Spain ended France's dream of a third World Cup triumph on Tuesday, taming their star-studded attack in a 2-0 victory to reach the final against England or Argentina.

Didier Deschamps' men were hot favourites to lift the trophy after a string of breathtaking attacking displays in the United States but they met their match against the slick European champions in the semi-finals.

Mikel Oyarzabal opened the scoring for the 2010 winners with an emphatic penalty in the first half in Arlington, Texas, and Pedro Porro doubled their lead in the second half.

Shell-shocked France could not find a way back into the match despite their wealth of attacking riches on a bitterly disappointing day for the two-time winners.

"We started almost four years ago with an idea and we've been faithful to that idea and it's brought us here," said Spain coach Luis de la Fuente.

"These players deserve everything," he added. "Day after day they've shown their commitment, their solidarity, their generosity, their talent. They make the difficult look easy."

The game at the AT&T Stadium caught fire midway through the first half when Salvadoran referee Ivan Barton pointed to the penalty spot after a reckless challenge by France left-back Lucas Digne on Spain winger Lamine Yamal.

Oyarzabal hammered the ball past France goalkeeper Mike Maignan for his fifth goal of the World Cup to leave France trailing for the first time in the tournament.

It was the Real Sociedad forward's 18th goal in his past 20 games for Spain.

Deschamps threw on Desire Doue for Bradley Barcola in the 57th minute in a bid to supercharge his attack but a minute later they were 2-0 down after a stunning team goal for Spain involving Dani Olmo and defender Porro.

Spain, who have conceded just once in the entire tournament, are the first team in World Cup history to keep six clean sheets at a single edition.

They have now gone 37 games without defeat in all competitions, equalling the record unbeaten streak by a European nation.

But defeat in Texas is a bitter blow for a France team that reached the past two finals, winning in 2018 and finishing as runners-up four years ago.

Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappe was just one cog in a star-studded attack that also included Ballon d'Or winner Ousmane Dembele and the elegant Michael Olise.

Defeat leaves just the third-place play-off on Saturday for long-serving coach Deschamps, who is stepping down after 14 years in charge.

The 57-year-old, who has won the World Cup as a coach and player, said his players were "devastated".

"First of all, it's our fault, I don't want to blame anyone," he said.

But Deschamps could not resist a dig at referee Barton.

"I'll ask a loaded question and I won't answer it," said the France coach. "Is the referee at the level required to officiate a World Cup semi-final?

"And I'm not saying this just because we lost today. There were quite a few situations. There were some favourable calls, too," he added, without elaborating.

Kane v Messi

In the other semi-final in Atlanta on Wednesday, England and Argentina will lock horns in the latest chapter of one of the game's most compelling rivalries.

The history of matches between the nations is peppered with incidents, set against a lingering sovereignty dispute over the Falkland Islands, known in Spanish as the Malvinas, in the South Atlantic Ocean.

The encounter takes place 40 years after Diego Maradona's infamous "Hand of God" goal helped Argentina to a 2-1 win at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

England captain Harry Kane, who is competing wity Lionel Messi and Mbappe for the Golden Boot, said his team would not be distracted by emotional baggage around the fixture.

"From a player's point of view it's us against a great team, who are smart, who are tactical, who know how to buy fouls, know how to slow the game down -- like many different teams you come up against throughout your whole career," Kane told ITV.

(AFP)

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday abruptly scrapped a planned 20 percent levy on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz amid clashes with Iran, saying he would instead seek compensation from Gulf allies via trade deals.

Trump said Middle Eastern leaders persuaded him to reduce the toll just a day after he announced it - and added that he was against charging any fees for the key waterway.

"Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States," Trump said on his Truth Social network.

He said he would continue with a "FULL Blockade" on ships coming to and from Iranian ports, set to restart at 2000 GMT Tuesday, or ships carrying anything have to do with Iranian cargo.

Tehran largely closed the narrow Strait of Hormuz, a key global waterway for oil and gas, after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February.

It began to reopen after a ceasefire deal in June, but has once again become the focus of military action after the truce effectively broke down last week.

Trump had declared on Monday that Washington was now "THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT" and would impose hefty fees on shipping to reimburse it for protecting it - while giving few details of the plan.

That announcement caused oil prices to spike and alarmed allies - especially given that the United States has previously slammed Iran for its own plans to charge shipping fees for the Strait.

But the US leader said on Tuesday that he had changed his mind after speaking to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait.

"I put it out yesterday, I thought it was good. I was called by different people, different countries - kings, emirs, and all of the people that we all know and we all love," Trump told reporters as he hosted Iraq's new prime minister in the Oval Office.

"They said we'd love to do it a different way. We'd love to invest in the United States, with billions and billions of dollars.... And I like that, actually, because I don't think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the Strait."

Trump added that it was "unfair that we're not in somehow compensated."

Iran's military command had insisted it would not allow the United States to "interfere" in the strait, while also warning its Gulf neighbors -- who have borne the brunt of its retaliatory attacks -- against cooperating with Washington.

It is far from the first time that the mercurial Trump, 80, has walked back a harsh announcement on trade, having last year eased global tariffs after markets quaked.

Traders have dubbed the phenomenon "TACO" - short for "Trump Always Chickens Out."

(AFP)

While US President Donald Trum backtracked on his threat to heavily tax ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, he warned he would expand US strikes on Iran next week to target power plants and bridges if Tehran does not agree to a deal.

"Next week it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges," Trump said in an interview on Fox News. "We're going to knock out all their power plants. We're going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate."

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the latest strikes were aimed at "degrading Iranian capabilities used to attack commercial shipping" in the strait, the key shipping channel for Gulf oil and gas where Tehran has repeatedly carried out attacks on civilian vessels.

Iranian state media reported explosions near the port city of Bandar Abbas, on the Gulf island of Qeshm near the Strait of Hormuz, and other locations.

State news agency IRNA later said that Iranian forces launched a drone attack on a military base in Jordan that hosts American warplanes.

The renewed naval blockade came into force at 2000 GMT - an hour after the US strikes began - with a senior Iranian official saying the move effectively wrecked a deal struck with Washington to pause the conflict to allow peace talks to take place.

Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said the US decision to renew the blockade "has, in a way, dismantled the Islamabad memorandum".

Admiral Brad Cooper, head of CENTCOM, said in a statement Tuesday that over the past week, "Iran has intentionally targeted civilians across the region by attacking seven commercial ships resulting in nearly a dozen civilian crew members killed, missing, or injured."

"US forces are holding Iran accountable for unwarranted aggression that continues to endanger innocent lives," he added.

Iran had earlier Tuesday said a previous round of US strikes targeted its Gulf island of Qeshm in the Strait of Hormuz, the key shipping channel for Gulf oil and gas that has been largely blocked by Tehran since the start of the war.

Trump scraps levy

Iran in turn hit two ships in the Strait of Hormuz, killing two crew members, according to the International Maritime Organization.

A Norwegian tanker was also hit by an explosion caused by an unidentified device off the Omani coast early Tuesday, the crisis response company MTI Network said.

And Kuwait said one of its naval vessels was struck during an Iranian missile and drone barrage, wounding four crew members.

Trump meanwhile said he was scrapping a planned levy on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz that he announced Monday, replacing the fee with trade deals with Gulf allies.

"I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network.

Since last week, renewed US attacks have killed at least 28 people in Iran, according to an AFP tally based on Iranian media and official announcements.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards announced Tuesday that they had fired missiles and drones on Bahrain, targeting a residential building for US forces and other facilities.

'Act of war'

Bahrain said it had intercepted "several treacherous aerial attacks launched by Iran" and accused Tehran of targeting civilians, after explosions and sirens were heard in Manama several times.

Tehran also launched attacks on other US allies in the region, including Jordan, which said Tuesday that it had shot down four missiles from Iran.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said their strikes targeted US forces at an air base and urged Jordanians to issue a "serious demand for the removal of the occupying American bases from the region".

Iran insists it only targets US interests, but its military command spokesman said any collaboration by Gulf countries with the US would be considered "an act of war".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a fierce opponent of Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions, warned Iranian leaders Tuesday that Israel would deal a heavy blow if they launched an attack on his country.

Speaking from Dimona, a southern town widely believed to house Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal, he told them: "Do not count on things remaining quiet if you attack us."

"The days are over when someone strikes us and we don't hit back with a decisive blow."

(AFP)

Lebanon and Israel concluded the first day of Washington-mediated talks in Rome on Tuesday, a US official said, as Israel said it was ready to move forward with plans to withdraw from two parts of southern Lebanon.

The US-brokered negotiations took place in the Italian capital over a framework agreement sealed last month after five rounds of talks in Washington, with Lebanese negotiators hoping for progress on an Israeli withdrawal.

The framework deal emerged after war broke out between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah on 2 March against the backdrop of the wider Middle East war.

It calls for an end to the war in Lebanon, disarmament of Hezbollah, the deployment of Lebanese troops in the south and for Israeli forces to steadily withdraw from the country in two "pilot zones".

"Talks in Rome by Representatives from the United States, Israel, and Lebanon were productive and held in a positive atmosphere," a US state department official said, adding that "both sides are eager to move forward" and that talks will resume on Wednesday.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said earlier on Tuesday that his country was "ready to move forward implementing these two pilot zones".

"I hope and tend to believe that this round of discussions in Rome will promote it."

The Lebanese presidency had announced on Monday that its delegation to Rome had been instructed "to demand the immediate start of Israeli forces' withdrawal from the two pilot zones before any further discussion".

According to a Lebanese diplomatic source familiar with the content of the talks, "the Lebanese army is ready to gradually take control of the localities from which the Israeli army would withdraw".

But Hezbollah rejects the agreement outright despite Lebanese government pressure, lowering expectations of success in the negotiations.

Orna Mizrahi of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv said Israel was "willing to withdraw gradually", but on the condition that "that there will be no presence of Hezbollah in the areas that Israel is withdrawing from".

She added that Israel also seeks to ensure "that the Lebanese army will have the ability... to keep it as a neutralised zone and a neutralised place that Hezbollah cannot come in again."

A US military delegation began discussions with the Lebanese army in Beirut on Saturday on the process for Israeli withdrawal from one of these "pilot zones".

Limited prospects

The framework agreement was concluded after a fragile ceasefire came into effect last month in the war between Hezbollah and Israel.

The Israeli army has nonetheless continued limited strikes in the south and has been carrying out demolitions in villages it occupies, according to official Lebanese media.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported Israeli strikes in the south on Tuesday, and detonations in several towns.

Israel's strikes and ground invasion have killed more than 4,300 people since the war started in early March, according to Lebanese authorities.

"The chances of a breakthrough in Rome are quite limited," Karim Bitar, a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, told AFP.

"What we might see instead is a kind of opportunity to show that the process is still in place... that there are negotiations continuing despite the opposition and the obstacles that are beginning to emerge."

Tehran had demanded the ceasefire in Lebanon in order to conclude a memorandum of understanding with Washington on 17 June.

But the region has seen a renewed escalation in recent days, with the US carrying out a third consecutive night of strikes against Iran ahead of the planned reimposition on Tuesday of its naval blockade on Iranian ports with ongoing attacks.

Iran wants to establish a link between negotiations over the regional war and Lebanon, "but we have the wish to disconnect it," said Mizrahi.

Tehran's priorities remain the Strait of Hormuz and the nuclear file, she added.

"The Iranians are using Lebanon as an excuse. They will always use it as an excuse," she said.

Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the regional war on 2 March by launching missiles at Israel in support of Iran.

Bitar, for his part, said that the risk of major fighting returning to Lebanon as a result of the regional escalation "is, of course, not negligible".

"But I think that Iran today will think twice before asking Hezbollah to launch new strikes against Israel," he said.

Tehran "wants to maintain Hezbollah as a long-term deterrent tool and does not want to use it immediately to open a new front," he said.

(AFP)

The wide-ranging bill would make it easier for authorities to deport asylum seekers and impose a "refugee tax" in return for government support.

The government says the legislation is intended to reduce small boat crossings while expanding "safe and legal routes" into the UK. It has been condemned by human rights groups who say it will weaken basic protections for asylum seekers.

The legislation passed its second reading in the House of Commons by 264 votes to 90, with Burnham among the Labour MPs to vote in favour of the bill despite a rebellion by 14 MPs from his own party.

The Makerfield MP's decision to back the bill comes after almost 80 Labour MPs urged him to scale back the reforms, warning that the party is "losing progressive voters" because of Mahmood's hardline approach.

Under the proposals, asylum seekers would be barred from obtaining permanent residence until they pay up to £10,000 for any financial support and accommodation received while waiting for their claims to be processed.

It will also limit the use of the European Convention of Human Rights to prevent deportation and replace immigration judges with a new system of independent adjudicators, which ministers say will speed up decisions but rights advocates say could weaken judicial oversight.

Ahead of the vote, Mahmood introduced new amendments to the bill, which include removing protections that block the deportation of Commonwealth citizens convicted of serious crimes.

Opening the Commons debate, Mahmood said the reforms were necessary to restore public confidence in the asylum system while preserving Britain's commitment to those fleeing war and persecution.

She also said Labour had increased arrests of people smugglers by 55% since taking office, while asylum decisions had reached a 24-year high and removals their highest level in almost a decade.

Refugee charities have criticised the introduction of the "refugee tax" as unfairly penalising asylum seekers who are unable to work until their applications are approved.

Amnesty International has called several aspects of the bill "deeply alarming", including the weakening of protections for families and the proposed overhaul of the appeals system.

The bill has also been met with criticism from Labour backbenchers. Nadia Whittome, the Labour MP for Nottingham East, called the bill "needlessly cruel" in a post on X, while Poplar and Limehouse's Apsana Begum described it as "performative and cruel".

Labour MP Stella Creasy also criticised plans to reassess refugees' status every 30 months, describing them as a "Diet Coke version of refugee status".

The Conservatives also voted against the legislation on Monday, arguing it does not go far enough to curb migration.

Burnham officially secured the Labour leadership on Monday after another 27 MPs backed his candidacy to succeed Keir Starmer. He now has 349 nominations, meaning no other candidates can reach the 81 needed to enter the contest.

The former Manchester mayor is expected to replace Starmer as Labour leader on Friday before becoming prime minister next Monday.

British media reports suggest that he is likely to keep Mahmood in her position as home secretary after he enters Downing Street.

The literary and free expression organisation issued the response after Dinaw Mengestu, the Ethiopian-American novelist and president of PEN America, announced he was stepping down, saying the organisation had repeatedly failed to uphold its commitment to defend free expression equally and had diminished the Palestinian experience.

Mengestu said the final breaking point came after PEN America published 'A Silent Moratorium', a report examining the experiences of Jewish and Israeli writers in the wake of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, while, he argued, failing to fairly represent Palestinians and misunderstanding the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Writing in a statement published on Instagram, Mengestu argued the report reflected a broader institutional failure.

“Across the report’s seven pages, terminology relayed to Jewish and Israeli identity appears more than 100 times, whole the word Palestinian is used six times-three times in reference to an anonymous Palestinian students quoted at the outset, and once in an extended quote from a Jewish student that concludes with, ‘I would never say Palestinians are terrorists’,” he wrote.

He noted that Israel was mentioned 52 times throughout the report, arguing that PEN America had failed to understand BDS as a legitimate form of dialogue.

Mengestu said his frustration had stemmed from PEN America's inability to defend free expression consistently, adding that he found the organisation instead "support[ed] suppression through its indifference".

“Like many other writers who have reached out to me, I am walking away from it permanently, and I will do everything I can now to help make something better,” he concluded.

The report at the centre of the dispute drew on interviews with around 30 Jewish and Israeli writers, literary agents and translators, who described harassment, de-platforming and professional isolation following Israel's genocide in Gaza.

Mengestu's resignation has renewed scrutiny of PEN America, which has faced sustained criticism from writers and activists for failing to defend Palestinian voices with the same urgency as others while Israel's onslaught on Gaza has continued.

His departure was widely praised by supporters online.

"Thank you for doing the right thing. It is astonishing how much they are committed to conflating the ideology of Zionism with the traditions of Judaism and Jewishness. Until PEN addresses this it’s better to build elsewhere," one Instagram user wrote beneath Mengestu's statement.

The latest controversy comes after Writers Against the War on Gaza launched a boycott of PEN America in August 2024 over discrimination against Palestinians and failures to defend free speech.

The boycott ended in December 2025 following the departure of then-president Suzanne Nossel.

Responding to The New Arab, PEN America said it had respected Mengestu's decision and confirmed that Executive Vice President of the Board Tracy Higgins would lead the organisation on an interim basis while the board begins the process of appointing a new president.

"We're grateful for Dinaw Mengestu's leadership of and contributions to PEN America, and we respect that he's made a decision he believes in," the organisation said.

It rejected suggestions that it had retreated from defending Palestinians.

"PEN America remains dedicated to defending writers under threat, including Palestinian writers. This piece neither revisits nor revises PEN America's prior work on Gaza. We remain an organization that believes what has happened there is a genocide," the organisation told TNA.

It highlighted that the organisation had directed more than half a million dollars in emergency assistance to Palestinian writers and artists in Gaza and in exile, published a report documenting the Israeli military's destruction of Gaza's cultural life based on interviews with Palestinian writers, artists and cultural workers, translated and published the work of Palestinian writers, and defended the free expression rights of Palestinian writers, scholars and pro-Palestinian activists on university campuses.

Addressing Mengestu's criticism of its position on BDS, PEN America said it has long opposed cultural and academic boycotts while simultaneously defending the right to engage in them as protected speech.

"PEN America has long opposed cultural and academic boycotts while also defending the right to engage in them; those two commitments aren't in tension," it said.

The organisation added that it rejects any interpretation that its report characterises BDS as discriminatory conduct rather than protected speech, noting it has consistently opposed legislative efforts to suppress the right to engage in boycotts.

In an interview conducted byThe New Arab,'s managing editor, Jahshan said Washington’s costly entanglements in the Middle East, unconditional support for Israel and increasingly authoritarian politics at home had exposed the widening gulf between America’s founding ideals and its conduct. He described Donald Trump’s transformation of US institutions as a “quiet political coup d’état”, warning that the damage to the republic could take decades to reverse, even as growing public opposition to Israel and foreign wars struggles to translate into meaningful policy change.

Below is the transcript of the interview, edited for clarity

Karim Trabousli: Hi, I'm Karim Traboulsi managing editor of The New Arab in London. This month the US is celebrating is 250th anniversary, the anniversary of its founding as a republic. Following its war of independence from Britain. Its founding principles were isolationist, anti-colonial and very much against entanglement in foreign wars. However, 250 years later, the United States and the Empire had built over the 20th century remain very deeply entangled in forever wars in the Middle East, most recently in Iran, with a botched war that ended with the strategic US defeat. The US is grappling today with many questions about the survivability of its empire and whether its foreign policy, as it currently stands, can be sustained. And for us in The New Arab, the Middle East is a crucial arena to examine those questions from that lens. To answer these questions and more, I'm joined by Doctor Khalil Jahshan, executive director of Arab Center DC. Thank you for joining us today.

Khalil Jahshan: Thank you. It's my pleasure.

KT: I want to just ask. My first question is: when the US, after its independence from Britain, the founding fathers pledged not to be entangled in great-power politics or foreign wars. And that promise was quickly abandoned thereafter steadily. And then, after World War Two, the US built a de facto empire and inherited the British Empire it had opposed. Today, it faces similar questions about the survival of this empire and the cost of sustaining it commensurate with America's mediocre circumstancesas Adam Smith had put it in relation to the British Empire at the time. Would you agree that the empire the US built over the 20th century is now in decline? Or do you think the rumours of its decline are greatly exaggerated?

KJ: As far as US policy toward the Middle East is concerned, I would definitely say there has been a decline, even though that bilateral relationship with countries in that region has not necessarily been successful in the past. Nonetheless, they have deteriorated. This is a historical question. And when you talk about a period of 250 years, essentially maybe 100, 120 of those directly dealing with the Middle East, you cannot deal with or answer this question in a static way, because the question does have built-in dynamics, if you will. Things have changed. No country stays consistent and persistent, if you will, in its policy, in its position for that long, and the US is not an exception. You know, some say some on the American scene say the US has definitely matured over the past 250 years. But again, with all due respect, maturity is in the eye of the beholder. You could mature for the better, you could mature for the worst. And in our case here, with regards to the Middle East, I would say it has changed. It has matured in a way. It's older today, but its policies have become even worse. So when you look at the founding documents of this republic and look at the values that this country established for itself in terms of its founding fathers, the Declaration of Independence, the inalienable rights of people, equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You can hardly recognise these with regard to US policy today, whether in what we have witnessed over the past 20 years Iraq, Afghanistan today, in Palestine, in Gaza, the West Bank, the conflict with Iran, the situation in Libya, Syria, Yemen, it's kind of almost difficult, even with a magnifying glass, to see these American values.

KT: That prompts a different question, because in commentary that we've seen recently about US foreign policy on the 250th birthday, there are calls from certain avenues in Washington, especially the realist international relations figures, that the US should go back to its roots of isolationism and hemispheric domination and pursue a light-foot approach in the region. And they often frame it at least as a backwater, strategically insignificant. They often repeat this mantra, you know, China, as everything should be about China, and the Middle East should be abandoned. But the recent war in the Middle East, now, the question of Palestine is coming back to become an internal political issue in the US. Would you say that would prove them incorrect about, like, the importance of the Middle East, or how insignificant or significant it is for the US position in the world?

KJ: That's a very good question. It might not prove them incorrect, but it would prove that this type of U-turn that they are calling for is virtually impossible because of the spillover of foreign policy into domestic policy. That doesn't happen quite often, universally. It doesn't even happen very often here with regard to the US policy. But in this case, it has happened in an unprecedented and almost complete way, which robs, you know, foreign policy makers in this country of their manoeuvrability space, of their ability to make a U-turn. The US is almost like an aircraft carrier unable to make a U-turn quickly. It endangers itself, and it might sink. It needs time, and it needs space. And unfortunately, most of the time you don't have time and space in foreign policy today to make those types of changes. That requires some decisive leadership, which the US does not have. It needs some dedication again, as the people you quoted were saying. Dedication to the original, if you will, ideals of the United States. And that takes some leadership. It's not easy. History doesn't go backwards. It takes some serious leadership to resort to earlier commitments. And right now, with the type of leadership the US has, which tends to be more authoritarian and more neglectful, if you will, of historical commitments by the United States to its own ideals, which they have rendered into myths rather than ideals. It's very difficult to expect that, besides this, the leadership that we have in the US today has also paralysed governance, has paralysed institutions, has paralysed the three essential parts of the US government. The three components are not working well together. They are still there, but they are not working well. I would say, for example, the legislative branch is totally paralysed and subjected to total control, if you will [by the executive].

What we learned from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, where it's totally independent, the same thing with the judiciary, which has become a footnote to the executive branch instead of an independent power within the system, kind of supervising, if you will, the behaviour of the executive branch. So, taking all that into consideration, I would find this demand, although I fully agree with it, that the US, if it has to survive as a system, has to basically readjust and revise some of its ideals on which it was based and respect them more than we have seen in the past. But that will prove much more difficult than those friends of ours think at this time.

KT: It's often the case that foreign policy is seen as whatever we do, whatever blunders we do abroad, it doesn't cost in United States because we're protected by two oceans and nothing can touch us. And that is a profound mistake, as we are seeing time and again that foreign policy does come back home to roost, and there is no escaping the cost of adventurism or miscalculation, or, as you said, neglecting commitments and obligations and long-term historic trends. In terms of the Middle East, it seems to me that the US still or never learns its lessons, specifically in the East. Maybe it learns lessons in Europe, maybe in Asia Pacific, maybe in South America to adjust policy. But it seems to me the Middle East, they repeat the same things and hope for different results. So we are seeing this now with the MOU, the Abraham Accords, with even the framework agreement in Lebanon where they're pursuing this, these recipes that are doomed to fail, that are recipes even for the US to withdraw and reduce its footprint in the Middle East. What would in your new opinion a durable solution that would allow the US to reduce its the cost of its footprint in the Middle East and leave it stable look like?

KJ: First, I fully agree with the premises of your question. It's been very difficult for the American political system to adjust to changes. I mean, yes, our system started as an isolationist, if you will, power anti-colonial and its general demeanour. In a sense, it was a rebellion against European control. But then it quickly assumed more power, and as it became a recognised world power, particularly economically, it kind of forgot its origins. And that made it oblivious to the commitments it made early on in its political lifespan, and made it difficult. In addition, through another development, which is what I referred to earlier, the spillover of foreign policy into domestic policy and vice versa. When that happens, you know, foreign policy is usually conceived and formulated in the interest of the aggregate, in the interest of the country, in the interest, or based on the national interest as perceived, if you will, by the foreign policy elite or leadership of the country. But when it spills over and gets mixed with domestic politics, it loses its sense of direction. It becomes a subject to the interest of the few. And that's basically what happened, for example, with a major aspect of US foreign policy, which is the Palestine question and the, you know, the relationship with Israel has become so intertwined with domestic politics to the point where it's impossible to even win the presidency or stay in the presidency or even any other office in the country, federal or even statewide or local, without, if you will, biased adherence to support for Israel at the expense of US national interests. You know, one could criticise Israel for that control. And that happens all the time, particularly in the Middle East.

Frankly, Israel is not to blame. The US is to blame. The Israelis, in an admirable way, basically know what they're doing. They put their own interests ahead of everybody else's, including the United States. But the problem is with the United States that, somehow, with regard to Israel, there is this reverse sense of exceptionalism. I mean, there is this phenomenon in US policy we refer to as exceptionalism, but it usually means something else. But in this regard, this exceptionalism attributed to Israel, somehow, it is treated separately and differently as an exception to all allies of the United States, in spite of the fact that occasionally, as we do now, you see some friction between leaders or you see some slight disagreements with regard to tactical objectives and so on. But to me, it's still, I mean, US policy in the Middle East still caters to Israel and treats, for example, Arab allies as a footnote to that bilateral relationship with Tel Aviv. And therefore, this pattern of politics, domestic plus foreign policy combined, has basically detracted the United States from the pursuit of its own national interest in the region.

KT: In fact, some on social media, perhaps very crudely, were burning Israeli flags and calling for US independence from Israel on the anniversary. But on a less crude note, there are a lot of insurgent candidates now winning on an anti-apartheid platform, and the primaries at least. There are calls to detach the US from Israeli interests and put US interests first on both aisles,  even ifstill in the fringes of both the right and the left. But perhaps there is a momentum I don't.Do you see that as a hopeful direction that the US could extricate itself from this, from this dependency or deference to Israel?

KJ: Sure. Yes and no. To be frank with you. Yes. In terms of the fact that there is a sea change happening with regards to public opinion in this country vis a vis the bilateral relationship between the United States and Israel. People are getting tired of this undue exceptionalism, if you will, in the treatment of Israel and allowing Israel to lord it over US policies and US interests in a vital region, and particularly when it leads to war, like in the case of the recent Iran war, that where the US, in a way, was dragged by Israel to enter into a losing war, if you will, that it had no interest entering at all, other than basically catering to the Israeli perspective and to Israeli interest.

And people seem to be smarter than policymakers these days. They have sensed that. And that's why we see this change, the grassroots level. And the change is becoming actually very significant, like it's no longer on the margins of American politics. When you look, for example, at the opposition today to US policy in the Middle East, particularly the war with Iran, let's say within the Democratic Party, it has already exceeded 80 to 90% within the party itself. That is critical. Opposed to the war, critical of the policy and extremely critical of the current government of Israel. That has never happened before, considering the fact that the Democratic Party has been the natural, if you will, base in this country for pro-Israel support. And that's where the bulk of the, let's say, the Jewish community is. That's where the bulk of the pro-Israel community used to be.

And now all of a sudden, it's changing and it's not limited just to Democrats and independents. It's to a lesser extent, happening also among independents, where you see fluctuating percentage between 40 to even 60% on some issues critical of of policy, less than the Democrats, but still significant, sometimes the majority on the Republican side, it's beginning to infiltrate the Republican Party, particularly youth. When you look at youth under 30 within the Republican Party, including MAGA, combined with policy substance, and, if you will, isolationist tendency within that sector of the party, the numbers are also increasing, exceeding 30 to 40%. That's almost the equivalent within young American Jews in this country -- the base of support for Israel, the natural base of support for Israel.

So these are significant changes. They are unprecedented welcome changes. We haven't seen them before to this extent. But the reason I said my reaction is mixed, because frankly, these changes in public opinion so far have not translated into change in policy. And until and unless leadership joins in, if you will, political parties get more involved in this and turn them into policy changes on the ground in the region where people in the region feel that change that could be just a passing phenomenon, could be just a passing phase that we could lose.

So, particularly as the reaction to that change is beginning to pick up on the Israeli and the pro-Israeli front, if you will. And so if people retreat, and it's easy for public opinion to disappear, we've seen it go up, we've seen it go down. It tends to be emotional. It tends to be cyclical. It tends to be seasonal based on certain events in the region, like the war in Gaza, the genocide in Gaza and so on. But American memories tend to be short-term. They tend to forget quickly, and unless it's changed, it changes the policy.

KT: I haven't read the book by Maggie Haberman yet and Jonathan Swan, regime change, but I feel like that could be part of the pro-Israel response, that if they are losing public opinion and if electoral politics are this favoring the Israeli narrative, is it possible that the those forces and their allies could sacrifice US democracy and the US Republic itself, and even the free media, as we've seen with the big monopolies emerging on the media and their heavy handed interference in like television shows and censorship, is it a possibility that this regime change from within?

KJ: It could at this day and age, if you asked me that question, let's say eight years ago, I would say no, this country, the way it's built in, if you will, and the way its DNA is composed is not conducive to coup d'etat, if you will, or to change that radically. But in this day and age, with Trumpist policies prevailing, I have to change my answer. My answer would be yes. Unequivocal yes. I think what we are witnessing today in the United States, I agree with the analysis that says it's very few people who use the word, but I would venture to use it. It's virtually a coup d'etat. This is the American version, unlike the Third World, which is always accused of having repeated coup d'etat that tends to be supported or initiated by the military or what have you, this one is different.

This one is a salient, quiet political coup d'etat that's undermining the basic premises of the American political system. How Trump and his supporters managed to do that. It still remains to be seen. Haberman and company, you know, the book is very smart. It has good analysis. They are well-connected. And I think they are probing and asking, raising the right questions. But the answers remain incomplete. I think it's going to take us a few years to fully realise what happened and how. And this administration assumes it ends, and it's not followed by a similar administration in the next presidential election. If that happens, it's going to take between 2 to 3 decades to clean up.

KT: Wow. That is a very that's a shocking assessment. For my final question: For us as analysts, as journalists, as the general audience, what do you think we should be watching out for as the survivability or the fate, really, of the US Republic and Empire seems to be very much in question and is tied to the Middle East in many ways. Not to say that the Middle East is at the centre of the universe, but it remains a critical, strategic and financial hub that determines the fate of empires. What should we be watching out for? What should be focusing on in the next few months and even years?

KJ: Well, in the short term, I would say the midterm elections. Again, going back to what I said earlier, looking for more solid, if you will, or tangible signs that the sentiment that changed sentiment in public opinion is being translated into reality in the political arena. We would like to see more evidence in this regard. If that happens, I think that would be good news for the survival of the American political system.

But frankly, right now the problem is not just with the Trump party, which used to be known as the GOP or the Republican Party. The problem is not with them alone. The problem is also with the Democratic Party. That seems to be confusing to those of us who study them. At least, it's reminiscent of what happened to the Labor Party in Israel, which is now kind of like a weak semblance of its former self. And that's basically what is happening to the Democratic Party. I'm not sure it can pick up the pieces. It can lead, it can substitute. There isn't even a consensus about potential leaders in these, you know, upcoming elections. So I would be looking for that type of evidence to see a sense of direction politically on the part of the public and again, pushing public opinion, pushing public sentiment more toward policy.

What we hear are good ideas, ideas in the right direction, but they need to be firmed up on political grounds, in a political base, if you will. And that hasn't happened yet. The other thing I would be looking for again is almost like a political revival in this country if I see the seeds of one, but there has to be some common sense political trends that need to emerge in the near future in this country that can reexamine these basic issues, whether they are the the exceptionalism in American politics, the American form of nationalism, this myth of manifest destiny, this pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What do they mean today in 2026? They definitely do not mean the same thing they did in 1776, but the quality of leadership needed to dive into these issues and answer these questions is still dormant. And if there is a tendency to move in that direction, I think that would also be healthy for the United States and its survival as a system.

KT: That's a perfect note to end our conversation on. Thank you so much for joining us, Doctor Jahshan. Hopefully, we'll talk to you again soon. Thank you.

KJ: Any time. Thank you.

The criticism follows Kane's recent account of playing golf with the US president, which he described as a "surreal experience", prompting renewed scrutiny of the human rights principles he promoted ahead of the Qatar tournament.

Footage from March 2022 has also recirculated showing Kane discussing the England squad's responsibility to educate themselves about issues surrounding the first World Cup staged in the Middle East.

“…As is often the case, when it comes to the West, criticism and vocalness become optional. The double standard would be amusing if it wasn’t so galling,” Yusuf told The New Arab.

"England captain Harry Kane might have a short memory, but the rest of us don't. He spoke of how the Qatar World Cup "shone a light on important issues," the country apparently faces, and how he and other professional players could "use our platform to help in any way we can. That eagerness to be an activist has disappeared,” he continued.

Sports expert and content creator Salma Mashhour also said Qatar was subjected to far greater political and moral scrutiny than the United States, Canada and Mexico have faced during the current World Cup.

"I do think so. Qatar was treated as a political and moral issue from the beginning, and players were constantly asked what they would say or do about human rights. But it has been clear for a while now that with this World Cup, there has been far less pressure on players to discuss the politics of the host country," she told The New Arab.

Mashhour argued that the issue extended beyond Kane, pointing to Germany's protest at the Qatar World Cup and the country's subsequent treatment of pro-Palestinian expression.

"And it is not only Kane. Germany’s national team covered their mouths in Qatar to protest being “silenced,” but Germany has since been heavily criticised for the way pro-Palestinian voices have been restricted, punished or excluded. So there is clearly a wider issue of people defending free expression and human rights selectively," she said.

Mashhour noted that Kane had previously presented engagement with human rights as part of his responsibility as England captain, but appeared to abandon that position when discussing Trump.

"With Kane, the key point is that in 2022 he said captains had a responsibility to educate themselves, discuss human rights issues and not hide from them. But when the political figure involved was Donald Trump, that principle seemed to disappear," she added.

Before the 2022 World Cup, Kane publicly discussed concerns over migrant workers' rights and the treatment of LGBTQ+ people in Qatar.

“We had that meeting last night. It was important to talk with the manager, staff and players. We wanted to qualify for the World Cup before doing that and we’ve done that, so it was our first chance to have that chat,” he said at the time.

“Gareth led that meeting. We spoke about what to expect, some of the important issues surrounding the World Cup…as a group we’ve never shied away from important issues, we’ve always had our opinions and always tried to show unity in everything we’ve done,” he continued.

When asked whether Qatar should have been allowed to host the tournament, Kane said: “It’s a hard question to answer if I am totally honest…like I touched on it wasn’t our decision, it was the decision of Fifa”.

Critics have since questioned why Kane has not spoken publicly about controversies surrounding this year's World Cup, including the treatment of Iranian players, US military attacks on Iran and Washington's support for Israel's wars on Gaza and Lebanon.

“The list is extensive: Iranian players being openly discriminated against compared to other nations; the fact that the US continues to arm Israel's genocide in Gaza and the assault on on Lebanon; and the ongoing US attacks on Iran whilst it banks on the football stealing all the attention,” Yusuf said.

“Harry Kane could have picked any one of those and used the platform he reminded everyone in 2022 was so crucial for highlighting what's important,” he added.

Golf with Trump

Kane recently confirmed that he played golf with Trump in Florida around 18 months ago after receiving an invitation from the US president.

“He invited me to play when I was down in Palm Beach, so yeah, when the president invites you somewhere … it was a pretty surreal experience just to meet him and obviously play golf with him," he said.

Kane also praised Trump's performance on the course.

Harry Kane confirms he played golf with Donald Trump: "We played about 18 months ago. He invited me to play when I was down in Palm Beach. It was a pretty surreal experience just to meet him and play golf with him"pic.twitter.com/LPBClmqvGi

— Bayern & Germany (@iMiaSanMia) July 11, 2026

“His ‌golf’s pretty good, to be honest with you…I hope I can play golf as good as him when I’m his age, that’s for sure,” he said, describing himself as “grateful” for the “unique experience”.

Mashhour said the problem was not simply that Kane played golf with Trump, but the warm and apolitical language he used to describe the encounter.

"I do not think he praised Trump specifically, beyond his golf skills, but his choice of words is problematic," she said. "Calling it a “surreal experience,” speaking warmly about the meeting, and praising Trump’s game makes it sound like a harmless, apolitical celebrity encounter. I dont think Kane needed to turn the press conference into a political speech, but he could have chosen his words far more carefully."

She contrasted Kane's comments with the OneLove campaign he supported in Qatar, which was presented as a stand against discrimination.

"Trump is not just a famous golfer or a celebrity. He is a very powerful political figure whose policies and actions directly affect many of the groups England claimed to stand with in Qatar," Mashhour said. 

"A jury found him liable for sexual abuse in the E. Jean Carroll case in 2023, with a separate defamation verdict following shortly after. In Qatar, the entire premise of the OneLove campaign was standing against discrimination and abuse. The contrast between the cause Kane attached his captaincy to and the figure he chose to describe warmly is one he has not been asked to account for nearly enough," she added.

Mashhour stressed that footballers should not be expected to comment on every political issue, but said those who choose to speak about human rights should apply their principles consistently.

"When they choose to speak about ethics and human rights, they should apply the same standard regardless of who is involved. Kane himself said that speaking about these issues was part of his responsibility as England captain. He has not really spoken up for anything since," she said.

The New Arab contacted Kane's management team for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Nuclear experts told The New Arab that while the site was a likely military target because of its strategic importance, conventional US bunker-buster bombs may be unable to destroy the deeply buried facility. They also warned that any strike could further undermine international oversight of Iran's nuclear programme while risking wider regional escalation.

"There is therefore a tension between maximalist promises to 'take out' the mountain and more uncertain efforts that conventional weapons can achieve," Benjamin Ashraf, an analyst at the Open Nuclear Network (ONN), told The New Arab.

What is Pickaxe Mountain?

Pickaxe Mountain, known in Iran as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, lies in the Zagros mountain range in Isfahan province, around two kilometres from the Natanz uranium enrichment complex.

Trump thrust the site into the spotlight on Monday during an interview with US radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Asked whether Iran possessed a fourth nuclear site after previous US attacks on Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, Trump described the mountain as a potential target for "a good, big, beautiful strike right through the front door", adding that Americans "may see that very soon".

He also said he wanted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect the site, while claiming Washington had not yet detected activity there.

The threat comes despite Trump's repeated assertions that previous US attacks had severely damaged Iran's nuclear programme.

What do experts know about Pickaxe Mountain?

Ashraf said ONN's assessment was based entirely on satellite imagery and open-source analysis because the IAEA has had no access to the site since tunnelling began in late 2020.

The underground complex sits within the broader Natanz area but appears to be significantly deeper than Natanz's original buried centrifuge halls.

Satellite imagery and terrain analysis suggest Iran has excavated large underground galleries around 100 metres below the surface inside a granite ridge.

"Granite has a much higher compressive strength than the sedimentary limestone and dolostone above sites like Fordow, meaning the rock itself is better at absorbing and dispersing the shock from conventional bunker-buster bombs," Ashraf said.

Recent high-resolution imagery also appears to show construction continuing after the US-Iran memorandum of understanding committed both sides to maintaining the status quo at nuclear-related facilities.

Vehicles have been observed using western access roads, while tunnel entrances appear to have been reinforced with concrete headworks and additional protective overburden.

Other tunnel portals remain partially backfilled, limiting rapid vehicle access and suggesting Iran is controlling which parts of the complex remain active.

"Taken together, these features lead ONN to assess Pickaxe as a deeply buried, nuclear-related site being actively hardened and prepared for large-scale industrial use," Ashraf said.

What is believed to be inside the mountain?

Iran has said the underground complex is intended to house a centrifuge assembly facility following the destruction of an earlier plant in what Tehran described as an act of sabotage in 2020.

Iranian authorities have released few technical details, and no international inspectors have independently verified the site's purpose.

According to Maxar Technologies, tunnelling began in December 2020.

Independent imagery-based studies suggest the underground chambers are large enough to accommodate a modern centrifuge assembly plant. ONN says the site's size, depth and protection could also make it suitable for future uranium enrichment or other nuclear-related work should Tehran choose to expand its programme underground.

The Washington Post reported last year that construction intensified after previous US attacks, while the Institute for Science and International Security published satellite images showing heavy construction vehicles, drilling equipment, cranes and reinforced tunnel entrances.

Iranian parliamentary adviser Mehdi Mohammadi described the site this week as "the most heavily fortified nuclear facility in the world".

Could conventional US weapons destroy it?

Ashraf said the site's strategic value makes it an obvious military target, but warned there is a significant difference between damaging the complex and destroying it.

Research into deeply buried facilities suggests even the largest conventional bunker-buster bombs may disrupt such sites without reliably eliminating underground halls protected by strong rock.

"The United States can almost certainly crater portals, collapse access tunnels and sever power and ventilation at Pickaxe," Ashraf said.

"It is much harder to guarantee the elimination of all underground halls 80–100 metres down without either nuclear use or post-strike inspection, neither of which is being contemplated."

Without international inspectors being granted access afterwards, it would also be difficult to independently verify the extent of any damage underground.

What are the risks of attacking Pickaxe?

Ashraf warned that a partial strike could leave the core of the underground complex intact while making it even harder for international inspectors to monitor Iran's nuclear activities.

"Technically, a partial strike that leaves core halls intact could provide Iran with a damaged but repairable, harder-to-monitor underground capability," he said.

He added that bombing the site without restoring inspector access risked repeating the uncertainty that followed previous attacks on Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan.

"From a verification perspective, bombing without restoring inspector access risks repeating what we saw after the 2025 strikes on Natanz, Fordow and Esfahan: strong rhetoric about 'obliteration' alongside surviving enriched uranium, damaged but usable infrastructure, and continued construction at deeper sites."

Ashraf also noted that recent attacks near the Bushehr nuclear power plant had already raised concerns about military operations targeting or occurring close to nuclear-related infrastructure.

"We have already seen attacks near the Bushehr nuclear power plant, with strikes landing close enough to raise serious questions about how far combatants are prepared to go in hitting nuclear-adjacent infrastructure."

How has Iran responded?

Iran has not formally responded to Trump's latest threat.

However, Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to the speaker of Iran's parliament, described Pickaxe Mountain as "the most heavily fortified nuclear facility in the world".

He argued that Trump's consideration of attacking the site showed Washington had exhausted its military options and was moving towards an operation that was "doomed to failure from the outset".

Mohammadi said US Central Command's own documents showed the complex could not be successfully destroyed and described it as "untargetable".

"When the enemy reaches this level of operational desperation, it means it has reached the end of the road and entered this war without a plan," he said.

He warned that any attack on the facility "will turn the region into hell", adding that Iran "will turn the region upside down over the Americans, and this will certainly happen".

Mohammadi said Washington was seeking to force Iran to change its negotiating position on the Strait of Hormuz and its nuclear programme.

"They may try to damage Iran's nuclear materials to remove this issue from the negotiations, but they will certainly not succeed in this objective," he said.

He added that the coming period would bring "major developments in Iran's nuclear field, and unprecedented operations against the United States in the region".

On 2 July, a bomb tore through a popular café near the Justice Palace in central Damascus, killing ten people. The day after, a hand grenade wounded three Civil Defence workers in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana.

Days later, on 7 July, twin blasts struck near the Tourism Ministry, minutes after French President Emmanuel Macron left his hotel for a meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa - the most consequential foreign visit Damascus has hosted since Bashar Al-Assad's fall.

Three incidents in just under one week, each closer than the last to the symbols of the new state's authority and its bid for international legitimacy. Taken individually, each could be dismissed as an isolated act of chaos in a country still awash in weapons after fourteen years of war.

Taken together, they read to Syrian analysts as something closer to a pattern, and raise an urgent question for a government banking its future on stability and foreign investment: who is sending this message, and what do they want Damascus, and the world, to hear?

A timed message

The political, security, and military implications of the 7 July bombings near the Tourism Ministry are significant precisely because of their timing and location, political analyst Abdullah Hamad tells The New Arab.

The attack coincided with a high-level visit by the French president and an accompanying delegation of businessmen, at a moment when France is trying to recover a historical role in Syria and secure itself a seat among the primary players shaping the country's future - Riyadh, Ankara, and Washington chief among them - after feeling its influence recede.

“France,” Hamad notes, “was long one of the main backers of the Kurdish-led SDF and recently helped broker its dissolution and integration into Syria's national structures”.

Hamad sees an intelligence dimension in the attack, given its timing alongside Macron's visit and its proximity to his residence, and points a finger at Iran.

“Tehran has been deeply unsettled by the Syrian authorities, who have dealt it more than one political blow, whether through the fall of the Damascus regime or through Syria's distancing itself and severing the corridor that once ran from Tehran to Beirut via Baghdad and Damascus.”

He adds that Syria is now positioned to play major potential political roles going forward, including sidelining Iran entirely from the scene in Lebanon, clipping its proxies, and pressuring Hezbollah into abandoning its weapons for a purely political role.

Who pulled the trigger?

The attacks have reopened an uncomfortable question in Damascus: who carried them out, and why now, just as Syria finally seated its new People's Assembly (a session postponed after the café bombing) and opened trials against former regime figures including Wassim al-Assad, Atef Najib, and former Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun.

Military expert Ahmed Rahal points to multiple pressure points capable of triggering unrest.

“In the south, he notes, sits Uli al-Bas (Islamic Resistance Front in Syria), an Iran-affiliated faction tied to the Lebanese file and to talk of Syrian intervention there - a dynamic that activates Hezbollah and its sleeper cells, along with Iran's, all of whom have an interest in signalling through recent bombings that they remain capable of disrupting security and undermining stability.”

Rahal also raises the possibility of remnants of the former regime, pointing to the trials of former regime figures as a motive, and noting that the device used in the café bombing was a crude, improvised explosive that ordinary people could build.

Political and security expert Dr Hamza al-Muhaimeed likewise considers the ex-regime’s involvement plausible, citing the same detail: a homemade device, easily assembled in any household and small enough to carry in a bag without drawing attention.

“It isn't possible to search everyone on the street,” he says. “Which means they can move such devices without being noticed.” He also points to recent threats issued separately by Miqdad Fatiha and Rami Makhlouf, suggesting both men may have wanted to translate their rhetoric into action and win the trust of their popular base.

Makhlouf, the ousted Assad's cousin and one of Syria's most notorious businessmen, stirred controversy after appearing in a video alleging a plan to alter the demographic makeup of Alawite-majority areas.

He urged members of the sect to remain patient and avoid being drawn into reactions or acts that could inflame tensions, suggesting the coming months would bring further developments along these lines.

A source at the Ministry of Defence, speaking on condition of anonymity, also pointed to ex-Assad officials’ involvement, noting that the café bombing occurred roughly 100 meters from the Justice Palace - the very site hosting trials of former regime officials - and coincided with the state completing its three branches of power and the start of a flow of foreign investment.

“There are parties unhappy about that, chief among them the ex-regime men seeking revenge for Atef Najib and others,” the source told The New Arab, adding that Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani's recent visit to Lebanon, where he received an enthusiastic welcome in Tripoli, may have further provoked Assad regime remnants, Hezbollah, and Iran inside Syria - prompting the attackers to send a message that they can destabilise Syria at any moment.

The Islamic State question

Beyond Assad loyalists and those hoping for his return, another actor looms over the Syrian landscape: the Islamic State (IS).

Rahal believes IS could indeed be involved, particularly given that the group now accuses President al-Sharaa of aligning with the West - an enemy in its eyes - branding him an apostate. He notes that IS's rejection of al-Sharaa's conduct extends to its rejection of the People's Assembly's formation and convening of sessions.

Other analysts, however, disagree. “That isn't how they operate,” al-Muhaimeed says, arguing that IS does not typically target civilians, not out of restraint, but because it favours distinctive operations aimed at a specific commander or high-value target, the kind that leave a mark international media will cover.

“IS does not attack with planted explosive devices but through car bombs or suicide bombers, and its operatives are not typically protected - the attacker usually intends to detonate himself during the act,” he explains.

Al-Muhaimeed's assessment carries the weight of firsthand experience: a native of Deir az-Zour province, he fought against the group as part of Jabhat al-Nusra and was once detained by IS himself.

Is Syria's security ‘breached'?

The café bombing and the twin blasts near the Tourism Ministry followed an earlier attack in May, in the Bab Sharqi area, which killed a Syrian army soldier and wounded others.

Together, the string of attacks has spread a sense of despair among Syrians, leaving many feeling unsafe and convinced that the security file is compromised and that the authorities responsible for it cannot fully do their job.

Rahal pushes back on the idea of a “security breach”. Syria, he argues, is not a settled, stable country; it is a nation emerging from fourteen years of war, one still holding hundreds of thousands of military ordnance pieces and explosives that ended up in civilian hands.

“It's natural, then, for bombings and breaches like this to occur,” he says, arguing the Interior Ministry is doing what it can with the resources available, though he acknowledges it suffers from a lack of experienced personnel, having brought in neither defected officers nor experienced security officers.

“Performance during this period is acceptable,” he concludes, “given the ministry's capabilities and Syria's current conditions.”

Al-Muhaimeed echoes the point: "A breach typically happens in a stable country, not one emerging from a long war. And a breach usually targets specific individuals - state officials, for instance - after surveillance and tracking of their movements”.

What happened, he argues, isn't a failure by the Interior Ministry: when the former regime fell, weapons spread into the hands of many people, and over fourteen years, a large number of Syrians learned to use and even manufacture weapons.

What it means for investment

The timing raises an obvious question: what does a string of bombings targeting the capital, foreign dignitaries, and now first responders mean for a country trying to convince the world it is safe to invest in?

Al-Muhaimeed believes the 7 July bombing was deliberate and loaded with meaning, intended to make the French president reconsider, to unsettle him, and to project instability.

Rahal agrees the attacks carry an unmistakable negative message for investors and damage investment prospects, particularly in a country that, in his words, “doesn't yet possess the basic ingredients for investment” to begin with.

Yet the bombing does not appear to have derailed Macron's intentions. France and Syria signed 16 agreements and memoranda of understanding spanning political, economic, health, and development sectors, covering maritime and air transport, energy, banking, infrastructure, and digital transformation.

Macron affirmed France's readiness to take part in Syria's reconstruction, announcing the formation of joint Syrian-French economic committees working in coordination with Gulf states to support reconstruction projects.

The Élysée Palace also announced that CMA CGM had signed a new partnership agreement with the Syrian government covering air cargo handling at Damascus International Airport, alongside the completion of earlier agreements to operate two dry ports, first announced in May.

A last throw of the dice

Whoever is ultimately responsible, Hamad frames the campaign as a desperate, last-ditch effort, “playing in stoppage time”, as he puts it, because the international community has already made its decision to move toward opening up to Damascus and backing its stability and government.

The regional picture being drawn by the major international actors, Paris, London, and Washington among them, rests on centralised state authorities and explicitly sidelines sub-state armed groups, he argues - a shift that also closes the door on some of the proxies Iran or Israel have used to destabilise the situation.

For a government counting on that international backing to survive its first year, the question is no longer whether more attacks will come, but whether Damascus can convince investors, diplomats, and its own exhausted public that each one is the last gasp of a losing side, and not the opening chapter of something wider.

Mawada Bahah is an independent Syrian journalist with bylines in local, regional, and international outlets

This article is published in collaboration with Egab

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

Visit our previous live page to catch up on developments earlier today.

Here are the key developments on Tuesday afternoon:

•    The US military has continued to attack southern Iran for a third day, with reports of explosions at Kish Island, Qeshm Island, Bushehr and Bandar Abbas.

•    Iran announced it had struck US positions in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, as well as several vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

•    Trump said on Monday he would reimpose the blockade on Iranian ports and would charge a 20 percent toll on all shipping through the disputed waterway.

•    Lebanon and Israel have begun a new round of US-sponsored talks in Rome focused on implementing last month's framework agreement.

•    Israeli forces have killed at least nine Palestinians in Gaza, including a 10-year-old boy.

Darline Graham Nordone, Graham's younger and only sibling, was appointed by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster on Monday to serve until January, when a special election will determine who completes the rest of the term.

Nordone has never held elected office. Her appointment came after US President Donald Trump and senior Republicans publicly backed her to succeed her brother, placing their family connection at the centre of the decision.

"I think, in many respects, it would be a way of extending Lindsey’s legacy here, and certainly something that, if that’s what they decide to end up doing, I think there’d be a lot of support for," Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview with CNN.

Trump also signalled his support for Nordone, describing her as Graham's "wonderful sister".

"This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

With Graham gone and fellow Republican hawk Mitch McConnell sidelined in hospital, president is also working with a narrower majority in the Senate to help advance his legislative agenda.

Now in her brother's post, Nordone enters the US Senate as Trump is attempting to push through military funding and approve nominees.

The ushering in of Graham's sibling, however, did not go unnoticed by observers, with some questioning the state of US democracy. 

"If this happened in some other country, we would laugh at their backwardness. Some in Washington would argue they must be bombed," Iranian-Swedish political analyst Trita Parsi wrote on X.

"So we’re passing seats in the senate to family members? No elections, no voter choice? Quite the democracy," wrote X user GenXGirl.

Under the US Constitution's Seventeenth Amendment, a senate vacancy caused by a senator's death may be filled by an appointee chosen by the governor "to complete the term or hold office until a special election can take place".

While Nordone takes the role temporarily, a candidate filing will open later this month, with a Republican primary scheduled for 11 August.

According to the sources, Washington will not, under its agreements and understandings with Baghdad, allow any extension beyond next October for the factions to comply.

The information, obtained by The New Arab, comes as Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi visits Washington at the head of a delegation to discuss "attracting investment and advancing the development process".

Sources told TNA that the future of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) and various armed factions was discussed at the Coordination Framework alliance's latest meeting before Al-Zaidi departed for Washington.

While none of the leaders of Shia political parties close to the factions objected to the government's disarmament plan, some leaders argued that emptying the factions' weapons depots could help pave the way for the approval of the Popular Mobilisation Forces Law. They argue this would transform the PMF into a regular institution administratively and organisationally subordinate to the prime minister.

The sources acknowledged that the issue could be discussed in Washington.

However, all indications suggest that the United States will not accept any weapons that are not registered with the Iraqi state.

A member of the Coordination Framework alliance who was familiar with the discussions at the latest meeting told TNA, "Washington, through separate meetings with leaders of Shia parties and through official meetings with the prime minister, confirmed that it will fully adhere to the timetable set for bringing faction weapons under state control, particularly heavy weapons including long-range missiles and drones."

"Therefore, discussions between Al-Zaidi and the US administration on disarming the factions are not open to any delay," the source said.

"Al-Zaidi contacted leaders of the factions known to oppose disarmament through intermediaries over the past few weeks. He offered numerous guarantees about the seriousness of the process and about the leaders themselves not being targeted. However, the response remained the same: accepting the disarmament of the factions would amount to surrendering to arrogant powers," the source added.

Al-Zaidi's domestic challenges

For his part, Iraqi MP Miqdad Al-Khafaji, affiliated with the Huqooq Movement, which is close to Kataib Hezbollah, said, "Washington wants to destroy the resistance factions by taking away their weapons, which represent the symbol of their strength, honour and doctrine."

"This will not happen as long as the threats and US occupation of Iraq continue, and as long as the danger of normalisation with the Israeli entity remains," he added.

Moreover, al-Akhafaji stressed to TNA that "Al-Zaidi's visit to Washington should remain focused on strengthening bilateral relations and concluding balanced agreements that achieve mutual benefit for both countries."

"It should not address Iraq's internal affairs related to popular orientations, particularly issues such as weapons being under state control and the future of the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Washington, as these are sovereign domestic matters to be decided exclusively under the dome of the Iraqi parliament," he said.

Political affairs researcher Basim Al-Sheikh said that Al-Zaidi will be required by the US administration to explain the latest developments on three issues: the state's monopoly on weapons, money laundering, and combating corruption.

"This will require intensified efforts. Although the government has made good progress, these files are still at an early stage of completion," al-Sheikh said.

He pointed out that the factions' weapons are linked to the presence of US forces in Iraq.

"The deadline set by the prime minister to end the factions' weapons coincides with the end of the US presence in Iraq. Therefore, the coming few months will determine the outcome," he said.

For his part, security expert Sarmad Al-Bayati remarked that "Washington wants faction weapons to be placed under the control of the Iraqi state and wants to prevent any leaders or members of the armed factions from holding important executive government positions in the country."

"Meanwhile, the factions say their weapons are linked to the US occupation. Even if the US presence ends, the factions may instead speak of the dangers of normalisation with the Israeli entity. Therefore, the issue of the factions' weapons will not be an easy one," he said.

Al-Bayati also argued to TNA that Al-Zaidi's visit to Washington does not include the weapons file.

"Rather, we are waiting for economic agreements so that we can emerge from the economic crisis, especially since we currently have no outlets for exporting Iraqi oil," he said.

The Iraqi factions appear to be aware of this position, particularly after the Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced on Sunday its "principled" rejection of Al-Zaidi's visit to Washington.

A statement issued by the group, which includes several factions, most notably Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat Al-Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid Al-Shuhada, said: "While the American-Zionist war machine continues to commit brutal massacres and shed the blood of thousands of believers and innocent people in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine, an Iraqi government delegation travels to Washington to meet the US administration."

"We reject this visit, which coincides with the hearts of believers and free people around the world boiling with grief and anguish over the continuation of these horrific crimes," the statement added.

The statement reiterated that "the continued presence of US forces on Iraqi soil constitutes an occupation, and that one of the government's priorities must be to work, through all available means, to end it according to the announced timetable."

The statement noted the factions opposed "trade exchanges and the signing of contracts with any country that harbours hostility towards the resisting people or works to confiscate political decision-making and violate sovereignty", while also rejecting "any economic monopoly or domination over Iraq's resources".

Article translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari. To read the original, click here.

The gold earrings, believed to date to the first millennium BCE and to originate from ancient Iran, were one of the most talked-about elements of Zendaya's appearance at the London premiere of The Odyssey last week.

They were sourced by Barron London, a Mayfair-based dealer specialising in antique jewellery, before being remounted with diamonds and 18-karat yellow gold. The jeweller describes them as "a pair of Ziwiye gold medallion plaques, circa first millennium BC Iran. Mounted by Glenn Spiro with diamonds in yellow gold".

“I find Western celebrities, who are part of the broader Western discourse in all arenas and therefore an extension of the cultural dialogue between East and West, to be largely deaf to questions of ethics and history when it comes to the Global South," Zirrar Ali, London-based author and expert on Islamic history, art, and architecture, told The New Arab.

"Adorning artefacts, whether from museums or private collections, is often seen as harmless, but can in fact constitute a display of power and domination: one culture asserting ownership over the heritage of another,” he added.

He said the move from Zendaya was "distasteful", but "in line with Orientalist practices".

The New Arab reached out to Barron London for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

According to Ali, the West often sees the ancient history of Iran, Arabia, and the rich history of the East more broadly as entirely detached from the modern nation-states of Iran, Iraq, and others, which may justify why the jewellery choice was made while the US bombs Iran.

However, he condemned the move, noting that it is deeply problematic.

“The practice of taking jewellery and other artefacts, especially those associated with the royal courts of great empires of the past, the Mughals, the Safavids, and others, and then allowing actors and celebrities to adorn them sends a clear message: not only will we not return what we took from you, because we consider ourselves more worthy custodians, but we also continue to occupy the symbolic position of monarchs and rulers over the lands from which these artefacts were removed,” he explained.

The earrings have also sparked fierce debate on social media, with archaeologists and heritage campaigners questioning both their provenance and the ethics of wearing ancient artefacts as fashion accessories.

An Instagram creator with 43,000 followers who posts archaeology content under the handle @dr_archaeology called Zendaya's choice "gross", adding: "So Zendaya’s Odyssey premiere earrings are seemingly first millennium BC gold adornment discs turned into earrings and we know nothing else about their provenance meaning their journey from their homeland which is probably Iran…"

She notes that the jeweller often acquires real artefacts from the Middle East and West Africa by “means undisclosed”.

“Bad taste in mouth,” she adds. “…These pieces are likely looted from Iran and they are gracing the ears of an American actress from a country that just bombed Iran…also I think the irony of wearing historical jewellery to a movie that is an absolute train wreck of anachronistic language, armour, gender roles, pants, is a funny choice.”

She added: “So why not replicas? Because let’s be real the point of these earrings is not to showcase legitimate ancient artistry, it is to fetishize the past, to be a commodity, stolen from the elite, circulated illegally, and immorally…this is about class signalling - fellow creators, let’s not hype this type of commodity fetishism, you are aware it drives the antiquities black market which hurts cultural groups and local people."

The choice of jewellery also divided opinion, with many noting that while the earrings are of Iranian origin, Zendaya's look was inspired by her role as Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom.

“Colonisation chic,” one person commented on a video of Zendaya wearing the earrings on Instagram.

“It belongs in a museum,” another said, while another wrote: “I will not pay money to watch the new Odyssey movie.”

The latest controversy comes after American actor Margot Robbie also came under fire in January for wearing the Taj Mahal Diamond on the red carpet for the premiere of Wuthering Heights in Los Angeles.

The necklace, valued at $8.8 million, features a diamond with a Parsi inscription reading "Love is Everlasting". Many criticised Robbie for failing to mention its origins or how it was previously acquired by Elizabeth Taylor and later Cartier.

The first declared that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed". This US Republic, founded through revolutionary war in 1776 by "enlightened Englishmen", defined itself against kings, hereditary privilege and empire, convinced that liberty could only survive if power was constrained and de-centralised.

It was this republic that inspired John Quincy Adams to warn that America "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy", lest it become "the dictatress of the world" and cease to be "the ruler of her own spirit".

The second republic was born alongside it, perhaps as a corruption of it. Even as the young nation proclaimed universal rights in its constitution, it tolerated slavery, expanded across Indigenous lands through genocidal conquest and dispossession, and steadily accumulated power beyond its borders.

As the US marks the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence under Donald Trump's second presidency, it is tempting to ask whether America has lived up to its founding ideals. But perhaps that's the wrong question. The more revealing one is this: which of these two republics triumphed?

For much of the Middle East, the answer seems obvious.

The America encountered across the region is less the republic of Thomas Paine and John Quincy Adams than the superpower of alliances that prop up tyrants, devastating military interventions, sanctions and unwavering support for the rogue state of Israel, even as the genocide in Gaza has left Washington increasingly isolated from much of international opinion while causing monumental shifts within the Republic's two governing parties.

Revolution

The first republic was genuinely revolutionary.

The American Revolution was not simply a colonial tax dispute but a revolt against monarchy, arbitrary authority and the concentration of power. The founders inherited a republican tradition stretching back to classical antiquity and Renaissance political thought, caught somewhere between Magna Carta and what would become the Jacobin tradition of revolutionary France.

It was a tradition that insisted republics rarely died by foreign conquest. Instead, they decayed from within, corrupted by militarism, executive corruption and the slide towards empire.

Thomas Jefferson hoped for "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none", while George Washington cautioned against permanent foreign alliances.

Their differences were considerable, and many of them lived lives that contradicted their professed ideals. Slaveholders writing of equality embodied the central paradox of the foundation of America. But their suspicion of empire and tyranny was real.

Even the Monroe Doctrine embodied both visions of the republic. Conceived largely by Adams as a warning to Europe's monarchies against recolonising the Americas, it gradually evolved into a justification for American intervention. By Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, the line between hegemony and empire had become far thinner than the founders had hoped.

Nor was America's anti-imperial tradition merely an eighteenth-century curiosity.

Throughout the nineteenth century, many Americans instinctively sympathised with peoples resisting European colonial domination. During Ahmed Orabi's revolt against British imperialism in Egypt, much of the American press portrayed his cause sympathetically through the prism of their own revolutionary heritage.

That argument reached its greatest domestic intensity after the Spanish-American War.

The Anti-Imperialist League

As the US acquired overseas territories, an extraordinary coalition emerged to oppose imperial expansion. The Anti-Imperialist League counted among its members Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie and William Jennings Bryan. They shared one conviction: a republic could not rule other peoples indefinitely without changing its own character.

They lost the argument.

The twentieth century transformed the US from a continental republic into the world's pre-eminent power. After the Second World War, it inherited much of Britain's global strategic role, constructing an international order of military alliances, overseas bases and economic institutions that came to define the American Century.

Yet even then, the first republic occasionally reasserted itself.

Perhaps nowhere was this clearer than during the Suez Crisis of 1956. When Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt following Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal. President Dwight Eisenhower refused to endorse the operation and used American economic and diplomatic pressure to force the invasion to an end. Cold War calculations undoubtedly mattered, but the episode nevertheless reflected an older American instinct that colonial conquest belonged to a world the republic had once defined itself against.

Suez now feels like a distant exception.

The Cold War normalised military alliances, overseas bases and intervention. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington increasingly cast itself as guarantor of a liberal international order, from Iraq to the global war on terror. A republic born in suspicion of empire had grown comfortable exercising extraordinary power far from its own shores.

For much of the Middle East, America's relationship with Israel completed that transformation. Washington's steadfast bipartisan support for Israel throughout its brutal occupation of Palestinian lands and, most recently during the genocide in Gaza, reinforced the perception that the US no longer merely defended the regional order but had become indispensable to it.

Though Donald Trump has come to embody this America, he did not create it. What he has done is strip away many of the assumptions and delusions that once accompanied it.

American power

Trump has shown little interest in cloaking American power in the language of universal values. War with Iran, in partnership with his ideological blood brother Benjamin Netanyahu, the killing of its supreme leader and senior leadership, the seizure of Venezuela's head of state, the tightening siege of Cuba and a nakedly transactional approach to alliances all reflect a presidency that no longer feels compelled to justify American power in liberal or universalist terms.

At home, that same contempt for restraint has been reflected in escalating battles over the judiciary, the rule of law, with ICE agents running amok, executive authority and the constitutional limits of presidential power

Those debates would have been instantly recognisable to the founders.

Their greatest fear was never simply the return of a British king, but rather that republics, intoxicated by power, would gradually lose the habits that made them republics in the first place. Empire, they believed, did not merely change a nation's foreign policy. It changed its political culture entirely for the worse.

Perhaps that is the deepest irony of America's 250th birthday.

The US gave the modern world one of its most enduring political languages: government by consent, suspicion of tyranny and the revolutionary idea that power exists to serve liberty rather than the other way around. Those ideals inspired generations far beyond America's shores, including many who fought colonial rule across the Middle East.

In much of the Middle East, America's founding ideals have long since been eclipsed by the realities of American power. Washington is associated less with the language of 1776 than with catastrophic military intervention, strategic dominance and unwavering support for Israel no matter how depraved its actions.

Yet as America's image abroad has become increasingly defined by the second republic, Americans themselves have begun asking questions that would have been instantly familiar to Adams, Madison and Jefferson: how much power should a president wield? Can constitutional restraints survive political tribalism? And, ultimately, can their republic survive the accumulation of power by Trump, a wannabe despot?

At this anniversary, the question is no longer which America the world encounters. It is whether the first republic still possesses the strength to defeat the second.

Sam Hamad is a writer and History PhD student at the University of Glasgow, focusing on totalitarian ideologies.

Join the conversation: @The_NewArab.

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.

The sixth round of negotiations, held at the US embassy in the Italian capital, comes as both sides seek to translate the 26 June framework agreement into a phased Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

However, Israeli media reported that disputes over the first "pilot zone" and the conditions attached to further withdrawals risk stalling progress.

According to Israel's Maariv newspaper, practical preparations are currently focused on only one "pilot zone", despite the framework referring to two. While US officials have suggested an Israeli withdrawal from the first area could begin "within days", no map or binding timetable has been agreed.

Under the framework, Israel would gradually withdraw from designated areas before handing them over to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), which would deploy troops, dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure and prevent the group from re-establishing a military presence.

But Israel reportedly insists that any expansion of the plan will depend on whether the first "pilot zone" is deemed successful.

Israel seeks US oversight

According to Maariv, Israel is demanding US oversight of Lebanese military units deployed to the "pilot zones", including vetting soldiers to ensure they have no links to Hezbollah.

The report said Israel also wants proof that the Lebanese army can locate weapons, destroy tunnels and military sites, prevent Hezbollah fighters from returning, and maintain long-term control over the areas before agreeing to additional withdrawals.

It remains unclear who will determine whether the pilot project has succeeded.

Israeli officials are reportedly seeking the ability to delay future withdrawals if they argue that Hezbollah infrastructure or fighters remain in the area. At the same time, the framework does not define operational criteria for dismantling Hezbollah's military infrastructure.

The report added that Israel has not committed to a broader withdrawal beyond the initial phase and continues to insist on maintaining what it calls a "security buffer zone" along the border for as long as it considers Hezbollah a threat.

Lebanon pushes for immediate withdrawal

Lebanon has instructed its delegation to demand that Israeli forces begin withdrawing immediately from two "pilot zones" before any further discussions take place.

According to the Lebanese presidency, the Lebanese army is prepared to deploy as Israeli troops withdraw.

Beirut has also argued that the "pilot zones" should include areas currently occupied by Israeli forces so that the first phase delivers tangible political and territorial gains.

Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri again criticised the framework agreement, warning that withdrawing through pilot zones rather than larger administrative districts would unnecessarily prolong the process.

"If withdrawal is carried out through pilot zones, it will take two years," he told Lebanese newspaper Al Joumhouria.

Berri reiterated his opposition to the "principle" of pilot zones, saying he had instead proposed withdrawals by district (caza), which he argued would be faster.

He nevertheless said he would welcome any outcome that secured an Israeli withdrawal, the return of displaced residents, the release of Lebanese prisoners and reconstruction.

"What matters to me is eating the grapes, not killing the vineyard's guard," he said.

Berri also described the framework agreement as "a trap", arguing that it sought to draw the Lebanese army into internal confrontations with Hezbollah that would only benefit Israel.

"The aim is to drag the army into internal clashes and provoke discord that serves only the Israeli enemy, which seeks to lure us into this trap," he said.

The negotiations come as the renewed US-Iran conflict casts fresh uncertainty over the framework agreed in Washington.

Barghouti had informed his lawyer of the violent incident during a visit on Thursday, Abdul Qader Badawi, media officer for the Popular Campaign for the Freedom of Marwan Barghouti and All Prisoners, told The New Arab.

Barghouti's cell door was opened suddenly four days before the visit, when a prison guard fired a rubber bullet at his leg from point-blank range, causing severe bleeding, Badawi said.

He received no treatment following the injury and was left without medical care for four to five days, Badawi said.

Arab Barghouti, Marwan Barghouti's son, told TNA that the attack was part of a long-running campaign aimed at breaking his father's resolve and ultimately killing him inside his prison cell.

Fadwa Barghouti, the jailed leader's wife and a lawyer, also confirmed that a prison guard had fired a rubber bullet at her husband's leg, causing a painful injury and bleeding.

She described the incident as the latest in a series of ongoing assaults against him.

The Israeli Prison Service had also issued an inflammatory report against her husband as an international campaign calling for his release continues to grow, she added.

The campaign, held under the slogan "Freedom for Marwan, Freedom for Palestine", has attracted the support of international figures and political leaders, as well as growing public and official backing worldwide.

After 25 years in Israeli prisons, Barghouti still holds on to his belief that freedom was an alienable right and that the Israeli occupation would eventually end, his wife added.

She argued that the Israeli report, despite seeking to condemn him, acknowledged his influence, political standing and symbolism, as well as the scale of the international campaign demanding his release.

Earlier this month, Barghouti's office said Israeli authorities had further tightened the conditions of his solitary confinement.

The Fatah Central Committee member has been held in isolation since November 2023 and has been repeatedly transferred between solitary confinement wings in several prisons.

His office said the Israeli Prison Service had recently imposed harsher conditions on him in the isolation section of Ganot Prison, describing the move as part of a series of systematic and arbitrary measures targeting him since the start of Israel's genocide in Gaza.

Khan, a 56-year-old British lawyer, denies the allegations against him.

He had already been suspended from his position on 8 June by the ICC's governing body, prolonging a crisis at the war crimes court, which is also under US sanctions over investigations into the United States and Israel.

The Bar Standards Board says Khan is suspended from practice as a barrister until the board or a disciplinary tribunal has ruled on the claims against him.

His supporters have suggested that he has become a political target for seeking arrest warrants for Israeli officials over Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.

The ICC, the world's first permanent war crimes court, opened in 2002 to prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by nationals of member states or on the territory of its members.

The village is seeing a gradual return of residents despite worsening living conditions, as well as ongoing security risks posed by the presence of Israeli occupation forces in surrounding villages.

At the same time, the municipality is working to rehabilitate infrastructure and restore basic services.

Qana, also known as Cana of Galilee, is located in the Tyre district, about 95 kilometres south of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and around 14 kilometres east of the city of Tyre.

It has an estimated population of about 18,000. It borders Deir Aames to the east, Aitit to the north, Hannawayh to the west and Siddiqine to the south.

Its best-known neighbourhoods include Haret al-Fawqa, Haret al-Tahta, Sayyida Salha, Al-Baraka, Al-Khashna, Al-Khariba and Haret Mar Youssef.

The village is known for its religious diversity and holds special significance among Christians. It is also known as "Biblical Cana", where one of the miracles of Jesus Christ is believed to have taken place.

Qana was the site of a notorious Israeli massacre on 18 April 1996, in which 110 people, including 33 children, were killed. Entire families were wiped out after seeking shelter inside a compound belonging to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) during Israel's military operation "Grapes of Wrath".

On 30 July 2006, Qana witnessed another massacre when the Israeli army struck a three-storey building in the Al-Khariba neighbourhood where displaced people had taken refuge, killing about 55 people, including several children.

During the September 2024 assault, 10 people were killed, and during the latest round of war, Qana was subjected to a series of Israeli attacks that killed about 16 people, destroyed more than 100 housing units and damaged buildings, commercial establishments and infrastructure.

The village remains in a fragile state of stability because it lies close to towns that are either fully occupied or under Israeli military fire control.

Residents said Israeli aircraft never leave the skies above the village and that the sound of shelling and explosions, particularly from Beit Lif in the Bint Jbeil district, regularly reaches them.

Against the backdrop of constant Israeli drone flights, the damage across Qana ranges from destruction to partial collapse.

The streets are marked by cautious calm and light movement. Some shops, particularly those selling vegetables and groceries, have reopened, while owners of damaged businesses continue repair and restoration work in preparation for reopening as soon as possible.

Returning residents of Qana said they will remain even if they have to sleep on the ground or among the rubble.

They said they decided to return as soon as there was talk of a truce being secured and rushed back to their village, despite the municipality asking them on 15 June to delay their return until an official announcement confirmed a comprehensive ceasefire, particularly because the Israeli army had violated agreements with the Lebanese state on more than one occasion.

Maryam Madani sits inside her grocery shop holding her daughter and tells The New Arab, "We returned with strong hearts and our heads held high. We missed our homes and our village."

"Qana was hit hard and lost many martyrs. The war was harsh on people and their livelihoods, but we came back with even stronger determination. We will stay on our land and rebuild it. People missed their homes, and that is why life is almost back to normal. We can hear explosions in the surrounding villages, but the situation in Qana is stable," she said.

Madani also said the municipality is carrying out maintenance work and completing projects needed to restore services and essential supplies, helping people return.

She added, "Although people still face some difficulties obtaining certain goods, especially because some trucks cannot reach the village, the beginning is good, and activity continues. We hope the situation remains stable so conditions gradually improve."

Hussein Taj al-Din, who works in aluminium design, told The New Arab, "Business is not what it used to be, of course. The situation remains tense, and work is slow. The psychological situation is also affected by the news, especially developments in the surrounding area and the Iranian-US negotiations."

"The main challenges now are electricity and water. Many residents had their solar panels damaged, but repairs are continuing to resolve these problems, along with issues affecting the telecommunications network," al-Din remarked. 

Fatima Hallal continues preparing a small clothing shop after the Israeli occupation destroyed her main store and damaged her home.

Although she was forced to flee to Beirut after the destruction inflicted on Qana, she said she is very happy to have been able to return.

She said, "This war was harsh in every respect, especially the conditions of displacement in schools. Most residents have not been able to return because some lost their homes completely."

Kifah Atiyeh said she lost her shop during the 2024 assault and later opened a small store to earn a living.

She explained, "I returned on the first day of the ceasefire. Basic services are almost fully available in the village. Life goes on, and we must move forward, even though what we lived through was difficult."

"I returned to Qana because it is my town. My land and my home are here, and I have spent most of my life here. Qana means both the Quran and the Gospel to me, and it is a blessing for the entire region," she added.

Fatima Ali Hakim survived several massacres in Qana and lost members of her family during the 2024 assault.

Despite all the difficulties, challenges, and dangers, she prefers to remain in the village and help people secure food and essential goods through her shop.

"Qana is our town, and it is difficult to leave our home and land. I do not fear becoming a martyr. What matters is that we remain on our land because displacement is unacceptable," Karim said. "The hardest thing anyone can experience is losing loved ones. They are the ones we mourn, not our livelihoods, because losing loved ones is far harder."

Qana Mayor Ali Atiyeh told The New Arab that "the Israeli attacks destroyed around 100 housing units and more than 70 commercial units.

"Around 20 homes and 15 shops were partially destroyed, while another 1,200 units sustained moderate damage. During the Israeli assault in 2024, our town recorded 29 martyrs. In the latest assault, we have 16 martyrs," the mayor remarked. "But the procession of martyrs has not stopped. We remain under fire and are subjected to attacks every day as Israeli assaults on the south continue, albeit at a lower intensity and at different times."

Atiyeh said, "The municipality resumed work on 14 June, and we are on the ground every day removing the effects of the assault. The scars of war cannot be erased without clearing the rubble."

"The municipality is working to restore electricity, water and internet networks, remove debris and clean the streets with the resources available to us, in cooperation with the local community and expatriates from the village," he noted. "It is well known that municipalities in the south lack the financial resources needed for recovery, but we are making every effort to help our residents who remain committed to their land and who decided to return from the very first moment the assault ended, before the official decision allowing people to return."

The mayor stressed that Qana is no ordinary village, saying its history bears witness to its resilience.

"Qana is a symbol of struggle in the region and a national model of coexistence among its people," he said.

"Its population used to approach 25,000 during the annual summer season. It is a meeting point for all surrounding villages and has a long history of Israeli attacks, particularly the 1996 massacre. The latest assault caused enormous destruction across its neighbourhoods, homes, infrastructure and commercial establishments," the mayor noted.

"Official buildings, including schools and the General Security headquarters, were also damaged. The biggest challenge now is the high demand for housing units, especially from residents whose homes were destroyed and from displaced guests from border villages such as Yater, Rshaf, Beit Lif and Kafra. We cannot meet this growing demand," he added.

"Israeli aircraft never leave the skies, and every day we hear explosions in neighbouring villages," Atiyeh continued. "This has a psychological impact on everyone and creates anxiety and tension amid the unstable reality we are living through."

"I hope the government establishes an effective crisis cell to assist southern towns, particularly by clearing rubble and restoring basic services. These are essential steps to bring life back to those villages," Atiyeh concluded.

Article translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari. To read the original, click here.

Israeli security officials were recently told to stop using the phrase “voluntary migration” when discussing Gaza's population, Israel’s Channel 13 reported in late June, citing officials who hope a softer name will make the underlying plan easier for foreign governments to accept.

The rebrand came just days after National Security Council chief Shmuel Ben Ezra convened an emergency meeting on “encouraging emigration” from Gaza.

In the meeting, Mossad representatives reportedly admitted they had not found a single country willing to receive Gazans. The timing was also awkwardly at odds with a US-GCC joint statement from 25 June, which said no one will be forced to leave Gaza, and that anyone who does leave is free to return.

“The whole story, since before the war began, is about displacement,” Jehad Malaka, a political researcher at the Palestinian Planning Centre, told The New Arab. “The war simply provided the opportunity to pursue a long-deferred Israeli ambition.”

Renaming the plan, or shelving and reviving pieces of it, doesn't change its content, he said, and doesn't lessen what would be considered a war crime under international humanitarian law.

A plan that keeps changing its name

Israel has already tried to sell the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza both regionally and internationally but has failed, said Malaka.

“Israel tried to market the idea of displacement, but the world refused to take in refugees. Now it's trying to reformulate the idea, hoping the concept gets laundered - but this attempt is doomed to fail, because states are more conscious of the real goal at this stage.”

Khaldoun Barghouti, an analyst on Israeli affairs, called the rebrand a change in tone, not strategy. “It has nothing to do with altering the strategic objective of displacing the Palestinian population of Gaza,” he told The New Arab.

“It's a softening of public messaging meant to ease international pressure. Instead of ‘displacement,’ it becomes ‘freedom of movement’ and ‘voluntary emigration.’”

Israel has yet to announce an operational mechanism for displacement, Barghouti said, but the search for one continues. He suspects there may be undisclosed arrangements with other governments.

The renamed plan stems from the governing coalition's politics in Israel, said Barghouti. “Gaza's displacement is at the top of the agenda for hardline figures in Netanyahu's government: Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and Daniella Weiss,” he said. “For those politicians who talk about settling in Syria and Lebanon, displacing Gaza is almost self-evident.”

Renewed military strikes in Gaza could make displacement more likely. Netanyahu could resume full-scale war and occupy the rest of Gaza if his political survival is at stake, said Barghouti, even at the cost of friction with the Trump administration. He could declare a state of emergency to extend his government's tenure.

“That would mean a return to violent displacement as well, if control over the rest of Gaza is completed,” he said. “Publicly, there are no operational procedures for displacement. But what's happening on the ground amounts to steps toward that goal.”

Hassan Hammad, a human rights researcher, said the rebrand is meant to evade international legal repercussions. The terminology shift, he told The New Arab, is “pure linguistic manipulation of what is a complete war crime. One that changes neither legal fact nor moral responsibility”.

International law is explicit on the issue, he points out. The Fourth Geneva Convention's Article 49 prohibits the forcible transfer of protected persons - individually or en masse - from occupied territory, regardless of the motive stated.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), meanwhile, classifies deportation or forcible transfer of a population as both a crime against humanity (Article 7) and a war crime (Article 8).

"On that basis," Hammad said, "human rights and UN institutions treat these acts as crimes warranting international criminal prosecution of occupation leaders, not merely political violations."

Nowhere to go

Whatever Israel calls the plan, it faces a major stumbling block: no country has agreed to take in Gaza's population.

With two million Palestinians, resettlement would be politically and economically costly for any receiving state.

“Israel has refused to bear any of that cost itself. And any government that participates risks exposure under international law, since forced displacement is treated as a serious crime,” he said.

Some European countries have laws allowing family reunification for citizens with first-degree relatives in Gaza, he said, but implementation moves slowly, out of fear of being accused of facilitating displacement.

Malaka credits Egypt for blocking the plan early in the war. “The world currently rejects the idea of displacement, and Egypt’s decision was decisive, which foiled the plan at the start of the war, when it closed its border at Rafah and prevented the displacement of hundreds of thousands into Sinai,” he said.

But that won’t necessarily stop it from happening indefinitely, he said.

It’s also not the first time Israel has tried to rebrand its displacement campaign.

Since October 2023, Israel has floated the idea of pushing Palestinians into Sinai, has tied departures to an exit-must-equal-return arrangement at the Rafah crossing after seizing it in May 2024, and has backed Trump's February 2025 'Gaza Riviera' proposal to relocate two million people to third countries.

In whatever way it's packaged, states are reluctant to violate the Geneva Conventions' Common Article 1, which implies that states cannot encourage war crimes, even indirectly. In other words, facilitating displacement could be seen as abetting ethnic cleansing.

By rejecting the plan at the outset, Egypt and Jordan set a strong early precedent for the plan’s rejection internationally, Malaka said.

The plan faces two main barriers, said Barghouti: “No host state, and continued reluctance from the US and European governments to align openly with a declared displacement policy.”

He argues that Israel is “politically, militarily, legally, and even at the popular level” prepared to displace Gaza's population, and if it succeeds there, it will become a “template for displacing the West Bank next”.

'Engineering an unliveable life'

The humanitarian collapse inside Gaza is not incidental, the analysts said. It’s meant to make displacement more likely.

At play is a larger strategy, said Malaka: to squeeze the population as much as possible, however possible. That’s what drives Israel’s years-long blockade and policies that restrict reconstruction materials and essential items like food and medicine. It’s also why Israel continues to hold seized territory behind the “yellow line,” an area that covers 70% of the Strip.

OCHA estimated in October 2025 that 81 percent of the Strip’s built structures have been damaged, many completely destroyed. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that more than 43,000 people in Gaza have sustained life-changing injuries.

The killing hasn't stopped either. Despite the October 2025 ceasefire, the UN human rights office recorded more than 700 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces over the following six months.

“Israel wants to bring people in Gaza to the point where they ask the world to intervene with Israel to let them leave to save their lives,” he said.

The restrictions on life in Gaza are designed with displacement in mind, said Barghouti. The “scorched earth” approach strips it of everything needed to sustain life or permit residents to return, turning parts of Gaza into heaps of rubble, he said - encouraging displacement.

Last February OCHA reported that less than half the water Israel supplies to Gaza City through the Mekorot pipeline was actually reaching residents. Most of what does reach people isn't safe, as 97% of Gaza's water is unfit for human consumption by WHO standards, and UNRWA has linked a rise in hepatitis A cases directly to contaminated water supplies.

“When you cut off water and food, destroy hospitals and health and educational infrastructure, and bomb homes over the heads of their residents, any resulting population movement cannot be called voluntary migration or free movement; it is the product of a coercive, expelling environment,” said Hammad

That’s why international law does not recognise consent extracted under starvation or armed force, said Hammad. Whatever name is used for a population’s departure, the legal responsibility is the same.

“Some call this ‘silent displacement’ which means a forced transfer carried out through non-military means,” he said.

Making sure the displacement campaign fails requires more than just tough-sounding words, said Hamad.

Real steps are needed, like Security Council action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, continued support for International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants, an expansion of South Africa's case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to explicitly address ethnic cleansing, and a refusal by UN agencies to take part in any logistical arrangement that could be read as facilitating the emptying of areas under the cover of humanitarian evacuation.

Israel may eventually use so-called “humanitarian cities” behind the yellow line as a transit point to move people west to east and eventually out of Gaza, said Malaka.

Even so, the analyst insists that Gazans remain attached to their land and have no intention of leaving. What he rejects is the notion of “steadfastness” as an empty slogan, one that asks people to simply endure indefinitely without any real change in conditions.

To him, that framing is disconnected from the reality facing two million people who have lost everything.

Mohamed Solaimane is a Gaza-based journalist with bylines in regional and international outlets, focusing on humanitarian and environmental issues

This piece is published in collaboration with Egab.

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

On 14 March, 41-year-old Mohammad Nazeer Paktyawal reportedly died of an allergic reaction at a hospital in Texas after being seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detained around 24 hours earlier. Use of methamphetamine was also listed as a cause of death, though his family said he did not use the substance. His death certificate was issued 103 days after his passing.

According to public statements from his family, Paktyawal was preparing his children for school when ICE agents apprehended him. As they were taking him away, his wife said she tried to give them his inhaler, which he relied on for breathing issues, but she said she was not allowed to hand it over.

He is one of many Afghans who have been targeted by ICE over the past year and a half, despite the community's work with US forces.

ICE have pointed to allegations of welfare fraud, though the relatively small-scale cases had not yet been heard in court at the time of his detention. In one instance, he reportedly bought dishes with his welfare benefits, not knowing the service was limited to food purchases.

ICE had initially said there was no record of his military service, though there are public reports of his service in the Special Forces. He was evacuated from Afghanistan during the fall of Kabul and was then paroled into the US. After relocating to the US, he worked as a market worker, a baker, and a driver.

In their death announcement, ICE identified Paktyawal as a criminal illegal alien, a term at odds with the promise of the US government to take care of their Afghan allies who had risked their lives to work alongside US forces.

Rights groups, Afghan advocacy organisations and politicians are calling for more transparency and an investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death.

“It is highly unusual for a 41-year-old man to die less than 24 hours after being taken into government custody, particularly where there are emerging questions about access to medical care,” AfghanEvac, a US veterans group that supports Afghan allies, wrote in a public statement.

“Mr Paktyawal survived the war in Afghanistan and trusted the United States enough to rebuild his life here,” wrote the group.

“Let me just say very simply, what's happening here smacks of a cover-up. Without being unfair to ICE or the Department of Homeland Security, the refusal to release these records creates doubts and suspicions that raise the spectre of some kind of cover-up,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who serves on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, according to local news reports.

According to the Associated Press, out of the more than 50 ICE detention deaths, Paktyawal’s is the first one ruled an accident. Most others were attributed to natural causes and suicide.

Israel's parliament on Monday passed a law declaring the study of Jewish religious texts a "fundamental value" of the state, a move widely seen as strengthening the ultra-Orthodox community's case for exemption from mandatory military service.

The bill cleared its final two readings by 63 votes to 52, just days before the Knesset dissolves ahead of the 27 October general elections, wrapping up months of tense negotiations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox parties that support his government.

With the bill's passage, Netanyahu is now expected to secure the support of the two parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, in the coming elections. Until now, both parties had withheld their backing over the issue.

The bill approved on Monday had undergone several revisions since passing its first reading in June.

A provision in the original version of the bill titled "Basic Law on Torah Study", which equated the rights of yeshiva (Talmudic seminary) students with those of soldiers, was removed to secure the backing of lawmakers from Netanyahu's own Likud party.

In the approved version, the bill states that "Torah study is a fundamental value of the heritage of the Jewish people and the State of Israel".

Even so, the legislation sparked fierce criticism not only from the opposition but also from within Likud, with lawmaker Dan Illouz resigning from the party.

Illouz argued that "removing the clause that explicitly defined the law's objective changes neither its nature nor its obvious purpose: this is a law that will, in practice, serve to legitimise exemption from military service."

For decades, most ultra-Orthodox Jewish men have avoided Israel's mandatory military service by registering as full-time religious students.

Israel's Supreme Court ruled this exemption illegal, and the military—stretched thin after more than two years of war—has demanded more recruits.

Rather than directly legislating an exemption, which the court would likely strike down, the coalition took an indirect route: drafting a "Basic Law"—a type of legislation with quasi-constitutional weight in Israel—declaring Torah study "a core national value".

Critics say this gives legal cover to keep ultra-Orthodox men out of uniform without saying so explicitly.

According to Israeli media reports, the finance ministry also opposed the legislation, warning that "if the right to Torah study takes precedence over the principle of equality, it will seriously undermine budgetary priorities".

In return for supporting the bill, lawmakers from the two ultra-Orthodox parties agreed to back other legislation put forward by Netanyahu's Likud.

"The government is using the Knesset's final days in session to push through laws that are detrimental to the army," said former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, who has emerged as the main rival to Netanyahu in the upcoming elections.

The Israeli Knesset formally concludes its current session on 17 July.

Iran responded by firing ballistic missiles towards a US air base in Jordan, while fresh explosions were reported across southern Iran and tensions continued to rise around the Strait of Hormuz.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the operation struck military targets in Bushehr, Chabahar, Jask, Konarak, Abu Musa Island and Bandar Abbas.

It said US forces used precision-guided munitions against Iranian coastal defence systems, missile and drone sites, and naval capabilities, with the stated aim of weakening Tehran's ability to attack commercial shipping.

The operation marked the third consecutive night of US attacks on Iran as Trump reinstated a blockade of Iranian shipping and proposed charging vessels a 20 percent fee for US protection in the Strait of Hormuz.

Explosions reported across southern Iran

Iranian media reported explosions in several parts of the country during the US assault.

The official IRNA news agency said four new blasts were heard near Bandar Abbas, the coastal city overlooking the Strait of Hormuz.

Mehr News Agency reported explosions across Hormozgan province, including in Bandar Abbas and on the islands of Kish and Qeshm.

Fars News also reported explosions in Jam, a city in the southern province of Bushehr.

Mehr said some of the blasts in Hormozgan may have been linked to fighting at sea and in the Strait of Hormuz.

Local authorities in the southwestern province of Khuzestan said four people were wounded in a US strike on the city of Omidiyeh, while rescue operations were underway.

Jordan intercepts Iranian missiles

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Iranian ballistic missiles had targeted a US air base in Jordan.

The IRGC also called on Jordanians to dismantle American military bases in the kingdom and elsewhere in the region.

"You know very well that not only do we not have any enmity with your country, but we also love you, the noble people, who understand the pain and oppression of the Palestinian people more than any other nation," the IRGC said in a statement carried by Fars News.

Jordan's armed forces said they intercepted and shot down four missiles that entered Jordanian airspace from Iranian territory, according to the state news agency.

The Jordanian military did not immediately confirm that a US air base had been struck.

Trump threatens more strikes but says deal possible

Trump had warned before the assault that Iran would be hit "very hard".

"We're going to hit them hard tomorrow. And there's not a damn thing they can do about it," he told the Hugh Hewitt Show on Monday.

Trump also said Iran's leaders could do nothing to stop the attacks, adding that they had "nothing else in their interest but their nasty tongues".

Despite the escalating strikes, Trump later told reporters at the White House that an agreement with Iran was still "possible".

The White House also said Trump would deliver a televised address to the nation on Thursday, although it did not disclose what he would discuss.

The latest hostilities came after Iran said at the weekend that it was closing the Strait of Hormuz, casting further doubt on an interim agreement intended to halt the war.

Trump revives Iran blockade

"The Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran. We are reinstating THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

He said the US would from then on be known as "the guardian of the Hormuz Strait", but would charge a 20 percent fee on all cargo shipped through the waterway.

Iran's top joint military command said Washington had no role in determining the future of the strait.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi wrote on X that Tehran was the guardian of the waterway and would remain so "forever".

Responding to Trump's proposed fee, Araqchi added: "20% is of course too much. We will be fair."

Before the conflict began in February, around a fifth of the world's oil and gas traffic passed through Hormuz each day, carrying more than 15 million barrels of fuel worth at least $1.2 billion.

A 20 percent US fee on that cargo could generate around $240 million a day.

The UN shipping agency rejected Trump's proposal, saying it opposed fees on straits used for international navigation and stressing that there was no legal basis for mandatory transit tolls.

Oil prices rise as shipping comes under attack

Oil prices rose almost three percent on Tuesday to their highest level in four weeks as the US restored its naval blockade and attacks in and around the Strait of Hormuz increased uncertainty over global energy supplies.

The UAE Ministry of Defence said Iranian cruise missiles struck two Emirati oil tankers on Monday as they travelled through the southern lane of the strait in Omani territorial waters.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency separately said a tanker had been hit by an unknown projectile while travelling around 40 nautical miles northeast of Oman's Qalhat.

Reuters could not immediately verify whether the UKMTO report referred to the same incident reported by the UAE.

The IRGC said two "offending" supertankers had been hit and disabled after ignoring repeated warnings and turning off their navigation systems, according to Iranian media.

The statement did not identify the vessels or confirm whether they were the same tankers cited by the UAE.

The IRGC accused Washington of encouraging vessels to use what it described as an illegal route.

It warned that cooperation with the "aggressor enemy" would result in further damage, delay the reopening of the waterway and deepen the global energy crisis.

Cargo vessel evacuated near Qeshm

Iranian media also reported a separate collision between two cargo vessels north of Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.

Fars News said one of the vessels, which was carrying 23 foreign crew members, suffered severe damage to the middle of its hull and began taking on water.

The captain ordered the vessel to be evacuated, and Iranian maritime rescue teams transferred all crew members safely to Qeshm Island.

US blockade to cover Iranian coastline

The US Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Centre said the blockade of Iran would take effect at 2000 GMT on Tuesday.

It said the measure would apply to all vessel traffic regardless of flag and cover Iran's entire coastline, including its ports and oil terminals.

The centre said neutral ships travelling through the Strait of Hormuz to or from non-Iranian destinations would not be prevented from passing.

Humanitarian shipments would also be permitted, subject to inspection.

The US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February, prompting Tehran to launch strikes on Israel and Gulf states hosting American military bases.

US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Israel's invasion of Lebanon during the war have killed thousands of people and displaced millions.

The ruling increased an earlier two-year prison sentence imposed by a lower court, which treated the 2016 donation as a tax-evasion offence, according to Ghannouchi's defence team.

Ghannouchi, the leader of the Islamist Ennahda movement and one of President Kais Saied's most prominent political opponents, received the Gandhi Peace and Tolerance Award in 2016 and donated the entire prize money to the Tunisian Red Crescent.

His lawyers argued that the prosecution should have been dismissed because the alleged offence dated back to October 2016 and had fallen outside the statute of limitations. They also said the case was marred by serious procedural flaws that rendered the prosecution invalid.

The defence further stressed that Ghannouchi never kept the prize money, deposited it into his personal account, or used it for personal or political purposes, saying the entire amount was donated to a national humanitarian organisation.

The Tunisia Freedom Observatory condemned the verdict, describing it as "an abusive and excessive use of the law".

In a statement, the rights group said turning "a publicly declared humanitarian donation into the basis for a three-year prison sentence" reflected an ongoing pattern of judicial persecution against opposition politicians and activists.

The organisation also argued that using foreign funding and currency regulations to criminalise a charitable donation distorted the purpose of those laws, which were intended to regulate foreign political financing rather than personal awards or humanitarian donations.

It called for the prison sentence to be overturned, saying it was disproportionate given the absence of any personal financial gain, criminal intent, or financial harm.

The group also urged the immediate release of the 85-year-old Ghannouchi, citing his age and health.

During a closed-door meeting in Ankara on Monday, the defence ministers of both countries discussed ways to advance bilateral defence industry projects, Turkish media reported.

They also discussed regional issues of mutual concern and regional security challenges.

Egypt and Turkey have been enhancing their military cooperation and political coordination for several months now, following a decade of tension.

In those months, the two countries took a raft of measures to mend their fences and increase their cooperation.

The same measures demonstrated their mutual desire to start a new chapter in a changing regional context, analysts said.

Monday's talks were held by an Egyptian defence delegation, led by Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Lt. Gen. Ashraf Salem Zaher, and a Turkish one, led by Turkish Minister of National Defence, Yaşar Güler.

Lt. Gen. Zaher's visit to Turkey is the first by an Egyptian minister of defence since 2013, the year relations between the two countries began to decline before gradually returning to normal as of 2023.

The visit came at the invitation of the Turkish minister, according to the Spokesman of the Egyptian Armed Forces.

Defence industry ambitions

Following his meeting with the Turkish Minister of National Defence, Lt. Gen. Zaher met the President of the Defence Industry Agency of Türkiye, Haluk Görgün.

During the meeting, both officials signed a Letter of Intent that creates a framework for defence industry cooperation between the two countries in the coming period.

They also discussed expanding cooperation and upgrading their countries' shared capabilities.

The defence partnership between Egypt and Turkey, they noted, would strengthen regional security.

The acceleration in contacts between defence officials in the two countries comes as Cairo and Ankara harbour aspirations for comprehensive defence cooperation, observers in Cairo said.

Egypt, which has been pursuing a policy of arms diversification, eyes closer defence industry cooperation with Turkey, a rising regional defence industry power, they added.

"Egypt views defence partnerships with countries like Turkey as an important booster of its comprehensive capabilities, thanks to its advanced military industry capabilities," Gen. Nasr Salem, the former reconnaissance commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces, told The New Arab.

He cited a wide range of fields in which the two countries cooperate, including joint training and military manufacturing.

Lt. Gen. Zaher's visit to Ankara also comes as Turkey tries to overcome obstacles to readmission into the US F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme.

NATO member Türkiye was excluded from the programme in 2019 due to its purchase of the Russian S-400 air defence system.

Now, however, it reportedly seeks to sell the system to a third country, with some media outlets pointing to Gulf countries as potential buyers.

Egypt operates a multi-layered air defence system that brings together equipment from the US, Russia, China and some European countries. The network also includes some home-grown equipment.

Nevertheless, Egyptian defence planners eye more than just the purchase of another Russian air defence system, analysts in Cairo said.

They base this assumption on the course of talks between the two countries over the past months.

In those months, Egypt and Turkey agreed to expand cooperation in the defence industry, including the manufacture of drones.

Egypt is also reportedly preparing to join Türkiye's ambitious fifth-generation KAAN stealth fighter jet programme as a co-producer and manufacturer.

"Turkey has a distinguished record in the making of drones, qualifying it to be a useful defence partner for Egypt," Gen. Salem remarked.

Joint military drills

The visit of the Egyptian army chief to Ankara comes only two weeks after the Chief of the Turkish General Staff, Selçuk Bayraktaroğlu, paid a visit to Cairo, during which he met his Egyptian counterpart, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Khalifa, and attended the fifth meeting of the Egyptian-Turkish Military Cooperation Committee.

The meeting was held shortly after Turkish fighter jets flew over Cairo as part of joint exercises with the Egyptian Air Force, the first between them in over a decade.

These exercises occurred a short time before fighter aircraft from the two countries conducted the 'Anatolian Eagle 2026' exercise at an airbase in Türkiye.

Special combat troops from Egypt and Turkey also conducted joint training—alongside troops from other countries—shortly before, as part of the Flintlock 2026 exercise in Sirte.

This city in northern central Libya has been a symbol of tensions between Cairo and Ankara, as it is part of the eastern Libyan government backed by Egypt, in contrast to the Turkey-backed government in the western part of the country.

Regional realignment

Intensifying defence cooperation between the two sides is a minor detail in the larger picture of accelerating political coordination, Turkish observers said.

This speeding up of coordination is driven by the belief in both Cairo and Ankara that the region is changing quickly, making their cooperation a necessity, they added.

"Cooperation between the two countries – regardless of its form – is an added force to the Islamic world against the threats it faces," Turkish political analyst Feras Ridwan Oğlu said.

Speaking to TNA, he added that this cooperation also mirrors the transformations sweeping the regional scene.

The two countries were once divided by their ideological differences, divergent regional alliances, and competing Eastern Mediterranean interests.

Whether these differences would constitute a challenge to their desire to expand cooperation in the future remains to be seen.

Observers like Ridwan Oğlu believe that the factors uniting the two countries are far stronger than those drawing them apart.

Among other things, the two countries agree on a large number of regional files, including Libya, Sudan and the Horn of Africa.

They emerge as pillars in a potential Sunni grouping that also includes Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Called 'Regional Quartet', the new bloc brings together sizeable populations, military power and economic capabilities.

It appears at a critical time for the region, especially with the US-Israeli war on Iran heralding a security vacuum that threatens regional stability.

"Closer political and security coordination between Egypt and Turkey will compel other regional actors to rethink their calculations," Ridwan Oğlu said.

The United States on Monday announced a sweeping campaign against the International Criminal Court (ICC) that could include further sanctions and other measures, accusing it of posing "an intolerable threat to US sovereignty."

The Trump administration said it would pressure other countries to withdraw from the court, marking a sharp escalation in the US effort to isolate the Hague-based institution and starve it of political and financial support.

"The ICC and its friends are waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles, but with statutes, compacts and the force of so-called international law," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a video statement.

The State Department said in a statement that the campaign will "systematically disable the ICC's ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty."

The US has previously targeted individual court officials it deems a threat to US interests, but the new "whole of government" campaign will pressure other nations "to withdraw from the ICC and cut off any financial support to the court," a State Department official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

'Threat to America' 

In February 2025, shortly after President Donald Trump returned to office, Washington slapped asset freezes and travel bans on several ICC officials over an arrest warrant issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.

But on Monday, the State Department focused on what it called the ICC's "intolerable threat to US sovereignty," saying the court "claims the authority to prosecute and even imprison American servicemen and officials operating on behalf of America's national interest."

"Americans never signed up for this, and all American presidents since the ICC's ratification have maintained that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Americans," the department's statement said.

Rubio added that the ICC "threatens every aspect of our political and legal system," and that it has moved from being a "narrow backstop" charged with prosecuting "only the gravest offenses...when a nation's courts were unable."

In addition to levying further travel and financial restrictions on people associated with the court, the State Department official said: "We will watch with interest which nations join ranks with us against this threat to Americans who are willing to risk their lives to protect others."

"While the calls are intended to highlight the ICC's abuses and the risks posed to Americans and other nations, nations that refuse to reject the ICC's false authority while relying on US assistance are likely to come under increased scrutiny," the official said.

US reservations about the court predate Trump. The US, like Israel, has not ratified the international treaty that established the ICC, and it has rejected the court's jurisdiction in cases involving the US or Israel.

Judges' lawsuit 

Three ICC judges sanctioned by the Trump administration filed a lawsuit in June against the president and other senior US officials, arguing that the measures imposed on them were unlawful.

In a complaint filed in New York, Canadian judge Kimberly Prost, Uganda's Solomy Balungi Bossa and Benin's Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini-Gansou said the sanctions were intended to "exert extrajudicial pressure."

Established in 2002, the ICC prosecutes individuals accused of the gravest atrocities, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The announcement comes as Iraqi authorities persist in a sweeping anti-corruption campaign launched weeks ago targeting cases linked to the oil and electricity ministries.

The campaign has led to the arrest of dozens of officials, members of parliament and politicians, and according to a recent briefing issued by the Supreme Judicial Council, 358 kilograms of gold were recovered in the Al-Jumaili case.

The statement quoted Judge Diaa Jaafar, who oversees the Corruption Crimes Court, as saying that 375 kilograms of gold had been seized in the case.

He said the gold was confiscated in coordination with authorities in the Kurdistan Region and the Judicial Council.

Jaafar said the recovered gold had been transferred to the treasury at the Central Bank of Iraq as part of efforts to complete the investigation into Deputy Oil Minister Adnan Al-Jumaili, recover the movable and immovable assets obtained through the crime, and punish those responsible in accordance with the law.

The state-run Iraqi News Agency (INA) published photographs showing large quantities of gold being transported to the custody of the Central Bank of Iraq.

In the same context, an Iraqi official at the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers in Baghdad said the Interior Ministry was coordinating with the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol) and several countries with which Baghdad has security agreements to extradite more than 40 people implicated in corruption and illicit enrichment cases.

The official said that at least 30 suspects or individuals implicated in the cases fled to several countries in the first days of the campaign and that efforts are underway to secure their extradition.

He cited significant cooperation from Jordan, Turkey, the UAE and Greece, adding that Iraq is expected to receive a number of those who fled to those countries in the coming days.

According to the source, who spoke to TNA on condition of anonymity, the coming days will see further arrest warrants released against individuals implicated in cases involving certificates and investment licences that resulted in financial waste or bribes paid to officials.

The Iraqi parliament approved referring the case of dismissed National Investment Commission head Haider Makkiya to the Integrity Commission, two days after voting to remove him during a parliamentary questioning session he did not attend.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Transport approved a decision to suspend the powers of Iraqi Airways Director General Manaf Abdul Munim until the conclusion of an investigation into "financial files".

On Monday, Iraqi security forces arrested former Parliamentary Integrity Committee chairman Talal Al-Zobaie on corruption charges, making him the second former integrity committee head to be arrested on corruption allegations after the arrest of Ziad Al-Janabi last month.

Authorities also arrested MP Alia Nassif, who has served on the parliamentary integrity committee for nearly eight years, and seized large sums of cash found at her home, estimated at around 98 billion Iraqi dinars.

Late on Monday night, the State Administration Coalition, which includes the Iraqi political parties participating in the government of Ali Al-Zaidi, issued a statement following a meeting affirming its "full support for anti-corruption efforts".

The coalition also stressed the need for the campaign to continue in accordance with the law and free from any political or selective motives.

It further stressed the importance of continuing efforts to ensure that arms remain exclusively in the hands of the state, to strengthen the rule of law, and to reinforce the authority and sovereignty of Iraq's constitutional institutions.

Article translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari. To read the original, click here.

These were the key updates earlier on Tuesday:

•    US President Donald Trump said a US blockade will be reimposed on Iran, and Washington will "become the guardian" of the Strait of Hormuz for a whopping 20 per cent fee.

•    For a third night, the US launched attacks on Iran, with reports of explosions in Kish Island, Qeshm Island, Bushehr and Bandar Abbas. Meanwhile, Iran says it attacked US military sites in Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan and a "hostile vessel of the American enemy".

•    The UAE noted that two of its national tankers have been targeted by Iranian cruise missiles, with one crew member killed and several wounded.

•    Israel persists in attacks on Gaza and southern Lebanon despite any 'ceasefires'.

And so we continue our live coverage...

The strike, which hit a tent sheltering displaced civilians in the al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis on Friday, killed Shabana's wife, known as Umm Anas, along with their four daughters—Taqwa, Yaqeen, Ihsan and Iman—and their youngest son, Ezz El-Din.

The attack came months after Shabana himself, also known as Abu Anas, and three of his sons were killed in separate Israeli strikes during the war. Hamas announced his death in May 2025, identifying him as the commander of the Rafah Brigade in its armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

With the deaths of his wife and remaining children, the Shabana family has been completely wiped from Gaza's civil registry, one of thousands of Palestinian families to have suffered the same fate since Israel launched its genocidal war in October 2023.

Dreams buried beneath the rubble

Beyond Shabana's role within Hamas, those who knew the family said the four sisters had built lives around education and hopes of serving their community.

According to relatives and neighbours, the sisters were university students studying scientific disciplines, with some aspiring to become doctors.

"They always believed studying medicine was a humanitarian mission before it was a profession," Nesma Abu Hein, a longtime friend of Taqwa Shabana, told The New Arab.

"Taqwa always talked about treating the wounded in Gaza. We used to speak about graduation and the future, but the war took away all those dreams," she said.

Neighbours described the sisters as academically outstanding and devoted to their studies.

"They were known for their good character and excellence," Abu Ahmed, a neighbour in Khan Younis, told TNA.

"When the family moved to al-Mawasi, everyone believed they had reached a safer place, but death followed them there," he said.

Another neighbour, Um Mohammed, told TNA that the four sisters had planned to resume their university education once the war ended.

"They hoped to help treat the wounded, but they became victims themselves," she said.

Civilian toll and legal concerns

Repeatedly, relatives of Palestinian faction leaders have also been killed during Israel's genocidal war.

Israel claims its military operations are aimed at dismantling Hamas's military capabilities and targeting the group's leadership, while maintaining that it does not deliberately target civilians despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary.

Palestinian and international human rights organisations have documented numerous airstrikes that killed entire families in homes, shelters and displacement camps, calling for independent investigations into the incidents.

Mustafa Ibrahim, a Gaza-based political analyst, told TNA that the repeated deaths of leaders' family members have raised questions among Palestinians about Israeli military objectives.

"If we look at the course of the genocidal war, we find that the families of a number of leaders lost wives, children and relatives, creating a widespread impression among Palestinians that the targeting was no longer limited to the leaders themselves," Ibrahim told TNA.

"Any targeting of civilians, regardless of their relationship to any party, remains subject to international humanitarian law, which requires the protection of civilians and prohibits attacks against them," he added.

Thousands of families erased

The Shabana family's fate reflects a broader pattern of devastating losses among Palestinian families during the war.

According to the government media office in Gaza and reports by al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights, more than 2,700 Palestinian families have been completely erased from the civil registry after all of their members were killed by the Israeli army.

"More than 6,020 other families have been left with only one surviving member," according to the government media office.

Human rights organisations said the figures illustrate the unprecedented human cost of the conflict and have called for independent investigations into attacks that wiped out entire families, as well as accountability for any violations of international humanitarian law.

The deaths of the Shabana family drew widespread attention on Palestinian social media, with journalists, academics and activists sharing photographs of the four sisters as a symbol of the losses suffered by Gaza's younger generation.

Rami Abdu, chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, wrote on the social media platform Facebook that members of the family were buried in a single grave because their remains could not be separated.

Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 173,000 others.

International calls for a ceasefire, civilian protection and expanded humanitarian access have continued, but no agreement has yet been reached to end Israel's genocidal war.

"We're going to hit them very hard tonight, and we're going to hit them hard tomorrow," Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday.

Oil prices shot up more than nine percent over fears of renewed conflict.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced strikes had begun at 2045 GMT, the third consecutive night of attacks.

"These strikes will continue imposing a heavy cost on Iranian forces and degrade their ability to attack innocent civilians and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz," CENTCOM said.

Early Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates said Iran had attacked two ships in the vital waterway, killing one crew member and wounding eight others.

The oil-rich UAE is a top US ally in the region and has reported multiple missile and drone strikes from Iran.

"The Ministry of Defence announces that the national tankers Mombasa and Al Bahiyah were targeted by two Iranian cruise missiles while transiting the southern shipping lane of the Strait of Hormuz, within Omani territorial waters," the Emirati Defence Ministry wrote on X.

That reported attack came after Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Monday announced new strikes on Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Oman.

US Congress notified

Trump formally notified Congress last week that the US had resumed military conflict against Iran, the White House confirmed to AFP, giving the Pentagon an additional 60 days to operate in the region without congressional approval.

Trump also threatened to destroy Pickaxe Mountain, a deeply buried nuclear site near Natanz where Western intelligence suspects Iran is building an undeclared enrichment facility.

"Tell the Iranians to be ready. Let them know we're coming (and) there's not a damn thing they can do about it," he told Hewitt.

CENTCOM, following Trump's orders, announced it would reimpose a blockade on Iranian ports beginning at 2000 GMT on Tuesday.

In a post on Truth Social, the president declared the United States would be "known as 'THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT'" and levy a 20 percent fee on all cargo shipped through the waterway.

While Iran's ports would again be blockaded, Trump said "all other countries will have fair and open use of the strait."

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi immediately mocked Trump's toll threat, writing on X that "POTUS is absolutely right" that whoever guarantees safe passage should be compensated - but that Tehran would charge less.

"20% is of course too much," he said.

Washington has vehemently opposed Tehran's desire to charge tolls in the strait, which international law generally forbids.

'In crisis'

Despite all signs to the contrary, Trump said Monday that a deal with Tehran to end the Middle East war was still possible.

"Yeah, I think a deal is possible. Sure, I do," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "We had a deal with them two days ago and then they said 'Oh we can't make that deal. We have to negotiate it further.'"

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said earlier Monday that the June memorandum of understanding that formed the basis for the negotiations and lifted the US blockade was "in crisis."

Baghaei said Iran would ignore its obligations under the deal if the Washington did the same, but added that Tehran was continuing talks with mediators from Qatar, Pakistan and Oman to prevent further escalation.

Analyst Bader Al-Saif said the escalating attacks would merely delay a permanent agreement.

"Both sides want to end the impasse on their own terms, and they are increasingly finding it difficult to do so. Hence the return to and increase in the scale of attacks," said Al-Saif, an associate fellow at Chatham House.

'Act of war'

Iranian state media reported deaths in the latest US strikes, which it said targeted large areas across the south and west.

At least four explosions were heard Monday east of Bandar Abbas, which sits on the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state media reported, citing a reporter in the port city's province.

At least 25 people have been killed in Iran since hostilities resumed Wednesday, according to an AFP tally based on Iranian announcements.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had struck US military targets and bases in Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait, state media reported.

Iran insists it only targets US interests in the Gulf, but the spokesman for its military command said any collaboration by Gulf countries with the United States would be considered "an act of war."

The ministry said the tankers, the Mombasa and Al Bahiyah, were targeted in the southern lane of the strait while in Omani territorial waters. The dead crew member was aboard the Mombasa, it said.

Of the eight wounded, four were seriously injured. Six of the wounded were Indian nationals and two were Ukrainian nationals, the ministry said.

The attack caused material damage to both tankers after fires broke out on board. The ministry said the fires had been brought under control.

It condemned what it called a "blatant attack" and said the UAE retained "its full right to respond to this escalation".

The ministry added that the UAE remained fully prepared to deal with any threats and was taking all necessary measures to respond firmly to any attempts to undermine the country's security and stability.

Separately, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said on Tuesday that a tanker had been hit by an unknown projectile while travelling 40 nautical miles northeast of Oman's Qalhat.

UKMTO said the tanker's master reported that the projectile struck the starboard-side engine room and that all crew were safe.

Reuters could not immediately verify whether the UKMTO report referred to the same incident as the one reported by the UAE's Ministry of Defence. Iran has not commented on the latest attacks.

The latest incidents in the waterway come after weeks of heightened tensions since the war broke out on 28 February, when the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran.

On Monday, President Donald Trump said the U.S. was reinstating its blockade of Iranian shipping in the Gulf and would ensure the Strait of Hormuz stays open, for a fee, while warning that U.S. forces would hit Iran again "very hard" in the coming hours after the two sides exchanged missile and drone attacks.

Iran's top joint military command said the U.S. had no role in determining the future of the waterway and would not be allowed to intervene. The conflict has destabilised the Gulf and spread across the region, with Iran attacking U.S. bases in multiple countries. It has also thrown into question an interim U.S.-Iranian agreement signed last month to reopen the strait and halt hostilities.

Before the conflict began in February, around a fifth of the world's oil and gas traffic passed through Hormuz daily, delivering more than 15 million barrels of fuel to global markets worth at least $1.2 billion.

President Donald Trump and others in Washington, such as former President George W. Bush, have long said the ICC should not have the authority to investigate and prosecute Americans, particularly members of the military. Reuters found the Trump administration backed sanctions against ICC officials in part to head off any future attempts to hold the Republican president or his officials accountable for U.S. military action overseas.

In a video message posted on Monday, Rubio said the ICC was initially intended to prosecute only the gravest offenses, but had turned out to be "something far more radical and extreme," adding that the Trump administration would not allow the court to threaten U.S. personnel.

A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters earlier that a wide range of options is under consideration to target the ICC, including travel bans, visa revocations, increased sanctions against the ICC and affiliated organisations, and diplomatic pressure on other nations to withdraw from the ICC.

"No diplomatic option will be off-limits in the campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the ICC to Americans," the State Department said in a statement.

ICC spokesperson Oriane Maillet said the court would not comment on the matter at this stage.

The ICC was established in 2002 by the international community to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. It asserts jurisdiction only if a member state is unable or unwilling to prosecute atrocities itself. The United States has never been a member of the court. However, the ICC statute also gives the court the power to prosecute atrocity crimes committed on the territory of member states by nationals of non-member states.

Trump's opposition toward the court goes back to his first term. It manifested again with a plan to penalise ICC officials, an idea developed in November 2024 when Trump was re-elected and the ICC issued an arrest warrant for his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Last month, three ICC judges sued Trump and ​his administration over sanctions imposed on them last year, arguing the measures were unlawful.

Diplomatic campaign

Rubio, in an opinion article for the Wall Street Journal on Monday, cited calls from activists and others for the court to prosecute U.S. personnel, including over the Trump administration's deportation of migrants or U.S. strikes on boats that officials say are carrying narcotics.

"As we speak, the ICC and its friends are waging a war against our country, not with bullets and missiles, but with statutes, compacts, and the force of so-called international law," he said in his video message, asserting that Border Patrol agents, Marines and prosecutors working on terrorism cases could face prosecution by the court.

The court has taken no steps to investigate U.S. personnel in recent years.

In March 2020, ICC prosecutors opened an investigation in Afghanistan that included looking in to possible crimes by U.S. troops, but since 2021, it has deprioritised the role of the U.S. and focused on alleged crimes committed by the Afghan government and Taliban forces.

The State Department official said Rubio and other top U.S. officials are pressuring other countries as part of a campaign "to diplomatically isolate the International Criminal Court and ensure it cannot target Americans."

The official said nations that partner with U.S. law enforcement, host a U.S. military presence, or benefit from the broader U.S. security umbrella "are being called upon to reject the ICC’s purported authority to prosecute American officials and servicemen."

Nations that refuse to reject the ICC while relying on U.S. assistance are likely to come under increased scrutiny, the official said.

"We will watch with interest which nations join ranks with us against this threat to Americans who are willing to risk their lives to protect others," the official said.

The three-day poll completed on Sunday found that 79% of respondents think U.S. military involvement in Iran will "go on for an extended period of time," up from 65% in late March. Only 18% of respondents said they think the war would "end pretty quickly in a matter of weeks." Some 37% of respondents approved of U.S. military strikes against Iran, which Washington resumed on 26 June in response to what it said were Iranian attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

​The poll surveyed 1,019 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of about four percentage points.

Trump said on Monday the United States was reinstating its blockade of Iranian shipping in the Gulf and would be reimbursed 20% on all cargo transiting the strait after Tehran said it had closed the vital waterway and the two sides exchanged more missile and drone attacks.

The latest hostilities cast further doubt on ‌an interim deal signed last month to reopen the strait and halt the war while the sides pursued 60 days of further negotiations. Trump has said he considers the ceasefire over, while leaving the door open to further talks.

Sixty percent of poll respondents said they expected gasoline prices to worsen over the next year as a result of the war. Half said they believe the war has not been worth its costs. Trump's approval rating has hovered near the lowest levels of his political career since the conflict began, with Republican strategists warning that rising living costs have neutralised the political benefits of his tax cuts.

Higher gas prices and cost of living concerns pose a political risk to Trump's Republican Party ahead of November's midterm elections, in which it risks losing its House majority and possibly the Senate as well.

The visit on 20 July will be Sanchez's first trip to Algeria since relations deteriorated in 2022 after Madrid shifted its longstanding position of neutrality on Western Sahara and backed Morocco's autonomy plan for the disputed territory.

Spain's move was part of a diplomatic rapprochement with Morocco, ending its decades of ambiguity on the issue but angering Algeria, which supports the pro-independence Polisario Front, which opposes Rabat's claim over the former Spanish colony.

Western Sahara, a mineral-rich desert territory with significant phosphate reserves and fishing resources, was controlled by Spain until 1975.

Morocco now controls most of the territory but the United Nations considers it a non-self-governing territory pending a final settlement.

In response to the policy shift in Madrid, Algeria suspended a 2002 friendship treaty with Spain and restricted trade ties between the two countries.

Relations have gradually improved since 2024, with commercial exchanges beginning to recover.

Abbas made the request in a letter delivered to the Arab League on Sunday, calling for the activation of the Arab financial safety net, a mechanism established to support the Palestinian Authority's budget when Israel withholds revenues collected on its behalf.

The appeal comes as Israel's continued withholding of Palestinian tax revenues has deepened the Palestinian Authority's financial crisis, undermining its ability to pay salaries and provide essential public services across the occupied West Bank.

"There is no way out for the PA. The PA, in order to survive, needs that money," Joost Hiltermann, Special Adviser on the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, told The New Arab.

"If Israel can shift the burden to external donors, then so much the better," he said, adding that Israel was "quite content for others to pay the bills of the PA", effectively underwriting the occupation.

According to Hiltermann, Israel has been withholding customs revenues collected on Palestinian imports since May 2025, significantly shrinking the Palestinian Authority's budget.

He said the cuts have affected around 200,000 public sector employees and their families, amounting to roughly one million people out of the occupied West Bank's population of around 3.2 million.

"It also affects the quality of healthcare and the quality of education," Hiltermann said. "Now students in schools have to take classes online, in part because there's not enough money to keep schools open full-time and to pay the teachers."

In his letter, delivered by Palestine's permanent representative to the Arab League, Ambassador Muhannad Al-Aklouk, to Secretary-General Nabil Fahmy in Cairo, Abbas said Israel's withholding of Palestinian tax revenues had deepened the authority's financial crisis and impaired its ability to govern the occupied West Bank.

The Arab financial safety net was first conceived and later agreed upon in 2012 to provide up to $100 million to the Palestinian Authority if Israel withheld the tax revenues needed for it to govern the occupied West Bank.

The mechanism was first activated in 2012 after Israel suspended the transfer of revenues following Palestine's successful bid for non-member observer state status at the United Nations. The Palestinian Authority has since requested its activation on several occasions, including in 2019.

Israel has withheld portions of Palestinian tax revenues since October 2023 before expanding the measure into a complete freeze in May 2025.

At the time, extremist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who plays a central role in administering the occupied West Bank, said he intended to collapse the Palestinian Authority through "economic strangulation".

Hiltermann said activating the Arab League's financial mechanism would help ease some of the immediate financial pressure on the Palestinian Authority.

"If they were to send money to the PA for budget support, that would relieve the pressure a little bit," he said, noting that the European Union also provides similar financial support.

Will Arab states actually step in?

Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the Arab Center Washington DC, said the timing of Abbas's appeal could complicate efforts to secure additional financial support from Arab states.

"What is unusual this time is the unsettled situation throughout the region due to the fallout from the wars on Gaza and Iran. Whether or not Arab countries were historically and unconditionally responsive to such requests, most of their economies at this juncture are not healthy enough to accommodate additional sizeable contributions outside their borders, including to Palestine."

He added that "potential donors are not to be blamed for questioning the nature and objectives of all these solicitations, including the request from President Abbas."

Jahshan said he was sceptical that the Arab League would be able to respond to Abbas's request in light of the current circumstances.

"Therefore, we are not optimistic about the ability of the League of Arab States to respond positively and effectively to President Abbas's request at this chaotic time in the region. Maybe the Palestinian message should have been directed at President Trump asking him to pressure the [Israeli]Netanyahu government to release the illegally held Palestinian tax funds."

The funding, approved by Israel's National Security Ministry headed by extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, will go to Ahavat Gilad, a settler group sanctioned last month by the UK, France, Canada, Australia, Norway and New Zealand over its links to illegal outposts where violence against Palestinians has been documented.

Documents filed by the ministry show the grant forms part of a joint programme with the National Community Security Authority aimed at establishing "a network of mentors" to work with young people living on settlement farms across the occupied West Bank.

The contract allocates approximately $1.3 million over 18 months, with an option to renew it for a further 18 months.

"Settler violence is state violence. Israel arms settler militias with weapons, drones, and off-road vehicles, pours billions into funding settlements, new outposts, and the construction of roads for Jews only, and grants settlers full backing and near-total impunity for attacks against Palestinians," Yair Dvir, spokesperson for Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, told The New Arab.

"The Israeli authorities, the judicial system, the military, and the settlers are all arms of the Israeli occupation, working together to expand and deepen the ethnic cleansing Israel is carrying out in the West Bank," he added.

Last month, the UK and five allies sanctioned Ahavat Gilad, saying it acted as a conduit for funds to the Farm Association, which financially supported illegal settler outposts where attacks against Palestinian communities had taken place.

According to the documents, Israel's National Security Ministry selected Ahavat Gilad because of its "connections with law enforcement and the trust it enjoys on the ground", a description rights groups say reflects the close relationship between settlers and Israeli security forces.

The ministry told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the organisation had been chosen because of its "proven, unique and extensive experience in connecting with the field, including measurable significant results in leading youth to positive action".

It added that it remained committed to "the good of the State of Israel and the citizens of Israel, and therefore does not accept dictates from international bodies with anti-Israeli agendas and foreign considerations."

The funding comes as settler expansion and attacks continue across the occupied West Bank.

Hassan Malihat, general supervisor of the Al-Baydar Organisation for the Defence of Bedouin Rights, told The New Arab that settlers established two new outposts over the weekend while attacks intensified in several Palestinian communities.

"On Sunday morning, settlers began preliminary steps to establish a new outpost in an area about 500 metres away from the community of Maazi Jaba, northeast of Jerusalem," Malihat said.

He added that another outpost had been established on Saturday evening in the Tal al-Asour area east of Ramallah.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces entered several neighbourhoods in Nablus, deploying across the city and raiding at least one building.

The development also follows comments by US Congressman Ro Khanna, who said he was recently detained by Israeli soldiers and settlers while visiting a Palestinian village that had been attacked.

"We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed; they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it," Khanna said.

"And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans," he added.

The two-day talks will begin at 10.00am (0800 GMT), the official said, requesting anonymity.

An Italian foreign ministry spokesperson had earlier said the talks would be held on July 15 and 16, and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar had confirmed on July 7 that the negotiations would resume "next week".

The two countries, which have no formal relations, began direct talks in April after Tehran-backed Hezbollah drew Lebanon deeper into the Middle East war by attacking Israel in support of Iran the month prior. Israel had already been violating a 2024 ceasefire with near-daily attacks on Lebanon.

They recently reached a framework agreement that calls for Hezbollah's disarmament and a gradual Israeli withdrawal from occupied Lebanese territory while Lebanon's army deploys into "pilot zones".

But the agreement - rejected by Hezbollah - does not set a timetable for Israel's withdrawal, and Israeli officials have also vowed that their forces will remain in a "security zone" 10 kilometres (six miles) deep along the frontier for as long as Hezbollah remains armed.

A US military delegation met with Lebanon's army in Beirut last week to discuss the implementation of Israel's withdrawal from a first pilot zone.

"The decision introduces a ban on the purchase, import or transfer of gold originating in Sudan. It also bans the sale, supply, transfer or export of mercury and cyanide to Sudan," said a statement by the Council of the European Union.

The conflict between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began more than three years ago, and it has caused a vast humanitarian crisis.

The conference appeared to serve as an opportunity to seek funding for additional MEF initiatives directed at challenging Iran's current government.

Operation Epic Fury was launched on 28 February by the United States and Israel, reportedly at the encouragement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The war's aim in the immediate hours was to topple the Iranian regime with the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the top leaders of Iran. The plan involved encouraging Iranian elements to rise and seize power in the ensuing chaos, the arming of dissident groups and recruits, especially in Iran's minority communities, and the installation of friendly Iranian leaders to accept US-Israeli terms.

Since 7 October, Israel stepped up its intelligence operations in Iran, peaking with the 12-day war in June 2025. Israel identified and recruited scores of Iranian dissidents to aid in its covert operations in Iran. It remains unclear, however, whether a similar level of Israeli infiltration occurred during Operation Epic Fury or whether Iran's brutal crackdown managed to contain it.

According to US and Israeli sources, the early days of the war involved a botched plan to arm Kurdish Iranian elements in the Northwest to launch attacks on Iranian regime targets.

With the war on Iran winding down in late June following the announcement of a Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran, which excluded Israel and by all accounts failed to deliver any strategic gains for Washington and Tel Aviv, The New Arab can now reveal a collaboration between MEF and the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) to create intelligence on "pressure points" inside the country with the aim of weakening the Iranian regime, ahead of the war.

The project, dubbed the "Iranian Civil Society Vulnerability Assessment", was to gather information from Farsi-language open-source intelligence and social networks and build a "comprehensive heat map that provides actionable information on key pressure points" in ten of Iran's most ethnically diverse provinces. The proposal identified INSS's top Iran expert, Raz Zimmt, as the intended project lead.

The leaked documents do not explain how any resulting research would have been operationalised, nor do they establish that it was subsequently used in military planning or intelligence operations.

But writing about the project in an email, Roman believed that "INSS's analytical expertise combined with MEF's operational focus can produce a truly transformative understanding of the opportunities within Iran".

Information about the proposed project was obtained thanks to documents leaked by the INSS and published by the journalist collective Distributed Denial of Secrets in April 2026.

The documents were leaked by a group operating under the eponym Handala, with suspected links to Iranian intelligence. According to the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, which established the authenticity of documents in the tranche, the Institute had been targeted by Iranian hackers for years.

The INSS claims to be an independent academic institution affiliated with Tel Aviv University. However, it maintains strong ties with the Israeli security establishment. Many of its fellows were high-ranking members of Israel's intelligence forces, such as the Mossad and the Army Intelligence, before joining the institute.

Its current director, Tamir Hayman, used to run the Israeli army's Intelligence Directorate between 2018 and 2021, and has been advising the Israeli army since the start of its war on Gaza in 2023. Meanwhile, some INSS experts, such as Raz Zimmt, have publicly questioned whether US-Israeli strikes alone on Iran could bring down the regime.

When contacted, MEF's Executive Director Gregg Roman refused to confirm the authenticity of the leaked correspondence and denied any collaboration with INSS.

"You are preparing to attack the American organisation doing the most to help the Iranian people end the regime in Tehran," Roman told TNA in an email. "That is not journalism. That is the regime's public relations, and you have volunteered to do it," Roman wrote in an acrimonious exchange of emails.

The New Arab also contacted Tamir Hayman and Raz Zimmt for comment. No reply was received in time for publication.

Before the publication of this article, Israeli media outlets reported on the forthcoming story and criticised The New Arab, accusing it of "[targeting] the Middle East Forum for its open support of the Iranian people against the regime". 

What is the Middle East Forum?

In his speech last month, Roman likened the Middle East Forum to DARPA, the research branch of the US Department of Defence, which developed, among others, the bunker-buster bomb.

"We're not a think tank. We're an applied research organisation for defending political modernity. We are the DARPA of this fight," said Roman during the conference in Washington.

Founded in 1994 by the self-described "counter-jihad activist" Daniel Pipes, the MEF is considered by many observers as one of the leading institutions in the spread of anti-Muslim discourse in North America.

Roman denied having an anti-Muslim agenda and told TNA via email that they only target 'Islamism', a common defence among right-wing and conservative forces.

But according to researchers at Georgetown University, the MEF "spreads misinformation, creates 'watchlists' targeting academics, and advocates hawkish foreign policy" in favour of an Islamophobic agenda.

While claiming to "promote American interests in the Middle East", the Forum has predominantly advanced agendas affiliated with the Netanyahu government. Through its Hebrew-speaking Israel Victory Project, it has called for a rejection of peace negotiations until Palestinians and their supporters "recognise the defeat of their struggle against Israel".

"Yes. Through the Israel Victory Project, we argue that wars end when one side accepts defeat, not when the losing side is handed another round of talks. We believe the same wherever the enemy is rejectionist. Decades spent asking the victim to keep bargaining with people sworn to destroy it have produced more war, not less. The path to a real peace runs through victory, and we will not apologise for saying so," wrote Roman in response to The New Arab.

In the UK, the Middle East Forum has been reported to have financed the legal defence of far-right activist Tommy Robinson with at least $60,000 back in 2018. The Forum also funded, organised, and staffed multiple far-right rallies in London in support of Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon. It ultimately cut all ties with the far-right figure in 2020 after it claimed funds intended for him were misappropriated.

What do we know about the project?

The leaked documents do not specify how the intelligence prepared by INSS would be made "actionable".

But such intelligence would include sensitive information such as the level of presence of military, paramilitary, and law enforcement forces in ten of Iran's provinces, as well as the number of political prisoners, executions, and other human rights violations there.

Prominent labour organisations, student and women's organisations would also be tracked, according to the documents. The project was estimated to cost $330,000 per year and would engage four researchers at the Israel-based INSS.

The leaked documents do not show whether the project was actually launched. In September 2025, INSS recruited a Farsi-speaking reservist from the Israeli army's Unit 8200 - in charge of signal intelligence - to be part of the project.

But leaked emails suggest funding had not yet been secured as of December 2025. At the end of that month, protests in Iran over rising living costs led to repression from the regime at a level of lethal violence never seen before.

Since then, the MEF has advocated for investing US taxpayer money in Iranian civil society with the goal of overthrowing the ruling regime.

In January, about a month before the first US strike on Iran, MEF's Gregg Roman wrote that the US government should funnel money to organisations in the country through Cold War-era programmes such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Then, in March, less than a week after the assassination of Khamenei, Roman called for some $300 to $500 million for the NED - to be spent as stipends for pro-democracy activists and in support of ethnic minority groups inside Iran.

"Funding democrats and persecuted minorities against a regime that hangs them is not a scandal. It is the most American thing we do," wrote Roman in an email to The New Arab. "Yes, I put a figure on it, because half-measures get people killed," he added.

Israeli influence inside the Iranian opposition?

Any such large investment could potentially help finance the Middle East Forum's own work and its hawkish agenda.

According to its website, the Forum has deployed some 470 Starlink satellite terminals inside the country to circumvent the regime's internet blackout. It also supports the Iran Freedom Congress, an umbrella group for the Iranian diaspora opposed to the current Iranian regime.

Marty Youssefiani, one of the Congress's founding members, also works at the Middle East Forum. In the lead-up to its convening, Youssefiani spoke extensively to right-wing Israeli media about how the removal of Iran's Islamic Republic could transform the region's relationship with Israel.

"A free Iran can transform the Middle East: peace, stability, trade, commerce, and fraternal relations with all neighbours, especially Israel," he stated in an X post after his intervention on pro-Netanyahu Israeli Channel 14 in March.

Roman, the Middle East Forum's executive director, challenged this framing of Youssefiani's advocacy.

"Youssefiani sat for The National, the Emirati paper out of Abu Dhabi. He is quoted in The Guardian, in The Atlantic, and at length in Foreign Policy," he said. "Calling that body of work 'right-wing Israeli media' is not a description. It is an effort to dress a mainstream, heavily covered movement up as an Israeli operation run in the dark."

In front of the Middle East Forum's funders, however, Gregg Roman has continued to articulate a vision of a global struggle for what he calls "Western values" against the "Islamist threat" and its "imams in Hamburg, professors at Columbia and ambassadors in Doha".

Speaking in that conference room in May, Roman vowed to continue "the patient work that the moment requires, finding the enemy, documenting the enemy, constraining the enemy, defeating the enemy", including from his "kitchen table in Hod Hasharon [in Israel]".

Anas Ambri is a freelance investigative journalist. Follow him on Bluesky: @anasambri.bsky.social

Yossi Bartal is a freelance journalist based in Berlin. His latest project, #Israelfiles, on Israel’s Lawfare against Human Rights, supported by the European Investigative Collaboration (EIC) Network, was published in numerous publications across Europe. Follow him on Bluesky: @yossibartal.bsky.social 

The meeting came amid growing pressure on the bloc to respond to Israel's expanding settlement enterprise, with several member states, including Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands, already taking steps to restrict trade linked to the settlements.

Speaking after the meeting, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the proposal that received the strongest backing from member states was a ban on trade with Israel's illegal settlements, though she declined to say how many countries supported the measure.

"It’s beyond shameful that a majority of EU member states, led by Germany and Italy, continue to block the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International's Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.

"If the EU will not act together, member states must act individually and unilaterally suspend all forms of cooperation with Israel that may contribute to its grave violations of international law, including by imposing a comprehensive embargo on the export of arms and surveillance equipment and related technology, and a total ban on trade with and investment in Israel's illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory," she added.

Ahead of the meeting, Belgium's Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot criticised the European Commission's proposals, accusing it of offering member states "a bone to gnaw on" rather than taking meaningful action.

Prévot said the options presented reflected "more a bone to gnaw on than a genuine desire to move forward", adding: "We are calling for concrete proposals", according to AFP.

He also described the measures as "largely insufficient compared to the need to be a credible actor on the geopolitical level in the Israeli-Palestinian situation - which, I regret to say, the European Union has not been for some time", according to Politico.

The European Commission presented three possible options, according to reports, which included a complete ban on trade with Israeli settlements, prohibitive tariffs on settlement goods, or a licensing scheme.

The discussions come two years after the International Court of Justice's July 2024 advisory opinion, which said states have an obligation "to abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel" concerning settlements and to "take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation".

EU member states remain divided over whether any restrictions would require the unanimous backing of all 27 member states or could instead be approved by a qualified majority. Spain, Ireland and Belgium have called for a ban, while the Commission's legal assessment reportedly suggests unanimity would be required.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. More than 500,000 Israeli settlers now live in settlements and outposts that are considered illegal under international law.

Successive Israeli governments have expanded settlement building across the occupied territory, further entrenching Israel's control over the West Bank and undermining the prospects of a two-state solution.

Israeli settlers have also carried out regular pogroms against Palestinian communities as part of efforts to expel and dispossess them of their land.

In a statement, Lebanon's internal security forces said they arrested the suspect "after careful monitoring and follow-up operations" on June 30 and that he was the group's leader in central and southern Syria.

The announcement comes nearly a week after two bombings hit Damascus during Macron's visit to Syria, killing one person and wounding dozens, near the hotel where the French leader spent the night.

Syrian authorities had said Thursday that preliminary investigations showed IS was behind the attack.

On Monday, the Syrian interior ministry published the names of three men it had interrogated, alleging that they were behind the bombings.

While its grip on Syrian territory it had claimed was broken in 2019, IS remains active in some cells across the country.

In Lebanon, Sunni extremist groups, some of which pledged allegiance to IS, fought several battles with the army in the 2010s and carried out a series of deadly bombings targeting Hezbollah strongholds, before being defeated in 2017.

Last year, Lebanon's military said it arrested the suspected leader of the IS group in the country, implicating him in planning several operations.

Lebanon and Syria share a porous, 330-kilometre (205-mile) border notorious for the smuggling of people and goods.

Those were among the final words of hawkish US Senator Lindsey Graham before he died on Saturday, according to Axios, highlighting his determination to press ahead with military pressure on Iran and a regional realignment centred on Israel until his final hours.

Hours before his death, Graham had reportedly spoken by phone with President Donald Trump, who told him he was preparing fresh strikes on Iran following another attack on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

After later telling an associate he was feeling unwell, Graham said he would seek medical attention after his scheduled appearance on NBC's 'Meet the Press' the following morning, before joking that he "couldn't die yet", according to Axios.

The Republican senator from South Carolina, one of Israel's staunchest allies in Congress and among Washington's most hawkish foreign policy voices, spent his final weeks laying the groundwork for a renewed push to normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which he viewed as the centrepiece of a broader post-war Middle East settlement.

According to the US news outlet, Graham believed Iran's weakening following the US-Israeli military campaign presented Trump with a rare opportunity to broker what he hoped would become a historic agreement between Riyadh and Tel Aviv.

He had planned to launch an intensive diplomatic effort after Israel's October elections and the US midterm elections, aiming to secure an agreement before the new Congress was sworn in in January.

He believed the conflict with Iran first had to be brought under control, particularly the crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, urging Trump to authorise a short but overwhelming military operation to reopen the strategic waterway if diplomacy failed.

In recent weeks, Graham had pushed Trump to make Saudi-Israeli normalisation the centrepiece of a broader regional "day-after" strategy.

According to Axios, he discussed the initiative with Trump and US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, while also speaking with Netanyahu aide Ron Dermer, Saudi Ambassador to Washington Princess Reema bint Bandar and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan.

He had also been planning to travel to Saudi Arabia and Israel in the coming weeks to assess whether there was enough political momentum to reopen negotiations, hoping intensive talks would begin in September so the framework of a deal could be in place by November.

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly ruled out establishing diplomatic relations with Israel without an irreversible and time-bound pathway towards an independent Palestinian state.

Israel's far-right government has rejected that condition while continuing to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank, policies widely viewed as undermining the prospects of a viable Palestinian state.

It remains unclear whether any government formed after Israel's October elections would be willing to meet Riyadh's demands.

Graham also believed any agreement would require Senate approval because it included a proposed US-Saudi defence treaty largely negotiated during the Biden administration. According to Axios, he viewed the post-election lame-duck session as the best opportunity to secure the required two-thirds majority.

He also believed winning enough Democratic support would require Israel to make meaningful commitments towards Palestinian statehood and intended to work with Trump to press any future Israeli government in that direction.

Graham's death prompted tributes from the Trump administration and Israeli leaders, who praised him as one of the strongest defenders of the US-Israel alliance.

Across much of the Arab world, however, he was remembered very differently. Activists, academics and commentators recalled his unwavering support for Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, his calls to escalate military action against Iran and his repeated defence of overwhelming force against Palestinians.

Graham drew widespread condemnation after urging Israel to "level the place" after 7 October 2023. In 2024, he also defended Israel's military campaign by comparing it to the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, remarks that amounted to endorsing attacks causing mass civilian casualties.

The Saudi-backed Yemeni government claimed responsibility for the attack on the Houthi-held airport, saying it wanted to prevent an Iranian plane from landing.

It came after they failed to convince a Houthi delegation that went to Tehran for the late Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei's funeral to board a flight on domestic carrier Yemenia instead.

"In response to this criminal Saudi aggression, the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a military operation targeting Abha International Airport, using a number of ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles," Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a video statement.

Earlier, Saree accused Saudi Arabia of "ending the de-escalation phase" and warned the attack would not go "unanswered or unpunished".

Saudi-led coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said air defences had "dealt with" the Houthi missiles.

The latest escalation threatens to unravel a truce that has been holding since 2022 despite expiring, and comes at a time of heightened tensions as the United States and Iran trade attacks impacting the Gulf and traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

Tehran condemned the attack on Sanaa airport, with a foreign ministry spokesperson describing it "as a clear violation of international law".

But following the strikes on Sanaa, the head of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, Rashad al-Alimi, said he had "ordered that the scope of the confrontation not be expanded".

Truce 'collapse'?

Mohammed al-Basha of the US-based risk advisory Basha Report told AFP there was a risk of the 2022 ceasefire failing.

"If this cycle of action and retaliation continues, it could effectively mark the collapse of the April 2022 ceasefire framework and signal a return to a much more intense phase of the conflict," he said.

For more than a decade, aircraft entering Yemeni airspace have needed prior clearance from the Saudi-led coalition that backs the government and says it enforces the restriction at its request.

The Houthis appeared to have challenged this arrangement by organising direct flights from Iran to Sanaa, angering the government and its backer.

Saree in his statement warned airlines against flying into Saudi airspace "until the blockade on Sanaa International Airport is lifted".

Tensions had been rising for days, after the Houthis accused Saudi Arabia earlier this month of attacking an Iranian plane that landed in Sanaa and took off carrying the delegation.

The rebels had threatened at the time to hit Saudi airports and vital assets should Riyadh violate its airspace or attempt to attack it again.

Since the Saudi-led coalition entered the war in 2015 to back the government, it has been the one to conduct air strikes on Houthi targets on the authorities' behalf.

According to Andreas Krieg, a lecturer in security at King's College London, it is "technically possible" for the government to have carried out the strike with planes provided by the UAE, which would need to travel far from the south.

"It would be a risk as these are not jet aircrafts. The jet aircrafts they have from the 1980s are in a bad shape and probably won't fly far. This is why it is more likely that it was the Saudis," he told AFP.

'Safe and accounted for'

The latest strikes raised the spectre of renewed Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia after years of relative calm between the two foes - as well as fears of broader conflict in Yemen.

A 29-year-old homemaker in the Houthi-held city of Hodeida, where rebel media said the plane had landed, said she was worried more conflict lay ahead, "without producing any results, just making the current crises worse".

Earlier in the day, the Yemeni government accused the rebels of preventing an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) aircraft from leaving Sanaa airport and holding the pilot and co-pilot "hostage".

"All ICRC staff and the crew of the plane are safe and accounted for," ICRC spokesman for the Middle East Hachem Osseiran told AFP.

The Houthis have been at war with Yemen's government since 2014, in a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and triggered a major humanitarian crisis.

The rebels control Yemen's capital Sanaa and much of the north, including most population centres, while the internationally recognised government holds much of the south.

The measures, introduced last week by Israel Prison Service (IPS) Commissioner Kobi Yaakobi, sharply limit how and when ICRC delegates can visit Palestinian detainees despite an Israeli High Court ruling that the blanket suspension of visits imposed after October 2023 was unlawful.

The policy, adopted without consultation with Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, comes amid mounting international criticism of Israel's treatment of Palestinian prisoners. Rights groups have documented allegations of torture, starvation, medical neglect and sexual abuse inside Israeli detention facilities, while humanitarian organisations have repeatedly called for independent monitoring to resume.

"We are continuing our dialogue with the Israeli authorities to resume our work in detention as soon as possible, including around the modalities and conditions of the resumption of visits, which remain suspended since October 2023," an ICRC spokesperson told The New Arab.

The restrictions follow Israel's decision to suspend ICRC prison visits after the start of the war on Gaza, citing Israeli captives held in the enclave. Although captives have since been released under ceasefire agreements, humanitarian access to Palestinian detainees has not resumed, prompting renewed concern from rights organisations.

Here, The New Arab looks at what the new rules mean for Palestinian detainees.

What do the new rules say?

The new IPS regulations significantly restrict how and when the ICRC can access Palestinian detainees.

Under the policy, the organisation will only be allowed to conduct prison visits once every three months and must submit an advance list of no more than five detainees it wishes to see.

The IPS also reserves the right to deny access to entire categories of prisoners, including detainees it classifies as "highly violent", those held in solitary confinement and individuals under interrogation.

Where visits are permitted, they will be limited to 30 minutes, with prison guards authorised to end them at any time.

The new rules also prohibit ICRC medical examinations, despite previous arrangements allowing examinations by physicians, and remove any guarantee that meetings will take place privately or face to face.

How will this affect Palestinians?

Rights organisations and legal experts say the restrictions will make it significantly harder to document abuse inside Israeli detention facilities.

Yair Dvir, spokesperson for Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, told The New Arab that testimonies collected by the group indicate Israel's incarceration facilities have become "a network of torture camps" for Palestinians since October 2023.

"Inmates are subjected to ongoing physical and psychological abuse, systematic starvation, sleep deprivation, denial of medical care, humiliation, and sexual assault," Dvir said.

"The systematic denial of access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is part of this broader policy of torture and denial of medical care, which has so far led to the deaths of at least 90 Palestinians held in these facilities since October 2023," he added.

Dvir argued that, with the international community largely failing to act, Israel continues to enjoy impunity for violations committed against Palestinian detainees.

Do the new rules comply with international law?

According to international humanitarian law, the ICRC has a recognised mandate to visit detainees and monitor their conditions.

While the new policy technically allows visits to resume, rights groups argue that the extensive restrictions undermine meaningful oversight and could allow serious violations to continue without accountability.

An ICRC spokesperson told The New Arab: "The ICRC's work in places of detention is mandated by the State parties to the Geneva Conventions. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, ICRC access to detainees, and the ability to meet with them individually, is an obligation under international humanitarian law."

Last month, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights said Israel's attempts to restrict ICRC access represented efforts to obstruct the organisation's humanitarian and monitoring role, which is mandated under international humanitarian law to protect people living under occupation.

Karen Saar, Director of Development and Outreach at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, told The New Arab that under international law ICRC representatives "should have free access and the ability to hold meetings without other people present".

What will prison visits now look like?

If visits resume under the new rules, they will take place under far tighter controls than before.

Two ICRC representatives will meet each detainee from behind a partition rather than face to face.

Before entering, ICRC staff will undergo security screening and be required to surrender electronic devices, including mobile phones, smart watches, laptops, cameras, tablets and audio recording devices.

Conversations will take place through an intercom system, with representatives only permitted to speak to one detainee at a time.

ICRC delegates will not be allowed to enter detainees' cells or hold meetings with prisoners behind closed doors without Israeli prison staff nearby.

Previously, ICRC staff were able to speak with several detainees from the same cell, helping them identify patterns of abuse and corroborate testimonies between prisoners.

Key developments from Monday:

• US President Donald Trump on Monday said that the US would take out Pickaxe Mountain in Iran, warning that Washington would continue to hit the country hard this evening and Tuesday
• Iran said Monday evening that it targeted US military facilities and equipment in Kuwait with drones, with sirens heard in Bahrain. The UAE also said Iranian missiles hit two of its tankers in the Hormuz strait, killing one sailor
• Trump reimposed a US naval blockade on Iranian ports on Monday and vowed hefty fees for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz
• Yemen's Houthis targeted Saudi Arabia on Monday, hours after the Iran-backed rebels accused the kingdom of attacking Sanaa airport in the biggest flare-up in years
• Lebanon and Israel will hold a sixth round of negotiations on Tuesday in Rome, expected to last two days

Charlotte Marshall, director of Sabeel-Kairos UK, which partners with Kairos Palestine, told The New Arab the vote marked a significant shift after years of debate within the Church.

The General Synod, meeting in York until Tuesday, approved an amended motion by 253 votes to 47, with members committing to "stand in solidarity" with Palestinian Christians and their fellow Palestinians in non-violent resistance to Israel's occupation.

The motion also encourages dioceses and churches to engage with the Kairos Palestine declarations as part of a broader effort to understand the lived experiences of Palestinian Christians.

The final text was amended during the debate to say the Church would "hear", rather than "receive", the Kairos declarations as "heartfelt expressions" of Palestinian Christian experience, while reaffirming its opposition to antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred and all forms of religious prejudice.

It also commits the Church to interfaith dialogue, calls for responsible investment policies in light of the International Court of Justice's July 2024 advisory opinion on the illegality of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory, and urges the UK government to work towards a just and lasting peace.

"After four years of delaying this vital debate, we are delighted that the Church has committed to both hearing and taking tangible action in solidarity with the Palestinian Church, as they seek their freedom, dignity and equal rights in the Holy Land," Marshall told TNA.

"The urgency of the situation cannot be expressed enough. Palestinian Christians and their fellow Muslims are being deliberately erased from this land," she added. "The Church of England has finally heard the Palestinian cry and decided to walk the path of costly solidarity."

The motion was carried in all three houses of the General Synod. Among bishops, 25 voted in favour, none voted against and five abstained. Among clergy, 115 voted in favour, 20 voted against and 30 abstained. Of the laity, 113 supported the motion, while 27 voted against and 35 abstained.

The debate centred on the Kairos Palestine declarations, particularly Kairos Palestine II, titled A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide, published in November 2025.

Produced by Kairos Palestine, a Palestinian Christian movement, the document was written following Israel's war on Gaza, expanding settler violence and increasing efforts to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

It calls on Christians worldwide to stand in solidarity with Palestinian Christians and urges churches to pressure governments "to isolate Israel, hold it accountable, impose sanctions, boycott it, and ban the export of arms until it complies with international law, ends oppression and tyranny, and adheres to the principles of justice and peace".

The document also describes Israel as a "colonial, settler, and exclusionary entity" and labels its military campaign in Gaza a genocide.

At the same time, it condemns antisemitism and rejects the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism. It also praises Jewish voices opposing the war and calls on churches to "amplify prophetic Jewish voices that call for justice and truth".

During the debate, Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally said hearing the Kairos declarations did not mean endorsing every statement they contained.

"To hear the heartfelt expressions of the lived experience of Palestinian Christians does not mean that we agree with everything in these documents - but it does mean we listen with compassion, and stand in solidarity with them amidst the many injustices they face," she told Synod.

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell also backed the amended motion, saying it would send a message to Palestinian Christians that "we hear you. We stand alongside you."

The Kairos Palestine documents have drawn criticism from several Jewish organisations and public figures in the UK, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which has described Kairos Palestine II as antisemitic.

Kairos Palestine II builds on the original 2009 Kairos Palestine declaration, 'A Moment of Truth: A Word of Faith, Hope and Love from the Heart of Palestinian Suffering'.

The Church of England's vote follows a similar move by the Presbyterian Church (USA), the country's largest Presbyterian denomination, whose General Assembly last month affirmed Kairos Palestine II, recognised Israel's war on Gaza as a genocide and called for an arms embargo on Israel and divestment from companies linked to it.

A German court on Monday jailed an Iraqi couple who were members of the Islamic State group for keeping two girls from the Yazidi minority as slaves.

The man, previously partially named by prosecutors as Twana H. S., was given a life sentence, while his wife, Asia R. A., was handed a term of nine and a half years.

The court in Munich found that the couple had been Islamic State (IS) members between October 2015 and December 2017 and committed their crimes on Syrian territory.

By late 2015, the couple had bought a five-year-old girl as a slave and another who was 12 in 2017.

The couple forced the two girls to do housework and look after their children, and the court found that Twana H.S. raped both girls.

He also beat the older of the two girls with a broom handle, while Asia R. H. scalded the younger one's hand.

In line with IS fringe and fanatical ideology, the couple also suppressed any practice of the Yazidi faith and ordered the girls to abide by their strict interpretation of Islamic rules instead.

One of the girls followed the trial in person and broke down in tears at the sentencing.

Judge Philipp Stoll read part of her testimony in which she said: "Even dogs were worth more than us. My whole childhood was nothing but suffering."

The Islamic State group regarded the Kurdish-speaking Yazidis, who follow a pre-Islamic faith, as heretics.

Stoll stressed that the couple had not been convicted as "representatives of the atrocities committed by the Islamic State group, but solely for their own actions."

The couple left Syria in November 2017 after handing the two young girls over to other IS members.

They were arrested in April 2024 in southern Germany.

In one of these appearances, on Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo podcast, Ahmed shared that he had been approached to work for British intelligence on multiple occasions. Each of these instances, whilst different in context, shares a disturbing common thread of revelation: not even the arts are a safe space for Muslims to express their identity.

This revealed a lot about the relationship between arts, culture and state power, and what it means for Muslim participation in mainstream Western creative industries.

Bitter irony

The first time the British-Pakistani actor encountered intelligence services was when he returned to the UK after filming The Road to Guantanamo and was manhandled at Luton Airport. He recalls how he was put into an arm lock, and his phone was aggressively searched whilst he was being accused of “advancing the Muslim Struggle”.

The irony is not lost in the fact that the film he had been working on spotlights the reality of Muslims navigating life as subjects of state suspicion. To add further contradiction, the security officers were seemingly so impressed by the way Ahmed handled their questioning that they thought it appropriate to try to recruit him as part of their team.

The second time British intelligence attempted to recruit Ahmed was much closer to home; “through a family friend”, he shared on the podcast. To be approached by someone within your personal network to spy on your community is an uncomfortable reality to confront and cements feelings of mistrust that already exist within Muslim communities.

The third incident, which was perhaps most threatening of all, came from a “senior figure at the BBC” who had just left their position.

Mistrust for the BBC as a media outlet is already at an all-time high, especially from within the Muslim community. This can be attributed to an undertone of pro-Israel bias during the coverage of the war in Gaza and Islamophobia, which was recently validated through analysis from research bodies.

As a self-proclaimed independent institution with no political affiliation and no service to the state, the BBC should play no role in advancing any counter-terror or surveillance programmes that form controversial government policy. The feeling that the BBC’s institutional perception of Muslims is shrouded in suspicion is therefore validated when its senior figures are involved in actively recruiting Muslims for intelligence services.

The Riz Test

With a career that unfolded in the shadow of the post-9/11 War on Terror, much of Riz Ahmed’s cultural commentary (not just as an actor, but also as a musician, writer, and producer) has centred on this. Countless airport searches, racial profiling and increased surveillance defined his experiences as a first-generation child of Muslim migrants.

It is remarkable to think that the very services that profiled him then attempted to use him as part of the highly criticised surveillance apparatus that is used to spy on Muslims in the UK. Especially given that the actor’s prominence and contributions to the arts, both behind and in front of the screen, can be attributed to his criticism of typecasting Muslim roles.

It is thanks to his work and advocacy that the Riz Test was developed, after all. The five-point criteria test is now used to evaluate how poorly Muslims are represented in movies and TV shows. For example, Muslim men are often reduced to terrorists, villains, security threats and misogynists who are ‘culturally backwards’.

In contrast, the ‘good Muslim’ is not only the one who rejects ‘extremism’ but also the one who assists the security state and therefore cooperates with British intelligence.

For decades, the War on Terror has unfairly demanded that Muslims constantly prove loyalty to the state, with the idea that their freedoms and even citizenship status would be protected as a consequence. According to these policies, brown Muslim men, in particular, fit into two boxes: you either hate the system and want to bring it down (“advancing the Muslim struggle”) or you embed yourself within the system used to target and vilify your community and curtail wider civil liberties.

Ahmed’s case shows that even when Muslims succeed in reshaping racist stereotypes, they still remain trapped within politicised and securitised identity narratives that reinforce a dangerous good Muslim/bad Muslim binary. Furthermore, it echoes the US government’s Cold War tactics of using culture as a means of ideological supremacy. Similarly, Muslim artists are now being used to cement the harmful perception that their community is supposedly secretly plotting against Western society - and if they’re not, they should join in spying on those who might be to prove this.

Riz Ahmed’s revelation has left many Muslim creatives wondering: if it can happen to such a prominent cultural figure, what is the situation for other Muslims in the industry?

Sajidah Ali is a freelance writer and strategic operations professional in the third sector, based in the Midlands, UK.

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.

The visit comes as he carries a complex agenda of political, security and economic issues, led by the future of armed factions, relations with Iran, the future of the US military presence, and economic and investment cooperation between Baghdad and Washington.

The visit comes at an exceptional moment for Iraq, as the government faces mounting pressure on several fronts, most notably the financial crisis and repercussions following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

It also comes amid continuing debate over the armed factions' file and the government's broad anti-corruption campaign, which has run up against entrenched political and economic influence networks within state institutions.

In a brief statement, the prime minister's media office said that "Al-Zaidi left the capital, Baghdad, for the United States on an official visit at the head of a government and economic delegation."

The delegation accompanying Al-Zaidi includes more than 20 prominent Iraqi figures from political, security and economic sectors.

A senior government source, speaking to The New Arab on condition of anonymity, said that "the visit has a strategic character and will address the most sensitive issues between the two countries".

The source noted that "the talks will include the government's plan to dismantle the influence of the armed factions, withdraw their weapons, end their control over certain areas, halt their economic activities and prevent them from using Iraqi territory to threaten neighbouring countries."

The source added that "the agenda also includes discussions on not renewing the agreement to import gas from Iran, accelerating the electricity interconnection project with the Gulf states, and the project to export Iraqi oil through Syria's Baniyas port, in addition to economic files."

These issues come at a time when limiting weapons to state control is regarded as the main challenge facing Al-Zaidi's government.

Since taking office, the government has declared that restoring state control over security and ending the existence of multiple centres of power are key priorities.

However, this matter faces broad resistance from some armed factions, which possess military, economic and political capabilities and maintain close ties with Iran, making any practical steps against them highly complex both domestically and regionally.

Ahead of his visit to Washington, Al-Zaidi said in an article published by The Washington Post on Sunday that the visit aims to deepen the Iraq-US partnership.

He said he would discuss investment in Iraq with US President Donald Trump and work to attract major US companies to infrastructure, energy, industry, technology and digital economy projects.

Factions issue a warning

The "State Administration" Coalition, which includes the Coordination Framework forces and excludes the Sadrist Movement and the Sunni and Kurdish parties, expressed support for the visit.

In a statement, it said it "held a meeting last night attended by the prime minister, president, parliament speaker, the president of the Supreme Judicial Council and representatives of the Kurdistan Region and reviewed the visit agenda."

It added that "those present affirmed their support for anti-corruption efforts, limiting weapons to state control and strengthening the authority of the state."

Meanwhile, the "Islamic Resistance in Iraq" factions voiced their opposition to the visit.

In a statement issued on Sunday evening, the second in two days, they said: "We in the Islamic Resistance announce our principled rejection of this visit. Our support for the government in fighting corruption does not mean granting it an open mandate for all its policies, nor does it justify passing projects that mortgage the future of coming generations to companies directly or indirectly linked to the interests of the occupation (the United States). It has been proven that a number of them have established partnerships with the Zionist enemy."

The factions added that "the continued presence of US forces on Iraqi soil constitutes an occupation, and one of the government's priorities should be to work, through all available means, to end it in accordance with the announced timetable."

They stressed their opposition to "trade and contracts with any country that harbours hostility towards our resisting people or seeks to confiscate political decision-making and violate sovereignty".

"At the same time, we reject any monopoly or economic domination over Iraq's resources and warn against replacing military occupation with an even more dangerous economic occupation," the statement added.

The factions also warned "any monopolistic company seeking to exploit Iraq's wealth or violate the rights of its people", stressing that "the option of defending the homeland and its legitimate interests will remain in place."

The significance of the visit extends beyond bilateral issues.

It is also linked to rapidly evolving regional developments, as Baghdad seeks to maintain a delicate balance between its strategic partnership with the United States and its political and economic relations with Iran amid growing US pressure to reduce Tehran's influence in Iraq.

Article translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari. To read the original, click here.

The UK government announced plans on Monday to ban Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign-backed threat to national security, in a "proscription-like" designation.

Moreover, a series of arson and vandalism attacks on Jewish sites in Britain was the work of a proxy group backed by Iran, the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, or IMCR, also known as Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, the UK government said Monday.

In a statement, Security Minister Angela Eagle said that the IMCR has claimed seven attacks in the UK “Sitting behind IMCR were members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force, who almost certainly directed IMCR attacks across Europe,” she said. Quds, or Jerusalem, Force is the Guard’s expeditionary unit.

"Anyone found supporting or assisting these groups will now face up to 14 years in prison," Prime Minister Keir Starmer said of a proposed law to be presented to parliament this week.

The banned groups would also include Russia's GRU Volunteer Corps, part of Moscow's military intelligence agency.

However, despite declaring the MoU ‘over’, neither side appears prepared to abandon the framework altogether.

Instead, Tehran and Washington appear to be using calibrated military and economic pressure to shape how the MoU is implemented.

US sees little alternative to the MoU

Despite declaring the Iran-US MoU ‘over’ on 8 July, US President Donald Trump does not appear prepared to abandon the framework deal with Iran.

“I can’t imagine the President or anyone in his cabinet pushing for the termination of the MOU, which isn’t really an agreement but more like a license to negotiate,” Bilal Saab, Senior Managing Director of TRENDS US, told The New Arab.

“The real challenge of any text on which the US and Iran sign off, MOU or otherwise, is implementation. So, any alternative to the MOU will run into the same roadblock.”

Instead, the US seems to be using military and economic pressure to influence the MoU’s implementation.

The US on 7 July resumed military strikes on Iran and on 8 July reimposed restrictions on Iran’s oil sales. This was in response to Iran’s recent attacks on three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, which Washington says violated the MoU.

Still, the US has stopped short of reimposing a naval blockade on Iran’s oil export facilities, suggesting that Washington wants to leave room for de-escalation.

Tehran appears to be exercising similar restraint.

“During the latest round of escalation, despite a US strike on a key railway in northern Iran, Tehran refrained from retaliating against regional infrastructure”, Mohammad Khatibi, a Tehran-based analyst, told The New Arab.

“This is a departure from the 40-day war, when attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure were followed by Iranian strikes on oil and gas facilities across the Gulf.”

Iran wants to preserve its strategic leverage

Washington has in recent weeks increased pressure on what Iran believes to be key pillars of its defensive capabilities.

From Tehran’s perspective, the recent escalation in the Strait of Hormuz followed what Iran views as a US-backed attempt to open a new shipping corridor in the waterway, along the Omani coast.

Iranian officials have repeatedly described control of the strait as a core pillar of Iran’s defensive strategy. Reiterating this, Mohsen Rezaei, an advisor to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, told Iranian media on 12 July that “Tehran will defend the Strait of Hormuz because this strategic passage is one of the state’s deterrence components”.

These developments come amid a renewed push by the US to disarm Iran-linked groups in the region, many of which joined the Iran-Israel-US war in support of Tehran.

Israel and Lebanon signed a US-backed agreement on 26 June to disarm Hezbollah, which Iran has condemned as a violation of the MoU. At the same time, a process - led by Baghdad and backed by the US - to disarm Iran-linked militias in Iraq is underway.

According to Iranian researcher Dr Rahman Ghahremanpour, at least some of Iran’s political leaders view these developments as a renewed attempt to weaken Iran before another round of conflict.

“Undermining Iran’s military and economic power is part of its [US] grand strategy to topple the regime,” Dr Ghahremanpour told The New Arab.

As a result, negotiations have become intertwined with disputes over the very issues that underpin Iran’s regional deterrence.

What could escalation look like?

The most likely scenario in the coming days and weeks is further rounds of calibrated escalation, as both sides seek to shape the terms under which diplomacy continues.

The main flashpoints are likely to remain the Strait of Hormuz, Lebanon, Iran’s oil exports, and military strikes on Iran.

However, if negotiations fail to produce compromises on these issues, Iran, the US, and potentially Israel could return to a level of hostilities comparable to the recent 40-day war.

This would include Iranian attacks on US military bases in the region, critical infrastructure and oil facilities in the Gulf, and the sustained closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

A renewed conflict would also be broader than the recent round, with both sides likely to employ options they previously held in reserve.

“Iran could also resort to options it deliberately avoided during the war,” according to Khatibi.

“These could include targeting oil pipelines and other critical infrastructure in the region, including facilities in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Tehran may also seek to persuade the Houthis to take more active steps to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait,” he explained.

Conditions for the MoU's collapse

Sustained US pressure on Iran to concede on all areas where Iran retains leverage in these negotiations could see the MoU framework fall apart.

“Iran does not want to find itself empty-handed regarding the Strait of Hormuz, nor does it want to lose its nuclear leverage - namely, its status at the nuclear threshold - by giving up its enriched uranium stockpiles in a nuclear negotiation,” Javad Heiran Nia, Director of Persian Gulf Studies at Shahid Beheshti University, told The New Arab.

“At the same time, if the issue in Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah is also pursued simultaneously, Iran would lose its leverage in three areas,” he explained.

“Indirectly, Iran establishes linkages between these issues so that it can use the leverage from each one in the others.”

The complete breakdown of the MoU framework, though unlikely, could result in a renewed US naval blockade on Iranian oil ports and sustained US-Israeli strikes on both Iran’s military and political leadership and infrastructure.

In an extreme scenario, the US could plausibly attempt to seize the strategically significant Kharg Island, which handles 90% of Iran’s oil exports. US President Trump has repeatedly threatened to do so throughout the conflict.

Still, regional mediators will almost certainly try to prevent such an escalation. A drawn-out conflict in the region - particularly one that includes a power vacuum in Iran - would undermine the Gulf States’ respective development ambitions.

Such an escalation would also see Iran attempt to mobilise its allies in Iraq, Lebanon and even Yemen, further undermining regional security.

Zahra Ladha is a geopolitical analyst focused on Iran, Iraq, and transnational Shiaism. She holds an MSc in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford 

Follow her on X: @zahrariy_

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

His visits to both territories at the time were widely viewed as powerful and rare political statements of solidarity by an Arab leader when those nations faced brutal Israeli military attacks and international isolation.

In August 2006, days after the end of Israel's 34-day war on Lebanon, Sheikh Hamad became the first head of state to visit the country since the conflict began.

Arriving from Syria, he toured Beirut's southern suburb alongside then Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, witnessing first-hand the devastation caused by Israeli air strikes.

At a joint news conference, Sheikh Hamad described the outcome of the war as a turning point for the Arab world, saying Hezbollah's ability to withstand Israel's military offensive showed that Israel could no longer impose its will on Arabs through force.

"The Lebanese people and its resistance have achieved the first Arab victory, which we have wanted for long years," he said.

The former emir also urged Israel to fully implement the UN-brokered ceasefire by ending its air and naval blockade of Lebanon, revealing that even his own aircraft had required Israeli clearance before landing in Beirut.

Rejecting Israel's argument that the blockade was necessary to prevent Hezbollah from rearming, Sheikh Hamad said Lebanon had the same right to defend itself as Israel.

"I believe it is unacceptable that arms are banned to the Lebanese and allowed to the Israelis," he said. "He who believes in this theory wants to place Lebanon in a cage so that it could be easy prey for Israel at any time."

On Sunday, Hezbollah issued a statement mourning his passing, saying he had played a "prominent role" in supporting Lebanon during difficult periods, and highlighted his support for Arab and Islamic causes and for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. 

Lebanon's reconstruction

During the visit, Sheikh Hamad pledged Qatar's support for rebuilding Lebanon after the war.

Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri later announced that Doha would fund the reconstruction of the southern towns of Bint Jbeil and Khiam, two of the areas worst affected by the Israeli bombardment.

Qatar ultimately contributed around $250 million to rebuilding southern cities, while additional Qatari-funded projects helped restore villages across south Lebanon.

The country's contribution became widely recognised in Lebanon, where later reports described reconstruction efforts being celebrated under the slogan "Shukran Qatar" ("Thank you Qatar").

Four years later, Sheikh Hamad returned to Lebanon to inspect the projects Qatar had funded. In July 2010, he travelled by helicopter with then-President Michel Suleiman to Bint Jbeil, where he was joined by Prime Minister Saad Hariri and welcomed by Hezbollah officials and thousands of residents lining the streets.

Speaking in the border town, which witnessed some of the fiercest fighting during the 2006 war, Sheikh Hamad described Lebanon as a country built on coexistence and stressed the importance of preserving its Arab identity.

Qatar's role extended beyond reconstruction. In 2008, Doha brokered the agreement that ended Lebanon's political crisis and paved the way for the formation of a national unity government.

The Arab leader who "broke" Israel’s siege on Gaza

Sheikh Hamad's solidarity with Palestinians was equally significant.

In October 2012, he became the first Arab head of state to visit the Gaza Strip after Israel imposed its blockade on the enclave. Accompanied by Sheikha Moza bint Nasser and a senior delegation, he visited Gaza despite its political isolation and received a large public welcome.

During the visit, Sheikh Hamad increased Qatar's reconstruction grant from $254 million to $400 million, financing housing, roads, hospitals and infrastructure projects across the Strip. Among the most prominent were Hamad City in Khan Younis and the Sheikh Hamad Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics.

Palestinians widely viewed the visit as breaking Gaza's political isolation and challenging the blockade imposed on the territory. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal later said Sheikh Hamad had become the first Arab and Muslim leader to stand alongside Gaza "in its darkest circumstances".

His support for Palestine predated the Gaza blockade. In 1999, Sheikh Hamad became the first Gulf leader to visit the Palestinian territories since 1967, meeting late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

During Israel's 2008-09 war on Gaza, he called for an emergency Arab summit in Doha, proposed a $250 million reconstruction fund and advocated establishing a maritime corridor to help bypass the blockade, publicly expressing disappointment when several Arab governments boycotted the meeting.

Much of the infrastructure Qatar financed under Sheikh Hamad's leadership has since been destroyed during Israel's war on Gaza. However, the Sheikh Hamad Hospital has continued operating despite repeated attacks and severe shortages, providing vital treatment for thousands of Palestinians.

The region has been rocked by US and Iranian attacks of a scale unseen since an April ceasefire, as fighting over the strategic Strait of Hormuz threatened to derail efforts to end the US-Israeli war on Iran permanently.

As the US attacks on Iran continued on Monday, Tehran said it would stop complying with a framework agreement to halt the fighting if Washington failed to meet its commitments.

It also responded with attacks of its own targeting Gulf nations, with the powerful Revolutionary Guards announcing new strikes on Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Oman.

"There is no doubt that this document is in crisis," foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said of the June memorandum of understanding. "Each time that the other party has failed to meet its obligations, we did not uphold ours," he added. "We will continue to act in this manner."

He nonetheless added that Tehran was continuing talks with mediators from Qatar, Pakistan and Oman in an effort to prevent any further escalation.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its forces had completed their latest barrage, which began overnight, on dozens of Iranian targets.

US aircraft, naval vessels and drones hit "dozens of targets at multiple locations with precision munitions to degrade Iran's ability to continue attacking international shipping flowing through the Strait of Hormuz".

Iran's Mehr news agency reported fresh blasts of unknown origin in the south around midday on Monday, adding that they "appear to be coming from the West Coast of Bandar Abbas".

'Futile efforts' 

The past week's hostilities have centred on the critical energy trade route, which Iran's Guards say is "closed" but which the United States maintains is open to maritime traffic and not controlled by Iran.

Oil prices, which tumbled after the announcement of the June agreement, jumped by up to 4.5 per cent, with the US benchmark WTI climbing to nearly $74 a barrel amid fears of supply disruptions in global markets.

Mediators have been trying to salvage a diplomatic resolution to the war after President Donald Trump this week declared the April ceasefire over.

Pakistan, a key intermediary in negotiations, expressed "deep concern at escalation in regional tensions", according to its foreign office.

Iran's foreign ministry said the US attacks had "caused the return of insecurity in the Strait of Hormuz" and "rendered futile all efforts" at establishing peace in the region.

But analyst Bader Al-Saif said the escalating attacks would merely delay a permanent agreement.

"Both sides want to end the impasse on their own terms, and they are increasingly finding it difficult to do so. Hence the return to and increase in the scale of attacks," said Al-Saif, an associate fellow at Chatham House. "That only prolongs what will eventually happen: a negotiated settlement."

'Heinous attacks' 

Iranian state media reported two deaths in the latest US strikes that it said targeted large areas across the south and west.

One person was killed and four wounded at a water pumping station in the southwestern city of Mahshahr, state news agency IRNA said.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had struck US military targets and bases in Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait, state media reported on Monday.

Air raid alerts sounded in Bahrain, while Kuwait's army said the country's forces were intercepting "hostile aerial targets" on Monday.

Jordan's army said it had intercepted four Iranian missiles.

Bahrain's military accused Iran of committing "heinous attacks with missiles and drones that target civilians", adding it had shot down several Iranian projectiles Monday morning.

The renewed fighting followed an Iranian attack early Sunday on a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whose crew was forced to abandon it after it went up in flames.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said after the incident that "the Strait of Hormuz will be closed until further notice and until the end of American interventions in this region," according to state news agency IRNA.

US CENTCOM countered on X that the strait was "open to all vessels seeking to lawfully transit".

On 15 July 2016, a rogue military faction made a short-lived bid to overthrow the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sparking fighting that left some 250 people dead and another 2,000 wounded.

Ankara blamed the US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally-turned-foe who has since died, vowing to eradicate his organisation—which it dubbed the Fetullah Terrorist Organisation, or FETO—from Turkish society.

Ankara imposed a two-year state of emergency during which it carried out a vast purge of the army, the police, the media, the judiciary, the education system and the diplomatic sphere that saw hundreds of thousands detained and tens of thousands sacked, leaving a permanent mark on Turkish society.

Describing Monday's nationwide sweep as part of "the great purification campaign", Justice Minister Akin Gurlek and Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci said police were seeking "968 suspects" in order to root out FETO-related elements.

"Our nation's will and the survival of our state are under threat from the treacherous FETO/PDY network, and our struggle against it continues with the same determination as on the first day," they wrote on X, using an acronym referring to the "parallel state structure" Ankara says Gulen's group set up.

Analysts say the coup became a turning point in modern Turkey's history, allowing Erdogan to cement his grip on power.

Last week, Ciftci sent a letter to the governors of Turkey's 81 provinces, describing the events of 15 July 2016 as "a foundational and indisputable turning point."

Lmrabet is under investigation for "alleged dissemination of false information harming constitutional institutions", according to the organisation that provides assistance to journalists at risk.

Moroccan judicial authorities did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Lmrabet, who also holds French nationality and lives in Spain, has used social media as a political commentator and has been an outspoken critic of Morocco's political system.

An informed source said Lmrabet is facing a preliminary investigation over complaints filed by individuals and institutions in Morocco alleging slander and defamation.

In 2003, Lmrabet was jailed after being convicted of offences including offending the king. In 2005, a Moroccan court banned him from practising journalism in Morocco for 10 years.

Sheikh Hamad, who died on Sunday at the age of 73, served as emir from 1995 until his abdication in 2013. During his rule, Qatar underwent a rapid transformation in sports infrastructure, establishing itself as a leading host of international events and positioning Doha as one of the region's foremost sporting capitals.

Among the major tournaments hosted during his reign were the 2004 World Table Tennis Championships, the 2005 World Weightlifting Championships, the 2006 Asian Games, the 2010 World Indoor Athletics Championships, the 2011 AFC Asian Cup, the 2011 Arab Games, and the ninth World Conference on Sport and the Environment.

Sheikh Hamad also played a key role in developing Qatar's sporting infrastructure, including the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex. Under his leadership, the Qatar Open women's tennis tournament was launched in 2001, building on the men's event, which began in 1993.

His tenure also saw the development of Aspire Zone, which officially opened in 2008 and has since become one of the world's leading sports training and development centres. The academy has helped produce a generation of elite Qatari athletes, including Olympic high jump champion Mutaz Barshim.

The defining sporting achievement of Sheikh Hamad's reign came in December 2010, when Qatar won the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The tournament, held under the leadership of his successor, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, was widely praised for its organisation, infrastructure and fan experience, culminating in Argentina's victory over France at Lusail Stadium.

Before becoming emir, Sheikh Hamad chaired Qatar's Supreme Council for Youth Welfare, later the Supreme Council for Sport, from its establishment in 1979 until 1991. During that period, he helped shape the country's long-term sporting strategy and infrastructure.

A lifelong supporter of equestrian sport, Sheikh Hamad also backed the development of Al Shaqab, the internationally renowned Arabian horse breeding centre, after it became part of Qatar Foundation in 2004.

His reign also saw the creation of Qatar National Sport Day. An Emiri decree issued in December 2011 established the annual event to promote healthy lifestyles and encourage sport as part of the goals set out in Qatar National Vision 2030. The first National Sport Day was held in February 2012 under the supervision of Sheikh Tamim, then president of the Qatar Olympic Committee.

Sheikh Hamad's passion for sport has continued across the ruling family. Sheikh Tamim has overseen Qatar's continued investment in international sport, including the creation of Qatar Sports Investments, the owner of French football club Paris Saint-Germain.

Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani currently serves as president of the Qatar Olympic Committee, while Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani successfully led Qatar's bid to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Sheikh Hamad's legacy is widely credited with transforming Qatar into one of the world's leading destinations for international sport, leaving a foundation that continues to shape the country's sporting ambitions.

Speaking in an interview with The New Arab's affiliate, Al Araby TV, on Sunday, Bishara described Sheikh Hamad as a "distinguished Arab figure and a historic leader", saying he owed him a debt of gratitude dating back to before he was forced to leave his homeland of Palestine.

Bishara said that when he was forced into exile, few Arab leaders were willing to receive him, but Sheikh Hamad "opened his arms completely", welcoming him to Doha and giving him the freedom to pursue cultural and media work. Bishara said the late emir believed that independent intellectual and media institutions ultimately benefited the state, even if they sometimes came at a political cost.

He praised Sheikh Hamad's rare commitment to allowing media and cultural institutions to operate independently, arguing that this had strengthened Qatar's regional influence through "soft power". Bishara said a few Arab leaders of that era shared the same confidence in the value of institutional independence.

Reflecting on Qatar's economic transformation, Bishara credited Sheikh Hamad with taking calculated risks by investing heavily in natural gas before it was widely regarded as a strategic resource. He also highlighted investments in Education City, describing them as long-term bets on the country's future that helped reshape Qatar's global standing.

Bishara characterised Sheikh Hamad as an "Arab nationalist" who remained deeply committed to the Palestinian cause. He said the former emir had initially supported the peace process but later took a firm stand in support of Gaza during Israel's 2008-09 war on the enclave, recalling his efforts to convene an Arab summit despite boycotts by several states.

"He stood with the oppressed," Bishara said, describing the Gaza summit as one of the defining moments of Sheikh Hamad's leadership.

The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies director also praised Sheikh Hamad's independent foreign policy, saying he consistently rejected external dictates and maintained Qatar's sovereignty despite the country's complex geopolitical position.

He pointed to Qatar's long-standing position that the Middle East should be free of nuclear weapons, including Israel as well as Iran, as an example of Sheikh Hamad's approach to regional diplomacy and peaceful conflict resolution.

Bishara also highlighted Sheikh Hamad's visits to Gaza and southern Lebanon as symbolic demonstrations of solidarity, saying they reflected his enduring commitment to Arab causes and his willingness to take political risks.

Concluding the interview, Bishara said Sheikh Hamad had introduced a new model of leadership in the Arab world by voluntarily handing over power after achieving the goals he had set for Qatar, adding that his vision, courage and belief in independent decision-making had shaped the country's modern trajectory.

The announcement came during a backbench House of Commons debate on Thursday evening, secured by Labour MP Abtisam Mohamed, to examine Britain's trade relations with illegal settlements and the potential impact of a ban.

Responding to MPs, Chris Bryant, Minister of State at the Department for Business and Trade, confirmed that the government is reviewing four measures he described as "key" to implementing a ban "directly targeting illegal settlements".

During the two-and-a-half-hour session, Bryant outlined that the proposed measures cover four areas: banning imports of goods from settlements into the UK market; banning exports of goods to settlements; banning exports of services to settlements; and banning imports of services from settlements into Britain.

Rewarding Israel and punishing Palestinians

At the start of the debate, Mohamed said that 32,000 constituents had contacted their MPs to stress the importance of addressing what she described as a critical issue.

She questioned, "Why, if Britain considers the settlements illegal, why have we not imposed a complete ban on trade with them?"

"Maintaining the status quo," she warned, "rewards Israeli expansion while punishing Palestinian aspirations".

She also criticised expectations that Palestinians should "silently accept that their humanity, their rights, and their right to self-determination always come second".

In his opening remarks, Bryant urged the Israeli government to "immediately allow" humanitarian aid into Gaza "so that the people of Gaza can breathe and live", while also calling for adherence to a ceasefire.

He described the settlements as "morally wrong, legally indefensible, and entirely counterproductive when it comes to achieving a two-state solution".

Bryant noted that Britain has "strengthened the implementation of customs differentiation measures" between goods originating in Israel and those produced in illegal settlements, but acknowledged that the approach "is not effective enough".

He said this lack of effectiveness represents "one of the fundamental problems we face now and in the future".

Challenges facing a potential ban

The minister also stated that "we as a government have a legal obligation not to provide any support or assistance to the occupation", adding that this creates "the need to prevent British companies from providing economic support and legitimacy to illegal settlements".

Bryant stressed that any potential measures must "strike a balance" between restricting settlement trade and allowing British businesses and consumers to benefit from legitimate trade with Israel and the Palestinian territories.

While he acknowledged that implementing a ban across the four sectors presents "challenges", several MPs criticised him, accusing the government of seeking "excuses" to avoid meaningful action.

He rejected this characterisation, reiterating that the government is giving the proposals "serious" consideration. "The important thing is that where challenges exist, we must overcome them, not use them as an excuse for inaction," he said.

On the legal front, Bryant added that he did not consider the obstacles "insurmountable", stating: "We are seriously considering the shape of a trade ban that directly targets illegal settlements."

Pressed by MPs on whether any concrete steps had been taken, including meetings or timelines, Bryant said only that he had "asked officials for advice on how to proceed".

He emphasised that any measures adopted "must be enforceable and effective, and must not have unintended consequences for our legitimate trade", citing medicines produced within the Green Line as an example.

"The worst thing that could happen," he added, "is to adopt measures that are morally driven but ineffective or unenforceable".

Conservatives defend Israel

The Conservative Party, the largest opposition group in Parliament, strongly defended Israel’s position during the debate.

Gareth Davies, Shadow Minister for Trade, argued that the suspension of UK-Israel trade talks had harmed bilateral relations and "significantly reduced our ability to influence the situation in the region".

He said the Conservatives believe Britain’s influence "has diminished to this extent because of a series of wrong decisions", including halting trade talks "while Hamas was still holding hostages after the 7 October attacks" and suspending export licences "while Israel was burying hostages who had been brutally torn away from their loved ones".

Meanwhile, veteran MP Jeremy Corbyn, now leader of the Your Party movement, cited International Court of Justice rulings calling for "steps to prevent trade or investment relations that help maintain the unlawful situation created by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories".

He added that the court had urged states to "refrain from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel concerning the occupied Palestinian territories or parts thereof that may entrench its unlawful presence in those territories".

Following the debate, Mohamed described the outcome as "a major victory" for pro-Palestine campaigners in the UK.

In a post on X, she said the government was "considering imposing a ban on goods and services linked to Israeli settlements", calling the announcement "exactly" what she and others had been advocating.

Pro-Palestine groups in Britain are continuing to push for a broader economic boycott of Israel, including ending military, security, and intelligence cooperation, in response to what they describe as acts of genocide committed in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

Article translated from Arabic by Afrah Almatwari. To read the original, click here.

At least 2,700 people could have died in England and Wales as a result of heatwaves that struck in May and June, according to a study released Monday.

Experts from Imperial College London, the Met Office and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used weather data, climate models and studies on excess mortality during heatwaves to arrive at their estimate.

"More than 2,700 people are thought to have died from heat-related causes during the May and June heatwaves in England and Wales," a statement said.

"Of those, it's estimated that 42% died as a result of the extra heat caused by human-induced warming," it added.

The UK and most of Europe experienced two unprecedented heatwaves in May and June, with monthly records of 35.1°C and 37.7°C set in England, respectively.

"They were extreme heatwaves for the UK, and for all parts of western Europe, and they're particularly exceptional for the timing and how early in the year they occurred," Mark McCarthy, science manager of the Met's climate attribution team, was quoted as saying in the study.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) will publish its official estimate of heat-related deaths in the coming weeks, based on death records from recent heatwaves.

The study's models, "while they are not a measure of observed mortality, they help illustrate the scale of risk associated with extreme heat and the growing threat climate change poses to our wellbeing," said Lea Berrang Ford, head of UKHSA's Centre for Climate and Health Security.

The study estimates that around 550 people died as a result of the heat between May 21 and 29, and nearly 2,200 died between June 18 and 28 in England and Wales.

The authors emphasise the role of climate change, which is making heatwaves more intense and frequent.

They estimate that maximum daytime temperatures were 3°C to 4°C higher than they would have been without global warming.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC), the body responsible for advising the government on climate change, warned last year that the UK was "not ready" to deal with the consequences of climate change.

In a report published in May, it was estimated that 92 per cent of British homes could be too hot by 2050, and it was recommended that the government set maximum temperature limits in workplaces and invest in air conditioning for public buildings such as hospitals and schools.

Here are the key updates of the day:

• A new wave of US attacks on Iran comes amid a standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, with explosions reported in the port cities of Bandar Abbas, Sirik and Jask, as well as Qeshm Island.
   
• Meanwhile, Iran claims attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Jordan, saying it hit US military sites, in retaliation for Washington’s renewed attacks
   
• Israel continues to attack Gaza and southern Lebanon, despite 'ceasefires' in place 

And so, we continue our live coverage...

M.Q.*, a Sudanese refugee, says these were the words a Croatian police officer shouted at him before he was "beaten, robbed of his phone, passport and money, and forced to walk barefoot back into Bosnia" after trying to seek asylum in the European Union.

His account echoes years of reports recording allegations of violent pushbacks at Croatia's border. Human rights organisations, journalists, and monitoring groups have documented repeated allegations that Croatian border police use such practices to deter irregular crossings and prevent people from accessing asylum procedures.

EU law is clear on asylum rights. The 1951 Refugee Convention establishes protections for people fleeing persecution, while the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union guarantees the right to asylum. EU asylum rules require protection claims to be assessed individually by the competent authorities.

But M.Q. says he was never given the opportunity to apply for international protection, despite fleeing El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, after war broke out in April 2023 between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), triggering widespread atrocities, including killings, sexual violence, looting and mass displacement, particularly in Darfur.

"I left my country because I feared for my life, or I never would have done it," M.Q. stresses while drawing the Darfur flag on a piece of paper.

He is sitting in a field next to the woods, where the NGO No Name Kitchen distributes clothes and organises activities for refugees staying at Lipa Camp.

The container-built compound is the main temporary reception centre near Bosnia's border with Croatia, located 23 km from Bihać, the nearest major city.

This location leaves refugees and asylum seekers without transport and without access to shops where they could, for example, buy a phone after it has allegedly been confiscated or stolen during pushbacks, according to their testimonies.

Endless limbo

Here, many now wait, stranded and trapped in an endless limbo.

This story is common among M.Q.'s compatriots. A.D.*, a 25-year-old refugee from Nyala, South Darfur, has been pushed back four times.

"The last time I paid smugglers and travelled by car. They caught me at the official border, but I was lucky," he says, sitting on the roadside between the Izačić border crossing and Lipa Camp.

"There were too many people watching, so they couldn't beat me."

The walk back to Lipa Camp takes around nine hours. By then, many have spent days without proper food, clean drinking water or sleep, making each step more punishing than the last.

Their only hope is to cross paths with Red Cross outreach teams patrolling the border. The humanitarian workers distribute food, water, first aid and other essentials to people returning from failed crossing attempts, often providing the only respite before the long journey back to the camp.

The outreach teams set out from Bihać at dawn and patrol the border until nightfall.

On some days, they encounter between 10 and 50 people making the long journey back from the frontier after failed attempts to cross, many exhausted, hungry, and in need of urgent medical attention.

"I told the border police I wanted to ask for asylum in Europe, but they wouldn't let me speak," A.D. continues. "They just sent me back to the other side. There were three of us in the back of a truck."

They were collectively pushed back by the Croatian border police and denied their right to international protection, A.D. shares, adding that he has been in Bosnia for over two months, and during his previous attempts to enter Europe, he was not so fortunate.

"The first three times we went through the woods, and the second attempt was the worst. We walked for three days in the cold, crossing two watercourses," A.D. recalls.

One of those crossings was the Korana River, where several people have died in recent years while attempting to cross the border.

"When the Croatian police caught us, they beat us, tore off our winter clothes and left us half-naked in the border woods. It was night," he says.

The most recent pushback took place in April, when temperatures in the area dropped to around 4-5 degrees Celsius at night.

"I thought the hardest part was over when I managed to leave Sudan," he says. "But my journey of more than three years had only just begun."

Borders and brutality 

From Nyala, one of the first major cities in Darfur to fall under RSF control, he crossed into Chad and Libya, where he suffered violence at the hands of militias.

He then sailed on a small boat, spending three days at sea before reaching Greece.

From there, he travelled through North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and finally Bosnia and Herzegovina — for most of the journey, he walked.

"I thought I could find relief and shelter in Europe, but all I found was beatings and Islamophobia," he shares. 

Beyond the Sudanese diaspora, thousands of people attempt to reach the European Union through irregular migration routes every year, with the Western Balkans remaining one of the main corridors into Europe.

Germany, one of Europe's largest destinations for asylum seekers, received 113,236 first-time asylum applications in 2025.

The largest groups of applicants came from Afghanistan (23,972), Syria (23,256) and Turkey (9,801), reflecting major displacement crises and migration pressures affecting neighbouring regions.

However, official asylum statistics record people only after they submit a protection claim and do not capture the full journeys they undertake before reaching European countries.

Many people travelling through transit countries remain absent from official data until they reach a destination country or enter an asylum procedure.

This gap is particularly significant along the Western Balkans route.

According to Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, 13,987 irregular border crossings were detected along the route in 2025.

These figures represent detected crossings, rather than the total number of people attempting the journey, meaning they capture only part of the movement along the route.

These figures are not only conservative but deeply misleading, largely because of the invisibility of people on the move, who are often detected only at the starting point and then disappear from official records until they reappear in their destination country.

Nevertheless, allegations of violence by Croatian border police have been extensively documented by NGOs and international organisations.

"We witness people bitten by police dogs, sometimes with deep wounds. The testimonies we have gathered tell us about the use of tasers, batons and pepper spray," says Silvia Maraone, Bosnia coordinator for the NGO IPSIA, which also operates inside Lipa Camp.

"What we find particularly alarming is that these practices are used against everyone: men, women and children, regardless of their vulnerability," the humanitarian worker explains.

In 2025, Save the Children documented the continued vulnerability of children travelling along the Western Balkans route, highlighting cases of unaccompanied and separated children affected by violence, exploitation and alleged pushbacks at the Croatia-Bosnia and Herzegovina border.

The organisation has warned that children are among those most severely affected by violent border practices and gaps in protection services along the route.

In addition to her work in Lipa, Silvia coordinates and works at the only centre for unaccompanied minors along the route.

The safe house welcomes children travelling alone, many of whom report severe trauma and allegations of violence at the hands of the Croatian authorities.

I.T.*, a 17-year-old boy from north-eastern Syria, first attempted to cross the border at age 15.

"When he came to us, his jaw was broken. The Croatian police had struck him so hard with batons that he had to undergo surgery to repair it," Silvia explains.

The fear and terror in his eyes are evident as he recounts his story. One detail he often returns to is the theft of his passport.

"After the Assad regime fell in late 2024, I considered going back to Syria or reuniting with my family, who are now in Turkey," I.T. tells The New Arab.

"But the Croatian police had stolen my passport, so I couldn't go back unless I travelled alone and on foot."

After everything he had been through, that was no longer an option.

*Real name not used to protect identities 

Annaflavia Merluzzi is an Italian freelance journalist covering Africa, the Middle East, and West Asia, with a focus on human rights, migration, and conflict. She has reported from Palestine, Lebanon, Kenya, Morocco and the Western Balkans, and her work has appeared in national and international publications

Follow her on Instagram: @annaflaviamerluzzi_

Giovanni Morgavi is a photojournalist focused on crisis, migration and conflicts. He has worked in Egypt, Italy and the Balkan region

Follow him on Instagram: @gianni_morgah

The precise ballot date had been unclear since the Israeli parliament voted in May to disband, raising the possibility the election could be held early.

However, coalition head Ofir Katz told a parliamentary committee on Sunday that the original October 27 date set by law would be kept.

Successive surveys have suggested Netanyahu's coalition of far-right nationalist and religious parties would lose the ballot, though his political rivals still have no clear path to power and the political landscape may still shift.

Less than a year after a 2022 political comeback ​at the head of Israel's most extreme-right government to date, Netanyahu's security credentials were left in tatters by Hamas' surprise attack on October 7, 2023.

Polls show many are also unhappy with Netanyahu over the outcome of the Iran war.

Israel's parliament, the Knesset, consists of 120 members elected for a four-year term. It can be dissolved early by a simple majority vote, which is common in Israel.

The entire country of roughly seven million voters forms a single constituency. The vote is based on full proportional representation: the number of seats is allocated in proportion to the percentage of votes obtained by each list.

Any list passing an electoral threshold of 3.25 percent of valid votes -- equivalent to four seats -- enters the Knesset.

The Israeli electorate is fragmented into multiple parties, with 29 lists running in 2022.

Historic movements such as the right-wing Likud and the formerly establishment Labour Party, now renamed the Democrats, are flanked by lists representing, among others, ultra-Orthodox Jews, extreme Religious Zionists, immigrants from the former Soviet bloc, and Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.

The large number of parties makes it virtually impossible to obtain the absolute majority of 61 seats needed to form a government.

Once the ballots are counted, negotiations begin to form a coalition.

The latest salvo by US forces began at 2100 GMT on Sunday, Central Command (CENCTOM) said on X, after earlier announcing approximately 140 strikes the previous night.

The flare-up is the latest to undermine an interim agreement between Washington and Tehran aimed at ending their war, which has caused global economic shockwaves since it began in late February.

Oil prices, which have tumbled since the announcement of the agreement, rose over 3.5 percent when futures trading opened Monday in Tokyo, with the US benchmark WTI jumping above $74 a barrel.

Iran reported strikes Sunday evening on two of its southern islands while Kuwait, where Tehran has repeatedly targeted US installations, said border posts and an offshore oil platform had been attacked.

The renewed fighting followed an Iranian attack early Sunday on a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whose crew was forced to abandon it after it went up in flames.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said after the incident that "the Strait of Hormuz will be closed until further notice and until the end of American interventions in this region," according to state news agency IRNA.

CENTCOM countered on X that the strait was "open to all vessels seeking to lawfully transit."

It said US forces were "positioned and prepared to ensure" freedom of navigation, adding: "Iran does not control the strait. Traffic is flowing."

Control of the waterway has become key leverage for Iran, with an adviser to the country's supreme leader on Sunday saying it was more important than "dozens of atomic bombs."

Mediators have been trying to salvage a diplomatic solution to ending the war after President Donald Trump this week declared a ceasefire over.

Iran's foreign ministry said the US attacks on Sunday had "caused the return of insecurity in the Strait of Hormuz" and "have rendered futile all efforts" at establishing peace in the region.

Exchange of attacks

On Sunday evening, Iranian state media reported at least 10 "enemy projectiles" hitting Qeshm Island, which sits on the Strait of Hormuz.

It also reported strikes on the island of Farur, to the east of Qeshm in the Gulf, that it said killed a telecommunications worker and wounded two others.

Shortly after, Kuwait said three of its land border posts in the north were damaged in an attack, and that an offshore drilling platform "was targeted by a hostile drone," with one person injured.

Tehran said it had targeted two ships in Hormuz early Sunday, including the one that caught fire.

The American military said it had responded with strikes on about 140 targets, and Iranian media reported explosions in Bandar Abbas, Sirik, Jask and on Qeshm, as well as in Khuzestan province, with one soldier reported killed.

"They were giving up everything, and then all of a sudden two hours after that they hit a ship with a drone," he said.

Iran's response to the US strikes came quickly, with sirens and explosions heard in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, AFP journalists and local authorities reported.

Kuwait said it was working to intercept an attack, while Jordan said three Iranian missiles fell inside the kingdom.

Iran's Guards said they also hit Oman, which has rarely been targeted.

Muscat summoned the Iranian ambassador and handed him a formal protest -- a rare move for the sultanate, which has been attempting to balance competing demands from Washington and Tehran.

The attack came just hours after the country hosted Iran's foreign minister to discuss the Strait of Hormuz

Indian ship targeted

Sunday's attack on a Cyprus-flagged container ship in the waterway left one Indian sailor missing, New Delhi said.

Muscat, meanwhile, said it had rescued 23 crew members from a commercial ship.

The crew abandoned ship and were on a lifeboat, British maritime agency UKMTO reported, around 17 kilometers (10 miles) east of Oman.

Separate Iranian strikes on ships in Hormuz had triggered fighting earlier this week, along with heated rhetoric.

Iran's supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei has vowed revenge for the killing of his father and predecessor on the first day of the war, and said Iran had compiled a list of individuals to be targeted.

Trump on Saturday said any attempt to assassinate him would lead the United States to "completely decimate" Iran.

The top diplomat for Pakistan, which has been mediating, called for "de-escalation" on Sunday during a phone call with his Iranian counterpart, Islamabad said.

"Dialogue and diplomacy remain the only viable path to resolving disputes and achieving lasting peace," said Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also called for peace, with his spokesman saying "these attacks must stop."

The tomb, identified as belonging to a man named Paser, was found by a Dutch archaeological mission from Leiden University in the Sheikh Abd el-Qurna necropolis on Luxor's West Bank, according to Egypt's tourism and antiquities ministry.

Specialists believe the tomb dates to the Ramesside period, which spans Egypt's 19th and 20th dynasties, based on the artistic style of its inscriptions.

Located east of a previously known burial site, the tomb follows the traditional layout of private Theban tombs from the New Kingdom (1570-1069 BC), they added.

It consists of an open courtyard leading to a rock-cut chapel shaped like an inverted "T", with burial chambers carved beneath ground level.

Archaeologists found several well-preserved architectural elements in the courtyard, including a mudbrick bench designed to hold a funerary stela and a staircase flanked by sloping ramps leading to the entrance.

Inside, inscriptions bearing Paser's name depict him worshipping various deities inside shrines, as well as seated with his wife before an offering table.

The excavation team said further documentation and study will continue in order to determine who was buried in the tomb and to better understand its historical and archaeological context.

The discovery comes as Egypt seeks to promote new archaeological finds to support tourism, a key source of foreign currency for the country.

Luxor is home to some of the world's most significant ancient monuments and archaeological sites.

Their appearance at the first session of the parliament on Sunday highlighted the diversity of Syria and the changes that years of conflict and upheaval have brought.

One woman MP, Madonna Beshara, who is from the country’s Christian minority, was chosen as parliament’s second deputy speaker.

Also among the women MPs was Fasla Yusuf, one of 70 MPs directly appointed by President Ahmed Al-Sharaa under controversial rules.

Her appearance in traditional Kurdish women’s clothing drew attention, as did that of Mirvet Sobhi Toto, who attended parliament in a niqab.

Like Yusuf, Toto was appointed directly by Sharaa. In July the names of the 70 MPs chosen by the president were announced, completing the makeup of the Syrian parliament and allowing it to convene.

Another 140 members were elected by special committees appointed for this purpose in 2025.

Yusuf is a member of the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party in Syria and previously served as the party’s secretary. She has also served as president of the Kurdish National Council.

These groups were opposed to the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which previously dominated Kurdish-held areas of Syria, and she was arrested by PYD-affiliated forces in 2017 and spent 22 days in jail.

Yusuf was born in Hasakah province in 1970. She had previously stated in an interview with the Kurdish news network Rudaw that she would participate in the first parliamentary session in Damascus wearing Kurdish clothing and that she would attempt to take the oath in both Kurdish and Arabic.

Historically, Syria did not even recognize the presence of a Kurdish minority and under the Assad regime, the use of the Kurdish language and expressions of Kurdish culture were suppressed.

Yusuf’s appearance was in stark contrast to Mirvet Sobhi Toto, who is from Idlib province in northwestern Syria, which was under the control of rebels – including hardline Islamist ones - opposed to the Assad regime for years.

Toto was described on the social media platform X as the first woman to ever attend Syria's parliament in a niqab. She is the widow of Osama Namoura, also known as Abu Omar Saraqib, who led the Islamist rebel group Jaysh al-Fatah (Army of Conquest).

Namoura previously founded a branch of Jabhat al-Nusra – which was affiliated to Al-Qaeda – in Aleppo, before becoming the military commander Jaysh al-Fatah and the commander of military operations during the rebel campaign to capture Idlib city from the regime in March 2015.

According to the Syrian Memory website, Namoura was also one of the most prominent commanders in the battle to break the siege of Aleppo, which took place in August 2016.

However, his relationship with Jabhat al-Nusra was complex and he was detained in June 2016, accused of “abuse of authority.”

Media sources at the time linked this to an air attack targeting a meeting of Nusra leaders at Abu al-Duhur Airport in eastern Idlib province, which Namoura had missed without explanation.

Namoura was later killed in September 2016 in an airstrike believed to have been carried out by the United States, during a meeting of leaders from Jabhat al-Nusra’s successor organisation in the town of Kafr Naha.

15 of the 22 women in parliament were appointed directly by Sharaa while only seven were elected by the committees appointed in 2025.

Eyewitnesses and medical sources said that injured people and the remains of four people killed were transferred to the Al-Quds Hospital after a strike targeted a building in the Sabra neighbourhood south of Gaza City.

Following the strike, residents received phone calls from the Israeli army ordering them to evacuate the area because further attacks would take places.

Local eyewitnesses added that Israeli warplanes carried out additional airstrikes on the area after the warnings. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said these attacks injured two Palestinians and sparked a fire.

Medical sources said that Israeli fire targeted a camp on the eastern side of the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, killing 9-year-old girl Tala Abu Matar.

Later, a New Arab correspondent reported that another person was killed in an Israeli drone strike on a tent sheltering displaced people west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

In a related development, a medical source at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah told the Anadolu news agency that a man died from wounds he sustained after being shot by the Israeli army on Friday east of the Bureij refugee camp.

A source at Nasser Medical Complex also reported that another man died from injuries he suffered on Saturday in an Israeli drone strike near the Bani Suheila roundabout east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

Over 73,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which began in October 2023, while more than 173,000 others have been injured. Around 90% of civilian infrastructure has been destroyed.

Israel has continued to carry out deadly airstrikes on the territory while subjecting it to a virtual siege despite an October 2025 ceasefire, severely limiting the amount of aid allowed in.

Around 1,092 Palestinians have been killed and another 3,507 injured since the ceasefire began, most of them women and children.

In accordance with Muslim customs, funeral services were held on Sunday evening at the Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab Mosque in Doha amid a large turnout which included current Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani and other members of the ruling family.

Sheikh Hamad was later laid to rest at the Lusail Cemetery.

He was the fifth Emir of Qatar and one of the most prominent leaders in the country's modern history. Sheikh Hamad is closely associated with Qatar’s transformation from a small Gulf state with limited influence into a major regional and international player.

His accession to power in 1995 marked a strategic turning point in Qatar’s history. Over 18 years of his rule, Qatar became a major force in energy, diplomacy, media, and sport, and took up causes like the Arab Spring and solidarity with the long-suffering people of Gaza.

Sheikh Hamad laid the foundations for an active foreign policy, a strong economy, and influential educational and media institutions, securing Qatar’s place on the international stage.

He was born in 1952 in Doha and as a young man enrolled at the Sandhurst Military Academy in the Uk, undergoing advanced military training and graduating in 1971.

After returning to Qatar, he became Commander-in-Chief of the Qatari Armed Forces with the rank of Major General. In 1977, he was appointed Crown Prince.

During the 1980s, he chaired the Supreme Planning Council, which was responsible for formulating Qatar's key economic and social policies. From 1992 onward, he gradually assumed responsibility for the day-to-day administration of the country, including overseeing the development of Qatar's oil and natural gas resources.

After assuming power in Qatar on 27 June 1995, he led an ambitious nation-building project focused on key pillars such as:

-economic development focused on the natural gas sector, which transformed Qatar into the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG)

-liberalization of the media, which saw the launch of the flagship Al-Jazeera TV network in 1996

-education and scientific research, with the establishment of Education City and the attraction of leading international universities to Doha

-an active foreign policy, which saw Qatar become a key mediator in the resolution of regional and international conflicts, including those in Lebanon, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Palestine.

Domestically he also carried out key reforms including holding the 1999 Central Municipal Council elections – the first ever elections in the Gulf region held under universal suffrage, ratifying Qatar’s permanent constitution in 2004, and expanding women’s participation in education, employment, and public service.

He also strongly supported sports and his efforts culminated in Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the first such event in the MENA region.

Support for the people of Gaza and Lebanon

During Sheikh Hamad’s reign, Qatar played a pivotal role in humanitarian and peacemaking efforts following devastating wars in the early 2000s in Lebanon and Gaza.

Gaza endured a crippling Israeli siege beginning in 2007 and then a devasting Israeli war in late 2008 and early 2009, while Lebanon was hit hard by the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.

During the 2008-9 Gaza war Sheikh Hamad had to deal with vacillation and indecision by Arab countries which meant that no quorum could be reached for an emergency Arab summit on the issue, which was due to be held in Doha.

He gave a famous speech criticising Arab indecision, arguing that it was shameful for governments in the region to try and sideline the issue. The speech contained a religious invocation, “God is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs,” which came to symbolize the frustration and helplessness people across the Arab world were feeling amid the assault on Gaza.

Sheikh Hamad however, bypassed the Arab League’s formal requirements and convened a consultative summit of Arab and Muslim leaders which called for an immediate ceasefire and a halt to all normalisation with Israel, while pledging funds for Gaza’s reconstruction.

In October 2012, Sheikh Hamad became the only Arab leader to visit Gaza, overseeing the distribution of Qatari humanitarian aid, while opening channels of support for hospital and schools.

Prior to that, in 2006, he also became the first Arab leader to visit south Lebanon, coordinating reconstruction and humanitarian relief operations with Lebanese officials amid the devastation caused by Israel’s assault.

In 2011, as pro-democracy protests spread across Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Libya in what became known as the Arab Spring, Sheikh Hamad pursued a policy supportive of political change, while spearheading pressure through the Arab League on government which used violence against their citizens.

The Al-Jazeera network meanwhile provided unprecedented coverage of the protests in the region.

Perhaps one of his most remarkable decisions was to abdicate in 2013 and transfer power to his son, current Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, providing the country with a smooth succession that helped preserve the country’s stability during a difficult period.

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi's government has repeatedly said it is making progress on its campaign to restrict weapons to the state's security forces, a policy that enjoys broad public support across Iraq.

However, officials have yet to explain the nature or extent of that progress as several influential factions continue to reject even discussing disarmament.

According to sources who spoke to The New Arab, the factions want assurances that their leaders and members will be protected from future attacks, will not face political or security persecution inside Iraq, and that the US military presence in the country will end.

They argue that relinquishing their weapons while regional tensions persist would leave them vulnerable.

Among the factions opposing disarmament are Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, Sayyid al-Shuhada, al-Awfiya and al-Badala, which are regarded as the ideological and most heavily armed wing of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF).

Although Baghdad has not publicly acknowledged the scale of the disagreements, statements issued by Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba in recent days have underlined the divisions, particularly ahead of Zaidi's expected visit to Washington.

During commemorations for Iran's former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the two groups declared that "the weapon is not an option for bargaining" and pledged to continue developing their "military and security capabilities both quantitatively and qualitatively".

Kataib Hezbollah secretary-general Abu Hussein al-Hamidawi also reaffirmed the group's ideological ties to Tehran.

"The Brigades were established by decision of the martyr of the Ummah (the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei), and their members remain loyal to that path and committed to the Islamic resistance and its weapons," he said, while urging Iraqi political leaders to resist what he described as "arrogant imperial projects".

Harakat al-Nujaba, led by Akram al-Kaabi, similarly said last month that its position on what it called the "sacred weapon" "has not changed and never will", adding that "the resistance's weapons are a red line".

The statements came after Asaib Ahl al-Haq, led by Qais al-Khazali, announced it would sever its links with the PMF and hand its weapons over to the state.

A similar decision had previously been taken by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who ordered his Saraya al-Salam faction to surrender its weapons after Zaidi launched a programme to bring all arms under state control by 30 September.

Three senior members of the Coordination Framework alliance told The New Arab that the factions refusing to disarm were not seeking confrontation with the Iraqi state but remained unconvinced that sufficient guarantees had been offered.

One source said there were "no guarantees" over the safety of faction leaders after surrendering their weapons, arguing that both the United States and Israel had previously failed to honour their commitments.

The factions also wanted assurances that the US military presence in Iraq would end and that they would not later face political or security persecution.

The source added that Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba viewed the disarmament initiative as "a dangerous plan" that could weaken Iraq in the same way Syria's military capabilities were degraded after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, arguing that their recent statements were intended as a message to Washington rather than a challenge to Baghdad.

Political analyst Abdullah al-Rikabi told The New Arab that the split reflected wider divisions within what remains of the Iran-led Axis of Resistance.

"The factions that agreed to surrender their weapons are seeking a political future and calm on the domestic front," he said.

"As for the factions that refuse, they believe continued Israeli military activity and US influence in the region make retaining their weapons necessary."

Hassan Malihat, general supervisor of the Al-Baydar Organisation for the Defence of Bedouin Rights, told The New Arab that settlers had established two outposts while attacks intensified across the West Bank. 

"On Sunday morning, settlers began preliminary steps to establish a new outpost in an area about 500 metres away from the community of Maazi Jaba, northeast of Jerusalem," Malihat said. 

He added that settlers had also established another outpost on Saturday evening on land in the Tal al-Asour area, east of Ramallah. 

In Nablus, local sources said settlers had transported caravans to the summit of Mount Ebal to expand an existing outpost. 

Palestinians and rights groups have long said the ouposts are part of a wider effort to displace local residents and fragment the occupied territory.

Harassment of Palestinian activists 

The developments come as there has been a sharp uptick in Israeli settlers harassing Palestinian activists.

Malihat said settlers stormed the home of activist Ayed Musa Kaabneh in the Arab Al-Kaabneh community near Jericho and threatened him over his efforts to document attacks on residents and their property. 

The settlers surrounded Kaabneh's home and threatened him to stop filming and publishing evidence of the attacks in what he described as an attempt to obstruct the documentation of violations targeting Bedouin communities, Malihat explained.

He said the intimidation of activists was a dangerous escalation and formed part of a broader pattern of attacks that includes home invasions, destruction of property, and assaults on residents and their livelihoods. 

Malihat further told The New Arab that settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, attacked residents of Arab al-Kaabneh, west of al-Auja near Jericho, before dawn on Sunday. 

During the raid, they reportedly cut through a fence surrounding one home, entered the property and a sheep pen, and removed livestock in an apparent attempt to seize them. 

He said settlers also attempted similar raids on neighbouring homes and animal shelters. When residents confronted them, Israeli soldiers then fired shots into the air to intimidate Palestinians while providing protection to the settlers.  

The settlers claimed they were searching for lost sheep. 

Malihat further said that, on Saturday evening, settlers attacked a displaced Bedouin community west of al-Auja, injuring one Palestinian after cutting through a metal fence in an alleged attempt to steal livestock.  

He said the incident was part of an ongoing pattern of attacks targeting Bedouin communities and their property across the Jordan Valley. 

Prominent anti-settlement activist Osama Makhamrah told The New Arab that settlers assaulted the family of Ibrahim Ismail al-Jabour in the Huwara area on Sunday morning.  

He said the family was beaten and sprayed with pepper spray while Israeli forces initially prevented an ambulance from reaching the scene. 

Makhamrah said five Palestinians were injured in the attack, including the elderly Ibrahim Ismail al-Jabour, three children, and a woman undergoing cancer treatment.  

The victims were later taken to Yatta Governmental Hospital by Palestinian Red Crescent medics after access was eventually granted. 

Local sources in southern Hebron also told The New Arab that settlers released their livestock to graze near Palestinian homes in Khirbet al-Kharaba, east of as-Samu', causing further disruption to residents and damage to their land. 

Separately, Israeli forces carried out raids and arrest operations across several areas of the occupied West Bank on Sunday, detaining a number of Palestinians. 

In Nablus, Israeli troops entered several neighbourhoods, deployed throughout the city, and raided at least one building. 

Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights organisations have repeatedly warned that escalating settler violence is systematically displacing Bedouin and herding communities in the occupied West Bank to facilitate the expansion of agricultural settlement outposts, often referred to as "pastoral settlements". 

Amid Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding communities across the occupied West Bank experienced either full or partial displacement between January 2023 and April 2026 because of settler attacks and related access restrictions. 

Khanna said he was detained by Israeli settlers armed with US-made rifles during his visit, which he cast as an unfiltered look at the human toll of Israeli occupation as he weighs a 2028 presidential run.

In a statement on Saturday, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said every member of Congress should condemn the detention of an American lawmaker by armed Israeli settlers in illegally-occupied territory.

"If an American elected representative can be stopped, intimidated and prevented from traveling freely, imagine what Palestinians endure every day without the protection of congressional office or international attention," Awad said.

"Congress must reject settler violence, oppose Israel’s illegal occupation and annexation policies, and ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are not used to facilitate ongoing Israeli human rights abuses."

The California Democratic representative said his group’s van was surrounded by settlers wielding M4 rifles a day earlier while touring a part of the southern West Bank where residents face frequent settler attacks.

"Israeli settlers, brandishing American made M4s, detained me & other Americans on my trip to Palestine. When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers & continued our detention. They made a huge mistake," he wrote on X.

The US is Israel’s closest ally and has offered it unwavering support over the past few years, as Israel launched a genocidal campaign on the Gaza Strip and continues to annex West Bank territory.

Violence by Israeli settlers has also spiked in the West Bank. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by settlers and Israeli forces since the start of the Gaza war.

Despite Washington’s support, there is growing frustration towards Israel within American political circles, both in the Democratic and Republican parties.

The Biden administration began imposing sanctions in February 2024 under an executive order targeting individuals and groups responsible for undermining peace and security in the West Bank. The US also introduced visa restrictions in late 2023.

Several Western states including Britain, France, Norway, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have imposed sanctions on Israeli settlers or extremist Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over their violent anti-Palestinian rhetoric.

Lawmakers from other Western countries such as the UK and France, and the EU, have reported being harassed by settlers during visits to the West Bank.

In 2019, Israel barred US Representatives Rashid Tlaib – who is of Palestinian heritage – and Ilhan Omar from entering Israel and the West Bank ahead of a planned visit.

Several UK Labour government ministers argued that payments for specific navigational services were already permitted in several international waterways, including the Strait of Malacca and the English Channel, The Guardian reported.

However, the UK's deputy prime minister, David Lammy, warned that introducing mandatory tolls would be "disastrous". 

The proposed framework, which draws on principles used in the Strait of Malacca, is reportedly being developed by Oman in coordination with British legal experts.  

Muscat has reportedly offered to send legal specialists to Tehran to explain the proposal in detail. 

European and Gulf officials meet

The developments come ahead of a meeting of European Union foreign ministers with Gulf counterparts in Brussels on Monday to discuss the escalating situation.  

The gathering at the Council of the European Union will mark the first meeting between European and Gulf officials since hostilities resumed. 

Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign affairs and security policy chief, will chair the EU-GCC High Level Forum on Regional Security and Cooperation, which will be attended by Gulf ministers. 

The reported proposals are also being considered amid vocal opposition to compulsory tolls, with Oman controlling much of the navigable waters in the Strait of Hormuz and rejecting the introduction of mandatory charges. 

Other Gulf states have also criticised any arrangements that could undermine Iranian sovereignty claims over the waterway. Qatar has warned against any agreement that conflicts with international maritime law. 

"Giving the Iranians sovereignty over the strait in a way that contradicts international maritime law will be basically agreeing to be hostages to whatever radical element that wants to take over the strait at any time," Qatar's foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said. 

The United States has also demanded that Iran publicly confirm the Strait of Hormuz is open and provide assurances to vessels using the vital maritime corridor that they will not be targeted. 

The dispute over Hormuz is closely tied to a memorandum of understanding signed by Washington and Tehran last month, which outlined a roadmap towards ceasefire negotiations.  

However, talks are taking place against the backdrop of renewed US-Iran tensions. 

Trump says agreement is 'over'

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he considered the interim ceasefire agreement with Iran to be “over”, while adding that Washington would continue negotiations aimed at securing a permanent end to the conflict. 

Qatari officials have since participated in talks between Iran and Oman over the partial reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, Axios reported, citing a diplomat familiar with the matter. 

During discussions in Muscat, officials reportedly considered a proposal that would see the full reopening of the "median lane" of the Strait of Hormuz, an area located in international waters, to allow unrestricted maritime movement. 

Oman proposed that the southern route, located in Omani waters, and the northern route, located in Iranian waters, should both operate fully. 

Under the Omani proposal, the southern route would reopen without requiring permits, restoring the arrangement that existed before the war. 

However, Iranian officials were reportedly unable to approve the proposal during the meeting and took it back to Tehran for further internal discussions. 

According to ABC News on Saturday, citing a US official, American negotiators were not present during the Oman talks. 

"US technical teams will not be present in Oman but will be in touch with the Omanis and Qataris as developments occur," the official said. 

The discussions come after Iran said on Sunday that it had closed the Strait of Hormuz following an incident in which a vessel travelling along an unauthorised route was struck. Tehran warned that any retaliation over the incident would receive a "severe response". 

Oman has been mediating efforts to end a conflict that has destabilised the Gulf and pushed up global energy prices since the United States and Israel launched air strikes on Iran on 28 February. 

Before the war, around one-fifth of the world's oil supply passed through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's effective blockade of the waterway has sent energy prices higher, contributing to renewed inflationary pressures worldwide.

The session comes under the Constitutional Declaration outlining the country's five-year transitional period until a permanent constitution is adopted and general elections are held.

The proceedings were opened by Mohammed Taha al-Ahmad, head of the Supreme Committee for People's Assembly Elections, while members of parliament were sworn in.

President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who led the rebel offensive that ousted Assad in December 2024, was present at the inauguration.

In a speech, Sharaa said Syria was "writing a glorious chapter in its history that reflects the heroism of its people," adding that the country faced "a responsibility to build both the nation and the individual" and that "we are partners in this responsibility."

He described the assembly as "a platform for truth and justice" and called for it to become "a model of responsibility and competence" that would help entrench "a culture of dialogue, the rule of law and respect for institutions."

Al-Ahmad described the session as "historic", saying it represented "the blood of the martyrs and a defining moment in history in which we declare to the world that Syria has shaken off the dust of war."

The assembly's oldest member, Osama al-Assaf, then invited members to form a temporary legal committee to oversee the election process, supervise the vote count, and establish the procedures for electing the parliament's presidential bureau.

Parliament Speaker elected

The inaugural session marks the transition from the assembly’s formation to the exercise of its constitutional powers.

It began with Al-Ahmad, inviting lawmakers to take the constitutional oath, after which the oldest member chaired the session on an interim basis, while the youngest member served as secretary until the election of the assembly's leadership.

Following the oath, lawmakers formally assumed their seats, and responsibility for the assembly passed from the Supreme Committee to the legislators themselves, marking the first practical exercise of the legislature's institutional independence.

Lawmakers then proceeded to elect a speaker, deputy speaker, and two secretaries in a secret ballot, formally launching the new parliamentary term.

Under the temporary electoral law, the newly elected speaker, Abdulhamid Al-Awak, will later invite Sharaa to address parliament in a future session, during which he is expected to outline the state's priorities and agenda for the next phase of the transition.

Controversial 'presidential third'

This follows the completion of the 207-member assembly after Sharaa appointed 70 lawmakers under what is known as the "presidential third", while three seats allocated to the southern province of Suweida remain vacant after the electoral process there could not be completed.

The southern Druze-majority province largely remains outside government control following deadly sectarian violence a year ago that saw more than 1,700 people killed.

The new parliament was established under the Constitutional Declaration and the temporary electoral law issued under Decree No. 143 of 2025. The law stipulates a 210-member assembly, with two-thirds selected by electoral bodies formed in each province and the remaining third appointed by the president.

According to the Supreme Committee, the system was designed to meet the needs of the transitional period by combining local representation with the inclusion of academic, legal, and administrative figures who are unlikely to reach parliament through the indirect electoral process.

Critics have described the appointments as undemocratic, arguing they set a troubling precedent for the country's post-Assad transition.

Despite the controversy surrounding the appointment of the "presidential third" – particularly over the selection process and the level of representation – the Supreme Committee said the appointments were based on criteria including competence, experience, and diversity.

The committee said the selections were intended to strengthen the representation of women, Kurds, displaced Syrians, and the families of those killed during the conflict, as well as former detainees. It also included academic, legal, and economic figures expected to contribute to drafting legislation for the transitional period.

What challenges does the assembly face?

During the transitional period, the Assembly will wield broad legislative and oversight powers, including the authority to propose, pass, amend, and repeal legislation, approve the state budget, ratify international treaties and grant general amnesties.

It will also be responsible for holding the government to account through questioning ministers, convening parliamentary hearings, and overseeing the performance of the executive branch.

Despite the powers granted to the assembly, analysts say its greatest challenge will be establishing its independence from the executive powers of government – the president and cabinet – and avoiding a return to the dynamic that prevailed under the Assad regime, when parliament had little influence over policymaking.

The assembly also faces other challenges, including completing representation for some areas, most notably Suweida province, and rebuilding public trust in the legislature after years in which the People's Assembly was widely viewed as a rubber-stamp institution under Assad.

The assembly will begin its work as Syria's new authorities seek to stabilise the country after more than a decade of conflict and political upheaval.

After more than 14 years of civil war, Sharaa continues to grapple with sectarian tensions and security challenges that underscore the fragility of Syria's post-Assad transition. The conflict, which began when Assad's forces violently suppressed anti-regime protests before spiralling into a multifaceted war involving foreign powers and militant groups, devastated the country's economy and infrastructure.

A Sudanese court on Sunday sentenced paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo and 15 others to death in absentia over the killing of a regional governor and committing war crimes in Darfur, state media reported.

The ruling is the first against the leadership of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since war broke out between the paramilitary group and the Sudanese army in April 2023.

The court in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, the army's de facto capital, convicted Daglo and the other defendants of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and attacks on civilians and public facilities, state news agency SUNA reported.

Those sentenced include Daglo's brother and deputy, Abdelrahim Hamdan Daglo, as well as several RSF officers and tribal leaders from Arab communities in West Darfur.

The case centres on the killing of West Darfur governor Khamis Abbakar in June 2023, shortly after RSF forces seized El-Geneina, the state capital.

Abbakar was killed hours after accusing the RSF and allied militias of carrying out attacks against civilians.

UN experts determined that between 10,000 and 15,000 people, mostly from the Massalit ethnic group, were killed in El-Geneina during the violence.

The RSF has repeatedly denied allegations of genocide and other war crimes.

The court said it would refer the case to the Supreme Court for review and seek the arrest and extradition of those convicted through Interpol and other international channels.

Sudanese army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Daglo had jointly led the 2021 coup that derailed Sudan's transition to civilian rule, before falling out over plans to integrate the RSF into the regular army, a dispute that eventually led to war.

Now in its fourth year, the conflict between the army and the RSF has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than 11 million and triggered what the United Nations describes as the world's largest displacement and hunger crises.

(AFP)

You can track developments from earlier today by visiting our previous live page here.

These are the key events on Sunday afternoon:

•    Iran launched attacks across the Gulf and announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz after a night of heavy US airstrikes.

•    Arab governments have condemned the attacks, while Oman summoned the Iranian ambassador in protest.

•    Qatar's former emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, has died at the age of 74.

•    Israeli forces have killed five people, including a child, in Gaza.

•    Seven Palestinians were injured in a settler attack in Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank.

•    Israel has announced that it will hold general elections on October 27

Iran said Sunday it was closing the Strait of Hormuz and launched missiles and drones at Gulf neighbours after the US carried out a new round of strikes as their conflict escalated.

The latest exchange of fire was sparked by another Iranian attack on a commercial ship in the strait, whose crew were forced to abandon the vessel after it went up in flames.

The escalation is the latest to undermine an interim agreement between Washington and Tehran aimed at ending their war, which broke out in late February with US-Israeli strikes that killed Iran's supreme leader.

Mediators have been trying to salvage a diplomatic solution after President Donald Trump this week declared a ceasefire over.

"Following this incident... the Strait of Hormuz will be closed until further notice and until the end of American interventions in this region," Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Sunday, according to state news agency IRNA.

Iran said it had targeted two ships in Hormuz, claiming they had ignored instructions to use an approved transit corridor or were "violating regulations", IRNA said.

The attacks prompted a barrage of US strikes across Iran in response, with the American military saying it had hit about 140 targets in its third round of attacks this week.

Iranian media reported explosions in Bandar Abbas, Sirik, Jask and on Qeshm Island as well as in Khuzestan province, with one soldier reported dead in the southern city of Jask.

"The United States is imposing a heavy cost by continuing to degrade Iran's ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial ships freely transiting the strait," the US military said on X.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said: "Iran made a poor choice. Now they pay."

Hormuz flashpoint

Iran's response came quickly, with sirens and explosions soon heard in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, AFP journalists and local authorities reported.

Qatar said three people were injured by Iranian attacks, while the UAE issued a warning for incoming missiles but later said they did not enter its territory.

Kuwait also said it was working to intercept an attack, while Jordan said three Iranian missiles fell inside the kingdom.

Iran's Guards said they also hit Oman, which has rarely been targeted.

They claimed to have destroyed "the logistical support centres for naval vessels and the refuelling facilities for US aircraft carriers at the port of Duqm".

Muscat summoned the Iranian ambassador and handed him a formal protest -- a rare move for the sultanate, which has been attempting to balance competing demands from Washington and Tehran.

The attack came just hours after the country hosted Iran's foreign minister to discuss the Strait of Hormuz, a key point of contention standing in the way of a final agreement to end the conflict.

Iran closed the waterway to commercial shipping during the war, heavily impacting the world economy because the strait is a key conduit for energy exports from the Gulf.

Tehran insists on controlling the passage of ships and plans to charge fees, a stance Washington has rejected.

Control of the waterway has emerged as key leverage for Iran, with an adviser to the country's supreme leader on Sunday saying it was more important than "dozens of atomic bombs".

'Blatant' attack

Sunday's attack on a Cyprus-flagged container ship in the waterway left one Indian sailor missing, New Delhi said.

Muscat meanwhile said it had rescued 23 crew members from a commercial ship.

Iran said it had fired "warning shots", but the US military accused Tehran of "blatantly" attacking the vessel.

The crew abandoned ship and were on a lifeboat, British maritime agency UKMTO reported, around 17 kilometres (10 miles) east of Oman.

Separate Iranian strikes on ships in Hormuz had already triggered fighting earlier this week along with heated rhetoric.

Iran's supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei has vowed revenge for the killing of his father and predecessor on the first day of the war on 28 February.

He said Iran had compiled a list of individuals to be targeted.

A conservative newspaper in Iran known for its provocative tone later published a list that included the leaders of the US, Israel and European countries, but there was no suggestion it was officially endorsed.

Trump on Saturday said any attempt to assassinate him would lead the United States to "completely decimate" Iran.

He has declared the ceasefire over while leaving the door open for talks, and mediators have been trying to salvage a diplomatic solution.

The top diplomat for Pakistan, which has been mediating, called for "de-escalation" on Sunday during a phone call with his Iranian counterpart, Islamabad said.

"Dialogue and diplomacy remain the only viable path to resolving disputes and achieving lasting peace," said foreign minister Ishaq Dar.

(AFP)

"Together with France, we want to develop a common policy on Lebanon in order to improve the prospects for peace in the Middle East," Wadephul told the Tagesspiegel newspaper over the weekend, ahead of next week’s Franco-German ministerial council meeting.

While the announcement from Wadephul does not provide further details on what the proposed initiative will entail, it comes as the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL) is due to begin winding down in the coming months, and as Israel and Lebanon look to begin implementing a framework agreement.

Lebanese political analyst Karim Bitar believes the joint German-French initiative for Lebanon is likely part of an effort to define a mechanism that would replace UNIFIL.

"We already have France, Italy, and Germany being on the record saying that they intend to remain engaged after UNIFIL winds down, even if German troops are no longer deployed under the UN mandate, and Germany had also committed to continuing its military training for the Lebanese Armed Forces to show support," he told The New Arab.

"France and Italy on their side had agreed to implement new political and security arrangements, so I guess its probably an effort of Germany to join this successor framework or complimentary European mission – I think it’s quite reasonable to think that this is the case."

UNIFIL’s mandate is scheduled to expire at the end of this year, with a period of one year of drawdown and withdrawal to follow in 2027. The European Union’s diplomatic service proposed a three-year military and civilian mission to advise and train Lebanese forces, including in border and maritime security, according to a document seen by Reuters last month.

After nearly three years of hostilities, UNIFIL has been unable to prevent the escalation in southern Lebanon - parts of which are currently under Israeli occupation - or halt Hezbollah's armament. Washington and Tel Aviv pressured to block an extension of UNIFIL’s mandate last year.

'Europeanise the deal'

Beyond replacing UNIFIL, Bitar believes European governments are seeking a broader role in southern Lebanon’s post-war security arrangements, rather than leaving Israel's ally, Washington, as the sole guarantor of the framework agreement.

"More broadly, what is interesting in this process, in the rapprochement between Paris, Berlin, and Rome over Lebanon, is that they are maybe trying to Europeanise the implementation of the US-Israel trilateral framework with Lebanon, because many in Lebanon consider that the United States is not an honest broker," he says.

The trilateral framework signed between Israel and Lebanon in late June is supposed to see Israeli forces gradually withdraw from areas they occupy in southern Lebanon and hand these territories over to the Lebanese army, who must dismantle weapons and infrastructure belonging to militant groups. The plan will be overseen by Washington.

Implementation is set to begin "within days," according to US sources, and a US military delegation met with the Lebanese army earlier this week to discuss the next steps on the ground.

Hezbollah has lambasted the framework deal as well as direct talks between Beirut and Tel Aviv, and the group has also refused to disarm if the Israeli occupation continues.

"European countries agree, just like Gulf countries agree, that Washington should not be the sole guarantor, and that in order to help the Lebanese authorities get support for this framework, Europe could seek a larger role in verification, security sector reform, border monitoring, reconstruction," Bitar says.

He added that this would address a concern that some Lebanese officials have voiced privately or publicly that relying exclusively on US mediation would leave the implementation of the framework vulnerable to shifts in Trump’s mood or in American domestic politics.

Lebanon and Israel are scheduled for a new round of talks in Rome on 15 and 16 July to discuss implementing the plan. They precede Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s scheduled visit to Washington on 21 July.

Medics said Israeli gunfire directed at a tent encampment on the eastern side of the Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza killed nine-year-old Tala Abu Matar. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the girl's death.

An airstrike at a metal foundry in Gaza City's Sabra neighbourhood killed four people. Witnesses said the site was hit with three Israeli missiles.

Israel's military told Reuters it had struck "terrorist" infrastructure, without giving further details.

The ceasefire agreed in October 2025 between Israel and Hamas has failed to stop Israeli attacks, which have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians since it took effect. More than 3,535 others have been wounded.

The latest attacks come as Hamas leaders visited Cairo for further talks over implementing the second phase of US President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan.

The discussions include Hamas disarmament and the withdrawal of Israeli forces, according to sources close to the talks, adding that there had not yet been a breakthrough despite Hamas last week dissolving its government in Gaza.

Nearly all of Gaza's 2 million ⁠people, most of whom have been displaced several times, now live on a tiny strip of land along the coast, mainly in makeshift tents or damaged buildings, under Hamas control.

Israeli forces have gradually expanded their zone of control during the ceasefire and now occupy an estimated 70 percent of the territory.

At least 73,331 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's genocidal assault since October 2023, according to the Gaza-based health ministry. Another 173,643 have been injured.

(Reuters and TNA staff)

Iraq has been seeking to balance its ties with neighbouring Iran and the US as military escalation between the two rivals continues.

"The agreements to be signed will include several memorandums of understanding in the oil and gas sector as Iraq prepares to bring in various US companies that will provide momentum to increase oil production capacity," government spokesperson Haider al-Aboudi said.

Iraq's state news agency, citing al-Aboudi, said the planned oil and gas agreements would also seek to create alternative export outlets to reduce Iraq's exposure to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iraq, like other Gulf oil producers, has suffered a drop in oil revenue due to the effective closure of the vital shipping route during the US-Iran war.

Al-Aboudi said strengthening Iraq's armed forces would also be among the issues discussed in Washington.

Relations between Iraq and the US have at times been strained over the presence of US troops in Iraq, Baghdad's ties with Iran, and US pressure on Iraq to curb the influence of Iran-backed armed groups.

However, after being nominated for the premiership in April, Ali al-Zaidi received congratulations from US President ​Donald Trump, who said he hoped for closer ​cooperation between ⁠Baghdad and Washington.

(Reuters)

Bassam al-Kuwatli, leader of the Syrian Liberal Party, said the authorities' public appeal for victims to come forward raised questions about the strength of the cases against those arrested.

"This is part of the issue. We do not know much about them, and the fact that they are searching for people to bring evidence against them might mean that they do not have enough evidence to start with," he told The New Arab.

The appeal comes as Syria's new authorities continue to grapple with how to hold members of the former regime accountable following the fall of Bashar al-Assad, with thousands of families still seeking answers about relatives who were detained, forcibly disappeared or killed during decades of Baathist rule.

Al-Kuwatli argued that the arrests reflected the absence of a coherent transitional justice process rather than evidence that one had been established.

"In general, what we are seeing is something between selective and random justice, rather than anything resembling transitional justice. There are still no clear procedures or coherent approach," he said.

"There are still people taking revenge into their own hands because of this problem. We see senior figures remaining free while relatively low-level offenders are arrested."

He said the uncertainty extended beyond criminal prosecutions to the fate of thousands of Syrians who disappeared under the Assad government.

"It is the same issue facing the families of the forcibly disappeared. They do not know where to go, what to do or what can realistically happen," he said.

"The worry is that, as time passes, the government will feel less pressure to act seriously on this issue."

Assad-era figures detained

The debate comes after the Counter-Terrorism Administration of the Internal Security Forces carried out the operation on Saturday as part of an ongoing investigation into former regime personnel.

According to the Deir ez-Zor Media Directorate, those detained included Fadel Mohammad Moein al-Nuwaiji, a former investigator in the Political Security Directorate who worked in the al-Bukamal district and held several posts across different security branches.

Authorities also arrested Ahmed Suleiman al-Muaybir, the former head of the armaments division of the pro-Assad National Defence Forces (NDF) militia, where he oversaw sniper units.

The other detainees were identified as Mohammad Ramadan al-Alim, a former official responsible for a State Security prison who is under investigation over allegations of abuses against detainees, and Ismail Hannoush al-Abdullah, a former Military Intelligence member being investigated over allegations that he participated in arbitrary arrests.

The authorities said investigations remain ongoing and urged anyone who claims to have suffered abuses at the hands of the four men to contact the relevant authorities and submit information or evidence to assist the investigation.

The arrests are the latest in a series of operations targeting former Assad-era military, intelligence, and militia personnel since the collapse of the former government.

However, the authorities have so far released few details beyond the men's former positions and the allegations under investigation, and have not said when they may face formal charges.

Human rights organisations have repeatedly argued that accountability for abuses committed under the Assad government will require transparent legal procedures, protection for victims and witnesses, and credible investigations capable of distinguishing between those who directed or committed serious crimes and lower-ranking officials.

Graham's office confirmed on Sunday morning that he died on Saturday night "from a brief and sudden illness."

US President Donald Trump announced Graham's death on his Truth Social platform, calling the South Carolina Republican "one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known".

"He was always working, and was a true American Patriot. Lindsey will be greatly missed," Trump wrote.

Graham served four terms in the House of Representatives before entering the Senate in 2003, where he became one of the Republican Party's leading voices on national security and foreign affairs.

Although he was a fierce critic of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, he later emerged as one of the president's closest allies, helping align Trump's "America First" rhetoric with a foreign policy that remained deeply interventionist in the Middle East, particularly in relation to Israel and Iran.

No foreign leader appeared more affected by Graham's death than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who described him as one of Israel's closest allies in Washington.

"Lindsey is a great friend of Israel and a cherished friend of mine. We have no better friend than Lindsey," Netanyahu wrote on X.

"Israel has lost one of its greatest friends. America has lost a great patriot. I have lost a beloved friend."

Tributes also poured in from across Israel's governing coalition, particularly among its far-right ministers.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel had "lost one of its greatest friends in Washington", praising Graham's "unwavering support" and "profound commitment to Israel's security", which he said had contributed to "many important achievements during the war".

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir likewise said Israel had "lost one of its greatest friends", crediting Graham's "unwavering support, courage, and moral clarity" and "steadfast commitment to Israel's security".

Support for Israel

The breadth of the tributes reflected Graham's unique standing in Israeli politics. For more than two decades, he was among the country's most dependable allies in Congress, consistently opposing attempts to condition US military aid, backing the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, and supporting sanctions against the International Criminal Court after it sought arrest warrants for Israeli leaders over the Gaza war.

His support for Israel reached its most uncompromising expression during the war in Gaza. Defending continued US weapons supplies in a May 2024 television interview, Graham invoked the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War.

"So when we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor... we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. That was the right decision," he said.

"Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can't afford to lose."

"To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state," he concluded.

Graham also spent years advocating a far more confrontational US policy towards Iran. He opposed the 2015 nuclear agreement, repeatedly argued that military action should remain on the table, and urged Israel to take whatever steps it deemed necessary to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Following US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this year, Graham praised Trump's decision as "brilliant" and "bold", saying it would "live in history". He also argued that "the only thing the Iranian regime will respect is strength".

His interventionist worldview long predated Trump.

Graham was an enthusiastic supporter of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, arguing that President George W. Bush had "used the only reasonable option available" in removing Saddam Hussein over alleged weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

As Iraq descended into years of violence, he remained one of the war's most steadfast defenders, backing the troop surge and opposing calls for a timetable for withdrawing US forces.

Alongside the late Senator John McCain, Graham became one of the Republican Party's foremost advocates of an assertive American role overseas.

Although Trump campaigned against America's "forever wars", Graham's close relationship with the president illustrated how interventionist policies remained central to Washington's Middle East strategy, particularly where Israel and Iran were concerned.

England and Argentina will meet on Wednesday in a blockbuster World Cup semi-final infused with decades of bitter rivalry after they battled past Norway and Switzerland respectively in the quarter-finals.

The South Americans and their talisman Lionel Messi must defeat England in Atlanta to keep alive their hopes of becoming the first team to win back-to-back World Cups since Brazil in 1962.

England and their key partnership of Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane must win to have any hope of ending a 60-year wait for a major trophy.

The winner of that game will take on the victor of France's semi-final with Spain - they meet in Texas on Tuesday - in the final on 19 July.

The Argentina v England match comes 40 years after a seismic encounter in the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

Argentina secured a 2-1 victory at the Estadio Azteca with two goals from Diego Maradona -- one the infamous "Hand of God" when he punched the ball into the net and the other a dazzling solo effort considered one of the greatest goals ever to grace a World Cup.

But the match will also take place against the backdrop of a lingering sovereignty dispute over the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, known in Spanish as the Malvinas.

Britain sent a military taskforce in 1982 to reclaim the islands after Argentine troops invaded.

After Argentina beat a dogged Swiss side 3-1 in Kansas City on Saturday thanks to extra-time goals from Julian Alvarez and Lautaro Martinez, their coach Lionel Scaloni attempted to take the political heat out of the meeting with England.

"The message is this is a football game. That's what I can say," Scaloni said.

"It is a football game and we will be playing against a very tough opponent. They have an excellent coach and this is a football game and that's all."

'Very lucky '

That coach, Thomas Tuchel, was angry with his England team after they needed extra-time on Saturday to end Norway's historic run in sweltering Miami.

Two goals from Jude Bellingham gave England a nervy 2-1 victory to send England into the semi-finals for only the fourth time in history.

Tuchel said his team would need to make a noticeable improvement if they were to have any chance of reaching the final.

In energy-sapping Florida heat and humidity, England's shaky defence allowed Andreas Schjelderup to unleash a rasping shot from the left to put Norway ahead on 36 minutes.

But England got a huge break in first-half stoppage time when Bellingham equalised after an attack that was initiated when a goal kick from Norway goalkeeper Orjan Nyland appeared to hit an overhead camera cable.

Norway's players protested in vain and the goal stood. The Norwegians also had a goal controversially disallowed before Bellingham then poached the winner in extra-time.

"We made life very, very difficult for ourselves today," Tuchel said afterwards.

"The result is fantastic. The last four is amazing, but not happy with the performance... we were very lucky today."

While football's world governing body FIFA later said there was "no evidence" the ball had hit the cable before England's first goal, Norway coach Stale Solbakken was adamant.

"That was unlucky for us," Solbakken said. "The ball fell straight down from the sky, so it changed its direction. But we can't do anything about that."

Erling Haaland, the marauding forward who scored seven goals as Norway reached uncharted waters at the tournament, said his team's performance had inspired a new generation.

"How we put Norway on the map is maybe one thing that touches me the most," said Haaland, who failed to score for the first time in 15 competitive games for his country.

"Hopefully now we can establish something when it comes to Euros, World Cups and everything because our generation is amazing and also all this gives motivation to young people back in Norway that it's possible to play a big stage in the world with a Norwegian shirt."

(AFP)

"Of the 11 Indian nationals on board, 10 have been rescued so far, while one Indian national is reportedly missing," the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Search-and-rescue operations were underway after the commercial vessel, GFS Galaxy, was attacked off the coast of Oman early on Sunday, the ministry statement said.

US Central Command said the vessel had been disabled by fire and damage to its engine room, accusing Tehran of attacking the ship.

British maritime agency UKMTO said the crew had abandoned the vessel and were on a lifeboat, adding that the incident occurred around 17 kilometres (10 miles) east of Oman.

The attack came as Tehran announced it was closing the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday and launched missiles and drones at its Gulf neighbours in retaliation for new US strikes.

The Indian foreign ministry said the attacks on commercial shipping in the region were "deeply worrisome".

"The targeting of commercial shipping and civilian infrastructure in the region must end," it said.

"... free and unimpeded navigation... through the international waterways in the region, in keeping with international law, must be restored at the earliest."

The fresh tensions threatened an interim agreement aimed at ending the Middle East war that began on February 28 with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, including one that killed former supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

(AFP)

On Friday, Germany's Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, approved legislation that would make calls for the abolition of Israel or the denial of its right to exist a criminal offence, carrying a potential prison sentence of up to five years or a fine. 

The offence would only apply where such statements are deemed to "encourage a willingness to commit anti-Semitic acts of violence or arbitrary measures".

The Bundesrat also cited the increase in antisemitic incidents as a key reason for introducing the proposal. 

The German government will now issue its position on the legislation before it is considered by the Bundestag, the country's lower house of parliament, after the summer recess. 

The proposed legislation appears to expand Section 130 of Germany's Criminal Code, which covers offences relating to "incitement of hatred".

Under the amendment, denying Israel's right to exist or calling for its destruction would explicitly fall within the scope of the law. 

If passed by the Bundestag, Germany would become the first European country to impose criminal penalties specifically for denying Israel's right to exist.

The proposal was championed by Boris Rhein, the governor of the state of Hesse, a member of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a prominent supporter of Israel. 

This comes as many German politicians regard Israel's security as part of the country's Staatsräson, or "reason of state" - which is a principle first introduced by former Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2008 that reflects Germany's historical responsibility following the Holocaust. 

Freedom of expression

However, the proposed law is likely to intensify debate over freedom of expression, particularly as Germany faces increasing scrutiny over its response to the genocidal war in Gaza, where the Israeli military has killed over 73,000 Palestinians since October 2023.  

Activists and human rights organisations have accused German authorities of increasingly restricting pro-Palestinian advocacy and freedom of assembly. 

The New Arab has previously reported that Germany's intelligence services have stepped up surveillance of Palestine solidarity groups, prompting a series of legal challenges.  

The European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) said the cases were aimed at resisting what it described as an "escalating effort" to intimidate and repress activism in support of Palestinians. 

In a separate case that has also drawn renewed scrutiny of Germany's response to Palestine solidarity activism, five pro-Palestinian activists known as the "Ulm 5" are currently on trial over a break-in at an Elbit Systems weapons facility in the southern German city of Ulm. 

These were the key developments earlier on Sunday:

•    Iran launched attacks across the Gulf and announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz after a night of heavy US airstrikes

•    Tehran claimed it targeted sites in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Jordan, as well as a vessel in the strait. The UAE said it also intercepted Iranian missiles and drones

•    The US military said it hit 140 targets inside Iran overnight in a third round of strikes launched in response to an attack on a ship in the Gulf

•    Iranian media reported explosions across its southern coast, including in Bandar Abbas, Sirik and Qeshm Island

•    Pakistan's top diplomat called on all sides to "show restraint" in a call with his Iranian counterpart

•    Qatar's former emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, has died at the age of 74

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani ruled Qatar from 1995 to 2013, before abdicating to his son Sheikh Tamim, the current leader of the gas-rich Gulf country.

"The Amiri Diwan announced the death of HH the Father Amir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani on Sunday morning. May Allah have mercy on his soul and grant him the best reward for what he achieved for his homeland and nation," the Diwan said.

Sheikh Hamad took power in June 1995, overthrowing his father in a bloodless coup while the latter was abroad.

He inherited a small, largely marginal emirate with nearly empty coffers and transformed it into a major player on the regional and international stage.

Within a few years, he laid the foundations for Qatar's rapid development. Although the country is only about one-third the size of Belgium, it possesses one of the world's largest natural gas reserves.

Thanks to investments and international partnerships, the emirate became a leading producer and exporter of liquefied natural gas.

It also rose to become one of the wealthiest countries on the planet in terms of GDP per capita. Qatar's population under Sheikh Hamad's rule numbered barely two million, the majority of them foreign nationals.

During his time in office, Al Jazeera was launched in 1996, following a decree issued by the emir, with the international broadcaster becoming one of the most influential media outlets in the region.

The Qatar Investment Authority was established with the aim of investing billions of dollars, particularly abroad, in companies including German automaker Volkswagen, London's luxury department store Harrods, and French football club Paris Saint-Germain.

Sheikh Hamad was still emir when Qatar was awarded the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup in 2010, amid allegations of corruption and, later, criticism over the treatment of foreign workers.

Also under his reign, Qatar began paying hundreds of millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip, notably funding road projects along the coast. A hospital in Gaza City bears his name.

In June 2013, Sheikh Hamad surprised many by voluntarily abdicating in favour of his son, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, a first in the recent history of the Arab world.

Arab and world leaders have expressed their condolences at his passing.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and UAE leader Mohammed bin Zayed both issued statements on social media following his death, while Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun wrote on X that he was a "true friend of Lebanon" and recalled his diplomatic efforts to end the 2006 war with Israel.