War rages on.

Another country, another divided populace, another election.

Israelis within country, and in the diaspora, traveled far and wide to descend upon the polls to elect a new leader, with reports claiming the highest voter turn out in the last 46 years. There have been five elections since 2019.

Anti-Benjamin Netanyahu leaders say he was MIA for nearly two years before finally touring the charred remnants of the homes of October 7 victims and consoling grieving families, leaving many security questions unanswered. Netanyahu (Bib) visited Kibbutz Nir Oz on July 3, 2025, but only after 636 days. That delay drew substantial criticism from survivors and victims' families.

AI “attack” ads, October 7, and endless debates online have defined this election. Israeli society may have lurched further right collectively, but not without contest, including efforts to forge inter-party unity with Arabs. Arab Israelis have historically voted at lower rates than their Jewish counterparts, with abstention sometimes serving as a form of political protest. But this election has turned the tide, with record Arab turnout transforming a historically marginalized electorate into a potentially decisive political force.

Israelis fell asleep after dinner with Eisenkot in the lead, and by morning Netanyahu was serving them breakfast.

If Eisenkot can build a coalition with Netanyahu’s opponents, they could potentially cobble together a 65-seat majority. The Arab parties are at 19, which could offer a theoretical 67-seat majority if all cooperated.

Eisenkot will need to cozy up to coalition partners, not unlike the Benny Gantz debacle, navigating a minefield of competing interests, ideological concessions, and fragile alliances that could unravel before his government even gets off the ground.

"Netanyahu needs to be replaced. October 7 was his responsibility, and he is also culpable for dividing Israeli society."

— Benny Gantz (National Unity Party, previous Deputy Prime Minister of Israel and Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces)

Gadi Eisenkot (Azenkot in Amazigh Berber meaning ‘gazelle’ or ‘agile, fast animal’) and his Yashar! party have long been touted as the only true rival to Netanyahu’s governance.

Netanyahu himself has been seen by some as being held hostage by an emboldened right wing led by the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Bibi has begun characterizing the surge in voter turnout as an attempt to, in a familiar refrain, “steal the election.”

Eisenkot, the son of Moroccan Jews from Casablanca and Marrakech, has a 41 year history in military service. He served in the Golani Brigade and was a rifleman later on becoming the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). He was military secretary under Prime Minister Ehud Barak. He focused his campaign platform on internal unity within Israeli society, along with rejecting wide-sweeping exemptions of Haredim from military service. He is for a long-term ceasefire and demilitarized Gaza. He calls for reforms to strengthen the separation of powers within the Israeli government. He has said Netanyahu and allies are politicizing the IDF and weakening military readiness.

If Eisenkot officially wins, he’ll be the first Israeli prime minister of Moroccan or Mizrahi descent, which is a big statement in and of itself, as Ashkenazi Jews dominated the realms of state control since the creation of the modern state of Israel.

“Rosh Memshala Dialna!”

“A Prime Minister of Our Own"

One of Eisenkot’s campaign slogans that blended Hebrew and Moroccan Arabic, as a nod to his heritage

Eisenkot will need to compromise a bit on established security protocol, foreign policy, and policing in Arab cities to gain their support, potentially driving away his own allies; he would ideally need 2 Arab parties to support him

And so, what happens next?

The real battle begins after the ballots are counted. We’ll be knee-deep in ballots, bluster and phony bravado. With Netanyahu’s bloc projected at 53 seats, Eisenkot’s at 48, and Arab parties holding a potentially decisive 19, neither camp has the 61 seats needed to govern independently. The question is no longer simply who won the election, but who can assemble a coalition without alienating the very partners needed to sustain it.

Eisenkot faces an especially delicate balancing act. Cooperation with Arab parties could end Netanyahu’s tenure, but concessions on Palestinian and Arab rights, West Bank policy, policing, and security could fracture his own political alliance. Some of Eisenkot’s bloc have already ruled out cooperation with Arab parties. Netanyahu, meanwhile, may seek to exploit those divisions, courting opposition figures into a broader unity government while preserving his own position at the helm. Should both efforts fail, Israel could find itself heading toward yet another election, making it election #6, with an electorate even more deeply divided and little appetite for more political paralysis.

Our Prediction

Netanyahu may have survived the election, but his political dominance has suffered a significant blow. We anticipate prolonged coalition negotiations, shifting allegiances, and considerable pressure on Eisenkot to choose between ideological consistency and political opportunity.

Netanyahu will initially have the advantage in coalition negotiations, potentially securing a broader governing arrangement with elements of the opposition. Eisenkot’s path to the premiership is mathematically plausible but politically treacherous. Even if he succeeds, his government would be vulnerable to internal divisions from its inception but the passion to oust Netanyahu could be the catalyst to a workable coalition. If Arab parties join Eisenkot, Netanyahu may do a little reach around and attempt to strike a deal with Mansour Abbas, head of the Ra’am Islamist Party, above all their heads, a trick he’s pulled before, especially when it serves his immediate political survival. Previous ‘deals’ have included freezing parts of the Kamenitz law (targeting illegal construction) and pledging massive infrastructure budgets. In exchange for their political backing, of course. This time around all will need to be a truly united front if we’re to see any significant lasting viable change.

The larger story may, indeed, be the unprecedented electoral strength of Israel’s Arab population. They were dubbed the “king makers” of this election. Their political participation has altered the parliamentary arithmetic and challenged long-established assumptions about who gets to determine Israel’s political future. Regardless of who ultimately occupies the prime minister’s office, this election may mark the beginning of a fundamental realignment in Israeli politics.

Meanwhile, the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran aren’t waiting for Israel to get its political house in order. Whoever emerges from the coalition negotiations will inherit a region teetering between fragile ceasefires, stalled diplomacy, and renewed military escalation. In Gaza, the question of Hamas’s disarmament, Israeli withdrawal, and reconstruction remains unresolved. Hezbollah has made clear that Israel’s election results will do little to change its position, while the future of southern Lebanon remains a serious point of contention.

Iran will likely prove the most immediate test. With Qatari mediators scrambling to salvage a diplomatic agreement and Washington reportedly preparing regional allies for possible renewed strikes following the November 3 U.S. midterms, Israel’s political uncertainty could collide with another round of military confrontation. Netanyahu and Eisenkot may differ on strategy, diplomacy, and the extent of coordination with Washington, but their security objectives overlap considerably. A change in leadership, therefore, would not necessarily mean a change in military posture. The question is whether Israel’s next government can translate military objectives into sustainable political settlements, or whether the country will remain caught between wars abroad and that pesky political paralysis and fatigue at home.

— Asli Omur for Grounded Perspectives

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Good Monday morning!

We are finally back this week to bring you some more start of the week headlines as we come to the close of October.

Ukraine’s Starshield disruption of the past week exposes a new vulnerability in modern warfare. Serbian students have stormed the government. Lula win’s the Brazilian vote. Jordan’s Greek Orthodox community left in sh…

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AI governance is still being treated primarily as a domestic regulatory problem, even as frontier AI is rapidly becoming an international security problem shaped by strategic competition, collective-action failure, and technological proliferation.

That distinction matters. Domestic regulation can constrain firms operating within a jurisdiction, but it cannot by itself solve a problem in which rival states, private companies, and eventually nonstate actors may all have incentives to push ahead. The central governance challenge is therefore not simply how to regulate AI firms, but how to manage a strategically consequential technology in an environment where restraint by one actor may create advantage for another.

For me, this is not an abstract question. As I come closer to finishing my doctorate in law and policy, my mind naturally turns to rules, norms, ethics, and legislation. At the same time, as a professor of practice in a university analytics department focused on AI, I am watching firsthand the rapid acceleration of the same technologies that increasingly dominate public warnings about AI safety.

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A true TGIF. Good morning and welcome to your Friday.

A big apology to our dear readers for the lull in our analysis, round ups and writings. So many unexpected summer curveballs. We may have needed to stick to the sidelines, but the news certainly did not. We’re back and in fighting shape, ready to dive deep into all the juicy geopolitical happenings with so many thoughts, predictions and art, as always.

But before we begin, we dedicate this issue to the memory of those killed on September 11, 2001. Twenty-five years later, we remember the victims, the families who carried an unimaginable absence, the survivors and first responders, and all those still living with the physical and emotional consequences of that day. We remember their names, their lives and the world that changed around them. Scroll to the end of this issue to watch a 9/11 announcement from NYC Mayor Mamdani’s office.

U.S. forces destroyed five tankers. Oil is back over $100 a barrel. Trump is at war with Canadian dairy, alcohol, large motorcycles and more. Canada is replying with retaliatory tariffs that include 15% to 50% on roughly $20B of U.S.-originated imports. Apple made a foldable iPhone. India is working with France to acquire 114 Rafale fighter jets, as militaries around the world arm up without the U.S. Russia and North Korea are solidifying their bond with the first road bridge across their shared border. Iran evades sanctions with two powerful trump cards. The Houthis control Mokha. We’ve got U.S.P.S. mail-in voting chaos, “Trump Dividends”, a Panama Papers journalists death unsolved and so much more.

After eight years in transit, BepiColombo is finally closing in on Mercury, poised to peel back the mysteries of the Solar System’s smallest (and strangest!) planet.

As the sun sets today Friday, the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) ushers in 5787. A season of reflection, renewal and the hope of a sweeter year ahead. Shana Tova to all who celebrate.

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

The medieval mystery of Greenland’s vanished Vikings. A new BBC Global mini-documentary travels among Greenland’s Norse ruins to examine how a remote but sophisticated medieval society survived for five centuries, then disappeared from the historical record as climate pressures, isolation and the collapse of the walrus-ivory trade converged.

🎯 US Strikes Iranian Oil Tankers After Missile Attack

American forces struck three Iranian crude-oil tankers near Kharg Island after Iran launched ballistic missiles at two US Navy warships, according to US Central Command. No American personnel were injured in the Iranian attack.

The locations matter as much as the targets. Kharg Island is the beating heart of Iran’s oil-export system, historically handling the overwhelming majority of the country’s seaborne crude. Earlier in the war, Washington deliberately struck military installations on the island while sparing its oil terminals. Hitting tankers operating nearby crosses another threshold: the United States is no longer merely restricting Iranian exports through sanctions and interception. It has demonstrated that vessels carrying Iranian crude may themselves be treated as military-economic targets.

Iran’s missile launch likewise represented more than symbolic retaliation. Directly targeting US warships raises the possibility that the next exchange could produce American casualties, forcing Washington to respond more forcefully. Even unsuccessful attacks consume interceptors, keep crews at combat readiness and expose naval personnel to an unpredictable mixture of ballistic missiles, drones and anti-ship weapons.

The immediate exchange may have ended without American deaths or catastrophic damage to Kharg Island. Strategically, however, it has placed two highly combustible assets, the US fleet and Iran’s oil-export infrastructure, at the center of the conflict.

Iran’s Gasoline Clock Is Running Down

Iran is one of the world’s largest holders of crude-oil and natural-gas reserves. That abundance disguises a serious structural weakness, producing crude is not the same as refining enough gasoline for a population of nearly 90 million.

Iranian officials have warned that the country may have roughly two months of gasoline reserves remaining. Domestic refineries cannot fully meet demand, leaving Tehran dependent on imported fuel and increasingly vulnerable to the American blockade. Iran reportedly faces a daily gasoline deficit of approximately 10 million liters even as its refineries operate at high levels.

The government is now preparing to increase the cost of gasoline purchased beyond the subsidized monthly allowance. Fuel above the 110-liter quota is expected to double in price to 100,000 rials per liter. The increase is designed to suppress consumption and preserve dwindling supplies, but it carries considerable political risk. Iran is already contending with a severely weakened currency, shortages and inflation approaching 90 percent. Raising fuel prices feeds directly into transportation, food and household costs.

Iran has encountered this danger before. A sudden gasoline-price increase in 2019 ignited demonstrations across the country, followed by a sweeping and lethal state crackdown. Today’s government must therefore perform an extraordinarily difficult balancing act: reduce consumption quickly enough to avoid running out of fuel without imposing an economic shock powerful enough to trigger another national protest movement.

Tehran’s decision this week to suspend a 10 percent freight charge on foreign vessels carrying oil, gas and petroleum products reveals the pressure behind the rhetoric. Iran is attempting to make trade cheaper and more attractive precisely because sanctions, military risk and the blockade have made foreign shippers reluctant to approach its ports.

The blockade is therefore doing more than reducing oil revenue. It is creating a feedback loop:

• Iran cannot export crude reliably.

• Lost export income weakens the government’s ability to finance imports.

• The same maritime restrictions make imported gasoline more expensive and difficult to obtain.

• Fuel shortages then slow transportation, industry and food distribution inside Iran.

• Any attempt to ration supply or raise prices increases public anger.

The central question is no longer simply whether Iran can sell its oil, but whether the state can keep its domestic economy moving.

A Wedding Becomes the Human Cost of Escalation

Iran’s Foreign Ministry accused the United States of committing a war crime after an American strike hit a family compound where women and children had gathered for a wedding in Kuhestak, a fishing community east of the Strait of Hormuz.

The initial reported toll of four dead later rose to at least five, including a four-year-old child and a 16-year-old. More than 60 people were wounded. US officials said the operation targeted Iranian air defenses and maritime military infrastructure along the southern coast—not civilians—and an investigation into the strike is underway. Reporting from the site, however, documented American munition fragments and extensive damage to the family compound.

Fourteen additional people were reportedly killed in the wider series of American strikes. Iran answered with missiles and drones aimed at US military facilities in Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait. Most were intercepted, and no casualties were initially reported.

The civilian deaths give Tehran something its military response alone cannot provide, a potent political narrative. Iranian officials can portray the blockade and air campaign not as pressure on the government but as collective punishment inflicted on Iranian families. That may not erase public anger toward the Islamic Republic, but it can complicate Washington’s expectation that economic pain will translate neatly into opposition to the regime.

Civilian casualties also raise pressure on governments hosting American forces. Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and the Gulf monarchies do not want their territory transformed into a permanent launchpad (or target zone) for an open-ended US-Iran war.

The Human Strain on the American Side

The USS Abraham Lincoln finally reached Thailand for a port call after its crew spent 286 consecutive days at sea. Approximately 5,000 sailors were given several days ashore before the carrier was expected to begin its return toward San Diego.

USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72)

The stop may look peripheral to the larger war, but it exposes another constraint on Washington, which is operational endurance. Ships can remain deployed longer than planned, but sailors, aircraft, maintenance systems and missile inventories cannot be treated as inexhaustible.

A prolonged campaign requires rotations, repairs, replenishment and replacement crews. Iran does not have to defeat the US Navy outright to impose costs. It can force American ships to maintain continuous defensive operations, fire expensive interceptors at comparatively inexpensive drones and missiles, and keep thousands of personnel inside a high-threat environment for months.

The tanker strikes and the Lincoln’s long-delayed port call tell two sides of the same story. Washington retains overwhelming power to destroy Iranian targets. But maintaining the military architecture required to enforce a blockade and protect bases and shipping routes is expensive, exhausting and increasingly vulnerable to one successful Iranian strike.

And so, what happens next?

The likeliest near-term outcome is neither peace nor an immediate full-scale invasion. It is an intensification of the economic and maritime war, punctuated by short bursts of direct military retaliation.

Iran will probably continue attacking the blockade indirectly. Rather than attempting a conventional battle it cannot win, Tehran can launch missiles and drones, threaten tankers, use mines or small vessels, and activate aligned forces elsewhere in the region. Its purpose will be to make enforcement of the blockade costly, keep oil prices elevated and convince American partners that supporting Washington carries unacceptable risk.

The United States, meanwhile, is likely to expand strikes against the machinery that enables those attacks: missile launchers, radar systems, naval bases, fast-attack craft and tankers accused of violating the blockade. Washington may continue trying to distinguish between Iran’s military and its permanent oil infrastructure. But that distinction is eroding. Once tankers are being destroyed near Kharg Island, an accidental or deliberate strike on storage tanks, pipelines or loading terminals becomes considerably easier to imagine.

The danger is an escalation chain driven less by strategy than by casualties. A missile that kills sailors aboard an American destroyer could trigger a much larger US attack. A strike that severely damages Kharg Island could push Tehran to target Gulf energy infrastructure or shipping beyond the immediate conflict zone. Each side believes calibrated force can compel the other to retreat. Each new exchange makes calibration harder.

Our Prediction

Iran’s gasoline shortage—not the battlefield—will become the most consequential pressure point over the next several weeks.

Tehran will introduce sharper rationing, higher prices and emergency measures to reduce consumption while searching for covert import routes through neighboring states and ship-to-ship transfers. The government will deploy security forces around fuel depots, refineries and major urban centers in anticipation of protests. Localized demonstrations are likely if queues lengthen or supplies become unreliable, particularly in working-class communities already strained by inflation.

Militarily, Iran will answer the tanker strikes, but it will try to avoid an attack so lethal that Washington feels compelled to devastate Kharg Island. Expect harassment, attempted saturation strikes and pressure through regional partners rather than a sustained conventional naval confrontation.

The United States will continue using economic suffocation as its principal weapon while conducting limited strikes whenever Iran attacks American forces or commercial shipping. But civilian casualties and the mounting burden on deployed personnel will increase pressure for a diplomatic off-ramp.

That opening is most likely to emerge through an intermediary like Oman, Qatar or Pakistan, and begin with a narrow maritime arrangement rather than a comprehensive peace agreement. Iran could offer reduced attacks on warships and commercial vessels in exchange for limited permission to import gasoline or export a controlled volume of crude.

Until then, both sides appear prepared to test how much pressure the other can absorb. The greatest risk is that they discover the limit only after crossing it.

Meanwhile, Iran’s pressure campaign is expanding beyond the Strait of Hormuz. The Iran-aligned Houthis have captured the Yemeni port of Mokha and advanced along the Red Sea coast toward the Hanish Islands and Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow passage connecting the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. The group has also declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia and renewed missile and drone attacks on Saudi cities and oil infrastructure. Tehran denies directing the Houthis, who maintain their own leadership and domestic ambitions, but Iran reportedly transported Revolutionary Guards advisers and missile equipment into Houthi-controlled Yemen in July.

The advance gives Iran indirect leverage over a second maritime chokepoint just as Washington tightens its blockade around Iranian ports. If shipping is threatened simultaneously at Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, vessels attempting to avoid one danger may encounter another, driving up oil prices, insurance costs and transit times. The Houthis therefore do not need to defeat the US Navy or close the Red Sea completely. By making navigation sufficiently dangerous and expensive, they can pressure Saudi Arabia, stretch American military resources and ensure that the economic consequences of the US-Iran conflict spread far beyond Iran’s coastline.

More reporting worth keeping on your radar:

As the American blockade constricts Iran’s oil exports and gasoline supplies, documents obtained by Iran International point to another threat inside the country’s energy system, a sanctions-busting network built on political loyalty, steep discounts and billions of dollars in unrecovered revenue.

According to Iran International, a confidential letter from the protection unit of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council questioned the Oil Ministry’s decision to give large volumes of crude to four approved intermediaries, known as “trustees”, on credit, despite allegations that they had failed to return proceeds from previous sales.

Iran International, author Mojtaba Pourmohsen

The new allocations reportedly began after another team assumed control of sanctioned oil sales in July. Iran International said the former head of Naftiran Intertrade Company, or NICO, had already identified the intermediaries as heavily indebted to the state. Nevertheless, the Oil Ministry allegedly authorized further shipments at a discount of $8.50 per barrel, which is an unusually generous reduction noted in the council’s own letter.

This trustee system is one of the ways Iran sells oil outside conventional markets. Traders use front companies, frequently renamed vessels, offshore accounts, intermediaries and ship-to-ship transfers to disguise the crude’s origin and destination. The system can keep oil moving under sanctions, but it also makes transactions opaque. Cargoes can be seized, payments frozen, ships sanctioned and sale proceeds diverted or withheld before they reach the Iranian treasury.

A second confidential document reportedly records a June 28 Oil Ministry meeting about two million barrels of Iranian crude transported to China aboard vessels connected to sanctioned oil trader Hossein Shamkhani, also known as “Hector” and “Hugo Hayek”, names he used to navigate international financial systems and to secure citizenship by investment through the island nation of Dominica. Shamkhani is the son of Ali Shamkhani, a former senior Iranian security official and adviser to the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

The crude traveled aboard the tanker Lily and arrived at China’s Dongjiakou port on March 24 through Panel Good Wholesalers, a Dubai-registered company associated with Shamkhani’s trading network. The missing links have always been China and Russia.

Under ordinary conditions, Tehran might tolerate substantial leakage as the price of evading sanctions. Under blockade conditions, that tolerance becomes far more dangerous.

Iran is simultaneously losing oil revenue, discounting the crude it can sell, paying elevated transportation costs and struggling to obtain enough gasoline for domestic consumption. Billions of dollars trapped with intermediaries could otherwise finance fuel imports, stabilize the currency or support increasingly expensive government subsidies.

The trustee system therefore creates a second blockade, that which is imposed from within. The United States constricts Iran’s access to international markets, while the opaque network required to evade those restrictions prevents Tehran from recovering the full value of the oil that escapes.

Tehran will likely grant these trustees greater authority because conventional buyers, banks, insurers and shipping companies remain inaccessible.

That dependence will increase the amount of crude sold at a discount while reducing the proportion of revenue that reliably returns to the treasury. More cargo disputes, unpaid proceeds and compensation claims are likely as sanctioned tankers and front companies become harder to operate.

The government may announce investigations or remove individual traders to contain public anger, but a comprehensive cleanup is improbable while the same networks remain essential to moving Iranian oil. The system’s dysfunction is also its protection. Tehran cannot easily prosecute the intermediaries without disrupting the machinery it needs to survive the blockade.

Iran’s petroleum crisis is therefore no longer solely about how many barrels it can export. The big questions are how much money returns, who controls it and whether a state already struggling to supply gasoline can afford the enormous hidden cost of its own sanctions-evasion system.

🎯 Diplomacy Returns as Russia Targets Ukraine’s Economic Lifelines

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner traveled to Kyiv after more than three hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. The visit was their first to the Ukrainian capital as part of the Trump administration’s latest effort to revive negotiations over ending Russia’s war.

The Kremlin characterized the Moscow discussions as constructive, frank and useful. No ceasefire, territorial compromise or other concrete breakthrough emerged, however. Typical! In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed the envoys for stronger security guarantees, additional air defenses and greater European involvement in any settlement.

The parties remain divided over the conflict’s fundamental questions. Moscow continues to seek control of occupied Ukrainian territory and concessions that would constrain Ukraine’s future military position. Kyiv has rejected an imposed territorial settlement without credible guarantees against another Russian invasion. The United States and Ukraine have developed a proposed 20-point framework, but the most politically difficult issues—including territory, enforcement and Ukraine’s long-term security alignment—remain unresolved.

Zelenskyy said this week that trilateral talks involving Ukraine, Russia and the United States are unlikely before Russia’s September 20 parliamentary elections. He is expected to discuss energy, grain exports and the broader peace effort with President Donald Trump later in the month. For now, diplomacy has produced communication rather than convergence.

Russia Intensifies Its Economic War

While negotiators move between capitals, Russia is expanding its campaign against the infrastructure that keeps Ukraine functioning.

Russian attacks killed seven people and wounded 76 in Pavlohrad, an important industrial and railway center in southeastern Ukraine. Additional strikes hit ports, fuel facilities, warehouses and commercial sites across the country. In Dnipro, an attack on a sunflower-oil facility operated by US agribusiness company Bunge killed two people and wounded five.

A jet-powered Russian drone also struck an Ukrnafta petrol station in Kyiv, the first reported attack of its kind against a fuel station in the capital. Ports in the Mykolaiv region and other logistics sites were targeted as Moscow continued placing pressure on Ukraine’s transportation and export networks.

The pattern suggests more than another round of nightly bombardment. Russia is attempting to weaken Ukraine’s economic endurance by damaging the systems that move fuel, grain, military supplies and civilian goods. Rail junctions such as Pavlohrad connect industrial centers with the eastern front. Ports and agricultural facilities generate export income. Fuel depots and energy networks will become even more important as winter approaches.

Poland is also warning that Russia may attempt to target border crossings used to move trade and assistance into Ukraine. A recent strike on a Ukraine–Moldova border post killed two people, reinforcing concerns that Moscow is widening its campaign against the country’s international supply routes.

Ukraine, meanwhile, is conducting its own economic counteroffensive. Ukrainian drones have reached gas facilities deep inside Siberia, while sea drones struck the Russian resort city of Sochi. Kyiv increasingly argues that Russia’s refineries, ports and energy installations are legitimate targets because petroleum exports finance Moscow’s war.

The result is an expanding contest in which each side is attacking the other’s capacity to finance and sustain combat, even as US officials attempt to restart peace negotiations.

War Always Overlaps

The wars in Ukraine and Iran are separate conflicts, but they are increasingly competing for the same weapons, diplomatic attention and economic resources.

The most immediate point of overlap is air defense. Ukraine urgently needs Patriot interceptors and other systems to defend its cities and energy infrastructure. U.S. forces and Gulf partners require many of those same capabilities to intercept Iranian missiles and drones. The United States has also expended much of its available stockpile of certain long-range precision weapons during the Iran campaign, raising questions about its readiness to supply multiple conflicts simultaneously.

Canada has now announced a C$350 million package to purchase air-defense interceptors for Ukraine through a U.S. supply program. It will also provide nearly C$435 million in loan guarantees to reinforce Ukraine’s energy security before winter. The assistance is substantial, but it also underscores Ukraine’s continuing dependence on a weapons pipeline facing mounting global demand.

Drone warfare creates a second connection. Russia transformed Iranian-designed Shahed drones into one of the principal weapons of its campaign against Ukrainian cities. Ukraine consequently developed years of practical experience detecting and intercepting them. When the Iran war began, Washington and Gulf governments turned to Ukrainian expertise for help countering similar systems in the Middle East.

The relationship has now become circular. Iranian drone technology helped Russia attack Ukraine, while Ukrainian battlefield knowledge is helping American and Gulf forces defend against Iran.

Energy provides the third, and potentially most consequential, link. The Iran war and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz have pushed global oil prices above $100 per barrel. Higher prices increase costs for Ukraine and its European supporters, but they can also strengthen Russia’s export income. Every sustained rise in oil prices potentially gives Moscow additional revenue to finance its military campaign, provided it can continue moving petroleum through sanctioned trading and shadow-fleet networks.

Russia and Iran are therefore partners in sanctions evasion but not identical economic beneficiaries. Both rely on discounted oil, opaque intermediaries and shadow shipping. Yet severe disruption to Iranian exports can remove competing barrels from the market and raise the value of the Russian crude that still reaches buyers.

And, the Iran war has significantly diverted American political attention from Ukraine. Witkoff and Kushner’s renewed diplomacy signals that Washington is attempting to return Ukraine to the foreground, but the administration must now manage two major conflicts while confronting pressure over military inventories, energy prices and the approaching US midterm elections.

And so, what happens next?

The diplomatic channel will remain open, but a comprehensive settlement is unlikely in the immediate future. Russia appears to believe that sustained attacks on Ukraine’s economy, energy system and supply routes can improve its negotiating position. Kyiv, in turn, is trying to demonstrate that it can impose comparable costs deep inside Russia.

The next meaningful diplomatic movement is more likely to concern limited arrangements, like grain exports, energy infrastructure, prisoner exchanges or restrictions on particular categories of attack,than a final territorial settlement.

Ukraine’s immediate priority will remain surviving another winter. That requires interceptors, replacement energy equipment, natural-gas financing and continued access to European transportation corridors. Russia will attempt to make each of those requirements more expensive.

Our Prediction

Russia will continue negotiating without substantially reducing its military campaign. Moscow will use talks to test whether Washington is willing to pressure Kyiv on territory while continuing to strike the economic infrastructure that supports Ukraine’s resistance.

A broad ceasefire before Russia’s parliamentary elections is unlikely. After the vote, Washington may push for another trilateral meeting, but territorial control and enforceable security guarantees will remain the principal barriers.

The Iran war will make Ukraine’s position more difficult, not because Washington has abandoned Kyiv, but because Ukraine is no longer the only theater demanding U.S. interceptors, precision weapons and presidential attention. If the conflict around Hormuz continues driving oil prices higher, Russia may also receive an indirect financial windfall.

Ukraine will respond by accelerating domestic drone production and attacking Russian energy assets at greater distances. That will make the war increasingly economic and geographically expansive even as diplomats insist that negotiations are progressing.

The central contradiction remains. Every side says the war must end, while each continues trying to strengthen its position before seriously accepting the compromises required to end it.

Finland is simultaneously strengthening the civilian side of NATO’s northern defenses. More than 2,000 people participated in Europe’s largest civil-defense exercise since the Second World War, sheltering inside an underground facility in Kuopio while authorities simulated missile threats, cyberattacks and disruptions to electricity and water. Finland shares a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia and has long maintained conscription, emergency stockpiles and an extensive shelter system.

🎯 BRICS Summit Tests the Bloc’s Claim to Global Leadership

India hosts the BRICS Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi on September 12–13 under circumstances that expose both the bloc’s growing importance and its deepest structural weakness.

BRICS now brings together 11 countries representing almost half the world’s population and approximately 40 percent of global economic output. Its members include major energy producers, the world’s largest developing economies and states seeking alternatives to institutions traditionally dominated by the United States and Europe.

But expansion, as we’ve learned, has not necessarily produced cohesion.

Iran and the United Arab Emirates will arrive as fellow BRICS members while standing on opposing sides of an expanding regional war. The UAE severed relations with Tehran after Iranian missiles targeted its territory, while Iran wants the summit to condemn the American and Israeli military campaign and the economic blockade imposed against it.

All the bloc’s members are expected to attend. Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian will travel to New Delhi, while the UAE will be represented by Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed. Their presence makes this the most important BRICS meeting since the organization’s expansion. Very possibly the most contentious.

Iran and the UAE Bring the War Inside BRICS

The immediate challenge will be producing a joint declaration on the Iran conflict.

Tehran is likely to demand explicit condemnation of U.S. and Israeli attacks, sanctions and interference with Iranian oil exports. Russia will be sympathetic to that language because it reinforces Moscow’s campaign against Western sanctions and presents military and economic pressure as violations of national sovereignty.

The UAE cannot comfortably endorse such a statement while Iranian missiles have targeted Gulf territory and Tehran-aligned forces threaten regional shipping. Abu Dhabi will want the declaration to address attacks on neighboring states, commercial vessels and critical energy infrastructure, not simply the strikes against Iran.

Saudi Arabia faces a similar dilemma. It wants to prevent the war from widening and preserve its developing relationships with both Tehran and Washington. It also cannot ignore the possibility that Iranian missiles or Houthi advances in Yemen could threaten Saudi territory, Red Sea ports and oil exports.

BRICS therefore confronts the problem that its expansion was always going to create. It admitted geopolitical rivals partly because their inclusion demonstrated the bloc’s reach. Those rivalries have now entered the organization itself.

A declaration condemning the United States would be unacceptable to some Gulf members. A declaration condemning Iran would be rejected by Tehran, Moscow and probably Beijing. The most achievable compromise is general language calling for a ceasefire, the protection of civilians, respect for sovereignty, freedom of navigation and a diplomatic settlement without assigning responsibility for the war.

That would preserve formal unity, but it would not amount to a common foreign policy.

India’s Balancing Act

The summit is also a test of India’s attempt to lead the Global South without allowing BRICS to become an explicitly anti-Western alliance.

New Delhi maintains close relations with Russia, imports substantial quantities of Russian energy and opposes efforts to isolate Moscow completely. It also values its relationship with Iran, including access to Central Asia through the Iranian port of Chabahar.

At the same time, India’s security and economic relationships with the United States, Europe, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have grown substantially. It has no interest in endorsing a declaration that places BRICS collectively behind Tehran or transforms the organization into an instrument of Russian and Chinese foreign policy.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will therefore try to move the summit away from the question of who is responsible for the war and toward areas where agreement is easier: energy security, food supplies, resilient transport routes, development finance and reform of international institutions.

This positioning reflects India’s broader definition of strategic autonomy. New Delhi wants BRICS to give developing states greater influence, but it does not want membership to require alignment with China or hostility toward Washington.

Energy Security Creates Unity and Division

The disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz gives every BRICS member an urgent economic reason to prevent further escalation. Oil prices have risen above $100 per barrel, placing additional pressure on governments already confronting inflation and slowing growth.

🎯 Germany’s Political Firewall Buckles After Historic AfD Victory

Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has won a state election for the first time, delivering a result that could overturn one of the central conventions of the country’s postwar political system.

The AfD captured 43.8 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, more than double its 20.8 percent result in 2021, and secured 39 of the state parliament’s 83 seats. It fell only three seats short of the 42 required for an outright majority.

The governing Christian Democratic Union suffered a stunning collapse. The CDU, which won 37.1 percent in 2021, fell to 17.2 percent and 15 seats. The result is a repudiation not only of the outgoing state government but also of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s federal leadership.

AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund declared that voters had given his party a mandate to govern. Whether it can actually do so will depend on the survival of Germany’s political Brandmauer, the “firewall” through which the country’s established parties refuse to enter coalitions or governing arrangements with the far right.

The firewall still exists formally. The CDU, Social Democrats, Greens and Die Linke have said they will not govern with the AfD. But the scale of the victory makes isolating the party considerably more difficult. The AfD is no longer a noisy opposition faction that can be excluded while several larger parties form a government. In Saxony-Anhalt, it is by far the largest party and controls almost half the legislature.

The election therefore presents Germany with two politically destabilizing possibilities. Allow the AfD to approach power, or assemble a fragmented coalition of parties united primarily by their refusal to let it govern.

The BSW Becomes Kingmaker

The immediate decision may rest with the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), which narrowly entered the state parliament with 5.3 percent of the vote and five seats.

BSW emerged from Germany’s left but combines traditional social-welfare policies with restrictive positions on migration, opposition to military assistance for Ukraine and support for restoring relations with Moscow. It is the only party represented in the new parliament that has expressed openness to talking with the AfD.

A formal AfD–BSW coalition remains uncertain and would contain substantial ideological tensions. BSW figures have instead suggested that they might cooperate with the AfD on individual proposals. That distinction could allow both parties to claim that no coalition exists while effectively providing Siegmund with the votes required to govern.

If BSW’s five legislators supported the AfD’s 39, the two parties would hold 44 seats, a majority. Germany could then acquire its first far-right-led state government since the end of the Second World War, with support from a party descended from the political left.

Even without a formal agreement, issue-by-issue cooperation would puncture the firewall. Once another party helps an AfD government pass budgets, appoint officials or implement policy, the claim that the far right remains institutionally isolated becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.

This may be the election’s most consequential result. Political taboos rarely collapse all at once. They weaken through exceptions, informal arrangements and claims that cooperation is temporary or limited to one issue.

Why Saxony-Anhalt Turned Against the Center

Saxony-Anhalt is among Germany’s smaller and more economically vulnerable eastern states. It has experienced population decline, the departure of younger workers, relatively low incomes and persistent concern that political and economic decisions are made elsewhere.

The AfD converted those grievances into a broader campaign against immigration, European integration and Germany’s political establishment. It also benefited from widespread dissatisfaction with Merz’s government over the cost of living, economic stagnation and the perception that promised reforms have not improved daily life.

Polling indicated that 87 percent of Saxony-Anhalt’s voters were dissatisfied with the federal government. Record turnout of approximately 76.5 percent further complicates attempts to dismiss the result as the product of an unusually mobilized extremist minority. The AfD attracted support on a scale approaching an absolute majority.

The party’s state organization has been classified as right-wing extremist by Saxony-Anhalt’s domestic intelligence service. Its victory therefore creates an extraordinary contradiction: an organization monitored for extremism may now be in a position to lead the government of the same state.

Germany’s democratic system was constructed after Nazism with unusually strong safeguards against authoritarian movements. But those protections cannot resolve the political problem created when a large percentage of voters knowingly supports a party outside the traditional democratic consensus.

The Russia Connection

The election also has consequences beyond Germany’s domestic politics.

The AfD favors renewed ties with Moscow, opposes German support for Ukraine and has challenged the sanctions imposed on Russia. BSW shares much of that position despite emerging from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. A governing arrangement between them would therefore create a powerful pro-Russian center inside a German state government.

German foreign and defense policy is determined principally at the federal level, so Saxony-Anhalt cannot independently end weapons deliveries or lift European sanctions. But state governments influence national politics through the Bundesrat, Germany’s upper legislative chamber, and can amplify public opposition to federal policy.

The timing is particularly sensitive. Russia is intensifying attacks on Ukraine’s energy and economic infrastructure while NATO members warn of sabotage, cyberattacks and threats to undersea cables. Germany is being asked to spend more on defense and sustain assistance to Kyiv at the same moment that a party opposed to both positions is recording its strongest result ever.

The victory strengthens Moscow’s broader political objective even without proof of direct electoral interference: weakening the European consensus behind Ukraine by empowering parties that portray sanctions and military assistance as burdens imposed on ordinary voters.

Economic Alarm Beyond Germany

The AfD’s economic platform also challenges Germany’s relationship with the European Union and the euro. Party figures have advocated German withdrawal from the common currency and, under some circumstances, from the European Union itself.

Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel warned that the far right’s rise could damage Germany’s attractiveness to businesses and foreign investors. A party promoting withdrawal from European institutions, restricting immigration and restoring ties with Moscow may struggle to reconcile those policies with Germany’s dependence on exports, skilled foreign workers and access to the European single market.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde responded by emphasizing that public support for the euro remains historically high at approximately 82 percent within the eurozone and 74 percent across the broader European Union.

That contrast will become central to the coming political fight. The AfD argues that national sovereignty offers protection from economic decline. Its opponents argue that Germany’s prosperity depends on precisely the European and international relationships the party wants to weaken.

A Warning for Chancellor Merz

Although the vote took place in a state of roughly two million people, its consequences reach Berlin.

Merz’s government had hoped that a €500 billion infrastructure program and promised economic reforms would restore confidence. Instead, the CDU lost nearly 20 percentage points in a state it had governed for years. The result will intensify divisions within Merz’s national coalition, particularly over pensions, welfare, taxation and spending.

The chancellor now faces pressure from two directions. Moving right on migration or cultural issues risks validating the AfD’s framing and alienating centrist voters. Moving toward the center may deepen the impression among conservative voters that the CDU is unwilling to confront their concerns.

Germany also has little time to absorb the result. Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern hold elections on September 20. Another major AfD performance, particularly in eastern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, would confirm that Saxony-Anhalt was not an isolated political revolt but part of a broader realignment.

And so, what happens next?

Negotiations over the state government will become an immediate test of whether the Brandmauer still functions in practice.

The mainstream parties may attempt to construct a broad anti-AfD coalition, but such a government would bring together parties with conflicting programs and could appear designed solely to deny power to the election’s clear winner. That outcome might preserve the firewall temporarily while feeding the AfD’s argument that Germany’s established parties disregard voters whenever they dislike the result.

The alternative, formal or informal support from BSW, would give the AfD a path to governing. BSW may initially limit cooperation to individual votes, allowing it to test the political consequences without committing to a coalition.

Siegmund could also fail to form a government and use the resulting paralysis to campaign for another election, betting that voters will punish the parties that blocked him and give the AfD the three additional seats it needs.

Our Prediction

The AfD may not immediately secure a formal coalition, but the firewall surrounding it will continue to erode.

BSW is likely to enter discussions while avoiding the language of coalition. If it supports the AfD on budgets, migration measures or appointments, Germany will move into a new political phase in which the far right exercises governing power without a conventional coalition agreement.

Merz will respond by hardening elements of his national agenda, particularly on immigration, welfare and internal security, while attempting to preserve Germany’s commitments to NATO and Ukraine. That strategy may slow the transfer of conservative voters to the AfD, but it is unlikely to reverse the deeper dissatisfaction visible across eastern Germany.

The AfD’s greater victory may therefore be normalization rather than immediate control of Saxony-Anhalt. Winning 43.8 percent has already changed the question from whether Germany’s political system should engage with the party to how long it can continue refusing to do so.

The next elections will determine whether Saxony-Anhalt was the high-water mark of Germany’s far right, or the moment its advance into government became unavoidable.

🎯 Turkey’s Opposition Fractures as Political Pressure Turns Violent

The stabbing of Yeni Parti (New Party) lawmaker Melih Meriç has added physical violence to an already combustible struggle over the future of Turkey’s opposition.

Meriç, a parliamentarian from Gaziantep, was stabbed during an argument with Seydi Ahmet Keleş, a former local official from the Republican People’s Party. Reports say it was a dispute over a district leadership position. He underwent emergency surgery, while the suspected attacker was detained. The incident appears to have emerged from a personal and political dispute rather than an organized assassination attempt, but its significance extends beyond the motives of one attacker.

Meriç belongs to the new political movement created by former CHP leader Özgür Özel after a court annulled Özel’s 2023 election as party chairman and restored his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The decision split Turkey’s largest opposition party at precisely the moment when it appeared capable of mounting its strongest challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in more than two decades.

The attack occurred inside a political environment already shaped by imprisonment, judicial intervention and institutional upheaval.

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s most formidable electoral rival, has remained jailed since 2025 and is standing trial alongside hundreds of defendants on sweeping corruption and organized-crime allegations. İmamoğlu and his supporters describe the prosecution as an effort to prevent him from contesting the presidency. The government maintains that Turkey’s judiciary operates independently.

The courts have now affected both sides of the opposition’s leadership structure: İmamoğlu’s ability to run for president and Özel’s ability to lead the CHP. Özel’s response was to establish a competing party and take a substantial number of opposition legislators with him. What had been a contest between Erdoğan and a strengthened CHP has consequently become a more complicated struggle over who controls the opposition itself.

That fragmentation may prove more consequential than the attack on Meriç. The CHP’s success in the 2024 municipal elections demonstrated that Erdoğan’s governing alliance could be defeated when opposition voters consolidated behind competitive candidates. Dividing that coalition among the restored CHP leadership, Özel’s new movement, İmamoğlu’s imprisoned political network, Kurdish parties and smaller nationalist groups changes the electoral equation considerably.

The government does not need to eliminate opposition support altogether. It benefits if that support is divided among rival organizations, leadership claims and presidential candidates.

Meriç’s stabbing now risks deepening those divisions. New Party supporters may portray the attack as evidence that the conflict inside the former CHP has crossed from political competition into intimidation. The CHP will seek to prevent responsibility for an individual attacker from being attached to the party as a whole. Erdoğan’s government, meanwhile, can present the violence as proof that the opposition is unstable and consumed by its own internal disputes.

The result is a political system in which Erdoğan remains under genuine electoral pressure but his opponents are becoming progressively less capable of converting that dissatisfaction into a unified challenge.

Why It Matters Beyond Turkey

Turkey’s internal instability arrives while Ankara is playing an increasingly important role in the wars surrounding it.

Turkey is a NATO member, a Black Sea power and an intermediary between Russia and Ukraine. It also borders Iran and maintains military and political interests in Syria, Iraq and the eastern Mediterranean. The widening Iran conflict gives Erdoğan another opportunity to emphasize strategic continuity, national security and his personal relationships with competing world leaders.

That international role can strengthen the presidency domestically. While the opposition argues over party leadership and İmamoğlu’s future, Erdoğan can present himself as the indispensable figure managing Turkey’s relations with Washington, Moscow, Tehran and Europe.

This is the central tension in Turkish politics: the government faces economic frustration and a large opposition electorate, yet the institutions and personalities capable of organizing that electorate are being systematically weakened or divided.

And so, what happens next?

The immediate investigation will determine whether Meriç’s stabbing remains a criminal case centered on an individual dispute or becomes part of the larger confrontation between the CHP and Özel’s breakaway movement.

Özel will use the attack to rally his new party and argue that Turkey requires an opposition free from both government interference and the CHP’s restored leadership. Kılıçdaroğlu and the CHP will attempt to retain local organizations, lawmakers and voters while rejecting any suggestion that the party bears collective responsibility for the violence.

İmamoğlu’s position remains the most important unresolved question. Even from prison, he retains a national profile and a symbolic claim to opposition leadership. But a prolonged trial, the cancellation of his university degree and the splintering of the organization that nominated him could make it increasingly difficult to translate his popularity into a viable presidential campaign.

Erdoğan is unlikely to call an early election while the opposition is still reorganizing unless he becomes confident that its divisions are permanent. His government has a strong incentive to allow the struggle between the CHP and New Party to continue while emphasizing regional security and political stability.

Our Prediction

The opposition split will harden before any serious attempt at reunification begins.

Özel’s movement is likely to attract politicians and voters who regard the court-directed return of Kılıçdaroğlu as illegitimate. The CHP will retain its historic identity, municipal organization and loyal base, leaving neither side able to absorb the other quickly. İmamoğlu will remain the opposition’s most powerful unifying symbol, but his imprisonment will limit his ability to broker an agreement between competing factions.

The stabbing will accelerate the hostility without determining the final balance of power. Its larger effect will be psychological. It reinforces the sense that ordinary political competition in Turkey is giving way to a struggle conducted through courts, police interventions, imprisonment and increasingly personal confrontation. People will continue to self-censor or self-deport.

Erdoğan’s greatest advantage may therefore come not from recovering all the voters his party has lost, but from facing an opposition that can no longer agree on who leads it, which institution represents it or how its strongest candidate could ever reach the ballot.

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What Else Mattered:

📍Europe reaches orbit from home soil. Germany’s Isar Aerospace successfully launched its Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andøya Spaceport, marking the first orbital flight from continental Europe. The privately developed rocket reached orbit on its second mission and deployed five CubeSats, along with a scientific experiment, after its inaugural test flight crashed into the sea in March 2025.

The achievement gives Europe more than a symbolic first. Spectrum is designed to carry small and medium-sized satellites, offering European governments and companies another route to orbit as access to Russian launch services remains severed and the U.S.’s SpaceX dominates the commercial market. One successful mission does not yet create a dependable launch system, but it advances Europe’s effort to control the infrastructure underlying its communications, navigation, climate monitoring and defense capabilities.

📍AI’s power centers grow larger, while its builders warn it may kill us…Two developments this week illustrated how rapidly the artificial-intelligence industry is consolidating around a small number of extraordinarily valuable companies. Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face for approximately $12.9 billion, bringing one of the most important platforms for sharing and deploying AI models under the control of the company that already dominates the advanced chips used to train them. The announcement lifted Nvidia’s shares and pushed CEO Jensen Huang’s estimated fortune toward $200 billion.

Investors are discussing a possible valuation approaching $2 trillion for Anthropic’s anticipated public listing. The Claude developer would enter the market carrying both enormous revenue expectations and an unusual governance structure. Its Long-Term Benefit Trust gives independent trustees influence over board appointments in an effort to protect safety considerations from purely commercial pressure.

And then comes in Jacob Coxon. The former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher left the industry and warned that its increasingly powerful systems could cause human extinction. Anthropic’s own alignment-science lead, Evan Hubinger, placed the chance of AI killing everyone within the next decade at greater than 10 percent. Nothing quite captures the current market like a company potentially worth $2 trillion whose own experts are debating whether its product could eliminate the customer base.

“Anthropic and OpenAI are gambling with our lives.”

All of this reveals the central contradiction of the AI boom. The industry presents itself as building technology for broad human benefit while ownership, infrastructure and wealth become increasingly concentrated. Nvidia is expanding its control from computing hardware into the model-development ecosystem. Anthropic is preparing to test whether safety-focused oversight can withstand the demands of public investors. The next phase of AI competition will definitely concern more than which company produces the strongest model. It’s going yo determine who controls the infrastructure, capital and governing rules behind the entire industry.

📍Germany blames Russia for attempted airport attack. Berlin concluded that Moscow was responsible for an August 4 attempt to strike Leipzig/Halle Airport with an explosives-laden drone. The device fell near a Ukrainian cargo aircraft reportedly used to transport military supplies and failed to detonate, a result Chancellor Friedrich Merz said prevented deaths and major destruction largely by chance. Russia denied involvement.

Leipzig/Halle is one of Europe’s largest freight hubs, making the apparent target economically and strategically significant. Germany responded by closing a Russian consulate and cultural center; Moscow retaliated against German diplomatic and cultural institutions in Russia. The confrontation illustrates how the Ukraine war is increasingly being fought inside NATO territory through sabotage, cyberoperations and attacks designed to remain below the threshold of conventional war. It also sharpens the contradiction confronting Germany after the AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt victory, evidence of an expanding Russian threat is emerging in the same region where a Russia-friendly party just achieved its greatest electoral success.

📍Joshua Wong pleads guilty to foreign collusion. Joshua Wong, the 29-year-old activist who became the international face of Hong Kong’s democracy movement, pleaded guilty to conspiring with exiled activist Nathan Law and others to persuade foreign governments to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and China. The national-security charge carries a sentence of between three years and life imprisonment, depending on how the court classifies his role.

Wong is already serving a four-year-and-eight-month sentence for participating in an unofficial 2020 primary election and had been expected to complete that term in 2027. The new prosecution could keep him imprisoned considerably longer. His plea illustrates how thoroughly Hong Kong’s political boundaries have changed. International advocacy once treated as legitimate democratic campaigning is now prosecuted as collusion with foreign forces. A movement whose leaders once testified before foreign legislatures and appeared on magazine covers has been transformed into a national-security case, with its best-known figures imprisoned, exiled or silenced.

📍Tycoon acquitted in Daphne Caruana Galizia murder. A Maltese jury acquitted businessman Yorgen Fenech of complicity in the 2017 car-bomb assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The 8–1 verdict leaves Malta without a convicted mastermind, although five men have been convicted of carrying out the killing or supplying the bomb. Prosecutors plan to appeal, while the verdict has renewed scrutiny of corruption, political influence and the safety of journalists in the EU’s smallest member state.

Caruana Galizia was one of the journalists investigating the Panama Papers. Her reporting exposed offshore companies connected to senior members of then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s government and examined the network surrounding 17 Black, a secret company later revealed to be owned by Fenech. Investigators subsequently found that 17 Black was expected to send payments to Panama companies belonging to Muscat’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and energy minister Konrad Mizzi.

After Caruana Galizia’s murder, Forbidden Stories assembled 45 journalists from 18 news organizations to continue her unfinished investigations under the banner of the Daphne Project.

📍Whistleblower Warns of Mail-Ballot Breakdown Before Midterms. A US Postal Service whistleblower told Congress that a new federal ballot-screening system, developed in approximately three months, could prevent legitimate ballots from reaching voters before November’s midterm elections. Under rules ordered by President Donald Trump, state and local election officials would have to upload voter information and ballot barcodes to a federal portal before mailing ballots. According to the whistleblower, a single barcode failing the system’s sample check could cause an entire batch to be rejected and returned.

A federal appeals court has upheld an injunction preventing USPS from enforcing the requirements, finding that the administration likely exceeded its authority by inserting the Postal Service into an eligibility process traditionally administered by state and local governments. The administration has taken the dispute to the Supreme Court, leaving the system’s fate unresolved as ballots are already being distributed in some states. With approximately 30 percent of Americans voting by mail in 2024, even a temporary implementation failure could affect large numbers of voters.

U.S. absentee voting dates to the Civil War, when soldiers cast ballots from the battlefield.

And on the other side of the midterms coin…

Trump Promises $5,000 Checks if Republicans Win Congress. Speaking at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, President Donald Trump promised a $5,000 “Trump Dividend” for every American adult if Republicans retain both chambers of Congress in November. Trump said tariff revenue and foreign investment would finance the payments and proposed requiring recipients to spend the money inside the United States.

The pledge would cost an estimated $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion and would require congressional authorization, despite Trump’s suggestion that he could issue the payments without it. The proposal has drawn skepticism from fiscal conservatives concerned about federal debt, inflation and higher interest rates, while supporters describe it as returning the benefits of administration policy to the public.

📍US Military Sinks Vessel Allegedly Linked to Los Choneros. US Southern Command intercepted and sank an Ecuadorian vessel in the eastern Pacific that it alleged served as a floating refueling station for drug traffickers connected to Los Choneros. The people aboard were removed before the vessel was destroyed and are expected to be transferred to Ecuadorian custody.

The operation was not an isolated seizure. It was the fifth Ecuadorian vessel destroyed by US forces in less than two weeks, part of an expanding military campaign against organizations Washington has designated as foreign terrorist groups. Ecuador says the sinkings formed part of a joint investigation, but relatives of some crew members maintain that the vessels were used for fishing and say no drugs were found aboard.

📍Israelis and Palestinians Head Toward Consequential Elections. Israel votes on October 27, with Benjamin Netanyahu fighting to preserve his rule after the failures surrounding October 7, years of regional war and persistent corruption charges. Polls indicate that his current coalition could lose its majority, although Israel’s fragmented opposition has yet to establish a certain path to government. Netanyahu is now attempting to consolidate smaller right-wing parties before they divide the nationalist vote.

One month later, Palestinians are scheduled to hold their first legislative election since 2006, on November 28. The announcement is potentially historic, but the practical questions are enormous. They include whether voting can take place throughout Gaza, whether Israel will permit Palestinians in East Jerusalem to participate, which factions will be allowed to stand and whether the results will be recognized by Israel and foreign governments.

The sequence matters. Israel votes first, meaning the government formed after October 27 could influence whether the Palestinian election is facilitated, obstructed or dismissed. A Netanyahu-led government would almost certainly resist any result that empowered Hamas and oppose efforts to turn the election into a pathway toward Palestinian statehood. The most important signals will therefore be Palestinian candidate rules, arrangements for Gaza and East Jerusalem, and whether the November vote remains on the calendar once Israel’s election is over.

Important thoughts on TISZA and Magyar’s polling

via The Hungary Report’s Péter Dósa

The Hungary Report

Summer Is Over. Is TISZA’s Honeymoon Over Too?

The State of Hungary: August 2026, with developments through 6 September…

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2 months ago · 21 likes · 1 comment · Péter Dósa

Something extra for your radar:

Art of the Week

Your breath of fresh art and culture.

“The world breaks everyone and
afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
— Ernest Hemingway

This week’s pick: Henri van der Stok!

Henri van der Stok’s Orpheus Plays His Harp for the Animals (c. 1917–1920) turns the mythic musician into a figure of quiet magnetism. Orpheus does not pursue; he plays, and the world gathers around him. The image becomes less about conquest than the strange authority of beauty, art, and presence — the ability to draw others near simply by remaining fully oneself.

» Two of his astrological pieces are found below. «

“Henri van der Stok (Dutch, 1870-1946) was born in Indonesia and eventually settled in the Hague. Van der Stok excelled in woodcut and lithography and did so with style and great skills as a draughtsman. Van der Stok's flair for art deco design is is consistent throughout his oeuvre. In addition to his blockprints, he was also a gifted painter and stained glass artisan. He was a member of the Pulcri studio.”

What to Watch This Week:

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

📌 Sweden votes Sunday. The center-left opposition led by former prime minister Magdalena Andersson holds a narrow advantage over Ulf Kristersson’s governing bloc. The decisive question is whether the far-right Sweden Democrats move from supporting the government in parliament to holding cabinet ministries for the first time. A close result could produce prolonged coalition negotiations.

📌 Bangsamoro holds its first parliamentary election. Voters in the autonomous Muslim-majority region of the southern Philippines go to the polls Monday after repeated postponements. The election is a crucial test of the peace settlement that transformed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front from an armed insurgency into a governing political movement. Watch turnout, election-related violence and whether former rebel leaders accept a competitive transfer of power.

📌 The Federal Reserve confronts oil-driven inflation. US central-bank officials announce their interest-rate decision Wednesday. Rising energy and transportation costs have revived inflation concerns, leaving the Fed to choose between raising borrowing costs again or waiting to determine whether the oil shock will spread through the wider economy. The decision will move currencies, bonds and global markets.

📌 Russia enters its final week before parliamentary elections. Voting for the State Duma takes place September 20, including ballots organized in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine. United Russia is expected to retain institutional control, making the more revealing signals turnout, protest voting, censorship and the Kremlin’s treatment of antiwar candidates. Kyiv has said no new trilateral peace negotiations are expected before the vote.

📌 The UN begins positioning for its annual diplomatic showdown. With the General Assembly’s high-level debate approaching, governments will begin circulating draft resolutions, arranging bilateral meetings and deciding which conflicts their leaders will prioritize in New York. Watch whether smaller states attempt to connect the wars in Ukraine and Iran to wider arguments about sovereignty, sanctions and the unequal application of international law.

Spotlight on the Markets:

📌 The oil shock becomes a bond-market shock. Brent crude approached $110 a barrel Friday and remained on course for an approximately 11% weekly gain as conflict around Iran and Yemen threatened two of the world’s most important shipping corridors. What began as an energy-supply disruption is now spreading through inflation expectations, interest rates and global asset prices.

Government bonds sold off sharply as investors anticipated tighter monetary policy. The US 10-year Treasury yield approached 5% while the 30-year yield reached its highest level in 19 years. Higher yields make borrowing more expensive for governments, companies and households, and reduce the appeal of stocks whose valuations depend on profits projected far into the future.

Equity markets fell across Asia and Europe, with oil-importing economies absorbing the greatest pressure. India’s main indexes dropped to three-month lows, while Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Australia also declined. Energy producers gained some protection, but airlines, manufacturers, miners and consumer-facing businesses were squeezed by the prospect of higher fuel and financing costs.

Even traditional havens behaved unusually. The dollar strengthened as US yields rose, while gold headed toward a third consecutive weekly decline because higher interest rates reduce the attraction of assets that pay no income. The market’s message was clear. Investors are no longer pricing the conflict as a temporary geopolitical disturbance. They are beginning to price it as a renewed global inflation cycle, one that could force central banks to tighten policy just as economic growth and highly valued technology stocks become more vulnerable.

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Mamdani announced the creation of New York City’s first public portal dedicated to records about the environmental and health consequences of 9/11. Its initial release contains approximately 170,000 pages of previously withheld municipal documents, including air-quality tests, contamination reports, residents’ complaints and internal discussions about the city’s potential legal liability. Additional records will be reviewed and published over the coming year.

The documents may help establish what officials knew about toxic dust around Ground Zero while residents, students and recovery workers were being told the air was safe. The release also settles two lawsuits brought by 9/11 Health Watch seeking access to the files. Mamdani said the archive was intended to provide “transparency and accountability” to survivors, first responders and families still confronting respiratory illnesses and cancers linked to the disaster.

♾️

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 th…

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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. …

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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 Cru…

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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 ach…

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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 Kev…

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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 rock…

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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.

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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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