Last week we asked whether the greater threat was being abandoned by Washington or used by it. This week supplies the other half. The Gulf, attacked in a war it neither started nor was consulted on, has stopped waiting and begun assembling its own security. Africa, meanwhile, was handed a record Ebola emergency and a map with Nigeria landlocked in the Sahara. The question tonight is not who abandoned whom. It is who is building, and who is still waiting.
The record — the Gulf
- The warning
- Reuters reports, on five sources, that Iran warned Gulf states through Riyadh and Doha that any fresh American strike would be answered against refineries, grids, water infrastructure and oil fields.
- 28 July
- President Trump threatens Iran's energy network. On 2 August he says he had cancelled the attack, subject to a rapid deal.
- 30 July
- Riyadh convenes representatives of forty-three countries and announces a fourteen-state maritime coalition for the Bab al-Mandeb, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
- February
- Gulf air defences held. The political architecture around them did not.
From consuming security to producing it
For fifty years the Gulf bought protection. It was attacked anyway, in a war it neither started nor was consulted on. What is happening now is not a complaint about that; it is a substitution. Forty-three countries in a room, a fourteen-state maritime coalition, a security architecture assembled by the states that need it rather than granted by the state that used to supply it.
The R4 — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan — is a working concert of medium powers, convening without anyone's permission. That is the Prof's own thesis of forty years ago, being tested in real time, by other people.
The record — Africa
- Ebola
- WHO's figures to 30 July: 3,605 confirmed cases and 1,587 deaths in the DRC, a 44 per cent fatality rate across five provinces — the largest outbreak in that country's history and the second largest ever recorded.
- The strain
- Bundibugyo. The licensed vaccine and therapeutics were certified against Zaire ebolavirus, so the tools exist — but not for this virus.
- The map
- At AIDS 2026 in Rio, a State Department slide presenting its new bilateral health agreements put Nigeria in the Sahara, Mozambique in the Horn and Côte d'Ivoire in southern Africa. Reuters found an AI watermark on the image; the department called it an unfortunate error.
An emergency, and a map
Set the two beside each other. The continent's largest-ever Ebola emergency in one country's history, against a strain the existing vaccine was not certified for. And a slide, presented at an international conference, that could not locate Nigeria on the continent it was making agreements about.
The error is not the story. What the error reveals about the attention behind the agreements is.
Riyadh convened forty-three countries in a fortnight. What has the African Union convened?The question on the table
The counter-example
Rabat is the one African capital currently holding real leverage over a European one: Morocco has made Europe's border policy depend on Moroccan enforcement. Whether that is statecraft to admire or a hostage arrangement that will cost Rabat later is exactly the sort of question this panel exists to argue about.
The spine of the conversation
- Riyadh convened forty-three countries in a fortnight. What has the African Union convened?
- Morocco has made Europe's border policy depend on Moroccan enforcement. Statecraft to admire, or a hostage arrangement that will cost Rabat later?
- If Washington will now do law-enforcement business with Beijing and Moscow, what remains of the moral framework African states keep being lectured with?
The flow of the hour
After the Prof's opening frame: the Gulf's turn from consuming security to producing it; then Africa's version of the same test — Ebola, the health agreements and the map, with Ceuta as the counter-example; then the reliability question — the FBI's new working groups with Chinese and Russian police, the contested Gaza disarmament announcement, and the AI models that reached out of their own test environments. A moderated audience Q&A closes.
This briefing accompanies Session 282 of thruMYeyes with Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, a Syncterface Media production. It is published ahead of the session; figures are as reported at the time of writing.