World roundup: July 4-6 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere
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PROGRAMMING NOTE: As I mentioned on Thursday we’re approaching our annual summer break, when I typically take several days off in part to try to pull myself together. We’ll be on our regular schedule through Wednesday, after which the newsletter will pause until Sunday, July 20.
TODAY IN HISTORY
July 4, 362 BCE: At the Peloponnesian city of Mantinea, a Theban-led army defeats a Spartan-led alliance in what probably should have been the decisive battle of the Theban-Spartan War. The battle was decisive in the sense that the Spartan defeat more or less put the final nail in the coffin in terms of reviving that city’s lost hegemony. But the Theban victory came at great cost because the city’s leader and the architect of its own hegemony, Epaminondas, died in the fighting along with his two potential successors, Iolaidas and Daiphantus. The political decapitation weakened Thebes as well. If there was a winner here it may have been the future King Philip II of Macedon, whose kingdom’s rise to dominance over the Greeks was aided by the absence of a genuinely powerful Greek city-state.
July 4, 1187: The Battle of Hattin, arguably the greatest disaster of the entire Crusading enterprise, sees the army of Jerusalem under King Guy of Lusignan virtually annihilated by the Ayyubid army under Saladin. Guy, in his regal wisdom, allowed Saladin to draw him a) out of Jerusalem and b) away from water, two decisions that proved to be fatal to most of the men under his command. The decimation of Jerusalem’s army left the city vulnerable and Saladin besieged it in mid-September. After a surprisingly robust defense led by Balian of Ibelin, the city fell to Saladin’s forces in early October.
July 4, 1776: The “Declaration of Independence” is published in Britain’s North American colonies. Commemorated annually as Independence Day in the United States.
July 5, 1960: Several Force Publique military units mutiny against their Belgian officers in the Republic of the Congo-Léopoldville (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo), sparking what has come to be known as the “Congo Crisis.” The Belgian military sent soldiers into Congo-Léopoldville and several parts of the country rebelled. Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba appealed to the Soviet Union for assistance, but army chief of staff Mobutu Sese Seko ousted Lumumba in a coup in September and the country began to break apart. The Crisis ended in November 1965, after most of the rebellions had been suppressed and Mobutu, with US support, had ousted President Joseph Kasa-Vubu in a second coup and assumed absolute power.
July 5, 1962: Algeria declares its independence from France, a few months after the close of the Algerian War. The declaration followed on the heels of an April 1962 referendum in which over 90 percent of French voters agreed with the Évian Accords, the peace treaties that ended the war, and a July 1 referendum in Algeria in which over 99 percent of respondents voted for independence. French President Charles de Gaulle declared Algeria independent on July 3 but the new provisional Algerian government set July 5 as the formal date.
July 5, 1977: Pakistan’s civilian government, under Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is overthrown in a military coup led by General Zia-ul-Haq. Conservative opponents of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party accused it, and him, of rigging the country’s March 1977 general election. Zia stepped in with promises to organize a new election within 90 days, and then ruled Pakistan as president/dictator until his death in a suspicious plane crash in 1988.
July 6, 371 BCE: A Theban army defeats the Spartans at the Battle of Leuctra, one of the most significant military engagements of the Greek classical period. Thebes, like the rest of Greece, had come under Spartan hegemony after the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE), but relations between the two cities broke down when Theban leader Epaminondas (d. 362 BCE) attempted to reform the Boeotian League against Spartan wishes. Leuctra almost immediately changed the balance of power in Greece, ending the Spartan hegemony and instituting a brief Theban hegemony before the exhausted city-states eventually came under Macedonian rule.
July 6, 640: An Arab army commanded by Amr ibn al-ʿAs defeats a much larger Byzantine force under the command of a general named Theodore in the Battle of Heliopolis, in an area that today is part of the northern suburbs of Cairo, Egypt. The victory proved very decisive, and Egypt fell to the Arabs in stages over the course of the next two years.
July 6, 1917: An Arab army under Bedouin chieftain named Auda Abu Tayi and advised by British officer T. E. Lawrence defeats the Ottomans at the Battle of Aqaba. Coming in the wake of an Arab defeat at Medina, the battle was important for several reasons—it helped the Arab Revolt regain momentum, it opened an important Red Sea port to Britain, it cleared the Egyptian Expeditionary Force’s path north, and it allowed the EEF and the Arabs to link up and coordinate their actions moving forward.
July 6, 1967: The Nigerian Civil War begins when Nigerian forces invade the breakaway Niger Delta region of Biafra. The conflict eventually settled into a Nigerian blockade of Biafra, precipitating a massive humanitarian crisis in which hundreds of thousands of people (high estimates run to around 3 million) died of preventable causes, mostly starvation. A final Nigerian assault in December 1969 led to the Biafran rebels’ surrender a month later.
INTERNATIONAL
The friendly friends of OPEC+ held another of their monthly chats on Saturday and agreed to increase global oil production by another 548,000 barrels per day next month. That will be the fifth straight month of increases, as a core group of eight member states—Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—continues gradually rolling back a voluntary production cut it made in January 2024. In fact August’s increase is higher than those for May, June, and July, which each saw increases of 411,000 barrels per day over the previous month. Oil prices are continuing to slide after spiking during the “12 Day War.”
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited Damascus on Saturday to restore full diplomatic relations with Syria. The British government cut ties with the previous Syrian government during that country’s civil war.
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least one person and wounded five others across at least four drone strikes in southern Lebanon on Saturday. The Lebanese government says it’s tallied nearly 250 people killed in IDF strikes since the Israeli government entered into an ostensible ceasefire with Hezbollah back in November. Israeli officials insist that they’re only responding to Hezbollah’s violations of that ceasefire, but Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem suggested in a speech on Sunday that the Israelis have gotten their causality backwards. Qassem stressed that Hezbollah would not “accept surrender” under constant Israeli threat and said that IDF “aggression” needs to stop first. Once that happens, he said, Hezbollah would be ready to move on to the ceasefire’s “second stage, which is to discuss the national security and defense strategy” with other Lebanese parties. Somehow I don’t think the Israelis are going to see things the same way, especially as Qassem’s idea of ending Israeli aggression seems to include an IDF withdrawal from the Occupied Territories.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Negotiations on another short-term Gaza ceasefire were set to resume on Sunday after Hamas gave a positive but qualified response to the latest proposed framework. The Israeli government sent its negotiating team back to Qatar to participate in those talks, though how flexible they’ll be probably depends upon the conversation that will take place between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump when the former visits the White House on Monday. Before he left for the US, Netanyahu characterized Hamas’s reservations about the ceasefire framework as “unacceptable,” so he may already be looking for a way out of the negotiations. Monday’s meeting may determine how hard Trump is prepared to pressure Netanyahu into a deal. If he pushes hard enough Netanyahu may be compelled to accept an agreement—and, just as importantly from his perspective, he’ll be able to tell his far right coalition partners that the US president gave him no choice. There is of course no reason to believe that Trump is prepared to do that.
On the substance of the framework and Hamas’s objections, Drop Site has published a full accounting. The upshot is that Hamas wants something approaching a written guarantee that the initial 60 day truce would continue beyond that timeframe provided negotiations are ongoing around a second phase/indefinite ceasefire. Any guarantee wouldn’t be worth the paper on which it was written but it’s the best Hamas can do under the circumstances. The group is also demanding that the IDF withdraw to the positions it occupied when the last ceasefire broke down in early March and that all aid distribution during the ceasefire be managed by the United Nations and the Red Cross/Crescent rather than the US proxy “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.” The Israelis are objecting to those latter two demands. Haaretz’s Amir Tibon notes the “absurdity” of this position, since the the Israelis decided to reoccupy Gaza and restrict aid to the GHF scheme ostensibly in order to pressure Hamas into accepting a deal. Netanyahu’s refusal to trade those things for the deal he claims he wanted suggests that what he really wants is an excuse to quash the negotiations.
In other items:
It comes as no surprise that Hamas is insisting that the GHF be cut out of aid distribution during any new ceasefire. The organization’s distribution sites have seen over 500 of the 613-plus killings that the UN says have taken place at aid points in Gaza since the Israelis permitted a resumption of aid delivery in late May. Two of the GHF’s staff members were wounded in what the group called a “targeted terrorist attack” in Khan Younis on Saturday. GHF officials blamed “credible threats from Hamas” for inciting the attack, though presumably all the killing could have done that without any Hamas input.
The BBC says it’s spoken with “a senior officer in Hamas’s security forces” who claims that the group’s “command and control system” has “collapsed” and it “has lost about 80% of its control over the Gaza Strip.” According to this account “armed clans” have stepped into fill the vacuum. The leader of one such group, Yasser Abu Shabab of the “Anti-Terror Service” (or the “Popular Forces” if you prefer), more or less acknowledged that he’s working with the IDF in an interview on Israeli public radio that aired on Sunday. The European Council on Foreign Relations has described Abu Shabab’s group as a “criminal” organization and has implicated it in the looting of aid trucks entering Gaza. Hamas demanded his surrender several days ago.
The Financial Times reported on Friday that the Boston Consulting Group, which provided initial logistical support for the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” not only provided more of that support than it has since acknowledged but “also built a financial model for the postwar reconstruction of Gaza.” It may surprise you, but probably won’t, to learn that said model “included cost estimates for relocating hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the strip and the economic impact of such a mass displacement.” The firm estimated over 500,000 Palestinians leaving Gaza in return for “relocation packages” priced at a mere $9000 per person. If the concept doesn’t strike you as offensive on its own merits then perhaps the idea of paying people the equivalent of a very old used car to uproot their lives will do the trick. BCG now says it “disavows” this work and claims that the partners who performed it “misled” the firm’s senior leadership.
The Telegraph reported on Saturday that satellite analysis shows that Iranian bombardments struck “five Israeli military facilities” during the “12 Day War.” Israeli censorship has made it impossible to get any accurate reporting on military damage so this report, based on work by scholars at Oregon State University, may have to suffice. Those researchers are still working on assessing the extent of any damage. Questions are also lingering about the effectiveness of Israeli air defenses, which seemed to decline over time. Whether that’s because the Iranians began using more effective projectiles and/or tactics, because the Israelis started to run out of interceptor missiles, or some combination of those or other factors is unclear.
YEMEN
The crew of a Greek-owned cargo vessel abandoned ship late Sunday after suffering multiple attacks while positioned off of Yemen’s Red Sea coast. The nature of the target and the location speak to Houthi involvement though the intensity seems out of proportion with the movement’s previous attacks on Red Sea commercial shipping. This vessel was hit with explosive-packed drone boats and then came under small arms and RPG fire, though it seems the initial drone boats may have done the bulk of the damage. No other group in the region is known to employ drone boats so that strongly suggests Houthi involvement. Houthi-linked media has noted the attack but has not broadcast any claim of responsibility as yet.
The IDF attacked ports in northern Yemen’s Hudaydah province as well as the Ras Kanatib Power Plant early Monday morning. This is the first Israeli strike on Yemen in several weeks and comes after several Houthi missile attacks that have either been intercepted by IDF air defenses or have otherwise not made it to their Israeli targets.
IRAN
The International Atomic Energy Agency announced on Friday that it has withdrawn its inspectors from Iran. You may recall that on Wednesday Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed into law a bill suspending Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA, so the inspectors’ continued presence was a bit superfluous and may even have put the inspectors themselves at risk. Iranian officials have blamed the IAEA, first for issuing a report that accused Iran of covering up an illicit nuclear weapons program, which they say paved the way for the Israeli attack that kicked off the “12 Day War”; and second for refusing to criticize the war even as the Israeli and US militaries attacked civilian Iranian nuclear sites.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
The Pakistani military claimed on Friday that its forces had killed some 30 “militants” who were attempting to cross the border from Afghanistan over the previous three days. It identified them as members of the Pakistani Taliban or “affiliated groups.” It further accused the Indian government of supporting them.
CHINA
According to The Financial Times, Chinese firms are looking abroad to try to dodge US tariffs:
Chinese businesses are sending increasing volumes of goods to the US via south-east Asia in a bid to evade the tariff wall erected by Donald Trump as part of his trade war, data suggests.
The value of Chinese exports to the US dropped by 43 per cent year on year in May, according to figures published by the US census bureau — equivalent to $15bn-worth of goods.
But the country’s overall exports rose by 4.8 per cent in the same period, official Chinese data showed, as the shortfall in trade with the US was offset by a 15 per cent increase in shipping to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations trade bloc and a 12 per cent rise to the EU.
Additional data suggests that at least some of these exports are eventually winding up in the US via third countries, and there is also precedent for Chinese firms engaging in this sort of behavior in response to US tariffs. The Trump administration’s recent accord with Vietnam took the issue of Chinese transshipment into account, setting a 20 percent tariff in place on Vietnamese goods and a 40 percent tariff on goods of foreign extraction shipped through Vietnam. Presumably that’s a format it will try to repeat in any subsequent deals with possible transshipment states.
AFRICA
NIGER
Two apparently coordinated attacks by jihadist militants left at least ten soldiers dead and 15 wounded in southwestern Niger’s Tillabéri region on Friday. The Nigerien military is claiming that at least 41 militants were killed as well.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Rwandan President Paul Kagame told reporters in Kigali on Friday that while he’s definitely supportive of the peace deal his government just signed with the Congolese government, he’s not terribly optimistic about its chances of working. He’s not concerned about his own compliance, of course, but he’s just not sure that the DRC will do its part. If it sounds like Kagame is laying the groundwork for the collapse of the agreement, or rather that he’s preparing a justification for collapsing it himself, that’s probably a reasonable supposition. But even if Kagame’s intentions are pure, the International Crisis Group’s Richard Moncrieff argues that the road ahead is likely to be difficult to say the least:
Despite the optimism in Washington and the prospect of a presidential summit, it will be arduous diplomatic work to make this deal stick. Previous agreements have been scuppered by foot dragging and disputes over sequencing of steps, and signs are it could happen again. One such sign is that fighting continues on the ground, the agreement notwithstanding. The M23, a Tutsi-led insurgency named after a failed 23 March 2009 peace deal between its predecessor rebel group and Kinshasa, has previously stated that it is not bound by any deal Rwanda might make with the DRC, even though it is backed by Kigali. While the M23’s expansion into new territory has slowed since March, amid mediation efforts, the rebels are still engaged in hostilities with a loose, mostly pro-Kinshasa coalition of armed groups that are together known as the Wazalendo (Swahili for patriot). With the ink barely dry in Washington, the M23 pressed its advance toward Uvira, the last major city in South Kivu that remains under government control. Rwandan troops, who numbered around 6,000 in the DRC at the start of the year and bear hi-tech weaponry that has been vital to the rebel conquests, continue to give the M23 critical support.
Meanwhile, the Congolese army is attempting to regroup, while the defence ministry buys new hardware, including attack drones. Kinshasa’s soldiers are skirmishing with rebel fighters at the edges of M23-held areas. On 1 July, three days after the truce, the Congolese army shot down a plane as it approached the Kiziba airstrip in South Kivu, which is in rebel hands. The M23 responded angrily, saying the plane was carrying humanitarian supplies. Government forces have not, however, attempted to launch a counteroffensive to retake positions the M23 has overrun.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
According to The New York Times, the apparently ailing leader of Russia’s Chechnya region appears to be trying to arrange the succession of his son, despite the legal challenges that would entail:
For two decades, Ramzan Kadyrov has been the Kremlin’s iron fist in Chechnya. In return for helping to brutally suppress an independence movement, he has been allowed to rule his region as a personal fief, crushing rivals and dissenters, as well as separatists.
But Mr. Kadyrov, 48, appears to be seriously ill, presenting President Vladimir V. Putin with a new challenge in a part of southern Russia where wars killed tens of thousands in the 1990s and 2000s. When the strongman leaves the scene, who can maintain the brutal control he has imposed over that part of the Caucasus?
Mr. Kadyrov’s own succession plan could be resting on his 17-year-old son, who got married and received congratulations from Mr. Putin over the weekend. But that would require circumventing Russian law requiring regional leaders to be at least 30 years old.
And there are other contenders, including a man who led an effort to round up and brutalize gay people and another who went off to fight for Russia in Ukraine.
UKRAINE
The Russian military claimed the seizure of two more Ukrainian villages on Sunday, one in Donetsk oblast and the other in Kharkiv oblast. The latter lies near the city of Kupiansk, an important rail hub that the Russians would surely like to take if possible. Meanwhile, Voldymyr Zelensky spoke with Donald Trump by phone on Friday and seems to believe that they “agreed that we will work together to strengthen protection of our skies,” according to a subsequent social media post. The Trump administration just froze US air interceptor shipments to Ukraine a few days ago but Trump seems to be on another one of his “I’m annoyed with Vladimir Putin” jags after his phone call with Putin on Thursday made no headway toward a ceasefire and the Russian military followed that call up by launching two of its largest overnight bombardments of the war. Trump is even talking about the possibility of new Russian sanctions again, though the chances that he’ll follow through on that are probably low.
AMERICAS
SURINAME
The Surinamese National Assembly elected former speaker Jennifer Geerlings-Simons as the country’s new president on Sunday. This outcome was the likely result after her National Democratic Party won May’s parliamentary election, taking 18 seats to 17 for incumbent President Chan Santokhi’s Progressive Reform Party. She becomes the first woman to hold the Surinamese presidency. Suriname is expecting a major financial windfall in 2028, when a large offshore oil and gas project is set to begin production, so Simons—whose term runs through 2030—will have first crack at overseeing those revenues.
UNITED STATES
Finally, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned on Sunday that countries that do not strike trade deals with the United States by August 1 can expect to face the “reciprocal” tariff rates that were announced by Donald Trump back on April 2. Trump suspended those rates for 90 days a week later, creating a new deadline for trade talks that should be expiring on Wednesday. Now the deadline has apparently been moved again, probably because the administration has negotiated just 3 trade deals instead of the dozens it had been promising to negotiate. Bessent is insisting, in a very “are you going to believe me or your lying eyes” sort of way, that August 1 is somehow not a new deadline. It’s all very simple and believable. The administration is planning to send letters by Wednesday informing countries of their new tariff rates, which I guess is its way of honoring the original 90 day window.