Doha, Qatar’s capital, has seen explosions in the sky. Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base was targeted by Iranian state media, according to Iran’s state media. Iranian airspace had previously been restricted due to Iranian threats to retaliate against US strikes on its nuclear facilities.
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According to Iran’s Tasnim news agency, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officially confirmed on Monday that it had launched a missile attack against Qatar’s American al-Udeid Air Base.
Tasnim referred to the “Annunciation of Victory” as the operation.
Over Doha, Qatar’s capital, were flames, which were visible on Monday. Initial theories didn’t immediately identify whether this was missiles or an air defense system.
Additionally, loud explosions could be heard.
Prior to this statement, Qatar’s US and UK embassies had issued statements warning citizens there to seek shelter there until further notice. As part of the precautions being taken to ensure the safety of residents and visitors, Qatar claimed to have temporarily restricted its airspace.
Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain are the nations that have the most US troops. These facilities are crucial hubs for regional logistics, intelligence gathering, and force projection for both air and naval operations.
The Middle East’s largest military base, Al Udeid, was established in 1996. The base can accommodate almost 100 aircraft and drones, covering a 24 hectare (60 acres) area. This base, which houses about 10,000 soldiers, has been the US Central Command’s (CENTCOM)’s front headquarters during operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
According to medical sources, the military has been pounding the besieged enclave relentlessly, with the total Palestinian death toll exceeding a staggering 56, 000.
At least 20 aid seekers were killed on Monday when they were desperately trying to get food for their families to their families at distribution centers run by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which the UN has criticized for “weaponization” of aid.
The latest killings are those that target hungry Palestinians who make the risky journey to the food distribution centers. In response to a worsening hunger and looming famine crisis, critics have criticized the locations as “human slaughterhouses.”
Since the GHF began distributions on May 27 and after Israeli attacks on Palestinians close to aid centers have claimed the lives of more than 400 people, and about 1, 000 others.
Hani Mahmoud, a journalist for Al Jazeera from Gaza City, claimed that Israel is engaged in its conflict with Iran while continuing to “kill Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with deadly airstrikes on tents or residential homes.”
“Foodie crowds assemble at food distribution centers in Rafah or the Netzarim Corridor,” the statement read. 13 aid workers have been shot dead as of today. They are one of 30 people killed by Israel’s military in the early hours, according to Mahmoud.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in northern Gaza’s Jabalia claimed the lives of at least four people and injured several others.
Three more brothers, all brothers, were killed by Israeli forces as they went through their damaged home in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza’s al-Salateen neighborhood.
Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp, which had been treating injured people in Israeli attacks along Salah al-Din Street, announced in central Gaza that it had received the bodies of two Palestinians and treated 35 others.
According to Wafa, 16 of the injured were in critical condition and were being taken to other central governorates.
In eastern Gaza City, Israeli artillery also shelled the Shujayea neighborhood.
Since the start of Israel’s 20-month war, there have been more than 56, 000 fatalities in the area, with at least 131, 559 wounded, according to the most recent casualty figures.
The attacks come as the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) issued a warning that Gaza’s lack of reliable energy sources poses a significant threat to its survival.
In a recent report, the NRC claimed that the “deliberate denial of energy access” undermines “fundamental human needs” in the enclave.
Israel has continued to encircle Gaza with a crippling aid blockade, preventing access to everything from food to medical supplies to desperately needed fuel.
Energy is not about convenience in Gaza; it’s about survival, according to Benedicte Giaever, executive director of NORCAP, an organization that makes up the NRC.
The effects are immediate and devastating when families can’t cook, hospitals go dark, and water pumps stop working. She continued, “The international community must give energy a top priority in all humanitarian efforts.”
Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in his 2002 testimony to the US Congress that an invasion of Iraq was necessary to end the “war on terror” and stop Iraq and terrorist organizations from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. He added that the conflict would be brief, and that it would elicit a new era of Western-friendly democracy, not just in Iraq but throughout the region, including Iran. The proclamation was not accurate.
Prior to the invasion of 2003, many experts and officials already knew that Saddam Hussein’s regime lacked al-Qaeda and had no weapons of mass destruction. Unavoidable suffering, insecurities, insecurity, chaos, and the breakdown of government were all inevitable outcomes of the war. And that is what transpired. Today, Iraq is at best a fragile nation with significant political and economic challenges.
Many analysts eluded commenting on how the two allies allegedly failed to learn from the Iraq war and are now making the same mistakes in Iran after Israel and then the US attacked it earlier this month. If the 2003 invasion had had the objectives of halting the proliferation of WMDs and establishing democracy in mind, these analyses would have been accurate. They weren’t, though.
The US and Israel’s goal in the war was an Iraq that wouldn’t impede the Israeli-occupied Palestinians’ claim to sovereignty and its role as a representative of US imperial power in the area. In Iran today, this is also the desired outcome.
The assertions that Iran was “on the verge of” developing nuclear weapons have no justification, just as the claims about Iraq’s weapons-of- mass destruction have been proven to be completely false. No concrete proof has been presented that Tehran was actually developing nuclear weapons. Instead, lies and hypocrisy have been displayed in a way that is unmatched.
Two nuclear powers are engaged in illegal “pre-emptive” aggression under the guise of stopping nuclear proliferation, one of which stands out as the only state in history to have used a nuclear weapon not once but twice. The other, who refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has a mass-murder-suicide-style nuclear doctrine, is at this situation.
Israel and the US are obviously not interested in Iran’s nuclear program. They want Iran to become a regional power, which is why regime change has already been discussed in the media.
US Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz have called for the sacking of Iran’s government in addition to numerous statements from Netanyahu, Israeli defense minister Israel Katz, and other Israeli officials. US President Donald Trump posted a message on social media on Sunday to join the calls for a change in Iran’s regime.
Iranians are now being urged to “stand up” and fight for their “freedom.” However, Israel and the US don’t want Iran to have freedom and democracy. Why? Because of the fact that a free and democratic Iran would reject the brutalities of a colonial-state project in its vicinity.
They would prefer any other political force to do their bidding, such as the Pahlavi dynasty, which was a violent, tyrannical monarchy that was once the Pahlavi dynasty, which overcame its demise in a popular revolution in 1979.
Israel and the US would prefer a destabilized, fragmented, weak, chaotic, and divided Iran, which would be ruined by a civil war. That would serve their purposes, just as a war-torn Iraq did.
The political elites in Israel and the US have jointly supported a well-established policy objective since the 1990s, which is to weaken regional powers in the Middle East and cause instability through subversion and aggression.
This strategy of attacking Middle Eastern states was described in a policy document called Clean Break, which was written by former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle and other neoconservatives in 1996.
Perle and al simply capitalized on the well-known imperial strategy of creating division and chaos to facilitate imperial dominance.
However, there are risks in this approach. A weakened or dispersed Iranian state can result in the same dynamics as the demise of the Iraqi state opened the door to violent non-state actors and helped Iran strengthen its position as a regional power challenging US-Israeli interests.
The US and Israel’s actions are encouraging more nations to pursue nuclear weapons on a more global scale. Nuclear weapons are a necessity to acquire just to prevent such attacks, which states are learning from the US-Israeli aggression against Iran. In other words, this war is likely going to cause more proliferation, not less.
As long as the chaos and destruction it causes in the area allows it to accomplish its strategic objective of ending all resistance to its settler colonization project, the Israeli state doesn’t seem concerned about proliferation. In a nutshell, Israel will do anything to bring the entire region to its knees in order to do so. Because it is essentially free to bear the cost of regional instability.
In contrast, chaos in the Middle East directly affects US interests. In the short run, a dysfunctional Iraq or weakened Iran may be beneficial to the US, but instability could impair its grander plans to control global energy markets  and halt China.
The unjustified aggression will have a ripple effect on the rest of the world, just as it did following Iraq’s invasion in 2003.
Some European nations have appeared to support the attack despite the numerous negative economic effects they may experience as a result of that war, which has had a brutal, decades-long impact on the global response to the US-Israeli aggression against Iran.
This complacency with imperial violence must end if governments truly want to make the world a safer place. They have come to the sobering conclusion that the US and Israel, thanks to their racist colonial designs, cause chaos and destruction.
US imperialism is an unjustifiable effort to rob people of their resources, dignity, and sovereignty, while the Israeli settler colonial project is an unjustifiable one of displacement, expulsion, and genocide.
The world needs to press Israel to abandon its settler colonial project and establish a decolonial relationship with the Palestinians in a decolonized Palestine, as well as to compel the US to let its citizens live in freedom and sovereignty.
Only this will prevent unending chaos, instability, suffering, and pain.
Early on Sunday, the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear sites after more than a week of Israeli strikes on Tehran’s military and nuclear sites, stoking concerns about radiation leaks and contamination in Iran and neighbouring countries in the region.
US President Donald Trump said the US strikes “obliterated” key nuclear enrichment facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. So far, no increase in radiation levels has been detected outside the targeted sites.
But the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has warned of chemical contamination inside these facilities. And experts have said that any attack on Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, Bushehr, could lead to a major radiation crisis.
Here is what we know about the potential of radiation risk and contamination in Iran and the region:
The Israeli army attacked Iran’s Fordow nuclear site a day after it was targeted in US strikes, according to a spokesman for the Qom province crisis management headquarters.
Morteza Heydari provided no further details regarding the attack, but said “no danger is posed to citizens” in the area.
Following the attacks on three nuclear sites, including Fordow, Trump claimed “monumental damage’ to the nuclear sites. “Obliteration is an accurate term!” he posted on his Truth Social platform.
On Monday, Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, said “very significant damage” is expected at the Fordow site. While “no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow”, he said it is expected to be “very significant”.
That’s because of “the explosive payload utilised and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges”, Grossi said at an emergency meeting of the IAEA’s board of governors.
In the aftermath of Sunday’s attack, levels of radioactivity in Iran and nearby countries are normal, confirmed their governments and the IAEA, which noted that no off-site radiation has been reported.
In a statement on Sunday, the IAEA said that the Isfahan site, which was previously also struck by Israel, had sustained additional damage after the US strikes.
The IAEA said that any radioactive contamination caused at Isfahan is limited to the buildings that were damaged or destroyed.
“The facilities targeted today either contained no nuclear material or small quantities of natural or low-enriched uranium, meaning any radioactive contamination is limited to the buildings that were damaged or destroyed,” the agency said.
Grossi, the IAEA chief, said that the US strikes on Isfahan hit several buildings, including some “related to the uranium conversion process” while a fuel enrichment plant was hit at Natanz.
Grossi said IAEA inspectors stand ready to check the targeted facilities “when agreed with Iran”.
The IAEA monitors and reports nuclear activities of Iran through inspections, monitoring equipment, environmental sampling, and satellite imagery, according to a UN website news release.
There are multiple possible reasons why the radiation has stayed at normal levels.
One is that Iran had moved away its nuclear infrastructure in anticipation of an earlier Israeli strike. Mahdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said earlier that Iran had moved its nuclear infrastructure from Fordow in anticipation of an attack.
So far, only enrichment sites, where uranium is enriched to make atomic bombs, have been hit.
At enrichment sites, uranium exists in gaseous form, which combines with fluoride gas to form uranium hexafluoride. This is spun around in centrifuges to increase the amounts of uranium-235, the isotope that can support nuclear fission chain reactions.
Hence, if struck, uranium hexafluoride might leak out of enrichment sites. The fluoride gas is deadly when inhaled and can be corrosive to the skin.
Moreover, enrichment facilities are also fortified underground and buried hundreds of metres deep, making them difficult to damage and hence lessening radiation risks.
On the other hand, nuclear reactors primarily use uranium. In a nuclear reactor, the fission chain reaction needs to take place within a fraction of a second, leading to a nuclear explosion from the tremendous amount of energy released. Typically, 90 percent enrichment is needed to make an atomic bomb.
Concerns have particularly been raised against attacks on the Bushehr nuclear site, with the IAEA chief warning of a disaster if the plant located at Iran’s Gulf Coast is hit.
Grossi said on Thursday that a direct hit to Bushehr, which is monitored by the IAEA, would result in a “very high release of radioactivity to the environment”.
Grossi added that Bushehr contains “thousands of kilogrammes of nuclear material”. In a worst-case scenario, it would require evacuation orders to be issued for areas within several hundred kilometres of the plant, including population centres in other Gulf countries, he said.
The IAEA chief said that a strike on the two lines that supply electricity to Bushehr could cause its reactor core to melt, with dire consequences.
Authorities would need to take protective actions including administering iodine to populations and potentially restricting food supplies, with subsequent radiation monitoring covering distances of several hundred kilometres.
On June 19, the Israeli military said that it had attacked Bushehr, but later said that the announcement was a mistake.
Bushehr, which is located around 750km (465 miles) south of Tehran, is Iran’s only commercial nuclear power plant. It is run by uranium produced in Russia.
Bushehr, home to around 223,504 people, has two large nuclear reactors – one of them still under construction.
“It would be very dangerous if it were hit with a bomb or the cooling systems are interrupted,” Robert Kelly, a former IAEA inspector who has worked in Iraq, South Africa and Libya, told Al Jazeera.
“You might get an accident on the scale of Fukushima, where the reactor would melt down inside its building and maybe release small amounts of gas to the environment,” Kelly said.
In March 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling systems of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, located in Okuma on Japan’s east coast. Radioactive material was released from the site, leading to tens of thousands of people being evacuated.
A UN report deems Fukushima the largest civilian nuclear accident since that in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986.
“If somebody attacks the town of Bushehr, it may not be the reactor. So when people are saying they’re attacking Bushehr or attacking the reactor of Bushehr, it could be the one that’s not finished yet,” Kelly said.
“I think the Russians would have a lot to say about someone attacking the facility that they already built and the one that’s worth about $7bn that isn’t finished yet. I think Israel has to take the Russians into account in this case, too.”
Russian state news agency RIA reported that the head of Russia’s nuclear energy corporation Rosatom, Alexei Likhachev, warned: “If there is a strike on the operational first power unit, it will be a catastrophe comparable to Chernobyl.”
A strike on Bushehr would contaminate a critical source of desalinated potable water for Gulf countries, including Qatar.
Qatar and Bahrain are 100 percent reliant on desalinated water for drinking water. All of Bahrain’s groundwater is saved for contingency plans.
In March, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said during an interview with US media personality Tucker Carlson that Qatar had conducted simulations of an attack on Bushehr. The Qatari PM revealed that an attack on the plant would leave the Gulf entirely contaminated and Qatar would “run out of water in three days”.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is reliant on desalinated water, which accounts for more than 80 percent of its drinking water.
In Saudi Arabia, around 50 percent of the water supply came from desalinated water as of 2023, according to the General Authority for Statistics.
While countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman have access to other water sources, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait do not have other options.
Kelly said that the nuclear reactors are extremely tough and are designed to melt down inside their containment in certain accident situations.
“The idea that very much of the material inside is going to get out is actually pretty small, so I think people are maybe obsessing too much,” he said.
The British government has said it will deploy antiterrorism laws to ban Palestine Action, a prominent campaign organisation that has protested against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and the United Kingdom’s role in supporting it, in the wake of its activists damaging two military planes.
Protesters clashed with police in London’s Trafalgar Square on Monday at a demonstration in solidarity with Palestine Action. The crowd moved towards police when officers tried to detain someone, while protesters chanted “let them go”.
The government’s move will make it a criminal offence to belong to the pro-Palestinian group and effectively place them in the same category as Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda or ISIL (ISIS) under British law.
It would be illegal for anyone to promote Palestine Action or be a member. Those who breach the ban could face up to 14 years in prison.
Activists from the group broke into a Royal Air Force (RAF) base in central England last week and claimed to have damaged two military aircraft to protest against the UK government’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Palestine Action said two of its members entered the RAF Brize Norton military base in Oxfordshire, spraying paint into the engines of the Voyager aircraft and attacking them with crowbars.
“Despite publicly condemning the Israeli government, Britain continues to send military cargo, fly spy planes over Gaza and refuel U.S./Israeli fighter jets,” the group said in a statement on Friday, posting a video of the incident on X.
The group said the red paint “symbolising Palestinian bloodshed was also sprayed across the runway and a Palestine flag was left on the scene”.
It said the activists were able to exit the military facility undetected and avoid arrest.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the “vandalism” as “disgraceful”.
There has been condemnation of the government’s move on Monday. Labour Party MP Apsana Begum said: “Proscribing Palestine Action as ‘terrorists’ while continuing to send arms to a state that is committing the gravest of crimes against humanity in Gaza is not just unjustifiable, it is chilling. The ongoing crackdown on the right to protest is a threat to us all.”
Palestine Action called the police response to the solidarity protest “draconian”.
Draconian response by the police at the protest in solidarity with Palestine Action.
They want to ban us, they banned our protest at parliament and now they attack us.
The people will not be intimidated.
WE ARE ALL PALESTINE ACTION. pic.twitter.com/CsmebIriek
Weekly protests in the UK have drawn tens of thousands of people opposed to Israel’s war on Gaza and its besieged and bombarded population, as well as Britain’s supply of weapons to the Israeli military, which the government says it has suspended but still continues.
NGO Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) found the UK increased its licences to Israel for military equipment after the government announced a temporary arms suspension in September 2024.