分类： politics

When the United States completed construction of Logistical Support Area (LSA) Jenkins on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast near Yanbu back in 2022, few anticipated how quickly this relatively remote outpost would become the blueprint for America’s entire regional military strategy. Today, multiple current and former U.S. officials, military analysts, and intelligence leaders confirm that stepped-up activity at LSA Jenkins is a direct response to a stark new reality: Iran’s advanced missile and drone arsenal has rendered large, fixed U.S. military bases close to Iranian shores dangerously vulnerable.

For decades, large, permanently manned forward bases have anchored U.S. military dominance across the Persian Gulf. But the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran has upended that long-standing model. As Iranian projectile attacks repeatedly targeted U.S. installations within range of its coast, activity at the more distant LSA Jenkins surged, insiders tell Middle East Eye. The base’s entire purpose, explains Abbas Dahouk, former U.S. defense and army attaché to Saudi Arabia, is to underpin Washington’s Iran strategy by providing critical strategic depth far beyond the reach of Iran’s immediate strike capabilities.

Tehran has made the full withdrawal of U.S. military forces from all regional bases a core demand for any long-term ceasefire agreement. While Washington has shown no indication it will meet that demand outright, the proven accuracy and effectiveness of Iranian missiles and drones—reportedly aided by Chinese and Russian satellite intelligence—has sparked urgent internal debate over the future of large U.S. bases across the Gulf. Remarkably, multiple sources confirm that U.S. leadership is already leaning toward drawing down forces from the very installations Tehran is demanding it abandon.

David Petraeus, former CIA director and former head of all U.S. military forces in the Middle East, acknowledged this shifting calculus in May comments to Bloomberg. “The truth is that we are not as inclined to occupy these bases now that we have seen what the Iranians can throw at them,” Petraeus said, noting the threat landscape is far more challenging than when he led U.S. Central Command. He added that the current CentCom commander has already broken with long-standing practice of locating command leadership in the same time zone as deployed forces, instead running military operations remotely from Tampa, Florida.

This new reality was underscored in recent weeks when a fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran collapsed, triggering fresh hostilities. After the U.S. launched new strikes, Iran retaliated with ballistic missile attacks targeting U.S. bases in Kuwait. While U.S. Central Command claimed it intercepted all incoming missiles, commercial satellite imagery from Soar Atlas revealed a destroyed shelter at Kuwait’s Ali al-Salem Air Base, plus extensive damage to a terminal at Kuwait International Airport—a casualty Tehran blamed on a malfunctioning U.S. Patriot interceptor.

The attack laid bare the unsustainable position of large U.S. bases in Kuwait, which currently hosts more U.S. troops—roughly 14,000—than any other Middle Eastern country, including the major installations of Camp Arifjan and Ali al-Salem Air Base. Both bases have come under repeated intense Iranian attack. “The war has exposed the vulnerability of all fixed bases,” notes Mark Cancian, senior military analyst at the Center for International and Strategic Studies. “The US is reevaluating its posture in the Middle East, and there’s likely to be changes. I wouldn’t be surprised if these bases were reduced in scope.”

Multiple U.S. officials and analysts, speaking on condition of anonymity to Middle East Eye, say the future of U.S. military presence in the region will increasingly mirror the LSA Jenkins model: smaller, more dispersed installations located farther from Iran, making them far harder targets for Iranian strikes. This shift aligns with a gradual transition Washington began 20 years ago, when it moved away from the dense fixed-base model established in Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf War toward a framework built on negotiated access rather than permanent occupation.

Today, the U.S. maintains a spectrum of basing arrangements across Gulf states. Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar host full-time permanent U.S. troop deployments, while Oman has no permanent U.S. bases, instead holding a standing agreement that grants pre-negotiated access to ports and airspace. Notably, Oman has experienced far fewer attacks than its Gulf neighbors since the outbreak of hostilities with Iran. Currently, around 2,700 U.S. troops are deployed to Saudi Arabia—half the number stationed there two decades ago, reflecting the ongoing shift toward a more flexible posture.

“It sounds like semantics, but the type of agreement does make a difference for the US and host country. The Gulf states are very sensitive to the language they use on how US troops are hosted. And it leaves the US presence more nimble,” a U.S. defense consultant who advises the Pentagon told Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity. “This war will force a light footprint approach like Oman that prioritises access.”

Kuwait’s unique geography, positioned at the northern tip of the Gulf, leaves it uniquely exposed to missile and drone attacks from Iran and allied Iraqi militias—a vulnerability that has forced the U.S. to already evacuate many personnel from its large Kuwaiti bases. Compounding this challenge is the growing strain on U.S. air defense stockpiles: in the opening weeks of the war, Gulf states were denied requests for additional interceptor missiles, and a May Washington Post report revealed the U.S. has only 200 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors remaining in its global stockpile.

“Defending all of these bases would stretch US interceptors,” Dahouk explained. “The US had to make a choice between hardening the bases and risking lives or evacuating. We evacuated.”

Former U.S. ambassador to Kuwait Douglas Silliman noted that retaining a large permanent U.S. presence in Kuwait would require major new investments to harden existing facilities, many of which were built decades ago to lower defensive standards. “Many US military facilities in Kuwait are not as hardened as some other US facilities in the region. If the US and Kuwait would like to keep a significant US presence after the Iran war – and I think it’s likely that both sides will want to – they will have to invest in hardening those facilities,” he said.

This shift toward more distant, flexible positions is already underway. Middle East Eye first reported that after Iran heavily damaged the large Prince Sultan Air Base southeast of Riyadh earlier this year, the U.S. secured access to Saudi Arabia’s Taif Air Base, located farther from Iranian strike ranges.

Iran’s effective control of the Strait of Hormuz has also created new sustainment challenges for the U.S. Navy, which has been effectively locked out of the key waterway. Today, the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain’s Persian Gulf waters, U.S. Central Command is headquartered in Qatar, Al Dhafra Air Base operates in the UAE, and Jebel Ali Port remains the most frequent stop for U.S. naval vessels in the region—all now within easy reach of Iranian capabilities.

Ironically, the shift to Red Sea access was foreshadowed more than a decade ago. Dahouk recalls that in 2015, then-Saudi Defense Minister and current Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman offered the U.S. port access to Jizan on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, an offer that received serious internal consideration at the time. “An additional port call option without having to transit through the Persian Gulf would reduce reliance on Jebel Ali Port,” Dahouk notes—a solution that looks far more necessary today than it did a decade ago.

Just one month after losing power in India’s 100-million-population eastern state of West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) — once the country’s most successful regional political force — is facing an unprecedented existential crisis, as a large-scale rebellion of its own legislators and a growing parliamentary split threaten to dismantle the party built by charismatic founder Mamata Banerjee.

Banerjee is no ordinary regional political figure. In 2011, the firebrand leader pulled off what many considered a political miracle: ending 34 consecutive years of Communist Party rule in West Bengal, bringing down one of the world’s longest-serving democratically elected left-wing governments. Her landmark victory earned her a spot on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and she went on to lead the state for 15 years, cementing the TMC’s status as a dominant regional power and her own reputation as one of India’s most formidable opposition leaders.

That legacy makes the past month’s rapid unraveling all the more startling. In last month’s state election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power, ending TMC’s 15-year incumbency amid a campaign defined by anti-incumbency sentiment, religious polarization, and widespread controversy over electoral roll integrity. Contrary to narratives of total defeat, however, the TMC remained a formidable electoral force: it secured 26 million popular votes, just 3 million fewer than the BJP, holding 40% of the total vote share, 80 seats in the state legislative assembly, and 28 national parliamentary seats.

Instead of regrouping to rebuild opposition, the party is fracturing from within. The most severe blow has come from the state legislature, where roughly three-quarters of TMC’s elected legislators have launched an open revolt against Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, widely positioned as her political heir. Rebels have seized control of the TMC’s legislative caucus, appointed their own opposition leader, and levied accusations of signature forgery against the party’s top leadership against top party leadership.

What began as a state-level mutiny has now spread to India’s national capital in New Delhi. Reports indicate that 20 out of the TMC’s 28 sitting members of parliament have submitted a formal letter to the parliamentary speaker requesting to split from the TMC’s parliamentary group and align with the BJP-led national ruling alliance. If the split is formalized, it will escalate the crisis from a legislative rebellion to an existential threat to TMC’s very existence as a unified political party.

This parliamentary revolt is just the most visible sign of a broader organizational collapse. In Falta, a constituency that TMC won with 56% of the vote in the 2021 state election, the party failed to even field a candidate for a recent repoll. Earlier this June, a public rally organized by Banerjee drew only a few hundred attendees — a stark contrast to the massive crowds that once packed her events at the height of her political power. TMC leaders are being arrested on corruption charges daily, local party offices sit empty, long-standing organizational networks are being dismantled, and once-powerful party figures face public attacks even in their former strongholds.

Political analysts say the rapid collapse of TMC exposes deep structural weaknesses in the party’s foundation. Unlike the 34-year Communist government it ousted in 2011, TMC never built a robust ideological framework that could sustain the party through a loss of power. According to Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, a political scientist studying Indian regional politics, the party’s unity always rested on two interconnected pillars: Banerjee’s unrivaled personal charismatic brand, and access to state patronage that comes with holding public office.

“To maintain control across the entire state, Banerjee relied far more on powerful local strongmen granted extensive autonomy over their regional fiefdoms than on formal party institutions,” Bhattacharyya explained. This system functioned seamlessly while TMC held power: local leaders competed aggressively for influence, generating frequent internal rivalries and occasional violence, but incumbency provided access to patronage, political protection, and what critics describe as widespread opportunities for illicit enrichment.

Today, both pillars holding TMC together have collapsed. The party lost control of the state government, and Banerjee’s own personal defeat in her Kolkata constituency has badly tarnished the aura of invincibility that long anchored her political brand. Left exposed to rival factions, anti-corruption investigations, and voter anger, local power brokers face overwhelming pressure to defect and switch their political allegiances.

This is where the BJP steps in as a catalyst for the split. Rahul Verma, a fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, notes that the rise of a nationally dominant BJP has completely reshaped the incentives for regional politicians across India. “In previous decades, defections were usually limited to individual leaders breaking away on their own. Today, entire factions can stage a rebellion because the BJP offers an alternative center of power, access to new resources, and formal political protection,” Verma explained. He added that this pattern mirrors the 2022 split of the powerful western Indian regional party Shiv Sena, where a succession battle and the concentration of power within a single political family triggered a large-scale defection.

Verma frames TMC’s crisis as part of a broader shift in Indian politics, where regional parties have grown increasingly centralized and family-centric. Ambitious long-time party lieutenants often accept the authority of a founding leader, but many refuse to defer power to a hereditary heir, a dynamic that played out in the Shiv Sena split when Uddhav Thackeray elevated his son Aditya Thackeray to lead the party. Before the BJP’s national rise, dissidents rarely had the resources to mount a successful challenge to sitting family leadership — but that dynamic has shifted dramatically.

“When you combine generational leadership transitions with patronage-driven party structures, you get a volatile mix: once a regional party loses power, local leaders who joined for access to power and influence see little reason to stay loyal,” Verma added.

For her part, 71-year-old Banerjee has remained openly defiant in the face of the crisis. She has labeled the BJP’s election victory “illegal” and “immoral,” alleging that the party stole roughly 100 assembly seats through electoral manipulation. She has dismissed the ongoing rebellion as blatant opportunism, noting “For so long, some people enjoyed power with us, and now that we have lost office, they immediately reached an understanding with another party.” Still, she remains adamant that TMC can recover: “We will rebuild the party anew. TMC is not for its leaders; it is for its grassroots workers.”

It remains too early to tell whether TMC can survive what is increasingly being framed as an existential crisis. Some analysts note that the current rebellion, led by a relatively minor former communist legislator who previously defected to TMC, could fizzle out, with rebels splintering further and eventually returning to Banerjee’s fold. But if the 20 MPs calling for a split hold their ground, the challenge could reshape West Bengal’s political landscape permanently.

Still, analysts warn that writing off Banerjee entirely would be a mistake. “If there is one face in West Bengal that still attracts widespread attention, and one voice that people cannot simply dismiss, it is hers,” Bhattacharyya said. Any successful revival, however, will require more than Banerjee’s well-documented charisma: it will demand deep organizational renewal and difficult leadership changes, areas that have not historically been Banerjee’s greatest strengths.

Throughout her decades-long political career, Banerjee has repeatedly defied long political odds. But the challenge facing her today is unlike any she has encountered before. Overthrowing a 34-year incumbency is one thing; rebuilding a political party from scratch after most of its own elected leaders abandoned it is an entirely different test.

WASHINGTON D.C. – In a move that escalates bilateral economic and diplomatic tension between the United States and China, the U.S. Department of Defense announced Monday it has added three of China’s highest-profile civilian-led corporations — e-commerce and technology giant Alibaba, global electric vehicle leader BYD, and top search engine operator Baidu — to its official register of Chinese military-linked companies. The designation bars these firms from accessing any U.S. federal defense contracts.

The updated publication of the list marks a notable shift in U.S. policy: for the first time, it explicitly targets large, publicly traded, non-state-owned Chinese enterprises that do not operate primarily in the defense or national security sectors. This expansion reflects deepening U.S. skepticism over what Pentagon officials describe as Beijing’s long-term strategy of integrating civilian commercial innovation into China’s military and defense industrial supply chain.

Established by congressional mandate in 2021, the list was created to identify any Chinese entity the Pentagon assesses has ties to China’s military apparatus. This scope extends beyond firms directly owned and operated by the Chinese military and security services to include any company that contributes to the development, expansion, or supply of China’s domestic defense industry. In last year’s update, Pentagon officials emphasized that the People’s Liberation Army actively pursues advanced technology and technical expertise developed by seemingly civilian Chinese companies, academic institutions, and research initiatives, framing this as a core national security concern for the U.S.

Monday’s expansion has grown the total number of listed Chinese entities to 188, up from roughly 130 entities included in last year’s iteration. Major consumer drone manufacturer DJI was already added to the register in a previous update. While companies on the list are not outright barred from all commercial activity within U.S. borders, they face significant indirect costs: widespread reputational damage among Western investors and partners, and they become eligible for additional restrictive measures that can be imposed by U.S. regulators in the future.

In its justification for adding Alibaba, a New York Stock Exchange-listed firm, the Pentagon claimed the technology conglomerate is affiliated with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and that this connection allows it to contribute to the growth of China’s defense industrial base. Both BYD and Baidu were added under the same rationale of institutional affiliation with the Chinese ministry, which oversees China’s national technology and industrial development policy.

BYD’s inclusion marks a striking reversal from earlier this year, when former U.S. President and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump stated he would welcome Chinese EV makers including BYD to the U.S. market, provided they construct domestic manufacturing facilities and hire American workers. Despite that opening, a growing bloc of bipartisan U.S. lawmakers has already pushed forward legislation that would implement a full ban on Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles in the U.S.

Another notable addition to the 2024 update is Unitree Robotics, a Chinese consumer robotics firm that gained global viral fame after its dancing robot contestants earned widespread praise from judge Simon Cowell during a 2023 appearance on NBC’s *America’s Got Talent*. According to the Pentagon, Unitree “knowingly received assistance” from the Chinese government through a national support program for small- to medium-sized enterprises deemed highly innovative, globally competitive, and critical to China’s domestic supply chains.

As of Monday evening, none of the four newly added firms — Alibaba, BYD, Baidu, or Unitree — had issued public statements or responded to press inquiries sent by reporters seeking comment.

In an official statement released hours after the Pentagon published the updated list, the Chinese Embassy in Washington issued a sharp rebuke of the U.S. action. The embassy accused the U.S. of “overstretching the concept of national security” and using discriminatory, arbitrary blacklists to target legitimate Chinese commercial enterprises. The statement emphasized that all Chinese companies operating globally comply with the laws and regulations of the host countries where they conduct business, and called on the U.S. to immediately end what it labeled a wrongful practice. “The U.S. should stop its wrong practice and create a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies,” the statement concluded.

As cross-strait military dynamics evolve rapidly, China’s deployment of an advanced new medium-range air defense system opposite Taiwan signals a critical shift in Beijing’s strategic thinking: growing recognition that any future conflict over the island will not be limited to the Taiwan Strait, but will likely extend deep into mainland Chinese territory.

According to reporting from the South China Morning Post this month, Beijing has deployed the cutting-edge HQ-16F surface-to-air missile (SAM) system to frontline People’s Liberation Army units positioned directly across the strait from Taiwan. Just weeks after the deployment was first reported, China’s state broadcaster CCTV released footage on June 5 showing the 73rd Group Army — a strategic PLA unit headquartered in Fujian’s Xiamen, just across the strait from Taiwan — completing its first live-fire exercises and operational evaluation of the new system.

During the drills, the unit traveled thousands of kilometers to testing grounds in the Gobi Desert of northwest China, where a mobile-launched HQ-16F successfully intercepted an incoming target at a range of 50 kilometers. Designed specifically to boost the defensive capabilities of the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command, which oversees all operations related to Taiwan, the HQ-16F is an advanced wingless missile that incorporates four tail fins, an integrated propulsion motor, and cutting-edge thrust vectoring technology. These design features allow it to engage highly maneuverable threats, including low-altitude infiltrators and supersonic incoming projectiles.

While full technical specifications for the domestic variant remain classified, military analysts note that the HQ-16F’s capabilities meet or outperform those of its export counterpart, the HQ-16FE. The export model is equipped with an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar that can track targets at distances exceeding 250 kilometers. This latest upgrade significantly narrows the technological gap between Chinese air defense systems and the U.S.-made Patriot PAC-2 and PAC-3 systems that form the core of Taiwan’s current air defense network, while the addition of a directional fragmentation warhead improves its ability to counter existing cross-strait defense infrastructure.

Analysts widely believe the HQ-16F program was accelerated and the system deployed in response to the rapid development of Taiwan’s precision strike capabilities, which can now reach potential invasion staging areas on the mainland. In a February 2026 analysis published by the U.S. Army 75th Reserve Innovation Command, researchers Brennan Deveraux and Kyle Marcrum argued that U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) platforms give Taiwan the ability to strike targets across a 300-kilometer ring extending from the island into mainland China. This capability, they note, has forced Beijing to position advanced air defense assets like the HQ-16F near key invasion embarkation points and command-and-control facilities within that strike range.

The ATACMS threat poses a particularly difficult challenge for Chinese air defense planners, Deveraux and Marcrum added. At just 180 kilometers across at its narrowest point, the Taiwan Strait places most of China’s coastal military infrastructure well within ATACMS range, and Taiwan has dispersed a large arsenal of the missiles across multiple hidden sites across the island. Additionally, ATACMS missiles travel at Mach 3 during their terminal approach, giving traditional air and missile defense systems only seconds to detect and react to an incoming threat, making interception extremely difficult.

ATACMS is not the only threat driving China’s air defense upgrades. Taiwan has also developed and fielded an arsenal of domestic long-range cruise missiles, most notably the Hsiung Feng IIE. Data from Missile Threat shows that extended-range variants of the Hsiung Feng IIE have a maximum range of 1,200 kilometers — a distance that allows them to strike targets deep inside the Chinese mainland when launched from Taiwan.

Like the U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile, the Hsiung Feng IIE is designed to evade enemy air defenses through low-altitude flight. It can be routed around known radar coverage gaps, follow indirect, unpredictable flight paths instead of the easily detectable ballistic trajectories used by traditional ballistic missiles, fly at high subsonic speeds below radar detection thresholds, and use terrain masking to avoid being picked up by defensive systems — all tactics that drastically reduce the chance of interception.

China’s vast landmass, long considered a key strategic advantage that provides depth for defensive operations, has become a liability in the era of long-range precision strikes, much as it has for Russia in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s experience has shown that defending an enormous territory comprehensively is functionally impossible, allowing attackers to target critical military, industrial, and energy infrastructure far from the front lines.

China faces the same dilemma: its size makes nationwide air defense coverage impractical, forcing military planners to concentrate limited defensive assets around key military, political, and strategic sites rather than protecting the entire country. Taiwan’s long-range missile arsenal, led by ATACMS and the Hsiung Feng IIE, can exploit these gaps in China’s air defense network to target invasion staging areas and critical assets deep in the Chinese mainland. These strikes could inflict major economic damage, undermine public confidence in Beijing’s leadership, and impose significant psychological costs on the Chinese government. While such attacks could theoretically erode public support for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, they could also harden Chinese public sentiment against the self-governing island and push Beijing to escalate military operations.

Beijing’s security concerns extend beyond Taiwan’s growing strike capabilities to include the threat of advanced conventional strike power from the United States, which can also target strategic sites deep inside the Chinese mainland. Beyond countering Taiwan’s missile arsenal, military analysts believe the HQ-16F will also be used to defend China’s nuclear arsenal and core leadership facilities against potential U.S. intervention in a Taiwan conflict. The June 2025 U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities underscored this risk, proving that U.S. long-range strike capabilities could be used against Chinese strategic assets in the event of a cross-strait conflict. In those strikes, seven U.S. B-2 stealth bombers dropped 14 13,600-kilogram Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs on three key underground Iranian nuclear sites: Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan. While it remains unclear whether the strikes completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear program, they inflicted severe damage on underground centrifuge facilities, collapsed critical tunnel networks, and likely cut off Iran’s access to its fissile material stockpiles and enrichment infrastructure.

In line with this strategic shift, the HQ-16F is expected to be deployed to defend key strategic sites including the Hami nuclear silo field in northwest China. A May 2026 Reuters report found that the Hami facilities are already protected by camouflaged defensive positions carved into the desert, which are widely believed to house air defense batteries. Beyond nuclear sites, the system will also be used to defend critical leadership and command-and-control facilities, such as the massive underground Beijing Military City complex, which was built to house China’s top leadership and serve as a wartime command center during a large-scale conflict.

Even with the deployment of the advanced HQ-16F system, China cannot fully eliminate its vulnerability to long-range precision strikes against its strategic rear. While the new system strengthens China’s defenses against evolving long-range strike threats, its deployment also highlights a stark new reality: Beijing now openly expects that any conflict over Taiwan will extend far beyond the Taiwan Strait and into core mainland Chinese territory.

For regional and global powers, this shifting strategic landscape creates a new defining challenge: how to maintain deterrence without crossing China’s explicit nuclear red lines in any future Taiwan crisis.

Across Latin America, a growing wave of conservative right-wing leadership is reshaping decades of regional foreign policy, abandoning the longstanding pro-Palestine solidarity that defined the so-called “pink tide” of left-wing governance to deepen strategic and diplomatic ties with Israel. Nowhere is this policy reversal more striking than in Chile, home to the largest Palestinian diaspora community outside the Arab world and North Africa.

Chile’s new president, Jose Antonio Kast, took office in December 2023 after a campaign focused on curbing immigration, strengthening national security, and slashing public spending. A self-professed admirer of Chile’s former authoritarian dictator Augusto Pinochet, Kast’s populist, hardline rhetoric aligns closely with other rising right-wing leaders across the hemisphere: Argentina’s austerity-focused Javier Milei, El Salvador’s authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele, and former U.S. President Donald Trump, whose approach to cementing U.S. influence in the Americas has been dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine” by political observers.

Kast is far from alone in this regional shift: newly elected leaders in Bolivia, Costa Rica, and Honduras have also rushed to reset diplomatic relations with Israel, even amid widespread international condemnation of Israel’s military campaign in the occupied Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians since October 2023. For Chile’s 400,000-strong Palestinian community, this policy reversal represents a direct break with decades of national tradition, and a deep threat to their longstanding advocacy for Palestinian statehood.

Ricardo Marzuca, a Chilean-Palestinian historian at the University of Chile’s Center for Arab Studies, notes that the shift marks an unprecedented break: “And that, indeed, is a problem for the Palestinian community in Chile.”

Under Kast’s predecessor, former left-wing President Gabriel Boric, Chile emerged as one of the most outspoken global critics of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Boric’s government recalled Chile’s ambassador to Tel Aviv, withdrew the country’s military and defense attachés from Israel, and joined South Africa’s landmark case accusing Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice. Shortly before leaving office in March 2024, Boric co-sponsored four United Nations resolutions condemning Israel’s war crimes in occupied Palestine and the Syrian Golan Heights. He also introduced legislation to ban imports of goods from Israeli-occupied territories and supported Spain’s push for a full regional arms embargo on Israel. However, Boric’s proposed import ban never passed the Chilean legislature, and Chile never followed Spain’s lead in codifying a full arms embargo into law.

Stephanie Elias Musalem, executive director of the Palestine Information Centre in Santiago, argues that Boric’s tenure marked the strongest political and symbolic support for Palestine from any Chilean president in modern history. “Yet most of his measures lacked long-term institutional safeguards, making them vulnerable to reversal,” she explained.

Kast has wasted no time undoing Boric’s legacy, having previously described Boric’s pro-Palestine policy as “irresponsible and markedly ideological.” Within weeks of taking office, he authorized Israeli weapons manufacturers to participate in FIDAE, Chile’s premier international military and aerospace trade fair, reversing a ban on Israeli defense firms implemented by the Boric administration. In early May, during a bilateral meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog held in Costa Rica, Kast confirmed plans to return Chile’s ambassador to Tel Aviv within a matter of weeks. The two leaders also discussed expanding bilateral cooperation across key sectors, including agriculture, public health, artificial intelligence, and advanced technology.

The meeting drew immediate and fierce condemnation from the Palestinian Community of Chile. Elias points out that even past center-right Chilean leaders embraced the Palestinian cause: former President Sebastian Piñera formally recognized the State of Palestine in 2011, becoming the first Chilean head of state to make an official visit to Ramallah.

At the same time, Elias notes that Chile has maintained deep, underreported material ties with Israel dating back to the 1970s. After the United States imposed restrictions on military aid and arms sales to Pinochet’s military junta over widespread human rights abuses in 1976, Israel stepped in to become one of Chile’s primary suppliers of military equipment and defense technology. Decades later, despite rhetorical commitments to a “real, secure and permanent peace” between Israel and Palestine, Piñera expanded economic, technological, and defense cooperation with Israel, pushing bilateral trade to $281 million by 2018. This dual track policy – rhetorical support for Palestine paired with deepening material ties to Israel – has long been “a core contradiction” at the heart of Chile’s foreign policy, Elias said.

Kast’s close alignment with Israel is further reflected in the senior advisors he has appointed to his administration. Eitan Bloch, a 32-year-old Argentine international advisor with deep ties to global Zionist networks, holds a senior position on the second floor of La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace. Bloch previously worked at the Israeli embassy in Santiago, and in December 2023, he joined a delegation of Chilean senators on an official trip to Israel led by the Jewish Community of Chile (CJCH), where the group met with Herzog and leading Israeli experts in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.

Elias explains that Bloch’s proximity to the president gives him outsize influence: “The second floor is made up of the president’s most trusted people. As such, Bloch is considered one of the key architects behind the administration for foreign policy.”

Kast has also appointed Gabriel Zaliasnik, a self-identified Zionist and former president of the CJCH – an organization dedicated to entrenching close diplomatic ties between Chile and Israel – as Chile’s new ambassador to Israel. “I cannot conceive of a Jew not being one,” Zaliasnik said in a 2020 interview. He has repeatedly criticized Boric and the Chilean left, falsely claiming that progressive pro-Palestine advocacy “embraces Islamic jihadism,” and has defended Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as “any democracy defending itself against terrorism.”

The appointment has drawn sharp criticism from Chile’s Palestinian community, which calls it “a very serious decision, contrary to the national interest, incoherent with Chile’s history of defending international law, and deeply offensive to the hundreds of thousands of Chileans of Palestinian origin.”

Kast’s pro-Israel policy also creates unexpected internal friction within his own conservative base: it alienates right-wing members of Chile’s Palestinian community, who have long supported the Palestinian cause regardless of their partisan alignment. The first wave of Palestinian migration to Chile began decades before the 1948 Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homeland by Zionist militias. Predominantly Christian migrants fleeing economic collapse and forced conscription under Ottoman rule built successful businesses, entered Chilean politics, and established a lasting cultural legacy that remains central to national life today.

Marzuca emphasizes that Chile’s Palestinian community is ideologically diverse, spanning the full political spectrum from former communist presidential candidate Daniel Jadue on the left to Francisco Chahuán, Chile’s current right-wing ambassador to Mexico. “The point that unites them all is a commitment to the Palestinian cause,” Marzuca told Middle East Eye. While left-wing Chilean Palestinians frame their support for Palestine through an internationalist lens rooted in human rights and anti-imperialism, right-wing members reject framing the Palestinian struggle alongside Indigenous liberation movements in Latin America, and hold a more narrow focus on establishing an independent Palestinian state. Even so, the community has built a cross-party parliamentary bloc that unites left and right lawmakers in solidarity with Palestine, meaning Kast’s policy creates a contradiction for even conservative Palestinian Chileans.

The tension over Kast’s policy has been thrown into sharp relief by the recent interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla, an activist mission seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. On May 18, four Chilean activists were illegally intercepted and abducted by Israeli forces in international waters. Nelson Hadad, a Chilean-Palestinian lawyer representing the activists, says his legal team will file a complaint with the International Criminal Court accusing Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“An illegal detention has been committed in international waters… this cannot go unpunished,” Hadad said. He added that the four activists were “subjected to torture, interrogated with physical violence, beatings and sexual violence” at a detention facility in the Israeli city of Ashdod.

The Kast administration issued a mild statement of displeasure to Israel’s ambassador, and called for the immediate release of the detainees, and Hadad confirmed that Chilean consular officials in Tel Aviv and Ankara provided limited assistance to the activists. But Macarena Chahuan, a Chilean-Palestinian journalist and activist who was aboard the flotilla during an earlier interception on April 30, says the government provided no support whatsoever for her, and her safe return was coordinated entirely by the flotilla’s local Chilean delegation.

Maurice Khamis Massu, president of the Palestinian Community of Chile, has publicly condemned the administration’s response as ambiguous and insufficient. “The government cannot remain silent when Chilean citizens are deprived of their liberties in international waters,” he said. “This is about the obligation of the state to protect its citizens. What we defend is not an ideology, but the pillars of our international coexistence: unrestricted respect for international law, international humanitarian law, and human rights.” For Chile, he argues, support for Palestinian self-determination is not a partisan issue – it is a longstanding, cross-party state policy that has remained firm for more than 50 years.

The sudden escalation of cross-border hostilities between Iran and Israel has triggered fierce, divided debate across Israeli political and media circles, exposing deep rifts over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategic leadership and the country’s next steps in an increasingly volatile regional crisis.

The sequence of violence unfolded on a Sunday, when Israeli forces carried out a strike on a building in southern Beirut that killed two Lebanese civilians. Iran condemned the attack as a clear violation of an existing ceasefire agreement, with Israeli military correspondent Alon Ben David of Channel 13 News later describing the strike as little more than a symbolic gesture. That same evening, Iran launched a retaliatory attack that caught Israeli defense and intelligence establishments completely off guard. Ben David noted that prior to the strike, both Israeli and U.S. officials had assessed Iran would never dare launch direct fire at Israel, a prediction that proved drastically wrong.

In the hours after Iran’s rocket and missile assault, Israel launched retaliatory air strikes across Tehran and other Iranian cities, while cross-fire exchanges continued into Monday. From the start of the crisis, much of the domestic debate has centered on the public intervention of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly urged Netanyahu to avoid further full-scale attacks on Iran and called for an immediate ceasefire from both sides.

Critics across the Israeli political spectrum have slammed what they see as Netanyahu’s willingness to cede control of core national security decisions to Washington. Veteran Israeli journalist Ben Caspit, writing in *Ma’ariv*, went so far as to argue that Israeli national security has effectively been “privatized” and handed over to Trump, requiring all major military decisions to win approval from the White House. Right-wing voices within both the governing coalition and opposition have been particularly vocal in rejecting U.S. pressure to stand down. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was expected to push for a harsh response at a Monday cabinet meeting, reportedly calling for Israel to raze dozens of buildings in southern Beirut’s suburbs for every Iranian missile fired into Israeli territory. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared bluntly that “Tehran must burn,” while Culture Minister Miki Zohar urged Netanyahu to continue strikes, arguing that regional actors only respect overwhelming military power. Even opposition figures from the right wing echoed this call: former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett framed the moment as a test of Israeli sovereignty, demanding immediate action to strike Iran’s strategic infrastructure, while former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz called the April ceasefire a strategic mistake that must be corrected with a forceful response.

But not all opposition figures back further escalation. Centrist and left-leaning opposition leaders have accused Netanyahu of deliberately stoking regional unrest to distract from domestic political pressure and avoid early national elections. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, argued that “our enemies recognize what everyone can see: Netanyahu is weak,” adding that the current government has no mandate to drag the country into another full-scale war. Fellow Democrat lawmaker Gilad Kariv added that Netanyahu has failed in his core duty to protect Israeli citizens, and that the coalition’s policies are putting every Israeli at risk.

Security analysts have largely framed the current escalation as proof of the strategic failure of the joint Israeli-U.S. military campaign against Iran launched earlier this year. Danny Citrinowicz, an Iranian affairs expert at Israel’s prestigious Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), noted that the campaign failed to achieve its core goal of toppling the Iranian government, leaving Israel in a far weaker strategic position. “Israel finds itself with less freedom of action, Iran with greater self-confidence, and the U.S. with a growing desire to resolve the crisis through a diplomatic settlement,” Citrinowicz wrote in a post on X. He added that Netanyahu now faces a fateful dilemma: launch a full-scale attack and risk a direct public clash with the U.S. president, or hold back and face restrictions on Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Lebanon. Haaretz military analyst Amos Harel echoed this assessment, pointing out that Netanyahu has pushed consistently to resume full-scale war against Iran since the April ceasefire, and the current escalation lays bare the growing rift between the Israeli prime minister and Trump.

In response to the crisis, Israeli authorities have implemented a series of emergency measures across the country. All school classes and public events have been canceled, public transportation and hospital operations are running at reduced capacity, and military officials have ordered strict limits on passenger arrivals at Ben Gurion Airport. The Israeli military has also begun mobilizing reservists, with Channel 12 News reporting that top army commanders are preparing for a multi-day conflict, and view the current escalation as an opportunity to finish the work left undone by the earlier joint campaign against Iran. As of Monday, Netanyahu himself has not issued any public comment on the escalation, leaving the fractious debate within Israeli politics and media to continue unabated.

In a move that has thrown the International Criminal Court (ICC) into unprecedented institutional uncertainty, the 21-member executive bureau of the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties (ASP) voted on Monday to immediately suspend Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, directly rejecting the findings of an independent judicial panel that cleared Khan of all wrongdoing. The suspension paves the way for a full vote by the broader 125-member ASP on whether to permanently remove Khan from his post, in a disciplinary process that legal experts warn risks eroding the court’s independence.

The bureau announced that a qualified majority of its members backed the suspension, which will remain in force until the full ASP issues a final ruling on the case. The decision invoked Rule 28 of the ICC’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence, after two-thirds of voting bureau members supported a formal finding of “serious misconduct”—a procedural step required to advance the matter to a full vote of the ASP. In its official statement, the bureau emphasized that the suspension is not the final outcome of the disciplinary process, and it has moved to convene a special session of the full ASP as quickly as possible to resolve the dispute.

The bureau’s determination drew on an investigation conducted by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), along with underlying evidence, input from an ad hoc expert judicial panel, and submitted written arguments. The body has also committed to keeping all related documentation and deliberations confidential, calling for full respect for the privacy and legal rights of all parties involved, as well as the integrity of the ongoing process.

Per ASP rules, the full body will first need to uphold the finding of serious misconduct via a two-thirds majority of states present and voting. If that threshold is met, a second vote will be held on removing Khan, which requires an absolute majority of the 125-member ASP—at minimum 63 votes—to pass.

The controversy stretches back to May 2024, when unproven allegations of sexual misconduct emerged against Khan, which he has repeatedly and vehemently denied. After the complainant declined to cooperate with the ICC’s internal investigative body, the ASP commissioned the independent OIOS-led probe. The UN investigation’s findings were then passed to a three-judge expert panel, tasked with advising the bureau on whether Khan had committed serious misconduct, minor misconduct, or no misconduct at all.

Middle East Eye (MEE) first reported in March that the judicial panel issued a unanimous ruling that the evidence presented in the UN investigation failed to establish any misconduct or breach of duty under ICC rules. Just weeks later, however, a majority of the bureau voted to set aside the panel’s independent finding, moving forward with the disciplinary process anyway.

Legal observers have raised sharp alarms about the decision to overrule the independent judicial panel, warning that the move risks turning the misconduct probe into a politicized process. The entire affair has already left the ICC in uncharted institutional limbo, with ongoing uncertainty surrounding Khan’s future and unauthorized media leaks of the unproven allegations against him.

Khan has already signaled his next steps if the full ASP votes to remove him: he has confirmed he will appeal any dismissal to the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization (ILOAT), the independent body that handles employment appeals for ICC staff. A separate legal opinion shared with ICC member states last month, prepared by former International Court of Justice judge Abdul Koroma, supports this path: Koroma found that the ILOAT could order Khan to be reinstated and order the ICC to pay up to €1.5 million (equivalent to $1.74 million) in damages if his removal is found to be unlawful.

Critics have also noted that the disciplinary proceedings against Khan align with a sustained campaign by the United States and its allies to derail his office’s high-stakes investigation into alleged war crimes and genocide committed by Israeli officials in Gaza. Khan, a British barrister elected as the ICC’s third chief prosecutor in 2021, has overseen investigations into serious international crimes against leaders across the globe: his office has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Myanmar’s junta leadership, and Taliban officials in Afghanistan.

Khan’s aggressive pursuit of high-profile cases against powerful leaders has already drawn retaliation from opposing states: the Trump administration imposed sweeping sanctions on Khan in February 2025, and Russian courts have issued an arrest warrant for him in absentia. While the U.S., Russia, and Israel are not ICC member states, the court exercises jurisdiction over crimes committed by their nationals on the territory of any member state. The U.S. later expanded sanctions to target two additional deputy prosecutors, eight sitting ICC judges involved in the Palestine and Afghanistan investigations, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, and multiple Palestinian non-governmental organizations that provided evidence to the court’s investigations.

The United Kingdom is preparing to roll out a new package of sanctions targeting Israel’s controversial E1 settlement project this week, joining a coalition of Western nations pushing back against a development plan that critics say will permanently fragment the occupied West Bank and eliminate any path to a contiguous, sovereign Palestinian state.

Multiple media and insider reports have laid out the expected scope of the upcoming measures. The Guardian cited diplomatic sources indicating the Foreign Office will formally penalize UK-based companies that enter into any commercial or construction involvement with the E1 project, alongside targeted sanctions against entities documented as supporting violent Israeli settler activity against Palestinian communities in the occupied territory.

Last week, Middle East Eye first reported that the UK government was actively considering a full import ban on all goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements across the West Bank, though it remains uncertain whether this week’s announcement will go as far as implementing that full ban.

First proposed in the 1990s, the E1 development zone plan has been delayed for decades by sustained international pushback. The project’s geographic location east of Jerusalem would cut off the northern and southern portions of the West Bank from one another, destroying any possibility of a geographically unified Palestinian state. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also supervises settlement expansion and civilian governance in the occupied West Bank, has openly acknowledged the project’s impact, stating publicly that it “effectively kills the Palestinian state.”

International pressure to block the project has mounted sharply in recent months. In late May, nine nations including the UK, France and Australia issued a joint formal warning that no businesses should participate in any E1-related activity. A growing number of European governments have already moved to restrict trade with illegal settlements: Spain has implemented a full import ban, while Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium are currently advancing similar legislation through their domestic processes.

The push for action has also gained significant traction within UK domestic politics. Over the weekend, more than 140 members of parliament signed an open letter organized by Labour MP Melanie Ward, urging Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper to immediately end all trade with illegal Israeli settlements. The letter carries unusual political weight: it was signed by the Labour chair of every parliamentary select committee, including senior party figures like former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, a prominent potential candidate for future prime minister.

The letter directly criticizes the current government for what it calls an “unacceptable” failure to take sufficient action to curb settlement expansion, and explicitly calls for a formal import ban on settlement goods. Signatories point to a 2024 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that ruled Israel’s 58-year occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal under international law, and requires third-party states to avoid any trade dealings that would legitimize or support the occupation and settlement activity.

Insider accounts confirm that Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer privately told Labour MPs late last year that an import ban is a desirable policy step, but the final authority for any major policy shift rests with 10 Downing Street.

Emily Thornberry, senior Labour MP and chair of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, who was among the letter’s signatories, told Middle East Eye that “the situation in Palestine is intolerable, and yet we tolerate it.” She argued that the UK must use economic leverage to change Israeli policy, saying “we have to make it so economically painful for Israel that settlement expansion becomes untenable.”

Internal party polling released Wednesday underscores the depth of support for the policy among UK Labour’s base: a staggering 87 percent of Labour members back a ban on trade with Israeli settlements, with only 6 percent opposed.

Parliamentary pressure is set to intensify further in the coming weeks: Labour MP Abtisam Mohamed, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, has secured a formal parliamentary debate on the proposed settlement goods ban. While a date for the debate has not yet been finalized, it will add additional public and political pressure on the government to adopt the full ban. Mohamed noted that the ICJ’s landmark ruling requiring states not to aid or assist in Israel’s illegal occupation is now two years old, and said the UK “is falling behind our allies” in meeting its international legal obligations.

On-the-ground data confirms a sharp rise in settler violence and displacement since the October 7 2023 Hamas attacks. Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reports that Israel has forcibly displaced 59 Palestinian communities comprising more than 4,000 people from the West Bank since October 2023. United Nations data recorded nearly 2,000 separate settler attacks against Palestinian communities in 2025, averaging roughly five attacks per day.

The current Labour government has already taken incremental steps on the issue: in May 2024, it sanctioned several high-profile extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including long-time settler activist Daniella Weiss, head of the hardline Nachala settlement movement. The following June, the UK joined a coalition of allied nations to sanction two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, over their repeated open incitement of violence against Palestinian communities in Gaza and the West Bank.