By Alexandra Sharp
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at disputed Venezuelan election results, the threat of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, and Russian Wagner Group deaths in Mali.
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‘The World’s Watching’
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (left) shakes hands with National Electoral Council President Elvis Amoroso during his proclamation in Caracas on July 29.Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images
Venezuela’s government-controlled National Electoral Council declared on Monday that incumbent President Nicolás Maduro won a third term in Sunday’s presidential election. With 80 percent of voting stations counted, the country’s election commission claimed that Maduro received 51 percent of the vote, whereas main opposition candidate Edmundo González secured just 44 percent.
Opposition leaders and other nations, however, have denounced the results as “impossible” and likely false. “We won, and the whole world knows it,” popular opposition icon María Corina Machado told reporters in the capital, Caracas, on Monday. Machado—who was set to run against Maduro before Venezuela’s highest court barred her from running in January—asserted that González won 70 percent of the vote compared to Maduro’s 30 percent.
There are “serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday. Many Latin American countries took similar stances, with Chilean President Gabriel Boric posting on X that “The Maduro regime must understand that the results they have published are difficult to believe.”
Locals reported voting irregularities across Venezuela on Sunday. Officials at multiple polling places—including at one of the largest voting stations in the capital, where around 15,000 people were eligible to vote—refused to release printouts verifying the National Electoral Council’s digital count. Authorities with the election council delayed releasing the results for six hours without a clear reason as to why. And incidents of intimidation were recorded at several polling stations, with individuals blocking access to voting centers and some Venezuelans being attacked while waiting in line.
Ahead of the election, the Maduro government also took actions seen as intended to skew the vote in his favor, including arresting members of the Machado-González campaign and imposing strict voting restrictions on Venezuelans living abroad.
This is not the first time that Maduro’s regime has been suspected of tampering with an election. A software company involved in voting on the country’s 2017 constitutional referendum accused Maduro’s administration of altering at least 1 million votes to declare its passage. And on Monday, Maduro accused unidentified foreign entities (without evidence) of once again trying to hack the nation’s voting system.
If Maduro were to relinquish control, he could end up in prison. The United States has indicted Maduro on drug trafficking and terrorism charges, and the International Criminal Court is investigating his regime for crimes against humanity. Instability in Venezuela could also worsen depending on if (and how) Maduro decides to crack down on the opposition. Since Maduro first took office in 2013, oil prices have plummeted, basic goods have faced widespread shortages, inflation has risen by 130,000 percent, and nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country.
Last October, the Biden administration lifted several sanctions on Venezuela but then reimposed some of them after Maduro banned Machado from running. It is unclear how Washington will respond to Maduro’s latest effort to maintain power. “We’re watching, the world’s watching,” U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Monday. But he added: “We’re going to hold our judgment until we see the actual tabulation of the results.”
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Today’s Most Read
The World This Week
Tuesday, July 30: Masoud Pezeshkian is sworn in as Iran’s new president.
Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin hold 2+2 talks with Philippine Foreign Minister Enrique Manalo and Defense Minister Gilbert Teodoro.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong visits South Korea.
Wednesday, July 31: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni concludes her four-day trip to China.
Myanmar’s state of emergency, imposed following its February 2021 military coup, is set to expire.
Thursday, Aug. 1: The OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee is expected to convene.
Friday, Aug. 2: Bulgaria concludes hosting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Saturday, Aug. 3: Blinken concludes his weekslong Asia trip, where he visited Vietnam, Laos, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Mongolia.
The six-month cease-fire between the Colombian government and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) insurgent group is set to expire.
What We’re Following
Approaching an “all-out war.” U.S. officials cautioned Israel on Monday against worsening its conflict against Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militant group in Lebanon, while also reiterating Israel’s right to defend itself. On Saturday, a rocket launched from Lebanon killed 12 children playing soccer in Majdal Shams, a town in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that is home to mostly ethnic Druze. This was the deadliest attack on Israel or Israeli-controlled territory since Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
The United States and Israel blamed Hezbollah for the attack, with the Israeli military saying Hezbollah is the only group in Lebanon that possesses the type of Iranian-made weapon used in the strike. Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the attack.
Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in cross-border attacks on a near-daily basis since the Israel-Hamas war began almost 10 months ago, but experts have long feared that a miscalculation or deadly incident like Saturday’s attack could tip the conflict into full-scale war. “We are approaching the moment of an all-out war against Hezbollah,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday. “The response to this event will be accordingly.”
Israel’s national security cabinet has authorized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to decide the timing and scale of the country’s response, and diplomatic efforts by the United States and other countries to try to limit the escalation are underway.
With Hezbollah believed to have at least 150,000 missiles and rockets pointed at Israel, a war could devastate both nations. “If there will be a comprehensive all-out war between us and Hezbollah, there will not be Hezbollah and probably not Lebanon after it,” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Foreign Policy earlier this month. “But [Israel] will also suffer a great deal, more than we have suffered up until now in all of the different wars that we had.”
Wagner losses. Russia’s Wagner Group acknowledged on Monday that ethnic Tuareg rebels seeking autonomy in Mali killed dozens of Russian mercenaries in the African country last week. The mercenary group’s 13th brigade sustained heavy losses, including the death of brigade leader Sergei Shevchenko, in what is believed to be one of the deadliest attacks on Russian personnel in Africa since the Wagner Group first arrived on the continent in 2017.
It is unclear how many Wagner members were killed in the attack, which took place near Mali’s border with Algeria. A Tuareg commander said 54 Wagner fighters were killed, though the Malian government appeared to downplay the incident. On Monday, the Kyiv Post published an exclusive photo showing Tuareg forces posing with a Ukrainian flag in an apparent endorsement of Kyiv over Moscow. Foreign Policy could not independently verify the photo.
Russia’s Wagner Group has been accused of “destabilizing” the region by backing kleptocratic regimes in exchange for critical resources and fomenting human rights abuses on the continent. Several African governments have since expressed regret over giving Wagner access to their nations, FP’s Jack Detsch reported last September.
ANC severs Zuma ties. South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party expelled former President Jacob Zuma on Monday. “His platform is dangerous, appeals to extremist instincts in our body politic, and riles up a political base that may foment social unrest,” ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said.
Zuma has clashed with the party since a series of corruption scandals forced him to resign from office in 2018. During South Africa’s general election in May, Zuma backed the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party to run for reelection despite “claiming that he had not severed his membership,” Mbalula said. MK’s surprisingly strong electoral performance helped prevent the ANC from securing an absolute majority in parliament for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994. The MK is now South Africa’s leading opposition party, with 58 out of 400 seats.
Odds and Ends
Around the world, millions of people are tuning in to the Olympics, wondering if they could ever achieve such athleticism. (Speaking for myself, that likelihood is extremely low.) But six astronauts aboard the International Space Station are giving it a try. As opening ceremonies kicked off in Paris last Friday, the astronauts posted a video showing off their weightlifting, running, and flipping skills. “We, of course, have had the benefits of weightlessness,” NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick said. “We can’t imagine how hard this must be to be such a world-class athlete doing your sports under actual gravity.”
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