Hit from the Sky, Iran Escalates War on the Ground Against Civilians
NEED TO KNOW
Hit from the Sky, Iran Escalates War on the Ground Against Civilians
IRAN
After Israel and Iran engaged in a 12-day war in June, some analysts and even members of the Iranian public wondered if the regime was on its way out. After all, with its proxies abroad and its stores of conventional weapons decimated, and its security apparatus and nuclear program severely weakened by Israeli and US airstrikes, the Iranian regime looked “more enfeebled” and “imperiled,” than it had at any time since the 1979 revolution that brought it to power, the Atlantic wrote.
But as it hit back at Israel and the US, Iran’s mullahs-in-chief responded by intensifying another war – the one on its people.
In less than two weeks in June, for example, Iranian police arrested 21,000 people, including nearly 2,800 foreigners in the country, for espionage or other perceived crimes, as an atmosphere of fear seeped into homes, neighborhoods, workplaces, and even prisons.
That’s because, as Amnesty International warned in a report this month, the regime’s “calls for expedited trials and executions” have underscored how the government was increasingly using the death penalty to crack down in the wake of the war.
Long-time observers of Iran know that crackdowns by the country’s repressive leaders on its perceived domestic enemies are nothing new. In 2019, hundreds of Iranians were gunned down for protesting fuel price hikes. Three years later, the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the “morality police” for improper dress sparked a national uprising: The regime responded by killing more than 750 protesters and arresting about 30,000, with many accused of vague crimes such as “waging war against God” or “corruption on Earth.”
In 2023, more than 850 people were put to death, many of them participants in the 2022 uprising and some of them children. In 2024, the number approached 1,000. This year, a United Nations official warned that Iran is set to surpass that number.
“The regime’s response to its perceived vulnerability in the wake of that conflict has become increasingly aggressive,” wrote Stephen J. Rapp, a former war crimes prosecutor at special tribunals for Rwanda and Sierra Leone, who also served as US ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues from 2009 to 2015, in an opinion piece in the Washington Post.
“Though its failures might be attributed to incompetence and the foreign penetration of its security services, its fury is being directed at domestic political opponents,” he added. “Thousands of Iranians are in danger as parliament now seeks to expedite death sentences in cases involving imagined collaboration with foreign entities. These judicial killings…are calculated measures to suppress dissent and reassert control in the aftermath of two nationwide uprisings, as well as the most recent war with Israel.”
In addition to targeting Iranians, the government has also focused on Afghan refugees in Iran, officially around 6 million, accelerating arrests and deportations in the aftermath of the war. The Iranian government accused some refugees of being spies for Israel, fueling a wave of xenophobia and suspicion that resulted in the loss of employment, housing, residency permits, and incarceration.
As a result, almost 700,000 Afghans have been deported or fled Iran since the war, the United Nations said, noting that the daily returns increased 15-fold in June. “The pace and volume of returns (to Afghanistan) is shocking,” said UN refugee official Arafat Jamal.
Iranian officials, meanwhile, cast the deportations, arrests, and executions as necessary to shore up state security. Press TV – the government’s global mouthpiece – said the government has struck a “heavy blow” to Mossad’s networks and “restored public order by punishing traitors.”
Meanwhile, in late June, Iranian lawmakers moved to pass an espionage bill that makes “collaboration with hostile states or their media” and other acts such as “propaganda against the establishment” a capital crime and also makes it applicable to past acts.
Some Iranian lawyers said that the law violates Islamic legal and religious principles, especially the provision making it retroactive.
Political analyst Babak Dorbeiki told Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty that the passage of the bill was so “shocking,” he initially thought it was a knee-jerk reaction to the war with Israel. “But when you read the bill, you realize it is just a strange way of seeking vengeance,” he said. “This will be dangerous to not only critics of the Islamic Republic, but also supporters who want to reform it.”
But Iranians now say the war and the domestic fury it unleashed have hurt their chances of any change coming to the country.
Mehraveh Khandan grew up visiting her mother, civil rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, in Tehran’s Evin prison, where thousands of so-called enemies of the state are housed. Her father, Reza Khandan, was thrown into Evin in December for distributing buttons opposing the mandatory headscarf for women.
After Israel struck the prison in June, she had hoped it would prompt the government to relent and release the prisoners. But after seeing reports of mass detentions and executions, she said she despaired that anything would ever change.
“All this hope is gone,” she told the Associated Press. “(The war) just destroyed all the things the activists had started to build.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Israel Launches Assault to Seize Gaza City As UN Calls Actions in Gaza Genocide
ISRAEL / GAZA / WEST BANK
Israel launched the early stages of its long-threatened ground assault to seize Gaza City on Tuesday, as Palestinians in the enclave described the bombardment as the most intense they have faced in two years, Reuters reported.
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) official said ground troops were moving toward the center of the city, with the number of soldiers to rise in the coming days to confront up to 3,000 Hamas fighters that the IDF believes are still there. The official emphasized that the process will be gradual, the Washington Post added.
“Gaza is burning,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz wrote early on Tuesday on X. Gaza officials reported at least 40 deaths during the assault in the early hours of Tuesday, mostly in Gaza City.
Residents in Gaza City have been recently reporting increasingly heavy bombardments, including a campaign to tear down several high-rise residential buildings.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli military said that Hamas uses high-rise buildings for their operations, although they did not provide evidence for this claim.
The plan to occupy Gaza City, approved by the Israeli cabinet in early August, pushed civilians to flee the area and triggered mass protests in Israel and around the world.
With the attack, Israel challenged the European leaders’ threat of sanctions and the warnings from some within the Israeli military that tank incursions and aerial bombardments could compromise the lives of hostages held in Gaza City. The US, however, has given its tacit approval, said analysts, noting that the offensive was announced just hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio left Israel.
For the past month, Israel has been calling on the one million residents of Gaza City to leave and head south toward the coastal plain of Mawasi, considered a humanitarian zone by Israel. However, aid agencies say that living conditions in Masawi are dire, with poor sanitation, overcrowding, and famine, even as the IDF continues to attack the area.
Meanwhile, a United Nations independent commission said in a report published Tuesday that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, concluding that Israeli authorities and security forces committed four of the five genocidal acts described in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Politico noted.
The commission based the report on previous investigations, statements of Israeli authorities, and the conduct of forces on the ground, which, according to the findings, indicated an intention to destroy the Palestinian enclave in whole or in part.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected the report as “fake and distorted,” writing on X that it “relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods…”
US Decertifies Colombia in Drug War for the First Time in Decades
COLOMBIA
The United States this week placed Colombia on its list of countries failing to cooperate in the drug war for the first time since 1997, underscoring tensions between the longtime allies amid a surge in cocaine production, NPR reported.
On Monday, the Trump administration decertified Colombia as a drug control partner, accusing Bogota of “failing demonstrably to meet its drug control obligations.”
However, it did not impose sanctions on the country, instead granting Colombia a “national interest waiver” that preserves US aid and security cooperation.
US President Donald Trump blamed Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “erratic and ineffectual leadership” for the surge in cocaine output and trafficking.
Petro expressed regret over the decision but accused Washington of lying, pointing to US and European demand for drugs as the real driver of the crisis, the Associated Press added.
For decades, the US and Colombia have partnered on counternarcotics efforts, with billions in US aid funding to eradicate coca production, strengthening Colombia’s security forces, and supporting alternative crop programs.
That cooperation began to weaken after Colombia’s high court banned aerial eradication efforts deploying glyphosate over health and environmental concerns.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Colombia is the world’s largest cocaine producer, and its estimated cocaine yield increased by 50 percent between 2022 and 2023.
Petro’s administration has attempted to curb drug trafficking through crop substitution programs and negotiations with criminal organizations. But his efforts have had little success, and the manual eradication of coca crops has slowed to a little more than 5,000 hectares in 2025 – far below the government’s own goal of 30,000 hectares.
Ahead of the designation, Colombian politicians and officials had been lobbying in the US not to cut military aid over concerns that it would severely impact its ongoing operations against armed groups, a fight that has escalated and turned increasingly violent this year.
Analysts said the designation, even without sanctions, is a symbolic blow to one of Washington’s closest regional partners and raises doubts about the reliability of US commitments in South America.
In addition to Colombia, Monday’s decertification included Afghanistan, Burma, Bolivia, and Venezuela.
Venezuela’s designation comes as the US has launched warships in the Caribbean in recent weeks, targeting alleged drug vessels outside Venezuelan waters.
On Monday, the US military carried out a strike on suspected Venezuelan drug smugglers, killing three people, the Washington Post wrote. That operation follows an attack earlier this month on a Venezuelan boat that saw 11 people killed.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has not commented on the second strike, but has labeled the first attack “a diplomatic aggression … on its way to becoming a military aggression.”
Observers and officials noted that the recent attacks underscore a sharp escalation in US counternarcotics operations, prompting questions about their legality.
Prosecution Says Soldiers ‘Disgraced’ British Army During Bloody Sunday Murder Trial
NORTHERN IRELAND
Prosecutors told the court during the opening of a long-awaited murder trial of a British army veteran Monday that soldiers disgraced the British Army by targeting unarmed civilians in an “unjustified” and “gratuitous” use of force during the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland, the Guardian reported.
The former paratrooper, a lance corporal designated as “Soldier F” by the court, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and five attempted murders over the Parachute Regiment’s fatal shooting of 13 civil rights protesters in the Northern Irish city of Derry on Jan. 30, 1972.
The trial focuses on shootings in a courtyard in Glenfada Park, where soldiers are accused of firing on unarmed civilians who were trying to escape once they noticed soldiers approaching, the prosecution said. Soldiers shot 31 civilians on the day of the protest, killing 13. Another casualty who died four months later is widely considered the 14th victim.
In 1972, a tribunal originally cleared the soldiers of wrongdoing after they claimed they fired in self-defense. However, a later inquiry in 2010 found that the killings were “unjustified and unjustifiable.”
The massacre became a defining moment for the Troubles and was the deadliest shooting of the conflict between mostly Catholic supporters of a united Ireland and mainly Protestant forces that advocated remaining part of the United Kingdom, the Associated Press explained.
While the conflict largely halted with the 1998 Good Friday peace accord, the situation has remained tense, with families of the victims continuing to call for justice.
Families of the victims who have been campaigning for accountability for over 50 years marched to the courthouse carrying photos of the dead and a banner reading “Towards Justice.” One of them called it a momentous day.
Meanwhile, supporters of army veterans argue that their losses have been downplayed and that they have unfairly been targeted in the investigations. During the trial, veterans gathered outside the courthouse in support of Soldier F and other soldiers.
The Irish and British governments are both paying close attention to the case because both want to repeal the Legacy Act, an effort by the United Kingdom’s previous Conservative government to end prosecutions for Troubles-era alleged crimes.
DISCOVERIES
Singing Overtime
Artificial light from homes and streetlights helps people prolong their days.
For birds, however, it means working overtime.
That’s the conclusion of a new study that found that city birds are singing earlier in the morning and finishing up later in the evenings in areas with more artificial light.
“We were shocked by our findings,” study author Brent Pease told the Guardian. “Under the brightest night skies, a bird’s day is extended by nearly an hour.”
Researchers used recordings submitted by bird enthusiasts to a popular species identification and mapping website called BirdWeather, wrote Smithsonian Magazine.
They analyzed 2.6 million morning calls and 1.8 million evening calls from more than 500 bird species and compared the findings with the light pollution levels measured by satellites. They found that birds in places with higher light pollution started their days about 18 minutes earlier in the morning and stopped singing about 32 minutes later at night.
“For these birds, effectively their day is almost an hour longer,” study author Neil Gilbert told NPR. “They start vocalizing about 20 minutes earlier in the morning, and they stop vocalizing about 30 minutes later in the evening.”
The study also found that some species, especially those with larger eyes compared with their body size, are more impacted by light pollution than others.
“The American robin, Northern mockingbird, and European goldfinch all extended their day by more than average,” Pease told the Guardian. “Small-eyed species such as sparrows didn’t have as much of a response.”
So far, it is not clear how longer days impact birds.
“We know that sleep loss is not great for humans, but birds are different,” said Pease. “They have developed interesting strategies to cope with loss of sleep during migratory periods.”
While researchers were concerned about disruptions of natural behaviors, Pease noted that, in some species, artificial lighting can extend foraging and mating time and boost the survival rate of fledglings.
Scientists already knew that light pollution affects birds and other animals. For example, it can confuse sea turtle hatchlings trying to reach the ocean.
This study, however, is the first to analyze this phenomenon across hundreds of bird species on multiple continents and during different seasons, providing researchers with unprecedented insight into how artificial light affects the lives of birds worldwide.