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TODAY IN HISTORY

June 16, 632: Yazdegerd III is crowned ruler of the Sasanian Empire. He ruled for 19 years, much of it in a fairly nominal sense, and was the last Sasanian emperor. He fled his capital, Ctesiphon, after the Persians’ catastrophic defeat to the invading Arabs at Qadisiyah in 636 and spent the rest of his life alternately running for his life and raising armies in a futile attempt to hold on to what was left of his empire. A miller assassinated Yazdegerd at Merv (near modern Mary, Turkmenistan) in 651, though it’s unclear whether he did so in an act of simple robbery or at the orders of the regional governor.

June 16, 1407: Ming Chinese forces capture the emperor of Đại Ngu (northern Vietnam today), Hồ Hán Thương, as well as his father and predecessor, “Retired Emperor” Hồ Quý Ly, thus bringing the 1406-1407 Ming-Hồ war close to its end. The conflict’s roots lay in the Hồ dynasty’s overthrow of the Trần dynasty, a Ming vassal, and the breakup of Đại Việt (Vietnam) in 1400. Hồ Quý Ly resisted a Ming demand for the reinstatement of the Trần and the rest, as they say, is history. The Ming annexed northern Vietnam, calling it Jiaozhi province, but that only lasted until 1427, when a rebellion led by Lê Lợi drove the Ming out and reestablished an independent Vietnam.

June 17, 1462: Wallachian ruler Vlad III—variously known as “Vlad Țepeș,” “Vlad the Impaler,” and the inspiration for the character “Dracula”—leads a daring night assault on an invading Ottoman army near the city of Târgovişte (in modern Romania). The Wallachians emerged victorious in the sense that they killed a lot more Ottomans than vice versa, but the attack failed in its main goal, which was killing Ottman Emperor Mehmed II. The Ottomans did ultimately withdraw, but Mehmed then engineered Vlad’s overthrow in favor of his more pliant brother Radu.

June 17, 1631: Mumtaz Mahal, the chief consort of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, dies in childbirth in the Indian city of Burhanpur. According to Mughal chroniclers her death caused the emperor tremendous grief and he withdrew into the palace for a year to mourn her loss. When he emerged he was, we’re told, clearly diminished. Shah Jahan had her body temporarily buried in Burhanpur then moved to an also-temporary tomb in Agra. In the meantime he ordered the construction of a monumental permanent tomb. The result, the Taj Mahal, was finally completed in 1653 and today is one of the most heavily-visited tourist sites in the world.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

Donald Trump’s apparent frustration with Benjamin Netanyahu bubbled to the surface on Tuesday, when he told reporters at the G7 summit in France that the Israeli prime minister “has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon.” Trump went on to say that the Israeli military (IDF) has been battling Hezbollah “too long and too many people are being killed” and that “you don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody because there’s a lot of people in those apartment houses — and they’re not all Hezbollah.” He added that he’d “suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah because to be honest with you, I think they’d do a better job of doing it.” As I mentioned on Monday this doesn’t seem like something that the Syrian government actually wants to do at the present time, but the “I think they’d do a better job” bit is fairly scathing given the context.

Lebanon is the biggest of several unknowns about the US-Iran memorandum of understanding (more on this later), because it’s unclear both whether the Israeli government will abide by its terms and what the Iranian government will to if/when the Israelis do not abide by it. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi claimed on Tuesday that the MoU requires the IDF to withdraw from Lebanon, an idea that Israeli officials including Netanyahu have already rejected. Hezbollah appears to be under the impression that the Iranians will repudiate the MoU if the IDF does not withdraw. The IDF is worried that it might have to pull back at least to its “yellow line” in southern Lebanon, which is about ten kilometers north of the Israeli border.

For the moment the IDF is evincing no interest in honoring the MoU’s terms, given that it is continuing to carry out daily airstrikes in southern Lebanon. It killed at least four people on Tuesday and I think it’s fair to say that if the Israelis can’t even conform to a basic ceasefire they’re certainly not going to accept any mandate to withdraw. If that’s the case then the war in Lebanon and the survival of the MoU may both come down to Trump’s willingness to impose the MoU’s terms on the Israeli government rather than just wanly griping to the press.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least two people in Gaza on Tuesday and two more on Wednesday, pushing the number of people it’s killed in the territory since the October “ceasefire” took effect to at least 1005. In the West Bank, meanwhile, the Israeli government is asserting greater control over the city of Hebron. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced on Wednesday that he’s authorizing new settlement construction in the city and seizing “planning and construction powers” over the Ibrahimi Mosque, a site known to Christians and Jews as the “Cave (or Tomb) of the Patriarchs.” The site was already located in the ~20 percent of Hebron that is under Israeli control according to the 1997 Hebron Agreement, but that same document left its administration under the purview of the Palestinian Authority. Smotrich’s move here effectively terminates that agreement, which could worsen tensions in Hebron and across the West Bank. It could also serve as a test run for an Israeli takeover of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

IRAN

Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed the US-Iran MoU on Wednesday. What’s that? No, this doesn’t preclude the formal signing ceremony that’s still (I think) scheduled for Friday in Switzerland. Trump signed the document in France (at Versailles, which is a bit on the nose for my taste) and Pezeshkian was presumably in Iran. You have another question? Yes, that’s true, people in the Trump administration were telling reporters on Monday that the two sides had already electronically signed the MoU. Please don’t ask me to make sense of this.

One of two sources who spoke to Axios’s Barak Ravid claimed that the first signing never happened, though what the administration would have gained by lying about that escapes me. The other said that it did happen and this was a second signing, done for reasons that also escape me. I’m really unsure why Trump and Pezeshkian had to sign it, since Trump had supposedly signed the document already and Pezeshkian is charitably a nonentity within the new Iranian government. Ravid says that this second signing was meant to speed up the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and to allow the White House to release the text of the MoU. The plan had been to do both of those things only after Friday’s ceremony. I’m still not sure why advancing the timetable by two days required all this fuss but I guess that’s why I’m not involved in major international negotiations.

The administration was under pressure to reveal the MoU text because media speculation about its contents was running rampant and that speculating fueled substantial criticism of terms that appear pretty favorable to Iran. Bloomberg claimed to have published the full MoU on Tuesday (you can see an unlocked summary here), but Iran’s Tasnim news agency dismissed that on the basis of “multiple inaccuracies and omissions.” On Wednesday CNN published an MoU text that was apparently released by the administration and that does include language that is not in the Bloomberg version, but White House communications director Steven Cheung dismissed that report as inaccurate. Several other outlets have since published what appears to be the final MoU text, or at least final as of this latest signing.

Now that the text has been published we can really start to draw a few basic conclusions. The document immediately waives all barriers to Iranian oil sales (meaning not just direct oil sanctions but also the banking and logistical sanctions that would otherwise hamper the sale/export process, which is a massive concession), establishes a $300 billion private reconstruction fund (roughly half of which is “already committed” according to Reuters) for Iran, and eventually unfreezes all of the country’s assets. It also commits to an end to the conflict in Lebanon though anything beyond that (for example, the future of the Israeli occupation) seems muddled. Likewise it nods toward Iran and Oman having future administrative rights over the strait but stops short of any details in terms of what that might look like.

All of these elements point toward a deal that, as I wrote above, seems pretty favorable to Iran and that has sparked criticism of Trump. While the nuclear issue has been left for subsequent talks, at the very least the contours of this MoU seem pretty similar to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, raising two obvious questions:

1. Why did Trump tear that deal up?

2. Why did we have to fight two wars and take a sledgehammer to the global economy just to get back to it?

The administration is insisting that the MoU is nothing at all like the JCPOA, without explaining any clear differences, while Trump’s own defense boils down to two main points: first, he had to make a deal to address the “economic catastrophe” that he’d caused, and second, if he decides that he doesn’t like the MoU for whatever reason, he’ll just start bombing Iran again. The latter argument is presumably meant to talk members of the DC Iran hawk community off of the ledge but it won’t do much for US credibility heading into the next round of negotiations. Trump is also very pleased that the Iranians have committed to never possessing a nuclear weapon, and at the risk of beating a dead horse I think it should be noted that they also did that in the JCPOA.

While I would never want to stop anybody from criticizing Trump, the failure here was in going to war in the first place and not in the terms of the agreement that is (probably) ending that war. To drive home that point, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the US didn’t even manage to stifle Iran’s oil exports during the conflict. In fact, Iran made more money off of its oil sales during the war than it was making prior to the war. CNN, meanwhile, reported that “US intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran can now effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz at will.” When you lose a war the settlement tends to reflect that.

ASIA

CHINA

According to The Washington Post, even as the Chinese government has relaxed its restrictions on the critical mineral market amid negotiations with the US, it is activating other supply chain leverage points:

According to a survey by the US-China Business Council released this week, more than one-third of its member companies said they have been affected by Chinese export controls in the last year, with auto and logistics companies hit the most.

“Raw and refined minerals are the tip of the iceberg,” the research agency Rhodium Group warned in a recent note, which described Beijing’s leverage extending up and down industrial supply chains to include goods such as silicon wafers, permanent magnets, LEDs and battery materials.

“These intermediate manufacturing sectors create an additional layer of chokepoints, which Beijing is targeting,” Rhodium Group said.

SOUTH KOREA

South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back announced on Wednesday that Seoul is moving the “Civilian Control Line,” which marks a restricted area around the “Military Demarcation Line” (MDL) that serves as the de facto border between South Korea and North Korea. That line currently sits at around ten kilometers south of the MDL, with most civilians barred from crossing the line without military authorization. Citing unspecified security improvements as well as “years of requests by residents,” Ahn said that the plan is to shift the line to around six kilometers south of the MDL. The shift should make life easier for local residents as well as people who work in the current restricted zone.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The Sudan Tribune is reporting that “several people were killed and others injured on Tuesday in drone and heavy artillery strikes targeting artisanal gold mining sites in Sudan’s River Nile State near the Egyptian border,” according to “local sources and miners.” The miners are accusing the Egyptian military of carrying out the attack. Egyptian forces have attacked mining operations in that area in the past and have accused Sudanese miners of conducting their illicit activity on the Egyptian side of the border.

SOUTH SUDAN

Al Jazeera reports on conditions in South Sudan’s war-torn Jonglei state:

Since the start [in late January] of what authorities refer to as “Operation Enduring Peace,” satellite imagery analysed by the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), combined with verified videos, images and witness accounts, indicates widespread destruction across a swathe of Jonglei that has long been a stronghold of opposition groups.

Both the military and opposition forces have been accused of razing villages and attacking civilians in recent months. In this area of Jonglei, which is home to a section of the Nuer ethnic group that officials often cast as hostile to the state, more than a dozen residents who spoke to Al Jazeera said they believed the military was responsible for targeted destruction that experts say has pushed tens of thousands of people towards the brink of famine.

In most of the 23 incidents CIR documented between late January and February, civilian structures, including homes, health facilities and markets, appear to have been burned and looted. In its assessment, the CIR said the destruction was “likely to be more widespread and potentially part of a deliberate military strategy.”

SOMALIA

Somaliland Defense Minister Mohamed Yusuf Ali insisted to Reuters on Wednesday that “there is no Israeli military presence or military ​bases in Somaliland,” while acknowledging that Israeli personnel “are supporting to train some of our police and ​military.” Yusuf Ali was in Israel accompanying Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi’s first “official” visit to the country since the Israeli government recognized Somaliland’s independence back in December. Drop Site reported a few days ago that there is an Israeli “intelligence presence” in Somaliland now and that a military base is “under discussion.”

EUROPE

EUROPEAN UNION

The European Parliament finally voted on Tuesday to approve the bloc’s trade deal with the US. The agreement will now go to EU member states for final approval, which isn’t expected to be a difficult process. There had been some resistance in the legislature over terms that seem imbalanced in favor of the US and over Donald Trump’s repeated provocations regarding Greenland, and so MEPs added a clause that requires the agreement to be renewed by the end of 2029 lest it sunset. Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on EU cars from 15 percent to 25 percent if the bloc doesn’t adopt the trade deal by July 4.

UKRAINE

Russian attacks killed at least four people in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, three in the city of Sloviansk and one in the city of Zaporizhzhia. On Wednesday, the annual G7 leaders summit in France ended with The Gang surprisingly in accordance with regard to the Ukraine war. Their joint statement expressed support for Ukraine and its “territorial integrity” as well as an intent to intensify sanctions against Russia. Perhaps to that end, Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Trump administration has “quietly” allowed its waiver on Russian oil sanctions to expire. I say “perhaps” because the lapse has been so quiet that nobody in the administration has said whether or not that means the sanctions are once again active. The administration issued the waiver in hopes of stabilizing the global oil market during the Iran war and subsequent blockade, a consideration that no longer appears to be relevant.

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AMERICAS

UNITED STATES

The US military’s Southern Command bombed another alleged drug boat in the eastern Pacific on Tuesday, killing at least one person and leaving two survivors. The US Coast Guard undertook a search and rescue operation but I have not seen any reporting as to the outcome.

Finally, Foreign Affairs’ Isaac Kardon argues that the era in which the US military could effectively control international waterways is at an end:

These accelerating challenges to free navigation are fragmenting the formerly open trading system. Throughout the eight decades after World War II, those engaging in commercial maritime trade—which constitutes roughly 80 percent of global trade overall—could largely afford to ignore these kinds of threats. A framework of multilateral treaties and legal norms established order in the littoral zones (coastal areas and narrow straits that channel trade) that had previously been governed by whoever could effectively control them. With unmatched military power throughout much of this period, the United States policed this relatively free zone of commerce. Now, a proliferation of challenges to free navigation is threatening the world’s open trading system. Washington still commands the strategic heights and depths, fielding the world’s most capable force of aircraft, warships, and submarines, as well as dominating space communications. But changes to trading patterns, military technology, and the economics of warfare are eroding the efficacy of U.S. military power in contested littoral zones.

Like Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff and staying aloft until he looks down, Washington has belatedly discovered that its military power cannot provide sufficient lift for its soaring global ambitions. Without the ability to control crucial waterways, straits, and other littoral zones, the United States can no longer reliably secure the economic system that has underwritten an unprecedented era of openness and prosperity. Today, both small actors and the United States’ greatest competitor, China, no longer need to challenge U.S. conventional military supremacy in these domains directly. They can do so obliquely and asymmetrically, using cheap but long-range drones and missiles or economic tools that prevent open access without firing a shot.

Even if the United States were to sink extraordinary resources into an attempt to reestablish a high degree of control over the commons, restoring the old maritime order is no longer a realistic aim. Sea changes in military technology and industrial production are undermining the basic feasibility of a truly open order. Reckoning with this structural shift is a generational challenge that must begin with making peace with the fact that the American way of war is mismatched with the contemporary world’s strategic and economic geography.

The Pentagon has long asserted effective control over the global “commons”—international waters, international airspace, more recently cyberspace, etc. To the extent that was ever really true it’s certainly no longer the case, thanks to these changes in military technology and particularly in the economic imbalance between offensive and defensive weapons. State militaries and non-state actors can threaten international shipping with cheap drones while the munitions the Pentagon uses to defend against those weapons are multiple times more expensive. Kardon suggests that Washington can still exert some degree of control or at least coercion through other means (sanctions and access to the dollar, for example), but those tools lose effectiveness when they’re overused by US policymakers.

June 15, 1215: King John of England signs Magna Carta at Runnymede, under pressure from a group of rebellious barons. The document included provisions protecting church prerogatives and establishing protection from illegal imprisonment, a right to a speedy trial, and limitations on taxation (for the barons, not in general, though it’s since been interpreted more broadly). John eventually petitioned Pope Innocent III to declare the document null, but King Henry III and regent William Marshal issued a revised Magna Carta in 1217 as part of the settlement to the First Barons’ War.

June 15, 1389: The Ottoman Empire defeats a Serbian army in the most famous of several historical battles of Kosovo. Though the Ottomans emerged victorious they suffered heavy losses—none heavier than Sultan Murad I himself, killed by a Serbian knight who pretended to defect in order to gain an audience with the Ottoman ruler. Serbian leader Lazar Hrebeljanović was also killed and son and successor, Stefan Lazarević, subsequently submitted to Ottoman vassalage. The battle had a profound effect on the development of a Serbian national and historical consciousness that has continued to reverberate to the present day.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

Two Islamic State jihadists reportedly attacked the Syrian Interior Ministry security headquarters in the city of Raqqa on Monday, killing at least one security officer. Both of the militants were killed in the assault, one by ministry forces and the other by detonating his suicide device.

Syrian Telecom, meanwhile, reported damage to an undersea cable connecting the Syrian port city of Tartus to the Egyptian city of Alexandria. The impact on Syrian internet service is unclear but the company is calling this an “act of sabotage” and part of a “systematic sabotage campaign” against Syrian telecommunications infrastructure, so it at least seems convinced that this was a deliberate attack. There’s no indication as to responsibility. Suspicion will likely focus on Bashar al-Assad loyalists or IS.

While it got drowned out by other events over the weekend, it may be worth noting that Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa told reporters on Saturday that his government has no plan to invade Lebanon to go after Hezbollah. Donald Trump publicly suggested earlier this month that Syria could intervene in Lebanon, an empirically bad idea if there ever was one, and apparently US officials broached the idea with Sharaa’s government privately but were rebuffed. Perhaps it’s irrelevant now.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

June 13, 1971: The New York Times begins publishing excerpts from “The Pentagon Papers,” portions of the Department of Defense’s history of US involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968 leaked by RAND Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg. The documents revealed details about US activity in Indochina that were previously unknown to the American public and made it clear that four consecutive presidential administrations—Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson—had lied consistently about the scope and nature of that activity.

June 13, 1983: The space probe Pioneer 10, launched in 1972, crosses the orbit of Neptune and becomes the first man-made object to pass the orbits of all the major planets of this solar system. It continued to transmit telemetry data until April 2002 and still sent weak signals back to Earth until January 23, 2003. It’s believed to be further from the sun at this point than any spacecraft save Voyager 1, though it will be surpassed by Voyager 2 sometime in the next few years.

June 14, 1325: A young Moroccan man named Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battuta sets out from Tangier on the Hajj, a journey that typically took about 16 months round-trip. But Ibn Battuta spent the next 24 years traveling throughout the world, visiting Turkey, the Balkans, Central Asia, India, Southeast Asia, and China (maybe). After returning to Morocco briefly in 1349 he spent five years traveling through Spain and the Sahel. These journeys would make Ibn Battuta the most widely traveled pre-modern explorer—assuming he actually made all of them. Scholars have questioned the historicity of segments of his journey but even so his travelogue, The Rihlah, became an important account of the period that is still widely read today.

June 14, 1821: Badi VII surrenders Sudan’s Sennar Sultanate to Egyptian forces under the command of Ismail Pasha. Sudan would remain Egyptian until it gained independence in 1956, though to be fair after 1899 it was really governed more as a British colony than as part of Egypt.

June 14, 1830: The French army lands at Sidi Fredj, beginning France’s invasion of Ottoman Algeria. Algiers fell on July 7 and France formally annexed the country, though it would take many years to conquer the rest of the country and longer for French colonial rule to really take hold. Algeria gained its independence in 1962.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

NOTUS’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed wrote a piece on Friday that has proven to be prescient:

U.S. and Iranian officials on Friday said an understanding to conclude the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is close. Whatever shape a deal takes, its greatest vulnerability is already clear: the situation in Lebanon.

Though American forces are not fighting in Lebanon, the U.S. is implicated in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militia.

Hezbollah attacked Israel soon after the war with Iran began, and Israel has since bombed and invaded the country, spurring the displacement of more than 1 million Lebanese people. As Israel’s military and diplomatic patron, the U.S. is the only player that could halt Tel Aviv’s offensive.

So if you have’t already heard, the US-Iran “memorandum of understanding” that seemed to be materializing on Friday was thrown into doubt on Sunday because the Israeli military (IDF) once again attacked southern Beirut’s Dahieh suburb, killing at least three people. Israeli officials claimed that the attack was in response to Hezbollah firing projectiles toward northern Israel, but we’re left to take their word for it. Hezbollah says it attacked IDF units in southern Lebanon, and given that Israeli forces are operating on both sides of the border there may be a lot of room for interpretation as far as what really constitutes an attack on “northern Israel.”

If this story seems familiar it’s because the IDF bombed Dahieh one week ago while claiming a similar justification, drawing an Iranian retaliation and kicking off a week of heavy fighting between Iran and Israel and then Iran and the United States. Iranian officials suggested that another retaliation might be forthcoming but that no longer appears to be the case. As we’ll discuss below this attack does not seem to have impacted US-Iranian negotiations.

Prior to the Dahieh strike, the IDF attacked dozens of targets across southern and eastern Lebanon on Saturday and Sunday. I haven’t seen a full casualty count but one of those strikes apparently killed senior Hezbollah commander Ali Mussa Daqduq, who’d been involved in an attack that killed five US soldiers in Iraq in 2007. Even putting aside the Beirut attack that flurry of activity seems intended to convey the message that the Israelis won’t recognize any ceasefire elements that attempt to constrain their behavior, which gives Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the ability to spoil a ceasefire that he doesn’t want—and over which he’s under domestic political pressure—by simply bombing Beirut. He can do this even after the US and Iran sign an MoU unless Donald Trump is prepared to constrain him.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least six people in Gaza on Sunday, which means it’s now killed at least 983 people in the territory since the onset of the “ceasefire” in October and more than 73,000 since October 2023 according to health ministry figures. Israeli forces killed at least five people in Gaza on Saturday.

Elsewhere, an Al Jazeera “open-source investigation” finds that the IDF has “established a de facto military footprint across the Gaza Strip, southern Lebanon, and southern Syria covering approximately 1,000sq km” since the October 7 attacks. Official IDF maps understate the size of this occupation, particularly in Gaza and Lebanon. To some extent Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders may be compensating for the IDF’s failure to deal a decisive blow to either Hamas or Hezbollah by accumulating territory instead. Logistically, maintaining these extensive occupations could post long-term problems for the IDF but that remains to be seen.

IRAN

As I wrote above, it does not appear that the IDF’s Dahieh airstrike has interrupted the US-Iran peace process, as Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif took to social media on Monday morning (local time) to announce that a deal is in place, under which “both sides have ​declared the immediate and permanent termination ​of military ​operations on all fronts, ‌including ⁠in Lebanon.” Donald Trump followed up, posting that “the deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete” and declaring both the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and an end to the US naval blockade. “Let the oil flow!” he added for good measure. According to Sharif there will be a signing ceremony on Friday in Switzerland but representatives of each government may electronically sign the MoU before that.

(All of the above unfolded without any official word from Iran initially, but within a couple of hours Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi did confirm the deal. I still have not seen any comment from the Israeli government, which seems particularly significant given Lebanon’s apparent inclusion in the ceasefire.)

Earlier in the day Trump did another one of his “I’m made at Bibi” interviews with Axios’s Barak Ravid, complaining that Netanyahu “has no fucking judgement. I let him know that.” In Trump’s telling the Dahieh strike took place “an hour before we [were] supposed to sign the deal,” but he insisted that it had only “delayed the signing by a few hours.” Apparently he was actually telling the truth. Go figure. I don’t know if this means there won’t be an Iranian retaliation against Israel or whether Trump had to offer anything to Tehran to salvage the MoU. Israel’s N12 outlet has been reporting that Trump offered the Iranians “relief…perhaps in the form of money or economic benefits” to maintain the ceasefire, but I haven’t seen any details beyond that.

Reuters reported earlier in the day on the details of the MoU as relayed by “a senior Iranian official.” Based on the source I’d take these with a grain of salt (and terms may have changed if Trump really did throw in any sweeteners after the Dahieh incident) but here are the basics:

• Iran reopens Hormuz immediately and the US stands down its blockade, with a fully redeployment of forces to be completed within 30 days

• Both countries will begin more detailed negotiations over a 60 day period, during which the US will not impose any new sanctions on Iran and will suspend oil sanctions for a set period of time

• The US will also permit the release of $25 billion in frozen Iranian assets

• If the two countries reach a “final agreement” all US and United Nations sanctions against Iran are to be lifted

• The negotiations will involve a proposal for Iranian reconstruction in addition to nuclear issues

• During the negotiations Iran will freeze its nuclear program

• Iran can dispose of its highly enriched uranium internally, likely by diluting it under international supervision although the details will have to be worked out during the 60 day negotiating period

Again the sourcing here could be cause for doubt but if this is the gist of the MoU it is pretty heavily tilted toward Iran. Losing a war has consequences.

ASIA

CHINA

Last Monday the US Defense Department expanded its list of companies affiliated with the Chinese military to include several major firms, including the e-commerce/tech firm Alibaba, electric carmaker BYD, and the Baidu search engine. The Pentagon has maintained since 2021 a catalog of private Chinese firms allegedly linked to the People’s Liberation Army, a list that now includes a whopping 188 entities with Monday’s additions. All three firms listed above denied any ties to the PLA and the Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned their inclusion on the list. On Saturday the Chinese Commerce Ministry said that it “is strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposes” these latest designations. It accused the Pentagon of violating the “understanding” reached by Donald Trump and Xi Jinping when the former visited Beijing last month.

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AFRICA

NIGERIA

Unspecified gunmen killed at least 17 farmers and wounded another 13 in northwestern Nigeria’s Zamfara state on Friday. This appears to have been the work of bandits, and a local official blamed the attack on the state government’s “refusal” to negotiate with the responsible gang.

SOMALIA

Drop Site’s Faisal Ali reports on recent developments in the relationship between Israel and Somaliland:

The embrace between Israel and Somaliland has deepened since the formal recognition at the end of last year. Israel has now established an intelligence presence in Somaliland, several officials including one from the Somaliland government and a senior Somali official told Drop Site, and news reports suggest that an Israeli military base is under discussion.

The base in question would allow Israel a military foothold on a crucial waterway near the Bab al-Mandab Strait—a maritime chokepoint comparable in importance to the Strait of Hormuz for exports from the Red Sea. Yemen’s Ansarallah already closed the Red Sea to Israeli ships, and has threatened to close the strait entirely in the context of the U.S.-Iran negotiations and Israel’s war in Lebanon.

Some analysts point to Berbera International Airport as a possible host to an expanded Israeli presence in the territory as part of an emerging alliance that would include Somaliland alongside Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. The United Arab Emirates has had an agreement since 2017 for a military base at Berbera International Airport that was linked to Emirati operations in the Yemeni civil war.

EUROPE

EUROPEAN UNION

The EU is about to open membership talks with the governments of Moldova and Ukraine:

The start of substantive negotiations, launched by senior EU officials and ministers from both countries in Luxembourg on Monday, will be a highly symbolic moment for the two countries that were both part of the former Soviet Union. It comes after Russia has intensified its bombardment of Ukrainian towns and cities, while sustaining huge losses for little territorial gain.

Ukraine and Moldova were quickly accepted as EU candidate countries in 2022, having filed applications days after Russia’s full-scale invasion. But despite a symbolic decision to open talks in June 2024, substantive negotiations were blocked by Hungary’s pro-Russian [prime minister], Viktor Orbán.

The election of a new Hungarian government in April paved the way for EU member states to agree unanimously last Friday to open “the first cluster”, the chapters of the EU rulebook covering rule of law and democracy. Launching this cluster opens the door to talks on other areas, such as the single market, the environment, economic and social policy.

RUSSIA

Ukrainian drone strikes killed at least three people in Russia over the weekend: one in the Krasnodar Krai region on Saturday, one in Oryol oblast overnight, and one in Bryansk oblast on Sunday. Another Ukrainian attack killed at least three people in Russia’s Tula oblast overnight Sunday into Monday. Also on Sunday, Donald Trump spoke separately by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It doesn’t sound like he made any significant headway in either call though both seem to have been pleasant enough.

ROMANIA

Romanian President Nicușor Dan nominated the National Liberal Party’s Adrian Veștea as prime minister on Sunday after his previous designee, Eugen Tomac, stepped aside. Dan is trying to find a successor to PM Ilie Bolojan, whose minority government lost a no-confidence vote last month. He nominated Tomac to head a “technocratic” administration earlier this month but that effort failed to generate enough parliamentary support. There may be more backing for another minority government under Veștea but it remains to be seen. Romania isn’t due to hold another general election until 2028.

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AMERICAS

VENEZUELA

Donald Trump announced late on Friday that a joint US-Venezuelan operation had killed alleged Tren de Aragua gang leader Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, AKA “Niño Guerrero.” A US airstrike killed Guerrero during the operation, which took place in Venezuela’s Bolívar state. According to the AP, Venezuelan authorities have been attempting to crack down on illegal mining operations in Bolívar, most likely to clear the way for foreign (US, for example) firms to move in and exploit Venezuelan gold and other mineral resources.

UNITED STATES

Finally, a new UN report begins to assess the damage that the Trump administration’s humanitarian aid cuts have done to the global effort to prevent HIV/AIDS:

The number of people who received pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication, used to prevent those at risk from contracting HIV, declined by a drastic 38 percent between 2024 and 2025, per initial data from 62 countries — which means more than a million fewer people took the drug. Funding for condoms has been cut in some cases by more than 90 percent, according to the report.

The drop-off comes after major cuts, pauses and disruptions to foreign aid by the United States under President Donald Trump, along with efforts to trim aid by other wealthy countries and domestic funding shortfalls in affected countries.

“Tenuous” progress in the global effort to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030 has continued: New HIV infections declined globally from 2.1 million in 2010 to 1.2 million in 2025, and AIDS-related deaths declined from 1.3 million in 2010 to 570,000 in 2025, the lowest in more than 30 years, the report found.

The number of people in treatment rose nearly 3 percent year on year. But nearly 9 million remain untreated, and cuts to HIV prevention and community support services could cause backsliding, UNAIDS warns.

June 12, 1898: Philippine rebel leader and dictator Emilio Aguinaldo proclaims Philippine independence with a declaration and a ceremony at his home south of Manila. This date is annually commemorated as Independence Day in the Philippines.

June 12, 1990: The Congress of People’s Deputies of Russia adopts the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, basically proclaiming Russia’s independence from the Soviet Union although “independence” may not exactly be the right term for this particular situation. This date is annually commemorated in Russia as “Russia Day.”

MIDDLE EAST

IRAN

We appear to be on the brink of either a US-Iran ceasefire deal or another near-miss. Evidence for the former is starting to pile up, most recently via a social media statement from Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that mediators now have a “final, agreed upon text” for a “memorandum of understanding” between the two sides. For good measure he added that “peace has never been this close as it is now.” Earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also hopped on social media to post that a deal “has never been closer,” which Donald Trump then shared because that’s how you do high level diplomacy now I guess.

If my tone suggests that I’m not taking this seriously it’s because I’m not, yet, though I concede things do appear to be further along than they’ve gotten in previous rounds of the “imminent agreement” cycle. But the deal isn’t done, and we even got a reminder of how precarious this situation on Friday morning, when a much angrier Trump took to social media to complain that reports in Iranian state media regarding the contents of the MoU had “NOTHING to do with the terms that were agreed to, in writing,” adding that the Iranians are “very dishonorable people to deal with. With them, there is no such thing as dealing in good faith.” Pot, kettle, etc. Trump was also upset at reports that the Iranians had fired drones at commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, something that they apparently did again overnight. It’s unclear if that later incident is going to interrupt the negotiations.

Iranian media has made claims about what’s in the memo. US officials have made claims about what’s in the memo. They’re obviously inclined to paint the most favorable picture possible for their side. No verifiable details have been released as yet and presumably won’t be unless/until there is an actual agreement. I don’t see much point in feverishly speculating about the terms until then, and that includes the question of whether or not Israel’s activities in Lebanon will be part of the ceasefire. Other details seem to be basically in line with previous draft MoUs—a 60 negotiating window for nuclear and regional issues, reopening the strait and lifting the US blockade in the meantime. The New York Times reported that US and Iranian delegations, led respectively by Vice President JD Vance and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, could travel to Switzerland for a signing ceremony if in fact the parties do reach an agreement.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

June 11, 786: The Battle of Fakhkh, near Mecca, results in the decisive defeat of a small early Shiʿa uprising. What makes this battle notable is that one of the rebel leaders, Idris b. Abdullah, survived and fled to northwestern Africa, where he established the Idrisid dynasty and is credited with founding the nation of Morocco.

June 11, 1865: A Brazilian naval squadron virtually annihilates the Paraguayan navy in the Battle of Riachuelo, fought on the Paraná River and named for a stream that flowed into that waterway near the site of the engagement. The Brazilian fleet outclassed the Paraguayans, so the Paraguayans initially planned a surprise attack to seize the Brazilian vessels. Paraguayan commander Ignacio Meza abruptly decided to change plans and opened fire on the Brazilians, and after an initially chaotic response Brazilian commander Francisco Barroso used his flagship, the Amazonas, to ram a Paraguayan vessel and turn the tide of the battle. The Paraguayan navy was broken, and this battle is considered a turning point in the 1864-1870 War of the Triple Alliance in that after some initial success Paraguay now found itself on the defensive.

INTERNATIONAL

• The United Nations refugee agency’s latest Global Trends Report finds that there were 117.8 million people “forcibly displaced by conflict, violence or persecution” around the world at the end of 2025. The good news is that reflects a 3 percent drop from 2024, which is the first time that number has declined year on year since 2016. The bad news is that number is still extremely high, and there are long-term challenges for both the global capacity to manage this level of displacement and the individual capacity to live displaced lives over periods of years (some 70 percent of current refugees have been in that status for five years or more). The number of internally displaced persons also remains quite high and major new displacements in Lebanon and Iran are adding to that challenge.

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published an “El Niño advisory” on Thursday, which means that it has observed El Niño conditions and is expecting them to stick. The likelihood of another El Niño has been reported for months now but its onset hadn’t yet been confirmed. Now that it’s clearly here it will likely mean higher average temperatures and more intense weather events moving forward.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 11 people and injured at least 25 more in airstrikes across southern and eastern Lebanon on Thursday. One of those strikes targeted a residential building near the Hiram Hospital in the city of Tyre and caused “extensive material damage” to several hospital facilities.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least three people in Gaza on Thursday. Meanwhile, negotiations in Egypt involving several Palestinian political factions reportedly ended “inconclusively,” with the groups agreeing to 14 of a list of 15 demands submitted by Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” but failing to reach consensus on the most significant of those demands: Hamas’s disarmament. Two sources who spoke to Reuters said that “Hamas continues to link full disarmament to launching a political track toward a Palestinian state.”

+972 Magazine is reporting that a recent IDF land grab in the West Bank city of Jenin has raised concerns its long-term plans:

While Israeli land seizure orders are certainly not uncommon in the occupied West Bank, this case has alarmed residents and human rights organizations because the plots are located in Area A. This is the section of the West Bank where, under the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority officially maintains full civil and security control; in Area B, the PA must coordinate security with Israel, while Area C, which comprises more than 60 percent of the territory, remains under full Israeli control.

The PA relayed the military seizure order to landowners in Al-Jabariyat via WhatsApp, with an Arabic-language PDF signed by the Israeli army’s Central Command chief Avi Bluth. According to the document and attached map, the designated plots are being confiscated for “military purposes” and transferred to the relevant defense authorities. The order states that the seizure will remain in effect until the end of 2028, though residents fear the confiscation could become permanent.

Dror Etkes, founder of the anti-settlement watchdog group Kerem Navot, told +972 Magazine that the seizure order and newly-paved military roads clearly indicate Israel’s plans to establish a large military base adjacent to Jenin refugee camp.

While Israel has previously issued a small number of seizure orders affecting Area A, such as for the construction of the separation wall in the early 2000s, Etkes sees the new order as marking a significant escalation. “This is the first time since Oslo that I have seen a seizure order for a military base in Area A,” he said.

It may be the first, but it is unlikely to be the last. And speaking of land grabs, the Israeli cabinet is reportedly considering a $338 million outlay for new West Bank settlement construction, which if approved would be one of the largest single settlement expansions in the history of the Israeli occupation. Cabinet members decided on Thursday to postpone a decision and refer the matter to the security cabinet first.

IRAN

Donald Trump began his Thursday with bellicose threats of another night of US airstrikes on Iran and even more bellicose threats of US forces seizing Iran’s Kharg Island seaport. By Thursday afternoon he had backed down from those threats, once again citing vague and possibly fictional progress in peace talks. Trump declared via social media that he was cancelling the planned strikes “based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been ​brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved” and claimed that “discussions and final points have been, in both concept and ​great detail, approved by all parties involved, including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and others” with the “time and place of the signing to be announced shortly.”

Notably the only real source for any of this is Trump himself. There’s been no definitive comment from any Iranian officials yet as far as I know, though Iran’s Fars news agency has reported that they are “likely” to approve the deal that is currently on the table. Even so, until proven otherwise I would treat this as another round of Trump either consciously manipulating the markets or hallucinating/exaggerating diplomatic progress. There is another possibility, one that I’ve seen speculated on social media, which is that Trump has backed away from the additional demands he added a couple of weeks ago to an earlier ceasefire proposal that appeared to have Iranian approval. If that’s the case then a deal really could be coming together. Whatever is happening, at the very least we can pencil in the resumption of the shooting war for another night.

ASIA

AZERBAIJAN

Responsible Statecraft’s Eldar Mamedov suggests that CNN’s big scoop last week regarding the presence of IDF personnel in Azerbaijan may have come from Israeli sources:

But why are the details being leaked now? While no official claims have been made, one possibility could be that the U.S. and Israel want to ensure Azerbaijan won’t rescind its cooperation. If so, by publicizing the alleged bases, Washington and Tel Aviv are burning Baku’s plausible deniability with Tehran.

This dovetails with a pattern. After the active phase of the war, reports emerged of a secret visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the UAE. Emirati officials vehemently denied them, while their Israeli counterparts openly boasted about the trip. The leak may have been at least partially linked to Israeli domestic political considerations — Netanyahu needs to burnish his credentials as a statesman to see off a tough challenge from his main rival Naftali Bennett in elections later this year. But its effect was to further tie Abu Dhabi to Israel’s regional posture toward Iran. The same logic may apply here: tie Azerbaijan’s hands. If Iran lashes out at either UAE or Azerbaijan, or both, the logic presumably goes, they’d have to turn to Israel for protection, thus solidifying their security dependence on Tel Aviv.

So far, Tehran has shown restraint. The Iranian drone attack on Nakhchivan in March — which Aliyev called “an act of terror” — has been interpreted by Iranian sources as a warning shot, not an opening salvo for greater hostilities. Iran has avoided a northern front throughout the war, concentrating instead on the Persian Gulf and its missile exchanges with Israel. If that was indeed Tehran’s message, then it succeeded: despite his vows of retaliation, Aliyev has to date done nothing — and in fact, shipped humanitarian cargoes to Iran soon thereafter.

Neither Baku nor Tehran wanted an open confrontation at that stage, but the more recent revelations can provide fuel for Tehran to act against Baku next time — if the war resumes.

INDIA

The three Indian sailers who went missing when the US military attacked their oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman earlier this week are now confirmed dead. The Indian government says it has lodged a “strong protest” over the incident and I assume it intends to never speak of this again.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

Sudan’s Emergency Lawyers activist group is reporting that overnight Rapid Support Forces drone strikes killed at least 23 people in North Kordofan state’s capital, El Obeid. According to local health officials those strikes hit a funeral procession and residential areas in addition to military targets.

ETHIOPIA

Ethiopian officials are renewing their claims that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front is gearing up for another war:

Hardline elements of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a powerful party with tense relations with Addis Ababa, have “decided to launch an offensive against the federal government in the coming days”, said Ethiopia’s east African affairs minister Getachew Reda and intelligence chief Redwan Hussein.

In an editorial on the website of Al Jazeera, they said the TPLF was preparing to “trigger a new conflict” with the help of Eritrea, which has hostile relations with Addis Ababa.

The TPLF has not yet responded to requests for comment from AFP.

The federal authorities have previously accused the TPLF of growing closer to Eritrea, although the group has denied this.

The TPLF ousted the Tigray region’s interim government back in April, effectively suspending the 2022 peace deal that ended its last war against the Ethiopian government. At this point the situation in Tigray is precarious enough that any spark could ignite a serious conflict.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

The Russian military claimed on Thursday that its forces had captured two more Ukrainian villages in Kharkiv and Donetsk oblasts. Ukrainian officials have not acknowledged these losses nor is there any independent confirmation.

In Crimea, meanwhile, weeks of Ukrainian attacks on oil facilities and supply routes have left the territory scrambling to meet its fuel needs. Gas stations are running dry and fuel trucks are reportedly unable to get to major cities on the peninsula. Ukrainian drone units have particularly targeted the Novorossiya highway, which links Crimea to Russia through southern Ukraine, with the aim of isolating the peninsula from resupply.

UNITED KINGDOM

UK Defense Secretary John Healey resigned on Thursday while castigating embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer for failing to commit to an increase in the country’s military budget. I mention this mainly to note that we seem to be entering a “last one out please turn off the lights” situation as regards Starmer’s remaining support within the UK Labour Party, though any formal challenge may have to wait for the outcome of Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s upcoming parliamentary election.

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AMERICAS

PERU

Expatriate election returns have moved Keiko Fujimori into the narrowest of leads in Peru’s presidential runoff, giving her 50.002 percent of the vote to Roberto Sánchez’s 49.998 percent. This effective tie means that the remaining ballots, which are contested and will be subject to judicial review, will prove decisive one way or the other. The loser may have ample cause to object to the outcome.

CUBA

Inkstick’s Tyler Hicks reports on deteriorating conditions in Cuba:

June marks five months since the Trump administration captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and cut off the oil Cuba received from Caracas, a key ally. The oil blockade marks the latest chapter in Washington’s long-running campaign of economic pressure on Cuba, helping push the island into its deepest crisis in decades.

William LeoGrande, a government professor and Latin America expert at American University, says the Trump administration’s approach to Cuba is fundamentally different from past governments, who often used secret negotiations and incentives to pursue specific goals. LeoGrande says the current strategy relies almost entirely on pressure, sanctions, and threats designed to force political change.

“The fuel thing is the worst, because with fuel people can produce food, they can transport the food from the fields to the cities,” says Anley Benitez, a 42-year-old tour guide on the island.

As a result, food and medicine have become exceedingly rare commodities. A carton of eggs costs the equivalent of hundreds of US dollars (more than many workers make in a month), and even when Cubans are able to locate and purchase food, they find themselves in a mad dash to cook it before the power goes out again. What’s more, hospitals are postponing any treatments they can while struggling to keep patients alive.

UNITED STATES

Amid a wave of anger over Donald Trump’s decision to name Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte as his acting Director of National Intelligence, the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives on Thursday voted down a temporary renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the federal government to wiretap communications involving foreigners without a warrant. Nearly every Democrat and 19 Republicans voted against the renewal, which was supposed to be an emergency measure before Section 702 expires at midnight on Friday. Conceding to the pressure Trump has now nominated Jay Clayton, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, as his next DNI. It is unclear whether that will be enough to salvage Section 702 before its expiration.

Finally, the Iran war has pushed the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its lowest level since Ronald Reagan was president:

The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to its lowest level in more than four decades as the Trump administration continues to draw on emergency oil stockpiles to offset supply disruptions caused by the war with Iran and the near closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

For the week ending June 5, the SPR stood at 349.2 million barrels, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration, just above the 345.7 million-barrel low recorded in August 1983.

As of June 5, the Trump administration had released 66 million barrels from the SPR since the war with Iran began on Feb. 28, according to the US Department of Energy. In March, Trump authorized the release of roughly 172 million barrels from the reserve, or around 40% of the available stockpile, with participating companies pledging to replenish it at a later date.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

June 9, 721: An Aquitanian army under Duke Odo of Aquitaine defeats an invading Arab army under the Umayyad governor of Andalus, al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani, at the Battle of Toulouse.

June 9, 1815: The Congress of Vienna, intended to sort out a new balance of power in Europe following the end of the French Revolution and the downfall of Napoleon, concludes with a “Final Act” establishing the terms of the new continental framework. Among other things, Vienna established the “Congress System” under which the five “Great Powers”—Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom—would manage European affairs, and also established the reactionary “Conservative Order” to tamp down revolutionary sentiment. The whole system fell apart under the pressures of nationalism and finally during the Revolutions of 1848.

June 10, 1190: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I drowns in southern Anatolia on his way to join what we now call the Third Crusade. His death contributed heavily to the breakup of the Crusader army and therefore to Richard the Lionheart’s decision to abandon his plans to besiege Jerusalem.

June 10, 1898: US Marines and Cuban forces capture Guantánamo Bay from Spain after a five day battle. The US quickly established a naval base there that proved critical in winning the decisive naval battle and siege of Santiago in July, which essentially ended the Spanish-American war in Cuba. The conflict continued on other fronts until August and Guantánamo remains a US possession to the present day.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

The Russian Foreign Ministry is talking about “a possible reformatting of the functionality of Russian military facilities” in Syria, which may explain why it seems like Moscow will be retaining those facilities despite the change in Syria’s government. The ministry didn’t go into detail but Reuters indicated that the Russians may create “a logistics hub” at their naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus that would serve “to distribute goods imported from Russia across Syria.”

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 16 people across Lebanon on Wednesday, one day after killing at least 17 people there. Israeli officials continue to issue evacuation orders ahead of some of their airstrikes, but Al Jazeera reporter Obaida Hitto argued on Wednesday that these are mainly for show and that the IDF isn’t offering civilians a) enough time to evacuate or b) safe routes out of danger.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Haaretz reported on Wednesday that “IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has, in recent weeks, approved several operational plans presented by the IDF Southern Command as part of discussions on renewing ground operations in the Gaza Strip.” This is apparently due to “assessments that Hamas has used recent months to significantly rebuild its military and organizational capabilities.” These plans won’t be enacted unless/until Zamir gets a green light from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and as busy as he is trying to prevent a US-Iran deal he may not get around to Gaza anytime soon.

In the meantime, Palestinian political factions are still meeting in Egypt to try to figure out a way forward under the second phase of the “ceasefire,” with their discussions possibly focusing on procedural ways that Hamas might fulfill its obligations to stand down/disarm without effectively surrendering to Israel. A framework like that could involve the group transferring its arms to a new Palestinian police/security force rather than to the IDF, though whether that would be acceptable to the Israelis is unclear and at any rate it seems purely theoretical when the first phase of the “ceasefire” still hasn’t been fully realized.

Elsewhere:

• A new United Nations human rights report accuses Hamas and its affiliated police units, as well as other armed factions, of committing war crimes against civilians in Gaza, including “executions, kneecapping, bone-breaking with metal pipes or cement bricks and beatings” that “were framed by the perpetrators as punishments for alleged collaboration with Israel, looting humanitarian aid, theft, drug-related offenses or affiliations with internal rivals.” It documented 249 cases, involving 108 deaths, between August 2024 and January 2026.

• In the West Bank, a new report from Amnesty International concludes that the Israeli government is pursuing a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing toward Bedouin Arab populations. Bedouin communities are easy targets for the Israelis since their villages often lie in the territory’s “Area C” under full IDF control. The report dismisses arguments that attacks on those communities are the isolated acts of a few violent settlers and argues instead that they reflect systematic government policy. Fortunately the governments of Canada, France, Norway, and the UK stepped in on Wednesday with a number of new sanctions targeting settler-related financial and business networks. This will do nothing to actually stop the violence since it doesn’t tackle the government policy outlined by Amnesty, but at least the leaders of those countries will be able to say that they’re Doing Something.

IRAN

Another major exchange of US-Iranian hostilities has Donald Trump talking as if he’s ready to end the ceasefire and resume his shooting war, at least publicly. It started with the downing of a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday. The Apache was participating in what Trump later called a “secret mission” (not anymore, I guess) to guide commercial shipping through the strait, a “Project Freedom 2.0” if you will. According to Trump that effort has gotten “more than 100 MILLION barrels of oil” through the waterway since “last month.” For reference, that’s about five days of the strait’s prewar oil traffic, so even if Trump isn’t lying it’s not an especially impressive achievement.

There’s some question as to whether or not the Iranians intended to bring the Apache down—particularly if, as has been reported, it crashed after colliding with a Shahed drone (Shaheds are not anti-aircraft weapons). Iranian officials suggested that it had been “caught in crossfire” and at any rate flying over a country’s territorial waters at a time of war, or semi-war in this case, carries with it a significant level of risk. The pilots were rescued but Trump was intent on retaliating, so the US military struck targets in southern Iran and on Qeshm island, including (according to Iranian officials) a desalination plant and two reservoirs. The Iranians responded with attacks on US military facilities in Bahrain, Kuwait, and in a new twist Jordan as well, but did not strike water infrastructure in the Gulf Arab states despite having threatened to do so. There doesn’t seem to be any indication of casualties and each side is making very divergent claims as to damage.

That Iranian response led into Trump’s angry outburst on Wednesday, in which he said that Tehran will “have ​to pay the price” and complained that Iranian leaders have “taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them.” It seems pretty clear that his anger is borne as much out of frustration that the Iranians haven’t done him the favor of surrendering yet as it is out of the Apache incident and its aftermath. The strikes began on Wednesday evening (in the eastern US) and at time of writing it was too soon to assess whether they were another tit-for-tat response or something more intense than that. This was after the Trump administration announced new sanctions targeting Iranian weapons acquisition efforts. The Iranian government declared the strait fully closed in response to the new US strikes.

Whatever these new attacks may entail—and Trump has been threatening to revert to destroying Iran’s civilian infrastructure as he was supposedly planning to do before the ceasefire—between this dustup and the Iran-Israel clash earlier this week I think it’s reasonable to conclude that things are beyond “ceasefire” at this point even if they’re not quite back to full-scale war yet.

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN

The Pakistani military carried out a new round of strikes on eastern Afghanistan’s Khost, Kunar, and Paktika provinces on Wednesday morning, killing at least 13 people including 11 children according to Afghan officials. This is the first major Pakistani attack on Afghanistan in about a month and came one day after militants attacked a border police outpost in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing at least six officers. Pakistani officials claimed that their strikes “targeted militant hideouts and infrastructure” and killed at least “26 militants.”

On Tuesday, dozens of people protested in the western Afghan city of Herat in opposition to what The Guardian called “a wave of arrests in recent days targeting women and young girls accused of ‘improper hijab.’” Security forces apparently opened fire on the demonstrators, killing at least two of them.

INDIA

The Indian Foreign Ministry summoned a senior US diplomat on Wednesday over a blockade enforcement action that may have gone a bit awry. The US military opened fire on an oil tanker that was allegedly carrying Iranian oil and attempting to run the blockade in the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday evening. Three members of its 24 member Indian crew are now missing.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

Rapid Support Forces officials accused the Sudanese military of destroying a major bridge in Geneina, the capital of Sudan’s West Darfur province, on Tuesday. That bridge is/was a main throughway for humanitarian aid entering Darfur from Chad and so the RSF called on the UN and other international agencies to condemn its destruction and ensure the continued delivery of aid. On Wednesday, RSF drone strikes killed at least five people in El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state.

NIGERIA

Unspecified gunmen attacked a school in central Nigeria’s Kogi state on Wednesday, killing at least three people. The attackers were probably bandits and this was likely an attempted mass abduction, but authorities have not yet been able to ascertain whether anyone was abducted.

KENYA

Police shot and may have killed at least one person in another protest outside the proposed US Ebola quarantine facility in central Kenya on Wednesday. There’s no confirmation that the protester was killed but Reuters reported that he “lay motionless with a ​large wound ​to ⁠the head in the back ​of a police ​van.”

EUROPE

RUSSIA

Russian authorities say they’ve arrested two people in connection with a car bombing that reportedly targeted “an employee of ​a scientific production enterprise” in southwestern Moscow on Wednesday. There were no casualties reported. That was just one of two car bombings that hit the city—the other killed a senior Russian military officer who was in charge of its “artillery and missile ammunition supply directorate.” There does not seem to be a suspect yet in that bombing but it would be surprising if there weren’t some Ukrainian involvement in that incident if not both of them.

The Ukrainian military also reportedly hit a military manufacturing facility in Russia’s Chuvash Republic overnight. This strike is noteworthy in that the target was over 900 kilometers east of the Ukrainian front line and the attack employed Ukraine’s homemade long-range FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. The Flamingo theoretically has a maximum range of 3000 kilometers. The Ukrainians have been relying on drones to carry out attacks deep inside Russia but this gives them another option in that regard.

UKRAINE

Russian drone strikes killed at least five people in Ukraine on Tuesday.

Ukrainian drones struck the Russian-occupied port city of Mariupol on Wednesday, reportedly causing blackouts. Mariupol is a logistical hub for the Russian military and this attack reflects a new Ukrainian focus on striking tactically important infrastructure in Russian-occupied parts of the country. Earlier this week Ukrainian forces attacked a bridge linking southern Kherson oblast to Crimea and they’ve been striking Crimean oil facilities to the point where provincial authorities have had to implement fuel rationing (and even that may no longer be tenable).

ALBANIA

Thousands of people protested again in Tirana on Wednesday in opposition to Jared Kushner’s proposed island resort. Jacobin’s Matt Broomfield offers more context for their grievances:

On Albania’s Adriatic coastline, demonstrators clashing with police and private security forces are waving cutout pink flamingos. The bird has become the emblem of protests against the planned tarmacking of a protected nature reserve in the Vjosa-Narta Delta in a multibillion-dollar luxury development project backed by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

The struggle is linked to the Trump administration in more ways than one. On the other side of the Mediterranean, Albanian forces are preparing to enter the Gaza Strip, as one of four states potentially committing boots on the ground via Donald Trump’s widely reviled Board of Peace. These developments are deeply connected. The Albanian government under right-populist Edi Rama, whose nominally socialist party has been loyal to Washington ever since 1991, is forging ever-deeper ties with Tel Aviv. In Tirana, Israel has found a loyal, Muslim-state partner willing to provide ideological cover and material support in the aftermath of the Gaza genocide.

The proposed Vjosa-Narta megadevelopment is a crucial piece of the puzzle. Local villagers, bird-watchers, and ecological activists have a common fight to save the unspoiled delta from rapacious investors seemingly linked to the Rama administration through a shady network of shell companies. In so doing, they find themselves in an unexpected confrontation with a global constellation of Trump-aligned financial interests and Israeli-linked power brokers.

GERMANY

The German government officially pulled the plug on Europe’s Future Combat Air System program earlier this week. FCAS was a €100 billion effort that was supposed to see France, Germany, and Spain collaborating on a new sixth-generation fighter jet that would work in conjunction with swarms of drone “wingmen.” It collapsed amid a turf war between the French firm Dassault Aviation and the pan-European firm Airbus, the companies that were supposed to be the main collaborators, as well as disagreements around the needs of each country’s armed forces (even though the project was intended to advance the cause of European military integration). They may try to continue working on the drone component but the fighter in particular appears to be kaput.

It is debatable whether Europe really needs a manned sixth-generation fighter, but as a purely symbolic matter this failure doesn’t speak highly of Europe’s ability to work as a whole to build up its defense capacity. Even though European leaders increasingly seem to be coming around to the idea that they cannot continue depending on the United States for protection, they’re still not really capable of collaboration.

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AMERICAS

PERU

Vote counting seems to have slowed down following Sunday’s Peruvian presidential runoff, leaving leftist Roberto Sánchez with a narrow 50.025 percent to 49.975 percent lead over right-winger Keiko Fujimori with 97.9 percent of the tally completed. A portion of the remaining votes are from abroad, which should favor Fujimori, but a much larger portion consists of contested ballots that need to be reviewed and could go either way.

UNITED STATES

In US news:

• Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he’s “not looking to renew” the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement. He added that “we don't need anything that Canada ​has. We don't need anything that Mexico has, but they need everything that ​we have,” a statement that’s so stupid I have a hard time imagining that even he believes it, but I guess anything is possible. All three governments need to declare their intention to renew the pact by July 1 or else trigger their withdrawal. But even if Trump opts for withdrawal the process by law takes ten years and can be halted in the event of a new agreement. It’s likely that a future administration would reverse course.

• Trump took to social media on Wednesday to say that he’s tasking incoming (acting) Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte “to execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office, reverting staff to their home agencies.” This would explain the decision to appoint someone with no discernible relevant experience to the job. Trump isn’t getting rid of the DNI post and even said he’s already considering candidates with an intelligence background to take the job on a non-interim basis, but even so Pulte’s appointment has ruffled enough feathers in Congress (both because of his inexperience and the fact that he’s a Trump sycophant) that it could complicate efforts to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the part that allows warrantless wiretapping of communications involving foreigners.

Finally, The Intercept’s Nick Turse reports that the US military’s very first “drug boat” attack may have missed the mark:

Nine months into the Trump administration’s deadly campaign against so-called drug boats, there is a pattern to the strikes. And a glaring anomaly.

The U.S. military has conducted more than 60 attacks, resulting in over 200 extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. In almost all the strikes, between one and four people lost their lives. In only one strike did the death toll of a single boat reach double digits: the first attack on September 2, 2025.

Since then, experts, lawmakers, and even military officials behind the scenes have been asking a simple but haunting question: Why was that boat packed with 11 people?

“Why would 11 people be on board a boat carrying drugs?” said a government source who attended a classified briefing where the large crew on the first boat attacked was discussed. “It’s a high risk for the cartels. That always stood out.”

One top military officer provided a plausible explanation, behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, The Intercept has learned. His admission raises even more questions about a strike that a high-ranking Pentagon official called a criminal attack on civilians and resulted in a firestorm in Congress last year.

In the briefing, the high-ranking officer on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff stated that some of the people killed by the U.S. military may have been the victims of human trafficking.

The admission highlights above all the basic fact that the US military didn’t know who it was killing that night and probably hasn’t known who it was killing in any of its other boat strikes. In remarks to members of Congress, military officials have even reportedly said that they don’t need to identify their victims before they kill them. As precedent they cite methods of targeting employed in the War on Terror, in which the US military has also famously killed many civilians because it didn’t know who it was attacking.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: I am fighting off an ear infection that has worsened over the past day or so, which means I will have to forego tonight’s voiceover with apologies. Those who need assistance can hopefully use the text-to-speech function in the Substack app. Also please note that there will be no newsletter tomorrow as I have a family obligation. Thanks for supporting the newsletter!

TODAY IN HISTORY

June 8, 218: In a battle near Antioch, a rebel army supporting 14 year old imperial claimant Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus defeats an army under Roman Emperor Marcus Opellius Macrinus. After his defeat, Macrinus attempted to flee west but was captured at Chalcedon and later executed. The new emperor, who took the regal name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, was later dubbed “Elagabalus” or “Heliogabalus” because he had previously been a priest of the Syrian sun god of the same name. He established that deity as the chief god of the Roman pantheon, displacing Jupiter, with himself as chief priest. Elagabalus is known today mostly for lurid and probably sensationalized accounts of the decadence of his court and of his sexual and romantic relationships. The Praetorian Guard assassinated him in 222 and elevated his cousin Severus Alexander to replace him.

June 8, 1941: World War II’s Operation Exporter begins. Allied forces invaded Syria and Lebanon and made relatively short work of their Vichy French defenders. The British government turned control of the region over to Charles de Gaulle’s Free French government under the condition that both mandates would be given their independence.

INTERNATIONAL

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s 2026 yearbook paints a grim picture regarding the world’s nuclear weapons stockpiles:

The nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—continued programmes to modernize and enhance their nuclear arsenals in 2025, and most deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems during the year.

Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12 187 warheads in January 2026, about 9745 were in military stockpiles for potential use (see the table below). An estimated 4012 of those warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft and the rest were in central storage. Between 2100 and 2200 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles. Nearly all of these warheads belonged to Russia or the USA, and to a lesser extent France and the UK, but China and India may now occasionally deploy a small number of warheads mounted on missiles during peacetime.

‘Influential voices, including some world leaders, are advocating nuclear weapons as a guarantee against attack by a hostile state. But making national defence and security strategies dependent—or more dependent—on nuclear weapons could significantly increase nuclear risks,’ said SIPRI Director Karim Haggag. ‘The dangers associated with nuclear weapons are growing due to advances in weapon technology, the breakdown of nuclear arms control and heightened geopolitical tensions, among a range of other factors. At the same time, world events—not least the outbreak of conflict between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan—are challenging nuclear deterrence logic.’

Overall the number of nuclear munitions in the world continues to decrease, as Russia and the US have continued to dismantle defunct Cold War-era warheads faster than they are producing new warheads. But the rate of decrease seems to be slowing and indications are that the trend will start to move in the opposite direction in the next few years.

MIDDLE EAST

IRAN

An exchange of hostilities that began with an Israeli attack on Beirut and an Iranian retaliation against Israel continued overnight and into Monday, before both governments halted at least for the time being. I’m not going to try to predict how long that halt will last, but it is worth noting that the Israeli government will reopen schools on Tuesday, while Iranian authorities have reopened the country’s airspace. Those are not the actions of officials who think they’re going to be back at war in a few hours. The cessation of fighting came after an appeal from Donald Trump for both parties to stand down, which came after Trump said publicly that he would ask the Israelis not to retaliate for the first Iranian missile strike—a request the Israelis apparently rejected (more on that in a moment).

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: Remember last weekend when I said there will be forthcoming disruptions to my usual schedule related to my daughter’s high school graduation? Well today involves one of those disruptions, so I’m doing an earlier roundup and will catch up tomorrow. This newsletter was also very hastily rewritten in response to breaking news so please forgive any errors that may have created. Additionally, there will be no newsletter on Tuesday at all so we’ll double up on Wednesday.

TODAY IN HISTORY

June 6, 1982: The Israeli military invades Lebanon, beginning a new phase in the Lebanese Civil War that’s also known as the Lebanon War.

June 6, 1944: The Allied invasion of France begins with the “D-Day” amphibious landings in Normandy, the largest amphibious military operation in history. Despite heavy losses, the Allies were able to establish five beachheads and by mid-June (though it took longer than planned) they secured a small but crucial foothold in northern France. From there they began the final phase of World War II on its Western Front.

June 7, 1494: In the Treaty of Tordesillas, Spain and Portugal agree to divide the world, or at least any “newly discovered” parts of it, along a north-south meridian that runs through the eastern half of modern Brazil. The negotiations superseded a decree previously issued by Pope Alexander VI that threatened both Portugal’s control of the around-Africa sea route to India and any claims it had on India itself. The agreement, which was mostly undefinable (and therefore unenforceable but did the job in terms of avoiding a Spanish-Portuguese war), left most of the recently-“discovered” Americas in Spanish hands save what eventually became Brazil. It was duly ignored by later expansionist European powers—particularly Protestant England, which viewed the treaty as a Catholic accord that it was not obliged to honor.

June 7, 1942: After a four day battle and thanks in large part to having decrypted Japan’s pre-battle communications, the US Pacific Fleet defeats a larger Japanese naval force at the Battle of Midway, around the Midway Atoll west of Hawaii. One of a handful of naval battles in the running for most decisive in history, Midway was the first major US victory in World War II’s Pacific Theater and permanently degraded the Japanese fleet, which lost four large aircraft carriers and almost 250 planes. The US victory gave it an opening to go on the offensive following the Pearl Harbor attack in December, helping to shift the balance of power in the Pacific.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 12 people in Lebanon on Saturday, including a brigadier general in the Lebanese army and two other soldiers. Israeli officials say they’re investigating the airstrike that killed those military personnel, but put the initial blame on the Lebanese military for failing to coordinate with the IDF regarding movement in an “active combat zone.” The Lebanese military condemned “the continuation of the deliberate and repeated brutal Israeli aggression,” while President Joseph Aoun called the incident a “flagrant violation of Lebanese sovereignty and of international laws and norms” and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called it “a heinous crime and an attack on Lebanon and all Lebanese people.” None of their outrage will extend beyond rhetoric, of course. At least two Israeli soldiers were also killed in clashes with Hezbollah fighters.

On Sunday the IDF buried whatever remained of last week’s “ceasefire” announcement by bombing southern Beirut’s Dahieh suburb, killing at least two people in what Israeli officials characterized as a response to Hezbollah fire into northern Israel. Iranian officials had previously suggested that further Israeli attacks on the Lebanese capital could end the US-Iran ceasefire.

UPDATE: Sure enough, as I was about to send out today’s newsletter Iran fired missiles at Israel for the first time since the US-Iran ceasefire took effect on April 8. Hezbollah likewise fired drones and artillery at IDF positions on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border. The ramifications here are potentially massive including a resumption of the US-Iran shooting war but it’s too early to draw any conclusions and unfortunately given my constraints this will have to wait for tomorrow’s newsletter.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least nine people in Gaza on Sunday after killing at least ten people in the territory the previous day. One of Saturday’s airstrikes hit a displaced persons encampment near Gaza city while one of Sunday’s struck a police outpost near another displaced persons encampment near Khan Younis. The Egyptian government, meanwhile, hosted a meeting involving Hamas and other Palestinian political factions to try to advance the “ceasefire” process or at least to present a united demand that the Israelis meet their obligations under the first phase of that agreement. The meeting is expected to last several days.

Elsewhere, a gunman (or gunmen) killed at least one person and wounded five more in a spree that took him/them through several towns in central Israel on Sunday. Israeli security forces subsequently reported killing two suspects, at least one of whom is believed to be a Palestinian citizen of Israel. There’s no indication of any organizational involvement, though Hamas did praise the attack without taking responsibility for it.

IRAN

The US military celebrated day 100 of its glorious war on Iran by shooting down two Iranian drones in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. This was after the Saturday morning exchange of hosilities that eventually saw the Iranians fire missiles at Bahrain and Kuwait again, causing some damage but apparently no casualties (at least as far as I’ve seen). There were a couple of minor indications of diplomatic activity, both involving the Pakistani government. Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi turned up in Tehran on Saturday carrying what he said was a “special letter” from Pakistani army commander Asim Munir, while Lebanese army commander Rodolphe Haykal was in Islamabad to meet with Munir. I haven’t seen any other details about those developments so far.

Reuters reported on Sunday that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been exploring the idea of using Iranian assets to pay reparations to Gulf Arab states that have suffered damage due to the war. This could be a major impediment to a peace deal given that the Iranians are demanding their frozen assets back and those would be the easiest for the US government to access and repurpose. Legally (not that legalities are a huge consideration for the US government) this seems quite dubious as well. It would be one thing if the Iranians were the clear aggressors in this conflict but that honor goes to the US and Israel, and Tehran can argue (and has argued) that the Gulf governments were co-aggressors in that they allowed the US to carry out attacks from bases in their countries.

Speaking of those frozen Iranian assets, Donald Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he won’t unfreeze them until “after” a genuine ceasefire agreement and then it will depend on whether or not the Iranians “behave.” As you may recall Mohsen Rezaee, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, told CNN on Friday that Tehran wants half of a $24 billion pot of assets released at the signing of such an agreement, so those are not compatible positions.

ASIA

ARMENIA

There are three elections on Sunday that seem to be drawing a fair amount of attention, none more than the parliamentary election in Armenia. Polling has tended to give Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party a fairly hefty lead, which if it holds up would be viewed as a public show of support for his efforts to negotiate with Azerbaijan and Turkey while steering the country’s foreign policy closer to the European Union and away from Russia. However, to satisfy Azerbaijani demands Pashinyan needs a two-thirds supermajority to amend the Armenian constitution to remove any territorial claim on the Nagorno-Karabakh region, so just winning the election won’t be enough. That issue in particular has been the opposition’s focus and has added a level of hostility to the campaign.

Armenian authorities arrested six candidates from the opposition Strong Armenia party on Saturday without giving any reason. Party boss Samvel Karapetyan is also under house arrest for allegedly calling for the overthrow of the Armenian government, an allegation he denies. These things don’t necessarily scream “free and fair election” though I’m not really in a position to judge their legitimacy.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

Sudan’s Emergency Lawyers activist group is reporting that drone strikes in the town of Hamrat al-Sheikh in Sudan’s North Kordofan state killed at least 13 people on Friday and Saturday. At least 11 were killed in one strike that hit a market in the Abu Zuaima neighborhood on Saturday. Hamrat al-Sheikh is controlled by the Rapid Support Forces militant group so these were presumably military attacks.

MALI

The New York Times reports that the new alliance between Tuareg rebels and jihadist militants in Mali is the result of ideological compromises on both sides:

On one side are the jihadists known as the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, or JNIM. On the other side are Tuareg rebels of the Azawad Liberation Front, or F.L.A., a separatist group fighting for independence in northern Mali.

The alliance began over a year ago when the F.L.A. agreed to accept a moderate form of Shariah law, and JNIM convinced the F.L.A. to seek autonomous rule rather than formal independence, according to Wassim Nasr, a researcher and Sahel expert.

As the piece notes, the rebels (the basis of the FLA) and al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists (who would eventually coalesce into one of the groups that merged to form JNIM in 2017) tried to work together during the Tuareg uprising in northern Mali in 2012. That arrangement fell apart quickly as the jihadists were not then offering a “moderate form of Shariah” and coexistence proved impossible. This time around JNIM appears to be taking a more collaborative approach, perhaps hoping to make itself a viable governing option (a la Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria) in addition to forming a more durable alliance with the FLA.

NIGERIA

The Nigerian army announced on Sunday that its forces had freed some 360 people from captivity in a Boko Haram outpost. It’s unclear when this operation took place or whether there were any casualties involved in seizing the facility, located in the southern part of northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state. Two infants among the captives died but the army is attributing their deaths to the conditions they endured in captivity rather than anything to do with their release.

MAURITIUS

The Telegraph reported on Sunday that the Trump administration may try to purchase the Chagos Islands from Mauritius, thereby forfeiting the UK government’s frozen (due to US opposition) proposal to transfer control of the archipelago to the Mauritian government. The administration has alternately signed off on and rejected that proposal, which would carry with it a 99 year UK/US lease of Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos islands and home to arguably the US military’s most important overseas base. It has cited concerns about potential Chinese espionage (based mainly on the fact that the Mauritian government is on friendly terms with Beijing) to justify resisting the transfer. In this scenario it would allow the transfer to take place and then buy the islands.

It’s unclear how much this purchase would cost (the US government would first have to actually make the offer to its Mauritian counterpart) but the UK was prepared to pay roughly $46.7 billion for that 99 year lease on just Diego Garcia so we can assume the price to buy the entire archipelago will be considerably higher, and that’s assuming the Mauritian government would even be willing to sell. Similarly unclear, and likely irrelevant from the administration’s perspective, is what would happen to the Chagossian people in this arrangement. The UK expelled the Chagossians from the archipelago in the late 1960s-early 1970s at US behest, and their repatriation (though not to Diego Garcia) was supposed to be part of the Mauritian takeover.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

Overnight Saturday-Sunday Russian strikes killed at least five people across Ukraine. Even more troubling, they apparently damaged a nuclear storage facility in Chernobyl. There’s been no detected surge in radioactivity but the damage does appear to have been significant. The facility is located near the Chernobyl disaster site but is used to store spent fuel from Ukraine’s current working reactors. In Russia, a Ukrainian strike killed at least one person in Belgorod oblast. The Ukrainian military also carried out another major bombardment of St. Petersburg on Saturday, its second in less than a week. The attack injured at least three people but the intent was mainly symbolic, striking Russia’s “second city” at the close of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum or Vladimir Putin’s “Davos.”

KOSOVO

The second entry in our election triumvirate is Kosovo, where lucky duck voters participated on Sunday in their third parliamentary election since February 2025 after the parliament they elected in December failed to choose a president. Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s Vetëvendosje party will likely win the election as it did in December (indeed early returns show it leading), but he needs at least 80 members of the 120 member parliament to participate in a presidential election1 and he wasn’t able to muster that after the previous contest.

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AMERICAS

BOLIVIA

France 24 reports on the ongoing violence between police and anti-austerity protesters in Bolivia, in this case in the agriculturally important eastern part of the country:

The Bolivian Chamber of Deputies passed legislation on Sunday authorizing President Rodrigo Paz to deploy military forces to clear the protesters’ roadblocks while also establishing legal impunity for the use of force against the protesters. The Chamber of Senators had already passed that measure, so once Paz signs it into law a more violent crackdown could ensue in short order.

PERU

In our third election story, Peruvian voters headed to the polls on Sunday for the second round of that country’s presidential contest, pitting right-wing perennial candidate Keiko Fujimori against left-wing Congressperson Roberto Sánchez. Fujimori won the first round in April and has had a narrow lead in polling ahead of the runoff, but there are a large number of people who seem either undecided or checked out (about 17 percent submitted either a fouled or blank ballot in the first round) so the polling may not be all that reliable.

UNITED STATES

Finally, NBC News reported late Friday that the US military is sounding an alarm about spying by America’s bestest friend in the whole wide world:

The Pentagon is increasingly concerned about Israel ramping up its spying on the U.S., recently raising the counterintelligence threat level from America’s top ally in the Middle East to the highest level, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official.

The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency in recent weeks issued the new counterintelligence threat assessment amid rising tensions between Israel and the U.S. over the way forward in the war with Iran, the officials said. They said the DIA posted an internal message, viewed by one of the current officials, that raised the level for Israel to “critical.”

The designation stems from concerns within the Pentagon that Israel is making a particular effort to surveil top U.S. officials to get information on the Trump administration’s internal deliberations and decision-making on the conflicts in the Middle East, the officials said.

The DIA assessment includes a seven-page document and features a chart, according to one of the current U.S. officials. The document says the assessment of Israel is that its ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection is at a “critical level,” according to the official.

The Israeli embassy in Washington insisted that any claim that Israel would spy on the United States is “completely false,” an assertion that is itself demonstrably false unless the Israeli government has changed its policy over the past few years. More interesting than the story itself may be the fact that “US officials” decided to leak it to the media. This fits into a pattern of unflattering leaks related to the Iran war that suggest there is discontent behind the scenes regarding that conflict and/or the US-Israel relationship. Anyway, if you’re worried that the Trump administration might do something to clamp down on the (alleged) spying, rest easy; the White House issued a statement saying that “this entire story is false and sourced to someone who doesn’t have any knowledge of what’s going on.” That’s a relief.

June 5, 1963: In what’s become known as the 15 Khordad Movement (because it took place on the 15th day of the Iranian month of Khordad), protests and riots break out in cities across Iran after the arrest of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini over his criticisms of the Iranian government. The previously little-known Khomeini emerged suddenly on the public stage months earlier when he angrily denounced Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s “White Revolution” reforms as contrary to Islam. The outpouring of anger over his arrest cemented him as a leading opposition figure, a status he carried with him into exile and all the way through the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

June 5, 1967: The Six Day War begins.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least five people in multiple attacks across southern Lebanon on Friday while ordering the evacuation of nine more towns and villages. There is no indication that Wednesday’s “ceasefire” announcement is having any effect on the conflict, which is not terribly surprising given that Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has already repudiated an agreement that the organization had no role in negotiating. At Middle East Eye, Cardiff University’s Amal Saad argues that the Lebanese government is acquiescing to the displacement of its own populace:

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TODAY IN HISTORY

June 4, 1615: The army of the Tokugawa Shogunate captures Osaka, ending a siege that had begun the previous month. This was the second Tokugawa siege of Osaka in less than a year—the initial siege, which lasted from November 1614 to January 1615, had ended with a peace agreement that quickly collapsed. With its capture of Osaka, the Tokugawa clan was able to force the disbanding of the Toyotomi clan, the last serious obstacle to full Tokugawa control over Japan.

June 4, 1989: Chinese soldiers charged with enforcing a declaration of martial law enter Beijing’s Tiananmen Square overnight, beginning a violent dispersal of protesters that left many people dead. The square had been the site of large student-led protests since mid-April, motivated by a wide array of issues but chiefly concerned with economic challenges, demands for political reform, and calls for a government anti-corruption campaign. The military action and ensuing bloodshed broke up the demonstrations. Official figures put the June 3-4 death toll at 241, 218 of them civilians, while various unofficial claims have put it at 300-1000 and above.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

Al Jazeera reports on the terms of Wednesday’s Israel-Lebanon ceasefire and explains why it’s unlikely to hold:

According to the Trump administration, Israel and Lebanon have agreed to implement a ceasefire contingent on a “complete cessation” of Hezbollah fire and the evacuation of its fighters from the area south of the Litani River.

The agreement also calls for the creation of “pilot zones” where Lebanese Armed Forces would take exclusive control “to the exclusion of all non-state actors”. The stated aim is to move towards a wider political and security agreement, including the dismantling of non-state armed groups and preventing their re-emergence.

But Hezbollah was not party to the talks and has already rejected the agreement. Lebanon was represented by government diplomats, even though the Lebanese army is not a party to this conflict.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem rejected the deal on Thursday, but that was only after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the Israeli military (IDF) would continue its Lebanese operations regardless of the ceasefire. Indeed the agreement doesn’t seem to oblige the IDF to do anything, least of all to withdraw from southern Lebanon. That alone makes the rest of the framework untenable. To stress the point, IDF airstrikes killed at least eight people and wounded another eight in eastern and southern Lebanon on Thursday.

There’s a potentially significant development buried in the joint statement that US, Israeli, and Lebanese officials released on Wednesday to announce the ceasefire. That statement references a June 2 comment by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declaring that Hezbollah “is an enemy of Lebanon.” In issuing the statement the Lebanese delegates implicitly endorsed that remark, which potentially advances the real US-Israeli interest in these talks which is fomenting another civil war in Lebanon.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least ten people in Gaza on Thursday. Nine of them were killed in airstrikes that targeted four apartment buildings near Gaza city—the IDF hasn’t commented on this attack on civilian residences. Israeli attacks have now killed at least 930 people since the start of the Gaza “ceasefire.”

OMAN

The Omani government is so far resisting the Trump administration’s demand that it sever ties with Iran and officials insist that any arrangement they reach with the Iranian government over management of the Strait of Hormuz will comport with international law. US officials have threatened to sanction and/or bomb Oman should it join Iran in any toll/fee/etc. system in the strait, an idea that Iranian officials are now characterizing as a charge to cover environmental remediation in the waterway. The New Arab’s Giorgio Cafiero explains the politics behind the threats:

Understanding the forces shaping this shift requires looking at political pressures from within the US capital. Muscat’s role as the “unsung hero” of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which included its hosting of secret negotiations in Oman between Obama administration officials and Iranian representatives, led to certain neoconservative and pro-Israel circles in Washington taking issue with the Sultanate.

To many within those networks, Oman’s position as a diplomatic bridge between the United States and the Islamic Republic has been suspicious. Over time, a range of think tank analysts, lobbyists, and political pundits sought to encourage both Trump administrations to see Muscat not as a trusted partner, but as a problematic regional actor.

For years, pro-Israel and Likud-aligned organisations have promoted narratives critical of Oman within Washington policy circles. These campaigns have frequently relied on exaggerated, misleading, or outright false claims regarding Muscat’s ties to Iran and members of the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” portraying such relationships as justification for a more punitive American approach toward the Sultanate.

KUWAIT

+972 Magazine’s Mira Al Hussein identifies one country where Donald Trump’s drive to expand the “Abraham Accords” might actually succeed:

Most of the states Trump is calling to join the accords — in fact, insisting that this “should be mandatory” — have reasons to resist. Kuwait, however, is undergoing huge transformations that are steadily eroding its institutional capacity to do so.

With its Arab nationalist tradition and historically robust pro-Palestine politics, Kuwait has always been an outlier as a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on the issue of normalization. But since the Emir Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah took office at the end of 2023, Kuwait has drifted steadily closer to Abu Dhabi, and the domestic consequences have quickly followed.

Kuwait’s parliament — a rare democratic institution in the Gulf — was suspended indefinitely in 2024. A sweeping campaign of mass denaturalization has since affected an estimated 300,000 individuals, including citizens of Palestinian descent. The fabric of political participation that once gave Kuwait its distinctive Gulf character is being deliberately shredded in tandem with closer military and intelligence cooperation with the UAE.

IRAN

The maritime data firm Kpler is reporting that four Iranian-flagged oil tankers carrying a combined 7 million barrels of oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. They are the first Iranian tankers known to have transited the strait and tested the US blockade since April 15.

ASIA

ARMENIA

As Al-Monitor’s Amberin Zaman reports, next week’s Armenian parliamentary election is drawing a substantial amount of foreign interest:

In normal times, Mehmandar, Armenia’s largest wholesale market for fruits and vegetables in the Ararat valley near the Turkish border, is a beehive of activity. But these are not normal times. Russia, citing spurious hygiene concerns, had just slapped a ban on Armenian fruits and vegetables. Business is dead. Some 90% of Armenian produce was sold to Russia. “My tomatoes fetched 2,000 drams [$5.50] per kilo a week ago; now they are worth 900 [$2.45] at most,” said Karen Arakelian, a stony-faced farmer. “It’s because of the elections.”

Arakelian is right. On June 7, Armenia will hold nationwide parliamentary polls. They are being touted as a historical referendum on the future course of this Christian nation of 3 million in the southern Caucasus that was part of the Soviet empire. A startling burst of global interest has seen Russia and a Western bloc led by the United States, the European Union and Turkey backing rival candidates amid a dizzying disinformation campaign waged by both sides.

Neighboring Iran and Azerbaijan have their own stakes in the emerging geopolitical order. If all goes to plan, Armenia would sit at the crossroads of the Middle Corridor, a trade route linking Europe to China that would bypass Russia’s northern corridor and Iran. “This is the first geopolitical election in Armenia’s history, and foreign actors each have their favorites,” Tigran Grigoryan, head of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security, a Yerevan-based think tank, told Al-Monitor.

Donald Trump is lavishing praise on incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who also has Turkish support as the two countries pursue normalization. The Russian government is backing the opposition and steps like its recent bans on Armenian imports and the recall of its ambassador from Yerevan are intended to hurt Pashinyan’s chances of victory. But that effort may be backfiring, as recent polls show a “surge” in public support for Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party.

PHILIPPINES

The “new structure” that the Philippine government says it intends to investigate in the South China Sea’s Scarborough Shoal may turn out to be nothing. According to Reuters, satellite imagery showed that there was some sort of object in the shoal last week but later imagery suggests that it’s no longer there. It may have been some sort of buoy or even a barrier positioned at the entrance to the shoal, presumably by the Chinese military, or it may have been something that just passed through. Either way if it’s gone there’s not going to be much to investigate.

NORTH KOREA

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pledged on Thursday “to beef up our state’s nuclear forces at an exponential rate” according to state media. He toured a new facility for the production of weapons-grade nuclear material and claimed that North Korea’s production capacity has doubled over the past five years. As ever he’s intent on demonstrating that North Korea is immutably a nuclear-armed state and any US or South Korean hopes of “denuclearization” are futile.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The Sudanese military (SAF) claimed on Wednesday that its forces had fended off “a large-scale attack” by the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North on the town of Al-Barka in Sudan’s Blue Nile state. Which is interesting, because the RSF reportedly released video footage that seemed to show its fighters occupying an SAF base in the town. If that footage is accurate then either the SAF is lying or it initially lost the town but was able to recover it. The SAF seized Al-Barka from the RSF and company late last month.

SOMALIA

Mogadishu has seen two days of violence after security forces intervened in an effort to quash planned protests against Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Protest organizers, including former Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire, are pushing back against the postponement of what was supposed to have been this year’s elections, which carried with it the extension of Mohamud’s term for at least another year. There have been no specific reports of casualties but AFP spoke to a “security analyst” who did say there have been casualties, and according to Khaire the fighting has involved “heavy weaponry” that has damaged “civilian infrastructure.”

EUROPE

EUROPEAN UNION

The Wall Street Journal reports on the EU’s attempt to wean itself off of dependence on foreign tech firms:

The European Union is putting forward a stack of measures aimed at bolstering its technological capabilities in the latest push from the bloc to reduce its dependence on tech giants from countries like the U.S.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, outlined a so-called tech sovereignty package, with policies targeting a broad range of tech infrastructure, from semiconductors to cloud services, data centers and artificial intelligence.

The proposals—which need to be negotiated by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union to be approved—come as EU officials voiced concerns over the bloc’s reliance on non-EU companies for increasingly important technologies that store sensitive data and power devices and vital infrastructure.

President Trump’s second term has seen a flareup in tensions with the EU over tariffs and geopolitics, injecting a fresh sense of urgency into the bloc to become more independent.

UKRAINE

Russian bombardments killed at least 12 people and wounded “dozens” across Ukraine overnight and into Thursday. At least five were killed in Ukrainian-held parts of Donetsk oblast. Ukrainian airstrikes, meanwhile, killed at least three people in the Crimean city of Simferopol and at least one person on a “commuter train” in the eastern part of the peninsula.

Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky sent/released an open letter to Vladimir Putin on Thursday proposing face-to-face negotiations in a neutral country along with a ceasefire. Putin held a press conference in St. Petersburg, apparently before he’d been briefed on the letter, and did not seem particularly open to either consideration even as he insisted that he’s “certainly prepared and willing to reach an agreement with Ukraine.” Putin is back to questioning Zelensky’s legitimacy (based on Ukraine’s 2024 presidential election, postponed/canceled under martial law) and is still demanding the entire Donbas, which means he’ll keep the war going unless Zelensky agrees to surrender the portion that Ukraine still controls.

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AMERICAS

BOLIVIA

Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz appointed Ernesto Justiniano as his new defense minister on Wednesday, replacing Marcelo Salinas after he and Education Minister Beatriz Garcia resigned the previous day. Justiniano promised to “restore ​normalcy” after weeks of anti-austerity protests and road blockades have isolated La Paz and created shortages of food and other essential goods in the capital. The Bolivian Congress voted last week to authorize the deployment of military forces to quell internal unrest so Justiniano may be preparing to go that route.

CUBA

The Trump administration blacklisted Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel as well as several members of his family and the Castro family on Thursday. It also designated the Cuban Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and a number of other entities.

UNITED STATES

The US military bombed another alleged drug boat on Wednesday, killing at least two people. US Southern Command said that the vessel “was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” offering no evidence of that as usual.

Finally, TomDispatch’s Alfred McCoy considers US imperial decline from the standpoint of energy:

Probe deeper still for the causes of the ongoing all-American imperial decline and you’ll come to the most fundamental but generally least noted factor in the rise and fall of every world empire for the past 500 years: energy innovation.

In the sixteenth century, Spain and Portugal maximized the caloric output of the human body by developing the slave plantation, whose phenomenal profitability allowed a uniquely cruel form of commercial agriculture to spread from West Africa along the coast of Brazil to the Caribbean and then, of course, to the American South. A century later, the Dutch mastered wind power, using windmills to saw uniform planks to build efficient sailing ships that won them a commercial empire stretching from the Spice Islands of Indonesia to the island of Manhattan. In the nineteenth century, Britain’s industrial revolution developed coal-fired steam engines for factories, trains, and ships that facilitated its conquest of colonies covering a quarter of the globe. After 1945, America’s ascent to global hegemony would be synonymous with the rise of petroleum, quickly supplanting coal as the world’s primary form of energy and leading to repeated U.S. interventions in the Middle East for the past 70 years.

In recent years, however, Beijing has launched a revolution in green energy from the sun and wind whose accelerating pace, driven by its sheer economic efficiency, has the potential to transform much of the global economy, while simultaneously making China the world’s preeminent economic power. With surprising speed, solar-powered electrical generation has become 41% less expensive (and wind 53% cheaper) than the least expensive form of fossil fuel. In addition, engineering innovations in battery design for both driving and electrical storage are likely to make the cost of carbon-fueled power prohibitively expensive within a decade or less.

China was already outpacing the US before Donald Trump returned to office and with the US out of the green energy business completely until at least January 2029 any competition may be well and truly over by that point.

TODAY IN HISTORY

June 3, 1940: World War II’s Battle of Dunkirk ends with the last British soldiers evacuating that French city and leaving the Nazis victorious. At Winston Churchill’s order, the Royal Navy returned to Dunkirk the following day to evacuate roughly 26,000 French soldiers, so the full evacuation wasn’t completed until June 4. In all the British military (aided by dozens of small civilian vessels) evacuated 338,226 soldiers from Dunkirk, along with another roughly 192,000 evacuated from other parts of France over the ensuing three weeks. The Nazis rolled into Paris on June 14, completing their conquest of France. Britain left a considerable quantity of materiel behind but the successful rescue of most of the personnel who were trapped at Dunkirk prevented a major defeat from reaching catastrophic levels.

June 3, 1965: Gemini 4, officially the tenth crewed US spaceflight, takes off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral base (which was called “Cape Kennedy” at the time). This mission had a couple of important objectives. It was the first multi-day US space mission, with astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White spending four days in orbit. This was intended to show that human beings could survive lengthy spaceflights such as would be required for a moon mission, and to show that the US space program was catching up to the Soviet program, which had done a nearly five day mission with Vostok 5 in June 1963. Additionally, White became the first American to perform a spacewalk, again catching up to the Soviets who had done their first spacewalk on Voskhod 2 in March 1965.

INTERNATIONAL

The United Nations General Assembly elected Austria, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Trinidad and Tobago, and Zimbabwe to new two year terms on the UN Security Council on Wednesday. Next year they’ll join Bahrain, Colombia, ⁠the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Latvia, and Liberia plus the council’s five permanent members. They’ll be replacing Denmark and Greece in the “Western Europe and Other” group, Pakistan in the “Asia-Pacific” group, Panama in the “Latin America and Caribbean” group, and Somalia in the “Africa” group. Notably the German government came up short in the Western European group despite some fairly intensive campaigning. Yesterday the assembly elected Bangladeshi Foreign ​Minister Khalilur Rahman as its president for the body’s next session starting in September.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least nine people in Lebanon on Wednesday, including a Lebanese soldier, and came close to violating Donald Trump’s “partial ceasefire” (if that’s what we should call it) by striking a vehicle in the southern outskirts of Beirut. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later warned to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen media outlet that “any attack on Beirut will have grave consequences and lead to a full resumption of war.” Hezbollah for its part reportedly fired rockets at IDF personnel in northern Israel, which would also be inconsistent with Trump’s arrangement.

Later in the day Israeli and Lebanese negotiators meeting in Washington announced that they’d “agreed to the implementation of a ‌ceasefire” that appears to expand on the limited framework that Trump introduced earlier this week. It is contingent on a number of actions by Hezbollah, which of course wasn’t represented in these talks, so its future seems dubious at best. Specifically Hezbollah has to agree to “a complete cessation of fire…and the evacuation of all of its operatives ​from the South Litani Sector.” It’s unclear what, if anything, the IDF would be expected to do.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

June 2, 1098: The army of the First Crusade captures Antioch after an extended siege. The Crusaders were subsequently besieged themselves by a Muslim relief army.

June 2, 1896: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi files a British patent application for his radio telegraphy device, titled “Improvements in Transmitting Electrical impulses and Signals, and in Apparatus therefor.” When it was awarded the following year it became the first patent awarded for a communications system utilizing radio waves.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

Monday’s partial reduction in hostilities seems to have held up for at least one day, in that the Israeli military (IDF) didn’t bomb Beirut on Tuesday. It did, however, kill at least 11 people in drone strikes across southern Lebanon, so any hope that Donald Trump cursing at Benjamin Netanyahu was going to lead to an actual ceasefire seems to have been misplaced. Israeli and Lebanese negotiators began another round of talks in Washington on Tuesday but there’s little reason to think this one will be any more beneficial to the Lebanese people than the previous rounds have been.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least four people across four incidents in Gaza on Tuesday. The IDF has only commented on one of them, in which its forces shot at two people who were allegedly encroaching on the “yellow line” near Khan Younis.

OMAN

According to The Wall Street Journal, recent threats from the Trump administration to bomb and/or sanction Oman are part of a larger effort to force the country “to pick a side and cut diplomatic ties with Iran.” The administration “increasingly interprets Oman’s approach toward Tehran as hostile to America.” Interpreting neutrality or impartiality as implicit hostility is a recurring element of US foreign policy but it’s particularly doltish here, given that Oman’s relationship with Iran has provided the US with a channel for communication with Tehran. The WSJ piece notes that the Omani government’s “back channel” talks with Iran “helped Gulf states reopen flight corridors” shortly after the war started, so one need only go back about three months to find the relationship paying dividends. Nevertheless even some of those states—at least two, Saudi Arabia and the UAE—are irritated with the Omanis as well.

IRAQ

Two Iraqi militias, Asaʾib Ahl al-Haqq and the Imam Ali Brigades, announced on Tuesday that they will begin the process of turning their weapons over to state authorities. That will begin with cataloguing their fighters and arms. These moves come after new Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi called last month for the militias to place themselves under state control, and prominent religious figure Muqtada al-Sadr announced that his own Saraya al-Salam militia would do so. Zaidi is under pressure from the US government to disarm the militias in the wake of their participation in the Iran war. Two other prominent militias, Kataʾib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba, have rejected Zaidi’s pitch.

IRAN

There’s been what sounds like a substantial exchange of hostilities between the US and Iran overnight (local times) and it remains to be seen how that will affect whatever peace talks are still taking place. This story is still developing but the US military’s version of events is that its forces fired on and disabled an Iranian oil tanker that may have been trying to load oil at Kharg island, prompting Iranian forces to fire drones at several civilian vessels. The US then attacked “military ground control stations” on Iran’s Qeshm island, at which point the Iranians fired at least two ballistic missiles at Kuwait and three at Bahrain, targeting US facilities in both countries. US Central Command later reported a round of Iranian drone fire directed at Kuwait and that’s where things stood at time of writing.

Prior to the above, Iranian media reported on Tuesday that officials in Tehran are “reviewing” another “proposed agreement” on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and beginning negotiations, “but [have] not communicated with Washington for a few days.” This is interesting inasmuch as Donald Trump had insisted just the previous day that “talks are continuing, at a rapid pace” despite reports that the Iranian government had completely suspended its involvement in the negotiations. The last message the Iranians sent to the US reportedly concerned the conflict in Lebanon.

With Trump seemingly unable to make a deal over the past few days there’s been less focus on the extent to which Iranian leaders are interested in an agreement, particularly if getting one would require them to make significant concessions like committing to the elimination of their highly enriched uranium. One of the problems that seems to recur in these deliberations is the fact that the US is demanding that Iran take steps that are not easily reversible while it’s only offering concessions that are easily reversible. That plus a massive trust deficit may be coloring internal Iranian deliberations. However, with Iranian inflation reportedly hitting 77.2 percent year-on-year last month, a rate not seen since World War II, Iranian officials have an economic incentive to conclude at least a preliminary agreement.

Elsewhere, the Trump administration blacklisted Nobitex, “Iran’s largest digital assets firm” according to the AP, on Tuesday along with its chairman. The administration has accused the firm and Tehran in general of using digital currency as a means of evading US sanctions.

ASIA

MYANMAR

Foreign Policy’s Michael Haack reports on the Trump administration’s efforts to make nice with Myanmar’s military government and gain access to the country’s minerals:

In 1988, student activists in Myanmar were protesting the military-dominated government of Gen. Ne Win. At some point, a rumor took hold that the U.S. Navy would be sending a ship to support them. One protester, who decades later still preferred not to give his name, said that he chartered a boat of his own to go greet the Americans. Others in Yangon, convinced of coming U.S. support, dug bomb shelters and printed signs to welcome the American GIs. Needless to say, the U.S. military never came. The boat that many expected was likely the USS Coral, passing nearby on a routine voyage.

But although the United States never sent a battleship in support of Myanmar’s democracy, over the coming decades, U.S. policymakers emerged as consistent, if imperfect, advocates of it. Up through 2024, Republican and Democratic administrations consistently used sanctions, refugee programs, Voice of America broadcasting, and other tools to weigh in on the side of those fighting for freedom.

Now, however, much of this support has been curtailed. Instead, the Trump administration appears to be laying the groundwork to cooperate with the military regime in a—likely unsuccessful—bid for rare-earth minerals. A number of entrepreneurs have emerged in the gray space between business and diplomacy, all seeking to help broker a deal between U.S. President Donald Trump and the junta. As one of them told Foreign Policy, “This is Shark Tank.”

The chances of extracting a meaningful supply of minerals from Myanmar are slim. Many of the country’s biggest mining areas remain under rebel control and even if the military seizes them there will be major challenges both logistically and geopolitically (given China’s sway in the country). But to be fair, the administration has secured the assistance of a security contractor, a crypto guy, and Roger Stone, and if that team of luminaries can’t get it done then nobody can.

CAMBODIA

The Cambodian government is seeking “compulsory conciliation” of its dispute with neighboring Thailand over the countries’ maritime border, under the terms of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Last month the Thai government scrapped a 2001 memorandum of understanding regarding the demarcation of that border and the sharing of offshore resources, prompting this decision. It’s unclear when the UN might issue a ruling and even when it does it won’t be binding.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The Sudan Tribune is reporting that a drone strike hit a market and a hospital in Sudan’s South Darfur state on Monday, causing “multiple civilian casualties.” The attack took place in the town of Kubum, in an area where the Salamat and Beni Halba tribes have been clashing since the weekend, so it seems likely that this strike is related to that situation. There are concerns now that if the violence continues it could spill into neighboring Central Darfur state.

MALI

At least eight people were killed and 42 more wounded in Mali on Tuesday when the bus they were riding struck a landmine west of the country’s capital, Bamako. There’s no confirmation as to who laid the mine but the jihadist group Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin is active in the surrounding area.

KENYA

Two people were killed on Monday during protests outside a proposed US Ebola quarantine facility in central Kenya. It’s unclear who killed them but Kenyan police do not have a great reputation for composure in these sorts of situations. Protests continued on Tuesday while Kenyan President William Ruto defended the facility, citing Kenya’s “friendship” with the US and insisting that it would pose minimal risk in terms of spreading the disease.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

Allied Democratic Forces jihadists killed at least 16 people in the eastern Congolese city of Beni on Sunday, as France 24 reports:

On a more positive note, Congolese authorities are planning a gradual reopening of the airport in the city of Bunia to commercial traffic. As Bunia is the only airport in position to service Ebola-hit parts of Ituri province this is both good news for the humanitarian effort in response to the outbreak and for the course of the outbreak itself. In announcing the reopening, officials said that there are now indications that the outbreak is being brought under control.

Additionally, the Trump administration blacklisted the M23 militant group’s head of intelligence along with an official in Rwandan military intelligence. It cited ongoing fighting between Rwandan-backed M23 militants and the Congolese military. The administration had been trying to mediate that conflict but that effort has shifted to the back burner—or really all the way off the stove—amid the Iran war.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

Last month Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu announced that Moscow is developing a “full-fledged partnership” with Afghanistan, roughly ten months after Russia became the first country to formally recognize the Taliban-led government in Kabul. The parameters of this partnership are unclear, though the two governments did sign a military cooperation agreement last week. That deal notwithstanding, The Diplomat’s Yama Sekandar argues that Russia’s interest in Afghanistan is actually more economic than military:

The war in Ukraine has reached a difficult moment for Russia. Officials do not acknowledge the situation as unfavorable, but the battlefield record tells a different story. Russia has sustained 1.2 million casualties since the onset of the war, has begun losing some territory, and now faces a Ukrainian military capable of striking Moscow itself, more than a thousand kilometers from the front. Losses have strained the military and accelerated a labor force contraction that was already underway before the first shots were fired, pulling working-age men out of the economy at a rate the country was already poorly positioned to absorb.

The underlying problem predates the war. As of 2025, Russia’s fertility rate had fallen to a two-century low of around 1.4 births per woman, well below the replacement threshold of 2.1. Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously introduced incentives for larger families and elevated natalist rhetoric to the level of state policy, but the trend has thus far failed to reverse. Productivity has remained stagnant relative to most developed economies, leaving population as the variable Moscow has the least room to lose. Russia is also facing a severe shortage of workers. In response, Russia has increasingly turned to migrant labor, historically drawing workers from Central Asia, Africa, and more recently India, to fill shortages domestic workers can no longer fulfill.

Afghanistan, which has agreed to allow a limited number of agricultural and other professionals to work in Tatarstan and Chechnya, oversaw a major step in sending migrant labor to other parts of Russia as a result of the new agreement.

UKRAINE

Russia’s overnight bombardment of Ukraine left at least 22 people dead and “dozens” more wounded across the country. At least 16 people were killed in central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk oblast while the remaining six were killed in Kyiv. A Ukrainian drone strike killed at least one person in Russia’s Kursk oblast.

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AMERICAS

CUBA

The secondary sanctions that the Trump administration imposed on Cuba’s Grupo de Administración Empresarial SA (GAESA) last month are having a major impact on the island’s hospitality industry, according to Reuters. Travel firms like Blue Diamond Resorts of Canada are ending their relationships with GAESA-linked hotels and major shipping firms have likewise suspended their Cuban business rather than risk US penalties. The Cuban government issued a statement on Tuesday defending GAESA, a conglomerate with ties to the Cuban military, from US charges of corruption, calling it “a carefully crafted response ​of proven efficiency against the economic blockade that has historically tried to suffocate the Cuban Revolution.” GAESA controls a substantial share of the Cuban economy (40 to 70 percent in most estimates), having been formed in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union left the island in crisis.

UNITED STATES

As part of its “out of sight, out of mind” approach to environmental degradation, the Trump administration is phasing out the Ocean Observatories Initiative. Established in 2016 and involving hundreds of instruments around the world, the OOI has been providing data on the health of the world’s oceans, measuring among other things the impacts of climate change. The Trump administration is not interested in the health of the world’s oceans so it’s terminating the program to save its $48 million annual cost, or roughly 0.004 percent of Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” project.

Finally, Trump has appointed Bill Pulte to replace outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on an acting basis. Pulte has been serving, and will continue to serve, as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency so his qualifications to serve as DNI presumably speak for themselves. He is at least demonstrably loyal to Trump, which seems to be the main consideration. That may come in handy, because he’s taking office at a time when Reuters is reporting that there is considerable discord within the US intelligence community:

The CIA has stopped contributing to some intelligence assessments, including those related to the Iran war, produced by the office of the nation’s top spy as disputes over intelligence-sharing and areas of responsibility boil over, say people familiar with the matter.

The infighting between the CIA and ​the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has flared for more than a year, disrupting collaboration on national security analyses on which presidents long have relied to navigate complex foreign challenges, said a U.S. official and three people ‌with direct knowledge of the matter.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.

At the heart of the disagreements is a clash over a task force set up in April 2025 by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, the sources said.

The CIA, led by Director John Ratcliffe, contends that Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group has acted recklessly by circumventing traditional intelligence-sharing and declassification protocols, said two of the people. ODNI officials say the CIA has consistently blocked the group’s access to intelligence.

The DNI post was created after the September 11, 2001 attacks in order to reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks and turf wars that prevented US intelligence agencies from working collaboratively. Instead it’s just added another bureaucratic bottleneck and an additional combatant in the turf wars. There is no reason for the office to exist given that it’s failed to achieve the one thing it was supposed to achieve, but it is highly unlikely that it will ever go away.

June 1, 1215: After a lengthy siege during which a substantial portion of its population is believed to have starved to death and after which many more were massacred (actual figures are hard to come by), the city of Zhongdu—known today as Beijing—surrenders to Genghis Khan’s invading Mongolian army. This was the Mongols’ second siege of Zhongdu, the ostensible capital of northern China’s Jin dynasty. After the initial siege the Jin retained control of the city but moved their court to Kaifeng for security, which was perceived by the Mongols as a provocation and thereby triggered the second siege. Because the Mongols turned their attentions west shortly after capturing Zhongdu, the Jin were able to survive at Kaifeng until it (and the dynasty as a whole) fell to the Mongols in 1233.

June 1, 1916: The Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of World War I and at least by some measures the largest in history to that point, ends in what I would say (there’s still disagreement on this point) was a fairly pyrrhic German victory. The Germans sank substantially more British ships and killed substantially more British personnel than vice versa, but these were losses that the British navy could sustain more easily than the Germans. The German government was able to claim victory in the immediate aftermath of the battle, but the British fleet maintained and arguably even increased its naval superiority for the remainder of the war, while keeping Germany’s High Seas Fleet largely out of the Atlantic Ocean. Put another way, the battle was a German tactical victory but a British strategic one. Of historical note, Jutland was the last major naval battle that featured battleships as the main participants before aircraft carriers displaced them as the primary combat ship for large naval powers.

INTERNATIONAL

The AP reports on the Iran war’s impact on the global fertilizer market, which carries short term food security risks but may bring longer term benefits as farmers transition from chemical to natural fertilizers:

The Gulf region produces 30% of globally traded chemical fertilizer, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, and global prices have increased by 50%, according to the World Bank’s fertilizer price index.

“The clock is ticking very hard,” said Maximo Torero, chief economist at the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, as concerns grow about food security.

Experts say a shift away from chemical fertilizer could have wider benefits, as its production and usage create significant greenhouse gas emissions, the main driver of climate change.

Natural fertilizers, by contrast, can sequester carbon in the soil and create fewer problems like runoff that can pollute waterways.

“It’s good for the planet because you’re weaning food production off fossil fuels,” said Susan Chomba, member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, a think tank.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that both US officials and satellite imagery show that Russia resupplied its Hmeimim airbase in northwestern Syria last month, an indication that it’s holding on to that facility at least for the time being. Moscow has been negotiating with the Syrian government over Hmeimim and its naval base at Tartus, both of which it leased from the Assad government, but as far as I know there’s been no announcement from either Russian or Syrian officials regarding the status of those talks. The revelation that a Russian cargo ship brought new supplies for the facility for the first time since the Assad government fell in December 2024 points toward the Russians sticking around.

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: I have a family commitment this evening and so I need to publish today’s newsletter early and without voiceover. This is perhaps an appropriate moment to mention that the next few months are going to be somewhat haphazard as my daughter graduates from high school and heads off to college. I will try to keep the disruptions to a minimum but unavoidably there will be disruptions. Thanks for your patience.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

May 30, 1431: The 19 year old (give or take) Joan of Arc is burned at the stake for heresy. After helping shepherd Charles VII to the French throne in 1429, Joan was captured while accompanying an army sent to relieve the English-Burgundian siege of Compiègne in May 1430. The Burgundians transferred her to English custody, and despite several French attempts to rescue her she was placed on trial for heresy in January 1431. Despite a lack of evidence and amid heavy English interference in what was supposed to be a Church process, Joan was found guilty.

May 30, 1913: The Treaty of London brings the First Balkan War to an end. The victorious Balkan League and the “Great Powers” (Austria-Hungary, Britain, Germany, Italy, and Russia) dictated the terms, which gave Crete to Greece and ceded every remaining Ottoman European territory to the Balkan League, except for the European environs of Istanbul and the territory of an independent Albania whose exact borders were to be determined by the “Powers.” The treaty satisfied almost none of the parties, particularly over the issue of dividing formerly Ottoman Macedonia. An especially frustrated Bulgarian government wound up attacking Serbia and Greece on June 29, kicking off the Second Balkan War.

May 31, 1223: A Mongolian army on an expedition to circle the Caspian Sea crushes a substantially larger Kievan Rus’ force at the Battle of the Kalka River. Perhaps as much as 90 percent of the Rus’ army was wiped out, and the Mongols continued unimpeded on their way back to their homeland in eastern Asia.

May 31, 1902: The Treaty of Vereeniging brings an end to the Second Boer War. In effect the Boer states (the Transvaal and the Orange Free State) surrendered in exchange for an amnesty and a British pledge that, after a period of postwar military control, both states would be allowed to transition to the status of self-governing colonies. Presumably it will not come as a great surprise to learn that the parties agreed to put off any discussion of Black enfranchisement until after the colonies had achieved self-governing status, or in other words indefinitely. It should also not come as a surprise to learn that when they were granted self-governing status (1906 for the Transvaal and 1907 for the Orange Free State) the issue of Black enfranchisement still didn’t come up. The two colonies did agree to merge into the Union of South Africa in 1910, which gained independence (under the British Commonwealth) in 1931.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) expanded its occupation of southern Lebanon over the weekend, seizing Beaufort Castle and approaching the encirclement of the nearby city of Nabatieh. Beaufort is a Crusader-era structure but its significance for the IDF is less in its historic value than in the fact that it sits on one of the highest points in the region. The IDF previously held the site during its 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon and Israeli officials (including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) seem to be framing this as a “return” rather than a “reoccupation,” which has some troubling implications. Netanyahu also called the seizure “a dramatic stage and a dramatic shift” that could enable Israeli forces to expand their occupation more quickly.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam accused the IDF of pursuing a “scorched earth” policy, though that doesn’t seem to be upsetting him enough to do more than rhetorically complain about it. Aside from maximizing casualties—3412 dead and 10,269 wounded since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry—the Israelis are aiming to make their Lebanon operations impervious to any new US-Iran ceasefire. It is unlikely that a ceasefire could survive with the IDF parked 25-plus kilometers inside Lebanon, and even if it did the Israelis can entrench their control over an expansive swath of the country.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least two people in Gaza on Saturday, while settler mobs attacked Palestinian villages near the West Bank cities of Hebron and Nablus. An Israeli airstrike killed another two people (at least) and wounded at least 12 in Gaza on Sunday. On the subject of Gaza’s “ceasefire,” under which Israeli forces have killed at least 922 people since October, the AP spoke to a few IDF soldiers who confirmed what everybody has been seeing in plain sight:

As diplomatic efforts to strengthen the deal have stalled, three soldiers described to AP a sense of confusion in the embattled territory, with a lack of clarity on rules of engagement around the yellow line. Some commanders paid lip service to the agreement, the soldiers said, while privately voicing desire for the war in Gaza to continue. Sometimes, troops were too far away or acted too quickly to recognize who they were shooting, one soldier said — a concern echoed in comments from a whistleblower group of veterans.

The soldiers’ accounts are a rare glimpse into what’s happened in the Israeli-controlled part of Gaza since the deal went into effect seven months ago. The soldiers — reservists deployed throughout Gaza between October and January who’ve since returned — spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared being ostracized over their comments. They said they were speaking out because they were angered and saddened by what they saw.

AP has documented shootings of Palestinian civilians, including children playing, close to the yellow line. And the soldiers said it felt like the killings never stopped amid the tenuous deal.

“To call it a ceasefire is a joke,” one soldier told AP.

IRAN

Donald Trump came out of his meeting on Friday, which was supposed to lead to a final decision on the latest proposal for negotiations with Iran, and decided to complicate the process by adding new demands for Tehran. There’s been no indication as to what specifically these demands entail but generally it sounds like they’re related to Iran’s nuclear program. I’m not sure the specifics matter, because this just reinforces the notion that Trump can’t make a deal—every time the two sides allegedly get close to an accord, he decides that it’s not “tough” enough and tries to change the terms.

There is already a fundamental imbalance between the irreversible steps the US wants Iran to take (e.g., eliminating its highly enriched uranium) and the reversible steps US negotiators are offering to take in return (e.g., lifting the naval blockade). Factor in the fact that Iranian leaders lack trust in their US interlocutors, who have followed negotiations with war twice in the past two years, and the addition of Trump’s repeated rug-pulling may be enough to prevent a deal.

Meanwhile, the US military “turned aside” a Gambian-flagged vessel that allegedly tried to run its blockade to get to Iran on Friday. By “turned aside” I mean “attacked,” by firing a missile into its engine room. There’s been no word as to casualties as far as I am aware.

ASIA

ARMENIA

The Russian government recalled its ambassador from Armenia on Saturday. Moscow is aggrieved that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan keeps trying to improve Yerevan’s relationships with the US and the European Union and it is allegedly trying to sway next month’s Armenian parliamentary election in the opposition’s favor. This expression of its displeasure can be viewed in that light.

SOUTH KOREA

The US and South Korean governments are “in talks” about a recent statement by the commander of US Forces Korea, Xavier Brunson. Apparently Brunson guested on a podcast and during that appearance he referred to South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia,” specifically referring to its location just off the east coast of China. As you might expect, the Chinese government didn’t look kindly on that remark, nor did the South Korean government particularly care for their country being reduced to the status of a forward operating base in the event of World War III. Amazingly this isn’t the first time Brunson has stepped on this particular rake—last year he characterized South Korea as a “fixed aircraft carrier.” Again I don’t think South Korean officials were particularly thrilled about that, especially inasmuch as they’d like to maintain cordial relations with Beijing.

JAPAN

Japanese Defense Secretary Koizumi Shinjirō spoke at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense conference in Singapore on Sunday and rejected Chinese claims that Tokyo is adopting a “new militarism.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry referred in a statement earlier this month to Japan’s “neo-militarism,” and Beijing’s Shangri-La representatives, Meng Xiangqing, questioned Japan’s “toxic legacy of militarism” and its ability to participate in regional defense cooperation projects. The Japanese government is undoubtedly keen on expanding the country’s military footprint, hence its decision to lift its ban on arms exports last month, but Koizumi’s argument is that it’s simply defending itself against China’s military buildup.

OCEANIA

AUSTRALIA

Continuing with a theme, representatives from Australia, the UK, and the US met on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue and announced on Sunday that they’ve modified Joe Biden’s precious AUKUS arrangement. Under its new terms, the US will give Australia three nuclear-powered Virginia class attack submarines out of the US Navy’s existing fleet. Previously Australia had been due to receive two used subs and one new one. Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles claimed that the updated arrangement would be “cost-effective,” but there is a major logistical consideration as well. US shipyards can’t even meet expectations for building new vessels for the Pentagon, let alone for supplying them to other countries.

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AFRICA

The Wall Street Journal reports on continued tension over the Trump administration’s approach to African health aid:

A year after President Trump reversed decades of American policy toward poor countries and closed the U.S. Agency for International Development, some African governments are bridling at the conditions he has set for resuming funding to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Nearly two dozen sub-Saharan countries have assented to Trump’s demands and struck deals with the U.S., including a $900 million, five-year pact with the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is currently the epicenter of a deadly Ebola outbreak. The Congo agreement came a couple of months after the country sealed a minerals deal with the U.S.

But Zimbabwe, Ghana and Zambia have said no or dragged out negotiations over the Trump administration’s self-described America First foreign-assistance policies, which aim to tie health aid more directly to U.S. diplomatic and security goals.

Talks with Zambia have stalled as the nation challenged Trump’s terms for a $2 billion American aid offer, calling U.S. demands for a critical-minerals deal, preferential treatment for U.S. companies and access to private health data unacceptable.

SUDAN

An apparent Sudanese military (SAF) drone strike reportedly killed at least ten people in West Kordofan state on Saturday. According to the National Umma Party the strike hit “two civilian vehicles.” There’s been no comment from the SAF as far as I know.

SOMALIA

Supporters of the former president of Somalia’s Southwest state, Abdiaziz Laftagareen, clashed with security forces in the city of Baidoa on Saturday in an incident that left at least six people dead. Federal Somali forces seized Baidoa back in March, forcing Laftagareen’s resignation. This was two weeks after his government had cut ties with Mogadishu, citing a then-alleged federal plot to oust him—and a few days after he’d won reelection as state president. Laftagreen had been among a number of state and regional leaders who objected to a constitutional amendment that the Somali parliament adopted earlier this year to extend President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s term for at least another year. Saturday’s violence came as authorities were attempting to seat a newly elected state legislature.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

The International Atomic Energy Agency issued a statement on Saturday expressing “serious concern” about the status of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. This was in response to Russian claims that a Ukrainian drone strike had damaged the facility. The Ukrainian military denied the charge and accused its Russian counterpart of engaging in “nuclear terrorism.” Zaporizhzhia is Europe’s largest nuclear plant and any attack on that site risks catastrophe.

Elsewhere, the Ukrainian military is reportedly bolstering defenses near the Belarusian border over fears that the Russian military could once again launch an attack from Belarusian soil. It’s citing unspecified intelligence to that effect. Ukrainian officials are also alleging that Belarusian companies are supporting Russia’s arms industry.

GERMANY

The German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported on Saturday that the US military may speed up its plans to withdraw forces from Europe. The Pentagon announced earlier this month that it was pulling 5000 soldiers out of Germany “over the next six to twelve months.” While there were no specifics in the report it would seem that the timetable could be accelerated. US officials are set to announce their plans at a NATO conference next month.

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AMERICAS

COLOMBIA

Colombian voters headed to the polls for a presidential election on Sunday whose repercussions could be profound both nationally and regionally given the wide divergence in potential outcomes. Iván Cepeda, the nominee of leftist President Gustavo Petro’s Historic Pact coalition, is likely to win the first round but fall short of an outright victory according to polling. That would set up a June runoff, most likely against either far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella or not-quite-as-far-right candidate Paloma Valencia, the nominee of former President Álvaro Uribe’s Democratic Center party.

Polling favors de la Espriella joining Cepeda in the runoff, but either matchup is likely to be a close-run affair. Cepeda has said that he will continue Petro’s effort to negotiate settlements with Colombia’s myriad armed non-state groups, while the other two are pledging a return to more militarized approaches and in that sense would both mesh better with the Trump administration.

UNITED STATES

The US military killed at least three people in another alleged drug boat attack on Friday and at least three more people in another such strike on Saturday, in both cases in the eastern Pacific. As ever it offered no evidence to support its case for extrajudicially executing these people.

Finally, TomDispatch’s Nick Turse considers the Trump administration’s steady bombardment of Somalia as a microcosm of its worldwide war against civilians:

The second Bush administration conducted 11 airstrikes in Somalia, killing as many as 144 people — including possibly 55 civilians, according to the think tank New America. Obama presided over 48 strikes during his eight years in office that killed as many as 553 people. Trump’s first term saw a massive escalation in such drone strikes. Over his first four years, Trump carried out 219 attacks, a 271% increase over the 16 years of the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies. But even that spike has paled in comparison to the relentless rate of attacks during Trump’s second term in office. While Biden exceeded Obama’s total in half the time — 51 strikes in four years — Trump is already set to eclipse his own infamous first-term record in less than a year and a half. He has presided over at least 190, if not more, air strikes in Somalia.

Trump’s killing spree in Somalia is just a small part of his wider war on the world. It’s no exaggeration to say that he has the U.S. military “run[ning] around shooting” people on an epic scale. During his two terms in office, Trump has overseen armed interventions and military operations — including air strikes, commando raids, proxy conflicts, so-called 127e programs, and full-scale wars — in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, Venezuela, Yemen, and an unspecified country in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as attacks on civilians in boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean. His second term has, in fact been a furious blitz of global war-making, only half-noticed by the American news media. In March, for example, the United States made war on three continents during just three days, conducting attacks in Africa, Asia, and South America. During that span, the U.S. also struck a civilian boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Less than a year and a half into Trump’s second term, the U.S. has already killed more than 2,000 civilians from Latin America to the Middle East and Africa. “This is unprecedented in terms of the sheer number of theaters where harm to civilians has been reported within such a short space of time,” said Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen, a policy specialist with Airwars, a British-based organization that tracks civilian harm globally. She also pointed to attacks in the Caribbean Sea, the eastern Pacific Ocean, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.

May 29, 1453: The city of Constantinople falls to the besieging Ottomans, marking the end of the Byzantine Empire and, if you prefer the longer view, the Roman Empire.

May 29, 1658: At the Battle of Samugarh, not far from the Indian city of Agra, an army commanded by Mughal heir apparent Dara Shikoh is soundly defeated by forces allied with two of his brothers, Aurangzeb and Murad Baksh. The reigning emperor, Shah Jahan, was critically ill, which sparked a civil war over the succession. Dara Shikoh’s defeat was so comprehensive that he was not only removed as his father’s regent, but Aurangzeb was actually crowned the new emperor. Shah Jahan then recovered, but Aurangzeb declared that his father was incapable of ruling the empire and had him more or less placed under medical arrest. This turn of events proved fateful for the Mughal Empire. Aurangzeb took the empire to its greatest territorial extent, but he broke with his predecessors’ religious tolerance and began persecuting India’s Hindu majority. This policy shift began to lay the groundwork for the Mughal Empire’s eventual destruction. In case you’re wondering, Shah Jahan lived for around seven and a half years after his deposition, so it seems he wasn’t all that medically infirm.

May 29, 1807: Ottoman Sultan Selim III is overthrown in a coup instigated by his own Janissary forces, fearful of his plans to create a new elite military unit meant in part to supplant them.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 14 people in southern Lebanon on Friday, while its forces began to advance north of the Litani River. Israeli and Lebanese military officials were scheduled to hold talks at the Pentagon on Friday presumably to discuss the status of the “ceasefire” though even typing that word seems silly under the circumstances. It’s been 13 days since the two governments agreed to extend their “ceasefire” for 45 days, and the IDF has already returned to full-blown warfare and is now going beyond its previous maximum line of advance.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

May 28, 621: With only around 10,000 soldiers at his disposal, prince Li Shimin of the nascent Tang Dynasty defeats an army of the rival Xia regime that was at least ten times that size at the Battle of Hulao. Considered by some historians to be one of the most important battles ever fought, Hulao was the decisive engagement of the civil wars that followed the collapse of the Sui Dynasty and Li’s victory ensured that the Tang would emerge as the new ruling dynasty of China.

May 28, 1905: A Japanese fleet decisively defeats a Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima, sinking 21 Russian vessels and capturing seven more while losing only three of its own. Tsushima is noteworthy in that it was the first naval battle fought between two fleets built around modern battleships using the telegraph for communications. It’s also noteworthy for the overwhelming nature of the Japanese victory, which brought the Russo-Japanese War to an end on Japanese terms, marked the beginnings of Japan’s imperial expansion, and caused a wave of “Yellow Peril” discourse to sweep through the West.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 19 people in Lebanon in a bombardment that focused primarily on the southern city of Tyre overnight and then expanded all the way to the southern suburbs of Beirut by Thursday afternoon. This was the first IDF attack in the Beirut vicinity in about three weeks and appears to have targeted the commander of a military unit affiliated with Hezbollah and with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It’s unclear whether he was killed in the strike. Israeli and Lebanese negotiators were scheduled to meet again in Washington on Thursday but I don’t know if that meeting actually took place, and with the Israelis apparently intensifying their Lebanese operations it’s unclear what difference another meeting would make.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least ten people in one airstrike in Gaza city late on Wednesday, targeting a Hamas military official who was among the dead along with his daughter. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said publicly that he’s ordered the IDF to occupy 70 percent of Gaza, up from the ~60 percent it currently holds and well above the 53 percent that is supposed to be under Israeli control during the first phase of the “ceasefire.” Defense Minister Israel Katz, meanwhile, took to social media to reiterate that the Israeli government is committed to the “voluntary migration” (really ethnic cleansing) of Palestinians from Gaza. It’s been clear for a while that the Gaza “ceasefire” was mostly fictional, but I think it’s fair to wonder whether it’s even still that anymore.

Elsewhere, the United Nations will add “Israeli entities” to its annual list of parties accused of practicing sexual violence in conflict. In response, Israeli UN ambassador Danny Danon said on Thursday that the country will cut off contact with UN Secretary-General António Guterres and his office. Danon called the listing “outrageous.”

OMAN

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened to sanction Oman on Thursday if it enters into any sort of toll/fee relationship with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, one day after Donald Trump threatened to blow the country up for the same reason. The New York Times reported last week that Omani officials were discussing such a relationship with their Iranian counterparts but that’s as far as they seem to have gone.

As long as these threats remain rhetorical it’s been kind of funny to see Oman become Public Enemy #2 over this, given that Oman is a) a close US regional partner and b) not all that significant in the big scheme of things. I expect that, as the administration reckons with its overwhelming failure of a war, this kind of lashing out may be a somewhat regular occurrence.

IRAN

Tracking the peace talks saga is starting to feel doing a daily recap of The Young and the Restless, except possibly less meaningful. Multiple outlets reported on Thursday that the US and Iran have reached agreement on a “memorandum of understanding” instituting a 60 day ceasefire while reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting the US blockade. However, there are a couple of tiny complications: Donald Trump hasn’t agreed to it and, according to Iranian media, the actual text hasn’t even been finalized. Given those caveats it’s unclear whether the two sides are actually closer to an agreement than they were yesterday.

Reports of this non-agreement began to emerge shortly after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired a ballistic missile toward what it said was a US airbase in Kuwait, in retaliation for earlier US strikes in the vicinity of Bandar Abbas. The Iranian “attack” was obviously pro forma but it may have effectively conveyed the message that the US cannot continue to take periodic shots at Iran without the Iranians responding. That may have helped refocus the principals on concluding that MoU, though again to say they’ve agreed on anything is a big stretch at this point.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration blacklisted eight tankers that are allegedly part of the “shadow fleet” moving Iranian oil and oil products despite US sanctions. It also blacklisted 15 entities allegedly involved in the Iranian oil trade.

Amid the alleged peace talks, Capital & Empire’s Aída Chávez reported on Thursday that Israeli officials are “lobbying” the Trump administration to assassinate Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and then start bombing Iranian civilian infrastructure as had been the stated plan prior to the ceasefire. Their pitch to Donald Trump is that one more round of airstrikes will be enough to topple the Iranian government without wrecking the global oil market, an argument so obviously fallacious that it would be unlikely to work on anybody other than Trump.

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN

It’s gone overlooked partly because of the Iran war, but Pakistan’s conflict with Afghanistan hasn’t ended even if it hasn’t been as intense of late as it was last year or even a couple of months ago. Pakistan has kept the Afghan border closed, for example, which according to The New York Times is beginning to take a serious toll:

The border closure has badly hurt the Afghan economy, which relies on Pakistan as a destination for agricultural exports and as a source of imports of other food products, construction materials and medical supplies.

Afghan pharmacists say they are facing a critical shortage of medicine for diabetes and other diseases. The Taliban government has ordered domestic pharmaceutical companies to ramp up production and has sought help from Russia and India to fill the gap.

“We are mostly dependent on foreign medicines,” said Parwez Khairi, a pharmacist in Kabul. “Afghanistan is a landlocked country and has always been, and continues to be, harmed by border disputes.”

CHINA

The Diplomat’s Michael Clarke notes an important divergence Russian and Chinese readouts of the recent Xi Jinping-Vladimir Putin summit:

The [Xinhua news] report noted that both Xi and Putin called for a “more just and reasonable international order” but it did not repeat the more pointed criticisms of “hegemonism” and “unilateralism” that peppered the Kremlin’s declaration. Rather, Xinhua recorded Xi telling Putin that Russia and China as “permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and major global powers” should focus on “their respective countries’ development and revitalization” and “promote the construction of a more just and reasonable global governance system.”

In contrast to the Russian declaration, the Xinhua report noted Xi’s emphasis that Sino-Russian relations are “a strategic choice made by both sides focusing on the fundamental interests of both countries. As such, the two parties must promote both “pragmatic cooperation in economic and trade investment, energy resources, transportation, and technological innovation” and “multilateral cooperation” in such forums as the United Nations, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS to “safeguard the postwar international order and the authority of international law, unite the Global South, and lead the correct direction of global governance system reform.”

This illustrates a key distinction between Russian and Chinese revisionism. Beijing presents itself not as a revolutionary actor or agent of “upheaval” but rather as a defender of the existing, U.N.-centered international order advocating for “reform” from within.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The Sudanese military (SAF) announced on Wednesday that its forces are approaching the town of Kurmuk in southeastern Sudan’s Blue Nile state. The SAF has been on the move in Blue Nile for a few weeks now and Kurmuk, strategically situated along the Ethiopian border, is a prime target. The Rapid Support Forces and its Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North partners captured Kurmuk earlier this year and it’s allegedly been serving as a conduit for support from Ethiopia to the militants.

Foreign Policy’s Suha Musa writes that the Iran war is worsening conditions in Sudan, because it’s caused this conflict to slip even further out of any international consciousness and also because of its humanitarian impacts:

Beyond the diplomatic circus, the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz and resulting price spikes are worsening an already dire humanitarian crisis. The International Rescue Committee estimated that Sudan alone accounts for more than 10 percent of global humanitarian need, which is reflected in rising starvation and disease outbreaks in the absence of a functioning state.

The Iran war’s disruptions to supply chains have brought the global humanitarian delivery pipeline to its knees. More than $130,000 in pharmaceutical supplies bound for Sudan were stranded in Dubai in late March, while lifesaving medical shipments for more than 400,000 children were delayed. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, the costs for some relief shipments have more than doubled.

A U.N. World Food Program official warned in March that if disruptions persist through June, 45 million additional people across multiple countries could face acute hunger. In a world without the U.S. Agency for International Development, and with aid infrastructure already hollowed out, even minor delivery disruptions put countless lives at risk.

As Musa notes, even if the strait is reopened soon serious damage to Sudan’s food supply may be locked in, as high fertilizer prices will impact the country’s planting season in June.

MALI

According to World Politics Review’s Corinne Dufka, Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM) really does seem to be patterning itself after Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in an attempt to seize power in Mali:

According to people allied with JNIM who spoke with me on condition of anonymity, the group’s leadership has found inspiration in HTS’ transformation in Syria. With the support of neighboring Turkey, HTS transformed itself from a dogmatic Islamist militia into a more tolerant political-military entity during the years it functioned as the de facto government in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. It stunned the world with a 12-day lightning offensive that ended Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year rule.

Of course, as my sources are well aware, there are many differences between the two situations. For starters, JNIM lacks a powerful backer like Turkey that could provide military aid and training. However, there is some room for optimism that certain aspects of the Syria template could apply.

Much like HTS, JNIM is trying to shed the terrorist label, distance itself from al-Qaida and evolve into a religious insurgency against Mali’s junta. My sources point to JNIM’s ditching of the lethal attacks on civilian soft targets that were typical of its operations a decade ago. One villager in central Mali told me the group’s representatives are “talking much less these days about global jihad and much more about local problems.”

Following JNIM’s recent offensive, evidence has emerged that it is seeking to establish its own version of Idlib in the swaths of northern and central Mali that it effectively governs. Villagers living in JNIM-controlled areas say that, like HTS, the group has moderated some of its strictest practices to accommodate the demands of local populations, including Christians. It has also established parallel institutions to resolve local disputes over land and water, particularly between sedentary farmers and nomadic pastoralists, as well as to address banditry. By filling the vacuum created by the Malian state’s absence, the group’s attempts at governance have resonated with many villagers.

(Foreign Exchanges readers can sign up for WPR’s free newsletter here and try out an all-access subscription free for 30 days, then $35 off—$77/year—after that.)

As far as the absence of a patron is concerned, there is some possibility that Algeria could fill that role but there are a number of things to consider there. One is that Algeria is no Turkey, so the extent to which it could really support a “reformed” JNIM is unclear. The other is that while the Algerian government definitely does not get along with Mali’s junta that doesn’t necessarily mean it would favor a jihadist (or even “post-jihadist”) takeover in Bamako.

EUROPE

LATVIA

The Latvian confirmed new Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs and his cabinet on Thursday, just under two weeks after President Edgars Rinkēvičs charged him with replacing former PM Evika Siliņa. Latvia must hold a parliamentary election by October, so this new government won’t have much time to make any significant policy shifts and may serve more or less in a caretaker capacity. Notably the new coalition is not expected to alter Latvia’s policy toward Ukraine, though it will aim to stop the pattern of Ukrainian drones entering Latvia airspace since that’s what brought down Siliņa’s government.

UKRAINE

European Union foreign policy coordinator Kaja Kallas claimed on Thursday that the US, and only the US, had pulled its embassy staff from Kyiv in response to Russian threats against the Ukrainian capital earlier this week. She told reporters in Cyprus that “what we heard from Ukraine yesterday was that all the embassies stayed, except one, so that also takes courage from those embassies, but yes, all the European stayed, America left.” This drew a social media response from the US embassy, which insisted that “there are no changes to our operations and reports otherwise are false.” The Ukrainian government is supporting the US claim, and an EU transcript of Kallas’s remarks was edited to remove the “America left” comment.

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AMERICAS

BRAZIL

The Trump administration said on Thursday that it will designate two Brazilian gangs, “First Command of the Capital” and “Red Command,” as foreign terrorist organizations. This is in keeping with the administration’s general policy of mislabeling Latin American criminal networks as terrorist groups but it’s also specifically an intervention in Brazilian politics, as this designation is meant to paint the current government as weak and is something that Trump-friendly challenger Flávio Bolsonaro can use to attack incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as “soft on crime” heading into October’s presidential election.

UNITED STATES

Finally, Reuters reported on Thursday that “commercially available location data” is apparently being used to track and potentially target US soldiers in conflict zones, specifically in the Middle East. The US military’s Central Command apparently sent a letter to US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) to that effect last month. But according to Wired, this is a problem that the Pentagon and lawmakers have known about for quite some time:

For the better part of a decade, US lawmakers have heard the same alarms about the dangers of commercially available location data that the Pentagon did—from the same intelligence assessments, from witnesses, from their own colleagues. Yet comprehensive privacy legislation has repeatedly stalled in Washington, and the one narrow fix that did pass—a requirement that data shared with military contractors not be resold—left the broader industry untouched.

One of the earliest warnings came in 2016. At the Joint Special Operations Command compound at Fort Bragg, California, a government technologist briefing senior officers demonstrated how commercial location data—bought, not hacked—could track phones from Fort Bragg and MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, the home stations of America’s most elite units, through Turkey and into northern Syria, where they clustered at a covert forward operating base. The same data was available to any advertiser or foreign intelligence service.

Even as the Pentagon was warned that the location-data marketplace was placing its own people in danger, parts of the department were eager to become its customers. The Defense Intelligence Agency disclosed to Congress in 2021 that it uses commercially purchased phone location data—including on Americans—without a warrant, taking the position that none is required. Months earlier, Motherboard reported that the US military was buying location data harvested from popular consumer apps.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

May 27, 1644: A Qing army under the Shunzhi Emperor’s regent, Dorgon, along with a Ming Dynasty army under general Wu Sangui, defeats the forces of the Shun Dynasty under Emperor Li Zicheng at the Battle of Shanhai Pass. During the collapse of the Ming Dynasty, the Manchurian Qing began to threaten China’s northern borders, while rebels under Li attacked the Ming from within the empire. Wu commanded one of the gates through the Great Wall, and faced with threats from either side he opted to allow the Qing through the gate to deal with Li. Wu initially seems to have meant for the Qing to help him restore the Ming Dynasty once the rebels were dispatched, but instead Dorgon continued on to Beijing, toppled the Ming, and claimed the Mandate of Heaven for the Shunzhi Emperor.

May 27, 1942: In “Operation Anthropoid,” two Czechoslovakian soldiers successfully assassinate the head of the Reich Main Security Office and the Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, in Prague. The soldiers and their fellow conspirators had been trained and advised by operatives from Britain’s Special Operations Executive. They initially believed that their attack had failed, but Heydrich later succumbed either to his wounds or to an infection that was brought on by his wounds. By some estimates the Nazis killed roughly 5000 people during the collective punishment campaign (their idea of an “investigation”) that ensued.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

France 24 has a new report on what residents in southern Syria say is a pattern of “arbitrary detention” by Israeli military (IDF) personnel. Under the guise of targeting “suspected terrorists,” the IDF has arrested at least 197 men since it extended its occupation in southern Syria following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. It’s still holding at least 43 of those detainees. Some of those who have been released have made allegations of mistreatment (to the level of torture) by their IDF captors. Residents also say that Israeli soldiers have been mistreating them, possibly aiming to drive them from their homes.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

May 26, 1908: A British drilling operation discovers a commercially-viable oil deposit at Masjed Soleyman, in Iran’s Khuzestan province. This was the first oil find in the Middle East and obviously began the region’s transformation into the stable, economically advantaged paradise it is today. The strike was made under the terms of the “D’Arcy Concession,” a 1901 agreement between British oil baron William Knox D’Arcy and Iranian ruler Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar that gave D’Arcy exclusive rights to explore for oil in Iran in exchange for a payment of 20,000 pounds and a mere 16 percent of any future profits. Let’s just say this led to some problems down the road and leave it at that.

May 26, 1918: The short-lived Democratic Republic of Georgia declares independence from the considerably shorter-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, which in turn formed out of the collapse of the Russian Empire. Although Georgia fell to a Red Army invasion in early 1921 and became a Soviet republic, this not-quite-three year period of independence was formative in terms of the development of Georgian nationalism, and after the country regained its independence from the USSR the Georgian government established May 26 as Independence Day.

MIDDLE EAST

IRAN

I didn’t plan this, but as it happens my Memorial Day break coincided with yet another will they-won’t they negotiating cycle. The outcome is that they won’t, at least not yet. In fact, the most recent turn in this saga involved the US military attacking Iran again early Tuesday morning, specifically “missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to emplace mines” according to US Central Command. These attacks took place in and around southern Iran’s Hormozgan province, with US officials characterizing them as “self-defense strikes” though calling anything about the US military posture in the Middle East “defensive” is debatable at least. Iranian officials accused the US of violating the ceasefire, though they’ve made no move to resume hostilities as far as I can tell.

Prior to these latest US strikes there did seem to be some movement toward expanding the ceasefire and resuming peace talks. There was a flurry of diplomacy involving mediators Qatar and Pakistan over the weekend, and while the specifics are unclear (reporting has offered varying and sometimes contradictory details and at any rate the principle that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” certainly applies in this case) the basic framework would involve a full ceasefire of at least 30 (possibly at least 60) days (in Lebanon as well as Iran) along with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the lifting of the US naval blockade. The US would also allow the unfreezing of some amount of Iranian assets and/or the suspension of oil sanctions as well. The sequencing of these steps is among the details that still seem to be in flux and the really difficult issues will wait for a new round of negotiations that is supposed to begin during the 30/60 day ceasefire window.

After that aforementioned flurry of diplomacy, by Sunday night the White House was preaching patience and then it decided to bomb Iran again, so a breakthrough that may have seemed imminent on Saturday now looks like it may take days or not come at all. There has been at least one positive indication amid all the chatter, however. There have been multiple reports that Iranian negotiators have agreed in theory to giving up the country’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, one of the main sticking points in this process. The details would be negotiated during the ceasefire window, and the reason why there seems to be some cause for optimism is that Donald Trump appears to have dropped his demand that the HEU be surrendered to the United States. His latest public comment, while difficult to parse because he’s an idiot, seems to open the possibility of eliminating the HEU by transferring it to a third party or in a monitored process within Iran. Either of those would be much more palatable for the Iranians than turning it over to the US.

In other items:

• Leaving aside the specifics of any particular issue involved in the negotiations, one major obstacle to an agreement seems to be Trump’s awareness that he’s lost this war and his inability to acknowledge it. The major elements of the emerging deal appear to favor Iran and most of the movement toward compromise has come from the US. Still, Trump needs something that will allow him to claim victory and right now he seems focused on using the threat of continuing the war to force other states to join the “Abraham Accords.” On Monday he took to social media to declare that “it should be mandatory” for Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to join, apparently in thanks for the US negotiating an end to the war it started. This would also serve as Trump’s pitch to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who doesn’t want peace, to stop trying to thwart the process by escalating in Lebanon (more on this in a moment). There is no indication that any of these countries is prepared to enter the Abraham Accords at Trump’s behest.

• The Iranian government partially restored internet access on Tuesday, 88 days after throttling it in response to anti-government protests back in January. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had ordered the restoration the previous day. However, a full restoration may not be in the cards anytime soon, as Iran’s Administrative Court of Justice ordered the suspension of the “Special Headquarters for Organizing and Governing the Country’s Cyberspace” on Tuesday. Pezeshkian had established that body earlier this month to oversee internet issues including a potential lifting of the internet ban.

• The Pentagon upped its Iran war casualty figure (killed and wounded) to 423 on Tuesday, three higher than its previous update on Friday. The US military continues to offer little to no transparency about this figure, which inexplicably rose from 385 to 428 after the ceasefire went into effect and then inexplicably dropped to 413 on April 21.

LEBANON

According to Reuters, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been lamenting “that Israel has little ability to influence Donald Trump’s decision-making on Iran” amid this latest stab at a peace process. Trump, we’re told, hasn’t been consulting Netanyahu, and at one point last week even told reporters that the Israeli PM will “do whatever I want him to do” regarding the war. That would certainly mark a shift in their dynamic to date.

Netanyahu may be trying to undermine the negotiations in Lebanon. The Israeli military (IDF) carried out at least 120 airstrikes across southern and eastern Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 31 people in total after killing at least 11 in strikes on a village in eastern Lebanon the previous night. IDF ground forces are also reportedly operating north of the “yellow line” that’s marked the extent of their southern Lebanese occupation. Netanyahu had threatened to intensify operations in Lebanon on Monday, ostensibly in response to Hezbollah drone strikes and potentially including attacks on Beirut and its environs.

However, while Netanyahu has not earned the benefit of the doubt, none of the above really marks a major “escalation” over what the IDF was already doing in Lebanon and one could argue that he may be trying to hype a phony escalation to appease domestic constituencies that are frustrated about a potential US-Iran peace. He could be forced into accepting another “ceasefire” alongside the US but find some way to maintain the occupation of southern Lebanon, in which case the IDF would get to keep carrying out “defensive” operations. Trita Parsi suggests that the Iranians might respond to that type of scenario by attacking the UAE, which as he notes would risk restarting the whole war.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least seven people in Gaza on Tuesday, including at least five in one strike on the Maghazi displacement camp. According to Netanyahu one Israeli attack targeted Mohammad Odeh, who allegedly replaced Izz al-Din Haddad as commander of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades after the IDF killed the latter earlier this month. This feels like an appropriate time to reiterate that there is no “but we really wanted to kill this guy” exemption to the “ceasefire.” On the subject of “ceasefire” violations, another Forensic Architecture satellite analysis at Drop Site finds that the IDF has built some 25 kilometers of earthen walls in Gaza to contain Palestinians within the portion of the territory that is controlled by Hamas. “Much” of the new barrier apparently runs deeper into Gaza than the “yellow line,” effectively annexing territory that is not supposed to be under Israeli control according to the “ceasefire’s” terms.

Elsewhere, Middle East Eye is reporting that the US and Israeli governments are planning to strip the Jordanian-run Jerusalem Waqf (the term waqf refers to a religious endowment) of its authority over al-Aqsa Mosque and its surrounding compound, replacing it with “a new body created by the Israeli government.” That body would manage the compound as a “multi-faith” site and tourist attraction rather than a place of primarily Islamic worship. The Israeli government would also have “a major say over the appointment of imams, preachers and senior mosque officials” and “the content mentioned in Friday sermons.” This is an anonymously sourced piece so I don’t want to give it undue credence but if it’s true it would mark a massive upheaval in the status of that site with unpredictable ramifications. It’s worth noting that the Israeli government may be moving to strip the Waqf of its role in managing the Tomb of Samuel, located just north of Jerusalem in the West Bank. That could be a dress rehearsal for what it has planned for al-Aqsa.

ASIA

MYANMAR

Reuters reported on Monday that the Myanmar military has undertaken significant new offensives against rebel forces in three important border regions—in Chin state near the Indian border, in Kachin State along the Chinese border, and in Karen State on the Thai border. Last week, military commander Ye Win Oo (who recently succeeded Min Aung Hlaing when the latter made himself president), claimed the capture of a border town in Chin and an important “arterial route” in Kachin. His focus is on regaining control over key economic regions and in particular over “rare earth” deposits in Kachin.

TAIWAN

Acting US Navy Secretary Hung Cao told a Senate subcommittee hearing last week that the Trump administration is “doing a pause” on a planned $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan over concerns that the Pentagon is running out of munitions because of the Iran war. Donald Trump has been sitting on this sale for months and given the outcome of his recent summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping there’s unsurprisingly been some speculation that he’s decided to halt Taiwan arms sales as a concession to Beijing. Cao’s claim prompted an anonymous denial from the administration, under the argument that Taiwan arms sales are arranged so far in advance that they couldn’t possibly be subject to near-term supply issues. That doesn’t seem terribly convincing as denials go, but I digress.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

Rapid Support Forces drone strikes killed at least 21 people in Sudan’s North Darfur state on Sunday and Monday, according to The Sudan Tribune. The strikes hit the towns of Kornoi and Al-Tina, both of which are among a handful of population centers in that province that are still controlled by forces aligned with Sudan’s military government. There are indications that the RSF is softening those towns up ahead of a major push to secure control over the rest of North Darfur.

Elsewhere, Human Rights Watch issued a new report on Tuesday accusing the UAE government of hiring and training Colombian mercenaries who were then sent to Sudan to support the RSF. HRW alleges that the Emiratis trained the mercs at two facilities in Abu Dhabi before deploying them. One of the alleged mercs says that he was involved in training RSF recruits, “many” of them “young children,” in South Darfur state. The UAE Foreign Ministry is denying the accusation.

SENEGAL

After months of mounting tension, Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye sacked his prime minister and former political patron, Ousmane Sonko, on Friday. The two were once joined at the proverbial hip, particularly when Sonko backed Faye as his PASTEF party’s presidential candidate in the 2024 election (Sonko was legally barred from running). But they’ve fallen out over a number of policy disagreements, including their diverging positions on managing the International Monetary Fund’s austerity demands (Faye favors appeasing the IMF, Sonko did not), and Faye may have been a bit frustrated by the fact that he technically held the more powerful position but Sonko was the senior partner in their arrangement.

Faye named economist Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo, who formerly ran Senegal’s branch of the Central Bank of West African States and should be much more in tune with the IMF, as Sonko’s replacement. But the story isn’t going to end there. Senegalese parliament speaker Malick Ndiaye, also a PASTEF member, stepped down from that post on Sunday and the body promptly elected Sonko to replace him on Tuesday. Needless to say this doesn’t bode terribly well for Faye’s ability to pass legislation moving forward. It also positions Sonko as the outsider voice of opposition to what may prove to be an unpopular presidential agenda (depending on how heavily Faye leans into austerity), which could position him well for 2029.

ETHIOPIA

Foreign Affairs’ Hilary Matfess argues that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is putting the country on a path to war:

A few months after coming to power in April 2018, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed signed a peace deal to end a decades-long insurgency in the country’s Oromia region. The same summer, he struck a peace agreement with Eritrea, resolving a border dispute that since the late 1990s had produced a two-year war and several smaller-scale clashes. That effort earned Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. But his reputation as a peacemaker did not last. By 2020, the Ethiopian government was fighting a brutal war in the Tigray region; the conflict would go on for two years, killing hundreds of thousands of people and displacing more than a million Tigrayans. The 2022 Pretoria Agreement ended hostilities and aimed to secure a lasting peace through measures related to disarmament, humanitarian access, and transitional justice. Yet today, as Ethiopians prepare to go to the polls on June 1—and all but certainly deliver Abiy’s party another term in office—Tigray remains combustible, and insurgencies continue in several other regions.

Rather than bringing stability, the deals the government has brokered with various armed groups have fomented uncertainty, mistrust, and fresh violence. They have caused new factions to emerge with fresh grievances. Some of these splinter groups have objected to the terms of the peace agreements—including the prospect of having to disarm and demobilize—while others have resented the government’s halfhearted implementation of key provisions, such as power-sharing. And growing friction between Ethiopia and its neighbors has added to the volatile mix as diplomatic disputes threaten to escalate into proxy fights or even open confrontation.

Ethiopia’s security problems are solvable. Openings for regional diplomacy exist, and following through on the terms of current peace agreements could go a long way to address the grievances that are now fueling armed conflict, as well as set the groundwork for future negotiations. Yet the necessary action will require political courage and an earnest commitment by the government to reforms. If Ethiopia’s leaders instead keep the country on its current path, they run the risk of letting the security crisis simmer until tensions eventually boil over and send the country into war.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

The Russian government issued a statement on Monday announcing a plan to carry out “systematic strikes on facilities located in Kyiv that are used for the needs ​of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” and warning foreign nationals (including diplomatic and presumably military staff) to leave the city. This was one day after the Russian military heavily bombarded the Ukrainian capital in what could be viewed as a preview of coming attractions. The statement cited what it called “continuing terrorist attacks ​by the Kyiv regime” against Russian civilians as the justification for this new campaign, and specifically an apparent Ukrainian drone strike on Friday that killed at least 18 people in a dormitory in Russian-occupied Luhansk oblast.

SLOVENIA

The Slovenian parliament confirmed Janez Janša as prime minister on Friday, at the head of the right-wing coalition that he unveiled last week. Janša has an affinity for Donald Trump and during his last PM stint he worked closely with then-Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán at the European level, though of course that won’t be an option this time around. That said, his new coalition will need support from the far-right Resni.ca party, so that may steer things in a harder right direction.

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AMERICAS

BOLIVIA

Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz offered on Monday to halve his salary and the salaries of his cabinet ministers, in another attempt to appease the anti-austerity protesters who have been demonstrating and blocking roads across the country for the past several weeks. That offer does not seem to have appeased them, as the protesters in La Paz continued to clash with police while demanding Paz’s resignation. The protesters’ roadblocks are really beginning to squeeze La Paz and there are now reports of food, fuel, and medicine shortages in the city.

UNITED STATES

Finally, in US news:

• The US military struck another alleged drug trafficking boat in the eastern Pacific on Tuesday, killing at least one person and possibly leaving two survivors. The US Coast Guard has been deployed to search for them.

• Tulsi Gabbard resigned as Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence on Friday. She cited her husband’s recent cancer diagnosis as the reason for her decision, though it is also true that she’d been generally sidelined within the administration—her past statements opposing military action clashed uncomfortably with Trump’s recent warmongering—and there had been rumors about her potential firing for several weeks prior to her resignation. Former deputy DNI Aaron Lukas has replaced her on an interim basis.

• A new analysis from the pro-asylum NGO Human Rights First estimates that the Trump administration’s deportation flights emitted a whopping 370,240 tons of carbon dioxide in 2025—an 88 percent increase over similar emissions in 2024—and are on pace to emit even more carbon in 2026, making those flights an environmental as well as moral abomination. Though to be fair, for the Trump administration pumping more carbon into the atmosphere is a feature, not a bug.

• According to Foreign Policy’s Alexandra Sharp, Trump’s about-face on the subject of sending additional US forces to Poland caught European NATO members off guard. This seems about right, given that Trump himself couldn’t really explain why he decided to send those forces days after he canceled their deployment, other than to note what a nice guy Polish President Karol Nawrocki is. But the inconsistency leaves the Europeans wondering exactly what he’s doing and could work against the administration’s stated goal of forcing those countries to take on a greater share of the NATO defense burden.

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REMINDER: I’m taking the next few days off for Memorial Day here in the US. We will return to our regular schedule on Tuesday.

GiveDirectly is raising funds to help families affected by the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. If you’re able to contribute, please do so!

TODAY IN HISTORY

May 21, 878: The Aghlabid Emirate captures the Sicilian city of Syracuse after a roughly nine month siege.

May 21, 1799: Napoleon lifts his failed siege of Acre and withdraws to Egypt (and, not long after that, to France).

May 21, 2006: Montenegro holds a referendum on leaving what remains of Yugoslavia and becoming an independent state. Amid allegations of irregularities, 55.5 percent voted in favor of independence, which was just over the 55 percent needed to pass the referendum. May 21 is now annually commemorated as Independence Day in Montenegro.

MIDDLE EAST

TURKEY

A Turkish court ruled on Thursday that the opposition Republican People’s Party’s 2023 leadership election was fraudulent, stripping current party boss Özgür Özel of his position and reinstating former CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. This is the product of another lawfare campaign against the party by the Turkish government, which has already imprisoned its presidential nominee Ekrem İmamoğlu. Kılıçdaroğlu, who lost the 2023 presidential election to incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is basically controlled opposition and that is unlikely to change now that he’ll owe his reinstatement to Erdoğan. The ruling can be appealed and in the meantime Özel held a rally for party supporters in Ankara on Thursday in which he said he would “fight” Kılıçdaroğlu’s return.

LEBANON

The Trump administration blacklisted eight Lebanese nationals and Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon on Thursday, all for their alleged support for Hezbollah. Notably, this round of designations included for the first time two active Lebanese security personnel—a colonel in Lebanese military intelligence and a general in the General Directorate of General Security intelligence agency. Both are accused of funneling intelligence to Hezbollah. In Lebanon, meanwhile, the Israeli military (IDF) carried out multiple airstrikes again on Thursday, killing at least one person.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

An IDF drone strike killed a 13 year old child in northern Gaza on Thursday. He’d apparently encroached on the “yellow line” and Israeli officials alleged that he was part of a group that “may have been attempting to place an ​explosive device.” The Palestinian outlet WAFA reported that the IDF killed at least four people in Gaza on Thursday in total. Meanwhile, ABC News reports that satellite imagery suggests that the IDF might be building a new wall along the “yellow line”:

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that part of the reason that the US military is running short of air defense interceptors is that it used “far more high-end munitions defending Israel amid hostilities with Iran than Israeli forces used themselves.” The US burned through some 300 interceptors of various types protecting Israel versus around 190 interceptors deployed by the IDF. The discrepancy calls into question US resource allocation decisions (I feel comfortable assuming that it didn’t expend anywhere near that amount of ordnance defending the Gulf states, for example) and makes recent calls to stop funding Israeli air defense systems ring hollow. If the US is going to shoulder most of the burden for Israeli air defense itself, then halting that funding doesn’t really make much of a difference.

OMAN

According to The New York Times (picking up on an earlier report from Bloomberg), the Omani government may be warming to Iran’s idea of charging ships for transiting the Strait of Hormuz:

In recent days, Iran’s state-controlled foreign media arm, Press TV, has reported that Iran has created a new mechanism to control maritime traffic through a designated route and to charge fees for “specialized services.”

Two people familiar with the discussions over management of the waterway said that Iran was not planning a toll system, which would charge simply for transit. Instead, the talks with Oman have explored a proposal to charge vessels fees for services.

Oman had initially rejected a joint partnership with Iran on the strait but is now in discussion over a share of the revenues, according to two Iranian officials familiar with the talks but not authorized to speak publicly. The officials said Oman told the Iranians that it was willing to use its influence with neighbors in the Gulf, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and with the United States to push the plan, having realized the potential economic benefits of a fee system.

Conceptualizing this as a “fee” system is intended to make it justifiable under international law. But to fully pass muster the Iranians and Omanis would have to show that they’re actually providing real services to the vessels they’re charging. “We won’t shoot a missile at you” is not a legitimate service, nor is “we’ll let you know where our mines are.”

IRAN

Pakistani army chief Asim Munir headed to Iran on Thursday in another bid to get the US and Iran back to the negotiating table, after the Trump administration reportedly submitted a new proposal that Iranian media claimed had “reduced the gaps” between the two sides “to some extent.” For Munir to involve himself personally suggests that this is a serious push, but he’s made this trip to Tehran before to no effect. Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he’s prepared to wait “a few days” for Iran’s response but yet again threatened to resume the shooting war if that response comes back in the negative. How long is “a few days,” you ask? Well, The New Arab is reporting that the Saudi government has asked the US to hold off on a renewed conflict until after this year’s Hajj pilgrimage, which is scheduled to take place between May 25 and May 30. So maybe that long.

In other items:

• The disposition of Iran’s highly enriched uranium continues to be a sticking point in these negotiations. According to Reuters, Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has promulgated a “directive” that the uranium must remain in Iran. The Trump administration has been demanding that Iran give up that stockpile to the US, a demand that Trump reiterated on Thursday. This seems like more trouble than it’s worth on both sides. Khamenei reportedly believes that possession of this HEU is a hedge against future US/Israeli attack, which is demonstrably untrue. What may concern him is that the destruction to Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities have Tehran unable to produce more HEU should Khamenei decide to pursue that course of action at some point. But with Iran disavowing nuclear weapons, the only reason to have uranium enriched to the 60 percent level is to use it as leverage in a new nuclear deal—which means trading it away. On the US side, there are many other ways to neutralize this material that would be less provocative to the Iranians than just taking it from them, like transferring it to a third country or blending it down to a lower enrichment level.

• CNN reported on Thursday that US intelligence estimates that “Iran has already restarted some of its drone production during the six-week ceasefire that began in early April.” One “US official” told the outlet that “the Iranians have exceeded all timelines the [intelligence community] had for reconstitution” of its military industrial base. Support from Russia and China explains part of this rebuild but it also seems that the US military hasn’t done as much damage to Iran’s manufacturing capacity as previously thought. This is another in what’s starting to look like a small avalanche of leaks from the intelligence community picking apart claims by Trump and other administration officials (Whiskey Pete Hegseth, for example) about how thoroughly they’ve devastated Iran’s military capabilities.

ASIA

AZERBAIJAN

The Azerbaijani government is resuming rail service to and from Georgia on May 26, which believe it or not will be the first time it’s opened any of the country’s land borders since the start of the COVID pandemic. Even North Korea hasn’t maintained this level of lockdown for this long, though Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev now attributes the lockdown to national security rather than public health concerns. Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze visited Baku earlier this week and negotiated the reopening of the rail link.

MYANMAR

Myanmar’s military reportedly recaptured two significant border towns this week: Tonzang in Chin state near the Indian border and Mawtaung in the Tanintharyi region near the border with Thailand. Tonzang had been held by the Chin National Army rebel group since 2024 and Mawtaung had been controlled by the Karen National Union rebel group.

INDONESIA

West ​Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) rebels killed at least eight civilian miners in Indonesia’s Highland Papua province on Thursday, according to the Indonesian military. The TPNPB claimed responsibility for the attack but insisted that its fighters killed “military ​intelligence officers disguised as gold miners.”

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AFRICA

ETHIOPIA

Al-Monitor’s Rosaleen Carroll reports on a new round of tension in the Horn of Africa:

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nebiat Getachew said Addis Ababa accused Egypt of attempting to “obstruct” Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea.

He added that Ethiopia “will continue working to secure sea access through a peaceful and sustainable path.”

Al-Monitor has reached out to the Egyptian government for comment.

This is not the first time Ethiopia has made such an accusation, but it comes less than a week after Egypt and Eritrea — a longtime adversary of Ethiopia — signed agreements on cooperation in the Red Sea. The agreements were signed in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, in the presence of President Isaias Afwerki during a visit by Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and Transport Minister Kamel al-Wazir.

The agreements included a “cooperation agreement on maritime transport and the establishment of a shipping line linking Egyptian and Eritrean ports via the Red Sea,” Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has insisted that does not intend to fulfill his goal of acquiring a Red Sea port through use of force, so on that basis it’s not immediately apparent why a maritime cooperation agreement between Egypt and Eritrea would be an obstruction. Beneath the surface, though, the Egyptian and Eritrean governments have clearly been working to forge an ad hoc regional bloc of countries that have grievances with Ethiopia, which presumably has officials in Addis Ababa on edge.

TANZANIA

The US State Department blacklisted Faustine Jackson Mafwele, a senior assistant commissioner in the Tanzanian police force, on Thursday. He’ll be barred from entering the US. The department’s press release claims that “members of the TPF detained, tortured, and sexually assaulted Ugandan Agather Atuhaire and Kenyan Boniface Mwangi, who were in Dar es Salaam to observe the judicial trial of opposition leader Tundu Lissu” last year. It cites “credible information” that Mafwele was involved in that incident.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

The eastern DRC Ebola outbreak has reportedly spread to South Kivu province’s Kabare region. The outbreak originated in Ituri province and has now moved south through North Kivu province, with cases also reported in Uganda. Kabare is under the control of the M23 militant group, highlighting the degree to which conflict in this region has complicated efforts to contain the outbreak. The World Health Organization sounded a new warning over the outbreak on Wednesday, noting in part that it involves a relatively rare strain of the illness that was difficult to detect early and for which there is not yet a vaccine. WHO officials suspect that the scope of this outbreak is greater than health workers have been able to confirm and fear that it could last at least two months.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

A Russian bombardment killed at least two people in Ukraine’s Chernihiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts overnight, while a long-range Ukrainian drone strike killed at least two people and targeted an oil refinery in southern Russia’s Samara oblast, hundreds of kilometers from the border. Another Ukrainian drone strike reportedly hit a train in Russia’s Bryansk oblast on Thursday, killing at least three people.

Ukrainian officials are also claiming that they carried out a strike overnight on a Russian “drone pilot training camp” in Donetsk oblast and another strike (it’s unclear when) on “a Russian security service headquarters and an air defense system” in Kherson oblast. They say that they killed at least 66 people in the Donetsk strike and killed and wounded nearly 100 people in the Kherson strike. There’s been no word from the Russian military and no independent confirmation.

POLAND

Donald Trump has apparently changed his mind about sending troops to Poland. A bit over a week after the Pentagon suspended the deployment of a combat brigade to that country, part of an overall plan to downsize from four combat brigades in Europe to three, Trump announced via social media on Thursday that he will send 5000 soldiers to Poland after all. That’s actually more soldiers than the ~4000 person brigade that the US was previously sending. Trump cited his friendly relationship with Polish President Karol Nawrocki as the reason for his decision.

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AMERICAS

UNITED STATES

Finally, Jacobin’s Nandita Shivakumar and Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee make the case for international labor protection for workers employed by US tech firms:

On April 16, news broke that Meta had cut ties with its contractor in Kenya, Sama, ending a long-standing outsourcing arrangement it had for content moderation and artificial intelligence training. The decision followed nearly eighteen months of organizing and litigation by Kenyan content moderators, during which the country’s courts had begun to recognize that Meta itself — rather than only its intermediary contractors — could be held accountable for labor rights violations within its supply chain.

Rather than remaining within the jurisdiction to confront these claims, Meta withdrew from its arrangement with Sama altogether, resulting in the layoffs of more than 1,100 workers in Nairobi. Many of these workers had taken significant personal and professional risks to organize and pursue legal action, only to face the immediate consequences of corporate restructuring. The company is also reportedly lobbying to shape legislative responses in Kenya to limit similar forms of liability in the future.

The implications of this case are particularly significant in the context of AI supply chains for two reasons. First, AI systems are expanding rapidly and are increasingly being positioned as integral to economic development, technological competitiveness, and national security. Second, the workers performing this labor occupy an intensely precarious position within these supply chains. Hired through layers of subcontracting, they face psychological harm, intense production pressures, and high job insecurity, leaving them vulnerable to the kind of abrupt contractual withdrawal witnessed in Kenya.

Meta’s withdrawal from its contract with Sama is an example of a recurring dynamic: when workers in the Global South begin to challenge the organization of production, capital does not simply resist within existing frameworks but relocates or withdraws, using its cross-border mobility to evade emerging forms of accountability.

What can states and labor movements, especially in the Global South, do when the firms they confront can reorganize production across borders, circumvent jurisdictional constraints, and exercise disproportionate power within labor markets? More fundamentally, what would it mean to confront these dynamics at the scale at which capital operates rather than within the fragmented limits of individual workplaces or national jurisdictions?

May 20, 1498: Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives at the port of Calicut (modern Kozhikode), completing his expedition from Lisbon around the African coast to India. Da Gama, who was expecting to extract favorable trading concessions from the ruler of Calicut, found instead that his token gifts were too shabby to win him any goodwill and Muslim traders spread scandalous gossip about the Portuguese arrivals. He left with only a smattering of local trade goods, but needless to say the opening of the trade route had some very long-lasting repercussions.

May 20, 1927: Abdulaziz Al Saud, also known as Ibn Saud, concludes the Treaty of Jeddah with the United Kingdom. Under the terms of the treaty, the UK recognized both Ibn Saud’s independence and his sovereignty over the kingdoms of the Nejd and the Hejaz, which he merged into Saudi Arabia in 1932. The treaty effectively recognized the Saudi conquest of the Hejaz at the expense of Britain’s Hashemite clients, while reaffirming an earlier commitment that Ibn Saud had made not to attack British protectorates in the Persian Gulf.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least eight people in southern Lebanon on Wednesday according to Lebanese state media, including at least five in a single strike on the village of Doueir. Hezbollah also reported a number of clashes with the IDF overnight but details beyond that are unclear. What is clear is that Hezbollah’s drones are increasingly affecting the IDF’s ability to operate on the ground. The Israeli public broadcasting network KAN reported on Monday that drones are “limiting around 80%” of IDF operations, causing Israeli commanders to eschew most daytime operations altogether, and have “severely restricted the army's freedom of movement.” A shift within Hezbollah from a rigid, military-esque command structure to a more guerrilla method of operation is also causing problems for the IDF.

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