World roundup: September 18 2025
Stories from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Mali, and elsewhere
You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:
PROGRAMMING NOTE: It is very apparent to me that I need to get away from the newsletter for a bit and recharge, so tonight’s roundup will be our last for a few days. We will resume our regular schedule on September 28. I’m hopeful that next week, being UN General Assembly week, will be relatively quiet as world leaders gather in New York to make each other miserable for a change and give the rest of us a break. That said I will of course pop back up if events dictate. Thanks for your indulgence and support.
TODAY IN HISTORY
September 18, 324: In a battle near the city of Chrysopolis in Anatolia, the armies of Roman emperors Constantine and Licinius meet in what proves to be the final battle of the Roman Tetrarchy’s multiple civil wars. Constantine, as we know, won an overwhelming victory and then had Licinius executed in 325. Constantine thus made himself the first sole emperor of Rome since Diocletian elevated Maximian to the status of Augustus in the west in 286.
September 18, 1810: The Government Assembly of the Kingdom of Chile, or the “First Government Junta,” takes power in the colony by pledging allegiance to the deposed King Ferdinand VII of Spain and rejecting Napoleon’s imposition of his brother, Joseph, on the Spanish throne, thus kicking off the Chilean War of Independence. Though it was supposed to be temporary, the junta continued fighting after Ferdinand’s restoration and didn’t stop fighting until Chile became an independent nation in the 1820s. Commemorated as Chilean Independence Day.
September 18, 1947: The National Security Act goes into effect, drastically reshaping the US national security bureaucracy. The previously cabinet-level Department of War (renamed the Department of the Army) and Department of the Navy were subsumed into a new cabinet-level “Department of Defense.” The US Air Force was split from the Army into its own military branch, also under the new Defense Department. Outside the Pentagon, the act created the National Security Council within the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency, the first US peacetime intelligence agency. And we all lived happily ever after.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
According to Reuters, the Trump administration has recently sacked a number of “senior US diplomats” who’d been working in the State Department’s “Syria Regional Platform” (its de facto Syrian embassy, based in Turkey). The administration isn’t commenting but there’s some speculation that this may be related to US envoy Tom Barrack’s preference for strengthening relations with the interim government in Damascus at the expense of US support for the Syrian Democratic Forces militia. Barrack has sided with Damascus and centralization over the SDF and its calls for a more federal governing structure with autonomy for Syria’s regions. The US has supported the SDF for years so it stands to reason that there are State Department personnel whose inclinations lie in that direction and Barrack may have decided that it was time to remove them.
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) bombed five southern Lebanese villages on Thursday after issuing evacuation orders to the residents. Israeli officials claim they were targeting “Hezbollah infrastructure.” There’s no indication of casualties but Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam criticized the strikes, which will further complicate his government’s efforts to peaceably disarm Hezbollah. The group has argued that disarmament would leave Lebanon defenseless in the face of unending Israeli aggression and every IDF attack reinforces that message.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
There are a number of items:
The IDF killed at least 50 people across Gaza on Thursday, and as has been the case all week the overwhelming majority (40) were killed in and around Gaza City. With Israeli forces advancing on the center of the city, the territory’s internet and phone connections blacked out on Thursday though the Palestinian Telecommunications Company said it had restored service by Thursday night. Presumably the blackout was intentional though I haven’t seen any comment on it from Israeli officials.
The United Nations Security Council voted 14-1 on Thursday to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but because that one “no” vote belonged to the veto-wielding US the measure failed. It is the sixth time the US has vetoed a UN ceasefire resolution since October 7. I hesitate to make too much of these resolutions because the have limited material relevance—even if the entire US delegation got stuck in an elevator or something and the resolution passed, the Israeli government would almost certainly ignore it. Symbolically it has some significance but the 14-1 vote conveys the same message.
The driver of a Jordanian aid truck opened fire on Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint along the border between Jordan and the occupied West Bank on Thursday, killing two people before Israeli forces killed him. The attack already has the IDF clamoring for an end to aid shipments from Jordan to Gaza.
Bezalel Smotrich is apparently touting Gaza’s value as an unoccupied territory, calling it a “real estate bonanza” at a business event in Tel Aviv earlier this week. I realize it’s unfair to pay attention to the ravings of a fringe figure like Smotrich, who is merely the finance minister in the current Israeli government and the man who is in charge of the civilian administration of the West Bank, but it’s very clear that he’s hell bent on achieving Donald Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” plan, which requires wiping the proverbial slate clean by emptying Gaza of both its civilian population and its entire history.
A new AP-NORC poll finds that 49 percent of all Americans believe that Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks has “gone too far,” up from 40 percent in November 2023. Over 70 percent of Democrats and over half of independents agree with that sentiment.
SAUDI ARABIA
The Saudi and Pakistani governments signed a mutual defense agreement on Thursday that commits them to treat any attack against one as an attack against both. I don’t normally mention these sorts of deals unless they become relevant somehow, and that’s doubly true of a pact between two countries that already had a close military relationship like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Nevertheless, this seems like a fairly big deal given that Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state and is perpetually on the brink of conflict with India, a country that has strong commercial and diplomatic ties to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi state helped to bankroll Pakistan’s nuclear program and it’s long been theorized that this put the kingdom under a Pakistani nuclear umbrella of sorts—including the possibility that the Pakistanis might provide Saudi Arabia with nukes if asked. There’s no specific mention of nukes in this pact but the ambiguity may be partly intentional.
A couple of years ago the obvious target of a Saudi-Pakistani defense arrangement would have been Iran. But now that Saudi-Iranian relations have improved somewhat and the Israeli government has decided that it’s open season on bombing Gulf Arab kingdoms, the message may be intended for a different audience. Notably The Financial Times—whose reporting strongly suggests that Pakistani nuclear protection was part of the deal—is also reporting that the Saudis only informed US officials about the new defense pact after it was signed. Maybe the Saudis observed that Qatar’s defense arrangement with the US includes a prominent Israel-sized exception and decided to diversify their own security arrangements. It’s also worth noting that the Saudis have been pushing for a pact like this with the US for several years, but successive presidential administrations have demanded Saudi-Israeli normalization in return and there is no way the Saudis can do that under present circumstances.
IRAN
Gunmen killed a member of the Basij paramilitary force in southeastern Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province on Thursday. This incident comes two days after another attack in the province that killed at least three, including a police commander. There doesn’t seem to be any indication as to responsibility but as I’ve said before Sistan and Baluchistan is rife with armed groups including jihadists, Baluch separatists, and criminal networks (with overlap among them).
The UN Security Council will hold a procedural vote on Friday regarding the reimposition of sanctions against Iran that were suspended under the 2015 “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” nuclear deal. The “E3” bloc (France, Germany, and the UK) invoked that deal’s “snapback” provision last month, which started a 30 day countdown to the restoration of those sanctions that runs out on September 28. Friday’s vote is part of the snapback process, which can’t be stopped at this point unless the “E3” decide they’re satisfied with the progress toward a new nuclear accord. Recent interactions with Iran have not been positive in that regard, and French President Emmanuel Macron called the restoration of sanctions “a done deal” in an interview with Israeli media on Thursday.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
Good news everybody: we’re invading Afghanistan again. That’s the only interpretation I can come up with for Trump’s statement during a press conference with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday that he is “trying to get it back,” where “it” is Afghanistan’s Bagram Airbase. Trump argued that the US needs Bagram because it is located “an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons” and because “it’s one of the most powerful bases in the world in terms of runway strength and length…You can land a planet on top of it.” Trump has in the past criticized the Biden administration for “giving up” the facility, as though there were some conceivable scenario under which the Taliban would have allowed the US to hang on to it back in 2021, and according to CNN he’s been “quietly pushing his national security team” to find a way to reacquire the base for several month.
Trump suggested that he’s trying to negotiate with the Taliban for control of the base, which he thinks will succeed because “they need things from us.” But they also need things from China, so needless to say it’s exceedingly unlikely that they’re going to hand over a strategically important military facility that Trump has openly said would be used to keep tabs on Chinese military activity. So if they say “no,” what then? And even if, against all odds, the Taliban agreed to trade Bagram for whatever it is they need, the US military would still be required to throw together the equivalent of an invasion force to occupy, staff, and secure the base. It would be an instant target for jihadist militants, for one thing, including any Taliban fighters suddenly disaffected by the fact that their government just cut a deal with the US. Personally I don’t see how there could possibly be a downside to this.
PAKISTAN
Two car bombings in different parts of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province left at least eight people dead and at least 23 people wounded in total on Thursday. There’s been no claim of responsibility in either incident, but as in Iran’s Baluchistan region there are multiple armed groups active in the province including Baluch separatists and jihadist factions.
AFRICA
MALI
The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the Trump administration has “ramped up” US intelligence sharing with Mali’s ruling junta. Ostensibly this is out of concern for dealing with the Sahel’s worsening jihadist crisis, though it’s of a piece with sketchier recent reporting that the administration has been offering military aid to the juntas ruling Mali as well as Burkina Faso and Niger in return for access to critical mineral reserves in those countries. Regardless of the administration’s motives, Responsible Statecraft’s Alex Thurston argues that the policy is doomed to failure:
Outside powers’ record of failure in the Sahel suggests that the Trump administration’s offers of intelligence and security assistance likewise mean little. Intelligence sharing might help locate top jihadist leaders, for example — but the French killed several dozens of senior operatives without unraveling the insurgency, and the Malian junta has repeatedly trumpeted its kills and captures of jihadist commanders. Intelligence sharing cannot fundamentally address the problem of an insurgency with a mass base of young fighters drawn from both urban and rural communities, able to paralyze key transport arteries, strike military outposts, impose economic blockades on important towns, and ambush both national militaries and foreign “trainers” in remote locations (such as Tinzaouaten, Mali, as the Russians learned in 2024; and Tongo-Tongo, Niger, as the Americans learned in 2017).
Nor is the problem of security one that comes down to either hardware, training, or even money — the Sahelian insurgencies have deep social roots, the region’s militaries (and paramilitaries) are riven with internal problems, and the skeletal states of the Sahel are ill-equipped to restore effective governance no matter whether it is civilians or generals who are in charge.
As he notes, even as the Trump administration drops any pretense of concern for human rights its approach to Africa is still entirely oriented around security and thus functionally indistinguishable from the failed strategies of the Obama and Biden administrations. Even on a purely bottom-line basis, the potential for mineral windfalls here is diminished by the fact that unchecked and potentially unstable military dictatorships tend not to be the most reliable business partners.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Reuters reports that Donald Trump’s Congolese peace process is falling apart as the DRC government and M23 militants can’t make any headway in negotiations and instead appear to be resuming their conflict:
Both sides are now dispatching hundreds of men to multiple frontline towns in Congo's eastern provinces bordering Rwanda and Burundi, where violence continues unabated while the talks rumble on, according to the Congolese government and rebel officials.
The U.N. and human rights groups have documented hundreds of summary killings, as well as torture and rape committed by both sides since preliminary peace agreements were signed, first in Washington and then in Doha.
In June, U.S. mediators brokered a peace deal between Congo and Rwanda aimed at ending the support that Washington and U.N. experts say Kigali provides the rebels. A parallel Qatari-led peace effort was meant to seal an agreement between Kinshasa and the rebels, but it missed an August 18 deadline.
MALAWI
Voters in Malawi headed to the polls on Tuesday for a general election in which both of the country’s main political parties have claimed victory. President Lazarus Chakwera’s Malawi Congress Party and former president/current challenger Peter Mutharika’s Democratic Progressive Party each held press conferences on Thursday to announce their respective wins. I’m sure there’s some quantum physics principle under which they could both be right but I don’t think that’s going to pass muster with Malawian election officials. Complicating the picture, the Malawi Electoral Committee says it’s counted nearly all of the votes but hasn’t yet released any results. It has until next Tuesday to announce the results of the Chakwera-Mutharika presidential race. What little polling was conducted prior to the race seemed to favor Mutharika, for whatever that’s worth.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Ukrainian drones targeted another major Russian oil facility overnight, in this case a Gazprom refinery and petrochemical manufacturing plant in the Bashkortostan region. Separately, Ukrainian special forces attacked another oil refinery in Russia’s Volgograd oblast. The Bashkortostan attack caused a fire at the facility though the level of damage is unclear, while the Volgograd attack caused a temporary shutdown to the refinery. Both attacks extend Ukraine’s series of strikes against the Russian energy industry.
UKRAINE
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the front line in Donetsk oblast on Thursday and claimed that the Ukrainian military has retaken seven villages from Russian forces in a new “counteroffensive.” He didn’t say when this operation began but he did suggest that it’s focused primarily on the area around the city of Dobropillia, where the Russian military made a minor breakthrough last month, and around Pokrovsk, which has been a Russian target for several months.
AMERICAS
MEXICO
The US Treasury Department sanctioned the El Mayo faction of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel on Thursday over allegations of drug trafficking and particularly the manufacture and trafficking of fentanyl. This designation included the blacklisting of five people and 15 entities allegedly linked to the faction, including a member of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies for the country’s ruling Morena party.
UNITED STATES
Finally, in his latest Zeteo column Spencer Ackerman argues that, the occasional bit of tension at the margins notwithstanding, Donald Trump’s MAGA movement is ultimately beholden to Israel:
Every political movement is factional and to some degree heterogeneous. MAGA's many contradictions, to say nothing of the Trump personality cult at its core, make it less coherent than most: days after Bannon inveighed against foreign wars, Trump boasted of executing 11 people in international waters, evidently desiring to provoke a military confrontation with Venezuela. But the nativism, militarism, and dominance politics uniting all MAGA elements render silly the past several months of confusion over why Israel enjoys so much support on the American right. When MAGA looks at Israel, it sees the America it wants.
As the youngest settler-colonial outpost of Western civilization in non-Western lands, Israel provides real-time examples of the frontier heritage MAGA valorizes. When the Israeli military despoiled West Bank olive trees en masse last month to render Palestinian life there unviable, many were reminded of the 19th-century photographs of mountains of bison skulls created to clear the American West of native tribes that relied on the bison nutritionally and economically. Earlier this month, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich unveiled a plan for Israel to annex 82% of the West Bank, a long-expected codification of the conquest produced by generations of Israeli military-backed settler terrorism against Palestinians. This is the contemporary, Middle Eastern version of the "homeland heritage" the Department of Homeland Security's recent blood-and-soil-style X posts urged presumptively-white Americans to honor.