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The rescue of the F-15E weapon systems officer (WSO) missing in Iran after his fighter was shot down was one of the most complex and dangerous missions the U.S. military can undertake. These kinds of operations can come in many forms. In this case, before the WSO was finally recovered from the mountain crevice where he was hiding, a forward arming and refueling point (FARP) deep inside enemy territory had to be rapidly set up and secured so that it could act as a staging area for the aircraft, equipment and troops taking part in the mission. This is an exact mission set U.S. special operations forces train for extensively.

To get more insights about how such a FARP would be set up and operated, we reached out to Kyle Rempfer, a former Special Tactics Squadron (STS) airman who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. STS units are an elite cadre of operators who work to control aircraft in the air, including from airfields they establish deep inside contested territory, and direct airpower onto the enemy, among other duties, including rescuing personnel trapped behind enemy lines. They are often paired with special operations units, such as SEALs, Delta Force and Rangers, to bring their unique skills to their missions.

Air Force Special Tactics – the Air Force’s ONLY Special Operations Ground Force

Rempfer, a journalist and former colleague of the author at Military Times, offered unique insights into the process as someone who trained for these missions.

Some of the questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

Q: What happens in the Special Tactics Squadron level when the word comes out that there’s an aircraft down deep into enemy territory? 

A: By this point in the campaign, Air Force Special Tactics teams – which are made up of combat controllers (CCTs) and pararescue jumpers (PJs) – would have surveyed or identified scores of Iranian runways and austere airfields that can be used for landing zones or drop zones down the line. Even if CCTs hadn’t set foot on these sites, they’d have pulled imagery of the locations and started using tools like AutoCAD, a surveying and mapping software, to sketch out the dimensions of an airfield and identify what type of aircraft could land there. Is this a site that could only work for a light short take off and landing (STOL) aircraft, or could we land something bigger like a C-17? Those types of questions are on their minds. And since this event appears to have happened near the Isfahan nuclear facility, it can be assumed that Special Tactics has been scoping out landing zones in that area since at least this war started, maybe far earlier. 

For this mission, the Special Tactics team just needed someplace to land a couple of MC-130J Commando IIs. Those are designed to infiltrate and exfiltrate special operations troops into and out of the hinterlands, so an agricultural runway intended for crop-spraying planes would fit the bill in terms of dimensions. But on the ground, the soil strength might not hold up for repeat landings, or perhaps the recent weather has eroded the area or left it muddy. That can have an impact, and there are tools like dynamic cone penetrometers that Special Tactics teams use to assess soil strength. They’ve used those and a host of other tools to scout airfields all around potential conflict zones in Africa, northern Iraq, Syria, etc., but given the tight security in Iran, that probably was not feasible to do in advance here. So the soil strength might have been a known-unknown going in. 

Q: What would happen once the FARP is set up?

A: They can do these fast. Everything is prestaged, even inside the MC-130. AH-6 Little Bird helicopters were probably offloaded and taking off within minutes, not hours, and beaming toward the WSO’s beacon. At that point, the team at the FARP site is pulling security and talking to all the aircraft overhead. Those pilots and aircrews are using sensors to monitor all the roadways that plausibly lead to the site, and potentially even putting warheads on those roadways to make them unusable. We know there were some diversionary bomb drops as part of the rescue, so they could also take that time to put big potholes in the roads.

Q: Can you talk about what systems, personnel and equipment would have secured the site?

A: The people who are surveying and setting up the landing zone and FARP are probably CCTs [Combat Control Teams] from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron. They would have had imagery to look at ahead of the mission, but you might not know what level of stress the ground can take until you physically get there. CCTs are trained to inspect that, blow up obstacles on the runway if needed, scan enemy activity around the landing site, etc., and then set up the austere airfield to start accepting planes and helos. They might not have had time to do a full-on reconnaissance mission, of course. 

CCTs have dirt bikes, something like a Kawasaki KLR 250, that they can drive up and down the airstrip for quickly setting up lights and visually inspecting the terrain. The lights they’d use to create the airstrip would be set up to infrared mode so only people with night vision devices can see them. This isn’t the early days of Afghanistan, though, and night vision devices have proliferated to such a degree that infrared lights are no longer the game changer they once were. However, it still prevents civilians from seeing the operation at night, and that is important given reports that Iranian state media was mobilizing the population to look for the downed airman. 

Q: Who would be brought in for force protection?

A: The CCTs of course are not alone at the landing zone. They had DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6) for security and dozens of aircraft backing them up with an absolutely jarring amount of aerial firepower. CCTs are usually also certified JTACs so they can manage the aircraft stacks not just for landing the MC-130s and AH-6s returning from the WSO rescue, but also the dozens of aircraft overhead that can fire at targets as necessary.

Q: Reports indicate that the WSO climbed up a 7,000 foot crevice and hid out there with intermittent communications while the Iranians were looking for him. How does that complicate things? And what would the team on the ground be doing?

A: I imagine that all the communications would have been encrypted – not anything that the Iranians could listen in on. For the guys on the ground, the biggest situation is monitoring to make sure that other forces aren’t approaching the area and protecting that forward arming and refueling site, because while it’s not a base, for all intensive purposes it is the center of mass of the most U.S. forces, the safest zone you have. So basically probably just protected that site. 

Q: What would be happening in the air?

A: You would have ISR assets that would be scanning the area, and not just the immediate area, but probably any roads and highways leading up to where that FARP site was set up. They would be watching anyone who could possibly be approaching. 

That whole area would just be soaked with ISR assets, and I know the Iranians knocked out two Reaper drones during the operation. So presumably, there was plenty of ISR. 

There would be a mix of attack and surveillance aircraft. There would be dozens of aircraft available for this mission. That is great for the team on the ground, but just like an air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan Airport in DC can be overburdened, so will the JTAC who’s on the ground controlling all these different pilots and aircrews calling in to report threats they’ve spotted, relay their fuel or munitions status, report radio chatter they’re picking up from the ground, etc. This could require multiple JTACs on the ground, and probably also pilots in A-10s or F-35s who can act as an extra layer of forward air control in the sky, handling aircraft check-ins and keeping track of specific assets so the JTACs on the ground aren’t losing their minds mind handling a massive air stack behind enemy lines. 

Most CCTs also have a JTAC certification, so they can help call in airstrikes as needed to protect the FARP site. And attack aircraft, like A-10s, or multi-role fighters, like F-35s, also have pilots who are certified as Forward Air Controller (Airborne) — or FAC(A). The E-3 can also provide a command and control function to help manage this complex battlespace. 

Q: How difficult is a mission like this? What are the dangers?

A: This would have been a hot refueling site, with engines running refueling, and you’re doing all that blacked out, and you have to probably keep the amount of radio chatter on the ground to a minimum because you don’t know if maybe Iran does have something where they can break through the encryption. 

So I would imagine that the danger is even more than just the IRGC coming in and shooting at you. The danger is  the technicalities that you’re dealing with, with the forward  arming and refueling sites and all these aircraft moving around under night vision in blacked out conditions in a tight area. It’s a small airfield, you have to keep your signature low.

Thankfully, they were able to get more aircraft in to usher everyone out. But that just shows how even what they were dealing with, the runway probably wasn’t built to handle these kinds of aircraft, or not maintained. 

Clearly this kind of operation – where you’re coming in, setting up an airfield, whether it’s for a follow-on parachute jump or even just air landing more troops and supplies – would be repeated in most of the other scenarios people are talking about. For instance, going in and digging out Iran’s enriched uranium. I think it would have to be pretty similar. You would send in a special tactics team with some Ranger recce guys, and the Ranger reconnaissance company would maybe parachute in, and check out the airfield, and they would start bringing in the MC-130s. It’s going to be a remote, austere airfield. It’s not going to be easy to land aircraft there, it’s not going to be well maintained, and you’re going to run into a lot of problems on the ground with aircraft. 

In addition to the fixed-wing planes, the U.S. also destroyed a reported four Little Birds on the way out. Imagine if you’re trying to do sustained operations bringing aircraft in, that all those aircraft are wearing down that obscure runway as you’re coming in, and you’re having more and more troops flow in. Your signature is going to be bigger and it’s going to be there for a longer time. 

So this is how you create a window into a country to conduct follow-on operations. In this case, it was just to look for one guy and pick him up. But, they’re obviously looking at runways and airfields all across the country, whether they’re actual runways that are in use by the Iranian government or municipal governments, or if they’re just like roads that they can use or dirt fields that they think they can land on. So this rescue mission was probably a snapshot into larger operational planning.

Q: After the rescue of the pilot, the search for the WSO seemed to turn fairly quickly from a traditional PJ mission to a Tier One rescue operation. Can you talk about that transition and how those two fit together?

A: That’s right. From my understanding, there were two missions. The first was a traditional CSAR mission that was launched in daylight immediately after the F-15E went down. This likely involved the PJs from a rescue squadron that was on standby. They were aboard HH-60W Jolly Greens and had refueling support from an HC-130J. That mission is obviously very risky and time sensitive. They’re flying low and slow, in daylight, and vulnerable to ground fire. We saw people shooting at them with small arms, which probably won’t do much barring really lucky shots, but the crews are still exposed to man portable air defense systems (MANPADS).

You can see Iranians firing small arms at the CSAR aircraft in the following video.

This initial CSAR package successfully recovered the F-15E pilot, who would have had a beacon and survival radio. But obviously the WSO was still at large. Perhaps they knew his location but couldn’t get to him before the region came alive like a bees’ nest – with everyone from locals to actual security forces scouring the scene. At that point, it appears the mission shifted from a more traditional CSAR operation conducted by a rescue squadron to something we’re actually more familiar with from Afghanistan and Iraq – Tier One raids into denied territory. This makes sense to me because this was the single most important mission going on, and it makes sense to flood this with assets to successfully pull off a second pick up. In a bigger war, I doubt downed aircrew can expect JSOC rescue parties every time one of them goes down. 

A lot of people were surprised that MC-130s and AH-6s were used for this, but it actually reminds me a lot of the early Afghanistan missions Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted in fall 2001, before the Taliban fell. At least one of these involved Air Force Special Tactics CCTs parachuting into a remote part of Afghanistan, setting up a dirt airstrip, landing two MC-130s, off-loading a couple of Little Birds and then flying those around all night striking Taliban targets.

This rescue raid isn’t too different. It sounds like Air Force Special Tactics CCTs surveyed the airfield in advance – maybe in person, maybe just using satellite imagery – and then brought in the MC-130s that held the AH-6s to actually conduct the rescue that grabbed the WSO. This sort of scheme makes sense given the distance inside Iran. The MC-130s can bring extra fuel and ammunition to set up a mini-special ops refueling and re-arming site.

One thing to note here is why the commandos reportedly blew up the MC-130s on the way out. If the government’s version of events is accurate, this might have been because the runway was not suitable for the MC-130s and those planes got stuck or damaged landing there. The CCTs may have known this was a possibility but determined it was the least bad option. There’s also the possibility the aircraft were more damaged by enemy fire than we’ve been told. We may never know. 

Q: What would be the biggest danger from the Iranians? Indirect fire like artillery? Drones?

A: Hard for me to say. If the team had the element of surprise, which it seemed to, then the Iranians would have been caught off guard enough that they didn’t have time to stage artillery or have drones already scanning the area. In that case, I could see the biggest threat being local police or civilians stumbling upon the site early in the mission. As the operation gets underway, the noise signature would probably attract more and more attention. And then you have IRGC teams speeding to the scene. If they’re moving fast, they might only have small arms, maybe some belt-fed machine guns, small caliber mortars, and potentially MANPADs. The longer the U.S. team was on the ground, the more time Iran had to rush forces to the scene and that’s when things appeared to get dicey, the Army’s Delta Force reportedly had to blow in place the MC-130s and call in a quick reaction force (QRF) for pickup. 

Because people keep asking, the WSO was extracted on little birds flying STS and DEVGRU. Smoke checked 9 EKIA on tgt. The QRF that got called in for the FARP was from Delta. https://t.co/mmCbzrRjys

— Jack Murphy (@JackMurphyRGR) April 5, 2026

This is also why having so many aircraft overhead would be useful. Not only are those planes there to strike targets, they can listen to enemy communications and local civilian radio chatter, they can use their sensors to scan all the routes leading up to the airfield, and they can use jamming and spoofing to befuddle the Iranian response. All that helps buy time. 

Q: What kinds of geospatial tools would have been used to find and prep the site and carry out the mission?

A: I imagine in advance of this mission the airfields and runways in this area were pre-scouted using satellite imagery. I’m probably too out of date to go into specifics even if I wanted to, but we have very high resolution satellite imagery that’s available in the commercial space and is very impressive. Additionally, aircraft can fly over sites and scan the terrain using LIDAR to build 3D maps of the environment. Suffice to say, the CCTs would have a great picture of the environment before going in, but being physically on the ground shows new problems — can the soil hold up to landing an MC-130? How fine is the sand? When the AH-6s take off, are they creating a brown-out environment? 

In an ideal scenario, the CCTs could parachute in before the main mission, conducting a high-altitude, high-opening (HAHO) jump and then confirming on the ground that the site will work to land an MC-130. We don’t know if that’s what happened, but if the reporting is accurate that an MC-130 got stuck and had to be blown up in place, then perhaps they made a mistake or – my bet – they knew the runway was rough and accepted the risk.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

Seoul says Pyongyang has not been supplying Iran with weapons in the hopes of being able to reopen diplomatic dialogue with the US.

North Korea appears to be distancing itself from longtime partner Iran in the hopes of forming a new relationship with the United States, South Korean intelligence believes.

Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) sees no signs that North Korea has sent weapons or supplies to Tehran since the US-Israel war on Iran began at the end of February, lawmaker Park Sun-won, who attended a closed-door briefing held by the NIS, said on Sunday.

While Iran’s other allies China and Russia have frequently issued statements on the US-Israel war on Iran, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry has only issued two toned-down statements so far, said the NIS.

While Pyongyang did condemn the US and Israeli attacks on Iran as illegal, it did not issue public condolences after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death or send a congratulatory message when Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, succeeded him.

The spy agency said Pyongyang is likely adopting this cautious approach to position it for a new diplomatic chapter with the US once the Middle East conflict subsides, said Park.

The NIS also told lawmakers that it now believes Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un is grooming his teenage daughter as his successor, citing a recent public display of her driving a tank.

The NIS said the imagery was intended to highlight the supposed military aptitude of the youngster, who is believed to be around 13 and named Ju Ae.

Such scenes are intended to pay “homage” to Kim’s own public military appearances during the early 2010s, when he was being prepared to succeed his father, Park said.

Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, was earlier thought to be a leading candidate to succeed her brother.

On Monday, she was in North Korean headlines as she welcomed an apology issued by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Sunday over a January drone incursion.

“The ROK [Republic of Korea] president personally expressed regret and talked about a measure for preventing recurrence. Our government appreciated it as very fortunate and wise behaviour for its own sake,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Seoul initially denied any official role in the January drone incursion, with authorities suggesting it was the work of civilians, but Lee said a probe had revealed government officials had been involved.

“We express regret to the North over the unnecessary military tensions caused by the irresponsible and reckless actions of some individuals,” Lee said.

Lee has sought to repair ties with North Korea since taking office last year, criticising his predecessor for allegedly sending drones to scatter propaganda over Pyongyang.

His repeated overtures, however, have gone unanswered by the North until now.

Lee’s expression of regret follows Kim’s labelling of Seoul as the “most hostile state” in a policy address in March in which he vowed to “thoroughly reject and disregard it”.

Why are many Latin American countries shutting down nonprofit organizations? Amnesty International claims it has the answer: in every case, it’s part of a drive to restrict human rights and “tear up the social fabric.”

Amnesty’s new 95-page report (in Spanish, with an English summary), criticizes governments across the political spectrum for attacking what it calls “civil society organizations.” But Amnesty ignores the history of many such organizations and therefore why governments might be justified in closing them.

Here we focus on the report’s deficiencies in relation to Nicaragua, Venezuela (two NGOs interviewed in each) and Cuba (none).

Data-light analysis supports preconceived conclusions

Amnesty’s report is strikingly thin. Unlike many other Amnesty investigations, this one provides scarce case studies or incidents, almost no statistics, few named victims or affected organizations, and little discussion of specific crackdowns. In most cases, substantive content about a particular country is assumed to apply to all countries.

Amnesty conducted interviews with only 15 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across six countries: Nicaragua, Venezuela, Paraguay, Peru, El Salvador and Ecuador. Its analysis extended to two more, Guatemala and Cuba, where no interviews took place. Yet the six countries alone have around 40,000 NGOs between them, making Amnesty’s sample minuscule. In none of the countries did Amnesty do any direct fieldwork.

Amnesty did not consult with any government sources or individuals close to governments, resulting in a one-sided narrative. According to Amnesty, the issues “should not be interpreted as… differentiation between the countries analyzed.” Thus, countries as politically different as Ecuador and Nicaragua are painted with the same brush.

While claiming to expose the real purpose of these laws, Amnesty fails to explain their political context, despite the widespread and documented use made of NGOs by the US to destabilize countries.

The authors emailed Amnesty with our key criticisms. In a lengthy response, Mariana Marques, Amnesty’s South America Researcher & Advisor, claimed that “the report intentionally prioritizes depth and comparability [between the chosen countries].” However, this is difficult to accept given that the report’s sweeping generalizations are mechanically applied to all six.

The authors also asked Amnesty if they had considered evidence that NGOs in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba have indeed engaged in political activities – that would very likely be illegal in Western countries such as the US? Did they consider whether allegations that NGOs provoked political violence or other criminal activities might be true? In response, Ms. Marques wrote: “The report does not adjudicate case‑by‑case allegations about individual organizations.”

Nevertheless, the report apparently identified “selective enforcement” and “sanctions” that were “disproportionate.” But how could they reach an impartial judgment on the fairness of a government’s actions without considering whether the alleged infractions might have actually occurred?

Destabilization claims go unexamined

If governments justify their laws as efforts to halt foreign-funded destabilization, surely Amnesty should ask whether such claims have merit. Here are some examples that Amnesty might have considered:

• In Cuba, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spent $15.5 million from 2009 through 2012 running “civil society” programs aimed at secretly stirring up anti-government activism. Then in just one year (2020), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – a reported CIA cutout itself masquerading as an NGO even though it is largely funded by the US government – financed 40 civil-society projects in Cuba with sums up to $650,000. According to the Cuban government, these groups were directly involved in violent demonstrations that affected Cuba in July 2021.

• In Nicaragua, which suffered a major coup attempt in 2018, Global Americans reported that the NED was “laying the groundwork for insurrection” even as the violence was taking place. NED and other bodies bragged to Congress about their regime-change efforts, and the Council on Hemispheric Affairs described in detail how NGOs indoctrinated young Nicaraguans.

• In Venezuela, USAID corroborated the use of NGOs to further US regime-change activities; since 2017 it provided “more than $158 million in humanitarian aid in Venezuela” through questionably “impartial” organizations.

Well-substantiated examples of Washington’s huge investment, extending over many years, to create or infiltrate NGOs in the three countries and use them to provoke anti-government violence, were of no interest to Amnesty researchers.

Rather, the report focuses on restrictions on access to foreign funding, which allegedly have “chilling effects on legitimate human‑rights work.” Amnesty’s refusal to “map individual donors” prevents scrutiny about the purpose of Washington’s funding for NGOs, which are often framed in vague terms such as “promoting democracy” or “strengthening civic society.”

Had the researchers talked to actual NGOs doing humanitarian work, they might have heard testimony such as this one from Rita Di Matiatt with Master Mama, a Venezuelan NGO dedicated to offering support to breastfeeding mothers: “NGOs that conspire against the stability and rights of a nation or its citizens, as well as everything that does not comply with the norms and laws of a country must be held accountable.” Venezuelan National Assembly deputy Julio Chávez expressed concern about such NGO’s working “to generate destabilization.”

And, indeed, the current NED president, Damon Wilson, recently confirmed that Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela are his highest priorities in the region.

Comparison with other countries

Amnesty claims a “global” trend toward laws resembling Russia’s “foreign agents” legislation. However, a more relevant comparison is the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) which is really the model.

The US has some of the world’s strongest and most detailed regulatory powers governing NGOs. Indeed, the US typically closes around 44,000 nonprofits annually that fail to comply. This is not unusual. The Charity Commission in Britain closes around 4,000 nonprofits each year. New regulations have led to large-scale closures in India, Turkey, South Africa and elsewhere.

Washington’s foreign agents act is not unique: The Library of Congress has examples of 13 countries with similar legislation. In Britain, the government has consulted on the introduction of a “Foreign Influence Registration Scheme,” which is similar to FARA, as are regulations which apply in the European Union.

However, it does not suit Amnesty’s narrative to make comparisons with Western countries that might caste the laws in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela in a different light.

Amnesty’s longstanding bias

Amnesty has a long history of bias against countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Ecuadorian-Canadian journalist Joe Emersberger documents how Amnesty minimizes the impact of US sanctions – illegal under international law – which target all three countries.

While Amnesty refused to recognize Nelson Mandella as a prisoner of conscious, because he failed to renounce violence in self-defense against the South African apartheid regime, Amnesty readily bestowed the honor on Leopoldo López, who fomented a number of violent coup attempts in Venezuela.

María Corina Machado is arguably Amnesty’s most lauded Venezuelan. Her legitimacy is based largely on her victory in an opposition primary. However, the contest was conducted by her personal NGO, Súmate, rather than the official Venezuelan electoral authority as is customary. This is relevant to NGO law, because Súmate received NED funds. Machado won that privately run primary by an incredible 92% landslide in a crowded field of eight candidates. When the runner-up, Carlos Prosperi, cried fraud, the ballots were destroyed to prevent an audit of the vote.

Camilo Mejia, a US military resistor and an Amnesty “prisoner of conscience,” published an open letter expressing his “unequivocal condemnation of Amnesty International with regards to the destabilizing role it has played in Nicaragua, my country of birth.”

Amnesty has long been accused of bias on an international scale. Journalist Alexander Rubinstein documented Amnesty’s collaboration with US and UK intelligence agencies dating back to the 1960s. Francis A. Boyle, human rights law professor and founding Amnesty board member, observed: “You will find a self-perpetuating clique of co-opted Elites who deliberately shape and direct the work of AI and AIUSA so as to either affirmatively support, or else not seriously undercut, the imperial, colonial, and genocidal policies of the United States, Britain, and Israel.”

NGOs and the “human rights industry”

Alfred de Zayas, former UN independent human rights expert, argues in The Human Rights Industry that there are few fields that are “as penetrated and corrupted by intelligence services” as NGOs. “The level of NGO interference in the internal affairs of states and their destabilizing impact on the constitutional order has become so prevalent that more and more countries have adopted… legislation to control this ‘invasion’ of foreign interests, or simply to ban them.”

While de Zayas recognizes Amnesty International when it does good work, he points out that in Latin America it ignores the struggle of sovereign nations “to shake off the yoke of US domination.” In a general comment that might apply specifically to Amnesty’s Tearing Up the Social Fabric, de Zayas condemns “entire reports… compiled from accounts of US-backed opposition groups.”

Nicaragua-based writer John Perry publishes in the London Review of Books, FAIR, CovertAction and elsewhere. Roger D. Harrisis with the Task Force on the Americas and the Venezuela Solidarity Network. Both authors are active with the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Brisk south-easterly winds developing on Tuesday and Wednesday will drag in much warmer air from the European continent.

Temperatures will be around 6 to 10C above average for early April.

On Tuesday temperatures will rise to the high teens and low twenties in most parts.

Across the south Midlands and the west coast of Wales it is likely to reach 22C, making it the warmest day of the year so far.

The previous highest temperature this year was 20.9C, recorded on 31 March at Pershore, Worcestershire.

Tuesday will be a mostly sunny day, especially across England and Wales but cloud will build in Northern Ireland and western Scotland with a few showers.

By Wednesday temperatures will rise even further to 23C, perhaps even 24C in south-east England.

With sunshine continuing, temperatures across England and Wales will still be into the low twenties, so it will feel more like a typical summer’s day for most of us.

However, conditions will turn a little cooler in western Scotland, Northern Ireland and Irish Sea coasts with more cloud and rain moving in later in the afternoon.

WHO driver Majdi Aslan was killed and a WHO doctor wounded, along with several other Palestinians, medical sources said.

A member of staff from the World Health Organization (WHO) has been killed in Gaza and several others injured when the Israeli army fired on their vehicle, according to sources, including an Al Jazeera correspondent.

WHO driver Majdi Aslan, 54, was killed on Monday. A doctor from the international organisation and several other Palestinians were also injured in the incident in eastern Khan Younis, according to sources at the enclave’s Nasser and Al-Aqsa hospitals.

As the world’s attention remains fixed on the United States-Israel war on Iran, Israel is continuing its attacks on the Gaza Strip, which has seen near-daily Israeli fire and strikes since a fragile ceasefire was reached in October, with more than 700 Palestinians killed since, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Monday’s incident took place in an area close to the so-called yellow line in eastern Khan Younis, reported Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud.

Israeli forces shot “indiscriminately” at people and vehicles moving along the Salah al-Din Street in the southern Gaza Strip, he said.

A commercial vehicle was transporting civilians between southern and central Gaza. It was followed by a car carrying WHO employees, said Mahmoud.

“The driver was shot in the head, and by the time he was transported to the Al-Aqsa Hospital, he was announced dead,” the correspondent reported from Gaza City. Seven or so others suffered injuries, he added.

Translation: Qamar Majdi Mustafa Aslan (54 years old), a resident of Bureij camp, who ascended after being wounded in a shooting targeting a World Health Organization vehicle on Salah al-Din Street east of Khan Younis city.

WHO did not immediately confirm that the man killed was an employee, but said in a statement emailed to Al Jazeera that “this morning, a critical security incident occurred in Gaza that is under review by relevant authorities”.

“As [a] result of this critical security incident, today’s medical evacuation from Gaza via Rafah to Egypt has been put on hold with immediate effect, until further notice,” the statement added.

WHO has been overseeing coordination between Egypt and Israel since the opening of the Rafah crossing, which has allowed small numbers of injured Palestinians desperate for medical aid to leave to seek treatment abroad.

Israel has, however, continued to limit the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged territory, also shutting the vital crossing in the early days of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Elsewhere on Monday in the southern part of Khan Younis, a Palestinian man with special needs was killed after being shot by Israeli soldiers.

To the north, a drone attack in Gaza City killed one person, Mahmoud said.

“The target was an electric bike … moving in the area that was struck by drone missiles. It killed … a 36-year-old individual who was moving … around the displacement camps,” he reported.

A child was also injured in the attack and is now in critical condition in hospital, the correspondent added.

Two Palestinians were also killed in Israeli drone strikes on the Yarmouk and Shujayea neighbourhoods, according to a medical source at al-Shifa Hospital.

Sources at Gaza hospitals have reported the deaths of eight Palestinians in Israeli air strikes outside areas under Israeli control since Sunday.

The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening phase of the US-Israeli war against Iran has generated a striking argument in strategic and theological circles alike: that the killing may have removed not merely a political leader but a normative brake on Iran’s possible march toward nuclear weapons. Reports indicate that Iranian decision-making has since hardened under intense military pressure and an increasingly securitised internal environment.

What gives Khamenei’s death a particular doctrinal significance is that he had, over more than two decades, publicly framed weapons of mass destruction—including nuclear and chemical weapons—as contrary to Islam. If that position represented a genuine religious constraint rather than mere diplomatic rhetoric, then his death may have removed more than a leader: it may have weakened the doctrinal restraint that helped keep Iran a threshold nuclear state.

What gives Khamenei’s death a particular doctrinal significance is that he had, over more than two decades, publicly framed weapons of mass destruction—including nuclear and chemical weapons—as contrary to Islam.

Islamic just war theory places moral constraints on indiscriminate violence, constraints that Khamenei appeared to project onto state policy. With that authority now gone, the central question is whether a moral tradition can discipline a state that increasingly experiences its insecurity as existential. Whether the next supreme leader can impose doctrinal restraint on a system drifting toward hard security logic.

The Islamic just war theory

The Islamic conception of war begins from a premise different from the caricatures often projected onto it. Classical Islamic thought does not treat war as an unbounded field of religious violence. Rather, it regulates warfare through a moral-legal framework derived from the Qur’an, the practice of the Prophet, and the juristic traditions that developed in subsequent centuries. The foundational Qur’anic injunction is taken from verse 2:190: “Fight in the way of God those who fight you, but do not transgress. Indeed, God does not love transgressors.” The verse both permits fighting and limits it: war is accepted as a political reality, but not treated as morally autonomous.

The Islamic conception of war begins from a premise different from the caricatures often projected onto it. Classical Islamic thought does not treat war as an unbounded field of religious violence.

The duality of permission and restraint thus runs through the Islamic just war tradition. War may be legitimate in cases of defence, resistance to aggression, or protection of the community. But even a just cause does not license unlimited means. Islamic jurists emphasised proportionality, legitimate authority, fidelity to agreements, and the protection of non-combatants—including women, children, the elderly, monks, and peasants— developing a norm of discrimination that restricted violence to active combatants.

It is from this perspective that nuclear weapons become especially difficult to reconcile with Islamic ethics. A weapon whose essence is mass, uncontrolled devastation, sits uneasily with any tradition that treats non-combatant immunity as morally central. In Islamic terms, the problem is not simply the scale of destruction, but the very structure of the act: the means themselves are transgressive.

 The fatwa: Genuine constraint or strategic cover?

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s reputed opposition to chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War established an early precedent for this kind of doctrinal restraint. Iraq used chemical agents extensively, and Iran suffered enormously—some 20,000 Iranians were killed and over 100,000 severely injured. Yet the Islamic Republic did not respond in kind on a comparable scale. Whether that restraint was entirely theological or also strategic remains debated. Recent evidence suggests limited Iranian chemical weapons development during the war. Still, the episode reinforced the notion that certain weapons lay beyond the moral threshold that Iran’s clerical leadership was prepared to cross openly.

Khamenei extended this logic to the nuclear realm. He first issued an oral fatwa in October 2003 declaring nuclear weapons as forbidden (haram) in Islam, and repeated this position in an official statement at the emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in August 2005. Over subsequent years, Iranian officials repeatedly invoked his religious decree as evidence of the Islamic Republic’s peaceful nuclear intentions.

Khamenei extended this logic to the nuclear realm. He first issued an oral fatwa in October 2003 declaring nuclear weapons as forbidden (haram) in Islam, and repeated this position in an official statement at the emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in August 2005.

But the fatwa’s authenticity and legal weight have always been contested. Some have argued that no formal written fatwa was ever issued and that what Iran marketed as a religious ruling was, in origin, merely the closing paragraph of a message to a 2010 nuclear disarmament conference, later retroactively framed by Iranian diplomats as a fatwa. Others have documented that Khamenei’s pronouncements on nuclear weapons were inconsistent: at times he categorically forbade development, stockpiling, and use; at other times he appeared to permit development and stockpiling while forbidding use.

None of this entirely strips the fatwa of significance. In political systems where legitimacy is partly theological, a public prohibition articulated by the supreme jurist, even if ambiguous in its legal form, raises the political and doctrinal cost of reversal. As one scholar observes, such declarations make it costly for the Islamic Republic to overturn the publicly stated position even if they do not constitute binding juridical rulings in the formal sense.

Succession and the question of doctrinal inheritance

The critical question of whether Khamenei’s successor would inherit his political and moral authority looms large. On March 9, 2026, the Assembly of Experts named Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Ali Khamenei as Iran’s third supreme leader. Whether he would inherit his father’s doctrinal commitments, especially on nuclear weapons, is far from clear. Not known as a jurist of comparable standing to his father, Mojtaba’s authority derives primarily from his revolutionary and security credentials rather than from the depth of his theological learning, a fact noted critically within Iran’s clerical establishment, which has historically resisted father-to-son succession as uncomfortably monarchical.

Khamenei’s nuclear prohibition carried weight because it came from the state’s highest religious authority. Mojtaba’s standing is far more contested, which means that any comparable prohibition would likely carry less doctrinal force—while any tacit relaxation would accelerate the erosion of the barrier his father maintained. The IRGC commanders who manoeuvred his appointment to power have long been among those pressing for a reassessment of Iran’s nuclear posture.

Islamic restraint vs strategic realism

This leads to the final and perhaps hardest question: would Iran, if acting as a pure realist state, pursue nuclear weapons regardless of the Islamic just war tradition? The realist answer is straightforward. States seek survival in an anarchic international system. When a state faces stronger adversaries, recurring coercion, and the credible prospect of regime-change violence, it has every incentive to pursue the ultimate deterrent. From this perspective, the logic of nuclear acquisition is not theological but strategic: a bomb would promise not battlefield utility but regime survival, deterrence, and insulation from future attack.

And yet Iran is not a pure realist state in the abstract. It is a political order where ideology, clerical authority, national security, and regime survival have long coexisted in uneasy combination. The more interesting possibility, therefore, is not that realism simply replaces theology, but that realism gradually colonises it. In that scenario, doctrine is not openly discarded; it is reinterpreted and subordinated to necessity, allowing the state to retain Islamic language while moving toward a posture that the older Khamenei publicly resisted.

The greater danger is that the Islamic Republic’s language of restraint may cease to anchor policy and instead begin to trail behind it. If so, Iran’s nuclear future will be decided not only in centrifuge halls or command bunkers, but in the struggle between theological limits and strategic fear.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Ukraine has increased attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in bid to disrupt financing of its war.

The Ukrainian military reported that it has struck a Russian ⁠warship and ‌a drilling rig in the Black Sea.

Kyiv’s drone forces ⁠commander Robert Brovdi said on Monday that the attack targeted ⁠the Admiral Makarov missile carrier in ⁠the port of Novorossiysk, which is Russia’s largest oil exporting outlet on the Black Sea. Ukraine has increased its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in a bid to disrupt export revenues that feed into Moscow’s war chest.

Russian authorities said at least eight people, including two children, were injured in Novorossiysk, without specifying whether the port was struck.

Videos posted on Telegram and verified by Al Jazeera’s verification unit showed a fire at one of the oil port’s docks in the city.

Novorossiysk’s Mayor Andrei Kravchenko said debris from drones had fallen on two locations in the city, including a residential area.

Russia’s military said in the early morning that air defence units had downed 148 Ukrainian drones over a three-hour period. It added that officials said emergency crews were restoring power to nearly half a million households in ⁠outages linked to air attacks.

The area of the port of Novorossiysk is also a location for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s (CPC) terminal, which exports oil from Kazakhstan and whose shareholders include US majors such as Chevron and ExxonMobil.

Ukraine has significantly intensified attacks on Russia’s energy facilities, including the largest oil exporting hubs ‌both on the Baltic and Black Seas, as it seeks to reduce Moscow’s revenues from the sales of oil, the lifeblood of its economy.

The Kremlin has attempted to boost its exports after US President Donald Trump gave it a temporary waiver from sanctions to ease supply constraints, as the US-Israeli war on Iran upends oil markets following the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Kyiv officials complain that Russia will use the additional revenue on new weapons to hit Ukraine harder.

Later on Monday, Russia reported that Ukrainian drones had attacked the CPC terminal. The export facility, which handles 1.5 percent of global oil supply, reported damage to mooring, loading, and storage infrastructure, the Reuters news agency reported.

“The Kyiv regime deliberately attacked facilities of the international oil transportation company Caspian Pipeline Consortium in order to inflict maximum economic damage on ⁠its largest shareholders – energy companies from the United States and Kazakhstan,” ⁠the defence ministry said in a statement.

The Black Sea strikes come a day after Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Primorsk – one of Russia’s main oil exporting outlets – and the NORSI oil refinery in the central Nizhny Novgorod region.

Alexander Drozdenko, governor of Russia’s northwestern Leningrad region, said a fuel reservoir in the Primorsk port area leaked when it was hit by shrapnel.

Ukrainian drones also repeatedly struck ⁠Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga last month, damaging several buildings in the sprawling ⁠complex of oil-processing facilities and export terminals.

In Ukraine, a Russian overnight drone attack on the southern port city of Odesa on Monday killed two women and a toddler, authorities said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X that 16 people were wounded, including a pregnant woman and two children.

Russia’s overnight strikes also hit energy infrastructure in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipro regions, Zelenskyy said.

More than 300,000 households were without electricity in the northern Chernihiv region after distribution facilities were damaged in attacks, according to the regional power utility.

The Ukrainian leader said that over the past week, Russia launched at Ukraine more than 2,800 attack drones, nearly 1,350 powerful glide bombs and more than 40 missiles of various types.

US President Donald Trump has issued a direct ultimatum to Iran: reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8pm Eastern Time in the United States on Tuesday, April 7 (midnight GMT on April 8), or face the destruction of national power plants and bridges.

This echoes an earlier March 21 ultimatum in which he threatened to attack Iran’s power plants – “the biggest one first” – if the strait was not fully reopened within 48 hours.

President Trump has since extended that deadline several times, citing progress in negotiations he claims the US is having with Iran to end the ongoing war. Iran denies it is holding direct talks with the US.

While Trump has made grand statements such as “they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country”, he has not mentioned specific targets.

The US president has also threatened to destroy the country’s bridges. Over the weekend, a US-Israeli strike hit the B1 bridge in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran. The major highway link, described as the tallest bridge in the Middle East, had been scheduled to be inaugurated soon. It sustained significant damage in the strike.

Legal experts say that targeting civilian sites amounts to “collective punishment”, which is prohibited under the laws of war.

Where are Iran’s power plants?

Iran operates hundreds of power plants which, together, form one of the largest electricity systems in the Middle East, supplying energy to 92 million people.

Most of the country’s power plants are close to major population centres and industrial hubs. The majority of Iran’s population lives in the western half of the country, with Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan the three largest cities.

Iran has a mixture of gas, coal, hydro, nuclear and oil-fired power plants, but most are gas-fired. In the north and centre of the country, clusters of gas-fired plants supply electricity to the country’s largest population centres, including Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan and Mashhad.

Another major concentration of power plants lies along the Gulf coast. These plants sit close to major gasfields and ports, allowing large thermal stations to run on abundant natural gas.

The coast is also home to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Iran’s only nuclear power facility, which has a capacity of 1,000MW. The US and Israel have repeatedly hit this nuclear power plant, raising risks of radioactive contamination far beyond Iran’s borders, the state-run Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) has warned.

Iran also operates a handful of hydropower dams concentrated along the Karun River, the country’s most important source of hydroelectric generation.

Electricity generated from all these plants is fed into a national transmission network operated by Iran Grid Management Company, which distributes power to cities, industries and homes across the country.

The map below shows all of Iran’s power stations with a capacity of 100MW or more.

A 100MW power plant can typically supply electricity to roughly 75,000 to 100,000 homes, depending on consumption patterns.

Iran’s largest power plant by capacity is the Damavand Power Plant located in the Pakdasht area, roughly 50km (31 miles) southeast of Tehran, with a capacity of some 2,900MW, enough to power more than two million homes.

Which are Iran’s most important power plants?

Iran’s largest power plants include:

• Damavand (Pakdasht) Power Plant – Near Tehran.
  Fuel: Natural gas (combined-cycle).
  Capacity: 2,868MW.
• Shahid Salimi Power Plant – Neka, along the Caspian Sea coast.
  Fuel: Natural gas.
  Capacity: 2,215MW.
• Shahid Rajaee Power Plant – Near Qazvin.
  Fuel: Natural gas.
  Capacity: 2,043MW.
• Karun-3 Dam – Khuzestan Province.
  Fuel: Hydropower.
  Capacity: 2,000MW.
• Kerman Power Plant – Kerman.
  Fuel: Natural gas.
  Capacity: 1,912MW.

Other smaller but strategically important power plants include:

• Ramin Power Plant – Ahvaz, Khuzestan.
  Fuel: Gas.
  Capacity: 1,903MW.
• Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant – On the Gulf.
  Fuel: Nuclear.
  Capacity: 1,000MW.
• Bandar Abbas Power Plant – Near the Strait of Hormuz.
  Fuel: Oil.
  Capacity: 1,330MW.

How does Iran generate its electricity?

Iran’s electricity system relies heavily on large thermal power plants fuelled by natural gas. The country has one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, and this fuel forms the backbone of its power system.

In 2025, 86 percent of Iran’s electricity came from natural gas.

Oil-fired plants provide a smaller share, generating roughly seven percent of electricity. Some power stations switch to diesel or fuel oil when natural gas supplies are tight, especially during winter demand peaks.

Hydropower accounts for about five percent of electricity. Large dams on rivers such as the Karun River generate power by using flowing water to spin turbines.

Nuclear energy contributes around two percent of the country’s electricity, mainly from the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Iran’s only operational nuclear reactor.

Renewables such as solar and wind play a very small role, together accounting for less than one percent of electricity generation.

Overall, more than 90 percent of Iran’s electricity comes from fossil fuels, making it one of the most gas-dependent power systems in the world.

As the US threatens to launch a ground invasion of Iran, many questions remain about its goals and geographical span. Some scenarios suggest a focus on some of the islands in the Gulf, others – joining forces with local insurgent groups.

Early on in the war, Washington seemed to toy with the idea of supporting opposition groups from Iran’s large Kurdish minority to launch a war by proxy.

According to reports in the Israeli media, initial efforts by Mossad to encourage attacks by Kurdish groups in Iran’s northwest failed due to “leaks, distrust”. Iran bolstered its defences in the area and put pressure on the authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the Iranian Kurdish groups are based.

Last week, in an interview with Fox News, US President Donald Trump acknowledged that the US provided weapons to the Kurds.

Further action involving either Kurdish or other ethnic opposition groups may still be on the table as his administration seeks to put together an exit strategy from the war. Encouraging local insurgencies to weaken Tehran may seem like a good plan, but would it work?

Iran’s weak spots

Fomenting ethnic or religious tensions in the enemy camp is an old military tactic, which the US itself has used many times in the Middle East. Trump is likely looking for ways to gain leverage over the regime in Tehran and stretch its military capabilities. Iran’s internal fractures may seem to offer some opportunities for that.

In the past three decades, Tehran has failed to address the growing grievances of various minority populations in the country’s periphery. Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Balochis feel marginalised in the Shi’a majority state, while Arab and Kurdish Shia Muslims feel discriminated against by ethnic Persians.

This has led to various anti-government mobilisations, including armed ones over the past three decades.

Kurdish armed groups based in Iraq have operated for decades in northwestern Iran. Kurdish areas have also seen waves of mass protests, the most recent of which was in the autumn of 2022 following the death of a Kurdish woman at the hands of morality police in Tehran.

Other armed groups have also been active. In 2018, an attack on a military parade in the city of Ahvaz killed 29 people; an Arab separatist group claimed responsibility. In 2019, Baluchi rebels of the Jaish Al Adl group attacked a bus carrying members of the IRGC, killing at least 27. A raid by the same group on a police station in 2023 killed 11 security personnel. Then in 2024, the bombing of a mourner’s procession for the late General Qasem Sulaimani killed at least 90 people in the southeastern city of Kerman; ISIL claimed responsibility.

All of these incidents expose weaknesses in Iran’s periphery, which its enemies have long tried to exploit. If Trump decides to go down that path, he should take heed of the experiences of those who have tried to undermine the authorities in Tehran by fomenting ethno-religious insurgencies.

Past failures

Iraq’s president Saddam Hussein was one of them. When he decided to invade Iran in 1980, he saw an opportunity in the ethnic unrest among Kurds and Arabs the Islamic Republic had inherited from the monarchical regime. Saddam Hussein encouraged insurgencies among both minorities.

By the time Iraqi troops stormed onto Iranian territory, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDP-I) had already launched a rebellion against the newly formed Islamic Republic in 1979. Iraq eventually provided arms and finances, enabling the KDP-I to take over some territory and hold it for months, but internal fighting and the brutal campaign Tehran launched through its Revolutionary Guards managed to suppress the rebellion by 1982-83.

Saddam also tried to get the Arabs in the south to revolt, some Iranian Arab separatist groups fought alongside Iraqi forces in the battle for the Iranian city of Khorramshahr in 1980. But the Sunni Arab community did not join in large numbers. Shi’a Arabs had no desire to participate in what they saw as a foreign invasion, launched by an Sunni-dominated Iraqi regime. As a result, Saddam never got the mass Arab uprising he wished for.

Twenty years later, US President George W Bush tried to use a similar playbook against Iran. He authorised the CIA and other intelligence outfits to carry out covert operations in Iran and funnel money and equipment to some opposition armed groups.

Like Saddam, Bush also failed to foment rebellions in Iran. This is not just because the Islamic Republic was able to handle security situations swifty and decisively, but also because efforts to incite uprisings never really got enough momentum. The reason for that is that parts of Iran’s minorities are well-integrated into the nation’s core and elite. Ethno-religious identities and socio-economic realities in Iran are too complex to feed into a simple black-and-white narrative about ethnic oppression by the Persian majority.

The likelihood of success today

More than a month into the war on Iran, it is by now clear that US and Israeli efforts to trigger a mass uprising in Iran by decapitating the regime have failed.

At this time, there is nothing to suggest that any efforts to foment ethnic insurgencies would be more successful. US-Israel support for separatist groups is unlikely to get anywhere further than localised acts of sabotage or small skirmishes.

This would not divert important military resources and attention away from the fight with the US and Israel, as Iran is fighting a techno-guerilla war, where its most valuable weapons are missiles and drones – not ground troops.

Furthermore, there is significant regional opposition to US support for separatist groups from major allies, including Pakistan and Turkiye. Islamabad has been dealing its own violent attacks carried out by Baluch separatists in the southwest of the country. Meanwhile, for Ankara, the issue of any support for Kurdish groups is highly sensitive given its own long history of unrest in the Kurdish regions of the country.

Iraq would also be reluctant to support such activities. The government in Baghdad, as well as the Kurdistan Regional Government, would not risk retaliation from Iran by allowing US-Israeli support for the Iranian Kurds to take place on Iraqi territory.

Inciting ethnic insurgencies may seem like a good strategy on paper, but in reality it would be another recipe for disaster for the Trump administration, which is already struggling with enough failures in its war on Iran.

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

United States President Donald Trump has announced that the US military has rescued a missing American fighter jet crew member in Iran.

The Air Force officer went missing in a remote part of Iran after the downing of his F-15 jet on Friday. Its two crew members ejected from the plane. The pilot was quickly rescued by US forces, but a search had to be launched for the F-15’s weapons systems officer.

In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump wrote that the US had rescued the second “seriously wounded, and really brave” airman from “deep inside the mountains of Iran”. It was reported that a firefight between US and Iranian forces took place in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province before the rescue. Iran has not confirmed this, however.

Here is how the complicated rescue mission unfolded:

What has Trump said about the rescue?

While the identity of the rescued airman has not been made public, Trump referred to him as “a highly respected Colonel”.

He added that the type of rescue mission that recovered him “is seldom attempted because of the danger to ‘man and equipment’”.

Trump said two raids had taken place, and the pilot was rescued in “broad daylight” during the second raid. It is unclear when precisely the pilot was rescued. The US president wrote that the rescue was “unusual, spending seven hours over Iran”.

In his post, Trump said he would talk more about the rescue mission during a news conference with the US military in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday at 1pm (17:00 GMT).

Trump wrote on Truth Social: “This brave Warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour, but was never truly alone because his Commander in Chief, Secretary of War, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and fellow Warfighters were monitoring his location 24 hours a day, and diligently planning for his rescue.”

Trump added that he had ordered dozens of aircraft carrying “lethal weapons” to be sent to retrieve the airman, who had managed to evade Iranian forces for two days.

How did the search unfold?

On Friday morning, the US confirmed that an F-15E Strike Eagle had been shot down over southern Iran. The F-15 is a tactical fighter jet used by the US Air Force that first flew in 1972. Modern variants of the jet cost more than $90m each.

State media outlets in Iran showed photos of what they said was wreckage from the F-15 and what appeared to be an ejection seat with an attached parachute.

Trump suggested that the US knew the location of the plane’s second airman and was tracking him as the rescue mission unfolded.

Iran was also racing to locate the airman. Tehran called on the public to hand over the soldier to the authorities in what appeared to be an effort to secure an American prisoner of war.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed on Sunday that Iranian forces had also destroyed two C-130 aircraft and two Black Hawk helicopters during the operation to rescue the US airman in southern Isfahan province.

What do we know about the two C-130 planes that Iran says it destroyed?

The C-130 Hercules and the newer C-130J Super Hercules variant were developed by the US weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. They are military transport aircraft primarily used for tactical airlifts, troop transport and medical evacuations.

The Wall Street Journal reported that each C-130 costs more than $100m.

The newspaper said in a report on Sunday that the US blew up the C-130 jets on the ground during the rescue operation, quoting an unnamed person familiar with the matter. This unnamed official did not explain how the jets were downed during the rescue operation but told the outlet that it was necessary to destroy them to ensure they did not fall into enemy hands.

Has the US lost other military assets or personnel?

Yes. This conflict has killed 13 US service members and wounded more than 300, the US military’s Central Command said, but no US soldiers have been taken prisoner by Iran.

Since the start of the war on February 28, the US has lost three F-15 fighter jets in what it said was a friendly fire incident over Kuwait. A US military refuelling aircraft also went down over Iraq last month, killing all six crew members.

According to the US military, the last US fighter jet to be shot down by enemy fire before the F-15 on Friday was an A-10 Thunderbolt II during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

At least one Black Hawk helicopter was hit during the initial rescue operation, US officials said, but it managed to stay airborne.

An A-10 Warthog aircraft was also hit near the Strait of Hormuz a short time after the F-15E on Friday, but its pilot was able to eject before the plane crashed and was subsequently rescued. Iranian media reported this aircraft was hit by Iran’s defence systems.

Iran has not yet confirmed that a firefight took place before the F-15 airman’s rescue. Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said a firefight appeared to have occurred in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province and nine people were reported to have been killed in “strikes” there although it was unclear if this was related to the US rescue mission.

Pakistan has proposed a two-stage plan to end the US-Israel war on Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with both sides now mulling the framework, a source has told the Reuters news agency.

Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Monday acknowledged diplomatic efforts by Pakistan, which has shared a plan with Iran and the United States to end hostilities, according to Reuters.

Baghaei added that Iran is focused on its security amid the latest attacks from the US and Israel.

A top university in Tehran and the South Pars Petrochemical Plant in Asaluyeh were bombed on Monday, killing at least 34 people in Iran.

Axios first reported on Sunday that the US, Iran and regional mediators were discussing a potential 45-day ceasefire as part of a “two-phased deal” that could lead to a permanent end to the war, citing US, Israeli and regional sources.

The source told Reuters that Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, has been in contact “all night long” with US Vice President JD Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

“All elements need to be agreed today,” the source said, adding the initial understanding would be structured as a memorandum of understanding finalised electronically through Pakistan, the sole communication channel in the talks.

Under the proposal, a ceasefire would take effect immediately, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, with 15 to 20 days given to finalise a broader settlement.

The deal, tentatively dubbed the “Islamabad Accord”, would include a regional framework for the strait, with final in-person talks in the capital of Pakistan.

The final agreement is expected to include Iranian commitments not to pursue nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets, the source said.

‘No reopening of Hormuz’

Tehran has responded by stating that it will not reopen the strait as part of a temporary ceasefire, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday, adding that it will not accept deadlines as it reviews the proposal. Washington also lacks the readiness for a permanent ceasefire, the official said.

The US has not yet responded to Pakistan’s plan.

“Pakistan officials tell me that Islamabad is involved in ‘frantic diplomacy’, as they put it,” said Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid.

“The problem they’re facing, as one official put it, is essentially that it’s a schoolboy brawl that they are dealing with. It is egos that they have to manage, and it is also a sea of distrust over which they have to build bridges.”

One source told Javaid that Pakistan is speaking to Iran’s clergy, diplomats, and military commanders, but the level of distrust is still high.

“You heard the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman mention that they have come under attack multiple times by the US and Israel. And then, if there is some sort of rapprochement, if there is some sort of agreement, what are the guarantees that their leaders are not going to be targeted?” said Javaid.

US’s 15-point plan ‘illogical’, says Tehran

Baghaei, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on Monday that Tehran would never accept a 15-point plan put forward by the US last month. He stated that Tehran had finalised its demands amid recent proposals to end the war, but would reveal them only when appropriate.

He stressed that Iran would not bow to pressure, the IRNA news agency reported.

“A few days ago, they put forward proposals through intermediaries, and the 15-point US plan was reflected through Pakistan and some other friendly countries,” Baghaei said. “Such proposals are both extremely ambitious, unusual, and illogical.”

Baghaei underlined that Iran has its own framework.

“Based on our own interests, based on our own considerations, we codified the set of demands that we had and have,” he said.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman also rejected the idea that engaging with mediators signals weakness.

The latest diplomatic push by Pakistan comes amid escalating hostilities that have raised concerns over disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery for global fuel supplies. More than 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas passes through the waterway, which remains under a de facto Iranian blockade.

Trump, in an expletive-laden post on Sunday, threatened to rain “hell” on Tehran if it did not make a deal by the end of Tuesday that would reopen the strait.

More than 2,000 people have been killed in Iran since the war began on February 28, according to Iranian authorities.

Israel has also invaded southern Lebanon and struck Beirut, where Lebanese authorities say 1,461 people, including at least 124 children, have been killed. More than 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced.

Israeli air raids on Lebanon have killed more than 1,450 people, including 126 children, and displaced some 1.2 million residents since March 2, according to Lebanese authorities. The bombardment has wounded more than 4,400 individuals.

In southern Lebanon’s Kfar Hatta, an Israeli attack killed seven people, including a four-year-old girl and a Lebanese soldier, the Ministry of Public Health reported on Sunday. The Israeli military had ordered the forced evacuation of the town the previous evening, an area where many displaced Lebanese had sought refuge.

As invasion expands deeper into southern Lebanon, leaving devastated villages behind, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has intensified calls for negotiation. “Why don’t we negotiate … until we can at least save the homes that have not yet been destroyed?” he pleaded in a televised address on Sunday, hoping to prevent destruction comparable to Israel’s Gaza operation.

In Toul village in the Nabatieh district, a couple were killed while their children, aged 15 and nine, were injured. Multiple bombardments have wiped out entire families in single attacks. Officials report that approximately 25 percent of all victims are women, children and medical workers.

On March 12, the Israeli military expanded its forced evacuation orders for southern Lebanon residents – from the Litani River to north of the Zahrani River, about 40km (25 miles) north of the Israeli border.

The massive displacement has overwhelmed the country’s shelter capacity. Many families are unable to find accommodation, spending nights in streets, vehicles, or public spaces as collective shelters reach maximum capacity. For many, this represents repeated trauma.

Between October 2023 and November 2024, amid cross-border fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, hundreds of thousands of residents of southern Lebanon’s border villages suffered the worst of the violence.

At its height, 899,725 people were forcibly displaced by Israeli forces back then. Most had returned by last October, only to be forced to flee again.

Israeli attacks during those 14 months inflicted extensive damage to homes and infrastructure. The World Bank estimated damage to residential buildings alone at approximately $2.8bn. About 99,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, preventing many families from returning even after the ceasefire.

Aichatou often heard of insecurity for most of her life, but never experienced it herself. She had relatives who had either been killed or displaced in places like Bosso, a village close to Lake Chad that was ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency in 2015. But the violence that festered along the Sokoto and Kebbi flanks was not common where she lived in Dosso, a region in southwestern Niger. 

Then came the coup. And with it, a promise that what had happened elsewhere would never reach her. 

It did. 

In 2024, terrorists stormed her town. They killed her brother and neighbours. And like many other survivors, she fled carrying nothing except the experience of something she had only once heard about – violence. It had finally reached her. 

After Niger’s military rulers seized power in July 2023, they promised to do what the elected government could not: make the country safe. Nearly three years later, an analysis of conflict data, geospatial information, and interviews with people in the country shows that the military administration has failed to deliver on its promise.

While the junta has partly succeeded in shielding the capital city, Niamey, from attacks, more people are being killed across the country, and more people are being displaced from regions that were previously stable. The evidence shows that the generals have not ended the violence; they have simply relocated it.

For this investigation, HumAngle analysed 62 months of conflict data, evenly divided between the period before and after the coup. We complemented this with interviews with Nigeriens in Maradi and Diffa, many of whom had fled from areas that had historically never been frontlines. They declined to speak on record, citing fear and arrest, and so their names have been changed to protect them.

Aichatou now lives in Maradi as a displaced person. She has not heard from her missing relatives and some of her neighbours. They were scattered when the attackers came. Everyone ran for safety, and it’s unclear who died and who survived. It’s a crisis of missing persons during a war. 

“We don’t know where they are and don’t even have phone numbers to reach out,” she says.

The promise

When soldiers deposed President Mohamed Bazoum on the evening of July 26, 2023, the justification was that the civilian government had failed the people. Specifically, it had failed them on economy and security.

The coup leader, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, accused Bazoum of covering up the deteriorating security situation and cited what he described as both his predecessor’s “outstretched hand” policy toward armed groups and a fundamental failure to build a regionally coherent security architecture. 

Two days after seizing power, Tchiani proclaimed himself head of state, saying he had deposed Bazoum to prevent what he described as “the gradual and inevitable demise of the country.” The new ruling body named itself the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) – a title that placed national security at the very centre of its identity and mandate.

The announcement landed on fertile ground. Niger had suffered genuine insecurity under the elected government. The Tillabéri region, squeezed between the borders of Mali and Burkina Faso in the volatile Liptako-Gourma tri-border zone, had been burning for years. Attacks by Islamic State affiliates and al-Qaeda-linked groups had claimed the lives of hundreds of soldiers and thousands of civilians. The insurgency had spread eastward into Tahoua, and southward into Dosso — regions that had once felt insulated. 

Ordinary Nigeriens, particularly in rural and border areas, had every reason to want something different. The coup, for some, looked like that. What followed were celebrations. 

Pro-junta crowds gathered in Niamey. Thousands marched. Russian and Nigerien flags flew alongside each other in the same streets where anti-French sentiment had been building for years. The generals had read the room correctly, at least in the capital.

Since assuming power, the junta in Niger has claimed some successes, especially in repelling some attacks, asserting sovereignty, and staging defences against the internal and perceived external threats. The military has, in 2025, also pursued general mobilisation decrees and created new partnerships, especially with Russian mercenaries. The mobilisation includes bolstering the military to 50,000 troops, increasing the retirement age for officers to 52, and mobilising youth to combat insecurity. 

However, under the same military, in 2026 (data for 2025), Niger reached its worst-ever ranking on Global Terrorism Index (GTI) as the 3rd most terror-impacted country in the world. This was significantly higher than when it was under an elected government, in which it was ranked between 8th and 10th. 

The silence

As the violence spreads under the junta, public criticism becomes more dangerous. 

State-owned newspapers in Niger do not often report comprehensively on the security crisis. Most of what appears tends to highlight that a security meeting was held, or that some terrorists were killed, or it focuses on accusing France of being responsible for the country’s security problems. This narrative has gone as far as Abdourahamane Tchiani alleging that Nigeria is collaborating with France to launch an attack on Niger through terrorists deployed at the Nigeria/Niger border. The Nigerian government and independent fact-checkers denied that. 

But when activists or independent journalists speak about insecurity, they get arrested.

Gazali Abdou Tasawa, a correspondent of DW Hausa, was arrested and jailed in January 2026 for reporting on displaced persons in Niger. He was not the first. 

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented that in October 2025 six journalists were arrested in Niamey – Moussa Kaka and Abdoul Aziz of Saraounia TV; Ibro Chaibou and Souleymane Brah from the online publication Voice of the People; Youssouf Seriba of Les Échos du Niger; and Oumarou Kané, founder of the magazine Le Hérisson – over their alleged role in circulating a government press briefing invitation on social media criticizing the introduction of the mandatory payment for “Solidarity Fund for the Safeguarding of the Homeland”, a form of security levy in Niger to combat terrorism. 

Moussa Ngom, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)’s Francophone Africa representative, explained that “arrest and detention have become tools-of-choice for Nigerien authorities to try to control information they find undesirable.” For this investigation, HumAngle reached out to journalists in Niger to speak on insecurity. Three of them declined to speak and one promised to speak but never replied to our questions. 

However, recently, a few activists have begun to speak out. A prominent Nigerien activist, Maikoul Zodi, recently called on the military junta to account for two years of broken promises on security – the central justification offered for seizing power on July 26, 2023.

Writing on his Facebook page, Zodi was blunt about what he sees as the junta’s failure. “Niger is still bleeding… the same villages are burning… the same families are burying their dead.” He asked directly what tangible improvements had been made on the ground since the coup. 

His statement reflects a shift in civil society’s posture from solidarity with the transition to demands for results. “Compassion alone is no longer enough. There must be accountability,” he wrote, as violence continues spreading into regions that had previously been spared. 

“I think the CNSP should present a transparent report of the security situation, with concrete figures and data,” reacted Tahirou Halidou, a concerned Nigerien.

One day after that Facebook post, Zodi was interrogated by the police because of the publication. 

What the numbers buried 

The junta’s promise of improving security has not become a reality. 

To understand what changed, HumAngle analyzed conflict data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project which maps political violence worldwide in real time, covering equal 31-month periods before and after the coup – from January 2021 to February 2026. 

ACLED data does not necessarily give us a complete picture of the dire  situation in Niger, given that most of its information relies on open-source reporting from NGOs and journalists who have been repressed by the junta, and so may not be able to accurately capture what is really happening on the ground. 

While the ACLED number of recorded incidents for the period under review rose only modestly, the outcomes of insecurity became dramatically deadlier in Niger Republic. Worse, the violence is spreading toward communities that were never hotspots.

“Although we are aware of insecurity in some villages a few kilometres away from ours, we had never experienced violence before the military coup,” said Ousmane*, an IDP who left his village Gadori in Diffa and moved to Maradi in early 2025.  

According to ACLED data, total recorded conflict events rose modestly after July 26, 2023 – from 1,879 to 2,221, an increase of 18.2 percent. Taken alone, that figure might suggest a country holding steady. But fatalities tell a radically different story: deaths surged from 2,983 before the coup to 4,855 afterwards, a 62.8 percent increase. The same rough number of incidents, but significantly more people dying in them. The deaths per incident climbed by 37.7 percent, meaning that even setting aside the raw count, each individual attack became deadlier on average.

One of the deadliest attacks recorded under the junta was on Dec. 10, 2024, when Jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State attacked Nigerien soldiers at a market in Chetoumane, Tillabéri region, killing at least 90 soldiers and over 50 civilians.  The junta suspended BBC for reporting the attack. 

The Junta Redistricted the Violence by IT HumAngle

The displacements

Before the coup, areas surrounding the Nigerien border with Nigeria were relatively safe, but not anymore. “In Dan Issa here, we had never experienced a situation when people were as afraid to go to villages as they are now,” one of the residents told HumAngle. “There is a silent displacement in the villages due to incessant cases of kidnappings.” 

Dosso, Aichatou’s region, appeared in the ACLED displacement data for the first time, with six distinct locations recording forced civilian movement: Dogondoutchi, Banizoumbou Kobia, Boumba, Kassalama, Kontalangou, and Tounouga. 

The entire Gaya corridor, the southern road connecting Niger to Nigeria and Benin, recorded zero displacement events in the 31 months before the coup. After it, the route became newly active, with JNIM and ISSP both documented operating along it. These are not places with histories of insurgent attack. They are places that were, until recently, buffers that absorbed refugees from further north without themselves being overrun. But that buffer has collapsed.

Tillabéri’s Abala district recorded nine distinct new displacement locations after the coup, compared to only two locations before the coup. A cluster triggered in a single week in October 2023 – Maimagare, Mandaba, Tamattey, Dangna, and Badak Toudou – marked the opening of that sub-region to what the data suggests was a systematic IS Sahel campaign of threats designed to clear villages. 

By early 2026, even Niamey itself was no longer exempt: an Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) attack on Air Force Base 101 in January 2026 produced the capital’s first recorded displacement event.

Across the full dataset, 51 locations recorded displacement for the first time after the coup. Only four sites of chronic, pre-existing displacement persisted into the post-coup period. The coup expanded the footprint of violence into entirely new territory. Generally, according to the United Nations Refugee Council (UNHCR), as of 2026, Niger has recorded over one million displacements, more than half of whom are internally displaced (IDPs). 

As the new wave of violence reached new places, more people fled their homes. Confirmed displacement events – i.e. ACLED incidents explicitly noting that people had fled or evacuated – rose by 83.3 percent, from 30 in the pre-coup period to 55 after. Abandoned settlement events declined, from 27 to 18, but that apparent drop carries a grim explanation: many of the communities that might have been abandoned had already been emptied. There were fewer inhabited places left to abandon.

The nature

The nature of the violence also transformed. Events recorded by ACLED explicitly as “violence against civilians” fell by nearly 31.7 percent. This decrease does not, however, reflect the full picture and reading it literally can be misleading.

ACLED records each conflict event under a single type based on its primary event: a gun battle is coded “Battles” even if the notes confirm civilians were killed; a roadside bomb is “Explosions/Remote violence” even when the target was a civilian vehicle. Only when deliberate civilian targeting is the defining characteristic, before they flag it as “Violence against civilians” and set the civilian targeting variable. However, three columns allow a closer accounting of civilian contributions to those increased overall fatality numbers: the “civilian_targeting” flag itself; the “interaction code”, which records the actor types involved; and the free-text “event notes”, which often documents civilian casualties in events coded under other categories.

Events that ACLED explicitly classifies as “Violence against civilians” did fall from 785 to 536 incidents. However, battles surged. The dominant interaction in battles by far was state forces against rebel groups, accounting for 182 clashes and 944 deaths before the coup and climbing to 382 clashes and 2,009 deaths afterwards. There have been clearly stated large combatant tolls in these events. But embedded in the ACLED event notes for those same battles are post-coup civilian-involved incidents, together contributing to 447 deaths when you count the fatality column of the rows’ note that explicitly records “civilian casualties”. This goes up from 23 battle events and 108 deaths before the coup to a more-than-threefold rise.

Most explosions and remote violence surges follow the same state-versus-rebel pattern: IED attacks on military convoys classified as “State forces-Rebel group” jumped from 46 to 155 events. Yet ACLED’s own civilian_targeting flag registers a 230 percent increase in civilian-linked explosion-related deaths (from 33 to 109). 

Reviewing these columns in those months before and after the July 2026 coup gives a narrower picture than the overall event counts suggest. 

More battles. Triple the bombs. Fewer labels, same bodies. by IT HumAngle

The increase in the death toll aligns with the assessments of other security monitoring bodies. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies noted that fatalities linked to extremist groups were projected to reach more than 1,600 in 2024 alone — a 60 percent increase from 2023. The Safeguarding Security Sector Stockpiles (S4) Initiative found that attacks on Niger’s own security forces in the first nine months of 2024 were more frequent than in any previous year. The CNSP had promised to protect its soldiers, but the opposite happened.

The HumAngle ACLED analysis also tracked attacks on state forces specifically: incidents targeting the military nearly doubled, rising from 198 to 366 – an 84.8 percent jump. Fatalities in those incidents climbed from 623 to 1,555, a 149.6 percent jump. By the post-coup period, state-force targeted deaths accounted for 32 percent of all fatalities recorded – up from 21 percent before the coup. The lethality of each individual attack on security forces also rose: from 3.2 deaths per event before the coup to 4.3 after.

“Those numbers reflect a simple reality that the security vacuum created by the rupture with Western partners has been exploited ruthlessly by non-state armed groups,” said Ikemesit Effiong, an analyst and a managing partner at SBM Intelligence, an African security intel firm based in Lagos, Nigeria. “A massive increase in violence metrics is more than a failure of policy; it is a failure of legitimacy,” he told HumAngle.

Jihadist groups, freed from the surveillance, intelligence-sharing, and operational pressure that Western and regional partnerships had provided, adapted their tactics. They hit less often but harder, and with dramatically more lethal results. JNIM, the al-Qaeda affiliate that had previously operated mostly in southwestern Tillabéri, expanded into southern Dosso. Islamic State Sahel Province consolidated control over the Abala sub-region and extended pressure southward toward Niamey. 

Tera, in Tillabéri, became the single deadliest location shift in the dataset: event counts rose by only a third, but fatalities exploded from 198 to 991 – a 401 percent increase. Gaya, on the Nigerian border, went from near-silence to an active conflict zone. Dioundiou appeared in the data for the first time, with 49 events and 144 fatalities recorded where none had existed before. The geography of the war had moved.

The war moved south. by IT HumAngle

In January 2026, the Jihadists affiliated with the ISSP conducted an unprecedented daring attack on the Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey. The attack included the first-time use of drones, which were reportedly engaged by the airport’s air defence systems. The attack sent a chilling message that the terrorists are getting bolder and ready to wage more sophisticated attacks on some of the state’s most protected infrastructure. 

“The use of drones by ISSP shows a level of technical sophistication and intelligence gathering we haven’t seen this close to the capital before,” said Effiong, the security analyst. “For the military regime, if they cannot secure the perimeter of the country’s premier international gateway, they cannot claim to control the state.”

The protection bubble

What the full body of evidence suggests is that the junta in Niger built a bubble around Niamey and the corridors of power that connect it to key military installations. Inside that bubble, things are calmer. Attacks on urban centres remain relatively rare. The capital’s residents can move through their days with a reasonable sense that yesterday’s normal will resemble tomorrow’s.

“The distinction is now visible,” Effiong told HumAngle. “Regime security focuses on Niamey’s checkpoints and the presidential palace; peripheral areas are being sacrificed.” 

Outside that bubble — in Dosso, in the new displacement clusters of Abala, in the villages whose names appear in ACLED event notes for the first time after July 2023 — the junta’s promise of peace has not arrived. 

“This emboldens groups like ISSP and JNIM because it reveals a risk-reward calculation: the junta’s air power is limited, and their reaction times are slow,” Effiong said.

The Islamic State Sahel Province has moved closer to Niamey than at any point in the country’s history, with militants increasingly controlling key roads into the capital, effectively tightening a noose that the junta’s propaganda apparatus does not mention.

Aichatou knows this too well. She is in Maradi, far from everyone who once knew her, far from the brother whose body she could not bury, far from the relatives she could not trace, and far from the neighbours who once gave her a sense of community.

The promise of security reached Niamey.

It did not reach her.

This article was produced with support from the African Academy for Open Source Investigations (AAOSI) and the African Digital Democracy Observatory (ADDO) as part of an initiative by Code for Africa (CfA). Visit https://disinfo.africa/ for more information.

Iraq’s head coach Graham Arnold couldn’t help but pause, smile and wave to the hundreds of Iraqi football fans gathered at Sydney airport to welcome back the Australian after he guided the Arab team to their first FIFA World Cup in 40 years.

Arnold was given a rapturous welcome as the jubilant Iraqis sang, danced to the beat of drums and tambourines, held aloft placards proclaiming their love for the coach and chanted his name as the 62-year-old walked out of the airport on Sunday night.

Fans waved Iraqi and Australian flags as they chanted “Arnie, Arnie, Arnie, oi, oi, oi” while Arnold spoke to local media following his return from Mexico, where his team won the intercontinental playoff final against Bolivia on Tuesday.

The 2-1 victory came during a tumultuous time in Iraq, engulfed in the Middle East conflict that left several players stranded in various parts of the region and threatened to sabotage their campaign for the playoff tournament.

However, Iraq overcame a logistical nightmare and strong South American opposition to mark their return to the global showpiece event for the first time since 1986.

The Lions of Mesopotamia also returned home to a hero’s welcome. Thousands of fans lined the streets in central Baghdad as the players, sitting atop a double-decker bus, celebrated with their compatriots on Saturday.

Arnold was not part of those celebrations but the Iraqi community in Australia ensured the coach didn’t feel left out.

“Crazy, crazy. I didn’t expect this here in Australia. Obviously in Iraq. But it’s incredible,” Arnold told Australian broadcaster SBS as he stood in front of the fans in the terminal.

“First, I want to apologise to everyone in Iraq that I couldn’t go back there to celebrate due to the airspace shutdown.

“Seeing this here is amazing. Thank you very much.

“I’m just very, very proud of the players and what they did, making many Iraqis happy is very important and that was the main thing.”

Reports in Australian media said local Iraqi football fans found out about Arnold’s return flight from Iraq’s Football Association (IFA) and decided to greet him at the airport.

Fans could be seen chanting “One, one, one, Arnold number one” as the coach took in the scenes around him.

Arnold, who formerly coached Australia, took charge of the Iraqi team in May and led them to three wins, three draws and two losses in their World Cup qualification campaign.

The results took Iraq to the fifth and final round of the Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) qualification competition, where they beat the United Arab Emirates 3-2 on aggregate in November and secured a place in the FIFA playoff tournament.

Earlier in March, the former Australian international player urged FIFA to postpone Iraq’s playoff final fixture or find a way to ensure the players reached Mexico well ahead of the match as they grappled with the consequences of the US-Israeli war on Iran.

His plea was heard as FIFA arranged a charter flight for the Iraqi squad and support staff, who reached Mexico just over a week ahead of the March 31 final.

Following their win, Arnold was effusive in his praise of the Iraqi players who participated in the match while the war raged on.

“Everything that is going on in the Middle East made it a little bit harder,” Arnold ⁠⁠said after the play-off final.

“I banned social media since the day we got here,” he added. “I did not want them to think of what is going ⁠⁠on in the Middle East because they had to focus ⁠⁠on the job we had here.”

Arnold said qualifying for the World Cup was a major privilege for the players. “Iraq has nothing to lose.”

Iraq will be placed in one of the toughest groups at the World Cup. Their opponents in Group I will be France, Norway and Senegal.

The Middle East team will face Norway in their opening game on June 16 in Boston. Their second fixture will be against 2018 champions France on June 22 in Philadelphia and their final group game against Senegal is four days later in Toronto, Canada.

Inside a hangar located near a motorway and a port, sleek fiberglass unmanned attack boats, resembling oversized canoes and painted naval grey, await engine fitting. These boats, initially built by Ukrainian special forces, have been effective in pushing the Russian Black Sea Fleet from nearby waters. If conflicts intensify in the Middle East between Israel and the U. S. and Iran, these British boats may be deployed. Such vessels are increasingly recognized as the future of naval warfare, as well as suitable for various offshore roles like search and rescue.

The manufacturing facility belongs to Kraken, a fast-expanding British defense company that has secured a contract to supply 20 small attack boats to Britain’s Royal Navy and has other agreements with U. S. Special Operations Command. Fueled by venture capital, similar companies globally are producing autonomous attack craft essential for potential conflicts, such as a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or NATO actions against Russia in the Baltic. Kraken offers various drones; the 8.5-meter Scout Medium is highly popular, though it hasn’t confirmed whether any of its boats have been used in the Middle East or Black Sea.

The U. S. military has deployed similar boats like the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft in Gulf operations. U. S. Central Command has been testing unmanned vessels for years, while European nations have advanced their skills with NATO’s Task Force X-Baltic. These vessels, whether autonomous or remotely operated, can carry weapons and surveillance tools, showcasing the rapid evolution of naval warfare, as evidenced by Iranian attacks on commercial ships.

Heavy jamming in Ukraine and the Gulf has led to challenges in keeping remote human-piloted systems operational and has shifted focus towards developing autonomous systems that do not require a communication link. Reports indicate that there were several problems in last year’s tests of these autonomous systems, which is not surprising given the contested regions like the Black Sea and Baltic Sea. Currently, the British Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Lyme Bay is expected to load drones for potential mine clearance in the Gulf, but only when the conflict ends and it is safer to operate such craft.

If this mission proceeds, it would highlight the reduced number of functional warships in the UK’s financially constrained navy and showcase changes in military technology. However, experts do not believe that vessels built by companies like Kraken will completely replace traditional warships, despite the reminder from Trump’s “armada” of the significant power that traditional ships hold. Notably, U. S. commanders have deployed these vessels away from battle zones to reduce risks.

Kraken claims it can produce as many as 500 remote-controlled vessels within the current year, with plans to double that by 2027 through partnerships with shipyards in Germany and the Pacific region. Kraken’s founder, Mal Crease, aims to establish a leading maritime offshore systems manufacturer by applying his experiences from Formula One racing and high-performance offshore boats. He acknowledges the complexities of producing quality systems amid conflict while also striving to mass-produce boats in peaceful environments.

Kraken’s team utilizes modular construction to rapidly assemble a variety of vessels by hand, similar to how supercars are made, allowing for quick scale-up in production. However, uncertainties about military spending in the UK remain, with ongoing debates regarding the Defence Investment Plan and budget allocations between the prime minister and the Treasury.

A broader trend is evident as new defense firms such as Kraken and others emerge, differing from traditional defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems, which are known for long development times and high costs. Newer companies, some less than two years old, are more agile and focused on producing weapons systems quickly and affordably.

Many former military personnel are now working with these companies and engaging with clients in various countries, including Ukraine, which is both buying and manufacturing these systems. Reports suggest that missile supplies, like the Tomahawk and Patriot missiles, are dwindling, while drone manufacturers expect to produce hundreds of thousands or even millions of systems annually. Ukraine, in particular, has rapidly grasped the importance of these new technologies and has been sharing its expertise with nations in the Middle East. Conversely, Western nations outside the conflict have been slower to adapt, but some firms are already making swift advancements.

With information from Reuters

Tehran says it will respond ‘in kind’ to any attacks on its infrastructure, warns Trump threats an ‘incitement to war crimes’.

At least 34 people have been killed, including six children, as the United States and Israel carried out massive attacks across Iran, targeting a top university as well as residential areas, after US President Donald Trump set a Tuesday deadline for Tehran to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face strikes on its power plants and bridges.

The Fars news agency reported on Monday that an air attack killed 23 people, including four girls and two boys aged below 10 years, in Tehran province’s Baharestan County.

At least five people were killed in an attack on a residential building in the city of Qom, according to the political and security deputy of the governor, Morteza Heydari. Six others were killed in Bandar-e Lengeh, in southern Iran, authorities said.

At least a dozen cities were hit across Iran, including Bandar Abbas, Ahvaz, Mahshahr, Shiraz, Isfahan and Karaj.

US-Israeli strikes also hit Sharif University in Tehran, one of Iran’s leading scientific universities, often compared with the US’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said the facility was severely hit, with extensive damage reported in the compound’s mosque and laboratories.

“The Sharif area has witnessed other attacks, including one on a gas facility,” Asadi said, adding that other civil facilities, including roads, power plants and bridges were also targeted across Iran.

“Iran’s Ministry of Science and Technology told us that at least 30 universities have been hit” since the beginning of the war on February 28, he said.

Iran vows retaliatory attacks

The attacks follow Trump’s expletive-laden threat on Truth Social, demanding that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face “hell”. Iran has warned of retaliatory attacks, saying it will respond “in kind” to any attacks on its infrastructure, with senior officials condemning the president’s remarks as an “incitement to war crimes”. The strait, through which some 20 percent of global oil and gas passes, has been under effective blockade by Iran in response to the war.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Iranians were unfazed by Trump’s threats and that they would not be forced into any unfavourable deal. He said Trump’s statements were “an indication of a criminal mindset” and amounted to an “incitement to war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

Baghaei also warned that Iran would respond to any attacks on its infrastructure by launching similar attacks in the region.

Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said a single misstep by either country could severely disrupt global energy flows and international trade.

Velayati added that while the US has learned certain lessons from Iran’s history, it “has yet to understand the geography of power”.

Meanwhile, Israel also faced several missile attacks, with alarms going off in parts of the country. According to the official Israeli radio station, four volleys of Iranian missiles were launched in the early morning hours on Tuesday.

Rescue workers pulled two bodies from the rubble of a building struck in Haifa, while two residents remained missing.

Ambulance and civil defence services reported several injuries, some serious, in more than 20 locations, including Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva and Ramat Gan.

The Ynet News outlet said a 34-year-old woman was “seriously injured” by interceptor missiles in Petah Tikva.

The Channel 2 broadcaster published images of smoke rising over Gush Dan and Bnei Brak, as well as a video of minor damage to a building in Tel Aviv.

Silva will leave Manchester City after winning the Champions League and six Premier League titles during his nine-year spell.

Manchester City ‌‌captain Bernardo Silva will leave the club ⁠⁠at the ⁠⁠end of the season, assistant manager Pep Lijnders has confirmed.

“Every good story comes to an end,” Lijnders told reporters after City’s 4-0 FA ‌‌Cup quarterfinal victory over Liverpool on Sunday.

“I hope he enjoys the last months – there are only six weeks left – and has a good farewell. He deserves all that attention.”

The 31-year-old Portugal international, who has ⁠⁠won six Premier League titles and the Champions League during nine years at the Etihad ⁠⁠Stadium, will depart as a free agent when his contract expires after the campaign concludes.

Pep Guardiola, who was serving a touchline suspension during the match, has previously described Silva ⁠⁠as “irreplaceable”.

Silva joined City from AS Monaco ⁠⁠in 2017 for a reported fee of about $57.35m and has since made 450 appearances for the club.

Known ⁠⁠for his tactical versatility, superb technique and tireless work rate, the midfielder has ⁠⁠been a cornerstone of City’s ⁠⁠side under Guardiola.

After winning the League Cup last month, City remain in contention for a domestic treble as the 2025-26 campaign enters ‌‌its final weeks, despite trailing Premier League leaders Arsenal by nine points.

The Manchester club have a game ‌‌in ‌‌hand and eight matches remaining to bridge the deficit.

Silva will become the second major player to leave the top four Premier League clubs this season, joining Liverpool legend Mohamed Salah, who confirmed he will exit the defending champions in May.

The 33-year-old Egypt international confirmed the news via a video message on his social media accounts last month.

“Unfortunately, the day has come. This is ‌‌the first part of my farewell,” Salah said. “I will be leaving Liverpool at the end of the season.”

Signed from AS Roma in 2017, Salah established himself as one ⁠⁠of the best players in the club’s ⁠⁠history, helping Liverpool to two Premier League titles, the Champions League, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup, FA Cup and two League Cups, as ‌‌well as an FA Community Shield.

He has scored 255 goals in 435 appearances, making him the club’s all-time third ‌‌highest ‌‌goal scorer, during which he won the Premier League Golden Boot on four occasions.

Assam, India – Amoiya Medhi says attending an election rally organised by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in her hometown in India’s northeastern state of Assam is a matter of both religious compulsion and personal gratitude.

On March 29, Medhi was among thousands of men and women who thronged the rally held on the outskirts of Jagiroad, an industrial town in central Assam’s Morigaon district, ahead of the state assembly election scheduled on Thursday.

Nitin Nabin, the BJP’s national president and chief guest at the event, trumpeted the welfare schemes launched by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s government – schemes that Nabin claimed benefitted the Assamese people, especially women.

Medhi, 38, nodded in agreement as she listened attentively to the speeches. “This government has done so much for everyone, including women,” she told Al Jazeera. “I am going to only vote for the BJP.”

Like Medhi, dozens of women attending the rally said they were the beneficiaries of multiple government schemes, including Orunodoi, a direct benefit transfer scheme that saw nearly four million women receive 9,000 rupees each on March 10 – the largest such disbursement in the state’s history, which included a three-month bonus to mark the Bihu festival held in April.

The disbursement came barely a month before Thursday’s vote in which Sarma, 57, is seeking a third consecutive term for his party.

Since becoming the chief minister in 2021, Sarma has been accused of pursuing a hardline Hindu supremacist agenda (popularly known as “Hindutva”) coupled with a xenophobic campaign targeting Muslims. They constitute 34 percent of Assam’s 31 million population, according to the last census conducted in 2011. That’s the highest among Indian states, with only the federally-governed territories of Indian-administered Kashmir and Lakshadweep higher.

An overwhelming nine million of Assam’s 10.3 million Muslims speak Bengali and not Assamese. They historically migrated to Assam in waves – a majority of them moving during British rule, when Bengali-speaking Hindu and Muslim communities moved from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) to work in Assam’s tea estates and rice fields.

‘Protecting our Hindu identity’

For decades, the BJP and other Hindu groups have labelled the Bengali-speaking Muslims as “foreigners”, accusing them of being undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh. Assam founded special tribunals to try these Muslims, sending hundreds to detention centres built across the state.

Thousands of “miya”, as Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam are pejoratively called, have also been declared “doubtful” voters. The “miya” issue has shaped the BJP’s politics in Assam. Leading the charge against them, Sarma himself publicly admitted that he had instructed BJP workers to file an objection with the Election Commission of India to remove half a million Bengali-speaking Muslims from electoral rolls.

In 2024, Sarma told the state assembly that his government “will take sides” and “will not let miya Muslims take over all of Assam”. Two months ago, a 17-second artificial intelligence-generated video, produced and shared by the BJP on X, showed Sarma holding a rifle and shooting at pictures of two Muslim men, with the caption saying: “No Mercy”. The clip, titled ‘Point Blank Shot’, was deleted after outrage.

Champa Hira, another woman attending the Morigaon rally, said while the BJP’s financial aid and other welfare schemes have been a major draw, her support for the party goes beyond financial benefits.

“For us, it is also about protecting our Hindu identity,” she told Al Jazeera.

“Our Hindu religion is born out of the lotus,” Hira said, referring to the BJP’s election symbol. “We will let the lotus bloom once again for such schemes and also for our Hindu identities.”

In the run-up to the polls, the BJP’s political messaging on roadside billboards, wall graffiti and posters had the party showcase its anti-Muslim policies pursued in the past decade.

The party boasts about clearing around 20,000 hectares of government land – an area more than three-and-a-half-times the size of Manhattan – from the “osinaki manuh” (“strange people” – a veiled reference to Bengali-speaking Muslims). The eviction drives, which intensified after Sarma became the chief minister in 2021, are a part of the BJP’s “war” on Bengali-speaking Muslims to “reclaim every inch of land” allegedly encroached by them. Without providing evidence, Sarma has repeatedly accused the Bengali-speaking Muslims of a conspiracy to change Assam’s demography and reduce Hindus to a minority. The government’s crackdown also saw dozens of Muslims “pushed back” to Bangladesh – their alleged homeland – or their properties bulldozed.

Alongside such hardline policies targeting Muslims, the BJP also touted the launching of various welfare schemes for women and youth. And has promised an increase in financial aid from $13 to over $32 in the Orunodoi cash transfer scheme. In the Udyamita scheme, an entrepreneurial fund reserved for rural women to bootstrap their businesses, the increase is from $107 to $269.

Akhil Ranjan Dutta, who teaches political science at Assam’s Gauhati University, says the Hindu nationalist party is using a strategy that mixes “heightened polarisation and a developmental pitch” to woo the Assamese voters.

“To me, it is a cocktail of Hindutva and welfarism,” Dutta told Al Jazeera. “The BJP is experimenting with a brand of Hindutva by co-opting Indigenous armed struggle and cultural nationalism, while solidifying Hindu identity and othering the Bengali Muslims.”

The Bengali-speaking Muslims say the BJP’s election promises have heightened their anxiety. In its manifesto, the party has promised more crackdowns on the community, including a proposal to implement a Uniform Civil Code, which, according to critics, will override Muslim personal laws on marriage, divorce and inheritance.

The Uniform Civil Code, a longstanding demand from Hindu groups, is already in place in two BJP-ruled states, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat. The BJP has also promised a pushback against “Love Jihad”, an unproven conspiracy theory floated by right-wing Hindu groups, under which Muslim men allegedly lure Hindu women into marriage and convert them to Islam.

A former Assamese parliamentarian from the main opposition Congress party, who requested anonymity fearing reprisal from the government, agreed with political scientist Dutta. “The BJP has managed to turn Hindus against Muslims and enjoy support,” he added.

BJP spokesman in Assam, Kishore Upadhyay, rejected the allegation, claiming the government’s eviction drives were not targeted at any community.

“It is directed only against illegal encroachment, irrespective of religion or identity. Unfortunately, successive Congress governments in the past allowed or even facilitated such illegal settlements, creating today’s challenges,” he told Al Jazeera.

“It is also important to highlight that this is about restoring land rights of indigenous and tribal communities, protecting forest areas and ensuring proper land governance.”

Will welfare schemes help BJP?

Opposition parties and analysts say the BJP is mainly milking two cash transfer schemes – Orunodoi and Udyamita – to influence voters in this election.

In December 2025 and January this year, the government distributed cheques of $107 each under the Udyamita scheme. Additionally, it withheld a monthly honorarium of $13 for poor women under the Orunodoi scheme for three months, but handed it out last month in the run-up to the election.

Isfaqur Rahman of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said the Sarma government’s disbursement of cash only days before the polls will help it in securing significant numbers of female votes. “If cash is disbursed to them on the eve of the election after making the beneficiaries wait, it will help influence their choice to vote,” Rahman told Al Jazeera. “This is nothing more than vote buying by the BJP.”

Economist Joydeep Baruah agreed, saying that distributing a lump sum of money will “bear a positive political result for the ruling party”, as he estimated that that at least 10 to 15 percent of the scheme’s four million women beneficiaries could vote for the BJP.

“While the rural wages in Assam have been stagnant due to a growing unemployment, the Orunodoi financial aid converts into 10-15 percent of their monthly income,” said Baruah, who teaches economics at state-run Krishna Kanta Handiqui State Open University in Assam’s main city of Guwahati.

Baruah said such populist schemes help in sustaining pro-incumbency.

“That way, the BJP is establishing more of a patron-client relationship, with patrons being the BJP and the clients being the beneficiaries,” he told Al Jazeera. “Such a transactional relationship materialises on the ground.”

Dipika Baruah, a 34-year-old woman in Kathiatoli town in central Assam’s Nagaon district – who is not related to economist Baruah – said the government grants empowered her to live with dignity.

“The money helped me keep the flame in my stove going,” she told Al Jazeera as she shopped at Mama Bazar, a marketplace named after Sarma, who is fondly called “mama” (maternal uncle in Assamese and Bengali) by his supporters. “This was possible because of mama. Women will only vote for Mama.”

Pre-poll surveys in Assam also suggest that cash transfer schemes will help the BJP consolidate votes in its favour.

An opinion poll conducted by political research firm, Vote Vibe, revealed that 54 percent of respondents believe the government’s cash transfer schemes will consolidate and even attract opposition voters. The survey also showed 38 percent of female respondents saying the schemes had strengthened the BJP’s voter base, while 21 percent of females said the schemes will poach opposition votes.

BJP spokesman Upadhyay told Al Jazeera the allegations of influencing voters by transferring cash before the election are “factually incorrect and politically motivated”.

“It [Orunodoi] is a long-standing welfare initiative aimed at supporting economically vulnerable women-led households, not a last-minute electoral measure,” he told Al Jazeera.

‘Kill us all at once’

Back at the BJP rally in Morigaon, where its leaders delivered fiery speeches calling for the expulsion of “infiltrators from Bangladesh”, Amir Ali remembered his sister Afsana.

On February 18, 1983, one-year-old Afsana was among an estimated 1,800 Bengali-speaking Muslims massacred by a Hindu and Indigenous mob in what came to be known as the Nellie massacre. The killings were in 14 villages, including Ali’s Matiparbat, a 40-minute drive from where the BJP rally was held.

Ali, now in his 50s, said he attended the BJP rally only to prove that he is not an “illegal immigrant” but a citizen of the state.

“When children were massacred, we had no choice but to vote to prove that we are not illegal Bangladeshis,” he told Al Jazeera. “Likewise, we have no choice now but to prove we are not infiltrators or ‘strangers’ as Sarma claims.”

In a quaint corner of Jagiroad town, Noorjamal shares Ali’s sentiments. Two years ago, he was rendered homeless after the houses of nearly 8,000 Muslims were bulldozed during a government eviction drive.

“The chief minister says he is evicting Bangladeshis from government land, but how are we Bangladeshis if my father and forefathers were born and died in India?” Noorjamal’s mother Maherbanu Nessa asked.

“The way Himanta ‘mama’ is bulldozing our homes, he might as well just kill us all at once.”

In a communication sent to India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, the United Nations Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said on January 19 this year that Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam are facing racial discrimination, resulting in forced evictions, hate speech and excessive use of force by the law-enforcement agencies.

An investigation by The New Humanitarian, an independent news outlet, published on March 24 found that between May 2021, when Sarma became Assam’s chief minister, and early 2026, more than 22,000 structures were demolished and 20,380 families evicted in the state, an overwhelming majority of them being Bengali-speaking Muslims.

As Sarma’s BJP vows to “break the backbone of miyas” after the election, Ali and Nessa worry about survival amid such hostilities.

“We have nothing to resist this cruel government but prayers and our votes,” Ali told Al Jazeera. “But maybe, if not today, then someday we will find peace in this land. We are still hopeful.”

NBA star marks comeback after nine weeks as Houston Rockets beat Golden State Warriors 117-116 in San Francisco.

Stephen Curry marked his return from a two-month absence ‌with 29 points but ended up on the losing side as the Houston Rockets edged the Golden State Warriors 117-116 in San Francisco.

The Rockets’ Alperen Sengun capped a 24-point performance with a go-ahead interior ⁠hoop with 11.1 seconds remaining, sealing his team’s victory on Sunday night.

In his first return to San Francisco ⁠as a member of the Rockets, former Warriors star Kevin Durant poured in a game-high 31 points for Houston (49-29).

Durant also found time for a team-high eight assists and eight rebounds, one shy of Smith’s nine for team honours in both categories.

The Rockets have now moved within one game of the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets in their three-team ⁠duel for third place in the Western Conference.

Brandin Podziemski backed Curry with 18 points for the Warriors (36-42), who have virtually assured themselves of the 10th seed in the Western play-in tournament.

Sengun’s four-footer from the middle of the key came after Golden State used a 17-6 burst to overtake the visitors on a ‌Gary Payton II layup with 19.6 seconds remaining.

Golden State had a shot after Sengun’s hoop, but Curry misfired under heavy pressure from 30 feet, capping a 5-for-10 effort from three-point range.

Jabari Smith Jr had 23 points, Amen Thompson 18 and Reed Sheppard 11 for the Rockets, who won their sixth straight game.

Curry, who ⁠had missed 27 straight games since a January 30 injury against Detroit, ⁠played 26 minutes, during which he hit 11 of his 21 shots.

Coming off the bench in the regular season for the first time in 14 years, Curry was greeted by a warm standing ovation and greetings on the big screen when he entered with 4:54 left in the opening quarter.

“He’s one of the most beloved players in league history, Bay Area history in any sport, and I think a long absence like this reminds everybody how lucky we are to see him, to watch him, to coach him, to play with him,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “So tonight’s a special night because we’re reminded of how lucky we’ve been and how lucky we still are.”

Kerr said before the game that it is still unclear how many of the remaining games Curry will play, given Golden State have five contests in eight days with a back-to-back the rest of the way – and the expectation is he would not play on consecutive nights.

“We’re going to manage it accordingly. The plan for tonight would be shorter bursts, and we’ll see on the minutes,” Kerr said. “But first game back, he’s not playing 48 minutes.”

The ongoing war of choice launched by the United States and Israel against Iran has shattered the geopolitical status quo in our region. As Washington finds itself entangled in another Middle Eastern quagmire, reports suggest that US President Donald Trump’s administration is increasingly in need of a political off-ramp.

The Hormuz littoral states possess a rare, collective opportunity to provide the American president with an exit strategy. By taking the initiative to establish a new, locally managed security architecture for the Strait of Hormuz, our nations can further elevate their strategic significance in regional geopolitics and the global economy. The alternative to this win-win scenario is prolonged conflict that would ensure that a new regional order is eventually imposed unilaterally by Tehran.

Seeking to balance their positions, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states appear trapped between two bad options. Confronting Trump, especially in the middle of a war, would undoubtedly carry significant costs and unpredictable reactions from an increasingly unpredictable leader.

At the same time, their inability to avoid being seen by Iran as at least passive participants in the aggression against the country makes them legitimate targets under its increasingly assertive military doctrine, which seeks to prevent the repetition of such wars for the foreseeable future.

Yet, this reality also demonstrates the limits of the United States’ security patronage. These limits—especially during what appears to be a historically unconditional alliance with Israel in which Israeli interests increasingly trump American interests in the region—suggest that the status quo is unsustainable.

A new order will inevitably replace the existing one, as conditions for all regional states will further deteriorate if the conflict continues to escalate. There is no longer any scenario in which Iran remains a target while the GCC carries on as usual, as was the case during the 12-day war in June 2025.

Iran’s ability to choke the flow of maritime traffic with $20,000 drones that can be produced underground and launched from anywhere in the country suggests that it possesses immense leverage. Iranian officials have clearly stated that it will now be utilised to forge a new order for Hormuz.

Relations between Iran and the GCC states have seen ups and downs since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The relationship was defined by hostility for a long time until it underwent a radical, positive transformation in the past few years.

Iranian attacks against the military and economic infrastructure in the GCC states, along with the recent expulsion of Iranian diplomats from some GCC capitals, undoubtedly constitute a severe setback and a regression toward the past.

However, this crisis has also demonstrated that security is a collective good; the current war proves how one state’s insecurity renders all states in the region insecure. A security architecture built at the expense of a neighbour is no longer viable. Iran has already begun dismantling the former order, but the new order does not need to be exclusively Iranian in its design.

For a path forward, we can look to Europe’s successful historical experiences in achieving a regional order. From the Congress of Vienna, which stabilised Europe following Napoleon’s wars of aggression, to the gradual economic, political, and security integration that followed World War II, these milestones should not serve as templates, but as sources of inspiration for our region.

The Strait of Hormuz suffers from a legal anomaly, as it remains one of the few critical maritime arteries of its kind lacking a dedicated international regulatory treaty. Unlike Turkiye, whose sovereign control and regional stability are in part anchored in the Montreux Convention regulating the Bosporus and Dardanelles, Hormuz operates without a codified maritime framework, which has made it uniquely vulnerable to superpower impositions throughout history. The current war can thus, to some extent, be understood as a product of this unregulated environment.

Convening a “Congress for Hormuz” could help regional states collectively design a security architecture, fill this legal vacuum, and ensure the stability of not only our own region but the global economy as well.

The ultimate goal of such a platform should be the codification of a treaty that formalises the status of the strait and provides the legal certainty currently absent, while also elevating the strategic weight of regional states in the global economy by ensuring that the management of Hormuz remains a local prerogative.

In the short term, this framework can serve to reopen the strait, providing Trump with a way out of the quagmire by claiming that his regional allies have helped reopen it. In the long term, this framework would protect GCC countries from a patron willing to sacrifice international law and regional stability for the benefit of its principal ally, Israel, an ally that none of us will ever be able to replace or compete with.

The future of Hormuz belongs in the hands of its inhabitants, not the superpowers who have exploited it and are currently destabilising it to pursue their own, or Israel’s, interests.

While a multilateral platform and a formal treaty represent the ideal path towards long-term stability, it is imperative to recognise that the current existential war launched against Iran—a conflict facilitated by the regional status quo—has made the emergence of a new order a non-negotiable necessity for Tehran.

Should the GCC states choose to prioritise the requests of their Western allies over regional integration—which is likely to also prolong the conflict, inflicting costs on all sides—Iran will undoubtedly proceed to forge this new order unilaterally.

In such a scenario, the resulting framework would also be an imposed order, born of strategic necessity and survival rather than consensus. Under these conditions, the common ground for shared peace, regional stability, and collective prosperity would be significantly diminished. This would be a lost opportunity.

The GCC states must now decide whether they wish to be the architects of this new regional era, or passive observers.

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

Abu Obeida says calling for the group’s disarmament amounts to an attempt to continue Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida has said that calling for the group’s disarmament amounted to an attempt to continue Israel’s genocide.

Hamas’s armed wing has rejected calls for the Palestinian group to disarm, saying that discussing the issue before Israel fully implements the first phase of the United States-brokered “ceasefire” in Israel’s war on Gaza amounts to an attempt to continue the genocide against the Palestinian people.

In a televised statement on Sunday, Obeida, who is Hamas’s armed wing spokesperson, said that raising the issue of weapons “in a crude manner” would not be accepted.

The issue of Hamas relinquishing its weapons is a major obstacle in talks to implement US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza, aimed at ending Israel’s war on the besieged territory.

Since the US- and Qatar-brokered “ceasefire” took effect in October, more than 705 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Hamas has told mediators it will not discuss disarmament without guarantees that Israel will completely withdraw from Gaza, three sources told the Reuters news agency last week.

“What the enemy is trying to push through today against the Palestinian resistance, via our brotherly mediators, is extremely dangerous,” Obeida said.

He said the disarmament demands were “nothing but an overt attempt to continue the genocide against our people, something we will not accept under any circumstances”.

It was not immediately clear whether the comments amounted to a formal rejection of the US-backed plan, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which began after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023, has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and injured at least 172,000 others.

Obeida urged mediators to pressure Israel to fulfil its commitments under the first phase of the Trump plan before any discussion of the second phase can take place.

“The enemy is the one who undermines the agreement,” he said.

There was no immediate comment from Israel on his remarks.

Obeida also addressed Israel’s role in the US-Israel war on Iran, condemning it for launching strikes on Iran “in the midst of the deception of negotiations, with full collusion and conspiracy with the United States”.

The US had been involved in talks with Iran over its nuclear programme in the weeks before the US and Israel launched the war on February 28.

In Iran, more than 2,000 people have been killed and at least 26,500 others injured since the war began.

Obeida also condemned Israel’s renewed offensive “against sisterly Lebanon”, which it launched on March 2 after the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel.

Israel’s assault on Lebanon has killed more than 1,400 people and displaced over 1.2 million, according to Lebanese authorities.

Obeida commended Iran, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis for their continued strikes against Israel.

Hamas’s spokesman also condemned the Israeli parliament’s passage of a new death penalty law that only applies to Palestinians, urging people in the West Bank “to seek, by every possible means, to liberate the [Palestinian] prisoners” held in Israeli jails.