Plus: Copper prices surge
IN TODAY’S EDITION
1️⃣ ICC arrest warrants for Hamas and Israeli leaders? |
2️⃣ Assange scores a court win in the UK |
3️⃣ Copper hits an all-time high |
Hi Intriguer. Howdy from Doha, Qatar, where it’s, like, 50 degrees (Celsius). I’m attending a forum on global security, and oh what a week to be here talking security in the Middle East. A few of my takeaways:
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Qatar wants to position itself as the go-to hub for delicate international negotiations.
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Iranian President Raisi’s helicopter crash has been the whisper of the forum, with many theories around what folks think actually happened.
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The Israel-Hamas war is still centre-stage, ranging from its humanitarian impacts to speculation around the ‘day after’ and, of course, the possible ICC arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders.
We dig into these arrest warrant requests in our top story today.
Iranian president’s funeral underway.
Days-long funeral ceremonies have kicked off for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and others killed in Sunday’s helicopter crash. As mourners gather, the Iranian regime has warned against any celebrations of Raisi’s death. New elections will be held on 28 June.
Taiwan chip-makers confirm invasion contingencies.
Dutch chip-machine leader ASML and Taiwanese chip giant TSMC have the ability to remotely shut down their machines in the event China invades Taiwan, according to Bloomberg. The firms reportedly shared their plans after Dutch and US officials expressed concerns.
Jacob Zuma banned from South African election.
South Africa’s highest court has banned former leader Jacob Zuma from running in this month’s general election, ruling his prior prison sentence for contempt of court made him ineligible. His former party, African National Congress, had feared Zuma could split the vote with his new party.
Film star Scarlett Johansson calls out ChatGPT.
US-based AI pioneer OpenAI has pulled the new female voice feature from its famous ChatGPT chatbot after criticism that it sounded just like US actor Scarlett Johansson (who famously starred in a movie about someone falling in love with a chatbot voiced by her). Johansson has criticised OpenAI for using a voice “eerily similar” to hers after she declined an offer to participate.
TOP STORY
ICC prosecutor applies for arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders
L to R: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, and Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.
Karim Khan KC, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, has filed applications for arrest warrants for top Hamas and Israeli leaders involved in the October 7 attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Who are the requested warrants for?
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The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu
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The defence minister of Israel, Yoav Gallant
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The head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar
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The head of the Hamas military wing (also in Gaza), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri (aka Mohammed Deif), and
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The Qatar-based political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh.
What are the allegations?
The ICC’s chief prosecutor has found there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the Hamas leaders are responsible for various crimes from at least October 7, including “extermination”, “taking hostages”, “sexual violence”, and “torture”.
Meanwhile, Khan accuses Israel’s leaders of crimes from at least October 8, including “starvation of civilians”, “wilfully causing great suffering”, “extermination and/or murder”, and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population”.
What’s next?
The three judges of the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber I now decide whether to approve the warrants – that’ll take weeks or months as they weigh up Khan’s evidence.
But ICC judges rarely deny these kinds of warrant applications, so there’s a fair chance they’ll approve the prosecutor’s request, at which point the ICC would issue formal arrest warrants. The question then becomes around enforcement.
If the above individuals then enter any of the 124 states that recognise the ICC, those governments would have an obligation to detain and hand them over to the ICC.
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That list of 124 ICC members includes traditional friends of Israel like Australia, Germany, and the UK but not (for example) the US.
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The ICC list also includes the State of Palestine (signed by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank) and neighbouring Jordan, but not Iran (the Hamas sponsor), Qatar (the host of its political wing), nor China or Russia (who’ve hosted recent Hamas delegations).
So in practice, it’s unlikely we’ll see these warrants executed, though they’ll still curtail the individuals’ freedom of movement, particularly Netanyahu and Gallant.
Of course, none of this is a surprise – Israel “became aware” of the ICC’s move last month (“became aware” often means “our intelligence found out”). Plus Khan himself says he publicly and repeatedly warned this day would come. And the ICC first opened an investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back in 2021.
But surprise or not, it’s still explosive. Hamas has “strongly denounced” the warrant requests for “Palestinian resistance leaders”, saying they equate “the victim with the executioner”. Iran, Qatar, Russia, and China haven’t commented at time of writing.
As for Israel, Netanyahu has described the ICC’s move as a “moral outrage”, President Biden has also called it “outrageous”, and the US Secretary of State has queried whether the ICC has upheld its own principles of “complementarity” (ie, the notion that the ICC should only step in when locals can’t or won’t).
But interestingly, Khan seems to have expected this criticism, flagging the ICC only steps back when local processes “do not shield suspects and are not a sham”.
Khan also acknowledges Israel’s right to self-defence and cites its aims to defeat Hamas and release the hostages, but argues “the means Israel chose to achieve them in Gaza… are criminal.”
INTRIGUE’S TAKE
One concept doing a lot of heavy lifting in the past 24 hours is “equivalence”:
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Hamas rejects any equivalence between its “resistance leaders” and Israel’s “occupation leaders”
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Israel rejects any equivalence between a “genocidal terrorist group” and the elected leaders of the state it’s trying to eradicate, while
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Khan seeks to zoom out, saying he must “apply the law equally” and that “the lives of all human beings have equal value”.
Another concept now in high rotation is “legitimacy”:
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Hamas has appealed to international law when convenient and rejected it when not (sometimes in the same statement)
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The West has also welcomed the ICC’s warrant against Putin, then partly condemned the court’s move against an ally like Israel, and
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The ICC has traded the risks to its own legitimacy from inaction, with the risks that now stem from action (ie, its warrants being ignored).
So what next? The politics of all this will ripple everywhere:
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The Palestinian Authority joined the ICC hoping to shine a light on Israel, but it’s also now shone a light on the difficulty of a two-state solution so long as Hamas leaders run Gaza but are wanted by the ICC
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This becomes even more of a wedge issue for Biden, who’ll face anger from the left for backing Israeli leaders under ICC scrutiny, and anger from the right for any distance between the US and Israel, and
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The ICC’s move against Netanyahu might benefit his rival Benny Gantz long-term, but it’ll unite Israelis around their government in the meantime. And that’s what Netanyahu needs to keep going in Gaza.
Also worth noting:
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France and Belgium have released statements backing the ICC.
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This ICC process is separate to the genocide case lodged by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ has jurisdiction over states (not individuals).
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Khan’s statement doesn’t call for a ceasefire, though he does call for “the immediate release of all hostages taken from Israel”, and for “all parties in the current conflict to comply with the law now”.
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Khan, a British lawyer, was elected ICC chief prosecutor in 2021.
A MESSAGE FROM SEMAFOR
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Us too — it’s why we read Semafor Principals every morning. Join 100,000 other thought leaders who trust Principals.
MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE…
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🇹🇯 Tajikistan: The foreign minister of China, Wang Yi, is currently on a four-day tour to Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, ahead of a planned visit there by President Xi in July. The region has traditionally been Russia’s turf, but Russia’s influence has waned as it’s focused on Ukraine.
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🇽🇰 Kosovo: Kosovo authorities have closed six local branches of a Serbian bank after the banks kept issuing the Serbian dinar. Kosovo isn’t (yet) an EU member, but it’s used the euro since 2002 and has ordered ethnic-Serb areas to adopt it too, sparking tensions with neighbouring Serbia.
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🇮🇩 Indonesia: Elon Musk has visited Indonesia to launch Starlink, his satellite internet constellation that promises to connect Indonesia’s vast archipelago. Indonesia is the third Southeast Asian nation to welcome Starlink, after Malaysia last year and the Philippines in 2022.
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🇭🇹 Haiti: The country’s international airport has now reopened, three months after gang violence forced its closure. Local leaders and regional partners hope the Toussaint-Louverture airport’s reopening will relieve a bottleneck in critical supplies and medication.
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🇳🇪 Niger: The US and Niger have jointly announced that US troops will withdraw from Niger by mid-September. The US built a $100M base there six years ago to help tackle jihadism, but a military junta seized power last year, ordering French and US troops to leave and instead drawing closer to Russia.
EXTRA INTRIGUE
Here’s what people around the world have been googling
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🇬🇧 United Kingdom residents looked up ‘Julian Assange’, after the UK High Court granted the Australian founder of Wikileaks final leave to appeal his extradition to the US, where he faces 18 criminal charges.
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🇲🇾 Folks in Malaysia have been looking up ‘Hari Wesak’ (Wesak Day), a key Buddhist festival marking Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death (the date and other details can vary across countries).
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And 🇩🇪 Germans are looking up ‘Frauen-Bundesliga’ (the women’s national soccer league) after FC Bayern Women won the championship, and the league voted to add new teams for 2025-26.
CHART OF THE DAY
Credits: Bloomberg.
Hold on to your pipes and antique pots because the price of copper just hit a new high. Several factors are driving this, including expected demand around the energy transition and the AI boom, plus possible output cuts by smelters.
But some industry folks think copper prices are getting ahead of reality: demand is still looking pretty subdued in the world’s top copper buyer, China.
DAILY POLL
If confirmed, what impact do you think the ICC arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders will have? |
Yesterday’s poll: What do you think the death of Iran's president means?
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🥱 Nothing – the regime will trundle on (63%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🔥 This power struggle will break the regime (9%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌍 Iran's rivals will weaken it while it's distracted (26%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (2%)
Your two cents:
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🥱 B.W: “If this was North Korea, China or Russia it’s a big deal but the Iranian cleric bureaucracy runs DEEP. The hardliners will mourn and the dissenters will continue to despise the regime.”
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🔥 D.H.P: “There is popular discontent, a failed response to help Palestine and counter Israel, and a dying Supreme Leader. The spark is on and the fuse is slowly burning.”
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🥱 J.C: “Will trundle on albeit with some internal power struggles. As long as Khamenei lives the country will not change.”
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