World roundup: June 26 2025
Stories from Iran, Kenya, Colombia, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
June 26, 1243: The Mongols defeat the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum at the Battle of Köse Dağ. Where losing to the Mongols usually meant absorption into their empire, however, in this case they opted to leave the Seljuks in place as a vassal kingdom and the sultanate survived like that until the early 14th century.
June 26, 1409: The Council of Pisa elects Peter of Candia as Pope Alexander V. This otherwise unremarkable event is noteworthy inasmuch as there were already two other popes in place at the time, Gregory XII in Rome and Benedict XIII in Avignon. Pisa was held at the height of the “Western Schism,” after a group of cardinals in Rome had elected their own pope to counter the French-controlled papacy in Avignon. A group of senior Catholic officials decided to call a general council to depose both popes and elect a new one. As you might expect, neither of the other two popes recognized his deposition. As a result, the Church found itself with three popes instead of two or, ideally, one.
June 26, 1794: The French Republican army defeats the Coalition at the Battle of Fleurus, in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium nowadays). The victory forced the Coalition to retreat and thereby opened the Netherlands to French forces. This marked the death knell for the Dutch Republic and set France on course to winning the War of the First Coalition. The battle is also notable in that it involved the first successful use of aircraft (a French reconnaissance balloon) in a military context.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Drop Site’s Heidi Pett is reporting that the “accountability” that Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa promised for the perpetrators behind the massacre of thousands of Alawite civilians in Latakia and Tartus provinces back in March has given way to something approaching de facto amnesty. Confronted with the fact that said perpetrators came from armed factions allied with Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group—at least some of whom have since been incorporated into Syria’s security forces—the committee tasked with investigating the attacks appears to be delaying the release of any findings and is, according to Pett, “under pressure to not name perpetrators to avoid inflaming tensions.” This might not be so egregious if they were planning to turn over the results of their work to the Syrian judicial system privately, but there’s no indication that anything like that is in the offing.
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least two people in separate airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Thursday. Israeli officials insisted that these latest in a seemingly unending stream of ceasefire violations was OK because both of the deceased were members of Hezbollah.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Al Jazeera is reporting that the IDF killed at least 62 people across Gaza on Thursday, though only three who were near a “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” distribution site at the time in what seems to have been a relatively quiet day for the IDF’s primary targeting unit. Israeli soldiers have now killed at least 549 Palestinians near aid sites since the GHF began operating in Gaza about one month ago. One IDF airstrike reportedly killed at least 18 people in Deir al-Balah. The target there appears to have been a unit of Gaza’s Sahm internal security force that, according to witnesses who spoke to the AP, “was distributing bags of flour and other goods confiscated from looters and corrupt merchants.”
Readers of this newsletter will undoubtedly be pleased to learn, courtesy of The Washington Post, that Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran directly has “reinvigorated” the US-Israel relationship—his outburst earlier this week notwithstanding. I was not aware that it had been deinvigorated, what with all the weapons and steadfast support through more than 20 months of genocide in Gaza, but apparently I missed a memo or something. Apparently there was a rift that only bombing Iran could heal, but now that it has been healed, in the worlds of former Israeli consul general Yaki Dayan, the Middle East looks on in awe at the “new axis” between the US and Israel. That may have been a tiny Freudian slip but who knows? Trump is even weighing in on Israeli legal matters, something no US president should be doing, urging an end to Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial.
IRAN
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine attended Thursday’s daily Pentagon press briefing to continue the interminable debate over whether or not Sunday’s US airstrikes actually obliterated the three Iranian nuclear sites they targeted. Their conclusion is of course “yes,” based on little more than vibes and the knowledge that Donald Trump would probably can them if they said anything else. There remains no way to know how badly damaged Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment site was, though International Atomic Energy Agency director Rafael Grossi has concluded that its centrifuge cascades “are no longer operational.” That’s a reasonable guess given that centrifuges are highly sensitive to vibrations and the dozen or so large bombs the US dropped on Fordow would have at the very least shaken the place up quite a bit.
Possible physical damage aside this argument, which I feel like we’ve rehashed three times now in this newsletter alone because the story refuses to go away, also turns on whether or not the Iranians still have access to their stockpile of highly enriched uranium, at least some of which was probably stored at Fordow. Iranian officials have suggested that they moved that stockpile out of Fordow before the bombing. Trump says they didn’t, again based on no evidence, while Hegseth and Caine would say only that they have seen no intelligence suggesting such a move. But according to The Financial Times, European governments have seen such intelligence and believe the stockpile may be intact and accessible. The Carnegie Endowment’s James Acton argues that the most reasonable conclusion from what is admittedly some extremely spotty evidence is that Iran remains a nuclear threshold state that may, because of the events of the past two weeks, put aside its previous reluctance to take the final decision to weaponize.
Given the possibility that Trump will order more attacks on Iran if he feels like he’s not being given enough credit for allegedly destroying the country’s nuclear program, maybe we should all just agree with him. Who cares what the evidence does or doesn’t show? All he wants are verbal pats on the head from the people he sees on TV and it may be safer for world peace to just let him have those.
Elsewhere:
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a televised address on Thursday for the first time since the Israeli-Iranian ceasefire took hold. As you might expect he took a triumphalist tone, claiming that the US strikes accomplished little and insisting that Iran will “never surrender” to the US. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi continues to take a more moderate tone, characterizing the damage to Iran’s nuclear sites as “serious.” Araghchi also on Thursday denied that any new US-Iranian negotiations are scheduled for next week, which contradicts a claim Trump made earlier this week.
Iran’s Guardian Council has ratified Wednesday’s parliamentary vote to reduce cooperation with the IAEA. The Guardian Council has veto authority over parliamentary actions but its approval doesn’t mean the vote will actually be implemented. Khamenei has the final word on any matter of foreign policy including the extent of Iran’s relationship with the IAEA.
While the Trump administration seems to believe that the time is now ripe for expanding the “Abraham Accords” to other Arab nations, Israel’s war with Iran may have made that task harder, not easier. The Wall Street Journal argues that perceptions of Iranian weakness and Israeli recklessness may have changed the calculus for Arab states that were previously looking to ally with Israel to protect themselves against Iran. Moreover, the conflict showed that even those Arab states that had already normalized relations with Israel had absolutely no influence over Israeli or US policy as their leaders urged restraint. That could make joining the accords less appealing.
The Washington Post published a piece a few days ago attempting to outline how the war came about that may be of interest. In this account Netanyahu had decided to attack Iran as far back as March, based not so much on any assessment of its nuclear program as over concerns that the Iranians were rebuilding the air defenses that the IDF destroyed last year. This supports the idea that Trump really was initially against an Israeli attack but came around to supporting it once he saw all the favorable media coverage that the initial IDF strike received.
ASIA
CHINA
According to The Wall Street Journal, despite the agreement that US and Chinese negotiators reached in London earlier this month the Chinese government is continuing to bottleneck the trade in certain critical minerals:
Two weeks after China promised the U.S. it would ease the exports of rare-earth magnets, Chinese authorities are dragging out approval of Western companies’ requests for the critical components, a situation that could reignite trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Western companies say they are receiving barely enough magnets for their factories and have little visibility of future supplies. Firms are waiting weeks as Chinese authorities scrutinize their applications—only to be rejected in some cases. And applications for raw rare earths, which are used to make magnets, are rarely granted.
As a result, Western companies are concerned that the shortages could soon affect manufacturing. Companies are so desperate for magnets that they are opting for expensive airfreight whenever licenses are granted to prevent costly production shutdowns. Some manufacturers are experimenting with workarounds that would allow them to make their products without the most powerful magnets.
NORTH KOREA
CNN notes that Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran has surely not gone unnoticed in North Korea:
Experts warn Washington’s military actions may harden Pyongyang’s resolve to accelerate its weapons program and deepen cooperation with Russia, as well as reinforcing its leader Kim Jong Un’s belief that nuclear arms are the ultimate deterrent against US-enforced regime change.
Despite yearslong efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program, the Kim regime is thought to possess multiple nuclear weapons, as well as missiles that can potentially reach the United States – meaning any potential military strike on the Korean Peninsula would carry vastly higher risks.
“President Trump’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities will undoubtedly further reinforce the legitimacy of North Korea’s longstanding policy of regime survival and nuclear weapons development,” said Lim Eul-chul, a professor of North Korean studies at South Korea’s Kyungnam University.
“North Korea perceives the recent US airstrike as a preemptive military threat and will likely accelerate efforts to enhance its own capability for preemptive nuclear missile attacks,” said Lim.
OCEANIA
TUVALU
According to AFP some 3000 Tuvaluans, almost one-third of the country’s population, have applied for climate visas to live in Australia. Back in 2023, under what’s known as the “Falepili Union treaty,” the Australian and Tuvaluan governments agreed on a program that would allow Tuvaluan citizens to relocate to Australia as climate change—specifically rising sea levels—rendered their homeland uninhabitable. Initially these transfers were to be limited to 280 per year but I doubt either country anticipated that the level of demand would be this great this quickly.
AFRICA
TOGO
Police and protesters clashed in Lomé on Thursday on the first of what may be several days of demonstrations calling for the ouster of Togolese leader Faure Gnassingbé after over 20 years in power. Last year Gnassingbé pushed through changes to the Togolese constitution that shifted executive power from the presidency to a new office called “President of the Council of Ministers,” basically a glorified prime minister post. Gnassingbé then, earlier this year, stepped down as president and made himself prime minister in a bid to extend his rule without having to worry so much about the pretense of elections or term limits. Needless to say that shift has generated a fair amount of backlash.
KENYA
Kenyan Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen argued that protesters are attempting to orchestrate a coup, which I guess is supposed to explain why police gunned down 16 of them the previous day. Referring to the demonstrators as “criminal anarchists,” Murkomen accused them of having “unleashed a wave of violence, looting, sexual assault and destruction upon our people.” Wednesday’s protests were held to commemorate the police killing of some 60 protesters one year ago during a demonstration against President William Ruto’s proposed tax hike. Kenyan police are infamous for their brutality and corruption, traits that The New Humanitarian’s Patrick Gathara traces back to colonial days:
Kenya’s National Police Service is the direct descendant of the colonial police force, created not to serve or protect the population, but to control and exploit it. From inception, the police has been the sharp edge of an extractive and violent state.
Described in a 2009 report as a “punitive citizen containment squad”, its recruitment, training, and deployment practices are designed to dehumanise the officers and separate them from the citizens they are meant to serve, ensuring loyalty to the ruling class. Barracked in poor conditions, underpaid, and isolated from their communities, officers operate more as an occupying force, an extension of the mechanism of elite extraction, than a public service.
Police officers are not just tools of political enforcement. They are also participants in a vast system of petty extortion. Police roadblocks are little more than toll booths, and most arrests – 1 in 5 Kenyans are taken into custody every two years – are essentially shakedowns. This is a feature, not a bug. As related in the book Looters and Grabbers: 54 Years of Corruption and Plunder by the Elite 1963-2017, in 1907, just a year after the force was legally created, one colonial settler remarked: “Time and time, I have had a native say they were stopped by an Indian policeman. When I asked them how they got away, they always said, ‘Oh, I gave him something.’”
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
According to Reuters there’s been something of a breakthrough in the Congolese-Rwandan peace process in that Congolese officials are no longer demanding that the Rwandan military immediately vacate the eastern DRC. Rwanda is believed to have around 7000 soldiers on Congolese soil, supporting and fighting alongside M23 militants. The Rwandan government denies the M23 connection while admitting that the soldiers are there to “protect” Rwanda from the Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) militia. This shift on the Congolese side appears to have been the thing that secured agreement on a preliminary peace deal that should be signed on Friday. Instead of an immediate withdrawal the proposal now calls for Rwandan forces to withdraw over a matter of months, as Congolese authorities take steps to deal with the FDLR.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Russian military has claimed the capture of the village of Shevchenko in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. This is noteworthy inasmuch as Shevchenko is located very close to a lithium deposit that a Soviet survey in the 1980s identified as potentially “significant.” Assuming that survey holds up Moscow would undoubtedly like to develop that deposit—but I imagine so would Donald Trump, under the terms of his minerals deal with the Ukrainian government. Shevchenko’s capture had been reported months ago but it would appear that was a different Shevchenko.
SPAIN
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s rejection of NATO’s new 5 percent of GDP spending floor has unsurprisingly put him on Donald Trump’s bad side. Trump is now threatening to raise tariffs on Spanish products in retaliation, though the actual implementation of that threat is up for debate since Spain’s trade relations are governed by the European Union rather than negotiated individually. It’s not clear how Trump could raise tariffs on Spanish goods without raising them on the EU as a whole, which he may be open to doing but wouldn’t single out Sánchez for punishment. Trump could try to impose specific tariffs on individual Spanish products within the EU framework but that seems inexact at best.
AMERICAS
COLOMBIA
The International Crisis Group’s Elizabeth Dickinson writes that the Colombian government is “bracing” for decertification under US drug policy:
The country’s failure to meet benchmarks for the reduction of coca crops, the raw material for cocaine, is the main source of Washington’s gripes. Suspending forced eradication of the plant has been a project of President Gustavo Petro’s government, which has drawn on abundant evidence to argue that destroying crops has exacted a heavy toll on poor farmers and the rural areas they inhabit while failing to curb the market for cocaine. Still, with 253,000 hectares under cultivation, Colombia has today reached its highest-ever levels of both coca leaf and refined cocaine production since the UN started monitoring in 1999. Volumes of drug seizures have risen, reaching 848.5 tonnes of cocaine in 2024 – almost double the 2019 total – but officials fear this number may simply mean that more drugs than ever are leaving Colombia. Complicating matters further, the relationship between Petro and President Donald Trump is troubled. Colombia only narrowly avoided harsh sanctions in January over its reluctance to accept U.S. military deportation flights, in a spat that saw the two leaders exchange fierce diatribes on social media.
The rise in cocaine production and chill in bilateral ties have seen attention turn to the U.S. certification process, a longstanding feature of Washington’s war on drugs, dating back to 1986. Before 15 September of every year, the U.S. president must make a determination as to whether major drug supplier and trafficker countries are complying with Washington’s counter-narcotic objectives. States must show that they are meeting commitments established in the UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances and the 1986 Narcotics Act, as well as fulfilling relevant bilateral agreements that could include everything from limiting drug supply and extraditing criminals to policing borders and countering money laundering. Although the certification process is built around clear criteria, the decision is made by the U.S. president and profoundly influenced by political and diplomatic considerations. Past administrations have repeatedly certified Colombia despite concerns about inadequate compliance because, in their view, preserving close cooperation with Bogotá was more advantageous to Washington.
The key issue here is Trump’s relationship with Petro. Past US governments have continued to certify Colombia despite failure to meet benchmarks because it was felt that the effects of decertification would only make things worse. But given that Trump doesn’t like Petro and he bases most of his decisions on who he feels is or isn’t nice to him he’s likely to ignore the consequences and decertify anyway. A full decertification could have repercussions well beyond just drug policy as it would put at risk all US assistance to Colombia across the board. But those cuts aren’t automatic so it would still be up to the Trump administration how much or how little aid to cut.
UNITED STATES
Finally, The Intercept’s Nick Turse outlines the Trump administration’s frankly horrifying plans now that the US Supreme Court has given it permission to traffic people abroad without due process:
An Intercept investigation finds that the Trump administration has been hard at work trying to expand its global gulag for expelled immigrants, exploring deals with a quarter of the world’s nations to accept so-called third-country nationals — deported persons who are not their citizens.
To create this archipelago of injustice, the U.S. government is employing strong-arm tactics with dozens of smaller, weaker, and economically dependent nations. The deals are being conducted in secret, and neither the State Department nor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will discuss them. With the green light from the Supreme Court, thousands of immigrants are in danger of being disappeared into this network of deportee dumping grounds.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling leaves thousands of people vulnerable to deportation to third countries where they face torture or death, even if the deportations are clearly unlawful,” said Leila Kang, a staff attorney at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a group that represents immigrants who filed suit.