The Trigger of Everything.

Key ingredients of life.

---

1. The world will experience an “increasingly erratic” water cycle as climate change drives new patterns of both extreme flooding and drought across the globe, the World Meteorological Organization has forecast. The agency said hydrological cycles were “spinning out of balance” and that more robust monitoring systems were needed, particularly in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, as it released a report on global water patterns in 2022. Droughts, extreme rainfall and melting snow and glaciers threatened long-term water security, the WMO said, underscoring the need for monitoring apparatus and better sharing of cross-border data on water patterns. (Sources: public.wmo.int, ft.com)

---

2. Saturday’s attack on Israel by Hamas militants, who killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped many others back to the Gaza Strip, has upended fundamental assumptions about the Middle East. Now, as Israel, its enemies and its main partner, the U.S., respond to these shocking events, the new—and untested—rules of the game risk turning the bloody confrontation between Israel and Hamas into a much wider war. Israel’s expected land operation against Hamas in Gaza, and the reaction to it by Iran and its group of allied Islamist militias around the region, could determine the new balance of power in the Middle East and the new set of understandings about the region’s future. (Source: wsj.com)

---

3. Hamas’s attack on Israel is complicating an already treacherous geopolitical outlook for President Biden as he ramps up his campaign for reelection next year. The prospect of months of bloody battle is certain to keep in focus the difficult trade-offs and unfulfilled ambitions Biden faces in the Middle East — notably Saudi-Israeli normalization — at a time when he would prefer to highlight economic victories, infrastructure building and Republican disarray. Last month’s deal to secure the release of American detainees in Iran in exchange for $6 billion in revenue for Tehran — a long-time supporter of militant groups waging war against Israel — has become fodder for critics. Despite Biden’s full-throated support for Israel, in the recent past his administration kept Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who enjoyed a cozy relationship with former President Donald Trump, at arm’s length. The decision reflected both distaste for his government — the most right-wing in Israel’s history — and the complex nature of Biden’s base, which includes both a large bloc of urban Jewish voters as well as young liberals sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians. (Source: bloomberg.com)

---

4. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman discussed the war between Israel and Hamas in a call with Iran’s president, the first such conversation between the two leaders who normalized relations earlier this year. The crown prince, known as MBS, “underscored the Kingdom’s unwavering stance in standing up for the Palestinian cause” and support for comprehensive peace during his call with Ebrahim Raisi, according to a report by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. Iran’s state news agency said the two leaders “stressed the unity of the Islamic world,” adding that “they considered the crimes of the Zionist regime and the US’s green light the cause of the destructive insecurity.” (Source: bloomberg.com)