Strike pauses involving Iran coincide with escalation in the Red Sea and battlefield shifts in Sudan

Off Leash update 27 July 2026

COMING UP THIS WEEK •Today, North Korea celebrates Victory Day - a commemoration of the Korean War armistice that was neither a victory nor a real end to the war (which is technically still ongoing). •Peru's president-elect, conservative Keiko Fujimori, takes office tomorrow, following her slim victory over leftist Roberto Sánchez in the June 7 runoff. Like other modern conservative leaders in Latin America, Fujimori has pledged to effect market-friendly reforms and crack down on crime. •The Commonwealth Games close on Sunday in Glasgow. •Delegates to OPEC+ - a cartel of oil-producing nations - meet Sunday to set output targets for September. Analysts expect them to agree to another modest production increase of about 180,000 barrels per day - about the same added in each of the past three months.

COMMODITY AND COIN MARKET PRICES •Aluminum: $3,160/ton •Antimony (global avg.): $34,315/ton •Bitcoin: $65,200 •Cobalt: $56,290/ton •Copper: $13,645/ton •Ethereum: $1,964 •Gold: $4,091/toz •Lead: $1,887/ton •Natural Gas (Nymex): $2.74/MMbtu •WTI Crude Oil (Nymex): $84.09/barrel •Zinc: $3,592/ton

IRAN •The Pentagon signaled a pause in strikes on Iran, ending two weeks of nightly strikes. •The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East - CENTCOM Commander Adm. Bradley Cooper - reportedly advocated the pause, reasoning that the current campaign had succeeded in taking out 80% of CENTCOM's high-priority targets and had reached the limit of its effectiveness against the remaining 20%, which are harder to hit. •Other U.S. military advisors - including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine - backed the pause for a more concerning reason. They worry that Iran's retaliatory fire has depleted the U.S.'s regional inventory of Patriot interceptors and other air defenses, leaving U.S. military sites and other targets in Gulf countries vulnerable to incoming strikes - like the ballistic missile that slipped through to kill three U.S. soldiers in Jordan last week. •Iran reciprocated and announced that it, too, would pause strikes.

UKRAINE •Ukraine irked Iran on Saturday when it struck "vessels used in military cargo shipments involving Iran" in the Caspian Sea. •Iran accused Ukraine of acting "at Israel's behest," but the Caspian strikes also served Kyiv's interests: the vessels they targeted were reportedly transporting Iranian-made drones to Russia to be used against Ukraine. [Iran's Foreign Ministry unconvincingly denied that charge, saying Iran "has never intervened in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine."]

YEMEN •Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Houthi rebels exchanged more fire over the weekend. •Saudi targeted Houthi military sites in Hodeida in return for Houthi attacks on tankers in the Red Sea, and the Houthis retaliated with missile strikes that damaged a Saudi oil refinery near Jizan. •The Houthis also tried to target a second Saudi oil refinery near Yanbu, but Greek operators used a U.S.-made Patriot air defense system to intercept at least two Houthi missiles. INDIA •India's Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) won its feud with scandal-plagued education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and Pradhan tendered his resignation. •Pradhan was one of Prime Minister Modi's most loyal deputies, so his resignation is a blow to Modi, who styles himself as a strongman whose ministerial choices are unaccountable to public approval. Pradhan is only the second Modi-appointed minister to resign - despite Modi's best efforts to insulate him from the fallout from scandals that happened on his watch. •CJP "members" and supporters were jubilant to see their street protests effect change, and many are now motivated to turn their sights on other targets in Modi's government that are overdue for reform. For starters, they want deeper changes to India's broken exam system and are demanding that the government drop the criminal cases it opened against some of them during protests.

MALI •The Trump administration is reportedly considering carrying out military strikes against Al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) militants in Mali. •U.S. intervention against JNIM would serve a secondary purpose beyond doing Mali's feckless military a favor by hobbling an adversary that regularly outfoxes them. If successful, it would show that the U.S. can succeed where the junta's hired Russian guns have failed, and thereby cast the Russians as ineffective security partners - not only in Mali, but in other African countries that work with Russia's Africa Corps. •One U.S. official alluded to this ulterior motive in an unattributed interview with the Washington Post: "We hope that other African nations take note of Russia’s terrible performance in combating terrorism."

SUDAN •Sudan's military boasted that it had recaptured the Al Sadarat highway from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) over the weekend. •Al Sadarat is a key link between the government-controlled capital of Khartoum and the North Kordofan regional capital of el Obeid, which is under an RSF siege and looks likely to be the prize in the next major battle between the RSF and the military. Control of Al Sadarat will allow the military reopen a much faster supply route that it can use to equip its troops in the fight for el Obeid.