Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at scrapped deals in the Middle East, Ukraine’s deadliest attack on Russia since the beginning of the war, and natural disasters in Colombia and China.
Middle East Mayhem Continues
Another weekend passed without any agreements to resolve the multiple conflicts in the Middle East. Deals were rejected, stalemates continued, oil prices rose, and missiles and drones flew.
Israel formally rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s 15-point peace plan for Gaza on Sunday. In a cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Israeli military would not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas undergoes “genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament,” which he defined as including “all weaponry.”
Although the deal has the continued support of Hamas, Netanyahu does not want to be seen as accepting anything less than “absolute victory” ahead of a critical election on Oct. 27, Shira Efron, the distinguished chair for Israel policy at the Rand Corp., told Foreign Policy’s John Haltiwanger last week.
Ten months on from the U.S.-brokered Israel-Hamas cease-fire signed in October 2025, permanent peace remains elusive. Israel still controls more than half of Gaza and has killed more than 1,250 Palestinians during the nominal cease-fire, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Negotiations between Washington and Tehran to end the Iran war also remain in a stalemate. Iran’s president said on Monday that the country’s supreme leader is calling for “unity and cohesion” as the country struggles to cope with the war’s mounting economic costs.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tehran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the United States meets its conditions, including ending the blockade of the strait, paying compensation for war damages, lifting economic sanctions, and releasing Iran’s frozen assets. Although Tehran is holding separate talks with Oman over transit through the strait, the spokesperson said any actual reopening will be contingent on U.S. concessions.
Trump is hoping that intense economic pressure, rather than restarting major military operations, will be enough to force Tehran’s hand. He told Axios on Sunday that the United States is “only semi-negotiating” and taking a “low-key” approach to talks. “We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,” he said.
Meanwhile, conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis continues to escalate. Seven people were killed and 30 wounded in a Houthi attack on Sunday, according to Yemen’s military. Ballistic missiles and drones targeted what a Houthi military spokesperson said were Saudi troop concentrations and weapons depots in the Red Sea city of Mocha, though the Yemeni military said the strikes also targeted residential neighborhoods. The Houthis also claimed responsibility for an attack on Sunday on an Aramco oil refinery in Saudi Arabia’s southwest.
The attacks came just two days after Riyadh signed a defense agreement with Turkey and Pakistan that includes a NATO-style collective defense clause. It is unclear what implications that may have for the Houthi conflict.
Today’s Most Read
The World This Week
Tuesday, Aug. 11: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosts Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger.
Wednesday, Aug. 12: The Cook Islands holds a general election to elect 24 members of Parliament.
Thursday, Aug. 13: Zambia holds a general election to elect the president and 150 members to the National Assembly.
A by-election takes place in the United Kingdom’s Clacton parliamentary constituency, which was represented by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage until he resigned as a member of Parliament in July.
Saturday, Aug. 15: The Taliban government in Afghanistan celebrates Victory Day, marking five years since the group’s return to power following the U.S. withdrawal.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to give a speech to commemorate the country’s Independence Day.
What We’re Following
Kyiv strikes deep. A Ukrainian drone attack on a major Russian oil refinery on Monday killed at least 13 people and injured 75 others in Nizhnekamsk, a city about 600 miles east of Moscow.
The Ukrainian military said the strikes targeted the Taneco oil refinery, a state-of-the-art facility designed to process 300,000 barrels a day, as part of Kyiv’s campaign to bring the costs of war more directly to Russian civilians.
In his nightly address on Sunday, following Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities including Odesa and Sumy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that “Russia’s war will be felt more and more at their own home—in Russia.” Monday’s strike on Nizhnekamsk was one of the deadliest Ukrainian attacks inside Russia since the war began.
The full extent of the damage is still unclear. Satellite imagery suggests that fires broke out at the neighboring petrochemical plant. According to the mayor of Nizhnekamsk, civilian sites were also targeted, and Russian authorities say a child was among those killed. The Uzbek regional consulate claims seven Uzbek citizens were killed.
In July, strikes on oil infrastructure contributed to “fuel shortages, rationing, or restrictions” in nearly all of Russia’s 83 federal regions, Alexey Kovalev writes for Foreign Policy. Recently, dozens of Ukrainian attacks on warehouses operated by e-commerce retailer Wildberries, Russia’s version of Amazon, hampered e-commerce for both civilian and military supply chains.
Natural disasters. A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck western Colombia on Monday morning. Its epicenter was in the Chocó region, about 175 miles west of Bogotá, according to the Colombian Geological Service. But reports of collapsed buildings and heavy casualties are spreading across the country, including in major cities such as Bogotá, Cali, Manizales, and Pereira. Initial reporting puts the death toll at more than 100 people, though that number is likely to rise.
The quake is the first major test for Abelardo de la Espriella, Colombia’s newly inaugurated right-wing president. De la Espriella initially announced that he was traveling to the affected areas but later opted to oversee relief efforts from Bogotá first. “You have a President who cares deeply for his people and who will do everything necessary to protect you, support you, and move forward together in rebuilding the affected regions,” he said.
In East Asia, meanwhile, Typhoon Dolphin made landfall in China’s Zhejiang province on Sunday evening after forming near the Marshall Islands last month. The tropical cyclone lashed China’s southeastern seaboard and forced the evacuation of more than 1 million residents. Wind speeds reached up to 94 miles per hour, and nearly 1,000 flights were canceled in Shanghai.
China attempted to use the typhoon to force Taiwan to adhere to traffic control measures in the Taiwan Strait, a move that the Taiwanese government called “utterly ridiculous.” Although the storm’s severity has been downgraded since hitting land, Chinese authorities cautioned that continued torrential rain across the country could cause landslides.
Syria reorganizes. Syria and Russia have reached a memorandum of understanding to restructure Moscow’s security presence in the country, the Syrian Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday. Control of the Hmeimim Air Base and the Tartus naval port on Syria’s western coast will be transferred to the Syria’s civilian administration, while the military facilities at both sites will become joint Russian-Syrian training centers.
Moscow was the top political and military ally of former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad throughout Syria’s civil war from 2011 to 2024. The overthrow of Assad—and his relocation in exile to Russia—dealt a blow to Moscow’s presence in the region. However, both interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Russian President Vladimir Putin have expressed a desire to cooperate over the past 18 months of negotiations, with Sharaa visiting Moscow twice since taking power.
Some see the reorganization as a signal of Damascus’s aim to assert its sovereignty. According to the statement from the Syrian Foreign Ministry, the memorandum “marks the most significant development since negotiations began” and will pave the way “for a new phase in Syrian-Russian relations.” Russia has not yet commented on the agreement.
Odds and Ends
If you (like today’s World Brief writers) were scarred by Dobby’s death scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, you can breathe a sigh of relief. A multimillion-dollar power cable project set to run across the Welsh beach where the scene was filmed was forced to relocate after vexed Harry Potter fans said the construction would desecrate the fictional elf’s grave. Project manager Simon Ludlam—who did not know who Dobby was before receiving thousands of phone complaints—said the new plans run “quite close to some real Bronze Age remains” but avoid the fictional gravesite. There, still, lies Dobby, a free elf.
