Mali army says 80 fighters killed after earlier al-Qaeda linked attacks
'The enemy suffered significant losses in every location where they engaged with the security and defence forces,' Souleymane Dembele, the army's spokesperson, said in a special bulletin broadcast on the armed forces' television channel, as visuals of fallen rebels, their weapons, motorbikes, and vehicles were displayed.
Al-Qaeda affiliate Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) earlier claimed responsibility for 'coordinated and high-quality attacks', saying it had taken control of three barracks and dozens of military positions.
Mali's armed forces said the attacks took place in seven towns in the central and western regions of the West African country.
The incidents bore the hallmarks of other recent operations by the group, which has conducted similar assaults on military positions in Mali and Burkina Faso.
Mali, governed by a military government since 2020, has for more than a decade fought violent groups linked to ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda, while contending with a longer history of Tuareg-led rebellions in the north.
The attacks on Tuesday targeted Diboli in western Mali near the border with Senegal, and the nearby towns of Kayes and Sandere. There were also attacks in Nioro du Sahel and Gogoui, northwest of the capital Bamako near the border with Mauritania, and in Molodo and Niono in central Mali, 'all struck by shellfire', the army's statement said.
Residents and a local politician confirmed the attacks in at least four towns.
'We woke up in shock this morning. There's gunfire, and from my house I can see smoke billowing towards the governor's residence,' one resident in the city of Kayes said.
The person described the gunfire as 'intense' while another reported sheltering at home while the assault raged on.
Elsewhere, a local political official wrote on Facebook that 'the region of Nioro woke up in shock' and that the towns of Nioro, Sandare and Gogui had been targeted.
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Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
The Bulletin June 25, 2025
The rundown: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his country will not abandon its nuclear program and that it must now rethink how to protect its facilities after strikes by Israel and the U.S. Here's what else he said. Why it matters: Araghchi told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed the nuclear program was transparent and under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and that Iran had shown its commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty—but that still was not enough to protect it. Read more in-depth coverage: IDF Shares Iran Nuclear Assessment as Trump Doubles Down on 'Obliteration' TL/DR: Trump said Iran will never rebuild its nuclear facilities and that his country's strikes alongside Israel's had caused them "monumental damage". What happens now? The top Iranian diplomat said the attacks will have "serious and profound effects on the course of the nuclear program," adding: "We need to rethink how we protect our nuclear facilities." Deeper reading Iran Defies Trump on Nuclear Program


The Intercept
2 hours ago
- The Intercept
The Israeli Plot to Extinguish the Journalists Documenting Genocide
Support Us © THE INTERCEPT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Mourners after an Israeli airstrike killed five people, including one journalist, in Gaza on June 25, 2025. Photo: Saeed M. M. T. Jaras/Anadolu via Getty Images In partnership with On Monday, journalist Ibrahim Abu Ghazaleh was on his way to meet his friends and colleagues at Al-Baqa Cafe, an area of relative 'normalcy' near the beach in Gaza City where civilians and journalists used to meet and work. Just before he stepped inside, a missile hit the building, killing his friend Ismail Abu Hatab and injuring another, alongside more than 20 other civilians. Hatab was a Palestinian filmmaker, the founder of a TV production company, and 'a great person,' Ghazaleh said. 'He served his people and photographed everything in Gaza City, conveying the suffering through pictures.' 'In Gaza, a camera is a threat.' Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinian journalists as Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continue the ongoing genocide of Gaza and the West Bank. Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli government has murdered close to 60,000 Palestinians, leaving an uncountable number vaporized, trapped under the rubble, dying of starvation, or shot while attempting to receive food. The bloodshed coincides with a ban on international media and a calculated extermination campaign to assassinate the limited number of people left to document and expose Israel's atrocities. 'In Gaza, a camera is a threat,' Ghazaleh said. 'When you witness the truth, you become a target.' In Gaza and the West Bank, Israeli soldiers consistently threaten journalists and their families. Before attacking, they warn reporters to cease reporting, pressuring them to abandon what is often the most urgent story of their lives. Last month, the Washington Post obtained audio of a threatening call from an Israeli intelligence operative to an Iranian general: 'You have 12 hours to escape with your wife and child. Otherwise, you're on our list right now.' The calls and messages journalists report receiving aren't much different. Reporters are often killed when most identifiable — while wearing their press vests. Ibrahim Abu Ghazaleh stands in front of Al-Ahli Hospital while reporting in November 2024. Photo: TKTK Ghazaleh is one of five Palestinian journalists targeted by Israeli military forces who spoke with The Intercept about how Israel's genocidal attacks on Palestinian people go hand in hand with the suppression of a free press. These reporters face a constant tension between competing urgencies: exposing the truth and protecting their personal safety. Two have since evacuated from Gaza with their families. Two are in north Gaza and continue reporting under the constant bombardment and manmade famine. One is reporting from the illegally occupied West Bank. Living through Israel's relentless attacks on civilians, and knowing they risk being targeted for their work, these reporters and a sparse set of their colleagues are those left to tell the world of the atrocities they have faced as Palestinians during the deadliest years in journalism's history. Over 230 journalists, and counting, have been killed since October 2023. At 6:05 a.m. in Gaza on October 7, 2023, Youmna El Sayed broke the news of the attack on Israel that Hamas called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. A former Al Jazeera English correspondent and mother of four, El Sayed said she has covered all of the escalations in Gaza since 2016, including the 11-day war in May 2021, where Israel destroyed many media offices in Gaza. After October 7, she knew things would be different. 'It was very clear from the beginning that it is going to be unprecedented retaliation,' El Sayed said. In the first frantic days of Israel's assault, El Sayed documented mass civilian killings as missiles fell. She described being 'thrown by the pressure of a missile falling, and it just blows you away, with everything else. That strong sound beeping in your ears when you stop hearing anything. Wearing my very heavy vest and helmet, I kept on running and running because I was trying to escape for my life.' Then Israel began its ground invasion. El Sayed and her family had tried to escape Gaza City, but she said it was hard to find housing because many people did not want to rent apartments to journalists as they are seen as a threat. When the ground invasion came, the family was trapped in their apartment. 'I couldn't get any signal [on my phone] so I got another SIM card that was not on my name, and two days later, my husband received this call,' El Sayed recalled. 'It was someone who identified himself as an [Israel Defense Forces] officer. He first identified my husband's full name, and he said, 'We know who you are, take your wife and kids and leave your home, otherwise your lives will be in danger in the upcoming hours.'' The call was not unique. Mohammed Mhawish, a journalist born and raised in Gaza City who was reporting for Al Jazeera, said that he was one of the few journalists covering his area for the network when he began receiving threatening calls. On December 6, he said, 'I received [another] call from a military officer saying, 'You have to leave the house or we're going to bomb it.'' He was living in a three-story building with several of his family members and others trying to find refuge under bombardment. Youmna El Sayed reports for Al Jazeera with the rest of the bureau from the Al Tabaa Tower when a drone missile hit Palestine Tower, a 14-story building behind them in central Gaza City, in October 2023. ' The next morning, on December 7th, at around 7:30 in the morning, the house collapsed in milliseconds,' Mhawish said. 'It was targeted by an Israeli warplane. I made it, but I lost family, people I loved, who are very close to my heart. I even lost neighbors to that attack and people who were only passersby at the moment.' 'The only thing I could do to protect my children is make them promise me they would never look at the ground. Even if you didn't, you could smell the decomposed bodies.' After El Sayed's husband received the call, ' the first thing I did was call our bureau chief in Jerusalem and confirm it was a direct threat,' she said. 'For the first time, it was not me in danger because I was in the field or in an unsafe area. I was a danger to my children, to my family. I waited for any of the other families [in our building] to receive any calls, and they didn't at all. None of them.' Two days later, the Israeli army surrounded El Sayed's home. 'The first thing they did was shoot at the windows,' El Sayed said. 'They rained the gate of the building with bullets. Then, the tank shelled the gate. Everyone in the building was screaming. It was 15 minutes of unprecedented hell. They called us on their mics and said, 'You have five minutes to leave the building.'' El Sayed said her family left everything and drove away while Israeli soldiers shot at them. They traveled on foot across what Israel called a 'safe corridor,' stretching seven kilometers from the north to the south, where no cameras were allowed. She described corpses strewn across the ground, where the Israeli army had barred ambulances from picking them up. 'I did not want my children to go through that trauma, but it was the only solution left to save their lives,' she said. 'The only thing I could do to protect them, is make them promise me they would never look at the ground. Even if you didn't, you could smell the decomposed bodies. I could see the formula [bottles] and the bags of children and families killed. We were instructed that whoever falls is not even to be lifted off the ground. It was, to this extent, dehumanizing.' El Sayed and Mhawish were lucky just to survive. Hassan Hamad, a 19-year-old journalist whose work frequently appeared on Al Jazeera, received a text from an Israeli officer saying Hamad and his family would be 'next' if he did not stop filming. On October 6, 2024, Israel struck his home in the Jabalia refugee camp and killed him. 'We either speak about it or we're gonna be erased,' said Mhawish. 'I kept filing stories through the voice [recordings] on my iPhone at the moment as I lived through it: the shortage of medical treatment, the collapse of supplies and food, and the rates [of killings] that were taking place across the city in northern Gaza.' Mohammed al-Sawwaf, like so many Palestinians from Gaza, has lost dozens of relatives to Israel's brutal assault. An award-winning filmmaker and founder of Alef Multimedia Company, al-Sawwaf is from a family of journalists: His father founded Falasteen, one of the largest circulating daily newspapers in Gaza. Al-Sawwaf recalled being a child witnessing the First Intifada, a multi-year protest and revolutionary movement when Palestinians rose up against the Israeli occupation between 1987 and 1993. 'I also witnessed the imprisonment of my father and most of my male relatives in Israeli prisons from my childhood until they were killed by Israeli bombs in November and December 2023,' he said. Al-Sawwaf said that in November 2023, with no prior warning, his family home was targeted in an Israeli attack. He believes the Israeli military was waiting for the whole family to be inside the building before bombing it. The attack killed his parents, two of his four brothers, their children, and several other family members. Al-Sawwaf and his two surviving brothers, Montaser and Marwan, continued their reporting of the genocide. Montaser was a videographer for Anadolu Agency who helped Al-Sawwaf with projects, and Marwan was a sound technician and film producer for Alef in the same month, not long after the short-lived ceasefire of November 2023, Israel bombed the house where the brothers were sheltering, killing Montaser and Marwan. In total, al-Sawwaf has lost 47 relatives. Montaser and Marwan al-Sawwaf assist their brother, Mohammed, on a film project about the students of Gaza as a part of the Al-Fakhoura scholarship for university education in 2021. 'Their deaths drained my desire for life,' al-Sawwaf said of his brothers. 'I still feel immense injustice, as we continue to endure suffering without accountability. Yet, I am still trying to rise and continue our work and mission.' Al-Sawwaf was injured in the bombing, too, leaving him paralyzed for months after the attacks. Two days after he was brought to Al-Awda Hospital in December 2023, it was besieged for the first time by Israeli forces. Two doctors overseeing his case were killed, and al-Sawwaf said he barely escaped. With little to no medical supplies, water, or food, al-Sawwaf has still not received proper care. Constant bombing, collapsed medical infrastructure, hunger, and thirst: Journalists in Gaza are forced to live through the same brutal conditions they cover. Mhawish experienced something similar in December 2023, after his family's house was toppled. Most of the hospitals in northern Gaza were already under siege, so he spent the next month trying to recover from his injuries until he could resume reporting. The Story Ghazaleh, now 26, has been reporting since he was 16. 'I have documented many massacres and offensive shellings on Gaza City since the genocide began,' he said. He was sheltering in Gaza's Indonesian Hospital in November 2023, he said, when 'the Israeli army advanced on the hospital and we were holding our breath whilst reporting on what was happening. There were so many sick and wounded who were sheltering in the hospital, and we were forced to leave or become martyrs ourselves.' Ghazaleh said he had to leave his laptop and camera equipment behind. He later found them vandalized and broken. His family moved to the Jabalia refugee camp, where, he said, 'many fellow journalists were targeted or directly threatened to stop their coverage of northern Gaza.' 'Documenting the truth has become a moral duty before it is a profession.' Israeli forces bombed the camp too, and Ghazaleh and his family have since been displaced over 12 times. Several of his friends, including Hossam Shabat, a journalist who worked for Al Jazeera Mubasher, have been killed. Shabat, along with five other journalists in north Gaza, was put on a 'hit list' by Israel in October 2024, and he received threatening phone calls to stop his reporting before Israeli forces targeted his car and killed him on March 24, 2025, claiming without evidence that he was a sniper for Hamas. 'The journalist here does not have protection,' Ghazaleh said, 'but despite the danger, we cannot back down because documenting the truth has become a moral duty before it is a profession.' In the West Bank, where Israeli settlers, emboldened by the ongoing genocide, have increased their violence against Palestinians, 24-year-old freelance journalist Mojahid Nawahda was reporting in Nablus when Israeli forces arrested him. Mojahid Nawahda reports on the Israeli occupation raids on September 7, 2024, in Jenin, north of the West Bank. He was detained before the October 7 attacks, on July 19, 2022. 'They vandalized and broke my camera equipment, and I was interrogated for 75 days at the al-Jalma Investigation Center,' Nawahda said. He was then held in Megiddo Prison for a year under 'indescribable and unbearable conditions,' without any form of due process. The prison is often compared to 'hell,' with several testimonials including reports of torture and sexual abuse. Upon his release, Nawahda resumed reporting on the occupied West Bank, where previous ceasefires in Gaza have not applied. The Palestinian Prisoners Society reported that over 17,000 people, including medical workers and journalists, have been arrested in the West Bank. Settlers have been responsible for many of the daily attacks on Palestinian journalists. In Nablus and Jenin, Nawahda said, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas bombs at him and other reporters on May 27. Meanwhile, under the protection of Israeli soldiers, settlers attacked their colleague Issam al-Rimawi in Ramallah. Again, on June 30, Israeli soldiers fired at journalists in Jenin while they were reporting on the demolition of Palestinians' homes in the Tulkarm refugee camp, part of a large-scale project Israel approved to build more illegal settlements across the West Bank. 'I am now always working on reports about the camps of the northern West Bank, specifically that the occupation has evacuated and displaced the people of these camps and is now blowing up and demolishing their homes,' Nawahda said. 'I like my city because it is always steadfast in the face of this occupation despite everything. People here reject the existence of the occupation and always do anything to get it out of the city. However, things are getting worse in the West Bank. The occupation is still working to demolish homes, close roads, and attack journalists and civilians.' 'I felt this very strange feeling that whatever I was saying in front of the camera was not moving the world.' It can be hard, however, to keep the faith under such conditions. In a span of three months, El Sayed, the former Al Jazeera English correspondent, said her family was displaced six times, all while she continued reporting on atrocities committed against other families, the targeting of health care facilities, and the lack of menstrual products and overall aid. 'I felt this very strange feeling that whatever I was saying in front of the camera was not moving the world,' El Sayed said. ' When you're a journalist, you're not the story. You can't stand in front of the camera and say, as a mother, 'My children are suffering from diseases. My children are losing weight because there is no food. They're dehydrated because there's no water.' My 8-year-old was terrified. Every single night, she told me, 'Let's sleep very close to each other so that when the missile falls, it kills us all, and I don't become the only survivor.' Read our complete coverage In January 2024, after months of constant upheaval, El Sayed and her family evacuated from Rafah to Egypt. With his 2-year-old and pregnant wife, Mhawish left the same year in mid-April. 'It was a very difficult decision,' Mhawish said, 'you could be the story before you even file your story.' He said he had begun receiving more threats from Israeli forces, who told him, 'This time it's not going to be fun.' 'They really also indicated that I'm not gonna survive it this time,' Mhawish said. Nawahda remains in the West Bank, documenting settler violence, and al-Sawwaf and Ghazaleh are still in Gaza. Al-Sawwaf said that he's begun to recover from his injuries, but without better health care, the process is difficult. 'I still need an accurate diagnosis and MRI scans for my spine and head, tests that are unavailable in Gaza,' he said. 'Everything in Gaza is destroyed — buildings, homes, factories, infrastructure. Prices are exorbitant, with some items costing 10 times their original price. People have lost their sources of income, and many remain unemployed. How do we build again if another Israeli war will bring it down? Wars have not stopped since I was born.' Matters are worsened, Ghazaleh said, by the aid blockade imposed by Netanyahu, now stretching into its fifth month. Ghazaleh was nearly killed during an Israeli bombing attack on al-Ahli Hospital, where he'd been hospitalized due to lack of food. While Israel has claimed to allow 'dozens of aid trucks' into Gaza, Palestinian people and the United Nations have called this a gross misrepresentation. Ghazaleh noted that some of the food that does arrive is contaminated or expired. 'The markets have run out of food, and the aid that did reach [the north of Gaza] was not enough,' Ghazaleh said July 1. 'Once food arrives, some is contaminated or old, but we have no choice but to take risks and eat it because hunger is merciless. Some children have been poisoned, and some families have completely lost confidence in any truck that enters. Everything costs money, to buy tents, to buy food, which we do not have either.' The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started 'aid distribution centers' in May, which has resulted in over 400 civilians being killed deliberately by Israeli soldiers while trying to reach them. Others have also reported incidents of kidnappings and grenades being thrown at them. 'My friends and I went to the aid sites and it was a harsh experience,' Ghazaleh said. 'The queues stretch for kilometers, and the security is missing. I saw mothers crying from the intensity of hunger and sometimes you wait for hours, and come back with nothing.' Doctors Without Borders, which sends medical workers regularly to Gaza, has condemned the sites as 'slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid, while a total of 170 aid groups have called for the GHF to close. The U.S., meanwhile, has spent over $20 billion in military financing, weapons sales, and transfers from U.S. weapons stockpiles to aid Israel. The psychological effects of witnessing this massacre, up close and afar, are torturous, Mhawish said. 'As Palestinian journalists, we can't separate ourselves from Gaza or the struggles that we lived, and it just adds more to the weight of the emotional toll,' he said. ' Gaza is a piece of life, and that life is being taken out of it, one soul at a time. We lost children that we were never supposed to lose. We lost parents. We lost families. We lost loved ones, only for the sake of just proving to the world over and over that we are only ordinary human beings who should be able to live.' Join The Conversation


Time Magazine
3 hours ago
- Time Magazine
Who Could Be Thailand's Next Prime Minister? Scenarios, Explained
History has a habit of repeating itself—but rarely as frequently as it does in Thailand. It was less than a year ago when the country ousted its fifth Prime Minister in 20 years, and already it looks set to oust another. Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who succeeded her fellow Pheu Thai party member Srettha Thavisin in August 2024, was suspended by the Constitutional Court on July 1 pending a ruling on an ethics complaint stemming from her controversial handling of a border dispute with Cambodia. Paetongtarn's deputy, Suriya Juangroongruangkit, initially stepped in as caretaker, though his rein was short-lived as he was soon replaced on July 3 by Pheu Thai veteran and former Defense Minister Phumtham 'Big Comrade' Wechayachai, following a cabinet reshuffle. Whether by court order, resignation, or political maneuvering, experts say, it's unlikely Paetongtarn will ever return to the premiership. What comes next, however, is far from clear. The populist Pheu Thai party—which has largely been seen as a political vehicle for Paetongtarn's influential father, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra—took power after 2023 elections in which it finished second to the progressive reformist Move Forward party. In what was described at the time as a devil's bargain, Pheu Thai partnered with conservative and military-aligned parties it had campaigned against to form a fragile coalition government. In recent weeks, that fragile coalition has fallen apart. Its second-largest member party, Bhumjaithai, defected to the opposition. And remaining member parties have demanded concessions and threatened to leave, too. Should Paetongtarn be removed or resign, the Thai National Assembly will have to vote on a new Prime Minister—but only Prime Minster candidates from the 2023 election would be eligible. If a majority of lawmakers can't agree on a new leader, the caretaker would stay in place until the deadlock is broken. But if a majority of lawmakers can't agree on a new leader but can get behind a no-confidence vote on the Pheu Thai-led government, then parliament would be dissolved and fresh elections would be held—two years ahead of schedule. As much as the broader view of Thai politics seems to end up in the same place over and over again, the details of its twists and turns along the way can also be unpredictable, and no one knows exactly what lies ahead. Here are four possible paths to know. Read More: Exclusive: Thai Princes Banished Again as Eldest Says 'I Did Nothing Wrong' The ruling party holds on, with another new leader Pheu Thai fielded three candidates in the last election: Srettha, Paetongtarn, and Chaikasem Nitisiri. With Srettha gone and Paetongtarn likely on her way out, Chaikasem would be its last option. Chaikasem, who turns 77 in August, has extensive government experience: a former attorney general, he served as Minister of Justice under former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinwatra—Thaksin's sister and Paetongtarn's aunt—until that government was overthrown in 2014. But there are a number of issues surrounding Chaikasem that 'his opponents could exploit,' Napon Jatusripitak, visiting fellow and acting coordinator of the Thailand Studies Programme at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, tells TIME. Chaikasem has previously expressed openness to amending Thailand's controversial lèse-majesté law, which crosses a red line for many conservative royalists. His health has also been a concern, after he suffered a stroke while on the campaign trail in 2023. Chaikasem has tried to allay concerns about his health, telling reporters recently: 'The stroke issue is no longer a problem. The large and small blood clots in my neck have dissolved, and my life is back to normal. I was able to play golf comfortably yesterday.' He offered himself as ready albeit reluctant to step up. 'I would be willing to serve if assigned. But if I had a choice, I'd rather not — that would suit me just as well,' he said. 'Am I ready to take on the premiership? As long as I remain in politics, I must always be prepared. But do I truly want to be Prime Minister? Who would willingly take on such an exhausting job? I wouldn't. I'd rather spend time with my family and do whatever I please.' Conservatives push a military return to power Right now, the Pheu Thai-led coalition still holds a slim majority. But three medium-sized junior parties—United Thai Nation, the Klatham Party, and the Democrat Party—are sizable enough that their defection would tilt the balance. Of those, only United Thai Nation has a viable path to the premiership. United Thai Nation, the party of former junta leader Prayut Chan-o-cha, is an ultra-conservative, pro-military, pro-monarchy party that fielded two Prime Minister candidates in the last election: Prayut, a former army general who seized power in 2014 and whose premiership until 2023 was marked by authoritarianism and crackdowns on democracy, and Pirapan Salirathavibhaga, the party's current leader and a deputy prime minister and energy minister in the current government. While some observers have speculated that Pirapan could make a play for the premiership, Napon says he does not have adequate support from even within his own party. Pirapan is being investigated by a national anti-corruption commission over an alleged ethics violation. Prayut, on the other hand, could emerge as a 'wildcard' candidate, Napon says, for conservatives to unite behind, if there's an impasse in parliament. Following UTN's decisive defeat at the polls in 2023, Prayut announced his retirement from politics, though he was appointed to the King's body of advisers later in the year. While Prayut is only eligible to serve two more years before he reaches constitutional term limits, Titipol Phakdeewanich, a political scientist at Ubon Ratchathani University in Thailand, tells TIME that he could potentially pursue a comeback to lead the country until its next elections in 2027 by leveraging his 'connections with the military and the establishment' to present himself as a 'reassuring' intracoalition option for Pheu Thai patriarch Thaksin, who faces multiple legal battles including a lèse-majesté prosecution, to back. 'That means the power is still controlled by the elite and the conservative establishment,' which could be a positive for Thaksin, says Titipol, though he adds: 'I don't think it would be good for the future of Thai democracy.' A 'frenemy' rejoins the coalition to helm it—or leads a new interim government with the support of the opposition The biggest blow to Pheu Thai in recent weeks has been the defection of its largest coalition partner, Bhumjaithai. The third-largest party in parliament, behind Move Forward's new incarnation the People's Party and Pheu Thai, Bhumjaithai was the largest coalition partner of the previous Prayut-led government and had made decriminalizing marijuana the centerpiece of its 2019 campaign. Its leader, former Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, sought the premiership in 2023 and, after joining the Pheu Thai-led coalition government—despite Pheu Thai's campaign promises to recriminalize marijuana—was placed in charge of the powerful Interior Ministry. But in June, ahead of a contentious cabinet reshuffle that was expected to see Anutin lose his post, Bhumjaithai left the coalition, and Pheu Thai quickly moved to recriminalize marijuana. Bhumjaithai originally said it would call for a no-confidence vote, but on July 3, after officially joining the opposition, it said it would hold off. The head of the opposition, People's Party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, suggested that to avoid political deadlock, one scenario could be for the opposition to back a 'caretaker government' with a limited, clear mandate until new elections, focusing on stability and democratic reforms. 'I cannot speak unilaterally,' Natthaphong said. 'Ultimately, the other side—the Bhumjaithai Party and Mr. Anutin himself—must also be in agreement with us.' Anutin, however, denied agreeing to such a plan. 'I have never proposed myself as an interim prime minister. The claim is untrue,' he said, adding that further discussions would need to take place. Napon is skeptical that a Bhumjaithai-People's Party alliance would work. If the People's Party helps Anutin achieve the premiership but opts to remain in the opposition rather than joining the government, as it said it would, 'there's a real risk that the result would be an unstable minority government that struggles to pass key legislation,' says Napon. 'Would the People's Party then be expected to help get it over the line? If so, wouldn't that blur the boundary between government and opposition?' Furthermore, 'there are no guarantees that the new government would deliver on the People's Party's conditions—namely, constitutional reform and the [eventual] dissolution of the House.' But those concerns assume the plan even gets off the ground. The first issue, Napon says, is that the two parties alone fall short of a majority needed to decide the next Prime Minister. 'They would still need to court additional MPs—potentially from hard-to-please parties.' 'Even though the People's Party has backed away from its earlier push to amend the lèse-majesté law, any form of deal-making with the party could still be viewed unfavorably by the conservative establishment, which continues to wield significant influence over the scope and longevity of Thai democracy,' Napon adds. 'Such a move could backfire on Bhumjaithai and undermine its efforts in recent years to position itself as a protector of conservative interests and a reliable ally of the establishment.' Napon believes that Anutin may be using interest in cooperation from the People's Party to 'make himself appear more valuable and viable' to the conservative establishment—and Pheu Thai. 'By suggesting that the People's Party is open to backing him under certain terms, he positions himself as the candidate with the broadest potential appeal. In reality, though, it is still Pheu Thai—not the People's Party—that holds the key to delivering him the numbers. The People's Party serves more as a political prop that will allow Anutin to raise his price in the eyes of the establishment and potential coalition partners.' A renegotiation between Pheu Thai and Bhumjaithai is not off the table, says Titipol. The two parties have historically been 'frenemies,' he says, and while they differ on marijuana policy, they do not have any repelling fundamental ideologies that could prevent them from reconciling. Anutin, according to Napon, was already 'best positioned' to be the coalition's next Prime Minister after Paetongtarn, and the Constitutional Court dropping a case against Bhumjaithai the same day it suspended Paetongtarn sent a 'strong signal' that there's support for the party within the establishment. 'I can see a scenario where Pheu Thai would be forced to support Anutin as Prime Minister,' says Napon, 'because it has no other options' that would keep it even in proximity to power. Progressives win a fresh election A very unlikely but not technically impossible option would be for Pheu Thai to relinquish its hold on government and choose to dissolve parliament—a move which the party has already said it won't do—or for the opposition to get a majority of members to support a no-confidence motion, which People's Party leader and leader of the opposition Natthaphong has reiterated is his preferred course of action. Either scenario would fast-track a new general election, which would allow voters to have their say on who gets to replace Paetongtarn. A June poll from the National Institute of Development Administration shows that the People's Party remains the public's top choice: nearly 1-in-3 respondents picked 38-year-old Natthaphong as their preferred next Prime Minister, followed by about 13% picking Prayut and 10% picking Anutin, while about 20% of respondents said they hadn't decided on a preference yet. But as the last election showed, Thailand isn't a democracy, and the people's pick won't necessarily take power following an election. 'The establishment and the deals are always made by those who are in power, and people don't actually have much say on that,' says Titipol. Still, he adds, an election would allow people to 'express their frustration' and 'dissatisfaction.' And while 'crony politics' seems unshakeable, he says, for many, optimism is too: 'In Thailand, actually, anything is possible, even if it is impossible.'