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TODAY IN HISTORY
June 25, 1876: US Army Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry Regiment encounter an Indigenous village near the Little Bighorn River in what was then the Montana Territory. The following morning, Custer led his men into battle against a substantially larger force of Lakota Sioux, Dakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho fighters. In one of the most widely-known battles in US frontier history the Indigenous forces thoroughly defeated Custer’s regiment, killing some 270 of its roughly 700 personnel including Custer himself. The Battle of the Little Bighorn is certainly the most famous battle of the Great Sioux War of 1876, but despite its outcome the war was won by the US military and resulted in the annexation of Sioux lands.
June 25, 1950: The Korean War begins with, by most accounts, a North Korean invasion of South Korea, although the Korean People’s Army claimed that South Korean forces invaded their territory first. There was already a North Korean-supported insurgency in South Korea, and conflicts at the Korean border had been fairly common occurrences since the Allies liberated and partitioned the peninsula in 1945, but the US decision to intervene two days later makes the June 25 incident stand out as the “official” start of the conflict. The war still hasn’t technically ended, but the fighting stopped in 1953 in a stalemate after two failed North Korean/Chinese invasions of South Korea sandwiched around one failed South Korean/US invasion of North Korea.
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least three people in southern Lebanon’s Nabatieh province on Thursday, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. The IDF is claiming that its forces killed six people, all allegedly “Hezbollah terrorists.” There’s no word of any progress emerging from the latest round of Lebanon-Israel talks in Washington, but an anonymous “US State Department official” did cause a stir on Thursday by claiming that the IDF “has already taken a concrete step by pulling back from a part of its buffer zone” in southern Lebanon. Both Israeli and Lebanese officials denied this and in fact there is no evidence of any Israeli withdrawal. The Trump administration is advocating a piecemeal IDF withdrawal with the Lebanese army moving in to secure the areas that the Israelis leave. Israeli officials seem cool to that idea to say the least.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The IDF killed at least one person in northern Gaza on Thursday and wounded two more in a drone strike in Gaza city. In the West Bank, Israeli forces raided a home in the city of Salfit and killed one Palestinian.
YEMEN
A car bombing killed Al Arabiya reporter Mohammed Ayda in eastern Yemen’s Hadhramaut province on Wednesday evening. There’s been no claim of responsibility but authorities in the provincial capital, Mukalla, had apparently warned him a few weeks ago that he was under threat. The Yemeni Journalists’ Syndicate condemned the bombing and the nominal Yemeni government has formed a “high-level committee” to investigate it.
IRAQ
According to Reuters, the Iraqi government may follow the UAE’s lead and quit the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) if The Gang doesn’t “significantly increase” Iraq’s oil production cap. That cap currently stands at 4.378 million barrels per day, though Iraq’s actual oil exports have been severely throttled by the Iran war so it’s currently well below that line. So far below, in fact, that the Iraqi government is now eating into the central bank’s foreign currency reserves in an emergency stopgap measure to cover its spending needs.
It’s not clear that Baghdad could actually increase production much beyond its cap right now, but it apparently is hoping to increase the country’s production capacity to 7 million bpd in the relatively near future. The expanded OPEC+ group is reportedly reviewing member states’ production capabilities and may adjust caps next year and beyond.
IRAN
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Iranian government is still expecting to reap a windfall from the Strait of Hormuz:
The Islamic Republic estimates that charging for security, safety and environmental services in the strait would bring in $40 billion a year in revenue for states involved, according to officials familiar with the matter. The idea, if implemented, would bring Tehran cash flow and control that it didn’t command before the war.
The regime is looking to models around the world, including the Dardanelles, the officials said, where Turkey charges ships a tax known as the gold franc for passage to and from the Aegean Sea through the international waterway.
To get buy-in, Tehran is pitching the idea to the wider Middle East and as far afield as Beijing, according to Iranian officials. It wants its Persian Gulf neighbors to be part of the agreement and share the revenue, they said.
The Turkish government is expecting to make $254 million from its strait fees for the period from July 1 2025 through June 30. It levies those fees on vessels that do not stop at Turkish ports along the way, and the money is put toward things like maintaining search and rescue teams in case of emergency, conducting ship inspections, and maintaining lighthouse facilities. Turkey’s authority to charge those fees is rooted in the 1936 Montreux Convention, which guarantees freedom of navigation through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus for commercial traffic.
I guess what I’m saying here is that the comparison with Turkey seems less apt than the Iranian government might want. Those Turkish strait fees are not a huge money maker and are collected in order to pay for seemingly necessary services. Moreover they’re permitted by an international agreement that’s been in place for 90 years. What the Iranians seem to be proposing is something else entirely: a profit-generating mechanism that would require imposing a new international (or at least regional) framework where none currently exists. Even allowing for the fact that Persian Gulf commercial traffic and Black Sea commercial traffic differ in both type and volume, $40 billion seems like a reach if you’re using Turkey as proof of concept.
Elsewhere:
The United Nations International Maritime Organization said on Thursday that it has halted its effort to evacuate vessels (and their crews) that have been trapped in the Persian Gulf due to the war, due to reports that a vessel came under attack in the Gulf of Oman. There are few details here but the IMO says that the ship had transited the strait but not “under IMO’s evacuation framework.” The framework had secured the release of some 57 ships and 1100 crew members since Tuesday. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations monitoring center reported that a container ship had been targeted in what was probably a drone attack while sailing near the Omani coast. It’s unclear who fired the drone.
Despite continued uncertainty about the strait and about the US-Iran negotiating process, global oil prices are more or less back to prewar levels. I’m all for optimism, I guess, but this seems out of proportion to actual events. There is apparently some concern of a short term oil supply “glut” as demand revives but that isn’t expected to last very long.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a trip to the Persian Gulf this week to assure his Gulf Arab counterparts that any grand deal the US reaches with Iran will not sacrifice the security interests of their states. The US and Israel already sacrificed those interests to fight the war in the first place, after all. He particularly stressed that the US won’t agree to anything that gives Iran unilateral prerogatives over the strait, though if you go back a couple of paragraphs it’s clear that the Iranians are aiming to bring the Gulf Arab countries in on whatever scheme they have in mind so that may not be a real issue.
ASIA
CAMBODIA
The US Treasury Department blacklisted nine people and 26 entities on Tuesday over their alleged ties to scam operations in Cambodia. All are reportedly linked to Prince Holding Group, which the department had previously sanctioned along with its chairperson, Chen Zhi (who’s also been indicted by the US Justice Department). One target of Tuesday’s measures was Hu Xiaowei, allegedly Prince’s “number two,” who was arrested in Japan earlier this week.
CHINA
Three US cabinet departments—Agriculture, Commerce, and State—are circulating letters warning state governments and private firms that the Chinese government is “mischaracterizing” US policy in an effort to discourage contacts with Taiwan. According to these letters, Chinese diplomatic offices in the US have been contacting those entities and, among other things, “falsely claiming that Washington has previously accepted Beijing’s specific position on Taiwan.” The letters advise anyone who is contacted on this subject by “Chinese officials” to notify the State Department.
AFRICA
SUDAN
Rapid Support Forces drone strikes killed at least two people in the Sudanese city of Rabak on Thursday. Rabak is the capital of Sudan’s White Nile state, where RSF drone strikes are becoming a more frequent occurrence. The militants may be attempting to soften that state up ahead of a future offensive or to weaken the Sudanese military’s overall infrastructure to support the RSF’s operations in Blue Nile and North Kordofan states.
The RSF is also reportedly issuing new currency notes in the territory under its control. The Sudanese military (SAF) declared old notes invalid and began issuing new currency in 2024, which the RSF unsurprisingly rejected and as a result currency had been running low in RSF-held parts of the country. The new notes appear to have started rolling out last month, though it’s hard to be precise because they apparently look pretty indistinguishable from prewar Sudanese currency. They even feature the signature of Sudan’s prewar central bank governor, Hussein Yahia Jangol, who is now filling the same role for the RSF’s alternative government. This could be interpreted as a step toward national separation, though I’m not sure that’s the intent and it seems more like a hasty response to a currency crisis.
NIGERIA
The Trump administration earlier this week blacklisted three people and six entities allegedly involved in logistical and financial activities on behalf of Islamic State. These included one person and three entities in Nigeria, part of a currency exchange network that has allegedly been serving as a “conduit” for IS fundraising.
EUROPE
BELARUS
The Wall Street Journal claimed on Tuesday that the Russian government opened a “pressure campaign” earlier this year to get Belarus more involved in the Ukraine war, perhaps “as a springboard” for attacks against Ukraine and/or “to launch nonconventional operations against members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” This piece is sketchily sourced to “former and current Russian and European officials,” but it also includes the tidbit that French President Emmanuel Macron confronted his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, with “information that Belarus was going to boost its engagement in the war” during a phone call last month. Macron reportedly “warned [Lukashenko] against it.”
The Trump administration and other Western governments have made tentative moves to engage with Lukashenko over the past several months and he’s been receptive to their outreach. Hopping on board for some sort of Russian war expansion would undo whatever progress has been made in that Western engagement. Lukashenko does have to be mindful of maintaining his relationship with Moscow, but again there’s not much more than conjecture in this piece around the question of whether Russia really is intending to expand the war with Belarusian assistance. At any rate, the Russian government denied the WSJ’s allegations on Thursday, while Lukashenko warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to stop threatening Belarus lest he draw Minsk more deeply into the war.
UKRAINE
The Ukrainian military kept up its bombardment of Crimea overnight, killing at least two people and causing another round of power outages across the peninsula. Ukrainian strikes also killed at least two people in Russia’s Bryansk oblast and one person in Russia’s Belgorod oblast. Russia’s overnight bombardment hit three trains across Ukraine, killing one operator in Zaporizhzhia oblast.
Elsewhere, the Polish government opened the annual Ukraine Recovery Conference in the city of Gdansk on Thursday with Zelensky not in attendance. Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of his “Order of the White Eagle” honor last week after Zelensky named a Ukrainian military unit after the Banderite Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which massacred ethnic Poles in the 1940s. Zelensky decided to snub the conference in response. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk played down the dispute in his opening remarks but also suggested that Ukrainian leaders who are hoping to join the European Union someday should “‘understand [Ukraine’s] history’ and show an ‘authentic capacity and readiness for reconciliation.’”
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
A “doublet” of major earthquakes struck Venezuela on Wednesday evening, leaving at least 188 people dead and causing major damage in Caracas and surrounding areas. Thousands of people are still missing (some 41,000 according to one unverified source) and the US Geological Survey’s models point toward an eventual death toll as high as 10,000. Venezuela will likely require major assistance in recovery and rebuilding, which apparently makes this the perfect time for Donald Trump to decide that he is not, in fact, running the country:
After abducting Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that America would “run” Venezuela. When asked in January who was leading Venezuela, Trump said, “We’re in charge.”
Yet after back-to-back earthquakes rocked multiple Venezuelan cities on Wednesday, toppling scores of buildings and killing at least 188 people and injuring at least 1,520, Trump merely offered assistance.
“The U.S.A. stands ready, willing, and able to help! I have instructed all agencies of our government to get ready to move quickly,” he wrote in a Truth Social post. “We will be there for our new and great friends.”
One U.S. government official told The Intercept that Trump’s offer doesn’t go far enough since Venezuela is now a U.S. “vassal state.” “Don’t we run that country?” the official asked, speaking on background and referencing Trump’s comments. “That’s an obligation that exceeds friendship.”
Trump is of course always ready to sink to expectations, but after pulverizing Venezuela via sanctions and more recently (by Trump’s own statements) looting billions of dollars in oil revenue from it, the United States and Trump especially have an obligation to provide whatever assistance is required.
UNITED STATES
In US-related news:
The US Senate reconvened Wednesday evening so that Republicans could block the War Powers resolution that they had just passed the previous day. After facing Donald Trump’s wrath, senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Rand Paul (R-KY), tucked tail and switched their votes (Cassidy to “no” and Paul to “present”), which was enough to defeat the measure. They made up separate excuses to justify their flip-flops—Cassidy claimed that he’d been satisfied by a White House briefing on the war, while Paul said that it wanted to “give the President more space and leverage to negotiate a lasting peace.” Whatever gets you through the night, I guess.
The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Thursday that the Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to revoke Temporary Protected Status for nationals of any country without judicial review. The ruling is a huge boost to the Trump administration’s dream of ridding the United States of all refugees save for Afrikaners.
Finally, a new ProPublica series shows how fossil fuel companies have been rigging climate research at major US institutions for decades:
An investigation by ProPublica and Drilled has found that fossil fuel companies have been funding climate research at prestigious U.S. universities for more than 30 years. Their support has helped amplify the work of scientists who promote the idea that we can stop the climate crisis without breaking our dependence on oil, gas and coal.
The research produced by those schools in turn shaped global climate models, as well as the policy and technology solutions adopted by governments around the world.
Ultimately, it fostered a misperception that climate change could be solved without dramatically curtailing fossil fuels — a notion that has delayed emissions cuts by decades.
Corporate funders sponsored entire centers, paid the salaries of researchers, kept offices on campus and in some cases had veto power over projects.
Companies maintain they are supporting innovation and needed science. Universities say that with safeguards, sponsorship enhances research programs while preserving academic independence.
Still, the impact of funding constitutes a pattern that Benjamin Franta, an associate professor of climate litigation at University of Oxford, called the “colonization of academia.”
One of the main arguments that has emerged from this curated research is the idea that humanity can keep burning fossil fuels to its collective heart’s content because emerging technology will allow the carbon that produces to be “captured” and sequestered underground. The small problem with this argument is that carbon capture doesn’t work, won’t work, and indeed can’t work at the scale required to stave off climate change. But the noise around carbon capture research has helped to diminish calls for reductions in fossil fuel use, which is all the energy companies that bought that research really wanted.