Hi Global Recap readers,
I was hoping to talk about the lead-up to today’s Iran–US talks in Geneva, but it looks like we’re in for more delays and the usual back-and-forth between the two sides.
But first, check out the new videos from yesterday’s Ukrainian drone strike on the Moscow oil refinery.👇🏼
👀 This Week So Far
Quick Catch-Up
🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran-US: The MOU is now signed, with the text pointing to at least $300+ billion in Iran reconstruction planning, immediate oil-export waivers, frozen-funds access talks.
🇷🇺🇬🇧 Russia-UK: The UK boards the Russian shadow-fleet tanker SMYRTOS; a Russian frigate fires warning shots near a UK-registered yacht in the Channel.
🇷🇺🇺🇦 Russia-Ukraine: Ukraine hits a Russian state fuel reserve more than 700 km (435 miles) inside Russia, a drone strike halts operations at Gazprom Neft's Moscow refinery, and Moscow says it intercepted 194 capital-bound drones overnight.
🇪🇺 EU: The European Parliament backs tougher deportation rules, including non-EU "return hubs," detention up to 24 months plus a possible 6-month extension, and 10-year entry bans in most cases.
🇷🇺🇺🇦 RUSSIA & UKRAINE
But First,
Follow-Up Videos
When I wrote about Ukrainian drones striking the Moscow oil refinery yesterday, only limited footage was available.
Several additional videos have surfaced since, and the scale of the damage appears far greater than initially reported:
Moscow’s skies turned black after a Ukrainian strike on a major oil refinery. Residents have reported oil-stained rain as the fallout. This video is not in black and white.
A Moscow resident saying “We (Russia) fucked around and found out.”
A Ukrainian drone is successfully intercepted, but its falling debris triggers an explosion in a building below. It’s a stark reminder of the destructive effectiveness of these so-called “kamikaze drones.”
Newly surfaced footage shows that the viral “tank-roof” moment was actually the result of a Russian surface-to-air missile attempting to intercept a Ukrainian drone.
🇮🇷🇺🇸 IRAN & US
Surprise Cancellation
US Vice President JD Vance
Vice President Vance delayed his Switzerland trip for direct Iran nuclear talks, with the White House citing “logistics.” Iran appears to have canceled the trip first, over Israel's continued fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Two questions being asked:
Why does Washington look more desperate to get Iran to the table than Iran looks to show up?
Is Tehran using an Iran-backed proxy fight to push the US and Israel apart?
Details:
Vance's team was ready to leave. In fact, US advance staff were already in Switzerland, and then the trip was suddenly called off.
Al-Mayadeen, a channel politically aligned with Hezbollah, reported that Iran delayed its delegation because Israel kept hitting Lebanon.
Supporters of the MOU are blaming Israel for its aggression in Lebanon against Hezbollah. Critics see Iran using Hezbollah-linked fighting as a stall tactic and a wedge against US-Israel trust.
📌 Context. In the latest exchange, Hezbollah fired rocket salvos near Nabatieh after intermittent Israeli shelling earlier Thursday, and Israel answered with airstrikes. That looks Hezbollah-first if you start with the rockets, but less cleanly so if you include the shelling and Hezbollah's initial ceasefire violation at the start of the week.
🇨🇺🇺🇸 CUBA & US
Cuba Cracks Open
Cuba's Communist Party approved an emergency economic package that would let more market logic into an economy being squeezed by blackouts, shortages, and US pressure.
Opening. The plan would expand private enterprise, give municipalities and state firms more autonomy, and seek more foreign investment, including from Cubans abroad.
Model. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the package draws from China and Vietnam: loosen the economy, keep one-party rule.
Pain. Havana has seen protests over outages, while Diaz-Canel says US sanctions and fuel pressure are forcing emergency choices.
Limit. The reforms may make daily business less suffocating, but they do not answer whether Cuba can attract foreign investment while the US is breathing down its neck.
🇪🇺🇮🇱 EU & ISRAEL
Kallas Gets Frozen Out
Israeli FM Gideon Saar is done talking to Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas until she says whether she compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.
Saar is treating her non-denial as the issue.
Trigger. The claim comes from a Euractiv report citing unnamed officials and diplomats who said Kallas compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to apartheid South Africa during closed-door Mexico meetings.
Reply. Kallas didn’t directly confirm or deny the reported comparison. She answered Saar by saying EU-Israel dialogue should continue, then restated the EU line that settlements are illegal and a two-state solution is "the only viable path."
Break. Saar's line is simple: deny it, own it, or lose contact.
Two-State Solution
Kallas’s call for a “two-state solution” sounds straightforward. The problem is that people often talk about it as if it’s an obvious answer that was never seriously attempted.
That’s not really what happened. It’s really messy.
Partition. In 1947, the UN proposed partitioning the British Mandate of Palestine (a British-administered territory formed after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and inhabited by both Jews and Arabs) into separate Jewish and Arab states.
Jewish leaders accepted the plan.
Arab leaders rejected it, and war followed after Israel declared independence.
War. Then came 1967. In the Six-Day War, Israel fought Egypt, Jordan, and Syria after Egypt expelled UN peacekeepers from Sinai, massed troops near Israel’s border, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and coordinated militarily with neighboring Arab states.
Israel viewed those moves as a direct threat to its survival.
Israel won, ending the war in control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Gaza and Sinai from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
Sinai. What’s often left out is that Israel later returned the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt under the 1979 peace treaty. That didn’t solve the Palestinian question, but it demonstrated that territorial concessions were possible in exchange for peace.
Clinton. The biggest missed opportunity is still debated, but many point to the 2000 Camp David talks and the Clinton Parameters that followed.
The framework envisioned a Palestinian state in Gaza, 96% of the West Bank, and 4% of Israeli territory through land swaps.
Clinton later said the Palestinians would have been able to choose where that 4% of Israeli land came from.
Israel accepted the parameters with reservations.
Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat initially accepted the parameters with reservations. However, Clinton later said that Arafat effectively rejected the proposal because they concerned issues such as refugees and Jerusalem.
The negotiations ultimately collapsed without a final agreement.
The Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Settlements. None of this means Israel bears no responsibility for where things stand today.
Settlement expansion in the West Bank has complicated the map and made a future Palestinian state harder to envision.
Critics argue the growth of settlements has steadily undermined the practicality of a two-state outcome.
Hamas. Palestinian politics has hardly moved in a more accommodating direction either.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, never embraced a permanent two-state settlement.
Its 2017 charter accepted a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines as a possible interim arrangement, but it still refused to recognize Israel and continued to call for the “full liberation of Palestine” from the river to the sea.
Reality. So when politicians describe a two-state solution as the obvious answer, they’re skipping over why the issue remains unresolved. Very convenient slogan for them to use.
