Yester⁠day we told you about the photo: prominent Lebanese banker Antoun Sehnaoui sitting across from Benjamin Netanyahu at a Washington dinner. To⁠day, the legal machinery is moving. A Lebanese judge has issued a 30-day order that could land Sehnaoui in handcuffs the moment he sets foot back in Lebanon.

• Judge Ahmad Rami al-Hajj of the Court of Cassation issued the order Wednes⁠day after 20 Lebanese lawyers filed a complaint alleging treason, violation of the Israel boycott law, and "state security crimes" — after the National News Agency confirmed the photo was authentic and AI-free.
• Sehnaoui co-hosted the Washington dinner in memory of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, alongside former U.S. envoy Morgan Ortagus, with Netanyahu and U.S. officials in attendance.
• If Sehnaoui doesn't appear within 30 days, the case transfers to the Military Court for a formal arrest warrant — a significant escalation.
• Lebanon's 1955 boycott law bans all contact with Israelis and carries sentences of up to 10 years in prison; Sehnaoui, currently in the U.S., has not commented.

What to watch: Whether Sehnaoui returns to Lebanon before the 30-day window closes — and whether the Military Court moves swiftly — will signal how seriously Lebanese institutions are treating this case.

After Prime Minister Nawaf Salam visited Turkey earlier this⁠ year to lay the groundwork, President Joseph Aoun is now making his own first official trip to Ankara — and arriving with a specific shopping list: diplomatic muscle behind the U.S.-brokered framework agreement, Turkish investment, and help sealing Lebanon's borders.

• Aoun wants Turkey — a NATO member with deep regional ties — to publicly back the framework agreement and pressure all parties to honor it, insisting any deal requires "a complete Israeli withdrawal simultaneous with the deployment of the Lebanese army" as a non-negotiable condition.
• On economics, he's asking Turkish companies to inject direct investment into Lebanese productive sectors and help with reconstruction, calling Beirut's reliance on Ankara "a strategic necessity, not a circumstantial option."
• Military cooperation is also on the table: expanding existing Turkish training and support programs for the Lebanese army, and potentially Turkish participation in whatever international force might succeed UNIFIL.

Zooming out: Turkey's NATO membership makes its diplomatic endorsement of the framework unusually valuable — Ankara can apply pressure in Washington corridors that Arab capitals simply cannot reach.

Days before the sixth anniversary of the Beirut Port explosion — which killed more than 220 people and was caused by 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate — UN peacekeepers have revealed they found and neutralized a massive cache of the same explosive material in southern Lebanon, earlier this Jul⁠y.

• UNIFIL announced it discovered nearly 4,000 kg of ammonium nitrate on Jul⁠y 2 during a routine search near the border town of Houla — packed across 385 abandoned containers inside a building.
• UNIFIL explosive ordnance disposal specialists carried out field procedures to neutralize and render the material safe, eliminating the threat on-site.
• The material is widely believed to belong to Hezbollah; separately, Israeli forces continued demolitions and drone strikes across multiple southern towns this⁠ week, including Nabatieh al-Fawqa and Bint Jbeil.

Why it matters: The find lands on the eve of the Beirut blast anniversary and amid live ceasefire negotiations — a reminder that the south's explosive legacy is literal, not just political.

A coordinated US-Saudi airstrike campaign hit militia sites across seven Iraqi governorates Wednes⁠day, killing at least 20 fighters and wounding 32 more — and instantly scrambling Iraq's diplomatic calendar. Baghdad canceled its prime minister's scheduled visit to Riyadh, with no new date set.

• CENTCOM said the strikes came in response to more than 30 drone attacks over 72 hours targeting US forces and Saudi energy facilities, with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps accused of directing the campaign.
• Saudi air defenses intercepted two waves of drones aimed at oil facilities in the Eastern Province and Riyadh; Muqtada al-Sadr called on factions not to drag Iraq into regional war.
• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq denied responsibility, claiming the Saudi attacks originated from Yemeni territory.
• The US mission in Baghdad classified Iraq at Level 4 travel warning — its highest — citing terrorism, kidnapping, and armed conflict risks.

What to watch: Whether Iraq's government can contain militia factions pushing for retaliation will determine if this escalation plateaus or pulls the region into a wider confrontation.

Two years into the conflict in Gaza, doctors are reporting a public health crisis inside the crisis: miscarriage rates have more than tripled since Oct⁠ober 2023, and hospitals are seeing a rise in premature births and severe congenital abnormalities not previously recorded at this scale.

• The Palestinian Ministry of Health recorded 3,958 miscarriages in the first six months of 2026 alone; the rate in some areas may reach 70 percent of total births, according to the ministry's senior consultant in obstetrics.
• Around 70 percent of pregnant women in Gaza suffer from severe anaemia; the IPC warns 1.4 million people — about 67 percent of Gaza's population — face critical or worse acute food insecurity through Dec⁠ember.
• Nearly 25,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women will require urgent nutritional support over the coming year, per IPC estimates.
• Doctors report babies born without limbs — once extremely rare — are now a recurring phenomenon in delivery wards.

The bigger picture: Physicians warn that toxic residues from bombardment and widespread malnutrition could alter the genetic landscape for future generations, extending the war's health consequences far beyond the current conflict.

Reports of a blockbuster new Israeli-Egyptian gas agreement sent ripples through regional energy markets this⁠ week — but Cairo is now pushing back, calling the $20 billion figure "incorrect" and promising an official clarification from the petroleum ministry.

• Industry newsletter MEES reported that Israel's Isramco and the UAE's Mubadala Energy signed a non-binding MoU with an Egyptian importer to export up to 80 billion cubic meters from Israel's Tamar field over a period initially covering 2031–2038, with Chevron expected to join.
• An Egyptian government source told Asharq Al-Awsat the deal as described is "incorrect"; the MoU would still need a final agreement, Israeli government approval, and export licenses before taking effect.
• Egypt's imports of Israeli gas already rose 30.5 percent year-on-year in May⁠ 2026, reaching their highest level in more than a year.

Zooming out: Egypt and Israel have maintained gas cooperation since 2018 — and expanded it with a $35 billion, 15-year Leviathan deal last Dec⁠ember — making the precise scope of any new Tamar agreement a significant signal for regional energy markets.