Global Pulse

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  • To sustain global influence, Gulf economies recalibrate foreign investments as war drains revenues

    To sustain global influence, Gulf economies recalibrate foreign investments as war drains revenues

    The six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – are grappling with severe economic turbulence spurred by the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran, a conflict that has upended long-standing investment strategies across the region. The escalation of hostilities has injected unprecedented uncertainty into critical maritime trade chokepoints, including the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb, triggering a sharp collapse in cross-border capital flows. Data shows foreign direct investment into the GCC has plummeted by as much as 67 percent since the war commenced in February, eroding a core pillar of regional economic growth.

    Beyond the drop in inbound capital, the long-standing capacity of GCC states to deploy large volumes of outbound investment – a tool that has shaped their global financial and political influence over the past 40 years – has come under intense strain. This fiscal pressure has forced widespread strategic recalibration across both cross-border investment portfolios and domestic budget allocations, forcing governments to scale back previously ambitious development targets, most notably in Saudi Arabia.
    Justin Alexander, an economist focused on GCC economic dynamics, told Middle East Eye that the conflict has triggered immediate downward pressure on government fiscal revenues. As a result, he explains, some regional governments are no longer able to allocate new capital to their sovereign wealth funds, and a growing number are even drawing down existing SWF assets to cover ongoing public spending obligations.
    Kuwait became the first major state to take this step this week, announcing it would borrow from its $1 trillion-plus Future Generations Fund, the country’s primary sovereign wealth vehicle, to close widening gaps in its public budget. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Saudi Arabia is actively pursuing up to $8 billion in new loans through its central debt management office, as part of efforts to expand non-oil revenue streams and cover budget shortfalls.

    At the core of the growing fiscal squeeze is the near-total disruption of GCC oil and natural gas exports stemming from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, forcing governments to reallocate billions of dollars to emergency domestic infrastructure projects designed to bypass the chokepoint. The most high-profile of these projects is a second oil pipeline the UAE has commenced construction to connect its inland oil fields to the port of Fujairah on the Arabian Sea, which would allow exports to bypass the Strait of Hormuz entirely.
    Ben Cahill, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank, notes that these large-scale infrastructure projects have historically been driven more by geopolitical priorities than pure economic efficiency, with collective price tags expected to run into the tens of billions of dollars. “These pipelines are expensive and geopolitically complicated, but the Gulf states will spend serious money for back-up options,” Cahill explained.

    Securing capital for these urgent domestic projects has become far more challenging amid a 30 percent drop in hydrocarbon export revenues across the bloc, the same fiscal pressure that pushed Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to pursue emergency borrowing this week. Experts note that while Saudi Arabia has regularly taken on debt to fund its large-scale megaprojects in recent years, the current urgency of its borrowing is atypical. For Kuwait, the move to draw down its flagship sovereign wealth fund is nearly unprecedented: the only other time the country pursued such a step was in 1990, immediately after Iraq’s invasion that devastated the country’s economy.
    Alexander projects that the ongoing shift from outbound global investment to urgent domestic spending will persist for the foreseeable future. “The demand for domestic spending for recovery and in new infrastructure will compete to some extent with foreign investment priorities,” he said.

    Not all GCC member states are facing identical pressures or adopting identical responses, according to Robert Mogielnicki, a leading independent researcher and consultant focused on Gulf political economy. While Saudi Arabia has simply accelerated the strategic budget shifts it already had underway before the outbreak of the war, Mogielnicki notes the UAE has prioritized efforts to restore pre-war economic normalcy, while Qatar is still working to manage growing fiscal strains driven by its extensive exposure to trade routes through the Strait of Hormuz.

    For years, GCC economies have systematically pursued economic diversification strategies designed to reduce their reliance on volatile hydrocarbon exports, investing heavily in emerging sectors from logistics and tourism to competitive e-sports. Alexander notes that this pre-conflict diversification has provided a critical buffer for regional economies amid the current downturn. While the war has disrupted almost all sectors, broader, more diversified domestic economic bases have softened the blow of collapsing hydrocarbon production.
    That said, many of the sectors that were at the core of GCC diversification strategies have also been hit hard by the conflict. Regional tourism arrivals have dropped sharply, delivering record losses to domestic airline and hospitality industries, while returns on foreign tourism investments held by states like Qatar have not been enough to offset lost hydrocarbon export revenues. Other key sectors targeted for diversification, including heavy manufacturing, have also faced major disruptions from the Hormuz closure, with some aluminium processing facilities and digital data centres sustaining direct damage from cross-border strikes, Alexander added.
    While economic diversification remains a core long-term policy objective for all GCC states, the war has pushed many planned diversification initiatives down the list of immediate priorities, Mogielnicki explained. He cites the example of the new UAE Fujairah pipeline, a project that was originally framed as a long-term diversification asset but is now primarily a tool to mitigate immediate Hormuz-related export disruptions. These emergency infrastructure projects pull capital away from diversification for growth, creating long-term tradeoffs: “clearly, lots of excess infrastructure is not the most cost-efficient approach to economic diversification,” Mogielnicki said.

    Outbound foreign investment has long served as a deliberate tool of soft power for GCC states, delivering geopolitical leverage, cultural influence, and structural economic power across the globe. That dual function of investment – delivering both commercial returns and geopolitical influence – remains central to the region’s recalibrated strategies, Alexander says. “Gulf investments often have dual objectives of commercial returns and cementing bilateral relationships.”
    Despite the widespread shift to domestic priorities, GCC investors have still closed a number of record-breaking large-scale outbound deals in recent months, though most of these deals had been negotiated and had momentum before the war began. In early August, a Saudi-led consortium completed the $55 billion leveraged buyout of American video game developer Electronic Arts, the studio behind global hit franchises *FIFA* and *The Sims*, marking the largest private buyout of a technology company in corporate history.

    Even more recently, on August 24, the governments of France and Saudi Arabia announced a joint partnership to build three new theme parks just outside of Paris, including one attraction themed around the global manga franchise Dragon Ball Z. The project is backed by a $7 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s state-affiliated Qiddiya Investment Company, and was formally announced by French President Emmanuel Macron during an official visit by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – a high-profile public display of how Gulf states continue to use outbound investments to advance their geopolitical standing on the global stage.

    Kristian Alexander, a Gulf security analyst at the Middle East Institute, explains that these high-profile outbound investments are designed to deliver both financial returns and expanded cultural influence for Saudi Arabia. “The EA acquisition provides access to global franchises and digital audiences, while the Paris project potentially gives Saudi-owned Qiddiya an international operating platform and European visibility,” he said.

    These large outbound deals come as Saudi Arabia faces major setbacks to its domestic megaproject agenda, most recently announcing a full halt to construction on The Line, the 170-kilometer flagship smart city project at the core of the kingdom’s $1 trillion Neom development initiative, with construction not expected to resume until at least 2030. The project has already undergone extensive restructuring after projections showed original costs could balloon by as much as 800 percent, and shrinking oil revenues and logistical challenges have forced the kingdom to pivot its domestic focus to AI data centers and digital infrastructure instead. Even the large-scale domestic investments that once defined the Gulf’s economic boom are now feeling the war’s fallout, forcing rapid reprioritization across government budgets.

    For Qatar, global soft power influence continues to be anchored in strategic investments in the international luxury tourism sector, a low-friction path to expanding geopolitical influence that avoids the political scrutiny that comes with investments in sensitive sectors like defense or energy. Over the past three decades, Qatar has accumulated a sprawling portfolio of luxury hospitality acquisitions across major global hubs including New York, London, Paris, Barcelona, Singapore, Rome, and Zurich, giving the small emirate a strategic foothold at the intersection of global luxury and finance. “A tourism project is easier to present as employment, environmental tourism and economic development,” Kristian Alexander explains, making these investments far less politically controversial than alternative forms of influence-building.
    The most recent example of this strategy is a new ultra-luxury resort project on Seychelles’ Assomption Island, where a Qatari-led consortium acquired development rights for the high-end property. The site is located adjacent to the Aldabra Atoll, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the project has already drawn fierce criticism from global environmental groups concerned about the ecological damage of construction in the sensitive protected ecosystem.
    More significantly, Assomption Island was previously selected by the Indian military for development as a new naval outpost, part of New Delhi’s “necklace of diamonds” strategy to counter China’s growing “string of pearls” military and economic presence across the Indian Ocean. The Qatari luxury hotel investment allows Doha to establish a permanent economic and political foothold in this strategically critical region, at a time when Gulf states are increasingly competing with China and India for influence across the Indian Ocean littoral. This project perfectly embodies Qatar’s “luxury diplomacy” model, Kristian Alexander says: “Qatar can consequently obtain presence, relationships and reputational visibility in a strategically important location without requesting the explicit sovereign privileges associated with a military base.”

    Looking ahead, GCC states recognize that they will need to continue investing abroad to sustain the economic and political influence built up through decades of cross-border dealmaking, particularly as the region takes on an increasingly central diplomatic role in global negotiations over the future of the Strait of Hormuz. But sustaining that outbound investment will become far more challenging in the coming months, as the closure of Hormuz and the war’s broader fiscal toll squeeze government budgets at the worst possible moment. Persistent uncertainty over when hydrocarbon exports will return to pre-war levels adds to the pressure, as urgent domestic infrastructure spending consumes available capital, leaving GCC economies increasingly financially stretched.

  • Meloni celebrates her Italian government’s longevity during party rally in Bari

    Meloni celebrates her Italian government’s longevity during party rally in Bari

    On a Friday rally in the southern Italian city of Bari, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni marked a unprecedented political milestone for her right-wing administration, celebrating that her government has become the longest-serving single cabinet in Italy’s post-war republican history. Crossing the 1,414-consecutive-day mark in office, Meloni’s coalition has officially surpassed the previous 1,412-day record set by Silvio Berlusconi’s second administration, which held power from 2001 to 2005.

    Addressing thousands of cheering supporters who chanted her name through the event, Meloni framed the longevity record as clear proof of the unity and resilience of her center-right coalition. “It is no coincidence that the three longest-serving governments in the history of the Italian Republic are all center-right governments,” she told the crowd. Framing political continuity as her government’s foundational achievement, Meloni added: “Stability is our first great reform.” She argued that the unusual stretch of unbroken governance has allowed her administration to advance economic and foreign policy priorities that would have been impossible to pursue under Italy’s historic pattern of short-lived, frequently collapsing administrations.

    In a vulnerable, personal reflection on her time in office, Meloni opened up about the steep obstacles she has faced while pushing forward her policy agenda and pushing back against political opposition to change. “There were days when it felt like I was swimming through glue, but I never gave up and I do not intend to start now,” she said, a comment that drew loud, sustained cheers from attendees. The Bari rally also laid out the core narrative Meloni is expected to center in the lead-up to Italy’s next national election, scheduled for 2027: that consistent, stable governance has delivered tangible results and rebuilt Italy’s global credibility.

    Political analysts note that the milestone caps a remarkable political transformation for Meloni, who made history as Italy’s first female prime minister when she took office in 2022, rising from a fringe political outsider to a central figure in Italian and European politics. When her government first took power, many international and European observers raised alarms over her party’s historical roots in post-war neo-fascism, widely predicting she would adopt a confrontational stance toward EU institutions in Brussels. To date, those fears have not materialized.

    Vera Capperucci, a professor of the history of European political parties at Rome’s LUISS University, described the Bari celebratory rally as a “necessary act” to cement the government’s narrative, adding that foreign policy credibility has been the defining success of Meloni’s term. “Meloni has built credibility with European partners while maintaining Italy’s Atlantic alliances, defying concerns when she took office that her government would pursue a more confrontational course toward Brussels,” Capperucci explained. Since taking office, Meloni has stayed consistent in Italy’s military and political support for Ukraine, worked within existing European regulatory and institutional frameworks, and built close, cooperative ties with key Western allies across the globe.

    Meloni and her supporters credit the government’s political stability for a string of tangible domestic achievements: they point to the creation of more than 1 million new jobs, a steady drop in national unemployment, more disciplined management of Italy’s public finances, and a sharp reduction in irregular migrant arrivals along Italian coasts. For many attendees at the Bari rally, the longevity record alone counts as a major win for Italian politics, which has been plagued by fragmented coalitions and early government collapses for decades. Marco Macrì, a 34-year-old Forza Italia supporter from the small southern town of Alliste, near Lecce, noted that Meloni has successfully held the center-right coalition together in the period following Berlusconi’s death. “Now, with Giorgia, we are all united under one roof … with different symbols but part of one family,” he said.

    Still, the milestone has drawn sharp pushback from political opponents, who argue that Meloni’s government has failed to address Italy’s most persistent long-term challenges. Critics point out that deep structural issues including stagnant productivity growth, chronically low wages, and widespread inefficiencies in public administration and services remain largely unresolved. Opposition leaders also accuse the coalition of cutting critical funding for public health and education services, and argue that the government’s only economic achievements have been limited to controlling public debt and deficit levels, with no actionable plan to boost sustained long-term economic growth.

    It is worth noting that while Meloni leads the longest-serving single uninterrupted government in Italian republican history, Berlusconi still holds the record for the longest total cumulative time in office across multiple separate administrations. No Italian government has ever completed a full five-year parliamentary term without collapsing or being replaced early. As Meloni’s administration basks in the glow of its record-breaking milestone, the national political conversation has already begun to shift: the question is no longer whether Meloni’s coalition can survive, but whether Italian voters will decide it has delivered enough to earn another term in 2027.

  • UAE-linked networks supplying weapons and fighters for Sudan atrocities, UN finds

    UAE-linked networks supplying weapons and fighters for Sudan atrocities, UN finds

    A United Nations-led independent international investigation has delivered a damning new assessment of Sudan’s 16-month-old civil conflict, concluding that cross-border flows of foreign weaponry, advanced military technology, and contracted mercenaries are prolonging the war and enabling widespread attacks on civilian targets that may rise to the level of war crimes. The long-awaited report from the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan, released publicly Thursday, confirmed there are reasonable grounds to believe a coordinated transnational network has provided the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Sudan’s main paramilitary opposition group, with a steady stream of arms, logistical backing, combat training, and foreign personnel.

    Investigators traced the sprawling network, which includes private companies, middlemen, and individual actors, to operations based in or transiting through the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Colombia, Chad, Libya, and Somalia. While the UAE has repeatedly denied all accusations of supporting the RSF, extensive independent reporting from Middle East Eye and other open-source research has long linked the Gulf state to arms and supply shipments to the paramilitary group. In recent weeks, global human rights organizations have submitted two formal communications to the International Criminal Court, calling for investigations into the role of foreign actors—specifically senior UAE officials—in aiding and abetting alleged RSF atrocities.

    Beyond the RSF’s foreign support, the UN mission also uncovered preliminary evidence that foreign-provided drone technology has drastically expanded the long-range strike capacity of Sudan’s official Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), allowing the military to hit targets deep in territory held by the RSF. “The consequences of this external support are being felt most acutely by civilians,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, chair of the fact-finding mission. “This external support has not brought greater protection for civilians. Instead, civilians are paying the price through attacks on homes, hospitals, schools, markets and places of refuge.”

    The report’s casualty figures underscore the devastating human cost of these externally enabled attacks: between January and May 2026 alone, more than 1,000 civilians were killed in drone strikes across the country. Investigators documented deliberate strikes on protected civilian infrastructure by both warring parties, including an RSF attack on a kindergarten, displacement camp, and hospital in Kalogi, South Kordofan, in December 2025. Successive RSF drone strikes hit the Nabaa al-Hanan kindergarten, first responders who rushed to the scene, and a nearby rural hospital, killing 114 people—roughly 60 of whom were children—and wounding 35 more. The mission’s investigation found no evidence that either the kindergarten or the hospital was being used for military purposes, stripping the attack of any legal justification under international law. The RSF also carried out a lethal strike on a former International Organization for Migration building that sheltered displaced families in Kulba, killing at least five civilians including multiple children.

    On the SAF side, the mission confirmed the military carried out a major strike on Ad-Da’ein Teaching Hospital in East Darfur on the first day of Eid al-Fitr in March 2026. The attack killed at least 70 people, injured 146 more, and completely disabled the only major referral hospital serving more than two million people in the region. Even after investigating claims that wounded RSF fighters were receiving care at the facility, the mission emphasized that providing medical treatment to injured combatants does not revoke a hospital’s protected status under international humanitarian law. The report also attributed strikes on the Abu Zaima market in North Kordofan and the Yabus market in Blue Nile to the SAF, finding no identifiable military targets at either impact site. Investigators noted that deliberate attacks on clearly civilian sites meet the legal definition of potential war crimes.

    The report dedicated specific analysis to the RSF’s foreign supply lines for its operations in Darfur, where the mission previously found evidence of acts bearing the hallmarks of genocide against non-Arab communities. It traced weapons, personnel, and supplies through interconnected air, maritime, and land routes that pass through Bosaso in Somalia’s Puntland region, southeastern Libya, and Chad. Among the military equipment supplied to the RSF are Chinese-made NORINCO AH-4 howitzers, FK-2000 air defense systems, and CH-95 reconnaissance and strike drones. Investigators noted that much of this materiel matches specifications of equipment previously exported to the UAE, a finding that reinforces existing links between Emirati-linked entities and the RSF supply chain.

    Witness testimony collected by the mission documented repeated cargo flights departing from the UAE, transiting through Chad, before moving supplies and foreign contractors into RSF-controlled territory. While investigators stopped short of holding the Emirati state officially responsible for the network’s actions, they concluded that individuals and entities registered, based, or linked to the UAE play a “significant role” in recruiting, financing, and transporting military contractors and delivering other critical support to the RSF. In its response to investigators, the UAE rejected all allegations of arms supplies or mercenary facilitation, insisting it has remained neutral in the conflict and that internal inquiries found no evidence linking entities under its jurisdiction to mercenary activity in Sudan. Even so, the fact-finding mission urged Emirati authorities to launch more robust investigations and take enforcement action against companies and individuals operating from its territory that support the RSF.

    Colombian contractors emerged as a particularly critical component of the RSF’s advanced weapons operations, the report found. Investigators estimate that as many as 2,000 former Colombian military personnel have been recruited to support the RSF since August 2024. Multiple witnesses confirmed that some of these contractors received combat training at a military-style facility in Ghayathi, UAE, before traveling to Sudan via Somalia, Libya, or Chad. Contractors belonging to a unit calling itself the “Desert Wolves” were present in el-Fasher before, during, and after the RSF’s seizure of the city, operating drones, artillery, and other advanced weapons systems.

    “This support fed into RSF operations in Zamzam camp and later during the takeover of el-Fasher, where the mission documented grave violations and international crimes, including conduct displaying hallmarks of genocide,” said Mona Rishmawi, a member of the fact-finding mission. The mission has previously confirmed that RSF forces and their allied militias committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the el-Fasher campaign, and that their systematic targeting of non-Arab communities meets the criteria for potential acts of genocide.

    While investigators identified multiple unpublicized foreign individuals and entities linked to the support network, the report only publicly names individuals already sanctioned by the UN Security Council’s Sudan sanctions committee. That list includes retired Colombian colonel Alvaro Andres Quijano Becerra, founder of one of the main recruitment firms in the network, who was based in Abu Dhabi. His wife, Claudia Viviana Oliveros Forero, is accused of coordinating recruitment activities inside Colombia. Both were sanctioned by the Security Council in April for their role in recruiting and deploying former Colombian soldiers to Sudan. The mission confirmed it maintains confidential dossiers on other unnamed suspects, which it will share with international judicial and accountability bodies as needed.

    Colombian authorities have acknowledged that Colombian companies and individuals have recruited contractors for deployment to Sudan, but the state has denied directing or supporting these activities, and the fact-finding mission made no finding of official Colombian state responsibility for the network. Under international criminal law, any individual who knowingly provides practical assistance that substantially contributes to the commission of international crimes can be held liable for aiding and abetting, even if their support was not strictly indispensable to the crime.

    “Accountability cannot stop with those who carry out the attacks,” said mission member Joy Ngozi Ezeilo. Investigators are calling for full inquiries that trace accountability through the entire chain of command, including individuals who order, finance, supply, or otherwise facilitate international crimes in Sudan.

    To curb the ongoing flow of weapons fueling the conflict, the mission urged the UN Security Council to expand the existing partial arms embargo covering only Darfur to the entire territory of Sudan. It also called on all UN member states to halt all transfers of weapons, drones, and military technology to any Sudanese party when there is a substantial risk the equipment will be used to facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

    Sudan’s ongoing civil war erupted in April 2023, triggered by a bitter power struggle between SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti. The conflict has killed at least tens of thousands of people, displaced more than 13 million from their homes, and pushed more than 19.5 million Sudanese to the brink of famine. The UN and European Union have both described the crisis as the world’s largest humanitarian and displacement emergency currently unfolding. Both warring parties have faced widespread accusations of systematic atrocities, and repeated international diplomatic efforts to negotiate a lasting ceasefire have all collapsed to date.

  • UAE president pardons Egyptian poet Abdul Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi

    UAE president pardons Egyptian poet Abdul Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi

    In a move that follows widespread international pressure from human rights organizations and United Nations experts, the United Arab Emirates’ president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan has granted a pardon to Egyptian dissident poet and activist Abdul Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who had been sentenced to a decade in prison in the Gulf state, Emirati state media has confirmed.

    The pardon, issued Friday, comes less than three months after Qaradawi’s conviction on August 27 by the Cybercrime Circuit of the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal, which handed down the 10-year custodial sentence alongside a fine of 200,000 Emirati dirhams (equivalent to roughly $54,450).

    A dual Egyptian-Turkish national, Qaradawi was first apprehended by Lebanese security officials in January this year, before being extradited to the UAE to face charges of spreading “fake news” and “disturbing public security”. The charges stem from a social media video he recorded during a visit to Syria, in which he publicly criticized the governments of Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Both Cairo and Abu Dhabi submitted formal extradition requests for the activist, and Lebanese authorities ultimately moved to enforce the UAE’s warrant on January 8.

    In the more than 200 days that followed his extradition to the UAE, Qaradawi was held in what human rights outlet Middle East Eye described as “forced disappearance”, with no public confirmation of charges or official indictment. The unacknowledged detention sparked fierce international pushback, with leading rights groups and UN experts repeatedly calling for his immediate release.

    London-based Amnesty International, one of the most vocal organizations calling for Qaradawi’s freedom, warned early in the case that his extradition represented a “flagrant violation of due process guarantees and other international human rights obligations, notably the principle of non-refoulement”. By March, a coalition of UN independent human rights experts issued a public statement raising alarm over Qaradawi’s ongoing unacknowledged detention, calling on UAE authorities to immediately disclose his location and ensure fair legal process.

    The experts also raised pointed concerns over the unusual legal mechanism that enabled the extradition: an arrest warrant issued through the Arab Interior Ministers’ Council (AIMC), a relatively obscure regional security body. The coalition argued the entire process was politically motivated rather than rooted in neutral legal criteria, warning that the AIMC’s cross-border arrest framework “is being abused by some states to silence criticism, shut down dissent, and pursue activists beyond their borders”.

    Amnesty International further confirmed that during Qaradawi’s initial detention in Lebanon, he was interrogated over two separate cases: a 2017 in-absentia verdict from an Egyptian court that convicted him of spreading false information in a widely condemned politically motivated case, and the separate extradition request from the UAE. The 2017 verdict added a five-year prison sentence to Qaradawi’s record in Egypt.

    Reaction to the news of the pardon has been largely positive among human rights advocates, though many have called for urgent action to complete Qaradawi’s release and allow him to reunite with his family. Samar Elhussieny, executive director of the Egyptian Human Rights Forum, welcomed the pardon in comments to Middle East Eye, urging Emirati officials to speed up final administrative procedures. “I hope the procedures will be finalised as soon as possible for him to be reunited with his family,” Elhussieny said. “Then he can live his life with his daughters in peace and safety, and heal from this traumatic experience.”

    Qaradawi, a well-known figure in Arab political and cultural circles, was a prominent public supporter of the 2011 Egyptian revolution that ousted long-time authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak. He also worked on the presidential campaign of former International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohammed el-Baradei, who ran for Egypt’s highest office following Mubarak’s resignation.

    In the years after 2011, Qaradawi was banned from publishing work and appearing on media outlets in Egypt, and joined hundreds of other Egyptian dissidents in self-imposed exile in Turkey. His family has also faced repeated pressure from Egyptian authorities: his sister Ola has been arbitrarily detained in Egypt for four years on unsubstantiated terrorism-related charges, widely seen as retaliation for the activist’s work. Qaradawi’s father, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most prominent and widely published Islamic scholars in the modern Arab world, died in Qatar in 2022.

  • Throwing papers, hurling a ninja star – Lindsay Clancy lawyer creates courtroom spectacles

    Throwing papers, hurling a ninja star – Lindsay Clancy lawyer creates courtroom spectacles

    The high-profile murder trial of Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy has drawn global public attention, and at the heart of the courtroom drama is veteran defense attorney Kevin Reddington, whose impassioned, high-stakes advocacy has once again put his decades-long career of unorthodox legal tactics on full display.

    Over the course of proceedings, Reddington has positioned Clancy, a 36-year-old woman accused of killing her three young children, not as a cold, calculating killer, but as a deeply distressed mother in crisis who desperately needed mental health intervention before the tragedy. His courtroom demeanor has shifted between quiet compassion and fiery frustration: he has held Clancy’s hand, rubbed her shoulder, and escorted her carefully across the courtroom as she uses a wheelchair, referring to her tenderly as “this young lady.” During closing arguments, his voice rose with conviction as he attacked the prosecution’s case, declaring, “This is a prosecution that has ripped the soul out of this girl.” When the judge rejected his initial request to dismiss a problematic juror, he slammed a stack of papers on the courtroom table and sat openly agitated, a display of raw emotion that has captivated the global audience watching the broadcast proceedings.

    For legal observers who have followed Reddington’s career, this high-drama courtroom performance is nothing out of the ordinary. The Massachusetts-based attorney first rose to national headlines in 1989, when he won an acquittal for Therese Rogers, a woman charged with murdering her sleeping boyfriend by stabbing him in the eyes with a butcher knife. In that case, Reddington deployed an unorthodox insanity defense, arguing that Rogers had endured years of ongoing abuse at the hands of her boyfriend and developed Battered Woman Syndrome that triggered a temporary state of insanity at the time of the killing. To drive his argument home, he threw a pair of ninja stars across the courtroom to demonstrate their lethal force; decades later, the scars from the demonstration still mark the courtroom wall. According to *The New York Times*, Reddington’s successful use of this defense strategy marked the first time such an argument secured an acquittal in a comparable case.

    Reddington leaned on a similar defense rooted in long-term abuse nearly two decades later, in 2007, when he represented another woman accused of shooting her husband to death in the chest. The evidence of sustained abuse he presented was so compelling that a grand jury—whose low evidentiary bar is famously summed up by the U.S. legal adage that a grand jury will “indict a ham sandwich,” according to Boston-based attorney Rosemary Scapicchio—declined to return any criminal indictment at all, a legal victory widely viewed as extraordinary.

    Reddington’s profile reached its peak in 2011, when he took on the defense of Catherine Greig, the long-time girlfriend of notorious Irish-American mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger (whose story was later adapted into the 2015 film *Black Mass*, where Bulger was portrayed by Johnny Depp). Greig, who harbored Bulger for years while he was counted among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, ultimately secured a favorable plea deal under Reddington’s representation.

    Now, decades after his first high-profile win, all legal and public eyes have turned back to Reddington as he fights for a favorable outcome for Clancy. Tensions boiled over in court recently, when Reddington pushed for the dismissal of one sitting juror, arguing that the juror was refusing to correctly apply the law as instructed and was the lone holdout preventing the unanimous verdict required by the court. Reddington, who appeared positioned to secure another potentially groundbreaking acquittal, warned that forcing the case forward with the noncompliant juror would be a miscarriage of justice. After the judge initially rejected his request, Reddington’s frustration boiled over into the public display of agitation. The following day, he pleaded with the court to avoid declaring a mistrial—an outcome that would require the entire case to be retried from scratch, dragging out proceedings and adding enormous cost and delay. He successfully persuaded the judge to grant a one-hour delay to the mistrial declaration, allowing him to file an appeal to the highest court in Massachusetts. “If we come back here in a half an hour with a mistrial because of a juror that has just spurned the instructions of this court, it’s a shame. It’s a real shame,” Reddington told the court. The judge, who initially pushed back against the request, at one point noting “I’m not an actor,” ultimately granted the delay, keeping Reddington’s defense strategy alive for the time being.

  • ‘There was blood everywhere’: Survivors recount US strike on wedding in Iran

    ‘There was blood everywhere’: Survivors recount US strike on wedding in Iran

    What was supposed to be the most joyful milestone in the lives of young Iranian couple Maryam Mallahi and Ziaeddin became one of the deadliest civilian tragedies of the latest round of US military strikes across Iran, leaving five people dead and dozens injured, many of them children.

    On the evening of September 1, around 350 guests gathered in the small coastal community of Kuhestak, located in Sirik County along Iran’s Hormozgan province eastern shore, to mark the couple’s marriage. Following long-held local custom, the celebration was split across two separate venues: male guests assembled at a relative’s residence, while women and children waited for the newlyweds at the bride’s family home. Strings of colored lights were strung across the property, guests dressed in vibrant traditional attire, and anticipation built as the crowd waited for Maryam and Ziaeddin to make their entrance.

    The idyllic scene shattered at approximately 9 p.m., as the United States launched a sweeping new wave of air attacks across southern Iran. Multiple explosions echoed across Kuhestak, a small settlement where the wedding venue sat just 200 meters from a telecommunications tower that was among the initial targets hit. Moments after the first blasts, a projectile tore through the roof of the bride’s single-story home, where dozens of women and children had gathered.

    Majid, a 41-year-old guest at the nearby men’s gathering whose wife and five-year-old child were both wounded in the strike, described the chaos that unfolded in the attack’s immediate aftermath. “We were talking to other guests when suddenly we heard a terrifying sound. At first we thought it was an earthquake. We panicked and ran outside,” he recounted to Middle East Eye. “We rushed toward the bride’s house and saw smoke and fire everywhere. I pulled my wife and my child out from under the rubble. Screams came from every direction, there was blood everywhere, and everyone was scrambling to pull the wounded to safety.”

    Ali Mallahi, the bride’s father and owner of the destroyed home, told reporters he heard a second and third blast, and immediately realized the explosions were centered on his property. “The first explosion completely destroyed the single-story house and left it uninhabitable. The second struck the courtyard, damaging a car and other parts of the property. The house is not a home any more. It is gone,” he said.

    One projectile left a 1.5-meter-deep crater in the floor of one of the home’s main rooms, according to local on-site reporting.

    Mina, a female guest who was trapped under rubble before being rescued and transported to Abolfazl Hospital in nearby Minab, described the casual horror of the moment the attack hit. “We were eating ice cream – the weather is still very hot in Hormozgan this time of year, you know – and we were waiting for the bride and groom to arrive when suddenly we heard this terrifying explosion nearby,” she said. “A second blast hit the house almost immediately and tore a hole through the roof. Bricks and chunks of ceiling and walls came crashing down on us. Everyone was screaming, everyone was calling for help, nobody knew what had happened. I was trapped under the rubble. I was just lucky to get out alive.”

    Nineteen-year-old Zahra, another wounded guest, recalled the gruesome scene inside the home that had been decorated just hours earlier for a celebration. “Every carpet in the house was stained with blood. The shoes, the serving dishes, the lights they had put up for the wedding all had blood on them,” she said.

    Local residents launched a frantic search for survivors before formal emergency response teams could reach the remote site. A Red Crescent rescuer who arrived moments after the strike, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said that uninjured guests and nearby neighbors had already begun pulling survivors from the rubble by the time his team arrived. “People who had escaped the building and others who saw the attack from outside were already trying to pull the wounded and survivors out from under the rubble,” he said. “They were so terrified that we had to spend a large part of our time just calming them down. Of course they were terrified. This was a real tragedy. It took only a few moments for their wedding to turn into mourning.”

    Fifteen ambulances were deployed to the area, with most casualties transported to hospitals in Sirik and Minab, and the most severely injured admitted directly to intensive care units. Iranian officials initially recorded two deaths and 50 injuries, but the toll climbed steadily in the days after the attack. The final confirmed death toll stands at five: 50-year-old Zarkhatoun Taheri, 43-year-old Kolsoum Mallahi-Nezhadnia, 16-year-old Mohammad Mallahi, four-year-old Amir Mohammad Karimi, and 22-year-old Asieh Molaeinejad, who succumbed to her injuries in hospital on Thursday.

    Provincial authorities confirm 68 people were wounded in total, 19 of whom are children under the age of 10. Fatemeh, a lightly injured guest who knew Amir Mohammad and his family, shared the devastating heartbreak of the young boy’s death: “Amir Mohammad was supposed to start preschool in just a few days, when the new school year began. Now his parents have to attend his funeral. The grief is unbearable.”

    To date, no official Iranian or US statement has confirmed exactly what type of weapon struck the wedding venue. Witnesses interviewed by Middle East Eye gave conflicting accounts, with some identifying the projectile as a missile and others saying it came from a drone. Razieh Alishvandi, deputy for international and humanitarian affairs at the Iranian Red Crescent, has officially characterized the incident as a projectile strike on a private residential home during a civilian wedding. All residents and witnesses interviewed confirmed the home was purely residential, with no military, security, or intelligence infrastructure located nearby.

    The Kuhestak strike was part of a broader wave of US attacks across Hormozgan and other regions of southern Iran that night. Iranian officials confirmed additional strikes and explosions in Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, Jask, Konarak, and Chabahar. In Kuhestak, the strike also damaged the local telecommunications tower, portions of the town pier, and critical electricity and communications infrastructure, cutting mobile phone and internet service for Kuhestak and the nearby village of Mishi for several hours.

    For local residents, the attack immediately stirred traumatic memories of a February strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab that killed 156 people, most of them children, on the first day of US-Israeli strikes against Iran earlier this year.

    US officials have not publicly confirmed what the intended target in Kuhestak was. US Central Command said in a statement that the night’s strikes targeted Iranian radar, communications, and maritime capabilities, adding that the US military does not intentionally target civilians. US Vice President JD Vance later stated that Washington was launching an investigation into the incident.

    Maryam and Ziaeddin survived the attack only by chance: neither had arrived at the bride’s home when the projectile struck. While the couple escaped physical harm, all of the dead and injured are close relatives, friends, and guests they had invited to celebrate their marriage. A close friend of the bride, who requested anonymity, said Maryam remains in deep shock and fragile mental health. “Maryam is in a very bad state – very, very bad,” she said. “She had dreamed about this night for so long. She wanted to celebrate the beginning of her married life with her family and friends. Now her mental state is so fragile that we honestly do not know how she will cope with this tragedy.”

  • UN votes to adopt new world map showing Africa’s true size

    UN votes to adopt new world map showing Africa’s true size

    In a landmark vote that addresses centuries of geographic bias in global mapping, the United Nations General Assembly has backed a plan to replace the ubiquitous but deeply flawed Mercator projection with a more geographically accurate map that properly reflects Africa’s true scale. The initiative, dubbed the “Correct the Map” resolution, was introduced by the West African nation of Togo and earned unified support from the 55-member African Union ahead of the vote. When the final tally was counted, 164 member states had thrown their support behind the measure, with major European powers France and the United Kingdom among the backers. The United States stood alone as the only country to vote against the resolution, while six other nations abstained from the vote.

    For more than 450 years, the Mercator projection has dominated classroom walls, atlases, and popular world maps across the globe. Created in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, the projection was originally designed to aid European mariners in navigating transoceanic trade routes and exploration voyages. Its enduring popularity stems from its unique ability to preserve straight lines of constant compass bearing, a feature that made it invaluable for 16th-century navigation. However, the projection carries a well-documented flaw: an unavoidable distortion inherent to flattening a three-dimensional spherical globe onto a two-dimensional plane. To preserve the straight-line navigation property, Mercator’s design systematically inflates the size of landmasses near the poles while drastically shrinking the apparent area of continents and countries near the equator.

    The most striking distortion of the projection shrinks Africa to such an extent that it appears roughly the same size as Greenland on most Mercator maps, even though Africa’s actual land area is 14 times larger than the Arctic island. Proponents of the change have long argued that this persistent misrepresentation is not just a trivial geographic error, but a distortion of global perceptions that undermines recognition of Africa’s geopolitical importance, economic potential, and development needs. By systematically minimizing the continent’s size on maps, critics argue, the Mercator projection has contributed to a longstanding underappreciation of Africa’s role in global affairs and the scale of challenges and opportunities it faces.

    The solution adopted by the UN and African Union is the Equal Earth projection, a modern equal-area map created by a team of independent cartographers in 2018. Unlike the Mercator projection, which prioritizes navigation shape over area accuracy, the Equal Earth projection preserves the proportional size of all landmasses across the globe, ensuring that Africa, South America, and other equatorial regions appear at their true size relative to northern landmasses such as Europe and North America. In February of this year, all 54 African Union member states formally adopted the Equal Earth projection, citing its ability to fairly represent all continents while retaining the visual clarity needed for general use.

    Speaking ahead of Friday’s General Assembly vote, Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey framed the initiative as a matter of global equity. “A fair world begins with a fair map,” Dussey told Reuters news agency. In an earlier briefing to UN delegates, he expanded on this reasoning, noting that maps are never neutral political or cultural objects. “A map is never neutral. It shapes perceptions, influences how the place of peoples and continents in the world is understood,” Dussey explained.

    While the non-binding resolution does not legally require all UN member states to alter their official maps, policy analysts and cartographers expect it to drive widespread changes to mapping standards across international institutions, educational systems, and global publications in the coming years. The vote marks a historic step toward addressing long-standing geographic bias that has shaped popular understanding of the world for centuries.

  • Argentine couple to return Nazi-looted painting to rightful owner

    Argentine couple to return Nazi-looted painting to rightful owner

    Eighty years after it was looted by Nazi forces from a Jewish art collector’s collection, a long-missing late-baroque masterpiece has been ordered returned to its rightful lineage following a surprising discovery hidden in plain sight in coastal Argentina.

    The artwork, *Portrait of a Lady* (also referred to as *Contessa Colleoni*), was first spotted by pure chance in August 2025: a Dutch newspaper, Algemeen Dagblad, identified the painting in public listing photos posted by an estate agent advertising a home for sale in Mar del Plata, a popular coastal town just outside Buenos Aires. The canvas was hanging unassumingly above a green sofa in the living room of Patricia Kadgien, daughter of former Nazi fugitive Friedrich Kadgien.

    Friedrich Kadgien, who fled to Argentina after World War II, was a senior adviser to Hermann Göring—Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command, who oversaw the mass plunder of thousands of artworks across occupied Europe. The portrait was one of more than 1,000 pieces stolen from the collection of Jacques Goudstikker, a prominent Jewish Dutch art dealer, following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940.

    After the painting was identified, authorities launched a search of Kadgien’s property in September 2025 that failed to turn up the artwork. Kadgien and her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso were subsequently charged with concealment of stolen property and placed under house arrest. On Friday, however, a court in Mar del Plata reached a negotiated resolution: all criminal proceedings against the couple have been suspended in exchange for their full cooperation to return the painting and a financial settlement.

    Under the terms of the agreement between Kadgien’s family, prosecutors, and Goudstikker’s heirs, Kadgien and Cortegoso will surrender all legal claims to the artwork. They have also agreed to donate 4.8 million Argentine pesos (equivalent to approximately £2,356 or $3,185) to local public hospitals in exchange for avoiding prosecution for concealing the stolen piece.

    The sole surviving heir to Goudstikker’s collection is Marei von Saher, Goudstikker’s daughter-in-law. Per reporting from Argentine newspaper *Clarin*, von Saher plans to place the portrait on temporary loan to Buenos Aires’ Holocaust Museum, where it will be displayed to raise public awareness of Nazi-looted art and the ongoing work to return stolen cultural property to its rightful owners. Von Saher has long reaffirmed her family’s commitment to the recovery effort, stating previously that the goal remains “to bring back every single artwork robbed from Jacques’ collection, and to restore his legacy.”

    Art historical scholarship on the portrait has been divided since its recovery. The work is broadly attributed to late-baroque Italian artist Giuseppe Ghislandi, though some experts have argued it may instead be the work of Giacomo Ceruti, another prominent Italian painter from the same historical period.

  • Argentina threatens oil firms with sanctions as Falkland Islands dispute intensifies

    Argentina threatens oil firms with sanctions as Falkland Islands dispute intensifies

    Decades-long tensions over the South Atlantic Falkland Islands, known as Las Malvinas to Argentina, have reignited in recent weeks after Argentina’s far-right President Javier Milei announced new threats of economic sanctions against international energy companies planning exploratory drilling in waters surrounding the contested archipelago. The move marks a sharp escalation of Buenos Aires’ long-standing campaign to push the United Kingdom to relinquish control of the British Overseas Territory, a dispute that already boiled over into open armed conflict between the two nations in 1982.

    In a nationally televised address to the Argentine public, Milei framed the current moment as a turning point in Argentina’s decades-long sovereignty claim, arguing that shifting global dynamics support Buenos Aires’ position. “The winds of change are blowing in favor of our claim to the Malvinas,” he stated, pointing to recent comments from former U.S. President Donald Trump that have opened the door to a potential reversal of Washington’s long-standing recognition of British sovereignty over the islands.

    Milei recalled that Trump previously threatened to revise the U.S. stance on the Falklands dispute in response to the UK’s refusal to back the U.S. in its conflict with Iran. “Recently, President Trump declared that the US is re-evaluating its historic position in relation to the Malvinas,” Milei added, marking the first time a sitting U.S. or former U.S. president has publicly confirmed a potential review of Washington’s long-held policy on the territorial issue.

    Beyond leaning on potential international support, Milei also sought to frame the dispute through a lens of national decline and resurgence. He claimed the UK is currently on “a path of decline” driven by its immigration policies, contrasting this with what he called Argentina’s flourishing future that will ultimately prevail in the sovereignty struggle.

    The immediate trigger for Milei’s latest escalation is the upcoming start of exploratory drilling at the Sea Lion oilfield, located in waters off the Falklands coast. The project is led by a partnership between British energy firms and Israeli energy company Navitas Petroleum, which holds a 65 percent controlling stake in the development. Milei labeled the project a “clear and present danger” to Argentina’s sovereignty claims, and confirmed that the country would move forward with implementing existing legal powers to sanction any companies involved in unauthorized activity around the islands.

    Argentina has long had legislation on the books that allows authorities to impose economic and legal restrictions on any company that participates in resource exploration projects in the Falklands that Buenos Aires does not authorize. What makes the Sea Lion project notable, however, is Milei’s own political background: the Argentine president has positioned himself as a staunch pro-Israel ally, and had previously avoided harsh criticism of Navitas Petroleum, unlike he has with other international firms seeking access to Falklands energy resources.

    The Israeli government has already acknowledged the diplomatic sensitivity of the situation. In December, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar noted that the involvement of Navitas Petroleum’s British subsidiary had created difficult feelings between the UK and Argentina, expressing regret for the friction while noting Israel’s special bilateral relationship with Milei’s government.

    For its part, the UK has swiftly rejected Milei’s threats and reaffirmed its long-standing commitment to the Falkland Islands and the rights of their population. Downing Street pointed out that economic pressure against Falkland Islanders from Argentine governments is not a new tactic, and emphasized that the island people hold an inalienable right to self-determination — including the right to develop and exploit their own natural resources.

    While both nations have staked competing claims to the archipelago for more than a century, a 2013 referendum held among Falkland Islanders delivered an overwhelming result in favor of remaining an overseas territory of the UK, a result London has repeatedly cited as confirmation of the legitimacy of its rule.

  • Judge says mistrial likely, permits defence to file an emergency appeal

    Judge says mistrial likely, permits defence to file an emergency appeal

    In a high-profile criminal case that has drawn widespread public attention, a Massachusetts judge has confirmed that a mistrial is the most likely outcome in the proceedings against Lindsay Clancy, while granting the defense team a narrow, one-hour window to submit an emergency appeal against the planned mistrial ruling.

    The legal move comes after weeks of heated arguments and procedural wrangling between the prosecution and defense over evidence admissibility and jury selection issues that have stalled the trial’s progress. Clancy’s legal counsel had previously pushed back against the growing expectation of a mistrial, arguing that a halted proceeding would prolong the case and disrupt the interests of all parties involved. In response to the defense’s push for appellate review, the judge issued a swift ruling on Friday: acknowledging that a mistrial was the probable next step, but greenlighting the defense’s request to file an emergency challenge within 60 minutes of the ruling.

    Legal observers note that emergency appeals in mistrial proceedings are rare, and the one-hour deadline is an unusually tight timeline designed to keep the case moving without unnecessary delay. It remains unclear whether the appellate court will take up the challenge, or how a ruling would impact the broader trajectory of the case. The defense has not yet released a public comment on their next steps following the judge’s order.