The 2026 World Cup final will be held at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 11, world football’s governing body FIFA has announced.
The world’s most popular sporting event will be held in 16 cities across the United States, Canada and Mexico, according to the tournament schedule unveiled by FIFA on Sunday.
The 48-team World Cup will open on June 11 in Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca and conclude on July 19 at the 82,500-capacity MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford in New Jersey.
FIFA officials did not explain their site-decision process.
Canada will host 13 games in total, including 10 in the group stage, split evenly between Toronto and Vancouver. Mexico will also get 13 games, including 10 during the group stage, in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey. The rest of the tournament will be held in 11 cities across the US.
Toronto, Mexico City, and Los Angeles will host the opening matches of their respective national teams.
The open-air stadium for the final, which opened in 2010 and cost $1.6bn, hosted the Copa America Centenario final in 2016 when Chile denied Lionel Messi’s Argentina for a second time in a penalty shootout.
FIFA did not announce kickoff times for the games.
Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca will host the opening match of the tournament on June 11, when Mexico will become the first nation to stage the World Cup for a third time. The opening day will also feature a match in Guadalajara.
Mexico hosted the World Cup in 1970 and 1986, with the finals of both editions held at Estadio Azteca where Pele’s Brazil crushed Italy 4-1 and Diego Maradona’s Argentina beat West Germany 3-2.
Maradona also scored the famous “hand of God” goal and the “goal of the century” at the same venue in a 2-1 victory over England in the 1986 quarterfinal.
📍 Mexico City 🏟️ Estadio Azteca 🗓️ 11 June 2026
🇲🇽 The #FIFAWorldCup 26 opening match is coming to Mexico!
The first match in Canada, which has never hosted a World Cup game, will be on June 12 in Toronto at the home of the city’s Major League Soccer team, while the opening game in the US will be in Los Angeles.
Each of the tournament hosts will spend the group stage in their own countries, with the USA team sticking to the West Coast and playing twice in Los Angeles and once in Seattle.
Canada will play one group stage game in Toronto, followed by two in Vancouver, while Mexico will play twice at Estadio Azteca and once in Guadalajara.
The tournament will shift entirely to the US starting with the quarterfinals, which will be held in Los Angeles, Kansas City, Miami and Boston.
Dallas and Atlanta will host the two semifinals on July 14 and 15, respectively, Miami will be the venue of the third-place playoff, while Philadelphia will host a round-of-16 match on July 4 to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The 2026 World Cup will feature 104 matches instead of the traditional 64 games, including an additional knockout round due to the previously announced decision to expand to 48 teams from 32.
A nation will need to play eight matches to win the title, up from seven since 1982.
Given the distance and different climates across the 16 host cities, FIFA opted to divide the venues being used into three regions – east, central and west – with teams operating out of a base camp in the same region as their games.
The stadiums in Arlington, Atlanta and Houston have retractable roofs that are expected to be closed because of summer heat, and Inglewood and Vancouver have fixed roofs.
Artificial turf will be replaced by grass in Arlington, Atlanta, East Rutherford, Foxborough, Houston, Inglewood and Vancouver.
Several of the venues are expected to widen their surfaces to accommodate a 75-by-115-yard (68-by-105-metre) playing field.
Billie Eilish, Miley Cyrus and Victoria Monet also took home top prizes at the 66th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
Women have swept the top awards at the Grammys with Taylor Swift winning album of the year for the fourth time, the only artist to win the top music industry prize so many times during their career.
Swift won the honour on Sunday for her album Midnights and surpassed music icons Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder with the most wins of the top Grammy.
Swift, who took her producer Jack Antonoff and fellow nominee Lana Del Rey with her onstage, said the moment was wonderful, but was comparable to many moments in her work from “rehearsing with my dancers or my band or getting ready to go to Tokyo to play a show”.
“For me, the award is the work,” the 34-year-old said. “I love it so much. It makes me so happy. It makes me unbelievably blown away that it makes some people happy who voted for this award too.”
Billie Eilish, 22, claimed song of the year, which honours songwriting, for What Was I Made For?, a ballad written for the Barbie soundtrack, while 31-year-old Miley Cyrus won record of the year, which recognises an overall performance, for her song Flowers.
Best new artist went to R&B and pop singer Victoria Monet.
Swift, who is the midst of her Eras tour, went into Sunday’s ceremony with six nominations, including best song and best record.
She scored one other prize, for best pop vocal album.
As the pop superstar accepted the award, she announced she would release a new studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, on April 19.
Swift’s previous three album of the year wins were for Fearless, 1989 and Folklore.
The Grammy winners are chosen by the musicians, producers, engineers and others who make up The Recording Academy. The group has worked to diversify its membership in recent years by inviting more women and people of colour to join its ranks.
Police spokesperson says hip hop artist was arrested following an altercation at the awards show.
US rapper and activist Killer Mike has been detained and escorted by police out of the Grammy Awards.
A video posted on social media by The Hollywood Reporter’s Chris Gardner showed Los Angeles police escorting the rapper in handcuffs on Sunday after he had earlier picked up three of the music industry’s biggest prizes for hip hop.
A Los Angeles Police Department spokesman was quoted telling the Associated Press that the hip hop artist had been arrested following an altercation inside the Crypto.com Arena in LA, where the awards show was being held, at about 4pm.
Breaking: Rapper Killer Mike has been taken away in handcuffs in https://t.co/aF2yiyTHol arena after winning 3 #Grammys during telecast (Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance for “Scientists & Engineers,” Best Rap Album for Michael) “Free Mike” someone shouts as he walks past. pic.twitter.com/4epfmzqMt8
At the 66th edition of the annual awards show on Sunday, Killer Mike, whose real name is Michael Santiago Render, and collaborators won the Grammy for best rap song and best rap performance for Scientists & Engineers and best rap album for Michael.
The awards were Killer Mike’s first Grammy wins since he was honoured for best rap performance by a duo or group in 2003 for his work on hip hop duo OutKast’s The Whole World.
Killer Mike, who made his recording debut on OutKast’s 2000 album Stankonia, is known for his outspoken views on social justice issues, including race relations and the treatment of Black people in the United States.
In 2019, he hosted Netflix’s Trigger Warning with Killer Mike, a documentary series examining issues affecting the Black community.
President Joe Biden urges Congress to swiftly pass bill after months of wrangling over immigration and support for Kyiv.
The United States Senate has unveiled a $118bn bipartisan deal that would boost border security and provide wartime aid for Israel and Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden and Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate have been pushing to resupply Ukraine with wartime aid but have faced resistance from conservative Republicans who have insisted on measures to tackle illegal immigration at the border with Mexico.
The bill announced on Sunday would provide $60bn in aid to Ukraine, whose efforts to push back Russia’s invasion have been hampered by a halt in US shipments of ammunition and missiles.
The deal would also provide $14.1bn in military aid to Israel: $2.44bn to address security in the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Houthi rebels have launched dozens of attacks on commercial shipping, and $4.83bn to support partners in Asia where tensions have spiked between China and Taiwan.
Under the deal, the president would be granted new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities become overwhelmed with asylum claims and applications at the border would be subject to quicker and tougher enforcement.
Illegal immigration is expected to be a key issue during the presidential election in November, with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump campaigning heavily on claims of an “invasion” from the southern border.
Biden on Sunday urged Congress to “swiftly pass” the deal so he could sign it into law, warning Republicans who have expressed alarm about the security of the border that “doing nothing is not an option”
“Now we’ve reached an agreement on a bipartisan national security deal that includes the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades. I strongly support it,” Biden said in a statement.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would aim to hold a vote on the bill on Wednesday, but the package faces uncertain prospects in both the upper house and the House of Representatives amid scepticism from Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson.
“The Senate’s bipartisan agreement is a monumental step towards strengthening America’s national security abroad and along our borders,” Schumer said in a statement.
“This is one of the most necessary and important pieces of legislation Congress has put forward in years to ensure America’s future prosperity and security.”
In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Johnson, who had previously declared the package “dead on arrival,” said his efforts to involve House Republicans in the Senate deal had been rebuffed and reiterated support for a House package of tough immigration measures.
“What we’re saying is, you have to stem the flow,” Johnson said.
The package’s support for Israel could also face resistance from some Democrats.
Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has called for the removal of $10bn earmarked for offensive weaponry while keeping funds for defensive systems.
Republican presidential candidate Haley made jibes about Trump’s age and mental competency on the TV show Saturday Night Live.
United States Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley made a surprise appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live and took a swipe at former President Donald Trump over his age, his mental fitness and his refusal to debate her.
Haley appeared in a segment set in a fake CNN town hall meeting in Columbia, South Carolina, where a fake Trump – played by cast member James Austin Johnson – was being asked questions by an audience.
The former South Carolina governor has been campaigning ahead of her home state’s Republican primary on February 24 as she attempts to close the polling gap with Trump. Last month, Trump secured a decisive victory in the New Hampshire primary, beating rival Haley by a substantial margin.
In the sketch, Haley was introduced as “someone who describes herself as a concerned South Carolina voter” when called on to question the candidate.
“My question is why won’t you debate Nikki Haley?” she asked.
Trump, the frontrunner for the nomination, has avoided all debates so far in the campaign.
“Oh my God, it’s her, the woman who was in charge of security on January 6. It’s Nancy Pelosi,” the actor playing Trump responded, referring to the day in 2021 when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol.
During a campaign speech in New Hampshire in January, Trump repeatedly seemed to confuse Haley, who was his ambassador to the United Nations, with Democratic former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Trump has accused Pelosi of turning down security he says his administration offered, but a special House committee that investigated the siege found no evidence to support that claim.
After the town hall moderators corrected the stand-in Trump, Haley asked, “Are you doing OK Donald? You might need a mental competency test.”
The Trump actor responded to Haley: “You know what I did. I took the test and I aced it, OK? Perfect score. They said I’m 100 percent mental.”
The former president has boasted in the past that he has “aced” cognitive tests.
A later joke about the movie The Sixth Sense prompted the actor playing Trump to say: “I see dead people.”
Haley replied: “That’s what voters will say if they see you and Joe [Biden] on the ballot.”
She later posted on X: “Had a blast tonight on SNL! Know it was past Donald’s bedtime so looking forward to the stream of unhinged tweets in the a.m.”
“I see dead people.” That’s exactly what voters will think if this race is between Trump and Biden in the fall.
Had a blast tonight on SNL! Know it was past Donald’s bedtime so looking forward to the stream of unhinged tweets in the a.m. pic.twitter.com/W43LlPOoi2
Haley has positioned herself as a younger, more capable alternative to Trump and the Democratic frontrunner, President Joe Biden, as well as the only anti-Trump Republican left in the race.
But if Trump wins in South Carolina, where Haley served two terms as governor, she will likely face mounting pressure to quit the race.
The final question in the skit came from SNL host Ayo Edebiri, who questioned Haley, now referred to as ambassador, about the root cause of the US Civil War.
The candidate, during a town hall in December in New Hampshire, was asked about the reason for the war, and she did not mention slavery in her response. She walked back her comments hours later.
“I was just curious, what would you say was the main cause of the Civil War?” Edebiri asked. “Do you think it starts with an ‘S’ and ends with a ‘lavery’?”
Haley replied: “Yep, I probably should have said that the first time.”
When I joined Facebook in 2007, three years after the platform launched, I used it solely as a means of staying in touch with friends I had acquired while hitchhiking through Lebanon in the aftermath of the summer 2006 Israeli assault, which had destroyed much of the country but not its famed hospitality.
Old acquaintances from middle school and high school were gradually added to my Facebook friends list, including my seventh-grade boyfriend and a few Zionists who were purged once I mastered the “unfriend” function. Then came writers, academics, and activists of compatible political persuasions. This, for a while, seemed to endow Facebook with the potential to serve as an inspirational forum and genuine virtual community.
Of course, human solidarity was never the aim of Facebook, and capitalism quickly reared its ugly head. After effectively luring a significant sector of humanity into digital addiction, the Facebook powers that be went about eviscerating the very concept of privacy as a basic human right. And as Facebook now celebrates its 20th anniversary on February 4, the panorama is bleak indeed.
Consider Amnesty International’s denunciation, in 2019, of Facebook’s business model of “surveillance capitalism”, which consists of “aggregating vast amounts of data on people, using it to infer incredibly detailed profiles on their lives and behaviour, and monetising it by selling these predictions to others such as advertisers”. Furthermore, Amnesty specified, the company had explored “how to manipulate emotions, and target people based on psychological vulnerabilities such as when they felt ‘worthless’ or ‘insecure’”.
Scrolling through Facebook recently on my phone, I counted no fewer than 70 advertisements in an uninterrupted row, many of them involving actress Angelina Jolie and family, a subject which Facebook’s surveillance mechanism has inexplicably determined should be of inordinate interest to me. I closed Facebook with indignant fury – and yet a few minutes later I was back for more pointless distraction and cheapened, emoji-laden communications.
Over recent years I have also regularly been on the receiving end of ads for plastic surgery and scanty, bust-accentuating clothing, plus one particularly memorable lacy black outfit that came equipped with horns, a leash, and an invitation to “explore your dark side”. Almost equally regularly, I have been encouraged to pursue online psychological counselling – no doubt a highly marketable service given the harmful mental impact of Facebook itself.
To be sure, the evolution of selfie culture and celebrity worship that compound the general superficialisation of existence on Facebook and other social media does nothing for the self-esteem of the average human. Having posted my own fair share of selfies – and availed myself of photo editing tools to compensate for wrinkles and other perceived defects – I can attest to the distinctly unfulfilling nature of the perpetual quest for superficial validation.
And for young people growing up in an online world, the toxic effects of Facebook’s all-consuming, soul-sucking alienation – not to mention the fertile environment the platform provides for bullying and sexual harassment – cannot be understated.
From a political standpoint, too, Facebook’s operations rarely fail to disturb. Back in 2012, for example, the New York Times reported that Facebook had acquired an Israeli facial recognition company, Face.com, which specialised in technology “designed not only to identify individuals but also their gender and age”.
The firm’s nationality was no surprise; after all, there’s nothing like having a captive Palestinian population at one’s disposal on which to test repressive surveillance techniques and other more lethal mechanisms.
I experienced another disconcerting intersection between Facebook and Israel in 2016 when I posted a photograph from the south Lebanese town of Adaisseh and was prompted to tag the location as “Misgav Am, Hazafon, Israel” – a case of digital colonisation if there ever was one.
And while Palestinians and pro-Palestine activists have long suffered from censorship and discrimination on social media, Facebook’s seemingly special relationship with Israel has become even more sinister in light of the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has now killed more than 27,000 Palestinians in less than four months.
In December, Human Rights Watch released a lengthy report on the “systemic censorship” of pro-Palestinian social media content by Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Since the launch of the Israeli onslaught on October 7, the Palestinian perspective has been increasingly silenced via tactics such as content removal, account deletion, and “shadow banning” – a practice that surreptitiously reduces the reach of certain social media posts.
In my own case, my post-October 7 Gaza-related Facebook posts received noticeably less interaction than pre-October 7 posts on Palestine, with friends informing me that my articles fail to appear on their feeds.
In the can’t-make-this-up category, meanwhile, Al Jazeera Arabic presenter Tamer Almisshal had his Facebook account deleted nearly a month prior to the start of the war after airing an episode on – what else? – Meta’s censorship of Palestinian content. (His account was subsequently restored.)
Beyond infringing on freedoms of opinion, expression and thought, Meta’s current anti-Palestine manoeuvres in a time of genocide effectively constitute something even more dire: a censorship of reality itself.
So much for the company’s assertion that “people deserve to be heard and to have a voice — even when that means defending the right of people we disagree with”. As for Meta’s proclaimed “mission” to give people “the power to build community and bring the world closer together”, one need only glance at CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth of $170bn to see that this is not about bringing the world together but rather about socioeconomically tearing it apart.
A January Bloomberg dispatch on Facebook’s impending 20th birthday noted that Zuckerberg is now making artificial intelligence (AI) his “top priority” – which will presumably only pave the way for more exciting opportunities for human rights abuses.
In the meantime, I myself am faced with the disconcerting realisation that I have spent nearly half my life on Facebook – and the sneaking suspicion that it’s time to heavily reconsider my own priorities.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
The US has warned of more strikes after bombing 85 alleged Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for an attack that killed American soldiers in Jordan amid Israel’s war on Gaza. Iraq says civilians are among the dead.
United States President Joe Biden has comfortably won South Carolina’s Democratic primary, promising afterwards that he would make Republican rival Donald Trump a loser for a second time in November’s election.
Biden on Saturday defeated the other long-shot Democrats on South Carolina’s ballot, including Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, notching an overwhelming victory in the state that vaulted him to the White House in 2020.
Kicking off his march to the party’s nomination, Biden secured a massive 96.4 percent of the votes in the first Democratic primary of the 2024 presidential race, US media reports said.
Democrats will now pore over the results to see how well the 81-year-old incumbent, battling low approval ratings, mobilised the Black voters who helped propel him to the White House against Trump, 77, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden in the election.
‘Donald Trump a loser’
As the results came in, Biden was at a campaign event in California, as he turned his attention to the next steps in his fight for re-election.
“Now in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again and I have no doubt that you have set us on the path to winning the presidency again – and making Donald Trump a loser – again,” Biden said in a statement.
He urged people to get out and vote in November, saying the stakes “could not be higher” if Trump manages a sensational comeback to the Oval Office.
“There are extreme and dangerous voices at work in the country – led by Donald Trump,” he said.
Four years ago, it was South Carolina’s Black vote in the state’s primary that helped ignite Biden’s campaign and ultimately propel him to the White House.
Besides campaign fears that South Carolina’s heavily Black electorate might not be energised this time around, there were also doubts about his age and concerns about high consumer prices and security along the US-Mexican border.
Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison, left, addresses attendees at South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary [Meg Kinnard/AP]
South Carolina has not backed a Democrat for president in the general election since 1976. But because Black people make up the state’s more than half of the Democratic electorate, it presented an important test of Biden’s appeal with a voting base that typically supports Democrats nine-to-one in presidential races.
‘Least popular president’
Carrie Sheffield, senior policy analyst at the advocacy group Independent Women’s Voice, said Biden’s victory in South Carolina does not guarantee him a lead in the presidential race.
“The reality is that this is just a primary and he is the incumbent president, so nobody ever thought he was actually going to lose. But the reality is that President Biden is the least popular president since World War II – that is truly shocking,” she told Al Jazeera.
“His approval ratings are only 33 percent. He is also losing in key battleground states that he won in 2020 against Donald Trump so he is losing overall across the seven battleground states by six points to Trump, and in North Carolina, it’s in double digits. No matter who wins the GOP primary, whether Donald Trump or Nikki Haley, both are beating Biden in the 2024 general election.”
Some South Carolina voters were also lukewarm about Biden’s re-election bid.
“Sometimes I wonder, is his presence enough because you don’t see him a lot, you don’t hear him a lot,” Martin Orr, a school administrator from McConnells, South Carolina, told The Associated Press news agency.
“Is it quiet because of his age or his physical condition, or what’s going on? I think that’s what a lot of people are concerned about right now,” Orr added.
For nearly four months now, Israel has been waging a “genocidal” campaign in Gaza, killing more than 27,200 people, displacing almost its entire population and triggering a widespread hunger and health crisis in the besieged enclave.
Israel’s latest campaign against Gaza started after Hamas fighters on October 7 stormed communities in southern Israel, killing more than 1,100 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 captives, nearly half of whom have since been released.
Michael Fauntroy, head of the Ronald Walters Leadership and Public Policy Center at Howard University, said Biden is walking “a fine line” as he tries to win Jewish votes while also trying to mediate for an end to the fighting inside Gaza.
“He seems to have been working very hard to get the Israelis to slow down and he has not publicly called for a ceasefire, but I think he understands that that is where the US policy will have to go,” Fauntroy told Al Jazeera.
Health officials say at least 92 people have been killed overnight by Israeli attacks, including on a kindergarten in Rafah.
Here’s how things stand on Sunday, February 4, 2024:
Humanitarian crisis in Gaza
At least 92 people were killed overnight in the besieged strip’s southern city of Rafah, where displaced Palestinians have been sheltering, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
At least two children were killed in the attack as Israeli forces hit a kindergarten, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.
Concerns over a potential Israeli ground incursion into Rafah have mounted in recent days, with hundreds of thousands of displaced seeking refuge from the fighting there in makeshift shelters and encampments.
A strike on a fuel tank near the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis killed one person and damaged hospital buildings, Wafa reported.
Israeli soldiers continue to film themselves committing crimes even after an ICJ ruling ordering Israel to take action to prevent genocide in Gaza, the Bisan Research and Development Center said.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he wants to see allegations that staff from the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees participated in Hamas’s October 7 attacks “fully examined”, but people in Gaza should not be left “literally starving”.
Since October 7, at least 27,238 people have been killed and 66,452 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza. The revised death toll in Israel from the October 7 Hamas attacks stands at 1,139.
Regional tensions and diplomacy
The United States and the United Kingdom have issued a joint statement saying their militaries – with support from allies including Australia, Bahrain and Canada – hit 36 Houthi targets in 13 locations across Yemen.
Separate from its air strikes on Yemen, the US military says it shot down six Houthi antiship missiles as they were preparing to launch against vessels in the Red Sea.
The UN Security Council is expected to hold an emergency meeting on Monday to address the US’s recent air strikes on Iraq and Syria.
Iran says the US attacks inside Iraq and Syria are a “strategic error” that will only add to tensions and instability in the Middle East.
On negotiations for the release of captives and a ceasefire in Gaza, a top Hamas official in Lebanon said the Palestinian group needed more time to “announce our position” on a proposed framework.
Occupied West Bank
Israeli forces continue with their nearly daily raids across the occupied West Bank.
Overnight, Israeli soldiers stormed Beita in the south of Nablus, Arrabeh in the south of Jenin, the Shu’fat refugee camp in northern Jerusalem, and Qaffin in the north of Tulkarem.
The United States has conducted a wave of air strikes on Iran-aligned targets in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for an attack that killed American soldiers in Jordan.
On Saturday, Iraq said 16 people, including civilians, were killed on its soil, and a monitoring group reported 18 people were killed in Syria.
Washington has warned of more strikes to purportedly deter the Iran-backed “axis of resistance” amid Israel’s war on Gaza. In announcing the overnight attacks, US President Joe Biden said: “Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing.”
Here is how the world reacted to the US action:
Iran
“The attacks are a violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq and Syria, international law, and a clear violation of the United Nations Charter,” said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Nasser Kanaani.
“In addition to an all-out support of the US for four months of relentless and barbaric attacks by the Zionist regime against the residents of Gaza and the West Bank, and military attacks on Yemen and violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, last night’s attacks on Syria and Iraq were another adventurous action and another strategic error by the US government which will have no result but to intensify tensions and instability in the region.”
“The attacks merely support the goals of the Zionist regime. Such attacks increasingly involve the US government in the region and overshadow the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza.”
Iraq
“This aggressive strike will put security in Iraq and the region on the brink of the abyss,” the Iraqi government said in a statement, and denied Washington’s claims of coordinating the air raids with Baghdad as “false” and “aimed at misleading international public opinion”.
The presence of the US-led military coalition in the region “has become a reason for threatening security and stability in Iraq and a justification for involving Iraq in regional and international conflicts”, read the statement from Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s office.
“Iraq reiterates its refusal to let the country be an arena for settling scores,” said government spokesperson Basim Alwadi.
Yahya Rasool, the Iraqi military spokesperson, said the attacks “constitute a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, undermine the efforts of the Iraqi government, and pose a threat that could lead Iraq and the region into dire consequences”.
“The outcomes will have severe implications on the security and stability in Iraq and the surrounding region,” Rasool added.
Syria
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the strikes served to “inflame the conflict in the Middle East in an extremely dangerous way” and added to Washington’s “record of violations against Syria’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the safety of its people, proving once again that it is the main source of global instability”.
The military said: “The area targeted by the American attacks in eastern Syria is the same area where the Syrian Arab Army is fighting the remnants of the Daesh [ISIL] terrorist organisation, and this confirms that the United States and its military forces are involved and allied with this organisation, and are working to revive it as a field arm for it both in Syria and Iraq by all dirty means.”
“The aggression of the American occupation forces at dawn today has no justification other than an attempt to weaken the ability of the Syrian Arab Army and its allies in the field of fighting terrorism, but the army.”
Islamic Resistance in Iraq
The coalition of US and Israel-opposed armed groups in Iraq, which had “suspended” its attacks earlier this week, said it launched drones at a US base in Erbil.
Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed reported from Baghdad that Iraqi groups have also carried out attacks with missiles targeting the al-Tanf military base in Syria which is home to US personnel, as well as the Ain al-Assad base in western Iraq.
Hamas
“We condemn in the strongest terms the American aggression against Iraq and Syria, and consider it a dangerous escalation, an infringement on the sovereignty of the two Arab countries, and a threat to their security and the stability of the region, in service of the occupation’s expansionist agenda and covering up its horrific crimes against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” read a statement from Hamas.
“The administration of US President Biden bears responsibility for the consequences of this brutal aggression against both Iraq and Syria, which adds fuel to the fire, and we affirm that the region will not witness stability or peace except by stopping the Zionist aggression, crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing against our people in the Gaza Strip, and ending the Zionist-Nazi occupation.”
European Union
“Everybody should try to avoid that the situation becomes explosive,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
While Borrell did not address the US strikes directly, he repeated a warning that the Middle East “is a boiler that can explode”.
He pointed to the war in Gaza, violence along the Israel-Lebanon border, bombings in Iraq and Syria, and attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. “That’s why we call everybody to try to avoid an escalation.”
United Kingdom
“The UK and US are steadfast allies. We wouldn’t comment on their operations, but we support their right to respond to attacks,” a British government spokesperson said in a statement.
“We have long condemned Iran’s destabilising activity throughout the region, including its political, financial and military support to a number of militant groups.”
Poland
“Iran’s proxies have played with fire for months and years, and it’s now burning them,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters as he arrived for a meeting with his EU counterparts in Brussels.
Poland’s Radoslaw Sikorski was the first EU foreign minister to directly comment on the strikes [Radek Pietruszka/EPA]
US House speaker
Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives, accused Biden of “placating” Tehran after the strikes, and said that “to promote peace, America must project strength”.
Council on American-Islamic Relations
“Instead of waging war across the Middle East, the Biden administration should demand an end to the far-right Israeli government’s ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza,” said CAIR’s National Executive Director Nihad Awad.
The US has ignored Israel’s “escalating human rights abuses”, maintained its troops in Syria, Iraq and other places “where they are not welcome”, and refused to re-enter the Iranian nuclear deal, Nihad noted.
“These latest strikes in Iraq and Syria are just further evidence of the total failure of the president’s Middle East policy. President Biden should change course to protect both American soldiers and people of the region from more violence … Justice and freedom for the Palestinian people – not more bombs – is what can build a more peaceful future for the region.”
Analysts
“I’m not surprised there has been this reprisal and retaliation by the United States,” HA Hellyer, a military analyst at the UK-based think tank Royal United Services Institute, told Al Jazeera, adding that if the US wants to de-escalate and not go to war with Iran, the key to that is Gaza.
Washington has “failed to apply any real leverage in order to bring a ceasefire to Gaza, which I think would really diminish the tensions in the region and remove the fuel for this sort of escalation taking place, which is likely to continue over the coming days and weeks and beyond”, he added.
Joshua Landis, associate professor and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told Al Jazeera that politicians in Washington are pressuring Biden for a stronger response as the US presidential election looms.
“He has to respond, but at the same time he’s made it very clear he does not want to escalate, and that means two things; he can hit Syrians, that’s easy and nobody cares about the Syrian government, but the Americans do care about the Iraqi government.”
“America does not want to get ejected from Iraq, particularly not before the elections in November. So, it wants to be strong but it doesn’t want to kill too many Iraqis.”
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