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Amid the intensification of Israel’s multi-front military campaign across Gaza, Lebanon, and the occupied West Bank, a transatlantic financial giant has quietly become the single biggest foreign backer of Israeli sovereign debt, holding more Israeli government bonds than the United States, United Kingdom, France, and every other non-Israeli entity combined. New data compiled by Amsterdam-based sustainability research group Profundo, shared exclusively with Middle East Eye, lays bare the unprecedented scale of this investment: by September 2025, Germany’s Allianz, which owns California-headquartered bond behemoth PIMCO, the world’s largest active fixed-income manager, had accumulated an estimated $2.67 billion in Israeli government bonds across its network of fund subsidiaries.

This staggering sum accounted for 51.8 percent of all tracked non-Israeli holdings in Profundo’s dataset at that time, confirming that at the peak of Israel’s military expansion, the Allianz-PIMCO combine held more Israeli sovereign bonds issued to fund wartime operations than the rest of the entire world’s non-Israeli investors put together. For Israel, these bond sales have become a critical lifeline. To finance its ongoing military campaigns, Israeli authorities ramped up sovereign bond issuance to record-breaking levels in both 2024 and 2025, with a sizeable “war premium” built into yields to attract risk-tolerant institutional investors. Issued during the active conflict, these bonds carry an average interest rate of 5.56 percent, far outpacing the 1.4 percent average yield of pre-war Israeli issuances – a premium that has proven irresistible to yield-hungry asset managers even after all three major global credit rating agencies downgraded Israel’s sovereign credit score.

But the investment carries far more than standard financial risk. Since the International Court of Justice opened an investigation into allegations of genocide against Israeli forces in Gaza, holding Israeli government bonds exposes investors to significant legal and reputational repercussions that go well beyond ordinary sovereign debt investments. Critics argue that PIMCO’s sustained accumulation of these bonds demonstrates a deliberate disregard for fundamental human rights obligations under international law. “In light of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, PIMCO’s continued investments in Israeli sovereign debt demonstrate a clear disregard for human rights responsibilities and international legal obligations,” explained Max Hammer, a campaigner with BankTrack, an organization that tracks the human rights impacts of commercial financial institutions. “They also put PIMCO at odds with many of its peers, which have understandably decided to pull back from Israel’s bond issuances. Human rights organisations, international legal experts and UN officials – including Francesca Albanese – have been clear that providing financing to Israel inevitably means contributing to gross human rights abuses and war crimes.”

Profundo’s dataset tracks holdings from international institutional investors across four quarterly snapshots between late 2024 and early 2026. While the research is not fully comprehensive, it captures a clear, staggering trend: total non-Israeli holdings of Israeli government bonds surged more than fourfold from $1.16 billion in November 2024 to at least $4.91 billion by March 2026, a growth trajectory that aligns directly with the expansion of Israel’s military operations across Gaza, Lebanon, and the occupied West Bank. The data reveals that this explosive growth is overwhelmingly driven by just two markets: the U.S. and Germany. Together, investors based in these two countries held 90.7 percent of all tracked non-Israeli holdings as of early 2026, totaling $4.45 billion of the $4.91 billion aggregate, with all other nations combined accounting for less than 10 percent of total foreign holdings.

The rise of Allianz-PIMCO’s holdings is particularly dramatic. In November 2024, shortly after the outbreak of the current conflict, the Allianz group – which spans its core German insurance operations, PIMCO’s U.S. fund platform, PIMCO Europe, and Allianz Global Investors – held just $32 million in Israeli bonds. Less than 12 months later, that figure had ballooned to $2.67 billion, a concentration of investment unmatched by any other corporate group in Profundo’s dataset. “Allianz, through PIMCO, is by far the largest non-Israeli investor in Israeli sovereign bonds and has been so since the October 7 attacks. It has not divested from these bonds, even after allegations of genocide were submitted to the ICJ,” said Ward Warmerdam, senior researcher at Profundo. “It’s no coincidence that it’s a US-German company that is investing so much into Israel. Allianz/Pimco is the largest fixed income investor in the world. But, that only goes some way to explain this scale of investment. I believe it is disproportionate, and deliberate. And the question of how deliberate it is for them to double down on Israeli sovereign bond issuances after October 7th is something I believe only insiders can speak to.”

Middle East Eye reached out to both Allianz and PIMCO with detailed questions about their Israeli bond holdings, but neither company had issued a response by the time of this publication. PIMCO, officially the Pacific Investment Management Company, is one of the most influential players in global bond markets. Founded in Newport Beach, California in 1971, the firm manages $2.27 trillion in total assets as of early 2026, including $1.86 trillion held on behalf of external clients ranging from public pension funds to sovereign wealth funds and global insurance groups. PIMCO has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Allianz since 2000, and together with Allianz Global Investors, it helps the parent group manage nearly €2 trillion in third-party assets, making the combined Allianz group one of the largest asset managers on the planet.

The group’s Israeli bond holdings are spread across dozens of separately registered fund vehicles, with the majority held through PIMCO’s various subsidiaries, plus additional holdings through Allianz Global Investors. Profundo’s aggregation of separate regulatory filings reveals the $2.67 billion peak holding figure, but researchers emphasize this is almost certainly an undercount of the group’s true exposure. Beyond investing its own and client capital through its in-house funds, PIMCO also acts as a sub-manager for hundreds of external mandates from institutional investors around the world, purchasing bonds on behalf of third-party clients within client-approved investment guidelines. This means PIMCO’s role in the Israeli bond market extends far beyond its own balance sheet holdings, with the true volume of Israeli bonds passing through PIMCO’s operations unknown to the public.

One high-profile example of this dynamic came to light in a previous Middle East Eye investigation, which revealed PIMCO purchased $29.2 million in Israeli government bonds between 2024 and 2025 on behalf of Border to Coast, the United Kingdom’s largest public sector pension pool. The purchases only became public after pro-Palestine activists filed public inquiries, prompting Border to Coast to open a review and ultimately divest its holdings under activist pressure. The only rationale PIMCO provided for the purchases, relayed to Border to Coast ahead of the divestment, was that the bonds were purchased based on Israel’s then-strong credit rating and economic fundamentals. However, this explanation does not rule out hidden political ties or vested interests driving the investment, and no PIMCO executive, including CEO Emmanuel Roman, has ever addressed the purchases publicly. Notably, PIMCO’s global advisory board includes Joshua Bolten, former White House Chief of Staff and a prominent figure in Washington’s pro-Israel policy community, alongside former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

While Allianz-PIMCO dominates foreign holdings of Israeli sovereign bonds, the broader U.S. investment industry stands as the core pillar of international demand for the debt. U.S.-based investors held $2.02 billion in Israeli government bonds as of March 2026, up from just $879 million in November 2024, with growth remaining steady and showing no signs of slowing. Pennsylvania-headquartered Vanguard, the world’s largest index fund manager, crossed the $1 billion threshold in Israeli bond holdings for the first time in the March 2026 snapshot, with its holdings continuing an upward trajectory.

Germany’s outsized share in the data is largely a product of PIMCO’s ownership structure: of the $2.43 billion in total German-domiciled holdings tracked in the dataset, roughly 94 percent is managed by PIMCO out of its U.S. headquarters. In reality, the overwhelming majority of this investment is U.S.-domiciled capital, flowing into Israeli war bonds at an unprecedented rate through U.S.-based asset management firms. After the U.S. and Germany, the next largest national holders as of March 2026 are the United Kingdom ($149 million), Canada ($101 million), Italy ($53 million), Switzerland ($46 million), and France ($22 million) – with all these nations combined accounting for just 9 percent of total non-Israeli holdings.

The concentration of U.S. capital in Israeli bonds reflects both the outsized dominance of U.S. asset managers in global fixed-income markets and the deep, sustained support for Israel at the highest levels of U.S. political and financial leadership. The trend also highlights a stark divide between the U.S. and much of Western Europe when it comes to Israeli bond investment. While the U.S. and Allianz-PIMCO have dramatically expanded their exposure, a growing wave of European institutional investors have moved to divest their Israeli holdings in response to human rights concerns. In September 2025, Danish academics’ pension fund AkademikerPension formally excluded Israeli sovereign debt from its portfolio. Three months prior, the Irish Strategic Investment Fund sold off all its Israeli government bonds, while Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global divested from 11 Israeli companies and excluded five major Israeli banks.

“Across the West’s asset management industry, we’re seeing divergence rather than convergence [especially between the US and much of Western Europe],” said Courtney Wicks of the Center for Monitored and Ethical Investment. “Some managers are reducing their exposure to [Palestine-related] human rights concerns in response to political or reputational pressure, rather than strengthening conflict-sensitive stewardship frameworks.”

This divergence is even visible within the Allianz group itself. In late 2025, Allianz’s core insurance division dropped its coverage contract for Elbit Systems UK, the British subsidiary of Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, following months of sustained activist pressure. At the very same time, the group’s asset management division held billions of dollars in Israeli government bonds that fund the military campaigns Elbit Systems supplies. Pro-Palestine activists who occupied Allianz offices in London and Guildford in 2024 and 2025, spraying red paint to protest the Elbit contract, now face a nearly £300,000 civil lawsuit from Allianz, in addition to existing criminal proceedings. A London court recently ruled the civil case can proceed, and the activists, who have no access to legal representation for the civil claim, argue the lawsuit is an attempt to suppress legitimate political protest. For context, Allianz reported an operating profit of $20.1 billion in 2025.

A compilation of recent Iranian press reporting, reviewed by Middle East Eye, reveals overlapping developments across Iran’s foreign policy landscape, domestic social progress, and economic stability in the wake of the 12-day US-Israeli war with the country in 2025.

On the question of Iran’s long-running regional strategy of expanding strategic depth through allied militant and political movements, one prominent Iranian analyst argues that the war has actually renewed domestic support for the policy, reversing waves of criticism that followed the June 2025 Israeli strike that triggered the conflict. Since the 1988 end of the Iran-Iraq War, Tehran has cultivated alliances with ideologically aligned groups across the Middle East, a policy framed by Iranian leaders as a core deterrent against Israeli aggression. After the 2025 war broke out, however, critics pushed back against the strategy, arguing that Iran’s regional partners had failed to prevent the attack and called the approach into question.

Writing for the reformist daily Shargh, Iranian analyst Mehrdad Ahmadi Sheikhani pushed back against this criticism, noting that Hezbollah, the Lebanese allied movement, offered Iran full backing from the opening of the war, while Yemen’s Houthi movement also aligned with Tehran. After Iran launched retaliatory strikes against Israel following an Israeli bombing of Beirut earlier this year, Sheikhani argued that the response effectively redefined Iran’s regional spheres of influence and strategic depth for the post-war era. This counters claims that the strategy had become obsolete after the fall of the Syrian government, he added.

Sheikhani also framed the conflict in sweeping historical context, arguing it marks a return to a level of Iranian regional power not witnessed in more than 200 years. Following the 1797 assassination of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, founder of the Qajar dynasty, Iran experienced a steady erosion of territory and regional influence amid conflicts with the Russian, Ottoman, and British empires. Unlike those historical defeats, Sheikhani emphasized that Iran emerged from the 2025 war without ceding any territory despite facing coordinated attacks from major global and regional powers, a historic shift. He also highlighted that the conflict exposed previously unknown precision and operational planning in Iran’s defense capabilities, building a new level of deterrence that the country has not held in more than two centuries.

Alongside debates over regional strategy, new details have emerged about the human toll of US strikes on Iranian territory following the ceasefire agreement between Tehran and Washington. Seyyed Moussa Mousavi, a member of the Iranian parliament from the southern city of Lamerd, told state news agency IRNA that the Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) deployed by the US on the first day of the war were fitted with controversial tungsten-fragment warheads that had not been publicly detailed before. While earlier reporting confirmed that upgraded PrSM variants were used in attacks on Iran, no specific information about the warhead design had previously been released.

Mousavi explained that these munitions detonate before reaching ground level, leaving no impact craters but shattering into as many as 180,000 tiny high-velocity tungsten projectiles per missile. On February 28, four of these missiles struck Lamerd, a small city of roughly 30,000 residents. In just 35 seconds, approximately 720,000 tungsten fragments rained across the city, leaving 21 civilians dead and 150 wounded in strikes that hit residential neighborhoods and a local sports hall. Mousavi drew a sharp rebuke of the attack, framing the munitions as a deliberate targeting of civilian populations, noting that per capita, every resident of Lamerd was effectively exposed to 24 tungsten projectiles in the strike.

In a separate positive domestic development, Iranian officials confirmed that long-standing restrictions on women obtaining motorcycle licenses will be lifted within the next month. Zahra Behrouz Azar, Iran’s vice president for Women and Family Affairs, told Shargh that all administrative procedures for the policy change have been finalized. While no Iranian law explicitly bans women from riding motorcycles, national traffic police have for decades refused to issue licenses to female applicants, even though women have long held full legal rights to drive passenger cars in the country.

Under the new policy, the minimum age for a female motorcycle license will be 18. Licenses will first be issued to female motorcycle instructors and women competing officially in motorcycle sports through Iran’s national motorcycle federation, before a broader rollout. The policy shift follows years of grassroots advocacy by Iranian women, who have openly defied the restriction by riding motorcycles on public roads, repeatedly clashing with police and having their vehicles seized in protests against the ban.

Despite this social progress, prominent Iranian economist and former Central Bank governor Valiollah Seif has issued a stark warning that the country is at growing risk of hyperinflation, driven by ongoing international sanctions and the cumulative economic shock of two major wars over the past 12 months. Writing for Khabar online news outlet, Seif noted that while Iran has not yet hit the technical definition of classic hyperinflation, it is currently experiencing extremely high inflation that sits just below the threshold for chronic monetary instability, putting the country at severe risk.

Seif identified five core factors that have left Iran’s economy increasingly vulnerable: sustained expansion of the national money supply, long-standing structural government budget deficits, extreme volatility in the value of the Iranian rial, repeated geopolitical shocks from war and international sanctions, and eroding public confidence in the national currency. He added that the current post-war political landscape amounts to a prolonged state of “no war, no peace,” with no permanent ceasefire in place to resolve ongoing tensions. This prolonged uncertainty, he argued, is uniquely damaging to Iran’s economic outlook: it does not allow for a return to full domestic stability, nor does it contain the damage of war to a short-term shock, instead keeping the economy in a sustained state of limbo. “Simply put, the economy does not die in this situation, but it is gradually eroded,” Seif concluded.

This report is compiled from an Iranian press digest, and its claims have not been independently verified by Middle East Eye, which specializes in independent coverage of the Middle East and North Africa region.

On the sidelines of the G7 Summit near Paris, US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian have formally signed a landmark memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Wednesday to bring an end to a regional conflict that has plunged the Middle East into crisis since late February. The White House has confirmed the digital signing of the agreement, which follows an initial preliminary accord reached Sunday that was signed by US Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, with Trump in attendance. Trump first announced that both sides had reached a framework deal back on June 14.

Trump carried out the signing during the summit at the Palace of Versailles, ahead of a working dinner hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, who later shared a social media clip capturing the moment. In footage of the event, Trump acknowledged the arduous path to the agreement, noting “This was not easy.”

The conflict that the MoU seeks to end began on February 28, when the United States and Israel launched unprovoked coordinated air strikes against Iranian targets that were widely condemned by the international community as illegal. The strikes killed long-time Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei alongside multiple senior Iranian officials, prompting widespread retaliatory action from Iran against Israel, US military bases across the Middle East, and several Gulf Arab states. Iran also moved to close the Strait of Hormuz — a critical global chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies pass — triggering a major global fuel market crisis. A fragile ceasefire has been in place across most fronts since April 8.

Under the terms of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, the two sides have been given a 60-day window to negotiate a full, final comprehensive peace treaty, a timeline that can be extended if both parties consent. Trump made clear the stakes if talks collapse, stating bluntly: “If it doesn’t get done in 60 days, that’s all right. We go back to bombing. I don’t want to do that, because it’s so good, but we might have to, because we’re never going to let them have a nuclear weapon.”

While no in-person physical ceremony was held due to the digital signing, delegations from both nations are scheduled to convene in Geneva this coming Friday, though Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has confirmed that a formal bilateral meeting has not yet been finalized.

The 14-point agreement lays out core guiding provisions that cover the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, targeted relief from US financial sanctions on Iran, and a framework for future technical negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Most critically, both parties have committed to an immediate and permanent end to all military operations across every front, including Lebanese territory, and have pledged not to launch new offensive military action against one another.

Specifically, the US has committed to begin lifting its naval blockade of Iran immediately upon signing, with full removal of the blockade to be completed within 30 days. In exchange, Iran has agreed to guarantee safe passage for commercial shipping through the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman for the full 60-day negotiating period.

On the nuclear front, the MoU reaffirms Iran’s longstanding 50-year commitment not to pursue the development of a nuclear weapon, and establishes a process for further negotiations over the future of Iran’s existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Currently, Iran holds an estimated 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% purity — a level that can be refined to weapons-grade material with only minimal additional processing. Under the agreement, Iran will down-blend its existing stockpiles on its own territory under the direct supervision of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, with broader terms for Iran’s civilian nuclear program to be finalized during the 60-day negotiation window. Baghaei emphasized that Iran will not transfer its enriched uranium stockpile to any third country, framing on-site dilution as the only acceptable path forward. He also made clear that Iran’s ballistic missile program will not be part of any upcoming talks, stating plainly: “Iran’s missiles are only for firing, not for negotiation.”

Baghaei added that Tehran will monitor US compliance with the agreement “without any leniency”, and will suspend its own commitments if Washington fails to uphold its end of the deal. A key economic component of the MoU outlines a planned $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran that will be developed with contributions from regional partners, with full details to be worked out during the 60-day talks. US administration officials have stressed that the agreement does not require any direct US government funding for Iran, instead relying on sanctions relief that will allow Gulf states to invest in Iranian infrastructure. The US Treasury will immediately issue new waivers allowing resumed Iranian oil exports, and the two sides will negotiate terms for the release of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets.

The agreement marks a notable shift in the Trump administration’s position on Iran’s nuclear program. Speaking at a press conference in Evian, Trump appeared open to allowing Iran to retain a civilian nuclear program for energy production, noting: “It is a little hard, though, when you say that somebody wants it, other people have it, other, adjoining states have it. And you’re not letting them have it for purposes of electricity and things like that.” He also walked back months of public insistence that seizing Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile was a core war aim, saying there was “no rush” to take possession of the material, and adding that while the US wanted it “psychologically”, it was not a priority worth derailing the deal over.

These remarks represent a sharp departure from the original justifications for the war, where both Washington and Tel Aviv cited preventing Iran from acquiring weapons-grade material as the central objective of their military campaign, dubbed Operation Epic Fury. The shift drew immediate scrutiny from policy observers.

The summit also saw Trump make a highly public break with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a rift that caught even US allies off guard. Speaking Tuesday, Trump criticized Israel’s prolonged campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, saying “too many people are being killed” and adding: “You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses and they are not all Hezbollah.”

Israel was not a signatory to the MoU, and has rejected the agreement’s provisions related to Lebanon. A senior Israeli official close to Netanyahu told Reuters Thursday that Israel has “no intention” of withdrawing its troops from southern Lebanon, and is currently engaged in tense negotiations with Washington over the terms. The deal is widely viewed domestically in Israel as a major political defeat for Netanyahu. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir stated that “Trump’s agreement does not bind us”, while centrist opposition figure Benny Gantz called it a “strategic failure”, and a lawmaker from the opposition Yesh Atid party described it as “the best thing that has happened to Iran in a generation”. A recent poll published by Israeli public broadcaster Kan found only 18% of Israeli adults support the agreement, with 55% opposed, and 70% saying they still perceive a major Iranian threat despite the months-long military campaign.

For its part, Iran has warned that any continued Israeli military presence or offensive action in Lebanon counts as a violation of the ceasefire agreement. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi clarified that Tehran views the US and Israel as a single party to the deal, with Iran and Hezbollah forming the opposing side. The Iranian military has reported that Israel has violated the existing ceasefire in Lebanon 84 times since the framework deal was announced Sunday.

The five-month conflict has already left a staggering humanitarian toll across the Middle East. At least 3,600 people have been killed in Iran alone, including more than 1,700 civilian casualties. In Lebanon, Israeli strikes have killed more than 3,750 people since fighting resumed in early March, and displaced over one million Lebanese from their homes. Iranian retaliatory strikes targeted Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Iraq, and Jordan, killing dozens of civilians and causing widespread damage to airports, hotels, energy infrastructure, and residential buildings across the region. Thirteen US service members were also killed in retaliatory attacks on American military bases in the region.

Against the backdrop of growing international outrage over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, Colombian President Gustavo Petro has made history by implementing a complete, ironclad ban on all coal exports to Israel – a move that campaigners say proves an energy embargo on Israel is achievable with sufficient political will, while also laying bare the gap between rhetoric and action from other high-profile nations that have publicly backed Palestinian rights.

The road to the full embargo began in 2024, when Petro first issued a decree banning Israeli-bound coal exports. But a critical loophole allowed multinational mining corporations to continue shipments to honor pre-existing contracts. By July 2025, that loophole was being actively exploited: the Maltese-flagged cargo vessel *Fortune*, loaded with coal mined by U.S. firm Drummond, departed Colombia’s Puerto Drummond bound for Israel’s Hadera port in open defiance of the spirit of the 2024 ban. Within hours of the *Fortune*’s departure, Petro ordered the Colombian navy to intercept and block all further coal supplies to Israel. On August 28, 2025, a revised, closed-loophole decree entered into force, cutting off all Colombian coal exports to Israel entirely.

“Not a ton of coal leaves for Israel, and I take responsibility,” Petro pledged. As Colombia was Israel’s single largest supplier of coal for electricity generation, exports dropped to zero within months. By November 2025, the ban was fully enforced.

The push for the embargo originated from grassroots pressure, not just presidential policy. Weeks after the outbreak of Israel’s military operation in Gaza in October 2023, Palestinian trade unions called on Colombia to end energy exports, a demand quickly taken up by Sintracarbon, Colombia’s largest mineworkers union. When the 2024 loophole allowed 28 Drummond ships to deliver coal to Israeli ports between October 2024 and April 2025, a broad coalition of union organizers, Indigenous groups, and BDS activists raised the alarm, forcing the government to close the regulatory gap.

Indigenous communities in Colombia’s coal-producing regions have framed the issue as a “double genocide,” linking the extraction of coal for Israel’s military to their own long-running displacement and environmental harm. In La Guajira, the Wayuu people have spent decades fighting the Cerrejon mine, one of the world’s largest open-pit coal operations, run by Anglo-Swiss mining giant Glencore. The Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) has documented more than 336,000 cases of respiratory illness in the region directly tied to toxic mine dust, with elevated long-term risks of cancer and genetic damage. Glencore has denied wrongdoing, saying it upholds international human rights standards and runs community development programs, but the company faces ongoing legal action: in 2017, Colombia’s constitutional court ordered a halt to Cerrejon’s expansion over plans to divert a critical water source for the Wayuu, prompting Glencore to launch an international arbitration claim against the Colombian state for millions in compensation.

Colombia’s coal sector also carries a legacy of paramilitary violence against organized labor. The country is the deadliest in the world for trade unionists, with more than 3,000 organizers murdered since the 1990s. Both Drummond and Glencore (via its subsidiary Prodeco) have been accused of financing and colluding with far-right paramilitary groups between 1996 and 2006, sharing intelligence on targeted union leaders. A 2014 report collected testimony from ex-paramilitaries, victims, and former employees supporting the allegations, which both companies have repeatedly denied, calling testimonies unreliable. In 2023, Colombia’s attorney general’s office announced it would put Drummond’s current and former chief executives on trial for conspiracy to finance paramilitarism, a charge the company continues to reject. Campaigners also note a historical link between Israeli mercenaries and Colombian paramilitaries: Yair Klein, an Israeli ex-soldier, was convicted by a Colombian court in 2001 for training AUC militias in the 1980s.

Today, the Colombian embargo faces political uncertainty: the country will hold its second round of presidential elections in June 2026, and far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who won 43.7% of the first-round vote, has pledged to reverse the ban, restore full diplomatic ties with Israel, and open a Colombian embassy in Jerusalem. Even so, campaigners celebrate the embargo as proof that political will can cut off energy supplies that enable military operations.

In March 2026, Colombia co-chaired a landmark meeting of 40 nations in The Hague, convened by The Hague Group, a coalition working to enforce international law amid the Gaza conflict. At the meeting, participating governments including China, Saudi Arabia, and Spain committed to ban fuel exports to Israel, implement stricter port and transit controls, and restrict the movement of arms, military supplies, and dual-use goods bound for Israel. But a closer look at trade data reveals that many signatory nations have failed to follow through on their commitments, with some even increasing energy exports to fill the gap left by Colombia.

The most prominent example is South Africa, which co-chaired the The Hague meeting and is the lead claimant in the landmark genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). As Colombian exports fell to zero, South Africa’s coal shipments to Israel surged by 87% to fill the gap. Even before the full Colombian embargo, South Africa was Israel’s second-largest coal supplier in the first half of 2024, accounting for 60% of all Israeli coal imports. Most of this coal powers Israel’s national electricity grid, which supplies energy to Israeli Defense Force bases, weapons manufacturing facilities, surveillance infrastructure, and illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank – even as Israel restricts electricity access for Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.

South African activists from the BDS Coalition have called on the government to enforce a ban, pointing out that the government is legally obligated under its own constitution and the Genocide Convention to prevent trade that supports alleged international crimes. South African attorney Sirhaan Che Khan notes that the government already has the power to implement export restrictions without new parliamentary approval, using the same International Trade Administration Act powers it invoked to restrict medical supply exports during the COVID-19 pandemic. The WTO’s trade rules also include security exceptions for actions taken to uphold UN Charter obligations for peace and security – a standard Colombia has already invoked without facing legal challenge.

Despite this, the South African government has failed to act. BDS coordinator Roshan Dadoo said activist requests for meetings with trade officials have yielded no commitments, with Trade Minister Parks Tau arguing a ban could face legal challenges under WTO rules and that political consensus is impossible in the country’s unity government, which includes the pro-Israel Democratic Alliance alongside the ANC. A government source, speaking anonymously to Middle East Eye, said businesses harmed by a ban could sue the state without new legislation, even though activists say existing law already grants the executive sufficient power. The South African Department of Trade, Industry and Competition did not respond to requests for comment by publication time, leaving a stark contradiction between the country’s bold international legal stance against Israel’s actions and its ongoing trade in energy.

Brazil, another high-profile signatory that has publicly backed South Africa’s ICJ case and recalled its ambassador to Israel after Lula compared Israel’s actions to the Holocaust, has similarly continued supplying energy to Israel via indirect routes. In 2024, Brazil became Israel’s fourth-largest crude oil supplier, accounting for 9% of Israel’s imports. State-owned Petrobras claims it never sells crude directly to Israel, only to third-party refineries, and has no control over the final destination of refined products. But union leaders say that is a deliberate loophole.

Leandro Lanfredi, a leader of Brazil’s National Federation of Oil Workers, told Middle East Eye that Brazilian crude is redirected to Italian refineries, which then process and ship it to Israel. In June 2025, after a combination of an Iranian drone strike on Israel’s largest refinery in Haifa (which took the facility offline for months) and scheduled maintenance at Ashdod’s refinery crashed Israeli domestic refining output to a 30-year low, demand for imported refined fuel surged. Data collected by Lanfredi shows that the share of Brazilian crude in the blend at Italy’s Saras refinery in Sardinia jumped from a historical average of 7% to 47% in June 2025, just as the refinery began exporting an estimated 45,000 tons of refined petroleum to Israel. “Of course Petrobras knows who their clients are,” Lanfredi said, noting that the Brazilian government owns more than 50% of voting shares in the state oil giant and has the regulatory power to enforce a ban, but has resisted to avoid friction with private investors. Brazil’s foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Activists say Brazil has a clear precedent for such action: in 1985, center-right President Jose Sarney implemented a full oil and arms embargo against apartheid South Africa, proving that even moderate administrations can enforce energy embargoes for human rights. “If it was possible for him to do it, it is more than possible for President Lula,” Badra El Cheikh of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy told MEE.

The core barrier to broader action, activists say, is fear of U.S. retaliation. “I think most of all, they are afraid of the backlash that could come from Israel’s biggest partner in crime, which is the US. They’re afraid of sanctions, and afraid of anything that the US might do against their economies,” El Cheikh explained. Ana Sanchez, general coordinator of Global Energy Embargo for Palestine (GEEP), added that energy deals face far less international regulation than arms sales, which are at least constrained by the Arms Trade Treaty. Many governments also hide behind the false claim that an energy embargo targets civilians, she said, ignoring that energy powers the military machine that drives the conflict.

For campaigners, Colombia’s successful implementation of a full embargo proves that the gap between global rhetoric on Palestinian rights and action is not inevitable – it is a choice, rooted in political priorities rather than legal or economic constraint.