Egyptian port attacked by unidentified drone as Middle East fighting continues

Expanded war: Egyptian authorities “said Thursday that the country had come under attack, blaming an explosion at one of its ports the previous day on an unidentified drone,” per The New York Times. “Earlier, Saudi Arabia also acknowledged direct involvement in the war for the first time, after conducting joint strikes with U.S. forces on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq on Wednesday.”

Fighting between the U.S. and Iran shows no signs of slowing or stopping, and may even be heating up: “U.S. Central Command said it carried out a two-hour operation launched at midnight targeting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ military command centres and drone facilities, aiming ‘to further diminish threats posed by Iran and its proxies to American forces, commercial shipping, and neighbouring Gulf countries,'” reports Reuters. “Iran’s state media reported that three people were killed in U.S. strikes on Qeshm Island.”

Meanwhile, Iran claims several U.S. service members were killed in an attack at the Al-Azraq Air Base in Jordan, though no details have been released as of yet. They also claim to have destroyed several F-35 fighter jets.

In Egypt, a drone hit the “floating storage tanker Energos Winter, causing a fire that spread to another vessel, Gaslog Salem,” per Reuters. Energos Winter is owned by a U.S.-based firm. It’s not clear who is responsible for that attack, which happened in the Damietta port, nor has Egypt signaled whether they intend to retaliate.

“The fighting this week ended a dayslong pause in direct attacks between the United States and Iran and ensnared an expanding list of U.S. allies,” reports the Times. “Since the U.S.-Iranian cease-fire collapsed earlier this month, there have been repeated attacks on several countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, but Wednesday’s drone attack on the port of Damietta was the first reported to have hit Egypt.”

Scenes from New York: As mentioned yesterday, I’m super excited to start writing my book, City Without Children. I’ll try to minimally annoy readers of this newsletter with updates, but the above link will be where I talk about book-specific things: updates, presale links, risk/parenting/NYC in the news, and cool tidbits that must get left on the cutting-room floor (but belong published somewhere). I don’t know why exactly I thought my year of grief would be a great time to write this newsletter, write a whole new book, and start homeschooling my son (you didn’t think I’d turn him over to the state, did you?). But let’s get at it, shall we?

QUICK HITS

• Big feature in…The New York Times? On Reihan Salam and the Manhattan Institute, the good people standing athwart the New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani agenda yelling, “stop.”
• “In a late-June meeting with more than a dozen of the nation’s top defense technology firms, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had an urgent message: The Pentagon needed their help to rapidly replenish America’s weapons arsenal,” reports The Washington Post. “The meeting, several details of which were previously unreported, underscores a pivotal shift in the U.S. defense industry. With the Iran war consuming vast quantities of precision munitions and relying less on ground troops or drone warfare, the Pentagon is leaning on venture-backed start-ups to solve one of its most pressing problems: rebuilding America’s weapons stockpiles at speed.”
• “Kevin Warsh has staked his chairmanship on the premise that a quieter Federal Reserve gets a cleaner read on what investors think. On Wednesday, he said it was working,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “At a news conference after the Fed held interest rates steady, he pointed to how nominal and inflation-adjusted Treasury yields had risen since his debut meeting in June, among the largest moves between meetings in two decades. He said markets were responding to the economy rather than to the Fed, which was evidence that his pullback from doling out guidance was working. Pressed later on why he hadn’t acted on his inflation pledge by raising rates, he suggested those higher borrowing costs were doing some of the work of a rate increase the Fed hadn’t had to make. Over the next hour, investors said otherwise. The 30-year bond yield jumped to 5.2%, the dollar weakened and stocks fell—a combination that points to worry about inflation rather than confidence in growth. Market-based measures of expected inflation over coming years rose, said Mark Cabana, head of U.S. rates strategy at Bank of America.”
• Kinda appreciate this and think we need more of it:

Reporting live on the scene from Nantucket’s culture wars. pic.twitter.com/I0NB8VVPde

— Sophie Vershbow (@svershbow) July 29, 2026