A NATO Summit Doomed to Inconsequence Kicks Off in Ankara Under the Aegis of Erdogan’s Ego
Car Bomb Next to Macron’s Hotel in Damascus: A Warning in Al-Sharaa’s Fragile Syria
JetZero Challenges Airbus and Boeing from the Mojave Desert
Brief Introduction
We are living, without rhetorical exaggeration, through one of the most delicate moments the international order has known since the end of the Cold War — and I dare to argue that, in some aspects, the most delicate of all.
The day we are analyzing today condenses this fragility with an almost didactic clarity: a NATO summit opens in Ankara that should be momentous, at a momentous time, but which — I warn you now — will end with perfectly inconsequential results; the oligarchic-jihadist regime in Tehran, decapitated at its helm and without an arbiter capable of guaranteeing anything, sets the Strait of Hormuz on fire once again; a car bomb explodes next to President Macron’s hotel in Damascus; and a terrorist oligarchy buries its assassinated leader amid cries of vengeance while displaying defiance instead of mourning.
The much-vaunted — yet not truly desired, as we are not even close to genuinely wanting it — strategic autonomy of Europa is, as of today, a chimera. We have neither the collective political will, nor the leaders endowed with the indispensable vision and capabilities, nor the means committed to our defense, nor even the elementary awareness of the severity of the risks looming over us.
Against this backdrop, a leitmotif projects itself, one that I have been describing for weeks and that today reaches its rawest expression: the fatherlessness of command. The same fatherlessness that reigns in Tehran — where the most ruthless of generals dominates by force without being able to arbitrate — reverberates, barring all moral distances, in the empty chair that Europe, and very notably Spain, occupy at the table where their own destiny is being decided.
A NATO Summit Doomed to Inconsequence Kicks Off in Ankara Under the Aegis of Erdogan’s Ego
Facts
The heads of state and government of the 32 allies are meeting today and tomorrow, July 7 and 8, in Ankara’s megalomaniacal presidential complex — an ode to the ego of Recep Tayyip Erdogan — for a summit that Mark Rutte, the Alliance’s Secretary General, has sought to frame as a «defense industrial revolution».
In an event shamelessly dubbed the «grand unveiling», Europeans will announce tens of billions of dollars in new weapons contracts — a large portion of them, paradoxically, awarded to American companies —, the replacement of the half-century-old AWACS surveillance aircraft fleet with Sweden’s Saab GlobalEye, and a battery of drone, missile, and interceptor programs funded in part by the European defense loan fund, endowed with up to $170 billion.
The final declaration reaffirms an «unwavering» commitment to Article 5, labels Russia a «long-term threat», and commits some €70 billion in military assistance to Ukraine for 2026. All of this under the shadow of the Russian bombardment that, on the eve of the conclave, unleashed dozens of missiles and hundreds of drones on Kyiv, leaving at least eleven dead.
The background is well known: Donald Trump, who has gone so far as to call NATO a «paper tiger», demands that allies accelerate up to the 5% of GDP agreed upon in The Hague — 3.5% on nuclear defense spending and 1.5% on expanded security — while Washington promotes its «NATO 3.0» doctrine: that Europe take over its conventional defense so that the United States can focus on the Indo-Pacific against China. There will be bilateral meetings between Trump and Zelensky, Syrian leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, and Erdogan himself, over whose eventual readmission to the F-35 fighter jet program Israel’s express opposition looms large.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meet on the sidelines of the NATO Leaders Summit in Ankara, Turkey, July 7, 2026 – REUTERS/ STOYAN NENOV
Implications
The Secretary General attempting to sell us a fairy tale about the Alliance’s new, unstoppable capabilities — masking the retirement of geriatric AWACS as a technological leap — sounds like the sad joke of an unemployed comedian. And it should be spelled out clearly: the problem is not just the 5%. Several European partners are already very close to or above the United States, which spends barely 3.4% of its GDP on defense and was — a devastating data point — the only NATO country whose effort, measured as a percentage of GDP, was lower in 2024 than in 2014.
Poland (4.1%), Estonia (3.4%), Latvia (3.2%), or Greece (3.1%) debunk the narrative of the free-riding European. Washington should, quite simply, deliver on what it demands from others. The summit, in short, exposes the asymmetry between a power that commands and a Europe that obeys without its own direction.
Outlooks and Scenarios
This analyst estimates that the outcome will be, at best, incremental progress without a breakthrough — just enough for Trump to claim a «victory lap» and for Europeans to breathe a sigh of relief for not being publicly humiliated. Nothing resembling an autonomous strategic architecture. The underlying risk persists: an Alliance sustained by the arithmetic of spending rather than shared political will is an imposing building erected on foundations of sand.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum, on the sidelines of the NATO Leaders Summit in Ankara, Turkey, July 7, 2026 – REUTERS/ YVES HERMAN
The Revolutionary Guard Attacks Again in Hormuz: Qatari LNG Tanker Al Rekayyat Punished for Evading the Regime’s “Toll”
Facts
On Monday night, the Revolutionary Guard (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — IRGC) fired at least two missiles at merchant vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, according to US sources cited by The Wall Street Journal and Axios. One of those hit was the Al Rekayyat, a liquefied natural gas tanker owned by Nakilat (Qatar Gas Transport Company), struck on its port side causing a fire in the engine room with no casualties reported. It is no minor detail that the victim is a Qatari vessel: Qatar is precisely the architect of the ceasefire. The IRGC had warned over marine radio that its «missiles and drones are ready to fire» against anyone using the route near Oman instead of the corridors Tehran claims the right to designate. Brent crude rebounded toward $73; the UK and France announced a mission to secure the strait.
People attend a funeral procession for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on February 28 in Israeli and US airstrikes, in Qom, Iran, July 7, 2026 – ISNA/ MOHAMMAD ASADI via REUTERS
Implications
The episode confirms two theses I have been holding. First: that the regime plans to charge — once the sixty-day grace period expires — a fee for «navigation services,» which is to say, a mafia-style extortion with a bureaucratic veneer. The second, deeper one, is what I have termed the decapitation paradox: removing the apex of power in Tehran has not cleared the path toward moderation, but has instead worsened the governance problem. The regime today possesses a dominant figure — General Ahmed Vahidi —, but lacks a reliable guarantor for any concessions. The most ruthless wins out, not the most authorized; and a dominant hawk lacking both the legitimacy and the will to comply can only generate this chaotic intermittency in Hormuz. It is not an accident: it is the very signature of the new power structure.
Outlooks and Scenarios
We are dealing with a textbook example of what I call variable-temperature wars: low-resolution conflicts but with an extremely high capacity for destruction that no one can win and no one can afford to lose. The triumvirate of IRGC terrorist-generals requires permanent tension to justify their rule and keep subjugating their own people. As long as contained systemic fracture remains the regime’s natural state, Hormuz will swing between self-serving openness and intimidating strikes, and the crude risk premium will rise and fall to the rhythm of that strained breathing.
Prayer for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on February 28 in Israeli and US airstrikes, at Jamkaran Mosque, in Qom, Iran, July 7, 2026 – Iranian Supreme Leader’s Office / WANA
Car Bomb Next to Macron’s Hotel in Damascus: A Warning in Al-Sharaa’s Fragile Syria
Facts
Two explosions rocked central Damascus today as President Emmanuel Macron was concluding a two-day visit to Syria. The device — reportedly an explosive attached to a vehicle — detonated in the vicinity of the Four Seasons Hotel, where the French leader was staying, and the Ministry of Tourism headquarters. Macron, who at that moment was heading to the People’s Palace to meet with his counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa, was unhurt and maintained his schedule without alterations; the Élysée confirmed he did not even hear the blast.
Images showed a vehicle engulfed in flames and blood traces on the asphalt, with casualties feared, although no official figure has been released. There has been no claim of responsibility by the closing of this report. This marks the first visit by a Western European head of state to Damascus since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, and Macron was accompanied by a business delegation — including the top executives of TotalEnergies and CMA CGM — focused on reconstruction.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa shake hands on the day they meet in Damascus, Syria, July 7, 2026 – REUTERS/ MAHMOUD HASSANO
Implications
Although authorship remains unclear, the most plausible hypotheses point in two directions that should not be confused: terrorist cells sent or inspired by Tehran — which is completely harmed by the normalization of a post-Assad Syria oriented toward the West — or else DAESH, a mortal enemy of Al-Sharaa. In either case, the message is identical: the security of the new Syria is a scarce and contested commodity, and those betting on its stabilization are treading on a minefield, both literally and figuratively.
Outlooks and Scenarios
Syria’s stabilization will remain a hostage to its saboteurs. The attack — failed in its presumptive objective but effective as a warning — will not derail the European opening, but it will drive up its price and slow down the flow of investment that reconstruction demands. It will be necessary to watch closely if the investigation allows for attribution, because the tone of the Franco-Syrian response in the coming weeks will depend on it.
Smoke and fire rise at the site where explosive devices exploded near a hotel where French President Emmanuel Macron was supposed to stay, in Damascus, Syria, in this screen grab obtained from a video, July 7, 2026 – REUTERS/ YAMAN AL SHAAR
Tehran Buries Khamenei Amid Cries of Vengeance: Defiance Instead of Mourning and a New Regional Order in the Making
Facts
Iran has been holding the state funeral for Ali Khamenei since July 3, with the burial scheduled for the 9th in Mashhad, after he was killed on February 28 in the joint US-Israeli attack that opened the war. Hundreds of thousands of people — the regime claims millions — have filed past the coffin at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla Mosque, amid slogans of «vengeance» and proclamations by a poet who openly called for the deaths of Trump and Netanyahu.
Reuters summarizes the meaning of the ceremony: a display of defiance and the announcement of a new regional order. Delegations from around a hundred countries — led by Russia, Pakistan, the Taliban, and Central Asian republics, and with the West conspicuously absent — have attended; envoys from the Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organizations met with Foreign Minister Araqchi.
Implications
The crucial data point is not who was there, but who was missing and who was superfluous. Missing was Mojtaba Khamenei, the son «inexplicably called “supreme”» and designated successor, who has not appeared in public since his elevation — wounded, hidden, perhaps incapacitated — and who is confirmed as a missing puppet leader: a blank figure. And superfluous, with eloquent prominence, was General Ahmed Vahidi, commander-in-chief of the IRGC, who reappeared sitting next to the coffin after months in hiding.
People attend a funeral procession for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on February 28 in Israeli and US airstrikes, in Qom, Iran, July 7, 2026 – ISNA/ AZAM DADASHI via WANA
Here lies the heart of the matter. Real power today rests in a Revolutionary Guard triumvirate: Vahidi as primus inter pares — by far the worst of the options, just as fanatical as the others, but infinitely more brutal and ruthless, also wanted by Interpol for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which left 85 dead —; former General Mohamed B. Zolghadr heading the National Security Council and the Al-Quds brigades; and Rezaei as interim military advisor. Ghalibaf answers to Vahidi, not to the blocked reformist Pezeshkian.
Outlooks and Scenarios
The funeral choreography aims to project continuity and control over the transition, but it betrays the exact opposite: a regime with a ruthless master and no legitimate arbiter. I set Scenario B — that of a negotiation piloted by the dominant hawk but incapable of guaranteeing compliance — at a 40% probability.
As long as Vahidi rules through fear and not through authority, Iranian foreign policy will be one of exporting terror and instrumentalizing conflict as a method of internal survival. The defiance displayed at the funeral is not strength: it is the mask of a jihadist oligarchy that only knows how to sustain itself through permanent standoffs.
Funeral procession for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on February 28 in Israeli and US airstrikes, in Tehran, Iran, July 6, 2026 – REUTERS/ ALKIS KONSTANTINIDIS
JetZero Challenges Airbus and Boeing from the Mojave Desert
Facts
In a hangar in the Mojave Desert (California), the startup JetZero is building the first full-scale demonstrator of a commercial blended-wing-body aircraft — a design featuring a manta ray-like silhouette — which, according to the company, could cut fuel consumption by up to half. The 200-to-270-seat aircraft targets the «middle of the market» segment once occupied by the Boeing 757 and 767.
The demonstrator, funded in part by the US Air Force ($235 million since 2023), is being manufactured by Scaled Composites — a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman — with Pratt & Whitney engines, and is expected to fly in late 2027. United and Alaska Airlines have already invested; United holds an option to purchase up to one hundred aircraft, plus another hundred. Analysts like Richard Aboulafia (AeroDynamic Advisory) deem it «premature, but not irrational,» while Bjorn Fehrm (Leeham News) notes that the promised savings are yet to be proven.
Implications
This news should not be dismissed as a mere industrial curiosity. The capacity of an ecosystem — venture capital, military contracts, universities, an agile regulator — to nurture a frontal challenge to the Airbus-Boeing duopoly is, in itself, an indicator of national power. The United States converts its economic muscle into technological capability with a fluidity that Europe watches with poorly disguised envy.
And here the comparison is inescapable: while entrepreneurial audacity thrives across the Atlantic with smart public backing, the Old Continent repeatedly witnesses the paralysis of its large industrial programs due to the arithmetic of national returns and mutual distrust. European strategic abdication is not just military: it is also, and alarmingly, industrial and innovative.
Outlooks and Scenarios
JetZero’s future hinges almost entirely on the flight of its demonstrator: if the aerodynamic promise is confirmed, the industry’s skepticism will turn into an order book, and the project — buoyed by the investment euphoria unleashed by SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO — could reshape the commercial aviation landscape by 2030. If it fails, it will remain a splendid military prototype. In any case, the lesson for Europe is the same: you compete by innovating, not by complaining.
There are days that function like X-rays, and today is one of them. In Ankara, the Alliance stages its strength with a catalog of contracts and a declaration of firmness; in Hormuz, a decapitated jihadist oligarchy proves that uncertainty over who is in charge translates, without remedy, into intermittent violence; in Damascus, a car bomb serves as a reminder that Syrian peace is a building under construction surrounded by arsonists. Three scenarios, a single thread: the fatherlessness of command.
Regarding the United States, I maintain my usual balance. I unreservedly applaud Trump’s foreign policy when it is pragmatic and realistic, when it is piloted by the steady hand of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and when it translates into tangible diplomatic successes. But the pressure on allies in Ankara, without an accompanying strategic architecture, belongs to the other register: that of erratic and transactional politics, governed by intuition and outburst. With the Iranian regime, there is no room for ambiguity: I was and remain in favor of the strikes that degraded its nuclear capability, but I have denounced from day one the conspicuous absence of a plan for the day after. That operation earned a 10 in military planning and a 0 in geostrategic planning, and the power vacuum that Vahidi administers today is the invoice for that lack of foresight.
And we arrive, inevitably, at Europe — and Spain. The strategic autonomy so often spoken of will remain a chimera as long as the Old Continent fails to take its own defense, its security, and its destiny seriously. Spain, in particular, has arrived late and grudgingly to an awareness of the threat, and has reaped what it sowed: a deep-seated distrust among its allies that is on its way to becoming something much worse than irrelevance — suspicion. It is not just about spending figures, but about reliability; and reliability, once lost, is agonizingly slow to rebuild. That other Europeans are already outspending the United States in relative effort demonstrates that the Spanish problem is not one of possibilities, but of will and vision, as reflected in indicators like the Eurobarometer.
I end where I began. The JetZero of the Mojave Desert and the empty chair of Europe are two sides of the same coin: that of one who converts wealth into capability and that of one who dissipates it in indecision. The lesson, for anyone who cares to hear it, is as old as the politics of nations: power is neither inherited nor declaimed, it is built — by innovating, spending wisely, and above all, deciding. The rest is literature.