I spent the last week deep in Hezbollah territory.

I texted their PR department. Drank coffee with their supporters and walked through their grave yards. I marched in the Ashura parade from the grave of Hassan Nasrallah listening to chants of death to America, death to Israel. I watched a lot of grown men weep and mothers hold up pictures of their sons killed in battle.

The story, is as always, not what you think. For the next month or so my paid subscribers will have access to my travelogue and photos from Southern Lebanon. (I'll unlock one post for everyone).

As always, I want to thank everyone for your support in keeping independent analysis and on-the-ground journalism alive.

Let's go,

Eric

P.S. Scroll to the bottom to see a screenshot of one of my exchanges with Hezbollah's media department.

A signed deal in Washington pushes Lebanon toward the brink. Israel, Lebanon and the US signed a framework that ties any Israeli withdrawal to a Hezbollah disarmament the Lebanese state can't enforce, and a Hezbollah MP is already warning of civil war.

Ukraine launches a record drone barrage and names the clock. Kyiv hit Russia with roughly 660 drones in one night, its largest of the war, hours after Zelensky announced a 40-day campaign to force Moscow to the table.

Two Sahel enemies decide they need each other. Benin and Niger, on opposite sides of West Africa's hardest split, are reopening their border because the jihadists between them don't respect the divide.

Washington said it runs Venezuela. Now an earthquake makes it prove it. A catastrophic quake hits a country the US broke and now claims to control, turning disaster relief into a test of leverage.

Colombia swings hard right by less than a point. A Trump-endorsed firebrand edged out the left by under 1%, and a US-sanctioned Petro is handing him the keys.

On Friday, June 26, Israel, Lebanon and the US signed a 14-point framework agreement at the State Department, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling it "the beginning of the beginning." The structure is the story: the framework sequences disarmament before withdrawal, keeping Israeli forces inside their pilot zones until the "verified disarmament" of Hezbollah is confirmed. Netanyahu said Israel keeps its buffer zone "until Hezbollah disarms and as long as there is a threat." Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah warned that any attempt by the Lebanese army to enforce disarmament would mean "civil war." Here on the ground, the signing brought people into the streets, and it landed on Ashura, with Hezbollah staging a show of presence across the south as Israeli strikes hit near Nabatieh the same day.

Israel signed a deal it cannot lose. Either Hezbollah disarms, which is a strategic win, or it refuses and Israel stays indefinitely, which is a territorial win. Lebanon signed a deal that orders its weak state to disarm a militia stronger than its own army, on penalty of the civil war Fadlallah named out loud. The Lebanese Armed Forces have neither the strength nor the political backing to force the issue, which means Hezbollah's arsenal becomes a permanent justification for an open-ended Israeli presence. This is leverage that manufactures the next crisis. And it radiates outward: the same withdrawal logic now hangs over Syria and Gaza, where Israeli forces also hold ground and the same question waits to be asked.

Overnight on June 26, Ukraine struck Russia with roughly 660 drones across more than a dozen regions plus occupied Crimea, the largest such attack of the war by Russia's own count, topping a prior peak of 556. It followed repeated strikes on Moscow-area refineries as part of Kyiv's campaign against Russian energy infrastructure. Hours before the barrage, Zelensky announced a 40-day operation aimed at "compelling Russia to end the war." Crimea declared a state of emergency, and its Moscow-installed governor admitted Russian forces cannot fully protect the peninsula. Moscow publicly denied seeking to pull Belarus into the war.

This is leverage by attrition. The strikes target refineries and specialized units that take months to replace under sanctions, draining the oil revenue that funds the war. The campaign has knocked an estimated fifth to a third of Russian refining capacity offline, pushed more than 50 of Russia's regions into fuel rationing, and forced Russia to import gasoline by sea. The 40-day clock reframes the barrage as coercion toward negotiation. And Moscow's unprompted Belarus denial is the tell: the pressure to drag in a co-belligerent is now loud enough to deny. This is a climb up the escalation ladder on both sides, but it would be good to remember that one side has nuclear arms.

On June 21, committees from Benin and Niger concluded two days of meetings with three draft cooperation agreements on defense, security, and reopening their shared border. This is a big regional change and it likely has to do with Jihadists attempting to steal Uranium in Niger. It is the first real thaw between a junta-run member of the Alliance of Sahel States and a coastal ECOWAS neighbor since the AES broke from the regional body and crippled intelligence-sharing against the jihadist group JNIM.

The AES was built on a wall: three coup governments pooling defense and turning their backs on ECOWAS and the West. The Under Report predicted 6 months ago that AES likely wouldn't have the ability to achieve its goals. Now, the wall is leaking. The insurgency AES was meant to defeat doesn't care about borders or standing up new transnational bodies. The bloc still cannot fund its 5,000-strong joint force without the donors it expelled (first France and the US, then Russia). A move back toward ECOWAS is a step closer to the west. The question is if the US or anyone else will capitalize on the need for help.