TUNIS: Tunisia’s parliament was set to vote on a major amendment to the electoral law on Friday, nine days before a presidential election that opposition groups fear will cement President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule. The bill strips the Administrative Court of its authority to adjudicate electoral disputes. It is likely to pass in an assembly elected in 2022 on an 11 percent turnout after Saied dissolved the previous one and prompted an opposition boycott.
Political opposition and civil society groups called for protests against the bill near parliament.
The Administrative Court is widely seen as the last independent judicial body, after Saied dissolved the Supreme Judicial Council and dismissed dozens of judges in 2022. The court this month ordered the electoral commission to reinstate disqualified presidential candidates, saying the legitimacy of the Oct. 6 election was in question. But the commission defied the court and has allowed only two candidates to run against Saied.
Lawmakers said they had proposed the bill because they believed the Administrative Court was no longer neutral and could annul the election and plunge Tunisia into chaos and a constitutional vacuum.
Critics argue that Saied is using the electoral commission and the judiciary to secure victory by stifling competition and intimidating rivals. He for his part says he is fighting traitors, mercenaries and corruption.
Saied was democratically elected in 2019, but then tightened his grip on power and began ruling by decree in 2021 in a move the opposition has described as a coup. Presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel was sentenced last week to 20 months in prison on charges of falsifying popular endorsements, and to a further six months on Wednesday on charges of falsifying documents.
Abir Moussi, leader of the Free Constitutional Party, has been imprisoned since last year on charges of harming public security. Another prominent politician, Lotfi Mraihi, was jailed this year on charges of vote-buying in 2019.
Both had said they would run in October, but were prevented from submitting their applications from jail.
Another court jailed four other potential candidates in August and gave them lifetime bans from running for office.
Tunisia assembly votes on electoral bill nine days before poll, opposition calls protest
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Tunisia assembly votes on electoral bill nine days before poll, opposition calls protest
- Bill strips Administrative Court of authority over electoral disputes
- Critics argue Saied uses judiciary to stifle competition and intimidate rivals
Iran’s foreign minister accuses Israel of using US bombs in Beirut
- Senior Hezbollah commanders were the target of Israel’s strike on the group’s central headquarters in Beirut’s suburbs on Friday
UNITED NATIONS: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi accused Israel of using several US “bunker buster” bombs to strike Beirut on Friday.
“Just this morning, the Israeli regime used several 5,000-pound bunker busters that had been gifted to them by the United States to hit residential areas in Beirut,” he told a UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East.
Senior Hezbollah commanders were the target of Israel’s strike on the group’s central headquarters in Beirut’s suburbs on Friday, but it was too early to say whether the attack took out Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a senior Israeli official said on Friday.
US-led coalition mission in Iraq to end by September 2025
- Under the plan, all coalition forces would leave the Ain Al-Asad air base in western Anbar province and significantly reduce their presence in Baghdad by September 2025
BAGHDAD: A US-led coalition’s military mission in Iraq will end by September 2025 and there will be a transition to bilateral security partnerships, the United States and Iraq said in a joint statement on Friday.
The US has approximately 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in neighboring Syria as part of the coalition formed in 2014 to combat Islamic State as it rampaged through the two countries.
The joint statement provided few details, including how many US troops would leave Iraq and from which bases.
In a briefing with reporters on Friday, a senior US official said that the move was not a withdrawal and declined to say if any troops would even be leaving Iraq.
“I just want to foot stomp the fact that this is not a withdrawal. This is a transition. It’s a transition from a coalition military mission to an expanded US-Iraqi bilateral security relationship,” the official said.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani initiated talks with Washington in January on the change. He has said that, while he appreciates their help, US troops have become a magnet for instability, frequently targeted and responding with strikes often not coordinated with the Iraqi government.
Reuters has reported that the agreement would see hundreds of troops leave by September 2025, with the remainder departing by the end of 2026.
Under the plan, all coalition forces would leave the Ain Al-Asad air base in western Anbar province and significantly reduce their presence in Baghdad by September 2025.
US and other coalition troops are expected to remain in Irbil. Other nations, including Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, contribute hundreds of troops to the coalition.
Officials told reporters that the US mission in Syria would continue.
The drawdown will mark a notable shift in Washington’s military posture in the Middle East.
While primarily focused on countering Islamic State, US officials acknowledge the US presence also serves as a strategic position against Iranian influence.
This position has grown more important as Israel and Iran escalate their regional confrontation, with US forces in Iraq shooting down rockets and drones fired toward Israel in recent months, according to US officials.
The agreement will likely present a political win for Sudani as he balances Iraq’s position as an ally of both Washington and Tehran.
Communication lost with Hassan Nasrallah, says source close to Hezbollah
BEIRUT: Hezbollah’s head Hassan Nasrallah was unreachable following Israel’s strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday evening, a source close to the Lebanese armed group told Reuters.
Hours after the strikes, Hezbollah had not made a statement on his fate. A source close to Hezbollah told Reuters Nasrallah was alive and Iran’s Tasnim news agency also reported he was safe. A senior Iranian security official told Reuters Tehran was checking his status.
Biden ready to ‘adjust’ US forces amid Middle East tensions: White House
- The adjustment comes as Israel launched a wave of strikes on Lebanon’s capital Beirut targeting Hezbollah’s headquarters
- Biden also ordered US embassies in the region to “take all protective measures as appropriate”
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden ordered US forces in the Middle East to be adjusted “as necessary,” the White House said Friday, after Israel launched a wave of strikes on Lebanon’s capital Beirut targeting Hezbollah’s headquarters.
“He has directed the Pentagon to assess and adjust as necessary US force posture in the region to enhance deterrence, ensure force protection, and support the full range of US objectives,” the White House said in a statement.
Biden also ordered US embassies in the region to “take all protective measures as appropriate,” it said.
The US president, who traveled to his beach house in Delaware on Friday, had been briefed several times by his national security team, the White House added.
Biden had earlier confirmed that “the United States had no knowledge of or participation in the (Israeli) action,” adding in remarks to reporters that, “We’re gathering information.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also said the US had no advance knowledge, adding that he had spoken by phone with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant “while Israel’s operation was already underway.”
A US official separately said Israel told Washington “once the operation was already ongoing and they had planes in the air.”
Israeli television networks reported that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was the target of the strike, though a source close to Hezbollah said he was “fine.”
Iran president denounces Israel attack on Beirut as ‘flagrant war crime’
- Pezeshkian vowed Iran “will stand with the Lebanese nation and the axis of resistance”
TEHRAN, Iran: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned Israel’s air strikes on the Lebanese capital’s densely populated southern suburbs Friday as a “flagrant war crime.”
“The attacks perpetrated ... by the Zionist regime in the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut constitute a flagrant war crime that has revealed once again the nature of this regime’s state terrorism,” Pezeshkian said in a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency early Saturday.
Israel said its strikes targeted the “central headquarters” of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, an Iranian ally.
Pezeshkian vowed Iran “will stand with the Lebanese nation and the axis of resistance.”
Friday’s strikes were by far the fiercest to hit Beirut since Israel shifted its focus from the war in Gaza to Lebanon this week, pounding Hezbollah strongholds around the country and killing hundreds of people.
The Iranian embassy in Lebanon warned that they marked a “dangerous escalation” in the Middle East.
“This reprehensible crime... represents a dangerous escalation that changes the rules of the game,” the embassy said in a post on X, adding that Israel “will receive the appropriate punishment.”
The Iranian foreign ministry said that the “brutal” strike gave the lie to a US-led ceasefire call issued on the eve of the strike.
“The continuation of the Zionist regime’s crimes shows clearly that the ceasefire call issued by the United States and some Western countries is a blatant trick aimed at winning time for the Zionist regime to continue its crimes against the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples,” ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said in a statement
Hezbollah started fighting Israeli troops along the Lebanon border a day after its Palestinian ally Hamas staged its unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7.
