Tag: News – Al Jazeera

United States President Donald Trump has called for a naval coalition to deploy warships to secure the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of world oil shipments transit, as oil markets reel from supply disruptions caused by the US-Israeli war with Iran.

What is essentially the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran in response to the attacks by the US and Israel has sent oil prices soaring to more than $100 per barrel.

Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has promised to keep the maritime artery closed while another top official in Tehran warned that oil prices could shoot up beyond $200 per barrel.

Trump said he hoped a naval coalition could secure the vital waterway, which connects the Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. Iran has struck more than a dozen ships trying to sail through the narrow waterway since the hostilities started two weeks ago.

But will Trump’s solution work?

What has Trump said?

The US president has been facing domestic pressure over starting the war alongside Israel with no endgame or off-ramps in sight.

“On the strait of Hormuz, they had NO PLAN,” US Democratic Senator Chris Murphy wrote in a post on X. “I can’t go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait, but suffice it [to] say, right now, they don’t know how to get it safely back open.”

After threatening to bomb Iran more, Trump called on China, France, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom to send warships to secure the strait.

Trump claimed “100% of Iran’s military capability” had already been destroyed but added that Tehran could still “send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close-range missile somewhere along, or in, this waterway”.

“Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint will send ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a nation that has been totally decapitated,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“In the meantime, the United States will be bombing the hell out of the shoreline, and continually shooting Iranian Boats and Ships out of the water. One way or the other, we will soon get the Hormuz Strait OPEN, SAFE, and FREE!”

Not long after, Trump returned to the keyboard, extending the invitation to all “the Countries of the World that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait” to send warships, adding that the US would provide “a lot” of support to those who participated.

What has Iran said?

Alireza Tangsiri, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, said in a statement that claims by the US about destroying Iran’s navy or providing safe escort for oil tankers were false.

“The Strait of Hormuz has not been militarily blocked and is merely under control,” he said in a statement.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later doubled down on this, saying the strait remained open to international shipping except for vessels belonging to the US and its allies.

“The Strait of Hormuz is open. It is only closed to the tankers and ships belonging to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and their allies. Others are free to pass,” Araghchi said.

Khamenei – son of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the US-Israeli strikes – suggested in his first statement since taking power that the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed to provide leverage for Iran during the conflict.

What are the challenges in the Strait of Hormuz?

The strait, which is just 21 nautical miles (39km) wide at its narrowest point, is the only maritime passage into the Arabian Gulf (known as the Persian Gulf in Iran). Shipping lanes in the waterway are even narrower and more vulnerable to attacks.

It separates Iran on one side from Oman and the United Arab Emirates on the other.

In brief, there is no way in or out by sea when the Strait of Hormuz is closed.

Alexandru Hudisteanu, a maritime security expert who served 13 years in the Romanian navy, told Al Jazeera that in the type of coalition that Trump is hinting at, “interoperability is the biggest hurdle.”

“That’s the ability of cruises to work together or with different units and different doctrine when basic communication would be an issue,” he said.

Then, there is the geography of the Strait of Hormuz: “a very unforgiving environment to sail with this type of wartime threats”, Hudisteanu said. “Especially difficult under missile threats and these asymmetric potential mines or unmanned systems that could damage or destroy ships.”

Providing escorts to ships would be a costly option, and it would pose risks to participating foreign warships from possible Iranian attacks, which would likely further drag more countries into the ongoing war.

From Iran’s point of view, “the fact that the shoreline is so close and the actual maritime passage is highly congested and confined is an advantage by default,” Hudisteanu added. Geographically, Iran keeps it as a gauntlet, with no way out for the ships unless Tehran allows it.

Another major challenge for any naval coalition trying to secure the passage would be the timeline of any operation.
”The security of the strait could be achieved. It’s just a matter of how much time you need and how many assets you need,” the analyst said. Rushing through it “could have negative implications for the security of the mission and the region”.

How have countries responded?

No country has so far publicly agreed to Trump’s call to send warships to secure the Strait of Hormuz.

London said it is “intensively looking” at what it can do to help reopen the maritime passage. British Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said: “We are intensively looking with our allies at what can be done because it’s so important that we get the strait reopened.”

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials said Beijing is calling for hostilities to stop and “all parties have the responsibility to ensure stable and unimpeded energy supply.”

Japan said the threshold is “extremely high” to send its warships on such a mission. “Legally speaking, we do not rule out the possibility, but given the current situation in which this conflict is ongoing, I believe this is something that must be considered with great caution,” said Takayuki Kobayashi, policy chief of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

France also confirmed that it will not send ships. The Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Saturday: “Posture has not changed: defensive it is,” in reference to President Emanuel Macron’s assertion that France will not join the war against Iran.

South Korea, which imports 70 percent of its oil from the Gulf, said it was “closely monitoring” Trump’s statements and “comprehensively considering and exploring various measures … to ensure the safety of energy transport routes”.

Are countries negotiating with Iran?

Some countries have been negotiating with Iran to secure passage for their petroleum shipments.

Two Indian-flagged tankers carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) have sailed through the Strait of Hormuz. New Delhi depends on this passage for 80 percent of its LPG imports.

The war on Iran has caused a critical shortage of cooking gas for India’s 333 million households. New Delhi has long had ties with Iran, but the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not condemned the killing of Ali Khamenei. It has condemned Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Gulf countries, where millions of Indian citizens work and send $51bn in remittances home every year.

Iran’s ambassador to India, Mohammad ⁠Fathali, said Tehran had allowed some Indian vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz in a rare exception to the blockade but did not confirm the number of vessels.

A Turkish-owned vessel was similarly granted permission last week after Ankara negotiated passage directly with Tehran. Fourteen more Turkish vessels are awaiting clearance.

France and Italy also reportedly opened talks with Iranian officials to negotiate a deal to allow their vessels through the strait, but there has been no official confirmation yet.

“Iran is affecting maritime supply,” Hudisteanu said. “It’s affecting the maritime security of the region and the entire ecosystem and bringing the entire world to the table as the global price for oil and gas increases.”

Hundreds of tankers sit idle on both sides of the Strait of Hormuz as Iran has effectively closed the waterway, pushing oil prices above $100 – the highest since 2022, after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Oil tanker traffic in the strait, through which one-fifth of global oil passes, has plunged after Israel and the United States launched attacks on Tehran on February 28. Asian countries, including India, China and Japan, as well as some European countries, source large portions of their energy needs from the Gulf. A disruption in supply will rattle the global economy.

With an aim to cushion from the shock, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has decided to release 400 million barrels of oil from emergency reserves, the largest coordinated drawdown in the agency’s history. But it has failed to push the prices down.

The agency had released about 182 million barrels after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to stablise the oil prices.

According to the agency, oil shipments through the strategic waterway have fallen to less than 10 percent of pre-war levels, threatening one of the most critical arteries in the global energy system.

IEA members collectively hold about 1.25 billion barrels in government-controlled emergency reserves, alongside roughly 600 million barrels in industry stocks tied to government obligations.

A large number in a massive market

The figure may appear vast, but it shrinks quickly against the scale of global energy demand.

“This feels like a small bandage on a large wound,” energy strategist Naif Aldandeni said, describing the world’s largest coordinated emergency oil release as governments scramble to steady markets shaken by war.

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates world consumption of petroleum and other liquids will average 105.17 million barrels per day in 2026. At that rate, 400 million barrels would theoretically cover just four days of global consumption.

Even when compared with normal traffic through the Strait of Hormuz – around 20 million barrels per day – the released oil equals only about 20 days of typical flows.

Aldandeni told Al Jazeera that emergency reserves can calm panic in markets but cannot replace the lost function of a disrupted shipping corridor.

“The release may soften the shock and calm nerves temporarily,” he said, “but it will remain limited as long as the fundamental problem — the freedom of supply and tanker movement through Hormuz – remains unresolved.”

Oil prices reflect those anxieties. Brent crude ended trading on Friday at $103.14 per barrel, after surging to nearly $120 earlier as fears of disrupted production and shipping intensified.

Geopolitical risk premium

Oil expert Nabil al-Marsoumi said the price surge cannot be explained by supply fundamentals alone.

“The closure of the Strait of Hormuz added roughly $40 per barrel as a geopolitical risk premium above what market fundamentals would normally dictate,” he told Al Jazeera.

From that perspective, releasing strategic reserves serves primarily as a temporary tool to dampen that premium rather than fundamentally rebalance the market.

Prices above $100 per barrel are uncomfortable for major consuming economies already struggling to curb inflation and protect economic growth.

Recent EIA projections suggest global demand has not yet declined significantly because of the war, remaining close to 105 million barrels per day. The market pressure, therefore, stems less from falling consumption and more from fears of supply shortages and delays in deliveries to refineries and consumers.

Threats to oil infrastructure

The latest escalation could deepen those fears.

United States President Donald Trump said on Friday that the US Central Command (CENTCOM) had “executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island”.

He added that “for reasons of decency” he had “chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island”, but warned Washington could reconsider that restraint if Iran continues to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

CENTCOM confirmed the operation, stating US forces had struck “more than 90 Iranian military targets on Kharg Island, while preserving the oil infrastructure”.

Iranian officials have meanwhile warned they would target energy facilities linked to the US across the region if Iranian oil infrastructure comes under direct attack.

Kharg Island is not simply a military location. It serves as the primary export terminal for Iranian crude, making it a critical node in the country’s oil supply network.

If attacks move from obstructing shipping to targeting export infrastructure itself, the crisis could shift from a chokepoint disruption scenario to one involving direct losses of production and export capacity.

In such circumstances, the oil released from emergency reserves would act only as a temporary bridge rather than a lasting solution to lost supply.

Major oil companies such as QatarEnergy, the world’s largest producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and Bahrain state oil company Bapco have shut production and declared force majeure, while Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, and UAE state oil company ADNOC have shut down their refineries.

Limits of emergency reserves

Even under a less severe scenario – where maritime disruption persists but infrastructure remains intact — the ability of strategic reserves to stabilise markets remains constrained by logistics.

The US Department of Energy said the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve held 415.4 million barrels as of 18 February 2026. Its maximum drawdown capacity is 4.4 million barrels per day, and oil requires about 13 days to reach US markets after a presidential release order.

That means even the world’s largest emergency stockpile cannot flood the market with crude immediately. The release must move through pipelines, shipping networks and refining capacity before reaching consumers.

Aldandeni said the current intervention would likely produce only a temporary stabilising effect, while al-Marsoumi warned that prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz – or the spread of threats to other chokepoints such as the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea could quickly send prices further higher.

Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s Formula One Grands Prix races will not be held in April on safety grounds due to the war.

Formula One and its governing body, FIA, said the Grands Prix races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia will not happen in April due to safety concerns related to the Iran war.

Both countries have been hit during Iran’s retaliatory attacks after the United States and Israel launched a wave of strikes on Iran.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 itemsend of list

The announcement was made early on Sunday morning in Shanghai ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix.

“Due to the ongoing situation in the Middle East region, the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix will not take place in April,” F1 said. “While several alternatives were considered, it was ultimately decided that no substitutions will be made in April.”

F1 was due to race in Bahrain on April 12 and in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah on April 19.

“While this was a difficult decision to take, it is unfortunately the right one at this stage considering the current situation in the Middle East,” said Stefano Domenicali, president and CEO of F1.

“The FIA will always place the safety and well being of our community and colleagues first. After careful consideration, we have taken this decision with that responsibility firmly in mind,” FIA’s president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, said.

The FIA did not explicitly rule out rescheduling the races and, along with F1, did not use the words “cancel” or “postpone” in announcing that the series would not be in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia next month.

“Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are incredibly important to the ecosystem of our racing season, and I look forward to returning to both as soon as circumstances allow,” Ben Sulayem said.

The promoters of the races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia said they supported the decision.

F1’s packed schedule does not have any obvious open dates for rescheduled races this year.

Calling off the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian races means there will be a five-week gap from the Japanese Grand Prix on March 29 and the next race, the Miami Grand Prix, on May 3. Without any rescheduling, the 22-race schedule would be the shortest since 2023.

The two Middle East races were not to happen until next month, but F1 faced making a decision earlier because it typically flies in the first staff and cargo to tracks weeks in advance. F1 was also faced with the difficulty of selling tickets at short notice, which makes it almost impossible to set up a replacement race in other countries.

Kimi Antonelli, the Mercedes driver who qualified on pole position for Sunday’s race in Shanghai, said his thoughts were “with the ones that are suffering from this situation” and that safety needed to be the priority.

“I’m sure they will do the right thing,” he said of FIA and F1.

The schedule is a joint matter for FIA and for F1’s commercial rights holder, and teams had signalled a willingness to follow their lead.

“I think we follow the guidance of the FIA and Formula 1, as we always do. They’ve always led us in the right direction,” Audi team principal Jonathan Wheatley said on Friday. “Nobody’s going to compromise on anything that would put teams into an uncomfortable situation.”

Bahrain had already hosted two preseason F1 tests this season, before Israel and the US launched attacks on Iran. A smaller-scale test of wet-weather tyres was called off in the immediate aftermath of the strikes.

A travel shutdown affecting major airports in the Middle East also caused disruption for Europe-based F1 and team staff heading to Melbourne for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

The last time a scheduled F1 race was cancelled was in 2023, when the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in northern Italy was called off at short notice due to deadly floods in the area.

In 2022, F1 continued with its race weekend in Saudi Arabia, even after Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacked an oil depot during a practice session, with black smoke visible from the Jeddah circuit.

The same year, F1 cancelled the Russian Grand Prix’s contract after Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.

The administration of President Donald Trump has moved to end its prosecution of a United States Army veteran who burned a national flag to protest one of the president’s executive orders.

Court filings this week show that the Department of Justice has moved to drop the charges against defendant Jan “Jay” Carey, following his motion to dismiss last October.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

Carey had been charged with two misdemeanours: one for lighting a fire outside of designated areas, and the second for lighting a fire in a manner that creates a public safety hazard or threatens property.

The incident unfolded on August 25, in the hours after Trump signed an executive order calling for the prosecution of flag-burners.

The Supreme Court has long upheld flag burning as an act of protected free speech. In the 1989 case Texas v Johnson, for instance, the high court held that “flag desecration is inconsistent with the First Amendment”, which protects free speech.

It reaffirmed that decision a year later in 1990, when Congress passed a new Flag Protection Act to outlaw such destructive behaviour. The high court struck down that law as unconstitutional.

But Trump has maintained that flag burning is akin to the incitement of violence, which is not protected under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Since his first term, he has pushed for steep prison sentences for any protester who knowingly destroys a US flag.

“If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail,” Trump said as he signed his executive order last August. “No early exits, no nothing.”

Though his executive order acknowledged the Supreme Court’s precedents protecting flag burning as an act of free speech, it nevertheless called on the US attorney general to “prioritise enforcement to the fullest extent of our Nation’s criminal and civil laws”.

In short, critics say it calls on the attorney general to prosecute flag-burners by searching for laws that fall outside the First Amendment’s scope.

In an interview last year with the Al Jazeera programme UNMUTE, Carey explained he had been outraged that the president would seek to circumvent the free-speech rights he had fought for as a veteran.

“I served for over 20 years. I defended that flag, served under that flag, fought for that flag,” Carey told Al Jazeera.

“The flag is a symbol. It’s not our democracy. I didn’t burn it to desecrate the flag or protest America. I did it as a direct reaction to what our treasonous, fascist president did by signing that executive order.”

Carey recalled that, after seeing the executive order, he turned to a friend. “I was like, I think I need to go burn a flag in front of the White House.”

Video captured the incident that followed. At about 6:20pm US Eastern time (22:20 GMT) on August 25, Carey appeared in Lafayette Park, directly across from the White House.

He took out a bullhorn and identified himself as a US veteran, protesting Trump’s executive order. He then placed a US flag on a brick pathway in the park and set it alight, using rubbing alcohol as an accelerant.

Four federal law enforcement agents then approached Carey. One used a fire extinguisher to put out the flames. The others handcuffed Carey and led him away.

Body camera footage released by law enforcement showed the four officers discussing Trump’s executive order as they detained Carey.

“So the president just today signed an executive order [that] says we’re arresting him,” one says. “We got that going for us.”

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, a legal nonprofit, ultimately took up Carey’s defence, arguing that charging the veteran was evidence of “vindictive prosecution”. It also called the Trump administration’s actions “a direct attack on dissent”.

Carey himself pleaded not guilty to the charges in September.

In his interview with Al Jazeera, Carey emphasised that Trump’s executive order is unenforceable — but that it does threaten to dampen free speech.

“This executive order was nothing but a bunch of fluff,” Carey said. “The First Amendment means that I am able to exercise my rights, my voice, my opinions. I can protest peacefully and have my grievances redressed.”

“As long as I’m not causing violence, I’m well within my rights within the First Amendment.”

One of the most wanted drug kingpins in South America, Sebastian Enrique Marset Cabrera, has been arrested in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, after a morning raid involving hundreds of police officers.

Following Marset’s capture on Friday, Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz celebrated the arrest as a milestone in the fight against drug trafficking on the continent.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

“One of the drug traffickers and criminals considered among the four biggest on the continent has fallen,” Paz said during a news conference in La Paz, Bolivia.

“The capture of Mr Marset marks a turning point in the fight against organised crime, and it also reaffirms the government’s determination to confront international and domestic mafias.”

Paz’s leadership is part of a trend in South America, which has seen longtime left-leaning governments flounder in recent elections, in favour of right-wing alternatives.

Marset’s arrest also coincides with a renewed push from the United States to more aggressively address drug trafficking across the Western Hemisphere.

Paz’s nascent government has demonstrated a willingness to partner with the US on those efforts.

Paz was sworn into office in November, ending nearly 20 years of leadership from Bolivia’s Movement for Socialism (MAS), and in late February, his government reinstated ties with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) after a rupture in 2008.

US President Donald Trump recently hosted Paz and other right-wing leaders from Latin America at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida to discuss shared efforts to combat drug cartels and other criminal networks.

One of Trump’s top advisers, Stephen Miller, reiterated the president’s hardline stance that drug traffickers should not be treated as criminals, but as unlawful combatants in an armed conflict.

“The cartels that operate in this hemisphere are the ISIS [ISIL] and the al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere and should be treated just as brutally and just as ruthlessly as we treat those organisations,” Miller said.

“We have learned after decades of effort is that there is not a criminal justice solution to the cartel problem.”

After his arrest on Friday, Marset was transferred into US custody, and he was seen boarding a US-tagged plane.

The DEA did not participate in his capture, which was led by local law enforcement. No injuries or deaths were reported after the operation.

Who is Marset?

The DEA considered Marset, a 34-year-old Uruguayan citizen, to be “one of South America’s most notorious drug traffickers”.

On March 7, 2024, he was indicted on money laundering charges, for allegedly using US-based financial institutions to process millions in drug-trafficking proceeds.

The indictment also accused Marset of leading a transnational criminal group, the First Uruguayan Cartel, responsible for shipping cocaine across the world, including to destinations such as Belgium and Portugal.

One drug bust in the Belgian port of Antwerp turned up nearly 16 tonnes of cocaine linked to Marset’s criminal network.

Prosecutors have also alleged that Marset solicited advice about disposing of the bodies of his enemies over text messages.

Both Paraguay and Bolivia had also sought to detain Marset on criminal charges. In 2023, Bolivia, for instance, posted a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

The US, meanwhile, offered a $2m bounty in May of last year for help arresting or convicting him.

Marset appeared to relish his reputation as one of South America’s “most wanted” criminal suspects. The Washington Post reported that he stamped his drug shipments with the label, “The King of the South”.

Media reports also indicated that Marset was a diehard football fan, investing in lower-level sports teams in Latin America and Europe. He had been on the run since July 2023, ahead of a planned operation at the time to detain him.

In 2021, he was briefly stopped in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, for travelling under a fake passport. But Uruguayan authorities ultimately issued him new travel documents that allowed him to leave the country, prompting outcry.

Since his arrest on Friday, Paraguay has said it too would seek Marset’s extradition so he could stand trial in the country.

Marset’s arrest follows another major operation last month in Mexico to capture the drug kingpin Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho”, a leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

That operation, however, resulted in El Mencho’s death and a wave of retaliatory attacks across Mexico.

Carlos Alcaraz will meet Daniil Medvedev in the Indian Wells semifinals, while Jannik Sinner faces Alexander Zverev.

World number one Carlos Alcaraz charged past Cameron Norrie 6-3 6-4 on Thursday to ⁠set up an Indian Wells semifinal with ⁠Daniil Medvedev after the Russian ended Jack Draper’s title defence with a 6-17-5 win following a controversial umpiring call.

Top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka also reached the last four in the women’s draw with a 7-6(0) 6-4 victory over 19-year-old Canadian Victoria Mboko, but Iga Swiatek was unable to ⁠find her way past Elina Svitolina and fell 6-2 4-6 6-4.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 itemsend of list

Australian Open champion Alcaraz improved his record to 16-0 to start the year with a solid display against a tricky opponent in the final contest of the evening, remaining on course for a third Indian Wells crown.

The Spaniard eased through the opening set, and though he ⁠was briefly in trouble at 0-2 down in the second, he quickly regained the momentum to see off Briton Norrie and set up a meeting with twice runner-up Medvedev.

“It was really difficult, I struggled with Cameron’s style,” Alcaraz said.

“His forehand has super top-spin, and his backhands are flat, so it’s tricky to play against him and find the correct shots. I played solid and aggressive when I could, and I’m happy to be at this level.”

Russian 11th seed Medvedev was also in impressive form against Briton Draper, who had ‌little time to recover after his stunning three-set win over Novak Djokovic on Wednesday.

Draper raised his level in the second set and stayed with his opponent up to 5-5, but Medvedev secured a late break after a controversial hindrance call from chair umpire Aurelie Tourte.

Medvedev was awarded a point to go 30-0 up following a late video review request, after the Russian said he was distracted by Draper’s raised arm during the rally when the Briton thought the ball went out.

Draper insisted he had not caused a major distraction, but the umpire stuck with her decision to award Medvedev the point, prompting jeers from the crowd when the call was made.

“If you look at the first forehand I did after it happened, I think I could have done a better shot if there was no gesture ⁠from Jack,” Medvedev told reporters.

“Was I distracted big time? No. Do I feel good about it? Not really. But I also ⁠don’t feel like I cheated or something. I got a bit distracted. I let it go and I let the umpire decide.”

Fourth seed Alexander Zverev beat Frenchman Arthur Fils 6-2 6-3 to make the semifinals for the first time, and become only the fifth man to complete the set of last-four appearances at all nine ATP Masters 1000 events.

The German faces a big challenge in the next round, ⁠however, as he takes on world number two Jannik Sinner after the Italian made light work of American Learner Tien 6-1 6-2.

Svitolina upsets Swiatek, while Rybakina could await Sabalenka

World number two Swiatek struggled early against Svitolina, with the Ukrainian capitalising on five double faults to secure three breaks ⁠and take the opening set in 38 minutes.

She found her rhythm in the second to force a ⁠decider, but Svitolina regained the upper hand by securing the only break in a tight third set before confidently closing out the match to return to the semis for the first time in seven years.

Belarusian Sabalenka had a battle on her hands against Mboko, and the top seed was taken to a first-set tiebreak, which she won to love – a career first.

The second set followed a similar script with Mboko clawing ‌her back to 5-4 and threatening another tiebreak, but four-time Grand Slam champion Sabalenka held firm.

“She’s a future Grand Slam champion,” Sabalenka said. “It’s incredible to see how brave these young girls are these days.”

Sabalenka next plays Linda Noskova, who ended Australian qualifier Talia Gibson’s fairytale run 6-2 4-6 6-2, the Czech reaching her second WTA 1000 semifinal.

Australian ‌Open ‌champion Elena Rybakina advanced with a 6-1 7-6(4) victory over Jessica Pegula to reach another Indian Wells semifinal, where she will play Svitolina.

Victory ensured Rybakina will leapfrog Swiatek and reach a career-high world number two when the WTA rankings are updated on Monday.

Washington, DC – In September, the United States began launching dozens of deadly military strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific.

Nearly half a year later, remarkably little is known about the strikes. The identities of the nearly 157 people killed have not been released. Any purported evidence against them has not been made public.

Recommended Stories

list of 3 itemsend of list

But a group of United Nations and international law experts are hoping to change that on Friday, when they testify at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

The international hearing will be the first of its kind since the strikes began on September 2, and rights advocates hope it can help lead to accountability as individual legal cases related to the strikes proceed.

Steven Watt, a senior staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s human rights programme, said the goal of the hearing will be threefold.

“Our ask will be to conduct a fact-finding investigation into what’s going on,” Watt said.

The second aim, he continued, would be “to assert or to arrive at a conclusion that there is no armed conflict here”, in what would be a rebuke to US President Donald Trump’s previous claims.

Finally, Watt said, he hopes the proceedings will yield long-sought transparency from the Trump administration on “whether or not they have a legal justification for these boat strikes”.

“We don’t think there are any,” Watt added.

‘We don’t know the names’

The experts set to testify at Friday’s hearing said the IACHR has a unique mandate to uncover the truth behind the US strikes.

The commission, based in Guatemala City, Guatemala, is an independent investigative body within the Organization of American States, of which the US was a founding member in 1948.

While the Trump administration has claimed it has a right to carry out the deadly attacks as part of a wider military offensive against so-called “narco-terrorists”, rights groups have decried the campaign as a series of extrajudicial killings.

They argue that Trump’s deadly tactics deny those targeted of anything that approaches due process.

Legal experts have also dismissed Trump’s claims that suspects in drug-related crimes are equivalent to “unlawful combatants” in an “armed conflict”.

Few details have emerged from the air strikes. Several families have come forward, however, to informally identify the dead as their loved ones.

Victims are said to include 26-year-old Chad Joseph and 41-year-old Rishi Samaroo, who were sailing home to Trinidad and Tobago when they were killed in October, according to relatives.

A complaint filed against the US government said both men travelled often between the islands and Venezuela, where Joseph found work as a farmer and fisherman, and Samaroo laboured on a farm.

The family of Colombian national Alejandro Carranza, 42, have also said he was killed in September when the US military attacked his fishing boat off the country’s coast.

The US has yet to confirm the victims’ identities, and only two survivors have ever been rescued in the 45 reported strikes.

A clearer picture of what happened will be a significant step towards accountability, according to experts like Watt.

“[The IACHR] is uniquely positioned to identify who all these persons are,” Watt said. “We just know the numbers from the United States. We don’t know the names or the backgrounds of these people.”

The IACHR has launched a range of human rights investigations in recent decades, including probes into the 2014 mass kidnapping of 43 students in Iguala, Mexico, and a series of murders in Colombia from 1988 to 1991 dubbed the Massacre of Trujillo.

The commission has also examined US policies, including extrajudicial detentions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during its so-called “global war on terror”.

The IACHR has the power to seek resolutions to human rights complaints or refer them for litigation before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Just last week, the court ordered Peru to pay reparations to the family of a woman who died during a government-led forced sterilisation campaign in the 1990s.

The Carranza family has filed its own complaint to the IACHR, and the families of Joseph and Samaroo have also lodged a lawsuit against the US in a federal court in Massachusetts.

Angelo Guisado, a senior staff lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), said a fuller accounting of the US actions is needed to prevent future abuses. He is among the experts testifying on Friday.

“You can’t normalise assassinating fishermen off the coast of South America,” Guisado told Al Jazeera. “That’s just sadistic and an abomination to the rules-based order that we’ve created.”

“So we hope that the commission can do some investigation.”

A war against ‘narco-terrorists’?

One of Guisado’s goals for Friday’s hearing will be to unpack the Trump administration’s argument that the attacks are necessary from a national security standpoint.

Even before the US strikes began, the Trump administration began framing the Latin American drug trade as an existential threat to the US.

As part of that re-framing, the administration borrowed messaging from its “global war on terror”, taking the unorthodox approach of labelling several cartels “foreign terrorist organisations”.

Speaking last week at a meeting of Latin American leaders, White House security adviser Stephen Miller maintained there is no “criminal justice solution” to drug cartels.

Instead, he affirmed that the US would use “hard power, military power, lethal force, to protect and defend the American homeland”, even if that meant carrying out deadly operations throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Guisado, however, noted that the administration has admitted that the targeted boats were largely carrying cocaine, not the highly addictive fentanyl responsible for the majority of US drug overdoses.

He explained that the administration has done little to prove its claims that drug traffickers are part of a coordinated effort to destabilise the US.

Such hyperbolic language, Guisado added, could be used as a smokescreen to conceal illegal actions.

“When you invoke national security interest, it seems as if scrutiny and any legitimate analysis or condemnation gets pushed to one side in favour of an ersatz martial law,” Guisado said.

“The idea that you could just proclaim anyone a narcoterrorist and do whatever you want with them is just so repugnant to our system of fairness, justice and law.”

Watt, meanwhile, said he hopes the IACHR will draw a clear “line in the sand”, separating drug crimes from what is conventionally considered an armed conflict.

He also would like to see the IACHR clearly outline the US’s human rights obligations.

“But even if there was an armed conflict — of which there isn’t — the laws of war would prohibit the type of conduct that the United States is engaging in here,” Watt explained.

“It would be an extrajudicial killing. It would be a war crime.”

Transparency or accountability

Friday’s hearing will only be an initial step towards accountability, and critics question how effective the IACHR will ultimately be.

The US has regularly shrugged off human rights probes at international forums, and it is not party to entities like the International Criminal Court in The Hague, raising barriers to the pursuit of justice.

Despite being a member of the OAS, the US has also not ratified the American Convention on Human Rights, one of the organisation’s founding documents.

It is, therefore, unclear how binding any IACHR decisions could be, although Watt argued that it is “longstanding jurisprudence of the commission that the declaration imposes obligations on non-ratifying member states”.

Still, legal experts said Friday’s hearing may yield clarity on the Trump administration’s legal argument for the boat strikes.

The IACHR has said US government representatives are set to appear at the hearing.

To date, the US Department of Justice has not released the Office of Legal Counsel’s official reasoning for the boat strikes, considered the foundational legal document for the military actions.

A separate memorandum from that office addressed the US abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3, which it framed as a drug enforcement action.

That memo touched on the boat strikes, but it only served to raise further questions about Trump’s rationale.

“This will be an opportunity for the United States to put its case before the commission,” Watt said.

“But of course, it depends on US cooperation,” he continued. “They’re going down there, but it’ll be interesting to see what they actually say.”

The 2026 edition of the FIFA World Cup kicks off in three months, but what was set to be one of the most straightforward editions to organise in the tournament’s history appears to be growing more complicated by the day.

The Israeli-United States war on Iran has created massive uncertainty across the globe, and FIFA’s showpiece event is already feeling the ramifications along with policy and political issues that were already rumbling in the Americas.

Recommended Stories

list of 4 itemsend of list

Al Jazeera Sport takes a look at the five issues the competition – cohosted by the US, Mexico and Canada – must resolve before the first match on June 11 between Mexico and South Africa.

Will Iran participate at FIFA World Cup 2026 in US?

Iran’s sports minister said on Wednesday that the country cannot ⁠⁠participate in the FIFA World ⁠Cup after the ⁠US killed its supreme leader.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated on the first day of the US-Israel war, and all of its national football team’s World Cup group games are to be played in US cities.

The US and Israeli attacks began on February 28. So far, 1,255 people have been killed in Iran and more than 12,000 wounded.

Iran has hit back with strikes on Israel, US military bases in neighbouring Middle East states and infrastructure in the region.

“Considering that this corrupt ⁠regime [the US] has ⁠assassinated our leader, under no circumstances ⁠can we ⁠participate in ⁠the World Cup,” Sports Minister Ahmad Donyamali told ‌state television.

Is the US willing to host Iran at World Cup in time of war?

US President Donald Trump would “welcome” Iran’s participation in the World Cup, according to FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

Before Iran’s announcement, Infantino took to Instagram on Wednesday to state that despite the war in the Middle East, Trump had reiterated his stance on Iran’s involvement during a meeting between the pair to discuss the upcoming tournament.

As the draw stands, the US and ‌Iran could come head-to-head at the tournament if they both ‌finish second in their respective groups. A July 3 elimination match in Dallas would be the outcome.

Meanwhile, if the US themselves refused to host the Iranian team, then FIFA could remove them as a World Cup host – a fate the Indonesia already befell.

As hosts of the men’s Under-20 World Cup three years ago, Indonesia refused to welcome Israel. FIFA dropped the tournament host just weeks before the scheduled first game and moved that competition to Argentina.

What is the latest on Iraq’s qualifications playoff match?

Iraq are facing major logistical issues as a result of the war before their March 31 qualifier for the World Cup.

The winner of Iraq’s intercontinental playoff against either Suriname or Bolivia will advance to the 2026 edition, but Iraqi airspace is closed until April 1 due to the war, and the squad is predominantly made up of players from the domestic league.

With the squad struggling to fully gather for the match, the head coach of the national team, Graham Arnold, asked FIFA on Monday to delay his team’s qualifier.

The match is due to be played in Monterrey, Mexico, and the host country issued some visas to Iraq’s players at their embassy in Qatar on March 8.

In a further complication, Mexico does not have an embassy in Iraq for the remaining players.

Mexico has issued an assurance to Iraq that it will “provide all necessary assistance in documenting the members of the Iraqi national team”.

Mexico violence raises questions over it hosting World Cup games

While the US and the rest of the world face complications related to the war on Iran, Mexico is facing its own internal issues.

A wave of violence was triggered in the country on February 23 after the killing of a drug lord who led one of the most powerful Mexican criminal organisations.

Gunmen torched cars and blocked highways in more than half a dozen states in the immediate aftermath of news of his killing.

The first match of the World Cup is being staged in Mexico City with a second on the same day in Guadalajara, which was rocked by last month’s violence.

Mexican officials thereafter sought to assure FIFA authorities and potential travellers that the tournament would be safe.

On Friday, President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico would deploy as many as 100,000 members of its security forces during the competition, assuring football fans that there was “no risk” in coming to the country.

What are the FIFA World Cup 2026 ticketing issues?

As with numerous global events in sport and entertainment, the availability and pricing of World Cup tickets for standard seats is a sore point for the general public.

Nearly 2 million tickets were sold in the first two sales phases for the 2026 edition, and demand was so intense that tickets were oversubscribed more than 30 ‌times.

The most expensive tickets for the opening game are being advertised at almost $900 while for the final, that figure is more than $8,000

Tickets in general cost at least $200 for matches involving leading nations. The cheapest tickets for the final cost $2,000 and the best seats $8,680.

Then there is FIFA’s official resale site, where one category three seat for the final in New Jersey on July 19 was being advertised for an eye-watering $143,750, more than 41 times its original face value of $3,450.