World roundup: June 19 2025
Stories from Iran, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
June 19, 1097: The First Crusade’s Siege of Nicaea ends with the Crusaders and their Byzantine allies in control of the city after the latter negotiates the surrender of its Seljuk garrison. The initial Crusader siege was unable to completely invest Nicaea because the campaign lacked any sort of navy to patrol Lake Ascania and so the city was able to keep bringing in supplies even with its land walls surrounded. Despite the successful outcome, the siege added tension to the already tense relationship between the Byzantine Empire and the Crusaders, who were cut out of the surrender discussions and felt they’d been denied their rightful chance for plunder.
June 19, 1821: An Ottoman army defeats a group of fighters from the Filiki Eteria (Society of Friends), a Greek independence movement, in battle near the town of Drăgășani (in modern Romania). This was one of the earliest battles of the Greek War of Independence, so clearly the Greeks’ fortunes picked up afterward.
INTERNATIONAL
A new study of satellite imagery has found that warming in the Arctic region is fueling the spread of peatlands, as melting permafrost opens up land and water for vegetation growth. This is an interesting side effect of climate change inasmuch as peatland is a very efficient carbon sink. The problem is that if the Arctic continues to warm those peatlands could dry out and begin emitting carbon, either slowly or—in case of wildfire—very quickly. Melting permafrost also has the unfortunate habit of releasing methane, which may cancel out the effects of the new vegetation growth.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli military killed at least 84 people across Gaza on Thursday, including at least 16 in another mass shooting near the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” distribution site in the central part of the territory. Al Jazeera’s Mat Nashed notes that Israel’s war with Iran has shifted media attention away from the Palestinians though there’s been no Israeli let up in the Occupied Territories:
Since Israel began attacking Iran on June 13, global attention on the plight of Palestinians in the occupied territory has faded from the headlines.
But Israel has continued to attack Palestinians in Gaza, while conducting deadly raids in the West Bank.
After the latest attack on Palestinians desperate for food, analysts and human rights monitors told Al Jazeera that they believe Israel is likely to commit more “massacres”, while prioritising the welfare of Israelis as the war with Iran drags on.
“Israel is using the diverted attention away from Gaza to continue to carry out atrocious crimes against starving civilians,” said Omar Rahman, an expert on Israel and Palestine for the Middle East Council on Global Affairs think tank.
“We have also seen a lot of military and settler activity in the West Bank in recent days,” he told Al Jazeera.
IRAN
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday that Donald Trump “will make [his] decision whether or not to go [to war with Iran] within the next two weeks.” That contradicts a fair amount of recent reporting, including a piece from Seymour Hersh on Thursday, suggesting that Trump’s decision was imminent or that he’d already made the decision to attack Iran. It is however somewhat in keeping with Trump’s history. When Trump is having trouble making a decision or answering a question he has a habit of defaulting to “I’ll let you know in two weeks,” probably because that timeframe is short enough to make it seem like he’s engaged but long enough for him to feel that the whole thing might blow over before he actually has to respond. That said, given that he’s demonstrably lied with respect to Iran over and over again for the past several weeks I don’t think anyone should take this “two weeks” dismissal at face value. The airstrikes could still be days if not hours away.
Trump expressly denied a report from The Wall Street Journal, later echoed by CBS News, that he’d “approved of attack plans for Iran.” But I don’t think this contradicts his “two week” statement, since all those reports were saying is that Trump had approved a plan of attack if he decides to attack at all. Still the administration is claiming that “all options are on the table,” presumably including a limited strike on one or a few Iranian targets (the Fordow uranium enrichment facility, for example) and a broader/more open-ended operation.
Elsewhere:
The US military appears to have moved all of its aircraft at Qatar’s Al Udeid Airbase off of the tarmac and out of sight. It’s unclear whether they’ve been transferred to other facilities in the region or simply moved into hangars, but either way it suggests that the Pentagon is worried that those aircraft might come under attack—presumably in retaliation for a US strike on Iran.
I noted yesterday a report from Axios that Trump’s hesitation to take action is rooted in part in uncertainty as to whether the US military’s GBU-57 “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” can actually destroy Fordow. That’s the one target that the US would absolutely need to destroy to be able to claim any sort of success. Apparently the debate over how to strike Fordow is still raging within the administration, with one estimate concluding that destroying it would ultimately require the use of a “tactical” nuclear weapon. That scenario is supposedly not under consideration, though Trump once allegedly asked about the feasibility of nuking a hurricane so I don’t think anything can be ruled out entirely. The international repercussions of the US using a nuclear weapon could be massive, including the possibility of opening the door for other nuclear-armed states to try to nuke their own problems away.
Speaking of nuclear matters, the IDF struck Iran’s Khondab Heavy Water Research Reactor, a site previously known as the Arak reactor, overnight Wednesday into Thursday. The facility has not come online and apparently contained no nuclear material, but the strike damaged its “heavy water” (deuterium oxide) manufacturing facility. Khondab is a theoretical proliferation concern inasmuch as “heavy water” reactors can produce plutonium that, if reprocessed, can be used in nuclear weapons. Plutonium reprocessing can be easier to conceal than uranium enrichment, though the Iranian government has long pledged not to build a reprocessing facility and in the 2015 nuclear deal agreed to redesign this reactor so that it would not produce meaningful amounts of plutonium. The IDF may also have struck Iran’s civilian nuclear power complex at Bushehr, though after claiming such a strike earlier in the day it later called that claim a “mistake” and refused to comment further.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz argued on Thursday that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “can no longer be allowed to exist.” He said this after an Iranian missile strike heavily damaged the Soroka Medical Center in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. Dozens of people were wounded in that incident though none seriously as far as I know. The Iranians claimed that the strike hit a nearby military and intelligence facility and that the hospital was coincidentally damaged in the “blast wave.” Any military attack that hits a medical facility is certainly a grave thing—unless of course that medical facility is in Gaza and has a cartoon Hamas base underneath. Then it’s OK.
The IDF and Israel’s embassy in the US claimed on Thursday that the Iranians had “fired a missile that contained cluster submunitions at a densely populated civilian area in Israel.” There’s no confirmation of this but regardless there are no reports of casualties. Cluster bombs, which can scatter widely and may pose longer term risks if any of their bomblets do not explode on impact, are widely considered indiscriminate and unlawful when used against civilian populated areas—unless of course the IDF uses them in southern Lebanon. Then it’s OK.
Diplomatic efforts are continuing. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is supposed to travel to Turkey over the weekend to attend a meeting of Organization of Islamic Cooperation foreign ministers. Needless to say there’s a good chance he’ll be speaking with any OIC attendee who might be able to get a message to Trump—Saudi FM Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, etc.—to ask them to press for a ceasefire. Before that he’s supposed to meet on Friday with the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and the UK (the “E3”), possibly to discuss the parameters of a hypothetical nuclear deal though it’s not like Trump is actually going to listen to anyone from any of those governments. And Reuters is reporting that Araghchi has spoken with US envoy Steve Witkoff “several times” since the initial Israeli attack last week offering to resume nuclear talks if the Israeli strikes stop. Those conversations may be helping to delay Trump’s decision to order US strikes.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
The New York Times reports that the Pakistan government has adopted US-style drone warfare for dealing with insurgents, with predictable results:
As the country’s internal security deteriorates amid rising Islamist militancy and a bloody separatist insurgency, Pakistani officials have increasingly turned to drones to monitor and strike militants, especially those operating in remote areas near Afghanistan.
The Pakistani government has not officially acknowledged the role of drones in its counterinsurgency playbook, in part because the issue is politically sensitive.
For years, the U.S. government conducted drone strikes inside Pakistan that targeted Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban and affiliated groups but also killed significant numbers of civilians. While Pakistan heavily criticized the Americans over the attacks, it has now adopted their tactic.
And as with the U.S. strikes, civilian deaths have been repeatedly reported during Pakistan’s current campaign. Although Pakistani security officials have privately insisted that drone operations have become significantly more effective and precise, the collateral damage reported in some attacks risks radicalizing more Pakistanis against the government.
THAILAND
Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s government appears to be hanging by a thread following the withdrawal of the Bhumjaithai Party from her coalition on Wednesday. On Thursday, Paetongtarn apologized for the incident at the center of the crisis, a leaked phone call she held with Cambodian Senate president and former PM Hun Sen in which she’s heard criticizing the powerful Thai military. She promised to “be more cautious with my negotiating approach” moving forward. If any other coalition member decides to follow Bhumjaithai out the door Paetongtarn’s coalition will collapse.
AFRICA
NIGER
An apparent jihadist attack left at least 34 soldiers dead and 14 wounded in southwestern Niger’s Tillabéri region on Thursday. The Nigerien Defense Ministry claimed that its forces killed “dozens of terrorists” after the attackers rolled into the town of Bani-Bangou, which is close to the Malian border.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
World Politics Review is not especially optimistic about the new Rwanda-DRC peace agreement actually leading to peace:
While there are reasons to be optimistic about the provisional agreement announced yesterday, a healthy dose of caution is also needed here. The latest talks build off negotiations conducted last year under Angolan mediation, and twice during that process experts from Congo and Rwanda reached an agreement only to see their home governments refuse to endorse it. So while both countries said they will sign this latest deal next week, nothing is official until they do so.
Nor will the official signing, if it happens, mean the violence in eastern Congo will come to an end. The decades-long conflict involves a wide range of armed groups with various competing interests, many of which are unrelated to the bilateral tensions between Congo and Rwanda. And while disarming M23 would go a long way toward stemming the violence, it is not clear that Rwanda has enough operational command over the group to do so. Meanwhile, the Congolese state has relied on the help of multiple paramilitary groups, and if the historical precedent from other conflicts is any indication, they may simply evolve into criminal armed groups or even insurgencies in their own right, rather than disarm and reintegrate civil society.
EUROPE
NATO
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s goal of getting alliance members on board with Donald Trump’s demand that they spend 5 percent of their respective GDPs on military-related items took a major blow on Thursday, when Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez rejected that target as “unreasonable” and “counterproductive.” He’s calling for a “more flexible formula” that would make the 5 percent threshold optional or, failing that, for the right to opt out of the plan. The Spanish government currently spends about 1.3 percent of its GDP on defense, well below even the current NATO benchmark of 2 percent—though he’s hoping to hit that mark by the end of 2026. NATO’s annual leaders’ summit is next week and Rutte’s main concern seems to be keeping Trump happy, but if he can’t show Trump that the rest of the alliance is at least vaguely on board with the new spending target then that task will probably prove difficult.
FINLAND
The Finnish parliament voted on Thursday to withdraw from the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, also known as the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo declared his intention to exit that treaty earlier this year in response to a perceived Russian threat, joining the governments of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland—all fellow NATO members sharing borders with Russia—in having either already voted to quit the treaty or planning to do so.
AMERICAS
HAITI
The United Nations’ annual Children in Armed Conflict report names Haiti’s Viv Ansanm gang coalition to what is informally called the “list of shame” over its violations of children’s rights. The report cites the coalition’s “recruitment and use and the killing and maiming of children, rape and other forms of sexual violence against children, and attacks on schools and hospitals” in explaining its addition to the list. It further cites 2269 cases of “grave violations” involving 1373 Haitian children last year, an increase of nearly 500 percent over 2023.
UNITED STATES
Finally, while it’s been largely “memory-holed” in the public consciousness, Van Jackson recalls Donald Trump’s previous nuclear-related international crisis, when he very nearly took the US to war with a nuclear-armed North Korea:
Trump had inherited a crisis-prone situation on the Korean Peninsula that he then made substantially worse, blustering into a high-stakes rap-battle of nuclear threats and insults with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un.
Following (and amplifying) Trump’s cues, the entire US national security state mobilized for war with North Korea. As someone who was in government for a portion of this period and close to people in government for the other portion, I was almost unique among public figures for really knowing just how real shit got.
I argued then that, by the time the crisis ended, we were on three different pathways to war and we had largely lost control of the situation; forces of catastrophe were in motion. We averted nuclear conflict through luck (which I detail at great length in the book) but also because of two crucial factors that were contrary to what the US wanted: 1) Kim Jong Un finally demonstrating that he had a reliable enough nuclear deterrent in the form of nuclear-capable ICBMs that could strike the US, and 2) South Korean peace diplomacy.
Trump did not save the day—he nearly caused nuclear war. The US goal of preventing North Korea from being able to threaten nuclear strikes against US territory failed, and that made America’s war posturing illogical and unsustainable. From there, the two Koreas entered dialogue, brought Trump along, and the rest is history.
As Van points out, the difference between North Korea then and Iran now is North Korea went for nukes and developed them. North Korea’s nukes haven’t meaningfully improved the lives of North Koreans, but they have kept Kim and company safe from a US invasion. There are at least two potential takeaways from that—one, there’s a good chance that Trump will go ahead with a war on Iran where he demurred with respect to North Korea; and two, that Iranian leaders could easily conclude that they’ll never be free of this US-Israeli threat without nukes of their own.