World roundup: May 3-4 2025

Stories from Israel-Palestine, Australia, Romania, and elsewhere

You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:

---

TODAY IN HISTORY

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.

May 4, 1799: The British East India Company and its allies capture the fortress of Seringapatam in the southern Indian sultanate of Mysore, ending a one month siege and along with it the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War and, indeed, the Anglo-Mysore Wars as a whole. The ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, had been a perpetual thorn in the EIC’s side, having risen to the throne during the Second Anglo-Mysore War and having led the kingdom into the Third Anglo-Mysore War. He was killed at Seringapatam and his kingdom was mostly absorbed by the EIC and its allies, the Maratha Empire and Hyderabad.

English painter Henry Singleton’s c. 1800 The Last Effort and Fall of Tippoo Sultaun (Wikimedia Commons)

May 4, 1904: The United States assumes ownership of a nearly defunct French project to build a canal across Panama connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This was just a few months after Panama’s US-backed declaration of independence from Colombia, which the Roosevelt administration encouraged because the Colombian Congress wouldn’t ratify the treaty leasing the canal zone to the US. The project was completed in 1914 and it’s fair to say it was kind of a big deal.

INTERNATIONAL

The OPEC+ gang held its monthly status meeting on Saturday, ahead of schedule, and as expected agreed to continue its plan to increase global oil production by 411,000 barrels per day for at least another month. June’s 411,000 bpd increase will come on top of the 411,000 bpd increase the group implemented in May. This is noteworthy in that global oil prices are continuing to drop, yet OPEC+ members are not taking steps to counter that drop by restricting supply. The rationale remains somewhat murky though member states may be trying to curry favor with the Trump administration and may be responding to internal tensions as several OPEC+ states had begun chafing at previous production caps.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

The Israeli military (IDF) carried out around 15 more airstrikes in Syria overnight Friday into Saturday, including at least eight in and around Damascus. Those attacks killed at least two people. There are reports circulating in Israeli media of “confrontations” between Israeli and Turkish military aircraft in Syrian airspace over the weekend, which would constitute a show of force by Turkey, but there were no reports of any actual clashes between them. The IDF is ostensibly acting in line with the Israeli government’s assumed role as protector of Syria’s Druze population, though Al Jazeera’s reporting suggests that many Syrian Druze believe they’re just a convenient excuse for Israel to bomb Syria. I know, I couldn’t believe it either.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The IDF over the weekend began calling up “tens of thousands” of reservists to support its still-undefined “expansion” of operations in Gaza. It sounds like they’ll mostly be sent to the West Bank, allowing full-time IDF personnel there to be redeployed to Gaza. It’s still not really clear what the “expansion” will entail, though IDF commander Eyal Zamir did mention something about destroying Hamas infrastructure “both on the surface and underground.” But while the military next steps remain somewhat murky, aid groups told the AP about Israel’s plans with respect to humanitarian relief and needless to say they are troubling:

Israel has blocked aid from entering Gaza for two months and says it won’t allow food, fuel, water or medicine into the besieged territory until it puts in place a system giving it control over the distribution.

But officials from the U.N. and aid groups say proposals Israel has floated to use its military to distribute vital supplies are untenable. These officials say they would allow military and political objectives to impede humanitarian goals, put restrictions on who is eligible to give and receive aid, and could force large numbers of Palestinians to move — which would violate international law.

Elsewhere, the Houthis fired a ballistic missile that struck in the vicinity of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday, close enough to that facility to disrupt operations and cause several Western airlines to cancel upcoming flights to and from it. The airport suspended operations for around 30 minutes so the attack doesn’t seem to have caused any major damage and I haven’t seen any indication of casualties. The Houthis later announced plans to target Israeli airports as a type of blockade in response to the “expanded” Gaza operation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later promised to retaliate against both the Houthis and Iran over the strike.

YEMEN

Speaking of Yemen, the prime minister of the country’s nominal government, Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, resigned on Saturday while complaining that the ruling presidential council had not given him the authority “to reform the state institution, and execute the necessary Cabinet reshuffle.” The council named Finance Minister Salem Saleh bin Braik as PM and appointed bin Mubarak as a special adviser. Unsurprisingly, given the makeup of the broad anti-Houthi coalition, the presidential council has fragmented into two blocs, one oriented toward southern Yemeni secessionists and the other oriented toward maintaining Yemen as one nation under a single government. These factions can’t even agree that there should be a Yemen, let alone how much authority the government of that entity should actually have.

IRAN

Donald Trump told NBC News on Sunday that the “total dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear program “is all [he] would accept.” Later in the same interview he said he’s “open” to arguments for Iran retaining a civilian nuclear power program, which means that said program’s “total dismantlement” may not be all he would accept. So at least we’re sticking to a consistent negotiating position. Without wasting too much of what’s left of my sanity trying to sift through the toxic waste dump that is Donald Trump’s mind, I assume he means that he won’t permit Iran to retain a uranium enrichment capability under any new nuclear deal. If that’s his red line then the chances of concluding such a deal are likely very slim.

ASIA

SINGAPORE

Singaporean voters headed to the polls on Saturday for a general election in which the only real drama was around the size of the ruling People’s Action Party’s victory. It was considerable. The party won its 14th straight election by taking 87 of the 97 seats in the Singaporean parliament, up from a mere 83 in the 2020 election. It also improved on its share of the overall popular vote. The center-left Workers’ Party won the other ten seats.

JAPAN

While the Trump administration continues to insist that other countries are crawling on broken glass to cut new trade deals and avoid new tariffs, it would appear that things are not exactly going that way with at least one major US trading partner: Japan. The administration is reportedly refusing to discuss several major tariff sectors with Tokyo, including and most especially auto and metals tariffs, and as a result Japanese negotiators are refusing to make any concessions of their own. Japanese Finance Minister Katō Katsunobu publicly suggested on Friday that Tokyo’s large holding of US Treasuries could be a “card” in these negotiations, a not terribly subtle hint that Japan might consider selling some of its $1.13 trillion supply of the bonds. That could inject considerable unrest into an already roiled US bond market.

Katō backtracked a bit on Sunday, contending that what he meant to say was that the Japanese government could reassure the US that it won’t sell its Treasuries as a concession in trade negotiations and that his “comments weren’t meant to suggest selling Treasury holdings.” As clarifications go this is pretty lame, but I guess that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

OCEANIA

AUSTRALIA

Australian voters also headed to the polls on Saturday for a federal election that, as I mentioned on Friday, was likely to turn on the Trump Effect. Which it did, pretty powerfully. Not only did Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Australian Labor Party win a second term in power, it appears to have added to its parliamentary majority. Similar to Monday’s election in Canada, the conservative opposition (in this case the Liberal-National Coalition) suffered defeat after having led fairly consistently in the polls pre-Trump, and its leader (in this case Peter Dutton) also lost his own race.

AFRICA

SUDAN

The Rapid Support Forces militant group carried out a drone strike on Port Sudan on Sunday, marking the first time they’ve attacked the city that’s become the de facto capital of Sudan’s military government. According to the Sudanese military the attack, which “targeted Osman Digna Air Base, a goods warehouse and some civilian facilities in the city of Port Sudan,” caused “limited damage” and no casualties. There were also reports of drone strikes over the weekend in the town of Kassala, near the Sudanese-Eritrean border, and in the city of El-Obeid in North Kordofan province. Having lost most of its foothold in and around Khartoum, the RSF may be turning to longer-range drone attacks to try to put the military on the defensive. Its drone capabilities are almost certainly being supported by the UAE, though that country continues to deny accusations of arming the militants.

TOGO

Former Togolese President Faure Gnassingbé assumed the new title of “President of the Council of Ministers” on Saturday, completing a political and constitutional maneuver that he undertook last year. In essence, Gnassingbé converted Togo’s political system from presidential to parliamentary, vesting nearly all executive authority in the presidency of the council of ministers (effectively a prime minister), and then transferred himself from the presidency to that post. Opponents view the shift as a way to extend Gnassingbé’s time in power without forcing him to run for a potentially uncomfortable fifth term as president.

NIGERIA

Islamic State West Africa Province fighters attacked a military base in northeastern Nigeria’s Yobe state late Friday night, killing at least 11 soldiers. They subsequently set fire to the base after looting it for weapons. Many more soldiers were still missing as of Saturday so the death toll was expected to rise.

SOUTH SUDAN

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported that someone carried out drone strikes on the town of Old Fangak in South Sudan’s Fangak county on Saturday, destroying its MSF-run hospital and killing at least seven people with 20 more wounded. It’s unclear who was responsible for the attack. The South Sudanese government and the SPLM-IO party remain on the brink of renewing their civil war.

EUROPE

RUSSIA

During a documentary celebrating his reign that aired in Russia on Sunday, Vladimir Putin casually noted his “hope” that the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine “will not be required.” Of course the message that this is supposed to convey is that Putin will use nukes in Ukraine under some unspecified set of circumstances. It’s not the first time he’s obliquely made that threat since he ordered his military to invade Ukraine over three years ago, but as far as I know it is the first time he’s done so in a while. The fact that he did it on Sunday probably doesn’t say anything encouraging about the state of the Trump administration’s peace talks.

ROMANIA

Romanian voters had the pleasure of heading to the polls on Sunday to redo the first round of the presidential election that the country’s Constitutional Court nullified back in December. Picking up the mantle of Călin Georgescu, whose first round win led to that nullification over claims that his candidacy had been illegally boosted by the Russian government, far-right candidate George Simion won Sunday’s first round easily. With nearly all the votes counted, official results gave Simion 40 percent of the vote, well ahead of Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan at 20.9 percent and ruling coalition candidate Crin Antonescu at 20.3 percent. One of those two will presumably wind up in the May 18 runoff against Simion.

Polling has suggested that Simion might struggle against either of the possible runners up in a head-to-head contest, but then again he appears to have significantly outperformed that polling in terms of the margin of his first round win. He seems to have made some headway criticizing the antidemocratic nature of the decision to annul last year’s vote seemingly because the Romanian establishment just didn’t want Georgescu to win, and has even suggested that he might appoint Georgescu as prime minister if he emerges victorious from the runoff.

AMERICAS

MEXICO

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told the audience at an event on Saturday that she had turned down an offer from Donald Trump to send US soldiers to Mexico to battle criminal gangs. According to Sheinbaum, she told Trump that “we will never accept the presence of the United States army in our territory” and that “our sovereignty is not for sale.” I know what you’re thinking, that Trump probably took this all in stride with his usual good humor, but apparently not. Go figure. The Wall Street Journal reports that “tension rose” during the April 16 phone call in which the two leaders discussed Trump’s proposal, and on Sunday Trump told reporters that the “reason” Sheinbaum rejected his offer is that “she’s so afraid of the cartels she can’t walk.” Yes, I’m sure it couldn’t be anything else but that.

UNITED STATES

The highlight of Trump’s NBC interview on Sunday would have to have been the part when interviewer Kristen Welker asked him if he, as President of the United States, is obliged to uphold the US Constitution and he replied “I don’t know.” This seems like the sort of thing they should clarify with you before you take the job, but what do I know? Anyway, Trump did say he’s not planning to run for a third term so at least that’s something.

Finally, there’s new information regarding the ouster of Mike Waltz as Trump’s national security adviser on Thursday. It would seem that Waltz was serving as Benjamin Netanyahu’s Man in Washington, and Trump found out about it:

In announcing the shift, Trump on Thursday vowed in a social media post that “together, we will continue to fight tirelessly to Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN.”

But Waltz also upset Trump after an Oval Office visit in early February by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when the national security adviser appeared to share the Israeli leader’s conviction that the time was ripe to strike Iran, two of the people said.

Waltz appeared to have engaged in intense coordination with Netanyahu about military options against Iran ahead of an Oval Office meeting between the Israeli leader and Trump, the two people said.

Waltz “wanted to take U.S. policy in a direction Trump wasn’t comfortable with because the U.S. hadn’t attempted a diplomatic solution,” according to one of the people.

“It got back to Trump and the president wasn’t happy with it,” that person said.

Netanyahu’s office his denied that his interactions with Waltz during that visit were “intense, though it did acknowledge that Netanyahu spoke with him prior to his meeting with Trump. But the sense within the administration seems to be that Waltz and the Israeli leader were colluding to box Trump in to taking military action. As a result, Waltz was already on very thin ice when the “Signalgate” scandal in March caused that ice to crack.