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The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters declares the strait a ‘red line.’ On Thursday, Iran’s main military command, the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters (KCHQ), warned that any U.S. interference in the Strait of Hormuz will be met with the Iranian armed forces’ “decisive and swift” response.

The KCHQ stressed that the strait is not the “aggressive U.S. playground,” but the territory of Iran’s “undisputed sovereignty,” with its security and stability considered a red line for the Iranian military.

It confirmed that all oil tankers and commercial vessels seeking to pass through the strait must use routes designated by Iran, warning that any non-compliance and use of other routes, or disregard for Iran’s navigation protocols, will be met with the Iranian armed forces’ “immediate and decisive” response, and endanger the violating vessels’ safety.

The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said that Iran considers any U.S. attempt to interfere in security affairs or cause disruption in the Strait of Hormuz as a threat against its national security, and will respond to it “swiftly and decisively.”

It emphasized that the continued presence of U.S. manned and unmanned fighter aircraft over the waterway will cause insecurity, adding that Iran will not hesitate to take the necessary actions to “crush any aggression” by the U.S. forces and their supporters to protect its sovereignty over the strait.

Iran has tightened its grip on the strait since Feb. 28, when it barred safe passage of vessels belonging to or affiliated with Israel and the United States following their joint strikes on Iranian territory.

On Thursday, Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for Legal and International Affairs, underlined in a post on social media platform X that the Strait of Hormuz “is defined under Iran’s command, not the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).”

His remarks came a day after CENTCOM led a “security dialogue” in Bahrain with military officials from 12 countries. The meeting discussed regional security, expanding defense collaboration across the region, and underscored their commitment to the free flow of commerce through the Strait of Hormuz.

Gharibabadi said the Bahrain meeting cannot “create legal order and security” for the Gulf, noting that security in West Asia will be ensured “not under the U.S. military umbrella,” but after the U.S. stops its interventions, withdraws from the region, respects countries’ national sovereignty, and accepts new geopolitical realities.

Najah Wakim accuses Lebanese government of complicity in ceding territory to Israel. On Wednesday, the head of Lebanon’s Popular Movement, Najah Wakim, categorically rejected the framework agreement signed by the Lebanese and Israeli governments.

“The Lebanon-Israeli agreement will fall, and with it, the authority that signed it,” he said, accusing the Lebanese administration of acting as an accomplice in the annexation of parts of national territory for the benefit of Israeli occupation.

Wakim emphasized that the true purpose of the framework agreement is to “fragment Lebanon according to the U.S.-Israeli plan,” which seeks the disintegration of state institutions and the Lebanese army.

He recalled that the framework agreement is worse than the accord signed in 1983, which provoked a serious division within the Lebanese armed forces.

Seeking to fracture this military institution, the U.S.-Israeli strategy overburdens the Lebanese armed forces with the implementation of the 2026 deal.

“If that happens, neither our state nor our nation would remain,” Wakim warned, asserting that the army commander remains firmly in his post and that no one can dismiss him.

The Lebanese movement leader called “outrageous” the acceptance of “Israel” overseeing the performance of the Lebanese army under Washington’s tutelage. However, he considered positive the withdrawal of the Lebanese military delegation that was in the U.S. capital during the negotiations.

In the interview published by Al Mayadeen, Wakim defended the legitimacy of resistance in Lebanon, asserting it will remain steadfast to prevent enemy aggression against the nation.

“Public awareness is an essential condition for preventing discord among the Lebanese. Relying on the strength of the resistance and the awareness of our people, and regardless of the government’s position, Israel will withdraw from all of southern Lebanon,” he stressed.

Assessing the current conflict situation in his country, Wakim clarified that “the real conflict today is between patriots and non-patriots. It has nothing to do with sects.”

He explained that numerous political parties firmly oppose the framework agreement because it represents a project of discord. Therefore, he does not foresee it becoming operative.

“The majority of the people, regardless of their region or political and confessional background, consider the framework agreement a danger to Lebanon,” he emphasized.

Previously in a ceremony held in Washington on June 26, representatives of the administrations led by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed a 14-point framework. This U.S.-brokered document is supposed to seek binding commitments following the rupture of the 1983 agreement caused by repeated attacks by Israeli occupation forces.

Justified as a proposal for “restoring Lebanese state sovereignty and removing non-state armed threats,” the framework agreement addresses matters including:

• Disarmament: The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) will assume full security responsibility and dismantle all non-state armed groups, specifically targeting Hezbollah’s infrastructure.

• Israeli Withdrawal: The Israeli occupation forces will gradually withdraw from southern Lebanon into verified “pilot zones” only after the LAF confirms the disarmament of militant groups.

• Normalization: Lebanon and Israel affirm the right to exist in peace, committing to end the formal state of war and cease hostile actions in international forums.

• Oversight: A U.S.-facilitated Military Coordination Group will monitor implementation, with U.S. aid conditioned on verifiable benchmarks.

On June 26th, Burkina Faso’s Minister of Communications Pingdwendé Gilbert Ouédraogo appeared on state television to announce the end of diplomatic relations with France, effective immediately. According to Ouédraogo, Paris maintained “neo-colonial ambitions” and were known to support the “subversive networks and the terrorists” bleeding the Sahel through endless waves of attacks on both military and civilian targets.

The buildup to this diplomatic severance was three years in the making. Only months after the military coup that put Burkinabé president Ibrahim Traoré in power, French troops were ordered out in early 2023, and the French ambassador recalled soon after. Then, in 2024, Burkina Faso expelled French diplomats. When Burkina Faso ended the Burkinabé-French military accord in 2023, the government insisted it was “not the end of diplomatic relations” between the two countries. But after two years of worsening relations and endless fighting against terror groups across the Sahel, Burkina Faso finally ended relations definitively in June 2026. For many who lionized Traoré, as well as the allied Sahel movement for self-determination, it came as a mortal blow against the former colonial master that had inflicted well over a century of bloodshed, suffering, and instability across the region.

And then, only days later, a photograph circulated across X (formerly Twitter) that nearly overshadowed this story. In the picture, Traoré could be seen shaking hands with Simon-Clément Seroussi, Israel’s ambassador to Côte d’Ivoire (and accredited ambassador to Benin, Togo, and Burkina Faso). The image in itself was proof of betrayal: the defiant country whose young leader had just faced down France, and become a folk hero to Africans dedicated to sovereign power over their own futures, had allegedly turned heel and embraced Israel. According to Seroussi’s own LinkedIn account, the handshake symbolized a continuance of the “longstanding ties” between Israel and Burkina Faso, and spoke of an “enduring friendship” between those countries.

What could possibly explain this?

Well, what happened in Koulouba was a credentials ceremony, the most routine event on the calendar of any newly-assigned ambassador. Burkina Faso did not sign any pacts with Israel, establish any new agreements, or commit to changing their consistent record of UN voting against Israel. It was a photographed handshake, much as another handshake was photographed with another Israeli ambassador in 2023. Unfortunately, for westerners who know next to nothing about the region or its history beyond Thomas Sankara’s martyrdom, developing countries who’ve committed to a revolutionary path exist as little more than action figurines who can be discarded the moment the sheen of novelty wears off, and once they begin doing the unpleasant things that states struggling for sovereignty must inevitably do.

Simon-Clément Seroussi is not posted to Ouagadougou. He resides in Abidjan, the commercial capital of Côte d’Ivoire, and, again, is accredited to four countries at once: Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso, according to Israel’s own foreign ministry. This is not a new relationship. Burkina Faso’s diplomatic history with Israel goes back to 1961, not long after Upper Volta (Burkina Faso’s predecessor state) became independent from France. Relations were severed in 1973 under Sangoulé Lamizana, after the October War destroyed relations between not only Israel and the Arab nations of the Middle East, but almost every African nation save for Mauritius, Swaziland (now Eswatini), Lesotho, and Malawi. But in 1993, relations between Burkina Faso and Israel were restored after the Oslo agreement. In fact, 2008-dated Wikileaks documents show that former president Blaise Compaoré attempted to win favour with the US, by courting a closer relationship with Israel during the Zionist entity’s 60th anniversary celebrations.

Burkina Faso’s relationship with Israel is, of course, much different from its partner states Mali and Niger. Mali followed suit with the vast majority of Africa in 1973, and broke diplomatic relations with Israel. It has never restored them, given Mali and the US have historically enjoyed a strong relationship, especially in the post-9/11 period where Mali became a US partner in counterterrorism, and subsequently received aid and military training. Former Malian president Boubacar Keïta did meet briefly with Benjamin Netanyahu in Liberia, during a 2017 regional summit (and Netanyahu spoke of “warming” the relationship between their respective countries), but nothing of substance materialized from there.

Niger’s history with Israel is somewhat uneven: it cut ties in 1973, restored them after the Oslo agreement, then severed them again in 2002 during the Second Intifada. So while the other AES bloc nations have mostly maintained their distance from Israel, Burkina Faso’s current government inherited a diplomatic relationship from previous leadership that, like all too many African nations at the time, had sold out their national interests to the west in exchange for maintaining their grasp on power.

As things stand today, all of Burkina Faso’s non-AES neighbours (and members of broader ECOWAS economic bloc) have diplomatic relations with Israel. Côte d’Ivoire hosts an Israeli embassy in Abidjan, Togo and Benin are covered by Seroussi’s diplomatic assignment and Ghana has its own Israeli embassy in Accra. Relations with Côte d’Ivoire were re-established in 1980 (not long after the Egypt-Israel treaty of 1979), Togo in 1987 (amidst then-president Gnassingbé Eyadéma’s domestic economic crisis), Benin in 1992 (after the collapse of Kérékou’s government, and the country’s decisive break from socialist policy), and Ghana in 1994, after the Oslo agreement. Israel’s embassy reopened in Accra, in 2011.

Seroussi was not dispatched to Ouagadougou for a trade or military agreement, or any realignment of Burkina Faso’s foreign policy at all. Seroussi was one of a batch of 8 new envoys received in the same accreditation round, much as his predecessor Rony Yedidia Clein presented hers in 2023 along with 12 other envoys.

Incidentally, Clein’s handshake with Traoré also set off speculation about Burkina Faso’s secret pact with Israel, much later in 2025.

Seroussi’s diplomatic cohort represented Saudi Arabia, Angola, Somalia, the Sovereign Order of Malta, Indonesia, Tanzania and Bangladesh. Before any of these ambassadors shook Traoré’s hand, they first handed working copies of their diplomatic letters to Burkina Faso’s foreign minister Karamoko Jean Marie Traoré on the 25th of June. The originals were then presented to the head of state, who posed for routine ceremonial photographs – one of which would later become raw material for outrage-farming online.

Missing in all of this, is the fact that working copies were delivered the day before Burkina Faso cut diplomatic relations with France. In other words, the accreditation of Israeli ambassador Seroussi was already moving through the ordinary diplomatic machinery before the France announcement was made. Based on the online narrative pushed by a small US-based account calling itself the “Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel,” many seemed to believe that Burkina Faso had kicked out Paris, only to welcome in Tel Aviv immediately afterwards.

Receiving an ambassador’s letters of credence simply means recognizing that person as another state’s official representative. It does not mean friendship, ideological alignment, economic cooperation, military procurement, or combat training. It does not mean support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. States routinely receive ambassadors from countries they sanction, condemn, vote against, negotiate with, spy on, and in some cases engage in mutual combat with. Traoré’s photo with Seroussi was not followed by any announcement of a public security pact, trade agreement, or even a shift in Burkina Faso’s United Nations voting record. The complete extent of the scandal was a non-resident Israeli envoy presenting his paperwork to the head of state, in the same week as seven other diplomats, followed by diplomatic boilerplate on LinkedIn about “longstanding ties” and “enduring friendship.”

Seroussi’s words, mind you, not a Burkinabé statement of policy.

None of this means that all of Burkina Faso’s policies are clean, consistent, or above criticism. Many commentators and publications have already drawn attention to its crackdowns on journalists, Traoré’s public skepticism towards liberal democracy (whether justified or not), and anti-LGBT policies encoded into criminal law. But to many foreigners commenting on these matters, the AES states are not so much “states” as they are symbolic representations of their own fantasies of a perfect revolution. They should be unblemished proof that Africa has finally cast off its fetters, and are ready to pull down the US, Europe, and Israel from their imperialist thrones.

The reality is, the AES bloc are landlocked, poor, heavily sanctioned, diplomatically isolated, and bogged down in fighting longtime insurgencies highly suspected of being backed by France. They need functioning infrastructure, economic redevelopment, and a broader range of trade partners, in addition to weapons, intelligence, and breathing room. They are bordered by militarized, pro-western countries which would gladly accept any pretext to intervene with western backing, and crush their sovereignist project. A diplomatic photo opportunity does not make Burkina Faso pro-Israel; it is an acknowledgment that Burkina Faso is a state: weak in some ways, defiant in others

In a letter published in early June, 36 academics and legal scholars had already warned that the triple nationality of the far-right politician, who is also a citizen of the United States and Italy, could create conflicts of interest if he becomes president of Colombia.

“We believe that his Italian citizenship does not raise any legal concerns… however, U.S. citizenship presents legal, ethical and political obstacles for anyone seeking to become president of Colombia because acquiring it requires taking an oath that entails legal commitments and obligations to that country, which are incompatible with the duties of the president of Colombia,” they said.

One week before De la Espriella is set to assume the presidency, Sen. Cepeda outlined fundamental requirements to guarantee the legality and legitimacy of the De la Espriella presidency.

In addition to demanding full respect for Colombia’s constitutional and legal order, the former presidential candidate requested the following:

1. De la Espriella must publicly renounce his U.S. citizenship and explicitly clarify whether he is or is not a collaborator with, or member of, U.S. security agencies.

2. De la Espriella must commit to fully respecting Colombia’s national security and judicial sovereignty, affirming that the integrity of Colombian institutions cannot be compromised by external loyalties.

3. De la Espriella must end all persecution of current President Gustavo Petro and abandon any possible attempt to extradite him.

4. De la Espriella must guarantee a democratic, pluralistic, and fair environment by ending the persecution of opponents and ceasing to encourage their prosecution through the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sen. Cepeda said that if those conditions are not met, he will embark on peaceful civil disobedience, which entails refusing to recognize the authority of someone who does not defend national sovereignty. The leftist leader called on more than 12 million citizens who voted for him to refuse to recognize any order, directive, or mandate issued by a president who does not protect the Colombian constitution.

In his speech, Lula spoke about threats from US President Donald Trump to invade Greenland and the Panama Canal, as well as the resumption of nuclear weapons production by countries around the world.

“For the first time, I will include the issue of national defense in the government program, so that we can make a public commitment to the type of defense we want in this country. Because the concrete fact is that I was a member of the Constituent Assembly and I was one of those who voted against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, because there was a commitment that whoever had nuclear weapons would deactivate them. Did anyone deactivate them? Since then, Pakistan has armed itself, North Korea has armed itself, India has armed itself, China has armed itself, Russia, the United States continue to manufacture more and more nuclear weapons. And we, until recently, our defense industry was practically bankrupt,” said the president.

“I don’t want war. But I also don’t want to be caught off guard. I don’t want to find out that I have nothing, you know? I have to take care of myself. You know, one fine day, when nobody expected it, Solano López, the president of Paraguay, just invaded Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. There are a lot of crazy people in the world.”

The president's statements were made during the launching and christening ceremony of the frigate "Cunha Moreira" in Itajaí (SC). It is the third of four vessels built under the Tamandaré Class Program, considered by the Navy to be the main project for the renewal of Surface Naval Power in recent decades.

The first, Tamandaré (F-200), has already been incorporated into the Fleet. The second, Jerônimo de Albuquerque (F-201), is undergoing sea trials. The fourth vessel, Mariz e Barros (F-203), is under construction.

Built at the TKMS Brasil Sul shipyard, the frigate is part of a program developed by the Navy in partnership with the Águas Azuis consortium, formed by the companies TKMS, Embraer, and Atech. The project foresees investments exceeding R$ 12 billion and encompasses shipbuilding, technology transfer, and strengthening Brazil's industrial capacity in the defense sector.

“Right now the American president wants to take Greenland, Canada is going to become his state, he wants to take the Panama Canal. Where are we? So I want you to know that this here, for me, is not a ship, this is not a pile of iron with cutting-edge technology. This is the beginning of a country that will truly and rightfully assume the right to be sovereign, to take charge of its own affairs and to be prepared. That is what we will have to do from now on.”

The statement comes at a time of escalating tensions with the United States over the classification of the criminal factions PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) and CV (Comando Vermelho) as terrorist groups.

Trump's decision was seen by government allies as a possible sign of foreign intervention in the country, as happened in Venezuela. (With information from Folha de S.Paulo)

London, July 2 (Prensa Latina) Analysts are currently viewing the conflict in the Middle East as the main economic impact on energy globally, an energy shock that is undermining the world's recovery.

This military problem triggered an energy crisis that is slowing global growth, according to the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with particularly severe effects on developing economies.

The global economy faces a bleak outlook. The World Bank drastically cut its growth forecast for 2026 to 2.5 percent, representing the weakest expansion outside of a recession in nearly two decades.

This downward adjustment, which affects about two-thirds of the world's economies, is a direct consequence of the war in the Middle East and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial bottleneck for the flow of oil globally.

Last year, the global economy grew by 2.9 percent. Now we expect 2.5 percent, said World Bank Deputy Director Ayhan Kose, presenting the report.

The IMF, which in April had outlined an adverse scenario with an oil price of $100 per barrel, is already observing a drop in energy and commodity prices following a ceasefire and the reopening of the strait.

However, full normalization will not be immediate, as supply chains and freight prices will take time to adjust, IMF spokeswoman Julie Kozack said.

Market volatility persists, and the agency warns that the economic impact of the conflict is still unfolding.

The true burden of the crisis falls on developing countries. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) identified 61 vulnerable economies that depend on both oil and grain imports, including 35 of the least developed countries.

For these nations, the increase in fuel and freight prices puts unbearable pressure on public finances and households.

The shock doesn't end with the reopening of Hormuz, regardless of what the head of state says, stressed UNCTAD spokesperson Marcelo Risi. It is estimated that the most vulnerable nations could face an increase of $20 billion annually in their import costs.

The increase in energy costs is directly passed on to food, worsening food insecurity.

UNCTAD warns that a five percent increase in real food prices raises the risk of acute malnutrition in poor children by 15 percent.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the situation is critical; although growth is projected at four percent, the World Bank points out that the increased costs of transport and fertilizers will severely impact inflation and food security in the region, which is mostly a net importer of energy.

The governments of these countries, with very limited fiscal space, are forced to design support measures that are timely, specific and temporary so as not to aggravate their already fragile finances.