Dubai, Sep 04: Jordan, a staunch US ally that hosts American forces in the Mideast, has paid a price for its relationship with Washington, which has made the kingdom’s military bases a target of repeat Iranian strikes.

Hundreds of drone and missile attacks have added to other strains on Jordan that include a slumping economy and volatility in the neighbouring West Bank, where Israeli settlers have ramped up attacks on Palestinians.

Despite the risk of more strikes, Jordanian leaders say they are committed to maintaining the relationship after decades of courting deeper security ties with American officials and offering to be a reliable partner with the West in a region rocked by conflict. Analysts say the alliance offers Jordan a way to guard against Iran’s attempts to destabilise its neighbours.

King Abdullah II of Jordan seemed to acknowledge the need for such alliances last year, when he warned that destabilisation fuelled by the COVID-19 crisis, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and multiple Israeli military campaigns in the Middle East could trigger chaos far beyond the region.

“We are living through wave after wave of disruption, without pause,” he told European lawmakers. “There is no telling where the boundaries of this battleground will end. That, my friends, is a threat to people everywhere.”

Jordan embraces Washington to weather stormy Middle East

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a puzzle-piece-shaped nation bordering Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel and the West Bank. More than 11 million Jordanians live between the Jordan River, the Red Sea and eastern deserts strewn with ruins.

Besides the threat from Iran, Jordan faces other challenges, such as an economy that has buckled under millions of refugees fleeing regional conflicts. Soaring energy prices and inflation have added to the burden as the tourism sector struggles to draw visitors to landscapes lionized in Hollywood by Peter O’Toole, Harrison Ford and Matt Damon.

And next door, growing Israeli settler violence in the West Bank is deeply unsettling to Jordanians who fear instability could drive many of the 2.8 million Palestinians there to flee into the kingdom, said Sean Yom, a professor at Temple University and author of a 2025 book titled “Jordan: Politics in an Accidental Crucible.”

Since taking the reins from his father, King Hussein, in 1999, Abdullah has forged ever-stronger links between his capital, Amman, and Washington. The monarch — a fluent English speaker whose dynasty claims to be descended from the Prophet Muhammad — enjoys widespread support among world leaders and Democratic and Republican lawmakers in the US.

President Donald Trump once called the king “one of the true great leaders of the world.” Joe Biden also praised his leadership. First lady Jill Biden was a guest at the wedding of Abdullah’s son Hussein to a Saudi aristocrat in 2023. Pope Leo welcomed Abdullah to the Vatican in 2025.

As part of its partnership with the West, Jordan provided logistical help and intelligence for the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, and it contributed to the fight against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

Amer Sabaileh, an independent Jordanian political analyst, said Jordan’s alliance with the US is central to Abdullah’s yearslong campaign to secure his kingdom against danger, including from Iran.

Jordanian elites see Iran’s support of Shiite militias in Iraq, armed Palestinian groups and Syrian drug traffickers as direct threats to the royal court, Yom said.

“Very few people in Jordan think the Islamic Republic is good for the Middle East,” he said.

US military operations rely on a dozen sites in Jordan

Amman and Washington signed a defence-cooperation agreement in 2021 that granted US forces and contractors access to 12 military installations across the kingdom. The NATO military alliance opened its first liaison office in the region in Jordan in 2025.

In the run-up to the Iran war, Jordan’s sprawling Muwaffaq Salti Air Base became “a key logistics hub” for US C-17 transport planes and about 60 combat aircraft, said David Schenker, a fellow at the Washington Institute.

“Jordan provides great strategic depth,” he said, calling the kingdom’s position “essential” to the US campaign against Iran. “This makes Jordan a target, not just targeting US forces but also targeting the king.”

About 50,000 US troops are currently deployed across the Middle East, with an unknown number in Jordan. Schenker estimates that at least 8 per cent, or USD 1.47 billion, of the kingdom’s annual budget comes directly from US grants.

Adm. Charles Bradford, commander of the Pentagon department covering the Middle East, said in May that the US military had relocated personnel and assets from its mission against the Islamic State from Iraq to Jordan. The shift was part of a broader, long-running strategy to put more distance between American forces and Iranian missiles.

Those troops were enough to draw fire to Jordan from the Islamic Republic. Most of the incoming missiles and drones were knocked down by US air defences.

Speaking Thursday in Vienna, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi defended his country’s right to make its own decisions.

“Iran has been attacking us and many other countries in the region long before even this war started,” he said, referring to Iranian “meddling in internal affairs” and other clandestine efforts. “So we do not buy their argument. We are a sovereign country. We were not a party to this war.”

Kathmandu, Sep 04: Around 600 children remain unaccounted for in Nepal’s Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts after the devastating flash floods, as the death toll rose to 1,282 on Friday with more than 4,700 missing.

The flash floods, triggered by an ice-rock avalanche near the Nepal-Tibet border on August 26, devastated towns and villages in northern and central Nepal, leaving a trail of destruction.

So far, 359 bodies have been recovered in Chitwan, 218 in Nawalparasi East, 208 in Nawalparasi West, 185 in Nuwakot, 72 in Gorkha, 60 in Dhading, 140 in Rasuwa and 38 in Tanahu, according to Nepal Police.

With two people dying while undergoing treatment in two hospitals in Kathmandu, the death toll has reached 1,282.

The joint command of security forces is searching for 4,798 people missing from different areas.

An estimated 280 children are missing in Rasuwa, and between 300 and 350 others remain unaccounted for in the neighbouring Nuwakot in central Nepal, the Kathmandu Post newspaper reported, citing figures compiled by local Education Development and Coordination Units (EDCUs), local governments, and educational institutions.

Surya Bahadur Khatri, head of the Nuwakot Education Development and Coordination Unit, said, “We are actively liaising with headmasters to collect verified data on missing students, though school heads are struggling to provide exact figures due to broken communications.”

“Although a few missing students have been located, new reports of unaccounted-for children continue to arrive from various schools. We estimate that at least 300 pupils are missing in our district.”

In Bidur Municipality of Nuwakot alone, roughly 250 children are missing since the floods hit, according to Navaraj Sapkota, school inspector of the municipality’s education unit.

“The situation on the ground is deeply distressing. In some cases, we have located surviving parents who cannot find their children, while in other instances, surviving students are searching for missing parents,” said Sapkota.

Bidur houses 170 educational institutions—142 community schools and 28 private schools.

In Rasuwa, Durga Prasad Silwal, chief of the local education unit, said that official verification is ongoing but preliminary records indicate that 280 students are currently missing across the district.

The disaster has also taken a toll on teachers and school staff. Education units confirmed that 22 teachers and school staff members remain missing across both districts.

Additionally, several teachers from Dhading and Gorkha who had travelled to Rasuwa for pilgrimage were caught in the deluge and remain missing.

Rasuwa reported 16 missing teachers—15 from community schools and one from a private institution—while Nuwakot confirmed six missing teachers, according to Kathmandu Post.

Although several bodies of victims have been recovered in downstream districts, authorities have yet to verify the exact number of identified students or teachers.

According to the Ministry of Education data, the floods affected 22 schools across Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading, with 12 institutions completely destroyed, the report said.

Washington, Sep 04: Confronted by an intransigent Iranian government that has refused to back down in the face of a massive military campaign, President Donald Trump appears to have settled on a dual-pronged approach that combines economic pressure with the potential of a devastating escalation in force.

Having launched “Operation Economic Outcast” just last week to try to isolate Iran from its remaining global trade partners, the Trump administration also resumed strikes in recent days, prompting Iranian retaliation that has renewed concerns of an all-out regional war.

However, the combination of already intense sanctions on Iran and an off-and-on bombing campaign since the war began more than six months ago has not bowed the Iranian leadership and has left the administration struggling to find a way to wind down the conflict. Tehran has dug in its heels — to Trump’s frustration — as energy prices rise, the global economy roils and poll numbers on the administration’s handling of the war dip ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections.

Trump said Wednesday that he didn’t think the conflict would last “much longer,” but he again shrugged off suggestions that its unpopularity and high gasoline prices resulting from Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz would affect the elections for Republicans.

“It doesn’t matter. And I’m not affected by the election,” he told reporters. “I’m not running. But my party is running, and I’m going to help my party. But I think my party respects the fact that we’re not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

A regional diplomat briefed on the matter described the current impasse between Tehran and Washington as reflective of both countries’ domestic priorities: the midterm elections for Trump and Republicans and the internal crises within Iran.

Domestic issues are critical reasons why neither side is willing to blink first, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.

The diplomat said negotiations, including those between Iran and Oman or even Iran and the US, will not go anywhere without addressing the initial catalyst of war: Israel. And the diplomat was sceptical of the Trump administration’s new sanctions plan, saying the threats require more explanation than what the US has provided so far.

The Trump administration’s economic isolation of Iran is off to a slow start

The administration’s new push for Iran’s economic isolation was announced with great fanfare last week and a dire warning for all remaining countries to cut off financial and trade ties with Iran or face US retaliation — but the campaign so far has fallen flat.

Just one branch of an Egyptian bank in the United Arab Emirates has been targeted so far. For actual sanctions to bite, experts agree that they must apply to Iran’s main trading partners: mainly China but also India and Russia. But Trump is loath to target China, especially as he is preparing to host President Xi Jinping later this month.

Trump also insists that the US has control over the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s oil transits before the war began. The strategic waterway has been a key pressure point for Iran, and reopening it fully has become one of the prime goals for the US administration.

Ship traffic through the strait is well below pre-war levels due to the risk of attack if vessels don’t comply with an Iranian vetting regime near its coastline, which is in sharp contrast to the unhindered navigation before the war. There were 102 transits last week and 126 the week before, according to shipping data company Lloyd’s List Intelligence, compared with 130 or more per day before the war.

“As President Trump said, the strait is open, and all mines have been cleared,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Thursday. “The naval blockade remains in full force and effect, and Operation Economic Outcast is underway to sever every remaining economic lifeline sustaining the regime.”

The White House has repeatedly touted the economic impact that the sanctions have had on Iran, citing its rampant inflation and the massive loss in the value of its currency. US officials have described Iran’s financial system as “one big house of cards.”

Going forward, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said “the price” Iran will pay will be primarily economic, “but we reserve the right … to take military action when necessary — not just to protect ourselves but to prevent them from being able to threaten others as well.”

“They’re going to continue to feel the squeeze,” he told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade in an interview that aired Wednesday.

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he would not characterise the current situation as a “war” but that the administration would respond to any Iranian hostile action.

“Major combat operations are currently not ongoing, and they haven’t been ongoing in a very long time,” Vance told reporters during a White House briefing. “In fact, what we did just a couple of days ago is that we made it harder for the Iranians to shoot at commercial shipping again in order to ensure the flow of oil and gas into world energy markets.”

Combining military force and sanctions on Iran is the only option,’ one analyst says

Complicating things for the US, Iran’s leadership has shown signs of divisions between moderates more open to a diplomatic solution and hardliners who want to press ahead with a more confrontational approach.

President Masoud Pezeshkian is one of the most prominent voices still calling for a negotiated solution. But the hardliners appear to have gained the upper hand, and Iran shows no sign of backing down. Tehran continues to lash out at US interests and allies around the region in response to military strikes.

“This kind of a hybrid approach — the combination of military force, blockade and economic pressure — is the only option that seems to be available to the United States at this moment,” said Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Still, he said, “it’s been for a long time, but now maybe more than ever, a battle of endurance between the two sides.”

Amr Hamzawy, director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, pointed to two main reasons for the deteriorating situation.

“One, none of the two parties is satisfied with the outcome — meaning that the current situation does not serve US interests well, and it does not serve Iranian interests well,” Hamzawy said.

The other reason is how leaders from both sides are perceived at home.

“The Trump administration is afraid of being portrayed in the US as an administration that failed to end a military campaign successfully, and that’s going to impact the midterm elections,” he said. “And the Iranians, especially the Revolutionary Guard, are quite afraid of appearing as if they are submitting to US sanctions with no actions on their side, which might hurt them domestically.”