Daily Edition No. 11Saturday, July 25, 2026 · Updated 12:00 Gulf · 𝕏 @mefilesnews · Instagram @mefiles.news · Facebook

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Iran File — Lead

Night Fourteen Passes Without a Bomb — and the Hand on the File Turns Out to Be China's

After thirteen consecutive nights, Central Command announced nothing. Hours earlier Reuters reported that the push to restart talks was initiated in Beijing and is being carried by Pakistan's channel to the IRGC. Oil gave back a third of the blockade premium. For the first time in this war, the pressure on Tehran is not being generated by the Gulf.

Ten sessions, two wars
Brent front-month settlement, $/bbl — the blockade premium, then the diplomacy discount
$83.30Jul 1314151617202122$100.6923$96.78Jul 24
Reuters / CNBC settlement reports

US Central Command announced no new action against Iran on Friday, and Iranian state media reported no strikes overnight into Saturday — the first break after thirteen straight nights, including this week's first B-1 sortie. The pause is an absence, not a declaration: neither Washington nor Tehran has confirmed a halt. But it arrived the same day Reuters reported from Islamabad that Pakistan is exploring a resumption of talks "following a push initiated by China," after exploratory discussions with Iran's interior minister Eskandar Momeni — considered close to the IRGC — who met army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir on his second Islamabad visit in weeks. Beijing's foreign ministry said on the record that it "supports the mediation efforts made by Pakistan and other parties." A Pakistani official put it less diplomatically: "The Chinese are unhappy because Iran's attacks on other Gulf states and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are hitting their interests."

The market moved before the diplomats did. Brent settled at $96.78, down 3.9 percent — the steepest one-day fall since late June — after closing above $100 on Thursday for the first time since May; it still ended the week up roughly ten percent. Trump said Tehran is "getting more serious" and that Iran would "love to make a deal," while adding he does not think they are ready and has not decided on further major strikes. The last framework, the June memorandum that collapsed this month, was brokered by Pakistan and Qatar.

Assessment: The mediation file has quietly changed hands. The ten-day truce floated this week by Qatar, Oman, Egypt and Pakistan was a regional initiative; this one carries Beijing's fingerprints and Rawalpindi's line into the IRGC. China is the single largest loser from a closed Hormuz, and its willingness to lean on Tehran is the first pressure vector Gulf capitals have not had to manufacture themselves. Three cautions. The China–Pakistan channel rests on anonymous Pakistani sourcing — only Beijing's statement is on the record. A night without an announcement is not a ceasefire. And the quiet is not general: as the American track cooled, the Saudi one caught fire.

The Cartoon — July 25
NIGHTS OF THE WAR 14
The fourteenth night.
MEFILES · the cartoon · CENTCOM announces no strikes for the first time in two weeks
$96.78
Brent's Friday settlement — down 3.9%, the steepest fall since late June, after Thursday's first close above $100 since May
Reuters · CNBC
14
the first night with no announced US strike on Iran, after thirteen consecutive — an absence, not a declared halt
CENTCOM · CNN
74.4%
of Iranian internet users are on circumvention tools — in a survey commissioned by Iran's own ICT ministry
ISPA · n=4,060
12.7M
women and girls in Sudan needing gender-based violence services in 2026 — four times the figure when the war began
UN Women
7
persons and entities designated by OFAC across four jurisdictions — including the Brotherhood's London-based secretary general
US Treasury

Iran File

The regime, the IRGC, the proxies, the strait — read from the Gulf, not from Washington.
Escalation for Escalation

Riyadh Stops Absorbing and Starts Shooting — and the Sirens Reach Yanbu

Saudi jets struck Hodeidah on Friday; Houthi missiles answered at Jizan within hours. A blockade of Saudi cargo has become a two-way war on Saudi soil — and the warnings now touch the one terminal keeping the kingdom's oil moving.

The Saudi-led coalition struck Houthi military sites in Hodeidah governorate on Friday, explicitly tying the targets to attacks on commercial shipping; Houthi-run media reported hits on telecommunications facilities and Kamaran Island, with at least one killed, while the coalition denied striking the port itself. Spokesman Maj-Gen Turki al-Maliki said a response to further "hostile acts" would come "without hesitation." Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said the strikes had ended a "de-escalation phase"; the movement's foreign ministry promised "escalation for escalation." Overnight into Saturday the Houthis claimed a missile attack on Jizan. Saudi civil defence issued brief "potential danger" warnings for both Jizan and Yanbu, lifted minutes later. The East-West pipeline to Yanbu can carry up to five million barrels a day against roughly seven million of prewar exports; insurers have begun refusing war-risk cover on Saudi-linked hulls.

Assessment: This is the escalation Riyadh spent two years engineering its way out of. With Hormuz at a standstill, Yanbu is not a fallback route — it is the route, and it now sits inside the Houthi envelope, which underwriters are pricing before any missile lands. The mediation track in today's lead and the war track here are the same story: Riyadh needs the Chinese-Pakistani channel to work precisely because it has just discovered it cannot deter the Houthis without fighting them. Read the claims carefully — the Jizan impact is a Houthi assertion, Saudi authorities have confirmed only that warnings were issued and lifted, and reports of an Aramco terminal ablaze trace to Houthi-aligned outlets and a photograph from 2021.

Sahel Monitor

Mali, Burkina, Niger, the AES bloc, JNIM, and the Russian bargain — security as economics.
Who fights over the gold
Share of mining-adjacent conflict events in the central Sahel, by perpetrator
JNIM42%Islamic State Sahel27%All other actors31%
ACLED · 1,185 events, Jan 2015 - Jun 2026
The Other Patron

Washington Weighs Strikes on JNIM — and Bamako Pointedly Does Not Say No

A US air campaign in Mali would put American aircraft over the same ground as Russia's Africa Corps. The junta's answer was not refusal but a condition: respect our sovereignty.

The Washington Post reported on July 22 that the administration is weighing strikes on JNIM inside Mali, citing current and former US officials; NSC counterterrorism director Sebastian Gorka is among the supporters. Mali would be the eighth country struck in Trump's second term. A former official says the core American aim over the past year has been overflight rights — a track opened when Washington lifted sanctions on then-defence minister Sadio Camara, later killed in the April offensive. On Friday, foreign minister Abdoulaye Diop acknowledged the report and declined to rule out US action, saying only that any partner "must respect" Malian sovereignty. A White House official told The Hill the US urges regional governments "to purchase U.S. equipment and services" and blames Russia for the deteriorating security picture.

Assessment: This is the first credible sign that Bamako's Russia-only bargain is being priced against an American alternative — and the US pitch is explicitly commercial, equipment and services rather than basing, which puts it in direct competition with Gulf and Turkish suppliers already incumbent. Watch for the junta trying to run both patrons at once; watch harder for a deconfliction failure, since Africa Corps personnel ride inside Malian convoys. Note the sourcing: the report is entirely anonymous, and Bamako's position is a non-denial, not consent — several aggregators are running it as a rejection.

The Alliance on Trial

The UN Calls the Ambush a Possible War Crime — and Names the Tuaregs Beside al-Qaeda

Footage of surrendering Malian soldiers being shot has drawn a war-crimes warning that lists the FLA and JNIM together — collapsing the separation the separatists have spent two years selling.

On July 23 the UN human rights office deplored "the reported torture and killing of dozens of surrendering Malian soldiers" in the July 18 ambush between Anéfis and Gao, demanding an independent investigation and saying such acts would amount to a war crime. A source close to the FLA told Reuters more than fifty pro-government fighters were killed; Reuters could not confirm it. The footage — showing men with hands behind their heads and fighters firing on captives — was circulated by JNIM itself and remains unverified. FLA spokesman Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane said the group supports investigations but that the video "must first be authenticated." Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger began formal ICC withdrawal on July 3.

Assessment: The FLA has spent two years marketing itself to Algiers, Nouakchott and Gulf interlocutors as a secular Tuareg-nationalist actor separable from al-Qaeda. A UN war-crimes allegation naming both in one breath collapses that pitch and freezes any third-party attempt to broker a standalone Azawad track. It also hands Washington the atrocity narrative that makes the story above politically executable. And with the AES trio leaving the ICC, the "independent investigation" has no venue — this file will be litigated in information space, not a courtroom. Treat the footage as combatant-produced media with propaganda intent, even if the underlying act is plausible.

Sudan Crisis Monitor

SAF versus RSF, the sieges and the famine, the gold economy, and the diplomacy of press releases.
El Obeid, by the numbers
A siege in which the water point is the weapon
12.7M
women and girls in Sudan needing gender-based violence services in 2026 — four times the 2023 figure
~500K
civilians trapped in El Obeid; roughly 70% are women and children
1,330
cholera cases reported by WHO in early July, with the rains peaking in August
21
killed in a July 21 drone strike on the Bir Andour water point, North Darfur
UN Women · OHCHR · WHO · North Kordofan authorities
The Diplomacy Ends

Burhan Buries the Truce From a Mosque Pulpit — and Names the RSF's Backers

The army chief has converted a procedural set of conditions into a flat no, telling a domestic audience there will be no place for the militia "or those who supported and backed them." Massad Boulos now has no counterparty.

Speaking after Friday prayers at the Al-Hadrab Mosque in Khartoum North on July 24, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan ruled out any deal with the RSF and extended the target set to its foreign backers: "There will be no place for the rebel militia or those who supported and backed them after today." The same day, Sovereignty Council adviser Amgad Fareid Eltayeb told Anadolu that Khartoum rejects any proposal legitimising RSF territorial control and will not accept partition "like the Libya scenario" — the first time the army side has framed the US plan in those words. Defence minister Hassan Daoud Kabroun claimed field gains across Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur; the prime minister spoke of the RSF's "complete defeat." Underneath the rhetoric, the army sent heavy reinforcements into the Sahara on July 21 to sever RSF resupply from Libya.

Assessment: The Quad — the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE — was built on the premise that both principals could be brought to a text. Hemedti accepted a truce but refused withdrawal; Burhan has now removed even the negotiable middle, and did it from a pulpit, to a domestic audience he intends to mobilise rather than to mediators. For Riyadh and Cairo, whose leverage rests on Burhan appearing to negotiate, that is a credibility problem — and his threat to the RSF's "backers" is a barely coded reference to Abu Dhabi inside a mechanism the UAE co-chairs. The Libya-border push signals the next phase is an interdiction war over supply corridors. The claimed battlefield gains are army-official and unverified; treat them as information operations.

The Method

Drones by Day, Rape by Night: In El Obeid the Water Point Is the Weapon

UN Women says strikes on water infrastructure in daylight push women and girls to collect water after dark — when a second kind of violence operates. There is no safe hour.

Briefing Geneva by video on July 24, UN Women regional director Anna Mutavati said women and girls in El Obeid "have been harassed. They've been raped… all while trying to access water, one of life's most fundamental necessities," and that there is no safe time of day to collect it. Nationally, 12.7 million women and girls need gender-based violence services in 2026, four times the figure when the war began, even as two-thirds of surveyed Sudanese women's organisations report safe spaces closing for lack of funding. Roughly 70 percent of El Obeid's half-million trapped residents are women and children. WHO reported 1,330 cholera cases in early July with the rains peaking in August. The pattern is regional: a July 21 drone strike on the Bir Andour water point in North Darfur killed 21 and wounded 30.

Assessment: This reframes El Obeid from an access problem into a documented method — striking water infrastructure to herd civilian movement into the hours when a second form of violence operates. That is the evidentiary shape prosecutors and sanctions drafters use, and it lands squarely on the Emirati-drone question Gulf capitals have so far managed as procurement rather than atrocity. It arrives the same week The Sentry argued the EU's blanket gold ban will push the trade underground and that Brussels should copy the UK's network designations instead. The humanitarian file supplies the predicate; the gold networks supply the target list. Caveats: the 12.7 million is a national figure with no El Obeid breakdown, and the Bir Andour attribution comes from an SAF-aligned local body.

The Brotherhood Brief

The organization as structure — designations, networks, finances, legal battles. Structure over slogans.
Structure Over Slogans

Washington Designates the Brotherhood's Secretary General — and He Lives in London

Treasury has moved from designating national chapters to designating the General Secretariat itself. The test case sits in an allied capital where the Brotherhood is entirely legal.

On July 23 OFAC designated Mahmoud al-Abyari, the UK-based secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood's General Secretariat, along with three other individuals and three entities — seven listings spanning the UK, Türkiye, Indonesia and Gaza. The action came under Executive Order 13224 rather than EO 14362, with coordination credited to the FBI, DEA and CBP. Treasury says al-Abyari acted for the Egyptian Brotherhood, designated in January, and raised funds for two previously listed Türkiye-based bodies. The tranche also named two "sham charities" in Indonesia and Gaza described as Hamas fronts funding its military wing, and a Türkiye-based money exchange that Treasury says moved hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hamas and ran underground banking for Sweden's Foxtrot network. The Brotherhood remains legal and unproscribed in Britain; the standing UK position is still the 2015 Jenkins review.

Assessment: Designating the General Secretariat is a claim that the Brotherhood is a single transnational corporate structure, not merely a set of national franchises — and Washington is testing that claim on British soil, where no proscription exists. London now hosts a designated global terrorist whose activity is lawful under UK law. The typology named in the action — charitable facade, cross-border collection, hawala and crypto settlement in Türkiye, intersecting European organised crime — is a compliance map for Gulf and European banks. Two corrections to the record we ran yesterday: the July 22 Florida date was a written status report, not a hearing, and no outcome has been reported; and the count of designated national chapters remains four, since al-Abyari was listed as an individual acting for an already-designated chapter.

Western Media Watch

How NYT, WaPo, FT, BBC and the wires frame the region — what is emphasized, what is omitted, and what the gap reveals.
The Grammar of a Blockade

Three Outlets, Three Subjects, and Not One of Them Is Saudi Arabia

A Gulf state was put under naval blockade and had its tankers burned. The Washington Post made the price the subject, CNBC made Trump the subject, Reuters made the market the subject. Only the BBC let the Yemenis have a reason.

The Washington Post's URL still carries its original headline — "At least one Saudi oil tanker is attacked in Red Sea as war risks widen" — but the published version reads "Oil prices leap after Houthi attacks in Red Sea." Within seven hours the attacked state was demoted out of its own headline. CNBC shows the same inversion: the page title still reads "Houthis claim strikes on two Saudi oil tankers," while the promoted headline makes Trump the subject and Iran the object, and the Houthi rationale appears nowhere in the piece. Reuters' market commentary is the purest form — rigorous on refining margins and lightering, with Yemen present only as a coastline beside a chokepoint. The BBC is the outlier, carrying the causal chain — that the blockade answered a Saudi blockade of Yemeni ports and an air strike on Sanaa airport — and, uniquely, Oman's mediation track. It sits some twenty paragraphs down.

Assessment: Delete the stated reason and the Red Sea becomes a place where irrational proxies interrupt commerce; the "suckered into this by the Iranians" line then follows naturally, because there is no Yemeni intent left to explain. The Gulf, meanwhile, is written about at the resolution of a futures quote — a Saudi-flagged tanker burning off al-Shuqaiq registers as a percentage move, not as a state under blockade. Note what vanished alongside the causal chain: Oman's mediation, the one de-escalation track in the story, survives in the BBC alone. One honest limit on this reading — the Post's full text sits behind a paywall, so the omission is verified for CNBC but not for the Post, whose headline shift is documented by its own URL.

Israel Press Review

Reading Haaretz, Times of Israel, Ynet and the Hebrew press — what Israeli media and officials are actually saying.
The counting problem
Netanyahu's public tally of violent settlers, against the army's own record of nationalist-crime incidents
PM's count, Dec 202570 youthsPM's count, Jul 2026150 delinquentsIDF-recorded, 2025867 incidents
IDF figures via Times of Israel / Haaretz
Cancer, and the Cure

Six Dead Near Nablus, and Netanyahu's Answer Is More Outposts

Four days after a leak revealed he privately called settler violence a "metastasizing cancer," the prime minister responded to a lethal incident sparked by an unauthorised settler hike by ordering new settlements.

On Friday, near the village of Tell outside Nablus, a group of Israelis the army says was hiking without military approval clashed with Palestinians; two Israelis and four Palestinians were killed. Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz announced demolitions, "intensive operations" in villages designated terror hotbeds, revoked work permits, new checkpoints and separated traffic routes — and accelerated legalisation of farm outposts plus the establishment of new ones. Overnight the IDF raided at least ten Palestinian towns, sealed Nablus, imposed curfews on Burin and Tell, and conducted an operation inside a Nablus hospital. Settlers raided Jit, Burin, Urif and Far'ata; at least eleven Palestinians were wounded. The army says it decided two weeks ago to move troops from the Lebanon and Gaza fronts to the West Bank, citing 126 outposts it struggles to protect.

Assessment: The gap between what Netanyahu says privately and does publicly is now the story. Channel 13 revealed on July 20 that the cabinet quietly approved a plan to curb settler violence in March, with the prime minister calling the phenomenon a "metastasizing cancer" — a summary kept secret for political reasons. His own count of violent settlers has drifted from seventy youths to a hundred and fifty delinquents, against 867 recorded nationalist-crime incidents in 2025. Haaretz reports the army has launched a "Greater Israel" unit patch and that officers up to Central Command level now argue settler farms enhance security: the institution has absorbed the settlement project's logic, three months from an election. Note that the hiking account, the arrest counts and the deployment figures are army-provided, and that video from Tell appears inconsistent with the official version.

The Supplicant

Netanyahu Finally Gets His Meeting — as a Bystander to the War He Began

Refused an appointment last week, the prime minister flies to Washington on Monday. Israeli defence reporting has moved from cheerleading to asking what Israel gains from another round at all.

The prime minister's office announced on July 24 that Netanyahu departs Monday and meets Trump on Tuesday, also attending Senator Lindsey Graham's funeral service. He had asked last week and received no appointment; White House officials told Axios he tried to "will the meeting into existence." It would be his seventh Oval Office meeting since Trump's return, more than any other world leader, at a moment Axios describes him as deeply unpopular in Washington across Democrats, Trump's circle and the MAGA base. Ynet reports he wants to restore trust "shaken since the war with Iran," with Trump's people saying his assessments proved wrong. Trump has meanwhile told him to pull back in Syria and Lebanon, and says he will not do the Saudi civil-nuclear deal unless Riyadh joins the Abraham Accords.

Assessment: This is the inversion of the war's opening framing. Israel launched the campaign in February and is now a spectator to a US-Iran fight it fears being dragged into, lobbying for a seat at negotiations it is not party to. Haaretz's Amos Harel reports Israeli generals questioning both Trump's motives and Netanyahu's, with defence officials asking what Israel stands to gain from another round; the army has gone to higher alert in case it is pulled in. Domestically, an Oval Office photograph is close to the only asset a prime minister losing an October election can still generate. Two cautions: the claim that Trump blames Netanyahu for the war's failure is single-source Ynet describing an Israeli camp's anxiety, not a Trump statement — and Axios itself warns that announced visits have twice served as cover for imminent strikes.

Digital Front Monitor

Cyber operations, information warfare and the infrastructure of control across the region.
What the shutdown cost
Market value of Hamrah-e Aval, Iran's largest mobile operator, as told by a sitting deputy ICT minister
Hamrah-e Aval$20bn at IPO$400m now
Ehsan Chitsaz, Deputy Minister of ICT · Tehran seminar, Jul 23
The Regime Polls Itself

Tehran's Own Survey Says the Filtering Lost — and a Deputy Minister Said So Out Loud

Three-quarters of Iranian users are routing around the national internet. The official who presented the number told a Tehran seminar the policy has been left with no legitimacy at all.

A state-commissioned ISPA survey of 4,060 internet users, fielded in mid-June for the Ministry of ICT and presented on July 23, found 74.4 percent using VPNs or filter-breakers, two-thirds of them free ones. Some 57.6 percent oppose shutdowns in a crisis, 61.1 percent oppose privileged unfiltered access for officials, and 63.7 percent called reopening the international internet after the war a very correct decision. Deputy minister Ehsan Chitsaz said that when a policy "is circumvented this widely across the entire country, it practically leaves no legitimacy for that policy," adding that the shutdown made 43 percent of Iranians aware of Starlink and put Hamrah-e Aval's market value at $400 million against $20 billion at flotation. In the same week the domestic layer bit: the sports platform Football 360 was taken offline overnight on July 21, and two outlets reported their channels blocked across Eitaa, Rubika, Bale and Soroush Plus.

Assessment: This is the tiered-internet model failing on its own terms, and being argued about publicly by the people who run it. Tehran built domestic platforms to make the global internet optional; three-quarters of users route around them, and the same week shows why — the domestic layer is a censorship instrument, so migration onto it is reversible by a single administrative act. For Gulf states weighing sovereign-platform and data-localisation strategies, Iran is the cautionary version: the more a national network is used for enforcement, the faster users leave it, and the more attractive satellite bypass becomes — which lands next on Gulf licensing and jamming policy. Read the numbers knowing the ICT ministry commissioned them in the middle of an intra-regime fight over restoring access.

The Convenient Assumption

A Fake Bahraini Air-Raid App Turns Phones Into Listening Posts — and It Isn't Iran

Attackers cloned Bahrain's Civil Defence branding and the Play Store to push a four-stage Android implant to Gulf civilians during live missile alerts. The researchers found Cyrillic in the code and no state at all.

Analysis published by Dream Security on July 20 and picked up on July 22 describes fake "BH Alert" pages impersonating Bahrain's Civil Defence, the Ministry of Interior and the Information and eGovernment Authority, citing the UN disaster-risk office for legitimacy and running bilingually. The chain unpacks through four stages into a remote-access tool the developers called OctagonPanel, capable of capturing lockscreen PINs and patterns, intercepting SMS, taking screenshots, overlaying banking apps and driving the interface remotely. Its cleverest component is a fake VPN that advertises public DNS resolvers, routes all traffic into a tunnel and simply drops it — while exempting the attacker's own packages — coercing victims to finish setup before it self-terminates after fifteen minutes. Delivery pages claimed more than 100,000 downloads and a forged "Verified by Play Protect" badge. Attribution points to a Russian-speaking developer: Cyrillic artefacts, and a package name derived from the Russian for "kitty."

Assessment: The instructive part is who it is not. During a war in which Gulf civilians are receiving genuine air-raid warnings, an actor weaponised the state's own emergency branding — and the researchers explicitly say they see no evidence of nation-state involvement. Several outlets nonetheless framed it as Iranian, which is precisely the reflex to resist: wartime raises the value of impersonating a government to ordinary criminals too, and misattributing it upward both flatters the adversary and misdirects the defence. The practical Gulf lesson is narrower and more useful — emergency alerting is now a phishing surface, and any state that pushes warnings to citizens needs a single, publicised, verifiable channel. Caveat: this is static analysis by a boutique vendor, with no victim count and no operator identified.

Watch Tomorrow — The Files' Forward Radar
  1. Iran File: whether a second night passes without an announced strike — the difference between a pause and a track — and whether Washington or Tehran puts anything on the record about the Chinese-initiated channel.
  2. The Red Sea: whether Saudi Arabia strikes Hodeidah again after the Jizan claim, and whether war-risk underwriters withdraw cover for Yanbu itself, which would close the kingdom's last working outlet on paper before any missile does.
  3. Sahel: whether any US official goes on the record about strikes in Mali, and whether Bamako converts its non-denial into either a formal overflight arrangement or a refusal.
  4. Sudan: whether Boulos or the Quad responds publicly to Burhan's rejection, and whether the Sahara deployment produces contact on the Libyan resupply routes.
  5. Brotherhood: whether London responds to hosting a newly designated global terrorist — a Home Office statement, or a review of the 2015 Jenkins position — and whether the July 22 Florida status report ever surfaces.
  6. Israel Press: whether the West Bank redeployment holds as Netanyahu leaves for Washington, and whether any flagship Israeli outlet ties the new outposts directly to the "cancer" leak.
  7. Digital Front: whether Amazon or Bahrain says anything at all about the IRGC's claimed strikes on the Bahrain cloud region, and whether Tehran's restored access survives the intra-regime fight its own polling just inflamed.
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