分类： politics

MANILA, Philippines — Top diplomatic leaders from Southeast Asia kicked off three days of high-stakes negotiations in the Philippine capital on Tuesday, bringing pressing regional and global security challenges to the forefront of their agenda against a backdrop of two unfolding crises: renewed warfare in Iran and a violent new confrontation in the disputed South China Sea.

Foreign ministers representing the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) convened behind closed doors for their initial session, before releasing a joint statement demanding an immediate ceasefire to hostilities in the Middle East and calling for the full, unimpeded reopening of the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, a major chokepoint for global oil and gas supplies.

“We expressed serious concern over the rapidly evolving situation in the Middle East, particularly the renewed hostilities involving the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the statement from ASEAN ministers read. The bloc also reaffirmed its commitment to the principle that all nations must resolve territorial and political disputes through peaceful means, while upholding universal standards of national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

As a dynamic economic region home to more than 680 million people, Southeast Asia depends heavily on energy imports from the Middle East. The resumption of conflict in Iran has already sent shockwaves through global commodity markets, triggering supply shortages and price volatility that have hit the region hard. In response to these pressures, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared a national energy emergency back in March, implementing measures to secure steady access to fuel, food and other essential goods, while cracking down on speculative hoarding and price gouging.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio touched down in Manila early Tuesday, ahead of a scheduled annual dialogue with ASEAN foreign ministers on Wednesday. The escalating Middle East crisis will top the agenda for that meeting, alongside a broader slate of regional security and economic priorities. Rubio will also take part in the ASEAN Regional Forum, a wider regional security dialogue that will bring together senior diplomatic representatives from the European Union, Russia (represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov) and China (led by Foreign Minister Wang Yi).

As of Tuesday, no formal bilateral meetings between Rubio, Wang, and Lavrov had been announced to the public. If Rubio and Wang do hold talks on the sidelines of the summit, it would mark the highest-level engagement between Washington and Beijing since U.S. President Donald Trump’s May visit to Beijing for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. That earlier meeting centered on the Iran conflict, U.S.-China trade relations, and cross-strait relations involving Taiwan, among other thorny issues. All three top diplomats will also attend the final East Asia Summit on Thursday, a gathering of 18 Indo-Pacific nations that will address a broad range of cross-cutting geopolitical, economic and security challenges.

On the regional front, ASEAN ministers are scheduled to hold a separate meeting with Wang Yi on Wednesday focused on advancing negotiations for a long-awaited code of conduct for the South China Sea. The proposed agreement, designed to prevent territorial disputes in the contested waterway from escalating into open conflict, has been under negotiation between China and ASEAN for nearly two decades, with both sides targeting a final agreement by the end of this year.

That timeline gained new urgency this week, after a fresh violent clash underscored the fragility of the status quo. The Philippine military accused China’s coast guard of injuring a Filipino sailor during an altercation on Monday near Second Thomas Shoal, a contested outcrop in the South China Sea. According to Philippine military accounts, Chinese coast guard personnel on a small motorboat repeatedly struck the sailor in the head with a wooden baton, wounding him and damaging his small vessel.

Philippine authorities issued a formal condemnation of the incident, while Chinese coast guard officials blamed Filipino vessels for initiating the confrontation. A spokesperson for President Marcos confirmed that Marcos summoned Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan for an emergency meeting Tuesday afternoon, though no details of the discussion were released to the public.

Fresh mass demonstrations have resumed in India’s capital New Delhi, just 24 hours after a violent police crackdown on supporters of the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a grassroots movement demanding sweeping national education reforms and the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The unrest unfolded on Monday, when tens of thousands of young demonstrators from across the country defied a pre-existing police ban to march toward India’s Parliament during the opening of the monsoon legislative session. What began as a peaceful mass mobilization quickly escalated into widespread chaos in Central Delhi, when security forces deployed batons and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Official police accounts confirm that at least 60 protesters and 118 police personnel were injured during the operation, while 70 demonstrators remain in police custody. Officers also cleared the movement’s long-standing protest encampment at the historic Jantar Mantar observatory, tearing down the main stage and all makeshift shelters set up by participants.

Multiple on-the-ground accounts from protesters, shared with international media, confirm that even female demonstrators were not spared from the use of force. Social media footage, circulated once local internet access was restored after a full-day blackout, shows uniformed and plainclothes security officers beating fleeing protesters, with multiple people left unconscious on the ground. Eyewitness reports describe panicked crowds scrambling over police barricades to escape, with demonstrators suffering severe head wounds and broken bones that required emergency treatment from volunteer medics.

The CJP, an unregistered satirical political movement, traces its origins to a controversial comment made earlier this year by India’s Chief Justice, who infamously described unemployed young people entering journalism and activism as “cockroaches”. After the remark sparked national outrage, the justice clarified he was only referring to people holding what he called “fake and bogus degrees”, but the label was adopted reclaimed by young activists as a badge of protest against systemic failures in India’s education sector.

The movement had maintained a peaceful encampment at Jantar Mantar for more than a month, drawing global attention when prominent education activist Sonam Wangchuk joined the protest on June 28 and launched an indefinite hunger strike to back the CJP’s demands. Wangchuk was forcibly removed from the protest site by police just two days before Monday’s march and transported to a local hospital, where he has continued his fast. What began as a focused demand for education reform has since grown into one of the most significant displays of public dissent against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in recent years.

In advance of Monday’s march, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Health Minister JP Nadda met with CJP representatives to discuss their demands. CJP spokesperson Saurav Das described the 10-minute meeting as unproductive, noting that while the government promised to review the group’s concerns, no concrete commitments were made. Other CJP leaders criticized the meeting as a hollow gesture, after being forced to wait four hours for the discussion that produced no results. Early indications suggested the movement might agree to stand down after the meeting, but organizers hardened their stance once internet access was restored and footage of the police crackdown spread widely online.

Shortly after the meeting, as protesters learned of the violence, security forces moved in to clear the entire Jantar Mantar site. Authorities used loudspeaker announcements to repeatedly order demonstrators to evacuate, claiming the protest was officially over. By Monday evening, however, CJP activists had reclaimed the protest site and issued a public call for renewed support, writing in a social media post: “Despite the police brutality, the brave protestors of CJP are back. Delhi, come out and join us at Jantar Mantar – this is now or never! Dharmendra Pradhan Must Resign!”

In an official statement following the crackdown, Delhi Police claimed the operation was justified because protesters had engaged in “unruly, aggressive and violent behaviour”, violated prohibitory orders, attacked officers with stones, breached barricades, and damaged public and government property. The CJP has forcefully rejected this account, accusing police of being the unprovoked aggressors. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke issued a public apology to supporters, particularly women who were beaten by male officers, writing on X: “We could have done better. I could have done better to protect you from the inhumane actions of the Delhi police.” Dipke also confirmed one young female protester remained in critical condition in a Delhi hospital.

The CJP’s core demands center on a full overhaul of India’s education system, with a specific focus on increasing accountability for repeated high-stakes exam paper leaks. The call for Pradhan’s resignation gained momentum following the leak of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), the country’s mandatory entrance exam for medical school. Nearly 2.28 million candidates sat for the May 3 exam, which was canceled just days later after confirmed reports of widespread cheating and paper leaks. A re-test was held weeks later, but the scandal has already been linked to more than 20 student suicides, with families saying their children were left devastated by the disruption to their academic futures. Pradhan has rejected all calls for his resignation, dismissing the CJP and its supporters as a “B-team of disruptive elements” aligned with the political opposition.

Major opposition parties, farmer union leaders, prominent activists, and even Bollywood celebrities have publicly thrown their support behind the movement. Rahul Gandhi, leader of the main opposition Indian National Congress, has called the protesters’ demands “legitimate” and labeled Modi “the most anti-youth prime minister India has ever had”. As of Tuesday, thousands of demonstrators had returned to Jantar Mantar to renew their protest, ensuring the youth-led movement will remain a major political challenge for Modi’s government in the coming weeks.

For the first time in nearly 16 years, a sitting Lebanese president is set to step into the Oval Office for a high-stakes meeting with a U.S. head of state, marking a historic turning point for Lebanese-U.S. relations and the implementation of a new ceasefire deal between Lebanon and Israel. Joseph Aoun, a former commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), will meet U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, just one month after Washington mediated a trilateral framework agreement between Israel, Lebanon, and the United States aimed at ending a months-long conflict that has claimed more than 4,000 Lebanese lives.

The first phase of the agreement officially launched on Monday, with the Trump administration confirming that so-called “pilot zone operations” have commenced in the southern Lebanese villages of Froun, Srifa, and Zawtar Al-Gharbiya. These operations are being overseen by the newly established U.S.-led Military Coordination Group for Lebanon. Under the terms of the framework, Lebanese armed forces will deploy to southern areas to take over security control as Israeli forces withdraw, with the core mission of disarming the Iran-aligned militant group Hezbollah. The conflict erupted in March, when Hezbollah launched rocket attacks into northern Israel in support of its ally Iran, prompting a large-scale Israeli incursion that has left roughly one-fifth of Lebanese territory under Israeli occupation to date.

Key questions remain about the feasibility of the LAF’s assigned mission. The Lebanese military is already under-equipped compared to Hezbollah, which retains superior military capabilities across Lebanon and has not agreed to disarm itself. Washington has moved to shore up the LAF with a new $30 million funding boost last month, on top of a previously announced $100 million package of humanitarian aid for conflict-affected communities in the region, but analysts warn structural challenges could derail implementation.

At a Monday media briefing hosted by the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, Sami Halabi, policy director and co-founder of regional consultancy Triangle, outlined the conflicting incentives facing Hezbollah. “If the framework fails, Hezbollah gains politically, because continued Israeli occupation proves its argument that diplomacy cannot deliver for Lebanon and that its armed arsenal is necessary for national defense,” Halabi explained. “At the same time, the group and its political allies want Israeli forces to withdraw, particularly from territories that are home to their core electoral and community constituencies.”

Halabi also pointed to a critical structural flaw in the deal’s security annex: the agreement frames Israeli movement as conditional redeployment rather than full withdrawal, with no binding timeline for completion and no automatic consequences for Israeli delays. “This creates a fundamental asymmetry between Lebanon and Israel,” he noted. Despite these concerns, U.S. officials have framed the framework as a landmark diplomatic breakthrough. U.S. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott called the deal a “milestone” in a Monday statement, adding that it grew directly out of recent Israel-Lebanon talks in Rome and that Washington would remain actively engaged to see the agreement through to full implementation. The Israeli military confirmed the process is underway in a post on X, warning it would “respond forcefully to any violation of the agreement.”

Aoun’s Washington visit, which began Saturday when he arrived in the U.S. capital with his wife, marks the first time a Lebanese president has visited the White House since Michel Sleiman met then-President Barack Obama in 2009. Aoun has not previously held one-on-one talks with Trump, and has little of the close rapport other regional leaders like Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa have built with the U.S. president. Still, like all Arab leaders, Aoun shares the widespread assessment that only Trump can exert meaningful pressure to rein in Israeli expansion.

In a break from standard diplomatic protocol, Aoun held a separate meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the State Department on Sunday ahead of his White House audience. The move, which notably saw Lebanon’s foreign minister Youssef Rajji skip the trip entirely, sparked public outrage across segments of Lebanese society, with many critics framing the snub of their top diplomat as a national humiliation. Rubio characterized the discussions as “very positive” following the meeting, telling reporters that “President Aoun will be able to return to Lebanon and say to the people of Lebanon that he is the one getting positive results” for the country. He also emphasized that Washington recognizes Aoun’s government as the sole legitimate authority in Lebanon, “not Iran, not Hezbollah.”

The trilateral framework was finalized last month after five rounds of U.S.-hosted talks, with Rubio calling it “the beginning of the beginning” ahead of the official signing. Beyond the $30 million in support for the LAF and $100 million in United Nations-coordinated humanitarian aid, Rubio said the deal creates a clear, structured pathway to restore Lebanese sovereignty over its southern territory, disarm Hezbollah, dismantle the group’s military infrastructure, and allow Israel to secure its northern border once security threats are eliminated. “For Lebanon, this Framework provides a genuine pathway out of a long crisis. For Israel, it creates a verifiable path to removing the persistent threat on its northern border,” he said.

Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. Nada Hamadeh Moawad described the ongoing Washington negotiations as “long and difficult.” In a post on X, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam welcomed the framework as a step toward “restoration of the state’s sovereignty” but emphasized that Lebanon will not take on any new obligations beyond those already outlined in UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and the 2024 ceasefire agreement. Salam also reaffirmed that “Only the legitimate forces are authorized to bear arms in Lebanon.”

While Hezbollah refused to join direct negotiations with Israel, reports indicate the group maintained backchannel communications with the Trump administration throughout the mediation process. The militant group remains the most powerful military actor in Lebanon, with firepower that far outpaces that of the official Lebanese armed forces, leaving lingering uncertainty about whether the disarmament mandate at the core of the U.S.-brokered deal will ever be fully implemented.

A last-minute nuclear cooperation push by the outgoing Trump administration has sparked intense scrutiny over regional security and non-proliferation norms, as multiple independent outlets have confirmed that the draft deal approved for Saudi Arabia lacks the strict safeguards long required by Washington to prevent nuclear weapons development.

According to an exclusive CNN report published Friday, U.S. officials have already signed off on the draft framework that authorizes Saudi Arabia to pursue domestic uranium enrichment as part of its stated civilian nuclear program. Negotiations between Washington and Riyadh wrapped up in October, but the agreement — which includes the mandatory bilateral “123 agreement” required for major U.S. nuclear exports and associated safeguards protocols — has not yet been sent to Congress for the required legislative review. Unnamed senior officials cited by CNN suggest the hold-up is deliberate: the Trump White House fears broad bipartisan backlash from lawmakers who have long demanded strict non-proliferation terms for any Saudi nuclear deal.

The timing of the expected presidential signature remains uncertain, amid growing expectations that Congress will flip to a Democratic majority following the November general election, which would effectively kill the proposal and derail a key foreign policy priority for the administration.

Saudi leadership has openly pushed for this framework for years. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his top advisors have prioritized securing U.S. approval for domestic enrichment, leveraging the kingdom’s extensive domestic uranium reserves to build out a civilian nuclear energy sector. Last year, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman publicly reiterated the kingdom’s ambitions, stating “We will enrich it and we will sell it and we will do a ‘yellowcake’” — referencing the intermediate step between uranium mining and enrichment. The crown prince made the nuclear deal a top agenda item during his 2019 visit to the White House, cementing its status as a core priority for the bilateral relationship.

Geopolitical context adds further urgency to Riyadh’s push. Earlier in 2020, just days after an Israeli strike on Hamas negotiators based in Qatar, Saudi Arabia signed a wide-ranging defense pact with Pakistan — the only Muslim-majority nuclear-armed state, which holds an estimated 170 nuclear warheads. Both governments confirmed the agreement covers all forms of military cooperation, leading to widespread speculation that the deal included informal nuclear security arrangements that placed Saudi Arabia under Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella.

U.S. analysts have framed the proposed American nuclear deal as a strategic counter to that partnership. A former U.S. intelligence official previously told Middle East Eye that bringing Saudi Arabia into a U.S.-backed nuclear framework would pull the kingdom away from Pakistani influence and shore up its regional standing relative to rival Gulf states. “It would pull them out of the Pakistanis’ nuclear umbrella and make the Saudis feel better than the Qataris,” the official explained.

Critics have repeatedly pointed out that the draft agreement breaks with longstanding U.S. non-proliferation precedent. Back in February 2020, the Trump administration formally notified Congress it would pursue a civil nuclear pact that omits the strict non-proliferation safeguards that have been standard for U.S. partners for decades. Unlike the U.S.’s 2009 nuclear agreement with the United Arab Emirates — which explicitly barred the UAE from enriching uranium and reprocessing spent fuel as a condition for cooperation — the Saudi draft only calls for “additional safeguards and verification measures to the most sensitive areas of potential nuclear cooperation,” language that leaves a clear opening for the kingdom to expand enrichment activities for military purposes in the future.

Foreign policy analysts widely agree that this framework would reshape Middle Eastern security dynamics far more dramatically than the separate F-35 fighter jet sale the Trump administration is also negotiating with Riyadh. Dozens of countries — including Morocco, the UAE, and multiple European and Asian nations — have already signed 123 agreements with the U.S., which are required under U.S. law to approve significant exports of U.S.-origin nuclear materials and equipment.

For years, bipartisan groups of U.S. lawmakers have insisted that any Saudi nuclear deal require the kingdom to adopt the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, which grants United Nations nuclear inspectors expanded access to nuclear facilities, documentation, and undeclared sites to verify no clandestine weapons work is underway. The UAE, the only other Gulf state to strike a formal nuclear partnership with the U.S., signed the Additional Protocol back in 2009 as a condition of its deal.

However, a Reuters report confirmed that the Trump administration sent a required preliminary notification to congressional committee leaders in November confirming it would not require Saudi Arabia to adopt the Additional Protocol. The notification underscores how the Trump administration has prioritized expedited deal-making in its Middle East diplomacy, even when it puts it at odds with longstanding norms and priorities of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.