Newspaper headlines: ‘Stop sharing data with China’ and ‘Shoot and kill’
Iran war live: Lebanon truce extended; Trump says time not on Tehran’s side
Death toll from Israel's ongoing genocidal war on Gaza has reached 72,568 with 172,338 injured: Gaza's Health Ministry.
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The Venezuelanalysis Podcast Episode 44: Venezuela’s Natural Resources, Oil Reform, and Sovereignty
Venezuela’s January 2026 hydrocarbons law reform marks a major shift in the country’s oil sector. It establishes a more flexible fiscal regime in the name of “international competitiveness,” while expanding the private sector role in extraction, operations, and dispute resolution mechanisms.
The reform follows years of US sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry and coincides with new US licenses allowing Western conglomerates to move into Venezuela’s energy sector.
Join Blas Regnault, energy policy analyst and consultant focused on oil geopolitics, alongside Venezuelanalysis editors Ricardo Vaz and Lucas Koerner, as they break down the reform, its economic and political context, and what it means for control over strategic resources and national sovereignty.
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Meta says it will cut 8,000 jobs as AI spending soars
The cuts, which employees had been expecting for weeks, will be Meta’s largest layoff since 2023.
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Trump Puts Out Kill Order On Iran’s Small Boats (Updated)
U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the Navy to attack any Iranian boats mining the Strait of Hormuz. His decree, issued on Truth Social, also claims the U.S. is currently demining the strategic waterway. His announcement comes hours after the U.S. boarded another Iranian-linked vessel in the Indian Ocean and a day after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) fired on at least three ships and seized two of them in the Strait.
All this activity is taking place as the prospect of peace talks remains unclear two days after Trump announced a ceasefire extension, which we will discuss later in this story.
“I have ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boat, small boats though they may be (Their naval ships are ALL, 159 of them, at the bottom of the sea!), that is putting mines in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump proclaimed on his social media site. “There is to be no hesitation. Additionally, our mine ‘sweepers’ are clearing the Strait right now. I am hereby ordering that activity to continue, but at a tripled up level!”
It should be noted that the IRGC has invested heavily in its fleet of small boats for decades as TWZ has explored in the past. In addition to being armed with short-range anti-ship missiles, as well as artillery rockets and other weapons, they can also be used to lay naval mines. While the president claimed that 159 Iranian ships have been destroyed, the IRGC still has a large number of these small vessels.
In a story yesterday, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon told Congress it could take six months to fully clear the Strait of Hormuz of mines deployed by the Iranian military.
With three carrier strike groups, several destroyers and scores of land-based aircraft in the region, the U.S. is well-postured to take out Iranian boats if needed. Striking Iran’s Navy was a prime mission for Epic Fury, as Trump noted. However, it is not publicly known at the moment what assets are conducting the mine sweeping Trump claimed or what the current level is of that activity that he wants to triple. We’ve reached out to the White House and U.S. Central Command for more details.
While it is possible one or more of these vessels could be in the Strait, doing so would put them at a greater risk of attack from Iran’s remaining cache of land-based weapons like anti-ship missiles and drones, as well as what’s left of its flotilla of small boats and uncrewed surface vessels (USVs).
As we reported on April 13, a pair of Avenger class mine-hunters homeported in Japan were tracked sailing westward out of the Pacific Ocean, however, they are still a distance away from the Strait. USS Chief and USS Pioneer departed Colombo, Sri Lanka, yesterday following a two-day port call, public AIS data on MarineTraffic shows. They stopped transmitting AIS while steaming northwest at 10 knots toward the CENTCOM area of responsibility, although their final destination is unconfirmed.
The U.S. also has a trio of littoral combat ships (LCS) forward-deployed to U.S. 5th Fleet and configured for mine countermeasures missions. However, as we previously reported, those ships were redeployed from Bahrain ahead of the conflict, and two emerged unexpectedly in Southeast Asia last month. It remains unclear why the decision was made to send them to the other side of the globe amid the threat of Iran mining the Strait of Hormuz, but both were recently spotted sailing northbound in the Malacca Strait after weeks in Singapore.
The Santa Barbara left Singapore on April 16 and the Tulsa left on April 2.
USS Canberra is the only confirmed mine sweeper currently in CENTCOM, according to a post on the Pentagon’s image sharing site that shows the Independence class LCS patrolling in the Arabian Sea.
The arrival of Pioneer and Chief would increase mine sweepers from one to three, tripling the coverage, which aligns with Trump’s order. The other two LCSs, USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara, could also be nearby or on station in the Middle East to support the MCM mission.
The transit of the Chief is not without issues. A sailor assigned to the was medically evacuated to his home port after he was scratched by an Asian monkey while ashore in Thailand, Axios reported.
“The Navy reports the incident did not delay the USS Chief‘s mission and that the sailor is OK, but officials say the attack is a reminder that military missions face unexpected troubles and disruptions that are hard to war-game for,” the outlet added.
UPDATES
UPDATE: 6:07 PM EDT –
“U.S. military officials are developing new plans to target Iran’s capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz in the event the current ceasefire with Iran falls apart,” CNN is reporting.
An additional option, according to the cable network, is targeting individual Iranian military leaders and other “obstructionists” U.S. officials believe are actively undermining negotiations.
UPDATE: 5:50 PM EDT-
The U.S. has burned through so many munitions in Iran that some administration officials increasingly assess that America couldn’t fully execute contingency plans to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion if it occurred in the near term, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing U.S. officials.
“The U.S. has fired more than 1,000 long-range Tomahawk missiles since the war with Iran began on Feb. 28, as well as 1,500 to 2,000 critical air-defense missiles, including Thaad, Patriot and Standard Missile interceptors, according to U.S. officials,” the publication added.
UPDATE: 5:34 PM EDT –
Trump announced that the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will be extended for three weeks.
“The President of the United States, DONALD J. TRUMP, Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, and Ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, met today with High Ranking Representatives of Israel and Lebanon in the Oval Office,” Trump announced on Truth Social. “The Meeting went very well! The United States is going to work with Lebanon in order to help it protect itself from Hezbollah. The Ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will be extended by THREE WEEKS. I look forward in the near future to hosting the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, and the President of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun. It was a Great Honor to be a participant at this very Historic Meeting!”
UPDATE: 5:15 PM EDT –
Hezbollah reportedly launched about five rockets at northern Israel. The IDF says its forces intercepted all the rockets. There were no reported injuries.
UPDATE: 5:09 PM EDT –
During an afternoon press conference on healthcare, Trump offered additional insight into his ongoing dealings with Iran.
Iran “came to us, and they said ‘we will agree to open the Strait,’ and all my people are happy,” Trump exclaimed. “Everybody was happy—except me. I said, wait a minute. If we open this Strait, that means they’re going to make $500 million a day. I don’t want them to make $500 million a day until they settle this thing, so I’m the one that kept it closed. We have total control of it. And it’ll open when they make a deal or something else happens.”
On the topic of who is in charge in Tehran, Trump said: “Iran wants to make a deal and we’ve been speaking to them, but they don’t even know who’s leading their country. They are in turmoil, so we thought we’d give them a little chance to get some of that resolved.”
As far as the military goals of Epic Fury, Trump said: “We’ve hit 78% of the targets that we’ve wanted to hit. If Iran doesn’t want to make a deal, then I’ll finish it up militarily with the other targets.”
Asked about the timeline of Epic Fury, Trump snapped that: “I don’t want to rush it; I want to take my time. We have plenty of time, and I want to get a great deal. I want to get a deal where our nation and the world are safe from lunatics with nuclear weapons.”
Queried about whether he would use a nuclear weapon against Iran, Trump retorted: “No. Why would a stupid question like that be asked? Why would l use a nuclear weapon when we’ve totally decimated Iran without it? A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody.”
Earlier this morning, the Pentagon announced an overnight “maritime interdiction and right-of-visit boarding of the sanctioned stateless vessel M/T Majestic X transporting oil from Iran, in the Indian Ocean within the INDOPACOM area of responsibility.”
“We will continue global maritime enforcement to disrupt illicit networks and interdict vessels providing material support to Iran, wherever they operate,” the Pentagon said, repeating a refrain it used earlier this week after the interdiction of the M/T Tifani in the Indian Ocean. “International waters cannot be used as a shield by sanctioned actors. The Department of War will continue to deny illicit actors and their vessels freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”
Video released by the Pentagon shows troops boarding MH-60S Seahawk helicopters then repelling onto the ship and searching it. As in the case of the boarding of the Tifani, a U.S. Navy Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB) vessel, which you can see in the background, provided support for this operation.
The Pentagon gave the ship’s name as Majestic X but the ship – IMO number 9198317- is also known as Phonix, according to SeaTrade Maritime News. The open-source maritime tracking site MarineTraffic shows that the Guyana-flagged crude oil tanker is located about 200 miles east of Sri Lanka and some 2,000 miles southeast of Iran.
While MarineTraffic data indicates the vessel is currently moving southwest about 8 knots, its current disposition is unclear. The Pentagon declined to offer further information and we have reached out to the White House for additional details.
The fate of the Tifani, boarded on April 21, is now in the hands of the Department of Justice, the Pentagon told us. We reached out to them for more details.
CENTCOM said it has turned away 31 ships so far during the blockade of Iranian ports.
The command also announced that, as anticipated, the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush is now in the Indian Ocean part of its region. That brings the total carrier force to three for now, with the Abraham Lincoln and Gerald R. Ford already on station. However, the Ford, which has set a record for the longest deployment since the Vietnam War and has suffered issues ranging from a fire to leaky plumbing, is likely to depart the area soon.
Two days into the ceasefire extension declared by Trump, efforts to negotiate a peace deal remain murky.
Iranian officials have yet to commit to a new round of talks, which the president blames on schisms in its government between hardliners in the IRGC and more moderate elements.
“Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is!,” Trump exclaimed on Truth Social. “They just don’t know! The infighting is between the ‘Hardliners,’ who have been losing BADLY on the battlefield, and the ‘Moderates,’ who are not very moderate at all (but gaining respect!), is CRAZY!.”
Iranian officials have pushed back against the notion their government is fractured.
“In Iran, there are no radicals or moderates; we are all ‘Iranian’ and “revolutionary,” and with the iron unity of the nation and government, with complete obedience to the Supreme Leader of the Revolution, we will make the aggressor criminal regret his actions,” Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf stated on X. “One God, one leader, one nation, and one path; that path being the path to victory for Iran, dearer than life.”
However, at about the time Ghalibaf posted that, Israel’s N12 News outlet reported that Ghalibaf stepped down as a result of interference from the IRGC.
“The reason for the extreme step is his refusal to accept the growing intervention of IRGC generals – including prominent names such as Ahmed and Heidi and Abdullahian,” the outlet claimed in its unsourced story. “According to the information obtained by News 12, the generals penetrate into the decision-making processes and prevent Ghalibaf from providing the maneuver required to manage the negotiations.”
The War Zone cannot independently verify this.
Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said his country “is prepared to resume the war against Iran,” but needs permission from Trump.
“We are awaiting a green light from the United States — first and foremost to complete the elimination of the Khamenei family and to push Iran back into a dark age,” Katz added. “This time, the strike will be different and far more lethal, delivering devastating blows at the most sensitive points — ones that will shake and undermine its very foundations”.
In his Truth Social post about Iranian leadership, Trump added that the U.S. has “total control over the Strait of Hormuz. No ship can enter or leave without the approval of the United States Navy. It is ‘Sealed up Tight, until such time as Iran is able to make a DEAL!!!”
The Iranians, however, have a different take.
“We have control over this Strait,” Hamidreza Hajibabaei, the deputy speaker of Iran’s parliament, said Thursday, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency. Hajibabaei, speaking at a public gathering in the western city of Kuhdasht, added that the first revenues from Iran’s new tolls on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz have been deposited in the Iranian state central bank account.
“If the United States continues on its current course, no vessels will pass through the Strait of Hormuz,” Hajibabaei warned. “We are not engaged in negotiations — rather, we are making demands.”
“The amount collected from each ship depends on its cargo and level of risk they pose,” said Alireza Salimi, another member of the Iranian parliament, according to the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency.
“Iran determines how much and how these fees are collected, in other words, we determine the rules,” Salimi said. The War Zone cannot independently verify this claim.
Trump has previously threatened ships that pay tolls to Iran to use the Strait.
Lloyds List reports that the Houthi rebels of Yemen, an Iranian proxy, could institute their own tolls around the Bab al-Mandab region.
“Mechanisms have been discussed at senior leadership levels indicating Houthi ambition to control, and not merely disrupt, maritime traffic,” the outlet reported. “Conversations have been supported by Iranian involvement. But the militia is looking to act on its own terms.”
You can read more about what a Houthi intervention into the conflict would mean in our report about it here.
The maritime security environment across the Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, and Strait of Hormuz “remains CRITICAL, driven by recent attack patterns, continued navigation interference, and persistent operational disruption, including impacts to port activity,” according to the latest update from the Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC). Despite the April 8 ceasefire, “commercial traffic remains limited, with constrained transits and continued routing uncertainty.”
With the Strait of Hormuz closed, the demand on transiting the Panama Canal has become so intense that one vessel carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) paid $4 million to skip the line and avoid a wait that can take up to five days, according to AFP, citing an official report.
Oil isn’t the only commodity supply affected by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. According to the United Nations, one-third of global fertilizers are stalled in that body of water as well.
“With planting seasons already underway, we have no time to lose,” the world organization noted. “This is not a matter of logistics or economics – it’s about saving lives. If we don’t act, a massive food crisis will hit the most vulnerable the hardest.”
Indian crew aboard two of the ships fired upon yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz by IRGC are safe, according to Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesman Randhir Jaiswal.
During the now-extended ceasefire with Iran, the U.S. continues to flow military assets to the Middle East.
Online flight trackers indicate that the first group of aerial refueling tankers supporting F/A-18C Hornets from the VMFA-312 “Checkerboards” are airborne from Lajes.
“The flight plans filed for the tankers indicate the jets are going straight into CENTCOM today,” according to open-source flight tracker DefenceGeek.
Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors are expected to convene again at the State Department on Thursday for a second round of meetings amid the latest conflagration in the Middle East, according to ABC News.
The first direct negotiations between the two states since 1993 “are intended as preparatory meetings to shape future talks on a deal to normalize ties between the countries,” the network noted. “Thursday’s meeting is expected to focus on extending a shaky ceasefire that has halted fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia.”
Trump will host the event.
“The ambassador-level talks between Israel and Lebanon will now take place at the White House,” an official tols us. “President Trump will greet the representatives upon their arrival.”
Despite the ongoing ceasefire, Israel is maintaining its positions in southern Lebanon and issued a new warning to residents there.
“We reiterate and warn that, out of concern for your safety and the safety of your family members, and until further notice, you are required not to move south of the line of the villages shown and their surroundings,” IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee stated on X. “Additionally, approaching the Litani River area, Wadi Salhani, and Salouqi is not permitted.”
Heading into a second round of rare direct talks with Israel, Lebanon is urging the Trump administration to pressure Israel to scale back its demands and end its military invasion of the country, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Salam said Lebanon could not sign any agreement that does not include a “full withdrawal” of Israeli forces.
“We cannot live with a so-called buffer zone,” he said, “an Israeli presence where Lebanese displaced people are not allowed to return, where destroyed villages and towns cannot be rebuilt.”
Israeli strikes killed one journalist and wounded another in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, The New York Times reported.
“The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said the Israeli military had targeted the journalists in the town of Tayri, where they took shelter in a nearby house after an airstrike struck a vehicle in front of the car they were traveling in,” the newspaper noted. “About an hour and a half later, a second strike hit the house they were hiding in, according to a statement by a Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, which employed the journalist who was killed.”
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com
Venezuela Installs Commission to Evaluate State Assets, Mulls Possible Sell-Offs
Rodríguez announced four categories for state assets, with “non strategic” ones destined for privatization or liquidation. (Presidential Press)
Caracas, April 23, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has established a commission to assess the “strategic” value of state-owned assets and their possible transfer to the private sector.
The Commission for the Evaluation of Public Assets held its first meeting on Wednesday. In a short televised message, Rodríguez said the commission had the purpose of bringing “agility and modernity” to the Venezuelan state.
The acting president announced that Venezuelan state assets would be divided into four categories: strategic ones to remain under state control, “strategic alliances” where the state retains ownership but management is turned over to the private sector in concession-type deals, “non-strategic” assets to be fully privatized; and assets to be liquidated or reincorporated elsewhere.
“The purpose of this commission is to elevate Venezuela’s productivity levels, so that the Venezuelan state can be robust and attend to the strategic aspects of the nation,” she said.
The commission includes Economic Sector Vice President Calixto Ortega, Finance Minister Anabel Pereira, Industry Minister Luis Villegas, State Solicitor Arianny Seijo, Communes Minister Ángel Prado, as well as Luis Pisella, former president of industry guild CONINDUSTRIA, representing the private sector.
Former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez spearheaded a nationalization campaign in the 2000s to impose state control of key economic areas such as oil, electricity, telecoms, banking, and the heavy industries.
In recent years, with the economy heavily targeted by US sanctions, the Nicolás Maduro government expanded “strategic alliances” with the private sector, particularly in the Venezuelan countryside. However, campesino organizations have denounced that the private takeover of companies that formerly supplied seeds, inputs, and tractors has significantly raised costs for small-scale producers. Strategic alliances in sugar mills have also drawn complaints of companies defrauding sugar cane growers.
The Cisneros Group, one of Venezuela’s largest private sector conglomerates, has recently announced plans to raise over $1 billion in funds ahead of potential sell-offs of state assets.
Elias Ferrer Breda, financial analyst and director of Orinoco Research, told Venezuelanalysis that he foresees privatizations in basic industries such as steel and cement.
“In my view, we will see virtually all the industries that are running at low capacity and without turning profits privatized,” he predicted. “We are talking about industries like steel and cement, but also other sectors like hotels or agricultural land.”
Ferrer affirmed that state companies currently under strategic alliances, such as sugar mills or Ferrominera Orinoco, an iron-ore complex presently managed by India’s Jindal Steel, could continue under similar deals as opposed to being sold outright.
“Where investors have mostly expressed an interest is in extractive industries: oil and mining,” he added. Ferrer additionally claimed that US “strategic and business interests” are likely to pursue control over Venezuelan critical mineral reserves, which are not presently certified.
Rodríguez had unveiled the commission to evaluate state assets in an April 9 presidential address. The acting leader also set in motion efforts to reform Venezuela’s labor, tax, and pension legislation. The Venezuelan National Assembly has recently approved pro-business overhauls of the country’s hydrocarbon and mining laws.
Caracas reestablished dealings with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank on April 16. On Wednesday, Rodríguez disclosed a conversation with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and stated Caracas’ priority in unblocking around US $5 billion worth of Special Drawing Rights to improve public services such as electricity and water supply.
For her part, Georgieva acknowledged a “very valuable and productive call” and that the next steps include IMF “policy advice and capacity development.”
Venezuelan leaders have vowed that there are no plans to incur IMF debt. However, the Caribbean nation could soon face pressure from creditors looking to collect on a massive external debt, with unpaid loans, defaulted bonds, and international arbitration awards totaling as much as $170 billion with accrued interest.
On April 16, the so-called Venezuelan Creditor Committee held talks with US officials amid efforts to secure a license to engage in debt negotiations with Caracas. The committee includes Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Greylock Capital Management, and others.
Since the January 3 US military strikes and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has seized control of Venezuelan oil revenues while issuing licenses to grant Western corporations favorable access to the Caribbean nation’s energy and mining sectors.
Edited by Lucas Koerner in Fusagasugá, Colombia.
How Trump’s Iran war is driving military dissent | US-Israel war on Iran News
From protests to quiet resistance, dissent is rising inside the United States military over the US-Israel war on Iran.
As the US expands its war with Iran, opposition is growing – not just among the public, but inside the military itself. Some service members are questioning orders, exploring conscientious objection, and speaking out. What’s driving this shift, and how far could it go?
In this episode:
- Mike Prysner (@MikePrysner), Executive Director of the Center on Conscience & War
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Marcos Bartolomé, Tamara Khandaker, and Sarí El-Khalili with Spencer Cline, Tuleen Barakat, and our host, Malika Bilal. It was edited by Tamara Khandaker and Noor Wazwaz.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer.
Connect with us:
Published On 23 Apr 2026
Watch: Girl describes finding rare Mexican axolotl in Wales
A 10-year-old girl who found an endangered Mexican axolotl while on holiday in Wales has told the BBC about the moment she found and caught the amphibian.
It is the first documented discovery of an axolotl in the wild in the UK, with only 50 to 1,000 left globally, according to experts.
Evie was playing in the shallows of the River Ogmore in Bridgend when she spotted the axolotl nestled in the rocks.
The family decided to cut their trip short to take the animal back to their home in Leicester, naming it Dippy as a tribute to where Evie found it.
“I think it’s a really nice change to the family,” Evie said about having Dippy.
Chris Newman, the National Centre for Reptile Welfare (NCRW) director, said the manner in which Dippy was found suggested its previous owner had released it due to a “change in circumstances”.
With talks in ruins, Iran displays its power over strait
Iran displayed its strengthened control over the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday by releasing video footage of its commandos boarding a large cargo ship. The video, aired on state television, showed masked troops storming the MSC Francesca and included scenes of another captured ship, the Epaminondas, which Iran accused of trying to cross the strait without proper permits.
As tensions remain high, the U. S. announced that it boarded another tanker, the Majestic, in the Indian Ocean. This was likely a reference to the supertanker, the Phonix, which was carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil off Sri Lanka. Since the start of conflict in February, Iran has effectively restricted access to the strait, asserting control after peace talks between the U. S. and Iran were halted shortly before a ceasefire expired.
Iran’s willingness to re-engage in talks depended on the U. S. lifting its blockade and releasing Iranian ships. In a post on Truth Social, U. S. President Donald Trump indicated that he ordered the Navy to “shoot and kill” Iranian boats that were laying mines in the strait, escalating military actions without addressing other Iranian tactics like speedboats and drones.
Iran’s judiciary chief stated that the merchant vessels attacked by Iran’s forces had faced legal consequences, while Iran’s vice speaker announced that the first toll revenue collected from ships using the strait had been transferred to the central bank, but provided no specifics on payments or amounts.
Tehran proclaimed it would not reopen the strait, which typically handles a significant portion of global oil and gas shipments, until the U. S. lifted the blockade considered a breach of the ceasefire. Although Trump refrained from escalating attacks in the ceasefire’s final hours, he remained firm on not lifting the blockade. There was no formal extension of the ceasefire nor plans for new negotiations.
Iranian citizens faced uncertainty and anxiety in what they termed a state of “neither peace nor war,” fearing potential attacks from the U. S. or Israel. Pakistan, previously facilitating talks, remained in contact with both countries about reviving discussions, but Iranian officials hesitated to commit due to the U. S. blockade.
On the U. S. side, another round of discussions was set for Thursday, focused on Israel and Lebanon, where Lebanon sought an extension of a recent ceasefire amidst continued Israeli airstrikes that resulted in casualties, marking a significant day since the ceasefire began.
In a significant personnel change, U. S. Navy Secretary John Phelan was dismissed amid conflicts over shipbuilding decisions and tensions with high-ranking officials.
The ongoing situation in the Strait of Hormuz has caused volatility in markets, pushing oil prices upward, while stock prices in the U. S. reached record highs despite uncertainty about energy supply. Washington has thus far failed to achieve its stated war goals of limiting Iran’s military capabilities, ending its nuclear efforts, and fostering regime change. Iran maintains its missile and drone capabilities and stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, while its government remains resilient against internal dissent. Despite threats from Trump, Iran’s control over the strait appears to strengthen its position in the conflict.
With information from Reuters
US-Israeli war on Iran will push 30 million back into poverty, UN warns | US-Israel war on Iran News
Disruption to fuel and fertiliser supplies due to the Strait of Hormuz closure will hit crop yields, UNDP chief warns.
Published On 23 Apr 2026
The Iran war will push more than 30 million people back into poverty, with the knock-on effects of the conflict likely to increase food insecurity in the coming months, the United Nations has warned.
Disruption to fuel and fertiliser supplies due to the ongoing blocking of cargo vessels through the Strait of Hormuz has already lowered agricultural productivity and will hit crop yields later this year, the UN’s development chief said on Thursday.
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“Even if the war would stop tomorrow, those effects, you already have them, and they will be pushing back more than 30 million people into poverty,” said Alexander De Croo, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
He also warned of other fallouts of the United States-Israeli war on Iran, including energy shortages and falling remittances.
Much of the world’s fertiliser is produced in the Middle East, and one-third of global supplies passes through the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran and the US are jostling for control.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) last week warned that a prolonged crisis in the strait could lead to a global food “catastrophe”.
India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Kenya, and Egypt are among the countries most at risk, according to the FAO.
“Food insecurity will be at its peak level in a few months – and there is not much that you can do about it,” De Croo said.
Straining humanitarian efforts
The knock-on effects of the Iran conflict have already wiped out 0.5 percent to 0.8 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), according to De Croo, who noted, “Things that take decades to build up, it takes eight weeks of war to destroy them.”
De Croo, the former prime minister of Belgium, also warned that the Middle East crisis is straining humanitarian efforts in other parts of the world, with the sector already facing funding cuts.
The US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which began on February 28, have also choked up key humanitarian aid routes, delaying life-saving shipments to some of the world’s worst crises.
“We will have to say to certain people, really sorry, but we can’t help you,” De Croo said. “People who would be surviving on help will not have this, and will be pushed into even greater vulnerability.”
Canada contributes $5M to eliminate chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria – Middle East Monitor
Canada on Wednesday announced $5 million in funding for international efforts aimed at identifying and eliminating chemical weapons remaining in Syria, Anadolu reports.
“Today, the Honourable Anita Anand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, announced Canada’s contribution of $5 million to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) through Canada’s Weapons Threat Reduction Program,” the Global Affairs Canada said in a statement.
Noting that the OPCW will use the contribution to verify the scope of Syria’s former chemical weapons program, the readout added that the funding will also be used to investigate past uses of such weapons, and prepare for the safe destruction of remaining stockpiles, in line with the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The statement said the work is considered critical to “Syria’s long-term stability,” advancing accountability and reducing the risk to civilians of any future chemical weapons use.
“This contribution is part of Canada’s long-standing support to the OPCW to uphold the global ban on chemical weapons and strengthen international accountability,” it added.
Rapist jailed for deliberate HIV infections
A judge says Adam Hall took away the futures of his victims, including boys aged 15 and 17.
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Ideology, Blood, and War: Rethinking the Origins of Boko Haram
Before he became a fugitive preacher, during which time security officials learned to mutter his name with a foreboding weight, culminating ultimately in his killing, filmed and circulated across local and international news platforms, Mohammed Yusuf was a boy seated before his father, learning the Qur’an. This is where this story begins.
Not in 2002 or in July 2009, which are often cited as the landmark years. The beginning lay far away from prying eyes, in the ordinary intimacy of religious learning, in a world of fathers and sons, mallams and pupils, recitation and repetition.
Those who knew Yusuf’s early life describe a child shaped in his father’s image. According to one of his sisters, who does not wish to be named, “He learned to recite the Qur’an under Baba. He was our father’s student before he became anyone else’s.” He imbibed that discipline, the rigour and rhythm of recitation, correction, and memorisation.
He went on to study under Goni Bulama, who was reportedly knowledgeable in fiqh (the human interpretation and application of Sharia law). Later, he travelled to Potiskum in Yobe State to continue learning under his uncle, Goni Madu. He stayed there for two or three years, “then he returned home and continued seeking knowledge in several places” as part of the Almajiranci system, his sister recalled.
Among the clerics repeatedly named by people who followed that part of his life is Goni Modu in Lamisula, a suburb in Maiduguri. He occasionally took lessons from the late Sheikh Abba Aji, a well-respected Mufassir (Qur’anic exegete)in Maiduguri. “Yusuf did not emerge from the bubble; he was shaped through the interplay of ideologies,” said Kyari Mustafa, a researcher and one of Yusuf’s former students. One of his childhood friends, who is now a moderate cleric in Maiduguri, described Yusuf as a very curious child, adding that he thinks “that was what made him learn faster than all his peers”.
According to many who encountered Yusuf, he was many things, some of them deeply dangerous, but he was not a man who wandered by accident into religious influence. He read, listened, argued, absorbed, and faltered like many clerics before him and after him. He later recast those ideas into a corrosive, doctrinal political weapon, with devastating consequences that plunged more than five countries bordering Lake Chad into violence, killing and maiming tens of thousands, and uprooting millions from their communities.
Long before he created a movement the world would come to know as Boko Haram, he moved through circles of da’awah and doctrinal activism that were themselves products of a wider shift in Muslim politics. At one stage, he was linked to the Muslim Brothers, a movement of mostly students active in the 1980s and 1990s that promoted political Islam and reform. Some accounts also linked him to circles associated with Sheikh Ibrahim El Zakzaky, the Shia cleric and leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria. Those familiar with that era said Yusuf pulled away immediately from what he regarded as Shi’a framing by key figures in the movement, since he was inclined toward Sunni religious beliefs. However, Yusuf was not separated from their struggle; instead, he was separated over the terms, over authority, aqeedah, and over who would define the path ahead.
The claim that Yusuf was a disciple of the late Kano-based Salafi scholar Sheikh Ja’afar Mahmud and his circle does not hold under closer scrutiny. However, those who observed the stint at Muhammad Indimi’s mosque in Maiduguri and the eventual split describe a sharper divergence. “Ja’afar argued that Muslims should engage formal schools and institutions, then reform them from within. Yusuf rejected that path, calling for a boycott. He pushed for parallel systems built on Islamic guidance with zero secular influence,” said Mustafa.
From the beginning, there were overlaps between Yusuf and dozens of clerics in broad questions about jihad and Sharia. Still, Yusuf pushed toward establishing a totalitarian Sharia system on terms others did not share, or not yet. Across the Sahel, a broad clerical ecosystem continues to propagate hardline doctrinal interpretations reminiscent of those once advanced by Mohammed Yusuf. Many remain obscure, not for lack of ideological alignment, but because they have not transitioned into open confrontation with the state. Unlike Yusuf, whose influence escalated when he mobilised disaffected youth into armed resistance, these figures operate below the threshold of insurgency and restrict themselves to preaching.
There was also an organisational history that has been largely buried beneath the violence that came later. “Yusuf was once part of a movement in 1997/1998 identified as ‘Jamatul Tajdid Islami’, which was first created in Kano and headquartered there,” said Malam Mohammad, Yusuf’s former associate now based in Kano. By early 2000, he was back in Maiduguri, beginning or deepening preaching activities across several mosques. He was pushed out from Mohammed Indimi’s Mosque, moved to Al’amin Daggash Mosque, was stopped again, and then continued from his own house, given to him by his father-in-law. He named the sanctuary Ibn Taymiyya Masjid after a 13th-century Islamic scholar.
This was a precursor phase built on a study circle, not an insurgent cell. At the time, young men in white jalabiyas and their wives in black long jalbabs flooded Maiduguri. They were encouraged to bond tightly, abandon schools, and resign from secular institutions. “They shared food amongst themselves. They sold farm produce at subsidised rates from their large farm in Benisheikh. They provided free medical care through two clinics in Maiduguri. They ran a small revolving loan scheme for indigent members,” said Malam (name withheld), one of the movement’s former clerics currently in Maiduguri.
A fighter still active told HumAngle he dropped out as a sophomore at the University of Maiduguri, leaving his parents’ home to move in with a member of the group. “Between 2006 and 2007, I had no skills or a job. I survived on daily meals and food stamps from the Ibn Taymiyyah mosque. I will never forget that support by Malam Mohammed Yusuf,” said the 42-year-old Boko Haram member.
Ideology and a premeditated war
Boko Haram did not erupt because of the high-handedness of security agents, though that high-handedness was real and consequential. It did not begin because Mohammed Yusuf was extrajudicially killed in July 2009. However, that killing transformed him into a martyr in the eyes of his followers and helped harden the foot soldiers in the war that came thereafter. It did not begin because of one helmet law, one police confrontation, or one week of clashes in Biu, Bauchi, Maiduguri, Damaturu, Potiskum, and elsewhere.
Those events merely accelerated the rupture.
The deeper fuse was ideology, and that ideology did not grow in isolation. It travelled with money, with wars fought elsewhere, with transnational religious currents, and with the afterlife of global politics that Nigeria still refuses to examine closely.
In the 1980s, amid oil-fuelled prosperity and the protracted Cold War contest in Afghanistan, a distinct wave of Salafi thought was actively scaled by a Gulf state. It travelled through well-funded clerical networks, charities, publications, scholarships, and layers of international patronage that gave it both reach and structure.
For external backers, the fine details of ideology did not matter. What mattered was shared strategy. As long as this movement in Afghanistan put pressure on the Soviet Union, its beliefs were rarely questioned and were sometimes quietly supported.
In Afghanistan, jihad evolved from a theological concept into something more kinetic, a pathway, a destination, and, for many, a defining personal transformation. Young men from across the Muslim world answered that call. Nigerians were among them. Many of them were strikingly from the southwest region, but when they returned, they did not find the same fertile conditions in their home environment for a project of violent proselytisation. The idea survived, but it did not easily reproduce itself in that terrain.
In the north, these returnee fighters from Afghanistan did not arrive on stable ground. They met a generation of young men with little education and a grim future, a generation that knew the state only through force, neglect, and theft. They met boys raised on the daily humiliation of poverty and poor investment in education by corrupt officials.
That was the combustible field in which Yusuf picked up most of his ideas in the late 90s and began to nurture them into a movement in the early years of 2000. By the time the July 2009 ma’araka occurred, the insurgency had already been imagined, nurtured, and prepared for years. The movement had passed through the stages of learning, da’awah, withdrawal, factional dispute, internal sorting, and ideological hardening.
“Operation Flush” and the broader security pressure during that period disrupted a longer period of preparation. When the confrontation came, the group had not yet fully built what they intended to build. If they had been left to prepare longer, and if the rupture had come later rather than in July 2009, Nigeria might have faced a movement with greater organisational maturity and strategic capacity.
In the weeks after the confrontation between Boko Haram members and Operation Flush in Maiduguri, triggered by the enforcement of helmet regulations on motorcycle riders, tensions escalated sharply. Security forces shot around 20 sect members, an incident that hardened positions within the group and deepened mistrust of state authority.
Mohammed Yusuf responded with an open declaration, signalling that the group would confront the state if certain demands were not met. Within the cult-like community, preparations began quietly but deliberately. Members started liquidating personal assets. Cars, motorcycles, and even houses were sold. Women parted with jewellery and household items. Contributions came from across the network, each person offering what they could.
This mobilisation unfolded in earnest in the month leading up to July 2009.
Long before the war, there were also fractures inside the movement that foreshadowed what would come later. One notable example is that of Muhammed Alli, who, after disagreeing with Yusuf, left for Hijra to Kanamma in Yobe State with dozens of youths in 2003. They isolated themselves from normal civil life in a remote location. When the traditional leader in the vicinity noticed a strange group of people in his turf in December 2003, he approached them, and one thing led to another; the group had violent confrontations with the Police that resulted in the loss of lives and properties.
At the height of Yusuf’s sectarian authority between 2006 and 2009, a fracture was already taking shape within his movement. Beneath the surface, a harder, more impatient current was consolidating around Abubakar Shekau, his top lieutenant. “Yusuf believed in sequencing. Build strength first. Recruit deeply. Arm deliberately. Accumulate resources. Then, confront the state from a position of capacity,” said Mustafa.
Shekau, like Muhammad Ali, who led Kanamma, rejected that procedure. They both pushed for immediacy. Strike now and absorb the consequences later. Death itself, whether inflicted or received, was framed as victory through martyrdom, according to those inclined to Shekau’s hardline views.
Malam Hassan (Gandrova), a staff member of the Nigerian Prison Service, who was radicalised during one of Shekau’s brief remands at the Maiduguri Maximum Security Prison, would eventually join the terror group’s bomb-making unit. On Friday, July 24, 2009, he was assembling an IED with two other individuals at his rented apartment in Umarari, ‘Bayan quarters’ in Maiduguri. “Hassan and the two other bomb-making members of the sect were unskilled at the time, and their explosives blew up everyone in the room,” said a former member currently in one of Nigeria’s deradicalisation programmes set up to reintegrate former fighters back to normal civil life in their communities.
The following day, Saturday, July 25, Yusuf’s followers were attacked in Bauchi. On the night of Sunday, July 26, Yusuf faced mounting pressure from his own ranks after the bomb incident and the raids in Bauchi, compounded by a sting operation by the police in Maiduguri, “who falsely tipped Yusuf’s men that security forces would launch an assault against them before dawn,” said a senior police officer familiar with the events of July 2009. Shekau’s more radical supporters within the group demanded action.
On the evening of July 26, 2009, hours before they launched an attack on the Borno State Police headquarters, Yusuf condemned the attacks on his men during an interview with this reporter, who worked for Daily Trust at the time. “What I said previously that we are going to be attacked by the authorities has manifested itself in Bauchi, where about 40 of our brothers were doing what Allah said, arm yourself and your religion in the face of an attack and an attack was imminent. This was what Malam Hassan [bomb victim] was doing when he became a martyr,” he said.
Had Yusuf refused the group’s attack on the Police Force headquarters in Maiduguri, he would not have remained leader after that night, said several senior members of the group interviewed by HumAngle. The movement was already shifting beneath him. At best, he would have been sidelined. At worst, he would have been removed entirely by the very hardline faction he had tried to restrain.
Blood ties and the machinery of war
To understand how this story has unfolded, one has to see Yusuf as the centre of a household as well.
He had four wives and a large number of children, between 24 and 26, according to the accounts available. His first wife was Aisha, also known as Ya Bintu or Yaya Bintu. Among the children attributed to her are Yusuf, Habib, Ibrahim, Ahmad, Imam Muslim, Abdullahi (also called Abba), Isa, and Abdulazeez.
His second wife was Fatima, also called Ummu Zara. Children linked to her include Zarah, Alhaji Ba (recalled unclearly in one account), Iya Gana, Ummu Kulthu, Aish, Uma, and Abdulwahab.
His third wife was Hajja Gana, also called Ba’ba. Children associated with her include Zainab (often called Ummi), Maryam, Umar, and Khadija (also known as Ya Dija).
The fourth wife was Ummu Tulaf, or Ummuthulab in some accounts. Muazu is consistently named among her children. This is not a perfect register, but a family history carried through oral memory, insurgent secrecy, death, displacement, and the distortions that come when names are repeated across generations. But the uncertainties do not dilute the central point. Yusuf did not leave behind a disembodied ideology. He left behind a house, and that house has remained part of the machinery of war to date.
One relative of Yusuf, based in Kano, who spoke in detail about the family, put it simply: “All of his children are part of the insurgency. Some are dead now. But they are all part of it with no exceptions.”
The first son, Yusuf, married in Hotoro, Kano State, in 2010. The marriage was brief; he died not long after, leaving no children. His death followed the September 7, 2010, prison break in Bauchi, when Boko Haram freed hundreds of their members. Some of the escapees of that prison break were later traced to a hideout in Hotoro, where Yusuf lived. Security forces moved in. In the exchange that followed, Yusuf, the first son of Mohammed Yusuf, was killed.
Habib, the second son, known as Abu Musab, became the most consequential. Family testimony about his domestic life varies in detail, as such testimony often does in clandestine worlds, but the core is clear. He had multiple wives and many children. Zainab is recalled as one wife, Halima as another, Aisha as another. Their children, depending on who recounts the family tree, include Mus’ab, Humaira, Rumaisa, Muhammad, another Muhammad, Shifa’u, Ramla, Zarah, Rufaidah, Kasim, Abdullahi, and Amir. In one account, there is mention of a concubine or enslaved woman who bore him a daughter.
After the July 2009 violent outbreak, most of Mohammed Yusuf’s children, except his first son, were moved out of Nigeria. They were first taken to Kusiri in northern Cameroon, then to N’Djamena in Chad, where they continued their religious education under Sudanese and Chadian tutors. This relocation appears to have taken place within months of Yusuf’s death and was aimed at preserving both their safety and their symbolic value within the movement.
In 2012, after Abubakar Shekau left Rijiyan Zaki in Kano and established himself in the Sambisa forest, he ordered Yusuf’s children to be brought back into the insurgent enclave, which the group had begun to frame as its Daula. This move reflected a deliberate effort to consolidate legitimacy by reabsorbing Yusuf’s lineage into the insurgency’s core.
Among those elevated during this period was Abu Musab al-Barnawi. He was progressively assigned roles that combined religious authority and operational relevance, positioning him as a bridge between doctrinal leadership and battlefield command.
From 2015 to 2016, tensions between Shekau and ISIS leadership intensified. The central issue was Shekau’s expansive use of takfir, particularly Takfir al-‘Umum, which justified violence against broad segments of the Muslim population. ISIS leadership, including Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, engaged in repeated efforts to moderate Shekau’s position. These attempts also addressed concerns over targeting practices, the use of female suicide bombers, and command discipline. All efforts failed.
In August 2016, ISIS formally intervened. Through its Al-Naba publication, it announced the removal of Shekau as leader and the appointment of Abu Musab al-Barnawi as Wali of the Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP). This marked the formal split between Boko Haram and ISWAP. The decision was externally driven by ISIS central and reflected a strategic shift toward a more controlled and population-focused insurgent model under new leadership.
Abba (aka Abu Umaysa), whose given name is Abdullahi, is also one of Yusuf’s sons. He reportedly had multiple wives and children, including Muhammad, Maryam, Aisha, and at least one other son. Within the insurgent structure, he played a technical and operational role, particularly in communications. Sources indicate he was responsible for managing encrypted messaging platforms that facilitated contact between ISWAP leadership and ISIS-linked actors in the Middle East.
Despite his communications role, Abba was known to participate directly in combat operations, a pattern that reportedly drew disapproval from senior leadership due to the sensitivity of his liaison responsibilities. Internal disputes led to repeated detentions. Abba was imprisoned on four separate occasions by his brother Abu Musab, including periods of detention alongside that of Mamman Nur, a senior figure associated with Mohammed Yusuf’s lifetime.
In one instance, he escaped custody with other fighters and fled to the Niger Republic, but later returned. According to a source, he was subsequently pardoned and allowed to reintegrate without facing the death penalty typically imposed on members accused of attempting to defect.
A senior ISWAP defector, Malam Ibrahim, stated that during one period of detention linked to internal disagreements, ISIS-linked contacts “declined communication with ISWAP as long as they did not hear his voice. He was released immediately to continue his work.”
Abba later died in early 2023 during an engagement with the Multinational Joint Task Force in the Kangarwa forest area.
The other sons, Muslim, Abdulazeez, Isa, and Abdulwahab, are described by one source as married and without children at the time of this report. However, Muslim was arrested in Chad when he was trying to defect from the group to live outside of Nigeria.
Even inside the household of a movement that would later devastate the northeast, family life is still narrated through the intimate vocabulary of births, marriages, hopes, namesakes, and unanswered prayers for children. That is exactly why the story resists easy reduction. The people at the centre of violence remained human in their own domestic worlds. That does not mitigate their responsibility, but it explains how such worlds sustain themselves.
The patriarch’s execution
Yusuf’s rise spiked because of his soft-spoken, unusual, and persuasive verbal skills rather than his scholastic proficiency. He did not need the theatrics many expected from Sahel’s religious authorities. He could name what young men already felt but had not yet organised into doctrine. Corruption. Injustice. Absence. State impunity. The feeling that rulers had abandoned both God and the governed. He took those scattered injuries and gave them a single haunting frame.
Yusuf was carrying a worldview shaped by transnational currents, doctrinal disputes within Nigeria and the broader Sahel Islam, and his own insistence that the Nigerian state was religiously illegitimate.
Then came the extrajudicial killing.
Outside the police headquarters in Maiduguri, Yusuf was captured on camera, alive in custody, seated and handcuffed. Later, he was dead, his body riddled with bullets. The state said he had been shot while trying to escape. The footage with his hands tied, however, invalidated that claim.
What followed was brutal and systematic. Raids spread across northern states, with Maiduguri at the centre. Security forces targeted hospitals and local pharmacies. They forced staff to identify and lead them to patients treated for gunshot wounds or related injuries. Those patients were taken to the State Police headquarters. Some could barely stand. Some were on crutches. Some were executed at close range in the presence of this reporter, as documented here.
For followers, the image of Yusuf became proof of everything he had preached about state injustice. This was the moment the war entered the family’s bloodstream. His children, who had already grown up under his teachings, now witnessed his extrajudicial death.
Abu Musab was central to the next phase.
The rise and fall of Abu Musab
Relatives remember him first as a disciplined son who rose through the ranks. He became a Munzir, later Ka’id, fiya, then a Waliy. He read deeply. He gained influence not only because he was Yusuf’s son but because he appeared to embody knowledge and steadiness.
Some accounts describe him as a serious internal voice within the insurgency, especially in doctrinal disputes over takfir and the treatment of ordinary Muslims. At one point, some within the movement argued that any Muslim who refused to migrate to the bush and live under insurgent control was an unbeliever. The practical effect of that doctrine was robbery, extortion, and killing.
Abu Musab is remembered by those close to him as having resisted that direction. “People had reasons they could not leave,” he said in one of his recorded messages. “Not everyone outside the bush was an apostate.” That detail does not make him humane in any broad sense. He remained a leader in a movement that killed, abducted, raped, extorted, and terrorised civilians. But it does place him more accurately within the insurgency’s internal tapestry. He was part of the crop of leaders who believed Shekau had gone too far.
That split would define the next phase of the war.
After Yusuf’s death, Abubakar Shekau turned what remained of the movement into a machine of spectacle and indiscriminate terror. His fighters razed villages, bombed markets, assassinated Muslim clerics, and turned young women and girls into delivery systems for explosives. Entire communities were punished under expansive accusations of unbelief or collaboration. Shekau did not merely fight the Nigerian state. He fought whole populations, including the Muslims his faction claimed to defend.
Inside the movement, dissent built over time. Some of Yusuf’s old followers, including members of his family, believed Shekau had broken from the founder’s original doctrinal line. They still believed in jihad. They still rejected the Nigerian state. But they did not accept his disregard for restraint and counsel.
When the movement pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, those internal disputes widened. That split changed the insurgency’s logic. Shekau’s faction remained rooted in Sambisa and in a politics of fear, punishment, and theatrical violence. ISWAP, under Abu Musab, moved toward an equally brutal but more organised form of insurgent governance around the Lake Chad Basin. It taxed fishermen, farmers, and traders. It built courts, regulated movement, and sought not merely to kill but to rule.
It was still a terrorist organisation. It still abducted, extorted, murdered, raped and coerced. But its method of domination differed from Boko Haram. Where Shekau often destroyed civilian life outright, ISWAP frequently sought to occupy it, supervise it, and harvest from it. Communities brutalised by both insurgents and the military often did not think in abstract moral categories. They thought in terms of survival. To some, ISWAP looked more predictable than Shekau’s men, less erratic, and more likely to tax than to massacre. In this phase, Yusuf’s family became an infrastructure.
Some sons moved into command, others into ideological work. Some daughters married senior figures, tightening bonds between bloodline and leadership. One of Yusuf’s wives, Hajja Gana, later married Abubakar Shekau. The geography of Lake Chad then amplified everything.
Once a vast inland body of water, the lake has, over the decades, become a shifting geography of reeds, channels, islands, marshes, and seasonal passages where state borders blur, and state authority thins into abstraction. A fighter can move from Nigeria into Niger or Chad with less friction than a trader might face at a conventional checkpoint. Armouries can be hidden on islands. Training camps can be relocated across terrains that conceal unfriendly surveillance. Tax routes can be imposed on fishing channels more effectively than the Nigerian state can regulate ordinary commercial life in some border communities.
Yet dynasties do not move cleanly. They fracture from within.
Abu Musab’s rise inside ISWAP did not end in settled power. Internal struggles sharpened. Rivalries widened within the rank-and-file and the shura. Family accounts describe a period of captivity that placed him in real danger. The Boko Haram faction led by one Bakura Doro wanted him dead. Some within ISWAP opposed his return to influence, reflecting deeper internal fractures shaped by ideology, loyalty, and competition for authority. Yet he retained a critical asset: He was a recognised member of the shura within the broader Islamic State network. That status placed him within a transnational decision-making architecture that extends beyond the Lake Chad Basin, linking local commanders to the central leadership historically based in the Levant and later dispersed across multiple theatres.
According to a high-profile source, “a decision was made to extract him, perhaps toward North Africa or the Middle East.” Such a move would align with patterns seen in the Islamic State’s global operations, where experienced figures are sometimes redeployed across provinces. These decisions are often driven by strategic need, internal distrust, or the desire to preserve individuals with institutional memory and ideological legitimacy within the wider ISIS ecosystem.
That plan never reached its destination.
Instead, he moved through Nigeria under concealment. He spent time with one of his wives and their child. He moved through Kano. He surfaced in Kaduna. The high-profile source said, “Kaduna was the location chosen for him to wait for his travel documents to be processed.” HumAngle gathered that he was in the process of obtaining a Niger Republic international passport. At his Kaduna hideout, between April 21 and May 19, 2023, one of his couriers was tracked and security agents followed the trail to the house.
What remains most striking is that they appear not to have known whom they were closing in on. They suspected criminality, but by available accounts, they did not know they were approaching Abu Musab al-Barnawi himself.
Abu Musab heard heavy banging at the gate, mixed with men shouting and the rumble of vehicles. He knew immediately it was security forces. HumAngle gathered through extensive interviews that he was calm, almost detached. He told his young wife, who was holding their young child, to open the gate. As she moved toward it, he slipped into the room’s toilet. Moments later, he detonated the explosive vest strapped to his body.
The blast stunned everyone outside, including his wife. The sound cut through the compound without warning. He chose death over arrest, over public disgrace, over the certainty of spending the rest of his life behind bars.
There was no public announcement after the blast that killed Abu Musab, no official triumph, no clear state recognition that one of the most significant insurgent figures in the region had died in that house. The insurgents, too, remained quiet, neither publicly mourning nor confirming the incident. Instead, the kunya Abu Musab continued to circulate, adopted by others as part of the deception and continuity that sophisticated insurgent networks rely on.
So he died in near silence.
A complex conflict
The temptation in telling this story is to simplify it into a mirror, a dreadful, clean reflective script revealing the ugliness and wretchedness of ruthless power mixed with aloof governance. The state is wholly guilty. The insurgents are evil. The civilians are trapped. All of that is true, and none of it is enough.
Yusuf’s movement drew strength from three elements that must be held up together if the story is to make sense.
The first was ideology. A structured creed, nourished by transnational currents, that delegitimised secular authority and imagined an Islamic order justified by violence.
The second was a grievance about corrupt governance, collapsed services, absent justice, police extortion, and growing poverty and unemployment across northern Nigeria.
The third was impunity: lawlessness by the state, extrajudicial killings, collective punishment, detention without process, and the routine treatment of poor people as disposable.
Some of the young men who heard and looked up to Yusuf died in 2009, before the insurgency fully matured. Some fled and returned. Some crossed into Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Sudan. Some started living normal lives. Some became commanders, teachers, recruiters, executioners, or administrators in the insurgent order. Some of his children, like Abu Musab, moved into leadership. Others remained within family or support structures inside the insurgent ecosystem. Some died. Some vanished. Some married deeper into the insurgency. Some had children in forest camps and island settlements. Those children then formed a third generation.
That third generation may be the hardest part of this story.
Across parts of the Lake Chad Basin, children have grown up under insurgent authority or the culture of violence, with no memory of peace. Their parents’ stories are not about school, court, civic life, or public trust. They are about raids, camps, betrayal, martyrdom, command, and survival.
In Borno, Yobe, and across the Lake Chad region, insurgency is not sustained only by ideology at the top. It is sustained by marriages, kinship, cattle routes, fishing economies, clerical contentions, clans, dialects, borderland trade, and the practical calculations of communities trying to stay alive between insurgent taxation and military suspicion. A woman’s marriage can be an alliance, survival, coercion, and entrapment all at once. A boy’s movement from the city to the forest can be due to indoctrination, family obedience, or a lack of alternatives. A trader may pay insurgents not because he supports them but because the state has left him no other safe route.
That is also why the story cuts beyond Nigeria.
The symmetry is brutal. The state killed the father after capture. The son killed himself to avoid capture. Between those two deaths lies the whole distortion of the northeast conflict. A state too often governed by force rather than law. An insurgency that chose violence over any serious claim to humanity. A population trapped between them, paying in graves, hunger, displacement, and silence.
More than a decade after Yusuf’s death, the conflict he helped set in motion has not collapsed into victory or defeat. Instead, it has settled into a prolonged contest between military containment and insurgent adaptation.
The Nigerian military and the Multinational Joint Task Force have, despite operational limitations, prevented a full territorial takeover by Boko Haram and ISWAP. At multiple points, especially between 2013 and 2015, insurgents controlled significant territory. That phase was rolled back through sustained military pressure.
However, these successes were fundamentally limited. The military has achieved containment, not resolution. This creates a circle where military gains are repeatedly eroded in the absence of credible state presence, turning the conflict into a durable stalemate rather than a solvable war.
The danger now is not only that Nigerians forget Mohammed Yusuf’s actual place in this history. The danger is that the next generation inherits only the myths. On one side, the state myth that terrorism came from nowhere and can be resolved through raids, procurement, press releases, and more force. On the other side, the insurgent myth is that an unbelieving state martyred a “righteous founder” and that his children merely carried forward a sacred duty.
Both myths kill.
The truer version is harder. Yusuf was a product of corrosive ideology, ambition, and grievance. That is why this story still matters.
Nigeria did not invent militant Salafi ideology. It did not write the script of the Afghan jihad. It did not create global takfiri currents. But Nigeria did something unforgivable in its own space. It abandoned millions of citizens to conditions in which men like Mohammed Yusuf could speak with authority. Then, when the blowback came, it answered with the same habits that had already emptied the state of legitimacy in the eyes of many.
There is one final image that remains.
Somewhere in northern Nigeria, perhaps in Lake Chad, perhaps in a displacement camp, perhaps in a community held loosely between one armed authority and another, a child is being taught. The question is not whether that child will learn religion. The question is what will be wrapped around it.
Rival party workers fight on election day in India’s West Bengal | Elections
Workers from two regional parties in India have been fighting on election day for West Bengal’s state assembly. Local media reported the fighting broke out as opposition party leaders accused the state ruling party of voter intimidation.
Published On 23 Apr 2026
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However, it’s important to approach this strategically. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of focusing only on “zero tax” narratives without understanding compliance requirements, substance rules, and international reporting obligations. Poor structuring can eliminate all the benefits you’re aiming for.
Free Zones vs Mainland: What Actually Matters
A common misconception is that choosing between free zones and mainland structures is just a formality. In reality, this decision has long-term consequences for your operations.
Free zones offer:
- 100% foreign ownership
- Simplified setup
- Industry-specific ecosystems
Mainland companies provide:
- Access to the local UAE market
- Fewer restrictions on business activities
- More flexibility in scaling
The right choice depends entirely on your business model. If you’re running a digital business or international service company, a free zone might be sufficient. But if you plan to operate locally or work with government contracts, mainland becomes necessary.
Most founders underestimate this decision and later face restructuring costs. That’s avoidable if the setup is done correctly from the beginning.
Reputation and Credibility
Beyond operational and tax benefits, the UAE also provides a strong reputational advantage. Having a company registered in Dubai or Abu Dhabi often enhances credibility when dealing with international partners.
Clients and investors tend to view UAE-based companies as more stable and globally oriented compared to entities registered in offshore or less regulated jurisdictions.
This matters especially in industries like:
- Finance and consulting
- E-commerce and trading
- IT and digital services
A well-structured UAE company can significantly improve your positioning in competitive markets.
Banking and Financial Infrastructure
Opening a corporate bank account has become more complex globally, and the UAE is no exception. However, compared to many jurisdictions, it still offers relatively accessible banking solutions—if your structure and documentation are prepared correctly.
Key considerations include:
- Clear business activity
- Transparent ownership structure
- Proof of business operations
- Compliance with AML requirements
Many entrepreneurs fail at this stage not because the system is broken, but because they approach it unprepared. Proper planning significantly increases approval chances.
Scaling Opportunities
The UAE is not just a place to register a company—it’s a platform for scaling.
The country actively supports:
- Startups and innovation hubs
- Venture capital and investment funds
- Tech and digital transformation initiatives
Dubai, in particular, has become a hotspot for founders building global products. Access to capital, talent, and infrastructure creates an environment where scaling is not just possible—it’s expected.
However, there’s a blind spot many entrepreneurs have: they move to the UAE expecting growth to happen automatically. It doesn’t. The environment amplifies good strategies, but it also exposes weak ones.
If your business model is flawed, the UAE won’t fix it—it will just make the problems more expensive.
Cost Considerations
While the UAE offers numerous advantages, it’s not a “cheap” jurisdiction.
Typical costs include:
- Company registration fees
- License renewals
- Office requirements (depending on structure)
- Visa costs
This is where many people miscalculate. They focus on tax savings but ignore operational expenses. The result? A setup that looks good on paper but doesn’t make financial sense.
The correct approach is to evaluate total cost vs. total benefit—not just taxes.
Long-Term Perspective
The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make when entering the UAE is treating it as a short-term hack rather than a long-term strategic move.
If you approach it purely as a tax-saving tool, you’ll likely:
- Underinvest in structure
- Ignore compliance
- Face issues with banks or authorities
But if you treat it as a base for international growth, the UAE becomes one of the most powerful jurisdictions available today.
Final Thought
The UAE isn’t a magic solution—but it’s one of the few places where business, tax efficiency, global access, and infrastructure align at a high level.
Most people either overestimate it (“it solves everything”) or underestimate it (“just another offshore”). Both views are wrong.
The real advantage comes from execution:
- Choosing the right structure
- Setting up properly from day one
- Aligning your business model with the environment
If done correctly, the UAE doesn’t just optimize your business—it changes the trajectory of it.
Lamine Yamal’s World Cup status unclear after Barcelona injury | Football News
Lamine Yamal pulled up injured when scoring the winning goal for Barcelona in their La Liga win against Celta Vigo.
Published On 23 Apr 2026
The consensus World Cup favourite could be in danger of missing its top attacking option after Spanish forward Lamine Yamal sustained an injury while playing for Barcelona on Wednesday in a La Liga match.
According to reports, club officials believe Yamal sustained a torn hamstring, though a full prognosis won’t be known until he undergoes scans on Thursday.
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The 18-year-old superstar drew a foul that led to a penalty kick, which Yamal stepped up and scored in the 40th minute against visiting Celta Vigo. However, once the ball hit the net, Yamal didn’t celebrate. Instead, he went down injured, clutching his left hamstring.
“We have to wait,” Barcelona coach Hansi Flick said after the game. “We have to see what it is. There is something. He felt it. After the goal, he would not leave the pitch without reason.
“So it’s something. Something happened. Hopefully it’s not so bad, but we have to wait until tomorrow.”
Midfielder Pedri, Yamal’s teammate with both Barca and the Spanish national team, said, according to ESPN: “Hopefully Lamine will only miss a few weeks. I wish him the best of luck. He needs to remain calm because he’s young and will surely recover well”.
The goal was Yamal’s 16th in 28 La Liga matches this season (his 24th in 45 games in all competitions), and led Barcelona to a 1-0 win. The result leaves Barcelona with a nine-point lead on second-place Real Madrid in the league standings, so Barca are comfortably on course to claim the league title, regardless of Yamal’s health.
The bigger question is whether the injury could impact Spain’s chances at the World Cup this summer in North America.
Spain are scheduled for Group H matches on June 15 against Cape Verde and on June 21 against Saudi Arabia, both in Atlanta, then play Uruguay on June 26 in Zapopan, Mexico.
Spain won UEFA Euro 2024, in part due to contributions from the then-16-year-old Yamal. A sublime playmaker and finisher, Yamal has six goals in 25 career appearances for the Spanish national team.
Will another film star be able to sway the election in India’s Tamil Nadu? | Elections News
Tamil Nadu, India – Standing on top of a customised van on a hot and humid afternoon in Tirunelveli, about 600km (373 miles) south of Tamil Nadu’s capital Chennai in southern India, C Joseph Vijay tells his supporters his opponents have joined hands to stop him from becoming the state chief minister.
“My rivals might appear different from outside, but they have only one aim: that Vijay should not become the chief minister,” says the 51-year-old actor-turned-politician to a mammoth crowd that begins to chant his name, which means “victory” in Tamil, in unison.
Tamil Nadu, one of India’s most developed states with impressive human development indices, also has a long history of electing film stars as leaders, some of whom are still revered by people as demigods years after their deaths.
As Tamil Nadu votes on Thursday to elect its 234-member state legislative assembly, Vijay’s bid for power is the latest addition to the state’s trend of film star-politicians, turning a traditionally bipolar battle into a triangular contest.
‘A blessing and a curse’
Vijay entered politics with much fanfare when he launched the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) party in 2024, promising to end the decades-old dominance of the governing Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the main opposition All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).
Incumbent Chief Minister MK Stalin leads the DMK and its 14-party Secular Progressive Alliance, in which the Indian National Congress is a junior partner. On the other hand, opposition leader Edappadi K Palaniswami of the AIADMK heads the 10-party National Democratic Alliance, which also includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The DMK and the AIADMK identify themselves as Dravidian parties, which derive their names from a powerful political and social justice movement in Tamil Nadu that opposed caste inequalities, championed social reforms, and rejected perceived attempts by India’s more dominant north Indian parties to impose Hindi – and upper-caste Hindu values – on the non-Hindi speaking southern states.
Dravidian parties have held power in Tamil Nadu continuously since 1967, with national parties like the Congress and the BJP playing secondary roles. While the BJP is contesting 27 seats in alliance with the AIADMK, the Congress is fighting for 28 seats as part of the DMK-led coalition.
More than 87 percent of Tamil Nadu’s 72 million people are Hindu, followed by Christians at 6.1 percent and Muslims at 5.8 percent, according to the last census conducted in 2011.
Among Hindus, the so-called “backward” or less-privileged castes constitute 45.5 percent, “extremely backward” castes 23.6 percent, while Dalits are at 20.6 percent. Dalits, formerly referred to as “untouchables”, fall at the bottom of India’s complex caste hierarchy and have faced marginalisation and violence for centuries.
Vijay, son of a Christian filmmaker father and a Hindu mother who is a background singer in films, belongs to the Vellalar community, an affluent agrarian group in Tamil Nadu with both Hindu and Christian members.
Vijay started his film career as a child actor in movies directed by his father. His 1992 debut as a hero, however, in Naalaiya Theerpu (Tomorrow’s Verdict), flopped. Following the setback, his father cast him alongside popular star Vijayakanth — who later founded his own political outfit, Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) — in Senthoorapandi (1993), which gave his career a new lease of life.
It was the 2004 film Ghilli (Gutsy), which carried a subtle political undertone, that catapulted Vijay to superstar status. He dropped hints about his political ambitions in the 2013 hit Thalaivaa (Leader), which was launched with the tagline “Time to Lead”.
Soon, political messaging became central to many of Vijay’s subsequent films. Even the title of his yet-to-be-released Jana Nayagan (People’s Leader) — which he claims will be his final film — alludes to his political aspirations.
Riding on personal charisma, Vijay has attracted millions of supporters to his rallies, despite allegations of poor crowd management, which caused a stampede at one such gathering in September last year, killing 42 people.
He is expected to draw a share of Dalit and minority Christian votes that would have otherwise flowed to the DMK-led coalition. He is also banking on anti-incumbency votes that could have benefitted the AIADMK alliance.
Yet analysts say Vijay’s ambition of becoming the next chief minister will not be as easy as the scripted blockbusters he has built his career on, since he faces two opponents with decades of experience in real politics.
That leads political commentator R Kannan to describe Vijay as “both a blessing and a curse” for the two Dravidian coalitions.
“When the AIADMK joined the BJP-led NDA, many predicted the Dravidian party would lose heavily, with minorities and Dalits flocking to the DMK. Vijay’s entry, however, has offered the AIADMK a ray of hope — he is expected to draw a decent share of votes that would otherwise have gone to the DMK,” he said.
“At the same time, he works in the DMK’s favour by siphoning off anti-incumbency votes that might not entirely have gone to the AIADMK. For both Dravidian parties, he is at once a blessing and a curse.”
Tamil Nadu’s tryst with stars
Vijay is aiming to follow the path of illustrious predecessors: Maruthur Gopalan Ramachandran, popularly known as MGR, and his protege, Jayaram Jayalalithaa – Tamil Nadu’s most beloved on-screen pair.
Born into poverty, MGR’s rise to stardom was nothing short of phenomenal. He captured the imagination of Tamil Nadu’s working class, who idolised him in return. From his first superhit, Rajakumari (Princess) in 1947, his films cast him as a champion of the masses, battling oppression and corrupt authority.
MGR launched the AIADMK in 1972 after breaking away from the DMK and served as Tamil Nadu’s chief minister from 1977 to 1987. He introduced several welfare programmes, the most significant being the Puratchi Thalaivar MGR Nutritious Meal Scheme, which provided free meals to schoolchildren to eliminate malnutrition and boost school enrolment.
His political heir, Jayalalithaa, was a six-time chief minister between 1991 and 2016, when she became India’s first female state leader to die in office. She is remembered for launching several women-centric programmes, including all-women police stations and subsidised two-wheelers for working women, apart from her work in curbing female infanticide.
The DMK also has a history of film personalities, including the party’s founder, CN Annadurai, who rose to fame as a pathbreaking scriptwriter with films like Velaikkari (1949), and MGR as the party’s star campaigner and leader before he founded the AIADMK.
Soon, Muthuvel Karunanidhi emerged as another prominent writer, poet and screenwriter with films like Parasakthi (1952), meaning Supreme Power, often cited as a turning point in Tamil cinema. Directed by Krishnan-Panju and written by Karunanidhi, then 28 years old, the film fiercely attacked casteism and social inequality, while propelling the spread of the Dravidian ideology.
Karunanidhi, popularly known as Kalaignar (artist), wrote scripts for more than 75 films that resonated with the struggles of the working class, championing rationalism and social equality.
He won the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly election for a record 13 terms and served as the state’s chief minister for five terms between 1969 and 2011. He died at the age of 94 in 2018, when his son, Stalin, took over as chief minister and DMK chief.
Film star-politicians who embraced Tamil identity politics flourished, while those who did not fell by the wayside.
“Successful leaders such as MGR, popularly known as Puratchi Thaalaivar [Revolutionary Leader], Jayalalithaa, who earned the monikers Puratchi Thalaivi [Revolutionary Female Leader] and Amma [Mother], embraced identity politics. Another popular film actor, Sivaji Ganesan, by contrast, could not make the same mark in politics even after he tried,” said Kannan, who has written biographies of MGR and Annadurai.
In 2005, popular actor Vijayakanth added to the starry mix by launching his DMDK party, another Dravidian political outfit. He made every attempt to position his party as an alternative to the DMK and the AIADMK, but failed. The party won just one seat in 2006 — Vijayakanth’s own — and drew a blank in 2009. Though he went on to become the leader of the opposition in the assembly in 2011, the election reverses forced him to seek alliances. The DMDK, now led by his wife Premalatha, is contesting 10 seats in alliance with the DMK.
Which is where, say analysts, Vijay’s pitch for power is unlikely to make an impact in this election. They say his TVK party does not fall in the long line of Dravidian parties that have a distinct political ideology and programme that appeals to their voters.
“Tamil Nadu is an ideologically and politically evolved state. Issues such as social justice, centre-state relations, and linguistic and cultural identity are paramount here. People will not back a politician without a clear ideology,” Ramu Manivannan, former professor of political science at the University of Madras, told Al Jazeera.
Manivannan said large crowds at Vijay’s rallies should not be mistaken for potential votes. “Film stars always attract crowds. To assume all of them will translate into votes is unfair.”
Vijay’s TVK is rooted in his fan clubs, which thrive on masculine aggression, said S Anandhi, retired professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies.
“Vijay’s populist rhetoric — defying all authority — appeals strongly to the youth. But he never clarifies what he will actually do in power. He frames it as all established forces being arrayed against young men, and youngsters see this as an opportunity for a new kind of collectivisation. I would call it a dangerous class,” she told Al Jazeera.
Appeal to young, female voters
Vijay appears to be banking heavily on two voter blocs: younger voters between 18 and 39 years, who number 23 million of the state’s 57 million voters, and women, who account for more than half of them.
At his rallies packed with young people and women, Vijay has alleged that Stalin’s true allies are “bribery and corruption”, framing the contest as a personal battle between himself and the chief minister.
Stalin, for his part, has largely brushed off Vijay’s attacks. “Newly-formed parties have a wrong notion that they can survive by criticising DMK,” he said in a recent interview.
Instead, Stalin has focused his attacks on the Modi government, accusing it of depriving Tamil Nadu of its share of federal funds, and framing the election as a contest between Tamil Nadu and New Delhi – a ploy that simultaneously targets the AIADMK for allying with an “adversary”, the BJP.
The AIADMK’s Palaniswami has countered by saying Stalin raises the centre-state issue only because he has “no achievements of his own to show”.
Despite their ideological differences, all parties are competing heavily on welfare promises in a state known for freebies during elections.
The DMK has pledged to double the monthly women’s allowance to 2,000 rupees ($21), offer 8,000 rupees ($85) in home appliance coupons, and build one million homes for the poor over five years. The AIADMK, also promising a monthly allowance of 2,000 rupees for women, has additionally offered free refrigerators to the poor and a one-time family grant of 10,000 rupees ($106).
Vijay’s TVK, hoping to cash in on the ongoing global fuel crisis, has promised six free LPG cylinders annually, 2,500 rupees ($26.5) monthly support for the female heads of a household, 8gm gold and a silk saree for poor women getting married, 4,000 rupees ($42.5) stipend for unemployed college graduates, and interest-free education loans of up to 2 million rupees ($21,257).
Still, Kannan feels Vijay can at best be a disruptor in the three-cornered contest.
“Vijay’s campaign gained momentum in the final lap. He turned what was a bipolar contest into a three-cornered one. But apart from his personal charisma, he lacks proper organisational machinery. Many of his party’s candidates are unknown faces,” he said.
Democrats up in Virginia, but US voters may pay price for redistricting war | US Midterm Elections 2026 News
Washington, DC – The latest battle in United States congressional redistricting has been decided, with voters in Virginia approving redrawing the state’s electoral map.
The result of Tuesday’s referendum on Virginia redistricting is widely expected to benefit Democrats in their fight to retake control of the slimly Republican-controlled US House of Representatives in the midterm vote in November.
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While redistricting is typically conducted every 10 years, following the US Census count of the country’s population, the election season has seen an unprecedented flurry of states moving to redraw their legislative maps early, initially spurred by pressure on US President Donald Trump to urge his fellow Republicans in Texas to do the same.
Democrats may be up at the moment, but several scenarios – including a redistricting push in Florida – could soon spoil those gains.
Experts, meanwhile, warn of the long-term implications of the election season’s norm-busting political manoeuvres, which they say could transform how and when electoral maps are drawn for years to come.
“Virginia’s unorthodox redistricting isn’t just a map redraw, it’s a mid-decade power play in a national arms race,” Rina Shah, a political adviser and strategist, told Al Jazeera.
“In a cycle defined by retaliation over reform, this sets a precedent: when one side bends the rules, the other follows, until courts or voters draw the final line.”
Democrats gain – for now
Trump has not been timid about his desire to redraw state congressional maps to benefit his Republican Party.
In July 2025, he confirmed the plan to reporters: “Texas would be the biggest one,” he said. “Just a very simple redrawing, we pick up five seats.”
By August, Texas’s Republican-controlled State House had passed a new map favouring Republicans, setting the party on course to secure five more seats in the US House of Representatives compared to the earlier map.
The move was soon followed by changes in Missouri, whose new maps are expected to net Republicans one additional seat, while redistricting in North Carolina and Ohio is expected to give the party two to three new Republican-dominated districts.
Democrats in several states responded in kind, pushing for redistricting in California and Utah that resulted in about six new Democrat-dominated districts. Virginia’s victory largely neutralised Republican gains, adding between two and four seats for Democrats.
“This could shift Virginia from a 6-5 split to something like 10-1 Democratic,” political adviser Shah said, referring to Virginia’s 11 congressional districts and noting this would result in “delivering up to four net seats and dramatically tightening the fight for House control in the 2026 midterms”.
This comes as Republicans are already expected to face a punishing election season, with wariness over the US-Israeli war in Iran and the stubbornly high cost of living in the US.
Democratic control of either chamber of Congress – or of both – would give the party the ability to largely curtail Trump’s agenda in the final two years of his presidency.
As of Wednesday, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a midterm predictor published by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, rated 217 Congressional districts across the country as leaning towards Democrats, with 205 leaning towards Republicans and 13 rated toss-ups.
Good for Democrats, ‘terrible’ for democracy
In the short term, Democrats are “winning” from the redistricting battle, according to Samuel Wang, a professor of neuroscience at Princeton University who runs the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.
“But from a non-partisan good government standpoint, it’s just a terrible event,” Wang told Al Jazeera.
He explained the “incredible” flurry of redistricting in recent months opens the possibility of a new age of heightened gerrymandering, the process by which congressional boundaries are drawn to benefit one political group.
Prior to this election cycle, there had been just three instances of mid-decade redistricting over the last five decades. Wang described the recent spurt as a “complete busting of norms”.
“It’s bad in the sense of reducing competition. Gerrymandering on both sides, basically, removes voters from the equation everywhere it happens,” he said.
Top Democrats have largely argued their hands were forced in mirroring the Republican strategy, rather than yield to the opposing party ahead of a consequential election.
“We fought back,” Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, told the Associated Press after Virginia’s vote. “When they go low, we hit back hard.”
But some Democrats have echoed concerns over the new precedent being set.
John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who has regularly sided with Republicans, told Newsmax on Wednesday, “Whether it’s a red state or whether it’s a blue state, our democracy is degraded.”
Attention turns to Florida
To be sure, while opportunities for further redistricting are diminishing following the vote in Virginia, the final congressional maps ahead of the midterms may not yet be set.
The Virginia vote now shifts pressure on Republicans in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis is set to hold a special legislative session on April 28 to discuss possible redistricting.
A new map could add up to five Republican-dominated congressional districts in the state, but could be scuttled by strict language in Florida’s constitution related to the process.
Democrat Jeffries, in a statement on Wednesday, vowed to surge resources to the state to take down Republican incumbents if the map is redrawn. “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time,” he pledged.
Several challenges to Virginia’s redistricting ballot measure are also currently being heard before the state’s Supreme Court, which could hinder the implementation of the new map.
Trump on Wednesday decried the Virginia vote as “rigged”, without providing any evidence to back up the claim.
Meanwhile, a case pending before the US Supreme Court could beckon in another slate of redistricting in the US South.
In Louisiana v Callais, the justices will determine whether the creation of two Black-majority congressional districts is in line with the Voting Rights Act, which seeks to assure minority representation in states with a history of racist election policies.
A ruling could open the door to redrawing maps in several states that would have previously been banned due to so-called “racial gerrymandering”, a process of drawing congressional lines based on racial makeup to dilute the electoral power of a minority group.
A pathway to reform?
A handful of states have created independent commissions to oversee redistricting, in an effort to assure the process remains non-partisan.
But the vast majority rely on their state legislatures to draw the maps, which can lead to outsized influence over the party in control, barring legal challenges. That largely remains true whether redistricting is conducted every decade or, as the current election season could portend, more frequently.
But amid the current cavalcade of congressional map changes, Princeton’s Wang, who is himself running in the Democratic primary for Congress in New Jersey’s 12th district, sees a rare opportunity for federal reform.
That could take the form of Congress creating independent commissions to oversee redistricting.
“Now that mid-decade redistricting is backfiring on Republicans, it creates the possibility that both parties can see clearly that gerrymandering is a zero-sum game,” Wang said.
“It opens a path for possible bipartisan action.”
Iran Ramps Up Attacks On Ships In The Strait Of Hormuz After Trump Ceasefire Extension (Updated)
Though President Donald Trump on Tuesday declared an extension to a ceasefire with Iran, the Islamic Republic continues to attack shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. At least two ships were fired on by Iran, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO). Iranian officials say the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized those ships and fired on another.
These incidents came a day after U.S. forces boarded an Iran-linked oil tanker in the Indian Ocean and highlighted that regardless of diplomacy, shipping remains a target for both sides. Meanwhile, Iran made veiled threats against the telecommunications cables running under the Strait. All this is happening as Tehran says it won’t return to the bargaining table until the U.S. ends its blockade of Iranian ports. We’ll discuss that more later in this story.
The first attack in the Strait on Wednesday took place shortly before midnight EDT about 15 nautical miles northeast of Oman, according to UKMTO.
“The Master of a Container Ship reported that the vessel was approached by 1 IRGC gun boat, no VHF challenge that then fired upon the vessel which has caused heavy damage to the bridge. No fires or environmental impact reported. All Crew reported safe.”
Nour News, a website affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) opened fire on the Epaminodes, after it had “ignored the warnings of the Iranian armed forces,” the BBC reported.
Epaminodes is a Liberian-flagged container ship, according to MarineTraffic.com.
A second incident took place about three hours later eight nautical miles west of Iran, UKMTO stated.
“A master of an outbound cargo ship reports having been fired upon and is now stopped in the water,” the organization explained in an alert. “Crew are safe and accounted for. There is no reported damage to the vessel. UKMTO is aware of high levels of activity in the SoH area and encourages vessels to report any suspicious activity.”
It is unclear at the moment which ship was attacked in that incident. UKTMO did not name the vessel. However, in addition to claiming they fired on the Epaminodes, Iranian officials say they also struck the Euphoria, which MarineTraffic said is a Panamanian-flagged container ship, and the MSC-Francesca, also a Panamanian-flagged container ship, according to MarineTraffic.
The Epaminodes and MSC-Francesca were also seized for “endangering maritime security by operating without the necessary permits and tampering with navigation systems,” the IRGC claimed, stating the vessels have been “directed to the coast of Iran.”
The disposition of the vessels and crews is not currently known. U.S. Central Command could not confirm any of these incidents.
A Sentinel-2 satellite image captured today shows what looks like a swarm of IRGCN fast attack craft sailing north of the strait of Hormuz near Kargan coast, according to open source investigator Mehdi H on X.
The image shows what appears to be at least 33 boats. It is unclear if there is any connection between these craft and the shipping attacks. The IRGC has invested heavily in its fleet of small boats for decades as TWZ has explored in the past. Some of these vessels are armed with short-range anti-ship missiles, as well as artillery rockets and other weapons. They can also be used to lay naval mines. These fleets are extremely hard to find and fix, and do not need large ports to operate from. While CENTCOM says it has destroyed well over 150 Iranian ships, the IRGC still has many remaining small boats.
As we noted earlier in this story, in addition to attacking and capturing ships on the Strait, Iran pointed out the vulnerability of telecommunications cables running under it.
“The Strait of Hormuz is not only a crucial route for oil and gas transportation; this narrow waterway is also one of the most important internet chokepoints in the region and the world,” the IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency noted on Wednesday. “According to submarine network data, at least 7 main communication cables of the Persian Gulf countries pass through this route; while more than 97% of the world’s internet traffic is transferred via these fiber optic cables laid under the sea.”
“Cables such as FALCON, AAE‑1, TGN‑Gulf, and SEA‑ME‑WE connect a significant part of the region’s digital communication to major data centers in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia,” the outlet added. “These infrastructures are the backbone of data transfer, e-commerce, cloud services, and online communications in the Persian Gulf countries.”
“The concentration of many internet cables in a narrow passage makes the Strait of Hormuz a vulnerable point for the region’s digital economy,” Tasnim posited, calling it “a place where cables, after passing through the strait, connect to coastal landing nodes and major regional data centers.”
UPDATES
Our coverage for the day has concluded.
UPDATE: 7:56 PM EDT –
Though the fighting may be paused, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the economic pressure on Iran continues.
The aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush is set to arrive in the Middle East in about three to five days after sailing around the southern tip of Africa, Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin stated on X.
The timing, she noted, coincides with Trump’s extending the ceasefire deadline by that same timeline.
The Washington Post reports that the Pentagon has told Congress it could take six months to fully clear the Strait of Hormuz of mines deployed by the Iranian military.
The publication added that any such operation is unlikely to be carried out until the U.S. war with Iran ends.
This “assessment that means the conflict’s economic impact could extend late into this year or beyond,” the newspaper added.
“The timeline — met with frustration by Democrats and Republicans alike, two of these people said — is the latest sign that gasoline and oil prices could remain elevated long after any peace deal is reached,” the Post noted.
Israel’s N12 News reported on X that Trump has given Iran a deadline of Sunday.
Two Israel Air Force technicians from Tel Nof Airbase, near Ashdod, will be charged with spying for Iran during Operation Roaring Lion, Israel’s public broadcaster KAN News reported on Wednesday.
“The two technicians, who worked on IAF F-15 fighter jets, handed over documentation of the engine diagrams, as well as photographs showing the face of a flight instructor, which is against military censorship rules, The Jerusalem Post reported.
“They were also asked to gather information about former IDF chief Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Herzi Halevi and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir,” the publication noted. “Authorities are considering whether to increase the charges on one of the technicians to treason, rather than the lower charge of espionage.”
The New York Post said Trump told them that another round of negotiations with Iran may take place later this week. At issue is the future of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, its supply of ballistic missiles, support of proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis, and ultimate disposition of the Strait of Hormuz.
“‘Good news’ about a second round of talks between the US and Iran may be coming as soon as Friday,” the publication said Trump and Pakistani sources told it on Wednesday.
“Sources in Islamabad touted positive mediation efforts with Tehran, renewing the possibility of more peace talks within the next ‘36 to 72 hours,’” the newspaper added. “Asked about this possible breakthrough by The Post, Trump, in a text message, said: ‘It’s possible! President DJT.’”
Trump “plans to give the Iranians a limited timeframe to come up with a unified proposal to get diplomatic negotiations back on track,” CNN reported, citing two sources familiar with the internal discussions. “The administration does not want to indefinitely extend the ceasefire, the sources said, and does not want to give Iran time to drag out talks further.”
“Trump is willing to give another three to five days of ceasefire to allow the Iranians to get their shit together,” one U.S. source briefed on the matter told Axios. “It is not going to be open-ended.”
Trump’s negotiators “believe a deal to end the war and address what’s left of Iran’s nuclear program is still achievable,” the outlet added. “But they also worry they may not have anyone in Tehran empowered to say yes.”
Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei “is barely communicating,” Axios posited. “The IRGC generals now in control of the country and Iran’s civilian negotiators are openly at odds over strategy.”
“We saw that there is an absolute fracture inside Iran between the negotiators and the military — with neither side having access to the supreme leader, who is not responsive,” a U.S. official told the news organization.
Axios added that though Vice President JD Vance was all set to go to Pakistan for the second round of negotiations, he instead found himself waiting for the IRGC generals now in control of Iran to let parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Sayed Abbas Araghchi travel to Pakistan to meet him. However, while the Iranians appeared to have given Pakistani mediators the green light for talks, by Tuesday morning, that signal was gone, replaced by a demand that the U.S. lift its naval blockade.
As we have previously noted, Trump extended the ceasefire deadline yesterday, but gave no specific date for when fighting could resume. In a Truth Social post, he said he did so to give time for the fractured Iranian leadership to come up with a response to U.S. demands and that the ongoing blockade of Iranian ports would remain in effect.
His post came after Iranians refused to commit to peace talks tentatively scheduled to be held in Pakistan.
The official Iranian IRIB news outlet denied Tehran has taken any official position on Trump’s ceasefire extension or future negotiations.
The Iranians say the future of negotiations depends on the status of the ongoing blockade of its ports.
Iran’s UN Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani stated that Tehran is prepared to negotiate immediately after the United States ends its naval blockade, emphasizing that Washington must first halt its “ceasefire violations.”
He added that while Iran is prepared to negotiate, it is also prepared for war.
Citing data from the Vortexa cargo tracking group, Financial Times is reporting that “at least 34 tankers with links to Iran have bypassed the US blockade since it began.”
CENTCOM, which on Tuesday said the US Navy had directed 28 vessels to turn back to Iranian ports since the blockade was enacted, told us the assertion that dozens of ships bypassed the blockade “is not true.”
The Pentagon on Wednesday pushed back on the assertion that the Iranian-linked oil tanker Tifani was seized by the U.S., however, it may be a matter of semantics.
As we reported yesterday, the vessel boarded by U.S. forces in the Indian Ocean and The Washington Post later said it was “seized” as the United States determines “next steps for the Tifani and its crew in the next couple of days.”
“Seized wouldn’t be accurate at this time,” a Pentagon official told us. “So the way it works is after interdiction the U.S. has 96 hours to determine next steps. That’s where the rest of the interagency comes in. It varies by ship and situation what the solution would be. At this point DoW’s finished its role with just the interdiction.”
“During that 96-hour period, State would make the determination it’s stateless and work through diplomatic channels on where to take it,” the official added. “DHS and Coast Guard could be the ones to escort it. DoE gets involved for the oil, treasury for the sanction, DoJ for the legal elements and warrant. It really is a large, complex coordination effort across the interagency.”
The exact current disposition of the vessel is unclear. We have reached out to the White House for more details.
With Iran partially reopening its airspace, the U.S. State Department stated that any U.S. citizens still in the country “should leave Iran now, monitor local media for updates, and consult with commercial carriers for additional information on flights out of Iran.”
Americans seeking to depart Iran “may also depart by land to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Türkiye, and Turkmenistan. U.S. citizens should not travel to Afghanistan, Iraq, or the Pakistan-Iran border area,” the warning added. “Be aware that the Iranian government may prevent U.S. citizens from departing or charge an ‘exit fee’ for departures from Iran. U.S.-Iranian dual nationals must exit Iran on Iranian passports.”
During the course of Epic Fury, the U.S. has run through a large amount of advanced munitions, CNN reported.
The list includes about 50% of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors, 50% of its Patriot interceptors, 45% of its Precision Strike Missiles, 30% of its Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAMs), 20% of its Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff (JDAM) munitions and 20% of its Standard Missiles (SM-3 and SM-6).
Given the expenditure of costly defensive munitions used to swat down much cheaper Iranian drones, the U.S. military has introduced Ukrainian counter-drone technology in recent weeks at a key U.S. air base in Saudi Arabia, Reuters reported, citing five people with knowledge of the matter.
These attacks have destroyed aircraft and buildings, and killed at least one service member.
“The deployment of a Ukrainian command-and-control platform called Sky Map at Prince Sultan Air Base, which has not previously been reported,” is another sign of Ukrainian battlefield technological advances after more than four years of full-on war with Russia.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com
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