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TODAY IN HISTORY
August 11, 1473: The Ottoman Empire decisively defeats the Aqquyunlu (“White Sheep”) Turkoman confederation in the Battle of Otlukbeli. The Aqquyunlu at its height controlled most of modern Iraq and parts of modern Iran, the southern Caucasus, and eastern Anatolia. It was in eastern Anatolia where its expansion and the Ottomans’ expansion ran into one another. Aqquyunlu leader Uzun Hasan made an alliance with Venice, which was at war with the Ottomans in the Mediterranean and promised to send firearms to the Aqquyunlu if they forced the Ottomans to fight a second war on their eastern front. The Aqquyunlu kept up their end of the bargain but the guns never arrived and the “war” was over after a single major engagement.
August 11, 1492: A papal enclave, the first ever held in the Sistine Chapel, elects Cardinal Rodrigo de Borja as Pope Alexander VI. Borja effectively bought the office, promising Cardinal Ascanio Sforza the position of vice-chancellor and allegedly distributing a variety of other goodies to him and several other cardinals in exchange for their support. Alexander was the patriarch of the infamous Borgia family, whose corruption and depravity (at least some of it exaggerated by their detractors, many of whom were as offended by Borja’s Spanish roots as by any of his family’s alleged crimes) became the stuff of legend.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus sentenced former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, along with his brother Maher al-Assad and his cousin Atef Najib to death on Tuesday for crimes committed during the Syrian Civil War. Bashar al-Assad and Maher al-Assad are both living in Russia and thus presumably safe from execution (barring what would be a very surprising Russian decision to extradite them), but Najib—who formerly ran the “political security directorate” in southern Syria’s Daraa province—was arrested last January and is in government custody.
LEBANON
With the United Nations peacekeeping force (UNIFIL) in Lebanon preparing to close up shop at the end of the year, Al Jazeera discusses some of the options for replacing it:
One proposal is that the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) could step in. The UNTSO, however, would be a much smaller force than UNIFIL, which boasted about 15,000 personnel at its peak and had approximately 7,000 in June 2026.
In June, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put forward three options to the Security Council that would see troop numbers range between 900 and 3,000.
Analysts are still uncertain about what form the next peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon will take.
“It is difficult to know how an international force could help promote stabilisation in southern Lebanon, until the overall security arrangement between Israel and Lebanon becomes clearer,” [International Crisis Group senior Lebanon analyst David] Wood said.
If the process is not sped up, there are concerns about a security gap.
Whatever the new force looks like it probably won’t have much leeway to act. UNIFIL’s mandate was already severely constrained and the US, on Israel’s behalf, has insisted on the lightest possible role for peacekeepers to ensure that they don’t interfere with the Israeli military’s (IDF) demolition of southern Lebanon.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The IDF killed at least one person in northern Gaza on Tuesday. It identified the individual as a Hamas “sniper.”
YEMEN
An apparent Ansarullah/Houthi attack on an Egyptian-owned cargo ship in the Bab el-Mandab Strait killed at least six people on Tuesday. The Yemeni Coast Guard is claiming that the attack came in two salvos, the first of which killed four crew members and the second of which killed two members of a security team (presumably Yemeni) that had been dispatched in response to the first strike. Ansarullah is claiming that the ship was carrying Saudi weapons.
The US military’s Central Command says that its airstrikes killed 153 civilians and wounded another 243 in Yemen last year, “according to an internal Pentagon assessment that was sent to Congress on Tuesday.” Those figures can probably be regarded as minimums but this is at least the first time that the Pentagon has acknowledged extensive civilian casualties in that conflict.
IRAN
The US military attacked a cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday when it apparently attempted to run the naval blockade on Iran. A US helicopter targeted the ship’s rudder and seems to have disabled it. There were no reports of casualties.
Elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal argues that Donald Trump’s belief (at least for this week) that he can squeeze the Iranian economy until Tehran concedes at the negotiating table may be misplaced:
Tehran is rationing scarce goods, limiting access to foreign currency, slashing investment and shifting more of the burden onto households while preserving strategic imports and the essential machinery of the state, analysts say. The result will be a deepening economic malaise that leads to rising poverty and dysfunction, but also more room for Iran’s leaders to stall talks with the U.S.
That leaves Trump’s strategy resting on a risky assumption that Iran will crack before Washington does. Mediators have warned their U.S. counterparts that Iran has been living under sanctions for years and betting that Tehran will compromise because of economic pressure won’t likely yield results. Instead, Iran will likely continue to escalate attacks to raise the price for Washington and its allies.
If Iran can outlast Washington’s expectations, it has less reason to give up leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, prolonging the standoff and the risk of renewed fighting. The longer that standoff lasts, the more pressure shifts back onto Trump as energy and shipping disruptions weigh on the global economy and inflation heading into the midterm elections.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
With the Taliban about to celebrate (I use the term loosely) the fifth anniversary of its re-takeover of Afghanistan, UNESCO reported on Tuesday that the group has barred a whopping 2.4 million girls from obtaining secondary education. The agency estimates that this will cost the Afghan economy some $9.6 billion in lost income over the next few decades. When it closed secondary and post-secondary schools to girls in 2022, the Afghan government described those measures as “temporary,” but there was and is no reason to believe that. Boys are affected as well, as a decision to bar women from teaching boys removed thousands of qualified teachers from the school system.
MYANMAR
A new UN report highlights an increase in the Myanmar military’s violence toward civilians:
The report by the United Nations-established Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, or IIMM, details a yearlong investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Myanmar’s military and affiliated militias, as well as the opposition armed groups.
It found that abuses escalated around the country’s army-organized elections in December and January. The IIMM said it observed a notable escalation in aerial attacks in the months preceding the elections and that they have continued unabated afterward, with investigators also documenting a pattern of deliberate arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence.
The IIMM said civilian casualties are worsened by the military’s increasing use of “double-tap” aerial attacks, in which a second strike follows the first, apparently targeting first responders, people helping the wounded and those trying to flee.
The IIMM said the Myanmar military was increasingly using motorized paragliders — also known as paramotors — as well as gyrocopters and drones to carry out low-altitude airstrikes with unguided explosives.
In several recent incidents in the upper Sagaing region, paramotor pilots allegedly cut their engines as they approached targets, allowing them to glide silently and leaving civilians little or no warning to flee or seek shelter, the report said.
Separately, the Arakan Army rebel faction said that military airstrikes killed at least 20 civilians and wounded another 22 in Myanmar’s Rakhine state from August 1 to August 11. Myanmar authorities haven’t commented on either the UN report or the Arakan Army claim.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The Sudan Tribune is reporting that Rapid Support Forces and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North fighters attacked the town of Geisan in Sudan’s Blue Nile state on Tuesday. The Sudanese military appears to have fended off the assault but only after the attackers were able to get to the center of town and loot shops there. Geisan is located near the Ethiopian border, which makes it a strategically valuable location for the RSF and its (alleged) links to the Ethiopian government.
LIBYA
Four straight days of drone strikes on the western Libyan city of Zawiya have sparked fires at a major oil refinery and the local power plant. Both fires had reportedly been brought under control by Tuesday evening and there have been no reports of any casualties. There is also no indication as to responsibility. Libya’s National Oil Corporation is warning that if the attacks continue it may have to declare force majure and suspend operations at the refinery.
NIGERIA
Police and criminal bandits reportedly clashed in northwestern Nigeria’s Kebbi state on Monday in a battle that left ten of the former and 17 of the latter dead. Police apparently encountered the bandits as they were traveling between Kebbi and neighboring Zamfara state.
SOMALIA
Responsible Statecraft’s Blaise Malley reports that the US military appears to have cut some sort of military cooperation agreement with the government of Somalia’s Puntland state:
In early August, the top U.S. special operations commander for Africa signed a security agreement with the president of Puntland — a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Somalia — to expand the American military installation there.
The deal surfaced through a short statement from the Puntland government.
“Under the agreement, the United States will expand its military base in Bosaso to improve operations against terrorism and to help protect maritime security,” the Puntland Government of Somalia wrote in a statement. “The Puntland state remains committed to fighting terrorism and any threat that could harm the security, stability, and development of Puntland, Somalia, and the Horn of Africa.”
There are few details regarding the arrangement, which has no public text and has not yet been confirmed by the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) or anybody in Washington.
Assuming that this is accurate it’s a major blow to the federal Somali government’s sovereignty to have the US military doing deals with what is supposed to be a subordinate state administration. Puntland does operate autonomously from Mogadishu and its government no longer recognizes the federal administration as legitimate, and the US has operated in Puntland and in concert with the state government for several years, but this seems like a shift in policy. What it means is unclear but it could revive speculation that the Trump administration may recognize the breakaway state of Somaliland as independent.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The DRC’s Ebola outbreak has now grown to encompass at least 4381 cases and 2011 deaths, according to the latest government figures. The DRC’s deadliest Ebola outbreak on record killed some 2300 people over 3500 cases from 2018 to 2020. This one has doubled in overall lethality in just three weeks, indicating that not only is it still going it’s still more or less out of control.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Russian military’s nightly bombardment killed at least 12 people across Ukraine from Monday into Tuesday, according to Ukrainian authorities. At least six people were killed in the city of Zaporizhzhia alone. Ukrainian officials alleged that the Russians employed North Korean-made missiles in this barrage, with President Volodymyr Zelensky claiming on Tuesday that the Russian military is also getting another influx of North Korean personnel. A Ukrainian drone strike killed at least one person in Russia’s Voronezh oblast overnight.
HUNGARY
As expected, the Hungarian parliament elected former Supreme Court head András Baka as the country’s new president on Tuesday. The vote was 140 to 6 so it wasn’t exactly a nail-biter, with the opposition Fidesz party boycotting. Baka should take office next week.
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
The Venezuelan and Israeli governments agreed to resume consular relations on Tuesday. Former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez severed those relations back in 2009, but now that Marco Rubio Delcy Rodríguez is calling the shots the country’s international priorities have shifted a bit.
UNITED STATES
In US news:
Donald Trump extended his administration’s Jones Act waiver for at least another 90 days on Monday. The Jones Act requires that cargo moving between US seaports be carried on US-built/owned/crewed ships. Trump suspended it in mid-March in an attempt to curtail shipping costs primarily related to fossil fuels and their derivatives amid the price spikes caused by his Iran war.
It seems that Trump’s flight from the G7 summit in Turkey last month was even more precarious than previously thought. While traveling press reported at the time that Trump had to ditch his luxury Qatari-provided Air Force One for an older version due to concerns that his plane might be targeted in some sort of Iranian attack, The Washington Post and The New York Times both reported this week that in fact Trump flew from Turkey to the UK on a Boeing C-32A support aircraft that had also accompanied him. The US Secret Service apparently smuggled him out of the older Air Force One to the other craft just before takeoff and then didn’t inform reporters, who were effectively left to act as decoys.
Finally, TomDispatch’s William Hartung discusses a new report on the toll that the US military has taken in Hawaii:
President Donald Trump and self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth are pushing for a post-World War II record $1.6 trillion Pentagon budget for next year, a sum so obscenely high that it is almost impossible to comprehend. The proposed $600 billion increase alone is almost twice the total annual military budget of America’s closest rival, China.
That supposed rivalry, despite the big spending gap, makes China central to justifying the Pentagon’s bloated budget. And Hawaiʻi is, in turn, central to the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific military strategy which assumes that deterring China requires a forward, offensive strike posture anchored by the archipelago. This not only puts a target on Hawaiʻi — as was the case during World War II, when Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan — but it also deepens long-standing economic hardships and environmental degradation produced by more than a century of U.S. military occupation, according to “The True Cost of the U.S. Military in Hawaiʻi,” a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies.
The report finds that as the Pentagon has shoved Hawaiʻi toward the front lines of a potential nuclear conflict, it has also poisoned the islands’ land and waters, lied about its economic benefits, tied Hawaiʻi’s financial well-being to an inefficient use of tax dollars, and failed to pay more than $130 billion in back rent. And now the Trump administration is extending its buildup in Hawaiʻi — which has long “been central to the architecture of U.S. imperial power” to expand facilities, build new bases, and secure access to air and naval bases from Guam to the Pacific island chain to the Philippines to Australia. And these moves in the Pacific are just one part of that multifaceted $600 billion boost being sought for the Pentagon.
Another happy and blessed day on this wonderful planet :)