World roundup: June 12 2025
Stories from Iran, Mali, El Salvador, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
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.”
INTERNATIONAL
The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that the total number of people “forcibly displaced” grew by around 2 million worldwide over the past year to a record 122.1 million total as of April. Troubling as that figure is there may be reason to hope that it will come down a bit in 2025, primarily because of the return of Syrians displaced by that country’s civil war. Even so, any reduction in the number of displaced will likely not be large enough to account for a steep and (of course) US-led global decline in funding for displaced persons programs. Ongoing displacement crises in Sudan, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and elsewhere will fester without adequate funding.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The Israeli military (IDF) raided the town of Beit Jinn in Syria’s Rif Dimashq province overnight, killing at least one person and abducting seven others according to the Syrian Interior Ministry—which, for whatever it’s worth, referred to the operation as a “blatant violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic.” Israeli officials say their forces arrested several Hamas members in the raid, though the person they killed may have been a civilian based on statements from his family. At any rate I feel quite certain that if the Syrian army entered Israel to arrest alleged enemies of Damascus, the Israeli government would take it all in stride and not raise a fuss.
The US military said on Thursday that it had killed a “Syria-based ISIS official” named Rakhim Boev in a recent airstrike in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province. This is presumably connected to those mystery drone strikes that took place in that province on Tuesday, though the Pentagon hasn’t yet confirmed that.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The IDF killed at least 52 people across Gaza on Thursday, at least 26 in several attacks on people gathering near—say it with me now—Gaza Humanitarian Foundation air distribution sites. Israeli forces also apparently damaged or destroyed the last remaining data cable running into Gaza, fully cutting off most communications both within the territory and between the territory and the outside world. The UN General Assembly voted on Thursday to adopt a new resolution calling for a ceasefire and humanitarian remedies in Gaza, though as with everything the UNGA does this is purely a symbolic gesture.
To probably no great surprise, Benjamin Netanyahu and his government survived a no-confidence vote in the Knesset early Thursday morning. Opposition parties had called for dissolving the legislature and going to a snap election, hoping that the ultra-orthodox parties in Netanyahu’s coalition might break with it in their anger over Netanyahu’s failure to enshrine a Haredim military service exemption into law. They did not. Apparently there is some sort of draft exemption bill now circulating, or rather “an understanding on the basis of a new draft” according to the AP, and that was enough to pacify the Haredi parties.
IRAN
The Omani government announced on Thursday that it will host a sixth round of nuclear talks between the US and Iranian governments in Muscat on Sunday. I’m assuming that’s off the table now, however, because the IDF is as I write this bombing Iran again. It’s far too early to say much about this operation but if it is as extensive as the AP is reporting—targeting nuclear sites and Iranian officials as well as military sites, and possibly involving sabotage operations on the ground by agents of Israel’s Mossad covert service—then it’s difficult to imagine that the Iranians will be willing to continue nuclear negotiations and this may finally be the event that brings Netanyahu the war with Iran that he seems to crave.
It’s also too early to say much about damage or casualties, though Iranian media is reporting that civilians were killed at least in Tehran and probably elsewhere as well (the inevitable result of strikes targeting specific individuals at their residences). Scattered reports indicate that the IDF targeted Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ headquarters in Tehran, and that strikes have killed or probably killed Iranian military chief of staff Mohammad Bagheri and IRGC commander Hossein Salami. Netanyahu characterized this strike in a Friday morning address as the first of many to come, “for as many days as it takes” to achieve whatever it is he’s trying to achieve. The Israeli government has declared a state of emergency and closed just about everything it can close (schools, nonessential businesses, etc.) in anticipation of a quick Iranian response. If, as has been reported, the Israelis are targeting Iranian ballistic missile sites, then Tehran may decide that it’s now in a “use them or lose them” situation as far as those weapons are concerned.
There’s been no real response yet from the Trump administration. Donald Trump had on Thursday reiterated publicly that he did not want the Israelis to attack Iran while nuclear talks were ongoing, though who knows whether that aligns with what he and his administration have been telling Israeli officials privately. But right up until the first explosions were reported from Tehran it seemed like the administration and the Israelis were more interested in using the threat of an attack to strong arm Iran into accepting a less favorable nuclear deal than it might otherwise have been inclined to accept. Multiple outlets had reported that the IDF was preparing an attack if the nuclear talks faltered but they’d suggested that if that attack came it would be days from now at a minimum.
US officials have disavowed any involvement in Friday morning’s attack, and while I can buy that (to a point) I have a hard time believing that the Israelis would have gone ahead with this if they hadn’t gotten at least a passive assent from Washington, even though what they’ve just done has undermined the nuclear talks and made Trump look like an irrelevant buffoon who’s just been openly defied by a US client. Iranian officials have threatened retaliation against US targets in the Middle East, which prompted the Trump administration to begin evacuating nonessential personnel and military dependents from the region earlier this week, though that also may have been a bit of bluster on Tehran’s part. While I think it’s safe to assume that the US will help defend Israel against an Iranian response Iran would be inviting a direct US attack if it were to strike American targets instead of focusing solely on Israel.
In news that now seems outdated despite being just a few hours old, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors voted to rebuke Iran on Thursday. That vote stemmed from the IAEA’s latest report into past Iranian nuclear activity, which concluded that Tehran has previously engaged in “secret” nuclear weapons-related research that it has not disclosed to the agency. The board of governors concluded that Iran’s failure to provide “full and timely cooperation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations constitute non-compliance with its obligations” under its agreements with the IAEA. Declaring Iran to be in violation of those obligations is a serious charge that could fuel efforts to reimpose UN sanctions on Tehran. The Iranian government responded defiantly, announcing that it’s planning to construct a brand new uranium enrichment facility and to take other steps to advance its enrichment program.
It’s possible those Iranian announcements prompted the Israeli government to bring its attack plans forward by a few days but that’s purely speculative. More likely the Israelis are doing exactly what they’d planned to do, preempting the next round of nuclear talks because they don’t really want a nuclear deal, they want a war. More to the point, they want to bring the US into war with Iran by making it a fait accompli. The next few hours and days will determine whether or not Donald Trump really opposed what Israel has done or if he’s willing to be played the way Netanyahu is trying to play him.
ASIA
ARMENIA
According to Reuters, residents of villages on the Armenian side of the Azerbaijan-Armenia border are reporting frequent, in some cases even nightly, gunfire coming from soldiers inside Azerbaijan. These incidents are part of what the outlet says is a surge in “reports of ceasefire violations” between the two countries (the Azerbaijanis have accused the Armenians of violations as well), who announced back in March that they’d agreed in principle on the framework of a peace treaty but don’t seem to have advanced much beyond that over the past three months. Fears are rising about the potential for new conflict, or that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev might use the threat of more conflict to extract painful concessions from the Armenian government.
CHINA
Language used by the Chinese Commerce Ministry on Thursday seemed to diverge a bit from Donald Trump’s claim that US and Chinese negotiators reached a trade agreement after two days of negotiations in London earlier this week. A ministry spokesperson referred to the London agreement as a “framework” rather than a deal, suggesting that more negotiations may be forthcoming. That aligns more closely with language used by US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who’s referred to what came out of London as a “handshake for a framework.” Trump called the deal “done” in his remarks on Wednesday, though he did note that both he and Chinese President Xi Jinping need to approve it.
AFRICA
LIBYA
The parliament based in eastern Libya has reportedly taken up a 2019 maritime boundary agreement that the rival government in western Libya reached with Turkey. The eastern parliament rejected that agreement when it was initially struck, arguing that the western Libyan government lacked the authority to make it. That it’s reviewing the deal now is an indication of improved relations between the Turkish government and the actual political authority in eastern Libya, warlord and “Libyan National Army” commander Khalifa Haftar. Ankara has been increasingly interacting with Haftar and other members of his family for a few years now, though that hasn’t done much to mend the rift between the rival Libyan governments. Analysts seem to think it’s unlikely that the eastern government will ratify the maritime deal—rather, they seem to think this is a ploy by Haftar and the eastern parliament speaker Aqila Saleh to try to weaken Turkey’s ties to the western Libyan government.
MALI
France 24 reports on the torture facilities that the now-departed Wagner Group established in Mali:
The screams no longer reached his ears, drowned out by a blaring, almost deafening sound. “It was their Russian music. They played it every time there was an interrogation,” said aid worker Wangrin [not his real name].
In front of him were two other Malian civilians, tied up and captured earlier that day. Each was brought forward, shirtless, and forced before a basin filled with water. The three guards grabbed their heads and plunged them into the water.
“They did it to me three times, until I couldn’t breathe anymore,” recounted Wangrin, who was tortured on August 5, 2024. The guards alternated waterboarding with beatings—hitting their sides and heads, sometimes with batons. “It was like they were killing dogs,” he recalled in a faint voice. “I started crying watching the beatings.”
Wangrin heard the same Russian songs for seven nights straight; a grim sign that the newly arrived prisoners at the Nampala military base in central Mali were now being tortured. Like him, several hundred Malian civilians were reportedly rounded up and secretly detained by Russian Wagner mercenaries, since late 2021.
Forbidden Stories and its partners from the Observers of France 24, Le Monde, and IStories investigated these secret detentions of civilians by Russian mercenaries in Mali. This investigation was carried out as part of the Viktoriia project, in memory of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, captured by Russia in the summer of 2023 while investigating the illegal detention of civilians in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. She was declared dead in captivity on September 19, 2024.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Ukrainian and Russian governments completed another phase of their ongoing prisoner exchange on Thursday, with each repatriating another group of seriously wounded and/or ill POWs. The two principals agreed to a large exchange of both prisoners and the remains of dead soldiers earlier this month at talks in Istanbul. They are implementing that exchange in stages.
UNITED KINGDOM
The UK and the European Union announced on Wednesday that they’ve reached a long-discussed agreement on the post-Brexit status of Gibraltar. The British exclave attached to southern Spain technically left the EU along with the rest of the UK back in 2020, despite the fact that 96 percent of its residents voted to remain in the bloc in the UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum. As with Northern Ireland there’s been an intensive back and forth since Brexit about how to manage the region’s land borders with the EU with a minimum of disruption to commerce and travel. The new deal apparently lifts all customs checks on people and goods passing through the land borders between Gibraltar and Spain, effectively returning the territory to the EU’s common market and its Schengen Area free movement zone. Checks will now be conducted at Gibraltar’s airport and seaports by UK and Spanish officials.
AMERICAS
BOLIVIA
Protests by supporters of former Bolivian President Evo Morales turned deadly this week, with at least four people—three police officers and a firefighter, according to Bolivian authorities—having been killed amid clashes between protesters and security forces. The circumstances of their deaths are not entirely clear. Morales’ supporters are protesting over his exclusion, due to term limits, from August’s presidential election, as well as over the weak Bolivian economy under current President Luis Arce. Although the Bolivian Constitution Court restored Morales ally Andrónico Rodríguez to the ballot earlier this month it reiterated its previous rulings that Morales is not eligible to run and he’s so far refused to concede on that point.
EL SALVADOR
A new ProPublica report makes shocking claims about Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s actual relationship with the criminal gangs upon which he’s allegedly been cracking down:
A long-running U.S. investigation of MS-13 has uncovered evidence at odds with Bukele’s reputation as a crime fighter. The inquiry, which began as an effort to dismantle the gang’s leadership, expanded to focus on whether the Bukele government cut a secret deal with MS-13 in the early years of his presidency.
New reporting on that investigation by ProPublica shows that senior officials in Bukele’s government repeatedly impeded the work of a U.S. task force as it pursued evidence of possible wrongdoing by the Salvadoran president and his inner circle.
Bukele’s allies secretly blocked extraditions of gang leaders whom U.S. agents viewed as potential witnesses to the negotiations and persecuted Salvadoran law enforcement officials who helped the task force, according to exclusive interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials, newly obtained internal documents and court records from both countries.
In a previously unreported development, federal agents came to suspect that Bukele and members of his inner circle had diverted U.S. aid funds to the gang as part of the alleged deal to provide it with money and power in exchange for votes and reduced homicide rates. In 2021, agents drew up a request to review U.S. bank accounts held by Salvadoran political figures to look for evidence of money laundering related to the suspected diversion of U.S. funds. The list of names assembled by the agents included Bukele, senior officials and their relatives, according to documents viewed by ProPublica.
It’s already been fairly well established that Bukele’s “crackdown” was built on a foundation of negotiations with and concessions to the gangs in return for a decrease in overt criminal activity. But this report goes well beyond that, particularly the allegation that people in his orbit have funneled US money to MS-13.
UNITED STATES
Finally, the US Environmental Protection Agency (I use that name loosely) is reportedly preparing to declare that carbon emissions from US power plants are such a minor part of overall global emissions that they should be unregulated. This is, of course, total bullshit. The US energy sector was responsible for 5 percent of all global carbon emissions from 1990 through 2022, which is a hefty amount all things considered. The Trump administration claims that eliminating the relevant regulations as well as other rules around power plant emissions could save the American public around $1 billion per year. That claim, as it turns out, is also total bullshit:
The savings for “Americans” will go entirely to power plant operators who won’t have to cut their pollution, while at the same time climate and health benefits for all Americans that are 20 times larger in dollar terms will be deleted.
“The massive cost to the public compared to the minuscule benefits is breathtaking,” said Charles Harper, power sector campaigner at green group Evergreen Action. “The costs will be borne by the American people who will breathe dirtier air and those around the world suffering from climate change. The benefits will go to a very small group of donors. Perhaps they should change the name of the agency if they are no longer about protecting the health of Americans.”
The EPA is proposing to entirely ditch all restrictions on planet-heating emissions coming from US power plants, the second largest source of carbon pollution in the country, while also weakening a separate regulation designed to limit the amount of harmful toxins, such as mercury, seeping from these power plants into Americans’ air, water and soils.