sábado, 27 de junho de 2026
Live Updates: Mideast Hostilities Flare, Testing Fragile U.S.-Iran Truce
Live
Updates: Mideast Hostilities Flare, Testing Fragile U.S.-Iran Truce
Bahrain
said it had come under attack by Iranian drones, an apparent retaliation after
the United States launched strikes on Iranian military sites overnight.
Aaron
Boxerman
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/06/27/world/us-iran-strikes-hormuz#heres-the-latest
Here’s
the latest.
Bahrain
said it was targeted early Saturday by Iranian drones, an apparent retaliation
after the United States launched strikes on Iranian military sites overnight.
The flaring of hostilities underscored the limits of the truce between
Washington and Tehran.
There
were no immediate reports of damage in Bahrain, which accused Tehran of
“destabilizing security, exporting chaos and undermining regional stability.”
The Iranian government did not immediately comment. Before the cease-fire, Iran
regularly launched strikes against neighboring Gulf states in retaliation for
U.S. and Israeli attacks.
The drone
attack came hours after the U.S. military said it had attacked Iranian missile
drones and coastal radar sites. U.S. officials framed the strikes as a direct
response to Iran’s firing of attack drones a day earlier at a container ship
passing near the Omani side of the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump said on
Friday that Iran had “foolishly” violated the cease-fire with the attack in the
strait.
Iran’s
foreign ministry accused the U.S. on Saturday of violating the cease-fire and
vowed that the Iranian military would “defend the country’s sovereignty,
security, and national interests with all its strength.”
Before
the overnight clashes, the deal between the United States and Iran signed
earlier this month had led to relative calm in the region, with an uptick in
vessels traversing the Strait of Hormuz and signs of an emerging agreement,
backed by the Trump administration, to wind down the war’s second front in
Lebanon.
The
agreement pushed discussion of many of the thornier questions between the
United States and Iran, including the future of Iran’s nuclear programs, to a
60-day negotiation period, which began in Switzerland at the start of the week.
While the deal did stipulate an end to the Iranian blockade of the strait for
at least 60 days, Iran has insisted that it maintains authority over managing
traffic through the waterway.
Both the
U.S. and Iran have sought to demonstrate that they emerged victorious from the
conflict, which is leading them to test one another’s red lines, analysts say.
For now, neither the U.S. nor Iran seems interested in a return to full-blown
war.
The war
began in late February with a massive joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign
against Iran that drew in much of the Middle East and sent global energy prices
skyrocketing. It also ignited a war in Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting
Hezbollah, an armed group backed by Iran.
On
Friday, the Trump administration announced that it had brokered a rare
agreement between Israel and Lebanon that U.S. officials hope could build
toward an end to the conflict there. More than 3,000 people have been killed in
Lebanon since Hezbollah attacked Israel in solidarity with Iran in March,
according to Lebanese authorities.
Lebanon’s
government is distinct from Hezbollah, long the country’s most powerful force.
Under the U.S.-backed agreement, Israeli forces would withdraw from two
occupied parts of southern Lebanon to allow the Lebanese army to take full
control there.
Israeli
forces will still occupy much of the country’s south for an unknown period,
however. And Hezbollah was quick to reject the deal, which also prompted
scattered demonstrations by opponents in the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
Israelis See Their Friendship With the U.S. Slipping Away
news
analysis
Israelis
See Their Friendship With the U.S. Slipping Away
Criticism
of Israel’s war in Gaza, anger over the Iran war and election results in New
York all suggest Israel’s solid support from Washington may be on borrowed
time.
David M.
Halbfinger
By David
M. Halbfinger
Reporting
from Jerusalem
June 27,
2026, 5:02 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/27/world/middleeast/israel-new-york-iran-war-mamdani.html
For
weeks, the Israeli news media has been obsessing about the once-ironclad
U.S.-Israeli relationship.
President
Trump’s pursuit of a peace deal with Iran, which many Israelis see as a
betrayal, and his repeated berating of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have
raised doubts about whether they can still call Mr. Trump the best friend in
the White House that Israel has ever had.
Then came
Tuesday’s election results in New York City. Three pro-Palestinian candidates
backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a harsh critic of Israel, defeated moderates in
hotly contested Democratic congressional primaries.
No one in
Israel is suggesting a pivot to China or Russia quite yet. But those who have
studied or steered the U.S.-Israel relationship say that the strains and
tensions are fast becoming worrisome for Israel.
“I’m
extremely concerned,” said Asaf Zamir, a deputy mayor of Tel Aviv who was
Israel’s consul general in New York from 2021 to 2023. All three candidates had
made fierce criticism of Israel central to their campaigns and political
identities. “And they say it out loud in the most Jewish city in the world,
after Jerusalem.”
Experts
on the relationship warn that Israel may not be able to count on solid support
from Washington for much longer — whether in concrete assistance like billions
of dollars in yearly military aid, in symbolic backing like reliable vetoes of
anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations or even in tax exemptions for
U.S. charities benefiting Israeli causes.
“There’s
a cliff, and we’re heading towards it,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a Princeton
professor who was ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush.
Some
pro-Israel moderates also won House primaries in New York on Tuesday. But the
victories by the candidates Mr. Mamdani aided — Brad Lander and Claire Valdez,
who accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza; and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who has
questioned Israel’s right to exist and, like Ms. Valdez, calls it an apartheid
state — landed like bold new dots on a scatter chart revealing a clear trend of
rising American hostility to Israel.
Mr.
Zamir, the Tel Aviv deputy mayor, said, “I’m waking up and hearing that we’re
‘genocidal’ and ‘apartheid.’”
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“I’m a
left wing, two-state, pro-peace Israeli, but I’m not blind or crazy,” he added.
“I know what the situation in Israel is, and we’re not those things we’re being
called. And yet, more and more Americans are buying into and voting on those
grounds. That troubles me.”
Israel
was already hemorrhaging popularity in the United States, and in both parties,
largely over its prosecution of the two-year war in Gaza after the Hamas-led
Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, in which about 1,200 people were killed and some 250
taken hostage. Tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians were killed in the
ensuing war, food shortages caused widespread famine and the enclave has been
largely destroyed by Israel’s campaign.
Americans’
sympathy for the Palestinians exceeded their sympathy for Israel for the first
time in a New York Times/Siena poll in September. And 60 percent of Americans
said that they held unfavorable opinions of Israel in a Pew survey in April, up
from 42 percent in 2022.
“If I
were the Israelis, I wouldn’t necessarily be concerned with three or four
members of Congress who are way out to the left,” Michael Koplow, an analyst at
the Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group, said of Tuesday’s
primary results.
But, he
said, those new lawmakers signaled a broader Democratic turn against Israel.
“Opposition to Israel is now the major foreign policy issue,” he noted. “It’s
not on the fringe anymore, it’s not even relegated to the sidelines in terms of
its importance. It’s front and center in campaigns and in worldviews.”
It could
well be front and center again in the 2028 presidential primaries, and Israelis
watching American politics say they can imagine the eventual nominees of both
parties agreeing on little except that U.S. policy toward Israel needs to
change.
For
Democratic critics of Israel, the rift has focused on the perception that the
two countries no longer share the same values, chiefly when it comes to human
rights and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
“The
‘specialness’ of this relationship was pleasant and easygoing and taken for
granted for decades,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli pollster who grew up
in New York. That was until Israel’s war with Hamas, she added, when many
Democrats and a growing number of Republicans “realized that a special
relationship was all well and good as long as Israel wasn’t killing thousands
of babies in Gaza. People just broke over that.”
Israel’s
claim to being the “only democracy in the Middle East” has been tarnished in
American eyes both by its oppressive treatment of the Palestinians and by its
right-wing government’s efforts to overhaul Israeli institutions and
consolidate its power.
That
claim is also arguably less important to the United States at a time when the
Trump administration is emphasizing the exertion of raw power and geopolitical
transactionalism over America’s traditional self-image as the leader of the
free world.
For
Republican critics, many of whom accuse Israel of dragging the United States
into fighting its wars — most recently in Iran — the argument centers on how
much American and Israeli national interests really still overlap.
“After 40
years of Israel calling itself a strategic asset to the U.S., there’s a
legitimate question: Is Israel an asset or is it becoming a liability?” said
Alon Pinkas, who was Israel’s consul general in New York in the early 2000s.
The more
American voters feel they are paying for the Iran war in higher prices at the
gas pump, he said, the more their elected officials will wonder, “What does
America get from this relationship with Israel?”
Even so,
the United States has a long way to go before support of Israel could fairly be
called into question. The Trump administration has accelerated billions in arms
sales and emergency military aid to Israel, backed Israel in peace talks with
Hamas, eased some pressure on West Bank settlement expansion and taken a host
of actions to curb anti-Israel protests on American college campuses.
Should
the alliance fray further, however, there is a lot that Israel could lose.
Already,
because of the talks with Iran, the Trump administration is trying to constrain
Israeli actions against its enemies in the region — most noticeably in Lebanon
— in ways that Israelis say they never anticipated.
Israelis
also can no longer count on receiving billions of dollars a year in U.S.
military aid, something that Mr. Netanyahu effectively acknowledged this year
when he proposed that Israel gradually wean itself from that assistance.
Other
measures that an increasingly frosty Congress, White House or both could take
to express displeasure with Israel include stripping charities supporting West
Bank settlement of federal tax-exempt status. Ms. Valdez, one of the House
primary winners in New York, had tried to do that at the state level in Albany.
“These
are all things that Israel has assumed would never come from the U.S.,” Mr.
Koplow, the analyst, said.
Experts
say it is easy now to imagine even this administration publicly lashing out at
Israel — such as by withholding its veto from U.N. Security Council resolutions
critical of Israel, a step it has taken only rarely over the years.
Mr.
Kurtzer, the former U.S. ambassador, suggested that Mr. Trump might use a
withheld veto to try to punish Israel if he is blamed for Republican losses in
the midterm elections.
“Right
now, even today in this environment, a U.S. veto is almost automatic, but who
knows?” Mr. Kurtzer said. “You have a mercurial president who judges everything
not on the basis of our relationship with Israel but on the basis of what it
does for him.”
The
strained relationship is starting to enter the Israeli political conversation
in the prelude to elections this fall. Naftali Bennett, who toppled Mr.
Netanyahu in 2021 and is trying to repeat that feat, said this week that the
U.S.-Israeli alliance was at an all-time low and that repairing it would be a
huge undertaking.
“For the
first time since the establishment of Israel,” he said, “Israel is a net
negative in the United States.”
“That’s a
disaster,” he added.
Other
candidates have suggested that Israel should crack down on settler violence
against Palestinians or give diplomacy a chance rather than trying to solve
every problem militarily.
For now,
as Israelis watch their support in the United States continue to bleed, there
is little to do but wait.
Mr. Zamir
said the worst part was psychological.
“I don’t
fear the loss of military aid,” he said. “We can live without it. I fear the
loss of backing toward the rest of the world — the feeling that you have our
back.”
David M.
Halbfinger is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel,
Gaza and the West Bank. He also held that post from 2017 to 2021. He was the
politics editor from 2021 to 2025.
Rupert Lowe, leader of the right-wing party Restore Britain, is facing a significant backlash and online "meltdown" from his most prominent supporters.
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Rupert Lowe accused by his supporters of
softening his immigration position
Rupert
Lowe, leader of the
right-wing party Restore Britain, is facing a significant backlash and
online "meltdown" from his most prominent supporters. This fallout
stems from an interview where he was accused of softening his uncompromising
stance on immigration.
The Cause
of the Backlash
During an
interview with American podcaster Patrick Bet-David, Lowe stated that he has "no
problem" with a multicultural society, provided that immigrants
integrate, pay taxes, and accept the laws and culture of the country they move
to. He followed up on these comments by releasing a video on June 25, 2026,
defending "integrated immigrants". In the video, he argued that
Britain cannot treat people who came to the country in good faith in an unfair
or illegal manner.
Reaction
from Supporters
Because
Lowe's party, Restore Britain, was founded on a platform significantly further
to the right of Nigel Farage's Reform UK—advocating for extreme measures like
the "most ambitious programme of mass deportations ever seen in
Britain"—his nativist base reacted with anger.
- Accusations of Backtracking: Prominent hardline activists
and Restore accounts on X (formerly Twitter) accused him of abandoning the
core principles of the movement.
- Calls for an Apology: High-profile far-right
activists, such as Steve Laws, publicly demanded that Lowe apologize to
the party membership. They criticized him for spouting what they labeled
"boomer nonsense" in mainstream interviews.
Broad
Political Context
The
controversy arrives at a delicate moment for Lowe's party. Restore Britain has
been under intense media scrutiny following a Mail on Sunday report exposing that some of its canvassers
and donors have ties to white supremacist organizations. While Lowe has
previously tried to court hardline voters by criticizing Farage's immigration
plans as "pitiful," his recent attempts to draw a line between
integrated legal residents and illegal migrants have alienated the very base he
sought to mobilize
Rupert Lowe Defends 'Integrated Immigrants' After Supporter Revolt
Rupert
Lowe has responded to criticism from some of his own supporters after comments
about integrated immigrants sparked a backlash online. During an interview,
Lowe argued that while he believes multiculturalism has failed, people who came
to Britain legally, contribute through work, pay taxes, obey the law and have
integrated into British society should be treated fairly and within the law.
His remarks angered some hardline supporters, who accused him of softening his
position on immigration. Lowe rejected those claims, insisting his views have
remained consistent for decades. He reiterated his support for mass
deportations of illegal migrants, foreign criminals and those with no right to
remain, while arguing that any action taken against legal residents must be
lawful and fair. The row has exposed divisions within Britain's immigration
debate and among supporters who had previously backed Lowe's hardline stance.
The minimum 21-year jail term handed to Vickrum Digwa for the murder of university student Henry Nowak has been officially referred to the Court of Appeal. Solicitor General Ellie Reeves KC ordered the review under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme, stating that the case "horrified" her and the British public.
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Prosecutors
in Henry Nowak Murder Trial Appeal Vickrum Digwa’s LENIENT Sentence
The minimum
21-year jail term handed to Vickrum Digwa for the murder of
university student Henry Nowak has been officially referred to the Court
of Appeal. Solicitor General Ellie Reeves KC ordered the review under the Unduly
Lenient Sentence scheme, stating that the case "horrified" her
and the British public.
The Court of
Appeal will determine whether the current minimum sentence fell outside a
reasonable range and should be increased.
Case
Background
- The Crime: On December 3, 2025,
23-year-old Vickrum Digwa fatally stabbed 18-year-old Southampton
University student Henry Nowak with a 21cm ceremonial blade.
- The Cover-up: Digwa lied to arriving police
officers, claiming Nowak had launched a racist attack against him.
- The Police Response: Misled by Digwa's lies,
Hampshire police handcuffed a dying Nowak and treated him as a suspect,
ignoring his pleas that he could not breathe.
- The Trial: Digwa was found guilty of
murder at Southampton Crown Court after the jury rejected his
claims of self-defense. On June 1, 2026, he was sentenced to life
imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years.
The Core
Controversy
The initial
sentencing calculation by Judge William Mousley KC used a statutory starting
point of 15 years. Aggravating features—including Digwa's persistent lies that
led police to ignore Nowak's fatal injuries—pushed the term to 23 years, which
was mitigated down to 21 years.
However,
legal experts and public figures argue the judge should have applied a 25-year
starting point under Schedule 21 of the Sentencing Act 2020 because Digwa
brought a weapon to the scene.
Broader
Fallout
- Public Outrage: Newly released body-worn camera
footage showing a dying Nowak handcuffed while Digwa sat unrestrained
sparked widespread public fury and violent protests in Southampton.
- Independent Investigations: The Independent Office for
Police Conduct (IOPC) is actively investigating the Hampshire and Isle of
Wight Constabulary's handling of the incident.
- Further Trials: Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, was
convicted of assisting an offender for trying to hide the murder weapon
and is scheduled for sentencing on July 17, 2026
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