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PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ve had a bit of a crisis here at FX HQ as my normally sure-footed wife went out for a nature walk with some friends yesterday and wound up in the hospital with a broken ankle. I mention this here because there may be some impact to the newsletter this week as she’s going to need surgery and we are hoping that can happen in the next few days. Ideally the disruption will be minimal but I can’t know yet until we see how the medical appointments unfold. Tonight’s roundup may also be a bit shorter than usual and there will be no voiceover.

TODAY IN HISTORY

August 1, 1798: The French fleet that had accompanied Napoleon on his great eastern campaign is nearly wiped out by a British fleet in Egypt’s Abu Qir Bay in the somewhat inaptly named “Battle of the Nile.” A hitherto relatively obscure British admiral named Horatio Nelson managed to track Napoleon down in Egypt and completely outmaneuver the French fleet in the bay so that several of his vessels were able to attack the French ships of the line from their unprotected rear, and that was pretty much that. The French defeat was so total that not only did it doom Napoleon’s campaign to failure, it established British naval supremacy in the Mediterranean for the rest of the Napoleonic period.

August 1, 1927: The Nanchang Uprising marks the start of the Chinese Civil War. In a direct response to the Shanghai Massacre of April 12, in which Kuomintang forces purged Chinese Communist Party members from their ranks (and killed thousands of them, though the casualty figures are disputed), a CCP army captured Nanchang, home of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Nationalist Party. This was one of several CCP uprisings around the country. Realizing they couldn’t hold the city against a counterattack, the CCP withdrew on August 5 and undertook what became known as the “Little Long March” south to Guangdong province. China’s People’s Liberation Army dates its founding to this uprising.

August 2, 338 BCE (or thereabouts): Philip II of Macedon defeats a Greek army organized by the cities of Thebes and Athens at the Battle of Chaeronea. The outcome effectively ended any chance of Greek resistance to a Macedonian takeover. After harshly punishing Thebes, Philip engaged in heavy diplomacy to win over Athens and Corinth and isolate Sparta. He managed to unite most of the Greek city-states behind him in what historians call the “League of Corinth,” which was one of the key preliminary steps in his grand plan to invade the Persian Empire. Philip didn’t live long enough to lead that campaign, but his son Alexander picked up where dad left off.

August 2, 216 BCE (or thereabouts): At the Battle of Cannae in southeastern Italy, the Carthaginian general Hannibal annihilates a much larger Roman army in what has often been regarded as the closest thing to a total military victory in history. Hannibal’s cavalry outflanked and completely encircled the Roman infantry in a pincer movement, then attacked from all sides. Of the 86,000 or so Roman soldiers who began the battle (to about 50,000 for Hannibal), Livy says that the Carthaginians killed 67,500 and that’s the low estimate. Polybius cites a death toll of over 85,000.

August 2, 1964: The USS Maddox, in North Vietnamese territorial waters, exchanges fire with several North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, as it came to be known, was the immediate trigger for the Vietnam War.

August 2, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait, sparking a US military buildup that would eventually lead to the Gulf War and, as far as that conflict’s fans are concerned, nothing else whatsoever.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) claimed on Saturday that its forces had killed an unknown number of Hezbollah militants in an overnight incident on the Ali al-Taher ridge. That high point is located near the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh and there has been fighting reported in that vicinity of late. The IDF claims that there is a Hezbollah command center beneath the hill. While the details here are minimal and unconfirmed these would mark the first known fatalities related to the IDF’s southern Lebanon occupation since July 15.

At Responsible Statecraft, Aurélie Daher argues that the US-Israeli effort to isolate Hezbollah within Lebanese politics and society has backfired:

The systematic, large-scale destruction of the country’s south and the massive killings of civilians did not produce Israel’s desired results. Tel Aviv had ideally hoped for a polarization of Lebanese society that would lead to a civil war, in which Shiites would come under fire from their compatriots — or, at the very least, for a majority of Lebanese to condemn and permanently exclude Hezbollah from governance.

The Israeli army’s brutal campaign had the opposite effect, adding fuel to Hezbollah’s fire rather than extinguishing it. In practice, the Israeli army has re-legitimized the Lebanese organization’s narrative that it has a special (if self-assigned) mission to defend the territory against the enemy to the south.

This represents an extraordinary failure for the pro-Israel position on the issue. In January 2025, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia (alongside Israel behind the scenes) had pressured the Lebanese political parties to elect President Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who were said to embody a “new era” for Lebanon. The new leadership promised, far and wide, that the United States was working to turn the Lebanese army into a military force capable of defending the country’s territory, which would render Hezbollah’s defensive rhetoric obsolete. They also tried to reassure skeptics by asserting that “diplomatic friendships” were enough to deter Israel’s potential trouble-making.

A year and a half later, the Lebanese army not only still lacked the resources to carry out its mission but was openly fleeing, on orders from Aoun himself, in the face of the Israeli advance in the spring of 2026. Hezbollah, which Tel Aviv claimed to have decimated in the fall of 2024, was back in action as early as March of the same year. And there were no signs of any external “friend of the Lebanese government” to keep Israeli military force in check.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

In case you were wondering if there is in fact a deal in place to disarm Hamas and further the Gaza “ceasefire,” the IDF offered a pretty compelling case for the negative on Sunday when it killed at least 18 people across the territory. Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen told Israeli Army Radio that there is currently “no deal to halt attacks on Gaza,” though leaving aside whatever did or didn’t happen on Thursday and Friday it seems like the October “ceasefire” was supposed to cover that sort of thing. The IDF killed at least seven people in Gaza on Saturday and punctuated the day by destroying medical warehouses in Deir el-Balah.

IRAN

Donald Trump once again pivoted away from his own precipice on Saturday, declaring via social media that he’d called off what was supposed to be a massive US and Israeli attack on Iranian energy infrastructure. According to Trump the “perimeters of a deal has been agreed to,” and yes he used the word “has.” He may also have meant “parameters” but who can say, really. There were indications from Tehran on Sunday that Iranian and Omani officials may be close to a deal on restoring traffic through the Strait of Hormuz but beyond that there’s no indication of any other sort of deal whose perimeters has been agreed. Nevertheless, Trump said on Sunday that there will be some sort of US-Iran negotiation on Monday but didn’t say where or how it would take place or who would be participating.

The actual impetus for Trump’s about-face may have come from the Gulf Arab states, whose leaders undoubtedly feared their own infrastructure being subject to Iranian retaliation. Several outlets reported that Gulf officials were urging against escalation and Trump’s favorite Gulf official, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, delivered that message directly in a phone call shortly before Trump made his announcement. The UAE apparently lobbied for escalation rather than postponement but one assumes that the Gulf consensus was more aligned with the Saudi perspective. Additionally, The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the head of the US military’s European Command, Alexus Grynkewich, had informed the Pentagon that a shortage of available naval destroyers meant that he would have to reduce the number of vessels currently deployed in the eastern Mediterranean to provide air defense to Israel. Maybe that was part of Trump’s thinking (I use the term loosely) as well.

ASIA

PAKISTAN

A suicide bomber killed at least 14 people on Sunday evening outside a police station in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The attacker targeted a group of protesters who were demanding greater levels of police and military action against violent insurgents. According to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa experienced 154 “terrorism-related” deaths in July and that was more than twice the number recorded the previous month.

INDIA

CNBC’s Priyanka Salve and Raksha Murali highlight the deeper economic issues underlying the recent “Cockroach Janta Party” protests in India:

India’s youth unemployment crisis has become one of the biggest vulnerabilities for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, exposing the gap between the country’s economic ambitions and the reality facing millions of young graduates.

The frustration erupted into the open this month after a leaked paper forced a retest of India’s ultra-competitive medical entrance exam, prompting nationwide student protests led by a viral, social media-focused youth movement called the Cockroach Janta Party.

While the exam scandal was the immediate trigger, economists say the demonstrations reflected something much deeper: a generation struggling to find secure, well-paying jobs despite spending years competing for an education.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The Sudanese military (SAF) killed at least 35 people in a drone strike in Sudan’s North Darfur state on Sunday, according to the Emergency Lawyers activist group. The strike apparently targeted a local court where people had gathered to hear cases in the village of Garra al-Zawaya, which is controlled by the Rapid Support Forces militant group. Elsewhere, new fighting between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North and the Otoro tribe has reportedly caused “a wave of displacement” in Sudan’s South Kordofan state. The SPLM-N and the Otoro, or elements of it, have been battling in South Kordofan since at least May.

NIGERIA

Gunmen attacked a village in northwestern Nigeria’s Sokoto state overnight Saturday to Sunday, killing at least 12 people and abducting several women and children as well as rustling livestock. There’s no indication as to responsibility and this may be another instance of organized banditry, which is a frequent occurrence in that part of the country.

ETHIOPIA

Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and federal Ethiopian forces battled one another in the western part of Ethiopia’s Tigray region on Saturday. It’s unclear how the fighting started or who started it, but tensions between the TPLF and the federal government have been escalating for months. Both sides are talking as if this may be a return to full scale war though that has yet to be seen. Details are slim but the fighting apparently spilled into Sudan and caused casualties among displaced Ethiopians along the border.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

A major Russian bombardment killed at least ten people in Ukraine’s Kyiv region on Saturday. Damage and casualties were widespread across the city and its environs. In Russia, a possible suicide bomber (authorities aren’t sure if she was aware that she was carrying a bomb) killed herself and at least two other people in a Moscow restaurant. A Russian general who was in the vicinity may have been the target, and it seems reasonable to assume that the incident was connected with the Ukraine war. On Sunday Ukrainian military strikes killed at least nine people across Russia including at least three in a long-range attack in the Udmurtia region. Russian strikes killed another five people in Ukraine.

SPAIN

At least 72 people have died amid the rush of migrants who attempted to cross from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta on Thursday and Friday. Most appear to have drowned while trying to enter Ceuta by sea and the death toll is expected to rise as more bodies are washed ashore. Spanish authorities have expelled some 48,000 of the roughly 60,000 people who entered the exclave.

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AMERICAS

UNITED STATES

Finally, though it’s not really part of our normal beat The Intercept’s Dylan Gyauch-Lewis reports on one of the more cartoonishly corrupt things Donald Trump has done so far in his second term:

For the low, low price of $100,000 a month, the ever-oxymoronic Truth Social is now selling direct access to its most important posts — or, in the firm’s preferred parlance, “truths” — to Wall Street. That’s an expedited lane to access statements and data from the president of the United States and other government officials, which have significant potential to move financial markets, ahead of us suckers in the general public.

This sort of product, called an Application Processing Interface, or API, is not a particularly unusual offering for a social media company in the abstract. But Truth API, which launched today, is uniquely positioned to fuel blatant presidential graft.

The move has been rightly called “brazen corruption,” “the president’s most desperate grift yet,” and a “clear and unacceptable pathway for corruption.” In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sens. Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren called the offering “an outrageous abuse of the President’s office for his personal benefit that undermines everyday investors and the integrity of our markets, while enriching Wall Street and other wealthy insiders.” All of that is true, but Truth API doesn’t stop at creating a new pathway to funnel de facto bribes to Trump; it also seeks to functionally merge the provision of a public good with a for-profit company.

As she goes on to point out, presidential communications are public property according to the 1978 Presidential Records Act. Moreover, officials within the Trump administration use Truth Social as an unmediated press office, releasing statements and announcements on the site to curry favor with their boss. Those are rightly public property as well. Trump is privatizing access to public documents and selling it off for his own enrichment.

July 31 (or thereabouts), 751: An Abbasid army defeats an imperial Tang Chinese force at the Battle of Talas in Central Asia. Arab and Chinese armies had by this point bumped into one another several times in that region, but Talas proved to be fairly decisive in terms of establishing Islamic over Chinese primacy. The main reason for this isn’t so much the battle as the subsequent An Lushan Rebellion in China, which the Tang survived but in a substantially weaker state with much less control over their imperial periphery. Talas was also once believed to have been instrumental in the transmission of paper-making technology from China to the Arabs and thus on to the West, but this seems to be overblown.

July 31, 1941: The invading Wehrmacht defeats the Soviet Red Army at the Battle of Smolensk, part of World War II’s Operation Barbarossa. Though a fairly stunning German tactical victory, leaving over 400,000 Soviet soldiers killed or wounded and over 300,000 captured, strategically Smolensk contributed to the overall collapse of the Nazi invasion of the USSR. The stiff Soviet resistance caused German leaders to slow down their advance on Moscow, which gave the Soviets time to strengthen their defenses around the city and contributed to the attrition of the German army. The subsequent Battle of Moscow ended in a significant Soviet victory.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The question of the day seems to be where things stand now that Hamas and Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” have apparently concluded an agreement that would see the former disarm. The answer, as far as I can tell, is pretty much the same place they stood before the deal was announced. Although Trump referred to it as “a big step for the Middle East” on Friday, informing reporters that “people are really impressed by it, and they're surprised by it,” the two parties that will actually have to participate for the agreement to work don’t appear to have materially changed their positions. Hamas is still insisting that it won’t disarm until the Israeli government fulfills its obligations under the October “ceasefire” agreement, while the Israeli government is still insisting that it won’t fulfill those obligations unless Hamas disarms. Same as it ever was, more or less.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

July 30, 762: Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur founds the city of Baghdad as his new capital. Located near the site of the former Sasanian (Persian) capital Ctesiphon, Baghdad replaced the Umayyad capital Damascus as the center of the caliphal court. Officially the new city was called Medinat al-Salam, or “the City of Peace.” It’s not entirely clear why it took the name Baghdad, but the prevailing theory as far as I know is that a village called “Baghdad” stood near the spot where the city was built, and common usage applied that name to the city. Eventually common usage won out. For several centuries Baghdad was arguably the most important city in the world. At its height it may have been home to more than a million people and was world-renowned as a center of learning and culture. Its decline mirrored the decline of the Abbasid dynasty, and the Mongol sack of the city in 1258 proved especially devastating.

July 30, 1619: The Virginia General Assembly meets for the first time in Jamestown. Today the Assembly bills itself as “the first representative government in the New World,” which I guess is true if you ignore the millions of people who were already living there when the first Europeans showed up, many of whom also practiced forms of “representative government.” Anyway this gives the Assembly a claim on being the true forerunner of the modern US government, which must be a source of great pride for everybody involved.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least six people in Gaza on Thursday, including two children. IDF officials insist that they were attacking “militants.” Later in the day, after reporting suggested that Hamas and the “Board of Peace” had made significant progress toward a disarmament agreement Donald Trump announced via social media on Thursday evening that the deal was done. Hamas later confirmed that it and the board had concluded what sounds like a somewhat bare-bones agreement on disarmament, with a fuller “roadmap” to be drafted within 14 days (a deadline that can be extended).

Full details are unclear but it basically it sounds like Hamas has expressed a willingness to transfer its weapons in stages to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, the “technocratic” Palestinian organ that’s supposed to administer Gaza under the board’s auspices. In turn, the IDF would withdraw from Gaza. There’s a lot that needs to be fleshed out in terms of details, sequencing, timelines, etc., but the more immediate concern may be that the Israeli government has not yet indicated its support. Indeed, reporting prior to Trump’s announcement suggested that it had rejected the emerging Hamas-board agreement. The US could certainly pressure Israel into acquiescence but a disgruntled Israeli government would have ample opportunity to disrupt any agreement.

EGYPT

The Egyptian government now says that it was most likely a drone strike that set fire to two ships in its Damietta port earlier this week. The apparent answer to one question only leads to a second: who is launching drones at Egypt? The New York Times reported the previous day, based on the claims of “two Iranians” (that was it as far as attribution), that the strike was “designed to show that global shipping and energy supplies could be more deeply disrupted if Iran chose to escalate.” That would point toward either Iran itself or one of its regional non-state allies. One such ally, Yemen’s Ansarullah group, denied responsibility on Thursday. The apparent target was a US natural gas tanker, which would also point toward Iran or an Iranian-affiliated entity. The NYT report, thinly sourced as it is, would suggest that this is was a one-off (at least for now) and no additional attacks on Egypt should be expected.

YEMEN

Reuters reported on Thursday that Ansarullah (the Houthi movement) has been carrying out drone strikes on Saudi Arabia from Iraqi territory, “in coordination with Iraqi armed groups.” The US and Saudi militaries carried out airstrikes against Iraqi militias earlier this week partly in retaliation for those strikes. The Iraqi government condemned those strikes as an insult to Iraqi sovereignty and has been demanding evidence that those drone attacks did in fact originate on Iraqi soil. Ansarullah and the militias (or at least some of them) do have a longstanding working relationship based on their mutual ties to Iran, but in recent years they’ve also developed their direct bilateral relationship.

The Guardian reported on Thursday, based on “Yemeni sources,” that the Saudi government “is preparing for a major military offensive against the Houthis by sea and possibly by land in central Yemen.” Saudi forces are reportedly redeploying from eastern Yemen in preparation for a ground campaign that may focus on southern Yemen’s Al-Bayda province. The maritime component appears to be the kingdom’s proposed “multinational military coalition” intended to counter Ansarullah’s challenge to Red Sea commercial shipping. So far 14 countries have declared their support for that coalition, out of 51 countries that the Saudis invited to participate. In terms of military capabilities Turkey and Pakistan are probably the two biggest names on the list. Notably absent is the United States, at least so far. It’s still unclear how the countries that have agreed to participate intend to contribute to the mission.

IRAN

The US military conducted roughly two-hours of airstrikes in Iran overnight in retaliation for the Iranian attack on Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti airbase earlier this week. Among those strikes was one that reportedly hit a residential building on Iran’s Qeshm island, killing a couple and their child. There’s no word yet as to additional casualties. The Iranians retaliated with strikes on Jordan and Kuwait, killing one worker for an unspecified Chinese company in the latter. At time of writing I had not seen any indication of another round of US strikes so maybe the intention is to go back to the pause that was in place before that first Jordanian strike.

Elsewhere, the Trump administration blacklisted six individuals and organizations on Thursday with ties to Iran’s already blacklisted Mahan Air carrier. The US government has accused Mahan of ferrying Islamic Revolutionary Guard personnel as well as carrying arms and other materiel for the IRGC.

ASIA

NEPAL

Inter-communal violence between Hindu and Muslim populations in eastern Nepal has left at least three people dead and prompted Nepali Prime Minister Balendra Shah on Thursday to “sincerely appeal to the citizens, civil society, religious communities, all respected leaders, all political parties and responsible media, to exercise patience and restraint and maintain peace, harmony, brotherhood and national unity.” According to AFP the violence began on Sunday over some sort of dispute about “loud music and religious flags during a Hindu procession” in Koshi provinces’s Sunsari district. When a crowd began to gather police decided that the best way to get control of the situation was to start shooting people, leaving two people dead. A third person died on Thursday during a protest in neighboring Madhesh province.

MYANMAR

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced on Thursday that Myanmar’s government has agreed to repatriate some 5000 Rohingya refugees. There are around 126,000 Rohingya refugees currently in Malaysia and there’s been an increase in tensions around their presence of late as Rohingya community leaders say their people are being mistreated and harassed. Nevertheless, Anwar’s announcement sparked accusations of refoulement as there does not seem to be any safe way to return those refugees to Myanmar at present. Even if the country’s essentially military government could be trusted to treat them humanely (it cannot be), much of Myanmar is still riven by civil war including the Rohingya homeland in Arakan state.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

A new investigation by the AP looks at the extent of the Rapid Support Forces military group’s use of child soldiers:

The teenage boy’s hands and legs were shackled to the anti-aircraft gun mounted on a pickup as Sudanese warplanes attacked. He saw another child chained to the steering wheel.

As their captors sought cover, the terrified children were ordered to stay and shoot down the jets over the capital, Khartoum. If they tried to flee, they’d be killed by their captors — if the planes didn’t get them first.

The boy, now 17, told The Associated Press that those who ordered him strapped to the gun were Colombian mercenaries providing military aid to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces against the army in the war, now in its fourth year. Another child said he was forced to carry out artillery strikes and beaten for disobedience.

The rare, firsthand accounts show the perils faced by tens of thousands of children believed to have been conscripted into the war by all sides. Six former child soldiers who were abducted and forced to fight with the Rapid Support Forces, known as the RSF, spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Two said they were trained by Colombians.

Their accounts point to a wider deployment of Colombian mercenaries, who rights groups say were recruited by a state-linked firm in the United Arab Emirates to fight with the RSF. Human rights groups and Sudan’s military accuse the UAE of arming the RSF, and a U.N. panel said it had tracked weapons shipments to the RSF originating in the Gulf federation that includes Dubai.

The UAE continues to deny, in a “who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes” sort of way, that it is backing the RSF at all. Emirati officials insist that they’ve investigated the firm in question and found that it has “no links to mercenary activity in Sudan.” It’s all very simple and believable, really.

NIGERIA

At Sawahil, Alex Thurston decries the sensationalism of media coverage of Boko Haram and its offshoots, when in his view the group is “fairly boring” and that’s what makes it so dangerous:

But the boring questions are the ones that matter if we want to understand the insurgency’s long life: Why have thousands of people fought and died for Boko Haram? What are the everyday technologies and operational modes - from motorbikes to light arms to munitions captured from the military - that enable the insurgency to notch so many tactical successes? Why have the security forces not been able to defeat the group or to project government authority into rural parts of northeastern (and now northwestern) Nigeria? Who profits from the insurgency, and who is content with the status quo?

The questions are boring - but crucial - in part because Boko Haram and its successor groups resist neat narratives. The groups do not relentlessly expand. The jihadists have not, after fifteen years and counting, captured Maiduguri or Kano or Abuja or Lagos. The kinds of attacks that shock the world - Boko Haram’s bombing of a United Nations building in Abuja in 2011, or the mass kidnapping of the Chibok girls in 2014 - either become infrequent or become normalized. And the villains of yesteryear are gone, leaving behind them figures who illustrate even more the tragic cycles of a self-perpetuating nightmare. In all the coverage I read of the killing of Abubakar Mainok (or Abu Bilal al-Minuki) in a U.S.-Nigerian strike in May 2026, the most striking line came from HumAngle’s Aliyu Dahiru: “Al-Minuki was a product of the insurgency itself.” There was never a single mastermind one could remove from the battlefield and end the movement, even in 2009 - as the Nigerian security forces learned after they killed Muhammad Yusuf. And seventeen years later, the idea of a mastermind driving a mass insurgency is even less plausible. What matters most is that many young men are willing to get on the back of a motorbike and go attack the Nigerian military, or extort civilians for “zakat” in the name of Islam.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

The Russian military’s overnight bombardment killed at least ten people across Ukraine and wounded over 50 more. Six of them, including three children, were killed in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk oblast. As if this were not alarming enough, amid the bombardment one Russian missile apparently crossed into Polish airspace and apparently struck farmland in Lublin province causing no casualties. NATO aircraft scrambled in response to the incursion.

HUNGARY

Amid the other extreme weather effects that Europe is experiencing this summer, the AP reports that the Danube River is drying up:

As wildfires rage in France and Spain and a renewed heat wave is bearing down on Western Europe, a prolonged drought half a continent away is setting record low water levels on one of Europe’s largest rivers, disrupting tourism and industry and confronting residents with the realities of climate change.

The Danube River, which runs through 10 countries from southwestern Germany to the Black Sea, has receded to never-before-seen lows along much of its course, exposing rocks, sand bars and old shipwrecks that have rarely been seen before.

In Budapest, Hungary’s capital, the national water authority measured the Danube’s water level at 23 centimeters (9 inches) on Wednesday morning, well below the previous all-time low of 33 centimeters (13 inches) set in 2018.

The river is expected to further ebb in the coming days with no significant rain in the forecast and temperatures expected to rise to over 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) across the region.

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AMERICAS

CUBA

Earlier this year The New York Times reported on a Russian “spy outpost” in Cuba, seemingly confirming an assertion made by the Trump administration. Belly of the Beast’s Reed Lindsay actually visited the side of this alleged facility and apparently found something much different:

For two months, the allegation that Cuba was hosting a major Russian spy base was largely ignored by U.S. media outlets. Then, on March 24, The New York Times published an article by Michael Crowley claiming not only that the Russian spy base exists, but that it “bristles with antennas and other eavesdropping equipment” capable of spying on the U.S. Central Command, the satellite launchpads of Cape Canaveral, and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

Crowley pinpointed the location: a former Soviet base on the outskirts of Havana called Lourdes that was “temporarily shut” by Vladimir Putin in 2001 but was reopened in 2014, according to the Times.

There is just one problem with this story: the base isn’t there.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. Belly of the Beast also sent requests to The New York Times and to Michael Crowley but received no response.

Today, Lourdes (also known as Torrens) is home to Cuba’s University of Computer Sciences (UCI). Belly of the Beast reporters spent the better part of two days walking the campus, searching the grounds and speaking with students, faculty and workers. We found no evidence of an active Russian intelligence base, much less the sort of extensive equipment described by The Times.

UNITED STATES

Finally, The Nation’s David Vine expects the Iran war to mark the beginning of the end for US military bases in the Middle East:

Since the illegal war’s first days, US bases have suffered extensive damage from Iranian retaliation. The losses include 18 US military deaths, dozens killed in host nations, and billions in infrastructure costs. This damage and the limited military utility of US installations are forcing a much-needed reconsideration of the US military presence in the Middle East. A growing consensus finds that dramatic changes are needed.

The result will almost certainly be the end of the nearly half-century-long era when scores of US bases have occupied the Middle East. The sooner US leaders accept this reality and start moving the military out of the region, the safer our nation, our troops, and our world will be.

US bases began dotting the Middle East around 1980 when Presidents Jimmy Carter and, after, Ronald Reagan started building installations in response to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and Iran’s 1979 revolution. More appeared during the 1991 Gulf War and the 2001 and 2003 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They remained long after original rationales disappeared. Today, the military has at least 80 installations in almost every country across the region.

The Iranian military has attacked most countries hosting US bases because they’ve helped enable the US/Israeli war. In addition to the human toll, damage to military infrastructure and hardware runs into the tens of billions of dollars.

US troops have been so vulnerable that military leaders moved many to local hotels and offices, likely violating the laws of war. Iran has made many Middle East installations “all but uninhabitable,” reports The New York Times.

July 29, 1014: A Byzantine army under Emperor Basil II defeats a Bulgarian army at the Battle of Kleidion, largely breaking Bulgarian resistance. Bulgarian Tsar Samuel deployed what was effectively his entire army in an attempt to bring an end to annual Byzantine raids, but Basil was able to exploit the terrain to surround and virtually wipe out the Bulgarians. The Byzantines took thousands of prisoners and reputedly sent them back to Samuel in October with nearly all of them blinded (a handful were allowed to keep one eye in order to guide the rest home). Samuel died of a heart attack, ostensibly over the shock of seeing all of those blinded soldiers, and this whole affair earned Basil the epithet “the Bulgar-Slayer.” Still, while their victory left Bulgaria open to continued assault it took the Byzantines another four years to finally force the Bulgarian Empire (the first of two of them) to surrender.

July 29, 1148: The ill-fated Second Crusade reaches its ignominious end with the failure of the Crusaders’ Siege of Damascus. Initially organized as a response to the loss of Edessa to the rising power in the Levant, the Zengid dynasty, the expedition saw open warfare between Crusaders and the Byzantine army, the destruction of two German armies by the Seljuk Turks, and the aforementioned siege of Damascus, which somehow made sense to the Crusaders even though Damascus’s emir was arguably on better terms with the Crusader states than he was with the Zengids. After badly mismanaging the siege, the Crusaders were forced to flee back to Jerusalem before they could be trapped by an oncoming Zengid relief army.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli military (IDF) struck a mosque in Gaza city on Tuesday, killing at least one person and wounding more than 12 others. Another IDF airstrike killed at least one person in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

July 28, 1821: Having entered Lima a few weeks prior and having been named “Protector of Peru” by local officials, South American revolutionary leader José de San Martín proclaims Peru’s independence from Spain. Annually commemorated as Peruvian Independence Day.

July 28, 1915: The US military occupies Haiti following a revolt that culminated in the assassination of pro-US Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. Woodrow Wilson ordered the occupation out of concern that Germany could use the uprising to establish a foothold in the Western Hemisphere (and to make sure Haiti repaid the sizable loans it had received from several US financial institutions, but we don’t like to talk about that part). The US didn’t return control of Haiti to Haitians until 1934.

INTERNATIONAL

The El Niño system that is currently developing in the south Pacific is forecast to be one of the strongest on record, and Foreign Policy’s Christina Lu reports on what that could mean:

This year’s event is still strengthening and is poised to peak in the winter. But it has already made waves because it is forecasted to be “very strong”—the highest of four levels at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The strength of an El Niño matters because it influences the probability of what will happen. Strong El Niños in particular are a big deal because they increase the odds that precipitation shifts mirror historic impacts. “A stronger El Niño increases your likelihood of having a certain outcome—it doesn’t make it a certainty,” said Andrew Hoell, a research meteorologist at the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory.

There have only been four other El Niños at this level, most recently between 2015 and 2016, according to [University of Maryland faculty member Brian] Barker. That event fueled a brutal drought in South Africa and India—which should have been seeing a rainy season—at the same time that it contributed to harrowing flooding across South America, wreaking havoc on some farmers’ livelihoods and straining other communities.

Estimates of the average economic toll of the phenomenon have ranged from tens of billions of dollars to a few trillion dollars. [Peterson Institute for International Economics fellow Cullen] Hendrix warned in a recent report for the think tank that this event could inflict a massive economic cost that disproportionately hits lower- and middle-income countries.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Reuters reports on life along the Israeli military’s (IDF) ever-advancing “yellow line” in Gaza:

On a road in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district, Palestinian resident Assem Dawla loaded mattresses and bags onto a truck as concrete yellow blocks marking the edge of Israel’s expanding military zone ​stood amid the rubble nearby.

He said it was the seventh or eighth time since the war began that he and his family had been ‌forced to leave a shelter because of Israeli evacuation orders and the advance of what residents call the yellow line.

Zeitoun is one of at least five locations across Gaza where residents and Hamas officials say Israel has expanded areas under its control in recent days by moving forward the yellow line, a military demarcation established under a U.S.-brokered ceasefire reached in October.

As men hoisted belongings onto a ​waiting truck, elderly relatives picked their way through debris. Continued Israeli military activity made it too dangerous to remain, Dawla said.

“We are taking our belongings out ​and going to leave the place because the occupation (Israel) has moved the yellow line all the way to Salah al-Din Street,” he ⁠said.

YEMEN

Oil prices are on the decline thanks to recent developments in the US-Iran conflict (see below), though there’s some mixed news on that front given the resumption of the Saudi-Ansarullah conflict. Saudi Aramco reportedly suspended operations at its oil refinery in the city of Jazan on Monday following a Houthi attack on that facility over the weekend, which on the one hand does reduce demand for crude oil but also takes about 400,000 barrels per day of refining capacity offline for an indeterminate period of time.

The renewed Yemen conflict has also disrupted traffic through the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandab Strait, at least when that traffic has anything to do with Saudi Arabia and the Houthi “blockade” of the kingdom. However, there may be some relaxation there as Reuters reported on Tuesday that the Chinese government has asked Ansarullah to allow its tankers safe passage through the waterway even if they are carrying Saudi oil. So far at least four Chinese vessels have passed through the strait despite the blockade, but those have been negotiated on a case-by-case basis and Beijing seems to be after a blanket waiver for its ships. The Houthis say they fired on a Saudi tanker in the Red Sea and forced it to change course on Tuesday, so the blockade is clearly still operative for non-Chinese ships.

SAUDI ARABIA

The Saudi military said that its air defenses intercepted another drone attack targeting oil facilities in the eastern part of the kingdom on Tuesday, the second time that’s happened in as many days. Saudi officials claim the drones originated in Iraq, which points toward Iraqi militias rather than the Houthis, but that doesn’t rule out some degree of coordination between the Iraqi and Yemeni actors.

BREAKING: The US and Saudi militaries carried out “strikes” against Iraqi militia targets on Tuesday night (eastern US time). There was no more information available beyond that at time of publication.

IRAN

DEVELOPING: After I had most of tonight’s roundup written, the US military’s Central Command reported an Iranian ballistic missile attack “on US forces based in the Middle East.” The target was apparently a US facility in Jordan. In CENTCOM’s telling US air defenses intercepted all of the missiles. Assuming this is accurate it is unclear why the Iranians would have upended the tenuous pause in fighting that’s been in place for the past few days. This story broke just about two hours before I sent out the newsletter and there’s no indication yet of a US response, unless those Iraqi strikes (see above) were the response (but that doesn’t appear to be the case). There may be much more to say tomorrow.

Prior to the above, the Omani government had reportedly presented its Iranian counterpart with a proposal for managing future traffic through the Strait of Hormuz that includes the collection of “voluntary fees” for ships that transit the waterway. It has previously been reported that the Omanis were proposing something akin to the system in place in the Strait of Malacca, where a coalition of littoral states asks shippers to pay into a fund to support maritime services including navigation assistance, environmental remediation, and search and rescue if necessary. This is not the framework that the Iranian government wants, particularly not if it’s expecting to make billions of dollars per year by managing the strait, but it may be the best it can hope to get. The Omani concept apparently has the support of the other Gulf Cooperation Council member states, whose participation Tehran has been seeking and whose influence may be enough to get the United States to go along with it.

In other items:

• As far as short-term management of the strait is concerned the Iranians have apparently rejected an Omani proposal to restore the “traffic separation scheme” under which ships could pass through one of two open transit routes—one through Iranian waters and the other through Omani waters. Tehran wants both routes to run at least partway through the Iranian side of the strait, ostensibly over “security concerns.”

• Nick Turse at The Intercept reports that the depletion of US air defense interceptor stockpiles has enabled Iranian forces to “overwhelm” those defenses with a combination of drone and missile fire. This is consistent with the NBC News story a few days ago that said US air defense units were letting some Iranian projectiles through to preserve their interceptor supplies. The US military insists that this only applies to projectiles that are deemed to be harmless (heading off target, for example), but we’re just supposed to take its word for that and recent evidence, in the form of US casualties, suggests otherwise.

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN

Two gunmen assassinated the director of information and culture in the Badakhshan provincial government on Tuesday in one of the most significant attacks on a Taliban grandee since the group retook control of Afghanistan in 2021. Police killed one of the assassins and captured the other but as yet there doesn’t seem to be any indication as to who they were or their motive. Islamic State carries out attacks in Afghanistan with some regularity but it’s unclear why it would target a provincial information and culture director, so there may be something else going on here.

PAKISTAN

The Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) activist group is alleging that Pakistani security forces have gunned down at least 30 people over the past two days amid protests in Pakistani (Azad) Kashmir. JAAC has been organizing protests for several weeks to demand changes in the allocation of seats in the regional legislature ahead of the election that began on Monday and will continue through early August. Security forces have frequently responded to those demonstrations with violence and the Pakistani government has outlawed the JAAC. State authorities have now imposed a communications lockdown featuring an internet blackout, which makes it impossible to verify the JAAC’s claims but also speaks to an attempted coverup.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

Sudan’s Emergency Lawyers activist group said on Tuesday that drone strikes have killed “dozens” of people in North Kordofan state over the past several days. That period coincides with the Sudanese military’s seizure of the main highway connecting the Khartoum region to the state capital, El-Obeid, from the Rapid Support Forces militant group. There does not seem to be any indication as to responsibility and both combatants may share it. Neither has exhibited much concern for civilian casualties in general. Inside El-Obeid the military’s gains have not yet translated into an influx of badly needed humanitarian aid. The city’s population has been swollen by displaced persons from other parts of Kordofan and has been struggling to accommodate them while under effective siege by the RSF.

LIBYA

Protesters broke into the Libyan General Electricity Company’s Mellitah Oil and Gas facility outside of Tripoli overnight, forcing a shutdown to natural gas lines supplying fuel to several power plants. This is the most serious incident in a days-long string of demonstrations that have been taking place in major western Libyan cities. They are demanding better electrical service and an end to the “hourslong” blackouts that have apparently become a regular feature of life in the region.

NIGERIA

Gunmen attacked a village in central Nigeria’s Benue state on Tuesday morning, killing at least 14 people. Benue is located in a part of Nigeria where herder-farmer violence is a fairly frequent occurrence and this appears to have been the work of Fulani herders, who have reportedly been active in the state in recent days.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

Ukrainian drone strikes killed at least three people and wounded another 19 in Russia’s Belgorod oblast on Tuesday. One of those strikes apparently hit a bus in the border town of Shebekino. The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the Ukrainian military of targeting public transit “with a maniacal persistence, taking revenge on ordinary people for growing failures at ​the front.”

UKRAINE

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha took to social media on Tuesday to warn Iran against retaliating for the Ukrainian attack that killed an Iranian sailor in the Caspian Sea over the weekend. The post came after Sybiha held a phone call with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, who told Iranian media that the Ukrainian FM had insisted that the strike was “unintentional and that Ukraine had no desire to escalate tensions.” Araghchi later posted that “Iran does not seek escalation either,” so maybe this situation will remain confined to the single incident, at least for now.

SPAIN

Al Jazeera reports on the climate-fueled wildfires that are currently raging through parts of Spain and France:

Since early July, wildfires have been burning across southern and western Europe, with France and Spain being the worst hit.

About 220,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in France, about 100,000 people in Spain, and around 30,000 others there ordered to shelter in place, according to authorities.

In Spain, a fast-moving wildfire in the Andalusia region killed at least 12 people on July 10. By July 20, the fires had spread hundreds of kilometres to the capital, Madrid. At least 10,000 people were evacuated following fires in the central Madrid region. On July 24, Spanish authorities declared a national emergency, saying two major blazes were “out of control”.

Over the weekend, a separate blaze in Spain’s eastern Castellon province ravaged more than 4,300 hectares (10,600 acres), regional authorities said.

“The fire is out of control; it’s very difficult to extinguish from a technical standpoint, especially because of the adverse weather conditions that will continue throughout the day,” the regional leader of Valencia, Juanfran Perez, told reporters near the site.

An extremely wet winter fed the growth of large amounts of vegetation that an extremely dry and hot summer has turned into a tinderbox. Both are manifestations of climate change. The fires are burning so intensely that the region is now seeing the formation of pyrocumulonimbus clouds, basically thunderclouds created by the fires themselves that can generate lighting strikes causing more fires. That makes fighting the blazes considerably more challenging. Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth and that’s undoubtedly supercharging seasonal wildfires. With more heatwaves expected the likelihood is not just that these fires will keep burning but that the crisis will spread to other countries across the continent.

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AMERICAS

PERU

Keiko Fujimori officially took office on Tuesday as Peru’s ninth president in the past decade. She narrowly won last month’s runoff, proving that the fourth time really can be the charm when it comes to presidential runs, and in terms of staying power she may benefit from the fact that her Fuerza Popular party is currently the largest bloc in the Peruvian Congress (though it does not hold a majority). Unsurprisingly, in her inaugural remarks Fujimori declared her intention to get Tough on Crime, promising to declare states of emergency across the country to enable the Peruvian military to assume responsibility for law enforcement. Given her family’s legacy, Peruvians will be lucky if that’s all she has military do.

UNITED STATES

The US Senate voted on Tuesday to confirm Jay Clayton, currently the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, as Donald Trump’s new Director of National Intelligence. He replaces Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned last month. Every Democrat voted against Clayton’s appointment but most nevertheless seem to regard him as an improvement over Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who had been serving as DNI in an interim capacity following Gabbard’s departure.

Finally, The Wall Street Journal reports on the emergence of a new boom (pun unfortunately intended) industry in the US and Europe—explosives:

At least 24 new projects are under way for propellants or explosives across NATO countries, according to information assembled by The Wall Street Journal. Three new factories are set for just Arkansas, a center of U.S. weapons production.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago exposed the West’s struggle to churn out ammunition. Although artillery-shell output has increased, producers still rely on constricted supplies of dangerous chemicals manufactured in a globe-spanning supply chain with lots of chokepoints.

Before the war in Ukraine, Washington and its allies believed they had ample stockpiles and reliable manufacturing sources. Pentagon dogma for decades centered on surgical strikes using a limited number of expensive and ultraprecise munitions packed with computer chips and digital sensors.

Now, war in “Ukraine and elsewhere is bringing back munitions that have a very different supply chain,” like artillery shells, said Will Somerindyke, the chairman of Regulus Global, a defense manufacturing and logistics company. The U.S. and Europe don’t have that supply chain, meaning they don’t have sovereignty over their own ammunition—and reversing that won’t be easy, he said.

Conflicts and tensions are now prompting countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to restart production and reshore supply chains, though slowly and with gaps.

TODAY IN HISTORY

July 27, 1794: Challenged by Maximilien Robespierre to arrest all those he deemed “traitors” to the revolution, which could have included pretty much any or all of them (he didn’t specify), members of France’s National Convention decide it would just be easier to arrest Robespierre instead. In what is now known as the “Thermidorian Reaction” since it took place in the month of Thermidor on the revolutionary calendar, Robespierre and dozens of his associates were rounded up by a faction within the National Convention calling itself, appropriately, the Thermidorians. A group of 22, including Robespierre, were executed the following day. The Thermidorians established a new constitution the following year that dissolved the Convention and created a five-member Directory as the main organ of the French Revolutionary government.

July 27, 1953: The Korean Armistice Agreement, signed by the United Nations Command, the North Korean People’s Army, and the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army at Panmunjom, halts fighting in the Korean War. The agreement set terms for a ceasefire, a prisoner exchange, and the fixing of what was supposed to be a temporary border and demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, with subsequent peace talks meant to finalize the details surrounding the end of the war. So, about that—those subsequent talks, at the 1954 Geneva Conference, failed, and the temporary armistice has remained the last word on the Korean War since its signing.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Al Jazeera reports that Israeli soldiers and settlers are continuing to rampage through the West Bank:

Israeli soldiers have intensified their offensive in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, raiding at least 20 towns and villages as well as a United Nations facility, demolishing homes and arresting dozens of Palestinians, as Arab states condemned escalating settler attacks against Palestinians and their property.

Soldiers fired tear gas and detained staff at a vocational training centre run by the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) in the Qalandia refugee camp, north of occupied East Jerusalem, on Monday, the Jerusalem Governorate said in a statement.

After storming the centre, soldiers held teaching and administrative staff in one of its halls, and climbed onto the roof of the camp’s local committee building.

The Israeli army had swept into Qalandia overnight, deploying across several neighbourhoods and firing tear gas and stun grenades, which sparked a fire, the governorate said.

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SAVE THE DATE: If you’re able, please catch my new, (hopefully) monthly livestream series with Elizabeth Urban starting Tuesday at 8 PM eastern here at Substack!

TODAY IN HISTORY

July 25, 1139: An army under the future Afonso I, then Count Afonso of Portugal, defeats the Almoravids at the Battle of Ourique. Details of this battle are sketchy, but it was apparently such a glorious victory that in its aftermath Afonso declared Portugal’s independence from the Kingdom of León and thereby gave himself a promotion from count to king. Later legends had Afonso being visited on the eve of the battle by, variously, Saint James the Greater (whose tomb is held to lie in Santiago de Compostela), Saint George, or even Jesus Himself, guaranteeing victory.

July 25, 1799: In the finale to his big, failed eastern campaign, Napoleon once again defeats an Ottoman-Mamluk army at the Battle of Abukir. The French expedition had stalled out at Acre and political upheaval back in France was demanding his attention. Abukir offered him a chance to declare victory and then slip out of Egypt and head home, while the French occupation of Egypt continued through August 1801 when a British intervention brought it to an end.

July 26, 657 (give or take): The climactic confrontation of the Islamic world’s first civil war (“fitna”), the Battle of Siffin, takes place in what is today eastern Syria. The battle pitted the forces of Caliph Ali against those loyal to Syrian governor Muʿawiyah. Ali’s outnumbered forces won the battle tactically, but to avoid further loss of life he agreed to resolve his dispute with Muʿawiyah via arbitration, only to have the arbitrators rule against him in 659. He ignored that ruling but was then assassinated in 661 by a group that became known as the Kharijites (“leavers”), former supporters who broke with him over the decision to seek arbitration in the first place. Muʿawiyah became caliph, inaugurating the Umayyad dynasty.

July 26, 1847: A constitutional convention in the Commonwealth of Liberia adopts a declaration of independence and constitution establishing the Republic of Liberia as a sovereign nation. Annually commemorated as Liberian Independence Day.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Lebanese army issued a statement on Sunday complaining that the Israeli military (IDF) is “obstructing” its efforts to deploy into villages that have supposedly been cleared under the “pilot” withdrawal program. Apparently the IDF is still conducting airstrikes and “clearance” operations (a euphemism for demolishing an area to render it uninhabitable) near enough to those villages so as to prevent Lebanese forces from entering them.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

IDF airstrikes killed at least three Hamas personnel on Sunday, including the heads of the group’s internal security/police forces in central and northern Gaza. Coincidentally or not, the Israeli “security cabinet” voted on Sunday to approve an initial deployment of the “International Stabilization Force” that is supposed to secure Gaza (the parts that are not under direct IDF control) under Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” scheme. This first deployment will be limited to a small territory in southern Gaza’s Rafah region. That puts it in an area that’s inside the IDF’s security perimeter, so this isn’t much of a test for how the ISF would work under the conditions in which it is ostensibly supposed to operate.

It’s still not clear when that force, planned to number 200 personnel, will deploy, nor is it entirely clear whence the personnel will be coming, though a handful of countries have expressed a general willingness to participate. IDF airstrikes killed at least four people and wounded another 15 in Gaza on Saturday, while the security crackdown that Israeli forces undertook in the West Bank following another settler rampage on Friday has swept up at least 70 Palestinians.

YEMEN

The Ansarullah/Houthi movement expanded its conflict with Saudi Arabia beyond its naval blockade on Saturday, carrying out drone and missile attacks against Saudi oil facilities in the cities of Jazan and Yanbu. That came after the Saudis attacked the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah and other coastal/Red Sea targets on Friday. The Saudis in turn carried out retaliatory airstrikes in northern Yemen later on Saturday. I have not seen any word as to casualties.

IRAN

A very funny thing happened on Friday, as the US military seemed to be on schedule to begin its 14th straight night of attacks on Iran: nothing. As in no US attacks, no Iranian response, if not quite “peace” then at least more or less “quiet.” Then the same thing happened the next night and it would appear as I write this that it’s going to be three nights in a row with no US-Iranian clash.

Iranian officials have said that they’ll stop fighting as long as the US does. As to why the US has stopped fighting, that’s an open question. It seems pretty clear that the halt was not long in the planning, as Haaretz reported that it caught the Israeli government off guard as it was preparing to re-enter the war as part of a US escalation. Donald Trump talked vaguely about progress in negotiations on Friday and the administration’s official story is that it’s giving the diplomatic process a chance.

But that may not be the real story. The New York Times reported that Trump held a meeting with “top advisers and senior members of his cabinet” on Friday to discuss the war, and they apparently aired a number of concerns about escalation. These included fears about the US military’s “already diminished” supply of Patriot air defense interceptors—NBC News reported on Friday that US forces are having to pick and choose which Iranian projectiles to intercept so as to preserve the interceptors they still have—as well as concerns “about the prospect of a widening war in the Middle East, the alienation of key Gulf allies who are vulnerable to Iranian attack, a global economic crunch, and growing energy and refugee crises.” On the subject of that “economic crunch,” maybe Trump got a peek at $100+/barrel oil prices on Thursday and Friday morning and that factored into his thinking.

Whatever the rationale, with escalation apparently taken off the table for the time being, Axios is reporting that US Central Command boss Brad Cooper advised halting the air campaign altogether “because it has reached the limit of its effectiveness.” And here we are.

ASIA

INDIA

Indian Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on Saturday in response to the “Cockroach Janta Party” protest movement’s demands. The Indian government also reportedly agreed to several other CJP requests, which combined with Pradhan’s resignation was enough to convince CJP leaders to end the group’s recent protests in New Delhi. The CJP has been demanding that the Indian government reform the country’s national exam system, drop criminal charges against protesters who had already been arrested, and compensate the families of students who took their own lives following the snafu that forced the retesting of some 2 million prospective medical students last month.

CHINA

The Diplomat’s Jan Švec outlines the Chinese government’s growing interest in “planetary defense”:

Within the past several weeks, China has announced a series of initiatives related to planetary defense. At the end of June, it unveiled plans to establish an asteroid early-warning network for planetary defense. A few days ago, China also released further details about its asteroid deflection mission, which has been under development for several years. The mission is currently scheduled for 2027, although the launch date may still change. The mission is expected to involve sending a spacecraft to impact an asteroid in an attempt to alter its trajectory and, potentially, disrupt its structure.

These steps are part of broader long-term plans. In 2018, China joined the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) and the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG), both of which operate under the auspices of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. The 2021 Space White Paper elevated planetary defense to one of China’s policy priorities for the coming years, outlining plans to develop a near-Earth object defense system by improving its monitoring, cataloguing, early warning, response, and disposal capabilities.

In 2022, China established the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL), which is responsible, among other tasks, for conducting research on planetary defense. DSEL is led by Wu Weiren, one of China’s leading space engineers and the chief designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. In February 2025, Chinese media reported that the government had opened three new positions for planetary defense experts. The following month, DSEL organized a conference on near-Earth asteroid defense, attended by more than 50 Chinese experts.

This seems to be an outgrowth of the Chinese government’s overall interest in building out its space program. But staking out a position of international leadership on this issue in particular is a fairly easy way for Beijing to present itself as a responsible Great Power—and maybe to justify investing in technologies that also have obvious military application.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The Sudanese military (SAF) declared on Sunday that it has once again secured total control of the main highway connecting the Khartoum region to Sudan’s North Kordofan state. This came after a military offensive pushing west from the city of Omdurman seized the towns of Barah, Jabrat Al-Sheikh, and Umm Sayala on Saturday and continued their advance through the following day, turning aside a counterattack by the Rapid Support Forces militant group in the process. Military forces in the sometimes-besieged city of El-Obeid were able to link up with the forces from Omdurman and secure the entire road.

The Sudan Tribune is reporting that Sudanese military commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has now ordered “a sweeping offensive to clear the entire country up to the border with the Central African Republic” to capitalize on the SAF’s momentum. I suspect that’s going to be easier said than done.

MAURITANIA

Responsible Statecraft’s Jordanna Yochai warns that instability in Mali is spilling over into neighboring Mauritania, causing refugee displacement across the border and leading to violent encounters between Mauritanians and Malian security forces:

Malian forces, alongside the Kremlin-backed Africa Corps, stand accused of killing scores of Mauritanian herders since the seasonal migration began in January. Local officials in Mauritania’s Guidimakha region report at least a dozen disappearances since then, leaving relatives uncertain of their fate. Despite government warnings, herders continue to cross into Mali, a necessity in a country where livestock accounts for roughly 10% of GDP.

This is an inversion of expected dynamics: herders can transit through terrorist-controlled areas but experience violence in areas under Bamako’s “control.” With terrorists, they are able to negotiate in-kind payments in exchange for safe passage through a region or access to pasture land therein. It is primarily in state-controlled areas where herders are targeted and, by some accounts, killed.

Malian operations have also reportedly crossed into Mauritanian territory, targeting border villages like Melga and Gogui. In border regions, locals now argue that Malian and Africa Corps operations are the primary source of instability. “When [terrorists] cross the border, they leave their arms behind… When the Malian military came, they were armed to the teeth. I pray that they do not come again,” said the mayor of a town that experienced such an incursion.

Security sources can recount at least six incidents in which Malian patrols crossed into Mauritanian villages this year, and the state’s response has left some citizens frustrated. Mauritania’s denials that the incursions occurred within its territory prompted a member of parliament to rhetorically question whether his district was considered part of Mali. Residents of affected villages insist they are Mauritanian, with Mauritanian schools and government offices.

During an audience with President Mohamed Ould El Ghazouani earlier this year, Mauritanians living along the border urged the state to attack Mali or at least secure grazing rights. But there are no easy solutions to this problem. Escalation risks conflict, while restraint could result in more cross-border incursions. According to a member of parliament, Ghazouani said during a private meeting with the opposition in April that tensions with Mali were his greatest concern.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

Russian attacks killed at least six people across Ukraine on Sunday, while a Ukrainian drone strike killed at least four people in the Russian-occupied portion of Donetsk oblast. The previous day Ukrainian strikes killed at least 12 people in “holiday camps” in the Russian-occupied portion of Zaporizhzhia oblast, while a Russian drone strike killed at least three people in Sumy oblast. Reuters reported on Friday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will visit the White House on Tuesday and that he and Donald Trump will discuss the idea of proposing an “air ceasefire” to Moscow. It’s possible that recent Ukrainian strikes inside Russia will convince Vladimir Putin to accept such a proposal, but it seems like a long shot.

Despite the relative lull in hostilities (see above), the Iran war may nonetheless have expanded over the weekend, after the Ukrainian military apparently attacked an Iranian commercial ship in the Caspian Sea and killed at least one person. Zelensky didn’t directly address the incident but did note via social media that Kyiv is aware of the Russian military passing targeting information to Iran. With Ukraine expanding its long-range targets to include Russian support infrastructure an attack on Caspian shipping may have been inevitable, especially inasmuch as Iran has been providing weapons and other support to Russia. Zelensky may also see an opening to build up some goodwill with Trump by being a loyal US proxy, though there seems to be some irony in his decision to jump into the Iran conflict just as Trump was pausing it. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi promised retaliation but Iran’s options in that regard may be limited.

ROMANIA

The Romanian Foreign Ministry summoned Russia’s ambassador in Bucharest on Sunday after the country’s military reported shooting down three Russian drones that had entered Romanian airspace in as many days. Authorities are still investigating the incidents but Friday’s drone was apparently a Shahed, an Iranian model that the Russian military has been using heavily in Ukraine.

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AMERICAS

BRAZIL

The Brazilian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that it had denied visa applications by two US officials, Assistant Secretary of State Riley Barnes and ⁠Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Samuel Samson, due to suspicion of election interference. According to the US State Department both had been scheduled to travel to Brazil “to hold meetings about election integrity, religious freedom, and freedom of expression.” Brazilian officials suspect, probably with good reason, that they were going to lay the groundwork for Trump ally and presidential challenger Flávio Bolsonaro to claim fraud should he lose the election in October.

Bolsonaro has already started alleging that Brazil’s electronic voting machines are insecure, something his father and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro did right before the 2022 election (which he lost) and something that Donald Trump does in the US on a fairly frequent basis. Polling puts Bolsonaro behind incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, though the race appears to be fairly close.

UNITED STATES

Finally, The Conversation’s Jason Blazakis discusses the Trump administration’s efforts to manufacture a terrorist threat out of “Antifa”:

The construction project began on Sept. 22, 2025, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order purporting to designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. The order describes antifa as “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government.” It directs every relevant agency to investigate and dismantle its operations.

Two problems are immediately apparent. First, no legal authority exists to designate domestic organizations as terrorist groups. It’s a gap that Congress has deliberately preserved for First Amendment reasons.

Second, the order designates as an organization something the FBI’s past leadership has described as an ideology. Trump’s executive order asserts an antifa enterprise into existence and then declares war on it.

Three days after the executive order, the White House implemented the order through National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which converts the fiction into machinery. The memorandum directs the Treasury Department to identify and disrupt financial networks that fund what it deems domestic terrorism. The memorandum instructs banks to file suspicious activity reports with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the U.S. government’s financial intelligence unit.

That means the government’s financial surveillance apparatus, built to trace al-Qaida’s money in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is being pointed at Americans that the administration considers left-wing.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

July 24, 1261: With much of the city’s garrison apparently out on a raid, a small group of soldiers from the Nicene Empire enters and seizes control of Constantinople in a nighttime incursion. Latin Emperor Baldwin II and most of the city’s grandees were evacuated by Venetian ships. The Nicene capture of Constantinople ended a 57 year war to reestablish the Byzantine Empire following its elimination during the Fourth Crusade. The restored empire was ruled by the Palaiologos Dynasty, starting with Emperor Michael VIII, through its final collapse in 1453.

July 24, 1923: The Treaty of Lausanne formally ends the Turkish War of Independence and establishes the borders of the Republic of Turkey. The treaty superseded the World War I Treaty of Sèvres, which partitioned Anatolia and was so punitive that it motivated the remnants of the Ottoman/Turkish military to resist.

INTERNATIONAL

• International Criminal Court member states voted to sack chief ICC prosecutor Karim Khan on Friday. Khan had been accused of sexual harassment. He and his have argued that he’s been the target of a manufactured pressure campaign because of his investigations into Israeli atrocities and US war crimes in Afghanistan. It is unlikely that the ICC will replace him before next year, which among other considerations further ices those investigations.

• A new study published this week in the journal Environmental Science and Technology contends that the carbon output of metals mining may be ten times higher (or more) than commonly thought. The study considered, apparently for the first time, the emissions effects of acid mine drainage, which can cause the release of carbon dioxide from certain types of rock. As metals mining is critical to a “green” transition its carbon impact is of particular concern.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli military (IDF) is in the process of launching a major crackdown in the West Bank after a settler attack on a town near the city of Nablus resulted in the deaths of four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers. The IDF is claiming that its forces responded to “an attack on Israelis hiking in the area” but those “hikers” must have been packing some firepower because they appear to have been the ones who started the shooting. At some point after the IDF showed up, a Palestinian resident reportedly seized a weapon from one of the Israelis and killed the two soldiers. In Israeli parlance this constitutes an act of “terrorism” requiring a “counterterrorism” operation in response.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

July 22, 1456: An Ottoman siege of the then-Hungarian city of Belgrade (Nándorfehérvár in Hungarian) ends in failure thanks to the city’s strong fortifications and the timely arrival of a relief army under Transylvanian warlord John Hunyadi. The defeat stymied Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II’s (“the Conqueror”) plans to advance west after his conquest of Constantinople and spared Hungary from Ottoman conquest—for a while, at least.

July 22, 1946: Members of the Irgun, a Zionist terrorist group that was one of the predecessors of the modern Likud party, bomb the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and kill 91 people in the process. Their target was the headquarters of the British mandatory authority and the attack was meant as a response to the British arrest of hundreds of Zionist militants in Operation Agatha in late June. Most Zionist leaders condemned Irgun, which in turn blamed British authorities for not evacuating the hotel despite telephoned warnings about the bomb.

July 23, 1319: A Knights Hospitaller-led fleet defeats and virtually annihilates a smaller fleet from the Anatolian Beylik of Aydin in a battle just off the coast of the Aegean island of Chios. The Aydinids controlled the port city of Smyrna (modern Izmir) and established a robust piracy operation in the eastern Mediterranean in the late 13th century. Their defeat at Chios was little more than an inconvenience for that operation, which thrived until a pair of Christian expeditions called the “Smyrniote crusades” took part of Smyrna from them in 1351. But the Hospitaller victory did serve as a model for later (and much larger) naval campaigns against the Ottomans.

July 23, 1952: Egypt’s 23 July Revolution sees the toppling of King Farouk in favor of a military junta led by the “Free Officers Movement.” One of the most consequential acts in 20th century Middle Eastern history, the coup ultimately brought Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser to power. Suffice to say he turned out to be pretty important.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least two Palestinians in Gaza on Thursday after issuing evacuation orders for multiple parts of the territory. Al Jazeera reporter Ibrahim al-Khalili said that some of the IDF strikes targeted “the very areas where people have been told to flee.”

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification organization warned on Wednesday that over two-thirds of the population of Gaza may be facing “acute hunger” by the end of the year. The main concern in this case is aid cuts due to budget shortfalls. The IPC had been painting a slightly more optimistic picture of conditions in Gaza, though the improvements have been limited to be sure under continued Israeli restrictions, and recent months have seen aid organizations cutting back for lack of resources. The organization also cited “uncertainty over aid groups' access” to Gaza as a complicating factor.

Meanwhile, the IDF is reportedly building an earthwork barrier in Gaza inside its “yellow line” security perimeter. On its side of the line the IDF is reportedly building new bases, roads and other infrastructure on the rubble of destroyed Palestinian residential areas. Both of these strongly suggest that it is not planning to withdraw from its current position within Gaza should the “ceasefire” advance to that point.

YEMEN

Ansarullah attacked two oil tankers in the Red Sea on Wednesday, accusing both of violating the group’s “naval blockade” of Saudi Arabia. Both ships reportedly caught fire but I have not seen any reports of casualties. These are the first Ansarullah/Houthi attacks on commercial ships since they announced the blockade on Monday. Donald Trump declared via social media on Thursday that he “will hold Iran responsible” for future attacks. He added that he was “disappointed with” the Houthis.

Elsewhere, the Houthis reportedly attacked Yemeni military forces in southwestern Yemen’s Dhale province overnight, sparking a battle that left at least four Yemeni soldiers and 23 Houthi fighters dead. There have been reports of additional clashes between Houthi and government forces this week in Yemen’s Jawf, Taiz, and Marib provinces but this Dhale incident seems to have been much larger than those others. And according to Reuters, the Iranian flight that the Saudis and the Yemeni government attacked before it could land at Sanaa airport last week—which led to the Houthi naval blockade—was carrying “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, military advisers and missile- and drone-related equipment.” That would explain why the Saudis attacked it, though it seems like that decision has backfired on them.

SAUDI ARABIA

News broke late Tuesday that the US and Saudi Arabia had reached agreement on a civilian nuclear deal that will see US firms supporting the development of Saudi nuclear power and, potentially, a Saudi uranium enrichment program. The official announcement of that agreement came on Wednesday and as I write this on Thursday the whole thing may be about to collapse after an intervention from Donald Trump.

There are major, legitimate concerns about the proliferation risk inherent to a Saudi enrichment program, nowhere more so than in Israel, which appreciates being the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East and opposes anything that might threaten that status. It favored a deal structured like the “123 Agreement” that the US reached with the UAE in 2009, which supports an Emirati nuclear program without an enrichment component. That agreement has long been regarded as the “gold standard” for such deals. Israeli officials worry that green lighting a Saudi enrichment program both risks the Saudis developing nuclear weapons and might prompt other countries (Egypt and Turkey being perhaps the likeliest) to pursue their own enrichment programs.

Another consideration from the Israeli perspective is that past US presidential administrations, including this one until a few days ago, had held out the prospect of nuclear cooperation as an inducement to convince the Saudis to normalize relations with Israel. There was nothing in either Tuesday’s reporting or Wednesday’s announcement to suggest that normalization was part of the discussion. Enter Trump, who insisted via social media on Thursday that the nuclear deal “is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.” That post was quite possibly the first time the Saudis had heard that condition.

The White House is now claiming that the Saudis already knew that the deal was contingent on normalization, but if that were true it would have been the first thing the administration announced. It certainly wouldn’t have waited for Trump to make a hasty after the fact post about normalization in response to criticism. Will the Saudis actually normalize relations with Israel? It’s not impossible, but I wouldn’t say it’s likely. Will the administration insist on normalization? That remains to be seen.

IRAN

Last night marked 12 straight nights of US strikes on Iran and Iranian retaliation against targets across the Middle East, with no sign of any let up on the horizon. Indeed, Donald Trump told Axios on Thursday that he is “considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it.” The previous day he took to social media to warn that “any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whether it be by Missile, Rocket, Drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT, including those located next to, or in, the Capital City of Tehran.”

Trump lies a lot, as we know, and he may be trying to bluff the Iranians with all of his recent talk about escalation, but what else can he do at this point? As Laura Rozen points out, there’s nothing happening diplomatically so Trump’s only options seem to be staying the course or escalating. Neither is likely to achieve anything but Trump’s temperament probably inclines him toward escalation.

Elsewhere:

• The New York Times reported on Thursday evening that Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi had “carried” a new US ceasefire proposal to Iran that he received during his visit to the White House earlier this month. Iranian officials rejected the offer, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi dismissing it over “America’s outlook, which is illogical, greedy and controlling.”

• Between the resumption of the war and the recent Houthi activity in the Red Sea, global oil prices are once again flirting with the $100/barrel mark. During the first phase of the war oil prices seemed to have at least a moderating effect on Trump’s approach, but that may no longer be the case.

• Reuters reported on Wednesday that Iranian forces have been so effective at targeting US Central Intelligence Agency facilities in the region that analysts are speculating that they’ve gotten targeting and/or technical assistance from Russia. Iranian strikes have hit at least two CIA posts, the agency’s Saudi Arabia station in Riyadh and another somewhere in eastern Iraq, and possibly more than that. The question of Russian support seems less significant than the fact that these facilities have been hit, but I guess it’s easier for the agency to rationalize those attacks if they’re attributed to Russia rather than Iran.

• A New York Times “visual analysis” of sites that have been attacked by Iran recently “show that the country maintains an ability to inflict damage on precise targets, despite the Trump administration’s repeated claims that Iran’s military capabilities have been diminished or destroyed.” Western satellite imagery firms are still complying with the Pentagon’s demand that they not release images of damaged US facilities but the Iranians release their own images and those can be corroborated with other data to show the extent of the damage.

• Another satellite analysis from The Wall Street Journal indicates that the Iranian government “has quickly rebuilt infrastructure” that’s been damaged in US/Israeli airstrikes since the start of the war. More quickly, apparently, than “Israeli officials” were anticipating. Suffice to say that Iran’s overall resilience certainly appears to have caught both the Israelis and the Trump administration off guard.

ASIA

PAKISTAN

Militants killed a district judge and a member of his security detail in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on Thursday. There’s been no claim of responsibility but the attack took place in Mastung district, which is apparently something of a hotbed of Baluch separatist activity.

THAILAND

An attack on a security checkpoint in southern Thailand’s Narathiwat province on Wednesday evening left at least five soldiers dead and six civilians wounded. There’s been no claim of responsibility but this incident came one day after somebody detonated a car bomb outside a police station in the same province (wounding one police officer), so the checkpoint attack may be part of a bigger operation. Ethnic Malay separatists have been engaged in a mostly low-level insurgency in southern Thailand since 2004.

CHINA

Donald Trump announced on Thursday that Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit the US on September 24. Xi will be reciprocating Trump’s visit to China back in May. Trump suggested that artificial intelligence will be a major topic for their summit.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

An apparent military drone strike killed and wounded “dozens of people” in southeastern Sudan’s Blue Nile state on Thursday, according to the Emergency Lawyers activist group. The strike hit a group of displaced persons in the Badia region in the southern part of the state.

MALI

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that White House “counterterrorism” adviser Sebastian Gorka has been pitching Donald Trump on going to war in Mali against the al-Qaeda affiliated Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM)jihadist group. If you asked Sebastian Gorka to make a list of the countries he would like the US to bomb and another list of the countries he would prefer the US not bomb the former would almost certainly be much longer than the latter, but his predilections aside JNIM and its allies in the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) have been posing an increasing threat to Mali’s ruling junta and the Trump administration would like to strengthen US relationships with all three of the Sahelian juntas for multiple reasons. So there’s some logic to this. The catch is that the US would be aiming to do for Mali what it’s been doing for Nigeria, which is killing people—civilians mostly—with no discernible effect on any actual counterterrorism mission.

NIGERIA

Attackers that Reuters is describing as “armed bandits” attacked a number of villages in northwestern Nigeria’s Zamfara state on Tuesday, killing at least 24 people and rustling cattle along the way. The casualty count is likely to rise as authorities continue recovery work.

ETHIOPIA

According to The New Arab’s Saleh Salem, Sudan has been experiencing declining water levels on the Nile River and that has the Egyptian government bracing for downstream effects. The cause, apparently, is a significant reduction in the amount of water being released by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile tributary. There’s been no comment from the Ethiopian government but this could obviously escalate very quickly if Egypt sees a severe drop in its water supply.

As we’ve noted previously the GERD is one of several grievances driving the emergency of a regional network that the Egyptian government has been building to counter Ethiopian ambitions. That network has incorporated Sudan’s military government as well as Eritrea and Somalia, two countries whose main concern involves Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s desire for a Red Sea port. Increasingly the United States also seems to be involved, though the extent to which it is participating is unclear and its main interest seems to be stability in the Horn of Africa. The Red Sea is already in a degree of turmoil because of the situation in Yemen and the Iran war (see above), so more turmoil on the African side would be unwelcome to say the least.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

The DRC’s Ebola outbreak topped 1000 deaths on Wednesday (1031 to be specific), according to Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Jean Kaseya. It is now the “fastest Ebola outbreak in history” and it is still unclear whether/when effective vaccine against or treatment for the relevant species of ebolavirus (Bundibugyo) will be forthcoming. Health officials continue to struggle with containment efforts, owing to a combination of regional violence, geographic remoteness, and the distrust of local communities. All of those challenges are compounded by the fact that the outbreak was identified late (largely because of the rarity of the strain) and so containment efforts began late.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

The Financial Times reported on Thursday that the cumulative effect of Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries is forcing Moscow to import fuel from India. A shipment of some 42,000 metric tons of gasoline is expected to arrive in Russia on Sunday, according to maritime tracking information. Russia is also apparently importing refined fuel from Belarus, which like India is a major customer for Russian crude. Damage from those Ukrainian strikes has reduced domestic refining capacity to such an extent that there are now fuel shortages across much of Russia and the government announced plans to import fuel last month.

The European Union reached internal agreement on a 21st major round of Russia sanctions on Thursday. The package blacklists 218 entities and individuals, including dozens of Russian banks and cryptocurrency outfits. The Greek government had been holding out but came on board in exchange for a one-year (renewable) exemption “allowing EU companies to transfer Russian liquefied natural gas to third countries.”

UKRAINE

Russian and Ukrainian attacks killed at least 8 people on Thursday. Ukrainian strikes killed two people in Crimea and two more, including a three year old child, in Russia, while Russian strikes killed four in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy oblasts. On the front line, the Russian military claimed the capture of the village of Bilytske in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast, which would probably be more impactful had they not also captured it in December. Either the Russians were fibbing back then or this is regaining territory that they had subsequently lost.

ALBANIA

Protesters in Tirana demonstrating against Jared Kushner’s plan to destroy a protected Albanian ecosystem in order to build a resort met with a heavier-than-usual police response on Thursday, as Reuters reports:

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AMERICAS

ECUADOR

At Drop Site, Camila Lourdes Galarza reports on a recent murder that may have had political, or geopolitical, connections:

Alexandra Bravo, the prosecutor assigned to investigate U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats and the 36 survivors’ subsequent accounts of torture and kidnapping, was shot dead in the coastal city of Manta last month. According to police, on June 14 a hitman aboard a black motorcycle opened fire on Bravo as she and her sister were leaving a café at about 11 a.m. Bravo’s sister, who jumped to protect her, was also killed in the attack.

Upon arriving at the crime scene, officers say they found five 9mm shell casings and Bravo’s injured driver, but no sign of the police detail that had been assigned to protect her. The Police Directorate, which operates entirely under the executive branch, has launched a probe to determine if there’d been an internal security breach.

Bravo is the 26th member of Ecuador’s justice system to be assassinated since 2020 and the second individual investigating state crimes murdered that week. Besides her usual caseload of homicide and organized crime, Bravo had been working the Fiorella, Negra Francisca, and Don Maca cases—a series of drone attacks on civilian fishing ships exposed by Drop Site in April. Two of the boat’s crews returned home and reported being abducted, blindfolded, and starved for eight days by American gunmen in U.S. military uniforms aboard a U.S.-flagged patrol ship, before being abandoned in El Salvador. The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances endorsed the calls for an investigation, demanding that the U.S. provide information on the whereabouts of the eight still-missing men and any involvement in the matter by April 27. To date, the United States has not responded.

Under Ecuador’s right-wing president Daniel Noboa—a Miami-born billionaire often characterized as a “U.S.-backed dictator”—the country has become a central testing ground for Operation Southern Spear, Washington’s extrajudicial bombing campaign purporting to target “narco-terrorists,” which has killed 221 people to date. There is no evidence that many of the victims, including those in Bravo’s investigation, had engaged in drug trafficking.

UNITED STATES

The Trump administration rolled out its new tariff package on Thursday, targeting 60 countries with levies between 10 and 12.5 percent on the claim that they have failed to enforce bans on exports manufactured by forced labor. These measures fall under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and are expected to be more legally robust than the tariffs that Trump imposed last year that the US Supreme Court struck down in February. The administration is likely to impose additional Section 301 tariffs but is still “investigating” those claims.

Finally, and on a related note, World Politics Review’s Judah Grunstein considers America’s apparently diminishing international prestige:

A closer look at the country-by-country results suggests that a good deal of the popular backlash to the U.S. stems from Trump’s tariffs, particularly in South and Southeast Asia. Seven of the nine countries where America’s favorability rating lagged that of China by 20 percent or more were hit hard by Trump’s trade war, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Elsewhere, like Mexico and Canada, a combination of tariffs and sovereignty concerns due to Trump’s provocations and threats were likely factors.

The low favorability for the U.S. among its NATO allies suggests a reaction to Trump’s disregard for the alliance. That his confidence rating is near or below 20 percent in Italy, Greece and Turkey—where it is at just 6 percent—makes it clear that Trump’s close ideological alignment with foreign leaders does not necessarily endear him to their populations.

There is also something to be learned, however, from the countries where favorability of the U.S. not only outpaces that of China but remains solid and even high: Poland, the Philippines, South Korea, India, Japan and Israel. All face significant security threats on their land or maritime borders, and all except India* depend heavily on the U.S. for security guarantees, even as all except Poland were hard hit by Trump’s tariffs. This suggests that Trump could be turning the “Two Asias” phenomenon—developed by Evan Feigenbaum and Robert Manning back in 2012 to describe the region’s preference for security ties with the U.S. and economic ties with China—into a global dynamic.

We also shouldn’t ignore the five countries where respondents’ views of the U.S. and China were roughly equal and generally favorable for both: Brazil, Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana. All have historically maintained relatively close political ties with the U.S., particularly Colombia and Kenya, but all have also benefited significantly from Chinese trade and investment.

One might expect popular opinions of the U.S. in these countries to be more negative, given America’s spotty historical record in South America and its general neglect of Africa. Instead, these countries’ populations clearly still consider America to have something valuable to offer. But their equal esteem for China suggests they do not wish to choose between the two global powers in what Washington has increasingly framed as a zero-sum strategic competition.

Though most of the shift appears to be Trump-related, Grunstein does note that US global support did begin to decline during the last two years of the Biden administration, likely related (at least in part) to its decision to enable Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

July 21, 1774: The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca ends the the Russo-Ottoman War of 1768-1774 on decidedly Russian terms. Although the Russians did agree to return territory they’d occupied in Moldavia and Wallachia, the Ottomans gave them control of the city of Azov and thereby satisfied a long-standing Russian desire for a Black Sea port. The Ottomans also agreed to recognize the “independence” of the Crimean Khanate, which in practice meant that it and the Crimean peninsula quickly came under Russian domination. But most significantly they agreed to allow Russia to build and “protect” an Orthodox church in Constantinople, a stipulation the Russians stretched to grant themselves a protectorate over all of the Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire. That assertion, as well as concerns among the other European powers about the growth of Russia, eventually contributed to the Crimean War.

July 21, 1798: Napoleon’s expedition defeats the Egyptian Mamluks at the fancifully named “Battle of the Pyramids.” Unable to invade Britain, Napoleon determined that the best course of action for the French revolutionary government would be to conquer itself a major colony in the eastern Mediterranean that might, over time, threaten Britain’s hold over India. Napoleon also had dreams of conquering his own world empire in the image of Alexander. Egypt was nominally part of the Ottoman Empire but really ruled by the Mamluks and Napoleon believed it was ripe for invasion. His army overwhelmed the Mamluks at Imbaba, which was really too far away from the pyramids to name this the “Battle of the Pyramids” but I digress. Napoleon’s position in Egypt remained unassailable for about a week and a half before the British fleet destroyed his at the similarly misnamed “Battle of the Nile.”

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Lebanese army entered the village of Zawtar al-Gharbiyah on Tuesday to kick off the first phase of the “pilot program” under which the Israeli military (IDF) is supposed to gradually withdraw from southern Lebanon. According to The New Arab, “residents and local officials” are questioning whether the IDF was ever occupying the village in the first place, adding to speculation that its initial “withdrawals” from this and two other locations don’t involve any actual withdrawing. Lebanese units did apparently get close enough to nearby Israeli forces as they were entering the village that the latter fired “warning shots” to scare them off, so that does indicate that the IDF is at least in the area.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun was at the White House on Tuesday, discussing Hezbollah’s disarmament and the IDF’s theoretical departure from Lebanon with Donald Trump. The only substantive outcome I’ve seen is that Trump announced that he’s authorizing US airlines to fly direct to Lebanon. The US government banned Lebanon’s flag carrier, Middle East Airlines, back in 1985 and since then travelers have had to make at least one stopover to fly between the two countries.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least 12 people in Gaza on Tuesday, including six members of a single family in one overnight strike in Gaza city. According to the United Nations Human Rights Office, Israeli attacks killed at least 57 Palestinians in Gaza between July 13 and July 20. Many of those strikes have targeted residential districts or displacement camps and more than half (34) of the deaths have occurred in locations nowhere near the IDF’s “yellow line” security perimeter.

YEMEN

The Ansarullah/Houthi “naval blockade” of Saudi Arabia appears to be having immediate effect, as two tankers carrying Saudi oil in the Red Sea turned around on Tuesday after the group threatened to attack them. The vessels had been heading for the Bab el-Mandab strait near Yemen but now appear to be sailing north toward the Suez Canal. As both of them were bound for Asian ports the detour will significantly complicate their itineraries. The Houthis have also reportedly sent an email to shipping companies around the world advising them that “vessels are banned from loading or ​discharging cargo at or from any Saudi ports” and recommending “that [they] exercise due diligence and the utmost care in all [their] dealings.”

SAUDI ARABIA

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday night that the Trump administration has reached agreement with the Saudi government on a nuclear deal that could wind up giving the kingdom its own uranium enrichment program:

The new deal, which would last 30 years, is estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars. It is designed to give American companies a central role in developing Saudi Arabia’s nuclear infrastructure while shutting out other foreign competitors.

A key provision of the new accord would have American companies build a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia if a joint U.S.-Saudi study determines such a step would be warranted.

That stipulation would give the U.S. influence over the Saudi nuclear program and, Trump administration officials argue, a way to prevent it from being misused for military purposes.

Yet the deal, which is expected to be submitted to Congress for review in the coming days, is certain to prove controversial among many lawmakers who oppose the spread of nuclear technology in the volatile Middle East.

Legislative opposition is irrelevant since Congress will have to actively vote to block the deal and even if it does Trump will be able to veto the block. But concerns about the Saudis weaponizing an enrichment program are just as valid as similar concerns about Iran’s enrichment program. The administration’s assurances that there’s no reason to be concerned don’t exactly carry a lot of weight given that a) this administration is generally incompetent and b) the Trump family is financially beholden to the Saudis.

IRAN

Donald Trump suggested to reporters on Tuesday that the US military could attack Iran’s “Pickaxe Mountain” (Mount Kolang) nuclear facility soon, and online chatter suggests that “soon” could be a matter of days or even hours as I write this. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Tuesday that “Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges” into the “Pickaxe” facility after last year’s “12 Day War,” presumably with the intent of establishing it as a new, hardened enrichment facility. Trump has been hyping a potential strike on the facility for several days now. Given its location and estimated depth there is no consensus as to whether or not the US military has the capability to damage the site directly, but it can at least damage its external features and maybe hope to cause a landslide or other aftereffect that would render the site unusable even if it remains intact.

An attack on the “Pickaxe” facility could draw a significant retaliation from an Iranian government that has learned its lesson after responding fairly mildly to last year’s US strikes on its nuclear facilities only to wind up back at war a few months later. Whatever Trump decides to do from here, though, the really exciting news is that even his own intelligence agencies don’t think it will make any difference:

Iran’s government is unlikely to feel significant impact or soften its negotiating position as a result of new rounds of U.S. military strikes like those now underway, according to a new intelligence assessment described by current and former U.S. officials.

Analysts at American spy agencies also have concluded that Tehran and Washington are, for now, stuck in an indefinite limbo between peace and war, the officials said — an uneasy dynamic given the increasingly deadly nature of the tit-for-tat hostilities between the two nations. The current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the assessments because of their sensitivity.

The findings, which have been briefed to the administration, appear to underscore the dilemma President Donald Trump faces in a war that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began in late February.

Trump’s current course of ever-expanding attacks appears to have led to a stalemate. But with the war deeply unpopular at home, continuing escalation by the United States, such as the possible introduction of ground troops, poses political risks for the president with no guarantee of military success.

It may be trite to ask what we’re doing here, but really what are we doing here?

ASIA

INDIA

The leader of India’s “Cockroach Janta Party” protest movement, Abhijeet Dipke, announced in a press conference on Tuesday that his group will continue to protest against the Indian government but will no longer stage any marches through New Delhi. Protesters did attempt to march through New Delhi on Monday and wound up facing an intense police crackdown that, according to Dipke, left some 150 of the demonstrators wounded. The “CJP” is the result of mounting youth grievances around unemployment and cost of living, but of late it’s been calling for the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan after irregularities forced some 2.2 million medical school applicants to retake their entrance exams. The fallout of that snafu reportedly included at least 12 prospective students taking their own lives.

JAPAN

A Chinese destroyer apparently conducted live-fire drills in an area that the Japanese government claims as part of its maritime economic zone on Sunday. The incident took place in the context of a Chinese-Russian naval exercise around 180 kilometers off the coast of the island of Okinotori. Countries can claim “exclusive economic zone” rights up to 200 nautical miles offshore, which is around 370 kilometers. However, while Japanese officials have expressed concern over the drill, the Chinese government has pushed back, arguing that Okinotori—an atoll well south of the main Japanese islands—is a “rock” rather than an island and therefore does not have an EEZ. In fairness, other regional governments have also disputed that Japanese claim.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

A drone strike killed at least 21 people in the town of Tina in Sudan’s North Darfur state on Tuesday. The Rapid Support Forces militant group was most likely responsible given that it has recently been stepping up its attacks on the town, which is controlled by the pro-military “Joint Forces” militia alliance. Tina’s location along the Chadian border makes it particularly attractive for the RSF. Further north, the Sudanese military has reportedly been deploying forces to the “tri-border” region in northwestern Sudan (a region that at various points borders Chad, Libya, and Egypt) in apparent preparation for an offensive there. The military withdrew from that region last June, leaving it to the RSF.

KENYA

Last week the CEO of the NGO Samaritan’s Purse, Franklin Graham, told Reuters that seven of the group’s employees were quarantining in Kenya after spending time in the Democratic Republic of the Congo supporting the Ebola response effort there. The US government recently imposed a 21 day “third country” quarantine requirement on any American leaving the DRC so that tracks. What doesn’t track is that the Kenyan government supposedly suspended construction on a US quarantine facility at Kenya’s Laikipia airbase late last month amid public outcry and several court orders to halt the project. Graham’s revelation made it clear that the facility has been built anyway and Kenyan activists are demanding some answers from the government.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

The Indian Foreign Ministry summoned Russia’s chargé d’affaires in New Delhi on Tuesday to protest the killing of four Indian nationals in Ukraine over the weekend. They were among the ten crew members killed when a Russian strike hit a cargo vessel as it was leaving Ukraine’s Odesa seaport. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Indian and Russian officials are “in touch” about the incident.

UKRAINE

A Russian strike hit an apartment building and killed at least three people in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday. The attack came on the same day that the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine released its official civilian casualty figures for the first half of this year, which as we’ve noted represent a substantial increase over the same period last year.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave in to days of protests and public outcry on Tuesday by sacking top military commander Oleksandr Syrsky. There have been calls for Syrsky’s removal since Zelensky fired former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov last week and insisted that personal animosity between the two men had made it impossible to keep them both on the job. Fedorov proved to have been more popular than Syrsky. Zelensky named Mykhailo Drapaty as Syrsky’s replacement and has reportedly offered Fedorov a new unspecified position in his government, though there’s no indication that Fedorov will accept it.

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AMERICAS

ECUADOR

A new report from Human Rights Watch suggests that increasing US-Ecuadorian cooperation on security and counternarcotics operations has come, go figure, at a cost to the human rights of ordinary Ecuadorians:

The United States and Ecuador are deepening their security cooperation against a backdrop of serious human rights violations by Ecuadorian forces, unexplained drone attacks on fishing boats, and the disappearance of several fishermen, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The US Congress should urgently scrutinize these incidents and the broader security relationship between Ecuador and the United States.

The 94-page report, “A Dangerous Partnership: Abuses, Unanswered Questions, and US-Ecuador Security Cooperation,” documents serious human rights violations in a rural community on the Colombia-Ecuador border, as well as attacks on and the disappearance of fishermen at sea near the Galápagos Islands. Each incident either clearly implicates the US-Ecuador security partnership or surfaces questions about responsibility. Ecuadorian forces tortured and arbitrarily detained four farm workers, and later burned and struck a dairy farm, during what the United States called a “partnered operation.” And drones of unknown origin attacked two fishing vessels, injuring several crew members. A third vessel remains missing.

“US-Ecuador cooperation on security has been too opaque and too dangerous for Ecuadorians,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Before more harm is done, the US Congress should demand real answers and effective safeguards.”

CUBA

A US humanitarian aid flight headed to Cuba on Tuesday, the first sign of the $100 million aid package that the Trump administration promised to send to the island back in May. Hey no rush, I mean it’s not like conditions are bad there right now.

On Monday the US State Department published a report in which it decreed that Cuba is the “Capital of 21st Century Communism” and claimed that the Cuban government’s goal since the 1959 revolution that brought it to power has been “conquering the neighboring United States.” This is absurd even by normal US foreign policy standards, but hyping a country that can’t even maintain its power grid as an existential threat serves two purposes. First it attempts to justify a future US military operation, which is almost certainly coming if/when the administration finally ends its war with Iran or at least winds it down to a more manageable level. Second, it aims to tie the administration’s domestic opposition to a nefarious foreign enemy to justify a crackdown that also seems to be on the horizon.

CANADA

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters on Tuesday that he and Donald Trump have agreed “to accelerate trade talks” in an effort to avoid the 50 percent tariffs that the US is about to impose on Canadian products. They have until August 19, when those duties are supposed to take effect. They’re estimated to impact around $20 billion in Canadian exports to the US. The Trump administration is accusing the Canadian government of discriminating against several categories of US products including alcoholic beverages and automobiles.

UNITED STATES

Finally, in US news:

• After his recent forays back into the wonderful world of tariffs with respect to Canada (see above) and Brazil, The Financial Times reports that Donald Trump intends to keep going. The across the board 10 percent tariff he imposed back in February, after the US Supreme Court terminated most of the tariffs he imposed last year, will expire on Friday and the administration has apparently been amassing what it expects to be a more legally rigorous package of duties to replace that one. Mainly they’re focused on “forced labor” claims (the actual forced labor being incidental to the justification for tariffs), but “other investigations” may offer Trump additional tariff latitude. It remains to be seen how wide-reaching these new duties are going to be, especially with the midterm congressional election looming and polling already suggesting that voters have soured on Trump over cost of living issues.

• A new report from the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) finds that the Trump administration’s foreign aid cuts have significantly disrupted HIV/AIDS relief efforts around the world, particularly with respect to programs related to HIV prevention. The report is based on a survey of organizations that are or were working with the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). It may underestimate the extent of the disruption, because local organizations that were critically impacted by the aid cuts may have been unable to respond to the survey or may not even exist anymore.

• The Pentagon acknowledged on Tuesday that Iranian attacks have wounded nearly 100 US military personnel since the war resumed earlier this month. That admission came one day after The New York Times reported that Pentagon officials had been covering up “dozens” of injuries from recent Iranian attacks on US bases in Jordan alone. US military facilities have also suffered “significant” damage since the conflict resumed, according to The Intercept. The Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System does not appear to have been updated to reflect these latest casualties.

• US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday that the Pentagon estimates that the Iran war will cost “$37.5 billion through the end of September.” This is, to put it as elegantly as possible, a crock of shit.

We had such a good time doing that AP livestream that we’ve decided to make it a regular thing, hopefully. Our aim is to expand on what Elizabeth has been doing at her Islamic history newsletter and try to demystify that subject for a wide audience. That’s where you come in, because we need the audience to make it work. We’d like to do these streams a regular monthly thing, opening with a brief discussion of a topic we’ve chosen ahead of time but then throwing the stream open to your questions. We want to make it as interactive as possible so the bigger the audience the better!

For this first outing we’re starting with a topic that’s usually part of the first week of any Islamic history course: what is the “Middle East”? As I said above, the stream will begin at 8 PM Eastern and you can catch it right here. I hope you’re able to join us!

July 20, 1402: An Ottoman army under Sultan Bayezid I runs smack into the famed warlord Timur at the Battle of Ankara and is resoundingly defeated. Timur took Bayezid prisoner and shattered the nascent Ottoman empire, giving most of it back to its former Turkic rulers and leaving several Ottoman claimants to fight over what was left. An 11 year civil war known as the “Ottoman Interregnum” ensued, with Mehmed I emerging victorious and resuming the empire’s expansion.

July 20, 1969: The crew of Apollo 11 carries out the first manned landing on the moon. Very early the following morning, mission commander Neil Armstrong became the first human being (as far as we know, anyway; I don’t want to upset any Ancient Aliens fans) to walk on the lunar surface. Possibly you’ve heard about this before so I don’t think we need to go into much detail.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

With Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the US this week and scheduled to meet with Donald Trump on Tuesday, the US State Department announced on Monday that the Israeli military (IDF) is moving ahead with the first stage of the “pilot program” in southern Lebanon. Israeli forces are withdrawing from three southern Lebanese villages—Froun, Srifa, and Zawtar al-Gharbiyah—while the Lebanese army moves in behind them. Well, “withdraw” is stretching it a bit, since there were no Israeli forces in Froun and Srifa in the first place. There are Israeli forces in Zawtar al-Gharbiyah, however, which may be why it was added to the program (initially the IDF was only supposed to “pull out” of Froun and Srifa). The Lebanese army will be aiming to demonstrate that it can secure these areas from Hezbollah, in which case the intention is for the IDF to withdraw from additional areas and eventually (in theory) from all of southern Lebanon.

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: I got a late start on Sunday, and since most of the weekend’s news revolved around the Iran war anyway I’m going to do an abbreviated “brief” version of our regular roundup.

TODAY IN HISTORY

July 18, 1195: The Almohad Caliphate defeats a Castilian army at the Battle of Alarcos in southern Spain. The victory strengthened the Almohads’ position in Iberia, though political unrest back in their North African heartland limited their ability to capitalize on their success.

July 18, 1290: English King Edward I (or Edward “Longshanks”) issues his Edict of Expulsion, forcing an estimated 16,000 Jews out of England. Edward, financially broken by wars on the Continent, cut a deal with English nobles in which he traded the expulsion of the Jews for the right to levy new taxes (the chance to seize abandoned Jewish property must also have appealed to him). But he was also building on a long tradition of English antisemitism, much of it the product of his father’s reign. The edict’s ban on Jews living in England lasted until Oliver Cromwell lifted it in 1657.

July 19, 64: The Great Fire of Rome ignites in the area around the Circus Maximus under uncertain circumstances. The conflagration would continue to rage for six days before subsiding, only to reignite and rage for another three days. Emperor Nero blamed the fire on Christians, and one theory has Nero starting the fire himself in order to rebuild Rome to his own tastes. The more mundane but also more plausible theory, which seems to have a fair amount of support among contemporary scholars, is that the fire started accidentally and spread quickly due to high winds.

July 19, 711: An Arab-Berber army defeats the Visigoths at the Battle of Guadalete, probably in what is now far southern Spain. Although hard facts about this engagement are difficult to come by, we can probably assume that it took place, the Muslims possibly invited to invade amid a Visigothic succession dispute. We can definitely assume that the Muslims won, because they wound up conquering most of the Iberian peninsula afterward.

July 19, 1864: The Third Battle of Nanjing ends with a decisive Qing victory and the final eradication of the rebel Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The battle, which ended after the death of rebel leader Hong Xiuquan and saw the Taiping forces lose perhaps as many as 100,000 men (double that if you include losses incurred over the course of the entire siege, which began in March), was the last major engagement of the Taiping Rebellion.

TOP STORIES

IRAN

At least three and probably four US military personnel were killed this weekend in incidents in Jordan and Iraq. On Friday night into Saturday morning, Iranian strikes targeted a number of US-used military facilities in the Persian Gulf—including in Saudi Arabia, in what may have been the first Iranian attack on that country since the war resumed earlier this month—and in Jordan. A drone and missile attack on Muwaffaq Salti airbase in Jordan left two US personnel dead and a third missing. The US military announced on Sunday that it had recovered unidentified remains on the base that are probably those of that missing person, but that’s not confirmed yet. The third/fourth death occurred in northern Iraq on Saturday, during what US officials called the “controlled detonation” of explosive material in the wreckage of a downed Iranian drone.

The Pentagon is now acknowledging 17 US military deaths in this war, likely soon to be 18, though as we’ve noted in the past its casualty figures are suspect. The Iranian government says that US attacks since the conflict resumed have killed at least 50 people. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi declared the US-Iran “Memorandum of Understanding” to be “suspended” on Saturday, which seems like a significant understatement. Saturday also brought another written statement purportedly from Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who accused Donald Trump of violating the MoU and threatened an escalation in Iran’s response. However it was the US that seemed to ratchet things up on Sunday in response to the deaths on Friday night into Saturday.

Iranian strikes have been intensifying in the Gulf in recent days, hitting what appears to be civilian infrastructure in Kuwait and expanding, as I mentioned above, to include Saudi Arabia once again. This has paralleled intensifying US strikes on civilian infrastructure in Iran. Iran’s Fars news agency suggested on Saturday that the United Arab Emirates could be targeted next if those US attacks continue. The Iranians have also been heavily targeting Jordan, which given its location and the fact that it hosts US air defense assets could be in part preparation for renewed strikes on Israel (should the war get to that point).

MALI

The Malian army suffered another major setback on Saturday, when Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) rebels and Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM) jihadists ambushed one of its convoys in northern Mali’s Gao region. The insurgents killed at least 50 soldiers and took another 24 captive, according to AFP. On Sunday the Malian military claimed that it had retaliated via airstrikes targeting “three terrorist positions” that “neutralized” an unspecified number of militants. There’s no confirmation of any of that and Mali’s military government is probably not the most reliable or impartial source for that sort of news.

UKRAINE-RUSSIA

Ukrainian airstrikes killed at least nine people across Russia overnight Friday into Saturday. Two of those strikes hit warehouse facilities for Russia’s largest online retailer, Wildberries, and one of those killed seven employees. Early Sunday morning the Russian military began an intensive bombardment of Kyiv that killed at least six people and wounded “dozens” of others, while additionally killing at least two people in other parts of Ukraine. A Russian strike also hit a commercial cargo ship that had left Ukraine’s Odesa seaport, killing at least five people on board. Eight crew members were rescued but several more remain missing.

UPDATE: That Odesa attack killed at least ten people at latest count.

Elsewhere, Volodymyr Zelensky indicated on Saturday that he may be making some new “decisions” with respect to the Ukrainian military in the near future. Zelensky’s recent decision to fire Mykhailo Fedorov has led to protests in Kyiv by supporters of the former defense minister who’s been credited with implementing Ukraine’s long-range strike strategy. Fedorov was reportedly feuding with Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr Syrsky, and if there’s a “decision” for Zelensky to make in the near future, it could involve replacing Syrsky at a minimum.

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ELSEWHERE

• The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least nine people in Gaza on Saturday, including at least three children in an airstrike on an apartment building in Gaza city. It’s now killed at least 1127 people in Gaza since the “ceasefire” went into effect in October.

• In southern Lebanon, some sort of explosive device killed one Lebanese soldier and wounded two others on Saturday when their vehicle apparently drove over it. The IDF is unsurprisingly insisting that the device must have been planted by Hezbollah but there’s no independent confirmation of that and Lebanese authorities are still investigating the incident.

• Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok agreed to leave office on Saturday, when he signed into law a broad constitutional amendment that the country’s parliament had passed several days earlier. The headline element of that amendment ended Sulyok’s term immediately, roughly three years ahead of schedule, claiming a “serious loss of confidence” given the fact that his presidency was backed by former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz Party. Current PM Péter Magyar wants to put his own president in office. Sulyok didn’t have much recourse, though he could have delayed the amendment’s adoption by sending it to the Hungarian Constitutional Court for review had he desired.

• Voters in São Tomé and Príncipe headed to the polls on Sunday for a presidential election in which incumbent Carlos Vila Nova is seeking reelection despite having cut ties with his former party, Independent Democratic Action (ADI), last year. ADI’s Nito Abreu appears to be his main challenger.

• The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the Turkish government “is in talks” to sell or transfer its Russian-made S-400 air defense system to the UAE. There have been murmurs about this scenario for some time now, since Donald Trump intimated at the NATO summit earlier this month that he was amenable to selling F-35 aircraft to Ankara. The US military does not want the F-35 and S-400 operating in close proximity for fear that the latter could reveal details about the former and share those with the Russian military. So if Turkey does pass its S-400 along to the UAE that would remove a major obstacle to an F-35 sale.

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Finally, Truthout’s Kourosh Ziabari describes the environmental damage stemming from the Iran war so far:

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran opened with the most intensive bombing campaign in modern history. Some 23,800 airstrikes were carried out in a span of 39 days, and one of its most consequential impacts was the environmental damage inflicted on Iran’s ecosystems. A June 17 memorandum of understanding halted the hostilities, but [Donald] Trump notified Congress last week that he was resuming military action. Bombings are becoming a new norm, damaging Iran’s land, air, and water.

From toxic acid rain blanketing the Tehran metro area after Israel bombed the Iranian capital’s oil depots on March 7, to the emission of a substantial volume of greenhouse gases in the early phases of the campaign, the war has caused serious environmental degradation in a country reeling from a range of climate-related crises, water stress, and air quality issues. While international media have failed to consistently cover the negative environmental impacts of the war, environmental nonprofits, academic institutions, and climate advocates have documented extensive damage, only a portion of which has been understood to date.

According to a study by the Climate and Community Institute, 5 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gases were emitted due to the attacks on Iran in [the] first 14 days of the war, which the nonprofit estimated exceeded Iceland’s carbon pollution over an entire year.

These emissions were caused by the destruction of homes and buildings, incineration of fuel used in combat, and the production of military equipment deployed by the warring parties, representing $1.3 billion in climate damage, the study added. Researchers have also warned that health hazards in Iran will increase as a result.

July 17, 1203: In what could be considered a dry run of their later conquest of the city, the armies of the Fourth Crusade attack Constantinople and force the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios III Angelos, to flee into exile. The Crusaders had been enticed by Alexios’ nephew, also named Alexios, with promises of financial support if they put him upon the throne. A couple of things then went very wrong. First, the people of Constantinople restored the younger Alexios’ father, Isaac II, to the throne contrary to the Crusaders’ wishes (and despite the fact that Alexios III had blinded Isaac when he took power). Second, the now co-emperor Alexios IV found himself unable to make good on his financial promises, and his costly attempts to do so drew outrage from Constantinople’s residents. When Isaac died in January 1204 the people revolted and overthrew Alexios IV, prompting the Crusaders to launch another, substantially more consequential, assault on the city.

July 17, 1936: The Spanish military, led by a cadre of nationalist officers including Francisco Franco, begins a coup against Spain’s Popular Front government starting in Morocco, the Canary Islands, and the Balearic Islands. The intent was to secure those outlying areas before swiftly moving into Spain proper to oust the government the following day, but the effort quickly stalled and the result instead was the Spanish Civil War. Franco and the Nationalists ultimately won but only after hundreds of thousands were killed.

July 17, 1945: Leaders of the three Allied nations—Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, and Harry Truman—meet in Postdam to hash out details concerning the end of World War II in Europe. On August 1 the leaders of the three countries—Churchill having been replaced by Clement Attlee in the interim because of the Labour Party’s victory in the UK’s July 5 election—released the “Potsdam Agreement,” which mostly set out terms for the post-war occupation and reconstruction of Germany.

July 17, 1968: In a bloodless coup sometimes called the “17 July Revolution,” the Iraqi Baath Party ousts President Abdul Rahman Arif and takes power under its leader, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. To this day the circumstances surrounding the coup remain murky, but the result is not—the Baathists controlled Iraq until the US invasion in 2003 ousted them. Bakr himself hung around until 1979, all the while slowly losing authority to his deputy, Saddam Hussein, until Hussein forced him out and assumed the presidency himself.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

With the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) winding down toward closure at the end of the year, Foreign Policy’s Anchal Vohra reports on the options being considered for its replacement:

The United Nations has outlined three options, with proposed troop numbers varying from nearly 2,000 to around 5,500. Their ability to support the Lebanese military declines with the numbers and capabilities allocated.

This could be seen as a reformed UNIFIL. But different actors have different propositions in mind. Israelis prefer it to be an American enterprise. France wants to maintain its sway in the region and is forming a coalition of willing countries that may deploy troops post-UNIFIL. There is also chatter about a Turkey-led NATO-backed deployment.

These ideas are not mutually exclusive. Elements of each could ultimately be combined and turned into an international stabilization force— a model that hasn’t yet taken off in Gaza but is more likely in Lebanon, which has a functioning state and an army.

“It is possible to do this in Lebanon,” a senior European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told me. “Because it has a state, a government.”

The assertion that Lebanon “has a functioning state and an army” is at best debatable, but leaving that aside there’s a conundrum here. The Israelis and the US want any replacement force to take a more active role in combating Hezbollah than UNIFIL has been mandated to take, but none of the countries that might contribute to the replacement force wants to put its military personnel in a potential combat situation in the middle of a potential civil war. Even the US likely wouldn’t contribute personnel for such a mission.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

July 16, 1212: An allied Iberian Christian army under Castilian King Alfonso VIII defeats a substantially larger Almohad army under Caliph Muhammad al-Nasir at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in what is today southern Spain. The battle is mostly notable for what happened in its immediate aftermath. Muhammad al-Nasir died the following year and his successor, Yusuf II, died without an heir in 1224 which sent the Almohad dynasty into a tailspin from which it never recovered. Forced to focus on internal struggles in North Africa, the Almohads were unable to counter the now onrushing Christians, who captured the key Andalusian cities of Córdoba and Seville by mid-century.

July 16, 1945: The United States conducts the first successful detonation of an atomic weapon at Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in New Mexico, code named “Trinity.” The 25 kiloton test, one of several such tests conducted as part of the “Manhattan Project,” involved an implosion-type plutonium device dubbed “the Gadget,” which became the model for the “Fat Man” device later dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The 15 kiloton “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a gun-type fission uranium device, using a technology that the US military did not test prior to its use.

July 16, 1979: Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr cites health reasons in stepping down from his post. Bakr does seem to have been a relatively frail guy and he did die in 1982, but at this point his main health consideration was probably “my vice president is going to murder me if I don’t resign.” His resignation allowed that vice president, Saddam Hussein—who was already Iraq’s de facto ruler anyway—to make it official by replacing him as president. I’m fuzzy on what happened after that but I’m sure it all worked out great.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least five people in Gaza on Thursday, maintaining its commitment to the “ceasefire” in the “you cease, we fire” sense of the term. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports on the rapidly shrinking scope of the “Board of Peace’s” much-delayed rebuilding plan:

The Gaza recovery plan being pursued by Donald Trump’s Board of Peace (BoP) has shrunk dramatically from an ambitious blueprint for the reconstruction of the whole territory to a small pilot project in the south of the strip.

Even the envisaged pilot scheme – involving a temporary camp for a tiny fraction of Gaza’s 2 million displaced people, with a Palestinian administration, police and a small international security force – is not expected to take shape before the end of the year.

Incremental steps have been announced in recent weeks. A few Moroccan and Kosovan officers have arrived in Israel where they are intended to be the kernel of an International Stabilization Force (ISF), tasked with protecting the pilot camp. A logistical base for this future force to store vehicles, equipment and other material is nearing completion at the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza.

However, preparatory work on the pilot camp near the southern Gaza of city of Rafah has not begun, nor has construction of the camp’s ISF support base. Satellite images of the area show disturbed earth but no new structures. Substantial progress is not expected before Israel holds elections on 27 October, which could bring down Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government.

There is some hope that a new Israeli government might actually try abiding by the “ceasefire” and seeing how that goes, but that seems like a long shot at best given the overall tenor of Israeli politics.

YEMEN

Ansarullah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi threatened more attacks on Saudi Arabia on Thursday. The two sides traded airport attacks earlier this week, prompting fears of a revival of their conflict. Houthi officials have suggested that they could carry out additional attacks on Saudi airports and one told Drop Site’s Iona Craig that the group may try to close the Bab el-Mandab strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, to Saudi ship traffic.

Speaking of that strait, the resumption of the US-Iran war has raised related fears that Yemen could become a bigger part of that conflict, with Reuters reporting on Thursday that Tehran wants the Houthis “to stand ready to close the Red Sea oil route if the United States strikes Iranian power infrastructure.” The threat to shut down Bab el-Mandab is one of the most potent cards the Iranians have left to play.

IRAN

The US military appears to be giving up the pretense that its strikes on Iran are simply intended to prevent it from attacking commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, as Thursday’s targeting package included sites near Tehran and in parts of northern and eastern Iran in addition to strikes in the south. Iranian officials say that US strikes over the past several days have killed at least 35 people and wounded over 300 more. They’re continuing to strike at US military targets in the Gulf and in Jordan but are now threatening their own escalation against “regional infrastructure” if the US follows through on Donald Trump’s threats to start targeting civilian infrastructure in Iran (which US forces may already be doing at a piecemeal level). That’s in addition to the Houthi threat against Bab el-Mandab, outlined above.

On Wednesday the Iranian government released Dena Karari, a US-Iranian dual national whom Iranian authorities arrested back in late 2024 on espionage charges. Donald Trump took to social media to trumpet her release. It is unclear why Iranian authorities released her at this particular moment and given how events proceeded on Thursday it doesn’t seem like there was any sort of quid pro quo with the Trump administration (or at least not one that has manifested yet).

ASIA

PAKISTAN

As the lines appear to be blurring between the conflict in Yemen and the Iran war (see above), the Pakistani government may find itself in an uncomfortable position in fairly short order. Pakistani officials have invested substantial time and effort trying to mediate between Iran and the US, and while they haven’t been terribly successful they seem interested in establishing a reputation as conflict resolvers (Pakistan’s own conflicts with India and Afghanistan notwithstanding). But Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense agreement last year, which means that if the Saudis restart their war with the Houthis they could insist on Pakistani involvement. Islamabad was already concerned about Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia triggering the defense agreement but is reportedly more concerned about the potential Houthi angle.

MYANMAR

Continuing with what’s been a running theme in the newsletter this week, the normalization of Myanmar’s ruling junta, Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow told reporters on Wednesday that the Thai government is ready “to serve as a facilitator” for peace talks between the junta and Myanmar’s multiple rebel factions. It’s not clear which of those factions are interested in negotiating but Association of Southeast Asian Nations envoys, including Sihasak, met with representatives of six groups earlier this week including the Karen National ‌Union ⁠and the Karenni National Progressive Party.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The UK government blacklisted 11 individuals and entities accused of supporting the combatants in Sudan’s civil war on Thursday. These included a UAE-based financier for the Rapid Support Forces militant group as well as individuals accused of aiding both the RSF and the Sudanese military in acquiring weapons and of providing other logistical support.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

The World Health Organization continues to sound alarms about the rapid spread of the DRC’s Ebola outbreak:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Ebola is spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo more quickly than in any previous outbreak.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters on Thursday that the Ebola outbreak in the DRC in 2018-2020 “took more than 10 months to reach 2,000 confirmed cases”. But this time, it took only two months for there to be over 2,000 confirmed cases.

“It is now the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record,” Tedros said. “In the past month, it has expanded faster than any previous outbreak.”

The ⁠number of confirmed Ebola cases in the DRC increased to 2,124 on Thursday, according to government data. The country’s public health ⁠institute said in ⁠its latest report that 51 new ⁠cases were ⁠detected on ⁠Wednesday in the eastern provinces of Ituri ‌and North Kivu.

The DRC reported 62 new cases on Thursday, increasing its total number of confirmed infections to 2,073, though the ⁠⁠WHO has said the ⁠⁠true tally could be at least double that.

On a more positive note, Uganda’s last known Ebola patient was discharged from hospital on Thursday. If no new Ugandan cases are confirmed for the next 42 days the WHO can declare the country Ebola-free.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

Russian and Ukrainian strikes killed a total of at least 18 people overnight and through Thursday. At least two were killed in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, which the Russian military has been attacking heavily over the past couple of weeks in what The Financial Times says is an effort to disrupt Ukraine’s Black Sea grain trade. This is presumably a tit for tat response to Ukrainian attacks that have been affecting Russian grain shipments in the neighboring Sea of Azov.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to can Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov is not being well received publicly. Hundreds of people reportedly protested the move in Kyiv on Thursday. It would appear that personal animosity between Fedorov and Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr Syrsky were the reason for the former’s ouster, with Fedorov telling reporters that Syrsky had opposed his plans for reforming Ukrainian armed forces. The public explanation at least is that Fedorov’s focus on asymmetrically attacking Russia via drone strikes and cyber warfare clashed with Syrsky’s focus on direct combat and territorial gains/losses.

UNITED KINGDOM

Presumptive UK prime minister Andy Burnham will succeed outgoing PM Keir Starmer as leader of the UK Labour Party on Friday, after securing an uncontested accession earlier this week. This is the final step before he replaces Starmer as PM, which should happen on Monday.

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AMERICAS

BRAZIL

The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it will impose 25 percent tariffs on most, but not all, Brazilian products effective July 22. It had first hinted about this measure last month, citing alleged “unfair” trade practices by the Brazilian government (even though the US runs a trade surplus with Brazil) and allegedly weak anti-corruption standards. In reality this is Donald Trump offering an in-kind contribution to Flávio Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign, but it may backfire. Bolsonaro is of course blaming incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for mishandling relations with the US and thereby causing the tariffs, but Lula is countering by accusing Bolsonaro of colluding with Trump to punish Brazil in order to benefit his own campaign. Polling suggests that more Brazilian voters are blaming Bolsonaro for the tariffs than are blaming Lula.

NICARAGUA

The Nicaraguan government severed diplomatic relations with its Italian counterpart on Thursday over a grievance that goes all the way back to 1978. Nicaragua is home to Alessio Casimirri, a former member of the leftist “Red Brigades” militant group who was convicted in Italian court in the 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. He fled to Nicaragua in 1983 and gained citizenship a few years later, while denying any involvement in the Moro incident. The Italian government has been pursuing his extradition ever since, and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani made a comment about the case on Wednesday that was apparently offensive enough to Nicaraguan officials to trigger the diplomatic break.

Nicaragua has no extradition treaty with Italy, and while authorities there tried to strip Casimirri of his citizenship in the 1990s they were blocked in court. Since Nicaraguan law prohibits the extradition of citizens to other countries legally there doesn’t seem to be a way to satisfy Italy’s demand.

UNITED STATES

Finally, the Trump administration kicked off its global McCarthyism campaign on Thursday, though The Washington Post reports that some of its rhetoric may have fallen on deaf ears:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted representatives from more than 65 countries at the State Department on Thursday, hoping to rally global support against what he said was the resurgence of far-left political terrorism, such as the antifa movement.

The Trump administration offered an all-star cast for the event, with Rubio joined by other key administration officials including FBI Director Kash Patel and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, spoke immediately after Rubio and offered an apocalyptic view of leftist ideology.

“Left-wing terrorism always ends in bloodshed, misery and suffering,” said Miller, painting a scene of “deformed” individuals who would turn Western society into a “gulag” if left to their own devices.

After the conference ended, the State Department announced visa restrictions that it said would block the “entry of foreign nationals who finance, recruit, incite, or otherwise enable terrorist, violent, and criminal Far-Left Terrorist networks.” The department did not immediately respond to a request for more information.

The Trump administration’s push to convince officials of the dangers posed by far-left terrorism had been met with skepticism by some allies, who had said that their own security officials did not assess the threat with the same level of severity as right-wing or Islamist terrorism.

July 15, 1099: The army of the First Crusade emerges victorious from its Siege of Jerusalem, capturing the city and thus achieving its stretch goal. Despite a potentially calamitous lack of readily available fresh water, the Crusaders were fortified by a shipment of raw materials from Europe that enabled them to construct siege towers and overwhelm the city’s enfeebled Fatimid garrison. There is still some debate over the extent of the massacre that followed, partly due to the difficulty in separating deaths during the siege from deaths in the immediate aftermath of the siege.

July 15, 1799: An officer on Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, Captain Pierre-François Bouchard, discovers an artifact later dubbed “the Rosetta Stone.” The stone, containing three versions of the same decree—in hieroglyphs, demotic Egyptian, and Ancient Greek—enabled scholars to finally translate hieroglyphs and was a landmark in the development of the field of Egyptology.

July 15, 1974: Greece’s military government engineers a coup in Cyprus in order to install a government favorable to union with Greece. The coup prompted Turkey to intervene to prevent Cyprus from joining Greece, partitioning the island and leaving it in a state of frozen conflict that continues to the present day.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

Israeli and Lebanese negotiators wrapped up their sixth round of talks with US officials in Rome on Wednesday. Neither party has yet commented on the outcome, but according to the US State Department they “agreed on the structure and guidelines for the pilot zone process, to be finalized and implemented in the coming days.” In that process, the Israeli military (IDF) is supposed to withdraw from two areas in southern Lebanon while the Lebanese army moves into them. But the zones that have been proposed apparently don’t have a heavy IDF presence anyway, calling into question the nature of the “withdrawal.” It’s still not clear when (or whether) these territorial handovers are actually going to take place.

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