The Resilience Paradox: How Military Strikes Are Bolstering Iran’s Cohesion

by Peter Rodgers | Jul 8, 2026 | 

Wars are seldom judged fairly in the immediate aftermath. Generals and analysts often focus on tallies of destroyed sites, intercepted projectiles, and tactical wins. Yet the deeper political fallout usually surfaces later – and it has a habit of defying the expectations of those who started the fight. History offers plenty of examples where short-term military victories sowed the seeds of longer-term strategic setbacks. This reality merits close attention when evaluating the recent U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran.

The central issue may not be simply how much Iranian military hardware was damaged. More important is whether the conflict has reshaped Iran’s internal politics in ways that run counter to what Washington and its partners hoped. If the goal of prolonged sanctions, isolation, and military action was to erode the Islamic Republic’s governing strength, the picture that’s emerging looks more nuanced than many anticipated.

Consider the massive funeral ceremonies held after the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Interpreting public turnout at state events always requires caution: people attend for a mix of reasons – religious duty, nationalist sentiment, genuine sorrow, official pressure, or simple curiosity. No single gathering can definitively gauge a regime’s legitimacy. Still, from the standpoint of institutional staying power, the state showed it could orchestrate large-scale, nationwide events and project an image of continuity rather than collapse during one of its most vulnerable leadership transitions.

This doesn’t mean Iran’s deep-seated problems have vanished. The country still grapples with serious economic hardships, social fractures, and political rifts. But these challenges exist alongside a pattern often overlooked in Western commentary: external threats frequently foster greater national cohesion, at least in the short term, before any weakening sets in.

Political scientists call this the “rally around the flag” effect. When facing foreign pressure, citizens often prioritize national sovereignty over internal grievances. This dynamic has played out in diverse systems. After the 9/11 attacks, American support for the government surged despite deep partisan divides. Britain showed similar unity during World War II. Other nations have experienced the same temporary closing of ranks in the face of external danger. Whether Iran is undergoing exactly this process is debatable, but it’s a possibility worth examining seriously rather than brushing aside.

For roughly two decades, U.S. policy toward Iran rested on a fairly steady premise: that economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, covert operations, and targeted military force would raise the price for Tehran enough to force major behavioral shifts or even systemic change. Administrations differed in emphasis, but the underlying logic stayed consistent.

The latest confrontation calls for a fresh look at that approach. There’s no denying that the military campaign inflicted real costs on Iran. Yet political results can’t be reduced to lists of damaged facilities. A strategy meant to undermine state authority can sometimes bolster it when outside pressure heightens institutional unity and ties citizens more closely to the idea of national defense. The link between external coercion and internal political evolution has never been straightforward. In some situations, it fuels domestic discontent; in others, it narrows room for internal dissent by focusing attention on external threats.

This matters because military achievements and political achievements are not always aligned. That said, it would be a mistake to assume that crisis-driven unity automatically equals lasting legitimacy. Short-term solidarity in an emergency rarely erases underlying economic woes or longstanding grievances. Societies that pull together during crises often resume their internal debates once the immediate danger passes. Any realistic view of Iran’s path forward must hold both truths at once: external pressure may enhance near-term resilience without locking in the country’s longer-term political direction.

This duality carries real weight for regional strategy. Whatever one’s view of the Islamic Republic, Iran remains a major player in the Middle East. Its size, geography, military assets, energy reserves, and location mean it will keep shaping security dynamics from the Gulf to the Caucasus and Central Asia. Few big regional issues can be tackled without factoring in Tehran’s role.

This is simply a statement of geopolitical reality, not an endorsement of Iranian policies. History shows that governments routinely engage with adversaries precisely because those adversaries matter strategically – not because ideological gaps have closed. The U.S. negotiated arms control with the Soviet Union during the Cold War while remaining rivals. Nixon’s opening to China in the 1970s was driven by shifting power realities, not shared values. Similar pragmatism appeared later with Vietnam and others.

These examples point to a key principle: sound grand strategy starts with a clear-eyed reading of the world as it is, not as one wishes it to be. Applied to today’s Middle East, if military pressure has – even temporarily – bolstered aspects of Iranian state cohesion, then strategists may need to rethink how force interacts with domestic politics. This doesn’t mean scrapping deterrence or ignoring fundamental differences. It does suggest that military tools by themselves may not deliver the political transformation some expect.

A smarter approach would combine robust deterrence with active diplomacy, careful crisis management, and open communication channels. Reducing escalation risks and avoiding miscalculations are valuable goals in their own right. Confidence-building steps, targeted talks, and broader regional security forums aren’t cure-alls, but they can usefully support – not replace – traditional deterrence.

In the end, the recent conflict drives home a lesson that goes far beyond Iran. Military action can alter political incentives in surprising ways. Regimes that look fragile beforehand sometimes come out with stronger institutional glue, while battlefield wins don’t always add up to strategic success. Whether this holds in Iran long-term is still unclear, and firm judgments would be premature. But the possibility alone deserves rigorous analysis.

For decision-makers, the real task isn’t just assessing the military scorecard. It’s grasping the political ripples that military moves create over time. If nothing else, recent events show that the connection between outside pressure and internal change is far more intricate than straightforward coercion theories suggest. Acknowledging that complexity isn’t advocacy for any specific policy. It’s a call for handling one of the most critical geopolitical rivalries with more intellectual humility and a sharper awareness of war’s often unintended, lingering consequences.

Peter Rodgers is an international relations graduate of Penn State University. His area of interest is the United States’ relations with Eurasia. His writings have appeared on news analysis websites like responsiblestatecraft.org and middleeastmonitor.com.

The Men Who Own the War Now Run It

by Thomas S. Karat | Jul 9, 2026 | 

There was a time when the arms dealer waited in the corridor. He financed the campaign, endowed the think tank, took the general to dinner, and hoped the man inside the office would remember him when the contract came up. The wall between the money and the decision was thin, often corrupt, but it was there. Someone held the public trust, and someone else tried to buy it, and you could at least tell the two apart.

That wall is gone. The financier no longer waits in the corridor. He holds the office. He signs the checks. He is the buyer and the seller, the regulator and the regulated, the public interest and the private portfolio, fused into a single man in a single suit, and the arrangement is entirely legal, which is the whole problem.

One of these men may already be familiar from a previous article. His name is Friedrich Merz.

The chancellor was the warm-up act

From 2016 to 2020, Merz chaired the supervisory board of BlackRock’s German arm, the local office of the largest pool of private capital on earth – a fact confirmed, without embarrassment, by his own party’s foundation. Then he climbed back into politics, and in March 2025, as chancellor-in-waiting, he drove through the outgoing Bundestag — deliberatelybefore the newly elected parliament could convene – the constitutional amendment that exempted defense spending from Germany’s debt brake. The borrowing limit Germans had treated as sacred since 2009 was gone. German military spending rose 24 percent in a single year to $114 billion, the largest in NATO Europe, and BlackRock held stakes in the very contractors – Rheinmetall, Hensoldt – that the money would flow toward.

He broke no law. He simply spent four years learning, from the inside, how the machinery paid out, and then went and pulled the lever. The arrangement was a particular kind that no scandal quite captures, because nothing in it is hidden. It sits in plain view, in regulatory filings and procurement requests, and it works precisely because everyone involved can say, truthfully, that they broke no rule.

It reads as a German problem only until you cross the Atlantic. There the same face turns up in an American suit, several of them, installed not adjacent to the war machine but at its controls.

The banker who became the Navy

Consider John Phelan, who until March 2025 had no connection to the military beyond a seat on a charity board. His career was money: he co-founded MSD Capital, the private investment firm that managed the personal fortune of Michael Dell, and later founded his own firm, Rugger Management. He gave Trump’s joint fundraising committee $834,600 in April 2024. Months later he was nominated to run the United States Navy, and in March he was confirmed, handed a $263.5 billion budget and command of nearly a million sailors and Marines.

Before his confirmation, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to him about the obvious. He had recently earned over $5 million in capital gains from Palantir, a defense-software contractor that took in $541 million from the Pentagon in fiscal 2024 alone, and whose relationships Phelan’s own acquisition vehicle had once advertised. She asked him to divest his defense holdings and to recuse himself, for four years, from matters touching his former clients and employers, noting that a dozen Biden appointees had voluntarily gone beyond what the ethics laws required. Phelan declined to make the stronger commitment. He was confirmed anyway, 62 to 30, with eleven Democrats joining every Republican in the room.

The man overseeing the Navy’s shipbuilding budget was, weeks earlier, a private investor with money in the companies the Navy buys from. Nobody hid it. It was printed in his disclosures and read aloud at his hearing, and it changed nothing.

The private-equity takeover of the Pentagon

Phelan is the modest case. The full expression of the thing sits one floor up, in the office of the deputy secretary of defense, where Stephen Feinberg runs the day-to-day of the entire department.

Feinberg co-founded Cerberus Capital Management and led it for thirty-three years; in his own sworn testimony to the Senate he put the firm’s portfolio at over $65 billion. He was a major Trump donor, and by the time he was confirmed in March 2025 he was, at a listed minimum net worth of $2 billion, the wealthiest official in the administration. What he has built since is not influence over the Pentagon. It is ownership of its investment arm.

Feinberg has surrounded himself with a circle of advisers drawn from his old firm. The group includes former Cerberus managing director John Gallagher and a deal team led by Cerberus alumnus George Kollitides – who was, until 2015, chairman and chief executive of Remington, the gunmaker Cerberus owned. Industry executives nicknamed the squad “Deal Team Six,” a joke on the SEAL unit that killed bin Laden, and Kollitides told a Milken Institute audience he found the name both fun and fitting while explaining that economic warfare has been a part of all successful nations for thousands of years. A Stanford professor watching this described it plainly: private equity has just acquired its largest organization.

The organization it acquired writes checks the size of nations. Under Feinberg, the Pentagon stopped merely buying weapons and began buying companies. It took a $400 million preferred-equity stake in the rare-earth miner MP Materials, enough to make the United States government the firm’s largest single shareholder at roughly 15 percent – ahead, as it happens, of BlackRock. It put $1 billion into an L3Harris rocket-motor unit slated to go public in 2026. Stakes in Trilogy Metals, Vulcan Elements, and ReElement Technologies followed, a portfolio that a group of House members warned was locking federal policy to the fortunes of individual firms – picking winners, and by definition creating losers.

Whose companies get the contracts

Here is where the fusion stops being abstract:

Feinberg signed an ethics agreement before confirmation. He would divest from Cerberus and recuse himself from matters involving the firm. But the fine print left the door open: he could transfer his Cerberus holdings into trusts benefiting his adult children, a maneuver legal under conflict-of-interest law but one ethics experts say hollows out its purpose, and he could keep contracting with Cerberus for administrative services. That contract was meant to end in April 2026. In January, he reversed course and extended it with no end date. The financial relationship between the deputy secretary of defense and the private equity firm he used to run now continues indefinitely.

Meanwhile the department began handing out contracts for Golden Dome, Trump’s missile-defense shield, a program that has already ballooned to an estimated $185 billion. The Pentagon at first refused to name the companies winning the work. When it finally released a list, at least four of the winners turned out to be owned or partly owned by Cerberus: North Wind, Stratolaunch, Red River Technology, and NetCentrics. The department still will not disclose what those contracts are worth, and by law is required to announce only those above $9 million.

Does Feinberg personally pick the contractors? The department says he has no direct responsibility for Golden Dome acquisitions. But the general who runs the program, Michael Guetlein, described his own chain of command without ambiguity: I report to the deputy secretary and only to the deputy secretary, he said. He is the only official who can tell me no. The man who can say no to the entire missile-defense program is the man whose old firm owns the companies being paid to build it, and whose family may still profit from that firm’s returns. No single email needs to be produced. The architecture does the work.

The recruiting pitch says it out loud

For anyone wondering how normal this has become, the sales brochure settles it. To staff its new investment operation – an “Economic Defense Unit” meant to deploy up to $200 billion over three years – the Pentagon hired the headhunting firm Heidrick & Struggles, whose recruiting deck went hunting for bankers at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Bank of America.

The pitch promised recruits unmatched access to top-level government officials and privileged information flow — whatever you need, you can get. It offered salaries reaching $600,000 through a government-aligned nonprofit, against a federal average near $100,000. And it described the job not as public service but as a two-year secondment leading to exceptional exit opportunities, including the chance to launch a new fund with members of the team. Come into the government, use the access, leave richer, on the strength of relationships built on the public payroll. This is not a leak of something embarrassing. It is a document written to attract people, on the assumption that the merger of private profit and public office is the perk.

A former assistant director on the White House technology-security staff, reading the same deck, warned that an effort this size has the potential to distort national-security-critical industries in ways he did not think anyone had seriously contemplated. There is, he added, obvious potential for truly egregious corruption. But corruption is almost the smaller point. Corruption implies a rule being broken. What is happening here is a rule being dissolved.

The same men, both shores

Line them up. Merz chaired an asset manager and then commanded the German rearmament that manager profits from. Phelan ran a billionaire’s money and then took command of the Navy that buys from the companies he held. Feinberg ran a private equity empire and then took the Pentagon’s second chair and filled the building with his former partners. Different countries, different uniforms, one profession and one move: from owning the assets of war to commanding the state that pays for them.

The line worth repeating from Merz’s own story turns out not to have been about Germany at all. The buildup manufactures the danger it claims to answer. Every European budget hardens Moscow’s conviction that it is being encircled, which justifies the next budget, around and around, while the men who profit count their dividends and call it security. That was true of one chancellor. It is true of an entire class of men who have stopped seeing daylight between the public interest and their own book, because across their whole careers there never was any.

The old fear, the one Eisenhower named in 1961, was that the military-industrial complex would acquire unwarranted influence over the government. That fear is quaint now. Influence is what you need when you are standing in the corridor. These men are not in the corridor. They are behind the desk, and the desk has a checkbook with no ceiling, and the recruiting brochure is on the table telling the next banker that whatever he needs, he can get.

Thomas Karat writes investigative work published at karat.substack.com and the Libertarian Institute, drawing on a corporate career and academic training as a behavior analyst to examine how institutions manufacture consent and influence.

How the US-Iran Fight in the Strait of Hormuz Can Be Resolved Before It Blows Up the MoU

Sacrificing the entire MOU over the question of who nominally manages the Strait for the next few weeks would be a costly and unnecessary mistake.

by Trita Parsi | Jul 9, 2026 | 

Reprinted with permission from Trita Parsi’s Substack.

For the second time since the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed, Washington and Tehran have slipped back into direct military confrontation. The United States struck “80 targets in Iran with precision munitions” after Iranian forces fired on several ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz without prior coordination with Tehran. The scale of the American strikes reportedly far exceeded the previous U.S.-Iran exchange, suggesting that Washington sought not merely to retaliate but to reestablish deterrence. The United States also reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil sales, reversing one of the central concessions of the MOU. The IRGC, in turn, claimed to have attacked 85 U.S. military sites across the region, including the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, and said eight were destroyed.

At the heart of the dispute are two competing interpretations of the MOU. Tehran’s reading is that while the Strait of Hormuz is to remain open, all commercial traffic during the 60-day interim period must be coordinated with Iran as the parties negotiate a permanent maritime arrangement. Washington, by contrast, interprets an “open” Strait to mean that vessels may transit either the Iranian or Omani shipping lanes without coordinating with Iran.

For Tehran, this is not a technical disagreement but a strategic one. Iranian officials fear the United States is using the MOU to erode Iran’s control over the Strait by rejecting any requirement for coordination and, in effect, establishing an alternative corridor that could remain open even if war resumes. Such an arrangement would deprive Iran of what many of its strategists regard as its single most important source of leverage in a future conflict: the credible ability to disrupt maritime traffic through Hormuz. From Tehran’s perspective, commercial shipping can resume without surrendering that leverage—but only if all vessel movements continue to be coordinated with Iran, thereby reinforcing its nominal authority over the waterway.

Washington counters that the text of the MOU does not explicitly require ships to obtain Iranian authorization before transiting the Strait. Instead, it assigns Iran responsibility for ensuring the safe passage of commercial vessels, a distinction the United States argues falls short of granting Tehran operational control over all maritime traffic. Paragraph 5 of the MOU states:

“Upon the signing of this MoU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles, and de-mining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be instated within 30 days.”

Following the previous round of fighting, the two sides explored a compromise under which commercial vessels would coordinate their transit with both Iran and a designated Gulf Cooperation Council state. Under such an arrangement, ships would notify Tehran while also reporting to a GCC maritime authority, balancing Iran’s demand for oversight with Washington’s desire to avoid granting Tehran exclusive control. The talks, however, appear never to have been finalized before they were suspended for the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

During that pause, several commercial vessels – with their AIS transponders switched off – attempted to transit the southern shipping corridor without notifying Tehran. Iran viewed these voyages as a direct challenge to its interpretation of the MOU and responded with force.

Both sides are clearly testing each other’s red lines. If the dispute were solely about ensuring the safe passage of commercial shipping, vessels could simply transit through the Iranian shipping lane. Tehran has not prevented ships from using the northern corridor. Instead, the insistence on using the southern corridor without notifying Iran appears designed to challenge Tehran’s claim that it exercises authority over the Strait—a claim the United States and most Gulf states have long rejected. Beyond questions of transit tolls or administrative fees, no country in the region is eager to legitimize Iranian control over one of the world’s most strategically important waterways. The current confrontation is therefore less about navigation than about sovereignty and strategic leverage.

The compromise discussed before the talks were suspended offers a sensible way out. Requiring vessels to notify both Iran and a designated GCC maritime authority would defer the sovereignty dispute without prejudging its outcome, allowing commercial traffic to continue while negotiations over a permanent arrangement proceed. Sacrificing the entire MOU—and the far more consequential regional framework it could ultimately produce—over the question of who nominally manages the Strait for the next few weeks would be a costly and unnecessary mistake.

The question now is whether the dual-notification arrangement can still be revived after the exchange of fire over the past 12 hours, or whether this latest escalation has closed the diplomatic window altogether. The coming hours are likely to provide the answer.

One final observation: by responding with both military force and the reimposition of sanctions on Iranian oil exports, Washington appears intent on establishing escalation dominance – not merely deterring further Iranian action but demonstrating its willingness to raise the costs far more sharply than Tehran. The contrast with the first post-MOU confrontation in the Strait is striking. This time, the U.S. response has been substantially more severe, suggesting that Washington is seeking to redefine the deterrence equation before negotiations can resume.

There is, however, a danger in Washington’s decision to rescind the general license permitting the purchase of Iranian oil. The license was intended to serve as one of the MOU’s principal incentives for Tehran to remain committed to the agreement. But an incentive is only as valuable as its credibility.

Even before this latest escalation, Iran had struggled to attract new buyers. Many governments and companies were reluctant to enter long-term arrangements because they feared negotiations would collapse and the license would expire without renewal. That uncertainty alone diminished the commercial value of the concession.

From Washington’s perspective, Iran’s alleged violation of the MOU is serious and warrants a response. But if the United States is seen as issuing and withdrawing the license too readily, potential buyers may conclude that access to Iranian oil is too politically volatile to justify the risk. That would weaken one of Washington’s most important sources of leverage. The less valuable the license becomes in the marketplace, the less valuable it becomes at the negotiating table – and the less the United States can demand in return for restoring it.

Trita Parsi is the Executive VP of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and an award-winning author. Washingtonian Magazine has named him one of the 25 most influential voices on foreign policy. Noam Chomsky calls him “one of the most distinguished scholars on Iran”

Visit Trita Paris’s Substack and subscribe.

WHITE NATIONALIST ISLAMOPHOBIA

Outrage after mosque replica placed on bonfire in Northern Ireland

09.07.2026

Photo: Jonathan Mccambridge/PA Wire/dpa

Police have been urged to intervene after a replica of a mosque was placed on top of a loyalist bonfire Northern Ireland.

The model was visible on top of the pyre in Moygashel in County Tyrone on Thursday.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said one man has been arrested.

Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn has described the bonfire display a "sickening and cowardly act of intimidation."

In a social media post, Benn said: "The placement of a replica mosque on the Moygashel bonfire is a sickening and cowardly act of intimidation."

"This is not about tradition, and in no way does it represent the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland."

"We must stand united and completely reject such hatred."

The Moygashel Bonfire Association has described the bonfire as an act of "political protest" against "uncontrolled illegal mass immigration."

Signs saying "Secure our borders" and "End the threat of radical Islam" have also been placed on the pyre, which is made up of pallets and is due to be set alight on Friday night.

Amnesty International described it as a "vile display" and a "blatant attempt to stir up anti-Muslim hatred and intimidate local families."

The same bonfire site has attracted controversy in previous years.

Last year there was condemnation after effigies of migrants in a boat were burned on the Moygashel fire.

Patrick Corrigan, Amnesty International's Northern Ireland director, said: "This vile display is a blatant attempt to stir up anti-Muslim hatred and intimidate local families."

"It must be met with a decisive response by the police."

"The placing of an effigy of a mosque on top of a bonfire amounts to incitement to hatred directed at real people who live, work and raise families in Northern Ireland."

"It is a crime under Northern Ireland law to distribute materials that are intended or likely to stir up racial or religious hatred or arouse fear."

"The police must investigate this as a potential crime, identify and hold to account those responsible, and ensure this material is swiftly removed before it can be used to incite further hatred and violence."

A spokesperson for the PSNI said: "Police are aware of the item placed on top of the bonfire in Moygashel."

"A 56-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of contravention of Article 9 of the Public Order (NI) Order 1987."

"He remains in custody at this time."

Ulster Unionist Party leader Jon Burrows has called for the "immediate removal of the offensive display."

He said: "Bonfires are an important cultural tradition for many within the unionist community, and there will be many peaceful and respectful bonfires across Northern Ireland over the coming days."

"However, that tradition is undermined when bonfires are used to intimidate, provoke or demean others."

"There can be no place for placing any place of worship on a bonfire and setting it alight. It is simply wrong."

"Sadly, images of this bonfire will once again travel around the world, damaging Northern Ireland's reputation and playing into the hands of critics of unionist and loyalist culture."

In a statement on social media, the Moygashel Bonfire Association said it had "noted the predicable fury in respect of the act of political protest at our bonfire site this year."

The statement said: "This year we have focused on an issue of significant public interest."

"Our display may well shock, offend or outrage others, but nonetheless it is an exercise in our rights under Article 10 of the ECHR and we note with some irony that it is the ECHR which has so often paved the way for mass illegal immigration and a failure to deport foreign criminals who have come here unlawfully, that also now protects our right to protest in robust terms against that."

"If there was no uncontrolled illegal mass immigration, we would have no need to protest on this issue."

It added: "Our display expressly does NOT target any individual. We make that very clear."

"Our opposition is not to people, but rather to ideology and government policy."

Fermanagh and South Tyrone Sinn Féin members of the Legislative Assembly, Colm Gildernew, described the display on the bonfire as "deplorable."

He said: "The signage and effigy on the Moygashel bonfire is a clear hate crime."

Alliance Party councillor Eddie Roofe described the bonfire as "hateful and deeply offensive."

"It is unacceptable that year after year, we continue to witness these hateful and deeply offensive displays."

SDLP councillor Carl Whyte described the display on the bonfire as "absolutely disgusting."

He told the BBC Good Morning Ulster programme: "The singling out of an entire religion, an entire faith, is just shameful."

Eleventh night bonfires will be lit across Northern Ireland on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings ahead of the Orange Order’s July 12 parades on Monday.

While most of the bonfires pass off without incident, several have become the focus of contention due to the placing of flags, effigies and election posters on the structures before they are ignited.

Last month in Moygashel, police removed a banner from a children’s playpark, saying it was being treated as a hate crime.

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

 

Blaze in Chinese shoe factory leaves at least 28 dead

09.07.2026

At least 28 people have died in a fire at a shoe factory in China. 

State news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday that the fire broke out at a factory in the south-eastern city of Jinjiang, in Fujian province. 

The state broadcaster CCTV had previously reported that people were trapped at the scene of the fire.

According to Xinhua, President Xi Jinping has called for comprehensive search and rescue operations, support for those affected and a swift investigation into the cause of the fire.

Those responsible are to be held strictly to account, he added.

The ministry of emergency management and the national fire service sent a joint task force to the scene of the accident. 

Authorities in Fujian mobilized resources to treat the injured and manage the situation on the ground, with the response ongoing.

Serious industrial accidents occur regularly in China. Inadequate safety measures or a failure to comply with regulations often play a part in such incidents. 

As recently as May, 37 people lost their lives in an explosion at a fireworks factory in the central province of Hunan.

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

Fire breaks out at historic Czech factory warehouse

09.07.2026, 

Photo: Glück Dalibor/CTK/dpa

An historic high-rise factory warehouse has caught fire in the Czech city of Zlín, known for its architectural heritage.

Part of the 10-storey building has collapsed, the local fire service said on Thursday. 

No injuries were reported as the building was unoccupied, but pictures showed thick plumes of black smoke emerging from the building. 

The industrial town of Zlín is situated around 250 kilometres south-east of Prague.

The fire reportedly broke out on the ninth floor in the warehouse of a Czech sports shoe brand and spread rapidly. The cause of the blaze has not yet been determined.

The high-rise factory building number 34 was constructed between 1949 and 1955.

It served as the central warehouse for the Svit shoe factory, the nationalized company that took over the famous Bata works in Czechoslovakia under the socialist regime.

The fire service declared the highest alert level, with around 300 firefighters on site to tackle the major blaze.

A helicopter provided aerial support for the fire-fighting efforts.

A wide area around the site has been cordoned off, while the city council urged residents to keep their windows and doors closed.

Around 75,000 pairs of shoes are said to have been destroyed in the blaze.

The damage to the affected sports footwear brand, Vasky, is estimated as at least 150 million Czech koruna ($7 million), the CTK news agency said.

• Information on the building, in Czech
• Czech fire service on X

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

 

Germany's VW debates cuts amid nationwide union protests

09.07.2026

Photo: Jan Woitas/dpa

By dpa correspondents

Germany's IG Metall trade union staged nationwide protests on Thursday against threats to close plants and cut more jobs at Volkswagen, as the VW supervisory board met in the afternoon to discuss new cost-cutting plans for the group.

The meeting was expected to continue into the evening, while protests against the cost-cutting plans took place at more than a dozen sites. 

Around 500 people gathered for a rally in Wolfsburg, where the German automotive giant has its global headquarters. They marched with horns and sirens to the management block, where the supervisory board later convened. 

Opinions also differ sharply within the supervisory board.

VW chief executive Oliver Blume announced earlier this year that he was working on a new 2030 target for the group and intended to significantly tighten cost-cutting measures.

Up to 100,000 jobs could be cut worldwide, according to Manager Magazin, a German business magazine - twice as many as previously planned.

Four Volkswagen Group plants in Germany are facing closure, according to the magazine: Hanover, Emden, Zwickau and Neckarsulm.

According to Der Spiegel, a news magazine, vehicle production could be wound down at those sites by the end of 2034.

"The precise content of the future plan and the associated required measures are being discussed today between the supervisory board and the management board of Volkswagen AG," a spokesman said ahead of the meeting.

This would involve measures to reduce complexity and focus development and production more regionally. "And yes, we will also have to reduce overcapacity," he said.

Union resists 'brutal plans'

IG Metall trade union said it would resist what it called "brutal plans" by the corporate leadership. 

"Across the country, colleagues have sent a clear message today: not like this," said union chairwoman Christiane Benner.

 "They have worked hard, they have made concessions. Instead of viewing that performance as an example, management is confronting workers with new plans to cut jobs. The anger and uncertainty this creates is understandably great."

It was "absolutely irresponsible the way people's futures are currently being played with, the way fear is being stoked," Benner said at the rally in Wolfsburg. "We as IG Metall cannot stand by and let four plants in Germany be closed. We will not accept that."

Works council chairwoman Daniela Cavallo called on management to "stop this uncertainty. We need clarity for the workforce. We need a comprehensive plan." Restructuring should not only mean job cuts and plant closures, she argued.

Thursday's protest was comparatively small in scale, but IG Metall said it would "further increase the pressure in the second half of the year if necessary, should management stick to its plans." 

VW was risking a "major conflict," warned Thorsten Gröger, IG Metall's district leader for Lower Saxony.

Osnabrück kicks off protests

The protests began in the morning in Osnabrück, where around 70 shop stewards and works councillors gathered at the factory gate, according to IG Metall. 

Workers had now been waiting two years for a decision on the plant's future, said local IG Metall chief Stephan Soldanski. 

The union reported the biggest turnout in Emden, with around 1,500 participants. Wielding whistles, flags and banners, they protested against the cost-cutting plans and the threatened closure of their site. 

Large numbers of VW workers and trade unionists from other companies gathered at the company gate for the changeover between the early and late shifts.

In Ingolstadt, between 250 and 300 people gathered for a flash mob at the headquarters of VW subsidiary Audi, according to the union. 

In Zuffenhausen north of Stuttgart, 250 Porsche workers staged a spontaneous protest, IG Metall said. Further actions were planned in Neckarsulm, Brunswick, Stuttgart, Hanover, Kassel, Chemnitz, Dresden, Zwickau, Leipzig, Munich, Nuremberg and Salzgitter.

Cuts already under way

VW has already announced the elimination of 50,000 jobs across the group in Germany by 2030. Of those, 35,000 jobs are to go at the core brand, with the remainder at subsidiaries such as Audi and Porsche. 

Blume has justified the expansion of the cost-cutting plans by pointing to deteriorating operating conditions. Tariffs, wars, geopolitical tensions and intensifying competition are creating headwinds, the chief executive said.

The group's previous business model - developing and producing in Europe and selling worldwide - no longer works, he argued.

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