Well, thank goodness its Friday! We have been behind on our Monday and Friday updates, but doctoral work, a new teaching job, and a move to a new city is all conspiring to temporarily consume bandwidth. But we have not taken our eye and our analysis off the geopolitical stage…events continue to brew across the Atlantic and across the Pacific, and as we are able to surface and get some air, we will continue to bring you our expert perspective and analysis.

Thank you for reading this far. Paid subscribers get full access to Grounded Perspectives and our Friday wrap ups, plus much more. If you’re so inclined, throw a couple coins into our human battery fund — also known as mochas and green teas. We’re glad you’re here.

Until Monday. May your weekend bring you renewed understanding.— Ali & Asli

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Good morning! Welcome to August!

We enter another summer month breathless with breaking news.

From Hormuz to Ceuta, governments are trying to contain crises that have already escaped their original borders, through improvised deals, fortified frontiers and economic pressure. Europe is burning. Trump left NATO’s Ankara summit proclaiming unity, but his threats against Denmark and Spain, and warm strategic embrace of Erdoğan, revealed an alliance increasingly shaped by leverage, loyalty and personal power. The current ebola outbreak is the largest in the country’s history.

Don’t forget to watch the night sky on August 12-13! We’ve got analysis, graphs, predictions, thoughts and more, plus art to share!

Thank you for reading this far. Paid subscribers get full access to Grounded Perspectives and our Friday wrap ups, plus much more. If you’re so inclined, throw a couple coins into our human battery fund — also known as mochas and green teas. We’re glad you’re here.

Be willing to outgrow yourself. — Ali & Asli

The Big Story

🎯 Diplomacy at the Chokepoint: U.S.–Iran Talks Put Hormuz at the Center of the Crisis | President Donald Trump said negotiations with Iran will begin Monday after the United States postponed a planned military strike, offering another opportunity to halt a conflict that has disrupted the global economy and destabilized the wider Middle East. The immediate focus is expected to be reopening the Strait of Hormuz, alongside broader efforts to constrain Iran’s nuclear program.

The strait is the essential source of Iran’s present leverage. Before the war, roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passed through the narrow waterway. Iran’s restriction of maritime traffic has therefore allowed Tehran to impose costs not only on the United States and Israel, but also on Gulf exporters, European and Asian energy consumers, and the global economy. Energy prices have risen, inflationary pressures have intensified, and regional governments have pressed Washington to prioritize diplomacy over another round of escalation.

Yet reopening Hormuz may prove more difficult than announcing another ceasefire. Washington has demanded unrestricted passage without Iranian tolls, while Tehran insists that the waterway cannot simply return to its prewar status. Iran has also rejected proposals for broader regional management, maintaining that only Iran and Oman should administer their respective portions of the strait.

The negotiations therefore concern more than freedom of navigation. They will determine whether Iran can convert wartime disruption into a lasting political and economic role in governing one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints. The central question is whether American military pressure can force Tehran to surrender that leverage—or whether the threat to global energy markets will compel Washington and its regional partners to accept concessions they would previously have rejected.

What Else Mattered:

🎯 The Patriot Shortage: Middle East Commitments Leave Ukraine’s Skies Exposed | A major Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv has exposed the growing consequences of the global shortage of Patriot air-defense interceptors. Russia launched 35 missiles—including 27 ballistic missiles—and 185 drones during the July 31 assault, killing at least ten people and damaging residential buildings, infrastructure, a school, and the Lithuanian Embassy. Ukraine intercepted only one of the ballistic missiles.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attributed that failure directly to Ukraine’s depleted supply of Patriot interceptors, arguing that missiles previously available to Kyiv have been redirected toward the defense of U.S. forces and allies during the conflict with Iran. Russia appears to recognize the resulting vulnerability and has intensified attacks using ballistic weapons that Ukraine cannot reliably defeat without the American-made system.

The shortage illustrates the limits of treating conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific as strategically separate. The same finite stockpile is needed to defend Ukrainian cities from Russia, U.S. bases and regional allies from Iran, and potentially American and allied forces during a future conflict in Asia. Washington has responded with a $58.6 billion Patriot missile contract, while manufacturers are developing cheaper interceptors, but expanded production cannot solve Ukraine’s immediate vulnerability.

Kyiv has sought permission to manufacture Patriot interceptors itself, but the Trump administration has now said that no agreement has been reached, reversing the certainty of an earlier public promise. Even with licensing and industrial cooperation, Ukrainian production could take anywhere from twelve months to several years to begin. That leaves Ukraine dependent on existing Western inventories at precisely the moment those inventories are under the greatest pressure.

The deeper strategic problem is therefore not simply that Ukraine lacks enough missiles. The United States and its allies have constructed security commitments across several theaters around highly capable weapons that cannot currently be produced at the rate modern wars consume them. Russia can exploit this imbalance by sustaining relatively inexpensive drone attacks, mixing them with ballistic missiles, and forcing Ukraine to expend scarce interceptors—or leave cities undefended.

The Patriot shortage is becoming a test of whether the United States possesses the industrial capacity to support simultaneous global commitments. If Washington must continually choose which ally, city, or military base receives protection, munitions scarcity will begin determining strategy before political leaders do.

🎯The Gaza Ceasefire’s Sequencing Trap | A new U.S.-backed roadmap for Gaza has been presented as a breakthrough, but Israel and Hamas remain divided over the order in which its central provisions must occur. The plan links the phased disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups to an Israeli military withdrawal, the transfer of authority to a Palestinian technocratic administration, and the deployment of an international stabilization force. Each stage would be subject to outside verification.

The disagreement is straightforward but potentially fatal to the agreement. Israel insists that Hamas must disarm before Israeli forces relinquish the territory they control. Hamas argues that Israel must first halt its attacks, withdraw its troops, and fulfill commitments concerning humanitarian assistance. It has accepted placing weapons under Palestinian institutional control only as part of that reciprocal process, rather than surrendering them unconditionally to Israel or an external power. In effect, each side demands that the other surrender its principal source of leverage first.

Continued Israeli strikes underscore the absence of an operative ceasefire despite President Trump’s announcement of progress. Israeli officials have expressed doubts that Hamas will fully disarm and maintain that military operations can continue until it does. Hamas, meanwhile, can argue that disarmament under continuing attack would amount not to a negotiated transition but to unilateral capitulation.

The proposed verification mechanism is intended to bridge this trust deficit by tying Israeli withdrawals to confirmed disarmament milestones and the expansion of control by the new Palestinian administration. But verification can establish whether an action has occurred; it cannot necessarily persuade either side to take the vulnerable first step. Questions also remain over who will control stored weapons, how tunnels and military infrastructure will be dismantled, and whether the international force will possess sufficient authority to enforce compliance.

The central obstacle is therefore not the absence of an agreed destination. Both sides can describe a future involving reduced Israeli military presence, new Palestinian governance, and the removal of Hamas’s independent military capacity. The obstacle is designing a sequence in which neither side believes that compliance will leave it defenseless while the other retains the ability to resume hostilities.

The Gaza negotiations illustrate a broader problem in conflict termination: agreements often fail not because the parties cannot imagine peace, but because neither trusts the other enough to survive the transition toward it. Unless disarmament and withdrawal can occur through tightly synchronized, independently verified steps, the sequencing dispute may prevent the ceasefire from advancing beyond the announcement stage.

🎯 After 50,000 Cross Into Ceuta, Europe’s Border Crisis Explodes | More than 50,000 people crossed from Morocco into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta in an unprecedented mass movement. At least 72 people died, more than 1,000 required treatment and nearly all the migrants subsequently returned to Morocco. Spain has reinforced the border and installed a 500-metre floating barrier.

This has already escaped the confines of Spanish domestic politics: 22 EU governments demanded coordinated action, Italy temporarily suspended Schengen arrangements with Spain, and the incident has reopened the argument over whether migration is being weaponized in the strained relationship among Morocco, Spain and Algeria.

Rome described the measure as a security precaution. Critics called it largely symbolic, noting that there was little evidence the migrants intended to continue toward Italy. Either way, the decision showed how quickly pressure at one external border can begin weakening confidence in free movement across the entire Schengen area.

The crisis has also reopened a more combustible question of whether migration is being used as geopolitical leverage. Morocco denies encouraging illegal crossings, and the precise collapse of border enforcement remains under investigation. Yet relations among Morocco, Spain and Algeria are strained by disputes over Western Sahara, Madrid’s contacts with Algiers and Rabat’s longstanding claim to Ceuta. That makes any apparent relaxation of Moroccan controls impossible to separate entirely from the region’s diplomatic rivalries, even though direct state orchestration has not been established.

Ceuta is now both a humanitarian disaster and a warning about Europe’s strategic vulnerability. The European Union has spent years trying to move migration control outward through agreements with neighboring governments. But that model leaves Europe dependent on partners capable of tightening (or loosening) the frontier according to their own political interests.

The immediate surge has receded, but the deeper crisis has not. Spain must identify the dead, care for those still stranded and negotiate with Morocco over preventing another crossing. Europe, meanwhile, must decide whether Ceuta was an exceptional rupture or a demonstration of how quickly a bilateral dispute, a social-media rumor and mass desperation can overwhelm one of the continent’s most politically sensitive borders.

🎯 Israel and Lebanon Test a Path Out of War | Israel and Lebanon begin another round of U.S.-brokered talks in Rome on Tuesday. These are unusual direct negotiations between states that formally remain at war. The framework calls for phased Israeli withdrawals, Lebanese army deployments and Hezbollah’s disarmament; the first Israeli pullback from a pilot zone has already taken place.

The deadlock is beautifully simple and brutally difficult. Lebanon says withdrawal must precede Hezbollah’s disarmament, while Israel says it will remain inside Lebanon until Hezbollah disarms.

And so, what happens next?

The Rome talks are likely to focus less on a sweeping peace agreement than on expanding the fragile “pilot zone” model already being tested in southern Lebanon. Negotiators will try to identify additional areas where Israeli troops can withdraw, the Lebanese army can deploy and Hezbollah’s military presence can be reduced or verified. The first experiment around Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh has exposed how difficult that sequence will be: homes remain heavily damaged, Israeli forces are still positioned nearby and residents have little confidence that the arrangement guarantees either security or a permanent return.

Lebanon will press for visible Israeli withdrawals to strengthen the authority of President Joseph Aoun’s government and give the Lebanese army political space to move south. Israel will demand proof that withdrawn areas cannot simply be reoccupied by Hezbollah. The United States may therefore push for a step-by-step exchange. Israeli redeployment from a defined zone, Lebanese army entry, weapons inspections or monitoring, and only then movement to the next area.

The central obstacle remains Hezbollah itself. The group did not sign the June framework and has rejected disarmament while Israeli forces occupy Lebanese territory. Beirut cannot easily compel Hezbollah to surrender its weapons without risking confrontation inside Lebanon, while Israel is unlikely to relinquish its buffer zone without guarantees that the group cannot rebuild along the border. That circular dispute could preserve the very stalemate the agreement was designed to resolve.

Our Prediction

The Rome talks will probably produce limited, visible progress rather than a comprehensive settlement. Israel is likely to withdraw from one or more carefully selected areas, allowing the Lebanese army to expand its presence and giving Washington a diplomatic success to announce. But the larger Israeli occupation will remain, and Hezbollah’s full disarmament will not occur on the timetable envisioned by the agreement.

Instead, the parties may settle into a gradual containment strategy with small withdrawals, reinforced Lebanese army deployments, outside monitoring and continued negotiations over the most strategically valuable positions. Proposals for an expanded European or international security role may gain momentum as both sides search for a force capable of preventing Hezbollah’s return while giving Israel sufficient confidence to pull back.

Our prediction is that the talks will reduce the immediate danger of renewed full-scale war without truly resolving its cause. Southern Lebanon may become quieter and more heavily supervised, but also more fragmented, and of course remain divided among Lebanese forces, Israeli-held positions and contested areas where Hezbollah’s influence survives beneath the surface. The process can create a path away from war, but only if incremental withdrawals eventually generate enough trust to break the cycle in which occupation justifies Hezbollah’s weapons and Hezbollah’s weapons justify occupation.

🎯 Russia Sanctions Bill Risks Opening a New Global Trade War | The long-delayed Russia sanctions bill would permit enormous secondary tariffs, potentially 100%, against countries purchasing Russian energy or assisting sanctions evasion. That could put China and India directly in the crosshairs, while also catching some U.S. allies. The Senate has advanced the measure, but objections over inflation, presidential power and collateral damage threaten its survival in the House.

A long-delayed Russia sanctions bill has cleared its first major hurdle in the U.S. Senate, reviving an effort to deprive Moscow of the energy revenue sustaining its war in Ukraine. But the legislation’s most powerful weapon is also the provision most likely to prevent it from becoming law, tariffs of up to 100% on goods from countries that continue buying large quantities of Russian oil and gas or help Moscow evade existing sanctions.

The U.S. Senate voted 86–12 to advance the measure during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington. The legislation was one of the final foreign-policy priorities of Senator Lindsey Graham and has been renamed in his honor. Its bipartisan support reflects growing frustration that years of Western sanctions have failed to eliminate the energy income reaching Vladimir Putin’s government.

The bill would impose new restrictions on Russian officials, financial institutions, energy projects and the aging “shadow fleet” of tankers used to move sanctioned crude. More controversially, it would authorize the president to levy tariffs of up to 100% against the five largest purchasers of Russian oil or gas and against leading jurisdictions accused of facilitating sanctions evasion. The tariff ceiling was reduced from 500% in an earlier version, but it would still represent an extraordinary use of American trade power.

China and India would be the most consequential targets. Both have become major buyers of discounted Russian crude since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, helping redirect exports once sold to Europe. But the bill could also reach other U.S. partners including Slovakia, Hungary and Azerbaijan rank among the leading buyers of Russian crude, while France, Japan, Hungary and Belgium remain significant purchasers of Russian gas.

That creates a basic contradiction. The measure is designed to isolate Russia, but enforcing it aggressively could instead place Washington in simultaneous trade confrontations with China, India and several European and Asian allies. A 100% tariff could disrupt supply chains, raise prices for American consumers and provoke retaliation against U.S. exports without guaranteeing that the targeted governments would abandon Russian energy.

The bill also grants the president considerable discretion. Trump could decide which countries qualify as major sanctions evaders, impose or withhold the tariffs and issue national-security waivers. Critics in both parties object that the legislation lacks a clear expiration date and gives Congress no straightforward mechanism for reversing presidential decisions. Some Democrats fear they would be handing Trump a broad new legal basis for expanding his tariff campaigns; some Republicans and business groups fear the economic consequences.

Supporters argue that flexibility is the point. The threat of secondary tariffs could give Trump leverage over both Putin and the governments financing Russia’s energy economy without requiring Washington to impose every penalty immediately. That strategy works only if targeted countries believe the United States is willing to absorb the economic consequences of following through.

And so, what happens next?

The Senate must still complete debate and vote on the final legislation, where lawmakers may seek amendments limiting presidential waivers, narrowing the definition of sanctions evasion or giving Congress greater oversight. Even if it passes the Senate comfortably, the House presents the more serious obstacle. Members are divided over inflation, tariff authority, procedural questions and the risk of damaging relations with India and other strategic partners.

China and India will meanwhile lobby against the measure and emphasize that their energy purchases reflect domestic economic needs rather than political support for Moscow. European governments potentially exposed by the bill will press Washington for exemptions, transition periods or recognition of existing efforts to reduce Russian dependence.

The markets will watch not only whether the bill passes, but how Trump signals he would use it. A law authorizing 100% tariffs is one thing, a credible threat to impose them on Chinese or Indian goods is something closer to a global trade shock.

Our Prediction

The sanctions package is likely to survive, but its tariff provisions will be narrowed before final passage. Congress broadly supports greater pressure on Moscow and will be reluctant to abandon legislation carrying Graham’s name after such an overwhelming procedural vote. Yet the House is unlikely to accept an open-ended transfer of tariff power without additional limits.

The most probable compromise will retain the threat of secondary tariffs while expanding presidential waivers, introducing consultation requirements and protecting allies that can demonstrate declining purchases of Russian energy. That would make the bill less automatic but potentially more useful as diplomatic leverage.

Trump will initially wield the legislation as a threat rather than impose 100% tariffs across the board. India may face the strongest immediate pressure because Washington believes New Delhi can be pushed toward alternative suppliers without the same risk of escalation posed by China. Beijing is more likely to retaliate than retreat, turning any full application of the measure into a renewed U.S.–China trade war.

Our prediction is that the bill will increase the cost and complexity of Russia’s energy trade without cutting it off entirely. Moscow will deepen its reliance on opaque shipping networks, intermediaries and discounted sales, while China and India demand greater concessions for assuming the sanctions risk. The legislation may squeeze Russian revenue but its larger legacy could be the transformation of sanctions policy into a far broader system of coercive tariffs, forcing allies and rivals alike to choose between commerce with Moscow and access to the American market.

🎯 Taiwan Lifts the Veil on Its Military Ties With Washington | Taiwan’s defense minister says Taipei’s relationship with the U.S. Pacific Command may be “far closer” than the public realizes. Taiwan is strengthening preparations for a possible Chinese blockade as Beijing expands coast-guard and military activity around the island, including along its strategically vital Pacific side.

And so, what happens next?

Taiwan will make the partnership more visible at the edges while keeping its most sensitive military coordination with Washington deliberately obscure. The immediate test comes during the Han Kuang exercises from August 5 to 14, when Taipei will rehearse a scenario in which China uses ordinary military drills to conceal preparations for an attack. Taiwan will disperse weapons production, convert civilian factories for defense work, protect maritime supply routes and deliberately restrict mobile bandwidth to test communications under wartime conditions.

The exercises reveal how Taiwan’s planning has shifted. Taipei is no longer preparing only for a dramatic amphibious invasion across the Taiwan Strait. It is building for a prolonged campaign involving blockade, cyber disruption, missile strikes and pressure on the island’s eastern coast. That Pacific side has traditionally been treated as Taiwan’s strategic rear, and the likely route through which U.S. and allied supplies could arrive, but expanding Chinese coast-guard activity is challenging that assumption.

Washington and Taipei are therefore likely to deepen cooperation in the less theatrical machinery of deterrence with intelligence sharing, operational planning, maritime surveillance, emergency logistics, coast-guard coordination and the rapid delivery of asymmetric weapons. Taiwan plans to expand its anti-ship missile inventory to more than 1,800 by early 2029, creating a force capable of surviving an initial bombardment and threatening ships attempting either an invasion or blockade.

Beijing will condemn Koo’s remarks and may answer with additional aircraft, naval or coast-guard deployments around the island. But China’s more likely near-term strategy is sustained gray-zone pressure rather than an immediate full blockade by surrounding Taiwan more frequently, normalizing operations east of the island and making each new exercise harder to distinguish from preparations for a real attack.

Our Prediction

U.S.–Taiwan military integration will become deeper but not fully public. Neither side wants to disclose enough operational detail to help Chinese planners, or to create the appearance of a formal alliance that Beijing could use as justification for escalation. The strongest evidence of the partnership will therefore appear indirectly. U.S. participation around Taiwanese exercises, closer coast-guard activity, faster weapons deliveries and increasingly compatible plans for keeping the island supplied during a crisis.

China will respond by testing the seams of that cooperation, particularly around Taiwan’s Pacific approaches. Expect more coast-guard patrols, encirclement drills, cyber pressure and exercises simulating the isolation of ports rather than an outright invasion order. The danger is that repeated drills will steadily compress Taiwan’s warning time: the more routine Chinese mobilization becomes, the easier it may be to conceal genuine attack preparations inside familiar activity.

Our prediction is that deterrence will strengthen, but so will the risk of miscalculation. Taiwan will become harder to blockade quickly, while Washington’s support will become more operationally meaningful. Their military relationship will advance faster than the political language surrounding it, leaving all three sides navigating an increasingly armed confrontation without clearly declared boundaries.

🎯Colombia’s New President Promises Force, Oil and a Break With Petro | Abelardo de la Espriella takes office on Friday, marking a major ideological shift in one of Washington’s most important Latin American partners. He has promised a harder military campaign against armed groups, an end to Petro-era peace efforts, large cuts to the state and the revival of oil exploration and fracking. A truck bombing outside a police facility days before his inauguration sharpens the security backdrop.

And so, what happens next?

De la Espriella will take office on August 7 under pressure to demonstrate immediately that his promises of “firm hand” government were more than campaign theater. The truck bombing in Cúcuta gives his administration both an urgent security test and political justification for moving quickly by ending negotiations with armed groups, strengthening military and intelligence operations, resuming aerial coca eradication and pursuing ELN and FARC dissident commanders. The first signals will come through his choice of military leadership, emergency security decrees and the territories selected for new offensives.

Yet a tougher policy will not produce a rapid return of state control. Colombia’s armed organizations have expanded to an estimated 25,000 members and are embedded in drug trafficking, illegal mining and local economies across difficult rural terrain. A sudden end to negotiations could prompt the ELN and other groups to intensify attacks in an effort to test the new president, making the opening months of his government more violent before they become more secure.

Economically, the fastest shift will probably come in energy policy. De la Espriella is expected to reopen Colombia to new oil and gas exploration, revive stalled projects and begin dismantling Petro’s restrictions on fracking. Those decisions could improve investor confidence and strengthen Ecopetrol, but they will not immediately double production: new contracts, environmental licensing, infrastructure and drilling all take time, while opposition from affected communities and climate groups is already organizing.

His larger promise to reduce the state by 40%, cut corporate taxes and reshape the economy will be harder to deliver. De la Espriella won by less than one percentage point and does not enter office with an automatic congressional majority. He will need traditional conservative and centrist parties to pass deep spending cuts or tax reforms, forcing him to choose between moderating his agenda and governing through a more confrontational mixture of decrees, public pressure and executive action.

Our Prediction

De la Espriella’s opening months will be dominated by security-focused chatter rather than economic transformation. He will launch highly visible operations against armed groups, expand cooperation with Washington and announce a decisive break with Petro’s Total Peace strategy. Some commanders and trafficking networks may be disrupted, but the crackdown is also likely to trigger retaliatory bombings, assassinations and displacement, especially along the Venezuelan border and in regions where the state has little permanent presence.

The oil sector will receive an immediate political boost, with new exploration contracts and fracking pilots likely to return. Actual production, however, will rise much more slowly than the government’s rhetoric suggests. His ambition to nearly double output to 1.3 million barrels per day is unlikely to be achieved quickly, but Colombia will unmistakably reposition itself as a fossil-fuel producer after four years of Petro’s energy-transition agenda.

Our prediction is that De la Espriella will govern more pragmatically than he campaigned, out of necessity, but more aggressively than Colombia’s institutions and opposition are prepared for. Congress will dilute his most radical economic reforms, while security and energy policy will give him greater room to act. The result will not be a clean erasure of the Petro era, but a combative reversal: closer alignment with the United States, far-right movements globally, renewed military pressure at home, more oil investment … and a deeply polarized country testing how much change one narrowly elected president can force through.

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🎯 Turkey and Iraq Open an Oil Route Around Hormuz | Turkey and Iraq have signed a one-year agreement to increase Iraqi crude exports through the pipeline running from Kirkuk to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The bridge deal keeps the route operating while Ankara and Baghdad negotiate a broader framework covering oil, electricity, water resources and long-term infrastructure cooperation.

Iraq’s oil minister says the agreement provides for at least 750,000 barrels a day to move through the pipeline, a dramatic increase from the roughly 170,000 barrels currently flowing, according to Turkish data. The system itself can carry as much as 1.5 million barrels a day, leaving considerable unused capacity if the two governments can resolve the political, commercial and physical obstacles that have kept it underutilized.

The timing is obviously strategic. Before the current regional conflict, Iraq exported around 3.5 million barrels of crude a day, most of it through southern terminals whose tankers must pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Disruptions in the strait have exposed the danger of relying so heavily on one vulnerable maritime chokepoint. Ceyhan gives Baghdad a Mediterranean outlet, and therefore a measure of protection against any future blockade, attack or prolonged closure in the Gulf.

The pipeline, however, is not a simple tap that can be opened to full capacity overnight. It was largely inactive after 2023, when disputes over the Kurdistan Regional Government’s independent oil exports led to legal action, financial claims and a breakdown in arrangements among Baghdad, Erbil, Ankara and international producers. Limited exports resumed last year, but substantially increasing them will require agreement over who supplies the oil, how companies are paid and how export revenues are divided.

Turkey is seeking much more than transit fees. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants the pipeline fully utilized and eventually connected to the oil fields of southern Iraq. Ankara’s state energy company, TPAO, has also acquired a 15% stake in the BP-led company operating in Kirkuk, giving Turkey a direct role in developing a field estimated to hold roughly 3 billion barrels of reserves. That moves Ankara further upstream, from transporting Iraqi crude to participating in its production.

A more ambitious project under discussion would link Basra in southern Iraq to Haditha in the west, then continue toward both Ceyhan and Syria’s Mediterranean port of Baniyas. Such a network would give Iraq several export directions and reduce the ability of any single war, strait closure or regional power to trap its oil inside the Gulf.

And so, what happens next?

The first test will be whether the promised volumes actually appear. Moving from roughly 170,000 barrels a day toward 750,000 will require pipeline repairs, higher northern production and a durable revenue arrangement between Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government. The agreement provides political cover and urgency, but the physical and commercial ramp-up is likely to occur in stages rather than all at once.

Over the next year, Turkey will push for a permanent agreement offering stronger commercial terms, greater involvement in Iraqi fields and a commitment to expand the corridor southward. Baghdad will seek guaranteed Mediterranean access without surrendering federal control over its crude. Erbil and the oil companies operating in Kurdistan will remain the difficult third side of that negotiation.

Our Prediction

Exports through Ceyhan will rise substantially, but the pipeline is unlikely to reach either the 750,000-barrel target or its full 1.5-million-barrel capacity immediately. Progress will come in increments as Baghdad, Erbil and the producers settle payment and supply arrangements and as neglected infrastructure is restored.

A broader Turkish–Iraqi energy agreement is likely within the next year. The more ambitious vision, a pipeline network carrying southern Iraqi crude directly to the Mediterranean, will take several years, major financing and sustained political cooperation. But the strategic direction is already clear.

Hormuz will remain indispensable to global energy markets, yet Iraq no longer wants its economic survival tied almost entirely to one waterway. Turkey, meanwhile, is positioning itself as the alternative bridge: not only between Iraq and Europe, but between the oil fields of the Gulf and the safer export routes of the Mediterranean.

📍 Oil Spill Spreads From Sanctioned Tanker Grounded Off Oman | An oil leak from a sanctioned tanker stranded off southern Oman is spreading through a protected marine area, raising fears that rough monsoon seas could break the vessel apart and release much more of its cargo. Satellite images taken through Friday showed an oil sheen covering roughly 20 square kilometers around Qibliyah Island, with darker crude already reaching parts of the shoreline.

The 274-meter Caroline Bezengi has been grounded off Oman’s Dhofar coast since June. The Cameroon-flagged tanker had loaded Russian crude at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk before its final voyage and is estimated to be carrying more than 800,000 barrels. Britain, the European Union, Canada and Switzerland have sanctioned the vessel over its role in transporting Russian oil and supporting Moscow’s ability to circumvent Western restrictions.

The spill threatens the Hallaniyat Islands, part of an Arabian Sea marine reserve supporting vulnerable seabirds and other rare marine life. Environmental analysts say the oil initially collected in a bay northwest of the ship but has since spread into a widening sheen around the island. The greatest danger is no longer the gradual leak alone: strong winds and heavy seas during Oman’s May-to-September monsoon season could further weaken the hull, or cause the aging tanker to break apart.

Reports have linked the grounding to a possible onboard explosion, but the cause has not been independently established. Omani authorities reportedly ordered the owners to remove the tanker and its cargo by July 23, yet it remains unclear whether a salvage operation has begun or whether the Shanghai-based operator has responded.

The unfolding spill exposes the environmental danger created by Russia’s so-called shadow fleet: older tankers operating through opaque ownership structures, frequently changing flags and relying on uncertain insurance and maintenance arrangements to move sanctioned oil. What began as a sanctions-evasion system is increasingly becoming a maritime safety problem far beyond Europe, leaving coastal states to manage the consequences when one of its vessels fails.

The signal to watch now: whether Oman can remove or unload the vessel before the monsoon further compromises its hull. A complete rupture could turn a spreading local spill into a far larger ecological disaster along one of the Arabian Sea’s most sensitive coastlines.

And so, what happens next?

The immediate race is to stabilize the Caroline Bezengi before monsoon winds and rough seas further damage its breached hull. Oman ordered the tanker’s owner to remove the vessel and its cargo by July 23, but the deadline passed without any publicly confirmed resolution. With the spill already reaching the protected Hallaniyat Islands, authorities may have to move from demanding private action to organizing an emergency state-led salvage operation, containing the slick, pumping out the remaining crude and attempting to refloat or dismantle the ship.

Every option is difficult. The vessel appears to be listing, the surrounding seas are rough, and transferring hundreds of thousands of barrels from a damaged tanker could itself trigger another release. The International Maritime Organization says discussions are underway, but no detailed recovery plan has been made public. The crucial signals will be the arrival of salvage vessels, containment booms and a second tanker capable of receiving the cargo.

Our Prediction

The leak will probably worsen before it is fully contained, although a complete breakup is not inevitable. Oman is unlikely to tolerate an abandoned, fully loaded tanker continuing to pollute a marine reserve, and will ultimately intervene with international or commercial salvage assistance. But the operation may take weeks, leaving the coastline exposed throughout the most dangerous part of the monsoon season.

Even if the hull remains intact, the political consequences will travel well beyond Oman. The incident will strengthen calls for tighter port restrictions, insurance checks and enforcement against Russia’s aging shadow fleet. Sanctions have made ownership and responsibility deliberately opaque. When one of these vessels fails, coastal governments can be left chasing unreachable operators while absorbing the environmental cost. Our prediction is that the Caroline Bezengi will become a test case for moving sanctions enforcement beyond cargoes and owners and finally, toward the physical seaworthiness of the ships still carrying them.

📍 Congo’s Ebola Outbreak Becomes the Largest in the Country’s History | The Democratic Republic of the Congo is confronting the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded within its borders. The World Health Organization reported 3,605 confirmed cases and 1,587 deaths as of July 30 — a fatality rate of 44% — surpassing the devastating 2018–2020 epidemic. Globally, it is now the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record, behind only the 2014–2016 West African epidemic.

The outbreak, first declared in May, has expanded from its original center in Ituri Province into North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uélé and Tshopo. Forty-nine health zones are now affected, with active transmission reported in 33 of them during the past week. WHO says most of the steep rise reflects genuine expansion, not merely improved testing or the reconciliation of delayed records.

The epidemic is being driven by the less common Bundibugyo species of Ebola, for which there is currently no approved vaccine or specific treatment. More than 150 health workers have been infected and at least 44 have died, further weakening a medical system already strained by armed conflict, displacement, unpaid staff and repeated attacks on health facilities.

The official figures may still substantially understate the crisis. WHO has warned that the real number of infections could be as much as four times higher because surveillance teams lack vehicles, personnel and reliable access to communities where mistrust and insecurity impede contact tracing. The virus is spreading faster than responders can isolate its chains of transmission.

The outbreak is also producing a wider health emergency. Pregnant women in Ituri are avoiding clinics out of fear of infection or compulsory isolation, while staff and supplies are diverted toward Ebola care. Maternal deaths in the province have nearly doubled since the outbreak began, illustrating how an epidemic can kill indirectly by hollowing out every other part of the health system.

WHO continues to assess the risk inside Congo as very high and the danger to neighboring countries as high, although the current global risk remains low. The immediate signals to watch are whether transmission slows in Ituri, whether new provinces report sustained local spread and whether governments and donors can provide the personnel, security and funding required to get ahead of an epidemic that is still expanding.

📍 Cyberattacks Spread Across U.S. Water Systems | Federal authorities are investigating a widening series of cyberattacks against U.S. drinking-water and wastewater systems after Michigan reported breaches at nine utilities, joining more than 30 systems targeted in Minnesota. Similar incidents have now been reported in at least seven states, raising concerns that hackers are systematically probing one of the country’s most essential—and unevenly protected—forms of infrastructure.

The attackers gained access to operational technology used to remotely monitor and control pumps, pressure, treatment processes and other physical equipment. They changed passwords and system settings, interrupted communications and, in some locations, caused pressure loss, flooding or temporary shutdowns. Michigan officials said the affected systems continued to provide safe water and that there was no known threat to public health.

In Minnesota, the most heavily affected state, hackers struck more than 30 community water systems over July 26 and 27. Braham temporarily lost automated control of its treatment operations, while Plymouth experienced a communications disruption. Operators were generally able to restore service manually, a reminder that old-fashioned physical controls can become the final line of defense when connected systems fail.

The FBI, Environmental Protection Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are investigating. Officials have not formally identified the perpetrator, although the methods resemble previous activity attributed to Iran-linked groups targeting internet-connected programmable logic controllers.

President Trump has publicly rejected suggestions that Iran was responsible, while federal and state investigators say attribution remains unresolved.

During a July 31, 2026 cabinet meeting at Camp David, Trump dismissed the link to Tehran, stating:

“I don't think so.”

The immediate damage appears limited, but the strategic warning is considerably larger. Many American water utilities are small, locally managed operations with aging equipment, limited cybersecurity staff and industrial-control devices still exposed to the public internet. That makes them attractive targets for foreign governments, criminal groups or politically motivated hackers seeking disruption without needing to poison the water itself.

The attacks demonstrate how cyberwarfare can cross into the physical world: a compromised password or exposed controller can alter pressure, disable a pump or force an entire community onto manual operations. The question is no longer whether foreign actors are examining America’s water infrastructure, but how many vulnerable systems remain accessible—and whether the country can secure them before a future attack produces more serious consequences.

📍From Greenland to Spain: Trump Threatens Allies While Embracing Turkey at NATO Summit | President Trump arrived at NATO’s Ankara summit three weeks ago, chastising some of America’s oldest allies while lavishing praise (and potentially major strategic rewards) on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The contrast offered a revealing picture of Trump’s NATO: less an alliance organized around shared rules and collective trust than a transactional arena governed by personal relationships, leverage and perceived payment. We’ve come to expect such an arrangement from the Trump White House. Everything is a ‘deal’ and everyone has a price. The fish rots from the head, as they say.

Trump revived his demand that the United States control Greenland, telling leaders that the strategically important Arctic territory should belong to Washington rather than Denmark. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen responded that Greenland was “not for sale”, its people did not want to join the United States and Denmark’s sovereignty must be respected. The dispute is especially extraordinary because it places NATO’s dominant military power in direct conflict with the territorial integrity of another alliance member.

Spain received even harsher treatment. Trump called Madrid a “terrible partner” and a “wasted cause,” ordering his administration to halt trade after Spain refused to embrace NATO’s new target of spending 5% of GDP on defense. The confrontation was also shaped by Madrid’s refusal to allow the United States to use Spanish bases or airspace during its war with Iran, turning disagreements over burden-sharing and Middle East policy into threats of economic punishment against a treaty ally.

Turkey, by contrast, was welcomed back toward the center of Washington’s strategic favor. Trump praised Erdoğan, announced plans to lift sanctions imposed after Ankara purchased Russia’s S-400 air-defense system and reopened the possibility of selling Turkey F-35 fighter jets. The issue has divided the alliance for years: Turkey was removed from the F-35 program because NATO officials feared that operating the Russian system alongside the aircraft could expose sensitive Western technology. Any final return will still require Ankara to resolve the S-400 dispute and overcome resistance in Congress.

Erdoğan’s leverage is considerable. Turkey possesses NATO’s second-largest military, controls access between the Mediterranean and Black Sea and has maintained working relationships with both Moscow and Kyiv. Ankara has also repeatedly used NATO’s consensus rules to pursue its own security demands, most prominently by delaying Sweden’s accession until it secured concessions on Kurdish groups, arms restrictions and advanced American fighter aircraft.

Despite the upheaval, the summit ended with an “ironclad” reaffirmation of NATO’s Article 5 collective-defense guarantee, €70 billion in military assistance for Ukraine and tens of billions of dollars in new defense initiatives. Trump emerged declaring that there had been “a lot of love” and unity in the room. Yet the gathering exposed the alliance’s central contradiction: Europe is spending more and assuming greater responsibility for its defense, even as confidence in the reliability and restraint of its principal protector continues to weaken.

The Ankara summit therefore produced both reassurance and warning. NATO survived, Turkey’s influence grew and Trump reaffirmed America’s commitment to European defense. But an alliance in which one member can threaten another’s territory, punish a second with trade restrictions and reward a third according to presidential chemistry is operating on increasingly personal (and increasingly uncertain) foundations.

And so, what happens next?

Europe will publicly preserve NATO unity while quietly accelerating plans to depend less on Washington. The alliance has shifted from announcing its 5% defense-investment target to expanding production, joint procurement and military readiness but Trump’s threats against Denmark and Spain will reinforce the fear that U.S. protection is becoming conditional on political compliance as well as defense spending.

Spain is unlikely to surrender its position immediately, while Denmark and Greenland will harden their rejection of any American takeover. Meanwhile, Erdoğan will try to convert his unusually warm access to Trump into concrete gains that include sanctions relief, renewed entry into the F-35 program and greater recognition of Turkey as Washington’s indispensable intermediary between Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Any fighter-jet agreement, however, will still have to overcome the unresolved S-400 dispute and opposition within the United States.

Our Prediction

Trump’s pressure will not break NATO, but it will continue changing what the alliance is. European members will spend more, build more weapons and assume more responsibility for their own defense…not because transatlantic trust has recovered, but because it has not.

Turkey will emerge as one of the summit’s clearest winners. Erdoğan may not secure every concession immediately, but Ankara’s military weight, geography and personal channel to Trump give it leverage that more conventionally loyal allies increasingly lack. The result will be a stronger but more transactional NATO with better armed, less cohesive and increasingly organized around bargaining with Washington rather than confidence in it. This is an inference from the summit’s spending commitments, Trump’s treatment of individual allies and his markedly warmer engagement with Erdoğan.

📍An Alleged Spy Inside NATO’s Military Headquarters | Belgian authorities have arrested a Canadian woman, Biwei Zhang (also known as Claire Zhang), who was working as an intern at NATO’s strategic military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, on suspicion of espionage. The woman is accused of spying for a foreign state and belonging to a criminal organization. Her detention has been extended for another month while the investigation continues.

The case began after NATO’s internal security services alerted Belgian military intelligence. Investigators subsequently searched the woman’s home and her workplace inside Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, better known as SHAPE, the command center responsible for planning and executing NATO military operations. NATO says there is currently no evidence that its readiness, command systems or ongoing missions were disrupted.

Belgian prosecutors have officially said only that she is suspected of working for a “third country.” However, sources familiar with the investigation told Reuters that authorities believe she may have been spying for China. That allegation has not yet been proven in court, and prosecutors have not publicly identified the suspected foreign sponsor.

The larger concern is not simply what information may have been obtained but how an intern allegedly became a potential intelligence asset inside one of the alliance’s most sensitive institutions. The arrest is likely to intensify scrutiny of NATO’s vetting procedures, digital access controls and exposure to foreign intelligence operations at a moment when the alliance is coordinating wars, weapons deployments and cyber defense across Europe.

Something extra for your radar:

August has a way of making the sky feel sentient … darkened for a moment, streaked with fire, alive with motion and hush. This annual celestial event showcases swift, bright shooting stars and peaks on August 12-13, 2026. Eclipses remind us that even the familiar world can suddenly become strange. Meteor showers arrive like flashes of memory, desire, or warning. Together they lend the season a sense of beauty suspended between spectacle and mystery.

Art of the Week

Your breath of fresh art and culture.

A life slipping free of the pattern. The Pleiades — Elihu Vedder

Inspired by the total solar eclipse, the Perseid meteor shower, and the celestial theater of late summer, this week’s art turns toward Elihu Vedder’s The Pleiades. The seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione appear not merely beneath the heavens, but as participants in their making, stretching and looping a shining filament above their heads, holding aloft a luminous thread from which six stars glow while a seventh slips free.

They were condemned to hold up the heavens, and Pleione, a sea nymph. In myth, the sisters were eventually transformed into the star cluster we call the Pleiades. There is also a lovely tension between unity and individuality. The sisters belong to one celestial body, yet no two move exactly alike. Some pull the thread taut, others loop or gather it. Some turn inward while others seem to drift outward. Their separate gestures create the constellation collectively. The painting can represent sisters, lovers, collaborators, or any group held together by a shared thread while each person retains a private direction. And the idea of a normally ordered sky suddenly doing something extraordinary.

Vedder first developed the image for his 1884 edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, where the sisters represented the stars under whose ascendency the astronomer-poet was born. The broken strand gives the painting its emotional force: order is briefly disturbed, fate loosens its grip, and one light escapes the pattern assigned to it. Like an eclipse or a meteor crossing the August sky, the moment is fleeting, mysterious, and charged with wonder.

What to Watch This Week:

What could break, what could shift, and what signals to watch this weekend

📌 Iran, or another false dawn: U.S.–Iran negotiations are expected to resume today. Watch for a written agreement, verifiable movement through the Strait of Hormuz and restraint from Iran’s regional allies. Without those signals, the pause in U.S. strikes may prove temporary.

📌 Whether Gaza’s “breakthrough” survives contact with reality: The decisive question is sequencing, whether Israel suspends operations and begins withdrawing as Hamas places its weapons under outside control. Continued strikes, Israeli resistance or disagreement over verification could collapse the roadmap before implementation begins.

📌 Ukraine’s air-defence emergency: Russia is intensifying ballistic-missile attacks while Kyiv presses Washington for urgently needed Patriot interceptors. Watch for concrete deliveries, progress on domestic production and whether renewed U.S. diplomacy produces talks—or simply gives Moscow more time to attack.

📌 A test of the Israel–Lebanon track: Direct talks resume in Italy on Tuesday. The signal to watch is whether Israel expands its initial withdrawal and the Lebanese army moves into additional border zones, or whether the argument over Hezbollah’s weapons freezes the process.

📌 Colombia’s political turn: Abelardo de la Espriella takes office Friday promising a harder security campaign and a revival of oil and gas development. His first appointments and decrees will show how quickly Colombia intends to break with the Petro era, and how closely it will align with the region’s emerging conservative bloc.

Spotlight on the Markets:

💵💶💷💴 📌Markets are opening the week on a fragile burst of relief. Oil prices fell more than 4% after President Trump postponed new strikes on Iran and raised hopes of an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Brent slipped below $84 a barrel, easing immediate fears of another inflationary energy shock.

U.S. stock futures moved higher, but Asian equities were mixed as coordinated American–Japanese intervention strengthened the yen and pressured the dollar. Gold rose above $4,060 an ounce, suggesting investors are embracing the prospect of de-escalation without abandoning their geopolitical insurance just yet.

What to watch: The entire rally rests on diplomacy holding. Any breakdown in the Iran talks (or renewed disruption in Hormuz) could send oil, inflation expectations and market volatility sharply higher yet again.

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Good morning — it’s Saturday! We made it!

Another little newsy curveball. We’re coming in hot this weekend to drop some big stories on our radar, alongside our usual graphs, analysis, predictions and more.

The Iran war spreads from Hormuz to Bab el-Mandeb, drawing Gulf states, shipping lanes and the region’s forgotten crises into one widening conflict. Ukraine is attempting to modernize its military command, contain a rare wartime political revolt and strengthen its negotiating position, all while Russia continues attacking and Washington presses for renewed diplomacy. Turkey’s opposition is abandoning the CHP in an attempt to save itself from judicial capture. Erdoğan will try to strategize around the ‘fragmentation’.

Washington is helping Saudi Arabia build a civilian nuclear program while escalating a war to destroy Iran’s, exposing a nonproliferation policy increasingly divided between capabilities permitted to allies and punished in enemies.

Thank you for reading this far. Paid subscribers get full access to Grounded Perspectives and our Friday wrap ups, plus much more. If you’re so inclined, throw a couple coins into our human battery fund — also known as mochas and green teas. We’re glad you’re here.

Until Monday, through the straits, the static and everything that keeps pulling us closer.
— Ali & Asli

🎯An Eye for an Eye at the Gate of Tears | The United States carried out its 13th consecutive night of strikes, hitting targets across Iran from the south to the Caspian coast. Iran and allied forces struck or threatened American positions around the Gulf and Iraq, while the Houthis declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia and attacked Saudi-linked tankers near the Bab el-Mandeb (Arabic for Gate of Tears). Oil briefly crossed $100 a barrel, with ships diverting around Africa and global markets pricing in another inflation shock.

Trump threatens an even larger offensive. Donald Trump suggested the campaign may still be only a prelude. The president said Iran had not experienced “enough pain” and threatened what he described as major military punishment for both Tehran and the Houthis. U.S. missiles struck from Qeshm Island near the Strait of Hormuz to Revolutionary Guard naval facilities on the Caspian coast.

Washington is no longer presenting its attacks solely as an effort to weaken Iran’s missile, nuclear or maritime capabilities. Trump is now explicitly holding Tehran responsible for actions carried out by the Houthis in Yemen, creating a rationale for striking Iran whenever an aligned armed group attacks U.S. interests, Gulf states or commercial shipping. That lowers the threshold for further escalation and makes the conflict increasingly difficult to contain.

Iran, meanwhile, has continued attacking the network of U.S. bases and military facilities surrounding it. Tehran claimed strikes against U.S. positions in Kuwait and Bahrain, as well as military installations in Jordan and Iraq’s Kurdish region. Jordan said it intercepted seven Iranian missiles and six drones without casualties, while explosive drones were also intercepted near Erbil, where U.S. troops are stationed.

The Revolutionary Guards have gone further by warning civilians across the Gulf to keep away from buildings that may be used by U.S. personnel. The message is intended to show that U.S. forces cannot operate from regional bases without exposing their host countries to retaliation. But it also places governments such as Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan in an increasingly precarious position: they are not formal parties to the war, yet their territory, infrastructure and populations are being pulled directly into it.

The Houthis have declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia and attacked two Saudi oil tankers near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the narrow entrance connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. The attacks briefly pushed oil above $100 a barrel, doubled some shipping-insurance costs and forced several tankers to turn around rather than continue through the strait.

The strategic significance is difficult to overstate. Saudi Arabia has been sending millions of barrels of oil through its east-west pipeline to Red Sea ports, allowing exports to bypass Iran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz. By threatening Saudi-linked shipping at Bab el-Mandeb, the Houthis are attacking the principal escape route around the first blockade. Ships avoiding both passages may be forced onto longer and substantially more expensive routes around Africa.

The region is therefore no longer confronting one endangered chokepoint, but two. Hormuz controls access to the Persian Gulf. Bab el-Mandeb controls access to the Red Sea and, beyond it, the Suez Canal. Retired Navy Admiral Stavridis warns Iran may try to shut down the Suez Canal as the conflict intensifies and widens. Disruption at both threatens not only oil exports but shipping schedules, insurance markets, food prices and supply chains far beyond the Middle East.

Against that chaotic, China has been encouraging Pakistan to explore whether stalled negotiations between Washington and Tehran can be revived. Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni, a figure considered close to the Revolutionary Guards, has visited Islamabad twice within ten days and met Pakistani leaders and army chief Asim Munir. Pakistan’s foreign minister also discussed the initiative with Chinese officials in Beijing.

China’s motives are both diplomatic and economic. Iran is one of its most important energy partners, but the closure of Hormuz and the extension of the war into the Red Sea are damaging the trade routes on which Beijing depends. Pakistan is one of the few states retaining meaningful relationships with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States, making it a plausible intermediary, but also placing it in an almost impossible balancing act.

Islamabad has reportedly told Tehran that attacks on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states must stop before negotiations can resume. Saudi Arabia is a major Pakistani financial and security partner, while China remains Islamabad’s most important strategic backer. The effort therefore begins with enormous obstacles: a previous Pakistan- and Qatar-mediated framework produced a temporary negotiating window but collapsed amid mutual accusations and renewed fighting. Still, it is presently one of the few diplomatic channels operating at all.

Displaced Palestinians, including many children, wait in long queues to receive hot meals distributed by a charitable organization in Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine on June 07, 2026.
[Moiz Salhi – Anadolu Agency]

At the same time, Gaza and Lebanon have been swallowed up by the larger war. As attention and money move toward Iran, the region’s other emergencies are becoming easier to overlook. The World Food Programme says it needs more than $420 million to sustain operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank through the end of the year. It has already reduced cash assistance for 75,000 people and halved food rations for 220,000 households. Without new funding, deeper cuts are expected by October. More than 1.4 million Gazans, roughly two-thirds of the population, could face acute hunger by December.

A live map of the fighting in Lebanon via https://lebanon.liveuamap.com

The agency attributes the shortfall principally to donor fatigue and shifting international attention, with rising fuel and supply-chain costs caused by the Iran war adding further pressure. Israel says it is not restricting food entry and points to the volume of aid delivered since the October 2025 ceasefire. Humanitarian monitors nevertheless warn that recent improvements could quickly be reversed as assistance declines.

In southern Lebanon, residents have begun returning cautiously to Zawtar al-Gharbiyeh after Israeli troops withdrew and the Lebanese army entered under a U.S.-brokered pilot plan. More than half the town has been destroyed, mines and unexploded weapons remain, and residents do not yet know whether they can safely stay overnight. The plan calls for the Lebanese army to confiscate Hezbollah weapons as Israel withdraws in phases, but Israeli forces still occupy a strip extending roughly ten kilometers (6.2 miles) into Lebanon and continue demolitions in areas under their control. Hezbollah has dismissed the deployment as largely symbolic.

Even the first handover exposed how fragile the arrangement remains. Israeli troops fired warning shots near Lebanese army personnel during the deployment after accusing them of entering the Israeli-designated security zone. The withdrawal is therefore not yet a settlement. It is a small and reversible experiment unfolding beside occupied land, destroyed villages, displaced communities and an armed group that rejects the terms of the agreement.

The central danger is not simply that the Iran war is expanding. It is that the conflict is beginning to absorb every other regional question, from shipping and energy to Gaza, Lebanon and Gulf security—until each becomes another front in the same war.

And so, what happens next?

The immediate test will come at sea. The Houthis do not need to seal the Bab el-Mandeb completely to make their blockade effective. They need only demonstrate that tankers using Saudi ports can be found and struck. A handful of successful attacks could keep insurers nervous, ships rerouting and oil prices elevated even if most traffic continues to pass through the strait. The economic effect will depend less on a formal closure than on the accumulation of risk.

Washington is therefore likely to answer the next serious Houthi attack with strikes in Yemen (and possibly in Iran). Trump has deliberately erased the distinction between Tehran and the armed groups it supports by declaring Iran responsible for future Houthi actions. That gives the White House a standing justification for expanding the war without waiting for proof that Iran ordered a particular attack.

Iran and the Houthis, however, also have reasons to calibrate their pressure. Their strongest position comes from threatening shipping, stretching American defenses and raising the economic cost of the war, not necessarily from sinking so many vessels that Saudi Arabia formally re-enters the conflict or Washington launches the larger offensive Trump has threatened. Expect attacks designed to demonstrate reach and sustain fear while remaining, at least initially, below that threshold.

Saudi Arabia will try to avoid being pulled back into a direct war in Yemen. Riyadh is likely to reinforce air defenses, expand naval escorts and press Washington for greater protection while preserving as much distance as possible from the American campaign against Iran. But the Houthi blockade is specifically designed to make that neutrality impossible: it tells the Saudis that allowing American operations and exporting oil through the Red Sea will carry a direct price.

China and Pakistan will continue searching for an off-ramp, but a comprehensive peace agreement is unlikely in the immediate term. A narrower arrangement is more plausible, temporary restraint around Gulf states, commercial shipping or particular categories of targets in exchange for a pause in American attacks. Pakistan has access to all the necessary capitals, while China has a powerful interest in restoring predictable energy flows. Neither, however, can easily bridge the central divide between Washington’s demands and Iran’s insistence that it will not negotiate while being bombed.

Meanwhile, Gaza and southern Lebanon will continue slipping down the diplomatic agenda. Humanitarian funding will be redirected or delayed, aid costs will rise with fuel and shipping prices, and Israel will face less international scrutiny as governments concentrate on Iran and maritime security. The danger is that supposedly temporary aid cuts and provisional security zones become the region’s new permanent conditions.

Our Prediction

The next phase will be a coercive stalemate fought through the region’s ports, pipelines and shipping lanes.

The Houthis are unlikely to close the Gate of Tears completely. Instead, they will try to make passage unpredictable and expensive. Iran will continue striking around the Gulf while avoiding, for as long as it can, the single catastrophic attack that would unite Saudi Arabia and its neighbors behind a full American offensive. Washington will intensify strikes in both Yemen and Iran but stop short of a large ground war, relying instead on air power, naval protection and economic pressure.

There may be another diplomatic announcement, perhaps mediated by Pakistan and backed by China, but it will initially produce deconfliction rather than peace. Any pause will remain vulnerable to one missile reaching the wrong base, one tanker sinking with a large crew aboard, or one strike killing enough Americans or Gulf civilians to force retaliation.

Our prediction is that the war widens before it pauses. Its next decisive battlefield will not be Tehran or Sanaa, but the water between them: Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, where an eye for an eye can become a blockade for a blockade—and where a regional war acquires a global price.

🎯 Ukraine Changes Command Under Fire. | Ukraine is attempting its biggest military reset since the war began, while Russian strikes continue exposing the weaknesses the new leadership is expected to fix.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy replaced commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi with 43-year-old Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi after days of rare wartime protests. Drapatyi, a respected combat commander who previously led Ukraine’s land forces, represents a younger generation seeking to replace rigid hierarchies with faster decisions, technological warfare and greater accountability. Syrskyi was credited with helping defend Kyiv in 2022, but critics increasingly blamed his command style for excessive losses and resistance to reform.

The upheaval began with Zelenskyy’s surprise dismissal of Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov after only six months in office. Fedorov had become closely associated with Ukraine’s drone campaign, defence procurement reforms and attacks on Russian energy and logistics infrastructure. His removal brought a deeper struggle into public view: a conflict between Ukraine’s technology-driven model of asymmetric warfare and a more conventional military establishment. Thousands protested in Kyiv and other cities, demanding Fedorov’s return and Syrskyi’s removal.

Replacing Syrskyi has satisfied one of those demands, but the political crisis is not over. Fedorov says he will accept no government position other than his former job, rejecting Zelenskyy’s offers to oversee defence innovation from another post. Yevhenii Khmara, a security official associated with Ukraine’s long-range operations, is serving as acting defence minister, but parliament is not scheduled to consider making the appointment permanent until August.

The shake-up comes as Russia intensifies attacks on both Ukraine’s military-industrial base and its economic lifelines. A Russian ballistic missile struck a defence-industry gathering in the Kyiv region on Friday, killing 10 people and injuring nearly 100. Zelenskyy blamed Russia but also condemned the decision to assemble defence manufacturers near residential buildings during wartime; prosecutors have opened an investigation into possible negligence. Russian attacks have also frightened shipowners away from Ukrainian Black Sea ports, threatening the grain exports that remain one of Kyiv’s most important sources of revenue.

Drapatyi and Khmara are promising technological superiority, asymmetric operations and continued strikes inside Russia. But their immediate task is larger than changing tactics: they must restore confidence between Ukraine’s soldiers, political leadership and public while defending cities, ports and infrastructure with limited air-defence supplies.

That tension will follow Zelenskyy to Washington on Tuesday, where he is scheduled to meet Donald Trump. American and Ukrainian officials are discussing a possible air ceasefire to present to Moscow, even as Kyiv argues that sustained military pressure, particularly attacks on Russia’s energy economy, is necessary to make Vladimir Putin negotiate. Ukraine is therefore changing commanders while pursuing two strategies at once: escalating the cost of the war and searching for a way to pause it.

And so, what happens next?

Mykhailo Drapatyi must now prove that replacing the commander can produce more than a symbolic reset. His first tests will be whether he can accelerate battlefield decisions, expand drone and long-range operations and dismantle the rigid command practices blamed for unnecessary losses. Meanwhile, the protests are unlikely to disappear while Mykhailo Fedorov remains outside the Defence Ministry, leaving Zelenskyy under pressure to reconcile two popular reformers with his own authority.

Tuesday’s Trump–Zelenskyy meeting will add another complication. Washington is exploring an air ceasefire with Moscow, while Kyiv argues that military pressure and strikes inside Russia are what make negotiations possible. Zelenskyy must show that Ukraine’s internal shake-up has strengthened the war effort, not destabilized it, while resisting any agreement that allows Russia to regroup without meaningful guarantees.

Our Prediction

The leadership change will restore some public confidence, but it will not end the political crisis. Drapatyi will push Ukraine toward a faster, more decentralized and technology-driven style of warfare, while Fedorov’s supporters continue demanding his return.

Our prediction is that Zelenskyy eventually brings Fedorov back into a position with real authority, whether under the same title or through a reorganized defense structure. Ukraine cannot afford a prolonged fight between its political leadership, military command and most visible reform movement.

On diplomacy, Tuesday’s meeting may produce another ceasefire framework, but not a durable settlement. Russia is unlikely to stop while it believes battlefield pressure is working, and Ukraine will not accept an air pause that restrains its own long-range campaign without equally enforceable limits on Moscow. Ukraine’s reset may change how the war is fought before it changes how the war ends.

🎯 Trump Rebuilds the Tariff Wall. | Donald Trump has restored a tariff barrier around nearly the entire U.S. economy, imposing new duties of 10% or 12.5% on imports from 60 trading partners, including the European Union, China, India, Japan, Canada and Mexico. The measures formally cover 99.4% of U.S. imports, although oil, natural gas, fertilizer, some foods, qualifying North American goods and products already subject to separate steel, aluminum or automobile tariffs are exempt.

The White House says the tariffs “punish” governments that have failed to prevent goods made with forced labor from moving through their supply chains. Countries with import restrictions against forced-labor products received the 10% rate, those Washington judged to have insufficient prohibitions face 12.5%. Trading partners immediately disputed that rationale. The EU, Australia, Brazil and others argued that their labor protections are robust and that the duties bear little relationship to actual forced-labor enforcement.

The timing points to a broader purpose. The new duties took effect precisely as Trump’s temporary 10% global tariff expired. They also replace part of the tariff system struck down by the Supreme Court in February, when the justices rejected the administration’s use of emergency economic powers to tax imports worldwide. This time, Trump is relying on Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974—a more established authority previously used against China and one that has survived earlier legal challenges. A new lawsuit has already been filed contesting the policy.

The rates may not immediately alter the effective tariff burden by much because they closely resemble the temporary duties they replace, and many companies rushed imports into American ports before Friday’s deadline. The greater danger is cumulative. New tariffs are landing alongside separate duties on Brazil and Canada, existing sectoral tariffs and another investigation into foreign industrial overcapacity that could produce additional penalties later this year.

Brazil says it will invoke its Reciprocity Law and challenge the United States at the World Trade Organization. Other governments may seek exemptions rather than retaliate, potentially allowing Washington to negotiate concessions country by country. That uncertainty is itself part of the pressure: businesses cannot easily decide where to manufacture, source or invest when tariff rates remain subject to the next investigation or bilateral bargain.

The economic risk is especially acute because the tariff wall is rising as the Iran war drives up oil, shipping and insurance costs. Import taxes make foreign goods more expensive; disrupted energy routes raise the cost of producing and transporting almost everything else. Together, they threaten to revive inflation while weakening global growth, the precise combination central banks have the fewest good tools to address.

Trump has not merely revived his trade war under a new legal authority. He has made tariffs a durable feature of American economic policy, and introduced another inflationary shock at the moment the world can least comfortably absorb one.

🎯 Turkey’s Opposition Abandons the CHP to Survive. | Turkey’s main opposition has split in two after months of judicial intervention, arrests and internal paralysis.

Özgür Özel and 90 allied lawmakers formally resigned from the Republican People’s Party on Friday and registered the New Party, leaving behind the movement founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk more than a century ago. With 91 seats in Turkey’s 600-member parliament, the new formation immediately becomes its second-largest party, behind President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AKP. Only 44 lawmakers remain in the CHP.

The rupture began in May, when an Ankara appeals court annulled the CHP’s 2023 congress over alleged voting irregularities, removed Özel and restored his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Özel’s supporters denounced the ruling as a judicial takeover of the opposition. Kılıçdaroğlu then resisted demands to hold a fresh leadership election, leaving Özel with a choice between submitting to the reinstated leadership or abandoning the party altogether.

Özel chose departure. One of his allies described the CHP they were leaving as an “occupied party”. A striking accusation against an institution that has long presented itself as the guardian of Turkey’s secular republican tradition.

The split follows a broader campaign against CHP officials. Hundreds of elected representatives and party members have been detained since 2024, mostly through corruption investigations that the opposition considers politically motivated. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s most formidable rival, has remained jailed since March 2025, while the annulment of his university diploma creates a separate legal barrier to his presidential candidacy. The government rejects accusations of interference and insists that Turkey’s courts operate independently.

Özel says the New Party will continue supporting İmamoğlu, who was selected as the opposition’s presidential candidate in a primary drawing more than 15 million participants. But he has also acknowledged that İmamoğlu’s legal obstacles may force the movement to consider Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş or another candidate.

The new party therefore inherits both the strength and the vulnerability of the old CHP. Under Özel, the party defeated the AKP nationally in the 2024 municipal vote and retained control of Istanbul and Ankara. But it must now rebuild its organization, transfer local branches and persuade voters that abandoning Atatürk’s party is an act of preservation rather than surrender.

The immediate beneficiary may, unfortunately, be Erdoğan. Turkey’s next elections are scheduled for May 14, 2028, although an earlier parliamentary vote would allow him to seek another presidential term. His governing alliance currently lacks the 360 seats needed to trigger one, making the loyalties of a newly fragmented opposition increasingly important.

The question is whether Özel has escaped a captured institution…or helped break apart the only political coalition capable of defeating Erdoğan. Turkey’s opposition is no longer fighting merely to win power. It is fighting to preserve the machinery through which power can still be contested.

And so, what happens next?

Özgür Özel’s immediate task is to transfer the opposition’s political machinery, not only its lawmakers, to the New Party. Watch whether CHP mayors, provincial organizations and voters follow him, and whether Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş joins the breakaway. If they do, the new movement could rapidly become the country’s de facto main opposition. If they hesitate, Erdoğan will benefit from two rival parties competing for the same electorate.

The presidential candidacy will become the defining question. Özel continues to support the imprisoned Ekrem İmamoğlu, but his revoked diploma and criminal cases may ultimately prevent him from running. The party will therefore try to preserve İmamoğlu as the movement’s political center while keeping Yavaş available as a legally viable alternative.

Our Prediction

The New Party will absorb much of the CHP’s parliamentary strength and eventually most of its active opposition network. But rebuilding the organization will take time—and Erdoğan will use that period of uncertainty to deepen divisions, intensify legal pressure and search for the parliamentary support needed to call an early election, which would permit him to seek another term.

Our prediction is that İmamoğlu remains the opposition’s symbolic candidate, but Yavaş increasingly becomes its practical one. Özel’s breakaway may ultimately rescue the movement from a captured CHP leadership, but first it will pass through a dangerous period in which the opposition is reorganizing while Erdoğan’s system remains fully intact.

🎯 Congo’s Ebola Emergency Outruns the Response. | Congo’s Ebola outbreak is growing faster than the system built to detect and contain it.

A review of data from two of the worst-affected provinces pushed the official toll on Friday to 2,905 confirmed infections and 1,269 deaths, more than 300 additional cases in a single revision. Officials stressed that much of the increase came from reconciling provincial records rather than one sudden burst of transmission. But the World Health Organization estimates that the true outbreak may be two to four times larger than the confirmed figures suggest.

The outbreak was declared in mid-May, although experts believe the virus had already been circulating undetected for weeks. It is caused by the rare Bundibugyo species of Ebola, which has a fatality rate of roughly 40% and, unlike the more familiar Zaire species, has no approved vaccine or specific treatment. Health authorities have called it the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record.

The epidemic has spread across five eastern provinces, although Ituri remains its center. As of July 15, nearly 90% of confirmed cases had been recorded there, with active transmission reported across dozens of health zones. Highly mobile and displaced populations, overcrowded camps and limited access to clean water and medical care have made contact tracing and isolation especially difficult.

But the response is being undermined by more than the virus. At least 12 attacks have targeted treatment centers, burial teams and health workers. Some responders have been held captive or threatened, while frightened patients have fled facilities following attacks. Health workers in Ituri have also gone on strike over unpaid salaries, and humanitarian organizations have temporarily withdrawn staff from dangerous areas.

Public mistrust has become another transmission risk. Restrictions on traditional funerals, where relatives may wash or prepare the bodies of loved ones, have provoked anger in communities where Ebola responders are sometimes viewed with suspicion. Conspiracy theories portraying the outbreak as a hoax have further weakened cooperation with contact tracers and burial teams.

There are signs of scientific progress, but none offers immediate protection. Congo has begun testing experimental treatments, while Oxford researchers have launched the first human trial of a vaccine designed specifically for Bundibugyo Ebola. Those candidates must still prove safe and effective before they can be deployed at the scale the outbreak requires.

Uganda, which recorded 20 confirmed cases connected to the Congolese outbreak, has reported no new infection since June 21. Its last patient was discharged on July 16, beginning the 42-day surveillance period required before the outbreak there can be declared over. But continued transmission across the border means the risk of reintroduction remains.

Congo’s emergency is therefore not merely a medical crisis. It is an outbreak moving through conflict, displacement, distrust and a severely strapped and underfunded health system conditions that allow a controllable virus to become a regional catastrophe.

🎯 China’s Western Pacific Pressure Campaign. | China applied pressure across three separate maritime fronts this week, confronting Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines through live-fire exercises, coast guard patrols and increasingly dangerous encounters at sea. None of the incidents alone amounts to open conflict. Together, they reveal a campaign designed to expand where Chinese forces operate, normalize Beijing’s disputed claims and test how far neighboring governments (and the United States) are prepared to resist.

Japan lodged a formal protest after a Chinese guided-missile destroyer conducted live-fire exercises near Okinotori, a remote atoll in the western Pacific. Tokyo says the drill occurred inside its exclusive economic zone and endangered passing vessels. China rejects Japan’s claim to the surrounding waters, arguing that Okinotori is a reef rather than an island entitled to generate a 200-nautical-mile economic zone. Chinese vessels were accompanied by a Russian frigate, adding to Japanese concerns about deepening military coordination between Beijing and Moscow. It was the first time Japan publicly reported a Chinese live-fire drill in the disputed area.

China simultaneously held two days of live-fire exercises near Dongshan Island in the Taiwan Strait. The drills followed talks between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which Taiwan featured prominently. Taipei condemned the exercises as another military provocation intended to increase pressure on the self-governing island.

The larger concern is what has been happening beyond the drills. Taiwan recorded 55 sightings of Chinese government vessels around the island in June, an increase of 83% from May and 120% from the same month last year. The ships included coast guard and research vessels, some operating in pairs near Taiwan’s eastern approaches and Pacific supply routes. Taiwanese officials say some Chinese coast guard ships are converted naval destroyers and have begun questioning commercial vessels, behavior Taipei interprets as an attempt to establish unofficial jurisdiction without firing a shot.

Taiwan fears Beijing may be rehearsing the legal and operational foundations of a future blockade. By repeatedly sending coast guard vessels into contested waters, inspecting or challenging commercial traffic and compelling Taiwan to respond, China can gradually turn extraordinary operations into routine ones. The danger is not only invasion, it is the creation of a new status quo in which Beijing behaves as though it already possesses authority over the waters surrounding Taiwan.

Farther south, Chinese and Philippine vessels confronted one another three times in a single week. At Second Thomas Shoal, the Philippines accused a Chinese coast guard member of striking a Filipino sailor with a wooden baton. Near Scarborough Shoal, Chinese coast guard ships used water cannons against Philippine government vessels on two consecutive days. During Friday’s encounter, one Chinese ship reportedly passed within seven meters of a Philippine fisheries vessel, creating what Manila described as a “serious collision risk”.

The timing was pointed. The clashes unfolded while Wang, Rubio and Southeast Asian foreign ministers were meeting in Manila to discuss regional security. Rubio called China’s actions “disturbing” and reiterated the American commitment to its Philippine ally. China accused Manila of illegally entering Chinese waters and defended its use of warnings, blockades and water cannons as lawful enforcement. A 2016 international tribunal rejected the legal basis of China’s sweeping South China Sea claims, but Beijing refuses to recognize the ruling.

These are often described as “gray-zone” operations because they remain below the conventional threshold of war. But they are not passive. Water cannons can damage ships and injure crews, close maneuvers can cause collisions, coast guard patrols can impose control as effectively as naval deployments, and live-fire drills can establish a military presence without formally announcing one.

China’s strategy appears less focused on provoking one decisive confrontation than on applying persistent pressure across the entire western Pacific. Japan must monitor Chinese and Russian warships. Taiwan must divide limited resources between its western coast, eastern supply routes and outlying islands. The Philippines must repeatedly resupply and defend small outposts surrounded by larger Chinese vessels.

The campaign’s power lies in repetition. Each patrol, drill and confrontation tests the response; each response helps Beijing identify what can be repeated, and what is repeated often enough begins to resemble the normal order of the region. China is not waiting for a single battle to redraw the map. It is attempting to redraw it one patrol at a time.

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What Else Mattered:

📍Nuclear Rules for Friends and Enemies. | The United States signed a landmark agreement Wednesday opening the way for Saudi Arabia to build a civilian nuclear industry with American technology, even as President Donald Trump escalates a war whose stated objectives include ensuring that Iran can never develop a nuclear weapon.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman signed the 30-year nuclear-cooperation pact, known as a 123 agreement, alongside a separate bilateral safeguards framework. The agreement would allow American companies to sell reactors, fuel and nuclear technology to the kingdom, which says atomic power will help diversify its energy supply and reduce the amount of oil and gas burned domestically.

But the announcement immediately raised a far more consequential question: whether Saudi Arabia would eventually be permitted to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel inside the kingdom.

Both processes have legitimate civilian uses. Enriched uranium can fuel nuclear reactors, while reprocessing can recover usable material from spent fuel. But the same technical infrastructure can also bring a country closer to producing weapons-grade material. That dual-use potential lies at the center of Washington’s decades-long confrontation with Iran, and is one of the principal reasons the White House has given for military action against Tehran.

Initial reporting on the agreement indicated that it would not prohibit Saudi enrichment or reprocessing. The framework reportedly provides for a two-year joint study that could lead to the construction of a uranium-enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia. It also omits the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Additional Protocol, which gives inspectors broader access to undeclared sites and greater authority to investigate suspected clandestine activity.

That would place Saudi Arabia below the nonproliferation standard accepted by the United Arab Emirates. Under its 2009 agreement with Washington, the UAE permanently renounced domestic enrichment and reprocessing, the so-called gold standard for civilian nuclear cooperation. Saudi Arabia has refused to make the same commitment. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has also repeatedly said that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the kingdom will seek one as well.

The contrast with Iran is difficult to miss. Tehran has long maintained that its enrichment program is intended for peaceful energy and research purposes. Washington has argued that Iran’s accumulation of enriched uranium, restricted inspections and capacity to move rapidly toward weapons-grade material make that assurance insufficient. Yet the Saudi agreement appeared willing to permit another regional power to acquire some of the same sensitive capabilities without accepting the most intrusive international inspections available.

Then, one day after the signing, Trump appeared to contradict his own administration’s agreement.

In a social-media post Thursday, the president declared that there would be “no enrichment of material” under the Saudi program and said the deal would proceed only if Riyadh joined the Abraham Accords and normalized relations with Israel. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt subsequently said that without Saudi recognition of Israel, “the deal is off.” The Saudi government has long insisted that normalization requires a credible path toward Palestinian statehood, a condition Israel’s current government has resisted.

The result is an agreement whose central terms remain unsettled. The administration signed a framework that, according to multiple accounts, leaves open a pathway to domestic enrichment; Trump then said enrichment would not occur at all. The deal was presented Wednesday as a bilateral nuclear and commercial achievement, only to be recast Thursday as leverage for a broader diplomatic bargain between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

There is a strategic logic behind Washington’s decision. Saudi Arabia intends to develop nuclear power with or without the United States and has suggested that China or Russia could become alternative partners. An American-led program would give U.S. companies access to lucrative reactor contracts while giving Washington greater visibility into Saudi activities than it might have under a Chinese- or Russian-backed project. Saudi nuclear power could also provide electricity for air conditioning and desalination while freeing more oil for export.

But commercial access and political alignment are not substitutes for nonproliferation safeguards. Allowing an ally access to sensitive technology while bombing an adversary over comparable capabilities creates the appearance that the nuclear rules depend less on the technology involved than on the government operating it.

That perception could carry consequences far beyond Saudi Arabia. Iran may see little reason to surrender enrichment if Washington is prepared to entertain it elsewhere. Turkey, Egypt and other regional powers could conclude that nuclear latency, the ability to approach a weapon without formally building one, is becoming an accepted instrument of national power. Israel, believed to possess the region’s only nuclear arsenal, could face a Middle East in which several states retain the infrastructure needed to move toward a bomb.

Congress now has 90 legislative-session days to review the agreement. Stopping it would require enough votes to overcome a likely presidential veto, but lawmakers can still demand publication of its terms, stronger inspections and an explicit prohibition on enrichment and reprocessing.

The argument is not that Saudi Arabia has already chosen to build a weapon, nor that civilian nuclear power inevitably becomes a military program. It is that Washington is weakening the very principle on which its case against Iran rests: that peaceful assurances are not enough when a state possesses the technology, material and political incentive to change course.

The United States is attempting to destroy one nuclear threshold while helping construct another. Whether it calls the difference partnership, commerce or peace-making, the centrifuges will not know the distinction.

And so, what happens next?

The agreement now enters a politically difficult review period. Congress will press the administration to clarify whether Saudi Arabia is permanently barred from enriching uranium and reprocessing spent fuel, or whether those capabilities have merely been postponed for future negotiation. Lawmakers are also likely to demand stronger international inspections before allowing American nuclear technology to be transferred.

Riyadh, meanwhile, will resist any arrangement that places it under stricter limits than Iran or leaves it permanently dependent on foreign nuclear fuel. Saudi officials may accept temporary restrictions to secure American reactors and expertise, while preserving the right to revisit enrichment later. Trump’s attempt to link the deal to Saudi normalization with Israel creates another obstacle, particularly while the kingdom continues to demand movement toward Palestinian statehood.

If Washington imposes conditions Riyadh considers unacceptable, Saudi Arabia can again threaten to seek assistance from China, Russia or South Korea. That possibility will keep pressure on the United States to compromise.

Our Prediction

The agreement will survive, but not in its current ambiguous form.

Our prediction is that the administration will formally prohibit Saudi enrichment during the program’s initial phase, strengthen inspection requirements and postpone the most sensitive questions rather than resolve them. Trump will continue presenting normalization with Israel as a condition, but the nuclear relationship will ultimately advance even without an immediate Saudi entry into the Abraham Accords.

Saudi Arabia will gain reactors, expertise and the foundations of a nuclear industry while retaining long-term strategic ambiguity over the fuel cycle. Iran will cite the agreement as evidence that Washington’s nuclear policy is determined by alliance rather than principle.

The result will not be an immediate Saudi bomb. It will be something more gradual. Another Middle Eastern power moving closer to the nuclear threshold, and a nonproliferation system increasingly divided between capabilities permitted to friends and punished in enemies.

Something extra for your radar:

A different speed for your reading pleasure.

Art of the Week

Your breath of fresh art and culture.

Théodore Géricault, The Wounded Cuirassier Leaving the Field of Battle (1814)

Géricault’s soldier does not charge toward glory…he descends from it, wounded, armored and still looking back. Painted as Napoleon’s empire collapsed, the work replaces heroic certainty with the private ache of surviving a battle that has not released its hold. He is retreating, but he has not surrendered, still standing, still holding the reins (or is?), still trying to lead himself home.

What to Watch This Week:

What could break, what could shift, and what signals to watch this weekend

📌 Watch whether the Houthis can turn their declared blockade into sustained pressure on Saudi-linked shipping, and whether another attack triggers heavier U.S. strikes in Yemen or Iran.

Pakistan and China will continue testing whether U.S.–Iran talks can be revived, though any early breakthrough is more likely to produce limited maritime restraint than a broader peace agreement.

Trump and Zelenskyy meet in Washington on Tuesday, with a possible air ceasefire, Ukraine’s shortage of air defenses and Kyiv’s new military leadership all on the table.

The Federal Reserve, Bank of England and Bank of Japan will also reveal whether they view the oil shock as temporary, or as the start of another inflation cycle, compounded by Trump’s new tariffs.

Beyond the lead stories, watch whether Turkey’s opposition breakaway gains momentum, Congo’s Ebola outbreak spreads further and China intensifies its pressure on Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.

The week’s arc is clear: war is spreading outward, its economic consequences are moving inward, and political systems are beginning to fracture under the pressure.

Spotlight on the Markets:

📌 Wall Street found a little relief Friday as oil retreated from its overnight surge: the Dow gained roughly 0.5%, the S&P 500 rose 0.4% and the Nasdaq finished nearly flat. But the rebound did not erase a bruising week for equities, with Alphabet and Tesla’s heavy AI spending renewing doubts about how quickly enormous investments in data centers and computing power will produce returns.

Brent crude fell about 4% to $96.37 after briefly reaching $102, but remains nearly 40% higher for the month as attacks around Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb threaten two of the world’s most important energy routes. Bond markets remained under pressure: the 10-year Treasury yield approached 4.7%, while the 30-year yield hovered near a 19-year high.

The market’s concern is no longer oil alone. War-driven energy costs, Trump’s new tariffs and a stronger dollar are reviving inflation fears just as the Federal Reserve prepares to meet. Traders now see roughly a one-in-three chance of an interest-rate increase next week. A dramatic reversal from expectations only days ago.

The question heading into Monday is whether Friday’s recovery marks stabilization or merely a pause. For now, markets are pricing the same message carried through the rest of the week: the war may be fought at the straits, but its costs are arriving everywhere.

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Good morning!

A little something different this week as we welcome you to your special summer weekend meets Monday headlines!

The U.S. was on fire with record heat and explosive diarrhea spreading across the country, originally thought to be linked to a parasite found in Taylor Farms brand salad greens (or not?!) and shredded iceberg lettuce found on Crunchy Taco Supreme at Taco Bell.

The U.S.–Iran conflict moves deeper into the infrastructure that keeps states functioning, Russia exposes Ukraine’s air-defense shortage, and diplomats gather from Washington to Manila hoping the machinery of escalation can still be slowed. European Union enlargement in the works, the battlefield ever widens, gas and oil on the upswing. Congress is moving to redraw the boundaries of crypto regulation, advancing a Trump-backed plan to shift oversight of many digital assets from the SEC to the CFTC.

Wildfire smoke stretched from the Great Lakes to Washington, D.C., floods continued across the Texas Hill Country, and new fires erupted in the Pacific Northwest. Sixty-eight major fires were burning across 15 states as of Friday. Nearly 3.72 million acres have burned nationwide this year—more than one million acres ahead of last year’s mid-July total. More than 17,000 firefighters and support personnel have been deployed.

Spain met Argentina in a stunning World Cup finale, and won! Claiming their second World Cup title.

We also have a separate special issue on Putin and NATO, read it here. We’ve got our usual predictions, graphs, art and more to kick off your Monday. Grab your cafecito or mate and join us — let’s get into it!

Thank you for reading this far. Paid subscribers get full access to Grounded Perspectives and our Friday wrap ups, plus much more. If you’re so inclined, throw a couple coins into our human battery fund — also known as mochas and green teas. We’re glad you’re here.

Some weeks, the world tests every structure built to hold. So does the heart. We keep watching both for what survives. The world rarely rewards certainty. Root for what you love anyway.— Ali & Asli

Ninety-six years after Uruguay and Argentina contested the inaugural World Cup final in 1930, Spain and Argentina became only the second pair of Spanish-speaking nations to meet for football’s greatest prize. Spain’s 1–0 extra-time victory belonged to a team defined by collective control. Patient in possession, disciplined under pressure and unwavering in its identity. One language united the final. Spain had the last word. Argentina understood.

🎯 The War Restarts and the Battlefield Widens | President Donald Trump notified Congress that U.S. forces had resumed hostilities against Iran, invoking the War Powers Resolution and restarting the 60-day period during which the administration must obtain congressional authorization or end the operation.

The notification followed the collapse of a ceasefire over renewed attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. American forces have since struck Iranian missile installations, air-defense systems and naval assets for three consecutive nights.

Iran has retaliated across a widening regional battlefield.

At least two U.S. service members were killed and several others wounded when Iranian ballistic missiles struck Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The attack prompted another round of American strikes on Sunday targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps positions and supporting infrastructure.

Seventeen American service members have now been killed since the war began. Iran has also launched missiles toward Jordan, while the conflict has reached Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq and the waters surrounding the Arabian Peninsula.

Iranian state media has claimed that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also carried out a surprise attack against a U.S. Special Operations compound near al-Tanf in Syria.

The state-run IRNA news agency alleged that several helicopters and a radar system were destroyed and that a large number of Americans were killed or wounded. If independently confirmed, it would be the first known Iranian attack on U.S. forces in Syria during the current war.

The claim remains unverified. IRNA operates as an organ of the Iranian government, and casualty and battle-damage figures released by Iranian state media and the IRGC have repeatedly been exaggerated or contradicted during previous conflicts.

Washington revises its strategy for Hormuz

Trump on Tuesday abandoned a proposed 20% toll on cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz, opting instead to pursue trade and investment agreements with Gulf governments.

The administration is nevertheless proceeding with a maritime blockade aimed specifically at Iranian vessels, while Trump has threatened attacks on Iranian bridges and power stations if Tehran continues interfering with commercial shipping.

Oil rose to a one-month high following the announcement.

Before the war, approximately one-fifth of the world’s petroleum supply moved through Hormuz. Iran’s ability to threaten that traffic remains its most powerful source of economic leverage, while Washington is attempting to isolate Iranian shipping without imposing costs on every vessel passing through the strait.

That distinction may prove difficult to maintain. A blockade targeting only Iranian ships still requires identification, interception and enforcement inside one of the world’s most militarized and economically essential waterways.

The regional order begins to shift

Trump also hosted Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani at the White House on Tuesday.

Following the meeting, Sudani announced that all remaining U.S. forces would leave Iraq by September 30, presenting the withdrawal as part of a broader transition from a military relationship toward cooperation centered on energy, investment and trade.

The announcement arrives as Iraq attempts to avoid becoming another active front in the war. American forces have operated from Iraqi territory while Iran-aligned armed groups retain significant political and military influence inside the country.

The withdrawal may reduce one source of friction, but it also raises questions about who will fill the security vacuum and whether the departure represents a planned diplomatic pivot or an accelerated retreat from an increasingly exposed position.

The distinction between military pressure and economic warfare is disappearing.

Washington is attempting to dismantle Iran’s missile and naval capacity, break its control over Hormuz and redirect its Gulf alliances toward commerce. Tehran, meanwhile, is demonstrating that American bases and partner states throughout the region cannot assume they will remain outside the battlefield.

Every new target now carries two calculations, whether it will weaken the enemy, and whether it will trigger the next widening of the war.

And so, what happens next?

The immediate answer is… more strikes.

The United States will continue attacking Iran’s missile launchers, air defenses, naval facilities and command infrastructure, attempting to reduce Tehran’s capacity to threaten American forces and commercial shipping. Iran will continue retaliating but it is unlikely to mirror the United States strike for strike. Its advantage lies in forcing Washington to defend an enormous geographic area stretching from Iraq and Syria to Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and the waters of the Gulf.

That creates several possible points of escalation at once.

A successful Iranian attack causing another large number of American casualties would place Trump under intense pressure to strike deeper inside Iran. Attacks on power stations, bridges or civilian-adjacent infrastructure could, in turn, prompt Tehran to target Gulf energy facilities, desalination plants or shipping beyond the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran may also try to expand the economic battlefield. Tehran has reportedly urged the Houthis to prepare for renewed disruption in the Red Sea should Iranian energy infrastructure come under heavier attack. That would place pressure on two maritime corridors simultaneously: Hormuz in the east and Bab el-Mandeb in the west.

The blockade will be the next major test.

A policy described as targeting only Iranian vessels sounds narrower than closing the strait, but enforcing it requires American forces to identify, stop and potentially seize ships in heavily trafficked waters. Iran can complicate that task through reflagged vessels, indirect ownership, deceptive tracking practices and naval escorts.

Commercial shipping companies will not wait for legal clarity if their insurers judge the route unsafe. Traffic through Hormuz has already fallen sharply during the renewed fighting, with tanker movements on one recent day reaching their lowest level since May.

The political clock in Washington is also running.

Trump’s War Powers notification does not itself provide congressional authorization. It begins a confrontation over whether the president can sustain an expanding war beyond the statutory period without a vote. Congress may avoid forcing the issue while American troops remain under attack, but additional casualties, or strikes against increasingly civilian infrastructure, could fracture that temporary restraint.

Iraq’s announced September 30 withdrawal deadline adds another layer. Removing American forces could reduce Iran’s available targets inside Iraq, but it would also weaken Washington’s regional intelligence, logistics and deterrence network at precisely the moment the war is spreading.

Meanwhile, diplomacy will continue quietly through Gulf capitals, Pakistan, Iraq and other intermediaries. Neither Washington nor Tehran presently appears willing to offer the concession required for a durable settlement. The United States wants unrestricted passage through Hormuz, while Iran refuses to surrender the leverage that brought Washington to the negotiating table in the first place.

The previous ceasefire did not fail because the shooting accidentally resumed. It failed because the central dispute was postponed rather than resolved.

Our Prediction

This war is likely to become more geographically dispersed but temporarily less concentrated inside Iran.

Washington will continue striking Iranian military assets, but it will initially stop short of a sustained campaign against Iran’s national power grid or the wholesale destruction of its civilian infrastructure. Trump will keep those targets visible as leverage while attempting to restore shipping through Hormuz without triggering a regional energy catastrophe.

Iran, unable to match American airpower, will pursue a strategy of controlled unpredictability. It will use missiles, drones, maritime harassment and aligned armed groups to demonstrate that every American base and partner government in the region carries risk.

The greatest danger is not a deliberate decision by either government to begin an unlimited war. It is a single Iranian strike that kills dozens of Americans, or an American attack that causes mass civilian casualties and leaves Tehran believing it must respond dramatically to preserve deterrence.

We expect oil to remain elevated and volatile, but not to enter a sustained extreme-price spiral unless shipping through Hormuz stops almost entirely or Gulf production facilities are directly hit. Saudi Arabia and other producers will continue diverting exports toward Red Sea terminals where possible, but those routes cannot fully replace the strait’s capacity.

We also expect Congress to postpone a decisive War Powers confrontation while American forces are actively taking casualties. The argument over authorization will grow louder as the deadline approaches, particularly if the administration’s objectives remain undefined.

The most probable outcome over the next several weeks is therefore neither peace nor total war.

It is a grinding cycle of American strikes, Iranian retaliation, disrupted shipping and intermittent negotiations, each side trying to establish a stronger position before the economic and political costs become impossible to absorb.

A second ceasefire will eventually emerge. But unless it contains a verifiable agreement governing Hormuz, Iranian shipping and attacks on regional bases, it will be another pause constructed over the same unresolved fault line.

The question is no longer whether the war can widen. That’s already happened.

The question is whether Washington and Tehran can build an exit before one devastating attack removes the choice from both of them.

The presidents of the parliaments of the countries seeking integration into the European Union at the inaugural meeting in Belgrade, July 7, 2026. DJORDJE KOJADINOVIC/REUTERS

🎯 New wave EU | Four countries moved forward in their bids to join the European Union, marking the first time since 2002 that so many candidates advanced on the same day.

Albania, Montenegro, Moldova and Ukraine held accession talks in Brussels, although full membership in the 27-nation bloc could still be years away. Ukraine and Moldova each opened a second negotiating cluster covering foreign policy, security and trade, while Albania and Montenegro completed selected chapters of their negotiations.

The coordinated progress reflects a broader strategic shift inside Europe. Russia’s war in Ukraine has transformed enlargement from a slow-moving bureaucratic process into a question of security, influence and the continent’s political future.

The EU is increasingly looking east and south. Not simply to grow, but to prevent contested states from being pulled into rival spheres of power.

Read more about what the European Union is doing to help support the Western Balkans

And so, what happens next?

The four countries advanced together, but they will not necessarily arrive together.

Montenegro is farthest along. It has opened all 33 negotiating chapters and provisionally closed 18, making it the clearest candidate to finish negotiations first. Albania has also opened all 33 chapters but has closed only three, leaving considerably more work on judicial reform, corruption, public administration and enforcement of EU law.

Ukraine and Moldova remain much earlier in the process. Both have opened the fundamentals and external-relations clusters, but opening a cluster merely begins the detailed work of meeting benchmarks, changing domestic laws and proving that those changes can be enforced. Their next likely step will be movement into the internal-market cluster, followed by negotiations over agriculture, environmental policy, economic competition and access to EU funds.

The difficult questions will become increasingly political, of course.

Ukraine’s size, agricultural power, reconstruction needs and continuing war will force the EU to reconsider its budget, farm subsidies, voting arrangements and security commitments. Moldova faces fewer economic complications but remains vulnerable to Russian interference, energy pressure and domestic political disruption.

The European Union must also prepare itself. Accepting several new members would redistribute funding and influence inside the bloc, potentially reducing agricultural and regional-development payments received by existing members.

And every major step remains vulnerable to a national veto. Enlargement decisions generally require unanimity, while a final accession treaty must receive the European Parliament’s consent, unanimous approval from the Council and ratification by every existing member state.

The Brussels meetings therefore represent political momentum but not guaranteed membership.

Our Prediction

Montenegro will become the next country to join the European Union.

Its negotiations are substantially more advanced than those of the other three candidates, and its relatively small population makes its admission easier for the EU to absorb financially and institutionally. We expect Brussels and Podgorica to push toward completing negotiations by 2028, provided Montenegro continues making measurable progress on corruption, organized crime and judicial independence.

Albania is likely to follow, but not immediately. Closing three chapters on the same day was an important breakthrough, particularly after it met interim rule-of-law benchmarks, but the country must now demonstrate that reforms exist beyond legislation and function inside courts, government agencies and public institutions.

Ukraine and Moldova will continue moving together through additional negotiating clusters over the next year. Politically, Brussels has every reason to maintain their momentum: accession is now one of Europe’s strongest tools for anchoring both countries outside Russia’s sphere of influence.

But we do not expect either to become a full member before Montenegro and probably not before Albania.

Moldova could technically finish its reforms sooner than Ukraine, yet the EU may resist separating the two processes too dramatically. Leaving Ukraine behind while admitting Moldova would carry enormous political symbolism at a time when Kyiv is fighting a war presented as a defense of Europe itself.

Our broader prediction is that the EU will begin integrating these states before formally admitting them. Candidates will gradually receive greater access to European markets, infrastructure, defense cooperation and funding while full membership remains under negotiation.

For years, Europe asked whether these countries had changed enough to join the European Union. Now the European Union must decide whether it is willing to change enough to receive them.

🎯 Moscow and Abu Dhabi call for an immediate halt | Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held an urgent phone call with UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed as the United States and Iran continued exchanging strikes across the Gulf.

The two ministers called for an immediate end to hostilities and the swift resumption of negotiations. They placed particular emphasis on keeping navigation through the Strait of Hormuz safe and uninterrupted, describing the waterway as essential to the global economy.

The UAE separately urged all sides to exercise maximum restraint and warned against attacks on civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, desalination plants, energy facilities and transportation hubs.

Lavrov and Abdullah also discussed closer Russian-Emirati coordination, including trade, education and diplomacy through international institutions.

The call reflects the UAE’s increasingly delicate position: it is a close American security partner, an important Russian commercial partner and one of the Gulf economies most exposed to a prolonged disruption of Hormuz. Moscow, meanwhile, is positioning itself as a diplomatic channel capable of speaking with Iran, the Gulf states and Washington, even as its practical ability to restrain Tehran remains uncertain.

🎯 Kyiv’s Patriot gap becomes impossible to ignore | Russia launched one of the largest ballistic-missile attacks on Kyiv since the full-scale invasion began, firing 41 missiles and 125 drones across Ukraine in a concentrated overnight assault.

Ukrainian forces said they intercepted 18 missiles and 108 drones, but the imbalance was stark: Kyiv proved increasingly capable of destroying slower unmanned aircraft while dozens of faster, harder-to-intercept missiles reached their targets. Residential buildings, warehouses, a supermarket and a university dormitory were damaged across the capital. At least six people were killed nationwide and dozens wounded.

“A firefighting helicopter drops water over the site of a Russian missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv region, Ukraine” July 19, 2026. REUTERS/Anatolii Stepanov

The barrage included ballistic and hypersonic weapons designed to compress warning times and overwhelm Ukraine’s limited supply of advanced interceptors. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow is increasingly placing its confidence in ballistic missiles precisely because Ukraine does not possess enough systems capable of stopping them.

Hours later, Russian missiles struck the Golden Leo, a Turkish-owned, Guinea-Bissau-flagged cargo ship carrying grain away from the Odesa coast. At least five crew members were killed in the attack, according to Ukrainian officials, extending Russia’s campaign from Ukraine’s cities and power infrastructure to the civilian shipping routes sustaining its wartime economy.

Kyiv’s shortage of Patriot interceptors has become one of the war’s most consequential vulnerabilities. Patriot batteries are among the few systems Ukraine possesses that can reliably defend cities against Russia’s ballistic missiles, but each interceptor is costly, production is limited and demand has risen across several conflicts.

Washington has agreed politically to allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot missiles domestically. Zelensky says Ukrainian engineers could possess the technical capability to begin production by the end of 2026, but defense specialists warn that meaningful output could still take at least a year.

That agreement could eventually reduce Ukraine’s dependence on foreign stockpiles.

But factories cannot intercept the missiles already in the air.

And so, what happens next?

Russia will keep pressing the vulnerability it has found.

Moscow is likely to launch further concentrated ballistic barrages against Kyiv and other strategically important cities, forcing Ukraine to expend scarce Patriot interceptors faster than its partners can replace them. The objective is not simply to destroy individual targets. It is to exhaust the defensive shield protecting government centers, military production, energy infrastructure and densely populated urban areas.

Kyiv will have to make increasingly severe choices about what it defends. Patriot batteries cannot cover the entire country, and every missile assigned to protect the capital is one unavailable for Odesa, Kharkiv, major power stations or frontline logistics. Until additional interceptors arrive, Ukraine will concentrate its strongest defenses around the targets whose loss would be militarily or politically catastrophic.

Europe is attempting to close the gap. Ten countries have backed a new anti-ballistic missile coalition intended to build a more integrated European defense architecture, while Ukraine is seeking hundreds of additional Patriot interceptors before winter. But coalition announcements, production licenses and industrial plans will not create immediate inventory. Experts say licensed Patriot production could take at least a year to begin at meaningful scale, with initial manufacturing more likely to occur in Germany or elsewhere in Europe before shifting into Ukraine.

Ukraine will therefore intensify the other side of its strategy, striking Russian oil facilities, weapons warehouses, logistics centers and naval assets in an effort to disrupt the systems supporting Moscow’s missile campaign. Those attacks cannot fully stop ballistic launches, but they can increase Russia’s costs, complicate resupply and demonstrate that the war will not remain confined to Ukrainian territory.

The race is now brutally uneven.

Russia is testing how quickly it can deplete Ukraine’s defenses. Ukraine and its allies are testing whether industrial production can expand before the next winter assault begins.

For Kyiv, the problem is no longer identifying the weapon it needs. It is surviving the time required to build it.

"We believe that the protection of Europe requires a global solution of integrated missile defense architecture to deter and defeat future missile threats," say France, the UK and their partners

Our Prediction

Russia will make concentrated ballistic barrages a recurring feature of its campaign.

Moscow has identified the gap between Ukraine’s improving ability to destroy drones and its far smaller capacity to intercept ballistic missiles. Rather than expend its most advanced weapons continuously, Russia is likely to stockpile them and launch periodic saturation attacks designed to overwhelm Patriot batteries, exhaust interceptors and keep Ukrainian cities uncertain about when the next major strike will arrive. Russian forces are already increasingly exploiting the global shortage of Patriot ammunition, while analysts estimate that Moscow produces hundreds of Iskander and Kinzhal missiles each year.

Kyiv will preserve its strongest ballistic defenses for the capital, critical command centers and essential military infrastructure. That will leave regional cities, ports and energy facilities carrying a greater share of the danger. The decision will not reflect their importance to Ukraine, but the brutal mathematics of defending an entire country with too few interceptors.

We do not expect licensed Patriot production inside Ukraine to transform the battlefield this year. The agreement is strategically significant, but establishing secure production lines, supply chains and specialist manufacturing will take time. Even optimistic assessments place meaningful domestic output beyond the immediate crisis.

Ukraine will answer asymmetrically. Rather than attempt to match Russia missile for missile, it will expand lower-cost drone attacks against refineries, fuel depots, weapons components, railways, warehouses and maritime logistics. The objective will be to damage the industrial and transport networks sustaining Russia’s strike campaign, and to ensure that Moscow’s attacks carry consequences beyond Ukrainian territory.

Our near-term prediction is therefore not the sudden collapse of Ukraine’s air defenses. It is their gradual thinning.

Patriot batteries will continue saving lives and intercepting some of Russia’s most dangerous weapons. But until Western production expands substantially, every successful defense will consume ammunition that cannot be replaced at the same speed.

Russia is trying to turn the interceptor shortage into a weapon of its own. Ukraine’s task is to survive the arithmetic.

🎯 Congress moves to redraw crypto’s regulatory map | The CLARITY Act would narrow the Securities and Exchange Commission’s authority over many digital assets and give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission primary oversight of spot markets for cryptocurrencies classified as digital commodities.

The SEC would retain authority over digital assets that qualify as securities, including many token-based fundraising transactions, while the CFTC would regulate exchanges, brokers and dealers operating in digital-commodity markets. The bill would also establish registration rules, customer-asset protections and disclosure requirements intended to replace years of regulation through competing agency interpretations and enforcement actions.

Supporters say the division would give crypto companies a clearer route to compliance and prevent the SEC from treating most tokens as securities indefinitely. Critics warn that shifting large sections of the market toward the smaller and historically less-funded CFTC could weaken investor protections and allow issuers to design assets around securities law.

The House passed an earlier version in July 2025, and the Senate Banking Committee advanced revised legislation in May 2026. It must still win sufficient Senate support and be reconciled with separate legislation under the Agriculture Committee’s jurisdiction before reaching Trump’s desk.

The fight is not simply over which agency regulates crypto. It is over whether digital assets will be treated primarily as investments governed by securities law, or as commodities traded within a new parallel financial system.

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What Else Mattered:

📍 Bastille Day becomes a show of European resolve | France used this year’s Bastille Day parade to stage what the Élysée called Europe’s “strategic awakening.” Nearly 6,700 troops, 98 aircraft and more than 300 military vehicles crossed the Champs-Élysées, joined by 500 soldiers from the coalition supporting Ukraine, including Ukrainian troops and pilots. With Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders watching, Emmanuel Macron’s final July 14 parade as president was less a celebration of French power alone than a declaration that Europe intends to defend itself collectively.

📍Ukrainians take to the streets over defense minister’s firing | Thousands of Ukrainians protested in Kyiv and other cities after President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov only six months into his tenure, producing a rare public rupture in the country’s wartime leadership. Fedorov was widely credited with accelerating Ukraine’s drone program, modernizing military procurement and challenging entrenched corruption inside the defense establishment.

His removal exposed a deeper struggle over how Ukraine should fight the war. Fedorov accused armed-forces commander Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi of blocking technological and institutional reforms, while Zelensky said the deteriorating relationship between the ministry and military command had become impossible to sustain. Protesters demanded Fedorov’s return and Syrskyi’s dismissal, warning that the government was sidelining one of the officials most closely associated with Ukraine’s recent battlefield innovation.

The dispute arrives at a punishing moment, though. Russia is intensifying its missile campaign, Ukraine’s air defenses are under growing strain, and internal unity remains one of Kyiv’s most valuable strategic assets. What began as a cabinet reshuffle has become a larger argument over whether Ukraine’s war should be directed by its traditional command structure, or by the technological reformers attempting to remake it in real time.

And so, what happens next?

Zelensky will try to prevent a personnel dispute from becoming a broader crisis of confidence in Ukraine’s wartime leadership. It’s the last thing Ukrainians need at a time like this.

His first move has already been made: Maj. Gen. Yevhenii Khmara, a respected special-operations commander associated with Ukraine’s long-range strikes against Russia, has been installed as acting defense minister. Khmara must now reassure soldiers, civil society and foreign partners that Fedorov’s dismissal will not reverse Ukraine’s expansion of drone warfare, digitized procurement and military innovation. His permanent appointment still requires parliamentary approval.

The pressure will not disappear with a new minister. Fedorov has rejected an advisory position and publicly accused Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi of obstructing reform. Protesters have demanded Fedorov’s return and Syrskyi’s removal, while the resignation of senior drone commander Pavlo Yelizarov suggests that the dispute has reached beyond the cabinet and into the armed forces.

Khmara will therefore inherit two jobs at once: running the Defense Ministry during an intensifying Russian missile campaign and repairing the relationship between military command and the reformers responsible for Ukraine’s technological edge.

The immediate test will be continuity. Kyiv must show that drone production, long-range operations and procurement reform will survive the departure of the official most closely associated with them.

Our Prediction

Our guess is that Zelensky will not reinstate Fedorov, and he will not immediately dismiss Syrskyi. Reversing either decision now would make the government appear to be governing under pressure from the street while risking another rupture in the chain of command. Zelensky is likely to give Khmara broad authority over long-range strikes and technological warfare while quietly adopting enough of Fedorov’s program to reassure the military and Ukraine’s Western backers. This is an inference from Khmara’s operational background and the responsibilities Zelensky has already assigned him.

The protests will probably continue in the near term but remain focused on defense leadership rather than becoming a general movement against the government. That could change if additional reformers resign, procurement transparency weakens or a battlefield setback is linked to disruption caused by the reshuffle.

The most likely outcome is an uneasy compromise, that Syrskyi remains in command, Khmara receives room to preserve the drone and long-range strike programs, and Fedorov becomes an influential critic outside government.

Zelensky may have ended the argument inside the cabinet. He has not ended the argument over how Ukraine should fight the war.

📍Lebanon brings a disarmament plan to Washington | Lebanese President Joseph Aoun will meet Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, becoming the first Lebanese head of state to make such a visit in nearly two decades.

Aoun is expected to present a written proposal tying Hezbollah’s disarmament to an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army in its place. Recent U.S.-mediated talks have focused on beginning that process through designated “pilot zones,” but Israeli forces still occupy a buffer zone inside Lebanon, and Hezbollah has rejected both the negotiations and demands that it surrender its arsenal.

Aoun is offering Washington a transaction. Use American leverage to help Lebanon recover its territory, and Beirut will attempt what successive governments have promised (but never fully achieved) the restoration of the state’s monopoly on arms.

The obstacle is sequencing. Hezbollah argues that Israeli occupation justifies its weapons. Israel argues that Hezbollah’s weapons justify its occupation.

Each side considers the other’s first move the price of its own.

And so, what happens next?

Aoun will ask Trump to turn the existing framework into a sequence that both Lebanon and Israel can survive politically, that Israeli forces withdraw from designated areas, the Lebanese army deploys in their place, and Hezbollah’s weapons and military positions are removed under international verification.

The first test will be the proposed “pilot zones” in southern Lebanon. U.S.-mediated talks have already explored beginning with a small number of towns where the Lebanese army could assume control as Israeli troops redeploy. If those transfers hold, Washington will attempt to expand the model gradually along the border.

Aoun will also seek military assistance, reconstruction funding and political guarantees that Lebanon will not be left exposed after confronting Hezbollah. The Lebanese army cannot credibly replace the armed group across the country without equipment, money and confidence that Israeli strikes will stop once state forces take control.

Israel, however, is unlikely to authorize a complete withdrawal in advance. It will demand evidence that Hezbollah fighters, launch sites and weapons stores have been removed before relinquishing strategically useful territory. Hezbollah will insist on the opposite sequence and has already rejected the wider security framework.

That leaves Washington attempting to manufacture reciprocity one district at a time.

Our Prediction

Aoun will leave Washington with strong political backing, but not an immediate agreement capable of disarming Hezbollah nationwide.

We expect Trump to pressure Israel to permit one or more limited withdrawals, allowing the Lebanese army to enter selected pilot zones and giving Aoun a visible achievement to take home. The United States may attach further military and economic support to measurable Lebanese action against Hezbollah’s infrastructure.

Israel will nevertheless retain forces inside part of its southern buffer zone until it believes Hezbollah’s ability to return has been substantially reduced. Hezbollah, meanwhile, is more likely to disperse, conceal or reposition its remaining arsenal than formally surrender it.

The result will be partial implementation: Lebanese troops gaining territory, Israel withdrawing from selected positions and Hezbollah losing some freedom of movement, but no immediate restoration of a complete state monopoly on arms.

The plan can reduce the battlefield before it resolves the conflict.

Its success will depend on whether small acts of reciprocity create enough trust for the next step or merely give every side a new line from which to refuse it.

📍Bangladesh’s Myanmar wall could deepen the Rohingya crisis | Bangladesh plans to erect barbed-wire fencing along sections of its roughly 270-kilometer border with Myanmar, citing armed infiltration, smuggling, border violence and the risk that Myanmar’s civil war will spill farther across the frontier. Fighting in neighboring Rakhine State has already sent mortar fire, armed personnel and new groups of Rohingya toward Bangladesh.

Dhaka’s security concerns are real. Bangladesh already hosts nearly 1.2 million Rohingya refugees, including approximately 150,000 who arrived after violence intensified in late 2023, while humanitarian funding, shelter space and food assistance continue to shrink.

But fencing the border could trap civilians between Myanmar’s military, the Arakan Army and armed Rohingya groups, closing one of the last escape routes available to families facing persecution or renewed fighting. It could also push more refugees toward smugglers and the Bay of Bengal, where more than 500 people were feared dead this month after two boats carrying mostly Rohingya passengers reportedly capsized.

A wall may help Bangladesh control its frontier.

It cannot make the other side safe.

📍 A European password manager’s Russian connections raise alarms | Passwork markets itself as a European-built password manager trusted by government agencies, universities and major companies. But an investigation by OCCRP and its media partners found that the Spain-based firm shares a common codebase, synchronized updates and nearly identical documentation with a Russian company bearing the same name and logo.

The Russian Passwork lists sanctioned companies, including missile manufacturer Almaz-Antey, among its clients and holds certifications from agencies linked to Russia’s Defense Ministry and the FSB. Meanwhile, software updates for the European product have reportedly passed through an opaque UAE company managed by one of Passwork’s Russian co-founders.

Passwork Europe says the companies are separate and stresses that customers host their encrypted credentials on their own servers. But cybersecurity specialists warn that shared software and an uncertain update pipeline could still create a state-level vulnerability, an organization may control where its passwords are stored without fully knowing who can alter the software protecting them.

For a password manager, trust is not a marketing advantage.

It is the entire product.

📍Japan rebuilds its intelligence state | Japan is creating its first centralized intelligence agency since World War II, seeking greater protection against espionage, cyberattacks and foreign interference from China, Russia and North Korea. The new system will include a prime minister-led National Intelligence Council and a roughly 700-person National Intelligence Bureau, supported by about $407 million and advice from the United States, Australia and Germany.

Japan has maintained intelligence and signals-surveillance capabilities throughout the postwar period, but they have remained fragmented across ministries and heavily dependent on cooperation with Washington. The new bureau is intended to coordinate those operations, while a separate foreign-intelligence service modeled more closely on the CIA or MI6 is planned for later.

The overhaul carries historical weight. Imperial Japan’s Tokko secret police (特警隊) imprisoned tens of thousands of political dissidents, leaving deep public resistance to concentrated surveillance power after 1945. Tokyo is now attempting to build the machinery of a modern intelligence state without resurrecting the abuses that made such machinery politically untouchable for eight decades.

The shift mirrors Japan’s wider security transformation. With defense spending reaching record levels, Tokyo is no longer content to rely almost entirely on American protection or intelligence. It is preparing to see threats for itself, and, increasingly, to act on what it sees.

📍France confronts Russia over a Europe-wide cyber campaign | France summoned Russia’s diplomatic representative in Paris after formally attributing a yearslong cyberespionage campaign to Unit 61240 of the FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence service. French authorities say the operation targeted government, diplomatic, defense, research and energy networks in France and at least nine other European countries, with some intrusions dating back to 2017.

The diplomatic protest formed part of a coordinated European response. The EU sanctioned nine individuals and four entities linked to the campaign, while Britain announced separate measures against Russian intelligence officers, hackers and companies accused of supporting cyberespionage and disruptive operations. Among those targeted was a group connected to attempts to destabilize the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The move reflects a harder French posture toward Russia’s hybrid warfare. Paris is increasingly treating cyberattacks, sabotage, election interference and covert influence not as isolated criminal acts, but as components of a sustained campaign operating just below the threshold of conventional war.

Russia may not have crossed France’s physical border. French officials argue that it has been testing the digital one for years.

📍Germany raises its national threat assessment | Germany has raised its security assessment from an “abstract” threat to a “high threat level,” with Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt warning that the country must now reckon with the possibility of attacks at any time. He said intelligence reporting points to increasingly identifiable plots targeting infrastructure, institutions and individuals.

The announcement comes amid concern over terrorism, foreign espionage, sabotage and politically motivated violence. German authorities recently disrupted an alleged bomb plot involving recruits linked to a foreign intelligence service, while officials continue to warn of Russian hybrid operations and threats from both far-right and far-left extremists.

Dobrindt is also preparing a major reform of Germany’s intelligence laws that would allow security services to move beyond gathering information and, in narrowly defined emergencies, intervene directly to disrupt attacks. The proposal would preserve the formal separation between intelligence agencies and police while placing the new powers under independent oversight.

📍The Indo-Pacific gathers in Manila | Secretary of State Marco Rubio will join Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and regional diplomats in Manila for ASEAN meetings shaped by three converging crises: confrontation in the South China Sea, Myanmar’s worsening civil war and the economic shock of the renewed U.S.–Iran conflict.

Rubio and Wang are expected to discuss preparations for a possible September meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, even as Washington and Beijing remain divided over maritime security, technology, trade and China’s growing influence across Southeast Asia.

ASEAN will also press for progress on a long-delayed South China Sea code of conduct and hear from its special envoy on new efforts to engage Myanmar’s military government, opposition forces and armed ethnic groups. The bloc is simultaneously preparing a joint appeal for de-escalation in the Iran war, which has driven up energy costs and exposed the vulnerability of Asia’s oil-importing economies.

The meetings will be an exercise in diplomatic compartmentalization. Washington and Beijing are preparing another presidential summit while competing for control of the region’s trade routes, security architecture and political loyalties.

They are not resolving their rivalry. They are trying to keep it organized.

📍Taiwan warns against Beijing’s “legal warfare” | Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te warned that the island must never be transformed from a democratic Taiwan into “China’s Taiwan,” using his ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s annual convention to denounce what he called Beijing’s expanding “red terror.”

Lai focused on China’s new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, which took effect this month. Beijing says it may pursue individuals and organizations outside China that it believes “threaten national or ethnic unity”, a claim that has alarmed Taiwan, the United States and the European Union over the prospect of transnational repression against Taiwanese citizens whom China labels separatists.

The pressure surrounding Taiwan is no longer confined to warships and military aircraft. Beijing increasingly combines legal claims, diplomatic isolation, trade restrictions, cyber operations and information warfare to narrow Taiwan’s international space and make resistance more costly without immediately triggering a conventional conflict.

The strategy is designed to make Chinese sovereignty appear inevitable before it is ever imposed.

Taiwan’s answer is that democracy, not Beijing’s law, will decide its future.

📍Brazil becomes the first test of Trump’s new tariff strategy | The United States will impose 25% tariffs on roughly 3,000 Brazilian products beginning July 22, including machinery, furniture, ethanol and sugar. Coffee, beef, orange juice, aircraft components and certain energy products are among the exemptions intended to limit disruption to American consumers and supply chains.

The tariffs follow a yearlong Section 301 investigation in which Washington accused Brazil of unfair practices involving digital trade and electronic payments, preferential tariffs, intellectual-property protections, ethanol access, anti-corruption enforcement and illegal deforestation. Brasília rejects those findings and is preparing countermeasures under its Reciprocity Law while pursuing the dispute through the World Trade Organization.

The case is unusual because the United States already runs a substantial trade surplus with Brazil. This is therefore less an attempt to correct a trade imbalance than an effort to use market access as leverage over Brazilian domestic policy.

Brazil is the first major test of whether Trump can replace his defeated emergency-tariff program with a slower, country-by-country offensive built on older, and potentially more durable, trade law.

📍Canada closes the door as Congo’s Ebola outbreak spreads | Canada will temporarily deny entry to most foreign nationals who have been in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the previous 21 days, beginning Monday night. The government says the measure is precautionary, although the World Health Organization continues to assess the risk of international spread as low and advises against broad travel restrictions.

Congo is confronting the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record. As of July 15, the country had reported 2,124 confirmed cases and 828 deaths from the Bundibugyo strain, for which no approved vaccine or treatment currently exists. Conflict, attacks on health workers and distrust of responders have made containment substantially harder.

The decision revives a familiar public-health dispute: whether closing borders meaningfully reduces risk or instead stigmatizes affected countries, obstructs humanitarian work and discourages governments from reporting outbreaks quickly.

Canada is trying to keep the virus outside its borders. The danger is that containment becomes isolation.

📍The AI trade encounters turbulence | The global semiconductor selloff deepened last week as investors began questioning whether record spending on data centers, advanced chips and power infrastructure can produce profits quickly enough to justify the sector’s valuations. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell roughly 10% during the week and entered bear-market territory, although chip stocks remain sharply higher for the year.

The retreat does not mean demand has disappeared. TSMC still expects strong, multiyear growth in AI chips and is expanding its planned investment in the United States to $265 billion. The tension is between the industry’s extraordinary expansion and investors’ growing reluctance to treat every dollar of AI spending as an inevitable future return.

At the same time, Xi Jinping is positioning China as the advocate of a more open and broadly accessible global AI system. Beijing says artificial intelligence should narrow the technological divide rather than deepen it, while opposing ideological barriers and Western restrictions on advanced chips and computing power.

The AI contest now has three simultaneous fronts: who can build the strongest systems, who can sustain the immense cost of building them, and who gets permitted to use them.

Something extra for your radar:

A first-century Roman funerary sphinx has been discovered built into a staircase in Elche, Spain, where it had spent generations hidden in plain sight. Archaeologists believe the winged stone figure once guarded the tomb of a prominent citizen, carrying the soul of the dead toward the afterlife.

Art of the Week

Your breath of fresh art and culture.

Our art finds to start your week:

Slaughter of the suitors by Odysseus and Telemachus, Campanian red-figure bell-krater, c. 330 BC, Louvre (CA 7124)

The suitors (οἱ μνηστήρες) are one of the main subjects in the storyline of The Odyssey

Penelope and the Suitors by John William Waterhouse (1912)
During Odysseus’ long absence, a group of suitors form, trying to seduce Penelope. They occupy Odysseus’ home and pressure Penelope to remarry. To delay them, she promises to choose a husband once she finishes weaving a funeral shroud for Odysseus’ father, Laertes. For three years, she weaves by day and secretly unravels the work at night until a maidservant exposes the ruse.

What to Watch This Week:

What could break, what could shift, and what signals to watch this weekend

📌 The next layer of U.S. targets in Iran. Strikes against additional power, transportation or communications infrastructure would signal that Washington has moved decisively from retaliation toward sustained economic coercion.

Aoun’s meeting with Trump on Tuesday. Watch for any timetable connecting Hezbollah’s disarmament to an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory. Without sequencing, the proposal remains a circle in which neither party moves first.

The diplomacy in Manila. A confirmed Rubio–Wang meeting would help establish whether the planned Trump–Xi summit remains intact despite rising tension over trade, Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Brazil’s response to the Wednesday tariffs. Brasília will have to decide whether reciprocity means carefully targeted pressure or the opening of a much wider commercial confrontation.

Oil above $90. The duration matters more than the headline. A prolonged rise would affect inflation expectations, central-bank policy, transport costs and the finances of energy-importing governments far beyond the Middle East.

Big Tech’s spending confession. Alphabet, Tesla and Intel will reveal whether the AI boom is still accelerating, or whether shareholders are beginning to demand that the billions poured into computing infrastructure produce clearer profits.

Between the straits and the static, we’ll keep watching where pressure becomes policy, and where policy becomes something harder to reverse.

Spotlight on the Markets:

📌 Oil begins the week as the clearest measure of geopolitical anxiety. Brent crude moved above $90 a barrel in Sunday trading, while West Texas Intermediate approached $85 as investors weighed further attacks on Iran and continuing disruption around Hormuz. U.S. stock futures remained comparatively restrained, suggesting markets have not yet priced in a complete breakdown of regional energy flows.

Wall Street ended last week lower. The S&P 500 lost 1.55%, the Nasdaq fell 2.9% and the Dow declined 0.93%, with the semiconductor rout weighing heavily on technology shares.

This week will test whether the AI rally still has institutional support. Alphabet and Tesla report Wednesday, followed by Intel on Thursday. More than 80 S&P 500 companies are scheduled to release results, while investors scrutinize how much the largest technology companies continue spending on data centers, chips and power infrastructure.

The European Central Bank meets Thursday with oil prices once again threatening to revive inflation. Markets broadly expect the ECB to hold rates steady, but Christine Lagarde’s language may matter more than the decision itself.

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Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images

For several years now, and with growing urgency since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, alarm bells have been ringing across Europe and NATO over the possibility of a Russian attack against the Alliance itself. Where such an attack might occur, what form it might take, and what Moscow would hope to achieve have all been matters of considerable debate. Among the most frequently discussed scenarios are provocations against Poland or the Baltic states, ranging from cyberattacks and sabotage to limited conventional military action—or, perhaps most plausibly, some combination of the two.

In recent weeks, however, the tempo and specificity of these warnings appear to have increased. Intelligence assessments cited by leaders in Lithuania and Poland reportedly point to the possibility of limited Russian attacks against critical infrastructure in NATO territory. Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs has gone further, warning that Moscow may seek to indirectly test Article 5 and NATO’s response mechanisms.

That raises a question more complicated than whether Russia would deliberately start a war with NATO: What if the objective is not to defeat NATO, but simply to discover where NATO believes war begins?

As Russia’s war in Ukraine has ground into a costly stalemate, while Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have imposed growing economic and strategic costs, the pressures facing Vladimir Putin and his government have continued to mount. How precarious Putin’s own political position has become is impossible to know from outside the Kremlin. Authoritarian systems are notoriously difficult to assess precisely because they suppress many of the signals that would ordinarily reveal political weakness, and history has shown that seemingly durable regimes can unravel with surprising speed.

If Putin does perceive the current trajectory of the war as threatening not only Russia’s strategic position but ultimately his own hold on power, the incentives facing him may look very different from those assumed by analysts who regard a confrontation with NATO as inherently irrational.

One last card available to Putin might therefore be a calculated push against a weak point in NATO’s defenses or political cohesion. A limited confrontation in the Baltics or Poland could allow him to recast the war in Ukraine as merely one front in the much larger struggle against NATO and the West that he has long claimed Russia is fighting.

The objective would not necessarily be to defeat NATO militarily. It could instead be to create a rapid fait accompli, expose divisions within the Alliance over how forcefully to respond, and demonstrate to the Russian public that the conflict had entered a new and supposedly historic phase. A limited territorial seizure, an attack on critical infrastructure, or a move threatening the Suwałki corridor could all create precisely the kind of dilemma Moscow might seek: an action serious enough that NATO could not easily ignore it, but limited enough to make escalation politically difficult.

A conflict with NATO could also give Putin the justification he needs to order a broader general mobilization while reducing the risk of provoking widespread public anger. By portraying Russia as facing a direct existential threat from the Alliance itself, the Kremlin could seek to impose far greater human and economic costs on the population while tapping more deeply into Russia’s large pool of manpower.

The greatest danger, then, may not come from a full-scale Russian invasion of NATO territory. Such an attack would almost certainly unify the Alliance and invite an overwhelming response. A more attractive option for Moscow would be something smaller, faster, and more difficult to categorize: a limited territorial incursion, sabotage against critical infrastructure, a drone strike, or some combination of military and hybrid actions calibrated to create confusion before consensus.

In that scenario, the real target would not necessarily be the territory itself. It would be NATO’s political cohesion.

Putin would be betting that the Alliance’s military strength is greater than its ability to agree quickly on how that strength should be used. A carefully limited attack could force NATO governments to debate whether the incident truly constituted an armed attack, whether Article 5 should be invoked, and what level of response would be proportionate. Every hour spent arguing would serve Moscow’s purpose.

And from Moscow’s perspective, this may be the perfect moment. The United States, NATO’s largest military power and its indispensable anchor since the Alliance was founded, now appears more distant from and more openly doubtful about NATO than at any point in recent memory.

Even a confrontation that ultimately went badly for Russia could carry political advantages for Putin at home. For years, the Kremlin has portrayed the war in Ukraine not simply as a conflict with Kyiv, but as part of a larger struggle against NATO and the collective West. A direct confrontation with the Alliance could therefore validate the narrative Putin has already constructed for the Russian public. The war in Ukraine could be reframed as merely the opening front of a much broader conflict Russia had supposedly been forced to fight all along.

That, in turn, could give the Kremlin greater political room to demand sacrifices from the Russian population. A conflict openly involving NATO could make broader mobilization, deeper economic controls, and greater casualties easier to justify as necessary for national survival rather than as the mounting costs of a war that has failed to deliver a decisive victory.

This is what could make such a gamble attractive despite the enormous risks. Putin would not have to believe that Russia could defeat NATO militarily. He would only have to believe that NATO could be made to hesitate.

That is also where the Alliance’s challenge lies. Article 5 is deliberately flexible. An attack on one ally is considered an attack on all, but each member determines what action it considers necessary in response. That flexibility has helped preserve political unity across a diverse alliance, but it may also create precisely the space an adversary would seek to exploit.

The answer is not to treat every act of sabotage or every border violation as the beginning of World War III. It is to ensure that Moscow cannot assume ambiguity will produce paralysis. NATO must be able to respond to limited and hybrid attacks with equally credible, rapid, and proportionate measures before a crisis begins, rather than improvising under pressure once it has already started.

Putin’s last card would therefore be an extraordinarily dangerous one. He would be wagering not that Russia can defeat NATO, but that NATO can be made to hesitate long enough to fracture politically.

For years, the question has been whether Russia would risk attacking NATO.

The more urgent question may now be whether Putin is willing to test where NATO believes war begins.

— Ali Omur for GP

Good Monday morning!

Another hot sunny blue summer week flew by, as FIFA’s World Cup games come to a close this final week, a handful of footballer veterans have played their final emotional games: Argentina’s Lionel Messi, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo (or maybe not 🤞🏼?!), Brazil’s Neymar, Croatia’s Luka Modrić, Germany’s Manuel Neuer and Belgium’s Kevin De Bruyne.

Post-NATO summit, Turkish citizens are seeing a deepening power grab from an emboldened AKP government. A second Turkish comedian has been arrested for “offensive” language. Suspended Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem İmamoğlu is still being held in a prison complex built specifically to hold opposition leaders (Marmara Prison). İmamoğlu was left going head to head with a judge accusing him of “disruptive” behavior while world leaders were gathered in Ankara to discuss peace, democracy, war and collaborative goals for the year ahead. Erdoğan gifted everyone a revolver with live ammunition, because nothing else could be more symbolic at a time like this.

Cubans are withstanding worsening black outs and threats of a US takeover amidst the island opening up to real estate investment largely driven by Cuban exiles in Miami; Iranian protestors face executions and Trump’s reminding everyone Greenland is still on his to-do list. We’ve got so much more to get into. And we’d never dare leave you without art and wisdom to ponder over.

Thank you for reading our free Monday Headlines newsletter. Paid subscribers get full access to Grounded Perspectives. You’ll get Friday wrap ups, full access to our archives, our Tuesday chats, podcasts, guest posts and more. If you’re so inclined, throw a couple coins into our human battery fund — also known as mochas and green teas. We’re glad you’re here.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.— Ali & Asli

UPCOMING FIFA WORLD CUP GAMES

The Big Story

🎯 Hormuz Closes Again as the U.S.–Iran War Spills Across the Gulf | Iran has again declared the Strait of Hormuz closed, reopening the most dangerous front in its war with the United States. Tehran’s announcement followed an attack on a commercial vessel and a new exchange of missile, drone and air strikes. Iran then targeted sites across Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and Oman, while the United States struck Iranian missile systems, air defenses and Revolutionary Guard boats positioned around the strait.

Washington disputes that Hormuz is actually closed. President Trump and U.S. Central Command say ships can still move through a southern route closer to Oman and that American forces are prepared to defend commercial navigation. But the distinction between legally open and commercially usable may prove decisive. Shipping companies, crews and insurers, not presidential declarations, will determine how much traffic is willing to pass through a waterway now exposed to missiles, mines, drones and miscalculation.

The stakes extend far beyond the Gulf. Roughly 20 million barrels of oil moved through Hormuz each day in 2024, about one-fifth of global petroleum consumption, along with approximately one-fifth of the world’s liquefied natural-gas trade. Even a partial disruption can lift shipping costs, tighten fuel supplies and transmit inflation into transportation, food and fertilizer prices.

So, what happens next?

The likeliest scenario is a strait that remains technically open but functionally dangerous. Iran may avoid attempting an airtight blockade, which would be difficult to sustain, and instead use warning shots, selective attacks and threats against unauthorized routes to keep insurers nervous and traffic constrained. The United States is likely to protect the Oman-side corridor, strike coastal launch systems and escort selected vessels rather than immediately widen the war into a ground campaign but Trump talks big and threats have already been made.

The greatest escalation risk is another ship strike with mass casualties or a successful attack on a major U.S. base. Either could trigger a broader American effort to destroy Iran’s coastal missile batteries, naval infrastructure and Revolutionary Guard fleet. That would draw Gulf governments further into a conflict they have tried to contain while making their ports, pipelines, air bases and desalination systems more vulnerable.

A diplomatic bargain remains possible, but it will now require more than another ceasefire announcement. Any durable settlement would need enforceable rules for navigation, agreement over the disputed shipping route and guarantees that commercial vessels will not become bargaining chips each time negotiations stall. Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar, Egypt and Oman are positioned to keep mediation alive, but the latest exchange has badly weakened confidence in the previous framework.

Ankara has been passing messages between Washington and Tehran and supporting the Pakistan-led diplomatic track. Erdoğan has also accused Israel of trying to sabotage a U.S.–Iran settlement. Turkey’s preferred outcome is a negotiated reopening of Hormuz that does not formally grant Iran permanent control or drag NATO into enforcing navigation militarily.

Turkey’s balancing act has limits. Iranian missiles have already approached or violated Turkish airspace, prompting NATO interceptions and reinforced air defenses. Ankara therefore condemns attacks on Iran while warning Tehran that Turkish territory, airspace and NATO installations cannot become collateral terrain.

Both nations share a roughly 560-kilometer border with Iran and has prepared buffer zones, temporary shelters and contingency plans for a larger civilian flight from the war. Another mass-displacement crisis would carry enormous political consequences inside Turkey and potentially reopen tensions with Europe over migration.

Turkey is a major energy importer, so higher oil, gas, diesel and shipping costs feed directly into inflation and the country’s import bill. Energy think tank Ember estimates that sustained Hormuz disruption could add about $14 billion to Turkey’s net energy-import costs in 2026. It’s also a major energy importer, so higher oil, gas, diesel and shipping costs feed directly into inflation and the country’s import bill. It also remains a regional power that is desperately trying not to choose. Ankara opposes a foreign campaign to destroy or destabilize Iran, but it also does not want Tehran controlling Gulf shipping, striking neighboring states or testing NATO defenses. Turkey will probably continue offering back-channel diplomacy, border coordination and defensive support while resisting direct participation in a U.S.-led naval war unless Turkish territory or vessels are attacked.

Our prediction

Neither side currently appears eager to begin an unlimited regional war, but both believe escalation can improve their negotiating position. That makes a prolonged cycle of strikes, contested shipping and emergency diplomacy more likely than either a clean reopening or a permanent closure. Hormuz may continue to function but as a tollgate controlled by fear.

But while the world watches Hormuz, the fate of Iran’s protesters has largely disappeared behind the war. Security forces killed thousands during the January uprising, according to rights groups and UN investigators, and executions connected to the unrest have continued throughout the year. Thousands more have reportedly been detained, with accounts of enforced disappearances, torture, mock executions, coerced confessions and families being intimidated into silence. Repression intensified further under what authorities described as wartime conditions.

Petition Calling for Immediate Action to Halt the Death Sentence of 25-Year-Old Political Prisoner Arghavan Fallahi
via & the NCRI

The streets may appear quieter now, but that quiet should not be mistaken for reconciliation or public consent. The protest movement has been driven underground by lethal force, imprisonment and fear, while the economic grievances that ignited it, currency collapse, inflation, failing services and political repression, have only deepened during the war. Any diplomatic agreement that reopens Hormuz while leaving detainees, condemned protesters and victims’ families outside the negotiations would stabilize the shipping lanes without resolving Iran’s internal crisis.

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In Other News

📌 Turkey Post-NATO: Stronger Abroad, More Repressive at Home | Hosting NATO’s July 7–8 summit gave President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the international validation Ankara had been seeking. Donald Trump announced that the United States would lift sanctions imposed over Turkey’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile system and signaled openness to restoring Ankara’s access to F-35 fighter jets. Turkey also used the summit to promote its expanding defense industry, press for entry into European procurement programs and reinforce its status as NATO’s indispensable bridge between Europe, the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Middle East.

But the diplomatic victory remains incomplete. U.S. law still prevents Turkey from possessing the S-400 system while rejoining the F-35 program, and Ankara has not confirmed reports that it may transfer the Russian missiles to a Gulf country. Moscow calls the system’s fate an “extremely sensitive” matter, leaving Turkey caught between repairing its defense relationship with Washington and avoiding an open rupture with Russia.

official NATO Ankara 2026 summit group photo

At home, the summit’s polished display of alliance unity obscured a harsher political reality. While Erdoğan welcomed NATO leaders in Ankara, his imprisoned rival Ekrem İmamoğlu was shuttled through multiple court proceedings involving corruption, espionage and academic-degree charges that could effectively remove him from political life. Demonstrations were restricted, journalists and opposition figures faced continued detention, and NATO allies largely avoided publicly confronting Turkey’s democratic backsliding.

The economy offers little relief. Official annual inflation stood at 32.6% in May, while the IMF has cut Turkey’s projected 2026 growth to 2.9%, its second downgrade this year. Higher energy prices from the Iran war threaten another inflationary shock just as the government tries to persuade investors that its economic stabilization program remains intact.

The post-summit picture is therefore sharply divided. Turkey has become more valuable to NATO, more courted by Washington and potentially better positioned to profit from Europe’s defense buildup. But that strategic importance is also giving Erdoğan greater insulation from Western criticism as political competition, civil liberties and household purchasing power continue to erode.

Ankara left the summit with greater leverage abroad and fewer constraints at home.

As NATO leaders gathered in Ankara, Ekrem İmamoğlu was required to appear in three separate proceedings on July 6, covering the sweeping municipal-corruption case, allegations concerning his university diploma and a political-espionage charge. In the main case, prosecutors accuse him of 142 offenses and seek sentences totaling more than 2,000 years. İmamoğlu denies the allegations and says the prosecutions are intended to eliminate Erdoğan’s strongest electoral rival.

The July hearings intensified concerns about his ability to mount a defense. On July 8, the presiding judge removed İmamoğlu from the courtroom following a dispute over procedure and the limited time allotted for him to answer the charges. Prosecutors then opened an additional investigation into remarks he made during the exchange, alleging that he threatened a public official. Although the court released six co-defendants, İmamoğlu remained among 53 defendants held in pretrial detention. His next detention review is scheduled for August 6, and the corruption trial is due to resume on August 17.

İmamoğlu has now spent more than fifteen months in custody without a conviction. His challenge to the legality of that detention has been given priority status by the European Court of Human Rights, while the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities is seeking to intervene in the case, a first for the body and a sign that the prosecution is increasingly being treated as a test of local democracy beyond Turkey itself.

📌 Cuba Goes Dark as Drone Allegations Raise the Stakes | Cuba’s electrical system is coming apart. The island suffered its second nationwide grid collapse in a week and fourth of the year, after a U.S.-imposed oil blockade and the loss of Venezuelan and Mexican fuel supplies left its aging power plants unable to operate. Some households have received only one or two hours of electricity a day, food is spoiling, businesses are failing and scattered pot-banging protests have returned to Havana.

The humanitarian and political crisis is now colliding with a new security confrontation. U.S. officials allege that Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones of varying capabilities from Russia and Iran since 2023, stored them at strategic locations across the island and discussed how they might be used against Guantánamo Bay, U.S. vessels or potentially Key West if hostilities erupt. The same intelligence reportedly points to Iranian military advisers operating in Havana. U.S. officials say they do not believe an attack is imminent. Cuba says Washington is fabricating a threat to justify sanctions or military intervention.

That leaves Cuba trapped between collapse and confrontation. An island struggling to keep refrigerators and hospitals running while Washington increasingly views it as a potential platform for Iranian and Russian asymmetric warfare. A government too weak to keep the lights on may still possess enough military capability, or be perceived as possessing enough, to trigger an even more dangerous American response.

📌 Venezuela’s Earthquake Catastrophe Deepens | The official death toll from Venezuela’s June 24 twin earthquakes has risen to 4,490, with 16,740 people injured and 17,907 left homeless. Rescue operations are winding down as families continue searching collapsed buildings and makeshift morgues for relatives, while overcrowded shelters face mounting shortages of clean water, sanitation and medical care.

The disaster has also torn through Venezuela’s football community. Argentine defender Lucas Trejo, who plays for Marítimo de La Guaira, lost his wife, Yanina Maranella, and their children Aarón and Ainhoa after a 74-hour search beneath the rubble. His teammate Héctor Bello lost his wife, Andrea, who died shielding their infant daughter Alana. The baby survived. Youth players Víctor Palacios and Razan Sijaa were also killed. Sijaa reportedly died alongside his family.

Among the dead was 18-year-old Venezuelan prospect Yimvert Berroteran, whom FIFA described as one of the country’s rising young players. At the World Cup, teams including England and Panama observed a minute of silence for the victims, bringing a national catastrophe briefly into the tournament’s global spotlight.

The tragedy is no longer only a natural disaster. It is becoming an indictment of fragile housing, weakened public institutions and an emergency response that has left many Venezuelans digging for their own dead.

Six months after U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela remains suspended between regime continuity and foreign-directed transition. Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has preserved the military, bureaucracy and security structures of Chavismo while cooperating with Washington on oil sales, private investment and limited political releases. The opposition remains sidelined, no firm election timetable has emerged, and the United States exercises extraordinary influence over the country’s principal source of revenue.

The June 24 earthquakes have become the Rodríguez government’s first enormous domestic test. Rodríguez is now seeking access to frozen Venezuelan assets, gold held in Britain and emergency financing from the IMF. The government has created a reconstruction fund, but the country also faces roughly $240 billion in debt, reduced oil production and enormous rebuilding costs.

Maduro was removed, but the hollowed-out state he left behind was not rebuilt.

Delcy Rodríguez is more likely to consolidate power than surrender it quickly. Washington currently has strong incentives to keep her in place because her government is cooperating on oil, mining and foreign investment, and the United States formally recognized her leadership and lifted sanctions against her in the spring. That backing gives her time, money and international legitimacy that the opposition does not presently possess.

Her most immediate threat is probably inside Chavismo, not María Corina Machado. Rodríguez has installed loyalists in military intelligence, the presidential guard and the Defense Ministry while reducing the influence of Maduro-era power brokers. Reuters has identified Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and his connections to security forces and armed colectivos as the most serious internal counterweight to her rule.

The earthquakes complicate that consolidation. The disastrous response has exposed the weakness of the state and created anger over collapsed public housing, delayed rescues and the government’s emphasis on security rather than emergency relief. If that anger becomes sustained street mobilization, Rodríguez may answer with a mixture of humanitarian concessions, controlled political releases and repression rather than risk genuinely open elections.

Her government may grow more market-friendly and less explicitly Maduroist, but that should not be mistaken for democratization. The more probable outcome is a hybrid system: Chavista institutions and coercive machinery preserved beneath a new layer of U.S.-backed economic reform.

Elections are therefore likely to be delayed, tightly managed or offered only after Rodríguez has secured guarantees for herself, her allies and the military. Her greatest danger may not be the opposition but a fracture within Chavismo, especially if earthquake anger, reconstruction failures or disputes over oil revenue persuade military and party elites that she can no longer protect their interests.

Our prediction

Delcy will try to become not merely Venezuela’s caretaker, but the indispensable broker between Washington, the military and the remnants of the revolution. The longer that arrangement holds, the less temporary her presidency will become.

📌 Lindsey Graham’s Death Leaves a Foreign-Policy and Senate Vacuum | Senator Lindsey Graham died on July 11 at 71, only two days after his birthday and shortly after returning from Kyiv. A preliminary medical finding identified an aortic dissection caused by cardiovascular disease. His death temporarily reduces the Republican Party’s effective Senate strength at a moment when lawmakers are returning to consider defense legislation, national-security nominations and a major new sanctions package targeting Russia’s oil revenues.

Graham had met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on July 10 to discuss air-defense requirements and legislation imposing steep penalties on countries that continue purchasing Russian energy. The Trump administration had only just approved moving the bipartisan bill forward. Some Republicans are now calling its passage part of Graham’s political legacy, which could give the measure an immediate burst of momentum even as it loses its principal Senate advocate.

His absence will be felt well beyond Ukraine. Graham was one of Washington’s most persistent champions of military aid to Israel, sanctions and military pressure against Iran, NATO’s eastern flank and an interventionist American role abroad. He also occupied an unusual position inside the Republican Party. He was close enough to Trump to influence him, but still attached to the traditional alliance-based foreign policy that much of the MAGA movement rejects. His death removes one of the few figures capable of translating that older Republican worldview into language Trump might accept.

The political succession will move quickly. South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster can appoint a temporary senator to serve through the remainder of Graham’s current term, which expires in January. Republicans will then hold a special primary on August 11, followed by a possible runoff on August 25. The nominee will face Democrat Annie Andrews in the November 3 general election for a full six-year term. South Carolina remains strongly Republican, but the accelerated process opens an unusually compressed contest over who inherits Graham’s seat and whether that person inherits his foreign-policy outlook.

So, what happens next?

The Russia-sanctions bill may advance quickly under the emotional force of Graham’s death, but his broader influence will be harder to replace. Other senators can vote for Ukraine, Israel or military pressure on Iran; few have Graham’s combination of seniority, media visibility, committee relationships and personal access to Trump.

The likeliest outcome is not an immediate change in U.S. policy, but a gradual weakening of the Republican interventionist bloc. Without Graham, arguments for sustained aid to Ukraine and continued alliance commitments will depend more heavily on institutional Republicans at a time when isolationist voices are growing louder inside the party.

Our prediction

Graham’s final Russia-sanctions bill probably passes and is named as part of his legacy. But the longer-term consequence of his death may be the disappearance of one of the last major Republican bridges between Trump’s America First movement and the older national-security establishment.

His seat can be filled. His particular role in Washington cannot.

📌 Ukraine Resets Its Government as the Drone War Accelerates | President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is replacing Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko after only a year in office, triggering the resignation of the government and Ukraine’s fourth major cabinet reorganization since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Zelenskyy has not yet named her successor, but he has also signaled changes at the top of Ukraine’s law-enforcement agencies and offered Svyrydenko another significant role, possibly involving relations with the United States.

The reset comes as Kyiv tries to reassure Western partners following the “Operation Midas” (“Mindich-gate”) corruption scandal, an alleged $100 million kickback operation involving the state nuclear company Energoatom and figures close to Zelenskyy. The reshuffle therefore appears designed not only to improve wartime administration, but to demonstrate that Ukraine can confront internal corruption while continuing to negotiate weapons, investment and eventual European integration.

At the same time, the war is becoming more automated and industrialized. Germany is financing 50,000 Ukrainian-made Shrike attack drones in an order worth roughly €90 million, one of the largest known Western purchases of drones for Kyiv. Produced by Ukrainian manufacturer SkyFall, the first-person-view aircraft use autonomous targeting software developed by the U.S. company Auterion. Some have already been delivered, with the remainder expected later this year.

Ukraine now manufactures millions of drones annually and carries out thousands of drone operations each day, increasingly striking Russian refineries, vessels and logistical infrastructure as part of what Zelenskyy calls a campaign of “long-range sanctions.” Germany’s order reflects a broader change in Western support. Instead of merely shipping weapons from depleted European stockpiles, allies are increasingly financing Ukraine’s own defense industry and purchasing Ukrainian systems at scale.

Russia, meanwhile, continues to intensify its aerial campaign against Ukrainian cities. Missile and drone strikes on July 11 killed at least eight people and wounded dozens, following attacks earlier in the month that killed dozens in Kyiv and exposed Ukraine’s severe shortage of Patriot interceptors. Ukrainian air defenses reportedly intercepted only four of 49 ballistic missiles fired during July’s opening days.

The political reshuffle and the drone order are therefore parts of the same wartime calculation. Zelenskyy is trying to tighten the state internally while expanding Ukraine’s ability to strike Russia without waiting for every missile, aircraft or political decision to arrive from abroad.

Our prediction

The government reset will produce new faces and stronger coordination with Washington and Europe, but not a fundamental decentralization of power around Zelenskyy. On the battlefield, drones will account for an even greater share of Western aid and Ukrainian strikes, while scarce air-defense interceptors remain the country’s most dangerous vulnerability. Ukraine is rapidly gaining the ability to punish Russia at distance but still lacks enough protection from what Russia sends back.

📌 Israel will vote on October 27, its first national election since the October 7 attack and the subsequent wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. Polls currently point toward losses for Benjamin Netanyahu’s nationalist-religious coalition, although the fragmented opposition still lacks an obvious route to assembling a governing majority. The date converts months of speculation into a defined political countdown.

Israel’s opposition is not a conventional left-wing alternative. Its strongest figures are former prime minister Naftali Bennett, now leading the joint Together party with centrist Yair Lapid, and former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, whose new Yashar party has surged by presenting him as a tougher, less compromised security leader. The broader camp is united around removing Netanyahu, investigating the failures surrounding October 7, ending ultra-Orthodox military exemptions and restoring institutions weakened by years of judicial and political warfare. It remains divided, however, over Gaza, Palestinian statehood and cooperation with Israel’s Arab parties. Bennett has ruled out relying on Arab factions potentially denying the opposition the very seats it may need to reach the 61-seat majority required to govern. Netanyahu may therefore lose the popular and parliamentary argument yet survive the coalition arithmetic.

The newest entrant is A Place for Us All (Makom Lekulanu) a joint Jewish-Arab party launched by Standing Together leaders Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green. Formally independent from the activist movement, it presents itself as an equal political partnership between Jewish Israelis and Palestinian citizens of Israel rather than an Arab representative inside a Jewish-led party, or vice versa. Its opening slate is evenly divided between Jewish and Arab candidates and between women and men.

The party campaigns on ending the war, pursuing Israeli-Palestinian peace, defending democratic institutions, reducing inequality and confronting the violent crime crisis inside Arab communities. Its significance lies less in its present size than in its attempt to create a political constituency that rejects both Netanyahu’s ethno-nationalism and the assumption that Jewish and Palestinian voters must organize separately.

Its immediate challenge is electoral survival. Any party must win at least 3.25% of the national vote to enter the Knesset, and critics on the left fear that an unsuccessful independent run could waste anti-Netanyahu votes. Party leaders insist they will pursue alliances rather than endanger the opposition bloc.

A Place for Us All may not yet possess a clear route to power, but it represents something largely absent from this election, a shared Jewish-Palestinian political project arguing that equality and peace are not side issues, but the foundation of Israel’s future.

The electoral countdown is already acquiring a regional antagonist. Netanyahu has intensified his confrontation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, urging Donald Trump to restrain Ankara and block Turkey’s return to the F-35 program. He argues that Erdoğan’s hostility toward Israel and Turkey’s growing regional military reach would make the transfer of advanced aircraft a direct strategic threat. Erdoğan, in turn, has accused Netanyahu’s government of destabilizing Syria and Lebanon, threatening Turkey itself and attempting to sabotage the U.S.–Iran diplomatic process.

The dispute became more than rhetorical at the NATO summit. Trump publicly defended Erdoğan, announced that U.S. sanctions on Turkey would be lifted and signaled openness to restoring Ankara’s access to F-35s despite Israeli objections and existing legal barriers. Netanyahu subsequently raised the issue directly with Trump, turning the future of Turkish air power into another point of tension between Jerusalem and Washington.

The tit-for-tat benefits both leaders politically. Netanyahu can cast Erdoğan as an emerging strategic threat and present himself once again as the indispensable defender of Israel’s military superiority. Erdoğan can position himself as the region’s loudest state-level opponent of Netanyahu while strengthening Turkey’s standing with Washington, NATO and Arab governments.

But the rivalry also carries real risks. Turkey and Israel are competing over influence in Syria, Gaza’s postwar order, the eastern Mediterranean and the future balance of air power after the Iran war. The sharper their rhetoric becomes, the greater the possibility that a proxy confrontation, airspace incident or dispute over Syria moves the relationship beyond political theater.

Our prediction

Netanyahu will increasingly place Erdoğan alongside Iran and its remaining partners in his election narrative, particularly if he cannot campaign on a decisive end to the wars. Erdoğan will answer in kind but both leaders will probably stop short of direct confrontation, using Trump as intermediary while testing how much regional advantage they can extract from the feud. But we should not rest in the idea that it’s out of the realm of possibility. The last decade has shown us that many things we once wrote off as unthinkable, came to be.

📌 Typhoon Bavi Forces One of the Year’s Largest Evacuations | More than 2.8 million people were evacuated as Typhoon Bavi, the most powerful storm to strike mainland China this year, made two landfalls in Zhejiang province. More than 2.2 million were displaced in Zhejiang alone, while hundreds of flights and train services were canceled across Hangzhou and Shanghai. No deaths or injuries had been officially reported in mainland China as of Sunday, although the storm injured 134 people while passing Taiwan.

Bavi weakened to a tropical storm after moving inland, but its danger did not end at landfall. The storm’s rain system stretches roughly the size of France and is expected to carry heavy or torrential rainfall across eastern and northern China, including areas already saturated by previous storms. Flooding, landslides and swollen rivers now pose the greatest threat as Bavi moves through Anhui and turns toward the Yellow Sea.

The storm is also becoming a test of China’s ability to manage compound climate disasters. Southern and central provinces were already recovering from deadly flooding, dam failures and tornadoes before Bavi arrived. The evacuation may have prevented a much higher immediate death toll; the harder test will be whether infrastructure, reservoirs and emergency services can withstand several more days of rain.

📌 Congo’s Ebola Outbreak Enters a More Dangerous Phase | The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola outbreak is still expanding. Confirmed infections have climbed above 1,800 and deaths have passed 600, while suspected cases have appeared in previously unaffected provinces. Two patients were identified in Tshopo, including one with no clear geographic connection to the original outbreak zone—raising fears that transmission chains are moving faster than health authorities can trace them.

The outbreak, caused by the relatively rare Bundibugyo virus, remains especially difficult to control. There is no approved vaccine or treatment specifically for this Ebola species, treatment centers are overwhelmed, protective equipment is scarce and contact tracing has been disrupted by conflict, displacement, funding shortages and attacks on health workers. The WHO has described the epidemic as remaining in an “expansion phase,” with infected people sometimes traveling between regions in search of care and spreading the virus along the way.

The crisis has also reached the international humanitarian community. A U.S. aid worker has tested positive, prompting the CDC, Congolese authorities and the worker’s employer to trace contacts and limit further transmission. The case does not by itself indicate a significant threat to the American public, the CDC currently assesses that risk as low, but it demonstrates how exposed frontline workers remain.

There is one significant source of hope. Congolese and international researchers have begun an unusually rapid clinical trial testing MBP134 and remdesivir, separately and in combination with supportive care. The trial began only weeks after the outbreak was declared an international health emergency and includes children, pregnant women and breastfeeding patients groups frequently excluded from early-stage medical research. A separate study is expected to test obeldesivir as preventive medicine for people exposed to the virus.

The outbreak has therefore entered a race between transmission and science. Researchers are moving with exceptional speed, but experimental medicine cannot substitute for functioning clinics, trusted health workers and reliable contact tracing. Unless containment improves, Congo may produce a treatment breakthrough while the epidemic continues outrunning the system meant to deliver it.

📌 Fourteen Nations Challenge China’s South China Sea Claims | Fourteen countries, including the United States, Philippines, Japan, Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany and New Zealand, have reaffirmed the 2016 tribunal ruling that rejected China’s sweeping claims across the South China Sea. The European Union issued a parallel statement, calling the award final and legally binding and warning against coercive actions that threaten navigation and regional stability. China dismissed the ruling once again as illegal, “null and void” and without binding force.

The legal position is clear. China cannot claim historic rights to resources across virtually the entire sea merely by drawing a line around them. The practical position is far murkier. Over the decade since the ruling, Beijing has expanded coast-guard patrols, fortified artificial islands and used water cannons, lasers, barriers and maritime-militia vessels to obstruct rival claimants without crossing cleanly into conventional warfare.

Scarborough Shoal illustrates the gap between judgment and enforcement. The tribunal recognized it as a traditional fishing ground shared among several countries, yet Filipino fishermen say Chinese vessels continue to drive them away, cut anchor lines and use water cannons. China has exercised de facto control there since 2012 and recently placed new barriers and infrastructure around the shoal, prompting renewed Philippine protests.

The result is a contest between two kinds of power. The Philippines and its partners hold the stronger legal case. China possesses the larger coast guard, the permanent installations and the ability to create daily facts at sea. The coalition’s statement matters because it prevents Beijing’s claims from acquiring legitimacy through repetition but declarations alone cannot reopen fishing grounds or remove military infrastructure.

Our prediction

The dispute will remain below the threshold of open war but become more militarized. The Philippines will lean further on U.S., Japanese and Australian patrols, surveillance and defense commitments, while China continues using coast-guard and civilian vessels to test how much pressure it can apply without triggering a treaty response. The danger is not a planned naval war, but a collision, injury or blockade that forces governments to decide whether years of legal commitments will finally be enforced at sea.

📌 Syria’s First Post-Assad Parliament Convenes | Syria’s new People’s Assembly has met for the first time in Damascus, restoring a national legislature 19 months after Bashar al-Assad’s fall. The 210-seat chamber is transitional rather than fully elected. Two-thirds of its members were selected indirectly through regional electoral colleges, while President Ahmed al-Sharaa appointed the remaining 70. Officials say direct elections were impossible because war, displacement and destroyed civil records left Syria without reliable voter rolls. Critics argue that the arrangement gives the presidency excessive influence over the country’s emerging political order.

The parliament can propose and approve legislation, but its authority remains limited under Syria’s temporary constitutional declaration. The government does not require a parliamentary vote of confidence, and the chamber’s 30-month term can be renewed. Its most consequential responsibility may be forming the committee that will draft Syria’s permanent constitution, the document that will determine the balance of presidential and legislative power, minority protections and the terms of eventual national elections.

Representation remains an immediate test. Women hold only 21 seats, most through al-Sharaa’s appointments, while Kurds, Christians, Alawites and other minorities appear underrepresented. Four seats remain vacant, including three reserved for Druze-majority Sweida, which remains beyond full government control following deadly sectarian violence.

The parliament is therefore both a milestone and a warning. Syria has replaced Assad’s rubber-stamp legislature with a chamber that may participate in rebuilding the state but one still created largely from above and operating beneath a powerful presidency.

The real test will not be that parliament has convened, but whether it is permitted to write rules that eventually constrain the man who convened it.

📌 Bangkok Pub Fire Kills at Least 27 | At least 27 people were killed when fire tore through the Na Ladprao beer hall in northern Bangkok shortly before midnight, while 63 others were hospitalized, including 22 in critical condition. A musician told officials that smoke appeared near a circuit breaker by the stage before the power failed, an explosion was heard and thick black smoke rapidly filled the venue. Investigators have not yet determined the cause.

Many of the victims were found in restrooms at the rear of the building, where patrons apparently fled from the flames only to become trapped. Survivors described darkness, smoke and confusion as they struggled to locate an escape route. Bangkok authorities are examining whether emergency exits were obstructed and whether the building’s ceiling materials and safety systems complied with regulations.

The disaster has revived painful memories of Thailand’s previous entertainment-venue fires, including the 2009 Santika nightclub blaze in Bangkok and the 2022 Mountain B fire in Chonburi. The recurring question is no longer simply how this fire began, but why crowded nightlife venues continue to operate with escape routes and enforcement systems capable of turning an electrical failure into mass death.

The flames may have started near the stage, but the scale of the tragedy was shaped by what happened—or failed to happen—at the exits.

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A Little Something Extra:

The Bayeux Tapestry is returning to Britain for the first time in nearly 1,000 years.

The 70-metre medieval embroidery, history’s most famous illustrated war report, was carried from France to the British Museum in a climate-controlled, anti-vibration container, under police escort and in near-total secrecy. It recounts William the Conqueror’s 1066 invasion, the Battle of Hastings and the violent end of Anglo-Saxon rule.

Before You Go

“Circumstances don’t make the man,
they only reveal him to himself.” — Epictetus

The World (Il Mondo) from the Visconti di Modrone, or Cary–Yale, Tarot, painted in Milan around 1440–45. It belongs to one of the earliest surviving tarot decks and is now held by Yale’s Beinecke Library.

The World tarot card represents reaching a milestone, mastering lessons learned, and achieving a state of harmony and self-actualization.

This track, Ágria Thálassa (Άγρια θάλασσα) by Giorgos Sabanis (Γιώργος Σαμπάνης) makes great soundtrack for your Monday.

Εγώ γεννήθηκα στα κύματα...
Όλη η ζωή μου συναισθήματα...
Να με ημερεύσεις μες τα χέρια σου...
Μέσα στα καλοκαίρια σου...

Εγώ γεννήθηκα άγρια θάλασσα...
Κι όμως στο χάος μου σε διάλεξα...
Να με ημερεύσεις την αγάπη σου...
Τριαντάφυλλο και αγκάθι σου...
Να ‘μαι εγώ...

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What to Watch For This Week:

What could break, what could shift, and what signals to watch by Friday

📌 Tuesday’s U.S. inflation report, major bank earnings and the price of oil will show whether the renewed Hormuz conflict is beginning to migrate into household economics. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs report Tuesday. Producer prices follow Wednesday. Retail sales arrive Thursday.

Iraq’s prime minister visits Washington Monday to sign oil-and-gas agreements partly intended to develop export routes that do not depend so heavily on Hormuz—an unusually direct example of the war already redrawing regional energy strategy.

Spotlight on the Markets:

📌 Wall Street ended Friday higher despite the renewed U.S.–Iran fighting, with the Dow gaining 0.29%, the S&P 500 rising 0.42% and the Nasdaq adding 0.29%. The S&P recorded its second consecutive weekly gain, leaving it up more than 10% in 2026 and less than 1% below its June record. Investors continued to favor the AI trade, reinforced by SK Hynix’s 14% surge in its enormous Nasdaq debut.

The market’s calm did not survive the weekend intact. Renewed attacks in the Gulf and Iran’s declaration that Hormuz was closed pushed Brent crude up more than 3% to roughly $78.50 a barrel in early Monday trading. S&P 500 futures fell 0.3%, Nasdaq futures dropped 0.5%, the dollar strengthened and the 10-year Treasury yield rose to around 4.59% as traders increased bets on further Federal Reserve tightening. Gold, pressured by the stronger dollar and higher yields, slipped to approximately $4,076 an ounce.

The tension is no longer simply between risk and safety, but between two competing inflationary forces: enormous enthusiasm for AI-led earnings growth and the prospect of another sustained energy shock. Markets have so far treated every Hormuz escalation as temporary. That assumption becomes harder to defend if tanker traffic remains restricted, Gulf infrastructure is hit or Brent begins moving decisively back toward $100.

This week brings the first major test. June inflation data, Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s congressional testimony and earnings from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Netflix and other major companies will show whether profits remain strong enough to outweigh higher oil prices, rising bond yields and the possibility of another rate increase. S&P 500 earnings are currently expected to rise 23.7% from a year earlier—a high bar that leaves little room for disappointment.

What to watch: Brent above $80, the 10-year yield approaching 4.7%, evidence that energy costs are feeding into core inflation, and whether technology shares continue rising once the market can no longer dismiss Hormuz as background noise.

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Welcome to our weekend headlines!

Not our usual Friday rundown, but just in time for your Saturn day coffee.

The war in Iran has kicked off part two to match your summer holiday schedule. Israeli intelligence uncovered Tehran plot to assassinate Trump. Erdoğan gave everyone a gun accompanied by live rounds at the NATO Summit in Ankara. China’s on a rocket race. Lebanon’s homes under fire. FIFA’s World Cup has been full of surprises. We’re already on track for a busy, news-filled July. There’s more. Plus, art!

Grab a spoon. Let’s dig in!

Thank you for reading this far. Paid subscribers get full access to Grounded Perspectives and our Friday wrap ups, plus much more. If you’re so inclined, throw a couple coins into our human battery fund — also known as mochas and green teas. We’re glad you’re here.

Until Monday. May your weekend bring you renewed understanding.— Ali & Asli

Grounded Perspectives

NATO After Restoration: What the Ankara Summit Revealed

Fourteen months ago, Volodymyr Zelensky left the White House following a public confrontation with Donald Trump that appeared to capture the deterioration of the relationship between Washington and Kyiv. Zelensky was lectured about gratitude, accused of gambling with global war, and sent away without the diplomatic agreement the meeting had been intended to produce…

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2 months ago · Grounded Perspectives

🎯 Our ceasefire in name only has returned once more. Hormuz remains the battlefield.

The three-week U.S.–Iran truce buckled after three Saudi and Qatari commercial tankers came under attack in the Strait of Hormuz. Washington answered with two nights of strikes on approximately 170 Iranian military targets. CENTCOM says the July 7 operation hit roughly 80 targets, including more than 60 IRGC small boats (aka “mosquito fleet”). Another 90 targets were struck July 8, including air-defense systems, coastal-surveillance assets, missile and drone storage sites, naval capabilities and military logistics infrastructure. Iranian state media said the attacks killed 14 people and injured 78 across five provinces.

Iran retaliated across the Gulf, claiming attacks on U.S.-linked military infrastructure in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan. Tehran said it targeted Patriot systems in Kuwait, an early-warning facility in Qatar, a U.S. Army fuel depot in Bahrain and Jordan’s Azraq base (Muwaffaq Salti Air Base) with ten ballistic missiles. Kuwait reported intercepting a cruise missile, three ballistic missiles and ten drones. One person was injured by falling shrapnel. The widening target map is important. This is no longer a contained exchange between Washington and Tehran but a conflict increasingly being fought through the territory and airspace of Gulf states that have been trying to mediate it.

The immediate flashpoint is no longer simply Iran’s nuclear program. It is who controls the Strait of Hormuz and who gets to write the rules for passage through it. The Trump administration is demanding that Iran publicly declare every shipping lane open, renounce further attacks and allow toll-free commercial transit by Saturday. Iran has refused to surrender what it calls exclusive authority over the waterway and has attempted to restrict vessels to Tehran-approved routes while laying the groundwork for a permanent fee system. Traffic is not completely halted, but the IRGC says it has recovered to only about half of prewar volume and only under Iranian supervision.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is expected in Oman on Saturday for talks focused on Hormuz. Trump has declared the ceasefire “over” while simultaneously agreeing to continue negotiations, leaving diplomacy operating beneath an unmistakable military ultimatum. Washington says there can be no lasting nuclear agreement unless Iran turns over more than 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium. Tehran still wants to preserve its nuclear program and formalize its control over the strait. Iran’s broader objectives remain control of Hormuz, preservation of its nuclear capabilities and protection of Hezbollah.

The naval posture is also tightening. Open-source satellite analysts report that the USS Abraham Lincoln is moving back toward the Gulf of Oman near Chabahar, while additional U.S. warships appear to be concentrating in the region. That movement is consistent with preparations for renewed blockade enforcement.

CNN-reviewed satellite imagery suggests Iran may be repairing or hardening parts of its damaged nuclear infrastructure but not yet undertaking a wholesale reconstruction. Activity was reportedly visible at Parchin, where concrete equipment and coverings appeared near strike holes, and at the underground Pickaxe Mountain complex near Natanz, where construction vehicles were moving through the site. No comparable restoration was visible at the principal Natanz, Fordow or Isfahan facilities.

The renewed fighting unfolded as Iran buried former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Mashhad, more than four months after he was killed in the opening U.S.–Israeli strikes of February 28. His successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, remained absent from the ceremonies and has not appeared publicly since reportedly suffering serious injuries in the same attack, which deepens questions about who is exercising practical authority over Iran’s military factions. U.S. officials now claim that an “errant” hard-line faction may have attacked the tankers to sabotage negotiations.

Adding another layer of volatility, Israel reportedly supplied Washington with intelligence suggesting Iran was considering a fresh attempt to assassinate Trump in retaliation for the 2020 killing of Qassem Soleimani.

Tehran will try to produce a face-saving statement after the Oman meeting something affirming safe commercial passage without conceding that Hormuz is an international waterway beyond Iranian control. That may be enough for Washington to delay another bombing round while keeping the naval force in place.

But another tanker attack, an ambiguous missile launch or Iran’s refusal to issue any assurance would probably trigger renewed coastal strikes, the full reimposition of oil sanctions and preparations to restore the blockade. The greatest danger is not that either side has deliberately chosen unlimited war. It is that each is using live military action to strengthen its negotiating hand while Tehran’s command structure appears opaque and potentially divided. That is how coercive diplomacy turns into an uncontrolled regional conflict.

The Strait may be narrow, but the consequences are ever widening.

🎯 Ankara’s Arms Deals and Turkey’s S-400 Exit Ramp | NATO’s Ankara summit ended with allies pledging €70 billion (roughly $80 billion) in military equipment, training and assistance for Ukraine in 2026, alongside more than $50 billion in new alliance-wide procurements. Leaders also advanced plans for expanded missile and weapons production, granted Ukraine political approval to manufacture Patriot interceptors under U.S. license, and announced new drone partnerships with Denmark, Estonia and the Netherlands.

The summit’s most consequential Turkish deal, however, may come after the delegations have gone home. Pro-government columnist Hande Fırat reported that Ankara could announce as soon as Friday that it plans to resell or transfer its Russian-made S-400 air-defense systems to an unnamed Gulf country. The Kremlin confirmed it is discussing the systems’ fate with Turkey, calling the issue “extremely sensitive.”

Removing the S-400s would clear the central obstacle to lifting U.S. sanctions and could reopen Turkey’s path toward the F-35 fighter program, from which it was expelled after acquiring the Russian system in 2019. But an S-400 transfer would not automatically return Ankara to the program. Congress requires Turkey to relinquish possession of the systems, and although Trump has promised to lift sanctions, he has not yet fully committed to approving an F-35 sale.

After NATO’s contentious summit in Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sent departing leaders home with an unconventional souvenir, that of a vintage revolver accompanied by live rounds, making clear the gift was more than ceremonial.

Official photo with guests of the Summit during the dinner at Presidential Palace in Ankara

🎯 China Catches Up in the Reusable-Rocket Race | China has recovered an orbital-class rocket booster at sea for the first time, capturing the first stage of its new Long March 10B (长征十号乙) in a giant net suspended above an offshore platform. The rocket successfully placed a satellite into orbit before the booster returned roughly six minutes after launch. Unlike SpaceX’s self-landing Falcon 9, China’s system eliminates landing legs and uses the net to reduce weight and preserve more capacity for cargo, which is a major step toward cheaper, reusable launches and Beijing’s broader lunar and satellite ambitions.

🎯 Washington Opens the Technology Tap for the UAE | The United States has sharply eased export controls on the United Arab Emirates, allowing its government and approved companies to receive advanced AI chips, servers and selected military and dual-use technologies without obtaining individual licenses. The new privileges cover Nvidia computing systems, unmanned aircraft, commercial satellites and equipment used in the oil, gas and civil-nuclear sectors, placing the UAE in an unusually favored export category despite its membership in none of the major international control regimes.

Washington credited Abu Dhabi’s defense cooperation and support for U.S. operations against Iran. The shift will benefit Emirati AI firms G42 and Core42, as well as American companies operating in the country, but it is already drawing scrutiny over whether sensitive technology could ultimately reach China and whether the administration’s expanding political and financial ties to the Emirates are shaping national-security policy.

🎯 Ukraine Wins the Right to Build Patriot Interceptors | The United States has agreed at the political level to license Patriot missile production for Ukraine, granting one of Kyiv’s most consequential defense requests as Russian ballistic attacks intensify. President Donald Trump announced the decision during the NATO summit in Ankara, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the agreement covers the local production of Patriot interceptors, the missiles fired by the air-defense system, rather than necessarily every component of a complete Patriot battery.

The breakthrough could eventually reduce Ukraine’s dependence on scarce Western stockpiles, but it will not solve the immediate shortage. Production facilities, specialist training and tightly controlled U.S. components must still be secured, and analysts estimate that even pilot manufacturing could take 18 to 24 months. In the meantime, Kyiv is seeking additional finished interceptors as its existing batteries remain the country’s principal defense against Russian ballistic missiles.

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What Else Mattered This Week:

📍Germany’s Far Right Sets Its Sights on Power | Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) emerged from its national conference in Erfurt with its leadership intact and its ambitions enlarged. Delegates reelected Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla as co-leaders while roughly 31,000 demonstrators gathered outside, blocking roads and clashing sporadically with police. The protest was enormous but so is the AfD’s momentum even after finishing second in Germany’s 2025 federal election, the party is now polling near the top nationally and presenting itself not as a permanent opposition movement, but as the country’s next governing force.

The first major test arrives in September in Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD is positioned to become the strongest party and could claim its first state premiership. Its prospective leader there, Ulrich Siegmund, has tried to pair hard-line anti-immigration politics with a more polished focus on schools, infrastructure and local decline, part of a broader effort to normalize the party beyond its protest base. Weidel is already outlining a national program that would restore Russian oil and gas imports, loosen Germany’s alignment with Washington and dismantle the political “firewall” that has kept mainstream parties from governing with the AfD.

For years, Germany’s establishment treated the AfD as something that could be isolated. The question now is whether the firewall can hold against a party that no longer merely wants influence. It wants the chancellery.

📍Qatar Blocks Volkswagen’s Iron Dome Pivot | Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has reportedly vetoed Volkswagen’s proposed partnership with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to manufacture components for the Iron Dome air-defense system in Germany. The Qatar Investment Authority, Volkswagen’s third-largest shareholder, with roughly 17 percent of its voting rights and two seats on its supervisory board, opposed the deal because of Doha’s politically fraught relationship with Israel.

The agreement would have repurposed Volkswagen’s struggling Osnabrück plant, where vehicle production is scheduled to end in 2027, to manufacture launchers, missile-transport vehicles, generators and other Iron Dome support equipment. The project had been presented as a lifeline for the factory’s roughly 2,300 workers, not merely hundreds, as Germany’s weakened auto industry increasingly looks toward the booming defense sector for new business.

The clash reveals an increasingly uncomfortable reality for European industry, that governments may be rushing to rearm, but strategic factories and boardrooms remain entangled with foreign capital whose geopolitical interests do not necessarily align with Europe’s defense plans.

📍Israel’s Wars Abroad, Netanyahu’s Battle at Home | A Wall Street Journal investigation using satellite imagery and on-the-ground video identified dozens of American-owned properties destroyed by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon since April. Many belonged to Lebanese-American families from Michigan who had spent years building homes in and around Bint Jbeil, only to watch them disappear during Israel’s expanding ground campaign. The findings give Washington a particularly uncomfortable view of the destruction. American citizens are not merely financing or observing the conflict, but losing their own homes to the forces of a close U.S. ally.

Back in Jerusalem, the Knesset is moving toward dissolution ahead of an election that must take place no later than October 27. Lawmakers have already approved the dissolution bill’s preliminary and first readings. Two final votes remain, with parliamentary officials recommending that the Knesset formally disband on July 17. The process began after ultra-Orthodox parties revolted over Netanyahu’s failure to secure military-service exemptions for their constituents.

Netanyahu will enter the campaign as Israel’s great political survivor but this time carrying the accumulated weight of October 7, unfinished wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the Iran settlement, a renewed confrontation with the Supreme Court and growing demands for accountability. Polling indicates that his coalition may struggle to secure another majority, although Israel’s fragmented opposition could still leave him room to maneuver. The coming election will determine not only who governs Israel, but whether voters reward Netanyahu’s doctrine of permanent confrontation … or finally hold him responsible for its cost.

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Art of the Week

Your breath of fresh art and culture.

“Manon Lescaut” (1928) Hans Henning Otto Harry Baron von Voigt - aka Alastair (1887-1969) was a German artist, composer, dancer, mime, poet, singer and translator.

The Passionate Embrace (1928) by Alastair — It was created as Plate No. 5 for his illustrated edition of Manon Lescaut.

What to Watch Next Week:

📌 Whether Oman can keep Hormuz from becoming a battlefield again. U.S.–Iran talks will center on Washington’s demand that Tehran renounce attacks on commercial vessels, open every shipping lane and abandon plans to levy tolls. Iran still insists that it will not surrender control of the strait. Another tanker attack—or no face-saving compromise—could bring the U.S. blockade and air campaign roaring back.

Whether Israel finally sets its election clock. The Knesset is expected to take up the remaining votes required for dissolution, with July 17 proposed as the day parliament formally disbands. Once that happens, Netanyahu’s struggle shifts from holding his coalition together to persuading voters that permanent war, domestic upheaval and October 7 have not exhausted his mandate.

Where Turkey’s S-400s go—and what Washington gives Erdoğan in return. Ankara may announce a transfer of its Russian-made missile systems to a Gulf state, potentially clearing the legal obstacle to lifting U.S. sanctions and reopening Turkey’s path to the F-35. Moscow calls the matter “extremely sensitive,” Congress still has a say, and Israel is watching closely.

Whether Ukraine’s Patriot breakthrough becomes more than a promise. The political license is historic; the manufacturing timeline is brutal. Watch for details on where the interceptors will be built, which American companies will participate and whether allies release finished missiles from existing stockpiles while Ukraine waits for production to begin.

Whether the oil market believes the diplomacy. Tanker traffic remains far below prewar levels, and the IEA warns that renewed escalation could erase expectations of a future supply surplus. OPEC’s report on Monday will offer the next test of how much disruption producers expect—and how much geopolitical risk traders are prepared to price back in.

And whether the week’s agreements survive contact with the people expected to implement them. From Patriot factories that do not yet exist to an S-400 transfer not yet announced and a Hormuz settlement neither side fully accepts, the coming days will reveal which summit promises were policy—and which were simply choreography.

Spotlight on the Markets:

📌 Wall Street ended the week higher, looking past renewed U.S.–Iran strikes and back toward artificial intelligence and corporate earnings. The S&P 500 rose 0.4% Friday to 7,575.39, the Nasdaq gained 0.3% to 26,281.61, and the Dow added 0.3% to 52,637.01. For the week, the S&P advanced 1.2% and the Nasdaq 1.7%, while the Dow slipped 0.5%. South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix finished its blockbuster Nasdaq debut 13% above its offering price, reinforcing the market’s conviction that the AI-spending boom still has room to run.

Oil told a less comfortable story. Brent crude settled near $76 a barrel, up roughly 5.4% for the week, while West Texas Intermediate rose about 4% to $71.41 as tanker attacks, renewed strikes and restricted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz revived supply fears. The market is still betting that Washington and Tehran will return to negotiations rather than permit a full regional war—but every new exchange makes that wager more precarious.

The consequences are already reaching consumers. The average U.S. gasoline price climbed six cents this week to $3.88 a gallon, the largest weekly rise since May, while American fuel inventories remain nearly 10 million barrels below their five-year average. Bitcoin hovered near $64,000, and bond yields rose as investors weighed whether another energy shock could revive inflation and force the Federal Reserve toward tighter policy.

Next week brings the harder test: June inflation data and earnings from JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Citigroup. Markets have learned to treat geopolitical escalation as temporary noise. Inflation—and the corporate balance sheets absorbing it—may be harder to dismiss.

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Fourteen months ago, Volodymyr Zelensky left the White House following a public confrontation with Donald Trump that appeared to capture the deterioration of the relationship between Washington and Kyiv. Zelensky was lectured about gratitude, accused of gambling with global war, and sent away without the diplomatic agreement the meeting had been intended to produce.

In Ankara this week, the picture was strikingly different.

Sitting beside the Ukrainian president at the NATO Summit, Trump praised Zelensky, described their relationship as “very good,” and announced that the United States would grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot missile interceptors. Trump presented the proposal in his characteristically transactional language: Ukraine would no longer be able to complain that Washington was not supplying enough missiles because it would eventually be able to produce them itself.

The practical value of the announcement should not be exaggerated. Patriot interceptors are extraordinarily complex weapons. Production will require agreements with American defense companies, access to sensitive technology, specialized facilities, secure supply chains, and considerable time. Ukraine still needs interceptors immediately, particularly as Russia intensifies its ballistic-missile attacks against Ukrainian cities. Officials have suggested that initial production may occur elsewhere in Europe because factories located inside Ukraine would present obvious targets for Russian strikes.

Yet the political significance is substantial. Washington was not merely discussing another shipment of weapons. It was contemplating Ukraine’s integration into the Western defense-industrial system.

That distinction captures much of what made the Ankara Summit important. The gathering was not primarily about restoring the NATO that existed before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, before Europe’s renewed rearmament, or before the United States became openly ambivalent about the costs of alliance leadership. It was about adapting NATO to a world in which those older assumptions can no longer be taken for granted.

The alliance emerging from Ankara is more heavily armed, more industrially focused, more European in its division of responsibilities, and more transactional in its internal politics. It is also an alliance whose members may remain operationally aligned even when they are politically divided.

From Promises to Production

For much of the post-Cold War era, NATO debates revolved around defense-spending percentages. Allies made pledges, missed targets, revised timelines, and promised again to do better.

Ankara suggested that the debate is moving beyond accounting.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte described the summit’s central theme as the transition from setting targets to producing results. NATO governments announced more than €50 billion in procurement commitments, launched a planned $40 billion initiative focused on counter-drone systems, and agreed to invest €27 billion in fuel storage and distribution infrastructure. Allies also reaffirmed plans to provide at least €70 billion in military equipment, assistance, and training to Ukraine in both 2026 and 2027.

These commitments reflect an increasingly sober understanding of deterrence. Defense budgets do not stop missiles. Spending targets do not replenish ammunition stocks. Political declarations do not move armored formations across Europe.

Factories, rail networks, pipelines, stockpiles, trained personnel, and functioning supply chains do.

The significance of Ankara was therefore less the announcement of another ambitious percentage than the recognition that NATO must recover the material foundations of military power. The alliance is attempting to rebuild the industrial capacity required not simply to deter a short crisis, but to sustain a prolonged confrontation with a major power.

That effort will remain difficult. European defense markets are fragmented. Procurement processes are slow. National governments protect domestic industries, while manufacturers remain reluctant to expand production without reliable long-term orders. But the strategic conversation has changed. The question is no longer whether Europe should spend more. It is whether Europe can convert its expanding budgets into usable military capability quickly enough.

Ukraine Is Becoming a Security Producer

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Happy Monday!
The last Monday of June.

And we are back to fighting in the gulf…again. Yet again. No, really, again.

Denmark worries about the influence of Islamic culture. Israel and Lebanon try and iron something out to slow down the fighting. Notice I didn’t say stop the fighting. That would be too optimistic. Secretary Hegseth continues to reshape the…

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Welcome to our Friday headlines!

African teams are performing incredibly well at the World Cup, including Morocco, Coite de Ivoire, and even Democratic Republic of Congo — who’s in an ebola crisis!

Things are one step forward forward, one step back this week between Iran, the U.S., and the IAEA. Turkey heightens security for the upcoming NATO summit, acting ODNI Pulte moves forward with more purges in the U.S. intel community, AI is the topic at Summer Davos 2026, and the U.K. PM resigns.

We brought the juice. We’ve got headlines, graphs, predictions, analysis, and art! Let’s get into it!

Thank you for reading this far. Paid subscribers get full access to Grounded Perspectives and our Friday wrap ups, plus much more. If you’re so inclined, throw a couple coins into our human battery fund — also known as mochas and green teas. We’re glad you’re here.

— Ali & Asli

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Good Monday morning!

We’re back to square one. Fighting in Lebanon resumes. Iran closes the Strait. Negotiating returns. As we predicted, everyone flinched!

We’re mid-year for a new season. June 21st was Summer Solstice marking the longest day of the year. Paraguay’s 1-0 win over Turkey eliminated Turkey and confirmed the U.S. as Group D winner after the…

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Welcome to our Friday headlines!

What a week … we’re over here building fences and packing up homes for a big move. And of course, surrounded by news of all sorts. Let’s get into it!

This week, the map changed less by conquest than by pressure. Fuel routes reopened, refineries burned, property rules bent, old claims resurfaced, and minerals became the new…

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Good morning!

We’re back to square one and it’s Monday again. Summer on our doorstep or in full swing.

The Iran war has become hydra-headed. One deal, many mouths. Washington is selling de-escalation, Tehran is claiming Lebanon, Israel is rejecting limits on its freedom of action, Netanyahu’s opposition is calling it a historic failure, and Trump is tryin…

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Welcome to our Friday headlines!

The Iran story has moved at the speed of whiplash this week. A U.S. sea-drone rescue near Hormuz, explosions across Iran, threats against Kharg Island, then Trump abruptly calling off new strikes and claiming a deal was close. Then there was a deal. Iran said “no”. Lebanon is being baked into the Iran deal. Israel struck…

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Good Monday morning!

Accusations of spying on U.S. officials by Israeli intelligence and even a mini-blow up over Beirut started off the weekend and bled through the start of the week. Washington is trying to manage a high-stakes Iran settlement, among juggling many other balls in the air, with a depleted diplomatic machine after 2,000 diplomats have bee…

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Welcome to our Friday headlines!

We’re being stress tested to the hilt with little change but lots of confirmation. Markets are pricing the possibility of peace, not the cost of a failed peace because it looks better on the leaderboard. The Black Sea remains a power negotiation table amid a floating battlefield. Turkey remains a hinge state. A Trump loy…

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Good Monday morning!

It’s June and we are waiting for El Niño to heat things up here on the U.S. East Coast. The West Coast is sunny and warm with cloudless blue-skies and occasional rains. Israel’s Lebanon offensive complicates the fragile path out of the Iran War. The Philippines is deepening defense cooperation with Japan, Australia, Canada, and New Z…

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Hello Fake Monday!

Good day, and welcome back from the long weekend.

Because of the Memorial Day holiday and a few travel (and school) schedules on our end, we’re keeping this week’s headlines lighter than usual. The world, regrettably, did not submit a leave request, but we are granting ourselves permission not to chase every thread through the labyrinth…

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Welcome to your weekend! 

One half of us is on sabbatical and the other is cramming for their doctorate so writing has become sparse but we’re back to dig into the news with you to welcome the weekend. 

This was the week the world kept trying to price in peace without quite believing in it. Markets rallied on every diplomatic whisper from the Gulf, but oil stayed nervous, the dollar stayed bid, and central banks looked less like they were preparing to ease than preparing to defend against the next inflation wave. From Hormuz to Gaza, Ukraine to Taiwan, the pattern was the same: ceasefires without settlement, negotiations without trust, and governments discovering that every conflict now travels by tanker route, bond yield, drone path, refugee corridor, and grocery bill.

Traders moved away from the “NACHO” position — “Not Any Chance Hormuz Opens” — but, as predicted, the optimism was provisional because the hard questions had not actually been solved. Iran’s uranium stockpile remains unresolved. The question of shipping tolls and authority in or around the Strait remains unresolved. Trump’s threat to resume military action still hangs over the talks. Investors were not pricing in peace so much as pricing in the possibility that the next bad thing might not happen immediately.

Tulsi’s out. Who’s next? Trump had to call out Hegseth on the troop removal from Poland, of all things. Turkey has officially shut off the lights on democracy.

This was a week (and more!) of secondary shocks. Not every story was the main earthquake, but each one showed the aftershocks spreading: Ukraine through drones and prisoner swaps, NATO through force posture, Mexico and Europe through trade hedging, Iran through civilian fear and documentation, and the U.S. through a coalition starting to strain under the weight of war politics at home.

We leave you this week where so many stories left us: at the edge of the water, watching the horizon for signs of return, rescue, rupture, or storm. Hormuz is not the only narrow passage. Gaza, Tehran, Taipei, Kyiv, Nairobi, and even Washington are all caught in their own straits now, waiting to see what can still move through and what has already been blocked.

Thank you for reading this far. Paid subscribers get full access to Grounded Perspectives and our Friday wrap ups, plus much more. If you’re so inclined, throw a couple coins into our human battery fund — also known as mochas and green teas. We’re glad you’re here.

Until Monday, keep watch for what returns … and what the tide reveals.— Ali & Asli

Upgrade to paid for just $5 and you’ll get full access to all our Friday wrap ups! It’s worth it. We always bring the juice!

🎯 The U.S.–Iran war remained the axis around which everything else spun this week, turning the Strait of Hormuz from a geographic chokepoint into the world’s main pressure valve. Markets rallied Friday on cautious hope around U.S.–Iran talks, but the optimism looked more like relief trading than real confidence. The hard issues are still exactly where they were: Iran’s uranium stockpile, the reopening and future control of Hormuz, sanctions relief, blockade terms, shipping guarantees, and whether diplomacy is actually building a way out or merely buying time before the next escalation. Brent stayed volatile in the low-$100s, while the dollar hit a six-week high and rate-cut hopes faded into a more uncomfortable “higher-for-longer, maybe higher-again” story. The market may have stepped back from full panic, but it has not stepped into peace.

The week’s best shorthand came from the trading desk phrase NACHO — “Not Any Chance Hormuz Opens.” Earlier in the week, oil markets had been leaning toward that position: assuming the Strait would stay effectively closed, supply would remain constrained, and every barrel moving through the Gulf would carry a war premium. By Friday, traders had backed away from the hardest version of NACHO as talks appeared to gain some traction. But the retreat was cautious. No one wants to be caught pricing in a diplomatic breakthrough only to wake up to another missile strike, another tanker disruption, or another failed round of talks. In other words, markets are no longer assuming Hormuz has no chance of reopening — but they are also not convinced that reopening means stability. A corridor can technically reopen and still remain politically weaponized, militarily vulnerable, and economically explosive.

That uncertainty is now traveling far beyond the Gulf. Taiwan became another pressure point in the shadow of Iran after Taipei said it had not been formally told of any U.S. changes to arms sales, despite U.S. comments suggesting some military sales could be paused to preserve munitions for the Iran conflict. That matters because Taiwan is no longer just a China file. It is now tied to America’s ability to sustain multiple theaters at once. The U.S. has spent years trying to project that it can deter Russia in Europe, Iran in the Middle East, and China in the Indo-Pacific simultaneously. But deterrence is not just rhetoric or alliance language. It is stockpiles, shipping lanes, defense production, interceptors, missiles, spare parts, presidential attention, and political will. If the Iran war is already forcing Washington to slow, prioritize, or rethink weapons flows elsewhere, then Beijing will notice. So will Taipei.

The prediction from here is that diplomacy will probably produce some kind of temporary mechanism before it produces a real settlement. The pressure is too high for everyone. From oil markets, Gulf states, Washington, Tehran, Europe to China, to let Hormuz remain fully frozen without at least trying to create an off-ramp. But the likely outcome is not clean peace. It is more likely a provisional arrangement: partial reopening, monitored shipping lanes, backchannel guarantees, sanctions ambiguity, and a nuclear discussion pushed into a longer timetable. That may be enough to cool Brent temporarily and give equities another relief rally, but it will not remove the risk premium. The market will keep treating Hormuz as one headline away from breaking again.

The Iran war has become a stress test for the whole U.S.-led security system. Hormuz is testing energy security. Taiwan is testing deterrence credibility. The dollar is testing inflation expectations. The Fed is testing whether it can still think about cuts while oil threatens another price shock. And allies are testing whether American commitments still arrive on schedule when multiple theaters start competing for the same military inventory. This week did not resolve that question. It made it impossible to ignore. The war in the Gulf is not staying in the Gulf. It is moving through markets, alliances, munitions pipelines, and strategic calculations from Tehran to Taipei.

From one chokepoint to another. Iranian people are trapped in the worst possible double-bind — squeezed by war from outside and repression from inside. The regime is using national-security logic to tighten control, while ordinary people are absorbing the cost through inflation, layoffs, shortages, disrupted supply chains, and fear. Reuters has reported that businesses have been crushed by high prices, supply-chain disruption, and the internet blackout, with unemployment spiraling; one Tehran rice and grain seller said sales had fallen about 40% since the war began. The war is not just moving barrels, bonds, and currencies. It is emptying wallets, cutting work, breaking small businesses, and making basic goods harder to afford.

Politically, the mood seems grim and complicated rather than cleanly revolutionary. Many Iranians were already angry at the clerical establishment and wanted change, reports last month noted the bombing campaign caused many to sour on the war itself. Anti-regime does not automatically mean pro-U.S. strikes. A lot of Iranians can despise the Islamic Republic and still experience foreign bombardment, blockade, and economic collapse as another form of abandonment.

The repression side is also sharpening. Iran executed two people this week on national-security charges, according to Tasnim. That kind of opaque “security” prosecution matters because wartime gives the state a larger vocabulary for crushing dissent: spy, collaborator, terrorist, saboteur, foreign agent. The regime can fold protest, labor unrest, ethnic grievances, women’s resistance, and ordinary anger over prices into one big emergency file.

But there are also small signs of civilian life trying to come back through the cracks. Live music has begun returning to Tehran under the fragile ceasefire, including a concert at the Tehran Contemporary Art Museum with hundreds of attendees and about 50 musicians. One striking detail: the performance included eight female musicians and one woman singing before a mixed-gender audience, still unusual under Iran’s theocratic restrictions. That is not “normalcy,” exactly. It is more like emotional triage. People trying to recover a little beauty, sound, public life, and breath after months of silence and fear.

The Iranian street probably does not explode immediately unless the economic pain combines with a visible regime failure or another brutal crackdown. For now, the more likely pattern is pressure-cooker survival: private rage, small acts of cultural defiance, labor strain, black-market adaptation, families trying to leave if they can, and a regime that uses the war to justify more surveillance and executions. If Hormuz partially reopens and sanctions talks begin, the regime will try to sell endurance as victory. But for ordinary Iranians, the deeper truth is harsher: even a diplomatic pause will not quickly restore jobs, trust, medicine, money, or dignity. The war may cool before the society does.

Iranian state TV has been airing rifle displays in studio segments, with presenters and government supporters handling weapons on camera. In one broadcast, after instruction from an IRGC member, a presenter reportedly pointed a weapon at an image of the UAE flag and fired at it; in another, an IRGC member demonstrated shooting techniques with a Kalashnikov while aiming at images of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Critics inside Iran said the scenes blurred wartime morale-building with intimidation, and the reformist newspaper Sazandegi said the UAE flag shooting left public opinion “shocked and astonished.”

Inside Iran, the civilian story keeps getting darker as families and witnesses help reconstruct what happened at Alghadir Hospital during the January massacre. Iran International says it has now identified 21 people whose bodies were taken there or whose final hours passed through its corridors, storage rooms, and rear courtyard. Witnesses describe a hospital overwhelmed by gunfire, fear, and security-force pressure. Doctors and nurses tried to save the wounded while families searched through blankets, morgue areas, and hospital grounds for sons, fathers, students, and workers who had vanished into the machinery of the crackdown.

🎯 Mexico and the EU signed their long-delayed modernized trade agreement this week, and the timing is the story. The deal updates their original 2000 agreement and expands it beyond industrial goods into services, government procurement, digital trade, investment, agriculture, and broader political/security cooperation. It was signed in Mexico City on May 22, 2026, with Claudia Sheinbaum, Ursula von der Leyen, and António Costa present. It was the first EU-Mexico summit in more than a decade.

The strategic meaning is clear: Mexico and Europe are both trying to diversify away from U.S. volatility. For Mexico, this is a hedge against dependence on the American market just as USMCA renegotiations are beginning and Trump’s tariff pressure remains a live threat. For the EU, it is part of a wider push to build trade routes and supply-chain partnerships outside the U.S.-China squeeze. The agreement grants near-total duty-free access for goods, including agricultural products such as Mexican chicken and European cheese, and Mexico projects its exports to the EU could rise from about $24 billion to $36 billion by 2030.

The USMCA timing makes this even sharper. Washington’s first formal talks to update USMCA are set to begin next week in Mexico City, focused on content rules and economic security. Essentially, how much production has to be North American, and especially American, to qualify for trade benefits. Strikingly, those first talks are expected to involve the U.S. and Mexico, not Canada, which already hints at a more fragmented, pressure-heavy regional trade environment.

This will not replace Mexico’s dependence on the U.S. market anytime soon — geography still wins — but it gives Sheinbaum leverage. Mexico can walk into USMCA talks with a little more room to maneuver, while Europe gets a stronger foothold in North America’s supply-chain ecosystem without relying entirely on Washington. Expect more of this: not clean decoupling, but strategic hedging, with countries layering trade agreements like insurance policies against tariff shocks, war risk, and American political whiplash.

🎯 Gaza moved back into international focus after Israel intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla. Israeli forces detained hundreds of activists from dozens of countries attempting to bring aid to Gaza. Video of detainees kneeling with hands bound, posted by Itamar Ben-Gvir, triggered international outrage and criticism even inside Israel’s government. The wider Gaza picture remains grim: the U.N. was warned that Gaza’s division risks becoming permanent, with more than 2 million people crowded into less than half the territory while Israel maintains troops in much of Gaza and Hamas refuses to disarm.

Gaza moved back into international focus after Israeli forces intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla, a Gaza-bound aid convoy of dozens of vessels carrying hundreds of activists, journalists, and lawmakers from more than 40 countries. Israel framed the flotilla as a political provocation and said it had the right to enforce its blockade, but the optics quickly became the story: activists were detained, some alleged abuse in custody, and video showed detainees forced to kneel with their hands bound. The backlash intensified after National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted footage mocking the detained activists — a spectacle that drew condemnation within in Israel and abroad, including a public rebuke from Netanyahu, who said Ben-Gvir’s conduct was inconsistent with “Israeli values” and “norms”.

“Israel has every right to prevent provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters from entering our territorial waters and reaching Gaza.

However, the way that Minister Ben Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms.

I have instructed the relevant authorities to deport the provocateurs as soon as possible.”

— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The flotilla episode matters because it internationalized Gaza again at a moment when the war’s underlying geography is hardening. At the U.N., Gaza envoy Nickolay Mladenov warned that Gaza’s division risks becoming permanent with more than 2 million people are crowded into less than half the territory, while Israeli forces remain in about 60% of Gaza and Hamas continues to refuse to disarm. That is the deeper story beneath the flotilla drama. Gaza is not only under blockade. It is being structurally reorganized into zones of control, displacement, and stalled reconstruction, with humanitarian access still limited and political settlement nowhere in sight.

The prediction here is bleak but important to highlight. Gaza is drifting toward de facto partition unless a ceasefire mechanism becomes more than paperwork. Israel will likely continue using security control and restricted aid flows as leverage. Hamas will resist any disarmament while claiming survival as legitimacy. And of course, international outrage will spike around visible incidents like the flotilla but struggle to force a durable political shift. The risk is that Gaza becomes a frozen catastrophe not fully at war in the old sense, not at peace, not rebuilt, not sovereign, but managed through checkpoints, buffer zones, aid bottlenecks, and periodic eruptions of violence.

🎯Africa had two major distress signals this week: Ebola in Congo and fuel unrest in Kenya. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the WHO raised the national risk level for the Ebola outbreak to “very high,” with the Bundibugyo strain spreading after likely circulating undetected for weeks. Confirmed numbers are already serious, but health officials warn they may only be the visible edge of a much larger outbreak. Suspected cases have climbed into the hundreds, suspected deaths have risen sharply, and the strain currently has no approved vaccine. Containment is also being complicated by violence, misinformation, community mistrust, and the difficulty of tracing contacts in areas already strained by conflict.

Kenya, meanwhile, showed how fast the Iran/Hormuz shock can travel into domestic politics. Public transport operators called off a strike after President William Ruto promised to cut diesel prices in the next monthly review, following protests over soaring fuel costs that left four people dead and more than 30 injured. Diesel had jumped sharply in the May-June cycle, with the government linking the spike to global energy disruption from the Iran conflict, though opposition figures blamed corruption and profiteering. Either way, the effect was immediate: transport paralysis, street clashes, commuters stranded, and a government forced to subsidize fuel despite already severe fiscal pressure.

Tulsi Gabbard’s official resignation letter

🎯 In the U.S., Trump’s domestic coalition showed signs of strain on multiple fronts. A Republican revolt stalled a $72 billion immigration enforcement funding bill after senators objected to Trump-linked additions, including a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund and funding connected to a White House ballroom project. Then came the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, effective June 30, she claimed it was officially to support her husband through treatment for a rare bone cancer but the timing carried obvious political weight. Her rocky and contentious tenure had already been marked by friction with the White House, especially around Syria, Venezuela and Iran, where her “anti-interventionist” (and pro-Assad/Putin) instincts sat uneasily beside Trump’s expanding war posture. Her departure now removes one of the administration’s most visible “antiwar” validators at exactly the moment Iran, inflation, gas prices, intelligence credibility, immigration enforcement, and Trump’s personal priorities are colliding inside the GOP rather than simply between parties.

Tulsi’s exit is likely to sharpen the internal split between Trump’s nationalist-populist anti-interventionist wing and the harder security faction now empowered by the Iran war. Gabbard’s exit may be framed as personal, but politically it clears space for a more hawkish intelligence posture, strengthens figures like CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and makes it easier for the administration to align intelligence messaging with the war track. The risk for Trump is that every pressure point now feeds the others: the Iran war drives oil prices, oil prices drive inflation anxiety, inflation weakens the domestic coalition, and defections or resignations inside the administration make the whole project look less disciplined just as the White House needs maximum control.

President Trump announced that Gabbard’s deputy, ex-CIA officer, Aaron Lukas, would serve as acting director of national intelligence until a candidate is officially nominated.

What Else Mattered This Week:

📍Turkey’s CHP crisis is bigger than opposition politics. It’s not just any opposition party, but the founding party of the Turkish Republic, established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and still carrying the symbolic weight of secular republicanism.

Turkey’s opposition crisis escalated sharply after a court annulled the CHP’s 2023 congress, removing Özgür Özel as party leader and reinstating former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Özel called the ruling a “judicial coup,” vowed to challenge it, and called for a new party congress within 40 days, while prosecutors detained 13 people across seven provinces over alleged vote manipulation tied to the 2023 leadership contest.

“Today is a dark day for Turkish democracy.”
— Özgür Özel

The ruling lands inside a much wider crackdown on the CHP: Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s most potent rival, remains jailed on charges he denies, while the party says hundreds of members and local officials have faced politically motivated investigations. The government insists the judiciary is independent, but the timing is hard to separate from the broader political map: after the CHP’s sweeping 2024 local election wins, Turkey’s main opposition is now being squeezed through courts, detentions, leadership disputes, and pressure on its presidential bench.

Erdoğan benefits most if the CHP is forced into an internal legitimacy fight between Özel and Kılıçdaroğlu while İmamoğlu remains legally boxed in. But the risk for the government is that the move turns into a rallying point rather than a decapitation. Özel reportedly still has the support of most CHP lawmakers, and if he can force a new congress quickly, the court ruling may sharpen the opposition’s message: that Turkey’s next election is not just about Erdoğan versus CHP, but ballots versus judges.

I say this with a heavy heart. The Erdoğan regime has now used captured courts to stage a judicial coup against the CHP, my political home and Türkiye’s oldest party.

Using the judiciary to replace a party’s democratically elected leadership carries no legitimacy. This is a blatant attempt to reshape political competition through the courts.

What happened today goes far beyond one party. It is an attack on the will of the people, on democracy, on the Republic, and on the foundations of the constitutional order.

Türkiye has seen too many moments when law was weaponized to redesign politics and this must not become another one.

This act is no longer only about party politics. The people of Türkiye must now stand together for their country.

We will not yield. Together, we will defend our party, our democracy, and our Republic.

— Ekrem İmamoğlu

📍An Oakland, California jury needed only two hours to toss Elon Musk’s court case against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The jury unanimously found that Musk’s remaining claims against OpenAI, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Microsoft were barred by the statute of limitations. The key legal point is that the jury found Musk knew or at least, should have known, about OpenAI’s commercial meets for-profit direction years earlier, so he waited too long to sue. Musk has already signaled he plans to appeal, keeping the feud alive even as OpenAI walks away with the immediate win.

📍Ukraine saw movement on prisoners, but not on peace. Russia and Ukraine exchanged 205 prisoners of war each, a rare humanitarian opening that Zelenskyy described as the first phase of a larger proposed 1,000-for-1,000 swap tied to the recent U.S.-backed ceasefire. For families waiting since the early years of the war, the exchange mattered deeply — names returned, bodies accounted for, sons and husbands brought back across the line. But it did not signal real de-escalation. The ceasefire was followed almost immediately by renewed strikes, including major Russian attacks on Ukraine and large-scale Ukrainian drone attacks inside Russia. The pattern remains brutally familiar: a negotiated aperture opens, human beings pass through it, and then the war closes over them again.

Putin accused Ukraine of carrying out a deadly drone attack on a student dormitory in Russian-occupied Starobilsk, in Luhansk, where Russian officials said 18 people were killed and more than 40 injured. Ukraine said it had targeted the headquarters of Russia’s elite Rubicon drone unit and denied intentionally striking civilians. Putin ordered the military to prepare retaliation, while Zelenskyy warned that Russia may be preparing a major combined strike using hypersonic Oreshnik missiles. The pattern remains brutally familiar: a negotiated aperture opens, human beings pass through it, and then the war closes over them again.

📍NATO’s stress test deepened this week as Washington signaled it may reduce the pool of U.S. forces and capabilities available to the alliance in a crisis. Under the NATO Force Model, member states identify forces that could be mobilized in an emergency, including an attack on a NATO country. Shrinking the U.S. contribution would not mean America has left NATO, but it would force Europe to plan for a future in which U.S. support arrives with fewer guarantees, more conditions, and less automatic depth. The timing is especially uncomfortable. Russia remains locked into the Ukraine war, the U.S. is consumed by Iran, and recent troop-deployment confusion around Poland has already rattled allies. Washington is still central to NATO, especially through its nuclear umbrella, but the message to Europe is increasingly blunt. America may still show up, but not necessarily in the same numbers, on the same schedule, or without a political price. For NATO, the question is no longer only whether members spend enough. It is whether the alliance can function when American commitments start arriving with conditions, delays, reversals, or moods attached.

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