World roundup: February 13 2025
Stories from Iran, Ukraine, Mexico, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
February 13, 1861: The city of Gaeta, in modern Italy’s Lazio region, surrenders to Piedmontese forces after a three-plus month siege. As it happens, King Francis II of the Two Sicilies had holed up in Gaeta when Naples came under threat the previous September, so the city’s surrender was also his surrender. He abdicated, and the kingdom came under the rule of Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia. A bit over a month later, on March 17, Victor Emmanuel retitled himself king of a united Italy.
February 13, 1945: The World War II Siege of Budapest ends with the Axis (German and Hungarian) defenders surrendering the city to the Soviet Red Army and allied Romanian forces. Casualties were high on both sides, but at this point in the war they were casualties the Soviets could withstand while the Nazis could not. Some 38,000 civilians are estimated to have died from combat and starvation during the nearly two month siege. On the same day, Allied forces in the west began their extended firebombing of the German city of Dresden, which lasted for three days and killed at least 25,000 people.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
At some yet to be determined point, the interim Syrian government is planning to hold a national dialogue conference that will ostensibly determine the country’s political future, including but not limited to the process of drafting a new constitution. As it stands now this conference will not include any representation of the Syrian Democratic Forces group, because the SDF has yet to reach an agreement with Syrian authorities about its own future. It’s difficult to imagine how this dialogue process will work without the involvement of a group that still controls a very large chunk of Syrian territory (the SDF claims 40 percent, which is probably an overestimate but even if it’s half of that it’s still a very large chunk of territory) and can claim to represent much of the country’s Kurdish population (though Syrian Kurds will in theory have other avenues for participating in the dialogue).
LEBANON
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who can credibly claim to speak on behalf of the political establishment, said on Thursday that he’d informed the US government of his “absolute rejection” of any further extension in the Israeli military’s (IDF) occupation of southern Lebanon. According to Berri, Israeli officials say they’re planning to pull the IDF out of most of the region by the current February 18 deadline but had requested the extension for “five points.” That’s apparently a nonstarter for Beirut, but at this point it is an open question whether the Lebanese government gets to have any say with respect to the presence of Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil. An anonymous Trump administration official sent a statement to reporters on Thursday that blamed the Lebanese army for the IDF’s withdrawal delay, contending that the Israelis want to remain in those five areas because Lebanese forces aren’t yet ready to deploy into them.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
It tentatively sounds like the Israeli government and Hamas could salvage the Gaza ceasefire agreement by Saturday. After reports of “progress” toward satisfying the objections that caused Hamas to suspend hostage releases earlier this week, the group announced on Thursday that it is “keen to implement [the agreement] and oblige the occupation to fully abide by it.” Israeli officials responded by insisting that the group release “three live hostages” on Saturday, as scheduled, lest the deal be forfeit. On the face of it, then, everybody seems to be in agreement that the deal will proceed as scheduled on Saturday and this week’s dust-up can be more or less forgotten.
Hopefully that’s what will happen, though we should note that there’s really been no firm resolution to Hamas’s main complaint, which is that the Israeli government has been holding up the influx of durable housing materials and heavy machinery into Gaza. Those items are needed to build sturdier shelter for displaced civilians and to clear rubble so that those shelters can be built (and to recover the bodies lying underneath). Shipments of those items are reportedly ready to go, but Israeli officials have still not given clearance for those shipments to enter Gaza.
IRAN
According to both The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, the US intelligence community has determined that Israel is intent on attacking Iranian nuclear sites in the near future—either sometime this year (WSJ) or sometime in first six months of this year (Post). This would be an exceedingly provocative action that would probably prompt an Iranian retaliation and very well may spur Tehran to develop the nuclear weapon this strike is intended to prevent. There is no scenario under which an airstrike can actually prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but it can change Iranian leaders’ thinking with respect to their deterrence posture. If that happens it could mean a US-Iranian war, because the US government has made preventing Iran from developing nukes a core foreign policy principle and in this scenario war might be the only option left that offers even a slim chance of achieving that goal. Which, let’s be honest, is what the Israelis really want.
Standing in the way of this operation is, for better or worse, Donald Trump. The IDF cannot carry out airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites, particularly hardened sites like the Fordow uranium enrichment facility, without US weapons, US intelligence, and US logistical support, so if the US government refuses to countenance these strikes they can’t happen. Trump, as we’ve seen, is willing to countenance just about anything—up to and including crimes against humanity—when it comes to Israel, but he may not be prepared to countenance this. That’s because he seems interested in proving that he really is President Deals by negotiating a peaceful end to the Iranian nuclear issue. But if he decides he’s tired of that policy I guess all bets are off.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
A suicide bomber killed one person (other than himself) and wounded three others on Thursday outside the Afghan Ministry of Urban Development and Housing office in Kabul. There’s been no claim of responsibility as yet but Islamic State seems the likeliest suspect.
UPDATE: IS claimed responsibility for this attack on Saturday.
INDIA
Indian and Pakistan forces fired on each other across the Line of Control separating their respective parts of Kashmir on Wednesday. At least four people were wounded, all on the Pakistani side. Indian officials are accusing Pakistani forces of firing first and there’s been no comment from the Pakistanis.
CHINA
Europe’s Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and America’s Global Energy Monitor jointly reported on Thursday that the Chinese government broke ground on new coal power plant projects last year to the tune of some 100 gigawatts. If carried to fruition those projects could be devastating to climate change amelioration efforts, even within the context of China’s world-pacing efforts to develop renewable energy. There is some question as to whether they will come to fruition—even if the construction projects are carried through to completion, the plants may not come online or may not be operated to capacity—which will depend to a significant extent on China’s power needs in the next several years.
AFRICA
ETHIOPIA
The National Election Board of Ethiopia suspended, for at least three months, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front on Thursday after concluding that it has violated the rules governing political parties. The TPLF has failed to organize an assembly of party members, elect new officers, or approve new bylaws due mostly to the fact that it’s splintered into two rival factions. The suspension may worsen that rift, which has gotten heated enough to fuel fears of a new Tigrayan conflict between those factions.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Congolese health authorities catalogued 572 reports of rape in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces during the week of January 27 to February 2, a 500 percent increase over the previous week. That week marked M23’s seizure of the city of Goma and this does not appear to be a coincidence as the perpetrators of those assaults generally seem to have been “armed men” involved in that conflict—though on which side is unclear. Even more horrifying, UNICEF says that 170 of those 572 cases involved child victims. A UNICEF spokesperson in the DRC says that “it is suspected that all parties to the conflict committed sexual violence.”
EUROPE
NATO
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first European trip has “thrown [NATO] into disarray,” as the AP put it. Not only did he make it clear that the Trump administration expects European nations to bear the cost for supporting Ukraine moving forward, his comments in speeches on Wednesday and Thursday drove home the idea that European nations should no longer rely on the United States for their own security.
The ramifications are enormous for Europe and NATO, but I’m having a hard time with European officials expressing anything like shock over this. It’s been clear since Barack Obama’s rhetorical “pivot to Asia” that US national interests are no longer oriented around Europe and that European nations would have to take greater responsibility for themselves. Anyone who paid attention to Trump’s first term should have seen his disdain for NATO and the disproportionate role that the United States plays in Europe’s security structure, which brought tensions over the US role in Europe and “burden sharing” among NATO allies to a head.
European leaders talked frequently during Trump’s first term about the need to reduce their dependence on the US. Then Joe Biden got elected in 2020 and everybody decided to treat Trump as an aberration and forget all about it. Maybe Trump’s return to office was unexpected (though it wasn’t that unexpected), but the writing has been on the wall since well before Trump took office the first time. That’s a long time to waste doing nothing about a problem everyone should have been able to see coming.
UKRAINE
The main source of panic in Europe over the past couple of days has of course been Trump’s Wednesday phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the two hatched plans to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine that may or may not involve any input from the Ukrainian government. The pushback was fairly robust on Thursday. For example, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters that Kyiv “simply will not be able to accept” any peace deal negotiated without Ukrainian involvement, while several European officials expressed similar resistance to being cut out of the loop. A number of Ukrainians also seemed fairly miffed at Trump, according to The Guardian.
The Trump administration appears to have moderated its message a bit amid the criticism. Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday of a meeting involving involving US and Russian officials that he says has been scheduled to take place on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday. He made a point of mentioning that Ukraine is “invited,” though Ukrainian officials suggested that they have no plans to participate. Trump additionally clarified that his comment the previous day about holding a summit with Putin in Saudi Arabia actually referred to another planned meeting between US and Russian officials (not him or Putin) and stressed that “Ukraine will be a part of it too.” Hegseth tempered his statement from the previous day ruling out Ukrainian accession to NATO, claiming that he was just commenting on “what’s likely” and not making any firm pronouncements. Of course, Trump later ruled out Ukraine joining NATO again, so it’s a bit of mixed messaging.
AUSTRIA
After coalition talks between the Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the People’s Party (ÖVP) collapsed on Wednesday, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen has decided to give more moderate parties another crack at forming a majority coalition.
In the immediate wake of September’s parliamentary election (which FPÖ won but fell far short of a majority) the second-place finisher, ÖVP, led negotiations on a three-way coalition with the third-place Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and fourth-place New Austria and Liberal Forum (NEOS) in hopes of blocking the formation of a government led by the far-right FPÖ. It was only after those talks broke down that Van der Bellen gave FPÖ a chance to form a government. Those three parties seem open to giving it another try, and with polling showing that FPÖ would likely win a snap election by an even bigger margin than it won September’s vote they should be pretty well incentivized to find common ground.
AMERICAS
MEXICO
Donald Trump made curtailing fentanyl trafficking the primary justification for the tariffs he imposed (then suspended) on Canadian and Mexican imports earlier this month. Which makes it somewhat ironic that Trump’s foreign aid freeze is reportedly undermining Mexican anti-drug programs:
All of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) programs in Mexico are currently halted due to the funding freeze, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters. These programs focus heavily on dismantling the fentanyl supply chain, according to State Department budget documents reviewed by Reuters. Their activities include training Mexican authorities to find and destroy clandestine fentanyl labs and to stop precursor chemicals needed to manufacture the illicit drug from entering Mexico.
In Mexico, INL also donates drug-detecting canines that helped Mexican authorities seize millions of fentanyl pills in 2023 alone, according to a March 2024 INL report.
“By pausing this assistance, the United States undercuts its own ability to manage a crisis affecting millions of Americans," said Dafna H. Rand, former director of the Office of Foreign Assistance at the State Department from 2021 to 2023. “U.S. foreign assistance programs in Mexico are countering the fentanyl supply chain by training local security services and ensuring maximum U.S.-Mexican cooperation in the fight against this deadly drug.”
The State Department and Mexico’s presidency and foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the freeze.
UNITED STATES
Finally, it had been widely speculated that Donald Trump would make good on his promised “reciprocal tariffs” on Thursday. He did not do that, exactly, but he did begin the process of imposing those measures. The Wall Street Journal explains:
President Trump ordered federal agencies on Thursday to explore how to adjust U.S. tariffs to match those of other countries, a move that threatens international rules in place for decades.
The order stops short of actually imposing the tariffs immediately, as many foreign capitals feared, and instead directs the Commerce Department and the U.S. trade representative to deliver reports on the steps to be taken to achieve reciprocal trading status. Commerce Secretary nominee Howard Lutnick said those studies should be completed by April 1.
“On trade, I have decided, for purposes of fairness, that I will charge a reciprocal tariff, meaning whatever countries charge the United States of America, we will charge them—no more, no less,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
If completed, Trump’s reciprocal tariff treatment would likely increase duties on scores of trading partners and break with decades of trade norms set up at the World Trade Organization—the global trade body that still counts the U.S. as a member, despite Trump’s attacks on the organization.
The impact of these tariffs on prices could be profound. That said, Trump’s decision to start the process of imposing these new duties without actually imposing them yet creates a bit of space for any US trading partners who would prefer to avoid the tariffs to negotiate lowering their tariffs on US products. So that could mitigate a bit of the impact to consumers.