Iranian government: Iranian foreign minister Araghchi and Iraqi foreign minister Fouad Hussein discussed latest regional developments following a US military strike on Iran, Washington’s repeated violations of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, and Iran’s responses to those actions.

Iranian sources said US warplanes struck parts of southern Qeshm Island on July 19, with explosions heard at about 03:38 and again at 06:10 local time. Residents reported 3–5 missiles; Iranian authorities have reached the affected areas to assess damage. US Central Command said on July 18 it had completed another round of airstrikes at 23:30 ET (07:00 Iran time, July 19).

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference on July 18, 2026, futurist Kevin Kelly said if token (inference) costs become a primary concern, Chinese open-source models would gain an advantage. He warned that while token costs are mostly ignored today, persistent high token consumption will make cost critical; a model delivering inference at one-tenth the cost of Anthropic would be disruptive. Kelly added open-source ecosystems still need sizable funding to operate because they are less commercially profitable than closed-source models and building large models requires massive capital.