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The United States and Australia’s political tug of war against Iran over the fates of seven members of the Iranian women’s football squad appears to have ended with the depleted team returning home minus the two players who defected last week.

Critics now say politics trumped concern for the women’s best interests as the drama played out. The evidence is that of seven Iranian women who initially accepted asylum in Australia, five changed their minds within days and returned to their country for reasons undisclosed.

Critics argue the outcome might have been different had the women been provided with independent legal advice earlier and the process not been so rushed.

“We ended up with an outcome that is certainly far from ideal,” said Graham Thom, advocacy coordinator for the Refugee Council of Australia, a nonprofit umbrella organisation representing asylum seekers.

“Hopefully, the two who are remaining get the protection they need, but we just hope that those who have returned are also safe,” he added.

Iran has claimed victory in the extraordinary public relations battle that played out since Immigration Minister Tony Burke released to the media on March 10 a photo of him posing with five women who had accepted protection visas.

He said the women, who all appeared without head coverings, were happy for their names and images to be released to the media.

Refugee advocates were alarmed, asking if women raised under an oppressive regime could be expected to question the Australian government’s media strategy.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a political scientist at Sydney’s Macquarie University who spent more than two years in Iranian prisons on spying charges from 2018 to 2020, said “winning the propaganda war” had overshadowed the women’s welfare.

“Had these women quietly sought asylum without that publicity around them, it’s possible that the Islamic Republic officials might have, as they have in the cases of other Iranian sportspeople in the past who’ve defected … simply allowed that to happen,” Moore-Gilbert told ABC media outlet this week.

Australia traditionally deals with asylum claims behind closed doors, conscious that the public spotlight can ramp up pressure and bring danger to potential refugees and their families.

Concerns for the team’s welfare were raised when players decided against singing the Iranian national anthem before their first match of the Women’s Asian Cup on the Gold Coast on March 2.

Iranian sports commentator Mohammad Reza Shahbazi calling the women “wartime traitors” in a television broadcast was widely quoted by protesters demanding asylum for the team.

The gesture attracted global attention and was not repeated at the women’s next match, at which they sang the anthem.

Shahram Akbarzadeh, professor of Middle East politics at Deakin University in Geelong, Australia, suspects the team had not thought through the consequences of “expressing a political opinion” on the Iranian regime.

“Sometimes frustration overrides fear of consequences,” Akbarzadeh said.

“Unfortunately for these players, their act of defiance turned into a symbol of resistance against the regime and basically a cause to be played by the United States and the Iranian diaspora who were anti-regime to humiliate and embarrass the regime and to basically gain a political score from the situation,” he added.

The stakes were raised when US President Donald Trump used social media to call for the team to be granted asylum and telephoned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the issue.

Albanese told Trump that the first five – four players and a team manager – had recently accepted offers of humanitarian visas.

Another two squad members chose to stay before the rest of the team flew from Sydney to Malaysia on March 10, after being knocked out of the competition.

“It quickly turned into a political dispute and political theatre between Iran and the US (and) Australia, and of course, the Iranians responded accordingly. They couldn’t be seen to be as embarrassed by their failure,” Akbarzadeh said.

All but two women who accepted asylum rejoined the team in Kuala Lumpur before the squad flew to Oman on Monday. Iranian state media reported they had returned to their homeland by bus from Turkiye and were met with a welcome ceremony.

“We are so happy to be in Iran, because Iran is our homeland,” midfielder Fatemeh Shaban told a flag-waving crowd.

The reasons why five women changed their minds about creating new lives in Australia have not been made pubic, but there were expectations that the regime would threaten family members.

Shiva Amini, a former Iranian national football player who now lives in New York City, said she had been in contact with the two women who had remained in Australia, Fatemeh Pasandideh and Atefeh Ramezanisadeh, and a number of those who had decided to return to Iran.

Amini was granted asylum in Switzerland in 2017 after the Iranian government threatened to sanction her for being photographed in the European country playing a casual game of football with men while not wearing the mandatory hijab, or headscarf.

“This is beyond sad that they couldn’t stay, because even if you get back to Iran, they’re gonna threaten your family,” Amini told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Amini declined to elaborate on her conversations with players out of concern for their safety and the safety of their families.

She said the regime put pressure on at least one of the players, whom she declined to name, to return to Iran by threatening to harm her mother.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said none of the five women who changed their minds about staying in Australia had been pressured by Iran to return home.

“They didn’t seek asylum. They were forced to. They were coerced to. They didn’t do it voluntarily,” Baghaei told ABC on Thursday.

Asked if the two players who remained in Australia were being held against their will, he replied: “I guess so.”

Baghaei said Australian officials had asked the Iranian women to go to a room on the pretext of testing for performance-enhancing drugs, and then told the women to sign visa papers and pose with Burke for photos.

“This was a shameful, sham posture,” Baghaei said.

Australia has denied pressuring the women to stay or go.

After the fifth refugee applicant rejoined her team in Kuala Lumpur on Monday, Assistant Immigration Minister Matt Thistlethwaite described the team’s plight in Australia as a “very complex situation”.

Israel and America’s war on Iran has killed more than 1,500 people in a matter of weeks, and the toll continues to rise.

In Tehran on March 7, mourners gathered around the coffin of Zainab Sahebi, a two-year-old girl killed in an Israeli air strike. A small doll lay beside her coffin as relatives and neighbours crowded the funeral, grappling with the loss of a child taken in an instant.

Zainab’s funeral was only one of many.

On March 3, thousands gathered in Minab, in Hormozgan province, for a mass funeral after the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ primary school was destroyed during the opening day of the bombing campaign. Rows of coffins were carried through the city as families laid to rest at least 175 students and staff, most of them children, killed in one of the deadliest incidents of the conflict.

Violence like this has a long and familiar history.

From Gaza to Lebanon and now Iran, civilians continue to bear the price of imperialism.

This escalation has not been limited to civilians. Israeli strikes also killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with senior military officials.

For Africa, the crisis unfolding thousands of kilometres away is not a distant geopolitical calamity.

Instability in the Gulf has historically translated into sharp fuel price increases across the continent, with imported petroleum underpinning transport, electricity generation and food supply chains from Lagos and Nairobi to Johannesburg and Dakar.

The result is rising inflation and higher food prices.

Still, Africa’s stake in this conflict is not only economic.

It is also a legal and political question.

The issue confronting African governments is not whether they admire the Islamic Republic of Iran or the United States.

The real question is whether the rules governing the use of force between states still apply at all.

Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter prohibits states from using military force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state, except in self-defence or with UN Security Council authorisation, a principle long understood as central to international order.

None of these legal thresholds were met in the case of the strikes on Iran.

Instead, both Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz and US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have presented the strikes on Iran as acts of “preemptive” self-defence against Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities.

Africans have seen before how quickly Western military campaigns, launched in the name of democracy, human rights or humanitarian protection, can expand far beyond their stated purpose.

Libya is a case in point.

In March 2011, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1973, authorising “all necessary measures” to protect civilians during Libya’s uprising against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Within months, NATO aircraft were conducting an extensive bombing campaign across Libya, striking military installations and government infrastructure, while also killing civilians.

For many Africans, it was no cause for celebration.

The moment symbolised something deeper: a Western air war that culminated in the violent overthrow of an African government and the death of its leader.

More than a decade later, Libya remains politically fractured, governed by rival administrations in Tripoli and eastern Libya, while armed militias continue to dominate large parts of the country.

Libya’s collapse also destabilised the wider Sahel, where looted Libyan weapons and returning fighters helped ignite the 2012 rebellion in Mali, and contributed to coups and insurgencies that continue to shake Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

Libya, like Iraq and Afghanistan, stands as a warning of what can follow when outside powers remake a state through force.

Indeed, the pattern across Iran, Libya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is clear. In each case, leaders sought to assert national control over strategic resources — oil in Iran and Libya, minerals in the DRC — only to face confrontation with Western dominance.

In September 1960, Congo’s independence leader Patrice Lumumba was deposed in a Western-backed coup and executed four months later after attempting to secure sovereignty over the country’s vast mineral wealth.

Half a century later, the same fate befell Gaddafi.

Today, Iran’s leader has been killed in a military operation justified as a security necessity.

Africa and the wider Global South stand at a crossroads.

The United Nations and the UN Charter remain among the few barriers standing between the present and a return to an era when powerful Western nations openly reserved the right to pillage Africa and other continents at any cost.

At the turn of the 20th century in the Congo Free State, in present-day DRC, the regime of King Leopold II of Belgium presided over a system of forced labour so brutal that historians estimate around 10 million Congolese died from violence, disease and starvation.

American troops occupied Cuba after the Spanish–American War of 1898 and forced the island to accept the Platt Amendment, which gave Washington the right to intervene in its affairs. The United States also seized Puerto Rico in the same war and, in April 1914, landed forces in Veracruz, Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution.

These actions reflected a time when powerful states acted with impunity and reshaped governments at will.

African leaders must respond to the present violations with clarity and resolve.

They should demand an immediate cessation of hostilities and unequivocally condemn the leaders responsible for this escalation: Israeli strongman Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump.

They must defend Iran’s sovereignty and Iranian lives.

They must stand up to the many faces of imperial power, including through coordinated action at the African Union and the United Nations General Assembly.

When African states founded the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa on May 25, 1963, one of its core principles was respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, a response to centuries of external intervention on the continent.

On that occasion, Ghana’s founding president Kwame Nkrumah warned fellow African leaders that “independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs unhampered by crushing and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and interference”.

More than 60 years later, that warning still stands.

It is time to defend the principles of the United Nations Charter.

History shows how quickly precedents travel.

Today it is Iran.

Tomorrow it may be Africa.

The world still speaks about the Strait of Hormuz as if the central question were whether Iran will try to close it. That is now the wrong question.

Iran’s most effective military option is not to mine the Strait of Hormuz itself, nor the narrow, internationally scrutinised traffic corridor inside the strait proper, but to mine the approaches to the strait, especially the entrance zones where commercial traffic converges before entering the constrained transit system. That is where disruption can be generated most efficiently, over the widest possible maritime area, while remaining under Iranian surveillance and command-and-control coverage.

This distinction matters. It is the difference between a crude blockade and a technically sophisticated interdiction strategy.

Operationally, the Strait of Hormuz is not simply a broad expanse of water. Commercial shipping moves through a traffic separation scheme, a regulated two-lane transit structure with inbound and outbound channels separated by a buffer zone. Large crude carriers and very large crude carriers are in effect canalised by draft, navigational rules and safety requirements into a highly predictable transit pattern. Their routes, speeds and timings are known in advance. In military terms, this is a forced maritime funnel.

But the key battlespace is not only the funnel itself. It is the wider approach geometry leading into it.

Before tankers enter the strait proper, traffic compresses through the Gulf of Oman approaches towards the entrance corridor. This is where Iran gains its greatest advantage. If mines are seeded in the entrance zones rather than inside the marked shipping lanes, the effect can extend across a broader manoeuvre space while avoiding the political and operational signature of overtly mining the strait itself. Tehran does not need to place mines directly under the keel line of every tanker. It only needs to create sufficient uncertainty in the approach battlespace that mariners, insurers and naval escorts assume contamination.

That logic is reinforced by hydrography. Surface circulation flows from the Gulf of Oman into the Gulf, while denser saline outflow moves at depth in the opposite direction. Floating, semimoored or near-surface devices deployed in the entrance zones can therefore drift naturally towards commercial traffic patterns without being laid directly in the formal transit lanes. A limited number of mines placed in the right location can create a disproportionate effect over a much wider maritime area. This is precisely why the entrance is the optimal interdiction zone: it enlarges the danger area, complicates clearance operations and magnifies uncertainty.

The relevant Iranian concept is not closure. It is selective, controlled disruption.

That concept depends on surveillance, and here Iran retains a meaningful advantage. From Bandar Abbas to Qeshm, Larak, Abu Musa, Sirri and the Jask–Kooh Mobarak sector, Iran’s northern littoral provides overlapping observation angles across the tanker lanes and their approaches. Coastal radar, UAV reconnaissance, patrol craft reporting, electronic emissions tracking and civilian maritime observation all contribute to a layered maritime picture. Even where parts of this network have been degraded, the architecture does not collapse easily because it is redundant by design.

That maritime picture is now deepened by space-based ISR. Iran’s Khayyam electro-optical satellite, developed with Russian support, provides high-resolution imagery that can be tasked over the Gulf and the approaches to Hormuz. It is not a constellation, but it does not need to be one to matter. When fused with Russian optical, electronic and maritime surveillance assets and integrated into Iranian coastal command networks, it strengthens Tehran’s ability to identify shipping concentrations, observe escorts, monitor port activity and select the most effective timing and location for asymmetric action.

This is what makes entrance-zone mining viable. Iran can observe the battlespace continuously enough to avoid indiscriminate use of force and instead apply pressure with precision.

Modern mine warfare further strengthens that option. Naval mines are no longer limited to simple drifting contact devices. Iran’s inventory is believed to include influence mines triggered by magnetic, acoustic or pressure signatures, bottom mines placed on the seabed, moored mines set at selected depths and command-detonated or controlled mines that can remain dormant until activated remotely or by preset criteria. Some systems can be delayed, some can self-neutralise, and some deployed close to friendly coastlines can be recovered or repositioned.

This is the crucial point: a controlled minefield in the approaches does not need to be permanently active to be strategically effective.

Mines can be emplaced early, left inert, repositioned if necessary and activated only at a chosen moment. If laid near Iranian-controlled coastlines and within the surveillance envelope of Iranian coastal forces, they can be managed as a reversible instrument of coercion. That gives Tehran escalation control. It also gives it deniability. The absence of an explosion is not proof of the absence of mines. Dormant influence mines or controlled devices can exist in the entrance battlespace without immediate kinetic effect while still forcing commercial actors to behave as though the area is contaminated.

That is how maritime disruption works today, not through dramatic closure, but through calibrated navigational insecurity.

Once shipping companies believe the approaches may contain selective mine threats, the economic effect begins immediately. War risk premiums rise. Transit slows. Clearance operations become necessary. Naval escorts are stretched. Traffic management turns defensive. The shipping corridor may remain technically open, but operationally it becomes degraded. In energy markets, that is enough.

This is why debate over whether the strait itself has been mined misses the point. The more plausible scenario is that limited, controlled deployment in the approaches has already created the conditions Iran seeks. With the geometry of the transit lanes, the hydrography of the entrance, the persistence of Iranian surveillance and the availability of modern controlled mines, the threshold for disruption is now extremely low.

The Strait of Hormuz does not need to be visibly mined to function as if it were.

In strategic terms, it already is.

Beirut, Lebanon and Gaza City, Palestine – Along Beirut’s downtown waterfront, Alaa is looking for somewhere to rest his head.

The Syrian refugee, originally from the occupied Golan Heights, is now homeless. He explained that he had already spent the day wandering around the Lebanese capital trying to find shelter.

He used to live in Dahiyeh – the southern suburbs of Beirut that have been pummelled by Israeli attacks, which have now killed more than 1,000 across Lebanon.

Now, he’s just looking for somewhere he can be safe. And in that context, Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival that began on Friday, is far from his mind.

When asked if he had any plans for Eid, he replied in the negative. Instead, his focus was on getting a tent.

“I got rejected from staying in a school, then I went to sleep on the corniche,” Alaa said. “Then people from the municipality told me to come here to downtown Beirut’s waterfront.”

Alaa wasn’t able to find a tent and is sleeping in the open air for now. But others in the area have, transforming a downtown more famous for its expensive restaurants and bars into a tent city for those displaced by the fighting. Across Lebanon, more than a million people have been displaced.

Lebanese are uncertain when this war will end, particularly as they have barely recovered from the conflict with Israel that ran between October 2023 and November 2024.

It makes celebrations difficult – a common theme across the countries affected by the current conflict.

In Iran, now in its third week of US-Israeli attacks – with no sign of an immediate end and an economic crisis that preceded the conflict, people are struggling to afford any of the items typically bought during the holiday season.

And it is potentially dangerous for people to shop at places like Tehran’s grand bazaar, which has been damaged by the bombing.

The religious element of Eid adds an extra sensitivity for antigovernment Iranians, some of whom now see any sign of religiosity as support for the Islamic Republic. The fact that Nowruz – the Persian New Year – falls on Friday this year means that some in the antigovernment camp will be focused on that celebration instead, and eschewing any events to mark Eid.

Struggling in Gaza

Many Palestinians in Gaza want to celebrate Eid, but the enclave’s economic crisis, brought on by Israel’s genocidal war, makes it difficult.

Israeli restrictions on the entry of goods into Gaza, which have increased since the war against Iran started, have driven up prices further, including the cost of children’s toys.

Khaled Deeb, a 62-year-old living in a partially destroyed home in Gaza City, had ventured into the central Remal market, curious to see how expensive fruit and vegetables had gotten in the run-up to Eid.

“From the outside, the Eid atmosphere looks lively and vibrant,” Khaled said, pointing to the crowded market. “But financially, things are extremely bad. People have all left their homes and are now living in tents and displacement. Everyone has lost everything during the war.”

Khaled says he can’t afford the fruit and vegetables, and will have to go without. Only “kings” could buy them, he said, not “poor and exhausted people” like him.

What makes it worse is his memory of what things were like before the war, when he owned a supermarket.

“During Eid, I would give my daughters and sisters gifts of more than 3,000 shekels ($950) when visiting them, not to mention preparing the house, buying Eid clothes for my children, and sweets and chocolates to welcome the holiday,” Khaled said. None of that is going to happen this Eid, even with a ceasefire in Gaza.

His sentiment was echoed by Shireen Shreim, a mother of three.

“Our joy in Eid is incomplete,” she said, as she wandered through the market. “We have come out of two years of war with immense hardship, only to face a life where even the most basic necessities are unavailable.”

And with Israel showing few signs that it is willing to stop violently attacking Palestinians, as well as other countries in the region, Shireen has no idea when Gaza will ever be rebuilt.

“I live in an apartment with completely hollowed-out walls,” she explained. “My husband and I put up tarps and wood, and we are continuing our lives. We are much better off than others.”

“Every time I return home, I feel sad,” she added. “As you can see, people are living in nylon and cloth tents in the streets, without any humane shelter. How will these people celebrate Eid?”

Back in Beirut, Karim Safieddine, a political researcher and organiser, is stoic. He said he would be celebrating Eid with his extended family, despite the difficult circumstances.

“Although we have been displaced by the war, we believe that consolidating these family bonds and creating a sense of communal solidarity is the first and foremost condition to survive this war,” Karim said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has succeeded where countless previous Israeli leaders have failed: persuading the United States to join Israel in launching open-ended strikes against its regional nemesis, Iran.

So far, those attacks have killed more than 1,400 people in Iran, while 1,000 have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon, as well as dozens of others in regional countries hit by the overspill that many had predicted.

Oil prices, a critical factor for the world economy, have been pushed to new highs, drawing the prospect of shortages and potential rationing even closer.

In the US, Democrat lawmakers, as well as some prominent members of President Donald Trump’s usually loyal support base, such as media personality Tucker Carlson and leading podcast host Joe Rogan, have broken into open revolt, with no clear agreement on what a potential resolution to the war might look like, or how the diplomatic rift it has opened between the US and its European and Western allies might be healed.

But little of that might matter for Netanyahu, compared with the gains he will feel he has already achieved from the conflict. Here’s a look at how the Iran war may solve some of the problems Netanyahu has faced for years.

The Iranian threat

Netanyahu has long warned about the threat from Iran to Israel, and the wider world, for years. He has infamously taken posters with him to the United Nations to claim that Iran was close to a nuclear weapon, and the dangers that would lead to.

Israel had long felt unable to emerge victorious from any conflict fought against Iran if it did not have US backing. And yet that support never came – until Trump came along.

Last year, Trump agreed to join in on Israel’s June war against Iran, but quickly moved to end the conflict after Iranian nuclear sites were hit. However, this time, Trump was in on the conflict from the start.

The conclusion of the conflict is unknown, but Netanyahu will feel a measure of success in finally convincing the US to join Israel in launching a war against Iran, and the image of the two countries as direct partners in a conflict.

And even if the war doesn’t lead to the fall of the Iranian government, the Islamic Republic has been weakened, and may pose less of a threat to Israel in the long term.

Coupled with the depletion of the power of Iran’s regional “Axis of Resistance” – including the heavy attacks on the Lebanese group Hezbollah and the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad – Netanyahu can argue that Israel has no one to be afraid of in the region, and is the undisputed hegemon.

Netanyahu’s corruption trials

Netanyahu currently faces trial on three corruption charges dating back to 2019. Accusations that he has been manipulating events to delay and sideline the criminal proceedings against him have run the length of his genocidal war on Gaza, with postponements and interruptions to the trial often linked to events in the conflict, and Netanyahu using them as justification to avoid attending hearings.

Earlier this month, Netanyahu repeated President Donald Trump’s previous appeal to Israel’s President Isaac Herzog to pardon the prime minister, allowing him to avoid the trials and the potential 10-year sentence he faces if found guilty.

Netanyahu hasn’t let go of the topic, even with war raging against Iran. In his first news conference since the war started – a full 12 days into the conflict – he labelled the legal proceedings against him an “absurd circus”, and said that Herzog needed to do “the right thing” and wrap up the case, allowing him to devote his full attention to the war and regional diplomacy.

“He [Herzog] needs to give the State of Israel the time, and me the time, to do what is necessary – not only to defeat our enemies but also to create tremendous opportunities for peace, prosperity and alliances in our region,” Netanyahu told reporters on March 12. “Tremendous things lie ahead, and I am working on them right now. I would like to be completely unencumbered.”

But earlier in the same week, Israel’s Ministry of Justice said it would be inappropriate to issue a pardon while Netanyahu’s trial is ongoing.

The roadblocks to overhauling the judiciary

Efforts by Netanyahu and his right-wing allies to overhaul the judiciary, essentially removing it as a check on the government, have for years been roundly rejected by the prime minister’s opponents.

The matter dominated the first few months of Netanyahu’s election victory at the end of 2022, with tens of thousands of Israelis taking to the streets to denounce what they said was a “coup”. But that protest movement weakened after the October 7 attack, and the genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023.

However, Netanyahu, even as the war against Iran rages, has not dropped the issue, and instead has been accused of using the war as cover to advance controversial legislation. In mid-March, Netanyahu’s coalition began attempting to push through legislation in parliament that would split and divide the attorney general’s powers, weakening the authority of the position, as well as giving the government greater control over the country’s media.

The proposed legislation would also establish a politically appointed panel to probe government failures in the run-up to the October 7 attack.

Responding to the government’s move, opposition leader Yair Lapid, who has gone to pains to support the war on Iran and was vocal in his backing of the genocide on Gaza, nevertheless accused the Parliament Speaker Amir Ohana, and “all the extremists” in the coalition, of not caring that Israel was at war.

“While the entire country is standing together, the coalition is promoting its extremist agenda and stealing money for political purposes,” he said in a statement.

Criticism of the treatment of Palestinians

Israeli violence against Palestinians has surged across the occupied West Bank, while in Gaza Israeli has imposed further restrictions on those still trapped in the enclave since the war with Iran began.

On March 11, both the European Union and the United Kingdom demanded that the Israeli government take action to halt the violence in the occupied West Bank which, at that time, had killed six Palestinians since Israel attacked Iran.

But violence against West Bank Palestinians – including by Israeli soldiers – has continued, and the death toll now stands at 11 since the war began. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7, 2023.

Among those killed there since the war against Iran began were members of the Bani Odeh family – a mother and father, Waad and Ali, and two of their children, five-year-old Mohammad and seven-year-old Othman. They were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers while they travelled in the village of Tammun on March 15, in a case that has attracted international condemnation, but few repercussions.

In Gaza, already decimated after two years of near-total war, the situation remains desperate. On Wednesday, the United Nations again urged Israel to relax wartime restrictions and allow aid into the enclave. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warned that disproportionate action on the part of Israeli troops, carried out with absolute impunity, was being normalised. Despite that, with attention focused on Iran, there is little pressure for Israel to fulfil the commitments it made as part of the October ceasefire agreement to allow large amounts of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.

Netanyahu’s election fears

Dogged by scandal and widely blamed by much of the Israeli public for his and his government’s failings before the October 7 attack, Netanyahu was at risk of losing elections slated for later this year, and the consequences that would potentially have for his legal troubles.

According to a poll carried out by the Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv shortly before the Iran war began, Netanyahu was tied in a virtual dead heat with former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Netanyahu still has a lot of work ahead of him. However, according to a more recent poll by the same title, confidence in Netanyahu’s ability to oversee the war had increased from an already overwhelming 60 percent at the start of the war to 62 percent.

Health and environment advocacy groups in the United States are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw a key 2009 climate change ruling known as the “endangerment finding”.

That finding had established that greenhouse gases are a risk to public health and environmental safety, given that they are the primary drivers of climate change. It formed the legal basis for many regulatory policies aimed at curbing climate change.

When US President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”, rescinded the declaration in February this year, the EPA supported the move, deeming it the “single largest deregulatory action in US history”.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday this week, alleges that the Trump administration’s decision will risk the health and welfare of US citizens.

“Repealing the Endangerment Finding endangers all of us. People everywhere will face more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths,” Peter Zalzal, the associate vice president of clean air strategies at the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

Trump’s revocation of the endangerment finding is the latest in a series of steps he has taken to prioritise deregulation, boost fossil fuel production and reverse climate regulations.

But Trump is not the first US president to enact policy damaging to the environment. Here’s how decades of US policy have harmed the environment before he arrived in the White House

What is the ‘endangerment finding’?

The endangerment finding was established under the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama. It states that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.

That ruling allowed the EPA under President Obama to move forward on policy aimed at limit the release of greenhouse gases in the US, Michael Kraft, professor emeritus of political science and public and environmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, told Al Jazeera.

Under the endangerment finding, power plants were required to meet federal limits on carbon emissions or risk being shut down. This forced oil and gas companies to invest more to detect and fix methane leaks, curb flaring, and improve tailpipe and fuel‑economy standards to enable automobile companies to manufacture more efficient, lower‑emitting vehicles.

What does rescinding it mean?

“By allowing for increased pollution, these recent changes [by the Trump administration] will harm practically every single person on the planet,” Washington, DC-based policy researcher Brett Heinz told Al Jazeera.

“People living near fossil fuel facilities will be some of the most immediately affected, as they will be exposed to the new air and water pollution unleashed by deregulatory policies,” Heinz added.

Without the endangerment finding in place, the EPA has lost a key legal basis on which to limit greenhouse gas emissions, making it easier for coal plants, oil refineries and petrochemical complexes to run older, dirtier equipment for longer, expand without installing modern pollution controls, and emit more soot, smog‑forming gases and toxic chemicals into nearby communities.

Heinz explained that higher greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels in power plants, cars and industry as well as continued deforestation will also amplify the dangers posed by natural disasters. This is because increased warming exacerbates heatwaves, storms, floods and droughts, and raises sea levels – all of which turn existing natural hazards into more frequent and more destructive disasters.

“The only people who will benefit from these decisions are a small handful of wealthy fossil fuel executives and shareholders, who will see healthy profits while the world grows sick. These fossil fuel elites, many of whom contributed money to Trump’s presidential campaign, have now gotten a return on this investment,” Heinz said.

Experts say that Trump’s decision to entirely do away with environmental policy is unlike any president before him.

“The White House’s tidal wave of new pro-pollution policies is completely unprecedented. While past administrations have modified environmental rules, the second Trump administration is essentially trying to eliminate them entirely. So far, this has been the most radically anti-environmental presidency in American history,” Heinz said.

How have previous US presidents endangered the environment?

Trump is by no means the first US president to enact policy which is damaging to the environment, however.

Under Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, Congress passed the Reclamation (Newlands) Act of 1902, which treated land and rivers primarily as raw material for large infrastructure projects rather than as ecosystems in need of protection.

This was furthered by Democrat Harry Truman, who was president from 1945 to 1953 and pushed for rapid post‑war industrial and suburban expansion by commissioning the construction of interstate highways and promoting car‑centric development.

Under Republican Dwight Eisenhower, who was president from 1953 to 1961, the interstate highway system burgeoned, and the private car became a developmental priority in the US.

While Republican Richard Nixon, who was president from 1969 to 1974, signed key environmental laws, he also backed massive fossil‑fuel expansion. Under Nixon, the highly toxic herbicide, known as Agent Orange, was used by the US military during the Vietnam War.

Republican Ronald Reagan, who was president from 1981 to 1989, appointed people to the EPA and the Department of Interior who pushed for expanded oil, gas, coal and timber extraction on public lands.

To facilitate this, they favoured deregulation and industry interests, and rolled back existing environmental policy, slashing budgets for EPA enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, easing rules on toxic emissions and pesticides, and opening up more federal land – including wilderness and wildlife habitat – to oil, gas, mining and logging activities.

Republican George W Bush, who was president from 2001 to 2009, refused to ratify the 1997 UN-backed emissions reductions Kyoto Protocol and actively undermined global climate negotiations by formally withdrawing US support for Kyoto in 2001, appointing senior officials who questioned climate science, and pushing voluntary, industry-friendly approaches instead of binding emissions cuts.

While Obama, who was president from 2009 to 2017, introduced several landmark climate regulations, he also oversaw the fracking boom, making the US the world’s largest oil and gas producer, and locking in long-term fossil infrastructure.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves blasting water, sand and chemicals into shale rock to release oil and gas, a process believed to cause methane leaks, groundwater contamination, heavy water use and increased local air pollution.

Democrat Joe Biden, who was president from 2021 to 2024, approved large fossil projects such as the Willow project in Alaska. This involved oil development on federal land in the National Petroleum Reserve, projected to pump hundreds of millions of barrels of crude over several decades.

Figures released by the the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) suggested that the project would release 239 million to 280 million tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime. The project, approved in 2023 and ongoing, was projected to continue for 30 years.

Biden also backed LNG export growth by approving new and expanded export terminals and long‑term export licences, allowing companies to lock into multidecade contracts to ship US gas to Europe and Asia.

Is this a partisan issue?

No.

“The failure of US policymakers to aggressively tackle global warming is not so much a Democrat versus Republican matter,” Steinberg said.

“It’s neoliberalism, a form of corporate freedom, that is the heart of the problem. A bipartisan consensus on the need for economic growth has led to a general trend toward weakening environmental regulations,” he added.

The US once led the world in conservation by creating an extensive national park system in the 19th century, Ted Steinberg, a history professor at the US-based Case Western Reserve University, told Al Jazeera.

“That was then. US corporate interests, especially the fossil fuel industry, combined with the one-party political system, in which both Republicans and Democrats indenture themselves to the business class, have caused the United States to drag its feet on global warming,” Steinberg said.

What is the history of Washington’s impact on the environment?

The US has historically been the largest contributor to global warming, experts say.

“As in most countries, US environmental policy has been a response to the problems caused by industrialisation and urbanisation, starting in the mid-19th century and proceeding from there, happening at the local, state and national levels,” Chad Montrie, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, told Al Jazeera.

“Much of that policy has been limited and inadequate, especially when corporations were able to exert their influence, but in some cases, it has been ahead of what other nations were doing,” Montrie, who specialises in environmental history, added.

There was a time when environmental policy was bipartisan. The EPA was, in fact, created by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970.

“It wasn’t until the rise of pro-business politics in the 1980s that Republicans like President Reagan took a hard turn against environmental protections,” Heinz said.

“The Democratic Party continues to believe in environmental protection and climate-friendly policies to some degree, while the Republican Party has become one of the few political parties worldwide that completely denies the scientific facts around climate change.”

How does this affect the rest of the world?

“US policy often sets the standards for policy in other parts of the world, both because of its cultural influence and because of the control that the US has over global bodies like the International Monetary Fund,” Heinz said.

“Right now, the US is actively pushing dirty fossil fuels on the rest of the world and even threatening some of its allies for trying to negotiate new environmental agreements.”

Heinz explained that this pressure, coupled with soaring energy prices, seems to have convinced Europe to retreat from some of their climate goals. Household electricity prices jumped by about 20 percent across the European Union between 2021 and 2022, according to Eurostat data.

Heinz said that if the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP negotiations are any indication, global climate ambition appears to be on the decline right now.

The latest conference concluded in November 2025 in Brazil with a draft proposal which did not include a roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels, nor did it mention the term “fossil fuels” at all. This drew rebuke from several countries attending the conference.