Israel’s largest attack ever against Iran has targeted nuclear and military facilities, gas and oil depots and the government-run broadcaster. More than 200 people have been killed and hundreds more injured.
Iranian facilities hit by Israeli attacks
Here is what is known about the damage to Iran’s strategic infrastructure so far.
Nuclear facilities
Israel launched its most recent attack against Iran last Friday with waves of coordinated airstrikes hitting nuclear sites and killing much of the country’s military chain of command, along with several nuclear scientists.
Iran’s nuclear industry is well established, with over 30 facilities spread over the country, and some buried deep underground.
Iranian nuclear facilities attacked
Other nuclear facilities in Iran
Source: The Nuclear Threat Initiative and New York Times reporting
The New York Times
The first strikes severely damaged Iran’s largest uranium enrichment center, at Natanz, about 140 miles south of Tehran.
Source: Institute for Science and International Security. Satellite imagery by Maxar Technologies.
The New York Times
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, initially reported that the strikes had damaged only the aboveground part of the enrichment plant. It later revised its assessment to confirm “direct impacts” on underground enrichment halls.
Satellite imagery taken two days after the strike shows the tracks of heavy machinery and piles of dirt covering craters above where the enrichment halls are believed to be built.
Source: Satellite imagery by Maxar Technologies
The New York Times
Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center
Iran’s most likely repository of near bomb-grade nuclear fuel is stored at a complex outside the ancient capital of Isfahan. The stockpile has so far been spared from attack, but the Israeli military struck laboratories that work to convert uranium gas back into a metal — one of the last stages of building a weapon.
Source: Satellite imagery by Maxar Technologies
The New York Times
As of Wednesday morning, Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear site, Fordo, remained undamaged. It was built deep inside a mountain to protect it from attack. Only the U.S. military has a bomb capable of even reaching it.
Striking Fordo is central to any effort to destroy Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons.
The site appeared to be intact in this satellite imagery taken on June 14.
Source: Satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies
A few other important nuclear facilities remain undamaged. Among them is Bushehr, Iran’s only operating nuclear plant, and Arak, a heavily guarded complex that has long been suspected of being built to produce plutonium.
Source; Satellite imagery by Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies
Israel also targeted at least one university associated with nuclear programs. In an image posted on social media and verified by The New York Times, black smoke can be seen billowing from the Institute of Applied Physics’s campus.
There are a few other institutions in the area that are also associated with Iranian nuclear programs, including Shahid Rajaee University and Malek Ashtar University of Technology. Both are under U.S. sanctions. American officials believe they participate in research on nuclear warhead design.
Missiles bases
Iranian missile capability was also degraded by the strikes. The Israeli military said that it had struck 12 missile launch sites and storage facilities on Tuesday alone.
Other missile bases in Iran
Source: Satellite imagery by Maxar Technologies
The New York Times
Several Israeli strikes targeted a missile base in Kermanshah, where missile storage buildings can be seen with damage in a satellite image taken on June 15.
Source: Satellite imagery by Maxar Technologies
The New York Times
Satellite imagery also shows damage at tunnel entrances to underground missile facilities.
Source: Satellite imagery by Planet Labs
The New York Times
In addition to Kermanshah, multiple other missile facilities were hit.
Bid Kaneh missile facility
Tabriz base underground entrance
Source: Satellite imagery from Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies
Energy infrastructure
With the second-largest gas reserves in the world and the fourth-largest crude oil reserves, Iran is one of the world’s major energy producers.
Iranian energy facilities
Energy facilities attacked
Intact refineries, oil and gas storage
Source: Global Oil & Gas Features Database and The New York Times reporting
The New York Times
Over the weekend, Israel targeted Iran’s critical energy infrastructure. It struck Tehran’s main gas depot and its central oil refinery, according to a statement from Iran’s oil ministry. The ministry said Israel had also targeted a section of one of the world’s largest gas fields.
Video posted to social media and verified by The Times shows a large fire burning at the Shahran oil depot, north of Tehran.
Source: WANA, via Reuters
Other infrastructure
On Friday, Israel carried out a strike on a military airport in the northwest Iranian city of Tabriz. A video taken by a witness and verified by The Times shows large plumes of black smoke rising into the sky.
Source: Satellite imagery by Planet Labs
The New York Times
And on Monday evening, the Israeli military attacked the headquarters of Iran’s state television. A news anchor was speaking live on the air when an explosion shook the building, followed by the sound of breaking glass and screams.
Premier League champions Liverpool to play the season’s first match on August 15 when they host Bournemouth at Anfield.
A Sunday afternoon clash between Manchester United and Arsenal is the pick of the matches on the opening weekend of the English Premier League’s 2025-2026 season as Liverpool will begin their title defence by hosting Bournemouth on August 15 .
The Premier League released its fixture schedule for the new season on Wednesday, giving teams and their fans a chance to start planning less than a month since the last campaign finished.
Manchester City, who are eyeing a seventh Premier League title under Pep Guardiola, take a trip to Wolverhampton Wanderers for their season opener on August 16 .
It’s a tricky beginning for Arne Slot’s champions with a trip to Newcastle on the second weekend, followed by a home match against Arsenal – another team in the Champions League – a week later.
Arsenal, who finished second for a third straight year last season, will play Manchester United, Liverpool, Manchester City and Newcastle in their opening six matches.
Everton bade farewell to their longtime home at Goodison Park at the end of last season, and the first game at their state-of-the-art, 53,000-capacity stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock will be against Brighton on August 23.
Thomas Frank’s first Premier League game in charge of Tottenham will be at home to promoted Burnley on August 16. That comes three days after Frank’s competitive debut with Tottenham, the Europa League champion, against Champions League winner Paris Saint-Germain in the UEFA Super Cup.
Sunderland’s first Premier League game since the 2016-2017 season is at home to West Ham while Leeds host Everton first after returning to the top flight following a two-year absence.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Speedos are more than a fashion statement. They’re a culture. If you’ve spent any time around a swim practice where the pace clock matters and lane space is sacred, you already know—real swimmers wear Speedo briefs.
Why? Because it’s about training hard, moving fast, and leaving the drag in the gear bag. Speedo briefs stay out of your way, last longer, and let everyone know you’re not here to glide through warm-up. You’re here to grind.
There’s no question that Speedo dominates this lane. The brand’s been a staple of competitive swimming since before goggles were cool. And while there’s no shortage of knockoffs, Speedo’s consistency in fit, fabric, and durability keeps them at the top of every swimmer’s gear bag.
NOTE: SwimSwam is independently owned and operated. We are not owned by a nonprofit, governing body, or a retail company. SwimSwam is partners with most but not all brands we review. If you order via these affiliate links in this post, you help support our mission of unbiased, athlete-first journalistic swim coverage.
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Culturally, Speedo briefs signal that you’re here to work. They’re streamlined, drag-free, and designed to last through the grind of a full training cycle. You’ll find them on Olympians and high school up-and-comers alike, because they do the job and stay out of your way.
Whether you’re hammering pace 50s or knocking out long aerobic sets, briefs give you one less excuse—and that’s why real swimmers wear them.
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If we were to trace back to the earliest building materials used by humans, we would likely point to some type of vegetation or simple mud. It’s no coincidence that adobe—unfired brick—was used in ancient civilizations such as Sumer and Egypt. Over time, more advanced materials like fired clay and concrete, along with sophisticated construction technologies like modular systems, were developed. Few would have predicted that a material as rudimentary as adobe would be paired with cutting-edge additive manufacturing technology.
However, this is precisely the breakthrough announced by ETH Zurich, which has found a way to use clay as a sustainable construction material. And no, it’s not 3D printing as you might imagine.
Clay as a sustainable construction material
Clay is not only an eco-friendly and sustainable option but also one of the most abundant materials on Earth. This prompted ETH Zurich’s research teams in Switzerland to explore whether it could be feasibly used in housing construction with the aid of technological innovation. Traditionally, structures made from clay have lacked durability and required significant manual labor.
Now, researchers at the Swiss institute have developed a groundbreaking technique involving a robotic system that forms clay or other excavated materials into projectiles, mixes them with silt, and launches them at high speed to build up walls vertically. Each ball of this sustainable material is propelled at a speed of 10 m/s.
The project includes a portable machine, reminiscent of a 3D printer, that can be brought directly to construction sites to build walls on location. According to the project’s leaders, the combination of traditional materials and robotics helps optimize production times and reduce costs.
A technology that leverages construction waste
The developers emphasize that only minimal use of additives is necessary for constructing robust structures. In initial tests, the team used a mix consisting of 75% construction waste blended with silt and other sustainable materials.
Unlike conventional systems where the material must set before adding new layers, this technique allows for clay to be applied continuously, even if the previous layer has not yet dried. This significantly accelerates the building process. The medium-term goal is to experiment with new mixtures to enhance results and broaden potential applications.
With this approach, ETH Zurich’s system eliminates the need for concrete, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the environmental impact typically associated with cement use. The basic robot is just the starting point; ongoing research is looking at robotic attachments to diversify the types of structures that can be built.
Watch the process in this video, showcasing impact printing in action as it constructs walls and columns:
Mycotecture: sustainable construction with fungi
Beyond natural materials like clay, other innovative disciplines are exploring the use of organic substances. One such area is mycotecture, which involves building structures and furniture using fungi. As previously covered in another article, this technique involves creating bricks by injecting fungal spores into a substrate. When these spores grow, they form a dense mycelium network. Growth is halted with heat treatment, resulting in “bricks” that can be used as thermal insulation and more.
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Source:
Image:
Michael Lyrenmann / Gramazio Kohler Rese / ETH Zurich
Dozens of legal scholars and economists have issued stark warnings over attempts by the European Commission (EC) to weaken corporate accountability laws, saying the action will wreck corporate accountability commitments, slash human rights and environmental protections, and lead to higher costs for companies and society.
Under pressure from corporate lobbyists, the EC has been discussing reshaping rules that govern how companies monitor and report their activity. Last month, both French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz escalated their campaign against the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which covers firms’ supply chains, claiming that the regulations threatened to make European businesses uncompetitive. In a speech, Macron told business executives the CSDDD should be “put off the table” entirely, expressing support for an EC “Omnibus Simplification Package” that would eliminate requirements for companies to monitor their supply chains for violations, remove mandatory climate transition plans, and significantly weaken enforcement mechanisms including civil liability provisions.
But legal and economics scholars, environmental organizations and businesses, along with countries such as Sweden and Denmark, have united to defend the regulations.
“The members of the European Parliament shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that if they remove this article that that’s going to somehow amount to a reduction in regulatory burden,” said Thom Wetzer, associate professor of law and finance at the University of Oxford, and the founding director of the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. “What will come in its place is a very litigious landscape and differential implementation of national requirements. You will have replaced a nicely uniform obligation with a patchwork of a variety of different and uncertain obligations.”
In May, Wetzer and more than 30 other legal scholars sent a letter to the EC warning that, far from reducing costs, scrapping the regulations would create a range of new financial and legal risks for companies, as well as making it harder for them to achieve their sustainability and climate goals. The scholars warn that, “Without guiding regulations, corporate climate transitions will be more disorderly and costly.”
Furthermore, Wetzer notes, many European companies have already taken steps to comply with the regulations. Indeed, towards the beginning of the year, 11 major brands, including the likes of IKEA [F500E #85, as Ingka], Maersk [F500E #70] and Unilever [F500E #49] came out in support of the CSDDD, signing and open letter that stated: “Investment and competitiveness are founded on policy certainty and legal predictability. The announcement that the European Commission will bring forward an ‘omnibus’ initiative that could include revisiting existing legislation risks undermining both of these.”
“Businesses have already started to put in place reporting frameworks to be able to align with the regulatory package,” Wetzer told Fortune. “There has been a lot of investment in the regulatory architecture on the assumption that this would stay in place for a long time. If you change this regulation and you go beyond simplification, you run the risk that all of those investments go down the drain.”
Legal scholars aren’t the only experts to have sounded the alarm on the EC’s plans. Also in May, more than 90 prominent economists criticized Omnibus proposals, strongly refuting claims that the sustainability regulations harm European competitiveness. Instead, they point to other factors behind Europe’s economic challenges, including the energy price crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, declining global demand, wage stagnation, and chronic underinvestment in public infrastructure.
The economists’ statement emphasizes that implementation costs for sustainability regulations are minimal, citing a London School of Economics study that estimated compliance costs for large companies at just 0.009% of revenue. They argue that the benefits of the regulations far outweigh such modest expenses, and further note that, with an estimated €750 billion investment gap in sustainable initiatives, the weakening of sustainability reporting requirements could undermine crucial programs like the Clean Industrial Deal and discourage private investment in sustainable projects.
“Economic choices are political choices,” said Johannes Jäger, a professor at the University of Applied Sciences BFi Vienna. “With the Omnibus proposal, the European Commission is choosing to reward short-sighted corporate lobbying at the expense of people, planet, and long-term economic resilience.”
To this point, many critics of the Omnibus package have framed it as opportunistic, saying it is an attempt to both mimic and placate U.S. President Donald Trump who, whilst threatening Europe with tariffs, is carrying out a program of sweeping deregulation across America. U.S. companies have been at the forefront of lobbying efforts to undermine the CSDDD, with watchdogs claiming that investment giant BlackRock helped carve out exemptions from the directive for large financial firms.
“With the Omnibus proposal, the European Commission is choosing to reward short-sighted corporate lobbying at the expense of people, planet, and long-term economic resilience.”Johannes Jäger, professor, University of Applied Sciences BFi Vienna
Such actions have motivated other European finance leaders to rally around the CSDDD. In February, more than 200 financial institutions, representing $7.6 trillion in assets under management, urged the EC to maintain strong sustainability standards. Aleksandra Palinska, executive director at the European Sustainable Investment Forum, warned that the Omnibus would “limit investor access to comparable and reliable sustainability data and impair their ability to scale-up investments for industrial decarbonisation.”
Rather than following Trump and doubling down on deregulation, European finance experts have urged the EU to maintain its resolve, along with its reputation for probity. In January, François Gemenne, a professor at HEC Paris and a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report, said that “the best response to the policies implemented in the U.S. is to beef up the EU green agenda, not to weaken it. Rather than follow Trump’s way, we should design our own path.”
Wetzer agreed, saying that the Omnibus proposals harm the European Union’s standing as a rational actor. “The European Union is proving itself not to be a reliable regulator because they’re flip-flopping in the face of changing political winds,” he said. In turbulent times, he suggested, a strong stabilizing influence is required. “We should chart our own course based on our assessment of the fundamentals.”
But beyond the legal and economic impacts, it is the environmental and human rights implications of the EC’s proposed changes that have drawn the most fire. In March, more than 360 global NGOs and civil society groups issued a joint statement against the Omnibus, stating that EC President Ursula von der Leyen was “deprioritizing human rights, workers’ rights and environmental protections for the sake of dangerous deregulation.”
“The European Union is proving itself not to be a reliable regulator because they’re flip-flopping in the face of changing political winds…”Thom Wetzer, associate professor of law and finance, University of Oxford and founding director of the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme
In comments accompanying the letter, Marion Lupin, policy officer for the European Coalition for Corporate Justice, said: “The message from Brussels couldn’t be clearer: industry interests come first, while people and the planet are left behind … hundreds of civil society organisations around the world are standing up—no to deregulation, no to greenwashing, and no to this reckless rollback of corporate accountability.”
As the Omnibus proposal moves through the European Parliament, the key question is whether EU institutions will preserve their original ambition to guide Europe through its sustainability transition, or acquiesce to corporate lobbying power. The outcome will likely have far-reaching implications for corporate accountability, human rights, and the fight against climate change.
Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on the island of Flores spewed an ash tower more than 11km (6.8mi) into the sky on Tuesday, the country’s volcanology agency said.
There have not been any reports of casualties. Authorities have raised the highest alert level and advised residents to avoid activities within a 7km radius around the crater.
Beyoncé capped off a six-night run at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Monday (June 16), generating over £45 million ($60 million) in gross ticket revenue.
The performances, which ran from June 5 through June 16, drew more than 275,000 fans and surpassed all previous artist records at the stadium, according to a press release from the stadium’s operator.
The gross revenue figure marks the highest-earning concert series in the venue’s six-year history. The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, with a seating capacity of 62,850, is the largest club ground in London.
Following the London concert series, Beyoncé thanked Sir Paul McCartney in an Instagrampost on Monday, referring to The Beatles’ Blackbird, which she covered on her Cowboy Carter album. In 2024, McCartney wrote: “I am so happy with @beyonce’s version of my song ‘Blackbird’. I think she does a magnificent version of it and it reinforces the civil rights message that inspired me to write the song in the first place.”
The London run is part of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour, which also celebrated multi-night runs in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Each performance runs nearly three hours and features songs from her Grammy-winning country-influenced Cowboy Carter album.
The venue, which opened in 2019, has hosted a number of major touring acts. Beyoncé’s six-show run exceeded her own previous record of five sold-out nights during her Renaissance World Tour in 2023, also breaking the record for most ticket sales and the highest grossing concert for any artist at the venue.
The Renaissance World Tour has spawn a documentary film called Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, which topped the domestic box office, raking in $21 million in its opening weekend. The film generated $44 million in box office sales worldwide, including $34 million in the US alone.
Promoted by Live Nation and produced by Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour has also attracted corporate sponsorships. Marriott International serves as the official hotel partner, while spirits brand SirDavis and Beyoncé’s haircare line Cécred have secured promotional partnerships. Beauty retailer Ulta Beauty has coordinated product activations around tour dates, building on its existing retail relationship with the Cécred brand.
Beyoncé’s production incorporates custom staging and visual elements tailored to each venue. The London shows featured collaborations with British fashion designers including Stella McCartney, Burberry, and Vivienne Westwood, alongside international luxury brands.
The tour’s next stop brings three performances to Stade de France in Paris beginning Thursday (June 19), followed by North American dates in Houston, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and Las Vegas.
Islamabad, Pakistan – In January 2024, Pakistan and Iran fired missiles into each other’s territory in a brief military escalation between the neighbours.
Yet 17 months later, after Israel attacked Iran with strikes on the latter’s nuclear facilities, and assassinated multiple Iranian generals and nuclear scientists, Pakistan was quick to condemn the Israeli action.
Islamabad described the Israeli strikes as violations of Iran’s territorial sovereignty and labelled them “blatant provocations”.
“The international community and the United Nations bear responsibility to uphold international law, stop this aggression immediately and hold the aggressor accountable for its actions,” Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on June 13.
As Israeli attacks on Iran, and Tehran’s retaliatory strikes, enter their sixth day, the deepening conflict is sparking fears in Islamabad, say analysts, rooted in its complex ties with Tehran and the even greater unease at the prospect of the Israeli military’s aerial influence extending close to the Pakistani border.
The human toll from the spiralling Israel-Iran conflict is growing. Israel’s attacks on Iran have already led to more than 220 deaths, with more than a thousand people injured. In retaliation, Iran has launched hundreds of missiles into Israeli territory, resulting in more than 20 deaths and extensive property damage.
While Pakistan, which shares a 905km (562-mile) border with Iran via its southwestern province of Balochistan, has voiced staunch support for Tehran, it has also closed five border crossings in Balochistan from June 15.
More than 500 Pakistani nationals, mainly pilgrims and students, have returned from Iran in recent days.
“On Monday, we had 45 students who were pursuing degrees in various Iranian institutions return to Pakistan. Almost 500 pilgrims also came back via the Taftan border crossing,” the assistant commissioner for Taftan, Naeem Ahmed, told Al Jazeera.
Taftan is a border town neighbouring Iran, situated in the Chaghi district in Balochistan, which is famous for its hills where Pakistan conducted its nuclear tests in 1998, as well as the Reko Diq and Saindak mines known for their gold and copper deposits.
At the heart of the decision to try to effectively seal the border is Pakistan’s worry about security in Balochistan, which, in turn, is influenced by its ties with Iran, say experts.
A complex history
Pakistan and Iran have both accused each other of harbouring armed groups responsible for cross-border attacks on their territories.
The most recent flare-up occurred in January 2024, when Iran launched missile strikes into Pakistan’s Balochistan province, claiming to target the separatist group Jaish al-Adl.
Pakistan retaliated within 24 hours, striking what it said were hideouts of Baloch separatists inside Iranian territory.
The neighbours patched up after that brief escalation, and during Pakistan’s brief military conflict with India in May, Iran studiously avoided taking sides.
On Monday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Ishaq Dar addressed Parliament, emphasising how Pakistan had been speaking with Iran and suggesting that Islamabad was willing to play a diplomatic role to help broker an end to the military hostilities between Iran and Israel.
“Iran’s foreign minister [Abbas Araghchi] told me that if Israel does not carry out another attack, they are prepared to return to the negotiating table,” Dar said. “We have conveyed this message to other countries, that there is still time to stop Israel and bring Iran back to talks.”.
Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry told Al Jazeera that other nations needed to do more to push for a ceasefire.
“We believe we are playing our role, but the world must also do its duty. Syria, Libya, Iraq – wars devastated them. It even led to the rise of ISIS [ISIL]. We hope this is not repeated,” he added.
Fahd Humayun, assistant professor of political science at Tufts University and a visiting research scholar at Stanford, said that any Pakistani bid to diplomatically push for peace would be helped by the fact that the administration of President Donald Trump in the United States is also, officially at least, arguing for negotiations rather than war.
But Umer Karim, a Middle East researcher at the University of Birmingham, suggested that for all the public rhetoric, Pakistan would be cautious about enmeshing itself too deeply in the conflict at a time when it is trying to rebuild bridges with the US, Israel’s closest ally.
“I doubt Pakistan has the capacity or the will to mediate in this conflict, but it definitely wants it to wind down as soon as possible,” he said.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif (centre) visited Tehran in May, where he met Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (right) and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian (left) [Handout via Prime Minister’s Office]
Balochistan and security concerns
Pakistan’s greatest concern, according to observers, is the potential fallout in Balochistan, a resource-rich but restive province. Rich in oil, gas, coal, gold and copper, Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province by area but smallest by population, home to about 15 million people.
Since 1947, Balochistan has experienced at least five rebellion movements, the latest beginning in the early 2000s. Rebel groups have demanded a greater share of local resources or outright independence, prompting decades of military crackdowns.
The province also hosts the strategic Gwadar port, central to the $62bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), linking western China to the Arabian Sea.
Baloch nationalists accuse the state of exploiting resources while neglecting local development, heightening secessionist and separatist sentiments. Baloch secessionist groups on both sides of the border, particularly the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLA), have been waging a rebellion in Pakistan to seek independence.
“There is a major concern within Pakistan that in case the war escalates, members of armed groups such as BLA and BLF, many of whom live in Iran’s border areas, might try and seek protection inside Pakistan by crossing the very porous boundaries shared by the two countries,” Abdul Basit, a research fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told Al Jazeera.
“Thus, Pakistan had to shut down the crossing in an attempt to control the influx. It remains to be seen whether they can successfully do that, but at least this is their objective.”
Worries about an Afghanistan redux
Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, waves of Afghan refugees have sought shelter in Pakistan. The latest mass entry occurred after the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021. At their peak, there were close to 4 million Afghans living in the country.
In 2023, however, Pakistan launched a campaign to send the refugees back to Afghanistan. According to government estimates, close to a million of them have been expelled so far. Pakistan has cited rising incidents of armed violence in the country, which it blames on groups that it says find shelter in Afghanistan, as a key justification for its decision. The Taliban reject the suggestion that they allow anti-Pakistan armed groups sanctuary on Afghan territory.
Basit said Pakistan would likely want to avoid any repeat of what happened with Afghan refugees.
“With such a long border [with Iran], and a history of deep connection between people of both sides, it is not out of realm of possibility that it was this factor which factored in Pakistan’s decision to close the border,” he added.
Fears of Israeli aerial superiority
Baloch armed groups and the prospect of a refugee influx are not the only concerns likely worrying Pakistan, say experts.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that his air force has control over Tehran’s skies. And while both Israel and Iran continue to strike each other’s territory, Pakistan, which does not recognise Israel and views it as a sworn enemy, will not want Israeli influence over the Iranian airspace to grow and creep towards the Iran-Pakistan border.
“Pakistan is also averse to Israel achieving complete air superiority and control of Iranian airspace, as it would upend the current security status quo on Pakistan’s western flank,” Karim, the University of Birmingham scholar, told Al Jazeera.
Break from the past
Security analyst Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, based in Islamabad, noted that Pakistan has historically sided with the US in regional wars, including in Afghanistan, but may hesitate this time.
A majority Sunni nation, Pakistan still boasts a significant Shia population – more than 15 percent of its population of 250 million.
“Pakistan has already dealt with sectarian issues, and openly supporting military action against [Shia-majority] Iran could spark serious blowback,” he said.
Donald Trump “may decide he needs to take further action” to stop Iran enriching uranium, vice-president JD Vance said on Tuesday.
Trump was “only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people’s goals”, said Vance, who has taken a more isolationist stance on foreign policy than many other Republicans, in comments on X.
Vance also wrote that the president “may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian [uranium] enrichment”, referring to the process that can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons-grade material. “That decision ultimately belongs to the president,” he added.
His comments came less than an hour before Trump called for Tehran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” on his own Truth Social network and boasted that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was an “easy target”.
Trump also highlighted the US’s contribution to Israel’s war effort, associating Washington with the country’s claim to have established air superiority over Tehran.
French President Emmanuel Macron, however, has warned that it would be the “biggest error” to seek regime change in Iran, warning that the ousting of the Iranian leaders would lead to “chaos”.
Washington has adopted a defensive posture in the conflict, according to US officials, but this has included helping Israel to shoot down incoming Iranian missiles and drones using American naval ships in the Mediterranean.
If the US were to intervene directly, it might deploy B-2 stealth bombers deployed in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities.
One such target could be the uranium enrichment facility at Fordow near the city of Qom, which is dug into a mountainside under dozens of metres of reinforced concrete.
Iran has said it will only agree to negotiate an end to the conflict and resume talks over its nuclear programme if Israeli forces halted their bombing campaign, according to diplomats.
Israel has launched waves of missiles into Iran since it began its attack on Friday. Iran has retaliated with volleys of missiles across Israel. Both sides have sustained casualties.