标签： Asia

Six months after the United States and Israel launched their second open military conflict against Iran, the Trump administration has stuck to a carefully crafted public narrative: the Islamic Republic is on the brink of collapse, Washington is on course for a clear win, and the economic and human costs of the war will be short-lived. But as the conflict stretches on far longer than the White House initially predicted, that storyline is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Rising global fuel prices, dwindling US military stockpiles, and broad public opposition among American voters — who are set to voice their discontent in upcoming November midterm elections — have exposed the gap between the administration’s claims and on-the-ground reality.

Despite facing crippling combined military and economic pressure, and the high-profile loss of a senior state leader, Iran has refused to capitulate. The regime retains its full fighting capacity, maintains the ability to escalate retaliatory attacks across the region, and has rejected all attempts to force Tehran into accepting Washington’s sweeping political demands. While US and Israeli strikes have inflicted massive widespread destruction across the country, they have failed to compel Iran’s leadership to bend to US terms. The core question that lingered before the first strike, and has become unavoidable after six months of conflict, is not whether the US can inflict more damage on Iran — it is whether that additional damage will ever translate into a meaningful, achievable political victory for Washington.

Last week, President Donald Trump downplayed the entire conflict as “small potatoes,” continuing a pattern of minimizing the human and financial toll that has already far outstripped his administration’s initial projections. As of this report, the war has claimed the lives of 18 American service members and left more than 750 others wounded, with the total cost to US taxpayers clocking in at no less than $37.5 billion. For Iran, the human and infrastructure toll has been exponentially higher.

According to data from Iran’s Ministry of Health, at least 3,468 Iranians had been killed and more than 26,500 injured in US and Israeli strikes by June 10. Civilian casualties have been a consistent feature of the conflict: documented incidents include a February airstrike on an elementary school in Minab and a September attack on a wedding gathering in southern Iran that left dozens dead. By April, the Iranian Red Crescent recorded that more than 125,000 civilian properties had sustained damage, including roughly 100,000 private homes damaged or destroyed. Iran has also submitted a formal list of 134 damaged cultural heritage sites to UNESCO, and independent reporting from Reuters has verified widespread damage to historic structures and protected heritage locations across the country.

Crucially, Iran has proven it can inflict meaningful, sustained costs on US forces in the region. One independent analysis found that Iranian retaliatory strikes have damaged 15 US military sites across the Middle East, damaging critical infrastructure including troop barracks, aircraft hangars, fuel storage depots, fixed-wing aircraft, radar systems, communications equipment, and air defense networks. While US Central Command has publicly disputed the scale of the reported damage, the strikes have laid bare the vulnerability of stationary US facilities in the region and the heavy cost required to defend them against constant Iranian missile and drone attacks.

Harrison Mann, associate director for campaigns at the anti-war advocacy group Win Without War and a former US Army officer and intelligence official, told the International Policy Journal that the Trump administration — and likely the Pentagon itself — seriously overestimated the ability of US and Israeli forces to quickly subdue Iran’s military establishment. “They were never able to locate or destroy the majority of Iran’s drones and missiles, nor destroy enough of its air defenses that US aircraft could fly freely over the entire country,” Mann explained. He added that Trump has learned a hard lesson: “It’s not possible to fight a prepared, 21st-century military — even one objectively weaker than America’s — and still conceal the costs from the public like previous US military interventions in the region.”

This asymmetric dynamic defines the entire conflict. Iran has no need to defeat the United States using conventional military means to achieve its core goal. To deny Washington a decisive political victory, Iran only needs to preserve its governing institutions, maintain sufficient retaliatory capacity, and make continued warfare costly enough that the US cannot impose its preferred outcome at an acceptable price for American taxpayers and voters.

The Trump administration claims it has severely degraded Iran’s missile, naval, and nuclear capabilities, but tactical military gains do not equate to a final political victory. Iran continues to launch retaliatory strikes, disrupt commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and reject Washington’s main negotiating demands. Further escalation by the US would only expand this stalemate, driving up costs for both sides without delivering a decisive end to the conflict.

A growing anti-war movement within the United States has cast increasing doubt on the war’s stated objectives, questioned its constitutional legitimacy, and grown weary of mounting costs. Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs at the Center for International Policy, told the International Policy Journal that Trump is facing unprecedented public and congressional pushback over his war on Iran. “The possibility that he may not get an annual National Defense Authorization Act from Congress for the first time in the 65-year history of such legislation is a major governing failure reflecting his massive strategic failure in the Persian Gulf,” Williams said.

While Trump initiated the conflict, US constitutional structure gives Congress the power to cut off funding for military operations. Article I of the US Constitution grants Congress the sole authority to declare war and control federal appropriations. The House of Representatives has already passed its version of the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, which would authorize roughly $1.15 trillion in spending, nearly all of it earmarked for military and nuclear defense activities. The bill has not yet completed the full legislative process.

This NDPA legislation is separate from the administration’s broader $1.5 trillion defense budget proposal, which includes $1.15 trillion in discretionary defense funding plus an additional $350 billion in proposed mandatory defense spending. “Trump is clearly refusing to take the loss, but that doesn’t make it any less real or costly,” Williams said. “Lawmakers opposed to this reckless military adventurism need to stand strong and continue to deny Trump’s record $1.5 trillion military budget request and other attempts to fund and deepen this disastrous war of choice.”

Williams noted that Congress has multiple tools to push back: it could tie further war funding to explicit congressional authorization, require the Trump administration to publicly disclose the war’s full human and financial costs and clear objectives, or set a legal deadline after which military operations cannot continue without renewed congressional approval.

Iran cannot match the combined military might of the United States and Israel, but it holds key strategic advantages: favorable geography, a defensive strategy tailored to counter a far stronger adversary, the benefit of fighting on its home territory, and a leadership that views the conflict as an existential fight and has already proven willing to absorb massive costs rather than surrender. After six months of relentless pressure, Washington is no closer to achieving its core policy demands than it was on day one. The US can continue to strike targets and degrade Iranian capabilities, but unless that pressure shifts Iran’s core political calculations, further escalation will only lead to more destruction without a negotiated settlement.

That does not mean Iran has closed the door on diplomacy. Iranian officials have repeatedly stated they are prepared to return to the previously negotiated June memorandum of understanding if Washington recommits to its terms, leaving a diplomatic off-ramp open to end the conflict. If the US refuses to return to the agreement, however, Iran appears prepared to continue escalating attacks until Washington grows weary of the conflict or concludes that diplomacy carries a lower cost than continued war. For Tehran, escalation is not an alternative to negotiations — it is a tool to force the US back to the bargaining table.

Six months into the war, the Trump administration has yet to outline a clear path to a lasting political victory. Trump retains the military capacity to escalate the conflict further, but without an achievable end state, further escalation will only deepen the mounting costs of a war that Washington still cannot bring to a conclusive end.

In a significant expansion of government oversight over citizen mobility, China has implemented far-reaching new regulations that authorize border officials to bar certain citizens from leaving the country for up to three years. The new rules apply to individuals found to have engaged in activities that endanger national security, and have been extended to cover those deemed threats to the nation’s industrial and technological sectors at a time when global tech competition between China and the United States continues to intensify.

The inclusion of industrial and technological security comes as China maintains strict scrutiny of high-stakes sectors such as artificial intelligence and semiconductors. Precedent for this targeted approach already exists: in March of this year, co-founders of Manus, an AI startup acquired by Meta, were reportedly blocked from exiting the country, an early indicator of the formalized restrictions now in place.

Beyond granting authority for new exit bans, the updated regulations also require border officials to formally advise Chinese citizens against traveling to countries and regions classified as “high-risk”. While this codification is new, informal travel restrictions have been expanding across different groups of Chinese citizens for years. Civil servants were the first cohort to face these controls, with requirements to surrender passports to employers and obtain pre-approval for any overseas travel, before restrictions were later extended to employees of state-owned enterprises and eventually ordinary citizens.

A retired grassroots civil servant based in the eastern province of Anhui, speaking to BBC Chinese on condition of anonymity, described the longstanding implementation of these controls. He explained that starting around 2018, his workplace required all employees to turn over their passports, and even after his retirement last year, his former employer still retains his document. To travel abroad, employees must submit a formal application detailing the purpose of their trip, and not all requests receive approval. According to the retired civil servant, trips to visit family are more likely to be approved than pure leisure travel, and the stated goals of the policy are to prevent corrupt officials from fleeing the country and moving assets overseas, as well as to stop the disclosure of state secrets by senior officials.

A 32-year-old employee identified only by the pseudonym Xiao Wang, who works at a state-owned financial institution in Beijing, confirmed that similar restrictions have been in place for staff at his workplace for a long time. He added that management has verbally informed staff that travel to “sensitive countries” such as Japan is strictly off-limits.

The expansion of formal exit bans has drawn sharp criticism from foreign policy analysts. Professor Tom Kellogg, Executive Director of the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown University, called the growing scope of travel restrictions “deeply concerning”. In comments to BBC Chinese, Kellogg argued that the new rules reflect expanding ideological control under China’s leader Xi Jinping, echoing conditions seen during the era of Mao Zedong, when China was largely cut off from the rest of the world and international travel was not a common reality for most citizens until the 1990s, following decades of reform and opening up. Kellogg noted that the current wave of restrictions brings back memories of that closed-off period.

Kellogg added that the new regulations also give authorities another tool to control citizens active in human rights and advocacy work, saying “this is another tool designed to control what Chinese citizens do and say overseas.” He explained that in some cases, state security authorities reject passport applications specifically to prevent individuals from criticizing the Chinese government while abroad or to punish them for human rights advocacy activities.

One case that illustrates this impact is that of Pipi, a 26-year-old Chinese citizen who asked to only be identified by his pseudonym. Pipi told BBC Chinese that his 2023 passport application was rejected, and he believes the denial is a direct result of his participation in the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, where he was interviewed by international media outlets. After returning to mainland China, Pipi was questioned by state security police, and an immigration official informally told him his application was denied “because of the Hong Kong issue” — no official written explanation for the denial was ever provided. Pipi says he has no idea if he will ever be allowed to leave China.

Chinese authorities have pushed back against criticism of the new rules. Piyao, China’s official government-run rumor-correction platform, released a statement last week asserting that the new regulations do not restrict travel for ordinary law-abiding citizens. Instead, the platform framed the rules as a preventative measure targeting high-risk destinations and individuals with unusual travel patterns, noting that the rules were put in place to address specific problems including people being tricked into leaving the country to participate in illegal gambling and transnational scam operations overseas.

One key feature of China’s exit ban system that creates uncertainty for citizens is that there is currently no public process for individuals to check if they are subject to an exit ban on their own. Most people only discover that they are barred from leaving when they attempt to cross the border or apply for travel documents, unless they receive direct official written or verbal notification. Neither China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor its national immigration authorities responded to requests for comment from BBC Chinese for this report.

Data compiled by human rights group Safeguard Defenders and shared with the BBC shows that exit bans have increased drastically in China over the past decade. China’s Supreme People’s Court database recorded just 89 court references to exit bans in 2016, but that number skyrocketed to nearly 189,000 last year. The share of civil court verdicts that involve exit bans also surged more than 30-fold between 2019 and 2025, rising from approximately 0.23% to 7.3%. Analysts note that the actual number of exit ban cases is almost certainly even higher than these official numbers indicate, as a growing number of court judgments related to exit bans are not made publicly available.

Over the past several months, Pakistan has steadily expanded its diplomatic footprint, positioning itself as a regional mediator to de-escalate tensions between Washington and Tehran. This diplomatic push reached a landmark milestone last month, when Islamabad joined Saudi Arabia and Turkey to sign a historic trilateral Joint Defence Agreement in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.

Signed on August 7, the pact’s core mutual defense clause mirrors NATO’s Article 5, stipulating that an armed attack against any one signatory will be considered an attack against all three. While the clause has drawn immediate comparisons to the NATO collective security framework, regional analysts have long warned against interpreting the text too literally.

That warning became relevant just one month after the signing, when Iran-aligned Houthi forces launched a large-scale barrage of drones and missiles into Saudi Arabia on September 8. The attack targeted critical military and energy infrastructure, turning the pact’s abstract security commitment into an urgent, high-stakes operational test for Pakistan and Turkey.

In the days following the strike, neither Islamabad nor Ankara launched direct military counter-operations alongside Riyadh. Instead, both countries opted for firm diplomatic statements of solidarity, highlighting a growing tension between political alliance commitments and direct military involvement that has left Pakistan walking a geopolitical tightrope between its Saudi alliance and fragile neighborly ties with Iran.

Shortly after the Houthi attack, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif publicly reaffirmed that Pakistan remained bound by the terms of the pact and would honor its commitments if needed. But just days later, foreign ministry spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan clarified that direct military action against the Houthi movement was not under active consideration. “Pakistan has signed a joint defence agreement, which is a fact… But as of now, there is no discussion of this kind,” Khan stated during his September 10 weekly media briefing in Islamabad.

This carefully calibrated response exposes the delicate balancing act Pakistan must maintain. Pakistan has maintained a longstanding military presence in Saudi Arabia and has significantly deepened bilateral defense cooperation in recent years. Under a separate 2025 bilateral Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement, Saudi Arabia confirmed in April that Pakistani troops, including Pakistan Air Force fighter jets and support aircraft, had deployed to King Abdulaziz Air Base to bolster regional security amid rising tensions.

But Pakistani officials and independent experts alike draw a clear distinction between providing defensive support to protect Saudi territory and infrastructure, and joining offensive military operations against Houthi forces inside Yemen. One senior Pakistani official with expertise in Gulf affairs notes that this current dilemma echoes a similar crisis Islamabad faced back in 2015, when parliament voted to stay neutral rather than join the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis in Yemen, a decision that severely strained bilateral ties with Riyadh at the time.

Today, both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia appear united in their determination to avoid being dragged into a wider regional conflict that could draw in Iran, the United States and Israel, according to regional security experts. Qamar Cheema, head of the Islamabad-based Sanober Institute think tank, explains that neither country wants to see the existing conflict spill over onto Saudi territory. “This alliance will fight with state actors and work as a deterrent and a clear case of strategic depth, which Saudi Arabia is searching for,” Cheema told Middle East Eye, adding that Riyadh is keen to avoid a repeat of past crises that disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Maintaining this careful balance between defensive support and active offensive participation could grow increasingly difficult if Houthi missile strikes against Saudi Arabia escalate. The geopolitical flashpoint has already shifted to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, where the Houthis announced a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia back in July, a strategy they describe as “blockade for blockade” launched in response to Saudi restrictions on Houthi-controlled infrastructure in Yemen. The move followed a cycle of escalation that included strikes on Sanaa Airport and repeated Houthi drone and missile attacks on Saudi energy facilities.

According to Pakistani officials, Riyadh has now concluded that political negotiations with the Houthis are no longer viable, forcing the kingdom to prepare for a protracted military engagement. Pakistan has already joined the Saudi-led Multinational Maritime Defence Alliance, which launched in Riyadh at the end of July with military representatives from more than 40 countries in attendance. Fourteen nations including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan have backed the initiative to protect commercial shipping lanes through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Beyond that, Pakistan also participates in ongoing regional maritime security operations through the U.S.-led Combined Task Force 150, a multinational naval coalition that patrols the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

For Pakistan, the immediate top priority remains avoiding escalation. But a senior Pakistani official warned that if Houthi strikes intensify and cause mass casualties among Pakistani troops deployed at strategic sites inside Saudi Arabia, growing public and political pressure in Islamabad could force the government to abandon its current neutral stance. That scenario would turn the current ambiguity surrounding Pakistan’s commitments into a direct, high-stakes test of the trilateral pact.

Cheema notes that attacking the Houthis is not a viable option for Pakistan at this stage. Having positioned itself as a regional peacemaker, Islamabad is currently prioritizing diplomatic dialogue to contain the broader crisis, particularly because closure of the Strait of Hormuz or disruption of Gulf of Aden shipping would put critical global supply chains and energy routes at severe risk.

For Pakistan, the most complicated factor in this entire strategic equation is its long border with Iran. The two countries share a 900-kilometer porous border, and both governments have worked for years to contain cross-border friction that flared into open exchange of missile strikes back in January 2024. If Pakistan were to launch offensive operations against the Iran-aligned Houthis, it would risk reigniting open conflict with Tehran, and experts warn that direct engagement with an Iranian proxy force would severely damage bilateral ties and create new security threats along Pakistan’s already volatile western frontier.

Domestic stability adds another layer of complexity. Pakistan is home to one of the world’s largest Shia populations outside of Iran, many of whom follow religious guidance from Tehran under the Wilayat-e Faqih doctrine. While Pakistan’s military was able to contain internal unrest following the reported killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in U.S.-Israeli airstrikes in February, sectarian sensitivities remain a persistent constraint whenever relations with Iran deteriorate.

Economic risks also compound Pakistan’s strategic dilemma. Pakistan relies heavily on Middle Eastern energy imports and unimpeded access to critical shipping corridors such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. Regional instability can quickly translate into economic disruption at home: recent Middle East hostilities already triggered a sharp spike in Pakistani domestic fuel prices within the span of a single week.

Beyond geopolitical and domestic challenges, the trilateral alliance also faces structural hurdles rooted in differing threat perceptions across the three member states. Pakistan’s primary security focus remains its long-running border tensions with India, with additional concerns over cross-border militancy from Afghanistan’s Taliban regime adding a second layer of security priorities. Saudi Arabia’s core priorities are focused on protecting its own territory, energy infrastructure and maritime shipping lanes, while managing threats from Iran and non-state armed groups such as the Houthis along its southern border. Turkey’s security perimeter extends even further, across Syria, Iraq, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus.

These divergent priorities raise a fundamental question: would each member state be willing to accept major economic and geopolitical costs to defend another member in a conflict that it does not view as a core threat to its own national security? This operational friction is further compounded by the fact that the three countries use disparate military hardware platforms. Saudi Arabia relies heavily on sophisticated U.S. and Western-supplied defense systems. Pakistan operates a mix of Chinese-origin and Western equipment, while Turkey has invested heavily in developing its own indigenous defense industry.

The trilateral agreement itself remains a work in progress. Senior defense ministers and military officials from the three countries met in Istanbul on August 31 to agree to establish a permanent secretariat based in Saudi Arabia and pledged to deepen cooperation on defense technology development. But experts note that the pact currently exists as a general policy framework rather than a fully integrated military command structure. Specific details on how the alliance will operate, including provisions for air defense assistance, intelligence sharing, protection of Saudi military installations and rules for participation in offensive operations against the Houthis, have yet to be finalized.

“A lot of institutional development is required at the moment, particularly in inter-military planning and interoperability among the armed forces of the three countries,” Cheema said, adding that the three nations also need to establish clear, agreed procedures for responding to threats from both state and non-state actors. Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesperson Khan acknowledged these limitations last week, describing the agreement as an “umbrella agreement” whose institutional mechanisms will take time to fully develop. “At this stage, I don’t think we should be discussing this topic in the context of its operationalisation,” he told journalists.

On a Monday press conference in New York City, former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, alongside a campus pro-Palestine student group and its leader, launched a new federal lawsuit against the elite Ivy League institution, accusing it of enabling systemic discrimination that directly cleared the path for his 2025 arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Joining Khalil as co-plaintiffs are the Palestine Working Group (PWG)—a student organization based at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA)—and PWG president Mohammed Ibrahim Zubairi. Named as defendants in the suit are Columbia’s Board of Trustees and SIPA Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo. The legal filing outlines that the university displayed deliberate indifference to repeated reports of severe, sustained, coordinated harassment targeting the plaintiffs, singling them out because of their pro-Palestine advocacy, their Arab and Muslim identities, their national origins, and their status as non-U.S. citizens. Court documents identify Khalil as a Palestinian Muslim holding Algerian citizenship, and Zubairi as a Pakistani Muslim with Pakistani citizenship.

Khalil, a former U.S. green card holder married to a U.S. citizen, was taken into ICE custody in March 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s campaign targeting non-citizens deemed to hold anti-Israel rhetoric. Plainclothes agents revoked his student visa and green card during the arrest, and he remained detained in an ICE facility for 104 days—a period that forced him to miss the birth of his first child. He was ultimately released on a federal court order pending the outcome of federal proceedings against him, and his case quickly garnered international public attention.

In remarks to reporters Monday, Khalil emphasized the lawsuit does not blame the university for ICE’s actions directly, but for creating conditions that made his detention possible. “If only I had legal support [from the university] before my detention, I don’t think ICE would have came and kidnapped me,” he said. “That’s why I’m not suing Columbia for what ICE did. I’m suing them for all the groundwork that they did before my abduction to make my abduction possible. Because without Columbia’s intentional disregard to my safety, I don’t think ICE would have came after me.”

The legal complaint details that in the five months after mass pro-Palestine protests erupted across Columbia’s campus in 2024 in response to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, Khalil, Zubairi, and other PWG members repeatedly reported harassment and doxxing targeting pro-Palestine students to university administrators, including directly to SIPA’s dean. According to the suit, school officials failed to intervene to stop the ongoing, pervasive harassment, and instead retaliated against PWG: university leaders repeatedly labeled the group’s events as security threats, unreasonably disrupting its ability to operate as a recognized student organization. Khalil added that he had met repeatedly with university leadership in the months before his arrest to plead for protection for the campus Palestinian community, but his requests were ignored. He also noted that the university ultimately banned two leading pro-Palestine student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, after the protests began.

“Our safety and well-being did not serve the ideological project [Columbia’s] Board of Trustees was protecting, so they traded us away,” Khalil told reporters.

In a statement provided to Middle East Eye in response to the new lawsuit, a Columbia spokesperson reaffirmed the university’s stated commitment to campus safety. “Creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported, and safe is fundamental to who we are as a University,” the emailed statement read. “It is also a responsibility we take seriously. Columbia is committed to protecting our community from discrimination and harassment, and responding promptly and appropriately when concerns arise.”

Monday’s lawsuit marks the second major legal action against Columbia over alleged anti-Palestine discrimination in as many months. Last month, a separate group of current and former Palestinian students and staff filed suit in New York State Supreme Court, seeking monetary damages under New York City’s Human Rights Law, which bans discrimination based on race and national origin, among other protected characteristics. That complaint alleges that Columbia has subjected Palestinian students, faculty, and staff to unequal treatment in the period following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza. Plaintiffs in that case accuse the university of actively amplifying racially, ethnically, and politically motivated targeting of Palestinians, failing to protect Palestinian community members from harassment, and subjecting pro-Palestine activists to biased, unfair disciplinary proceedings. One key allegation in that suit notes that Columbia hired private investigators to surveil students who participated in a March 2024 campus event called “Resistance 101,” after which six students were suspended and removed from university housing.

Both legal actions come after more than two years of ongoing controversy surrounding Columbia’s handling of campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. In July 2025, Columbia reached a settlement agreement with the Trump administration to end federal investigations into alleged violations of anti-discrimination law and restore frozen federal research funding. Under the terms of that deal, the university agreed to pay $200 million to the U.S. government and an additional $21 million to resolve an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation into antisemitism claims from Jewish employees. Columbia did not admit any wrongdoing nor accept the federal government’s finding that it had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The university also settled a separate lawsuit brought by Jewish plaintiffs in February 2026, which alleged Columbia had failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from antisemitism on campus.

Palestinian student activists and free speech advocates have for years repeatedly accused Columbia of disproportionately disciplining students and faculty who voice opposition to Israeli policy, a pattern that the new federal lawsuit brings to federal court.

This report is from Middle East Eye, an independent media outlet focused on coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and global affairs related to the region.