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I'm Bob McMann. And I'm Karl-Ann Robbins. Bob, let's start with the Middle East, an enormous amount of news this week. Within hours of each other, Fuad Shukar, a senior Hezbollah commander, was killed in Beirut, and Ismail Hania Hamas's political leader and one of its top negotiators was killed in Tehran, where he had traveled for the inauguration of Iran's newly elected president. Israel claimed the Lebanon strike was retaliation for an attack in the Golan Heights that killed 12 children and 18s. No one has taken responsibility for the Nia killing, but there's little doubt about Israel's role. Now, today, Thursday, the Israeli military has announced that it killed Muhammadaif, the leader of Hamas's armed wing in Gaza, and an architect of the October 7 attack. He was killed in an airstrike last month that left some 90 people dead, according to Gaza's and health officials. The United States and others are calling for restraint from all sides, but are we now on the brink of this wider regional war that we've been fearing ever since the October 7 attacks on the war in Gaza began? I'm sorry to say it does seem that way, Carla. And, you know, let's look to the next theater for this, which is the decision-making going on in Iran right now. The Supreme Leader somewhat unusually attended a top-level security briefing the full day after the attack and clearly indicated that there will be a response, a reprisal, by Iran against Israel, seeing this as a grave violation of Iranian sovereignty. Its role as a host of this Mahanya and so forth. So we are looking to see in the coming days some sort of an Iranian attack. Recall, in April, the Iranians launched their first-ever direct attack against Israel, most of which was intercepted. These are drones and other projectiles, but we are looking to see some sort of an Iranian attack against Israel itself and we'll see what nature that takes, whether or not it'll be what has been called in the past, calibrated response or something different. A lot of analysts that I've read and talked to are saying this just feels a bit different. Red lines seem to be shifting in this case. Our colleague Stephen Cook has written on cfr.org that the Israeli military has opened up a new chapter in this and basically signaling to all of its enemies in the regions, particularly the axis of resistance, that it is not going to take any of their attacks lying down. It has intel, it has capabilities to go after their top officials and that it is intent on keeping this up if it needs to protect itself. So it's a calculation that seemingly both sides now are ready to go take further steps. So we're in a really dangerous moment and it's not clear whether any diplomatic leverage can be brought to bear on this or whether these two sides are able to "calibrate" responses that keep this from escalating. I understand going after, listen, I'm not justifying any of these guys here, but in the midst of the ceasefire negotiations, Connie was one of the negotiators and the Americans kept saying that they thought there were progress, certainly the Israeli military wanted these ceasefire negotiations to go ahead. And also in the midst of an inauguration in Iran of as close to reformist as you're going to get in Iran, it's really hard to look at that one particular assassination as anything other than an attempt to disrupt a possibility for a ceasefire negotiation and disrupt a possibility for an opening potentially with Iran and the United States. Am I being overly conspiratorial here? Well, I think you're reflecting what had been the hopes of a lot of people who've been watching this very closely and looking for a glimmer of progress in the darkness of the last 10 months in particular. But there are some who are saying, and I've been trying to keep up with all of the commentary on this. Some who are saying that this latest incident shows, first of all, how a bit outside the loop the U.S. seems to be in this latest round in terms of the Hania killing, seemingly catching the U.S. by surprise, which again, as you said, was not confirmed as an Israeli strike, but is assumed to be an Israeli strike. And the fact that Israel did this at this time raises all sorts of questions, including, as has been noted by some, you know, just seemingly disrupts any sort of hostage return, because that is a source of real domestic concern in Israel. And it's a really bold step. But at the same time, there are calculations going on that we're unaware of on the Israeli side and on the Iranian side repeatedly about how far they're willing to take this. So you're right, it did seem like with both being on the quote, unquote, 10 yard line of a ceasefire deal and Gaza and, you know, a new somewhat reformist leader taking office as president in Iran, there was a little bit of ability to find traction for deescalating coming out of this crisis moment. But this is going to spend itself out further. And it's a question of whether it then just sort of becomes this escalatory ladder into full scale war. And that's the real concern, Carlos. So I think to answer your original question, I think there was just a lot of miscalculations along the way by people who thought they saw what was going on and saw this headed in a certain direction. And of course, as we go back and we talked about this last week, if we go back and we look again at the speech that Bibi Netanyahu gave when he came to the Congress, which was mainly about Iran. And there was, of course, no glimmer of a commitment to moving ahead with ceasefire talks in that either, which there had been high hopes for that. But it was all about Iran and basically don't be deceived, you know, don't go down that road. But there's something so absolutely extraordinary. It's, you know, one smaller reminder of what, you know, is really intelligence is capable of. And the Times is reporting this morning that it wasn't a drone strike. It wasn't, you know, anything from the air that apparently was a bomb that was planted in this guest house, with a guest house controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps under their noses in the middle of Tehran during an inauguration, a guest there, I mean, the violation there, intelligence failures, absolutely so enormous, very hard for them now to respond to that. But also a calculation to saying, you know, we've made the decision, we knew the time in place and we made the decision to do this right now. This is very calculated. This is not an accident. And then Tony Blinken, you know, the American Secretary of State comes out and says, we weren't informed. We weren't told about this, which does suggest that the Americans, as you said, are not really on top of what's going on and can't control this alliance, which goes back to the original question. Is this, you know, situation spinning out of control? It's, it's a pretty grim set of developments here. On the other hand, they're chipping away at Hamas and Hezbollah. They're certainly chipping away at the Hamas leadership. And that's what they were planning on doing. Yeah, exactly. And I'll just note, we have a background on the Hamas group that has had this org chart, so to speak, of the Hamas leadership and now fully half of it has been put in different colors as assassinated. So Israel is moving to not only decapitate, but to try to eradicate Hamas as they have said since the beginning. And so perhaps we should just start taking them at their word on that as this continues. And if that happens, one would hope that they would then want to have peace and reconstruction afterwards rather than a regional war. But we will have to see, you know, how much the Iranians responded because the hope would there once again, if they could have a ceasefire deal, that they would also have a calm along the border with Lebanon. And this doesn't vote for that direction, but we'll have to watch and see how that plays out. Bob, let's move to Venezuela. We're an election commission controlled by incumbent President Nicholas Maduro, claimed he had won an overwhelming mandate for a third six-year term with 51.2% of the vote, while the main opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, they claim had received only 44.2%. Going into the vote, opinion polls gave a huge leap to Gonzalez and an exit poll by Edison Research, and these are the people who do exit polls here in the US, had Mr. Gonzalez leading by 65% to 31%. And let's just say, I'm always skeptical about exit polls, but overwhelmingly, Maduro was not ahead in anybody's mind anywhere. Turned out an opposition, strongholds was notably high. And then, of course, the autocrats playbook kicked in, you know, in key polling places, election officials refused to turn over paper tallies. And then there was this mysterious six-hour holdup in announcing the results in which the authorities blamed on so-called terrorists. I watched this happen when Pinochet tried to steal the no vote, all of that. All of this looked incredibly, not just suspicious. This is a total sham election. And many Venezuelans, many people in the international community, denounced Maduro's 2018 election as a sham as well. And he still held on to power. You know, is he going to tough it out again? You know, that remains a question. It certainly looks like he is consolidating the power sectors that he needs to to do so. But this is this is a different type of election, and it's worth kind of recounting exactly how we got to this moment. First of all, the question about is the military behind him? It would seem it is at this point, the defense minister, General Vladimir Padrino, went on the air to say, quote, "We reaffirm our most absolute and unconditional loyalty to Nicholas Maduro, president of the Bolivarring Republic of Venezuela, our commander-in-chief, who has been legitimately reelected for the next presidential term." So... No doubt there. No doubt there. So, you know, 25 years of Shavista government seems to be set to continue. But what got us to this moment was, first of all, the Venezuelan authorities allowing this election after keeping out the winter, the overwhelming winter of the October primary of opposition candidates, Maria Carina Machado. And the opposition, famously fractious in Venezuela, had been pulling together, had seen this as a moment to take a stab at a legitimate change of power, bloodless, for the most part, if it could pull it off. And they were able to get a Muno Gonzales put into the fore, seen as acceptable enough not to be banned by the Maduro regime. He was making the right sounds about, you know, maintaining a dialogue with all sides and building up Venezuela's institutions, projecting moderate views. And as you said, it, by all accounts, and this was a heavily watched by the Venezuelan opposition side and by whatever independent parties could be mustered, a heavily watched vote that seemed to clearly indicate with exit polling and other signs that Gonzales had been the victor. And it was why you had this shut down or blackout even on information for a while before the government came up with its 51 percent, you know, finding of a Maduro win. The Carter Center, one of the few outside observers allowed in the country, even then only to a few places, has expressed its concern about this vote. All sorts of outside parties, including sympathetic leaders in the region have all called for a proper independent review of the vote. Maduro said he's asked Venezuela Supreme Court to conduct an audited presidential election, but the court is seen as in his pocket. So it's not clear whether there is any sort of proper legitimate off-ramp in this. And we're just going to see a consolidation of a corrupt and incompetent regime, which should be noted, that has driven this country, this one's very strong economy and vibrant society, it should be noted, really downhill. I mean, upwards of, I think, 8 million people at this point have fled the country in recent years because of just the failures in every direction. If you look at any benchmarks economically, it has been a mishandled economy, it has been corrupt and repressive on top of it. It's kind of a thuggish repression as well. But yet again, democratic enough to have this vote in which people felt like they had a voice, an ability to maybe change the direction. And it's just not clear whether any outside voices are going to have any sway on this regime and whether or not the regime is going to really crack down heavily in terms of it's already started throwing people in jail who were seen as poll observers, 16 or so deaths across the country reported. Maybe that's gone up since I last saw it. And really, again, the ability to have some sort of an off-ramp that can allow this country out of its abyss seems to be shrinking. So United States has tried pretty much everything as well as of other countries. In the OIS, of course, they're just toothless. But the United States has tried all sorts of things. There were sanctions and there were less sanctions, sort of starving, starving country because in the period of time, there were people who couldn't get food or medicine in Venezuela. Once Ukraine started, they wanted to lessen up because they still, even though they're refining capacity as to be plummeted, they still have oil. Any conversation already from the United States or anybody else about how they're going to put pressure on Maduro, it seemed like the initial comments from the United States seemed to be a little bit softer than I expected it to be because this to me looked like just a total ripoff. Yeah, and I think the initial U.S. response was to be concerned but trying to hold some wiggle room to allow some even some wiggle room from the Maduro regime to allow independent review and some sort of potential compromise approach to resolving this mess. But that's not happening. There was an indication in a briefing earlier this week that the U.S. was certainly open to new sanctions. There have been members of Congress, particularly Republicans who have said they need to start going into more targeted sanctions. We've seen this before. We've seen this play out in other countries around the world. U.S. sanctions regime is vast and sprawling and growing. And the impact is really mixed, but it doesn't mean you don't do them, but it also doesn't mean that you should expect anything from that. And all it does also to a country like Venezuela is just prolong its misery for the people who are voting with their feet and fleeing. And by the way, where are they fleeing to? Some of them, if they can make it to the U.S. border, get in the U.S. There are thousands and thousands that have come to the U.S. in recent years. There are millions who have gone to neighboring countries, including Colombia. Peru is taken in a lot. And a lot of the countries in the region are reacting with alarm, and they are being treated with derision by the Maduro regime. So you have this response that's this sort of sharp autocracy. It gets a few nods of approval from countries like Russia or Cuba, but otherwise, you know, and Nicaragua. But these are not countries that are going to bolster it too much. Russia might be able to provide a little bit of support here and there. But it's still a country among the world's largest, if not the largest oil reserves, and yet it is so mishandled that sector that it's not something that can be any sort of a revenue line anytime soon. So they're just grim outlook at this point unless we have some sort of change of heart that takes place within this regime. It just doesn't seem likely. And we're looking at more of a closing off of Venezuela than any sort of sort of constructive engagement, which I think was the last US approach that they thought was going to get some traction. Carla, I want to take us in a different direction. I want to take us to an art festival, a massive sprawling art festival that explodes in Edinburgh, Scotland every year. Tomorrow, August 2nd marks the start of the three week long fringe festival. It's a festival that features comedy, dance, theater, opera, circus, even, and even more than that. The French has been the launchpad for all sorts of fresh talent. We've heard these names emerge in the past, Judy Dench, Alan Rickman, Robin Williams, Maggie Smith, Carla, what other names are going to come out this year? What should we be looking for? I know you've watched these things closely. This isn't an easy one to make a top 10 recommendations for because it is just so vast and so wonderfully eclectic, verging on chaotic, which I gather is a big part of the fringe experience. So a little history, it seems in order first. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival was founded in 1947 when eight theater companies turned up uninvited at the prestigious and highly buttoned down Edinburgh International Festival and put on their own shows pretty much anywhere they could find a space and there wasn't a lot of space left over. And they've continued that tradition and like the original fringe, anyone can participate. Now they have to pay a comparatively small entrance fee and they are still using unconventional spaces from theaters to churches to pubs to university lecture halls to audience living rooms, even supposedly a double-decker bus at one point and a public toilet. This year's Fringe, which runs until the 26th, is scheduled to include more than 3,300 productions, theater, music, comedy, circus acts, all the things you mentioned. With 51,446 individual performances held in 262 venues. Did you say 51,000, Carla? Yeah, because if you have 3,300 productions and then they, you know, it goes on for three weeks and all that. And last year, there were nearly two and a half million tickets issued throughout the month. And when it comes to ticket events, only the Olympics and the World Cup are larger. In addition to the actors you mentioned, the Fringe is given a boost to a variety of theater and television productions. Most recently, the Netflix hits Baby Reindeer, something I've not watched yet. I don't know if you've seen it. And that began as a one-man show at the Fringe in 2019. And Phoebe Waller Bridge performed Fleebag for the first time in 2013 at the Fringe. So there's lots of things that are not surprising. Those numbers, great stuff should come out of it and a lot of weird stuff as well. The question that puzzles me is how a French goer decides which of the more than 3,000 events to attend. There, of course, we've got an app for that. There is, you know, an online program and you can sort it, and I've been playing with it for the last few days. You can sort it by show or performer or category or venue or date. And there's this official Fringe app, which also has this shake to search function. And apparently if you shake your phone, it suggests random shows as well. So if you just want to just want to go random for the Fringe, you can do this as well. I am, as you know, a very organized person. So I tend to rely on the critics to curate my experiences in our researcher. Halak opens Johnson gathered several what to see on the Fringe list of what are appetites and what she found is not only where there are not a lot of big headliners, there was very little overlap between the lists, which tells you once again a lot about the eye of the beholder Fringe experiences. So I went through these lists that she came up with and I also played with the Fringe online. I like musicals. I like music. So I went for the musicals, most of them. One of the things I'm not sure this is a musical, Weather Girl by the producers of Fleabag and Baby Rain Deer. And this is how they describe it. Smile while it burns. Stacy is a California Weather Girl, an over-sexed and underpaid harbinger of our dying planet. But today, her regular routine of wildfires, Prosecco and teeth whitening descends into a scorched earth catastrophe before she discovers something that will save us all. A dazzling rampage into the soul of American strangeness. So that's Weather Girl. There are two, count them two musicals based on the Gwyneth Paltrow ski crash trial. Gwyneth goes skiing and Gwyneth goes skiing, I wish you well. There's Beowulf the Musical. There's the bloody ballad of Betty Davis under musicals and opera's horror musical theater. What if Betty Davis were a witch? Then there's the emu war, a new musical. In 1932, thousands of World War I veterans went to war with Australia's emu population to turn the app back into an agrarian paradise. Inspired by two events, this new comedy musical showcases the futility of human hubris against thousands of six foot tall birds. So Betty Davis, a witch and emu is left in there. And then of course, two separate Gwyneth Paltrow ski, the horror, the humanity of Gwyneth Paltrow. I don't know where to begin, Carla. Although I do want to see the Beowulf the Musical. So I'm going to mark that down. We will put on our show notes page the link that you mentioned, which is for the, I guess, the app you download to try to get started somewhere? Yeah. There's an app and there's also just an online tool that you can search by children and musicals and whatever it is you want to look for. I just had an enormous amount of fun looking at these descriptions. That's great. I mean, anybody who's been to an arts festival of this nature, I've been to smaller ones in the Czech Republic and then in the States for that matter. And there's a lot of fun. And it's just the discovery aspect in some cases and the stumbling upon things. That's great too. But yeah, it would be advised to sort of check out what's the line up before you go, given the vastness of this one. Or you can just shake. Or you can shake yourself or your phone. Let the gods tell you where to go. Carla, I want to take us to another topic that we've discussed repeatedly on this podcast, which is Russia's detention of American journalists and other nationals, because there's some breaking news that we teased at the top of this podcast. It includes detained journalist Evan Gishkovich and Ausu Karmashiva. But I wanted to toss it to you to give us a sense of where this stands at this point. Well, Bob, the news is still coming through. But as we were typing the podcast on Thursday, this is a very complex multi-country prisoner swap with the Russians involving 24 people. That is freed our colleague Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gishkovich, as you said, also Ausu Karmashiva from RFERL, who we've spoken about quite a lot. So we're thrilled about this. Also reportedly freed all whale and a former US Marine who was arrested in 2018. Russian dissident Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Karamurza, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post-Appinions contributor, who is out as well. This is all really good news, Oleg Orlov, the co-chairman of Memorial, which is a Russian human rights group. And German national Rico Krieger, who had been sentenced to death for "terrorism" and Belarus, very obviously, a protector of Russia. What did the Russians get in exchange? We haven't gotten the full list yet, but supposedly they've gotten eight people in exchange for the 16. Germany released a Vadim Krasikov, who was a Russian convicted of murdering a Chechen former separatist fighter in Berlin. Putin had made very clear this to someone he wanted back. And the United States released a hacker, a lot of stuff, Kiyushin, and two others whose name we do not yet have. And supposedly Slovenia, Poland, and Norway have also released several accused Russian spies. So we know that in total there are 22 journalists jailed in Russia in addition to Evan. So not everyone is out. We have to remember lots of other people who are in jail. But right now, this is very good news. Evan and Alsu are out. Vladimir is out. And there's lots of other people who still have to be freed, but extraordinarily good news for a change. So it's being called the biggest prisoner swap of this nature since the Cold War. The previous biggest one was in 2010, where people like Anna Chapman were among those released to the Russian Anna Chapman. But this is a bigger in scale. And in our previous discussions, Kyle, we had talked about the complicated nature of pulling off something like this because of it's not just a straight US Russia. And it looks like seven or so countries involved really extraordinarily complex and the kind of anatomy of the deal I'm sure will be coming out in days to come. But I find that fascinating. The question of whether or not this kind of thing is going to continue in terms of seizing people in Russia in particular remains to be seen. But as you say, the first human reaction is to be really relieved at these releases and all these names that we've talked about and been concerned about for so long. And you have to sort of wonder why Putin was willing to do this. I mean, the relations are so incredibly bad now between Putin and the West and particularly between Putin and the Biden administration. Former President Trump has been going around saying that Putin was going to do him the favor and it was going to do it for him. And he was going to give nothing to get Evan Gershowt's back. But this is analysis for another day right now. Let's just celebrate the freeing of our colleagues of extraordinary people who were taking hostage for doing their jobs. And yes, a price was paid and there will be critics who say that some of the people who were freed in exchange shouldn't have been freed. But that's the nature of these sort of swaps. And Evan is free and also is free and Karamurs is free. And these are all people who were extraordinary people and thank God they're free. So, and those three in particular, there was a great deal of dedicated continued campaigning on their behalf, which is worth noting most returnals extraordinary. We have Evan R.F.E.R.L. for Alsoo to name a couple. Alsoo's family had just passed through the United States and appeared on several media talking about her case as well. So this kind of thing is important. Who knows how it filters back to the Kremlin, but it is important. Yes. So a little bit of good news today. All right, Carla, we've talked ourselves into the audience figure of the week part of the podcast and that ding that you wait for with great expectation every week, Carla. My favorite thing. This is the figure that listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR underscore orgs Instagram story. This week on intriguing selection, Wagner commander killed in Molly. Carla, can you tell us what we should know about this case? So, you know, I probably going to tell you more about what we don't know about this, but it is a reminder of what the Russians have taken on in Molly and other countries in Africa. And especially at a time when they're pretty overstretched in Ukraine late last week, an unknown number of Wagner fighters and Wagner, talked about this so much before, but Progosians, mercenaries, they are now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian defense ministry. Anyway, these Wagner fighters and a detachment of Molly and military forces were attacked in the desert near the border with Algeria. And the attack has been claimed by both the permanent strategic framework for peace security and development, which is a to our separatist group, and an al-Qaeda affiliate JNIM. And the casualty numbers are also really murky. Reportedly, some 50 to 80 Russians were killed and around 15 captured. We've no idea the number of Molly and soldiers were killed or captured. This Wagner 13th Brigade commander, Sergei Chevchenko, was among those reportedly killed. And there's also reports that a incredibly well-known Russian military blogger Nikita Fedyanin from the Grey Zone was also supposedly killed in this attack. The JNIM has been increasing activities in Northern Molly for quite a while in other parts of Africa with five attacks just in the last week. They also attacked in Molly and Niger, Burkina Faso and in Togo. And in January, the Russian Debbie Defense Minister announced that what they're now calling the Africa Corps, not the Wagner group, but that's the Wagner forces, planned to increase its strength in Molly from 100 to 300 personnel, which is the slippery slope there. So they're getting deeper involved, and they're obviously not finding a particularly easy time of it in Molly. The question is why they're doing it? Why are they so deeply getting more deeply involved in Molly? The Kremlin is used. Wagner's a proxy force to challenge the West, to challenge the French who were kicked out when the military took over in Molly in exchange for Wagner. There have been reports as well that these countries have been used as trans-shipment for military arms to Ukraine in a variety of other reasons, but given however stretch they are in Ukraine, if they keep losing forces, certainly at that large number, I'm wondering if they're going to start questioning the wisdom of this Africa Corps deployment. Yeah, I think that's for me a huge question. This seems to be a even a partial number of the people killed as comes to light. That's a big setback for any country, and especially your country that has big aspirations, you know, in this part of Africa where we have talked about the decline of democracy and the growing incidence of coups and the fact that after coups, these countries tend to be receptive to messaging from Russia and China, which is less about, you know, holding their feet to the fire on democratic norms and rule of law, but more like, you know, being a bit transactional. So it'll be very interesting to see how much Russia decides this is worth it or not to be involved in their Africa Corps. Indeed. And that's our look at the world next week. Here are some other stories to keep an eye on. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken wraps up his 10 day trip to Asia. The EU Artificial Intelligence Act enters into force and Poland marks the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprisings against Nazi occupation. Please subscribe to the world next week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to reach out, please email us at twnw@cfr.org. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for the world next week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on the world next week are silly those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Today's program is produced by Esther Fang, with director of podcasting Gabriel Sierra. And special thanks to Helena Copins-Johnson and Emily Hallsmith for their research assistance. You guys, I'm sure you found lots of things you want to watch at the French. Thanks for doing that. Our theme music is provided by Marcus Zacharria. And this is Carla Robinson, thanks so long. And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye, and check out the fringe. 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