🇫🇷🇸🇾 | France-Syria: French economic intelligence players set up shop in Damascus in the wake of Macron’s visit Among the figures present during the presidential visit to Damascus on July 6 and 7, alongside major CAC 40 companies, was a more discreet core of specialists in economic intelligence. This is the case of Grégoire de Saint-Quentin, former head of the Special Operations Command, who came to formalize the Syrian establishment of his employer, the business intelligence group ADIT. Heading GEOS, the group’s security branch, Saint-Quentin is tasked with creating a French business outpost on the ground that brings together all of the group’s services for companies wishing to invest in Syria. This setup follows the model ADIT already tested in Iraq in the early 2010s—a model the group had subsequently tried, unsuccessfully, to replicate in Iran and then in Ukraine. ADIT also has a local relay through its subsidiary Next Step Influence (which includes ESL & Network): Syrian entrepreneur Marwan Idris, head of the business travel agency Adonis Travel operating between Beirut, Damascus, and Amman, represents the group locally. To navigate Damascus’s circles of power, ADIT also relies on André Parant, former French ambassador to Lebanon and a recognized specialist on the region, who is simultaneously active in Ukraine. Parant sits, alongside Bertrand Besancenot (another Next Step Influence consultant and former ambassador to Saudi Arabia), as an honorary member of the Franco-Syrian Business Council. This organization was founded and is led by businessman Jamal Kassimy. Kassimy is also involved in a second organization launched in 2026, the France-Syria Business Council, driven by Ambassador Jean-François Faivre and the Medef (the French business federation), and chaired by Joe Dakkak, head of CMA CGM for the Levant region—the most influential economic player in the bilateral relationship. Facing this ADIT push, other firms are already well established. Axis & Co, led for the Middle East by Stéphane Ravion, has been working on the Syrian file for over a year, counting the World Bank among its institutional clients. This firm had for a time collaborated with Timios & Co, founded by former economic intelligence officers from Bercy (the French finance ministry) and by Iyad Jaber, a former Quai d’Orsay diplomat and specialist in the region—but Timios, very well connected locally, now operates independently. The scale of Syria’s reconstruction effort is naturally drawing the attention of international donors and, more broadly, of companies seeking experts able to decode the inner workings of the transition. Beyond the broader geopolitical balance, the challenge for these firms is learning to navigate a transitional power structure blending genuine decision-makers with figurehead officials: behind every officially appointed minister often lies a second circle of officials still known by their nom de guerre (the “kunya”), all directly tied to transitional President Ahmed al-Sharaa and his inner circle.

🇺🇸🇦🇪 | The strikes against Iran are being supported by 7 refuelling aircraft, 6 American and 1 Emirati.

✍️🇹🇷🇪🇺 | The 30 June visit to Ankara, Kallas, Kos and Brunner received by Erdoğan and then Fidan, referred to internally as a “jumbo meeting”, fits into a broader reconfiguration of the European security architecture, in which Turkey is no longer treated as a mere peripheral candidate but as an adjustment variable in the face of a twofold erosion: that of the American guarantee and that of Russian pressure. The breaking point dates back to April, when Europe’s refusal to commit ships to unblock the Strait of Hormuz during the US-Israeli war against Iran pushed Trump to threaten a withdrawal from NATO, a rift aggravated by the Greenland issue and since confirmed by Fidan himself, who speaks of active discussions on the terms of an American disengagement deemed potentially “destructive” if not coordinated. Some think tanks rank the withdrawal of American guarantees among the top risks for the EU in 2026, on a par with continued Russian aggressiveness and the hybrid threat to critical infrastructure, a climate that has already produced its most fully realized precedent in German rearmament (the Wehrdienstmodernisierungsgesetz, targeting 260,000 troops by 2035). In this context, Turkey’s position becomes a structural rather than diplomatic asset: NATO’s second-largest army by manpower, control of the straits under the Montreux Convention, a direct border with the Russo-Ukrainian war zone via the Black Sea, and a defense industry whose exports tripled between 2020 and 2024, all factors that mark it out as a lever for reducing European dependence on Washington. But integration remains blocked by the SAFE ceiling lock at 35%, exceeding which requires a bilateral agreement that does not exist and unanimity among the Twenty-Seven that Athens has explicitly threatened to block, with Mitsotakis and Dendias equating any opening to introducing a Trojan horse into the European framework, a position reinforced by the unresolved Cyprus dispute and the Aegean disagreement stemming from the 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime deal. Added to this is a structural ambivalence that Brussels has not resolved: Turkey simultaneously serves as a sanctions-evasion conduit for Russian oil, crude imported, refined, and re-exported under Turkish flag, and as a sought-after industrial partner (Baykar-Leonardo, TAI-Airbus, the British Eurofighter), even as the political dimension hardens in parallel, between the European Parliament report targeting Gürlek, the İmamoğlu affair, and Kos’s reaffirmed demand for alignment with democratic standards as a condition for any progress. Erdoğan, for his part, is capitalizing on this window by calling for an allied security network “from Texas to Ankara” with no conditions attached, a calculation consistent with a strategy of inclusion through necessity rather than normative grounds, as Turkey bets that European security urgency will, in time, override the normative reservations that have blocked its case for two decades.

📝 Aliyev between two allies: managing an absorbable crisis Israel’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide on June 28, 2026 places Baku in a position of structural but non-existential discomfort. The Azerbaijani MFA characterized the decision as a “distortion of historical facts” while calling on Jerusalem to reconsider, but this register of protest deliberately falls short of rupture. Baku judges that this decision “will neither favor dialogue nor rapprochement between peoples” and that such measures “deepen existing contradictions and hinder efforts to achieve lasting peace and reconciliation in the region”, deliberately depoliticized legal language, designed to preserve a diplomatic off-ramp. For the interdependencies are massive: Baku and Jerusalem maintain close cooperation across military, security, and energy domains, Azerbaijan ranks among Israel’s principal oil suppliers while Israel ranks among Baku’s foremost arms suppliers, making their partnership one of the most solid between Israel and any Muslim-majority state. These armaments, Harop drones, Spike missiles, satellite intelligence, proved decisive in the 2020 and 2023 Karabakh wars. Israel retains critical value for Baku on two distinct counts: it is the source of Azerbaijan’s military-technological superiority over Armenia, and commands considerable lobbying capital in Washington that Baku intends to mobilize in pursuit of the repeal of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, which restricts direct American assistance to Azerbaijan. On the Iranian flank, Israel provides Azerbaijan with a strategic intelligence foothold on Iran’s northern border, a dimension Tehran monitors with growing hostility, fearing a Washington-Tel Aviv-Baku triangulation capable of destabilizing its Azerbaijani minority, estimated at one-fifth of the Iranian population. Simultaneously, Aliyev cannot afford to alienate Ankara: under the 2021 Shusha Declaration, Turkey and Azerbaijan are bound by a mutual obligation of support in the event of external aggression, and pro-government Turkish media are exerting increasing pressure on Aliyev, expecting him to demonstrate the primacy of his axis with Ankara over his ties with Israel, some critics going so far as to pointedly raise the authoritarian nature of Azerbaijani governance, a subject Ankara had long set aside. Baku had, however, previously delivered explicit warnings to Jerusalem indicating that such recognition would damage the strategic relationship, warnings that Israel this time deliberately chose to ignore, a signal that it consciously factored in the Azerbaijani cost in its calculus in order to maximize pressure on Erdoğan against the backdrop of the post-Gaza rupture. The Azerbaijan-Israel relationship is arguably robust enough to absorb a cabinet resolution, but this is precisely the type of development that complicates the public management of a relationship, at a moment when Baku is endeavoring to be everyone’s friend simultaneously, particularly in a context where Aliyev seeks to position himself as a regional mediator between powers in tension. Azerbaijan’s posture will therefore in all likelihood be one of calibrated rhetorical protest without operational rupture: publicly condemning to satisfy Ankara and the domestic Turco-Islamic opinion, quietly maintaining the flows of arms and hydrocarbons, and banking on the fact that the decision technically remains at the stage of an Israeli cabinet position and will still need to pass through the Knesset before acquiring the value of an official state commitment, a legal window that allows Baku to play for time. Should Ankara-Baku tensions nevertheless deepen, this would signal not a mere conjunctural disagreement but a deeper strategic drift liable to reshape the balances across the South Caucasus, with a potential opening for Moscow.

🎯 The Rubio tour reveals less a reassurance diplomacy than an exercise in managing the structural trust deficit between Washington and its Gulf partners. The US-Iran agreement, the first signed by presidents of both countries since 1979, provides for a $300 billion reconstruction fund and sanctions relief for Tehran, without the GCC having been consulted beforehand. The tour is therefore corrective, not foundational. The MOU mentions neither Iranian proxy forces,Houthis, Hezbollah, nor Tehran’s ballistic missile program, two omissions that concentrate the anxiety of the Gulf monarchies. Riyadh and its partners fear in particular that the $300 billion fund will serve to rebuild Iranian military capacity while refinancing regional proxy networks. This is not an abstract fear: it is the rational reading of an agreement that economically rehabilitates an actor without constraining its power-projection vectors. On Hormuz, the American position is formally firm but operationally fragile. The MOU stipulates that Iran will make its “best efforts” to guarantee toll-free passage, for sixty days only, pending a final agreement. Since signing, Tehran has multiplied declarations about “service fees,” and the Revolutionary Guards clarified on June 25 that vessels must use Iranian waters, excluding the southern route through Omani waters. Rubio responded by judging Iran on facts, “if the ships move, that’s what counts”, a pragmatic formulation that, implicitly, grants Tehran permanent rhetorical latitude. Riyadh is simultaneously conducting its own direct track, with Minister Faisal bin Farhan exchanging directly with his Iranian counterpart Araghchi, confirming that the Gulf monarchies no longer rely exclusively on the American security umbrella to calibrate their Iranian risk exposure. The reconciliation talks planned in Riyadh between Iran and the Gulf states, separate from the US-Iran track, follow this same logic: Riyadh seeks to institutionalize a regional bilateral dialogue independent of Washington’s pace and arbitration. It is simultaneously a prudential hedge and a signal of strategic autonomization. The conclusion is this: the Gulf security architecture is entering a bifurcation phase. If the sixty days produce an agreement encompassing missiles and proxies, Rubio will have succeeded in his reassurance mission and the GCC will remain anchored in the American orbit. If the final agreement remains nuclear-centric, the monarchies will accelerate their diversification, toward Beijing, toward Moscow marginally, but above all toward a regional autonomy of which the Riyadh talks will constitute the first institutional framework. Washington knows this. The real pressure is not on Tehran: it is on the American negotiating team for the sixty days ahead.

📝 On the operational level, the repeated elimination of experienced cadres tends to degrade insurgent leadership quality, leading to a loss of skills, disruption of networks, and a decline in internal cohesion, or even fragmentation into independent cells that are harder to track. A durable disruption strategy, however, requires a broader approach integrating political and socio-economic dimensions, particularly governance and economic opportunities, in order to reduce the drivers of recruitment and radicalisation, as illustrated by the Iraqi case.

🇮🇶 | Iraq: The End of Armed Militias or the Beginning of a Legitimized Parallel Power? The developments currently unfolding in Iraq are often portrayed as a victory for the U.S. maximum-pressure strategy and a step toward restoring the Iraqi state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Yet a more strategic reading suggests that what is taking place is less a process of disarmament than a reconfiguration of the influence mechanisms employed by Iraq’s Shiite armed groups. Under the combined pressure of U.S. strikes against Iranian infrastructure, financial constraints imposed on Baghdad, and the scheduled withdrawal of American forces, several armed factions have gradually agreed to reduce their military visibility. Saraya al-Salam, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, and Kata’ib al-Imam Ali have all endorsed the principle of placing weapons under state authority. However, military capabilities do not necessarily disappear. In many cases, they are stockpiled, redistributed, or maintained in less visible forms. At the same time, the militias’ political, economic, and administrative networks continue to expand. The issue is therefore no longer solely one of territorial control through force, but increasingly of controlling resources, strategic infrastructure, and state institutions. For Washington, the immediate benefits are clear: attacks against American interests have sharply declined, and the military withdrawal can now be presented as the outcome of an effective coercive strategy. Yet this evolution does not necessarily guarantee a lasting reduction in Iranian influence. On the contrary, it may signify its transformation. For years, Tehran has sought not merely to sustain permanent confrontation but to institutionalise its regional proxies. The experience of Hezbollah in Lebanon has demonstrated that an actor integrated into state structures enjoys far greater political and legal protection than an organisation operating exclusively in the shadows. From this perspective, the gradual integration of Iraqi militias into governance mechanisms appears less as a retreat of Iranian influence than as its consolidation. The groups involved also appear to be among the primary beneficiaries of this transition. By progressively abandoning their role as overt paramilitary forces, they gain access to more durable sources of power: public contracts, critical infrastructure, land ownership, logistics networks, telecommunications, and customs systems. In other words, the centre of gravity of influence is shifting from the military sphere to the political and economic domains. At the same time, more hardline organisations, notably Kata’ib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba, continue to reject this trajectory and maintain autonomous military capabilities. This duality should not necessarily be interpreted as fragmentation. It may also represent a form of strategic diversification, allowing Iran to preserve both an institutional lever of influence and a military pressure capability that could be reactivated if necessary. The silence of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also contributes to this evolution. In the absence of explicit religious opposition, integrationist factions enjoy considerable room for manoeuvre to legitimise their political repositioning without requiring formal doctrinal endorsement. Ultimately, the current situation points to a paradoxical equilibrium. The United States reduces the immediate security threat and secures a more favourable environment for its withdrawal. Iran preserves the core of its influence networks while making them less vulnerable to military strikes and sanctions. As for the militias, they are gradually exchanging firepower for more enduring institutional influence.