“This man absolutely ought not to be around forever.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, was threatened by Israel’s defense minister after Iranian missiles struck Israel. Numerous injuries were caused by the missiles, which also damaged a hospital, a high-rise, and several residential structures.
Iranian TV host’s live broadcast was interrupted by an Israeli bombing, and Israeli social media users made up videos that imitated her clothes and reaction to the attack that went viral. Some people criticized the videos as “despicable” displays of war crimes.
According to a joint statement from the two nations and the US Department of State, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have signed a provisional agreement aimed at bringing an end to the conflict in eastern DRC.
Following “three days of constructive dialogue regarding political, security, and economic interests,” the statement said, the development occurred late on Wednesday in Washington, DC.
Disarmament, non-state armed group integration, and the return of refugees and internally displaced people are among the issues that the draft agreement addresses.
Armed groups fighting for access to natural resources have been rife in Eastern DRC for decades. The largest city of Goma, the mineral-rich area’s largest city, was taken over by the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group in January. The group seized Bukavu, a strategic town, a few weeks later. Rwanda denies supporting the rebels.
Since the conflict started to escalate earlier this year, thousands of people have been killed in the area and hundreds of thousands have fled.
A number of conflict-related parties have been accused of violating human rights.
Amnesty International accused M23 of torturing and killing civilians in a report that was released in May.
According to Amnesty, “These acts may amount to war crimes because they violate international humanitarian law.”
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk claimed on Monday that rebels, DRC troops, and allies have all committed human rights violations.
Turk urged all parties to “commit to a ceasefire, resume negotiations, and respect international humanitarian and human rights law.”
The US hopes to put an end to the conflict and allow Western investors to invest billions of dollars in eastern DRC, which has large cobalt, copper, gold, and lithium reserves.
The “win-win” scenario, according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, includes the two objectives of peace and investment.
US envoy to Africa, Massad Boulos, traveled to Rwanda and the DRC in April as part of the diplomatic mission. He urged Kigali to stop supporting the M23 rebels during his visit.
Since 2021, the African nations have reached at least six truces, but none have been lasting.
In March, Angola resigned from its mediatorship, and the US and Qatar are currently leading efforts to bring about peace in the eastern DRC.
As Israel and Iran carry out strikes against each other for a seventh straight day, the region is anxiously bracing for a potentially wider conflict. But question marks remain over the two sides’ ability to finance a sustained war effort.
On Friday, Israel killed several of Iran’s top military commanders and nuclear scientists and damaged some of its nuclear sites. It has since damaged parts of Iran’s fossil fuel sector. In response, Iran has launched missile attacks at government buildings and metropolitan areas in Israel.
As of Thursday, the Israeli attacks have killed 240 people while Iranian strikes have killed at least 24 people.
But the conflict is also costing both nations billions of dollars and could choke their economic growth and trigger concerns over long-term fiscal planning.
Israel’s prolonged military operations in Gaza since October 2023 and the recent escalation with Iran have plunged the country into the most expensive period of conflict in its history.
According to a January report by the Israeli business newspaper Calcalist, the cumulative cost of the Gaza war alone had reached 250 billion shekels ($67.5bn) by the end of 2024.
A June 15 report by the Israeli news outlet Ynet News, quoting a former financial adviser to the Israeli military’s chief of staff, estimated that the first two days of fighting with Iran alone cost Israel 5.5 billion shekels (roughly $1.45bn). At that rate, a prolonged conflict with Iran could see Israel surpass the end-2024 Gaza war expenses within seven weeks.
Even before the current escalation with Iran, Israel had dramatically increased its defence budget amid its multiple regional conflicts and the war on Gaza. From 60 billion shekels ($17bn) in 2023, it grew to 99 billion ($28bn) in 2024. Projections for 2025 suggest it could reach 118 billion shekels ($34bn).
The Ministry of Finance set a deficit ceiling of 4.9 percent of Israel’s gross domestic product (GDP) for this fiscal year, equating to 105 billion shekels ($27.6bn). Higher military spending would put that to the test.
Despite a recent increase in projected tax revenues – from 517 billion to 539 billion shekels ($148bn to $154bn) – Israel’s 2025 growth forecast has been revised down from 4.3 to 3.6 percent.
According to the business survey company CofaceBDI, roughly 60,000 Israeli companies closed in 2024 due to manpower shortages, logistics disruptions and subdued business sentiment. In addition, tourist arrivals continue to fall short of pre-October 2023 levels.
Those trends could be aggravated in the event of a full-fledged war with Iran.
S&P Global Ratings issued a stark warning about the vulnerability of the Israeli economy on Tuesday.
The agency stated that a continued Israeli war campaign, particularly if met with a sustained and strategic Iranian response, could lead to a downgrade of Israel’s credit rating from A to A-. Were that to happen, it would likely raise borrowing costs and soften investor confidence in the Israeli economy.
In recent days, Iran’s oil exports appear to have fallen dramatically. Total Iranian crude and condensate oil exports are forecast to reach 102,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the week ending on Sunday. That’s less than half the 242,000 bpd it was averaging in exports this year, according to data from the analytics firm Kpler.
Critically, exports from Kharg Island, from which Iran exports more than 90 percent of its oil, appear to have completely halted since Friday. No tankers were anchored at Kharg Island on Monday, according to LSEG satellite ship tracking data.
In 2025, Iran has produced an average of 3.4 million bpd of crude, according to the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), with China appearing to be the main foreign buyer. Most of the oil Iran produces is for domestic consumption.
On Saturday, Iran partially suspended gas production at the South Pars gasfield in the Gulf after it was hit by Israeli missiles. South Pars, which Iran shares with Qatar, is the world’s biggest gasfield. It produces about 80 percent of Iran’s total gas output.
For now, the extent of the damage to the South Pars field is unknown. In addition, Israel has targeted the Shahr Rey refinery outside Tehran as well as fuel depots around the capital. The full impact of these strikes on production is unknown.
Iran has faced economic sanctions from the US after the Islamic Revolution and the US embassy hostage crisis in 1979 and then over its nuclear programme.
In a bid to pressure Tehran to agree to a deal on its nuclear programme, the administration of then-US President Barack Obama coaxed multiple major economies around the world to cut down or stop their oil purchases from Iran, using a wave of additional sanctions.
Those sanctions were relaxed after Iran struck the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal in 2015 with the US, Russia, China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
The following year, Iran exported 2.8 million bpd of petroleum products.
But US President Donald Trump reimposed the sanctions in 2018 during his first term as president and added more, again pressuring most other nations to stop buying Iranian crude. The result, according to the EIA, was that Tehran generated only $50bn in oil export revenue in 2022 and 2023, which amounts to roughly 200,000 bpd of crude exports, less than 10 percent of 2016 levels.
The upshot is that sanctions have gutted Iran’s foreign exchange earnings.
Iran has staved off economic collapse in part thanks to China, the main buyer of its oil and one of the few nations still trading with Tehran.
Still, the loss of revenue because of the sanctions has deprived the country of long-term economic development and has hit Tehran’s ability to fix dilapidated infrastructure.
President Masoud Pezeshkian has repeatedly highlighted the severity of the economic situation facing the country, stating that Tehran’s situation is more challenging than during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
In March, he openly criticised the latest round of US sanctions targeting tankers carrying Iranian oil.
Iran also faces a string of other constraints – energy and water shortages, a collapsing currency and military setbacks among its regional allies – all amplified by the sanctions.
A lack of investment, declining natural gas production and inefficient irrigation are all leading to power blackouts and water shortages.
Meanwhile, the rial, Iran’s currency, has shed more than 90 percent of its value against the dollar since the sanctions were reimposed in 2018, according to foreign exchange websites.
And while the official inflation rate hovers around 40 percent, some Iranian experts said it is actually running at more than 50 percent. “Precise numbers are hard to come by,” said Hamzeh Al Gaaod, an economic analyst at TS Lombard, a political research firm.
“But what we can say is that years of sanctions have triggered inflationary pressure, including through devaluations of the rial. In turn, that makes goods imports from abroad more expensive,” Al Gaaod told Al Jazeera.
In January, the Tasnim news agency quoted the head of Iran’s Institute of Labor and Social Welfare, Ebrahim Sadeghifar, as saying 22 to 27 percent of Iranians were now below the poverty line.
Unemployment is running at 9.2 percent. However, Iran’s Supreme Assembly of Workers’ Representatives, which represents labour interests, estimated the true figure of people without access to subsistence-level work is far higher.
According to Al Gaaod, Tehran has a “relatively small budget for military purposes”. He estimated that anywhere from 3 to 5 percent of Iran’s GDP is spent on defence, which amounts to roughly $12bn.
Tehran does have $33bn in foreign exchange reserves it could theoretically draw on. But Al Gaaod said: “This is where Iran is on the backfoot. To use reserves for short-term military conflict would cripple them over the longer term.”
According to the medical facility, an Iranian missile struck the main hospital in southern Israel, injuring people and causing “extensive damage.”
The large headquarters of the Israeli army’s Command and Intelligence (IDF C4I) and the military intelligence camp in the Gav-Yam Technology Park were the “main target” of the missile attack early on Thursday, according to IRNA, the Islamic Republic News Agency.
In Be’er Sheva, it was claimed that this facility is near Soroka Hospital.
IRNA claimed that the hospital’s shockwave from the missile attack only caused minor damage.
It stated that “the military infrastructure was a precise and direct target.”
Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, blasted the attack and promised a response, saying: “We will demand from Tehran the full price.
In at least two locations close to Tel Aviv, another missile struck a high-rise building and several other residential structures. According to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service, at least 47 people were hurt in the attacks.
In its most recent attack on Iran’s sprawling nuclear program, Israel carried out strikes on the country’s Arak heavy water reactor on the seventh day of a conflict that started with surprise airstrikes against military installations, senior officers, and nuclear scientists.
Israel’s military claimed that to prevent the Arak factory from producing plutonium, its fighter jets targeted the reactor core seal.
Israel also asserted that it struck a second site in Natanz that it said was connected to Iran’s nuclear program.
The attack on the Arak site posed “no radiation danger whatsoever,” according to Iranian state TV.
The United States National Hurricane Center (NHC) has announced that Hurricane Erick has advanced to an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm just before it is expected to scuttle Mexico’s Pacific coastline.
The meteorological center’s most recent bulletin indicated that Erick might gain even more strength before making landfall on Thursday morning in Guerrero and Oaxaca, both in the eastern region of the state.
Forecasters have predicted that the major storm will cause destructive winds, flash floods, and a risky storm surge as it moves northwest at a rate of 15 kilometers per hour (nine mph).
The hurricane’s maximum sustained winds increased to 230 km/h (145 mph), according to the NHC, putting it within the Category 4 wind speed range of 208 to 251 km/h (130 to 156 mph).
The NHC warned that Erick could cause “life-threatening flooding and mudslides, especially in areas of steep terrain,” bringing up to 16 inches (40 cm) of rain in Oaxaca and Guerrero.
Up to 6 inches of rain could fall on the Mexican states of Chiapas, Michoacan, Colima, and Jalisco, according to the Miami-based center.
As it moves closer to the Oaxacan resort city of Puerto Escondido, Erick’s projected path was changed late on Wednesday. The entire coastal region between Acapulco and Puerto Angel is under a hurricane warning.
Before Erick’s arrival, Mexican authorities have scrambled to get the population and tourists ready. President Claudia Sheinbaum urged people to stay at home or relocate to shelters if they were in low-lying areas in a video message on Wednesday night.
In Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca, there are about 2, 000 temporary housing units that can accommodate those who have to leave their homes.
Meanwhile, Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado announced that fishing and tourism companies had been instructed to prepare their boats for storms and that all of her state’s schools would remain closed.
Acapulco, a resort resort in Guerrero, was one of the places where people prepared for Erick’s landing.
Hurricane Otis, which killed at least 52 people and destroyed many homes and businesses in the city of almost one million people, devastated the city in October 2023.
In the 2023 hurricane, Carlos Ozuna Romero, 51, lost his restaurant on the sand dunes of Acapulco. He watched workers prepare for the new storm on Wednesday by preparing tables and chairs.
He said, “Authorities’ warnings fill us with fear and obviously make us remember everything we’ve already been through.”
Another 40-year-old employee at the city, Veronica Gomez, suggested the city was much better prepared this time around. She said, “Now it won’t catch us by surprise.”
According to the NHC, Erick is likely to gradually deteriorate as it travels to the mountains, and it will likely vanish.
