Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic regime he has led for more than 35 years now face their biggest test since the eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s.

Since last week night, Iran has been bombarded by Israeli airstrikes that show no signs of abating anytime soon. In connection with the Israeli air campaign, the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, has been operating on Iranian soil and targeting senior Iranian nuclear scientists and military officers in an attempt to shatter the Iranian military’s chain of command. Iran’s armed forces chief, the intelligence chief of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the supreme leader’s senior foreign policy adviser have all been killed. Khamenei himself was in Israel’s crosshairs, although President Donald Trump dissuaded the Israelis from assassinating him, fearing an even deeper escalation.

Over the last several days, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up the air campaign by striking sites such as the South Pars natural gas field and refineries on the outskirts of Tehran. Netanyahu seems to be ever more enamored with going beyond Israel’s original objective, telling Fox News last weekend that regime change in Tehran could very well be the ultimate result.

In terms of conventional military power, the Iranians are by far the weaker party. Iran’s air force is diminished due to decades of U.S. sanctions and export controls. The Iranian navy is essentially a collection of small boats that have difficulty projecting power beyond the Iranian coastline. And the country’s ground forces haven’t fought a war in more than three decades.

What Tehran does have, however, is the largest ballistic missile stockpile in the Middle East. To date, Iran has kept its retaliation limited to launching periodic volleys of missiles toward Israel’s major population areas in the hope that a few of them will breach the country’s sophisticated air defense system. Indeed, the first days of conflict took on a familiar rhythm, with Israel striking military, energy and nuclear-related targets in Iran and Tehran responding with ballistic missile attacks on Tel Aviv, Haifa and towns in central Israel.

Yet if those attacks are designed to push Israel into suspending its military campaign or at least reevaluating the need for diplomacy, then they’ve failed. Based on his rhetoric as well as the intensity of the Israeli operation, Netanyahu is in no mood for a face-saving exit and appears to genuinely believe that the Islamic Republic is on its last legs. Rather than pushing the Israelis into a negotiation, every Iranian ballistic missile sent toward Israel provides Netanyahu with more ammunition to continue the war and press his central argument: Iran is led by fanatical mullahs bent on Israel’s destruction.

Khamenei isn’t a stupid man; he knows all of this already. While the octogenarian may sound like a zealot when he gives speeches at the pulpit, in practice he’s actually a wily figure who is more pragmatic than he lets on. He keeps all options close to his chest and isn’t immune to backing down if it means preserving his regime or buying time to plan next steps.

In 1988, for instance, then-President Khamenei supported signing a ceasefire with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein after eight years of war and nearly a million casualties. (In 2010, he referred to that decision as “one of the most rational events in Iran’s history.”) After the 9/11 attacks, he authorized Iranian officials to coordinate with the United States against the Taliban in Afghanistan. From 2012 to 2013, Khamenei agreed to dispatch his senior advisers to meet with Washington to explore whether a nuclear agreement was possible, culminating in the 2015 nuclear deal. (Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018.) And in April, Khamenei did so again, despite strong reservations the talks would lead anywhere.

Yet the supreme leader is now in a position in which his options are quite limited. His runway is short, any decision he takes will have consequences and he’s at the mercy of Netanyahu, who views the current military campaign as a way to severely degrade Israel’s biggest strategic adversary.

One option would be to throw out feelers to regional mediators and perhaps the United States directly that Iran wants to deescalate and will stop firing missiles toward Israel if the Israelis end bombing operations. This would be the most logical step for the Iranians to take, and it’s one Trump, who wants the fighting to wind down, would likely support. But it runs into the problem of Netanyahu, who has the wind at his back and is demonstrating no urgency to sign a ceasefire. Begging for peace also exposes Khamenei as a weak leader in the eyes of regime hard-liners, who are already preparing succession scenarios for the day when the longtime leader passes from the scene.

Fighting it out is an option as well. Khamenei may bet that Israel doesn’t have the capacity, stamina or will to maintain a war of attrition with Iran over the long term and that the longer the missile exchanges go on, the more political pressure Netanyahu will feel to come to the table.

Even so, this is a very risky bet for the Iranians to make and underestimates Netanyahu’s ability to withstand public opinion. After all, Netanyahu remains committed to the 20-month-old war in Gaza despite the Israeli public increasingly prioritizing the return of all the hostages over the defeat of Hamas. If the ultra-right ministers in Netanyahu’s cabinet want to continue bombing Iran, it’s likely the Israeli premier will do so, if only to save his political skin.

Iran’s supreme leader has confronted crises before. But this is his biggest to date.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Related Articles

David M. Drucker: Will Republican gains among Hispanic voters last?

Abby McCloskey: Vouchers aren’t enough to fix U.S. schools

Andreas Kluth: Republicans are (almost) ready for maximum pressure on Russia

Adrian Wooldridge: Reagan wasn’t the conservative he’s made out to be

Thomas Friedman: The smart way for Trump to end the Israel-Iran war

I met Agather Atuhaire, a Ugandan human rights defender, in late May at the Oslo Freedom Forum, an event celebrating activists against authoritarianism. She was petite but powerful, bruised but not broken. Traveling to this event was her latest act of defiance.

Only days earlier, she and Boniface Mwangi, a high-profile Kenyan activist, had been dumped near the Tanzanian border after being detained and tortured for days by Tanzanian police when they tried to attend the trial of Tanzania’s main opposition leader. The abuse was excruciating. They recounted being stripped, hung by their bound feet and hands, brutally raped and beaten. The entire sick process was recorded to elicit shame and more fear.

I spent years working in East Africa, so I’m familiar with its explosive politics and the authoritarian tendencies of those clinging to power. But this felt like something new. Atuhaire received the U.S. State Department’s International Women of Courage Award just last year.

Where was the outrage? Once, the U.S. government used its influence to prevent these abuses. Now, Washington is practically silent.

Repression has been on the rise across the region. When governments stop trying to hide or temper their abuse, the dangers escalate. Cross-country cooperation in governmental repression is ticking up too.

Tundu Lissu, the politician Atuhaire and Mwangi were in Tanzania to support, was arrested in April and charged with treason after spearheading a campaign ahead of Tanzania’s upcoming elections. Tundu was fighting for reforms to unrig a system that has enabled the ruling party to win every election since independence.

Several other critics of the Tanzanian government have been abducted over the last year. One opposition party official was killed after being taken from a bus in September. His body was later found soaked in acid and beaten.

Maria Sarungi Tsehai, a prominent Tanzanian activist, was abducted in January in Nairobi, Kenya, where she had been living since seeking asylum there in 2020 because of threats from the Tanzanian government. After a few hours of assaulting her as they tried to gain access to her phone and social media, Tsehai’s abductors dumped her on a side road. Tsehai was also in Oslo and told me she was certain the Tanzanian and Kenyan authorities were working together to repress their citizens, so nowhere was safe now.

In November, Ugandan opposition politician Kizza Besigye and his aide were also abducted in Nairobi, only to emerge four days later in military court in Kampala, Uganda. Kenyan authorities have since admitted to cooperating in the kidnapping. These are just some of the hundreds of civilian opposition actors to face military courts in Uganda, even though the country’s supreme court has ruled it unconstitutional.

Yoweri Museveni has ruled the country since 1986. His son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, is the chief of Uganda’s Defense Forces and recently bragged on social media of capturing an opposition leader, holding him captive in his basement, and torturing him.

Perhaps the Kenyan government has become more amenable to facilitating repression in the region since it’s upped its own at home. Last June, Kenya saw a wave of antigovernment protests led by Kenya’s youth. Kenyan police killed dozens in their aggressive response. Waves of protests continued throughout the year, and in the final weeks of 2024, at least 10 young activists were abducted.

As a former U.S. diplomat, I expected more of an American response to these events. It wouldn’t prevent all the abuses, but it would have mattered. Activists I’ve spoken with have assured me, for example, that the abuse of Mwangi and Atuhaire wouldn’t have occurred under prior U.S. administrations (even Donald Trump’s first administration), since the Tanzanian government would have anticipated consequences.

The United States has provided these countries with military assistance and development and humanitarian support for many years. But America has a very different relationship with the region today. Though some advocates in Congress continue to speak up, the Trump administration has made clear that it will not use its influence to fight human rights abuses. Not only has it gutted foreign assistance, which could previously be used as an incentive for better behavior, but it also has explicitly stepped back from promoting human rights at all.

The weight of America’s moral leadership has been weakening for years, but it is now wholly broken. And the consequences, on individuals and democracy movements across the globe, are real and likely to worsen.

You may think it isn’t America’s business to promote human rights internationally, but it was never much of an investment. Prior to the Trump administration’s draconian cuts, the entire foreign aid budget amounted to less than 1% of the country’s expenditures, and only 3.2% of that went to democracy, governance and human rights programs.

But by using our diplomats and assistance to impose even a small cost for the worst repression, we once helped protect and uplift those fighting for values we used to hold dear.

What will we gain by not doing so? Nothing, but it will cost others plenty.

Elizabeth Shackelford is senior policy director at Dartmouth College’s Dickey Center for International Understanding and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. She was previously a U.S. diplomat and is the author of “The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age.”

Related Articles

David M. Drucker: Will Republican gains among Hispanic voters last?

Abby McCloskey: Vouchers aren’t enough to fix U.S. schools

Andreas Kluth: Republicans are (almost) ready for maximum pressure on Russia

Adrian Wooldridge: Reagan wasn’t the conservative he’s made out to be

Thomas Friedman: The smart way for Trump to end the Israel-Iran war

By PHILIP MARCELO, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Friday ordered the U.S. government to free former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil from the immigration detention center where he has been held since early March while the Trump administration sought to deport him over his role in pro-Palestinian protests.

Related Articles

Man with Taser and rope charged in attempted kidnapping of mayor, Memphis police say

An ex-college basketball player testifies that Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs got ‘extremely creative’ on drugs

Billions of login credentials have been leaked online, Cybernews researchers say

Aflac finds suspicious activity on US network that may impact Social Security numbers, other data

Investigator and jurors speak out about Karen Read murder trial in aftermath of not guilty verdict

U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz announced the decision from the bench in New Jersey, responding to a request from Khalil’s lawyers to free him on bail or, at the very least, move him from a Louisiana jail to New Jersey so he can be closer to his wife and newborn son.

Khalil was the first arrest under President Donald Trump ’s crackdown on students who joined campus protests against Israel’s devastating war in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Khalil must be expelled from the country because his continued presence could harm American foreign policy.

Farbiarz had ruled earlier that the government can’t continue to hold Khalil on those grounds, but the government argued the legal U.S. resident was instead being held based on allegations that he lied on his green card application. Khalil disputes the accusations that he wasn’t forthcoming on the application.

Khalil, a legal U.S. resident, was detained on March 8 at his apartment building in Manhattan over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. His lawyers say the Trump administration is simply trying to crack down on free speech.

Khalil isn’t accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The international affairs graduate student served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists. He wasn’t among the demonstrators arrested, but his prominence in news coverage and willingness to speak publicly made him a target of critics.

The Trump administration has argued that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country as it considers their views antisemitic.

By CALEIGH WELLS and MELINA WALLING

The first big heat wave of 2025 has arrived, coinciding with the official start of summer.

More than 40 million people in the U.S. were under heat alerts Friday, according to the National Weather Service. Temperatures in the Midwest are expected to crest well into the 90s Fahrenheit (30s Celsius) this weekend. Triple-digit highs could pop up in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Denver. The peak will likely hit the East Coast early next week.

Meanwhile, British health officials are also issuing heat warnings for the U.K.

Climate change has been exacerbating heat waves, and the problem isn’t going away any time soon. An increasingly hot planet — due largely to burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas — means already hot regions are getting worse.

Heat doesn’t just mean canceled events. It also poses a health risk, especially for children, older people and those with certain health conditions.

So here are some tips to stay safe.

When does heat become dangerous?

The answer depends on more than the temperature. The most detailed measurement is called the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), which includes temperature, humidity, cloud cover and wind. The heat index, which measures temperature and humidity, is less descriptive but easier to find on weather apps. Both explain why a shaded soccer field on a 90 degree F day (32 degree C) in arid Phoenix may be less risky than an exposed park on an 80 degree F (27 degree C) day in soupy Little Rock.

Just based on heat index, NOAA has a chart that calculates how dangerous prolonged exposure can be. For example, a day where temperatures reach 96 degree F (36 degrees C) and 45% humidity would fall into the “danger” category for prolonged exposure or strenuous activity.

The WBGT threshold isn’t exact, but recent research suggests that even some young, healthy people can’t endure hours of exposure to high heat and humidity.

How to cool down

Overnight lows can be a particularly dangerous part of a heat wave, said Ashley Ward, director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University.

“Your body needs a reprieve,” she said. “You don’t get that overnight, we start the next day at a deficit.” Heat can worsen labor productivity and lead to more visits to the emergency room.

“When we have overnight temperatures that don’t drop below 75 degrees” F (24 degrees C), she said, “You start to see some pretty extraordinary outcomes with respect to heat illness and heat stroke, and even mortality.”

Related Articles

More employers adopting ICHRAs, giving workers money to buy their own health insurance

NFL widows struggled to care for ex-players with CTE. They say a new study minimizes their pain

Natural disasters may be shaping babies’ brains

New CDC advisers will skip some expected topics and explore a target of antivaccine activists

The world’s only twice-a-year shot to prevent HIV could stop transmission — if people can get it

Ward’s answer: Find air conditioning. That might be at home, but she said census data overcounts how many people have access.

If you can’t afford to cool the whole house, Ward said, create a “cool corner” and sleep there, so your body is prepared to tackle the next day.

Evaporative or “swamp” coolers can help in dry heat, but they increase humidity and can make it more difficult to cool down. In humid places, just use a fan.

If you don’t have air conditioning, find public places that do, including movie theaters, malls and libraries. Some communities set up cooling centers.

Depending on where you live, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program can help you buy a window air conditioning unit, according to the National Council on Aging. Some local nonprofits and civic organizations can also help you access one if cost is a burden.

Know your rights if you work outside

Knowing what workplace protections you have is important. But there are no federal heat rules to protect workers in the United States.

Some states have them, including Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota and Maryland, according to the National Resources Defense Council. Other states don’t have any.

If your state has work rules, try to learn them — though there are still challenges to ensuring regulations are actually enforced, said Bharat Venkat, director of the University of California, Los Angeles Heat Lab.

He notes that sometimes shaded areas are too far for workers to take breaks without losing wages, or that management can make it impossible for workers to advocate for themselves. “Most workers don’t actually have control over their time or control over where they work,” he said.

Within those constraints, finding ways to stay hydrated and lower your body temperature are paramount. You can do this by drinking lots of fluids, wetting clothing or putting cold water or a cold rag on your hands, feet, armpits and neck. A portable handheld fan or a cooling vest can also help.

If you’re exercising, avoid the hottest times of day and bring more water than you think you need.

Knowing heat illness symptoms

Heat illness symptoms can vary by person, Venkat said. Medications or underlying conditions can also make it harder to regulate body temperature or notice you’re getting too hot.

Early trouble signs include heavy sweating, muscle cramps and headache. That’s when you stop what you’re doing and cool yourself off — for example, by splashing yourself with cold water or finding an air conditioned space.

As heat exhaustion sets in, new symptoms arrive, including faster heart rate and dizziness. Next comes heat stroke, which can include confusion, slurred words and fainting. Ward said that’s when to call 911.

“Don’t be embarrassed to call 911 or go to urgent care when you think you might have overdone it in the heat,” he said.

Walling reported from Chicago. Wells reported from Cleveland.

Related Articles

More employers adopting ICHRAs, giving workers money to buy their own health insurance

NFL widows struggled to care for ex-players with CTE. They say a new study minimizes their pain

Natural disasters may be shaping babies’ brains

New CDC advisers will skip some expected topics and explore a target of antivaccine activists

The world’s only twice-a-year shot to prevent HIV could stop transmission — if people can get it