标签： Asia

On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed via social media that Iranian air defense forces shot down a cutting-edge U.S. Apache attack helicopter conducting patrol operations over the Strait of Hormuz, a revelation that directly undermines his earlier public statements declaring Iran’s air defense capabilities fully eliminated.

In his public post on the social platform, Trump noted that two pilots were aboard the downed aircraft, and both escaped the incident without injury. Despite no casualties being reported, the president stressed that the United States has no choice but to launch a response to the attack.

This incident comes at a moment of fragile détente between Washington and Tehran, just days after Trump intervened to de-escalate cross-border fighting between Israel and Iran. Just hours before he shared news of the helicopter downing on social media, Trump once again claimed that a comprehensive deal to end the ongoing regional conflict could be finalized within just two to three days — a repeated promise he has made dozens of times over recent months that has yet to produce any tangible progress.

The downing of the Apache is not an isolated event, and it is the latest in a string of military confrontations that have completely discredited Trump’s repeated assertions that Iran’s entire military infrastructure has been decimated. Back in April, Trump publicly claimed that the Islamic Republic’s navy and air force had both been completely destroyed, and that the vast majority of Iran’s missile stockpiles had either been expended or neutralized by coalition strikes. He went even further, stating that Iran no longer retained any functional anti-aircraft equipment, and that all of its radar systems had been 100 percent destroyed.

Recent Iranian military actions have directly contradicted these sweeping claims. Earlier this week, Tehran launched a wave of missile strikes targeting northern Israel, carried out as retaliation for Israeli airstrikes that hit Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Just last week, Iran responded to U.S. military strikes by launching a coordinated attack of drones and missiles against targets in Kuwait and Bahrain, which host major U.S. military bases.

While it remains true that the United States holds overwhelming conventional military superiority over Iran, allowing U.S. forces to strike most targets in the region at will using a combination of air, sea, and ground-launched weapons systems, Iran has repeatedly demonstrated that it retains the capacity to disrupt U.S. military operations in its airspace. This latest helicopter downing adds to a growing list of successful Iranian strikes on U.S. military aircraft: in April, Iran downed a U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet, forcing U.S. forces to launch a large-scale urgent search and rescue operation to prevent Iranian forces from capturing one of the downed airmen. To date, Iran has also shot down approximately 30 U.S. MQ-9 Reaper surveillance and combat drones.

This report is part of independent coverage from Middle East Eye, which provides unrivaled on-the-ground reporting and analysis of developments across the Middle East, North Africa, and surrounding regions.

Fewer than 10 Palestinian Americans have ever secured statewide elected office in the United States, and now 30-something Palestinian-American progressive organizer Aber Kawas is aiming to break that barrier and join their ranks this election cycle.

On June 23, the Queens-based Democratic socialist will face off against Filipino-American state assemblyman Steven Raga in the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th Senate District. The winner of the primary will advance to the November general midterm election, with the victorious candidate set to take office in January at New York’s state capital in Albany.

The race has already drawn notable political endorsements that tie it to a growing left-wing progressive wave reshaping New York politics: after Raga backed Zohran Mamdani’s historic 2025 New York City mayoral campaign, Mamdani threw his support behind Kawas in the 12th District primary just one week after his own primary win last year.

Kawas told Middle East Eye in an interview that Mamdani’s grassroots movement re-energized young, left-leaning New Yorkers who had grown disillusioned with mainstream politics. “The Mamdani movement gave so many young people, so many people who were leftist progressives, something to do, something to lean into, something to hope for, something to channel their despair into, and they worked to knock on those doors,” she said. “What we’re trying to capitalise on is that momentum and sustain it.”

Mamdani, once written off as a fringe outsider candidate, pulled off a shocking primary win last year running on an unapologetically left-wing platform that included expanded rent control and free public bus transit. What made national headlines, however, was his open, unflinching support for Palestinian rights amid Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which a growing number of scholars and international bodies have labeled a genocide. Despite widespread smears accusing him of antisemitism over his stance, post-election analysis confirmed his pro-Palestine position was a key factor that drove turnout and secured his victory.

For Kawas, support for Palestinian rights is not just a campaign position—it is personal. A Palestinian immigrant displaced from her ancestral homeland, she has spent decades organizing in Queens’ diverse communities, and her own family’s experience with U.S. immigration policy shaped her path into politics. In the years following the September 11, 2001 attacks, her undocumented father was swept up in a nationwide, aggressive crackdown on Muslim communities that included FBI raids, enforced disappearances, and mass surveillance of mosques and Muslim community institutions. He was detained for nearly three years in a mixed-use detention center that also held individuals accused of violent crimes, before being deported to Jordan.

Kawas grew up raising alongside her siblings in a single-parent household, a reality she says thousands of American families face today as the second Trump administration pursues an aggressive goal of carrying out one million deportations annually. “I never want this to happen to anyone else,” she said. “We used to fight for comprehensive immigration reform as a pathway to citizenship. Now we are just fighting against all of these [Trump-era] policies – the Muslim ban, visas being taken away. So I think it tells us, as the left movement…you need to be bold, you need to fight for your communities, you need to show up.”

Senate District 12, which covers the diverse western quadrant of Queens—one of the most demographically varied counties in the United States, home to New York City’s largest concentration of immigrant communities spanning dozens of national and ethnic backgrounds—includes neighborhoods such as Astoria, Long Island City, and Sunnyside. As a hijab-wearing Muslim Palestinian woman, Kawas is a familiar presence in the multicultural district, but she has already become a target of right-wing U.S. media outlets that have attacked her for past work with two national advocacy organizations: the Council on American Islamic Relations and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Both are registered, legally operating U.S. non-profits, but have faced repeated criticism from pro-Israel groups that falsely claim they contradict American values.

Kawas pushed back on these attacks, pointing to her decades of grassroots community organizing rooted in Queens’ Muslim and Arab communities. “I started organising in my mosque. I used to organise around mutual aid [and] drug addiction issues in the mosque, domestic violence issues in the mosque. That’s what I started doing as a young person,” she said. “I’ve organised in community-based organisations like the Arab American Association around immigrant rights, language accessibility, police reform. That’s my whole background. We need people who are going to go into the state legislature and challenge the status quo, create a political atmosphere that leadership needs to react to, that is going to move the Democratic party to act, that is going to show that we’re formidable.”

Kawas is well aware of the risks of running for office as a high-profile Palestinian Muslim in the current political climate. Data from the Muslim Public Affairs Council, released in April 2025, shows that anti-Muslim attacks on individuals and institutions across the U.S. have reached a 15-month high under the second Trump administration, with an 11-fold increase in targeted incidents recorded in the first three months of 2025 alone. Just months ago, a New York man was arrested on federal charges for plotting to firebomb the home of prominent Palestinian-American New York activist Nerdeen Kiswani. Around the same time, Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian activist from neighboring New Jersey and the longest-detained pro-Palestine protestor held by the Trump administration, was released after posting $100,000 bond.

Despite these risks, Kawas says two competing impulses pushed her to enter the race. On one hand, she shares a widespread sense of urgency and exhaustion among progressive organizers amid the current administration’s hardline policies. “One is because I just feel like we’re at our wits end as a movement…I’m in my mid-30s. I have conversations with my friends about whether or not to have children, right? Are children going to be able to survive the future politically?” she said. “Will they be able to afford the future or survive today’s political climate?”

On the other hand, she says the moment also brings unprecedented opportunity for progressive, pro-Palestine candidates to win office across the country, a shift she has watched unfold in recent primary contests. Earlier in June, Egyptian-American surgeon Adam Hamawy—who earned national attention for his life-saving 2024 medical mission to Gaza—handily won the Democratic primary for New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, all but guaranteeing he will take a seat in Congress next year. In May, progressive pro-Palestine Democrat Chris Rabb won his Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, and with no Republican candidate filed for the November general election, he is all but assured to win a seat in Congress.

Kawas is convinced the open pro-Palestine stances of these candidates were key to their recent primary victories. “When you express your support for Palestine, really, what that is signalling is that you are willing to speak out and speak truth to power, and I think that’s what people want out of their local politicians,” she said. “What you are saying is, I’m going to fight for the most marginalised, forgotten communities that so many politicians don’t centre.”

To date, Kawas has raised roughly $60,000, mostly from small individual grassroots donations, and trails Raga in total campaign fundraising. Even with the fundraising gap, she has earned high-profile endorsements from leading national progressive figures, including independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, Representative Rashida Tlaib.

Nearly 100 high-profile cultural, political and activist figures from across the globe have signed an open letter calling on a UK senior judge to abandon plans to apply a special terrorism designation to four climate and pro-Palestine activists ahead of their sentencing next week. The activists, already convicted of non-terrorism criminal damage charges for their action against an Israeli arms manufacturer’s UK facility, face drastically harsHER sentences if the terrorism connection is officially added to their charges.

The four defendants – Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Zainab Rajwani – are part of the grassroots activist collective known as the Filton 25. Their protest action dates back to August 2024, when they entered the Bristol-based UK branch of Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense contractor that produces military technology for the Israeli military. Following their entry to the site, the group was charged with a series of offenses, including criminal damage; two additional co-defendants, Jordan Devlin and Zoe Rogers, were ultimately cleared of all charges in court proceedings.

Last month, independent regional outlet Middle East Eye revealed a pivotal detail that had been kept hidden from the jury during the trial: prosecutors intend to request that Judge Jeremy Johnson, the presiding justice in the case, formally attach a “terrorism connection” to the activists’ convictions during the sentencing hearing scheduled for June 12. In a preliminary ruling issued in March 2025, Johnson already indicated he saw a plausible basis for the designation, arguing that the activists carried out their action to influence Israeli government policy by limiting its access to weaponry.

Crucially, the four activists were never formally charged with terrorism offenses, nor were they tried under UK counterterrorism legislation. The jury that convicted them of criminal damage was never informed of the prosecution’s plan to seek a terrorism connection, and never delivered any guilty verdict related to terror activity. This procedural irregularity is at the heart of the signatories’ criticism.

Prominent signatories to the letter span multiple creative and public fields: best-selling novelist Sally Rooney, climate activist Greta Thunberg, veteran actor Brian Cox, comedian Steve Coogan, actors Miriam Margolyes, Zoe Wanamaker and Zawe Ashton, musicians Charlotte Church and Kate Nash, and award-winning film directors Yorgos Lanthimos, Terry Gilliam and Ken Loach are among the high-profile backers of the plea.

The open letter argues that adding the terrorism designation at the sentencing stage, after the jury has already ruled on the actual charges brought against the activists, amounts to a deliberate bypass of the jury system that would constitute a severe miscarriage of justice with long-reaching ripple effects across UK law. It notes that this would be the first time a terrorism link has ever been applied in a UK criminal damage case, and that the risks to basic civil liberties and the right to peaceful protest in the country cannot be overstated.

The letter also contextualizes the activists’ action, explaining that the group exhausted all standard advocacy channels to push for an end to UK arms exports to Israel before taking direct action to disable equipment at the Elbit facility. “The Filton activists acted to uphold international law and defend human life,” the letter reads. “To sentence them on the basis of a ‘terrorism connection’ would not only be unjust and cruel: it would gravely undermine the right to protest and the impartiality of the judicial system itself.”

Most of the four defendants have already spent 18 months in pre-sentencing remand. In an independent comment released alongside the letter, Sally Rooney expanded on the gravity of the case, noting that “Protest that poses no threat to the public simply is not terrorism. These activists may have knowingly risked their freedom in taking action, but they now face the prospect of punishment for crimes they were never convicted of and did not commit. This is an obvious effort to undermine solidarity with Palestine, but what it really undermines is UK law.”

The case comes after a series of prior legal proceedings: the four activists are facing retrial after the original jury threw out aggravated burglary charges, and the previous jury delivered not guilty verdicts for violent disorder against Rajwani, Devlin and Rogers, while failing to reach a verdict on the same charge for the other three defendants. All eyes now turn to the June 12 sentencing hearing, as the public figures’ intervention has drawn broad attention to what campaigners call a landmark test for UK protest rights.