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TODAY IN HISTORY
June 21, 1791: French King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette attempt to flee Paris to meet up with royalist troops at Montmédy in what’s become known as the “Flight to Varennes.” As the name suggests, they didn’t make it and were arrested in the town of Varennes-en-Argonne. The attempted escape made it clear to the French public that Louis was conspiring to end the French Revolution and caused popular sentiment to turn toward abolishing the monarchy rather than maintaining it under constitutional limitations.
June 21, 1813: A Bonapartist army under the command of then-Spanish King Joseph Bonaparte is badly defeated near the Spanish city of Vitoria by a joint British, Portuguese, and Spanish army commanded by Arthur Wellesley, Marquess (later Duke) of Wellington. Wellington outmaneuvered the Bonapartists so thoroughly that, in their retreat, Joseph’s men left behind their artillery as well as the (soon to be former) king’s considerably baggage train. While the Battle of Vitoria didn’t entirely end the Peninsular War (only Napoleon’s surrender and abdication in April 1814 did that), it did chase Joseph out of Spain. By December, the Allied army’s position was secure enough to restore—with Napoleon’s acquiescence—the previously abdicated Ferdinand VII to the Spanish throne.
June 21, 1942: Axis forces under Erwin Rommel capture the Libyan city of Tobruk. Rommel was promoted to field marshal for his trouble, but the Allies retook the city in November.
June 22, 1527: A force from the Javanese Demak Sultanate under its commander, Fatahillah, liberates the port of Sunda Kelapa from the Portuguese and renames it “Jayakarta.” I wonder whatever happened to that place.
June 22, 1593: Local Ottoman forces from the Eyalet of Bosnia are routed by a Habsburg army at the Battle of Sisak (which is located in central Croatia today). This was one of the first serious Ottoman defeats in the Balkans, and the Ottomans’ desire for revenge contributed to the 1593-1606 Long War against the Habsburgs (there are some historians who consider Sisak part of that war). That war ended indecisively, which was typical for Ottoman-Habsburg conflicts until the late 17th century.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
A suicide bomber killed at least 22 people in an Orthodox church just outside of Damascus on Sunday, according to Syrian authorities via state media. Unconfirmed witness reports suggest there may have been one or more gunmen who accompanied the bomber and fled after the explosion. There’s been no claim of responsibility but Syrian authorities are unsurprisingly pointing toward Islamic State as the culprit.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Health authorities in Gaza are saying that the Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 51 people across the territory over the weekend. A senior officer in Gaza’s civil defense corps was reportedly among the dead, and at least seven of those 51 were killed in another aid distribution center massacre on Sunday.
IRAN
It may be trite to start off this section by saying that “Seymour Hersh was right” but Seymour Hersh was in fact right: the United States bombed Iran this weekend. It turns out that Donald Trump’s “two week” timetable for deciding whether or not to take the US to war with Iran was as deceptive as pretty much everything else he and his administration have said or done regarding Iran for the past five months. The basic outline that’s being reported is that B-2 bombers, flying from bases in the US (reports of B-2s being deployed to Guam and potentially on to Diego Garcia also appear to have been misdirection) dropped several GBU-57 “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” bombs on Iran’s hardened uranium enrichment site at Fordow while US submarines launched cruise missiles against Iranian nuclear sites at Isfahan and Natanz. Both of those sites had already been damaged by Israeli attacks over the past week-plus so most attention has been focused on Fordow. We’ll come back to that. We’re apparently calling this “Operation Midnight Hammer.”
If one wanted to quibble with Hersh’s reporting they might quibble with his claim that Trump had approved “an all-out bombing campaign in Iran,” because the message out of the Trump administration following the strikes was basically “what’s done is done, let’s not dwell on it.” This manifested in several ways, some of them fairly contorted—Vice President JD Vance’s argument that the US is “not at war with Iran, we’re at war with Iran's nuclear program” probably tops that list—but Trump made the formula pretty explicit in his remarks announcing the strikes: the Iranian government can avoid the all-out bombing if it surrenders. In point of fact it really can’t avoid the bombing (we’ll come back to that too) but it may be able to return the US military to the proverbial sidelines depending on the nature and severity of its response. Still it seems pretty clear that Hersh was right and the all-out bombing is still more or less on the table. Trump’s offer seems meant to shore up his now-scrapped reputation as a “peacemaker” but should not be regarded as a legitimate attempt to deescalate.
Although the Iranians might be best advised not to respond to these strikes at all (at least not in near future, I don’t think that’s realistic. The problem they face is that they don’t really have any avenues for significant retaliation that won’t invite the “all-out bombing” that Hersh reported. They’ve threatened to attack (directly and via proxies) US forces in the Middle East, which would almost certainly trigger the all-out bombing if such attacks were carried out at any sort of scale. They could block the Strait of Hormuz and the substantial oil traffic that passes through it—all-out bombing would ensue. They could announce Iran’s withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, signaling a shift in nuclear policy, but to do so under the present circumstances would likely also invite that all-out bombing. There are degrees of retaliation, and it’s possible that if the Iranians made some sort of demonstration strike against a US facility, like they did after the US killed Qasem Soleimani in 2020, that the Trump administration would consider the matter settled. I do think part of the Iranian response to all of the events of the past several days will be to withdraw from the NPT, but after the situation has calmed down. It would be very dangerous to do so right now.
(There’s also been a lot of breathless reporting about the threat of “Iranian sleeper cells” in the United States that strikes me mostly as media outlets chasing a post-9/11 high. This sort of thing is not out of the question but there’s also a “boy who cried wolf” problem that the US government and the mainstream press have to overcome if they want to be taken seriously on this subject.)
The challenge with trying to game out what Iran’s response might be is that ultimately the Trump administration, following its predecessor’s model but also expanding well beyond anything the Biden administration ever considered doing, has ceded any control over the direction of the conflict with Iran (and really of the entire Middle East) to the Israeli government. The logic of a restrained Iranian retaliation starts to break down in a situation where it doesn’t matter what they do because the bombing campaign is likely to continue anyway. Israeli officials have already said as much, on Friday and again after the US strikes. If Iranian leaders believe the Israelis aren’t going to stop until they collapse the Iranian government—or if they’ve noticed that Trump himself is now openly musing about regime change—then why not attack US forces? Why not close the Strait of Hormuz? What would they have left to lose?
(Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did say on Sunday that Israel is “very, very close to completing” its “goals” in Iran. He’s also been claiming that Iran is very, very close to having a nuclear weapon for over 30 years now so your guess is as good as mine as far as what he might actually have meant. He suggested that the focus now is on Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, so clearly we’re at least one more target away from the Israelis declaring victory and hitting the pause button.)
What comes next may depend to a significant extent on how much damage these US strikes actually did, and in particular how much damage they did to Fordow. Far be it from me to question Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who crawled out of his bottle long enough to declare all three targeted sites “obliterated” on Sunday, but there’s really no way to know that without site assessments and it’s difficult to do that without site inspections. Satellite imagery can offer some indication but it’s imperfect, particularly when talking about a facility that’s deep underground like Fordow. Some Iranian officials have dismissed the damage as “superficial” and there’s an emerging US-Israeli narrative that the site was “damaged but not destroyed.” Of course that narrative serves Israeli interests to the extent that a failure to destroy Fordow in the first attempt might encourage Trump to order more strikes.
Ultimately I’m not sure how much it matters. Even if the facility hasn’t been destroyed it may still be unusable, particularly now that the US has set a precedent for bombing it. If the Iranians want to build a new secure uranium enrichment facility they’ll presumably do it somewhere else and try to keep it secret. They’re claiming that they’d already had personnel and material evacuated from the site because they’d assumed a US strike was coming, which would minimize any long-term impact. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has already issued a statement declaring its intention to continuing Iran’s nuclear program. This speaks to the overarching issue that you can’t bomb that program away. Yes it’s possible to set it back temporarily (how much these strikes have done so remains an open question) but preventing weaponization takes political action, not military action. In this case the military action may actually convince Iranian leaders that there is no way forward for them that doesn’t include nuclear weapons, which would mean that this attack will have raised, not lowered, the risk of Iran developing nukes. At the very least it’s hard to see how the Iranians can return to negotiations, given that Donald Trump has shown them many times over that he’s not a reliable negotiating partner and that the Israelis have told them many times over that negotiations won’t end the bombing.
ASIA
INDIA
Indian Interior Minister Amit Shah told The Times of India on Saturday that the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty “will never be restored.” The Indian government “suspended” that accord after the Kashmiri militant attack in the town of Pahalgam back in April and is reportedly advancing a number of projects that could significantly reduce downstream water levels in the Indus valley—which could have a severe effect on Pakistan, especially on its agriculture sector. The Pakistani government maintains that there is no mechanism in the treaty allowing for its unilateral suspension. On a long enough timescale this situation could certainly escalate beyond a purely diplomatic disagreement.
MYANMAR
A new report from the International Crisis Group warns of the dangers of an emerging insurgent movement among Myanmar’s Rohingya community:
Bangladeshi security agencies, which have long maintained relations with both Rohingya armed groups and the Arakan Army, have backed the “unity” campaign. While they insist that their intention is to reduce violence in the camps, they appear to be using Rohingya armed groups as a means of compelling the Arakan Army to take back refugees. Though it remains unclear whether they are providing material support to the groups, the involvement of these security bodies threatens prospects for nascent dialogue between the Bangladeshi government and the Arakan Army, which now controls all the areas from which Rohingya refugees fled in 2017.
Rohingya armed groups, meanwhile, have already started carrying out attacks on the Arakan Army in Rakhine State and are training fighters in camps along the border. Further intensification of this insurgency would cause great harm to all concerned – Rohingya civilians, the Arakan Army and Bangladesh. It would heighten the risk of further bloodshed between the Buddhist majority and Rohingya Muslim minority within Rakhine State, as well as increase the likelihood that more Rohingya will flee conflict across the border to Bangladesh. It would also make it more difficult for the Bangladeshi government to engage the Arakan Army, since the group believes that Dhaka is offering support to Rohingya armed groups. Given that the Arakan Army is now an inescapable interlocutor for any meaningful effort to repatriate the Rohingya living in Bangladesh, a breakdown in ties between it and the Bangladeshi government would represent a major setback to planning for the refugees’ return.
Rohingya armed group attacks on the Arakan Army are also likely to shape the way the Rohingya are perceived in Myanmar and undermine their campaign to gain full rights, including citizenship, in the country. The Arakan Army has emerged as one of the junta’s most formidable opponents, boosting its appeal nationwide. Opposing it would put the Rohingya on the “wrong” side of the anti-military struggle in the eyes of many across Myanmar, damaging their prospects of gaining public acceptance, increasing the threat of persecution and undermining efforts at eventual reform of the country’s discriminatory citizenship law.
CAMBODIA
The Cambodian government further escalated its dispute with Thailand on Sunday, when Prime Minister Hun Manet announced that his government is stopping all imports of fuel from its Southeast Asian neighbor. As I imagine most of you are aware, these two governments have been at odds since a border skirmish last month that killed one Cambodian soldier. The Cambodian Foreign Ministry also issued a warning for travel to Thailand. The border dispute and a related scandal has left Thailand’s ruling coalition on thin ice, though it seems that situation has stabilized for now.
AFRICA
MALI
The International Criminal Court may be taking up allegations of cannibalism involving Russian Wagner Group mercenaries in West Africa:
The International Criminal Court has been asked to review a confidential legal report arguing that the Russia-linked Wagner Group has committed war crimes by spreading images of apparent atrocities in West Africa on social media, including ones alluding to cannibalism, according to the brief seen exclusively by The Associated Press.
In the videos, men in military uniform are shown butchering corpses of what appear to be civilians with machetes, hacking out organs and posing with severed limbs. One fighter says he is about to eat someone’s liver. Another says he is trying to remove their heart.
Violence in the Sahel, an arid belt of land south of the Sahara Desert, has reached record levels as military governments battle extremist groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Turning from Western allies like the United States and France, the governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have instead embraced Russia and its mercenary fighters as partners in offensives.
Most of the videos appear to come from Mali though the piece mentions at least one filmed in Burkina Faso as well.
NIGERIA
A woman apparently linked to Boko Haram reportedly killed at least 20 members of an anti-jihadist militia in a suicide bombing in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state late Friday night. Nigerian authorities have acknowledged ten deaths so far but AFP, based on interviews with militia fighters, is reporting the higher figure, which may rise further as recovery work continues.
SOMALIA
The Ugandan military reported on Sunday that seven of its soldiers detailed to the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) had been killed in a recent battle with al-Shabab fighters. They were involved in a “three-day siege” of a town in Somalia’s Southwest state that saw the town retaken by AU forces. It’s unclear from the reporting when this siege took place. AUSSOM currently has a bit over 11,000 personnel in Somalia but has called for at least 8000 more to try to cope with jihadist violence at a time when al-Shabab appears to be enjoying something of a resurgence.
EUROPE
BELARUS
Trump administration envoy Keith Kellogg turned up in Belarus on Saturday, where he met with President Alexander Lukashenko. Following that meeting, Lukashenko’s government freed 14 political prisoners including prominent opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky. Belarusian authorities arrested Tikhanovsky back in 2020, weeks before he was scheduled to run against Lukashenko in that year’s presidential election. After his arrest his wife, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, ran instead and the disputed outcome of that election spurred mass protests against Lukashenko’s government that, among other things, undermined what had been a thawing of relations between Belarus and the West. Tikhanovskaya fled into exile in Lithuania, where her husband joined her after his release.
SPAIN
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced on Sunday that his government has struck a deal with NATO that will allow it to dodge the alliance’s proposed 5 percent of GDP defense spending threshold. This may come as news to the rest of the alliance, which collectively “signed off” on the new threshold earlier in the day with no indication of any special carve out for Spain. Indeed, the general consensus seemed to be that NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte had finally, after lengthy negotiations, gotten Sánchez to agree to the group’s 5 percent pledge, albeit after a change in language that makes the commitment a bit less firm.
Rutte and company want to have a deal in place on the 5 percent threshold before Tuesday’s leaders’ summit in order to appease Donald Trump—who, hilariously, is insisting that the US should be exempt from his own demand. Sánchez, meanwhile, could see his Socialist Party’s leftist coalition partner, Sumar, quit the government in opposition to such a major increase in defense spending (the Spanish government hasn’t even met the old 2 percent of GDP threshold, though it is expected to do so this year after hurriedly appropriating another €10 billion for its military budget). That’s why Sánchez rejected the new threshold altogether on Thursday. If Sánchez and Rutte did come to some sort of compromise whereby Spain can dodge the 5 percent rule it might have behooved them to downplay that until after the summit. It’s too late for that now, I guess.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, Spencer Ackerman considers what may now become the United States’ next great Forever War:
The nightmare is here. Twenty-four years after the Islamic Republic attempted a post-9/11 rapprochement that the Bush administration rejected, nine years after Iran fought ISIS on the ground in Iraq while the U.S. provided de facto air support, and seven years after Trump violated the nuclear accord with Iran known as the JCPOA, the War on Terror has reached perhaps its most terrifying moment yet. It has done so under the leadership of a madman who on Wednesday boasted of his unpredictability, saying with an air of self-satisfaction that "nobody knows what I'm going to do." The fate of perhaps millions of people was in the balance when he said that. The day before, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the G7 Summit in Canada that "nothing… suggests [Trump's] about to get involved in this conflict."
Time will tell whether this was deception, wishful thinking, willful blindness or intelligence failure on Starmer's part. But many people, at home and around the world, convinced themselves that Trump wasn't going to join Israel's war, as if there has been a single day since October 7 when Israel's genocide and regional aggression lacked the support of the United States, and specifically of Donald Trump. The White House's Wednesday statement that Trump would decide in two weeks was greeted with an exhale by many people, several of whom DM'd me upset or incredulous when I posted on Instagram that we had just seen last week that his timelines are ruses and formal U.S. entry into war was in the cards. To them I can only say that REIGN OF TERROR is on sale at affordable prices in multiple formats.
Not for a day in Trump's political career has he been interested in peace. People with his politics are never interested in peace. Domination is what they are interested in, particularly after they sign onto wars of aggression in Iraq that turn into fiascoes. Cultivating humiliation and fueling revenge is what they are interested in, rather than the peacebuilding efforts found in addressing the imperial and material root causes that seeded the fiascoes. Paying attention to that distinction is a good way to determine who is actually interested in peace.
Your voice sounded fine, hope you feel better.