World roundup: May 15 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Today’s roundup is early because I have a family commitment this evening. We will catch up on anything I’ve missed tomorrow. Thanks for reading!
TODAY IN HISTORY
May 15, 1811: Paraguay’s May 14 Revolution, a military coup against Governor Bernardo de Velasco, succeeds in forcing him to create a three man governing junta including himself and two military appointees. The junta was the first in a series of governments that increasingly substituted local rule for colonial control from Spain. Although it was a very long road from here to Paraguay’s formal declaration of independence in 1842, May 14 and 15 are commemorated as Independence Day (well, “days”) in Paraguay today.
May 15, 1940: Brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald open a small restaurant called “McDonald’s Bar-B-Que” in San Bernardino, California, serving mostly, as the name says, barbecue. A few years later they streamlined the operation to focus on their most popular item, hamburgers. Since as far as I know there are no McDonald’s Bar-B-Que restaurants in existence anymore, I can only assume this disruptive change was the death-knell for their company, and it just goes to show you that innovation isn’t always a panacea. That’s today’s business tip.
May 15, 1948: The Arab-Israeli War begins. On a related note this is also “Nakba Day” (Dhikra al-Nakba or “Remembrance of the Catastrophe”), which marks the displacement/expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians from the territory of the state of Israel in the period leading up to and during the war.
INTERNATIONAL
It would appear that the Trump administration’s sanctions on International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan are having their desired effect:
The International Criminal Court ’s chief prosecutor has lost access to his email, and his bank accounts have been frozen.
The Hague-based court’s American staffers have been told that if they travel to the U.S. they risk arrest.
Some nongovernmental organizations have stopped working with the ICC and the leaders of one won’t even reply to emails from court officials.
Those are just some of the hurdles facing court staff since U.S. President Donald Trump in February slapped sanctions on its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, according to interviews with current and former ICC officials, international lawyers and human rights advocates.
The court is reportedly having trouble even maintaining basic functions, let alone investigating and prosecuting cases. The ICC has never been what you’d call “effective” at punishing war criminals but it at least represented some attempt to act as though international law is actually relevant. But if it can be taken apart by sanctions from a nonmember then clearly it’s not set up for success.
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
The Trump administration on Thursday blacklisted four individuals with alleged ties to Hezbollah. They included two of the organization’s senior officials and two people accused of involvement in its fundraising efforts.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Palestinian media is reporting that the Israeli military (IDF) killed more than 115 people across Gaza on Thursday. Most of the deaths (at least 61) occurred in the southern city of Khan Younis. To the north, IDF evacuation orders and airstrikes are displacing thousands of people in and around Gaza City as the Israelis ramp up for their “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” mass displacement and occupation plan. An investigation by Local Call and +972 Magazine makes clear that the IDF’s aim is to make that displacement permanent:
Together, these sources paint a clear picture: the systematic destruction of residential buildings and public structures has become a central part of the Israeli army’s operations, and in many cases, the primary objective.
Some of this devastation is the result of aerial bombardments, ground fighting, and IEDs planted by Palestinian militants inside buildings in Gaza. However, while it is difficult to obtain precise figures, it appears that most of the destruction in Gaza and southern Lebanon was not carried out from the air or during combat, but rather by Israeli bulldozers or explosives — premeditated and intentional acts.
According to +972 and Local Call’s investigation, this was driven by a conscious, strategic decision to “flatten the area,” to ensure that “the return of people to these spaces is not something that will happen,” as Yotam, who served as a deputy company commander in an armored brigade in Gaza, said.
As tempting as it might be to think that Donald Trump’s recent apparent tension with Benjamin Netanyahu is going to nip this new atrocity in the bud, before he left Qatar on Thursday Trump once again revived his proposal that the US take Gaza over and depopulate it. He emphasized the idea that the territory could be turned into a “freedom zone,” which I’m pretty sure means free of Palestinians in addition to whatever other conceptions of “freedom” he’s got in mind. As Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill writes, there’s very little to suggest that Trump really means to rein Netanyahu in—rumors that he would try to impose a ceasefire while in the Persian Gulf seem to have fizzled out—and some reason to believe that the Trump administration is engaging in the same theater that its predecessor did, playing up relatively minor disagreements to create the public impression of a deep split between Trump and Netanyahu.
In the northern West Bank, the IDF is reportedly engaged in a manhunt for the gunmen who killed a pregnant Israeli woman (the baby survived) late Wednesday night. They’re blockading villages and setting up checkpoints in the vicinity. Israeli forces killed at least five Palestinians in the village of Tammun on Thursday in what appears to have been a retaliatory operation, though it’s unclear whether any of those five were involved in the shooting. There are also new reports of settler mobs attacking Palestinian villages in the area.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Donald Trump’s Persian Gulf tour took him to the UAE on Thursday, where he’s expected to advance a $1.4 trillion tech investment package that the US and UAE inked back in March. The expectation seems to be that there will be less focus on regional issues—and thus maybe less opportunity for any big dramatic news—than there was during Trump’s stops in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
IRAN
Speaking of dramatic news, before he left Qatar Trump blurted out that the Iranian government has “sort of agreed to the terms” of a nuclear deal that lead US negotiator Steve Witkoff may have presented to them in Oman on Sunday. That would be big news, if true. Is it true? Your guess is as good as mine.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
A Washington Post satellite analysis shows that the Indian military damaged six Pakistani military airfields during a final barrage on Saturday before the two countries agreed to a ceasefire. At least a couple of the facilities appear to have been moderately damaged, making those strikes the most significant the Indian military has landed on Pakistan since the last full-fledged war the two countries fought in 1971, though none seem to have been fully disabled.
INDIA
Indian authorities say their security forces killed at least 31 Naxalite militants during a three week operation along the border between the country’s Chhattisgarh and Telangana states. Indian Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah claimed via social media on Thursday that “there was not a single casualty in the security forces in this operation.” The Indian government has committed to wiping out the Naxalite movement, which has been engaged in an insurgency since the late 1960s, by early next year. The Indian military also said on Thursday that its forces had killed ten militants in Manipur state. It’s unclear who these militants are/were. Manipur has been marred by inter-communal violence between the Meitei and Kuki peoples, and it also lies on the border with Myanmar so there’s some possibility of militant groups from that country spilling into the province.
AFRICA
SUDAN
Rapid Support Forces drone strikes reportedly knocked out power across Sudan’s Khartoum state overnight, including in the city of Khartoum itself. After multiple setbacks on the ground the RSF has seemingly shifted focus to an air campaign targeting infrastructure and major cities held by the Sudanese military. It’s conducted several drone strikes on the military’s de facto capital, Port Sudan, and now appears to be doing the same to the country’s actual capital city and its environs. The New Arab’s Elfadil Ibrahim analyzes that shift:
The Port Sudan strikes signal more than tactical escalation - they expose the deepening entrenchment of the war, the sophisticated capabilities of its combatants, and the increasingly brazen role of external actors in fuelling a conflict that has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
"The drone attacks on Port Sudan are an extension of the war’s shift away from ground battles toward destabilising aerial strikes," notes Ahmed Kodouda, a humanitarian policy expert and former senior policy advisor in Sudan's post-revolution transitional government.This strategy, he argues, demonstrates the RSF is "not only interested in gaining ground, but also in denying the SAF the ability to govern."
The RSF's "speed and precision shouldn't be a surprise," Kodouda adds. "It reflects an emboldened force with foreign backing and no political constraints,” he told The New Arab.
LIBYA
From what I can tell, Wednesday’s ceasefire in Tripoli seems to be holding after more than two days of violent urban warfare between armed factions in the city. However, the situation remains precarious and could escalate quickly. That tension involves forces loyal to Government of National Unity Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, particularly the “444 Brigade,” and the “Special Deterrence Forces Radaa” militia, which is nominally aligned with the GNU but operates independently of Dbeibeh. According to AFP, militias from the nearby city of Zawiyah have been moving on Tripoli in support of the Radaa group while there are reports of armed groups supporting Dbeibeh that are moving toward the city from Misrata. That’s a recipe for a much bigger conflict than what the city has seen thus far.
MALI
Security forces allegedly arrested and then summarily executed “about two dozen” Fulani men in central Mali’s Mopti region earlier this week. A group of local women organized a protest over the atrocity in the town of Diafarabé on Wednesday. There’s been no comment from Mali’s ruling junta, but the country’s military and its Russian mercenary auxiliaries have been accused of several atrocities against Malian civilians and especially against members of the Fulani community.
BURKINA FASO
Jihadist militants attacked the Burkinabè city of Diapaga, in the country’s East region, on Monday. Details beyond that are uncertain primarily because it sounds like the attackers are still in control of the city, though it is known that they freed prisoners from the city’s detention facilities. According to AFP, residents have been sheltering in their homes since the attack took place.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
I haven’t seen any indication as to how Thursday’s Russian-Ukrainian peace talks are going, but suffice to say that expectations were not high from the start. Not only is Vladimir Putin not there, which means that Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump are also not there, but the delegation Putin sent seems too low-level to be able to agree to anything substantive, or anything at all really. In fact it wasn’t even clear that any talks were going to take place on Thursday, as the two negotiating teams were still making their ways to Istanbul at last check.
Back in Ukraine, the Russian military claimed the capture of two more villages on Thursday. Both are located eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast.
PORTUGAL
Portuguese voters will head to the polls on Sunday for the snap parliamentary election that became necessary when Prime Minister Luís Montenegro’s minority government lost a no-confidence vote back in March. This will be the third parliamentary election Portugal has held since January 2022 and one gets the sense that the main consideration on voters’ minds is stability. Unfortunately that may not be in the cards, as polling indicates that the conservative Democratic Alliance bloc is likely to win but fall short of an outright legislative majority, as it did in last year’s election. The main point of interest may be the performance of the far-right Chega party, whose support appears to be growing amid the political dysfunction.
AMERICAS
GUYANA
AFP is reporting that Guyanese soldiers were attacked three times over a 24 hour period Wednesday into Thursday in the Essequibo region, which is also claimed by neighboring Venezuela. There’s no indication of any casualties. The attacks are being attributed to “armed men in civilian clothing” who appear to be operating around the Cuyuní River. Since they remain unidentified there’s nothing directly connecting them to the Venezuelan government, though the coincidence is noteworthy.
UNITED STATES
Finally, regular readers may recall that the US National Intelligence Council issued a report earlier this month contradicting the Trump administration’s claim that the Tren de Aragua criminal gang is “invading” the United States on behalf of the Venezuelan government. That report undermines the administration’s legal justification for trafficking Venezuelan migrants (accused of being TdA members) to El Salvador, so it’s a pretty big deal. Well, today I’m proud to say that the Trump administration has done something about it:
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired two veteran intelligence officials because they oppose President Donald Trump, her office said, coming a week after the release of a declassified memo written by their agency that contradicted statements the Trump administration has used to justify deporting Venezuelan immigrants.
Mike Collins was serving as acting chair of the National Intelligence Council before he was dismissed alongside his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof. They each had more than 25 years of intelligence experience. The two were fired because of their opposition to Trump, Gabbard’s office said in an email, without offering examples.
“The director is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community,” the office said.
Finally somebody is doing something about the politicization of the intelligence community by canning any member of that community who doesn’t say whatever the president wants them to say. Truly this is a glorious new day for America and, indeed, for intelligence.