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  • What to know about Iran’s billions of dollars in frozen funds

    What to know about Iran’s billions of dollars in frozen funds

    For weeks, Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammed Ghalibaf has held firm on one core demand: unfreezing billions of dollars in Iranian assets held abroad must serve as a confidence-building step — if not an outright precondition — for any new round of negotiations with the United States. Today, that demand is officially on the table, as the most high-stakes diplomatic push in recent years advances, with broad goals that include a long-term end to regional hostilities, the full reopening of the critical Strait of Hormuz shipping lane, and substantial curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.

    Early this week, unconfirmed reports outlined a potential framework: the U.S. would release up to 25% of Iran’s globally frozen assets in exchange for Tehran surrendering 400 kilograms of enriched uranium and permanently shutting down key nuclear facilities. Both concessions are widely viewed as non-starters for Iran’s leadership, so Tehran has instead tabled a more modest request: immediate access to $10 billion of its own withheld funds. What is confirmed is that both Ghalibaf and Iran’s central bank governor traveled to Qatar on Monday to negotiate the release of $6 billion in Iranian assets that have been held by Doha since September 2023 — a development that many analysts see as a sign of a potential breakthrough in the long-stalemated talks.

    Just one month ago, the White House ruled out any such asset release. But shifting political pressures have upended earlier positions. With U.S. gasoline prices surging to multi-month highs and Donald Trump’s public approval sliding amid the ongoing Israel-Gaza war, and growing pressure from U.S. Gulf Arab allies to de-escalate tensions, the on-the-ground calculus for Washington has changed dramatically.

    For Tehran, the need to unlock these funds is urgent. Iran’s government estimates it is owed as much as $120 billion in oil revenues and other assets that have been frozen by foreign governments and global financial institutions, a direct consequence of sweeping U.S. sanctions imposed on the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The 1996 Iran Sanctions Act expanded restrictions to third-party entities doing business with Tehran, while codifying a ban on Iran pursuing a nuclear weapons capability. Starting in 2005, the U.S. imposed a steady stream of additional sanctions targeting individuals and companies accused of ties to alleged terrorist activity, effectively cutting Iran off from most global commerce.

    U.S. sanctions not only bar U.S. persons and entities from doing business with Iran; they also block Iran from accessing the U.S.-dominated global financial system, which relies heavily on the U.S. dollar and U.S.-backed payment infrastructure including the SWIFT network. No meaningful relief came until the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the landmark nuclear agreement brokered under former President Barack Obama. Under that deal, Iran rolled back its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief that unlocked roughly $50 billion in frozen assets, followed by a $1.7 billion settlement the next year to resolve a decades-old legal dispute at the International Court of Justice over Iranian assets seized by the U.S. before the 1979 revolution.

    That relief proved short-lived. In 2018, during his first term, Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. unilaterally from the JCPOA, designated the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization, and reimposed all previous sanctions, triggering the immediate re-freezing of Iranian assets held across international banks. Most of these assets are held in China and India, with smaller portions in Turkey and the U.S. One $6 billion fund, generated from Iranian oil sales to South Korea, was granted to Tehran as part of a 2023 prisoner swap brokered by the Biden administration, which saw five Iranian detainees released by the U.S. in exchange for five American citizens held by Iran. As part of that deal, the $6 billion was transferred to Qatari banks for restricted use by Iran.

    Just two weeks after the transfer, the October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel upended the arrangement. Qatar suspended Iranian access to the funds over concerns about how Tehran might use the money, given its longstanding support for Hamas and Hezbollah, which are currently at war with Israel. Now, that $6 billion fund could be released again as part of a broader new deal being negotiated with the second Trump administration.

    Regional analysts have offered diverging views on the motivation behind the Qatari-led push. “It’s Qatari money,” Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, explained during a public discussion panel on Monday. “Qatar is pushing this now because they’re telling Iran: you have to engage in this diplomacy. Even if the Americans don’t follow through on their end, you still get the money. That tells you just how high anxiety levels are across the Gulf region right now.”

    Other U.S. security analysts are skeptical that any unfrozen funds will be directed toward civilian needs. “I’m not a fool here — the first money from any sanctions relief or unfreezing of assets is going to go to the IRGC,” retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Kevin Donegan told the same panel.

    Yet there are reasons to question that assessment, given the fragile state of Iran’s domestic economy. Top of the Iranian government’s priority list is almost certainly stabilizing the country’s domestic financial system, after the U.S.-backed collapse of a major Iranian bank in late 2023 sparked widespread popular unrest across the country. Tehran also may seek to use access to funds to shore up its public image, which has gained some traction among younger Western audiences on social media during the 40-day Israel-Gaza war, a conflict Tehran did not initiate. As early as March, two weeks into the U.S.-backed Israeli military campaign in Gaza, Tehran demanded economic and structural reparations for regional devastation as a core condition of any peace deal, a demand it reiterated in a formal peace proposal sent to the White House last week — the same proposal that forms the basis of the current negotiations.

  • The rise of the fruit that tastes like custard

    The rise of the fruit that tastes like custard

    In the arid, drought-prone farmlands of southern India, where farmers have spent decades digging deep borewells and sinking most of their income into chasing scarce water supplies, an unlikely native fruit is emerging as a game-changing opportunity for agricultural resilience and profitable growth. Custard apple, a knobbly, sweet fruit with creamy flesh that owes its name to its dessert-like flavor, has long grown wild across India’s dry regions – but recent agricultural innovation and targeted crop development are turning this hardy native species into a high-demand commodity for both domestic and global markets.

    The story of this transformation begins with farmers like Ashoka Shivareddy, who carried a lifelong passion for agriculture even after his family abandoned their Kolar district farm due to mounting drought-related losses and moved to Bengaluru in 2005 to open a small vegetable shop. Shivareddy went on to build a career as an artificial intelligence software engineer, but never lost his connection to the land he grew up on. In 2018, he decided to revive his family’s abandoned property, approaching the venture with a data-driven, scientific mindset focused on finding a crop that could thrive in the region’s harsh, low-rainfall conditions.

    “I was searching for a crop that could survive on minimal water, grow solely with natural rainfall, and not require heavy pesticide inputs,” Shivareddy explained. That search led him to custard apple, a fruit that already grew wild across his local region, where small-scale farmers harvested wild fruits for local market sales. To maximize output on his land, Shivareddy adjusted traditional planting practices, spacing trees closer together than the standard industry approach, and selectively cultivated three high-performing varieties with complementary benefits. The strategy has already delivered impressive results: he harvested roughly 20 tonnes of fruit last year, and projects output will climb to 25 tonnes this year, with strong demand from both domestic buyers and international importers.

    While the species’ natural hardiness allows it to survive months without irrigation, traditional custard apple varieties have long faced significant commercial limitations. Local wild varieties such as Balangar have an extremely short shelf life – often just three to four days after harvesting – which limits farmers’ ability to sell beyond local markets, and they also contain a high number of seeds, making them less appealing to consumers. That’s where institutional agricultural research has stepped in to drive improvement, according to Dr. Sakthivel T, principal scientist at the Indian Institute of Horticulture Research (IIHR) based in Bangalore.

    Dr. Sakthivel’s team developed a new hybrid custard apple variety called Arka Sahan, which addresses many of the key flaws of traditional strains. The hybrid can last up to a week at room temperature, contains far fewer seeds, and delivers a much higher proportion of edible pulp. Over the past two decades, this improved variety has spread widely across southern India, delivering major gains for farmers without requiring them to expand their land holdings. “By boosting pulp recovery from just 30% in wild varieties to 70% in Arka Sahan, we have effectively doubled the usable harvest farmers can get from the same amount of land,” Dr. Sakthivel noted. Today, his team is focused on solving another key challenge: the tendency of custard apple pulp to turn brown quickly after extraction, which limits its use in processed food products. Researchers are testing new processing equipment and preservation techniques to help the pulp retain its characteristic pale, creamy color for longer, opening up new commercial opportunities in value-added foods like ice cream and milkshakes.

    In Maharashtra, India’s top custard apple producing state which accounts for nearly one-third of the country’s total output, independent farmer-breeder Navnath Malhari Kaspate has spent decades developing his own improved variety, after noticing that the crop had been largely overlooked by formal research for years. Kaspate traveled across India collecting custard apple seeds from diverse regions, brought them back to his farm, and spent years cross-pollinating varieties to develop higher-yielding, more commercially viable strains. Developing a new stable custard apple variety takes 12 to 15 years of selective breeding, a long, slow process that requires decades of patience and experimentation. His work ultimately produced NMK-01, a high-yield variety named for his initials that launched commercially in 2014.

    Today, Kaspate grows custard apple on nearly 50 acres of land, achieving yields of roughly 10 tonnes per acre. The improved shelf life and hardiness of NMK-01 have unlocked export opportunities that were previously out of reach for Indian custard apple growers. “We have started exporting to Gulf countries, and even shipped large volumes to Europe, something that had never been done at this scale before,” Kaspate said. He continues his breeding work today, focused on developing a new variety with improved visual appeal and stronger natural disease resistance.

    Exporter Manoj Kumar Barai, who ships NMK-01 to markets across the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Europe, says the variety is ideal for international trade thanks to its thicker skin, longer shelf life, higher pulp content, and sweeter flavor compared to older strains. Even with these improvements, exporting the delicate fruit requires extremely precise logistics: every step from harvesting timing to transport to packing, airport transfer, and customs clearance must be tightly scheduled, as every hour of delay impacts the fruit’s freshness. Custard apple is highly sensitive to high temperatures, so road transport is often scheduled overnight to avoid the peak midday heat in regions where summer temperatures can climb to 40°C, and fruit is pre-cooled for five hours before being packed in custom-designed corrugated boxes that protect produce and maintain cool temperatures during transit, then shipped in refrigerated vans and cold storage before being loaded onto air freight.

    An increasing share of exports are now shipped as frozen pulp or powder, a shift Barai describes as a revolution for the Indian custard apple industry. While frozen pulp must be stored and transported at -18°C, it is far cheaper to ship than whole fresh fruit, allows for large-volume transport over multi-week periods without spoilage, and is in high demand by overseas ice cream manufacturers, bakeries, and specialty cafes. Back in Kolar, Shivareddy plans to expand his own business by adding pulp processing to sell both whole fruit and value-added pulp products, and plans to build a processing unit that can utilize portions of his harvest that would otherwise go unsold. The shift to processing does require significant upfront investment in cold storage and extraction equipment, which Shivareddy says requires a change in mindset for many small-scale custard apple farmers.

    “Custard apple sits in an unusual position in Indian agriculture,” Shivareddy explained. “Demand is rising rapidly, but farming hasn’t adopted high-tech methods because the crop is naturally so hardy. It grows in poor soil, needs almost no extra water, and survives entirely on rainfall. Farmers don’t need expensive irrigation systems, sensors, or controlled growing environments, so technology adoption stays low.” Even with that barrier, the growing global demand for this drought-resilient, nutrient-dense fruit is driving steady growth across India’s custard apple sector, turning a forgotten wild crop into a viable, profitable agricultural commodity that supports small-scale farmers in some of the country’s driest regions.

  • Lebanese cling to memories of Liberation Day as Israel reoccupies the south

    Lebanese cling to memories of Liberation Day as Israel reoccupies the south

    On May 25, 2000, 19-year-old Abeer received the historic news that southern Lebanon had finally been freed after 18 years of brutal Israeli occupation. Within hours, she and her family packed their belongings and left Beirut, heading south to their ancestral hometown of Kfar Kila – a centuries-old village sitting directly on the tense Lebanon-Israel border. Recalling that moment decades later, Abeer, now an events coordinator working with musicians, says the joy she felt that day was unlike anything she had ever experienced.\n\nToday, 26 years after that landmark liberation, Abeer is once again displaced. Relentless Israeli bombardment across southern Lebanon forced her to flee her home in Nabatieh, and she now resides in a makeshift tent in Beirut’s Biel district, sharing the small space with her two dogs. Since Israel launched its current military campaign against Lebanon on March 2, the conflict has displaced more than one million Lebanese people. Hundreds of thousands remain barred from returning to their properties, as Israeli troops continue to hold dozens of southern villages under occupation, while 45 percent of all towns across southern Lebanon have suffered severe damage or been completely destroyed.\n\nSitting just outside her temporary tent home, Abeer says she longs to return to Kfar Kila, and holds out hope that the south will be liberated for a second time. “We need to remember this day because we were victorious and hopefully we will be again. They have turned Kfar Kila into a football field,” she told reporters from Middle East Eye. Over the past two and a half years, repeated Israeli airstrikes and ground operations have gradually leveled Kfar Kila along with more than a dozen other villages along the southern border. “Our grandparents, my mother and father are buried in Kfar Kila,” Abeer said. “I pray we can return to them, to our homes and to our work.”\n\nThe long arc of Israeli incursion into Lebanon stretches back decades. In 1967’s Six Day War, Israel seized the Chebaa Farms region, followed by the 1978 Operation Litani invasion, and a larger 1982 ground incursion launched with the stated goal of dismantling the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Then-Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon convinced parliament to approve Operation Peace for Galilee, claiming troops would advance no more than 40 kilometers into Lebanese territory and the operation would conclude in just two to three days. Instead, Israeli forces pushed all the way to Beirut, occupied the capital for three years, then withdrew to a buffer zone in southern Lebanon where they remained for an additional 15 years. A sustained guerrilla resistance campaign led by Hezbollah through the 1990s, targeting Israeli positions and their allied South Lebanon Army militia, ultimately forced full Israeli withdrawal from the south in May 2000.\n\nThis cycle of occupation and resistance is personal history for 28-year-old political activist Tarek Serhan, who holds a master’s degree in human rights. Though Serhan was only two years old when the 2000 liberation was declared, he remains deeply connected to the south, with family roots in Dweir, a village in the Nabatieh district, and upbringing in Beirut’s southern Dahieh suburb. Today, he shares a small Beirut apartment with his dog Lexy, the entrance of which is decorated with a Lebanese flag. The apartment has also become a refuge for his parents and grandmother, who fled intense Israeli bombardment of Dahieh to stay with him. Serhan makes regular trips back to Dweir and neighboring villages to attend funerals and offer condolences to families who have lost loved ones.\n\nEven amid ongoing violence, Serhan says he has been struck by the steady resilience of southern Lebanese communities. “When I was in the village three or four weeks ago, people were not afraid,” he said. “They were carrying the martyrs on their shoulders during the procession, in the middle of the village, under warplanes and bombardment. My heart was full, honestly.”\n\nAccording to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, Israeli strikes across Lebanon have killed 3,151 people and wounded 9,571 more since the current conflict began. Despite a formal ceasefire agreement reached on April 16, Israel continues to carry out daily strikes and enforce mandatory evacuation orders across southern Lebanon, with civilians, journalists, medical workers, and civil defense teams repeatedly targeted, often in deadly double-tap attacks. Hezbollah has continued to launch retaliatory strikes against Israeli occupation troops and targets inside Israeli territory.\n\nAmid the reoccupation, bombardment, and near-constant presence of Israeli drones over Beirut, some have questioned whether the annual marking of Resistance and Liberation Day, the holiday commemorating the 2000 Israeli withdrawal, is appropriate this year. For Serhan, marking the holiday is a non-negotiable national duty. “We have this country due to people’s sacrifices. These aren’t just words. Liberation cost lives, families, time that detainees spent in prison, people who are living to this day with physical pain or disabilities,” he said. “Lebanese were resisting from all areas and all sects. Liberation happened. It’s part of history. It cannot be erased. As Lebanese we have a responsibility to show the danger of the Zionists on our border. We need more education and awareness for all people, especially the youth, to know the history and know what has happened to Lebanese like them.”\n\nIn the small northern Lebanese town of Karm Saddeh, near Ehden, one extended family has worked tirelessly to keep the memory of the 2000 liberation alive for younger generations. In May 2000, the entire clan – grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins – boarded a bus and traveled south to see the newly liberated lands and join the celebrations. For Dominic, the family’s son who was just eight years old at the time, the trip was a formative experience. Now a designer living in Beirut, Dominic says his mother instilled in him a deep connection to the south from childhood. “I’m very much from the north, and my heart is very much in the south. That’s what my mother always told me as a kid,” he said. “I love my village, and the south feels like my village but greener, more natural. Southerners are a lot like northerners, but even more hospitable.”\n\nDominic believes that Liberation Day should be commemorated across an entire week, just as the original 2000 celebrations unfolded. “It was a week of celebrations in 2000. A week of people returning to their land. Let’s take a week to remember what happened, why it happened, and what happened after,” he said. The family made the same trip south to reconnect with their land after the 2006 July war, and their commitment to honoring the liberation remains unshaken.\n\nAs Tel Aviv and Beirut hold their first direct diplomatic talks in decades, some Lebanese have publicly expressed support for the prospect of formal peace and normalization with Israel. But for Dominic, normalization with Israel was never an acceptable option after the 2006 war, and it remains off the table today, 25 years after liberation. If he had his way, Lebanese people from every region of the country would travel south to mark the day, even amid the threat of bombardment, as an act of national solidarity.\n\n“We have festivals for cherries and apples that many attend. They matter because they connect people to the land,” he noted. “But the south is the land, and the most precious olive trees in the world grow there. It’s one of the most important parts of our culture. Maybe next year we can hold an olive festival on the border with Palestine – and maybe Palestinians can come too.”’

  • Delhi’s most exclusive club is under threat of shutdown – can it survive?

    Delhi’s most exclusive club is under threat of shutdown – can it survive?

    For more than a century, the Delhi Gymkhana Club has stood as more than just an exclusive recreational space in the heart of India’s capital. Tucked away on 27.3 acres of prime central land along Safdarjung Road, a stone’s throw from the prime minister’s official residence, this cream-coloured colonial-era clubhouse has long been a quiet hub where retired generals, senior bureaucrats, and old-money business families cut informal deals over whisky sodas and grilled kebabs. For generations, its reputation for grandeur and exclusivity has stretched far beyond its locked gates, even to the majority of Delhi residents who have never crossed its threshold. Today, that storied, slow-moving world faces an uncertain future after India’s federal government, which owns the land the 113-year-old institution sits on, issued an eviction order demanding the club vacate the premises by June 5. The government justifies the move, noting the site is a “highly sensitive and strategic” zone, and that the land is required for new defence infrastructure and critical public security projects. The lease termination, the government added, is effective immediately. Club members have formally challenged the order in India’s court system, with the first hearing scheduled for Tuesday. The eviction notice, which comes after years of heightened scrutiny of elite closed institutions by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, has reignited fierce public debates across the country over inherited privilege, urban heritage preservation, and public land use. It has also sparked an unexpected wave of public nostalgia, with many Delhi residents expressing quiet affection for a space they long claimed to resent. Joining the Gymkhana Club has always been notoriously difficult, with exclusivity enforced more through strict gatekeeping than prohibitive membership costs. Prospective members must be nominated and seconded by existing members before a managing committee votes on their approval. For decades, the process has heavily favored senior civil servants and military officers, leaving only a small fraction of openings for applicants from other backgrounds. Critics argue this closed system has entrenched social inequality, even as it has made Gymkhana membership one of the most sought-after status symbols in Delhi. Still, for many Delhiites, the club represents a rare unchanging fragment of the capital’s elite colonial and post-independence past, preserved through small, beloved rituals: liveried waiters circulating at dusk, gin and lime served on wide shaded verandas, elderly retired officials and diplomats lingering for hours under the shade of ancient neem trees. “It is one of the few structures in Delhi that has remained untouched while the city outside changed completely,” a senior Delhi-based journalist, who never held a club membership, told the BBC. “But now I feel like stepping in once.” Founded in 1913 as the Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club, the institution was born alongside the construction of New Delhi, after the British colonial government shifted India’s capital from Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Delhi. It first operated out of Coronation Grounds in the Civil Lines neighborhood, serving exclusively British colonial administrators and military officers, before being allocated its current Safdarjung Road site in 1928. The existing clubhouse, designed in the 1930s by celebrated British architect Robert Tor Russell — who also designed New Delhi’s iconic Connaught Place commercial district — embodies the classic colonial architecture of early central Delhi, with deep verandas, lofty high ceilings, and pale facades opening onto sprawling tree-lined lawns. Inside the club’s walls, time has long moved at a different pace: crisp white tennis attire drying under the afternoon sun, quiet bridge games drifting through rooms that still hold faint traces of cigarette smoke and talcum powder, elderly members turning through newspapers under slow-turning vintage ceiling fans. Intimate layers of history are woven into every corner of the space. In its early decades, a small number of Westernized Indian Civil Service officers — among the only Indians granted access to elite colonial social circles — learned ballroom dancing and British social etiquette at the club as they navigated the unwritten rules of imperial society. In 1947, as the British Indian Army was split between the newly independent nations of India and Pakistan, officers from regiments marked for separation gathered at the club for one final round of farewell drinks before the border split them apart forever. That enduring image of shared camaraderie amid historic change helps explain why the prospect of the club’s closure has stirred such deep emotion across Delhi. As historian Narayani Gupta once noted, cities are layered entities, and each generation leaves its indelible mark on the spaces it occupies. Places like the Gymkhana become living repositories of collective memory, holding traces of every era that passed through their gates. In the final decades of British rule and the early years of independence, the club remained tightly intertwined with the capital’s political life. Speaking at the institution’s 2013 centenary celebrations, then-Indian President Pranab Mukherjee recalled that Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Irwin, the Viceroy of India at the time, held a critical private meeting at the club that ultimately led to the landmark Gandhi-Irwin Pact. After independence in 1947, the club dropped “Imperial” from its official name, but much of its old-world atmosphere remained intact: strict formal dress codes, worn vintage carpets, pre-dinner drinks, and long-tenured waiters who served multiple generations of the same families. Over the decades, the Delhi Gymkhana Club also became synonymous with a particular brand of inherited elite privilege in the capital. Its notoriously multi-decade waiting lists entered Delhi folklore, while critics framed it as a symbol of power shaped by nepotism, personal networks, and family legacy rather than merit. A retired Indian Police Service officer told the BBC it took 18 years from his application to secure membership. “When I applied, I was fascinated by the idea,” he said. “By the time I became one, I was totally indifferent and rarely visited it.” For Ghazal Tansir, a Delhi-based doctor who hosted her 2019 wedding reception at the club through a relative’s membership, it remains “a preserved, undisturbed little nook of memories.” The club’s longstanding exclusivity drew increasing government scrutiny after Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took power in 2014, campaigning on a promise to shift power away from Delhi’s entrenched English-speaking elite. After government inspections in 2016 and 2019, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs filed a case with a national tribunal in 2020, alleging the club had committed financial irregularities and violated longstanding membership rules. Two years later, the tribunal dissolved the club’s elected governing committee and allowed the government to appoint its own administrators to run the institution, a decision that drew sharp pushback from club members. The latest eviction order has once again split public and expert opinion across India. Kiran Bedi, a former top Indian police officer who once ran as the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate for Delhi, called the eviction “unfortunate and tragic,” framing the Gymkhana as an irreplaceable part of the capital’s sporting and institutional heritage. Historian Swapna Liddle acknowledged the club’s elitist colonial origins, but argued that reform, not closure, would have been a better path forward. “Instead of just saying ‘let it not exist’, you [the government] could have asked how it could be changed and made meaningful for more people,” she said. Other observers take a harder line against the institution. Veteran journalist Prabhu Chawla has criticized clubs like the Gymkhana as exclusionary entities that occupy heavily subsidized public land for the benefit of a tiny elite. Former diplomat KC Singh pushed back on that critique, noting that for much of the club’s history, it provided affordable recreational space for civil servants and military officers who earned modest government salaries. BJP spokesperson RP Singh rejected claims that the government is unfairly targeting the historic club. “It is a property leased by the government,” he told the BBC. “Everything has happened according to the rule book and relevant laws.” Beneath the legal and political disagreements, however, runs a deep undercurrent of emotional response, tied to collective memory and the loss of historic space in a city that is constantly remaking itself. For decades, Delhi has undergone rapid transformation, and nearly every long-term resident can point to a list of beloved lost landmarks: the iconic Regal Cinema, the historic old Coffee House, the legendary Urdu book markets of Daryaganj, the open winter evenings at India Gate before widespread security barricades reshaped the central city. Through all that churn, a small handful of spaces managed to outlast the change. The Gymkhana Club was one of those rare constants. It survived British colonial rule, the bloodshed of Partition, the turbulence of independence, and Delhi’s transformation into a sprawling 32 million-person megacity. If the club ultimately loses its legal challenge and is forced to leave its historic home, Delhi will still have no shortage of newer private clubs, luxury hotels, and trendy restaurants. But as many observers point out, the capital will lose something far less tangible: one of the last remaining spaces where the old, slow, layered version of Delhi still feels alive.

  • What we know so far about the US-Iran deal

    What we know so far about the US-Iran deal

    After nearly three months of open regional conflict between the United States and Iran, diplomatic efforts have reached a critical turning point, with former US President Donald Trump confirming that a tentative framework agreement is “mostly finalized”. Should the deal cross the finish line, it would bring an immediate end to months of hostilities that have roiled global energy markets and raised fears of a wider regional war.

    Global financial markets reacted swiftly to the news of a potential breakthrough on Monday morning, with investor sentiment driving a sharp 6% drop in Brent crude prices that pushed the benchmark down to $97 per barrel. While the full text of the proposed agreement remains under wraps, emerging details from anonymous US officials speaking to Axios have shed light on the phased approach being negotiated.

    Under the draft terms, the first step would be a 60-day extended ceasefire between the two parties. During this temporary truce, the Strait of Hormuz – the critical chokepoint through which 20% of the world’s daily crude oil and liquified natural gas shipments pass – would be fully reopened to commercial traffic. No transit fees would be imposed by Iran, and Tehran would clear all naval mines it had placed in waters near the strait as a strategic pressure tactic. Once mine clearance is completed, the US would lift its recent naval blockade of Iranian ports, and Tehran would be allowed to resume oil exports for the two-month period, temporarily pausing some US sanctions to enable the sales. The unnamed US official noted that while the temporary export access would boost Iran’s economy, it would also help cool tight global energy markets and ease upward pressure on energy prices worldwide.

    This 60-day window is intended for the two sides to negotiate long-term arrangements, including the highly contentious issue of Iran’s nuclear program. As part of broader talks aimed at a permanent ceasefire, Iran is demanding the immediate unfreezing of its sovereign assets held around the globe and permanent relief from crippling US economic sanctions. In response, US officials have stated that these major concessions will only be granted in exchange for “verifiable, tangible concessions” from Tehran on nuclear security.

    The still-undrafted memorandum of understanding between the two countries is reported to include a proposed Iranian commitment to never pursue a nuclear weapons program, though there is currently no confirmation that Tehran has accepted this condition. The draft text also proposes negotiations on freezing Iran’s uranium enrichment activities and removing its existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium. A US official told The Washington Post that the two-month ceasefire period will be dedicated to ironing out the verification and implementation mechanism for a final nuclear agreement. However, an Iranian official pushed back on this framing, telling the Post the draft deal only includes a commitment to discuss nuclear issues at a later date, not a pre-negotiated agreement on the terms.

    Over the weekend, Trump faced cross-partisan criticism from US lawmakers over both the ongoing conflict and the terms of the emerging deal. The former president pushed back forcefully against his detractors in a post on his social platform Truth Social, insisting he only negotiates successful agreements. “If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama,” Trump wrote. “Don’t listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about. Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don’t make bad deals!”

    By Monday, Trump struck a more optimistic tone, telling reporters negotiations are “proceeding nicely”. He also used the moment to push for an expansion of the Abraham Accords, the 2020 US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states that he oversaw during his first term. Trump said he had spoken with leaders of multiple regional nations on Saturday about efforts to end the conflict with Iran, arguing that after US diplomatic work to resolve the crisis, all involved nations should join the accords. “After all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords,” he said. He listed the candidate nations as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE (already an accords member), and Bahrain (also already a signatory). The original 2020 accords also included Morocco and Sudan, while Egypt and Jordan already hold established diplomatic relations with Israel.

    Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei offered a more muted confirmation of progress on Monday, saying that Tehran and Washington had reached preliminary conclusions on several issues included in the draft memorandum of understanding. But he stressed that this progress should not be read as a sign an agreement is imminent. Baghaei clarified that Iran’s current negotiating priority is ending the ongoing conflict, not addressing nuclear questions. He also reiterated a longstanding Iranian complaint that inconsistent, shifting positions from US officials have consistently complicated efforts to reach a final deal.

  • ‘Failure’: Israel reacts with alarm as emerging US-Iran deal draws criticism

    ‘Failure’: Israel reacts with alarm as emerging US-Iran deal draws criticism

    A reported emerging US-Iran agreement to permanently end ongoing conflict has triggered sharp skepticism and deepening alarm across Israel, with political, military and security leaders warning that the proposed framework fails to address core Israeli national security priorities.

    Early weekend reports outlined that the tentative deal centers on a 60-day preliminary ceasefire captured in a memorandum of understanding, with the draft text notably omitting any provisions targeting Iran’s controversial nuclear program. The preliminary scope of the agreement also calls for an end to hostilities across all regional fronts, including the ongoing conflict in Lebanon.

    Cross-party criticism from U.S. lawmakers, ranging from Democratic members to hardline Republican hawks, has been mirrored by widespread condemnation from Israeli political analysts and security experts. Against this mounting backlash, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement Sunday confirming he had reached an understanding with U.S. President Donald Trump that any final, binding agreement with Iran must fully eliminate the nuclear threat posed by the regime. Netanyahu added that Trump had reaffirmed Israel’s sovereign right to self-defense against threats across all fronts, including Lebanon.

    For his part, President Trump has moved to defend the ongoing negotiations in a post on his Truth Social platform. “If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama,” he wrote, referencing the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement signed during the administration of former Democratic President Barack Obama. “I don’t make bad deals,” he added.

    These public reassurances from both leaders have done little to ease concerns among Israeli journalists and military analysts, many of whom frame the emerging deal as a major political failure and strategic retreat for both the U.S. and Israeli governments.

    Amos Harel, veteran military affairs commentator for leading Israeli left-leaning outlet Haaretz, argued Monday that any such deal would amount to a clear American capitulation to Iran, while also highlighting Israel’s eroding leverage within the Trump administration. Harel emphasized that the proposed framework falls drastically short of the explicit goals Netanyahu set when the conflict launched in late February, which included the full collapse of Iran’s ruling government and the complete dismantlement of the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

    Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran-focused researcher at Israel’s independent Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), echoed Harel’s critical assessment, noting that the architects of the joint military campaign “did not truly understand Iran”. “The enormous gap between the declarations made at the beginning of the campaign and the agreement that will likely bring it to an end illustrates its failure,” Citrinowicz said Monday. “This war proved that Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy has collapsed.”

    Fellow INSS researcher Raz Zimmt described the tentative agreement as “very problematic” for Israeli national interests, arguing that Iran has effectively succeeded in reshaping a new regional power order in its favor. “The one who blinked first was President Trump, not the Iranians,” Zimmt told Israeli public radio outlet 103FM.

    Nahum Barnea, veteran prominent political columnist for leading Israeli tabloid Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote Monday that the emerging deal would mark a clear strategic defeat for both Israel and the United States. He noted that neither Netanyahu nor Trump “never imagined” that after nearly three months of conflict, Iran would emerge in a stronger regional position than it held before the war began. Barnea added that Israel is now “subject to the absolute authority of a capricious, hollow, desperate American president” and argued that while confronting Iran remains an existential challenge for Israel, “Netanyahu is the last person” capable of leading that effort.

    This wave of domestic criticism comes alongside growing concern across Israel that the country’s political influence in Washington has diminished significantly in recent months. On Saturday, *The New York Times* reported that the Trump administration had largely sidelined Israeli officials from the direct negotiation process, despite Israel’s role as a core coalition partner in the military campaign against Iran.

    A Sunday report from Haaretz added that senior Israeli security officials are deeply alarmed by the direction of the U.S.-Iran talks, and have privately warned that “Israeli interests were not taken into account throughout the negotiations”. According to the report, officials have expressed significant frustration that despite Israel’s direct participation in joint military action against Iran, the White House has refused to prioritize Israeli core security concerns in the negotiation text. Senior officials now fear that a final U.S.-Iran agreement could impose binding restrictions on Israel’s ability to conduct independent future military operations in both Lebanon and Gaza.

    Leading Israeli news outlet Ynet also reported that senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials view the proposed framework as “a bad agreement for Israel” and have expressed deep disappointment with the reported terms. The outlet noted that the IDF had already begun preparations for a renewed military campaign against Iran, and senior commanders believe the agreement will fall far short of meeting core strategic goals, potentially leaving Iran well positioned to advance to full nuclear weapons capability as a “nuclear threshold state”.

    Even within Netanyahu’s own ruling Likud party, some lawmakers have acknowledged the gap between opening war aims and the emerging deal. David Bitan, a Likud member of the Knesset, acknowledged Monday that Israeli expectations at the start of the conflict had been unrealistically high. Even so, Bitan insisted that Israel had secured significant military gains during the 40-day active conflict phase. When asked about Iran’s remaining ballistic missile capabilities, Bitan said Israel would “have to deal with it again and again”, adding that he expects further rounds of military conflict with Iran to occur every two to three years going forward.

  • In German first, Leipzig students vote for academic boycott of Israel

    In German first, Leipzig students vote for academic boycott of Israel

    On May 19, a landmark vote unfolded at Germany’s University of Leipzig that marks a seismic shift in the national debate over academic collaboration with Israel. Nearly 700 gathered students voted almost unanimously to cut all formal institutional ties between their university and Israeli academic entities, citing allegations of Israeli genocide and systematic educational destruction in Gaza. This outcome carries unique weight given Leipzig’s long-standing reputation as the heart of Germany’s Antideutsche movement, a radical left tradition defined by militant anti-German nationalism and unwavering, vocal support for Israel rooted in anti-antisemitism commitments, where Antideutsche activists have regularly clashed with pro-Palestinian organizers for decades.

    The resolution approved by students lays out three core demands: first, that the university officially recognize and condemn what students frame as the genocidal character of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, including the deliberate destruction of the Palestinian education system — a phenomenon widely termed scholasticide. Second, the university must terminate all existing cooperative agreements with Israeli higher education and research institutions. Finally, students insist the university refuse to participate in, promote, or publicize any joint activities or programs hosted or organized by Israeli academic bodies.

    A collaborative report compiled by Leipzig students and staff alleges that the university’s existing partnerships directly enable what they call Israel’s genocide and repeated violations of international law. Current collaborations include extensive student exchange programs, active joint research initiatives, and formal partnerships with multiple Israeli institutions that have been linked to the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

    “Leipzig University is completely open about its work with institutions that break international law,” one student who contributed to the report told Middle East Eye. The student laid out three justifications for cutting ties: moral, noting the universal justice of opposing genocide; ethical, arguing universities must uphold the values of life and education while rejecting human rights abuses and scholasticide; and legal, referencing the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion that confirms the illegality of aiding or abetting violations of universally binding erga omnes international law, including violations committed by Israeli educational institutions.

    University administration moved preemptively to block the student assembly, rejecting the vote’s legitimacy. Ahead of the planned gathering, the institution withdrew its permission for students to use university-owned space for the assembly, and the university’s rector Professor Eva Ines Obergfell argued that the event was no longer a legitimate academic debate, but rather a partisan push that aimed to restrict academic freedom. The administration also claimed the assembly was improperly convened, noting it was not organized through the official student council leadership per institutional statutes, and that only around 1 percent of the university’s total student body attended.

    These accusations were immediately rejected as baseless by the Leipzig Student Council. Per the student body’s own governing rules, a general assembly can be called via a public petition signed by at least 3 percent of the total student population. Organizers collected roughly 1,300 signatures, easily surpassing the required threshold to convene the assembly. Ultimately, students held the gathering in an outdoor university courtyard after being denied indoor space. “The signatures we collected make it clear that we as a student body want and need to participate in this critical discourse,” explained Alaska Krakor, a Student Council representative. “The general assembly as a direct democratic outlet for our position must be respected by university leadership.”

    Leipzig is far from an outlier in Germany: almost every major higher education institution in the country maintains formal academic ties to Israel. In June 2025, the German Rectors’ Conference, the national umbrella group for all public and officially recognized German universities, issued a formal statement calling for the expansion and strengthening of academic and research partnerships with Israel. The statement was released in direct response to growing European calls to suspend the EU Association Agreement with Israel, the primary legal framework governing political and economic relations between the bloc and Israel. The conference asserted that Israeli universities and the broader Israeli academic community have long been a core liberal, democratic force in the Middle East, and a central pillar of balanced ethical and academic reflection on the regional conflict.

    Student organizers emphasize that this vote breaks new ground even as past student council resolutions have backed academic boycotts of Israel. Unlike previous measures that were introduced as part of broader general assemblies, this vote came out of a general assembly specifically convened to address the question of institutional academic complicity in Gaza. Organizers with Students for Palestine Leipzig told Middle East Eye that the groundwork for the overwhelming vote was laid months earlier at the start of the academic year, when the group released the complicity report detailing the university’s Israeli partnerships. In the lead-up to the assembly, organizers held educational sessions to walk students through the report’s findings and explain the rationale for an academic boycott, building broad support across the student body.

    “We as students wanted to think globally and act locally,” the SFP Leipzig statement read. “Our university is complicit through its direct ties and cooperation with Israeli institutions that help develop weapons, manufacture bombs, and build knowledge that enables the oppression of Palestinians. We want no part in this complicity. We call on the university to respect the will of the student body.”

  • Iran’s Jews: From ancient roots to the modern day

    Iran’s Jews: From ancient roots to the modern day

    In March 2015, as then-US President Barack Obama prepared to finalize a landmark nuclear deal with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a high-stakes address to a joint session of the US Congress. Seeking to sway lawmakers against the agreement by framing Iran as an existential threat to the Jewish people and the state of Israel, Netanyahu made a notable factual error when he misrepresented the Biblical story of Esther, claiming that ancient Jews living in Persian-ruled territory were targeted for death by a Persian viceroy. The actual account holds that it was Haman, an Amalekite court official, who plotted the extermination of Iranian Jews, a scheme foiled by Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai, after which Persian King Ahasuerus ordered Haman’s execution and spared the Jewish community.

    Far less widely reported in Western discourse is the deep, continuous history of Jewish life in Iran that stretches back nearly three millennia. Today, the tomb of Esther and Mordecai stands in the western Iranian city of Hamedan, a site that has drawn Jewish pilgrims for centuries and was designated a national heritage site by the Iranian government under then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2008. This long-standing presence challenges the pervasive Western narrative that frames Iran as a uniformly antisemitic nation, scholars and community members emphasize.

    “Compared to many countries in the region and certainly in the West, Iran has not had a history of anti-Jewish sentiment,” explains Farhang Jahanpour, former dean of the Faculty of Languages at the University of Isfahan. “Most Iranian Jews regard Iran as their home and have a strong feeling of affinity for Iranian culture, literature, music and cooking.”

    For Etan Mabourakh, a member of a centuries-old Iranian Jewish family that left the country during the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, this cultural connection remains vivid decades after his family’s departure. “There’s a deep pride for Iranian Jews in our cultural heritage, and distinct traditions that we hold on to,” he says. “My father’s side hail from Hamedan, and we have a Hamedani cookbook with traditional Jewish recipes that I still cook dishes from to this day – on Passover we still practice the Jewish Iranian tradition of beating each other with scallions when we sing Dyenu. These traditions are a real source of pride for us.”

    Jews first arrived in what is now Iran following the Babylonian exile of the 6th and 7th centuries BCE, when they were displaced from the ancient kingdom of Judea by King Nebuchadnezzar II. Initial settlements centered in what is now Isfahan, before communities spread across the Iranian plateau. Biblical accounts themselves reference deep ties between ancient Jews and Persian rulers, with many holy sites associated with Jewish prophets still standing across the country today. “The Hebrew Bible speaks very highly of ancient Persians and reveals very close Jewish connections with ancient Iran and its kings,” Jahanpour notes.

    After the advent of Islam in Iran in the 7th century, the Jewish population continued to grow, drawn in large part by opportunities along regional trade routes. “We have testimonies of Jews from the period when Islam came to Iran that they were actually very pleased to see the Muslim army coming,” says Lior Sternfeld, a professor of History and Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University. “The message of Islam and the recognition of the people of the book was quite liberating for Iranian religious minorities. They believed it might bring positive change to their status and protections.”

    Between the arrival of Islam and the establishment of Shia Islam as Iran’s state religion in 1501, the community experienced periods of both stability and intermittent repression. By the 17th century, Jews were formally recognized as a protected and tolerated minority under Iranian law. A major milestone came with the 1906 Constitutional Revolution under the Qajar dynasty, which established Iran’s first parliament and granted Jews a guaranteed parliamentary seat, formally placing them on equal legal footing with Muslim citizens. This progress followed years of targeted violence, including a 1839 pogrom in the northeastern city of Mashhad that forced Jews to choose between conversion to Islam and exile.

    Under the Pahlavi dynasty, which took power in 1925, Iran’s new legal protections for Jews drew Jewish migrants from across the region and Europe. In the 1930s, prominent Jewish professionals and intellectuals fleeing Nazi Germany’s race-based purges arrived in Iran, followed by hundreds more Jewish refugees who fled the 1941 Farhud pogrom in Iraq that killed more than 500 Jews. By the mid-20th century, Iran’s Jewish community was a diverse tapestry of Persian, Kurdish, Iraqi, Mountain, and Ashkenazi Jews, with Ashkenazi refugees establishing a still-operational synagogue in Tehran.

    During World War II and the Holocaust, Iran hosted as many as 300,000 Polish refugees, between 5,000 and 20,000 of whom were Jewish, who settled in camps on the outskirts of Tehran, Isfahan, and Ahvaz. While the decision to accept the refugees was driven by British occupying forces and created significant food shortages for local Iranians, Sternfeld notes that contemporary accounts consistently highlight the widespread hospitality ordinary Iranians extended to the displaced Jewish arrivals. Around 780 orphaned Jewish refugees, known as the Children of Tehran, were eventually resettled in Mandatory Palestine.

    By the 1940s, Iran’s Jewish community had become integral to the Pahlavi Shah’s national development project, taking prominent roles in government bureaucracy, trade, and science, and rising to become a core part of Iran’s urban middle and upper classes. By the late 1940s, the community numbered around 100,000 and continued to grow over the next three decades. When Israel was established in 1948, only a small minority of Iranian Jews – between 17,000 and 20,000 between 1949 and 1953 – chose to emigrate, and migration effectively halted by the 1960s. For decades, Iran maintained close diplomatic ties with Israel, supplied the Jewish state with oil, and in return received military training from the Israeli army for the Shah’s brutal secret police force, Savak.

    Life for Jews under the Shah was not without tension, however. “The generation that came of age during Mohammed Reza’s time no longer carried the burden of Jewish persecution on their shoulders and they became much more Iranian,” Sternfeld explains. “They went to universities, became involved in political activism and they shared the grievances of their fellow Iranians about the shah’s dictatorship. They were also over-represented in opposition movements, and the shah didn’t cut slack for Jews in these groups, so many ended up being in exile or prison.”

    Mabourakh’s own family was forced to flee Iran for the US and Israel during the Shah’s rule due to their political activism. “They were treated like second-class citizens,” he says, adding that modern glorification of the Pahlavi dynasty does not align with his family’s experience. “Reza Pahlavi has been reframed as this figure to bring Iran back to greatness, but the more you read about the brutal oppression of the Savak under his father, the more you realise it’s no better than what exists today.”

    After the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the Shah, the execution of prominent Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian, a figure linked to the former regime, sparked widespread fear among Iran’s Jewish community. Community leaders traveled to the holy city of Qom just days after the execution to meet with Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini to clarify the status of Jews under the new Islamic Republic. The meeting resulted in a landmark fatwa that formally drew a distinction between Iranian Jews and Zionism, stating that Iranian Jews are full members of the Iranian nation, while Zionism is a separate political movement opposed to religious teachings. Under the edict, Iranian Jews are guaranteed full protection as a religious minority.

    Despite this guarantee, mass emigration resumed after the revolution, with nearly half of Iran’s Jewish community leaving over the course of the 1980s. Unusually, only a minority of emigrants settled in Israel; roughly 70 percent relocated to the Los Angeles area in the United States. For the community that remained, experiences have varied across successive administrations: former President Hassan Rouhani, who held office from 2013 to 2021, enacted progressive reforms including legislation protecting Jewish inheritance rights and allowing Jewish students to be absent from school on Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath.

    Today, Iran is home to between 10,000 and 15,000 Jews, the third largest Jewish population in the Middle East after Israel and Turkey. Most reside in Tehran, with sizeable communities in Shiraz and Isfahan. Though the community is a fraction of its mid-20th century peak, it remains an integrated part of Iranian society, with 60 operational synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher food outlets, and other communal institutions, granting Iranian Jews a comparatively high degree of religious autonomy. While community members cannot publicly express support for Israel, they maintain a nuanced relationship with the Jewish state, drawing a distinction between its religious significance to Judaism and its political status relative to Iran. “They make the separation between Israel as a holy place and Iran as their political homeland,” Sternfeld says.

    Most recently, after an Israeli air strike on Tehran damaged the Rafi-Nia synagogue last month, Iran’s Jewish community publicly condemned the attack, reaffirming their loyalty to the Iranian state. “The Zionist regime with its brutal ambitions has not only attacked the Muslim community but also the Jewish community,” said Homayoun Sameh, the Jewish representative to Iran’s parliament. Rabbi Younes Hamami Lalehzar, a leading Iranian Jewish community leader, added: “Beyond being an inhumane and terrorist act, this clearly shows that all the claims made by the Israeli regime about defending Jews are nothing more than a shameful lie.”

    Mabourakh, who works with the National Iranian American Council, echoed that condemnation, noting that the Iranian government’s response to the attack revealed a respect for Jewish life that is rarely acknowledged in Western media. “I felt disgusted that the synagogue had been blown up in a war that my tax dollars are funding. The fact that so much infrastructure has been targeted – these are war crimes and we should call them out,” he says. “The Jewish community asked the rescue mission not to use heavy machinery to clear the rubble, to avoid damaging Torah scrolls and other items, so the teams used their hands to retrieve them. I think there is a genuine respect from Iranian authorities towards people of the book, and this is not communicated in the West.”

  • US and Israel ‘actively working’ to strip Jordan of Al-Aqsa custodianship, sources say

    US and Israel ‘actively working’ to strip Jordan of Al-Aqsa custodianship, sources say

    A controversial covert plan backed by senior U.S. and Israeli figures to dismantle Jordan’s century-old custodianship of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque complex has been revealed by multiple anonymous sources in an exclusive reporting to Middle East Eye, threatening to upend decades of regional stability and upend the long-standing status quo governing one of the Muslim world’s most revered religious sites.

    Multiple layers of sources—including serving U.S., Jordanian, Palestinian, Western and Gulf Arab officials—have confirmed the proposal is being spearheaded by former White House advisor Jared Kushner, who holds no official role in the current U.S. administration, and current U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. Under the terms of the draft plan, the Jordanian-backed Islamic Waqf, which has overseen day-to-day administration of the site for generations, would be stripped of all governing authority immediately. A new Israeli-created regulatory body would reclassify the 35-acre compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, as a multi-faith religious center, granting Jews equal access and formal permission for organized large-group communal prayer on the site, which has been an exclusively Islamic holy site under the long-standing international status quo.

    The plan would also grant the Israeli government significant influence over key personnel decisions at the mosque, including the appointment of imams, senior clerics and preachers, as well as approval power over the content of weekly Friday sermons. Two senior U.S. officials confirmed that Washington has already drafted a policy document outlining this vision for the site’s future, stating the Trump administration’s goal is to erase the site’s exclusive Muslim identity and rebrand it as a cross-religious tourist landmark open to followers of all three Abrahamic faiths.

    According to one proposal that has circulated among regional stakeholders, Arab nations including Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates have already received briefings on the plan and could be offered rotating oversight responsibilities for the complex. Multiple Gulf Arab sources and a source familiar with Jordanian government policy confirmed that Saudi Arabia—Jordan’s close historic ally—has already publicly taken a stance opposing the proposal.

    The idea of altering Al-Aqsa’s governance was first raised by Israeli officials to the U.S. government nearly a decade ago, but gained new momentum after Huckabee took up his post as U.S. ambassador last year. A devout Evangelical Christian and long-time hardline pro-Israel advocate who has openly supported illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, Huckabee has repeatedly pressured Washington to move forward with the plan, sources say. A source familiar with Jordan’s position noted the U.S. has long resented Amman’s frequent use of its custodianship status to file formal complaints against Israeli actions at the compound, most recently this month when Jordan’s parliament formally condemned Israeli seizures of Palestinian property and Islamic endowments in areas adjacent to the mosque.

    The proposal also leaves the future of Jerusalem’s Christian holy sites—for which Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy also holds formal custodianship, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Ascension, plus a veto over appointments to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem—unaddressed, a gap that has sparked deep new concerns among regional stakeholders. “This plan says nothing about the Christian sites, which raises a whole new set of concerns,” one senior source told MEE.

    A senior Jordanian government official reaffirmed Amman’s unwavering position on the issue, stressing that Hashemite custodianship of Jerusalem’s holy sites is formally recognized under international law and binding bilateral treaties, including Article 9 of the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty. The official added that Jordan is coordinating closely with Palestinian, Arab and international partners to protect the sites’ Arab, Islamic and Christian identity and block any attempt to alter the historical and legal status quo.

    The current governing framework for Al-Aqsa, the status quo arrangement, has been in place for more than half a century. Following Israel’s 1967 seizure of East Jerusalem, the two countries reached a formal agreement that left the Islamic Waqf in charge of all internal religious and administrative affairs at the compound, while Israel retained control over external security. Under the terms of this arrangement, non-Muslims are permitted to visit during set time windows, but are barred from holding prayer services at the site. For Jewish communities, the site holds deep religious significance as the location of the two ancient Jewish temples destroyed in antiquity.

    Jordanian and Palestinian officials warn the proposed new framework closely mirrors Israel’s long-standing policy at Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, also known to Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Following a 1994 massacre carried out by an Israeli extremist settler that killed 29 Muslim worshippers, Israel imposed a formal division of the site, allocating 63% of the compound to Jewish worship even though the site is equally revered by all three Abrahamic faiths as the burial place of the Prophet Abraham.

    For Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, custodianship of Jerusalem’s holy sites is a core pillar of its domestic and regional legitimacy. The ruling family’s claim to custodianship dates back to 1924, shortly after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Islamic Caliphate, when the British Mandate administration granted the Hashemites oversight of Jerusalem’s Muslim and Christian holy sites after the family lost control of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest sites, to the Al Saud dynasty. The custodianship was later reaffirmed in the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, which explicitly recognized Amman’s special role in governing Jerusalem’s Islamic holy sites.

    For years, Palestinian and Jordanian officials have warned that the status quo is being steadily eroded by successive Israeli governments and emboldened far-right nationalist groups pushing for greater Jewish control of the compound. Frequent Israeli police raids inside the mosque, growing numbers of visits by ultranationalist Jewish activists, and repeated calls by senior Israeli cabinet ministers for formal Jewish prayer rights at the site have led to widespread accusations that Israel is incrementally altering the long-standing arrangement. Waqf officials have also repeatedly documented that Israel imposes harsh restrictions on Palestinian worshippers and blocks the Waqf from carrying out critical maintenance and repair work at the site.

    Mustafa Abu Sway, deputy head of the Waqf council, described Hashemite custodianship as an non-negotiable foundation for regional peace. “The Hashemite Custodianship is a cornerstone for stability in the region, undermining it is tantamount to undermining the very principles for peace,” he said, adding that Palestinians view Jordan’s role as a strategic lifeline that has consistently defended the status quo in international forums including UNESCO.

    The Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate said it had not received formal notification of the proposal but rejected it outright, noting that there has already been a dangerous escalation in Israeli interference in the Waqf’s work, including restrictions on Waqf security and staff, and growing incursions into the compound by extremist Israeli settlers.

    Gulf Arab sources say Jordan, which relies on regional support to counter the U.S.-Israeli proposal, can count on Saudi opposition to the plan. Saudi Arabia fully understands that any move to alter Hashemite custodianship would ignite widespread anger across the Middle East and inflame regional conflict, one senior Gulf Arab source said. “The Saudis may have disagreements with Jordan on some issues, but on Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa they understand the consequences of dismantling the existing arrangement,” the source added.

    In recent years, Jordanian Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah has built a close working relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with bilateral ties deepening following the 2020 Abraham Accords that saw a number of Arab states normalize relations with Israel. It remains unclear how Saudi Arabia would respond if the UAE or Bahrain chooses to publicly back the proposal, sources noted.

    Since signing the Abraham Accords, both the UAE and Bahrain have significantly deepened political, economic and security ties with Israel, even as regional anger over Israeli actions in Jerusalem and Gaza has grown. The UAE has positioned itself as Israel’s closest Arab partner, expanding cooperation across trade, technology, energy and defense sectors. Emirati-backed diplomatic and religious initiatives have also promoted a framework of multi-faith coexistence that Jordanian and Palestinian officials fear could be used to legitimize changes to Al-Aqsa’s historical status quo. In 2023, the UAE opened a state-backed multi-faith complex in Abu Dhabi housing a mosque, church and synagogue. Bahrain has similarly built close ties with Israel, framing its engagement as a critical tool to counter Iran, and has generally avoided public criticism of Israeli policy in Jerusalem, stoking fears it is willing to accommodate Israeli demands over the holy sites.

    “They [UAE and Bahrain] understand how explosive this issue is in the Arab and Muslim world,” a Gulf Arab source said. “Given that they are closely aligned with Israel, they should be cautious about publicly supporting changes to the status quo.”

    MEE reached out to the foreign ministries of Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the UAE for comment, but received no response prior to publication. The Jordanian government, which has banned MEE access in the country since May 2025, acknowledged receipt of questions but declined to comment.

  • Cambodia’s new conscription law takes effect in wake of conflict with Thailand

    Cambodia’s new conscription law takes effect in wake of conflict with Thailand

    PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – Cambodia’s overhauled military conscription framework, which carries criminal penalties of up to five years behind bars for people who refuse mandated military service, officially entered into force on Monday, according to Prime Minister Hun Manet. The new law was formally signed into effect this past Saturday by Senate President Hun Sen, who stepped in as acting head of state while Cambodia’s monarch King Norodom Sihamoni receives ongoing medical care for prostate cancer in Beijing. The push to update the country’s decades-old draft rules comes on the heels of two deadly outbreaks of cross-border armed clashes with neighboring Thailand last year, a series of conflicts that claimed roughly 100 lives and forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes near the shared border.

    Structured across eight chapters and 20 individual articles, the updated regulation replaces a 2006 conscription law that was never put into practice and had long been labeled outdated by policymakers. Under the new guidelines, all Cambodian men between the ages of 18 and 25 are required to complete a two-year active service term in the national military, while female citizens are eligible to enlist on a voluntary basis. Recipients of conscription summons are legally mandated to report for processing within 30 days of receiving their official notice, unless they can demonstrate a qualified, legitimate exemption; failure to meet this requirement results in being formally classified as a draft evader.

    Penalties for evasion are tiered based on whether the nation is in a state of peace or active conflict. During peacetime, convicted evaders face between six months and two years of imprisonment, plus financial fines ranging from $250 to $1,000. If the country is at war or facing an imminent foreign incursion, the penalties jump to 2 to 5 years in prison and fines between $1,000 and $2,500.

    A narrow set of groups qualify for permanent exemptions from the mandatory service requirement, including Buddhist monks, recognized religious clergy, people with permanent disabilities, and individuals holding high-demand specialized skills in science and technology. After completing their mandatory active service, conscripts transition to the national military reserve force and remain eligible for reserve activation until they turn 45 years old.

    Speaking to Cambodian lawmakers earlier in October, Prime Minister Hun Manet framed the new law as a critical institutional foundation for nurturing national identity among young Cambodians, encouraging love of country, building a culture of patriotism, and cultivating a widespread willingness to serve the nation’s defense needs. This policy shift comes as Cambodia continues to navigate lingering regional border tensions and seeks to strengthen its national defense capabilities following last year’s deadly clashes.