Belarus has freed Sergey Tikhanovsky, a key dissident figure and the husband of exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, following a rare visit by a senior US official, Tikhanovskaya’s team announced on Saturday.

Tikhanovsky, a popular blogger and activist who was jailed in 2020, arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, alongside 13 other political prisoners, his wife’s team said. The release came just hours after Belarusian authorities announced that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko met with US President Donald Trump’s envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, in Minsk.

A video published on his wife’s official Telegram account showed Tikhanovsky disembarking a white minibus, with a shaved head and broad smile. He pulled Tikhanovskaya into a long embrace as their supporters applauded.

“My husband is free. It’s difficult to describe the joy in my heart,” Tikhanovskaya told reporters. But she added her team’s work is “not finished” while over 1,100 political prisoners remain behind bars in Belarus.

Tikhanovsky was jailed after announcing plans to challenge Lukashenko in the 2020 election. Following his arrest, his wife ran in his stead, rallying large crowds across the country. Official results of the election handed Lukashenko his sixth term in office but were denounced by the opposition and the West as a sham.

As unprecedented protests broke out in the aftermath of the vote, Tikhanovskaya left the country under pressure from the authorities. Her husband was later sentenced to 19 1/2 years in prison on charges of organizing mass riots.

Other prominent dissidents remain in Belarusian jails, among them Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, a human rights advocate serving a 10-year prison sentence on charges widely denounced as politically motivated. Also behind bars is Viktor Babaryka, a former banker who was widely seen in 2020 as Lukashenko’s main electoral rival, and Maria Kolesnikova, a charismatic leader of that year’s mass protests.

Released alongside Tikhanovsky was longtime Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent Ihar Karnei, the US government-funded broadcaster confirmed. Karnei, who had also worked with prominent Belarusian and Russian newspapers, had been serving a three-year service on extremism charges he rejected as a sham.

RFE/RL’s Belarusian service had been designated extremist in the country, a common label handed to anyone who criticizes Lukashenko’s government. As a result, working for it or spreading its content has become a criminal offense.

“We are deeply grateful to President Trump for securing the release of this brave journalist, who suffered at the hands of the Belarusian authorities,” the broadcaster’s CEO Stephen Capus said Saturday in a press release.

Karnei was detained several times while covering the 2020 protests. Unlike many of his colleagues, he chose to stay in Belarus despite the ensuing repression. He was arrested again in July 2023, as police raided his apartment seizing phones and computers.

Belarus also freed an Estonian national who had set up an NGO to raise funds for Belarusian refugees. According to the Estonian Foreign Ministry, Allan Roio was detained last January, and sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison on charges of establishing an extremist organization.

The streets were fairly quiet in the Iranian capital, usually a bustling metropolis of over 9 million people. Over the past few days, traffic has increased as more Iranians return to the city after fleeing Israel’s bombing during earlier days of the conflict.

Despite being the voice of a government exchanging blows with a nuclear power (and waiting on whether to expect fire from the United States), Mohajerani was relaxed. The first woman to serve as Iranian government spokesperson, she came into her role less than a year ago, appointed by President Masoud Pezeshkian last August.

She noted that Iran has endured numerous cycles of negotiations about its nuclear activities, yet none have resulted in a sustained long-term deal.

“These past years we’ve been through a painful experience twice,” Mohajerani said, pointing to US President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA agreement in 2018.

No matter how eager Trump might be to bring Iran to the negotiating table, Mohajerani said Iran does not want to be left empty-handed again. And before talks begin, Israel’s bombing must stop, she said, emphasizing a point made by multiple Iranian officials in recent days.

“This time we were in the middle of negotiations again when this attack took place,” Mohajerani said. “Therefore, as our officials have already stated, as long as there are attacks, negotiations will be meaningless. When the attacks stop, we will think about it.”

Israel’s initial, wide-ranging operation on June 13 killed some of the most powerful commanders in the Iranian military and damaged Iranian uranium enrichment sites. Since then, daily strikes have damaged its nuclear power plants, set its largest natural gas field aflame and obliterated the newsroom of one of the country’s state-run media channels.

Still, Mohajerani insists that Iran is ready for whatever the Israelis throw at them next.

“Both the government and the nation of Iran are totally robust in defense,” she said. “Our military force is completely ready to prevent such attacks from happening again, and in case the need arises to practice legitimate defense.”

“I’ve had five operations,” she said from her hospital bed. “In my abdomen area, my kidney, my liver.”

Iran’s missile-and-UAV-driven response, meanwhile, has killed 24 in Israel, wounding over 1,200 others, according to figures from the Israeli government. Iranian missiles have struck deep within Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, with one missile hitting a hospital.

Nuclear energy ‘means life to us’

At the heart of the conflict is the future of Iran’s nuclear program.

“Nuclear energy does not mean war to us,” Mohajerani said. “It means life to us. Therefore, since the subject of enrichment and the subject of life are the same path to us, not leading to war, we believe enrichment is our right.”

Nonetheless, Israeli officials have cast their bombing campaign in existential terms, going so far as to say that Iran’s nuclear program poses a threat to the entire planet.

“We act to prevent a huge threat—primarily to the existence of Israel, but also to the entire region, Europe, and the world order,” declared Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar at the site of an Iranian missile strike in Rishon Lezion.

It remains unclear whether Washington will join the fray. Trump has said he will decide whether to intervene within the next two weeks, but has already joined Israeli officials in publicly pondering the benefits of assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on June 17. “He is an easy target but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”

Mohajerani was blunt when asked about the possibility that Israel or the US might take direct aim at her country’s head of state.

“This shows that Israel does not understand the unity of the Iranian people,” Mohajerani said. “Israel better not do something for which it can’t pay the damage. The Iranian people are backing their leader.”

“We should not forget that for all of us Iranians today, Iran is a united concept, which we will certainly defend.”

A draft-dodging scandal in Taiwan allegedly involving a number of actors, influencers, and musicians has cast an unflattering spotlight on the conscript and reservist forces which could one day stand between the island and a possible invasion by China.

Taiwan’s military service regime, which runs alongside its conventional military, faces accusations of failing to prepare conscripts for an actual war – an alarming situation against a drumbeat of threats from its giant neighbor.

On Monday, authorities indicted 28 defendants. Prosecutors allege that, between 2016 and early this year, a four-person ring helped 24 healthy men dodge the draft by faking high blood pressure to gain a medical exemption, netting a total of 7.63 million Taiwanese dollars ($255,000).

At least 11 celebrities are now under investigation.

Among those indicted was the actor Darren Wang. The 34-year-old, launched to fame across the Chinese-speaking world a decade ago as a boyish heartthrob in teen romcom Our Times, was accused of paying 3.6 million Taiwanese dollars ($120,000) for a fake hypertension diagnosis.

Such organized efforts to evade conscription are largely seen as a sign of people’s apathy towards service, rather than their fear of military rough-and-tumble.

“Most of the time during the service is dedicated to miscellaneous tasks, and not actually combat-related.”

A mundane duty

Back in 1949, as the Nationalist government lost a bloody civil war against the insurgent Chinese Communist Party and fled to Taiwan, it introduced mandatory military service to the island, where eligible men would serve two years in the army or three years in the navy, air force or marines. The system, in one form or another, has been in place ever since – as have Beijing’s designs on the island, which the Communist Party claims as its own territory, to be taken by force if necessary.

But military service has long been seen as anything but heroic. Conscripts have described it as monotonous, disorganized and often irrelevant to modern warfare: a combination of indoor lectures, hours of waiting around, and outdated ceremonial drills.

US officials, not authorized to speak openly, quietly warn that Taiwan’s reserve forces remain the soft underbelly of its defense posture.

One official said millions of former conscripts exist “on paper,” but years of truncated service and minimal refresher training have left them “underprepared for modern warfare.”

While there are no official estimates for the number of illegal draft-dodgers, a tally by the Ministry of the Interior shows that, from 2021 to 2023, cases of suspected obstruction of military service have risen from 309 to 553.

“It is imperative to reform military service as quickly as possible,” said Wu Tzu-li, an associate research fellow at the INDSR. “After all, the fight ultimately comes down to the people operating the weapons and not the weaponry itself, so having solid education and training is crucial.”

Attempts at reform

Even Taiwan’s leaders have acknowledged the problem. Shortly after taking office in 2016, former President Tsai Ing-wen called for sweeping reform, as opposed to “papering over problems, wasting human resources, and operating inefficiently in so many different ways.”

In response to growing security threats from Beijing, which conducted at least three large-scale military exercises around Taiwan last year, and sent warplanes, naval vessels and coast guards close to the island on a near-daily basis – Taiwan’s government has extended training time for conscripts and introduced reforms such as more live-fire drills and an emphasis on modern tactics. As of January 2024, the minimum active-duty period was increased to one full year, up from just four months under the previous policy.

The changes’ effectiveness remains to be seen. Critics say that unless Taiwan revamps how – and what – soldiers are taught, young men will continue to view the draft as symbolic rather than strategic.

“The key is what kinds of training will be provided to the new conscripts,” said Chieh. “It’s important to not let them feel they’ve wasted one year.”

Another US official added that “Taiwan is making good progress in enhancing the realism of training for reservists, but still has work to do in updating their equipment and reforming the organization of reserve units.”

“Retraining and equipping existing reservists to operate asymmetric platforms like drones and anti-air missiles will have an outsized impact on Taiwan’s ability to deter conflict.”

It added that the new, extended one-year training period “enables conscripts to undergo systematic and comprehensive military training, including enlistment, stationing, specialization, base training, and joint exercises – equipping them with essential combat skills and a firm resolve to defend the nation.”

Korean contrast

In nearby South Korea – another place marked by long-running hostility with its nearest neighbor – military service is taken a lot more seriously, and counting down the days until major celebrities will park their careers to don military fatigues has become something of a national pastime.

Rather than damaging reputations, military service is often seen as a sign of integrity and patriotism in major stars – an impression that can enhance their careers after taking off the uniform.

Earlier this month, K-pop superstars RM and V, from the band BTS, became the latest high-profile conscripts discharged from national service. They each saluted upon their release from duty in Chuncheon city, after about 18 months of active service, to the cheers of about 200 gathered fans – some of whom traveled from Mexico, Turkey and Brazil.

The other five members of the massively popular group either have completed or will complete the mandatory service, and the band expects to reunite within the next 12 months.

Even soccer superstar Son Heung-min, who avoided conscription through an exemption after winning gold at the 2018 Asian Games with South Korea’s national team, has taken four weeks of basic military training.

For Taiwan to restore faith in conscription, military analysts say, it will need to reduce loopholes, improve instruction, and modernize training to reflect real threats – particularly as tensions with Beijing intensify. It will also, they say, need a cultural shift: one that values service not as empty symbolism, but as preparation for a possible fight.

But it depends whether the recent reforms take root.

“The fear,” said one former conscript, “is that the new system will look just like the old one – only longer.”

The US has struck three key nuclear sites in Iran, President Donald Trump said on Truth Social Saturday evening as the Iran-Israel conflict enters a second week.

The Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz sites lie at the heart of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and had previously been targeted by Israeli strikes. Here’s what we know about them.

Natanz

The nuclear complex, about 250 kilometers (150 miles) south of the capital Tehran, is considered Iran’s largest uranium enrichment facility.

Analysts say it is used to develop and assemble centrifuges for uranium enrichment, a key technology that turns uranium into nuclear fuel.

Natanz has six above-ground buildings and three underground structures, two of which can hold 50,000 centrifuges, according to the non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI).

The site was targeted in Israel’s initial attack on Iran, with satellite photos and analysis showing the strikes destroyed the above-ground part of Natanz’s Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant.

That’s a sprawling site that has been operating since 2003, and where Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60% purity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 90%.

Fordow

Much is still unknown about the full size and nature of this secretive, heavily-guarded facility, located close to the holy city of Qom and buried deep in a group of mountains. A good chunk of what we do know comes from a trove of Iranian documents stolen years ago by Israeli intelligence.

The main halls are an estimated 80 to 90 meters (around 262 to 295 feet) beneath the ground, making it very difficult to destroy the facility from air. The US is the only country with the kind of bomb required to strike that deep, Israeli officials and independent reports have previously said. However analysts have warned even those bombs might not be enough.

“Iran can convert its current stock of 60 percent enriched uranium into 233 kg of weapon-grade uranium in three weeks at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant,” enough for nine nuclear weapons, according to the nonpartisan Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).

Recent IAEA reports suggested Iran had ramped up production of enriched uranium to a level of 60% at Fordow. The facility now contains 2,700 centrifuges, according to experts and the IAEA.

Isfahan

Isfahan is in central Iran, and is home to the country’s largest nuclear research complex.

The facility was built with support from China and opened in 1984, according to the NTI. According to NTI, 3,000 scientists are employed at Isfahan, and the site is “suspected of being the center” of Iran’s nuclear program.

It “operates three small Chinese-supplied research reactors,” as well as a “conversion facility, a fuel production plant, a zirconium cladding plant, and other facilities and laboratories,” the NTI says.

The bodies of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier and two civilians killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks have been recovered from Gaza in a military hostage recovery operation.

In a special operation carried out by the Israel Security Agency (ISA) and the IDF, the bodies of civilians, Ofra Keidar and Yonatan Samerano, and soldier Shay Levinson were recovered from the Gaza Strip on Saturday, the ISA and IDF said in a joint statement Sunday.

Ofra Keidar, from the kibbutz Be’eri community, was killed by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023. The 71-year-old’s body was taken to Gaza, where it had been held since. Keidar was a wife and mother of three. Her husband was also killed in Hamas’ attack.

“On that dark Saturday Ofra went, as usual, for a walk in the fields she loved – and never returned,” her kibbutz said in a statement.

“Ofra was one of the women leading Be’eri to be the flourished kibbutz it has become, and set an example for other women while showing strength and leadership skills. She left three children and seven grandchildren.”

Samerano, 21, from Tel Aviv, was killed by Hamas militants who took his body after fleeing the Nova music festival.

Levinson, a dual German-Israeli national and tank commander, was killed in combat on October 7, the joint ISA-IDF statement said. The 19-year-old’s body was then taken to Gaza.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said: “Alongside the grief and pain, the return of their bodies provides some comfort to the families who have waited in agony, uncertainty, and doubt for 625 days.”

The forum also called for the return of the remaining 50 hostages in Gaza to be a priority as Israel continues its conflict with Iran. “Particularly against the backdrop of current military developments and the significant achievements in Iran, we want to emphasize that bringing back the remaining 50 hostages is the key to achieving complete Israeli victory,” it said.

In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his “heartfelt condolences” to the families of Keidar, Samerano and Levinson and thanked Israeli soldiers for a “successful operation.”

In a warehouse in northeast Nigeria, a nonprofit’s stocks of food to treat malnourished children and pregnant women are running low.

The organization, Action Against Hunger (ACF), is running a project to combat malnutrition that had been relying on funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to procure much-needed therapeutic food sachets. But the project was intermittently suspended, leaving ACF unable to procure enough of the nutrient-rich food during the peak season of malnutrition.

It’s one of the many urgent, lifesaving aid projects left in limbo and in need of additional resources following the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID.

But now, a group of former USAID staff has come together to connect big donors with cost-effective projects like this, which desperately need cash to carry out operations already in the pipeline.

The primary goal is “to save as many lives as possible,” said Robert Rosenbaum, a former USAID portfolio manager and one of the people spearheading the initiative, which they are calling Project Resource Optimization (PRO). “At this point, there really are people who are dying as a result of these (budget) decisions and this halting of the work.”

Rosenbaum said that thinking about cuts to American programs tackling things like malnutrition, extreme poverty and disease prevention was keeping him up at night after he lost his job earlier this year.

So, he and other laid-off USAID workers decided to do something. They began vetting projects being carried out by USAID partner organizations, which had abruptly lost their funding earlier this year.

They gradually built a spreadsheet – dubbed the Urgent & Vetted Projects list – and started matchmaking, setting up meetings between the most critical and cost-effective programs and donors who wanted to help, but didn’t know where to start.

The spreadsheet was first inspired by reach-outs from a few small family foundations seeking expert guidance on where to best put their dollars, amid the initial uncertainty surrounding US government aid cuts. But it quickly grew into something bigger.

It became clear to Rosenbaum that there was an opportunity to “expand the overall pool of private philanthropy” and bring in donations from people who might not have considered giving to international aid projects until this year.

“There have been a handful of folks who have come out of the woodwork and literally written us an email that’s like, ‘I set aside $100,000, $200,000, a million dollars… And this is exactly how I want to think about giving… So, help us figure out how to do this,’” he said.

Earlier this week, the PRO team also launched a tool for smaller donors to contribute online, crowdfunding for some of the most critical aid projects.

Now, anyone can give a one-time or monthly contribution to the team’s “Rapid Response Fund” to support vetted projects in Sudan, Haiti, Nigeria and more.

“For most of the humanitarian projects that we’ve talked to… sometime this summer, if the funding doesn’t come through, the lights will go off and it will be very hard to stand back up,” Rosenbaum said.

“Part of what we’re offering for funders is that the fixed cost of standing these projects up has already been taken on by the US government. The staff has already been hired, they’re trained, they’re in place. The commodities, in many cases, have been procured and are sitting in a warehouse,” Rosenbaum said. “There’s all these efficiencies.

“But the flip side is that the cost of shutting them down is extraordinarily high,” he added, noting that typically it takes years for local organizations to build trust with authorities, leaders and communities.

In Mali, an organization called the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA) was at risk of shutting down a project that delivers medical care to children under five, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, as well as providing mobile health clinics to internally displaced people.

“We were forced to suspend activities and reduce activities at different points,” said Carlota Ruiz, the organization’s head of grant management, adding that more than half ALIMA’s operating budget in Mali had come from USAID. “One of our main concerns in terms of navigating suspensions or project closures was the risk to our credibility and our relationships with the Ministry of Health and the communities that we work with.”

Weeks ago, the organization was facing the prospect of shutting down vital services, but now a new grant will allow ALIMA to provide 70,000 medical consultations to people in need and treat more than 5,000 children with severe acute malnutrition.

Meanwhile, in Nigeria, ACF says it is close to securing funding to keep one of its malnutrition projects going, after coordinating with the PRO team.

The funding will go towards procuring more ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF). The timing was “extremely critical,” according to an ACF staff member on the ground.

But the funding will only go towards that one project. ACF also supports programs in northern Nigeria that provide food assistance, clean water and sanitation, and support hundreds of health clinics.

“It will be very meaningful, and it will be really very useful to ensure continuity of activity and save the lives of thousands of children,” the ACF worker said of the grant about to be finalized. “But this project cannot address all the other aspects of our work.”

After the United States’ overnight strikes on Iran’s secretive nuclear program, the most important question is at least a “known unknown” – that is, what remains of it. The answer could define the region for decades to come, and be the ultimate arbiter of US President Donald Trump’s decision to embark on another conflict in the Middle East.

It is also an answer bedevilled by the elliptical and fickle nature of intelligence. On the one hand, public discussion of nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan should have left Tehran unwilling to let all of its nuclear secrets reside there. (Iran has said its program is entirely peaceful, although the UN’s nuclear watchdog reported finding uranium particles enriched up to 83% – just short of weapons grade).

If, as Israel maintains, Iran’s nuclear program has a hidden element, then surely that would not be housed in the same places where UN inspectors roam, and in the case of Fordow, over which there has been a public discussion for days of what American bombs might penetrate its deep caverns.

The raw materials needed for a nuclear bomb can be small: 20 kilograms of highly enriched uranium would suffice. The ingredients for several devices would fit into a minivan. This could be hidden anywhere in Iran. The technology needed to create a weapon is fiddlier, and requires human expertise, which Israel has been decimating over both the past 10 days, with strikes targeting key personnel, and also picking off more persistently over the past 10 years.

It is hard to imagine Iran suddenly being able to make this leap while under the intense bombardment of Israel’s air force, now with the open involvement of the US and its vast surveillance machinery too.

But this is an unknown, and Israel cannot have it both ways. If you insist Iran’s program is advanced and secretive, then there is also the risk something is happening that you are unaware of. Could Iran have assembled all the elements it needs, or even an atomic bomb, at another site, and just be waiting? Only time will tell.

The counterargument is also persuasive. Israel has been able to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists and military command as they slept in their homes – specific rooms in apartment blocks hit in the first wave of strikes on June 13. This suggests the wide and impressive penetration of vast parts of Tehran’s command structure and its most guarded secrets. No operation is perfect; it is possible Washington and Tel Aviv combined knew a lot.

It was not just the mountain fortress of Fordow that was struck, either. It is likely, as the dust clears and satellite images provide greater clarity in the battle damage assessment, that we will learn of targets being hit that we did not know about a week ago. For the opponents of Iran’s nuclear ambitions – just about everybody bar a handful of Iranian hardliners – that should provide some comfort.

But it is likely the Saturday night strikes did not take out everything – not every expert, or every piece of fissile material. The struggle will now be to chase what is left – to pursue the survivors and look for opportunities if panicked elements of the nuclear project make mistakes as they scatter or pick through the rubble.

What will remain will likely be the parts of Iran’s program which were unknown, if there are any. Tehran may decide that it would be better to reveal or progress this greatest secret only once the threat of Israeli strikes recedes. Does it make sense to rush it out now, at the height of surveillance and bombardment?

Diplomacy may – as Trump has suggested with his overnight post on Truth Social that “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!” – now re-emerge. But the face of it has changed entirely compared to a week ago. Iranian officials had hinted to the media it might be willing to give up enrichment during talks in the past week. The demands placed upon it may now center on its ballistic missile program, which US hawks have long demanded be dismantled. That is happening, it seems, at a fast rate already, through its intense use of missiles to target Israel, and as a result of Israeli strikes that claim to have taken out the majority of its launchers.

The fact that Iran’s wish list for negotiations is now significantly altered – as much of what it’s hoped to keep has been destroyed or used – reveals the challenge of this moment to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His skies are owned by a hostile air force, his nuclear program heavily damaged, and his military infrastructure and command shattered, constantly having to adapt and replace to survive. This limits his immediate, favorable options for a response. Flat-out strikes against US bases will simply augur a violent US retaliation, and may, after this much telegraphing, prove ineffective.

Iran has generally turned to asymmetrical responses, to compensate for its smaller budgets and capabilities. We may see this in the capital cities of Europe and in the Strait of Hormuz in the coming days. It needs to both display some sort of deterrent but also de-escalate, in order to survive.

But Iran’s capacity to see the longer-view, and its strategic patience, will work in its favor. There are no real electoral cycles to beset the Ayatollah’s decision-making. The Iranians have time to regroup, and respond when the heat is lower.

The United States, however, has a poor track record of success and application in the region. Last night, it gained the dubious distinction of having bombed a full cartographical sweep of nations from Syria through to Afghanistan in just 20 years. But it failed to dislodge the Assad regime of Syria, and despite years of trying were observers when last year’s sweeping changes removed one of Iran’s main regional proxies. And its longest war, in Afghanistan, ended in stark humiliation. Iraq, too, began with disputed information about weapons of mass destruction, and ended in failure after years of destruction and loss.

Iran is not Iraq and last night was not March 20, 2003, when America’s ill-fated invasion of that country began. There is no ground element to Trump’s ambition in Iran, and its goal was something widely supported by allies, and possibly within reach. But the US’ questionable track record and the hubristic atmosphere around Trump’s overwhelming use of force, should amplify alarm in the region over the unknowns to come.