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MEXICO CITY — The stunning U.S. indictment of 10 current and former Mexican officials for alleged links to the Sinaloa cartel has put Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in an extremely tight corner.

Most of the those accused, including Sinaloa Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya and a senator, Enrique Inzunza Cázarez are members of Sheinbaum’s ruling leftist Morena party.

A president with 70%-plus approval ratings now faces some wrenching decisions.

Do Mexican authorities move to arrest the Sinaloa governor and the others and extradite them to the United States — as Washington is demanding?

That could provoke an outcry from nationalist circles, who would likely view such as move as a breach of sovereignty. It would also threaten to split the ruling Morena coalition, which now dominates Mexican politics.

Or does Sheinbaum seek to delay any extradition on legal or other grounds? Extradition requests typically drag on for months, sometimes years, as those targeted seek reprieves from Mexican courts. Such a move would buy time, but also run the risk of enraging Trump at a delicate moment in U.S.-Mexico relations.

Commentators took to social media, TV, radio and newspaper sites to voice opinions on what could be Sheinbaum’s biggest showdown to date with the Trump administration.

Sheinbaum has “her back against the wall,” wrote columnist Denise Dresser on X.

The president, she wrote, faces a quandary: She could opt to”ingratiate” herself further with Trump, and turn over the suspects. Alternately, Sheinbaum could “shield herself in sovereignty,” refusing to surrender the accused — at least for now.

“The dilemma is to maintain party unity,” Dresser wrote, “or appease an irascible/dangerous neighbor.”

U.S.-Mexico relations had already taken an awkward turn this month when it was learned that two CIA agents died in a car crash after state authorities raided a mountain drug lab.

Sheinbaum denounced the CIA presence as a violation of a Mexican law prohibiting direct foreign involvement in law enforcement operations. She has demanded explanations from Washington and from state authorities in Chihuahua.

Now confronting the indictment of Rocha Mayo and others, Sheinbaum, who is inherently cautious, may seek to delay the extradition process, requesting that Washington provide more evidence to Mexico’s foreign ministry, which evaluates extradition requests. In that scenario, Sheinbaum could essentially be washing her hands of the decision and foist it on the ministries.

But the White House might view that as stonewalling from a leader who, seeking to curry Trump’s favor, has already been willing to bypass the formal extradition process and turn over scores of cartel suspects to the United States.

“If the proof is not legally conclusive, we could be confronting a long push-and-pull process that will damage — possibly irreparably — the bilateral relationship,” wrote commentator Gabriel Guerra Castellanos on X. “The thermometer is positioned in the red zone.”

It’s a high-stakes drama with few easy outs for a president who has, until now, managed a delicate equilibrium: balancing Mexican sovereignty with Trump’s constant demands for more action against Mexican-based cartels that his administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations.

The 36-page indictment unsealed Wednesday alleges that Rocha Moya won office with the help of the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa cartel, led by four sons, or Chapitos, of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the legendary co-founder of the multi-billion-dollar cartel.

To elevate Rocha Moya in the 2021 election, the indictment alleges, says the Chapitos manipulated ballots and kidnapped and intimidated his opponents.

In return, the indictment alleges, Rocha Moya and other public officials helped the Chapitos traffic massive quantities of fentanyl, cocaine, heroin and crystal meth to the United States. The indictment accuses authorities of accepting bribes in exchange for protecting drug shipments and tipping off traffickers about upcoming police raids.

In one case, one of the accused is alleged to have turned over a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency informant and members of the informant’s family to the cartel, resulting in multiple deaths.

The indictment raises other questions. Did two of El Chapo’s sons who are in U.S. custody, Ovidio Guzmán López and Joaquín Guzmán López, provide information to U.S. authorities that led to the charges?

And what about the possible role of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the former partner of El Chapo who pled guilty on trafficking charges in the United States but is waiting for a sentencing hearing? Did Zambada — one-time keeper of many cartel secrets — cooperate with U.S. authorities?

Joaquín Guzmán, a former leader of the Chapitos, confessed to the 2024 kidnapping of Zambada, snatching him at a meeting, flying him by private plane to the United States and handing him over to authorities.

Zambada has said that he agreed to rendezvous with Guzmán outside Culiacán, the Sinaloa state capital, because he had been told that Rocha Moya would be there. Rocha Moya has denied being at the fateful meeting where Zambada was seized.

U.S. officials have denied any role in the kidnapping, though Mexican authorities suspect that Washington orchestrated the abduction of the mob capo.

The betrayal of Zambada sparked a vicious battle for control of the Sinaloa cartel that has resulted in thousands of deaths. The raging cartel war pits Los Chapitos and their allies against loyalists of Zambada.

Suspicions of possible ties to drug traffickers have long hung over Rocha Mayo, who was born in Badiraguato, the same mountainous municipality in Sinaloa that is the hometown of El Chapo and other cartel bigwigs.

In an interview when he was a candidate for governor, Rocha Mayo told reporter Carlos Loret de la Mola that governments must figure out a way to co-exist with organized crime, which exerts de-facto control over vast stretches of Sinaloa and other Mexican states.

“We have to find a way to do it,” Rocha Mayo said. “Governments in general deny that there is any contact or conversation with criminals. But contacts are made between government officials and drug traffickers … and a state policy must be designed for that coordination.”

Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed.

President Donald Trump’s maritime blockade is the latest attempt to test a thus far unproven theory of the Iran war — that superior US might will inevitably break the Islamic Republic.

The strategy is based on a simple premise: The strangulation of Iran’s oil exports and the imports that sustain regular life there will trigger societal collapse. This will build unbearable pressure on the regime to bow to US demands to permanently renounce its nuclear program.

In Washington, this seems logical. Every nation, whether a radical theocracy or Western democracy, will crumble if it can’t assure access to the basics — food, energy and work. When US officials see soaring inflation, catastrophic job losses and shortages in Tehran, they conclude the two-week blockade is working.

“The blockade is genius, OK?” Trump said Wednesday. “Their economy is in real trouble. It’s a dead economy.” The president is so pleased with the plan that he’s steeled aides for it to last much longer, CNN reported.

One reason is that it’s a way of heaping pressure on Iran without risking US casualties with ground operations or resuming bombing that was relentless but inconclusive. Another is that it seeks to restore US leverage in economic warfare eroded when Iran set off a global crisis by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

The US economy is far mightier than Iran’s, so this should be no contest. Then again, a fearsome US-Israel air assault devastated Iran’s military, but wasn’t able to secure a strategic victory in the war.

Trump’s bullishness will confront two questions that will decide the fate of his latest strategy in a war that has often seemed to lack a rationale or endgame.

The first is how long Trump, his fellow Republicans and the American people can take the rising costs of the war, including $4-plus gasoline and a likely rise in inflation. Midterm election voters are already angry at high costs and Trump’s economy.

The second question is whether the plan is based on realistic intelligence about conditions in Iran and sound reasoning on how its leaders might react. There is, after all, a long and dubious tendency in Washington to apply American logic to Middle Eastern societies that don’t react as US presidents expect.

The president is betting that Iran’s leaders, in a radical Islamic theocracy with a record of inflicting extraordinary pain on its own people, will react purely on economic motives — as perhaps he might in their shoes.

There is growing evidence that Iran’s economy is in terrible trouble. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the war’s costs include a million unemployed; soaring food prices; and an internet shutdown that has stifled the online economy. Inflation is rampant and staples like red meat are unaffordable. Middle Eastern media reports warn of growing shortages and threats to food security.

Iran’s Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad warned the public on Wednesday to cut consumption of energy. And government offices have been ordered to cut electricity use by 70% after 1 p.m.

CNN’s White House team reported that US officials are reading intelligence that predicts the Iranian economy can only survive for a few weeks, if not days, according to two sources. And Trump repeatedly claims Iran’s inability to export oil means it will have to halt production and risk huge damage to oil wells that could take years to fix.

Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, argued the blockade could wreak severe economic pain that could translate into uncontrollable political opposition.

But he added a critical caveat: This could take months.

“The first thing to remember is that we’ve never been here before; this is uncharted territory,” Vatanka said. “The blockade is nothing Iran’s ever experienced, not even during the Iran-Iraq war.”

Vatanka said he could foresee a time when millions of workers would potentially come onto the streets and demand relief. “That is where the regime will be tested in ways it hasn’t been tested before — it doesn’t mean it can’t prevail, relying on repression. … But it’s going to be a question of whether they can overcome the volume of anger.”

Vatanka warned, however, that the potential for economic collapse to spark political change would rely on a level of organization in anti-regime protests and regime defections that are yet to materialize in Iran.

Trump might not have time to wait for the counter-revolution. His approval ratings are at historic lows and Republicans fear losing the House and facing an uphill fight to cling onto the Senate in November. The longer the war goes on and Iran keeps the Strait of Hormuz closed, the greater the damage in the US.

Trump’s personal psychology may also play a role. He seems fixated on his legacy as he dreams of grand architectural works in his last 1,000 days in office. Nothing would be more shameful for a man who sees himself as one of life’s ultimate winners as being branded a loser in a war with Iran.

One day, Trump may not TACO.

Yet even if Trump vows to go long, there’s always a chance that the blockade strategy is simply flawed.

If the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei didn’t cause Iran to quit and weeks of relentless bombing didn’t break the resolve of its leaders, is there reason to think an economic crisis might?

The Islamic Republic’s persistence and stubbornness have become legendary.

Iran has labored under Western sanctions for decades. It endured a horrendous eight-year war with an estimated 1 million casualties against Iraq in the 1980s. Every time protesters threatened to reach a critical mass, the regime sent its thugs on the streets to massacre civilians to save the revolution.

The regime’s entire ethos in the 47 years since the Islamic Revolution has been resistance to the US “Great Satan.” It might choose societal collapse over caving into Trump.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said that Trump’s team was the latest US administration to believe, wrongly, that a pressure campaign could force Iran to give in.

“There is that constant search for that silver bullet, that one point of pressure that causes the Iranians to either collapse, capitulate or just mend themselves to America’s wishes,” Parsi said. “And almost every time the US goes down that path, it ends up disappointing itself.”

Trump’s confidence also reflects another familiar Washington trend — a never-reconciled belief, especially prevalent among conservatives, that the Iranian economy and regime is perpetually about to collapse.

“They have to cry uncle, that’s all they have to do. Just say, ‘We give up, we give up,’” the president said in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

If Iran does so, Trump could break a futile cycle of history and finally end America’s near half-century duel with a bitter enemy.

If it fails, he will only have proved yet again that the Islamic Republic’s willingness to take punch after punch can neuter far greater American power.

Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted on federal charges after posting an image of seashells arranged to spell “8647” on Instagram, in a case that has raised concerns about the use of the United States justice system as a form of political retaliation.

The charges were announced on Tuesday, with prosecutors accusing Comey of threatening US President Donald Trump and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce.

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The case comes amid heightened political tensions in Washington after an armed suspect managed to get close to a ballroom in the hotel where Trump was attending the White House Correspondents’ Association gala dinner on Saturday evening.

Trump has long called for prosecuting his political opponents and has set his sights, in particular, on Comey, who oversaw the early days of an investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign had coordinated with Russia.

Trump allies have blamed Democrats for fuelling hostility against the president through the use of heated political rhetoric.

What are the charges?

A federal grand jury has indicted Comey in the US state of North Carolina. He is accused of knowingly threatening the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce by posting the “8647” image on the social media platform Instagram in May last year.

Tuesday’s indictment came after an earlier Department of Justice criminal case against Comey fell apart last year.

The charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, according to acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche, although sentences in such cases are often lower.

Federal prosecutors have also obtained an arrest warrant for Comey, who has denied wrongdoing.

In a video posted on Substack titled “Seashells”, he said: “I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.”

His lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, said Comey would fight the charges and defend his constitutional rights in court.

What does ‘8647’ mean?

The case centres on an Instagram post Comey shared in May last year showing seashells arranged to form the number “8647”.

Trump and his supporters claim the numbers are a coded call for violence against the president.

The number 47 is commonly understood to refer to Trump, who became the 47th US president after returning to office in January 2025.

The dispute focuses on the meaning of “86”.

In US slang, “86” can mean to remove, reject or throw something out. It has long been used in restaurants when an item is unavailable or taken off the menu.

Some critics of Comey’s post claim the number can also imply getting rid of something or someone violently, though that interpretation is disputed. Comey said at the time that he did not intend the post as a threat.

He later deleted it, writing that he had not realised some people associated the numbers with violence and that he opposed violence “of any kind”.

Why is this case politically significant?

Comey has been one of Trump’s most prominent adversaries for years.

As director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2013 to 2017, Comey oversaw investigations that angered both Democrats and Republicans during the 2016 election cycle. Trump later fired him in 2017, a move that triggered major political fallout and scrutiny over whether the dismissal was linked to the FBI’s investigation into whether Russia had interfered with the 2016 presidential election, which Comey was overseeing.

After Comey was dismissed, Special Counsel Robert Mueller took over the Russia investigation.

The investigation lasted nearly two years and found that Russia had made major efforts to sway the 2016 election. Ultimately, it did not prove there was any criminal conspiracy involving Trump or his team, but the case hung over Trump for years, and he condemned it as a “witch-hunt”.

Since returning to office, Trump has repeatedly accused political opponents and former officials of wrongdoing, while promising to dismantle what he calls the “deep state”.

Critics say the latest case against Comey fits a broader pattern of targeting perceived political enemies.

Trump had publicly urged the Department of Justice to take action against Comey and other rivals, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and US Senator Adam Schiff.

Have there been previous cases against Comey?

Yes.

This is the second time Comey has been indicted since Trump began his second term.

Several months after the seashell controversy, Comey was charged in Virginia with making false statements to Congress and obstruction. That case focused specifically on whether he had lied to senators during his 2020 testimony about the Russia investigation to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020.

He denied those accusations. That case was later dismissed by a federal judge, who ruled that the prosecutor overseeing it had not been lawfully appointed. The earlier collapse has added scrutiny to the latest prosecution.

What happens next?

Comey’s case has been assigned to US District Judge Louise Flanagan in North Carolina.

He is expected to challenge the indictment and argue that the Instagram post was protected speech rather than a genuine threat.

Legal experts say the central question will be whether prosecutors can prove that Comey intended to threaten the president, rather than to post a political message open to interpretation.

The outcome could have implications beyond Comey himself, raising fresh questions about free speech, prosecutorial independence, and the boundaries of political expression in the United States.