By Alexandra Sharp
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the widening scope of U.S. and Iranian strikes, Britain’s new Labour Party leader, and China denying interference in U.S. elections.
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Iranian flags flutter during an inauguration ceremony for new equipment and infrastructure at the Shahid Beheshti port in Chabahar, Iran, on Feb. 25, 2019.Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images
Iran accused U.S. forces on Friday of targeting civilian infrastructure in their latest salvo of attacks, marking a drastic escalation in ongoing fighting. Although U.S. President Donald Trump has previously threatened to widen the military’s campaign to include assaults on power plants and bridges, legal experts warn that doing so could be considered a war crime.
U.S. strikes on Friday damaged at least five highway and railway bridges, killing at least eight people and wounding around 20 others, according to Iranian state media. This would bring the total number of casualties caused by U.S. forces since fighting reignited last week to roughly 38 deaths and more than 400 injuries. Friday’s strikes appeared to be aimed at cutting off Bandar Khamir, a major port, from roads leading inland toward Tehran.
The U.S. military’s recent assault also hit a train station in Bandar Khamir, an airport in the city of Iranshahr, and a surveillance tower at Chabahar port along the Gulf of Oman. “The destruction of the tower directly degrades IRGC’s [the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s] ability to coordinate attacks on innocent civilian crew members,” U.S. Central Command wrote on X on Friday.
In response, Iranian forces launched a slew of attacks on the country’s Persian Gulf neighbors. Tehran claimed on Friday to have hit U.S. bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar as well as a U.S. radar station in Oman. It also fired at Syria for the first time reported since the conflict began, targeting what Tehran described as a U.S. special forces base in the city of al-Tanf. No casualties were reported, as both Damascus and Washington maintain that U.S. troops had vacated al-Tanf earlier this year.
Most notably, though, Iranian strikes on Friday damaged one of Kuwait’s power generation and water desalination plants. The attack sparked a fire, damaged the facility, and disrupted several electricity generation units. The Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry condemned the “heinous Iranian aggression,” claiming that it represents a “grave breach of international law.” Roughly 90 percent of Kuwait’s drinking water comes from desalination.
Striking a desalination plant marks a major escalation in the fighting that could push the White House to consider returning to its cease-fire deal. The last time that Iran hit a desalination facility in Kuwait, the United States agreed to the war’s first truce just a week later.
Trump insists that the conflict is going to plan. The United States is “winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly,” the U.S. president said on Thursday. But global markets tell a different story, with Brent crude prices rising above $86 a barrel on Friday as the Strait of Hormuz remained effectively closed.
Tehran is similarly feeling the pressure. For the first time, the Iranian Energy Ministry acknowledged U.S. “attacks on power infrastructure” on Friday, urging civilians to use less power in southern provinces that are “experiencing extreme heat.” The department did not specify which types of power facilities had been attacked.
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New party leader. Britain’s ruling Labour Party voted on Friday to install Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, to be the party’s new leader, paving the way for him to officially replace outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer. King Charles III is expected to ask Burnham to form a government on Monday. He will be the United Kingdom’s seventh premier since 2016.
Burnham will enter Downing Street during a tumultuous period for Labour. The party is still reeling from scandals surrounding former British Ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson, who was dismissed in September over his close ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Faith in liberal politics remains low after the far-right Reform UK party secured sweeping local election wins in May. Current polling has both the Labour and Conservative parties trailing five points behind Reform UK for the next general election, which must be held by late summer 2029.
But Burnham is optimistic that he can turn the party’s fortunes around. In a speech on Friday, he promised major economic reforms that will be “the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years.” These include reindustrialization, deprivatization of key utilities, and launching the country’s largest housing building program since the end of World War II.
Trump’s lingering obsession. China on Friday denied interfering in the 2020 U.S. presidential election after Trump pushed unfounded conspiracy theories claiming that the vote had been the target of meddling from Beijing. “The relevant allegations by the U.S. are entirely fabricated and aimed at vilifying China,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said. “We have no interest in interfering in U.S. elections and have never done so,” he added, saying that the White House needs to “take a long, hard look at itself” and stop making these “groundless accusations.”
Trump used a primetime address on Thursday to reinsert doubt into the security of the country’s electoral process. The U.S. president has long claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 election was rigged in favor of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden. That year, Biden won both the Electoral College and the popular vote.
The White House also published declassified information that Trump said showed, among other things, that during that election cycle, China “illegally acquired” 220 million U.S. voter files that included “names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote, and engage in other nefarious activities.”
However, such information is not confidential and is made available for purchase by many U.S. states. In addition, a U.S. intelligence assessment that was unclassified in 2021 and conducted under Trump’s then-director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe (now Trump’s CIA director), determined that China’s collection of that data was likely done to try to predict the election’s outcome. The report also concluded that no foreign actor tried to change or succeeded in changing “any technical aspect” of the 2020 vote.
Analysts have argued that Trump’s speech was less about reorienting his China policy and more about inserting doubt into the upcoming midterm elections at a time when public opinion of the Trump administration is at record lows. Democrats are leading in the vast majority of polls, and as fighting reignites in the Iran war, confidence in Republicans’ foreign-policy agenda appears to be flailing.
The oldest boy’s club. Japanese lawmakers passed legislation on Friday revising who can inherit the world’s oldest continuous hereditary monarchy. Under the new policy, only paternal-lineage men can become emperor. This could prove disastrous for the imperial family, of whom only five of its 16 adults are men.
The line of succession mandates that Emperor Naruhito be replaced by his younger brother, 60-year-old Crown Prince Fumihito, despite Princess Aiko, Naruhito’s 24-year-old daughter, being immensely popular. While the majority of Japanese citizens support allowing a woman to take the throne, far-right Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has applauded the paternal-lineage requirement, arguing that the male bloodline is “the only source of the emperor’s authority and legitimacy.”
To address concerns that male-only succession could cause the royal line to die out, Japan’s parliament voted in another policy on Friday allowing the family to adopt distant male relatives to father future heirs. The legislation also allows princesses who marry commoners to keep their imperial status. However, these measures “treat male royals as stallions and put female royals under pressure as ‘childbearing machines’ to produce male offspring,” argued Chizuko Ueno, a prominent feminist scholar.
What measure did Puerto Rico’s government announce it was taking on Thursday amid an ongoing drought on the island?
A. Water rationing for 48 hours starting on Friday in some regions
B. Importing more water from neighboring Caribbean communities
C. Increasing production at its desalination facility
D. Calling on the U.S. Congress to fund greater irrigation on the island
The United States’ “Mexican grill” has finally made it across the southern border. California-based fast-casual chain Chipotle unveiled its first restaurant in Mexico on Thursday, opening its doors in San Pedro Garza García, believed to be the wealthiest municipality in Latin America. According to Chipotle’s Mexico director Pablo de Brito, the company’s expansion plans don’t end there; over the next 14 months, the Cal-Mex chain aims to open six to eight restaurants in Monterrey before moving into Mexico City. But after rival fast-food joint Taco Bell twice failed to open stores in Mexico, it’s unclear if the locals will bite.
A. Water rationing for 48 hours starting on Friday in some regions
The U.S. government’s inept and inadequate response to natural disasters in Puerto Rico has played a role in shaping Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s politics, Jonathan Guyer writes in a new profile of the congresswoman.
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