标签： Asia

On Tuesday, Israeli military forces carried out a temporary closure of one entrance gate to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Israel-occupied East Jerusalem, with official statements characterizing the action as necessary to accommodate scheduled military training drills.

According to the Jerusalem Governorate, a governing body affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, the military exercises unfolded within the open courtyards of the sensitive holy site and continued for approximately 30 minutes. While only the King Faisal Gate was fully shuttered during the activity, the organization added that Israeli security personnel ramped up restrictions and surveillance across all other entry points to the compound, creating significant disruptions to Palestinian worshippers seeking access to the site for prayer.

This temporary closure is the latest in a consistent pattern of escalating Israeli actions at Al-Aqsa Mosque, a site of profound religious and political significance to Palestinians and the broader Muslim world. Earlier in 2025, Israel implemented an unprecedented 40-day full closure of the mosque amid its open conflict with Iran, framing the move as a necessary response to looming security threats. During that extended shutdown, Palestinian Muslim worshippers were barred from entering the compound for major religious gatherings, including weekly Friday prayers, night prayers held throughout the holy month of Ramadan, and communal celebrations for the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

Palestinian leadership has roundly condemned these repeated actions, arguing they are not driven by legitimate security concerns but rather represent a deliberate campaign to restrict Palestinian religious freedom and advance what officials call the “Judaisation” of the site, which is sacred to both Muslims and Jews.

Data compiled by the Palestinian Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, released in an early July report, underscores the growing frequency of Israeli incursions into the compound. The document records that Israeli military forces carried out 26 separate raids on the Al-Aqsa complex during the month of June alone. Over the same 30-day period, the ministry added, 4,212 Israeli extremist settlers entered the site under armed protection from Israeli security forces, a practice that has stoked widespread anger across the Palestinian territories and the Muslim world.

For more than half a century, the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound has operated under a longstanding, internationally recognized agreement known as the status quo, which formally designates the entire site as an exclusive place of worship for Muslims. Under the terms of this arrangement, the full 144,000-square-meter complex — which includes the iconic Dome of the Rock, the Qibli Mosque, surrounding courtyards, entry gates, and all associated religious structures — is administered by the Islamic Waqf, a religious endowment body overseen by the Jordanian government. The status quo permits non-Muslim visitors to tour the site during scheduled time slots, but explicitly reserves all prayer rights exclusively to Muslims, with all access management and administrative oversight falling to the Waqf. The endowment also holds full responsibility for the site’s physical maintenance and religious governance.

Palestinian officials and community leaders argue that since Israel seized East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, the terms of the status quo have been incrementally eroded. Tighter and more frequent restrictions on Palestinian Muslim worshippers have coincided with a growing and increasingly permanent Israeli presence at the compound. In recent months, Palestinians charge that Israel has accelerated efforts to weaken the Waqf’s long-held authority: the Israeli government has restricted the Waqf’s ability to carry out critical maintenance work on site, revoked work permits for dozens of Waqf administrative and religious staff, and permitted Jewish groups to hold formal prayer services at the compound, a direct violation of the longstanding prohibition laid out in the status quo agreement.

Earlier this year in May, independent outlet Middle East Eye published a report claiming that Israel and the United States were collaborating to formally revoke Jordan’s centuries-old custodianship over the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. The Biden administration quickly issued a denial, stating that no such plan was under consideration.

Hong Kong police have arrested five individuals on suspicion of sedition-linked violations of the national security law following coordinated raids on two independent bookstores in the city, local authorities confirmed in an official statement. The two male suspects, aged 37 and 57, and three female suspects between 30 and 59 years old, are accused of selling and displaying publications that Hong Kong officials claim incite hatred toward the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, the territory’s judiciary and law enforcement institutions. Law enforcement officers seized hundreds of suspected unauthorized books from the two targeted shops during the operation, which was documented by AFP reporters who witnessed officers escort a handcuffed woman from one of the stores, Have A Nice Stay, into a police van. Have A Nice Stay, located in the densely populated Mong Kok district, was established in 2022 by a collective of former journalists, and specialized in titles covering democratic movements, global governance structures, media literacy and critical political analysis. Just one day before the raid, the bookstore had publicly announced it would permanently close in August, citing both persistent financial pressures and growing uncertainty around the unwritten ‘red lines’ that determine which reading materials are deemed unacceptable by authorities. Local media reports confirmed a second nearby shop, Greenfield Book Store, was also searched by officers during the operation. Greenfield Book Store states on its official Facebook page that it carries a curated selection of titles from Hong Kong and Taiwan, spanning genres including literature, history, philosophy, art, sociology and personal development. Neither of the two raided independent shops are participating in this year’s Hong Kong Book Fair, which opened to the public on Wednesday. This latest raid marks the third such operation targeting independent book retailers in Hong Kong in 2026. In June, two staff members were arrested at Hunter Bookstore, and four more people were taken into custody following a March raid at Book Punch, another independent outlet. Global human rights organization Amnesty International has condemned the latest arrests, arguing that the repeated raids lay bare the chilling effect of national security enforcement on freedom of expression in the territory. ‘This is the chilling reality of what Hong Kong has become: a place where you can be criminalized simply for what’s on your bookshelf,’ the organization said in a statement. Amnesty added that the persistent ambiguity around what content falls within unmarked regulatory ‘red lines’ has forced booksellers and authors across Hong Kong into a state of constant uncertainty, as they are forced to guess which titles could trigger criminal investigations, arrests or forced business closures. This climate of fear has driven widespread self-censorship among independent publishers and retailers, eroding the city’s once vibrant literary culture, the organization added. All five suspects currently remain in police custody for further investigation. If convicted on the sedition charges, they face a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment. Hong Kong authorities have not publicly released the names of the raided businesses, or details on which specific titles were deemed seditious.

HONG KONG – In the latest crackdown on independent bookselling in the semi-autonomous city, Hong Kong police have carried out coordinated raids on two independent bookstores and arrested five people on charges of violating the 2024 national security law through the alleged sale of seditious publications. The operation, confirmed by police in an official statement Wednesday, marks the third round of arrests targeting independent booksellers since March this year, deepening concerns over shrinking press and publication freedoms in the former British colony.

Visual evidence from multiple local and international media outlets documents the raid on Have A Nice Stay, a bookstore founded by a group of former journalists, located in the busy Mong Kok district. Footage shows uniformed officers removing sealed boxes of materials from the store’s building and leading one bookseller into custody. Just a short distance away, a second raid unfolded at Greenfield Book Store, with video from online news platform The Collective showing law enforcement also seizing boxes of inventory from that location.

In their public statement, police confirmed the two Mong Kok locations were searched and that two men and three women were taken into custody on suspicion of violating the national security law. Investigators found the five suspects allegedly displayed and sold publications intended to stir up public hatred against Hong Kong’s executive government, judiciary and law enforcement institutions, the statement said. The case was originally referred to police by Hong Kong Customs, which discovered the allegedly seditious titles in a shipment arriving from overseas; police have not released the names of the publications in question.

Both targeted stores remained shuttered during their regular operating hours Wednesday, and attempts to reach ownership of Greenfield Book Store and the founder of Have A Nice Stay went unanswered. Notably, Have A Nice Stay had already publicly announced plans to permanently close its doors on August 30, citing unmanageable financial strain and the uncertainty of unwritten regulatory “red lines” that make operating an independent bookstore untenable in today’s Hong Kong.

For decades, Hong Kong built a global reputation as a haven for free expression and open publication, drawing Chinese mainland readers who crossed the border to access books and materials considered too politically sensitive for distribution across the mainland. High-profile cases targeting independent booksellers stretch back nearly a decade: Lam Wing-kee, owner of the iconic Causeway Bay Books, died earlier this month after making global headlines in 2016 when he revealed he had been detained by Chinese mainland authorities during a trip to Shenzhen in 2015. Four other people connected to Causeway Bay Books also disappeared in late 2015, a case that sent shockwaves through Hong Kong’s publishing community and raised urgent questions about the future of the civil liberties Beijing pledged to protect for 50 years after the 1997 handover.

Since the large-scale anti-government protests that roiled the city in 2019, independent bookstores have faced increasingly difficult operating conditions, with multiple crackdowns under the national security framework. Hong Kong authorities maintain that the national security legislation is critical to upholding long-term stability and public order in the city. Secretary for Security Chris Tang has previously stated the government will not publish an official list of banned books, arguing such a list would be unworkable in practice.

This week’s operation is the third targeted action against independent booksellers this year. In March, police arrested the owner and multiple staff members of Book Punch, another independent Hong Kong bookstore, on identical suspicion of selling seditious publications. Among the materials seized in that raid was a biography of jailed former pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in a separate national security case. A second round of arrests came in June, when two more booksellers were taken into custody on suspicion of selling seditious materials and receiving funding from foreign political organizations; all five people arrested in the March and June operations were later released on bail.

Over three consecutive nights of air operations, United States military forces have launched strikes against hundreds of Iranian targets, including sites in the southern strategic port city of Bandar Abbas. The campaign was launched by sitting US President Donald Trump in an effort to reassert American control over the critically important Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most vital chokepoint for global oil and natural gas trade.

Trump has positioned the United States as the self-declared “guardian” of the waterway, revived a naval blockade of Iranian commercial ports, and made a fleeting demand for a 20 percent toll on all cargo transiting the strait – a proposal that his own Secretary of State Marco Rubio had publicly ruled out just two weeks prior to the announcement.

In response to the US strikes, Iran has escalated hostilities in turn: the country has carried out attacks on two commercial tankers operating in the strait, which left one crew member dead, and launched retaliatory strikes against US military bases located across the Persian Gulf. Tehran’s open decision to target commercial shipping in the strait, a move that directly threatens the stability of the global economy, lays bare the significant strategic leverage Iran holds in the escalating conflict.

Yet amid this spiraling cycle of tit-for-tat violence, a critical question has emerged: why has Iran chosen to carry out its long-dormant threat to disrupt traffic through the strait now, when it has held the military capacity to do so for nearly 40 years?

For four decades, the threat to close the Strait of Hormuz remained a rhetorical weapon that Iran never chose to fire. Even at the peak of the brutal Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, which saw more than 400 commercial and military vessels attacked across the Gulf, Tehran exercised deliberate and notable restraint. Iran never attempted to fully seal off the strait, not even after the USS Vincennes, a US Navy warship, mistakenly shot down an Iranian civilian passenger airliner in 1988, killing all 290 people on board.

At that time, Tehran’s strategic logic was clear: closing the strait would cripple Iran’s own critical oil export revenue and guarantee devastating retaliation from Western powers. As political scientist Caitlin Talmadge observed in 2008, closing the strait would have been “the military equivalent of cutting off its nose to spite its [enemies] face.” For decades, the strait functioned solely as an instrument of Iranian coercive diplomacy: Tehran leveraged the threat of closure as a deterrent and bargaining chip, but never followed through on the warning.

This pattern held through decades of escalating tensions. In 2011, then-Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi threatened that “not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz” if Western sanctions on Iran’s petroleum exports were implemented. Yet in the end, Tehran backed down, allowing the embargo to take effect without disrupting strait traffic. This pattern of rhetorical bluffing held through every round of escalation before 2026, making Iran’s current decision to act on its threats a significant departure from decades of strategic behavior.

Scholars argue this dramatic policy shift stems not from a change in material military capacity, but from a fundamental shift in how Iran’s leadership perceives risk. Behavioral economics’ prospect theory offers a compelling framework to explain this reversal: the theory holds that decision-makers do not evaluate risk in a consistent, rational way. When leaders operate within a context of perceived gains, they overwhelmingly prefer the certainty of what they already hold over risky gambles that could cost them their current advantages. But when leaders frame their situation as one of accumulating losses, this logic flips: they become far more willing to take extreme risks to recover what they have lost.

The clearest evidence of this shift comes from the first public statement by Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, issued March 12, two weeks after the assassination of his predecessor Ali Khamenei. In the address, he declared: “The revenge we have in mind is not just because of the martyrdom of the illustrious leader of the revolution. Every member of the nation martyred by the enemy is a separate case that demands we seek revenge … the leverage of closing the Strait of Hormuz must definitely continue to be utilised.”

The statement reframed every Iranian death from conflict not as a tragic cost of war, but as a sacred debt that the United States and Israel owed in retribution – and the Strait of Hormuz was positioned as the tool to collect that debt. Khamenei’s insistence that the strait’s leverage “must definitely continue to be utilised” transformed the waterway into a mechanism through which Iran could recover its accumulated perceived losses.

This framing has spread widely across Iranian society. In a mid-April address delivered directly at the shore overlooking the strait, Iranian cleric Hojjat al-Islam Jafar Rastakhiz argued that “for 47 years the criminal America has sanctioned us” and now “the Strait of Hormuz, because of the atrocities of America, has been closed.” Ali Khamenei’s recent state funeral, which drew mass processions across Iran, turned the regime’s collective losses into a public national ritual, with mourners chanting in unison: “Our word is one! Revenge! Revenge!”

This public rhetoric lays bare how the Iranian regime now narrates its geopolitical position: it has framed Iran as a state burdened by decades of accumulated military, political, and symbolic losses that demand recovery. In doing so, it has created the exact conditions under which extreme risk-taking becomes politically and strategically acceptable to Iran’s leadership.

This shift carries uncomfortable implications for US strategy. Trump’s decision to launch repeated strikes on Iran, while framing the action as protecting commercial shipping in the strait, may actually be reinforcing the very psychological conditions that drive Tehran’s risky behavior. Conventional effective deterrence relies on the assumption that an adversary will calculate what it stands to lose from escalation. But against a regime that believes it has already suffered irrecoverable losses, every additional US strike simply deepens the perceived deficit that Iran’s leaders are gambling to reverse. Today, the conflict is being fought on terms entirely defined by Tehran.