Morning Brief, Tuesday 18 August

Donald Trump let a 60-day negotiating window with Iran expire without an extension, then hardened the American line by saying Tehran should surrender rather than bargain. The memorandum signed in June had aimed to settle wider disputes, including Iran's nuclear programme, but the ceasefire around that effort had already fallen apart in July. Washington now says it will not extend the framework, while United States forces prepare further sanctions and maintain a naval blockade around the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that carried about 20% of global oil and liquefied-natural-gas shipments before the war.

Donald Trump also turned his anger on Oman, which has been talking directly with Tehran about restoring merchant shipping through the strait. Muscat and Tehran say they have mapped transit routes for vessels entering near Iran and exiting near Oman, but Donald Trump cast that diplomacy as obstruction and threatened military action against the sultanate.

That threat matters because Oman has often served as a quiet channel between Washington and Tehran, including during earlier nuclear diplomacy. Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Donald Trump to return to negotiations, but the White House instead framed the blockade as open-ended and argued that domestic oil production can cushion energy markets. The danger is not just another deadline missed; it is that Washington now treats a mediator as a target.

Jared Kushner moved from Cairo to Jerusalem after direct talks with Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya and a four-hour meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Nickolay Mladenov and Tony Blair. The American-led Board of Peace created working groups and said Israeli forces would not redeploy until Hamas fully disarmed and Gaza was demilitarised. A United States general would verify the process, while reconstruction money would stay blocked until weapons removal begins and tunnels are closed.

The plan immediately hit definitional trouble. The Board of Peace says disarmament covers light weapons, heavy weapons and all tunnels; Hamas officials say they accepted only storing heavy weapons under a United States-backed Palestinian technocratic body, contingent on Israeli forces halting strikes and withdrawing as new security forces deploy. Donald Trump said Israel should stop striking Gaza, but Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the roadmap as insufficient before Israel's October election. Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,265 people in Gaza since the October 2025 ceasefire began, according to the source summary, while Hamas and allied fighters killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages on 7 October 2023.

Domestic Israeli politics made the diplomatic task uglier. Itamar Ben Gvir called for nightly killings in Gaza and mass emigration of Palestinians, prompting German politician Jürgen Hardt to urge European Union sanctions against him.

Gaza's next deal will stand or fall on verbs, not slogans: disarm, withdraw, verify, rebuild.

Nvidia filed documents showing up to $105 billion in credit backing for an OpenAI-linked data-centre project in Pike County, Ohio. The guarantee is narrower than the $250 billion backstop discussed in July because it applies to residual value on completed structures, not direct rent. If OpenAI defaults, SB Energy must first try to relet or sell the facilities, and OpenAI must reimburse Nvidia for any guarantee payout. Nvidia will also invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy, joining SoftBank Group and OpenAI as the project ties finance, chips and energy supply into one stack.

The site sits on former United States Department of Energy land once used for uranium enrichment. SB Energy plans a 9.2-gigawatt natural-gas plant costing about $33 billion, while SoftBank and SB Energy will put more than $4 billion into regional utility networks. OpenAI signed a 20-year lease, with 800 megawatts planned for 2028, an initial phase of 4.25 gigawatts, and possible total capacity of 8 gigawatts by 2032. At full scale, the complex would consume electricity equivalent to about six million American homes.

Jensen Huang framed the deal as industrial infrastructure, not just another server farm.

OpenAI says the project will create 35,000 construction jobs and 2,500 permanent posts, plus local commitments worth $124 million. The political snag is visible already: a Gallup poll in March found more than 70% of Americans oppose data centres near their homes. The Ohio plan turns AI from a software race into a power-and-credit race, with households and balance sheets along for the ride.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo's latest Ebola outbreak has become the deadliest in the country's history, with 2,325 deaths and 4,945 confirmed cases reported by the national public-health institute. The outbreak has overtaken the 2018–2020 epidemic, which killed 2,299 people over more than two years. This one reached 2,000 infections in roughly two months, a speed that shows how much time the virus gained before officials declared the emergency in May.

The strain is Bundibugyo, a rarer species without approved vaccines or targeted treatments. Early patients were misdiagnosed, the first surveillance tests targeted the wrong strain, and samples sent to Kinshasa were mishandled. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said responders were still chasing a virus that had spread from near Mongbwalu, a mining town in Ituri, as early as January.

Transmission now spans six provinces, with children making up a quarter of confirmed cases and nearly a third of deaths. Armed groups in eastern Congo block access for health teams, workers have struck over unpaid wages, and the World Health Organization calculated in July that 80% of new cases were outside known contact chains. Airfinity estimated total infections could be five times the official figure. An epidemic that outruns diagnosis, security and pay packets can turn a local failure into a regional emergency.