World News

By Alasdair Pal and Christine Chen

SYDNEY, May 1 (Reuters) – Hundreds of protesters clashed with Australian emergency services workers in a remote town following the arrest of a man suspected of murdering a 5-year-old Indigenous girl, police said on Friday.

Australia’s Prime Minister, the Northern Territory’s police commissioner and a spokesperson for the victim’s family all appealed for calm after an angry crowd of roughly 400 Indigenous people gathered on Thursday night at the hospital where the suspect was taken after being beaten unconscious by locals.

Footage of the protests from public broadcaster ABC showed members of the crowd calling for payback, which refers to traditional, mostly physical, punishment in Aboriginal societies.

They threw projectiles and lit fires, injuring a number of police officers and medical workers, while also damaging police vehicles, ambulances and fire trucks. Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters.

GIRL WAS MISSING SINCE LATE ON SATURDAY

Jefferson Lewis, a 47-year-old man who police say they believe abducted and killed the girl, presented himself to one of the town camps in Alice Springs, Northern Territory Police Commissioner Martin Dole said at a news conference.

“As a result of presenting himself, members of that town camp decided to inflict vigilante justice upon Jefferson,” he said.

The ‌girl, now referred to by her family as Kumanjayi Little Baby in line with Indigenous customs, went missing from her home on the outskirts of Alice Springs late on Saturday.

   Her body was located on Thursday by one of hundreds of people searching the dense bushland around the town, a popular tourist destination in Australia’s Northern Territory.

Lewis, who was identified as a suspect by police earlier in the week, has past convictions for physical assaults and was recently released from prison.

SUSPECT MOVED TO DARWIN FOR OWN SAFETY

“I just call for calm across the community today … I’d like to think that what we saw last night is an aberration,” Dole said, adding that Lewis was moved to the territory capital Darwin in the early hours of Friday morning for his own safety.

He is likely to be charged in the coming days.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he understood “people’s anger and frustration” but urged the community to come together.

Robin Granites, a senior Aboriginal elder and spokesperson for the family, also appealed for restraint.

“This man has been caught, thanks to community action, and we must now let justice take its course while we take the time to mourn Kumanjayi Little Baby and support our family,” he said in a statement.

“Now is not the time to be heroes on social media or make trouble.”

A day-long ban will apply to takeaway alcohol and more police will be arriving from Darwin to prevent further escalation, Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said.

Alcohol restrictions are already enforced in the town on certain days during the week in an effort to reduce crime.

Australia has struggled for decades to reconcile with its Indigenous population, who have inhabited the land for some 50,000 years but were marginalised by ⁠British colonial ​rulers.

Indigenous Australians make up around 3.8% of Australia’s population ​of about 27 million, but track near the bottom in almost every economic and social indicator and have disproportionately high ​rates of suicide and incarceration.

Thousands, including the victim and her family, live in communities known as camps on the outskirts of Alice Springs, where housing and services are often inadequate.

(Reporting by Alasdair Pal and Christine Chen in Sydney; Editing by Chris Reese and Edwina Gibbs)

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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — At her studio in Iran’s capital, Amen Khademi prepared a fashion shoot for a jacket she designed with Persian-inspired motifs. But even as she applied lipstick to the model, she was distracted, worrying if her business would survive after four months without its main link to customers — the internet.

Iran’s 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. That is devastating an online economy that had long defied government restrictions and international sanctions. From fashion to fitness, to advertising and retailers, many have seen their incomes evaporate.

Khademi hasn’t made a sale in months. “The internet outage in the past four months has completely destroyed not only my business, but many online businesses,” she said.

Despite an uneasy truce with the U.S. and Israel, Iran’s rulers have refused to reverse the shutdown they have depicted as a wartime necessity. But they are facing an outcry as it adds to mass job losses from strikes on key industries and an ongoing U.S. blockade.

Before January, Iranians could access the internet, but authorities blocked a large amount of content. Now all access to the global web has been shut down. Some workarounds exist, but they have become enormously expensive, out of reach for most Iranians.

The internet cutoff costs the economy an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to the communications minister, Sattar Hashemi.

Throughout years of economic turmoil in Iran brought on by sanctions and mismanagement, platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp helped small businesses to find customers, and people to earn extra income to afford skyrocketing prices for basic goods.

Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests. That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout on Feb. 28 as the U.S. and Israel launched the war.

Mahsa Alimardani, an expert on internet censorship, said Kashmir and Myanmar have had longer blocks affecting specific regions or platforms. Countries like China, with its “Great Firewall,” and North Korea, have always strictly limited access to the global internet.

“What makes Iran’s shutdown unprecedented is the combination of scale and severity: an entire country of 90 million people with a developed digital economy deliberately reverted to a controlled national intranet,” said Alimardani, an associate director for technology threats and opportunities at the rights group Witness.

A flagship company of Iran’s digital economy, online retailer DigiKala, recently said it was laying off 200 people, about 3% of its workforce. The pain extends to “production, foreign trade and even traditional business,” Reza Olfatnasab, head of a national group representing digital businesses, said in comments published in Iranian media.

Khademi’s shopfront is Instagram. But her studio’s page — with more than 30,000 followers — is now inactive. She was doing the photo shoot to save the pictures for later, hoping to find an alternative.

Her model, Farnaz Ojaghloo, is also a fitness coach. The shutdown has dried up both her modeling gigs and the online courses she ran for people inside Iran and abroad.

“Psychologically, it really hits hard,” Ojaghloo said. “All the plans you had for six months or a year ahead get pushed aside, and your only concern becomes surviving in the moment.”

For years, authorities in Iran have enforced filters and policed content on platforms like YouTube and Instagram. But before the war, Iranians could bypass restrictions with cheap virtual private networks, known as VPNs, and other easy workarounds.

Now, the shutdown has stoked high prices for black-market VPNs. Iranian state media routinely report arrests of people for using illegal VPNs or the American satellite system Starlink, which was banned last year.

Senior government officials are awarded “white” SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure to alleviate the economic harm, the government is now allowing less-restricted internet access to a small number of professions, business and media.

An e-commerce trade group in Tehran condemned the tiered system in Iranian media on Wednesday, calling it “an abuse of an obvious need of every citizen.” It said the outage threatens “the destruction of the country’s infrastructure at the hands of our own decision-makers.”

The vast majority of people have no choice but Iran’s national net.

A Tehran resident who works in advertising said sponsors have little interest in paying for content that can’t be posted on major platforms like Instagram, where he has tens of thousands of followers. He said his income is down to near zero since the war began.

A gamer in Isfahan — also with a large following on YouTube and Instagram — said Iran’s domestic net “is terrible” — slow, insecure and full of bugs. He too has lost almost all his income from sponsors and donations.

Iran has its own social media platforms modeled on services like WhatsApp and YouTube, but content is closely monitored and often censored.

“Nobody really wants to use these platforms, but there is no other option,” the gamer said. Both he and the advertising worker spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns.

The shutdown has piled new pressures on Iran’s once large and educated middle class, already struggling in the face of a prewar currency crash.

Economic decline in Iran has spurred waves of anti-government protests, most recently in December. Now, more Iranians are thinking of emigrating, a software developer said.

The developer — likewise speaking on condition of anonymity out of safety fears — said the internet shutdown has wiped out remote work. He lost his own job when his former company laid off almost all its employees in recent weeks, he said.

The consequences are visible in the rising numbers of street peddlers in Tehran. Reza Amiri, a 32-year-old former employee of an internet provider, now sells hats and umbrellas by a metro stop. He lost his job after the war started and has not received his last month’s salary, he said.

Monireh Pishgahi sells ornaments and accessories on the capital’s famed Vali Asr Street. She said her tailoring business used to supply three online shops. As business dried up, she shut down and laid off her five employees.

One downtown shopkeeper, Mohammad Rihai, said he had given up on trying to persuade street vendors to stop blocking the sidewalk outside his store. “After the war, you see them all along the sidewalk. I cannot fight them anymore.”

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Radjy reported from Cairo.

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CAIRO (AP) — A boat carrying 33 Sudanese migrants capsized in the Mediterranean Sea near the eastern Libyan town of Tobruk, leaving at least 17 people dead and nine others missing, U.N. officials said Thursday.

Only seven of the people on board survived the shipwreck, the U.N. refugee agency said on X.

It was unclear when the boat capsized.

The U.N. International Organization for Migration, or IOM, said that when the survivors were rescued, they had been stranded at sea for several days, and that some of the migrants had died of hunger and thirst.

The boat had taken off from Tobruk and was heading to Greece when it capsized about 100 kilometers (60 miles) northwest of the city, the IOM said. The agency said rescue operations were carried out by the navy, the Libyan coast guard and the Libyan Red Crescent.

The Libyan Red Crescent posted photos Thursday of the rescue showing crew members moving several bodies in black bags.

The medical conditions of the survivors were not immediately known.

Libya has been a main transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. The country plunged into chaos after a 2011 uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Earlier this month, more than 80 migrants went missing after a boat that departed a Libyan coastal town capsized in the central Mediterranean.

The IOM said in early April that 2026 had seen the deadliest start to a year for migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea since 2014. In the Central Mediterranean alone, 765 people had been reported dead, marking about a 150% increase compared with the same period last year.

IOM Director General Amy Pope told The Associated Press earlier this month that the agency is seeing a growing number of migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sudan on boats in the Mediterranean.

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MILAN (AP) — The international jury of the Venice Biennale resigned Thursday, just days before the world’s oldest and most important contemporary art fair opens. No reason was given, but the move came as Italy’s government opposed Russia’s participation.

The Biennale said in a statement that the jury, made up of the president, Solange Farkas, and Zoe Butt, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Marta Kuzma, Giovanna Zapperi, had resigned. It didn’t provide an explanation for the highly unusual move.

It followed a visit to the Biennale by Cultural Ministry officials who arrived on Wednesday to gather information about the reopening of the Russian Pavilion. The Italian government has opposed the Biennale’s decision to allow Russia to participate in the international exhibition.

The jury was due to select winners of the highly prestigious Golden Lion and other prizes on the official opening day on May 9. The Biennale announced that after the jury’s resignation, visitors to the Biennale will select winners of two awards: Best Participant in the 61st curated Exhibition “In Minor Keys,” and the Best National Participation among the 100 national pavilions. It will be awarded on the closing day, Nov. 22.

Premier Giorgia Meloni, asked about the resignations, reiterated that the government didn’t agree with the Biennale’s decision to allow the Russians to participate, but acknowledged that the Biennale is autonomous.

She said that she didn’t know if the resignations were connected to the Culture Ministry’s decision to send inspectors to Venice.

Cabinet Minister Matteo Salvini said that it was a “great idea” by the Biennale leadership to allow the exhibition’s spectators to decide the ultimate winner of the Biennale, at the end, and not a jury.

“So it will be an autonomous and democratic Biennale,” he said. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”

The European Union last week slashed a 2-million euro ($2.3-million) grant to the Venice Biennale over Russia’s participation in the exhibition for the first time since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Russian artists withdrew their participation in 2022, and Russia did not present an exhibition in 2024 for its permanent pavilion, which it instead lent to Bolivia. Russia last participated in the International Art Exhibition in 2019.

The Biennale said in a statement that it “does not have the authority to prevent a country from participating. Any country recognized by the Italian Republic may request to participate.’’

Since Russia owns the pavilion built in 1914 in the historic Giardini, it was required only to send notification of its request to participate, the Biennale said.

“La Biennale di Venezia rejects any form of exclusion or censorship of culture and art. The Biennale, like the city of Venice, continues to be a place of dialogue, openness and artistic freedom, encouraging connections between peoples and cultures, with the constant hope for an end to conflicts and suffering,’’ the Biennale said.

The Biennale contemporary art exhibition is the world’s oldest and most important, comprising a main exhibition alongside national pavilions, which are curated separately by the participating nations.

The Biennale has in the past refused pressure to exclude countries, including Iran and Israel, from participating.

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Nicole Winfield contributed to this report from Rome.

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2 Injured in Golders Green London Stabbing Attack; Suspect Targeted Jews, Patrol Group Says  

Two people were injured after being stabbed Wednesday in Golders Green, a north London suburb with a large Jewish population, as authorities detained a suspect following reports he targeted Jews in the area.  

Shomrim, a Jewish neighborhood patrol group operating in the neighborhood, said it apprehended a male suspect who was “attempting to stab Jewish members of the public.” The group reported that two victims were wounded and were receiving treatment from Hatzolah, a volunteer emergency medical service.  

According to the patrol group, police arrived at the scene and at one point deployed a taser before taking the suspect into custody. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.  

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed the attack in Parliament, calling it “deeply concerning.” He said authorities were examining the circumstances and emphasized the need to be “absolutely clear in our determination to deal with any of these offences, the likes of which we’ve seen too much recently.”  

Golders Green is home to approximately 15,000 residents, with about half identified as Jewish, according to 2021 census data. The area includes several synagogues as well as dozens of Jewish schools and restaurants.  

The stabbing is another in a series of antisemitic incidents in the UK. Just weeks earlier, several Hatzolah vehicles were damaged in an arson attack, and there were a number of attacks on synagogues. An attempted arson was also reported in the area on Monday. 

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IDF Chief Zamir Says No Ceasefire in Southern Lebanon  

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said during a visit to southern Lebanon that the military had met the objectives set by Israel’s political leadership, including preventing direct fire on northern communities, while instructing forces to continue operations against threats.  

“The mission assigned by the political leadership to prevent direct fire on the communities – has been achieved,” Zamir said. “Everything the political leadership defined for us regarding the current campaign in Iran and Lebanon we achieved and even beyond. And with this we created the operational conditions for the processes now being led by the political leadership.”  

He continued, “On the combat front there is no ceasefire – you continue to fight and remove direct and indirect threats from the communities of the north.”  

Separately, a siren warning of hostile aircraft infiltration was activated in Zar’it in the Western Galilee on Wednesay. The IDF said the details are being investigated.  

The military reported that more than 30 Hezbollah weapons depots, headquarters and additional infrastructure sites were struck in southern Lebanon over the past two days. An IDF spokesperson said that during the morning hours, the Air Force and the 91st Division’s fire brigade targeted about 20 Hezbollah infrastructure sites.  

The Lebanese Al-Mayadeen network, affiliated with Hezbollah, reported two strikes in the villages of Zibqine and Qabrikha in southern Lebanon, along with what it described as a “significant explosion” in Bint Jbeil.  

In two separate incidents earlier, Hezbollah launched several explosive drones that detonated near IDF forces in southern Lebanon, according to an IDF spokesman, who said there were no casualties. The military also reported that a launcher positioned in a civilian building in southern Lebanon was destroyed. 

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Rapid military adoption of artificial intelligence is becoming essential to Ukraine’s survival, even as full integration across the battlefield may still be several years away, according to a senior AI official.

Danylo Tsvok said AI is already helping Ukraine hold territory, while reducing risks to its soldiers as it faces a larger, better-resourced adversary.

“We need to be faster than the enemy in decision-making,” he told The Associated Press, adding that AI is “not only a competitive advantage. It’s about our survival.”

Tsvok, 35, leads the Defense Artificial Intelligence Center, which was established last month by the Defense Ministry. He previously served in the government’s top civilian AI role.

Ukraine and Russia are locked in an intensifying race to deploy increasingly automated systems — from aerial drones to ground and maritime platforms. At the center of that race is the ability to maintain operations under heavy electronic warfare.

Many newer systems are designed to shift toward autonomous functionality, maintaining target focus even under hostile jamming.

Ukraine’s rapidly expanding domestic arms sector now includes more than 2,000 manufacturers and military technology firms. Developers are testing tools that enable coordinated drone swarms, aiming to boost efficiency while easing the burden on human operators.

“We need to understand that the future belongs to autonomous systems,” Tsvok said. “AI makes it possible to automate parts of the kill chain.”

In its more mature form, he said, AI could underpin a networked battlefield in which smart weapons operate in coordination under a unified assessment platform.

“That could happen within three to five years,” he said. “Within that time frame, front lines could be secured by tightly integrated hardware and software systems.”

In the nearer term, he pointed to wider deployment of autonomous interceptors, expanded use of ground-based robotic systems, and an escalation in electronic warfare capabilities.

Some elements are already in place. Unmanned ground platforms are increasingly used in logistics, evacuation and combat roles.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently said land drones supported more than 20,000 battlefield missions — including medical evacuations, supply runs and direct combat — over a three-month period this year. Among them, he said, was a successful attack carried out without any human soldiers.

Tsvok insisted the objective is not fully autonomous ‘killer robots,’ but a more coordinated system that accelerates decision-making and integrates more closely with Western partners.

“It’s not about reaching 100% autonomy, it’s about being efficient on the battlefield,” he said.

Ukraine is deepening partnerships with Western allies and Gulf states to secure funding, scale production and embed itself in security alliances, while also opening access to its extensive battlefield data.

Tsvok’s department receives financial support from the U.K. Ministry of Defence — the type of relationship he described as both militarily and politically significant.

“Democracies must develop strong defensive capabilities,” he said. “Without AI, they cannot effectively protect peace. This is not only about Ukraine. It’s about global security.”

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Volodymyr Yurchuk and Vasilisa Stepanenko in Kyiv, Ukraine contributed.

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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Hezbollah has launched a new weapon against northern Israel in the latest round of fighting: small drones controlled with fiber-optic cables the width of dental floss that avoid electronic detection.

These drones — used widely in the war in Ukraine — are small, hard to track and potentially lethal.

Many drones are susceptible to electronic jamming by air defenses. Jamming can cause a drone to crash or return to its point of origin.

But fiber-optic drones are not controlled remotely. They have a thin cable that connects an operator directly to the drone, making it impossible to electronically jam.

The drones are not infallible because the wind — or other drones — can cause the cables to tangle.

But, “if you know what you’re doing, it’s absolutely deadly,” said Robert Tollast, a drone expert and researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London, explaining how the drone can fly low and creep up on a target.

Experts say militaries must either intercept the drones, which is difficult due to their small size and short flight path, or find a way to snip the nearly invisible cable.

Hezbollah — the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon — has mostly been using the fiber optic drones on Israeli soldiers operating in southern Lebanon or towns on the border.

Here’s a closer look at these weapons.

An Israeli military official told AP the fiber optic drones are a relatively new threat during the latest round of fighting with Hezbollah. Hezbollah seems to have turned to them because Israeli air defenses have been successful against larger and more powerful rockets, missiles and other drones, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military guidelines.

Israel believes the drones are made locally and are easy to produce – requiring little more than an off-the-shelf drone, a small amount of explosives, and transparent wire that is readily available on the consumer market, he said.

He called the drones the biggest threat to troops inside Lebanon but said the Israeli military is working on technological solutions. In the meantime, Israel is taking measures on the ground to defend troops, such as adding nets and cages to military vehicles.

The fiber-optic drones are the latest part of a cat-and-mouse race as Israel’s high-tech defenses race to intercept new threats, especially ones that are less sophisticated.

Ran Kochav, a former head of the Israeli military’s air defense command, said Israel is failing in its attempts to defend against the fiber-optic drones.

“They fly very low and very fast, and they are very small, it’s very difficult to detect them, and even after they’re detected, they are really hard to track,” he said.

Kochav said Israel spent years focusing on strengthening its air defense systems to improve protection against rockets and missiles. But drones were not seen as a top priority.

He said Israel should have been following the advances in fiber-optic drones in the war in Ukraine and assumed that like Russia, other Iranian allies would eventually use them.

Throughout the war in Ukraine, Moscow and Kyiv have been engaged in a race to develop new technology.

Russia pummels Ukraine almost nightly with Shahed long-range attack drones — originally from Iran. Although Moscow has made many improvements to the drones, some can still be taken down by electronic jamming.

Fiber-optic drones were developed to get around that problem — although they do not have the same range as a drone that uses a radio link or artificial intelligence to navigate.

In some cases, fiber-optic drones have been recorded with cables extending as far as 31 miles (50 kilometers) said Tollast, the expert in London.

Russia and Ukraine are using many different types of drones “at a phenomenal scale,” he said.

The fiber-optic drones are in such wide use that footage shows front-line Ukrainian towns coated with shiny, fishing line-like strings, resembling massive spiderwebs shimmering in the sunlight.

Israel has sufficient firepower to intercept drones, but the key is early detection, Kochav said.

He explained that Israel already has suitable technology that tracks changes in light, identifies signals and communications, and can recognize the sound of drone propellers.

But he said these monitoring systems haven’t been widely deployed along the northern border.

Over the past weeks, Hezbollah has aired videos through social media platforms and its Al-Manar TV station of attacks with these new drones, especially against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.

These attacks have captured public attention. One attack killed one Israeli soldier and wounded six others, some of them seriously, last weekend. Another attack, on Tuesday, killed an Israeli civilian contractor in southern Lebanon.

In the attack that killed the soldier, Hezbollah issued a video taken by the drone until it exploded in the middle of troops gathering near a vehicle. Another drone was fired at the same location as a military helicopter landed to evacuate the wounded but narrowly missed.

Hezbollah announced that it began using fiber-optic guided drones for the first time during the round of fighting that began March 2, after using other types of drones for years.

Israel also has a fleet of drones that carry out surveillance and attacks, though not necessarily with the fiber optics cables, to target Hezbollah militants.

Zevik Glidai, a 78-year-old math teacher and volunteer ambulance driver, discovered coils of the translucent fiber-optic cables surrounding a drone that crashed into his backyard in the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona on April 13.

His house is 2 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the Lebanon border. He was sitting at home when he heard a high-pitched shriek and a small crash. His neighbor yelled that the yard was on fire.

The two of them put out the fire with a garden hose but noticed something new: The destroyed drone was surrounded by loops and curls of a white thread.

“We are very worried about these drones because there’s no way to shoot it down, because we can’t detect it,” Glidai said.

He said there was no warning siren before the drone crashed into his house, and the bomb squad that responded called it a miracle that nearly 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of explosives failed to detonate.

“They told me, ‘You have a lot of luck,’” said Glidai, who noted that he’s lived through several iterations of Hezbollah weapons in his 48 years in Kiryat Shmona. “They picked up all of the pieces that they could pick up, and they left me a few optical fibers as a keepsake.”

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Mroue reported from Beirut; Burrows from London.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Even as Iran squeezes world energy supplies with its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, its own oil industry is increasingly being threatened by an American blockade.

With no way to export the oil it is pumping out and diminishing room to store it at home, Iran may be forced to dramatically reduce or cease production from some of its wells, perhaps beginning in as little as two weeks, experts say.

The situation likely isn’t as dire as U.S. President Donald Trump recently described, colorfully suggesting pipelines could start exploding within days. But once shut down, production from the aging wells may not be restarted so easily, if at all, undermining Iran’s future oil output. Iran appears to have begun dialing back production already, analysts say, to avert outright shutdowns.

The pressure is building as the U.S. Treasury Department ratchets up sanctions on Iranian oil shipments already at sea. The U.S. military has seized at least two tankers off Asia believed to be carrying Iranian oil.

With its oil trade constrained, Iran is seeing less hard currency flow back into an economy mauled by weeks of war, months of unrest and decades of international sanctions. But with fewer tankers shipping Iranian oil, the effects of the Strait of Hormuz shutdown are only being magnified, leading to shortages of jet fuel and rising gasoline prices around the world.

Iran’s leaders “are really resisting” shutting down oil wells because of how painful that would be long-term, said Miad Maleki, a former sanctions expert at the U.S. Treasury who is now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“They’ve been under sanctions, they’ve been isolated for 47 years now. Those oil wells are not maintained well. Their machinery is not maintained well,” Maleki said. Once shut off, he added, the wells won’t easily “snap back after a few months.”

Iran had been pumping over 3 million barrels of crude oil a day before the war, with a little more than half going toward its domestic market. But since the American blockade began on April 13, ships have been filled with oil and unable to get out.

“It looks like there’s been a significant slowdown in production,” said Antoine Halff, the co-founder and chief analyst at Kayrros, an environmental intelligence company that tracks emissions and energy supply chains. He pointed to signs that storage is not filling as fast as usual at Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf.

Iran is likely storing some of its oil in tankers positioned around Kharg Island, Halff noted.

Kpler, a firm monitoring commodities markets, said it believes Iran has enough capacity left to store about two weeks worth of oil production, even after reducing output.

“While the immediate revenue impact is limited, operational constraints are now forcing production cuts and setting up a delayed but significant financial squeeze,” wrote Homayoun Falakshahi, an analyst at Kpler.

Wood Mackenzie, another oil analysis firm, estimates Iran will run out of storage capacity in about three weeks.

“If the blockade persists, cuts become inevitable,” wrote Alexandre Araman of Wood Mackenzie. Shutdowns of more than a month “risk long-term damage” to Iran’s oil reservoirs, he wrote, adding that recovering older fields “remains uncertain.”

From the moment it first struck oil in 1908, Iran’s oil industry has been entangled in the region’s politics. A move to nationalize Iran’s oil fields and wrest control from the British sparked the CIA-backed 1953 coup that cemented Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s rule. That also lit a long fuse to Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the shah. During the revolution, oil workers went on strike and brought production down from 6 million barrels a day to around 1.5 million.

Iran’s oil industry never recovered and faced decades of international sanctions, during which its infrastructure aged and faltered.

In his first term, Trump exerted a “maximum pressure” campaign, hiking sanctions to severely cut Iran’s oil exports. Forced to store oil in tankers at sea, the Iranian government lost tens of billions of dollars in revenues. Still, the pressure failed to push Tehran into reaching a nuclear deal with the U.S.

Now Iran faces a combination of hiked sanctions and the blockade. Trump on Tuesday claimed that Iran was “in a ‘State of Collapse.’”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent piled on, writing on X, “Iran’s creaking oil industry is starting to shut in production thanks to the U.S. BLOCKADE. Pumping will soon collapse. GASOLINE SHORTAGES IN IRAN NEXT!”

There have been no immediate signs of any gasoline shortages in Iran. However, Iran does seem to be acknowledging some of the pain indirectly.

A segment on state TV, which is run by hard-liners, included journalists discussing the possibility of an oil storage crisis. One noted that if empty tankers get blocked from returning to Iran, “we won’t be able to export.” Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad on Monday praised oil terminal staff for their “continuous perseverance.”

Maleki, the analyst from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that if the blockade continues and production slows further or halts, oil workers could potentially lose their jobs — which could cause new unrest.

“In 1979 when the oil industry was disrupted, in the 1980s war with Iraq … you can go and look at to see how effective they were in really pressuring the regime,” he said. “It’s really going to affect some of the most strategic provinces in Iran and the most strategic industry.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Jon Gambrell, news director for the Gulf and Iran for The Associated Press, has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and other locations across the Mideast and the wider world since joining AP in 2006.

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HAVELTE, Netherlands (AP) — Their faces daubed with camouflage, the troops emerge almost silently from a forest with Colt C7 rifles slung across their chests. They scan their surroundings for potential threats.

The soldiers are members of the 10th Infantry Battalion Guard Security Corps National Reserve on a weekend exercise to hone their skills as the Netherlands bolsters its military with new recruits and volunteers. The Dutch government and top brass have committed to raising military personnel from its current 80,000 to 120,000 by 2035 — plans that have broad political support.

The recent enlistment by the country’s queen and her eldest daughter as reservists look to be helping, with authorities now scrambling to arm and train new recruits.

The recruitment drive in the Netherlands reflects moves across Europe to expand and modernize militaries as leaders warily eye the grinding war launched by Russia against Ukraine and the disenchantment expressed by U.S. President Donald Trump with the NATO alliance that has been the cornerstone of the defense and security architecture of the continent since World War II laid ruin to much of it.

A corporal in the reserve battalion, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of her service, said she’s seen a shift in priorities as the global security outlook has gotten more volatile and less predictable.

“When I first joined, there was almost no risk or almost no threat … and now it’s changing so we are more aware of it,” she said. That has meant a mindset shift toward “more what we call ‘green things,’ infantry things.”

She added: “We are here to defend our country and to make sure to keep the threat down.”

The threat is very real, according to European Union and NATO officials, who believe Russian President Vladimir Putin could be ready to launch an attack elsewhere in Europe in three to five years, especially if he wins the war in Ukraine.

New NATO plans aimed at countering that threat require allies to prepare their armies for big battles, focused on more mobile forces that can be quickly deployed.

Dutch recruitment got a significant boost when Queen Maxima and her eldest daughter and heir to the throne Amalia, Princess of Orange, enlisted as volunteer reservists. Photos of Maxima in training and aiming a pistol on a shooting range were published around the world.

That royal seal of approval, together with recruiting campaigns running everywhere from newspapers and billboards to social media, has proven so successful that the military is now working overtime to arm, train and accommodate all the newcomers.

At the Defense Ministry, it’s known as “the Amalia effect.”

“It’s really a thing, yes,” State Secretary for Defense Derk Boswijk told The Associated Press. “It’s very inspiring to see how members of our royal family inspired people to join our armed forces.”

Boswijk said there are about 9,000 reservists in the Netherlands, and recruiters aim to have at least 20,000 in 2030.

“We have more applications than we can handle,” Boswijk said. Now the military has to battle “a lack of training capacity, a lack of housing. You have to give them all uniforms, you have to give them weapons.”

But, he added: “It’s a luxury problem.”

German lawmakers are considering a government plan to offers better pay and conditions for people who join up on a short-term basis, along with better training and more flexibility on how long recruits must serve.

The aim is to draw sufficient recruits without reviving conscription that was suspended for men in 2011. The plan leaves the door open for limited compulsory recruitment if not enough people volunteer.

Like the Netherlands, France is leaning into voluntary service to boost the military. A program starting in September seeks to recruit 3,000 volunteers aged 18-25. They will serve in uniform for 10 months in France’s mainland and overseas territories only. The plan seeks to attract up to 50,000 volunteers per year by 2035.

In northern and eastern Europe, where the threat from Russia is felt most keenly, some nations still have some conscription.

Finland has a draft for all males and a voluntary system for women. Sweden reinstated a gender-neutral partial military service in 2017. If not enough people volunteer, a lottery is held to select people for the remain slots. Neighboring Denmark has a similar system, as does Latvia since it revived its draft in 2023 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Netherlands never fully abolished its draft, but call-ups have been suspended since 1997 and there are no immediate plans to reintroduce them. Instead, the Defense Ministry is seeking to make the military more attractive to a broad cross-section of society.

Threats have expanded from traditional battlefields into cyberspace and the digital world, he added, “so we need all kind of skills, to keep our society, our country, our allies safe. So, yes, we need also people wearing hoodies, having blue hair, who can game perfectly.”

For some among the new generation of answering their country’s call to arms, a bitter lesson from Dutch history is motivating them.

“When I was in primary school, we were taught that in the Second World War it took (German forces) five days to take over Holland,” Lisette den Heijer said at a recent information evening run by the Dutch military for reservist volunteers, adding that she doesn’t want history to repeat itself.

At the exercise in the eastern Netherlands, a private first class in the reserve battalion who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he works for a defense-related company, said he too has seen a shift in recent years.

“So where we were just focused on peaceful operations in 2018, we’re now more focusing on protecting vital infrastructure,” he said. That included duty in the massive security operation to guard last year’s summit of NATO leaders in The Hague.

Reservists in the Netherlands commit to 300 hours of service each year, including regular weekend exercises. Traditionally they are deployed to secure and guard domestic sites and are not sent to combat missions overseas. They also can be used in national emergencies, such as piling up sandbags in cases of severe flooding.

Back in the forests of the eastern Netherlands, the reservists suddenly stop and point their weapons at an innocent-looking mound of earth covered in dry leaves and wood.

A soldier — a member of their unit — crawls out of the foxhole where he was hiding and surrenders. The volunteers exchange high-fives before preparing to break down their camp and return to their day jobs.

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Associated Press reporters across Europe contributed.

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