International

Afghan NGO women ‘threatened with shooting’ for not wearing burqa

AFP

The Taliban’s religious police have threatened to shoot women NGO workers in a northwestern province of Afghanistan if they do not wear the all-covering burqa, two staff members told AFP.

The rights of Afghans — particularly women and girls — have been increasingly curtailed since the Taliban returned to power in August after ousting the US-backed government.

Women are being squeezed from public life and largely barred from government jobs, while most secondary schools for girls are shut.

Two international NGO workers in rural Badghis province told AFP that the local branch of the feared Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice met with aid groups on Sunday.

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“They told us… if women staff come to the office without wearing the burqa, they will shoot them,” one said, asking not to be named for safety reasons.

Women must also be accompanied to work by a male guardian, he added.

A second NGO source confirmed the warnings.

“They also said they will come to every office without prior notice to check the rules are being followed,” he told AFP.

A notice to NGOs seen by AFP did not mention the threat of shooting, but did order women to cover up.

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Women in deeply conservative Afghanistan generally cover their hair with scarves anyway, while the burqa –- mandatory under the Taliban’s first regime, from 1996 to 2001 –- is still widely worn, particularly outside the capital Kabul.

Desperate for international recognition to unlock frozen assets, the Taliban have largely refrained from issuing national policies that provoke outrage abroad.

Provincial officials, however, have issued various guidelines and edicts based on local interpretations of Islamic law and Afghan custom.

In the capital on Friday, the Taliban staged a demonstration with around 300 men, who chanted “We want Sharia law”.

Holding posters of women wearing full coverings, the crowd accused women’s rights activists who have taken to the streets of being “mercenaries”.

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Earlier this month, posters were slapped on cafes and shops in Kabul ordering Afghan women to cover up, illustrated with an image of the burqa.

Women are banned from appearing in television dramas and must be accompanied by a male guardian on journeys between towns and cities.

Small and scattered protests have broken out demanding women’s rights, which had improved slightly over the past 20 years in the patriarchal Muslim nation.

However, several activists told AFP they had gone into hiding in the capital this week after a series of raids led to the arrests of three women.

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International

FBI Warns of Possible Iranian Drone Attack on U.S. West Coast

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned police departments in California about a possible Iranian plan to carry out a drone attack against the west coast of the United States, according to a report published Wednesday by ABC News.

The warning was issued through a memorandum sent to agencies participating in a Joint Terrorism Task Force, outlining the possibility of a surprise attack involving unmanned aerial vehicles launched from a vessel off the U.S. coastline.

According to the document, intelligence suggested that in early February 2026 Iran may have considered an attack against unspecified targets in California if the United States carried out airstrikes on Iranian territory.

However, the memo also noted that authorities lack additional details about the timing, method, specific targets, or individuals responsible for the alleged plan.

Reports cited by U.S. media indicate that the alert coincided with the start of a military offensive by the administration of Donald Trump against the Iran, a development that has heightened tensions across the Middle East.

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Law enforcement sources with counterterrorism experience told the Los Angeles Times that the warning is part of a routine precautionary advisory based on information from the U.S. Coast Guard.

The sources emphasized that there is no credible indication of an imminent attack and no evidence that Iran currently has the capability to successfully carry out such an operation.

California is home to the largest Iranian community in the United States. According to the Migration Policy Institute, more than half of Iranian immigrants in the country lived in the state in 2019, including around 140,000 people in Los Angeles County alone.

The city also hosts a neighborhood widely known as “Tehrangeles,” where a large Iranian community began settling in the 1960s and continued to grow following the Iranian Revolution.

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International

Trump Says Iran Is Welcome at 2026 World Cup but Warns of Security Concerns

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, said Thursday that the national football team of Iran is “welcome” to participate in the 2026 World Cup, although he suggested it might be safer for the team not to take part in the tournament.

“The Iranian national soccer team is welcome at the World Cup, but I really don’t think it’s appropriate for them to be there, for their own safety,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

His comments came a day after Iran’s sports minister, Ahman Donyamali, said that there are currently no conditions for the country to participate in the tournament following the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, during a military offensive launched on February 28 by Israel and the United States.

“After the corrupt government killed our leader, there are no conditions that allow us to take part in the World Cup,” the Iranian official said. He added that the country has faced two wars in the past eight or nine months, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths, making participation in the tournament unlikely.

On Tuesday, the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, met with Trump at the White House.

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Following the meeting, Infantino said that Trump reiterated that Iran’s national team would be allowed to compete in the FIFA World Cup 2026.

“We discussed the current situation in Iran and the fact that the Iranian team has qualified to participate in the FIFA World Cup 2026. During the conversation, President Trump reiterated that the Iranian team is, of course, welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States,” Infantino wrote on Instagram.

International

Iran issues threat to Trump as conflict escalates over Strait of Hormuz

The head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, threatened U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, warning him to “beware of being eliminated.”

The Republican president had warned on Monday that he would strike Iran “very hard” if the Islamic Republic blocked oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, which has effectively been closed since the war began eleven days ago.

“Iran is not afraid of your empty threats. Others more powerful than you tried to destroy the Iranian nation and failed. Beware that you are not eliminated,” Larijani wrote on X.

Earlier, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards — the ideological military force of the Islamic Republic — also said their forces would move to block oil exports from the Gulf.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military offensive against Iran is far from over.

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“Our aspiration is that the Iranian people free themselves from the yoke of tyranny; ultimately, that depends on them. But there is no doubt that with the measures taken so far we are breaking their bones, and we are not finished yet,” Netanyahu said in a statement.