conflict

Lawmakers in the United States have renewed calls for answers about conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, suggesting that reports emerging from the aircraft carrier may belie a troubling pattern.

In at least three separate appeals, Democrats called for more information about how the Navy prepared for the vessel’s record-breaking deployment.

The aircraft carrier has been involved in military operations against Venezuela as well as the US-Israel war on Iran since it departed from San Diego, California, in November.

The ship has yet to dock for a port call in the time since. Having spent more than 260 days at sea, it has broken the US Navy’s record for the longest deployment without a stop.

Reports have emerged in recent weeks about crew members attempting to jump overboard amid shortages of food and other supplies.

On Tuesday, US Representative Pat Ryan published a letter sent to acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and signed by 22 members of Congress.

It noted that the lengthy deployments “have become a pattern in the Administration’s handling of its war against Iran”.

The war, which began on February 28, shows no sign of ending. Ryan pointed out that the USS Gerald Ford had also broken records for the length of its deployment as part of the Iran war, and it, too, was the subject of worrying reports about strain on sailors’ health. The ship returned to the US in April.

“The reported conditions on the Lincoln, following so soon after the reported conditions on the Ford, leave Congress and the public concerned that the Department is not adapting quickly enough to the conditions,” Ryan wrote in his letter, dated August 14.

He also questioned whether US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees military operations in the Middle East, was “taking the appropriate steps to mitigate the continued challenges in our fleet”.

A delegation of California lawmakers, including Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, has also sent a letter to the Pentagon calling for an inquiry.

Separately, a group of Democratic senators addressed another letter, dated August 15, to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, demanding answers and calling for accountability.

“This is a symptom of poor planning by both you and the President and exacerbated by the deeply unsound decision to start a war with Iran,” that letter said.

“Open-ended deployments driven by an open-ended war have real consequences for our servicemembers, and we are seeing those consequences now.”

The appeals for more information come as the USS Lincoln prepares to navigate home.

Cao revealed last week that the USS Lincoln would soon return to the US. The announcement coincided with reports that the USS George Washington has been rerouted from the Pacific Ocean to replace its fellow aircraft carrier.

But the USS Washington’s departure leaves no aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific, long portrayed as a region of strategic interest for the US as it seeks to check China’s territorial ambitions.

President Donald Trump and his defence officials, meanwhile, have argued that reports about the USS Lincoln’s conditions have been overblown.

Hegseth, for instance, has called the reports of conditions “completely misrepresented”. Trump last week also said the vessel had not been deployed “nearly long enough”.

On Monday, the president brushed aside questions about the USS Lincoln’s conditions as part of a “CNN fake report”.

Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command, has also released a statement on social media this week, saying he has visited the USS Lincoln in recent days and found the crew “awe-inspiring”.

“This doesn’t mean that all is perfect,” he wrote. “Find any of the nearly 4 million Navy veterans in America today and they will likely tell you that service at sea for long periods isn’t for everyone.”

But he applauded the USS Lincoln’s leadership for having made “mental health and crew resilience” a priority.

Unlike Democrats, members of Trump’s Republican Party have largely not responded to the reports of mental health strain and supply shortages on the USS Lincoln.

However, Representative Don Bacon voiced concern during an interview on CBS News’s Face the Nation programme on Sunday.

“We should have oversight,” he said.

Most people, when asked what terrorism is, will say that it is the use of violence and terror to create fear among people. This is broadly the dictionary definition. The 2017 Manchester Arena bombing at an Ariana Grande concert, in which 22 people, including many children, were killed, is a clear example.

Yet the legal definition of terrorism in Britain is far broader than this common understanding. Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows even “damage to property” to constitute terrorism when it is carried out for a political, religious, racial or ideological purpose and is intended to influence the government or intimidate the public. Where firearms or explosives are involved, the latter requirement does not apply.

Including politically motivated damage to property within the definition was controversial from the start. When Parliament debated the bill in 1999, animal liberation activists were among the groups MPs had in mind.

Labour MP Alan Simpson warned during the debate that by defining attacks on property as terrorism, “we transform the relationship between civil protest movements and elected Parliaments and the judicial system.”

The criticism did not end with Parliament. The Supreme Court later described Section 1’s definition of terrorism as “very far-reaching”, while David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, called it “remarkably broad – absurdly so in some cases”.

In his 2012 report, Anderson observed:

“The current law allows members of any nationalist or separatist group to be turned into terrorists by virtue of their participation in a lawful armed conflict… however odious the regime which they have attacked.”

In his 2014 Terrorism Report, he warned:

“To render people subject to the terrorism laws whom no sensible person would think of as terrorists risks destroying the trust upon which these special powers depend for their acceptance by the public.”

Yet defining what can count as terrorism is only part of the story. Not every organisation whose conduct falls within that definition is proscribed. That decision rests with the government.

Proscription therefore adds a political choice: Which organisations should be banned, making membership and inviting support for them criminal offences.

For example, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed Kurdish group that has fought the Turkish state for decades, is proscribed in Britain. Its Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is not, because PYD-led forces became Western allies in the fight against ISIS (ISIL).

Britain proscribed Hamas’s military wing in 2001. In 2021, Home Secretary Priti Patel extended that proscription to Hamas in its entirety, including its political wing, declaring the previous distinction between the two “artificial”. Many civilian members of Hamas who had never picked up a gun were now deemed terrorists alongside its fighters.

By collapsing the distinction between Hamas’s military and political wings, Britain legitimised Israel’s portrayal of Hamas’s civilian administration as part of a terrorist apparatus and, with it, the targeting of hospitals and schools as terrorist infrastructure.

The asymmetry is stark. Britain’s terrorism laws can criminalise non-state organisations and those who support them, while state terrorism, including Israel’s, remains outside their reach.

The proscription of Palestine Action brought a different consequence of these laws into focus: Their use against protest in Britain. Palestine Action is a British direct-action group that has targeted arms companies supplying Israel. In July 2025, the government proscribed it under the Terrorism Act 2000.

United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Turk warned that the decision to proscribe Palestine Action “raises serious concerns that counter-terrorism laws are being applied to conduct that is not terrorist”.

The ban has been fiercely contested in the courts. In February 2026, the Divisional Court ruled the proscription unlawful. On June 15, the Court of Appeal reversed that decision and upheld the ban. The court also described Elbit as carrying out a “lawful business”, ignoring its role in supplying the Israeli military during the genocide.

In upholding the ban, Lady Chief Justice Sue Carr drew a contrast with the Suffragettes, saying Palestine Action was not “a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the Suffragettes operating transparently in the open” but “a covert group operating in cells”.

Carr’s characterisation rests on an extraordinarily sanitised version of suffragette history.

In November 1909, a suffragette attacked Winston Churchill with a horse whip. In the same month, suffragettes, armed with a catapult and missiles, attacked Prime Minister H. H. Asquith’s car in Liverpool.

In 1912, Suffragettes attempted to set fire to the Theatre Royal in Dublin during a matinee attended by Asquith. They left a canister of gunpowder close to the stage. Earlier in the day, Mary Leigh had hurled a hatchet towards Asquith.

In 1913, four postmen in Dundee were severely injured by phosphorus chemicals left in post boxes. The following year, Mary Richardson slashed the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery, while bombs were discovered in St Paul’s and churches were burned down.

This history sits uneasily with Carr’s distinction. The Suffragettes themselves engaged in politically motivated attacks on property and people of precisely the kind that Britain’s modern definition of terrorism is broad enough to capture.

The Filton case shows what this can mean in practice. When the Filton 25 attacked an Elbit factory in Bristol, they were remanded in custody for up to 18 months. When six of them went on trial in November 2025, the jury acquitted them of aggravated burglary, the most serious charge, and failed to reach verdicts on criminal damage. No defendant was convicted at that first trial. At a retrial, four were convicted of criminal damage; only one was eventually convicted of grievous bodily harm, without intent.

The jury was not told that guilty verdicts could later lead to the offences being treated as having a “terrorist connection” for sentencing. Justice Jeremy Johnson subsequently made precisely that finding. Johnson had also ruled out defences based on necessity and the need to prevent the greater crime of genocide. In doing so, he usurped the role of the jury.

The consequences of the ban were not confined to those accused of taking direct action against Elbit. Once Palestine Action was proscribed, inviting or expressing support for the group became a terrorism offence.

When the government proscribed Palestine Action, people defied the ban. Nearly 4,000 people have been arrested for holding placards supporting Palestine Action.

The Home Office reported that in the year ending March 2026, there were 3,061 terrorism-related arrests, 2,819 of them linked to suspected support for Palestine Action. The average age of those arrested in connection with Palestine Action was 59, compared with 31 for all other terrorism-related arrests. A majority of the Palestine Action arrests were women.

The profile of Britain’s average “terrorist” changed from a man aged 31 to a woman aged 59.

This is where Britain’s extraordinarily broad definition of terrorism, combined with the government’s power to proscribe organisations, has led. Conduct once understood as protest and political expression can now be prosecuted under terrorism legislation.

As Orwell wrote, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” When the meaning of “terrorism” is stretched far enough, the extraordinary powers attached to that word stretch with it.

Today, my own trial begins. I am accused of inviting support for Hamas. My prosecution is not separate from the story told here. It is where that story leads.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” of a peace deal between the US and Iran.

Oman is currently negotiating with Iran over the reopening of the critical Strait of Hormuz, while Iran has repeatedly stated that it will not speak directly to the US.

On Monday, as Iranian officials said they were close to announcing an agreement with Oman, a 60-day Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Washington and Tehran – which had provided for a period of peace talks but largely fell apart early on – expired with little hope for renewal.

This is not the first time Trump has threatened Oman, a US ally which has never entered into any direct conflict with the US. Oman, through whose territorial waters the contested Strait of Hormuz also flows, has positioned itself as a neutral party in the US-Iran war. Despite that, it has suffered a number of strikes by Iran, which has targeted US military assets and infrastructure around the region in retaliation for US-Israeli attacks.

Now, Trump is threatening to strike it as well.

Here is more about what Trump has threatened, and why.

What did Trump threaten Oman with?

Trump told US broadcaster Fox News on Monday that Iran should surrender, and claimed that his administration had opened a direct backchannel for talks with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

During the interview, he threatened to bomb US ally Oman if it “gets in the way” of US talks with Iran.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s*** out of them,” he said.

An IRGC spokesman denied Trump’s claim of direct talks, telling Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News: “There are no talks taking place between IRGC officials and the Americans, and this lie by Trump is merely fantasies caused by the delusions and nightmares he has suffered as a result of defeat and desperation in the war.”

Has he threatened Oman before?

Monday was not the first time Trump threatened Oman over the course of the five-month war between the US and Iran. In May, he made a similar threat.

At a cabinet meeting on May 27, a reporter asked Trump what he thought about the idea of Oman and Iran jointly overseeing shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

“ Would you accept a short-term deal that allows Iran and Oman to control the strait?” the reporter asked.

Trump replied with a seemingly offhand threat. “Nobody is going to control it. It’s international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we will have to blow them up.”

While there was initial speculation that Trump might have misspoken and said “Oman” instead of “Iran”, the US State Department later shared the comment on social media, with a transcript of the quote that referred to the Arab country.

What is the context for all this?

For the past few weeks, Iran and Oman have been engaged in direct talks, facilitated by mediators in Qatar, to reach an agreement over how to manage maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in the future.

While Iran had agreed to keep the strait open to shipping without charge for 60 days following the signing of the MoU with the US on June 17, this quickly fell apart as the two sides disagreed over who had ultimate control over the strait – in particular which routes ships should take. Towards the end of June, Iran launched strikes on a number of ships which had followed an Oman-issued route, approved by the US, rather than its own route, and the US restarted strikes on Iran for nearly two weeks.

Following that, Iran refused to talk directly to the US, saying it had violated the terms of the MoU which included a cessation of hostilities on all fronts, and began talks with Oman over the future of the strait instead. Iran also issued a list of new demands relating to the lifting of sanctions and a permanent end to US strikes before it would resume talks, it said.

On Monday, Tehran said the two countries have reached an agreement on a new shipping route in the strait and are now preparing a joint declaration.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the proposed mechanism for control of the strait seeks to protect the interests of both Iran and Oman while allowing commercial shipping to pass through.

“This is the first time that a mechanism is being developed to simultaneously safeguard the sovereign rights of the two littoral states and ensure the safe passage of commercial vessels,” said Baghaei.

The Strait of Hormuz is a critical waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies were shipped before the US-Israel war on Iran began on February 28. Roughly 130 ships sailed through the strait each day.

Iran closed the strait in early March, allowing only a few ships it deemed “friendly” to pass through the strait until it signed the MoU with the US on June 17. Since then, it has become the key issue holding up talks for a lasting peace plan to end the war on Iran.

The US, meanwhile, has established its own blockade on Iranian ports in and around the strait. Last week, it fired on a Panama-flagged cargo vessel it accused of attempting to reach Iranian ports and which, it said, had failed to follow orders to change course.

The crisis has triggered global energy shortages and the price of oil has soared. The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, was about $66 a barrel just before the Middle East conflict began. Over the course of the war, the price has surged past $100 on several occasions, most recently on July 23. In March, the price rose as high as $119.

Global benchmark Brent crude futures rose to $91.22 a barrel on Tuesday, inching close to a three-week high.

What is Oman’s position on the Iran war?

Oman, which is known for its neutrality, has not publicly stated that it intends to join Iran in controlling the Strait of Hormuz. The US and Oman are close partners with a relationship stretching back nearly 200 years.

The two countries have multiple cooperation treaties, including security partnerships, a free trade agreement and a science and technology deal.

During the war, Iran launched multiple strikes on US military assets and energy infrastructure in neighbouring countries, including Oman.

Oman previously acted as a key mediator between Washington and Tehran as they sought a resolution to the war that began on February 28, when the US and Israel attacked Iran.

So, why is Trump threatening Oman now?

A potential Iran-Oman understanding covering the Strait of Hormuz could cut against one of Washington’s core demands: that Iran relinquish control of the strait as a condition of ending the war. Rather than curbing that control, such a deal would lend it greater legitimacy by formalising Iran’s position.

But experts say Trump is also likely angry that the US has seemingly been cut out of the deal relating to the strait.

“In part, a solution mediated without US intervention and which in fact allows Oman and Iran to manage passage through Hormuz, which lies entirely within the two countries’ territorial waters, would show how impotent the United States is and has been,” Laleh Khalili, a professor of Gulf studies at the University of Exeter, told Al Jazeera.

The US and Iran have also strongly disagreed about whether Iran should be allowed to charge fees to shipping companies using the strait. Under international law, tolls for passing through natural waterways such as Hormuz are forbidden, even when they are not technically in international waters. However, fees for services such as insurance, environmental protection and docking can be charged. It has yet to be seen whether this issue will be addressed in an Iran-Oman agreement.

In late July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that Iran should not be allowed to charge tolls on vessels traversing Hormuz. Days earlier, Trump himself pledged there would be no tolls for passage through the strait, unless they are collected by his own country.

On August 14, Trump went a step further, telling his supporters in New York that he had plans to declare the Strait of Hormuz a “territory” of the US. “After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, responded to that threat on social media with defiance.

“Trump said that, after Iran’s defeat, he will soon declare the Strait of Hormuz as American territory,” Gharibabadi wrote.

“The Strait of Hormuz cannot be taken over by a tweet, nor by an aircraft carrier, nor by issuing a decree, nor by an election speech. Iran is neither afraid of threats nor intimidated by a show of force.”

Twelve people including the captain are on board ‘Kate’, the latest vessel attempting to deliver aid.

Bristol, United Kingdom – A boat has set sail from southern England as part of a flotilla’s efforts to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

Supporters on Sunday gathered at Hannover Quay in Bristol, a city represented by the Greens and known for its progressive spirit, to send off “Kate”, a vessel with Freedom Flotilla activists on board.

Among those bidding the 12 activists farewell were Swee Ang, a doctor and the founder of Medical Aid for Palestinians; the Welsh nurse Leigh Evans, who was seen in footage shared widely online kneeling before Egyptian soldiers in June 2025, pleading to be allowed to cross and deliver aid to Gaza and David Miller, a professor who recently won a legal battle against the University of Bristol over his anti-Zionist views.

Fiacc O Brolchain, the Irish sailor and captain of the vessel who was detained by Israeli forces earlier this year during a previous mission, said his hearing aids were seized while being interrogated. He said he kept repeating to the Israeli soldiers, “I can’t hear you; you took my hearing aids.”

Israel has since 2010 intercepted or attacked every flotilla that has attempted to breach the Gaza blockade, including in international waters.

Frank Romano, a member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and an international lawyer who has represented Palestinian cases before the International Court of Justice, said that since October 2023, Israeli forces have intercepted and detained more than 75 solidarity ships and boats. He has taken up legal battles to recover them, but has succeeded in retrieving only two vessels.

Romano himself owns “Handala”, a vessel named after a character created by the late Palestinian artist Naji al-Ali, that was intercepted and detained in July 2025.

The Global Sumud Flotilla, which Romano said has so far cost $24m and comprises scores of boats in different waves, launched its first mission last year and a much larger one in April.

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg joined the movement and was among the flotilla’s passengers detained by Israel when their boat, the Alma, was intercepted in October. She is among those who alleged physical and psychological abuse while detained. Israel denied the allegations.

Colm Byrne, an Irish activist who is setting sail again after participating in previous flotilla attempts, said that in April, he was more than 1,000km (620 miles) from Gaza when Israeli forces intercepted. He said flotilla members were kicked, beaten and forced into painful and humiliating postures. He suffered a shoulder injury, he said.

Activists were made to spend four hours on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs before being transferred to prison, where they were forced to walk with their heads down or else face the threat of being slapped, Byrne noted.

But he stressed that although he felt humiliated, the mistreatment does not compare with the scale of abuse suffered by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The nearly nine-month extended deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East has triggered a mental health crisis among the crew so intense that some sailors have tried to jump overboard, according to some US media reports.

Family members of the exhausted military crew on board the flagship aircraft carrier, reportedly located in the Gulf region, say there are food shortages, while broken toilets and showers have contributed to unsanitary conditions and poor health.

More than 5,000 staff members have been on board the vessel, which has been conducting maritime security and blockade operations at present around the Strait of Hormuz, for that time. It set sail on November 21, 2025 from its homeport of San Diego for an extended deployment to the Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

Since then, the ship has made just one single-day port stop at Naval Base Guam from December 11-12. The lack of port stops is a major issue for a ship the size and complexity of the USS Abraham Lincoln, experts say.

As US President Donald Trump and his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, declare the United States is ready to continue an “indefinite” blockade on Iranian ports in the Gulf, we look at how this compares with other lengthy aircraft carrier deployments.

What is happening on board the USS Abraham Lincoln?

Reports by two US publications that cover military affairs, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, last week quoted family members of military personnel on board the vessel who said they were suffering from declining mental health and morale, and cases of suicidal ideation.

The Navy Times spoke on record with one sailor’s wife, identified as Annabelle Loma, who said he had attempted to jump overboard amid what she described as “severe burnout”.

The reports prompted urgent questions from US lawmakers. On Sunday, Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM), reportedly visited the USS Lincoln.

He praised the crew and stated on social media that “service at sea for long periods isn’t for everyone, while claiming the ship has the lowest number of mental health-related cases of the navy’s 11 active aircraft carriers. “It is uniquely challenging and tough, and every single one of us, including me, reacts to stressors in different ways,” he said.

But there is growing concern among Republican and Democratic lawmakers over what they see as a lack of accountability after Hegseth dismissed mental health reports last week as “completely misrepresented”.

When Trump was asked last week whether the USS Lincoln had been at sea for too long, he told reporters: “No, not nearly long enough.”

The USS Lincoln mission was supposed to end in May but has been extended repeatedly since then.

Last week, it emerged that another ship, the USS George Washington, has been rerouted from its position in the Pacific and will arrive in the Gulf within a week to take over duties from the Lincoln.

How long can US aircraft carrier deployments be?

The longest aircraft carrier deployment since the Vietnam War was the USS Gerald R Ford’s 326-day mission, which began in June 2025, under Trump’s second term in the White House.

That mission included NATO exercises in the Mediterranean, support for the US military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and operations in the Red Sea during the US-Israel war on Iran.

After beginning its mission as a routine deployment to the Asia Pacific region, the Ford then moved into the South China Sea for security operations, before being deployed to the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman to help the US enforce its naval blockade of the Iranian ports.

During this time, the USS Ford met several technical problems, including an onboard fire, which also triggered congressional scrutiny back home.

Lengthy deployments during the Vietnam War

Some of the longest aircraft carrier deployments in US history took place in and around the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War, with the USS Midway operating for 332 days, the USS Coral Sea operating for 329 days and the USS Saratoga operating for 308 days.

Similar to the USS Lincoln, they faced issues as well. Reports said the intense flight schedule of the active air combat during the Vietnam War pushed crew and operations to their limits.

While there are a number of lengthy aircraft carrier deployments from other countries, they pale in comparison to the US Navy’s record.

Russia’s Admiral Kuznetsov conducted a five-month mission to the Syrian coast which began in October 2016, but suffered several technical breakdowns, including aircraft losses.

The United Kingdom’s HMS Queen Elizabeth completed a seven-month deployment in 2021, which included combat strikes on targets in Iraq and Syria, despite significant breakdowns due to engineering issues.

Why is this issue so critical?

Many lawmakers have raised questions over whether the US can maintain an “indefinite” blockade in the Gulf if conditions on board a flagship aircraft carrier are so dire.

In a letter to Hegseth last week, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal raised the alarm over reports of deteriorating mental health on board, as well as shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, an increase in safety incidents and even disruptions to mail services, through which those on board receive care packages.

“These reports warrant immediate attention, but they also raise a broader question: whether the Navy can sustain the operational tempo now being demanded of its carrier force, particularly as this administration repeatedly commits US forces to conflicts of its own choosing and increasingly relies on aircraft carriers to sustain those operations,” Blumenthal wrote.

Experts say the lack of port stops is a major issue for the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Harlan Ullman, a retired senior naval officer and chairman of the strategic advisory firm Killowen Group, told Al Jazeera that ships require onshore care to keep advanced technology operational over long periods.

“Ships need maintenance, particularly ships that are extremely complicated with very advanced weapon systems such as nuclear-powered carriers with very advanced systems, and there are things that you cannot do in terms of maintenance under way,” Ullman said.

“There are lots of things that you can do at sea, but there are far more things that can only be done in port,” he pointed out.

Ullman noted that extended deployments “erode the readiness and capability of that ship the longer it’s at sea, and it lacks the ability to repair and extend maintenance”.

He added that the Trump administration must prioritise naval readiness over politics, saying “this is a national issue, not a local one; and the administration should not be so defensive. It should say, ‘OK, we’ll see what’s going on, and then if there are some issues, we’ll take care of them.’”

What are the drawbacks of deploying aircraft carriers?

Aircraft carriers are built to be on deployment for many months at a time. However, that comes with a high cost, as extended cruises increase the risk of technical breakdowns and can also lead to reduced staff morale and mental health concerns.

Large aircraft carriers are expensive. The USS Abraham Lincoln cost $2.2bn to build in 1989, and it costs tens of millions of dollars to operate on a daily basis.

Recent conflicts in the Red Sea have also underscored the vulnerability of large aircraft carriers. Houthi rebels, who do not possess a formal navy, have nevertheless managed to put significant pressure on large US Navy aircraft carriers operating near the limits of their missile range.

At one point during the US-Israel war on Iran, the USS Gerald Ford was forced to sail hundreds of miles away from the Iranian coast to reduce the risk of being hit by missiles, limiting its effectiveness.

Israeli settlers have erected tents for a new illegal settlement outpost near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, as separate groups of settlers have besieged the village of Qusra for a week.

Settlers pitched tents in the Wadi Zeytun area near the village of Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah, on Sunday in an attempt to establish a new settlement outpost, said Al Jazeera’s Tharwat Shakra.

Reporting from Ramallah, she said settlers also began establishing a separate outpost in the village of Burqa on the same day.

If a new outpost is established, the number of outposts surrounding the two neighbouring villages will rise to six, said the Palestinian news agency Wafa, which also reported the encroachment in Wadi Zeytun.

Settlers have seized roughly 4,700 of Umm Safa’s 4,800 dunams (about 470 of 480 hectares, or 1,160 of 1,186 acres), and 10,000 of Burqa’s 12,000 dunams (1,000 of 1,200 hectares, or 2,471 of 2,965 acres), according to Shakra.

Meanwhile, in the Ras al-Ain area of the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, an Israeli settler siege on three families has entered a second week, with 15 Palestinians, including two children, besieged in their homes.

Israeli soldiers rotated their positions and erected a tent in front of residents’ homes after spending the previous two days dismantling one that settlers had tried to put up there, Shakra reported. Municipal crews later restored electricity and water lines to the besieged families.

In separate incidents on Sunday, Al Jazeera reporters in the West Bank said settlers attacked a Palestinian home in the town of Beit Imrin, north of Nablus, and detained those inside. Israeli forces then arrived and arrested nine people from the house before withdrawing. Soldiers also blocked Palestinian Red Crescent teams from reaching the area and confiscated the keys to ambulances and medical-relief vehicles, Shakra reported.

There were also attacks in the Nab’a al-Kaabneh community near Taybeh, Shakra said, and an attempted raid on a home in Turmus Aya, both in the Ramallah district. Attacks in Hebron’s al-Jaabari neighbourhood left Palestinians injured, including some by gunfire, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces have escalated arrests in towns where illegal settler outposts have been established, targeting residents who confront the attacks.

Israel using settlers ‘to advance ethnic cleansing’

Israeli settler violence and the ongoing siege of three Palestinian homes in Qusra should be understood as part of Israel’s decades-long rule of “impunity”, which has now reached a “climax”, said Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Sunday, she said Israel has no right to carry out military incursions on Palestinian territory and is instead obligated to protect civilians from military action. Israeli officials, however, appear to be collaborating with settlers rather than restraining them, she said.

“Israel has outsourced coercion to the settlers and is using them to advance ethnic cleansing,” Albanese said. “This is a crime… This is utter terrorism; these settlers should be investigated and prosecuted.”

She said that while Israel’s endgame may be “ethnic cleansing”, it is using “war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide as the means to continue the Nakba” – the catastrophic ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinians in 1948, during the creation of Israel.

Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al Jazeera the situation in the West Bank was “extremely dangerous”, saying settler groups were carrying out “an average of 30 attacks every day” as they “spearhead” a campaign to seize land and displace Palestinians.

Barghouti said the goal of the campaign was “annexation and displacement”, and called for Arab and international pressure on Washington to halt Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank as well as Gaza.

Israeli attacks in the West Bank have intensified since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, according to Wafa. About 750,000 Israeli settlers live in 156 illegal settlements and 360 illegal outposts across the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

The UN recognises Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory as illegal under international law.

Israeli settler attacks in the occupied West Bank are trapping Palestinian families in their homes.

The violence is taking place as Israel’s far-right government faces elections in October.

Why are attacks by settlers intensifying? And what are the consequences?

Presenter: Imran Khan

Guests:

Ofer Cassif – member of the Knesset representing the Hadash-Ta’al political alliance

Mouin Rabbani – co-editor of the Jadaliyya online magazine and non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Qatar

Ori Goldberg – Israeli political commentator

Sunday marks one week since Israeli settlers began their siege of Qusra, a Palestinian village south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Since August 9, dozens of Israeli settlers have surrounded three Palestinian homes in the Ras al-Ain area on the edge of the village, cutting off water and electricity as food and other supplies run low. About 15 Palestinians from the Abu Rida and Hassan families live in these homes, among them two children under the age of seven and one belonging to a dual US citizen. Residents said settlers from nearby outposts have been trying to take the properties for months.

On Thursday, the Israeli military ordered the residents of two of the houses to leave and forced them all into the third. That same day, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, described the settlers besieging the homes as “Israeli terrorists“. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the siege, calling it criminal and inhumane.

Over the course of the week, the Israeli army declared the area a closed military zone and blocked Israeli and foreign activists from reaching the besieged families. Reporting from Qusra on Sunday, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said the UN was able to bring in some aid that morning after coordinating with the Israeli military.

Where is Qusra?

Qusra sits in Area B, which makes up about 21 percent of the West Bank. It is where the Palestinian Authority runs civil affairs, such as education, healthcare and the economy, but Israel retains full security control and its forces can enter at will.

Odeh said the sequence in Qusra is following a pattern repeated across the West Bank: The Israeli army deploys to an area, takes over Palestinian homes and dispossesses residents of their properties while settlers face no arrests.

Average of six settler attacks each day

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, from January 2025 to June 2025, there were at least 3,033 settler attacks in the occupied West Bank – an average of six per day.

Settlements built illegally on Palestinian land

Last month, a similar siege in the neighbouring village of Jalud displaced Palestinian families from their land, which settlers then took over. Qusra itself has faced repeated attacks, including the burning of a newly built mosque last month.

Since October 7, 2023, when Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza began, settler attacks and land grabs have intensified in the West Bank under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which has backed a rapid expansion of settlements.

About 700,000 Israelis live in settlements, which are illegal under international law. About three million Palestinians also live in the West Bank. Israel has occupied the region since 1967.

WASHINGTON — Approaching six months of war with Iran after predicting a six-week campaign, President Trump has few options before him to bring the conflict to a close. But some experts believe a new strategy emerging from his administration could avert a more consequential defeat.

The president has repeatedly flirted with broadening the assault, hoping yet another round of bombardment might force Iran to yield. Yet he has ultimately resisted, once again stepping back this month from options to expand strikes across Iran’s critical infrastructure and leadership. And he has refrained since the beginning of the war from ordering a ground operation that would expose U.S. troops to direct attack, faced with dwindling U.S. munitions stockpiles and an entrenched Iranian government willing to retaliate.

The result has been a U.S. campaign that has failed to achieve any of Trump’s stated war aims — of regime change in Tehran, the elimination of Iran’s ballistic missile and naval capabilities, and the end of its nuclear program — but has also avoided the costs of uncontrolled escalation, experts said.

In remarks Friday, Trump said the United States was still in the process of “defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated.”

“We have the blockade. No ships get through,” he said. “They still have missiles, but not a lot. They still have drones, but just a fraction of what they had. But their manufacturing is largely gone.

“We’re winning big with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added. “Nobody has any idea how successful we are — they don’t want to write it. But they know. You know who knows how well we’re doing? Iran.”

In an interview published last week, Trump explained his decision not to proceed with expanded strikes, telling Axios, “we are low-keying it.”

“We are only semi-negotiating with them,” he said. “We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”

It is a shift from an instinctual posture to one of restraint uncharacteristic of a president who launched the war in February after consulting a mere handful of people, including Israel’s prime minister and fewer than a dozen of his closest aides.

The current approach — an economic choke hold on Iran — is being led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was not involved in Trump’s prewar deliberations.

“The options are escalating militarily, conceding Iranian victory through a phony negotiation, or continuing the economic pressure we have in place. The president’s problem is that he can’t simply choose — the ayatollah gets a vote,” said Elliott Abrams, a veteran diplomat who served under Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, as well as under Trump in his first term.

“Trump has to choose now between sticking to the blockade and the risks it brings — including high oil prices and a loss in the midterm elections — or accepting defeat by Iran and the risks that brings,” he added, “to our friends and allies and to his own reputation.”

White House officials are betting the risks to Tehran, from soaring inflation and a shortage of goods, are greater than the political costs Trump will incur at the ballot box in November during the midterm elections, with oil prices holding stable under $100 a barrel since mid-July.

“We have the ability to accept costs because our resources are great. Iran does not, because theirs are few,” said Barry Posen, a political science professor at MIT.

And while restraint may not end the conflict on Trump’s preferred terms, it could prevent the kind of open-ended escalation that pulled the United States deeper into costly quagmires in Vietnam and Iraq, said Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in the Brookings Institution’s foreign policy program.

“He has resisted that temptation so far,” O’Hanlon said. “In this regard, he is showing greater humanity and greater thoughtfulness than either of those two American presidents during the Vietnam War. And he has avoided the mistakes of George W. Bush in launching big ground wars without adequate planning or preparation.

“It’s troubling, and far from victory,” O’Hanlon added, “but also far from quagmire or defeat.”

Trump’s reluctance to escalate has so far averted a high U.S. casualty count in the war. According to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System, 18 U.S. service members have been killed and hundreds have been wounded since the start of operations against Iran.

But his reticence to deploy additional U.S. troops within striking distance of Tehran — and the need to protect those already stationed across the region — has forced the administration to rely on long-range weapons systems that cost tens of millions of dollars and require complex international supply chains to produce, leading to critical shortages of drones, missiles and defense systems as the conflict continues longer than planned.

“Even limited operations, such as the air wars over Kosovo and Libya, dragged on much longer than policymakers expected, and the U.S. ran short of critical precision guided weapons,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security. “What really differentiates the current situation with Iran is that Tehran can hold U.S. forces in the region at risk with its long-range missiles and drones.”

Karoline Leavitt, the president’s outgoing White House press secretary, said the United States has “more than enough firepower” to carry out any operation the president wishes to order.

But Defense officials acknowledged to The Times that a protracted campaign, and the risk of an escalation that prompts Iran to expand its targeting of U.S. assets and allies in the region, could further stretch weapons systems to dangerously low levels.

A “low-key” campaign will mitigate the threat of dwindling supplies and high casualties, without necessarily providing Trump with a path to victory, said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public policy at Columbia University.

“The issue with Iran isn’t how long the war has lasted, though it’s already lasted longer than the Trump administration apparently expected,” Biddle said. “The issue is how we’ll get out of it with our interests intact. The administration has no viable plan for doing that, and none is immediately obvious.”

President Donald Trump on Friday said he would designate the Strait of Hormuz a territory of the United States “pretty soon” as the status of the waterway, a global chokepoint through which a fifth of global oil and gas passes, remains under a military and diplomatic deadlock.

Iran has fired back, dubbing Trump’s threats as “nonsense” as the memorandum of understanding signed between the two in June expires on Sunday.

Tehran has blocked the passage to leverage it as a global economy kill switch, while Washington has maintained a military naval blockade against Iran’s ports, choking its economy further.

In the apparent game of who blinks first – though Trump says negotiation with Iran “is like chess” – the US president’s military rhetoric has also followed a pattern throughout the ongoing war, which began on February 28. On many occasions, he has threatened to attack Iran only to pull back at the eleventh hour.

So, can the US actually make the Strait of Hormuz its territory? And what does that even mean?

What has Trump said?

“After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said during a speech at a police academy in New York.

Referring to the naval blockade, Trump went a step further to suggest that the Strait of Hormuz is already a US territory. “Essentially, that’s what it is,” he added.

“We have the blockade. No ships get through unless we want them to,” he said.

Iran maintains that it controls the waterway — and despite the US claims, some vessels have transited the passage despite the blockade, maritime navigation data shows.

“It’s clear the US president, with a chuckle as he said that, even himself, is not taking this particularly seriously,” said Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington, DC.

“These are the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. But what the US president likes to do is get under the skin of adversaries, and, in this case, it’s Iran,” she said.

“What we should point out, though, is what the US president is not backing down on is the fact that there is a naval blockade by the United States in effect in the Strait of Hormuz, and that is ongoing.

How has Iran reacted to it?

Several Iranian officials have sharply reacted to Trump’s remarks. The head of the judiciary came out with furious rhetoric, calling the US president criminal and feather-headed, his remarks “nonsense” and saying the Strait of Hormuz belongs to Iran.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, also responded, saying, “The Strait of Hormuz cannot be seized by tweet, nor by aircraft carrier, nor by issuing an order, nor by an election speech.”

“The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian; this strait will only be closed and opened under Iran’s command, and as long as you do not accept the reality of defeat and cease your fanciful delusions, Iran will continue to enforce the blockade,” he added.

Meanwhile, Iran has been holding talks with Oman, the only other coastal country in the strait, to reach a settlement on the management of maritime traffic in the strait. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in comments carried by the Iranian Students’ News Agency, said negotiations between Tehran and Muscat “may reach a conclusion soon”.

The reopening of the waterway, however, is a separate issue, Araghchi said, where Washington has to adhere to promises made in the June memorandum of understanding, including removal of the naval blockade and sanctions on Iran.

That is the new Iranian position on the ongoing war, where Tehran is now seeking these US concessions for mere reopening of the waterway, which were originally conditions for ending the war.

Is Trump’s claim even practical?

First, sovereignty does not exchange hands over a mere unilateral presidential proclamation.

For instance, Trump had earlier threatened to send US boots to Iran’s Kharg Island to take over the key Iranian oil export hub in the Gulf. Tehran then responded by saying that its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would be waiting for them, “with fingers on the trigger”. Trump had previously also threatened to take over Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Bruce Fein, associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, says Trump is constitutionally powerless to annex on his own.

“A treaty ratified by the Senate or statute is constitutionally required to annex territory, as with the Louisiana Purchase or annexation of Hawaii or Panama Canal or acquisition of Puerto Rico or the Philippines in ending the Spanish-American War.

If he goes ahead with annexation, Fein says, it would “constitute the crime of aggressive war under international law, including the UN Charter”.

Natalie Klein, a specialist in international law and associate dean at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, said, “Essentially the only way Trump’s claim could have any plausibility under international law would be if the US was asserting control over the Strait as an occupying power perhaps comparable to the authority the US exercised over Japan immediately after World War II.”

“But in that scenario, the US would need to have military control over Iran or at least its coastal areas.”

Trump’s war on Iran is also widely unpopular in the US, where the president and his fellow Republicans are seeking to defend their narrow congressional majorities in November’s midterm elections. Barely 35 percent of Americans approve of the war, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Several US media publications have reported that Washington is running short on munitions, including the crucial Patriot antimissile interceptor. Petrol prices have also increased, and are now averaging more than $4 a gallon – a major issue for Americans.

Last week, US Vice President JD Vance said the Trump administration’s top priority in the war was to control increasing petrol prices, while stopping Iran’s supposed race to a nuclear weapon now comes second.

Tehran has also attacked its neighbours in the Gulf, which analysts say are aimed at forcing the regional countries to push Washington into a corner at the negotiating table.

Even Iran does not enjoy unfettered sovereignty over the strait as a whole, under international laws, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), but only some coastal sites near its own borders.

The UNCLOS recognises coastal-state sovereignty over territorial waters, but limits that territorial sea to 12 nautical miles (22km), and notes that ships enjoy a right of passage that “shall not be impeded”.

The Strait of Hormuz is in international waters, sandwiched between the coasts of Iran and Oman. At its narrowest point, the strait is only about 21 nautical miles (39km) wide — and the two countries’ 12-nautical mile territorial seas overlap across it.

While neither the US nor Iran has ratified UNCLOS, the convention’s rules on international straits are widely regarded as customary law.

Paul Musgrave, an associate professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, said Trump usually makes such statements primarily to speak to a US audience, especially his support base.

It is important to remember, he added, that Trump is a product of US reality TV and is, at the end of the day, a “showman”.

“This is a guy who speaks big. You have to take him seriously in some cases but not literally,” Musgrave cautioned.

Trump cannot be taken seriously, especially in this case because making the strait US territory is physically and legally impossible, he said. But the statements do show that Trump is determined not to back down from Iran and accept defeat in the months-long war, he added.

Romania’s Defence Ministry didn’t specify the origin of the drone but has previously blamed Russia for similar incidents.

Russian strikes on Ukraine have killed at least one person and wounded seven more while a Spanish jet has shot down a drone that entered Romanian airspace.

A woman was killed and six others wounded in a missile and drone attack on Kryvyi Rig, the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the region’s governor said early on Sunday.

Authorities in the Ukrainian capital also said Kyiv was “under ballistic missile attack” late on Saturday, with one person wounded and fires sparked at non-residential sites in the Obolonsky and Holosiivskyi districts.

Separately, Romania’s Defence Ministry reported on Sunday that a Spanish F-18 fighter jet pilot on a NATO air policing mission to Romania had shot down a drone illegally breaching its national airspace.

It is the fourth drone shot down in Romania this year.

Romania’s Defence Ministry did not specify the origin of ‌the ‌drone.

In July, a Romanian jet shot down a suspected Russian drone, and in May a stray drone injured two people in the Romanian city of Galati when it collided with a building.

Romania shares a 634km (394-mile) border with Ukraine and has repeatedly seen Russian drones breaching its airspace as Moscow escalates its bombing campaign against Ukrainian civilian and military infrastructure.

Escalating long-range strikes

Russia has maintained near-daily missile and drone strikes across Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion in early 2022, with areas far from the front lines frequently coming under attack.

The war’s impact has also spread to key regional shipping lanes, with reports of mines and unmanned sea drones found floating in the Black Sea.

Civilian casualties in Ukraine hit their highest level since 2022 this July, with at least 437 killed and 2,610 injured, according to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission.

Meanwhile, in Russia on Sunday, authorities reported a large-scale drone incursion from the Ukrainians.

Moscow officials said they had downed more than 100 drones heading towards the capital overnight.

Emergency services were deployed to sites where debris fell, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, adding that three people were wounded.

Ukraine has increasingly targeted military, industrial and logistical facilities deep inside Russia, arguing its strikes are a response to Moscow’s ongoing bombardment of Ukrainian towns and infrastructure.

Yemen’s Ministry of Information denounces Houthi attacks on Marib as ‘escalation’ that threatens lives and increases suffering.

Yemen’s Houthis have launched several strikes on the government-held city of Marib, also hitting residential neighbourhoods, according to local authorities.

The group hit the city with four ballistic missiles and four drones on Saturday, causing several injuries and damage to homes, vehicles and property, Marib’s provincial authority said.

A fifth ballistic missile later in the day also injured one person, Marib governorate officials said on X.

A sixth ballistic missile was launched by the Houthis towards Marib overnight, officials added early on Sunday.

It described the strikes as part of an “ongoing assault that threatens the lives of civilians, displaced persons’ camps, and residential neighbourhoods”.

Marib hosts the largest number of internally displaced people in Yemen, with more than two million of the roughly five million Yemenis forced from their homes over the course of the war living there.

Video footage verified by Al Jazeera showed destruction in the aftermath of Saturday’s strikes.

Yemen’s Ministry of Information said on X that the continued targeting of Marib’s densely populated areas marked a dangerous “escalation” that threatens lives and increases suffering.

The attacks on Marib came alongside clashes further south, where Yemeni government forces claimed drone strikes killed three fighters from the Iran-backed Houthis on Saturday, including field commanders, and wounded others along the Maqbanah front west of Taiz.

A separate strike destroyed a Houthi military vehicle in Jabal al-Zuhayb, killing several more fighters, a military source told the Yemeni News Agency (Saba).

The attacks are part of a rapid escalation that has gripped Yemen since early August, when Houthi missile and drone strikes on military camps in Marib and Hadramout killed at least 30 government soldiers, the deadliest single episode of the conflict in years.

Days later, Houthi missiles killed at least two civilians and wounded 14 in Marib, and further strikes killed seven people in the port city of al-Makha (Mocha).

The Houthis, backed by Iran, control much of Yemen’s northern territory, including the capital, Sanaa.

United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg warned the UN Security Council on Thursday that Yemen faces its highest risk of returning to full-scale war since the UN-brokered truce of April 2022, as fighting has intensified on multiple fronts and threatens to unravel more than four years of relative calm.

US president’s words come as Treasury chief says US will use economic measures against Iran that have ‘never been seen’.

Members of the US Congress have called for a probe into conditions amid reports of sailors attempting to jump ship.

United States President Donald Trump has dismissed concerns about conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln during its lengthy deployment as part of the US-Israel war with Iran.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump rejected the assertion that the families of those on board the aircraft carrier are worried about their loved ones. “No, they’re not,” Trump said.

When asked if the aircraft carrier had been deployed too long, Trump replied: “No, no, no, not nearly enough.”

His remarks follow a series of reports this week, documenting supply shortages and mental health strain on the USS Abraham Lincoln. That includes accounts of individuals attempting to jump from the ship.

The aircraft carrier left in November from a base in San Diego, California, and it has since been involved in January’s military operation against Venezuela and, more recently, the war against Iran.

Its deployment was expected to end in May, but that timeframe has been extended. It has spent more than 250 days at sea without a port stop, setting a record for the US Navy. More than 5,000 sailors and Marines are housed on board.

Several US lawmakers have since called for an inquiry into conditions on board the ship. One Democratic senator, Ruben Gallego, has also called on the Navy to allow a bipartisan delegation to visit the ship to assess the state of affairs.

Still, the Trump administration has repeatedly denied worsening conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

On Friday, a US official told Al Jazeera the Navy had “not observed an increase in suicidal ideations or attempts aboard the ship”.

The official added that there were five chaplains, one psychologist, one social worker, three “behavioral health technicians”, and one “embedded integrated prevention coordination (EIPC) counselor” on board the vessel. There is also an emotional support dog on board.

‘What military objective?’

While Trump downplayed the length of the deployment, he did confirm reports that the aircraft carrier will be swapped out in the near future.

“That ship is moving right now or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with another very similar ship,” Trump said on Friday.

In a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier this week, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, asked for information on conditions on the boat, including what metrics the Navy was using to measure the mental health of the crew.

“What military objective is the continued deployment of the Lincoln intended to achieve in Iran, and how does the Department assess whether the carrier’s continued presence is necessary to accomplish that objective?” he asked.

The focus on conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln come as diplomatic efforts to end the US-Israeli war in Iran show no signs of breakthrough. The war began with a US and Israel-led offensive on February 28.

In June, the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that called for an immediate pause to the fighting.

But last month, the memorandum collapsed amid a dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for trade.

The subsequent escalation saw the US re-impose its naval blockade on Iranian ports and Iran constrict traffic through the strait once more.

Iran has since focused its diplomatic efforts on reaching an agreement with Oman over travel routes in the waterway, which is a key artery for oil, natural gas, fertiliser and other goods.

Israeli settlers have marauded across the occupied West Bank for months, attacking Palestinian towns and villages with impunity.

Events in Qusra, a village south of Nablus, where Israeli settlers have laid siege to three Palestinian households since Sunday, have even led to a rare condemnation of settler behaviour by the Israeli government, with spokesperson David Mercer calling the settlers’ actions “deplorable” and “unacceptable”, and promising that Israeli authorities would investigate and arrest those responsible.

Analysts, campaigners, and Israeli parliamentarians who spoke to Al Jazeera have reacted to that with disbelief and incredulity, pointing to the inability of the Israeli military to stop the siege, in which the settlers have cut off water and electricity to Qusra. Israeli soldiers were initially even seen mingling and even praying with settlers in Qusra.

Complicity

“Government attempts to distance themselves from the violence are ridiculous,” Aida Touma-Sliman, a member of the Israeli parliament representing the left-wing Hadash party, told Al Jazeera. “They can say what they want, but they’re complicit.”

“If you look at the West Bank, you can no longer differentiate between the army and the settlers,” she said, adding that many of the settlers had been allowed to carry out their military service protecting the same illegal settlements they had come from. “The government is supplying them, protecting and arming them. It isn’t opposed to them. Supporting them is policy,” she added.

“There is nothing new in what’s happening in Qusra,” Yair Dvir of the Israeli rights organisation B’Tselem said. “We’ve been seeing this for decades. When there’s international criticism of the violence, the government condemns it, the settlers withdraw, and then return as soon as attention shifts.”

“Let’s be clear, settler violence is state violence,” Dvir added. “They both have the same aim: to displace Palestinians and to take their land.”

The speed and brutality of the Israeli government’s encroachment upon Palestinian land, in defiance of both international law and the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that it should stop its illegal settlement of Palestinian territory, has increased in recent months. United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs monitoring shows settler violence to be increasing with every week that Israel’s October election – and the potential end of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government – draws nearer.

“We’re definitely seeking an escalation of violence across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and in other areas, such as Gaza, in the build-up to the election,” saidNeve Gordon, a professor of International Law at Queen Mary University, London, and the author of “Israel’s Occupation”.

“The vote is like a rallying cry for that entire [settler] constituency that they have to do as much as they can, while they can,” he said of fears among settlers and the radical Israeli right that they might lose what many regard as their allies in Netanyahu’s coalition.

Settlement unchained

The Israeli government has done little to distance itself from the actions of the settlers. Instead, prominent members of Netanyhu’s Likud party have attended prominent settlement conferences, including those explicitly focused on ethnically cleansing Gaza. Netanyahu himself responded to recent violence in the Palestinian village of Tal – which prompted the United Nations to warn that the entire West Bank was at “breaking point” – by promising to recognise even more illegal settlements.

At the heart of government policy on settlements have been the polarising figures of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Smotrich has proven to be one of the most consequential Israeli politicians in history in promoting the cause of illegal settlements.

As well as normalising political references to the annexation of the Palestinian territory, Smotrich made being granted partial administrative control over the occupied West Bank a key condition of his joining Netanyahu’s coalition. He has since overseen the expansion of illegal settlements at an unprecedented rate.

Smotrich has also boasted of making the two-state solution a practical impossibility with the announcement of the E1 settlement project, joining occupied East Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement, in August of last year.

However, focusing on just two of the coalition’s more controversial figures was to miss the point, Gordon argued.

“It’s too easy to say it’s all the fault of these few people and if they were gone it would all be OK,” Gordon said. “It goes far wider.”

“The ethnic cleansing we’re seeing of the West Bank, as well as that being undertaken by the army in the territory’s refugee camps, such as Jenin, needs the complicity of the police, the attorney general, the military and, ultimately, the public,” the professor noted. “Without the umbrella they provide, none of this would be possible.”

Taybeh, occupied West Bank – Underneath a painting of Jesus and his disciples, Sandra Basir brought out what she and her husband, Roland, now keep to protect their home: a couple of fire extinguishers.

They keep them because the last time Israeli settlers set fire to a neighbour’s car outside their house, no one else came. “Civil defence – when did they even show up? After everything was already over,” Roland says.

The couple’s nightly routine in their Palestinian Christian town is now similar to the majority-Muslim rural Palestinian communities besieged by settler attacks and nighttime military raids for years. Sandra checks the doors more than once before bed. They got a dog to stay outside to alert them of any trespassers. Sandra is, by her own description, always half-awake – listening for whoever might be coming for her four small children while they sleep.

Their seven-year-old son has stopped playing outside, Sandra says, and for months, the little boy told his father not to go to work – scared he might not return. “That’s what our life has become,” says Sandra, who was on the verge of tears throughout the conversation. “A child that age should just be playing.”

For more than 20 years, Roland built up a stone quarry and concrete-block factory on the edge of town, investing an estimated $5m in the business. After employing 40 local Palestinians, he has found his life’s work snatched by marauding settlers, both armed adults and some barely teenagers.

In the past three years – and with the situation deteriorating even more severely this past year – he and his workers were frequently chased off by settlers at gunpoint, with his quarry’s heavy-machinery equipment set on fire. The most brazen attack came in March, when Roland says some 30 to 40 settlers stormed the quarry site in a coordinated mass incursion. Videos and photos show them raising Israeli flags over the grounds and performing prayers on the land. Before leaving, they smashed his office, destroyed electrical panels, and pulled cameras from the walls.

Roland documented everything on video, filed complaints with the liaison office, the police, and every institution he could reach. All his efforts to mobilise help to protect his land, however, were for naught. The settlers were back the next day, with their attacks continuing ever since.

Meanwhile, Roland showed Al Jazeera donation pages online for the settlers that he says carried out the attacks. He also alleges that stone taken from his land was registered under a settler’s name and resold.

This past week, he finally stopped trying to continue operations, leaving his stone quarry business all but abandoned.

“They’ve taken the quarry, taken the factory, taken the land,” Roland says. “What’s left for them to take? My children? My house?”

A once-safe haven now in the crosshairs

A few years ago, nobody in Taybeh thought trouble like this was coming their way.

Madees Khoury, who runs the Taybeh Brewery her family founded in 1994, lived in Taybeh through the second Intifada, the Arab Spring, and every war on Gaza – but none of it ever really touched the quaint town filled with centuries-old churches, well-built homes, and street-corner statues of Mother Mary and Jesus. “Taybeh was always safe, untouched – never, never, never did I imagine it would come to this,” says Madees.

The town is traditionally identified with biblical Ephraim – the place Jesus is said to have withdrawn to before his final journey to Jerusalem – and is the last Palestinian town left in the West Bank whose population is entirely Christian, home now to roughly 1,200 people and to the ruins of the fifth-century Church of St George, one of the oldest Christian sites in the Holy Land.

Things began to change as Israeli settlers, after driving Bedouin and herding communities from areas to the east, increasingly turned their attention to the hills around Taybeh itself, commencing attacks within the town last year. Mayor Suleiman Khourieh estimates roughly seven settler outposts now surround the town – four or five, by his count, sitting directly on Taybeh’s municipal land.

The attacks that followed mirror those taking place across the rural West Bank, with Sandra – who says her mother’s arm was broken by a settler during last year’s olive harvest – and Roland showing Al Jazeera photographs and videos of the frequent settler incursions within the town’s central confines.

Repeatedly, settlers graze cattle, sheep and camels on private agricultural land. Last year, Christian leaders say fires were deliberately set near the church and its adjoining cemetery. A couple of months ago, armed settlers set large fires along the village’s farmlands and prevented firetrucks from reaching them, according to local residents who drove to the scene.

Residents of Taybeh now face routine restrictions on accessing their farmlands and resources, including the now depopulated Ein Samiya spring. The spring supplies all the water to Taybeh Brewery and other Palestinian communities in the area, but settlers have since taken control of it.

Madees Khoury remembers one morning, in February this year, when a group of settlers walked into the centre of town claiming to search for a horse that didn’t exist – while her cousin’s actual horse and its foal, kept in a small structure on her father and uncle’s land for years, stood a few metres away. When she and her family called Israel’s Civil Administration to have the settlers removed, she says the officials who arrived instead walked in alongside them, broke open the door, and helped carry the horses out. “Instead of removing them,” she says, “the officials who came walked alongside the settlers onto my father and uncle’s private property … took the horse and the foal, and walked out.”

The newest outpost, established just last week, sits on the western edge of town, in Area B of the West Bank – nominally under Palestinian civil administration, though security in these hills has long since fallen to whoever is willing to enforce it on the ground.

On his own land in Area B, Mayor Khourieh has watched a settler take over his vineyard and its well over the past month, following the establishment of a settler outpost nearby. Sitting in his office, Khourieh described the settlers cutting his locks, bringing sheep there to graze, at one point pitching a tent by the well and furnishing it with sofas, and even bathing in the water meant for his vines.

According to the mayor, the army eventually removed the settlers’ tent, but the settlers still come back daily to water their flock from Khourieh’s own well. “We still don’t know whether I’m even allowed to go to my own vineyard or not,” says the town mayor inside his office.

Israeli officials have, at least on paper, acknowledged the problem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this year that outposts established in Area B should be evacuated. But despite reported pressure from career military officials to remove the outposts over security concerns, enforcement has frequently been blocked amid opposition from officials in Netanyahu’s far-right government. By Peace Now’s latest count, of the approximately 390 illegal outposts and farms across the West Bank, at least 21 sit in Area B.

Al Jazeera has reached out to the Israeli authorities for comment on the attacks on Taybeh, and the accusations that their response has not been sufficient, but has yet to receive a response.

Hollow protections from the state

Following attacks in the area – including the invasion of a then-empty home of a Taybeh family on August 5 – on August 9, the Israeli army declared Taybeh, along with the neighbouring village of Rammun, a closed military zone.

The order itself has confused almost everyone tasked with living under it. It bars entry to Israelis and foreigners without a specific connection to the village, and the army has offered little clarity on the terms and enforcement. “It’s unclear,” Madees Khoury says. “The whole thing was strange.”

What almost no one in Taybeh believes is that the order will actually keep settlers out. Especially in the past year, such closed military zone orders have been issued in cases where settlers are attacking local Palestinians – only for those orders to be enforced selectively to remove activists attempting to offer protective presence to local Palestinians, while doing little to remove the violent settlers themselves.

Instead, the removal of visitors adds to the town’s growing isolation.

“The decision hasn’t amounted to anything practical,” the mayor says, “because the settler is still exactly where he was.” Father Bashar Fawadleh, priest of Taybeh’s Christ the Redeemer Church, put it more bluntly: “We don’t feel that they’re actually forbidding the settlers from coming to Taybeh.”

According to Roland, the day the military zone closure was announced, settlers broke into his office at the stone quarry and smashed cabinets, equipment, and anything they could reach inside. The following morning, he tried to go back to what remains of his quarry, but settlers confronted him again. He called the police; two and a half hours later, he says, they arrived, but the settlers had already left.

‘The cross we have to carry’

Emigration of Palestinian Christians has been an issue in Taybeh and elsewhere for years, as the Palestinian Christian population has shrunk to about 40,000 in the West Bank, or just more than 1 percent of the entire population. But under the pressures of severe restrictions on land access by Israeli authorities and settlers, movement restrictions, and the threat of unchecked settler attacks, in Taybeh, the quiet of emptiness is being replaced by a quiet borne of fear.

Madees Khoury says people avoid the roads now because no one wants to risk a checkpoint that might swallow four hours of their day, or a stretch of road where a settler’s car might slow down alongside theirs.

Tourism is gone; a well-known hiking trail that begins at the brewery sees almost no visitors any more. Among a wider economic depression and skyrocketing export costs imposed by Israeli authorities, Taybeh Brewery’s revenues are down 80 percent compared with before October 2023, according to Madees Khoury.

Fifteen families have already left Taybeh in the past two years, according to Father Bashar, along with dozens of individuals who left parents behind and moved on alone, mostly to the United States and Europe.

And yet almost no one who spoke to Al Jazeera described leaving as a real option for themselves. “Where is there to go?” asks Roland Basir, reiterating a common refrain heard across the West Bank these days.

“This land is ours,” says Father Bashar. “We cannot leave it easily … we want to resist by staying rooted in this land, to be part of this land, for dignity, for security, for peace, and for justice.”

Mayor Khourieh, whose own vineyard now sits behind a settler’s fence, put it in starker terms. “We are Palestinian Christians,” he says. “We have been in this town since the Lord Christ walked in it. This is our town. We will not leave it. Even if we die, we’ll be buried in it, because it’s holy ground.”

These days, Father Bashar frames the threats to this bastion of the wider Palestinian Christian community in the context of the suffering that Jesus endured. “For me, our cause, our problems, are the cross we have to carry on our shoulders,” he says.

He pauses before offering the line he says he carries into every house he visits after a new attack: “In the midst of this cross, in the hardest time, still we have hope. Inside our hearts, we have to put hope instead of the fear.”

Pyongyang has accused the US of pushing the world ‘to the brink of nuclear war’.

North Korea has denounced major United States-South Korea military drills set to start next week as a provocation that heightens tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The US-Japan-South Korea military cooperation is turning into a nuclear alliance, and North Korea will respond to a new level of threat with a new level of deterrent, a spokesperson for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday, according to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Pyongyang routinely denounces military drills in the south as a provocation that heightens tensions.

The drills – named “Ulchi Freedom Shield” – are due to start on August 17 and will last until August 27. They will incorporate exercises to counter drones, GPS disruption, and cyberattacks as the US and its allies adapt to North Korea’s evolving capabilities.

“The US announced that the forthcoming exercises are quite different from the ones of the past five years and intended to master the ability of fighting a war on the basis of the new aspects of modern warfare,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in the statement.

“It is our consistent principle of ensuring security to respond to a new level of a threat with a new level of a deterrent,” the statement, published by KCNA, added.

Lessons learned in Russia-Ukraine

North Korea sent an estimated 12,000-15,000 soldiers to fight for Russia in its war against Ukraine, and the country is now thought to be preparing the deployment of another 10,000.

Thousands died, but the deal provided North Korea with valuable battlefield experience, as well as payment in arms, energy and direct financial support, according to reports.

Colonel Ryan Donald, spokesperson for the US and South Korean Combined Forces Command, said this week that North Korea’s deployment to the European war had changed the threat his soldiers may face on the Korean Peninsula.

“They’ve taken those lessons they learned there and brought them back to North Korea,” he told reporters. “Our training accounts for that threat.”

Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry statement said the US-South Korea drills are being staged “at a time when military and political situation is becoming more serious with each passing day in Europe, the Middle East and other parts of the world”.

North Korea also said on Friday that it would further strengthen its nuclear deterrence, accusing the US of lowering its threshold for nuclear weapons usage and pushing the world “to the brink of nuclear war”.

On Wednesday, North Korea fired a ballistic missile towards the sea off the Korean Peninsula’s east coast, just six days after firing another missile.

The Ulchi Freedom Shield drills will include 18,000 South Korean soldiers and counterparts from the 28,500-strong US contingent in the country.