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Islamabad, Pakistan – A wooden panelled bookshelf behind him, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the United States and Iran, aimed at extending their ceasefire by creating a pathway towards long-term peace.

Sharif then held up the document for the cameras. That was June 17, the high point of a frenzied diplomatic effort led by Pakistan spanning weeks, which had culminated in the MoU that Sharif signed as a mediator.

Yet less than four weeks later, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has, in just the past few days, issued two statements expressing “deep concern” over renewed US-Iran hostilities, with the MoU Islamabad had helped pull together seemingly in shreds.

On Monday morning, the US launched the latest in a series of attacks on Iran, which responded by firing missiles and drones at multiple Gulf and Arab nations that it blamed for hosting US military bases.

Hours later, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters that mediators, including Pakistan, Qatar and Oman, remained engaged and were continuing their efforts, even as he warned that Iran would continue responding to what it viewed as US non-compliance with the MoU.

So far, those efforts have failed to slow down the fighting, even as Pakistan has pressed on with diplomatic outreach.

On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar spoke by phone with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, telling him that dialogue and diplomacy remained “the only viable path” to resolving the crisis.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also spoke to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Friday, warning that “hard-earned” peace gains were at risk, while Dar held a separate call on Saturday with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.

To many analysts, one question, above all, now stares at Pakistan and other mediators like Qatar: With the deep distrust between the US and Iran only further expanding following the new bout of fighting, can Islamabad or any other capital once again bring Washington and Tehran back to the negotiating table?

Repeated breakdowns

The renewed fighting marks at least the third occasion since the US-Iran ceasefire signed on April 8 appeared to have collapsed.

Days after that truce was agreed on, the breakdown of the first round of Islamabad talks led to the US imposing a naval blockade on Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The US and Iran both attacked ships in the days that followed.

Then, after the MoU was signed on June 17, Iran attacked several ships that it claimed were passing through the Strait of Hormuz without its permission, prompting another escalation with Washington.

But the Iranian tanker strikes last week appear to have raised tensions to new heights.

US attacks on Iran since then have hit at least 10 provinces, killing a soldier, several fishermen in the southern province of Hormozgan, and a firefighter in Sistan and Baluchestan, according to Iranian authorities.

A railway bridge on a trade corridor linking Iran with Central Asia and China was also struck, along with a bridge near Mashhad used by mourners travelling to former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral.

The renewed hostilities have also pulled Qatar, a fellow mediator alongside Pakistan, more directly into the conflict. On Sunday, Iranian missiles and drones hit the Gulf state, with debris from interceptions injuring three people, including a child, according to Qatar’s Ministry of Interior.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has accused Washington of violating “nearly all parts” of the June agreement within 25 days of its signing, citing attacks on transport infrastructure and fishing vessels.

Baghaei said on Monday that Iran had “acted in good faith” throughout, but that “each time the other party has failed to meet its obligations, we did not uphold ours, and we will continue to act in this manner.”

Since the war began on February 28, Islamabad has played the role of mediator.

It hosted talks in April, the first time in four decades that US and Iranian officials sat in a room together.

Its army chief and interior minister have travelled to Tehran several times. In late March, Pakistan also helped secure a Chinese-backed peace framework alongside its own diplomatic efforts.

In June, it helped produce the MoU signed by Pezeshkian and US President Donald Trump, along with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, which was then discussed at the Burgenstock summit in Switzerland.

Yet analysts say Pakistan lacks the means to enforce the agreements it helps broker.

Javad Heiran-Nia, director of the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, said the MoU was never intended to resolve the underlying dispute.

“The MoU deferred key and substantive issues to future negotiations and functioned primarily as a tactical instrument to halt hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping,” he told Al Jazeera.

Iran, he said, sees control of the waterway as “a strategic asset; not merely a coercive lever, but a deterrent tool”, and appears “prepared to accept the risk of war to preserve this strategic advantage”.

Mediators, he added, lack the instruments to resolve the dispute “unless a shift in the balance of power between Iran and the United States emerges as a result of limited military engagements”, pointing to a potential US naval blockade as one of the few developments that could alter the strategic calculus.

Dania Thafer, executive director of the Gulf International Forum in Doha, said Pakistan’s room for manoeuvre had narrowed as both sides hardened their positions over the strait.

“Pakistan is in a situation where it is highly dependent on both parties, as it always has been, but right now, Iran is bent on establishing its control over the Strait of Hormuz,” she told Al Jazeera.

According to Thafer, there is little Pakistan can do to de-escalate while both Washington and Tehran remain in “an escalatory phase”.

“Once they feel they have reached a point where the balance tips in favour of one side or the other, then perhaps they will return to the negotiating table,” she added.

But Qamar Cheema, head of the Islamabad-based Sanober Institute, pushed back on the idea that Pakistan is operating without real tools.

He pointed to US Vice President JD Vance’s recent remarks, where he credited Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir’s role in the process, as evidence that Islamabad’s military-diplomatic channel carries real weight in Washington.

Access itself, he argued, is the instrument.

“Pakistan enjoys trust, and that’s why both sides pick up the phone and call Pakistani leadership any time to remove a stumbling block,” Cheema told Al Jazeera.

Crowded diplomacy, narrowing options

But Pakistan has not been the only diplomatic channel, and according to Heiran-Nia, the dispute over the strait was never really Islamabad’s to mediate.

“Iran had previously removed the Strait of Hormuz issue from Pakistan’s mediation agenda, as the matter was essentially bilateral between Tehran and Muscat,” he said.

Tehran, he explained, did not want the issue to be “defined within a broader negotiation package under Pakistani auspices, which would have afforded Washington room for political manoeuvre”.

Direct Iran-Oman talks followed, but “US military pressure and economic sanctions threats against Oman have placed Muscat under considerable strain, preventing meaningful progress,” according to the Tehran-based analyst.

Meanwhile, he cautioned that Sunday’s attacks on Qatar “could have adverse effects on Qatar’s mediatory role”, although Doha “does not currently appear inclined to withdraw”, adding that “Iran should not assume that Doha’s patience is limitless.”

Mustafa Hyder Sayed, executive director of the Pakistan-China Institute in Islamabad, described the GCC states as caught in an uncomfortable position.

“The GCC countries are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. They want a functional relationship with Iran while not openly declining the use of their bases and territory by the United States, because they understand they cannot choose their neighbours,” he told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, Israel, which is not a party to the MoU, has continued military operations in Lebanon, which Tehran cites as an ongoing violation of the agreement.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that southern Lebanon “would become Gaza”, raising the prospect of further regional escalation.

Who blinks first?

Despite a week of escalating attacks, the core dispute remains unchanged.

Washington and Tehran remain divided over the same issue that stalled negotiations even before the latest round of fighting: Who controls passage through the Strait of Hormuz, and under what conditions?

Iran insists the MoU gave it authority over transit through the waterway. The US disputes that.

On Monday, Trump announced that the US was reinstating a naval blockade of Iranian ships and would charge a 20 percent tariff on all other ships trying to pass through the strait.

Yet, earlier, a possible compromise had briefly emerged.

Heiran-Nia said the parties explored a formula under which commercial vessels would coordinate passage with both Iran and a designated Arab Gulf state, allowing “both parties [to] claim a degree of victory”.

The talks stalled before reaching a conclusion, however, interrupted by the funeral of Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war in joint US-Israeli air strikes.

The conflict has since moved in the opposite direction, with military action aimed at shifting the balance of power rather than reviving negotiations.

“The prevailing trajectory now is the continuation of military strikes in an effort to shift the balance of power. Yet, there remains a risk that strategic calculations on either side could spiral beyond control,” Heiran-Nia said.

Thafer believes that, despite the violence, neither side has formally abandoned the MoU.

“Iran is framing this current round of escalation as a violation of the MoU rather than a reason to exit it, which means there could still be light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.

In her assessment, both sides bear responsibility for violating the agreement, from Iran’s attacks on shipping to Washington’s revocation of Iran’s oil sale licence and the military attacks. Yet the agreement remains, at least formally, in place.

Its future, she said, depends on which side ultimately gives ground over the strait. Iran retains what Thafer described as a “snapback capability” to disrupt shipping whenever it chooses.

“It is, militarily, very difficult to fully neutralise that Iranian capability. We will have to wait and see where the leverage finally sits,” she said.

Cheema, for his part, argued that Iran’s own conduct, more than any mediator’s diplomacy, is what will decide how this settles.

“Iranian authorities seem ambitious and aggressive, and are looking to take risks to project power, which makes it less likely that any agreement will reach a final conclusion. That means interventions from mediators will keep coming.”

The United States-Israel war on Iran has inflicted the greatest disruption to merchant shipping since the back-to-back shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Since the start of the war in late February, shipping lines have faced attacks on their vessels, lengthy delays and steep rises in operating costs.

Yet even after more than four months of turmoil for the industry, the most enduring legacy of the war for shipping may end up being just how little it ultimately changes.

While shipping firms are expected to more explicitly factor risk into their expenses and diversify supply chains where possible in the future, the indispensable nature of seaborne trade means the industry is likely to continue much as before over the long term, analysts say.

That is likely to be especially the case for the container shipping industry, which, unlike the operators of the oil and gas tankers whose dislocation has roiled energy markets, is not heavily reliant on the Strait of Hormuz to transport its cargoes, which range from agricultural produce to apparel and consumer electronics.

While there is no alternative to the strait to access oil-producing Gulf nations by sea, container shipping firms have had the option of redirecting their vessels along longer alternative routes to avoid conflict in the region, including attacks by the Iran-aligned Houthis in the Red Sea.

The global shipping industry has long stood apart for its resilience in the face of crises, bouncing back from major upheaval at remarkable speed.

In 2020, the first year of the COVID pandemic, global container shipping volumes fell by just 1.2 percent compared with the previous year, according to the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO), one of the world’s largest associations for shipowners.

By January 2021, the volume of cargo handled at ports worldwide had already surpassed pre-pandemic levels, rising 6.4 percent year-on-year, according to data from the Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics.

By contrast, it took more than four years for global air travel to fully recover from the shock of COVID-19.

While the Iran war and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea since 2023 scrambled regional supply chains, shipping companies have been rapidly adding capacity since Washington and Tehran signed their memorandum of understanding on ending the conflict on June 17.

After plummeting from 3.2 million TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit of cargo) to 74,000 TEU as of mid-June, container capacity in the region has already rebounded to pre-war levels on some routes, according to Xeneta, an ocean and air freight rate market analytics platform.

Capacity between Asia and the United States’ West Coast last week surpassed its pre-conflict record, hitting 350,000 TEU, according to Xeneta.

On Monday, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, the second- and fifth-largest container shipping firms, respectively, announced that they would begin sailing through the Suez Canal again for the first time since February, following an assessment of the security situation in the Red Sea.

Shipping is indispensable to global trade, in large part because no other mode of transport comes close in terms of capacity and cost-effectiveness.

The world’s largest container ships have capacities exceeding 24,000 TEU – the equivalent of roughly 12,000 trucks, 2,240 cargo planes, or 360 freight trains.

Lacking genuine competition in the transport of goods in huge volumes, shipping facilitates about 90 percent of global trade.

Shipping will look “remarkably familiar” in five years from now because it is an industry driven by demand, said Punit Oza, the head of the consultancy Maritime NXT and the former executive director of the Singapore Chamber of Maritime Arbitration.

Even the most severe conflict cannot change the “physics or the economics” of seaborne trade, he said.

“Ships do not sail because shipowners want them to; they sail because consumers somewhere want grain, iron ore, gas, or televisions,” Oza told Al Jazeera.

“It is the consumers of shipping – the cargo interests, the economies, the households – who ultimately shape the industry, and their demand will endure long after the headlines fade.”

Judah Levine‏, head of research at freight booking company Freightos, said container shipping in the future is likely to look “quite similar” to how it did before the war, with Dubai’s Port of Jebel Ali continuing to serve as the region’s main hub for both Gulf-bound goods and cargoes destined for Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

But Levine said diversion of cargoes to smaller hubs – such as the UAE’s Port of Fujairah and Khor Fakkan Port, and Port Sultan Qaboos in Oman – during the war offers a preview of the contingencies shipping firms are likely to deploy in future crises.

“All of a sudden, they were handling much larger volumes, and then creating these land bridges, usually to go on to Jebel Ali,” Levine told Al Jazeera.

“Containers find a way,” Levine said.

“It’s kind of like water. They’ll trickle, you know, to where they need to go by other paths.”

Another lasting impact of the war could be greater international cooperation on maritime security and safety.

The International Maritime Organization, the UN body responsible for shipping and seafarers, has listed the protection of shipping lanes as one of its top agenda items for discussion at its biannual meeting taking place from Monday to Friday.

“Seafarers have tragically lost their lives in connection with this conflict, and the impact has been felt well beyond the region, with real consequences for global trade, energy and food security,” IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said in opening remarks to the session on Monday.

Ruth Banomyong, a professor of logistics and supply chain management at Thammasat Business School in Bangkok, Thailand, said he expects to see international coordination to strengthen trade routes that integrate both land and sea even as shipping networks remain “largely the same”.

“This means ensuring that maritime transport, ports, inland logistics, customs procedures and alternative land transport options work together as an integrated system when disruptions occur,” Banomyong told Al Jazeera.

“Maritime freedom is no longer just about freedom of navigation. It is about ensuring the continuity of global trade.

“The long-term lesson is not to replace the Strait of Hormuz, but to reduce overdependence on any single transport corridor,” Banomyong added.

Oza, the head of Maritime NXT, said the ad hoc naval coalitions deployed to ensure freedom of navigation during times of conflict could ultimately be succeeded by a multilateral security framework with “regional ownership rather than purely external enforcement”.

“Freedom of navigation is too important to be left to improvisation,” Oza said.

“If there is one consistent lesson from shipping’s long history, it is that human ingenuity always finds a way – pipelines get built, reserves get repositioned, technologies emerge, and trade, like water, finds its path. It will do so again,” Oza added.

“The innovations that follow this war will be a tribute to human resilience; the tragedy is that it took a war to summon them.”

President Lula accuses Jair Bolsonaro’s son, now a presidential hopeful, of helping triggered proposed US tariffs.

Brazilian presidential hopeful Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, is asking the Trump administration to delay proposed tariffs on Brazilian goods until after October’s election, as he tries to counter allegations from President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that his family helped bring them about.

The Trump administration proposed the 25 percent tariffs in June, citing alleged trade violations including illegal deforestation and what it called unfair electronic payment practices, catching Brazil’s government by surprise. Lula had said relations were improving after a White House meeting with Trump in May.

The announcement came shortly after Bolsonaro met senior US officials in Washington, prompting accusations back home that he had invited US pressure on Brazil, with Lula accusing the right-wing senator of lobbying Washington to impose the tariffs.

He has since doubled down on those accusations, saying in a social media post last week, “the origin of all this was motivated by the Bolsonaro family itself” and that Bolsonaro’s request to delay the tariffs until after the election was “yet another act of treason against the Fatherland”.

Bolsonaro rejects the allegation, arguing instead that it’s Lula who would gain a political advantage if the tariffs were imposed.

“New US tariffs on Brazilian products would hand the current Brazilian government precisely the political victory it has been engineering,” Bolsonaro wrote in a submission to the Office of the US Trade Representative.

Brazilian officials have spent months trying to persuade Washington not to move ahead with the tariffs. But Bolsonaro says the government hasn’t gone far enough to find common ground with the US and is calling for a 180-day delay before any final decision is made.

“Brazil holds general elections in October 2026, and the political landscape that determines the viability of any negotiated resolution will be redefined within roughly ninety days,” he wrote.

So far, there is little sign his efforts are paying off. In a response to a letter Bolsonaro sent last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US officials still had “substantial differences” with Brazil over the issues they say justify the proposed tariffs.

The dispute has left Brazilians split over who’s telling the truth. A Quaest poll published last month found 47 percent of Brazilians agreed with Lula’s claim that Bolsonaro had encouraged the United States to impose tariffs, while 35 percent agreed with Bolsonaro that he had tried to stop them.

Washington has until July 15 to decide whether to impose the tariffs which, if approved, would still exempt beef, coffee, rare earth minerals and aircraft parts. They would come on top of the tariffs Trump imposed last year over what he described as a “witch hunt” against Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted months later.

Bolsonaro has made Brazil’s relationship with the United States a central part of his campaign, as Trump has taken a more active role in Latin American politics. That has included the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas and backing right-wing candidates across the region, including Abelardo De La Espriella, who narrowly won Colombia’s presidential election last month.

Military command issues threat a day after Qatari mediators hailed ‘positive progress’ in indirect US-Iranian talks.

Iran’s military command has threatened ships that attempt to cross the Strait of Hormuz using unapproved routes with a “forceful response,” casting new doubt over trade flows in the critical conduit for global energy supplies.

Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters issued the threat on Thursday, a day after Qatari mediators hailed indirect negotiations between US and Iranian officials as making “positive progress” towards a peace deal.

“Any failure to comply with and depart from the designated route or disregard for the navigation protocols of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Strait of Hormuz will be met with an immediate and forceful response from the armed forces, and will endanger the security of the offending vessels,” the military command said in a statement carried by the country’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.

While Tehran did not specify what prompted the warning, it came after US Central Command (CENTCOM) on Wednesday said it had presided over a security dialogue in Bahrain during which regional leaders expressed their commitment to the “free flow of commerce” in the strait.

Iranian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi hit out at CENTCOM’s statement on Thursday, saying the forum “cannot establish legal order and security for the Persian Gulf”.

“The region’s security will be ensured through the end of interventions and the US withdrawal from the area, respect for countries’ sovereignty, and acceptance of new geopolitical realities – not under the military umbrella of America,” Gharibabadi said in a post on X.

The Strait of Hormuz, which facilitated about one-fifth of the global trade in oil and liquefied natural gas before the US-Israel war on Iran began in late February, has become a major sticking point in Washington and Tehran’s talks aimed at turning their fragile ceasefire into a lasting peace.

While Iran agreed to make its “best efforts” to arrange the safe passage of ships in the strait in the memorandum of understanding it signed with the US on June 17, Tehran has repeatedly threatened to attack ships that do not use its preferred route close to the Iranian shoreline.

At least 49 attacks on commercial vessels have been recorded in the strait since the start of the war on February 28, according to MarineTraffic.

Most of those incidents, including drone attacks on a Singapore-flagged cargo ship and Panama-flagged merchant vessel on Thursday and Saturday, respectively, have been blamed on Tehran.

While transits through the waterway have risen since US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed their MoU on June 17, they remain far below the roughly 130 daily crossings that took place before the conflict.

At least 45 vessels crossed the strait on Wednesday, up from 34 on Tuesday, according to MarineTraffic data.

After dropping to pre-war levels on Thursday on reports of productive talks in Doha, oil prices largely held steady as markets opened in Asia on Friday.

Brent futures for August delivery stood at $72.07 per barrel as of 02:30 GMT, after dropping below $71 for the first time since the war the previous day.

Research published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has found that a United Kingdom-United States pharmaceutical deal could cause 229,000 excess deaths as a result of the diversion of billions of pounds away from Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

In December, the UK and US signed a pharmaceutical trade deal, under which the US government agreed not to impose tariffs on UK pharmaceutical and medical technology exports for the next three years.

In return, the British government committed to increasing NHS spending on new US medicines from 0.3 percent in 2026 to at least 0.6 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) by 2036. This means that medicine spending overall should increase from 10 percent to 12 percent of the NHS budget.

UK politicians defended the deal with Science Minister Patrick Vallance saying in April that the arrangement gives patients across the NHS access to “life-changing new medicines that they previously would have been denied”.

“Not only this, but as the first country in the world to benefit from a zero percent tariff on pharmaceuticals to the US, Britain’s life sciences sector will be further boosted,” Vallance argued.

But the research published in the BMJ found that the commitment to spend so much more on new branded medicines over the next decade without any increase in NHS funding will “create substantial opportunity costs elsewhere, having a direct effect on population health”.

Samuel Cross, a professor in the department of pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of Liverpool, who coauthored the report, said the agreement “benefits pharmaceutical companies and comes at a cost of NHS patients”.

“There’s really no way to sugar-coat that. The numbers speak for themselves,” Cross told Al Jazeera.

Here’s what we know about the report:

What is in the US-UK deal?

The agreement signed on December 1 was hailed as a landmark deal between British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump on pharmaceutical trade and pricing.

The US agreed not to impose tariffs on UK pharmaceutical and medical exports for the following three years – until January 19, 2029.

According to a policy paper published by the British government, the preliminary understanding of the agreement recognised that the US and UK shared a “mutual interest in developing a global medicines system that supports development and commercialisation of new innovations”.

 What did the research find?

In February, Vallance disclosed that funding for the increased spending on medicines would come from the Department of Health and Social Care, which funds the NHS in England, rather than the Treasury.

The study in the BMJ forecast that if spending targets are met and the economy grows as forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the NHS would need to spend an extra 1.3 billion pounds ($1.73bn) a year by 2028 – about 25 million pounds ($33.4m) a week. By 2036, this would rise to an extra 8.8 billion pounds ($11.74bn) a year – about 170 million pounds ($227m) a week). Over the course of the agreement, that would add up to about 44.7 billion pounds ($59.7bn) by the end of 2036.

“Costs are even higher if the impact on publicly funded adult social care is also considered – modelling of English local authority data indicates that every £1bn [$1.33bn] the NHS must find to fund this deal will increase the costs of adult social care by £118m [$157.5m] because of increases in morbidity and mortality,” the report found.

Ultimately, the study predicted, excess deaths are likely as a result.

“Even if we restrict attention to the direct effect of reductions in available NHS expenditure, by 2036 this deal is likely to result in roughly 229,000 excess deaths – more than during the COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020 and June 2022 (137,000). If the indirect effect on adult social care is also included, the increase in excess deaths is even greater (291,000),” the report stated.

The report added that the findings are “unsurprising” given the existing pressures on the NHS and the “large burden of unmet need in highly cost-effective areas of care”.

It also referred to shortfalls in NHS funding and pharmaceutical pricing as “opportunity costs”.

Cross said that in health economics, opportunity costs are the “key to all of this”.

“In the NHS, we have a finite budget – we’re not made of money – and if you take money away to pay for, in this case, more medicines. then that comes at an opportunity cost of the places that the money has been diverted away from,” he explained.

Which health sectors will be worst affected?

The research predicted that the greatest number of deaths would occur in cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal and cancer patients.

It added that there will also be broader harm caused to quality of life for patients in those sectors as well as “neurological, endocrine, musculoskeletal, and mental health problems”.

“Despite this evidence and reassurances that ‘frontline services’ will be protected, the NHS will need to fund this deal from allocations made six months before the deal was agreed. The evidence suggests that if additional public expenditure was available, it could be more effectively deployed within the NHS itself,” it added.

The report also called the government’s claims that the US-UK agreement would encourage pharmaceutical innovation in the country “uncertain”.

“Pharmaceutical research and development operate within a global market, of which the UK represents a relatively small share. As such, there is limited evidence that UK domestic pricing materially influences global investment decisions,” the report stated.

“Even so, evidence suggests in most cases the UK is already paying more than 100 percent of the long-term value of new medicines; incentivising production of new medicines under this deal will do long-term harm to the public health objective of the NHS,” it added.

Cross added that because money has in effect been diverted away from the NHS, there is no way for the government to offset the impact on the service.

“If the funds are used to pay for new medicines, we will lose positive health outcomes elsewhere, and that is as simple as that,” he said.

He called for the government to release an impact assessment to trigger a public discussion about how good the US-UK deal really is for Britain.

EXPLAINER

China and Sudan signed off on a waiver of $50m as Sudan’s military-led government seeks support amid Western sanctions.

China has waived loans worth $50m that it had given to Sudan, the two countries said over the weekend. The agreement comes three years into a war between Sudan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that has shrunk the country’s economy by roughly 40 percent, according to the United Nations.

The sum is small compared with what Sudan owes overall to external governments or agencies, an amount estimated at more than $56bn before the war. But the waiver lands at a moment when Khartoum has few other international lenders extending any financial support.

China’s relationship with Sudan predates the war by decades, built on oil and infrastructure interests that survived multiple changes of government in Khartoum. But the war has narrowed Sudan’s options elsewhere, as Western governments have largely held back or imposed sanctions.

Here’s why this deal is significant for Sudan and China:

What do we know about the deal?

The signed protocol in Port Sudan cancels four interest-free loans worth 344 million yuan, about $50m, with immediate effect, according to Sudan’s official news agency, SUNA.

Sudan’s Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim welcomed the move, reportedly saying that China has continued investing in the country throughout the war while Western governments, including the United States and European Union members, have largely held back. Gibril himself was added to the US Treasury sanctions list in September 2025 for his alleged “involvement in Sudan’s brutal civil war and … connections to Iran”.

China’s charge d’affaires in Sudan, Xu Jian, reportedly said at the signing ceremony that China was ready to help rebuild what was destroyed during the war in Sudan.

What’s in it for Sudan?

Sudan’s external debt of more than $56bn before the war is expected to have ballooned since.

The $50m debt relief amounts to not even 1 percent of the total external pre-war debt. In fact, Sudan was close to a far bigger debt write-off in 2021. It was on track with the IMF and the World Bank Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative to have more than $50bn of its debt forgiven within three years. The 2021 military coup in October derailed that debt relief plan, and the process was formally suspended a year later.

Still, China’s waiver arrives at a moment of acute need for the country. The war is now in its third year. More than 1.5 million people have been killed, according to the UN, and the war has displaced about 14 million people – about a quarter of the Sudanese population. The World Health Organization says less than 14 percent of health facilities are still functioning. Jobs have vanished in many parts of the country, and the rising cost of living has made it difficult for households to survive.

The Sudanese pound has collapsed since the start of the war. It went from roughly 600 to the dollar before the war to more than 5000 to the dollar by June 2026.

What’s in it for China?

In many ways, Beijing’s decision to waive the $50m loan is in keeping with a broader approach it has taken in recent years, one that has helped cement China as Africa’s largest trading partner for 17 consecutive years.

China has provided interest-free loan forgiveness as a diplomatic gesture to multiple countries, and these decisions are recurrent announcements at Beijing’s frequent leader-level summits with African nations. This is especially true for smaller loans. Research from the Johns Hopkins China Africa Research Initiative found that China forgave at least $3.4bn of these kinds of debts across the African continent between 2000 and 2019.

By contrast, larger loans are usually commercial loans through state banks that come with interest, and waiving those is harder.

At a time when the West is largely trying to isolate Sudan’s leadership, a small loan waiver gives China outsized influence in a country that sits at the intersection of the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.

What have China-Sudan ties been like historically?

Oil has long served as a catalyst for their relationship. From the mid-1990s on, China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) poured billions of dollars into Sudanese oil fields and the pipelines carrying that crude oil to Port Sudan. This was a time when many Western companies were pushed out due to sanctions.

The relationship changed when the southern part of the country voted in favour of independence in 2011. The world’s newest country, South Sudan, left the north and took most of the country’s oil fields with it.

Chinese investment largely dried up afterwards, but Sudan still has more than $5bn of outstanding debt to China. The war has aggravated Sudan’s economic challenges. The CNPC requested a formal exit from Sudan in December 2025.

China has added 10 United States-based companies to its export control list and barred government procurement from nearly 50 US companies two weeks after the Pentagon blacklisted some of China’s best-known companies for their alleged ties to the Chinese military.

China’s Ministry of Commerce announced the export order on Monday, barring Chinese companies from exporting “dual-use” items that can be used for civilian or military purposes to the US firms.

The list of companies includes rare-earth mine operator MP Materials Corp, rare-earth magnet maker USA Rare Earths, and US defence contractors specialising in fields such as aerospace, drones, synthetic-aperture radar, and shipbuilding and repairs.

Under the order, “foreign institutions and individuals worldwide are also prohibited from transferring or providing Chinese dual-use goods to them” while ongoing export transactions must be suspended immediately.

The Commerce Ministry said the export ban had been issued to “safeguard national security and interests and fulfil international obligations such as non-proliferation”.

China’s Ministry of Finance on Monday separately barred Chinese government procurement from 46 companies, including subsidiaries of major US defence contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Atomics and General Dynamics. US-funded, locally registered companies, however, have been given an exemption by the ministry.

Experts described Beijing’s orders as a retaliation, albeit a largely symbolic one, against the US after the Pentagon in early June added about 80 Chinese companies and their subsidiaries to its list of “Entities Identified as Chinese Military Companies Operating in the United States”.

The designation means the Pentagon either believes the companies are owned or controlled by the Chinese military or they are “military-civil fusion contributors”, a term for commercial companies that contribute to China’s military development despite their civilian status.

The updated list includes Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Holdings, search engine giant Baidu and electric automaker BYD, some of China’s largest and best-known companies.

While the order does not bar US companies from doing business with them, it does impact US defence contractors and their future supply chains.

“We can interpret this as a tit-for-tat response, and that fits into China’s playbook any time we’ve seen escalation from the US side in terms of trade and investment tools,” said Nick Marro, global trade lead analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

China-based supply chain consultant Cameron Johnson said the Commerce Ministry’s order mirrors US semiconductor export controls designed to keep the most advanced chips out of Chinese hands.

“They basically say it doesn’t matter where or who you are, you are bound by this regardless of circumstance,” said Johnson, who is also a senior partner at the Shanghai consultancy Tidal Wave Solutions. “Organisations or individuals in any country or region are prohibited from transferring dual-use materials that originated in China.”

He said Beijing’s orders in practice may be hard to enforce and many of the companies named in those orders have already moved their supply chains out of China or begun to “de-risk” their operations there.

Johnson said the wide scope of companies included in Washington’s and Beijing’s directives could be a sign of more to come and may signal a new front in the US-China trade war.

“This is probably just the beginning of the back and forth,” he said. Last year, after returning to the White House for a second term, US President Donald Trump reignited the US-China trade war, leading Washington and Beijing to impose escalating rounds of tariffs on each other.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a trade truce in October, which was extended during a summit between the two leaders in Beijing in May.

Despite promises to “enhance economic cooperation” during the meeting, observers like Singapore-based geopolitical analyst Steve Okun predicted the goodwill may be short-lived.

“The US’s recent closure of chip export loopholes and China’s continuing addition to its export bans show the national security lane remains active in both capitals regardless of the diplomatic niceties at the recent Trump-Xi summit,” Okun told Al Jazeera.

“There is no ‘truce’ in the US-China trade war. Expect further actions from both sides as well on export controls and investment restrictions,” he said.

Ship tracking data shows sharp fall in transits as US and Iranian officials hold talks to save fragile peace framework.

Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz has plunged following Iran’s announcement that it has closed the waterway once again over Israel’s strikes on Lebanon, according to ship tracking data.

A total of 12 vessels crossed the strait on Sunday, down from 35 transits the previous day, an analysis by maritime intelligence company Windward showed on Sunday.

Five of eight vessels entering the strait had their Automatic Identification Systems turned off, according to Windward.

“The current traffic profile: dark, sanctioned, Iranian-linked, resembling the late-blockade baseline more than a functioning open strait,” Windward said in a post on X.

Maritime traffic in the strait had been showing signs of recovery since US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding on ending the US-Israel war on Iran.

Twenty-five vessels transited the strait on Thursday, the highest number since mid-April, according to data from maritime intelligence provider Kpler.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Saturday declared the waterway shut, citing Israeli “crimes” in Lebanon and the failure of the US to maintain a ceasefire in the country.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) on Saturday denied that Iran had closed the strait, which normally carries about one-fifth of global oil and liquified natural gas supplies, saying that safe passage through the waterway remained “intact”, with 55 merchant ships transiting that day.

The cause of the discrepancy between the transit figures provided by CENTCOM and commercial ship tracking providers is unclear.

US and Iranian negotiators on Sunday held make-or-break talks in Switzerland as the conflict in Lebanon threatened to derail efforts to turn their 60-day ceasefire extension into a permanent peace deal.

In a briefing to Iranian media after the talks, Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the sides had discussed the safe passage of ships through the strait, and “a mechanism was set up, which is important”.

Despite renewed tensions between Washington and Tehran and signs of slowing traffic in the strait, oil prices moved lower on Monday morning in Asia.

Brent crude, the primary international benchmark, was down about 0.9 percent as of 01:30 GMT, at just below $80 a barrel.

Asia’s major stock markets opened higher, with key indices in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan making substantial gains.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 and Seoul’s Kospi were up 1.8 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively, while the Taiex in Taipei surged 2.6 percent.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index bucked the rally, dipping 0.7 percent.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has signed a US-Iran memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the war between the two countries. US President Donald Trump and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian signed on Wednesday.

For half a century, a handful of wealthy Western democracies wrote the rules of the global economy.

But the world order is becoming crowded, and even as the Group of Seven (G7) remains one of the world’s most influential clubs, a challenger has emerged.

BRICS has expanded, and says it wants a bigger voice for the Global South. This bloc of nations speaks for nearly half the world’s population – and accounts for a growing share of global output, energy and raw materials.

In the space between the two, a third force is gathering pace: the so-called middle powers, nations too big to ignore and unwilling to pick a side.

EXPLAINER

US President Donald Trump and Iranian leaders say a deal has been agreed to end more than 100 days of war that killed thousands.

United States President Donald Trump and Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said on Sunday that they had reached an initial deal to end the war and to resume traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump said the deal allows for toll-free shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been largely closed since the US and Israel launched an assault on Iran on February 28.

“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.

The US and Iran will sign a memorandum of understanding in Switzerland on Friday, said the prime minister of Pakistan, whose country has served as a mediator.

Monday marks 108 days since the war began, with the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran. Here is what’s happening:

What we know about the deal

• The content of the agreement, which follows weeks of fraught negotiations and periodic threats from Trump of new hostilities unless Iran reaches a deal, remained unclear.
• Strait of Hormuz to reopen: Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency said the draft deal called for reopening the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days under Iranian arrangements. Trump, who turned 80 on Sunday, said the deal allows for toll-free shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been largely closed since the US and Israel launched an assault on Iran on December 28.
• Frozen assets to be released: Iran’s Mehr news agency reported that the US would release $12bn in frozen assets to Iran before the start of negotiations.
• Iran’s enriched uranium: In an interview with The New York Times on Sunday, Trump said Washington was still negotiating whether Iran would suspend its enrichment for 20 years. Trump hinted that he might settle for a 15-year suspension, but said he did not want to negotiate via the press.
• Israel has not commented: There has been no official comment from Israel about the peace agreement.

In Iran

• The secretariat of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said on Monday that the deal with the US includes the immediate suspension of hostilities on all fronts. “Based on the agreements reached, the war and military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon, will end immediately and permanently as of tonight, and in addition, the naval blockade against Iran will end immediately and completely,” it said in a statement.

In the US

• Democrats slam Trump over war: While Democratic lawmakers welcomed the deal, they criticised the Trump administration’s decisions pertaining to the war. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said that while the deal moves the situation in the “right direction”, several questions remain. He warned that competing interpretations of what was agreed upon could pose risks. Senator Chris Murphy, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the deal is a “surrender to Iran” but that the US should be “glad about it because every day this insane, illegal war continues, we get weaker”.

In Lebanon

• Trump rebukes Israeli attack on Beirut: On Sunday, shortly before the deal was announced by Trump, Israel launched an air attack on Beirut. Trump angrily blamed Israel for delaying the deal’s signing after launching this attack. In an expletive-laden phone interview with US news outlet Axios, Trump fumed about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying: “I was so pissed off. I let him know.”

Global response

• Western leaders praise deal: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was ready to aid the further technical talks between the US and Iran, adding that he hopes the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz will stabilise energy markets.
• French President Emmanuel Macron also praised the deal and said Paris would support the Lebanese government.
• European Union chief Antonio Costa welcomed a deal between the US and Iran to end the Middle East war, adding that the bloc was ready to contribute to a strategy for “lasting peace”.
• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was a “critical step” towards resolving the war in the Middle East.

Global economy

• Oil prices drop: Oil prices slipped to their lowest since March on Monday, with global benchmark Brent crude futures falling $4.08, or 4.7 percent, to $83.25 a barrel by 04:15 GMT. US West Texas Intermediate was at $80.53, down $4.35, or 5.1 percent. Both contracts fell to their lowest levels since March 10 on Monday after tumbling more than 3 percent on Friday.
• Asian markets soar: Markets in Japan soared, more than 5 percent up; in South Korea, they were up 5.3 percent; in Taiwan, they were up 2.4 percent. In Shanghai, they were up 1.3 percent; and in Hong Kong, they were up half a percent; while in Indonesia, they were up 2.07 percent; and in the Philippines, they were up 5.2 percent.

Volker Turk, the high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, has issued some of his harshest criticism yet of the recent sanctions the United States has imposed on Cuba.

On Monday, Turk drew a line between the increasing restrictions on the Cuban economy and reports of heightened death rates, particularly among children.

“The fuel restrictions imposed since early 2026 and recent tightening of extraterritorial sanctions, taken together, are directly harming Cubans, especially the most vulnerable,” Turk said in a statement.

“Children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines. This is unacceptable.”

Such “severe sanctions”, he added, run contrary to the “basic principles of international human rights law”. He called for them to be “lifted immediately”.

Turk’s comments are a direct response to the suite of actions taken under US President Donald Trump to tighten pressure on Cuba, a Caribbean island that has already weathered a decades-long US trade embargo.

Starting in January, the Trump administration moved to cut off Cuba’s foreign oil supply, a linchpin for its ageing energy grid.

First, it severed supplies of oil and funds from Venezuela. Then, on January 29, Trump issued an executive order declaring Cuba to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security. As such, he said, any country that supplied it with oil would be subject to steep tariffs.

In the months since, the Trump administration has continued to layer sanctions on Cuba. In May, for instance, penalties were announced against Cuba’s Interior Ministry, its National Police and its Directorate of Intelligence.

Those were followed this month by sanctions targeting Cuba’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, as well as members of his family.

The sanctions are designed to penalise those “responsible for repression” in Cuba, an island whose communist government has been accused of stifling dissent, as well as imprisoning and torturing activists.

Turk on Monday acknowledged Cuba’s human rights record and called on the country to “release all those arbitrarily detained”.

But he also pointed to the mounting death toll associated with the US sanctions, which have isolated the island country from much of the world.

The sanctions freeze any US-based assets the target may have, but they also prohibit entities from conducting business with the sanctioned parties. That can result in difficulties accessing global financial systems and other international platforms.

The de facto oil blockade has also resulted in the increasing frequency of power outages, and essential services like public transportation and medical care have faced reductions. Turk pointed to those downstream effects in his remarks.

“Cuba faces increasing isolation,” he said. “Companies are leaving. Fewer airlines fly to the country. It is almost disconnected from international payment systems.”

Turk’s office has also highlighted the human costs of the sanctions. According to the statistics it cited, infant death rates have doubled, reaching 9.9 for every 1,000 births. The survival rate for childhood cancer, meanwhile, has declined from 85 to 65 percent.

In March, the Cuban government also warned of medical needs going unanswered as a result of the energy shortage. It estimated that there was a backlog of 96,387 people awaiting surgery, 11,193 of whom were minors.

It also underscored that 16,000 patients needed radiotherapy, and another 2,888 required dialysis, two treatments that depend on steady electrical supplies.

Turk’s remarks also pointed to the risks posed by the Atlantic hurricane season and other natural disasters. Within hours of his remarks, western Cuba was rattled by a powerful 6.1-magnitude earthquake. Summer heat alone could cost lives, he explained.

“Rising summer temperatures risk increasing the spread of vector borne and waterborne diseases,” Turk said.

“The hurricane season further increases exposure. This creates a perfect storm for social and economic deterioration and suffering for the Cuban people.”

Trump has repeatedly suggested that he is considering military action in Cuba to remove its leadership after the US-Israel war on Iran reaches an end.

Since January, only one Russian oil tanker has been allowed to reach the island, leaving its foreign fuel supplies largely depleted.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang on Sunday is significant for one reason.

It’s not that they are meeting: The two men met in Beijing just a year ago when China held a massive military parade to mark 80 years since Japan surrendered unconditionally to Allied forces, bringing an end to the second world war.

What’s surprising is that Xi is travelling at all.

The Chinese leader has not travelled to Pyongyang since 2019, having steadily cut down his travel in recent years, and world leaders like US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin generally come to him these days.

“We need to remember that Xi Jinping has not really travelled abroad that much,” William Yang, Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Northeast Asia, told Al Jazeera. “The growing trend is foreign leaders heading to Beijing to meet with him.

“For Xi Jinping to be the one who decides to travel to Pyongyang, it shows the level of significance that China attaches to this trip.”

Xi averaged about 14 trips a year between 2013 and 2019, but dropped to approximately six a year between 2022 and 2025, according to the Asia Society. In 2020, he made just one overseas trip, and in 2021, he made none, as China grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic.

He may be travelling now, though, amid concerns about North Korea’s relationship with Russia, Yang said.

Senior partner no more?

Traditionally, Beijing played the role of senior partner in the China-North Korea relationship, with North Korea heavily dependent on China for as much as 95 percent of its trade, according to one 2022 estimate from the National Committee on North Korea, a US-based nonprofit.

That dynamic has been changing since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however. North Korea has provided Russia with critical weapons, artillery and manpower and is credited by observers with helping to keep Moscow’s war machine going.

South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy, a government-funded research institute, estimates that since 2023, Moscow has paid North Korea as much as $14.4bn for troop deployments and the export of “artillery, shells, and guided and ballistic missiles”.

The report said that North Korea may only have received between $580m and $1.5bn of that in the form of “goods”, which means there is a “significant possibility that the majority of the payment from Moscow was in the form of ‘sensitive military technology or related precision parts and materials that are difficult to observe via satellite’,” according to a translation.

Although China shares a mutual defence treaty with North Korea, it is still wary of North Korea acquiring new military technology, Yang said.

“Beijing has always been very careful about providing military assistance to North Korea because they do not see a militarily stronger North Korea as necessarily in its favour,” he said. “A North Korea that is militarily emboldened through its relationship with Russia could be a potential source of disruption to the balance of power and status quo on the Korean Peninsula.”

North Korea has already carried out eight missile launches since the start of the year, and in May unveiled a new AI-guided tactical cruise missile, according to North Korean media and the US Naval Institute.

Earlier this week, North Korean state media also released photos of Kim touring a new “weapons-grade nuclear materials” factory, which would be used to expand Pyongyang’s nuclear capability at an “exponential rate”.

Fluctuating tensions

North Korea has technically been at war with South Korea since 1950, with the conflict suspended by a 1953 armistice agreement. The two countries are divided by a 250-kilometre-long (155-mile-long) Demilitarized Zone, splitting the Korean Peninsula.

Tensions have fluctuated dramatically over the years, reaching a recent low point in 2024 when Kim abandoned the long-term goal of Korean unification.

He has largely cut off communications ever since, according to observers. On Friday, South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it hopes that Xi’s trip will “play a constructive role in addressing issues related to the Korean Peninsula” – suggesting that Seoul may have lobbied the Chinese leader to try to smooth over relations.

South Korean Minister of Unification Chung Dong-young separately told reporters last month that he expects the two leaders to discuss a possible meeting between Kim and Trump later in the year.

Xi may also be alarmed by other security developments in East Asia, including news of a possible military-logistics ‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌support pact between South Korea and Japan, which was raised at the Shangri-La Dialogue of regional defence officials in Singapore last weekend.

While China and South Korea’s relationship fluctuates, its ties with Japan are acrimonious due to longstanding grievances dating back to Imperial Japan’s occupation of China in the 1930s and 1940s. Beijing has also objected to recent moves by Tokyo to expand its de facto military.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has proposed new tariffs of up to 12.5 percent on imports from 60 economies after determining they had failed to curb trade in goods made with forced labour, an assertion that was rejected by US trading partners.

The proposal from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), issued late on Tuesday, comes from a Section 301 unfair trade practices investigation designed to help rebuild US President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs, struck down by a US Supreme Court decision in February.

Despite laws banning them, the products of forced labour are deeply embedded in supply chains across the world. European lawmakers bristle at the accusation that the region is less effective than the US at curbing the trade in such goods, with one describing the US findings as “utterly absurd”. Business leaders said the US move created more confusion for companies.

The USTR proposed 10 percent additional duties on imports from Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Taiwan and Britain. The USTR said all had plans or partial schemes in place.

The trade agency said it would impose additional duties of 12.5 percent on the remaining 45 countries that it investigated. These include China, India, Nigeria, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand.

“The failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labour is unacceptable,” US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement. “This creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field.”

The USTR said it would accept public comments on the proposed tariffs and other remedies through July 6, with a public hearing scheduled for July 7.

The announcement comes ahead of the July 24 expiration of a 10 percent temporary tariff imposed by the Trump administration on February 20, the day the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It also shows how determined the Trump administration is about building a wall of tariffs around the US economy, the world’s largest, despite repeated setbacks in court.

After the loss in the Supreme Court, Trump turned to another law to impose temporary 10 percent tariffs globally. But those stopgap levies expire July 24. And a specialised trade court ruled last month that they, too, were illegal – though the government can continue collecting them while that case works its way through the courts.

Unjustified tariffs

The European Commission said the tariffs were unjustified and reiterated its commitment to the trade deal sealed with Washington last year.

Bernd Lange, the chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee, which voted on Tuesday to accept that trade deal, said the new tariffs were expected, but said the results of the US investigation were still “utterly absurd” given a 2024 EU law to ban imports of forced labour products.

“The impression is increasingly emerging that a tariff measure is sought first, and only then is a suitable legal justification found,” he said. However, he added that the key question would be whether the additional tariffs would exceed those agreed between both sides last July.

The US’s largest trading partner, the EU, agreed last July to accept tariffs of 15 percent on a broad range of its exports. In its report, the USTR said the EU anti-forced labour measures only came into force in December 2027 and lacked key elements.

It was unclear whether the proposed tariffs – which the US release described as “additional duties” – would come on top of levies agreed in bilateral deals signed with the US.

Britain said it was in regular talks with the US and was taking action to tackle forced labour. It added that the preferential access to US markets that it had negotiated for UK businesses remained in place.

Mexico said that goods that were compliant under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) would be exempt from the new tariffs.

Taiwan said it was “hopeful and confident” that the final results would reflect agreements already reached, securing relatively preferential treatment.

Beijing, facing 12.5 percent tariffs, said that it opposed all forms of unilateral tariffs and that there was no forced labour in China. India, confronted with the same rate, said it was engaged with Washington on the Section 301 proceedings, noting the proposed tariffs were not final.

“There will be deep concerns in the international business community that the US [forced labour law could] become a global template,” said Andrew Wilson, deputy secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce.

“Anyone can make a claim, get a shipment impounded and the company has to prove no forced labour in supply chain.”

Certain exemptions

The USTR said it would exempt from tariffs products including energy, rare earths and some other metals, beef, coffee, certain fruits and vegetables, pharmaceuticals, organic chemicals and aircraft parts.

It also said it was proposing a textile mechanism that would allow for a certain volume of apparel and textile imports to enter the US at a reduced tariff rate, without giving details.

The ICC’s Wilson said the list of exemptions, stretching for more than 76 pages, suggested sensitivities over the potential cost-of-living hit to food and other goods with known forced-labour risks.

“It doesn’t make sense if the object of this is to enhance controls on modern slavery,” he said.

Mexico and Canada have backed extending the USMCA trade agreement for another 16 years as negotiations over its future continue. The proposal comes amid an ongoing trade dispute with the United States.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has proposed a new 25 percent tariff on imports from Brazil amid allegations of unfair trading practices.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the new punitive tariffs late on Monday, stemming from issues including digital trade and illegal deforestation.

The new tariffs would be imposed under Section 301 of US trade policy — a statute that gives the US government broad authority to impose trade sanctions based on violations of trade agreements, as well as what it deems “unfair” trade practices under the Trade Act of 1974.

Greer said there has been an investigation that began in July. The practices under investigation were related to issues such as illegal deforestation, ethanol market access, and anticorruption enforcement, among other key issues, according to the summary released by the US Department of Commerce on Tuesday.

In the 107-page document, the US government said that trade practices between the two nations “are unreasonable and burden or restrict US commerce”, and pointed to agreements that Brazil has with Mexico and India.

“Brazil’s trade arrangements with Mexico and India also create incentives to offshore US production by creating a financial advantage to exporting to Brazil from these countries, as opposed to exporting from the United States,” the document says.

There is a comment period for the general public to weigh in on the proposed tariffs, which begins on Thursday. The written comment period ends on July 1, and there will be a public hearing in Washington on July 6.

Beef, coffee, rare earths, other metals, energy, and aircraft parts are among the products that would be exempt from the tariffs.

On CNBC, Greer said that it would release more findings on unfair trade practices in the next several weeks in order to address what Greer called a “giant” trade deficit.

However, the data shows that the US maintains a trade surplus with Brazil. In March, Brazil bought more goods, worth $3.3bn, from the US than it exported at $2.9bn, representing a $420m trade surplus.

Other countries under investigation include China and Vietnam.

The new tariff would partially replace a tariff of 50 percent on many Brazilian goods imposed last year by Trump, with 40 percent serving as a punishment for Brazil’s prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally.

The White House also recently dropped tariffs on select aluminium, copper, and steel imports, which include agricultural equipment such as harvesters. Those tariffs will drop from 25 percent to 15 percent. The tariffs expire in December 2027.

The new tariffs come after the Supreme Court, in February, struck down the use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which the White House used to impose its sweeping global tariffs.

“They are the first of many new tariffs to replace the IEPPA national security tariffs. The period of public comment will allow for potential modest tweaks and exemptions. Ultimately, it will add to some inflation pressure compared to the last few months but not compared to a year earlier,” Rachel Ziemba, a senior adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Al Jazeera.

Political tensions

The changes come despite President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s visit to Washington last month, as relations have deteriorated in recent months.

The US State Department has also designated two of Brazil’s criminal gangs as “terrorist organisations”, a move that supported Senator Flavio Bolsonaro’s position, Lula’s main rival in October’s election, and over the objections of Brazilian officials.

“I expressly asked President Trump not to tariff our companies,” Bolsonaro wrote on X on Tuesday. “Tariffs are not the solution.”

The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Department of Commerce issues guidance on chip restrictions amid concerns about loopholes in export control regime.

The United States has issued a notice affirming its restrictions on shipments of semiconductors to subsidiaries of Chinese companies located outside China amid concerns about loopholes in Washington’s export control regime.

The Department of Commerce said in the guidance issued on Sunday that its licensing requirements for the export of advanced AI chips applied to all businesses with headquarters or a parent company in China.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), which falls under the Commerce Department, said it issued the clarification in response to questions about whether it was enforcing preexisting licence requirements after it had overturned former President Joe Biden’s AI Diffusion Framework.

“The answer is yes,” the BIS said in the notice.

Unveiled in the final days of the Biden administration, the AI Diffusion proposed the implementation of a globe-spanning framework to control access to AI chips, including export caps for all but the closest US allies.

The framework drew backlash from tech firms, including Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chip company, which cast the proposal as a threat to innovation and cross-border collaboration.

President Donald Trump’s administration scrapped the framework last May, ahead of its implementation, citing the “burdensome new regulatory requirements” and the harm it would do to Washington’s diplomatic relations with other countries.

Chip giant Nvidia, whose top-of-the-line Blackwell GPUs are banned for export to China, said it had already been operating in keeping with the clarified rules.

“The guidance reaffirms that NVIDIA’s sales and vetting process is correct – consistent with our existing approach, licences are required to ship controlled products to PRC headquartered companies,” a Nvidia spokesperson told Al Jazeera, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

AMD and Intel, Nvidia’s main competitors in the GPU space, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

TSMC, which manufactures the most advanced chips on behalf of clients such as Nvidia, did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The BIS also did not respond to inquiries.

Chris McGuire, a former State Department official who worked on technology policy in the Biden administration, accused the Trump administration of providing Chinese companies a loophole to buy export-controlled chips.

“Chinese companies have been buying these chips, very likely at scale. And because BIS has not updated export control regulations to clearly state what it IS enforcing, all of this was legal,” McGuire said in a post on X.

“This clarification does make clear that Blackwell shipments to China-headquartered companies outside of China are now illegal again – which is good, although obviously we have to see how many shipments have already gone to assess how much damage was done,” McGuire said.

“BIS’ statement acknowledges these shipments have been happening when it says companies who bought chips under this loophole don’t have to stop using them.”

The US has rolled out numerous restrictions on the supply of high-end technology to China, as Washington and Beijing battle for dominance in AI.

In December, Trump announced that he would allow Nvidia to sell its H200 chip to China, in a major loosening of Washington’s export controls.

While not Nvidia’s most advanced chip, the H200 is about six times as powerful as the H20, the most advanced chip previously allowed for export to China.

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.

Canada has announced plans to buy a fleet of early warning planes from Sweden’s Saab rather than a competing option from Boeing as it seeks to reduce its reliance on the United States.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Wednesday that Canada would opt for Saab’s GlobalEye, which is based on Bombardier’s Global 6500 jet. Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail plane – which has suffered from delays and cost overruns – had also been in contention.

“With a suite of advanced sensors and mission systems, Saab’s GlobalEye will be a key resource for the Canadian Armed Forces to detect and deter threats across the Arctic,” Carney told a defence conference in Ottawa.

The Prime Minister pledged in March that Canada would take full responsibility for protecting its vast Arctic territory, after relying for decades on a partnership with the US to monitor its more than 4.4 million square km (1.7 million square miles) of land and sea, a territory larger than India.

Carney’s Liberal government last year announced plans to ramp up defence spending. The US and other allies had complained for years that Canada was not meeting longstanding NATO targets on military expenditure; Carney announced in March that Canada hit that target of spending 2 percent of its GDP on defence last year.

In a statement, Saab said it planned to invest in research and development work in Canada as part of any deal.

Although Carney did not give details of the fleet size or the cost of a potential contract, military officials had earlier said they were looking to buy six early warning aircraft.

Philippe Lagasse, associate director of international affairs at Ottawa’s Carleton University, said Canada’s decision to buy the GlobalEye planes was “an important test case for the Carney government’s policy of pivoting away from American military capability”.

He said in a statement that the decision confirms Canada’s relationship with Sweden, a new NATO ally that has also been eager to strengthen its ties to the Canadian military.

Canada has previously said it wants to work more closely with the Nordic countries in the Arctic on defence and other issues, in a global environment in which the US has become a less reliable partner.

“GlobalEye is already creating jobs in Canada, and working with the Canadian supply chain. This decision ties our two nations even closer together,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a social media post.

Saab is also in the running to sell Canada some of its Gripen fighters.

Canada has a deal to buy 88 F-35 jets from Lockheed-Martin, but last year, after the US slapped tariffs on key Canadian imports, Carney asked the military to probe whether it could cut back the order and buy some planes from another manufacturer.

Carney later told reporters Ottawa would make a decision on the fighter fleet in due course and declined to comment when asked whether the military would be operating two jets.

Last week, a Pentagon official, speaking after Washington suspended planned biannual defence talks with Canada, said the delay in making a decision on the F-35s showed how Ottawa was prioritising politics over defence issues.

Still, Lagasse of Carleton University said he expected Canada would ultimately decide to stick with a fleet of F-35 jets rather than splitting the fleet by buying some Saab Gripens.

“If the government was determined to buy Gripens, I would have expected them to make the announcement alongside this [GlobalEye] decision,” he said.

Trade tensions

The announcement came amid ongoing trade tensions between US and Canada after US President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on Canada after taking office last year, alongside multiple comments threatening to annex the country and make it the 51st state of the US.

Historically, nearly 80 percent of Canada’s exports have been to the US. While the vast majority of those were protected under the USMCA, the trade agreement between the two countries that also includes Mexico, that is now due for a review, which starts on July 1, and Trump has said the US does not really need that deal.

While the US has announced bilateral talks with Mexico, there has been no mention of Canada.

Deputy US Trade Representative Jeffrey Goettman will lead bilateral talks in Mexico City on Thursday and Friday focused on “economic security and rules of origin for key industrial goods,” the department said in a statement on Wednesday.

USTR said the US and Mexico will hold a second round of negotiations in Washington on June 16-17, focused on agriculture and “a level playing field,” with a third set of talks in Mexico City scheduled for the week of July 20.

The first Trump administration held trilateral negotiating rounds with both Mexico and Canada to create the existing USMCA, which replaced the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement in 2020.

But so far, there have been few discussions between US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and his Canadian counterpart, Canada-US Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc, since early March, and no formal launch of a US-Canada negotiating process.

European Union agriculture ministers are meeting in Brussels to discuss the availability of fertiliser as the war on Iran disrupts global supply chains.

The talks come as the European Commission pushes a new Fertiliser Action Plan aimed at supporting farmers who face a significant rise in costs for fertilisers. It is hoped the measures could boost agricultural production and reduce Europe’s dependence on food imports.

The plan includes possible fertiliser stockpiles, emergency support for farmers and measures to increase imports from countries other than Russia and Belarus, which are involved in the war with Ukraine.

It comes amid disruption in the Strait of Hormuz caused by the US-Israel war on Iran. The vital shipping route normally carries about one-third of the world’s seaborne fertiliser trade, raising fears that rising fuel and fertiliser costs could place further pressure on farmers already struggling with high expenses.

While the EU is less directly impacted by fertiliser shortages than some other parts of the world, disruptions to supplies have exposed divisions within the bloc about how to protect food supplies and shield farmers from rising costs.

How exposed is Europe?

Europe imports large volumes of fertiliser, bringing in two million tonnes of ammonia, 5.8 million tonnes of urea and 6.7 million tonnes of nitrogen fertilisers and mixtures in 2024, according to EU data.

The EU also produces its own nitrogen fertiliser, but this depends heavily on imported gas. When conflicts in the Gulf region pushes up gas prices, it also makes fertiliser made inside Europe more expensive.

The blockade has raised concerns over global food security, particularly in Africa and South Asia, where countries are more dependent on Gulf supplies.

The Middle East accounts for only about 3 percent of the EU’s ammonia imports and 1 to 2 percent of its nitrogen fertiliser imports, so the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has not significantly affected European supplies.

But the bloc is still being hit through higher global prices and rising energy costs because European nitrogen fertiliser is made using gas, which has increased in price due to the disruption in the strait –  while some countries are more at risk to rising costs due to low stockpiles.

Nitrogen fertiliser prices in Europe are now about 70 percent above their 2024 average, according to reporting on the commission’s plan.

That vulnerability became clear after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when soaring gas prices forced several European fertiliser plants to scale back or temporarily shut down because production was no longer profitable.

The commission says its new plan combines immediate measures to improve affordability and security of supply with longer-term steps to strengthen domestic production and reduce dependence on imports.

What is the EU proposing?

The plan includes emergency financial support for farmers through the EU agricultural budget, liquidity schemes and more flexible advance payments under the Common Agricultural Policy.

The commission is also looking at ways to support farmers who reduce their reliance on synthetic fertilisers, including through bio-based alternatives and more efficient fertiliser use.

In a second measure, the EU has moved to suspend duties on some nitrogen fertilisers, including urea and ammonia, from countries other than Russia and Belarus. Some nitrogen fertiliser imports currently face tariffs of between 5.5 and 6.5 percent. The Reuters news agency reported that the suspension could save importers about 60 million euros ($68m).

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the plan was aimed at building “a stronger European fertiliser industry” while supporting farmers and accelerating “sustainable, home-grown solutions”.

But Irish Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon warned that rising fertiliser prices caused by the Middle East crisis would affect the cost of food production and the competitiveness of European farmers.

“The rise in fertiliser prices as a result of the Middle East crisis will impact on the cost of food production and, consequently, on the economic sustainability and competitiveness of European farmers,” he said.

Which countries are most exposed?

The impact is not evenly spread across Europe, with Ireland particularly vulnerable because it has little domestic fertiliser production and depends heavily on imports. Its livestock-heavy farming system also relies on nitrogen fertiliser for grassland, with many farmers buying supplies between February and September.

Ireland imported 1.7 million tonnes of fertiliser in 2025, leaving farmers exposed to international price swings.

Other countries are better prepared. Finland has long maintained security-of-supply stockpiles that include fertiliser, grain and fuel. Sweden has also announced plans to stockpile fertiliser, seeds and grain as part of its “total defence” strategy after joining NATO.

There are also divisions inside the EU over how far Brussels should go. Italy and France have pushed for relief from the bloc’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which adds costs to carbon-intensive imports.

Some farming unions argue that the carbon levy has become another cost for farmers at a time of crisis. Environmental groups, however, have warned Brussels not to weaken nitrogen pollution rules, saying that doing so could increase pollution and health costs if excess nitrates enter water supplies.

Poland and Germany, meanwhile, home to major nitrogen fertiliser producers, have been more focused on opposing any measures that could weaken protections for domestic industry – and are therefore more opposed to reducing levies on imports.

Will food prices rise?

EU officials are not expecting an immediate food price shock, with many farmers in the bloc still using fertiliser bought long before the Iran war disrupted supply chains.

But officials are concerned that higher fertiliser costs could create problems in supply chains later in the year. Fertiliser affects food prices with a delay, as gas becomes fertiliser, fertiliser then feeds crops, and crops eventually become food – so the effects are often felt up to six months after the initial disruption.

Meanwhile, there are fears that anger in rural areas already hit by higher fuel, energy and input costs could lead to a backlash against green policies in the EU at a time when right-wing and populist parties are gaining ground in Europe.

But Europe still remains less exposed than many regions. The most severe risks are in countries more dependent on Gulf fertiliser and energy supplies, especially in parts of Africa and South Asia.

At least 24 people were killed and more than 50 injured when a suicide car bomb detonated on a train carrying soldiers in Quetta, capital of the southwestern Pakistani province of Balochistan, on Sunday.

The attack came amid Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s four-day visit to China, and the day before his meeting in Beijing with China’s President Xi Jinping, marking 75 years of diplomatic ties between the two nations.

Pakistan is among an exclusive group of countries China regards as an “all-weather strategic partner”, with ties featuring close economic, trade and security cooperation.

Responsibility for the train attack was claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), an armed Baloch separatist group which, apart from calling for an independent state, also strongly objects to large-scale Chinese investment in the region.

While the BLA has long carried out attacks that have killed civilians and members of the security forces in Balochistan and beyond, there has been a recent uptick in such incidents.

We examine what is behind this increase in attacks:

What happened in Sunday’s attack?

Reporting from the scene, Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder said several houses and buildings adjacent to the railway line were severely damaged in the blast, which caused train carriages to overturn and catch fire.

According to local media reports, a state of emergency was declared at public hospitals in Quetta, with doctors and other medical staff ordered to remain on duty.

Footage shared online showed charred vehicles and train carriages lying on their sides, with thick plumes of black smoke rising into the sky.

Pakistan has experienced several attacks by separatist groups in recent months. The attacks have increased in ferocity and have also targeted Chinese workers amid protests over Beijing-backed infrastructural projects in Balochistan.

As part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project – one of the main arms of China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” designed to improve trading routes – China’s Xinjiang region has been connected to Pakistan’s deep-sea Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea in Balochistan.

Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif condemned Sunday’s train attack in Quetta in a post on X.

“Such cowardly acts of terrorism cannot weaken the resolve of the people of Pakistan. We remain steadfast in our determination to eliminate terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” he said.

He added that while initial reports indicated a suicide bombing, this has not been officially confirmed. If it is, Yunas Samad, an emeritus professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Bradford in the UK, told Al Jazeera, “this would reflect tactics that insurgent organisations in the region have increasingly adopted over recent years”.

“There are also persistent claims regarding the circulation of sophisticated weaponry originating from stockpiles left behind after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan,” he said.

Are we seeing a new phase of armed separatist attacks in Balochistan?

According to research gathered by the independent, Islamabad-based think tank Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, Balochistan recorded at least 254 attacks in 2025 – roughly 26 percent more than in 2024.

A December 2025 report published by independent conflict monitor Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) found that separatists had also intensified attacks and pressure on security forces. The report said the number of attacks using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and grenades, mainly targeting convoys and police stations, grew by more than 65 percent in the first 11 months of 2025, compared to the same time period in 2024.

The Global Terrorism Index (GTI) report this year found that there has been more Baloch armed group activity in Pakistan in 2025 as well. The GTI is an annual report published by the Australia-based independent think tank Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

Its 2026 report states that the BLA was responsible for Pakistan’s largest terror attack of 2025 – when the Jaffar Express, a train travelling from Quetta to Peshawar, was hijacked in March.

The BLA claimed responsibility and reported that six military personnel had been killed. Hundreds of people were taken hostage from the train, which was carrying 400 passengers.

“What can reasonably be said is that, following the earlier coordinated attack on the Jaffar Express, the Pakistani authorities appear to have intensified security measures around transport infrastructure, military personnel and key lines of communication,” Samad, of Bradford University, told Al Jazeera.

“The fact that this latest incident nevertheless occurred may suggest that militant groups retain a significant operational capability despite those efforts,” he noted.

The group stunned Pakistan’s security establishment in 2022 when it ‌stormed army and navy bases. In August 2024, militants carried out coordinated ⁠attacks across Balochistan, including highway assaults in which passengers were pulled from buses and shot after identity checks.

“While statistics in such conflicts are always contested and should be treated cautiously, they do indicate that the intensity of the conflict has not significantly diminished,” Samad said.

“Whether this constitutes an entirely ‘new phase’ is perhaps too strong a conclusion at present. However, it does appear to indicate a degree of resurgence in militant capability and confidence among sections of the Baloch insurgency.”

Who are the BLA and major Baloch armed groups?

The BLA, which has a suicide squad called the Majeed Brigade, says it is fighting for the independence of Balochistan, a province located in Pakistan’s southwest and bordering Afghanistan to the north and ⁠Iran to the west.

It is the largest of several ethnic separatist groups that have been fighting the federal government for decades. Balochistan’s mountainous border region serves as a safe haven and training ground for both Baloch separatist fighters and Islamist armed groups.

The BLA often targets infrastructure and security forces in Balochistan, but has also struck in other areas – most notably the southern port city of Karachi.

The BLA has deployed women suicide bombers, including in an attack on Chinese nationals in Karachi, and was designated a “foreign terrorist organisation” by the United States in August 2025 in a move welcomed by the Pakistani government. Analysts say BLA is particularly known for its ability to recruit young, often well-educated fighters.

The group, separately, was at the centre of tit-for-tat strikes in 2024 between Iran and Pakistan over what each said were armed group bases on each other’s territory, which brought the neighbours to the brink of war.

What is the Baloch cause?

Home to about 15 million of Pakistan’s roughly 240 million people, according to the 2023 census, Balochistan is the country’s poorest region despite its wealth of natural resources, including coal, gold, copper and gas.

These resources generate significant revenue for the federal government – unfairly, according to the BLA, which wants Balochistan’s natural wealth to belong to its people and rejects federal control over resource extraction and security.

The province is Pakistan’s largest by area, but smallest by population. It has a long Arabian Sea coastline, not far from the Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz oil shipping lane.

Balochistan is also home to one of Pakistan’s major deep-sea ports at Gwadar, a crucial trade corridor for China’s $65bn investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a wing of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative.

The province is home to key mining projects, including Reko Diq, which is operated by Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold and is believed to be one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines.

China also operates a gold and copper mine in Balochistan.

The province – which was annexed by Pakistan in 1948, six months after partition from India in August 1947 – has a long history of marginalisation. It has since experienced at least five separatist uprisings.

Separatist sentiment was particularly high in the 2000s, around the time the BLA emerged. Analysts of Baloch resistance movements say it was led by Balach Marri, the son of veteran Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri.

After the government of military ruler Pervez Musharraf killed prominent Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti in 2006, the separatist movement escalated.

Rebel fighters have targeted Pakistan’s army and Chinese interests, in particular the strategic port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, accusing Beijing of helping Islamabad to exploit the province. Fighters have killed Chinese citizens working in the region and attacked Beijing’s consulate and language centre in Karachi.

More recently, the BLA has also attacked civilians and migrant labourers from other provinces, a shift that officials say marks an escalation in tactics.

Pakistan accuses India and Afghanistan of backing Baloch armed fighters, an allegation both countries deny.

“Baloch separatist groups themselves have, at times, sought to internationalise their cause and last year publicly appealed for diplomatic recognition by India,” Samad said.

“However, establishing clear evidence of direct state support is considerably more difficult, and much of the discussion in this area remains politically contested.”

Hundreds of Baloch activists, many of them women, have protested in Islamabad and Balochistan over alleged abuses by security forces – accusations the government denies.

Over time, the BLA has set itself apart as a group explicitly committed to Balochistan’s full independence from Pakistan. Unlike more moderate Baloch nationalist parties, which press politically for greater provincial autonomy, the BLA has consistently rejected compromise.

Why is this significant now?

Regional stability and international investment

The attack comes as Prime Minister Sharif meets with China’s President Xi in Beijing to discuss economic and security cooperation – something the BLA is strongly opposed to.

The movement could pose a challenge to Pakistan’s attempts to retain Chinese and American investment, experts say, if it reveals a deeper instability.

The Baloch separatist movement is one of the major unresolved questions over Pakistan’s statehood. It is a constant reminder of the challenges of the Pakistani state to stay united, they say.

“More broadly, the persistence of insurgency has had implications for Pakistan’s wider political system,” Samad explained. “Security concerns in Balochistan have increasingly shaped governance and political discourse, strengthening the role of the military and security establishment in national affairs and undermining the democratisation process.”

“Internationally, the issue matters because Pakistan remains a nuclear-armed state of enormous strategic importance,” Samad told Al Jazeera.

“While speculation about state fragmentation is highly premature, any significant escalation in internal instability in a country with nuclear capabilities inevitably attracts international concern. For that reason alone, developments in Balochistan are likely to remain closely watched both regionally and globally.”

Rare-earth metals

Another major issue is that geological assessments suggest Balochistan contains 12 of the 17 rare-earth minerals on the periodic table. Rare earths are critical minerals used to manufacture a vast array of modern items, including batteries, clocks, wiring, military hardware, smartphones and semiconductors, among other technological products.

Since the start of his second term, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed plans to diversify Washington’s stockpile of critical minerals in order to reduce reliance on China, which currently dominates the supply and processing of the world’s rare-earth minerals.

When Pakistan’s Prime Minister Sharif met with Trump at the White House in September 2025, he offered the US access to critical minerals and rare earths.

Then, in December 2025, the US announced a $1.25bn investment in critical minerals mining at Reko Diq to drive “economic growth in Balochistan”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in China on Tuesday evening for a two-day visit centred on talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as Moscow and Beijing draw closer amid war, sanctions and an increasingly fractured global order.

Putin’s visit is the second face-to-face meeting he has held with Xi in less than a year and coincides with the 25th anniversary of the 2001 Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, the agreement that formalised ties between Russia and China following decades of ideological rivalry and mutual suspicion.

The visit comes just days after United States President Donald Trump left Beijing following his own two-day visit to the Chinese capital for meetings with Xi.

Both Moscow and Beijing are navigating tricky relations with Washington, with analysts saying the unpredictability of Trump’s foreign policy has had the effect of pushing Russia and China even closer together.

Their deepening partnership also comes against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, mounting tensions around Iran, and disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz – a crisis that has rattled global energy markets and renewed Beijing’s concerns over the security of its oil and gas supplies.

With one of the world’s most strategically vital waterways under threat, China has increasingly turned towards Russia as a reliable overland energy supplier.

Analysts say Xi’s decision to host Trump and Putin within the space of a week is no coincidence, reflecting Beijing’s attempt to cast itself as a trusted actor in an increasingly fragmented and volatile world order.

How have China-Russia relations changed over the decades?

China and Russia have long occupied a complicated place in each other’s histories. Once bound together through communist ideology and shared opposition to Western capitalism, the Soviet Union and Maoist China later became bitter rivals, with tensions along their 4,300km (2,670-mile) border bringing the two countries close to conflict during the Cold War.

However, that border has since transformed from a frontier of insecurity into one of strategic cooperation and trade.

Neither Xi nor Putin is a frequent international traveller. Putin is the subject of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant over the war in Ukraine, while Xi rarely leaves China other than for carefully choreographed state visits. But both leaders have invested heavily in maintaining personal ties with each other.

The two have repeatedly called each other “friends”, and their relationship has deepened, particularly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which pushed Moscow further into international isolation and forced the Kremlin to look southeastwards for trade amid Western sanctions.

“Russia and China look confidently towards the future,” Putin said in remarks carried by Russian state media ahead of the visit.

He said the two countries were “actively developing cooperation in politics, economics, defence, expanding cultural exchanges, and fostering interpersonal interaction”.

“In essence, jointly doing everything to deepen bilateral cooperation and advance global development for the wellbeing of both nations,” Putin added.

Why Russia needs China

China has become an economic lifeline for Russia as the country’s economy has shifted to a wartime footing, with two-way trade between the countries more than doubling between 2020 and 2024, when it reached $237bn for the year.

But the relationship is also uneven. While China is Russia’s largest trading partner, Russia accounts for only about four percent of China’s total international trade. China’s economy is also vastly larger, and Beijing holds considerably more leverage in negotiations between the two sides.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has become increasingly reliant on Chinese technology and manufacturing. A recent Bloomberg report found Russia was sourcing more than 90 percent of its sanctioned technology imports from China, including components with military and dual-use applications vital to drone production and other defence industries.

China has also emerged as a crucial buyer of Russian oil and other energy products at a time when European markets have largely closed to Moscow in response to the Russia-Ukraine war. With Western sanctions restricting Russia’s options, the Kremlin has few viable alternatives to China’s scale of demand.

Analysts say the imbalance means Beijing is often able to negotiate from a position of strength, securing access to Russian oil and gas at discounted prices while expanding its influence over Moscow’s economic future.

Why China still needs Russia

While the relationship is uneven, it is not one-sided. Russia provides something increasingly valuable in a turbulent world: secure access to vast energy resources beyond vulnerable maritime trade routes.

The war surrounding Iran and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz have heightened Beijing’s concerns over energy security, given China’s heavy dependence on imported oil and gas passing through contested shipping lanes.

That has renewed attention on the proposed Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, a long-delayed project expected to feature prominently in this week’s discussions.

If completed, the pipeline would transport 50 billion cubic metres of Russian gas annually to China via Mongolia, significantly expanding energy flows between the two countries.

But it is more than just an economic relationship. China also values Russia as a geopolitical partner. Both countries are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and frequently align diplomatically in opposition to US-led policies.

While analysts say China has been careful not to become formally tied to Moscow through a rigid military alliance, the two countries have still gradually reinforced their partnership through increasingly regular joint military exercises, including the “Joint Sea” naval drills that began in 2012.

Last year, China and Russia launched fresh naval drills in the Sea of Japan near the Russian port of Vladivostok, with exercises focused on submarine rescue, anti-submarine warfare, air defence, missile defence and maritime combat operations. Analysts say the drills help signal strategic alignment between Beijing and Moscow without the mutual defence commitments of a formal alliance.

Experts say the strength of the partnership lies in its flexibility. While Western governments have often portrayed the relationship as fragile and driven largely by a shared opposition to the West, analysts say, it may prove more durable because it is rooted in shared economic and strategic interests rather than ideology alone.