分类： politics

Eighteen months after his arrest at Manila’s international airport, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has made his first in-person appearance before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, where he has been detained since March 2025. The 81-year-old, who is facing charges of crimes against humanity stemming from his signature anti-drug campaign, arrived at the court on Wednesday dressed in a dark suit and untucked white shirt.

Duterte, who led the Philippines from 2016 to 2022, launched a brutal nationwide war on drugs immediately after taking office, which rights groups and ICC investigators say resulted in the extrajudicial killing of tens of thousands of low-level drug suspects and small-time dealers. The court’s investigation into the killings spans more than seven years, starting in November 2011 when Duterte served as mayor of the major southern city Davao, and ending in March 2016 when Duterte withdrew the Philippines’ membership from the ICC.

Prior to this week’s hearing, Duterte had only appeared remotely before the court and had repeatedly skipped scheduled in-person proceedings, with his legal team arguing that his declining health leaves him unfit to participate in a full trial. Wednesday’s status hearing was called specifically to address the defense’s claims that Duterte lives with severe memory impairment that prevents him from collaborating effectively with his legal team. Prosecutors have pushed back against this claim, disputing that Duterte is unfit to stand trial. The former president first disclosed his diagnosis of myasthenia gravis — an autoimmune disorder that causes nerve and muscle dysfunction — back in 2019, when he was still in office. When he was elected in 2016 at the age of 71, he was the oldest candidate ever to win the Philippine presidency.

Duterte’s appearance at the ICC comes as his political dynasty is locked in a high-stakes power struggle that reshaped the country’s political landscape and cleared the path for his arrest. The alliance between the Duterte and Marcos political families, which delivered a landslide election victory for incumbent President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. in 2022, has collapsed in a very public feud between Marcos and Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte. That falling-out, which fractured the ruling coalition, is widely seen as having enabled the arrest of the former president in 2025.

Sara Duterte, currently the frontrunner in polling for the 2028 presidential election (for which Marcos is constitutionally barred from seeking a second term), is also fighting for her own political future. She is currently undergoing an impeachment trial on charges that include misappropriation of public funds and making threats to assassinate President Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, Marcos’ cousin. If convicted in the impeachment proceeding, she will be permanently disqualified from holding any public office, ending her presidential bid before the 2028 campaign even begins. Duterte’s formal trial on the ICC charges is currently scheduled to begin in November.

A new, highly contentious $2.8 billion arms deal prepared by the Trump administration would send tens of thousands of powerful 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, with U.S. taxpayers on the hook for the full cost, The Washington Post has reported, citing an anonymous senior U.S. official familiar with the military planning. If finalized, the transfer would mark the largest single shipment of this destructive munition from the United States to Israel in modern history.

Details of the package outline that it includes 40,000 general-purpose 2,000-pound bombs — specifically the MK-84 and BLU-117 variants — alongside an additional 20,000 I-2000 Penetrator warheads. Classified as one of the most devastating conventional armaments in Western military stockpiles, the MK-84 is engineered to penetrate thick concrete and reinforced metal, create massive impact craters, and spray lethal shrapnel across hundreds of meters from its detonation site. This wide destructive radius puts civilian populations at extreme risk when deployed in populated areas.

The proposed sale has already been shared informally with key congressional committees, creating a awkward political bind for Democratic lawmakers. Tensions between the U.S. Democratic caucus and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have reached a fever pitch in recent months, as growing frustration over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has strained the long-standing U.S.-Israel bilateral relationship.

When pressed by reporters about widespread concerns over the humanitarian risks posed by the transfer, a senior Trump administration official declined to comment on the pending deal, noting only that all international arms sales follow standard procedural protocols. The Israeli Embassy in Washington also did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Washington Post.

Criticism of the proposed transfer spread rapidly across social media, with high-profile journalists and political commentators quickly condemning the deal. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson used his platform on X to argue that the sale is unprecedented and unjustified. “There is no precedent for what the Trump administration is doing. Nor is there any justification,” Carlson wrote. He added that Israel is not fighting a large-scale conventional war that requires such heavy armaments: it is engaged in limited skirmishes with guerrilla forces in Lebanon and a brutal offensive against the largely unarmed civilian population of Gaza, neither of which necessitates the deployment of 2,000-pound bombs.

Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald went further, framing the deal as a continuation of former President Trump’s political obligations to Miriam Adelson, an Israeli-born American billionaire and one of the most prominent pro-Israel donors in U.S. politics. “In case you’re wondering when Trump’s debt to Miriam Adelson and her Israeli cabal will finally be paid off, the answer is: never. The debt is eternal and limitless,” Greenwald posted on X. He added that political obligations are just one factor behind Trump’s unwavering alignment with Israeli policy, separate from the former president’s own personal and political motivations for his staunch support.

The $2.8 billion package outpaces all previous U.S. arms sales to Israel in recent years, including a $2.04 billion sale approved in 2025 that skipped the standard congressional review process. Data compiled from open-source reporting confirms that Israeli forces have already deployed 2,000-pound bombs hundreds of times during their ongoing military campaign in the besieged Gaza Strip and cross-border strikes in Lebanon, resulting in catastrophic civilian casualties.

Multiple United Nations bodies, including the UN Commission of Inquiry, alongside leading international and Israeli human rights organizations, have officially concluded that Israeli authorities have committed acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip. Since the launch of Israel’s military offensive on the enclave in October 2023, more than 73,000 people have been killed in Gaza, the vast majority of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

On a Tuesday hearing in a Virginia immigration court, Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri delivered a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration’s legal arguments to justify his deportation, calling the government’s claims baseless, shallow, and rooted in political opportunism rather than factual evidence.

Suri, a legal permanent U.S. resident and Indian citizen married to a U.S.-born woman from Gaza, first became a high-profile target of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 18 months ago, shortly after he publicly expressed support for Palestinian rights. What began as a routine immigration matter has since erupted into a global flashpoint over the weaponization of U.S. deportation policy to silence dissenting political speech.

Speaking to reporters outside the Annandale courthouse following Tuesday’s proceedings, Suri pushed back against the administration’s unsubstantiated claims labeling him antisemitic. ‘The government’s argument is very specious. It’s very shallow. They want to talk about something, but it has no roots,’ he said. ‘They are saying that I’m antisemite, I’m anti this or that, but they’re just saying it for the sake of some political agenda.’ Suri also highlighted that dozens of his Jewish supporters attended the hearing to stand with him, noting they reject the government’s effort to weaponize their religious identity for political gain.

Nader Hashemi, director of Georgetown’s Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding where Suri conducts post-doctoral research, framed the case as a clear example of the Trump White House’s deeply entrenched anti-Palestinian policy orientation. Hashemi, who was present in the courtroom for Tuesday’s arguments, told Middle East Eye that Suri would never have been targeted for deportation without pressure from extreme right-wing backers of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He added that Suri himself is not the ultimate target of the administration’s action: because Suri’s wife, a Gaza native, is a U.S. citizen and cannot be legally targeted for political retaliation, officials have opted to harass her by going after her husband instead.

Records of the case lay out how outside pro-Israel groups laid the groundwork for Suri’s arrest. In late February 2025, the conservative pro-Israel organization Middle East Forum (MEF) announced it had uncovered that Suri’s wife, Saleh, is the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, a former senior political advisor to the late former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh – who has publicly criticized Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel. Saleh was later added to the pro-Israel blacklist site Canary Mission, which cited her past work for Al Jazeera and Gaza City birthplace as evidence of purported Hamas ties. Just hours after news of Suri’s pending detention broke, MEF publicly took credit for pushing for his arrest.

On March 17, 2025, masked federal agents took Suri into custody outside his Washington, D.C. suburban home. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally ordered the revocation of Suri’s visa, officially citing claims that the scholar had ‘spread Hamas propaganda and promoted antisemitism on social media.’ For two months following his arrest, Suri was held in an overcrowded, unsanitary ICE detention facility in Alvaredo, Texas, before a federal judge ordered his release on May 14, 2025, allowing him to return to his family in Virginia while his legal challenge proceeded.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is representing Suri in his legal fight, has previously outlined that the administration’s legal argument relies on a rarely invoked provision of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act. The provision allows deportation when the government claims an individual’s presence ‘compromises a compelling foreign policy interest’ – a standard that legal advocates say is being abused to target political dissent. In July, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s bid to re-detain Suri, upholding the lower court’s ruling that granted him bail while his case moves forward.

Today, Suri is pursuing two parallel legal battles: a federal habeas corpus case defending his due process rights, and a separate immigration hearing overseen by an immigration court under the Department of Justice, which answers directly to the U.S. Attorney General. Habeas corpus, a legal principle dating back to 13th-century England, was created to prevent arbitrary detention by state authorities and today applies to all people on U.S. territory, regardless of citizenship status.

Suri, who has spent 20 years working to advance Middle East peace initiatives, says he remains prepared for the fight ahead and confident that justice will ultimately win out. ‘I know this is a tough thing. So I am ready for these challenges, and I am very hopeful that justice will prevail,’ he said.

Hashemi also expressed cautious optimism following Tuesday’s hearing, pointing to widespread public outrage over the Trump administration’s abuse of executive power in the case. ‘I’m feeling confident that there’s a lot of public outrage over the abuse of power that the Trump administration has engaged in, and this has drawn the ire of a lot of concerned American citizens,’ he said. ‘It’s not just about the rights of one post-doctoral fellow in Georgetown. His case now is about the future of democracy in the United States.’

As of Tuesday, the presiding immigration judge was expected to issue a ruling in the case as early as Tuesday evening local time.

A newly released public report from the U.S. Department of Defense’s inspector general has laid bare deep vulnerabilities in America’s military stockpiles and infrastructure, confirming that months of combat operations against Iran have created critical ammunition shortfalls, exposed production bottlenecks in the U.S. defense industrial base, and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and losses – directly contradicting public assurances from former President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the conflict had not strained U.S. military capabilities.

In the report submitted to Congress on Monday, the watchdog noted that the heavy rate of munitions consumption during Operation Enduring Freedom against Iran has led to strategic gaps in national military stockpiles, while also highlighting longstanding constraints in the domestic defense industry that slow emergency resupply of key weapons. “The munitions expenditure on OEF has resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply,” the report reads.

To address the growing gaps and production delays, the Pentagon has implemented a series of adjustment measures, including streamlining military procurement procedures, cutting production lead times for critical weapons, and building up stockpiles of key raw materials, components, and high-priority munitions, the report adds. Even so, the watchdog cautions that expanding domestic production capacity for advanced munitions requires years of lead time and substantial upfront investment, meaning shortfalls are likely to persist for the foreseeable future.

The inspector general’s findings line up with multiple independent reports from major news outlets that emerged in the early months of the conflict. Middle East Eye first reported at the conflict’s onset that the U.S. faced immediate shortages of missile interceptors, leaving allied Gulf states waiting for scheduled weapons deliveries. In August, The Associated Press reported that the drawdown of U.S. stockpiles for the Iran war had severely undermined America’s ability to support Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion, leaving a “beyond critical” shortage of advanced Patriot missile interceptors, the primary system used to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles targeting Ukrainian cities.

Reuters further confirmed the scope of the stockpile depletion, reporting that the U.S. has nearly exhausted its reserves of sophisticated long-range standoff strike missiles. Citing two anonymous defense sources, the outlet reported that the Pentagon has used “virtually all” of its available surface-to-surface precision weapons, including ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles and the newer Precision Strike Missiles.

Beyond ammunition shortages, the inspector general’s report also documents extensive material losses across U.S. military assets in the Middle East. The tally includes four F-15 fighter jets destroyed in Iranian strikes, one F-35 stealth fighter damaged, seven KC-135 aerial refueling tankers damaged, and as many as 30 MQ-9 Reaper surveillance and strike drones destroyed. The report also confirms that the U.S. Navy’s primary regional logistics hub in Bahrain was repeatedly targeted by Iranian drone and ballistic missile attacks.

Across U.S. military bases spread across eight Middle Eastern nations – Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan – the report counts hundreds of buildings and structures that have been damaged or destroyed by Iranian strikes. The watchdog notes it remains unclear whether all damaged bases will be rebuilt, and equally unclear which government will cover the costs of reconstruction. As of the report’s publication, the cumulative estimated cost of the Iran conflict stands at roughly $33.4 billion, a figure that does not include additional infrastructure repair costs. Of that total, $3.7 billion is attributed to lost and destroyed equipment, while $22.3 billion covers the cost of munitions expended during combat operations.

This assessment aligns with previous reporting from Middle East Eye, which quoted current and former U.S. officials arguing that traditional forward-deployed base infrastructure in the Middle East is no longer a viable strategic posture, given Iran’s proven ability to strike fixed positions with large volleys of drones and ballistic missiles.

The report also outlines the human cost of the conflict: more than 50,000 U.S. personnel have been deployed across the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility to support operations against Iran, with more than 1,500 air combat missions conducted as of the end of June. According to the watchdog’s casualty tally, seven U.S. service members have been killed in combat operations, and another seven have died in non-hostile incidents connected to the deployment. An additional 417 service members have been wounded in action, the report confirms.