A Marine veteran who had been held in Russian prisons since his arrest in January 2022 has been released back to US custody, reportedly after a consistent pressure campaign from Trump administration officials and global advocacy groups.

32-year old Robert Gilman, a former US Marine and English teacher imprisoned in Russia, is said to have received direct pardon from President Vladimir Putin based on humanitarian reasons, given reports say Gilman’s health has been rapidly deteriorating. Soon after Gilman’s arrest he was slapped with an steep eight-year prison sentence for allegedly kicking a police officer while drunk, followed by an alleged assault on a prison official, according to court records.

Gilman had actually following his jailing owned up to the attacks on prison staff – but claimed self-defense and that he was provoked and responding to insults.

Gilman’s family as well as advocacy groups say he was wrongfully detained on false charges, and further that was held as a bargaining chip for future possible prisoner swap with Washington. Here’s how one such US non-profit organization characterized his arrest:

Robert is a Marine Corps veteran, who was traveling in Russia when he fell sick on a train. Instead of medical help, he was taken to a police station. He fell into a cycle of charges, which began with a case that was dismissed, a second that was without evidence, and a third for assault of a police officer where even the police officer says he should not be charged.

A typical Russian Government tactic is getting Americans into their system, and pile on various unfounded charges to keep them there. This is Robert’s story, and they continue to put him in conditions that set him up for further charges that further politicize his case. Beyond this, the profile of the case against Robert appears eerily familiar to the Trevor Reed case, where a former Marine unexpectedly blacked out and was charged with punching a police officer, suggesting this may all have been staged.

So there does seem to be an admission that Gilman indeed acted violently toward law enforcement officials. The whole situation might be a politicized case, but it’s also the reality that Americans sometimes do stupid and drunken criminal acts abroad. 

According to more on the context of the American citizen’s release:

Gilman’s sudden release comes after his family and the hostage advocacy group Global Reach had appealed to Moscow for his release, warning that he was “near death” following months of alleged torture in Russian prison. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also said to have raised Gilman’s imprisonment with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a meeting in the Philippines last month.

The family and some US officials are alleging that the former Marine was tortured while in Russian prisons, including being subject to mind-altering drug injections:

And according to Reuters:

But Eric Lebson, chief strategy ​officer of Global Reach, an advocacy group representing Gilman’s family, told Reuters last week that Gilman was moved in late ​June from the prison hospital to the psychiatric ward of a civilian emergency hospital in ⁠a catatonic-like state assessed as a “dissociative stupor.”

The U.S. officials said Gilman on Tuesday was on a State Department plane ​carrying him from Russia to Washington Dulles Airport.

BREAKING: U.S. Marine veteran Robert Gilman, a Lowell native detained in Russia since 2022, has been released after advocates raised dire concerns about his health. pic.twitter.com/njUt3OQt5D

— WCVB-TV Boston (@WCVB) August 11, 2026

However, concerning his current state of health while being transferred back to America, there is this line in Reuters: “All ​things considered he seems to be in good shape,” an unnamed US official said.

It is as yet unclear if a prisoner swap will emerged, but so far there’s been no word of any Russians being released from US custody. There may have as yet been other undisclosed incentives that Moscow was responding to.

Trump quickly took to social media…

🚨 GREAT NEWS: President Trump just secured the release of American Robert Gilman from a Russian prison. The former U.S. Marine is coming home tonight. Russia agreed to free him with no exchange required. This is another major win for bringing Americans home. Welcome back to… pic.twitter.com/kutNhNN2H2

— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) August 11, 2026

By Bas van Geffen, senior macro strategist at Rabobank

Yesterday, my road cycling took me along the Lek River, which branches off from the Rhine. I frequently ride the path along this river, but the Lek was almost unrecognisable in the distance and what is normally part of the riverbed has now run dry.

It’s a very tangible reminder of numbers we’ve recently been watching on our screens: Upstream, at Kaub, the water level in the Rhine has fallen to historical lows. And a new heatwave that is due to hit Europe, is bound to make matters worse: current forecasts see the level drop to less than 5 centimetres above the station’s zero mark by the end of the week.

Ships were already forced to reduce the amount of cargo they carry, but soon they may be unable to sail the entire river. The drought is effectively splitting this key piece of infrastructure into two halves between Cologne and Frankfurt. Inland shipping costs have surged, and companies are scrambling to find alternative transport for resources and finished product. This, as diesel prices in Germany have largely rebounded in the last month.

Concerned about the impact for local industry, several German Bundeslander are suspending Sunday driving bans for trucks and lorries. Indeed, the hit to economic activity will be noticeable.

But these droughts also underline that a once-convenient shipping route is becoming unreliable. Higher shipping costs and possible disruptions of key supplies add to high energy costs and other headwinds facing German industry. And although Germany has earmarked billions for the revitalization of key infrastructure, this will probably be insufficient to remedy the issue.

That’s a problem for Brussels’ strive to regain strategic autonomy – and a physical challenge for European plans to revive key industries and build new ones on European soil.

European –and American– plans to move critical industries back home are increasingly causing geopolitical friction. This is, after all, a zero-sum game where China in particular stands to lose.

Beijing realizes this too. China recently broadened its travel restrictions to include experienced engineers with knowledge of critical technologies such as rare-earth processing, solar panels or battery technologies. Those who “may endanger technological security” can be barred from leaving the country. The tightened rules must prevent that these engineers help companies set up production lines in rival countries.

These restrictions may clash with the European Commission’s planned Industrial Accelerator Act, which requires that large foreign investments in Europe’s critical industries generate knowledge transfers and local research & development.

In markets, the joint Japanese-US intervention in the JPY exchange rate is starting to lose its grip on the currency. The prospect of further FX interventions continues to provide some support, but USD/JPY is gradually drifting higher, and the currency has and it has reversed about half of the peak-to-trough move versus both EUR and USD.

As we noted last week, these FX interventions may prop up the currency temporarily, but it will probably not last unless there are structural improvements in the yen’s fundamentals. Last week, we also learned that the government’s plans are unlikely to do this in the near-term.

Interest rate differentials are also weighing on the currency, and the central bank is signalling that it may remedy this to some extent. Sources within the Bank of Japan told reporters that policymakers could raise rates again in September. The comments follow a relatively hawkish write-up of the July meeting.

The Australian dollar also slipped briefly after today’s RBA decision. The central bank kept its policy rate unchanged as expected, but traders read some dovish language in the statement, and the downward revisions to the bank’s growth and inflation forecasts.

However, RBA Governor Bullock corrected that in her press conference. She commented that policymakers debated whether to hold or to hike, adding that it is “quite possible” that the RBA needs to hike rates again. Monetary policy is currently seen as “a bit restrictive” and domestic demand has slowed in line with expectations. But, according to the governor, the domestic economy is still operating above capacity. So, consumer spending growth and the economy need to slow further for capacity pressures to ease sufficiently to return inflation to target on the projected timeline.

As our Australia strategist noted prior to today’s meeting, the RBA seems to hope that the three rate hikes since the start of the year will be sufficient to dampen domestic demand. However, we are not entirely convinced that it is. Accordingly, we forecast that the central bank will have to raise rates once more, in November

Ukraine’s President Zelensky has in fresh remarks warned North Korea against its deepening involvement with Russian in executing the war against Ukraine.

Zelensky’s late Monday words alleged that Russia recently received additional ballistic missiles from Pyongyang and is preparing to deploy more North Korean troops, after already sending thousands to fight on the Russian side.

While reports from the last couple years have estimated that North Korea has maintained up to around 10,000 troops in Russia related to the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, Zelensky is now floating a huge number of projected new DPRK forces.

It started on Saturday when Zelensky took to X to say – without evidence – that “a decision has been made for 30,000 ⁠to 50,000 North Koreans to be deployed on the territory of Russia,” a higher figure than his estimate of 30,000 in July.” He didn’t specify where he obtained the alleged data from.

He also said that Ukrainian intelligence had located some North Korean missiles in Ukraine’s territory, without further elaborating. What is clear is the Moscow and Pyongyang do have a robust defense cooperation pact, which was signed in June of 2024.

On Tuesday Ukrainian officials said that overnight at least nine people were killed in new Russian ballistic missile attacks, and scores wounded.

Zelensky then newly said in reference to the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, “The city was struck with North Korean ballistic missiles, Zircons, and guided aerial bombs” – and he described “a vicious attack, calculated to,  inflict maximum damage specifically on civilian infrastructure.”

But again, no proof of the North Korean origins of the missiles was forthcoming. “It ⁠is absolutely clear that North Korea will ​continue ⁠to build its experience in modern warfare, receive licenses from Russia, and receive all kinds of military tools from them,” Zelensky has also said.

Interestingly, Zelensky is using this narrative to try and goad South Korea into changing its policy and export heavy weapons, including anti-air defenses, to Ukraine:

Zelensky said North Korea was gaining valuable battlefield experience through its cooperation with Russia and urged South Korea to provide Ukraine with air defense systems and other capabilities.

“They have a legal restriction under their Constitution. But we would like to have this cooperation and are counting on it. Our diplomats are in contact,” Zelensky wrote.

🚨 Zelensky: Russia struck Zaporizhzhia with North Korean ballistic missiles

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia launched more than 120 drones at Ukraine overnight, most of them Shaheds. In Kyiv, a missile strike damaged an infectious diseases hospital… https://t.co/khmFsf7xcu pic.twitter.com/Xj2ORoM4S8

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) August 11, 2026

However, this new pressure campaign on Seoul prompted one senior South Korean official to tell The Korea Times, “South Korea’s supply of defense materials to any country has always been carried out in accordance with domestic law.”

The official made clear that there is no policy change in the works, and that South Korean weapons will not start flowing to Kiev anytime soon – or this is the official response at least.

Chicago wheat futures are coiling for a breakout (one way or another) as ongoing Russia-Ukraine attacks on Black Sea grain infrastructure and bulk carriers threaten exports from one of the world’s most important breadbaskets.

Most-active Chicago wheat has been choppy in the last few days…

Hard red winter wheat gained as much as 2.7% to $7.505 a bushel.

Soft Red Winter wheat futures are poised for a much larger breakout if prices sustain a move above $7 a bushel.

Bloomberg noted Monday that Turkey temporarily suspended Black Sea transits by its cargo ships over the weekend amid ongoing maritime security risks in the critical shipping corridor. Ukraine warned that its agricultural exports for the 2026-27 season could be halved due to Russian attacks.

Joe Davis, director of commodities at brokerage Futures International, was quoted by the outlet as saying that potential supply disruptions had boosted US-grown hard red winter varieties more sharply because the grain is seen as a direct competitor to higher-protein milling wheat from the Black Sea region and Europe.

“While the disruptions don’t necessarily translate into immediate additional US export business,” Davis said, adding, “they do tighten the global exportable supply outlook and balance sheets, forcing importers to diversify origins and keeping support under higher-quality wheat values.” 

With wheat prices inching higher and approaching $7, which could spark upside momentum, a gauge of global food prices tracked by the UN climbed to a three-year high in July.

Disruptions not only in the Black Sea but also in the Strait of Hormuz, combined with adverse weather conditions across key US and other key growing regions as El Niño risks rise, are certainly putting a bid under food prices, as the worst may be yet to come.

UBS analysts outlined five forces driving grocery bills higher in a note last week (report here). They asked a very important question: Is this the end of cheap food?

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We have previously discussed how many professors seem to compete in finding new forms of racism in every facet of society and education.

Astrophysics, math, runoffs, science, statistics, and meritocracy have all been denounced as racist. In this academic cottage industry, professors secure publications and speaking opportunities by identifying racism in the expressions, images, or entire fields. Even time itself has been declared racist.

Now, however, academics have found another undiscovered continent of white privilege: niceness.

When I saw a story in The College Fix on a study of “niceness as Whiteness,” I was skeptical and decided to take a look. The study by Vanderbilt Postdoctoral Research Fellow Abigail Beneke, Professors Benjamin Fisher (U. Wisconsin-Madison), F. Chris Curran (U. Florida), and Samantha Viano (George Mason) was first flagged by Dr. James Nuzzo.

The paper “Niceness as Whiteness in School Police Officers’ Perceptions of Student Arrest” addresses the “perceptions of arrest” by school resource officers, or SROs) in two school districts.

The officers appear to be precisely what you are looking for in an SRO: empathetic and reluctant to make arrests. The researchers admit that they try to avoid arrests. However, according to the authors, hidden behind those sympathetic approaches was, of course, a boiling caldron of racism in terms of the racial disparity of those arrested.

Indeed, the researchers realized that it was the niceness itself that was the evidence of oppressive “Whiteness.” Indeed, the officers may not want to be engines of racism and use “niceness” as a “coping mechanism,” but do so by deluding themselves and others that they are nice:

“Nice SROs did not want to arrest children. Nice police officers thought of themselves as well-meaning. Yet, they expressed being required to arrest children because of real or imagined mandates. They used niceness as a strategy for upholding a system of Whiteness that systematically privileges White people and excludes those who fall outside of Whiteness. Niceness hinders possibilities for the types of political, communal relationships central to authentic care.”

The paper makes it sound like everyone would be better off, or at least more honest, to return to hostile, racist-spewing officers. The reason is that niceness is an  “enduring component of Whiteness” which “allows predominantly White people to elide how their own actions contribute to inequality by maintaining a sense of their own benevolence.”

The evidence of niceness includes such findings as how officers work at “minimiz[ing] the negative impact of arrest by highlighting their own goodness.” (This includes saying things like “You want to listen to the radio? You want the window down? Is there a station you want to listen to?” after an arrest.)

Then there is the fact that these officers have good relationships and perspectives of the students. Again, it is just a shield of “whiteness”:

“SROs used niceness as Whiteness in their recounts of arrest … by highlighting the positive relationships they had with students they arrested…As with highlighting their own goodness, highlighting these positive relationships reframes violence (i.e., arrest) that contributes to racial inequality as a positive, since students still like the SROs. This strategy emphasizes the officer’s ability to retain his niceness—by virtue of the maintained interpersonal relationship—despite having arrested the student.”

The paper is an example of ideological screeds posing as academic research. Based on a few interviews, the researchers simply declare the empathy and relationships to be shields perpetuating “whiteness.” They cite other studies identifying niceness as a whiteness tactic:

“Prior research has demonstrated how primarily White women educators use niceness to uphold Whiteness in their work with children (Bissonnette 2016; Drake & Rodriguez 2022; Gardiner et al., 2023; Vlach et al., 2022; Wiborg, 2022). We found niceness was also present in the work of SROs, suggesting the potential for broader application of niceness to well-intentioned actors working in structurally violent systems. In addition to framing niceness as a means of excusing behavior that upholds Whiteness, we equally center the structural binds that delimit SROs’ capacity for providing care. In doing so, we identify niceness as a coping mechanism for arresting children.”

At these universities (Vanderbilt, Wisconsin, George Mason, and the University of Florida), these faculty members and their obvious agenda are viewed as ideal choices to teach their students.

With four kids, I found the SROs at their schools to be extraordinary and popular figures. They would routinely intervene with kids to see if they were having trouble or try to direct them away from trouble. It turns out that everything that parents valued in their SROs was a perpetuation of privilege, according to these researchers.

While the researchers insist that “we do not intend to demonize individual SROs,” they reward the cooperating officers by twisting their every comment as revealing their deep white privilege. Presumably, they conveyed to the SROs that this would be a fair, unbiased study. It was neither, and, perhaps reaffirming their own triumph over racism, they were not a bit nice about it.

A New York judge temporarily halted Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist experiment to impose a new tax on luxury second homes, ordering far-left City Hall officials to remove a controversial list doxing more than 900,000 homeowners from the public domain

The publicly accessible database exposed names, addresses, and property values, effectively creating an easily accessible targeting list for radical activists, including Luigi-worshipping far-left activists, amid City Hall’s escalating war on property owners.

Related:

• “I’ve Been Doxed”: Lefty Podcaster Scott Galloway Rips Mamdani After Landing On Socialist’s Rich Target List

Bloomberg reports that Justice Wayne Ozzi temporarily restrained City Hall from proceeding with the new pied-à-terre tax and required the city to remove the online list of properties that would be targeted by the tax and halt further action based on roughly 17,000 notices mailed to property owners.

A hearing is scheduled for Aug. 31.

“The city screwed this up… got it wrong… stop the train and make them do it over,” Randy Mastro, a former deputy mayor, told the court. Mastro is the one who brought the suit on behalf of three New York homeowners. 

“We are very gratified by the judge’s decision, which has vindicated the rights of hundreds of thousands of New York City homeowners who were subjected to a process they never should have been a part of in the first place,” Mastro said after the ruling.

On Monday, Mamdani noted Mastro’s role in suits challenging his socialist housing policies. 

“You know, there are few things more certain in New York City than death, taxes and Randy Mastro filing a lawsuit against this administration,” the mayor said at a press conference.

“There are a few things more certain here today than death, taxes and Randy Mastro filing a lawsuit against this administration,” NYC Mayor Mamdani says when asked about the new lawsuit filed by Mastro on behalf of NYC homeowners over the rollout of the pied-à-terre tax pic.twitter.com/BTnvLPvgly

— Rebecca C. Lewis (@_rebeccaclewis) August 10, 2026

He continued, “So we look forward to vigorously defending our city’s position in court as we have done so with the previous lawsuits that he has filed and I’m sure with the lawsuits that he will continue to file in the months and years to come.”

Last month, Mastro also filed a separate complaint on behalf of a group of NYC landlords who sued to void a rent freeze approved in June, arguing that Mamdani improperly influenced the Rent Guidelines Board’s vote and ignored evidence of soaring operating costs for landlords. This plays into the broader socialist endgame: bankrupt landlords and create conditions for City Hall to seize distressed apartment buildings. 

Mamdani has said the new pied-à-terre tax will help fund safer streets, safer schools, and “the city that New Yorkers deserve.”

Yet we know socialists do not live in economic reality, and the fact that they had to dox homeowners suggests an alternative motive: they want to seize the means of production. Putting such a list out in the public domain for their radical left foot soldiers to access suggests that wealthy homeowners will be targeted. This is dangerous, especially given the rhetoric pushed by Mamdani’s friend Hasan Piker, who recently said, “Kill capitalists.”

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics,

It seems as though only one thing motivates Congress to act – the threat of elections.

That’s why both the House and Senate have moved to pass a continuing resolution to keep funding the government until December. Originally funding was going to run out on Oct. 1, the date that was decided during the last shutdown crisis.

But with virtually every member of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate up for election in November, almost no one in Congress wanted to call attention to their own inaction by letting a new shutdown occur.

It’s the political version of Pavlov’s dogs. You know, the famous experiment by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov who trained canines to salivate at the sound of a bell because they associated the bell with the expectation of food being served.

The same thing happens with members of Congress when they hear that an election is scheduled within the next three months. Suddenly they want to be productive.

A representative can ignore constituents for 22 months and then suddenly rediscover them during the last two. And senators can become unresponsive to their voters for most of their six-year term, enjoying junkets and the other fruits of power while being under no obligation to get anything done.

Makes you almost sympathize with the Democratic Socialists of America, who have made abolition of the Senate one of their top priorities. Six-year terms have their virtues, but they also make senators especially prone to forgetting who they work for.

But maybe we could salvage the Senate if we could adapt Pavlov’s experiment in a way that would hopefully train senators to do their job on the regular instead of just once in a blue moon.

Call this my modest proposal. Like Jonathan Swift’s famous satirical essay proposing that poor Irish parents sell their infants as food, it isn’t intended as a serious legislative recommendation. It’s meant to expose an absurdity – in this case, a Congress that suddenly remembers how to govern only when voters are about to fire it.

Sadly, the proposal has little likelihood of being put into effect by those senators whom it would put on notice. Yet if its argument is accurate, then we can at least all agree that senators – and yes, all members of Congress – are little more than trained monkeys. If only we could train them well, perhaps they would do their job more consistently.

No doubt you are wondering how we could possibly accomplish such a remarkable goal. It’s a relatively simple mechanism, akin to the bell that Pavlov taught dogs to associate with food.

Namely, the Senate can institute a rule that once a month, the citizen constituents of each state will be able to vote electronically on whether they wish to retain or dismiss their senator.

Now, before you worry about constitutional entanglements and the risk of meddling in the results of such digital ballots, understand that the votes will not be binding. Instead they will simply keep senators on their toes, just as the threat of real elections does today. The results will be widely publicized, and any senator who consistently fails to win majority support from his state’s voters will be publicly humiliated.

But if it were taken seriously, it could have a much wider impact. Political parties could guarantee additional campaign support to senators who consistently earned the confidence of their state’s voters. And the opposite would be true as well. Suppose a senator has only a 30% retention rate from the citizens of his or her state. Donors would flee. Challengers would emerge. Even the most complacent senators might begin to reconsider their inaction.

The genius of elections is not that they remove bad politicians. It’s that the possibility of removal changes behavior long before Election Day. Congress doesn’t need more elections. It simply needs to remember every month that one is coming. Perhaps Pavlov’s bell could do the trick.

And then, instead of Congress passing a continuing resolution to fund the government for a month or two, we could return to regular order and watch appropriations bills passed for an entire year. What a revolutionary concept!

Frank Miele, retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His book “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA and on X/Gettr @HeartlandDiary.

Despite what are clearly ongoing attacks on international vessels in regional waters, suddenly mediators are feeling optimism again, and decided to float another apparent round of pre-US market open headlines suggesting peace could return.

Though there’s as yet no evidence of this, the Pakistani Defense Minister has signaled that the US and Iran are close to some agreement and that the situation is moving towards peace. Oil prices promptly plummeted ahead of market open. Pakistan’s interior minister Mohsin Raza Naqvi, has also just arrived in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials amid going mediation efforts, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.

This came ironically just as reports of more serious shipping incidents, at least one of them deadly, emerged in regional waters, but perhaps the brief ‘peace is near’ headline redux had its intended effect on markets.

And significantly, the US is clearly still enforcing its military blockade of Iranian ports – and so no, the warring sides do not seem ‘close’ to a return to deal-making, instead the ground reality is quite the opposite:

US forces reportedly fired on a Panama-flagged ship that attempted to run the American blockade of Iranian ports early Tuesday, according to WSJ citing a US official.

“A U.S. military helicopter fired at the rudder of the ship after its crew ignored warnings from American personnel working to enforce the naval blockade of Iran’s ports, the official said,” The Wall Street Journal details:

“There were no immediate reports of any casualties in the incident, which took place before dawn on Tuesday. The U.S. official said the ship appeared to be attempting to transfer its crew to another civilian vessel after the attack,” the report adds.

There’s been a major deadly attack on a commercial ship in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb Strait region off Yemen on Tuesday, amid the ongoing escalation against Saudi shipping by the Houthis.

Yemen’s internationally recognized government has announced that at least three people have been killed in a Houthi attack on an unidentified commercial ship in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, however there’s been no immediate confirmation forthcoming from the Houthis themselves.

The small vessel has been identified as the Tanzania-flagged Tihamah, and reports say this marks the first deaths from Houthi maritime attacks since the start of the Iran war in February.

According to emerging details in Reuters via maritime monitors:

UK Maritime Trade Operations said it ​had been informed that a cargo vessel off the coast of al-Mokha, Yemen, had been hit by an unknown projectile, resulting in casualties.

British maritime security company Ambrey said the ship was reportedly targeted and ​damaged by the Houthis, killing three crew members, while at anchor 3.3 nautical miles ​northeast of Perim Island, Yemen.

Two Pakistanis and one Indonesian person were killed as the ship sailed ‌from Salalah ⁠in Oman via Djibouti, the Yemeni sources said. After the attack, the crew lost control of the ship and were approached by Yemeni coast guard, they added.

And yet the stricken vessel does not appear to be Saudi-owned or operated, which could signal that the Houthis are expanding their siege of the waterway to include all foreign vessels and not just Saudi and Israeli-linked ones.

Further east, UKMTO also received a report of an incident involving a container ship and military forces in the Gulf of Oman.

UKMTO WARNING 109-26

Click here to view the full product ⤵️ https://t.co/352rLshzGu#MaritimeSecurity #MarSec pic.twitter.com/5g4OTPteMc

— UKMTO Operations Centre (@UK_MTO) August 11, 2026

If this alleged incident which is closer to the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz is confirmed, it would likely be a directly Iranian-linked incident. WSJ details that “maritime security firm Vanguard reported that a Panama-flagged containership called Vela Nova was struck by a missile fired from a helicopter while transiting westbound through the Gulf of Oman about 71 nautical miles from the coast of Pakistan.”

“The missile struck the vessel, causing a fire that was subsequently extinguished,” said Vanguard, noting that all 17 crewmembers are accounted for.

Since joining the regional conflict on Iran’s side, the Houthis – which have long been seen as proxies of Tehran, have attacked dozens of vessels after declaring their “siege for siege” operations against Saudi Arabia.

Overnight Developments

• Iran’s new supreme leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, is putting his own stamp on the country’s national-security policy amid a confrontation with the U.S. that could last months or even years. In a sweeping overhaul of the government’s top echelon on Sunday and Monday, Iran named seasoned hard-liners to run the country’s security policies and institutions of repression. WSJ
• Persian Gulf energy producers are concluding that Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz will become permanent, disrupting their oil and gas exports and global energy supplies indefinitely. The problem is they worry the alternative—going back to war—would be worse. WSJ
• There was a maritime incident reported in Bab al-Mandab, with Fars reporting that a Saudi ship was reportedly targeted by the Yemeni army. In other news, 
• Yemeni sources said a second missile targeted a ship while the coast guard was rescuing its crew in Bab al-Mandab.
• The UKMTO has received a report of an incident involving a tanker and military forces in the Gulf of Oman.
• Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi said the world should hold the US accountable for the Hormuz block, while Hormuz security requires end to US aggression, according to Fars News Agency.
• Yemen military source said government forces launched a concentrated attack on militia positions in Harib, Shabwa, according to Al Arabiya.
• Explosions reported in Yemen’s Marib, according to SNN.
• Lebanon and Israel are expected to hold the next round of talks in early September, according to Al-Arabiya.
• Israeli forces conducted new strikes in southern Lebanon, according to SNN.