The Government of Israel notified the White House on Thursday that the attack on Iran would take place in the next 24 or 48 hours, according to several US media outlets.

Tel Aviv also assured Joe Biden's government that Iran's nuclear facilities would not be the target of the bombing, according to the NBC television network.. Isfahan has key facilities in Iran's nuclear program.

Washington has also confirmed that its Armed Forces did not participate in the attack.. At the moment there is no official reaction from the US Government, which wants the situation to calm down and would have preferred if Tel Aviv had not attacked.

US President Joe Biden himself had asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iran.. The political website Axios reported this week that Biden told Netanyahu: “You've had a victory, take it.”

The “victory” that Bien spoke of was the shooting down of the vast majority of the approximately 320 missiles and drones launched by Iran against Israel on the night of Saturday to Sunday.. A considerable part of these mills – more than a third of the total – were shot down by the Armed Forces of the US, France, the United Kingdom and Jordan.. The rest were shot down by Israel's air defense, at a cost ranging between 520 and 1,225 million euros, according to the Jewish State's own estimates by analysts.

Israel, however, decided to attack. According to the US media, the initial date of the attack was going to be Monday, but, under pressure from Washington, Netanyahu decided to wait.. Likewise, the US forced Netanyahu to reduce the dimensions of the military action.

Washington hopes the bombing was little more than symbolic, just as the one Iran launched against Israel on Saturday night was.. In fact, Tehran had warned the air traffic authorities of Saudi Arabia and other countries the day before that there would be a significant number of unregistered and unidentified aircraft flying over the region in the following days.. It was a subtle way of saying that military devices were going to take off from Iran.

ATTACK-COUNTERATTACK DYNAMICS

However, in the US there is concern about the possibility of a reaction from Tehran that would establish a dynamic of attacks and counterattacks between both countries.. The fact that the 'hardest' sectors are in power in both Israel and Iran is a factor that aggravates the uncertainty.

Iran attacked Israel to 'save face' after that country's bombing of its consulate in Damascus (Syria) on April 1. Now, Israel seems to have done the same to show Iran that attacks on its territory do not go unpunished.. The question is whether Iran is going to counterattack directly, through its allies in the region – such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon – or if it is going to choose to do nothing.

That Israel carried out the attack despite US opposition highlights the incredible influence of Tel Aviv over Washington. The United States gives military aid to Israel equivalent to almost four times what the USSR gave to Cuba during the Cold War (adjusting prices for inflation). According to the Bloomberg news agency, the US also pays a third of the Gaza war. Even weapons systems that are entirely Israeli and over which Tel Aviv has complete control have been paid for by the American taxpayer.. This is the case of the 'Iron Dome' anti-missile system, which Tel Aviv has repeatedly refused to deliver to Ukraine – despite the fact that the president of that country, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish – and which will be one of the large beneficiaries of the aid package of 14 billion dollars (more than 13 billion euros) for Israel that the US Government is going to approve this Saturday.

The US has air defense systems in all the countries that Israel has had to fly over to attack Iran, with the exception of Syria – aligned with Russia – and Saudi Arabia, as well as in the Persian Gulf. The air defense systems of these countries have also had to detect Israel's aircraft.

For the Government of Joe Biden, the attack is another failure in the cascade of disasters that has occurred in the Middle East since the terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.. Washington has failed to try to get Israel to carry out a targeted offensive against terrorist targets in Gaza, instead of carrying out a conventional attack that has devastated much of the territory.

Nor has it managed to get Tel Aviv to allow large amounts of humanitarian aid into the enclave, which is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe.. Washington has informed Iran through diplomatic channels that it did not participate in any way – neither by providing information nor with any type of support – in the Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, in which eight members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and which has unleashed this wave of attacks and counterattacks.

In the White House and in the Democratic Party, there are those who believe that Benjamin Netanyahu – whose bad personal relationship with the American president is as notorious as his closeness to 'Trumpism' and, especially, his friendship with the former president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner – is carrying out an escalation in the conflict to drag the US into the war.

On the part of the Republican Party, however, there are no fissures in support for Israel, which is summarized in the phrase of former President Donald Trump, who has urged Tel Aviv to “finish the job” in Gaza. Kushner has criticized the fact that a beach tourism infrastructure has not been created in Gaza under the Hamas administration, which was a clear reference to the Palestinian economic failure, although there have been those who have taken it as a covert proposal for Israel to annex the coast of the region and expel the Palestinians from it.

This situation has caused the Ibex 35 to start this Friday's session, the last of the week, with a fall of 0.8%, standing at 10,678 points, in a context marked by tensions.

Cash, diamonds, drugs and alcohol. All of this, in huge quantities, is what the Election Commission of India (ECI) has seized since March, the body that must ensure the cleanliness of the largest elections the world has ever seen..

The elections started this Friday and will last for 44 days. Around 970 million citizens (of a very young country where about 1.42 billion people live) have the right to vote, more than 10% of the world's population.

But the most notable news that broke in the run-up to the elections was the value of all the “gifts” distributed by Indian politicians in exchange for votes: a record of more than 530 million euros. They are 100 million more than the sum of the bribes prior to the previous elections.

The ECI has pointed out that the two states where the most assets related to vote buying have been seized are Rajasthan and Gujarat.. They are both in the north. And both are important strongholds of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).. Furthermore, the second is the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi (73 years old), the great favorite to win a third consecutive term at the polls.

India historically has a serious problem of endemic corruption, more widespread in the north, in the poorest regions of the most populous country in the world.. Transparency International's annual corruption perception index places this Asian giant in 93rd place out of the 180 nations it analyzes, at the same level as Kazakhstan.. It is common that, during election periods, political leaders and the media campaign against what they call “electoral incentives”, a deep-rooted practice to attract voters.

The shadow of corruption has been surrounding the celebration of the current elections for some time, starting with the controversy unleashed around the electoral bonds that finance – in a very opaque way – political parties.

This system, introduced by the Modi Government in 2017, allows individuals and companies to buy bonds from the State Bank of India, administered by the Executive, and donate them anonymously to any political party, although donations usually go to mostly to the BJP. At the beginning of the year, the Supreme Court declared these bonuses “unconstitutional.”

In addition to the controversy over the financing of the ruling party, the opposition has denounced that the Modi Government has swept away the equality of conditions in the elections after “fabricating” corruption cases against some of the local leaders candidates for the Lok Sabha (the low camera).

The main opposition force, the Congress Party, which has governed the country in 54 of its 76 years since independence, also claimed that tax authorities had frozen its bank accounts for six weeks, hampering the financing of its campaign.. One of the most relevant opposition political figures, Arvind Kejriwal, head of the Government of New Delhi, was arrested last month in a corruption case.

Results: June 4

The elections to elect 543 deputies will be held in seven phases over six weeks by the 22 states and federally administered regions. They will end on June 1 and the results will be available on the 4th. It is impossible to concentrate the celebration of Indian democracy on a single day due to the enormous size of an electoral list larger than the sum of the populations of Russia, the United States, Brazil, Japan and the United Kingdom.

More than a million and a half electoral centers will open in a phased manner even in the most remote and inaccessible regions, with mules, camels and elephants carrying ballot boxes and ballots to the isolated mountain towns, jungles and deserts. For the first time, the Electoral Commission has said that elderly and disabled people can vote from home by postal vote.

“We will bring democracy to every corner of India,” promised Rajiv Kumar, director of the commission, who recalled an extreme case that occurred in the 2019 general elections: five officials traveled by bus and on foot for two days so that it could exercise her right to vote a woman who lived isolated in a village near the border with China in the Himalayas.

Modi's BJP, which now has a parliamentary majority (352 seats including the support of its coalition partners), hopes to expand its dominance by occupying more than 400 of the 543 seats in Parliament. Not even the super alliance formed by two dozen opposition parties, called the Indian National Alliance for Inclusive Development (INDIA), seems likely to remove a leader increasingly revered by a fervent nationalist tide.

The main rival of Indian leader Raul Gandhi of the Congress Party owes his popularity to a family lineage that begins with his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of independent India.. His grandmother and father also later served as rulers of the country.

But the problem that Gandhi faces – he has denounced that the elections are “rigged” -, no matter how many allies he has sought to confront the BJP, is that Modi, surrounded by a growing cult of his personality, has broad support from of the Hindu community, which represents 80% of the population. He has hooked the most extremist Hindus with a campaign against religious minorities, especially Muslims.

Much of the media narrative is driven by the ruling party, which reminds almost daily of the prime minister's achievements: leading the economy to be the fastest growing in the world, promising to be a developed nation by 2047, and technological milestones such as reach the far side of the moon. Many voters are confident that, with Modi at the helm, India can aspire to be a superpower one day.

In a bold and unprecedented move, Iran has completely transformed its approach to conflict with the inauguration of a new strategic doctrine. This shift came in response to the recent attack on its consulate in Damascus by Israel. Rather than relying on its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, or Yemen, the Islamic Republic took matters into its own hands on April 13, unleashing a remarkable display of force. The operation involved the deployment of an astonishing 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and over 30 cruise projectiles.

In response to the unfolding conflict in the Gaza Strip, Turkey has assumed the role of a mediator between Israel and Hamas, positioning itself strategically amidst other regional stakeholders such as Qatar and Egypt. While Ankara initially focused on providing humanitarian aid to Gaza, it had been excluded from discussions surrounding a potential ceasefire. However, the dynamics of mediation have shifted with the recent escalation of tension between Tehran and Tel Aviv, altering the landscape for intermediaries involved in the conflict.

Erogd

Latvia, like its Baltic neighbors, has been one of Ukraine's strongest supporters since Russia launched its full-scale invasion more than two years ago.. It has also become a refuge for many Russians who have fled war or the draft.. But even in exile there are ambushes by local politics. A combative minister named Inese Libina-Egnere is becoming the nightmare of local Russians.

Russians living in Latvia face criminal charges for justifying war under Latvian law if they vote at the Russian embassy in Riga, where two polling stations are expected to open for the March 15-17 elections.. Latvia's Justice Minister believes that Russian citizens living in the Baltic country and planning to vote in Russia's upcoming presidential election “fundamentally support” Moscow's invasion of Ukraine simply by participating in the vote. , which is celebrated throughout Russia but also in the occupied territories in Ukraine.

“We cannot prevent Russian citizens from entering the embassy. What they do there and why they do it is their business and that of the state of which they are citizens,” explained last Tuesday Inese Libina-Egnere, a popular Latvian politician who represents the Unity party, a center-right force.. “Order will be maintained outside the embassy, but we consider that the people who enter also support the war,” the minister told local radio station TV3.

Libina-Egnere has some reasons to have little sympathy for the Russian government. She herself is among several Latvian cabinet members under arrest warrant from Russia's Interior Ministry accused of promoting the dismantling of Soviet monuments, a serious affront to a Russian regime engaged in a crusade for the glories of the past..

Moscow has not remained indifferent to the minister's threats. The Russian Foreign Ministry has denounced that “several states in Europe and the United States” have intensified calls to “interrupt” the voting process in Russian embassies abroad.

The minister's threats come after a cascade of measures to remove Russia even from the refrigerators of Latvians. In a historic decision, Latvia's parliament this month approved a ban on agricultural imports from Russia and neighboring Belarus until at least 2025.

Additionally, the Latvian government decided on February 27 to extend restrictions on the entry of Russian citizens into the country given Russia's continued aggression in Ukraine.. The government believes that they “continue to represent a threat to the internal security of Latvia”, a country of only 1.8 million inhabitants..

Entry restrictions will continue to apply to Russian citizens wishing to cross the EU's external border for tourism and leisure purposes.. This means weekend getaways to Riga will remain banned well into next year.

Other restrictions also apply to Russian-registered cars using Latvia's road network, and they may even be subject to confiscation if discovered, a highly restrictive measure that has affected even Russian dissidents and Ukrainians leaving Russia to travel. look for a country where they can settle permanently after fleeing to the east to escape the fighting.

The threat from Russian President Vladimir Putin to NATO countries in the event that they send ground troops to Ukraine is real for countries like Poland that were part of its territories of influence until the expansion of the Alliance to the East in 1997.. This is why the European Union's damning response to Putin's State of the Nation address was not enough.. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has called for action, an all-out military race to match Russian military potential at the European level.

“Europe must understand that this new arms race that Russia is imposing on the world and the Russian aggression in Ukraine must cause an awakening in all European capitals and in the EU as a whole,” Tusk declared in an appearance in Warsaw with the first Latvian minister, Evika Silina. The Polish premier calls for “decisions to match Russia's military potential and make Europe better and not worse armed and prepared.”

For Tusk, after Putin's words anticipating a nuclear conflict that would end civilization on Earth, European rearmament is an “absolute necessity”. “Putin's words about Russia arming itself and moving de facto to a war economy are true. “It is not just an aggressive speech,” Tusk assured, adding that the decisions announced by the Russian leader to increase Russia's self-sufficiency and modernize its armed forces must be taken “totally seriously.”

Putin announced this Thursday that Russia has fulfilled the development plans for all the newest missiles and weapons announced by the Kremlin in 2018, part of which have already been delivered to the Russian Armed Forces and even used in the war in Ukraine.

“We have already done or completed the work on everything we planned in the field of arms, which I announced in my 2018 message,” he stated in his State of the Nation address before both houses of Parliament.. Putin added that work on a whole series of new weapons systems continues and announced that “we will soon learn about new achievements of our scientists and weapons manufacturers.”

In Germany, Putin's speech continues to be analyzed, but voices have already emerged from parliamentarians highlighting the seriousness of the content and at a time when, beyond the elections that he will attend in two weeks and that are already considered won , worrying movements are detected in the separatist region of Transnistria, in the Republic of Moldova.

Poland and the Baltic countries have been warning for months that Germany, France and the rest of Europe would also have to maximize arms production by government decree to restore to some extent Cold War arms equality.. The reason is simple: Europe is currently unable to produce enough weapons for either Ukraine or itself.

“There is a principle known since ancient times: if you want peace, prepare for war,” said German MP Norbert Rötteng, for whom this is especially true when you have as a neighbor a cynical murderer who brutally exploits any weakness.