Quotes of the Day:

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor." 

– Vince Lombardi

“One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.”

– Simone de Beauvoir

"When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm is all about."

– Haruki Marukami

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 16, 2024

2. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 16, 2024

3. CENTCOM: Iranian Weapons Seized in VBSS, Two SEALs Missing | SOF News

4. Arsenal of Autocracy: North Korea and Iran are arming Russia in Ukraine

5. With 'God's-eye view,' secretive surveillance flights keep close watch on Russia and Ukraine

6. US to relist Yemen's Houthis as specially designated global terrorists, AP sources say

7. A freed Israeli hostage relives horrors of captivity and fears for her husband, still held in Gaza

8. How the War in Gaza Revived the Axis of Resistance

9. America Can’t Surpass China’s Power in Asia

10. Trump Is Already Reshaping Geopolitics by Graham Allison

11. Getting “Left-of-Launch” in the Counter-Drone Fight

12. Twilight of the Davos Gods: The Economic Forum Loses Its Relevance in a Time of War

13. Why Saudi Arabia Is Staying on the Sidelines in the Red Sea Conflict

14. The secret history of the Air Force One shadow fleet

15. Taiwan Learned You Can’t Fight Fake News by Making It Illegal

16. First Preemptive Strikes Against Houthi Missiles Preparing To Fire Launched By U.S.

17. Fear Not: US Military Aid to Ukraine Is Coming By Kurt Volker

18. Free Surgeries and Prescriptions: White House Staff Got Access to Military Health Care Despite Being Ineligible

19. Army has too many infantry, armor lieutenants, asks some to switch to combat-support jobs

20. Iran Will Escalate Until It Pays a Price

21. A Peaceful Solution on Taiwan Is Slipping Away

22. Israel releases data on three months of fighting in Gaza

23. Israel Hints at Lebanon Ground Operations

24. Israel SitRep: Jan. 16, 2024

25. Opinion | The Houthis sink an arrow into the West’s Achilles’ heel

26. Iran and the Houthis Don’t Get Biden’s Message

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 16, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-16-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin continued to demonstrate that Russia is not interested in negotiating with Ukraine in good faith and that Russia’s maximalist objectives in Ukraine – which are tantamount to full Ukrainian and Western surrender – remain unchanged.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin notably amplified a longstanding Kremlin effort to set information conditions for future escalations against Baltic countries, likely as part of his wider effort to weaken NATO.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated the importance of defeating Russia in Ukraine at the Davos World Economic Forum on January 16.
• Russian tactical aviation operations are reportedly decreasing near the Sea of Azov, and Russian aviation capabilities may be degraded after Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft and caused severe damage to a Russian Il-22 airborne command post aircraft on the night of January 14.
• At least two state-owned Chinese banks reportedly ordered reviews of their business with Russian clients and will sever ties with sanctioned Russian entities and entities with ties to the Russian defense industry.
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov thanked North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui for North Korea’s support for Russia in the war during Choe’s official state visit to Moscow on January 16.
• The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada adopted a law on its second reading to digitalize Ukrainian military records on January 16.
• Russian forces made confirmed advances near Kreminna and Bakhmut as positional engagements continued along the entire frontline.
• Russian State Duma deputies from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) proposed a bill on January 16 that would create a legal status for volunteers of the Russian war in Ukraine that would grant them compensation in case of injury or death.
• Russian occupation officials from occupied Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Donetsk oblasts attended a meeting of Russian municipal representatives in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin on January 16.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JANUARY 16, 2024

Jan 16, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 16, 2024

Christina Harward, Riley Bailey, Nicole Wolkov, Grace Mappes, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

January 16, 2024, 7:00pm ET 

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 12:45pm ET on January 16. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the January 17 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Note: ISW has added a new section on Ukrainian defense industrial base (DIB) efforts to the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment to track the development of Ukraine’s DIB and the international support for Ukraine’s DIB efforts. ISW will be publishing its assessments in this section based on public announcements, media reporting, and official statements.

Russian President Vladimir Putin continued to demonstrate that Russia is not interested in negotiating with Ukraine in good faith and that Russia’s maximalist objectives in Ukraine – which are tantamount to full Ukrainian and Western surrender – remain unchanged. Putin claimed on January 16 during a meeting with Russian municipal heads that “Ukrainian statehood may suffer an irreparable, very serious blow” if the current battlefield situation continues.[1] Putin also reiterated Kremlin allegations of the prevalence of Nazism in Ukraine and claimed that ”such people...cannot win.”[2] Russia’s continued calls for Ukraine’s “denazification” are thinly veiled demands for the removal of the elected Ukrainian government and its replacement with a government acceptable to the Kremlin.[3] Putin reiterated the Kremlin narrative that Ukraine – not Russia – is to blame for the absence of negotiations, claiming that Ukraine’s “peace formula” is actually a continuation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ban on negotiating with Russia and amounts to “prohibitive demands” on the negotiation process.[4] Putin claimed that any negotiation process is an “attempt to encourage [Russia] to abandon gains [it] has made in the past year and a half” and that this is “impossible.”[5]

The Kremlin appears to lack a consistent framing for current Russian offensive operations to present to the Russian public, despite the fact that Putin appears to be – at times – using his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian military as part of his election campaign.[6] Putin declared that Russian forces “completely” have the initiative in Ukraine following a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive.[7] This is a notable departure from Putin‘s claim on December 14, 2023, that almost all Russian forces are in “the active stage of action” and from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s previous characterization of Russian offensive operations in Ukraine as an “active defense.”[8] ISW continues to assess that Russian forces have regained the initiative throughout most of the Ukrainian theater but have not seized the battlefield initiative in Kherson Oblast.[9]

Russian President Vladimir Putin notably amplified a longstanding Kremlin effort to set information conditions for future escalations against the Baltic countries, likely as part of his wider effort to weaken NATO. Putin claimed on January 16 that Latvia and other Baltic states are “throwing [ethnic] Russian people” out of their countries and that this situation “directly affects [Russia’s] security.”[10] Previous changes to Latvia’s immigration law stipulated that Russian citizens’ permanent residence permits would become invalid in September 2023 and that Russian citizens would need to follow the general procedure for obtaining EU permanent residence status in Latvia, including passing a Latvian language exam, by November 30, 2023.[11] The Latvian Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs stated in December 2023 that Latvia would deport about 1,200 Russian citizens who failed to apply for a new residence permit by the deadline.[12] Putin has long employed an expansive definition of Russia’s sovereignty and trivialized the sovereignty of former Soviet republics, and Russia has long claimed that it has the right to protect its “compatriots abroad,” including ethnic Russians and Russian speakers beyond Russia’s borders.[13] ISW has not observed any indication that a Russian attack against the Baltics is imminent or likely, but Putin may be setting information conditions for future aggressive Russian actions abroad under the pretext of protecting its “compatriots.” Putin recently threatened Finland in mid-December 2023 and reiterated a world view illustrating that he continues to pursue demanded changes to the NATO alliance that would amount to dismantling it.[14]

Putin subsequently tied alleged security threats to Russia in Eastern Europe to NATO’s “Open Door Policy,” a core principle of the alliance enshrined in its charter that allows it the discretion to admit new members. Putin claimed that NATO “open[ed] the doors to Ukraine and Georgia” in 2008 – referring to the Bucharest Declaration in which NATO promised Ukraine and Georgia paths to membership but took no concrete steps towards opening such paths – and claimed that this declaration went against Ukraine’s 1991 Declaration of Independence that stated that Ukraine is a neutral state.[15] Putin did not mention that the Russian Federation committed “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine,” which included Crimea and occupied Donbas, in 1994 in exchange for Ukraine’s return of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons on its territory to Russia.[16] Sovereignty includes the right of self-determination. Putin claimed that NATO’s 2008 declaration “completely changed the situation in Eastern Europe” and affected Russia’s security. ISW previously assessed that Putin did not invade Ukraine in 2022 to defend Russia against a threat from NATO but rather to weaken and ultimately destroy NATO – a goal he still pursues.[17] The Kremlin and Kremlin-affiliated actors have recently promoted information operations and conducted hybrid warfare tactics aimed at destabilizing NATO and may now be setting information conditions for possible future aggressive Russian actions against NATO countries and their neighbors.[18]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated the importance of defeating Russia in Ukraine at the Davos World Economic Forum on January 16. Zelensky emphasized that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not change – referring to Putin’s maximalist war aims – and noted that all attempts to restore peace have failed two years after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion and 10 years since the illegal annexation of Crimea.[19] Zelensky stated that the Ukrainian military is holding Putin back and that it is better to defeat Russia on the battlefield now than later. Zelensky’s statements are consistent with ISW’s longstanding assessment that the Kremlin is very unlikely to engage in good faith, meaningful peace negotiations.[20] European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated that Ukraine needs steady funding and supplies of weapons through 2024 and beyond in order to defend and reclaim its territory, indicating that Europe will continue to play an increasingly active role in supporting Ukraine.[21] Von der Leyen stated that Ukraine can win the war but that the West needs to expand Ukraine’s capabilities.[22] Von der Leyen emphasized Ukraine’s successes throughout the war thus far: “Russia has lost roughly half of its military capabilities,” and Ukraine has recaptured half of the territory that Russian forces captured after the full-scale invasion, pushed back the Black Sea Fleet (BSF), and opened a grain corridor in the Black Sea.

Zelensky continued bilateral meetings with world leaders at the Davos World Economic Forum on January 16. Zelensky discussed US-Ukraine defense cooperation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Russian strikes and NATO summit preparations with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the battlefield situation and Ukraine’s defense needs with Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden, and Ukrainian operations in and corridors through the Black Sea with business representatives.[23] Zelensky also met with Singaporean President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and invited Shanmugaratnam to join the Ukrainian peace formula and global peace summit.[24]

Russian tactical aviation operations are reportedly decreasing near the Sea of Azov, and Russian aviation capabilities may be degraded after Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft and caused severe damage to a Russian Il-22 airborne command post aircraft on the night of January 14. Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat stated on January 16 that Russian tactical aviation presence over the Sea of Azov is currently at a lower level “than ever before.”[25] Ihnat stated that the A-50 and Il-20 aircraft helped Russian forces detect air targets at a range of up to 600 kilometers and transmitted information to Russian control points in Ukraine in real time.[26] Ihnat stated that this monitoring allowed Russian tactical aviation to see Ukrainian aircraft from afar and increased the effectiveness of tactical aviation operations.[27] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces only had three A-50 and six modernized A-50U aircraft in service before January 14, 2024, and Ihnat stated that the destruction of one of these few aircraft would reduce Russian operational capabilities to some extent.[28] Ihnat stated that severe damage to the Il-22 aircraft rendered the aircraft inoperable but that Russian forces would likely replace both the destroyed A-50 and damaged Il-22 aircraft.[29] Ihnat clarified that the destruction of these aircraft will not impact the intensity of Russian missile and drone strikes since Russian forces program these missiles and drones with specified routes and targets from ground positions.[30] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on January 16 that Ukraine must gain air superiority just as it gained superiority in the Black Sea following strikes on Russian naval assets in occupied Crimea.[31]

At least two state-owned Chinese banks reportedly ordered reviews of their business with Russian clients and will sever ties with sanctioned Russian entities and entities with ties to the Russian defense industry. Bloomberg reported on January 16 that people familiar with the matter stated that at least two People’s Republic of China (PRC)-owned banks ordered reviews of international transactions with Russian clients after the United States authorized secondary sanctions on financial institutions that facilitate Russian sanctions evasion and support the Russian war effort in Ukraine on December 22, 2023.[32] Bloomberg’s sources stated that these Chinese banks are auditing clients’ business registrations, authorized beneficiaries, and ultimate controllers to determine whether the clients are Russian, conduct business in Russia, or transfer critical items to Russia through a third country.[33] Bloomberg’s sources stated that these banks will sever ties with these clients, regardless of the currency or location of the transactions.[34] Bloomberg reported that the PRC’s four largest state-owned banks have a history of complying with previous US sanctions against Iran and North Korea.[35] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitri Peskov refused to comment on Bloomberg’s reporting on January 16.[36] Russia has relied on Chinese entities for dual-use goods for use in Ukraine and for component parts in Russian military equipment.[37] ISW previously assessed that China has likely been heavily involved in various Russian sanctions evasion schemes, but it appears that US secondary sanctions may be threatening enough to force China to abandon many of these schemes.[38] The reported Chinese reaction to the US secondary sanctions further indicates that China has reservations concerning the Kremlin’s desired “no limits partnership” between the two states.[39]

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov thanked North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui for North Korea’s support for Russia in the war during Choe’s official state visit to Moscow on January 16.[40] Lavrov highlighted his visit to Pyongyang in October 2023 and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Russia in September 2023 as “only the beginning” to comprehensively developing relations between Russia and North Korea.[41] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitri Peskov stated that Lavrov and Choe met with Putin to discuss new unspecified Russian-North Korean agreements.[42] Russia is likely advancing efforts to procure ammunition and ballistic missiles from abroad amid reported Russian ammunition shortages and missile production constraints. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Deputy Chief Major General Vadym Skibitskyi reported that North Korea delivered one million rounds of artillery ammunition to Russia from September to November 2023, and Western and Ukrainian officials have stated that Russian forces have launched at least one North Korean ballistic missile against Ukraine.[43]

The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada adopted a law on its second reading to digitalize Ukrainian military records on January 16.[44] The law will improve the register for mobilized personnel, conscripts, and reservists and introduce the possibility of creating a digital military accounting document.[45] The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that the draft law will also create an electronic services portal for military personnel and conscripts.[46] The Ukrainian MoD also stated that the draft law will allow Ukraine to strengthen its cyber defense, expand its access to unspecified allies' intelligence, develop and deploy new combat systems, and place its IT systems for military cloud storage in NATO member states, thereby allowing Ukrainian air defense systems currently protecting national data centers to cover military and civilian infrastructure.[47]

Key Takeaways:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin continued to demonstrate that Russia is not interested in negotiating with Ukraine in good faith and that Russia’s maximalist objectives in Ukraine – which are tantamount to full Ukrainian and Western surrender – remain unchanged.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin notably amplified a longstanding Kremlin effort to set information conditions for future escalations against Baltic countries, likely as part of his wider effort to weaken NATO.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated the importance of defeating Russia in Ukraine at the Davos World Economic Forum on January 16.
• Russian tactical aviation operations are reportedly decreasing near the Sea of Azov, and Russian aviation capabilities may be degraded after Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft and caused severe damage to a Russian Il-22 airborne command post aircraft on the night of January 14.
• At least two state-owned Chinese banks reportedly ordered reviews of their business with Russian clients and will sever ties with sanctioned Russian entities and entities with ties to the Russian defense industry.
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov thanked North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui for North Korea’s support for Russia in the war during Choe’s official state visit to Moscow on January 16.
• The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada adopted a law on its second reading to digitalize Ukrainian military records on January 16.
• Russian forces made confirmed advances near Kreminna and Bakhmut as positional engagements continued along the entire frontline.
• Russian State Duma deputies from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) proposed a bill on January 16 that would create a legal status for volunteers of the Russian war in Ukraine that would grant them compensation in case of injury or death.
• Russian occupation officials from occupied Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Donetsk oblasts attended a meeting of Russian municipal representatives in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin on January 16.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
• Activities in Russian-Occupied Areas
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives
• Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces recently made a confirmed advance near Kreminna amid continued positional fighting along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on January 16. Geolocated footage published on January 15 indicates that Russian forces advanced north of Dibrova (southwest of Kreminna).[48] Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional engagements continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka; east of Kupyansk near Petropavlivka; northwest of Kreminna near Makiivka and Ploshchanka; west of Kreminna near Terny, Torske, and Yampolivka; southwest of Kreminna near the Serebryanske forest area and Dibrova; and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka and Hryhorivka.[49] Russian milbloggers, citing alleged unspecified Ukrainian sources, claimed that Russian forces advanced near Makiivka up to 2.2 kilometers in width and up 1.7 kilometers in depth, although ISW has not observed visual evidence supporting this claim.[50] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces resumed “active offensive actions” using armored vehicles in the Serebryanske forest area after a hiatus of Russian offensive activity in the area.[51] Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Military Administration Head Artem Lysohor stated on January 16 that Russian forces launched a large number of glide bombs at Ukrainian positions in the Serebryanske forest area and that Russian forces have been conducting offensive operations along the entire Luhansk Oblast frontline to seize the remainder of Luhansk Oblast for the past 1.5 weeks.[52]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces recently made marginal gains near Bakhmut and continued positional engagements with Ukrainian forces in the area on January 16. Geolocated footage published on January 15 indicates that Russian forces recently marginally advanced north of Klishchiivka (southwest of Bakhmut).[53] Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting occurred northeast of Bakhmut near Vesele and Verkhnokamyanske; northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka; west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske; and southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Andriivka.[54] Elements of the Russian 98th Airborne (VDV) Division reportedly continue to operate west of Bakhmut near the O0506 (Khromove-Chasiv Yar) highway, and elements of the Russian irregular “Lynx” unit are reportedly operating in the Bakhmut direction.[55]

Russian and Ukrainian forces continued positional engagements near Avdiivka on January 16. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting occurred northwest of Avdiivka near Novobakhmutivka and Stepove, near the Avdiivka Coke Plant in northwestern Avdiivka, west of Avdiivka near Sieverne, and southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske and Nevelske.[56] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi stated that Russian forces intensified assaults with armored vehicle support in the Tavriisk direction (a wide area ranging from Avdiivka all the way through western Zaporizhia Oblast), likely referring to the Avdiivka and Marinka directions.[57]

Russian and Ukrainian forces continued positional fighting west and southwest of Donetsk City on January 16, but there were no confirmed changes in the area. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced northeast of Krasnohorivka (west of Donetsk City), although ISW has not seen confirmation of this claim.[58] Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting occurred west of Donetsk City near Heorhiivka and Krasnohorivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Pobieda and Novomykhailivka.[59] A Russian milblogger claimed that recent freezing temperatures near Donetsk City were more conducive to mechanized maneuver but that dense minefields impeded Russian armored vehicles from moving forward.[60] The Russian milblogger claimed that relatively warmer weather is currently constraining mechanized maneuver and that Russian armored vehicles are getting stuck in ruts created by armored vehicle tracks.[61]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Positional fighting continued in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on January 16, but there were no confirmed changes to the front in this area. Russian sources claimed that positional fighting continued southeast of Hulyaipole near Chervone; south of Velyka Novosilka near Zavitne Bazhnnya and east of Urozhaine; and northwest of Pryyutne (southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[62] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces captured several Ukrainian positions north of Kermenchyk and Staromylnivka (both south of Velyka Novosilka), but ISW has not observed visual evidence of this claim.[63]

Positional fighting continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast on January 16, but there were no confirmed changes to the front in this area. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting continued west of Verbove (east of Robotyne) and near Robotyne and Novoprokopivka (just south of Robotyne).[64]

Ukrainian forces maintain positions in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast amid continued positional fighting on January 16, but there were no confirmed changes to the front in this area. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional engagements continued on the east bank, including near Krynky and Pishchanivka.[65] Recently collected satellite imagery indicates that Russian forces have repeatedly attempted to counterattack near Krynky with small detachments along the M14 highway.[66] Satellite imagery indicates that Russian forces are preparing to defend the area beyond Krynky, including the M14 highway, along which Russian forces have built a 0.5-kilometer trench and other defensive positions.[67] Elements of the Russian 8th Artillery Regiment (22nd Army Corps, Black Sea Fleet) are reportedly operating on the east bank.[68]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Russian State Duma deputies from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) proposed a bill on January 16 that would create a legal status for volunteers of the Russian war in Ukraine that would grant them compensation in case of injury or death.[69] The bill states that volunteer activities can include providing assistance to people in Ukraine and conducting counterterrorism or “special military operations.” The bill provides volunteers with 25,000-80,000 rubles ($284-$909) for mild-to-severe injuries, 150,000-500,000 rubles ($1,705-$5,684) for disabilities, and two million rubles ($22,737) to beneficiaries in the case of death.

Russia continues to keep soldiers in service who are partially or completely medically unfit for military service. Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty outlet Idel Realii reported on January 16 that the Russian military command deployed a group of ill soldiers, who had diseases including HIV and Hepatitis C and were awaiting a medical commission hearing, to conduct combat missions on the front line.[70] Russian opposition media outlet Mobilization News reported on January 16 that the mother of a Russian soldier diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder stated that her son was declared partially unfit for service and deemed unsuitable to handle weapons but that the command sent the soldier to the front, nonetheless.[71] The mother complained that other soldiers in the unit suffered from similar diagnoses and issues. Russian opposition outlet Astra reported that the Russian military will not release a contract soldier with cardiomyopathy from service despite his multiple health issues and the fact that his contract expired over a year ago.[72]

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

Kremlin newswire TASS reported on January 15 that the Tallamho Design Bureau in Grozny, Chechen Republic, developed the BUKH1a artillery reconnaissance system, a budget analog to the 1B75 “Penicillin” artillery reconnaissance system.[73] TASS claimed that the BUKH1a has a range of 100 meters to 20 kilometers depending on the weapon and can identify enemy targets within one minute.

Russian forces are installing electronic warfare (EW) systems on tanks to defend against drones. A Russian source amplified footage of a Russian T-80BV tank equipped with a “Saniya” anti-drone EW system, which can reportedly suppress drones at a range of up to 1.5 kilometers.[74]

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

Click here to read ISW’s new analysis on Ukrainian long-term efforts to develop a self-sufficient DIB with US and European support.

Three unspecified European Union (EU) diplomats told the Financial Times (FT) in an article published on January 16 that the EU’s External Action Service (EEAS) is conducting an audit of weapons that EU member states have provided to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.[75] The diplomats stated that the EEAS intends to conduct the audit in response to claims that some unspecified EU countries have not sent as much aid to Ukraine as they can and intends to present the findings before the EU summit on February 1.[76]

Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds stated on January 16 that Latvia has created a coalition of nearly 20 unspecified countries to provide Ukraine with thousands of new unspecified drones.[77]

Bulgarian Defense Minister Todor Tagarev stated in an interview published on January 15 that the Bulgarian defense industry is consistently producing ammunition, small arms, and light weaponry for direct or indirect security assistance to Ukraine. Tagarev stated that Bulgaria is currently producing 122mm and 152mm shells for Ukrainian artillery systems and plans to produce 105mm and 155mm shells for Ukraine’s Western-provided artillery systems.[78] Ukrainian officials have recently highlighted shortages of 122mm and 152mm shells as a prominent battlefield challenge.[79]

The Australian Ministry of Defense (MoD) signed a contract with the Australian branch of US Defense Contractor Lockheed Martin worth 34.7 million AUD to produce HIMARS rockets starting in 2025.[80] Ukrainian forces routinely use HIMARS rockets to strike rear Russian areas and logistics in occupied Ukraine.

Belgian defense company John Cockerill announced on January 15 that it signed an agreement with the Swedish Volvo Group to acquire French armored vehicle manufacturer Arquus.[81] Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi reported that John Cockerill signed a contract with the Belgian government to modernize M113 armored personnel carriers for Ukraine in July 2023.[82]

The Ukrainian National Security Council stated that the Ukrainian state federal budget and special funds funded the Ukrainian security and defense sector with 2,503 billion hryvnias (about $66 million) in 2023, which accounted for about 39 percent of Ukraine’s expected GDP for the year. The Ukrainian National Security Council stated that funding in 2023 increased 63.9 percent from funding in 2022 and noted that the level of funding in 2023 allowed Ukraine to acquire materiel and technical resources, pay salaries to military personnel, and provide them with other social benefits.[83]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian occupation officials from occupied Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Donetsk oblasts attended a meeting of Russian municipal representatives in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin on January 16.[84] Putin stated that all municipal development programs will be available to occupied territories in Ukraine, and Russian occupation officials stated that they discussed further integration efforts with Russian municipal officials at the meeting.[85] Occupation administrations at the regional and municipal levels have forged patronage networks with Russian federal subjects and cities and likely used the event to seek out new patronage partnerships.[86]

The Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast has reportedly caused millions of dollars' worth of damage to the facility. Ukrainian nuclear energy operator Energoatom President Petro Kotin stated on January 16 that Russian occupation has caused damages to the ZNPP totaling 30 billion hryvnia ($791 million) and has caused Energoatom to incur 167 billion hryvnia ($4.4 billion) in unrealized profits.[87]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian ultranationalists continue to criticize post-Soviet countries for promoting local languages. A prominent Kremlin-linked Russian milblogger amplified accusations that the Kazakh government is trying to replace official usage of the Russian language with Kazakh language citing efforts to change the names of railway stations from Russian to Kazakh.[88] The milblogger claimed that small efforts to promote local languages result in a ”dangerous trend” in which post-Soviet countries, like the Baltic states, close Russian schools and remove Soviet monuments.[89] Russian officials have also criticized Central Asian efforts to promote indigenous languages at the perceived expense of the Russian language.[90]

Pro-war Russian ultranationalists continue to portray the West as Russia’s main adversary through art and literature. Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported on January 16 that the Russian pro-war community produces pro-war art, poetry, music, literature, and films, which Meduza calls “Z-realism.”[91] Meduza stated that this genre of art glorifies the Russian victory over Ukraine, NATO, and the “collective West.”[92] Meduza noted that the Kremlin does not appear to actively promote the pro-war art that these ultranationalists produce and promote, though Meduza observed that Russian state-owned outlet RT has amplified some “Z-poetry.” Prominent Kremlin-affiliated Russian milbloggers have produced and promoted pro-war poetry and art throughout the war, particularly pieces that glorify notable battles and Russian formations in Ukraine.[93]

Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to portray Russia as the protector of “traditional values” as part of an ongoing effort to define Russia as a cultural adversary to the West. Putin claimed at a meeting with representatives of municipalities from 89 Russian federal subjects that many Russian citizens are returning from abroad because they find it difficult to “live and to raise children” with “traditional values” in Western countries.[94] Russian officials routinely portray Russia as upholding “traditional values” and may intensify this rhetoric in the coming months as Putin declared 2024 the “Year of the Family.”[95]

Significant Activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Belarusian Defense Minister Lieutenant General Viktor Khrenin stated at a Belarusian Security Council meeting on January 16 that Belarus’ new draft military doctrine accounts for the use of Russian tactical nuclear weapons stationed in Belarus for the first time.[96] While the specifics of how the new doctrine applies to tactical nuclear weapons are unclear, ISW has observed no indications that Russia or Belarus seeks nuclear escalation and continues to assess that Russian or Belarusian use of nuclear weapons remains unlikely.[97] The inclusion of tactical nuclear weapons usage in Belarus’ nuclear doctrine likely reflects Russia’s deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus in 2023.[98]

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

2. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 16, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, January 16, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-january-16-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Palestinian militias are likely re-infiltrating into areas of the northern Gaza Strip where Israeli forces previously conducted clearing operations.
• The IDF 646th Paratroopers Brigade (assigned to the 99th Division) continued to conduct clearing operations in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip.
• The New York Times reported that the IDF now believes that there are more tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip than previously thought.
• The 98th Division conducted clearing operations focused on locating Hamas leadership and degrading Hamas’ Khan Younis Battalion in the southern Gaza Strip.
• The IDF announced Special Forces Unit 217 (Duvdevan) operating under the 89th Commando Brigade withdrew from the southern Gaza Strip.
• A low-level Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander told Israeli intelligence he received military training in Iran before Hamas’ October 7 attack.
• Hamas and Israel reached a deal to supply medicine to Israeli hostages in exchange for additional humanitarian aid inflows to the Gaza Strip.
• The al Qassem Brigades fired rockets from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel.
• Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters four times across the West Bank.
• Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) conducted six attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.
• Iran conducted three drone and missile strikes abroad.
• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed that it conducted a long-range cruise missile attack targeting Israel.

IRAN UPDATE, JANUARY 16, 2024

Jan 16, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, January 16, 2024

Ashka Jhaveri, Andie Parry, Amin Soltani, Alexandra Braverman, Kathryn Tyson, Peter Mills, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm EST 

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Key Takeaways:

• Palestinian militias are likely re-infiltrating into areas of the northern Gaza Strip where Israeli forces previously conducted clearing operations.
• The IDF 646th Paratroopers Brigade (assigned to the 99th Division) continued to conduct clearing operations in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip.
• The New York Times reported that the IDF now believes that there are more tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip than previously thought.
• The 98th Division conducted clearing operations focused on locating Hamas leadership and degrading Hamas’ Khan Younis Battalion in the southern Gaza Strip.
• The IDF announced Special Forces Unit 217 (Duvdevan) operating under the 89th Commando Brigade withdrew from the southern Gaza Strip.
• A low-level Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander told Israeli intelligence he received military training in Iran before Hamas’ October 7 attack.
• Hamas and Israel reached a deal to supply medicine to Israeli hostages in exchange for additional humanitarian aid inflows to the Gaza Strip.
• The al Qassem Brigades fired rockets from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel.
• Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters four times across the West Bank.
• Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) conducted six attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.
• Iran conducted three drone and missile strikes abroad.
• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed that it conducted a long-range cruise missile attack targeting Israel.

Palestinian militias are likely re-infiltrating into areas of the northern Gaza Strip where Israeli forces previously conducted clearing operations. CTP-ISW has observed renewed militant activity in several neighborhoods across the northern part of the strip in recent weeks, as Israeli forces have transitioned to less intense fighting there. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed on December 31, 2023, that it withdrew five brigades from the northern Gaza Strip and said that it would transition to targeted raids with its remaining forces.[1] CTP-ISW assessed on January 2 that the IDF transitioning to this new phase of operations will very likely enable Hamas to reconstitute itself militarily.[2]

Palestinian militias have renewed attacks particularly around Jabalia, Sheikh Radwan, and southern Gaza City.[3] Palestinian militias have claimed several attacks on Israeli forces in Jabalia, despite the IDF reporting on December 19, 2023, that it “dismantled” Hamas’ three battalions there.[4] There are similar reports of militant activity around Sheikh Radwan after there has been no major activity there since December 30, 2023.[5] A Palestinian journalist reported on January 9 clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters in Sheikh Radwan.[6] The military wing of Hamas, the al Qassem Brigades, claimed to have conducted an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) attack on January 16 targeting an Israeli armored personnel carrier in Sheikh Radwan. CTP-ISW previously reported that the al Qassem Brigades and other Palestinian militias are not destroyed around southern Gaza City, where Palestinian militias have continued to attack Israeli forces.[7]

There is a similar but more limited renewal of Palestinian activity in other locations that Israeli forces previously conducted clearing operations around the northern Gaza Strip as well. The militant wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the al Quds Brigades, fired a rocket salvo from Beit Hanoun toward Sderot in southern Israel on January 15.[8] The IDF separately engaged Palestinian fighters in Shaati refugee camp and Beit Lahia on January 16.[9] Israeli Army Radio furthermore reported on January 16 that the Israeli military establishment believes that Hamas is trying to restore its control over the civilian population in the northern Gaza Strip, in part, by rehabilitating local police there.[10]

Israeli forces are returning to areas that they had recently left, according to Reuters, which is consistent with the likely re-infiltration of Palestinian militants.[11] A Palestinian journalist similarly reported on January 9 and 16 that Israeli forces have “repositioned” themselves in Gaza City after they had withdrawn earlier.[12]

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
• Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip.

The IDF 646th Paratroopers Brigade (assigned to the 99th Division) continued to conduct clearing operations in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip on January 16. The Israeli forces, including Yalam forces and engineering elements from the 99th Division, destroyed a Hamas underground tunnel route beneath Salah al Din Road.[13] The IDF reported that the tunnel is about nine meters deep and used to transport fighters between the northern and southern Gaza Strip. The al Qassem Brigades mortared Israeli forces as they advanced into Nuseirat on January 16.[14]

The New York Times reported on January 16 that the IDF now believes that there are more tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip than previously thought. Anonymous senior Israeli defense officials speaking to the New York Times increased their estimate of the tunnel network’s length to between 350 and 450 miles from 250 miles in December 2023.[15] The defense officials assessed there are close to 5,700 separate tunnel entrance shafts in the Gaza Strip.[16] Israeli forces have discovered many of the tunnels through documents uncovered during their ground operations in the Gaza Strip.[17]

The 98th Division conducted clearing operations focused on locating Hamas leadership and degrading Hamas’ Khan Younis Battalion in the southern Gaza Strip on January 16. IDF commando forces raided the offices of senior Hamas commanders in the South Khan Younis Battalion and found weapons, ammunition, grenades, and surveillance cameras[18]. Israeli Defense Minster Yoav Gallant stated on January 15 that IDF operations in the southern Gaza Strip are “focused on the head of the snake, the Hamas leadership.”[19][20] Israeli artillery shelled a PIJ headquarters in Khan Younis.[21] The IDF 7th Brigade Combat Team directed several airstrikes on Palestinian fighters in Khan Younis, and the IDF 35th Paratroopers Brigade Combat Team killed Palestinian fighters with tank fire.[22]

Palestinian militias continued to attack Israeli forces operating in the Khan Younis area on January 16. Palestinian militias claimed seven mortar attacks on Israeli armor and dismounted infantry in eastern, southern, and central Khan Younis.[23] The National Resistance Brigades was the only group to claim close-range small arms clashes and IED attacks on Israeli forces in Khan Younis on January 16.[24] The militias’ high proportion of mortar attacks compared to other weapons systems in Khan Younis is anomalous. The IDF published documentation that Palestinian fighters launched rockets from the premises of Nasser Hospital at Israeli forces conducting clearing operations in northern Khan Younis at some point in the last week.[25]

The IDF announced Special Forces Unit 217 (Duvdevan) operating under the 89th Commando Brigade withdrew from the southern Gaza Strip on January 16.[26] The Duvdevan Unit will conduct operations in the West Bank. The unit raided Palestinian militant infrastructure in southern Khan Younis and clashed with a militia squad before withdrawing from the strip. The IDF withdrew the 36th Division from the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip a day prior on January 15.[27]

A low-level Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) commander told Israeli intelligence he received military training in Iran before Hamas’ October 7 attack. The platoon-level commander from Sheikh Radwan was detained by Israeli forces on December 20, 2023, and made the statements during recorded questioning by Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet.[28] The PIJ fighter stated that he and 15 to 20 other PIJ members from the Gaza Strip, Syria, and Lebanon were sent to a 15-day sniper training course at an Iranian base.[29] He alleged that other PIJ fighters received artillery and officer command courses at unspecified military bases in Iran. The US State Department and Treasury Department said in November 2023 that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps enables PIJ’s operations through the transfer of funds and the provision of both weapons and operational training.[30]

Several drug smugglers exchanged fire with Israeli forces on the Egypt-Israel border on January 15.[31] The IDF reported the clash along the Nitzana border area lightly injured one soldier as about 20 people approached the border.[32] The Egyptian army spokesperson said Egyptian authorities thwarted the smuggling attempt after the cross-border fire.[33] The Nitzana border area is about 40 kilometers from the Gaza Strip.

Hamas and Israel reached a deal to supply medicine to Israeli hostages in exchange for additional humanitarian aid inflows to the Gaza Strip on January 15.[34] The Qatari Foreign Ministry announced Israel will permit higher levels of medicine and humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip in exchange for Qatari representatives delivering medicine to Israeli hostages under the agreement.[35] Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's office said two Qatari Air Force planes are expected to arrive in Egypt on January 17, after which Qatari representatives will transfer the medicine to the hostages inside the Gaza Strip.[36] The agreement comes as Hamas heightened its effort to spread hostage propaganda.[37] CTP-ISW assessed on January 15 that Hamas’ increased hostage propaganda was likely intended to generate public pressure on the Israeli government to stop operations in the Gaza Strip and agree to a hostage/prisoner swap.[38]

The Gaza Strip is experiencing the longest, large-scale internet blackout since the Israel-Hamas war began. NetBlocks reported on January 16 that telecommunications have been offline in the Gaza Strip for over 96 hours.[39]

The al Qassem Brigades fired rockets from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel on January 16.[40] Israeli media reported that the militia fired a rocket salvo into southern Israel from areas in the central Gaza Strip where Israeli forces recently withdrew.[41] The IDF withdrew the 36th Division from the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip on January 15.[42]

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters four times across the West Bank on January 16.[43] This rate of kinetic activity is a decrease from the average, as Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters have clashed around nine times per day over the past week.[44] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades engaged Israeli forces in small arms clashes in three locations.[45] Palestinian fighters separately detonated an IED targeting Israeli vehicles, including a bulldozer, in Nablus.[46]

The IDF arrested over 20 wanted individuals across the West Bank on January 16.[47] The IDF said that it questioned dozens of suspects in Bnei Naim in relation to a car-ramming attack in Ranaana, Israel, on January 15.[48]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
• Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) conducted six attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.[49] LH targeted Israeli forces and military infrastructure. Israeli forces struck LH positions, including munitions storage facilities in Wadi Saluki, southern Lebanon.[50] Israeli aircraft targeted LH anti-tank guided missile teams in Kafr Kila as well.[51]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
• Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

Iran conducted three drone and missile strikes abroad on January 15-16. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) struck actors in Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan that Iranian leaders have accused of trying to destabilize and undermine the regime. Iranian officials and media have portrayed these groups as agents and/or accomplices of Israeli intelligence services.

• The IRGC conducted drone and missiles strikes targeting what it claimed to be Israeli Mossad-affiliated facilities and individuals in Erbil, Iraq on January 15.[52] The IRGC stated that the attacks were meant to retaliate for recent terror attacks inside Iran and for Israel killing senior IRGC commanders in Syria.[53] Iranian officials and state media have accused Israel of supporting the December 15 and January 3 terror attacks in Rask and Kerman. IRGC-affiliated media also claimed that the strikes around Erbil targeted an Iraqi Kurdish businessman whom the IRGC accused of protecting Mossad agents, providing unspecified logistical support for Mossad operations inside Iran, and transferring Iraqi oil to Israel.[54] Iran similarly targeted an Iraqi Kurdish businessman whom it had accused of cooperating with Israel when it conducted missile strikes around Erbil in March 2022.[55] Iran has historically accused anti-regime Kurdish militant groups and Israel of jointly using Iraqi Kurdistan to facilitate operations into Iran.[56] Iran has previously attacked Iraqi Kurdistan to counter these perceived threats.[57]
• The IRGC similarly claimed that it conducted missile strikes targeting the Islamic State (IS), the al Nusra Front, and the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) in Haram, Idlib Governorate, Syria, on January 15.[58] The IRGC justified its strikes on the basis that the above groups use their facilities to train IS fighters before transporting them to Afghanistan to then conduct attacks into Iran.[59] CTP-ISW previously reported that the Afghan branch of IS, named the IS Khorasan Province (ISKP), has command and control over IS cells composed of Uzbek and Tajik nationals in Idlib.[60] ISKP fighters, including two Tajik nationals, have conducted three terrorist attacks inside Iran since October 2022.[61] Iranian officials accused Israeli intelligence services of directing ISKP to conduct these attacks.[62] Iran also accuses Israel and the United States of having created IS and affiliated organizations to undermine Iran’s stability and create divisions between Muslims in the region.[63]
• The IRGC conducted drone and missile strikes on two Jaish al Adl headquarters in Koh Sabz, Baluchistan Province, Pakistan on January 16.[64] The strikes follow an uptick in terrorist activity in southeastern Iran in recent weeks. Jaish al Adl—a Balochi, Salafi-jihadi group operating on the Iranian border with Pakistan—conducted at least four attacks targeting Iranian security personnel inside Iran between December 15, 2023, and January 16.[65] Iranian officials blamed Israel for the attack on December 15.[66]

It is noteworthy that the IRGC used the Kheibar Shekan ballistic missile for the first time since it entered production in 2022 in Syria on January 15.[67] The name of the missile, translatable as “Fortress Breaker,” notably references a Jewish fortress conquered by Muslim armies during the Battle of Kheibar in 628.[68]2 Israeli media noted and Iranian officials and media emphasized that the IRGC ballistic missile attacks on Syria constituted the greatest distance that Iran has ever fired a missile.[69] The Kheibar Shekan missile is also the progenitor model of the Houthi Hatem ballistic missile.[70] The Houthis have used missiles of Iranian origin in their ongoing attacks on commercial and naval vessels in the Red Sea.[71]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed that it conducted a long-range cruise missile attack targeting Israel on January 16.[72] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq did not specify where exactly in Israel the attack targeted. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq stated that it used an “Arqab” cruise missile in the attack. The group last claimed that it used an “Arqab” missile in an attack targeting Haifa, Israel, on January 7.[73]

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi praised the Houthis for supporting Palestinians during a phone call with Houthi President Mehdi al Mashat on January 14.[74] Raisi stated that the US-UK combined strikes on Houthi facilities revealed the “aggressive” nature of the United States.

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian warned the United States and the United Kingdom “to stop the war” against the Houthis during a press conference with his Indian counterpart, Subramaniam Jaishankar, in Tehran on January 15.[75] Abdollahian reiterated the false Houthi narrative that the Houthis only target Israeli ships. Abdollahian added that the Houthis will stop their anti-shipping attack campaign when the Israel-Hamas war ends. Jaishankar also met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian during his visit to Tehran.[76]

US naval forces seized an illegal shipment of Iranian missiles sailing to Yemen on January 1.[77] US forces seized Iranian-made ballistic and cruise missile components, including warheads for Houthi medium-range ballistic missiles. Iran providing these kinds of weapons to the Houthis continually enables their attacks on international shipping around the Red Sea.

IRGC advisers and officers are operating on the ground in Yemen to directly facilitate Houthi attacks targeting international shipping and Israel, according to US outlet Semafor.[78] The IRGC placed drone and missile trainers and operators in Houthi-controlled Yemen, according to unspecified US and Middle Eastern officials. IRGC personnel on the ground are providing tactical intelligence support to the Houthis. Semafor reported that the IRGC Quds Force has overseen the transfer of the drones and missiles that the Houthis have used in their attacks targeting maritime shipping in the Red Sea and targets in Israel in recent weeks.

The Houthis continued their attack campaign targeting international shipping on January 16. The Houthis launched anti-ship ballistic missiles into international shipping lanes in the southern Red Sea.[79] A missile launched from the Houthi-controlled area of Yemen separately hit a Maltese-flagged bulk carrier in the Red Sea.[80]

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised the Houthis during a speech to Friday prayer leaders in Tehran on January 16.[81] Khamenei stated the Houthi attacks against shipping done on behalf of the Palestinian people deserve admiration and appreciation.[82] Khamenei claimed the Houthis struck an “existential blow” to Israel. Khamenei voiced his support for the Houthis continuing their destabilizing regional activities against maritime shipping in the Red Sea.

Several international companies halted operations in the Red Sea on January 16. Japanese shipping company Nippon Yusen announced its suspension of shipping through the Red Sea.[83] British energy company Shell similarly halted all shipping operations through the Red Sea indefinitely.[84] The US Department of Transportation renewed its warning to American merchant ships to avoid the southern part of the Red Sea until further notice.[85]

The United States conducted a strike targeting four Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles in Yemen on January 16.[86] An unnamed US official told Reuters that the Houthis were preparing the missiles to target ships.

3. CENTCOM: Iranian Weapons Seized in VBSS, Two SEALs Missing | SOF News

CENTCOM: Iranian Weapons Seized in VBSS, Two SEALs Missing | SOF News

sof.news · by Guest · January 16, 2024

(CENTCOM press release, 16 Jan 2024). On 11 January 2024, while conducting a flag verification, U.S. CENTCOM Navy forces conducted a night-time seizure of a dhow conducting illegal transport of advanced lethal aid from Iran to resupply Houthi forces in Yemen as part of the Houthis’ ongoing campaign of attacks against international merchant shipping.

U.S. Navy SEALs operating from USS Lewis B Puller (ESB 3), supported by helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), executed a complex boarding of the dhow near the coast of Somalia in international waters of the Arabian Sea, seizing Iranian-made ballistic missile and cruise missiles components. Seized items include propulsion, guidance, and warheads for Houthi medium range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) and anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs), as well as air defense associated components. Initial analysis indicates these same weapons have been employed by the Houthis to threaten and attack innocent mariners on international merchant ships transiting in the Red Sea.

This is the first seizure of lethal, Iranian-supplied advanced conventional weapons (ACW) to the Houthis since the beginning of Houthi attacks against merchant ships in November 2023. The interdiction also constitutes the first seizure of advanced Iranian-manufactured ballistic missile and cruise missile components by the U.S. Navy since November 2019. The direct or indirect supply, sale, or transfer of weapons to the Houthis in Yemen violates U.N. Security Resolution 2216 and international law.

Two U.S. Navy SEALs previously reported as lost at sea were directly involved in this operation. “We are conducting an exhaustive search for our missing teammates,” said General Michael Erik Kurilla, USCENTCOM Commander.

The dhow was deemed unsafe and sunk by U.S. Navy forces. Disposition of the 14 dhow crewmembers is being determined in accordance with international law.

“It is clear that Iran continues shipment of advanced lethal aid to the Houthis. This is yet another example of how Iran actively sows instability throughout the region in direct violation of U.N. Security Resolution 2216 and international law,” said General Michael Erik Kurilla, “We will continue to work with regional and international partners to expose and interdict these efforts, and ultimately to reestablish freedom of navigation.”

****

This article was first published by U.S. Central Command on January 16, 2024.

https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/3645241/uscentcom-seizes-iranian-advanced-conventional-weapons-bound-for-houthis/

Photos from CENTCOM Twitter account dated January 16, 2024. Map by SOF News derived from CIA maps (view larger version). Information about Vessel Boarding Search and Seizure (VBSS) operations. Also known as Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure.

sof.news · by Guest · January 16, 2024

4. Arsenal of Autocracy: North Korea and Iran are arming Russia in Ukraine

Excerpts:

It is now clear that Russia has succeeded in establishing an Arsenal of Autocracy together with Iran and North Korea. Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang are leveraging their military potential and producing the quantities of weapons necessary to overwhelm Western resistance and achieve Russian victory in Ukraine.

This authoritarian alliance poses grave threats to the future of global security. If Russia prevails in Ukraine thanks to military support from Iran and North Korea, Ukrainians will not be the last victims. On the contrary, Putin’s triumph would set a disastrous precedent. The international community would soon be faced with further wars of aggression as the world plunged into a dangerous new era where today’s rules regarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity no longer applied.

None of this is inevitable, but the clock is already ticking. If Western leaders wish to avoid decades of international insecurity and instability, they must send a clear message to all autocratic rulers and Putin wannabes by making sure the Russian invasion of Ukraine ends in decisive defeat.

Arsenal of Autocracy: North Korea and Iran are arming Russia in Ukraine

By Olivia Yanchik

atlanticcouncil.org · · January 11, 2024

Over the New Year holiday period, Russia launched some of the biggest bombardments of Ukrainian cities since the start of the full-scale invasion almost two years ago. These attacks had been widely expected, with Russia believed to have been actively stockpiling missiles and drones during the final few months of 2023. Nevertheless, the origin of some of the missiles used in Russia’s latest air attacks has sparked considerable disquiet in Ukraine and throughout Western capitals.

In the days following these latest bombardments, the White House announced that Russia had used North Korean ballistic missiles to strike Ukraine. These claims were subsequently corroborated by senior Ukrainian officials. In a joint statement issued on January 9, the US, UK, EU, Australia, Germany, Canada and nearly 40 other partner nations condemned North Korea’s export of ballistic missiles to Russia.

The delivery of North Korean ballistic missiles marks the latest escalation in the country’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Reports of North Korean arms shipments to Russia first emerged in late 2022. In October 2023, US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby announced that Pyongyang had delivered more than 1,000 containers of equipment and munitions to Russia. Speaking in late 2023, South Korean officials claimed North Korean military production facilities were operating “at maximum capacity” in order to meet Russian demand for armaments.

It is not clear what Russia is offering in exchange for the weapons it is receiving from North Korea, but there are fears that Moscow is providing the heavily sanctioned nation with access to new military technologies. During a September 2023 visit to Russia, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited a number of military sites showcasing advanced weapons systems.

Stay updated

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

North Korea is not the only authoritarian regime currently providing Putin with weapons for the invasion of Ukraine. Iran has supplied Russia with large quantities of attack drones as well as artillery shells, while Russia is using Iranian drone technologies to establish large-scale domestic production of attack drones for use in Ukraine. Recent reports indicate this cooperation is now intensifying. Russia is poised to receive Iranian ballistic missiles, with Iran also delivering upgraded drones.

The military support currently being provided by North Korea and Iran is believed to be critical for the Russian war effort. While Vladimir Putin has succeeded in moving much of the Russian economy onto a war footing, the intensity of the fighting in Ukraine means Russia is currently unable to meet high demand for key munitions categories including drones, missiles, and artillery shells.

With the invasion of Ukraine about to enter a third year, deliveries of Iranian and North Korean ammunition are enabling Russia to maintain a significant artillery advantage in what is now widely regarded as a war of attrition. Likewise, the steady supply of Iranian drones makes it possible for Russia to continue its intensive bombing campaign against Ukrainian cities and the country’s civilian infrastructure. Deliveries of North Korean and Iranian ballistic missiles will allow Russia to further expand the air war against Ukraine.

While Putin’s fellow autocrats in Tehran and Pyongyang grow bolder in their readiness to back the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the West’s collective commitment to the Ukrainian war effort is now increasingly in question. In recent months, a major new US aid package for Ukraine has become hostage to domestic American politics, while the passage of long-term EU aid has been blocked in Brussels thanks to opposition from Hungary. This is fueling speculation over the future of Western support for Ukraine in a long war with Russia.

Vladimir Putin has clearly been encouraged by mounting recent indications of Western weakness, and believes he can ultimately outlast the West in a test of political wills. The Russian dictator has long framed the invasion of Ukraine in historic terms as an attempt to end the era of Western dominance. He aims to usher in a new multipolar world order and is building alliances with like-minded authoritarian regimes.

It is now clear that Russia has succeeded in establishing an Arsenal of Autocracy together with Iran and North Korea. Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang are leveraging their military potential and producing the quantities of weapons necessary to overwhelm Western resistance and achieve Russian victory in Ukraine.

This authoritarian alliance poses grave threats to the future of global security. If Russia prevails in Ukraine thanks to military support from Iran and North Korea, Ukrainians will not be the last victims. On the contrary, Putin’s triumph would set a disastrous precedent. The international community would soon be faced with further wars of aggression as the world plunged into a dangerous new era where today’s rules regarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity no longer applied.

None of this is inevitable, but the clock is already ticking. If Western leaders wish to avoid decades of international insecurity and instability, they must send a clear message to all autocratic rulers and Putin wannabes by making sure the Russian invasion of Ukraine ends in decisive defeat.

Olivia Yanchik is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

​

atlanticcouncil.org · by Peter Dickinson · January 11, 2024

5. With 'God's-eye view,' secretive surveillance flights keep close watch on Russia and Ukraine

With 'God's-eye view,' secretive surveillance flights keep close watch on Russia and Ukraine

BY JOHN LEICESTER

Updated 5:27 AM EST, January 16, 2024

AP · January 16, 2024

ABOARD A FRENCH AIR FORCE AWACS (AP) — Off in the distance, Ukraine, fighting for its survival. Seen from up here, in the cockpit of a French air force surveillance plane flying over neighboring Romania, the snow-dusted landscapes look deceptively peaceful.

The dead from Russia’s war, the shattered Ukrainian towns and mangled battlefields, aren’t visible to the naked eye through the clouds.

But French military technicians riding farther back in the aircraft, monitoring screens that display the word “secret” when idle, have a far more penetrating view. With a powerful radar that rotates six times every minute on the fuselage and a bellyful of surveillance gear, the plane can spot missile launches, airborne bombing runs and other military activity in the conflict.

As the second anniversary of Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine nears, The Associated Press obtained rare and exclusive access aboard the giant Airborne Warning and Control System, or AWACS, aircraft. With 26 military personnel and an AP journalist aboard, it flew a 10-hour reconnaissance mission from central France to Romanian airspace and back, peering with electronic eyes across southern Ukraine and the Black Sea to Russian-occupied Crimea and beyond.

Circling on auto-pilot at 34,000 feet (10 kilometers), the plane with a proud cockerel painted on its tail fed intelligence in real time to ground-based commanders.

Its mission for NATO on the eastern flank of the 31-nation military alliance also, in effect, drew a do-not-cross line in European skies.

The plane’s sustained presence high above eastern Romania — seeing and also being seen by Russian forces — signaled how intensely NATO is watching its borders and Russia, ready if necessary to act should Russian aggression threaten to extend beyond Ukraine.

A crew member snaps a souvenir photo from the cockpit of a French military AWACS surveillance plane as it flies a 10-hour mission Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, to eastern Romania for the NATO military alliance. (AP Photo/John Leicester)

SHIELDS FOR NATO, PIECES OF AVIATION HISTORY

Regular surveillance flights, together with fighter patrols, ground-based radar, missile batteries and other hardware at NATO’s disposal, form what the commander of France’s AWACS squadron described as “a shield” against any potential spill-over.

The “ultimate goal is, of course, no conflict and deterrence,” said the commander, a lieutenant colonel named Richard. Because of French security concerns, the AP was only able to identify him and other military personnel by their ranks and first names.

“We need to show that we have the shield, show to the other countries that NATO is collective defense,” he continued. “We have the ability to detect everywhere. And we are not here for a conflict. We are here to show that we are present and ready.”

France’s four AWACS are among a variety of surveillance aircraft, including unmanned UAV drones, that gather intelligence for NATO and its member nations. Lt. Col. Richard said the French E-3F-type AWACS see for hundreds of kilometers (miles) with their distinctive black-and-white rooftop radar domes, although he wouldn’t be precise.

The pilot of a French military AWACS surveillance plane operates cockpit equipment on a 10-hour mission Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, to eastern Romania for the NATO military alliance. (AP Photo/John Leicester)

E-3s are modified Boeing 707s. The 707 first flew in 1957 but stopped carrying passengers commercially in 2013, so E-3s are also flying examples of aviation history.

“We can detect aircraft, we can detect UAVs, we can detect missiles and we can detect ships. That’s true, for sure, in Ukraine, especially when we are at the border,” Lt. Col. Richard said.

As the plane loitered and scanned, the crew detected a distant Russian AWACS above the Sea of Azov, many hundreds of kilometers away on the Crimean Peninsula’s eastern side. The Russian aircraft also seemingly spotted the French AWACS: Sensors along the fuselage picked up Russian radar signals.

“We know that they see us, they know that we see them. Let’s say that it’s some kind of a dialogue between them and us,” the French co-pilot, Major Romain, said.

HAWK-EYED AWACS ON CALL TO SAFEGUARD THE OLYMPICS

NATO also has its own fleet of 14 AWACS, also E-3s. They can detect low-flying targets within 400 kilometers (250 miles) and higher-flying targets another 120 kilometers (75 miles) beyond that, the alliance says. It says one AWACS can surveil an area the size of Poland; three can cover all of central Europe.

A crew member is obscured by surveillance equipment that largely fills the fuselage of a French military AWACS surveillance plane as it flew a 10-hour mission Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, to eastern Romania for the NATO military alliance. (AP Photo/John Leicester)

The commander of France's AWACS squadron talks to crew members aboard one of the four French surveillance planes as it flies a 10-hour mission, Jan. 9, 2024, to eastern Romania for the NATO military alliance. (AP Photo/John Leicester)

Able to fly for 12 hours without refueling, French AWACS aren’t limited to surveillance, communications and air-traffic control missions for NATO. They expect to be deployed as part of the massive security operation for the Paris Olympics, providing additional radar surveillance with what Lt. Col. Richard called their “God’s-eye view.”

Russian pilots have at times made clear that they don’t like being watched.

In 2022, a Russian fighter jet released a missile near a British air force RC-135 Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft that was flying in international airspace over the Black Sea, Britain’s government said. The U.S. government released video in March 2023 of a Russian fighter jet dumping fuel on a U.S. Air Force surveillance drone. The drone crashed into the Black Sea.

Rivet Joints are particularly capable spy planes, and Russian authorities “really hate” their ability to snoop on the Ukraine war, said Justin Bronk, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute defense think tank in London.

As well as gathering “real-time intelligence that theoretically could be shared with Ukrainian partners,” the planes also furnish “fantastic” insight about “how Russian forces actually operate in a real war,” Bronk said in a phone interview.

“So of course, the Russians are furious,” he said.

Crew members debrief ground staff after a 10-hour mission Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, aboard a French Air Force AWACS surveillance plane that flew from the 702 Air Base in Avord, central France, to eastern Romania and back again. (AP Photo/John Leicester)

IN THE SKIES, REGULAR ENCOUNTERS

NATO also scrambles fighter jets to scope Russian flights. It says allied aircraft took to the skies more than 500 times in 2022 to intercept Russian aircraft that ventured close to NATO airspace. The number of such encounters dropped to more than 300 in 2023, according to the Brussels-headquartered alliance.

The strengthening of Ukrainian air defenses with Western weaponry may partly explain the decrease, with shoot-downs seemingly making Russian pilots warier. NATO observed reduced activity by manned Russian flights over the western Black Sea last year. NATO says “the vast majority of aerial encounters between NATO and Russian jets were safe and professional” and that Russian incursions into NATO airspace were rare and generally short.

Aboard the French flight, the co-pilot, Major Romain, said Russian planes haven’t intercepted a French AWACS “for a long time” and that if they did, French pilots would try to defuse any tension.

“Our orders are to be, let’s say, passive,” he said. “For a civilian, let’s say ‘polite.’”

___

Find more of AP’s coverage of Russia and Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

AP · January 16, 2024

6. US to relist Yemen's Houthis as specially designated global terrorists, AP sources say

US to relist Yemen's Houthis as specially designated global terrorists, AP sources say

BY AAMER MADHANI, MATTHEW LEE AND ZEKE MILLER

Updated 7:20 PM EST, January 16, 2024

AP · by AAMER MADHANI · January 16, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is expected to soon announce plans to redesignate Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen as specially designated global terrorists, according to two people familiar with the White House decision and a U.S. official.

The move comes as the Houthis have launched dozens of attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The group says it has attacked the ships in response to Israel’s military operations in Gaza in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The three people familiar with the decision were not authorized to comment and requested anonymity to discuss the matter ahead of the expected formal announcement.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken delisted the Houthis as both a foreign terrorist organization and as specially designated global terrorists in February 2021 as the administration sought to make it easier to get food imports and humanitarian aid into Yemen.

In its waning days, the Trump administration designated the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization over the strong objections of human rights and humanitarian aid groups.

The foreign terrorist designation barred Americans and people and organizations subject to U.S. jurisdiction from providing “material support” to the Houthis, which the groups said would result in an even greater humanitarian catastrophe than what was already happening in Yemen.

Shortly after the Biden administration took office, Blinken removed the designations in a step that was roundly criticized by conservative lawmakers and others but was intended to keep much-needed food, medicine and other aid flowing to Yemen.

Yemen, on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula bordering the Red Sea, is the poorest country in the Arab world. War and chronic misgovernment have left 24 million Yemenis at risk of hunger and disease as of 2023, and roughly 14 million in acute need of assistance, the United Nations says. About two-thirds of Yemenis live in territory controlled by the Houthis.

While supporters of broad sanctions argue it’s possible to shape any enforcement mechanisms so to exempt food and humanitarian aid, aid organizations worry that fears of running afoul of U.S. regulation could scare away shippers, banks and other players vital to Yemen’s commercial food supply. Arid Yemen imports 90% of its food.

“This designation would add another level of uncertainty and threat for Yemenis still caught in one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises,” said Scott Paul, an associate director of Oxfam America. “The Biden administration is playing with fire and we call on them to avoid this designation immediately and prioritize the lives of Yemenis now.”

The specially designated global terrorists label to be reimposed on the Houthis does not include sanctions for providing “material support” and it does not come with travel bans that are also imposed with the foreign terrorist organization label, steps intended to help prevent the U.S. move from harming ordinary Yemenis.

Meanwhile, a senior White House official said Tuesday that addressing the ongoing threat by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on commercial vessels in the Red Sea is an “all hands on deck” problem that the U.S. and allies must address together to minimize impact on the global economy.

“How long this goes on and how bad it gets comes down not just to the decisions of the countries in the coalition that took strikes last week,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during an appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The Iran-backed Houthi group has launched dozens of attacks since November on vessels in the Red Sea, a vital corridor for the world’s shipping traffic, in what they say is an effort to support Palestinians in the war with Israel. U.S. and British forces have responded by carrying out dozens of air and sea strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen since Friday. The attacks by the Houthis have continued.

Linda Thomas Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said last week that 2,000 ships since November have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea. Houthi militants have threatened or taken hostage mariners from more than 20 countries.

The Red Sea attacks have already caused significant disruptions to global trade. Oil prices have edged higher in recent days, though Brent crude futures were down slightly in early trading Tuesday.

The U.S. launched a new strike against the Houthis on Tuesday, hitting anti-ship missiles in the third assault on the Iranian-backed group in recent days. The strike came as the Iranian-backed Houthis claimed responsibility for a missile attack against the Malta-flagged bulk carrier Zografia in the Red Sea. No one was injured.

Sullivan said it was critical that countries with influence on Tehran and other Middle East capitals make it clear “that the entire world rejects wholesale the idea that a group like the Houthis can basically hijack the world.”

President Joe Biden’s senior adviser acknowledged that the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea as well as groups allied to Iran carrying out attacks in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen pose concerns that the Israel-Hamas war could escalate even as Israeli officials have indicated a shift in intensity in their military campaign.

“We have to guard against and be vigilant against the possibility that in fact, rather than heading towards de-escalation, we are on a path of escalation that we have to manage,” Sullivan said.

The comments from Sullivan came after Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said during an appearance at the Davos forum that the situation in the Middle East is a “recipe for escalation everywhere.” He said Qatar believes that ending the conflict in Gaza will stop the Houthis and militant groups from launching attacks elsewhere in the region.

Sullivan on Tuesday met with Al Thani as well as Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, according to the White House.

Iran fired missiles late Monday at what it said were Israeli “spy headquarters” in an upscale neighborhood near the sprawling U.S. Consulate compound in Irbil, the seat of Iraq’s northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region, and at targets linked to the extremist Islamic State group in northern Syria.

Iraq on Tuesday called the attacks, which killed several civilians, a “blatant violation” of Iraq’s sovereignty and recalled its ambassador from Tehran.

___

Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Jerusalem, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed reporting.

AP · by AAMER MADHANI · January 16, 2024

7. A freed Israeli hostage relives horrors of captivity and fears for her husband, still held in Gaza

And the world needs to know those horrors that she has lived.

Video at the link: https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-war-hostages-cunio-captivity-869241bb259b00a8f98817edf89b0bc8?

A freed Israeli hostage relives horrors of captivity and fears for her husband, still held in Gaza

BY JULIA FRANKEL

Updated 5:37 PM EST, January 16, 2024

AP · January 16, 2024

KIBBUTZ NIR OZ, Israel (AP) — Standing in the ruins of her home in the Nir Oz farming village on the Gaza border, Sharon Alony Cunio gazed at the distant skyline of Khan Younis, the Palestinian city where Hamas militants dragged her more than three months ago. Her husband, David, remains captive in Gaza.

He’s kilometers away but completely out of reach.

Cunio and her 3-year-old twins were released from Gaza on Nov. 27. They are physically healthy, safe. But she can’t stop thinking about her husband’s last words to her. He was skinny and frail, wounded in the leg, as the family embraced for a final time in captivity.

“Fight for me. Don’t give up,” she said he told her. “Please yell what I cannot yell. I’m scared as hell.”

David Cunio is among scores of captives believed to be alive in Gaza after 120 hostages, including his wife and daughters, were freed during a weeklong cease-fire.

Sharon Alony Cunio, who was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz along with her husband and daughters by Hamas militants more than three months ago stands beneath hostage posters on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. Cunio and her daughters were released in November, but her husband remains in captivity in Gaza. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

As days spin by, punctuated by reports that other hostages have died in Hamas captivity, those freed have increasingly spoken out about the conditions they endured in Gaza. With the plight of the remaining hostages gripping the nation’s attention, those who survived hope to pressure the government into reaching another deal.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Sharon described the Hamas attack and her time in captivity, most of which she said was spent in a hospital — bolstering Israel’s claims that Hamas has abused protected medical locations for military purposes.

Her girls, Emma and Julie, don’t yet understand what happened to them after Hamas militants rampaged through southern Israel on Oct, 7, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 250. The Hamas attack prompted a blistering Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip.

In captivity, she told the girls the near-constant sounds of bombardment were just thunderstorms and the militants who guarded their door were their protectors. Now, when it rains in Yavne, the central Israel city where the three are staying with Sharon’s parents, the girls ask, “Mommy, where are the booms?”

Sharon Alony Cunio surveys the kitchen in the ruins of her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. Cunio, her husband and their 3-year-old twin daughters were kidnapped from the home by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023. She and her daughters were released in November, but her husband remains in captivity. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

____

On the morning Hamas militants attacked their home, the family cowered in their fortified safe room. David Cunio muscled the door shut against the intruders, his wife said, but they eventually flicked on the gas and lit the house ablaze.

As smoke poured in, David grabbed Julie and climbed out the window, leaving Sharon and her sister, Danielle, in the safe room with two children. Armed men stood outside.

“I started to lose consciousness,” Sharon recalled. “At that point, Danielle shook me and said, ‘Let’s open the window and get out. It’s much better if they shoot us. Then there will be no pain, no suffering, instead of watching us all choke to death in here.’”

But militants didn’t shoot them. Instead, they dragged them, with four other hostages, to Gaza on a tractor stolen from the kibbutz. In the melee, the family lost one of the twins — Emma was gone, and they feared it was for good.

Sharon, David and Julie spent 10 days in a Palestinian home, guarded by two Hamas militants. Their captors said they were in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest city, Sharon said.

Sharon Alony Cunio is reunited with her cat, Elvis, on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024, in the ruins of her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz from where she was kidnapped with her daughters and husband on Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas militants. Her husband is among scores of captives believed to be alive in Gaza, after 120 hostages, including his wife and daughters, were freed during a weeklong cease-fire in November. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

“I had a mental breakdown, I had tics, I had panic attacks,” she told AP.

On day nine of captivity, the house next door was bombed. As the explosion sent the walls around them crashing in, David and Sharon climbed on top of Julie, protecting her. Glass pierced Sharon’s scalp.

Soon after, the captors moved the family. Sharon said militants covered her husband in a white sheet so he looked like a corpse and dressed her in traditional Arab clothes. They wrapped Julie in a cloth and pushed her into Sharon’s arms. They packed the family into an ambulance and brought them to a hospital Sharon said she now recognizes from the news as Nasser, in Khan Younis.

Three days later, Sharon said, she heard crying outside their room. She instantly recognized the cries as Emma’s.

“This guy just handed me Emma, like she’s a box or something. And I was shocked,” she said. “ I was certain she was dead. She was panicking and crying. I couldn’t believe that they brought her back to us.”

Sharon Alony Cunio searches for a necklace on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024, in what remains of her kitchen in Kibbutz Nir Oz, from where she was kidnapped with her family on Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas. Cunio and her twin daughters were freed in November, but her husband remains in captivity in Gaza. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Reunited, the family spent the next few weeks in a room on the hospital’s first floor. Stacked boxes separated the hostage section from the rest of the hospital floor, Sharon said. She described sleeping with the girls on a small bed, using a pillow stained with blood. At one point, she said, 12 hostages were packed in the tiny room.

The family soon found out they were being held near two additional rooms of captives, nearly 30 in total. Captors eventually let the hostages spend time in one another’s rooms, Cunio said.

The Israeli military has come under international criticism for the forced evacuations and closures of more than half of Gaza’s hospitals during its offensive, leaving the medical system near collapse. Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of storing weapons and hiding hostages in hospitals in an attempt to justify military operations at the facilities.

Cunio said some captives received medical treatment from hospital staff. When one of the captives in her room grew sick, she said, he was taken away, returning with an IV in his arm. Another young hostage underwent leg surgery, she said.

Food didn’t come on a regular schedule, but most days captors brought them two meals. Sharon described plates of spicy rice topped with meat, and often-moldy pita bread with feta. Some days, no food came at all. Cunio said the adults often gave up their food to feed the twins. They split the bread into quarters, in case no food came the next day.

Sharon Alony Cunio calls a relative on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024, during a visits to the ruins of her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, from where she was kidnapped with her family and taken to the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas militants. She and her two daughters were freed in November, but her husband remains in captivity. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Cunio lost 11 kilos (24 pounds) in Gaza and said each member of her family suffered from vomiting and diarrhea at least once.

“A lot of the times, the girls were just crying, saying ‘I’m hungry,’” she said. “It was devastating.”

When they needed to use the bathroom, they knocked on the door and waited for captors to open it. Sometimes they waited five minutes, other times hours, Sharon said, and the girls sometimes relieved themselves in the sink or trash can of the windowless, humid room. Every time they left, they had to cover themselves with a hijab.

For the last week of captivity, militants moved the hostages into an outer room, with a window. Cunio said she saw rows of displaced Palestinians camped around the hospital.

The captives were told not to make noise. At night, Sharon said, they cracked the window for fresh air. It grew cold, but the hostages had blankets. The girls had been taken captive in underwear and tank tops, and another hostage fashioned long pajama pants for them out of extra clothing.

Sharon said David, an electrician born and raised in Nir Oz, blamed himself — he was the reason the family lived so close to the Gaza border. Sharon cried all the time, she said, and David once beat himself until he bled inside the mouth. Other times, he managed a bit of levity.

“I would tell him, ‘You’re the best man I have ever known,’” Sharon said. “And he told me, ‘It’s about time you figured that out.’”

One day, Sharon said, David was pulled out of the room to speak with a Hamas officer. The man told him Israel had decided to bring back only women and children, Sharon recalled, and David would be taken somewhere with the other men.

“We sat there for three hours, just hugging. Me, him, and the girls,” Cunio said. “I’m begging him not to go and begging to stay with him. The girls are crying. ‘Why are you leaving? Why are they taking Daddy? Can they take other dads? Why do you have to take ours?’”

Three days later, Red Cross vehicles ferried Cunio and the girls back to Israel.

____

Now, Sharon said she won’t be able to sleep through the night until her husband comes home.

“Everything is full of blame,” she said. ”Taking a shower, eating hot food, smoking a cigarette, playing with our girls, being outside when he’s in the tunnels.”

Sharon Alony Cunio stands outside of a safe room in the ruins of her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Monday, Jan.15, 2024.Cunio and her family had barricaded themselves in the room on Oct. 7, 2023, before Hamas militants seized them and dragged them to Gaza. Cunio and her daughters were released in November, but her husband remains in captivity in Gaza. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

On Monday, Sharon toured Kibbutz Nir Oz — where militants killed some 20 people and took more than 80 hostage — for the second time since her release. She got excited as familiar faces appeared, with neighbors collecting belongings from ransacked houses. Everyone had a story — a son still held hostage, a spouse murdered.

Sharon’s old cat, Elvis, sauntered up. He survived the onslaught, nuzzling into Cunio’s leg as the two reunited.

Sharon said the family won’t return to the kibbutz, whose idyllic flowering paths and orange groves now give way to homes pockmarked by bullet holes. On the horizon, she sees pillars of smoke rising from the place she believes her husband is held.

For now, Sharon sends the girls to preschool each day and hugs them at night, soothing them through their nightmares.

When she gets a moment to herself, she turns to an archive of her husband’s voicemails. “I love you, you’re the best,” he says in the one she can’t help but play over and over.

“I promised him I’d fight for him,” Sharon said. “I won’t stop until he comes back.”

AP · January 16, 2024

8. How the War in Gaza Revived the Axis of Resistance

We should not cede the use of the word "resistance '' to these rogue and revolutionary powers and violent extremist organizations. We need to protect the use of "resistance" to resist authoritarian regimes of rogue and revolutionary powers and violent extremist organizations. In the battle of narratives our adversaries continue to demonstrate superior competence. We should not allow them to use resistance as a way to romanticize and legitimize their actions.

Conclusion:

The axis of resistance has been long in the making. The war in Gaza has given the network its greatest opportunity so far to unleash a military and communications assault upon the West. Already, it has asserted itself in the region through its arms and soldiers, and globally through its message and mission. The Israel-Hamas war has changed the Middle East: immense public anger has been stirred up, and animus towards the West could spark fresh extremism and political instability. For the region’s rulers, even those whom Washington counts as allies, the war has changed fundamental assumptions about their own security and their relations with the West. The United States can neither easily dismantle the axis nor defeat the ideas that spawned it. The only way to take the wind out of the axis’s sails is to end the war in Gaza and negotiate a real and just settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Unless this is done, the axis will be a regional reality that the United States will have to contend with for many years to come.

How the War in Gaza Revived the Axis of Resistance

Iran and Its Allies Are Fighting With Missiles and Memes

By Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr

January 17, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr · January 17, 2024

On January 12, the United Kingdom and the United States launched military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. These attacks were a response to the group’s assaults on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, which have disrupted global trade. The Houthis’ actions briefly made them the most prominent members of a military coalition that has become increasingly active across the region following the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri and other Hamas leaders in Beirut on January 2. For, following their deaths, Hezbollah’s commander, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed retribution and declared that the fight against Israel required nothing less than an “axis of resistance.” In the hours that followed Nasrallah’s pledge, his words were spliced into slickly produced videos and spread widely. Then the axis attacked. Hezbollah pounded Israel’s Meron air surveillance base with 62 rockets; the Iraq-based Islamic Resistance group sent drones to attack U.S. bases in Syria and Iraq and targeted the Israeli city of Haifa with a long-range cruise missile; the Houthis struck in the Red Sea; and Iran captured an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman.

Although both Western and regional countries claim that they do not want the war in the Gaza Strip to become a regional conflagration, Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other members of the axis are playing a very different game. They are patiently and methodically consolidating an alliance of forces across a regional battlefield. It started with Iran and Hezbollah, but it is rapidly evolving into something larger than its parts. Its other members include the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria. The formation of this axis presents a direct challenge to the regional order that the West has created and defended in the Middle East for decades. It also—as Iranian and Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea demonstrate—presents a threat to global trade and energy supplies.

Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 demonstrated the axis’s capabilities and influence, which extend beyond the Palestinian territories to encompass Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran. The West sees Tehran as the mastermind behind this network, and there is no doubt that the axis of resistance reflects Iran’s strategic outlook. Indeed, its Revolutionary Guards have provided the axis’s members with lethal military capabilities and coordinating support. But Tehran is not the puppet master, and the axis’s coherence and regional role reflects far more than Iran’s dictates.

Instead, the axis is bound together by a shared hatred of U.S. and Israeli “colonialism.” Hezbollah believes that Washington and Tel Aviv are meddling in Lebanon, and Hamas, the Houthis, and Iraq’s Shia militias believe the same to be true in their territories. As Nasrallah has put it, the disparate groups are unified by the reality that, be they Lebanese, Palestinians, or Yemenis, they face the same issues and the same enemy. This means that what happens in one territory is directly relevant to the others. Rather than instruments of Iran, the axis sees itself as an alliance built around common strategic goals with the spirit of “all for one and one for all.” The axis’s members believe that they are all fighting the same war against Israel and, indirectly, the United States. That means that neither U.S. warnings nor U.S. attacks will force the axis to stand down. Unless the guns in Gaza fall silent, the pressure on its population is relieved, and a credible path to Palestinian sovereignty and self-determination is plotted, the United States will not be able to extricate itself from a dangerous escalatory spiral.

TEHRAN’S GRAND DESIGN

The axis of resistance did not spring into life on October 7. Rather, it was forged in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Its founder, the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and its former commander, Qasem Soleimani, built the network on the back of Iran’s close ties with Hezbollah, drawing on both Iran’s and Hezbollah’s experiences of fighting Iraq and Israel in the 1980s. From the outset, Soleimani sought to create a flexible network where each constituent part of the axis was self-sufficient. Although the training and munitions might come from Iran, each unit was expected to master and deploy tactics, technology, and weaponry.

In its early days, the fledgling axis had the primary aim of defeating U.S. plans for the occupation of Iraq. To that end, Tehran and Hezbollah successfully created local militias that fought U.S. troops. Then, after ISIS took control of large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, similar militias were established to fight these militantly sectarian forces that threatened both the Assad regime in Syria and Shia control of Iraq. The Syrian civil war became a turning point for the axis as Iran, Hezbollah, and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria fought against their common enemy. In doing so, these countries and groups deepened their military and intelligence capabilities and honed the strategic logic of their alliance. It was during this time that Iran strengthened its ties with Yemen’s Houthi rebels, folding them into the now burgeoning alliance, and adopting the banner of the axis of resistance.

Over the past decade, Iran and Hezbollah have deployed advanced missiles, drones, and rockets in Gaza, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. They have also trained Hamas and the Houthis to build their own weaponry. The success of this approach is shown by Hamas’s and the Houthis’ adept development and use of missiles. Axis members have also been trained in media communications, assisted in setting up financial channels, and taught how to support civil resistance, especially in the West Bank. Soleimani’s successor, Esmail Qaani, built on this legacy and further decentralized the axis, increasingly delegating tactical and operational decision-making to local units and their commanders.

Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others are consolidating an alliance of forces across a regional battlefield.

The resulting network has helped Tehran further its enduring objective of driving the United States out of the Middle East. Since the 1979 revolution, Tehran has been focused on protecting the country from Washington, which Iranian leaders are convinced is determined to destroy the Islamic Republic. To that end, Iran has sought to flout U.S. attempts to contain it economically and militarily. It has sought to dislodge the U.S. military from countries bordering Iran and the Persian Gulf, and to compel the United States to leave the region. The axis has been valuable, then, for Tehran, for it has distracted U.S. forces away from Iran’s borders.

The strategic value of the axis to Tehran has grown over the past eight years because of Washington’s increasing belligerence. In 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran and imposed maximum sanctions on the country, and in 2020 he ordered the killing of Soleimani. These actions convinced Tehran of the need for a more powerful and coherent axis of allies, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, that could increase the pressure on Washington. In this context, Iran’s nuclear program became important not only as a bargaining chip to negotiate sanctions removal but also as a deterrent that could protect the axis from U.S. attack.

The other members of the axis of resistance are aligned with Tehran’s aims across the region, which also reflect their own local interests. Hezbollah, for example, is driven by the desire to protect southern Lebanon from what it believes is Israel’s expansionist ambitions, which supposedly also extend to include territories in Syria and Jordan. Shia militias in Iraq are focused on getting U.S. forces out of the country, as well as on triumphing in what they believe is an unfinished civil war with the country’s Sunnis. The Houthis want to gain power over the whole of Yemen, and they resent the efforts of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to get in their way.

ALL FOR ONE

Still, the axis of resistance is ultimately a military alliance, and so its members are stronger together. Although Hamas planned and executed the October 7 attack, Iran and Hezbollah were largely responsible for upgrading Hamas’s capabilities. Indeed, as a host of meetings in Beirut attended by senior leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Revolutionary Guards, and the Houthi and Iraqi militias before the attack shows, the axis’s members likely knew of Hamas’s plans and supported them. For Hamas, the attack’s main aim was to disrupt the status quo that was slowly but surely extinguishing the Palestinian cause, and to return their struggle to the forefront of Arab politics.

For Iran and Hezbollah, too, returning the Palestinian issue to center stage had the advantage of putting Israel on the back foot, thereby reducing the likelihood of further normalization of ties between Israel and Arab states. They are also intrigued by the possibility of miring Israel in a multifront war that would consume its resources. Either way, the conflict achieves a long-standing Iranian objective: Tehran has long believed that if Israel is not preoccupied with its own affairs, it will be preoccupied with Iran’s.

However, the outcome of Hamas’s attack, the scale and ferocity of Israel’s response, the humanitarian catastrophe that has ensued, and the extent of world attention were unexpected. Hamas and its axis allies did not anticipate that the attack on October 7 would be so successful, instead likely envisaging a swift foray into Israel that would end quickly and with limited casualties and hostages. Israel would, then, have attacked Gaza but not with the abandon and destructive ferocity that it has unleashed. The success of Hamas’s attack and the scale of Israel’s reaction stunned the axis, which has, as a result, recalibrated its aims and strategy. Although neither Iran nor Hezbollah want a wider regional war, they have nevertheless targeted both Israeli and U.S. forces with drones and missiles. The Houthis have joined the fray by disrupting shipping in the Red Sea. They have done this to show support for Palestinians but also to deter the United States and Israel from expanding the war into Lebanon by showing the axis members’ willingness to fight. They hope that this resolve will deter Israel from expanding the conflict and deny Tel Aviv the ability to expand the war on a front of its own choosing, without facing a conflict on all of the axis’s fronts.

All members of the axis have taken part in the war in Gaza, and are all, consequently, implicated in the eyes of Israel and the United States. This has further strengthened bonds within the axis. Now they all depend on one another, and on preventing a clear Israeli victory in Gaza. For if Israel triumphs, it will likely turn its attention to other members of the axis, starting with Hezbollah and ending with Iran.

THE MEDIA WARS

Cameras were just as important to Hamas’s attacks on October 7 as lethal weapons. Using GoPro cameras strapped onto militants and drones to record breaches of the Israeli security wall, Hamas started releasing social-media-ready videos within hours of the attack, seizing control of the narrative from the outset. Hamas has been equally media-savvy since then. For example, during the temporary cease-fire and exchange of hostages in November 2023, the group released its Israeli captives in the middle of Gaza City, with cameras at the ready to capture their smiles, handshakes and high-fives with their captors. This was designed to counter Israeli politicians’ narratives of “savage,” “human animal” terrorists. Public opinion across the Middle East, the global South, and even the West increasingly regards the conflict as the consequence of a decades-long occupation, rather than as a response to Islamic terrorism. This implicitly validates the axis’s anticolonialist worldview, and it helps make the axis more popular across the region.

The axis hopes that its global popularity will increase, too. For the first time in many decades, the Palestinian cause is internationally prominent, which the axis’s leaders see as a boon. The rise of the Palestinian issue isolates Israel and the United States and increases global critiques of settler colonialism, occupation, and apartheid. Axis leaders welcome confrontation with the West at a time when these anti-Western ideas are gaining newfound attention. To that end, the axis’s leaders have put these concepts at the center of their messaging. Gone is the obscure religious terminology that was for so long a staple of Iran and Hezbollah’s narrative; in its place instead are words and phrases familiar from human rights literature and international law. An instructive example occurred recently, when the Houthis released an English-language video across social media platforms, announcing a blockade of the Red Sea to all commercial vessels linked to Israel or destined for Israeli ports. The video stated that these military operations “adhere to the provisions of Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This article mandates that all parties to the convention are under obligation to prevent the occurrence of genocide and to punish those responsible for its commission.” The video ends with the message: “The Blockade Stops When the Genocide Stops.” On February 11, the United Kingdom and the United States bombed Yemen, on the same day that South Africa made its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Once again, across social media platforms, the message was spread that South Africa and Yemen were taking actions to stop genocide, whereas London and Washington were once again bombing the region to uphold oppression. Throughout the past three months, the Houthis, in particular, have gained a global fandom among sectors of Gen Z, with their videos going viral on TikTok.

During the 20 years of the “war on terror,” the axis of resistance’s members were either internationally unknown or simply considered to be terrorists motivated by hatred of the West. Since October 7, the axis has been able to define itself on its own terms, and successfully link its actions with global anticolonialist movements. It has already experienced previously unthinkable success: protestors in London this month chanted “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around.”

Cameras were just as important to Hamas’s attacks on October 7 as lethal weapons.

The axis, then, is now fighting Israel and the United States not only on battlefields in the Middle East but also across social media—on platforms including Instagram, Telegram, TikTok, and X—for world public opinion. Indeed, Nasrallah’s and Khamenei’s statements indicate that the axis’s leaders regard international public opinion as the more important strategic long-term prize. They know that they cannot defeat the United States militarily and so they hope to create sufficient public pressure to force Washington to retreat from the Middle East and respect the sovereignty of Palestinians. It is for this reason that Nasrallah has celebrated the fact that “Israel is now seen as a child murdering terrorist state, thanks to social media.” Because of social media, Nasrallah went on, there is a global perception of Israel as a “killer of children and women, [that] displaces people, and is responsible for the largest genocide in the current century.” Nasrallah has also celebrated social media’s ability to spread the view that the United States bears responsibility. “The war on Gaza is an American one, the bombs are American, the decision is American,” he said. “The world knows this today.”

For the axis, this media campaign comes just in time. Iran and Hezbollah have long been aware of the importance of soft power but have been historically unsuccessful at influencing it. But they recognized this shortcoming, and they have spent the past decade building a strong and nimble media infrastructure—now operational in multiple languages—for exactly this kind of moment. Today, the axis of resistance puts out daily videos of battlefield operations, complete with slo-mo effects to highlight direct hits on Israeli soldiers and military installations. It posts on TikTok videos of Houthis dancing aboard ships seized in the Red Sea, and it produces memes meant to generate global fandom for key axis figures, including Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida. Content is also produced to celebrate Nasrallah, contrasting the Hezbollah leader with Arab heads of state who are accused of doing little for the Palestinians. This output complements content generated abroad in support of Palestine, expanding the axis’s reach in unprecedented ways.

The military and soft power campaigns that the axis has masterminded present unprecedented regional challenges for the West, and for Washington in particular. If the war does not end soon, and no clear path to a just settlement for the Palestinians is established, the United States will face a region whose politics will be shaped increasingly by the rage that has gripped the Gaza Strip. An expansion of the conflict beyond Gaza, by Israel in Lebanon or by the United States and its allies in Yemen will only feed this rage, and further inflame public opinion, entrenching the axis’ influence. Washington can only reverse this trend by negotiating a cease fire in Gaza and, then, shaping a credible peace process leading to a final settlement.

The axis of resistance has been long in the making. The war in Gaza has given the network its greatest opportunity so far to unleash a military and communications assault upon the West. Already, it has asserted itself in the region through its arms and soldiers, and globally through its message and mission. The Israel-Hamas war has changed the Middle East: immense public anger has been stirred up, and animus towards the West could spark fresh extremism and political instability. For the region’s rulers, even those whom Washington counts as allies, the war has changed fundamental assumptions about their own security and their relations with the West. The United States can neither easily dismantle the axis nor defeat the ideas that spawned it. The only way to take the wind out of the axis’s sails is to end the war in Gaza and negotiate a real and just settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Unless this is done, the axis will be a regional reality that the United States will have to contend with for many years to come.

• NARGES BAJOGHLI is an anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She is a co-author of How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare.
• VALI NASR is Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is a co-author of How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare.

Foreign Affairs · by Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr · January 17, 2024

9. America Can’t Surpass China’s Power in Asia

Excerpts:

Emphasizing the benefits that defense investments offer to a country’s economy as well as its security can help the United States avoid damaging vital relationships. Washington can also more consciously rely on the barrier afforded by the region’s oceans by deploying fewer forward-based forces to the Asian theater. Instead, the United States should bolster its ability to rapidly deploy reinforcements by pre-positioning more equipment and ammunition (including what the Navy calls “afloat forward staging bases”), improving the air and missile defenses at its existing bases, and modernizing its logistics infrastructure to coordinate a surging flow of troops. The United States has an opportunity to let the region’s geography serve as its first line of defense, helping its allies and partners help themselves while freeing up military capacity for other regional security concerns.

Balancing would also put valuable pressure on Washington itself. The United States needs to learn how to navigate better the Indo-Pacific’s flexible regional alignments rather than exclusively relying on the U.S.-led alliances and partnerships such as AUKUS. Washington must work to integrate itself more fully into political, economic, and security networks that already exist, engaging more actively with ASEAN and its many subgroups. The United States should also seek new opportunities to support other regional minilateral organizations. For all their shortcomings, these groups have become foreign-policy focal points for countries in Southeast Asia, and the United States will need to be able to operate within and alongside them to achieve its interests in the region.

One of the biggest barriers to the adoption of a balancing approach is Washington’s mindset. The idea that military dominance must be pursued in Asia is deeply ingrained in U.S. foreign and defense policy. This presumption risks becoming even more entrenched as leaders in both political parties fear slipping behind Beijing. But a balancing approach constitutes neither appeasement nor defeatism. It is perhaps the only fiscally sustainable way to protect U.S. interests in the region for decades to come.

America Can’t Surpass China’s Power in Asia

But It Can Still Prevent Chinese Hegemony

By Kelly A. Grieco and Jennifer Kavanagh

January 16, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Kelly A. Grieco and Jennifer Kavanagh · January 16, 2024

By the end of U.S. President Barack Obama’s second term, the United States faced a clear choice regarding its future role in Asia. As China grew more powerful—and assertive in its territorial claims—Washington could double down on costly efforts to try to maintain U.S. military primacy in the region. Or it could acknowledge that China will inevitably play a growing military role there and use its finite resources to balance Chinese power, seeking to prevent Chinese regional hegemony without sustaining its own.

Obama’s successors, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, both opted for the first approach. They have focused on achieving “overmatch” against China, as Mark Milley, then the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it in early 2023—retaining military preeminence as an overarching goal of U.S. Indo-Pacific policy. Biden’s strategy for achieving this goal has differed from that of his predecessors. Recognizing that the price of maintaining U.S. military dominance in the region was fast becoming politically and practically unsustainable, the Biden team sought to build a coalition of allies and partners to defray some of the costs. In the last three years, for example, the administration successfully gained access to additional military bases in the Philippines, established new trilateral intelligence-sharing mechanisms with South Korea and Japan, and forged the AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom to provide the Australian navy nuclear-powered submarines.

But despite some successes, Biden’s overall progress toward building the needed coalition has been slow. The United States still lacks military access to critical parts of Asia, a strong U.S.-led security architecture, and enough well-armed allies and partners to sustain U.S. preeminence. Worse, there is no clear way to address these weaknesses. Asia’s maritime geography reduces the threat that countries in the region perceive China poses, fundamentally undermining Biden’s coalition-building project.

The Biden administration’s limited gains reflect an underlying reality that many in Washington would rather not face: U.S. military supremacy in Asia cannot be sustained over the long term. Rather than maintain an ill-fated pursuit of primacy, the United States should adopt a strategy that prioritizes balancing, not exceeding, Chinese power. Washington needs to focus more narrowly on safeguarding access to strategic locations—for example, the industrial centers of Japan and India—and key waterways. Washington must also try to shift some of its security burdens by helping allies and partners to strengthen their self-defense capabilities. Finally, Washington needs to learn to better navigate the region’s many multilateral institutions to advance U.S. interests and influence instead of organizing engagement solely around U.S.-centered partnerships.

Critics of balancing may argue that such an approach would embolden China and stoke fears of abandonment among U.S. allies. But they are wrong: if Washington does not change its approach, it risks finding itself overstretched, lacking the military posture to credibly back its extensive commitments and deter China. A balancing approach would be more sustainable and less risky because it works with the region’s unique geography, not against it.

POWER STRUGGLE

To achieve its vision of regional primacy through coalition building, the Biden administration has invested heavily in strengthening the United States’ relationships with countries across Asia. The United States has elevated its relationship with Vietnam to a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” for instance, and inked new defense cooperation and co-production agreements with India. But Biden’s coalition-building efforts still fall far short of what would be required to prop up U.S. military dominance.

From the beginning, Biden’s administration made it clear that a coalition would have to accomplish three things: diversify the United States’ access to bases, airfields, and ports across the region so that the U.S. military can rapidly project power in the event of a crisis, create a network of alliances and partnerships that reinforces U.S. interests and values, and boost allied and partner countries’ own military capabilities. A primary challenge the United States faces in the Indo-Pacific is China’s large arsenal of missiles. U.S. forces concentrated at large bases in Japan, Guam, and South Korea are particularly vulnerable to Chinese strikes, and the Pentagon hopes to distribute personnel and assets more widely to numerous small bases and outposts across the region to improve their chances of survival.

U.S. efforts to establish this distributed posture have yielded some achievements. The Biden team secured expanded permissions for U.S. forces to use additional bases in Australia and the Philippines, as well as Papua New Guinea, pending the approval of the latter country’s parliament. However, these expanded permissions do not provide much in the way of additional crisis or wartime access. The Philippines and Papua New Guinea have both signaled that they will not permit the United States to use bases on their territories to stockpile weapons or conduct offensive military operations in a war against China, especially over Taiwan. This additional access does not address Washington’s most critical needs or expand U.S. access to the most strategically important countries in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. As a result, in the event of a contingency—and with South Korea also likely to restrict U.S. military access—the United States would still have to rely on vulnerable runways in Japan and Guam or operate long-range bombers from Australia.

Biden has sought to bolster U.S. regional dominance by shifting its military strategy from a traditional “hub-and-spoke” approach—in which the United States is the center of military operations—to a "latticework” model that links allies and partners more comprehensively. The Pentagon has increasingly emphasized trilateral military exercises, including joint air and naval drills with Australia and Japan and coast guard training with Japan and the Philippines. But here, too, Biden’s administration has met with frustrations. Few countries in the region are willing to fully commit to a U.S.-led security architecture that requires them to choose between the United States and China. The United States insists that it does not seek to build a regional security bloc, but many in the region, including U.S. allies, have resisted what they view as Washington’s attempts to do just that.

FRIENDS WITHOUT BENEFITS

Biden’s coalition-building project also still lacks the institutional mechanisms it would need to effectively synchronize actions between its allies and partners during a contingency. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—a security forum comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States—is supposed to deepen maritime cooperation, among other initiatives. But it does not afford participating countries the common intelligence picture they would need to coordinate in a crisis, because information-sharing arrangements remain bilateral. Similarly, Washington counts on Tokyo to provide direct military support during a regional war, but no combined U.S.-Japanese command exists to effectively coordinate the two countries’ operations.

The United States’ efforts to build up its allies’ military capabilities have a mixed record. In the last few years, some countries in Asia have begun to spend more on defense. But they remain a long way from being able to share the region’s current defense burden with the United States, much less the higher demands a conflict would impose. The United States would need its Asian allies and partners to spend many times more than what they currently do to achieve anything close to true burden-sharing.

The United States continues to carry the bulk of the defense burden in the Indo-Pacific.

Consider Japan and Australia: both countries have announced plans to increase defense spending. Japan intends to raise its defense spending 65 percent over the next five years to better defend itself against China, a project that includes the purchase of 400 U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles. Australia also means to increase its defense spending from about 2 percent of GDP to 2.3 percent over the next ten years and is prioritizing funding for power projection; it plans to buy U.S.-produced long-range strike missiles and nuclear-powered submarines.

But there is less to these plans than meets the eye. Japan lacks the intelligence and targeting capabilities needed to use Tomahawk missiles effectively, either for self-defense defense to contribute to U.S. operations. Even once it acquires these capabilities, it is unclear whether the modest number of missiles it is buying will contribute meaningfully to regional deterrence. And the aging of Japan’s population has driven a shortage of personnel trained to operate its ships and aircraft. Australia’s military is facing a similar lack of trained military personnel, as well as of civilian experts it will need to operate and maintain the submarines it buys.

Few other Asian militaries currently contribute much in the way of capabilities that would enable greater burden-sharing with the United States. Some in Washington have high expectations for South Korea, but Seoul has not made the investments in hard infrastructure, air defense, and transport that would allow it to contribute to regional operations. Similarly, despite U.S. pressure, Taiwan has taken only tentative steps toward adding the defensive capabilities it would need to withstand a Chinese attack, such as mobile air defense, sea mines, and cheap drones, among others. In the end, the United States continues to carry the bulk of the defense burden in the Indo-Pacific.

IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM, BALANCE THEM

The Biden administration’s limited progress should raise questions about whether the United States can or should even try to sustain primacy in Asia. Some U.S. leaders hope that as China’s military threat grows, the coalition required to defend U.S. preeminence will eventually emerge, organically sustaining the United States’ dominance indefinitely. This optimism is unwarranted. The region’s maritime geography conspires against Biden’s coalition-building aspirations—and, ultimately, its goal to maintain regional primacy.

The vast Pacific and Indian Oceans create powerful defensive barriers that encourage free-riding and complacency among geographically dispersed states. China’s regional neighbors are certainly wary of Beijing’s aggression. But countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia tend not to see Beijing as an existential threat. And the maritime nature of the Indo-Pacific theater itself undermines the credibility of U.S. deterrence. The air and naval forces most relevant to the region are highly mobile—easy to deploy and easy to withdraw. This mobility makes potential allies fear abandonment and reduces the benefits—like U.S. investments in land bases—that they can anticipate from joining a U.S.-led coalition. Many Asian states already harbor understandable skepticism about the durability of U.S. guarantees to the region, given how halfhearted some of Washington’s efforts to “pivot” to Asia have been—and given how extensive the United States’ military commitments are in Europe and the Middle East.

The United States can, however, choose a different approach—and it should. A smarter, more sustainable U.S. strategy would focus on balancing China’s power, not overmatching it. A balancing strategy would still require the United States to build a friendly coalition in Asia, but it would be a different kind of coalition. In a balancing approach, the sheer quantity of U.S. allies and partners and available access locations become less important. More important is the quality and strategic value of the United States’ coalition members and access points.

The United States should focus foremost on keeping the region’s major centers of industrial power—most notably India, Japan, and South Korea—out of Beijing’s grip by helping them develop their self-defense capabilities and better supporting their attempts to reduce their economic dependence on China. Washington must also commit more energy to safeguarding the region’s key waterways, specifically the Strait of Malacca and parts of the South and East China Seas, enlisting the help of India, Japan, the Philippines, and Singapore. While the United States should maintain its regional treaty commitments and continue to invest in strategically important partners, countries with fewer implications for the balance of power should receive less U.S. attention. The United States need not exceed every move China makes in the Pacific Islands or in continental Southeast Asia.

MENTAL BALANCE

A balancing approach would prioritize shifting much of the United States’ defense burden to allies and partners, requiring that they assume primary responsibility for their security and putting the U.S. military in a supporting role. Washington should encourage all of its allies in the region, but especially Japan and the Philippines, to become harder to conquer by investing heavily in asymmetric and self-defense capabilities. U.S. leaders must more urgently push Taiwan, too, to quickly adopt a similar self-defense posture.

For many Asian countries, meeting the challenge of modernizing their defense will not be easy after decades of underinvestment and given personnel shortages. But Washington can do far more than it currently does to induce them to armor up. It can attach conditions to the extensive U.S. military assistance and arms deals it offers, pushing allies and partners away from buying expensive prestige items like fighter jets and toward acquiring large amounts of relatively cheap and mobile military assets such as uncrewed ships, aerial drones, naval mines, antiship missiles, and air defenses. Washington can also use incentives like co-production arrangements and technology sharing to encourage its allies to invest in their own defense industries. Most of all, Washington will need to make clear to allies and partners that U.S. involvement has limits.

Balancing is the only fiscally sustainable way to protect U.S. interests in Asia for decades to come.

Emphasizing the benefits that defense investments offer to a country’s economy as well as its security can help the United States avoid damaging vital relationships. Washington can also more consciously rely on the barrier afforded by the region’s oceans by deploying fewer forward-based forces to the Asian theater. Instead, the United States should bolster its ability to rapidly deploy reinforcements by pre-positioning more equipment and ammunition (including what the Navy calls “afloat forward staging bases”), improving the air and missile defenses at its existing bases, and modernizing its logistics infrastructure to coordinate a surging flow of troops. The United States has an opportunity to let the region’s geography serve as its first line of defense, helping its allies and partners help themselves while freeing up military capacity for other regional security concerns.

Balancing would also put valuable pressure on Washington itself. The United States needs to learn how to navigate better the Indo-Pacific’s flexible regional alignments rather than exclusively relying on the U.S.-led alliances and partnerships such as AUKUS. Washington must work to integrate itself more fully into political, economic, and security networks that already exist, engaging more actively with ASEAN and its many subgroups. The United States should also seek new opportunities to support other regional minilateral organizations. For all their shortcomings, these groups have become foreign-policy focal points for countries in Southeast Asia, and the United States will need to be able to operate within and alongside them to achieve its interests in the region.

One of the biggest barriers to the adoption of a balancing approach is Washington’s mindset. The idea that military dominance must be pursued in Asia is deeply ingrained in U.S. foreign and defense policy. This presumption risks becoming even more entrenched as leaders in both political parties fear slipping behind Beijing. But a balancing approach constitutes neither appeasement nor defeatism. It is perhaps the only fiscally sustainable way to protect U.S. interests in the region for decades to come.

• KELLY A. GRIECO is a Senior Fellow in the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center, a Nonresident Fellow with the Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare, and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University.
• JENNIFER KAVANAGH is a Senior Fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Foreign Affairs · by Kelly A. Grieco and Jennifer Kavanagh · January 16, 2024

10. Trump Is Already Reshaping Geopolitics by Graham Allison

Since Graham Allison wrote this I think we can read this analysis in a non-partisan way.

I think it has been quite some time since "politics has stopped at the water's edge." I think the political parties now believe everything is fair game if it helps them gain and maintain power and undermine their political opposition.

Excerpts:

Historically, there have been eras when differences between Democrats and Republicans on major foreign policy issues were so modest that it could be said that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” This decade, however, is not one of them. Unhelpful as it may be to foreign-policy makers and their counterparts abroad, the U.S. Constitution schedules quadrennial equivalents of what in the business world would be an attempted hostile takeover.

As a result, on every issue—from negotiations on climate or trade or NATO’s support for Ukraine to attempts to persuade Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, or Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to act—Biden and his foreign policy team are finding themselves increasingly handicapped as their counterparts weigh Washington’s promises or threats against the likelihood that they will be dealing with a very different government a year from now. This year promises to be a year of danger as countries around the world watch U.S. politics with a combination of disbelief, fascination, horror, and hope. They know that this political theater will choose not only the next president of the United States but also the world’s most consequential leader.

Trump Is Already Reshaping Geopolitics

Foreign Affairs · by Graham Allison · January 16, 2024

In the decade before the great financial crisis of 2008, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, became a virtual demigod in Washington. As U.S. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, famously advised, “If he’s alive or dead it doesn’t matter. If he’s dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him.”

During Greenspan’s two decades as chair, from 1987 to 2006, the Fed played a central role in a period of accelerated growth in the U.S. economy. Among the sources of Greenspan’s fame was what financial markets called the “Fed put.” (A “put” is a contract that gives the owner the right to sell an asset at a fixed price until a fixed date.) During Greenspan’s tenure, investors came to believe that however risky the new products that financial engineers were creating, if something went awry, the system could count on Greenspan’s Fed to come to the rescue and provide a floor below which stocks would not be allowed to fall. The bet paid off: when Wall Street’s mortgage-backed securities and derivatives led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, triggering the 2008 financial crisis that sparked the Great Recession, the U.S. Treasury and the Fed stepped in to prevent the economy from sliding into a second Great Depression.

That dynamic is worth recalling when considering the effect that the 2024 U.S. presidential election is already having on the decisions of countries around the world. Leaders are now beginning to wake up to the fact that a year from now, former U.S. President Donald Trump could actually be returning to the White House. Accordingly, some foreign governments are increasingly factoring into their relationship with the United States what may come to be known as the “Trump put”—delaying choices in the expectation that they will be able to negotiate better deals with Washington a year from now because Trump will effectively establish a floor on how bad things can get for them. Others, by contrast, are beginning to search for what might be called a “Trump hedge”—analyzing the ways in which his return will likely leave them with worse options and preparing accordingly.

THE GHOST OF PRESIDENCIES PAST

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s calculations in his war against Ukraine provide a vivid example of the Trump put. In recent months, as a stalemate has emerged on the ground, speculation has grown about Putin’s readiness to end the war. But as a result of the Trump put, it is far more likely that the war will still be raging this time next year. Despite some Ukrainians’ interest in an extended cease-fire or even an armistice to end the killing before another grim winter takes its toll, Putin knows that Trump has promised to end the war “in one day.” In Trump’s words: “I would tell [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, no more [aid]. You got to make a deal.” Facing a good chance that a year from now, Trump will offer terms much more advantageous for Russia than anything U.S. President Joe Biden would offer or Zelensky would agree to today, Putin will wait.

Ukraine’s allies in Europe, by contrast, must consider a Trump hedge. As the war approaches the end of its second year, daily pictures of destruction and deaths caused by Russian airstrikes and artillery shells have upended European illusions of living in a world in which war has become obsolete. Predictably, this has led to a revival of enthusiasm for the NATO alliance and its backbone: the U.S. commitment to come to the defense of any ally that is attacked. But as reports of polls showing Trump besting Biden are beginning to sink in, there is a growing fear. Germans, in particular, remember former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conclusion from her painful encounters with Trump. As she described it, “We must fight for our future on our own.”

Trump is not the only U.S. leader to ask why a European community that has three times the population of Russia and a GDP more than nine times its size has to continue to depend on Washington to defend it. In an oft-cited interview with The Atlantic’s chief editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, in 2016, U.S. President Barack Obama lacerated Europeans (and others) for being “free riders.” But Trump has gone further. According to John Bolton, who was then Trump’s national security adviser, Trump said, “I don’t give a shit about NATO” during a 2019 meeting in which he talked seriously about withdrawing from the alliance altogether. In part, Trump’s threats were a bargaining ploy to force European states to meet their commitment to spend two percent of GDP on their own defense—but only in part. After two years of attempting to persuade Trump about the importance of the United States’s alliances, Secretary of Defense John Mattis concluded that his differences with the president were so profound that he could no longer serve, a position he explained candidly in his 2018 letter of resignation. Today, Trump’s campaign website calls for “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” When considering how many tanks or artillery shells to send to Ukraine, some Europeans are now pausing to ask whether they might need those arms for their own defense were Trump to be elected in November.

Leaders are waking up to the fact that Trump could return to the White House.

Expectations derived from a Trump put were also at work during the recently concluded COP 28 climate change summit in Dubai. Historically, COP agreements about what governments will do to address the climate challenge have been long on aspirations and short on performance. But COP 28 stretched even further into fantasy in heralding what it called a historic agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels.”

In reality, the signatories are doing precisely the opposite. Major producers and consumers of oil, gas, and coal are currently increasing—not reducing—their use of fossil fuels. Moreover, they are making investments to continue doing so for as far ahead as any eye can see. The world’s largest producer of oil, the United States, has been expanding its production annually for the past decade and set a new record for output in 2023. The third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, India, is celebrating its own superior economic growth driven by a national energy program whose centerpiece is coal. This fossil fuel accounts for three-quarters of India’s primary energy production. China is the number one producer of both “green” renewable energy and “black” polluting coal. So although China installed more solar panels in 2023 than the United States has in the past five decades, it is also currently building six times as many new coal plants as the rest of the world combined.

Thus, although COP 28 saw many pledges about targets for 2030 and beyond, attempts to get governments to take any costly, irreversible actions today were resisted. Leaders know that if Trump returns and pursues his campaign pledge to “drill, baby, drill,” such actions will be unnecessary. As a bad joke that made its way around the bars at COP 28 went: “What is COP 28’s unstated plan to transition away from fossil fuels? To burn them up as rapidly as possible.”

A DISORDERED WORLD

A second Trump term promises a new world trading order—or disorder. On his first day in office in 2017, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. The weeks that followed saw the end of discussions to create a European equivalent as well as other free-trade agreements. Using the unilateral authority that Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 gives the executive branch, Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports—tariffs that Biden has largely kept in place. As the Trump administration’s trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer—whom the Trump campaign has identified as its lead adviser on these issues—explained in his recently published book, No Trade Is Free, a second Trump term would be much bolder.

In the current campaign, Trump calls himself “Tariff Man.” He is promising to impose a ten percent universal tariff on imports from all countries and to match countries that levy higher tariffs on American goods, promising “an eye for an eye, a tariff for a tariff.” The cooperation pact with Asia-Pacific countries negotiated by the Biden administration—the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity—will, Trump says, be “dead on day one.” For Lighthizer, China is the “lethal adversary” that will be the central target of protectionist U.S. trade measures. Beginning with the revocation of the “permanent normal trading relations” status China was granted in 2000 ahead of joining the World Trade Organization, Trump’s goal will be to “eliminate dependence on China in all critical areas,” including electronics, steel, and pharmaceuticals.

Since trade is a major driver of global economic growth, most leaders find the possibility that U.S. initiatives could essentially collapse the rules-based trading order almost inconceivable. But some of their advisers are now exploring futures in which the United States may be more successful in decoupling itself from the global trading order than in forcing others to decouple from China.

Trade liberalization has been a pillar of a larger process of globalization that has also seen the freer movement of people around the world. Trump has announced that on the first day of his new administration, his first act will be to “close the border.” Currently, every day, more than 10,000 foreign nationals are entering the United States from Mexico. Despite the Biden administration’s best efforts, Congress has refused to authorize further economic assistance to Israel and Ukraine without major changes that significantly slow this mass migration from Central America and elsewhere. On the campaign trail, Trump is making Biden’s failure to secure U.S. borders a major issue. He has announced his own plans to round up millions of “illegal aliens” in what he calls “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” In the thick of their own presidential election, Mexicans are still searching for words to describe this nightmare in which their country could be overwhelmed by millions of people coming across both their northern and southern borders.

FOUR MORE YEARS

Historically, there have been eras when differences between Democrats and Republicans on major foreign policy issues were so modest that it could be said that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” This decade, however, is not one of them. Unhelpful as it may be to foreign-policy makers and their counterparts abroad, the U.S. Constitution schedules quadrennial equivalents of what in the business world would be an attempted hostile takeover.

As a result, on every issue—from negotiations on climate or trade or NATO’s support for Ukraine to attempts to persuade Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, or Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to act—Biden and his foreign policy team are finding themselves increasingly handicapped as their counterparts weigh Washington’s promises or threats against the likelihood that they will be dealing with a very different government a year from now. This year promises to be a year of danger as countries around the world watch U.S. politics with a combination of disbelief, fascination, horror, and hope. They know that this political theater will choose not only the next president of the United States but also the world’s most consequential leader.

• GRAHAM ALLISON is Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
• MORE BY GRAHAM ALLISON

Foreign Affairs · by Graham Allison · January 16, 2024

11. Getting “Left-of-Launch” in the Counter-Drone Fight

Excerpt:

The U.S. approach to countering tactical drones has too narrowly focused on defensive options. The popular narrative around the democratization of drone technologies has fed into the idea that drones are too ubiquitous to be targeted before they launch. But the most sophisticated drone capabilities still require supply chains, manufacturing facilities, and training regimes that are all viable targets for a variety of interdiction efforts. These features constitute emerging global drone networks with access to increasingly capable and low-cost drone technologies. The good news is that the U.S. military has an ace in the hole: its comparative advantage is that it knows how to take down networks. The left-of-launch strategy we outlined offers a new path forward to proactively counter tactical drones by integrating all instruments of national power. As the Department of Defense looks to revise its counter-drone strategy, it’s time to recall Gen. George Washington’s timeless advice: “offensive operations, often times, is the surest, if not the only (in some cases) means of defence.”

Getting “Left-of-Launch” in the Counter-Drone Fight - War on the Rocks

CAITLIN LEE AND PAUL LUSHENKO

warontherocks.com · by Caitlin Lee · January 17, 2024

America’s adversaries, including both state and non-state actors, have developed creative ways of using cheap, commercially available, and easily weaponized drones to assassinate opponents, destroy tanks, wage surprise attacks, smuggle drugs, and even conduct aerial dogfighting. Most recently, extremist groups such as the Houthis in Yemen have used drones to attack commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The democratization of drone technology means that countries, as well as terrorist organizations and “lone wolves,” are now able to conduct attacks with near impunity. This includes attacks against U.S. military forces deployed abroad, America’s commercial interests on land, sea, and air, and even critical infrastructure and population centers on the homeland.

In response to this drone proliferation crisis, the U.S. government has largely focused on a narrow “right-of-launch” approach. This relies on defeating tactical drones after they are en route to their targets with a variety of point and stationary defenses — small-arms fire, arresting nets, dazzling lasers, frequency jammers, and even other drones. This prevailing approach is reflected in the administration’s Domestic Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Action Plan, as well as the Department of Defense’s Counter Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Strategy, both of which focus mostly on mitigation technologies.

Yet our research suggests that a right-of-launch strategy is too reactionary. It cedes the initiative to America’s adversaries, and it requires expending costly munitions that are not designed to counter drones. This problem will only worsen as a new generation of drones, enabled by artificial intelligence, begin to collaborate in large numbers to overwhelm stationary and mobile military positions with swarm tactics. Defending every target, right-of-launch, with a “bullet-on-bullet” approach is likely to be technically difficult, costly, and insufficient. The Houthis’ recent drone attacks in the Red Sea are prima facie evidence that America’s current ad hoc and tactical response to these low-cost and easy-to-use capabilities is not working. This is not to say that mitigation efforts are not worth pursuing — the use of microwave energy to disorient and ultimately defeat drones holds particular promise. But this is only part of the solution.

Become a Member

In our estimate, a better approach to countering the emerging drone swarm threat is to embrace a holistic, offensive counter-drone strategy that snuffs out adversary drones at their source. The U.S. Army’s Joint Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System Office, in its role as the executive agent for the entire joint force, should pursue a “whole-of-government” approach that enables a “left-of-launch” counter-drone strategy, which can be tailored across all classes of drones. This new strategy should focus not only on drone attacks, but also the networks behind them. Such an approach will require U.S. officials to adopt a new mindset — drawing from the U.S. Special Operations Command’s experience and expertise countering terrorist networks — that focuses on intervening early and proactively to disrupt and defeat the transregional networks that are enabling drone attacks globally. The strategic shift to a left-of-launch strategy will require a variety of activities, many non-kinetic, but potentially also some lethal interdiction operations, the latter of which are dependent on the political will necessary to operate in sensitive and inherently dangerous areas.

These networks are characterized by variations in drone technologies, important differences in how drones are employed by states, non-state actors, and lone-wolf threats, and the potential for these actors to learn from one another. International regimes that aim to stem drone proliferation are likely to founder as capable, low-cost drones proliferate to a variety of America’s enemies, both near and far. But diplomatic, military, and economic tools that aim to take down globe-spanning drone networks — long before they are able to attack U.S. interests at home and abroad — can make help manage the expanding drone threat.

The Nature of Global Drone Networks in the New Drone Age

The left-of-launch counter-drone strategy we propose starts with a fresh assessment of drone proliferation globally. Though drones were once the monopoly of industrialized nations, such as France and the United States, this is no longer the case. Terrorist organizations, including Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen, now favor weaponized drones. Indeed, the international drone marketplace is saturated with commercially available and easily weaponized drones, such as the Chinese-manufactured DJI, as well as military-grade capabilities including Turkey’s TB-2 Bayraktar and Iran’s Shahed series of drones. This new drone age blurs prior distinctions between military-grade and commercial drone technologies, as well as between state and non-state actor operating concepts, organizational structures, and drone procurement and manufacturing.

First, there is an emerging “cross-over market” for drone technologies, which combines the best of breeds from military-grade and commercial technologies. Military-grade technologies, which tend to have greater range, payload, and precision, are concentrated among leading drone exporters like China, Iran, and Turkey. These drones, such as China’s Wing Loong, Iran’s Shahed, or Turkey’s TB-2, incorporate low-cost and dual-use technologies. But they also require a degree of systems integration that middle powers, non-state actors, and smaller commercial companies have yet to master. That said, these less-capable actors are quickly bending the learning curve as they gain access to increasingly lethal commercial and military-grade technologies.

The Houthis, for example, were reportedly able to create simple cast fiberglass shells of Iranian drones, so that when their access to Iranian-manufactured drones was cut off in 2021 due to peace talks and an embargo, the local industrial base in Yemen was still able to reproduce an aerodynamic drone chassis. During its 2020 conflict with Armenia over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, Azerbaijan was also able to use simple automation — in the form of autopilot software — to convert Soviet-era AN-2 crop-duster aircraft into one-way suicide drones. Azerbaijan used these jury-rigged loitering munitions to bait Armenia’s air defense systems, which analysts argue helped turn the tide of the war in Azerbaijan’s favor.

Second, new operating concepts and organizational structures are also proliferating across state and non-state lines. While the war in Ukraine has made it fashionable to claim that anyone can rig a drone with a mortar and drop it on a tank, the reality is that drone operators often need some combat training, which involves the kind of tacit knowledge that state-backed military organizations can provide. Battle-hardened private military contractors from Russia’s Wagner Group, for example, reportedly trained Hamas terrorists to drop bombs from small drones during exercises in Africa prior to the brutal attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Among Hamas’ supporters, Russia had experience with these simple bomb-dropping mechanisms.

At the same time, states are also gaining new knowledge from watching how non-state actors employ commercial drone technology. The Islamic State’s drone campaign against Iraqi and U.S. forces in 2017 prompted some experts to label drone warfare a threat as strategically significant as “the next improvised explosive device.” The Islamic State’s approach to drone warfare, followed by Russia and Ukraine’s use of tactical drones during their ongoing war, have even encouraged a rethinking about the force structure of the U.S. Air Force and the need to combat the low-cost yet effective drone threat.

Third, the adoption of new manufacturing processes also crosses state and non-state lines. The Islamic State initially emerged as a violent extremist organization, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and then morphed into a pseudo-state, helping to explain its rapid adoption of a state-like bureaucracy for drone manufacturing. This allowed the group to acquire drone technologies from 16 different companies in seven different countries and eventually establish its own drone production system. Similarly, countries like the United States and United Kingdom are exploring commercial 3D printing to mass produce drones at scale. This initiative replicates what non-state actors are already doing. Rebel groups in Myanmar, for example, already use 3D printing to manufacture drones for combat, albeit with mixed success.

In this operational environment, it will be difficult to identify the sources of drone proliferation and stop them. Commercial drone capabilities — especially on the software side — will diffuse more quickly than military ones, as nearly continuous cost reductions in turn yield greater accessibility. Advancements in AI technologies — which employ computers and computing power to perform tasks that are normally reserved for humans — add another wrinkle. In the context of drone innovation, AI could become a key enabling function for the autonomous command and control of fast-moving, lethal drone swarms that stand to provide a coveted “first-mover” advantage. Stemming the proliferation of AI-enabled drone technologies might ultimately require stopping people from writing code on computers, although such regulation would result in a dystopian level of intrusion, including a breach of countries’ sovereignty and individuals’ privacy, which raises ethical and legal concerns.

We believe that the United States, with the Department of Defense in the lead, can successfully adopt a left-of-launch counter-drone strategy without resorting to such tactics. By recognizing a convergence in trends toward more capable, pervasive, and military-class drone operations in modern warfare, a left-of-launch strategy sharpens the focus on specific actors with the greatest capability and desire to threaten U.S. national interests, as well as those of America’s key allies and partners. The U.S. military cannot conceivably track every code writer, 3D printer, high-resolution camera, and mortar that supports tactical drone development. But only a limited set of actors are seeking to leverage combinations of commercial and military-grade technology to produce novel warfighting capabilities that could affect U.S. interests — and the Department of Defense can use a left-of-launch strategy to target and eliminate these threats.

Getting Left-of-Launch to Counter Global Drone Networks

Middle powers and violent extremist organizations in the Middle East and Africa — who import drones from China, Iran, and Turkey — are obvious targets for a left-of-launch counter-drone strategy. All of these actors benefit from difficult-to-track commercial technologies, making widespread proliferation almost inevitable. Even state powers interested in limiting proliferation are tempted to dismiss international regimes, such as the Missile Technology Control Regime, which are designed to achieve this goal. For example, France and the United Kingdom, both regime members, sold the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia SCALP missiles, which have specifications that come within shouting distance of the range and warhead size specified for export guidelines. And China never agreed to the regime in the first place — it has exported a variety of drones since producing its first armed drone in 2011. Meanwhile, non-state actors are starting to develop their own indigenous drone capabilities that are modest now but could become far more autonomous, networked, and capable, especially with the support of patron states such as Iran and Russia.

Yet we argue that, despite these serious challenges, it is still possible to get ahead of the proliferation problem. The United States, along with its allies and partners, should leverage economic and military measures to counter these emerging and globe-spanning drone networks. In the new drone age, both state and non-state adversaries will continue to rely on dual-use and military-grade capabilities to maximize their combat effectiveness against stronger militaries. Many of these capabilities are, in fact, dependent on supply lines, manufacturing facilities, and training networks. All of these elements are required to operate armed, automated, and networked drones at scale. And they also have key vulnerabilities that are exploitable.

A model for a left-of-launch counter-drone strategy is U.S. Northern Command’s missile defeat strategy, which aims to destroy missiles before they launch. The centerpiece of this effort is “early domain awareness,” enabled by long range radars, autonomous drones, and other technologies. Of course, tactical drones are even harder to detect than cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons. So, an equivalent counter-drone strategy should put greater emphasis on intelligence collection to identify the movement of supplies and trainers that the United States, in concert with its allies and partners, can interdict.

Fortunately, the U.S. military knows how to do this. Years before the Islamic State massed drones on the battlefield, the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group — which was tasked to identify future threats during the “global war on terror” and is now partly nested under the Threat Systems Management Office — recognized drones as an emerging threat. It outfitted U.S. forces deployed abroad with cutting-edge counter-drone technology and proliferated new “tactics, techniques, and procedures” across Army formations combating radical Islamic terrorists.

Today, Special Operations Command organizations like the 75th Ranger Military Intelligence Battalion, which include exquisite cyber, human, imagery, and signals collection capabilities, provide valuable intelligence capabilities. This organization, as well other Special Mission Units assigned to the command, also has flexible funding authorities to experiment with novel counter-drone measures that are capable of identifying the threat early enough to create space for kinetic, economic, or diplomatic responses. Among these options include proliferating counterfeit drone parts with tracking mechanisms to enable global interdiction; using “zero-day” cyber tools to exploit and disrupt software enabling tactical drones; and conducting strikes against drone makers and manufacturing nodes themselves, when the political will exists to do so.

Business intelligence is also critical. A proactive left-of-launch strategy should emphasize working with allies and partners to prevent drones and components from falling into adversary hands in the first place. The Islamic State’s drone network, for example, relied on the purchase of large numbers of suspicious items — such as bulk orders of thermal cameras — for delivery to war zone-adjacent locations. A coalition of willing governments and industry partners could develop new trade regulations and practices that enable participating companies to monitor and report suspicious transactions.

Finally, although mitigation strategies themselves are reactionary solutions, they are nevertheless essential to a layered, holistic, and proactive left-of-launch counter-drone strategy. Recent history reveals the costs of waiting. While the U.S. military struggled to adapt its ground vehicles to the threat of Iranian-made explosively formed penetrators in Iraq between 2005 and 2011, at least 196 soldiers were killed and nearly 900 were wounded. Mitigations may be less effective for drones, which are difficult to detect with radar and even more difficult to destroy if deployed in large numbers. But identifying the most effective mitigations now is prudent, rather than waiting until the day when every U.S. tank formation, carrier strike group, and manned fighter package is vulnerable to saturation attacks by large drone swarms. One key lesson gleaned from the Asymmetric Warfare Group’s research, and more recently validated by Special Operations Command, is that any counter-drone strategy should be layered, offering a defense-in-depth to defeat a variety of small drones used at different scales and ranges. There is no “silver bullet” for countering drones, but a strong network can take down an adversary network.

The Best Defense Is a Good Offense

The U.S. approach to countering tactical drones has too narrowly focused on defensive options. The popular narrative around the democratization of drone technologies has fed into the idea that drones are too ubiquitous to be targeted before they launch. But the most sophisticated drone capabilities still require supply chains, manufacturing facilities, and training regimes that are all viable targets for a variety of interdiction efforts. These features constitute emerging global drone networks with access to increasingly capable and low-cost drone technologies. The good news is that the U.S. military has an ace in the hole: its comparative advantage is that it knows how to take down networks. The left-of-launch strategy we outlined offers a new path forward to proactively counter tactical drones by integrating all instruments of national power. As the Department of Defense looks to revise its counter-drone strategy, it’s time to recall Gen. George Washington’s timeless advice: “offensive operations, often times, is the surest, if not the only (in some cases) means of defence.”

Become a Member

Dr. Caitlin Lee is the director of acquisition and technology policy in the national security research division at RAND Corporation and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

Paul Lushenko, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the U.S. Army War College, where he also serves as the director of special operations. He is the co-author of The Legitimacy of Drone Warfare: Evaluating Public Perceptions (2024).

Image: U.S. Air National Guard photo by Tech. Sgt. Brigette Waltermire

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Caitlin Lee · January 17, 2024

12. Twilight of the Davos Gods: The Economic Forum Loses Its Relevance in a Time of War

Hmmm... but we do need to know how the "day after" will be shaped after these various conflicts are won (or concluded?) We must continually ask what is the acceptable durable political arrangement that we can achieve that will protect, sustain, and advance our interest?

Excerpts:

Sullivan, like Davos, is lost in the pursuit of what the “day after” looks like in Ukraine, the Middle East, and potentially, the Indo-Pacific. He is clinging to a rules-based world order that both Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have rejected by undermining the United Nations Security Council in order to target Ukraine and possibly Taiwan.

Davos should have been all about Crimea on Tuesday — and what it will require to expel Russia from it. The peninsula is, as retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges argues, the “decisive terrain” of the war and Ukraine retaking it must be priority one.

Instead, Davos now finds itself lost during a time of war. The once seemingly omnipotent gathering is veering into being less a think-tank and more a trade show, devoid of purpose and solutions to the greatest existential threats facing the West. Davos’s theme in 2024 is “Rebuilding Trust.” It should have been “Rebuilding Purpose and Western Resolve to Win.”

Twilight of the Davos Gods: The Economic Forum Loses Its Relevance in a Time of War

Published 01/17/24 06:00 AM ET

Mark Toth and Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet

themessenger.com · January 17, 2024

The 2024 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos is in full swing and all of the usual suspects are there, including diplomats, CEOs, academics and the global media. In years past, Davos has had the look and feel of a modern-day Mount Olympus given its setting in the snow-covered Alps of Switzerland.

Now, however, in a world gone kinetically mad, Davos seems to be struggling to maintain its relevance and its global influence. Long fodder for a myriad of globalist conspiracy theories, Davos is, in reality, ill-equipped to influence matters of war and peace. Economics, in that regard, as a means of global order is proving to be Utopian.

Davos itself is rapidly becoming plebeian in construct: lots of huckstering, yet scant geopolitical or geostrategic solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. It now appears more akin to a Turkish bazaar than a forum capable of providing insightful direction.

Scan the names of the 1,000 or so companies attending Davos and the forums in which they are participating, and you will see many of them attempting to position themselves to profit off the war in Ukraine: defense firms, cybersecurity specialists, and even investment banking groups seeking to capitalize, post-war.

Kyiv has encouraged the latter, as it did last year at Davos. However, there is a war to be won first — and that is where we are witnessing the beginning of the twilight of the Davos gods and their capacity to economically influence global events.

Last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his generals at Davos were coming off of an impressive counteroffensive in the Fall of 2022. Ukraine had recaptured vast swaths of Russian-occupied territory, and Kyiv’s hopes were high for a decisive move on the Crimean peninsula last summer.

Today Ukraine faces a very different and challenging battlefield. The frontlines on the ground have become static and increasingly are fought as a war of bloody attrition — trench warfare like that of World War I.

Kyiv’s recent breakthroughs largely have come from Ukraine’s deep fight against Russian military forces, including the downing on Sunday of a Beriev A-50 airborne early warning and control plane, as well as an Ilyushin Il-22M command post turboprop over the Sea of Azov. Intended or not, Ukraine sent an urgent message to its allies gathering in Davos: Winning the war on the ground will require winning the skies.

Yet Davos is devoid of answers and the West has reduced Zelenskyy into playing Kabuki theater while his soldiers hold the lines amidst the bitter cold of the war’s third winter and repeated Russian ground assaults. Zelenskyy needs battlefield answers, not diplomatic rhetoric, academic theory and media punditry played out by Davos attendees dining on $150 steaks and sipping $40 martinis.

Yes, Zelenskyy trotting out Ukraine’s ten-point peace plan in Davos serves a purpose — especially in defining what Kyiv views as an acceptable end state. But a far-off peace plan is not a plan for winning the war in the here and now. Nor will it forestall Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against the West, or China’s machinations in the Indo-Pacific.

Davos has simply lost the plot.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan’s Tuesday evening address to the forum was strikingly emblematic of just how far detached Davos is from the new reality of a Western world embroiled in an ideological war with Moscow and Beijing. Sullivan framed his comments in legal and economic terms — as if Moscow can be convinced to return to the post-World War II global order that Putin single-handedly destroyed by invading Ukraine.

Eastern Europe is at war and central Europe is threatened. Yet Sullivan’s speech was naïvely lost, framing the challenge of winning it as if it were merely one of the West “competing to shape the international economic system.”

Sullivan fixated on the concept of conflict in an age of economic “interdependence,” as though the West’s calculus in confronting Russia in Ukraine must be one of future co-dependence — instead of winning the war against the West that Putin started. Cutting through the doublespeak, essentially Sullivan argued that the war in Ukraine must not be won, but only defended against into perpetuity, so as to avoid escalation.

It was more of the same nonsense when it came to the Middle East. Sullivan characterized Israel’s response to Hamas’s terrorist attack on Oct. 7 as a “defensive action,” and pointedly asserted that the U.S. is “not looking for regional conflict” in its responses to Houthi attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Instead, he said, Washington seeks to “stop the spread of conflict and to create the conditions for de-escalation.”

Iran, the instigator of both Hamas and the Houthis, was left unmentioned — as was Putin, who is benefiting the most. Once again, Sullivan, like President Biden, sent a message to our nation’s foes that they can be at war with the U.S. and we will pretend no such war is occurring. Notably, Sullivan completely ignored Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons in his speech.

Sullivan, like Davos, is lost in the pursuit of what the “day after” looks like in Ukraine, the Middle East, and potentially, the Indo-Pacific. He is clinging to a rules-based world order that both Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have rejected by undermining the United Nations Security Council in order to target Ukraine and possibly Taiwan.

Davos should have been all about Crimea on Tuesday — and what it will require to expel Russia from it. The peninsula is, as retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges argues, the “decisive terrain” of the war and Ukraine retaking it must be priority one.

Instead, Davos now finds itself lost during a time of war. The once seemingly omnipotent gathering is veering into being less a think-tank and more a trade show, devoid of purpose and solutions to the greatest existential threats facing the West. Davos’s theme in 2024 is “Rebuilding Trust.” It should have been “Rebuilding Purpose and Western Resolve to Win.”

Mark Toth, an economist and entrepreneur, is a former board member of the World Trade Center, St. Louis.

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014.

themessenger.com · January 17, 2024

13. Why Saudi Arabia Is Staying on the Sidelines in the Red Sea Conflict

Excerpts:

In an ideal world for the warring sides, their peace talks would remain compartmentalized from the Red Sea crisis. But this is not the reality of today. The region is quickly heating up, and more actors are entering into the fray by the minute that could altogether threaten Yemen’s fragile peace process. If the United States opts for nonmilitary approaches—such as designating the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization—Houthi participation in future U.N.-led peace talks will be compromised, raising the specter of reigniting the local conflict in Yemen and thus ending the de facto truce.

On the other hand, if the United States and Britain continue to strike Yemen, the Houthis could escalate further, as they have threatened to do, by targeting U.S. military bases in the region, including in Bahrain or even in Gulf capitals that they see as aligning with Israel. At the very least, such attacks would completely derail peace talks and force the Saudis to act, plunging Yemen into a much more complex regional war.

Overall, there are no favorable options left for Saudi Arabia in Yemen. While the strategy of compartmentalizing the two issues has succeeded in protecting Riyadh thus far, this is only a temporary bandage absent an official peace agreement. The future of Yemen’s conflict is now inextricably linked to the upheaval in the Red Sea, and the country’s peace process must now take this uncomfortable reality into consideration.

Why Saudi Arabia Is Staying on the Sidelines in the Red Sea Conflict

After years of war with the Houthis, Riyadh is seeking to ensure its security above all else—but peace talks are precarious, and the plan could backfire.

By Veena Ali-Khan, a Yemen and Persian Gulf researcher based in New York.

Foreign Policy · by Veena Ali-Khan

• United States
• Middle East and North Africa

January 16, 2024, 3:56 PM

In the not-too-distant past, Saudi Arabia would have cherished the opportunity for a joint U.S.-U.K. strike targeting Houthi strongholds. After all, Riyadh fought a brutal war against the group for almost a decade. But today, a Western offensive on the Yemeni group is precisely the opposite of what Riyadh wants as it conducts a delicate peace negotiation with the Houthi leadership to extricate itself from Yemen and, it hopes, permanently protect itself from cross-border attacks.

As temperatures rise in the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia has therefore chosen to stay out of the conflict. Instead, the lines of communication between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis are staying open as Riyadh avoids overtly siding with Washington, lest it become the target of attacks. For now, this strategy seems to be working—but the larger question remains about whether this will guarantee Saudi Arabia’s protection in the long term.

Early on Jan. 12, U.S. and British warplanes targeted dozens of Houthi military sites in Yemen. A day later, Washington launched new raids on Houthi positions, targeting command centers, ammunition stores, missile launch systems, and drones. Vowing to take revenge, the Houthis fired ballistic missiles at a U.S.-owned container ship on Jan. 15. (Washington retaliated again on Jan. 16.)

These strikes followed two months of Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, which the rebels claim demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The Houthis say that these strikes are limited to ships affiliated with Israel; in practice, they have targeted any vessels within range. At least 50 countries have been affected by the nearly 30 Houthi attacks on international shipping so far.

It did not take long for most of the world’s leading container-shipping companies to announce decisions to avoid the Red Sea, a vital waterway leading to the Suez Canal, which handles approximately 15 percent of the world’s shipping traffic and as much as one-third of all global container trade.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent Middle East tour was intended to pressure regional actors to keep the conflict in Gaza contained. However, Persian Gulf capitals know the Houthis—and their limited leverage over them—well, and they did not respond with much. In another attempt, the United States urged the Saudis to take the Red Sea crisis into consideration in their peace talks with the rebels and slow down their negotiations.

Nonetheless, both the Houthis and Riyadh opted to continue their discussions, preferring not to let the Red Sea crisis interfere with their progress. Following the U.S.-British strikes, the Saudi Foreign Ministry expressed its “great concern” and called for “self-restraint” to avoid an escalation.

Riyadh simply doesn’t have the appetite to embroil itself in another intractable conflict with the Houthis. The kingdom has learned from past lessons through dealing with the rebels militarily and is acutely aware that it risks falling directly in the line of fire.

The 2019 Aramco attacks that were claimed by the Houthis—which targeted two major oil installations and forced the kingdom to temporarily shut down half of its oil production—marked a turning point. This was due to the United States’ lack of response. Feeling betrayed by the Americans, Riyadh quickly recalibrated its foreign policy in the years that followed, seeking diplomatic solutions to its regional headaches instead of relying on Washington to come to its rescue.

These days, Riyadh is instead keeping dialogue open with Iran. A day prior to the strikes on Yemen, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan was contacted by his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. The last thing that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, needs is an escalation that disrupts the crucial years leading up to the much-anticipated Vision 2030, an extensive reform plan intended to diversify the national economy. Consequently, the kingdom opted to stay silent amid the Red Sea crisis, hoping that its communication channels with Iran—via a China-brokered deal announced in spring 2023—and the Houthis will shield it from regional turmoil and future Houthi attacks.

These new communication lines are not aimed at stopping Houthi actions in the Red Sea; rather, they are a pragmatic part of a wider effort to isolate the kingdom from any regional escalation, regardless of the circumstances. So far, the strategy appears to be working, and Riyadh has not been targeted. Indeed, part of Saudi Arabia’s decision not to join the U.S.-led maritime coalition against the Houthis is influenced by its experience of bearing the brunt of Iran-U.S. tensions.

Saudi Arabia’s number one priority is protecting itself. The kingdom wants a swift exit from Yemen’s war, and it won’t let the West’s latest spat with the rebels mess this up. Since 2021, negotiations with the Houthis—facilitated by Oman—have been snowballing. Riyadh has finally reached a point of effective communication with the rebels, something that took years to achieve. Hence, Saudi Arabia judges that it is not worthwhile to jeopardize this relationship—which the Saudis see as sufficient to protect themselves from Houthi attacks—just to support the U.S. operations in the Red Sea.

If anything, the recent escalation provided Saudi Arabia with additional incentives to finalize an agreement as soon as possible. Toward the end of November, Riyadh presented a draft proposal to the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, intended to lay the groundwork for future U.N.-led talks between the Yemeni government and the Houthis. Part of the agreement reportedly includes a buffer zone to protect Saudi Arabia’s borders, a top priority for the kingdom.

Riyadh is also feeling smug. The kingdom has long warned Washington about the dangers of the Houthis acquiring more advanced drone capabilities and gaining control of areas close to the Red Sea, but in their eyes, received only lackluster responses. Hence, Saudi Arabia is questioning why it should assist the same Western partners that have spent years criticizing it for its brutal war against the Houthis.

Now that Washington is in the Houthis’ firing line, Riyadh sees no reason to join it there.

But Saudi Arabia’s calculus could be mistaken. A final peace agreement has not yet been secured; what exists is merely a fragile understanding that could collapse at any moment. There is nothing stopping the Houthis from targeting the kingdom—in the Red Sea or its borders—in the future, absent an official peace agreement.

The likelihood of this possibility only increases as the situation escalates. The rebels themselves admit in private that Riyadh’s protection hinges on their decision not to engage in the wider spat. The Houthis are aware of Saudi Arabia’s weak point—its border—and can exploit this whenever they see fit. Just hours after the second spate of strikes made by the United States, the Houthis conducted a military maneuver along the Saudi border, serving as a warning to the kingdom about the potential consequences of siding with the United States.

Complicating matters further, if and when Riyadh decides to resume normalization talks with Israel, the kingdom could once again become a prime target for the rebels. The Houthis have not shied away from voicing their criticism of the Abraham Accords—the U.S.-brokered deal that normalized relations between Israel and some Arab nations in 2020—and this issue has been central to their critique of the United Arab Emirates.

Should Saudi Arabia proceed with normalization talks, there’s a strong possibility that the Houthis might shift the goal posts and declare their intent to target any nation perceived as aligned with Israel, using it as justification to extract further concessions from the Saudis on the peace talks. What is for certain is that Riyadh will need to resume talks with Israel while being mindful of potential future targeting by the rebels.

In an ideal world for the warring sides, their peace talks would remain compartmentalized from the Red Sea crisis. But this is not the reality of today. The region is quickly heating up, and more actors are entering into the fray by the minute that could altogether threaten Yemen’s fragile peace process. If the United States opts for nonmilitary approaches—such as designating the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization—Houthi participation in future U.N.-led peace talks will be compromised, raising the specter of reigniting the local conflict in Yemen and thus ending the de facto truce.

On the other hand, if the United States and Britain continue to strike Yemen, the Houthis could escalate further, as they have threatened to do, by targeting U.S. military bases in the region, including in Bahrain or even in Gulf capitals that they see as aligning with Israel. At the very least, such attacks would completely derail peace talks and force the Saudis to act, plunging Yemen into a much more complex regional war.

Overall, there are no favorable options left for Saudi Arabia in Yemen. While the strategy of compartmentalizing the two issues has succeeded in protecting Riyadh thus far, this is only a temporary bandage absent an official peace agreement. The future of Yemen’s conflict is now inextricably linked to the upheaval in the Red Sea, and the country’s peace process must now take this uncomfortable reality into consideration.

Foreign Policy · by Veena Ali-Khan

14. The secret history of the Air Force One shadow fleet

The secret history of the Air Force One shadow fleet

Service officials do not acknowledge the existence of four of the world's most prominent Boeing 757s.

defenseone.com · by Marcus Weisgerber

Minutes after Air Force One takes off from anywhere in the world, another blue-and-white aircraft emblazoned with “United States of America” typically follows to far less fanfare.

That’s the way the Air Force likes it. That trailing plane is one of a quartet of bespoke Boeing 757s whose existence service officials don’t acknowledge. And although the four aircraft are well known to plane spotters and aviation enthusiasts, they’re getting harder to track.

The planes’ mission is broadly understood. They fly the U.S. president to cities and towns whose airport runways are too short for the Boeing 747s more commonly associated with the Air Force One mission, and they regularly serve as backup if a larger plane breaks down.

But much remains unknown: when and why the aircraft were purchased, how much they cost, and how much taxpayer money is spent to keep them flying. Unlike other types of expensive military hardware—notably, the two 747s currently being customized to replace the three-decade-old VC-25 jets that fly the president—the four shadow planes received no public debate over their purchase and left almost no paper trail.

But there are clues. Using publicly available government, military, and contracting documents, flight tracking data, and information gathered by aviation enthusiasts and photojournalists, Defense One has assembled the most comprehensive history of this shadow fleet. It’s a rare glimpse into the secretive, and often classified, world of presidential travel and continuity-of-government operations.

The White House Military Office, which oversees the President’s air travel, deferred questions about the planes to the Air Force, which declined to comment.

President Biden steps off a secret C-32 serving as Air Force One at Philadelphia International Airport on December 11, 2023. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Building the secret fleet

The Air Force has long operated Boeing 757s outfitted for executive travel. It designates such planes C-32As and publishes a fact sheet that acknowledges four of them. (Its special operators also fly two all-white 757s, called C-32Bs, whose existence the Air Force does not acknowledge.)

These four C-32As were ordered in 1996 from Boeing, which delivered them two years later. Before the shadow fleet existed, presidents used these planes to reach airfields too small to accommodate a 747. In April 2004, for example, George W. Bush flew one to a small regional airport in Maine. Today, they are regularly used to fly the vice president, first lady, cabinet secretaries, and other high-ranking government and military officials.

But there’s no record of the company delivering the four 757s that have been used by U.S. presidents since the mid-2010s. Boeing stopped making the 757 in 2005, which likely means the Air Force turned to the secondhand market for its secret fleet.

In February 2009, the service posted a contracting notice seeking new and used planes for flying top government officials. “These aircraft will provide domestic and worldwide team and VIP transportation,” the notice said. “This acquisition is a result of Congressional legislation as enacted in Public Law 110-417.” That law, better known as the fiscal 2009 National Defense Authorization Act, contains no explicit reference to the aircraft. But three of the four planes in the shadow fleet have registration numbers that begin with 09, signifying that they were purchased in 2009.

Until recently, the aircraft bore the tail numbers 90015, 90016, 90017, and 90018. According to FAA records, Boeing built 90015 for Ladeco, a now-defunct Chilean airline. It then flew for a Taiwanese airline before being transferred to L-3 Communications, now L3Harris Technologies, a company with a deep history of modifying commercial aircraft with high-tech military communications gear. 90016 flew for TWA and American Airlines before being sold to the Air Force. 90017 was part of Aeroméxico’s fleet.

The newest presidential C-32, 90018, began its life in Finnair’s fleet. L3 bought it sometime before 2015, when a plane spotter in Japan captured video of the plane landing at Kansai International Airport in Osaka. At the time, it had the Texas flag painted on its tail and the word “Trailblazer” on the forward fuselage. The Air Force acquired the plane in 2019, based on its registration number.

The L3Harris connection appears to be more than happenstance. According to an Air Force briefing from 2020, a company facility in Greenville, Texas, equips business jets with the Senior Leader Communications System, which a different briefing calls “a system foundational to the Presidential and executive Airlift Fleet.” Presidential aircraft need special communications gear to keep the commander-in-chief connected to the country’s nuclear arsenal.

The interiors of the planes in the shadow fleet are configured differently than the four public C-32s. But like the official planes, they are outfitted with large seats and conference tables. In 2014, President Obama sent 90016 to pick up Alan Gross, an American contractor who had been detained by the Cuban government. The Obama administration and the office of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., posted pictures of Gross with lawmakers inside the plane.

A rare interior photo of a secret C-32 shows Alan Gross, right, after his release from Cuba on Dec. 17, 2014. (White House/Lawrence Jackson)

Operations

Obama was also the first president to fly aboard one of the new shadow aircraft, in the mid-2010s. Donald Trump often used them as backdrops when addressing thousands of supporters at flightline campaign rallies in 2020.

President Joe Biden has used the planes for the short flight between Joint Base Andrews in Maryland and New Castle Airport near his home in Delaware. Earlier this month, Biden took one to South Carolina and Texas. On Monday, he used one to fly to a Martin Luther King Day event in Philadelphia.

The shadow aircraft are part of the Presidential Airlift Group, according to a 2016 Air Force document that mentions their tail numbers. The group, which also flies the Boeing 747s, is a unit of the 89th Airlift Wing, whose 1st Airlift Squadron operates the four acknowledged C-32As.

The four planes are based at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, within the high-security Air Force One “compound.” Satellite imagery shows a hangar—known as Hangar 20—that is large enough to hold three aircraft and which was built between 2007 and 2010. Like the larger Hanger 19 next door where the two VC-25 Boeing 747s more regularly used as Air Force One are kept, special security fencing isolates the complex from the flightline. Recent satellite images show 757s parked outside the hangar.

This screenshot from Google Earth shows the gray-roofed Hangar 20 built at Joint Base Andrews, Md., around the time the secret fleet was acquired. (Google Earth)

You can’t tell the secret planes by their radio callsigns. When the president is aboard an Air Force jet, it goes by “Air Force One,” no matter the airframe. And a C-32 flying in trail duty generally uses the callsign “SAM,” for “special airlift mission,” just as the public C-32s do.

Nor can you tell by their tails anymore. Last year, the Air Force began removing the tail numbers from its transport aircraft, including the one that took Biden to Charleston and Dallas this week.

But once up in the air, the planes and their tail numbers still appear on public flight-tracking websites such as ADS-B Exchange—at least for now. The Air Force has called these types of flight tracking websites a threat to military aircraft.

“The Department of Defense considers open source flight tracking and data aggregation on our aircraft a direct threat to our ability to conduct military air operations around the world,” the Air Force said last year in a statement attributed to a “senior DoD aviation policy expert.”

It’s unclear how the shadow fleet’s performance or communications suite differs from those of the public C-32As.

“There is no aircraft in the world that can do what Air Force One can do, and certainly under the demanding circumstances under which this aircraft conducts these missions,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters after Obama met with the Presidential Airlift Group in 2017.

While he was talking about the 747, it’s fair to assume the shadow fleet fits that same billing.

defenseone.com · by Marcus Weisgerber

​15. Taiwan Learned You Can’t Fight Fake News by Making It Illegal

Excerpts:

Taiwan has tried other forms of a more open approach. Although it banned the Chinese-owned video platform TikTok from government apps in 2022, Taiwan has not followed countries such as India in issuing a general proscription on the app despite concerns that Beijing can influence content. About one-quarter of Taiwan’s population uses the app, including a host of popular influencers and celebrities.

Taiwan also has a network of strong civic fact-checking organizations that work with social media companies to combat disinformation. One of them, MyGoPen, recently started collaborating directly with TikTok to correct false posts about the 2024 election.

No matter who is in power, politicians seem to acutely understand that the best way to combat false information about them is to push out their own narratives on social media. “If you are popular on the internet, that’s more important than [popularity on] traditional media channels,” Chiang said.

Lai’s win on Saturday is not an outright victory against disinformation itself—both Chinese and domestic actors will surely continue to create confusion and distrust whenever they can. It did, however, show that Taiwanese voters can’t easily be swayed, as long as public officials do their part to communicate rapidly, positively, and honestly.

Taiwan Learned You Can’t Fight Fake News by Making It Illegal

Foreign Policy · by Nick Aspinwall

• Taiwan

January 16, 2024, 3:54 PM

Lai Ching-te will be Taiwan’s next president after winning Saturday’s election, ensuring that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will remain in power and dealing a rebuke to Beijing’s wishes for a more China-friendly administration. In the days before the election, Taiwanese voters were flooded with information. Look up, and they saw posters on buses and buildings declaring the virtues of all three candidates and their running mates. Look down, and they got a stream of news, gossip, and opinions from their phones—not all of it true and much of it likely stirred up by internet trolls in China.

Lai Ching-te will be Taiwan’s next president after winning Saturday’s election, ensuring that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will remain in power and dealing a rebuke to Beijing’s wishes for a more China-friendly administration. In the days before the election, Taiwanese voters were flooded with information. Look up, and they saw posters on buses and buildings declaring the virtues of all three candidates and their running mates. Look down, and they got a stream of news, gossip, and opinions from their phones—not all of it true and much of it likely stirred up by internet trolls in China.

Taiwan is one of the world’s most digitally connected countries, and on social media, false posts and videos are reaching thousands of people before platforms can take them down. TikTok was flooded with disinformation accusing Lai of sex scandals, tax evasion, and conspiring to start a war with China. His vice presidential pick, Hsiao Bi-khim, has been accused of secretly holding U.S. citizenship. So has the running mate of Ko Wen-je, the third-party candidate livestreaming his spoiler campaign on YouTube and TikTok.

Researchers have attributed much of the false information to Chinese actors—and rather than blasting pro-China views to Taiwanese voters, they’ve focused on amplifying negative stories about Taiwan’s domestic politics and wedge issues, such as the role of the United States, with the intent of polarizing Taiwanese society.

“Beijing’s cognitive warfare is evolving,” said Tzu-wei Hung, a scholar at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. “Negative narratives are effective not because they will change the election result but because they intensify social conflicts and create a vicious cycle of distrust and hate.”

Taiwan faced a similarly toxic disinformation environment before the 2020 presidential election, and at the time, it fought back—hard. Officials frequently accused China of being behind wide-ranging disinformation campaigns. Police summoned private citizens for posting false stories and levied fines in some instances for violating a law preventing public disorder. The National Communications Commission (NCC) issued a series of fines to the pro-China TV station Chung Tien Television (CTi) for broadcasting false information. Eventually, in December 2020, CTi was taken off the air after the NCC declined to renew its broadcast license.

The government learned quickly that none of it worked.

“If you want to curb disinformation by legal measures, it’s difficult and dangerous,” said Yachi Chiang, a professor at National Taiwan Ocean University specializing in intellectual property and tech law. It “opens a pathway for the government to control speech.”

Taiwan has always been a banner holder of free speech in Asia. In 2020, however, DPP legislators were panicked over the prospect of Chinese election-meddling. President Tsai Ing-wen was riding a wave of global popularity by supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, which had broken out months earlier, giving Beijing every reason to remove her from office or disrupt her legislative majority.

Tsai was reelected in a landslide—but not because her government cracked down on fake news. Many fines levied under the Social Order Maintenance Act, an existing law that was utilized against disinformation peddlers, have since been overturned by the courts.

The NCC’s crusade against CTi hasn’t gone much better. Opposition politicians used its removal from the airwaves to hammer DPP politicians as enemies of free speech. The NCC, at the time, argued that CTi had failed to adhere to basic fact-checking standards and could not ensure impartiality from outside influence—a clear reference to its owner, the domestically unloved Tsai Eng-meng, a snack food tycoon with extensive business interests in China and a track record of pro-unification statements.

In May 2023, a Taipei court ruled against the NCC’s decision to shut down CTi, saying it had failed to provide adequate reasoning for its decision. At present, CTi remains off the air—and its request to have its license renewed by the court was rejected—but the NCC has been ordered to review its own decision and provide stiffer reasoning. “You need something stronger to sustain your ruling,” Chiang said.

Taiwanese authorities have successfully prosecuted citizens who received funding from China to publish fake news. But in general, politicians began to realize that moving through the judicial system “would be slow,” Chiang said. “The decisions might be disappointing. The results might be less effective.”

Just after the 2020 election, however, Taiwan’s government found a better way to combat disinformation when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe. Taiwan was the first country to alert the World Health Organization of the presence of a coronavirus in Wuhan and then introduce travel restrictions and quarantine protocols.

Public officials also began releasing accurate, easily digestible information as quickly as possible, before disinformation could reach people’s phone screens. Chen Shih-chung, the health minister at the time, held press conferences each afternoon, earning him the nickname “Minister Clock.” His ministry, along with the social media accounts of Tsai and Premier Su Tseng-chang, posted colorful memes sharing data on the pandemic and extolling the virtues of masking and hand-washing.

It was a triumph of public transparency that paid off handsomely. Taiwan saw just 823 COVID-19 cases in all of 2020, despite its close proximity to the pandemic’s epicenter.

It also helped politicians realize that “you can’t count on laws to tackle disinformation,” Chiang said. “You need to create your own information.”

“Free speech is not the cost but the key to counteract disinformation,” said Hung, who noted that in 2022, Freedom House found that countries that protect free expression and have robust civic society groups do a better job at mitigating false information.

Taiwan has tried other forms of a more open approach. Although it banned the Chinese-owned video platform TikTok from government apps in 2022, Taiwan has not followed countries such as India in issuing a general proscription on the app despite concerns that Beijing can influence content. About one-quarter of Taiwan’s population uses the app, including a host of popular influencers and celebrities.

Taiwan also has a network of strong civic fact-checking organizations that work with social media companies to combat disinformation. One of them, MyGoPen, recently started collaborating directly with TikTok to correct false posts about the 2024 election.

No matter who is in power, politicians seem to acutely understand that the best way to combat false information about them is to push out their own narratives on social media. “If you are popular on the internet, that’s more important than [popularity on] traditional media channels,” Chiang said.

Lai’s win on Saturday is not an outright victory against disinformation itself—both Chinese and domestic actors will surely continue to create confusion and distrust whenever they can. It did, however, show that Taiwanese voters can’t easily be swayed, as long as public officials do their part to communicate rapidly, positively, and honestly.

Foreign Policy · by Nick Aspinwall

​16. First Preemptive Strikes Against Houthi Missiles Preparing To Fire Launched By U.S.

First Preemptive Strikes Against Houthi Missiles Preparing To Fire Launched By U.S.

The U.S. struck four Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles that were being prepared for launch early Tuesday morning Yemen time.

BY

HOWARD ALTMAN

|

PUBLISHED JAN 16, 2024 1:15 PM EST

thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · January 16, 2024

The U.S. launched a preemptive strike against Houthi targets in Yemen early Tuesday morning Yemen time, destroying four anti-ship ballistic missiles being prepared for launch, a U.S. defense official told The War Zone. This is the first time the U.S. has launched what a second U.S. official called an "imminent self-defense strike" against Houthi missiles being prepared to launch. The first official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details, declined to say how those strikes were carried out, citing operational security concerns.

"These missiles were prepared to launch from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and presented an imminent threat to both merchant and U.S. Navy ships in the region," the official told us. You can read more about the Houthi anti-ship arsenal in our story here.

Tankil anti-ship ballistic missiles shown at a Houthi parade in 2023. via mmy.ye

Carrying out a preemptive strikes against Houthi missiles in a persistent manner is a challenging feat. From our story about that:

"Having the U.S. military strike targets in Yemen sounds easy, and it wouldn't be hard to do operationally, but the escalation that could follow could pose much more challenging tactical problems. Giving the Houthis a 'bloody nose' is very different than actually stopping or even significantly curbing their ability to launch anti-ship attacks. Preempting anti-ship missile and drone attacks would require a large, costly, resource-sucking, open-ended operation. This would include persistent intelligence gathering across a very broad area, as well as strike assets at the ready to hit time-sensitive targets based on that real time intelligence. Is the United States prepared to see that through and to what end?"

And from a more recent post about America's first strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen:

"Still, it must be highlighted that attempting to directly stop the Houthi missile and drone attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden military would be extremely resource intensive. While space-based infrared warning satellites would have detected the locations of anti-ship ballistic and most cruise missile launches — with many other intelligence capabilities gaining valuable information on these operations in recent weeks, as well — and documenting these patterns of operations would be critical to stopping launches before they occur, actually doing this would be a huge challenge. It would require a far more elaborate surveillance and reconnaissance enterprise to be persistently deployed over large swathes of Yemeni coastline and inland areas. This would need to be paired with assets at the ready capable of time-sensitive strikes. They would need to hit the launchers before firing. Considering the Houthis have years of experience fighting against Saudi Arabia and their Arab coalition, they have dispersed their capabilities so they cannot be easily destroyed and know that firing from unpredictable locations and moving the weapons themselves around constantly is key to surviving. This makes eliminating them very challenging.

That being said, degrading the Houthis ability to target ships in other ways, like striking known radar systems and command and control nodes, could help reduce their ability to launch attacks but it will not eliminate it. Not even close."

The strike on the Houthi missiles followed a Houthi attack Monday when an anti-ship ballistic missile struck the U.S.-owned bulk cargo ship M/V Gibraltar Eagle, the official said.

The M/V Gibraltar Eagle was hit by a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile Monday. (YouTube Screencap) YouTube screencap

The Houthis also launched an attack today at about 1:45 p.m. local time, striking the M/V Zografia, a Maltese-flagged bulk carrier. The ship is reported seaworthy and continued its Red Sea transit, the official said.

The U.S. previously struck a Houthi radar site with a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile fired by the Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer USS Carney on Jan. 13. That came after U.S. and U.K. aircraft, surface ship and submarine attacks on more than 60 targets hit at 28 sites in Houthi-controlled Yemen on Jan. 12.

This is a developing story. We will update it when new information becomes available.

Update: 1:25 PM Eastern -

The Houthis released a statement on today's strike against the M/V Zografia:

"The naval forces of the Yemeni Armed Forces, with the help of God Almighty, carried out a targeting operation against the ship '[Zografia],' which was heading to the ports of occupied Palestine, with a number of suitable naval missiles, and the hit was direct. The targeting operation came after the ship’s crew rejected warning calls, including fiery warning messages. The Yemeni armed forces will continue to implement the decision to prevent Israeli navigation or those associated with the Israeli enemy in the Red and Arab Bahrain until the aggression is stopped and the siege on the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is lifted. The Yemeni Armed Forces continue to take all defensive and offensive measures within the legitimate right to defend dear Yemen and in confirmation of continued practical solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people."

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

thedrive.com · by Howard Altman · January 16, 2024

17. Fear Not: US Military Aid to Ukraine Is Coming By Kurt Volker

Fear Not: US Military Aid to Ukraine Is Coming

By Kurt Volker

January 16, 2024

Despite the delay, a further $61 billion of US aid to Ukraine — enough to cover all of 2024 — will still be approved

cepa.org · by Kurt Volker · January 16, 2024

How can I be so confident? Because the vast majority of Republicans and Democrats in both Houses of Congress support it, and nobody wants to vote on this again during a Presidential election year. For all concerned, that means approval is better agreed upon sooner rather than later.

Ukrainians and other Europeans are understandably worried because as of mid-January, Congress has still not voted to approve the new support package. According to former Ukrainian Minister of Defense Andrii Zagarodnyuk, the delay is beginning to be felt on the battlefield as the pace of ammunition supply slows.

Yet this is not, as often reported, because of declining support for such aid in the United States generally, and among Republicans in particular.

While it is true that support has dropped slightly since Russia’s all-out war of aggression began nearly two years ago, at least 75% of members of Congress support the aid package, as do a good majority of the general public The Reagan National Defense Survey in November found that 59% of Americans support continuing military aid, the same number as in June and in November 2022.

Majorities of both Republicans and Democrats agree that helping Ukraine is in the US national interest. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairmen Mike McCaul, Mike Turner, and Mike Rogers all support the aid package, and House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he will support bringing it to a floor vote that will surely be positive.

So what’s the delay? It is not disagreement over Ukraine, but over how to handle the tidal wave of illegal immigration washing across the US southern border.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded 2.5 million encounters with illegal migrants coming across the Mexico border in 2023, up from 2.2 million in 2022. An average of more than 7,000 a day crossed in December, for a total of 225,000, the highest monthly total in more than two decades. And these are only those who are processed. Many more are never caught or tracked.

This has led to major crises not only in the US border states such as Texas and Arizona but in major cities across the country.

Republicans in Congress are insisting that urgent action be taken to stem this flow. They argue that it is politically unsustainable to tell their voters that they have approved another $61bn to help Ukraine recover its borders, while they have not done nearly enough to protect the US border.

Get the Latest

Sign up to receive regular emails and stay informed about CEPA's work.

Most Democrats also agree that something should be done about the border (and some are even privately telling Republicans they are right to keep pushing the issue in the face of White House resistance). But most Democrats disagree with Republicans over the necessary fixes. A minority of progressive (left-wing) Democrats, to whom the White House must pay at least some attention, do not want to see any new restrictions at all.

A further complicating factor had been the lack of agreement on the overall federal budget for 2024, independent from and much bigger than the supplemental spending package covering Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and the US southern border.

An initial set of budget deadlines would have begun to have an effect in mid-January and early February, but the pressure has eased temporarily since Congress agreed on an overall spending “top-line” for 2024, and pushed these deadlines back to March.

This will allow lawmakers to stay focused on the southern border issue, which in turn will unlock the overall supplemental spending bill.

What is the state of play? Three US Senators – a Republican, a Democrat, and an independent – have been negotiating a compromise deal on border spending and policies. They claim to have made significant progress, but some issues still remain. Those should be resolved within the next week or two, but it is a high-stakes and difficult political struggle.

Any compromise will by definition leave both the right-wing Republican “Freedom Caucus” and progressive Democrats deeply unsatisfied. But majorities of both Republicans and Democrats will support action over inaction.

Once a final deal is brokered in the Senate, there will still be some haggling in the House. But, as mentioned, that package should come to a floor vote in both chambers and receive majority support, unlocking the aid to Ukraine and Israel as well.

The not-insignificant challenge for House Speaker Johnson is to have a strong enough package regarding the border to stave off a no-confidence vote such as brought down his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, in October. He has to show his own party that he has won concessions from the administration.

There is one final and important point to note; the administration actually has other means of supporting Ukraine if the supplemental does not pass. It can exercise authority to lend Ukraine funds for defense articles through the already approved “Lend-Lease Act.”

It can declare more goods to be “excess defense articles” and then transfer them, rather than use draw-down authority to cover their replacement costs. And it can use other types of emergency national security spending powers.

None of these are ideal, however, and both Congress and the White House believe the best approach is to pass new supplemental spending legislation. If President Putin believes that US aid to Ukraine is blocked, he has a shock coming.

Ambassador Kurt Volker is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. A leading expert in US foreign and national security policy, he served as US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations from 2017-2019, and as US Ambassador to NATO from 2008-2009. 

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Europe's Edge

CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.

Read More

cepa.org · by Kurt Volker · January 16, 2024

18. Free Surgeries and Prescriptions: White House Staff Got Access to Military Health Care Despite Being Ineligible

I guess the defense budget is big enough to cover these costs, right? I am sure there is more to this story and I would bet variations of these practices are not confined to a single administration.

Excerpts:

According to the report, from 2017 through 2020, the Defense Department "funded and resourced care for an average of 6 to 20" non-DoD beneficiary patients per week at no cost to them -- medical appointments and services that then were unavailable to active-duty military personnel, their family members or retirees.

...

As a result of the practice, the Pentagon paid for medical care for those non‑DoD beneficiaries, according to the report.

Free Surgeries and Prescriptions: White House Staff Got Access to Military Health Care Despite Being Ineligible

military.com · by Patricia Kime · January 16, 2024

Under the Trump administration, the White House Medical Unit -- a joint Defense Department team that provides medical care for the president, vice president and family members and also manages health services for certain high-level officials -- sent ineligible staff members to military hospitals for specialty care and surgeries, the DoD inspector general has found.

The medical unit also dispensed hundreds of free prescriptions, including controlled substances, to people in the White House, the DoD inspector general said in a report released Jan. 8.

The federal watchdog determined that the unit, comprised of military medical personnel and DoD civilians and led by an officer with a paygrade of O-6, had received little to no oversight from the Defense Health Agency or the military services for years despite having its own pharmacy and referring White House staff for care at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Virginia, and elsewhere.

According to the report, from 2017 through 2020, the Defense Department "funded and resourced care for an average of 6 to 20" non-DoD beneficiary patients per week at no cost to them -- medical appointments and services that then were unavailable to active-duty military personnel, their family members or retirees.

The DoD IG launched the investigation in May 2018 after receiving complaints that the White House Medical Unit's senior military medical officer, who is not named, engaged in improper medical practices, and that the pharmaceutical practices at the White House and referrals for ineligible patients to DoD facilities were questionable.

The watchdog subsequently launched a review of the Defense Department's Washington, D.C., area executive medicine facilities, which provide concierge-level medical care for flag and general officers, but also to VIPs such as the president and, on occasion, members of Congress and Cabinet members.

In addition for being responsible for care for the president and family, the White House Military Unit is charged with overseeing the acute medical needs of those who work on the White House grounds.

The review found that the White House Medical Unit's pharmacy, which operates outside the military health system, maintained practices that could have led to prescription errors and patient harm.

According to the report, unit staff kept poor prescription records, including those for controlled substances like opioids and sleep medications, and distributed medications like Ambien in unmarked pill bottles with no instructions or recordkeeping.

Staff members also routinely prescribed brand-name medications instead of trying a generic alternative first, a practice known as step therapy that is required under the military's health program, Tricare, according to the report.

"Without oversight from qualified pharmacy staff, the White House Medical Unit's pharmaceutical management practices may have been subject to prescribing errors and inadequate medication management, increasing the risk to the health and safety of patients treated within the unit," the IG wrote.

Providers told investigators that they had concerns about the practices, including sending non-eligible persons to military treatment facilities, but feared that if they didn't provide referrals to high-ranking administration officials, their careers would be affected.

"We feared mostly, you know, for evaluations, for follow‑on assignments, for credibility as a professional in our own branches and specialties," a staff member told the IG.

As a result of the practice, the Pentagon paid for medical care for those non‑DoD beneficiaries, according to the report.

The investigation also found that across the Washington, D.C., area, more than half of those who utilize the Defense Department's executive medicine services are military retirees or their family members and not on active-duty.

The DoD investigators said that, given the imbalance, the department runs the risk of "expanding resources outside its primary mission" to provide medical care to the active-duty population.

The services' executive medicine programs initially were established to ensure that senior military leaders had quick access to medical care and any treatment they received did not disrupt care and services at regular clinics within the military hospital system.

But that mission has expanded, often to include treating members of Congress and the senior executive service.

Top-level care at Walter Reed has been in the news recently with the hospitalization of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who underwent surgery for prostate cancer in December but returned to the facility on Jan. 1 after developing an infection.

Defense officials did not disclose Austin’s hospitalization until Jan. 5, sparking a backlash from members of Congress and the press over the lack of transparency over the health of a Cabinet member.

As a retired general, Austin has access to the facility’s executive medicine suite, and it is likely that his primary care provider is assigned to Walter Reed's executive medicine staff.

The DoD IG made a number of recommendations to the Defense Health Agency and the military services regarding their executive medicine programs and the White House Medical Unit, which falls under the White House Military Office. Those recommendations included that the DHA develop policies to manage prescriptions at the White House Medical Unit and develop a pharmacy oversight plan; establish controls to determine White House patient eligibility; and improve oversight of executive medicine services.

It also recommended the DHA bill for outpatient medical services that are provided by the DoD to non-military senior officials.

The White House Military Office received a draft of the report in May 2020 for review and held it until July 2023.

In response, DoD Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Lester Martinez-Lopez said the DoD concurred with all recommendations.

military.com · by Patricia Kime · January 16, 2024

19.  Army has too many infantry, armor lieutenants, asks some to switch to combat-support jobs

Isn't this a perennial problem? Isn't this why we had branch details in the past - officers branch detailed to combat arms as Lieutenants and then they branch to combat support and combat service support.

But the good news is our officers gravitate toward combat arms - the tip of the spear. And they will be better combat support and combat service support officers for having served as young combat arms officers.

Army has too many infantry, armor lieutenants, asks some to switch to combat-support jobs

Stars and Stripes · by Corey Dickstein · January 16, 2024

Soldiers ruck march at Fort Carson, Colo. (Chelsea Durante/U.S. Army)

The Army is overstaffed with infantry and armor lieutenants and needs some of them who were commissioned in 2021 to move into combat-support jobs, service officials announced Tuesday.

The service is asking some 250 infantry and armor officers from the group year of 2021 to move voluntarily to the adjutant general or finance or signal corps, Army Human Resources Command said. Service officials said they were concerned current staffing levels would soon the leave units without enough officers serving in those positions, raising potential combat readiness issues.

“Unless we offer these steps to rebalance the force, the Army will face a shortage of battalion and brigade [personnel officers], [logistics officers] and finance positions worldwide,” said Col. Charlone Stallworth, the talent alignment and development director for Human Resources Command. “That not only impacts Army manning, but also our readiness and ability to take care of soldiers.”

Officials pitched the needed changes in career fields as beneficial to the service and the officers — giving them a chance to align their job with their talents and interests. The moves also would help untangle a logjam of officers waiting to attend the Maneuver Captain’s Career Course, which is a required military education course for those who want to serve as a captain in the infantry and armor fields.

Infantry and armor are among the most sought-after branches for new officers because of their front-line combat roles, opportunities to lead soldiers on the battlefield and the belief that serving in direct combat positions is the best path toward achieving high-ranking posts in the future. The service has long required more junior officers in the infantry and armor fields to lead platoons and serve in other staff roles than it does when officers reach mid-career and higher ranks.

The Army has other programs that allow junior officers to serve in those combat branches before transitioning into support roles, but this is the first time the service is offering such an unplanned, seamless transition opportunity into an understaffed career field for some of its first lieutenants, officials said.

In all, the Army needs about 130 lieutenants from the 2021 group to move into the adjutant general field, about 100 to move into the signal corps and about 20 to switch to finance, according to HRC.

The service said it would not force anyone to change branches at this time. The program could be opened later to officers in other career fields and year groups.

Those willing to change career fields must log into the Active Duty Officer Assignment Interactive Module Version 2, or AIM 2, platform and rank their branch preferences among infantry, armor, adjutant general, finance and signal from 1 to 5 by Feb. 24. Those who place other branches above their infantry or armor branch will be considered volunteers for a career field change, according to HRC directions.

Officers approved will be immediately transferred into their new branch upon notification, officials said. They will be contacted at that point by their new branch’s career manager about their next job placement and scheduling for the Captain’s Career Course.

Col. Miles Gengler, who is in charge of readiness for HRC’s Force Shaping Directorate, said the opportunity could open new paths for officers who want to command units. He said he was commissioned as an armor officer but later shifted into the adjutant general corps and commanded at the battalion and brigade level.

“We strongly encourage these affected junior officers to consider this another opportunity to continue to serve the Army, albeit in a different capacity,” Gengler said. “The Army is committed to matching officer desires and talents to its requirements and will do its best to accommodate both. Adjutant general, signal and finance officers are equally dedicated and passionate about their branch as infantry and amor officers.”

Stars and Stripes · by Corey Dickstein · January 16, 2024

20. Iran Will Escalate Until It Pays a Price

This will not lead to Iran removing its sanctions on Mark. - Recall that Iran sanctioned him for his influence over US policy against Iran.

Iran Will Escalate Until It Pays a Price

Weakness in Washington only emboldens Tehran, writes Mark Dubowitz.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-escalate-biden-yemen-strikes-irgc-fbac5e0d?utm

Jan. 16, 2024 1:22 pm ET

A pro-Houthi rally in Sanaa, Yemen, Jan. 5. PHOTO: OSAMAH YAHYA/ZUMA PRESS

A U.S.-led international coalition bombed multiple Houthi military targets in Yemen in response to 27 attacks against international ships in the past three months (“Hitting the Houthis, at Last,” Review & Outlook, Jan. 13). In a statement, President Biden didn’t mention the role of Iran in supporting these Houthi attacks. Nor did he order the U.S. military to hit any Iranian targets, including an Iranian spy ship that was providing intelligence and targeting information to Iran’s Houthi allies. The president even telegraphed that an attack was imminent to give the Iranians and the Houthis a chance to escape.

Yet again the Biden administration stepped away from a direct fight with Tehran. This weakness will only embolden Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Already, he has escalated: Iran’s proxies targeted a U.S. Navy warship and an American commercial ship, and Iran itself fired missiles near the U.S. consulate in Erbil, Iraq, killing Kurdish civilians.

The U.S. is being pulled into a deeper Middle Eastern quagmire on the supreme leader’s terms. Only direct strikes against the military assets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards will persuade him that he will pay a severe price for his aggression.

Mark Dubowitz

CEO, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

21. A Peaceful Solution on Taiwan Is Slipping Away

OPINION

GUEST ESSAY

A Peaceful Solution on Taiwan Is Slipping Away 

Jan. 17, 2024, 1:00 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/17/opinion/taiwan-china-election-war.html?utm

By Michael Beckley

Mr. Beckley is the author of “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict With China.”

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

Conflict between China and the United States just got a little more likely.

On Saturday, Taiwanese voters handed the Democratic Progressive Party (D.P.P.), which asserts that Taiwan is already independent from China and should stay that way, an unprecedented third consecutive presidential victory. In doing so, the island’s people shrugged off ominous warnings by China that a win by President-elect Lai Ching-te — considered by Beijing to be a dangerous Taiwan independence advocate — could trigger a war.

The result should lay to rest any doubt about the direction in which Taiwan is going. Determined to maintain their autonomy, the people of Taiwan are drifting further from China and won’t come back voluntarily, elevating military action as one of the only options left for China to effect the unification with Taiwan that it has long sought.

This hardening in Taiwanese attitudes has been a long time coming. In 1949, China’s former Kuomintang (K.M.T.) government lost a civil war against Communist Chinese forces and fled to Taiwan, dividing the two sides. For decades, the K.M.T. clung to an official policy of eventual unification with the mainland, and the question of whether Taiwan is part of China or its own distinct and self-ruled polity has dominated island politics ever since.

In 1994, more Taiwanese considered themselves exclusively Chinese than Taiwanese, and more favored moving toward unification with China than toward independence. Beijing courted such sentiments by forging close economic links with Taiwan. But attitudes have inexorably shifted as Taiwan blossomed into a democratic and economic success. Now, with China’s economy stagnating, it has fewer carrots to offer, and repressive Chinese actions like its crackdown on Hong Kong’s freedoms have further alienated Taiwan. As a result, President Xi Jinping of China has increasingly turned to wielding the stick — economic coercion, military threats and an online disinformation campaign in Taiwan — to pressure the island's people into unification.

It is now clear that this strategy has failed spectacularly. Today, nearly two-thirds of Taiwan’s people consider themselves exclusively Taiwanese, versus only 2.5 percent who identify as exclusively Chinese. Almost 50 percent of the island’s 24 million residents prefer future Taiwanese independence over maintaining the current ambiguous status quo (27 percent) or unification with China (12 percent).

There are reasons Mr. Xi might take modest comfort from the election result. The D.P.P.’s margin of victory in the presidential race was smaller than four years ago and it lost its legislative majority. But the weaker D.P.P. showing does not reflect a softening of independence sentiment in Taiwan. Rather, it is probably due more to bread-and-butter issues like stagnant wage growth and soaring housing prices, which loomed large in campaigning and public opinion surveys, as well as with public fatigue with the party after eight years in power.

Moving forward, Mr. Xi no longer has a reliable partner in Taiwan to negotiate unification with. Even the K.M.T., now in the opposition and more Beijing-friendly, knows that it must cater to an independence-leaning electorate. On the campaign trail, its presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, explicitly ruled out unification talks with China or a return to the engagement policies previously favored by the party, pledging instead to bolster Taiwan’s military in partnership with the United States, Japan and other democracies.

In this climate, the United States will need, more than ever, to strike a careful balance between deterring China from invading Taiwan and reassuring Beijing that Washington does not support the island’s independence. But that will be complicated by the divisive election campaign that America is now entering, in which candidates are likely to engage in tough talk on China that could provoke Beijing. Despite the posturing, election-year politicking may actually undermine U.S. readiness for a conflict: Partisanship last year held up military spending bills and hundreds of military leadership appointments, constraining the Pentagon’s ability to build bases, buy weapons or expand the U.S. industrial base at anything close to China’s clip.

President Biden has said the United States would help defend Taiwan in the event of an unprovoked attack, but with U.S. military supplies already constrained by the support provided to Ukraine, American forces could run out of missiles after a few weeks of high-intensity combat with China. Washington may also struggle to forge an effective coalition to deter or defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan if allies, put off by U.S. political dysfunction and a possible return to the “America First” foreign policy of Donald Trump, hesitate to join in U.S. military preparations or economic sanctions​.

There is a belief that the United States can head off the possibility of Chinese aggression by voicing its opposition to Taiwan independence. The idea is that this will ease concerns in Beijing, which, beset by an ailing economy, will want to avoid the massive economic, social and diplomatic disruptions of starting a war. But Taiwan provokes China simply by being what it is: A prosperous and free society. Taiwan’s blooming national identity threatens China with the prospect of permanent territorial dismemberment; and Taiwan’s elections, rule of law and free press make a mockery of Beijing’s claim that Chinese culture is incompatible with democracy. America’s words can’t change any of that.

Chinese law explicitly states that Beijing may use force if possibilities for peaceful unification are “completely exhausted.” Because of politics in Taiwan and the United States, those possibilities are dwindling.

Taiwanese and American political leaders need to recognize this stark reality, do far more to improve military deterrence, start national conversations about the growing threat of war and work toward public unity about how to confront that threat, all while avoiding rhetoric or actions that needlessly throw fuel on the fire.

If they fail to seize this opportunity, they may not get another chance.

Michael Beckley is a political scientist at Tufts University, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the director of the Asia program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads.

22. Israel releases data on three months of fighting in Gaza

Israel releases data on three months of fighting in Gaza | FDD's Long War Journal

longwarjournal.org · by Seth Frantzman · January 16, 2024

An IDF tank in Gaza at sunset. (IDF)

The Israel Defense Forces published extensive data collected from the last three months of fighting Hamas in Gaza. The data also includes information on the threats Israel has faced from Hezbollah and Iranian-backed terrorist groups in Syria. This information is released as Israel is transitioning its Gaza operations into lower intensity conflict and bringing home some of the reservists who had fought for more than 90 days against Hamas.

The IDF data is mostly relevant for the dates October 7 to January 9, covering three months of war. The IDF says it has struck 30,000 targets in Gaza, including 22,000 targets that were struck by December 10, illustrating that the number of targets struck did not decline greatly in the last weeks of December. However, the size or quality of the targets may have changed. 750 targets have been struck in what Israel calls the “northern arena.” This includes Lebanon and may also include Syria, although the IDF does not specify. The IDF has waged a “campaign between the wars” in Syria over the last decade, and has not often specified the number of targets struck there. The number struck in Syria is in the thousands according to details released in 2019.

In Gaza, the IDF has eliminated an estimated 9,000 terrorists, according to the new data. This includes 19 Hamas battalion commanders and “over 50 Hamas company commanders.” This would appear to mean that Hamas has lost a significant number of its mid-level commanders, but Hamas still has up to 20,000 fighters in Gaza. Hamas has lost control of northern Gaza and parts of central and southern Gaza. In strikes on Hezbollah and other terrorist groups in the north, the IDF estimates it has eliminated 170 terrorists. More than 9,000 rockets have crossed into Israel from Gaza. Some rockets do not launch properly and fall inside Gaza, meaning the real number of rockets launched by Hamas and other terror groups is likely higher. There have also been 2,000 rockets launched into Israel from Lebanon and 30 from Syria since October 7. The data on Lebanon does not distinguish between rocket fire and anti-tank missile fire, and a lot of the munitions used by Hezbollah have been ATGMs.

The IDF also says that 522 soldiers have been killed since the war began, 188 of them since ground operations began on October 27. A total of 2,536 IDF soldiers have been injured, 388 of them severely. More than 400 IDF soldiers are still in Israeli hospitals due to their injuries.

The data set was released as the IDF continued to fight on multiple fronts. In Khan Younis in Gaza, the IDF said it identified two terrorists on January 15 and called in an air strike to eliminate them. In another incident the IDF found a compound for manufacturing mortar shells and producing rockets in the area of Nuseirat in central Gaza.

Threats to Israel continued from Lebanon. On January 14, two civilians were killed in Israel by anti-tank missile fire. The IDF also identified a group of terrorists along the Lebanese border seeking to infiltrate the Mount Dov area. This area includes a mountain on the Lebanon-Israel-Syria border. Hezbollah claims the area is part of Lebanon and has often threatened Israeli forces patrolling the mountain. IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said IDF “soldiers guarding the Har Dov area for the past three months identified a terrorist cell that had infiltrated from Lebanese territory. The soldiers acted professionally, under challenging weather conditions and limited visibility, engaged the enemy, and eliminated the three terrorists. The terrorists were found with AK-47s and grenades.”

While the threats in the north and in Gaza are now known to Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned on January 14 that Israel may also face escalation in the West Bank: “Hamas is trying to tie Gaza, and Judea and Samaria, and to ‘ignite’ the arena. We must do everything possible to prevent this,” he said.

Reporting from Israel, Seth J. Frantzman is an adjunct fellow at FDD and a contributor to FDD’s Long War Journal. He is the acting news editor and senior Middle East correspondent and analyst at The Jerusalem Post.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.

Tags: Gaza, Hamas, Hezabollah, Israel, lebanan

longwarjournal.org · by Seth Frantzman · January 16, 2024

23. Israel Hints at Lebanon Ground Operations

Israel Hints at Lebanon Ground Operations

fdd.org · by Krystal Bermudez · January 16, 2024

Latest Developments

The Israeli military went public on January 16 with a special forces operation in southern Lebanon, as the prospect of war with Hezbollah looms. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its special forces struck in order “to remove a threat” in the area of Ayta ash Shab, a Lebanese village about half a mile from the Israeli border, which has seen frequent Hezbollah attacks in solidarity with Hamas during the Gaza war.

The announcement appeared to be a rare acknowledgement by Israel of action on the ground as opposed to retaliatory air and artillery strikes against the Iran-backed terrorist group. Separately, Israeli aircraft and artillery carried out heavy shelling of dozens of Hezbollah targets in Wadi Saluki, a strategic southern Lebanese gateway to the country’s interior.

Major-General Ori Gordin, chief of the IDF Northern Command, said tens of thousands of Israeli troops were training for a potential Lebanon offensive. Time is running out for the Beirut government, and Western countries that care about Lebanon’s future, to persuade Hezbollah to back off the border with Israel.

Expert Analysis

“A day after the Hamas massacre that triggered the Gaza war, Hezbollah opened a second front with Israel. It is now Hezbollah that must stand down, or drag Lebanon into an all-out war.” —Mark Dubowitz, FDD CEO

“The Israeli special forces operation in Lebanon should be a concerning development because it signals growing Israeli exasperation with Hezbollah’s escalating attacks. It also reflects the failure of international diplomacy and the IDF’s limited counterstrikes to silence the organization’s guns. If Hezbollah’s current aggression and perpetually growing threat on the Lebanon-Israel border remain unaddressed, further escalation can be expected, and Hezbollah and Israel will continue inching toward war.” — David Daoud, FDD Senior Fellow

“Since the onset of the October 7 war, Hezbollah has adopted a tactic of engaging the Israeli military in a bid to relieve pressure on Hamas in Gaza. However, Israel is using this opportunity to respond to Hezbollah by destroying the organization’s infrastructure in southern Lebanon, thus degrading the military capabilities of the Lebanese terrorist organization.” — Joe Truzman, Senior Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal

Related Analysis

“Hezbollah Targets Northern Israel with Rocket Fire,” FDD Flash Brief

“Elderly Israeli and Son Killed in Terror Attack on Israel-Lebanon Border,” FDD Flash Brief

“Hezbollah Attacks Israel Using Kamikaze Drones,” FDD Flash Brief

fdd.org · by Krystal Bermudez · January 16, 2024

24. Israel SitRep: Jan. 16, 2024

Israel SitRep: Jan. 16, 2024

fdd.org · by David May · January 16, 2024

Today’s Issue: Iran Strikes Northern Iraq and Northern Syria, Aims to Hit Israeli Target | Israeli Forces Clash With Suspected Arms Smugglers Near Israel-Egypt Border | ‘Intensive’ Ground Operations Will End Soon, Says Top Israeli Defense Official | U.S. Government Cautions Gulf of Aden Shipping as Houthi Rebels Threaten U.S. Ships | Latest FDD Analysis

Iran Strikes Northern Iraq and Northern Syria, Aims to Hit Israeli Target: Between January 15 and January 16, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched ballistic missiles in northern Iraq and northern Syria, reportedly targeting an Israeli “espionage headquarters” and “anti-Iran terrorist groups.” At least four civilians died, and multiple injuries occurred from the strikes. The missiles, targeting Erbil in northern Iraq, exploded near the U.S. consulate and a U.S. military facility, but the U.S. National Security Council reported no casualties or damage. In Syria, Iran struck al-Sina’a Prison, according to Syrian Democratic Forces spokesperson Farhad Shami, which is the largest prison housing Islamic State detainees in Hasakah City.

Israeli Forces Clash With Suspected Arms Smugglers Near Israel-Egypt Border: On January 16, The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported firefight with about 20 suspected drug smugglers, many armed, at the Israel-Egypt border near the Al-Awja (Nitzana) crossing. The IDF fired upon the group, resulting in an Israeli soldier’s injury. Egyptian forces also clashed with the purported drug smugglers. Six smugglers were arrested, and one died. Egypt reported that it seized approximately 174 kilograms of various narcotics.

‘Intensive’ Ground Operations Will End Soon, Says Top Israeli Defense Official: On January 15, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the “intensive phase” of Israel’s ground offensive in northern Gaza is concluding. He added that Israel’s military operations in southern Gaza will soon be ending, as well, since Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade is “gradually disintegrating as a fighting force.” Israeli efforts will concentrate on “the head of the snake, Hamas’s leadership,” according to the top Israeli defense official. This announcement follows Israel’s successful military operations in northern Gaza, where the IDF says Hamas’s command has been destroyed.

U.S. Government Cautions Gulf of Aden Shipping as Houthi Rebels Threaten U.S. Ships: On January 15, the U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration published an alert cautioning all U.S.-flagged and U.S.-owned commercial vessels to avoid certain coordinates in the Gulf of Aden. The release warns of anticipated, potential retaliatory strikes by Houthi forces. That same day, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree claimed an attack on a U.S.-owned ship reportedly suspected of carrying naval missiles and continued to threaten U.S. and UK vessels. On January 15, Houthi militants struck the Marshall Islands-flagged, U.S.-owned and operated M/V Gibraltar Eagle commercial ship with an anti-ship ballistic missile. The vessel continued its journey without “injuries or significant damage,” according to U.S. Central Command.

Latest FDD Analysis:

“Israel Releases Data On Three Months Of Fighting In Gaza,” FDD Adjunct Fellow Seth J. Frantzman

“Houthis Continue Attacks After Western Strikes Target Launch Sites,” FDD’s Long War Journal

“Israel: North Gaza Still Too Dangerous For Civilians To Return,” FDD Flash Brief

“Israel Seizes Oil Tanker Off Coast Of Oman,” FDD Flash Brief

“Houthis Vow To Continue Attacks Despite U.S., UK Airstrikes,” FDD Flash Brief

fdd.org · by David May · January 16, 2024

25. Opinion | The Houthis sink an arrow into the West’s Achilles’ heel

Conclusion:

But the bizarre little war off the coast of Yemen — and its big potential effect on global commerce — is a reminder of how fragile the logistical network remains. The grandees of the world economy who are gathering this week in Davos, Switzerland, for their annual celebration of globalization should keep an eye on the distant bottleneck at the Bab el-Mandeb, where the system seems very weak indeed.

Opinion | The Houthis sink an arrow into the West’s Achilles’ heel

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · January 16, 2024

The White House has officially designated April as “Supply Chain Integrity Month.” Houthi rebels in Yemen and a dozen other players that can wreak havoc on global logistics don’t seem to have gotten the message.

The Houthis are a tribal militia in a faraway country that many Americans couldn’t identify on a map. But they have the ability to disrupt world markets. For three months, they have been sending missiles and drones toward commercial cargo ships in the Red Sea — and, in the process, altering global shipping flows and insurance rates. Reuters reported on Tuesday that just in the past week, risk premiums for ships traveling the area had increased by more than 40 percent.

The Houthis have what might be called bottleneck power. They command the narrow passageway into the Red Sea, which allows them to sabotage a vulnerable point in the global supply chain. This ability to exploit chokepoints is an increasingly important but little-discussed weakness in the global economy — one that the United States, which boasts of its role as guarantor of freedom of navigation, seems almost powerless to prevent.

U.S. military threats didn’t deter the Houthis, who began firing missiles at cargo ships in November in a supposed protest against the war in Gaza. A U.S.-led coalition of more than 20 countries, hubristically called Prosperity Guardian, didn’t stop the attacks, either. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, two of the biggest global shipping companies, announced on Jan. 2 they would stop using the Red Sea route because of the Houthi missiles.

The United States and Britain finally took military action on Jan. 11, striking more than 60 Houthi targets with more than 100 precision bombs, and U.S. forces attacked again the next day. Even that didn’t stop the Houthis, who struck a U.S-owned cargo ship on Monday, drawing a retaliatory U.S. assault Tuesday against a Houthi missile-launching site.

The Houthis are masters of modern guerrilla war, exploiting the weak points of stronger powers. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates fought a war against them starting in 2014. The UAE gave up in 2020, and the Saudis agreed to a peace deal last year, which only seemed to embolden the Houthis. They are tough, patient fighters — supplied with weapons, training and intelligence by Iran — and they sit atop one of the world’s most strategic waterways.

Houthi leaders seem to understand that the deeper they draw the United States into conflict, the greater impact they have on the global economy. That’s the lesson of this undeclared war: The United States has overwhelming economic power. But perhaps because it is dependent on global trade and financial flows, it is especially vulnerable to economic attack by such seeming lightweights as the Houthis.

We’ve seen other bottleneck vulnerabilities during the past few years. A giant Panamanian-flagged cargo ship called the Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal for six days in March 2021, obstructing more than 350 ships. The delicate thread of global commerce was beginning to unravel when the ship was finally refloated.

The war in Ukraine has been, in part, a battle to control access points and skew commerce. Russian control of the Black Sea allowed it, for a time, to halt Ukrainian grain shipments and spike global food prices — adding to inflation and, worse, threatening famine. Russia’s enemies, identity still unknown, sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022. Ukraine at least twice has attacked the Kerch Strait bridge that links Russia to occupied Crimea.

Paradoxically, the more dominant the United States has become economically, the more vulnerable it is to supply-chain attack. An early demonstration of that dependence was the 1974 Arab oil embargo, whose destabilizing effects persisted for much of the next decade. Today’s most precious resource is information, and the United States keeps leaping forward with new digital tools. But as cyber technology advances, so do the weapons of cyberwar.

A disturbing example of a U.S. strength that could become a weakness is our dominance of cloud computing — and growing reliance on it. A study to be published Wednesday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace focuses on the risk that the theoretically invulnerable cloud could be disrupted by natural disasters, technology failure, human error or other unanticipated factors.

The study cites an estimate by two giant reinsurance companies that potential insurance losses in a cloud-dependent world could be 100 times those before cloud adoption.

The Carnegie study, outlined for me this week by Ariel Levite, one of its three authors, proposes that cloud providers and their clients should agree on “a framework to enhance resilience and trust.” Like giant financial institutions, cloud providers should face regular “stress tests” to see how they would cope with unexpected disasters, Levite explained.

The Biden administration, which took office amid the covid-19 pandemic, recognized the need to protect global supply chains. And the administration’s actions have reduced the United States’ vulnerability to outside disruptions.

But the bizarre little war off the coast of Yemen — and its big potential effect on global commerce — is a reminder of how fragile the logistical network remains. The grandees of the world economy who are gathering this week in Davos, Switzerland, for their annual celebration of globalization should keep an eye on the distant bottleneck at the Bab el-Mandeb, where the system seems very weak indeed.

The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · January 16, 2024

26. Iran and the Houthis Don’t Get Biden’s Message

Iran and the Houthis Don’t Get Biden’s Message

Two Navy SEALs are missing from a mission to seize Iran’s weapons.​

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-houthi-missile-attacks-ships-navy-seals-biden-administration-88b9e98a?mod=editorials_article_pos2

By The Editorial Board

Follow

Jan. 16, 2024 6:49 pm ET

Tribal supporters of Yemen's Houthis hold up their firearms during a protest against recent U.S.-led strikes on Houthi targets, Sanaa, Yemen, Jan. 14. PHOTO: KHALED ABDULLAH/REUTERS

President Biden said on the weekend that he had sent a private message to Iran to stop aiding the Houthi attacks on shipping in the Middle East. Apparently it was lost in translation. Iran’s Houthi proxy militia keeps firing missiles at U.S. ships, and two Navy SEALs are missing at sea after a mission to seize Iranian-made missile parts bound for the Houthis.

Mr. Biden’s spokesmen are at pains to say the U.S. doesn’t want war with the Houthis or Iran, but it sure looks like they’re at war with the U.S. On Monday the Houthis fired an antiship missile at a U.S.-flagged containership, and on Tuesday they launched a missile that hit a Maltese-flagged ship. The Maltese ship was able to keep sailing, but the episode shows that neither the Houthis nor Iran have been deterred by last week’s U.S. salvos against Houthi arms caches and missile launchers.

Perhaps that’s because the U.S. warned the Houthis in advance of the strikes so the militants could evacuate. That might seem like a humanitarian gesture, but in the Middle East it tends to get interpreted as weakness. The Houthis may think Mr. Biden authorized the retaliatory strikes because he wanted to show a U.S. audience he’s getting tough, but that the President fears Houthi escalation. So of course the Houthis escalate (and the U.S. hit four more Houthi targets on Tuesday).

As does Iran. The missing SEALs were part of an operation to interdict Iranian weapons on their way to the Houthis in Yemen. One SEAL fell into the water trying to board a dhow with suspected weapons, and a comrade went in after him. They may be dead—two more American casualties of Iran’s hostility to U.S. interests and its apparent disdain for Mr. Biden’s warnings.

The SEALs join Army pilot Garrett Illerbrunn, who has been in a coma after being badly injured in an attack by a different Iranian proxy militia in Iraq on Christmas Day. Americans who sign up for military duty know the risks, but Mr. Biden hasn’t made any public statement to our knowledge about Chief Warrant Officer 4 Illerbrunn or the Navy SEALs.

Iran and the Houthis are putting American lives at risk, even as the leaders in Tehran hide their malevolent intent behind their proxy militias. They probably assume Mr. Biden will never dare to attack Iran’s military or domestic assets in a U.S. election year. These are the consequences of failed deterrence, with American servicemen paying the price.

WSJ Opinion: Should Secretary Mayorkas Be Impeached?

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Journal Editorial Report: Congress’s border frustration boils over. Images: AP/Reuters Composite: Mark Kelly

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the January 17, 2024, print edition as 'Iran Doesn’t Get Biden’s Message'.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com