World
‘Don’t see a major war with India, but have to be ready’: Pakistan ex-NSA
Islamabad, Pakistan – Eleven days after gunmen shot 26 people dead in the scenic valley of Baisaran in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Pahalgam, India and Pakistan stand on the brink of a military standoff.
The nuclear-armed neighbours have each announced a series of tit-for-tat steps against the other since the attack on April 22, which India has implicitly blamed Pakistan for, even as Islamabad has denied any role in the killings.
India has suspended its participation in the Indus Waters Treaty that enforces a water-sharing mechanism Pakistan depends on. Pakistan has threatened to walk away from the 1972 Simla Agreement that committed both nations to recognising a previous ceasefire line as a Line of Control (LoC) – a de-facto border – between them in Kashmir, a disputed region that they each partly control but that they both claim in its entirety. Both nations have also expelled each other’s citizens and scaled back their diplomatic missions.
Despite a ceasefire agreement being in place since 2021, the current escalation is the most serious since 2019, when India launched air strikes on Pakistani soil following an attack on Indian soldiers in Pulwama, in Indian-administered Kashmir, that killed 40 troops. In recent days, they have traded fire across the LoC.
And the region is now on edge, amid growing expectations that India might launch a military operation against Pakistan this time too.
Yet, both countries have also engaged their diplomatic partners. On Wednesday, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, urging both sides to find a path to de-escalation. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth called his Indian counterpart, Rajnath Singh, on Thursday to condemn the attack and offered “strong support” to India.
Sharif met envoys from China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, three of Pakistan’s closest allies, to seek their support, and urged the ambassadors of the two Gulf nations to “impress upon India to de-escalate and defuse tensions”.
To understand how Pakistani strategists who have worked on ties with India view what might happen next, Al Jazeera spoke with Moeed Yusuf, who served as Pakistan’s national security adviser (NSA) between May 2021 and April 2022 under former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Prior to his role as NSA, Yusuf also worked as a special adviser to Khan on matters related to national security starting in December 2019, four months after the Indian government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, revoked the special status of Indian-administered Kashmir.
Based in Lahore, Yusuf is currently the vice chancellor of a private university and has authored and edited several books on South Asia and regional security. His most recent book, Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments: US Crisis Management in South Asia, was published in 2018.
Al Jazeera: How do you assess moves made by both sides so far in the crisis?
Moeed Yusuf: India and Pakistan have for long struggled in terms of crisis management. They don’t have a bilateral crisis management mechanism, which is the fundamental concern.
The number one crisis management tool used by both sides has been the reliance on third parties, with the idea being that they would try and restrain them both and help de-escalate the crisis.
This time, I feel the problem India has run into is that they followed the old playbook, but the leader of the most important third party, the United States, didn’t show up to support India.
It appears that they have so far taken a neutral and a hands-off position, as indicated by President Donald Trump few days ago. (Trump said that he knew the leaders of both India and Pakistan, and believed that they could resolve the crisis on their own.)
Pakistan’s response is directly linked to the Indian response, and that is historically how it has been, with both countries going tit-for-tat with each other. This time too, a number of punitive steps have been announced.
The problem is that these are easy to set into motion but very difficult to reverse, even when things get better, and they may wish to do so.
Unfortunately, in every crisis between them, the retaliatory steps are becoming more and more substantive, as in this case, India has decided to hold Indus Water Treaty in abeyance, which is illegal as the treaty provides no such provision.
Al Jazeera: Do you believe a strike is imminent and if both sides are indicating preparedness for a showdown?
Yusuf: In such moments, it is impossible to say. Action from India remains plausible and possible, but the window where imminence was a real concern has passed.
What usually happens in crises is that countries pick up troop or logistics movements, or their allies inform them, or they rely on ground intelligence to determine what might happen. Sometimes, these can be misread and can lead the offensive side to see an opportunity to act where none exists or the defensive side to believe an attack may be coming when it isn’t the case.
Pakistan naturally has to show commitment to prepare for any eventuality. You don’t know what will come next, so you have to be ready.
Having said that, I don’t think we are going to see a major war, but in these circumstances, you can never predict, and one little misunderstanding or miscalculation can lead to something major.
Al Jazeera: How do you see the role of third parties such as the US, China and Gulf States in this crisis, and how would you compare it with previous instances?
Yusuf: My last book, Brokering Peace (2018) was on the third-party management in Pakistan-India context, and this is such a vital element for both as they have internalised and built it into their calculus that a third-party country will inevitably come in.
The idea is that a third-party mediator will step in, and the two nations will agree to stop because that is what they really want, instead of escalating further.
And the leader of the pack of third-party countries is the United States since the Kargil war of 1999. (Pakistani forces crossed the LoC to try to take control of strategic heights in Ladakh’s Kargil, but India eventually managed to take back the territory. Then-US President Bill Clinton is credited with helping end that conflict.)
Everybody else, including China, ultimately backs the US position, which prioritises immediate de-escalation above all else during the crisis.
This changed somewhat in the 2016 surgical strikes and 2019 Pulwama crisis when the US leaned heavily on India’s side, perhaps unwittingly even emboldening them to act in 2019.
(In 2016, Indian troops launched a cross-border “surgical strike” that New Delhi said targeted armed fighters planning to attack India, after gunmen killed 19 Indian soldiers in an attack on an army base in Uri, Indian-administered Kashmir. Three years later, Indian fighter jets bombed what New Delhi said were bases of “terrorists” in Balakot, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, after the attack on the Indian military convoy in which 40 soldiers were killed. India and Pakistan then engaged in an aerial dogfight, and an Indian pilot was captured and subsequently returned.)
However, this time, you have a president in the White House who turned around and told both Pakistan and India to figure it out themselves.
This, I think, has hurt India more than Pakistan, because for Pakistan, they had discounted the possibility of significant US support in recent years, thinking they have gotten too close to India due to their strategic relationship.
But India would have been hoping for the Americans to put their foot down and pressure Pakistan, which did not exactly materialise. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s phone call again is playing down the middle, where they are telling both the countries to get out of war.
So, what they have done has, oddly enough, still played a role in holding India back so far, since India didn’t (so far) feel as emboldened to take action as they may have during Pulwama in 2019.
Gulf countries have played a more active role than before. China, too, has made a statement of restraint.
Al Jazeera: How has Pakistan’s relationship with India evolved in recent years?
Yusuf: There has been a sea change in the relationship between the two countries. When I was in office, despite serious problems and India’s unilateral moves in Kashmir in 2019, we saw a ceasefire agreement on the Line of Control as well as back-channel talks.
We have tried to move ahead and reduce India’s incentive to destabilise Pakistan, but I think India has lost that opportunity due to its own intransigence, hubris and an ideological bent that continues to force them to demean and threaten Pakistan.
That has led to a change in Pakistan as well, where the leadership is now convinced that the policy of restraint did not deliver, and India has misused and abused Pakistan’s offers for dialogue.
The view now is that if India doesn’t want to talk, Pakistan shouldn’t be pleading either. If India does reach out, we will likely respond, but there isn’t any desperation in Pakistan at all.
This is not a good place to be for either country. I have long believed and argued that ultimately for Pakistan to get to where we want to go economically, and for India to get to where it says it wants to go regionally, it cannot happen unless both improve their relationship. For now, though, with the current Indian attitude, unfortunately, I see little hope.
Al Jazeera: Do you anticipate any direct India-Pakistan talks at any level during or after this crisis?
Yes – I don’t know when it will be, or who will it be through or with, but I think one of the key lessons Indians could probably walk away with once all this is over is that attempting to isolate Pakistan isn’t working.
Indus Water Treaty in abeyance? Simla Agreement’s potential suspension? These are major decisions, and the two countries will need to talk to sort these out, and I think at some point in future they will engage.
But I also don’t think that Pakistan will make a move towards rapprochement, as we have offered opportunities for dialogues so many times recently to no avail. As I said, the mood in Pakistan has also firmed up on this question.
Ultimately, the Indians need to basically decide if they want to talk or not. If they come forth, I think Pakistan will still respond positively to it.
*This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
World
Meta appeals landmark jury verdict that found it to blame for social media addiction for young users
Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, has appealed the verdict of a landmark social media addiction lawsuit in Los Angeles, challenging the jury’s determination that the company designed its platforms to hook young users without concern for their well-being.
Lawyers representing Meta filed a notice of appeal Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The lawyers will provide their arguments related to the appeal in subsequent court filings.
The case centered on a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to social media as a child and that it worsened her mental health struggles. The jury found that negligence by both Meta and Google-owned YouTube, which was also a defendant in the case, was a substantial factor in causing harm to the young woman, identified in court only by her initials, KGM, and her first name, Kaley.
The jury awarded her $3 million in damages and recommended an additional $3 million in punitive damages. Her lead attorney, Mark Lanier, said in a statement Friday that the legal team is expecting the appellate court to “continue the careful application of the law to this case, affirming the verdict of the trial court.”
A notice of appeal starts what can be a lengthy process. A Meta spokesperson provided a statement Friday that they also gave when the jury returned the verdict in March, saying that teen mental health is “profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app.”
José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, said in a statement Friday that YouTube plans to appeal and that “these are standard motions for this case to move forward.”
Meta and Google had each filed post-trial motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict — a routinely filed motion by defense lawyers asking a judge to toss out the jury’s verdict — and for a new trial. The trial judge, Carolyn B. Kuhl, denied those motions in early June.
Tech companies like Meta and YouTube are shielded from legal responsibility for content posted by third parties, based on Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. To get around those protections, the plaintiffs focused on the design features of the platforms like “infinite scroll,” or the endless nature of feeds on the platforms, and autoplay functions.
Questions about encroaching into content-related territory were the subject of many objections from the defendants throughout the five-week trial.
The verdict in this case came during a time of legal woes for Meta. A jury in New Mexico returned a verdict finding that Meta’s platforms harm children’s mental health and safety just one day before the California jury reached its decision. The New Mexico jury, siding with state prosecutors who brought the case, landed on a penalty of $375 million. Meta has said the company disagrees with the verdict and will also appeal in that case.
“We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement at the time of the verdicts and again on Friday.
Kaley’s case was a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, and the verdict could influence the outcome of thousands of similar lawsuits accusing social media companies of deliberately causing harm. TikTok and Snapchat parent company Snap Inc. were also initially named as defendants in the case, but each settled for undisclosed sums before the trial began.
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Israel’s leaders are publicly signaling that their country is prepared to strike Iran for a third time, while a U.S. official tells Fox News Digital that Washington remains closely coordinated with Jerusalem.
“The IDF is on high alert and prepared to resume the campaign, regain air superiority, and carry out an independent Israeli strike against Iran to eliminate threats — even for a third time,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Minister Israel Katz said Thursday at a graduation ceremony for the Israeli Air Force’s newest pilots.
“If we have to return, we will return with even greater force,” Katz added.
ISRAEL DEFENSE CHIEF WARNS STRIKES ON IRAN COULD RESUME SOON, SIGNALS CAMPAIGN NOT OVER
U.S. Central Command shared this footage in a July 8, 2026, press release about strikes against Iran. (CENTCOM)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also warned Thursday that Israel’s campaign against Iran was not finished and said Tehran would not be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon, regardless of any agreement reached with Washington.
“The war has not yet ended,” Netanyahu said at the air force ceremony. “Alongside the old challenges, new challenges are emerging. Axes are falling, and axes are rising. We are paying attention to this. We are prepared for every scenario.”
Two Israeli sources told CNN Friday that the Trump administration does not currently want Israel to participate in the latest U.S. strikes against Iran.
“Netanyahu would really want to join the U.S. strikes, but the U.S. doesn’t want Israel involved at the moment,” one of the sources told CNN.
A U.S. official denied the report, telling Fox News Digital, “This is fake news. The United States has a strong relationship with Israel, which contributed to the resounding success of Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Epic Fury. We remain in close coordination with our Israeli partners.”
Israel first launched a major campaign against Iran in June 2025, with the United States later joining the fighting by striking the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities. On Feb. 28, the two allies launched a new, coordinated military campaign against Iran.
While Israeli leaders are openly presenting the military as ready for another campaign, some Israeli officials and analysts say there is little appetite for renewed fighting unless it produces a clear strategic result.
The public warnings may overstate Israel’s desire to reenter the fighting, said Israeli analyst and journalist for Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth, Nadav Eyal.
“On the record, Israel is signaling that it is prepared and even eager to strike Iran. But off the record, sources are saying that it is anything but that,” Eyal told Fox News Digital. “The reason is clear: Any Israeli strike in Iran will lead to Iranian ballistic missile attacks against Israel.”
US CLAWS BACK KEY CONCESSION TO IRAN AFTER FRESH ATTACKS ON COMMERCIAL SHIPS IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, from left, US President Donald Trump and US Vice President JD Vance during a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025. Trump insisted Egypt and Jordan will take in Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, dismissing the countries’ refusal to accept people from the war-shattered territory. Photographer: Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Getty Images)
Eyal said the domestic political consequences could make Netanyahu reluctant to begin another round of fighting, particularly as Israel approaches another election.
“If these strikes are meant to provide meaningful, strategic change, it is something the prime minister can sell to the public,” Eyal said. “But if the intention is only to use Israel as leverage, why should Israelis again experience a couple of weeks or more of sitting in safe rooms and losing their summer vacations, children’s day camps and summer camps? That could play out badly for the prime minister politically.”
“The truth is that Israel was not really enthusiastic about another strike,” he added. “That doesn’t mean it is not going to happen. If President Trump demands that Netanyahu join, it is very hard to see the Israelis saying no. But right now, I don’t see any passion for it.”
The diplomatic outreach continued even as Trump declared that the ceasefire with Iran was over.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has asked us to continue ‘talks.’ We have agreed to do so, but the United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the Cease Fire is OVER!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
A source with knowledge of the situation told Fox News that Qatari negotiators have traveled to Iran, in coordination with the United States, to meet with Iranian officials in an effort to de-escalate the situation and create the conditions for negotiations to resume.
On Thursday, Netanyahu and Trump spoke by phone, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office, which said the two agreed to continue coordinating across several regional fronts. Trump briefed Netanyahu on American operations in the Gulf, the statement said.
NETANYAHU REJECTS REPORTS OF A RIFT WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP, SAYS THE TWO REMAIN ALIGNED ON IRAN
A satellite image shows damage at the control tower in the port of Chabahar, Iran, July 9, 2026, after the U.S. military said July 8, 2026, it launched fresh strikes on Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping. ( 2026 PLANET LABS PBC/Handout via Reuters)
The military warnings came as the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Israel had provided the United States with intelligence about what is described as a fresh Iranian plot to assassinate Trump.
The developments follow renewed attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, where U.S. naval officials said the maritime threat remained “severe.” U.S. Naval Forces Central Command reminded commercial vessels Friday that an expanded southern route through the strait remained open and that no controlling authority could require ships to pay a fee for passage.
A U.S. official told Fox News on background that Iran’s attacks against commercial vessels were “acts of terrorism” and constituted failed performance under the memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran.
“The United States is still committed to finding a resolution, and technical talks continue,” the official said. “Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon.”
Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, a former senior Israeli military intelligence officer who now heads the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said Israel had never regarded the memorandum as an adequate guarantee.
“From Israel’s perspective, the MOU was never a good deal,” Kuperwasser told Fox News Digital, speaking of the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran.
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CENTCOM shared footage of strikes against airplanes amid Iran war (U.S. Central Command on X)
“Israel should be on high alert, ready to face an Iranian attack and prepared to strike back if necessary,” he added.
For now, Israel’s leaders appear to be leaving Iran — and Washington — with little doubt that they are prepared to act. Whether the United States allows Israel to join the renewed campaign, however, could determine whether the latest confrontation remains limited or develops into another full-scale regional war.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.
Published on •Updated
Belgium’s three regions announced on Friday that they would introduce a road tax next year that foreign drivers transiting the country would also have to pay.
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The country does not currently charge drivers to use its highways and the issue of introducing some form of payment has been debated for years.
“Everyone who uses our roads must contribute fairly to their maintenance,” said the transport minister for the southern Wallonia region, François Desquesnes.
Starting on 1 May 2027 drivers will need to register their vehicle and pay the road tax, with day passes available for drivers driving across the country.
An annual pass for a zero-emission car will cost €90 and up to €125 for higher polluting vehicles.
Road cameras that catch cars that haven’t paid for a pass will incur a fine of €70.
In Belgium, the individual regions are responsible for maintaining roads and motorways.
Currently, drivers can use almost all highways toll-free but the possibility of an introducing a charge has been under discussion for several years.
The revenue would be used for the operation and maintenance of the road network.
The proposed toll still needs final approval from the regions and European authorities.
According to the chairman of the liberal-conservative MR party, the government intends to offset the new toll by lowering other taxes for Belgians.
Additional sources • AFP
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