WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a money exchanger and a group of firms across six countries involved in commodity shipments and business transactions that benefit Iran’s military and the Houthi militant group in Yemen and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned six firms, two tankers and a money exchanger, all either based or registered in Liberia, India, Vietnam, Lebanon or Kuwait. They are accused of materially benefiting Iran, the Houthis and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah and the Houthis have been launching regular attacks since the onset of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and they have sparked international concern that the war in the Palestinian enclave could spill over into the rest of the Middle East.
Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops exchange fire on a near-daily basis along Lebanon’s southern border, which has led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people on both sides. Despite losing more than 200 combatants and Israel striking deeper into the tiny country, Hezbollah maintains that it will stop launching rockets into northern Israel only when there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthls, who control much of Yemen’s north and west, have been launching drones and missiles on ships in the Red Sea, which they say is an effort to pressure Israel to end its war. Despite US-led airstrikes over the past two months, they have carried on with their campaign.
In a separate announcement Tuesday, Treasury slapped sanctions on 11 people and entities accused of facilitating financial transfers to the Syrian government to help it duck sanctions and being involved in the trafficking of a highly addictive amphetamine called Captagon that has become a booming industry in the war-torn country.
Treasury sanctioned a Syrian identified as Taher Al-Kayali and his company Neptunus LLC, accused of purchasing cargo ships to smuggle Captagon to Europe. One of his ships was intercepted by Greek authorities in 2018. Mahmoud Abulilah Al-Dj and his companies Al-Ta’ir Company and FreeBird Travel and Tourism were also sanctioned. He has had several of his drug shipments seized in Libya, and has cooperated with Abulilah. Al-Dj is also the “exclusive agent” of sanctioned Syrian airliner Cham Wings in Libya, Treasury said.
Experts say Captagon is primarily produced in Syria and Lebanon, where packages containing millions of pills are smuggled into Gulf countries, Europe and elsewhere. The trade allegedly has strong ties to Syrian President Bashar Assad and his associates, as well as the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group in neighboring Lebanon.
Western governments estimate that the industry has generated billions of dollars in revenue for Syria. Syria’s Arab neighbors, notably Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states, have been desperate to halt the trade, as millions of pills have been smuggled in.
Meanwhile, Treasury slapped sanctions on Syria-based Maya Exchange Company, as well as Aleksey Makarov, the vice president of the listed Russian Financial Cooperation Bank, and Muhammad ‘Ali Al-Minala of the Syrian central bank, who used the exchange company to make payments to “a Jordanian beneficiary”.
Treasury also slapped sanctions on STF Logistic which it claims has generated tens of millions of revenue for the Syrian government and through a 50-year contract with Damascus has been granted the right to almost three-quarters of sales revenue from Syrian mines near Palmyra. Grains Middle East Trading, and its chief executive officer Yafi David were sanctioned for serving as an intermediary for STF Logistic. The company is based in Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.
Assad’s crackdown on protests in 2011 led to his global isolation, and his forces were accused of torture, bombing civilian infrastructure, and using chemical weapons with support of key allies Russia and Iran.
US imposes more Iran sanctions and hits Syrian regime with penalties for drug trafficking
https://arab.news/g2w6p
US imposes more Iran sanctions and hits Syrian regime with penalties for drug trafficking
- The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned six firms, two tankers and a money exchanger
- Treasury sanctioned a Syrian identified as Taher Al-Kayali and his company Neptunus LLC, accused of purchasing cargo ships to smuggle Captagon to Europe
Petra tourist numbers plunge by 75 percent due to Iran-Israel war
- Jordan’s major attraction has 16,207 foreign visitors in June compared with 68,349 during the same month in 2023, according to tourism authority
- Hotels in Petra say more than 90 percent of bookings canceled, leading to closures and staff layoffs
LONDON: The number of foreign visitors to the ancient city of Petra in southern Jordan fell by more than 75 percent in June compared with previous years due to the outbreak of fighting between Iran and Israel, and the conflict in Gaza.
The Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority recorded 16,207 foreign visitors in June compared with 68,349 during the same month in 2023 and 53,888 in June 2019.
The authority said on Monday that the number of foreign visitors in the first half of 2025 has fallen sharply. It recorded 259,798 visitors, including 175,510 foreign tourists, compared with 692,595 visitors, including 606,000 foreigners, in the first half of 2023.
Fares Braizat, head of the Board of Commissioners of the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority, said that the Israeli conflict in the Gaza Strip, which began in October 2023, along with hostilities between Iran and Israel in June, has significantly contributed to the sharp decline in foreign tourism to Petra.
Middle East airspace was empty of any flight traffic at times during the 12 days of war in June, as Israel launched airstrikes inside Iran, and Tehran fired missiles and combat drones toward Israeli towns. The US also targeted three nuclear sites in Iran. Although there was no travel alert for Jordan by Western countries, similar warnings were issued for Israel, Iran, and later for Qatar as tensions escalated.
Braizat said that the decline in domestic and Arab tourist numbers to Petra has added to the challenges facing tourism businesses since 2023, leading to a decline in revenue. About 85 percent of Jordan’s population depends on tourism, directly or indirectly, with entry fees to archaeological sites the authority’s primary source of income.
He said that the authority has set up plans to support the tourism sector, with hotels in Petra saying that more than 90 percent of bookings have been canceled, leading to closures and staff layoffs.
Abdullah Hasanat, president of the Petra Hotel Cooperative Association, said that 28 hotels with a total of 1,975 rooms have been forced to close, representing 56 percent of all hotel rooms in the Petra region.
Blaze at Cairo telecoms building contained
- A state TV reporter later said the fire, whose cause was not immediately clear, had been contained
- A plume of smoke could be seen above the Ramses district of Cairo, Reuters witnesses said
CAIRO: A fire broke out in a telecommunications building in central Cairo, local media reported on Monday.
It led to communications disruptions across the Egyptian capital, including people being unable to make phone calls, Reuters witnesses said.
A state TV reporter later said the fire, whose cause was not immediately clear, had been contained. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
A plume of smoke could be seen above the Ramses district of Cairo, Reuters witnesses said.
Egypt’s state news agency MENA said Cairo’s Control Center for emergency services had received a report of a fire in one of the building’s top floors, without giving further detail.
Israeli soldier describes alleged arbitrary killings of civilians in Gaza
- Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, the reservist claimed troops were often instructed to shoot anyone entering areas considered to be off limits
LONDON: An Israeli army reservist has claimed that civilians in Gaza were frequently shot without warning or threat during his service, describing what he called shifting and often arbitrary rules of engagement that, at times, led to the killing of unarmed people.
In a rare on-camera interview with Sky News, the soldier, who served three tours of duty in Gaza with the Israeli military, said troops were often instructed to shoot anyone entering areas considered to be off limits, regardless of whether they posed a threat or not.
“We have a territory that we are in, and the commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die,” he told Sky News. “If they’re inside, they’re dangerous, you need to kill them. No matter who it is.”
Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, the reservist from the Israeli military’s 252nd Division said he was twice stationed at the Netzarim corridor, a narrow military-controlled strip carved through central Gaza early in the war to divide the territory and tighten Israeli control.
He described how his unit marked invisible boundaries near civilian areas, sometimes while occupying homes belonging to displaced Palestinians. Local residents, he said, were expected to understand these lines without explanation or risk being shot.
“There’s an imaginary line that they tell us all the Gazan people know. But how can they know?” he said. “It might be like a teenager riding his bicycle.”
The soldier said the decision to open fire on civilians frequently depended on the “mood of the commander,” with criteria for engagement varying from day to day, adding: “They might be shot, they might be captured, it really depends on the day.”
He recalled one incident in which a man was shot for crossing the boundary, followed by another who was detained for approaching the body, only for the rules to change again hours later, with orders to shoot anyone crossing the line.
The soldier alleged that commanders were able to set their own rules of engagement, sometimes with deadly consequences.
“Every commander can choose for himself what he does. So it’s kind of like the Wild West,” he said. “Some commanders can really decide to do war crimes and bad things and don’t face the consequences of that.”
He also described a pervasive culture among troops that viewed all Gazans as legitimate targets in the aftermath of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, which killed about 1,200 people in Israel and led to more than 250 taken hostage.
“They’d say: ‘Yeah, but these people didn’t do anything to prevent October 7, and they probably had fun when this was happening to us. So they deserve to die’,” he said.
“People don’t feel mercy for them. I think the core of it, that in their mind, these people aren’t innocent,” he added.
In Israel, where military service is a social rite of passage and the military is widely seen as a unifying national institution, public criticism of the armed forces is rare. The soldier told Sky News he feared being branded a traitor but felt compelled to speak out.
“I kind of feel like I took part in something bad, and I need to counter it with something good that I do, by speaking out,” he said. “I am very troubled about what I took and still am taking part of, as a soldier and citizen in this country.”
He added: “I think a lot of people, if they knew exactly what’s happening, it wouldn’t go down very well for them, and they wouldn’t agree with it.”
When asked about the allegations, the Israeli military told Sky News that it “operates in strict accordance with its rules of engagement and international law, taking feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
According to the statement: “The IDF operates against military targets and objectives, and does not target civilians or civilian objects.”
The military said complaints or reports of alleged violations are “transferred to the relevant authorities responsible for examining exceptional incidents that occurred during the war.”
It also highlighted steps it says it takes to minimise civilian casualties, including issuing evacuation notices and regular updates about combat zones.
On the radio and online, Palestinians keep up with Israel’s West Bank roadblocks
- Israeli obstacles to Palestinians’ movement in the West Bank have proliferated since the 2023 start of the war in Gaza
- In early 2025 there were 849 obstacles restricting the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank, including checkpoints, road gates, earth walls, trenches and roadblocks
RAWABI: Radio presenter Hiba Eriqat broadcasts an unusual kind of traffic reports to her Palestinian listeners grappling with ever-increasing Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks across the occupied West Bank.
“Deir Sharaf: traffic, Qalandia: open, Container: closed,” Eriqat reads out from drivers’ live reports, enumerating checkpoints to let listeners know which of the West Bank’s hundreds of checkpoints and gates are open, busy with traffic, or closed by the Israeli military.
“My mission is to help Palestinian citizens get home safely,” she told AFP in the radio studio in the city of Rawabi between her thrice-hourly broadcasts.
“Covering traffic in the West Bank is completely different from covering traffic anywhere else in the world.”
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has long been dotted with checkpoints, but obstacles to Palestinians’ movement in the territory have proliferated since the 2023 start of the war in Gaza — a separate territory.
In the West Bank, a territory roughly the size of the US state of Delaware, there are hundreds of new checkpoints and gates, but Israeli authorities do not provide updates about their status.
“The army might suddenly close a checkpoint, and the traffic jam would last an hour. Or they might just show up and then withdraw seconds later, and the checkpoint is cleared,” Eriqat said.
The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in early 2025 there were 849 obstacles restricting the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank, including checkpoints, road gates, earth walls, trenches and roadblocks.
Updates on WhatsApp groups
To navigate, Palestinians often rely on minute-by-minute updates from drivers on WhatsApp and Telegram groups, some of which were created by Basma Radio to feed Eriqat’s broadcasts.
“We turned to taxi drivers, truck drivers, private companies and even ordinary people,” said Eriqat, to create the West Bank’s only traffic report of its kind.
The updates were launched in October 2023 — the same month the Gaza war broke out — and are now broadcast by other Palestinian radio stations too.
A Telegram group run by Basma Radio now has some 16,000 members.
Fatima Barqawi, who runs news programs at the station, said the team had created “contact networks with people on the roads,” also receiving regular updates from Palestinians who live near checkpoints and can see the traffic from their window.
Beyond the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities, the traffic reports sometimes feature warnings about roads blocked by Israeli settlers, whose attacks against Palestinians have also risen throughout the war.
It is a constantly shifting roadscape, Eriqat said, complicating even what otherwise should have been a quick drive to work, home or to see family and friends.
“You might tell people the checkpoint is open now, but three minutes later, it’s jammed again. And it’s not a regular jam — it could last six or seven hours,” she said.
Safe journey ‘not guaranteed’
Maen, a 28-year-old video editor, used to tune in to Basma Radio to plan his weekly commute from Ramallah to his hometown of Bethlehem, but now prefers checking what other drivers have to say.
“I often call a friend who has Telegram while I’m on the road” and ask for updates from checkpoints, said Mazen, who asked to use his first name only for security reasons.
He has deleted Telegram from his own phone after hearing about Palestinians getting into trouble with soldiers at checkpoints over the use of the messaging app.
But in a sign of its popularity, one group in which drivers share their updates has 320,000 members — more than one-tenth of the West Bank’s population.
Rami, an NGO worker living in Ramallah who also declined to give his full name, said he listened to the radio traffic reports but mainly relied on Telegram groups.
Yet a safe journey is far from guaranteed.
Rami told AFP he recently had to stop on the way to his hometown of Nablus.
“I pulled over, checked the news and saw that 100 settlers had gathered at a settlement’s road junction and started throwing stones at Palestinian cars,” recognizable by their green license plates, he said.
And passing through a military checkpoint often “depends on the soldier’s mood,” said Eriqat.
“That’s the difficult part.”
Syria, Libya resume direct flights after 10-year halt due to political turmoil
- Syrian Civil Aviation Authority says Syrian Airlines will operate direct flights from next week
- Move will help Syrians return home following collapse of Assad regime late last year, authority says
LONDON: The Syrian Arab Republic announced the resumption of direct flights to Libya after a pause of more than 10 years due to security and political turmoil in both countries.
The head of the Syrian Civil Aviation Authority, Ashhad Al-Sulaibi, said that Syrian Airlines will operate direct flights starting next week from Damascus and Aleppo to the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi.
He added that the move will help to reconnect Syria with its communities abroad and help Syrians to return to their homes following the collapse of the Assad regime last December.
Commercial flights between Syria and Libya were halted over 10 years ago due to political turmoil and civil armed conflicts that engulfed both countries in 2011.
