标签： Asia

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is currently fighting to retain his hold on Downing Street, with political insiders widely predicting his premiership could end in a matter of days as rival factions within the Labour Party scramble to position his successor.

During a Tuesday morning Cabinet meeting held at 10 Downing Street, the embattled prime minister pushed back against growing pressure to step down, telling his senior ministerial team that the Labour Party’s formal leadership challenge process had not yet been activated. “The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and what we must do as a Cabinet,” Starmer told attendees, according to accounts of the closed-door meeting.

But few senior officials in London’s Whitehall government district believe Starmer can cling to power for much longer. His bloc of loyal allies has shrunk rapidly in recent days, and more than 80 Labour MPs spanning every ideological faction of the party have publicly and privately called on him to acknowledge his leadership is finished. The unrest spilled into open revolt on Monday night, when five junior ministerial aides resigned from their government posts in protest of Starmer’s continued tenure.

With Starmer’s position hanging by a thread, a bitter power struggle has erupted between the centre-right and soft-left wings of the Labour Party over who will take the top job, multiple party sources confirmed to Middle East Eye.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, a figure aligned with the party’s centre-right, is moving quickly to force Starmer out before soft-left opponents can organize a coordinated campaign, Labour insiders say. Streeting’s push has already drawn accusations of an undemocratic power grab from left-wing party figures.

One of the most high-profile potential challengers from the soft left is Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who has spent weeks quietly building support for a leadership bid among sitting Labour MPs. Burnham’s path to the premiership faces major structural barriers, however: he currently does not hold a seat in the House of Commons, a requirement for the office of prime minister in the UK.

To resolve this obstacle, an unnamed Labour MP is reportedly preparing to resign their parliamentary seat to clear a path for Burnham. If the MP steps down, Burnham would need to win a subsequent by-election to enter the Commons before he could launch a formal leadership challenge. A further complication comes from the Green Party, which has indicated it will mount a aggressive left-wing campaign to defeat Burnham in any by-election he contests.

Another leading soft-left contender is Angela Rayner, Starmer’s former deputy leader, who has positioned herself as a unifying candidate for the party’s progressive wing. Rayner stepped down from the Cabinet last September after revelations she underpaid stamp duty on her £800,000 coastal vacation property. One senior soft-left Labour insider warned Middle East Eye that opposition researchers have compiled damaging information on Rayner that would be released if she takes power, saying “there is a truck load of dirt on Rayner waiting to be unloaded if she becomes PM.” The insider compared Rayner’s potential short-lived premiership to that of Conservative former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who resigned after just 49 days in office.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, another veteran soft-left politician, has been urged by dozens of MPs to launch his own leadership bid, though he has so far declined to comment publicly on his plans. Some party figures have floated the idea of a joint Burnham-Miliband ticket to unify the soft left against Streeting’s faster-moving campaign. The soft left as a whole is working against the clock, as it needs time to organize its base while Streeting pushes for an immediate ousting of Starmer.

John McDonnell, a veteran left-wing Labour MP and former Shadow Chancellor, publicly condemned Streeting’s maneuver on Tuesday morning via social media, writing that Streeting “has launched coup for fear of a democratic process & whilst candidates are blocked”. Labour Together, the influential centrist think tank that was instrumental in getting Starmer elected Labour leader, is widely understood to be backing Streeting to retain its hold on power after Starmer departs.

Streeting faces his own major headwinds in a leadership contest, however. He is widely tied to former senior Labour minister Peter Mandelson, a once-powerful party figure who was disgraced earlier this year for his long-standing close personal ties to convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Streeting, who has previously been described as a protégé of Mandelson, has struggled to distance himself from the scandal. Most critically, Streeting’s popularity among rank-and-file Labour Party members is far lower than his leading rivals: a recent survey conducted by the progressive think tank Compass found 42 percent of Labour members backed Burnham in a potential leadership race, compared to just 11 percent who supported Streeting.

For Streeting, that means his only realistic path to power is to force a leadership vote before Burnham can resolve his by-election barrier and gain the ability to contest the leadership.

Israeli military chief of staff Eyal Zamir has delivered a stark, urgent warning to Israeli lawmakers that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could see its entire reserve force collapse within a matter of months if the government fails to immediately pass sweeping conscription and service extension legislation, multiple Israeli media outlets have confirmed. Speaking during a closed-door classified session of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee on Monday, Zamir laid out an urgent set of policy demands, including raising mandatory active military service from 30 months to 36 months, expanding overall recruitment pools, and updating outdated reserve duty requirements to address the growing shortfall.

Zamir’s projection painted a grim picture for the IDF’s force structure: by January 2027, the scheduled reduction of mandatory service to 30 months will strip the service of thousands of additional frontline combat troops, creating a gap so severe that “the reserve army will collapse into itself,” according to comments reported by Israeli outlet i24news. The top uniformed official stressed that after nearly three years of constant combat operations across multiple fronts, the IDF is already grappling with a critical manpower shortage that threatens to undermine the military’s ability to carry out future missions. “I do not deal with political or legislative processes,” Zamir told the committee. “I am engaged in multi-front warfare and in defeating the enemy. In order to continue doing that, the IDF urgently needs more soldiers.”

Per Israeli news outlet Ynet, Zamir confirmed the IDF is already operating at “the lower threshold in terms of manpower,” as prolonged large-scale military campaigns continue to drain personnel resources. Monday’s warning comes just weeks after Zamir first notified the government that the IDF needs an additional 15,000 troops, between 7,000 and 8,000 of whom are required for frontline combat roles. This need has grown more pressing in recent weeks after the Israeli government approved construction of 30 new illegal outposts in the occupied West Bank, all of which require dedicated military protection for residents and operations.

A senior official from the IDF Manpower Directorate added further context Sunday, noting that if mandatory service is not extended, reservists could be forced to serve between 80 and 100 days of active duty annually, a burden that many observers believe will lead to widespread retention issues. Just one day after the Manpower Directorate’s comments, Israel Hayom reported that the Knesset committee had extended the active call-up order for roughly 400,000 reservists through the end of the current month. While the IDF has attempted to alleviate the shortage over the past 18 months by recruiting 8,000 new troops through an accelerated career-service program, Israeli financial newspaper The Marker reported that the initiative has failed to meaningfully reduce the strain on existing personnel. As of today, an estimated 100,000 reservists remain on active duty, placing unprecedented pressure on Israel’s reserve force structure.

Opposition politicians across the ideological spectrum have seized on Zamir’s comments to attack Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, arguing that the government’s failure to end longstanding military conscription exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities is directly responsible for the worsening manpower crisis. Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff and opposition figure, accused the government of “evading responsibility and prioritizing political considerations over the country’s security.” Writing on social platform X, Eisenkot added: “A government that does not demand conscription for everyone at such a critical moment for Israel is a government that does not deserve to remain in office for even one more day.”

Former Israeli Prime Minister and current opposition leader Naftali Bennett echoed Eisenkot’s criticism, stating that the ongoing draft exemptions are “costing the lives of our soldiers.” Bennett pointed to the scale of the unmet personnel demand: “There are 100,000 healthy ultra-Orthodox young men who, because of politics, are not being drafted.”

Public debate over ultra-Orthodox conscription exemptions has exploded in intensity in Israel since October 2023, as expanded operational demands across Gaza, the West Bank, and northern border with Lebanon have stretched the IDF’s personnel capacity to breaking point. Senior military leaders and politicians from across the political divide have repeatedly called for an end to the exemptions to close the manpower gap, but Netanyahu’s coalition has been unable to advance new conscription legislation due to deep internal divisions within his ruling alliance.

Avigdor Liberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, called the failure to mandate ultra-Orthodox conscription “a devastating blow to the security and future of the State of Israel.” Yair Golan, leader of the opposition Democrats party and a retired senior IDF officer, went further, accusing the government of “selling out the country’s security simply to preserve ultra-Orthodox draft evasion. This is simply a betrayal of our soldiers,” Golan said.

The ongoing manpower crisis has also amplified a separate contentious debate over the recruitment of women into combat units. During his testimony to the Knesset committee, Zamir pushed back against opposition from religious leaders, reaffirming the IDF’s commitment to recruiting women for combat roles. “Women are an inseparable part of the IDF’s strength,” he stated.

Last month, leading religious-Zionist rabbis issued a formal warning that continued recruitment of women into mixed-gender combat units would drive members of their communities to refuse military service. “Under no circumstances can we allow our male and female students to serve in mixed-gender frameworks that place them in impossible situations,” one rabbi declared during an emergency conference of religious-Zionist leaders. A second rabbi added: “We will not serve in a field unit in a setting where there is mixing with women.”

Days after that conference, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan 11 reported that three religious Israeli soldiers had already refused to report for duty at a northern Israel military base after a female service member was assigned to the same post, marking the first public case of protest-related refusal tied to the mixed-gender debate.

With the Netanyahu government deadlocked on passing new conscription legislation, Israeli security analysts and researchers have floated a series of unorthodox alternative proposals to address the IDF’s critical manpower shortage. In February, two researchers at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a prominent right-leaning security think tank, proposed the creation of a foreign legion modeled on the longstanding unit operated by the French military. The researchers argued that increasing recruitment from global Jewish diaspora communities would not meet the IDF’s current needs, and instead called for allowing “the enlistment of non-citizen volunteers” to build a new auxiliary fighting force. While the pair acknowledged that the proposal “will likely make many Israelis uncomfortable,” their report argued that “there is no compelling reason to forgo the assistance of foreign volunteers in advancing the Zionist project.”

Weeks after the United States and Israel launched their large-scale military assault on Iran starting in late February, former U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly slammed Iranian Kurdish groups, saying he is “very disappointed” in their failure to provide military backing to Iranian opposition forces. His remarks at the White House Monday came amid persistent unconfirmed media reports that the Central Intelligence Agency had supplied weaponry to Kurdish opposition factions to deploy against the Iranian government, claims that Kurdish leaders have repeatedly and flatly denied.

In his comments, Trump painted a critical picture of the Kurdish groups, saying, “The Kurds take, take, take. They have a great reputation in Congress. Congress says they fight hard. They fight hard when they get paid.” These latest critical remarks mark a sharp shift from Trump’s own conflicting public statements on the issue just weeks earlier, highlighting the chaotic alignment of U.S. policy around the Iran conflict.

Shortly after the U.S.-Israeli offensive began in early March, Trump confirmed to Reuters that he would openly support a Kurdish offensive against the Iranian government, a comment that aligned with widespread media reports of CIA arms shipments to Kurdish factions. However, just days later, Trump backtracked entirely, telling reporters he had explicitly instructed Kurdish groups not to join the conflict. “They’re willing to go in, but I’ve told them I don’t want them to go in,” he stated at the time.

These contradictory statements from the U.S. head of state have left Iranian Kurdish party leaders caught off guard. The factions collectively maintain roughly 6,000 armed fighters based primarily in northern Iraq, and none of the groups have entered the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war against Iran to date.

Mustafa Mawloudi, deputy secretary-general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (PDKI) — one of the largest Iranian Kurdish opposition groups — told independent outlet Middle East Eye that his organization has neither received U.S. weapons nor shipped arms to activists inside Iranian Kurdistan, referred to locally as Rojhalat. “A proof of this is that we cannot send arms through Iraq to our people,” Mawloudi explained, noting that cross-border arms shipments would create serious legal complications for the group, which is based in Iraq’s northern Kurdish autonomous region.

Tensions have spiked dramatically in the border region since the U.S.-Israeli offensive began. Data compiled by independent Kurdish news outlet Rojhelat Info shows that Iran and its allied militias have launched nearly 700 missile and drone strikes targeting Iraqi Kurdistan since February 28. At least 15 people have been killed in these attacks, according to the data. Roughly 170 of those strikes have specifically targeted bases of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, killing six opposition fighters to date.

The back-and-forth rhetoric from Trump comes on the heels of major unrest inside Iran just months earlier: in late December, widespread nationwide anti-government protests spread across the country, lasting roughly two weeks before Iranian security forces violently suppressed the demonstrations amid a total national internet blackout.

After months of diplomatic deadlock, the European Union has finally moved forward with targeted sanctions against violent Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, a breakthrough made possible when Hungary’s new government reversed a veto held by the country’s former pro-Israel right-wing administration.

For months, the EU’s plan to penalize settlers amid a sharp spike in anti-Palestinian attacks had been held up by Viktor Orban, the former Hungarian prime minister and a longstanding close ally of Israel, who blocked the proposal after settler violence surged across the occupied territory starting in October 2023. Orban’s tenure ended when he lost re-election in April, and his successor Peter Magyar moved quickly to end the stalemate, clearing the path for a formal vote.

The sanctions package received final approval during a meeting of EU foreign ministers from all 27 member states on Monday. Under the terms of the new measures, three individual Israeli settlers and four settler organizations will be targeted, though the identities of those affected have not yet been released to the public. The sanctions also extend to leading figures from Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas emphasized that the long-delayed action marked a shift from stalled negotiations to tangible policy. “It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery… extremisms and violence carry consequences,” Kallas stated. She also acknowledged that broader, more sweeping measures — including a French-Swedish proposal for a full trade embargo on goods from illegal Israeli settlements — failed to gather enough backing from EU member states to move forward.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot welcomed the decision, praising the bloc’s action in a social media statement. “The EU is sanctioning the main Israeli organisations guilty of supporting the extremist and violent colonisation of the West Bank,” Barrot wrote, adding, “These most serious and intolerable acts must cease without delay.”

Israeli officials were swift to condemn the sanctions, issuing harsh pushback within hours of the announcement. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called the measures “unacceptable” and “without any legal or factual basis.” Far-right Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir went further, labeling the EU’s decision antisemitic.

“To expect the antisemitic union to make a moral decision is like expecting the sun to rise in the west. While our enemies perpetrate attacks and murder Jews, the European Union is trying to tie the hands of those who defend themselves,” Ben Gvir wrote in a social media post. He added that “the settlement enterprise will not be deterred. We will continue to build, to plant, to defend, and to settle throughout the entire land of Israel.”

The EU’s move comes as Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank has accelerated dramatically in the months following Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The hardline government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has introduced a raft of policies to expand settlements, approving new construction at a record-breaking pace. In April, Israeli media reports revealed that the Israeli cabinet secretly authorized an unprecedented number of new settlements amid rising regional tensions with Iran, approving 34 new outposts in a single decision — that number is more than half of the total settlements approved in 2025, the previous record-setting year for expansion.

Under international law, all Israeli settlements built in the West Bank, territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, are widely recognized as illegal. The United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and most of the global community have repeatedly reaffirmed this position, though Israel rejects the classification and has continued to expand its presence in the territory.

A senior anonymous White House official has confirmed that a roster of high-profile U.S. leaders spanning big tech, aerospace, finance and agriculture will accompany former President Donald Trump on his official trip to Beijing this week, where Trump is set to hold pivotal bilateral talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The U.S. delegation departs Tuesday, with trade disputes and artificial intelligence governance emerging as two core agenda items, alongside discussions focused on the ongoing Iran crisis.

Among the most closely watched attendees is Elon Musk, the eccentric billionaire CEO of electric vehicle giant Tesla and aerospace firm SpaceX, who once chaired Trump’s short-lived Department of Government Efficiency. The agency, which drew widespread controversy from its launch, wound down operations last November, following Musk’s exit from the role in spring 2025. Musk’s presence on the trip comes after a very public falling out with Trump last summer: the social media mogul, who also owns platform X, made unsubstantiated claims that the U.S. government hid information linking Trump to disgraced convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, triggering a fiery public war of words. Musk later walked back portions of his remarks, acknowledging he regretted several of his public posts about the president on X.

Today, Musk has shifted his focus back to managing his global business portfolio, which includes substantial manufacturing and sales operations in China that he has visited multiple times. He is currently navigating a slew of legal challenges outside the U.S. as well: French prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges against Musk and X over allegations that the platform failed to moderate child sexual abuse material, hosted harmful deepfakes and disinformation, and allowed the platform’s AI chatbot Grok to amplify content that denies crimes against humanity. He is also engaged in a high-profile civil trial against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, centered on competing visions for the future of artificial intelligence development.

Another key figure in the delegation is Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose 15-year tenure leading the world’s most valuable company is set to conclude on September 1, when he will hand the CEO role to John Ternus, Apple’s current head of hardware engineering, and transition to the position of executive chairman. During Cook’s leadership, Apple grew exponentially: the company’s market capitalization swelled by more than $3.6 trillion, driven by booming global demand for iPhones and Apple’s expanding ecosystem of consumer technology.

Throughout his time at Apple’s helm, Cook has repeatedly had to navigate the shifting tides of U.S.-China trade relations, particularly during Trump’s previous and current presidential terms when the White House launched sweeping tariff measures targeting Chinese goods. In Trump’s first term, Cook successfully negotiated exemptions for iPhones and other core Apple products from the initial round of tariffs. In the current second term, Trump has pushed for Apple to move all of its iPhone manufacturing out of China and back to the U.S., and imposed new tariffs on the devices. Cook has managed to mitigate the financial impact of these measures by shifting production of U.S.-bound iPhones to India, and securing additional exemptions after committing Apple to a $600 billion U.S. investment over the course of Trump’s second term.

Aerospace industry leader Kelly Ortberg, CEO of Boeing, is also part of the delegation. Ortberg took the top job at Boeing in 2024, stepping in to lead the American manufacturing giant as it grappled with overlapping legal, regulatory, production crises that triggered severe financial losses. Last year, Ortberg publicly downplayed the impact of the escalating U.S.-China trade war on Boeing’s recovery, arguing that tit-for-tat tariffs would not derail the company’s efforts to return to stable growth or meet delivery targets for Chinese airlines, which had paused acceptance of new Boeing jets amid rising trade tensions.

The trade conflict escalated sharply in April 2025, when Beijing raised import tariffs on U.S. goods to 125% in retaliation for the Trump administration’s hike of tariffs on Chinese-made products to 145%. For Boeing, the U.S.’s largest exporter, the new tariffs would more than double the cost of its commercial passenger jets, which already sell for tens of millions of dollars apiece. However, the impact has been softened in recent years by Boeing’s gradual reduction of direct finished aircraft exports to China, making the market less central to its bottom line than it once was. Ahead of the Beijing trip, Boeing confirms it has been holding ongoing negotiations with Chinese officials over a potential large-scale new aircraft order.

The delegation also includes a dozen other top C-suite leaders from across major U.S. industries: BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink, Blackstone co-founder, Chairman and CEO Stephen Schwarzman, Cargill Chairman and CEO Brian Sikes, Citi Chairman and CEO Jane Fraser, Coherent CEO Jim Anderson, GE Aerospace Chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp, Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon, Illumina CEO Jacob Thaysen, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach, Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick, Micron Chairman, President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon, and Visa CEO Ryan McInerney.

Reporting from Washington D.C. contributed by Aamer Madhani.