World roundup: June 30-July 1 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Malaysia, Mali, and elsewhere
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PROGRAMMING NOTE: I’m going to have to ask your indulgence for one more day. I am still a bit under the weather today so while I’ve been able to complete tonight’s roundup I’m going to forego our usual voiceover and hopefully get fully back into the swing of things tomorrow. As always the Substack app offers a text-to-voice feature if necessary.
TODAY IN HISTORY
June 30, 1520: During La Noche Triste (“the Night of Sorrows”), Hernán Cortés and his forces are driven out of Tenochtitlan by the Aztecs. He regrouped and returned the following year to besiege and ultimately capture the city.
June 30, 1934: On the “Night of the Long Knives,” Nazi leaders purge their party’s original paramilitary wing, the SA or Sturmabteilung, including its leader Ernst Röhm, and target party opponents like German Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen. Estimates of the death toll range from a low of 85 to a high of somewhere around 1000.
July 1, 1097: The army of the First Crusade defeats a Seljuk army at the Battle of Dorylaeum. The outnumbered Seljuks caught the vanguard of the Crusader army by surprise but were eventually worn down as the day went on and the rest of the Crusaders kept rolling in to relieve their comrades. Leading the Crusader vanguard, Bohemond of Taranto was able to hold out for several hours against a larger Turkish force in what was arguably the First Crusade’s signature moment prior to its conquest of Jerusalem. The victory cleared the Crusaders’ path to Antioch.
July 1, 1569: Polish and Lithuanian nobles agree to the “Union of Lublin,” creating the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the rule of Polish King/Lithuanian Grand Duke Sigismund II Augustus (d. 1572). In essence Lublin was a compromise between Lithuanian and Polish nobles, the former agreeing to a stronger union and the latter agreeing to increase support for the Lithuanian nobility in the Livonian War against Russia. The new commonwealth also eased concerns about Sigismund’s poor health and the fact that he had no heir apparent—the formal union ensured that the two polities would remain joined after his death and the institution of an elected monarchy solved the problem of succession. The Commonwealth survived until it was absorbed by Austria, Prussia, and Russia in three 18th century partitions.
July 1, 1968: The “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” is signed by 62 countries. Nowadays that list has grown to 191 signatories. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has prevented the spread of nuclear weapons ever since, except for all the times—India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, South Africa—it hasn’t done that.
MIDDLE EAST
TURKEY
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) announced on Tuesday that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will begin its disarmament process in a matter of days, a sentiment that two PKK “commanders” confirmed to the AFP news agency. The PKK declared its intent to disarm and dissolve back in May, following an order from founder Abdullah Öcalan earlier this year. What’s apparently coming soon is not a mass disarmament but rather a ceremony marking the start of disarmament, in which a small group of PKK fighters will symbolically lay down and possibly destroy their weapons. The event is set to take place in Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah province, the stronghold of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party that has historically friendly ties with the PKK. Details beyond that are still being worked out.
SYRIA
Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday that suspends or outright lifts most of the sanctions that the US government had imposed on Syria that would impact the current Syrian government. This fulfills, at least to the extent Trump has the authority to do so, the pledge he made during his Persian Gulf trip back in May. It should also provide a substantial boost to the Syrian economy, especially in concert with the sanctions relief Damascus has already obtained from the European Union. The Trump administration is continuing to work on a Syria-Israel normalization agreement and there had been some thought that it would leave a few sanctions in place as a final reward for completing that deal, but the administration apparently decided that carrots were preferable to sticks in this case.
Reuters has published the results of its own investigation into the March massacre of nearly 1500 Alawites (with “dozens” apparently still missing). The findings directly implicate the Syrian government in the killings:
At least a dozen factions now under the new government’s command, including foreigners, took part in the March killings, Reuters found. Nearly half of them have been under international sanctions for years for human rights abuses, including killings, kidnapping, and sexual assaults.
Syria’s government, including the Defense Ministry and president’s office, did not respond to a detailed summary of the findings of this report or related questions from Reuters about the role of government forces in the massacres.
In an interview with Reuters just days after the killings, al-Sharaa denounced the violence as a threat to his mission to unite the country. He promised to punish those responsible, including those affiliated with the government if necessary.
"We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won't accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us," he said.
Among the units Reuters found to be involved were the government's General Security Service, its main law-enforcement body back in the days when HTS ran Idlib and now part of the Interior Ministry; and ex-HTS units like the elite Unit 400 fighting force and the Othman Brigade. Also involved were Sunni militias that had just joined the government’s ranks, including the Sultan Suleiman Shah Brigade and Hamza division, which were both sanctioned by the European Union for their role in the deaths. The EU has not sanctioned the ex-HTS units. The United States hasn’t issued any sanctions over the killings.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
BREAKING: Late Tuesday Donald Trump took to social media (of course) to declare that the Israeli government “has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the 60 Day CEASEFIRE, during which time we will work with all parties to end the War.” I can’t even begin to hazard what he means by this so I’m not going to make much of it for now. Trump put the onus on Hamas to accept…whatever this is supposed to be, so from the Israeli perspective this appears to be a no lose situation—either Hamas agrees and the Israelis get to resume the genocide in two months or Hamas doesn’t agree and gets blamed for the failure to achieve a ceasefire. Anyway, please continue with what I had already written before this development.
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 102 people across Gaza on Tuesday, one day after it killed at least 95 people across the territory. It’s unsurprising given those numbers but the IDF has acknowledged “expanding” its Gaza operations of late, possibly in anticipation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the US next week. While he’s there he’s liable to get some pressure from Donald Trump to agree to a ceasefire, which may be motivating the IDF to get in as much killing as possible while it can. What sort of ceasefire he and Trump will discuss is anybody’s guess, but despite the optimistic chatter over the past few days Netanyahu has given zero indication that he’s comfortable with anything more than another temporary truce. Allegedly a new agreement would have strong language obligating Netanyahu to negotiate on a long-term ceasefire, but ultimately he can still say “no” at the end of any negotiating process.
Elsewhere:
Among the dozens of people the IDF killed on Monday, at least 39 were killed in an airstrike that hit a popular cafe in Gaza City at a time when a witness described it as full of women and children. The cafe had become a hub for people trying to get internet access and electricity to charge their phones. There’s no indication of any legitimate military target in or around the site.
A group of more than 170 humanitarian NGOs issued a joint statement on Monday calling for an end to the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” the alleged aid distribution charity that has functioned mostly as an arm of the IDF since it began operations in late May. Israeli forces have killed at least 583 Palestinians at or near GHF distribution points according to authorities in the territory, and after a Haaretz investigation into those killings last week “senior Israeli officers” are now apparently admitting that “inaccurate and uncalculated” IDF artillery fire has killed civilians near those sites. They’re claiming that said artillery fire was meant to serve as crowd control which is weak sauce even by the usual standards for IDF excuses. The US government is now as we know funding the GHF to the tune of $30 million so far, money that should probably be counted as part of Israel’s annual military aid package though of course it won’t be.
The IDF killed two more Palestinians, including a 16 year old, in separate incidents overnight in the West Bank. While it is dwarfed by the carnage in Gaza it should not go unnoticed that Israeli forces have killed more than 1000 people in the West Bank since the October 7 2023 attacks.
Later this week United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese will release a new report listing the companies that are enabling and profiting from the genocide in Gaza. According to Al Jazeera it “names 48 corporate actors” including major US tech firms Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Microsoft. The report describes the Israeli occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem as “the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech — providing significant supply and demand, little oversight, and zero accountability — while investors and private and public institutions profit freely.” It also lists the major investors in those companies, featuring asset managers BlackRock and Vanguard. Please try to contain your shock.
IRAN
Satellite imagery appears to show that the Iranian government has built a new road to its damaged and/or destroyed Fordow uranium enrichment facility and is moving the sort of heavy equipment to that site that might be used to try to determine how badly damaged it was by US and Israeli airstrikes last month. I don’t think it’s worth making much of this unless/until it becomes apparent what the Iranians have or have not found at the site, though I’m sure that some members of the the mollified-but-not-satisfied “Bomb Bomb Iran” cohort will seize on this as evidence that more bombing is required. As Sina Toossi argues at Foreign Policy, the uncertainty around how effective the Israeli/US war actually was is evidence that the war itself was pointless—it didn’t definitively affect the alleged Iranian nuclear threat and it certainly didn’t cause regime change in Tehran, so it’s 0-for-2 as stated objectives go—though for many BBI types bombing Iran is its own reward.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
Militants attacked a police station in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on Tuesday, then set two banks on fire. They killed at least one civilian, a child, and wounded nine other people. Security forces responded and engaged the attackers in a shootout in which there were additional casualties though Pakistani officials don’t seem to have gone into specifics about those. Baluch separatists were presumably responsible though no group has yet claimed credit.
THAILAND
The Thai Constitutional Court suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on Tuesday pending an investigation into her leaked phone conversation last month with Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen. Specifically the investigation is meant to determine whether she violated constitutional ethical standards in criticizing a Thai military commander during that call. With Paetongtarn’s coalition already fraying over that incident this may be the final nail in the proverbial coffin for her premiership. She’ll be replaced at least temporarily by Deputy Prime Minister/Transportation Minister Suriya Juangroongruangkit.
MALAYSIA
The New York Times reports that the Malaysian government has decided to stop accepting America’s garbage:
On Tuesday, Malaysia, which received more discarded plastic from rich nations than any other developing country last year, effectively banned all shipments of plastic waste from the United States.
That might not seem like a big deal. But the United States has increasingly relied on countries like Malaysia to deal with plastic trash. American scrap brokers sent more than 35,000 tons of plastic waste to Malaysia last year, according to trade data analyzed by the Basel Action Network, a nonprofit group that tracks plastic waste issues.
Last year, after seizing more than 100 shipping containers of hazardous materials sent from Los Angeles that had been improperly labeled as raw materials, the Malaysian environment minister, Nik Nazmi, told reporters that “we do not want Malaysia to be the world’s rubbish bin.” The country’s Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Several Asian states that used to accept Western plastic refuse have in recent years curtailed that practice, starting with China in 2018 and rippling out from there. Malaysian authorities have imposed a ban on accepting plastic waste from all countries that have not joined the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, a category that includes the United States along with East Timor, Fiji, Haiti, and South Sudan. Needless to say the other four are not major plastic waste exporters.
CHINA
The Chinese government blacklisted former Philippine Senator Francis Tolentino on Tuesday, which means he won’t be able to enter mainland China or its Hong Kong and Macau territories. He’d apparently campaigned for reelection on a hawkish platform with respect to protecting Manila’s South China Sea claims, and Beijing took offense at his rhetoric.
AFRICA
MALI
The al-Qaeda affiliated Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin group has claimed responsibility for a coordinated attack on seven military outposts in western Mali early Tuesday morning, including at least one that is troublingly close to the border with Senegal—a potential JNIM expansion target. Malian authorities are claiming that their forces “neutralized” some 80 militants but have not released their own casualty figures as yet. AFP reports that JNIM is increasingly fashioning itself as a governing authority in large parts of the Sahel, attacking government installations to disrupt security forces and then imposing itself on towns and villages through a mix of coercion (often violent) and reward (distributing food, for example, or positioning itself as the defender of communities that have been victimized by state violence).
Despite repeated setbacks on the battlefield, however, Alex Thurston argues that the juntas in charge of Mali and its Sahelian neighbors have still been able to consolidate their own political authority:
As the juntas have struggled on the battlefield, they have hollowed out their countries’ politics, subverting decades of fragile but meaningful democratic experiences. Political parties have been banned, journalists arrested, critics conscripted, and associations dissolved. There are a few niches of resistance remaining, particularly labor unions, but those have largely challenged the juntas on a sector-by-sector basis over issues connected to pay and conditions; unlike in 1991 in Mali or 2014 in Burkina Faso, broader revolutions involving multi-sector coalitions have not coalesced. In fact, although it is difficult to measure given the lack of regular and reliable polling as well as the near absence now of investigative journalism, the juntas appear to enjoy substantial popularity. Military men have made invigorating promises about restoring security, championing national sovereignty, revitalizing economies, and bringing people dignity. Even as those promises remain unfulfilled, the message is clearly thrilling to a wide domestic audience.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Al Jazeera reports that the emerging DRC-US minerals deal is reminding some observers of Africa’s colonial past:
Although Kinshasa appears to have readily offered the US access to the country’s critical minerals in exchange for security, many observers on the continent find such a deal concerning.
Congolese analyst Kambale Musavuli told Africa Now Radio that reports of the possible allocation of billions of dollars worth of minerals to the US, was the “Berlin Conference 2.0″, referring to the 19th-century meeting during which European powers divided up Africa. Musavuli also bemoaned the lack of accountability for human rights abuses.
Meanwhile, Congolese Nobel laureate Denis Mukwege called the agreement a “scandalous surrender of sovereignty” that validated foreign occupation, exploitation, and decades of impunity.
An unsettling undertone of the deal is “the spectre of resource exploitation, camouflaged as diplomatic triumph”, said political commentator Lindani Zungu, writing in an op-ed for Al Jazeera. “This emerging ‘peace for exploitation’ bargain is one that African nations, particularly the DRC, should never be forced to accept in a postcolonial world order.”
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The Ukrainian military carried out a drone strike against a Russian weapons factory on Tuesday, killing at least three people and wounding some 35 others. What makes this incident stand out is that the factory in question is located in the city of Izhevsk, some 1300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. It shows that the Ukrainians are still capable of pulling off attacks well inside Russia.
UKRAINE
In Ukraine, meanwhile, the Russian-appointed head of the “Luhansk People’s Republic” administration claimed on Tuesday that Russian forces now hold 100 percent of Luhansk oblast, which would make it the first Ukrainian province to come fully under Russian control since the 2022 invasion. There’s been no confirmation from either the Ukrainian government or the Russian military. The latter is, however, claiming the seizure of a village in central Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk oblast. That would also mark a first for the Russians, who just penetrated that province last month.
Elsewhere, POLITICO reported on Monday that the US Defense Department is halting “shipments of some air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine” over concerns about US stockpiles. This is aid that was earmarked for Ukraine by the Biden administration. The decision to freeze air defense munitions in particular is likely to sting as the Russian military has ramped up its nightly bombardments in recent weeks and Donald Trump just last week suggested that more air defense support might be forthcoming, not less.
AMERICAS
COLOMBIA
It would appear that Colombian President Gustavo Petro has finally pulled the plug on his efforts to resolve Colombia’s myriad internal armed conflicts peacefully. Colombian military commander Francisco Cubides told Reuters over the weekend that Bogotá is now “in a total military offensive to counteract those illegal armed groups and it’s up to us to keep winning territory.” That total offensive includes recruiting more soldiers—some 16,000 for starters—as well as “increases in capacity,” according to Cubides.
CUBA
Donald Trump on Monday signed a presidential memorandum reimposing something like the “maximum pressure” approach he took toward Cuba during his first term. The memo reemphasizes the US ban on tourist travel to Cuba and the US embargo, in particular barring interactions between US citizens and any entity affiliated with the Cuban military. The measure reverses a few Biden administration policies that had marginally relaxed US policy toward Havana but it’s mostly a political statement appealing to the US Cuban exile community.
CANADA
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney caved to US pressure on Sunday, announcing that his government is rescinding the digital services tax it was set to levy against US tech firms. Donald Trump called off trade negotiations with Canada on Friday over the tax, but has apparently agreed to restart them now that Carney has appropriately prostrated himself. On the plus side, now that Carney has shown Trump that he’s prepared to bend the knee I’m sure Trump will come to respect him more and not make any new demands.
UNITED STATES
Finally, in The Greatest Country In The World®:
The US Defense Department announced last week that it will stop “processing and delivering” satellite data on the extent of sea ice effective July 31. Pentagon satellites have been instrumental in supporting the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s Sea Ice Index, which in turn provides valuable data on the effects of climate change. Already I’m sure you can see why this is anathema to the Trump administration, whose decision here is part of a much larger project of combating climate change by systematically eliminating any government function that might interact with that phenomenon. After all, is the climate really changing if nobody is able to measure it? In fairness, there are other ways to track sea ice loss, but the problem is that switching from this satellite data to those other methods means that the new data won’t really be comparable to older data.
A new study in The Lancet argues that the Trump administration’s decimation of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) could contribute to the otherwise preventable deaths of some 14 million people by 2030. Researchers extrapolated that conclusion from an estimate “that USAID funding had prevented 91.8 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021.” These effects could be particularly pronounced in public health-related areas like malaria and HIV treatment. They’ll be compounded by the fact that several major European charitable donors—particularly France, Germany, and the UK—have decided to take advantage of these larger US cuts to reduce their own foreign aid outlays. Profiles in courage all.
Feel better soon Derek!
Take as many days as needed