Israeli jets struck the Abu al-Duhur air base in Idlib on 18 August, hours after a Turkish delegation had inspected the site, and Ankara says it was given no advance warning. Israel's government said Syria had been about to let Turkish forces deploy there; Turkish officials call that baseless. The US special envoy to Syria called the strike an unnecessary escalation that risked a direct clash between Turkey and Israel.
Boğaziçi University's Kandilli Observatory recorded 117 small earthquakes in a 20-kilometre area south of the Princes' Islands between 18 and 20 August, magnitudes 0.7 to 3.1. Scientists say the cluster sits on the fault system that runs under the Sea of Marmara, the stretch that has not ruptured since 1912 and is watched as Istanbul's biggest earthquake risk. Authorities say monitoring is continuous; no larger quake has followed.
France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Canada, Norway and the Netherlands issued a joint statement on 20 August calling Israel's tenders for the E1 settlement project unacceptable. They said the project would cut the West Bank in two and warned companies bidding on the work that they risk legal and reputational liability. Israel's foreign minister rejected the statement outright.
A Romanian F-16 destroyed a suspected Russian sea drone found near the Neptun Deep gas platform in the Black Sea on 20 August, 80 miles off Constanta. Bomb disposal experts later destroyed the wreckage; Ukraine confirmed the drone was not its own. President Nicusor Dan blamed Russia directly, though the defence minister stopped short of naming a source. Neptun Deep is due to make Romania the EU's largest gas producer when it starts up in 2027.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on 20 August that new sanctions will target Iran's oil smuggling networks, swap lines, exchange houses and ship registries, and called it the toughest economic campaign against any country. President Trump is pressing China, Iran's largest oil buyer, to join in ahead of a planned Xi Jinping visit to Washington on 24 September. Tehran dismissed the threat as economic terrorism. Further measures are expected on 25 August.
Government forces carried out 81 attacks on Houthi positions in 24 hours, officials said on 20 August, while the Houthis claimed to have hit two targets inside Saudi Arabia. The escalation follows the Houthis' deadliest attack in years earlier this month, which killed 58 government troops in Marib, and their blockade of Saudi-linked shipping in the Red Sea. The UN says at least seven civilians have been killed in the past two weeks.
With the 13 September election three weeks away, Centre Party leader Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist is pitching her party as the anchor of a "middle alternative" government with the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats if the ruling Tidö coalition loses. A Verian poll for SVT put the opposition parties ten points ahead of the government bloc, a lead pollsters call unprecedented for a comeback this late. The Centre Party itself rose to 8 percent.