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TODAY IN HISTORY

May 2, 1611: This is probably the date upon which English printer Robert Barker produced the very first edition of the King James Version of the Bible. I say “probably” because it’s the date you most often find cited for the KJV’s publication but as far as I know there’s no documentary evidence backing that up. Regardless, the KJV proved to be a monumental achievement that not only stands as probably the most important vernacular (meaning I’m excluding the Latin Vulgate) translation of the Bible but also a fundamental text in the development of the modern English language. So it’s probably worth commemorating.

May 2, 2011: Not long after midnight (local time), according to the official narrative, a team of US special forces operators raids a house in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, in the process killing al-Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden. There have been more than a few alternative theories offered about bin Laden’s death, partly to try to explain how America’s Most Wanted Man was able to spend years living in the Pakistani equivalent of West Point without our good pals in Islamabad ever finding out and/or letting us know. The official story has relevance, since it’s the version of events most people believe. Anyway, the good news is that we all lived happily every after.

May 3, 1815: In a clash that offered a kind of foreshadowing of the later Battle of Waterloo, an army led by the Napoleon-installed king of Naples, Joachim Murat, is badly defeated by a smaller Austrian army at the Battle of Tolentino. Murat abandoned Naples altogether and fled to Corsica, leading to the end of the Neapolitan War and the restoration of Ferdinand I as king of Naples and Sicily.

May 3, 1978: Gary Thuerk, an employee of the Digital Equipment Corporation’s marketing department, sends a marketing email to hundreds of addresses on the US Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). This was the first known instance of unsolicited bulk email, AKA “spam,” and as you might expect it drew a fairly hostile reaction from the recipients. Unfortunately, that negative response only delayed the spread of the tactic and today it is of course ubiquitous.

INTERNATIONAL

The friendly friends of OPEC+ held their monthly supply meeting on Sunday and the group’s core members—Russia and Saudi Arabia, primarily—agreed to another increase in their production quota. Starting next month they will raise that limit by 188,000 barrels per day—or at least they will raise it in theory, since the current closure of the Strait of Hormuz puts a hard cap on global oil supplies that no OPEC+ quota adjustment can remedy. Notably The Gang said nothing at all about the UAE’s decision to quit their ranks, in large part so that it would no longer be bound by these oil supply caps.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

The Syrian military has reportedly incorporated four new brigades comprised of former Syrian Democratic Forces fighters. They’ve been deployed to the northeastern Syrian cities of Hasakah, Kobani, Malikiyah (also known as Derik), and Qamishli. This is the most substantive step yet in the integration process that the SDF and the Syrian government agreed to undertake earlier this year.

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 10 people across southern Lebanon on Sunday and a whopping 41 for the weekend in total. While there is still a nominal ceasefire in place the Israelis are not abiding by it (nor, for that matter, is Hezbollah, though it has mostly targeted the Israeli forces that are currently occupying a large swath of southern Lebanon).

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least one person and seriously wounded four others in a raid in the West Bank city of Nablus on Sunday. Israeli officials say they were targeting “terrorists” who had thrown rocks at IDF personnel.

In Gaza, with the “ceasefire” stalled Al Jazeera reports on indications that the IDF may be gearing up to resume full-scale conflict to try to force Hamas to accept disarmament. Among its preparations, the IDF has expanded the “yellow line” to incorporate some 59 percent of Gaza under its direct control, up from 53 percent under the terms of the “ceasefire.” It’s also apparently been shifting personnel from Lebanon to Gaza.

IRAN

The US and Iranian governments have traded yet another round of proposals for resuming peace talks, to no apparent effect although the Iranians are still reviewing the latest US pitch. The newest 14-point Iranian proposal rejects an extended ceasefire and calls for ending the war within 30 days after settling an array of issues including “guarantees against future attacks, a withdrawal of US forces from around Iran, the release of frozen Iranian assets worth billions of dollars and the lifting of sanctions, war reparations, ending all hostilities, including in Lebanon, and ‘a new mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz.’” This doesn’t sound very much like what the “losing” side of the war would be offering under these circumstances, but make of that what you will.

Donald Trump rejected the Iranian framework on Saturday, despite having not yet seen it, arguing that he “can’t imagine that it would be acceptable in that [Iran has] not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to Humanity, and the World, over the last 47 years.” Neither has the US, though I don’t see anybody making a big deal about that. On a somewhat positive note Trump didn’t sound interested in resuming the shooting war in his comments to reporters, though he’s one or two mood swings away from changing his tune on that front.

Elsewhere, a bulk cargo carrier came under attack by presumably Iranian speedboats near the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. There’s no indication of any casualties or serious damage. Trump excitedly compared his blockade of Iran to piracy on Friday. This is of course admitting to a crime but that nuance seems to have been lost on him. On Sunday he declared via social media the start of what we’re apparently supposed to call “Project Freedom,” an effort to help extricate ships that have been trapped by the strait’s closure. This is not an escort mission. It appears to be the implementation of the “Maritime Freedom Construct” coalition that the US State Department has been trying to form, which aims to “share information, coordinate diplomatically and enforce sanctions.” From Trump’s language this effort is only about freeing ships that are currently stuck, not about reopening the strait in full. Nevertheless there’s a reasonable possibility that this operation could threaten the ceasefire.

On a similar note (i.e., Donald Trump sounding like an idiot), Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain asks the question that I’m sure has been on everybody’s mind lately: “Why isn’t Iran’s oil infrastructure exploding like Trump said it would?” This stems from an interview Trump gave to Fox News last weekend in which he said that “both mechanically and in the earth, something happens where it just explodes, and they say they only have about three days left before that happens.” The “it” there is Iran’s oil infrastructure once its storage capacity has been exhausted due to the blockade. Three days have come and gone and there are no reports of any spontaneous pipeline explosions, which is because Iran probably hasn’t exhausted its storage capacity and also because oil infrastructure doesn’t just “explode” in these situations. If the Iranians have to shut down their oil wells that could cause some damage to their infrastructure but a) it’s unclear if/when they’ll have to do that and b) the damage almost certainly won’t be catastrophic.

ASIA

PAKISTAN

UAE authorities appear to be on a deportation spree when it comes to Pakistani nationals, and especially Pakistani Shiʿa. New Lines Magazine reports that this seems to be part of a larger effort to punish Pakistan:

These reports come amid strains in UAE-Pakistan ties. As the South Asian nation emerged as a mediator between the United States and Iran, the UAE made a surprise request for its longtime ally Islamabad to immediately repay a debt of $3.5 billion, prompting Saudi Arabia, which signed a mutual defense pact with Pakistan last year, to step in with financial support.

Observers said the demand may have been punitive and reflected Abu Dhabi’s growing frustration with Islamabad, particularly as the latter deepens ties with Riyadh and over what was seen as Pakistan’s muted response to Iranian attacks on the Gulf.

Moreover, remittances from the UAE are a critical source of foreign exchange for Pakistan, so deportations could affect thousands of families as well as the broader economy.

The Pakistani government already has a fraught relationship with the country’s Shiʿa minority, so their mass deportation (according to New Lines some 5000 families, or 15,000 individuals, have been sent back to Pakistan thus far, many stripped of their possessions and denied access to their bank accounts) puts Islamabad in a difficult position.

CHINA

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce issued what it called a “prohibition order” on Saturday in response to another round of US sanctions designations related to Iranian oil exports. Among those targets was China’s second-largest independent or “teapot” refinery—the designation refers to facilities that handle Iranian and/or Russian oil and are not tied to major energy firms to insulate those companies from sanctions risk—along with four smaller operations. The ministry issued this order under its blocking rules, which legally prohibit designated firms from complying with the sanctions.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

Sudan’s Emergency Lawyers activist group reported that a drone strike killed at least five people in Khartoum on Saturday, blaming the Rapid Support Forces militant group. This was the second drone strike in the Sudanese capital region in less than a week, following an attack on Tuesday in the Jabal Awliya area just south of the city. The strikes break what has been a fairly calm period after the Sudanese military seized full control of the region last May. Another RSF drone strike killed at least nine people in central Sudan’s Gezira state on Saturday night. The target was Abu Aqla Kaykal, the commander of the pro-military Sudan Shield Forces militia group, and all of those who were killed were members of his family.

MALI

Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin fighters have reportedly seized a military base in the central Malian town of Hombori and have captured two checkpoints near Bamako. The Russian Africa Corps unit denied losing the Hombori facility but the reporting on the checkpoints is consistent with JNIM’s announced plan to blockade the Malian capital. The fact that the Malian army and Africa Corps have shown no hint that they’re even ramping up to a counterattack more than a week after JNIM and the Azawad Liberation Front launched their major offensive in northern Mali is a fairly damning statement about their situation.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

A Russian drone strike killed at least two people in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Saturday. Further attacks overnight into Sunday killed at least two people in Odesa oblast, while Ukrainian drones killed at least one person in a town west of Moscow. Ukrainian strikes also reportedly hit Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Primorsk as well as at least three of its “shadow fleet” tankers, a Karakurt-class missile corvette, and a patrol boat of some type.

GERMANY

With Donald Trump still apparently seething over Friedrich Merz’s criticism of the Iran war a few days ago, the Pentagon announced on Friday that it will withdraw 5000 US soldiers from Germany “over the next six to twelve months.” Supposedly this decision follows “a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe,” but if you believe that then I’m afraid I need to ask you to submit your wallet for immediate inspection. In fairness, it’s been reported for several weeks that Trump was considering a withdrawal of forces from Europe as a way to punish NATO members who were refusing to fight Iran for him (and who, lest we forget, also refused to give him Greenland). But the decision to pull them out of Germany specifically seems pretty clearly to be a retaliation for Merz’s remarks. German officials don’t seem terribly upset by the announcement.

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AMERICAS

MEXICO

Sinaloa state Governor Rubén Rocha left his post on Friday evening, two days after the US Justice Department indicted him over his alleged ties to the Sinaloa cartel. Rocha characterized this as a “temporary leave” while he defends himself from charges he insists are false, rather than a permanent resignation. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said that she will need US officials to provide “clear evidence” supporting their allegations against Rocha before she considers approving any extradition request.

UNITED STATES

Finally, TomDispatch’s William Hartung considers the Trump administration’s “unprecedented shift of resources” toward military spending:

Right at this moment, we are witnessing an unprecedented shift of resources from domestic investments in the United States to the military-industrial complex (aka the war machine). The only comparable period in our history was the buildup to World War II, when the United States confronted a powerful adversary in Nazi Germany with designs to control not just Europe, but the world. The current buildup is breathtaking in scope and will certainly prove devastating in its impact — not just on this country’s foreign and domestic policies but also on the economic prospects of average Americans.

When, in 2023, my colleague Ben Freeman and I first conceived of our book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine, we viewed it in part as a cautionary tale about just how high the Pentagon budget might rise in the years to come (absent pushback from Congress and the taxpaying public). By the time our book came out in November 2025, however, the Pentagon budget had already topped the $1 trillion mark and, only recently, President Trump has proposed to instantly add another $500 billion to that already staggering figure and to do so in a single year’s time. And imagine this: such a proposed increase alone is higher than the total military budget of any other nation on Earth. Mind you, the current high levels of spending have already underwritten a provocative, unnecessary intervention in Venezuela and a region-wide war in the Middle East, and the larger costs of all this in human lives and damage to the global economy are guaranteed to shape the lives of the rest of us globally for years to come.

To add insult to injury, the Pentagon announced that it would seek a $200 billion supplemental appropriation to pay for its war on Iran, which has spread across the Middle East. That $200 billion would have been in addition to the $1.5 billion proposed for the Pentagon’s future budget. According to an analysis by Pentagon budget expert Stephen Semler, the Iran war, which started on February 28th with Israeli and U.S. air strikes on that country, cost the United States more than $28 billion just in its first two weeks. And to put that in perspective, $28 billion is more than three times the Trump administration’s proposed annual budgets for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency (at a time when the climate crisis and the need to head off future pandemics are essential to the health and security of all Americans). Worse yet, it’s all for a completely senseless war that should never have been started.

As President Trump alternates between engaging in negotiations to end the war and threatening to wipe Iran off the map — or even just walking away to bomb another day — there are reports that the supplemental budget request to pay for the war on Iran will shrink from the proposed $200 billion to $98 billion. And that $98 billion will include other things in addition to war costs, including disaster relief and aviation modernization.

TODAY IN HISTORY

May 1, 1707: The Acts of Union, separately passed by the English and Scottish parliaments, go into effect, merging the two kingdoms into the newly christened Great Britain. The Scottish Stuart dynasty had been ruling both kingdoms (the “Glorious Revolution” notwithstanding) since James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I as James I of England, but the crowns had been held in personal union only. The Acts of Union made it a legal union and thereby completed the Scottish takeover of England. Or at least that’s how I like to think about it.

May 1, 1977: Unidentified gunmen open fire on a May Day labor rally in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, massacring somewhere around 40 people. To this day speculation remains high that a right-wing paramilitary group called Kontrgerilla, part of a US-backed network of anti-communist groups across Europe better known under the name of its Italian branch—Gladio—was responsible for the shooting with support from both the US and Turkish governments.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

The imam of Damascus’s Sayyida Zaynab Mosque, Farham al-Mansour, was killed in a grenade attack on Friday. There’s no indication as to responsibility but given that he was one of Syria’s most prominent Shiʿa religious figures some suspicion presumably has to fall on Islamic State.

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least four people across southern Lebanon on Friday, one day after it killed at least 28 in its biggest one day spree since the “ceasefire” began on April 16. Emergency workers are still recovering bodies from Thursday’s attacks so that death toll may rise.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

April 30, 1803: US representatives Robert Livingston and James Monroe and French representative François Barbé-Marbois sign the Louisiana Purchase Treaty in Paris. The treaty ceded France’s vast Louisiana Territory in North America to the United States, roughly doubling the young nation’s size, in return for $15 million. Livingston and Monroe intended to negotiate the purchase of the port city of New Orleans and were prepared to pay up to $10 million just for the one city. But Napoleon decided to sell the entire territory because he needed the money and because the Haitian Revolution had thrown his colonial plans for the Americas into disarray. Most of the Louisiana Territory wasn’t really Napoleon’s to sell, as it still belonged to Indigenous tribes, but in purchasing it the US bought the “right” to acquire that land by whatever means it chose.

April 30, 1975: The North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong capture Saigon, bringing the Vietnam War to a close. The North Vietnamese had begun their assault on the city the day before, when the remaining US personnel in Saigon began an evacuation known as “Operation Frequent Wind” that cleared out the US embassy and moved some 7000 US and Vietnamese nationals out of the country in the largest helicopter evacuation in history. The North Vietnamese government, which wasn’t really the “North” Vietnamese government anymore, renamed Saigon Hồ Chí Minh City, and this date is commemorated annually in Vietnam as Reunification Day.

INTERNATIONAL

Reporters Without Borders released its annual World Press Freedom Index on Thursday and it doesn’t paint a very pretty picture:

For the first time since RSF started producing the index in 2002, more than half of the world’s countries fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories for press freedom – “a clear sign that journalism is increasingly criminalised worldwide”.

Only seven mostly Nordic countries are ranked with “good” press freedom, with Norway, the Netherlands and Estonia in the top three. France ranks 25th with a “satisfactory” score, while the United States ranks 64th with a “problematic” score, falling seven places since President Donald Trump took office.

RSF reports that Trump “has turned his repeated attacks on the press and journalists into a systematic policy”, citing the detention of Salvadoran journalist Mario Guevara, who was later deported, while he was documenting a protest against immigration raids, as well as the suspension of several notable public media institutions.

In Latin America, RSF highlighted the dramatic fall of Javier Milei’s Argentina (98th, -11) and of El Salvador (143rd), which has dropped 105 places since 2014 following the launch of a war against the Maras criminal gangs.

The press freedom NGO said that “Eastern Europe and the Middle East are the two most dangerous regions for journalists in the world, as they have been for 25 years”, notably putting Russia (172nd) and Iran (177th) in the bottom 10.

It added that wars and restrictions on access to information are some of the driving factors for the decline in press freedom. It cited Israel’s attacks on journalists in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon as an example of this, ranking Israel 116th.

MIDDLE EAST

TURKEY

Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) cofounder Murat Karayılan accused the Turkish government of having “frozen” its peace process with the militant group in an interview published on Thursday. Essentially it seems Ankara has pocketed the PKK’s concessions with respect to its disarmament and eventual dissolution, and now that the onus is on Turkish officials to make concessions to the PKK they’ve decided they’re not interested. This was apparent months ago, but to have a major PKK figure like Karayılan say it openly is a significant development. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan insisted earlier this week that “the process is proceeding as it should,” which doesn’t seem to be how the PKK sees it.

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 28 people across southern Lebanon on Thursday, marking the highest single day casualty figure yet under the ostensible ceasefire. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and parliament speaker Nabih Berri both condemned the continued Israel assault, though their condemnation remains strictly rhetorical. That said, according to Reuters there is a “rift” emerging between Aoun and Berri, who by virtue of their positions represent the country’s Maronite and Shiʿa blocs, respectively, over continuing Lebanese-Israeli “peace” talks. Aoun is reportedly prepared to normalize relations with Israel in return for a full peace deal while Berri wants a modest nonaggression agreement. Their lack of cohesion is reportedly making it difficult for Saudi Arabia, which has involved itself in the peace process on Lebanon’s behalf, to establish diplomatic parameters. Notably the Saudis appear to be concerned that Aoun is moving too quickly to appease the Israelis.

Meanwhile, Haaretz reports that Israeli soldiers are increasingly pressed by Hezbollah drone attacks and are starting to criticize a mission that seems less about battling militants and more about permanently depopulating southern Lebanon:

Soldiers in the field told Haaretz that much of what they do now isn’t directly fighting Hezbollah, but systematically destroying buildings in villages in southern Lebanon.

“The only mission is to continue the destruction,” one officer said. “There is no other mission.” The IDF believes this systematic destruction of Shi’ite villages will prevent villagers from returning home.

Another commander said that, contrary to the IDF’s claim that the soldiers are destroying “terrorist infrastructure” in these villages, the destruction goes well beyond that. “It isn’t terrorist infrastructure; we’re destroying everything,” he said. The IDF terms this plan for demolishing Shi’ite villages in southern Lebanon “Operation Silver Plow.”

As part of this plan, a polygon is marked out for each of the units in the area showing the section they are responsible for razing. At the end of every day, there’s an assessment of what was accomplished, and every commander is required to report how many homes he destroyed. Each unit is assigned a number of bulldozers operated by civilian contractors that it is required to protect.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least four people in Gaza on Thursday, according to the territory’s health officials. To my knowledge there’s been no comment from Israeli personnel about those deaths.

Reuters reports on the rats that are now infesting Gaza’s displaced persons camps:

Doctors Without Borders released a new report this week accusing the Israeli government of using water as a “weapon of war” in Gaza. The territory is still suffering from severe water shortages more than six months after the start of the “ceasefire” that was supposed to alleviate its humanitarian crisis. Israeli officials insist that they’re letting more than enough water into the territory, but with Gaza’s water infrastructure mostly obliterated people are forced to rely on expensive and logistically challenging water deliveries. The infrastructure can’t be repaired because the Israelis won’t allow the necessary materials to enter the territory.

Elsewhere, the IDF intercepted a new Gaza aid shipment by the Global Sumud Flotilla in waters off the coast of Crete on Thursday. This was much further from Gaza than the IDF usually interdicts these fleets, putting it out in international waters and making the interception at least arguably an act of piracy. Israeli personnel abducted several people from the flotilla and said that it was planning to release them in Greece later in the day.

IRAQ

Donald Trump has apparently given his assent to Ali al-Zaidi, the presumptive incoming Iraqi prime minister. The Coordination Framework political coalition nominated Zaidi on Monday after a lengthy dispute between factions backing former PM Nouri al-Maliki (the bloc’s original choice) and incumbent Mohammed Shiaʿ al-Sudani. Trump’s opposition sunk Maliki’s candidacy so his approval was seen as necessary to ensure that Zaidi would get the job.

IRAN

There are a few items of note:

• US Central Command boss Brad Cooper was scheduled to brief Donald Trump on Thursday about new military options with respect to Iran. As you may recall, Trump is now once again thinking about striking Iran, but only briefly and purely with the intention of advancing the negotiating process. This is the same logic that caused him to go to war with Iran in the first place, but hey, maybe it will work this time. It’s also possible that he’s trying to convince the Iranians that he might attack again, but for that threat to work the Iranians would actually have to fear the war’s resumption and I’m not sure that’s really the case. They may even view it as preferable to an indefinite US blockade.

• The US State Department reportedly wants its diplomats to push their host governments to support another coalition to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. This one, the “Maritime Freedom Construct,” aims to “share information, coordinate diplomatically and enforce sanctions.” It would not be sailing ships through the strait so I question the efficacy of this approach. Trump keeps demanding that US allies simply “take” the strait, though nobody has taken him up on that dare yet.

• Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued another written statement on Thursday. The upshot is that he’s not prepared to open Hormuz and doesn’t think much of making any concessions to the US. I don’t think it’s worth dwelling too much on this sort of performance.

• Friday will mark 60 days since Trump went to war with Iran, which should under the 1973 War Powers Resolution mean that the US Congress must vote on whether or not to allow him to continue the conflict. But don’t worry! There’s not going to be a vote, because House Speaker Mike Johnson has decided that the US and Iran aren’t at war anymore. Sure, technically a blockade is an act of war and the shooting could resume at any time, but…I’m sorry, I’ve lost my train of thought. The most important thing is that Congress won’t have to do its job. What a relief!

• The Pakistani government is allowing countries (excluding India) to use its territory to ship goods overland to Iran, bypassing the US blockade. This will ease the blockade’s economic blow to some extent but not completely, given the inefficiency of overland shipping compared to its maritime variant. But it will also help establish Pakistan as more of a regional trade hub and boost its direct trade contacts with Iran, bypassing Afghanistan.

ASIA

PAKISTAN

Reuters reports on the plight of hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals who are being expelled from Pakistan even as the war between those two countries makes it much more difficult for them to get to the border and cross into Afghanistan. The expulsions themselves are already painful, particularly for those whose families fled to Pakistan decades ago and who in many cases have never set foot in Afghanistan. But the closure of the border has left them stranded in long lines of traffic in Pakistan.

MYANMAR

The AP reports that Myanmar’s military may be reasserting itself:

A little more than a year ago, the government’s military was on the back foot in Myanmar ‘s bloody civil war, pushed out of great swaths of the country’s north by an alliance of seasoned militias, and forced into defensive action around the rest of the country by other established groups and new pro-democracy guerrillas.

Today the picture has changed.

With its ranks swollen by tens of thousands of new conscripts, the military, known as the Tatmadaw, has reversed some of its losses and appears poised to resume the offensive, while some opposition groups have left the fight and infighting and supply issues have weakened others.

The junta—that’s what it is, its recent pantomime of an election notwithstanding—has offered to engage in peace talks with those opposition groups. But despite a general level of exhaustion after more than five years of war, it’s not clear that any of them are prepared to take up that offer.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The New Humanitarian reports on the local solidarity that’s helping residents of the embattled city of El-Obeid survive Sudan’s ongoing civil war:

Home to a key army base, the city’s residents have endured drone attacks and a long-running siege imposed by the paramilitary-turned-rebel [Rapid Support Forces], while taking in more than a million displaced people who are living in camps and with host families.

Yet far from giving in, the population has revived long-standing traditions of communal solidarity while reinventing other aspects of everyday life to survive the onslaught.

Across the city, host families have welcomed in the displaced, religious networks and volunteer groups have set up community kitchens, and small clinics and community-run health points have stood in for a struggling health system.

New local food production – largely led by women – has taken root to ease shortages, while truck drivers have risked their lives to bring in supplies, using back roads that pass through remote villages and forests to avoid armed checkpoints.

“We carry the lives of families, not just goods,” said 48-year-old Mohammed al-Hassan, one of many transporters who use cars, tuk-tuks, donkey carts, and sometimes their own backs to bring in goods. He said he views the work as a “duty rather than business”.

The efforts of El Obeid’s residents – described to The New Humanitarian in interviews conducted over the phone – reflect a much wider story of local solidarity seen across all of Sudan’s states and cities for the last three years.

MALI

Following up on its shock offensive fighting alongside Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) rebels over the weekend, the jihadist group Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM) now says it is imposing a blockade on the Malian capital city of Bamako. The group has been blocking fuel shipments from reaching the city since September, but cut a deal with the Malian junta last month to lift that restriction in return for a prisoner release. Now it sounds like they’re going to attempt a full blockade, with a spokesperson saying that “the only concession is being made for those already in Bamako to allow them to leave.”

NIGERIA

A new report from Amnesty International accuses the Nigerian government of setting up a deadly concentration camp for ethnic Fulani:

The Nigerian authorities must conduct a prompt, thorough, independent, impartial, transparent and effective investigation into the reported deaths of least 150 members of the Fulani community, most of them children, who have been arbitrarily detained by the Nigerian military in the north-central state of Kwara, Amnesty International said today.

An investigation by the human rights organization found that the victims were among 1,500 Fulani pastoralists who have been detained at the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Orientation Camp in Yikpata for the past three months. They were transported to the camp after being forced to leave their homes amid escalating attacks by armed groups in Kwara. Instead of finding safety, they face overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, restrictions on their movements, acute malnutrition and disease. At least 100 pregnant women at the camp are at risk of life-threatening complications due to a lack of adequate maternal care.

“Members of the Fulani community face persecution on two fronts – from armed groups and the military. Instead of receiving protection, they are being denied their rights to personal liberty, livelihood, movement, education and healthcare. We met people who described losing parents, siblings, spouses, children and grandchildren at the camp. Such tragedies only add to their suffering,” said Isa Sanusi, Director of Amnesty International Nigeria.

SOMALIA

The Somali government said on Wednesday that its forces had killed at least 22 al-Shabab fighters in an operation in the Lower Shabelle region.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

The Trump administration blacklisted former DRC President Joseph Kabila on Thursday. Kabila is allegedly working with the M23 rebel group and its Rwandan patrons, and suffice to say that his reemergence last year (after several years abroad) in the M23-controlled city of Goma didn’t do much to dispel that allegation. A Congolese military court subsequently sentenced him to execution in absentia. He’s still believed to be living in Goma and the US Treasury Department accused him of helping to finance M23’s operations.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod oblast, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said via social media on Friday morning that a Ukrainian drone strike had killed two teenagers in that province.

UKRAINE

What appeared to be an emerging diplomatic spat over a shipment of allegedly stolen Ukrainian grain heading for Israel was diffused on Thursday when its prospective importer refused to take delivery. The Israel Grain Importers Association announced that the Russian cargo vessel Panormitis will be required to find an alternative destination for its discharge, and maritime tracking data showed the vessel heading away from the Israeli port at Haifa. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had accused the Israeli government of knowingly accepting Ukrainian grain as the Panormitis approached. It would have been the second Russian vessel to unload allegedly Ukrainian grain at Haifa this month. The Israeli Foreign Ministry rejected claims that it had backed down due to Ukrainian pressure and instead maintained its position that Kyiv had not offered any evidence to show that the grain was in fact taken from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi has instituted a maximum two-month deployment period for front line soldiers, amid a public scandal over the conditions they have been enduring. Relatives of soldiers in one Ukrainian brigade circulated pictures of their loved ones last week showing them in disturbingly emaciated condition. This forced the Ukrainian military to acknowledge that it has not been able to keep front line units supplied with food and water (to say nothing of ammunition and other materiel), a disruption it blamed on Russian drone strikes. The Ukrainians have experimented with using robotic devices (“ground drones”) to deliver supplies while minimizing the risk of casualties, but those devices are still frequently targeted by Russian strikes. The deployment limit could help—if the already overstretched Ukrainian military can actually implement it.

KOSOVO

Acting Kosovan President Albulena ​Haxhiu has scheduled the country’s next snap election for June 7. The contest became inevitable when parliament failed again to elect an actual president earlier this week. This will be Kosovo’s third parliamentary election in about 16 months.

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AMERICAS

VENEZUELA

An American Airlines flight from Miami landed in Caracas on Thursday, which is noteworthy inasmuch as it was the first direct flight from the US to Venezuela since 2019. It marks another step toward fully normalizing bilateral commercial and diplomatic relations in this new post-Nicolás Maduro era.

CUBA

According to the AP the US fuel blockade is crippling Cuban agriculture:

Eduardo Obiols Sobredo struggles to feed Cubans young and old, a task even harder now because of a U.S. energy blockade that has caused sweeping water and power outages along with severe gas shortages.

“I feel like crying,” the 58-year-old farmer said. “It’s so sad to see crops grown with so much effort go to waste, especially when you know there are so many who need them.”

Farming equipment is falling silent across Cuba, with no fuel to power it. Farmers like Obiols Sobredo are turning to animal and manual labor, but not everyone can afford it, and resources are limited.

As a result, poverty is deepening and hunger is increasing across Cuba, a country of nearly 10 million people. The quality and quantity of fruit and vegetables is diminishing, and prices are surging even further beyond the means of many across the island nation.

While the Iran war pinches energy supplies around the world, Cuba is the rare place blaming the Trump administration’s targeted actions instead.

UNITED STATES

Finally, at The Ideas Letter Daniel Bessner offers his interpretation of our current geopolitical moment, with the US losing primacy and an unfamiliar kind of multipolarity emerging:

This new multipolar world order will be very different from the bipolar system that existed during the Cold War. In the latter conflict, the two superpowers, despite occasional diplomatic and economic engagement, largely operated independently and devoted significant resources to fighting each other in proxy wars on behalf of universalistic ideological projects. It will also be nothing like the unipolar moment, in which the United States exerted unprecedented economic, military, political, and cultural influence over global affairs. Finally, it will be unlike the Concert of Europe that lasted from the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 until the outbreak of World War I. Whereas in the latter period the world’s most powerful states operated within a shared diplomatic culture refined through centuries of interaction, nothing like that exists today.

Above all, we are entering an era in which ideology will matter less to geopolitical competition than it did in the nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries. In the last two hundred years, the world’s most important powers fought in favor of particular ideologies such as liberalism, fascism, and communism that they considered to be globally applicable. That period is over. Instead, what unites the world’s powers today is that they are not fighting in favor of universalist visions of the good society but are instead committed to the pursuit of material national interest. Ours is therefore the first era in two centuries in which raw power is the sole end of international politics.

To avoid the outbreak of a major war, we must confront this reality openly and honestly. And a good way to do so is to turn to the past, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt envisioned a world similar to the one presently emerging.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

April 28, 224: This is the date generally given for the Battle of Hormozdgan, which effectively ended Parthian rule over the Persian Empire and installed the Sasanian dynasty in its place. Then-Emperor Artabanus IV was responding to the rise of the Sasanids under Ardashir V, king of Pars. Ardashir’s smaller but better armed and better prepared force met the Parthians at Hormozdgan—the location of which remains unconfirmed but was probably near the Iranian town of Ram-Hormoz—and won a decisive victory, killing Artabanus in the process. Ardashir V of Pars soon became Ardashir I of Persia, and the Sasanians ruled the empire until the Arab invasion swept them (and the Persian Empire in general) aside in the 7th century.

April 28, 1192: The newly elected king of Jerusalem, Conrad of Montferrat, is assassinated in the city of Tyre.

April 29, 1770: The HMS Endeavour, commanded by Royal Navy Captain James Cook, makes landfall at what is now eastern Australia’s Botany Bay. Cook’s expedition had set out on August 26, 1768, in part tasked with searching for the hitherto only rumored Terra Australis Incognita (‘unknown southern land’). Cook claimed the eastern portion of what was then called “New Holland” for Britain, giving it the name “New South Wales.” But Royal Society geographers insisted that there must be a larger southern landmass that Cook had missed, so he made a second voyage (1772-1775) that included the first European crossing of the Antarctic Circle and proved that no such landmass existed in temperate waters. A Russian vessel is believed to have been the first to sight the ice sheet around the actual southern landmass, Antarctica, in 1820.

April 29, 1916: A British army besieged at Kut, in Iraq, surrenders to the Ottomans in what was the worst military disaster in British history to that point.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Lebanese Health Ministry reported on Wednesday that the Israeli military (IDF) killed “three emergency workers” (out of at least nine killed in total) in an apparent double-tap strike on the town of Madjal Zoun. Lebanese media is additionally reporting at least five killed in another IDF attack on the town of Jebchit, and the Lebanese army says that a strike on the town of Bint Jbeil killed one of its soldiers along with his brother.

The Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture issued a joint statement with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program on Wednesday warning of a food crisis affecting some 1.24 million Lebanese people. The statement anticipates that they will face “crisis levels or worse” of food insecurity between now and August as a result of the war and associated displacement.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

IDF strikes on Gaza killed at least five people on Tuesday, including a nine year old. The child had apparently strayed too close to the “yellow line” in the Khan Younis area. On Wednesday the IDF killed one paramedic in Gaza and one person, apparently a suspect in an earlier knife attack on Israeli personnel, in a raid on a West Bank town near the city of Ramallah. It later killed a 16 year old in a raid in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that “new maps” that the IDF issued to aid groups (but did not make public) last month show it claiming control of an additional 11 percent of Gaza on top of the 53 percent it controls under the terms of the current “ceasefire.” This leaves thousands of Palestinians in a sort of limbo area between the original “yellow line” and this new “orange line.” The Israelis claim that the “orange line” is only meant to be used as a reference for aid distribution and reflects areas where NGOs need to coordinate their operations with the IDF. Supposedly it has no bearing on civilians. It’s pretty well established at this point that the IDF has been moving the “yellow line” anyway, so the distinction between these two lines may be meaningless.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

The UAE government announced on Tuesday that it is withdrawing from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), effective May 1. It is not the first country to quit the cartel but is by far the most significant—the UAE was OPEC’s third largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and Iraq last year. It is the fifth largest member in terms of proven oil reserves. The Emiratis are also apparently leaving the OPEC+ framework, which includes large non-OPEC oil producers like Russia, Brazil, Kazakhstan, and Mexico. Its presence outside those structures will meaningfully reduce their capacity to regulate global oil supply and prices (a capacity that had already taken a hit given the US emergence as the world’s largest oil producer several years ago). Oil supply and price are currently severely constrained by the Iran war so it will take some time to see what effect this UAE decision will have.

This move came without warning but is not entirely out of the blue, given the rising tensions between the UAE and de facto OPEC leader Saudi Arabia over the past couple of years. The most obvious reason for the exit is that, as The Conversation’s Kristian Coates Ulrichsen writes, Emirati leaders want to pump and sell more oil than they’re currently allowed to do under OPEC+ production limits. They’ve invested in increasing their production capacity and have previously expressed frustration over limits that are meant to prop up oil prices artificially (and that have been largely championed by the Saudis).

But there are other geopolitical factors at play, including the Saudi-Emirati rivalry but now also including an Emirati sense that they’ve suffered a disproportionate share of Iran’s retaliation during the war without getting the support they expected from their fellow Gulf states. Emirati officials say they’re “reviewing” the country’s other international relationships over that grievance but they don’t expect to withdraw from any other organizations (like the Gulf Cooperation Council). This grievance has pushed the UAE—at least in the short-term—in closer alignment to a US government that would prefer lower oil prices for political reasons (its asinine decision to start a war in the Persian Gulf notwithstanding) and may not be all that choked up about disarray within OPEC. And with the Emiratis potentially seeking economic relief from the US it’s not a huge leap to speculate that leaving OPEC is a topic that’s come up in recent discussions between UAE and US officials.

IRAN

Donald Trump gave an interview to his friends at Axios on Wednesday in which he said that he intends to maintain the US naval blockade on Iran until Tehran agrees to meet his demands (whatever those are at this point) on its nuclear program. This interview came after a bit of media speculation about next steps in the Iran war the previous day. The Wall Street Journal reported, in keeping with what Trump later told Axios, that he’d already begun telling aides that he prefers maintaining the blockade to either resuming the shooting war or declaring victory and getting out. Reuters reported that US intelligence agencies have been tasked with assessing how Iran might respond in a scenario where Trump declares victory and gets out, which means that is or at least was on the table. I suppose Trump has now clarified his position, though given how often he changes his mind (I use the term loosely) no interview is going to be entirely clarifying.

Trump’s bet is that economic pressure will force the Iranians to fold before the US does. His rejection of the Iranian offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in return for ending the war and the blockade has sent oil prices back into the $120 per barrel range so that theory is going to be put to the test quickly. The Iranian economy is undoubtedly worsening—the rial, already basically worthless, fell to a whopping 1.81 million per US dollar on Wednesday and is, as far as I know, still dropping. Authorities have taken several steps to increase commerce via the country’s land borders but infrastructure has been battered, people are out of work, food costs are reportedly rising, and wartime restrictions (especially the internet throttling that began during the protests back in January) are making it difficult to do business.

The question is not whether the blockade can impose economic pain on Iran, it’s whether the Iranian government can withstand that pain long enough to force the US to reconsider its approach. The closure of the Persian Gulf continues to pay havoc with the global economy and maintaining this level of naval pressure is not cheap or logistically easy. The Pentagon is telling Congress that the war has cost $25 billion so far, a figure that manages to be both huge (Spencer Ackerman notes that it’s comparable to what the US military was spending during the height of the Afghanistan “surge”) and suspiciously low given that outside estimates were pegging the cost at $25 billion a month ago. It is unclear how long the US can maintain its current approach.

(It may be worth noting here that The Washington Post reported on Wednesday afternoon that the Pentagon is preparing to rotate the USS Gerald R. Ford and its carrier group back to the US. Although the Ford has been stationed in the Mediterranean and is not participating directly in the blockade, its many reported maintenance issues are a prime example of the stress that builds up when these units remain deployed for months on end—ten in this case—which seems fairly relevant in the context of a major and now open-ended maritime operation.)

If the economic pressure is enough to cause either side to blink the question becomes whether “blinking” means giving up or going back to the shooting war. The Axios piece above mentions that the US military’s Central Command “has prepared a plan for a ‘short and powerful’ wave of strikes on Iran in hopes of breaking the negotiating deadlock.” That would not break the deadlock but it would restart the war. It is in fact the same imbecilic logic that started the war in the first place, with Trump (at Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence) figuring that a solid weekend of bombing and political assassinations would bring the Iranians to their knees. If at first you don’t succeed, etc. Meanwhile, anonymous Iranian officials are threatening unspecified retaliation if the US blockade isn’t lifted soon. So there are threats coming from both parties even if neither seems quite ready to start fighting again.

ASIA

THAILAND

The AP has published a photo essay on the environmental damage that rare earth mining is causing in Southeast Asia:

Thailand is bearing the brunt as toxic runoff from rare earth mines in upstream Myanmar and Laos seep into the Mekong Basin, threatening millions who rely on its waters for farms and fisheries.

These heavy metal toxins imperil Southeast Asia’s globally important, multi-billion-dollar produce industry, backbone of its developing economies.

“The Mekong and Kok Rivers are both a source of food and income, which gives life to the people,” said Sayan Khamnueng of the Living Rivers Association. “The river contaminants are the biggest transboundary issue we’ve ever faced.”

Thailand’s response to the spreading problem has been limited to monitoring levels of heavy metals and educating communities about health risks. That raises concerns for Cambodia and Vietnam, downstream.

CHINA

The United States currently owes more than $4.5 billion to the United Nations in the form of unpaid dues and unfulfilled support for UN peacekeeping operations. Rather than simply pay that money as owed, the Trump administration is apparently circulating a list of demands that it wants the UN to meet first. Mostly these demands involve general austerity measures to shrink the UN and reduce its already meager capabilities, but one of the demands is directed at China, or more specifically at the “tens of millions of dollars” that Beijing deposits each year in “a discretionary fund housed in the office of the U.N. secretary-general.” Apparently this is supposed to reduce Chinese influence within the UN. If the US is really worried about losing UN influence relative to China I would think that paying its bills would be a logical step to take, but what do I know?

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AFRICA

SUDAN

In Sudan-related news:

• A drone strike killed at least 11 people in the city of Rabak, in southeastern Sudan’s White Nile state, on Tuesday. The strike targeted the “Joint Forces,” an alliance of militant groups that are supporting the Sudanese military (SAF), so the Rapid Support Forces group was presumably responsible.

• Also on Tuesday, the SAF said that its forces had repelled a new RSF attack on the Sali area in neighboring Blue Nile state. The RSF has attacked that locale at least twice in the past week.

• Elsewhere in Blue Nile, the Sudan Doctors Network issued a new warning on Wednesday that the presence of over 100,000 displaced persons in the state capital, Ad-Damazin, is stretching that city to the breaking point. The longer the displacement continues without significant intervention the closer this situation is going to get to a major catastrophe.

• The UN has blacklisted Algoney Hamdan Dagalo, the brother of RSF leader Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, along with three Colombian mercenaries accused of procuring additional mercenaries on the RSF’s behalf.

MALI

The Malian military reportedly chased Islamic State fighters out of the town of Ménaka on Wednesday. Although they did not participate in the weekend offensive involving Tuareg rebels and Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin fighters, IS appears to have tried to take advantage of the chaos of that operation to seize the town, which is located near the Nigerien border. Elsewhere across northern Mali, civilians and security forces alike appear to be preparing themselves for a new round of militant attacks.

NIGERIA

The Nigerian military claimed on Wednesday that its forces have killed at least 18 militants in multiple operations in the country’s northeastern Borno state. Followup airstrikes were still reportedly being conducted so those operations aren’t entirely over as yet.

SOUTH SUDAN

A new report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Program, and UNICEF released on Tuesday warns that some 7.8 million people in South Sudan (56 percent of the country’s population) are at risk of severe food insecurity due to “conflict and displacement.” It further estimates that some 2.2 million South Sudanese children aged six months to five years are facing “acute malnutrition” and some 700,000 are at “grave risk” of death. Worsening clashes between the South Sudanese military and various militant groups have made humanitarian intervention much more difficult in a country where living conditions were already poor.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

There are several items of note:

• Russian attacks killed at least three people and wounded another 17 across Ukraine on Wednesday. Heavy fighting in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast reportedly forced the displacement of at least 867 people from areas near the front line, according to Russia’s Interfax news service.

• Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone on Wednesday and according to Trump they discussed a potential ceasefire. Or as he put it to reporters, “I suggested a little bit of a cease-fire and I think he might do that.” I hope nobody is holding their breath on this, but after their brief (and disputed) Easter ceasefire earlier this month it is conceivable that the parties could agree to do it again for the “Victory Day” commemoration on May 9.

• The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry summoned Israel’s ambassador on Tuesday after a second Russian cargo ship allegedly carrying stolen Ukrainian grain docked at Haifa. The previous incident earlier this month prompted a request from the Ukrainians for the Israelis to detain that Russian vessel, which apparently fell on deaf ears. Once could be an oversight but twice is a pattern and the tenor of Ukrainian comments has turned more critical of the Israeli government, which has responded by insisting that Ukrainian officials haven’t offered any evidence that the grain was stolen and criticizing their decision to make this issue public.

• Acting US ambassador to Ukraine Julie Davis, who also serves as US ambassador to Cyprus, announced on Tuesday that she’s stepping down in June and The Financial Times reported that she is leaving because of frustrations with the Trump administration’s Ukraine policy. Davis has been serving as US chargé d’affaires in Kyiv since May, after previous ambassador Bridget Brink resigned for similar reasons. Aside from disagreements over Ukraine, Davis was reportedly “blindsided” when Trump nominated Republican mega-donor John Breslow to replace her in Cyprus back in October.

KOSOVO

The Kosovan parliament missed its final deadline to elect a new national president on Tuesday, ensuring that the country will hold its third parliamentary election in roughly 18 months sometime later this year. Having already failed to elect a president last month the writing was on the wall, but Kosovan Prime Minister Albin Kurti gave it one last try before the legal deadline expired at midnight. As before, opposition parties boycotted the session and thus denied Kurti the two-thirds quorum necessary for a legitimate election. Parliament speaker Albulena ​Haxhiu, who is also acting president at the moment, should announce the date of the election soon.

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AMERICAS

COLOMBIA

The ex-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) Central General Staff faction has claimed responsibility for a bombing on a highway in Colombia’s Cauca department that killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens more on Saturday. It issued a somewhat apologetic statement attributing the bombing to a “tactical error” made amid clashes with Colombian security forces.

PANAMA

The United States and the governments of five Latin American and Caribbean nations—Bolivia, Costa Rica, Guyana, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago—issued a joint statement on Wednesday criticizing China for imposing what they called “targeted economic pressure” on Panama after an unfavorable court ruling. Back in January, the Panamanian Supreme Court annulled the contracts under which the Hong Kong firm CK Hutchison was administering the Balboa and Cristóbal terminals at the Pacific and Atlantic ends (respectively) of the Panama Canal. Beijing has since detained dozens of Panamanian-flagged ships, including 70 in March alone. The court’s decision to invalidate those contracts came in the context of previous threats by Donald Trump to seize the canal and US companies frequently use Panamanian-flagged container vessels for moving cargo so there are clearly bigger geopolitical issues at work here.

MEXICO

The US Justice Department announced on Wednesday that it is charging several officials in Mexico’s Sinaloa state, including governor Rubén Rocha, of colluding with the Sinaloa Cartel. This is certainly an escalation in the Trump administration’s assault on Mexican institutions and in particular on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, given that Rocha is also from her Morena Party. Rocha issued a statement via social media saying that the charges “lack any truth or foundation whatsoever.”

HAITI

The last detachment of Kenyan police left Haiti on Monday, their failed anti-gang mission giving way to the UN-backed “Gang Suppression Force” that’s supposed to feature manpower contributions from Chad and several other still unnamed countries. The Kenyan-led mission never approached either its funding or manpower goals and was generally ineffectual. The new GSF operation appears to be off to a better start on both fronts and it is hoped that it will reach its full manpower extent (around 5500 personnel) by October.

UNITED STATES

Finally, while we’re tallying up the costs of the Iran war, The Intercept reports on a new Brown University estimate of the money that the Trump administration has spent on its American military adventures:

The Pentagon won’t disclose the price tag of its wars in the Western Hemisphere, but a new analysis by Brown University’s Costs of War Project, provided exclusively to The Intercept, offers the first window onto the ballooning costs.

By the most cautious estimate, the U.S. military’s intervention in Venezuela and attacks on boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific — Operation Absolute Resolve and Operation Southern Spear, respectively — have already cost taxpayers at least $4.7 billion.

The Costs of War analysis is the most comprehensive accounting of the U.S. air, naval, and Special Operations expenses — including some troop deployments and munitions — used in the two campaigns between August 1, 2025, and March 31, 2026. The need for such an estimate stems from the refusal of the Department of War to provide a tally of costs to lawmakers or The Intercept.

The researchers behind the Costs of War estimate say it’s almost assuredly an undercount.

April 27, 1960: The Togolese Republic declares its independence from France. Commemorated annually as Independence Day in Togo.

April 27, 1961: The Republic of Sierra Leone gains its independence from the United Kingdom as the result of negotiations that had taken place the previous year. Commemorated annually as Independence Day in Sierra Leone.

April 27, 1978: The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, with the support of the Soviet Union, undertakes a coup against Afghan President Mohammed Daoud Khan that is known as the “Saur Revolution.” PDPA leader Nur Muhammad Taraki assumed the presidency after Khan’s execution on April 28, and mismanaged things so badly that his own party ousted and executed him in September 1979. That incident led directly to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 and, with few breaks, Afghanistan was in a state of war from then on until the US withdrawal in 2021.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) carried out multiple airstrikes in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley on Monday, the first time it’s attacked that part of the country since the start of the “ceasefire” on April 16. I hadn’t seen any reports of casualties at time of writing.

The New Arab’s Joe Macaron reports that the three week extension of the Lebanese “ceasefire” came with a major stipulation: the Lebanese government is supposed to have a “clear and achievable” plan for disarming Hezbollah by the time it expires on May 17. If it does not, and presumably the Israeli government will be the entity that determines whether the plan is in fact “clear and achievable,” then it seems that all bets will be off. There will of course be no discussion of an IDF withdrawal, or even an actual IDF ceasefire instead of whatever this is, until the plan is submitted.

Read more

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TODAY IN HISTORY

April 25, 775: An Armenian rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate is cut short at the Battle of Bagrevand. Many of the leading Armenian families that supported the uprising suffered greatly in its aftermath and the Abbasids began encouraging migration from other parts of their empire into the southern Caucasus. This policy helped to remake the region of Caucasian Albania, which more or less corresponds to modern Azerbaijan.

April 25, 1846: A small detachment of US soldiers is resoundingly defeated by a much larger Mexican contingent in what became known as the Thornton Affair, after the US commander Captain Seth Thornton. This was the first military engagement of the Mexican-American War, which ended in February 1848 with Mexico’s surrender, including its recognition of the US annexation of Texas and the cession of the territory that includes the modern states of California, Nevada, and Utah as well as parts of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.

April 25, 1898: The US Congress declares war on Spain retroactive to the imposition of a US naval blockade on Cuba on April 21. This marks the start of the Spanish-American War, which ended in August with Spain’s surrender and the cession of Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico to the US along with a renunciation of Spain’s claim on Cuba.

April 26, 1803: At around 1 in the afternoon a hail of some 3000 rock fragments, weighing around 37 kilograms in total, rains down upon the town of L’Aigle in France’s Normandy region. A French scientist named Jean-Baptiste Biot was dispatched to catalog and study the event by the French Academy of Sciences. His fieldwork determined conclusively that the fragments were of extraterrestrial origin, establishing near-definitive proof for the hitherto widely questioned existence of meteors. Biot’s work at L’Aigle birthed an entirely new field of study, meteoritics, and was the first of many significant scientific contributions he would make in his career.

April 26, 2005: Under considerable international pressure due to its suspected involvement in the February 14 assassination of then-Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic al-Hariri, the Syrian government withdraws the last of its occupation forces from Lebanon. Syria had invaded Lebanon in May 1976 during that country’s civil war, in support of Maronite and conservative Muslim factions and in opposition to the Palestine Liberation Organization and leftist militias. Tensions later emerged between the Syrians and some Maronite leaders, including former Lebanese President Michel Aoun. Initially the Syrian military presence in Lebanon was legitimized by the Arab League under the auspices of a peacekeeping force, but by the mid-1980s the Arab League had stopped renewing its mandate and the Syrian presence in Lebanon could be considered a full-fledged military occupation.

INTERNATIONAL

A new report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) finds that global military spending hit a collective $2.9 trillion last year, breaking the record set all the way back in 2024. Amazingly the US actually spent less than it did the previous year, owing to the absence of new military aid to Ukraine. But massive increases in military spending across Europe, including by Russia and Ukraine, and across Asia, including by China and Japan, more than made up the difference.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least four people in two airstrikes in southern Lebanon’s Nabatieh province on Saturday. Both strikes took place north of the Litani River, outside of the zone in which the IDF has decreed it will operate with impunity. On Sunday the IDF issued evacuation orders for seven towns north of the river as it prepared to retaliate for a Hezbollah attack that had killed one Israeli soldier earlier in the day. It proceeded to kill at least 14 people and wound 37 more. That made it the single deadliest day since the start of Lebanon’s ostensible ceasefire on April 16.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least four people in multiple incidents across Gaza on Sunday. Those attacks capped off a busy “ceasefire” weekend for the Israelis, who killed at least 13 people on Friday. Local officials in Gaza say the death toll under the “ceasefire” has now topped 800.

The Palestinian Authority held municipal elections in the West Bank and in Gaza’s Deir al-Balah community on Sunday. Turnout was low—around 56 percent in the West Bank and 23 percent in Deir al-Balah—but authorities seemed pleased that the vote happened at all and characterized it as a sort of dry run for a potential presidential and/or parliamentary election. PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party seems to have been the big winner, despite his and its overall unpopularity. Its candidates apparently ran unopposed in much of the West Bank. Hamas’s favored list (the party itself officially boycotted the vote) won only two of the 15 council seats that were up for grabs in Deir al-Balah.

IRAN

To I assume no great surprise, US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner did not wind up meeting with Iranian representatives in Pakistan over the weekend, as the Trump administration had teased on Friday. In fact the two men never left the US. Donald Trump tried to portray this to reporters as though he’d called off the talks, but in reality Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left Pakistan and thus rendered the Witkoff-Kushner trip pointless. Trump said via social media that if the Iranians want to talk they can pick up a phone, while blaming the “tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership’” for the lack of diplomacy during his ceasefire. He’s made repeated assertions about chaos in Tehran without offering any evidence to support them. It is a convenient way for him to frame his own diplomatic failures.

Iranian state media is claiming that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has begun “reverse engineering” undetonated US munitions. Who knows if this is actually true, but it would be in keeping with the rest of this boneheaded conflict if it wound up advancing Iran’s missile program instead of degrading it. Meanwhile, US state media Axios is reporting that Araghchi conveyed to the Pakistanis a proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war, while tabling nuclear issues for future negotiations. One assumes that the Trump administration won’t go for this because US officials feel that the war, or at least the current US naval blockade, is their best chance of extracting nuclear concessions from Tehran.

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN

The Afghan Foreign Ministry is assuring the 1100 or so Afghan nationals who are currently stranded in Qatar by the Trump administration’s xenophobia that they need not worry about returning home. As we noted a few days ago, the administration is offering those Afghan nationals a choice between returning to Afghanistan or being relocated to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. All of them should be eligible for US visas under the program that aimed to protect Afghans who worked with the US military between 2001 and 2021 from reprisals by the Taliban, but the administration scrapped that program last year and they’ve remained in Qatar. The Taliban insists that they will face no violence if they go back to Afghanistan but there’s not much reason to believe that and it’s unclear how many would actually agree to return. That said, there do not seem to be many (or any) takers for moving to the DRC either.

MALAYSIA

The Wall Street Journal reports that the US search for non-Chinese sources of rare earth metals has turned in part to Malaysia:

The Pentagon’s push to get its hands on the rarest of the rare-earth elements leads all the way to this small port city [Kuntan] in Malaysia.

Here, Lynas Rare Earths, an Australian company, has begun pumping out heavy rare earths, the elusive kind that China dominates.

“No one had made a separated heavy rare earth outside of China in 20 years,” said Amanda Lacaze, Lynas’s chief executive. The company’s chief operating officer, Pol Le Roux, said it had actually been 30 years.

When China cut off exports of heavy rare-earth elements during trade tensions last year, automobile factories in the U.S. and Europe were forced to stop production. Now, Lynas is at the vanguard of an effort by the U.S. and allies to prevent Beijing from using its monopoly power to squeeze the rest of the world.

The Pentagon is opening its wallet in unusual ways to ensure supplies. In March 2026, Lynas announced a preliminary $96 million deal in which the Pentagon would purchase Lynas’s rare earths.

And Las Vegas-headquartered MP Materials, backed by billions of dollars in U.S. government support, is planning its own refinery for heavy rare earths that is set to come online later this year.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

Drone strikes killed at least seven people in El-Obeid, the capital of Sudan’s North Kordofan state, on Saturday, according to the Sudan Doctors Network. It described a series of attacks specifically targeting residential parts of the city. El-Obeid is under military control, so while there’s been no claim of responsibility it’s safe to assume that the strikes were carried out by Rapid Support Forces militants.

MALI

A coordinated offensive involving Tuareg rebels from the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) and jihadist militants from Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM) struck multiple locations across Mali on Saturday, killing a still-unknown number of people including Malian Defense Minister Sadio Camara. He was killed in an attack on the town of Kati, located just north of the Malian capital Bamako and the site of the country’s largest military base. Bamako’s airport was also among Saturday’s targets, along with major towns and cities primarily in northern Mali where the FLA operates. It’s still difficult to assess the aftermath and in some places the fighting hasn’t ended, for example in the strategically important northeastern town of Kidal.

To my knowledge this is the first case of JNIM and Tuareg rebels collaborating on a major military operation but there is a prior relationship there—one of JNIM’s constituent organizations, Ansar Dine, emerged amid the 2012 Tuareg uprising to which the FLA also traces its origins. JNIM leader Iyad Ag Ghali was a prominent participant in that rebellion and in the 1990-1995 Tuareg rebellion. It’s unclear what this collaboration might mean moving forward but what is clear is that neither the Malian junta nor its Russian Africa Corps auxiliaries were prepared for this assault. That could undermine the junta’s legitimacy with Malians and, more importantly, among the lower ranks of the Malian military.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

Russian and Ukrainian airstrikes killed at least 16 people in total over the weekend, including at least nine in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Ukrainian attacks killed at least one person in Crimea, at least three people in Russian-occupied Luhansk oblast, and at least one in Russia’s Belgorod oblast. There are also reports of at least two people killed in Ukraine’s Chernihiv oblast and at least one in Zaporizhzhia oblast, which would bring the total number of deaths to at least 17. This weekend marked the 40th anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Ukraine’s Chernobyl power plant, which prompted new calls from the International Atomic Energy Agency for repairs to that site’s protective outer dome. A Russian strike damaged it over a year ago.

BULGARIA

Responsible Statecraft’s Ventzislav Marinov and Almut Rochowanski argue that media coverage of presumptive new Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev, that attributes his party’s recent electoral victory to his supposed anti-Europe/pro-Russia sentiments, is missing the mark:

Radev, who served as Bulgaria’s president from 2017 until earlier this year, has called for Europe to start talking to Russia, but this hardly amounts to being “Putin’s proxy.” He trained at U.S. Air Force Squadron Officer School, obtained a master’s degree at the Air War College, and, as commander of Bulgaria’s air force, oversaw NATO interoperability. A former fighter pilot with the rank of general, his pragmatic approach to making peace with Russia may reflect a veteran’s wariness of war.

Radev is nominally from the center left, but in practice has come across as a “milquetoast neoliberal.” His electoral manifesto reads blandly centrist, as if written by AI.

Under the opportunistic gaze of foreign policy elites in Brussels, Berlin or Washington, Bulgaria’s elections were all about geopolitics, about the single-minded focus on the war with Russia. But while matters of war, peace, security, and Bulgaria’s place in the world played into voters’ decisions, they did so for reasons centered on their own lives and communities.

For example, how can strong majorities of Bulgarians support EU membership and yet vote for a candidate who has been portrayed as an EU-skeptic? Perhaps it is because the gains from EU membership have been distributed unequally, between the cities and the countryside, between the elites and average citizens.

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AMERICAS

COLOMBIA

A bombing targeting a bus in Colombia’s Cauca department killed at least 20 people and wounded at least 36 others on Saturday. Authorities are attributing it to the ex-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) “Central General Staff” faction. This was the deadliest of a recent spate of violent incidents in Cauca and other parts of southwestern Colombia—according to the AP “more than two dozen incidents [have been] reported in the past three days.” Another ex-FARC faction is also believed to be contributing to the spree.

UNITED STATES

As you’ve no doubt heard, a gunman attacked the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington on Saturday night but was subdued by security forces before he could cause serious harm (one US Secret Service officer was shot in his bulletproof vest but appears to be doing well). This isn’t something that’s really on the radar of this newsletter but I felt I should mention it at least. I gather that the Trump administration is attempting to paint the attacker as a far left, “anti-Christian” zealot, but reporting by Ken Klippenstein suggests that he was in fact a practicing Christian who was motivated in part by outrage over a recent social media post in which Donald Trump portrayed himself as Jesus.

Elsewhere, the US military blew up another boat in the eastern Pacific on Friday, killing at least two people. It blew up yet another on Sunday, killing at least three people. US Southern Command has now extrajudicially executed more than 185 people since beginning this spree in early September.

Finally, TomDispatch’s Alfred McCoy places the Iran war into a historical context of imperial decline:

Writing more than 2,000 years ago, the Greek historian Plutarch gave us an eloquent description of what modern historians now call “micro-militarism.” When an imperial power like Athens then, or America now, is in decline, its leaders often react emotionally by mounting seemingly bold military strikes in hopes of regaining the imperial grandeur that’s slipping through their fingers. Instead of another of the great victories the empire won at its peak of power, however, such military misadventures only serve to accelerate the ongoing decline, erasing whatever aura of imperial majesty remains and revealing instead the moral rot deep inside the ruling elite.

There is mounting historical evidence that America is indeed an empire in steep decline, while President Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran is becoming the sort of micro-military disaster that helped destroy successive empires over the past 2,500 years — from ancient Athens to medieval Portugal to modern Spain, Great Britain, and now the United States. And at the core of every such ill-fated war-making decision lay a problematic leader, often born into wealth and prestige, whose personal inadequacies reflected and ramified the many irrationalities that make imperial decline such a painful process.

During that demoralizing downward spiral, imperial armies, so lethal in an empire’s ascent, can err by plunging their countries into draining, even disastrous “micro-military” misadventures — psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the loss of imperial power by trying to occupy new territories or display awe-inspiring military might. Although such micro-militarism often chose targets that proved strategically unsustainable, the psychological pressures upon declining empires are so strong that they all too often gamble their prestige on just such misadventures. Not only did such disasters add financial pressures to a fading empire’s many troubles, but in a humiliating fashion, they also invariably exposed its eroding power while exacerbating the destabilizing impact of imperial decline in the capitals of empire (whether Athens, Lisbon, Madrid, London, or Washington, D.C.).

In our moment, when the bombs stop falling and the rubble is finally cleared from the streets of Tehran and Beirut, the impact on U.S. global power of such a de facto defeat will become all too clear — as alliances like NATO atrophy, American hegemony evaporates, legitimacy is lost, global disorder rises, and the world economy suffers.

April 24, 1547: Habsburg/Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s army virtually annihilates a smaller force led by Protestant princes John Frederick I of Saxony and Philip I of Hesse at the Battle of Mühlberg in Saxony. The battle, and particularly the capture of John Frederick, marked the effective end of the 1546-1547 Schmalkaldic War and the first iteration of the Schmalkaldic League, an alliance of Protestant German nobles. It did not, of course, mark the end of Protestantism. A second Schmalkaldic War in 1552 went worse for the Habsburgs and resulted in the Peace of Passau and, in 1555, the Peace of Augsburg and its famous principle of cuius regio, eius religio (“whose realm, their religion”).

April 24, 1915: Ottoman authorities arrest a group of around 250 Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul in what has come to be known as “Red Sunday.” They were forcibly deported to other parts of the empire and most were ultimately killed. The incident is considered a kind of “decapitation strike” against the empire’s Armenian community and is regarded as the first major event of the Armenian Genocide. April 24 is commemorated as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day within Armenia and by diaspora Armenians, as well as in countries that have recognized the genocide.

April 24, 1916: Some 1200 Irish republicans, including members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, commemorate Easter Monday by seizing a number of key positions in Dublin and declaring the advent of an independent “Irish republic.” The “Easter Rising,” as it’s known, was suppressed within six days by UK security forces, but the atrocities they committed during and after that suppression fueled greater levels of anti-UK sentiment among the Irish population. The Rising is now regarded as one of the major milestones of the “Irish revolutionary period,” as that period’s first serious armed conflict.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

The New Arab’s Mohamad Karkas reports that the Israeli military (IDF) is, without much international attention, continuing to brutalize southern Syria:

Local sources told The New Arab that a huge explosion rocked several areas in Quneitra province.

They said it originated from the destroyed city of Quneitra, where an Israeli military base is located, and resulted from demolition operations targeting buildings inside the city.

The sources explained that these explosions are part of a series of systematic demolition operations by Israel that the area has witnessed for some time.

This incident is an extension of similar events witnessed in the destroyed city of Quneitra in previous periods.

Israeli occupation forces carried out explosions and destruction that affected many buildings, including parts of al-Hassan bin al-Haytham Secondary School, the old Golan hospital, and the historic al-Andalus cinema.

These sites hold both historical and service value.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

April 23, 1817: Under their leader Miloš Obrenović, a group of Serbian rebels in the village of Takovo declare independence from the Ottoman Empire, setting off the Second Serbian Uprising. After a conflict that lasted until late July 1817, the rebels were able to win de facto independence from the Ottomans, who recognized their autonomous state as the “Principality of Serbia.” The Serbs finally gained full independence at the Congress of Berlin in 1878.

April 23, 1985: In what is considered one of the most catastrophically bad business decisions of all time, the Coca-Cola Company introduces a new formula for its flagship beverage. Although the new formula had outperformed the old one in taste tests, the move was so overwhelmingly unpopular that the company revived the old formula a mere three months later, first as “Coca-Cola Classic” and later, after it had phased out the new formula, as just “Coca-Cola” again. The switch seemed so baffling that it spawned a plethora of conspiracy theories, ranging from a ploy to boost sales to a cover story to disguise changes in the original formula (a switch from sugar to high fructose corn syrup and/or the removal of its remaining coca elements).

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

Israeli and Lebanese emissaries held their second round of direct talks in Washington on Thursday, this time including an in-person appearance by Donald Trump himself. They must have been so excited. Afterward Trump announced that they had agreed to extend the ten day ceasefire that went into effect last Friday for at least another three weeks. He suggested via social media that he could host a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun soon, perhaps within that three week window. At the very least these negotiations should begin to shift from preliminary to substantive, with a particular focus on convincing the Lebanese government to join Israel’s war against Hezbollah.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least four people in two airstrikes in Gaza on Thursday. Israeli officials claimed that one of the attacks, which killed one person and wounded several others in Khan Younis, targeted a group of “militants” but have said nothing about the other strike, which killed at least three people in the Maghazi displaced persons area. In the West Bank, meanwhile, IDF soldiers shot and killed a 15 year old during a raid in the city of Nablus.

KUWAIT

Kuwaiti authorities have released journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin after 52 days in detention for reporting on the war. He’d been arrested for “spreading false information, harming national security and misusing his mobile phone,” most likely because he posted a video of a US fighter crashing in Kuwait. He was apparently acquitted on all charges.

IRAN

In Iran-related news:

• Air defenses may have activated in Tehran on Thursday, as Iranian media reported explosions above the city. Given that those reports came a short time after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared during a security meeting that the IDF is just “awaiting a green light from the United States…to return Iran to the age of darkness and stone” I wouldn’t blame anybody for jumping to conclusions. However, at this point it doesn’t appear that there’s any definitive explanation for those explosions and certainly no indication that they were the result of any new Israeli and/or US attack.

• The USS George H. W. Bush and its carrier group arrived in the region on Thursday, adding to the armada that the US military has amassed around Iran. The newly arrived vessels will likely be put to use maintaining the US naval blockade but also if the Trump administration were contemplating a resumption of the shooting war then the arrival of a third aircraft carrier to the war zone would be a significant development.

• Donald Trump took to social media on Thursday to decree that the US Navy will “shoot and kill any boat” found to be laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. He also claimed that US “mine ‘sweepers’ are clearing the Strait right now” though that seems unlikely unless he’s referring to small anti-mine drones or something along those lines. The US Navy does have mine countermeasures vessels in the area but whether it would be willing to risk putting them in the strait under the current tenuous ceasefire is an open question. The Trump administration later broadcast via Barak Ravid that the “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy laid more mines in the Strait of Hormuz this week,” though whether that’s actually true or just a means to explain Trump’s post is unclear.

• The New York Times reported on Thursday that Iran’s power structure has changed fundamentally in the transition from former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei. Mojtaba, in this narrative, is relying heavily on a “collective of commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,” serving more as a “director of the board” than as a sole decision maker. To some degree this is a product of circumstance, as Mojtaba is in hiding and still physically compromised by the wounds he suffered in the airstrike that killed his father in late February. But it also reflects his longstanding relationship with senior IRGC figures and a dynamic in which he’s somewhat beholden to them for installing him in his position and maintaining him there. Those IRGC figures are likely to be less open to negotiation and compromise with the US than some of the senior civilian figures in the Iranian government, who had a stronger voice in deliberations under Ali Khamenei than they do now.

• AFP tries to project the degree to which the US blockade is likely to squeeze the Iranian economy and the consensus seems to be that it’s not going to be enough to force Tehran to surrender to Trump’s demands. A lengthy blockade—two to three months or beyond—could do a lot of damage but probably not as much damage as it will do to the Gulf Cooperation Council states, whose tolerance for economic pain is demonstrably lower than Iran’s. A better bet may be that global economic strife causes the Chinese government to nudge Iran toward concessions but it’s debatable whether it would do so and whether the Iranians would respond positively to that sort of pressure.

• The head of the United Nations Development Program, Alexander De Croo, warned on Thursday that the war’s disruptions to global fuel and fertilizer supplies could force some 30 million people into poverty. The UNDP is expecting a spike in food insecurity later this year, as the lack of proper fertilizer for this year’s planting season really starts to take effect. There’s nothing that can really be done to remedy that now.

ASIA

CAMBODIA

The US Treasury Department blacklisted Cambodian Senator Kok An on Thursday, accusing him of having ties to online scam operations based in that country. It also designated 28 people and entities that are allegedly part of his scam “network.”

INDONESIA

Indonesian Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa speculated at a symposium in Jakarta on Wednesday that it might be a neat idea to start charging tolls for ships traversing the Malacca Strait. It’s unclear if he was serious, kidding, or kidding on the square, but if it was either the first or third of those options it means that recent events involving the Strait of Hormuz have gotten people thinking about the potential for monetizing other major maritime chokepoints around the world. The revenues of such a tolling system, which would have to be split between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, could be substantial given that the strait is the most direct route between the Indian and Pacific oceans.

NORTH KOREA

The Russian and North Korean governments are planning to construct a new road bridge spanning their border along the Tumen River, according to a report from North Korean state media on Thursday. This is the latest expression of their blossoming bilateral relationship and is a project that Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un discussed back in 2024, when Putin visited Pyongyang to conclude a “comprehensive partnership” agreement with Kim. The bridge will link the North Korean border city of Rason to Russia’s national highway network.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The Sudanese military (SAF) says that it “launched a series of coordinated air and ground operations” across multiple Sudanese states on Thursday, targeting Rapid Support Forces air defense positions and facilities. The states targeted have been Blue Nile; North and West Kordofan; and South, Central, and North Darfur.

BURKINA FASO

Amid a recent surge in pieces assessing the administration of Burkinabè junta leader Ibrahim Traoré, Alex Thurston offers some thoughts about why he’s proven so popular both domestically and abroad:

Here we might pause to ask why it is Traoré who electrifies people when several other leaders, including like-minded ones, also came to power in coups around the same time and have ruled with styles that partly overlap with his. Traoré stands out among this group for several reasons:

• He came out of the middle ranks of the military, unlike Chad’s Mahamat Déby (whose father ruled that country from 1990-2021) and Niger’s Abdourahmane Tiani (who was head of the presidential guard at the time of the 2023 coup in Niger).

• He has ruled in an assertive style, one that welcomes international attention, in contrast to the quieter, more domestically focused and conventional style of Guinea’s Mamady Doumbouya (who took power in 2021 and who has a far different relationship to France - among other things, his wife is a French citizen).

• He is somehow more camera-ready, more of a romantic hero, than Mali’s Assimi Goïta, who is the most similar to Traoré of all the new Sahelian/West African military leaders. One could imagine a slightly different world in which Goïta, who also saw a significant amount of combat and carries an aura of a man of action, had become the key symbol of Sahelian and pan-African sovereignty in our era; but Traoré’s greater rhetorical skill and more ideological self-presentation (whether one credits him as a substantive heir to Sankara or not) have made him cut a much larger figure than Goïta.

We can understand Traoré’s appeal through these comparisons; another way to get at his appeal is to think about the even starker contrasts with other world leaders. Many analysts have talked convincingly about ours as an age of gerontocracy - from Biden to Trump to Netanyahu to Putin, the world stage is dominated by men who are well over seventy, as well as by a slate of middle-aged, mostly male and mostly unimaginative (or outright failed and feckless) leaders. Not all leaders are old, of course, but Traoré stands out as not just young but also youthful, conveying a kind of energy and purpose and confidence that make him seem, to many, like a compelling alternative to the status quo. For supporters, Traoré’s appeal seems to be enhanced - not dented - when he declares democracy to be a failed and violent system. Traoré comes across to supporters as a truth teller and a problem solver, not someone caught up in fealty to (what can be seen as) Western-backed political projects and hollow, faux-universal norms. The tremendous challenges facing Traoré and Burkina Faso, namely insecurity and poverty, also add to supporters’ sympathy for and confidence in his rejection of criticism, his assertions of rapid progress on the security front, and his nationalist discourse.

SOMALIA

Al Jazeera reports on the scale of Somalia’s climate- and conflict-driven hunger crisis:

EUROPE

RUSSIA

Anybody wondering about the efficacy of Western sanctions on Russia may be interested to know that, according to Forbes Russia, the collective wealth amassed by Russian billionaires now stands at “a record $696.5 billion,” which is a whopping 11 percent increase over the past year. Most of these folks made their fortunes in the energy and mining sectors and rising prices in those markets fueled the increase. Apparently we can count them among the small number of true winners in the US/Israeli war on Iran.

UKRAINE

Russian drone strikes killed at least three people and wounded another ten in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro overnight. Local officials accused the Russians of deliberately targeting a residential part of the city.

Elsewhere, despite evidence that they’re not working (see above), the European Union moved forward on Thursday with its 20th tranche of Russia sanctions since the start of this war in 2022. The new sanctions focus on the banking and energy sectors and include measures targeting Russian crypto traders. The EU also gave formal approval to its €90 billion Ukraine loan, the first disbursements from which should start arriving in Kyiv in the coming weeks. These measures were made possible because the Hungarian and Slovakian governments finally stopped blocking them, following the reopening of the Druzhba oil pipeline earlier this week.

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AMERICAS

BOLIVIA

Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Aramayo met with his Chilean counterpart, Francisco Pérez Mackenna, in La Paz on Thursday. Well, technically then met on the border and then traveled to La Paz for discussions. This is noteworthy in that those two countries broke off diplomatic ties back in 1975 after they failed to negotiate an accord that would have given Bolivia a Pacific coastline, something it lost after the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific. The new right-wing governments in both countries are apparently interested in restoring relations, though regaining access to the ocean remains a Bolivian policy goal so it’s unclear how they’ll manage that.

MEXICO

According to the AP the Mexican government has been struggling to get its story straight regarding the apparent presence of two CIA agents at a drug raid in Chihuahua state on Sunday (both were killed in a subsequent car accident which is how their presence became public). Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has been publicly opposed to direct US involvement in counternarcotics operations, initially professed no knowledge of the raid or any potential CIA involvement and threatened punitive action against the state government. But Mexican officials have since told reporters that federal security forces were involved in the raid and that there was some interaction between the federal government and US officials regarding the operation.

This doesn’t mean the CIA personnel participated in the operation directly, nor does it mean that if they did participate Mexican authorities would have been aware of it. But this is a sensitive subject for Sheinbaum’s government given the CIA’s…oh, let’s say checkered record in Latin America and her stated opposition to US personnel being involved in Mexico in anything more than a training and advisory capacity.

HAITI

The UN’s special envoy for Haiti, Carlos Ruiz Massieu, told reporters on Thursday that Haiti’s nascent “Gang Suppression Force” is actually generating more international support than expected. That would put it well ahead of the multinational police force it’s supposed to replace sometime this year, which never met its goals either in terms of money or manpower. According to Ruiz Massieu countries have pledged manpower in excess of the 5500 personnel the GSF is expected to field, and the UN says it’s already received monetary pledges in excess of $200 million. In addition to greater levels of support the GSF will also have the power to arrest suspected gang members, which the previous force apparently did not have.

UNITED STATES

Finally, Drop Site has additional detail on those Ecuadorian fishermen whose boat was the target of a US drone strike back in January. In addition to being marked for death despite no discernible connection to drug trafficking, they are alleging serious mistreatment while in US custody:

As the fishermen made their way toward what they hoped was safety on the nearby blue boat, an aircraft hovered directly overhead. Nearing closer, they spotted blonde-haired men, armed to the teeth, dressed in camouflage uniforms, and yelling “hands-up” in English. Flores said they began to pray, convinced they were going to die.

Guns drawn, the men placed hoods over the fishermens’ heads, handcuffed them, and held them on the blue ship’s scorching metal deck for over 24 hours, blistering their skin. The Ecuadorian crew of La Negra Francisca Duarte II were surprised to find themselves detained following the attack. Like Mero’s husband, they had been cleared to proceed by Ecuadorian coast guard personnel just hours earlier at a checkpoint near the Galápagos.

The gunmen, issuing instructions through an interpreter, offered no explanation for why they were being apprehended, nor did they bother to inquire what had happened, as a rescue team might, or search their boat for evidence, as a counternarcotics operation would. All but one fisherman were denied medical attention, despite the severity of what they had just endured. Held for days, they were refused food and given only one bottle of water.

The following day, despite being in Ecuadorian waters near the Galapagos Islands, the kidnappers transported the fishermen roughly 900 nautical miles north, turning them over to El Salvador’s coast guard.

April 22, 1809: Napoleon’s army defeats the Austrians under Archduke Charles at the Battle of Eckmühl, in Bavaria. The victory is considered a turning point in the 1809 War of the Fifth Coalition, because it blunted Austria’s invasion of Bavaria, which had caught the French leader somewhat by surprise, and allowed Napoleon to go on the offensive by invading Austria.

April 22, 1948: In one of the last major engagements before the civil war in Mandatory Palestine turned into the Arab-Israeli War, the Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah captures the Arab sections of the port city of Haifa from the Palestinians. Haifa was one of six largely mixed cities that the Haganah captured between the start of April and the middle of May. By the end of May, between voluntary flight and involuntary expulsions the number of Arabs living in those cities collectively dropped from an estimated 177,000 to an estimated 13,000.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least five people across southern Lebanon on Wednesday, including another journalist. The reporter, Amal Khalil, worked for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar. She was covering an earlier IDF strike on the village of at-Tiri when the IDF attacked a building in that same village, burying her in the rubble. Continued IDF strikes in the area prevented rescue workers from reaching the site for hours afterward. A second journalist caught in that same attack was recovered alive and is reportedly in serious condition. The IDF denies targeting journalists. Lebanese and Israeli delegations are scheduled to meet in Washington on Thursday, when the most immediate item on the agenda should be an extension of their current ten day “ceasefire.”

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TODAY IN HISTORY

April 21, 43 BCE: In the followup to April 14’s Battle of Forum Gallorum, Mark Antony’s army is again defeated by a Roman consular army led by Aulus Hirtius with the support of Octavian at the Battle of Mutina. Conveniently for Octavian, Hirtius died during the battle, and when his fellow consul Pansa died the following day of wounds suffered at Forum Gallorum, Octavian was left to claim sole credit for the victory. The newly empowered Octavian soon turned on the Senate and later allied with Antony under the framework of the Second Triumvirate.

April 21, 1526: An army led by a Timurid prince named Babur defeats the Lodi Sultanate at Panipat and lays the foundation for the Mughal dynasty.

April 21, 1802 (probably): A Saudi-Wahhabi army/mob sacks the city of Karbala.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

Hezbollah fired a number of rockets and drones into northern Israel on Tuesday, calling it a response to multiple Israeli violations of the Lebanese ceasefire. The Israeli military (IDF) has continued to carry out attacks despite the ceasefire, claiming self-defense. It’s also continuing to demolish homes and entire villages along the Lebanese side of the border. It of course accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire on Tuesday and responded by carrying out a strike on the launcher that the group used to fire those rockets.

The IDF has punished two soldiers involved in vandalizing a statue of Jesus in a southern Lebanese village. As you may have seen, over the weekend an image circulated online of an Israeli soldier smashing the statue, which appeared to have been removed from a crucifix, with a sledgehammer. Both the hammerer and the photographer have been removed from combat duty and will be jailed for 30 days, while another six soldiers who observed the incident and did not stop it may also face some form of discipline. It is not an exaggeration to say that their punishment probably would have been lighter, or even nonexistent, if they’d taken that sledgehammer to a Lebanese person, but this sort of thing causes problems for the Israeli government’s Christian Zionist support base in the US so the IDF had to make a show of retribution.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Israeli settlers and soldiers killed two Palestinians, one a 14 year old, in the West Bank village of Al-Mughayyir on Tuesday. Local officials reported that Israeli soldiers entered the village and began shooting at a school, while Israeli officials said that an IDF reservist opened fire after rocks were thrown at his vehicle. Israeli forces also killed at least two people in separate incidents in Gaza.

Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” has reportedly been in talks with DP World, a logistics firm based in Dubai, about “managing supply chains and infrastructure projects” in Gaza. The firm would be tasked with overseeing the operations of many other companies in a reconstruction process that remains on hold while the board attempts to advance the Gaza “ceasefire” and in particular Hamas’s disarmament. In the meantime, The National reported on Tuesday that four of the 13 members of the Palestinian technocratic committee that is supposed to be managing Gaza’s day to day affairs have tried to resign over the fact that the Israeli government won’t even allow them to enter the territory much less take up their duties. The board’s Gaza envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, has rejected those resignations.

The Norwegian Refugee Council has published a new report on the role that sexual violence is playing in the displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank:

This report documents gender-based and sexualised violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank in contexts where Israeli forces were present and did not prevent or halt the violence, nor effectively investigate the abuses. In these circumstances, such violence is not occuring in isolation. It operates within a coercive environment that contributes to the forcible transfer of Palestinian communities.

The research results of this report found at least 16 cases of conflict-related sexual violence attributed to Israeli settlers and soldiers. These cases form part of a broader pattern of sexualised harassment, intimidation and humiliation, much of which remains underreported. Taken together, the evidence shows how sexualised violence is used to pressure communities, shape decisions about remaining or leaving their homes and land, and alter patterns of daily life.

Over 70 percent of displaced Palestinian families identify the threat of violence toward women and children, including sexual violence, as “the decisive reason” behind their decisions to relocate.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Donald Trump told CNBC on Tuesday that he may offer a “financial lifeline” to the UAE in the form of a currency swap. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Emirati officials had approached the Trump administration about a potential currency swap to cushion the economic blow of the Iran war. The conflict has impacted the UAE’s energy sector and has undercut Dubai’s image as a safe haven for business and travel. Implicit in their pitch is the idea that the US got them into this war and therefore it should bail them out if necessary, along with an apparent threat to start conducting business in the Chinese yuan rather than the US dollar. Right now the currency swap discussions are preliminary, but given that the UAE is fully paid up with the Trump Family one assumes that if they do ask for the swap they will get it.

IRAQ

Joel Wing at Musings on Iraq says that Kurdistan Democratic Party leaders (the Barzani family, essentially) are upset that the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party outmaneuvered them to retain control of the Iraqi federal presidency. Although the KDP has been ascendent in recent years, PUK leader Bafel Talabani has been building relationships with smaller Kurdish parties and with key political figures in Baghdad that have strengthened his party’s position both at the federal level and within the Kurdistan Regional Government. The Barzanis, meanwhile, have largely ignored Baghdad and the election of PUK member Nizar Amedi as president, despite a KDP boycott of the vote, shows that they are losing influence in the Iraqi capital.

Elsewhere, the AP reported on Tuesday that the Iranian government has given its affiliated Iraqi militias greater autonomy in terms of carrying out attacks against US interests amid the war. This is similar to what they’ve done with regional military commanders inside Iran. It helps to explain why a large percentage of the attacks against Gulf Arab states have been traced to Iraqi, rather than Iranian, soil. It may also make Iraq the new locus for the conflict if the US-Iran ceasefire holds (more on that in a moment). The Gulf states and/or the US could decide to step up attacks on the militias under the assumption that it won’t threaten the ceasefire, which would likely prompt more attacks by the militias in return.

IRAN

Schrödinger’s peace talks are still off at the moment, though that could change quickly so if they’re back on by the time you read this I apologize. Despite a slight uptick in optimism on Monday evening, a full day later there’s still no indication that the Iranian government is willing to participate in another round of talks in Pakistan and consequently US Vice President JD Vance and the rest of his negotiating team remain in the US. A “US official” said something to The New York Times about the Iranians failing to respond to a “written proposal” outlining US negotiating positions, which struck me as a little odd initially but in hindsight looks like it was laying the groundwork for a major development later in the day.

That major development? Well, despite the lack of movement on talks it does not appear that the shooting war will be resuming anytime soon. Donald Trump announced via social media on Tuesday evening that he had acquiesced to what he said was a Pakistani government request to extend the soon-to-expire ceasefire indefinitely. This is supposed to allow time for the Iranians, who according to Trump are “seriously fractured,” to submit their own “unified proposal.” There’s no indication that the Iranians were working on a proposal but that NYT report I mentioned above makes more sense if you see it as the administration establishing a narrative basis for Trump’s announcement. There’s also no reason to actually believe that this was a “Pakistani request” but I digress. I don’t expect the Iranians to reject this extension but I will note that at time of writing—hours after Trump’s post—they still had not offered an official comment on it.

The US blockade of Iran will remain in place in the meantime. Iranian officials have been suggesting that they won’t resume negotiations until the blockade is lifted, so this presents something of a quandary in terms of how to move things forward. The US Navy is continuing to pursue and board suspected blockade runners, though an analysis of maritime traffic by Lloyd’s List suggests that at least some vessels are getting through. Even so, the possibility exists that the blockade (or rather blockades, including the Iranian hold on the Strait of Hormuz) will eventually spark a return to full-on war even if neither side necessarily intends that. The diplomatic track would appear to be in limbo for the time being. Maybe the US and Iranians could come to some sort of arrangement to ease their blockades (even unofficially) and open some space for negotiation that way. Something’s got to give, because both the economic upheaval and the logistical challenges of maintaining the US blockade mean that the current state of affairs can’t actually last indefinitely (even if Trump thinks it can).

In other items:

• It’s also conceivable that Trump’s ceasefire extension is fake and that he’s trying to set up a “surprise” attack, though it seems that the Iranians are fully aware of that possibility so the element of surprise probably isn’t there.

• The Trump administration added another 14 entries to its Iran sanctions list on Tuesday, targeting individuals and entities allegedly connected to Tehran’s arms procurement efforts.

• CNN reported on Monday that Trump’s Friday social media spree was not only false, it offended Iranian officials so much that it undermined diplomatic efforts to end the war. Even “some Trump officials” have “privately acknowledged to CNN that the president’s public commentary has been detrimental to talks, noting the sensitivity of the negotiations and the Iranians’ deep mistrust of the US.” The media narrative about Friday’s chaos has focused on supposed divides within Iranian leadership, which may well be overblown. But to the extent that there are such divides, Trump’s online blabbering would have only discredited the officials with whom the administration has been negotiating and strengthened the position of those officials who oppose talks.

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN

Shawn VanDiver, the founder of the organization AfghanEvac, told AFP on Tuesday that the Trump administration is offering Afghan nationals who aided the US military during the 2001-2021 Afghanistan war a choice between returning home or accepting resettlement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hundreds of Afghan nationals remain stranded in Qatar and the administration suspended the program under which they were supposed to be vetted and then given visas to relocate to the US after one participant in that program shot and killed two US National Guard personnel last year. It can probably be assumed that they will not opt to move to the DRC, which means returning them to Afghanistan despite the threat they may be facing from the Taliban authorities there.

MYANMAR

New Myanmar President Min ‌Aung Hlaing is inviting the country’s various rebel groups to engage in a new round of peace talks, giving them a deadline of July 31 to RSVP. Two of those groups, the Karen ​National Union and the Chin National Front, have already told him to get bent so this process is not off to a great start.

JAPAN

Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae lifted the country’s ban on exporting lethal military equipment on Tuesday, opening the door to foreign arms sales. That ban had been in place since 1976 and limited previous Japanese military deals to non-lethal materiel only. Now anything is fair game, though legally only 17 countries are currently eligible to purchase Japanese arms. The Japanese and Australian governments recently concluded a $7 billion deal under which Mitsubishi Heavy Industries will build several warships for the Australian Navy, so this rule change will clear the way for that arrangement and likely many more to come.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

A new United Nations report alleges that an element of the “Libyan National Army” known as the Subul al-Salam Battalion has “facilitated the transfer of recruits, including Colombian mercenaries, weapons and fuel” into Sudan on behalf of the Rapid Support Forces militant group. Subul al-Salam operates mainly in southeastern Libya’s Kufra district, positioned opposite Sudan’s northwestern border, and its backing helped the RSF drive the Sudanese military (SAF) out of the “triangle area” along the Egyptian, Libyan, and Chadian borders last year. Its control of “crucial facilities, including an airport” has made it an important node in the international network that’s been supporting the RSF.

NIGERIA

Nigerian authorities have charged six people in connection with the apparent coup plot that they foiled last year and are searching for a seventh suspect, former state minister Timipre Sylva. These six, including a retired army major general, are among 16 people who were arrested last year amid reports of an attempt to overthrow President Bola Tinubu. Nigerian officials revealed the plot earlier this year while announcing plans to bring treason and terrorism charges against the suspect.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

The European Council blacklisted two Russian entities, the media outlet Euromore and the “Foundation for the Support and ​Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living ​Abroad,” on Tuesday. It’s accusing both of perpetuating Russian “disinformation.”

UKRAINE

Russian military commander Valery Gerasimov claimed on Tuesday that his forces have seized some 1700 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory so far this year. There’s no way to verify this and according to Reuters “pro-Ukrainian maps indicate Russia has taken around 600 square km this year.” I’m not sure what “pro-Ukrainian maps” they’re using. According to Gerasimov the advance has brought the Russian military closer to the “fortress belt” of cities in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. The Russians are already occupying parts of at least one of those cities, Kostiantynivka and they may be just a few kilometers from two others, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

The Ukrainian government reopened the Druzhba pipeline on Tuesday, restoring the flow of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia (well, maybe—the Ukrainians apparently bombed a Russian pumping facility on the same pipeline on Tuesday and it remains to be seen how that might affect its operations). The pipeline has been shut down since a Russian attack damaged it in January, though outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had accused the Ukrainians of deliberately cutting off the oil and was using that claim as a justification for blocking the first disbursement of the European Union’s two year, €90 billion loan to Kyiv. The timing of the pipeline’s reopening, just after Orbán’s election defeat, is curious, but regardless the disbursement is now expected to be made within the next two months and should cover around two-thirds of Ukraine’s financial requirements for the year.

ROMANIA

Romanian Prime Minister Ilje Bolojan is aiming to lead a minority government now that the Social Democratic Party (PSD) has quit his coalition. Moreover it doesn’t sound like he’s rethinking the austerity program that prompted the PSD to withdraw, arguing that his “reforms” are essential to securing billions of euros in EU funding. Romania technically isn’t due to hold another election until 2028, but Bolojan will have to present his new PSD-less cabinet to parliament for confirmation within 45 days and he’s likely to face at least one no-confidence motion before then. He’ll need to survive those votes to avoid a snap election—one that the far-right Alliance for Uniting ​Romanians would be expected to win handily.

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AMERICAS

MEXICO

The Intercept’s Nick Turse reports that two US embassy “staff members” who died in a car accident in Mexico’s Chihuahua state on Sunday were working for the Central Intelligence Agency:

The American personnel died in a vehicular crash in the mountains of the Sierra de Chihuahua following a drug raid, alongside two Mexican officials, including Román Oseguera Cervantes, the director of the Chihuahua State Investigation Agency.

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson announced the deaths of the Americans on Sunday, referring to them in a post on X as “two members of staff from the United States Embassy.”

The State Department refused requests for additional information on the Americans’ activities or the agencies that employed them. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said during a Monday press conference that she was unaware of “any direct work between Chihuahua state and personnel from the U.S. embassy.”

Two U.S. government officials who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity said the CIA has been running covert operations in Mexico, working alongside vetted Mexican state-level police forces and other government agencies. The sources said the Americans died after a raid on a synthetic drug lab.

Sheinbaum’s government has now reportedly opened an investigation into the operation and the role these CIA personnel may or may not have played in it. Chihuahua state officials are insisting that the CIA personnel were not involved in the raid and only turned up at the raid site after the fact for some sort of “training” reason.

CUBA

Cuban Foreign Ministry official Alejandro García del Toro said on Monday that reasonably high level US and Cuban delegations met in Havana earlier this month to try to calm bilateral tensions. He didn’t say when this meeting took place but did say that it included assistant secretaries of state on the US side and deputy foreign ministers on the Cuban side. The Cuban government is trying to negotiate an end to the US energy embargo on the island.

UNITED STATES

The Trump administration set up an online portal earlier this week for companies pursuing refunds for tariffs they paid under the regime that the US Supreme Court struck down in February. Potentially over $160 billion could be refunded, with Walmart and Target in line to get the biggest payouts.

Finally, The Guardian has spoken with several survivors of the US military’s War on Speedboats:

A group of Ecuadorian fishers have described how they were attacked in a double drone strike and then detained at gunpoint by soldiers on a US-flagged patrol vessel, in a rare first-hand account by victims of Donald Trump’s militarized campaign against alleged drug-trafficking boats off South America.

At least 178 people have been killed in US military airstrikes in the Caribbean and Pacific since the offensive began in September, according to a tally by the Washington Office on Latin America (Wola).

The US has provided no evidence that any of the vessels were involved in drug trafficking, and legal experts and rights groups say the attacks amount to extrajudicial killings as they apparently target civilians who do not pose any immediate threat. The White House insists the killings are lawful.

The Don Maca, a 35-ton fishing vessel that worked with six smaller boats, was about 200 miles (320km) north-west of the Galápagos Islands, when it disappeared on 26 March. About a week earlier, it had departed from Manta, a port city in south-western Ecuador that has become a focal point in the country’s escalating “war on drugs”.

Its 20 crewmen, all from nearby communities including San Mateo, Santa Marianita and Jaramijó, insist they were fishing when they were attacked.

That US patrol boat deposited them in El Salvador, where officials in Donald Trump’s favorite Central American police state questioned them and then turned them over to UN personnel. They were eventually repatriated and none was ever charged with a crime, even though the US military was so certain that they were trafficking drugs that it tried to kill them.

April 20, 1752: A small battle south of the city (village at the time) of Shwebo marks the start of the Konbaung–Hanthawaddy War, which helped consolidate the modern nation of Myanmar. An “army” (of around 40 men) belonging to the nascent Konbaung dynasty, under its founder Alaungpaya, defeated a small military unit detached by the southern Hanthawaddy kingdom to pacify the region. The war ended with a Konbaung victory that reunited upper and lower (northern and southern) Myanmar (Burma if you prefer) under a Bamar ruling family and marked the final time that the Mon people of southern Myanmar were able to establish an independent state.

April 20, 1792: The French Assembly declares war against the Habsburg monarchy, kicking off nearly ten years of conflict sometimes called the “French Revolutionary Wars.” This conflict is perhaps more properly broken up into the wars of the First Coalition (1792-1797) and Second Coalition (1798-1802), referring to the international alliances that were arrayed against the French First Republic. The Republic emerged victorious from both wars. They’re distinguished from the five subsequent coalition wars (1805-1815) thanks to Napoleon, who brought the Republic to an end with his coronation as emperor in 1804.

INTERNATIONAL

Four candidates are vying to succeed the outgoing António Guterres as United Nations secretary-general:

• Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet

• International Atomic Energy Agency director Rafael Grossi

• Secretary-General of UN Trade and Development Rebeca Grynspan

• Former Senegalese President Macky Sall

All four will go through a Q&A session before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. As the AP notes, this is a far cry from the 13 people who contested the job in 2016 and the obvious conclusion to draw is that the gig is just not that appealing these days. It’s hard to pick a favorite, though the Trump administration (which is one of the main reasons why the job isn’t appealing anymore) is definitely opposed to Bachelet so she faces a pretty uphill climb.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

Syrian security forces arrested a senior Bashar al-Assad-era official in an operation in Latakia province on Monday in which one security officer was killed. The target was Amer al-Hassan, the former head of state security in Latakia, who has been accused of a number of crimes connected to his service in that post. Elsewhere, the Israeli military (IDF) arrested two men in southern Syria’s Quneitra province. The continued IDF presence in Quneitra is a major concern for residents, and recent construction activity has reportedly raised fears that the Israelis are building a major military base in the province. That would indicate an intention to occupy the area indefinitely.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

April 18, 1775: Dozens of American Patriot riders fan out across the Massachusetts Bay colony to warn “Minutemen” militia fighters that a British army is approaching. The nighttime ride was crucial in alerting the militia and enabling their victories at the ensuing Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first major engagements of the American Revolution. The event gave birth to the legend of Paul Revere, the Boston silversmith and engraver who was one of the operation’s planners, and has been memorialized as “Paul Revere’s Ride” in the title of a famous 1861 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

April 18, 1897: The Ottoman Empire declares war on Greece, marking the official start of the Greco-Turkish War (which had unofficially begun the previous month). Fought primarily over control of the island of Crete, which had repeatedly revolted against Ottoman rule, the war ended in mid-May with a decisive military victory for the larger and better armed Ottoman army. Then the European Great Powers intervened. The Treaty of Constantinople, negotiated primarily by the Powers, gave the Ottomans a few limited territorial conquests but forced the empire to return most of the Greek territory it had seized and to recognize Cretan autonomy. Under the guise of that autonomy, the island moved further and further into the Greek orbit, finally becoming part of Greece in the 1913 settlement to the First Balkan War.

April 18, 1938: Action Comics debuts with issue #1, published by National Allied Publications as an anthology meant to replicate and complement the success founder Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson had achieved when he began publishing Detective Comics the previous December. The first story in the issue was called “Superman,” from writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, and marks the first appearance of their character by that name. The story was an instant success, arguably birthing the modern superhero genre (Detective Comics wouldn’t introduce its famous star, Batman, until the following year), and today Action Comics #1 is regarded as the most valuable comic book ever published (a near-mint copy sold for over $3 million in 2014).

April 19, 1775: Two military engagements between British regulars and American colonial militia in the Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord mark the start of the American Revolution. The British force succeeded in destroying some cannons and ammunition at Concord but was driven back into Boston by the militia. A large (15,000 man) militia army recruited from across New England then surrounded and besieged the city, which the British evacuated the following March.

April 19, 1943: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest World War II Jewish revolt against Nazi rule, begins in occupied Poland. Nazi forces entered the Ghetto to effect another mass transfer of Jews to the Treblinka death camp, similar to the previous year’s Grossaktion Warsaw, but met with armed resistance. They began a month-long suppression campaign that included the systematic torching of homes and other buildings within the Ghetto. The uprising ended on May 16 with the Nazis having killed outright or transferred (to death camps) some 56,065 Jews according to official German figures.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

Hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians have either returned to southern Lebanon or are considering it, amid the US-imposed ceasefire that took effect on Friday. Some have apparently already returned only to find that the Israeli military (IDF) has destroyed their homes and villages so thoroughly that it’s impossible for them to stay. The IDF has continued that destruction and has carried out several attacks despite the ceasefire, under its typical justification of “self-defense.” As it has done in Gaza, it’s facilitating continued violence by establishing a new “yellow line” in southern Lebanon. As in Gaza, the line demarcates what is essentially a free fire zone for Israeli soldiers, where anyone found on the wrong side of the line or even approaching the line can be treated ipso facto as a threat and thus a legitimate target. Also as in Gaza, the location of the line is opaque to civilians and may not even be completely fixed, making it a generalized excuse for killing.

A French soldier serving with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon was killed and three other UN personnel were wounded in an attack in southern Lebanon on Saturday. The UN is assessing that a non-state actor was responsible, presumably Hezbollah, though it hasn’t determined that conclusively as yet. Hezbollah is denying involvement.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed two people in separate “yellow line” incidents in Gaza on Saturday then gunned down another person in northern Gaza’s Jabalia area on Sunday. Their identities are unclear, but it does appear that two men whom Israeli soldiers gunned down in northern Gaza’s Shujaʿiyah area on Friday were working for UNICEF as water deliverymen.

According to Al Jazeera, satellite imagery shows the IDF expanding the military facilities on its side of Gaza’s “yellow line,” most prominently in the southern Rafah area. This is a curious thing to do if the Israeli government is prepared to withdraw from more territory in Gaza as the current “ceasefire” progresses. It would make more sense if the Israelis are planning to remain in those facilities for the long term—or indefinitely, even.

IRAN

It may or may not come as a surprise that pretty much everything Donald Trump asserted in his extended “peace is upon us” social media spree on Friday turns out to have been bullshit. As it happens Iranian officials had not suddenly given in to all of his demands. What a surprise. By Friday evening (in the US) it was clear that even the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, as announced by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi earlier in the day, was not actually happening, and on Saturday Iranian forces made that very clear by firing on at least two ships that were attempting to transit the strait. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared the strait closed until the US lifts its naval blockade on Iran, basically resetting this whole situation back to where it had been prior to Araghchi’s announcement but with a bit more bad blood built up on both sides of the conflict. Then on Sunday the US Navy fired upon and detained a cargo vessel that apparently attempted to run the blockade, amid reports that it’s been planning to start boarding suspected Iranian vessels.

It’s hard to know what to make of a day in which the Iranian government made a major announcement that it rescinded within hours while the president of the United States regaled reporters with tales of Iranian concessions that were apparently never made. The Wall Street Journal suggested that the “Hormuz is open/no it’s not” drama reflected a breakdown of Iranian leadership. Araghchi, in this narrative, opened the strait on his own initiative only for the IRGC to overrule him and close it. The apparent incoherence seems to have sparked a fair amount of confusion within Iran. On Saturday Iran’s Supreme National Security Council offered an attempt at clarification, saying that the decision to open the strait was contingent on the US “observing the ceasefire on all fronts.” Trump wrecked that understanding by a) refusing to lift the blockade and b) spewing his nonsense on social media.

It’s still unclear whether Trump himself realized that his posts were bullshit (another WSJ piece argued that they were part of some sort of “negotiating strategy” somehow meant to pressure Iranian officials into making concessions) but he’s spent the past two days reacting like somebody who really believed that the Iranian government surrendered and then double crossed him. He’s now back to threatening the destruction of Iran’s civilian infrastructure, which if you recall is where we were 12 days ago. Even so he’s sending negotiators back to Pakistan on Monday for another attempt at diplomacy. At this point it’s unclear whether the Iranians will reciprocate. Iranian media reported on Sunday that Tehran has made no decision regarding those talks, and the previous day Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh told the AP that “maximalist” US demands were making further talks difficult.

“No decision” is not an outright no. But even if the Iranians do send a team to Pakistan, the chances of reaching a deal with an overmatched and disempowered US negotiating team that has to report to what appears to be a mentally compromised president seem pretty low. Maybe there’s still an opening to simply extend the ceasefire, but even that seems like a long shot given how much the process has broken down over the past three days.

ASIA

CHINA

The Diplomat’s Yi-Chuan Chiu outlines what the Chinese government is hoping to get out of the forthcoming Donald Trump-Xi Jinping summit on the subject of Taiwan:

At the summit, Beijing is expected to underscore that U.S. support of Taiwan will disrupt China-U.S. “strategic stability,” while cross-strait peace can be achieved without U.S. involvement. A grand deal over Taiwan or a fundamental shift of Washington’s One China policy is unlikely and would be difficult to sustain. However, Trump’s incoherent personal language over Taiwan or a delay of Taiwan-U.S. arms sales would constitute gains for Beijing.

Beijing’s main goal for the Trump-Xi summit would be to sustain the fragile stability in China-U.S. relations after both countries agreed on a truce in their trade war. Washington is so far interested in keeping the trade truce and has signaled that Trump will not seek confrontation during the summit.

However, China hopes that this cooperative tone will extend beyond trade. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi claimed in March that 2026 would be a “big year” for Sino-American relations and that “unnecessary disruptions” should be cleared. This partly explains why Beijing has been avoiding publicly denouncing the U.S. attack on Iran. Trump’s ambivalence over Taiwan presents an opening for Chinese officials to persuade the U.S. president that further U.S. support for Taiwan will disrupt their broader relationship.

JAPAN

Dozens of NATO representatives visited Tokyo on Thursday for talks on improving the bloc’s relationship with Japan. World Politics Review’s Elliot Waldman argues that both parties are being drawn together by concerns over their respective relationships with the United States:

For NATO, a closer relationship with Japan makes sense for a few reasons. For starters, the Trump administration has threatened to invade Greenland and is openly threatening to withdraw from the alliance. Technically, the U.S. president can’t pull out of NATO without approval from Congress. But as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, there is a lot that Trump can do to make America’s exit from NATO a de facto reality, such as withdrawing or reducing the U.S. troop presence in key theaters. In that context, seeking other partners with whom they could potentially share the burden of collective defense is a prudent call for NATO member states.

For Japan’s part, it has historically relied on the U.S. security umbrella for its defense. Given Trump’s recent behavior, however, officials in Tokyo are also worried about whether they can count on the U.S. to be a steadfast ally in the long term, even if they don’t say so publicly.

One major byproduct of these concerns is that European states and Japan are trying to expand their domestic arms industries. That could create new opportunities for joint investment and development projects.

(Foreign Exchanges readers can sign up for WPR’s free newsletter here and try out an all-access subscription free for 30 days, then $35 off—$77/year—after that.)

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The Sudanese military (SAF) announced on Saturday that it has opened an apparently major offensive across Sudan’s North and South Kordofan states. Initial operations focused on four areas in North Kordofan, and according to the military they “resulted in significant losses of life and equipment for the [Rapid Support Forces or RSF].” Fighting in the Kordofan region has generally emphasized drone strikes over ground action in recent months so this is a significant development even though it’s far too early to tell how it will play out.

Elsewhere, the US Treasury Department announced on Friday evening that it was blacklisting three people and two entities allegedly involved in hiring Colombian mercenaries for the RSF. All three individuals are Colombian nationals and the entities are both connected to a retired Colombian military officer.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

The Congolese government and the M23 militant group announced a new agreement on Sunday, under which they will hold a prisoner exchange within ten days while also working together to facilitate greater humanitarian access to parts of the eastern DRC. The deal emerged out of a multi-day negotiating session in Switzerland, held under primarily Qatari mediation, during which the parties also reached a general agreement on establishing ceasefire monitoring mechanisms.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

The Trump administration extended its waiver on Russian oil sanctions for another 30 days on Friday, just two days after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that waiver would not be renewed. It applies to any Russian oil that was loaded onto a tanker as of Friday and is of course another attempt at keeping global oil prices down even as the Iran war looks like it’s spinning up again.

UKRAINE

A Russian bombardment killed at least two people in the Ukrainian cities of Chernihiv and Kherson overnight. According to the Ukrainian military the Russians fired 236 drones in this barrage. On a related note the Ukrainians reportedly struck a drone manufacturing facility in the Russian city of Taganrog, sparking a fire and wounding at least three people. The extent of the damage is unclear.

BULGARIA

Bulgarian voters headed to the polls for their country’s eighth parliamentary election since April 2021 on Sunday, and early indications suggest that this one might actually be somewhat decisive. Exit polling gives the Progressive Bulgaria party, established by former President Rumen Radev after his resignation back in January, a bit over 38 percent support. That would be a far higher percentage than any single party has won over the previous seven elections, and while it might not work out to a sole parliamentary majority it could mean that Radev would only need the support of one additional party instead of having to form an unstable minority government or multi-party coalition.

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AMERICAS

ARGENTINA

El País reports that Argentine President Javier Milei’s economic miracle is starting to look somewhat less miraculous:

In a scenario constructed from the official statistics promoted by the government, Javier Milei’s Argentina is a happy world: poverty is falling to its lowest level in the last seven years, economic activity is reaching record highs, and fiscal balance is being maintained. But, simultaneously, more and more people say that their present situation doesn’t align with the successes touted by the far-right president, a disconnect pointed out not only by his detractors but even by figures of economic orthodoxy aligned with his policies. Are the official figures false? No, but they are averages that fail to capture an unequal and fragmented socioeconomic reality. And they coexist with other, also official, data, such as the rise in unemployment. Or the acceleration of inflation, whose containment had been Milei’s main achievement and which now remains above 3% per month. In this context, social discontent is spreading, fueled by corruption scandals: almost all opinion polls indicate that the president’s approval rating is at its lowest point.

Indeed, economic activity is at record highs, having risen 1.9% in the last year. However, this does not appear to translate into equivalent well-being. According to a report by the consulting firm Analytica, when the data series is adjusted for population — a more representative metric of well-being — current levels are 6.8% below the peak reached in 2011. At best, activity levels per capita have returned to the pre-pandemic average, the report notes.

PERU

Peruvian officials have counted 93 percent of the votes cast in last Sunday’s/Monday’s presidential election, but they may not be ready to announce official results until the middle of next month. That’s going to be a tight turnaround given that the runoff is scheduled for June 7. Perennial candidate Keiko Fujimori’s place in that contest seems to be assured, as she’s “winning” the first round with around 17 percent of the vote. But the race for second place is very tight, with leftist Roberto Sánchez now around 13,600 votes ahead of right winger Rafael López Aliaga. Given the narrow margin, the race could come down to a review of thousands of challenged ballots—hence the delay.

NICARAGUA

The US State Department blacklisted Nicaraguan Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa on Saturday, over alleged human rights abuses. He’ll be barred from entering the US.

UNITED STATES

Finally, TomDispatch’s Steve Fraser sees in Donald Trump the “perfect amalgam” of US imperialism abroad and repression at home:

Democracy and civil liberties, thought to make up the essence of the homeland’s civic religion, can’t survive the imperial drive. Today, violations of the most basic rights to free speech, privacy, a fair trial, and the right to vote are appalling and commonplace. Immigrants, often here because they couldn’t survive the ravages of American capitalism in their homelands, are treated like outlaws. The most basic constitutional requirement — the exclusive right of Congress to declare war — is ignored with impunity (and had been long before Trump took over). The imperial state, the surveillance state, and the authoritarian state are hollowing out what’s left of the democratic state.

Imperialism does massive and fatal damage abroad. The wars in Gaza and Iran are the latest bloodbaths for all to see. Less visible are the wages of imperialism at home. An equation might clarify the historical record: The Imperium = land, labor, resources, power, and wealth. The Homeland = cultural brutalization, dispossession, fear, misogyny, racism, repression, slavery, tyranny, and war.

Donald Trump turns out to be a purveyor of both imperialism (notwithstanding his promises to “stop wars” and refrain from “forever wars”) and its toxic outcome. Conjoined in his person is the perfect amalgam of America’s imperial history of aggressive aggrandizement and the ubermensch cruelty that history has instilled in the American psyche.

TODAY IN HISTORY

April 17, 1895: Representatives of the Empire of Japan and China’s Qing Dynasty sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, ending the First Sino-Japanese War. Reflecting the decisive Japanese victory, the treaty obliged the Qing to renounce Chinese claims on Korea, cede islands in the Taiwan Strait (including Taiwan itself) to Japan, pay reparations, and establish “most favored nation” trade status with Japan. European powers France, Germany, and Russia intervened to force Japan to give up control of the Liaodong Peninsula, which had been another stipulation of the treaty. The newly independent Korea quickly fell under Japan’s sway, which brought the Japanese into Russia’s orbit and led to the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War.

April 17, 1975: The Cambodian Civil War ends with the Khmer Rouge capture of Phnom Penh and the ouster of the short-lived Khmer Republic. The Khmer Rouge briefly restored the Cambodian monarchy before embarking on one of the most brutal genocides in history, in which upwards of 25 percent of the Cambodian population was killed through a mix of mass executions, forced labor, and other more indirect forms of violence. That genocide finally ended when Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979 and removed the Khmer Rouge from power.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

Lebanon’s ten day ceasefire took effect at midnight on Friday and the most immediate result appears to be a stream of displaced people returning to their homes in the southern part of the country despite a continued Israeli occupation and against warnings from Lebanese authorities. Al Jazeera is reporting “tens of thousands” of returnees, though how many will be able to stay once they’ve assessed the destruction that the Israeli military (IDF) has wrought on their towns and villages remains to be seen. But the pull home is so strong that they’re not only ignoring the continued IDF threat, they’re undertaking the difficult task of crossing the main coastal bridge that the IDF had damaged in its attempt to cut southern Lebanon off from the rest of the country.

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TODAY IN HISTORY

April 16, 1457 BCE: This is the date most commonly cited for the Battle of Megiddo, the earliest well-documented (reasonably, anyway) battle in human history. An Egyptian army under Pharaoh Thutmose III defeated a group of rebelling Canaanite kingdoms at Megiddo, a city that was the site of so many battles in the ancient world that it gave its name to the hypothetical apocalyptic “Battle of Armageddon.” They followed up by besieging the city, which fell seven months later. Thutmose’s victory restored Egyptian preeminence in the Levant and enabled the greatest territorial expansion in Ancient Egyptian history.

April 16, 73: This is the traditional date for the fall of Masada, a Jewish fortress whose capture by the Romans effectively ended the First Jewish-Roman War (66-74). According to the Jewish rebel leader-turned-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, the surviving defenders of Masada chose mass suicide over capture. Modern archeological work on the site, which also questions the dating of the siege, suggests the Romans massacred most of the survivors and that Josephus was either misinformed or deliberately formulated the suicide narrative to cover up the atrocity. The traditional narrative and its story of Jewish fighters choosing death over capture holds a prominent place in modern Israeli national consciousness.

April 16, 1746: The Battle of Culloden sees a British army basically destroy a Jacobite uprising led by pretender prince Charles Edward Stuart. Culloden ended the Jacobite Uprising of 1745, in which Charles had attempted to organize a multi-pronged invasion of England involving France as well as his own forces. That invasion never really came together and so he was forced to retreat to Scotland and eventually had no choice but to meet the pursuing English army in the open field. Charles survived and continued to claim the British and Irish thrones but the 1745 uprising was over and so pretty much was the Jacobite movement as a whole. Culloden has been called the “last pitched battle” ever fought on British soil (British, not Irish), which I guess is true but I am not a British historian so don’t quote me.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

The US military withdrew from the Qasrak airbase in northern Syria’s Hasakah province on Thursday, completing the handover of all of its “major” facilities to the Syrian government. The US military’s Central Command has been withdrawing from Syrian bases for several weeks now, ever since the government and the Syrian Democratic Forces group reached an accord. Also related to that accord, Syrian Kurds have begun registering for citizenship. Many Syrian Kurds have been unregistered since a 1962 census stripped a large portion of that community of its citizenship, but amid his negotiations with the SDF Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a decree in January allowing Kurds to obtain citizen status.

LEBANON

After trying and apparently failing to arrange a phone call between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Thursday, Donald Trump hopped onto social media to announce that he’d instead gotten them both to agree to a ceasefire effective a midnight local time (5 PM eastern in the US). The ceasefire is set to last for at least ten days but can be renewed if both parties agree. It obliges the Lebanese government, which is not actually a combatant here, to restrain Hezbollah, which is, from attacking Israel.

The chances of this arrangement surviving seem slim. It’s structured so that the Israeli military (IDF) is obliged to cease “offensive” military activity, but the Israeli government has described its entire Lebanese campaign—including the mass depopulation and occupation of a swath of southern Lebanon, as an act of self-defense. The Gaza “ceasefire,” presumably the model for this accord, has been replete with IDF violations justified through a very expansive definition of “defensive” action. Hezbollah has said that it will honor the ceasefire provided the IDF stops attacking it, but really the likelihood of that is low. There doesn’t even seem to be any requirement that the IDF withdraw from southern Lebanon, which makes a return to conflict practically inevitable. Still it is possible that this ceasefire will hold long enough to remove Lebanon as an obstacle to a US-Iran deal, which is all Trump and company seem to care about.

The IDF spent the hours ahead of the ceasefire pounding southern Lebanon, killing at least eight people in one particularly deadly strike and destroying the last remaining bridge across the Litani River. Trump now says that he wants to invite Netanyahu and Aoun to Washington for face-to-face talks, though when and under what circumstances that might happen remain to be determined.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Reinforcing what I wrote above, IDF airstrikes killed at least three people in Gaza city and Khan Younis on Thursday according to the Palestinian WAFA news agency. I am unaware of any comment on these strikes from Israeli officials.

IRAN

The news on the US-Iran front is a bit more subdued, particularly after Wednesday’s flurry of activity. Reuters, citing “two Iranian sources,” reported that the parties “have scaled back” their “ambitions.” Instead of focusing on a “comprehensive peace deal” they are instead working on a “a temporary memorandum to prevent a return ​to conflict,” which would then open a 60 day window to negotiate a more comprehensive arrangement. It does appear that they’ve made progress on the status of the Strait of Hormuz and on Iran’s nuclear program, though they remain at odds over the length of a potential uranium enrichment moratorium. The disposition of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium has also not been determined.

The best indication of progress will likely be a decision to schedule another round of in person negotiations, and right now there is no plan to do that according to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry. An agreement to extend the current ceasefire could come without another meeting but anything more substantive than that will likely require some face-to-face interaction even if it’s just to sign a document.

Elsewhere, while CENTCOM continues to insist that its blockade has completely prevented commercial vessels from getting to or leaving Iran, shipping data apparently shows that at least two supertankers that have been blacklisted by the US government have been able to enter the Persian Gulf this week. It’s not clear whether either or both are heading to Iranian ports—one of them lists Iraq as its destination but that doesn’t mean it’s actually going to Iraq. Even if the blockade drastically slows or stops Iranian oil exports, Reuters reports that Tehran has two months of available storage capacity before it would be forced to reduce production. That’s considerably longer than the 16 days that The Financial Times reported earlier this week and would give the Iranians more time to wait out the US.

ASIA

INDIA

Al Jazeera reports that Indian authorities appear to be purging Muslim voters from the rolls ahead of an important election in West Bengal state:

West Bengal is home to nearly 25 million Muslims, accounting for roughly 27 percent of the state’s 106 million population, according to the last census conducted in 2011 – the community’s second-largest population among Indian states after Uttar Pradesh.

It is also a state [India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party] has never won. The Trinamool Congress (TMC), one of India’s key opposition parties led by Mamata Banerjee, a fiery 71-year-old Modi critic, has governed the state since 2011, ending a record 34 years of communist rule.

The analysis of voter deletions across West Bengal shows that Muslims have been disproportionately affected by the [“special intensive revision” or] SIR exercise, mainly in districts where they constitute a high percentage of the population and could sway the election, including Murshidabad with 460,000 deletions, followed by 330,000 in North 24 Parganas and 240,000 in Malda.

CHINA

The Diplomat’s John Calabrese argues that the Chinese government is taking advantage of the US focus on Iran to reshape its near abroad ahead of Donald Trump’s scheduled visit next month:

[Chinese Foreign Minister] Wang [Yi]’s North Korea trip [earlier this month] is only one part of a broader set of initiatives Beijing has been assembling both to shape the regional environment ahead of the summit and to capitalize on Washington’s focus on the war in the Middle East. China is simultaneously shaping the regional security environment, stabilizing and selectively managing economic relations, and positioning itself as a potential diplomatic intermediary. Not every diplomatic move may have been pre-planned, but the cumulative effect is an increasingly coherent posture that seeks to maximize China’s leverage ahead of the summit while preserving flexibility.

The Iran conflict has created a strategic opening by drawing U.S. attention and resources away from Asia. Rather than acting aggressively, China has generally favored a patient approach that prioritizes building influence and keeping options open over immediate, high-profile gains. This reflects a Xi-era pattern in which structural advantage and long-term positioning often take precedence over headline-grabbing confrontation.

The delay of the Trump–Xi summit, from late March to mid-May due to the Iran war, has reinforced these dynamics. Beijing has gained additional time to shape the agenda and explore leverage points on technology controls, investment restrictions, tariffs, and Taiwan. With Washington managing multiple crises, China appears less as a challenger and more as a stabilizing presence, creating an emergent asymmetry likely to influence U.S. expectations and negotiation dynamics.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The Sudanese Armed Forces killed at least three people and wounded dozens more on Wednesday in another drone strike targeting the Adukong checkpoint along the border between Chad and Sudan’s West Darfur state. The SAF has repeatedly targeted Adukong, claiming that it is trying to interdict fuel shipments bound for the Rapid Support Forces militant group. Civilians have been the most frequent victims of those attacks, including Chadian nationals.

Sudan’s war passed its three year anniversary on Wednesday with the combatants seemingly no closer to a resolution than they were in 2023. The main focal point of the conflict has shifted away from Khartoum and its environs to the Darfur and Kordofan regions but beyond that not much seems to have changed apart from the level of human suffering the two sides have inflicted. Some 13 million people remain displaced due to the war, around 9 million within Sudan and the rest as refugees.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

The Congolese government and M23 militants are holding another round of negotiations in Switzerland, with mediation from Qatar and the US. They’ve apparently agreed to set up a ceasefire monitoring body, though it sounds like there’s still a fair amount of work to do in terms of fleshing out the details of that entity. Assuming it does come into being the monitors should be quite busy, considering that there are perpetual if sketchy reports of regular clashes between the militants and the Congolese army (and/or allied local militias) in the DRC’s South Kivu province. The humanitarian situation in highland areas of that province is thought to be grim, though the fighting and the region’s remoteness make it hard to ascertain conditions.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

A Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Black Sea port town of Tuapse killed at least two people on Thursday, including a 14 year old. Russian authorities are also claiming that the Ukrainians struck an oil tanker in the Black Sea.

UKRAINE

One of the largest overnight Russian bombardments of the war killed at least 18 people across Ukraine, including a 12 year old, and left over 100 others wounded. The barrage involved over 700 projectiles, more than 650 of them drones. With Kyiv having struck deals to supply drone interceptors to a number of Persian Gulf Arab states, the Russian military may be testing to see if there’s been a decline in the country’s overall air defense capabilities. Ukraine is still woefully short on air defense interceptors of the kind used to down missiles.

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AMERICAS

PERU

Peruvian officials are still counting the votes from Sunday’s/Monday’s presidential election and the race to see who will join first round winner Keiko Fujimori in June’s runoff is too close to call. With around 93 percent of the vote counted, leftist Roberto Sánchez is in second place with 11.98 percent of the vote, while right-wing ex-Lima Mayor Rafael López Aliaga is at 11.92 percent. Fujimori, at just over 17 percent, seems to be a lock for the second round. López Aliaga is alleging fraud and his party is now apparently offering rewards for any information that supports that claim.

NICARAGUA

The Trump administration blacklisted several individuals and entities tied to Nicaragua’s gold sector on Thursday, including a vice minister and two sons of Co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. They’re accused in particular of involvement in last year’s state seizure of a gold processing facility that had been established with foreign (specifically US) investment.

GREENLAND

The Wall Street Journal reports on the parameters of Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland:

In talks with Denmark and Greenland, the U.S. is now seeking to expand its military presence in three areas of Greenland, the commander of the Northern Command, Gen. Gregory Guillot, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month.

The locations are aimed at securing a presence for special forces and permanent access to Arctic waters, as well as expanding space and submarine monitoring. A senior Danish official confirmed two possible locations at Kangerlussuaq, formerly Sondrestrom, which houses a sizable airstrip, as well as the maritime gateway of Narsarsuaq. A third potential location could be a deep-water port near Pituffik, where the U.S. already has a space base.

The real hitch of the negotiations is ensuring the U.S. respects Danish and Greenlandic sovereignty. The Danish government has said U.S. sovereignty over bases, akin to the British model in Cyprus, is unacceptable. Such a deal might satisfy Trump’s desire for improved security but falls short of his goal of ownership.

Getting the US government and Donald Trump to respect anything is a tall order, but it’s particularly difficult here because of the possibility that Greenland might achieve independence someday. The US wants to make an agreement with Denmark that will bind Greenland regardless of its future status, which is not in any sense respectful of Greenlandic sovereignty.

UNITED STATES

In US news:

• The US military murdered at least three more people in another speedboat strike in the eastern Pacific on Wednesday. That makes at least five such attacks and at least 14 extrajudicial killings since Saturday.

• According to Reuters, US officials have been informing their European counterparts that some weapons purchased under the Foreign Military Sales program are going to be delayed. The FMS program is part of the Trump administration’s push to reduce European military dependence on the US and instead encourage European governments to arm themselves with US-made weapons. But the Iran war has left the Pentagon scrambling to maintain its own stockpiles, so European arms sales are taking a backseat. Over time this sort of thing will presumably reduce European interest in purchasing those weapons.

And finally, The Guardian has some great news about a few of the winners (and losers) in Donald Trump’s Iran war:

The world’s top 100 oil and gas companies banked more than $30m every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran, according to exclusive analysis for the Guardian. Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and ExxonMobil are among the biggest beneficiaries of the bonanza, meaning key opponents of climate action continue to prosper.

The conflict pushed the price of oil to an average of $100 (£74) a barrel in March, leading to estimated windfall war profits for the month of $23bn for the companies. Oil and gas supplies will take months to return to pre-war levels and the companies will make $234bn by the end of the year if the oil price continues to average $100. The analysis uses data from a leading intelligence provider, Rystad Energy, analysed by Global Witness.

The excess profits come from the pockets of ordinary people as they pay high prices to fill up their vehicles and power their homes, as well as from businesses incurring higher energy bills. Dozens of countries have cut fuel taxes to help struggling consumers, meaning those nations, including Australia, South Africa, Italy, Brazil and Zambia, are raising less money for public services.

TODAY IN HISTORY

April 15, 1395: The Turco-Mongolian warlord Timur defeats the army of the Mongolian “Golden Horde” khanate at the Battle of the Terek River. Timur’s victory ended a threat against his empire by the Golden Horde’s ruler, Tokhtamysh, and allowed him to destroy all of the major cities in the khanate. In doing so he was able to divert commerce along the “Silk Road” from its northern branch, which ran through the Horde’s territory, to a more southernly route that ran through Timur’s territory.

April 15, 1450: In one of the final engagements of the Hundred Years’ War, a French army under Jean de Clermont nearly annihilates an English force commanded by Sir Thomas Kyriell at the Battle of Formigny, in Normandy. The loss of an entire field army left England unable to defend its remaining holdings in Normandy and the region came under French control in the succeeding months. The battle is notable from a military history perspective as perhaps the first recorded use (by the French) of battlefield artillery in Europe. It’s debatable how effective the guns actually were, but their noise did alert French constable Arthur de Richemont to the battle. The arrival of his ~2000 man army on the field was decisive in turning a likely defeat into an overwhelming French victory.

April 15, 1947: Jackie Robinson makes his Major League Baseball debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers. In doing so, he became the first African-American to play in the MLB, breaking the color barrier that had been entrenched in the league since the 1880s. Two years later he became the first African-American to win his league’s Most Valuable Player award for the 1949 season, and he was inducted in the the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

At time of writing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to convene a meeting of his security cabinet on Wednesday evening to consider a ceasefire in Lebanon. Hezbollah and Lebanese officials have also been talking about a potential ceasefire that would be linked to the US-Iran ceasefire, so if/when one ends the other would also end. The Lebanese officials seem to believe that the Trump administration has been “pressuring” Netanyahu’s government to take this step. The administration hosted Lebanese and Israeli representatives in Washington on Tuesday for talks, ahead of which the Israelis had expressly ruled out a ceasefire. So I have to confess that I’m a bit confused as to what’s happened here.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth, as they say, and from Lebanon’s perspective the hows and whys of a ceasefire matter less at this point than just getting to a ceasefire. Even the “you cease, we fire” format of a typical Israeli “ceasefire” would at least reduce the intensity of the current onslaught. The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 13 more people in Lebanon on Wednesday, adding to the more than 2000 Lebanese it’s killed since March 2. Al Jazeera is reporting a rise in public resentment toward the Lebanese government for opening talks with Israel absent a ceasefire, but it’s unclear if that feeling extends beyond hard hit southern Lebanon. The Guardian reported a few days ago on the extent of the damage the IDF has wrought:

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TODAY IN HISTORY

April 14, 43 BCE: The legions of Mark Antony win a victory and suffer a defeat on the same day in the Battle of Forum Gallorum in northern Italy. Antony was confronted by a Republican army under the command of that year’s consuls, Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Vibius Pansa, bolstered by a group of Julius Caesar’s veterans led by Octavian. Antony’s army attacked Pansa’s part of the consular army and won a fleeting victory before an attack by Hirtius forced Antony to withdraw. Pansa was badly wounded and would die on April 22. The outcome of Forum Gallorum was inconclusive and led to a second, decisive engagement, the Battle of Mutina, a week later.

April 14, 1912: Shortly before midnight, the allegedly unsinkable ocean liner RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg and, well, begins sinking. In part due to the fact that it carried enough lifeboats for only about half of the passengers on board (and a third of the passengers it could have carried at full capacity), the Titanic’s sinking became one of the biggest maritime disasters in history, killing more than 1500 people.

INTERNATIONAL

Global oil prices ticked down on Tuesday despite the breakdown of peace talks in Islamabad over the weekend and the resulting US decision to double blockade the Strait of Hormuz. In part this may be due to the potential resumption of those talks (we’ll get to that), but the International Energy Agency is offering another theory: demand destruction. Basically oil has gotten so scarce and so expensive that it’s reducing demand even for what is typically a very inelastic good. The economic implications of that are not promising to say the least.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

As expected, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted Israeli and Lebanese representatives for a discourse in Washington on Tuesday. Also as expected, the “peace” talks were not about peace, they were about convincing the Lebanese government to go to war with Hezbollah. The post-session comments from participants made that pretty clear. In fairness I’m probably overstating things. The talks seem mostly to have been preparatory in nature, which makes sense given that there were no senior decision makers from either government in attendance. The real arm twisting will come in subsequent sessions, which have yet to be scheduled.

The New Humanitarian highlights the legal objections to the Israeli military’s (IDF) evacuation orders to southern Lebanese civilians:

International humanitarian law requires advance warning to protect civilian populations in war time, so many have questioned both the legality – and the intent – of these orders.

As Fadi Hachem, a human rights lawyer who lectures at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, told The New Humanitarian: “When warnings drive populations into conditions of extreme vulnerability without access to food, water, or medical care, the protective intent of the order is severely compromised.”

In addition, rights groups have said the orders may amount to the war crime of forced displacement, especially after Israeli officials explicitly said in late March they were demolishing south Lebanon houses and villages “in accordance with the model as Gaza”, and Israeli troops would remain in the area, with 600,000 displaced people not allowed to return “until the safety of Israel’s northern residents is guaranteed”.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed at least 11 people, including two children, in multiple incidents across Gaza on Tuesday. One IDF attack targeted police, which has been a priority for Israeli officials as they aim to prevent the territory’s current police force from being folded into the new force that’s supposed to be created under the auspices of Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace.”

KUWAIT

Kuwaiti authorities have been holding US journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin in detention for six weeks now, apparently over his reporting in the early days of the Iran war. His specific crime seems to have been posting video and images of the war’s impact in Kuwait on his social media outlets, which the Kuwaitis are treating as a security breach even though the Committee to Protect Journalists says that everything he posted was already publicly available. Kuwait is not what you’d call a beacon of free expression and liberal values under normal circumstances, but Shihab-Eldin’s case is highlighting the extent to which the Gulf Arab states, and the US as well, have been heavily repressing war reporting even by their usual standards. Hundreds of people have been arrested across the Gulf on similar charges.

IRAN

The US military’s Central Command is reporting that zero ships passed through its blockade in the Strait of Hormuz during its first 24 hours, while six vessels responded to US orders to turn back. Maritime tracking suggests that this is a slight exaggeration and that at least three ships exited the Persian Gulf via the strait after the blockade went into effect and at least two of them were sailing from Iranian ports. But hey, close enough I guess.

Multiple outlets reported on Tuesday that US and Iranian negotiators may be heading back to Pakistan for another round of talks, and Donald Trump later told The New York Post that those talks could take place within the next two days. Later this week or early next week may be more realistic possibilities. It’s unclear what they would be discussing, but Al Jazeera dug into reports that their dispute over Iranian uranium enrichment has come down to the length of a proposed moratorium and there does seem to be something there. The Trump administration wants a 20 year moratorium while the Iranians are offering five.

The sticking point apparently hearkens back to the 2015 nuclear deal, many of whose provisions were supposed to sunset after a period of ten or 15 years. Both sides want to be able to say that they negotiated a “better” deal this time around, which for the Iranians means any temporary restrictions have to be shorter than 10 years and for the Trump administration means they have to be longer than 15 years. The 2015 deal didn’t include an enrichment moratorium of any length, so in theory the Trump administration could agree to Iran’s five year offer and still claim that it negotiated a “better” deal than the Obama administration got. But I doubt they’re going to see it that way. Still, if this is really the ground on which they’re negotiating it means that the Trump administration has already acquiesced to an Iranian “right” to enrich uranium and that could go a long way toward achieving an agreement.

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN

The AP reports that Afghanistan’s capital and largest city is “running out of water”:

Nestled in a high-altitude valley of the Hindu Kush mountains, Kabul is rapidly running out of water. Its population relies mostly on groundwater extracted from wells. But the groundwater has been receding at an alarming rate, and some wells have to be dug as deep as 150 meters (nearly 500 feet) to reach it.

An April 2025 report by the aid group Mercy Corps said the level of Kabul’s aquifers had plunged by 25-30 meters (about 80-100 feet) over the past decade. Aquifers hold massive amounts of water deep under land surfaces. Water in them collects slowly over years as precipitation seeps in. Too much extraction from aquifers, or changes to the climate bringing less water, leads to depletion.

“Without large-scale changes to Kabul’s water management dynamics, the city faces an unprecedented humanitarian disaster within the coming decade, and likely much sooner,” it said.

Climate change, mostly caused by the burning of gasoline, oil and coal, has played its part. Repeated droughts have reduced snowfall, whose gradual melting can replenish groundwater. Instead, Kabul sees more sudden, heavy rainfall that leads to flooding but not enough of it reaches the aquifer.

INDONESIA

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hosted his Indonesian counterpart, Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, at the Pentagon on Tuesday to sign a new bilateral defense cooperation agreement. US and Indonesian forces already cooperate, particularly in the realm of joint exercises, but this agreement points toward shared technological development particularly regarding drones. It does not include anything about the US military having “blanket” access to Indonesian airspace, but a deal on that front is also rumored to be nearing completion.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

According to United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher, drone strikes have killed “nearly 700” Sudanese civilians so far this year. With the exceptions of the Kordofan region and Blue Nile state the conflict between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces has shifted away from clashes on the ground to tit-for-tat drone strikes that frequently seem to hit—intentionally or otherwise—markets, schools, and medical facilities. Even in the areas where the combatants actually encounter one another face to face drones have become a regular feature, especially in Kordofan where strikes seem to take place on a daily basis.

LIBYA

The Trump administration’s effort to reunify Libya took another step forward on Tuesday, when the US military’s Africa Command held special forces exercises involving personnel from both eastern and western Libya’s armed forces. This is the first time that those forces have jointly drilled together since Libya’s civil war began in 2014. It comes just a couple of days after the eastern and western parliaments agreed on Libya’s first truly national budget since 2013.

SOMALIA

The Somali military declared on Tuesday that its forces had killed 27 al-Shabab fighters in an operation in southern Somalia’s Jubaland state. This operation apparently involved both federal and state-level security personnel, which seems noteworthy inasmuch as Jubaland is one of several Somali states that are not currently recognizing the authority of the federal government. Still, this sort of security collaboration is fairly routine despite the political hostility. Somali officials also noted the role of “international partners” in carrying out airstrikes, which presumably means the United States.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

Reuters is reporting that the DRC will receive a group of at least 37, and possibly 45, people trafficked from the United States sometime this week. The Congolese government agreed to become part of the Trump administration’s human trafficking operation earlier this month, making it one of I believe eight African countries that have become party to these “third-country deportations” that are employed in cases where US authorities cannot for whatever reason deport people to their countries of origin. The threat of these kinds of operations is also intended to serve as a deterrent for anyone thinking about entering the US. These deportees will be housed in a hotel near Kinshasa’s airport for up to 15 days. There’s no information as to what will happen to them beyond that.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

A Russian missile strike reportedly killed at least five people, all civilians, in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Tuesday. The attack wounded more than 24 people, at least ten of them severely enough to require hospitalization.

The Ukrainian government is reportedly asking its Israeli counterpart to detain the Russian cargo vessel ABINSK, which is currently docked in the Israeli port of Haifa. Ukrainian officials allege that the ship was carrying grain harvested from parts of Ukraine that are under Russian occupation, which Kyiv regards as stolen. I haven’t seen any indication of a response from Israeli officials.

ITALY

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced on Tuesday that her government is suspending the renewal of its defense cooperation agreement with Israel. The Italian and Israeli governments negotiated that deal in 2006 and it renews every five years automatically unless one of the parties interrupts that process. Meloni cited “the current situation” in explaining her decision, likely a very vague reference to Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Lebanon. Italian officials have been unusually critical of Israel over its actions in that operation.

On a related note, Donald Trump bashed Meloni in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Tuesday, saying that she is “very different from what I thought.” Trump’s comments focused on Italy’s refusal to open the Strait of Hormuz for him, and he’s also angry that Meloni criticized his ridiculous feud with Pope Leo XIV on Monday. The Iran war seems to have caused Meloni to recalibrate her previously tight relationship with Trump.

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AMERICAS

PERU

There are still no official results from Peru’s delayed presidential election, but unofficial results make it clear that, as expected, no candidate won an outright victory. Perennial candidate Keiko Fujimori is “winning” the first round with a bit under 17 percent of the vote and should be heading to her fourth consecutive runoff in June. At this point it looks like she’ll be joined by right-wing ex-Lima Mayor Rafael López Aliaga, although that could still change as more votes are counted.

HAITI

Criminal insurgents attacked a commune in Haiti’s Southeast department overnight, killing at least seven people and setting fire to a police station. There’s no indication which of Haiti’s several gangs was responsible.

UNITED STATES

The US military bombed another speedboat in the eastern Pacific on Tuesday, killing at least four people. This is at least the fourth extrajudicial execution that US forces have carried out since Saturday, leaving at least 11 people dead in all.

Finally, in a piece for The New York Times Jonathan Guyer explains why Donald Trump’s crack negotiating team has failed to close a deal with Iran:

[Jared] Kushner and [Steve] Witkoff, the president’s son-in-law and special envoy for peace missions, respectively, represent the Trump mind-set: a rogue version of diplomacy that’s focused on the flashy and theatrical, a reflection of the Trump real estate developer ethos. But that ethos has failed, and Iran is proof.

In fact, in February, Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff had a chance to enter into serious negotiations with Iran that could have secured a new nuclear deal and averted the American and Israeli war.

Now, after the president threatened to destroy “a whole civilization,” a two-week cease-fire is in place. But the cessation of hostilities came not through a Witkoff and Kushner-led initiative, but through emergency diplomacy led by Pakistan and China. The duo returned to the bargaining table this weekend, this time demoted, with Vice President JD Vance leading the diplomatic efforts. But the global backdrop of the negotiations — the Strait of Hormuz still in chaos, the American military still in place across the region — shows the shallowness and recklessness of their peace-as-business strategy. When it comes to peacemaking, Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff are no match for the intensive work that it actually requires.

TODAY IN HISTORY

April 13, 1953: Central Intelligence Agency director Allen Dulles orders the formation of Project MKUltra, a program for human experimentation into “mind control” drugs and techniques. Among its more unsavory components were experiments in which human subjects, often pulled involuntarily from prisons and mental institutions, were dosed with drugs (LSD in particular), usually without their consent. Some of the techniques MKUltra tested eventually found their way into George W. Bush’s “enhanced interrogation” (torture) program, and it has spawned innumerable conspiracy theories since the revelation of its existence in the 1970s.

April 13, 1975: An attack by Christian Phalangist militia fighters on a bus carrying Palestinian fighters and civilians in eastern Beirut triggers the Lebanese Civil War. That conflict, which fed on religious and sectarian tensions that were inherent in the structure of the Lebanese state and were exacerbated by the influx of Palestinian refugees following the 1948 and 1967 wars and by the arrival of the Palestine Liberation Organization after the Black September 1970 event in Jordan, lasted some 15 years and killed anywhere from 150,000 to 250,000 people.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least six people in multiple airstrikes across southern Lebanon on Monday. Israeli forces also reportedly encircled the town of Bint Jbeil and began an operation to seize it ahead of Tuesday’s planned “peace” talks between the Israeli and Lebanese governments. According to Reuters there is a Hezbollah garrison inside Bint Jbeil that is hunkering down and preparing “to fight to the death.” It’s unclear how large that garrison is but Israeli officials are apparently expecting to take the town in a matter of days and proceed from there to securing a strip of land running all the way across the Lebanese side of the border. It is yet to be seen what Tuesday’s negotiating session will look like, given that the Lebanese government appears singularly focused on achieving a ceasefire and the Israeli government has already rejected a ceasefire in principle.

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: I am feeling much better but my voice has not recovered from my cold and so, with apologies, I will have to forego tonight’s voiceover.

TODAY IN HISTORY

April 10, 1815: Indonesia’s Mount Tambora volcano begins the largest eruption in human history with an explosion that was heard 1200 miles away and knocked roughly a full mile off of the volcano’s elevation. The subsequent year, 1816, is known as “The Year Without a Summer” because of the ensuing volcanic winter. The climate effects caused worldwide famine and may have, among other things, contributed to westward migration in the United States and the invention of the bicycle.

April 10, 1998: The governments of the UK and Ireland as well as Republican and Unionist forces in Northern Ireland sign the Good Friday Agreement, ending the Northern Ireland conflict, AKA “The Troubles.” The agreement recognized Northern Ireland as part of the UK but also left open the possibility of Irish reunification if majorities in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland were ever in favor. It also allowed the people of Northern Ireland to claim British or Irish citizenship, or both if they preferred. The freedom of movement enabled by the fact that both the UK and Ireland were members of the European Union helped to facilitate the agreement, and maintaining it has been a challenge post-Brexit.

April 11, 1241: A Mongolian army defeats King Béla IV of Hungary at the Battle of Mohi. While Béla survived the battle he temporarily lost control of his kingdom to the Mongols, who were able to sack the city of Pest and occupy most of Hungary. But they withdrew in early 1242, as their leader Batu had to return east to defend his interests amid the succession of a new Great Khan. Béla was able to regain control and the Mongols wouldn’t seriously threaten Hungary again for over 40 years.

April 11, 1713: Five separate treaties are signed between the various participants in the War of the Spanish Succession, becoming the first of several accords that would come to be known as the Peace of Utrecht. The war, fought between the Habsburg and Bourbon claimants to the throne of Spain, ended with a qualified Bourbon victory that saw French King Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip V, ratified as Spanish king but only on the condition that he renounce his place in the French line of succession, thus preventing a merger of the two kingdoms. Because it enshrined the demand that the French and Spanish crowns remain separate, Utrecht is regarded as a significant milestone in the development of both the nation-state and the “balance of power” concept in geopolitics. Britain is generally thought to have benefited the most from the peace, as it secured naval supremacy over its continental rivals and forced the French monarchy to recognize the Hanoverian dynasty’s accession to the British throne and drop its support for the rival Stuart dynasty.

April 11, 1814: The Treaty of Fontainebleau ends the War of the Sixth Coalition and forces the defeated French Emperor Napoleon into his first (and, as it turned out, temporary) exile on the island of Elba. Having forced the surrender of the French army at Paris on March 31, the victorious coalition decreed that it would no longer deal with Napoleon as the ruler of France and forced his abdication. Napoleon attempted to step down in favor of his son, but the treaty stipulated that neither Napoleon nor any member of his family should continue to rule France. A restoration of the pre-revolution French monarchy under Louis XVIII followed, though his reign was interrupted when Napoleon returned from exile on March 20, 1815 and began the “Hundred Days” epilogue to his career.

April 11, 1979: The Tanzania People’s Defense Force, along with a group of Ugandan opposition fighters called the Uganda National Liberation Front, seizes Kampala and forces Ugandan dictator Idi Amin to flee into exile after over eight years in power. Amin sought sanctuary first in Libya and later in Saudi Arabia, where he lived until his death in 2003. His time in power is remembered mostly for its brutality toward ethnic minorities and political opponents, with estimates of the number of people killed on Amin’s orders ranging from around 100,000 at the lower end to upwards of 500,000 at the higher end.

April 12, 1204: The army of the Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople, temporarily doing away with the Byzantine Empire. In many respects the true culmination of the Crusading enterprise, the Fourth Crusade can either be viewed as a deliberate plot against the Byzantines or the unplanned result of a military campaign going completely off the rails—this is still a matter of some debate among historians. What is indisputable is that the Byzantine Empire, though it managed to reconstitute itself and retake Constantinople under the Palaiologos family in 1261, never really recovered from this event.

April 12, 1861: Batteries from the new “Provisional Forces of the Confederate States” open fire on Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, kicking off the American Civil War. The garrison commander, Major Robert Anderson, agreed to surrender and evacuate the fort the following day. Two US soldiers were killed the day after that when some ammunition in the fort exploded during a ceremonial salute to the US flag, but they were the only two fatalities connected with the battle. The fort remained in Confederate hands until they evacuated it in 1865 during William T. Sherman’s war-ending Carolinas campaign.

MIDDLE EAST

IRAN

Before we talk about anything else I suppose we should start with the fact that Saturday’s US-Iran negotiating session in Islamabad did not produce an agreement. This was not surprising. The Trump administration has been negotiating with Iran (at least according it its definition of “negotiate”) on and off for two years now without making any discernible progress, so the notion that the two sides were going to settle all of their grievances in one marathon session was fanciful to say the least. What is a bit surprising is that when the talks ended without a deal, the US envoys simply declared failure and went home.

Tuesday’s ceasefire opened a two-week, potentially extendable, window for negotiations, which suggested at least a brief negotiating process rather than a one-or-done moonshot. But this is in keeping with the Trump administration’s overall approach to negotiations (that definition I mentioned earlier), which involves issuing ultimatums and walking away rather than doing the difficult work of trying to find common ground. Chalk that up to laziness, stupidity, arrogance, or any other trait you want, but whatever the reason it’s not an effective way to conduct diplomacy—especially not after you’ve just spent six weeks losing a war badly enough that you’re now hoping to end it.

According to lead US “negotiator” JD Vance, the talks failed over the Iranians’ failure to provide “an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon.” They’ve committed to the former, both verbally and in writing, so many times at this point that I’ve lost count. So we can assume that the failure was on the subject of “tools,” and specifically that Iran refuses to accede to the Trump administration’s demand that it fully halt its uranium enrichment program. That demand has not shifted an iota over these two years, which brings us back to that refusal to negotiate as that term is properly understood. Iranian sources told The New York Times that Vance and company went to Islamabad looking for submission, not discussion, and when they didn’t get that they were either unwilling or unable to change their approach.

The insistence on “zero enrichment” is and always has been silly. A limited, well-monitored enrichment program isn’t a major proliferation risk and it’s certainly less of a proliferation risk than an entirely unmonitored nuclear program. One has to assume that the Trump administration’s refusal to budge from that position is because a) they don’t understand it or b) they don’t want a deal. “Both” is also possible, particularly in a presidential administration that lacks cohesion and is led by a man whose brain flickers on and off seemingly minute by minute. But there may be another layer here, namely that Vance is lying. Other sources mention several points of disagreement aside from just the nuclear issue, chiefly the ongoing Israeli slaughter in Lebanon and the future status of the Strait of Hormuz.

Speaking of Hormuz, Donald Trump announced on Sunday that the US Navy is now blockading it, and the rest of Iran with it. Moreover he’s apparently planning to chase down and intercept any vessel that pays Iran’s toll to transit the strait. Yes it takes a real military genius to retaliate for Iran’s closure of the strait by double closing it, but the point is of course to interdict Iran’s own oil exports (squeezing China in particular, one assumes) and to demonstrate that the US can play this game too. I don’t expect it will have much of an impact on the Iranians but it may foreclose on further negotiations given that it is, in its own way, an act of war—even though the Iranians apparently left Islamabad believing that there would be further talks. Trump is also reportedly considering a “range” of other options from a full resumption of the war to “limited” airstrikes that would probably lead to a full resumption of the war in short order, though it’s possible that he’ll give this blockade time to see if it somehow forces the Iranians to surrender.

In other items:

• The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded to Trump’s blockade order by threatening to fire on any military ships approaching the strait. As it happens, the US Navy sailed two destroyers into the strait on Saturday, as talks were taking place, on what Central Command called a “mine clearing operation.” There are some problems with this story, starting with the fact that destroyers don’t clear mines (there’s a whole different class of ship for that). They can participate in mine clearing operations but the fact is that they weren’t in the strait long enough for anything like that to have taken place, possibly because they were chased out by the Iranians. Maybe they dropped off a few minesweeping drones, but that’s a token effort at best. It might be better to classify this as a “freedom of navigation” mission, but demonstrating that one can traverse the strait with armed naval vessels under a ceasefire does not mean that one can sail an oil tanker through it with no ceasefire in place.

• It’s been about five weeks since Iran was on the verge of running out of ballistic missiles and The Wall Street Journal reports that US intelligence agencies believe that Tehran still possesses thousands of them. “More than half” of its missile launchers are thought to have been destroyed, damaged, or buried but many of those can be repaired and/or recovered.

• One interesting story that has emerged in recent days is the role that China has been playing in this war, which seems to be more extensive than previously thought. The New Arab reported on Saturday that there was “a Chinese delegation” in Islamabad “to assist Pakistani mediation” in the talks. Had there been a settlement they could have been involved in negotiating it, for example serving as a guarantor for any concessions offered to Iran. Behind the scenes, The New York Times reported on Saturday that China may have sent a shipment of portable air defense systems to Iran. There’s no evidence that they’ve been used but if there has been a shipment they could come into play should open hostilities resume. The Independent alleged that China is also selling rocket fuel components to Iran. But this puts China in an awkward spot if the negotiations are over and the US is going to start blockading Iranian oil shipments, as Beijing is likely to feel that. The US assumption is probably that China will pressure Iran into making concessions, though you know what they say about assuming things. If the war resumes the Chinese government could find itself in another difficult position, supporting Iran even as Pakistan—a client state whose military uses Chinese- and co-produced arms—is supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia and could be pulled further into the conflict because of their alliance.

LEBANON

The Lebanese government revealed on Friday that the initial round of “peace talks” with its Israeli counterpart will take place in the US on Tuesday. I put “peace talks” in quotes because the Israeli government is likely to come to them demanding that Lebanon join it in waging war on Hezbollah so “peace” may not be the focus. Lebanese officials have been pushing for a ceasefire ahead of those talks but the Israeli government definitively ruled that out on Saturday and then punctuated its refusal by killing at least 18 people including three emergency workers. The Israeli military (IDF) also killed at least 13 Lebanese soldiers on Friday. An IDF airstrike killed a seven year old child who was attending her father’s funeral on Sunday. He’d been among the roughly 350 people the IDF killed during its massive barrage on Wednesday.

The possibility of some form of internal conflict in Lebanon appears to be growing, after Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem criticized the government’s decision to enter into negotiations on Friday and Lebanese authorities began deploying army units around Beirut. If they decide to join the Israelis their first move could be an attempt to expel Hezbollah from the city.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Gaza’s “ceasefire” quietly hit the six month mark on Friday, and the IDF commemorated the milestone by killing at least seven people across the territory the following day. I’m not sure what else needs to be said there, thought on the humanitarian front it’s probably worth noting that the continued lack of proper shelter and sanitation has caused a major rat infestation within the territory’s tent cities, raising serious health concerns. Looking ahead, Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” is reportedly scrambling to find funding after receiving what Reuters said was “only a tiny fraction of the $17 billion pledged for Gaza.” Amid all the discussion about disarming Hamas I’m not sure anybody predicted that a lack of money could be the thing that dooms Trump’s enterprise.

Elsewhere, a reserve IDF soldier/settler killed a Palestinian man near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Saturday. There is no indication that the killer was acting in an official capacity, though admittedly the line between settler and soldier is not terribly clear when it comes to Israeli activity in the territory. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expelled Spanish representatives from the Gaza “ceasefire” coordination center in Israel on Friday, citing the Spanish government’s repeated criticisms of Israeli policy and the IDF’s activities. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been a vocal critic of the Gaza genocide and the Iran war.

ASIA

AFGHANISTAN

Gunmen killed at least 11 people in Afghanistan’s Herat province on Friday. There’s no confirmation as to responsibility, but given the location and the fact that the victims appear to have been Shiʿa it’s reasonable to speculated that this was an Islamic State operation.

PAKISTAN

Baluch separatists opened fire on a Pakistani Coast Guard patrol boat operating in the Arabian Sea on Sunday, killing three of its personnel. The Baluchistan Liberation Army claimed responsibility, calling the incident “a new development in the BLA’s military strategy.”

CHINA

The Chinese government is reportedly suspending sulfuric acid exports starting next month. China is one of the world’s largest sulphuric acid exporters, producing the substance as a byproduct of metals processing. Beijing is aiming to conserve domestic supplies because sulphuric acid exports from the Persian Gulf, where it’s produced as a byproduct of oil and gas refining, are unreliable at best due to the Iran war. Sulphuric acid is used in manufacturing phosphate fertilizers as well as multiple industrial processes, so these supply restrictions could be very significant.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The Sudan Tribune is reporting that a senior Rapid Support Forces commander based in Sudan’s North Darfur state has defected to the Sudanese Armed Forces due to “internal friction” within the RSF. Basically it sounds like he got passed over for a promotion and was mad enough to quit the organization, though the report also notes that Arab tribal grandee and RSF foe Musa Hilal may have encouraged him to defect and there are allegations of nepotism regarding the family of RSF boss Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo that contributed to his decision.

Human Rights Watch issued a new report a few days ago accusing the SAF and its affiliated militias of having “arbitrarily detained, tortured, and otherwise ill-treated civilians in areas under their control.” The mistreatment is especially prevalent in areas that have recently come under SAF control and involves civilians accused of “collaborating” with the RSF, often on the basis of some perceived (or misperceived) allegiance or even something as flimsy as ethnicity. HRW says it is aware of at least two deaths in military custody under these circumstances and the actual figure is presumably higher than that.

LIBYA

Despite reports of a movement attempting to undermine US envoy Massad Boulos’s plan for reunifying Libya, the first part of that plan came to fruition on Saturday when the Lebanese Central Bank announced that both of the country’s rival legislatures (the House of Representatives in the east and the High Council of State in the west) had approved a joint national budget. This is Libya’s first genuinely national budget since 2013, so this is no minor feat although there’s still a ways as far as reunification is concerned. Interestingly the Iran war may have hastened this agreement, as oil prices are up and while the eastern government and its “Libyan National Army” control most of Libya’s oil facilities it’s the western government that has most international recognition.

BENIN

Beninese voters elected a new president on Sunday, with incumbent Patrice Talon having decided to respect the country’s two term limit and step aside. Results are not yet available but Talon’s finance minister and chosen successor, Romuald Wadagni, was expected to win, particularly after opposition parties failed to win a single seat in January’s parliamentary election. He’ll be the first president elected since the Beninese parliament lengthened the presidential term from five to seven years in November.

NIGERIA

The Nigerian military carried out an airstrike on a crowded market in northeastern Nigeria’s Yobe state on Saturday night that according to Reuters may have killed more than 200 people. The rationale for this strike is unclear though it came shortly after an apparent Boko Haram attack in neighboring Borno state so this may have been a very misguided attempt at retaliation. The market is located near the Borno state border.

DJIBOUTI

To I assume no surprise, early results from Friday’s Djiboutian presidential election show that incumbent Ismaïl Omar Guelleh eked out a narrow victory with just under 98 percent of the vote. Condolences to anybody who’d bet on the other guy. The 78 year old Guelleh has been in power for 27 years now, and counting.

EUROPE

UKRAINE

With their Easter (Orthodox) ceasefire in place on Sunday, the Ukrainian and Russian governments spent the holiday accusing one another of violating it. Several times, in fact—Ukrainian officials claimed a whopping 2299 Russian ceasefire violations while the Russians accused their Ukrainian counterparts of 1971. These appear to have been confined to the front line so at least Ukrainian (and Russian) cities were more or less spared. The Kremlin likewise rejected any extension of the ceasefire unless Ukrainian leaders accept their demands, including the cession of territory in Ukraine’s Donbas region. On a more positive note, the two sides did exchange 175 prisoners each on Saturday, even as Russian strikes killed at least two people in Odesa prior to the ceasefire taking effect.

HUNGARY

Proving that the JD Vance Bump really works, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party was resoundingly defeated in Sunday’s election by the opposition Tisza party, ending his 16 year reign. Orbán conceded defeat with around 60 percent of the vote counted and Tisza ahead of Fidesz by a healthy 52 percent to 38 percent margin. Tisza leader Péter Magyar will be in line to succeed Orbán, with the main lingering question being whether his party will win a supermajority as projected. Orbán’s defeat is a major blow to the European and US far-right and to the Russian and Israeli governments, as he’s supported both within the European Union.

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AMERICAS

PERU

Exit polling has Keiko Fujimori, as expected, “winning” Sunday’s Peruvian presidential election with somewhere around 16 percent of the vote. If that proves accurate she’ll be heading to another runoff—her fourth in a row—on June 7. Leftist Roberto Sánchez is polling in second place, which would be a bit of a surprise though again that assumes the polling holds up once the results are counted.

COLOMBIA

The Colombian government raised its tariffs on Ecuadorian products to 100 percent on Friday, reciprocating a step the Ecuadorian government took a day earlier. Ecuador recalled its ambassador from Colombia one day prior to that so it’s safe to say that bilateral relations are at something of an ebb right now.

UNITED STATES

Finally, Foreign Affairs’ Christina Knight and Scott Singer argue that the only way to develop artificial intelligence safely is if the US and China work together:

As artificial intelligence increasingly defines economic and strategic competition between the United States and China, the technology also creates extreme risks that transcend national borders. An individual could potentially use an AI model or a combination of models to engineer a dangerous pathogen, launch autonomous cyberattacks on power grids or hospital networks, or create and disseminate realistic deepfakes that erode public trust—regardless of whether that individual lives in Dalian, Dallas, or Delhi. Neither the United States nor China benefits from an AI race in which a model from either country could cause catastrophic harm anywhere.

Chinese models present particularly acute vulnerabilities. DeepSeek’s open-source large language model, R1-0528, for example, lacks many of the safeguards that are built into U.S. systems. It accepts malicious instructions 12 times more often than leading U.S. models do, according to U.S. government research. Its models are also significantly more vulnerable to attackers: standard jailbreaking methods—techniques to bypass a model’s built-in safety controls—elicit harmful responses 94 percent of the time versus just eight percent of the time for comparable American systems. This risk increases when a Chinese model powers many autonomous agents, such as the now viral OpenClaw, which can browse the web and access databases at scale without human oversight.

As the two dominant powers in transformative AI, Washington and Beijing will determine whether it creates widely shared benefits or generates dangerous new risks. When great powers develop high-risk technologies, open communication channels are essential to prevent misunderstandings that could lead to disaster. During the height of the Cold War, for example, U.S. scientists shared information with the Soviet Union about technologies to prevent unauthorized nuclear use. Deciding when to share information related to critical technologies requires careful discretion about what to disclose and what to withhold. But even the most intense rivals can find ways to effectively cooperate.

The United States and China must collaborate to manage the growing risks of AI while they compete for technological supremacy. A prudent U.S. risk mitigation strategy does not mean slowing down innovation. Instead, it means working with Beijing to come to an understanding of safety research priorities, to coordinate testing for vulnerabilities and implementing safeguards, and to jointly establish best practices to contain truly global risks. China, meanwhile, needs to invest in the technical capacity that makes engagement on AI safety worthwhile. Working together is necessary, and with the right approach, it is feasible. By focusing on how to look for risks rather than the specifics of what they find, Washington and Beijing can compete fiercely on AI while still mitigating the most extreme dangers it presents to the world.

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: With apologies since I just came back from vacation, I am sick enough that there is a greater than 50 percent chance that I will need to take tomorrow off altogether. This only applies to paid subscribers but I just wanted to give you a heads up.

TODAY IN HISTORY

April 9, 1241: A small Mongolian army under the command of Orda, one of Genghis Khan’s grandsons, defeats a Polish force under the command of Grand Duke Henry II at the Battle of Legnica. Despite the victory the battle partially marks the end of the Mongols’ 1240-1241 invasion of Eastern Europe. The expedition’s overall commander, Batu, had to return east after the death of Great Khan Ögedei in 1241 and at any rate there were signs that the Mongol conquests were reaching their territorial/logistical limits the further they advanced into Europe.

April 9, 1288: The Đại Việt defeats the invading Mongols at the naval Battle of Bạch Đằng in what is today the Quảng Ninh province of modern Vietnam. Vietnamese forces capitalized on the Mongols’ unfamiliarity with tidal patterns on the Bạch Đằng River to sink or capture hundreds of Mongolian ships and kill or capture tens of thousands of warriors. The battle effectively ended the Mongols’ third and final attempted invasion of Vietnam. The Đại Việt eventually negotiated a tributary relationship with the Mongolian Yuan dynasty in China on relatively favorable terms that ended further threat of invasion.

April 9, 1865: Confederate General Robert E. Lee, along with his Army of Northern Virginia, surrenders to Union commander Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. Though there were still other Confederate armies in the field, Lee’s surrender is generally treated as the end of the US Civil War.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

One day after a massive bombardment that drew surprisingly intense international criticism, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Thursday that he’s authorized direct negotiations between the Lebanese and Israeli governments. Lebanese officials have been requesting this for some time (predating the Iran war) so there was no question of their acceptance. Al-Monitor is reporting that the US State Department will host Israeli and Lebanese negotiators next week to begin the talks, which according to Netanyahu “will focus on ‌disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful ‌relations between ⁠Israel and ⁠Lebanon.”

(For whatever it’s worth, and I don’t think it’s worth very much anymore given subsequent developments, CBS News reported on Thursday that—as some of you may have already assumed—when the US and Iran agreed on their ceasefire on Thursday it was with the understanding that Lebanon was included. Netanyahu then rewrote the ceasefire after the fact to exclude Lebanon and the Trump administration went along with it. Now the line out of the administration, peddled most conspicuously by Vice President JD Vance, is that there was a “misunderstanding” on the Iranians’ part that led them erroneously to believe that the deal also covered Lebanon. As ever, the next honest word out of Vance’s mouth will be the first.)

The breakthrough here seems in part to have been Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s statement earlier on Thursday in which he rejected any notion that the Iranian government might negotiate a peace deal on Lebanon’s behalf, as part of its forthcoming talks with the US. But if Salam was hoping that this rhetoric would earn Lebanon a ceasefire he was wrong—Netanyahu made it clear that the Israeli military (IDF) will continue its Lebanese offensive. The Israeli negotiating position will presumably be less oriented toward stopping the violence than toward encouraging the Lebanese government to join it in waging war against Hezbollah, so a ceasefire could be a long way off.

Axios’s Barak Ravid is out with what feels like the 10 billionth iteration of his “Netanyahu under pressure from the US” story, and if that’s actually true we may see the IDF temper its Lebanese activities without entirely halting them. I do think there’s some possibility that Ravid’s story is accurate, in that the Trump administration could have solicited Salam’s statement divesting Lebanon’s conflict from Iran’s with the promise that it would force Netanyahu to open negotiations. The statement could (I stress could) lessen the risk that Tehran would walk away from negotiations with the US because of ongoing fighting in Lebanon.

Elsewhere, as I mentioned the IDF bombardment on Wednesday drew sharp international criticism, most notably from Europe. Lebanon is a special case for Europeans as far as the Middle East is concerned but even at that the level of unqualified opprobrium for Israel has been notable. And the World Health Organization is warning that the massive number of casualties on Wednesday has left many Lebanese hospitals at risk of running out of trauma supplies. This may not prove to be a serious issue unless the IDF decides to do it again in the near future.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF killed a nine year old girl in northern Gaza on Thursday. It seems that Israeli fire hit a “school tent,” and the fact that we’re talking about children attending school in tents is grotesque enough without the IDF shelling those tents to boot. Israeli officials claim to have killed a Palestinian Islamic Jihad member, though whether it was in that same strike is unclear. According to Al Jazeera, the IDF has attacked Gaza on 36 of the past 40 days, as attention has shifted to the Iran war. It has also drastically restricted both aid entering the territory and medical evacuations leaving it.

In the West Bank, and also under the cover provided by the war, the Israeli government has reportedly legalized 34 new West Bank settlements on hitherto illegal outposts. This is possibly the largest single expansions of West Bank settlements in history and furthers the project of expelling Palestinians from most of the territory. In Israel proper, Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial is apparently set to resume this weekend. Its proceedings had been suspended due to the Iran war. This is another reason why Netanyahu may keep trying to scuttle the ceasefire.

SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi state media has revealed the extent of the damage that the war has caused to the kingdom’s oil sector, and it is fairly extensive. In total Saudi oil output has been cut by some 1.3 million barrels per day, most (700,000) due to a late Iranian strike on the East-West Pipeline that carries crude from fields in eastern Saudi Arabia to terminals on the country’s Red Sea coast. Strikes on oil facilities have reduced the kingdom’s total production capacity by some 600,000 barrels per day. Damage to their energy sectors may be one reason why Gulf Cooperation Council states are now rethinking their US investment portfolios, as Drop Site reported on Sunday prior to the ceasefire. Gulf investment has become a massive driver of the only real growth sector of the US economy, “AI,” and if there’s a disruption there it could have serious repercussions.

IRAN

As it currently stands the plan is for the US and Iran to begin peace talks in Pakistan on Saturday. Those plans could certainly change given the volatility of the ceasefire, though it may be worth noting that even as the Iranian government has been threatening to withdraw over Lebanon (Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, admittedly a bit player in this process, said on Thursday that the talks are “meaningless” while the war in Lebanon continues) its delegation is apparently already in Islamabad waiting for the US.

In other items:

• Donald Trump issued what I guess was a threat late Wednesday, posting on social media that he’s leaving US forces deployed to the Middle East unless/until there is a “REAL AGREEMENT” between the US and Iran. He suggested that he will escalate the war if it resumes. Countering that, The New York Times became the latest in a string of outlets to report that the “Pakistani” ceasefire proposal that sealed the proverbial deal on Tuesday was effectively a US proposal issued under the imprimatur of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Trump, in short, was intent on ending the war.

• We still don’t have anything I would consider an accurate casualty count from Iran, but state media is now reporting that the death toll after nearly six weeks of war was “over 3000.” That’s hundreds more than the figures currently being reported in Western outlets, which are around 2000.

• The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, which is not hugely surprising and wouldn’t be even if the Iranians hadn’t said that they were “halting” traffic due to the situation in Lebanon. Iranian military authorities published a map late Wednesday that suggests they’ve mined the strait, which would be consistent with reports that were circulating a couple of weeks ago. Even the suggestion of mines will force any shipping firm that is planning to transit the strait to work with the Iranian Navy to ensure safe passage, which in turn enables the Iranians to collect the tolls they seem intent on collecting. Trump currently seems displeased with this state of affairs but I say that knowing that he could write another post about this 20 minutes from now completely reversing himself.

• The New Arab is claiming that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has opened up recruitment to children as young as 12, who could find themselves patrolling cities and manning IRGC checkpoints. If this is accurate it would indicate both extensive IRGC personnel losses and concern over potential internal unrest (requiring manpower/childpower to deter or suppress).

ASIA

INDIA

While I was away the Indian government’s March 31 deadline for eradicating the country’s Maoist insurgency lapsed, and although it sounds like they didn’t quite hit the mark Indian officials are nevertheless declaring mission accomplished:

On March 30, four days before [imprisoned Maoist leader Prashanta] Bose’s death, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah told parliament that the CPI (Maoist) had lost almost all its central leadership. This was a day before the deadline he had given the Indian security forces roughly two years ago to make the country Maoist-free.

“Our goal was a Naxal-free India by March 31, [2026]. The country will be informed once the entire process is formally completed, but I can say that we have become Naxal-free,” Shah said. Naxal is the Indian name for Maoists.

The surrender of Communist Party of India (Maoist) military leader Tippiri Tirupati in late February appears to have been the death knell for the movement, which has lost most of its leadership and large segments of its rank and file in recent years and especially since Shah made its elimination a top priority.

MYANMAR

New Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing unveiled his new cabinet on Thursday and—stop me if you’ve heard this already—it’s mostly military officers. With that I think we can finally close the book on this reskinning of the country’s junta as a notionally civilian government.

PHILIPPINES

The Philippine Coast Guard is opening a new command center on Thitu Island in the disputed South China Sea. This is squarely in a region where Philippine and Chinese vessels have tangled with one another in the past so I mention this only because there is a possibility of some sort of Chinese response.

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AFRICA

SUDAN

The Sudan Tribune is reporting that a drone strike killed more than 40 people in a wedding party in Sudan’s North Darfur state on Wednesday evening. The Sudanese military hasn’t commented on this as far as I know but given that most of North Darfur is controlled by the Rapid Support Forces group and there were RSF personnel among the casualties it’s clear that this was a military attack.

The Iran war has had a deleterious effect on humanitarian aid operations around the world. By way of an example, Just Security’s Rachel George discusses what it’s doing to aid efforts in Sudan:

The Iran war has made this worse in both direct and structural ways. Sudan imports more than 50 percent of its fertilizer from the Persian Gulf region, meaning that the Strait closure has not only disrupted the delivery of existing humanitarian aid, but also is undermining the very agricultural foundation that Sudanese families depend on to feed themselves. Humanitarian shipments intended for Sudan have been rerouted as far as the Cape of Good Hope — a 6,000-mile, three-week extension in travel time.

The International Rescue Committee warned in March that pharmaceutical supplies worth $130,000 intended to support about 20,000 people in Sudan were stuck in Dubai, as disruptions to shipping routes delayed deliveries. Save the Children told the Council on Foreign Relations’ Think Global Health that almost $600,000 worth of essential medicines intended for 90 primary care facilities in Sudan were stuck in their Dubai shipping hub.

Sudanese women have been leading humanitarian efforts throughout the miltiary-RSF conflict and they are hardest hit by this new challenges. Funding challenges are contributing as well—the United Nations World Food Program warned on Thursday that it is facing a $428 million shortfall in its Sudanese refugee operations, threatening support for the more than 1.3 million Sudanese people who have fled this war into neighboring Chad.

LIBYA

According to The New Arab, a plan floated by US envoy Massad Boulos to end Libya’s lengthy political turmoil is falling apart as elites chafe against it. Boulos’s proposal seeks to create a unified national budget and joint military command bringing together the rival governments based in eastern and western Libya, mostly held together by an apparent interpersonal accord involving Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and Saddam Haftar, the chief of staff of the “Libyan National Army” and son of LNA grandee Khalifa Haftar.

Libya’s High Council of State, which is a legislature of sorts based in the west, is resisting these unification efforts and its leaders may be involved in a counter effort involving the head of Libya’s presidential council, Mohamed al-Menfi, and the speaker of the eastern-based House of Representatives, Aguila Saleh. Adding to this morass, there are indications that at least one of Saddam Haftar’s brothers is participating in this scheme because of intra-family rivalries. Khalifa Haftar’s position is unknown and he’s thought to be in poor health anyway.

NIGER

Islamic State ​in the Sahel Province issued a statement earlier this week declaring that its fighters had attacked a Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin encampment in Niger’s Tillabéri region last Thursday, killing at least 35 JNIM personnel. It claimed that the attack was a retaliation for a recent JNIM operation in a nearby village. IS and the al-Qaeda linked JNIM often struggle to coexist but this is apparently their first major clash in Niger and signals the deteriorating security situation in that country. JNIM has seemed in recent months to be expanding its Nigerien presence, which may have set the table for this clash.

NIGERIA

Unspecified jihadists attacked a military base in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state overnight, killing at least 18 people including a brigadier general. This is apparently part of a wave of violence that’s been sweeping the province since Sunday and seen at least 90 people killed in attacks on multiple villages this week.

DJIBOUTI

Djiboutian voters will choose a president on Friday, with 27 year incumbent Ismaïl Omar Guelleh all but a lock to win yet another term. Djiboutian votes aren’t outright rigged but Guelleh doesn’t permit any genuine opposition so elections are basically a token exercise. There was one obstacle to his re-election, a legal age limit for presidential candidates of 75 (Guelleh is 78), but parliament excised that restriction last year.

EUROPE

NATO

According to Reuters, the Trump administration is considering the withdrawal of some US military personnel from Europe as another way to “punish” NATO’s European members for their alleged failure to participate in the Iran war. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s visit to the White House on Wednesday does not appear to have materially satisfied Donald Trump’s grievances regarding the alliance, and he’s apparently now demanding that member-states produce their plans for fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz in the next few days. There are some preliminary efforts in motion to contribute to some sort of “freedom of navigation” mission in the Gulf, but none of these countries are going to send their navies barging into the strait unless they’re sure the war is over and they’re not going to be attacked. So whatever plans they offer are unlikely to satisfy Trump.

RUSSIA

The UK government is claiming that a recent joint military operation may have prevented Russian maritime sabotage:

Britain and Norway conducted a weekslong military operation to deter Russian spy submarines near undersea cables in the North Atlantic, the U.K. defense chief said Thursday, accusing Moscow of using the distraction of the Iran war to ramp up malign activity against Europe.

Defense Secretary John Healey said a Royal Navy frigate, aircraft and hundreds of personnel were involved in tracking a Russian attack sub and two spy submarines operating north of the U.K., and prevented the spy vessels from carrying out “nefarious” activities against underwater infrastructure.

He said the Russian vessels eventually left after the operation that lasted more than a month. There is no evidence of damage to any cables or pipes, he said.

The U.K. said other allies were also involved in the operation, but didn’t name them.

UKRAINE

In something of a surprise, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced an Orthodox Easter ceasefire in Ukraine on Thursday, which he’s intending to begin late Saturday afternoon and extend throughout the day on Sunday. There’s been no response from the Ukrainian government as yet, but since Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing at least a holiday break from attacks on public energy infrastructure one assumes he will reciprocate Putin’s offer.

UPDATE: Zelensky appears to have agreed to the ceasefire in a Telegram post.

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AMERICAS

ECUADOR

One day after recalling its ambassador from Colombia, the Ecuadorian government imposed 100 percent tariffs on all products emanating from that country citing a supposed failure to secure the border. This is an increase on the 50 percent tariffs it had in place previously. Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the decision “a monstrosity” in a social media post.

MEXICO

UN rapporteur Marcos Orellana told The Guardian this week that Mexico is facing a “toxic crisis” due in large part to the fact that it has become a “garbage sink” for the United States:

[Orellana] cited one place he visited, the industrial corridor of Tula in the central Mexican state of Hidalgo, where steel plants, cement factories and petrochemical facilities operate near a river polluted by industrial waste and untreated sewage from Mexico City. He said proposals to bring in additional waste for recycling would only add to an already devastating environmental burden on communities there.

Meanwhile, companies are not held responsible for preventing, mitigating and repairing the damage, he said.

The result, he said, was the “legalized poisoning of people”.

The rapporteur highlighted the influx of plastic waste from the United States. He said once this waste crosses the border, there is often little clarity about its final destinations. In addition, he said he was concerned that microscopic plastic particles had been detected in rivers such as the Tecate in Baja California, the Atoyac in Puebla and the Jamapa in Veracruz.

Government records show the US ships hundreds of thousands of tons of hazardous waste to Mexico each year, including lead-acid car batteries, as well as common scrap such as plastic, paper and metal for recycling. Environmental groups have questioned whether the country is equipped to handle all this without it leading to pollution.

UNITED STATES

Finally, The Nation’s Julia Gledhill argues that the Trump administration’s new $1.5 trillion military budget request is a sign that the United States is “self-destructing”:

On Friday, the White House released preliminary details about the fiscal year 2027 federal budget. The president requested $1.15 trillion for the Pentagon, as well as an additional $350 billion for the military outside of the regular budget process. If Congress manages to approve the latter in a separate spending bill, it will deliver President Trump a $1.5 trillion top line—a 44 percent increase from last year.

The administration’s budget request to Congress comes as the United States surpasses the first month of its illegal, dangerous war against Iran—which according to YouGov, about 60 percent of Americans oppose. It remains to be seen whether the Pentagon will pursue additional funding for the war, though the Pentagon suggested a separate $200 billion spending package just two weeks ago. Even with a ceasefire, the Pentagon may still pursue a supplemental to refill weapons stockpiles. Either way, lawmakers have a clear mandate: Cut the Pentagon budget and salvage their chance to deliver the domestic rejuvenation the American people demand.

The president is forcing austerity on the American people while prioritizing arms dealers and warmongers. The administration has proposed a 10 percent cut to nonmilitary spending, a $73 billion reduction. But superfluous military spending is an accelerant of American decline, coming at the cost of childcare, healthcare, and social welfare writ large—as the president made explicit in his address last Wednesday. According to the president, “it’s not possible” for the federal government to take care of childcare or healthcare: “We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”

Needless to say Trump isn’t really doing that either.

TODAY IN HISTORY

April 8, 876: An Abbasid army manages to defeat the rapidly expanding Saffarid empire at the Battle of Dayr al-ʿAqul. The Abbasids had only just emerged from the “Anarchy at Samarra,” a period in which their Turkic military essentially held the caliphate prisoner in the city of Samarra, and their empire had begun to fall apart amid the power vacuum at its center. The Saffarids emerged into that vacuum and conquered much of modern Iran and Afghanistan along with parts of modern Pakistan before attempting to march on Baghdad. Despite their weakness, the Abbasid army was able to use the Saffarids’ unfamiliarity with the region to outmaneuver and eventually trap the attackers, possibly saving the caliphate and definitely sending the Saffarids into a decline from which they never recovered.

April 8, 1904: The French and UK governments sign the Entente Cordiale, a series of seemingly relatively minor documents ironing out colonial disputes in Egypt, Morocco, Canada, parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Despite its humble appearance, the Entente Cordiale is considered the end of the centuries-long rivalry between France and the UK (and their various predecessors) and the beginning of their modern accord. It paved the way for improved relations, driven in part by a shared fear of Germany and leading to a full military alliance in World War I.

MIDDLE EAST

LEBANON

It’s appropriate to start here, because even though the major news of the day is the US ceasefire with Iran it is in Lebanon where that agreement seems most likely to collapse. The Israeli military (IDF) pulverized Lebanon on Wednesday, at one point striking what it claimed were more than 100 targets in a single ten minute barrage. It was the largest and bloodiest IDF action in Lebanon since fighting resumed on that front on March 2, leaving at least 254 people dead and 1165 wounded at last count. Many of these strikes hit Beirut, whose civilian population has swelled as refugees from the IDF’s southern Lebanese occupation have made their way to the city.

This IDF outburst sent an unmistakeable message, that the Israeli government does not consider Lebanon to be included in the ceasefire. But they could’ve sent that message with something far less drastic. Wednesday’s violence may instead have represented the Israeli government’s attempt to wreck the ceasefire before it could really get going. And it could be working—Iranian state media has apparently reported that Tehran “is halting oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz” in response to these IDF attacks. This is a bit odd in that Iranian officials had previously talked about reopening the strait in a limited fashion on Thursday or Friday ahead of the first round of peace talks (more on that below), which seemingly means they hadn’t yet reopened it so it’s unclear what traffic they’re actually halting. Iranian officials have also threatened to attack Israel, which would certainly end the ceasefire if they follow through. But the statement that they’re halting traffic is provocative enough on its own to threaten the ceasefire unless something changes.

What could change? Well, the Iranians could decide that Lebanon is indeed not part of the deal, though that would be quite a comedown from their current position. It is also conceivable that the Israelis are trying to maximize the damage they cause ahead of an actual ceasefire in Lebanon—or at least the Israeli version of a ceasefire, wherein the IDF reduces its tempo from dozens of attacks per day to only a few. But that would probably require some pressure from the US, and that doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. Donald Trump referred to the Lebanon conflict as a “separate skirmish” in comments to PBS on Wednesday, rejecting its inclusion in the ceasefire, though he did add that it will “get taken care of, too,” whatever that means. But according to Haaretz this is contrary to the “impression” that US officials gave their Iranian and Pakistani counterparts in their verbal ceasefire agreement, which makes this a very serious and potentially fatal breach.

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