Israeli strikes on residential buildings have killed nine Palestinians, setting homes ablaze and leaving widespread destruction. Footage from the scenes showed rescue efforts amid the flames and ambulances transporting casualties.
Published On 4 Jun 20264 Jun 2026
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Kuwait’s defence ministry has labelled an attack on the country’s international airport as ‘heinous Iranian aggression’. One person was killed and dozens were injured after Iranian drones struck a terminal on Wednesday, causing ‘significant material damage’.
Published On 3 Jun 20263 Jun 2026
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In January 2024, the publication Axios reported that the United States president at the time, Joe Biden, was “running out of patience” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza had been raging for months by that point, and Biden was facing public backlash over US support for the conflict.
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The assault would continue for the rest of Biden’s term and bleed into the first 10 months of Donald Trump‘s second presidency.
Since then, media outlets have continued to publish anonymous accounts of rifts and “frustrating” calls between Trump and the Israeli prime minister. But US support for its Middle East ally has never wavered.
Another anonymously sourced report about a furious, expletive-laden call between US and Israeli leaders came out this week, and it spread rapidly across international media.
Axios reported on Monday that Trump called Netanyahu “f***ing crazy” and berated him over Israel’s escalation in Lebanon.
Around the same time, an Israeli attack killed six people, including two children, in the southern Lebanese town of al-Marwaniyah.
Experts say that despite leaks of feuds and harsh words between US leaders and Netanyahu, policies are ultimately what matters, and they have changed very little.
Ryan Costello, the policy director at the National Iranian American Council Action (NIAC), said political observers have grown to “mock” reports of closed-door anger from US presidents against Netanyahu.
“What’s really important is what actually happens in practice,” Costello told Al Jazeera.
Though there are reports of Trump giving Netanyahu a dressing-down, Isabelle Hayslip, an advocacy manager at the US-based rights group DAWN, said that US policy remains aligned with Israeli interests.
“Single-source reporting of Trump as a strongman who picks up the phone and yells at Netanyahu for undermining US policy is contradicted by the actual policy outcomes where Netanyahu gets exactly what he wants,” Hayslip told Al Jazeera.
“Trump has no final say over Israeli actions. Like his predecessors, the president has proved completely unable to prioritise American interests, instead catering to Israel’s expansionist whims.”
The latest report comes as Trump faces increasing pressure from his Democratic rivals and segments of his base over his handling of the war on Iran, which he launched jointly with Netanyahu on February 28.
The conflict, which saw Iran close the Strait of Hormuz, has sent gasoline prices soaring in the US and fuelled inflation.
Critics have accused Trump of allowing Israel to drag the US into a war that does not advance Washington’s priorities.
With negotiations to end the war stagnating, Israel’s escalation in Lebanon and its threat to bomb Beirut risks derailing the fragile truce that came into effect in April.
Iranian officials have suggested that they cut off contact with the US over the Israeli attacks in Lebanon.
Before the Axios report, Trump announced he had spoken to Netanyahu and an unidentified Hezbollah representative, and both sides agreed that “all shooting will stop”.
But Netanyahu was quick to assert that the Israeli military “will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon”, where it is deepening its invasion and turning entire towns into rubble.
Advocates say Israeli atrocities in Lebanon and across the region could not have happened without US backing.
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, the US has provided Israel with nearly $25bn in military aid, helped fend off retaliatory Iranian attacks against the country and vetoed several ceasefire resolutions at the United Nations Security Council.
Nonetheless, anonymous accounts that the US president is angry at Netanyahu have become a regular feature in the media.
Such reports are attributed to US officials, but it is unclear how leaks with a similar message on the same topic have continued across two administrations from different political parties.
Publicly, aides of both Biden and Trump have largely refrained from criticising Israel.
Trump has regularly praised the Israeli prime minister, arguing on more than one occasion that Israel would have ceased to exist without Netanyahu’s leadership.
In December, the US president also called the Israeli prime minister a “hero” during a meeting in Florida.
“We’re with you, and we’ll continue to be with you,” Trump told Netanyahu.
Two weeks earlier, Axios reported that the White House had “scolded” Netanyahu over Israel’s ceasefire violations in Gaza.
“The White House message to Netanyahu was: ‘If you want to ruin your reputation and show that you don’t abide by agreements, be our guest, but we won’t allow you to ruin President Trump’s reputation after he brokered the deal in Gaza,” the publication quoted a US official as saying.
Few people know the exact content of high-level calls at the White House. Sometimes, top officials, including members of the National Security Council, sit in on conversations between the president and world leaders after briefings.
Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, a research nonprofit, said the leak about the tense call between Trump and Netanyahu may be aimed at making Trump look tough on Israel to quell outrage over the war.
“It could be sort of a way of moderating the anger or the blame at the US for continuing this unpopular, illegal, unnecessary war,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera.
She added that the message it sends is, “Look, we’re very angry at Israel. We yell at them. We call them names.”
But Mortazavi stressed that policy is more important than rhetoric: “Does that change the facts on the ground?”
For his part, Costello argued that the leak was likely directed at Iran.
“I see this one primarily as a signal to the Iranians that Trump is serious, and he wants to insulate what’s happening in Lebanon and Israel’s attacks from the Iran negotiations,” Costello said.
“It remains to be seen the extent to which that excoriation has actually led to a change in Israel’s policies, and I think there is a strong incentive for continued defiance from Netanyahu.”
Axios, meanwhile, has defended its coverage.
“We stand by our reporting, which by the way noted ‘Trump and Netanyahu have had several tense calls in the past but have still coordinated closely on Iran and other issues,’” Jake Wilkins, a spokesperson for the publication, told Al Jazeera in an email.
Mortazavi warned that all sides of the war on Iran are trying to influence public perceptions of the conflict.
She pointed to recent reports that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had resigned, a rumour that was promptly denied by his office.
“This is a very hybrid war. It’s a war on the battlefield. It’s an intelligence war. It’s a war of narratives,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera. “And then there’s also an information war, which includes disinformation, half-truths and strategic leaks.”
A Gaza-bound ship carrying aid has begun its voyage from Sweden, weeks after Israeli forces abducted activists on a similar mission in international waters. The ‘Handala II’ vessel says it is carrying humanitarian supplies for Palestinians to break the Israeli blockade on the enclave.
Published On 1 Jun 20261 Jun 2026
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On a modest bed inside his war-battered home in the Khartoum North neighbourhood of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, Murtada Mohieddin, a diabetic patient in his early 50s, carefully counts his remaining doses of insulin. His search for medicine has transformed into a harrowing battle – not just to find the treatment he needs to survive his diabetes, but to ensure the medicine is not expired or ruined.
“Sometimes the insulin is spoiled,” Mohieddin tells Al Jazeera, inspecting his limited supply. “You wouldn’t know if it is ruined or expired. You can check the expiration date, but it could still be damaged from poor storage.”
More than three years of civil war have crippled Sudan’s healthcare infrastructure: hospitals, health centres and pharmaceutical factories have been shut and vital medical supply chains and storage across the country have been disrupted.
The war, which erupted as a power struggle between Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has killed more than 50,000 people and displaced 14 million – nearly a quarter of the country’s population.
The devastating conflict has paralysed domestic pharmaceutical production and collapsed vital supply chains across the country.
According to a World Health Organization (WHO) news release dated April 14, 2026, Sudan represents the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 21 million people lacking basic healthcare services out of 34 million needing aid.
In the void left by the closure of pharmaceutical companies, smuggling networks have flourished, flooding the market with unregulated drugs locally known as “Boko” medicines.
These include critical intravenous malaria medications smuggled across borders. Because they completely bypass strict temperature controls and quality checks during transit, these drugs are frequently spoiled, rendering them either totally ineffective or lethally toxic to patients.
Inside local pharmacies in Omdurman, located on the outskirts of Khartoum, the crisis is not just limited to scarcity. Patients now face the double threat of exorbitant costs and life-threatening quality issues, as these illicit medicines are often severely spoiled due to a lack of proper storage and refrigeration.
Mutawakil Hamza, a pharmacist based in Omdurman, said the reliance on unregulated channels is putting lives at immediate risk.
“Most malaria medicines are now brought in through smuggling,” Hamza said. “These are ultimately injections for intravenous use, and this is highly dangerous to a patient’s health.”
Because intravenous treatments bypass the body’s natural defences and require absolute sterility, administering improperly stored or degraded smuggled injections can rapidly cause severe bloodstream infections, systemic shock, or death.
The war has effectively dismantled local manufacturing, reversing years of medical self-reliance. Yasser Ahmed Youssef, a pharmaceutical industry expert whose factory is located in Khartoum, noted the stark contrast to the pre-war era, when local factories managed to produce “very large quantities of life-saving medicines, including drugs for blood pressure, diabetes, colds, and paediatric care”.
Now, the majority of those production lines are silent, leaving the population dependent on a shattered healthcare system. According to the October 2025 Health Resources and Services Availability Monitoring System (HeRAMS) report cited in a WHO Public Health Situation Analysis from January 6, 2026, 40 percent of health facilities nationwide are entirely nonoperational.
The situation is even more drastic regionally, with 87 percent of facilities shut down in Khartoum and 85 percent closed in North Kordofan, whose control is contested between the rival sides.
In active conflict zones such as Gezira, Khartoum, Darfur and the Kordofan regions, the shortages are particularly dire.
A United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) emergency report from August 2025 highlighted that the only functioning maternity hospital in the besieged city of el-Fasher faces critical medicine shortages and risks imminent closure.
El-Fasher, the last SAF stronghold in the western region of Darfur, was taken over by the RSF in late October 2025, trapping approximately 700,000 civilians – mostly women and children. People have been cut off entirely from food and medicine and subjected to attacks.
In the government-funded public sector, the National Medical Supplies Fund maintains that it is working to secure essential medicines despite the fighting, claiming to have achieved 75 percent availability for cancer medications and fully secured supplies for kidney patients.
However, officials admit the overarching infrastructure is in ruins, with the local health ecosystem almost destroyed.
“We have been massively affected by the ongoing war inside Sudan,” said Abubakar Salouha, a department director at the fund. “The medical supplies have been severely impacted; there has been a collapse at the level of the main warehouses at the headquarters.”
International aid deliveries from neighbouring countries also face enormous logistical hurdles.
The WHO’s January 6 situation analysis detailed that cross-border transit times for medical commodities can take up to 90 days to reach remote regions like Darfur from the Cameroonian city of Douala via Chad. Compounding these suffocating delays, armed groups have repeatedly targeted medical infrastructure, looting pharmacies and stripping remaining hospitals of their vital medical supplies.
Recent attacks highlight this systematic destruction by rival sides. On March 20, 2026, a drone attack on Al-Daein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur state killed at least 64 people, including medical personnel, and injured 89 others. Sudanese rights group the Emergency Lawyers reported that the army was behind the attack.
On April 2, another drone attack struck Al-Jabalain Hospital in White Nile state, killing 10 staff members, including the hospital’s director while he was performing surgery. That same day, the Family Hospital in el-Daein was looted, and patients and health workers were assaulted and expelled. Similarly, a hospital in Kurmuk, Blue Nile state, was looted on March 25, its equipment destroyed, and patients forced out. The RSF was blamed for these attacks.
“Sudan is confronting one of the gravest humanitarian and public health emergencies in the world today. The ongoing conflict has pushed the health system to the edge of complete collapse,” warned WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on April 4.
“These incidents are stark reminders of the urgent need for renewed international solidarity and decisive political and humanitarian action. Sudan cannot endure this crisis alone.”
EXPLAINER
While a peace deal between the US and Iran remains elusive, Israel has deepened its offensive into southern Lebanon.
Published On 1 Jun 20261 Jun 2026
The United States military says it has struck Iranian military sites, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it has targeted a US base in response, the latest in a series of exchanges as negotiations to end the three-month US-Israel war on Iran are conducted.
US President Donald Trump also on Monday described Iran as eager to reach an agreement.
“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the USA and those that are with us,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.
Here is the latest on the US-Iran negotiations as both sides announced on day 94 of the war on Iran that they traded attacks:
At least two Palestinians were killed and around a dozen wounded when an Israeli air strike hit a crowded cafe at Gaza’s seaport. Witnesses said people had gathered there to escape the heat and enjoy a public holiday, as attacks continue despite an October ceasefire.
Published On 1 Jun 20261 Jun 2026
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Ten years after Colombia’s landmark peace agreement, former president Juan Manuel Santos assesses its legacy. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate discusses renewed violence, political divisions and what Colombia’s experience can teach a world facing growing conflict.
Published On 31 May 202631 May 2026
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In 1973, Tom Bradley became L.A.’s. first Black mayor by assembling Black, Jewish, white and Latino liberals into a coalition that ended decades of conservative white rule at City Hall.
Bradley’s election transformed Los Angeles politics and began what has been, for the most part, a 50-year reign of moderate Democrats. Year after year, the election map has changed, but liberal centrists have usually remained on top.
But as Mayor Karen Bass seeks reelection, she is struggling to unite her traditional base as she faces attacks from Democratic Socialists of America Councilwoman Nithya Raman on the left and Republican reality TV star Spencer Pratt on the right.
Some political experts in L.A. say mainstream Democrats are floundering as they try to patch together their coalitions in an era when poll after poll shows the city’s residents frustrated with the status quo.
“Overwhelmingly, Angelenos feel Los Angeles doesn’t work,” said Fernando Guerra, founding director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “You have this liberal regime that has dominated from ‘73 to ‘26 and it’s stagnant.”
Traditional voting patterns, political experts agree, are unraveling as L.A.’s mounting housing costs create new political fault lines in this city of 3.9 million. The devastating 2025 wildfires, along with enduring problems of homelessness, declining city infrastructure and traffic, have exacerbated discontent.
It’s still possible Bass can pull off reelection in the nonpartisan mayoral race and some coalition of centrist Democrats can survive. But the fact that she is unlikely to avoid a runoff when U.S. incumbents typically win at a 90% rate, Guerra said, shows that L.A.’s mainstream Democratic institutions are hollowing out.
“The problem is not Bass,” Guerra said, adding: “Any regime that lasts for that long begins to fall upon itself. … It stagnates and stops being innovative, and just becomes protective of the ingrained interests that have nurtured that coalition.”
Former L.A. Mayors Antonio Villaraigosa, Eric Garcetti and Richard Riordan.
(Los Angeles Times)
Republicans hope that Pratt’s social-media-fueled critique of L.A. leaders’ failures in emergency preparation and response after the fires and high spending on homeless programs can lead a new generation of conservative Angelenos to the polls.
Most political observers in L.A., however, are confident that the city’s future is not conservative.
The DSA, a decentralized anti-capitalist group, has made inroads in L.A. as it advocates for rental protections, defunding the police and a Green New Deal. Over the last six years, Angelenos have elected four DSA-backed City Council members and a DSA-recommended city controller.
“L.A. is clearly a city that is steadily moving to the left,” said Jim Newton, executive director of UCLA Blueprint magazine and a veteran political journalist who worked for the L.A. Times for 25 years.
“People are unhappy, but they’re not unhappy enough to vote for a Republican,” Guerra agreed. “They have been looking at the other alternatives: the Democratic Socialist party that is the challenge to the establishment.”
Some caution, however, that it is too early to map out Los Angeles’ political future.
Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Haynes Foundation and author of “Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles,” said sweeping generational changes are happening in L.A. politics.
“I think everything is up for grabs,” Sonenshein said, noting that he expected more competition for Latino and Asian voters, young voters and even older Democrats. “Certainly, younger voters are completely up for grabs. It’s just hard to know where they’re going to end up. … Small shifts in the primary can make a very big difference.”
L.A. rose as the Republican stronghold of California.
As a massive influx of white Midwesterners descended on L.A. after the 1885 opening of the Santa Fe railroad, conservative white civic leaders — including the owners of the L.A. Times — touted the city as the GOP counterpart to progressive, union-friendly San Francisco. Liberal Black and white Angelenos were shut out of citywide power.
The purpose of the Bradley coalition, Sonenshein said, was to “break open the stranglehold of a city establishment that was … unresponsive to the diversity of the community.”
Bradley, an even-keeled attorney and former police officer, was well positioned to bridge L.A.’s racial divides. As a police community relations officer, he had cultivated relationships with Jewish business owners. He was an early supporter of L.A.’s first Latino City Council member, Edward Roybal, and had already united Black and Jewish Angelenos in the 10th District as the city’s first Black City Council member.
L.A. City Councilman Tom Bradley and Mayor Sam Yorty in a TV studio just before the start of a debate during their 1973 campaign for mayor.
(Los Angeles Times)
After his 1973 win, as waves of new immigrants moved to L.A., Bradley brought more Latinos and Asian Americans into the fold. A conscious alliance of minority communities reelected Bradley, helping him become the longest-serving mayor in L.A. history.
But by the 1990s, frustration had swelled over L.A.’s crime, pollution and poverty. Bradley’s popularity plummeted after Black motorist Rodney King was brutally beaten by LAPD officers in 1991 and riots erupted across the city the next year when a largely white jury acquitted the officers. More than 60 people were killed.
As Bradley prepared to step down, Democrats struggled to find a successor who could unite liberal Black, white, Latino and Asian Angelenos.
Still, some were skeptical that Richard Riordan, a Republican venture capitalist, would win. Riordan was a moderate, easygoing philanthropist, Newton said, and Republicans at the time made up 30% of L.A.’s registered voters, double their number now. Even so, he noted, “there were people who thought this is just not what this city is, the city doesn’t need a multimillionaire white guy Republican.”
Voters thought differently. After securing the support of San Fernando Valley Republicans and Democratic centrists and making small inroads among Latinos, Riordan became the first Republican L.A. mayor elected in 36 years.
The Bradley coalition was “a spent force,” Sonenshein said. “But new players were emerging in prominent roles, working to forge new types of alliances and, at times, temporary coalitions.”
When California voters in 1994 passed the anti-immigrant Proposition 187, which barred undocumented immigrants from receiving many public services, Latino participation in L.A. politics surged. Asian Americans also began to rise.
But after Bradley, there was no single Democratic coalition in the city.
When Antonio Villaraigosa challenged James Hahn in 2001 and 2005, Sonenshein said, Hahn drew support from the Black community and the Valley, Villaraigosa from Latinos and liberals. When Eric Garcetti defeated Wendy Greuel in 2013, Greuel had strong support in Black South L.A., but Garcetti managed to win with the white and Latino vote.
“People have to piece it together, because the Democrats have such a larger edge in L.A. than they did in Bradley’s age,” he said. “It’s almost a kind of entrepreneurial thing: You’ve got to go out and build a majority each time, and those alliances shift.”
There were still challenges from the right. But in 2022, when billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso ran against Bass on a centrist law-and-order platform, he switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democratic. Some saw that as a recognition that a Republican could not win in L.A.
Bass defeated Caruso by nearly 10 percentage points.
Like Bradley, Bass is a pragmatic politician with a long record of forging relationships behind the scenes.
In the 1990s, she founded the grassroots Community Coalition to combat the public health crises that plagued South L.A. amid the crack-cocaine epidemic.
But as Bass presides over a City Hall that is almost entirely dominated by Democrats, discontent is spreading. Polls show a substantial portion of the electorate views her unfavorably because of her handling of the Palisades fire.
Guerra said the lack of affordable housing had created a unique moment: Even after the King riots, the Northridge earthquake and the O.J. Simpson trial, he said, Angelenos were still invested in living in the city.
“You could still buy a home. You could still see yourself nurturing L.A., but also L.A. nurturing you,” Guerra said.
For Guerra, centrist Democrats have been so successful at inclusion they have struggled to identify priorities.
“There are too many members of the coalition and there are too many of the members who have veto power, which then leads to paralysis,” Guerra said. “The paralysis is what’s led to the lack of innovation, the failure to pursue policies that make sense for the greater good.”
The dysfunction, he said, is particularly clear on housing.
“Every NIMBY in every neighborhood, in every council district, is like, ‘We want housing, but not here,’” Guerra said. “That, replicated everywhere, leads to paralysis and no housing.”
It has also led to renters becoming a rising political constituency — a big shift from the Bradley era, when homeowners were the city’s dominant voters.
But that doesn’t mean working-class Angelenos have a bigger voice now in L.A. politics. Instead, the middle class is splintering along generational lines.
“Middle-class young folks graduating from college, who have extraordinary amounts of debt, cannot buy homes,” said Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College. “The city still has issues with food insecurity and low-wage worker protections, but those are not the issues dominating anymore.”
While L.A. Democrats have long focused on assembling coalitions of Black, Latino, Asian American and other minority activists, Sadhwani said, what was often not spoken about was the role of the city’s “nonprofit industrial complex.”
“Nonprofits have a huge role,” she said, noting that Bass came of that world. “Their politics are shifting.” Before 2020, she said, progressives focused on racial justice, immigration reform, and creating an economy that respects the work of immigrants; now, the focus is largely on homelessness and policing.
“What it means to be a progressive today,” Sadhwani said, “is actually quite different from what it was to be a progressive even just five years ago.”
Even as L.A. is clearly still a Democratic stronghold, Republicans say there are signs that some Angelenos are not in lockstep with liberal activists.
Donald Trump’s share of the vote in L.A. in the last three presidential elections, they note, climbed from 16% in 2016 to 21% in 2020 and 27% in 2024. And there is evidence that voters, at least at the county level, are questioning some criminal justice reforms.
In 2024, L.A. County voters ousted progressive incumbent Dist. Atty. George Gascón, who eliminated cash bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies and championed rehabilitation over punitive sentencing. A majority of county voters also backed Proposition 36, allowing stiffer penalties for crimes of repeat theft and possession of hard drugs.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, pictured here on the cover of Newsweek, helped reshape the city’s Democratic coalition
(David McNew / Getty Images)
With Republicans making up about 15% of L.A.’s registered voters, Rob Stutzman, a GOP strategist, said Pratt might win enough independent voters and disaffected Democrats to make it past the primary. But he would then struggle to get more than 50% in the runoff.
“The math just isn’t there, but in addition to that it’s the stink of Trump,” Stutzman said. “The tribal politics of today make a Republican victory in L.A. very difficult.”
Raman stunned L.A.’s political establishment in 2020 when she was elected L.A.’s first DSA-backed City Council member.
As she runs for mayor, the Los Angeles chapter of the DSA hopes to expand its power as it endorses a new slate of 2026 candidates for City Council, city attorney and L.A. school board.
Richard Riordan, the last elected Republican mayor of Los Angeles.
(Los Angeles Times)
Raman is clearly betting that a big, viable part of the electorate is to Bass’ left, Newton said.
The DSA, Newton said, had done a good job in recent years of identifying renters’ interests and advancing them to usher in a “newer, younger, probably more progressive edge to the city’s politics.”
But so far, Raman, who has aligned herself with the DSA on issues such as renter protections but deviated on police spending, is struggling to unite the organization.
The Harvard and MIT graduate caught the DSA and her fellow City Council members off guard when she entered the mayoral race just before the filing deadline.
In March, the L.A. chapter of the DSA announced it would recommend Raman for mayor, but not formally endorse her. This month, a trio of her fellow DSA-backed City Council members endorsed Bass.
After building momentum, the DSA’s failure to rally around a 2026 mayoral candidate could hurt the movement for several election cycles, Guerra said.
“This dissension is setting them back,“ Guerra said. “They really do have an opportunity to elect a DSA mayor.”
Bass has seized on Raman’s lack of support in City Hall to critique her coalition-building skills.
“If you want to be the mayor and you can’t get along with people who are your colleagues on council,” Bass said recently, “I don’t know how you’re supposed to govern at all.”
In the end, the outcome of L.A.’s mayoral race may not depend so much on Bass’ ability to inspire her traditional Democratic coalition. The question is whether a new generation can find a way to represent a mass of Angelenos with bold new visions and coalitions of their own.
A Palestinian doctor has been killed and three people injured in an Israeli attack in central Gaza, as Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian homes and property in northern and southern parts of the occupied West Bank.
The attacks across Palestine on Saturday, the fourth day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, came amid continued Israeli violations of a United States-backed “ceasefire” implemented in October aimed at halting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
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Dr Jamal Abu Aboun, the head of anaesthesia at Al-Yafa Medical Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah, was killed in an Israeli strike near the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, also in Deir al-Balah on Saturday.
“The body of Jamal Abu Aoun and three injured people, including a child, had arrived at the hospital following an Israeli drone strike that targeted a group of civilians near the hospital,” a medical source at Al-Aqsa hospital told the Anadolu news agency.
Earlier, Israeli artillery shelling targeted areas east and south of Khan Younis city in southern Gaza. Another artillery strike targeted al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
At least 922 Palestinians have been killed and 2,786 others injured in Israeli attacks since the October “ceasefire”, according to the Gaza Media Office.
Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, killing at least 72,000 Palestinians and injuring over 172,000 others, according to Palestinian figures.
In testimonies to The Associated Press news agency, Israeli soldiers described a climate of dehumanisation, permissive rules of engagement and the routine killing of Palestinians during the “ceasefire”.
Reservists who served in Gaza between last October and January said Israeli troops frequently opened fire on Palestinians approaching or crossing the so-called “Yellow Line”, an often poorly marked boundary separating Israeli-occupied areas from the rest of the enclave.
One soldier said that fellow troops celebrated after a strike on a vehicle carrying Palestinians killed everyone inside. “It was a jungle,” the soldier told AP. “After the ceasefire, the order was: If someone crosses the line, you shoot them.”
Another reservist said commanders repeatedly emphasised holding territory at all costs. “There was a general feeling that human lives are not valuable,” he said.
Elsewhere in occupied Palestine, Israeli settlers attacked several homes early on Saturday in the town of Beita, south of the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, according to Palestinian news agency, Wafa.
They threw stones at houses and smashed several vehicles, Wafa reported.
State-run Voice of Palestine radio reported Israeli forces firing light bombs into the sky over the town.
In the southern West Bank, settlers attacked Palestinian farmland and damaged several trees in Khirbet el-Muraq in Masafer Yatta, activist Osama Makhamra, who follows Israeli violations south of Hebron, told reporters.
Israeli settlers carried out at least 540 attacks in April against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, according to a monthly report by the Palestinian state-run Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.
The attacks ranged from “direct physical violence, uprooting trees, burning fields, preventing farmers from accessing their land, seizing property, as well as demolishing homes and agricultural structures”.
Israeli army raids, arrests and settler attacks have intensified across the West Bank since the start of the genocidal war in Gaza.
According to Palestinian figures, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 1,168 Palestinians, injured 12,666, displaced about 33,000, and detained nearly 23,000 in the West Bank since October 2023.
On Sunday, voters in the South American country of Colombia are facing a choice.
Four years ago, they elected the first left-wing president in the country’s modern history, Gustavo Petro. Now, they must decide whether to continue with Petro’s leftist push — or restore the political right to power.
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Fourteen candidates will be on the ballot for the first round of voting in Colombia’s presidential election. The packed field includes contenders from the left, right and centre, who are slated to face off over issues like security and the cost of living.
But Petro will not be among them: Presidents in Colombia are limited to a single four-year term.
The right wing is expected to have the advantage, particularly if the race proceeds to a second round. Petro is struggling with low poll numbers, and voters have expressed frustration with crime and violence, driven in part by the country’s six-decade-long internal conflict.
But leftist candidate Ivan Cepeda has surprised observers, consistently placing at the top of the polls ahead of the first round.
When is the election, who are the candidates, and which issues are top of mind for voters? We look at those questions and more in this brief explainer.
The first round of voting is set to take place on May 31, 2026.
A candidate would need to win more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round to avoid a run-off.
If no single candidate meets that threshold, a run-off will be held between the top two finishers on June 21.
In recent years, across Latin America, long-entrenched left-wing governments have met defeat at the ballot box.
Last year alone, right-wing candidates have been elected to replace left-wing presidents in Bolivia, Chile and Honduras.
But Colombia does not have a long history of left-wing presidents. Petro was the first. That makes this race one to watch, according to Gimena Sanchez, a Colombia expert at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a human rights nonprofit.
“This is the first election to be held after the first-ever leftist administration in Colombia’s 200-year history,” Sanchez explained.
Colombia now stands at a fork in the road. One of the dominant issues in the election is how to resolve the country’s internal conflict, which forced more than 235,619 individuals from their homes in 2025.
Another 87,069 people were caught up in mass displacement events due to the fighting, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Petro has embraced negotiation as a tool to end the conflict, which has seen government forces, criminal networks, left-wing rebels and right-wing paramilitaries all battling one another.
But the political right has advocated a return to the more militarised approach backed by the United States, according to Sanchez.
“The leading candidates fall into two camps: continuity with the leftist government of Petro and an approach to security that focuses on negotiations with armed groups, and right-wing candidates who very much want to go back to a hardline security model that Colombia had in the past,” Sanchez said.
“You have polar opposite visions for the country.”
Senator Ivan Cepeda has emerged as the primary candidate of the political left, running as the head of the governing coalition, known as Historic Pact.
Cepeda has largely pledged continuity with Petro’s platform, including social and economic policies meant to reduce inequality.
He has also embraced Petro’s “Total Peace” approach, which aims to resolve the country’s internal fighting by negotiating with armed groups and criminal networks, as opposed to solely relying on military force.
Confronting state-backed violence has become a hallmark of Cepeda’s life and career.
His father, who was also a senator, is believed to have been assassinated by a government-backed paramilitary. For years, Cepeda was also embroiled in a legal battle for accusing former President Alvaro Uribe of connections to right-wing paramilitaries.
While Cepeda has become the standard-bearer for the left, the political right has had to contend with a more fractured field of candidates.
Running on the far right is Abelardo de la Espriella, a lawyer for the Defenders of the Homeland Party who has generated comparisons with Salvadoran President Salvador Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei.
Like those leaders, de la Espriella has offered a hardline vision for his country’s security. If elected, he says he would end negotiations with armed groups, bomb rebel camps, and resume the aerial fumigation of coca crops, which produce the raw material for cocaine.
Senator Paloma Valencia, a candidate with the Democratic Centre Party, is running as a more moderate alternative to de la Espriella. She too has promised a stricter approach to crime. Her platform involves expanding the police and armed forces, while cutting taxes and promoting pro-business policies in the economic realm.
Their election-season competition has become a source of acrimony for Valencia and de la Espriella, who have accused each other of paving the way for a leftist election victory.
“There is a more familiar, establishment right, represented by Valencia, and a far right in the form of de la Espriella, who pitches himself as an outsider,” said Sanchez.
Valencia, for her part, has criticised de la Espriella as two-faced, defending criminals in his legal practice but advocating for tighter security on the campaign trail.
De la Espriella, meanwhile, has dismissed Valencia as a member of the country’s political establishment and chided her in a social media post, stating that the presidential election is “not for little games”.
Polls generally show Cepeda ahead of his rivals, with de la Espriella in second place and Valencia in third.
A May 24 poll from the National Consulting Centre (CNC) and the publication Cambio suggested that Cepeda had drawn 33.4 percent of voter support, the most of any candidate.
But de la Espriella was on the upswing with 30.9 percent. Valencia, meanwhile, trailed with 12.6 percent.
The same surveys, however, suggest that Cepeda would struggle to win a run-off against either of the two right-wing candidates, with de la Espriella eking out about three points in a head-to-head contest, and Valencia coming within a percentage point of victory.
Undecided voters could play a key role in deciding the outcome, though. An analysis cited by the Spanish paper El Pais estimates that undecided voters could account for as much as 28 percent of the electorate.
Concerns over crime, security and economic issues like unemployment and affordability have dominated the election.
In a poll from the firm Invamer, the highest proportion of voters — 37 percent — identified security as the top issue facing the country.
Basic needs and unemployment ranked second and third, with 17 percent and 16 percent, respectively. Eleven percent of voters, meanwhile, named corruption as a leading concern.
The threat of violence has lingered over the presidential campaign over the past year.
Two political staffers with de la Espriella’s campaign were killed by gunmen on motorbikes earlier this month. And in June 2025, presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot while leaving a campaign rally. The 39-year-old died two months later from his injuries.
Political violence is a serious concern in Colombia, and all of the frontrunners in the race travel with heavy security.
Israel’s military has advanced beyond Lebanon’s Litani River for the first time since 2006.
Israel’s military has advanced beyond the Litani River in southern Lebanon for the first time since 2006 and appear poised to encircle the major city of Nabatieh.
Senior Lebanese military sources on Saturday told the Turkish state news agency Anadolu that Israeli forces had crossed the Litani River, which Israel has declared the perimeter of its unofficial buffer zone.
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Israeli forces are now on the outskirts of Nabatieh, a city that is key to southern Lebanon’s economy and a cultural hub for the region. If the Shia-majority city were to fall, it would mark a significant development in the war on Lebanon, which began in October 2023 and subsequent official ceasefire.
Nabatieh is viewed by many Lebanese as a symbol of resistance due to its historic role on the frontline of Israeli assaults.
Reporting from the southern city of Tyre, Al Jazeera’s Obaida Hitto said Israel was expanding its air campaign in southern Lebanon and encircling Nabatieh in preparation for a potential assault on the city.
“It looks like Israel is trying to make this final push to encircle Nabatieh, breaking through the second and third lines of defence of Hezbollah and isolating the western Bekaa Valley from the south of the country,” Hitto said.
Israel has issued evacuation orders for at least 10 villages in southern Lebanon, as it expands its invasion, despite being engaged in ongoing peace talks with Lebanese officials.
The Israeli army’s Arabic spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, instructed residents in several Lebanese villages to evacuate immediately, warning they could be killed if they remained.
The order came the day after officials from both countries met in Washington to discuss a permanent end to the war. It began in early March when Iran-backed Hezbollah began attacking Israel following the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
Hitto said people fleeing their homes have few options, with more than 20 percent of the population — around 1.2 million people — displaced by fighting.
“Those options are turning into basically people living with relatives if they have that option, or people living in makeshift camps in public parks and public spaces. I’ve seen many families living in their vehicles for long periods of time,” Hitto said.
“Some of these families have been continuously displaced since 2023,” Hitto added.
The latest forced displacement orders are a further test to the nominal “ceasefire” in place since mid-April and repeatedly violated by Israel. It justifies its actions by saying it is targeting Hezbollah as part of efforts to disarm the group.
On Friday, at least 14 people were killed in Israeli air raids in southern Lebanon.
Lebanese officials are working to disarm Hezbollah, but the task has proved extremely difficult.
Lebanese and Israeli officials are currently engaged in negotiations to end the war, marking the first time the two sides have spoken directly in decades.
The talks are being facilitated by the United States, and a new round is expected in Washington next week.
Lebanon’s President, Joseph Aoun, held talks with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Saturday to discuss the security situation and ongoing negotiations with Israel. According to the state-run National News Agency, they agreed to intensify efforts to end the war, which has triggered a humanitarian crisis.
Aoun also spoke by phone with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and stressed the importance of Israel respecting the current ceasefire.
Trump weighs next steps on Iran deal as Tehran insists negotiations are continuing and no final agreement exists.
Published On 30 May 202630 May 2026
Prospects for a US-Iran agreement to end the conflict remained uncertain on Friday, with President Donald Trump saying he would make a “final determination” on a deal, while Iranian officials stressed that no understanding had yet been reached.
Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Tehran would judge any agreement by actions rather than words, adding that no steps would be taken unless Washington acted first.
Meanwhile, fighting continued elsewhere in the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces had advanced beyond Lebanon’s Litani River, as Israeli attacks across Lebanon on Friday left dozens more civilians reportedly killed or wounded.
Here is what we know:
Israel pushes deeper into Lebanon just days after Israel's prime minister ordered 70 percent of Gaza to be occupied.
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US President Donald Trump posted online that he’s heading into the Situation Room at the White House to make a “final determination” on potentially finalising a peace deal with Iran. Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane reports from the White House.
Published On 29 May 202629 May 2026
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A digital register of land ownership in the West Bank is seen as an escalation of Israel’s occupation.
Published On 29 May 202629 May 2026
Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestine – A controversial Israeli plan to digitally register property ownership in the occupied West Bank is a “dangerous colonial occupation step that represents a direct assault on the historical and legal rights of the Palestinian people to their land and property”, the Palestinian Land Authority has said.
The Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate and the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CRRC) have urged Palestinians in the West Bank not to engage with any Israeli “entities, committees, platforms, or procedures” of lands and property.
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Israel reportedly launched the online “Land Registry and Settlement of Rights” platform on which it plans to “update” property ownership in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday this week.
The Jerusalem Governorate and the CRRC have called on the international community, the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and all international human rights and legal institutions to “take their urgent responsibilities to stop these illegal procedures and hold the occupying state accountable for its continuous violations against the Palestinian people, their land, and their resources”, they said.
Moayad Shaaban, head of the CRRC, which is part of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said the move reveals “the occupation’s transition from traditional policies of field control to digital and administrative colonial engineering aimed at imposing permanent legal realities on the occupied Palestinian territory”.
In May 2025, the Israeli Security Cabinet launched a new, aggressive land settlement process throughout the West Bank, with the aim of “completing the legal and administrative annexation of the occupied territories through fully registering the lands under Israeli authority”, the Jerusalem Governorate said.
Then, in July 2025, Israel’s parliament approved a symbolic measure calling for the annexation of the occupied West Bank. The move was first tabled in 2024 by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who himself lives in an illegal Israeli settlement.
On February 15, 2026, the permanent acquisition and registration of approximately 58 percent of Area C – the part of the West Bank over which Israel exerts total control – began.
Under that decision, Palestinian land registration in the Israeli “Tabu” – the land registry extract – began for the first time since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967. It is a final measure that will be difficult to challenge in Israeli courts, the Israel Hayom newspaper reported in February.
With the onset of land settlement, the Israeli Land Registry unit will take over the regulation and registration of land ownership in Area C. It also has the power to issue sales permits and to collect fees. Israel aims to complete the full settlement of 15 percent of the West Bank by the end of 2030.
Some 700,000 Israeli settlers already live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as illegal settlement has expanded under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Rights groups say settlement approvals, along with rising settler violence against Palestinian communities, have accelerated since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.
EU says the sanctioned individuals and groups violated a range of rights, from the right to physical and mental integrity, to the right to education.
Published On 28 May 202628 May 2026
The European Union has sanctioned four entities and three individuals it says are “extremist Israeli settlers” responsible for “serious” human rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
The EU said they had violated a range of rights, including the rights to physical and mental integrity, privacy and family life, freedom of religion and education.
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The announcement on Thursday is part of an EU sanctions package agreed earlier this month to punish Israeli settlers and Hamas leaders.
The sanctions include the Nachala Settlement Movement and its director, Daniella Weiss. The EU says the group “encourages and facilitates coercive acts that lead to the forced displacement of Palestinians”.
Israeli NGO Regavim and its director, Meir Deutsch, are also on the sanctions list for lobbying “for the demolition of Palestinian property” in order to expand Israel’s control over the entirety of the West Bank, plus the demolition of an EU-funded Palestinian primary school.
Also sanctioned is the Hashomer Yosh NGO and its president, Avichai Suissa for supporting “at least 28 violent outposts and settlements”. It also recruits armed volunteers and provides guards who engage in violent attacks, the EU added.
The Amana cooperative association of the settler movement Gush Emunim was also sanctioned, the EU stating it had likewise “played a key role in initiating, financing, and facilitating at least 30 violent outposts and settlements”.
With Thursday’s additions, the EU said it now sanctions 136 persons and 41 entities from a range of countries under its Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime.
The regime was created in 2020, and applies to acts such as genocide, crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations or abuses.
The measures targeting Israeli settlers because of violence against Palestinians were long-awaited, having been blocked by the self-styled illiberal government of Hungary’s former premier Viktor Orban.
However, the appointment of new Prime Minister Peter Magyar saw the veto quickly lifted earlier this month.
Israel earlier condemned the sanctions, asserting that Jews have the right to settle in the occupied West Bank, despite that being in violation of international law.
In 2025, the expansion of Israeli settlements reached its highest level since at least 2017, when the United Nations began tracking data.
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the West Bank has been gripped by almost daily violence involving Israeli troops and settlers. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, according to the UN.
The Israeli army has already expanded its control of Gaza by 11 percent over the ‘Yellow Line’, beyond the terms of the ‘ceasefire’.
Published On 28 May 202628 May 2026
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed the Israeli army to expand its control of the Gaza Strip to 70 percent, according to remarks aired by Israeli media.
“At this point, we are fully in control of 60 percent of the territory of the Gaza Strip … and my directive is to get to … 70 percent,” Netanyahu said in footage recorded by Channel 12 and aired on Thursday.
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When someone in the audience shouted that Israel should take the entire besieged enclave, the prime minister said “we are going in order”, according to The Times of Israel. “First 70 percent,” he said without disputing that a complete takeover could take place. “We’ll start with that.”
The Israeli army had in mid-March quietly sent maps to aid organisations showing it had already expanded its control to about 11 percent beyond the so-called “Yellow Line” demarcating areas of the enclave occupied by Israeli troops. That line was agreed in a United States-brokered “ceasefire” in October 2025. That meant it controlled 64 percent of the Palestinian territory, instead of 53 percent.
Due to the Israeli army occupation, Palestinians cannot access about two-thirds of Gaza. A further seizure of the territory would force two million of them, already living in disastrous conditions, into an even smaller territory after enduring two years of genocidal war.
Despite the nominal truce reached last year, Israeli bombing in Gaza continues with near-daily attacks. An Al Jazeera tally from October to April counted at least 2,400 Israeli violations. Earlier on Thursday, health authorities said an Israeli air raid killed at least 10 people, including four children, and wounded 20 others.
According to the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs’ (OCHA) latest report, the humanitarian situation for civilians in Gaza remains critical, with displaced families living in overcrowded tents, schools or damaged structures. Clean water is scarce, and poor waste collection is increasing health risks, including the spread of rats and insects. Many neighbourhoods across Gaza are also still dangerous, with frequent air strikes, shelling and shootings happening in or near residential areas, the report said.
Last week, the high representative overseeing the US-founded Board of Peace for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, warned that the deteriorating status quo in the enclave risks becoming “permanent”. Speaking to the UN Security Council, he urged the international body to use “every means at its disposal” to press Hamas to disarm and to push Israel to uphold its commitment under the October ceasefire, pointing to its continued killings and restrictions on humanitarian flow.
The war that Israel launched following the October 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups has killed more than 72,775 Palestinians. The Israeli military continues to maintain a strict security regime, and many hundreds more have been killed in the past seven months. Conflict monitors warn that since the US-Israel war on Iran started in February, Israeli bombardment of Gaza has accelerated.
Israeli ambassador to the UN says Tel Aviv will cut ties with UN chief Antonio Guterres over the upcoming report.
Published On 28 May 202628 May 2026
The United Nations has “added Israel to the blacklist of sexual violence in conflict zones”, prompting Israel to cut ties with UN chief Antonio Guterres, the country’s ambassador to the UN says.
“We are done with this secretary-general,” Israeli ambassador Danny Danon added in a video posted on X on Thursday, denouncing the upcoming report from Guterres’s office.
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The UN secretary-general’s annual report on conflict-related sexual violence is customarily presented to relevant states before publication. Last August, the report warned that Israel could be added to the list of parties suspected of, or responsible for, sexual violence in situations of armed conflict.
“The decision to blacklist Israel and accuse us of using sexual violence as a weapon of war is an outrageous decision,” Danon said.
“The secretary-general and his team continue to spread lies against Israel. To put us and Hamas terrorists on the same list, that’s unacceptable.”
The Israeli mission to the UN said in a statement that it will have no contact with the secretary-general’s office as long as Guterres serves as head of the organisation.
The country’s foreign ministry also expressed anger over the upcoming report.
“The shameful and absurd UN decision to include Israeli entities in the annex to the CRSV (conflict-related sexual violence) report is further proof of the UN’s true nature: a politicised and corrupt organisation that has abandoned its founding principles and systematically targets Israel as its primary mission,” Oren Marmorstein, a spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry, said on X.
Guterres’s spokesperson said they were aware of Danon’s remarks.
“For our part, the secretary-general’s door remains open,” Stephane Dujarric said.
Last August, the UN cited “credible information” regarding sexual violence committed by Israeli security forces against Palestinian detainees in prisons and other detention centres, and said UN inspectors had been denied access to the facilities.
“We invited the representative of the UN to come to Israel to check those ridiculous allegations. They chose not to come,” Danon said.
Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons, especially those taken from Gaza during Israel’s brutal war since 2023, have long revealed how they suffer dehumanising treatment by guards and soldiers, including torture and sexual violence. According to international human rights organisations, these testimonies are part of a broader and systematic pattern.
Furthermore, a report from the West Bank Protection Consortium last month found that sexual violence and other forms of gender-based abuse committed by Israeli settlers and soldiers are spurring Palestinians to leave the occupied West Bank.
Even foreigners, namely those on board a recent Gaza-bound aid flotilla, say that freed activists who were abducted from international waters faced abuse while in Israeli detention, including at least 15 separate cases of sexual assault or rape.
Earlier this month, Israel also rejected accusations of rape by its forces, which were detailed in a column by longtime New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. The Israeli government had responded to the report by stating that it would take the extraordinary step of suing the paper. Kristof’s reporting was based on the accounts of 14 male and female Palestinian victims.
Relations between the UN and Israel are fraught and have reached an all-time low since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack that preceded Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians.
Israeli authorities have criticised Guterres and other UN officials for their condemnation of its brutal conduct in Gaza. The UN chief was declared “persona non grata” in Israel in 2024.
A top US official says Oman should know that Washington ‘will aggressively target’ actors that facilitate tolls in waterway.
Published On 28 May 202628 May 2026
The United States has warned that it would “aggressively” impose sanctions on Oman if it helps Iran establish a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz, intensifying President Donald Trump’s threats against the Gulf ally.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that Washington will “not tolerate” either country imposing fees on commercial ships in the strategic waterway.
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“Oman, in particular, should know that the US Treasury will aggressively target any actors involved — directly or indirectly — in facilitating tolls for the Strait and any willing partners will be penalized,” Bessent said in a social media post.
“All nations should reject outright any efforts by Iran to disrupt the free flow of commerce. Tehran’s days of terrorizing the region and the world are over.”
The statement comes less than 24 hours after President Trump threatened to bomb Oman, a key US ally known for its neutrality and mediation efforts in regional crises, including the war between the US and Iran.
While Iran has suggested that the governments in Tehran and Muscat could jointly manage the Hormuz Strait, Oman has not said that it is seeking control over the waterway, parts of which flow through its territory.
It is not clear what is driving Washington’s recent posture toward Oman. It is highly unusual for the US to threaten sanctions and military action against a close security and economic partner.
Since the US and Israel started bombing Iran without direct provocation on February 28, Iran has closed the strait and claimed sovereignty over it.
Around 20 percent of the world’s oil flowed through Hormuz before the conflict, so the Iranian blockade has put a major strain on energy supplies, sending prices soaring.
The US and Iran have been indirectly negotiating to reach an agreement for a comprehensive end to the war, and control over the Hormuz Strait has emerged as a major point of disagreement.
Trump has stressed that the strait must be a free passageway.
When asked whether he would accept joint Iranian-Omani control over the strait in the short term, the US president told reporters on Wednesday: “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.”
Ali Bagheri, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Thursday that Tehran will not allow Hormuz to be a source of insecurity for the country.
“The powers that have used this passage against Iran’s security must be held accountable,” he was quoted as saying by Iran’s public television.
Bagheri added that Iran seeks to “establish a just order that negates hegemony and domination and strengthens trust and cooperation” in the region.
The war that Donald Trump declared won last month looks rather different from the inside of the Pentagon. The resulting stalemate has drained American military stockpiles, emboldened Iranian commanders, and left the US with far worse options than before the conflict began.
The administration’s triumphalist framing has struck a jarring note among those who have spent careers studying the Iranian military and the limits of American power projection. Declaring victory when the enemy is still standing, still armed, and still controlling the waterway you went to war over is not a strategy. It is a wish dressed up as a press release.
At the heart of the impasse are two demands that Tehran has consistently and categorically rejected. Iran will not surrender what it regards as its sovereign right to develop its uranium program, and it will not yield control of the Strait of Hormuz. Those two positions were Iran’s red lines before the fighting started. They remain Iran’s red lines now. Nothing in between has changed.
What has changed is the arithmetic of munitions. The United States entered this conflict with a military built around expensive, technologically sophisticated weapons systems, precision instruments that take years to design, years more to manufacture, and that have now been expended at a rate the American defense industrial base is poorly positioned to replenish. Iran, by contrast, relies on a dispersed network of robotic small boats, undersea mines, tactical ballistic missiles, and unmanned systems. These weapons are cheap, simple, and easy to produce at scale.
The United States essentially deployed a Ferrari into a demolition derby. The Iranians didn’t need high-end technology; they just needed a relentless volume of cheaper assets to overwhelm the defense.
Trump, for his part, has shown no appetite for nuance. “We have totally obliterated their military capacity, there’s nothing left, believe me, nothing,” he told supporters at a rally in Georgia. Pentagon planners reviewing the same battlefield data have reached a rather different conclusion.
The American strikes produced mixed results. Iran does not maintain a conventional naval fleet or a modern air force in the Western sense. Its control of the strait rests not on destroyers or fighter wings but on a distributed, resilient system of asymmetric capabilities. The Iranian systems that dispersed into the terrain absorbed the strikes and began reconstituting almost immediately. Defense analysts point out that the Iranians have adapted from what they observed, replenished their stocks, and may now be better positioned than when the conflict began.
The strategic picture is further complicated by the political pressures that shaped the original decision to go to war. Analysts describe a decision driven less by tactical opportunity than by commitments made to Israeli leadership and to influential pro-Israel donors whose support was central to Trump’s political coalition. The result was a military campaign calibrated to political timetables rather than operational logic.
READ: Israeli premier expresses concern over US handling of Iran nuclear file in call with Trump: Report
Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a member of the Armed Services Committee, called the conduct of the conflict “a case study in how not to use military force.” Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, before his defeat in his primary, was more pointed: “We went in without a declaration of war, without a clear objective, without an exit strategy, and now we’re supposed to celebrate because we used up half our missile inventory and the Iranians are still there.”
The regional picture adds further complexity. Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf monarchies are acutely aware of their own exposure. A major Iranian strike on above-ground oil and desalination plants could critically impede the GCC’s government’s ability to maintain economic prosperity. The GCC states have no appetite for an escalation that leaves their vital water infrastructure in ruins. While they favor the containment of Iran, preventing a regional war is a matter of sheer survival.
The broader strategic damage extends well beyond the Gulf.
The conflict has exposed, with uncomfortable clarity, the brittleness of an American military model that prioritized theoretical sophistication over the practical demands of sustained combat. The long-overlooked vulnerability of the missile supply chain has now emerged as the primary constraint on future American options. Restoring that capacity, according to officials, will require years of industrial retooling.
Washington has come to realize that Iran acutely recognized US vulnerabilities, designing asymmetric systems specifically to deplete America’s most expensive capabilities with its cheapest assets. This is not a temporary setback; it is a structural crisis.
For now, President Trump appears caught between the political cost of acknowledging stalemate and the military risk of a second round of strikes that the Pentagon itself doubts would achieve different results. The operational pause is not a logistical necessity. The forces are forward-deployed and ready. The pause is a search for a rationale, a way to resume the fight that does not require the White House to explain why the first attempt failed.
By most accounts, the search has not yet succeeded.
OPINION: The bell tolls in Beijing: Xi’s warning and the shadow of Thucydides
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
WASHINGTON — Ethnic war in Kosovo is provoking a kind of civil war inside the Republican Party.
In rapid fashion, the conflict in the Balkans is widening a fissure in the GOP over America’s role in the world. While Democrats mostly have supported President Clinton’s course, Republicans are being torn in diametrical directions as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s forces systematically expel hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.
On one side, a band of traditional GOP internationalists–led by Sen. John McCain of Arizona–is urging Clinton to escalate the campaign against Milosevic, even to the point of sending ground troops to drive the Serbian forces from Kosovo.
On the other side, an assertive group of conservative nationalists–led by presidential hopeful Patrick J. Buchanan, but extending into Congress–is arguing that the United States should bring its forces home now and leave the problem to the Europeans. “I think . . . we should tell our partners, ‘Look, we’ve expended, almost exhausted our resources. . . . Now on May 1st, we’re going to be out of there and then you take over from there,”’ Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) argued Sunday.
This dispute marks the first real division in the Republican presidential campaign and, more importantly, a continued shift in the GOP’s center of gravity away from the internationalism that defined it through the Cold War.
Many in the GOP now appear increasingly drawn to an updated version of the old “fortress America” doctrine in which the United States increases its spending on defense but reduces its commitments abroad. Supporters describe this impulse as hard-headed nationalism. Critics, in both parties, deride it as isolationism.
“Republican foreign policy is now mired in pathetic incoherence,” the conservative Weekly Standard magazine said in an editorial last week.
In the first half of the century, the GOP was closely divided between internationalists and isolationists. When the Cold War dawned after World War II, that balance of power tilted toward the internationalists–whose victory was sealed by Dwight D. Eisenhower’s triumph over isolationist Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio for the GOP presidential nomination in 1952.
For nearly the next four decades, internationalists dedicated to containment of the Soviet Union held the upper hand in the GOP–even while isolationist sentiment in the Democratic Party grew after the Vietnam War.
A Role Reversal for Democrats, GOP
But the collapse of the Soviet Union eliminated the central rationale for engagement abroad among conservatives and has precipitated something of a role reversal between the parties during Clinton’s presidency. That process has reached a peak in the last few weeks with Republicans leading the opposition to U.S. involvement in Kosovo and Democrats (including many who opposed Vietnam) insisting on America’s obligation to ensure stability abroad.
When the Senate voted last month to authorize airstrikes in Kosovo, 70% of Senate Republicans voted no. Earlier, three-quarters of House Republicans voted against the use of American troops as part of an eventual North Atlantic Treaty Organization peace-keeping force in Kosovo. Virtually all Democrats in both chambers backed Clinton.
Those figures partly reflect Republican skepticism about Clinton’s ability to manage a military conflict and their sheer distrust of the president. But most analysts also see larger forces at work.
“It’s a complex fabric that’s giving us this situation here, from congressional feelings toward this president to the post Cold War fault lines,” said Marshall Wittmann, director of congressional relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
It is possible that tensions could sharpen among Democrats, too, if Clinton eventually asks for ground troops. But so far Democrats have offered little dissent from the president’s course.
On the other hand, the outbreak of fighting has widened the disagreement among Republicans. Overshadowed during congressional debates on Kosovo last month, internationalist Republicans have raised their voices since the bombings began.
Most ubiquitous has been McCain. Last week, McCain put off the formal announcement of his bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2000, saying that it was inappropriate while NATO was at war in Kosovo. But he has been inescapable on television arguing for an escalation against Milosevic, including the use of ground troops if necessary.
“For us to rule out any capability we have to bring this war to a successful conclusion is a mistake,” McCain said.
Others in this camp include Republican Sens. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Charles Hagel of Nebraska, 1996 GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole and–more gingerly–Elizabeth Hanford Dole, who has not explicitly backed ground troops but said last week that “no options should be taken off the table.”
In a slightly different place are Republicans–led by former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger–who opposed the original decision to intervene in Kosovo but now say that NATO must do whatever it takes to defeat Milosevic to maintain its credibility.
Yet it remains unclear how much support these internationalists still command in the GOP.
Apart from McCain and Elizabeth Dole, the only other Republican contender who has accepted the possible use of ground troops is Texas Gov. George W. Bush–though his comments have been so tangled and conditional that the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page labeled them “Clintonian.”
Half of the GOP contenders–including former Vice President Dan Quayle and Ohio Rep. John R. Kasich–have opposed the bombing mission from the outset.
On Sunday, Inhofe and Buchanan raised the ante by calling for Clinton to cut off the military action already underway. Jack Kemp, the GOP’s 1996 vice presidential nominee, last week also urged Clinton to call off the attack and reopen negotiations. Rep. Tom Campbell (R-San Jose), who has criticized the mission, plans to introduce a resolution shortly that would require an up or down vote in Congress on whether to end American involvement.
Republicans opposed to the Kosovo mission extend beyond isolationist figures like Buchanan toward leaders with previously unquestioned credentials as internationalists–like Kemp and Quayle. But the GOP case against involvement is resurfacing arguments that echo earlier generations of isolationist thinking on the right.
One line of thought revives pre-Cold War conservative skepticism about excessive U.S. involvement in Europe. Quayle and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) have argued over the last week that, if troops are required in Kosovo, European nations alone should provide them.
Most foreign policy analysts consider that an impractical prescription since the European governments have made clear that they will not commit troops unless the United States does.
Concerns About U.S. Military Deployments
A related line of Republican thinking on Kosovo echoes earlier “fortress America” thinking. This argument holds that Clinton has invested U.S. forces in too many conflicts–from Bosnia to Haiti to Kosovo–that do not truly threaten America’s vital interests.
By making so many deployments, these conservatives insist, Clinton is depleting the U.S. ability to respond to a true crisis–especially because they believe he has not provided enough funds for defense. As Kasich put it recently: “The United States has to maintain its strength and power so it can preserve stability in the world.”
Much like Clinton, the GOP internationalists think that argument is almost exactly backward. They argue that the United States cannot hold its position of world leadership if it walks away from a crisis of this magnitude.
The test of strength for these competing arguments could come in the weeks ahead if Clinton decides to seek congressional support for ground troops.