How the 2020 assassination of Mohsen Fakrizadeh bought Israel time to improve capabilities for June attack on Iran.
The founder and chief of Iran’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated on November 27, 2020, with Iran pointing the finger at the Mossad. Israel, even after the June conflict with Iran, has not taken responsibility for the episode.
European leaders urged private business and equity on Thursday to invest in rebuilding Ukraine now, even as Russia accelerates its war, as they opened an annual recovery conference with announcements of a new equity fund and public-private partnerships amid uncertainties of the U.S. commitment to Kyiv’s defense.
On July 7, in the midst of President Donald Trump’s discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, and their genuine efforts to bring peace to the Middle East; the brutal military attacks of Russia against Ukraine and its people were equally at the center of discussions.
Russia offered to help replenish Iran’s depleted uranium stockpile to support a peaceful nuclear program.[1] CTP-ISW previously assessed that Russia’s involvement in the US-Iran nuclear talks would be very unlikely to secure US interests due to Russia’s alignment with Iran.[2] Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov stated on July 8 that Russia can receive and downblend Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile and return it to supply Iranian nuclear power plants. [3]Downblending is the process of converting highly enriched uranium into low-enriched uranium. Russia previously accepted 11,000 kilograms of enriched uranium from Iran in December 2024 in exchange for natural uranium as part of the JCPOA.[4] Russia also has previously offered to accept Iran’s enriched uranium to “provide assistance” to the United States and Iran during the US-Iran nuclear negotiations before the Israel-Iran war.[5] Neither the United States nor Iran accepted Russia’s offer to mediate. Russia has repeatedly opposed the stated US demands in the negotiations by supporting Iran’s right to enrich uranium and has consistently supported the Axis of Resistance against Israel.[6]
War kills in so many ways. These days, Americans are bombarded with images from Gaza and elsewhere of people or broken bodies being ferried on stretchers from the rubble of homes and hospitals, by rescue workers whose thin bodies and stricken faces suggest they are barely better off than those they’re helping. Social media and journalists make us eyewitnesses to emaciated children too weak to cry. And yet, compared with air raids that crush and bloody instantaneously, a slower disaster, more difficult to capture (especially given our made-for-TikTok attention spans), consists of the hours that many people in war zones spend wasting away from infectious diseases of one sort or another.
Israel’s defense minister has outlined plans to pack hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into a closed zone of the Gaza Strip along the border with Egypt, according to local media reports.
It appears to be the latest version of plans by the Israeli government to maintain lasting control over the territory and relocate much of its population of some 2 million. Critics say that would amount to forcible displacement in violation of international law because Israel’s offensive and blockade have made Gaza largely uninhabitable.
US President Donald Trump has expressed growing frustration with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as the war in Ukraine drags on, saying he is considering imposing new sanctions on Moscow.
In comments made at the White House on July 8, five days after his latest phone call with Putin, Trump indicated he was making little progress in his goal of ending the more than 40-month war.
The French government on Monday said it would take new measures to tackle the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in France, including the disbanding of endowment funds and a new asset-freeze mechanism.
An official 74-page report on the Muslim Brotherhood “required more ambitious proposals” from the state, the Elysee said in a statement, after a high-level meeting with a small group of cabinet members.
Al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) is the main group behind a surge in militant jihadist attacks sweeping across several West African nations, especially Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
On 1 July, the group said it had carried out a major coordinated attack on seven military locations in western Mali, including near the borders with Senegal and Mauritania.
[This investigation is co-published with French investigative outlet Disclose and our Arabic-language sister publication Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. It is a follow-up to a first investigation into the same subject, which was published in French in online newspaper Mediapart in March 2024].