WORLD BRIEFING: August 4, 2024

Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, hired Iranian security agents to plant explosives in three separate rooms of a building where a Hamas leader was staying, The Telegraph has learned. The original plan was to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of the Palestinian terror group, in May when he attended the funeral of Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s former president. The operation did not go ahead due to the large crowds inside the building and the high possibility of its failure, two Iranian officials told The Telegraph. Instead, the two agents placed explosive devices in three rooms of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) guesthouse in north Tehran where Haniyeh might stay. The agents were seen moving stealthily as they entered and exited multiple rooms within minutes, according to the officials who have CCTV footage of the building. The operatives are then said to have snuck out of the country but had a source still in Iran. At 2am on Wednesday, they detonated the explosives from abroad in the room where Haniyeh was staying. The explosion killed Haniyeh, who was in Tehran for the inauguration of Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president. - Telegraph

Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at the town of Beit Hillel in northern Israel at around 00:25 local time on Sunday (21:25 GMT Saturday). Footage posted on social media showed Israel's Iron Dome air defence system intercepting the rockets. There have been no reports of casualties. Israel’s air force responded by striking targets in southern Lebanon. The Pentagon said it was deploying additional warships and fighter jets to the region to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies. UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said the regional situation “could deteriorate rapidly”. - BBC

Flights to Beirut by Air France and low-cost carrier Transavia France will remain suspended until at least Tuesday due to “security” concerns in the region, parent company Air France-KLM said. The two French airlines first stopped servicing the route on Monday, a day after Israel vowed to retaliate following rocket fire from Lebanon that killed 12 people in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. “Any resumption of operation will be subject to a renewed evaluation on the ground,” a spokesman said Saturday, adding that passengers with reservations could rebook at no extra cost. - Arab News

Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut has warned its citizens to leave Lebanon immediately and has also offered repatriation loans to Americans who need them. The Embassy further urged those who stay to prepare to shelter in place

The divided response to incumbent Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro’s election claim has made his country the latest battlefield in an emerging global ideological conflict that’s not between left and right so much as authoritarianism and democracy. From Ukraine to Taiwan, Yemen to Syria, the authoritarian bloc is upending global norms, working to hinder the advance of democracy and transforming what in other times might have been isolated regional disputes into protracted proxy struggles between the liberal and illiberal worlds. “It used to be that you could get together a few interested parties and manage a crisis,” said Eric Farnsworth, a senior analyst at the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society. “But Russia, Iran and Cuba complicate everything. Their interests are not to manage the crisis, but disrupt the system, to make the management more difficult.” Their support of Maduro has undermined the international community’s efforts to force Maduro’s exit through diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions. The strongman, the handpicked successor of Hugo Chávez, the founder of Venezuela’s socialist state, has ruled Venezuela for more than a decade, despite widespread belief that he stole the 2018 election. “Maduro is largely immune from Western pressure,” said Oliver Stuenkel, a political analyst at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Brazil. “He doesn’t depend much on friendly relations with them.” - Washington Post

Escalating attacks on civilians have made it clear that Myanmar is evading sanctions aimed at blocking the flow of jet fuel that the regime needs to keep its bombers, fighter jets and helicopter gunships in the air. In separate attacks, the junta recently bombed a wedding and a monastery, killing some 60 people. Myanmar Peace Monitor, a nonprofit group that tracks aerial attacks, said at least 1,188 civilians had been killed by aerial bombing since the military seized power in February 2021. By the group’s count, the regime has already conducted more aerial attacks in the first half of this year than all of last year — demonstrating the regime’s ability to circumvent sanctions. Tom Andrews, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, urged the United States and other Western nations to cut off the regime’s access to aviation fuel by imposing tougher and better coordinated sanctions. - NYT

Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to show up for the previously agreed-upon debate set for September 10 on ABC – even if Donald Trump does not, a source familiar with the matter tells CNN. The source says their understanding is ABC News would provide airtime to whichever candidate showed up – even if that ended up being just Harris. ABC News did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Trump said late Friday he had agreed to participate in a debate hosted by Fox News on September 4 and would no longer participate in the ABC debate as he had agreed to do when President Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee. Saturday morning, Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement that Trump needs to “stop playing games” with the presidential debate. - CNN

In Olympic news…

• Ukraine wins its first gold medal of the Paris Olympics, in women’s team saber fencing. It now has three medals - one each oh gold, silver and bronze. The Ukrainian delegation at the Paris Olympics is the smallest ever due to the war in Ukraine

• Tens of thousands have signed a petition to ban equestrian events after two prominent horse riders at the Paris Olympics were ensnared by severe disciplinary measures. In one case, equestrian authorities slapped Brazil's rider Carlos Parro with a yellow warning card for potentially causing "unnecessary discomfort" to his horse Safira during the Paris Olympics. The FEI received photos and evidence of Parro hyper-flexing a horse's neck, a prohibited move known as "Rollkur" that can compromise the animal's breathing. - France 24

• Harry Potter author JK Rowling is facing the wrath of netizens in Taiwan after she challenged female Chinese Taipei boxer Lin Yu-ting’s eligibility to compete in the Paris Olympics. Rowling, a vocal opponent to trans rights, said Lin was part of the “insanity” of trans athletes competing in women’s sport. She shared an article on social media platform X about Lin and Algerian boxer Imane Khelif being authorised to compete in the Olympics despite failing gender eligibility tests last year - SCMP

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• French taxi drivers on Thursday demanded government compensation for lost revenue during the Olympic Games as traffic disruptions and fewer regular clients weigh on demand. In a letter to the transport ministry, taxi unions said that the Games had been "hugely disappointing" for the drivers of licensed taxis of which there are 20,000 in Paris alone. "Demand is slowing and the entire profession is being prevented from simply doing their job because of these Games," said the letter, seen by AFP.