标签： Asia

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Iranian press review: Conflict revived Iran’s regional power, says anti-war analyst

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.

18 6 月, 2026
Israel’s Ben Gvir set to attend UN policing conference in New York next month

Controversial Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir is scheduled to travel to New York next month to participate in the annual United Nations policing summit, Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz has reported. Ben Gvir will lead a delegation from Israel’s national security ministry to the two-day conference, which is set to run from July 7 to 8 under the official theme “Investing in Peace”. The high-profile gathering brings together security ministers and police leaders from across the globe to explore how national and cross-border law enforcement agencies can work together to advance shared goals of global peace, security and inclusive development.

What makes Ben Gvir’s upcoming appearance notable is his years-long, public record of fierce criticism against the United Nations. As recently as June 2024, after Israel was added to the UN’s blacklist of state actors responsible for harming children in conflict zones, Ben Gvir launched a scathing attack, claiming the global body had aligned itself with Hamas and become an accomplice to terrorist activity. Earlier that same year, he publicly celebrated Israeli forces’ destruction of a facility belonging to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (UNRWA) in occupied East Jerusalem.

Just one week before news of his planned UN trip broke, Ben Gvir sparked international outrage by calling for the abduction of Lebanese women and young people as a pressure tactic against the Hezbollah militant group. “Let’s start thinking outside the box about Hezbollah,” he stated in public comments. “Conquering territory and killing many terrorists, but also detaining their women and youth and taking them to terrorist prisons… That’s what hurts them the most.”

The month prior to that call, a video showing Ben Gvir overseeing the mistreatment of activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, went viral online and drew widespread condemnation both inside Israel and across the international community. Footage captured Ben Gvir waving an Israeli flag and confronting the detained activists while Israeli Prison Service officers forced the detainees to kneel face-down on the ground and manhandled them. The incident prompted official criticism from multiple world leaders, including representatives from nations whose citizens were among those detained. While condemnation also emerged within Israel, much of the domestic criticism centered on concerns that the embarrassing incident had severely damaged Israel’s global reputation.

Ben Gvir, who resides in the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron, has long been the public face of efforts by Israeli settlers to storm Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a flashpoint site sacred to both Muslims and Jews. His far-right ideological views are rooted in the legacy of Meir Kahane, an ultranationalist American-Israeli rabbi, former Israeli lawmaker and founder of the Kach Party, a movement that openly advocated for the creation of an ethnically pure Jewish state and the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israeli-controlled territory.

Ben Gvir joined Kach as an activist at the age of 16, years before the party was designated a terrorist organization by the United States and banned by the Israeli government following the 1994 Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in Hebron. In that attack, Kach member Baruch Goldstein opened fire on unarmed Palestinian worshippers at the holy site, killing dozens of people. Despite the attack’s global notoriety, Ben Gvir has openly praised both Kahane and Goldstein. He has repeatedly referred to Kahane as a “holy man, a righteous man”, and for decades kept a portrait of Goldstein hanging on the wall of his personal residence. A previously unearthed video from a Jewish Purim celebration also shows Ben Gvir dressed in costume as Goldstein, declaring “He is my hero.”

In 2007, Ben Gvir was convicted by an Israeli court on charges of inciting racism and supporting a banned terrorist organization, after he was found carrying a sign that read “Arabs out”. Police also discovered Kahanist posters in his vehicle that read “It’s us or them” and “There is a solution – expel the Arab enemy.” For many years prior to entering politics, Ben Gvir worked as a lawyer representing Israelis accused of anti-Palestinian incitement and violent attacks against Palestinians. His highest-profile client was one of two Israeli teenagers charged with carrying out a 2015 arson attack on a Palestinian family home in the West Bank village of Duma, an attack that killed an 18-month-old Palestinian baby and multiple other family members.

Just days before news of his planned UN trip was confirmed, Ben Gvir was forced to scrap a separate trip to the United States to attend a friend’s wedding after he encountered unexpected difficulties securing a US travel visa. However, a source familiar with the plans told Haaretz that Ben Gvir is not expected to face similar barriers for his upcoming UN trip, thanks to his official status as a sitting Israeli cabinet minister.

This independent reporting was originally published by Middle East Eye, which provides in-depth, independent coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and global affairs.

18 6 月, 2026
Why Xi is walling in China’s money – and why it won’t work

TOKYO — In a move framed by a centuries-old Chinese cultural metaphor that balances freedom and state oversight, Beijing is drawing tighter boundaries around cross-border capital outflows — but analysts warn this “birdcage” strategy risks doing more harm than good for Asia’s largest economy, even as the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) pursues incremental market-aligned reforms to boost the yuan’s global standing.

Over recent weeks, Chinese regulators have moved to shut down informal channels that allow the country’s 1.4 billion citizens to move capital overseas. On May 22, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) launched a targeted crackdown on unlicensed brokerage firms that facilitate cross-border investment into foreign markets. Regulators have since pressured financial institutions based in Hong Kong and Singapore to wind down their cross-border offerings of securities, futures, and investment funds, with the full rollout of the crackdown planned over a two-year timeline. Officials have framed the action solely as a crackdown on illicit capital flows, but industry experts warn the broader shift in regulatory posture will almost certainly create an unintended chilling effect across China’s economy.

Ashwin Binwani, founder of Singapore-based Alpha Binwani Capital, warns the crackdown could escalate far beyond its stated target, expanding into a broader clampdown that spooks global markets. “The biggest problem is that you never know how far the crackdown on cross-border capital flow can go,” noted Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis, adding that uncertainty will inevitably ripple through Hong Kong’s already fragile international financial sector.

This latest round of regulatory tightening is not an isolated policy shift, analysts point out. More than five years after Beijing’s sweeping crackdown on Jack Ma’s Alibaba and the broader Chinese tech sector, global investors are still grappling with the lasting fallout of that sudden, unanticipated regulatory shift. Just last month, new details emerged of Beijing’s tight restrictions on international travel for Chinese artificial intelligence researchers — a modern echo of Soviet-era “birdcaging” of academics, artists, and athletes to prevent defection and limit foreign influence.

These policy moves stand in stark contradiction to President Xi Jinping’s 2013 pledge to allow market forces to play a “decisive role” in China’s economic development. They also highlight a longstanding pattern: the Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly addressed the visible symptoms of China’s economic challenges, rather than tackling their deep-rooted causes.

In the near term, the crackdown is already having corrosive effects on market confidence. Eurasia Group analyst Dominic Chiu notes that major global banks have already begun quietly tightening requirements or freezing new account openings for mainland Chinese clients. In the longer term, experts frame the strategy as a reflection of anxiety rather than progress — an awkward step for a government that is actively lobbying for the yuan to be recognized as a legitimate global reserve currency.

Not all recent Chinese economic policy moves lean toward greater state control, however. In a promising development for global investors, PBOC Governor Pan Gongsheng announced June 17 at a major business forum that the central bank is preparing to transition to a Fed-style overnight policy rate, a reform that would sharpen Beijing’s control over short-term funding costs and align China’s monetary policy framework more closely with global central bank standards.

Full statutory independence for the PBOC would represent a far more transformative change for global markets. For the yuan to truly challenge the dollar and euro as a top reserve currency, the central bank would need genuine authority over monetary policy, rather than its current advisory role under the State Council, which retains final decision-making power. Even so, analysts agree that the overnight rate shift represents meaningful, incremental progress.

Since July 2024, the PBOC has already formally adopted a policy framework centered on the 7-day reverse repo rate as its primary policy tool. That shift represented a step forward, improving the transmission of the central bank’s monetary adjustments from short-term rates to longer-term borrowing costs, and reducing the outsize influence of China’s loan prime rate and medium-term lending facility.

If the PBOC follows through on its planned shift to an overnight policy rate — which analysts view as highly likely — the reform would increase the central bank’s influence over markets through greater transparency. It could also pave the way for scheduled monetary policy meetings, clear forward guidance for markets, and the publication of meeting minutes, all standard practices among major global central banks.

Greater transparency around monetary policy would reduce the opacity that has long deterred foreign investment in Chinese assets, and could boost foreign participation in China’s onshore bond markets, which have already grown steadily via the Bond Connect program. A more predictable, rules-based monetary framework would also strengthen Beijing’s case for the yuan to gain reserve currency status, theoretically reducing the PBOC’s scope for behind-the-scenes micromanagement of the exchange rate. While that shift could lead to greater short-term volatility for the yuan, it would ultimately improve the currency’s long-term credibility among global investors.

The global economic landscape is uniquely favorable for China to position the yuan as a larger player in global trade, finance, and central bank reserves. U.S. national debt is rapidly approaching the $40 trillion mark, inflation is running at 4.2% amid the ongoing Iran war and total political gridlock in Washington, creating widespread demand among global investors for a credible alternative to the dollar. As far back as late 2025, JPMorgan warned that “increased polarization in the U.S. could jeopardize its governance, which underpins its role as a global safe haven.”

Earlier this month, a European Central Bank report confirmed that gold has overtaken U.S. government bonds as the world’s largest reserve asset. At the end of 2025, gold accounted for 27% of global central bank reserve assets, up from 20% just one year prior. “Geopolitical tensions continue to drive strong central bank demand for gold,” ECB President Christine Lagarde wrote of the findings. Hamad Hussain, senior economist at Capital Economics, told CNBC that “recent doubts over the dollar’s safe-haven status could also boost the attractiveness of both gold and the euro as reserve assets over the coming years.”

Alongside the planned overnight rate reform, Pan unveiled new steps to boost the yuan’s global profile during his June 17 speech. The PBOC is launching the FIMA RMB Repo Facility, which will allow overseas central banks, monetary authorities, international financial institutions, and sovereign wealth funds to access yuan liquidity via repo transactions collateralized by Chinese government bonds and other high-grade fixed-income securities. The central bank is also exploring a new liquidity backstop to support non-bank financial institutions during periods of market stress, a policy guardrail that would address a key longstanding concern of global investors seeking greater predictability in Chinese markets.

These incremental reforms come even as Xi Jinping has doubled down on capital controls and other restrictive policies in recent weeks, contradicting pledges he made just last month to a delegation of high-profile U.S. business leaders including Apple’s Tim Cook, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and Tesla’s Elon Musk, when he promised China would “open wider” to foreign investment and offer “broader prospects” for global business. Since that meeting, Xi’s government has tightened cross-border capital controls, restricted access for AI researchers, and rolled back transparency measures. Instead of expanded access as promised, the leadership of Asia’s largest economy has moved toward greater closure, with recent actions reading more as a sign of deep-seated economic anxiety than the confident leadership global markets have come to expect from Beijing in the Xi era.

Compounding that anxiety, recent economic data has undermined Beijing’s official narrative that deflation has been defeated. Officials have pointed to a 1.2% year-on-year rise in consumer prices in May, following a flat 0% full-year reading in 2025, as proof the economy has turned a corner. But retail sales fell 0.6% year-on-year in May, the weakest reading since late 2022, indicating weak domestic demand is likely deepening. Fixed-asset investment also dropped 4.1% year-on-year in the first five months of 2026, a far steeper decline than analysts forecast.

Like Japan during its decades-long period of stagnation, China is struggling to break the “defeationary mindset” that has taken hold among households and businesses, regardless of the monthly headline numbers published by the National Bureau of Statistics. Strong export performance has not been enough to lift broad economic confidence. To defeat deflation once and for all, Beijing would need to resolve the multi-year property sector crisis and convince Chinese households to deploy the more than $22 trillion in excess savings they have accumulated. That massive pile of household cash is more than four times Japan’s annual GDP, a reminder of the high cost of policy complacency drawn from Japan’s lost decades. The two challenges are closely linked: roughly 70% of Chinese household wealth is tied up in real estate.

Analysts argue that if China built a more transparent, stable domestic economy that offered attractive alternative investment options to real estate, Chinese citizens would have far less incentive to move capital overseas in the first place. Beijing is making a critical mistake, they say, in relying on a restrictive “birdcage” for capital, when what the economy actually needs is bold reform to rebuild domestic confidence and convince households to invest their savings at home.

This analysis is by William Pesek, a contributing columnist on Asian economic affairs.

18 6 月, 2026
Inside the Oxford Union debate where Tommy Robinson lost to a Palestinian student from Gaza

In a highly charged night of controversy that tested Britain’s long-held commitment to open debate, the Oxford Union — one of the world’s most prestigious academic debating institutions — hosted far-right anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson for a divisive debate, culminating in a clear defeat for the motion claiming the West is justified in viewing Islam with suspicion. The event, organized by 20-year-old Oxford Union president Arwa Elrayess, a Muslim of Palestinian heritage from Gaza, drew hundreds of furious protesters who blocked access to the venue, delayed the debate by more than two hours, and left the chamber with a drastically reduced audience far below its 400-person capacity.

Elrayess has long framed her decision to invite Robinson as a defense of free speech principles: rather than silencing extremist anti-Muslim views, she argued, they should be confronted openly through rigorous debate. This was not her first clash over free speech: just weeks earlier, she defied the UK Home Office after the government barred two American progressive commentators, Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur, from entering the country over critical remarks they made about Israel, hosting the pair via a live stream instead. The decision to invite Robinson, a convicted criminal, drew condemnation from across the political spectrum, including from sitting and former parliamentarians, and Elrayess only survived a no-confidence vote from Union members over the controversy.

The lead-up to the May 21, 2026 debate was marked by escalating tension, coming just one week after riots targeting ethnic minorities in Belfast that broke out hours after Robinson urged his online followers to hold demonstrations. By 5:30 p.m. on the day of the debate, roughly 60 left-wing protesters had gathered outside the Union, blocked off by police. The crowd quickly swelled to over 500, many wearing masks, who physically prevented ticket holders — including student speakers and Elrayess’ own family, who had traveled from Doha to attend — from entering the venue. Two adjacent streets were closed, and local businesses shut early in anticipation of unrest. While the crowd outside raged with chants of “refugees are welcome here” and anti-fascist slogans, the small group that managed to slip inside — including the author of this report — described an eerily calm atmosphere inside the Union grounds.

Among those who gained entry were Robinson, fellow pro-motion speaker Laurence Fox, founder of the small right-wing Reclaim Party, and senior Conservative former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, who spoke against the motion alongside Elrayess and multiple Muslim student debaters. Ahead of the debate starting close to 10 p.m. — two and a half hours behind schedule — informal exchanges between far-right guests and Muslim debaters remained cordial, with pro-motion podcaster Liam Tuffs even joking that he had enjoyed the event’s halal chicken catered meal.

When the debate formally opened, Elrayess surprised attendees by announcing she would step down from chairing the event to speak for the opposition against the motion. Opening for the pro side, Union committee member Oliver Jones-Lyons argued that Islam is fundamentally irreconcilable with Western liberal democratic values, pointing to the historic jizya tax on non-Muslims in Islamic states. Muslim debater Abdullah al-Andalusi pushed back, noting that religious minorities in some Muslim-majority states receive specific legal privileges that challenge claims of universal discrimination, a distinction Jones-Lyons dismissed as segregation by another name.

Student opposition speaker Aisha Khan opened her remarks with a sharp rebuke of Robinson, introducing him as “Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known to his hooligans as Tommy Robinson” and noting that he would have been “quite literally cooked” without the protection of the Union’s Muslim Palestinian president and majority South Asian executive committee. She took aim at Fox too, mocking his party’s poor electoral performance: “Founder of the Reclaim Party, which at the last general election reclaimed approximately 0.02 percent of the British vote.” Khan centered her argument on the value of open scrutiny, arguing that Western critical thinking allows believers to question their own faith without fearing its collapse: “a thing that cannot survive a question probably deserves to be questioned.”

When Robinson took the stage, the anti-Islam activist opened with a lighthearted joke about preferring to watch the England football game before praising Elrayess for upholding his right to speak. He then outlined his core claim, citing Islamic scripture and laws in Muslim-majority countries to argue that Islam promotes violence, intolerance of LGBTQ+ people, and punitive laws for extramarital sex and child marriage. Multiple opposition speakers challenged his claims: al-Andalusi pressed Robinson to produce a scripture citation supporting the death penalty for homosexuality, which Robinson failed to provide, instead pointing to high-profile cases of execution in the Middle East. Luton-based debater Michael Doward, who shares Robinson’s hometown, refuted Robinson’s misquotation of a Quranic verse on child marriage and called out his selective framing: “Tommy is desperate to make connections between crime and Islam. But when it comes to Muslims working as NHS workers, doctors, nurses, charity workers — does he ever connect good deeds to Islam?”

The most powerful speech of the night came from Elrayess, who systematically dismantled Robinson’s reading of the Quran, pointing out that the verse he cited calling for violence against unbelievers was context-specific, referring exclusively to a 7th-century Arab tribe that had broken a peace treaty with early Muslim communities during wartime, a interpretation agreed by 1400 years of classical Quranic scholarship. She cited the Prophet Muhammad’s final sermon emphasizing universal equality regardless of race, and shared polling data showing that 85 percent of British Muslims support democracy as the best system of government — compared to just 71 percent of the general British public — and 70 percent feel fully or mostly loyal to the UK, against 50 percent of the broader population. “British Muslims are more committed to British values than the British average,” she declared, earning applause even from some attendees who had supported Robinson. She closed with a powerful defense of her decision to host the debate rooted in her faith: “Free speech and debate is not something I do despite being a Muslim, it is something I do because of it. I’m not betraying my religion, I’m practicing it. My faith has survived empires, it will survive this evening.”

A moment of light relief came when a tipsy Laurence Fox attempted to display a controversial cartoon as a prop, only to be called out for violating Union rules by Rees-Mogg — before revealing the cartoon was a drawing of Rees-Mogg himself, drawing widespread laughter.

When the final vote was counted, the motion “This House believes the West is right to be suspicious of Islam” was defeated 41 votes in favor to 57 against. Though the audience was small due to the protest blockade — most of the blocked students who could not enter were expected to oppose the motion, which would have produced a larger margin of defeat — the result was nonetheless clear.

As attendees left the building late that night, protesters outside chanted angrily against the Union and the debate. The event has already sparked fierce national debate: critics argue that giving Robinson a platform at a prestigious institution legitimizes anti-Muslim bigotry and far-right extremism at a moment of rising ethnic tension in the UK. But supporters of Elrayess’ approach frame the outcome as a victory for open discourse: young Muslim leaders did not shy away from confronting hateful views, they extended the right of free speech even to those who oppose their own faith, and defeated them on the open, democratic battleground of debate. Outside the Oxford train station early the next morning, a young British Muslim man who had traveled from London to attend the debate summed up this perspective: he had been blocked from entering by protesters, he said, but he saw no reason to fear open debate about his faith — and suspects many other young British Muslims feel the same.

18 6 月, 2026
New York mayor, other leaders push to ban horse-drawn carriage rides after Indian teen’s death

A devastating tragedy in one of New York City’s most iconic landmarks has reignited a decades-long debate over the future of Central Park’s historic horse-drawn carriage industry, after an 18-year-old tourist from India died following a runaway carriage incident. The fatal crash, which has become the first recorded human death linked to a horse carriage accident in the 150-plus-year history of the attraction, has amplified pressure from activists and city leaders to ban the service entirely, while industry representatives push for targeted safety reforms instead of a full elimination.

The victim, Romanch Mahajan, was in New York on a celebratory family trip marking two joyous milestones: his recent high school graduation and his newly earned acceptance to a university in his home state of Rajasthan, India. The family, who had arrived in the city just days earlier and already visited top tourist spots including the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge, opted for a classic Central Park carriage ride as a memorable stop on their itinerary. According to Romanch’s father, Deepak Mahajan, the driver dismounted near a popular fountain to take a photograph of the family, leaving the horse untethered. The animal suddenly spooked and bolted, throwing Romanch’s mother from the open carriage. In a desperate attempt to reach his mother, Romanch jumped from the moving vehicle, struck his head fatally on the pavement before the out-of-control carriage collided with a second horse-drawn vehicle and toppled over. Deepak Mahajan, his wife, and their younger son escaped with only minor injuries, but the tragedy cut short Romanch’s emerging future. “It took my son’s dream away,” Deepak Mahajan told *The New York Times*.

Industry representatives confirmed that the carriage owner has suspended the involved driver indefinitely and plans to retire the spooked horse from service. The labor union representing carriage workers, Transport Workers Union Local 100, also voluntarily shut down all operations this week to conduct a full internal review of existing safety protocols. As of Thursday, no carriage rides were operating in the park, and there was no immediate timeline for when service would resume.

Central Park Conservancy, the non-profit organization that manages the 843-acre public space, had already backed regulatory changes to restrict the industry in recent years, and the group is now calling for an immediate suspension of all operations until new sweeping safety safeguards can be implemented. Conservancy officials note that Mahajan’s death marks the eighth horse-related incident in the park over just 13 months, adding that crowded park roads packed with joggers, cyclists, pedestrians, and motorized scooters have made shared space with horses unsafe in the modern era. The organization also pointed to a growing national trend, noting that major U.S. cities including Chicago and San Antonio have already phased out horse-drawn tourist carriages entirely.

Animal welfare and public safety advocates have gone a step further, calling for a permanent full ban. Edita Birnkrant, executive director of New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets, said the pattern of incidents can no longer be ignored: “The record is undeniable: crashes, runaways, horse deaths, injuries, and now a devastating loss of human life.” Activists have long argued that carriage horses are forced to work excessive hours in crowded urban conditions that leave them prone to spooking, are housed in substandard stables, and that drivers routinely violate existing city safety rules.

These claims have been consistently rejected by carriage owners and drivers, who emphasize that their animals receive proper care and that their stables meet all city regulatory requirements. Rather than eliminating the 150-year-old nostalgic attraction that draws millions of tourist dollars to the city each year, industry leaders argue the fatal crash highlights the need for targeted safety improvements, not an outright ban.

Alexander Kemp, vice president of Transport Workers Union Local 100, said the industry was devastated by the tragedy: “We’re absolutely gutted and stunned by this tragedy.” Onur Altintas, a long-time carriage owner who operates four horses in Central Park, warned that a full ban would eliminate hundreds of jobs across New York’s horse industry, including roles for drivers, stable hands, and farriers. He pushed back on calls to end the industry over a single accident, noting that far more deadly incidents occur in other common forms of transportation regularly. Altintas also laid out a clear path to improve safety, saying 90% of accidents could be prevented by installing public hitching posts across the park at popular tourist photo stops, allowing drivers to secure their horses when they need to step away briefly — a common practice when taking passenger photos, using restrooms, or taking breaks.

The union confirmed that a bipartisan bill has already been introduced to the New York City Council that would mandate exactly these hitching post requirements. But city leaders have already made clear they plan to move forward with a vote on a broader, long-proposed ban that would phase out the industry entirely and support workers to transition to new careers. City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced that the legislative body will hold a public hearing next month on the ban legislation, known as Ryder’s Law, which the Central Park Conservancy formally endorsed last year, reigniting public debate over the carriages. “The time to act is now,” Menin wrote on social platform X.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has also reaffirmed his commitment to ending the industry, saying he will work with the council, industry stakeholders, and advocates to “deliver a just transition that protects workers while ending horse-drawn carriages in Central Park once and for all.” This push to end the carriage industry is not new: former mayor Bill de Blasio famously vowed to shut down the industry “on Day One” of his tenure, but faced years of stiff opposition in the council. Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, also came out against the industry near the end of his single term.

18 6 月, 2026
‘This was not easy’: Trump and Iran sign interim ceasefire deal in France

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.

18 6 月, 2026
Colombia stopped energy exports to Israel – so why did South Africa and Brazil not do so?

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.

18 6 月, 2026
Federal regulators back Trump’s plan to speed power to energy-hungry AI data centers

WASHINGTON – In a landmark move tailored to the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, federal energy regulators have greenlit new rules to speed up connections between large power users — most critically AI-focused data centers — and the nation’s aging electric transmission system. The vote comes as U.S. policymakers race to meet surging energy demand for AI infrastructure and shore up American competitiveness against China in the fast-expanding tech sector.

The policy shift was initiated eight months ago, when U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to take bolder action to clear interconnection bottlenecks that have delayed data center development. In a unanimous vote by the five-member commission, FERC passed an order requiring that large power loads such as AI data centers gain timely, orderly access to high-voltage transmission lines. This marks the second major regulatory adjustment FERC has made in less than a year to accommodate AI infrastructure, following a December order that allowed data centers to connect directly to independent power plants.

FERC Chair Laura Swett, a Trump administration appointee, framed the decision as a historic step to modernize the U.S. electricity market while shielding ordinary consumers from unexpected costs. Under the new order, data center operators are required to cover 100% of the costs for transmission upgrades needed to support their connections, addressing widespread concerns that general ratepayers would be forced to foot the bill for expanding the grid to serve AI facilities. “Many Americans are increasingly concerned that adding large power loads like data centers will push up their electricity bills, and that concern is shared by this commission,” Swett said. “We take very seriously our congressional mandate to ensure rates remain reasonable for American households.”

The policy has drawn a mixed reception from stakeholders across the energy and political landscape. Tech giants and data center developers have welcomed the reform, which cuts through years-long interconnection backlogs that have left major AI companies scrambling to secure enough power to expand their operations. Major industry players including xAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, OpenAI and Amazon have already backed the administration’s efforts by signing the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a voluntary commitment to build or purchase new power generation to match their data center demand, cover all grid upgrade costs, provide emergency backup power to avoid blackouts, and prioritize local hiring for construction projects.

But the rule has sparked significant pushback from utilities, state governments, and regional grid operators, who argue that the new federal framework erodes their existing authority to manage local transmission planning and interconnection processes. Clean energy advocates have also raised alarms, warning that the policy could undermine state-level requirements to power new data centers with renewable energy sources, slowing progress on national decarbonization goals.

Beyond regulatory and policy disputes, the FERC vote comes amid a growing grassroots backlash against data center development across the country. Local communities are increasingly pushing back against proposed facilities, citing fears that concentrated data center demand will drive up regional electricity prices, strain local water supplies, and cause environmental harm. Many residents have also protested the loss of open space and farmland to massive data center complexes, which have grown dramatically in size to meet AI’s extreme power requirements.

Current industry data underscores the scale of AI’s growing energy footprint. An estimated 4,000 data centers are already operating across the U.S., with another 3,000 planned or under construction — some of which consume as much electricity as a small entire city. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that data centers already account for roughly 5% of total U.S. electricity demand, a figure that could triple by 2035. In Virginia, a major hub for data center development, facilities already make up more than 25% of the state’s total electricity demand, a share projected to climb above 40% by 2030.

Even with the new FERC rules, however, major structural challenges remain to matching AI’s power demand with available supply. The order does not address the growing gap between data center construction and the buildout of new power generation plants. In many regions, data center development is outpacing the addition of new generation capacity, leading to tightening energy supplies, rising retail electricity prices, and increased warnings of potential future blackouts.

Industry analysis also shows that even with clearer interconnection rules, overall data center capacity buildout is lagging far behind projected demand. A recent J.P. Morgan report, which analyzed satellite imagery of planned projects, found that more than 60% of data center capacity scheduled for completion by 2027 has not yet broken ground, and an additional 7% of projects have already been delayed. The report cited persistent permitting bottlenecks, supply chain delays for critical equipment including gas turbines and transformers, and widespread shortages of skilled construction labor as the primary causes of backlogs.

For the Trump administration, accelerating AI data center development is a core priority to maintain U.S. economic and military leadership in AI, a sector the White House views as critical to outcompeting China. President Trump has made AI competitiveness a central policy focus, recently signing an executive order to establish a 30-day national security vetting framework for the most advanced AI systems before they can be released to the public, while framing the sector as a magnet for global foreign investment into the U.S.

18 6 月, 2026
A UK border official and a former Hong Kong cop sentenced for spying on China’s behalf

LONDON – In a landmark national security ruling that has escalated diplomatic tensions between London and Beijing, two men – a former United Kingdom border official and a retired Hong Kong police officer – have received lengthy prison sentences on charges of orchestrating a spy operation targeting Beijing’s critics based on British soil. The convictions mark one of the highest-profile cases prosecuted under the U.K.’s post-Brexit National Security Act, underscoring growing concerns over transnational political surveillance on Western territory.

Sixty-six-year-old Bill Yuen, a former Hong Kong Police superintendent who went on to work as office manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) in London – the regional government’s official U.K. representative – and 41-year-old Peter Wai, a former Metropolitan Police officer who later joined U.K. Border Force, were handed down their sentences Thursday at London’s Central Criminal Court. Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb imposed a 10-year prison term on Wai and an eight-year term on Yuen, condemning the pair’s actions as deliberate, coordinated and severely damaging to the safety of those they targeted.

According to prosecution arguments, the two Chinese-British nationals operated a covert surveillance network between 2020 and 2022, posing as legitimate law enforcement or intelligence personnel to monitor and collect intelligence on Hong Kong pro-democracy dissidents and Beijing critics residing in the U.K. Their list of targets included prominent high-profile figures: Nathan Law, a former Hong Kong opposition lawmaker who fled to the U.K. after Beijing’s imposition of the 2020 national security law, and multiple British parliamentarians who have publicly criticized Chinese policy. Prosecutors also revealed that the pair referred to the pro-democracy activists they targeted with the dehumanizing slur “cockroaches”, a term widely adopted by pro-Beijing factions to describe opposition supporters during Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests.

Last month, a jury found both men guilty on charges of violating the National Security Act for providing assistance to a foreign intelligence service. Wai received an additional conviction for misconduct in public office, after he abused his position as a border official to access a secure government computer and pull personal information on individuals of interest to Hong Kong authorities. In her sentencing remarks, Cheema-Grubb emphasized that the pair’s repeated covert operations had inflicted ongoing fear and psychological harm on the people they monitored, who had sought safety in the U.K. after fleeing political persecution.

Helen Flanagan, commander for Counter Terrorism Policing London, described the defendants’ activities as “truly chilling” in a post-sentencing statement. She noted that the targets of the spy ring were peaceful pro-democracy campaigners who had fled to the U.K. to seek sanctuary, only to be tracked and targeted for their political beliefs.

The case has sparked immediate diplomatic friction between the U.K. and China. Following the guilty verdict last month, British foreign ministry officials summoned Chinese Ambassador Zheng Zeguang to formally raise concerns over the transnational surveillance operation. In response, China’s Embassy in London denounced the proceedings as a politically motivated “farce” manufactured to provide cover for anti-China forces that had relocated to Britain. The Hong Kong government also issued a statement rejecting all links between the espionage operation and the Hong Kong administration or HKETO, claiming British authorities had launched the investigation on “groundless accusations”, abused legal processes and manipulated judicial proceedings to secure a conviction.

The verdict comes amid a steady deterioration in Sino-British relations over issues including Hong Kong’s political crackdown, increased Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, and repeated allegations of transnational repression targeting dissidents based in Western countries.

18 6 月, 2026
Men jailed over work for Chinese intelligence in UK

On Thursday, a landmark sentencing at London’s Old Bailey delivered severe punishment to two men convicted of working on behalf of Chinese intelligence to target Hong Kong pro-democracy dissidents on British soil. After a month-long trial, 40-year-old Chi Leung “Peter” Wai received a total 10-year prison term, while 65-year-old Chung Biu “Bill” Yuen was sentenced to eight years behind bars. Both were found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service under the UK’s National Security Act, marking one of the most high-profile foreign interference cases in recent British legal history.

Wai, a former Metropolitan Police officer who joined UK Border Force at Heathrow Airport in December 2020 after years of public service roles including eight years in the Royal Navy and a volunteer constable position with City of London Police, abused his official access to the Home Office’s national database of foreign nationals to track Hong Kong residents who fled the territory’s crackdown on pro-democracy activism. Beyond the charge of assisting a foreign intelligence service that carries a six-year sentence, he was also convicted of misconduct in public office, which added an extra four years to his punishment. In one message sent to Eddie Ma, a former chief superintendent of Hong Kong Police’s Criminal Intelligence Bureau who maintained ties to Chinese authorities, Wai infamously wrote, “Will not let any cockroaches in,” referencing the dissidents he was tasked to monitor.

Yuen, a former Hong Kong police officer who served as office manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London, acted as the critical liaison between Wai and Chinese state authorities, coordinating the illegal surveillance network that prosecutors described as a coordinated “shadow policing operation” run for Hong Kong authorities and ultimately the Chinese government. During the trial, the court revealed that the operation did not only target exiled dissidents – it also extended special surveillance attention to high-profile British politicians, including senior Conservative MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith.

The court also heard that Wai recruited another Border Force officer, former Royal Marine Matthew Trickett, to participate in the surveillance. In November 2023, Trickett was ordered by Wai to follow prominent exiled Hong Kong activist Nathan Law – one of eight dissidents that Hong Kong chief executive John Lee placed a HK$1 million (£100,000) bounty on that year – while Law spoke at the Oxford Union. Shortly after the pair were apprehended by counter-terrorism police, Trickett was found dead in an apparent suicide, with an official coroner’s inquest scheduled for November this year.

Delivering the sentencing remarks, Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb emphasized the severity of the men’s crimes, stating their actions “threaten the sovereignty of the state.” Several Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, including one who currently has a HK$1 million bounty placed on her by Hong Kong authorities, attended the sentencing in the Old Bailey’s public gallery to observe the ruling.

While the jury returned guilty verdicts on the main charges, it could not reach a consensus on an additional count of foreign interference linked to an alleged break-in at the West Yorkshire home of a Hong Kong-origin fraud suspect.

UK law enforcement and prosecution officials have framed the convictions as a stark warning against any foreign interference activity on British territory. Commander Helen Flanagan, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, made clear in an official statement that this kind of covert activity will not be tolerated. “I want to be really clear that if you are working on behalf of a foreign state, that we in counter-terrorism policing and with our partners will identify who you are and bring the full force of the National Security Act upon you,” Flanagan said.

Bethan David, Head of the Counter Terrorism Division at the Crown Prosecution Service, echoed that sentiment, noting that Wai and Yuen’s actions were “deliberate, coordinated and carried out with full knowledge of who it would benefit.” She added that the convictions send an unmistakeable message: “transnational repression, foreign interference, unauthorised surveillance, and attempts to operate outside the law will not be tolerated on British soil.”

The case has sparked renewed official and public scrutiny of transnational repression operations run by hostile states within UK borders, raising urgent questions about the vulnerability of sensitive government systems and the safety of exiled dissidents who have relocated to Britain to escape persecution.

18 6 月, 2026