Iran Launches Missile Attack on US Base in Qatar
Witnesses reported seeing missiles in the skies, followed by explosions.
Iran announced on state television that it attacked American forces stationed at Qatar's Al Udeid Air Base. A caption on screen called it 'a mighty and successful response" to "America's aggression.'
The attack came shortly after Qatar closed its airspace as a precaution amid threats from Iran.
A statement by the Qatari Foreign Ministry said on X that the move comes to ensure safety of residents and visitors.
"The competent authorities announce the temporary suspension of air traffic in the country's airspace, as part of a set of precautionary measures taken based on developments in the region," the Ministry said.
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Arab News
35 minutes ago
- Arab News
Gaza reveals the brutal new ethos of global geopolitics
The systematic destruction of Gaza transcends diplomatic failure and exposes a fundamental realignment in international ethical and political frameworks. This realignment is characterized by deliberate, structured complicity from dominant global powers, facilitating military operations independently verified by UN bodies, human rights monitors, and jurists as satisfying the legal criteria for genocide. Such complicity operates through four measurable channels: continuous arms transfers exceeding $18 billion documented since October 2023, recurrent diplomatic obstruction via five Security Council vetoes blocking ceasefire resolutions, methodical disinformation campaigns targeting mortality data, and the wholesale deprivation of humanitarian assistance. Officially confirmed direct fatalities now exceed 56,000, with civilians comprising over 70 percent of this figure. Yet this represents only the immediate kinetic impact. Rigorous analyses — validated by studies of siege warfare in Mosul (2016-2017) and Fallujah (2004) — demonstrate that indirect deaths from engineered famine, hospital collapses, and waterborne diseases consistently quadruple direct casualties. Applied to Gaza's density (5,791 persons per sq. km) and a 92 percent acute food insecurity rate, the adjusted mortality projection easily surpasses 250,000. It is the obliteration of some 10 percent of Gaza's pre-conflict population within 19 months, which exceeds the cumulative death tolls of Bosnia (1992-1995) and surpasses the pace of Rwanda's 1994 genocide. What is more, the denial infrastructure operates with clinical precision, beginning with systematic data suppression that dismisses Gaza Health Ministry figures — historically corroborated by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Human Rights Watch — despite admissions of lacking alternative methodologies. The denial even extends to linguistic obfuscation, where over 14,000 child deaths are classified as 'collateral damage' despite targeting protocols permitting 100:1 civilian-to-combatant ratios and documented deployment of 2,000-pound bombs on designated safe zones. Simultaneously, physical erasure manifests through the destruction of 87 percent of Gaza's cemeteries and enforced mass anonymous interments, denying both life and dignity after death through the obliteration of burial rites. Together, these mechanisms transmute tacit consent into active participation in normalizing atrocities. Furthermore, the systematic inversion of ethical language serves as both instrument and symptom of collective moral abdication. Military operations documented to violate international humanitarian law, including the destruction of 72 hospitals and 85 percent of educational facilities per the UN's Satellite Center analysis, persistently receive the paradoxical designation of 'the world's most moral army.' Such linguistic corruption extends to the reframing of ceasefire demands to prevent further child casualties (12,500-plus UN-verified deaths) as antisemitic acts rather than humanitarian imperatives. Simultaneously, documented state rhetoric explicitly denying a people's existence and invoking territorial expansion from 'river to sea' — a phrase historically associated with settler-colonial projects — faces negligible diplomatic consequence, receiving merely three UN General Assembly condemnations versus 47 for comparable territorial claims elsewhere since 2020. Gaza is a live demonstration of the effective nullification of universal norms. Hafed Al-Ghwell Historical guilt over genocide is weaponized to legitimize current atrocities, despite demographic reality: 82 percent of contemporary Gaza's population descends from refugees displaced before 1948, bearing no conceivable responsibility for European crimes. It generates a grotesque paradox wherein institutions from historically perpetrator nations now systematically accuse genocide victims' descendants of bigotry — a tactic deployed in 68 percent of university protests suppressed according to American Civil Liberties Union documentation. The perversion culminates in the silencing of Shoah descendants themselves, with Jewish-led ceasefire advocacy groups such as IfNotNow facing state surveillance at five times the rate of non-Jewish organizations. The ensuing linguistic ecosystem transforms legal prohibitions into justificatory tools: Where international law prohibits collective punishment, it is reframed as 'self-defense'; where the Genocide Convention criminalizes starvation, it becomes 'sanction enforcement.' It creates a self-replicating corrosion that transcends semantics, operating as the ideological infrastructure enabling the annihilation of Gaza. Overall, the operational pattern emerging from Gaza reveals more than isolated policy failures; it constitutes a blueprint for systemic value erosion overtaking global geopolitics. When states providing 74 percent of Israel's arms imports between October 2023 and July 2025 simultaneously sanction International Criminal Court prosecutors investigating potential war crimes, they actively dismantle the judicial mechanisms created to uphold their proclaimed 'rules-based order.' This material contradiction manifests in quantifiable terms: While the US allocated $61.4 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine within 60 days of invasion, the UN's $2.7 billion humanitarian appeal for Gaza remained 67 percent underfunded after eight months of bombardment that destroyed 62 percent of housing units and 84 percent of health facilities. Moreover, the selective application of principles becomes statistically unambiguous when examining parallel crises. Sudan's conflict displaced 8.6 million civilians by mid-2025 — the largest internal displacement crisis recorded by UNHCR — while pushing 15.3 million into emergency hunger levels, according to IPC assessments. Yet donor conferences secured barely 23 percent of required funding, contrasting sharply with the $186 billion mobilized for Ukraine. The EU's migration containment expenditures demonstrate similar disparity: $4.6 billion paid to Turkiye since 2016, $1.9 billion to Libya's coast guard since 2017, and $102 million to Mauritania in 2025 alone — transactions documented by the EU's own auditors as directly reinforcing regimes with UN-verified torture rates exceeding 40 percent among detained migrants. These financial flows correlate with a 300 percent increase in Mediterranean migrant fatalities since 2020, according to IOM missing migrants data. Inevitably, Gaza has become a horrifying consequence of raw power consistently redefining ethical boundaries. Weapons shipments to conflicts violating international humanitarian law quadrupled among major exporters between 2023-2025, while referrals to the ICC decreased by 38 percent during the same period. When judicial processes face obstruction rates exceeding 90 percent for cases involving powerful states, as indicated by the ICJ's pending docket, the operational precedent becomes clear. Rules apply precisely inversely to geopolitical influence, with consequences calculated in millions of avoidable casualties. The international legal architecture, painstakingly built post-1945, faces unprecedented disrepute. The unchecked ability of powerful states to flout provisional measures from the ICJ regarding genocide risk, and to actively punish the ICC for pursuing arrest warrants, signals a dangerous erosion of much-needed accountability. When core instruments such as the Genocide Convention are rendered unenforceable against specific allies through political obstruction and threats, the entire framework loses legitimacy in the eyes of the Global South. To conclude, the clear hypocrisy is fueling a deepening rift, irrevocably damaging Western claims to moral leadership. The consequence is a world where 'might makes right' is the operational doctrine, humanitarian law is negotiable based on political alignment, and the value of human life is explicitly quantified by passport and geopolitical utility. Gaza stands as the most potent symbol of this new, brutal ethos: a live demonstration of impunity and the effective nullification of universal norms when applied to the disfavored. The lasting repercussion is the entrenchment of a global system where abdication of morality is normalized, and raw power is the sole remaining arbiter. • Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. X: @HafedAlGhwell
Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
US envoy Tom Barrack clarifies Syria comments, denies they were threat to Lebanon
LONDON: US Special Envoy Tom Barrack has sought to clarify remarks made during his recent visit to the region, saying that his comments praising Syria's progress were not intended as a threat to neighboring Lebanon. 'My comments yesterday praised Syria's impressive strides, not a threat to Lebanon,' Barrack posted on X on Saturday. 'I observed the reality that Syria is moving at light speed to seize the historic opportunity presented by @POTUS' lifting of sanctions: Investment from Turkiye and the Gulf, diplomatic outreach to neighboring countries and a clear vision for the future. I can assure that Syria's leaders only want coexistence and mutual prosperity with Lebanon, and the US is committed to supporting that relationship between two equal and sovereign neighbors enjoying peace and prosperity,' he added. My comments yesterday praised Syria's impressive strides, not a threat to Lebanon. I observed the reality that Syria is moving at light speed to seize the historic opportunity presented by @POTUS's lifting of sanctions: investment from Türkiye and the Gulf, diplomatic outreach to… — Ambassador Tom Barrack (@USAMBTurkiye) July 12, 2025 The clarification comes after reports in Lebanese media, including from MTV Lebanon, cited Barrack as warning that Lebanon risked 'going back to Bilad Al-Sham' if it failed to act quickly on regional realignment. The term Bilad Al-Sham, historically referring to Greater Syria, encompasses present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine under the Ottoman Empire; a sensitive concept in Lebanon given fears over sovereignty and outside interference. Barrack's comments were widely interpreted by some local outlets as a warning that Lebanon could fall under renewed Syrian influence if it failed to align with shifting regional dynamics. Meanwhile on Saturday, the Syrian government also moved to quash speculation that it was planning escalatory steps against Lebanon over the issue of Syrian detainees held in Lebanese prisons. A Syrian Ministry of Information official said that the detainee issue remains 'a top priority' and that Damascus is committed to resolving it 'swiftly through official channels between the two countries.' Earlier reports had cited unnamed sources close to the Syrian government suggesting that diplomatic and economic retaliation was under consideration in response to what Damascus saw as Lebanon's neglect of the detainees' plight. However, the Information Ministry source denied this, saying there were no such plans and reaffirming Syria's commitment to bilateral resolution. In an interview with Arab News on Friday, Barrack had made similar remarks reflecting growing US concern over Lebanon's political inertia and the evolving role of Hezbollah. 'If Lebanon doesn't hurry up and get in line, everyone around them will,' Barrack warned, pointing to a broader regional shift sparked by the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. He framed the moment as pivotal for Lebanon, with pressure mounting for a new political order. Addressing questions about Hezbollah's future, Barrack said the group consists of 'two parts,' an Iran-backed militant faction designated as a terrorist organization, and a political wing operating in Lebanon's parliament. #WATCH: 'If #Lebanon doesn't hurry up and get in line, everyone around them will,' @TomBarrackJr tells @arabnews when pressed about the future of #Hezbollah, sectarian dynamics and Lebanon's recovery — Arab News (@arabnews) July 11, 2025 He added that any disarmament process 'must be led by the Lebanese government, with the full agreement of Hezbollah itself.' Barrack said: 'That process has to start with the Council of Ministers. They have to authorize the mandate. And Hezbollah, the political party, has to agree to that. But what Hezbollah is saying is, 'OK, we understand one Lebanon has to happen.' Why? Because one Syria is starting to happen.' On Syria, Barrack described the lifting of sanctions on May 13 as a 'strategic fresh start' for the war-ravaged nation and said that the US was not intending to pursue 'nation-building or federalism.' He called the Middle East a 'difficult zip code at an amazingly historic time,' and told Arab News that the Trump administration's new approach was designed to offer 'a new slice of hope' to the Syrian people. 'President (Trump)'s message is peace and prosperity,' he said. 'Sanctions gave the people hope. That's really all that happened at that moment.'
Al Arabiya
an hour ago
- Al Arabiya
Israeli political official accuses Hamas of sabotaging Gaza ceasefire talks
A senior Israeli political official on Saturday accused Hamas of sabotaging attempts to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, by rejecting a plan in talks in Doha for a 60-day pause in the conflict. 'Hamas rejected the Qatari proposal, is creating obstacles, refusing to compromise, and is accompanying the talks with a psychological warfare campaign aimed at sabotaging the negotiations,' the official said in a statement, sent to AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that Israel 'has demonstrated a willingness to show flexibility in the negotiations.' Read more:
