标签： Asia

For over half a century, Washington’s commitment to maintaining Israel’s military dominance over all regional rivals has anchored the decades-long alliance between the United States and Israel, shaping power dynamics across the entire Middle East. This core policy, formally known as Qualitative Military Edge (QME), has guided billions of dollars in U.S. military support, restricted arms sales to other regional states, and become a flashpoint for growing political controversy amid Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza.

The QME framework emerged in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, taking root during the Cold War when the U.S. and Soviet Union backed opposing blocs in the region. The first landmark step toward formalizing this commitment came in 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson approved the sale of 50 advanced F-4 Phantom fighter jets to Israel — a departure from earlier U.S. arms export restrictions to the country. When the 1973 Arab-Israeli War broke out, with Moscow pouring arms into Arab coalition forces, Washington responded with sweeping logistical and military backing for Israel. By 1977, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a key architect of Cold War U.S. foreign policy, framed Israeli security as a core moral priority for all democratic nations, cementing the policy’s ideological standing.

The 1980s marked the first explicit official use of the term “qualitative military edge”. In 1981, Secretary of State Alexander Haig confirmed before Congress that preserving Israel’s military superiority had been a central pillar of U.S. policy since the 1973 war. The policy’s influence extended to all U.S. arms deals in the region: when Washington sold F-15S Strike Eagle warplanes to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, the jets were fitted with downgraded radar technology, and Riyadh was barred from stationing the aircraft at its Tabuk airbase near the Israeli border to avoid threatening Israel’s advantage.

QME was formally codified into U.S. federal law in October 2008 under the George W. Bush administration via the Naval Vessel Transfer Act. The legislation legally bound the U.S. government to ensure that any arms exports to other Middle Eastern states do not undermine Israel’s military superiority, formally defining QME as Israel’s ability to defeat any credible conventional military threat — from individual states, coalitions, or non-state actors — with minimal casualties, through superior technology, weaponry, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. The law also mandated a quadrennial assessment of Israel’s military edge relative to regional neighbors, a requirement updated in 2013 by the Israel QME Enhancement Act, signed by President Barack Obama, to require assessments every two years.

Since the end of World War II, cumulative U.S. military aid to Israel has surpassed $240 billion when adjusted for inflation, making Israel the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign military assistance in modern history. The current framework for this support is a 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the Obama administration, which allocates a minimum of $3.8 billion in annual military aid to Israel through 2029 — the largest single military aid pledge in U.S. history. The agreement requires Israel to spend the vast majority of these funds on U.S.-manufactured military equipment, ensuring the investment cycles back to the American defense industry. At the time of the signing, Obama emphasized that “America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable”, noting that access to cutting-edge U.S. weapons technology would guarantee Israel’s ability to defend itself against all threats.

In the years following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza that human rights groups have labeled genocide, additional U.S. military support to Israel has surged to record levels. Congressional data shows that annual U.S. military contributions to Israel hit a new high of more than $12.5 billion in 2024.

At the center of current U.S. arms exports to Israel is the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter, manufactured by American defense giant Lockheed Martin with components supplied by eight partner nations including the United Kingdom and Germany. As the world’s most technologically advanced stealth jet, prized for its long range, 360-degree integrated sensors and radar evasion, the F-35 is also the most expensive weapons program in history, with total program costs exceeding $2 trillion and a per-unit price of $82.5 million for the standard F-35A variant. As the program’s controlling owner, the U.S. only approves F-35 sales to NATO members or U.S.-designated Major Non-Nato Allies, with just 20 countries currently operating the jet. The U.S. itself operates 1,763 F-35s, more than all other operator nations combined.

Israel became the first foreign country to purchase the F-35 in 2010, receiving its first deliveries in 2016, and remains the only country in the Middle East and North Africa region to operate the jet. Israel’s custom variant, designated the F-35I Adir (Hebrew for “The Mighty One”), is modified to integrate Israeli-developed electronics and software. In 2018, Israel became the first country to use the F-35 in combat, launching an airstrike in Lebanon. Israeli F-35s have since been used in operations across the region against targets in Iran, Syria, Yemen, Qatar, and Gaza, where the Israeli campaign has killed nearly 73,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. During the 2025 Israel-Iran war, Middle East Eye reporting confirmed that the U.S. approved Israeli modifications to its F-35 fleet to add external fuel tanks, allowing non-stop round-trip flights from Israel to Iran without refueling at U.S. bases in the Gulf or Caucasus, where host governments declined permission for Israeli refueling stops. Beyond the F-35, Israel also operates large fleets of U.S.-made F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, and the U.S. has invested billions of dollars into co-developing Israel’s world-renowned layered air defense systems, including Iron Dome, Arrow, and David’s Sling, produced in partnership with U.S. defense firm Raytheon.

Washington has also long maintained a deliberate policy of ambiguity toward Israel’s status as the Middle East’s only undeclared nuclear power, which developed outside public U.S. oversight and was first publicly exposed by Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu in 1986.

In recent years, the massive scale of U.S. military support for Israel has sparked growing political backlash in the U.S., amplified by widespread international condemnation of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The only Palestinian-American member of Congress, Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib, argued in September 2025 that the U.S.-backed, U.S.-funded military operation in Gaza is growing more horrific by the day without congressional action to cut off aid. Criticism has also emerged from across the political aisle: in July 2025, Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced an amendment to cut $500 million in funding for Iron Dome, which gained support from Tlaib and progressive Democrat Ilhan Omar but failed by a lopsided 422-6 vote. High-profile conservative commentator and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has also called for a full end to U.S. aid, telling Israel’s Channel 13 in May 2025 that “I don’t think the United States owes Israel anything. I don’t think the U.S. should give Israel anything. I think we should stop all aid to Israel tomorrow.” The White House dismissed Carlson’s comments as the work of a “low-IQ person who spreads fake news for cheap publicity.”

The future of the QME policy was thrown into question in November 2025, when President Donald Trump announced during a White House visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that the U.S. would proceed with a plan to sell F-35 stealth fighters to Saudi Arabia, as part of a broader package of bilateral trade and defense deals worth billions of dollars. Trump acknowledged Israeli concerns that selling top-tier F-35s to Riyadh would undermine its military edge, saying “I know they [Israel] would like you to get planes of reduced calibre. I don’t think that makes you too happy… I think they [Saudi Arabia and Israel] are both at a level where they should get top of the line.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back quickly, saying that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to preserving Israel’s QME in all regional arms sales. The proposed sale has not yet received congressional ratification, and its path forward remains uncertain.

Kristian Ulrichsen, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told Middle East Eye that the sale’s outcome will depend heavily on whether the Trump administration has enough political capital to advance the deal amid heightened congressional scrutiny, particularly if 2026 midterm elections shift control of one or both congressional chambers to the Democratic Party. This is not the first time a proposed F-35 sale to a Gulf state has run into obstacles: in 2020, during Trump’s first term, the administration announced plans to sell up to 50 F-35A jets to the United Arab Emirates following the Abraham Accords normalization agreement between Israel and the UAE, but President Joe Biden paused the deal after taking office in 2021 over concerns about UAE’s economic and security ties with China. When Washington imposed strict access restrictions on the jets, the UAE pulled out of the deal at the end of 2021 and ruled out reopening talks in 2024. Turkey similarly lost access to the F-35 program in 2019 after purchasing Russian-made S-400 air defense systems, which U.S. officials said posed unacceptable intelligence risks. A NATO member and original F-35 production partner, Turkey has paid roughly $1.4 billion for the jets it ordered, six of which remain undelivered; President Recep Tayyip Erdogan requested that Trump revisit the ban during a March 2025 diplomatic request.

Despite the proposed Saudi sale, Israel continues to expand its own fleet of advanced U.S. fighter jets. In May 2026, Israel announced plans to purchase 25 additional F-35s alongside a squadron of new F-15IA advanced fighter jets. Combined with a 2023 order for 25 more F-35s, the purchases will bring Israel’s F-35 fleet to roughly 100 jets, giving it one of the largest F-35 squadrons outside the United States. Ulrichsen noted that even with new arms sales to Gulf partners, longstanding U.S. commitment to QME is unlikely to shift. “The US is likely to maintain its commitment to preserving Israel’s QME even as it deepens defence and security ties with the Gulf States,” he said.

A grassroots petition demanding scrutiny of Israeli-linked and pro-Israel lobbying activity in British politics has crossed the 100,000-signature threshold required for a mandatory parliamentary debate, forcing what advocates call a long-overdue conversation about foreign influence and democratic integrity in the UK. Scheduled for discussion on June 22, the petition has collected more than 116,000 signatures from UK citizens concerned that unregulated lobbying is skewing government policy, party priorities and public discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The petition’s text frames the debate as an urgent necessity, pointing to the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, continued Israeli expansion and repression in the West Bank, and the UK government’s aligned response to these events as evidence of the need to map the full scope of pro-Israel influence across British political institutions. Under UK parliamentary rules, any public petition hosted on the official government website that garners 10,000 signatures requires a formal written response from the government, while any crossing 100,000 signatures must be scheduled for a full debate in the House of Commons.

In its initial response to the petition, the UK government has already rejected calls for a dedicated investigation into pro-Israel lobbying, claiming existing regulatory frameworks already address foreign political interference. Critics push back against this claim, noting that the government’s flagship review into foreign financial interference—led by former senior diplomat Matthew Rycroft—explicitly focuses on Russian, Chinese and Iranian interference and does not mention Israeli influence at all.

Andy Kalil, the creator of the petition, dismissed the government’s position as empty deflection, arguing that clear conflicts of interest between pro-Israel lobbying donations and UK policy on Gaza, the West Bank, Iran and southern Lebanon amount to a major political scandal on par with some of the most high-profile controversies in recent British political history.

Documentation of unreported and disclosed pro-Israel donations underpins these concerns, particularly within the current ruling Labour Party. Data shows that more than half of Keir Starmer’s cabinet have received donations from pro-Israel lobbying groups. One of the most prominent of these donors, Trevor Chinn, contributed £175,000 between 2017 and 2020 to Labour Together, the influential think tank that spearheaded Starmer’s successful campaign to oust Jeremy Corbyn, a longtime critic of Israeli policy toward Palestinians, as Labour leader. Chinn’s donations granted him repeated private access to senior Labour figures, including current Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

That £700,000 in donations to Labour Together during Starmer’s leadership campaign went undeclared to the UK’s Electoral Commission, resulting in a £14,000 fine for the group. After the undeclared funding was exposed in journalist Paul Holden’s book *The Fraud*, reports emerged that Labour Together hired a public relations firm to investigate journalists who leaked the information, then attempted to destroy evidence of a coordinated smear campaign against the reporters.

The pro-Israel funding that flowed through Labour Together was a core component of a successful effort to unseat Corbyn and shift the Labour Party sharply to the right on Middle East policy. Since taking office, Starmer has stated publicly that Israel has a right to cut power and water access to Gaza, a position aligned with pro-Israel lobbying priorities. The think tank has also been linked to a series of coordinated “astroturf” campaigns fronted by groups like the Centre for Countering Digital Hate and Stop Funding Fake News—co-founded by senior Labour politicians Steve Reed and Imran Ahmed—designed to attack independent pro-Palestine media and push left-wing, pro-Corbyn figures out of the party.

Since Starmer took control of the party, one-third of newly elected Labour MPs have professional backgrounds in lobbying, and one-quarter have received direct funding from pro-Israel groups. Even ahead of the 2024 general election, Luke Akehurst, a former director of the pro-Israel advocacy group We Believe in Israel, was selected to run for a safe Labour seat in Durham, reflecting the movement’s deep penetration into party ranks.

Pro-Israel lobbying is not limited to the Labour Party, either. Roughly 80% of Conservative Members of Parliament are members of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), an organization that has provided more than £330,000 to fund 118 MPs’ trips to Israel across 160 separate visits.

Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor of international law at London’s Queen Mary University, argues that the double standard in how foreign influence is scrutinized in the UK reveals clear political alignment. While Russian, Chinese and Iranian interference are repeatedly framed as threats to British national interests and subject to intense regulatory and media scrutiny, Gordon says those countries exert far less actual influence on UK policy than the pro-Israel lobby, whose impact is consistently downplayed. Gordon explains that this double standard exists because the pro-Israel lobby is broadly aligned with long-standing British geopolitical interests, allowing the government to hide its own policy preferences behind the narrative of external lobbying influence.

Jeremy Corbyn, who faced years of pressure from pro-Israel groups during his time as Labour leader, confirmed that this pressure is both political and commercial. He recalled being asked during a private Parliamentary Labour Party meeting whether he would offer unconditional support for Israeli military action, and said he faced constant, enormous pressure across all areas of his leadership due to his dissenting views on Middle East policy.

Commercial lobbying is also a major factor: Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private weapons manufacturer, held multiple meetings with UK Home Office officials and lobbied the government during its crackdown on Palestine Action, a direct action group that stages protests against the company’s UK facilities. The government ultimately proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization—a decision that was later ruled unlawful by the UK High Court, though the government has continued to appeal the ruling.

Critics of the pro-Israel lobby also highlight its coordinated strategy of framing criticism of Israeli policy as antisemitism to silence dissent. Leah Levene and Jonathan Rosenhead of Jewish Voice for Liberation, a group representing anti-Zionist Jews in the UK, point to organizations like UK Lawyers for Israel, which has been accused of waging legal intimidation campaigns against activists who oppose Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and Campaign Against Antisemitism, whose legal actions against pro-Palestine public figures were labeled “abusive” by a UK judge.

Levene and Rosenhead note that mainstream pro-Israel Jewish organizations like the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Office of the Chief Rabbi have successfully positioned themselves as the sole legitimate representatives of all Jewish people in the UK, erasing dissent from anti-Zionist Jews and flattening diverse community perspectives into a single pro-Israel consensus. When any public figure voices criticism of Israeli policy, these organizations come down heavily to silence that dissent, which in turn undermines open democratic debate by cutting off space for alternative viewpoints.

Hil Aked, author of *Friends of Israel: The Backlash Against Palestine Solidarity*, contextualizes the deep roots of pro-Israel lobbying in British political history, noting that the development of the Zionist movement has long been intertwined with the history of the British Empire. Aked explains that pro-Israel organizers have consistently framed their goals as aligned with British national interests to win support from successive UK governments. A key example, Aked argues, is the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which paved the way for the creation of the state of Israel and was drafted by the same generation of British politicians who passed the 1905 Aliens Act, the UK’s first modern anti-immigration law that blocked Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe from entering the UK. This historical context, Aked says, makes clear that Zionism and antisemitism are not incompatible, and that pro-Israel lobbying in the UK is not a foreign import—it has been actively fostered by successive British governments for more than a century.

For campaigners like Andrew Feinstein, co-founder of the anti-corruption non-profit Shadow World Investigations, open debate about the influence of the pro-Israel lobby is a core requirement for protecting British democracy. “Unless we are prepared to have a transparent, open and frank conversation not only about the Israel lobby, but about the influence of all money in politics, we will continue to have nothing better than the best democracy money can buy,” Feinstein said.

In a landmark federal court hearing held in downtown Los Angeles Friday, a one-time leader of a majority-Asian Southern California city entered a guilty plea to a federal charge of operating as an unregistered illegal agent for the Chinese government.

Eileen Wang, 56, who stepped down from her position as mayor of Arcadia — a suburban community of roughly 53,000 located 21 kilometers northeast of Los Angeles — earlier this April, formally admitted to carrying out requests for Chinese officials without meeting U.S. legal requirements to disclose her foreign work to American authorities. She was initially indicted on the single charge back in April 2023.

Wang first won a seat on Arcadia’s five-member city council in the November 2022 general election, a body that selects its mayor on a rotating annual basis. Federal prosecutors document that her unlawful activities took place between late 2020 and 2022, a timeline that both city officials and Wang’s legal team confirm ended before she assumed public office.

During the plea hearing, U.S. District Judge Wesley Hsu walked Wang through standard procedural checks to confirm she fully understood her constitutional rights and the penalties attached to her guilty plea. Though a Mandarin interpreter was on hand for the proceeding, Wang declined the service, confirming she could follow the hearing without assistance. She was granted continued release on a $25,000 bond ahead of her scheduled October 6 sentencing, where she faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and three years of supervised release following incarceration.

Court documents attached to her plea agreement detail that Wang collaborated with her then-fiancé Yaoning “Mike” Sun to advance Chinese government propaganda through a digital platform called U.S. News Center. Sun, who also served as treasurer for Wang’s 2022 city council campaign, pleaded guilty to the identical charge last October and is currently serving a four-year federal prison sentence. Wang’s legal team has stated her romantic relationship with Sun ended in spring 2024, and in a statement following her resignation, the attorneys noted Wang “trusted and loved the wrong person, who ultimately led her astray.”

One key documented incident from June 2021 lays out the core of Wang’s cooperation: after a Chinese government official sent Wang a link to an op-ed written by China’s Los Angeles consul general and published in the *Los Angeles Times*, Wang shared the link to her collaborative website within minutes. The op-ed rejected international reporting of systematic human rights abuses including persecution, forced labor and mass incarceration against Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region, falsely claiming “There has never been genocide in Xinjiang or forced labor in the region’s cotton fields or any other sector.” The United States and dozens of other nations have formally recognized Beijing’s systemic repression of Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang as genocide and crimes against humanity.

Local reactions to Wang’s plea have reignited long-simmering tensions in Arcadia, a city with a large concentration of Chinese American residents. Many local residents and former elected officials have argued Wang should have been removed from office immediately after she first became linked to the FBI investigation into Sun’s activities.

Current acting mayor Paul Cheng has pushed back on that criticism, noting the city charter only grants the city council authority to remove a sitting member after they have been convicted of a felony crime — a milestone Wang had not reached prior to her guilty plea. “We are not law enforcement investigators, and politicizing an active federal case would only undermine the ongoing investigation,” Cheng explained of the council’s previous inaction.

Exclusive new data obtained by Middle East Eye (MEE) has uncovered a striking electoral trend from England’s 7 May local elections: candidates who publicly backed Palestinian rights outperformed nominees from most major established parties, only trailing the right-wing Reform Party in win rates for contested seats.

The data confirms that public opposition to ongoing British policy cooperation with Israel remains a deeply resonant political issue across England, and that running on a clear pro-Palestine platform has emerged as a measurable predictor of electoral success in dozens of local races.

All candidates who signed the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC)’s widely supported “Pledge for Palestine” secured victory in 27% of the seats they contested. By comparison, Reform candidates posted a 30% win rate, while the Labour Party — the current national governing party — won just 22% of its contested seats, and the Liberal Democrats followed closely behind at 21%.

More than 1,600 candidates across the political spectrum signed the pledge, which commits elected officials to use their local office to advance Palestinian human rights. Signatories vow to take all appropriate steps to uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, and to support efforts to secure accountability for what the pledge frames as Israel’s crimes of genocide, military occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

The pledge also requires candidates to prevent their local councils from complicity in or normalization of Israel’s alleged violations of international law. Key commitments include divesting council pension funds and other publicly administered assets from companies that enable these violations, and aligning local procurement policies with these goals.

Signatures came from a broad cross-section of political groups: more than 1,000 Green Party candidates, over 200 Labour candidates, more than 200 independent and small local party nominees, as well as a number of Liberal Democrat and Conservative candidates. Pro-Palestine candidates were particularly likely to run and win in seats with large youth, student, ethnic minority and Muslim populations.

One of the most high-profile successes came in Hackney, east London, where 31 Green candidates signed the pledge, including mayoral candidate Zoe Garbett, who won her race. The Greens secured a dominant majority on Hackney Council, taking 42 of the body’s 57 total seats. In neighboring Haringey, north London, the Greens surged to 28 council seats, overtaking Labour and coming just short of a full majority, with 26 of the party’s successful candidates having signed the pledge. Across the Midlands, in Bradford and Birmingham, dozens of independent and Green signatories won their local council contests.

Jeanine Hourani, a representative of Palestinian Youth Movement Britain — a partner in the Vote Palestine grassroots coalition that backed the pledge campaign — emphasized that the results confirm Palestine is a critical local issue for voters across England. “In the months leading up to election day, 16 local campaigns were launched, spending thousands of hours canvassing and organising dozens of local action days,” Hourani said. She added that the outcome highlights how essential grassroots community organizing is to the pro-Palestine movement, while sending a clear warning to mainstream elected officials: “Pledge signatories collectively outperformed almost every political party, and their successes will only grow as we look towards the 2029 general election.”

Asma Alam, a newly elected Green councillor for Manchester’s Burnage ward, who won her seat after signing the pledge, framed Palestinian rights as an inherent local government responsibility. “If councils have power over pensions, procurement and public money, then Palestine is absolutely a local government issue,” she said. Alam pointed to Greater Manchester’s pension fund, the largest local government pension pool in England, valued at more than £31 billion. Campaigners have identified nearly £905 million in fund investments tied to companies that they say are complicit in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. “We cannot pass motions, say the right things, and then carry on as normal,” Alam said. “For me, this is simple: I will not take a council pension while that pension is tied to Palestinian suffering. Divestment is not symbolic. It is about refusing to let public money bankroll injustice.”

The electoral success of pro-Palestine candidates comes against a backdrop of growing tension between the national Labour government and pro-Palestine activists within and outside the party. In January, Communities Secretary Steve Reed issued a warning to all Labour-run local councils that they could face legal action if they move to boycott Israeli businesses, directing councils to a 2016 national government ban on procurement boycotts targeting Israeli firms and companies that trade with Israel.

Over the past two years, dozens of local authorities have passed votes to boycott companies linked to Israeli war crimes, arms supplies to Israel, or economic activity in the occupied Palestinian territories. Multiple local council pension funds — including those in Islington, Lewisham, Wandsworth and Caerphilly — have already removed companies listed by the United Nations as operating in occupied Palestinian territories from their investment portfolios.

Prominent veteran pollster Sir John Curtis noted after the elections that the Green Party, which drew the largest share of pro-Palestine candidates, inflicted far more damage to Labour’s vote share across England than the Reform Party, a shift that experts attribute in part to the Green Party’s clear embrace of pro-Palestine policy.

MEE, which publishes independent, in-depth coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and global affairs, obtained the exclusive data for this report.

ASTANA, KAZAKHSTAN — At a high-stakes summit of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) held Friday in Central Asia’s capital, top leaders from the bloc have issued a stark warning to member state Armenia: move forward with plans to seek European Union membership, and face immediate suspension from the Moscow-dominated economic alliance. The public rebuke amplifies already simmering tensions between the Kremlin and Armenia’s pro-Western government, just days ahead of a critical national parliamentary election that will shape the small Caucasus nation’s future geopolitical alignment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was joined by the heads of state of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan — the four full voting members of the 2015-founded single market bloc — in issuing the demand. The group emphasized that Armenia’s formal bid for EU membership creates “significant systemic risks” to the collective economic security of all EAEU members, who enjoy tariff-free movement of goods, capital, and labor across their shared market. They instructed top regional officials to prepare a comprehensive policy report by December detailing the procedural and economic implications of suspending Armenia’s EAEU membership.

In an unusual step that goes beyond standard bloc diplomacy, the four leaders also called on Armenian authorities to put the geopolitical choice to a national public vote: let Armenian voters decide between pursuing integration with the EU or retaining full membership in the Eurasian Economic Union. That call has already been rejected by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who has led the country since the 2018 Velvet Revolution and is currently campaigning to retain his office in the June 7 parliamentary election.

The escalation from EAEU leaders is no coincidence: it comes just over a week before Armenians head to the polls, with Pashinyan’s government having spent the past two years steadily shifting Armenia’s foreign policy away from Moscow and toward Western institutions. Last year, Yerevan signed a US-brokered peace deal with neighboring Azerbaijan, ending decades of armed conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Since then, Pashinyan has openly declared his government’s intention to pursue full EU membership, and already suspended Armenia’s participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Moscow-dominated regional security bloc.

This deliberate westward pivot has enraged the Kremlin, which has long viewed Armenia as a key ally in the South Caucasus. Putin has repeatedly warned Pashinyan that moving closer to the EU would bring severe economic consequences for Armenia. In recent weeks, Moscow has already taken preliminary punitive steps: it has threatened to cut off supplies of heavily subsidized natural gas — a critical energy input for Armenia’s economy — and imposed a full ban on imports of Armenia’s signature brandy, as well as fresh fruit and vegetable products. Analysts widely view these measures as direct interference in the upcoming election, designed to turn voters against Pashinyan and his pro-Western agenda.

Putin doubled down on that position Friday, stressing that Armenia cannot maintain membership in both blocs simultaneously. He warned that if Armenia withdraws from the EAEU, the country could see its total gross domestic product drop by as much as 14% as it loses access to the large, tariff-free Eurasian market. In comments that carried clear historical weight, Putin also drew a direct parallel between the current standoff with Armenia and the 2014 crisis in Ukraine. At that time, Ukraine’s decision to move forward with an association agreement with the EU led to the ouster of Moscow’s allied president, Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the outbreak of a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, and ultimately the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — the largest European military conflict since World War II.

Pashinyan has pushed back against the Kremlin’s warnings, arguing that for the immediate future, Armenia can balance its existing EAEU membership with deepening political and economic cooperation with the European Union. As campaigning enters its final stretch, the election is set to deliver a clear verdict on whether Armenians will back their government’s push westward, or pivot back to closer alignment with Russia.

Across the sidewalks outside Tunis’s Court of First Instance, small, steady gatherings have become a routine sight in recent weeks. demonstrators from varying walks of life gather here: some demand safeguards for the democratic freedoms Tunisians have long fought for, while others push back against what they label arbitrary administrative suspensions that target their work. What unites all these protesters is a shared concern: the steady erosion of civic space in Tunisia, a shift that many activists and regional observers warn is growing into a permanent new reality.

Over the past 24 months, dozens of non-governmental organizations across this North African Maghreb nation have been hit with 30-day administrative suspensions and court-ordered threats of full dissolution. The crackdown has accelerated in recent months, with some of the country’s most prominent and respected civil society groups landing in authorities’ crosshairs.

Among the targeted organizations is the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH), Africa’s oldest human rights group and a core member of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet. That quartet was awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for its foundational work steering Tunisia through its post-uprising democratic transition. Also targeted is Belgium-based Lawyers Without Borders (ASF). The Al Khatt foundation, owner of award-winning independent investigative media outlet Inkyfada, has also faced the same punitive measures. Inkyfada was initially suspended for 30 days and is now facing full dissolution, with a critical court hearing scheduled for Monday.

“It all started in October 2025 with a sudden, one-month suspension designed to silence our publications,” Manel Lassoued, Inkyfada’s editorial director, told Middle East Eye. “But we didn’t stop. We kept working and appealed the decision, trusting in our fundamental right to a defense and an impartial justice system.”

Lassoued’s outlet is far from alone. The Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, Aswat Nissa, Nawaat, the International Commission of Jurists and the World Organisation Against Torture are just a handful of the additional groups that have received court-ordered suspensions. The crackdown comes against a backdrop of steady erosion of the political and civil liberties gained after the 2011 Tunisian uprising, a shift that began five years ago when President Kais Saied seized sweeping executive power.

On 25 July 2021, Saied dissolved the sitting government, froze parliamentary activity, and began ruling by decree—a move that rights organizations have characterized as a steady slide toward authoritarian rule. He later pushed through a new constitution that vastly expanded presidential authority, while increasing pressure on independent institutional checkpoints including the Supreme Judicial Council, which has been effectively stripped of all regulatory and oversight powers.

This sweeping institutional overhaul has been paired with a wide-ranging campaign of arrests and administrative harassment targeting civil society groups working across nearly every sector, from human rights documentation and migration policy to anti-corruption investigation and social justice advocacy. Current reports indicate that roughly 600 organizations are now under formal government investigation.

Tunisian authorities justify the crackdown by framing the measures as a crackdown on suspicious foreign funding and a defense of national interests. But international rights groups including Amnesty International dismiss this framing as a transparent excuse to intimidate independent NGOs and further narrow space for civic action.

Amnesty’s analysis finds that what began as low-level intimidation, arbitrary regulatory restrictions, asset freezes and politically motivated prosecutions of NGO staff has now escalated into a coordinated effort to use the country’s judiciary to shutter independent civil society organizations entirely. Under current Tunisian law—specifically Decree-Law No 88, which regulates association activity—groups face a three-step punitive process: an initial administrative warning, followed by temporary suspension, and ultimately full dissolution. Multiple prominent organizations have already reached the final, permanent dissolution stage, including Inkyfada and Mnemty, a Tunis-based anti-racism association. Mnemty’s founder, Saadia Mosbah, has been in detention for two years and was recently sentenced to eight years in prison on financial misconduct charges that supporters call politically motivated.

Lamine Benghazi, head of advocacy for the Euro-Mediterranean region at ASF, told Middle East Eye that the crackdown extends far beyond individual organizations. “The entire institutional framework inherited from the democratic transition has been targeted,” he explained. “But it is not only about institutions: these authorities want to erase the entire political system. They are trying to erase an entire political ecosystem – one that includes the media, associations and trade unions.”

The April 2026 suspension of LTDH sparked widespread public outrage, with hundreds of demonstrators gathering on Tunis’s central Avenue Bourguiba to protest the decision. LTDH was one of the last independent organizations still granted access to Tunisian prisons, where dozens of dissidents, journalists and political opponents are currently detained.

“We consider the suspension to be a political decision disguised as a judicial one as it comes within a context of restricting civic space and targeting independent organisations that are fighting for human rights in Tunisia,” LTDH president Bassem Trifi told Amnesty International. “Beyond targeting human rights organisations, human rights and freedoms are being severely undermined, especially the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly.”

Sihem Bensedrine, one of Tunisia’s most prominent veteran civil society leaders and a journalist who previously led the post-2011 Truth and Dignity Commission (IVD), was among the protesters who turned out to support LTDH. The IVD was the independent body tasked with investigating systemic human rights abuses committed under former presidents Habib Bourguiba and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, as well as crimes committed during the 2011 uprising that ousted Ben Ali. Bensedrine was arrested in August 2024 on charges of falsifying the IVD’s final public report. She was released only in February 2025, after a months-long hunger strike that severely damaged her health. She still carries the physical and psychological scars of what she calls unjust detention, and currently faces multiple additional trials linked to her work with the IVD.

“They are using new repressive techniques: they do not directly shut down associations, they suspend them,” she told Middle East Eye. “And this is even more insidious than simply banning activities, because it aims to spread fear and create a reflex of self-censorship.”
Bensedrine, who has been politically active since the Bourguiba era and has survived multiple periods of detention under past authoritarian regimes, says authoritarian control has reached unprecedented levels under Saied. “I had the feeling that, for the current regime, imprisoning people who are considered troublesome has become a kind of royal lettre de cachet: they lock you up and you never get out,” she said. “I felt that I could remain there for a very long time. At a certain point I told myself: ‘No, I cannot accept this any more.’ There was absolutely no reason for me to be in prison.”

As Bensedrine faced prosecution, a wider wave of arrests swept up other leading civil society and media figures, including prominent lawyer and television commentator Sonia Dahmani, and veteran columnist and radio commentator Mourad Zeghidi. In both cases, authorities relied on Decree-Law 54 of 2022, a controversial law the government has repeatedly used to prosecute people accused of spreading “false information” deemed harmful to public security. Their arrests have become emblematic of the government’s growing reliance on the judiciary to silence critical public voices.

Dahmani was released in November 2025 after 18 months in detention, but was again sentenced to two years in prison earlier this week; she has filed an appeal against the new ruling. Zeghidi remains behind bars, facing additional charges including money laundering and corruption that his legal team describe as baseless and politically motivated.

The steady erosion of press freedom in Tunisia is reflected in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which ranks Tunisia 137th out of 180 countries, down seven spots from its 2025 ranking of 129th. “This decline reflects a deeper trend that RSF has been systematically documenting,” Oussama Bouagila, RSF’s regional advocacy officer and deputy bureau chief for North Africa, told Middle East Eye. “RSF recorded 39 prosecutions against journalists based on laws unrelated to journalism. President Saied has repeatedly called on public media to align themselves with what he describes as a war of national liberation.”
Bouagila noted that the 2011 revolution opened an unprecedented era of media freedom in Tunisia, but that progress was abruptly halted after the July 2021 power grab and the subsequent concentration of all political authority in Saied’s hands.

The case of Inkyfada stands as one of the most visible examples of this ongoing crackdown. Widely recognized across Tunisia and the international community for its hard-hitting investigations into Tunisian politics and society—including groundbreaking reporting on abuses targeting the sub-Saharan migrant community after Saied labeled migrants a “demographic threat”—the outlet remains a rare independent space for thousands of Tunisian readers.

Ahead of Inkyfada’s 1 June dissolution hearing, Lassoued emphasized that the outlet has complied fully with all Tunisian regulatory requirements. “Looking ahead to 1 June, let us be clear: we have by no means broken the law or the norms of civil society work in Tunisia. We have done everything by the book, including the consistent declaration of all foreign funding. We expect nothing less than justice,” she said. Lassoued added that the crackdown represents a fundamental shift in the country’s political trajectory: “What we are witnessing in Tunisia is no longer just a shift in attitude; it is a systematic, structural crackdown on independent media and civil society.”