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airstrikes
Nigerian Village Bombed by Trump Has 'No Known History' of Anti-Christian Terrorism, Locals Say
“Portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality,” said Nigeria's information minister.
Dec 27, 2025
When President Donald Trump launched a series of airstrikes in Nigeria on Christmas, he described it as an attack against "ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians."
But locals in a town that was hit during the strike say terrorism has never been a problem for them. On Friday, CNN published a report based on interviews with several residents of Jabo, which was hit by a US missile during Thursday's attack, which landed just feet away from the town's only hospital.
The rural town of Jabo is part of the Sokoto state in northwestern Nigeria, which the Trump administration and the Nigerian government said was hit during the strike.
Both sides have said militants were killed during the attack, but have not specified their identities or the number of casualties.
Kabir Adamu, a security analyst from Beacon Security and Intelligence in Abuja, told Al Jazeera that the likely targets are members of “Lakurawa,” a recently formed offshoot of ISIS.
But the Trump administration's explanation that their home is at the center of a "Christian genocide" left many residents of Jabo confused. As CNN reported:
While parts of Sokoto face challenges with banditry, kidnappings and attacks by armed groups including Lakurawa–which Nigeria classifies as a terrorist organization due to suspected affiliations with [the] Islamic State–villagers say Jabo is not known for terrorist activity and that local Christians coexist peacefully with the Muslim majority.
Bashar Isah Jabo, a lawmaker who represents the town and surrounding areas in Nigeria's parliament, described the village to CNN as “a peaceful community” that has “no known history of ISIS, Lakurawa, or any other terrorist groups operating in the area.”
While the town is predominantly Muslim, resident Suleiman Kagara, told reporters: "We see Christians as our brothers. We don’t have religious conflicts, so we weren’t expecting this."
Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with more than 237 million people, has a long history of violence between Christians and Muslims, with each making up about half the population.
However, Nigerian officials have disputed claims by Republican leaders—including US Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas)—who have claimed that the government is “ignoring and even facilitating the mass murder of Christians.”
The senator recently claimed, without citing a source for the figures, that "since 2009, over 50,000 Christians in Nigeria have been massacred, and over 18,000 churches and 2,000 Christian schools have been destroyed" by the Islamist group Boko Haram.
Cruz is correct that many Christians have been killed by Boko Haram. But according to reports by the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project and the Council on Foreign Relations, the majority of the approximately 53,000 civilians killed by the group since 2009 have been Muslim.
Moreover, the areas where Boko Haram is most active are in northeastern Nigeria, far away from where Trump's strikes were conducted. Attacks on Christians cited in October by Cruz, meanwhile, have been in Nigeria's Middle Belt region, which is separate from violence in the north.
The Nigerian government has pushed back on what they have called an "oversimplified" narrative coming out of the White House and from figures in US media, like HBO host Bill Maher, who has echoed Cruz's overwrought claims of "Christian genocide."
“Portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality,” said Nigerian information minister Mohammed Idris Malagi. “While Nigeria, like many countries, has faced security challenges, including acts of terrorism perpetrated by criminals, couching the situation as a deliberate, systematic attack on Christians is inaccurate and harmful. It oversimplifies a complex, multifaceted security environment and plays into the hands of terrorists and criminals who seek to divide Nigerians along religious or ethnic lines."
Anthea Butler, a religious scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, has criticized the Trump administration's attempts to turn the complex situation in Nigeria into a "holy war."
"This theme of persecution of Christians is a very politically charged, and actually religiously charged, theme for evangelicals across the world. And when you say that Christians are being persecuted, that’s a thing," she told Democracy Now! in November. "It fits this sort of savior narrative of this American sort of ethos right now that is seeing itself going into countries for a moral war, a moral suasion, as it were, to do something to help other people."
Nigeria also notably produces more crude oil than any other country in Africa. Trump has explicitly argued that the US should carry out regime change in Venezuela for the purposes of "taking back" that nation's oil.
Butler has doubted the sincerity of Trump's concern for the nation's Christians due to his administration's denial of entry for Nigerian refugees, as well as virtually every other refugee group, with the exception of white South Africans.
She said: "I think this is sort of disingenuous to say you’re going to go in and save Christianity in Nigeria, when you have, you know, banned Nigerians from coming to this country."
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Iran Suspends Cooperation with IAEA, Accusing Nuclear Watchdog of 'Complicity' in Trump Strikes
"The IAEA, which did not even formally condemn the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, has put its international credibility up for sale," said Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.
Jun 25, 2025
The Iranian parliament approved a bill Wednesday suspending its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The resolution states that weapons inspectors with the United Nations nuclear watchdog organization will not be allowed to enter the country unless it guarantees the security of Iran's nuclear facilities and their ability to pursue peaceful nuclear activities.
Ahead of the vote, lawmakers denounced the IAEA, accusing it of enabling U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities Saturday—strikes Iran, as well as other observers of international law, have denounced as a clear violation of its sovereignty.
"The IAEA, which did not even formally condemn the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, has put its international credibility up for sale," said Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. "For this reason, the [Atomic Energy Organization of Iran] will suspend its cooperation with the Agency until the security of its nuclear facilities is guaranteed, and Iran's peaceful nuclear program will proceed at an even faster pace."
In response to the resolution, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said that "the return of inspectors to Iran's nuclear facilities is a top priority."
Independent inspectors have not yet been able to inspect the damage to the three nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan—hit by the U.S.
Following the strikes, U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that Iran's nuclear sites were "completely and fully obliterated."
However, reporting by CNN and The New York Times on Tuesday, based on unnamed sources familiar with an internal assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, undercut that claim, stating that the strikes only set back Iran's nuclear program by a matter of months.
Grossi said Monday that the airstrikes likely inflicted "very significant damage" at Fordo, but that no conclusions could be reached until independent inspectors are allowed to examine the site and account for Iran's uranium stockpile.
The latest IAEA report issued on May 31 found "no credible indications of an ongoing, undeclared structured nuclear program" being pursued by Iran—a finding echoed by U.S. intelligence agencies.
However, the IAEA did find that Iran had significantly increased its uranium stockpile enriched to 60%, near weapons-grade, which it said was a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Despite no "imminent threat," according to the most recent intelligence assessments, the Trump administration cited those IAEA findings to justify its attacks.
As a result, Iran's nuclear organization has questioned the IAEA's credibility as a neutral broker, accusing them of "deliberate inaction," following American and Israeli strikes. It said in a statement Sunday that these strikes were carried out "with the IAEA's silence, if not complicity."
Some critics have argued that the IAEA's decision to declare Iran in violation of the NPT was the result of significant U.S. arm-twisting and that the IAEA has not applied similar scrutiny to Israel's nuclear weapons program.
Iran maintains that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and that strikes upon its nuclear facilities violate the NPT, which grants countries an "inalienable right" to develop nuclear energy for nonmilitary purposes.
Nuclear experts warn that the U.S. strikes on Iran have undermined the credibility of the NPT, prompting some factions in Iran to call for the nation's exit altogether.
Kelsey Davenport, the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, suggested Monday that U.S. attacks may only embolden Iran and other nations to violate the treaty and pursue nuclear weapons, perceiving them as necessary for their protection.
"From a nonproliferation perspective, Trump's decision to strike Iran was a reckless, irresponsible escalation that is likely to push Iran closer to nuclear weapons in the long term," Davenport said. "Politically, there's greater impetus now to weaponize."
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Trump Said He Would Be a 'Peace President' But 'It Was All Lies,' Say Critics
Trump campaigned to stop "endless war," but now he's bringing the U.S. into a dangerous new one.
Jun 23, 2025
During his run to retake the White House in 2024, U.S. President Donald Trump promised to avoid "endless war" and serve as a "peace president."
"We will measure our success not only by the battles we win," Trump said during his second inaugural address in January, "but also by the wars that we end and, perhaps most importantly, the wars that we never get into."
But after he launched airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites and called for "regime change" this weekend, critics accused him of blatantly misleading the American public.
"Trump, who proclaimed upon his inauguration he wanted to be remembered as a 'peacemaker,' couldn't even wait a half a year into his term to do the thing that he had told everyone he wouldn’t do, and which he built his entire political brand on opposing," wrote columnist Branko Marcetic in Jacobin.
On the campaign trail, Trump lambasted his predecessor, Joe Biden, as a "warmonger," promising to end the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. However, both conflicts not only continue to rage, but have grown bloodier.
Massacres by Israel Defense Forces soldiers in U.S.-administered aid sites have ramped up in recent months as Israel advances with what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described in February as "U.S. President Trump's plan for the creation of a different Gaza.”
As Trump has abandoned talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russian aerial attacks on Ukraine have likewise surged in recent weeks. Shortly after Trump's airstrikes on Iran, the Kremlin launched over 300 drones and dozens of missiles at Kyiv, leaving seven people dead and 31 injured, according to The Washington Post.
"Trump said he could end Russia’s war against Ukraine before his inauguration. He said he would negotiate an end to the war in Gaza with a phone call," wrote civil and labor rights leader Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II on X. "He said Biden was going to drag the US into World War III, but he would be a peace president. It was all lies."
Since he entered the political arena Trump has railed against the wars launched by former President George W. Bush. On the Republican primary debate stage in 2015, he described the Iraq War as a "big, fat mistake," building his credibility with Americans seeking a break from the GOP's interventionist foreign policy consensus.
After Trump's airstrikes on Saturday, his associates attempted to downplay the obvious comparisons with Bush's disastrous legacy.
Vice President JD Vance—who on the campaign trail called out Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris' coziness with Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, and his ex-congresswoman daughter, Liz Cheney—went on NBC to do damage control and explain how Trump's actions were somehow different from those of the 43rd president.
"I empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East. I understand the concern," he said. "But the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both assured the public that this would not be another war of "regime change," like Bush waged in Iraq.
But Trump thoroughly undermined their claims on Sunday night, when he posted on Truth Social: "It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!"
In a Sunday column for The Guardian, Mohamad Bazzi, director of the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and an associate professor of journalism at New York University, argued that Trump is following Bush's model.
" Donald Trump has dragged the U.S. into another war based on exaggerations and manipulated intelligence," Bazzi wrote. "The people of the Middle East will pay the highest price for yet another reckless war built on a lie."
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