🌐 Shoot First, Aim Later

I kind of left you all hanging yesterday after the latest attack on the Egyptian-owned cargo ship Tihamah in the Bab el-Mandeb. I think it’s a good chance to dig into what makes this so dicey.

Plus, I’ve got a sneak peek at one of my favorite exclusive content at the end of the newsletter if you’d like to watch.

Other than that, let’s take a look at this surreal Russian response to Ukraine’s massive drone attack. 👇

A huge drone attack hammered Russia’s Black Sea coast and occupied Crimea overnight, including Novorossiysk, the port where Russia moved much of its Black Sea Fleet after Ukraine made Crimea… more dangerous.

• Russia says it shot down 502 Ukrainian drones across multiple regions, Crimea and the Black Sea. Kyiv hasn’t publicly claimed the operation.

• Russian officials say an 8-year-old boy was killed in Novorossiysk and 8 people were injured. More than 20 homes and 4 businesses were damaged.

Last week, Lithuania warned that Russia could rebuild Ukrainian drones from recovered wreckage and use them in a fake Ukrainian attack on NATO infrastructure.

Then, on August 8, a drone of a type used by Ukraine crossed Romania and exploded in NATO-member Bulgaria.

I think this is one worth keeping in the back of your mind.

Latvia says 15 illegal immigrants entered from Belarus through the first secret underground border tunnel ever found on Latvian territory (discovered near Silene on Aug. 10).

• All 15 were detained and returned.

• Latvia and its neighbors accuse Belarus and Russia of steering migrants toward NATO’s eastern border, but both deny it.

• Similar tunnels have already appeared along Belarus’s borders with Lithuania and Poland.

A Damascus court sentenced former President Assad to death in absentia, convicting him of murder, torture, and crimes against humanity.

• This is Syria’s first conviction of Assad since his regime was toppled.

• The sentence is mostly symbolic though, since he fled to Russia as rebels took Damascus in December 2024, ending his family’s 54-year rule.

• And of course, Russia granted him asylum.

• His brother Maher and 7 other former officials also got death sentences.

Followup to yesterday’s breaking news:

The Houthis hit the Egyptian-owned cargo ship Tihamah in the Bab el-Mandeb on Aug. 11, killing 6 people, including 3 Pakistanis.

Just 2 days earlier, a Houthi drone hit Saudi Aramco’s Jazan refinery, right after Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey signed a deal saying an attack on one is an attack on all.

1. If Pakistan and Turkey do nothing, their new defense pact really is “paper agreement” as Iranian MP Ebrahim Rezaei said.

2. If they do hit back, they risk getting pulled into a bigger war.

Pakistan has another problem. It’s been trying to play mediator between the US and Iran and present itself as “neutral.” That gets pretty hard to maintain if it also starts firing at Iran’s allies.

Turkey makes the whole thing even more awkward because it’s in NATO. Turkish FM Hakan Fidan says the new pact is “technically the same” as NATO’s Article 5. NATO obviously doesn’t automatically have to defend Saudi Arabia, but if Turkey gets involved, gets attacked in return, and then starts looking to NATO, things could get complicated really fast.

The US just used actual missiles to stop a civilian cargo ship from heading toward Iran. CENTCOM says a Navy MH-60 helicopter fired two Hellfires into the Panama-flagged Vela Nova’s engine room after its crew ignored repeated warnings in the Gulf of Oman.

This is the 12th vessel US forces have attacked since the blockade began in April, and the 3rd since it was reimposed July 14.