Gustavo de Arístegui,
July 23, 2026
I. BRIEF INTRODUCTION
The day can be summarized in a single sentence, and it’s worth stating it bluntly because it’s the thread from which everything else hangs: on the same Wednesday that the United States bombed Iran for the twelfth consecutive night to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, accompanied by a bilateral safeguards agreement. Some may see a contradiction there. There isn’t one. On the contrary, it represents the clearest formulation the West has made in twenty years of the only sensible doctrine on nuclear matters: those who want a verifiable, verified, and strictly civilian program will find a technological partner in the United States and its allies; those who build a dual-use program and accumulate fissile material without any civilian justification will find bombers. Riyadh has chosen the former. Tehran has been choosing the latter for twenty years.
The rest of the picture is hardly encouraging. In the Strait of Hormuz, President Trump has proclaimed a doctrine of automatic retaliation—an Iranian bridge or power plant for every ship attacked—just as Qatar, Egypt, Pakistan, and Oman were proposing a ten-day truce that could reopen the passage. In the Red Sea, the Houthi blockade has begun to take its toll: two Saudi oil tankers attacked, ships turning toward Suez, and the European naval force Aspides issuing warnings that no one can enforce. And in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed his commander-in-chief under pressure from the public, marking the president’s second retreat from his own civil society in twelve months, while Marco Rubio and Sergey Lavrov met this morning in Manila for the first time in ten months.
Four news items, two diagnoses. One hopeful: in matters of non-proliferation, Washington has finally drawn a clear line between the verifiable partner and the clandestine proliferator. The other troubling: in the Strait of Hormuz, a shift is occurring toward a logic of transaction—tolls, fees, ad hoc agreements—where principles and planning are needed. This report applauds the former without reservation and warns against the latter without hesitation.
II. THE FOUR MOST IMPORTANT NEWS STORIES OF THE LAST 24 HOURS
1. Hormuz: the doctrine of “one bridge or one power plant” and a ten-day truce on the table
Facts
President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that, from now on, every time the Islamic Republic fires on a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz—whether by missile, rocket, drone, or any other device—the United States will bomb and destroy a bridge or power plant in Iranian territory. Tehran’s response came within hours through the Tasnim news agency: an Iranian military source warned that if Washington attacks a bridge or power plant in Iran, Iran will strike infrastructure, bridges, and energy facilities throughout the region wherever the United States has interests. The U.S. Central Command carried out its twelfth consecutive night of attacks last night, targeting, according to its own description, operations centers, maritime capabilities, hangars, drone depots, and military logistics. The Revolutionary Guard claimed on Thursday that an oil tanker caught fire after an explosion in the strait, according to Reuters, although the UKMTO—the British agency that monitors merchant shipping—had not recorded any attacks in the Hormuz area in the previous 24 hours.
Meanwhile, and this is truly relevant, Qatar, Egypt, Pakistan, and Oman have presented the parties with a ten-day ceasefire proposal that envisions the reopening of both routes through the strait—the southern route through Omani waters, free from Iranian attacks, and the northern route through Iranian waters, free from the US naval blockade—and negotiations during that period for a permanent transit regime. One of the options under consideration would allow Iran to charge “reasonable service fees” for maritime security and environmental protection. The initiative builds on the Muscat talks of July 11, which ended without an agreement. At the same time, the Pentagon has deployed dozens of fighter jets and tankers to the region, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared in Manila that Washington remains open to a diplomatic solution, but that the Iranians “right now don’t seem serious,” noting that Tehran violated the memorandum of understanding signed last month within two weeks. The president attended the solemn transfer of the remains of American soldiers killed in this war at Dover Air Base yesterday; Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that nearly 100 American soldiers have been wounded since July 7, 96% of whom have already returned to service.
Implications
Let’s call things by their name. What’s being negotiated under the euphemism of “reasonable service fees” is the institutionalization of blackmail. For the international community to seriously discuss paying a terrorist state for not sinking ships in an international waterway constitutes a major conceptual defeat, and whoever signs off on it will then have to explain why the same method doesn’t work in Bab el-Mandeb, Malacca, or the Bosphorus. The law of the sea isn’t bought: it must be respected. That’s the fundamental problem with a diplomacy that confuses pragmatism with resignation.
The second decisive element is one of power architecture. It’s worth focusing on what almost no one else does: General Ahmad Vahidi, commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guard since March 1, when he succeeded Mohammad Pakpur, who was killed in the February 28 attacks that also claimed the life of Ali Khamenei. Vahidi is a sinister figure even by the regime’s standards: founder of the Quds Force, which he led before Soleimani, sanctioned by the European Union, designated by the US Treasury, and with an outstanding Interpol red notice since 2006 for the AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, which left eighty-five dead. Analyses by the Middle East Forum and the Jerusalem Center agree on one point that our readers should remember: the new supreme leader, Mochtaba Khamenei, was elevated by the Assembly of Experts under pressure from the Guard commanders and currently serves as a figurehead, not a decision-maker. Real power resides in a hard core that operates through the Supreme National Security Council and the Corps itself, and Vahidi is apparently the only senior official with direct access to the leader. He is the one who ordered the attacks against the Gulf Arab states and who publicly reprimanded President Pezeshkian when he apologized to them.
Here, once again, is the paradox of the decapitation we have been describing since March: each removal of the Iranian leadership has not produced moderation, but rather a mechanical radicalization, because the system promotes leadership based on revolutionary seniority and not on political criteria. Anyone who negotiates with Tehran in the coming weeks will not be negotiating with a state, but with an armed jihadist oligarchy that has even hijacked the figure of the supreme leader.
Perspectives and scenarios
First scenario, the most likely in the short term (around 45%): a ten-day technical truce accepted with reservations by both sides, partial reopening of traffic, a correction in Brent crude prices, and no fundamental solution. Second scenario (around 35%): failure of mediation and a shift to the phase of systematically targeting civilian infrastructure—bridges, power plants, the Pickaxe Mountain underground nuclear facility—with the consequent risk of direct involvement by Israel, currently on high alert but still not actively engaged. Third scenario (around 20%): internal fracture of the regime due to accumulated attrition. And here we reiterate what we have been warning about from day one: there is no plan for the day after . No one in Washington has explained what happens if the regime capitulates, much less if it implodes. Bombing without a political plan is a military operation, not a strategy.
2. Red Sea: The Houthis open a second front with a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia
Facts
The Houthi militia, funded and armed by Tehran, declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia on Monday, July 20, effective from 12:01 GMT that same day. The notice, sent by email to shipping companies from the so-called Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center in Sana’a, prohibits loading or unloading cargo at any Saudi port and warns that violating vessels will be subject to sanctions. On Thursday, the Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack on two Saudi oil tankers, the Encelia and the Layla, for violating the blockade. The Saudi state news agency SPA, citing the General Authority of Transport, confirmed a fire on the bow of the Encelia, with all crew members safe, and called the attack a violation of international law. The International Chamber of Shipping confirmed to AFP that radio transmissions from the Houthis have been recorded, warning vessels sailing in the area.
The effects on shipping have been immediate and verifiable. The supertankers Rodos and Xin Long Yang, loaded with 2.8 million barrels in the port of Yanbu, turned north toward Suez instead of continuing to Bab el-Mandeb; five vessels changed course on Wednesday, two of them indicating the Suez Canal as their new destination. The European naval force Aspides issued an advisory warning that vessels linked to Israel, the United States, or Saudi Arabia face a heightened risk and recommending they avoid the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Freight brokers Clarksons and Braemar have noted the overall decline in activity, and the latter has put its finger on the sore spot: the embargo calls into question the viability of eastern routes from Yanbu, the terminus of the Saudi East-West Pipeline.
Implications
This is far more serious than it first appears, and it deserves an explanation that almost no media outlet has offered. The East-West pipeline and the port of Yanbu are precisely the infrastructure that Riyadh built over decades to be able to export crude oil without passing through the Strait of Hormuz. It was their lifeline. By blocking Bab el-Mandeb, the Houthis aren’t adding a front: they’re closing the back door. Saudi Arabia is simultaneously left without its main entrance, seized by the Revolutionary Guard, and without its service entrance. It’s the purest and most brutal application of the Iranian doctrine of proxies: Tehran doesn’t need to declare war on the Gulf because it has someone to wage it for them.
That anyone is still arguing at this point whether the Houthis are an autonomous actor is simply untenable. They are part of a regional system of coercion that includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, and Hamas in Gaza, and which is activated and deactivated from Tehran with remarkable timing: the blockade was decreed exactly as the US Central Command completed its eleventh night of bombing. And this has a consequence that directly links to the next point in this report: the kingdom that Tehran is attacking by proxy is, with all its flaws, the main element of stability and security in the Gulf and a solid ally of the West. Anchoring it firmly within the Western camp, including in the technological and energy spheres, is not a concession: it is a strategic necessity of the highest order.
Perspectives and scenarios
In the coming days, we expect further increases in Red Sea war insurance costs, a growing diversion of traffic around the Cape of Good Hope—with the additional three or four weeks of transit this entails—and intense Saudi pressure on Washington to obtain air and missile defense coverage for its western terminals. Riyadh faces a crucial strategic decision: continue its strategy of discreet containment or re-engage militarily in Yemen, with all that this entailed between 2015 and 2022. And Europe, whose trade with Asia depends on this route more than the United States’, is once again absent from the debate. Operation Aspides issues warnings; it does not impose deterrence.
3. The nuclear agreement between Washington and Riyadh: the difference between a verified program and a dual-use program
Facts
The U.S. Department of Energy announced Wednesday that Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman had signed a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement —the instrument known as the “123 Agreement,” after the section of the Atomic Energy Act that governs it—along with a bilateral safeguards agreement. According to the official statement, both documents establish the legal framework for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership that pursues, among other objectives, nuclear nonproliferation.
Hours earlier, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times , citing sources familiar with the talks, had revealed the substantive content of the agreement: a 30-year term, preferential access for American companies—including Westinghouse—to the construction of the kingdom’s nuclear industry, and, most importantly, a provision allowing Saudi Arabia to develop uranium enrichment on its own territory following a joint study by both countries. If confirmed in these terms, the agreement would fall short of the so-called gold standard , which the United Arab Emirates accepted in 2009 when it expressly renounced uranium enrichment and the reprocessing of spent fuel. According to the same reports, it would also not require the application of the Additional Protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which grants inspectors expanded verification powers.
Marco Rubio, questioned in Manila before the formal announcement, dismissed proliferation fears with a firm statement: the United States will not reach any agreement with any country in the world that leads to the risk of proliferation. The text must be sent to Congress, which has the power to review and block it, although to do so against a presidential veto it would need a two-thirds majority. It is worth recalling the context: the Biden administration linked nuclear cooperation to Saudi recognition of Israel, a condition that the Trump administration removed; during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington last November, the framework for civilian cooperation was already announced, accompanied by a package of F-35 fighter jet sales.
The data that allows for a comparison of both programs is documented and publicly available, and this report considers it essential to present it. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s own records, Iran had accumulated 440.9 kilograms—approximately 970 pounds—of uranium hexafluoride enriched to 60%, a material for which there is no known civilian use: fuel for commercial nuclear reactors is enriched to 3-5%, and fuel for research reactors to 20%. The Agency estimates that about 42 kilograms of this material, if enriched to 90%, would be sufficient for a nuclear device, and has noted that Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state producing uranium at this level of enrichment, calling it a cause for serious concern. Since mid-2025, following the deactivation of surveillance cameras, the Agency acknowledges having irreversibly lost continuity of knowledge about this arsenal: it can no longer confirm its size, composition, or location. Added to this is the Fordow incident: on January 21, 2023, inspectors found two IR-6 centrifuge cascades configured substantially differently than declared, and environmental samples taken the following day revealed particles enriched to 83.7%, just shy of the 90% considered military-grade. Tehran claimed “unintentional fluctuations”; the Agency never accepted this explanation, and in June 2025, Iran announced that it had exhausted its efforts to determine the origin of those particles.
Implications
Let’s begin by dismantling the slogan already circulating around the world: the double standard. It simply doesn’t exist. What the United States has signed with Riyadh is not a permit, but a control regime: a cooperation agreement accompanied, in the same act, by a bilateral safeguards agreement whose very purpose is to guarantee that everything done on Saudi soil is strictly civilian and strictly verifiable, with Western technology, companies, and inspectors present within the facility from the very first bolt. No one, however, can guarantee today that the Iranian program is civilian; the evidence points in precisely the opposite direction, and this evidence is not based on opinion, but on laboratory findings. Nearly a thousand pounds of 60% enriched material with no imaginable civilian use, 83.7% enriched particles in an underground facility whose cascades were configured differently than declared, surveillance cameras turned off, and a continuity of knowledge irreversibly lost. This is not about treating two identical countries differently: it is about treating two radically different behaviors differently. International law does not require willful blindness.
Why one and not the other? For two reasons that should be clearly stated. The first is that Saudi Arabia, with all its flaws—and it has them, and this report has never hidden them—has proven itself for decades to be a solid ally of the United States and the West, and is today, at the worst moment in the Gulf since 1990, a fundamental element of regional stability and security. An ally whose ports are being blockaded and whose oil tankers are being attacked by Tehran’s militias this very week. The second reason is industrial and related to climate, and it is often overlooked: the kingdom wants to stop burning crude oil and gas to produce electricity, which is exactly what it does today and one of the greatest energy anomalies on the planet. Replacing that generation with nuclear energy would represent a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of the highest magnitude. It is worth remembering that the European Union itself incorporated nuclear energy into its taxonomy of sustainable activities through the Supplementary Delegated Act of July 2022, a decision that the General Court of the European Union upheld on September 10, 2025, when it dismissed the Austrian appeal. If nuclear power is considered a green transition in Europe, it is difficult to explain why it should be viewed with suspicion in the Arabian Peninsula when it is being built under American control.
But the truly important aspect of this agreement is its message, and it’s a message of a clarity not heard for years. To anyone who wants a genuinely peaceful nuclear program, the West offers its technology, its funding, its companies, and its assistance in installing and operating it. To those who build dual-use facilities, like Iran’s, something else will apply. Because that’s the point almost no one explains well: Tehran doesn’t need dual-use facilities to produce electricity; it needs them to produce plutonium and to maintain the capacity to increase uranium refining beyond 90%. The very architecture of its facilities—buried beneath a mountain, with waterfalls reconfigured outside of official guidelines—reveals the intention more eloquently than any statement from its leaders. A civilian program doesn’t hide two hundred meters underground or turn off inspectors’ cameras.
There is also a second message, implicit but perfectly legible in Tehran, and it is what, in our opinion, gives this agreement its true strategic dimension. If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, the United States would be just one step away—a short technical and legal step, because the infrastructure and the relationship would already be in place—from reorienting its cooperation with Riyadh from civilian to military. It would be an extremely dangerous regional escalation, and no one with common sense wants it. But it is precisely the kind of warning that an abject, oligarchic, corrupt, oppressive, and terrorist regime is capable of understanding, because it appeals not to morality but to the calculation of survival. Deterrence doesn’t work with fine words: it works when the adversary understands that the cost of crossing the line outweighs the benefit. This agreement puts that cost on the table without needing to proclaim it.
For all these reasons, and in the face of criticism already voiced by the more purist wing of the non-proliferation community, this report argues the opposite of what is currently convenient to maintain: the agreement between Washington and Riyadh deserves not censure, but applause. It deserves applause because it distinguishes between allies and proliferators; because it anchors the main Sunni actor in the Gulf to the Western camp at a time when Tehran is trying to tear it away by force; because it contributes to the decarbonization of one of the world’s most hydrocarbon-intensive economies; and because it sends the Islamic Republic the strongest message it has received since the beginning of this war. None of these four things is insignificant, and together they constitute a policy, not an improvisation.
Perspectives and scenarios
The most likely scenario (around 65%) is that the agreement will pass Congress: the two-thirds threshold is extremely high, the Republican majority will back the president, and the arguments for energy security and the alliance will outweigh doctrinal objections. A second scenario (around 25%) envisions a strengthened approval, with amendments that further bolster the verification framework—incorporating the Agency’s Additional Protocol, establishing verifiable thresholds, and ensuring a permanent presence of inspectors—and that would, frankly, be the best possible outcome: not because the agreement needs it to be defensible, but because the more robust the control structure, the more irrefutable the contrast with the Iranian program will be, and the harder it will be for Tehran’s propaganda machine to peddle the myth of double standards. We assign only a 10% probability to the blockade, which would be a major mistake: it would leave the Saudi nuclear market in the hands of Rosatom or the Chinese nuclear corporation, with notoriously laxer safeguards and a strategic penetration into the Gulf that the West would pay for for decades.
Three indicators to watch in the coming weeks. First, the exact content of the bilateral safeguards agreement that accompanies the main text: the substance lies there, not in the headlines. Second, the reaction from Ankara and Cairo, which will reveal whether the precedent is interpreted in the region as what it is—a reward for transparency—or as an invitation to demand the same without offering the same guarantees. And third, and most importantly, what has become of the 440.9 kilograms of 60% Iranian uranium that the Agency claims to have been unable to locate for a year. That is the real ticking time bomb of the nuclear issue in the Middle East, not a reactor contract signed openly with Western inspectors present.
4. Ukraine: Street collapses Sirski and Manila reopens the Rubio-Lavrov canal
Facts
President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed General Oleksandr Sirsky as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces on Tuesday, a post he had held since February 2024, and appointed Major General Mikhail Drapati, 43, formerly head of the Joint Forces in Kharkiv Oblast, in his place. The decision came after several days of mass demonstrations in Kyiv and other cities, sparked by the dismissal, just six months after his appointment, of popular Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, 35, whose modernization efforts had put him at odds with the military leadership. Fedorov accused Sirsky of blocking his initiatives and pressuring the president to remove him; Sirsky denied the accusations and published an article on Monday apologizing if he had offended the minister. High-ranking officials resigned, including the deputy commander of the Air Force, and the United24 platform suspended its publications to join the protests. This is the second time in twelve months that Zelensky has backtracked under pressure from the street, after having to reverse the law last summer that weakened anti-corruption agencies. Fedorov has not been reinstated; he has been offered another position, which keeps the protests alive.
On the diplomatic front, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met this morning in Manila, on the sidelines of the ASEAN ministerial meeting, for 37 minutes: their first face-to-face encounter since September. Lavrov had announced the meeting on Wednesday, invoking the so-called “spirit of Anchorage” and indicating that he would ask Rubio about Trump’s statements regarding the imminence of an agreement. Rubio, for his part, acknowledged that negotiating efforts “have slowed somewhat in recent months” and advocated keeping the lines of communication open between the two largest nuclear powers. Zelensky held talks on Wednesday with envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
Implications
Let us begin with an observation that is not vanity, but rather a matter of historical accuracy. This report was among the first to analyze the dismissal of Mikhail Fedorov when it occurred last week, at a time when many major international newspapers were still dismissing it as just another ministerial reshuffle. We maintained then that the heart of the matter was not a cabinet crisis, but a clash between two conceptions of warfare—that of the classical General Staff, based on sheer numbers and the line of contact, and that of technological modernization, based on drones and data—and that the commander-in-chief’s position was compromised from the very moment Ukrainian society identified who had forced the minister’s resignation. Seven days later, events have confirmed this point by point. We emphasize this because in geopolitical analysis, a correct assessment that is not documented is useless: the traceability of the judgments made is the only proof of their soundness, and it is also the only honest way to acknowledge mistakes when they are made.
There is also a lesson here that deserves to be emphasized forcefully, and which contrasts brutally with what is happening on the other side of the front: in Ukraine, in the midst of an existential war, civil society takes to the streets and succeeds in removing the Chief of Staff; in Russia, anyone who disagrees is thrown out of a window. Those in Spain who justify Russian aggression and spread misinformation about the nature of the kyiv regime should explain in what other dictatorship in the world something similar occurs. That said, it would be irresponsible not to point out the risk: changing the commander-in-chief in the middle of a war of attrition, with Russia bombarding Zaporizhzhia with glide vehicles, has a cost to operational continuity that is not paid for in headlines, but in lives. Drapati represents the generation forged in this war and the commitment to technology and drones; his appointment resolves the institutional conflict between the Ministry and the General Staff, but it does not resolve the arithmetic on the front lines.
Regarding Manila, let’s be both prudent and clear. Thirty-seven minutes is not a negotiation: it’s an initial contact. Moscow arrives with a hardened stance—according to various reports, it has abandoned the idea of territorial exchange and demands that the occupied border areas be maintained as a buffer zone — and it also arrives emboldened because Washington’s attention is focused on the Persian Gulf. Rubio’s insistence on maintaining dialogue seems appropriate and responsible to us: the relationship between the two largest nuclear powers cannot depend on the mood of the day. What we don’t find appropriate is that the US negotiating position fluctuates based on the latest social media post.
Perspectives and scenarios
We don’t expect any substantial progress before autumn. The real window of opportunity will open once the summer campaign concludes and both sides have assessed their gains and losses. Three indicators to watch are: whether Fedorov returns to the government—which would solidify the technological shift and quell unrest—whether Russia agrees to discuss a ceasefire without prior recognition of annexations, and whether the US Congress approves new secondary sanctions. And a fundamental warning: any agreement that enshrines the acquisition of territory by force would be a defeat for everyone, not just Ukraine.
III. MEDIA RACK
What the major newspapers are saying today and how they are framing it.
The Saudi nuclear agreement. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal share the scoop on the pact’s contents, focusing on enrichment on Saudi soil and the shift away from traditional non-proliferation policy; the Times’s approach also links the signing to the Houthi offensive against the kingdom’s ports. NBC and NPR concentrate on the industrial and commercial dimensions: preferential access for American companies, decades of validity, and billions of dollars. France 24 headlines about a “historic” agreement and reports Rubio’s denial in Manila. Al Jazeera offers the most comprehensive technical review of the agreement—the Emirati gold standard, the Additional Protocol, the two-thirds threshold in Congress—along with critical voices from the non-proliferation community. Fortune emphasizes that it is a thirty-year agreement signed while the United States is waging war to end the Iranian program. CBS clarifies, with journalistic prudence and accuracy, that the agreement is for civilian, not military, use. Note that the dominant framing in much of the international press is that of double standards; our analysis, as the reader will have seen, directly disagrees with that interpretation.
The war with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. CNN maintains live coverage focused on the exchange of threats regarding bridges and power plants, and on the solemn transfer of the fallen at Dover. CNBC focuses on the day from an energy perspective and warns that exports through Hormuz may not recover to pre-war levels. Fox News emphasizes the president’s pending decision on extending the campaign. The Hill headlines on the risk of Houthi threats opening a new front. Axios provides the exclusive on the ten-day truce proposal from Qatar, Egypt, Pakistan, and Oman, with “service charges” as the exit strategy. The Times of Israel follows the day minute by minute and reports Trump’s assertion that Iran “is not ready for a deal, but will be very soon.”
The Red Sea blockade. Reuters confirms the attack on the Encelia and Layla and the change of course of five oil tankers. The Washington Post documents, using MarineTraffic data, the turning of ships bound for Saudi Arabia as the first sign of the blockade. The Jerusalem Post details the warning issued by the European force Aspides and the diversion from Yanbu. Al Jazeera, using naval tracking data, follows the supertankers Rodos and Xin Long Yang and openly questions whether the Suez Canal can save Asian consumers now that Bab el-Mandeb is closed. The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) confirms the fire aboard the Encelia and calls the attack a violation of international law.
Ukraine and the Rubio-Lavrov Channel. The Associated Press and The Washington Post report on the change in the Ukrainian military leadership as part of a broader reshuffle. France 24 interprets it as a victory for the protesters who had been demanding Sirski’s dismissal since Fedorov’s downfall. CBS and CNN emphasize the decisive role of the citizen protests. The Hill reports on the dismissal as a result of an internal political crisis. TASS provides minute-by-minute coverage of the Manila meeting—thirty-seven minutes to be exact—and Ukrainska Pravda and Ukrinform highlight the “spirit of Anchorage” invoked by Lavrov. The Kyiv Independent and the Kyiv Post frame the meeting as the first face-to-face encounter since September and note the hardening of the Kremlin’s position on the buffer zone.
Analysis and think tanks. The FDD maintains its agenda regarding the Pickaxe Mountain nuclear bunker and, in a judgment with which we disagree, with all due respect to its track record, publicly calls for Congress to block the Saudi agreement. The Middle East Forum and GIS Reports have published the most authoritative analyses on the fragmentation of decision-making power in Tehran and on the central role of General Vahidi. The Institute for Science and International Security has been arguing for a year what this report considers the key point: that Iran has no civilian use or justification whatsoever for producing 60% uranium in quantities of hundreds of kilograms. Focus Taiwan and the Taipei Times, in parallel and with little Western coverage, report on the reaffirmation of Taiwanese claims in the South China Sea on the tenth anniversary of the arbitration award.
IV. RISK TRAFFIC LIGHT
● Strait of Hormuz and the US-Iran war. Twelfth consecutive night of bombing, doctrine of automatic retaliation against civilian infrastructure, and explicit threat against Pickaxe Mountain. Risk of a qualitative leap in days, not weeks.
● Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb. Houthi naval blockade in effect, two Saudi oil tankers attacked, radio navigational warnings and a warning from the European force Aspides. Second front fully open.
● Unlocated Iranian fissile material. The International Atomic Energy Agency declares that it has irreversibly lost track of 440.9 kilograms of 60% fissile uranium, which has no possible civilian use and is sufficient for several devices if it were brought to 90% fissile. It is, by far, the greatest open nuclear risk on the planet.
● US-Saudi Arabia nuclear agreement. Civilian cooperation with a bilateral agreement on safeguards, technology, and Western control. It strengthens non-proliferation rather than weakening it and anchors Riyadh within the Western camp. The focus should be solely on the robustness of the verification framework in the text submitted to Congress.
● A regional replication of the Saudi model. Turkey and Egypt could demand equivalent agreements. This is not a risk in itself if the same guarantees are demanded; it would be if they were granted without them.
● Global energy security. Three bottlenecks compromised simultaneously —Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb and the Black Sea— with the risk premium now incorporated into the price structure and not just a temporary situation.
● Ukrainian internal front. Replacement of the commander-in-chief in the midst of the Russian offensive and ongoing citizen protests over Fedorov’s non-reinstatement. Risk of operational disruption at the worst possible time.
● Regional escalation by proxy. Hezbollah in Lebanon, pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, and Hamas in Gaza remain levers that can be activated from Tehran if the truce fails.
● South China Sea. Anniversary of the arbitration award, tension between Beijing and Manila, and increasing pressure from the Chinese coast guard on Taiwanese positions. Sustained surveillance.
● US-Russia diplomatic channel. Resumed in Manila after a ten-month interruption, and active Arab mediation in the Gulf. The only genuinely constructive elements of the day, although still lacking substance.
V. EDITORIAL COMMENTARY
Wednesday, July 22, 2026, will likely go down as one of those dates that international relations textbooks eventually cite. On that day, the United States bombed Iran for the twelfth consecutive night to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons and signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, including bilateral safeguards. Much of the international press has focused on the double standard. They are mistaken, and it is important to explain why as clearly as possible, because in this matter, the confusion is not innocent: it is exploited, and very skillfully so, by the propaganda of the Islamic Republic.
Let’s begin with what must be acknowledged, because intellectual honesty demands it and because in this report we don’t indulge in the national sport of indiscriminate criticism. We were in favor of the attacks against the Iranian nuclear program, and we remain so: a regime that finances Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, and Iraqi militias, that represses its people with documented cruelty, and that has made the export of terror an instrument of foreign policy cannot possess nuclear weapons. Likewise, this administration’s foreign policy has yielded diplomatic successes in less than a year that many of us considered improbable: the ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand, the Gaza framework, and the rapprochement between Azerbaijan and Armenia. When President Trump acts prudently and takes the advice of Marco Rubio—a serious, well-informed Secretary of State with a genuine understanding of the world—the results are there, and it would be petty to deny them.
And yet, a doctrine that consists of announcing on social media that “a bridge or a power plant” will be destroyed for every ship attacked is not a deterrent strategy: it’s a tally of retaliation. It shackles the one who proclaims it, because it forces them to either comply or retract their statement; it hands the adversary control over the pace of the escalation, because a single drone is enough to provoke a response; and it shifts the military objective toward civilian infrastructure, with the legal and moral costs that this entails. The most serious issue, however, remains the same as what we denounced in March, April, and June: five months of war and no one has mapped out the aftermath. What happens if the regime caves in? What if it implodes? Who controls the ballistic missile arsenal, the network of proxy forces, and, above all, the fissile material? Bombing is easy; governing the vacuum left behind is not. We learned this in Iraq and Libya at a very high price, and everything indicates that we haven’t learned it.
The fact that General Ahmad Vahidi is now the de facto ruler of Tehran should keep us up at night. A man wanted by Interpol since 2006 for the AMIA bombing, which killed eighty-five people in Buenos Aires, is now the true interlocutor in any negotiation and the only one with access to the Supreme Leader. The Islamic Republic has completed its transformation: from a theocracy with revolutionary aspirations to a jihadist oligarchy with the structure of a criminal syndicate and a ballistic arsenal. And yet, there is talk of paying it “service fees” for allowing us to sail. One wonders what those who drafted the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea would have said to such a proposal.
A nuclear program isn’t judged by the flag flying over the plant, but by three things: its architecture, its purpose, and its verifiability. Riyadh has signed a cooperation agreement accompanied, in the same act, by a bilateral safeguards agreement; it will build with American technology, with American companies, and with American control within the facility; and it’s doing so to stop burning oil and gas for electricity production, which is one of the planet’s greatest energy anomalies and a source of emissions that will be difficult to justify in 2026. Let’s not forget that the European Union itself incorporated nuclear energy into its taxonomy of sustainable activities in 2022, and that the General Court upheld that decision last September: if nuclear power is part of the green transition here, it’s unclear why it should be viewed with suspicion there. Tehran, on the other hand, has buried its facilities under two hundred meters of rock, reconfigured waterfalls outside of its declared facilities, turned off inspectors’ cameras, and stockpiled nearly a thousand pounds of 60% uranium, a material utterly useless in a power plant and whose whereabouts the International Atomic Energy Agency no longer knows. Lest there be any doubt about its intentions, inspectors found 83.7% uranium particles at Fordow. There aren’t two sets of standards: there are two distinct behaviors, and only willful blindness could confuse them.
There is also a message, and it is the best message the West has delivered on this issue in twenty years. Those who truly want nuclear energy are offered the technology, the financing, and the assistance to install and operate it; those who want dual-use plants—because dual-use plants are not for producing electricity, but for producing plutonium and maintaining the capacity to reach 90% efficiency—are offered something very different. And there is a second message, implicit but certainly understood in Tehran: if the Islamic Republic were to acquire the weapon, the United States would be one step away from shifting its cooperation with Riyadh from civilian to military. It would be an extremely dangerous escalation, and no one in their right mind wants it. But it is precisely the kind of warning that an abject, oligarchic, corrupt, oppressive, and terrorist regime understands, because it appeals not to conscience but to calculation. Deterrence has never worked any other way.
Therefore, and although it may be uncomfortable to say so today, this report maintains that the agreement with Riyadh deserves no censure whatsoever: it deserves applause. Saudi Arabia, with all its flaws—and it has them, and we have never concealed them here—has proven itself for decades to be a solid ally of the United States and the West, and is today, at the worst moment in the Gulf since the invasion of Kuwait, a fundamental piece of regional stability and security. An ally whose ports are being blockaded and whose oil tankers are being attacked by Tehran’s militias just this week. Anchoring it firmly within the Western sphere, including technologically and energetically, is not a concession or a business deal: it is a strategic necessity of the highest order. Let Congress do its job, review the wording, and strengthen the verification architecture as much as possible; but let it not block what would be a gift wrapped for Rosatom and the Chinese nuclear corporation.
Faced with all this, Europe. Our frustration is becoming increasingly difficult to manage gracefully. The Union has absolutely no say in the Gulf nuclear issue, no say in the Strait of Hormuz, and in the Red Sea its presence is reduced to Operation Aspides, which issues navigational warnings but offers no deterrent, while European trade with Asia depends on that route far more than North American trade does. And this comes just six weeks after Paris and Berlin buried the European sixth-generation fighter jet due to an industrial division dispute between Dassault and Airbus, leaving Spain—which had staked its aeronautical industry on this project through Indra—without a replacement for the Eurofighter and with the added humiliation of watching the British, Italians, and Japanese sign multi-million-dollar contracts and move forward according to schedule. Chancellor Merz’s explanation that the FCAS “was a system, not an aircraft” is the kind of rhetorical consolation that only convinces the person uttering it: an air combat system without an air combat platform is a cloud of data with nothing to connect. Europe doesn’t have a budget problem: it has a problem of seriousness. And until it takes its own defense, its own security, and its own destiny seriously, it will remain a norm-bearer in a world that has returned to force.
We are left with the hope—perhaps the last thing we have left—that the system will work. That the good sense of those surrounding the president, and especially that of Marco Rubio, will ultimately prevail over impulsiveness and outbursts. American institutions have demonstrated a remarkable capacity for correcting their leaders over two centuries. But it is worth remembering that institutions do not function on their own: they are made to function by men and women willing to say no when necessary. That, and nothing else, has always been the essence of political liberalism. And that, precisely, is also what our Transition, the Spanish one, consisted of, whose example—that of King Juan Carlos I as the architect of reconciliation—remains the best lesson this country has to offer a world that has lost the habit of compromise.