Middle East

• Israel (allegedly) carried out a coordinated attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon by implanting small quantities of explosives and a switch inside thousands of pagers the terrorist group ordered from Taiwan and distributed to its members only days ago.
• Then - at 3:30 pm local time yesterday - a text message appearing to come from Hezbollah's leadership simultaneously remotely detonated the devices.
• At least 11 people died and over 2,700 were injured - including Iran's ambassador to Lebanon.
• The pagers were part of a Hezbollah campaign to switch to lower-tech comms that would be harder for Israeli spyware to penetrate. As it turns out, Israeli operatives targeted the hardware instead.
• As usual, Israel has not officially acknowledged it was behind a foreign operation, and as usual, Hezbollah vowed to retaliate.
• Israel seems ready for war with Hezbollah: its defense minister, Yoav Gallant, told a U.S. official that "military action" was "the only way" to stop Hezbollah's frequent cross-border rocket attacks so 60,000 Israelis can safely return to their homes in the north. Israel recently added their return to its official war aims.
• Separately, PM Netanyahu is reportedly considering Gallant, who has offended the PM with repeated public criticism.

• The UN published its annual report on Venezuela yesterday, and it was even more damning than the previous edition.
• It called Pres. Maduro's unprecedented campaign of repression "one of the most acute human rights crises in recent history" and documented evidence of severe human rights violations by Maduro's security services.
• Separately, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said security agents arrested a fourth U.S. citizen he accused of being "part of the plot against Venezuela, the plot against our country." Cabello and Maduro blame the CIA and Spanish intelligence for masterminding the plot; both the CIA and Spanish intelligence deny any involvement.

• The U.S. military announced yesterday that it completed its full withdrawal from Niger ahead of the Sep. 15 deadline it agreed on with the junta in Niamey.
• Meanwhile in Mali - where another junta also evicted Western (French) counterterrorism forces - Al Qaeda-aligned JNIM extremists targeted a military training camp in the capital. The junta said it has regained control but it temporarily closed the country's main airport.