Iran Hardens Nuclear Stance as War Costs Mount

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has issued a directive that Iran's near-weapons-grade enriched uranium must not leave the country, two senior Iranian sources told Reuters — a position that directly contradicts a clause that, according to Israeli officials, President Donald Trump had committed to Israel as part of any settlement to the US-Israeli war. Iranian officials told the agency they believe shipping the material abroad would leave the country more vulnerable to future US and Israeli attacks; the two sides have narrowed some gaps but remain divided on the stockpile and on Tehran's demand for recognition of its right to enrichment. Tehran in parallel published a map claiming military oversight over 22,000 sq km of the Strait of Hormuz under a newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority, extending the toll regime it has run since the US naval blockade of Iranian ports on 13 April; Iranian MP Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani of the Foreign Policy Commission told Euronews that political authorities have so far restrained the military from striking US naval assets in the Gulf, warning of retaliation if US ships move on Iranian ones.

The war's costs landed across capitals on the same day. A Congressional Research Service report cited by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach put US aircraft losses since the 28 February start at 42 — fighter jets, helicopters and drones — at a replacement-cost estimate of $29 billion, against a $1.5 trillion defence budget Wilsbach said could not absorb the gap. CNN, citing US intelligence assessments, reported that Iran has resumed drone production faster than expected, aided by Russia and China; analysts now place potential restoration of Iran's drone output within months. Walmart told investors the same day that Iran-war fuel prices were pulling consumer spending down — Q2 sales-growth guidance cut to 4-5% from 7.3% in Q1 — and EasyJet booked a £552 million half-year loss while warning of summer-bookings declines and potential European fuel rationing on the IATA's assessment. The Iran-war thread fed back into Brussels-London friction: the UK's quiet rollback of sanctions on Russian-origin jet fuel and diesel drew a public rebuke from EU Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis.

In Kyiv the operational picture moved in Ukraine's favour. The Institute for the Study of War reported that Ukrainian counterattacks since winter have liberated more than 400 square kilometres in the south, recaptured most of Kupiansk in the east, and taken settlements in western Zaporizhzhia Oblast — the largest territorial gains since the August 2024 Kursk incursion. Commander-in-Chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi told the defence outlet Militarnyi that Ukrainian offensive actions had exceeded Russian ones since 14 May. Unmanned Systems Forces Commander Maj. Robert Brovdi ("Magyar") said Ukrainian drones struck 19,203 Russian personnel in the first nineteen days of May, with formations under his command accounting for more than 6,000 of the total, and forecast more than 34,000 drone-inflicted casualties by month's end — outpacing Russia's recruitment rate of about 23,500 contracts per month against a quota of 33,500-34,600. The SBU's Alpha unit struck a Russian FSB headquarters in occupied Kherson on Thursday, destroying a Pantsir-S1 system and inflicting roughly 100 casualties.

Washington's domestic ledger was loud. The Justice Department opened on Monday a $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" compensation fund — the figure chosen to evoke American independence — drawn from the Treasury's Judgment Fund without congressional appropriation, with five board members appointed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and quarterly reporting through 1 December 2028. By Wednesday Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges had sued, calling the fund "the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century" and invoking the Fourteenth Amendment's bar on paying "debts incurred for the support of an insurrection or rebellion." More than ninety House Democrats filed legal documents to block; Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.) — fresh off his Louisiana primary loss and now the fourth GOP senator backing an Iran war powers resolution that advanced 50-47 — joined Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and others in cross-party opposition. Trump separately swore in Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chair on a 54-45 Senate vote, the narrowest margin in the institution's history.

Across Europe, the Iran picture surfaced inside national jurisdictions. Germany's Federal Prosecutor in Karlsruhe charged Danish national Ali S. and Afghan national Tawab M. with plotting on behalf of Iran's Quds Force to assassinate Volker Beck, chair of the German-Israeli Society, and Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany; the case originated with a Mossad tip, and Beck publicly demanded the expulsion of Iran's ambassador and the freezing of the late Ali Khamenei family's German assets. The Conference of European Rabbis called for a Europe-wide terror designation of the Revolutionary Guard. The 10 April Munich Israeli-restaurant arson and parallel claims in London, Antwerp, Liège and Amsterdam — claimed by an obscure pro-Iranian group calling itself Hayi — sit in the same plot pattern.

In Asia-Pacific, Australia's assistant productivity minister Andrew Leigh told an audience that rogue AI or an engineered pandemic were the most likely human-extinction risks of the next century; the Australian government announced a A$7.2 million package to combat a diphtheria outbreak in remote Indigenous communities. In Paris, the appeals court convicted Air France and Airbus of involuntary manslaughter over the 2009 AF447 crash that killed 228, with a maximum €225,000 statutory fine for each — the first criminal finding in a 17-year process. In Turkey, the Ankara appeals court annulled the Republican People's Party's November 2023 congress, reinstating former chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and removing current chair Özgür Özel pending a final ruling, against the backdrop of the party's record 2024 local-election performance and a campaign of arrests.