Trump calls for Gaza hostages release ahead of Netanyahu meeting at the White House – Middle East crisis live
Date: 2025-07-07T06:45:58.000Z
Title:
Content: A Russian Foreign Ministry statement said its minister Sergei Lavrov had issued a new denunciation of Israeli and US strikes on Iran last month, 'including the bombing of nuclear energy infrastructure under safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.'
It came during Lavrov's talks in Rio de Janeiro with Abbas Araqchi, his Iranian counterpart, who he met at the BRICS summit. The Foreign Minister restated Moscow's offer to help resolve disputes around Tehran's nuclear programme, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Update:
Date: 2025-07-07T06:45:58.000Z
Title:
Content: In a joint statement from the opening of the BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, the leaders of the BRICS group of developing nations called attacks against Iran's 'civilian infrastructure and peaceful nuclear facilities' a 'violation of international law.'
The group expressed 'grave concern' for the Palestinian people over Israeli attacks on Gaza, and condemned what the joint statement called a 'terrorist attack' in India-administered Kashmir.
The group voiced its support for Ethiopia and Iran to join the World Trade Organization, while calling to urgently restore its ability to resolve trade disputes.
Update:
Date: 2025-07-07T06:45:58.000Z
Title: Read our full analysis here:
Content: Benjamin Netanyahu returns to the White House holding all the cards in the Gaza talks in Washington. Joint attack on Iran have put the Israeli PM in a powerful position as he dangles the prospect of a Trump-brokered ceasefire deal.
Netanyahu and Donald Trump have a complex personal relationship – and Trump openly vented frustration at him last month during efforts to negotiate a truce with Iran – but the two have appeared in lockstep since the US launched a bombing run against Iran's nuclear programme, fulfilling a key goal for Israeli war planners.
Netanyahu arrives in Washington in a strong political position, observers have said, potentially giving him the diplomatic cover he would need to end the war in Gaza without facing a revolt from his rightwing supporters that could lead to the collapse of his government.
Update:
Date: 2025-07-07T06:45:58.000Z
Title: Welcome and summary
Content: Hello and welcome to the Guardian's continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
Donald Trump has said there is a good chance a Gaza hostage release and ceasefire deal could be reached with the Hamas this week, as he prepares to meet with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday at the White House.
Trump told reporters before departing for Washington on Sunday that such a deal meant 'quite a few hostages' could be released.
Here is what has happened so far:
Donald Trump will host Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington DC on Monday as the US president seeks again to broker a peace deal in Gaza and the Israeli prime minister takes a victory lap through the Oval Office after a joint military campaign against Iran and a series of successful strikes against Tehran and its proxies in the Middle East.
The first session of indirect Hamas-Israel ceasefire talks in Qatar ended inconclusively, two Palestinian sources familiar with the matter said early on Monday, adding that the Israeli delegation didn't have a sufficient mandate to reach an agreement with Hamas. The talks resumed on Sunday, ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's third visit to the White House.
Israeli warplanes launched a wave of strikes in Gaza on Sunday, killing at least 38 Palestinians, according to hospital officials, as talks over a ceasefire in the devastated territory reached a critical point. Officials at Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis said 18 people were killed by strikes in al-Mawasi, a nearby coastal area that is crowded with tented encampments of those displaced by fighting elsewhere.
Israel has continued to launch waves of airstrikes in Gaza, hours after Hamas said it was ready to start talks 'immediately' on a US-sponsored proposal for a 60-day ceasefire. The announcement by the militant Islamist organisation increased hopes that a deal may be done within days to pause the killing in Gaza and possibly end the near 21-month conflict.
Israel has attacked Houthi targets in three Yemeni ports and a power plant, the Israeli military said early on Monday, marking the first Israeli attack on Yemen in almost a month. The strikes on Hodeidah, Ras Isa and Salif ports, and Ras Qantib power plant were due to repeated Houthi attacks on Israel, the military added.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Israel's ‘humanitarian city' would be concentration camp for Palestinians, says former PM
The 'humanitarian city' Israel's defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, Israel's former prime minister Ehud Olmert has told the Guardian. Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmert said, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation. 'It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,' he said, when asked about the plans laid out by Israel Katz last week. Once inside, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave, except to go to other countries, Katz said. Katz has ordered the military to start drawing up operational plans for construction of the 'humanitarian city' on the ruins of southern Gaza, initially to house 600,000 people and eventually the entire Palestinian population. 'If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new 'humanitarian city', then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing. It hasn't yet happened,' Olmert said. That would be 'the inevitable interpretation' of any attempt to create a camp for hundreds of thousands of people. Olmert does not consider Israel's current campaign is ethnic cleansing because, he said, evacuating civilians to protect them from fighting was legal under international law, and Palestinians had returned to areas where military operations had finished. The 'humanitarian city' project is backed by Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel's refusal to withdraw from the area Katz envisages for the camp is a sticking point in the faltering negotiations for a ceasefire deal, Israeli media have reported. Olmert said that after months of violent rhetoric, including calls from ministers to 'cleanse' Gaza and projects to build Israeli settlements there, government claims that the 'humanitarian city' aimed to protect Palestinians were not credible. 'When they build a camp where they [plan to] 'clean' more than half of Gaza, then the inevitable understanding of the strategy of this [is that] it is not to save [Palestinians]. It is to deport them, to push them and to throw them away. There is no other understanding that I have, at least.' Israeli human rights lawyers and scholars have described the plan as a blueprint for crimes against humanity and some have warned that if implemented, 'under certain conditions it could amount to the crime of genocide'. Other Israelis who have described the planned 'humanitarian city' as a concentration camp have been attacked for invoking comparisons to Nazi Germany, when the government says it is designed to protect Palestinians. Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial centre, accused one journalist of 'a serious and inappropriate distortion of the meaning of the Holocaust'. Olmert, who led Israel from 2006 to 2009, spoke to the Guardian on the day funerals were held in the occupied West Bank for two Palestinian men, one an American citizen, who had been killed by settlers. The latest deaths came after a campaign of violent intimidation that has forced the residents of several villages to flee their homes over the last two years. The attacks were war crimes, Olmert said. '[It is] unforgivable. Unacceptable. There are continuous operations organised, orchestrated in the most brutal, criminal manner by a large group.' The attackers are often called 'hilltop youth' in Israel and described as fringe extremists. Olmert said he preferred the term 'hilltop atrocities' to describe the young men whose campaign of spiralling violence was carried out with near-total impunity. 'There is no way that they can operate in such a consistent, massive and widespread manner without a framework of support and protection which is provided by the [Israeli] authorities in the [occupied Palestinian] territories,' he said. Olmert described extremist cabinet ministers who backed violence in Gaza and the West Bank, where they have authorised major settlement expansions and control law enforcement, with a view to expanding the borders of Israel, as a greater threat to the country's long-term security than any external foe. 'These guys are the enemy from within,' he said. Extreme suffering in Gaza and settler atrocities in the West Bank were fuelling growing anger against Israel that cannot all be written off as antisemitism, Olmert said. 'In the United States there is more and more and more expanding expressions of hatred to Israel,' he said. 'We make a discount to ourselves saying 'they are antisemites'. I don't think that they are only antisemites, I think many of them are anti-Israel because of what they watch on television, what they watch on social networks. 'This is a painful but normal reaction of people who say 'hey, you guys have crossed every possible line'.' Attitudes inside Israel might only start to shift when Israelis started to feel the burden of international pressure, he said, calling for stronger international intervention in the absence of serious political opposition at home. He also criticised the Israeli media for its failure to report on violence against Palestinians. Olmert backed the initial campaign against Hamas after the 7 October 2023 attacks. But by this spring, when the Israeli government 'publicly and in a brutal manner' abandoned negotiations for a permanent end to fighting, he had reached the conclusion his country was committing war crimes. 'Ashamed and heartbroken' that a war of self-defence had become something else, he decided to speak out. 'What can I do to change the attitude, except for number one, recognising these evils, and number two, to criticise them and to make sure the international public opinion knows there are [other] voices, many voices in Israel?' he asked. He attributed what he called war crimes to negligence and a willingness to tolerate unconscionable levels of death and devastation, rather than an organised campaign of brutality. '[Did commanders] give an order? Never,' Olmert said. Instead, he believes the military looked away when things were done that would inevitably 'cause the killing of a large number of non-involved people'. He said: 'That is why I cannot refrain from accusing this government of being responsible for war crimes committed.' Despite the devastation in Gaza, as the last Israeli premier to seriously attempt to reach a negotiated solution with Palestinians, Olmert still hopes that a two-state solution is possible. He is working with the former Palestinian foreign minister Nasser al-Kidwa to push for one internationally, and even believes that a historic settlement could be in reach – an end to the war in Gaza in exchange for normalisation of ties with Saudi Arabia – if only Netanyahu was able or willing to take it. Instead Olmert was stunned to see Netanyahu, a man who has an arrest warrant for war crimes from the international criminal court, nominating Donald Trump for a Nobel peace prize. Additional reporting by Quique Kierszenbaum
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Brics growing up: A new bloc seeks autonomy – and eyes a post-western order
The Brics summit in Brazil last week revealed a loose alliance of emerging powers becoming more complex – and perhaps more consequential. For Brics, heft matters. It now counts 11 member states – including Indonesia, which joined this year – representing half the world's population and 40% of the global economy, outpacing the G7 by $20tn. Yet its size hides its contradictions. The grouping's call for more inclusive global institutions sounds welcome, but there is a preponderance of autocracies within its own ranks. Brics is right that international law should be upheld in Middle Eastern conflicts. But it climbs down from its moral pedestal by condemning Ukraine's strikes on Russian infrastructure – while staying silent on Moscow's relentless attacks on civilians. The acronym 'Bric' – Brazil, Russia, India and China (South Africa wouldn't join until 2010) – began as a Wall Street bet on rising powers challenging the west. But what defines Brics today is a subtler, more strategic ambition: to insulate themselves from Washington's gravitational pull while cooperating to build a joint hi-tech industrial base. There are things that the Brics get right. Financial global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund are in need of reform; the rich world has failed to honour climate finance promises. The group's understandable response in the face of inaction is to create its own development bank to promote a form of green industrialisation. A pre-summit agreement on a formal collective Brics stance on funding climate action will help. Rapid growth in renewable energy means fossil fuels now account for less than half of the bloc's total electricity generation. Given the climate emergency, such progress can only be welcome. Brics member states now lead in green tech and boast booming consumer markets – offering both the tools and the scale to drive industrial growth. The postwar order stood on three pillars: US dominance, hydrocarbons and open trade. Today, all three are cracking, largely because of the US itself. Many Brics nations have little to gain from backing oil when the world's biggest producer is the US. Donald Trump's threat of higher import duties on the bloc's members speaks to the US turn against global trade. By placing tariffs on Brazil over its internal politics, Mr Trump turns economic diplomacy into personal vendetta – and highlights how the rules-based order is unravelling. This moment presents both a challenge and an opening. Tariffed in the west, Chinese firms pivot to Brics. So the United Arab Emirates cashes in – winning local production and tech transfers from Beijing that the west won't permit. Brics' vision of smart, clean growth fits the gaps in the global order. But it isn't united: Russia's green potential is buried under its fossil fuel policy. Saudi Arabia hedges – flirting with Brics while clinging to the US, with deals in the balance. Most of the group's member states are nervous that a powerful China could tower over the rest. Strikingly, however, its leader, Xi Jinping, did not attend this summit. The Brics nations can still close ranks. Their most technical yet revealing move is to start building financial 'plumbing' to bypass western systems. The group isn't ditching the dollar – but its members know what exclusion feels like: India had credit denied after the 2008 crash; Iranian banks have been sanctioned since 2012. The bloc's success will depend not just on ambition, but on the capacity to coordinate across national interests.
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
Iran President Pezeshkian was reportedly injured in Israeli strikes
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was reportedly slightly injured during one of Israel's attacks on Iran last state Fars news agency, close to the revolutionary guard, says that on 16 June, six bombs targeted both access and entry points of a secret underground facility in Tehran where Pezeshkian was attending an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security president is said to have suffered leg injuries as he and others escaped through an emergency shaft. Iran is now reported to be following leads of infiltration by Israeli Fars report has not been independently verified. Israel has not publicly commented on the report. Videos posted on social media during the 12-day war showed repeated strikes against a mountain side in north-west Tehran. Now it has emerged that the strikes on the fourth day of war targeted a secret underground facility in western Tehran where Iran's top leaders were at the time. The Fars news agency report says the Israeli strikes blocked all the six entry and exit points, and also the ventilation electricity to the facility was also cut off - but Pezeshkian managed to reach safety. The Supreme National Security Council is Iran's top decision-making body after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Last week, Pezeshkian accused Israel of trying to kill him - a claim denied by Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, who said "regime change" had not been not a goal of the wiped out many of top IRGC and army commanders at the very start of the war. Iranian leaders admit they were taken completely by surprise, and there was a decision-making paralysis for at least the first 24 hours after the attack. Israel officials admitted that Ayatollah Khamenei was also the target - but that they had lost track of him when he was moved to a secure secret location, cut off to a great extent from the outside world. There are still many questions about how Israel had gathered critical intelligence about the whereabouts of Iran's top officials and commanders - not to mention the locations of sensitive secret 13 June, Israel launched a surprise attack on nuclear and military sites in Iran, saying it acted to prevent Tehran from making nuclear weapons. Iran - who retaliated with aerial attacks on Israel - denies seeking to develop nuclear weapons and says its enrichment of uranium is for peaceful 22 June, the US's Air Force and Navy carried out air and missile strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities. US President Donald Trump later said the attack "obliterated" the facilities, even as some US intelligence agencies have taken a more cautious view.
