Person Decapitated in Apparent Jihadist Attack in France

France has begun a terrorism investigation after two men drove a car into a gas company facility near Lyon this morning, setting off an explosion. Reportedly, one person was found decapitated with Arabic written on the disembodied head and the attackers were carrying banners with Arabic script. According to a local French paper, one of the attackers might have already been known to French intelligence. The Associated Press reports that one of the attackers has been arrested, though it is unclear if this is the same person.

European Union to Resettle 60,000 Refugees

The European Union agreed a new plan to resettle 40,000 North African migrant refugees and 20,000 Syrian refugees. However, countries will divide the quotas on a volunteer basis, which some European politicians worry could undermine the policy. The United Nations called the plan an “important step,” but said more must be done to address the causes of Europe’s influx of refugees.

Headlines

• Al-Sadeq Mosque, a Shia mosque in Kuwait City, Kuwait, was bombed during Friday prayers.

• The Islamic State’s new assault on Kobane, which began yesterday, has already killed 146 civilians, making it the second-largest civilian massacre conducted by the terrorist group.

• The United States and Egypt will hold a strategic dialogue at the end of July, according to the office of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

• A month after agreeing to the principles of the accord and two years after recognizing Palestine as a state, the Vatican and Palestine formally signed a treaty on the Roman Catholic Church’s activity in Palestinian territory.

• A flotilla hoping to push through the Israeli blockade of Gaza with humanitarian aid has set sail from Crete.

Arguments and Analysis

“Iranian breakout timelines in a comprehensive nuclear deal” (Richard Nephew, Markaz)

“However, even a useful construct can be taken too far. For starters, most breakout scenarios focus on the time needed for Iran to acquire enough nuclear material of sufficient potency for one nuclear weapon. This over-simplification of breakout ignores the time required to make that nuclear material usable in a bomb — gas or powdered uranium doesn’t do much good — and also assumes that Iran would be mad enough to risk military strikes in order to produce one nuclear weapon. Nuclear deterrence theory has long taught that the most precarious situation for any nuclear weapons aspirant is the possession of one rudimentary device, as the state automatically becomes a target for preemptive military strikes without having a secure second strike capability. Still, whether a nuclear breakout with one bomb’s worth of nuclear material is realistic, it is the metric of merit in today’s debate.”

“How Iraq is Driving Itself to Hunger” (Hadi Fathallah, Sada)

“In June 2014, with the Islamic State’s (IS) incursion into Salahuddin, Nineveh, Kirkuk, and Anbar — the breadbasket governorates comprising Iraq’s cereal belt — the country lost the majority of its annual wheat and barley harvests from these areas, which combined contributed over one-third of Iraq’s cereal production. About 1 million tons of wheat was lost in total. Moreover, of the harvest stored in government silos, much was expropriated by IS and transferred to Syria, and what the farmers kept was confiscated, bought at depressed prices, or left to rot. The increasing number of IDPs, now estimated at around 3 million, together with about 250,000 refugees from Syria, has put an extra strain on the food supply and remaining strategic reserves in Iraq.”

-J. Dana Stuster

PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP/Getty Images