One thread runs through the day's coverage: armed conflict is widening on two fronts while the price of security climbs everywhere.

The Gulf

  • The war spread beyond Israel, Iran and US forces to Kuwait, which says it is downing Iranian drones, and to Bahrain, home of the US Fifth Fleet, where explosions were heard. more
  • US forces struck Iran for a ninth consecutive night, with reports of Iran now hitting oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. more
  • Brent crude topped $90 a barrel; the open question is whether Iran moves to close Hormuz outright, choking roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil. more

Russia and Ukraine

  • Ukraine launched more than 400 drones toward Moscow on 20 July, its latest major attack on the Russian capital. more
  • It followed a Russian strike on a ship near Odesa that killed 10, and Russian ballistic missiles on Kyiv and other cities. more
  • Both sides are trading long-range strikes rather than winding them down; whether this is a real step up in intensity or a louder round of the same pattern is unresolved. more

The bigger picture

  • Our week-in-view traces one thread from the Persian Gulf to the Indo-Pacific to Central Europe: security is being repriced as a scarce, purchasable good. more
  • The signs: the US struggling to guarantee open sea lanes, China building a navy to contest them, Japan debating nuclear weapons, and Europe standing up new arms production in Romania and Ukraine. more
  • The open question is whether this is a durable, managed order or the runway to a harder collision. more