Gaza

• Israel and Hamas are reportedly still far from agreement on the terms of the latest U.S. ceasefire proposal. Indirect talks continue in Qatar.
• Meanwhile, Israel launched a new operation against Hamas in Bureij and Deir al Balah, central Gaza. Israeli forces are hunting Hamas militants "above and below ground," including at a site that Israel says was a Hamas compound hidden in a school. Gaza's health ministry claimed Israel's strike on the school killed 27 people seeking shelter there - not Hamas militants.
• A NYT investigation found that Israel planned and funded an ongoing social media campaign to influence U.S. lawmakers to support the war in Gaza by planting pro-war posts by fake "American" users.
• Israel's campaign was among the AI-based influence operations Meta and OpenAI recently said had targeted their platforms over the past six months [Russia, Iran, and China also ran similar campaigns.] Both companies said none of the foreign influence campaigns had a widespread impact.

Russia

• Pres. Putin lashed out at Western countries - especially Germany - for allowing Ukraine to use their donated weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
• The U.S. and UK have also given Russia permission to use their weapons to strike Russia, although the U.S. only ok'ed strikes on Russian regions near Kharkiv.
• He warned that Russia would reciprocate in kind: "If someone thinks it possible to send such weapons to a war zone to strike our territory and create problems for us, then why do we not have the right to send our weapons of the same class to those regions of the world where strikes can be made on sensitive facilities of the countries that do this against Russia?"
• [I would note that Russia was the first to use foreign-supplied weapons in cross-border attacks: it uses North Korean missiles and Iranian drones in Ukraine.]
• I highly doubt Russia would consider direct strikes on German, American, or British soil because of the risk of igniting WWIII. Rather, Putin will probably try to target Western assets or personnel in Ukraine.

Iran

• The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted 20-2 (with 12 abstentions) to approve a resolution rebuking Iran for refusing to give IAEA inspectors access to its nuclear sites.
• The two no votes were cast by Russia - which buys Iranian drones to use in Ukraine - and China - which circumvents sanctions to buy cheap Iranian oil.
• The IAEA censure resolution isn't enforceable, but the fact that 20 countries voted to approve it may add a tiny bit of political pressure on Iran to cooperate with inspectors. Or it may not.

Venezuela

• Pres. Maduro uninvited European Union observers from monitoring his farcical July 28 presidential election on hyperbolic grounds that EU compliance with "genocidal sanctions" on Venezuela is "interventionist."
• The EU hadn't accepted Maduro's invitation anyway.
• Plus, observers don't need to fly to Venezuela to conclude that the election won't be fair: Maduro is already manipulating the vote by bullying the opposition and blocking its strongest candidates from running against him.

Other News

• A lone gunman wearing a vest labeled "Islamic State" in Arabic and "IS" in English opened fire near the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. He was quickly shot and arrested. Islamic State hasn't officially claimed the attack yet.