Category World News

The US President has urged leaders in the Middle East to move past conflict.

United States President Donald Trump has pledged to boost Argentina’s economy with a $20bn currency swap — but only if the South American country’s right-wing president prevails in the upcoming elections.

That president, the self-described anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei, was in Washington, DC, on Tuesday for his latest visit to the White House.

“We think he’s going to win. He should win. And if he does win, we’re going to be very helpful,” Trump said. “And if he doesn’t win, we’re not going to waste our time, because you have somebody whose philosophy has no chance of making Argentina great again.”

Since taking office in December 2023, Milei has made at least a dozen trips to the US, including to attend Trump’s second inauguration. The two leaders share a strong public bond.

But Milei’s latest meeting with Trump comes as his political coalition, La Libertad Avanza (Freedom Advances), faces a series of scandals heading into Argentina’s midterm elections on October 26.

Trump appeared eager to help Milei overcome his drooping poll numbers on Tuesday, as he hosted the Argentinian leader in the White House’s cabinet room.

He explained to reporters that the economic safety net that the US was giving to Argentina was his way of “helping a great philosophy take over a great country”.

“ You’re going to win the election,” Trump told Milei. “We’re going to endorse you. I’m going to endorse you today, fully endorse you. People in Argentina like me. A lot of people like me.”

A conditional bailout

The conditional nature of the Argentinian bailout, however, has raised questions about Trump’s commitment to propping up Argentina’s ailing economy.

Milei’s surprise victory in the 2023 presidential election was widely seen as a backlash against the previous left-wing government of Alberto Fernandez, under whose leadership inflation spiralled to more than 200 percent.

However, while Milei has reduced inflation, the value of the Argentinian peso remains low, and critics have accused the South American president of slashing government programmes for low-income residents, exacerbating poverty.

One reporter on Tuesday asked Trump outright if the US’s support for Argentina depended on a win for La Libertad Avanza in the upcoming elections.

“ Well, I think if they don’t do that, we’re not going to be around very long,” Trump replied.

The US president then mused about a potential loss for Milei’s party. “We would not be generous with Argentina if that happened. If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina.”

Trump also alluded to the potential for further economic turmoil should Milei’s “extremely far-left” rival prevail, though it was unclear which opposition figure he was referring to.

Milei himself is not on the ballot on October 26, but his party, La Libertad Avanza, will be competing for half the seats in Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies and a third in its Senate.

Control of Argentina’s National Congress will determine whether Milei can continue to carry out his wide-reaching austerity measures, among them a push to overhaul the federal government.

Milei himself has illustrated the dramatic nature of his cost-cutting campaign by turning to props: He was known for wielding a chainsaw on stage during his presidential bid and whacking piñatas emblazoned with the name of Argentina’s Central Bank.

Backlash to Milei

But while Milei’s victory in the 2023 presidential race was a strong rebuke to Argentina’s left wing, more recent races have shown public support for his agenda cooling.

On September 7, the province of Buenos Aires, where the capital is located, held elections for its congressional seats, and La Libertad Avanza was trounced by a rival coalition, the left-wing Justicialist Party.

That party took more than 46 percent of the vote, compared with La Libertad Avanza’s 34 percent.

Also that month, Milei suffered a personal scandal when his sister and close associate, Karina Milei, was implicated in a case of alleged bribery.

Karina Milei serves as secretary-general to the presidency, and leaked audio released to Argentinian media appears to show the then-head of the National Disability Agency accusing her of accepting kickbacks in exchange for government contracts.

Both of the Milei siblings have denied the charges, and so far, Javier has stood by his sister. The resulting scandal, however, has cast a stark spotlight on Milei’s actions as president.

Milei had vetoed congressional legislation that would have increased benefits for people with disabilities, but in September, Argentina’s Congress pushed back, forming an overwhelming supermajority to overturn his veto, by a vote of 63 to seven.

It has since repeated the feat, overriding Milei’s vetoes to restore congressional funding for universities and paediatric healthcare.

Still, despite the setbacks, Trump and his officials used Tuesday’s meeting as a platform to promote Milei’s agenda and project confidence in his party’s midterm prospects.

“We think he’s going to do quite well and then continue his reform agenda,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent told reporters.

Projecting confidence

Like Trump, Bessent underscored that the $20bn promised to Argentina was hinged on Milei’s electoral successes.

A return to the left-wing Peronist policies of the previous administration, with its emphasis on social justice, would not be tolerated, he added.

“We’re confident that the president’s party will — and the coalition will — do well in the election, and this aid is predicated on robust policies,” Bessent said. “Going back to the failed Peronist policies would cause a US rethink.”

Trump, meanwhile, acknowledged that Argentinian voters may be experiencing “some pain” as a result of Milei’s economic reform.

But he defended Milei, arguing that “Argentina would be lost if he wasn’t there”.

When asked what his advice would be to the South American leader, Trump used the question to blame the news media for presenting Milei in a bad light.

“My advice is to hold strong to his principles, because he’s right, and he’s proving that he is right. He’s got one problem. He’s got people that are giving him tremendously bad press,” Trump said.

“Everybody knows he’s doing the right thing. But you have a radical-left sick culture that’s a very dangerous group of people, and they’re trying to make him look bad.”

The remarks were a reflection of Trump’s own adversarial relationship with the press. During his appearance with Milei, Trump once again took the opportunity to slam domestic journalism outlets like ABC News, labelling the channel “fake news”.

Trump, who campaigned on an “America First” platform, has faced scrutiny over his outreach to Argentina.

The $20bn currency swap — wherein US dollars will be sent to Argentina in exchange for pesos to help boost their value — comes after Bessent said he would take “exceptional measures” to stabilise the South American country.

That includes withdrawing from the Exchange Stabilization Fund, an emergency fund that falls under the Treasury’s authority.

On Tuesday, Trump even joked that he was willing to send missiles to Argentina to help Milei combat his opposition.

“Do you need any Tomahawks in Argentina?” Trump quipped, to polite chuckles. “You need them for your opposition, I guess.”

Israel has imposed new restrictions on aid entering the besieged Gaza Strip and will not open the Rafah crossing as planned, while Israeli forces killed several people in the Palesitinian territory as the Israel-Hamas ceasefire came under growing strain.

Israel notified the United Nations on Tuesday that it will only allow 300 aid trucks – half of the number it originally agreed to – daily into the Gaza Strip from Wednesday.

Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, confirmed the UN had received the note from the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into Gaza.

The COGAT note said no fuel or gas will be allowed into the war-torn enclave except for specific needs related to humanitarian infrastructure.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud noted that allowing 300 trucks of aid each day was “not nearly enough” for famine-stricken Gaza.

“Three hundred is not enough. It’s not going to change anything,” he said.

Israeli authorities also announced the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed.

The restrictions came hours after Israeli forces killed at least nine Palestinians in attacks in northern and southern Gaza, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

At least six Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza City, and three others were killed in Khan Younis.

Sources from al-Ahli Arab Hospital told Al Jazeera Arabic on Tuesday that Israeli soldiers killed five Palestinians in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City.

The Israeli military said it opened fire to remove a threat posed by people who approached its forces in northern Gaza.

The attacks come four days after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect, preparing the way for an exchange of captives and partial Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

The ceasefire is the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s proposal for ending Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed at least 67,913 people and wounded 170,134 since October 2023, according to Palestinian health authorities. The remains of thousands of other people are estimated to be under the rubble in Gaza.

At least 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, and more than 200 others were taken captive.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Hamas and Israel carried out an exchange on Monday that saw the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails and 20 Israeli captives held in the Gaza Strip. Some 154 prisoners were exiled to Egypt.

Hamas was also due to return the remains of 28 dead captives on Monday, but the group only handed over four coffins.

Trump’s ceasefire plan provided a mechanism if that handover didn’t happen, saying Hamas should share information about deceased captives and “exert maximum effort” to carry out the handover as soon as possible.

Hamas said that it would transfer the remains of four more deceased Israeli captives on Tuesday, and the Israeli military said that the Red Cross had received the bodies. The military later said the bodies had arrived in Israel, where they would undergo forensic tests.

The Israeli military earlier accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire “regarding the release of the bodies of the hostages”.

Trump noted the delay in handing over the remains of the deceased captives in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“THE DEAD HAVE NOT BEEN RETURNED, AS PROMISED! Phase Two begins right NOW!!!” he wrote.

Hamas has previously said recovering the bodies of some captives could take more time because not all sites where they were held are known, and because of the vast Israeli destruction of the enclave.

“The headline here is, Israel is already starting to put threats of restricting aid going into Gaza for what they say is the slow work by Hamas to get the bodies of the deceased captives back to Israel,” Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo said, reporting from the UN.

@ajplus

Israel unilaterally broke the last ceasefire in Gaza. AJ+ spoke to journalist and analyst Omar Rahman about what might make this deal different. #Gaza #Ceasefire #Israel #PeaceDeal #Palestine

UN urges more aid deliveries

The UN and the International Red Cross called for all crossings into Gaza to be opened to allow desperately needed aid into the enclave. The UN had 190,000 metric tonnes of aid waiting and ready to go into Gaza, OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said on Tuesday.

UNICEF spokesman Ricardo Pires, meanwhile, said the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) had 1,370 trucks ready to enter Gaza.

“The level of destruction, again, is so huge that it will take at least 600 trucks a day, which is the aim that we have,” he said. “We’re far from that.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) also stressed the need to send more aid into Gaza.

“We need to scale up the delivery of medical supplies because the pressure on hospitals is not going to ease overnight,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters.

President Donald Trump announced that the United States has carried out another air strike on a vessel off the Venezuelan coast, once again accusing the boat of transporting drugs.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Trump said six people were killed in the latest bombing.

“Under my Standing Authorities as Commander-in-Chief, this morning, the Secretary of War, ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO),” Trump wrote.

“The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed.”

Trump did not offer any evidence to confirm his allegation that the boat was “conducting narcotrafficking”.

But as with past strikes, he shared an unclassified video of the bombing, which appeared to show a small boat seemingly drifting in the water, not moving, before the US missile makes impact.

This latest attack is believed to be the fifth such US bombing in the Caribbean Sea. Experts and rights groups have described the US strikes as a clear violation of international law since drug traffickers do not qualify as armed combatants.

Despite their dubious legality, the strikes have become commonplace over the last month and a half.

The first such attack took place on September 2, killing 11 people. Two further attacks took place on September 15 and 19, with three people killed in each case.

Then, a fourth strike came on October 3, with US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth claiming four fatalities aboard that boat. Tuesday’s attack brings the known death toll to 27.

In each case, Trump and his officials have claimed that the air strikes were necessary to prevent “narco-terrorists” from reaching the US with their deadly cargo, though it is unclear who was onboard those small vessels, what they were carrying, and what their destination was.

Suspected drug trafficking vessels are often interdicted by US forces at sea as part of the government’s efforts to halt the transportation of drugs into the country.

But critics say the lethal attacks reflect Trump’s push for executive power with few limits, both at home and abroad.

Still, Trump has attempted to lay the groundwork for international action against drug cartels, through a series of executive actions and statements.

In early October, for instance, the Trump administration issued a memo to Congress saying the president had determined that the US was enmeshed in a “non-international armed conflict” with the cartels, whom he described as “unlawful combatants”.

And in August, news reports emerged that Trump had secretly signed a separate order authorising military strikes against drug-trafficking networks.

That continues a months-long campaign by the Trump administration to recategorise drug trafficking as an act of foreign hostility.

Since February, the Trump administration has sought to label a wide variety of criminal and narcotics groups as “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs), a move rights groups say could pave the way for US military operations abroad.

Last week, the US Senate voted down a bill introduced by a handful of Democratic senators that would have required the approval of the legislative branch for any future strikes on drug-trafficking vessels.

The attacks have also taken place amid a build-up of US forces in the Caribbean, including at bases in Puerto Rico.

The increase in fighter jets and other military equipment in the region has prompted questions about possible attacks on Venezuela.

Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and on Tuesday, he repeated past accusations that Venezuela was responsible for an “invasion” of foreign gangs into the US.

“We get drugs and all of that, but we get something, in a way, worse,” Trump said at a news conference in the White House, repeating unsubstantiated allegations.

“What they do very well is they send their criminals into the United States, and they send trend Tren de Aragua.”

President Donald Trump said that Hamas “is going to disarm” but if they don’t the US would act to disarm them “quickly and perhaps violently.” Trump declined to elaborate or to explain how the group would disarm a day after the Gaza peace deal was signed.