标签： Asia

Turkey’s fractured main opposition bloc entered a new phase of upheaval this week, when former Republican People’s Party (CHP) chairman Ozgur Ozel announced plans to formally launch a new political force — named Yeni Parti, or New Party — on Monday, capping months of escalating internal and judicial conflict that has gutted the decades-old CHP.

The schism traces back to the CHP’s historic victory in the 2024 Turkish local elections, where the party swept most of the country’s major urban centers and claimed the largest share of the national vote, positioning it as the most credible threat to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s long-running rule ahead of the 2028 presidential and parliamentary polls. Within months, a wave of judicial investigations targeted CHP leadership and elected officials, leading to the arrest of 26 CHP mayors on corruption charges — including Ekrem Imamoglu, the widely popular mayor of Istanbul.

A separate legal case accused Ozel of securing the CHP chairmanship through bribery and improper lobbying. In May, a Turkish court annulled the party congress that elected Ozel, removed him from office, and reinstated former CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu as interim pending the outcome of Ozel’s appeal. Since his return, Kilicdaroglu has rejected repeated calls from party members to hold an extraordinary congress to resolve the leadership dispute, instead purging senior party officials aligned with Ozel and Imamoglu. Many Ankara-based political analysts suspect Kilicdaroglu’s reinstatement was quietly supported by Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as part of a deliberate strategy to split the opposition. To date, the judicial pressure and internal chaos have already pushed several sitting CHP mayors to defect to the AKP.

As the party’s power struggle intensified, Ozel opted to break away entirely, building a new movement that is expected to draw the vast majority of the CHP’s sitting lawmakers and provincial leadership. Reports indicate that 94 of the CHP’s 135 members of parliament and 74 of its 81 provincial chairs will join Ozel’s new party. A small group of Ozel-aligned officials will remain in the original CHP, however, to block Kilicdaroglu from consolidating full control over the remaining rump party.

The split has created a complex new political calculus for Erdogan, carrying both clear short-term advantages and long-term risks for his bid to retain power in 2028. In the immediate term, the divided opposition plays directly into the AKP’s strategic goals. The opposition already lost significant momentum after months of legal pressure on the CHP, and a split into rival factions leaves no unified challenger to Erdogan. If the fractured opposition fields multiple presidential candidates, political strategists widely expect that split to enable Erdogan to win outright in the first round of voting.

This advantage has been compounded by Erdogan’s ongoing 2024 peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has pulled the pro-Kurdish Dem Party away from the broader opposition alliance, giving the government unobstructed political space to advance its corruption cases against CHP leaders. Polling also suggests that Kilicdaroglu retains very little support among the CHP’s original voter base: only 5 to 10 percent of CHP voters say they will remain with the party under his leadership. Multiple surveys indicate Ozel’s new party could capture more than 30 percent of the national vote, surpassing the AKP’s current support share — the CHP won 37 percent of the vote in the 2024 local elections.

Still, even with this strong initial showing, the split could benefit Erdogan in parliamentary elections, where tightly contested constituencies often swing to the candidate or party with even a narrow lead. A pollster affiliated with the AKP told Middle East Eye that the new party’s initial momentum is likely to fade over time, and the AKP’s internal leadership sees Ozel as a preferable opponent to other potential challengers. Despite Ozel’s growing popularity, AKP strategists believe he would struggle to win a nationwide head-to-head contest against Erdogan. With Kilicdaroglu also expected to field his own presidential candidate, the opposition vote will be further fragmented, easing Erdogan’s path to victory.

One major wild card in the current political equation is Mansur Yavas, the popular incumbent mayor of Ankara. Multiple independent polls consistently show Yavas leading Erdogan by 15 to 20 percentage points, making him the opposition’s strongest potential presidential candidate. Yavas has thus far signaled he intends to remain in the CHP, but Ozel-aligned officials privately warn that Yavas could face his own corruption investigations if he solidifies his position as the leading opposition challenger. Erdogan’s current approval rating sits between 35 and 40 percent, but polling analysts note he could push that figure close to 50 percent through a well-executed populist campaign ahead of 2028.

Despite these short-term gains for the ruling party, the emergence of Ozel’s new party carries significant long-term risks for Erdogan and the AKP. For decades, Erdogan built successful election campaigns by framing the CHP as an elitist, bureaucratic, statist movement disconnected from ordinary Turkish voters, tying it to unpopular historical policies such as the university headscarf ban. That messaging has resonated deeply with conservative and Islamist constituencies for decades. Ozel’s new party carries none of the CHP’s historical baggage, leaving it free to build a cross-spectrum coalition.

If Ozel succeeds in building a broad center-left movement that unites voters across Turkey’s political divide, while rolling out a credible policy platform focused on restoring independent institutions and repairing Turkey’s struggling economy, the new party could emerge as a formidable long-term challenger to AKP rule. A recent joint poll conducted by the IstanPol think tank and Rawest Research, which surveyed 1,985 respondents across 20 Turkish cities between July 3 and 10, found that 55.9 percent of all respondents believe the new party can succeed. Support for the project is particularly high among opposition voters: 81 percent of CHP supporters, 72 percent of Dem Party voters, and 61 percent of nationalist IYI Party voters expressed confidence in the new party. Notably, even 67 percent of voters from the AKP’s coalition partner, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and 45 percent of AKP voters said they believe the new party can achieve full or partial success.

Political analysts argue the new movement has an opportunity to avoid the organizational weaknesses that have long hampered the CHP, including an overcentralized structure that relies on tightly controlled local branches with little engagement with broader civil society. Kemal Buyukyuksel, an analyst at George Mason University, wrote for independent outlet Progresif that the new party should not model itself on traditional, centralized political organizations. Instead, he argued, it can function as a broad political space that incorporates elements of civil society and grassroots social movements. “Instead of being a machine that plans everything from the central office, the party can become a platform that opens up space for social initiatives emerging in different places, connects them, and gives them a common political direction,” Buyukyuksel explained.

A closed-door Sudan-focused gathering organized by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office at the Wilton Park conference facility has sparked sharp international criticism after independent outlet Middle East Eye exposed that a senior leader from the political wing of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) will attend the event – while the country’s internationally recognized army-backed transitional government has been excluded from the agenda.

Multiple verified British and Sudanese sources confirm that Nasredeen Abdulbari, a top figure in the RSF-aligned Tasis political coalition, will participate in the three-day conference, which kicked off Wednesday, alongside an official delegation from the United Arab Emirates. Sources familiar with the event’s planning describe the gathering as intentionally kept “discreet,” with no public listing on Wilton Park’s official event schedule, a departure from the facility’s standard transparency practices for most of its dialogues.

The controversial invitation to the RSF representative and UAE delegates follows damning recent testimony to a UK parliamentary committee from Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab. Raymond publicly accused the UK government of prioritizing its close strategic and economic ties with the UAE over taking meaningful action to halt widespread atrocities in Sudan’s ongoing civil conflict.

Sudan has been locked in a brutal civil war since April 2023, pitting the RSF paramilitary group against the country’s formal Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). The RSF, which the United Nations, United States and multiple independent human rights bodies have formally accused of perpetrating genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region, has long been documented receiving military and political backing from the UAE – a claim the UAE has repeatedly denied despite growing open source evidence. The SAF, by contrast, receives external support from Egypt and Turkey.

In a striking contradiction of the UK’s public posture on the Sudan conflict, British officials joined a joint statement with other European nations in June 2024 that openly condemned RSF atrocities, specifically referencing the group’s October 2023 seizure of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. The statement noted that UN assessments found the violence carried out during that assault carried “the hallmarks of genocide,” with witness accounts collected by Middle East Eye confirming systemic rape, summary executions, and extortion of civilian populations by RSF fighters.

Beyond Abdulbari and the UAE delegation, Wilton Park officials have confirmed that representatives from several other Gulf states will also take part in the closed conference. Founded in the aftermath of World War II to foster open democratic dialogue between global stakeholders, Wilton Park brands itself as the UK’s “foremost multilateral facilitator” and acts as an official expert body for the UK government to convene sensitive international policy discussions.

When reached by Middle East Eye for clarification on attendee lists and the purpose of the confidential gathering, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office declined to issue any comment. A senior foreign office source, speaking on condition of anonymity, only confirmed that the event was proceeding as planned, and a Wilton Park staff member also verified that the conference was scheduled and underway at the facility’s Wiston House estate in West Sussex.

The exclusion of Sudan’s official Transitional Sovereignty Council has drawn fierce condemnation from the Sudanese government. Amgad Fareid Eltayeb, a senior adviser to the council, slammed the UK’s decision as inconsistent with its public rhetoric around human rights and accountability in Sudan.

“We saw a lot of statements from the US and UK governments showing concern about what the RSF would do if they took el-Fasher. It’s the same rhetoric we still hear, the same talk… But while the British government is echoing concern about possible crimes committed by the RSF, a possible genocide committed by the RSF, they have invited RSF affiliates to England to discuss the future of Sudan,” Eltayeb told Middle East Eye.

“Anything that needs to be discreet is hiding something that makes it necessary for it to be discreet. The UAE’s support for the RSF has been documented even by their own parliament, and so we have very little confidence or trust in what the British government is trying to do discreetly,” he added.

Critics have also pointed to deep economic ties between the UK and UAE that may inform the UK’s approach to the Sudan conflict. Official trade data shows the UK has exported £422 million ($565 million) worth of arms to the UAE over the past three years, and independent open source investigations have already confirmed British-made military equipment originating from the UAE has been recovered from RSF fighters on Sudan battlefields.

For Eltayeb, this creates an unmistakable pattern of contradictory behavior: “We can see a pattern of complicity here. They issue statements of concern about the RSF possibly committing genocide, then invite their leadership to discuss the future of Sudan.”

A veteran British policy expert with decades of experience working on Sudanese peace negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid professional repercussions, called the exclusion of key Sudanese stakeholders from the conference “fairly outrageous.” The expert noted that many longstanding Sudanese peace advocates and experienced negotiators were not only uninvited but completely unaware the conference was being organized.

The controversial gathering comes just 48 hours after former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband was appointed as the UK’s new foreign secretary in Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s new cabinet. Notably, Miliband did not mention Sudan or its ongoing civil war in his opening public address after taking office, as the new UK government has prioritized other pressing foreign policy issues including the war in Ukraine, rising tensions with Iran, and the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Miliband’s brother, David Miliband, currently serves as CEO of the International Rescue Committee, a major humanitarian organization operating in Sudan.

Diplomatic sources, however, tell Middle East Eye that some Sudanese and international stakeholders hold tentative hope that Miliband will take a harder stance against the UAE’s role in fueling the Sudan conflict, which the UN has classified as the world’s worst current humanitarian crisis. More than a year into the war, official estimates place the death toll at hundreds of thousands, and over 14 million Sudanese have been displaced from their homes.

Escalating tensions in the Middle East have taken a sharp turn as former U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly threatened a forthcoming military strike on Pickaxe Mountain, a heavily fortified underground nuclear facility that lies at the heart of fresh Israeli claims about Iran’s contested nuclear program. Speaking on Tuesday, amid ongoing U.S. military operations targeting Iranian assets, Trump stated bluntly: “We’ll be hitting that area very probably pretty soon. And there’s not a thing they can do about it.”

In response to the threat, Tehran has issued a stern warning that any attack on its sovereign nuclear facilities will trigger a broadening of the ongoing regional conflict, raising fears of a wider war that could engulf the entire Middle East. The core of the current dispute centers on Israeli allegations that Iran relocated enriched uranium stocks and advanced centrifuges to the Pickaxe Mountain facility after earlier joint U.S.-Israeli strikes damaged other key Iranian nuclear sites. Notably, Israel has yet to release any verifiable evidence to support these claims, and Trump himself has openly acknowledged that U.S. intelligence agencies cannot confirm Jerusalem’s assertion.

Located just 1.6 kilometers south of the Natanz uranium enrichment complex in central Iran – a site that was heavily bombed by U.S. and Israeli forces in June 2025 – Pickaxe Mountain is purpose-built to withstand military attack. Carved at least 100 meters beneath the surface of Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, a mountain named for the Persian word for “pickaxe”, the facility is nearly impervious to conventional air strikes and would pose enormous challenges to any ground incursion. Construction of the site first began in 2020, following a damaging explosion at a centrifuge assembly workshop within the original Natanz complex. Iran formally notified the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that the facility was intended to manufacture centrifuges for uranium enrichment operations.

Analysis of satellite imagery conducted by the Institute for Science and International Security reveals an extensive network of tunnels, a broad heavily guarded security perimeter, and blast-resistant concrete-reinforced entrances designed to survive heavy air bombardment. As of current reporting, construction work remains ongoing, and no public evidence has emerged to confirm that the complex has begun full operations. Satellite imagery captured by Vantor on June 21, 2026, shows visible vehicle activity at the western entrance of the tunnel complex, confirming that work at the site has accelerated dramatically in the year following the June 2025 U.S.-Israeli attacks on Natanz and other Iranian nuclear sites.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies has outlined two leading explanations for the increased activity at Pickaxe Mountain: Iran may be accelerating completion of the declared centrifuge assembly plant it initially announced, or it has simply moved critical nuclear operations to the secured underground site after other facilities were damaged in the earlier bombings.

A key unresolved question hangs over the fact that the U.S. and Israel chose not to target Pickaxe Mountain during their 12-day offensive against Iranian nuclear infrastructure in 2025, raising doubts about the site’s purported strategic importance to Iran’s program at that time. During that earlier campaign, Israel first struck Iran’s core nuclear sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, killing multiple civilian Iranian nuclear scientists, before the U.S. joined the conflict, launching heavier bombing raids on the same three targets. Trump initially claimed the attacks had completely “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but subsequent assessments from U.S. and United Nations experts found that while the strikes caused extensive damage, significant portions of Iran’s nuclear program survived.

Since the 2025 offensive, Washington and Jerusalem have focused intense pressure on Iran over its existing stockpile of nearly 450 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, demanding that Tehran either surrender the material or permanently dispose of it. When pressed by reporters on whether Iran had indeed moved advanced centrifuges to Pickaxe Mountain, Trump contradicted Israel’s unsubstantiated claims, admitting: “We don’t have it on record.”

Iran has repeatedly denied conducting any undeclared nuclear activities at the Pickaxe Mountain site. The Iranian government maintains that its entire nuclear program is oriented toward peaceful civilian energy goals, and says it plans to expand its nuclear power fleet to meet growing domestic electricity demand, freeing up more of its oil reserves for export to global markets. The latest threat of a new strike has sent shockwaves through the international community, with experts warning that further escalation could have catastrophic consequences for global energy security and regional stability.

Two leading U.S. news outlets revealed Wednesday that former President Donald Trump has given formal approval to a three-decade civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, a deal that will grant Riyadh access to cutting-edge U.S. reactor technology despite widespread warnings that it could ignite a dangerous nuclear arms race across the Middle East with Iran.

According to reports from both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Trump’s pending official signature on the dual civil nuclear and security pact will clear the way for the proposal to move to the U.S. Congress for mandatory formal review. The accord is scheduled to be finalized this week by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, two officials who first held high-level talks on the framework back in April 2025, the Journal added.

If the agreement receives final congressional approval, it will open the door for U.S. nuclear firms to earn tens of billions of dollars in revenue from constructing Saudi Arabia’s first full civilian nuclear infrastructure. At the same time, it has reignited a decades-long, bitter debate among U.S. legislators over the severe risks of nuclear proliferation spreading across the Middle East.

The Trump administration has defended the agreement, arguing that close U.S. oversight will guarantee that Riyadh’s civilian nuclear program is never diverted to develop nuclear weapons. But critics point out that the deal fails to address core long-standing nonproliferation concerns that have divided policymakers for years. Lawmakers seeking to block the pact also face steep procedural obstacles: to override a guaranteed presidential veto, opponents would need to secure a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers of Congress, a high bar that is widely seen as difficult to reach.

The most significant proliferation risk stems from the deal’s framework that paves the way for Saudi Arabia to develop domestic uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities – the two core processes required to produce weapons-grade material for nuclear bombs. Beyond supplying initial reactors and related technology, the agreement mandates that U.S. firms conduct a two-year feasibility study to assess whether domestic uranium enrichment in Saudi Arabia is practical. If the study concludes the project is viable, U.S. companies will build and operate the enrichment facility under a so-called “black box” model designed to keep all sensitive nuclear technology restricted from Saudi access. If the U.S. rejects moving forward with enrichment, Riyadh would be blocked from developing domestic enrichment capabilities for a 10-year period.

Notably, the accord bypasses the enhanced safeguards protocol overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog that sets the global baseline for nonproliferation monitoring. Instead, all inspection and oversight responsibilities will be managed through a private bilateral agreement exclusively between Washington and Riyadh. Unlike the United Arab Emirates, which previously committed to the international “gold standard” nonproliferation pledge that bans nations from enriching uranium or reprocessing spent fuel on their own territory, Saudi Arabia has repeatedly refused to adopt that requirement. A congressional source who spoke with CNN also confirmed that early closed-door briefings on the deal outlined a special provision that grants Riyadh limited permission to carry out domestic fuel enrichment and reprocessing activities.

Talks over a U.S.-Saudi nuclear accord first launched during Trump’s first presidential term, and the deal has renewed intense scrutiny over the role played by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who served as a senior White House adviser during that first term. A 2019 investigative report from House Democrats already revealed that Kushner pushed aggressively to approve nuclear technology transfers to Saudi Arabia over the explicit objections of multiple senior national security officials. This scrutiny has been amplified by questions over Kushner’s personal financial ties: Westinghouse Electric, the major U.S. nuclear services firm vying to sell reactors to Saudi Arabia, is owned by Brookfield Asset Management. That same firm orchestrated a $1.1 billion bailout for a struggling property asset owned by Kushner’s family real estate company back in 2018.

As early as 2018, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation to block any nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, but the Trump administration continued to advance negotiations behind the scenes. That same year, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made international headlines when he stated publicly that if Iran successfully developed a nuclear bomb, “we will follow suit as soon as possible”. During initial negotiations, Saudi negotiators also made clear to the Trump administration that Riyadh would reject any deal that granted UN nuclear inspectors unfettered access to search for covert nuclear weapons activity across the kingdom.

In a major shift from the previous Biden administration’s policy, Trump has dropped the requirement that tied U.S.-Saudi nuclear cooperation to Riyadh completing a full normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel, effectively decoupling the nuclear deal from the Abraham Accords framework. The final agreement, however, lays bare a stark contradiction in U.S. foreign policy: Washington continues to pressure Iran to roll back its expanding nuclear program, while at the same time enabling Saudi Arabia to build out its own civilian nuclear infrastructure with pathways to weapons-capable technology.

A high-stakes diplomatic and legal dispute has erupted over the expected September visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to New York City, after New York’s mayor publicly called on the U.S. federal government to enforce an outstanding International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against the Israeli leader.

Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, laid out his position in a viral two-minute social media video posted Tuesday, just hours after former U.S. President Donald Trump stated that Netanyahu would “not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America”. The video, posted to X on July 22, 2026, has already amassed more than 30 million views.

In the clip, Mamdani made blunt allegations against Netanyahu, calling him a war crime suspect and the mastermind of what he described as a devastating genocide against the Palestinian people. He cited multiple humanitarian and human rights claims to back his stance: pointing to soaring rates of Palestinian amputees in the Gaza Strip, referencing a United Nations report that alleged Israeli forces deliberately targeted and killed Palestinian children, and claiming the prime minister is responsible for the deaths of over 73,000 people and the maiming of tens of thousands of children. Mamdani also added that Netanyahu, who Mamdani says has ordered military strikes in six countries since 2023, is also responsible for the killings of international aid workers and journalists reporting on the conflict.

Mamdani acknowledged that the ICC’s 2024 arrest warrant against Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is legally justified, but confirmed that his administration has reviewed all possible legal pathways and confirmed New York City lacks independent authority to execute the warrant. He clarified that after active discussions with New York’s law department, it remains unclear whether the city can order the New York City Police Department to detain a sitting foreign leader, so the power to act rests solely with the federal government.

“My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here. It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant. The federal government, however, does, and I call on them to join the ICC and execute this warrant,” Mamdani said in the video.

Netanyahu is scheduled to travel to New York this coming September to attend the annual United Nations General Assembly, a regular high-level diplomatic gathering hosted by the city. The ICC issued the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant in November 2024, charging both with war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Gaza starting in October 2023. The warrants marked a historic first for the 24-year-old court, as it was the first time ICC judges issued arrest warrants for senior officials allied with Western powers.

Since the warrants were issued, the ICC has faced intense backlash, including widespread criticism, threats, and punitive measures from the United States — Israel’s closest ally. The U.S. and Israel are not signatories to the Rome Statute, the international treaty that established the ICC. All 125 countries that are party to the statute, including every member of the European Union, hold a legal obligation to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant and turn them over to the court for prosecution. However, the ICC itself has no independent enforcement powers to carry out arrest warrants, and the court cannot conduct a trial in absentia.

Mamdani’s call to action has drawn responses from pro-Palestine activists and commentators, who have pushed the mayor to go beyond rhetoric and take tangible, within-authority actions to oppose what they describe as complicity in Israeli crimes.

Prominent Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed el-Kurd argued that Mamdani could use his municipal platform to push for action against U.S.-based groups that fund Israeli settlement activity. “If Mamdani wants to take tangible action within the bounds of his office, he could easily urge Attorney General and other relevant authorities to go after New York-registered tax-exempt organizations that funnel tens of millions of US dollars into Israeli settler expansion and violence every year,” el-Kurd noted.

Another activist, Nerdeen Kiswani, said the city’s treatment of Netanyahu’s visit must match Mamdani’s rhetoric, to make clear the Israeli leader is not welcome in New York. “Don’t roll out the red carpet for a wanted war criminal. Don’t use the NYPD to insulate him from public outrage. Don’t suppress the New Yorkers who take to the streets demanding accountability,” Kiswani wrote on X. “If Netanyahu is truly not welcome in New York City, that principle should be reflected in how the city treats his visit, not just in rhetoric.”

In a move that continues the policy set by his predecessor Keir Starmer, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has formally approved the United States’ use of several UK military bases to carry out what the government characterizes as “defensive” air strikes against Iran, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday.

The decision traces back to a high-level meeting convened by Starmer this past Friday, where senior cabinet ministers and national security officials reached a provisional agreement to maintain access for US aircraft at two key facilities: the Indian Ocean base at Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford, a major air force installation in Gloucestershire. Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting shared details with Bloomberg on condition of anonymity.

After being fully briefed on the meeting’s outcome and the proposed policy, Burnham endorsed the arrangement, confirming he intends to uphold Starmer’s framework for the duration of the US’s expanded military operations against Iranian targets.

The approval comes as US air bombardment of Iranian targets has entered its 11th consecutive night. Iranian state media has reported large explosions across multiple population centers, including the cities of Bushehr, Tabriz, Chabahar, as well as areas in the western provinces of Kurdistan and Ilam. US Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, has stated the strikes are targeting Iranian operations centers, logistics hubs, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars and drone storage sites.

Tehran has responded to the ongoing US attacks with retaliatory strikes targeting US-allied nations in the region, including Jordan, Bahrain, Syria and Kuwait.

Burnham’s green light for continued base access is already expected to trigger significant political and public pushback in the UK. Human rights organizations have previously warned that granting the US permission to launch strikes from British territory could violate longstanding international law standards.

Starmer first outlined his original policy in early March, framing the base access as exclusively for defensive operations. He later expanded the agreement to allow US strikes launched from UK bases to target Iranian sites connected to activity around the Strait of Hormuz, justifying the move under the legal framework of “collective self-defense” for US-aligned Gulf states.

Yasmine Ahmed, UK director at Human Rights Watch, issued a formal letter to the prime minister pointing out that the British government’s legal justification for the policy fails to address core obligations under international humanitarian law (IHL). Ahmed referenced multiple high-profile incidents that have raised questions about US compliance with IHL, most notably a February 28 air strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, a southern Iranian city, carried out at the opening of the US-Israeli joint assault. The attack killed more than 150 people, the vast majority of them children, and a preliminary Pentagon investigation confirmed the US military was responsible for the incident.

Burnham’s confirmation of the policy comes just days after he held a telephone conversation with former US President Donald Trump. A public readout from the UK prime minister’s office stated that during the call, Burnham “outlined the UK’s commitment to securing the movement of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.” In a post to his Truth Social platform following the call, Trump wrote that the discussion covered topics including North Sea oil, bilateral trade, the US-UK military alliance, and demining operations in the Strait of Hormuz, noting that the talks “went very well.”