World
‘Overshadow Gaza crimes’: World reacts to US attacks on Iraq and Syria

The United States has conducted a wave of air strikes on Iran-aligned targets in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for an attack that killed American soldiers in Jordan.
On Saturday, Iraq said 16 people, including civilians, were killed on its soil, and a monitoring group reported 18 people were killed in Syria.
Washington has warned of more strikes to purportedly deter the Iran-backed “axis of resistance” amid Israel’s war on Gaza. In announcing the overnight attacks, US President Joe Biden said: “Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing.”
Here is how the world reacted to the US action:
Iran
“The attacks are a violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq and Syria, international law, and a clear violation of the United Nations Charter,” said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Nasser Kanaani.
“In addition to an all-out support of the US for four months of relentless and barbaric attacks by the Zionist regime against the residents of Gaza and the West Bank, and military attacks on Yemen and violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, last night’s attacks on Syria and Iraq were another adventurous action and another strategic error by the US government which will have no result but to intensify tensions and instability in the region.”
“The attacks merely support the goals of the Zionist regime. Such attacks increasingly involve the US government in the region and overshadow the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza.”
Iraq
“This aggressive strike will put security in Iraq and the region on the brink of the abyss,” the Iraqi government said in a statement, and denied Washington’s claims of coordinating the air raids with Baghdad as “false” and “aimed at misleading international public opinion”.
The presence of the US-led military coalition in the region “has become a reason for threatening security and stability in Iraq and a justification for involving Iraq in regional and international conflicts”, read the statement from Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s office.
“Iraq reiterates its refusal to let the country be an arena for settling scores,” said government spokesperson Basim Alwadi.
Yahya Rasool, the Iraqi military spokesperson, said the attacks “constitute a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, undermine the efforts of the Iraqi government, and pose a threat that could lead Iraq and the region into dire consequences”.
“The outcomes will have severe implications on the security and stability in Iraq and the surrounding region,” Rasool added.
Syria
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the strikes served to “inflame the conflict in the Middle East in an extremely dangerous way” and added to Washington’s “record of violations against Syria’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the safety of its people, proving once again that it is the main source of global instability”.
The military said: “The area targeted by the American attacks in eastern Syria is the same area where the Syrian Arab Army is fighting the remnants of the Daesh [ISIL] terrorist organisation, and this confirms that the United States and its military forces are involved and allied with this organisation, and are working to revive it as a field arm for it both in Syria and Iraq by all dirty means.”
“The aggression of the American occupation forces at dawn today has no justification other than an attempt to weaken the ability of the Syrian Arab Army and its allies in the field of fighting terrorism, but the army.”
Islamic Resistance in Iraq
The coalition of US and Israel-opposed armed groups in Iraq, which had “suspended” its attacks earlier this week, said it launched drones at a US base in Erbil.
Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed reported from Baghdad that Iraqi groups have also carried out attacks with missiles targeting the al-Tanf military base in Syria which is home to US personnel, as well as the Ain al-Assad base in western Iraq.
Hamas
“We condemn in the strongest terms the American aggression against Iraq and Syria, and consider it a dangerous escalation, an infringement on the sovereignty of the two Arab countries, and a threat to their security and the stability of the region, in service of the occupation’s expansionist agenda and covering up its horrific crimes against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” read a statement from Hamas.
“The administration of US President Biden bears responsibility for the consequences of this brutal aggression against both Iraq and Syria, which adds fuel to the fire, and we affirm that the region will not witness stability or peace except by stopping the Zionist aggression, crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing against our people in the Gaza Strip, and ending the Zionist-Nazi occupation.”
European Union
“Everybody should try to avoid that the situation becomes explosive,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
While Borrell did not address the US strikes directly, he repeated a warning that the Middle East “is a boiler that can explode”.
He pointed to the war in Gaza, violence along the Israel-Lebanon border, bombings in Iraq and Syria, and attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. “That’s why we call everybody to try to avoid an escalation.”
United Kingdom
“The UK and US are steadfast allies. We wouldn’t comment on their operations, but we support their right to respond to attacks,” a British government spokesperson said in a statement.
“We have long condemned Iran’s destabilising activity throughout the region, including its political, financial and military support to a number of militant groups.”
Poland
“Iran’s proxies have played with fire for months and years, and it’s now burning them,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters as he arrived for a meeting with his EU counterparts in Brussels.
US House speaker
Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, accused Biden of “placating” Tehran after the strikes, and said that “to promote peace, America must project strength”.
Council on American-Islamic Relations
“Instead of waging war across the Middle East, the Biden administration should demand an end to the far-right Israeli government’s ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza,” said CAIR’s National Executive Director Nihad Awad.
The US has ignored Israel’s “escalating human rights abuses”, maintained its troops in Syria, Iraq and other places “where they are not welcome”, and refused to re-enter the Iranian nuclear deal, Nihad noted.
“These latest strikes in Iraq and Syria are just further evidence of the total failure of the president’s Middle East policy. President Biden should change course to protect both American soldiers and people of the region from more violence … Justice and freedom for the Palestinian people – not more bombs – is what can build a more peaceful future for the region.”
Analysts
“I’m not surprised there has been this reprisal and retaliation by the United States,” HA Hellyer, a military analyst at the UK-based think tank Royal United Services Institute, told Al Jazeera, adding that if the US wants to de-escalate and not go to war with Iran, the key to that is Gaza.
Washington has “failed to apply any real leverage in order to bring a ceasefire to Gaza, which I think would really diminish the tensions in the region and remove the fuel for this sort of escalation taking place, which is likely to continue over the coming days and weeks and beyond”, he added.
Joshua Landis, associate professor and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told Al Jazeera that politicians in Washington are pressuring Biden for a stronger response as the US presidential election looms.
“He has to respond, but at the same time he’s made it very clear he does not want to escalate, and that means two things; he can hit Syrians, that’s easy and nobody cares about the Syrian government, but the Americans do care about the Iraqi government.”
“America does not want to get ejected from Iraq, particularly not before the elections in November. So, it wants to be strong but it doesn’t want to kill too many Iraqis.”

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Trump demands do-or-die nuclear talks with Iran. Who has the leverage?

President Donald Trump remains adamant that his administration will engage in “direct” nuclear talks with Iran on Saturday in Oman, while Tehran appears to remain equally steadfast in its insistence the negotiations will be “indirect.”
Middle East envoy Stever Witkoff is scheduled to travel to Oman, where he could potentially be meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, though the Iranian official has so far maintained the talks will be held through a third party.
While it remains unclear who will get their way regarding the format of the discussions, Iran expert and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Behnam Ben Taleblu, said this public controversy between Washington and Tehran is all a game of leverage.
“Both sides have an incentive to either overrepresent or underrepresent what is happening,” he told Fox News Digital. “These are often the negotiations before the negotiations.”
IRAN MULLS PREEMPTIVE STRIKE ON US BASE AFTER TRUMP BOMB THREATS
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office on April 9, 2025. (Getty Images)
“For the White House, the desire to be seen as having direct talks with the Islamic Republic is high,” he said, pointing to the lack of direct engagement between Washington and Tehran dating back to his first term and the regime’s deep disdain for the president, as witnessed in an apparent assassination attempt.
While the Iranian government has long held contempt for the U.S., a sentiment that has persisted for decades, Trump is “very different,” Ben Taleblu said.
The security expert highlighted the 2020 assassination of top Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the crippling effect of the U.S.-sanctioned maximum-pressure campaign and Trump’s open support for the Iranian people as the major issues that have rankled the Iranian regime.
“Trump is a very bitter pill to swallow, and I think the supreme leader of Iran once said that the shoe of Qasem Soleimani has more honor than the head of Trump,” Ben Taleblu said. “Being seen as directly negotiating with someone [like that] would be making the Islamic Republic look like a supplicant.
“The U.S. wants to be seen as having driven Iran to the negotiating table, and the Islamic Republic does not want to be seen as being driven to the negotiating table,” he added.

Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani is shown in 2016. (Press Office of Iranian Supreme Leader/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
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Tehran’s chief advantage is the fact that, despite severe U.S. sanctions and geopolitical attempts to halt its development of a nuclear weapon, it has made serious gains in its enrichment of uranium to near-weapons-grade quality, as well as with its missile program, a critical component in being able to actually fire a nuclear warhead.
It also has drastically closer ties with chief U.S. adversarial superpowers like Russia and China, whose position and involvement in countering Western attempts to disarm a nuclear Iran remains an unknown at this point.
While Iran holds significant leverage when it comes to negotiating with the Trump administration on its nuclear program, Washington has a plethora of levers it can use to either incentivize or coerce Tehran into adhering to international calls for the end of its nuclear program.
“The U.S. actually has a heck of a lot of leverage here,” Ben Taleblu said, pointing to not only more economic sanctions, including “snapback” mechanisms under the United Nations Security Council, but also military options.
Trump last month threatened to “bomb” Iran if it did not engage in nuclear talks with the U.S.
But some have questioned how long the administration will allow negotiations to persist as JCPOA-era snapback sanctions expire in October 2025.
The White House would not confirm for Fox News Digital any time restrictions it has issued to Iran, but Trump on Wednesday told reporters, “We have a little time, but we don’t have much time.”

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies analyzed where Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is located. (Foundation for Defense of Democracies)
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“The regime has its back against the wall,” Ben Taleblu said. “A military option, given what has been happening in the Middle East since Oct. 7, 2023, is an increasingly credible option against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
“And the regime is engaging, now, to delay and prevent a military option from ever materializing,” he added. “They are hoping to use talks with the Americans as a human shield against the Israelis.”
“So long as you’re talking to America, the Israelis aren’t shooting at you,” Ben Taleblu continued.
Trump this week said that it would be Israel who would take the lead on a military strike on Iran, not the U.S., should nuclear talks fail, which again could be a negotiating tactic as Israel has already demonstrated it will not hesitate to militarily engage with Iran.
“Pursuing wholesale disarmament of the Islamic Republic of Iran is incredibly risky, and it doesn’t have a great track record of succeeding,” Ben Taleblu said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talks to President Donald Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office on April 7, 2025. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The Iranian expert said the only way to actually take on the Islamic Republic would be through a “broader” and “more holistic” strategy that focuses not only on nuclear nonproliferation but removing the “Axis of Resistance,” scaling up sanctions and having a “ground game” to counter the regime through cyber, political and telecommunication strategies “for when Iranians go out into the street and protest again.”
“What the Islamic Republic would always want is to have you focus on the fire and not on the arsonist, and the arsonist is quite literally a regime that has tried to kill this president,” Ben Taleblu said.
World
US envoy Witkoff meets Putin in Russia over Ukraine war

The Kremlin says Witkoff ‘will bring something from his president to Putin’ in push for a Ukraine peace settlement.
United States President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg to discuss the war in Ukraine, according to the Kremlin.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed on Friday that Witkoff and Putin were in the Russian city.
“The painstaking work continues. Naturally, Witkoff, as a special representative of President Trump, will bring something from his president to Putin,” Peskov was quoted as saying by Russia’s TASS news agency.
“Putin will listen to it. The conversation on various aspects of the Ukrainian settlement will continue.”
Earlier on Friday, Russian state media published footage of Witkoff and Russia’s economic negotiator, Kirill Dmitriev, leaving a hotel in Saint Petersburg.
Talks to secure a ceasefire deal to end the Ukraine war have stalled amid negotiations on the conditions to end the conflict.
At the end of March, Trump said he was “very angry” and “p****d off” after Putin criticised the credibility of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s leadership.
Trump told NBC News: “If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault – which it might not be – but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia.”
Last month, Putin rejected a joint US-Ukrainian proposal for a complete and unconditional ceasefire.
While Russia and Ukraine agreed to halt attacks on energy infrastructure in March, both sides have accused each other of continuing attacks.
Mending ties
Witkoff has quickly become a key figure in discussions between Washington and Moscow as frosty tensions during former President Joe Biden’s administration have eased.
After his last meeting with Putin, Witkoff said the Russian president was a “great leader” and “not a bad guy”.
More recently, US and Russian officials held talks on Thursday in Turkiye.
Both sides said they had made progress towards normalising the work of their diplomatic missions.
That same day, Russia freed Russian American Ksenia Karelina from prison in exchange for the suspected tech smuggler Arthur Petrov.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that prisoner exchanges helped build “trust, which is much needed” between the two sides after ties deteriorated under Biden.
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