Understand conflicts beyond the news cycle.

• Iran–Gulf
  Saudi Arabia is moving roughly a million barrels a day more through Hormuz than in August, under United States naval escort, for transfer off Sohar. That is a government routing around an interruption, not a market deciding the water is safe — no cover is being written, and total exports remain down over seventy per cent.

  This module opens on the strait every week, and this week the strait's three accesses moved in three different directions at once.

  2026-09-20 Confidence: Moderate

• Sahel
  Dioura fell on 10 September and entered the record this week: a toll reported above a hundred soldiers and five Africa Corps personnel, no reinforcements sent, the camp abandoned eight days later. State sustainment broadly still works; re-establishment after loss is what does not happen — the finding the Analytical Note of 19 September, "Mali's regeneration problem", narrows to its defensible core.

  Dioura's camp has been attacked at least four times since 2019 — raided that year, overrun in 2023, taken and looted in May 2025 — and on each of those occasions the attackers left and the state came back.

  2026-09-20 Confidence: Moderate

• Ukraine–Russia
  The act signed on 18 September authorises tariffs of up to 100 per cent on the largest buyers of Russian oil and gas, at the president's discretion and waivable at will. The authority now exists and no designation has been made, which makes it leverage before it is a regime.

  What is new is the instrument, not the policy. Sanctions on Russian energy have until now acted on Russia, on the vessels that move the oil or on the banks that clear it; this one acts on the buyers, and it does so through tariffs rather than through the financial system.

  2026-09-20 Confidence: High

• Syria
  Four Russian vessels reached Tartous on 7 September, reported this week, in the first resupply since the August basing deal. Satellite imagery verified the port call; the reported ammunition cargo was not verified. One run is not a cycle, and the question now turns on whether a second follows.

  A memorandum describes an intention; a port call describes a practice, and the two have now been laid beside each other. A joint training centre does not require a resupply run by a destroyer, an oiler and a sanctioned cargo ship with transponders off — that is the behaviour of a supply line.

  2026-09-20 Confidence: Moderate

• Taiwan Strait
  HIMARS, anti-ship and air-defence missiles and more than one type of attack drone fired at Jiupeng over three days to 18 September. No cross-service data path, common fire-control picture or retasking decision was described, so the integration the week's language implies remains unestablished.

  The attractive reading of this exercise is that the capability is in the connection rather than the inventory, and this module treats that as a good question and not as a conclusion.

  2026-09-20 Confidence: Moderate

Also reviewed this week Caucasus · NATO Eastern Flank

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1. 01

   Vigil records what changed

   Every published area is reviewed on its stated cadence — weekly — and the findings are published as a dated brief, including the weeks where the finding is that nothing material changed.

2. 02

   It connects that change to the standing system

   A development is linked back to the actors, relationships, forces, geography, logistics, economic channels, humanitarian conditions, campaigns and events the area already runs through — so it is read against the system it enters rather than on its own.

3. 03

   It shows what the assessment rests on

   Sources, dates, confidence grades, claim states, stated information gaps and review status travel with the record and the assessment — including where Vigil does not know.

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