Vietnam and Afghanistan: A tale of two US military withdrawals

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Combo image showing a picture of the 1975 fall of Saigon by Dutch photographer Hugh Van Es (left) and a chaotic scene at Kabul airport on August 19, 2021. (Wikimedia Commons and AFP)
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Updated 06 September 2021
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Vietnam and Afghanistan: A tale of two US military withdrawals

  • US enmity with Vietnam’s communist rulers gave way to frienship and strategic partnership
  • Whether Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and the US can bury their enmity remains to be seen

WASHINGTON D.C.: Images of the chaotic last days of the US mission in Afghanistan have been compared widely to the scenes of the final evacuation from Saigon in 1975 as the victorious North Vietnamese Army rolled into the capital of South Vietnam.

Iconic photos of desperate Vietnamese trying to scale the walls of the US embassy bear a striking resemblance to those of civilians clambering up the gates of Kabul airport last month in hopes of catching one of the last flights out of the country.

In hindsight, the parallels between the American experience in Vietnam and Afghanistan are too many to ignore. Just like the US began a rapid military drawdown in Vietnam after signing the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam in 1973, the February 2020 Doha deal between the US and the Taliban set the scene for America’s rush for the exits in Afghanistan.

By 1975, the only US soldiers remaining in South Vietnam were the Marines who guarded the embassy in Saigon and a small contingent at a nearby air base. By the end of April that year, the city, later renamed Ho Chi Minh City, had fallen to the North VIetnamese Army (NVA).




Jubilant communist troops atop tanks make their way to the center of Saigon as the city fell under their control on April 30, 1975. (Vietnam News Agency photo via AFP) 

The US had hoped that the peace accords would allow for the “Vietnamization” of the conflict, transferring combat operations and security away from the US military to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).

But just like the Afghan National Army — in which Washington had invested billions in training and equipment — proved incapable of securing the country on their own, the ARVN crumbled in the absence of the full complement of US ground combat units and field advisers.

For a long time after the humiliating end to the Vietnam War, the US seemed to suffer from a crisis of confidence, questioning its strength, the appeal of its values and its role in the world.

“This will be the final message from Saigon station,” wrote Thomas Polgar, the last serving CIA station chief in Saigon, before his evacuation. “It has been a long and hard fight and we have lost. This experience, unique in the history of the US, does not signal, necessarily, the demise of the US as a world power.”

He added: “Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it. Let us hope that we will not have another Vietnam experience and that we have learned our lesson. Saigon signing off.”




Afghans crowd at the tarmac of the Kabul airport on August 16, 2021, to flee the country as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. (AFP file)

American military historians would be right to assess that the lessons of Vietnam were lost when the US pursued another open-ended war whose initial limited objectives were overtaken by a zeal for nation-building.

As with Saigon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the government in Kabul supported by the US military lacked the competence and broad legitimacy to combat an insurgency on its own.

In a now declassified 1969 memo to former president Richard Nixon, his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, expressed deep concern that the war was unlikely to be won militarily.

“I am not optimistic about the ability of the South Vietnamese armed forces to assume a larger part of the burden than current plans allow,” he wrote, adding: “Hanoi’s adoption of a strategy designed to wait us out fits both with its doctrine of how to fight a revolutionary war and with its expectations about increasingly significant problems for the US.”

In both the Vietnam and Afghanistan missions, time and lack of strategic patience were America’s main weaknesses in the face of a stubborn insurgency. Of the four different administrations that have guided US foreign policy since the Afghan war began, none took a step back to assess the likelihood of success as rationally and impartially as Kissinger did in the 1969 memo.

Although the Afghanistan mission did not produce the kind of civil disturbance and political turmoil synonymous with the Vietnam War, there was a broad consensus among US politicians for some time now that an indefinite military involvement in the culturally distant Central Asian country was not desirable.

Now that the Afghanistan chapter is closed, some point to the fact that the post-1975 period has seen a slow but remarkable rapprochement between the US and Vietnam.

Within the space of 20 years, the former belligerent nations were able to forge a relationship that today has evolved into a veritable strategic partnership, symbolized by the US-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership of 2013.

A quarter of a century after the establishment of bilateral relations in 1995, the US and Vietnam are thus partners with a friendship grounded in mutual respect and suspicion of China’s geopolitical motives.

The partnership now spans political, economic, security and people-to-people ties. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese citizens study in the US and contribute almost $1 billion to the US economy.

“We must remember that the immediate consequences of the Vietnam War were horrible. Many in South Vietnam were sent to camps and murdered, resulting in a huge human-rights tragedy,” James Carafano, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Arab News. “Today, Vietnam is a different place. Vietnamese are terrified of China and they need the US to defend them.”

A strong, prosperous and independent Vietnam is very much in Washington’s interest as Hanoi and Beijing remain locked in a standoff over competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Bilateral trade between the two nations has grown from $451 million in 1995 to more than $90 billion in 2020. US goods exports to Vietnam were worth more than $10 billion in 2020, while imports were worth a whopping $79.6 billion. US investment in Vietnam touched $2.6 billion in 2019.




Vietnam's exports to the US swelled over the past decade. (Reuters file photo)

Now that the war in Afghanistan is over and discussions between the Taliban and regional countries toward diplomatic normalization are ongoing, the evolution of US-Vietnamese relations from enmity to a flourishing partnership can prove instructive.

Could economic leverage, common security interests and deft diplomacy achieve in Afghanistan what the expenditure of billions of dollars in building a defense force in the mold of Western militaries failed to do?

The Taliban have been keen to signal that they are ready to engage diplomatically with regional powers, including China, the Arab Gulf states, Turkey and even India.

For the US, the immediate security objective is to make sure that neither Al-Qaeda nor Daesh establishes a base of operations to plot transnational terror attacks from. To this end, the US will have to make use of all the tools at its disposal: Soft power, diplomacy and economic incentives.

The worst-case scenario at the time of the 1975 US defeat was a communist victory in South Vietnam having a “domino effect,” leading to the collapse of Southeast Asian governments allied with the US. But such an eventuality did not come to fruition.

The dramatic turnaround in US-Vietnam relations means there is room for hope in the case of Afghanistan, too, but with a number of caveats.

“There were two reasons why the US remained in Afghanistan: One, to prevent another space for transnational terror again, and two, to prevent the destabilization of South Asia. Both were legitimate US interests,” said Carafano.

“Now we have no presence, no visibility on the terrorist situation and no deterrent against actors in the region. We have lost the trust of allies.”

As for the future, Carafano said: “The Taliban are not going through an evolution like Germany post-Second World War. It’s a ridiculous notion that the Taliban will normalize as a government. Daesh are useful idiots who do not have the capacity to threaten anybody. They are a bigger threat to the Taliban than to us.

“Will the Taliban break with the Haqqani network and Al-Qaeda? They won’t. The Taliban may not plan the next 9/11, but Al-Qaeda and Haqqani will.”




In this photo taken on May 31, 2017, Afghan security forces stand at the site of a deadly explosion blamed on the Haqqani network. (AP file)

Clearly, the time-worn tribal partnership between the Haqqani network, which is an integral part of the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda, will be a major complicating factor in the Taliban’s ability or willingness to prevent the international terror group from rebounding.

For the moment, the Taliban seem to be making all the right noises. The political leadership has emphasized that they are pursuing a nationalist vision, not a transnational one.

What remains to be seen is whether the group can prioritize the needs of running the affairs of state, which will require significant outside financial support and technical expertise, over a wild-eyed “revolutionary” vision that includes terror sanctuaries.

“In Vietnam, military victory over the US did not translate to a strategic defeat of the US and the anti-communist bloc globally,” Carafano told Arab News.

“Both Republican and Democratic administrations have taken successive steps toward strengthening Washington’s commitment to a security partnership with Vietnam. Previously unthinkable, US Navy aircraft carriers are now allowed to dock in Vietnamese ports.




US Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Vietnam's Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh din Hanoi on August 25, 2021. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/Pool)

“Whether the US and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan can develop some level of security arrangement based on a common threat perception is an open-ended question.

“But already, China and Russia have signaled that they are ready for a bigger role in Afghanistan in the wake of the US withdrawal. Though they are likely to engage cautiously. Both powers’ interest in Afghanistan lies in winning without fighting. But they’ll take their time in Afghanistan.”

In the final analysis, time was the overarching factor in America’s military defeat by the insurgency in both Vietnam and Afghanistan. But it also was the passage of time following the Vietnam War that enabled the adversaries to grow into friends based on common interests and threats.

It remains to be seen what American policymakers have learnt from the two humiliating withdrawals in order to avoid a third. With Vietnam, the US was able to salvage a measure of diplomatic victory from its military defeat. In Afghanistan, much will depend on the Taliban leadership’s ability and willingness to make a complete break with the past.

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Twitter: @OS26


US spies said Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon, Trump dismisses that assessment

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US spies said Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon, Trump dismisses that assessment

The country was not building a nuclear weapon, the national intelligence director told lawmakers
Gabbard brushed off the inconsistency, blaming the media for misconstruing her earlier testimony and asserting that “President Trump was saying the same thing that I said“

WASHINGTON: Tulsi Gabbard left no doubt when she testified to Congress about Iran’s nuclear program earlier this year.

The country was not building a nuclear weapon, the national intelligence director told lawmakers, and its supreme leader had not reauthorized the dormant program even though it had enriched uranium to higher levels.

But President Donald Trump dismissed the assessment of US spy agencies during an overnight flight back to Washington as he cut short his trip to the Group of Seven summit to focus on the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters. In his view, Iran was “very close” to having a nuclear bomb.

Trump’s statement aligned him with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has described a nuclear-armed Iran as an imminent threat, rather than with his own top intelligence adviser. Trump was expected to meet with national security officials in the Situation Room on Tuesday as he plans next steps.

Gabbard brushed off the inconsistency, blaming the media for misconstruing her earlier testimony and asserting that “President Trump was saying the same thing that I said.”

“We are on the same page,” she told CNN. Asked for comment, Gabbard’s office referred to those remarks.

In her March testimony to lawmakers, Gabbard said the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

She also said the US was closely monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, noting that the country’s “enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”

Trump’s contradiction of Gabbard echoed his feuds with US spy leaders during his first term, when he viewed them as part of a “deep state” that was undermining his agenda. Most notably, he sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 when asked if Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election, saying Putin was “extremely strong and powerful in his denial.”

The latest break over Iran was striking because Trump has staffed his second administration with loyalists rather than establishment figures. Gabbard, a military veteran and former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, was narrowly confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate because of her scant experience with intelligence or managing sprawling organizations.

Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in 2022 and endorsed Trump in last year’s election, is expected to testify Tuesday in a closed session on Capitol Hill, along with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, during a previously scheduled budget hearing.

Both officials likely would face questions about their views on Iran and Trump’s latest statements. A representative for the CIA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs should it choose to do so. Iran maintains its nuclear program is peaceful.

An earlier intelligence report, compiled in November under then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, also said Iran “is not building a nuclear weapon.”

However, it said the country has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce one, if it so chooses,” such as increasing stockpiles of enriched uranium and operating more advanced centrifuges. The report did not include any estimates for a timeline for how quickly a bomb could be built.

Trump’s immigration agenda is another place where he’s split with intelligence assessments. He cited the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime law, to deport Venezuelan migrants, which he justified by claiming that the Tren de Aragua gang was coordinating with the Venezuelan government. However, an intelligence assessment in April found no evidence of that.

Gabbard fired the two veteran intelligence officers who led the panel that created the assessment, saying they were terminated because of their opposition to Trump.

In response to those reports, the White House released a statement from Gabbard supporting the president.

“President Trump took necessary and historic action to safeguard our nation when he deported these violent Tren de Aragua terrorists,” the statement said. “Now that America is safer without these terrorists in our cities, deep state actors have resorted to using their propaganda arm to attack the President’s successful policies.”

India evacuates students from Tehran as Israel hits civilian sites

Smoke billows from an explosion in southwest Tehran on June 16, 2025. (AFP)
Updated 17 June 2025
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India evacuates students from Tehran as Israel hits civilian sites

  • About 6,000 Indian students are enrolled in Iranian universities
  • So far 110 studying in Urmia have left the country through Armenia

NEW DELHI: India’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it was moving Indian students out of Tehran, as many sought safety after their universities were shut down amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes.

Israeli attacks on Iran started on Friday, when Tel Aviv hit more than a dozen sites — including key nuclear facilities, residences of military leaders, and of scientists — claiming they were aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Daily attacks have been ongoing for the past five days after Iran retaliated with ballistic missile strikes against Israel.

As the Israeli military intensified its bombing of civilian targets, hitting Iran’s state broadcaster on Monday, stranded foreigners — including 6,000 Indian students — have been struggling to leave.

“Most of the students here were living in apartments, including me and my friend. The first blast in Tehran happened in Sa’adat Abad district, where me and my friend were living,” Hafsa Yaseen, a medical student at Shahid Beheshti University, told Arab News.

“One of our university’s nuclear scientists was martyred in these blasts. Situation is really bad.”

According to the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, at least 224 people have been killed and 1,481 wounded in Israeli attacks since Friday. Most of the casualties have been reported in Tehran.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs confirmed in a statement that it was moving those studying at universities in the Iranian capital “out of the city for reasons of safety.”

Yaseen was among a group of a few hundred students moved on Monday to Qom, 140 km south of the capital city.

“Me and my friend were frightened, and we just thought it’s our turn now to die. We were literally calling our parents and telling them goodbye,” she said.

“We are not even safe here, because we are still in Iran (and) anything can happen ... We are in constant fear that we might die and our families are more stressed than us. I just want to request the government of India to evacuate us from here as soon as possible.”

A group of 110 Indian students from Urmia University of Medical Sciences in northwestern Iran has already been assisted by the Indian authorities to leave through the land border with Armenia.

“All the Indian students who had crossed the Iran-Armenia border have now safely reached the capital city, Yerevan. This includes around 90 students from Kashmir Valley, along with others from various Indian states,” said Nasir Khuehami, national convenor of the Jammu and Kashmir Students Union.

“Their flight from Armenia to Delhi is scheduled for tomorrow, with all necessary arrangements being facilitated in coordination with the Indian authorities. This comes as an immense relief to the families.”

The families of those remaining in Iran have been pleading with Indian authorities to also bring them home.

“Please save my daughters. My two daughters study (at) Shahid Beheshti University. They are in great panic — the situation in Tehran is so bad that students are in great panic,” one of the mothers, Mubeena Ali, told Arab News through tears.

“They have been shifted to Qom but they feel afraid ... They are greatly distressed. They want to be evacuated.”


Trump mulls extending travel ban to 36 more nations: source

Updated 17 June 2025
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Trump mulls extending travel ban to 36 more nations: source

  • The Washington Post said it reviewed the internal memo and reported it was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to diplomats who work with the countries
  • The ban at first did not include Egypt, although the proposed follow-up list does

WASHINGTON: The United States is considering extending its travel ban to 36 more countries, a person who has seen the memo said Monday, marking a dramatic potential expansion of entry restrictions to nearly 1.5 billion people.

The State Department early this month announced it was barring entry to citizens of 12 nations including Afghanistan, Haiti and Iran and imposing a partial ban on travelers from seven other countries, reviving a divisive measure from President Donald Trump’s first term.

But expanding the travel ban to three dozen more nations, including US partners like Egypt along with other countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific, appears to escalate the president’s crackdown on immigration.

The Washington Post said it reviewed the internal memo and reported it was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to diplomats who work with the countries.

A person who has seen the document confirmed its accuracy to AFP.

It reportedly gives the governments of the listed nations 60 days to meet new requirements established by the State Department.

The countries include the most populous in Africa — Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania — as well as Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, Saint Lucia, South Sudan, Syria and Vanuatu.

Should the ban expand to include all countries cited in the memo, nearly one in five people worldwide would live in a country targeted by US travel restrictions.

The 19 countries facing full or partial entry bans to the United States, combined with the 36 cited in the latest memo, account for 1.47 billion people, or roughly 18 percent of the global population.

The State Department declined to confirm the memo, saying it does not comment on internal deliberations.

But it said in a statement that “we are constantly reevaluating policies to ensure the safety of Americans and that foreign nationals follow our laws.”

When the initial ban was announced this month, Trump warned it could be expanded to other countries “as threats emerge around the world.”

The ban at first did not include Egypt, although the proposed follow-up list does.

Trump said the initial measure was spurred by a recent “terrorist attack” on Jews in Colorado.

US officials said that the attack’s suspect Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national according to court documents, was in the country illegally having overstayed a tourist visa, but that he had applied for asylum in September 2022.


Overnight Russian attack on Ukraine kills 15 and injures 156

Updated 17 June 2025
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Overnight Russian attack on Ukraine kills 15 and injures 156

  • At least 14 people were killed as explosions echoed across the Ukrainian capital for almost nine hours
  • Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said

KYIV: An overnight Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed 15 people and injured 156, local officials said Tuesday, with the main barrage demolishing a nine-story Kyiv apartment building in the deadliest attack on the capital this year.

At least 14 people were killed as explosions echoed across the Ukrainian capital for almost nine hours, Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said, destroying dozens of apartments.

Russia fired more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, calling the Kyiv attack “one of the most terrifying strikes” on the capital.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said 139 people were injured in Kyiv. Mayor Vitalii Klitschko announced that Wednesday would be an official day of mourning.

The attack came after two rounds of direct peace talks failed to make progress on ending the war, now in its fourth year.

Russia steps up aerial attacks

Russia has repeatedly hit civilian areas of Ukraine with missiles and drones. The attacks have killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations. Russia says it strikes only military targets.

Russia has in recent months stepped up its aerial attacks. It launched almost 500 drones at Ukraine on June 10 in the biggest overnight drone bombardment of the war. Russia also pounded Kyiv on April 24, killing at least 12 people.

The intensified long-range strikes have coincided with a Russian summer offensive on eastern and northeastern sections of the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, where Ukraine is short-handed and needs more military support from its Western partners.

Uncertainty about US policy on the war has fueled doubts about how much help Kyiv can count on. Zelensky had been set to meet with US President Donald Trump at a G7 summit in Canada on Tuesday to press him for more help. But Trump returned early to Washington on Monday night because of tensions in the Middle East.

Ukraine tries to keep the world’s attention

Zelensky is seeking to prevent Ukraine from being sidelined in international diplomacy. Trump said earlier this month it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace, but European leaders have urged him to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into accepting a ceasefire.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday it is unclear when another round of talks might take place.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia’s attacks during the G7 summit showed Putin’s “total disrespect” for the US and other countries.

“Russia not only rejects a ceasefire or a leaders’ meeting to find solutions and end the war. It cynically strikes Ukraine’s capital while pretending to seek diplomatic solutions,” Sybiha wrote on social media.

Ukrainian forces have hit back against Russia with their own domestically produced long-range
drones.

The Russian military said it downed 203 Ukrainian drones over 10 Russian regions between Monday evening and Tuesday morning.

Russian civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia reported briefly halting flights overnight in and out of all four Moscow airports, as well as those in the cities of Kaluga, Tambov and Nizhny Novgorod as a precaution.

Overnight Russian drone strikes also struck the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa, killing one person and injuring 17 others, according to Oleh Kiper, head of the regional administration.

Putin “is doing this simply because he can afford to continue the war. He wants the war to go on. It is troubling when the powerful of this world turn a blind eye to it,” Zelensky said.

Russian attack demolishes apartment building

The Russian attack delivered “direct hits on residential buildings,” the Kyiv City Military Administration said in a statement. “Rockets — from the upper floors to the basement,” it said.

A US citizen died in the attack after suffering shrapnel wounds, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko told reporters.

Thirty apartments were destroyed in a single residential block after it was struck by a ballistic missile, Klymenko said.

“We have 27 locations that were attacked by the enemy. We currently have over 2,000 people working there, rescuers, police, municipal services and doctors,” he told reporters at the scene of one attack.

Olena Lapyshniak, 49, was shaken from the strike that nearly leveled her apartment building. She heard a whistling sound and then two explosions that blew out her windows and doors.

“It’s horrible, it’s scary, in one moment there is no life,” she said. “There’s no military infrastructure here, nothing here, nothing. It’s horrible when people just die at night.”

People were wounded in the city’s Sviatoshynskyi and Solomianskyi districts. Fires broke out in two other city districts as a result of falling debris from drones shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, the mayor said.

Moscow escalated attacks after Ukraine’s Security Service agency staged an audacious operation targeting warplanes in air bases deep inside Russian territory on June 1.


Spain says April power outage caused by ‘overvoltage’

Updated 17 June 2025
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Spain says April power outage caused by ‘overvoltage’

  • Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen said the system “lacked sufficient voltage control capacity” that day
  • Authorities have been scrambling to find answers after the April 28 outage

MADRID: A major power outage that struck the Iberian Peninsula in April was caused by “overvoltage” on the grid that led to “a chain reaction,” according to a government report released Tuesday.

The blackout had “multiple” causes, Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen told reporters following a cabinet meeting, adding the system “lacked sufficient voltage control capacity” that day.

Overvoltage is when there is too much electrical voltage in a network, overloading equipment. It can be caused by surges in networks due to oversupply or lightning strikes, or when protective equipment is insufficient or fails.

When faced with overvoltage on networks protective systems shut down parts of the grid, potentially leading to widespread power outages.

Authorities have been scrambling to find answers after the April 28 outage cut Internet and telephone connections, halted trains, shut businesses and plunged cities into darkness across Spain and Portugal as well as briefly affecting southwestern France.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced the formation of an inquiry commission led by the Ecological Transition Ministry shortly after the blackout, urging residents not to speculate until detailed results were available.

He had warned that the probe’s conclusions could take several months, given the complexity of the incident.

Aagesen singled out the role of the Spanish grid operator REE and certain energy companies she did not name which disconnected their plants “inappropriately... to protect their installations.”

She also pointed to “insufficient voltage control capacity” on the system that day, due in part to a programming flaw, stressing that Spain’s grid is theoretically robust enough to handle such situations.

Due to these misjudgments “we reached a point of no return with an uncontrollable chain reaction” that could only have been controlled if steps had been taken beforehand to absorb the overvoltage problems, she added.