Ben Guerdane: Months into the closure of Tunisia’s main border crossing with Libya, a haven for smugglers, shops are shuttered and unemployment has soared in the already-marginalized desert region, merchants say.
Ras Jedir, in Tunisia’s south, is a major hub of informal trade between the two North African countries.
The crossing has been shut since March 19, following what Libyan media said were clashes between armed groups and security forces on the Libyan side.
Libya’s Interior Ministry said it ordered the post’s closure “after outlaw groups attacked the post in order to create chaos.” It said the groups are involved in smuggling activities, which “they consider to be their right.”
More than three months later, Tunisian merchants in towns like Ben Guerdane, around 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of the border, are suffering.
“All shops are closed,” said Abdallah Chniter, 45, whose own store is among those that went out of business.
Mounir Gzam, head of a Tunisian-Libyan business association in surrounding Medenine governate, said that since the closure of Ras Jedir, the region has experienced a “commercial stagnation affecting around 50,000 merchants and their families carrying out activities linked to the border post.”
Now, he said, “they are unemployed.”
Gzam called the crossing “the beating heart and lifeline” of the struggling region. Unemployment in southern Tunisia topped an average of 20 percent last year, compared with the national average of 15.8 percent.
Summertime tourism is also set for a blow as Libyans usually flock to Tunisia’s island of Djerba, north of Ben Guerdane, Gzam added.
Ben Guerdane hosts vast marketplaces of car and mechanical parts, household appliances and clothing, at times even supplying cities in the north.
But the most lucrative commodity is petrol, which is smuggled from Libya and sold at half the price found elsewhere in Tunisia.
Libyan authorities have many times announced the reopening of Ras Jedir, around 170 kilometers (105 miles) west of Tripoli, only to have it delayed. This confusion has only worsened the dismay of the local population in Ben Guerdane.
In 2023, about 3.4 million travelers from both countries crossed Ras Jedir, according to official Tunisian figures.
While Libyans crossed mainly for tourism and treatment in private clinics and hospitals, most Tunisians traveled for trade or other work.
The commerce in Ben Guerdane often went unsupervised, without taxation and customs control. Tunisian officials ignored the unofficial cross-border trade, aware of its importance to a desert region where promised development has not materialized.
Throughout Libya, armed groups filled a security vacuum following the overthrow and death of longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi in a 2011 NATO-backed uprising.
Libya is still struggling to recover from years of war that followed Qaddafi’s overthrow and is split between rival administrations — Tripoli in the west and Benghazi in the east.
The border had most recently been expected to reopen on Monday. It was delayed again when armed groups from the Libyan city of Zuwara, a few dozen kilometers east of the border, erected barricades of sand on the coastal route to protest measures announced by Libyan Interior Minister Imad Trabelsi.
“We will not leave our borders unsecured, just as we will not stand idly by in the face of trafficking and chaos,” Trabelsi said in March. He vowed to bring an end to the smugglers’ control and directed official security forces to take charge of the crossing.
Pledging not to back down “in the face of drug traffickers and smugglers,” he described the crossing as “one of the biggest smuggling and crime hotspots in the world.”
It remains unclear when the border crossing will reopen and the hardship in Ben Guerdane might ease.
“The crossing is the only source of livelihood for young people because the (Tunisian) state abandoned us,” said Chniter.
“The state must find solutions for us. Why do we depend entirely on Libya?“
Tunisia town shuttered after Libya closes smuggler-linked border
https://arab.news/42b5s
Tunisia town shuttered after Libya closes smuggler-linked border
- The crossing has been shut since March 19, following what Libyan media said were clashes between armed groups and security forces on the Libyan side
How Israeli strikes have pushed Iran’s leadership into a corner
- Severely degraded missile capabilities and military network mean Tehran is unable to respond with effective strikes
- Regional experts believe leadership is backed into a corner with limited options, each more perilous than the other
DUBAI: Israel has gutted Iran’s nuclear and military leadership with airstrikes that leave a weakened Tehran with few options to retaliate, including an all-out war that it is neither equipped for nor likely to win, according to four regional officials.
The overnight strikes by Israel – repeated for second night on Friday – have ratcheted up the confrontation between the arch foes to an unprecedented level after years of war in the shadows, which burst into the open when Iran’s ally Hamas attacked Israel in 2023.
Regional security sources said it was unlikely that Tehran could respond with similarly effective strikes because its missile capabilities and military network in the region have been severely degraded by Israel since the Hamas attacks that triggered the Gaza war.
State news agency IRNA said that Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel on Friday in retaliation. But the Israeli military said the missiles numbered fewer than 100 and most were intercepted or fell short. No casualties were immediately reported.
The regional security sources said Iran’s leaders, humiliated and increasingly preoccupied with their own survival, cannot afford to appear weak in the face of Israeli military pressure, raising the prospect of further escalation – including covert attacks on Israel or even the perilous option of seeking to build a nuclear bomb rapidly.
“They can’t survive if they surrender,” said Mohanad Hage Ali at the Carnegie Middle East Center, a think tank in Beirut. “They need to strike hard against Israel but their options are limited. I think their next option is withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
Withdrawing from the NPT would be a serious escalation as it would signal Iran is accelerating its enrichment program to produce weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb, experts said.
Iran’s leadership has not confirmed whether it would attend a sixth round of deadlocked talks with the US over its nuclear program scheduled for Sunday in Oman.
Tehran’s regional sway has been weakened by Israel’s attacks on its proxies – from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq – as well as by the ousting of Iran’s close ally, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
Western sanctions have also hit Iran’s crucial oil exports and the economy is reeling from a string of crises including a collapsing currency and rampant inflation, as well as energy and water shortages.
“They can’t retaliate through anyone. The Israelis are dismantling the Iranian empire piece by piece, bit by bit … and now they’ve started sowing internal doubt about (the invincibility of) the regime,” said Sarkis Naoum, a regional expert. “This is massive hit.”
Israel strikes targeting key facilities in Tehran and other cities continued into the night on Friday. The Iranian foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was defiant on Friday, saying Israel had initiated a war and would suffer “a bitter fate.”
Dr. Abdulaziz Sager, director of the Gulf Research Center think tank, said Iran has been backed into a corner with limited options. One possibility would be to offer assurances – in private – that it will abandon uranium enrichment and dismantle its nuclear capabilities, since any public declaration of such a capitulation would likely provoke a fierce domestic backlash.
He said another option could involve a return to clandestine warfare, reminiscent of the 1980s bombings targeting US and Israeli embassies and military installations.
A third, and far more perilous option, would be to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and accelerate its uranium enrichment program.
Such a move, Sager warned, would be tantamount to a declaration of war and would almost certainly provoke a strong international response – not only from Israel, but also from the US and other Western powers.
Trump has threatened military action to ensure Iran does not obtain an atomic weapon. He reiterated his position on Thursday, saying: “Iran must completely give up hopes of obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
Iran is currently enriching uranium up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent it would need for nuclear weapons. It has enough material at that level, if processed further, for nine nuclear bombs, according to a UN nuclear watchdog yardstick.
Israel’s strikes overnight on Thursday targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories, military commanders and nuclear scientists. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was the start of a prolonged operation to prevent Tehran from building an atomic weapon.
At least 20 senior commanders were killed, two regional sources said. The armed forces chief of staff, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Revolutionary Guards Chief Hossein Salami, and the head of the Revolutionary Guards Aerospace Force, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, were among them.
“It’s a big attack: big names, big leaders, big damage to the Iranian military leadership and its ballistic missiles. It’s unprecedented,” said Carnegie's Hage Ali.
Sima Shine, a former chief Mossad analyst and now a researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), said Israel would probably not be able to take out Iran’s nuclear project completely without US help.
“Therefore, if the US will not be part of the war, I assume that some parts of (Iran’s) nuclear project will remain,” she said on Friday.
Friday’s strikes have not only inflicted strategic damage but have also shaken Iran’s leadership to the core, according to a senior regional official close to the Iranian establishment.
Defiance has transformed into concern and uncertainty within the ruling elite and, behind closed doors, anxiety is mounting, not just over the external threats but also their eroding grip on power at home, the official said.
“Panic has surged among the leadership,” the senior regional official said. “Beyond the threat of further attacks, a deeper fear looms large: domestic unrest.”
A moderate former Iranian official said the killing in 2020 of General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, on the orders of President Donald Trump, started the rot.
Since then, the Islamic Republic has struggled to reassert its influence across the region and has never fully recovered. “This attack might be the beginning of the end,” he said.
If protests erupt, and the leadership responds with repression, it will only backfire, the former official said, noting that public anger has been simmering for years, fueled by sanctions, inflation and an unrelenting crackdown on dissent.
In his video address shortly after the attacks started, Netanyahu suggested he would like to see regime change in Iran and sent a message to Iranians.
“Our fight is not with you. Our fight is with the brutal dictatorship that has oppressed you for 46 years. I believe the day of your liberation is near,” he said.
The hope for regime change could explain why Israel went after so many senior military figures, throwing the Iranian security establishment into a state of confusion and chaos.
“These people were very vital, very knowledgeable, many years in their jobs, and they were a very important component of the stability of the regime, specifically the security stability of the regime,” said Shine.
Iranian state media reported that at least two nuclear scientists, Fereydoun Abbasi and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, were killed in Israeli strikes in Tehran.
Iran’s most powerful proxy in the region, Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, is also in a weak position to respond.
In the days leading up to the strikes on Iran, security sources close to Hezbollah told Reuters the group would not join any retaliatory action by Iran out of fear such a response could unleash a new Israeli blitz on Lebanon.
Israel’s war last year against Hezbollah left the group badly weakened, with its leadership decimated, thousands of its fighters killed, and swathes of its strongholds in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s suburbs destroyed.
Analysts said Trump could leverage the fallout from the Israeli strikes to bring Iran back to the nuclear negotiating table – but this time more isolated, and more likely to offer deeper concessions.
“One thing is clear: the Iranian empire is in decline,” said regional expert Naoum. “Can they still set the terms of their decline? Not through military terms. There’s only one way to do that: through negotiations.”
Iran says nuclear talks with US ‘meaningless’ after Israel attack
- "You cannot claim to negotiate and at the same time divide work by allowing the Zionist regime (Israel) to target Iran’s territory,” says Iran's foreign ministry spokesman
CAIRO: Iran said on Friday the dialogue with the US over Tehran’s nuclear program is “meaningless” after Israel’s biggest-ever military strike against its longstanding enemy, accusing Washington of supporting the attack.
“The other side (the US) acted in a way that makes dialogue meaningless. You cannot claim to negotiate and at the same time divide work by allowing the Zionist regime (Israel) to target Iran’s territory,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei as saying.
He said Israel “succeeded in influencing” the diplomatic process and the Israeli attack would not have happened without Washington’s permission.
Iran earlier accused the US of being complicit in Israel’s attacks, but Washington denied the allegation and told Tehran at the United Nations Security Council that it would be “wise” to negotiate over its nuclear program.
The sixth round of US-Iran nuclear talks was set to be held on Sunday in Muscat, but it was unclear whether it would go ahead after the Israeli strikes.
Iran denies that its uranium enrichment program is for anything other than civilian purposes, rejecting Israeli allegations that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
US President Donald Trump told Reuters that he and his team had known the Israeli attacks were coming but they still saw room for an accord.
UN chief urges ‘maximum restraint’ after Israel strikes Iran
- Peace and diplomacy must prevail,” Antonio Guterres said on X after Israel’s “preemptive” strikes on Iran and Tehran’s counter-attack
UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN chief Antonio Guterres urged Israel and Iran to “show maximum restraint” after Israel’s wave of air strikes, the secretary-general’s spokesman said in a statement late Thursday.
While broadly condemning “any military escalation in the Middle East,” the statement by Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq noted Guterres was “particularly concerned” by Israel’s strikes on nuclear installations amid the ongoing US-Iran negotiations.
“The Secretary-General asks both sides to show maximum restraint, avoiding at all costs a descent into deeper conflict, a situation that the region can hardly afford,” it added.
At UN, Iran accuses US of being complicit in Israeli strikes
- Council the above-ground pilot enrichment plant at Iran's Natanz nuclear site had been destroyed, and that Iran has reported that nuclear sites at Fordow and Isfahan were also attacked
UNITED NATIONS: Iran accused the United States of being complicit in Israel's attacks on the Islamic Republic, which Washington denied, telling Tehran at the United Nations Security Council that it would "be wise" to negotiate over its nuclear programme. Iran launched retaliatory strikes on Israel late on Friday after Israel attacked Iran earlier in the day.
Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said Iran had been "preparing for war" and Israel's strikes were "an act of national preservation." His Iranian counterpart, Amir Saeid Iravani, accused Israel of seeking "to kill diplomacy, to sabotage negotiations, and to drag the region into wider conflict," and he said Washington's complicity was "beyond doubt". "Those who support this regime, with the United States at the forefront, must understand that they are complicit," Iravani told the Security Council. "By aiding and enabling these crimes, they share full responsibility for the consequences."
HIGHLIGHTS
• UN Security Council met over Israel's strikes on Iran
• US says Iran would 'be wise' to negotiate on nuclear program
• Iran accuses US of being complicit in Israel's strikes
U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he had given Tehran a 60-day ultimatum, which expired on Thursday, to make a deal over its escalating uranium enrichment program. A sixth round of U.S.-Iran talks had been scheduled to take place in Oman on Sunday, but it was unclear whether it would go ahead. Danon said Israel had been patient despite mounting risks.
"We waited for diplomacy to work ... We watched negotiations stretch on, as Iran made false concessions or refused the most fundamental conditions," Danon told the Security Council. He said intelligence had confirmed Iran could have produced enough fissile material for multiple bombs within days.
Senior U.S. official McCoy Pitt said the United States will continue to seek a diplomatic resolution that ensures Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon or pose a threat to stability in the Middle East. "Iran's leadership would be wise to negotiate at this time," Pitt told the council. While Washington was informed of Israel's initial strikes ahead of time it was not militarily involved, he said. U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi told the Security Council the above-ground pilot enrichment plant at Iran's Natanz nuclear site had been destroyed, and that Iran has reported that nuclear sites at Fordow and Isfahan were also attacked.
US helps Israel shoot down barrage of Iranian missiles
- US also is shifting military resources, including ships, in the Middle East in response to the strikes
- About 40,000 troops are in the Mideast region now, according to a US official
WASHINGTON: American air defense systems and Navy assets in the Middle East helped Israel shoot down incoming ballistic missiles Friday that Tehran launched in response to Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and top military leaders, US officials said.
The US has both ground-based Patriot missile defense systems and Terminal High Altitude Air Defense systems in the region capable of intercepting ballistic missiles, which Iran fired in multiple barrages in retaliation for Israel’s initial attack.
Naval assets also were involved in assisting Israel as Iran fired missiles at Tel Aviv, one official said. It was not immediately clear if ships fired interceptors or if their advanced missile tracking systems helped Israel identify incoming targets.
The United States also is shifting military resources, including ships, in the Middle East in response to the strikes.
The Navy has directed the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner, which is capable of defending against ballistic missiles, to begin sailing from the western Mediterranean Sea toward the eastern Mediterranean and has directed a second destroyer to begin moving forward so it can be available if requested by the White House, US officials said.
American fighter jets also are patrolling the sky in the Middle East to protect personnel and installations, and air bases in the region are taking additional security precautions, the officials said.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public or to discuss ongoing operations.
President Donald Trump met with his National Security Council principals Friday to discuss options.
The forces in the region have been taking precautionary measures for days, including having military dependents voluntarily depart regional bases, in anticipation of the strikes and to protect personnel in case of a large-scale response from Tehran.
Typically around 30,000 troops are based in the Middle East, and about 40,000 troops are in the region now, according to a US official. That number surged as high as 43,000 last October amid the ongoing tensions between Israel and Iran as well as continuous attacks on commercial and military ships in the Red Sea by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.
The Navy has additional assets that it could surge to the Middle East if needed, particularly its aircraft carriers and the warships that sail with them. The USS Carl Vinson is in the Arabian Sea — the only aircraft carrier in the region.
The carrier USS Nimitz is in the Indo-Pacific and could be directed toward the Middle East if needed, and the USS George Washington just left its port in Japan and could also be directed to the region if so ordered, one of the officials said.
Then-President Joe Biden initially surged ships to protect Israel following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas that launched the war in Gaza. It was seen as a deterrent against Hezbollah and Iran at the time.
On Oct. 1, 2024, US Navy destroyers fired about a dozen interceptors in defense of Israel as the country came under attack by more than 200 missiles fired by Iran.
