PH Seeks International Aid for Release of Filipino Sailors Held by Houthis
The Iran-backed militant group recently released footage of crew members from the cargo ships Eternity C and Magic Seas, asserting they had 'rescued' the sailors after their attacks. Human Rights Watch has condemned the detention as illegal and labeled the Houthi actions as potential war crimes. The U.S. has gone further, accusing the group of abduction.
DFA Undersecretary Eduardo De Vega confirmed the detention of nine Filipinos but refrained from labeling them as hostages, noting they are still alive. 'We won't engage the Houthis directly,' he said, emphasizing that the Philippines would work through 'friendly countries.'
Meanwhile, the EU's naval task force Operation Aspides reported that 15 of the 25 crew members from the Eternity C remain unaccounted for, with four presumed dead.
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Gulf Today
2 hours ago
- Gulf Today
UN says 1,373 killed while waiting for aid in Gaza since late May
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Middle East Eye
2 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
Why are people protesting against the Boston Consulting Group?
In San Francisco, Boston, Dallas and other cities around the country, protesters have marched and chanted outside the offices of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The demonstrators were demanding accountability for BCG's role in creating a deadly new aid distribution system backed by the US and Israel that a United Nations official described as using starvation as a bargaining chip. Founded in 1961 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, BCG is one of the most prominent consulting firms in the United States and advises clients on a large number of topics, including security and humanitarian issues. BCG is one of the world's three largest management consulting firms by revenue and is no stranger to controversy. It has been reported to have worked with Isabel dos Santos, who was accused of exploiting Angola's natural resources. It is also reported to have been one of the firm's "critical" in helping Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman consolidate his grip on power in the kingdom. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Middle East Eye examines the BCG's role in Gaza's humanitarian crisis and efforts to hold the consulting firm accountable. Collaboration with Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Between October 2024 and May 2025, BCG helped establish the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The GHF began to invite increased scrutiny in early June as evidence of massacres at GHF aid sites emerged, prompting BCG to cancel its contracts with GHF and describe their previous cooperation as 'unapproved'. 'Two former partners initiated this work, even though the lead partner was categorically told not to. This work was not a BCG project. It was orchestrated and run secretly outside any BCG scope or approvals. We fully disavow this work. BCG was not paid for any of this work,' BCG wrote on their website. But a Financial Times (FT) investigation revealed that BCG's cooperation with the GHF was extensive and discussed with senior BCG figures, while the Washington Post's reporting showed that BCG was filing monthly invoices of over $1m a month. The FT investigation found that BCG was originally contacted by Orbis, an American security company working on behalf of an Israeli think tank, to do a feasibility study for a new Gaza aid operation. Senior partners at BCG 'step down over Gaza humanitarian controversy' Read More » BCG then helped create Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), a mercenary firm that would provide security at aid sites, along with GHF. At one point, SRS reportedly chastised a contractor under its command for refusing to shoot Palestinian children. GHF's executive director resigned hours before GHF's public launch in May, claiming it was impossible to implement GHF's Gaza aid plan 'while also strictly adhering to humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence'. UN aid chief Tom Fletcher also criticised the GHF, describing it as 'a fig leaf for further violence and displacement'. BCG planned to bill GHF around $4m for work that included developing financial models of what the UN described as 'ethnic cleansing' in Gaza. The model included 'voluntary relocation', where Palestinians in Gaza would have been given $5,000, rent subsidies for four years and subsidised food for a year. The model predicted that a quarter of the population would leave, and three-fourths of them would never return, according to FT. As Israeli air strikes indiscriminately kill Palestinians and children starve to death under Israel's suffocating siege, such an offer could hardly be considered voluntary and was widely condemned by rights groups. Why is the GHF controversial? Set up to bypass UN aid distribution networks that have been in place for decades, but that Israel alleges are now linked to Hamas, GHF sites have proven deadly for Palestinians seeking aid. Israeli soldiers have admitted to deliberately killing unarmed Palestinian aid seekers at GHF distribution sites, with one Israeli soldier describing the aid centres as 'killing fields'. Over a thousand Palestinian aid-seekers have been killed, mostly at GHF sites, since May, according to the UN. Yet as malnutrition spreads across Gaza, hungry Palestinians have little choice but to brave Israeli bullets to search for aid. Israel alleges that violence at the aid sites is necessary to stop the aid from being stolen by Hamas. 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The National
3 hours ago
- The National
Does the downfall of the 'Shah of Shahs' hold lessons for the regime that deposed him?
Earlier this week Iranian exiles, including some not long released from Tehran's Evin prison, made their way to Cairo's Al Rifa'i Mosque to pay respects at the tomb of the last Shah. It is an event on July 27 that commemorates the loss of the imperial order and this year represented the 45th anniversary of the death of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It came just weeks after the Shah's former patron, the US, bombed the regime that ousted the monarchy in what US President Donald Trump has called the 12-day war. Author Scott Anderson has written a definitive account of the last days of the monarchy in King of Kings (Shahanshah) with the subtitle Unmaking of the Modern Middle East. The current predicament of the religious leaders who preside over the new Iranian system could hardly be more present. His continuing conversations with Iranian contacts both within the country and in the diaspora mean that Anderson sees sentiment as having shifted to a more nationalistic plane, something that bolsters the Islamic Republic regime. 'I feel that the events of the last month have just set any [opposition] movement way back by years,' he tells The National from his west coast of the US home. 'Now the regime can paint anybody who is in opposition as 'lackeys of the Americans who just bombed our country and killed several hundred of our innocent civilians'.' There is a contrast with the beleaguered Shah in 1979 who saw the US as his last resort when one of the periodic outbursts of unrest turned into people power-style demonstrations that eventually overwhelmed his security forces. When it came to it, the book painfully illustrates how no help was there. Look west The Shah had gone to great lengths to woo America, something the book demonstrates very well. But in the 1970s America was distracted by its economic problems, not least the inflation caused by the oil price shock. Jimmy Carter, US president at the time, unlike Donald Trump, was not willing to intervene in the affairs of his ally. Worse, Washington's Cold War considerations allowed a dithering president to place his faith in a misguided calculation on how Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini would rule. 'There started to be this idea within the Carter administration: 'Well, you know, if the ayatollahs take over, that's not the worst thing for us, because at least they'll be anti-communist'. And really, in the last few months of the revolution, you saw this growing acquiescence of the Carter administration,' said Anderson. It was an ill-fated visit to the White House in 1977, where the welcome ceremony was disrupted by tear gas and police clashing with anti-Shah protesters, that set off the fateful demonstrations in Iran. The incident on the Ellipse was broadcast on Iranian TV. As Gary Sick, a White House adviser at the time, observed, if Iranians saw a sparrow fall from the tree, it was the CIA that killed it. So too the live images of the Washington clashes sparked revolt in Iran. Self-regard What ultimately paved Khomeini's way to power lay in the Shah himself. Anderson says Reza Shah believed his own Shahanshah propaganda on the country's modernisation but failed to see how that created dangers. 'Obviously the Shah was extending prosperity,' he said. 'There was a huge number of scholarships. There was a certain lifestyle available in Tehran. The economic factor however isn't strong enough to save him. You had the streets flooded with young men, overwhelming men, coming from the countryside and from villages that really hadn't changed much of 300 years. Suddenly they are being exposed to this very westernised culture in the major Iranian cities. It would just cause a massive disjunction.' It was no coincidence that the Shah lost his vizier Asadollah Alam, who died in April 1978. During one of Alam's stints as prime minister, the state mobilised to crush massive demonstrations in 1963. It was also under Alam's firm hand that the Shah staged his grandiose and grating Persepolis celebrations of 2,500 years of the Persian empire, described as the most expensive party ever staged. 'Alam was his alter-ego for 20-odd years, and actually he was the one who crushed things in 1963 as the prime minister at the time,' said Anderson. 'He crushed the clerical revolts and oversaw Khomeini getting sent into exile. Ironically, the Americans saw that as the Shah's response. It wasn't the Shah's response, but the Shah took credit for it. The Americans finally saw the Shah as a strongman, and so that was kind of a secret that he always had with us.' Ailing monarch The Shah himself was ill with the cancer that killed Alam, during the 1978 events. Subordinates feuded and the military high command was left no clear orders. 'One cliche I heard over and over about the Shah is he would oscillate between being tough when the revolution was happening and then being an appeaser,' said Anderson. 'In fact he did both simultaneously. He declares martial law but then orders the troops not to fire on demonstrators or only as the very last resort,' Anderson said. Anderson reviews the myth of the feared Savak secret police and says that, compared to the record of today's IRGC or Basji militia, it was a something of a paper tiger. 'I think they've acted much more brutally,' he said. 'I mean the prisons in Islamic Iran are far greater than they ever were under the Shah as far as political prisoners are concerned. You have this very pervasive security system now that's loyal to the regime." Modern technology assists the system of control in a way unimaginable in the Shah's day. 'Iranians are very sophisticated when it comes to technology and things like that, so I think that they have a much broader surveillance system that is far advanced in technological terms than anything the shah's ever could have dreamt of creating.' Breaking point King of Kings recounts a scene at Tabriz airbase in October 1978 as pilots handed in their resignations. The commanding general phoned his counterpart in Shiraz where resignations were also piling up on the commander's desk. His response was to tell the men that he too supported Khomeini and told his men to return to barracks. Four months later he led his pilots in a switch to the revolution and ended up as the interim defence minister. No such fog of confusion has yet set in for the present day regime, despite assassinations by Israel at the highest level. There is also a clear-cut focus on who is the real enemy under the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 'Certainly very late into the game the Shah always perceived his danger coming to the left,' says Anderson. 'He saw the [Khomeinists] as a bunch of medievalists and had nothing but disdain for the ayatollahs. So Savak was always geared to looking at the danger of the left and they're on the Shah's payroll so they gave it to him. 'I think he thought it was much more rooted in tribalism.' Turn back the clock Generations of monarchists have rallied around the US-based exiled son of the late Shah of Iran. Reza Pahlavi, who was then the 17-year old Crown Prince, is now a globe-trotting advocate for a reborn monarchy. He called on Iranians to rise against the regime during the US and Israeli attacks and has since met foreign dignitaries including former UK prime minister Boris Johnson to further his cause. Despite the loyal pilgrimages made to the Cairo mausoleum annually, Anderson does not see a new imperial order in Iran. "I think it is utter fantasy," he says. "You have got to remember 80 per cent of Iran's population has been born since the revolution. Iran is a very young country."
