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In a sharp escalation of regional tensions, Iran has paused all indirect negotiations with the United States mediated by third parties, in direct response to Israel’s intensifying military strikes across Lebanon, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency announced Monday. The outlet, which maintains close ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), outlined the reasoning behind the decision, noting that a stable ceasefire in Lebanon had been a core precondition for continued talks. With Israeli attacks breaking the truce on that front and across multiple regional theaters, all mediated dialogue and document exchanges have been suspended indefinitely.

Tasnim emphasized that Iran’s non-negotiable demand remains an immediate, full halt to all Israeli military operations across both Gaza and Lebanon. The statement also carried a stark warning: should hostilities continue, Iran and its regional allied factions have finalized plans to fully close the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil supplies pass — and activate pressure points along other critical global shipping lanes, most notably the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern entrance to the Red Sea.

This threat to blockade the Bab el-Mandeb Strait marks a clear ratcheting up of Iran’s strategy to disrupt global economic activity, aiming to pressure Washington into making concessions on regional policy. The impact was felt immediately in global energy markets: oil prices, which had steadily fallen over the past month amid growing optimism that a diplomatic deal could be reached, surged sharply in trading on Monday. Brent Crude, the global benchmark for oil pricing, jumped 6.7% to settle at $97.28 per barrel by mid-trading.

Monday’s announcement follows a series of escalating confrontations over the weekend. U.S. Central Command confirmed it had launched new targeted strikes on Iranian assets, just after Kuwait reported that missile and drone attacks targeting U.S. personnel stationed on its territory had been carried out in retaliation for prior U.S. actions. The fragile April ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran has been teetering on collapse for weeks, following a series of breaches on both sides. Just on Friday, former U.S. President Donald Trump said he would lift a U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz only if Iran surrendered its entire stockpile of enriched uranium and agreed to never impose shipping tolls in the waterway — terms Tehran immediately rejected.

Over recent weeks, Israel has steadily ramped up its ground and air operations in Lebanon, turning the small Mediterranean country into a central flashpoint in indirect U.S.-Iran negotiations. Diplomatic records from April, reported by Middle East Eye, show that Saudi Arabia had pushed the U.S. to prioritize a ceasefire in Lebanon as a foundation for sustaining talks with Iran, a move that ultimately led to the fragile April truce. Despite that truce being formalized, Israel has continued to carry out regular strikes on its northern neighbor and push ground forces deeper into Lebanese territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also publicly confirmed that Israeli forces will seize additional territory in the Gaza Strip, a direct violation of the October ceasefire brokered by the United States. Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza, Iran-aligned Houthi forces based in Yemen have launched attacks on commercial shipping transiting the Hormuz waterway, a move the group says is in solidarity with blockaded Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Notably, the Houthi’s Ansar Allah administration operates with a large degree of independence from Tehran, and has so far avoided formally entering the U.S.-Israeli conflict against Iran.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is a particularly critical strategic chokepoint: it is the primary shipping outlet for Saudi Arabia’s oil exports via the kingdom’s East-West Pipeline, which connects Gulf oil production fields directly to the Red Sea export terminal of Yanbu. Closure of this strait would not only disrupt global energy supplies but also raise shipping costs dramatically for global trade between Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

By early June 2026, a historic and unrelenting heatwave has pushed Banda, a dusty rural district in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state, into the center of a growing climate crisis. For more than a straight week, temperatures hovered between 47°C and 48°C (116°F to 118°F) — an extraordinary stretch of extreme heat that even long-term residents describe as unprecedented, marking a dangerous shift from the region’s familiar seasonal weather patterns.

Located just a short distance from the Tropic of Cancer, Banda is no stranger to sweltering summers. But this year’s heatwave has broken all patterns of persistence, bringing a grinding, non-stop heat that alters every part of daily life for the district’s 2.3 million residents, most of whom rely on outdoor labor like farming, construction, road work and small-scale trade to survive. With little access to air conditioning or even reliable cooling for millions of low-income households, Banda’s population has been forced to completely restructure their lives around the deadly heat.

By 6 a.m., when most urban centers across India are just waking to morning, the sun over Banda already blazes with the harsh intensity of a mid-afternoon summer sun. Atarra’s wholesale vegetable market, which once bustled with trade until late morning, now clears out completely by 8 a.m. Farmers and traders travel to the market before dawn to unload their harvests of tomatoes, gourds, chillies and melons, rushing to sell all stock before the heat becomes unbearable — a necessity that grows more urgent by the day, as high temperatures cut the shelf life of fresh produce drastically. “It’s only 6:15 a.m., but it already feels like 8 or 9 a.m.,” explained Himanshu, a local vegetable trader, wiping sweat from his brow as he leaned against crates of ripening tomatoes. “A box of tomatoes has to be sold today or tomorrow; in this heat, it simply won’t last.”

Across the district, this compressed daily schedule governs nearly every activity. As veteran Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński once observed of equally sweltering African landscapes, Banda’s residents now devote most of their energy to a constant, daily search for shade and cool air. Pappu Verma, a local mason, has rearranged his work schedule to start at 7 a.m., wrap up by noon, take a four-hour break to avoid the peak midday heat, then return to work from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. While the break protects him from dangerous heat exhaustion and headaches, it stretches his workday out to 12 or 13 hours — and his pay remains the same regardless. “Otherwise, whatever I earn would just end up being spent on medicine for heat sickness,” he shrugged, a common trade-off for low-income workers across the district.

Outdoor laborers bear the brunt of the crisis most directly. On a 46°C day last week, three female road construction workers were found huddled in the thin sliver of shade cast by a water tanker chassis on a highway bridge spanning the Ken River, eating their simple lunch of flatbread with onion, salt and pickle. “If we brought cooked vegetables, they’d spoil before noon,” explained Shanti Devi, one of the workers, who walks six kilometers to her job site every morning and another six kilometers back home each evening. She summed up the reality for Banda’s working poor in a blunt, memorable line: “Poor people don’t have the luxury of worrying about the heat.”

The Ken River, which once provided a natural cooling effect for surrounding communities, has itself been weakened by decades of overexploitation. Researchers note that widespread illegal sand mining and steady groundwater depletion have eroded the river’s ability to moderate local temperatures, creating a vicious cycle where water scarcity amplifies extreme heat, which in turn worsens water demand.

The economic and public health impacts of the prolonged heatwave are visible across every corner of the district. E-rickshaw drivers report almost no passengers during midday hours; shopkeepers now open before sunrise and close their doors from noon to 4 p.m., and customer numbers have fallen by half. Local hospitals report a steady stream of heat-related illnesses, with 15 to 20 new cases arriving daily, most involving children and elderly patients. Common symptoms include diarrhoea, vomiting and high fever, all brought on by constant exposure to extreme heat.

Banda’s current ordeal is not an isolated anomaly: it is a local manifestation of a growing climate crisis unfolding across northern India. Climate researchers have identified the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the vast fertile belt that covers most of northern India including Uttar Pradesh, as one of the world’s fastest-growing hotspots for dangerous humid heat — a combination of high temperatures and high humidity that places far more physiological stress on the human body than dry heat alone. With a dense population of low-income outdoor workers, widespread irrigation that adds moisture to the air, and limited access to residential cooling, Uttar Pradesh is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to deadly heatwaves, according to Delhi-based think tank Climate Trends.

Local geographic and development choices have amplified Banda’s risk dramatically. Data from Banda University of Agriculture and Technology shows that nearly one-sixth of the district’s dense forest cover disappeared between 1991 and 2022, driven by agricultural expansion, mining and urban development. Tree cover now sits far below the recommended levels to moderate local temperatures, while concrete infrastructure and exposed sand river beds absorb and radiate heat, pushing daytime temperatures even higher. While Banda has recorded extreme temperatures of 48°C to 49°C in the past, including two consecutive days of 49°C heat in 2024, local meteorologist Dinesh Sah notes that this year’s heatwave is unprecedented for its persistence. “For eight or nine straight days, 47°C to 48°C without a break — that is what is new this year,” he explained.

The heat does not fade when the sun sets. Overnight temperatures remain stuck around 30°C, meaning residents never get a chance to fully cool down and recover from the day’s heat. “It feels as if mornings and cool nights no longer exist,” Sah said. By 7 or 8 a.m., it already feels like mid-afternoon.

In rural Achharaund village, 20 kilometers from Banda’s district headquarters, the crisis is as much about water as it is about heat. A single deep well supplies most of the village’s drinking water, and women spend up to five hours a day queuing under the blazing sun to fill buckets for their households. Eighteen-year-old Kranti Vishwakarma says that when afternoon power cuts cut off access to the village’s few electric pumps, the only relief comes from the shade of ancient neem trees. “We don’t have coolers or air conditioners, so for us, the neem trees play that role,” she said.

Eighty-year-old Chunubadi, one of the village’s oldest residents, relies on a rickety table fan held together with string to circulate air in her small home. Even when the power stays on, the fan only blows dry, hot air. “In my 80 years, I’ve never seen heat like this,” she said, watching the fan blades turn slowly. “Old people die in extreme cold or extreme heat. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to endure this one.”

Even as residents adapt their daily routines to survive the heat, adaptation does not equal safety. Research from the University of California, Berkeley estimates that a single severe five-day heatwave in Uttar Pradesh could cause more than 8,000 excess deaths, with the burden falling overwhelmingly on the elderly, outdoor workers and low-income households without access to cooling. What worries climate scientists is not that Banda is hot — it is that heatwaves are growing longer, more intense and more frequent, as the natural systems that once kept temperatures in check are destroyed by human activity.

After more than a week of record heat, a western disturbance finally brought brief relief: dust storms and scattered rain dropped temperatures by 8 to 9°C, and Banda’s residents were finally able to step outside during midday without fear. But the respite is only temporary. The daily routines that Banda’s population has adopted to survive this heatwave — starting work before dawn, retreating indoors during peak heat, constantly searching for shade — are no longer temporary adaptations. They are quickly becoming the new normal, a preview of what climate change will bring to millions of vulnerable people across South Asia in the coming decades.

Fresh escalation along the Israel-Lebanon border has sent civilians back into displacement, as Israel’s top security official’s threat to expand attacks into the Lebanese capital dashed the fragile normalcy residents of Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahieh had only just begun to rebuild.

On Monday, thousands of residents who had trickled back to their homes following an April ceasefire began packing their belongings to evacuate once again, after Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a blunt warning that no part of Beirut would be spared from violence if Hezbollah’s cross-front hostilities did not stop. Katz explicitly equated Dahieh, a dense, heavily residential district in southern Beirut long associated with Hezbollah, to Israeli communities in northern Israel that have faced frequent cross-border attacks. “If there is no calm in the north [of Israel], there will be no calm in Beirut,” he stated.

Katz’s warning came amid a sharp intensification of Israel’s ground and air offensive across Lebanon over the past week, a campaign that has already pushed far beyond the country’s southern border regions. The latest point of contention centers on the ancient Beaufort Castle, a strategic hilltop fortress in southern Lebanon. While Israeli officials announced Sunday they had seized the site and raised the Israeli flag there, Hezbollah contradicted the claim in a Monday statement, confirming its fighters were continuing a “battle of attrition” against Israeli troops in the area.

Israel frames its expanded military campaign as a necessary operation to push Hezbollah forces away from its northern border communities. Katz added that the Israeli military aims to establish full security control over the entire Litani River basin, turning the region into a weapons-free zone cleared of what Israel terms “terrorist elements.” The Litani, which runs roughly 30 kilometers north of the Israel-Lebanon border, has long been a focal point of Israeli demands for Hezbollah to withdraw its military assets from southern Lebanon.

In recent days, Israeli military operations have pushed even further north past the Litani. Last week, the Israel Defense Forces designated all territory south of the Zahrani River — located 40 kilometers from the border and encompassing the major population centers of Tyre and Nabatieh — as an official combat zone, issuing mandatory evacuation orders for all local residents. On Monday, IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee extended these expulsion orders to additional towns and villages located north of the Litani River.

For residents of Dahieh, the new threats have resurrected trauma many had only just started to process after months of displacement. Thousands of residents had gradually returned to the district following the April ceasefire, repairing damaged homes, reopening shuttered businesses, and working to rebuild a fragile sense of daily normalcy. That progress has now been completely upended.

Thirty-one-year-old Batoul Fawaz, who had spent the duration of the conflict in rented temporary accommodation, had just finalized plans to move back to her Dahieh home and returned the keys to her rental when the Israeli threat was released. Now, she is forced to rent another short-term space just to have a place to sleep. “We are no longer afraid for our lives only. We are afraid for our homes,” Fawaz told Middle East Eye. Her entire family, she added, has been scattered by displacement once again: one of her sisters had just given birth and returned to Dahieh, only to flee again with her newborn just days later.

The new threats against Beirut come after weeks of mounting pressure from Israel’s far-right ruling coalition to escalate operations against Hezbollah, in response to the group’s increasing use of explosive FPV drones targeting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. A recent report from Israeli public broadcaster Kan found that Hezbollah’s advanced drone capabilities are currently limiting roughly 80 percent of Israeli ground assaults in southern Lebanon.

Senior far-right ministers have publicly pushed for massive retaliation against Lebanese civilian centers. Last week, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the Lebanese capital to be collectively punished for Hezbollah’s drone attacks, arguing that “for every explosive drone, 10 buildings should fall in Beirut.” National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has additionally urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resume full-scale war in Lebanon, calling for Israel to cut the country’s national electricity supply and seize all territory up to the Zahrani River. Netanyahu has aligned with the hardline position, vowing last Friday to push Israeli forces deeper into Lebanese territory and confirming that large swathes of southern Lebanon are now classified as combat zones.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the latest Israeli escalation, labeling it “a vicious and reprehensible Israeli aggression.” The expanding offensive has also disrupted regional diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the wider conflict across the Middle East. Iran’s foreign ministry stated Monday that a full ceasefire in Lebanon remains a non-negotiable prerequisite for any indirect talks with the United States to end the broader regional war. Iranian state news agency Tasnim later confirmed that Iran has paused all indirect negotiations with the U.S. in response to Israel’s ongoing attacks.

For the displaced families of Dahieh, the political and diplomatic standoff translates to a far more immediate crisis: the ceasefire that gave them a chance to return home has already been rendered meaningless, and any hope of resuming normal life has been delayed indefinitely once again.

A politically charged case spanning the Gulf and North Africa has sparked urgent alarm from human rights advocates, as an Egyptian dissident and her days-old newborn face forced extradition from Oman to Cairo, in what legal representatives say is a brazen misuse of international law enforcement frameworks built for transnational crime, not political repression.

Beneath the scorching dry-season winds that cut through the narrow lanes of Lucknow’s historic old city, an unmistakable display of solidarity with Iran fills every public space. At Hussainabad Chowk, the city’s bustling central open plaza, towering posters of the recently assassinated Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei billow, one bearing a Hindi inscription that reads: “Heartfelt and tearful homage to the great leader and guide of world peace and humanity, Martyr Ayatollah Sajjad Ali Husaini Khamenei Sahib.” Another poster positions Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, standing protectively behind his slain father, hands resting gently on his shoulders.

Further into the warren of old city alleyways, reverence for Iran’s ayatollahs appears everywhere: hand-painted graffiti, framed portraits, and street-side murals line every wall. In a stark act of protest, Israeli and American flags are painted directly onto the dusty paving stones, alongside portraits of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman, placed deliberately to be stepped on by passing pedestrians. Netanyahu’s image is the most heavily worn, reduced to faint fragments against the tattered blue-and-white backdrop of the Israeli flag, while Trump’s portrait remains partially intact—a vivid visual marker of the relative intensity of public anger toward each figure, shaped by their role in the strikes that killed Khamenei.

This grassroots activism is not a new outburst: soon after the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, local shopkeepers in old Lucknow launched a grassroots boycott of American and Israeli-linked goods, pouring thousands of bottles of Coca-Cola down open drains. Today, the only cola stocked on store shelves is Campa Cola, a popular Indian-made alternative. What makes this display of anti-Israel protest particularly striking is its location: it unfolds in the country of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one of Israel’s closest global allies.

Lucknow, the capital of India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh, carries centuries of deep cultural and religious ties to Iran. Once ruled by the Nawabs of Lucknow, a Persian-origin dynasty that governed the Awadh region through the 18th and 19th centuries, the city grew into one of South Asia’s preeminent centers of Indo-Islamic culture, with its art, cuisine, music, and architecture all bearing enduring West Asian influences. Today, it is home to India’s largest Shia Muslim community, concentrated heavily in the old city’s winding neighborhoods.

When news broke on February 28 of the joint U.S.-Israeli strike that killed Khamenei, spontaneous protests erupted across old Lucknow within hours. Chants of “America Murdabad” and “Israel Murdabad”—translated as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”—echoed off the Chowk’s historic sandstone walls. By sunset, thousands of mourners gathered at Bada Imambara, Lucknow’s iconic 18th-century Shia religious site and top tourist attraction, to light candles in honor of Khamenei, whom many now honor as a martyr.

A historic slogan tied to the core of Shia identity was quickly reworked to reflect the moment: the centuries-old cry “Hussaini maaroge, har ghar Hussaini Niklega” (“If you kill one Hussaini, a hundred more will rise from every home”), rooted in the 680 CE martyrdom of Imam Hussain at the Battle of Karbala, became “Tum kitne Khamenei maaroge, har ghar se Khamenei niklega” (“If you kill one Khamenei, thousands more will emerge from every household”). The adaptation sent a clear message: the Shia community of Lucknow views itself as an integral part of the global Shia resistance movement.

“Lucknow’s historical relationship with Iran is such that it was once called the Shiraz of the East,” explains Akbar Mehdi, a young Shia cleric originally from a small town east of Lucknow who now resides in the Iranian holy city of Qom. Mehdi returned to India for the holy month of Ramadan shortly before the strike and has been unable to return to Iran amid the ongoing conflict. “In dining customs, in everyday conversation, an Iranian imprint is clearly visible across our culture here,” he said.

While connections between Lucknow and Iran predate the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the depth of ideological alignment grew dramatically in the decades that followed, according to Ziyaullah Siddiqui, co-editor of the Urdu-language news portal Qasidnama. His co-editor Shibli Beg explains that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s introduction of the concept of Wilayat-e-Faqih—rule by Islamic jurists as a temporary guardianship before the messianic return of the Mehdi—shifted the entire orientation of Lucknow’s Shia community. After 1979, the community’s center of gravity moved from local religious affairs to an increasingly Iran-centric global outlook, with hundreds of young Lucknow Shias traveling to Iran for religious education, and nearly all of the city’s most prominent senior clerics completing their studies in Iranian seminaries.

The ancestral ties binding the two regions run even deeper than the revolution: just a short drive from Lucknow, the small village of Kintoor sits amid the lush, fertile paddy fields of the Gangetic Plains, and it is the ancestral birthplace of Khomeini himself. Khomeini’s grandfather, Syed Ahmad Musavi Hindi, was born in Kintoor in 1790 before migrating to the Iranian village of Khomein at age 40.

In the neighboring village of Rasulpur, Middle East Eye met Rehan Kazmi, a local doctor, descendant of Khomeini, and distant cousin of Iran’s first revolutionary supreme leader, who also founded the Imam Khomeini Foundation to preserve the family’s ancestral connection to the region. “The Kazmi family of Rasulpur and the Kazmi-Musavi family of Kintoor share the same bloodline,” Kazmi explained during an interview in his clinic, where four framed images hang on the wall: a local Sufi saint Haji Waris Ali Shah, a piece of embroidered Islamic calligraphy, Ali Khamenei, and Ruhollah Khomeini. “Around 900 years ago, our ancestors moved to this land from Nishapur in Iran and settled here. We have been Indians ever since,” he said, recalling that even during his childhood in the village, Farsi was so commonly spoken that “even the chickens understood Farsi commands.”

Kazmi recalled that within hours of news of Khamenei’s assassination breaking on February 28, villagers across the region took to the streets to condemn the strike and express solidarity with Iran. They marched carrying portraits of Khomeini and Khamenei, all local shops closed their doors, and the village observed three days of official mourning.

While Lucknow is home to India’s largest Shia community, the city’s overall population is majority Hindu, and Uttar Pradesh is governed by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a controversial Hindu nationalist priest-politician infamous for his anti-Muslim rhetoric and repeated actions that stoke inter-religious communal tension. He once claimed “Muslims did no favour to India by staying here.” Yet despite this tense political context, local journalist Siddiqui noted that aside from a tiny number of isolated provocations early on, the widespread pro-Iran protests have seen remarkably little communal pushback. “Lucknow is a city where Hindu-Muslim riots have never taken root. During the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan, the city was largely spared the bloodshed that tore apart other parts of the subcontinent. People here are sensible. This is a city of tehzeeb—of civilisation,” he said.

By mid-March, the nature of the solidarity movement shifted: large, public street protests gave way to coordinated humanitarian fundraising for Iranian civilians affected by the ongoing war. Even the poorest members of the community contributed what they could, Kazmi said. “Even very poor daily wage labourers gave whatever small change they had. It shows how deeply people here care about this cause.” One young donor, who himself relied on casual work to support his family and clearly had little to spare, told organizers: “Such is my love for Iran, I could not give less.”

The gap between this widespread grassroots solidarity and India’s official foreign policy could not be wider. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in New Delhi maintains extremely close ties to Israel: India is the world’s largest buyer of Israeli military equipment, and just three days before the joint U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran began, Modi completed a high-profile state visit to Israel. Standing alongside Netanyahu on February 25, Modi declared: “Israel is the Fatherland, India is the Motherland,” and even noted that his birthday falls on the same date that India first formally recognized Israel, framing the alliance as a personally fated bond. Just two days after that visit, the war on Iran began.

The conflict has already delivered tangible economic harm to India, which relies almost entirely on energy shipments passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Nine out of 10 Indian households rely on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders for cooking, and roughly 60% of India’s total LPG imports pass through the strategic waterway. From the first day of the war, Indian households faced sharp price hikes and long waiting lines for refills, and widespread public panic has gripped the country ever since. When negotiations between the U.S. and Iran collapsed in mid-May, Modi publicly called on Indian citizens to cut energy use by using public transport and working from home wherever possible.

“Both the ordinary people of India and Iran are unhappy with India aligning so closely with Israel,” cleric Akbar Mehdi said. “People here can tell truth from falsehood. Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine—this is the path of truth, the path of Karbala, the path of Islam.”

Today, India presents a picture of two competing national narratives existing side by side. On one side is the BJP government, which has refused to condemn Israel’s military campaign, even as its own supporters grow increasingly anxious about the economic fallout of the conflict. On the other side is the grassroots pro-Iran solidarity movement, whose leaders are hesitant to openly challenge the central government: after 12 years of BJP rule, India’s Muslim community as a whole, and Shia Muslims in particular, are a marginalized minority with very little representation in national politics, and face widespread systemic pressure. “We cannot speak openly against the government, because of the fear and the constant pressure we live under,” Mehdi explained.

Once a leading global voice for Palestinian statehood and the first large country to cut diplomatic ties with apartheid South Africa, India now maintains a deliberate silence on the violation of Iran’s sovereignty, though it has also walked back its early overtly pro-Israel rhetoric in the face of growing domestic and regional discontent. Many critics in Lucknow argue that the BJP’s current foreign policy is unmoored and weak, leaving India increasingly isolated across West Asia as anti-Western and pro-resistance sentiment spreads across Asia.

For Rehan Kazmi, the shift in India’s longstanding principles is the core of the problem. “The leaders who built independent India experienced oppression themselves, they stood with the victims of colonialism. They understood what was happening in Palestine, because they had fought the same fight. Our ancestors sacrificed everything to free this country. Today, the soul of India is under attack. If the soul is gone, the body has no meaning.”

More than three months have passed since the United States and Israel opened military hostilities against Iran, and for ordinary Iranian citizens across Tehran, every day has been defined by a single, draining reality: a liminal state of neither open war nor lasting peace that has left nearly all facets of daily life frozen. For 38-year-old Tehran resident Afshin, his weariness echoes the sentiment of a large swathe of the population. “We’re exhausted,” he shared in an interview. “It’s either been war since last summer, or the constant shadow of war. I hope they reach a deal so we can finally escape this suspended state… I just want life to go back to normal.”

Against this backdrop of persistent instability, many Iranians hold a fragile, tentative hope that indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington, brokered by regional intermediaries including Pakistan and Qatar, will pull the country out of its current crisis. These talks have continued despite major escalations: recent U.S. airstrikes on southern Iran and Israel’s ongoing ground invasion of southern Lebanon have failed to derail the diplomatic process entirely. Over the past week, circulating reports suggest a potential preliminary deal that would institute a 60-day mutual ceasefire, creating space for negotiators to hammer out a more comprehensive agreement addressing longstanding sticking points, including Iran’s uranium enrichment program and the relief of crippling U.S. economic sanctions.

Yet for all the quiet hope, no guarantee of a breakthrough exists, and the endless uncertainty has become a heavy emotional burden that most Iranians struggle to carry week after week. While 27-year-old Tehran resident Hediyeh suspects a preliminary agreement has already been finalized behind closed doors—telling Middle East Eye that “it appears they’re only still negotiating on how and when to announce it”—she remains deeply skeptical of how long any deal will hold. She notes that public speculation already frames the 60-day ceasefire as merely a delay for tougher negotiations on core issues to come later. “But what if there isn’t a final agreement? Honestly, we’re tired. We are tired of hearing about uranium and the nuclear programme and negotiations and ‘informed sources who asked not to be named,’” she said.

For many Iranians, recent history only fuels deep distrust of the ongoing diplomatic process. Both the 12-day conflict last year and the new war that began in late February broke out while Iranian and U.S. diplomats were already engaged in indirect talks through intermediaries. That pattern has left many convinced another outbreak of hostilities could come at any time, even amid current negotiations. “I don’t trust Trump anymore,” 46-year-old Mohammad, another Tehran resident, told Middle East Eye. “Two times he attacked us while we were negotiating. Why shouldn’t it happen a third time? All this uncertainty drags my mind more towards the possibility of another war.”

Trump’s own erratic public messaging has only amplified this uncertainty: the U.S. president has shifted wildly day to day, sometimes posting respectful messages to Iranian officials on social media and claiming a deal is close, only to turn around days later and tell reporters he is unhappy with proposed terms and issue new threats of military action. This inconsistency has filtered through his own administration, creating whiplash for observers both inside and outside Iran. On May 28, the Associated Press cited multiple senior U.S. officials reporting that the full text of a preliminary agreement had been finalized and was waiting for Trump’s approval. Just hours later, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, an outlet aligned with the country’s Revolutionary Guards, rejected the report entirely. Citing a senior Iranian negotiator, Tasnim confirmed no final text had been agreed, and no such update had been shared with Pakistani mediators. The conflicting reports have only deepened public suspicion across Iran.

For business owners like 58-year-old clothing retailer Hamidreza, this months-long uncertainty has paralyzed economic activity across the country, from large enterprises to ordinary households. “Everything in our lives is hanging in the air. We don’t know what to do. The market is terrible. We can’t plan ahead. We can’t even visualise the future adequately. Customers are in exactly the same situation,” he explained. Asked if he believes a deal will ever be reached, he laughed bitterly. “Trump himself likely doesn’t know, much less me. Anyone who tells you with certainty what’s going to happen is a charlatan. The world is now dealing with a man who goes into one night’s sleep and wakes up the next morning saying something totally different. How can anyone properly and confidently predict anything, when so much of global politics rests on someone this unpredictable?”

This uncertainty has not only strained public mood and business activity—it has upended concrete, long-held personal plans for many Iranians. Thirty-one-year-old lab technician Sima, who had been planning to pursue a master’s degree in Europe, has seen her dream put on indefinite hold. Visa processing for most Iranians has effectively frozen amid the current crisis, she explained. “Many European embassies in Tehran are essentially semi-shut down. You cannot get an appointment in Iran, they won’t permit you to apply through embassies in neighbouring countries either,” she said. After spending months securing admission to a reputable Italian university, the Iranian rial collapsed in value, completely wiping out her carefully calculated budget for study abroad. Even with an acceptance letter in hand, she cannot book a visa appointment—and the new academic year is just months away.

Not all Iranians are pushing for a rapid deal with Washington, either. Some argue that a hasty agreement could become another strategic trap that leaves Iran surrendering key leverage without gaining any meaningful, lasting concessions. Forty-one-year-old civil engineer Mehdi is deeply pessimistic about the current negotiation framework, questioning what Iran will actually gain in exchange for the concessions it is being asked to make. “If they stopped the war and went back to bargaining, it’s from pressure associated with the Strait of Hormuz and increasing oil costs,” he noted. “So now we reopen the strait and in return they return a tiny fraction of our own frozen cash? That sounds absurd to me.”

Mehdi fears that any temporary ceasefire deal will ultimately weaken Iran’s position without preventing a future full-scale conflict. “I’m not saying I like war,” he clarified. “But do you know what’s worse than war? When they can go wherever they want, blow up parts of your country, and nothing really happens in return. That’s how things played out for years in Syria.” He warns that if Iran eases economic pressure on the U.S. and global markets, Washington and Israel will simply return to all-out military action once Iran has given up its leverage.

For now, the majority of ordinary Iranians are trapped between two equally frightening outcomes: the immediate fear of a resumption of full-scale war, and the long-term fear that a flawed, fragile peace will only delay the inevitable conflict, leaving them exhausted and adrift in limbo for months or years to come.

On a sweltering March afternoon, hundreds of men clad in all black marched in a winding procession through the main thoroughfares of Kano, one of Nigeria’s largest northern cities. They carried framed portraits of Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, waved Iranian national flags, and filled the air with chants denouncing joint US-Israeli military strikes on Iran, declaring unwavering solidarity with what they called “a nation under oppression.”

To casual onlookers lingering at roadside storefronts or peering out from passing public buses, the demonstration looked like a scene borrowed from a conflict drama unfolding thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East. But for Nigeria’s minority Shia Muslim community, the public rally was far more than performance: the US-Israeli campaign against Iran hits close to home, bound by decades of ideological, religious, and cultural ties.

In the weeks following the outbreak of the latest Middle Eastern conflict, nearly identical pro-Iran demonstrations have cropped up across major Nigerian cities, from Kano and Sokoto to Gombe and the federal capital Abuja. Organized primarily by members and supporters of the proscribed Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) — one of the most influential Shia movements across the African continent — these rallies lay bare a stark reality: global geopolitical tensions can reverberate powerfully among local religious communities thousands of miles from active battlefields.

The gatherings also underscore the persistent ideological pull Iran has maintained among segments of Nigeria’s Shia population, nearly 50 years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Tehran inspired grassroots movements across the Middle East and large swathes of Africa. “We believe Iran is standing against oppression and foreign domination,” explained Ibrahim Musa, a 32-year-old local trader who joined the Kano march. “As Shia Muslims, we feel connected to their struggle.”

Nearly 100 days have passed since the February 28 US-Israeli attacks on Iran ignited a broader regional conflict, and its economic and political aftershocks continue to ripple far beyond the Middle East. In Nigeria, where the vast majority of the country’s large Muslim population identifies as Sunni, the Shia minority has cultivated deep spiritual and ideological bonds with Iran for generations, viewing the country as a global symbol of anti-imperial resistance. These ties solidified in the late 1970s and 1980s, when the IMN emerged under the leadership of Sheikh Ibrahim el-Zakzaky.

Drawing direct inspiration from Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Zakzaky built a movement centered on grassroots political activism, community social welfare programs, and uncompromising opposition to Western political influence in West Africa. Over decades, the IMN built formal educational and religious partnerships with Tehran, with hundreds of members traveling to Iran to pursue advanced Islamic theological studies. Today, Iran remains a potent symbolic touchstone for much of Nigeria’s Shia community.

“Supporting Iran is not only about politics. Many people see it as defending Muslim dignity against powerful Western countries,” noted Abdullahi Sani, a Shia cleric based in Sokoto, in an interview with Middle East Eye.

Moses Abolade, a leading African geopolitics scholar and peacebuilding consultant with the Peace Education and Practice Network, explained that Iran has spent decades carefully building ties across African nations through religious training scholarships, investment in local religious institutions, humanitarian development projects, and targeted diplomatic outreach. While Tehran’s overall influence on the continent pales in comparison to global powers like China, the United States, and Russia, it has successfully nurtured deep loyalty among Shia minority communities in countries including Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania.

“The recent protests by some Nigerian Shia Muslims over the US-Israel-Iran tensions reflect how global conflicts increasingly shape local identities, emotions, and public discourse far beyond the Middle East,” Abolade told Middle East Eye. “For many participants, Iran represents not just a sovereign nation, but a symbol of transnational religious and political solidarity. While these demonstrations may not shift the balance of global geopolitics directly, they deliver symbolic morale boost and reinforce narratives of international solidarity that strengthen Iran’s ideological standing against Western powers.”

Even so, Abolade emphasized that the rallies do not represent the views of all Nigerians or all Nigerian Muslims, and warned that framing the conflict through a sectarian lens risks deepening existing domestic social divides. “The deeper concern is how transnational narratives, social media amplification, and global political tensions can worsen polarization, spread misinformation, and stoke sectarian mistrust within already fragile Nigerian society,” he said. “Nigeria’s extraordinary religious and ethnic diversity demands that these issues be approached with extreme caution and responsibility to avoid importing foreign conflicts into local community dynamics.”

For Nigeria’s Shia community, which has long faced official suspicion and repeated government crackdowns, the protests also serve a quiet domestic political purpose. The IMN has endured years of tense, often hostile relations with the Nigerian federal government, particularly after a 2015 clash in Zaria where Nigerian army forces killed hundreds of IMN members. The government formally banned the movement in 2019, and in the years since, IMN members have organized regular public demonstrations to demand accountability for the Zaria killings and greater official recognition of the movement. For many members, global developments connected to Iran act as a natural rallying point, creating space to reaffirm their shared religious and political identity and reinforce collective unity.

Not all observers view the demonstrations as benign, however. Retired Colonel AY Gwandu, a senior security official at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, noted that “there is inherent concern whenever foreign conflicts begin to shape the activities of local religious groups.” He added that many ordinary Nigerians fear the rallies could deepen domestic sectarian divides or create new domestic security risks.

Nigeria has struggled for decades with violent insurgency linked to Sunni extremist groups including Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province. While the IMN holds distinct ideological positions that separate it from these extremist organizations, Nigerian security agencies have continued to closely monitor the movement’s activities. Although authorities have occasionally dispersed IMN gatherings over public safety concerns, the recent pro-Iran demonstrations have remained overwhelmingly peaceful.

Even so, many residents of northern Nigeria still worry that these displays could heighten sectarian tensions in a country already grappling with chronic insecurity, rising religious extremism, and deep political instability. Political analysts add that the demonstrations also put Nigeria in a diplomatically delicate position, as the country maintains formal ties with Western nations, Israel, Gulf Arab states, and Iran simultaneously. While open public displays of support for Tehran by local groups are unlikely to shift Nigeria’s official foreign policy directly, they highlight how increasingly global power rivalries are reshaping domestic political discourse in African states.

Political scientist Abdulqodir Yunus explained that the Nigerian government is currently navigating pressure to “balance respect for freedom of expression with legitimate domestic security concerns.” He added that “these protests make clear that international conflicts now have unavoidable local dimensions” across the globe.

For the protesters themselves, however, the movement is as much about collective belonging as it is about geopolitics. In Kano, demonstrators of all ages — including women and children — marched through crowded commercial streets under heavy police observation. Some carried large banners accusing the United States and Israel of unprovoked aggression, while others called on the international community to stand with Iran. Similar scenes were documented across Sokoto and Gombe States, where participants chanted for unity and condemned Western military intervention in the Middle East. While solidarity with Iran was the rally’s official central theme, the gatherings also doubled as public assertions of religious identity and resistance to what participants frame as global injustice.

“If another Muslim nation is suffering, we cannot ignore it,” said Musa, the Kano trader. At a rally in Gombe, religious chants filled the afternoon air, punctuated by large posters featuring images of Iranian leaders alongside portraits of IMN founder Zakzaky.

To outside observers, this display of transnational solidarity may seem striking in a West African nation grappling with its own severe economic struggles and security crises, but protesters insist their shared struggle transcends geographic borders. For Tehran, these public displays across African cities confirm that the Islamic Republic’s ideological message still resonates globally, even amid decades of diplomatic isolation and crippling economic sanctions. For Nigerian Shia, the rallies reaffirm their connection to a broader transnational movement.

“These protests give us a voice,” said Fatima Aliyu, a university student who joined the demonstration at Abuja’s National Mosque. “Even though we are far away, we want Iran to know they are not alone.”

On a Sunday in May 2026, a contingent of at least 199 Israeli ultranationalists carried out a deeply provocative incursion into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, under the direct protection of Israeli police. During the raid, the group raised the Israeli national flag, sang the country’s national anthem, and multiple participants openly conducted Talmudic prayers — actions that directly violate long-standing agreements governing the holy site.

Al-Aqsa Mosque ranks as one of the most sacred sites in Islam, and its governance has been guided for decades by a globally recognized status quo arrangement. This binding international framework, widely accepted by major world powers, explicitly designates the entire mosque complex as an exclusively Islamic place of worship, where only Muslim followers may conduct religious rituals. While non-Muslim visitors are permitted limited access under specific conditions, all administrative, maintenance, and worship oversight falls to the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, which operates under the custodianship of Jordan’s king, with Jordan holding formal protection responsibility for the site.

For years, however, Israel has faced growing international condemnation for systematically eroding this status quo. Successive Israeli governments, and particularly the hard-line administration led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that took office in 2022, have increasingly facilitated near-daily incursions by ultranationalist Jewish groups into the compound, allowing activities that were banned for decades to prevent regional unrest. For generations, Israeli leaders enforced restrictions on displays of the Israeli flag and formal Jewish prayer at Al-Aqsa, out of explicit concern that such actions would ignite widespread violence across Jerusalem and the occupied Palestinian territories. But ultranationalist factions, which openly advocate for the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque to build a Jewish temple in its place, have pushed relentlessly to lift these restrictions, and Netanyahu’s government has largely capitulated to their demands.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency following Sunday’s incursion, Omar Rajoub, media department director for the Jerusalem Governorate, framed the action as part of a deliberate, state-backed campaign to reshape the identity of East Jerusalem. “Raising the Israeli flag inside the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, along with performing provocative rituals, is part of a systematic and deliberate official Israeli policy led by the extremist occupation government,” Rajoub stated. He added that these targeted practices are intended to forcibly impose new realities on occupied East Jerusalem, and fundamentally undermine the site’s centuries-old historical and legal status quo.

Rajoub warned that the repeated incursions by settlers and ultranationalists are a core component of an ongoing colonial project to Judaize Jerusalem and erase the city’s existing Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic religious and historical identity. He emphasized that these incursions, which are enabled and protected by Israeli security forces, amount to a clear violation of international law, and held the Netanyahu government fully accountable for any subsequent escalation of tensions in the region.

On the day of the incursion, Israeli police imposed additional strict restrictions on Palestinian worshippers seeking entry to the mosque, multiple witnesses confirmed. Several worshippers reported that their identity documents were seized by officers at the outer gates of the compound, barring them from accessing the site for worship. The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf added that the Israeli settlers deliberately provoked on-site guards and worshippers by taking photos throughout the mosque courtyards, including in front of the iconic Dome of the Rock, one of the most recognizable and sacred landmarks in the city.

In the wake of the December 2024 lightning rebel offensive that toppled 50 years of Assad family rule in Syria, a quiet crisis over land ownership is unfolding in northern Hama, the historic core of Syria’s once world-leading pistachio industry, threatening to derail fragile efforts to build intercommunal peace.

The conflict traces back more than a decade to the earliest days of Syria’s civil war, when northern Hama’s pistachio-growing hills became a brutal frontline between regime forces and opposition factions. What were once scenic, multi-sectarian villages descended into sectarian bloodshed between majority Sunni communities, which made up most of the anti-Assad rebellion, and Alawis, the Shia offshoot sect to which Bashar al-Assad belonged. By the end of Assad’s rule, thousands of Sunni landowners had been displaced from their properties, while Alawi landholders fled en masse after the regime’s collapse, fearing retaliatory violence from returning rebels.

For Ahmed Ali, a former Syrian civil servant who lost his government job in 2019 for refusing mandatory military service on principle, the collapse of the Assad regime should have cleared the way for him to return to his 15-hectare family pistachio farm, a plot that has been in his family for more than half a century. Instead, Ali has become one of hundreds of landowners trapped in the messy new system of property administration implemented by the new Syrian government, led by former HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Ali’s story is familiar to many displaced landowners. When he returned to his property after Assad’s ouster, he found his former Alawi neighbor Karim al-Khattib occupying his home, after Khattib’s own property was destroyed in the fighting. Ali initially agreed to let Khattib stay in exchange for a share of the annual pistachio harvest, only to discover that the state-owned agricultural investment firm Iktifaa had seized control of his land, branding him an Assad-aligned “shabih” without providing evidence of any crime.

Khattib, who has signed a new contract with Iktifaa to farm Ali’s land for 2026, says he will vacate the property once he earns enough to replant his own destroyed pistachio orchard. Last year, a weak harvest worsened by Syria’s worst drought in decades yielded around $4,000, 60% of which went to Khattib, with the remaining 40% going to Iktifaa. Ali estimates his losses from 2025 alone top $50,000, and he has been blocked from even selling the land he has owned for decades.

Founded in 2021 through a merger of two Idlib-based agricultural firms active in former opposition-held territory, Iktifaa is now the central body managing “absentee lands” across most of Syria, under the oversight of the newly created Illicit Gains Committee. The committee, an extrajudicial body independent of Syria’s court system, is tasked with investigating ties to the former Assad regime and seizing assets from those linked to the old government. It is overseen by Abraham Succarieh, a Lebanese-Australian national who remains under Western sanctions over allegations of terrorism financing, and all revenue from seized assets flows to the Syrian state’s sovereign wealth fund.

During the war, Iktifaa and its predecessor firms managed lands owned by displaced Druze and Christian minorities in HTS-held Idlib. While those properties were returned between 2020 and 2023 as HTS sought to improve its standing with minority communities, many landowners reported they never received compensation for years of use of their property, with all revenue going to the former Syrian Salvation Government, HTS’s pre-2024 governing body. Today, Iktifaa applies the same model to lands abandoned by displaced Alawis who fled after Assad’s fall.

Monzer Khattab, head of Iktifaa’s Hama and Homs branch, defends the firm’s approach, arguing that state oversight was necessary to prevent widespread land grabbing and chaos in the immediate aftermath of the regime’s collapse. He acknowledged that 2025 was a chaotic year, with much of the harvest in Hama and Homs stolen due to the firm’s limited capacity, but confirmed Iktifaa still earned between $1.5 million and $2 million in profits from the region last year, 90% of it from absentee lands. This year, the firm will deploy additional staff across all producing regions to monitor the upcoming June mid-harvest, he said.

But for displaced Alawi landowners who have already been cleared of any ties to the Assad regime, the system still leaves them locked out of their livelihoods. Ammar al-Aassad, an Alawi farmer from the northern Hama village of Maraiwid, received official clearance for his 29 dunam pistachio and olive orchard last month, but has still been unable to access his land. After a Bedouin faction occupied his property and Iktifaa signed a cultivation contract with the group, Aassad lost his entire 2025 harvest, with estimated losses of $40,000. He has yet to receive any compensation, and fears to return to his village even with official clearance: three days after Assad’s ouster, one of his Alawi neighbors who tried to return was killed by unknown assailants, and no other displaced Alawi residents have dared come back since.

“There should be evidence – the previous regime was oppressive, we don’t want oppression again,” Ali says of the current system.

Syrian provincial authorities in Hama acknowledge the growing tensions and say they are working to resolve the crisis. Hama Deputy Governor Hassan al-Hassan says the national presidency has issued formal directives supporting the return of displaced Alawis to their lands, and that new appeal offices linked to the Illicit Gains Committee will open in every province within weeks to allow landowners to challenge seizures. To resolve the immediate housing crisis that has displaced Sunnis and Alawis alike, the provincial council is planning to build temporary caravan housing for displaced Sunni farmers who returned to destroyed homes and now occupy abandoned Alawi properties.

“Our goal is to restore civil peace, and our thinking is that of a state and its institutions, not that of an armed faction. The state’s vision is that people return to their regions,” Hassan said, adding that priority must first go to Sunni farmers who returned after years of displacement to find their homes destroyed and trees uprooted. He gave no clear timeline for when full property returns would be completed.

Local intercommunal reconciliation committees, made up of both Sunni and Alawi community leaders, are already working to resolve disputes at the village level. Alaa Ibrahim, an Alawi landowner from Maan village who serves on one such committee, says his 138 dunam family property remains under Iktifaa control because his brother worked at an army-owned shoe factory, placing him under suspicion. With the 2026 harvest approaching, the Illicit Gains Committee has not issued a ruling on his case, and Ibrahim warns that if Alawi landowners are locked out of another harvest, the economic impact will be catastrophic for already vulnerable families, pushing many to sell their land at rock-bottom prices.

Ibrahim and other committee members are negotiating direct sharecropping contracts between Alawi landowners and their Sunni neighbors, while working to resolve long-running intercommunal violent disputes. If successful, he says, the agreements could pave the way for the safe return of displaced Alawis and ease sectarian tensions. If not, he warns, growing resentment will undermine the entire project of building post-war civil peace in Syria’s once-prosperous pistachio heartland.