Gustavo de Arístegui,
September 10, 2026
I. INTRODUCTION
September 10, 2026, dawned with an uncomfortable certainty: the Gulf War, which Washington stubbornly refuses to call a war, had ceased to be a naval conflict confined to the Strait of Hormuz and had become a regional conflagration of shifting proportions. In the last twenty-four hours, the Revolutionary Guard had launched twenty ballistic missiles against an airbase located on the territory of a third country—the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, a Western ally and a cornerstone of Levantine stability—, ordered the evacuation of the crews of oil tankers anchored off the ports of Kuwait and Bahrain, and the price of Brent crude had broken the psychological barrier of one hundred dollars a barrel. Any one of these three events would have been enough, in less turbulent times, to lead news broadcasts around the world. Together, they paint the picture of a crisis that no longer allows for the excuse of containment.
Far from the Gulf, in the Siberian Arctic, Ukraine has carried out its deepest attack of the entire war against two gas condensate plants in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, more than 3,000 kilometers from its border. It is a message aimed less at Russian logistics than at the Kremlin’s psychology: there is no sanctuary left. In Dallas, President Trump opened the first midterm convention in the history of the Republican Party, promising a check for five thousand dollars to every adult citizen if his party retains control of both houses of Congress. In Madrid, the government declassified and published nearly forty secret documents about the massive assault on the Ceuta border on July 30 and 31, tearing open the seam separating intelligence services from political power. Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, Texas, the first German F-35A completed its maiden flight in the very month that funding for the Franco-German sixth-generation fighter program was definitively terminated.
Five scenarios, one common thread: the growing inability of Western political systems to sustain strategic decisions beyond the immediate electoral cycle. The West’s adversaries—Tehran, Moscow, Beijing—are neither smarter nor stronger; they are simply more patient. That is the diagnosis that runs through today’s report.
II. THE MOST IMPORTANT NEWS OF THE LAST 24 HOURS
1. Tehran takes the war to a third country: twenty ballistic missiles over Jordan, threats over the waters of Kuwait and Bahrain, and Brent crude above $100
Facts
It is important to first define the scope of what is truly new. The sinking of the five Iranian oil tankers—the Kaviz, the Charminar, the Horizon 1, and the Riesco in the Gulf of Oman, and the Derya near Kharg Island—was announced by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) on the night of September 8 and was included in yesterday’s report. Since then, there have been no further U.S. attacks on Iranian cargo: the five vessels are the same, not five more. What has changed in the last 24 hours is the nature of the Iranian retaliation and the market’s behavior.
Tehran’s response came in the early hours of September 9th and targeted a location deliberately outside the naval theater: twenty ballistic missiles were fired at the Al Azraq air base in Jordan, where US forces are deployed. The Jordanian Armed Forces claim to have intercepted eighteen of the twenty projectiles; the remaining two landed in unpopulated areas, causing no casualties. The Revolutionary Guard proclaimed that it had destroyed US fighter jet hangars, a version directly incompatible with Amman’s account. The Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Ali Abdullah, had previously warned that Tehran would strike US military installations throughout the region if Iranian oil tankers were attacked: it made good on the threat, but carried it out on Jordanian soil.
Tehran accompanied the attack with a campaign of claims that the evidence does not support. The Revolutionary Guard claimed to have struck the destroyers DDG-119 and DDG-53 with ballistic missiles, causing significant damage, and later asserted that it had attacked two American ships and eight more oil tankers in the region. The Central Command categorically denied this version: no American warship was hit, and all of the Revolutionary Guard’s attempted attacks failed. Tehran also ordered the immediate evacuation of the crews of the oil tankers anchored near the ports of Kuwait and Bahrain, warning that they could be subject to retaliation. This notification, even without any subsequent attack, is enough on its own to paralyze shipping traffic and drive up insurance costs: blackmail without firing a single shot.
The market reacted with the expected brutality. Brent crude closed at $97.89 on September 8 and surpassed $100 on Wednesday, September 9, reaching highs above $101.50—the first triple-digit mark since July, when the Islamabad memorandum collapsed—while West Texas Intermediate approached $95. Daan Struyven, co-head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs, warned in an interview with CNBC that the probability of a bullish scenario with Brent above $120 is clearly increasing. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, visiting Colombia, defended the attacks and ruled out any withdrawal. The Iranian Foreign Ministry called the US actions a war crime and a violation of the UN Charter.
Implications
The truly serious aspect of the last 24 hours is not the tally of sunken oil tankers, which we already discussed yesterday, but the choice of the Iranian target. By bombing Al Azraq, Tehran has attacked the sovereign territory of an Arab state that is not a party to the conflict, a kingdom with which it maintains diplomatic relations and whose internal stability constitutes one of the few solid assets the West has left in the Levant. This is the same old logic of the ayatollahs’ regime: export the cost of its decisions to its neighbors, hold third parties hostage, and test the limits of others’ tolerance. Anyone who thinks this is a tactical overreach has understood nothing; it is a doctrine.
The second implication is economic and, therefore, political. Brent crude above $100 with the US midterm elections just 55 days away is a ticking time bomb for voters. Energy inflation doesn’t discriminate between Democrats and Republicans, and its effect on the perception of the conflict will be devastating. Europe, which imports what it consumes and doesn’t produce what it needs, will pay a disproportionate bill without having had any say in the decisions that generated it. No one in Brussels seems to have foreseen that the war we refused to see would end up entering our homes through our electricity bills.
The third implication relates to the power structure in Tehran and deserves further examination. Since March 1, 2026, the Revolutionary Guard has been commanded by General Ahmad Vahidi, who replaced Mohammad Pakpur after the latter was killed in the initial attacks on February 28. Vahidi is no ordinary military officer: he was the founding commander of the Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani’s predecessor, Minister of Defense between 2009 and 2013, Minister of the Interior between 2021 and 2024, and is subject to an Interpol Red Notice for the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, which claimed eighty-five lives and injured three hundred and thirty people. Since August 9, 2026, the secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council has been headed by Mohsen Rezaei, commander of the Revolutionary Guard between 1981 and 1997 and also wanted by Argentine authorities for the same crime. Two men subject to international arrest warrants for terrorism now control the war machine and security architecture of the Islamic Republic.
The conclusion is self-evident: neither Vahidi nor Rezaei has any incentive to end the war. Hostilities are the instrument that legitimizes their primacy over President Masoud Pezeshkian, who favors a negotiated solution and is increasingly irrelevant in the decision-making process. The jihadist oligarchy that governs Iran is not waging this war against the United States: it is waging it against the very possibility that Iran will cease to be what they need it to be.
Perspectives and scenarios
Scenario A, the most likely in the short term (fifty percent): a continuation of the spiral of mutual retaliation with a tacit ceiling; that is, Iranian attacks against bases and ships calibrated to avoid massive American casualties, and US responses against economic assets—oil tankers, terminals, Revolutionary Guard infrastructure—rather than against targets that would result in civilian casualties. It is a war of fluctuating temperatures, with Brent crude oil prices oscillating between ninety-five and one hundred and ten dollars.
Scenario B (thirty percent): a miscalculation—a missile hitting the wrong place, a warship struck with casualties, an attack on a Saudi or Emirati facility with mass casualties—that forces Washington to respond qualitatively differently against Iranian territory. This would be the shift from naval warfare to a strategic campaign.
Scenario C (20 percent): Opening of a serious negotiating channel through Omani or Qatari mediation, taking advantage of Iran’s economic decline and American electoral nervousness. This is the desirable and least likely scenario, precisely because those currently in power in Tehran would lose far more with peace than they are losing with war.
2. Ukraine reaches the Arctic heart of Russian gas: the deepest attack of the entire war
Facts
On September 9, Ukrainian Special Operations Forces units attacked the gas condensate processing plants in Novyi Urengoy and Purovsk, in the Yamalia-Nenets Autonomous District of northwestern Siberia, using long-range drones. The distance to the Ukrainian border is approximately 3,200 kilometers, far exceeding the previous record of about 2,500 kilometers, set during the attack on the Omsk refinery in July 2016. The region’s governor, Dmitry Artyukhov, confirmed the attack and the resulting fire at an industrial facility in Novyi Urengoy.
The targets are not insignificant. The Novoy Urengoy plant has a design capacity of 19.5 million tons of raw material per year; the Purovsk plant processed 13.4 million tons of condensate in 2025. Both belong to Gazprom and are located in the region that produces around 80 percent of Russia’s natural gas. Until yesterday, Yamalia was considered an absolutely secure rear area. The Ukrainian company Fire Point hinted, without confirming it, at the involvement of its FP-1 drones, whose declared range is already around 3,400 kilometers with a 60-kilogram payload.
Russia responded with its usual brutality against the Ukrainian civilian population. On the night of September 8-9, it launched 166 drones, 32 cruise missiles, and an undetermined number of ballistic and anti-ship missiles; the Ukrainian Air Force shot down 142 drones, 31 cruise missiles, and two ballistic missiles. The bombing of Kyiv on the 8th and 9th left dozens dead and wounded, and in the early hours of the 10th, Russian attacks caused at least seven deaths: four in Mykolaiv and three in a shopping mall in Sumi. All of this occurred just three days after special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner concluded their round of talks between Moscow and Kyiv without success. President Trump declared on Wednesday, upon his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, that he had spoken again with Vladimir Putin and that both sides might be willing to negotiate, attributing the impasse to personal animosity between Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky.
Implications
The attack on Yamalia has a symbolic value that outweighs its material value. Ukraine has demonstrated that it can reach any point in Russia’s energy complex, including Arctic installations that Moscow considered untouchable due to sheer geography. The immediate consequence will not be a dramatic drop in Russian gas production, but rather a forced redistribution of air defense resources across a vast territory, with the resulting weakening of coverage on the fronts that truly matter.
There is a second, more uncomfortable interpretation for Western foreign ministries. Ukraine’s power projection capabilities are growing precisely when Western political support is becoming more erratic. Kyiv has realized that its security will not be guaranteed by any external promises, but by its own long-range drone industry. This lesson should give pause to the Europeans, who have spent four and a half years promising capabilities they haven’t delivered and funding a war they don’t control.
The third implication is diplomatic. The resumption of the massive bombing of Kyiv immediately after the visit of the American envoys is not a coincidence: it is a message. Putin does not negotiate under pressure because he does not perceive any pressure. As long as the Kremlin remains convinced that it can take over the entire Donbas before the end of the year, no transactional mediation will produce any results. The mediators confuse the willingness to talk with the willingness to reach an agreement, which are two different things.
Perspectives and scenarios
In the short term, we can expect an intensification of the Ukrainian campaign against Russian energy infrastructure, with increasingly deeper targets, and a similarly intensified Russian retaliation against Ukrainian cities as winter approaches. The Council of Europe has launched, in parallel with the EU initiative, its own mechanism to use frozen Russian assets to compensate for the damage caused to Ukraine; MEPs are pressing to release the €200 billion currently blocked. None of this will be resolved in a matter of weeks. The realistic outlook is for a protracted war of attrition in which Ukrainian technological superiority in unmanned systems partially offsets Russian demographic and industrial superiority, with neither side achieving the decisive victory they both continue to promise their publics.
3. Dallas: The $5,000 “Trump dividend” and Republican anxiety ahead of the midterm elections
Facts
On the evening of September 9, President Donald Trump closed the first day of the first midterm convention held by a political party in American history at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. In a one-hour and forty-five-minute speech, he promised to pay a $5,000 dividend to every adult citizen of the United States if the Republican Party retains control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the November 3 elections. He dubbed it the “Trump dividend” and likened it to the cash distribution a successful company gives to its shareholders, specifying that the money should be spent in the United States. He offered no details about the mechanism, the necessary congressional authorization, or its legal basis. With approximately 270 million adults registered in the U.S. census, the measure would cost around $1.35 trillion. Vice President JD Vance later clarified the proposal, suggesting that high-income taxpayers would be excluded and pointing to tariff revenues as a source of funding: about $154.5 billion in the first ten months of fiscal year 2026.
The context is as revealing as the announcement. The president’s approval rating hovers around 38 percent. Several Republican candidates in swing districts declined to appear in Dallas, though at least 16 candidates in competitive races were on the program, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Ohio Senator Jon Husted. Despite the president’s insistence that the arena was full, the upper tiers remained largely empty. The president urged his supporters to act as if he himself were on the ballot.
Implications
It’s important to be clear and uncompromising: promising public funds in exchange for an election result is a form of vote-buying, even if it’s disguised in the corporate language of dividends. US federal law expressly prohibits paying or receiving payments to influence votes, and no amount of revenue raised through tariffs even remotely approaches the $1.35 trillion that this measure would cost. This is a campaign blunder, not a matter of public policy, and it’s precisely the kind of erratic, intuitive, and transactional decision that separates the Trump who gets it right—the one who mediated between Cambodia and Thailand, the one who addressed Gaza, the one who brokered the agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the one who listened to Marco Rubio—from the Trump who shoots himself in the foot.
There’s something deeper going on, and that’s what truly matters. A president who needs to offer $5,000 per person fifty-five days before an election is a president who knows he’s going to lose. Republicans can’t win a midterm election in the midst of a war, with oil above $100 a barrel and energy inflation looming on every bill. The narrative that the conflict that began on February 28th isn’t a war—maintained by Vice President Vance himself just a week ago—won’t stand up to scrutiny from the voter filling up their tank.
The institutional consequences are extremely serious, and no one in Europe seems to be calculating them. If the Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives, it will open the door to impeachment proceedings that could paralyze the final two years of the presidential term. An America mired in a constitutional crisis while the Gulf burns and Russia bombs Kyiv is the worst possible scenario for Western interests, and it is a scenario that grows clearer, more evident, and more imminent every day.
Perspectives and scenarios
The calendar is relentless: fifty-five days. Historical trends consistently favor the opposition party in midterm elections, and presidential approval ratings point in the same direction. The question is not so much whether the Democrats will regain the House—the most likely outcome—but rather the margin and, above all, the fate of the Senate, whose map of seats up for grabs is considerably more favorable to the Republicans. In geopolitical terms, the key point is that, starting November 4th, American foreign policy will be constrained by parliamentary arithmetic and the constant threat of investigations. Washington’s adversaries know this and will act accordingly: for Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing, the American election clock is an ally that doesn’t charge a commission.
4. Spain declassifies the Ceuta papers: the CNI, the Moncloa Palace and the broken seam of the State
Facts
On Tuesday, September 8, the Council of Ministers agreed to declassify confidential information from the National Intelligence Center (CNI) and the Armed Forces Intelligence Center (CIFAS) regarding the mass entry of migrants into Ceuta on July 30 and 31, when approximately 72,000 people entered the autonomous city irregularly by swimming or on foot. Government spokesperson Elma Saiz specified that the declassified information consisted of three CNI memos, a CIFAS report, and the transcripts of conversations between the CNI and the Government Delegation in Ceuta, as well as with the Civil Guard’s Special Central Unit Number 3. On Wednesday, September 9, the government released nearly 40 police and intelligence documents covering the period between July 1 and August 1.
The result has been the opposite of what was intended. Sources within the National Intelligence Center (CNI) cited, after the leak, an early warning notice sent to Moroccan intelligence services and the contacts made on July 29 with the Government Delegation in Ceuta and the Civil Guard. The Prime Minister’s office denies that the Center warned of a mass arrival, and President Sánchez maintains that the reports contained routine warnings that in no way anticipated the scale of the event. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares reiterated that he was unaware of any report that would have allowed for the assault to be foreseen. The Government Delegate claims he knew nothing and rules out resigning. The People’s Party is calling for early elections and maintains that on July 30 there were five Civil Guard officers and four divers at the fence. From the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), Gabriel Rufián summarized the episode with a phrase that is sure to catch on: there is a part of the State that is acting against the Government. The European Commission, meanwhile, approved on Wednesday emergency aid of 114.7 million euros to reinforce the Ceuta border, enable registration and control facilities and accelerate returns.
Implications
A serious state does not air its intelligence materials in a press conference to win a parliamentary question time. The declassification of CNI and CIFAS reports for immediate political expediency produces three simultaneous and lasting damages. First, it undermines the trust of allied intelligence services, which share information with the certainty that it won’t end up in the newsstands; it’s worth remembering that one of these reports was addressed to Moroccan intelligence. Second, it exposes sources, methods, and reaction times to an adversary who takes note. Third, and perhaps the most corrosive, it transforms the intelligence community into a litigant in a domestic dispute.
The core issue remains unresolved. Seventy-two thousand people failed to cross a European border in forty-eight hours due to a random weather event. The fact that the Spanish government is now debating whether the warnings were routine or extraordinary, instead of explaining why the European Union’s southern border was guarded by only a handful of officers, reveals the extent to which Spanish politics has prioritized narrative over effective management. Brussels having to send €114.7 million to plug the gap is not a diplomatic victory: it is the price of negligence.
Finally, there is a strictly geopolitical dimension that partisan controversy is burying. Ceuta and Melilla are not a migration problem: they are a problem of sovereignty and deterrence. As long as Spain lacks a national policy on its North African territories—a policy that transcends legislative terms and political parties—it will remain vulnerable to the manipulation of migration flows as a tool for exerting pressure. Other countries have learned this lesson; we continue to argue about who read which press release and when.
Perspectives and scenarios
The Spanish institutional crisis is far from over. The contradiction between the Defense Ministry’s and the Interior Ministry’s versions of the prior warnings remains unresolved, and the publication of the documents has exacerbated it rather than resolved it. The Prime Minister has also hinted at his intention to run again in the 2027 general election without specifying a date, thus placing the entire remaining term under the shadow of electoral calculations. On the international stage, Rabat is expected to capitalize on Spain’s weakness, while Brussels continues to pay for a border it does not control. Domestically, the appearance of the Prime Minister and the release of the documents have opened a rift between the political establishment and the intelligence community—a situation no government should wish for and one that none can resolve in a few months.
5. The first German F-35 flies as FCAS funding dries up: chronicle of a Franco-German rupture
Facts
On September 8, the first F-35A Lightning II destined for the Luftwaffe—registration MG-01, serial number 35+01—completed its maiden flight from Lockheed Martin’s facilities in Fort Worth, Texas, already painted with German markings. The official presentation is scheduled for September 18, and formal delivery will take place next week. Germany has ordered 35 aircraft; the first ones will remain at the Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Arkansas for pilot and maintenance personnel training, and operations will later be transferred to Büchel Air Force Base. The F-35A will replace the aging Tornado fighters and, with them, assume German responsibility for NATO’s nuclear engagement mission, for which the aircraft has been certified since October 2023 with the B61-12 bomb. Initial operational capability is projected for 2029 and full operational capability for 2030.
The calendar holds a cruel irony. On June 8, 2026, Chancellor Friedrich Merz confirmed the end of the manned component of the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) program, the sixth-generation fighter jet launched by Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel in 2017, in which France, Germany, and Spain participated through Dassault, Airbus, and Indra. Nine years of political mediation, over one hundred billion euros budgeted, and not a single demonstrator built. On July 28, Safran announced the end of the EUMET joint venture, created with the German company MTU to develop the aircraft. Funding associated with the FCAS expires this September 2026. Dassault’s president, Éric Trappier, is now pushing for a strictly French demonstrator for 2031 or 2032, while the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan are making progress on the Global Combat Air Programme.
Implications
That Germany celebrates the first flight of an American fighter jet in the same month that funding for the European fighter program is cut is the most accurate metaphor for where European strategic autonomy lies today: in rhetoric. We must be precise in our diagnosis, because the temptation to blame the engineers is strong and false. The FCAS program didn’t die from technical difficulties. It died from an industrial dispute between Dassault and Airbus that nine years of political intervention failed to resolve, and above all, it died from a lack of government leadership. When states can’t say what kind of aircraft they want, companies decide for them, and companies always decide based on their bottom line.
The cost is not just that of a failed program. It’s the cost of credibility. A continent that can’t agree on a successor to the Rafale and the Eurofighter will hardly convince anyone that it can guarantee its own defense without the United States. The material result is even worse: Berlin reinforces its dependence on American industry precisely in the sector—nuclear participation—where that dependence is most sensitive, while Paris locks itself into a national program that it will hardly recoup its investment without partners. Each has chosen the path least beneficial to the whole.
Spain deserves a separate paragraph, and not a complimentary one. Our country was a full partner in the FCAS program through Indra, with a third of the development committed, and has witnessed the dismantling of the program without any say in the decision-making process or any articulated alternative. The same passivity that left us out of the European board currently being established in Berlin now leaves us without a sixth-generation fighter and without a plan B. This isn’t bad luck; it’s the predictable consequence of a defense policy that merely formally complies with the quotas and waits for others to decide.
Perspectives and scenarios
The most likely scenario is the consolidation of three aeronautical blocs in Europe in the medium term: a French national demonstrator on the horizon for 2031-2032, a possible German-Swedish partnership or an expansion of the American purchase, and the British-Italian-Japanese GCAP as the only multinational European program with a credible timeline. For Spain, the window of opportunity is closing rapidly: either it joins the GCAP under decent industrial conditions, or it negotiates a stake in its demonstrator with France, or it accepts that its combat aircraft for the second third of the century will be of foreign design and manufacture. The worst option, which is the one we have been pursuing for years, is not to choose. As with so many things, not deciding is also deciding, only worse.
III. MEDIA RACK
Overview of comparative treatment in the leading international press during the last twenty-four hours.
International agencies
Reuters set the agenda for the day with a dispatch from Dallas by Nandita Bose, Steve Holland, and Nathan Layne on the president’s promise of a $5,000 dividend, highlighting the uncertainty surrounding its legality and cost, and with coverage of Saudi energy operations suspended following Houthi attacks. The agency was also the go-to source on Iran’s power structure. The Associated Press distributed Planet Labs satellite images of the plume of smoke at the Aramco refinery north of Abha and photographs from Dallas. AFP fueled European coverage of the energy escalation.
Anglo-Saxon press
The Washington Post featured on its front page the wave of Iranian missiles against the US base in Jordan and Tehran’s refusal to capitulate despite economic pressure. The Financial Times reported on Monday that Aramco’s facilities in Jazan had been hit again. CNBC offered the most useful financial analysis of the day, with Goldman Sachs’ warning about the increasing likelihood of Brent crude rising above $120. CBS and Fox News led with the “Trump dividend,” the former emphasizing the campaign-conditional nature of the promise and the latter its unprecedented character. The Hill described the Dallas convention using the phrase circulating among attendees, “Trump-a-Palooza,” and did not shy away from showing the half-empty stands. Time covered both the Dallas announcement—with Vice President Vance’s subsequent clarification—and the Iranian missiles over Jordan. The Washington Times highlighted Brent crude breaking the $100 barrier after the US and Houthi attacks. Fox News was among the first to report on the extent of the Ukrainian attack on the Russian Arctic.
Middle Eastern Press
Al Jazeera has provided the most consistent coverage of the naval conflict, with specific analysis of the tanker war and the escalating nature of the confrontation, and by reproducing the Iranian narrative: the Foreign Ministry’s characterization of the attacks as a war crime and the statement by Hassan Gashgavi, spokesman for the Knesset’s National Security Committee, about an existential war against the United States. It is advisable to read these pieces with some background knowledge. The Jerusalem Post has closely followed the successive Iranian ballistic missile attacks against US bases in Jordan. The Israeli Institute for National Security Studies published an analysis (INSS Insight No. 2197) on September 9 regarding the tender for 1,234 housing units in Area E1 of the West Bank, arguing that the tender crosses a threshold that successive Israeli governments had avoided for years.
Ukrainian and Russian press
Ukrainska Pravda and The Kyiv Independent broke the news of the attack on the Novoy Urengoy and Purovsk plants, providing full technical details, including the processing capacity of both facilities. The Kyiv Post published the Institute for the Study of War’s assessment from September 9 and figures on the previous night’s Russian bombing. On the Russian side, official coverage downplayed the attack, attributing the fire to debris from intercepted drones—a version hardly compatible with the scale of the images released. The Kyiv Independent also reported on the alternative mechanism launched by the Council of Europe to use Russian assets to compensate for war damages, and on the dissolution of the Serbian Parliament by a president aligned with Moscow.
Think tanks and specialized publications
The International Crisis Group issued a statement on September 4 urging European governments to take responsibility for halting the E1 project, given the silence of the US administration. The German Council on Foreign Relations maintains the most authoritative analysis of the dismantling of the FCAS, identifying the primary cause of failure as the lack of governmental leadership rather than the number of partners. The Iranian conflict monitoring services continue to provide the most reliable daily tally of the naval campaign, today marking its 195th day.
Significant absences
The limited international coverage of the Spanish institutional crisis surrounding the declassification of the Ceuta reports is striking. Despite affecting the European Union’s external border and involving the intelligence services of a member state, the crisis has barely made it past the national media. This is yet another symptom of the lack of media attention that accompanies strategic irrelevance.
IV. RISK TRAFFIC LIGHT
🔴 Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. Maximum and increasing risk. Iranian ballistic retaliation against Jordanian territory, order to evacuate oil tankers anchored off Kuwait and Bahrain, and CENTCOM’s categorical denial of Tehran’s naval claims. The probability of an incident with massive American casualties increases daily.
🔴 Yemen, Houthis, and Saudi Arabia. Maximum risk. The Houthi terrorist organization has attacked energy facilities in Abha, Khamis Mushayt, Jazan, and Najran, injuring seventy-three and forcing the suspension of operations. The internationalization of the Yemeni front is complete.
🟠 Energy markets and global inflation. High risk. Brent crude above $100 for the first time since July, with a bullish scenario reaching $120 gaining probability according to Goldman Sachs. Europe is the hardest hit.
🟠 Russia-Ukraine: Energy escalation. High risk. The deepest Ukrainian attack of the war on the Russian Arctic gas complex and massive Russian retaliation against the civilian population. The Witkoff-Kushner mediation has failed without producing a single verifiable commitment.
🟠 Spain, Ceuta and the southern European border. High risk. Open institutional crisis between the political powers and the intelligence community, with no state policy on the North African territories and the European Commission funding the redress for the negligence.
🟡 United States: Pre-election cycle. Medium-high risk. Presidential approval rating around 38% 55 days before the election. The potential loss of the House of Representatives would trigger a scenario of institutional paralysis with global repercussions.
🟡 European cohesion in defense. Medium-high risk. FCAS funding ends this month, the German F-35 takes its first flight, and Europe is fragmented into three air force blocs. Spain lacks a viable alternative.
🟡 West Bank: Project E1. Medium risk. The tender for 1,234 homes crosses a threshold avoided for decades and compromises Palestinian territorial contiguity, with Washington limiting itself to formal opposition to annexation.
🟡 Indo-Pacific and South China Sea. Medium and latent risk. Permanent patrols by the Chinese coast guard east of Taiwan and sustained pressure on Pratas. Beijing is closely watching the American distraction in the Gulf.
🟢 Venezuela and the Caribbean. Moderate risk and under surveillance. The supervised transition under Delcy Rodríguez is progressing in the energy sector without the democratic uncertainty or the question of the criminal responsibilities of the Chavista network being resolved.
V. EDITORIAL COMMENTARY
Raymond Aron wrote that international politics is the arena where prudence becomes the foremost virtue. If anything has been lacking in the last twenty-four hours, in every arena and in almost every capital, it has been precisely that: prudence. Not timidity, which is its counterfeit, but the ability to calculate consequences beyond tomorrow’s headlines.
Let’s start with Tehran, because that’s where the diagnosis is clearest. The Islamic Republic isn’t fighting this war to win it. It’s fighting it to avoid having to end it. General Ahmad Vahidi at the head of the Revolutionary Guard and Mohsen Rezaei as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council represent the culmination of a process we’ve been predicting for months: the definitive shift of power from the Republic’s formal institutions to the praetorian guard, with an elected president reduced to the status of a figurehead. The fact that both are wanted internationally for the AMIA bombing isn’t a biographical detail: it’s an exact description of the regime’s nature. A state governed by individuals wanted for terrorism behaves as it is. Bombing a base in Jordan—a country not at war with anyone, whose stability sustains the Levant’s equilibrium, and whose population is already enduring extreme demographic and economic pressure—is proof that Tehran has stopped calculating. Or worse, that he calculates perfectly and has concluded that he can do it with impunity.
Let’s turn to Washington, where the assessment requires nuances that no one wants to make. The campaign against Iran’s capacity to strangle the Strait of Hormuz was necessary, and its military execution has been, in strictly technical terms, remarkable. That is the tactical success. Facing it, unscathed, is the geopolitical catastrophe: six and a half months of war without a defined political objective, without a plan for the aftermath, without a regional architecture to replace the one that has been demolished, and now with a president promising five thousand dollars per vote fifty-five days before an election he will likely lose. American foreign policy oscillates between success—when it listens to Marco Rubio and the professionals who surround him—and outbursts. Yesterday, in Dallas, it was an outburst. The problem with outbursts is that allies cannot plan around them, while adversaries can bet on them.
Let’s end with Europe, where it hurts. In the same month that funding for the European sixth-generation fighter jet is definitively cut off, the first German F-35 takes off in Texas, sporting the Luftwaffe roundel. There is no more eloquent image of twenty years of rhetoric about strategic autonomy. Nine years of the program, one hundred billion euros budgeted, three partner countries, and not a single demonstrator. Meanwhile, a continent that pays one hundred dollars a barrel for oil in a war in which it hasn’t participated in a single decision, that finances the repair of a border left undefended by a member state with 114.7 million euros, and that argues about percentages of gross domestic product as if defense were a mere accounting exercise. Konrad Adenauer used to warn that in politics, it’s not enough to be right: you also have to have the power to impose it. Europe has been content with the first half of that statement for far too long.
Spain remains, and here the criticism must be explicit because silence would be complicity. A government that declassifies CNI and CIFAS reports to gain a parliamentary advantage has failed to grasp the purpose of an intelligence service. The Ceuta papers have clarified nothing about the essential question—why 72,000 people crossed a European border in 48 hours in the face of a symbolic security presence—and have opened a rift between the State and its government that will take years to heal. Our country is a member of an Atlantic alliance to which it contributes less than it receives, it was a partner in an aeronautical program that has disintegrated without our uttering a word, and it is the owner of two cities on the African coast for which there is no national policy. None of this can be fixed with a budget: it can be fixed with sound judgment, and sound judgment is the only thing that cannot be bought.
The lesson of this day, if there is one, is old and simple. Authoritarian regimes play the long game because they are not accountable; democracies play the short game because the ballot boxes always arrive before the results. This asymmetry is not corrected with more rhetoric, but with institutions capable of sustaining a strategy that transcends electoral cycles. As long as the West fails to resolve this problem—and today it is nowhere near attempting to do so—we will continue to read reports like this one, in which the facts write themselves and the solutions remain, waiting for someone to dare to formulate them.