# Saturday, October 3, 2026

Global Politics · Sun, 04 Oct 2026 01:24:54 GMT · 6:12

Maya: Good evening, and welcome to Global Politics, the evening edition for Saturday, October third, twenty twenty-six. I'm Maya.
Devon: And I'm Devon. It has been a long day in world politics, so let's get straight to the biggest development. The Strait of Hormuz is shut again, and the war between the United States and Iran just took another dangerous turn.
Maya: That's right. According to the BBC's live coverage today, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Navy said the strait will stay closed until the United States lifts its blockade of Iranian ports. Iran had briefly reopened the waterway yesterday, but by this evening it was closed again.
Devon: And it is not just a standoff over the shipping lane. The Institute for the Study of War says Iran's navy likely attacked two tankers in the strait on October second, and maritime monitors count six attacks on vessels there since late September. That is the sharpest spike in shipping attacks in weeks.
Maya: Meanwhile the pressure is building on both sides. American Central Command says it has forced twenty-three ships to turn around near the strait since the blockade began, claiming it has completely halted sea trade going in and out of Iran.
Devon: President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that quote, very good conversations, are happening with Iran, but added that the United States will not be blackmailed over the waterway. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking in Paris, said reports that Iran wants to make tolls on the strait permanent are quote, unacceptable. He also said he expects the war to end in quote, weeks, not months.
Maya: Then came the accusation that could escalate everything. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Israel struck two of Iran's largest steel factories, a power plant, and civilian nuclear sites, including the Arak heavy water facility. He said Israel acted in coordination with the United States, and promised Iran would exact quote, a heavy price. The Israeli military has confirmed striking the Arak site.
Devon: Why does all of this matter? About a fifth of the world's oil moves through Hormuz, so every closure announcement pushes energy prices higher. And with a third American carrier group steaming toward the region, the risk of a wider confrontation keeps growing.
Maya: Turning now to Brazil, where the most watched election in Latin America goes to the polls tomorrow. Al Jazeera reports that eighty-year-old President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces forty-five-year-old Senator Flávio Bolsonaro in a deeply polarized first round.
Devon: Voting opens at eight A M and closes at five P M, Brasilia time, with nearly one hundred sixty million Brazilians casting ballots on electronic voting machines. A poll released today gives Lula forty-three percent and Bolsonaro thirty-eight. Counting only valid votes, it is forty-seven point eight to forty-two point one. Neither man reaches fifty percent, so a runoff on October twenty-fifth is now widely expected.
Maya: The Guardian reports the stakes go well beyond Brazil. Bolsonaro has promised close cooperation with Washington and offered Brazil's rare earth minerals to help break America's dependence on China, while Lula has pushed back against alignment with the Trump administration's regional security coalition.
Devon: Here is what to watch. Polls close at five P M Brasilia time, which is one P M on the Pacific coast. And because Brazil counts electronically, the first results should come fast tomorrow evening.
Maya: Now to the Horn of Africa, where a diplomatic rupture is deepening by the hour. Reuters reports that Ethiopia closed its embassy in Eritrea on Thursday and expelled ten Eritrean diplomats, and Eritrea answered by severing all diplomatic relations with Ethiopia.
Devon: The break came hours after explosions, believed to be drone strikes, were heard near Ethiopia's military headquarters in Addis Ababa. A source linked to the opposition told Reuters it carried out the strikes, which would be the first known drone attack on the capital by anti-government forces.
Maya: Ethiopia also expelled an Egyptian diplomat, and Cairo retaliated in kind. Meanwhile the BBC reports at least fifty-two civilians were killed in three days of fighting in the north, where federal troops are advancing toward the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle. The African Union has urged all sides to show maximum restraint.
Devon: This reverses the rapprochement that won Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize in twenty eighteen, and it is the biggest escalation of fighting since the civil war of twenty twenty to twenty twenty-two. With Eritrea, Egypt, and Sudan all drawn in, the fear now is a wider regional conflict.
Maya: To Britain now, where two Iranian men appeared in a London court this morning over an alleged bomb plot against Manchester's Jewish community. CNN reports that Salam Ahmadyan, thirty-six, and Rahman Salehi, thirty-four, are accused of planning a chlorine bomb attack on the Jewish Museum and Heaton Park Synagogue, directed by an Iranian national believed to be operating from inside Iran.
Devon: Prosecutors say the pair carried out hostile reconnaissance and were arrested on September twentieth, on the eve of Yom Kippur. Both were remanded into custody to appear at the Old Bailey on October twenty-third. It comes almost exactly one year after a terrorist attack at that same synagogue killed two worshippers, Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby.
Maya: And finally, on the energy front, NPR reports that the Group of Seven agreed Friday to release one hundred million barrels of oil from emergency reserves over four months, coordinated by the International Energy Agency, with a front-loaded diesel release in the first twenty days.
Devon: That decision came after President Trump threatened to ban American diesel exports. French President Emmanuel Macron called such a ban catastrophic, since France alone uses six hundred thousand barrels of diesel a day. American diesel hit a record six dollars and fifty-two cents a gallon last month, and with the midterm elections exactly one month away, energy prices are becoming the defining domestic issue.
Maya: So here is what we are watching overnight and tomorrow. In Brazil, first-round results start arriving tomorrow evening, Pacific time. In the Middle East, the question is whether Iran answers those Israeli strikes, and whether any ship dares to transit Hormuz. And in the Horn of Africa, all eyes are on whether the fighting spreads further.
Devon: That is it for the evening edition. Maya and I will be back tomorrow morning with Brazil's first-round results and everything else the night brings.
Maya: Good night, and thanks for listening.