What happens to higher education when institutions dedicated to critical thought increasingly align themselves with the logics of war, surveillance, and national security? Unless we mount an organized resistance, we may viscerally experience the answer to this question all too soon.

We are already watching this transformation play out in both the U.S. and Canada as universities face growing pressure to align their missions, research agendas, and pedagogical practices with the values, priorities, and imperatives of a society increasingly organized around the logic of war.

Militarized policies, values, identities, and modes of governance no longer merely creep into U.S. society. Under the Trump administration, they increasingly define it. Militarization now extends far beyond the battlefield, reshaping everyday life, public institutions, and the very meaning of citizenship. War is celebrated as a moral imperative, often wrapped in the language of religious righteousness and white Christian nationalism. Due process gives way to abductions and arbitrary detention, dissent is met with threats and repression, soldiers occupy U.S. cities, and political violence is normalized through a steady stream of incendiary rhetoric and state-sponsored spectacles that glorify force, exclusion, and domination. Democratic ideals are displaced by a culture of fear, manufactured insecurity, and the belief that the nation is besieged by enemies both within and beyond its borders — largely immigrants and people of color.

In this militarized landscape, critical thought is derided, informed judgment is replaced by ideological conformity, and institutions charged with nurturing democratic agency increasingly come under attack. This fusion of militarism, toxic masculinity, religious fundamentalism, and white nationalist politics functions as a powerful form of public pedagogy, producing the authoritarian values, identities, and modes of agency that have historically provided the cultural foundations for fascist politics.

The Dangers of the “Military-Industrial-Academic Complex”

The late U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers posed by what he called the “military-industrial-academic complex.” In an earlier draft of his famous 1961 farewell address on the military-industrial complex, Eisenhower included the word “academic,” recognizing that universities could become deeply entangled with military power, corporate interests, and state security agendas in ways that threatened their intellectual independence and democratic mission.

This warning extends to countries that increasingly live in the shadow of the U.S.’s expanding warfare state and its militarized culture. For instance, against an increasingly militarized global order, the Canadian government has unveiled an expansive “Defence Industrial Strategy” backed by 81.8 billion Canadian dollars (around 60 billion in U.S. dollars) in new defense spending in Budget 2025, including 6.6 billion Canadian dollars devoted specifically to expanding the country’s defense-industrial infrastructure. The strategy marks the largest long-term expansion of Canada’s military economy since the Second World War.

What once appeared to be limited partnerships between North American universities and defense industries has evolved into a far broader transformation of higher education itself. As Canada dramatically expands military spending through its Defence Industrial Strategy, universities are increasingly being drawn into the orbit of defense priorities. Federal initiatives encourage partnerships between universities, defense contractors, and government agencies in fields such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum computing, autonomous systems, and advanced surveillance technologies. Research funding is increasingly directed toward projects framed around national security, defense innovation, and military competitiveness. As these priorities gain influence, higher education is being reshaped by the social logics of militarization, technological control, and permanent security, altering not only what knowledge is produced but also the purposes to which it is put, raising urgent questions about the future of the university as a democratic public sphere.

Militarized knowledge production blurs the line between education and warfare, transforming universities into laboratories for the development of technologies whose ultimate purpose is often surveillance, social control, and lethal violence.

The growing use of drones and AI-driven warfare systems is not simply a military development. It signals a broader transformation in how research and knowledge are produced, funded, and valued. As universities deepen their involvement in military research, fields ranging from artificial intelligence and data analytics to robotics and cybersecurity are increasingly organized around the imperatives of surveillance, security, and warfare. AI technologies are already being deployed by state agencies to monitor migrants, journalists, activists, and political dissidents, while drones have revolutionized warfare by making it cheaper, more remote, and less accountable. Under such conditions, knowledge is not viewed primarily as a public good serving democratic life. Instead, it is increasingly organized around military imperatives of prediction, control, targeting, and domination. The result is a form of militarized knowledge production that blurs the line between education and warfare, transforming universities into laboratories for the development of technologies whose ultimate purpose is often surveillance, social control, and lethal violence.

Michael S. Sherry rightly argues that in an age in which state power is increasingly organized through militarized values and security logics, military culture now shapes not only state policy but “broad areas of national life.” As David Theo Goldberg argues, militarization no longer operates only through armies and weapons systems. It increasingly shapes culture, technology, modes of governance, and everyday life. As Goldberg observes:

The military is not just a fighting machine…. It serves and socializes. It hands down to society, as big brother might, its more or less perfected goods, from gunpowder to guns, computing to information management … In short, while militarily produced instruments might be retooled to other, broader social purposes, the military shapes pretty much the entire range of social production from commodities to culture, social goods to social theory.

The implications for higher education are profound. Militarization does not simply reshape culture, technology, and governance. It also reorganizes the production of knowledge itself, aligning university research with the imperatives of surveillance, security, and warfare while legitimating authoritarian forms of power. The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence research tied to military and surveillance applications deepens these dangers. Universities are increasingly helping to develop technologies used for predictive policing, automated warfare, mass surveillance, and forms of digital authoritarianism that blur the line between security and repression. Such developments are routinely justified in the language of innovation, efficiency, and national security, yet they raise profound ethical questions about the role of higher education in designing technologies that deepen inequality, expand state violence, erode civil liberties, and facilitate the killing of civilians, including children, in conflicts largely removed from public scrutiny.

The militarization of the university is not simply a matter of research contracts or funding priorities. It is pedagogical, cultural, and deeply political.

The militarization of the university is not simply a matter of research contracts or funding priorities. It is pedagogical, cultural, and deeply political. Universities do more than train workers; they shape civic identities, ethical sensibilities, and the capacity for democratic agency itself. When higher education embraces military partnerships and military-driven research agendas, it legitimates a worldview in which security eclipses justice, technological efficiency displaces ethical reflection, and dissent is recast as a threat rather than a democratic necessity.

How Militarization Reorganizes the Production of Knowledge

As militarization becomes woven into the fabric of political culture, universities increasingly reorganize knowledge, research priorities, and technological innovation around the assumptions of permanent conflict, geopolitical competition, and security management. In doing so, higher education normalizes the belief that militarized knowledge and military solutions should govern everyday life. Yet militarization does not merely reshape research priorities and institutional culture. It also reorganizes historical memory, civic identity, and the very terms through which democracy is understood.

Militarization also bears heavily on the production of knowledge itself. As Fintan O’Toole observes, contemporary authoritarian movements do more than expand military power; they seek to reshape historical memory and civic consciousness. Shameful histories are recast as heroic achievements, while assaults on democracy are reimagined as acts of patriotism. The Confederate rebellion is transformed from a defense of slavery into a noble cause, much as the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is increasingly celebrated by its defenders as a patriotic uprising rather than an assault on democratic institutions. Equally troubling are efforts to remake the military itself through demands that soldiers be trained for loyalty to political leaders rather than to constitutional principles. Here, power seeks not only to command institutions but also to militarize knowledge, memory, and civic identity. Universities have a crucial responsibility to resist such distortions by defending historical truth, critical inquiry, and the capacity to distinguish education from propaganda.

As Kevin Baker notes, military solutions increasingly displace diplomacy, democratic institutions, and other civic responses to social problems. Within a culture saturated by militarism, aggression is celebrated as prevention, repression is justified in the name of security, and military force is invoked to discipline dissent and erode democratic values. Under such conditions, education is organized less around the imperatives of democratic culture than around the demands of the arms industry, surveillance systems, technological acceleration, and the national security state.

These developments become even more troubling when they intersect with the ongoing marketization of higher education. At its best, higher education functions as a democratic public sphere, a place where students learn to think critically, question authority, engage history, and imagine alternative democratic futures. Yet under the pressures of neoliberalism, universities have increasingly abandoned this mission. Education is now often reduced to job training, students are treated as consumers, faculty are deskilled and casualized, and learning is defined largely in instrumental terms. Questions about how education might nurture civic courage, ethical imagination, social responsibility, and democratic agency are increasingly sidelined in a market-driven university culture.

Yet the assault on higher education is not only economic. It is also ideological and political. In recent years, a growing chorus of liberal and conservative critics has claimed that universities have lost their way, charging that the humanities and critical scholarship have corrupted higher education through ideology and activism. Under the seductive language of “reform,” “balance,” “civility,” “institutional trust,” and “neutrality,” these critics present themselves as defenders of academic integrity while advancing a profoundly reactionary project. In some cases, liberal critics go so far as to treat “social justice” as a threat to scholarship rather than asking how power, exclusion, race, gender, class, empire, and inequality have always shaped what counts as knowledge. Their calls for neutrality, which function as a cover for depoliticization, do not protect intellectual freedom; they align with a broader assault on critical thought, historical memory, and democratic culture. They are aghast at the notion put forward by Thomas Chatterton Williams that “For humanities departments [and higher education in general] to continue to matter, they must challenge the modern world rather than accommodate it.” In doing so, they obscure the far more dangerous attacks on higher education coming from the right: censorship, book bans, assaults on DEI programs, the repression of student protest, and efforts to align universities with corporate, state, and military interests.

Critical scholarship is condemned as ideological, while militarized research, donor influence, state-directed threats of defunding, and forms of ideological indoctrination are celebrated as common sense. The real danger is not that universities have become too political, but that they are being stripped of their democratic mission and transformed into institutions that normalize conformity, surveillance, militarization, and authoritarian power. Higher education is not under attack because it has been ruined by the left. On the contrary, it is under assault by the Trump administration and a broader network of far right forces precisely because it keeps alive a dangerous truth: education is not merely about credentials, careers, or conformity to the status quo. At its best, it cultivates the capacity for critical judgment, informed dissent, compassion, and democratic agency. What authoritarian movements fear most is not ideological indoctrination but an educated public capable of questioning power, holding authority accountable, and imagining a more just future.

Militarization deepens anti-democratic tendencies. Research is increasingly tied to military applications, geopolitical competition, and outside funding rather than to the public good. Universities adopt the language of security, risk management, efficiency, and competitiveness while corporate and military values increasingly shape institutional priorities. As a Simons Foundation policy briefing warns, militarization has increasingly become a “default response” to political instability and global insecurity, reinforcing a culture in which social problems are framed through the logics of surveillance, strategic competition, and military preparedness rather than diplomacy, public investment, and democratic cooperation. As Professor Catherine Lutz notes, such actions run the risk of eroding legal and moral boundaries. In such a climate, higher education loses its civic character and becomes subordinated to the interests of the warfare state and defense industries.

As universities become increasingly tied to military and security logics, they risk abandoning their civic purpose in favor of a pedagogy of permanent emergency, one that privileges surveillance, strategic competition, and technological domination over critical inquiry, civic imagination, ethical responsibility, and social solidarity. What disappears in this militarized vision of higher education is the conviction that universities should cultivate informed citizens capable of holding power accountable rather than simply servicing the imperatives of the national security state.

Equally troubling, militarization reshapes the culture of the university itself. Militarized institutions reward conformity, secrecy, technocratic thinking, and instrumental rationality. Ethical questions about violence, disposability, colonialism, and state power are pushed aside in favor of managerial efficiency and national competitiveness. Students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, settler colonialism, genocide, sexual violence, or war crimes are too often met not with dialogue but with surveillance, administrative repression, and policing.

The dominance of war-like values in both higher education and the wider civic culture prepares “civil society itself for the production of violence.”

In such instances, the university ceases to function as a space for critical engagement and becomes instead an extension of a broader authoritarian culture. As scholar John Gills notes, the dominance of war-like values in both higher education and the wider civic culture prepares “civil society itself for the production of violence.” In this way, universities risk becoming agents of militarized socialization rather than sites of democratic education. Such developments raise not only political and educational concerns but also urgent ethical questions about the kinds of institutions that universities are becoming and the values they choose to endorse.

The militarization of higher education raises a profound ethical question: What happens when universities enter into partnerships with military institutions while remaining silent about documented human rights abuses associated with those same institutions? Such silence is never politically neutral. It suggests that violations of human rights can be overlooked, rationalized, or normalized when carried out in the name of security, defense, or national interest.

This issue extends beyond universities themselves and raises broader questions about the responsibilities of democratic governments. As Canada, among other countries, deepens military cooperation with allies and expands investments in defense industries, it cannot exempt those relationships from ethical scrutiny. If credible allegations of war crimes, torture, collective punishment, or sexual violence are ignored in the name of strategic alliances or national security, democratic principles are hollowed out from within. Universities, precisely because they are charged with fostering critical inquiry and ethical judgment, have a responsibility to challenge such silences rather than reproduce them.

These ethical concerns become especially urgent when universities maintain relationships with institutions implicated in serious human rights abuses. The issue is particularly troubling in light of allegations regarding the use of sexual violence against Palestinians. Writing in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof noted that while there is no evidence that Israeli leaders explicitly order rape, United Nations investigators have reported that sexual violence has become one of Israel’s “standard operating procedures” in the mistreatment of Palestinians. Other human rights organizations have reached similarly disturbing conclusions.

Such allegations also raise broader concerns about how security regimes can be used not only against occupied populations but also against those who challenge state policies. Reuters reported that organizers of a flotilla attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza alleged that some activists detained by Israeli authorities experienced physical abuse and that at least 15 reported sexual assaults, including allegations of rape. Zeteo provided shocking and wrenching video testimonies from some of the activists, largely ignored by Western media. Whatever the final findings regarding these allegations, they underscore the need for independent scrutiny of security institutions and the dangers of granting them unquestioned legitimacy in the name of national defense. When accusations of abuse are met with silence rather than investigation, the boundaries between security, impunity, and state-sanctioned violence become increasingly blurred.

If universities claim to uphold principles of human rights, social responsibility, and ethical inquiry, they cannot selectively ignore such evidence when it implicates states or institutions with which they maintain research, military, or security partnerships. To do so risks transforming universities from spaces of critical inquiry into institutions that legitimate power while remaining silent about its abuses. At stake is more than the question of particular research contracts. It is the moral integrity of higher education itself.

These concerns are not confined to particular institutions or isolated abuses. They are symptomatic of a broader culture in which militarized values increasingly shape public life, political discourse, and social priorities. From sporting events and military recruitment in schools to popular films, social media spectacles, gun culture, and state-sponsored propaganda, aggression, domination, and war are normalized as features of everyday life.

Nowhere is this more visible than in the influence of Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who celebrates “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” and wraps militarism in the language of white Christian nationalism and religious righteousness. As Jasper Craven observes, Hegseth champions a form of “military manliness” stripped of any ethical center. Such a worldview elevates domination as a virtue, defines violence as a moral ideal, and transforms, in Craven’s words, “the Pentagon into the staging ground for an ideological religious crusade.” As these values circulate through culture and public institutions, they increasingly shape higher education itself, influencing not only what universities teach but also the forms of knowledge they produce, fund, and legitimate.

Universities cannot claim to defend democracy while simultaneously aligning themselves with industries and state policies organized for state violence, war, and imperial aggression.

At the same time, vast intellectual, scientific, and financial resources are being diverted from urgent public needs such as climate justice, public health, democratic education, and social welfare toward the expansion of military technologies and security infrastructures. In the process, the arms industry reaps enormous profits while universities increasingly risk becoming laboratories for aggression rather than institutions dedicated to civic responsibility, ethical imagination, and the common good.

Defenders of militarized partnerships insist that universities must remain pragmatic and “neutral” in securing funding and advancing national interests. But neutrality in such cases is largely a myth. Universities cannot claim to defend democracy while simultaneously aligning themselves with industries and state policies organized for state violence, war, and imperial aggression. Higher education has no legitimate ethical mandate to function as a research arm of militarized power.

Universities Must Refuse to Become Laboratories for War

The issue is not whether universities are political, but what kind of politics they embody and in whose interests they function. In an age marked by rising authoritarianism, widening inequality, climate catastrophe, and endless wars, universities cannot escape matters of power and values, and they must decide whether they will serve democracy or militarized power. Nor can educators retreat into the call for neutrality. At stake here is more than institutional policy. It is the fate of the university as a democratic institution. Few writers understood these dangers more clearly than Toni Morrison, who warned: “If the university does not take seriously and rigorously its role as a guardian of wider civic freedoms, as interrogator of more and more complex ethical problems, as servant and preserver of deeper democratic practices, then some other regime or menage of regimes will do it for us, in spite of us, and without us.”

Higher education may be one of the few public spheres left where knowledge, values, and learning can nurture radical hope, civic responsibility, informed agency, critical thinking, and substantive democracy. The struggle against the militarization of Canadian universities is therefore not merely a fight over funding priorities. It is a struggle over whether education will serve democracy or become an extension of the warfare state. Activists from groups like World Beyond War Canada and the Canadian Federation of Students are right to insist that genuine security comes not from militarism and permanent war, but from investing in education, housing, public health, and the social good.

Universities must refuse their transformation into laboratories for war, surveillance, and technological domination. At stake is whether higher education will further accommodate militarized and authoritarian power or become a crucial site of resistance, critical consciousness, and democratic possibility, one that refuses to confuse security with fear, civic responsibility with obedience, and education with the demands of war and domination. In an age when militarism increasingly shapes culture, politics, and everyday life, universities must remain among the few institutions willing to defend critical inquiry, civic responsibility, and democratic freedom against the expanding reach of the warfare state.

A man in his 40s was hospitalized with serious injuries after a brutal knife attack in Northern Ireland, as police arrested a Sudanese migrant on suspicion of attempted murder. 

The attack happened shortly after 10:30 p.m. Monday in north Belfast, according to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The victim suffered serious injuries to his face, neck, back and eyes, while police said they recovered what they believe was a kitchen knife at the scene.

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Video circulating online appeared to show members of the public confronting the attacker, including one person wielding a hurling stick. PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson praised the bystanders as "heroic," saying their intervention helped save the victim’s life, according to the BBC.

Police initially said the suspect was Somali but later corrected that he is believed to be Sudanese, describing the change as part of a "fast-time investigation." Henderson said police understand the suspect came into Northern Ireland from Dublin, Ireland and had been granted leave to remain, though he said the Home Office would provide further clarity on his status.

On Monday evening, protesters burned down a bus as tensions rose in Belfast following the gruesome stabbing, despite earlier calls from authorities for calm.

"At this stage, we have no information to suggest that this was a terrorist-related incident," Henderson said, while stressing that the investigation remains in its early stages. "However, I must stress, we are still at the early stages of our investigation," he said, according to The Sun.

Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital that the attack exposed what he described as failures in Britain’s immigration system.

"Britain’s broken border and migration system has been put into stark relief once more with this tragic — and entirely avoidable — case," Mendoza said. "This man should never ever have been in the U.K., let alone been granted ‘leave to remain.’ The Irish border is the soft underbelly for a process the British public has long since lost confidence in, as well as in those administering it politically. Nothing short of a revolution in who we allow into the U.K. and how will satisfy a people fed up with false promises about immigration change."

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The swift response from Prime Minister Keir Starmer marked a notable contrast with the case of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old who was stabbed and then handcuffed by police after his attacker accused him of making racist remarks. Starmer faced criticism from some conservatives over his response to that case.

Starmer quickly posted on X that the attack was "sickening," adding: "I have absolutely no tolerance for abhorrent scenes of violence like this on our streets." He said his thoughts were with the victim and thanked first responders, including members of the public who intervened.

The attack prompted political reaction across the U.K. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called on authorities to reveal the suspect’s identity and immigration status.

"What happened in Belfast last night is horrific. The authorities must reveal the identity and status of the attacker immediately. The public are entitled to the truth," Farage wrote on X.

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Robert Jenrick also wrote on X: "We’ve woken up to truly barbaric footage on a street in Belfast. Of a kind you’d think you’d never see in this country. For years now I’ve urged the police to spell out the basic, sober facts, as they have them, when there are horrors like this."

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said people would ask whether there had been "failings around our borders," according to GB News.

Northern Ireland’s main political parties issued a joint statement condemning the violence and urging the public not to share graphic footage of the attack.

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"There is no place in our society for this kind of brutality. Our immediate thoughts are with the victim and his family, and we hope he makes a full and complete recovery," the parties said, according to GB News.

Police said they had declared a critical incident and would increase their presence across Northern Ireland amid calls for protests. Officials urged calm and asked the public to allow the investigation to proceed.

The climate emergency is sharply increasing the risk of crop failure in regions that produce an outsized share of the world’s staple food grains, according to a report published Tuesday that warns of “serious threats to Europe, the NATO alliance, and global stability” if cooperative resilience initiatives and other mitigation strategies aren’t pursued.

The report, “Global Breadbaskets: Food System Resilience as a Strategic Imperative,” was published by the Center for Climate and Security—part of the Council on Strategic Risks, a Washington, DC-based security policy think tank—and the Woodwell Climate Research Center, an independent nonprofit located in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

“Geopolitical fragmentation, conflict, extreme weather, and global aid cuts already strain food security. Meanwhile, climate change is increasing the likelihood of crop failures in the American, European, and Asian breadbaskets, which produce most of the staple crops underpinning global food security,” the report states.

🆕 Across India, France, and Germany, in the next decade and a half, the odds of key crops failing are set to increase by between two- and six-fold. This isn't just a food story. It's also a #NATO security story.

— Council on Strategic Risks (@councilonstrategicrisks.org) 2026-06-09T07:13:30.778Z

The publication follows an April report from a pair of United Nations agencies on how extreme heat is impacting food production and food security around the planet. The new report includes a storymap that explores climate change-driven threats to wheat, rice, and maize (corn) crops in France, Germany, and India—three of the world’s “global breadbaskets.”

The analysis’ authors note that compared with 2010 threat levels, by 2040, “the risk of a given year’s crop failing is projected to grow roughly twofold for Indian wheat and German maize, roughly threefold for French wheat, roughly fourfold for French maize, and roughly sixfold for Indian rice, with sharp increases in critical producing regions.”

Climate-driven extreme heat “not only threatens crops, but also the laborers and infrastructure that translate them into food security,” the report continues. “Extreme heat is projected to reduce the suitability of 15-40% of India’s rain-fed rice-growing regions by 2050, and to reduce physical work capacity during the average growing season to as little as 40% of 2000-era levels by 2100.”

“By 2040, southwestern France will average up to 16 additional days per year above 35°C (95°F), exceeding thresholds that reduce yields, impact grain quality, and cause heat stroke,” the paper warns. “Extreme heat also threatens to damage or disable road and rail networks critical to food transportation, agricultural machinery, civil defense, and military mobilization.”

The publication also states that global breadbasket failures in Europe “could open rifts for Russian meddling, fuel instability in key partners, and elevate food production as a geopolitical lever.”

The Council on Strategic Risks operates within the transatlantic security policy community, whose work often overlaps with NATO’s interests.

“We have plenty of examples of how crop failures can contribute to political instability, from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring,” Center for Climate and Security deputy director and report lead author Tom Ellison said Tuesday in a statement. “In today’s environment, global breadbasket failures could strain NATO priorities, prompt unrest in key countries, and upend trade relationships.”

Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist and report co-author Alexandra Naegele warned that “climate change doesn’t just threaten crop yields and grain quality—it destabilizes entire food systems, from labor and livestock to food storage and transport.”

“Quantifying these climate-driven risks is an essential step toward building resilient food systems and safeguarding global food security,” she added.

The report recommends steps countries—specifically members of the European Union and NATO—can take to mitigate risks to food security, including strengthening cooperative resilience, anticipating instability and hybrid warfare, supporting strategic and vulnerable partners, coordinating trade responses, and investing in agricultural research and development.

“Amid climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, food shocks from the war in Iran, and Russian hybrid warfare, investing in a resilient food system isn’t in competition with security—it’s a key part of it,” Ellison stressed.

Monica Caparas, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and report co-author, said, “Understanding and preparing for breadbasket failures is both a national security priority and a humanitarian imperative—one that can help protect lives, reduce instability, and strengthen food resilience before a regional shock becomes a wider crisis.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran has accelerated its executions of dissidents and activists, with the true number of victims likely obscured by the regime’s internet censorship and blackout.

Ever since the January uprisings against the regime, Tehran has enforced a bloody clampdown against its opponents.

The Iran Human Rights Society has documented 784 executions so far in 2026. A representative from the organization told Fox News Digital that "these figures indicate a rapidly accelerating trend in executions since March," and explained that "in particular, the execution of political prisoners has reached a level not seen in the past 37 years."

'KILLING OFF THE COUNTRY': IRAN EXECUTES DOZENS, ARRESTS 4,000+ IN WAR CRACKDOWN

A State Department official told Fox News Digital that "we are aware of disturbing reports about the recent surge in executions in Iran." The official noted that "we strongly condemn the Iranian regime’s use of executions to punish people for exercising basic human rights, including Iranians peacefully protesting for a better life."

The official said that "for decades, Iranians have been subjected to torture and sham trials resulting in executions and severe punishments, often with coerced confessions as the only evidence presented against them."

According to information provided to Fox News Digital by the Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) on June 4, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed at least 18 prisoners between May 31 and June 1. These included 12 prisoners hanged on May 31, and an additional six prisoners executed on June 1, one of whom was said to be "hanged in public with utmost brutality."

IRAN REGIME USES WAR TO MASK 'BRUTAL' EXECUTION SURGE AGAINST POLITICAL OPPONENTS

The NCRI has counted a total of 32 executions between March 19 and June 1. These included eight members of Iranian dissident organization People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOE/MEK) and 24 participants in Iran’s January 2026 protests.

In documents provided to Fox News Digital, the NCRI said on June 7 that there was "an imminent risk of execution" for five political prisoners in the Sheiban Prison in Ahvaz, four of whom were sentenced to death because they were charged with being members of PMOI/MEK.

Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the NCRI, posted on X a call for "urgent action" from the U.N. "to prevent the execution."

Days earlier on June 2, following two other executions against January protesters, Rajavi said on X that the "clerical regime has committed another horrific crime in Iran." She called on the U.N. Security Council and European Union "to decisively condemn these criminal executions and take effective action to stop the killing of political prisoners and protesters in Iran."

The Iran Human Rights Society echoed NCRI’s account of 18 recent executions between May 31 and June 1. Their representative explained that despite the internet blackout, they receive reports from "a network of prison sources, prisoners' families, lawyers, and local contacts" and explained that "all reports are reviewed and cross-checked through multiple independent sources before publication." Though they say "internet restrictions make documentation more difficult," they stated they "continue to receive, verify, and document information."

IRAN GOES DARK AS REGIME UNLEASHES FORCE, CYBER TOOLS TO CRUSH PROTESTS

Alp Toker, the director of NetBlocks, a global internet monitor, told Fox News Digital that "internet connectivity in Iran is largely restored but the service that is available remains limited compared to the state of things before the protests and the war this year. For most users, in practice, that means international access is slow with indications of throttling and there's also increased filtering, particularly targeting messaging apps.

"It's been in this limbo state since the restoration with no significant change for better or worse," he said.

However, the Iran Human Rights Society representative noted that the actual number of executions is "almost certainly" higher than the figure they have captured. "The ruling authorities in Iran frequently carry out executions in secret and do not publicly announce many of them," the representative explained. Additionally, the representative added that "a significant number of executions, particularly in remote areas or locations with limited access to information, may remain undocumented or reach us only after a considerable delay."

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The representative also noted that the quantity of executions the Iran Human Rights Society documents "has consistently been lower than the actual number carried out."

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Dr. Mai Sato, did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on the increased executions in Iran.

On June 20th, up to 100,000 Iranian expats from both sides of the Atlantic are expected to hold a major rally in Paris to urge an end to the executions. More than 100 lawmakers, officials, former heads of state and ministers are also expected to join, according to the NCRI.

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EXCLUSIVE: Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said Ukraine has gained new leverage against Russia, arguing that Moscow’s renewed talk of negotiations comes as Kyiv has strengthened itself militarily, politically and diplomatically.

Valtonen’s comments carry particular weight because Finland is one of NATO’s newest members and now sits on the alliance’s longest border with Russia. Finland joined NATO in April 2023 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, ending decades of military nonalignment and transforming the country into a frontline state in Europe’s security posture.

"Ukraine certainly is now holding the cards," Valtonen told Fox News Digital Monday in an interview at the United Nations headquarters in New York. "They have strengthened themselves immensely over the course of the past three, four months, both militarily and politically, diplomatically. And I think this opens a great window of opportunity for actually advancing the peace talks."

UKRAINE MAKES FASTEST GAINS IN YEARS AS RUSSIA TALKS STALL, EXPLOITING CRACKS IN KREMLIN COMMAND

Her assessment comes as Reuters reported that Ukraine’s top military commander said Ukrainian forces had recaptured more than 600 square kilometers, or roughly 230 square miles, of territory so far in 2026, a shift after years of slow Russian gains. It also follows renewed diplomatic activity, including Zelenskyy’s stated willingness to halt fighting along current lines as a path to talks and Putin’s public rejection of a direct meeting for now.

Finland shares a roughly 820-mile border with Russia, making it one of the alliance’s most strategically exposed members.

Valtonen said Moscow has shown little willingness to make concessions and argued that the responsibility for ending the war remains with the Kremlin.

"So far, Russia hasn’t been willing to make any concessions, and essentially Russia could end the war today if they wanted to, because it was their war in the first place," she said. "So I’m hopeful that this could be the right time to relaunch those talks."

Peace efforts remain stalled over the same core divide that has shaped the war for years: Ukraine has called for a ceasefire and negotiations without surrendering territory, while Russia has continued to demand control over occupied Ukrainian regions. Putin said in early June there was "no point" in meeting Zelenskyy for now and repeated Moscow’s broader war aims.

Asked about U.S.-led efforts to negotiate an end to the war, Valtonen praised Washington’s role but stressed that Ukraine alone must decide whether to accept any concessions, including on territory.

"I think the U.S. involvement in this entire process has been a very good one, and it’s important that the U.S. stays engaged, because at the end of the day, it’s about freedom, it’s the future of not only Europe, but also of global peace," she said.

ZELENSKYY SAYS US WILL ONLY GUARANTEE UKRAINE'S SECURITY IF KYIV AGREES TO GIVE UP DONBAS

Valtonen said Europe also needs to be part of the process because Russia’s war directly affects the continent’s security architecture.

She said any serious negotiations would require Russia to accept a full ceasefire.

"First and foremost, we would need Russia at the table willing to end the war," Valtonen said. "And that would need to happen through a full ceasefire, because only that would open the possibility for true negotiations."

Valtonen also credited President Donald Trump with pushing European allies to increase defense spending, saying the pressure had moved the continent in the right direction after years of imbalance inside NATO.

Finland has moved aggressively to increase defense spending. Helsinki plans to raise defense spending to 3.2% of GDP by 2030, up from 2.5% in 2025, Reuters reported in April. 

WHY NATO’S DEFENSE SPENDING IMBALANCE LASTED FOR DECADES

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also praised Finland and Sweden Tuesday during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, saying the two newest NATO members had strengthened the alliance by bringing "their own defense industry" and "advanced technologies." 

He called them "a great partner" and "an extraordinary partner."

Valtonen said Finland’s approach is shaped by its own history with Moscow.

"Finland obviously has taken the Russian threat extremely seriously because we have the longest border with them," she said. "We certainly worship our status as the happiest country in the world, i.e. democracy, the rule of law and human rights, which we hold dear as values over anything that Russia could offer."

She also pointed to Finland’s experience in World War II, when the Soviet Union invaded Finland, as a reminder of why deterrence matters.

"The last time the Soviet Union, i.e. Russia, tried to invade us was during the Second World War," Valtonen said. "Happily, we were able to fend them off, but of course at the massive cost to the society."

"For us, it has been clear that if we invest in our deterrence, then that’s a signal to Russia — do not come here," she added.

On Iran, Valtonen said Finnish President Alexander Stubb’s March comments, reported by The Guardian, that the conflict was not a NATO matter should not be understood as Europe washing its hands of the crisis.

"I don’t think our president meant that this has nothing to do with European countries or NATO allies," Valtonen said. "I think what he probably meant more is that NATO obviously is not directly involved as an organization, which is true."

EX-NATO AMBASSADOR WARNS US AND ALLIES MUST 'STOP THE SNIPING' AND UNITE TO END IRAN CONFLICT

Her comments came after another weekend escalation in the Iran war, with Tehran launching missiles at Israel and Israel striking military targets in western and central Iran overnight. The flare-up unfolded as the U.S. and its allies continue efforts to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state and keep pressure on Tehran over threats to Israel and regional shipping.

The Strait of Hormuz, a critical global energy choke point, has become a central focus for Western governments after Iranian threats and restrictions on maritime traffic. Reuters reported Monday that the European Union sanctioned Iranian-linked individuals and an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy unit over threats to shipping in the strait.

"We as individual member states in Europe have definitely been helping the U.S. effort," Valtonen said. "We don’t want to see Iran as a nuclear state. We know what kind of a threat Iran has projected towards the region, especially toward Israel."

Valtonen added Finland has also joined efforts led by France and the United Kingdom to keep the Strait of Hormuz open once conditions allow for safe operations in the area.

"It’s so important that such straits are not weaponized by any country around the world," Valtonen said.

Asked whether European countries had refused U.S. requests to use bases during the Iran crisis, Valtonen said Finland has no U.S. bases to shut down but argued that most European allies have supported Washington’s requests.

"Finland has been helping the U.S. through so many ways," she said. "We don’t have any U.S. bases in Finland, so there’s nothing we can shut down."

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"But having said this, the vast majority of European countries have said yes to everything that the U.S. has asked during the past couple of months when this war effort has been ongoing, independent of the fact that, of course, we are not directly involved as countries in the war," she added.

Valtonen said that support demonstrated NATO allies’ willingness to help Washington even when the alliance itself is not formally involved.

"I think that really shows the engagement by NATO allies in this and our willingness to help when the U.S. really needs some assistance," she said.

Earlier in June, the European Union appeared to finally react to concerns raised by President Donald Trump and many European voters over illegal immigration by introducing tougher border entry rules for the 27-nation bloc.

The EU agreed on new, stricter rules regarding migration and asylum. The laws are specifically designed to ensure that illegal/undocumented migrants who enter the bloc are processed and, where necessary, quickly sent to deportation centers in countries outside the EU.

People seeking asylum will be screened for identity, security, and their health before even entering any asylum system. The border officials will now track and record non-EU citizens entering and exiting the bloc. Plus, it will use biometric data such as fingerprints and facial recognition. And all member states must now help one another and share information.

The Associated Press reported that the provisional deal struck by the EU's three main institutions is expected to go to EU lawmakers and governments, where approval is expected.

EUROPEAN NATIONS DEMAND POWER TO DEPORT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WHO COMMIT CRIMES

Alan Mendoza, founder and executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital that "The EU’s demography is changing Europe’s culture. We are now having to deal with people who are not integrating with the local customs." 

While the U.K. is not part of the EU, he said, "Britain’s efforts are behind the new EU rules." Noting the country has "not managed to have offshore migrant holding centers, which would make sure Britain is not seen as a soft touch."

Other experts say the longer countries take to fix the problem, the harder it will be to deal with. Some say it’s already too late.

While Europe’s workaday men and women have clearly seen the problems of illegal immigration for years, their leaders are only just getting the message. 

President Donald Trump told world leaders about the damage caused by a flood of undocumented migrants into Europe during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last year. "You’re destroying your countries," he said. "Europe is in serious trouble; they’ve been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody’s ever seen before."

JD VANCE'S WARNING ON EUROPE'S FUTURE SHINES SPOTLIGHT ON CONTINENT'S GROWING LIST OF PROBLEMS

Just last week, Vice President JD Vance commented on the stabbing death of the 18-year-old British man who was stabbed to death. 

In part, Vance posted, "Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit. His murder is as tragic as it is enraging. He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it."

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also made reference to the topic during a speech to commemorate D-Day in France on the weekend. "Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not," he said.

Elsewhere in the EU, Spain seems to have broken with the rest of the bloc on its new stance on undocumented immigration. The country decided to legalize half a million undocumented migrants.

"When undocumented migrants arrive, they get papers, and they get social security," Javier Negre, owner of the La Derecha Diario newspaper, told Fox News Digital. He says a lot of the push to house migrants has come via nongovernmental organizations. "NGOs had a big business, and they promoted illegal immigration," he says.

Another problem is that many undocumented migrants don’t choose to integrate into their new domicile. "They don’t have the same values," Negre said. "We import a lot of people, and some realize they can steal iPhones and wallets," he said, commenting on the rise in crimes.

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Critics of the move mostly came from the European left and NGOs. Mélissa Camara, from the French Green party, said the deal was "a historic setback" for human rights in the bloc," the Associated Press reported.

"The legalization of return hubs outside the European Union, the green light for the detention of minors, home visits inspired by ICE practices: the legal arsenal serving a xenophobic ideology is now complete," she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Cocaine production and use are at record levels worldwide. West Africa has become a major transit hub, where traffickers exploit weak states, under-resourced enforcement and high-level corruption.

- 2026/06 / article

A pair of U.S. adversaries — China and North Korea — appear to be strengthening relations, with Chinese President Xi Jinping's arrival in Pyongyang on Monday for a rare state visit.

This is Xi's first trip to North Korea in seven years, and experts say the visit is likely aimed at reasserting China’s unique influence over North Korea in exchange for providing economic and political benefits.

Xi is scheduled to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in what will be their first summit since September, when they met in Beijing after viewing a military parade alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin and other foreign leaders.

No specific agenda has been mentioned, but foreign experts predict the meeting to have a significant impact on bilateral ties and more, as both sides seek to fully restore their traditional alliance amid separate disputes with the U.S. government.

NORTH KOREA UPDATES CONSTITUTION TO REQUIRE AUTOMATIC NUCLEAR STRIKE IF KIM JONG UN ASSASSINATED: REPORT

Xi’s trip comes after his back-to-back summits with U.S. President Donald Trump and Putin in Beijing last month. Xi plans to meet Trump again for a U.S. visit in September.

China has, for years, been North Korea's economic lifeline and primary diplomatic backer. China has refrained from fully enforcing U.N. sanctions on North Korea and sent clandestine aid to support its impoverished neighbor.

This year marks 65 years since the two nations signed a mutual defense treaty.

Despite this, there have been questions about their ties in recent years, as North Korea has prioritized cooperation with Russia by supplying troops and weapons to support its war against Ukraine and received economic and military assistance from Moscow in return.

Experts warn that restoring China's exclusive influence over North Korea would give Xi leverage with Trump, who has repeatedly expressed his wish to restart diplomacy with Kim.

Analysts said Xi would likely offer Kim economic aid packages such as shipments of rice and fertilizers, a resumption of Chinese group tourism to North Korea and joint economic projects.

Xi may also avoid the issue of denuclearization of North Korea, which wants to achieve international recognition as a nuclear weapons state, as a way to call for lifting of U.N. sanctions on North Korea, according to experts.

After last month’s summit between Trump and Xi, the U.S. government said the two leaders affirmed their shared goal to denuclearize North Korea.

But China only said the leaders spoke about the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. Kim’s sister and senior official Kim Yo Jong dismissed the readout of the meeting as "false information."

NORTH KOREAN DICTATOR SAYS GOVERNMENT WILL KEEP CEMENTING NATION'S 'IRREVERSIBLE STATUS AS A NUCLEAR POWER'

Last week, Kim unveiled a new plant to produce nuclear ingredients and pledged to bolster the country’s nuclear forces "at an exponential rate." He also said he is seeking to speed up efforts to build a nuclear-armed navy.

On Sunday, Kim Yo Jong described a U.S. plan for the denuclearization of North Korea as an "escapist and anachronistic dream."

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Kim Jong Un has dismissed U.S. and South Korean offers for talks as he focuses on enlarging and modernizing his nuclear arsenal. The North Korean leader in September urged the U.S. to withdraw its demand for North Korea to denuclearize as a precondition for resuming diplomacy.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes on sites it described as Hezbollah command centers in Beirut's southern suburbs Sunday, hours after Israeli officials said Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel. Hezbollah did not immediately claim responsibility.

The escalation came days after the U.S., Israel and Lebanon announced a renewed conditional ceasefire framework requiring Hezbollah to halt fire and withdraw from parts of southern Lebanon. It also followed the release of IDF footage that Israel said showed troops dismantling a Hezbollah explosives facility, where an outside expert said components appeared consistent with anti-personnel shrapnel devices designed to wound or kill people on foot.

The strikes mark a major cross-border escalation days after the U.S., Israel and Lebanon announced a renewed conditional ceasefire framework requiring Hezbollah to halt fire and withdraw from parts of southern Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced the military action was direct retaliation for the group's violation earlier in the day.

HEZBOLLAH FIRES BARRAGE OF ROCKETS INTO ISRAEL AFTER IDF TARGETS HEZBOLLAH COMMAND CENTERS IN BEIRUT

Concurrently, footage released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) showed troops locating and dismantling a hidden, booby-trapped explosives warehouse.

The multipurpose assembly hub appeared to contain materials that could be used in makeshift shrapnel and propane tanks to create a distributed, lethal network.

Nick Reese, an adjunct professor at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs and a former U.S. national security adviser, told Fox News Digital that the captured weapons cache suggests a deliberate emphasis on personnel casualties, which could be military or civilian targets.

"Given the current situation, they probably targeted more military personnel. Shrapnel bombs are intended to hurt and kill people on foot," Reese said.

"The video cuts between the IDF entering the building and showing the contents. It's at this moment that they probably cleared any booby traps," Reese added. "It would be standard practice to look for and disable any booby traps in a facility like this before going inside and before filming anything."

"It's possible the booby traps could be using shrapnel methods, but I can't see evidence of that in the video. It shows what appears to be a shrapnel bomb, but it is not hidden so likely not a booby trap unless the IDF disarmed it off camera," he said.

HEZBOLLAH ‘HUMAN SHIELD’ STRATEGY BEHIND LEBANON AMBUSH, BOMB DETONATION - MACRON DRAWN IN

Among the items found in the raid was a container filled with nails and other sharp objects, which Reese noted are specific indicators of anti-personnel targeting.

"This video shows what appears to be a container with nails or other sharp implements in it," Reese noted. "This is likely for creating shrapnel bombs intended to kill, wound, and maim targets."

"Such devices are both effective and cause significant fear among the population, which was likely the intent," Reese continued. "The method is not particularly sophisticated but shows that they were targeting humans, not simply hardware or infrastructure."

"Making shrapnel bombs also tends to be cheap, easily concealed, and effective, especially against personnel. These types of bombs would likely have been in significant use."

"The video shows a variety of materials that could have been used to create bombs, from makeshift shrapnel to what appears to be a propane tank," Reese explained.

"These components would be used for very different purposes, so the location seems to have been a central general-purpose explosives-making facility."

"Propane tanks would be used for larger targets like tanks or buildings, while shrapnel would be used against infantry or in public places," Reese said.

US, ISRAEL ANNOUNCE TARGETED KILLINGS OF TERROR LEADERS IN SYRIA AND LEBANON

The dismantling of the factory follows a high-profile decapitation strike against the leadership running these hidden networks.

The IDF announced Friday that an airstrike in Lebanon killed Hezbollah’s chief explosives engineer, Abed Harb, the commander of Hezbollah’s engineering unit, after he "attempted to harm" Israeli soldiers.

The military said Harb was a veteran commander responsible for "numerous attacks against IDF soldiers" over the decades.

When considering the expertise required to manage such operations, Reese observed: "Over a 20-year career, this is difficult to say. Given Iran's well-known funding and support to Hezbollah and its experience fighting the Israelis in multiple conflicts, he likely had a mix of internal and external training combined with combat experience."

"Harb was targeted as part of an effort to disrupt Hezbollah's war-making infrastructure and limit its ability to continue to plan and execute large bombing operations against the IDF and civilian targets."

"The loss of Abed Harb by Hezbollah is not just a loss of leadership but of institutional knowledge," Reese added.

"His two decades of battlefield experience were significant to Hezbollah not only because of his bomb-making abilities but because of how he understood the IDF, Hezbollah, and the junior ranks.

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"As a member of Hezbollah since 2006, Harb likely had significant skills in making and disguising bombs over a 20-year career, which will be a blow to Hezbollah's operational capabilities and infrastructure," Reese said.

New details from Iran’s top diplomat about the strike that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei provide some of the clearest evidence yet of the precision and strategy behind the joint U.S.-Israeli operation that launched Operation Epic Fury, counterterrorism experts said Sunday.

The account, revealed by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in a new television interview, also highlights what analysts describe as a defining feature of President Donald Trump’s national security doctrine: using a decapitation strike against a hostile regime while simultaneously creating an off-ramp to end the conflict.

"Well, the building we were sitting in was targeted, but the wing we were in remained intact while the other wing of the building was destroyed," Araghchi said in an interview that aired June 4 on the Lebanon-based, Hezbollah-backed Al Mayadeen television network.

While Araghchi survived the Feb. 28 strike because he was in a different wing of Khamenei's compound when the attack occurred, he went on to detail how Khamenei was in his office and how others survived.

BEFORE-AND-AFTER SATELLITE IMAGERY OFFERS A RARE LOOK AT DAMAGE INSIDE IRAN

Reviewing the original segment, counterterrorism expert Dr. Omar Mohammed told Fox News Digital that Araghchi’s account confirms the operation targeted a specific section of the complex rather than flattening the entire site.

"In the Arabic version, Araghchi says he was in a different wing of the compound, briefing another official, and his wing survived while the leader’s office was destroyed," Mohammed explained.

Araghchi also told the interviewer that he had an appointment that day with an official at the compound regarding the Geneva negotiations and that, based on the usual workflow, Khamenei "had to be present in his office."

Mohammed, director of the Antisemitism Research Initiative at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, added that if Araghchi’s account is accurate, this was Iran's glaring acknowledgment of U.S. strategic capabilities.

"They did not flatten a building; they took one wing and left the one next to it standing. That is President Trump’s whole doctrine in a single strike — he does not want a war of occupation, he wants to show the United States can reach the center of a hostile regime with precision and then offer it a way out," Mohammed said.

DOZENS OF TOP IRANIAN REGIME OFFICIALS, SUPREME LEADER KILLED IN ISRAELI STRIKES

The daylight strike on elder Khamenei’s compound was carried out by Israeli jets targeting the site with 30 precision munitions alongside Sparrow air-launched ballistic missiles.

Military officials confirmed that a precise strike sequence killed Khamenei, 86, alongside Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh, IRGC Commander Mohammed Pakpour and multiple top security leaders.

Trump confirmed U.S. involvement in Khamenei’s killing in a post on social media at the time.

"He was unable to avoid our intelligence and highly sophisticated tracking systems, and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he or the other leaders killed alongside him could do," the president wrote.

"Iran was handed the clearest message an adversary can get — we can reach your leader in his own office, and here is the off-ramp," Mohammed noted. "A rational state takes the exit. Tehran did the opposite. It fired on Israel, killed a civilian in Bahrain, struck Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and closed the Strait of Hormuz, setting off a global energy crisis. The surgical strike was American. The months-long war that followed was Iran's choice."

Following the leadership transition, Ali Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, became Iran's new supreme leader.

IRAN’S NEW SUPREME LEADER IS ‘HIS FATHER ON STEROIDS,’ EXPERTS WARN OF HARDLINE RULE

He has since been involved in back-channel discussions with the U.S. while maintaining a confrontational public stance.

"In Arabic, Araghchi calls the new leader ‘the young Khamenei in place of the elderly Khamenei.’ That is the language of a monarchy, not a republic of clerics," Mohammed observed. "They are rewriting the theology on air to fit a son who lacks the religious rank, who was wounded in the same strike and who then vanished for weeks. A revolution that came to power by ending a monarchy is handing the throne from father to son."

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"The real story is not that Iran is strong," Mohammed continued. "It was shown the precision of American power and the door was held open, and it chose to widen the war instead."

A suspected Hamas terrorist, reportedly granted asylum a year from the Gaza war, was arrested by Greek police for allegedly plotting an attack on an Israeli cruise line.

The Gaza man, 37, was arrested on the Greek island of Crete on Sunday for his alleged ties to one of four suspected Hamas terrorists previously arrested in Cyprus, having traveled with him to Malaysia, where they allegedly received training in making explosives from commercially available chemical agents.

The Israeli cruise ship MS Crown Iris was the believed target of the attack before it was scheduled to arrive in Crete on Tuesday. Police did not publicly identify the man or name a target in their initial statement.

Searches in homes in both Crete and the Greek capital, Athens, turned up a number of mobile phones, a laptop, external hard drives and bank cards, The Associated Press reported.

3 ALLEGED HAMAS MEMBERS ACCUSED OF PLOTTING AGAINST JEWISH INSTITUTIONS IN GERMANY

The suspect, an electrician who has been reportedly living in Crete for the past year and working at a hotel there after being granted asylum, will appear before a magistrate later Sunday.

The suspected terrorist had placed an online order for what police said were "chemical agents" that could be used in the manufacture of explosives, according to the report.

State broadcaster ERT, cited by Israeli and Greek media, reported that police also found laboratory equipment.

TWO CONVICTED OF TERRORISM IN DENMARK FOR GRENADE ATTACK NEAR ISRAELI EMBASSY

The case appears to be part of a broader regional counterterrorism probe. Cypriot authorities arrested two Palestinians on May 22 after intelligence led investigators to materials in two residences that police said could be used to manufacture explosives. Two more Palestinian men were detained May 29 as part of the same investigation, according to Greek police.

The Crown Iris has become a recurring flashpoint at Greek ports amid anger over the war in Gaza. Protesters gathered near the ship when it docked in Piraeus on Wednesday, June 3, and demonstrations against the vessel have followed it at Greek ports since last year.

Protesters allege that Mano Maritime, the owner of the MS Crown Iris, is profiting from the Hamas-Israel war by selling tourist services to Israel Defense Forces soldiers during breaks from active duty.

In July 2025, Greek police used tear gas and made arrests as demonstrators tried to block the ship at Agios Nikolaos on Crete.

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The investigation remains ongoing, and authorities have not announced formal charges against the suspect.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Idaho resident Aaron Hutchings arrived at a Pakistani brick factory in January. The devout Christian told Fox News Digital that he was shocked to see children turning bricks under the hot sun to work off the debts that their families had incurred, sometimes over the course of generations.

Within hours of his arrival, Hutchings paid off the debts for two enslaved Christian families and escorted them to freedom, breaking the "curse that they’ve had for hundreds of years."

There are up to one million Christians working in slave and bonded labor in Pakistan, according to Emma Hall, a persecution researcher working with charity Open Doors U.K. and Ireland, told Fox News Digital. This could comprise as much as 30% of Pakistani Christians, counted at 3.3 million in the 2023 census and accounting for 1.37 percent of the population.

WATCHDOG HIGHLIGHTS NATIONS WHERE CHRISTIANS FACE PERSECUTION AROUND THE GLOBE

Hall noted that "extreme poverty drives desperate families to accept advance loans (peshgri) for emergency and basic needs, trapping them in cycles of debt bondage where repayment systems are structured in ways that make exit extremely difficult."

Emmanuel Hernandez said he was shocked when he first heard that Christians in Pakistan were living in debt-based enslavement in Pakistan’s brick-making industry. After traveling to Pakistan to meet the woman who would later become his wife, Hernandez witnessed bonded laborers at a brick factory for the first time.

"Never in my life have I seen such hopelessness," he told Fox News Digital. "At that moment, I committed myself to rescuing one family a year for the rest of my life."

In January 2025, Hernandez started the nonprofit Project Jubilee. He says that it is "by the grace of God" that people have already donated enough through the nonprofit to save 300 Pakistanis from slavery.

GRAHAM FAMILY RESPONDS TO GLOBAL CRACKDOWN ON CHRISTIANS WITH $1.3M DEFENSE FUND AND URGENT CALL TO ACTION

Though Project Jubilee will save any bonded slave, regardless of race or faith, Hernandez said that "98% of the people we rescue are Christians, and that’s because they’re second-class citizens" in their country.

The average cost to help one family is about $8,500, Hernandez said, because Project Jubilee recognizes that slaves needed more than debt relief to escape the cycle of bonded labor.

"Our goal is for them to succeed in life and make sure that they never go back," he explained. To accomplish this, Hernandez and his team pay lawyers to take care of all applicable paperwork, and help each family with two months of rent and food. They also get families in touch with a local minister, pay for children to attend school and purchase every family a tuk tuk, a motorcycle taxi, which they can use to create income.

He said that in most cases, factory owners are grudgingly accepting of letting slaves go after their debts are paid off. But in some cases, he says owners have put a cap on the number of families Hernandez’s group can free in a month, or told them that they’re "never allowed to come back again."

AFRICA’S CHRISTIAN CRISIS: HOW 2025’S DEADLY ATTACKS FINALLY DREW GLOBAL ATTENTION AFTER TRUMP’S INTERVENTION

Hutchings found Hernandez’s online profile in late 2025 and messaged him, asking to be part of his effort. Retired from the IT world, Hutchings said he is "just a normal guy who wanted to do something…to help people."

After a short conversation over the phone, Hernandez invited Hutchings to come along to a trip to Pakistan in January. Hutchings agreed. It was during this visit that Hutchings freed two families and reported he "just got hooked." He admits that the process is highly emotional. "It changes an entire family’s future for generations," he explained.

Hutchings said that it is especially impactful to witness the change that freedom brings to children. "We get to ask them, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?" Hutchings said. "They probably haven’t even really thought about that. They’re [thinking] ‘I’m going to be a brick worker for the rest of my life, just like my parents.’"

Hutchings started his own nonprofit, Intentional Faith Foundation, which he now uses to collect donations from people who want to help free more slaves.

NIGERIA NAMED EPICENTER OF GLOBAL KILLINGS OF CHRISTIANS OVER FAITH IN 2025, REPORT SAYS

Just months after his first journey, Hutchings returned to Pakistan in May to free an additional ten families. After video of his visit went viral, Hutchings said that his nonprofit raised enough funds to save another family from enslavement.

The practice of bonded slavery was outlawed formally in Pakistan in 1992, Hall says, but "enforcement remains weak." Discrimination extends beyond the bonded labor environment, with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noting in 2025 that there were "recent and escalating attacks against religious minorities" in Pakistan, including Christians.

During his recent visit, Hutchings learned that securing housing was difficult, with many landlords refusing to rent to Christians. Eventually, a Pakistani Christian group working with families was able to find housing and jobs for parents, and located a teacher for the children who were largely illiterate.

In a 2023 report, Pakistan's National Commission for Human Rights released a series of recommendations for diminishing the pain that bonded labor brings to approximately three million Pakistanis. In her introduction, the group's chairperson stated, "It is deeply appalling that in the 21st century, slavery persists in the form of bonded labor."

Among its recommendations are forbidding children from laboring in brick kilns, helping laborers access justice and creating unions for collective representation. They suggest registering all brick kilns, increasing the use of automated machinery, and encouraging brick purchasers to buy bricks from kilns "that provide a safe and decent working environment."

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Representatives of the Pakistani government did not respond to Fox News Digital's questions about the enforcement of laws against bonded labor, or about the treatment of Pakistani Christians. Neither Hutchings nor Hernandez reported having complications with the Pakistani government when working to free brick kiln laborers.

For Hutchings, the work has been transformative. "Looking back, it is hard to see any of it as random. I believe God's hand was in it from the beginning, and even though we were doing all of this to show Jesus' love towards these people, we ended up receiving more than we gave."

This is part six of a series examining the challenges confronting the NATO alliance.

As President Donald Trump presses NATO allies to shoulder more of Europe's defense burden, countries closest to Russia are moving fastest — while some of Western Europe's biggest economies face growing pressure to catch up. 

Retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former deputy director for strategy, policy and plans at U.S. European Command, said the shift is already visible across the alliance.

"Europe is clearly stepping up, but they're stepping up by geographic variation," Montgomery told Fox News Digital.

"If you ask me who's doing the most, the Eastern Europeans are clearly."

RUSSIAN DRONES TEST NATO'S ARTICLE 5 DEFENSE GUARANTEE AHEAD OF FRIDAY SANCTIONS DEADLINE

Montgomery pointed to the Baltic states, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria as countries moving aggressively to strengthen deterrence against Russia.

His assessment comes as NATO allies work toward a new defense spending benchmark agreed at the 2025 summit in The Hague, which calls on members to invest 5% of GDP in defense and security-related spending by 2035, including 3.5% for core defense requirements and 1.5% for defense-related infrastructure and security investments.

John Deni, a research professor at the U.S. Army War College, said the trend shouldn't be surprising. 

"Given the threat of Russia, allies in the East are acquiring capabilities more quickly, and they're spending even more than allies in the West," Deni told Fox News Digital. "This shouldn't surprise us because they're the ones closest to the threat."

Deni noted that many eastern allies are rapidly purchasing equipment already available on the market rather than waiting years for domestic defense programs to mature.

UK, GERMAN DEFENSE OFFICIALS DEFEND MILITARY BUILDUP UNDER RUSSIAN THREATS

The transformation is visible across NATO's eastern and northern flanks. Poland has become one of the alliance's largest military spenders, Romania is increasing defense investments, and Finland and Sweden have added advanced military capabilities to NATO following their accession.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised Finland and Sweden Thursday at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, using them as examples of allies strengthening the alliance.

"Sweden and Finland have actually contributed because they brought their own defense industry, their own advanced technology," Rubio said. "They have been great partners." 

Romanian Foreign Minister Oana-Silvia Ţoiu echoed that message in an interview with Fox News Digital following an emergency U.N. Security Council session convened after a Russian drone strike injured civilians in the Romanian city of Galați.

"We do agree with President Trump on the need to increase budgets," Ţoiu said.

Ţoiu said Romania raised defense spending to 2% of GDP during Trump's previous term and plans to allocate "an average of 3.4 percent" next year through military procurement and strategic infrastructure investments.

POLAND SEEKS ANSWERS AFTER PENTAGON SCRAPS PLANNED US ARMORED BRIGADE ROTATION

"We have launched initiatives that are directed at the eastern flank because it is increasingly more clear that that needs to be protected," she said.

She argued that Romania's role extends beyond national defense.

"We need better deterrence, better defense capabilities there in order to ensure our responsibility in protecting not just the Romanian border, which is the longest border to the war, but also it is in the same time a European border and the border of the Allied territory," Ţoiu said.

For frontline states, the urgency is driven by geography as much as politics. Romania shares a border with Ukraine and repeatedly has dealt with Russian drones entering its airspace. Poland has become one of NATO's top military spenders, while the Baltic states are racing toward defense expenditures approaching 5% of GDP.

Montgomery said the eastern flank's urgency contrasts sharply with the pace in much of Western Europe.

Among the continent's five largest economies, and despite a slight decrease in military spending in 2025, the U.K. remains the largest investor relative to GDP, with 2.4%, trailed by Germany (2.3%), Spain (2.1%), France (2%) and Italy (1.9%), according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

WHY NATO’S DEFENSE SPENDING IMBALANCE LASTED FOR DECADES

"The Germans are the one country, I think, with a large economy that is starting to make the right kind of investments."

Germany, he argued, could become the backbone of Europe's future defense industrial base.

"Germany developing a large, impressive defense industrial base is good for NATO, it's good for Western security, and it's even good for our primes," Montgomery said.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has embraced higher defense spending and backed NATO's new spending goals, positioning Berlin as a potential hub for Europe's future defense industrial base as allies seek to reduce long-term dependence on the United States.

But despite rising defense budgets, experts warn Europe remains heavily dependent on American military capabilities.

Barak Seener, a senior fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, said Europe still relies on the United States for many of the systems required to fight a modern war.

NATO CHIEF WARNS EUROPE CAN’T DEFEND ITSELF WITHOUT US AS TENSIONS RISE OVER GREENLAND

"Europe is heavily dependent on NATO for its strategic airlift and sea lift, its air-to-air refueling, its cyber capabilities, its space assets, its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance," Seener said.

Without those capabilities, he warned, European forces would struggle to maintain situational awareness during a major conflict.

Montgomery said Europe faces three major challenges: expanding military capacity, rebuilding its defense industrial base and developing high-end support capabilities that have long been provided by the United States.

PENTAGON CUTS BRIGADE COMBAT TEAMS IN EUROPE AS TRUMP PRESSURES NATO ON SPENDING

"When you are freeloading for 30 years, you create enormous deficits in terms of people, equipment, technology and know-how," he said.

"The primary forces to defend Europe should be European," he said. "The United States should provide additional forces that allow maneuver and offensive operations."

Montgomery also criticized reported Pentagon deliberations over delaying long-range strike deployments to Germany and reconsidering future Tomahawk missile sales, arguing the systems are critical for deterring Russia.

"The goal here is not to fight Russia in the Baltics or in Poland. The idea here is we want to deter Russia from even trying to attack."

Looking ahead, Montgomery remains optimistic about NATO's future.

Montgomery predicted Europe will continue increasing defense spending and expanding its defense industrial base, while the alliance benefits from steadier transatlantic relations.

"I think you'll have a U.S. president that probably doesn't provoke the Europeans as much. You'll have Europe that's investing more," he said.

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He also predicted NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte would be remembered for helping hold the alliance together through a period of significant change.

"I think five years from now, NATO will be stronger," he said. "And I hope we have Ukraine in there."

Peruvians head to the polls in a pivotal presidential runoff June 7 in an election that could reshape not only the country’s future but also the balance of power across Latin America.

Two candidates are vying to become the country's ninth president in just 10 years. Conservative candidate Keiko Fujimori is campaigning on law and order, free-market policies and closer ties with the United States, while left-wing challenger Roberto Sánchez represents a political movement that many see as a continuation of the leftist currents that have challenged U.S. interests in the region.

José Ignacio Beteta, executive director of Asociación de Contribuyentes, a think tank in Peru, told Fox News Digital, "Peru’s June 7 runoff carries consequences well beyond its borders. When analyzed against the current U.S. National Security Strategy, this election will determine whether Peru consolidates its alignment as a U.S. partner or devolves into deeper geopolitical contention. Peru’s institutional weakness has already allowed China to expand into strategic sectors."

MEET ‘CHINA’S MAN IN LIMA’ WHO JETTED OVER TO US TO COLLECT TRAINS DONATED BY BIDEN ADMIN

Beteta added, "Meanwhile, the vote is seen as a choice between a return to freer and more competitive economic and security policies with Fujimori and a second attempt at left-wing governance with Sanchez, a binary that mirrors South America’s broader ideological fractures."

The election follows years of political instability in Peru, a country that has seen multiple presidents removed from office over the past decade and remains deeply divided between urban and rural constituencies.

Sunday’s election's outcome is expected to be very close, with the possibility of a final result not being known for days, according to the Associated Press. 

For Washington, Peru’s election represents more than a domestic political contest. It is another test of the broader political direction of Latin America. Over the past several years, several countries in the region have experienced electoral shifts toward center-right or conservative governments, including Argentina under Javier Milei and Ecuador under Daniel Noboa who are all more friendly to Washington.

A Fujimori victory would reinforce that trend and could position Peru alongside a growing bloc of governments favoring tougher approaches to crime, stronger ties with the United States and market-oriented economic policies.

Presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori told Fox News Digital that if she wins, "My government's foreign policy will be based on a very clear premise: defending Peru's interests. Specifically, regarding the United States, my government will seek a relationship of cooperation, mutual respect and investment promotion. We welcome the Trump administration's renewed perspective on Latin America and, especially, on Peru, which occupies a strategic geopolitical position in the region."

Fujimori continued: "We want to seize this opportunity by generating greater stability, legal certainty, and confidence for investment. Peru must always be a country open to the world, committed to freedom, free competition, and the free market. Our goal is to lay the groundwork so that investors from the United States and around the world find in Peru a reliable, stable, and attractive country in which to invest, produce, and create jobs."

Fox News Digital reached out to Sánchez’ campaign but did not get a response.

ALLIANCE WITH US ‘DISMANTLED’ BY LEFTIST PETRO REGIME, COLOMBIA’S FORMER DEFENSE MINISTER SAYS

Peruvian analyst and legal expert Lucas Ghersi told Fox News Digital, "Roberto Sánchez represents a rather radical left. His platform includes nationalizations and expropriations, and he is close to Evo Morales and Nicolás Maduro. This election is highly polarizing Peruvian society."

Ghersi continued, "If Keiko Fujimori wins, she would have a good relationship with the United States. She is a reasonable person who defends the constitutional framework and the rule of law, and she has ties to the United States because she has done academic work at Florida International University (FIU).

"Roberto Sánchez, on the other hand, would create tension in the relationship with the United States. During his campaign and in the presidential debate, he bitterly criticized Peru's purchase of F-16 jets from the United States. He said that Peru shouldn't buy from the United States and should instead use that money for health or education. He also has ties to illegal mining and has been accused of drug trafficking. This could create tensions in the relationship with the United States."

TRUMP LOOMS LARGE AS BIDEN SET TO MEET CHINA'S XI DURING LATIN AMERICA SUMMITS

Ghersi concluded, "Peru is a very strategic country and has been the focus of competition between the United States and China. Peru has one of the largest proven copper reserves and is a major gold producer. Therefore, both China and the United States are vying for influence in Peru, and China has been promoting mega-investment projects there, such as a mega-port that is already operational. In response, the United States offered to renovate the Peruvian Navy's base and invest in large port projects."

A Fujimori victory would likely be interpreted in Washington as a continuation of the recent trend toward center-right governance in parts of Latin America. Fujimori has campaigned on restoring public security, strengthening economic growth, and maintaining Peru’s market-oriented model. Her supporters argue that these policies could encourage greater foreign investment and closer cooperation with the United States on security and economic issues.

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A Sánchez victory would present a different scenario. Although he has recently moderated portions of his platform, emphasizing respect for private property, free trade agreements and macroeconomic stability, questions remain about how his administration would approach relations with Washington and regional left-wing movements.

The next Peruvian president will help determine whether one of South America’s most important countries moves closer to Washington, or charts a leftward course.

The Associated Press reports that voting is mandatory in Peru for citizens from the ages of 18 to 70, with more than 27 million people registered.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Pope Leo XIV joked Saturday that he knows who would win if young people had to choose between seeing him or Latin pop singer Bad Bunny this weekend.

The Pope, who began a weeklong visit to Spain on Saturday, acknowledged that he is competing for attention with the Puerto Rican superstar while in Madrid. Many young Spaniards, he suggested, would likely choose the Grammy-winning artist over the pontiff.

"If they are confronted with the question ‘Do you want to go see Bad Bunny or do you want to go to see the pope?’ I think many will see Bad Bunny," Leo told reporters aboard the papal plane before his arrival.

"But I think there will also be a few here to see the pope," he added. "And that says something, you know."

WHY BAD BUNNY’S ‘GOD BLESS AMERICA’ MOMENT AT THE SUPER BOWL SPARKED CONTROVERSY

Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is currently performing a 10-show run in Madrid as part of his Spanish tour.

Leo raised the comparison while discussing what he described as signs of a spiritual awakening among some young people in Spain.

The pope said many young adults appear to be searching for meaning and expressed hope that his visit could help "awaken" something within them.

POPE LEO XIV GIVES 1ST HOMILY AS AMERICAN PONTIFF, SAYS LOSS IN FAITH HAS LED TO CRISIS IN HUMANITY

Despite his remarks, thousands of young Catholics turned out to greet the pope.

An estimated 500,000 people gathered in a Madrid plaza Saturday evening for a prayer vigil, chanting, "This is the youth of the pope!"

Leo later rode through the crowd in his popemobile while a Spanish rendition of the 1970s musical "Godspell" played.

POPE LEO XIV'S SPORTS FANDOM COMING TO LIGHT WITH WHITE SOX WORLD SERIES APPEARANCE, VILLANOVA-KNICKS TIES

The Chicago-born pope was also asked about reports that the Chicago Bears could soon move out of Illinois.

The team's board of directors voted Thursday to advance a proposed stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana.

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"That’s out of my pay (scale)," Leo quipped when asked about the potential relocation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A fisherman was killed late Saturday morning after an attack by a suspected nearly 15-foot shark off the coast of Western Australia.

The unidentified 35-year-old was spearfishing near Michaelmas Island, a protected sand cay on the Great Barrier Reef not far from the city of Albany.

The island is around 240 miles south of Perth, the state’s capital.

His was the third fatal shark attack in the country in less than a month.

SHARK ATTACK DEATHS SURGE ABOVE DECADE AVERAGE IN 2025

The man was brought by boat to shore, but paramedics weren’t able to revive him.

On May 24, 39-year-old Michael Jensz was killed after suffering head injuries while spearfishing along the Great Barrier Reef off the country’s northeast coast. 

A bull shark is suspected in his death.

On May 16, 38-year-old Steve Mattabonni was killed by a white shark at Rottnest Island, a popular resort in Western Australia. He was also spearfishing.

In January, a 12-year-old also died a week after he was attacked by a shark in Sydney Harbor.

Australia usually averages around three shark deaths per year.

"We do see an increase in larger sharks this time of the year, particularly chasing the sardine and the salmon along the coast, which is quite normal," commercial fisherman Gregory Sharp told the Australian Broadcasting Company Saturday.

He added that sharks also tend to attack in areas "where there's a lot of seals, and the island area in King George Sound is renowned for seals."

Michaelmas Island is located in King George Sound.

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Western Australia Premier Roger Cook said in a Facebook post Saturday that he was deeply saddened to hear of this morning's fatal shark attack in Albany. 

This is a tragedy and my thoughts are with the victim's family and friends, as well as the first responders."

World War II veteran Arthur Rose read a letter written a few days after June 6, 1944, at a ceremony Saturday in Normandy, France, as part of a commemoration of the 82 years since D-Day.

"Dear mom and dad and kids, About a month before we landed, I had a feeling I might be part of the invasion. I couldn't quite believe, though, that I would. I kept thinking, what could I possibly do in an invasion? Pull engines in the middle of a battle? I figured men like me would come along afterwards — after they cleared the wreckage and the damage had passed," Rose read to the crowd.

"But two weeks before D-Day, I was told I would go along and do whatever I could. We had moved to the assault port. Thousands of ships and landing craft of every description filled the harbor. Everyone worked day and night preparing fuel, provisions, ammunition and secret material. Everything was checked and rechecked and checked again. You can imagine the confusion and activity," he continued.

"Then came the day we began loading supplies for the invasion: food, blankets, ammunition, and all the countless things that would be needed once the men landed in France. We knew then the invasion could not be far. Then came the word: D-Day will be June 6th.

WORLD WAR II VETERANS TRAVEL TO NORMANDY FOR EMOTIONAL D-DAY COMMEMORATION

"I can't describe the feeling exactly. It wasn't fear, and it wasn't excitement. Just a funny feeling — nervousness, expectancy, and wondering what was going to happen next. Then we sailed. The sea was rough, windy, and miserable. I was seasick most of the time. Everyone expected bombing, submarines, battleships, and all hell to break loose at any moment. But the first attempt was called off because the sea was too rough, and we returned to the harbor. That was a real letdown," Rose continued.

"The next day, we sailed again. Near the coast of France, we could see flashes in the distance and hear the explosions continuously. In went the landing craft. We expected terrible destruction, as there was shelling, and men died. But not all of us," he read.

"Then our work truly began: back and forth, day and night, bringing in equipment, medical supplies, and ammunition. What had once been just another stretch of French coast had suddenly become a vast harbor filled with hundreds of ships and thousands of men."

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At this point, Arthur stopped reading and said aloud, "I don't remember writing this.

"I will always be grateful to my commander for taking me along. Don't worry about me. I am well, and whole, and happy. Love, Art."

UNITED NATIONS — When Jeff Bartos appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2025 for his confirmation hearing, he was warned that the job he was seeking might not exist. 

The Pennsylvania businessman, former political candidate and endurance athlete had been nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as U.S. ambassador for United Nations Management and Reform — a title that has long sounded aspirational in a building famous for bureaucracy.

During his confirmation hearing, Bartos recalled being greeted with a dose of skepticism.

"U.N. reform? That's an oxymoron if I've ever heard one," lawmakers told him.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION COULD LEAD TO BUDGET CUTS, LEADERSHIP SHAKEUP AT UN

Less than a year later, Bartos believes the impossible is beginning to happen.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, the Trump administration official laid out an ambitious campaign to reshape an institution critics say has become bloated, inefficient and increasingly disconnected from its founding mission.

The effort comes at a pivotal moment for the United Nations. The stakes extend well beyond budgets. As the U.N. confronts a cash crunch, prepares to choose its next secretary-general and faces growing scrutiny from the administration, the debate over reform has become a battle over the institution's future: whether it remains on its current course or undergoes its most significant restructuring in decades.

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Secretary-General António Guterres has repeatedly warned of a growing liquidity crisis as the organization struggles with delayed member-state payments, including billions owed by the United States. At the same time, the Trump administration has made clear that future funding and support will be increasingly tied to reforms.

Bartos argues that pressure is already producing results.

Sitting at the U.N. headquarters, he points to what he calls historic achievements: roughly $570 million cut from the U.N.'s regular budget and 2,900 positions eliminated through negotiations among all 193 member states.

"Again, never happened before in 80 years," Bartos said.

"$570 million cut to the regular budget, approximately 3,000 posts cut. Unanimity. That's by consensus. All 193 countries had to come together."

For Bartos, the achievement is particularly striking because many diplomats viewed meaningful reform as impossible.

AMBASSADOR MIKE WALTZ LAYS OUT ‘AMERICA FIRST’ VISION FOR US LEADERSHIP AT THE UN

"I promised you we wouldn't let you down," he recalled telling Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch months after his confirmation.

The reforms represent only what Bartos describes as a "down payment." The next phase is already underway.

As member states negotiate peacekeeping budgets for the coming year, the administration is pushing to reduce spending, streamline missions and eliminate programs it believes no longer serve their intended purpose.

One example, Bartos said, involves changing how the U.N. reimburses countries that contribute equipment to peacekeeping missions.

Previously, reimbursement was largely based on whether equipment was present.

"The methodology that the U.N. used to reimburse troop-contributing countries for equipment was: 'Is it there?'" Bartos said.

The United States pushed for a simple change: "You get reimbursed when the equipment is put into action to do work."

The reform could save roughly $30 million annually, according to U.S. estimates.

For Bartos, however, the dollar figure matters less than what it represents.

"It's a culture change," he said. "Being efficient, being respectful of every dollar, thinking about the taxpayers who fund all this."

That mindset is driving the administration's next major targets: employee compensation and pensions.

Bartos argues that the U.N.'s pension system and benefits structure consume resources that could otherwise be directed toward humanitarian operations.

Not everyone at the United Nations agrees with Bartos' assessment. U.N. officials argue that many of the reforms predate the Trump administration and were already being pursued under Guterres.

"From day one, the secretary-general has been committed to reforms," U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told Fox News Digital. "A few days ago, on 28 May, the secretary-general told member states that they need to act on structural reform, saying, ‘Genuine reform requires tough choices. This is no time for complacency, self-interest, or foot-dragging.’"

FORMER HIGH-LEVEL UNITED NATIONS OFFICIALS TO LAUNCH 'DOGE-UN' TO HIGHLIGHT AGENCY INEFFICIENCIES

The UN80 initiative is Guterres' flagship reform effort, aimed at cutting duplication, reviewing mandates and making the U.N. system more efficient.

Still, Bartos argues the pace and scope of reform changed dramatically once the United States began applying pressure through budget negotiations and funding discussions.

"The U.N. is at a decision point," Bartos told Fox News Digital.

The debate comes as the organization faces mounting financial pressure. Dujarric said Guterres remains deeply concerned about ongoing liquidity challenges caused by delayed payments from member states, including the United States.

"Unlike a government, the U.N. cannot borrow or print money," Dujarric said, warning that the organization is expected to execute programs with funds it has not received while also returning unused funds at the end of the year.

Earlier in 2026, Guterres urged member states either to pay their assessed contributions in full and on time or overhaul the U.N.'s financial rules to prevent what he described as the risk of financial collapse.

The reforms are unfolding as the U.N. begins preparing for one of the most consequential transitions in years: the search for a successor to Guterres, whose term expires at the end of 2026.

According to Bartos, reform has become a central topic in discussions with prospective candidates.

The administration hopes the next secretary-general will embrace efforts to reduce bureaucracy and return the institution to what Bartos repeatedly describes as a "back-to-basics" approach.

The challenge, he acknowledges, is enormous.

Yet Bartos insists the experience has prepared him in unexpected ways.

Before entering government, he completed two Iron Man triathlons while balancing work and family life.

"It's discipline, planning, prioritization," he said. "It's not dissimilar to budget negotiations."

The comparison may sound unusual, but it reflects how Bartos views the job: not as a sprint but as an endurance race requiring patience, persistence and long-term thinking.

The mission also carries a personal dimension.

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After two unsuccessful statewide campaigns in Pennsylvania — first as the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in 2018 and later as a candidate in the state's 2022 Republican Senate primary — Bartos said he had largely stepped away from politics before returning to public service following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. 

Bartos recalled his wife urging him to get involved: "You've spent your life working on these issues. You need to do something."

He ultimately joined efforts to help elect Trump and later accepted the U.N. role.

Now, after tackling what many considered the first impossible mission — reforming the United Nations — Bartos is preparing for what may prove an even harder challenge.

Bartos said he was recently tasked by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz with helping lead efforts to combat what the administration views as entrenched anti-Israel bias across the U.N. system, including agencies, special rapporteurs and investigative bodies.

The debate intensified following the publication of the U.N. secretary-general's annual report on conflict-related sexual violence, which added Israeli security forces to the report's blacklist of parties credibly suspected of patterns of sexual violence in armed conflict. Israel rejected the allegations and announced it would suspend engagement with Secretary-General António Guterres' office.

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Responding to the report, Waltz told Fox News Digital the U.N. has failed to address what he described as a longstanding pattern of institutional antisemitism.

"The U.N. was built in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, and yet, remarkably, it continues to be weaponized against the Jewish people and Israel," Waltz said. "Whether it's a U.N. official regularly referencing Israel as a 'stain on humanity' and attacking American companies for doing business with Israel, or reports that spread misinformation and propaganda, this antisemitism is completely unacceptable.

"It's been over a year since the secretary-general signed off on an 'action plan' to fight antisemitism at the institution. It would be nice if the institution actually used it."

Bartos argues that anti-Israel bias has become embedded across multiple U.N. bodies and says the administration is working to dismantle what he calls that infrastructure through diplomacy, funding decisions and engagement with the next generation of U.N. leadership.

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"There is not a day that goes by that we're not working on that," Bartos said.

The United Nations rejects accusations that it has ignored antisemitism within its ranks.

Dujarric told Fox News Digital the secretary-general launched a formal Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism in January 2025 aimed at tracking antisemitism within U.N. structures and evaluating whether the organization's policies and actions are effectively addressing the problem.

Dujarric also disputed suggestions that Guterres directly controls some of the U.N. bodies most frequently criticized by Israel and its supporters. 

"The U.N. mechanisms that you allude to, including human rights mechanisms, are created by and accountable to member states," Dujarric said. "The secretary-general has no authority over them.

"It is very important for member states to actively engage in these mechanisms if they have concerns about their content and tone.

"The U.N. is at a decision point."

Whether the institution changes enough to satisfy its largest financial contributor remains one of the most consequential questions facing the organization, and the man charged with answering it insists the work is only beginning.