标签： Asia

A months-long confrontation between Iran, the United States, and Israel has sent shockwaves through the Middle East, crippling global shipping through the critical Strait of Hormuz and pushing international oil prices sharply upward. At the center of regional debate this week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi delivered a defiant address asserting that Tehran’s sustained resistance against the US-Israeli campaign has cemented Iran’s status as an unbreakable global power.

Speaking during a televised press conference Tuesday, as reported by Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency, Araghchi shared that international officials have repeatedly told him that Iran has defied all global expectations. “No one thought that Iran could resist America like this,” he noted, pointing out that Washington launched its campaign alongside broad backing from Israel, Western nations, and other international partners. He reminded audiences that at the opening of the conflict, the US president publicly called for Iran’s “Unconditional surrender” on social media. Two decades later, that same opposing force is now seeking diplomatic negotiations, he said.

Araghchi’s assertive remarks were echoed in warnings from Anwar Gargash, senior diplomatic advisor to United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who cautioned Tuesday that the Middle East cannot sustain its current stalemate of “neither war nor peace.” In a post on the social platform X, Gargash argued that the region’s core priority must be a transition toward long-term, sustainable stability guided by transparent, mutually agreed international rules. The veteran Emirati diplomat stressed that any future agreement between Washington and Tehran cannot be built on “shaky foundations or arrangements detached from international law,” and called for a broad regional settlement rooted in “peaceful coexistence, respect for sovereignty, and the logic of peace.” His comments come as bilateral talks between the US and Iran remain stalled, with both sides repeatedly warning that large-scale fighting could resume at any time.

The ongoing conflict has already inflicted severe disruption on the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most vital chokepoint for global oil and commodity trade. Data from analytics firm Kpler, cited by Reuters, shows that only six vessels transited the strait on Monday, a dramatic drop from the previous 10-day average of 11 ships. Before the outbreak of war, the waterway accommodated between 130 and 140 commercial vessels daily. The sharp decline in shipping has already triggered measurable shifts in the global energy market: by Tuesday, Brent crude climbed to nearly $90 per barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate crude crossed the $84 per barrel threshold.

For Iran’s domestic economy, the maritime blockade imposed by the US-led coalition has created an existential economic challenge, leading top Iranian business figures to push for urgent action to end the disruption. Majid Reza Hariri, a prominent Iranian business leader, warned that Tehran cannot simply adapt to the ongoing blockade, telling local outlet Khabar Online that the restriction must be lifted by any means necessary. “Whether through negotiations, requests, threats, or even using force and starting a war again, this maritime blockade must end,” Hariri said.

He calculated that rerouting all imports to overland transportation instead of maritime shipping would add an estimated $18 billion annually to Iran’s total import costs. To illustrate the gap, he noted that shipping a single container from China costs roughly $3,000 by sea, compared to $12,000 overland. “The worst thing that could happen today is to think we can bypass the maritime blockade and try to run the country despite it,” Hariri argued. “We must not allow our economy – or the enemy – to get used to the maritime blockade.”

The conflict has also sparked fresh domestic political friction in the United States, where top congressional Democrat Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader, launched a sharp rebuke of former President Donald Trump’s handling of the war. Schumer accused Trump of launching an illegal conflict with no clear exit strategy, writing on X that “Donald Trump got us into an illegal war, is losing his illegal war, and has no way out of his illegal war.” He added that Trump’s “lack of strategy, discipline, and any ability to seriously negotiate is endangering our troops and raising prices for everyday Americans.”

Separately, regional tensions expanded this week as Israel dramatically escalated military attacks on southern Lebanon, violating a US-brokered ceasefire framework reached between the two parties in June. Lebanon’s National News Agency reported intensive concentrated artillery barrages on the Ali al-Taher hills near the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh. On Monday, Israeli armored units advanced into the border towns of Zawtar el-Charqiyeh and Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh, where Israeli engineering vehicles demolished residential homes, local reports confirmed.

Data from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) underscores the scale of the escalation: between Friday and Sunday, the force recorded 455 Israeli artillery projectiles fired into Lebanon and 97 separate violations of Lebanese airspace, marking the heaviest bombardment in months. Unifil noted that Saturday’s 229 projectiles marked “the highest single-day total since 21 June.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei issued a swift response, “strongly condemn[ing] the brutal attacks” that have killed and injured civilian residents and destroyed critical civilian infrastructure. The latest escalation comes just after the seventh round of Lebanese-Israeli diplomatic talks held in Rome, laying bare the growing gap between US-led diplomatic efforts to de-escalate and Israel’s ongoing military expansion along the Lebanese border.

In the weeks following the July NATO summit held in Ankara, Turkish government officials have privately concluded that an Israeli intelligence report warning of an Iranian plot to assassinate then-U.S. President Donald Trump during the event was a deliberate fabrication designed to disrupt ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations, multiple sources familiar with the internal discussions told Middle East Eye.

The high-stakes summit, held on 7 and 8 July, put Ankara on total security lockdown. The Turkish government rearranged civilian schedules, granting all public servants a full week of administrative leave to clear city streets, blocked major roadways and pedestrian corridors, and repurposed the military-controlled Etimesgut Air Base (dubbed Ankara Airport for the summit) to cut travel time for visiting heads of state from the tarmac to the summit venue to just 10 minutes. On 8 July, around 2:00 p.m., reporters on the ground already noted an unusual increase in security deployments around the airbase, where Trump’s presidential aircraft was parked.

It was shortly after this visible buildup that U.S. intelligence officials shared the Israeli-originated threat assessment with their Turkish counterparts: the report claimed an Iranian covert operations unit planned to target Trump’s new Air Force One with Man-portable air-defense systems (Manpads) fired from within a 1-kilometer radius of the runway. Unlike Ankara’s main international hub Esenboga Airport, the repurposed Ankara Airport is ringed by civilian residential and commercial buildings, some sitting as close as 500 meters from the runway, creating an immediate vulnerability that pushed security teams to act fast.

The U.S. Secret Service, which already viewed the threat as credible amid two prior alleged Iranian plots targeting Trump, moved quickly to revise security arrangements. First, officials shifted Trump’s departure point from Ankara Airport to Esenboga Airport, where civilian structures sit much farther from airport perimeters. They then swapped the new, unprotected Air Force One for the older model, which is outfitted with integrated air defense systems. According to reporting from The Washington Post, the Secret Service went a step further: after Trump boarded the older Air Force One, he was secretly moved to an accompanying U.S. government C-32 transport plane via a borrowed Turkish catering vehicle, a movement captured in a viral social media post from journalist John Hudson.

Turkish officials, who coordinated last-minute landing approvals for the extra C-32 and accommodated the abrupt schedule changes, told MEE that the chaotic last-minute shifts immediately raised red flags in Ankara. The threat arrived at an unusually sensitive moment for regional diplomacy: Trump was actively engaged in negotiations with Iran to end the ongoing war and reopen the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, a position that ran directly counter to the agenda of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had publicly pushed for a resumption of full hostilities against Iran, including expanded strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure and a renewed campaign of targeted assassinations against Iranian leadership.

During Trump’s pre-summit meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sources present told MEE that Trump repeatedly stated the war with Iran was effectively over and expressed optimism about the outcome of ongoing negotiations. Trump also signaled he was prepared to roll back U.S. sanctions imposed on Turkey over its 2019 purchase of Russian-made S-400 air defense systems, and move forward with a long-delayed sale of F-35 fifth-generation fighter jets to Ankara – a move Netanyahu has repeatedly opposed, arguing it would erode Israel’s decades-held Qualitative Military Edge in the Middle East.

Turkish assessments of the Israeli intelligence report conclude it was likely a deliberate ploy by Netanyahu’s government to position itself as a trusted ally warning Trump of danger, derail the nascent U.S.-Iran negotiations, and damage the warming relationship between Trump and Erdogan. While Turkish security teams took the threat seriously and coordinated fully with U.S. counterparts to implement new precautions, senior Turkish officials quickly became convinced the plot could not be real.

Ankara’s skepticism is rooted in decades of regional security dynamics: though Iran has targeted exiled dissidents on Turkish soil with small-scale attacks using simple firearms, it has never attempted a complex, high-profile operation involving heavy weaponry like Manpads in Turkish territory. Pulling off such an attack would require moving man-portable missiles through multiple layers of NATO summit security checkpoints and roadblocks, establishing safe houses and covert transit routes in a city under total lockdown – a feat that Turkish intelligence views as functionally impossible. Any successful attack would also force Turkey into an open conflict with Iran, a neighbor with which Ankara has maintained stable diplomatic relations throughout the war, and for which Iran has already thanked Turkey for refusing to back what it calls a Western-backed Kurdish insurrection in western Iran.

An Ankara-based security insider added that the timed leak of the Secret Service’s emergency security operation just one month after the summit only reinforced Turkish suspicions. “I guess they need heroes for an attack that never happened and, most likely, was never planned,” the insider told MEE.

Middle East Eye has reached out to the White House and Israeli Foreign Ministry for comment on the allegations, and had not received a response at the time of publication.

Just one week after his inauguration as Colombia’s new far-right head of state, Abelardo de la Espriella has upended his predecessor’s Middle East policy by formally recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel has occupied since defeating Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.

In an official public statement released Monday, the Colombian administration confirmed its new position, noting: “The Government of Colombia recognises Israeli sovereignty over this territory, as well as that State’s right to protect itself against external threats.” The statement further emphasized that Bogota views Israeli control and sovereign authority over the Golan Heights as a critical element of Israel’s national defense framework.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar publicly praised the decision a day prior, calling the recognition a “historic” step and thanking de la Espriella, whom he referred to as a “good friend.” Prior to Colombia’s announcement, the United States remained the only United Nations member state to formally acknowledge Israel’s claim to the disputed territory.

The policy shift marks a deliberate reversal of the course set by de la Espriella’s predecessor, Gustavo Petro, a progressive leader who was one of the most outspoken backers of the Palestinian cause in Latin America. During his tenure, Petro repeatedly condemned what he framed as Israeli genocide against Palestinian civilians in Gaza following the outbreak of hostilities in October 2023. Under Petro’s leadership, Colombia co-founded and co-chaired the Hague Group, a multilateral coalition of nations dedicated to holding Israel accountable for alleged violations of international law in its treatment of Palestinians. After the Gaza war began, Bogota withdrew its ambassador from Tel Aviv and suspended all coal exports to Israel.

De la Espriella’s decision aligns Colombia with a growing conservative, pro-Israel shift that has reshaped Latin American politics in recent years, a trend that has been widely welcomed by Israeli leadership. The shift gained momentum following the 2025 election of conservative President Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia, which led to the resumption of full diplomatic and cordial relations between La Paz and Israel. In March 2026, pro-Israel candidate Jose Antonio Kast took office as president of Chile, further expanding the bloc of Latin American governments aligned with Tel Aviv. Argentina’s President Javier Milei remains the most vocal of these allies, having famously declared, “If Israel falls, all of the West is next.”

This report was compiled and distributed by Middle East Eye, an outlet that delivers independent, in-depth coverage and analysis of developments across the Middle East, North Africa, and surrounding regions.

In a bombshell new report from leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israel is currently detaining the remains of roughly 1,700 Palestinians to use as potential bargaining chips in future talks—even after Palestinian armed groups have returned all captured Israeli hostages and their remains. The report outlines that the country’s domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, is led by director David Zini, who has publicly pushed for Israel to hold onto the remains for future hostage negotiation leverage, a stance that has received full backing from the Israeli military. According to Haaretz’s breakdown, the vast majority of the retained remains are linked to Palestinian fighters who participated in the October 7, 2023 attack led by Hamas, but the collection also includes the bodies of Palestinian civilians and 13 Israeli citizens who died alongside them. Legal experts and sources quoted in the investigation have raised serious objections to the policy, noting that Israel has no legal or official authority to hold the remains of non-combatant Palestinians, as no formal Security Cabinet policy backs the decision. The report builds on earlier reporting from the same Israeli outlet from July 2025, which exposed one high-profile case of a detained Palestinian photographer, a father of four, who was arrested in December 2023 and died in custody just one day later at the Erez Crossing detention facility. Israeli authorities only admitted to holding his remains in response to a petition filed with the High Court of Justice, and to date, no autopsy has been performed on his body. It was not until July 2025 that the photographer’s family learned of his death, after submitting a court petition through Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization focused on Palestinian freedom of movement. Even after notifying the family of his passing, Israeli officials have refused to release key details about the date, location, or specific circumstances of his death, as well as any legal justification for retaining his remains. Israeli authorities have labeled the photographer a “military Hamas operative,” a claim the family has forcefully denied. The July 2025 Gisha report put the number of Palestinian remains held by Israel after death in custody at more than 100, originating from both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At least 68 of these retained remains are people from Gaza. In court proceedings, Israeli state representatives acknowledged that a formal review of the policy of holding these remains was underway, but that the review has been put on hold indefinitely amid the ongoing conflict with Iran. Israel’s policy of seizing and holding remains of Palestinians killed by its forces is not a new practice, and for years it has drawn widespread condemnation from international human rights organizations, which have repeatedly called for the immediate return of all remains to their grieving families. International humanitarian law mandates that all deceased people must be treated with dignity. The International Committee of the Red Cross notes that these legal standards are designed in large part to prevent people from being listed as missing, and to ensure that families receive clarity about the fate of their loved ones. The Fourth Geneva Convention, a cornerstone of international humanitarian law, further requires that the bodies of deceased detainees must be given honorable burial, that their graves must be properly maintained and clearly marked to allow for future identification. The convention also mandates that the dead must be treated in accordance with the religious rites of the deceased’s faith wherever possible. While this policy violates international humanitarian standards, it is permitted under Israeli domestic law, and has been systematically implemented across the occupied Palestinian territories for decades. In a November 2025 report from Reuters, Palestinian armed groups confirmed that all remains of Israeli captives had already been returned to Israel as part of a broader exchange agreement that was supposed to result in the return of Palestinian remains to their families. As of this reporting, that exchange has not been completed on the Israeli side, leaving more than a thousand families waiting for the return of their loved ones to carry out proper burial rites. This coverage is originally reported by Middle East Eye, an independent outlet providing unmatched reporting and analysis on the Middle East, North Africa, and surrounding regions.

A prominent Israeli anti-settlement advocacy group, Peace Now, has issued a damning new report accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government of carrying out a coordinated, undeclared campaign to annex the occupied West Bank in violation of the decades-old Oslo Accords, the landmark 1990s framework that established a temporary power-sharing arrangement between Israel and the Palestinian people.

Peace Now, which has long tracked Israeli settlement expansion and violations of interim agreements in the West Bank, outlined a series of interconnected steps the administration has taken to extend Israeli civilian control, expand illegal settlements, and systematically erode the authority of the Palestinian Authority across all regions of the West Bank. The report, which was first obtained and published by Israeli outlet Ynet on Tuesday, warns that these incremental actions put Israeli security at grave risk by breaking long-standing international commitments.

“Netanyahu’s government is playing with fire, disregarding its international commitments and endangering Israel’s security – all in order to take control of more territory and land in the West Bank,” the movement wrote in its findings.

One of the most consequential policy shifts came in February of this year, when Israel’s security cabinet approved expanding the authority of the Israeli Civil Administration – a department within Israel’s defense ministry that manages civilian affairs in occupied territories – to enforce regulations and oversee environmental protection, water management, and archaeological projects in West Bank Areas A and B. Previously, Israeli civilian interventions in these zones were largely restricted, even as Israeli military operations have frequently been carried out there for years.

Israeli government officials defended the move, framing it as a necessary step to mitigate environmental risks and prevent damage to culturally significant heritage sites. But Peace Now argues the broad wording of the new regulatory framework gives Israeli civilian authorities carte blanche to interfere with nearly all Palestinian construction projects across most of the West Bank.

To understand the significance of this shift, it is necessary to revisit the terms of the 1995 Oslo II Accords, which divided the West Bank into three administrative zones as a temporary interim arrangement that remains in place decades later: Area A, which contains major Palestinian population centers and is designated to fall under full Palestinian Authority control for both civil governance and internal security; Area B, which includes smaller towns and rural communities, where the Palestinian Authority manages civil affairs while security responsibilities are split between Israel and the Palestinians; and Area C, which makes up roughly 60 percent of the total West Bank territory, is under full Israeli civil and security control, and hosts the vast majority of Israeli settlements and military outposts built on seized Palestinian land.

In June, the Civil Administration moved to strip the Palestinian municipal government of Hebron – a flashpoint city in the southern West Bank – of its broad planning and construction authority over territory surrounding Israeli settlements and several key holy sites located in the city’s central district. Just one month later, in July, the Israeli military issued formal land requisition orders seizing Palestinian private property inside Area A to build a new road connecting two existing Israeli settlements. Peace Now notes that this marks the first time since the Oslo Accords were signed that Israel has used military seizure orders in Area A for an explicitly civilian settlement purpose, rather than for officially declared military needs.

The advocacy group’s researchers also documented at least 23 new unauthorized settler outposts established in Area B over the past 30 months. Even in rare cases where the Israeli military removes these illegal outposts, Peace Now found, settlers quickly return to rebuild and expand the sites, often adding permanent concrete structures. These outposts have been paired with the construction of unauthorized access roads, the seizure of critical Palestinian water sources, and the forced displacement of local Palestinian communities. In addition, settlers have taken over abandoned Palestinian homes in both Areas B and C after original residents were forced to flee their properties following repeated violent attacks by Israeli settler groups.

Crucially, the report emphasizes that these actions are not random, isolated incidents: instead, they form a deliberate, coordinated state policy whose end goal is to force the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, create widespread political chaos across the occupied territories, and clear the way for further Israeli settlement expansion deep into Palestinian population centers across the West Bank. Beyond territorial changes, the report adds, the government is waging a consistent, organized campaign to weaken the Palestinian Authority across economic, political, and security domains.

One of the most powerful tools the Israeli government uses to pressure the Palestinian Authority is the withholding of tax and customs revenues that Israel collects on the Palestinian government’s behalf under the 1994 Paris Protocol economic agreement. These revenues add up to roughly 11 billion Israeli shekels, equal to around $3.66 billion, annually, and historically make up more than 60 percent of the Palestinian Authority’s total operating budget, per Ynet data.

Peace Now’s analysis found that only around half of the funds owed to the Palestinian Authority have been transferred by the current Netanyahu government between 2022 and 2025. As of June 2025, no funds have been transferred at all, according to the report.

While the Israeli government has not formally taken legislative action to abolish the Oslo Accords, officially annex the entire West Bank, or dissolve the Palestinian Authority, Peace Now argues that the cumulative effect of all these incremental measures adds up to a process of undeclared de facto annexation on the ground.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right proponent of full West Bank annexation, rejected the report’s criticism and instead framed its findings as a victory for the current administration. “What they call ‘the erosion of Oslo’ we call correcting an injustice resulting from 30 years of neglect,” he told Ynet. “What they call ‘de facto annexation’ we call establishing Israel’s security belt. I am proud of the settlement revolution I have led to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state in the heart of the country. This is only the beginning.”

Iran’s domestic political arena has entered a period of unprecedented polarisation, with two deeply opposed ideological and political camps now vying for control over the country’s future direction. At the heart of the confrontation is a critical debate over whether to move forward with a negotiated agreement with the United States that would bring an end to nearly six months of open hostilities between the two nations. On one side are moderate and pragmatic factions led by reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian and conservative Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, both of whom have publicly committed to advancing diplomatic talks with Washington. On the opposing side are hard-line Principlists, who have launched a coordinated campaign to derail any potential agreement and remove the two top leaders from their positions of influence.

Principlists have explicitly framed their opposition as a fight to protect their political standing: they warn that any successful deal with the US would empower moderate political forces, ultimately marginalising hard-liners and eroding their decades-long grip on Iran’s key institutions. This high-stakes internal power struggle erupted into public view last week when a leaked video of Mohammad-Bagher Kharrazi – brother-in-law to Masoud Khamenei, the younger sibling of Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – was distributed to media outlets. Critics of the hard-line camp describe the leak as a core part of a broader smear campaign orchestrated by Principlists to undermine support for negotiations.

In the leaked recording, Kharrazi made explosive claims, asserting that the Supreme Leader had issued a formal public warning that if President Pezeshkian attempted to resign one more time, his departure from office would be immediately accepted. Kharrazi added that Pezeshkian, who he claimed had threatened to step down between 27 and 28 times during his tenure, no longer had the political courage to raise the prospect of resignation. He also alleged that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a key architect of the US negotiation effort, had been completely sidelined from talks following a direct order from the Supreme Leader.

Within hours of the video’s circulation, the public relations office of the Supreme Leader issued a formal denial of the claims attributed to Kharrazi, though it did not name him directly. Just days later, however, a separate leaked audio recording emerged that complicated the narrative, featuring Ali Saeedi, a senior conservative figure with close ties to the Supreme Leader’s office. In the recording, Saeedi claimed that the Supreme Leader not only supports the ongoing negotiation efforts but has publicly criticised hard-line opposition to diplomacy.

According to Saeedi’s account, the Supreme Leader told one of his brothers: “I have never opposed negotiations, and I still do not. I was the one who authorised the negotiations, and I am not satisfied with the hard-line positions adopted by some people.” Saeedi also added that the Supreme Leader holds Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf in high regard, comparing him to the revered late Quds Force commander Haj Qassem Soleimani and confirming his continued support for Ghalibaf’s role in the negotiation process.

Background reporting from senior political sources reveals that the current confrontation is rooted in long-running tensions over the supreme leadership succession. A senior reformist source told Middle East Eye that Principlists did not initially support Mojtaba Khamenei’s ascent to the supreme leadership following his father’s passing. Instead, the hard-line faction backed their own candidates for Iran’s top post: the former president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a 2024 helicopter crash, and hard-line cleric Mohammad Mahdi Mirbaqeri, a prominent advocate of civilisational confrontation with the West who rejects most forms of modernity and Western-origin technology.

In the years leading up to Khamenei’s ascension, the reformist source added, Principlists have repeatedly targeted members of Khamenei’s inner circle to undermine their credibility. Most recently, they levelled corruption accusations against Mahdi Khamoushi, a senior official widely tipped to become the next chief of staff to the Supreme Leader, as part of their effort to weaken Khamenei’s core support base.

The source also noted that while Khamenei holds some ideological views that align with hard-line positions, he was not the public face of the ultraconservative movement over the past decade. Instead, he was caught in a bitter succession struggle, during which influential hard-line figures including Raisi’s political camp worked to block his rise to power. The source credits a shift in regional dynamics triggered by former US President Donald Trump’s policies with altering the internal political landscape, creating a more favourable path for Khamenei to assume the supreme leadership.

A separate conservative source, speaking to Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Principlists are currently working to mobilise their grassroots base of conservative and hard-line supporters against Ghalibaf specifically. Their strategy, the source explained, is to position themselves as the only truly reliable defenders of the Supreme Leader among Iran’s religious and political class, while painting Ghalibaf as disloyal. As part of this push, Principlists have repeatedly accused Ghalibaf of bypassing the Supreme Leader to advance his own negotiation agenda, in an effort to erode Khamenei’s trust in the parliament speaker.

Despite these ongoing attacks, the conservative source confirmed that the Supreme Leader continues to trust and support Ghalibaf, noting that if Khamenei had lost confidence in Ghalibaf, he would have already removed him from his role overseeing negotiations with the US.

A reformist political analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity to Middle East Eye, summed up the core goal of the Principlist campaign: “They want to turn Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf into political outcasts and ultimately push the supreme leader into turning against them.” The analyst explained that ultraconservatives see any successful deal with the US as an existential threat to their power, because an agreement would empower moderate factions and significantly reduce hard-line influence over Iranian policy. As a result, they are determined to obstruct the negotiation process by any means necessary.

Crucially, the analyst added, the ultraconservative camp does not hold enough sway in Iran’s key centres of power to derail negotiations on their own. To compensate for this gap, they have increasingly mobilised their grassroots supporters, organising a series of angry sit-ins and public protests targeting the negotiation team. These demonstrations are designed to raise the political cost for Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf as they push forward with diplomatic efforts, making it more difficult for them to sustain momentum for a deal.

In a landmark ruling marking the first major legal action against ousted former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad since his flight from power, a Damascus court issued death sentences on Tuesday to Assad, his younger brother Maher al-Assad, and former senior security official Atef Najib. The convictions center on charges of premeditated murder, systematic torture, and incitement to targeted killing that span more than a decade of conflict.

Court documents confirm Bashar al-Assad was found guilty on multiple counts, including the premeditated killing of civilians — among them children — alongside arbitrary detention, widespread torture, and crimes against humanity. Atef Najib, a cousin of the former president who was taken into custody by new authorities in January 2024, was convicted in person on identical charges, with specific convictions for the intentional killing of children under 15 years old and torture that resulted in death. Both Bashar and Maher al-Assad were tried in absentia, after the pair fled Syria for Moscow in December 2024 as armed opposition groups advanced on Damascus and toppled the decades-long Assad family regime.

The verdict is the first high-profile conviction of former Assad regime figures issued by Syria’s new transitional government, which launched a widespread prosecution campaign this year targeting former officials both in custody and at large. The case closes a 14-year chapter of authoritarian rule that began when Bashar al-Assad, born in 1965, took power in 2000 following the death of his father and long-time ruler Hafez al-Assad. For 24 years, the Assad family maintained tight authoritarian control, cementing the political dominance of the minority Alawite sect in Syria’s majority Sunni population, and aligning the country closely with Iran while maintaining persistent hostility toward Israel and the United States.

The eruption of mass pro-democracy protests during the 2011 Arab Spring marked the turning point for Assad’s rule. When government forces led by Assad launched a brutal violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators, the unrest escalated into a full-scale armed uprising that plunged the country into 14 years of catastrophic civil war. The conflict quickly drew in global and regional powers, with Russia and Iran providing consistent military and political backing to the Assad regime, while the United States, Turkey, and other nations supported various opposition factions at different stages of the war.

By the end of Assad’s rule, the United Nations estimates the conflict had killed hundreds of thousands of people, flattened critical civilian infrastructure across the country, and forced more than half of Syria’s pre-war population to flee their homes as internally displaced persons or refugees. The UN has confirmed the 14-year conflict left Syria grappling with an unprecedented, multi-layered political, economic, and humanitarian catastrophe that will require decades of recovery.

Throughout the conflict, international investigators and human rights groups documented widespread abuses tied directly to the Assad government. Credible reports confirm the regime carried out mass arbitrary detention, systematic torture, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and deliberate attacks on civilian populations. A United Nations-backed investigative mechanism found overwhelming evidence of a systematic pattern of abuse, including torture, sexual violence, and enforced disappearances, operating across more than 100 government-run detention facilities throughout Assad’s rule.

While the fall of the Assad regime opened a new political transition for Syria, UN experts have warned that human rights risks remain pervasive, with ongoing allegations of summary executions, forced displacement, and other abuses against civilian populations across different areas of the country as new governing structures take shape.