World roundup: September 2 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Thailand, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
September 2, 31 BCE (or thereabouts): Octavian’s forces decisively defeat the navy of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. Actium effectively marked the end of the war between Octavian and Antony, as both Antony and Cleopatra subsequently retreated to Alexandria and eventually committed suicide after Octavian besieged the city. His rival gone, Octavian became the first emperor of Rome, taking the title Augustus to mark his new status.
September 2, 1192: The Third Crusade effectively ends with the Treaty of Jaffa, under the terms of which Richard the Lionheart and Saladin agreed to a three year cessation in hostilities, during which time Saladin would allow Christian pilgrims to visit any holy sites in his territory, including Jerusalem. Richard agreed to surrender the city of Ascalon (modern Ashkelon) to Saladin, but only after destroying its fortifications. The treaty was the product of Richard’s realization that he lacked the manpower to besiege Jerusalem and that he needed to return home to defend his French territories.
September 2, 1870: The Prussian Third and Fourth armies thoroughly defeat the French Army of Châlons at the Franco-Prussian War’s Battle of Sedan, in northeastern France. In military terms the Prussian victory was of significant importance. The entire Army of Châlons, which had been trying to come to the Army of the Rhine’s aid during the Siege of Metz, was eradicated, suffering some 18,000 casualties and a whopping 104,000 soldiers captured. In political terms the impact was massive. It just so happens that French Emperor Napoleon III had accompanied the Army of Châlons to Metz, and he was among those taken prisoner. Two days later, an uprising in Paris saw whatever was left of the empire give way to the “Government of National Defense,” which attempted to salvage the war but ultimately surrendered in January 1871 and transitioned into the French Third Republic.
INTERNATIONAL
A new study substantially raises the likelihood that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) system will eventually collapse without climate intervention. Previous modeling had focused on the potential for the Amoc to cease functioning by the end of this century, an outcome that remains unlikely. But this latest study takes a longer-term view of the risk and concludes that the planet may hit a “tipping point” in the next few decades that would make the Amoc’s collapse inevitable, and while it would likely take another 50-100 years before it fully shuts down it can be expected to weaken substantially by 2100. Even the weakening of the Amoc leads to some cataclysmic outcomes, though likely not cataclysmic enough to motivate world leaders to meaningfully curb carbon emissions.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The Syrian Oil Company said on Monday that it had exported some 600,000 barrels of oil via the country’s Tartus seaport. What makes this significant is that it’s the first time Syria’s national oil firm has exported any oil in 14 years—legitimately, at least—thanks to the Syrian civil war and related Western sanctions. Those factors are no longer relevant, but what is relevant is that Syria’s most productive oil fields are still outside Damascus’s control, being held by the Kurdish-led administration in eastern Syria. That administration began providing oil to the Syrian government earlier this year but ongoing tension between them could threaten that supply.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli military (IDF) continues to advance, relatively slowly, toward its planned “conquest” of Gaza City, which it characterized as “a dangerous combat zone” on Friday. Progress remains slow because the IDF is still in the process of mobilizing some 60,000 reservists who were recalled late last month to participate in the operation, 40,000 of them in the initial “wave” of call-ups. The IDF is also at least putting on a show of trying to evacuate the remaining civilian population of northern Gaza (somewhere on the order of 1 million people) to the south, a process that the International Committee of the Red Cross called “not only unfeasible but incomprehensible under the present circumstances” on Saturday.
In other items:
According to Haaretz, the leaders of Israel’s various security services pushed back on the Gaza City takeover plan during a Sunday meeting of the country’s security cabinet. We’re told they urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pursue a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal and warned that seizing Gaza City will not lead to Hamas’s “defeat.” There’s no indication that their reticence had any impact on Netanyahu’s thinking.
Health officials in Gaza say that some 185 people died of malnutrition-related causes in the territory last month, as the Israeli starvation campaign began to exact a toll. On Tuesday they highlighted at least 13 malnutrition-related deaths over the first day-plus of September.
On that note, members of the International Association of Genocide Scholars voted on Monday to adopt a resolution stipulating that the Israeli campaign in Gaza satisfies the “legal definition” of that charge according to the United Nations’ 1948 genocide convention. This is fairly definitive as far as it goes, though genocide deniers will likely find some solace in the fact that, while the vote was 86 percent in favor of the resolution, only 28 percent of the organization’s 500 members actually participated in the vote.
The IDF announced that it killed Hamas spokesperson “Abu Ubaydah” (a nom de guerre) over the weekend. To my knowledge there’s been no confirmation of his death from Hamas but there’s not much reason to doubt the Israeli claim at this point. Abu Ubaydah was the most public face of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades armed wing and ran the organization’s propaganda/public relations operation so his loss will certainly be felt, though these days it feels like the Israeli government is doing all the PR work that Hamas needs. Hamas did on Saturday finally acknowledge the death of former Gaza leader Mohammed Sinwar, whom the IDF killed in an airstrike back in May.
The Washington Post has reported on a “38-page prospectus” for Donald Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” plan for postwar (and post-Palestinian) Gaza. I feel like much of what’s in this report has already been reported in bits and pieces elsewhere but it’s useful to see it compiled and there are some new details, like the calculation that developers would save some $23,000 for every Palestinian they convince to “voluntarily” relocate out of Gaza, when compared with the cost of feeding and sheltering them during a hypothetical rebuilding process. Those who opt to leave would be paid in cash and food and rent subsidies to entice their departure. The “Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust” (yes, that’s right, the acronym is “GREAT”), devised by the same folks who brought you the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” aid distribution/human targeting program, envisions a ten or more year US “trusteeship” for Gaza, during which time developers would erect “six to eight new ‘AI-powered, smart cities’” across the territory. That alone should be enough to demonstrate that this is a fantasy, but what matters isn’t whether the full project comes to fruition but whether and to what extent it’s used as justification for ethnic cleansing.
Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot announced on Tuesday that Brussels will join several other Western nations in recognizing Palestinian statehood during the UN General Assembly session later this month. He also declared that it will impose 12 “firm sanctions” on the Israeli government to boot.
With this UNGA shaping up to be a significant, if symbolic, event from the standpoint of a Palestinian state, the Israeli government is reportedly considering “the annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank” in retaliation. This is not unlike a serial killer threatening to murder more people if they’re indicted for the murders they’ve already committed. It’s what the Israeli government is already doing, but now with some manufactured excuse for doing it. The IDF, by the by, has continued its recent series of raids on West Bank cities and even arrested the mayor of Hebron, Tayseer Abu Sneineh, on Tuesday. He’s been at odds with the Palestinian Authority, but whether that has anything to do with his arrest is difficult to say. There doesn’t seem to be much justification behind these raids from the Israelis apart from “because we can.”
It’s unclear whether the Trump administration will green light this annexation but it is punishing the PA by yanking its officials’ visas so that they cannot attend the UNGA. This is in principle a direct violation of the UN’s “headquarters agreement,” but because that agreement is written to give the US some latitude when it comes to blocking attendees’ visas on vague “security” concerns there’s likely nothing that the UN can or will do about it.
YEMEN
Thursday’s IDF attack on Sanaa did, as it turns out, target senior Houthi officials and killed the prime minister of its northern Yemeni government, Ahmed al-Rahawi, along with a number of other cabinet ministers. These were, to be somewhat reductive, civilian officials so their killing likely will not have much of an effect on the Houthi movement’s military activities. It may—a la the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh last July—make negotiating with the group more difficult, but I cannot say whether that might have been part of the Israeli calculation behind the strike (readers are as ever free to draw their own conclusions). In what may have been a demonstration of continued intent, the Houthis attacked an Israeli-owned tanker in the Red Sea over the weekend. I haven’t seen any indication as to damage.
IRAN
The Trump administration blacklisted a “network” of shipping companies and tankers on Tuesday that has allegedly been transporting Iranian oil by disguising it as Iraqi product to evade sanctions. Meanwhile, the foreign ministers of Iran, China, and Russia sent a joint letter to the UN Security Council on Monday denouncing the “E3” bloc’s invocation of the “snapback” mechanism in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which started a process that will, unless interrupted, result in the reimposition of UN sanctions on Iran. The letter is meaningless in any practical sense but could be taken as a statement of intent by Moscow and Beijing to ignore those sanctions if they are reimposed, which means Iran won’t be as economically isolated as Western nations might prefer it to be.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
A magnitude 6.0 earthquake caused substantial damage in eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar and Nangarhar provinces on Sunday night, killing over 1400 people and injuring some 3000 more in Kunar alone according to Afghan officials. A major aftershock on Tuesday has raised fears of further devastation. The Afghan government has appealed for international support but so far has received the equivalent of pocket change from the United Kingdom and European Union (less than $2.5 million combined). Trepidation about dealing with the Taliban and a general antipathy toward foreign aid (particularly in the US) are the main factors behind this lack of support.
PAKISTAN
A bombing outside a public event in the Pakistani city of Quetta killed at least 11 people on Tuesday evening. As far as I know there’s been no claim of responsibility as yet, and given the location it could have been Baluch separatists or jihadists (or some combination). Earlier in the day militants attacked a security base in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing at least six people (six of the attackers were also killed). There’s been no claim of responsibility here either but in all likelihood the attackers were from the Pakistani Taliban or some related group.
THAILAND
Thailand’s Constitutional Court removed Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra from office on Friday, just shy of two months after it suspended her pending an ethics investigation into her apparent criticism of the Thai military during a phone call with Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen. Her Pheu Thai party is trying to salvage its government, but according to Reuters it is “prepared” to dissolve parliament and move to a snap election if its negotiations with other parties fail to produce an acceptable PM candidate. Leaders of the leftist People’s Party, which is the largest bloc in the Thai parliament, are reportedly considering whether to back another Pheu Thai-led government or throw their support behind the opposition Bhumjaithai party as it attempts to form a government. If Bhumjaithai’s bid looks like it might succeed it’s likely that Pheu Thai will try to force a dissolution.
INDONESIA
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto announced over the weekend that the country’s political parties have agreed to withdraw a number of perks that had previously been available to members of parliament, following a week of heavy protests in which at least five people were killed and at least 20 remain missing. The demonstrations began after media reports of a substantial housing stipend that was awarded to legislators last year, and then escalated in severity after police killed a taxi driver while attempting to suppress one protest in Jakarta on Thursday night. Demonstrations began to verge into riots, during which several more people were killed and protesters set fire to multiple regional parliament buildings across the country. The housing stipend alone was 20 times what the average minimum wage worker in Indonesia would earn in a year, hence the anger.
CHINA
The Chinese government hosted a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) group in the city of Tianjin over the weekend. These events are generally more for show than anything else but I do think it’s worth mentioning the display that Chinese President Xi Jinping arranged with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday. The three of them performed mutual solidarity in what was undoubtedly a message to Washington, where Donald Trump’s efforts to punish India economically have driven New Delhi into a closer relationship with both Moscow and Beijing. Trump reacted angrily to the display, calling the US-India relationship “a totally one sided disaster” in a Monday social media post, so it seems the message was received.
AFRICA
SUDAN
An apparently massive landslide in Sudan’s North Darfur state killed at least 1000 people on Sunday and destroyed an entire village, leaving just one survivor. The African Union has called on the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces militant group to cease fighting and allow a surge of aid into what is a fairly remote area, but that seems unlikely and the same drying up of international humanitarian support I mentioned above—coupled with likely concerns about supplying aid to a region that is controlled by the RSF—may make this recovery effort as politically fraught as the one in eastern Afghanistan.
Elsewhere, Sudan’s Emergency Lawyers activist group reported that a military drone strike hit a clinic in the South Darfur city of Nyala on Sunday, killing at least 12 people. And AFP reported that RSF shelling killed at least seven people in the besieged North Darfur city of Al-Fashir. According to researchers at Yale, satellite imagery reveals that the militants are building an “earthen wall” around that city in what appears to be an attempt to prevent outside access and to trap the people inside.
LIBYA
The UN’s mission in Libya warned on Tuesday of “rapidly escalating tensions and military mobilizations” by armed groups in Tripoli. In particular there have been reports of armed elements moving into the city from nearby Misrata and there were apparently reports of gunfire in the nominal Libyan capital on Monday night. Factions in Tripoli have clashed with one another in the past, the most recent major flare-up having occurred back in May.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Corneille Nangaa, the political leader of the Congo River Alliance, accused the Congolese government on Monday of “successive violations” of the ceasefire agreement between it and the M23 militant group. M23 is by far the most prominent member of the CRA, and its leaders agreed to a statement of principles with the Congolese government back in July that was supposed to lead to the signing of a peace deal last month. That signing never took place and both sides have accused one another of violating the earlier statement. According to Nangaa, the government’s violations have included attacks by the Congolese military and allied militias against M23 positions in South Kivu province.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
A plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was reportedly targeted by GPS jamming as it was landing in Bulgaria on Sunday. Pilots managed to land safely but the incident unsurprisingly raised an alarm and Bulgarian authorities have pointed the proverbial finger at Russia. Moscow has denied the charge. Multiple European governments, particularly in Scandinavia and the Baltics but also including Germany and Poland, have accused Russia of jamming GPS signals in recent months. Assuming it was Russia the next question would be whether or not von der Leyen’s flight was targeted intentionally. If it’s determined that it was, that could have implications for how European officials travel around the continent.
UKRAINE
Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov argued on Friday that his forces have sped up their advance in Ukraine and are now taking some 600 to 700 square kilometers per month, up from 300 to 400 per month at the start of 2025. He also asserted significantly increased damage to “Ukraine’s military-industrial complex” owing to intensified Russian airstrikes. It’s hard to verify his claims but it does seem generally true that the Russian military is moving a bit faster on the ground in eastern Ukraine of late, though pro-Ukrainian outlets have argued that the Russians are overstating their advances. Overnight Russian strikes from Saturday into Sunday left tens of thousands of Ukrainians without power, after which President Volodymyr Zelensky threatened additional Ukrainian strikes inside Russia.
Meanwhile, European leaders are reportedly talking about creating a “buffer zone” between Russian and Ukrainian forces as part of either a ceasefire deal or a “final” settlement to the war. The Russian government has reportedly expressed some interest in this idea, but ultimately it seems to reflect less a workable plan than a lack of real options for crafting a postwar security order in eastern Ukraine. There is a model here, which is the Demilitarized Zone separating North Korea and South Korea, but European officials are loathe to embrace it because the implication is that, like the Koreas, Ukraine and Russia could remain in a technical state of war indefinitely. Any other relevant case would have to be drawn from conflicts that took place decades ago, making this idea anachronistic to say the least (as Zelensky has pointed out).
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
During a White House press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Donald Trump revealed that the US military had just carried out an airstrike targeting what he asserted was “a drug-carrying boat” from Venezuela. The strike, in the southern Caribbean, killed at least 11 people according to Trump, who said that “there’s more where that came from.” The US military reportedly identified the boat as belonging to Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, though I think it would be perfectly reasonable not to take its (or Trump’s) word on that. Trump has ordered a military buildup near Venezuelan waters, which he contends is part of a counternarcotics operation. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has accused Trump of preparing an invasion, for which he insisted on Monday that his country is at “maximum preparedness.”
UNITED STATES
A US federal appeals court ruled on Friday that the Trump administration’s entire tariff scheme represents an unlawful use of the powers granted to the president under the 1977 International Emergency Powers Act, which it used as the legal basis for imposing those duties. However, the court left the tariffs in place pending the administration’s inevitable appeal to the US Supreme Court, whose right-wing majority may give it a more favorable reception.
Finally, at Foreign Policy Chatham House’s Patrick Schröder examines the US government’s role in killing the chances for a UN plastics treaty:
In Geneva earlier this month, the world tried for a sixth time to negotiate a plastics treaty, and for a sixth time, it failed. Without a binding international framework, the production and consumption of plastics and associated waste generation and pollution are set to continue rising. This will exacerbate risks to human health, biodiversity, and ecosystems worldwide.
National governments around the world, many of which were awaiting clear guidance from the treaty to design or update their domestic legislation, now face delays in implementing policies to curb plastic waste and leakage. The absence of a legally binding multilateral agreement leaves regulatory gaps unaddressed, undermines companies that are developing innovations and technology solutions, delays investments for recycling infrastructure, and perpetuates inequities as vulnerable communities continue to bear the brunt of pollution.
As a result, uncontrolled plastics pollution will continue to inflict widespread harm on both the environment and human health. Oceans, rivers, and soils are increasingly contaminated, threatening marine ecosystems, biodiversity, and critical food chains. And microplastics will continue to enter water supplies and the human diet, with growing scientific evidence linking them to health risks.
Who can be blamed for this calamitous outcome? Country positions did not change significantly since the last meeting, held in Busan in November 2024.
But there was one notable exception: The United States’ position shifted from one of potentially backing an effective instrument to one of actively pursuing a low‑ambition stance. This stance was informed by U.S. domestic policies that support oil and gas companies and limit the country’s ability to commit to any ambitious international environmental action.