Executive Summary 

The dominant theme for the week of July 6-13 is the reopening of the US-Iran war following the collapse of a fragile ceasefire, which drew ten Middle Eastern states into direct exposure within days, from Gulf missile exchanges to a US naval blockade reinstated on July 13 and a Saudi strike accusation that put Yemen's long-holding truce at risk the same day. Running alongside this, institutional authority weakened simultaneously across unrelated regions, from judicial-executive conflict in Costa Rica to a compressed leadership transition in the United Kingdom and a contested election outcome in Peru. State infrastructure failures in Cuba, Sudan, and Haiti, compounded by a major typhoon striking three East Asian economies in 48 hours, add a parallel dimension of degraded operating conditions independent of the Gulf crisis. Collectively, the week points to an operating environment where state authority, physical infrastructure, and even long-standing regional truces are proving less reliable across a wider set of countries than in recent reporting periods.