TODAY IN HISTORY
October 7, 1571: A Spanish- and Venetian-led Holy League fleet wins a major victory over the Ottoman Empire at the naval Battle of Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth, thanks largely to more advanced ship designs and the adoption of firearms for close quarters sea combat. The Ottomans lost some 200 ships to the Christians’ ~50, and although they replaced those vessels their navy after Lepanto was never quite the Mediterranean power it had been before. The victory has been widely celebrated in Europe as one of the most important naval battles in history, though its impact on the tactics of naval warfare may have been more important than its immediate geopolitical impact.
October 7, 2001: The US military begins its invasion of Afghanistan. Though it replaced Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government with a friendly regime within weeks, the US finally left that country nearly 20 years later (in August 2021) with the Taliban back in power.
INTERNATIONAL
A “secret poll” of United Nations Security Council members suggests that former Costa Rican Vice President Rebeca Grynspan is the current favorite to succeed António Guterres as UN secretary-general. However, she currently has the support of the bare minimum of nine council members and it’s unclear if she has the necessary backing of all five veto-holding members, so the process isn’t over yet. There are currently seven candidates vying for the job but more may enter the field if this uncertainty lingers.
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Iranian government has sent some $200 million to Hezbollah to support people displaced by the Israeli military’s (IDF) occupation in southern Lebanon. The US State Department is rejecting this claim as a “fake” narrative being peddled by Hezbollah, which may itself be fake news given that the reported transfer of funds calls into question the strength of the US economic blockade of Iran and Washington’s efforts to sanction Hezbollah’s financial networks. According to Reuters’ sources the Iranians got around those challenges by paying intermediaries a whopping 20 percent fee for facilitating the transfer. Hezbollah has yet to announce any concrete plans for this money but will supposedly be doing so “in the coming days.”
