Ahmad Vahidi: the man who really calls the shots whilst diplomats negotiate in Doha
The Caspian: the two theatres of war converge and the fiction of watertight compartments collapses
Kaduna: thirty killed in the early hours of Sunday morning and the deafening silence of the West
A brief introduction
There are days when current affairs fall into place of their own accord, and this is one of them. Two wars that, until a week ago, were running on parallel tracks — the war in the Gulf and the war in Ukraine — have just collided, and they have done so in the most unexpected and revealing of places: the Caspian Sea. Kyiv has attacked an Iranian vessel which, according to its own embassy in Israel, was transporting drones and military components to Russia. Tehran is promising retaliation. The fiction of watertight compartments is over: there is a single theatre of operations, and the party that has been fuelling it for years has a name and a surname.
Meanwhile, Washington and Tehran are entering a third day without an exchange of fire, and mediators in Doha and Islamabad are reporting progress. A tactical pause should not be confused with peace. Iran’s own foreign ministry spokesperson pointed out yesterday, with a frankness for which he deserves credit, that the situation in the Strait of Hormuz has not changed and that it remains closed. And the regime’s proxy militias have fired on Abqaiq, on the pipeline carrying Saudi crude to Yanbu, on Riyadh, on Jordan and on the Israeli border. All of this, I must emphasise, has taken place during the ceasefire.
At the same time, a game of enormous significance is being played out in Washington today: Volodymyr Zelenskyy is entering the Oval Office whilst the Senate votes on the sanctions package that was Senator Lindsey Graham’s final act of public service. And in Europe, two images that sum up our contemporary tragedy: a British Prime Minister making his foreign policy debut on the deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth, and a sixth-generation fighter programme – worth one hundred billion euros – reduced to rubble by a dispute over industrial workshare between two companies. We conclude with Kaduna, where thirty people were killed in the early hours of Sunday morning, yet the world has taken no notice.
These are the most important news stories from the last 24 hours:
Smoke rises from the Saudi Aramco oil refinery in Ras Tanura following an alleged attack by Iranian drones, amidst the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran, in Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia, on 2 March 2026 – PHOTO/ REUTERS
Abqaiq, again: Tehran’s proxies strike at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s energy sector during the ceasefire
Facts
The Saudi Ministry of Defence announced on Monday 27 July that its air defence systems had intercepted and destroyed several drones targeting oil facilities in the Eastern Province and the Riyadh region. The military spokesperson, Major General Turki al-Maliki, stated that the drones had taken off from Iraqi territory and attributed the attack to terrorist militias affiliated with Iran. Riyadh described the actions as terrorist acts, demanded that the Iraqi Government prevent its territory from being used as a launch pad, and expressly reserved the right to respond at a time and place of its choosing. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Ali al Zaidi, subsequently ordered an investigation.
Meanwhile, in a claim that Riyadh rejects, the Houthi military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Sari, stated that they had struck, using drones, key crude oil supply and transport hubs linking eastern Saudi Arabia with the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea, citing Saudi incursions into Yemeni airspace. Images circulated on social media and thermal detections from NASA’s FIRMS system pointed to the Abqaiq processing plant, owned by Aramco. The incident forms part of an escalation that began on 20 July, when the Houthis declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia; three days later, they claimed responsibility for missile and drone attacks on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, and Riyadh responded with air strikes on the province of Hodeida. Saudi Arabia has begun diverting exports via the Suez route.
On the same day, the Israel Defence Forces shot down two drones over the Jordanian border, near the Dead Sea; the Royal Jordanian Air Force shot down another two; and Iraqi security sources reported a series of drone attacks on camps belonging to the Iranian Kurdish opposition in the north of the country. Jordan, Qatar and Egypt condemned the attacks and called for restraint.
Implications
It is worth stating this without euphemisms: during a pause in hostilities that Tehran itself presents as a gesture of goodwill, its proxies have simultaneously attacked the energy heartland of Saudi Arabia from Iraq and from Yemen. This is, precisely, the architecture of power we have been describing for years: a terrorist state that reserves negotiation for its diplomats and violence for its proxies, so that it can always deny responsibility and always reap the rewards. The discrepancy between the Saudi version — drones originating from Iraq — and the Houthi claim is not a contradiction; it is the very design of the system, ‘plausible deniability’ elevated to the status of state doctrine.
The chosen target is no accident. Abqaiq is the largest crude oil processing complex on the planet and was already struck in September 2019. Striking it again – whilst the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait under threat – amounts to signalling to the markets that Iran retains the capacity to choke off three chokepoints simultaneously. This is the system of extortion along energy routes that we have been referring to in these reports as the ‘geopolitics of the toll’.
There is a third element, even more serious if that is possible. Baghdad has once again demonstrated that it does not control its own territory. A state that cannot prevent drones from being launched from its soil against a neighbour is not a sovereign state: it is a corridor. And the reactivation of the Saudi-Houthi front, following years of an expired but de facto respected truce, buries the Yemeni process that Riyadh had been sustaining with enormous patience and at considerable political cost.
Outlooks and scenarios
Most likely scenario (55 per cent): a calibrated and verifiable Saudi retaliation against Houthi targets in Hodeida or al-Jawf, without entering Iraqi territory so as not to compromise Baghdad, and intense diplomatic pressure on al-Zaidi. Riyadh has learnt that open escalation harms it more than anyone else.
High-risk scenario (30 per cent): a strike that penetrates the air defence system and effectively damages Abqaiq’s processing capacity. A single serious disruption would be enough to send oil prices spiralling out of control and to blow the truce between Washington and Tehran to smithereens within forty-eight hours.
Less likely but decisive scenario (15 per cent): Riyadh makes public evidence of the Iranian chain of command and formally requests US protection. This would be the moment when the civil nuclear agreement between Washington and Riyadh — which we have wholeheartedly welcomed in this report — would reveal its true deterrent potential.
The Vice-President of the United States, JD Vance, speaks alongside the Pakistani Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, and the Prime Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, at the start of a four-way meeting between the United States, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar at the luxury Burgenstock hotel complex overlooking Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, on 21 June 2026 – PHOTO/ FABRICE COFFRINI via REUTERS
Ahmad Vahidi: the man who really calls the shots whilst diplomats negotiate in Doha
Facts
On Monday, the United States and Iran completed their third consecutive night without an exchange of fire. Two regional officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to the Associated Press that mediators led by Qatar and Pakistan are working to piece together the interim agreement that was blown apart by the latest exchanges. The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, told Fox News that President Trump is giving the negotiating process a chance. The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, confirmed the exchange of messages via Islamabad and Doha, but accused Washington of having destroyed the favourable ground for dialogue, and maintained that the situation in the Strait of Hormuz has not changed and that it remains closed.
Above this diplomatic manoeuvring stands a man who does not appear in the photographs: Major General Ahmad Vahidi, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps since 1 March 2026, following the death of his predecessor, Mohammad Pakpour, in the initial attacks on 28 February. Vahidi was the first head of the Quds Force — Soleimani’s predecessor —, Minister of Defence under Ahmadinejad, Minister of the Interior under Raisi and a member of the Expediency Council. He is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice for his alleged involvement in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA building in Buenos Aires. He led the internal security forces during the bloody crackdown on the protests of 2022. He had been appointed deputy head of the IRGC on 31 December 2025 with the express mandate to prepare Iranian forces for confrontation. He was one of the main driving forces behind the appointment of Moytaba Khamenei as Supreme Leader and, according to various sources, is blocking President Pezeshkian’s attempts to appoint a new Minister of Intelligence.
Implications
This is the crux of the matter, and it bears stating clearly. The negotiators in Doha — Gharibabadi, Araghchi, Ghalibaf — can sign whatever they like; the man who controls the ballistic missiles, the speedboats in the Gulf and the network of proxy militias is Vahidi. This is precisely what we have been referring to in these reports as the ‘decapitation paradox’: the attacks on 28 February eliminated the regime’s visible leadership – Khamenei himself, Pakpour, Nasirzadeh, Mousavi, Shamkhani – and the result has not been a decapitated and docile regime, but one in which authority has shifted downwards and towards the military. The architect has been killed and the foreman promoted.
The practical consequence is grim. An agreement with Tehran is worth exactly what Vahidi decides it is worth. And Vahidi is no pragmatist: he is the man behind the AMIA bombing, the man behind the 2022 crackdown, the man who founded a school at the Supreme National Defence University designed to ensure that the next generation of Iranian political leaders emerges from the barracks. His aim is not to negotiate the regime’s exit; it is to militarise its succession once and for all.
The fact that such a figure is simultaneously managing the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the Iraqi militias and the Houthis, whilst the West debates whether or not to unblock funds, speaks volumes about the lack of seriousness with which the ‘day after’ has been addressed. We have warned of this from the very outset: we applaud the attacks on the regime’s nuclear and military infrastructure, but we denounce the complete absence of a plan for what comes next. Vahidi is the consequence of that lack of foresight.
Outlooks and scenarios
Most likely scenario (50 per cent): a partial and precarious interim agreement, with the supervised reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the gradual release of funds, which Vahidi will tolerate as long as it helps him rebuild capabilities. A truce to rearm.
Alternative scenario (35 per cent): breakdown of mediation due to an incident involving its delegates — Abqaiq, a ship, a US base — followed by a new wave of US attacks. This is the pattern that has been repeating since February.
Internal rupture scenario (15 per cent): an open rift between Pezeshkian’s civilian apparatus and the IRGC leadership. This would be the best possible news for the Iranian people and the worst for those who believe that stability is a higher value than freedom.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy gestures whilst US President Donald Trump reacts during a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House, amid negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, in Washington, D.C., USA, on 18 August 2025 – REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Zelensky in the Oval Office and the Graham Act in the Senate: the sanction that could change the equation
Facts
The Ukrainian president is meeting today, Tuesday 28 July, with Donald Trump at the White House at 9.30 am Washington time, behind closed doors. At 11.00 am, the US president is scheduled to meet with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Both will then attend the funeral of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly this month from an aortic rupture. Zelenskyy is also scheduled to meet with senators in the afternoon, according to Reuters, citing two Senate advisers.
On the same day, the Senate may vote on the package of sanctions against Russia that Graham had been pushing for months and which he negotiated during his last trip to Kyiv on 10 July. The bill would impose 100 per cent tariffs on goods from the five largest buyers of Russian oil and gas, including China and India, and has dozens of sponsors from both parties. In a last-minute move, President Trump has sought to include sanctions against Iran in the same text; when asked about this, Zelensky described it as an excellent idea.
On the military front, the two countries agreed earlier this month to jointly produce Patriot interceptors and are moving towards an agreement on the joint manufacture of drones. Ukraine will produce between six and seven million short-range attack drones this year; the Pentagon’s programme, with a budget of $1.1 billion, will have ordered just under 200,000 drones in total by February 2027.
Implications
The Graham Act is by far the most serious leverage the West has brought to bear since 2022, and it is worth noting that it comes three years too late. 100 per cent tariffs on major buyers of Russian hydrocarbons effectively force Beijing and New Delhi to choose sides.
Therein lies its strength and therein lies its risk: it is a measure that punishes Moscow through third parties and which, if poorly calibrated, could push India – an indispensable partner in containing Chinese expansionism – into an awkward position. Washington should treat New Delhi with a degree of tact that it has not always demonstrated.
The move to include Iran in the same text is revealing of this White House’s approach: intuitive, transactional, hasty. It may work; it may also derail a vote painstakingly built up over months. It is the difference between the foreign policy advocated by Marco Rubio, who has achieved undeniable diplomatic successes in less than a year – Cambodia and Thailand, Gaza, Azerbaijan and Armenia – and a foreign policy improvised as it goes along. We trust, once again, that the system and the sound judgement of those around the President will ultimately prevail.
The figure for drones deserves a separate paragraph, because it sums up a military revolution that Europe refuses to face head-on. This year, Ukraine will manufacture thirty-five times more attack drones than the Pentagon’s entire programme. The country that has been invaded, ruined and bombed has become the world’s leading power in unmanned warfare, and today it is the United States that will be learning from Kyiv, and not the other way round.
Outlooks and scenarios
Most likely scenario (55 per cent): the Graham Bill is passed by a broad bipartisan majority, with or without the Iran amendment, and its implementation is deferred or phased in to allow the White House to manage the timetable with China and India.
Deadlock scenario (25 per cent): the inclusion of Iran fractures the consensus and delays the vote, with the consequent symbolic cost on the day of its proponent’s funeral.
Strategic breakdown scenario (20 per cent): Beijing and New Delhi devise circumvention mechanisms — triangulation, payments in alternative currencies, a ‘shadow fleet’ — which render the law toothless within six months. This is what has happened with almost all previous packages.
Flags fly at the Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka oil terminal, owned by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), near the port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, Russia – PHOTO/ Caspian Pipeline Consortium via REUTERS
The Caspian: the two theatres of war converge and the fiction of watertight compartments collapses
Facts
On Saturday 25 July, Ukrainian forces attacked an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea. Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, claimed that the vessel was transporting drones and military components from Iran to Russia. Tehran, which describes the ship as a civilian merchant vessel and has reported fatalities, has promised retaliation against Kyiv. The two theatres of war, separated by some 2,500 kilometres, have now been formally linked.
The former US ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia, William Courtney, told Al Jazeera that by attacking Iranian ships, Kyiv is not only defending itself but also striking a blow against Washington’s number one enemy, which is unlikely to displease the Administration; he added, however, that Ukraine has no interest in appearing too closely associated with an unpopular US war.
Implications
We have been arguing for years in these reports that there are not two wars, but a single system of aggression with multiple fronts. The Caspian Sea has demonstrated this as clearly as possible: the Shahed drones falling on Chernihiv and Kyiv are fitted with Iranian screws, and the regime sending them is the very same one that is blocking the Strait of Hormuz and arming the Houthis. Anyone who claims that the war in Ukraine and the Gulf crisis are separate issues has either not read a cargo manifest or does not wish to read it.
Kyiv has, moreover, made a remarkably astute political move. By striking an Iranian asset, it presents itself to Washington not as a recipient of aid, but as an operational partner in the theatre that is currently of genuine concern to the White House. It is a way of saying, on the eve of a meeting in the Oval Office and a vote in the Senate, that Ukraine contributes and does not merely ask for help. In terms of the grammar of power, it is impeccable.
The risk, naturally, is retaliation. Iran has the capacity to act against Ukrainian interests in third countries, and its track record – from Buenos Aires to Burgas – offers little cause for optimism. The fact that the commander-in-chief of the IRGC is precisely the man wanted by Interpol in connection with the AMIA bombing is a coincidence that no serious analyst should overlook.
Outlooks and scenarios
Most likely scenario (50 per cent): asymmetric and unacknowledged Iranian retaliation – cyber-attack, logistical sabotage, action against Ukrainian personnel or interests outside Ukraine – without an official claim of responsibility.
Containment scenario (30 per cent): Moscow, which needs the Caspian corridor to remain operational, pressures Tehran not to internationalise the incident and seeks alternative routes through the Caucasus or Central Asia.
Escalation scenario (20 per cent): Ukraine repeats the operation and turns the Caspian into a permanent interdiction front. This would represent a qualitative shift, with direct consequences for Baku, Astana and Ashgabat.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham delivers a speech outside 10 Downing Street after taking office, in London, United Kingdom, on 20 July 2026 – REUTERS/ ISABEL INFANTES
Portsmouth and the ashes of the SCAF: Europe, caught between symbolic gestures and industrial impotence
Facts
Volodymyr Zelenskyy met on Monday with the new British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, at the Portsmouth naval base, aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. It was Burnham’s first meeting with a foreign head of state or government since taking office a week ago; he is the fifth British Prime Minister to engage with Zelenskyy since the large-scale invasion of February 2022, and takes up the post after nine years as Mayor of Greater Manchester and with little international experience. Both leaders visited more than 200 Ukrainian military personnel who have spent three weeks in the UK taking part in the Sea Breeze exercise, which focuses on maritime security and mine clearance in the Black Sea. London announced the transfer to Ukraine of the intellectual property rights for the Stone Cloak electronic warfare system – which enables drones to jam Russian air defence radars – so that Kyiv can mass-produce it on its own territory. Burnham stated that British support is unwavering and that the two had spoken at length about Ukraine’s need for interceptors against Russian ballistic missiles.
At the other end of the continent, the picture is very different. The FCAS/SCAF programme — the Future Combat Air System, valued at around one hundred billion euros and launched by Macron and Merkel in 2017, with Spain joining in 2019—was formally scrapped in its manned fighter component on 8 June 2026, when Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced this at the opening of the ILA air show in Berlin, the very same venue where the partnership had been unveiled in 2018. The decision had been conveyed to Macron on 6 June, on the sidelines of the EU–Western Balkans summit in Montenegro, after the industrial mediation process launched following the dinner in Brussels on 18 March concluded on 18 April that a joint manned fighter was no longer viable. No prototype was ever built. No demonstrator ever took to the air.
Since then, fragmentation has accelerated. Airbus and seven German companies have formed the Team Gen 6 alliance to explore a German-led sixth-generation fighter. Dassault, at the presentation of its half-yearly results on 23 July, announced that it is negotiating with the French government to launch a national or cooperative alternative; its chairman, Éric Trappier, set the target of a demonstrator based on French requirements capable of flying in 2031 or 2032, and made it clear that the company would not return to a model in which Dassault is the prime contractor without sufficient industrial control. As for the ‘combat cloud’ and unmanned platforms, the only thing that has survived is the intention to continue cooperating, the division of responsibilities for which was due to be discussed at the Franco-German Council of Ministers on 17 July. Spain, meanwhile, remains a bystander.
Implications
It must be stated with all the bluntness the matter deserves: Europe has just repeated, forty-one years on, exactly the same mistake it made in 1985, when France abandoned the programme for the future European fighter to develop the Rafale, whilst the others built the Eurofighter. That split cost us two aircraft where there should have been one, two industrial supply chains, two logistics systems and a fraction of our negotiating power. We are now on course to end up with three: the British-Italian-Japanese GCAP, the French programme and the German one. And all this at a time when Russia is waging war on our continent and Washington is demanding – quite rightly – that we take responsibility for our own defence.
The fact that the cause was a dispute over the industrial division of labour (workshare) between two companies makes this failure worse than a strategic error: it makes it a humiliation. Nine years of political mediation have not been enough for two European companies to agree on who builds what. This is the very ailment afflicting our ruling class: the inability to subordinate corporate interests and short-term electoral gains to the strategic interests of an entire continent.
The Spanish case is particularly glaring and deserves to be addressed here in no uncertain terms. Spain joined the programme in 2019, has contributed public funds, and today nobody even knows whether Indra will retain a significant role in the surviving architecture. Our irrelevance is not the result of bad luck: it is the direct consequence of years of defence spending falling short of our commitments, of a foreign policy without a compass, and of a political class that treats national security as a budgetary nuisance. We said as much when Madrid was excluded from the European steering committee set up in Berlin: that was a self-inflicted wound, and so is this one.
The contrast with Portsmouth is instructive. London, with a newly appointed Prime Minister lacking international experience, has achieved something tangible in its first week: handing over the intellectual property rights to an electronic warfare system so that an ally can manufacture it themselves. This is not merely a press release; it is the transfer of capability. It remains a modest gesture given the scale of the challenge, but at least it is a gesture that yields tangible results.
Outlooks and scenarios
Most likely scenario (60 per cent): consolidation of three separate European programmes — GCAP, the French and the German programmes —, with the combat cloud as the sole remnant of Franco-German cooperation and Spain forced to choose sides before the end of the year.
Partial realignment scenario (25 per cent): Berlin formally applies to join the GCAP. London has shown some willingness; Tokyo, far less. This would be the least bad solution.
Surrender scenario (15 per cent): one or more European partners end up purchasing the upgraded version of the F-35, which would bury European aerospace industrial autonomy for a generation. Spain has ruled out this option for now; it would be advisable for it to rule it out in its budgets as well, and not just in speeches.
Aerial view, taken by drone, of worshippers leaving the Catholic Church of St Peter and St Paul after Sunday Mass in Palmgrove, Lagos, Nigeria, on 2 November 2025 – REUTERS/SODIQ ADELAKUN
Kaduna: thirty killed in the early hours of Sunday morning and the deafening silence of the West
News
Armed men raided the village of Naridon in the Kaura Local Government Area of Kaduna State, in north-western Nigeria, during the night between Sunday and Monday. They killed at least thirty people, including women and children — eight minors according to Reuters, six from the same family according to local official Yunusa Babados — set fire to homes and shops, and left four people injured. No group has claimed responsibility for the massacre. Derek Christopher, chair of the South Kaduna Peace and Security Network, recalled that the same community was attacked around the same time last year and stated that the government has failed to protect it. Amnesty International strongly condemned the attacks. The previous week, more than twenty people had been killed in attacks on several villages in Zamfara State.
North-eastern Nigeria continues to face an insurgency by Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP). The United States, which has accused the Nigerian government of failing to protect the Christian population – a move that sparked a diplomatic crisis between the two countries – launched an operation on 25 December against suspected members of the Islamic State on Nigerian territory, with the cooperation of Abuja, and has deployed military trainers to the country.
Implications
Thirty people murdered in a single night, including six children from the same household, and the news has not been given a single minute of airtime as the lead story on European news programmes. That is the exact measure of our moral hierarchy. For years we have been calling in these reports for systematic monitoring of jihadist barbarity wherever it occurs, and West Africa is today the global epicentre of Islamist-inspired terrorism, far ahead of any other region.
It is important, however, to maintain analytical rigour and not succumb to oversimplification. In north-western Nigeria, at least three distinct phenomena coexist: the pure jihadism of Boko Haram and ISWAP, concentrated in the north-east; armed banditry dedicated to kidnapping for ransom, cattle rustling and the extortion of farmers; and a conflict over land and water between pastoralist and farming communities, which is exacerbated year on year by desertification. Conflating these issues neither helps the victims nor allows for the design of an effective response. Nor, however, is there any room for the opposite excuse – so common in certain sections of the European press – which consists of reducing everything to a problem of natural resources in order to avoid using the correct term. When a predominantly Christian village in southern Kaduna is burnt to the ground and entire families are murdered, there is a religious dimension which to deny would be a form of complicity.
The diplomatic crisis between Washington and Abuja presents a real dilemma. The US condemnation of the persecution of Christians is substantially true and was necessary; the way in which it has been framed, however, has weakened a Nigerian government that already has poor control over its territory. Pressuring a fragile state to the point of collapse protects no one: it creates another Sahel.
Outlooks and scenarios
Most likely scenario (60 per cent): continued deterioration, with cycles of massacres, mass displacement and ad hoc responses from the Nigerian Army, which lacks the capacity to maintain territorial control.
Enhanced cooperation scenario (25 per cent): deepening of military and intelligence collaboration between Washington and Abuja following the December operation, with noticeable results against ISWAP but little effect on banditry in the north-west.
Breakdown scenario (15 per cent): US pressure on the Christian issue leads to sanctions or the suspension of cooperation, creating a power vacuum that other actors — Moscow and Beijing, as in the Sahel — would rush to fill.
Leading Anglo-Saxon outlets
The Washington Post and the Associated Press set the agenda for the day with reports on progress in mediation between Washington and Tehran, based on accounts from two anonymous regional officials, and with coverage of the Kaduna massacre. Today’s key US coverage focuses on the two White House meetings – Zelenskyy at 9.30 am, Netanyahu at 11.00 am – and on the Senate vote on the Graham Bill, which is being treated unanimously as a political tribute to the late senator. The tone is notably restrained: it highlights the improvement in relations between Trump and Zelensky since the confrontation in February 2025 and avoids in-depth analysis of the actual effectiveness of secondary tariffs. Fox News reported on Ambassador Waltz’s statement regarding the scope for negotiation and his denial that stocks of interceptors are at rock bottom – a claim that experts openly question.
British and European press
The British media and France 24 have given Zelensky’s visit to Portsmouth a distinctly domestic political slant: Andy Burnham’s debut in foreign policy, his lack of experience and continuity with Keir Starmer. The handover of the Stone Cloak system takes a back seat when it should be the headline, as it is the only tangible outcome of the meeting. On the subject of defence industry, FlightGlobal, the specialist French press and Germany’s Handelsblatt are providing the only serious coverage of the consequences of the SCAF’s collapse; the European general-interest press, including the Spanish media, has moved on with a flippancy that is difficult to explain. It is telling that the news that Dassault is aiming for a national demonstrator by 2031 or 2032 has circulated almost exclusively in sector-specific publications.
Gulf and Middle Eastern press
Abu Dhabi’s *The National*, *Al Bawaba* and the Saudi press have provided the most detailed coverage of the drone attacks, reproducing Riyadh’s official position in full: Iraqi origin, carried out by militias affiliated with Iran, and an explicit reservation of the right to respond. Middle East Monitor and Al Jazeera have placed greater emphasis on the Houthi claim of responsibility and the maritime blockade declared on 20 July. The Times of Israel provided the most comprehensive overview of the day’s events, linking the downing of drones in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as a single regional phenomenon; this is the most analytically sound approach. Press TV, the mouthpiece of the Iranian regime, presented the events as US aggression against Iranian commercial shipping and reproduced the statement from the Jatam al-Anbia Headquarters denouncing the maritime blockade, without a single mention of the attacks on Abqaiq. Iranwire, on the opposite side of the spectrum, provided the most accurate breakdown of Yahya Sari’s claim.
Ukrainian and Russian press
The Kyiv Post and Ukrainska Pravda had been reporting on the Oval Office meeting for days and have detailed the full itinerary of the visit, including the afternoon meeting with senators. Ukrainian coverage of the attack in the Caspian Sea is deliberately sparse: the ship’s military cargo was leaked via the ambassador to Israel, whilst a formal claim of responsibility was avoided – a perfectly calculated strategic communications decision. As of the time of writing, Russian state media have chosen to downplay both the Caspian incident and the scope of the Graham Act.
Asian press
The South China Morning Post and the regional press highlight China’s naval and air patrols in the South China Sea and Beijing’s accusation against Manila of organising joint patrols with foreign powers, as well as the US and Japanese exercises alongside the Philippines between 21 and 25 July. One piece of news that has gone almost unnoticed deserves special attention: China is accelerating the development of land corridors through Central Asia — the China–Kazakhstan–Uzbekistan–Turkmenistan–Afghanistan axis — precisely to circumvent the maritime bottlenecks that the Hormuz crisis has laid bare. This is exactly what we have been warning about: Beijing never wastes a crisis caused by others, and every closure of a strait translates into another kilometre of railway under Chinese control.
Significant omissions
No major European media outlet has led with the Kaduna story. None has linked the collapse of the SCAF to Europe’s failure to support Ukraine. And virtually none has devoted a serious analysis to the figure of Ahmad Vahidi, despite the fact that he is now the man calling the shots in the Gulf. These omissions are, in themselves, newsworthy.
US President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO leaders’ summit at the Bestepe Presidential Complex in Ankara, Turkey, on 8 July 2026 – REUTERS/JONATHAN ERNST
There is a thread running through all today’s news, and it is worth following it through to the end.
Let us begin with what pains us most. Whilst Ukraine — invaded, ruined, bombed every night — manufactures seven million drones a year and attacks Iranian ships in the Caspian Sea; whilst Saudi Arabia shoots down swarms of drones over Abqaiq and reroutes its crude via Suez without a single refinery coming to a standstill; whilst the US Senate votes on sanctions that could upset the global energy balance, Europe has spent nine years unable to agree on who should manufacture an aeroplane wing. Nine years. One hundred billion euros committed. Zero prototypes. Zero demonstrators. Zero test flights. And an explanation that one is not sure whether to describe as embarrassing or comical: the engineers could not agree on how to divide up the work.
This is no industrial accident. It is a symptom of a political illness that we have been diagnosing for years in these pages: a mediocre and short-sighted European ruling class, incapable of taking its own defence, its own security and its own destiny seriously. A ruling class that has confused the European project with a mechanism for distributing subsidies and which, when the time comes to decide who will build the aeroplane that will defend our grandchildren, prefers to protect the market share of a national company rather than the freedom of a continent. One can be a staunch pro-European — as we are, without the slightest reservation — and state this in no uncertain terms. In fact, one can only be a true pro-European by saying so.
Spain deserves a paragraph of its own, and it will not be a complacent one. We joined the programme in 2019, we contributed taxpayers’ money, and today no one is able to say with certainty whether we will retain any significant role. We are not where the decisions are made because we long ago ceased to do what was necessary to be there. Strategic irrelevance does not fall from the sky: it is painstakingly built up, year after year, through unmet defence budgets, a foreign policy lacking in doctrine, and the conviction—as widespread as it is suicidal—that someone will defend us for free. They will not.
Let us now turn to the Gulf, where the lesson is even harsher. We applauded at the time the attacks on the nuclear and military infrastructure of the Ayatollahs’ regime, and we would applaud them again: this is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, a jihadist oligarchy that murders its own people and exports death from Beirut to Sana’a via Baghdad. But we warned then, and we repeat it today with even greater reason, that striking without a plan for the day after is reckless. And here is the result: the visible leadership has been eliminated and real power has shifted to those in uniform. The man calling the shots in Tehran today is Ahmad Vahidi, a general in the Revolutionary Guards wanted by Interpol for the AMIA bombing, responsible for the 2022 crackdown and founder of a school designed to ensure that future Iranian political leaders emerge from the barracks. This is what we have called the paradox of decapitation: the architect is killed and the foreman rises to power. The regime has not softened; it has hardened and become militarised.
That is why these days of silence from the guns should not deceive anyone. A ceasefire during which proxy militias attack Abqaiq, Yanbu, Riyadh, Jordan and the Israeli border is not a ceasefire: it is a war of variable intensity, managed with admirable coldness by those who are not accountable to any electorate. And those in Spain who maintain – and there are some, including those with a daily platform – that the Iranian protests were instigated by the Mossad and the CIA, or that the crackdown is an internal affair, are not offering analysis: they are spreading propaganda in the service of a regime that hangs protesters from cranes.
As for President Trump, we shall be as fair as we are critical today. His foreign policy, when exercised with prudence and under the guidance of a Secretary of State of the calibre of Marco Rubio, has, in less than a year, achieved diplomatic successes that would have taken others a decade: Cambodia and Thailand, Gaza, Azerbaijan and Armenia. His firm stance against drug trafficking and against the narco-dictatorships of the hemisphere deserves our unqualified support. But intuition is not a doctrine, and outbursts are not a strategy. Adding last-minute sanctions against Iran to a bill painstakingly drafted over months by a senator who has just died – and doing so on the day of his funeral – is exactly the sort of improvisation that can cost a vote that was otherwise won. We trust that the system and the good sense of those around the President will prevail once again. Trust, however, is not a security policy.
And we end up where the world does not want to look. In the village of Naridon, in southern Kaduna, thirty people were killed in the early hours of Sunday morning. Six children from the same family. Homes and shops set alight. The same community had been attacked a year ago. There was no lead story on the news, no solemn statement, nor a minute’s silence in any European parliament. There has, admittedly, been a condemnation from Amnesty International and the bitter testimony of a neighbour who asked who was left to fight for them. That question should put us all to shame.
Because that is, at heart, what geopolitics is all about: that there are lives that matter and lives that do not, and that we decide that arithmetic every morning when we choose the headline. A continent that is incapable of manufacturing a fighter jet, that is incapable of calling out barbarism when it occurs in Africa, and that allows itself the luxury of debating the sex of angels whilst Russia is waging war two hundred kilometres from Warsaw, is not a serious continent. And continents that are not serious do not usually retain either their prosperity or their freedom for very long.
Methodological note: all the information contained in this report has been cross-checked against news agency dispatches and leading media sources published between 27 and 28 July 2026. The attributions of responsibility included—the origin of the drones, the cargo of the ship attacked in the Caspian Sea, and responsibility for the Kaduna massacre—are recorded exactly as they were stated by official sources or the witnesses cited, and not as independently established facts. The probabilities assigned to the scenarios are the author’s analytical estimates.