The ceasefire with Iran, “over”: second night of strikes and retaliation over the Gulf
Israel alerts Washington to a new Iranian plot to assassinate Trump
Trump removes Syria from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list
Brief introduction
I am writing this instalment on one of those days when current events confirm, with almost educational clarity, what I have been describing for months. The provisional ceasefire between the United States and Iran’s oligarchic-jihadist regime has blown apart, and it has done so with President Trump declaring it “over” from the NATO summit in Ankara, amidst two consecutive nights of American aerial punishment and Iranian retaliation against Gulf bases. The variable-temperature war has, therefore, flared up again just as it seemed to be cooling down.
On the eastern flank, Ukraine is perfecting its energy strangulation of the Russian war machine. And as if there were not enough tension, the American press wakes up to an Israeli warning of an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump, while Washington rehabilitates post-war Syria. Four issues, a single common thread: the growing disproportion between the capacity to destroy and the inability to order the day after. Here are the four news stories that, in my view, best explain the last twenty-four hours.
The ceasefire with Iran, “over”: second night of strikes and retaliation over the Gulf
Facts:
From Ankara, and at the close of the allied summit on 7 and 8 July, President Trump declared the Islamabad memorandum of understanding “over” and branded Iranian leaders “scum”. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) carried out two consecutive nights of strikes — around eighty targets on Tuesday and about ninety on Wednesday — against air defences, command and control nodes, coastal radars, anti-ship missile capabilities, and more than sixty fast attack craft of the Revolutionary Guards in the vicinity of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran responded by striking US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain — Kuwait claims to have intercepted ten drones, three ballistic missiles, and one cruise missile, with damage from falling debris and one casualty — along with alerts in Qatar and Jordan. The speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, warned with his usual bluster that Hormuz will only open “with Iranian arrangements”, not under American threats. By Thursday 9, the temperature dropped: despite having a target list ready and the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln prepared, Washington refrained from a new strike and allowed diplomacy to take over — with Pakistan and Qatar acting as mediators — with an eye on a nuclear agreement by mid-August. Traffic through Hormuz plummeted to barely a dozen vessels in twenty-four hours, compared to one hundred and ten daily prior to the war, amidst deliberate GPS jamming.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gestures while US President Donald Trump speaks to the media on the day of a NATO leaders summit in Ankara, Turkey, on 8 July 2026 – REUTERS/ UMIT BEKTAS
Implications:
We are facing the archetype of what I call variable-temperature wars: low-resolution but highly destructive conflicts that no one can win and no one can afford to lose. The strike-pause-strike sequence is not hesitation, but a calibrated escalation in which Washington retains the target list as a negotiating lever — a contained systemic fracture, in my terms.
The war, initiated on 28 February, has seriously degraded the Iranian military apparatus, but leaves two poisoned unknowns: the whereabouts of the highly enriched uranium and the survival of the regime’s hardest line. It is the perfect illustration of my assessment of this Administration: military planning, a ten; geo-strategic planning for the day after, the great pending subject. And Hormuz, turned into a weapon, reminds us that global energy security remains hostage to a cosmically corrupt oligarchy.
Prospects and scenarios:
Scenario A (35%): back-channel diplomacy prevails and a patched-up ceasefire is reassembled, leading to a nuclear framework towards mid-August.
Scenario B (40%): a prolonged “variable temperature” sets in — intermittent strikes without open war, with Hormuz as a chronic bottleneck and skyrocketing risk premiums.
Scenario C (25%): a miscalculation, a disproportionate reprisal, or an attack reopens total war. The sum is one hundred per cent; and, as I have been warning, the intermediate scenario is the most likely and the most corrosive.
A satellite image shows damage to the control tower at the port of Chabahar, Iran, on 9 July 2026, after the US military said on Wednesday (8 July) that it launched new strikes against Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping – PLANET LABS PBC via REUTERS
Ukraine perfects its “long-range sanctions” and kicks off Patriot licensing; Russia punishes civilians
Facts:
On 9 July, Ukrainian forces intensified what President Zelensky calls “long-range sanctions”: drones hit a dozen Russian oil tankers, a tugboat, and a cargo ship in the Sea of Azov — vessels that supply the Russian army and serve the shadow fleet to evade sanctions — as well as crude oil depots in Tver, Ufa (Bashkortostan), and the Stavropol region, worsening fuel shortages in Russia.
Moscow, for its part, launched 94 drones and two ballistic missiles that same night; Ukrainian defences shot down 72, but there were impacts, with a residential building hit in Kharkiv and civilian casualties. In Ankara, Trump committed to granting Kyiv a licence to manufacture Patriot anti-aircraft systems — although Kyiv warns that producing interceptors will take a year or more — and Poland agreed to co-produce and maintain PAC-3 missiles.
Implications:
Ukraine has understood that the way to break an aggressor who refuses to stop the war is to suffocate its war economy. The strikes on the shadow fleet and the refining industry are legitimate, necessary, and long overdue; they are a healthy exception to the passivity with which the West has for too long contemplated the Kremlin’s energy blackmail.
We are, without nuance, opposed to Russian aggression and the use of force to acquire territories, and Moscow’s repression against the civilian population — a residential building in Kharkiv — admits no equidistance. The Patriot licence is a pragmatic success for Trump; however, European funding must be, as the Ankara Declaration itself states, equitable, predictable, and sustainable, and not just a token gesture.
Prospects and scenarios:
The energy infrastructure war will intensify in the summer; the decisive variable is no longer Ukrainian resolve, but European industrial constancy. Another variable-temperature war that drags on because Europe lacks the determination to shorten it.
US President Donald Trump holds a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy alongside the NATO leaders summit at the Bestepe Presidential Complex in Ankara, Turkey, on 8 July 2026 – REUTERS/ JONATHAN ERNST
Israel alerts Washington to a new Iranian plot to assassinate Trump
Facts:
The The Wall Street Journal revealed on Thursday 9 — and two sources confirmed to CNN — that Israel shared intelligence with the United States regarding a new and specific Iranian plan to assassinate President Trump; the warning allegedly arrived “this week”.
Washington had been picking up a trickle of indicators regarding threats, but this piece of data was new and had not been independently verified. With notable professional honesty, several US officials warn that the genuine Israeli report could be part of an effort to shape Trump’s decision on whether to escalate the campaign against Iran; there are those in the intelligence community, they say, who routinely distrust Israeli data.
Trump himself declared he was “number one on the target list” for Iran. In Mashhad, a banner was deployed with the slogan “We will kill Trump” and slogans were chanted against the United States. Trump and Netanyahu spoke by phone on Thursday — with the relationship strained by Lebanon — and the President left Ankara on an older Air Force One, denying it was for security reasons.
Implications:
The threat is credible in its nature: the Tehran regime has been promising to avenge Soleimani since 2020, and judicial precedents are not lacking — a hitman plot in 2024, the conviction in March 2026 of a Pakistani national linked to the Guards. That Iran exports terrorism and instability is a thesis I hold without euphemisms.
However, precisely because the regime is sinister, it is wise to read this episode with a cold eye: instrumentalising intelligence to force external decisions is a game as old as diplomacy. The sensible course is to fortify the President’s protection without being dragged into an escalation calculated by a third party. Neither naivety towards Tehran, nor docility towards whoever seeks to push Washington into the war that suits them.
Prospects and scenarios:
A reinforcement of presidential protection and a political use of the narrative can be expected. The unknown is whether the institutional good sense — and the firm hand of Secretary of State Marco Rubio — will prevail over impulse and outburst. On that clash between institution and intuition, I still stake a good part of my optimism.
Effigies of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hanged are displayed during the 46th anniversary of the expulsion of the United States from Iran, in Tehran, on 4 November 2025 – Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Facts:
Between 8 and 9 of July, President Trump signed the directive revoking Syria’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. The Syrian Foreign Minister released a photograph, alongside President Ahmad al-Sharaa, showing the signed document; United States Congress now has forty-five days to review the decision.
Implications:
This is one more piece of the pragmatic realignment that characterises this foreign policy when guided by prudence and Rubio’s counsel, rather than excess: betting on the stabilisation of post-war Syria and removing it from the orbits of Moscow and Tehran.
I applaud the pragmatism, but with the reservation imposed by the trade: al-Sharaa comes from jihadism, and vigilance against DAESH and Al-Qaeda in its multiple branches admits no holidays. Lifting sanctions in exchange for verifiable behaviour is reasonable; doing so out of sheer wishful thinking is imprudent. I prioritise caution here.
Prospects and scenarios:
The door opens to sanctions relief and normalisation, with the latent risk of the Syrian transition derailing. It is worth monitoring the process in Congress and, above all, the facts — not the muses — of the new power in Damascus.
I gather below, by geographical blocs and with due contrast, the dominant approach of the mastheads and analysis centres effectively consulted in the last twenty-four hours. I deliberately refrain from attributing theses to media that I have not been able to verify today, faithful to the principle of inventing nothing.
Leading US press
The Washington Post / NBC News / The Hill — Focus heavily on the second night of cross-attacks and Trump’s “it’s over” on the memorandum, underlining the calibrated nature of the American escalation and the Iranian retaliation on Kuwait and Bahrain.
CNN — Documents the collapse of traffic through Hormuz and the mediation of Pakistan and Qatar, and breaks — via two sources — the Israeli warning about the plot against Trump, while noting the scepticism of parts of US intelligence.
The Washington Times / Fox News / Newsmax — Emphasise presidential firmness and the cost to Tehran, in a tone more favourable to a firm hand; they record Trump’s pessimism about the utility of continuing negotiations.
Newsweek — Publishes the finest analysis on the five-member collective leadership and the primacy of Ghalibaf and Vahidi, advancing the thesis of an Iran that is “militarising” post-Khamenei.
British press, financial outlets and think tanks
Financial Times / Bloomberg — The former dissects the power of the new commander Vahidi over security, foreign policy, and the economy; the latter quantifies the Ukrainian strikes on Russian tankers and the fuel shortages they cause.
Forbes / CEPA / Congressional Research Service — Agree on the diagnosis of a NATO that agrees on a 5% spending floor without agreeing on what the primary threat is, along with reproach for the laggards — Spain among them.
The Economist / EIU — Maintain the reading of a second half of 2026 dominated by Trump’s “managed chaos”, China, and energy markets.
Continental European press
Euronews / Defense News — Reconstruct the collapse of the Franco-German FCAS fighter jet and the Airbus-Dassault rift, and recount the clash in Ankara: the “terrible partner” Spain, the claim over Greenland, and Danish anger.
Middle East and Israeli press
The Times of Israel / The Jerusalem Post / JNS — Amplify the WSJ exclusive on the Iranian plot, report the Mashhad banners and the Trump-Netanyahu call, and frame the removal of Syria from the blacklist.
Al Jazeera — Offers the regional counterpoint: casualties in southern Lebanon, President Aoun’s conditions on Israeli withdrawal, and the Arab interpretation of the standoff in Hormuz.
Ukrainian press
The Kyiv Independent / Ukrinform / Ukrainska Pravda — Detail the “long-range sanctions” against the shadow fleet and Russian refineries, the toll of the nightly bombing of Kharkiv, and Trump’s green light for Patriot production.
Russian state media (symptom, never a source)
TASS / RT and related aggregators — Circulate the nickname “Operation Bitch Slap” attributed to the New York Post and unverified rumours about a resale of Turkish S-400s to a Gulf country. I record them as a thermometer of Kremlin propaganda, never as reliable information.
There are days that are, on their own, a thesis. Today is one. I observe a West that knows how to destroy with surgical precision yet fails to imagine the day after — military planning, a ten; geo-strategic planning, the eternal failed subject — facing a decapitated jihadist oligarchy that has lost its arbiter and gained its executioners.
Because that is the knot of the paradox of decapitation in its most dangerous phase: when the patriarch falls, no moderate emerges, but rather the most brutal of the praetorians, capable of piloting the escalation and signing on paper, but unable — and unwilling — to ensure that anyone honours it. With a hawk like Vahidi at the head of the Guards and a “supreme leader” turned ghost, any agreement will be born dead in the water.
And while Tehran loses its head, Europe insists on losing its compass. It pains me to write it, but Spain’s humiliation in Ankara is, to a large extent, deserved: those who contribute the bare minimum, deny their airspace to allies, and confuse neutrality with irresponsibility, cannot later be surprised to have gone from irrelevance to suspicion.
It is the same vacuum of command that I denounce in the Gulf, only here the empty chair is ours. And as if the picture were not eloquent enough, the Franco-German engine — Paris and Berlin, Airbus and Dassault — has blown up the European sixth-generation fighter jet in a clash of industrial vanities and sovereignty qualms, dragging the main battle tank down with it and making it evident that the old continent prefers the rhetoric of strategic autonomy to the much less glamorous effort of actually rearming. May God — and European factories — help us.
Not all is shadow, and this analyst resists comfortable equidistance. I applaud without reservation the “long-range sanctions” with which Ukraine is suffocating the war machine of a Kremlin that refuses to stop, and I welcome Trump — when guided by Rubio’s sanity rather than outburst — granting Kiev the Patriot licence or removing post-war Syria from the orbits of Moscow and Tehran.
Therein lies the pragmatic foreign policy that has reaped real success in less than a year. The erratic, transactional Trump of the trade cut to Spain or the Greenland whim is another matter: the one who trusts intuition and shock value over strategy. I continue to bet, with stubborn optimism, that the system and the voices of reason surrounding it will eventually prevail over impulse. Because in a world turning towards extremes, good sense — that rarity — is today the scarcest and most necessary asset.