After days of tit-for-tat strikes between Israel and Iran, for the civilians caught up in Israel’s bombing campaign, life is filled with uncertainty.

A week into the conflict, Iranians’ contact with the outside world is difficult, hampered by sporadic internet and phone coverage. Some – typically wealthy activists – have access to Starlink terminals providing independent internet access.

“We have electricity but gasoline is useless to us because we have nowhere to go outside Tehran,” he said, after long lines of traffic departing the capital were seen in recent days.

Glued to the TV watching an outlawed Iranian broadcaster based in London, he said his family hadn’t left their house in recent days.

⁠”Daily life is filled with constant fear and distrust,” he said.

From Shiraz in southern Iran, a 55-year-old English teacher described a “huge group of people waiting” to withdraw cash at a bank branch in the city center.

“The workers were completely overwhelmed and said they just cannot process all these requests for cash. I wouldn’t say it was chaotic, but I do feel there is an underlying feeling of panic,” he said.

Destruction and despair

A hairdresser from Shiraz lamented the destruction being inflicted: “I don’t even know what to say. You watch the videos, the photos. People are being killed, our country is being looted, falling apart like this.”

“Israel and the US don’t care about the Iranian people,” she said. “You want to hit the real target, but it’s surrounded by ordinary people. They’re destroying the country.”

Bleak prospects

More than 200 people have been killed in Iran, according to Tehran, with Israel’s strikes taking out much of the key leadership in the country’s military and nuclear program. But Iran has accused Israel of also targeting its energy and digital infrastructure.

“We are paying the price for a dictatorship and its arrogance,” shared a nurse from Mashad, northeast Iran, whose father was a decorated war veteran. “But now that all its forces (in the region) have been destroyed, it seems that its own turn has come,” she added.

Watching the attacks on a deeply unpopular regime, some Iranians confessed to welcoming the strikes, even as civilians were caught up in the bombings.

“Still, I’ll say it, I’m genuinely happy. Really, deeply happy!” she added. “I believe it’s worth it, for the sake of future generations.”

But a week into the fighting, even as diplomatic channels for peace start to coalesce, there’s still no sign of an end to the bombings. Uncertainty has only been fueled by US President Donald Trump teasing the possibility of US aircraft joining the bombing campaign.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has slammed Trump’s call for surrender, warning that America’s involvement in Israel’s military campaign would “100% be at their loss.”

Other Iranians share his defiance.

“The mood in Iran is starting to morph into an environment of nationalism,” according to a 69-year-old Iranian-American woman visiting Tehran. “I saw a lot of cars waving the Islamic Republic flag from their windows as we drove out of town.”

“Now that Trump has come this far, he will see it through to the end. They don’t let a wounded bear go free,” she said.

A serial rapist who was convicted of raping 10 women in the United Kingdom and China has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 24 years.

Zhenhao Zou, 28, was sentenced Thursday at Inner London Crown Court. Judge Rosina Cottage told him he would serve 22 years and 227 days before he was eligible for parole, taking into account time spent on remand, according to the UK’s PA Media.

Zou was found guilty in March of 11 counts of rape, one count of false imprisonment, three counts of voyeurism and a number of other offenses, including the possession of extreme pornographic images and the possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offense.

Many of his victims were “unconscious and rendered defenseless” after being drugged, according to prosecutors.

Police and prosecutors said Zou, who also used the name “Pakho” online, contacted students of Chinese heritage on WeChat and dating apps, inviting them to his apartments in London and China to drug and assault them. The police said he also took items from his victims, including jewelry and clothing.

The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service said Zou filmed some of the attacks using a mobile device and hidden cameras. The police said he “manipulated and drugged women in order to prey on them in the most cowardly way.”

Zou was a PhD student at University College London. He was arrested in January 2024 after one of his victims came forward to police.

Prosecutors in March said that the “courageous women who came forward to report Zhenhao Zou’s heinous crimes” had been “incredibly strong and brave” and that there was “no doubt” that their evidence had led to his convictions.

Ivana Kottasová contributed to this report.

Transporting the world’s second largest land mammal halfway across the second largest continent isn’t exactly easy.

But in a 3,400-kilometer (2,100-mile) journey that involved crates, cranes, trucks, and a Boeing 747, 70 captive bred southern white rhinos were moved from South Africa to Rwanda’s Akagera National Park in early June as part of an initiative to “rewild” them.

The creatures, which can weigh over 2,000 kilograms (more than 4,000 pounds), originated from a controversial breeding program started in the 1990s by property developer John Hume.

Hume, who spent years lobbying for the legalization of the rhino horn trade, amassed stockpiles of horn, obtained by trimming them without harming the animals, with the aim of flooding the market to driver poachers out of business and to fund conservation efforts.

But he ran out of money, and with the horn trade still banned under international law, he put the rhinos up for sale in 2023. He told Agence France-Presse (AFP) at the time that he’d spent around $150 million on the project – with surveillance being the largest cost. “I’m left with nothing except 2,000 rhinos and 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres) of land.”

He didn’t receive a single bid. African Parks — a conservation nonprofit that manages 23 protected areas across the continent — stepped in to acquire for an undisclosed sum what was the largest rhino captive breeding operation in the world, with plans to “rewild” the animals over 10 years.

The translocation marked the first cross-continental move for African Parks’ Rhino Rewild initiative.

“It’s a very important milestone,” says Taylor Tench, a senior wildlife policy analyst at the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency US, who wasn’t involved in the relocation. “This is definitely a big development with respect to African Parks’ efforts.”

‘A story of hope’

Today, there remain only about 17,000 southern white rhinos in Africa and they’re classified as “near threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List. That means the 2,000 southern white rhinos that African Parks bought, and plans to spread around the continent, comprise more than 10% of the remaining population.

Although the international trade of rhino horn has been banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) since 1977, demand from consumers in Asia who see it as a status symbol, or falsely believe it can cure ailments ranging from hangovers to cancer, is still driving poaching.

Poachers sometimes kill a rhino outright, or tranquilize it before cutting off its horn, sometimes hacking off a large portion of the animal’s face, leaving it bleeding to death.

In South Africa, where the majority of the population lives, 420 rhinos were poached in 2024. More than 100 were killed in the first three months of this year.

Tench says that rhino poaching was rampant in the continent from 2012 to 2015, and a “lot has been accomplished since then.” He added that Kenya lost no rhinos last year and that poaching has dropped significantly in Zimbabwe. Today, poaching is mostly concentrated in South Africa and Namibia, he says.

To better address the issue, Tench says more government resources should be dedicated to addressing the organized criminal networks behind the poaching and international trading of rhino horn, and to increased international cooperation.

Rickelton says there are a number of future relocation projects in various stages of discussion and planning. He adds that a strong framework is in place to ensure the locations that receive the rhinos provide a suitable habitat, security to keep the animals safe, and enough funding to care for them.

The move to Akagera National Park took more than a year and a half of planning and approvals. And the cost of moving each rhino, including three years of monitoring and management afterwards, is about $50,000 (the move was backed by the Howard G. Buffet Foundation).

The animals were first moved from the breeding program facility to the South African private game reserve Munywana Conservancy, to expose them to conditions more like Akagera. Then, the rhinos were loaded into individual steel crates, driven to an airport in Durban, South Africa, and carefully loaded by crane onto a Boeing 747.

After arrival in Kigali, Rwanda, the rhinos made the final leg of their journey by road. Now, the rhinos need to adapt to their new environment. They’ll be monitored by a veterinary team for several weeks.

Measures like a canine unit to reduce poaching are in place in Akagera, which has reduced poaching to “near zero” levels, according to the park.

There’s reason for optimism. In 2021, African Parks moved 30 rhinos to Akagera from a private game reserve in South Africa. Since, they’ve had 11 offspring. With the addition of 70 more rhinos, “we’ve now established a genetically viable herd of rhino,” says Rickelton.

He says that seeing the rhinos emerge from their crates at the end of the journey “makes months and months of really hard work and frustration and challenges really worth it.” Rickelton adds: “It’s a story of hope in a world of not too much positive.”

The diplomat refused to be drawn on specifics but reiterated that the crux of the matter remained Iran’s controversial uranium enrichment program and that the talks would focus on “what kind of compromise would be feasible” on that issue.

But enrichment — which Iran says it needs for peaceful purposes, while also manufacturing large quantities of near-weapons-grade material — is a major sticking point, with the Trump administration vowing that any agreement with Iran would have to entirely prohibit the country from enriching any nuclear material.

For decades, Iran, which denies it intends to build a nuclear weapon, has categorically refused to give up its capabilities — instead plowing billions of dollars into refining the technology and constructing vast enrichment facilities, like the secretive Fordow installation, which is built deep underground inside a mountain.

After launching its first wave of strikes on Iran, Israel pointed to a recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which acknowledged Iran is enriching uranium to a higher level than other countries without nuclear weapons programs, in violation of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

“Because Iran is now under immense military pressure, it might run out of options, and their nuclear capability is being degraded,” the diplomat said.

Until Trump’s decision to allow diplomacy another shot, the Geneva talks had looked like a European sideshow, with the US seemingly poised to join with Israel in the destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities.

The meeting, between the EU’s foreign policy chief, alongside the British, French and German foreign ministers and their Iranian counterpart, is now taking on greater significance, setting the stage for next steps and possibly acting as a bridge between Iran and the United States.

But there is an underlying fear in Geneva that the reinvigorated talks here, the first formal meetings with Iranian representatives since the escalation of the Israel-Iran conflict, will still go nowhere.

“It’s impossible to read anything Trump says because there is a daily barrage of statements,” the diplomat added.

China and Russia positioning themselves as voices of reason, calling for de-escalation of a conflict the United States is contemplating on entering — these are the optics Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin sought to project during a phone call on Thursday.

As US President Donald Trump weighs joining Israel in attacking Iran, the fast-spiralling conflict between two sworn enemies in the Middle East has presented Beijing and Moscow another opportunity to cast themselves as an alternative to US power.

In their call, Putin and Xi strongly condemned Israel’s actions, calling them a breach of the UN Charter and other norms of international law, according to the Kremlin. (The elephant in the room, of course, is Russia’s own violations of international law in its ongoing war against Ukraine — which Beijing has consistently refused to condemn.)

In Beijing’s readout, Xi struck a more measured tone and stopped short of explicitly condemning Israel — unlike his foreign minister, who did just that in a call with his Iranian counterpart last week.

Instead, the Chinese leader urged the warring parties, “especially Israel,” to cease fire as soon as possible to avoid further escalation and regional spillover.

And notably, in a veiled message to Trump, Xi emphasized that “major powers” that have a special influence on the parties to the conflict should work to “cool the situation, not the opposite.”

Beijing has long accused Washington of being a source of instability and tensions in the Middle East — and some Chinese scholars are now seizing on the Iran crisis to underscore that point.

Liu Zhongmin, a Middle East expert at the Shanghai International Studies University, attributed the latest flareup to the uncertainty created by Trump’s second presidency and the chaotic, opportunistic and transactional nature of his Middle East policy.

“(Trump) has seriously undermined the authority and credibility of US policy in the Middle East, eroded America’s leadership and image among its allies while also weakening its ability to threaten and deter regional adversaries,” Liu wrote in state media this week.

Another Middle East ‘forever war’?

Some Chinese online commentators have noted that Trump appears on the brink of pulling the US deeper into another so-called forever war in the Middle East.

At the outset of his second term, officials close to Trump repeatedly stressed the need for Washington to redirect its focus and resources toward countering China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific. Yet five months in, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza continue to rage on — and Trump is now weighing US involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict.

Beijing has no interest in seeing an all-out war against Iran that could topple the regime. Under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran has emerged as a formidable power in the Middle East and a vital counterweight to US dominance — just as China is working to expand its own diplomatic and economic footprint in the region.

In 2023, Beijing helped broker a surprise rapprochement between arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran – a deal that signaled its ambition to emerge as a new powerbroker in the region.

China has long backed Iran through sustained oil imports and its seat on the UN Security Council. In recent years, the two countries have deepened their strategic ties, including holding joint naval exercises alongside Russia. Beijing welcomed Tehran into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS – groupings led by China and Russia to challenge the US-led world order.

Iran is also a critical node in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), its global infrastructure and investment drive. The country lies near the strategic Gwadar port — a key BRI outpost in Pakistan that gives China access to the Indian Ocean — and borders the Strait of Hormuz, a vital chokepoint for Chinese oil imports from the Persian Gulf.

Like Russia, China has offered to be a potential mediator in the Israel-Iran conflict, casting its role as a peace broker and an alternative to US leadership.

During his call with Putin, Xi laid out four broad proposals to de-escalate tensions, including resolving the Iran nuclear issue through dialogue and safeguarding civilians, according to the Chinese readout.

Meanwhile, Xi’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has had a busy week on the phone, speaking with his counterparts in Iran, Israel, Egypt and Oman in a flurry of diplomatic outreach.

Yet it remains unclear what Beijing is willing and able to do when it comes to actually mediating the conflict. In the early stages of Israel’s war on Gaza, China made a similar offer and dispatched a special envoy to the region to promote peace talks — efforts that ultimately yielded little in terms of concrete results.

Brokering peace in the Middle East is a tall order, especially for a country with little experience or expertise in mediating protracted, intractable conflicts – in a deeply divided region where it lacks a meaningful political or security presence.

And in the one conflict where China does hold significant leverage — the war in Ukraine — Xi has offered diplomatic cover and much-needed economic support to help sustain Putin’s war effort, even as China continues to cast itself as a neutral peace broker.

Still, at a time when America’s global leadership is under growing scrutiny, particularly in the eyes of the Global South, presenting itself as a voice of restraint in the Iran conflict may already count as a symbolic win for Beijing.

Since Israel began its concerted attack on Iran, calls for regime change have grown louder, with US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raising the possibility of targeting Tehran’s all-powerful leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Many Iranians have firsthand experience with the United States enforcing a regime change in their country.

Here’s what happened:

Oil fields: In 1953, the US helped stage a coup to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

He had pledged to nationalize the country’s oil fields – a move the US and Great Britain saw as a serious blow, given their dependence on oil from the Middle East.

Height of the Cold War: The move to nationalize was seen as popular in Iran and a victory for the then-USSR.

Strengthen Shah rule: The coup’s goal was to support Iran’s monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to rule as Shah of Iran, and appoint a new prime minister, Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi.

The coup: Before the coup, the CIA, along with the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), helped foment anti-Mossadegh fervor using propaganda. In 1953, the CIA and SIS helped pull pro-Shah forces together and organized large protests against Mossadegh, which were soon joined by the army.

US cash: To provide Zahedi, the country’s new prime minister, with some stability, the CIA covertly made $5,000,000 available within two days of him taking power, documents showed.

US acknowledgement: In 2013, declassified CIA documents were released, confirming the agency’s involvement for the first time. But the US role was known: Former President Barack Obama acknowledged involvement in the coup in 2009.

It backfired: After toppling Mossadegh, the US strengthened its support for Pahlavi to rule as Shah. Iranians resented the foreign interference, fueling anti-American sentiment in the country for decades.

Islamic Revolution: The Shah became a close ally of the US. But in the late 1970s, millions of Iranians took to the streets against his regime, which they viewed as corrupt and illegitimate. Secular protesters opposed his authoritarianism, while Islamist protesters opposed his modernization agenda.

The Shah was toppled in the 1979 Islamic revolution, which ended the country’s Western-backed monarchy and ushered in the start of the Islamic Republic and clerical rule.