MIDDLE EAST - The Hamas leadership never disguised that its fighters were being trained for a massacre. “We will come to you, God willing, in a roaring flood,” announced the terror chief Yahya Sinwar nine months before his marauding legion attacked and slaughtered Israelis in October 2023. Now the knottiest of Middle East problems approaches: how to persuade Hamas to abandon armed resistance, its very essence? That has been at the heart of the accelerating diplomacy of the past few months. Hamas, according to leaks from President Trump’s Board of Peace, has agreed to a plan that would see a decommissioning of its heavy weapons in Gaza, stepping down from governing Gaza and accepting the deployment of an international stabilisation force. The group is making it conditional on Israel halting airstrikes, removing its troops from Gaza and allowing for the reconstruction of the territory.

USA - On Monday, the homepage of the BBC had two important headlines that reflect changing US policy and the effect it is having on the world order. “Trump threatens to bomb US ally Oman, if it ‘gets in the way’ over Iran deal” was the first headline. “Trump says to reduce military drills with South Korea after it stayed out of Iran war,” was the second. The two headlines reflect a US policy that is now having a kind of butterfly effect around the world. The US and Israel chose to bomb Iran in late February 2026. Now the US is reducing its role in the Pacific and Asia and pivoting to the Middle East. After a decade and a half where the US has sought to bolster its focus on China and Asia, the US strategy is now deeply focused on the Strait of Hormuz, and US ties around the world are changing. The US has slammed European allies and allies such as South Korea. Threats to Oman show that the White House is willing to threaten partners and friends of the US.

TURKEY - Turkey’s mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is a step toward the ultimate ambition of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan: to make Ankara a powerhouse across the entire territory of the old Ottoman Empire. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed in Mecca on August 7 by Erdogan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, commits the three countries to a NATO-type alliance among Sunni states that would treat an attack on any one of them as an attack on all. The agreement gives Turkey access to assets it could not easily replicate on its own: Pakistan’s implicit nuclear deterrent and military capabilities, Saudi Arabia’s vast financial resources and influence across the Arab and Muslim worlds. For Erdogan, the objective is not necessarily to recreate the Ottoman Empire on a map, but to restore the power and influence it once exercised — putting Turkey at the center of the Middle East and increasingly independent of the West.

USA - We are facing a global energy crisis, a global debt crisis and a global inflation crisis all at the same time. In all my years, I have never seen anything like this. Two of China’s largest shipping companies just decided to stop sending their oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Meanwhile, diesel prices are heading into the stratosphere with no end in sight. Supplies of diesel fuel are going to get so tight during the months ahead. At the same time, bond yields are surging as the global debt crisis escalates. The US national debt is about to hit 40 trillion dollars and the debt to GDP ratio in Japan is nearing 250 percent. We are caught in a global debt spiral that is out of control, and inflation has become a major issue all over the planet. Anyone that thinks that there is an easy answer to all of these problems is just being delusional.

USA - Usually when numbers shoot higher on Wall Street, it is a reason for celebration. That is not how Jonas Goltermann, the chief markets economist at Capital Economics, feels when he looks at one of the most feared charts on the stock market: the Shiller price-to-earnings (PE) ratio. “That’s obviously a bit worrying,” he says after seeing the metric on track to end the month at its highest level since August 2000.

UKRAINE - Ukrainian drones knocked out three of Russia’s largest grain terminals last week. One of them, Novorossiysk, handled up to a third of Russia’s grain exports, or at least it did until missiles and drones put some five million tonnes off the global market, a third of the port’s yearly output. The Kremlin claims that Kyiv is trying to provoke chaos. Extraordinary. From the nation that invaded Ukraine and continues to murder their farmers and sailors, it’s a bit rich to blame others for the consequences.

USA - The short-range ballistic missiles scream through the atmosphere at a mile a second, bearing their explosive payloads towards Kyiv or Gulf states. As a missile streaks towards impact, air defences have just minutes to spot it, track it and destroy it with an interceptor, akin to hitting a bullet with a bullet. It is a technical challenge that means ballistic missile defences are precious high-end military kit with a hefty price tag. The US has for decades led the way in developing these defences and selling them to allies.

USA - Donald Trump threatened to bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” of US negotiations with Iran. The president said he would “bomb the s--- out of” the US ally after Iran said it was working to finalise an agreement with the Gulf country to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. As he spoke on Monday, the 60-day deadline for Washington and Tehran to negotiate a broader peace deal was due to expire, with no signs of a diplomatic breakthrough. There has been no word of an extension from either side, and their positions over the strait and the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme remain far apart. On Monday, Iran said it had agreed on a plan with Oman to manage the transit of ships through the critical waterway that runs between the countries. Reopening the waterway has been a sticking point in peace talks to end the conflict in the Middle East, with strikes and blockades halting traffic and hampering global oil markets.

IRAN - Iran pushed to continue the war with the United States in order to force a ceasefire on its own terms, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said during a conference with Iranian educators on Tuesday. "We were the ones who refused the ceasefire and continued the war until we reached a point where they [the US] agreed to a ceasefire and negotiations on Iran's terms," Araghchi said. "We fought with strength and negotiated with strength, and we won the war, and we won the diplomacy." According to Araghchi, "The Iranian people stood against what was supposedly the largest military in the world, which was supported and assisted by most Western countries and by several other countries in the region and beyond." Regarding US munitions used against Iran, Trump said that what has been used so far against Iran "is peanuts."

EUROPE - The fires in France and Spain have had devastating impacts. More than 220,000 people fled the flames west of Bordeaux. Outside Madrid, fires scorched an area twice the size of the capital and drove nearly 90,000 people from their homes. Those who lost homes and livelihoods deserve sympathy – and far better fire policy. What they do not need is the climate sermon that now follows every plume of smoke. Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change. The UK and Spanish governments rushed out a joint statement declaring that “climate change was now a national security emergency” threatening our way of life. The verdict was in even while houses burned: only ending the use of fossil fuels can put out the flames.

MIDDLE EAST - When it comes to the Middle East, Tony Blair is not known for his wisdom. His invasion of Iraq left the region in chaos, leading to mass jihadist mobilisation and the strengthening of Iran, while as the Quartet’s Middle East representative, he singularly failed to ease the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. What better man, therefore, to meet Hamas in Cairo, alongside Jared Kushner, to press the jihadis to fulfil their commitment to disarm on Sunday? Blair’s problem has always been the same, and it has been shared by the entire Western political establishment since the end of the Cold War. Namely: gullibility. The thread running through decades of Western failure to encourage peace and prosperity in the Middle East is our damnable assumption that deep down, the Islamists are just like us. Lord Renwick famously labelled this the “Wykehamist fallacy”, the tendency to assume that even the most bloodthirsty despot had an inner civilised chap of the sort one might find at Winchester College.

UK - It gives me no pleasure to write this, but we need to be realistic about the economic danger we face. UK inflation was 2.6 percent in June and the July figure will be published on Wednesday. The consensus is that inflation will likely increase, with the consumer price index (CPI) expected to be up 2.8 percent or 2.9 percent during the year to last month.

ISRAEL - Jerusalem seems to be the only country judged solely by the behaviour of its worst elements. Don’t take my word for it; consider a remark by Abdul Azim Wadi, the mayor of Qusra, a Palestinian village between Ramallah and Nablus, where Jewish “terrorists”, as American ambassador Mike Huckabee has called them, have been laying siege to an Arab family for days. Speaking to the Telegraph last week as troops struggled to tame the fanatics, Mayor Wadi said: “There are good soldiers sometimes, and there are bad ones.” There you have it. To you or me, this might seem obvious; to those in the West who have appropriated Palestine as a personal totem, however, there can be no such thing as a “good” Israeli soldier on the grounds of ideology.

UK - It is a strange perversion of compassion to tell a young man with anxiety that he is beyond work. Work – structure, purpose, the company of others – is precisely what recovery from anxiety requires. Yet, in Labour’s first year in office, almost 250 people received benefits for anxiety or mood disorders every single day. Some 6.9 million people are now entitled to receive disability benefits – 2.5 million more than 20 years ago. More than 20,000 join the Personal Independence Payment caseload each month, and two-thirds of those who began claiming in 2017 were still claiming five years later.

UK - For Gen Z, the future has looked bleak for a while. Many struggle to secure a house, a job or a life partner. Is it any wonder that they’re turning to magic? Julie Aspinall has been selling magical products and services for the best part of a decade, but has seen business boom in recent years. The self-described witch helps clients find love, land a job, or get rich – all for £150 a spell. “I saw a massive surge in spirituality after Covid,” she says. “Younger people got involved. They stopped what they were doing and reflected, getting off the hamster wheel of life." Aspinall believes the curiosity young people are showing for the supernatural is down to something deeper than a social media fad. “When I grew up, everyone had a religion. Over the years, religion has faded and more people are looking for meaning in life,” she says. “In the future, spirituality will get even bigger,” she says. “Everyone’s looking for something deeper.”