Israel, Hezbollah Say They Seek to Contain Escalation After Major Cross-Border Fire |
Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah carried out some of the largest cross-border attacks in the ten months of war over the weekend. Hezbollah reported launching hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel, while Israel said it sent around one hundred jets to strike Hezbollah from the air. Hezbollah said it was issuing its initial response to the targeted killing of one of its commanders last month. Still, both sides looked to contain further intensification of the conflict yesterday, with Israel’s defense minister mentioning “the importance of avoiding regional escalation” and Hezbollah’s leader saying “people can take a breath and relax.”
The ongoing war in the Gaza Strip nonetheless continues to prompt fears of an even wider conflict between Israel and Iran’s proxies in the region, including Hezbollah. While four days of talks in Cairo over a potential cease-fire and hostage release deal in Gaza wrapped up yesterday without a breakthrough, an unnamed U.S. official said working group discussions related to the talks would continue in the coming days. (NYT, AP)
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“Ordinary Lebanese do not want a war in their homeland. If one breaks out and they blame Hezbollah, its popularity may drop,” Arab Barometer’s MaryClare Roche and Michael Robbins write for Foreign Affairs.
“The prevention of [Hezbollah’s] planned attack on targets in central Israel was ultimately an impressive but limited tactical military achievement for Israel. To pull itself from the wider, strategic, regional mud, Israel will still need the help of a comprehensive diplomatic deal: One that will return the Israeli hostages and end the war in the Gaza Strip,” Haaretz’s Noa Landau writes.
Read the full suite of Foreign Affairs and CFR.org resources on Israel and the current conflict.
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Pacific Island Leaders Begin Talks on Climate Finance, Geopolitics |
This year’s Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting is underway in Tonga with a packed agenda. The attending eighteen nations are discussing climate finance, U.S.-China tensions, recent riots in the French territory of New Caledonia, and applications for associate member status by the U.S. territories of Guam and American Samoa. (Nikkei)
U.S./China: China’s commerce ministry warned yesterday it would take steps to protect its interests after the United States announced new sanctions on forty-two Chinese firms last week. The State Department said the firms have supplied Russia’s war effort. The U.S. move came ahead of U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s visit to Beijing tomorrow. (AP, Nikkei)
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Bangladesh’s Interim Government Begins Probe of Former Administration’s Accounting
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Economist and public policy analyst Debapriya Bhattacharya was invited to produce a white paper documenting potentially inaccurate data reported under the previous Sheikh Hasina government. Bhattacharya said the data was “manufactured” and “suppressed” during that time, creating “unprecedented economic vulnerabilities.” (Bloomberg)
Pakistan: Separatist fighters killed at least thirty-nine people in multiple attacks in the southwestern Balochistan province today that largely targeted ethnic Punjabis, local government officials said. They called the assaults “coordinated;” one attack that singled out Punjabis on a highway was one of the region’s worst shootings in recent years. (AFP)
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Middle East and North Africa |
Libya’s Eastern Government Says It Will Stop Oil Production Over Bank Dispute |
The internationally backed government in western Libya seeks to replace the country’s central bank governor, who says he will not step down. The country’s rival government in the east said that it would halt oil production amid the row, though Libya’s national oil company did not immediately confirm the freeze. (Bloomberg, Reuters)
CFR’s Center for Preventive Action tracks civil conflict in Libya.
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Germany to Donate One Hundred Thousand Mpox Vaccine Doses to African Countries |
The doses will come from Berlin’s military stockpile, a German government spokesperson said. Health experts have criticized the slow approval process from the World Health Organization (WHO) for international donor groups such as Gavi and the UN Children’s Fund to be able to purchase vaccines for African countries. On Friday, the WHO said it would speed up the approval process. The first ten thousand doses are due to arrive on the continent this week, coming from the United States. (Reuters)
For Think Global Health, Linda Nordling discusses how African officials came to declare mpox a health emergency.
Ghana: Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, the ruling party’s candidate in December’s presidential election, said he would sign a bill calling for three years of jail time for people identifying as LGBTQ+ if the country’s Supreme Court rules it lawful. The bill has been sharply criticized by rights groups and could jeopardize some $3.8 billion in World Bank funding to help Ghana overcome its debt crisis as the bank would pull its support, the country’s finance ministry said earlier this year. (Bloomberg)
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France Arrests Telegram CEO Over Content Moderation Stance |
The messaging platform said its CEO Pavel Durov has “nothing to hide” and that Telegram abides by European Union laws after Durov was detained during a Paris stopover on Saturday. The arrest was part of a probe into Telegram’s allowance of content linked to drug trafficking, terrorism, and cyberstalking, Le Monde reported. The platform generally has taken a hands-off approach to content moderation and has more than 900 million users. (FT, Le Monde, NYT)
Russia/Ukraine: Russia launched overnight attacks on Ukrainian energy and civilian targets that included more than one hundred missiles and one hundred drones, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. At least three people were killed and thirteen wounded in Ukraine, officials said. In Russia, officials reported Ukrainian drone strikes wounded four people. (AP)
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U.S. Delivers Twenty-Four Armored Vehicles to Haiti |
The equipment will support a U.S.-backed, Kenya-led multinational security mission to help Haitian police regain territorial control from gangs. Security forces from the Bahamas and Jamaica are expected to arrive in early September. (The Star)
Mexico: The ruling Morena party and its allies will hold a supermajority in the lower legislative house but fall two seats short of a supermajority in the Senate when a new legislative term begins next week, the country’s electoral institute ruled. Morena will now need to earn support from outside its coalition to pass constitutional reforms, a goal of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador before he leaves office on October 1. (Bloomberg)
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Meta Blocks Accounts It Says Are Linked to Iranian Hackers Targeting Presidential Campaigns |
Meta said it blocked a small cluster of WhatsApp accounts it found was linked to an Iranian group trying to target people connected to the administrations of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. It said no accounts appeared to have been compromised. Meta’s investigators said the activity was connected to a network blamed for a hacking incident reported by Trump’s presidential campaign. (Meta, AP)
For the Net Politics blog, CFR’s Kat Duffy and Kyle Fendorf look at the hack on the Trump campaign.
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