World roundup: June 17 2025
Stories from Iran, Uganda, Brazil, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
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 Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (“Mehmed the Conqueror” if you prefer) had invaded after Vlad refused to pay proper tribute (in money and slaves) as an imperial vassal and had defeated two smaller Ottoman incursions. 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—killing Mehmed. The Ottomans did up retreating, after Vlad lined the road to Târgovişte with the impaled bodies of Ottoman soldiers and it proved too much for the army to endure. Mehmed handled his Wallachian problem in a different way, by engineering Vlad’s ouster 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 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
SYRIA
Al-Monitor’s Amberin Zaman is reporting that, according to “two officials who spoke not for attribution,” the US military is planning to reduce its presence in northeastern Syria to a single base near the town of Rmelan in Hasakah province. In a shocking coincidence that happens to be in the area where Syria’s most productive oil wells are located. Of course I’m not suggesting that the one has anything to do with the other. US forces recently quit two Syrian bases and appear to be in the process of leaving another, their timetable possibly pushed forward over concerns that those facilities might be targeted if US and Iranian forces start shooting at one another in the near future. It’s unclear how many US soldiers remain in Syria, but the goal is to bring that number down from somewhere around 2000 to fewer than 1000 when the withdrawal is completed.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 89 Palestinians in Gaza on Tuesday, including at least 70 who were gathered at another aid site in what appears to have been the deadliest day for aid seekers yet. Israeli soldiers reportedly attacked a crowd gathered in Khan Younis to await the arrival of United Nations aid trucks with a mix of gunfire, drones, and tank shelling. They wounded over 200 additional people in that incident, and many of them are in critical condition. Israeli forces have killed some 338 people at or near aid distribution sites since the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” started operating as the IDF’s targeting unit last month.
IRAN
Israel’s war on Iran continued into a fifth day on Tuesday with the main question still being whether, or perhaps more accurately when, Donald Trump will order the US military to enter the conflict directly. Trump’s warning to Iranians to “evacuate” Tehran on Monday, followed by his abrupt departure from the G7 summit in Canada (which may have been because he was bored for all anyone really knows), fueled speculation that he was about to order US airstrikes imminently.
That order had not yet come at time of writing, but Trump’s beautiful mind may have found a third way forward—instead of making a clear decision either to get involved or stay out, he seems now to be claiming ownership of the Israeli campaign as though it had been his idea all along. Trump took to social media (of course) on Tuesday to say that “we know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding”—though “we are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now”—and to let everyone know that “we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.” This repeated use of “we” suggests either that this has in fact been a joint US-Israeli effort from the start or that Trump has now decided to think of it as such, whether or not that actually comports with objective reality. Either way it seems to lower the bar for direct US engagement moving forward.
In other items:
Trump continued his posting spree with a demand for Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” which is generally not the sort of thing that people do unless they consider themselves to be direct participants in a given conflict. It also seems to rule out any sort of mutual ceasefire or even a negotiated settlement to the war, though in fairness Trump’s approach to “negotiations” with Iran has all along been to demand Tehran’s surrender rather than try to compromise, so this is not that big a shift. Nevertheless, Barak Ravid and Marc Caputo of Axios reported on Monday that the US and Iranian governments are “discussing” a possible meeting between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US envoy Steve Witkoff to explore a potential diplomatic resolution. There’s an argument to be made that the Trump administration has been using Axios as an outlet for spreading disinformation, so take this with a grain of salt.
The US military is moving additional F-16s, F-22s, and F-35s to the Middle East. Just putting that out there. They could be used to try to interdict Iranian drones and missiles, or they could be used to bomb Iran.
Iran’s strikes on Israel seemed noticeably less intense overnight Monday into Tuesday, which could mean that Iran is running out of missiles and/or missile launchers or could reflect a tactical decision to slow the rate at which the Iranians are expending munitions. Perhaps the Iranians are holding something back in case they decide to retaliate against any US airstrikes by targeting US facilities in the Middle East, as they’ve threatened to do.
The IDF, meanwhile, says it killed Ali Shadmani, the recently appointed commander of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya unified military command facility. He’d replaced Gholam Ali Rashid, whom the IDF killed in its initial attack on Friday morning.
Two vessels, at least one of them an oil tanker, collided in the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday. There were no casualties but the images of a ship on fire in that part of the world, when one avenue of escalation that is available to Iran would be blocking the strait and all of the commercial (mostly oil) traffic that passes through it, certainly caused a stir. There has apparently been a decline in the number of ships traversing the strait due to the conflict, which could have some impact on global oil prices although those have come down a fair amount from the $10+ per barrel spikes that manifested immediately after the first Israeli attack.
Continuing its important work as one of the Israeli government’s chief US stenographers, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday on the “new intelligence” that supposedly convinced Benjamin Netanyahu and company that the Iranian government had decided to go for broke and develop nuclear weapons, making (according to them) Friday’s attack a necessary act of “self-defense.” The US assessment of the same intelligence was that it showed the Iranians doing research applicable to nuclear weaponization but no more than that. Trump, in this narrative, has decided that his own intelligence agencies are full of shit and that’s why he’s now leaning heavily into the Israeli war effort. I don’t have any grand conclusion to draw here except to note that the US intelligence budget is around $100 billion per year, and if the president is going to regularly ignore the US intelligence community’s reality and substitute his own then that money could surely be put to better use.
ASIA
CHINA
Leaders of the five ex-Soviet Central Asian states signed a new treaty with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday at the close of a regional summit in Kazakhstan. The document vaguely calls for “permanent good-neighborliness and friendly cooperation” but pertains mostly to commercial relations, an area in which Xi has been trying to expand Beijing’s ties with the region while the Russian government is distracted by its war in Ukraine and somewhat hobbled by the associated Western sanctions. Xi’s outreach is also part of his effort to capitalize on the Trump administration’s determination to alienate as many countries as possible with high tariffs and general unpleasantness. He’s taking the opportunity to try to improve Beijing’s relations with other states in China’s general vicinity.
NORTH KOREA
Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu visited North Korea on Tuesday, where Kim Jong-un promised to send military engineers and de-miners to support the cleanup and recovery of Russia’s Kursk oblast. Ukraine’s assault on that province is now effectively kaput, although Ukrainian officials continue to claim that their forces haven’t withdrawn entirely. Kim sent thousands of soldiers as well as arms and ammunition to Russia to assist in the war effort, with the North Koreans reportedly taking heavy casualties in the process. He and Shoigu also apparently discussed the possibility of building a war memorial in Pyongyang.
AFRICA
WEST AFRICA
A new report authored by Olivier Walther, Steven Radil, and FX’s Alex Thurston explores the extent to which West African jihadists focus their attention on national road networks:
The results of our study show that 65% of all the attacks, explosions, and violence against civilians recorded between 2000 and 2024 were located within one kilometre of a road.
Only 4% of all events were located further than 10km from a road. This pattern was consistent across all road types but most pronounced near highways and primary roads.
We think the reason for this pattern is that there is fierce competition between state and non-state actors for access to and use of roads.
Governments need well-developed road networks for a host of reasons, including the ability to govern, enabling economic activity, and security. Roads enable military mobility and reduce potential safe havens for insurgents in remote regions.
Insurgent groups also see transport networks as prime targets. They create opportunities to blockade cities, ambush convoys, kidnap travellers, employ landmines, and destroy key infrastructure.
Our research is part of a long line of work that explored the role of infrastructure in relation to security in west Africa. Our latest research reinforces earlier findings linking the two. Transport networks have become battlegrounds for extremist groups seeking to destabilise states, isolate communities and expand their influence.
KENYA
The AP is reporting that a Kenyan police officer shot, at point-blank range, a man who appeared to be a bystander amid sometimes-violent protests in Nairobi on Tuesday. Protesters have been taking to the streets of that city and others across Kenya in recent days following the death of a prominent blogger, Albert Ojwang, while in police custody. Ojwang was the subject of a defamation complaint filed by the deputy inspector general of the Kenyan police force so his death after he’d been detained has not sat especially well with a segment of the Kenyan population. Tuesday’s shooting, which seems to have involved a street vendor who wound up in a confrontation with police for unknown reasons and who is now being treated for his wounds, may further inflame the situation. The police officer who pulled the trigger has reportedly been arrested. He joins two officers who were arrested in the Ojwang case, including the commander of the police station where the blogger died.
UGANDA
Al Jazeera considers the economic dimensions of the Ugandan military’s occupation of parts of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, including what appears to be a revival of historic patterns of gold smuggling:
Eastern DRC’s market has become a battleground of its own. A recent analysis by The East African valued regional exports to the DRC at $2.9bn over nearly three years, with Uganda commanding a 68 percent share. Kenyan financial institutions have also staked their claim, entering DRC through bank acquisitions and the market was highly profitable – until M23’s advance this year halted their expansion.
But this trade has a dark side. Over the years, analysts and UN reports have accused both Uganda and Rwanda of acting as conduits for smuggled Congolese minerals and agricultural products such as cocoa and coffee. The International Court of Justice in 2022 ordered Uganda to pay the DRC $325m in reparations for the illegal exploitation of natural resources during its military presence in eastern DRC between 1998 and 2003; Kampala has paid several installments since.
Analysts argue that mineral exploitation is visible in export data of these countries: for instance, Uganda’s gold exports reached $3bn in 2024, despite the country lacking any significant large-scale gold deposits.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
According to Reuters the Trump administration has quietly shut down “an inter-agency working group it had set up to formulate strategies for pressuring Russia into speeding up peace talks with Ukraine.” Apparently the effort “lost steam in May as it became increasingly clear to participants that U.S. President Donald Trump was not interested in adopting a more confrontational stance toward Moscow.” Trump’s decision last month to fire everyone on his National Security Council who was working on the war in Ukraine seems to have been the final indication that it was time to pull the plug. Even as his big minerals deal is starting to get off the ground, Trump seems more likely at this point to walk away from the peace process altogether than to take any action that might be viewed as anti-Russia.
UKRAINE
Russian strikes overnight killed at least 18 people across Ukraine, two in Odesa and the other 16 in Kyiv. That made it the deadliest night in the Ukrainian capital so far this year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to spin the attack to appeal to Trump, arguing that Vladimir Putin ordered such a large bombardment in the middle of the G7 leaders summit in a show of “total disrespect to the United States and other partners who have called for an end to the killing.” He’s trying, but I don’t think that’s going to be enough to convince Trump to take action.
UPDATE: The death toll in Kyiv has risen to 28, and with recovery work ongoing it may continue to rise.
AMERICAS
BRAZIL
The Brazilian government on Tuesday began a process that could do an extreme amount of damage to the Amazon:
Brazil auctioned off several land and offshore potential oil sites near the Amazon River on Tuesday as it aims to expand production in untapped regions despite protests from environmental and Indigenous groups.
The event came months before Brazil is to host the U.N.’s first climate talks held in the Amazon. The protesters outside Tuesday’s venue warned of potential risks that oil drilling poses to sensitive ecosystems and Indigenous communities in the Amazon.
A luxury Rio de Janeiro hotel hosted the auction conducted by the National Oil Agency. Most of the 172 oil blocks for sale are located in areas with no current production, such as 47 offshore locations close to the mouth of the Amazon River and two sites inland in the Amazon near Indigenous territories.
Nineteen offshore blocks were awarded to Chevron, ExxonMobil, Petrobras and CNPC. The oil companies see the area as highly promising because it shares geological characteristics with Guyana, where some of the largest offshore oil discoveries of the 21st century have been made.
This region is considered to have high potential risk due to strong currents and the proximity to the Amazon seashore.
UNITED STATES
Finally, in random US items:
If Donald Trump is leading the US into war with Iran he should know that public opinion does not seem to be on his side. A new Economist/YouGov survey finds that 60 percent of respondents oppose US involvement in the conflict, including 53 percent of people who say they voted for Trump last year.
The Trump administration has been considering a major expansion of its new travel ban involving as many as 36 additional countries (25 of them in Africa, a shocking development coming from this administration I know). It apparently sent a cable over the weekend ordering consular staff in those countries “to gauge their host countries’ willingness by Wednesday to improve their citizens’ travel documentation and take steps to address the status of their nationals who are in the United States illegally.” So in theory it could announce new travel bans as soon as Thursday. It remains a mystery to me why anyone who isn’t forced to do so would want to travel to the United States at this point anyway, but I digress.
Trump has ordered the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to resume raids on agricultural and food/hospitality firms just days after he seemingly ordered those raids to stop. Having apparently just talked to some of his pals in the hotel and/or restaurant business, Trump on Thursday posted to social media that he was preparing to implement unspecified “changes” to his immigration crackdown to “protect our Farmers,” a large portion of whose workforce is being deported. But Trump was back on social media on Sunday ordering ICE “to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” a goal that cannot be met without raiding farms, restaurants, and hotels. If nothing else at least he’s consistent.
Trump’s surprise departure from the G7 summit on Monday sparked a lot of speculation as to why he left. Most of it focused understandably on the Israel-Iran war, with French President Emmanuel Macron going so far as to claim that Trump was going back to Washington to work on a potential ceasefire. In another social media outburst on Monday night Trump said that Macron was “Wrong!” and dismissed him as “publicity seeking,” which you have to admit is an absolutely hilarious insult for Donald Trump of all people to hurl around. At any rate Trump’s departure seems to have ensured that this was a markedly ineffectual summit even by normal G7 standards. Though to be sure, even if he’d stayed Trump was demonstrably opposed to most of what the rest of The Gang wanted to do, particularly with respect to pressuring Russia, so it sounds like the failure to really achieve anything was inevitable.