标签： Asia

When Israel launched its campaign amid the ongoing war with Iran, the Netanyahu administration articulated two tightly linked strategic objectives: collapse the Islamic Republic of Iran, and eliminate the decades-long threat posed by Hezbollah to Israeli security. For 44 years, the Lebanese Shiite militia has remained a persistent menace along Israel’s northern border, and Israeli policymakers reasoned that cutting off Hezbollah’s core Iranian patron would force the group to collapse. Past efforts to disarm Hezbollah via direct military strikes and internationally backed disarmament initiatives had both fallen short, leaving this two-pronged strategy as the government’s preferred path forward.

On a chaotic Monday marked by shifting military threats and diplomatic posturing, former President Donald Trump announced that backchannel negotiations had produced a tentative agreement for a ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, even as top officials from both Israel and key Hezbollah figures pushed back on the details of the deal. The announcement came hours after Israeli military authorities renewed forced evacuation orders for residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs, triggering a fresh wave of civilian displacement and stoking widespread fears of an imminent full-scale assault on the densely populated capital district known as Dahieh.

In a post to his Truth Social platform, Trump laid out his version of the agreement, saying he had held two separate sets of talks to broker the truce: first with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and second, through intermediaries, with Hezbollah leadership. “I had a very productive call with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, of Israel, and there will be no Troops going to Beirut, and any Troops that are on their way, have already been turned back,” Trump wrote. “Likewise, through highly placed Representatives, I had a very good call with Hezbollah, and they agreed that all shooting will stop – That Israel will not attack them, and they will not attack Israel.”

When Middle East Eye reached out to the White House press office to request clarification on which US official had spoken with Hezbollah as part of the backchannel, officials declined to comment beyond confirming that no additional information would be added to Trump’s public Truth Social post.

In the hours following Trump’s announcement, key Lebanese and Israeli leaders offered conflicting accounts that undermined the claim of a finalized ceasefire. Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah released a statement Monday confirming the group’s support for a full, nationwide ceasefire across all of Lebanon, which he said must be followed by a full withdrawal of Israeli military forces from all occupied Lebanese territory. Fadlallah explicitly rejected any proposal for a partial truce that would spare Beirut from Israeli airstrikes in exchange for Hezbollah halting attacks on northern Israel, a framework that aligned closely with the deal Trump described.

Shortly after Fadlallah’s statement, the Lebanese presidency issued a confirmation that Hezbollah had agreed to a US-brokered proposal for a mutual halt to attacks across all of Lebanese territory. But Netanyahu immediately pushed back, asserting that Israel’s core policy toward Hezbollah remained unaltered. “I spoke with President Trump and told him that if Hezbollah does not cease attacking our cities and citizens—Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut. This stance of ours remains unchanged,” Netanyahu wrote on his X account, adding that the Israel Defense Forces would continue all planned operations in southern Lebanon as planned.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz reinforced this hardline posture, issuing a fresh warning Monday that “there will be no calm in Beirut” if Hezbollah continues its attacks on Israeli troops and communities in northern Israel. That warning triggered a new exodus of residents from Beirut’s southern suburbs, just days after many had returned to their homes following previous rounds of evacuation orders. Since Hezbollah launched cross-border attacks against Israel in October 2023 in support of its ally Hamas, Israeli military operations have killed more than 3,200 people across Lebanon. The 2024 November ceasefire brokered by the Biden administration has already been violated by Israeli forces more than 1,000 times, and the broader US-Israeli campaign against Iran that launched in late February has only intensified Israeli pressure on Lebanon, with Jerusalem demanding the full disarmament of Hezbollah.

Monday’s diplomatic chaos also unfolded against the backdrop of ongoing US-led negotiations between Israeli and Lebanese officials, a process that launched earlier this year with military-to-military talks hosted by the Pentagon last Friday. US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby led the meeting, which the Pentagon described as the opening of a “security track” to support ongoing political negotiations between the two sides. “The delegations engaged in productive, military-to-military talks focused on building practical frameworks for regional security and stability,” a Pentagon statement read, adding that outcomes from the security track would inform political talks led by the US State Department set to reconvene this week as the third round of such negotiations.

This diplomatic process began in late April, when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted direct talks between Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors in Washington, with a second, longer round of discussions held last month. The meetings marked the first high-level face-to-face engagement between the two countries in four decades, though Hezbollah has not been included in the talks: the US designated the group a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. Founded in 1982 to oppose Israeli occupation of Lebanon, Hezbollah remains the most powerful military actor in the country and holds representation in Lebanon’s parliament. Rubio has framed the negotiations as more than just a bid for a temporary ceasefire, saying they aim to resolve decades of destabilization caused by Hezbollah’s influence. “This is a lot more than just about that. This is about bringing a permanent end to 20 or 30 years of Hezbollah’s influence in this part of the world and the – not just the damage that it’s inflicted on Israel – [but] the damage that it’s inflicted on the Lebanese people,” Rubio told reporters in April.

Many regional policy experts have expressed skepticism about the prospects for these talks to end the violence. “It’s certainly a good thing that the conversation took place, and it’s a good thing that the United States agreed to host it, even though it was…at a low level, purely exploratory,” Steven Simon, a former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration, told Middle East Eye earlier this year. “It’s really difficult to see how these talks will alter the course of combat operations, which are what shape the diplomatic environment and the diplomatic possibilities.”

Monday also brought fresh friction around ongoing talks between the US and Iran, which has provided training and support to Hezbollah since the group’s founding and remains its closest strategic partner. After Iranian state news agency Tasnim, which has close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that Iran had suspended all talks with US mediators to protest Israel’s escalating attacks in Lebanon, Trump quickly pushed back on the claim in another Truth Social post. “Talks are continuing, at a rapid pace, with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” he wrote. According to Tasnim’s report, Iran suspended negotiations because Israeli violations of the ceasefire in Lebanon violated a core precondition for talks, and Tehran is demanding an immediate end to all Israeli military operations in both Gaza and Lebanon. The report also warned that Iran and its allied militias are prepared to block the Strait of Hormuz and open new front lines of conflict at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea if the Israeli offensive continues.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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