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In a historic move last week, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to encourage the use of new world maps which more accurately depict continents with their true sizes.

The move followed months of lobbying by the African Union, which itself adopted a new map earlier in February. A total of 164 countries voted in favour while six abstained.

The United States was the only member to oppose it. US representative Yaryna Ferencevych said before the vote that the resolution was “the reason this institution is losing its credibility”.

“Instead of focusing on genuine problems … this body is debating map projects from the 16th century,” she said.

But since the resolution was approved, at least three other countries have voiced concerns about the changes: India, Ukraine and Japan.

None are explicitly opposed to adopting a new projection. However, they are raising concerns about how certain disputed territories should be depicted.

Here’s what we know:

Why is there a new world map?

The UN endorsed a resolution promoting the Equal Earth projection of the world map, rather than the Mercator projection, which is currently widely used.

The resolution does not ban Mercator or impose a particular replacement – it merely encourages nations to adopt the Equal Earth version, which was created by three researchers in 2018.

The Mercator projection, which was produced by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 when the West was busy “conquering” new territories, attempts to show a three-dimensional globe on a two-dimensional surface. That is why countries closer to the poles appear much larger than countries at the equator.

For decades, map experts have pointed out that Mercator’s projection disproportionately shrinks the true size of the African continent and that of other developing regions, while making Europe and the US seem much larger by comparison.

For example, Greenland is shown as roughly the same size as Africa, but, in reality, it could fit into the continent 14 times over. Europe, which is portrayed as bigger than South America, is actually half its size.

Advocates from African countries pointed out that the map is problematic because of the size issues. Importantly, they argued, it reinforces negative perceptions of Africa.

Several cartographers have attempted to develop equal area maps. However, African activists specifically pushed for the Equal Earth projection map, which significantly expands Africa and shrinks Europe and the US.

Experts say while maps are inherently inaccurate because of the constraints of depicting a spherical world on a flat plane, the Equal Earth projection is as close as it gets.

Why is Ukraine worried about the new map?

Ukraine was one of six countries which abstained from the vote at the UNGA, along with Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia and Lithuania, who voted in solidarity with Ukraine.

Kyiv has complained that the Equal Earth projection depicts the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula in a distinctly lighter shade than mainland Ukraine.

Russia illegally occupied and annexed Crimea in February 2014, a move the UN has denounced.

Although the peninsula is also shaded differently from mainland Russia on the new map, its yellowish tint appears closer to the Russian shade than Ukraine’s.

“Ukraine does not in principle oppose the core issue addressed in this draft resolution,” Andrii Melnyk, the country’s permanent representative to the UN, said in an address to the assembly.

Melnyk said Kyiv had asked for corrections before the vote but had not received positive responses. The new map, he said, could be tantamount to opening a Pandora’s box, enabling the “abuse and distortion” of the world map.

“It would be a truly fatal mistake for all of us, and for this General Assembly, to seek to correct a historical injustice in the geographical depiction of countries and continents by simultaneously allowing a deeply troubling interpretation of the text of this draft resolution,” he added.

What is Japan demanding?

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Tokyo, which voted in favour of the new map, said it had also asked for corrections to the Equal Earth projection because the map uses the same colours and shades for Russian territory as it does for the disputed Kuril Islands.

Russia and Japan have long fought over control of the four islands, known in Russia as the Southern Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories. In 1945, during World War II, the Soviet Union invaded and annexed the islands as part of a pact with Western Allies that stipulated the Soviets would take the disputed territory. The islands’ Japanese inhabitants were removed.

Subsequently, Japan and the US have claimed that the islands were not part of the original pact. The islands, however, remain under Russian administration.

In August this year, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin paid his first-ever visit to the islands, drawing condemnation from Japan. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the visit “absolutely unacceptable”, saying it “offends the sentiments of the Japanese people”.

This week, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said the Japanese embassy in the US has asked Equal Earth’s creators to change the map.

“Displays that contradict the Japanese government’s position are seen [on the map],” Kihara said at a news conference. “We need to prevent incorrect perceptions regarding our country’s territories and geographical names from spreading.”

Why is India uneasy about the map?

India also voted in favour of the Equal Earth projection, but on Sunday, the Ministry of External Affairs published a caveat regarding depictions of the disputed border territory of Kashmir.

Following the Indian partition of 1947, both Pakistan and India lay claim to the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, which had been controlled by the British through indirect rule. The region has subsequently been a flashpoint for tensions between the two rivals and has led to several wars.

Parts of Kashmir are administered by Pakistan, while other parts are administered by India. China, which also disputes some Kashmir territory with India, administers its northeastern portion.

In his statement, spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal noted that the UN vote was in favour of encouraging the use of equal area projections and that it had not made the use of any one map mandatory.

“India’s sovereign territory, including the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, must be depicted in accordance with India’s official map,” he said. “Any inaccurate or misleading depiction is unacceptable.”

SAN FRANCISCO, California: Anthropic said Thursday it shut down multiple cases of state-sponsored surveillance operations that used its artificial intelligence (AI) models, and warned that governments and state-aligned actors are increasingly using AI to spy on ethnic minorities and dissidents.

The incidents were found and disrupted between January and July, and they originated in China, Iran and west Africa, Anthropic said in a report about misuse of its models.

These surveillance campaigns “targeted the same diaspora and dissident communities these regimes have historically targeted. These include pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong, Tibetan and Falun Gong communities across Asia, and Iranian minority communities and opponents of the Iranian regime abroad,” the report said.

In one case, Iranian actors developed a way to identify people through their social media accounts; in another, a contractor working for Malian national security authorities used Claude “to design the underlying software that enabled the intelligence gathering.”

“AI is now being used in place of an engineering workforce,” the report said.

Anthropic also disrupted efforts by users to design weapons, conduct questionable biological research, and create dating scams.

The San Francisco-based AI lab also accused Chinese developers of deceptively using Claude to produce responses to user queries while simultaneously “distilling” that data to improve their own models.

Distilling is an industry term that refers to a process where one AI model is used to train another one.

Chinese developers have previously been accused of using that technique without permission, essentially stealing resources from American labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI.

Now Anthropic alleges that China’s Moonshot and Deepseek have also secretly used Claude to generate answers given to its users.

“In one instance, over a ten-day period, Moonshot relayed almost 300,000 customer requests to Anthropic” through a “network of 5,380 fraudulent accounts, most of which appeared to be located in Singapore and Japan,” the report said.

Some of that data contained sensitive user information, potentially in violation of privacy agreements.

“We do not know if Moonshot notified their customers that their requests were being rerouted to Anthropic and exposed to a third party,” the report said.

Deepseek used similar techniques.

When it comes to the research Anthropic detected and blocked that was related to biological weapons, the intent of the actors was less clear-cut and the AI lab did not identify them.

“The individuals implicated in these case studies are working scientists. We do not assert that they intended harm, and identifying them or their labs could expose them to harm,” the report said.

The scientific research in those cases involved work around the mosquito-born chikungunya virus, a “highly-pathogenic” strain of the bird flu, a family of viruses that include smallpox and mpox, venoms and other toxins.

KABUL: The head of the Norwegian Refugee Council aid group, Jan Egeland, criticised on Thursday what he called the “hypocrisy” of countries demanding rights for Afghan women while cutting humanitarian assistance.

In an interview with AFP in Kabul, Egeland said that “I think it’s right of them to demand, like we do, education for Afghan girls, work rights for Afghan women… but it is hypocrisy when one does that from abroad in a seminar in some capital in Europe and cut aid for food to Afghan girls and even for primary education for Afghan girls.”

The United Kingdom has announced a ban on the import of all goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in Parliament on Tuesday.

It comes in response to an intensifying wave of Israeli settler pogroms and settlement expansions in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The ban, set to come into effect within six to nine months, would target settlement exports such as dates, olive oil and agricultural products, with Miliband saying he did not believe “the British people want us supporting the occupation by accepting products from settlements in our shops”.

The International Court of Justice in July 2024 called Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory “unlawful”. Months later, the United Nations passed a resolution calling for an end to the Israeli occupation within a year.

Israel’s response was furious, as it announced four “counter-measures”, including banning 12 British MPs from entering Israel and closing the British consulate in Jerusalem.

After Miliband’s speech, 11 more countries: Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, shared a joint statement supporting the so-called two-state solution and announcing their own intentions to impose restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements.

Spain and Ireland had already announced their own national bans earlier this year, alongside the Netherlands and Belgium.

How much do these countries trade with Israel?

Aside from Canada and the UK, the rest of the countries considering or already banning settlement goods are European Union members.

The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, accounting for 31.7 percent of Israel’s total trade in goods in 2025 (43.3 billion euros, or $50.4bn), according to the European Commission. The EU supplied 33.1 percent of Israel’s imports (28 billion euros, or $32.6bn) and received 29.4 percent of Israel’s exports (15.3 billion euros or $17.8bn).

Israel is the EU’s 27th largest trade partner, with Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany being its biggest individual trade partners.

According to a 2026 report by Global Echo Litigation Center, a Palestinian rights legal advocacy group, roughly 5,900 shipments from Israel were headed to Europe, with more than 17 percent containing products originating from settlements.

While no specific figures for settlement trade alone are known, it is understood to be a tiny fraction of total EU-Israel trade, meaning the ban’s impact is much more symbolic than economic.

The table below shows each country’s total trade with Israel for the European countries that have banned, or are introducing bans on, illegal Israeli settlement goods.

The top five European trading partners with Israel either enforcing or set to introduce settlement bans are Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK, France and Spain.

Ireland

Ireland-Israel bilateral trade totalled $5.36bn in 2025. Ireland is Israel’s second-largest export market for goods after the United States, driven largely by tech, particularly semiconductors and integrated circuits.

The Netherlands

Netherlands-Israel bilateral trade totalled roughly $4.8bn in 2025. The Netherlands is also Israel’s largest single foreign investor, accounting for roughly two-thirds of all EU investment in the country.

United Kingdom

According to UN Comtrade, UK-Israel bilateral trade totalled $3.73bn in 2025. An Al Jazeera investigation found at least 17 companies linked to illegal Israeli settlements hold more than 2.1 billion pounds ($2.85bn) in UK public-sector contracts.

France

France-Israel bilateral trade totalled $3.62bn in 2025. A large part of France’s trade with Israel constitutes export licences for surveillance and military technologies.

Spain

Spain-Israel bilateral trade totalled $2.79bn in 2025. In September that year, Spain banned the import of goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, as well as the trade of arms.

What are Israeli settlements?

Israeli settlements are Jewish-only communities built illegally on Palestinian land.

Settlements are illegal under international law as they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which bans an occupying power from transferring its population to the area it occupies.

Illegal Israeli settlements continue to grow, decades after the 1993 Oslo Accords, which established limited Palestinian self-rule and were meant to lead to a permanent peace settlement.

At the time, about 270,000 settlers lived across the occupied territory. Today, that figure has more than doubled to between 600,000 and 750,000 people, about 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, living across some 250 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The announcement revives a 2023 commitment by President Tshisekedi and comes as several governments signal plans to deepen diplomatic ties with Israel.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has reiterated its decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, becoming the latest country to announce such plans.

Following a visit to Israel by President Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi, both countries said in a statement on Thursday that they would take steps towards “the relocation of the embassy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem”, AFP news agency reported.

The plan dates back to September 2023, when Tshisekedi met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

In 2020, the DRC president announced plans to appoint an ambassador to Israel after two decades and establish an economic section of the embassy in Jerusalem while the embassy remained in Tel Aviv.

The relationship has since expanded. Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the DRC capital, Kinshasa, in November. Tshisekedi has spoken warmly about Israel for years, saying his support is driven by his Christian faith. He has also been eager for support from the United States, which has increasingly pressured Rwanda over armed rebel advances in the DRC.

Why does the embassy move matter?

The announcement comes weeks after Colombia’s new hard-right president, Abelardo de la Espriella, also announced that he would move his country’s embassy to Jerusalem, a sharp shift from his leftist predecessor who criticised Israel over its genocidal war on Gaza.

The United States moved its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term. Fiji, Guatemala, Honduras, Papua New Guinea and Paraguay have followed.

Kosovo and Somaliland, which are not UN member states, also maintain missions they consider embassies in the city.

Most countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel keep their embassies in the Tel Aviv area, maintaining that Jerusalem’s final status should be determined through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel considers the entire city its capital and has encouraged foreign governments to establish embassies there. Palestinians want occupied East Jerusalem to serve as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

The UN Security Council has rejected measures seeking to alter the status of Jerusalem and has called on countries not to establish diplomatic missions there.

BEIRUT — Iran’s economy, already strained by high inflation, years of Western sanctions and a war that has sharply reduced oil revenue, is poised for more instability as the Trump administration tries to coerce other countries into ending all financial dealings with the Islamic Republic.

A decision by the United Arab Emirates to suspend trade relations with Iran last week kick-started the White House’s latest attempt to isolate Tehran into submission. Iran entered the war with its foreign commerce concentrated among a relatively small group of countries, leaving it with fewer places to turn now.

The success of the U.S. strategy largely will hinge on China, the main buyer of Iranian oil and its top trading partner. Russia, a fellow target of sweeping U.S.-led sanctions, has a military conflict and economic crisis of its own and probably can’t offer longtime ally Iran much hard financial support.

Regional partners like Turkey, Pakistan and Iraq maintain important relationships with both Iran and the U.S., giving them reason to avoid exposure to the secondary sanctions that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said awaited nations that did not cut economic ties with Iran.

“Those who stand with the United States will reap the rewards of our partnership,” Bessent said Monday while outlining the plan he called “Operation Economic Outcast.” “Those who tether themselves to the Iranian regime should expect to share in the isolation.”

The Emirates will be hard for Iran to replace as a conduit for foreign goods and payments

Despite Western sanctions, Iran in 2024 exchanged $125 billion worth of goods globally, according to Trade Data Monitor, a private firm. Iran is not a member of the World Trade Organization.

The bulk of its declared international trade, though, was with a handful of partners. The UAE, China and Turkey supplied nearly three-quarters of Iran’s merchandise imports. Four countries — China, Iraq, the UAE and Turkey — accounted for more than two-thirds of its non-oil exports.

On the supply side, the UAE held outsized importance. It was Iran’s biggest source of imported items and a gateway to financial channels that helped Iranian businesses make and receive international payments. Both roles kept Iran connected to the global economy.

As a reexport hub, the UAE processed shipments from foreign suppliers reluctant to deal directly with Iranian customers.

“From Iran’s perspective, the UAE can be replaced, but the Iranians are openly saying it’s not going to happen overnight,” said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

China has deep economic ties to Iran but depends less on the relationship

Beijing has economic interests in the Persian Gulf beyond Iran, and so far has avoided getting drawn into the conflict the U.S. and Israel initiated. China buys the overwhelming majority of Iran’s crude through opaque trading networks that bypass sanctions.

Its manufacturing clout and stranglehold on critical mineral supplies nonetheless give Beijing more room than Iran’s other partners to resist U.S. pressure, said David Lubin, a senior research fellow at Chatham House. Aggressive action against major Chinese banks and businesses could revive trade tensions as Chinese leader Xi Jinping prepares to meet with President Trump in Washington next month.

“I don’t see China playing ball by any means,” Lubin said.

China is both Iran’s largest reported export market and a supplier of essential parts and products, according to WTO and United Nations data.

During the Obama administration, Beijing did agree to reduce energy imports from Iran, said Atlantic Council fellow Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland.

“We will want the Chinese to go a lot farther than they have gone in the past,” Fried said. “But it’s a lot harder now.”

China has experience helping an ally survive sanctions: It has long been North Korea’s economic lifeline and main diplomatic backer. Experts say China has avoided fully enforcing U.N. sanctions on North Korea and sent clandestine aid to help its impoverished neighbor stay afloat.

Expanding bilateral trade would create problems for Iran’s neighbors

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who has been his country’s lead negotiator over the last six months, was in Iraq the day of the UAE’s trade suspension. A purpose of his visit, he said, was “speeding up efforts to expand joint cooperation among all countries in the region, without foreign interference.”

The U.S. dollar’s preeminence in international trade and finance, however, means none of Iran’s trading partners would antagonize Washington lightly, Vatanka said. “We’re still at a point where if the U.S. wants to hurt you, it will matter,” he said.

Underscoring potential consequences, Turkey settled a years-long U.S. dispute in July over the role of a state-owned bank in helping Iran evade sanctions through an oil-for-gold scheme. Trump also moved to lift sanctions on its fellow NATO member stemming from Turkey’s purchase of a sophisticated Russian missile system.

“I really don’t think Turkey would like to become the next country helping Iran to evade sanctions right now,” said Riccardo Gasco, an analyst at the IstanPol think tank in Istanbul.

Iran is a vital import source for Iraq and retains influence there through allied political factions and armed groups. Baghdad has sought closer economic and security ties with Washington. Since it invaded Iraq in 2003, the U.S. has significant control over the nation’s foreign currency reserves because they are housed in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

Oman, a frequent intermediary between Washington and Tehran, has found its balancing act suddenly precarious. Trump threatened Oman last week over its ongoing negotiations with Iran on the future management of the Strait of Hormuz.

One easy route for goods slipping past sanctions on Iran would be ports like Gwadar near the Persian Gulf in Pakistan, said Peter Harrell, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University.

“Ship an intermodal container of drone parts to one of the ports in western Pakistan and unload it onto a truck and have it driven across the border into Iran,” he said.

While Pakistan, a key ally and economic partner of China in the region, wants to increase trade with Iran, it faces competing pressures. It is serving as a key mediator between Tehran and Washington and has deep security ties with Saudi Arabia, Iran’s longtime regional rival.

Caspian Sea trade route alternatives unlikely to grow quickly

With the Strait of Hormuz mostly blocked and Russia’s war with Ukraine endangering ships on the Black Sea, Iran has sought to develop a “road of life” on the Caspian Sea, said Nikita Smagin, an independent analyst and a former Russian state news agency correspondent in Tehran.

Russia reportedly sent drones to Iran this year, repaying Tehran’s favor after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It also rerouted exports to Iran via Caspian Sea ports like Astrakhan. Agricultural products make up 80% of Russia and Iran’s reported trade.

“Both economies are exporting natural resources and have little to offer each other,” Smagin said.

The other countries that border the Caspian — Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan — probably won’t rush to join in, said Umud Shokri, a fellow at George Mason University.

Yet Russia and Iran are already in an “axis of the sanctioned,” said Mark Galeotti, executive director of the Mayak Intelligence firm. For decades the pair have collaborated to thwart trade restrictions, and increasing bilateral trade in both “strategic goods” and contraband like military technology, microchips and Gucci handbags could be a next step.

“Pomegranates and tomatoes only go so far,” he said.

Chehayeb and McNeil write for the Associated Press. McNeil reported from Brussels. AP writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran and Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

EXCLUSIVE: After spending much of her life caring for members of her family, Sheila decided to go solo travelling after finding herself on her own for the first time

New research has found that one in five British over-50s now travel by themselves, with women more than twice as likely as men to do so, according to Saga Holidays. Among those embracing the trend is 83-year-old Sheila Ingram from Northampton. Sheila began travelling solo at 75 and has now visited 27 countries, including India, Uzbekistan and Cuba, where she went ziplining.

After spending much of her life caring for members of her family, Sheila said she decided to go solo travelling after finding herself on her own for the first time. “When I found myself on my own, I thought, this really is my life for as long as I’ve got it,” she said.

“I decided to embrace it and try to tick a few countries off the bucket list.”

With 27 countries down, we asked Sheila where the best place she’d travelled to was in an exclusive chat.

“The best place I have ever visited has to be Registan Square in Samarkand during my first trip to Uzbekistan,” she said.

“In 2016, after watching a BBC television series called The Silk Road, narrated by Sam Willis, I decided I wanted to have my own adventure and follow part of that historic route. I discovered that Saga, which was already my preferred company for solo travel, offered a tour across Uzbekistan, so I decided to go for it.

“I was following a dream, and I was not disappointed. The colours of the tilework on the buildings, madrassas and mosques were extraordinary. There were vivid purples, turquoise blues and so many other beautiful shades. The local people were so welcoming, and I loved every single minute of it, so much so that I returned again in 2022.”

As well as travel experiences, Sheila says she’s made some great friends in the eight years she’s been solo travelling.

“Some have been fellow solo travellers, although many have been couples too,” she explained.

“Each year we make an effort to have a lunch together in one another’s homes and catch up with all the news on the various holidays that we’ve been on since our last meeting.

“I have enjoyed around 17 wonderful get-togethers each year in different parts of the UK with very good friends I have met through travelling.”

Asked whether she thinks some older people may be stuck in their ways, Sheila says it’s ‘understandable that some people her age can be cautious’, with many content with heading to the same places.

However, her advice is to be “brave and fearless” when heading on a solo trip.

Discussing her life motto, Sheila told us it’s to “enjoy each and every day we are given on this beautiful, fragile earth.”

She concluded: “We all have a different amount of time here, and none of us knows exactly what lies ahead. That is why I believe it is so important to make the most of every day we have.”

Iran has threatened to retaliate against any country that joins the United States’ “economic war” against it, as diplomatic efforts to end the months-long war have stalled and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has drastically decreased.

The warning from Iran’s top security official on Saturday came as the US plans to announce new sanctions on Monday that could further strain the struggling Iranian economy.

So, how can Tehran retaliate?

Here’s what we know:

What has Iran said?

On Saturday, Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told the IRIB state broadcaster that Iran was appealing to all countries around the world, including its neighbours, not to join the US’s “economic war”.

“Any country that takes part in imposing economic restrictions on us will be regarded as an enemy,” he said, warning of “seismic” retaliation.

Rezaei also warned Iran’s neighbours that if they participated in Trump’s economic warfare, “not even a drop of oil” would leave the Gulf region, including by alternative export routes away from the Hormuz chokepoint through which a fifth of global oil and gas exports pass in peacetime.

Iran has attacked US military installations and civilian locations since the war began on February 28 , on the pretext that Tehran was on the verge of having nuclear bombs. That claim was debunked by the US intelligence agency, as well as the UN’s IAEA nuclear watchdog.

The US operates military facilities in more than a dozen locations across the Middle East and North Africa, including in Gulf nations, such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Thousands of US soldiers are also stationed across the region, including in Jordan.

Rezaei’s remarks came days after US President Donald Trump announced that his government would undertake the “most crushing economic operation” yet against Iran. He also pledged “tremendous economic consequences” for any country that gives Iran “any type of lifeline”.

The US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, echoed his threats the following day, saying, “You’re either with us or against us”. He also urged cooperation from China, which buys more than 80 percent of Iran’s oil shipments.

On Sunday, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said: Iran is “in a full-scale economic, military and security war” with the US. He said Washington falsely predicted before the war that it would fall amid US aggression and become like Venezuela.

“The enemy had assessed that if Iran falls, it will become Venezuela,” he said in a televised speech.

“Not only did it not happen, but it became a power that amazed the world with its resistance, solidarity and cohesion.”

How can Iran retaliate?

Rezaei described Iran’s strategy as a three-stage sequence, starting with talks with countries cooperating with the US to de-escalate tensions.

“Of course, we will first negotiate with them. We will hold talks and tell them to step aside and distance themselves from the United States.”

“But if they do not act, we will strike. We will target that country’s interests,” he added.

Rezaei’s warning that alternative export routes outside Hormuz could be targeted, probably points to the Bab al-Mandeb Strait gateway to the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia has used it to export its oil following the blockade of Hormuz. Tehran imposed a blockade on Hormuz in response to the US war and has since used it as leverage in negotiations with Washington to end the war. The US has put Iranian ports under a naval blockade, impacting Tehran’s international trade.

Hamidreza Azizi, a researcher on Iran at the Clingendael Institute, said in a post on X on Saturday: “Tehran appears to be trying to establish deterrence at an earlier stage, by signalling that even preparations for an attack could trigger an Iranian response.”

Azizi said two elements in the new “offensive doctrine” are emerging: preemption, which is aimed at preventing a perceived threat from materialising; and disproportionate retaliation, which is aimed at raising the cost of any attack that does occur.

Iran’s warning to Gulf states joining Trump’s economic war is “essentially an ultimatum” to the Gulf states, he said, adding that Iran’s military-security establishment “is increasingly preparing for another round of escalation”.

Will Iran’s neighbours join the US in its economic warfare?

Gulf countries, which are Iran’s neighbours and also US allies, have increasingly been finding themselves caught in the middle of the war. So it is unclear if they will join Washington in economically threatening Iran further.

Iran’s attacks on Gulf nations have impacted their economies, which use Hormuz for most of their exports, including oil and gas.

While Gulf nations have condemned Iranian attacks on their territories, analysts say Gulf states closely aligned with Washington recognise that a functioning political relationship with Iran is necessary due to its close proximity.

The UAE restored diplomatic relations with Iran in 2022 but imposed a trade embargo last week after accusing Tehran of a missile attack. Iran denies responsibility.

Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to normalise ties in 2023 under a deal brokered by China, both likely a calculation that engagement with Iran was safer than permanent confrontation.

While the Iranian attacks on Gulf states have tested this idea, they have not necessarily shattered it.

“Ultimately, Gulf countries can’t change geography. They have to live and work alongside Iran,” Simon Mabon, a professor of international relations at Lancaster University told Al Jazeera in an interview last month. “They don’t want the instability that would come from the fall of the Islamic Republic. I think some Gulf states have pushed for harder strikes – not to precipitate its collapse, but to weaken the more hardline elements of the IRGC.”

Also last month, Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera that confidence in diplomacy to end the crisis remains low but, at the same time, no nation in the region “can afford another long war”.

As a result, that “will keep them away from a completely uncontrolled level of escalation”, and depleted global oil inventories will make a prolonged confrontation between the US and Iran unattractive.

“All inventories have not been able to be replenished” during the ceasefire, Parsi added. “We are at a much lower level globally.”

What we know about international sanctions against Iran over previous decades?

Since 1979, Iran has faced sanctions from the US and other nations in the West. The United Nations has also imposed sanctions on Tehran.

The US first imposed sanctions after the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the pro-Western ruler Reza Shah Pahlavi. Washington said that was in response to Iranian students taking Americans hostage at the US embassy in Tehran.

Washington also halted oil imports from Iran and froze $12bn in Iranian assets following the revolution. Iranian products were banned from import into the US, apart from small gifts, informational material, foodstuffs and some carpets.

In 1995, President Bill Clinton issued executive orders preventing US companies from investing in Iranian oil and gas and trading with Iran. He banned US trade with Iran and investment. A year later, the US Congress passed a law requiring the US government to impose sanctions on foreign firms investing more than $20m a year in Iran’s energy sector.

Then in December 2006, the United Nations Security Council, whose members include China, Russia, the UK and France, imposed sanctions on Iran’s trade in nuclear-energy-related materials and technology and froze the assets of individuals and companies involved in related activities.

The sanctions were mainly an effort to curtail Iran’s growing nuclear capacity, but while programmes to enrich uranium were stopped in 2002, they restarted in late 2005. In subsequent years, the UN toughened the sanctions and imposed more. The European Union also followed suit.

In 2015, Iran signed a nuclear deal – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – with the US, EU, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom. The deal put a cap on Iran’s nuclear programme in return for the complete lifting of sanctions.

However, in 2018, during his first term, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the nuclear treaty and reimposed all sanctions on Iran that were lifted under the treaty as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran.

In 2019, the Trump administration designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organisation’. Additionally, he imposed sanctions targeting petrochemicals, metals (steel, aluminium, copper) and senior Iranian officials.

During Trump’s first term, Qassem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force, was assassinated in a drone strike in Baghdad in 2020. The US also imposed additional sanctions on Iran.

The Biden administration, in power from 2021 to 2025, kept in place most US sanctions.

Last September, UN sanctions were reimposed due to Iran’s nuclear programme when the UNSC voted against permanently lifting economic sanctions.

DAKAR, Senegal — Twenty migrants deported from the United States arrived in Liberia on Thursday, the first group of an eventual 1,200 deportees that the West African country says it will receive from the U.S. under a new deal.

Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to two dozen countries that aren’t their own, as it pushes ahead with its immigration crackdown, advocates say.

An estimated 11 of those agreements, nearly half the total, are with African countries and the Liberia-U.S. agreement involves one of the largest numbers of such third-country deportations

Immigration lawyers say the practice is being used as a legal loophole to indirectly return some asylum-seekers to countries they fled. Authorities in Liberia have said the deportees being welcomed in their country can seek asylum there or leave if they choose.

Here’s what to know about the deportations:

Why some African countries accept deportees

Other African countries that have received third-country deportees from the U.S. include South Sudan, Eswatini, Rwanda, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Congo, Uganda, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic.

Some, like Ghana and Sierra Leone, are accepting deportees from their regions — in this case West Africa.

Many of the African countries approving the deals are among the worst hit by the Trump administration’s policies, including on trade, aid and migration. A good number of them also have authoritarian governments, raising questions about the lack of accountability and due process to ensure the protection of the deportees’ rights.

Details of most of the deals are never made public and some of the African nations, like Ghana’s government, have defended their actions as having been taken on humanitarian grounds.

The Trump administration had spent at least $40 million to deport about 300 migrants to countries other than their own, according to a February report by the Democratic staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. More countries have entered the deal since then.

Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi has described his country’s agreement as an “act of goodwill between partners,” without financial compensation. The deal came as Washington increased pressure on neighboring Rwanda over its support for M23 rebels, a dynamic analysts say may help explain Congo’s willingness to cooperate.

Many are asylum-seekers

Early flights to Africa included people that the U.S. said had convictions for serious crimes. But later transfers have included asylum-seekers with U.S. court orders protecting them from being returned to their home countries because they could face persecution or torture.

Many say they’ve been sent to countries with which they have no ties and where they were not told about until hours into the deportation journey.

For instance, a gay Moroccan woman deported to Cameroon, where homosexuality is illegal, and an Iranian woman with U.S. court protection from returning to Iran who was sent to the Central African Republic.

Immigration lawyer Alma David called that an effective legal “loophole,” saying deportees can be left with “impossible choices” — remain in an unfamiliar country with little support or return to a country a U.S. judge found unsafe.

U.S. policy says that when a receiving government gives blanket diplomatic assurances that deportees won’t face persecution there, they can be removed without additional procedures, David told The Associated Press.

Conditions vary in different countries

Some of the deportees have recounted being shackled while some were held in full-body restraint straitjackets called the WRAP during flights that can sometimes last more than 16 hours.

Their conditions in the different countries vary. In Sierra Leone, the government hired private contractor Kenvah Solutions to provide housing, food and healthcare.

In Congo, the International Organization for Migration said it has provided “humanitarian assistance” and offered assisted voluntary return to the migrants’ home countries. But deportees told the AP their movements were tightly controlled. They were housed behind locked gates, could not leave alone and were allowed out roughly once a week accompanied by IOM staff.

In Equatorial Guinea, the AP found deportees confined in a hotel owned by the family of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Migrants said they were barred from leaving, had uneven access to medical care and faced repeated pressure to return home. Twenty-five of at least 32 people held there had been sent to their home countries by May.

Deportations have led to lawsuits and human rights concerns

Rights advocates say the third-country deportation program risks violating non-refoulement, the principle barring governments from sending people to places where they face persecution or torture.

An international coalition sued Ghana in June on behalf of 27 deportees, alleging most were quickly sent to their home countries, despite U.S. protection orders, and that some were held under armed guard in military camps, hotels and airport cells.

Rights lawyers have also brought a case against Equatorial Guinea before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, alleging deportees were returned to countries where they faced persecution despite U.S. court protections.

Banchereau writes for the Associated Press.