World roundup: July 29 2025
Stories from Iran, Thailand, Sudan, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
July 29, 1014: A Byzantine army under Emperor Basil II defeats a Bulgarian army at the Battle of Kleidion, largely breaking Bulgarian resistance. Bulgarian Tsar Samuel deployed what was effectively his entire army in an attempt to bring an end to annual Byzantine raids, but Basil was able to exploit the terrain to surround and virtually wipe out the Bulgarians. The Byzantines took thousands of prisoners and reputedly sent them back to Samuel in October with nearly all of them blinded (a handful were allowed to keep one eye in order to guide the rest home). Samuel died of a heart attack, ostensibly over the shock of seeing all of those blinded soldiers, and this whole affair earned Basil the epithet “the Bulgar-Slayer.” Still, while their victory left Bulgaria open to continued assault it took the Byzantines another four years to finally force the Bulgarian Empire (the first of two of them) to surrender.
July 29, 1148: The ill-fated Second Crusade reaches its ignominious end with the failure of the Crusaders’ Siege of Damascus. Initially organized as a response to the loss of Edessa to the rising power in the Levant, the Zengid dynasty, the expedition saw open warfare between Crusaders and the Byzantine army, the destruction of two German armies by the Seljuk Turks, and the aforementioned siege of Damascus even though Damascus was a Crusader ally. After badly mismanaging the siege, the Crusaders were forced to flee back to Jerusalem before they could be trapped by an oncoming Zengid relief army.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
According to Al-Monitor’s Amberin Zaman, the outbreak of violence between government security forces and Druze militias in southern Syria’s Suwayda province earlier this month may have stiffened the Syrian Democratic Forces group’s resolve amid its negotiations with Damascus:
Kurdish confidence has grown since the debacle earlier this month in Suwayda, where Sunni Bedouin tribes and government forces clashed with Druze militias, leaving hundreds of people — including women and children — dead. [Syrian President Ahmed al-]Sharaa’s global image took a big hit amid gruesome videos showing his forces abusing Druze civilians. Druze militias loyal to prominent Syrian Druze spiritual leader Hikmet al-Hijri were recorded committing abuses against the Bedouins as well. Government forces were forced into a humiliating retreat from the southern province following Israel’s military intervention in defense of the Druze. Sharaa has never seemed weaker since taking power. His lack of control over his forces and other radical elements who allegedly joined in the bloodletting have bolstered the SDF’s arguments. They demand to know just what national army they are expected to be a part of. The awkward truth is that the Kurds have their own real, combat-ready army of around 100,000 seasoned fighters, armed and trained by the Pentagon since 2014 to fight the Islamic State. “Take us on if you can” is the prevalent mindset within the SDF leadership. “Suwayda changed everything,” a source with close knowledge of [SDF leader Mazloum] Kobane’s thinking told Al-Monitor.
The SDF still has to worry about the possibility of a Turkish military intervention in northeastern Syria to force it to accept Damascus’s terms. But with the Turkish government now pursuing a peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), politics may dictate that it take a softer stance with respect to the PKK-affiliated SDF.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 83 people in Gaza on Tuesday according to officials in the territory, bringing the official death toll in its ongoing massacre to more than 60,000. Three United Nations organizations—the World Food Program, UNICEF, and the Food and Agriculture Organization—issued a joint statement warning that Gaza is “slipping into famine” despite the reluctant half-measures the Israeli government has taken in recent days to at least appear to be addressing the humanitarian situation. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC), the organization that is generally regarded as the final word in terms of designating a famine, has yet to issue such a designation for Gaza and may never do so. The primary reason isn’t that there’s not a famine in the territory, it’s that IPC monitors can’t conduct an assessment under present conditions.
International pressure for a ceasefire ratcheted up a bit on both principals on Tuesday. A group of 17 countries (along with the European Union and the Arab League) signed on to a joint statement crafted at a UN conference calling on Hamas to “end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, with international engagement and support, in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State.” Included among them were Egypt and Qatar, the two countries with the closest ties to Hamas and co-mediators of whatever remains of the ceasefire negotiations (which Hamas quit on Tuesday, for whatever that’s worth given that Israel and the US had already done the same).
Meanwhile, the UK government declared its intention to recognize Palestinian statehood…maybe. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has apparently told his cabinet that he’ll recognize Palestinian statehood in September unless the Israeli government agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza and takes other “substantive steps” regarding aid delivery and making progress toward the zombie “two-state solution.” As far as I can tell he didn’t offer any objective standards for most of these conditions so he’d probably be satisfied with just a ceasefire, which would inevitably improve the humanitarian aid situation. Regardless of what happens between now and September let’s say I’m skeptical that Starmer will follow through, but we’ll see. And the Dutch government designated far-right Israeli cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir personae non gratae, meaning neither will be permitted to enter the Netherlands. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar summoned the Dutch ambassador to complain, but the practical effect of this is negligible.
IRAN
Foreign Policy’s Narges Bajoghli argues that the “12 Day War” likely strengthened the position of hardliners in Iranian politics:
In the weeks following the Israeli strikes on Iran in June, something unusual happened. For decades, Iranians had been among the most pro-American populations in the Middle East. They were skeptical—if not outright dismissive—of their government’s ideological framing of the United States and Israel as existential threats. Such official slogans were heard by much of the population, especially younger Iranians, as merely background noise or even as a source of eye-rolling embarrassment. The regime’s obsession with “resistance” often felt more like a relic than a real policy.
But this time, when the bombs dropped, the war didn’t stay far away. It came home. And it changed the conversation. The generation that once scoffed at the regime’s rhetoric is now learning—sometimes for the first time—why the government built a narrative of resistance in the first place.
Almost overnight, I heard a profound shift among my many contacts across Iranian society. Even Iranians who once dismissed official slogans from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei began repeating them. The strikes didn’t just spark a patriotic fervor. They ignited something more volatile: a widespread sense that foreign powers had crossed a line. Even among some of the most vocal critics of the regime, the anger turned not inward but outward.
In just two weeks, Iranians absorbed a new geopolitical reality. The slogans began to make more sense. Military elites were hardly unified on how best to protect Iran; now, those urging for diplomacy are being swamped by those demanding a hardened defensive stance. Even civilians—many of whom once opposed the regime’s security posture—are now calling for stronger defenses. Some are openly discussing the need for a nuclear weapon. “We need something that makes them think twice,” a journalist in Esfahan told me. “Otherwise, they will be able to target us every few years.”
ASIA
THAILAND
After some initial difficulty, it looks like the Thai-Cambodian ceasefire has taken hold. Although the Thai military accused the Cambodians of continuing to fight beyond the official midnight (local time) start of the ceasefire, lingering violence eventually tapered off and senior military commanders from both sides went ahead with a planned meeting to further the ceasefire process. They agreed to continue those discussions at a scheduled meeting of the bilateral General Border Committee next week in Cambodia and to establish four-person teams to “resolve problems,” and also agreed not to deploy any additional forces to the border region in the meantime.
CHINA
The latest round of US-China trade talks wrapped up in Stockholm on Tuesday with little to show in terms of tangible outcomes. An expected decision to extend current interim tariff rates beyond a looming August 12 deadline for a more comprehensive deal failed to emerge, with the parties agreeing only to “work on extending” the deadline according to the Chinese delegation. The US delegation was even less effusive than that, though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did say that the negotiations were “very constructive.”
NORTH KOREA
Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, issued a statement carried by state media on Tuesday in which she noted that her brother’s relationship with Donald Trump is “not bad” but insisted that the US government should not make “any attempt to deny the position of the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK] as a nuclear weapons state.” She urged Washington to avoid confrontation and “seek another way of contact on the basis of such new thinking,” or in other words to drop its demand for Pyongyang’s denuclearization. This relatively anodyne statement seems significant because it’s really the North Korean government’s first high-level mention of the Kim-Trump relationship since the latter resumed the US presidency in January. It’s not exactly an appeal for new diplomacy but does try to lay out the main condition under which diplomacy might be possible.
AFRICA
SUDAN
According to the Sudan Doctors Network, 13 children died due to malnutrition in the Lagawa displaced persons camp in Sudan’s East Darfur state last month. UNICEF had previously reported a 46 percent increase in children treated for “severe acute malnutrition” in Darfur from January through May, compared with the same period in 2024. The “Sudan Quartet,” a group that includes the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the US, was to have held a meeting on the situation in Sudan in Washington on Tuesday but wound up postponing it when the Egyptian and Emirati delegations disagreed over the meeting’s proposed joint statement. The UAE team insisted on wording that excluded both the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces militant group from a postwar transition process. The Egyptian team rejected the exclusion of the Cairo-backed military.
BURKINA FASO
An apparent jihadist attack on a military base in Burkina Faso’s Center-North region left some 50 soldiers dead on Monday according to local sources. The Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM) group is believed to have been responsible.
TOGO
Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey has revealed to Reuters that JNIM has been responsible for 15 attacks in northern Togo this year, killing at least 54 civilians. Although it’s well-established at this point that jihadist violence is expanding from the Sahel region south toward coastal West Africa it is rare for an official in one of those coastal West African countries to go on the record with the scope of the problem like this. JNIM’s activity in neighboring Burkina Faso has been on the rise and spillover into Togo is the inevitable result.
ANGOLA
At least four people were killed, presumably by police, during a protest on Monday in Luanda. Demonstrators have been turning out in the Angolan capital of late in response to a new 30 percent hike in fuel prices that was announced earlier this month by the Angolan government. Authorities reported violence amid the protest, including several instances of looting and vandalism, and arrested some 500 people. Human Rights Watch has already accused Angolan police of using excessive force in responding to a July 12 demonstration so there may be a pattern emerging.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Donald Trump further tightened his deadline for imposing new sanctions on Russia on Tuesday, telling reporters that he’s expecting Moscow to make progress on a peace deal in Ukraine within “10 days from today” or else. It’s unclear at this point what “or else” might entail but there’s been a fair amount of talk about potential oil sanctions that would apply both to Russia and to buyers of Russian oil. Apparently that issue came up at this week’s US-China trade negotiation (see above), which is unsurprising inasmuch as China is the largest Russian oil buyer.
UKRAINE
Overnight Russian bombardments killed at least 27 people across Ukraine, a higher-than-usual figure that only reinforces Trump’s apparent frustration with Moscow. Most of those, at least 16 people, were inmates at a prison in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia oblast that the Russians targeted with multiple glide bombs for some unknown reason.
Elsewhere, Al Jazeera reports on speculation behind Volodymyr Zelensky’s deeply unpopular attempt to undermine Ukraine’s two main anticorruption agencies:
A Kyiv-based political analyst says there are two popular theories about why Zelenskyy initiated the bill [to weaken the agencies].
“One is that [the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine or NABU] allegedly closed in on Zelenskyy’s inner circle,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta think tank, told Al Jazeera.
NABU accused Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, Zelenskyy’s closest ally and lifelong friend, of taking kickbacks worth $346,000 from a real estate developer in a deal that cost the government $24m.
Zelenskyy’s press office didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s phone calls and text messages.
“Or this is an attempt to control NABU’s actions in order not to overtly politicise them, not to provoke domestic political wars during the war with Russia,” Fesenko said.
“But I think it has to do with the activisation of the NABU on political issues that may have caused suspicion in Zelenskyy’s inner circle. That it wasn’t a fight against corruption but more of a political attack on Zelenskyy,” he said.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel highlights the American companies that have been profiting from the genocide in Gaza:
Amid this manufactured famine, however, Israel has permitted another kind of shipment to flow freely. Weapons imports have continued unabated, with thousands of pounds of bombs, guns, and ammunition pouring into the Israeli Defense Force. A new report by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has uncovered the major supplier of this fatal equipment: the United States.
Titled “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,” the exposé lays bare how major American corporations have been all too eager to facilitate Israel’s atrocities in Gaza in exchange for billions of dollars in revenue. It also reveals our nation’s now undeniable complicity in what has been described as the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century.
War profiteering is a phenomenon as ancient as war itself, but Albanese’s investigation shows that the military-industrial-technological complex is reaping uniquely horrible payoffs in Palestine. Albanese describes how Lockheed Martin has built fighter jets for Israel that have carried out bombings that have killed or wounded almost 200,000 Palestinians. She details how Palantir inked a deal with the Israeli military to provide AI-generated target lists, then consummated that partnership by holding a sycophantic board meeting in Tel Aviv. And she brings to light how Caterpillar Inc. has provided equipment to demolish homes and hospitals, crushing to death civilians stuck inside those structures.
Perhaps the most hypocritical offenders are the members of the Magnificent Seven. Google’s unofficial motto was once “Don’t be evil,” but now the company has joined Amazon to provide cloud computing services to the IDF for a persuasive $1.2 billion. Albanese quotes an Israeli colonel who calls this technology “a weapon in every sense of the word,” a cloud as deadly as any poison gas.