Iran War Afterlife: Brooklyn Arrest, Berlin EU Compromise Fails, Paris Bars Ben-Gvir

The Iran war's afterlife touched two continents in a single 24 hours. In Brooklyn, federal prosecutors detained 32-year-old Iraqi national Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi -- arrested in Turkey on May 15 and extradited -- on 18 counts of attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and the United States, with the New York Post reporting an alleged plot to assassinate Ivanka Trump in revenge for the January 2020 US drone strike that killed Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. The indictment also covers a March arson at a Bank of New York Mellon branch in Amsterdam, an April knife attack on two Jewish victims in London, a March shooting at the building housing the US consulate in Toronto, and planned synagogue attacks in Liege and Rotterdam. US reporting flagged severe drawdowns of THAAD interceptors, Tomahawk missiles and Patriot systems; former Israeli adviser Eyal Hulata said Israel would strike again if Iran resumed enrichment.

The Iran war's economic shadow showed up in domestic indicators. The University of Michigan's May consumer sentiment index fell to 44.2 -- a new historical low below April's 49.8 record -- with 57 percent of respondents spontaneously naming high prices as eroding their finances, up from 50 percent. An AP/NORC poll dropped Republican approval of Trump's economic handling to about 6 in 10 from 8 in 10 in February. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard resigned for June 30 citing her husband's cancer; the Justice Department pulled every January 6 prosecution press release from its website as "partisan propaganda," following Trump's pardon of 1,500-plus defendants and a $1.776 billion compensation fund; US District Judge John Bates ordered Trump aides to keep observing the Presidential Records Act, rejecting a DOJ opinion that the law unconstitutionally intruded on presidential power.

Across the Black Sea and 1,700 kilometres inland, Ukraine's long-range campaign reached new geographic depth. The Security Service of Ukraine struck the AKM complex of Metafrax Chemicals in Gubakha, Perm Krai, forcing production to halt; President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the plant as a supplier of "important components for the Russian arms industry, including for drones, rocket engines and explosives." The Ukrainian general staff also hit the Sheskharis oil terminal at Novorossiysk and the Grushovaya transshipment depot operated by Transneft, with debris from a downed drone igniting fires in technical and administrative buildings; the tanker Chrysalis was hit in the Black Sea, and Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces struck the frigate Admiral Essen and a Project 1239 missile hovercraft in Novorossiysk port. The Russian Defence Ministry reported intercepting 348 Ukrainian drones overnight. Russian retaliation included a 24-hour-plus large-scale attack on Naftogaz facilities in Kharkiv and Poltava oblasts, an FPV drone strike on a funeral procession on the outskirts of Sumy that killed one and wounded nine, and Friday strikes that killed four civilians and wounded 25 in Kherson and Kharkiv. Russian civil defence said the death toll from the May 22 Ukrainian drone strike on a Starobilsk vocational-school dormitory had reached 18, with three missing; UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack and the UNSC convened at Russia's request. UNHCR's Kyiv representative Bernadette Castel-Hollingworth said a Wednesday Russian missile on a UNHCR warehouse in Dnipro killed two and destroyed about $1 million of aid -- the first time a UNHCR facility had been attacked, she said.

Zelenskyy's letter to European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, seen by Reuters and dpa, formally rejected Chancellor Friedrich Merz's proposal for an "associate" EU membership without voting rights: "There can be no complete European project without Ukraine, and Ukraine's place in the European Union must also be complete -- full and equal." A German government spokesperson framed Berlin's letter as opening "the necessary debate" and said there was "a high level of agreement" with Zelenskyy on opening negotiation chapters; Hungary's veto fell last month with Viktor Orban's defeat to Peter Magyar. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said he had already invited Zelenskyy to the alliance's Ankara summit in early July -- "He will be there" -- and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Helsingborg, Sweden, said Washington was prepared to broker new peace talks while acknowledging an impasse. Putin offered Europeans a seat at the table but proposed former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder -- his long-time friend -- as interlocutor, described by many European officials as a "poisoned" offer.

France's bar on Itamar Ben-Gvir opened a fresh European front against the Israeli government. Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot announced on X that the Israeli national security minister was banned from French territory over his video taunting bound activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla at the port of Ashdod, and called -- with Italian counterpart Antonio Tajani -- for EU sanctions, a move Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka has vowed to block in the unanimity-bound Council. Britain, Canada, Australia, Norway and New Zealand had already sanctioned Ben-Gvir last year alongside Bezalel Smotrich. The Global Sumud Flotilla on Friday reported at least 15 cases of sexual abuse from returning detainees -- including 12 documented sexual assaults on one converted vessel and accounts of rape and forcible penetration by a handgun -- after Israeli naval forces intercepted more than 430 participants in international waters off Cyprus on May 18; Israel's prison service called the allegations "false and entirely without factual basis," and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar publicly distanced themselves from Ben-Gvir. UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the UN was "very concerned." Algeria added a second pressure: an official-gazette publication on May 21 made French colonisation between 1830 and 1962 a state crime, listing 31 imprescriptible offences. UN partners working in Gaza reported raw sewage flooding neighbourhoods in Khan Younis after power failures at pumping stations tied to a shortage of lubricating oil; humanitarians flagged continued airstrikes and naval fire over the weekend, and the UN said the situation in Lebanon was deteriorating despite the ceasefire announced last month.

The Indo-Pacific moved at the same time. Taiwan's National Security Council chief Joseph Wu reported that China had deployed over 100 naval and coast guard vessels from the Yellow Sea through the South China Sea to the western Pacific, exceeding previous numbers. A five-member Bundestag delegation led by Green lawmaker Till Steffen flew to Taiwan for a May 24-31 visit including talks with President Lai Ching-te, with Steffen telling Beijing "not to interfere." Rubio landed in New Delhi ahead of a meeting with his Indian, Australian and Japanese counterparts to take stock of the Quad alliance, and at GLOBSEC in Prague European officials worked on insulating NATO from Trump-era unpredictability after the White House withdrew 5,000 US troops from Germany and cancelled intermediate-range missile deployments.

Turkey's defence ministry brought 501 personnel from both Libya's rival armies -- the Tripoli Government of National Unity and Khalifa Haftar's Benghazi Government of National Stability -- into its Efes 2026 exercises for the first time, in a drive to secure Haftar's parliamentary ratification of the 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime memorandum opposed by Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel; Turkish and Syrian intelligence separately detained 10 ISIL suspects in a joint operation in Syria, including a figure linked to the 2015 Ankara bombings. Guinea heads to a parliamentary election on May 24. UK government jobs adviser Alan Milburn will publish next week an interim report warning that 946,000 NEET 16- to 24-year-olds form an "anxious generation," with 43 percent of those classed as unable to work citing mental health as the primary reason, up from 24 percent in 2011. And in Garden Grove, California, a 34,000-gallon methyl methacrylate tank began leaking at an aerospace plant, forcing the Orange County Fire Authority to evacuate more than 44,000 residents and warn of a possible explosion radius of several blocks.