Syrian death sentences, Red Sea attack and U.S. blockade enforcement mark new security developments

Off Leash update 12 August 2026

SYRIA •A Syrian court sentenced former dictator Bashar al Assad and eight of his henchmen to death for crimes against humanity that their regime inflicted during Syria's bloody civil war from 2011 until 2024, when Assad fled to Russia. •Assad and seven of the eight convicted with him were sentenced in absentia and are unlikely to voluntarily return to Syria to face execution. The one who did attend his trial - former Daraa security chief Atef Najib - can appeal his sentence; the others cannot. •The conviction corroborates conclusions by multiple independent UN inquiries that Assad's regime repeatedly used chemical weapons against civilians. Rights groups credibly assert that the regime killed the vast majority of the 650,000 Syrians who died in the conflict, including at least 200,000 (and probably closer to 300,000) civilians.

HUNGARY •Hungary's parliament - in which new Prime Minister Peter Magyar's Tisza party has a two-thirds majority - elected former Supreme Court chief justice Andras Baka to be the country's new president.

YEMEN •Yemen's Houthi rebels attacked a small Yemeni cargo ship in the Red Sea, killing four crew members and two Yemeni soldiers accompanying them. •The Houthis used three ballistic missiles to strike the vessel, which Yemeni authorities claimed was carrying food supplies. If that part is true, three ballistic missiles would seem like overkill.

IRAN •U.S. forces fired on and disabled the Panama-flagged M/V Vela Nova after the vessel reportedly tried to evade the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports and ignored warnings to reverse course. •In total, CENTCOM has reported redirecting 55 commercial boats that tried to defy its blockade; it said it has also disabled three and boarded two that refused to turn back.

NORTH KOREA •Like a toddler jealous of the attention his sibling is getting, North Korea reacted to the imminent start of U.S.-South Korea joint military drills by testing two ballistic missiles in the span of a week. •Pyongyang views the annual U.S.-South Korea drills as a practice run for a possible future invasion of North Korea, and it regularly times its weapons tests to coincide with adversaries' drills like this as a show of its own military capabilities. •Unusually, North Korean state media still hasn't announced the first launch six days after it took place (state mouthpieces usually crow about weapons tests the next day). •Analysts speculated that the media's silence on that launch could mean it was unsuccessful - or, on the opposite extreme, that it involved a new, top-secret missile Pyongyang doesn't want to reveal yet.

UKRAINE •While Kim Jong Un's regime was busy test-firing missiles into the sea, Russia reportedly used North Korean ballistic missiles in its overnight strikes on Zaporizhzhia and other Ukrainian cities. •Pres. Zelensky complained that the strikes deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure and aimed to exploit Ukraine's critical shortage of Patriot interceptors that can stop ballistic missiles.