Two fronts of confrontation with Russia and Iran hardened today, while Washington pressed transactional deals on trade partners from Ottawa to Caracas.

Gulf war goes open

  • Iran retaliated against US forces after Washington's latest strike, turning a month-old shadow war into open, reciprocal airstrikes; oil rose and US stocks fell (more).
  • Iran claims it hit US bases in Bahrain, Jordan and Iraq as a brief lull collapsed; gold fell to a three-week low on fears of central-bank rate hikes (more).
  • Iran fired missiles and drones at US-linked targets despite an explicit warning from Trump, per the Washington Post (more).
  • Two Filipino sailors died when the Saudi-flagged tanker Sidr was struck in the Strait of Hormuz — the first confirmed deaths of the crisis, dragging Riyadh toward the fighting as oil topped $90 a barrel (more).

Russia-Europe tensions escalate

  • Germany closed Russia's Bonn consulate and added sanctions days after blaming Moscow for a drone found near Ukrainian cargo planes at Leipzig/Halle Airport (more).
  • Medvedev threatened to strike German arms plants and other Berlin sites as EU foreign ministers weigh roughly 1,600 new sanctions listings (more).
  • Brussels is moving to unlock emergency funding for PAC-3 Patriot interceptors as Ukraine's air defences thin, with approval targeted for next week (more).
  • Zelensky called Russian airspace "completely unsafe" for civilian flights as Ukraine steps up long-range drone strikes, though Chinese and Gulf carriers keep flying it (more).

Great-power positioning

  • At a Bishkek summit, Xi Jinping cast China as a global stabilizer and brushed off US pressure to curb support for Iran and Russia (more).
  • Analysis: the relationships reshaping global power in 2026 — China-Russia, the SCO, BRICS — run without binding mutual-defense treaties like NATO's Article 5 (more).

Washington's deal-making

  • Trump is running the same tariff-then-negotiate strategy on Canada and India: Canada faces an escalating standoff and a threatened 100 percent blanket levy, while India already cut a deal dropping Russian oil purchases for relief (more).
  • US Energy Secretary Chris Wright signed a Venezuela oil deal giving a US-controlled company 65 billion barrels of reserves, pledging to double output (more).