What does Ebrahim Raisi’s election victory mean for Iran and the world?

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Updated 20 June 2021
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What does Ebrahim Raisi’s election victory mean for Iran and the world?

  • US-sanctioned judge becomes new president after election viewed as rigged in his favor
  • Whether Raisi can improve life for ordinary Iranians will be the determinant of its legacy

MISSOURI, US / IRBIL, Iraqi Kurdistan: A popular Persian music video from several years back features a long line of sullen-looking people waiting to be served at a cafeteria. When their turn comes to choose, we see the grim-faced chef offer them the option of maggot-filled mystery meat or slime filled with flies.

Many Iranian artists engage in such oblique attacks on the clerical ruling class since direct criticism of the basic parameters of the political system remains forbidden. The victory of ultraconservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi in Friday’s presidential election highlighted Iranians’ lack of choice in such matters more than ever.

While it is not uncommon for voters in many countries to complain of lack of meaningful choice in elections, the Iranian case takes this phenomenon to new heights. The Guardian Council, an unelected body of clerics and jurists (three of whom were appointed by Raisi), vets would-be political candidates.




Voter turnout for Iran’s presidential poll was the lowest in decades. (AFP)

By many estimates, the council rejects more than 90 percent of applicants who go through the trouble of applying to run for political office. This year it rejected the candidacy of not only popular reformist candidates allied with outgoing President Hassan Rouhani, but also of populist hardliners as well.

The list of candidates forbidden to run in the election thus included current vice-president Eshaq Jahingiri, Speaker of the Parliament Ali Larijani (both allied with Rouhani), and the rightwing populist former president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. These are former political leaders of Iran, among the few allowed to run in previous elections and whose support for the basic tenets of the Islamic Republic seems beyond doubt.

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Yet the Guardian Council still deemed them too much of a threat and disqualified their candidacy (along with that of any women, who are all barred from running in such elections). Unsurprisingly in such a climate, voter turnout appeared to have been the lowest in decades. 

How to judge the legitimacy of the Iranian presidential election then?




An electoral campaign poster covers the facade of a building on Valiasr Square in Iran's capital Tehran on June 19, 2021, a day after the presidential election. (AFP / Atta Kenare)

“That depends on how you define ‘legitimate’,” Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told Arab News. “The Guardian Council has always vetted out any candidates seen as insufficiently loyal to the system, although never before had the definition of ‘loyal’ contracted as much as it seemed to have for this election.”

Much less charitable than Slavin is Arash Azizi, author of “The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran’s Global Ambitions.” “Raisi won pretty much the same number of votes in 2021 as he had in 2017 as the losing candidate. But he won this time because the majority of people boycotted the elections,” Azizi told Arab News.

“Even if we believe the official figure, this is the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic, and the first time a majority have not voted in a presidential election. Not to mention the nearly four million voters who spoiled their ballots.”

Aside from the lack of choice in political candidates, the most important decision-making posts in the country are not elected in any case. The supreme leader — currently Ayatollah Khamenei, who took over from Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 — is nominally chosen by the Assembly of Experts. The heads of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are likewise not elected but make many of the most important policy decisions in the country.




Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (AFP)

“Iranians were frustrated at the lack of choice and pessimistic about the prospects for a better life under this regime,” Slavin told Arab News. “For 25 years, they have turned out in large numbers in presidential elections in hopes of achieving peaceful evolutionary change.

“But while Iranian society has progressed, the system has become more repressive and less representative. Also, not voting is a form of protest in a system that regards voting as a patriotic duty.”

IRAN’S POLITICAL ECONOMY IN NUMBERS 

40 percent - Iran’s inflation rate in 2019.

5 percent - Jump in poverty rate over past two years.

3.7 million - People added to poverty roll in this period.

83 million - Population of Iran in 2019.

In the past, Khamenei and IRGC commanders preferred to allow limited choice in presidential elections and refrained from intervening too directly or obviously in the political process.

They would use the very restricted electoral system to gauge the popular mood, try and gain some legitimacy by claiming a democratic mandate, and sit back to see what political cards various elites in Iranian society would try to brandish.

Only when he perceived Iran to be veering too far off course would Khamenei step in publicly to make a correction.

Behind the scenes, of course, such unelected leaders played an active role in nearly everything, from economic policy and directives regarding executions of political prisoners to the strategy of Iran’s nuclear negotiations and other matters such as covert operations abroad and funding of various Iranian proxy forces in the region.




Rising poverty, growing unrest and an economy in crisis have rattled the Tehran regime. (AFP)

An economy in crisis and a growing number of popular protests in recent years seem to have rattled the regime, however. Under such conditions, the real leadership fears allowing Iranians even a semblance of choice in this year’s election.

Raisi’s appointment to the presidency therefore probably represents a message to the Iranian people most of all. A protege of Khamenei, Raisi is blamed by Iranian activists for the executions of tens of thousands of dissidents during the past three decades. They also claim that Raisi, as a junior prosecutor in the 1980s, headed “death committees” that buried slain political prisoners in mass graves in 1988.

According to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, at that time Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who was then the heir apparent to Ayatollah Khomeini, even condemned the death committees, saying: “I believe this is the greatest crime committed in the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution and history will condemn us for it … . History will write you down as criminals.”




Iranian President Hassan Rouhani faced harsh criticism from conservatives today over a poorly implemented scheme to distribute food to low-income families in the sanctions-hit Islamic republic.(AFP file photo)

Even today, Iran stands second only to China — a much larger country — in the number of executions it carries out every year. These are carried out after closed-door kangaroo trials in which defendants are not allowed to even see the evidence against them or confront their accusers, with a disproportionate number of accused coming from ethnic and religious minorities in Iran. Iranian Kurds make up roughly half of those executed, although they constitute less than half of Iran’s population.

Raisi takes up the post of president after serving as chief of the judiciary that oversaw this system and its mass executions of dissidents. Before becoming chief justice in 2019, he served as attorney general (2014–2016), deputy chief justice (2004–2014), and prosecutor and deputy prosecutor of Tehran in the 1980s and 1990s.

He is the first Iranian official to enter the presidency while already under US and European sanctions for his past involvement in human rights abuses.

The message to the Iranian people would therefore seem quite clear: You must behave and stay in line or else.

“Khamenei and the clerical establishment have long made a conscious decision to drive out all political competition. The reformists were drowned in blood once the 2009 Iranian Green movement was crushed, with many of its leaders sent to jail for years and its main political parties banned,” Azizi told Arab News.

“The centrist wing of the regime, represented by Rouhani, was also subsequently pushed out of major positions of power. The pro-Khamenei conservatives now control the iudiciary, the parliament and the presidency. The latter two became possible only after all major electoral rivals were thrown out by the Guardian Council.” 




Hassan Rouhani's moderate leadership was reportedly sidelined in conducting foreign policy by the warmongering Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). (AFP file photo)

Comparing the present situation to the abolition in 1975 of the multi-party system by the shah of Iran, Azizi said: “This is  very much the Islamic Republic’s 1975 one-party state moment as some historians have pointed out. The regime might come to regret the day it turned itself into an ever more monolithic entity.”

Looking to the future, the Atlantic Council’s Slavin says a more pertinent question now than the presidential election’s legitimacy is whether the Raisi administration can improve life for ordinary Iranians as “that will be the determinant of its legacy.”

“Iranians may hope to see a slightly better economy if Tehran comes back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal and sanctions are lifted again,” she said.

“But much depends on the competence or lack thereof of Raisi’s team and the appetite or lack thereof of foreign companies to invest in Iran. I would expect repression of dissent to continue and even accelerate.”

Azizi believes Raisi’s election will not lead to quick changes in people’s lives or a sharp turn in policies. “He will tread carefully as his main goal is to prepare for the day when Khamenei’s death brings a succession crisis and he can be in line to become the supreme leader,” he told Arab News.

“Interestingly enough, Rouhani’s chief of staff Mahmod Vaezi recently speculated that people’s lives might improve under Raisi since there will be dealings with the West, possibly even a deal before Raisi takes office, which should take some pressure off the economy.”

That being said, what might Raisi’s elevation to the presidency mean for Iran’s relations with other countries?

Compared with the more affable and moderate Rouhani, Raisi seems less likely, able or willing to lead an Iranian charm offensive abroad. The style of Iranian diplomacy may therefore change a bit, but the substance or Iranian policy will likely differ little from that of the previous administration.

Rouhani was not the one making the most important Iranian foreign policy choices in any case. He was, along with his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, just the messenger.

“Iran’s policy in the Arab world was neither made nor implemented by the Rouhani administration, so a change in presidency won’t bring an immediate change on this count,” Azizi told Arab News. “But the IRGC will find more unrestricted access to state structures it doesn’t already control and will have a freer hand in regional adventures.”




With an ultraconservative sitting as president, the IRGC will have a freer hand in regional troublemaking adventures, critics warn. (Iranian Army Office photo via AFP) 

Slavin takes a more nuanced view of Iranian ambitions under Raisi’s watch. “I see him as risk-averse in foreign affairs in part because he hopes to succeed Khamenei,” she told Arab News.

“I think he will focus on stabilizing the economy and try to reduce tensions with the neighbors. However, he is not in charge of relations with the various militia groups. That will remain within the purview of the Quds Force.”

Tellingly, Raisi has made statements in the past indicating his willingness to accept international sanctions on Iran. He views such sanctions as an opportunity for Iran to further develop its own independent, “resistance” economy.

For ultraconservatives like him, too deep an integration with the world economy risks cultural and political perversion of Iran, so anything short of an American military invasion may be perfectly fine for Raisi and his mentor, Khamenei.

The Biden administration, which remains very much interested in resuming the nuclear accord, may thus find it difficult to negotiate with someone who does not seem to mind sanctions and a certain amount of isolation.

However, Azizi thinks the regime will try to seal a deal to get Washington to rejoin the nuclear accord before Raisi takes office in August. “Raisi will thus inherit this deal and maintain it,” he said, although some IRGC elements will be pushing him to permit “more adventurous stuff in the region” and reject Gulf states’ reconciliation and talks offers.

“How amenable he is to such pressure is an open question,” Azizi told Arab News.

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Israeli fire and airstrikes kill 35 in Gaza

Updated 14 June 2025
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Israeli fire and airstrikes kill 35 in Gaza

  • Hamas, which denies Israeli charges that it steals aid, accused Israel of “employing hunger as a weapon of war and turning aid distribution sites into traps of mass deaths of innocent civilians”

GAZA: Israeli fire and airstrikes killed at least 35 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, most of them near an aid distribution site operated by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, local health authorities said.
Medics at Al-Awda and Al-Aqsa hospitals in central Gaza areas, where most of the casualties were moved to, said at least 15 people were killed as they tried to approach the GHF aid distribution site near the Netzarim corridor.
The rest were killed in separate attacks across the enclave, they added.

BACKGROUND

The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that at least 274 people have so far been killed, and more than 2,000 wounded, near aid distribution sites since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operations.

There has been no immediate comment by the Israeli military or the GHF on Saturday’s incidents.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the UN says is neither impartial nor neutral.
The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that at least 274 people have so far been killed, and more than 2,000 wounded, near aid distribution sites since the GHF began operations in Gaza.
Hamas, which denies Israeli charges that it steals aid, accused Israel of “employing hunger as a weapon of war and turning aid distribution sites into traps of mass deaths of innocent civilians.”
Later on Saturday, health officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza said Israeli fire killed at least 12 Palestinians, who gathered to wait for aid trucks along the coastal road north of the strip, taking Saturday’s death toll to at least 35.
The Israeli military ordered residents of Khan Younis and the nearby towns of Abassan and Bani Suhaila in the southern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and head west toward the so-called humanitarian zone, saying it would forcefully work against “terror organizations” in the area.
The war in Gaza erupted 20 months ago after militants raided Israel and took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s single deadliest day.
Israel’s military campaign has killed nearly 55,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to health authorities in Gaza, and flattened much of the densely populated strip, which is home to more than 2 million people.
Most of the population is displaced, and malnutrition is widespread.
Despite efforts by the US, Egypt, and Qatar to restore a ceasefire in Gaza, neither Israel nor Hamas has shown willingness to back down on core demands, with each side blaming the other for the failure to reach a deal.


Egypt delays opening of massive new museum

Updated 14 June 2025
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Egypt delays opening of massive new museum

  • Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a press conference on Saturday that the grand opening would be delayed until the last quarter of this year

CAIRO: Egyptian authorities announced on Saturday that the long-awaited inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, known as GEM, would once again be delayed as a result of escalating regional tensions.
“In view of the ongoing regional developments, it was decided to postpone the official inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which was scheduled for July 3,” the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said in a statement.
Spanning 50 hectares, the GEM is twice the size of both Paris’ Louvre and New York’s Metropolitan, and two-and-a-half times that of the British Museum, according to its director.
Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a press conference on Saturday that the grand opening would be delayed until the last quarter of this year.
In view of current events, “we believed it would be appropriate to delay this big event so that it can maintain the appropriate global momentum,” he added.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has previously described the GEM as “the largest archeological museum in the world dedicated to one civilization.”
The opening of the massive, ultra-modern museum situated near the Giza Pyramids has been repeatedly delayed over the years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other reasons.

 


Latest: Israel and Iran strike at each other in new wave of attacks

Updated 22 min 4 sec ago
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Latest: Israel and Iran strike at each other in new wave of attacks

  • Projectiles visible in night sky over Jerusalem
  • Apparent Israeli strike hit South Pars gas field

TEL AVIV/DUBAI: Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks on each other overnight into Sunday, stoking fears of a wider conflict after Israel expanded its surprise campaign against its main rival with a strike on the world’s biggest gas field.
Tehran called off nuclear talks that Washington had said were the only way to halt Israel’s bombing, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks were nothing compared with what Iran would see in the coming days.
Israel’s military said more missiles were launched from Iran toward Israel late on Saturday, and that it was working to intercept them. It also said it was attacking military targets in Tehran.
Several projectiles were visible in the night sky over Jerusalem late on Saturday. Air raid sirens did not sound in the city, but were heard in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.
Israel’s ambulance service said a woman in her 20s was killed and 13 other people injured after a missile struck a house in northern Israel. Emergency responders with flashlights were seen searching the rubble of the home, which was still standing but had a partially collapsed roof. Israeli media said three people were killed in the attack in Tamra, a predominantly Palestinian city.
Iran said the Shahran oil depot in western Tehran was targeted in an Israeli attack. A video posted online by the semi-official Iran Students' News Agency, or ISNA, showed a massive fire raging at the depot, but officials later said the situation was under control.

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Israeli strikes also targeted Iran’s defense ministry building in Tehran, causing minor damage, Iran’s Tasnim news agency said on Sunday.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Iranian missiles and drones targeted Israel’s energy infrastructure and facilities for fighter jet fuel production. The elite force warned Tehran’s attacks will be “heavier and more extensive” if Israel continues its hostilities.
US President Donald Trump had warned Iran of worse to come, but said it was not too late to halt the Israeli campaign if Tehran accepted a sharp downgrading of its nuclear program.
A round of US-Iran nuclear talks that was due to be held in Oman on Sunday was canceled, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi saying the discussions could not take place while Iran was being subjected to Israel’s “barbarous” attacks.
In the first apparent attack to hit Iran’s energy infrastructure, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said Iran partially suspended production at the world’s biggest gas field after an Israeli strike caused a fire there on Saturday.
The South Pars field, offshore in Iran’s southern Bushehr province, is the source of most of the gas produced in Iran.
Fears about potential disruption to the region’s oil exports had already driven up oil prices 9 percent on Friday even though Israel spared Iran’s oil and gas on the first day of its attacks.
An Iranian general, Esmail Kosari, said on Saturday that Tehran was reviewing whether to close the Strait of Hormuz controlling access to the Gulf for tankers.

Iran says scores killed
Iran said 78 people were killed on the first day of Israel’s campaign, and scores more on the second, including 60 when a missile brought down a 14-story apartment block in Tehran, where 29 of the dead were children.
Iran had launched its own retaliatory missile volley on Friday night, killing at least three people in Israel.
With Israel saying its operation could last weeks, and Netanyahu urging Iran’s people to rise up against their Islamic clerical rulers, fears have grown of a regional conflagration dragging in outside powers.
B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization, said on Saturday that instead of exhausting all possibilities for a diplomatic resolution, Israel’s government had chosen to start a war that puts the entire region in danger.
Tehran has warned Israel’s allies that their military bases in the region would come under fire too if they helped shoot down Iranian missiles.
However, 20 months of war in Gaza and a conflict in Lebanon last year have decimated Tehran’s strongest regional proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, reducing its options for retaliation.
Israel sees Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to its existence, and said the bombardment was designed to avert the last steps to production of a nuclear weapon.
Tehran insists the program is entirely civilian and that it does not seek an atomic bomb. However the UN nuclear watchdog reported it this week as violating obligations under the global non-proliferation treaty.

‘We will hit every site’

Israel said three people were killed and 76 wounded by Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile barrage overnight, which lit up the skies over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu vowed to keep up Israel’s campaign.
“We will hit every site, every target of the ayatollah regime,” he said in a video statement, threatening greater action “in the coming days.”
He added that the Israeli campaign had dealt a “real blow” to Iran’s nuclear program and maintained it had the “clear support” of US President Donald Trump.
Netanyahu’s defense minister, Israel Katz, warned “Tehran will burn” if it kept targeting Israeli civilians.
Israel’s fire service reported residential buildings were hit following the latest launches.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian fired back that “the continuation of the Zionist aggression will be met with a more severe and powerful response from the Iranian armed forces.”
According to a statement from his office, Pezeshkian also condemned Washington’s “dishonesty” for supporting Israel while engaged in nuclear talks with Iran — which mediator Oman said would no longer take place on Sunday.
Western governments have repeatedly accused Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon, which it denies.
Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said the Israeli attacks undermined negotiations and were pushing the region into a “dangerous cycle of violence.”
With world leaders seeking to contain the conflict, Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed in a phone call that it needed to stop.
“He feels, as do I, this war in Israel-Iran should end,” Trump said on Truth Social.

 

After decades of enmity and conflict by proxy, it is the first time the arch-enemies have traded fire with such intensity, triggering fears of a prolonged conflict that could engulf the Middle East.
Highlighting the unease, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned against a “devastating war” with regional consequences in a call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Ankara said.

Turkiye denies sharing information with Israel

At the United Nations, the Turkish mission dismissed as "black propaganda" reports that “information was shared with Israel from the radar base in Kürecik.”

In a statement, the mission said the Kürecik Radar Station, a NATO installation, was established in line with Türkiye's national security and interests and is intended to ensure the protection of the NATO allies.

"The data obtained from the Kürecik radar base is exclusively shared with NATO allies within a specific framework, in accordance with NATO procedures," said the statement. "Sharing radar base data with non-NATO allies, such as Israel, is absolutely out of the question."

It maintained that "Türkiye stands against Israel's operations to destabilize the Middle East and will never support Israel's actions in this regard."

Israeli strikes have hit Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant and killed its highest-ranking military officer, Mohammad Bagheri, as well as the head of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami.
The Israeli military said its strikes had killed more than 20 Iranian commanders.
Iranian media reported five Guards killed Saturday in Israeli strikes, while authorities in one northwestern province said 30 military personnel had been killed there since Friday.
Iran’s Red Crescent said an ambulance was hit Saturday in Urmia city, killing two.

 

Iran called on its citizens to unite in the country’s defense, while Netanyahu urged them to rise up against against the government.
Iran’s Mehr news agency said Tehran had warned Britain, France and the United States it could retaliate if they came to Israel’s defense.
AFP images from the city of Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv showed blown-out buildings, destroyed vehicles and streets strewn with debris after Iran’s first wave of attacks.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had struck dozens of targets in Israel. One Iranian missile wounded seven Israeli soldiers, the military said.
Firefighters had worked for hours to free people trapped in a Tel Aviv high-rise building on Friday.
Chen Gabizon, a resident, said he ran to an underground shelter after receiving an alert.
“We just heard a very big explosion, everything was shaking, smoke, dust, everything was all over the place,” he said.
In Tehran, fire and heavy smoke billowed over Mehrabad airport on Saturday, an AFP journalist said.
The Israeli army said it had struck an underground military facility Saturday in western Iran’s Khorramabad that contained surface-to-surface and cruise missiles.
Iranian media also reported a “massive explosion” following an Israeli drone strike on an oil refinery in the southern city of Kangan.
The attacks prompted several countries to temporarily ground air traffic, though on Saturday Jordan, Lebanon and Syria reopened their airspace.
Iran’s airspace was closed until further notice, state media reported, as was Israel’s, according to authorities.

 


We will recognize the State of Palestine soon, Macron tells Asharq News

French President Emmanuel Macron holds a press conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Friday. (File/Reuters)
Updated 14 June 2025
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We will recognize the State of Palestine soon, Macron tells Asharq News

  • French president: ‘I have agreed with the Saudi crown prince to postpone the New York conference to a date in the near future’

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron pledged, in statements to Asharq News on the sidelines of a meeting with journalists and representatives of Palestinian and Israeli civil society institutions, that his country will recognize the State of Palestine at an upcoming conference that France will organize with Saudi Arabia in New York.
In response to a question about whether there are conditions for recognizing the Palestinian state, Macron said: “There are no conditions. Recognition will take place through a process that includes stopping the war on Gaza, restoring humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, releasing Israeli hostages, and disarming Hamas.”
He stressed: “This is one package.”
Macron indicated that France and Saudi Arabia have agreed to postpone the UN conference they are co-organizing, which was originally scheduled to take place in New York next week. He noted that current developments have prevented Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from traveling to New York.
Macron explained that he had spoken several times with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Friday and Palestinian President Abbas, and it was agreed to “postpone the meeting to a date in the near future.”
He also claimed that the president of Indonesia, which currently does not officially recognize Israel, had pledged to do so if France recognizes the State of Palestine. Macron emphasized “the need for maintaining this dynamic.”
The International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine, scheduled to be held in New York from June 17-20 and co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France, outlined in its paper a commitment to the “two-state solution” as the foundational reference. The paper defines a timeline for implementation, outlines the practical obligations of all parties involved, and calls for the establishment of international mechanisms to ensure the continuity of the process.
Asharq News obtained a copy of the paper, which asserts that the implementation of the two-state solution must proceed regardless of local or regional developments. It ensures the full recognition of a Palestinian state as part of a political solution that upholds people’s rights and responds to their aspirations for peace and security.
The paper highlights that the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and the war on Gaza have led to an unprecedented escalation in violence and casualties, resulting in the most severe humanitarian crisis to date, widespread destruction, and immense suffering for civilians on both sides, including detainees, their families, and residents of Gaza.
It further confirms that settlement activities pose a threat to the two-state solution, which it states is the only path to achieving a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace in the region. The paper notes that the settlement activities undermine regional and international peace, security, and prosperity.
According to the paper, the conference aims to alter the current course by building on national, regional, and international initiatives and adopting concrete measures to uphold international law. The conference will also focus on advancing a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace that ensures security for all the people of the region and fosters regional integration.
The conference reaffirms the international community’s unwavering commitment to a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution, highlighting the urgent need to act in pursuit of these objectives.


Iranian media claims Israeli pilots captured, IDF denies

Updated 14 June 2025
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Iranian media claims Israeli pilots captured, IDF denies

DUBAI: The Iranian army has claimed they have downed a third Israeli F-35 fighter jet since Israel’s attacks began on Friday.

State Iranian media, Tehran Times, reported that one pilot is believed to have been liquidated and another captured by Iranian forces.

However, the Israeli Defense Forces denied the claims dubbing the news “fake”.

“This news being spread by Iranian media is completely baseless” the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson Col. Avichay Adraee said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Friday the launch of “Operation Rising Lion” against Iran in an effort to deter the Iranian threat of nuclear weapons to Israel. Netanyahu confirmed the operation will continue until the mission is accomplished.