The Union cabinet on Tuesday approved ？1 trillion each for schemes to promote employment, as well as research, development, and innovation (RDI) in the country.
The employment-linked incentive (ELI) scheme, aimed at generating 35 million jobs in two years, will provide direct financial benefits up to ？15,000 to 19.2 million first-time employees, Union minister of information and broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw said.
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TEL AVIV—Relations between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have had plenty of ups and downs. As the two leaders prepare for a White House visit set for next week, things are decidedly on the upswing.
Trump has showered Netanyahu with praise for leading a 12-day assault on Iran aimed at setting back Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, a conflict the U.S. joined by launching bunker-busting airstrikes on underground Iranian uranium-enrichment sites.
Now the White House has renewed its push for a halt to the war in Gaza. In a Tuesday evening social media post, Trump said Israel had agreed to the “necessary conditions" for a 60-day ceasefire with Hamas, a goal likely to come up in his meeting with Netanyahu.
“I hope, for the good of the Middle East, that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better — IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE," Trump wrote on Truth Social, his own social-media platform.
Since the Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran, Trump has weighed in on Israel’s domestic affairs, urging Israeli authorities to drop charges against Netanyahu that accuse him of corruption, fraud and breach of trust. Netanyahu denies wrongdoing. The calls represent rare interference by a U.S. leader in a foreign country’s domestic judicial process.
“Bibi and I just went through HELL together," Trump wrote on Truth Social over the weekend, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “Bibi could not have been better, sharper, or stronger in his LOVE for the incredible Holy Land. Anybody else would have suffered losses, embarrassment, and chaos!"
Trump has called the case against Netanyahu a political witch hunt and compared it to his own legal issues. Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records by a New York court last year and also found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case. Trump has denied wrongdoing and called both the cases against him disgraceful.
Trump’s decision to add U.S. forces to the air campaign against Iran and then to champion Israel’s leader reflects the president’s affinity—in military and political affairs—for leaders he sees as winners.
Netanyahu’s ability to persuade Trump to bomb Iran marks a high point in their at-times tumultuous relationship.
“Trump is a very primal, gut politician and to the extent that he identifies with you, you’re better off," said Gil Troy, an Israeli-American scholar of American presidential history and Zionism. Besting Iran in the conflict also helped. “The power of the victory absolutely created a momentum of its own," he said.
Trump also has appeared to warm in recent weeks to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—whom he scolded in the Oval Office earlier this year—after spectacular Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian strategic air bases and a lack of progress in Russia’s ground offensive.
On Tuesday, Trump said in response to a reporter’s question that he was going to be “very firm" with Netanyahu about ending the war in Gaza. “He wants to end it too," he said of Netanyahu.
The lowest point in relations between Trump and Netanyahu arguably came in 2021. After Netanyahu called former President Joe Biden to congratulate him on his election win, Trump said of the Israeli premier: “f—him." In an interview with Axios at the time, Trump said Netanyahu was disloyal.
Netanyahu never publicly addressed the matter. He also has kept his head down after other slights by the president, avoiding any confrontation and offering consistent and effusive praise of Trump in public.
“You have two people who are used to being by far the most dominant presence in any room," said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. “I think Netanyahu has been socially intelligent by deferring to Trump all the time, but also cajoling and convincing him to do things he might otherwise not have done."
Netanyahu has portrayed his corruption trial as an effort on the part of Israel’s “deep state" to unseat him. Netanyahu is Israel’s longest serving prime minister, having held office for 17 nonconsecutive years.
The allegations against Netanyahu, stemming from a 2019 indictment, broadly center on accusations he provided benefits to wealthy businessmen in exchange for favorable media coverage or expensive gifts such as cigars and Champagne. In December, he began testifying as frequently as three times a week in his trial, the first sitting Israeli prime minister to do so.
One of Netanyahu’s main political selling points domestically has been his close relationship with Trump. He has worked to pump up the image of that friendship. In his 2019 election campaign, he put up billboards around Israel showing him shaking hands with Trump, with the words: “Netanyahu, in a league of his own."
When Trump returned to office, some Israelis were jittery about how that congratulatory phone call to Biden would play into Trump’s posture toward Israel.
For the opening months of Trump’s second term, he appeared to be sidelining Israel. The president skipped Israel on the first trip to the Middle East, and he negotiated a deal with Yemen’s Houthi rebels to halt a U.S. bombing campaign that didn’t stop the group from lobbing missiles at Israel.
A low point between the two men came in April, when Trump announced at the White House, to a displeased looking Netanyahu, that the U.S. was going to begin direct negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
Netanyahu appeared in April at his trial on corruption charges at a court in Tel Aviv.
Despite the awkward moment, Netanyahu didn’t respond and played it well, said Oren. “He didn’t pull a Zelensky," he said, referring to the Ukrainian president’s open dispute with Trump on Feb. 28 in the Oval Office. “He could have taken him on. He rolls with it, which is smart."
In a June 12 phone call between Trump and Netanyahu, the president said Israel could proceed on its own with strikes against Iran, but that the U.S. wouldn’t get involved, the Journal previously reported.
As Trump watched Israel’s opening blows, his tune changed. He began expressing admiration for the strikes, hinting to reporters in calls that the U.S. had played a bigger role than was known.
But just a few days later, Trump angrily said that Iran and Israel “don’t know what the f—they’re doing" when a shaky cease-fire seemed on the cusp of collapse.
Oren said those kinds of events are characteristic of the two men’s relationship. “It’s ups and downs," he said. “It’s a roller coaster."
Write to Shayndi Raice at Shayndi.Raice@wsj.com
The furious debate over whether U.S. strikes obliterated Iran’s nuclear program or only delayed its progress toward being able to build a nuclear weapon by a few months skips over a key component in the equation: Iran’s political calculation.
If Iran were to make the decision to build a nuclear weapon, it would be betting that it can complete the job and establish deterrence before the U.S. and Israel intervene—through military action, economic pressure or diplomacy—to stop it.
A longer timeline increases the risk of being spotted or struck again, which could dissuade Iran from taking such a gamble in the first place. So measured on the Iranian nuclear clock, a delay of a few months could translate into a lot longer than it sounds if it keeps Tehran from moving ahead.
“If they start their breakout effort, and it takes them three more months, that’s a lot of time to respond. It gives you time to detect it. It gives you time to mount a response," said Michael Singh, managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former senior official at the National Security Council. “It’s not nothing."
The 2015 international nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, which granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for limits on its nuclear program, was designed to keep Iran a year away from being able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.
President Trump pulled the U.S. out of that agreement in his first term. Iran scaled up its nuclear work a year later and by May this year, it was producing enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon every month.
Before the war, the general assumption was it would take Iran a few months to make a crude weapon as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and deliverable by truck or ship, and one to three years to make a warhead that could be fit atop a missile.
Some analysts are concerned thatthe attacks by Israel and the U.S. may have convinced hard-liners in Tehran that the only way to preserve the regime is to make a run at developing nuclear weapons.
“If Iran decides to weaponize, it will take more time than it would have otherwise," said Alan Eyre, a former State Department official and member of the U.S. negotiating team under the Obama administration that worked on the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. “But, paradoxically, we might have strengthened their resolve to seek a nuclear weapon now."
“They’re going to be figuring out how to reconstitute some sort of defensive strategy, or at least create a new one, because the one they had doesn’t work anymore," he said.
Nuclear experts and U.S. officials say Iran could have stashed away enough centrifuges and material to race for a bomb. Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation" on Sunday, said Iran has the industrial and technological wherewithal to resume enriching uranium in a few months.
U.N. atomic energy agency chief Rafael Grossi said Iran can resume enriching uranium in a few months if it wants.
“The capacities they have are there," Grossi said. “They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that. But as I said, frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there."
Grossi’s agency is responsible for inspecting Iran’s nuclear sites but hasn’t been able to visit the sites since the Israeli strikes on Iran began June 13.
Iran’s options now include trying to reconstitute a covert nuclear program and produce a bomb as fast as possible. A second option would be to agree to a diplomatic path that limits their ability to build a weapon by ending its enrichment of uranium, which the Trump administration has pushed.
Iran could also try to split the difference: engage in nuclear diplomacy while quietly advancing its nuclear program. That would mean working in secret at sites hidden from international inspectors, which would make the task more cumbersome.
Trump and his administration say the U.S. airstrikes using 14 30,000-pound bombs and a salvo of cruise missiles have destroyed the facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. If so, Iran would need new, hidden enrichment sites, as well as facilities to turn enriched uranium into metal for a bomb core and manage a covert program that can get nuclear scientists to the site without being spotted.
“Iran will never obtain a nuclear bomb, because Operation Midnight Hammer obliterated their nuclear capabilities," White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said when asked about Iran’s prospects for rebuilding its nuclear program.
Iran has worked for decades on know-how relevant to developing nuclear weapons and has mastered most of the aspects of building a bomb, according to the IAEA and Iranian and Israeli officials.
The Trump administration says it destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow.
Before the war, Iran had amassed a large stockpile of highly enriched uranium large enough for 10 nuclear bombs if further enriched. It would have taken about a week to convert enough of the 60% material into 90% weapons-grade enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon, according to the IAEA.
Iran had also tested out many of the components needed to build a bomb and kept that knowledge alive for a new generation of scientists through experiments and studies ostensibly designed for peaceful purposes.
The fate of the fissile material stockpile and how many centrifuges Iran still has remain unclear. Some may have been moved from Iran’s nuclear sites before the U.S. attack.
The IAEA’s inspectors lost the ability to track Iran’s manufacturing of centrifuges due to restrictions Iran imposed in response to Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 deal.
Inspectors have also spent six years seeking the whereabouts of a vast array of equipment from Iran’s decades-old nuclear weapons program that Tehran dispersed in 2018. It could include lines for making uranium metal and equipment for testing high explosives and other key equipment for making a bomb.
Iran’s pre-2003 nuclear program aimed to produce a small arsenal of nuclear weapons deliverable by missile. Experts believe Iran has yet to seriously work on miniaturizing a nuclear weapon and integrating it onto a missile, which could take one to three years.
“This process of actually making a warhead is not just a physical process. It also comes down to the engineering," the Washington Institute’s Singh said. “There’s a little bit more art, rather than just science, to that part of it."
The office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence assessed in March that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hadn’t reauthorized the program to develop a nuclear weapon he suspended in 2003.
What Khamenei decides in the wake of the attacks is now the biggest consideration in any timeline.
“We don’t know if that is an actively running clock," said Eric Brewer, a deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative and a former senior official at the White House National Security Council and National Intelligence Council. “These timelines are in some ways evolving, and they depend upon what choices Iran makes next."
Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com and Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
CINCINNATI—The first wave of immigrants to arrive in this hilltop neighborhood perched above the Ohio River were Germans who opened taverns, Catholic churches and schools.
More than 150 years later, immigrants from Guatemala are remaking East Price Hill, replacing empty storefronts on Warsaw Avenue, the main thoroughfare, with barbershops, taquerias and supermercados.
“We wouldn’t have a local economy if not for them holding it up," said Ashley Feist, commercial-real-estate director at Price Hill Will, a local nonprofit.
The public clash over the Trump administration’s sweeping deportations has centered on the economic and social fallout in big, Democratic-run cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago, where President Trump has promised to focus his enforcement efforts. Yet deportations are also hitting less prominent places: smaller cities and neighborhoods across the Rust Belt, where economists say recent immigration has helped boost faltering economies and offset long-running population declines.
Over the past decade, immigrants, largely from Latin America, have moved into depressed, working-class urban neighborhoods in cities across the U.S., drawn by low rents and proximity to jobs. In recent weeks, cities including St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Buffalo, N.Y., were hit by immigration raids.
In Cincinnati, federal agents on May 31 showed up in the neighborhood and arrested four people, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. She said all four were in the U.S. illegally, including two who had public-intoxication and driving under the influence charges on their records. At least two people were arrested outside the Kroger supermarket on Warsaw Avenue, eyewitnesses said.
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Businesses in East Price Hill, including a small grocery store run by Guatemalan immigrants, have seen a drop-off in shoppers since recent ICE arrests in the community.
The arrests cast a shadow over the local economy. Restaurant tables emptied. Kitchen workers stayed home. Fruit vendors disappeared from the streets. The number of shoppers at stores shrank, and those who still went didn’t linger for long.
Federico Ventura, whose Guatemalan immigrant family runs a small grocery store in East Price Hill, said shoppers were slow to return. “They think any truck with tinted windows is ICE," he said.
When Ventura’s parents opened the store in the early 2000s, the neighborhood had few Latino residents, and its population was shrinking as middle-class families moved to the suburbs.
The foreclosure crisis that began in 2006 hit particularly hard. Many of the neighborhood’s stately old homes fell into disrepair and some were torn down, leaving the area pockmarked with empty lots. The remaining residents complained about rising crime. Out-of-state investors bought up hundreds of foreclosed houses and turned them into rentals.
Over the past decade, Latin American immigrants, many from Guatemala, helped temper East Price Hill’s economic decline. They came because of cheap housing, the neighborhood’s location near jobs in downtown Cincinnati and because some Guatemalans already lived in the area.
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Federico Ventura’s parents opened the small grocery store in East Price Hill in the early 2000s, when the neighborhood had few Latino residents.
Between 2010 and 2020, East Price Hill added close to 2,000 Hispanic residents, which helped keep the population nearly steady at around 15,000 as others departed, according to Census Bureau figures. That influx has accelerated since 2020, locals say. As older shops and restaurants closed, immigrants opened new ones, keeping Warsaw Avenue lively. The newcomers also filled crumbling apartment complexes, propping up the local real-estate market.
Tensions have flared along the way. The newcomers drove down apartment vacancies, contributing to rising rents that are a sore spot for longtime residents. In the 2024 presidential election, Ohio voted to elect Trump, who promised to close borders and deport immigrants. But Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, voted for Kamala Harris.
Barbara Rich, who works at an East Price Hill hardware store, said she feels like some immigrants haven’t become enmeshed enough in the community, including learning English. When locals staged a protest against the recent ICE arrests in early June, people driving by in a car stuck their middle fingers at the protesters, said Walter Vasquez, a neighborhood resident and missionary for a local religious organization, who witnessed the arrests at the supermarket.
Some immigrants, meanwhile, complain about crime. They also say nonimmigrant residents target them in robberies because immigrants tend to carry cash and are reluctant to approach police.
Around the Midwest, Pittsburgh’s Hispanic population roughly doubled between 2010 and 2023, according to census estimates. The number grew by 92% in Cincinnati and by 75% in Columbus, Ohio. This far outpaces Hispanic population growth throughout the U.S.
“The types of changes that have taken place in Price Hill have taken place in at least hundreds of neighborhoods in dozens of cities," said A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, a professor of history at Pennsylvania State University.
Many of these places are now sites of immigration raids. Authorities also arrested and deported a recent high-school graduate from Honduras in a different part of Cincinnati this month.
The East Price Hill arrests rattled a neighborhood where many newcomers are in the U.S. illegally but have managed to work. Immigration agents grabbed one man from Guatemala as he stopped at the supermarket on the way to a birthday party, said Vasquez, the neighborhood resident, who witnessed the arrest.
Locals are worried because immigration agents often use unmarked cars, making them hard to spot. “They might show up in a Prius," he said.
A neighborhood fruit vendor, an immigrant from Guatemala, said she used to sell 10 to 12 fruit cups a day. After the arrests that fell to one to three, and she worries about being able to pay her apartment rent.
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A fruit vendor from Guatemala said her business took a hit after the local immigration arrests.
At the Valle Verde restaurant, business declined around 50% after the arrests, and servers only make a fraction of what they used to in tips, said the owner, another Guatemalan immigrant. When customers call for pickup for dishes such as tacos and enchiladas, they sometimes ask if immigration agents are nearby, she said.
A mattress-shop owner said he recently asked his brother in his native Mauritania for $500 to cover a utility bill because business has plummeted.
Shaundale Green, who cuts hair at an East Price Hill barbershop, said the majority of his customers are Hispanic immigrants. Business had been good, he said on a recent weekday, pointing at the sign listing prices of $30 to $40 for a cut.
But fear was keeping many clients home, eating into his income. “They ain’t going out any more," Green said.
Write to Konrad Putzier at konrad.putzier@wsj.com
While Israel and the U.S. were bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, another battlefield emerged behind the scenes: the financial infrastructure that keeps Tehran connected to the world.
Israeli authorities, and a pro-Israeli hacking group called Predatory Sparrow, targeted financial organizations that Iranians use to move money and sidestep the U.S.-led economic blockade, according to Israeli officials and other people familiar with the efforts. U.S. sanctions, imposed off-and-on for decades due to Tehran’s nuclear program and support for Islamist groups, have aimed to cut Iran off from the international financial system.
Predatory Sparrow, which operates anonymously and posts updates of its activities on X, said this past week that it crippled Iran’s state-owned Bank Sepah, which services Iran’s armed forces and helps them pay suppliers abroad, knocking out its online banking services and cash machines. Iranian state media acknowledged the damage.
The group also breached Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, popular with locals for transferring money overseas. The hackers extracted about $100 million in funds and forced the platform to shut down, according to the exchange.
Iran’s government pulled the plug on much of the country’s online activities to prevent further attacks and keep a lid on dissent. Non-Iranian websites were blocked. Citizens were warned against using foreign phones or messaging platforms that it claimed could collect audio and location data for Israeli spies. Government officials were banned from using laptops and smartwatches.
Predatory Sparrow said the two hacks were directed against the “financial lifelines" of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most powerful faction of Iran’s military that also controls swaths of the economy. “Noble people of Iran! Withdraw your funds before it is too late," it tweeted.
Both targeted companies remain hobbled. Nobitex said it faced serious challenges in restoring services and was aiming to relaunch trading this coming week. Some Bank Sepah users say online they still aren’t receiving deposits.
The group didn’t say if it was acting on behalf of Israeli authorities. “The group’s sophistication, target selection and geopolitical messaging fit the profile of an Israel-aligned, state-sponsored cyber actor," said Deddy Lavid, chief executive of Cyvers, a Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity firm.
Predatory Sparrow didn’t respond to requests for comment sent to the administrator of its Telegram group.
The cyberattacks hit an economy already battered by U.S. sanctions that bar the purchase of Iran’s oil or interactions with its banks. Iran’s economy is highly dependent on a select few trading partners, notably China. Annual inflation runs above 40%, according to the World Bank. A constant flight of skilled workers has also throttled Iran’s economic growth.
Israel confirmed a cease-fire with Iran on Tuesday. But cybersecurity experts and Israeli officials expect the cyberwarfare to continue. “Israel will likely keep launching precision cyberstrikes against the regime’s power centers," said Lavid.
Officials at Israel’s National Bureau for Counter-Terror Financing said they didn’t have information on links between Predatory Sparrow and Israeli authorities. They said Israel was broadly targeting the economic infrastructure that allowed Iran to finance its military and proxies, imposing sanctions earlier this month on its central bank and other banks used by the IRGC.
The NBCTF, which is overseen by the defense ministry, plans to issue orders to exchanges outside Iran to help it seize more of Nobitex’s crypto holdings. It has identified a further $150 million in funds held by Nobitex, the officials said.
Pro-Iran cyber groups have hit back, targeting Israeli government websites with denial-of-service attacks, in which hackers aim to overwhelm computers that route internet traffic with a flood of requests, and sending phishing messages to Israelis in a bid to compromise their phones. The Israel National Cyber Directorate said Iran’s cyberattacks hadn’t caused damage in recent weeks.
Paranoia swept through the Iranian population as the attacks, both physical and cyber, mounted. “It’s better to cut [the internet] off. Israel can see everything," said Mohammad Ghorbaniyan, a Tehran-based money changer whom the U.S. sanctioned several years ago for allegedly aiding Iranian hackers, an accusation he denies.
The Bank Sepah hack last Tuesday halted payments, including salaries owed to military retirees, according to Fars News Agency, which is controlled by the IRGC. Many of its cash machines stopped working. The U.S. Treasury Department said last year that Bank Sepah, which has branches on Iranian military bases, helps Iran’s defense ministry pay foreign suppliers via a sprawling shadow-banking network.
Nobitex went offline the next day. The Tehran-based crypto exchange has processed transactions in excess of about $22 billion for users since its 2017 launch, according to blockchain research firms and the officials from Israel’s NBCTF.
“This attack had political motives to create emotional distress and damage the Iranian people’s property," Nobitex’s chief executive, Amir Rad, said in a video posted on its Telegram channel.
As in Russia and other countries cut off from international finance, cryptocurrencies, in particular dollar-pegged stablecoins such as tether, have emerged as a vital workaround in Iran, providing a medium through which users can shift money between local and foreign banks.
Nobitex’s 11 million customers use the platform to swap Iranian rials for tether, which they can convert into other traditional currencies abroad. Rad has said on his LinkedIn account that Nobitex’s goal is to allow Iranians to trade crypto despite “the shadow of sanctions."
“Nobitex has been the main option for the Iranians to skip the sanctions," said Amit Levin, a former Israeli prosecutor and ex-investigator at the Binance crypto exchange who now advises companies on financial-crime compliance.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had also turned to Nobitex for international payments, according to the Israeli officials and blockchain researchers. Crypto analytics firm Elliptic has found that two IRGC operatives, whom the U.S. accused of conducting ransomware attacks on American companies, used Nobitex to make transfers.
Rad said he didn’t believe that the IRGC was moving money through Nobitex because he operated a transparent platform that was closely monitored.
Predatory Sparrow has been wreaking havoc on Iran since at least 2021. In earlier hacks, the group disabled gas-station payment systems across the country and triggered a fire at an Iranian steel plant.
For their operation against Nobitex, the hackers managed to obtain the keys for the exchange’s cryptocurrency wallets, which were held by key personnel within the company, said Rad.
Predatory Sparrow then “burned" the stolen $100 million by sending the tokens to other digital wallets the group itself couldn’t access. These wallets’ addresses, which are made up of long strings of numbers and letters, contained profane phrases like “F—IRGCterrorists."
Nobitex’s initial investigation into the breach indicated that Israel’s government had likely supported it, Rad said, though he declined to provide proof of his claim. He said Nobitex was a private, independent company with no affiliation to the Iranian state, including the IRGC.
Write to Angus Berwick at angus.berwick@wsj.com
Three years ago, Ibrahim Traoré was a junior army officer in Burkina Faso’s armed forces. Today, he has emerged as a surprising anti-Western hero preaching self-reliance and resilience with fans across Africa and beyond.
Since toppling the West African country’s previous military leader in 2022 and making himself president, Traoré has won the kind of glowing admiration from people across the continent that has eluded African leaders since the days of antiapartheid icon Nelson Mandela and the generation that led the independence struggles.
“Many Africans are disillusioned with the West," said Ayotunde Abiodun, an analyst with SBM Intelligence, a Nigeria-based geopolitical research consulting firm. Traoré, he said, has become the anti-imperialist face of that sentiment.
Russia has tried to court him, seeing him as a way to accelerate the decline of France’s influence across the arid countries of the Sahel, the wide band of land bordering the southern reaches of the Sahara.
But Traoré has his own agenda of reviving the Pan-African movements of the past. Whether he succeeds in putting Burkina Faso on a stronger footing and pushing back a long-running Islamist insurgency could influence what happens elsewhere across the region.
The 37-year-old appears to be genuinely popular as people across the region tire of a generation of aging leaders widely seen as corrupt and beholden to the West.
In April, thousands of Burkina Faso citizens poured into the streets of Ouagadougou, the capital city, in solidarity with Traoré after an alleged counter-counter-coup failed to oust him from office.
The protesters were also incensed by comments by Gen. Michael Langley, head of U.S. Africa Command, accusing Traoré of misusing the country’s gold reserves. Traoré partisans saw Langley’s comments as a pretext for Western intervention, and members of the African diaspora held solidarity marches to show their support for him.
In London, Traoré supporters held banners that read, “Hands off African resources, Hands off Ibrahim Traoré." In Jamaica, demonstrations took place outside the U.S. Embassy in Kingston, and on the north coast in Montego Bay, where protesters sang, played drums and hailed Traoré as a “Black liberator."
Motorized rickshaws, a common mode of transport among working people, display photos of the beret-wearing Traoré in Nairobi, a city on the opposite side of the continent.
Part of Traoré’s appeal comes from how he styles himself after his countryman and Pan-Africanist leader Thomas Sankara.
Often called “Africa’s Che Guevara," Sankara renamed the Republic of the Upper Volta as Burkina Faso, or “land of the upright people," and set about making the country more self-sufficient before he was assassinated in 1987. In taking a leaf out of his book, Traoré has revived interest in Sankara and his pan-Africanism. Last month, a newspaper published by the Nation of Islam, the Black religious and political movement of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan, featured side-by-side photos of Traoré and Sankara on its front page.
Traoré primarily came to power on a promise to improve security, however.
As a captain, he ousted Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had himself overthrown a civilian government eight months earlier. Both Traoré and Damiba had justified their actions by accusing their predecessors of failing to quell dual insurgencies by Islamists affiliated with al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Traoré has since surfed a wave of public discontent with France, the former colonial power, whose continued involvement in the political and economic lives of its former West African colonies created resentment, according to analysts.
In a popular move, Traoré expelled French troops, who had also been unable to tame the insurgencies. U.S. Green Berets, who had arrived to train local commandos shortly before the coup, suspended military aid after the putsch.
Donning the populist mantle, Traoré renegotiated international gold-mining contracts to guarantee the government a greater share of the revenue. He distributed tractors and cheap fertilizer to farmers and built factories, such as a tomato-processing plant and the country’s first gold refinery—efforts to keep value-added businesses at home.
A survey by Afrobarometer, a Ghana-based pollster, found last year that a majority of Burkina Faso’s people supported military rule as the best way to combat corrupt civilian elites. The survey showed that across the continent, more than half of Africans were willing to tolerate military intervention in politics if “elected leaders abuse power for their own ends." Two-thirds, however, rejected military rule as the default system of government.
Analysts say Traoré has gained strong support from the country’s rural poor by placing land under state control, nullifying previous land allocations that favored agribusinesses and recognizing customary rights of rural communities. Supporters see the measures as an attempt to undo decades of land policies that favored corporate investors over smallholder farmers, said Burkina Faso analyst Luc Damiba.
The new land policies have also gained him favor from young people, who have cheered his promise of land and agricultural training.
Analysts say sections of Burkina Faso’s urban, educated classes, including academics, journalists and civil？society activists, worry that Traoré doesn’t intend to return the country to elected civilian government. Traoré has postponed elections scheduled for last year until 2029, saying voting will take place when the military has wrestled enough territory from jihadists to allow all citizens to vote.
Like the African liberation leaders of the 1960s, Traoré has cozied up to Moscow.
Last month, he attended a Moscow parade celebrating the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany.
Russia has launched an influence operation in Burkina Faso involving pro-Moscow local radio stations as well as sports and musical events, says the nonprofit African Digital Democracy Observatory. Paid content lauding Traoré also began to appear across pro-Russian social-media platforms after he seized power, according to a 2023 report by the Paris-based watchdog All Eyes on Wagner.
“Allowing Burkinabé to sleep peacefully and live without hunger. These are his ambitions. This man deserves the greatest respect," read a caption on one Traoré portrait. The posts were disseminated widely across the continent by the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary force active in Africa, the watchdog said, though only a fifth of Burkina Faso’s population has internet access and only 12% use social media, limiting the domestic influence of online campaigns.
Russia has a clear interest in getting on Traoré’s good side. Hobbled by Western sanctions, it needs gold to shore up its struggling economy and has expanded its presence around West Africa through resource？for？security pacts, providing military trainers, mercenary units and media campaigns in exchange for mining rights.
Burkina Faso, a major gold producer, struck a deal with the Russian company Nordgold, which took an 85% stake in a gold-mining project. The government, which retained 15% of the ownership, expects the project to contribute $101 million to its coffers over an eight-year span.
However, unlike in countries like Mali or the Central African Republic, where Moscow’s mercenaries play a key role in protecting local regimes, Traoré has been reluctant to accept Russian boots on the ground. A 400-strong contingent of Russian mercenaries, who arrived in Ouagadougou with much fanfare last year, departed within three months, according to current and former French and Burkinabé officials.
“Traoré feels the army is the guarantor to preserve his country’s sovereignty," said a former minister in the Burkina Faso government. “Russian mercenaries are not his cup of tea."
Traoré’s Achilles’ heel, however, may be the very issue he used to sell his power grab: security.
Violence has gotten worse since the military seized power.
More than 17,000 people have been killed in insurgent violence since the takeover—more than triple the death toll from the final three years of civilian rule, according to an analysis by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, part of the Pentagon’s National Defense University. The center analyzed data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit monitoring service.
In August, jihadists massacred hundreds of villagers in Barsalogho, a remote town in north-central Burkina Faso.
Rights groups report that the Burkina Faso military has committed extrajudicial killings and arbitrary detentions during Traoré’s time in power, and has used an emergency law to forcibly conscript civilians, including critics and activists, to quell dissent.
Burkina Faso officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“There’s a possibility for this symbolism and popular legitimacy that he enjoys right now to erode if there’s no improvement in the security situation and economic condition of the Burkina Faso people between now and then," said Abiodun, the Nigeria-based analyst.
Write to Caroline Kimeu at caroline.kimeu@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com