Quotes of the Day:
"It's a heavy burden to look up at the mountain and want to start the climb."
- Abby Wambach
"Hence most of the matters dealt with in this book are composed in equal parts of physical and of moral causes and effects. One might say that the physical seem little more than the wooden hilt, while the moral factors are the precious metal, the real weapon, the finely-honed blade."
- Carl von Clausewitz
"Aside from what we have discussed above, we can point out a number of other means and methods used to fight a non-military war, some of which already exist and some of which may exist in the future. Such means and methods include psychological warfare (spreading rumors to intimidate the enemy and break down his will); smuggling warfare (throwing markets into confusion and attacking economic order); media warfare (manipulating what people see and hear in order to lead public opinion along); drug warfare (obtaining sudden and huge illicit profits by spreading disaster in other countries); network warfare (venturing out in secret and concealing one's identity in a type of warfare that is virtually impossible to guard against); technological warfare (creating monopolies by setting standards independently); fabrication warfare (presenting a counterfeit appearance of real strength before the eyes of the enemy); resources warfare (grabbing riches by plundering stores of resources); economic aid warfare (bestowing favor in the open and contriving to control matters in secret); cultural warfare (leading cultural trends along in order to assimilate those with different views); and international law warfare (seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations), etc., etc In addition, there are other types of non-military warfare which are too numerous to mention. In this age, when the plethora of new technologies can in turn give rise to a plethora of new means and methods of fighting war, (not to mention the cross-combining and creative use of these means and methods), it would simply be senseless and a waste of effort to list all of the means and methods one by one.'
- Unrestricted Warfare, 1999
1. Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: June
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 2 (PUTIN'S WAR)
3. US Army Delays Doctrine Release to Incorporate Lessons from Ukraine
4. Kremlin’s Other Special Operation Seeks To Get Western Elites To Desert Ukraine – OpEd
5. More Military Education Should Be Like the ‘Strategic Thinkers Program’
6. After 100 days of war, Putin is counting on the world's indifference
7. Palantir’s Karp is first western CEO to visit Zelenskyy amid invasion
8. U.S. updates fact sheet, again, says does not support Taiwan independence
9. TN four-star General Carl Stiner, a pillar of U.S. Special Forces, dead at 85
10. US to China: We're hosting world's largest naval exercise, in Pacific
11. Russian Pacific fleet begins week-long exercises with more than 40 vessels -Russian agencies
12. EXPLAINER: At 100 days, Russia-Ukraine war by the numbers
13. Exclusive: Putin treated for cancer in April, U.S. intelligence report says
14. FDD | China’s Multilateral March Continues
15. FDD | Israeli-Saudi Deal Over Two Islands Is a Step Toward Peace
16. The U.N. Nuclear Watchdog Must Censure Iran
17. The Long Arm of Authoritarianism
18. Weighing America’s ‘repivot’ away from Asia
19. Workforce Development Agenda for the National Cyber Director - CSC 2.0
20. Inside the White House's struggle to get Joe Biden to matter: 'Why are we doing this?'
21. FDD | Hamas as Tehran's Agent
1. Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: June
Access the Foriegn Policy tracker HERE.
June 2, 2022 | FDD Tracker: May 3, 2022-June 2, 2022
Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: June
Trend Overview
Edited by David Adesnik and John Hardie
Welcome back to the Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker. Once a month, we ask FDD’s experts and scholars to assess the administration’s foreign policy. They provide trendlines of very positive, positive, neutral, negative, or very negative for the areas they watch.
Bipartisan majorities in Congress
approved a $40 billion assistance package for Ukraine and regional security, while President Joe Biden welcomed Finland’s and Sweden’s bids to join NATO.
Biden made his first trip to Asia, where he met with democratic allies but still did not lay out a clear policy toward
China. Rather, Biden made an unexpected pledge to defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression, which White House staff swiftly retracted. While struggling to contain COVID-19 outbreaks at home, Beijing won election to the Executive Board of the World Health Organization despite China’s perennial obstruction of pandemic-related investigations. The agency’s member states also rewarded Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus with a second five-year term despite his deference to Beijing, challenging Biden’s strategy of reforming
multilateral organizations via deeper engagement.
The president’s campaign to revive the 2015
nuclear deal with
Iran also stalled, apparently because Tehran continued to demand that Biden lift the designation of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Meanwhile,
North Korea launched three ballistic missiles amid signs of activity at one of its nuclear test sites.
Please check back with us in 30 days to see if the administration has laid out a clear path for dealing with China, Iran, and North Korea while continuing to oppose the Kremlin’s aggression.
Trending Positive
Trending Neutral
Trending Negative
Trending Very Negative
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 2 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 2
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 2
Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Mason Clark, and George Barros
June 2, 6:15pm ET
Russian forces continued to make incremental, grinding, and costly progress in eastern Ukraine on June 2. Russian troops continued operations to capture Severodonetsk and further operations to capture Lysychansk. Russian military leadership will likely use the capture of these two cities to claim they have “liberated” all of Luhansk Oblast before turning to Donetsk Oblast but Russian forces are unlikely to have the forces necessary to take substantial territory in Donetsk Oblast after suffering further losses around Severodonetsk. Russian forces are evidently limited by terrain in the Donbas and will continue to face challenges crossing the Siverskyi Donets River to complete the encirclement of Severodonetsk-Lysychansk and make further advances westward of Lyman towards Slovyansk via Raihorodok.[1]
Russian military leadership continues to experience complications with sufficient force generation and maintaining the morale of mobilized personnel. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DNR) 1st Army Corps, under Russia’s 8th Combined Arms Army, is conducting forced mobilization in occupied areas of Donetsk Oblast.[2] Russian forced mobilization is highly unlikely to generate meaningful combat power and will exacerbate low morale and poor discipline in Russian and proxy units. The 113th Regiment of the DNR posted a video appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 2 wherein forcibly-mobilized soldiers complain they have spent the entire war on the frontline in Kherson without food or medicine, and that mobilization committees did not conduct requisite medical screenings and admitted individuals whose medical conditions should have disqualified them from service.[3] Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate additionally released an intercepted phone conversation wherein DNR soldiers similarly complained that physically unfit individuals were forced into service and that mobilized units are experiencing mass drunkenness and general disorder.[4] Russian forces are additionally struggling to successfully rotate servicemen in and out of combat. Spokesperson for the Odesa Military Administration Maksym Marchenko stated that 30 to 40% of Russian personnel that rotated out of Ukraine refused to return, forcing Russian commanders to send unprepared and unmotivated units back into combat.[5] This is consistent with complaints made by DNR servicemen that rotation practices are contributing to poor morale and dissatisfaction within units that have been forcibly mobilized.[6]
Russian occupation authorities continue to face challenges establishing permanent societal control in newly occupied Ukrainian territories. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Russian occupational administrations “are [only] created on paper” and are incapable of controlling local populations, enforcing the use of the Russian ruble, or conducting bureaucratic processes.[7] The Ukrainian Resistance Center noted that Ukrainian civilians welcome partisan activity that systematically sabotages Russian occupation rule.
Key Takeaways
- Russian operations to advance on Slovyansk from the southeast of Izyum and west of Lyman continue to make little progress and are unlikely to do so in the coming days, as Russian forces continue to prioritize Severodonetsk at the expense of other axes of advance.
- Russian forces continued assaults against Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in order to claim full control of Luhansk Oblast.
- Russian forces made incremental advances around Avdiivka.
- Ukrainian counteroffensives in northwestern Kherson Oblast pushed Russian forces to the eastern bank of the Inhulets River and will likely continue to disrupt Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) along the T2207 highway.
- The Kremlin continued to pursue inconsistent occupational measures in southern Ukraine, indicating both widespread Ukrainian resistance and likely Kremlin indecision on how to integrate occupied territory.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those 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 population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
ISW has updated its assessment of the four primary efforts Russian forces are engaged in at this time. We have stopped coverage of Mariupol as a separate effort since the city’s fall. We had added a new section on activities in Russian-occupied areas:
- Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts);
- Subordinate main effort- Encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
- Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv City;
- Supporting effort 2—Southern axis;
- Activities in Russian-occupied areas
Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces conducted limited unsuccessful attacks and continued efforts to resume larger-scale offensives southeast of Izyum towards Slovyansk on June 2. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces focused on maintaining their current positions southeast of Izyum and shelled Dovhenke, Kurulka, Virnopillya, and Dolyna in order to set conditions to renew offensive operations towards Slovyansk.[8] Russian forces additionally conducted unsuccessful assault operations around Studenok, Sosnove, Svyatohirsk, and Yarova, several settlements southeast of Izyum along roadways connecting to the Izyum-Slovyansk highway near the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border.[9] Russian troops likely seek to capture this highway to exploit road access to support advances on Slovyansk. Russian forces in the Lyman reportedly attempted an additional, unsuccessful assault on Raihorodok, northeast of Slovyansk.[10]Russian forces attempting to advance on Slovyansk from both Izyum and Lyman remain largely stalled and are unlikely to make significant progress in the coming days, particularly as the majority of Russian forces continue to focus on Severodonetsk.
Russian forces continued ground assaults in and around Severodonetsk on June 2.[11] Head of the Luhansk People‘s Republic (LNR) Leonid Pasechnik claimed that the LNR controls all of Luhansk Oblast except for Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.[12] Deputy Chief of the Main Operations Department of the Ukrainian General Staff Oleksiy Gromov notably stated that despite Russian efforts to surround Severodonetsk, Ukrainian troops do not need to fully withdraw from the city.[13] Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks to the south of Severodonetsk-Lysychansk in Bobrove and Ustynivka.[14] The UK Ministry of Defense stated that Russian forces will likely be inhibited in their attempt to advance into Lysychansk from Severodonetsk (if they are first able to capture Severodonetsk itself) due to the tactical challenge of crossing the Siverskyi Donets River.[15] The UK Ministry of Defense additionally noted that Russian forces will likely need a brief tactical pause to prepare for subsequent attempts to cross the Siverskyi Donets River if they intend further operations into Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts. [16]
Russian forces continued ground, rocket, and artillery strikes around Donetsk Oblast on June 2.[17] Russian forces continued offensive operations to the east of Bakhmut around Komyshuvakha, Mykailivka, Vrubivka, Berestove, Bilohorivka, Svitlodarsk, and Nahirne in order to cut ground lines of communication (GLOCs) northeast of Bakhmut and support continuing but slow-moving operations to encircle Severodonetsk-Lysychansk from the south.[18] The DNR claimed that the Russian grouping in the Donetsk City-Avdiivka area made incremental gains around Avdiivka and reportedly broke through Ukrainian defenses in Verkhnotoreske, though ISW cannot independently confirm this claim.[19]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Withdraw forces to the north and defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum)
Russian forces conducted rocket and artillery strikes on Kharkiv City and northern Kharkiv Oblast on June 2.[20] Russian forces shelled residential districts of Kharkiv City, Tsyrkuny, Chuhuiv, Prudyanka, and Mykhailivka in an attempt to maintain their positions to the north of Kharkiv City.[21] A Russian Telegram channel claimed that clashes between Russian and Ukrainian troops occurred in Vesele and Tsupivka, both north of Kharkiv City, indicating that local fighting continues along the frontline in northern Kharkiv Oblast.[22]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporozhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Ukrainian counteroffensives in northwestern Kherson Oblast likely pushed Russian forces back to their established defensive positions on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River on June 2. Geolocated drone footage confirms Ukrainian forces conducted a counteroffensive near Starosillya, a settlement on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River and just 12 kilometers south of the northernmost area of Russian control.[23] Kherson Oblast Military Administration Head Hannadiy Lahuta reported that Ukrainian forces liberated 20 unnamed villages in Kherson Oblast, likely referring to the settlements on the western bank of the Inhulets River.[24] ISW cannot independently confirm these territorial changes at this time, but Ukrainian defenders have likely secured the western Ihululets riverbank. Ukrainian forces on the west bank of the Ihulets River are likely able to fire on and disrupt Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) that stretch along the T2207 highway within a kilometer of the river.[25]
Russian forces are taking measures to hinder further Ukrainian counteroffensives on the western Kherson-Mykaloiv Oblast border. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces are planning a counteroffensive in Mykolaiv Oblast and engaged in heavy battles with Russian forces in the Oblast on June 2.[26] Russian military Telegram channel Rybar claimed that Ukrainian forces will attempt to liberate Snihurivka, approximately 66 kilometers east of Mykolaiv City.[27] Russian forces conducted a missile strike on a railway bridge northwest of Mykolaiv City likely to preempt the transfer of Ukrainian forces and equipment in the area.[28] Russian occupation authorities continued to cut off telecommunications signals in Zaporizhia and Kherson Oblasts, and Ukrainian officials speculated that Russian forces fear Ukrainian counteroffensives and partisan activity in occupied settlements and seek to limit Ukrainian communications.[29]
Activity in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)
The Kremlin continues to send mixed signals about its plans to integrate occupied Ukrainian territories – likely indicating the Kremlin has not decided on a single course of action. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that a referendum to integrate Donbas to Russia is “hardly possible” without fully ensuring security in the region, but did not specify what the Kremlin would consider “ensuring security.”[30] Leader of the “Fair Russia” Party (part of the pro-Kremlin “systemic opposition” of parties not directly affiliated with Putin’s United Russia party but not posing any real opposition) Sergei Mironov said that any Ukrainian Oblast may join Russia, likely in support of other claims by Russian State Duma members that the Kremlin will annex Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk Oblast as soon as July.[31] Russian Senator Andrey Turchak announced the opening of a United Russia ”humanitarian center” in Kherson City and claimed to have negotiated industrial cooperation agreements between Kherson Oblast and Russia, but exact Russian plans for occupied Kherson remain unclear.[32] Russian-backed occupation authorities in Zaporizhia also announced the “nationalization” of Ukrainian state property, including the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), which could suggest that the Kremlin seeks to economically exploit newly occupied territories with or without direct annexation.[33] Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin previously stated that the Zaporizhia NPP will exclusively work for Russia and will sell electricity to Ukraine.[34] Ukrainian state energy company “Energoatom” noted that Russia physically cannot export electricity from the Zaporizhia NPP as Russia is not connected to the Ukrainian or European energy grid.[35]
The fate of the Mariupol defenders taken prisoner by Russian forces remains unclear. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported that Ukrainian officials are discussing prisoner exchanges with Russian forces, but refused to comment on the status of the negotiations.[36] Russian sources claimed that members of the Ukrainian Azov Regiment are imprisoned in Olenivka, approximately 22 kilometers from Donetsk City.[37]
[7] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/06/02/okupanty-imituyut-stvorennya-rosijskyh-administraczij-i-ne-mozhut-protydiyaty-ruhu-oporu/
3. US Army Delays Doctrine Release to Incorporate Lessons from Ukraine
Excerpts:
The team includes an assortment of Army officials, from doctrine writers to military educators, who are speaking to U.S. trainers, Ukrainian forces, and even refugees to learn as much as they can about the tactics and strategies being used in the war, Funk said.
“They're trying to gather on everything. But they're trying to do it through a lens of, ‘are we going to be ready for the future,’ right? So, we don't want to learn the lessons from the past, we want to be ready for the lessons of the future,” he said.
Since February, Defense Department officials and experts have repeatedly mentioned lessons—in reconnaissance, combined arms, and logistics—that they are learning from the fight between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
US Army Delays Doctrine Release to Incorporate Lessons from Ukraine
The wreckage of an armored personnel vehicle sits on a road to a Donbas village on June 2, 2022. Celestino Arce/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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A service team is in Europe talking to Ukrainian troops and U.S. trainers, gathering information to refine its multi-domain operations playbook.
|
June 2, 2022 07:03 PM ET
Staff Reporter
June 2, 2022 07:03 PM ET
The U.S. Army is delaying the release of its multi-domain operations doctrine by a few months to refine it with lessons from the war in Ukraine, the commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command said Thursday.
The conflict is an opportunity for the Army to look at their doctrine without risking American soldiers, Gen. Paul Funk said during an Association of the United States Army event.
“Let's make sure this is working. Let's not put something out that doesn't have a chance to work, right? Doctrine just gives you a basis from which to change,” Funk said. “So you want to make sure when somebody's actually modeling that for you, you ought to take advantage of it, right? That's what we're doing.”
TRADOC laid out the service’s most recent concept for operating as part of a joint force in 2018’s “The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028.” Since then, the concept has been expanded into a detailed set of operating principles—that is, doctrine—that was expected to be released this month.
Instead, the Army has dispatched the entire Center for Army Lessons Learned team to Europe “to capture these observations so that we can come back, check our doctrine, make sure it's up to speed,” he said.
The team includes an assortment of Army officials, from doctrine writers to military educators, who are speaking to U.S. trainers, Ukrainian forces, and even refugees to learn as much as they can about the tactics and strategies being used in the war, Funk said.
“They're trying to gather on everything. But they're trying to do it through a lens of, ‘are we going to be ready for the future,’ right? So, we don't want to learn the lessons from the past, we want to be ready for the lessons of the future,” he said.
Since February, Defense Department officials and experts have repeatedly mentioned lessons—in reconnaissance, combined arms, and logistics—that they are learning from the fight between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
4. Kremlin’s Other Special Operation Seeks To Get Western Elites To Desert Ukraine – OpEd
One of the most elite mouthpieces they have captured is Tucker Carlson. It is also ironic how much Carlson appeals to all those who are anti-elitist. His upbringing, his life, and his career is among the most elite in our nation. But I digress.
Excerpts:
The US-based Russian commentator says that in his 50 years of following Moscow’s foreign policy moves, he has never seen such a concerted Russian effort to change the views of Western elites and give Moscow a victory that in this case the heroic Ukrainian people have denied it.
The message Moscow wants to deliver and that all too many Western commentators are prepared to do exactly that, Piontkovsky says, is this: “Don’t humiliate Russia. Force Ukraine to agree to a division of that country. Do not in any case raises the question about the prosecution of Russian war criminals. They are still useful to use for resolving problems of global warming.”
Please recall this from our previous national security strategy. It should ring true for all Americans.
"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."
Kremlin’s Other Special Operation Seeks To Get Western Elites To Desert Ukraine – OpEd
Having failed to win its first “special operation” against Ukraine, the Kremlin has launched a second one that it believes it will have more success, Andrey Piontkovsky says. Its various soft power agencies, he continues, are working overtime to convince Western elites that they must desert Ukraine rather than stand up to Russian aggression.
The US-based Russian commentator says that in his 50 years of following Moscow’s foreign policy moves, he has never seen such a concerted Russian effort to change the views of Western elites and give Moscow a victory that in this case the heroic Ukrainian people have denied it (piontk01.comcb.info/material.php?id=6280FB32ED7F7).
The message Moscow wants to deliver and that all too many Western commentators are prepared to do exactly that, Piontkovsky says, is this: “Don’t humiliate Russia. Force Ukraine to agree to a division of that country. Do not in any case raises the question about the prosecution of Russian war criminals. They are still useful to use for resolving problems of global warming.”
Moscow expects its campaign to work in one of two ways, either directly on the national security elite in Washington despite the fact that the American people are solidly on the side of Ukraine against Russia or indirectly by inspiring Republican attacks on the Biden Administration for not doing enough.
However that may be, the Russian-American commentator says, this massive campaign is important for a reason independent of its potential effectiveness. It provides a window into the thinking of “the Chekist-imperial group of people who are making decisions in Moscow at the present time.”
They recognize that the US has ceased to be afraid of Russia’s nuclear blackmail and has decided that it would be better if Putin feared them by their support for Ukraine’s people and government. Neither they nor those in the West who are prepared to repeat their arguments understand what has happened: “the sun of a Ukrainian victory has risen over the world.”
“The heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people to the invasion of the Eurasian horde has made Ukraine the leader of the Free World,” Piontkovsky says. If Moscow thinks it can do any better in its second special military operation than it has done in the first, it will be sadly mistaken.
Instead, such an effort will only bring closer the day when some Russians will be sitting on the bench of the International Criminal Court in Mariupol.
5. More Military Education Should Be Like the ‘Strategic Thinkers Program’
I agree with General Thornhill. And Daniel Marston has done incredible work developing the program she describes. Her description is very similar to my SAMS experience in 1995-1996.
I would consider developing a similar program to develop irregular warfare strategic thinking which I think was partly the intent of Congress and the Sec. 1299L legislation to develop a Center for Irregular Warfare Security Studies - note BG Thornhill's comment about singular focus. But what university could host and replicate such an experience for Irregular Warfare?
Excerpt:
1. Create programs with a singular purpose. The Joint Chiefs of Staff Vision statement and the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff’s Officer Professional Military Education Policy should only be considered starting points. To thrive, PME programs must focus on the specific type of graduate they want to produce, and design the course of study accordingly. Absent that focus, PME administrators will continue to pitch programs at the intermediate and senior levels to the lowest-common student denominator. By contrast, STP is laser-focused on producing strategists who can staff generals and flag officers at various levels.
More Military Education Should Be Like the ‘Strategic Thinkers Program’
I spent the last year teaching in an officers’ graduate education program that I did not design and, in the process, discovered just how good military education can be.
The program is the Secretary of Defense’s Strategic Thinker Program, or STP. Authorized by the Office of the Secretary of Defense in response to decades of dissatisfaction with professional military education—especially, its inability to produce strategists—the program was launched in 2019 by Daniel Marston, the accomplished military historian, strategist and educator.
The program has four essential components: 1) intense, year-long, Oxford tutorial-style seminars that are part of 2) a civilian policy-focused education graduate program. The seminars inform 3) a pair of wargames that highlight the strategic challenges that belligerents face in wartime; and 4) the program’s culminating experiential learning experience: an international staff ride designed to make the academic discussions come to life. A closer look at these four components tells us about the untapped potential of military education.
Intensive seminars. Over the course of an academic year, students study the nature and character of war, national policy, and especially strategy in depth, width and context. The modified tutorial system means small seminars (maximum of 10 students), intensive reading (about 250 pages per seminar), graded written assignments for each seminar, routine oral presentations, and student-led discussions. Each seminar meets twice a week for four hours to wring out the myriad dimensions of the strategic issues being explored that day. The contact time might seem excessive, but it turns out that in a discussion-oriented class, it is just enough.
Policy-oriented university. The strategic education program is embedded in a civilian graduate school with a policy focus. This allows students to take electives with civilian counterparts who share an interest in national security, and explore other academic interests in the process.
The STP’s civilian home is Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. The relationship is strong and symbiotic. Both parties vetted each other before agreeing to the partnership, and both routinely reassess the relationship to ensure that STP courses complement the school’s broader curriculum and vice versa. To put it bluntly, STP is not another Defense Department executive education program generating revenue for the university while students get a bit of a break.
Wargames and international staff ride. These offer the experiential learning essential to effective adult education. In the wargames, students grapple with the strategic, logistical and alliance challenges, as well as the fog and friction of conflict. The staff ride delves into the detail of a campaign that illuminates the depth, width and context of war in all of its fascinating and harrowing dimensions. This academic year, the students traveled to the Somme to study 1918’s “100 Days Offensive” from the perspective of three nations. The students ran each segment of the staff ride, having done research and preparation for months in advance. They left the Somme after an intense week, having forged a more personal connection with those who crafted the strategy, led at all levels, fought, and, in many cases, died during the offensive.
The students’ roles in executing the staff ride highlights how essential they themselves are to the program’s success. An exquisitely designed and led program is only as good as its students. To enroll in the Strategic Thinkers Program, U.S. military officers must be accepted by both OSD and the School of Advanced International Studies. By submitting to a dual application process, students are consciously committing to a much more intense military education experience than their contemporaries before they ever set foot in a classroom. It also means they are accepting failure as an option: both the school and the program reserve the right to fail a student. However, that likelihood is small, since students accept upfront the heavy workload associated with successfully completing the program. Having watched the intellectual and professional growth of this year’s cohort, I can attest to how students embrace the work and focus on thriving throughout the program.
Lessons
As an observer, I would argue perhaps the greatest sign of success for the Strategic Thinkers Program is the expressed desire within OSD, the Joint Staff, and the services to hire its graduates. This program produces strategists who think about constantly about conflict and are always asking, “What’s next?” and “To what end?”
The program’s rigor and subsequent success of its graduates suggest five essential points to consider when exploring reforms to existing PME programs (or, as with the Space Force, creating new ones).
1. Create programs with a singular purpose. The Joint Chiefs of Staff Vision statement and the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff’s Officer Professional Military Education Policy should only be considered starting points. To thrive, PME programs must focus on the specific type of graduate they want to produce, and design the course of study accordingly. Absent that focus, PME administrators will continue to pitch programs at the intermediate and senior levels to the lowest-common student denominator. By contrast, STP is laser-focused on producing strategists who can staff generals and flag officers at various levels.
2. Empower the program director. Along with a singular purpose, PME needs to devolve power to the program directors. Right now, with the responsibility for large student throughput, of necessity much authority for PME class design is centralized in the provosts, deans, and department chairs. This structure leaves little latitude to explore innovative educational concepts like STP. One cannot overstate the vital role of a dedicated program director, responsible for both faculty and students and empowered to innovate at the seminar level. As PME institutions strive to reinvent themselves, they might look for opportunities to devolve authority, and empower program directors to create more year-long seminars specifically designed to bring more rigor and focus to the students. Program directors, in return, must demonstrate how they are producing graduates to meet an important, service- or joint-identified need.
3. Understand the U.S. government-university relationship. PME programs embedded in civilian universities (or in the case of the Space Force, exploring such partnering) should pay close attention to what the university is bringing to the relationship. Is the university staking its reputation (to any extent) on the success or failure of the program, or is it more interested in making money off it? Do the number of military students in a particular program preclude most interactions with civilian peers? What type of degree is being granted? Who are the faculty? Before establishing a military education program at a civilian university, it is essential to know the answers to these and related questions are essential. Civilian higher education is going through its own post-COVID reckoning, and U.S. government funding is enticing. Both the U.S. government and the associated university should be equally invested in the success of a military education program.
4. The basics of graduate education remain critical. No matter where it is based, the core of a rigorous military education program should be small seminars, demanding assignments, routine oral and written assessments, and constant feedback. Neither advanced classroom technology nor affiliation with an elite university can compensate for a classical, critical-thinking approach to teaching strategy. Struggling to analyze, understand, and write about national and military strategies using primary and secondary sources remains one of the most powerful ways to improve critical thinking skills.
5. A program is only as good as its students. Finally, just as students are the key to STP’s success, so do they hold the key to rigorous PME. Students should have to apply for PME, just as they should have to apply for other selective military programs. Students should also be allowed to leave an educational program without paying a career penalty. In short, services need to think more seriously about who should attend professional education programs and why. This means that the services should forgo the longstanding, albeit informal practice, of considering PME as family time. If family time is needed, services should create specific sabbatical programs for that purpose. Under the current structure, they dilute the education and devalue the student at the same time.
As a teacher and observer, I have found that the Strategic Thinkers Program stands out as the Defense Department’s most rigorous and rewarding military education program. If DOD can protect STP while using lessons gleaned from it to reform professional military education more broadly, PME schools might, at last, turn away from teaching to a minimal standard, and start offering the demanding education students deserve. With the Strategic Thinkers Program at least now a beacon exists for other PME institutions to follow.
Paula G. Thornhill is a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general. She is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and is the author of Demystifying the American Military.
6. After 100 days of war, Putin is counting on the world's indifference
As long as soldiers from NATO and the US and the democracies around the world are not fighting and dying, the people could eventually "lose interest."
If you lose interest perhaps you have succumbed to "Dich Van." You may have been manipulated.
Consider Dau Tranh and in particular the political struggle.
Dau Tranh Strategy: Integrated Political and Military Struggle
Political Struggle:
Dan Van - Action among your people - total mobilization of propaganda, motivational & organizational measures to manipulate internal masses and fighting units
Binh Van - Action among enemy military - subversion, proselytizing, propaganda to encourage desertion, defection and lowered morale among enemy troops.
Dich Van - Action among enemy's people - total propaganda effort to sow discontent, defeatism, dissent, and disloyalty among enemy's population.
Military Struggle:
Phase 1: Organizations and Preparation - building cells, recruiting members, infiltrating organizations, creating front groups, spreading propaganda, stockpiling weapons.
Phase 2: Terrorism - Guerrilla Warfare - kidnappings, terrorist attacks, sabotage, guerrilla raids, ambushes, setting of parallel governments in insurgent areas.
Phase 3: Conventional Warfare - regular formations and maneuver to capture key geographical and political objectives.
After 100 days of war, Putin is counting on the world's indifference
CNN · by Analysis by Nathan Hodge, CNN
(CNN)Rewind the clock to February 23, the day before Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine, and one might be tempted to guess that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's days in office were numbered.
After all, Russia's military outspent that of Ukraine by roughly ten to one. Moscow enjoyed a twofold advantage over Kyiv in land forces; and the nuclear-armed power had ten times the aircraft and five times the armored fighting vehicles of its neighbor.
A visibly angry Russian President Vladimir Putin had appeared on television just days before, delivering a rambling historical monologue that made clear he expected nothing less than regime change in Kyiv.
'Madness': Putin addresses Ukraine during speech 01:57
The Kremlin leader seemed to be gambling that Zelensky would flee his capital, much as the US-backed president of Afghanistan had left Kabul just a few months earlier, and that Western outrage would subside, albeit with the temporary pain of new sanctions.
100 days later, whatever plans Putin may have had for a victory parade in Kyiv are on indefinite hold. Ukrainian morale did not collapse. Ukrainian troops, equipped with modern anti-tank weaponry delivered by the US and its allies, devastated Russian armored columns; Ukrainian missiles sank the guided-missile cruiser Moskva, the pride of Russia's Black Sea Fleet; and Ukrainian aircraft stayed in the air, against the odds.
President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kharkiv region on May 29.
Read More
In late March, Russia's military began withdrawing its battered troops from around the Ukrainian capital, claiming they had shifted focus to capturing country's eastern Donbas region. Three months after its invasion, Russia no longer appears to be aiming for a short, victorious war in Ukraine -- nor does it seem to be capable of achieving one.
The problem with prognostication
Does this mean Russia is losing? It's tempting to take a snapshot of the situation on a given day and draw sweeping conclusions.
The Ukrainians have managed to kill Russian generals at an astonishing pace; Moscow has been forced to reorganize its military command after initial disarray; and Russian casualties, however elusive the official numbers, are shockingly high.
But Russia now controls a crescent of Ukrainian territory that extends from around Ukraine's second city of Kharkiv, continues through separatist-held cities of Donetsk and Luhansk and reaches westward to Kherson, forming a land bridge linking the peninsula of Crimea (forcibly annexed by Russia in 2014) with the Donbas region.
Russia's main direction of effort is now in the Donbas region, where things have settled into a grinding war of attrition. Recent fighting has focused around Severodonetsk, an industrial city where Ukrainian forces hold the last sliver of eastern Luhansk region.
Smoke and dirt pictured over Severodonetsk on June 2, 2022.
Ukrainian troops have ceded most of Severodonetsk to the Russians. The fall of the city will be a symbolic loss, but one that military analysts say spares the Ukrainian forces there from a protracted -- and likely losing -- siege.
"Kyiv could have committed more reserves and resources to the defense of Severodonetsk, and its failure to do so has drawn criticism," the US-based Institute for the Study of War said in a recent analysis.
"Both the decision to avoid committing more resources to saving Severodonetsk and the decision to withdraw from it were strategically sound, however painful. Ukraine must husband its more limited resources and focus on regaining critical terrain rather than on defending ground whose control will not determine the outcome of the war or the conditions for the renewal of war."
Amid the offensive on Severodonetsk, Oleksandr Motuzianyk, the Ukrainian defense ministry's spokesperson, said Russian forces were now "trying encircle our troops in Donetsk and Luhansk regions," and regrouping to launch an offensive in the directions of Sloviansk, a strategic city that may be shaping up as the focus of the next pivotal battle.
A destroyed Russian tank in the Kyiv region on April 16.
The battles in Ukraine's east are being fought in much more open terrain than the more densely-packed urban environment around Kyiv. That explains the urgency with which Ukrainians have requested heavier weaponry -- particularly artillery systems that can strike targets at longer ranges -- from the US and its allies.
President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that the US will be sending more advanced rocket systems, including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems with munitions that can launch rockets around 49 miles, a range far greater than anything Ukraine has been sent to date.
That's welcome news for Kyiv, but Russia's offensive in the east is playing out as international media attention on Ukraine recedes somewhat from the headlines. And that may be what Putin is counting on, perhaps mindful that high energy costs and rising consumer prices -- both of which have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine -- are more likely to concentrate public opinion (and drive election outcomes) in the United States and elsewhere.
Putin may also be counting on short diplomatic attention spans. This is the same Russian leader who doubled down on his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2015 after Damascus suffered a string of defeats. That war -- now entering its 12th year -- has continued even as the world's attention has shifted to Ukraine.
Officials carry away bodies of dead Russian soldiers in Kyiv on May 13.
In that respect, Zelensky has been one of Ukraine's biggest assets in the information war. He has made a string of virtual appearances before parliaments around the globe, while reminding other world leaders who might be inclined to placate Putin by pushing for Ukraine to cede territory that it is the Ukrainian people, not he, who must decide outcomes.
In Zelensky's appearances with wounded Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, the Ukrainian leader takes selfies and projects a warm, humane and self-effacing leadership style. That contrasts with the Russian leader's lone public visit to a military hospital: Putin, in an oversized white laboratory coat, met with wounded soldiers and officers who stood stiffly at attention before their commander-in-chief.
But Putin, who has ended all domestic political opposition and effectively controls his country's airwaves, does not face the same domestic pressure as Zelensky. Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Putin's Security Council, said in recent remarks that Russian forces aren't "chasing deadlines" in Ukraine, suggesting Putin has a much more open-ended timeline for his war in Ukraine. Ukrainians, in contrast, fear international fatigue may set in, leading the international community to press their government to make concessions to Putin.
"You have the watches, but we have the time." That saying, sometimes attributed to a captured Taliban fighter, summed up America's dilemma in fighting the Afghanistan war, a grudging acknowledgement that insurgencies operated on different political horizons and timelines, and that insurgents needed only to outlast -- not defeat -- the technologically superior US military.
To repurpose that phrase, the deciding factor in Ukraine may be who has the time: A Russian dictator who is likely to hold power until he dies, or a Ukrainian people who are fighting for their national survival.
CNN · by Analysis by Nathan Hodge, CNN
7. Palantir’s Karp is first western CEO to visit Zelenskyy amid invasion
Palantir’s Karp is first western CEO to visit Zelenskyy amid invasion
WASHINGTON — The chief executive officer of Palantir Technologies Inc. quietly visited Ukraine this week, meeting with the country’s president and other leaders in Kyiv to discuss defense cooperation and the opening of an office for the data analytics company in the war-torn country.
CEO Alex Karp’s trip to Eastern Europe and subsequent exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov was disclosed June 2. Photos and a summary of the trip were shared by Zelenskyy’s office and posted on social media.
The visit to the capital is the first made by an executive of a major Western company since Russia launched its bloody invasion in February. A handful of government officials including U.S. first lady Jill Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson have visited, as well.
Zelenskyy in a statement described the in-person dialogue as a “positive signal that despite a full-scale war, Ukraine is open to business and ready for cooperation.” He said he is “delighted that Palantir is ready to invest in Ukraine and help us in the fight against Russia on the digital frontline.”
The talks addressed Russian cyberattacks, which preceded the invasion and continue to jumble networks, as well as enhancing the Ukrainian military’s digital portfolio. The U.S. has reinforced Ukrainian defenses, including in cyberspace.
“We are actively working not only on the digital blockade of the Russian Federation, but also to attract top international companies to Ukraine. This is one of our priorities today,” Fedorov said in a statement Thursday. “Modern warfare has changed the rules, and technology plays a big role in it.”
Palantir in a tweet said it was honored to take part in the talks about the ongoing war, collaboration and “the pivotal role of software to Western security.” A spokesperson offered similar comments Thursday.
The Palo Alto-based company, known for its data analytics and software development capability, went public in 2020. It launched using seed money from the CIA.
Palantir has won contracts with government organizations, banks, and other private institutions and in recent years made headway with the U.S. military following a legal spat with the Army.
Several years ago, Palantir sued the Army over its procurement plans for the Distributed Common Ground System-Army, or DCGS-A, an intelligence analysis platform. The company maintained that it could provide a less expensive and more capable solution to the service and urged the Army to abandon its decision to internally develop the system.
Through the 2016 lawsuit, Palantir revealed a major culture clash behind the scenes between service leadership and company executives. The Army was forced to reevaluate its approach after Palantir won in court. And, after a new competition, Palantir is providing tactical level DCGS-A systems to the service.
Palantir is embracing its work within the Defense Department, setting up a splashy booth at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., in 2018. It has repeated its attendance since.
The company has also been involved with Project Maven, a Pentagon effort to develop artificial intelligence capabilities that could help, for instance, flag and decipher aerial surveillance footage. The point of the project is to use AI and machine-learning to shorten the decision-making timeline on the battlefield.
Colin Demarest is a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covers military networks, cyber and IT. Colin previously covered the Department of Energy and its NNSA — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a daily newspaper in South Carolina. Colin is also an award-winning photographer.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts from Kenyon College.
8. U.S. updates fact sheet, again, says does not support Taiwan independence
Is it really fair to call Taiwan a "de facto" independent state? despite minimal international recognition is it not functioning as an independent state? It is "part" of the PRC in words only. There is no "governance" of Taiwan from Beijing.
But think of how the PRC would react if we called Taiwan an independent state. The importance of words and the games we must play with them.
U.S. updates fact sheet, again, says does not support Taiwan independence
TAIPEI, June 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has updated its fact sheet on Taiwan again, to reinstate a line about not supporting formal independence for the Chinese-claimed, democratically-governed island.
Last month the State Department changed the wording on its website on Taiwan, removing wording both on not supporting Taiwan independence and on acknowledging Beijing's position that Taiwan is part of China, to anger in Beijing. read more
Washington said the update did not reflect a change in policy. That wording has now be changed again, to reinstate a line saying "we do not support Taiwan independence".
The change was first reported by Taiwan's official Central News Agency on Friday, and appears to have happened on May 28, the date at the top of the fact sheet.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
State Department Spokesman Ned Price had said in May that the United States does not support Taiwan independence and "we have repeatedly made this clear both in public and in private".
Taiwan is already a de facto independent state, though with only very limited international recognition. Washington has no formal ties with Taipei, but is its most important international backer and arms supplier.
Taiwan's official name remains the Republic of China, the name of the government that fled to the island in 1949 after losing a civil war with the Communist Party who set up the People's Republic of China with its capital in Beijing.
The Chinese government in 2005 passed a law giving Beijing the legal basis for military action if it judges Taiwan to have seceded or to be about to.
Taiwan's government says only the island's 23 million people have the right to decide their future, and while it wants peace will defend itself if attacked.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Michael Martina in Washington; Editing by Michael Perry
9. TN four-star General Carl Stiner, a pillar of U.S. Special Forces, dead at 85
Rest in peace, General Stiner.
TN four-star General Carl Stiner, a pillar of U.S. Special Forces, dead at 85
Author: WBIR Staff
Published: 12:57 PM EDT June 2, 2022
Updated: 6:37 PM EDT June 2, 2022
Stiner's family announced the news Thursday afternoon.
"He would like to be remembered as a man of faith that loved his family and friends and his country. And when reflecting on his military career as well as his life, General Steiner would frequently say he was just a country boy trying to do what was right," his family said about his legacy.
Stiner served 35 years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and Desert Storm. He eventually retired in 1993 and returned to Campbell County, where he grew up.
Stiner served as Commander in Chief of U.S. Special Operations Command in the years before his retirement. In 2002, he co-authored a book with Tom Clancy, "Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces."
We are marking the passing of a fearless patriot and military pioneer. A man of faith who loved his friends, family, and country. Gen. Carl Stiner would often say about his military career, “I’m am just a country boy trying to do what was right.” #RIP @wbir pic.twitter.com/oDJtRmf0Jw
— John Becker (@JohnBeckerWBIR) June 2, 2022
U.S. Representative Chuck Fleischmann (R - Oak Ridge) said he was heartbroken to hear of Stiner's passing.
"General Stiner was a hero who bravely led our nation's troops into combat and represented the best of Tennessee, Campbell County, and LaFollette. May God bless General Stiner and his family," he said.
Heartbroken to hear about the passing of four-star general Carl Stiner.
General Stiner was a hero who bravely led our nation's troops into combat and represented the best of Tennessee, Campbell County, and LaFollette.
May God bless General Stiner and his family.
— Chuck Fleischmann (@RepChuck) June 2, 2022
U.S. Representative Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville) said "hero just doesn't quite cover it" when describing Stiner.
— Tim Burchett (@timburchett) June 2, 2022
Retired Lt. Col. and Campbell County Mayor E.L. Morton served under General Stiner.
"We were always very proud to tell everybody that we were from the same town as General Stiner," said Mayor Morton.
Mayor Morton talked about the Stiner aid, still used in battle. It's a landmark where troops can assemble once they jump out of an airplane.
"No matter where you dropped on the drop zone, there was a certain combination of lights that you would actually have to assemble on," said Mayor Morton.
He said even though General Stiner had traveled all around the world, and met so many world leaders, he never forgot he was the farm boy from LaFollette.
"It's very rare to find a person who has the ability to communicate between the rows on the farm and the diplomats table internationally, and convince you that he actually cares," said Mayor Morton.
Stiner's funeral is set for Saturday, June 11.
10. US to China: We're hosting world's largest naval exercise, in Pacific
US to China: We're hosting world's largest naval exercise, in Pacific
The U.S. is hosting the world’s largest naval war games in the Pacific ocean this summer in a loud message to China. All four members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (also known as “The Quad”) and at least five countries from the South China Sea will be in attendance.
In a Tuesday press release, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) said the 2022 Rim of the Pacific exercise (RIMPAC) will see 38 surface ships, four submarines, nine national land forces, more than 170 aircraft and approximately 25,000 personnel from 26 different countries. This year’s iteration of the biennial RIMPAC, which is the largest international maritime exercise, will run from June 29 through Aug. 4.
The participating countries include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Participants Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore all border the South China Sea, where China has broad maritime claims that conflict with other countries in the region.
Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. are all members of the Quad, a strategic security dialogue focused on maintaining regional stability in the Pacific.
Australia and the U.S. are also part of trilateral security and military technology-sharing pact with the U.K. called AUKUS.
The exercise will take place in and around the Hawaiian Islands and off the coast of Southern California.
The U.S., which organizes the biennial RIMPAC exercises, allowed China to attend the 2014 iteration of the maritime war game. China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) sent four surface ships for RIMPAC 2014. China’s PLAN again participated in RIMPAC 2016, this time sending five surface ships. China was initially invited to again attend RIMPAC 2018, but was later disinvited by the U.S. due to its continued militarization of the South China Sea.
In 2018, USNI News wrote that the U.S. had hoped inviting China to the biennial RIMPAC drills would help ease tensions and get China to stop militarizing the South China Sea, but China’s 2014 and 2016 participation in the maritime exercise had not achieved that desired outcome.
After being disinvited from RIMPAC 2018, China’s Defense Ministry called the U.S. decision “unconstructive” and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said “We hope that the U.S. will change such a negative mindset,” Voice of America reported. The PLAN also sent a surveillance ship near Hawaii to monitor the 2018 exercise, USNI News reported at the time.
The U.S. Pacific Fleet will host RIMPAC 2022, and U.S. 3rd Fleet, who will serve as Combined Task Force (CTF) commander for the exercise. Royal Canadian Navy Rear Adm. Christopher Robinson will serve as deputy commander of the CTF, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Rear Adm. Toshiyuki Hirata as the vice commander, and Fleet Marine Force will be led by U.S. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Joseph Clearfield. Royal Australian Navy Commodore Paul O’Grady will also command the maritime component of the exercise and Royal Canadian Air Force Brig. Gen. Mark Goulden will command the air component.
11. Russian Pacific fleet begins week-long exercises with more than 40 vessels -Russian agencies
Counter to RIMPAC?
Russian Pacific fleet begins week-long exercises with more than 40 vessels -Russian agencies
June 2 (Reuters) - Russia's Pacific Fleet launched a week-long series of exercises with more than 40 ships and up to 20 aircraft taking part, Russian news agencies quoted the defence ministry as saying.
The ministry statement said the exercises, taking place from June 3-10, would involve, among other matters, "groups of ships together with naval aviation taking part in search operations for (enemy) submarines".
The exercises were taking place amid Russia's three-month-old incursion into Ukraine, described by Moscow as a "special military operation". Ukraine lies thousands of kilometres to the west of where the exercises are occurring in the Pacific.
Reporting by Ronald Popeski; Editing by Himani Sarkar
12. EXPLAINER: At 100 days, Russia-Ukraine war by the numbers
Putin's War.
EXPLAINER: At 100 days, Russia-Ukraine war by the numbers
AP · by JAMEY KEATEN and YURAS KARMANAU · June 3, 2022
GENEVA (AP) — One hundred days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war has brought the world a near-daily drumbeat of gut wrenching scenes: Civilian corpses in the streets of Bucha; a blown-up theater in Mariupol; the chaos at a Kramatorsk train station in the wake of a Russian missile strike.
Those images tell just a part of the overall picture of Europe’s worst armed conflict in decades. Here’s a look at some numbers and statistics that — while in flux and at times uncertain — shed further light on the death, destruction, displacement and economic havoc wrought by the war as it reaches this milestone with no end in sight.
THE HUMAN TOLL
Nobody really knows how many combatants or civilians have died, and claims of casualties by government officials — who may sometimes be exaggerating or lowballing their figures for public relations reasons — are all but impossible to verify.
Government officials, U.N. agencies and others who carry out the grim task of counting the dead don’t always get access to places where people were killed.
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And Moscow has released scant information about casualties among its forces and allies, and given no accounting of civilian deaths in areas under its control. In some places — such as the long-besieged city of Mariupol, potentially the war’s biggest killing field — Russian forces are accused of trying to cover up deaths and dumping bodies into mass graves, clouding the overall toll.
With all those caveats, “at least tens of thousands” of Ukrainian civilians have died so far, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday in comments to Luxembourg’s parliament.
In Mariupol alone, officials have reported over 21,000 civilian dead. Sievierodonetsk, a city in the eastern region of Luhansk that has become the focus of Russia’s offensive, has seen roughly 1,500 casualties, according to the mayor.
Such estimates comprise both those killed by Russian strikes or troops and those who succumbed to secondary effects such as hunger and sickness as food supplies and health services collapsed.
Zelenskyy said this week that 60 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers are dying in combat every day, with about 500 more wounded.
Russia’s last publicly released figures for its own forces came March 25, when a general told state media that 1,351 soldiers had been killed and 3,825 wounded.
Ukraine and Western observers say the real number is much higher: Zelenskyy said Thursday that more than 30,000 Russian servicemen have died — “more than the Soviet Union lost in 10 years of the war in Afghanistan”; in late April, the British government estimated Russian losses at 15,000.
Speaking on condition of anonymity Wednesday to discuss intelligence matters, a Western official said Russia is “still taking casualties, but ... in smaller numbers.” The official estimated that some 40,000 Russian troops have been wounded.
In Moscow-backed separatist enclaves in eastern Ukraine, authorities have reported over 1,300 fighters lost and nearly 7,500 wounded in the Donetsk region, along with 477 dead civilians and nearly 2,400 wounded; plus 29 civilians killed and 60 wounded in Luhansk.
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THE DEVASTATION
Relentless shelling, bombing and airstrikes have reduced large swaths of many cities and towns to rubble.
Ukraine’s parliamentary commission on human rights says Russia’s military has destroyed almost 38,000 residential buildings, rendering about 220,000 people homeless.
Nearly 1,900 educational facilities from kindergartens to grade schools to universities have been damaged, including 180 completely ruined.
Other infrastructure losses include 300 car and 50 rail bridges, 500 factories and about 500 damaged hospitals, according to Ukrainian officials.
The World Health Organization has tallied 296 attacks on hospitals, ambulances and medical workers in Ukraine this year.
FLEEING HOME
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR estimates that about 6.8 million people have been driven out of Ukraine at some point during the conflict.
But since fighting subsided in the area near Kyiv and elsewhere, and Russian forces redeployed to the east and south, about 2.2 million have returned to the country, it says.
The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration estimates that as of May 23 there were more than 7.1 million internally displaced people — that is, those who fled their homes but remain in the country. That’s down from over 8 million in an earlier count.
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LAND SEIZED
Ukrainian officials say that before the February invasion, Russia controlled some 7% of Ukrainian territory including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and areas held by the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. On Thursday, Zelenskyy said Russian forces now held 20% of the country.
While the front lines are constantly shifting, that amounts to an additional 58,000 square kilometers (22,000 square miles) under Russian control, a total area slightly larger than Croatia or a little smaller than the U.S. state of West Virginia.
THE ECONOMIC FALLOUT IN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE ...
The West has levied a host of retaliatory sanctions against Moscow including on the crucial oil and gas sectors, and Europe is beginning to wean itself from its dependence on Russian energy.
Evgeny Gontmakher, academic director of European Dialogue, wrote in a paper this week that Russia currently faces over 5,000 targeted sanctions, more than any other country. Some $300 billion of Russian gold and foreign exchange reserves in the West have been frozen, he added, and air traffic in the country dropped from 8.1 million to 5.2 million passengers between January and March.
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The MOEX Russia stock index has plunged by about a quarter since just before the invasion and is down nearly 40 percent from the start of the year. And the Russian Central Bank said last week that annualized inflation came in at 17.8 percent in April.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has reported suffering a staggering economic blow: 35% of GDP wiped out by the war.
“Our direct losses today exceed $600 billion,” Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, said recently.
Ukraine, a major agricultural producer, says it has been unable to export some 22 million tons of grain. It blames a backlog of shipments on Russian blockades or capture of key ports. Zelenskyy accused Russia this week of stealing at least a half-million tons of grain during the invasion.
... AND THE WORLD
The fallout has rippled around the globe, further driving up costs for basic goods on top of inflation that was already in full swing in many places before the invasion. Developing countries are being squeezed particularly hard by higher costs of food, fuel and financing.
Crude oil prices in London and New York have risen by 20 to 25 percent, resulting in higher prices at the pump and for an array of petroleum-based products.
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Amin Awad, the U.N. crisis coordinator in Ukraine, said 1.4 billion people worldwide could be affected by shortages of grain and fertilizer from the country.
“This war’s toll on civilians is unacceptable. This war has no winner,” he told reporters in Geneva via video from Kyiv on Friday. “Today we mark a tragic milestone. And we know what is needed the most: An end to this war.”
___
Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine.
___
AP · by JAMEY KEATEN and YURAS KARMANAU · June 3, 2022
13. Exclusive: Putin treated for cancer in April, U.S. intelligence report says
A cancer survivor?
Excerpts:
As the official explains it, a strong Putin could bully his way through, overcoming objections from ministers and commanders. But a damaged Putin (and here the official mentions Donald Trump as a similar example), "one who might not be in control of all of his faculties, just doesn't have that kind of sway."
"Putin is definitely sick ... whether he's going to die soon is mere speculation," the DIA official says. "Still, we shouldn't rest assured. We shouldn't answer our own mail, if you will, believing only the intelligence that affirms our own desired outcome. He's still dangerous, and chaos does lie ahead if he does die. We need to focus on that. Be ready."
Exclusive: Putin treated for cancer in April, U.S. intelligence report says
Newsweek · by William M. Arkin · June 2, 2022
Vladimir Putin's health is a subject of intense conversation inside the Biden administration after the intelligence community produced its fourth comprehensive assessment at the end of May. The classified U.S. report says Putin seems to have re-emerged after undergoing treatment in April for advanced cancer, three U.S. intelligence leaders who have read the reports tell Newsweek.
Vladimir Putin was treated for cancer in April, says a classified U.S. intelligence report. The Russian president at the Tauride Palace on April 27, 2022, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. contributor/Getty Images
The assessments also confirm that there was an assassination attempt on Putin's life in March, the officials say.
The high-ranking officials, who represent three separate intelligence agencies, are concerned that Putin is increasingly paranoid about his hold on power, a status that makes for a rocky and unpredictable course in Ukraine. But it is one, they say, that also makes the prospects of nuclear war less likely.
"Putin's grip is strong but no longer absolute," says one of the senior intelligence officers with direct access to the reports. "The jockeying inside the Kremlin has never been more intense during his rule, everyone sensing that the end is near."
All three officials—one from the office of the Director of National Intelligence, one a retired Air Force senior officer, and one from the Defense Intelligence Agency—caution that the Russian leader's isolation makes it more difficult for U.S. intelligence to precisely assess Putin's status and health.
"What we know is that there is an iceberg out there, albeit one covered in fog," says the DNI leader, who communicated with Newsweek via email and requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
"One source of our best intelligence, which is contact with outsiders, largely dried up as a result of the Ukraine war," says the DIA senior official. "Putin has had few meetings with foreign leaders," the official says, cutting off the insights that can sometimes be gained in face-to-face encounters. "Putin's isolation has thus increased levels of speculation."
"We need to be mindful of the influence of wishful thinking," cautions the retired Air Force leader. "We learned—or didn't learn—that lesson the hard way with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein."
Biden shouldn't plan on a Putin "expiration date," says U.S. intelligence official. The Russian Prime Minister with a horse during his vacation outside the town of Kyzyl in Southern Siberia on August 3, 2009. ALEXEY DRUZHININ/AFP via Getty Images
A picture of manhood
Horseback-riding, hockey-playing Vladimir Putin has been the image of masculinity and vitality for years, a persona carefully curated by official Moscow and one often used by Kremlin propagandists to contrast the Russian leader with his American counterparts.
Then came the very long table that Putin used in the Kremlin to record the photo ops of his important meetings, one that came to symbolize his paranoia and physical fear.
The table most recently was the venue for Putin's meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on February 7, just two weeks before the Ukraine invasion. For the intelligence community, the long table and Putin's behavior with Macron became a baseline against which to measure the Russian president's decline.
"There was no shaking of hands, no warm embrace, and we noticed that," says the DNI leader. He said that French intelligence had many observations from the meeting and the trip to Moscow, declining to elaborate on what was reported back to the U.S. government.
Then came Putin's April 21 meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, this time at a small table, the hue all green and peaceful. Many focused on Shoigu, who had been missing from the public eye. But it was Putin who had largely been absent for much of the month, and he was far from a picture of health, slouching in his chair and gripping the table with his right hand.
Some observers inferred that the Russian leader had Parkinson's disease. Others insisted it was just his KGB weapons training, referring to his rigid stance and walk, always with the right arm ready to reach inside a jacket for a gun. The video was closely scrutinized by intelligence community analysts, some trained in remote diagnosis and others in psychiatry. Many pieces of intelligence were analyzed for the White House: the consensus was that Putin was ill and probably dying. He seemed to be putting on a good show. But perhaps the isolation of COVID had masked a decline that was only now more vividly being exposed.
Exclusive: Russia's Air War in Ukraine is a Total Failure, New Data Show
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The May 9 "Victory Day" appearance was next, where a noticeably bloated Russian leader sat slumped. Putin's health, and his inability (or reluctance) to declare victory in Ukraine went together. The U.S. intelligence community agreed that his situation was graver than previously thought, and his physical exhaustion was matched by Russia's own exhaustion.
Three days later, Ukraine's head of intelligence Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told U.K. Sky News that Putin was in a "very bad psychological and physical condition and he is very sick," adding that there were plans inside the Kremlin to overthrow the Russian leader.
A rumor that Kremlin security people had uncovered a Russian plot to assassinate Putin was confirmed at this time. The CIA and foreign intelligence services were picking up consistent stories of discord at the top of the national security ministries, as well as the desire on the part of Russian diplomats to defect to the west.
"Someone once seen as omnipotent was now mostly seen as struggling with the future, his own in particular," says the DNI leader.
A long table between Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron; Moscow on February 7, 2022. SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Imagges
The Saddam and bin Laden effect
When serious intelligence started to circulate about Putin's illness, U.S. leaders were cautioned not to jump to conclusions too quickly, reminded of examples of hot "intelligence" about Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein that shaped U.S. policy and then proved questionable.
In Saddam's case, the question was whether he was psychologically disturbed and what he would do next with his weapons of mass destruction. In Osama bin Laden's case, before and after 9/11, it was whether he was dying, probably from kidney disease, and how that might influence his decisions.
Though U.S. intelligence knew little about the al Qaeda leader (and paid insufficient attention to what it did know before the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks), the state of his health was a constant part of reporting during the late 1990's. The most persistent rumor was that bin Laden was weak and fragile, requiring regular dialysis that was unlikely to be available in a cave. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf affirmed that bin Laden was dying; other Pakistani officials—the source of much bin Laden intelligence—agreed.
Throughout those years the Saudi government was always ready with some gossip about their native son, tidbits that were always negative, questioning his achievements and his piety. A young Bin Laden whored and partied in Beirut and on the Riviera, the rumors said. Bin Laden didn't graduate from university, dropping out. Bin Laden didn't really go to Afghanistan after the Soviets invaded. Bin Laden didn't fight once he did go. The news media picked up all of these rumors, as did U.S. leaders, failing to take into account that the Pakistanis were reporting what they thought would dissuade the U.S. from focusing too much on bin Laden, while the Saudis thought that deprecating his honor and religious devotion would dissuade more young men from following the renegade son.
Lost in the wishful thinking was the key to bin Laden's power over his fiercely loyal disciples: his grievances with the West were their grievances, too.
"What Musharraf has to say carries more weight [with U.S. policymakers] than anything the CIA might say," the senior Air Force leader tells Newsweek. "What the Saudis tell their American counterparts can be incredibly influential. Thus many wanted to believe that he was sick and couldn't believe that he was the charismatic leader that he was.
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"Is Putin sick? Absolutely. But we shouldn't let waiting for his death drive proactive actions on our part. A power vacuum after Putin could be very dangerous for the world."
Saddam Hussein was considered one of the most dangerous men in the world, with CIA psychological assessments that portrayed him as a madman, a man who would never give up his WMD, a man so hated and vulnerable he had to sleep in a different bed every night. The evidence that Saddam did not have WMDs was ignored by Bush administration leaders who thought they knew better.
But the CIA wasn't solely to blame for the false belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. High-level assessments offered by foreign leaders had an enormous impact.
"Hosni Mubarak [of Egypt], Abdullah [of Jordan], the Kuwaiti ruler himself—they all told Bush administration leaders that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction," says the retired Air Force leader. Where did the foreign leaders get their intelligence? From Saddam Hussein himself: it was an intentional deception on the part of the Iraqi leader to persuade the Bush administration not to invade and seek regime change, an implicit threat that he would use WMD if they did.
In some cases, experts now agree, some of that intelligence from foreign leaders, shared face-to-face with Bush counterparts, didn't circulate widely in the Agency. There was a clash between technical analysis that often doubted the existence of WMDs versus the Bush leadership's conviction that the U.S. intelligence community was a victim of group-think and that Saddam's public denials about WMDs were lies. (In fact it was his confidential whispers that were the lies.) That cognitive gap helped lead to war.
An expiration date?
The U.S. intelligence community's latest assessment for President Biden and other senior leaders saw a turnaround for the Russian leader after the previous report, compiled about two weeks earlier, portrayed him as gravely ill. On one day—May 26—he made his first public visit to a Moscow military hospital. He had a phone call with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. And he spoke to a Russian business conference via video. Each appearance was closely scrutinized. This Monday, Putin had a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan where the two discussed the possibility of a face-to-face meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky.
What Putin's General Was Doing in Ukraine, According to Top Secret Report
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed any notion of Putin being sick in an interview on French TV last weekend. "I don't think that a sane person can suspect any signs of an illness or ailment in this man," Lavrov said, citing Putin's recent public appearances.
"Lavrov's insistence that everything is normal is as much a declaration of allegiance to Putin as it is any kind of diagnosis to be listened to," says the DIA official. The official says that Putin continues to be "challenged" both health-wise and in his leadership.
Are the lessons of bin Laden and Saddam being applied to Vladimir Putin? Is he fighting off Kremlin opponents and warring with his own intelligence agencies? Is he indeed dying? What—or who—comes next? These are the issues that the Biden administration is grappling with even as they publicly insist that rumors of Putin dying are just rumors.
"Even if they agree that the intelligence [that Putin is dying] is reliable," the senior DNI leader says, "they can't bank on an expiration date nor signal their support for a Russia without Putin." Both President Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have let slip their desire not only for regime change but also the fall of Russia, and both have since walked back their indelicate statements.
"A nuclear-armed Russia is still a nuclear-armed Russia, whether Putin is strong or weak, in or out, and not wanting to provoke him or his potential successor into thinking we are hell bent on their destruction is an important part of continued strategic stability," says the DNI official.
The DIA leader argues that in some ways, "Putin being sick or dying is good for the world, not just because of the future of Russia or ending the Ukraine war, but in diminishing the mad man threat of nuclear war.
"A weakened Putin—an obviously declining leader, not one at the top of his game—has less influence over his advisors and subordinates, say, if he orders the use of nukes."
Shocking Lessons US Military Leaders Learned by Watching Putin's Invasion
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As the official explains it, a strong Putin could bully his way through, overcoming objections from ministers and commanders. But a damaged Putin (and here the official mentions Donald Trump as a similar example), "one who might not be in control of all of his faculties, just doesn't have that kind of sway."
"Putin is definitely sick ... whether he's going to die soon is mere speculation," the DIA official says. "Still, we shouldn't rest assured. We shouldn't answer our own mail, if you will, believing only the intelligence that affirms our own desired outcome. He's still dangerous, and chaos does lie ahead if he does die. We need to focus on that. Be ready."
Newsweek · by William M. Arkin · June 2, 2022
14. FDD | China’s Multilateral March Continues
Excerpts:
In a public relations coup for Beijing, Bachelet concluded her trip by refusing to condemn, let alone acknowledge, China’s repression of ethnic minorities. Instead, she referred to the camps as “vocational and educational training centers” associated with China’s “counterterrorism” and “de-radicalization” operations, parroting the CCP’s description of its policy toward minorities. Still unclear is whether the UNHRC will issue a long-awaited report on rights abuses in Xinjiang, which UNHRC officials previously described as “deeply disturbing.”
Thus far, Biden administration officials have not outlined concrete plans to counter China’s multilateral influence, beyond a generic insistence that sustained engagement will eventually lead to reform. Given the shortcomings of this approach, Congress should hold hearings on the UN system and condition future U.S. funding for the WHO on the re-establishment of Taiwan’s non-observer status. Similar appropriations strategies should be considered for other UN agencies seen drifting into China’s orbit.
FDD | China’s Multilateral March Continues
fdd.org · by Craig Singleton Senior Fellow · June 2, 2022
China scored several diplomatic victories last week at the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), amplifying concerns about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) efforts to co-opt the UN system. Beijing’s growing multilateral clout calls into question the Biden administration’s strategy of reforming UN agencies via deeper diplomatic engagement with little to no pressure to back up Washington’s demands.
In a 2017 speech before the CCP’s 19th Party Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping outlined plans for China to take “an active part in leading the reform of the global governance system.” Xi’s speech marked a turning point in China’s efforts to leverage the United Nations as a platform to undermine democratic values and legitimize Beijing’s illiberal behavior. Since then, China’s annual UN financial commitments have surged by 75 percent to more than $367 million, making Beijing the second-largest UN contributor after the United States.
Central to China’s multilateral takeover is the goal of denying Taiwan’s participation in UN activities. This strategy dates back to 2016, when Taiwanese voters elected Tsai Ing-wen as president on a platform that refuted Beijing’s contention that Taiwan is a part of “one China.” The following year, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — who had secured his position with Beijing’s backing — upended years of precedent by prohibiting Taiwan from serving as a non-voting observer during the WHO’s annual agenda-setting meeting, the World Health Assembly (WHA). Tedros’ ban on Taiwanese participation remains in place.
During the 2022 WHA last week in Geneva, China’s triumphs were three-fold. First, Beijing convinced Tedros to continue blocking Taiwan’s attendance despite two G7 joint communiques backing Taiwan’s “meaningful participation” in the event. Second, Tedros sailed to re-election for a second five-year term (2022–2027) after the Biden administration declined to nominate a more qualified candidate to challenge him. Consequently, Taiwan will likely be prohibited from attending WHO meetings for five additional years.
Lastly, China secured a three-year term (2022–2025) on the WHO’s Executive Board, the organization’s highest-level decision-making body. Beijing will serve on the board despite refusing to cooperate with the WHO’s investigation into COVID-19’s origins. In concert with current Executive Board members Russia and Syria, China will play a major role in shaping global health standards and the WHO’s program of work.
Meanwhile, UNHRC Commissioner Michelle Bachelet completed a trip to China last week aimed at scrutinizing the CCP’s detention — and, in some cases, forced sterilization — of over 1 million Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minority groups. Her trip coincided with investigative journalists’ release of cached government documents, known as the “Xinjiang Police Files,” detailing China’s mass detention system. Chinese officials denied Bachelet’s request for “full and unfettered” access to internment camps, although she did meet in-person with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and met virtually with Xi himself.
In a public relations coup for Beijing, Bachelet concluded her trip by refusing to condemn, let alone acknowledge, China’s repression of ethnic minorities. Instead, she referred to the camps as “vocational and educational training centers” associated with China’s “counterterrorism” and “de-radicalization” operations, parroting the CCP’s description of its policy toward minorities. Still unclear is whether the UNHRC will issue a long-awaited report on rights abuses in Xinjiang, which UNHRC officials previously described as “deeply disturbing.”
Thus far, Biden administration officials have not outlined concrete plans to counter China’s multilateral influence, beyond a generic insistence that sustained engagement will eventually lead to reform. Given the shortcomings of this approach, Congress should hold hearings on the UN system and condition future U.S. funding for the WHO on the re-establishment of Taiwan’s non-observer status. Similar appropriations strategies should be considered for other UN agencies seen drifting into China’s orbit.
Craig Singleton, a national security expert and former U.S. diplomat, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s China Program and International Organizations Program. For more analysis from Craig, the China Program, and the International Organizations Program, please subscribe HERE. Follow Craig on Twitter @CraigMSingleton. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Craig Singleton Senior Fellow · June 2, 2022
15. FDD | Israeli-Saudi Deal Over Two Islands Is a Step Toward Peace
Excerpts:
Full peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia should be the ultimate goal. It may not be imminent, but the Biden administration can use Tiran and Sanafir as major stepping stones in that direction.
FDD | Israeli-Saudi Deal Over Two Islands Is a Step Toward Peace
fdd.org · by Orde Kittrie Senior Fellow · June 3, 2022
Israel and Saudi Arabia have reportedly agreed on a security arrangement enabling Egypt to transfer to the Saudis two strategic islands near Israel. In return for Israel’s acquiescence, Saudi Arabia is set to allow Israeli airlines to fly more frequently over its airspace. The deal is expected to be announced by President Joe Biden during his trip to the Middle East at the end of June.
While the two islands — Tiran and Sanafir — have no civilian inhabitants or known natural resources, tensions related to their strategic location contributed to two Arab-Israeli wars. Now, they could provide a stepping-stone to Arab-Israeli and indeed Muslim-Israeli peace. To capitalize on this opportunity, the Biden administration should encourage Saudi Arabia to take additional, public steps toward peace with Israel. There are several specific steps the Saudis should take, both in relation to the island transfer and in other arenas.
Causes of War
Both Tiran and Sanafir are located in the Strait of Tiran, the narrow body of water connecting the Gulf of Eilat to the Red Sea. Whoever controls the islands can block maritime access to Israel’s port of Eilat and to Jordan’s only port, Aqaba. In contrast with Israel’s other ports, all located on the Mediterranean, Eilat is the only one from which ships can reach India and East Asia without sailing around the southern tip of Africa or transiting Egypt’s Suez Canal.
Egypt’s closures of the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping were a major cause of the 1956 and 1967 wars between the two countries. The 1956 war erupted after Egypt tightened its blockade of Israeli shipping through the strait and closed the airspace over it to Israel’s airlines, blocking the only feasible Israeli air route to Africa. This, combined with Egypt’s closure of the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping, spurred Israel to seize the Sinai Peninsula (plus the two islands) in October 1956.
Israel’s 1957 withdrawal from Sinai (and the two islands) was conditioned on placing UN peacekeepers near the strait. The United States affirmed Israel’s right to transit the strait, and Egypt issued a non-binding, indirect, unwritten, non-public, and ambiguous statement to a UN official that Egypt would not interfere with any commercial shipping to or from Eilat.
In May 1967, Egypt reneged, expelling the peacekeepers and once again blocking the strait. At the time, 90 percent of Israeli oil imports passed through it. President Lyndon B. Johnson commented that “if a single act of folly was more responsible for [the Six Day War] than any other, it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Straits of Tiran would be closed.”
During the 1967 war, Israel again seized Tiran and Sanafir. The islands returned to Egypt only as part of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, which legally obligated Egypt to allow Israel “unimpeded and non-suspendable” navigation of the strait, limited Egypt’s military presence on the islands, and established a multinational peacekeeping force — eventually the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) — to help ensure “freedom of navigation through the Strait of Tiran.”
The Island Transfer Proposal
The Saudis now claim, and Egyptian President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi has stated, that Tiran and Sanafir have continuously belonged to Saudi Arabia. According to this version of history, Egyptian troops are said to have occupied the islands in 1950, and periodically thereafter, with Saudi permission because Egypt was considered more capable of defeating Israel militarily.
Yet Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979, and Saudi Arabia has inched closer to doing the same in recent years. In a sign of the two countries’ prioritization of national interests over lofty pan-Arabist goals, Cairo and Riyadh in 2017 agreed to transfer control of Tiran and Sanafir back to Saudi Arabia.
Sisi’s opponents responded by claiming the islands belong to Egypt, and accused him of ceding the islands in exchange for billions of dollars in Saudi trade and investment. Although protests erupted in Egypt against the proposed transfer, Sisi stuck with the plan.
Israel’s Role
The need for Israel to agree to the islands’ transfer to Saudi Arabia results from Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty obligations.
In April 2016, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir stated in a media interview that Riyadh is “committed” to continuing Egypt’s approach to the islands. Riyadh has now reportedly agreed to unimpeded navigation and to limiting its military’s presence on the islands, but not to a continuation of the MFO presence. The newly agreed deal reportedly involves MFO monitoring from Egyptian soil several kilometers away.
Given the strategic and historical significance of Tiran and Sanafir, it is remarkable that Israel would even consider their transfer from Egypt, a peace partner with treaty obligations, to Saudi Arabia, which has yet to formally recognize Israel.
Options for Using the Island Transfer to Advance Normalization
Given Saudi Arabia’s wealth and custodianship of Islam’s holiest sites, it is the most important Arab country with which Israel could make peace. Israeli-Saudi peace would almost certainly spur progress with both the Palestinians and additional Arab or other Muslim countries.
The Saudis have in recent years reportedly been tip-toeing closer to normalization with Israel, including through confidential intelligence cooperation, greenlighting the Abraham Accords, and allowing Israeli businesspersons to visit the kingdom.
However, the Saudis have avoided major public steps toward peace with Israel. These would represent a higher stage of engagement, are typically harder to reverse, and would provide vital cover to others considering steps towards peace with Israel.
Reportedly, the only public step to which Riyadh agreed in exchange for the island transfer is to authorize more Israeli airliners to cross Saudi airspace en route to other destinations. Saudi Arabia was reportedly also considering allowing Israeli Muslim pilgrims to fly directly from Israel to Saudi Arabia, but that was reportedly omitted from the final deal. Notably, Biden’s announcement of the deal will reportedly not include a public meeting between Israeli and Saudi officials.
In exchange for Saudi Arabia being given what are in essence the keys to Israel’s outlet to the Indian Ocean and most of Asia, Riyadh should be pushed to provide more in return, including public evidence that its attitude towards Israel has truly and sustainably changed. Indeed, Saudi Arabia should be strongly encouraged to move as close to normalization as possible with Israel. Full Saudi normalization would surpass in importance the Abraham Accords, the signal foreign policy achievement of Biden’s predecessor.
Biden’s proposed visit to Saudi Arabia at the end of the month would represent an improvement in U.S.-Saudi relations, which have been strained by disputes over human rights abuses, the Yemen war, and the Saudi murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. A public Biden administration report concluded the murder was approved by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). As a presidential candidate, Biden promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah.” A piqued Riyadh has reportedly refused U.S. requests to ramp up oil production in response to market pressures resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
MBS has reportedly told the Biden administration that improved U.S.-Saudi ties are a prerequisite for progress on Saudi-Israeli relations. If the United States is to bring MBS in from the cold and Israel allows Saudi Arabia to control Tiran and Sanafir, the Saudis should be willing to take public steps toward peace with Israel. The flourishing relationship between Israel and the United Arab Emirates has already provided the Saudis with examples of the many benefits of peace.
The United States and Israel should insist that the island transfer be accompanied by a public, legally binding, written Saudi commitment mirroring Egypt’s peace treaty obligations to limit its military presence and guarantee “unimpeded and non-suspendable” Israeli navigation of the Strait of Tiran. The Saudi foreign minister’s 2016 statement is all too reminiscent of the non-binding, indirect, unwritten, and ambiguous 1957 Egyptian affirmation of Israel’s rights, on which Cairo reneged in 1967.
In addition, Riyadh’s Tiran and Sanafir obligations should be made directly to Israel, which would represent an important step toward Saudi recognition of the Jewish state. The Biden administration should further urge that the island transfer be accompanied by establishment of an Egyptian-Israeli-Saudi mechanism to ensure that the three countries’ navies avoid friction while operating in close proximity near the islands. Such a mechanism can build on two of the Arab-Israeli regional security agreements that were agreed upon by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and 13 Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, in 1994 at the height of the Oslo peace process but stalled because diplomacy collapsed soon thereafter.
For example, the parties adopted — but never implemented — an agreement on preventing incidents at sea and concluded text for a framework agreement on maritime search and rescue. The parties also reached — but never implemented — an agreement on prior notification of certain military activities. These agreements should be resuscitated, adapted as necessary, and then implemented. They could at first be implemented by Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia — specifically tailored to Tiran and Sanafir — and then expanded to other Arab signatories.
The Biden administration should also encourage public Saudi cooperation with Israel in the defense arena. This could include Saudi participation alongside Israel in U.S. and other allied military exercises and in multinational military task forces. A larger step would be for Saudi Arabia to participate with Israel — and presumably the United Arab Emirates — in sharing early warnings of attacks by Iranian ballistic and cruise missiles and drones.
Other steps that stop short of full diplomatic relations with Israel include liaison offices such as those upon which Israel and Morocco agreed in December 2020. Since then, the Israeli and Moroccan governments have signed numerous joint memoranda of understanding, creating frameworks for cooperation on issues including finance and investment, aviation, trade, defense, and science and technology cooperation in fields including agriculture, water management, and renewable energy.
Israel and Saudi Arabia could sign joint memoranda of understanding on some of the less sensitive issues, such as water management. They could also foster cooperation agreements between leading companies and amongst academic institutions.
Full peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia should be the ultimate goal. It may not be imminent, but the Biden administration can use Tiran and Sanafir as major stepping stones in that direction.
Orde F. Kittrie is a law professor at Arizona State University and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously served for over a decade at the U.S. State Department, including as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs and as lead attorney for strategic trade controls. FDD is a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy. Follow him on Twitter @OrdeFK.
fdd.org · by Orde Kittrie Senior Fellow · June 3, 2022
16. The U.N. Nuclear Watchdog Must Censure Iran
Excerpts:
Passing a censure resolution requires the support of two-thirds of the agency’s 35-member board. Based on the board’s current membership, the Biden administration likely already has at least 18 of the 24 affirmative votes it needs. Most of the probable yes votes would come from European and Asian nations that almost always vote with the U.S., as well as friendly Latin American states like Colombia and Mexico.
This leaves six additional votes, which will take sustained diplomatic outreach to gather. The administration should start with South Korea, which currently chairs the board. Next Washington should reach out to Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, regional partners and outspoken critics of Iran’s nuclear program.
Obtaining the last three votes could be tricky, but the Trump administration pulled it off. Only four countries—Burundi, China, Pakistan and Russia—are likely on Iran’s side. The remaining nations on the board generally try to abstain on controversial issues. The U.S. and its allies should target Argentina, Brazil and Vietnam.
Tehran is rapidly approaching the nuclear threshold, the point at which outside force might not be able to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The Biden administration has no time to delay.
The U.N. Nuclear Watchdog Must Censure Iran
A new agreement with Tehran is pointless if IAEA inspectors are unable to do their jobs properly.
By Jackie Wolcott and Anthony Ruggiero
June 2, 2022 6:35 pm ET
Iranian officials plotted in the early 2000s to deceive the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and defeat its inquiries into Tehran’s covert nuclear weapons program. The Journal reported last week that the Islamic Republic even stole internal IAEA documents, the better to organize its deceptions. Iran has also stonewalled, for nearly four years, a new, little-publicized IAEA investigation into its covert nuclear activities, and the watchdog reported Monday that Tehran has not answered questions about its undeclared nuclear work. These revelations underscore how foolish President Biden has been in negotiations over a new nuclear deal. To enforce transparency, he must push for the IAEA to censure Iran when its members assemble on Monday.
The Biden administration has focused its diplomatic efforts on reviving the expired 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The Biden administration and officials from France, Germany and the U.K. have discussed the prospect of a new deal with the Iranians, but Tehran has shown little interest in compromising. Still, the U.S. and its European allies have withheld IAEA censure—which would insist that Iran comply with the agency’s investigation or else the issue could be referred to the U.N. Security Council—lest it disrupt negotiations.
That was a mistake. The IAEA’s new inquiry revealed what many policy makers have long known: The JCPOA did little to stop Iran from pursuing its nuclear interests. The IAEA began its investigation in 2018, after Israel obtained an archive of secret Iranian nuclear documents. The files, dating mainly from the late 1990s to 2004, showed that Tehran had gotten closer to a nuclear weapon than previously realized. In 2003, with American troops to Iran’s west in Iraq and its east in Afghanistan, Tehran’s leaders suspended their easily detectable efforts to make atomic weapons. But the exfiltrated files show that Tehran planned to maintain clandestine activities aimed at weaponization—the ultrasensitive process of fabricating a nuclear bomb—and the documents pointed the IAEA to several suspicious sites that could host secret nuclear research.
The IAEA requested access to and information about four sites where the regime appeared to have conducted undeclared nuclear activities. The agency found man-made uranium particles at three of the sites, meaning the regime violated its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Tehran refuses to explain how man-made uranium turned up at these sites.
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All of this is worthy of IAEA censure, and passing such a resolution at next week’s board meeting would be the first step toward an effective nuclear deal. If the Biden administration wants to craft an agreement stringent enough to stop Tehran from fulfilling its nuclear ambitions, it needs to ensure that Iran allows IAEA inspectors do their job properly. The deal would have to contain meaningful penalties on Tehran if it tries to interfere with inspections. Iran will never agree to this unless the U.S. can credibly prove that the consequences of not doing so will be worse for the regime. Censuring Tehran would show that Washington is willing to take a firm stand against the Islamic Republic.
Censure has succeeded in shifting Tehran’s behavior before. In 2020, Iran stonewalled the IAEA’s requests to visit the sites it suspected to house nuclear research. At the June Board of Governors meeting that year, America’s European allies drafted a resolution, with the Trump administration’s support, demanding Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA, marking the first IAEA censure of Tehran in eight years. The Islamic Republic gave in and granted the IAEA access to sites.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that the U.S. and its European allies are circulating a draft censure resolution for consideration at next week’s board meeting. The Biden administration has not confirmed these reports. If Mr. Biden indeed pushes for censure, it will demonstrate that his administration is serious about preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. If he doesn’t, it will convince the world that he simply wants favorable headlines. There is no point to a nuclear agreement if Mr. Biden won’t insist that Tehran lets IAEA inspectors do their job properly.
Passing a censure resolution requires the support of two-thirds of the agency’s 35-member board. Based on the board’s current membership, the Biden administration likely already has at least 18 of the 24 affirmative votes it needs. Most of the probable yes votes would come from European and Asian nations that almost always vote with the U.S., as well as friendly Latin American states like Colombia and Mexico.
This leaves six additional votes, which will take sustained diplomatic outreach to gather. The administration should start with South Korea, which currently chairs the board. Next Washington should reach out to Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, regional partners and outspoken critics of Iran’s nuclear program.
Obtaining the last three votes could be tricky, but the Trump administration pulled it off. Only four countries—Burundi, China, Pakistan and Russia—are likely on Iran’s side. The remaining nations on the board generally try to abstain on controversial issues. The U.S. and its allies should target Argentina, Brazil and Vietnam.
Tehran is rapidly approaching the nuclear threshold, the point at which outside force might not be able to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The Biden administration has no time to delay.
Ms. Wolcott was the U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (2018-21). Mr. Ruggiero was senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council (2019-21). Andrea Stricker contributed to this article. They are all affiliated with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’s new Nonproliferation and Biodefense program.
WSJ Opinion: Joe Biden Measures U.S. Security by the Inch
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WSJ Opinion: Joe Biden Measures U.S. Security by the Inch
Play video: WSJ Opinion: Joe Biden Measures U.S. Security by the Inch
Wonder Land: NATO can't quarantine Putin in Ukraine. He and other adversaries of the West have been trying to weaken and replace us for years. Images: Getty Images/KCNA via KNS/AFP/AP Composite: Mark Kelly
Appeared in the June 3, 2022, print edition.
17. The Long Arm of Authoritarianism
My belief: China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, and displace democratic institutions.
Doing This provides China the ability to work through, with, and by other countries to stifle dissent.
Excerpts:
Democracies can and should hold perpetrators of transnational repression accountable, as part of the work of safeguarding democracy and human rights at home as well as abroad. They can do so by applying targeted sanctions, withholding security assistance, and prosecuting those responsible for domestic acts of transnational repression. Democratic countries should also work together to stem the abuse of tools meant to facilitate international cooperation on security issues. These tools, such as the Red Notices issued by the International Criminal Police Organization, which inform member countries about internationally wanted fugitives, are increasingly being used by authoritarian governments to legally detain and extradite dissidents. But to meet the bigger challenge of rising global authoritarianism, especially as nondemocratic governments increasingly cooperate to stifle dissent, democracies must first and foremost change their approach to asylum.
Democracies should stop offshoring their immigration and asylum systems and allow people the opportunity to apply for asylum inside their territories, where they are offered better protections against persecution, repression, and violence on the part of authoritarian states. Governments should also provide permanent protections for those who qualify for asylum and reduce the reliance on temporary refugee status that leaves individuals and their families exposed to harassment by their countries of origin. As long as democratic governments enact ever more restrictive policies on asylum, they will continue to trap vulnerable people in parts of the world where autocrats make the rules.
The Long Arm of Authoritarianism
How Dictators Reach Across Borders to Shut Down Dissent
June 2, 2022
Last year was a particularly dangerous time to be a Belarusian political dissident—not just in Belarus, but anywhere in the world. In 2021, after months of violently cracking down on peaceful opposition protests at home, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko began exporting his repressive tactics abroad. His targets ranged widely, from longtime dissidents to novice critics. Although many of his efforts flew under the international radar, others attracted major public attention. In May 2021, for instance, Lukashenko’s regime concocted a false bomb threat to force a passenger airliner traveling between Greece and Lithuania to land in Minsk so that Roman Pratasevich, a young journalist and political activist on board, could be arrested on the tarmac. Later, during the Tokyo Olympics, Belarusian authorities tried to forcibly repatriate Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, a track and field athlete, after she criticized the national team’s coaching staff—and were only prevented from doing so by the Japanese police.
Both incidents are cases of what is known as transnational repression, or the efforts of governments to reach across borders to silence their critics. In a new report from Freedom House, a nonpartisan democracy advocacy organization, we find that safe spaces for dissent are rapidly shrinking around the world. Based on a data set of 735 documented incidents of explicit transnational repression that occurred between 2014 and 2021, we show that authoritarian governments are increasingly working together to help locate, threaten, detain, and expel their critics. Moreover, thanks to the restrictive asylum policies of many democracies that could otherwise serve as havens for dissidents, there are fewer safe places available for those seeking shelter from persecution. If democracies want to shore up liberal values and human rights worldwide, they could start by welcoming those who are risking their lives to stand up to authoritarian regimes.
NOWHERE TO TURN
Worryingly, fellow autocrats are increasingly helping each other chase dissidents across borders. In 2021, the vast majority of incidents of transnational repression—74 percent—were committed by authoritarian governments on the territory of other authoritarian states. This is 16 percentage points higher than the average between 2014 and 2020, when 58 percent of cases recorded by Freedom House were perpetrated by and took place in authoritarian countries. Incidents of transnational repression that occur in countries with little regard for civil and political rights and with weak traditions of rule of law, such as Tajikistan and Thailand, are particularly insidious because they tend to attract less media, civil society, and government attention. Although Pratasevich’s arrest and Tsimanouskaya’s ordeal garnered significant international coverage and even led to the imposition of multilateral sanctions, the bulk of Belarus’s campaign of transnational repression in 2021 largely went unnoticed. This is because it mostly took place inside a neighboring authoritarian country: Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime has been a willing partner in Lukashenko’s persecution of dissidents and opponents. Russian courts, long indifferent to the rights of homegrown political activists, repeatedly approved extradition requests for Belarusians in Russia who had been active in antigovernment protests in Belarus. In one notable case, Russia deported a mixed martial arts fighter who, according to Radio Free Europe, had already been beaten and shot with rubber bullets while in police custody in Belarus, even after the European Court of Human Rights issued an opinion prohibiting his repatriation because of concerns about torture. His was only one of 22 incidents last year in which Belarusians in Russia were detained, extradited, or threatened with extradition.
In some cases, the Russian state has played a more active role in spiriting people wanted by Lukashenko’s regime out of Russia without any semblance of a legal process. In April 2021, Russian authorities apparently kidnapped two Belarusian men—one with U.S. citizenship—from a hotel in Moscow and handed them over to Belarusian security services, who then drove them over 400 miles across the border to Minsk. Both men had longstanding ties to the Belarusian opposition and now face charges of planning a coup against the government in Belarus.
Russian authorities have helped other autocrats repress dissidents as well. Take, for instance, the case of Izzat Amon, a human rights activist originally from Tajikistan who had Russian citizenship and had been living in Russia for decades. Amon ran a nonprofit organization in Moscow that helped migrants from Central Asia find employment and get legal immigration status in Russia. Amon was deported from Russia in March 2021; upon his return to Tajikistan, he was sentenced to nine years in prison on dubious charges of fraud. When another activist from Turkmenistan, who had been living in Russia for six years, disappeared in October 2021, Russian authorities claimed that he had left the country voluntarily. But information obtained by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International suggests that he was in fact arrested by the Russian police and forcibly returned to Turkmenistan, where he is now being held incommunicado by security services.
Other countries share Russia’s willingness to come to the aid of fellow autocracies. In November 2021, authorities in Thailand unlawfully repatriated opposition activists to Cambodia, where they faced politically motivated charges and threats to their safety. In May, the government of the United Arab Emirates detained for weeks a teenage Chinese activist who was transiting through the Dubai airport and allowed Chinese consular officials to try to coerce him into returning to China. The Turkish government, which is itself a major perpetrator of transnational repression, has acted on behalf of other authoritarian governments to bully foreign activists living inside its borders. These developments portend a troubling future for civil society groups, political dissidents, and pro-democracy advocates, all of whom now face the prospect that persecution will follow them no matter where they go.
AIDING AND ABETTING
As autocrats increasingly collaborate to crush dissent, traditional sanctuaries for critics and activists are becoming less welcoming. For instance, Turkey was a longtime safe haven for Uyghurs, but it has recently become a dangerous place for the Uyghur diaspora. In 2021, Turkish authorities harassed groups of Uyghur activists by arresting them and threatening them with deportation to China. That same year, Beijing ratified an extradition treaty signed by Ankara in 2017, fueling fears that Uyghurs living in Turkey could be arrested on trumped-up charges and extradited back to China. This mounting repression of Uyghurs in Turkey has taken place against the backdrop of tightening economic and political relations between Ankara and Beijing, driven by Turkey’s growing need for investment and trade with the Asian superpower.
Turkish authorities also cracked down on the small Turkmen diaspora in the country, arresting activists opposed to the strongman regime in Ashgabat and working to prevent protests in front of Turkmenistan’s embassy. This comes as the Turkish government is seeking closer ties with the Central Asian country: the crackdown coincided with the November 2021 summit meeting of the Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States, a regional bloc that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes to lead and where Turkmenistan has observer status.
Autocrats are increasingly working together to help locate, detain, and expel their critics.
Erdogan has likewise sought to salvage relations with Saudi Arabia after years of tensions by abandoning efforts to ensure accountability for one of the most heinous acts of transnational repression committed on Turkish soil. In April 2021, a Turkish court agreed to transfer the trial being held in connection with the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian dissident and journalist, to the same Saudi authorities who had been implicated in his killing.
Nondemocratic governments cooperate in the exercise of transnational repression because it is politically convenient and because they share a set of illiberal values that reject the fundamental right to criticize those who wield political power. Authoritarian practices and values are currently on the rise: a Freedom House report released earlier this year found that democracy has declined globally for 16 consecutive years, and political rights and civil liberties are under attack even in established democracies such as India and the United States. These parallel trends converge to form an ominous forecast: autocrats will have more and more opportunities to cooperate moving forward.
LOCKING THE GATES
Global declines in civil liberties and political rights—and the erosion of checks on human rights violations and abuses of power—deepen transnational repression because people who flee the persecution of one authoritarian government are likely to find themselves under the thumb of another. Geographical proximity, permissive visa regimes, and the strict asylum policies of democratic governments often funnel dissidents fleeing an authoritarian regime into places controlled by other nondemocratic governments. Citizens of Belarus and Central Asia go to Russia, where they do not need a visa to enter. People escaping Cambodia, Laos, or Vietnam often cross the border into neighboring Thailand. Uyghurs leave China by escaping to Egypt or Turkey. These places are attractive because they are accessible—but although they may provide short-term refuge, they do not offer long-term protection.
Living in a robust democracy, with strong legal systems and high levels of security, is by far the best protection against transnational repression. It is, however, no guarantee of safety. Authoritarian governments struggle to target dissidents in Europe and the United States, but they have still found some limited success. Last year, for instance, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that agents of the Iranian regime hired a private investigator to collect information on Masih Alinejad, a prominent Iranian-American journalist and women’s rights activist, as part of a plan to kidnap her from her home in Brooklyn and return her to Iran. Also last year, a court in Sweden convicted a man and a woman for the assault and attempted murder of Tumso Abdurakhmanov, a Chechen asylum seeker and a long-time critic of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, as part of a plot hatched by Chechen officials.
To meet the challenge of global authoritarianism, democracies must change their approach to asylum.
This problem is compounded by the rising barriers to admission that increasingly fence off democracies from asylum seekers, refugees, and other immigrants. Democratic countries—already geographically distant from many repressive regimes—have invested resources in building physical and legal walls against immigrants. In 2016, the EU signed an agreement with Turkey aimed at preventing asylum seekers from reaching Europe via Greece. The policy effectively corralled millions of people inside Turkey, a country that already targets its own opponents abroad and increasingly harasses foreign activists at home.
Another striking example of an asylum policy that may well facilitate transnational repression is the United Kingdom’s plan, announced this April, to send asylum seekers arriving in the country by irregular means to Rwanda for processing and resettlement. Rwanda is controlled by an authoritarian regime and is itself an active perpetrator of transnational repression. The British authorities are perfectly aware of Rwanda’s track record. In 2019, the Rwandan government targeted Faustin Rukundo, a UK resident and outspoken critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, with surveillance spyware. As reported by the BBC, the Rwandan High Commission in London has pressured Rwandan residents of the United Kingdom to take a loyalty oath to the regime as recently as 2020. In light of this recent history, the United Kingdom should be fully aware that its decision to offshore its responsibility for the asylum process to Rwanda will only help authoritarian governments seeking to target dissidents by consigning political refugees to the care of an authoritarian state.
IT STARTS AT HOME
Democracies can and should hold perpetrators of transnational repression accountable, as part of the work of safeguarding democracy and human rights at home as well as abroad. They can do so by applying targeted sanctions, withholding security assistance, and prosecuting those responsible for domestic acts of transnational repression. Democratic countries should also work together to stem the abuse of tools meant to facilitate international cooperation on security issues. These tools, such as the Red Notices issued by the International Criminal Police Organization, which inform member countries about internationally wanted fugitives, are increasingly being used by authoritarian governments to legally detain and extradite dissidents. But to meet the bigger challenge of rising global authoritarianism, especially as nondemocratic governments increasingly cooperate to stifle dissent, democracies must first and foremost change their approach to asylum.
Democracies should stop offshoring their immigration and asylum systems and allow people the opportunity to apply for asylum inside their territories, where they are offered better protections against persecution, repression, and violence on the part of authoritarian states. Governments should also provide permanent protections for those who qualify for asylum and reduce the reliance on temporary refugee status that leaves individuals and their families exposed to harassment by their countries of origin. As long as democratic governments enact ever more restrictive policies on asylum, they will continue to trap vulnerable people in parts of the world where autocrats make the rules.
18. Weighing America’s ‘repivot’ away from Asia
No matter how hard we try to "pivot to Asia" there always seems to be something that gets in our way.
It is almost as if there is a conspiracy theory and everyone is doing something to prevent us from pivoting.
Weighing America’s ‘repivot’ away from Asia
Biden administration was supposed to double down on Indo-Pacific engagement but the Ukraine war dominates his attention and agenda
SEOUL – US President Joe Biden last week wrapped up the first Asia tour of his administration with trips to South Korea and Japan, where pro-US governments in both Seoul and Tokyo staunchly reiterated their commitment to their American alliances.
But the trip came against the backdrop of a war in Europe that is consuming much of America’s political, diplomatic, military and media bandwidth.
Biden’s visit has been a long time coming. The two-nation visit, which included a meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialog in Tokyo, followed three separate tours Biden has made to Europe. There, he has visited Belgium, Italy, Poland, the UK, Switzerland and Vatican City, and attended the G7 and NATO summits.
And even though his Democratic Party is hardly a natural partner of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, he has already visited the UK three times.
As vice-president under Barack Obama, Biden is familiar with the so-called “Pivot to Asia.” But many in the region are starting to ask if Biden is too Atlantic-centric – or even too Anglosphere-centric.
It is a germane question given the holes in the West’s anti-Russia strategy.
“Asian economic heft is being indirectly funneled behind Russia in this war,” said Indian Manu Sharmer, a partner at the intelligence arm of Fair Observer, a non-profit independent media. “If Russia is not on its knees, it is because it has indirect access to everything it wants from China or India.”
Making that situation doubly ironic, Beijing and New Delhi are, in the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean, aligned against each other, illustrating the complexities facing US policy in the region.
AUKUS could provide a path to peace rather than conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Photo: Facebook
East versus West
The latest US security initiative in Asia-Pacific, the Australia-UK-US AUKUS format, which appeared in 2021, provides some grounds for Anglocentric criticism.
“One aspect of AUKUS that makes it uncomfortable is that it is kind of an Anglo-Saxon club,” admitted Philip Shetler-Jones, the James Cook Indo-Pacific Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy. “Any grouping can be individuous.”
However, the Briton added: “I don’t think that is helpful – and the development of a joint fighter with Japan is a kind of corrective to that.”
Tokyo and Mitsubishi are mulling which partner to build its next-generation stealth fighter with. The two companies in the running – the UK’s BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin – are both Anglosphere players.
Shetler Jones, like Sharmer, was speaking on an online panel discussion last week hosted by Fair Observer, as Biden wound up his Asian trip.
But the issue is not only one of appearances. America faces more multi-faceted security dynamics in the Indo-Pacific than it ever did in the North Atlantic.
“It has always been the case that NATO has been one of the best models for regional security as it does have an architecture and Asia has always been, by comparison, sort of weaker,” said Haruko Satoh, a Japanese scholar of regional and international relations at the Osaka School of International Public Policy.
While NATO might provide Washington with an ideal “us versus them” vehicle to confront first the USSR and then its legacy state, the Russian Federation, issues in the Indo-Pacific are more complex.
“Asia needs to be mindful that we cannot draw a binary way of looking at this region in terms of China and Russia versus democracies as might be the case with NATO,” she said.
The key multilateral post-war agreement in the region, the San Fransisco Treaty of 1951, did not include China, the USSR or either of the Koreas as signatories, she noted. As a result, the US was forced to draw up a “hub and spokes” system for the region, and even within that there are tensions.
“Insofar as Japan is concerned, Japan has territorial disputes with China and Korea, and the absence of a peace treaty with Russia,” she said. “There is lots of catching up to do among the spoke countries in terms of meeting certain security challenges.”
But compared with other parts of a region that Washington and its Anglosphere subalterns are trying to rally to confront a rising and increasingly assertive China, South Korea and Japan’s historical and territorial squabbles are piddling.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with then US Vice-President Joe Biden in New Delhi on July 23, 2013. Photo: AFP
India’s issue with America
“Everyone has been an unreliable security partner – the US and UK have been on Islamabad’s side on Kashmir, and if you read the New York Times, you would think India is practicing genocide in Kashmir,” said Atul Singh, editor-in-chief of the Fair Observer. “So, from the Indian point of view, there has been some lack of reliability.”
That, he suggested, was one reason why New Delhi has declined to assail Moscow at the UN. But there is another reason – which illustrates the case for a non-binary view of the region.
India relies on Russia for spare parts for its defense systems and can hardly turn down Russian offers of “cut-price oil.” Both are critical for India’s defense – and nuclear-armed India is the one regional power able to stare down China.
“The elephant in the room is China,” Singh said. “Which country can go head to head with China? Our boys can.”
He ticked off the reasons why, in his opinion, New Delhi should get more respect from the West.
“India has the manpower, the economic heft, the territorial size to take on China,” he said. “We don’t have a single child policy, we can take casualties, we can roll with the punches. The Chinese can’t.”
But India has reason to cast a critical eye at Biden, reckoned one of Singh’s colleagues – who summoned the recent history of Democrats’ defense policies in the sub-continent.
“The US is a mixed bag as a security partner [for India] depending on the bent of the administration in place,” said Sharmer. “From the India point of view, Bush and Trump were excellent on security issues in the post-Soviet era, but when the Democrats are in power, India has a tough time.”
US President Barack Obama, with then Vice-President Joe Biden, in the East Room of the White House on July 14, 2015. Photo: AFP /Andrew Harnik
He cited Bill Clinton’s opposition to India’s nuclear test, Obama urging New Delhi to downplay terrorist threats, and Biden for “choosing to withdraw from Afghanistan without consulting the biggest democracy in the region.”
Biden’s abandonment of the Kabul government was “a huge knock” for democracy, he said.
After the fall of Kabul, “hard military power was going to be a strong arbiter of disputes … a call to arms,” Sharmer said. “Sooner or later what happened in Kabul would land at the doors of the West – and that came in the Russo-Ukraine War.”
Japan is joined at the hip to the US via a Mutual Defence Treaty, unlike India, which is simply a member of the Quad. Hence, Tokyo takes more comfort from US support.
“The Japanese perception of US commitment to Asia has been quite strong for the past 10 years, regardless of Donald Trump,” Satoh said.
That was a reference to Trump’s demands that Seoul and Tokyo massively expand their share of the financial burden generated by stationing US troops in the two nations.
But she agreed that, elsewhere, Democratic administrations had failed Asia on the security front.
Referring to saber rattling and base building in the South China Sea as Beijing built up a huge blue-water navy, Satoh pointed the finger at Obama, whose pivot to Asia lacked teeth.
She criticized the administration for underplaying the Hague Tribunal’s 2016 decision regarding the Philippines’ territorial rights against China in the South China Sea, and then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s mild response to Chinese aggression over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.
“The US could have called out China much more strongly on freedom of navigation,” she added. “If Obama did it sooner, China would have had a different calculation.”
The West’s wobbly posture
The Russian assault on Ukraine has sparked fears in Japan of a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Satoh noted.
The tougher posture Biden has adopted – as seen in his shock statement in Tokyo, that the US was committed to a military defense of Taiwan – may be a learning from Ukraine’s misfortunes, Asia Times has learned.
Moscow may have greenlighted its invasion of its neighbor after both Biden and Johnson stated clearly that they would not fight in, or for, Ukraine, a source familiar with European military affairs said. A more florid stance, at least verbally, is now being taken with Taiwan.
Ukraine’s surprising resilience, Russia’s multiple blunders and shortcomings, the likely advent of Sweden and Finland joining NATO and Germany’s commitment to increased defense spending response favor a shifting of western eyes to the east.
“It makes turning to Asia look less like a risk,” said Shetler-Jones. “Europe is much more capable of defending itself than people have been thinking, so this is a golden opportunity for America and others to deploy a portion of their diplomatic, intelligence and security resources to the Indo-Pacific.”
A renewed US and Western commitment to the region is merited now more than ever, Sharmer said. While he was critical of the lack of substance in Obama’s pivot, the thinking was sound, he said.
“If you look at the world today, of the top 5 largest economies in the world, three are Asian – China, Japan and India,” he said. “This is not the world in the 1980s … the Cold War, the Atlanticist world as it was a few decades ago … the world has moved on in terms of manufacturing, cyber technologies, 5G, you name it, coupled with the huge domestic market that each of the three has.”
Add Southeast Asia and South Korea to the mix and “it is a huge economic bloc. It is not engaged like the EU today, but it will rise,” Sharmer said.
Representatives from the 11-nation Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership meet in Santiago in 2018. Photo: AFP / Claudio Reyes
Regional economies are being woven more tightly together by giant multilateral trade deals such as the Tokyo-led CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for a Trans-Pacific Partnership) and the Beijing-driven RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership). Both remain nascent, and it is unclear how far they will go in increasing intra-regional trade.
But both are actual free trade areas, with tariff removing provisions and commitments, unlike Washington’s IPEF (Indo-Pacific Economic Framework), a rule-setting dialog group rather than a trade area.
And the IPEF is not the only US-led Asian grouping whose ties lack tensile integrity.
“IPEF is not a real trade deal, it is mere chat,” said Singh. “The Quad is a reaction to the rise of China, and it could be a lead to some sort of new NATO, it could be an economic arrangement … people are just dating, they are not really getting involved yet.”
The broader question is exactly where America and the West stand in relation to the East, given the lack of a clear, firm stance on principles of econo-political engagement.
“There is a frustration in Asia with the West in what side the Western countries are on: Do they favor democracy or autocracy, or do they emphasize business or values?” Sharmer asked. “Most times it is quote-unquote ‘real politick.’”
This ambiguity is undermining the Western effort to defend Ukraine, he warned, and it comes on the back of a fall in American prestige in the sub-continent.
“The US could have withdrawn from Afghanistan in a more elegant manner, taken on more democratic and liberal stakeholders, but it left as if it was being chased by a wild beast,” Sharmer said.
“There are grandmas and housewives – the grassroots of India – with a cheap internet phone getting every piece of info. It has an impact, and the prestige of the US took a fall.”
Follow this writer on Twitter @ASalmonSeoul
19. Workforce Development Agenda for the National Cyber Director - CSC 2.0
Workforce Development Agenda for the National Cyber Director - CSC 2.0
CSC 2.0 Reports
Workforce Development Agenda for the National Cyber Director
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June 2, 2022
By Laura Bate, Mark Montgomery
This report outlines a path for the National Cyber Director to strengthen the federal cyber workforce and recommends actions for Congress to support efforts to grow the cyber workforce.
Executive Summary
Nearly 10 years ago, researchers hypothesized that market forces would correct the U.S. shortage of cyber professionals over time. This has not occurred, and the cybersecurity community is out of time. The pervasiveness of avoidable cyber problems such as misconfigured systems, slow patching, and insufficient attention to risk management can frequently be directly tied to cyber staffing shortages. Not only are these problems expensive to remediate after incidents occur, but they are also a threat to national security, particularly when they occur in critical-infrastructure systems or in the supply chains upon which that infrastructure depends.
For more than a decade, report after report has documented the growing number of unfilled cyber positions, both in the U.S. government and nationwide, offering strategies and recommendations to address the shortfall. These strategies and recommendations have too often gone ignored. The congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission published a white paper on the cyber workforce in September 2020, identifying systemic barriers stymieing existing workforce development efforts. A lack of centralized leadership, insufficient coordination across the federal government, a nonexistent federal strategy to guide priorities and resources, and ineffective organizational structures all combined to limit the potential of the very programs designed to strengthen and diversify the federal and national cyber workforces.
No clear focal point for interagency coordination existed at the time of the Commission’s report, but the July 2021 confirmation of the first-ever national cyber director (NCD) has created a new opportunity to overcome these pervasive barriers. The first section of this memorandum outlines a path forward for the NCD to grow and strengthen the federal cyber workforce and coordinate federal support for national cyber workforce development.
In many cases, the NCD will need legislative support, so the second section of the memorandum recommends actions Congress can take to support federal efforts to grow the cyber workforce. These actions include extending the Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Data Collection Act, establishing a Federal Cyber Workforce Development Institute, and authorizing a Federal Excepted Cyber Service
While these recommendations focus on the federal government in the first instance, the federal and national cyber workforces ultimately draw from the same community of professionals, so effective approaches must address both. Accordingly, the third section of this memorandum outlines actions that private-sector leaders can take to support the NCD’s priorities and national cyber workforce development more generally.
Recommendations for the National Cyber Director
Recommendation 1: Establish a Process for Ongoing Cyber Workforce Data Collection and Evaluation
- 1.1 – NCD and OPM should provide expanded support for cyber workforce data collection
- 1.2 – NCD should work with heads of federal departments and agencies to ensure accountability for data mandates
- 1.3 – NCD should work with OPM to share data on the federal cyber workforce
- 1.4 – NCD should work with NSF to add to data on the national cyber workforce
Recommendation 2: Establish Leadership and Coordination Structures
- 2.1 – NCD should establish and chair a cyber workforce steering committee
- 2.2 – NCD should establish a cyber workforce coordinating working group
Recommendation 3: Review and Align Cyber Workforce Budgets
- 3.1 – Working with OMB, NCD should review budgets for cyber workforce programs
Recommendation 4: Create a Cyber Workforce Development Strategy for the Federal Government
- 4.1 – NCD should establish a cyber workforce development strategy for the federal government
Recommendation 5: Revamp Cyber Hiring Authorities and Pay Flexibilities Government-Wide
- 5.1 – NCD should work with OPM to modernize cyber-specific coding structures, hiring authorities, and special pay rates government-wide
- 5.2 – NCD should work with OPM to establish a cadre of human resource specialists trained in cyber hiring and talent management
- 5.3 – NCD should work with OPM, OMB, and the appropriations committees to ensure adequate resourcing
Recommendations for Congress
- 6.1 – Congress should amend the federal cybersecurity workforce assessment act of 2015
- 6.2 – Congress should increase support for the CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service program
- 6.3 – Congress should provide incentives to develop entry-level employees into mid-career talent
- 6.4 – Congress should strive for clarity in roles and responsibilities for cyber workforce development
- 6.5 – Congress should exercise oversight of federal cyber workforce development in each department and agency
- 6.6 – Congress should establish cyber excepted service authorities government-wide
- 6.7 – Congress should expand appropriations for existing efforts in cyber workforce development
Recommendations for the Private Sector
- 7.1 – Partners in the private sector should increase their investment in the cyber workforce
- 7.2 – Partners in the private sector should develop shared resources
20. Inside the White House's struggle to get Joe Biden to matter: 'Why are we doing this?'
Inside the White House's struggle to get Joe Biden to matter: 'Why are we doing this?'
CNN · by Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN
(CNN)Being familiar never makes the feeling less dreadful: White House aides emailing each other during one of President Joe Biden's stops on the road, tracking who's covering what he's saying, which TV channels are taking the speech live -- and realizing a number of times that the answer was none.
"You are thinking," said one person familiar, "why are we doing this?"
Biden and his inner circle get weekly readouts of the metrics on local newspaper coverage of his speeches, how long and for what he was covered on cable, but also videos tht staff post on Twitter and other social media interactions. Those reports go on the piles with internal memos from pollsters saying Biden isn't breaking through in traditional news outlets and that the people who are engaged are mostly voters who've already made up their minds.
But beneath this struggle to break through is a deeper dysfunction calcified among aides who largely started working together only through Zoom screens and still struggle to get in rhythm. They're still finding it hard to grasp how much their political standing has changed over the last year, and there's a divide between most of the White House staff and the inner circle who have been around Biden for longer than most of the rest of that staff has been alive.
At the center is a president still trying to calibrate himself to the office. The country is pulling itself apart, pandemic infections keep coming, inflation keeps rising, a new crisis on top of new crisis arrives daily and Biden can't see a way to address that while also being the looser, happier, more sympathetic, lovingly Onion-parody inspiring, aviator-wearing, vanilla chip cone-licking guy -- an image that was the core of why he got elected in the first place.
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"He has to speak to very serious things," explained one White House aide, "and you can't do that getting ice cream."
Aides regularly talk about how little traction they're getting from one-off Biden appearances or events and then -- whether on inflation, the baby formula shortage or mass shootings or the other crises landing on Biden's desk -- he's often left looking like he's in a reactive crouch on the issues that matter most to voters rather than setting the agenda. Sometimes clipped moments from those speeches that the White House puts out on social media generate huge traffic but, at least as often, moments from the President appearing to be caught off-guard go viral on their own.
Aides and allies worry that the West Wing is making the same mistakes as they tout the White House's big pivot to inflation -- which they know is a defining issue for the midterms -- using all the methods Biden and his top advisers keep going back to: A Wall Street Journal op-ed, a basic photo-op Oval Office meeting with the Federal Reserve chairman and Treasury secretary, dispatching Cabinet secretaries for short TV interviews.
Biden himself, meanwhile, is staying barely visible, spending all of this week at the White House and his beach home in Delaware, removed from any interaction with anyone who's actually on edge about their bills going up.
The President is a 79-year-old man who still thinks in terms of newspaper front pages and primetime TV programs, surrounded by not-quite-as-senior aides in senior positions with the same late 1990s media diet. Lifelong habits don't tend to fade when people get to their desks in the West Wing.
"These numbers that get put up by 'soft media,'" a senior adviser put it to others on staff recently, using a term meant to brush off all platforms that aren't older than Biden's grandkids, "don't feel as real."
It's not just the kind of news Biden consumes, according to CNN's conversations with 14 White House aides and other Democrats in close touch with the White House. After 50 years of looking up to the Oval Office, televised speeches and front-page stories are how he thinks of a president making news, still conceiving of the presidency as a sort of Rooseveltian ideal where he can lay what's happening for an audience gathered around to hear from a commander-in-chief whose schedule keeps getting cleared for him to write, edit and review each set of remarks.
"A speech is presidential, remarks are presidential. His view is if he can just explain to people what's going on and why, that people will understand," said one person familiar with Biden's thinking.
Finger-pointing inside the White House
Biden aides cite a range of other factors -- a political press corps still hooked on Trump-style melodrama, a news environment dominated by Ukraine and pandemic, a Secret Service buffer that limits what Biden can do, lingering anxiety that he'll catch Covid-19 and possibly become really sick.
That's in between pointing fingers at each other for whose fault it is. They have the same internal meetings over and over, insisting that they need to change up their whole approach to how they're using Biden -- and then each time watch as nothing changes.
Older aides dismiss the younger aides as being too caught up in the tweet-by-tweet thinking they say lost the 2020 election for everyone else. Younger aides give up -- what's the point of working up innovative ideas, they ask themselves, if the ideas constantly get knocked down and the aides get looked down on for suggesting them?
Responding to a question about the President's older media habits, White House spokesman Andrew Bates noted the weekly time set aside on the President's schedule for creating digital content and the over 70 people on staff who help create it and manage his various accounts, as well as two interviews in the past few months with online-only creators.
"The President has a well-rounded strategy that combines putting unprecedented resources into digital engagement, speeches that provide many of his most powerful moments, and person-to-person interactions that showcase important qualities like his empathy," Bates said.
Biden did more traveling around the country during May than in any month of his presidency so far. But nearly every stop was the same toe-touch, take-a-factory-tour-then-give-a-speech-then-back-on-Air Force One routine, one-off events with a couple of mournful condolence trips to Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, added.
Nothing happened that wasn't on script. Nothing that's not fully planned.
When they're on message, aides will take solace in driving local news coverage, despite the events not registering outside of whatever media market he lands in. When they're being frank, they acknowledge that they've been slow to realize that doing single events on any topic never seems to make much of an impact.
Speeches that have broken through -- like the President's sorrow-filled statement delivered while the bodies were still being identified in Uvalde -- are rarely because of either the words themselves or the delivery.
It's because Biden himself shines through, like when he, a father who's buried two of his own children, talked about the parents in Texas having parts of their souls ripped away, or on his condolence visit a few days later when he placed his hand on each murdered student's oversized photo.
Aides still figuring out the best way to present the President
Biden tells CNN's Kaitlan Collins he didn't know until April the baby formula shortage would be so serious 03:29
Outside of those consoler-in-chief moments, Biden and aides know they're not doing much to make him empathetic.
They'll tell each other he doesn't have enough time in his schedule. Then they'll say, actually, no, he is doing the kind of events that should resonate, just no one is giving him credit.
They'll note that the structure of the White House staff -- down to the physical arrangement of the offices, so that the press aides are all clustered together in the only accessible part of the West Wing -- is around interactions with traditional media outlets, even as viewership and readership declines.
They'll say he's answering reporters' questions whenever he's asked, while nixing interview requests to avoid the hours of prep and possible clean-up. They'll acknowledge that Biden himself feels shut off enough that he's quietly had a half-dozen sessions with favored writers since the fall, like last month's lunch with the New York Times' Tom Friedman, in which the columnist shared his own impressions of Biden's off-the-record thoughts, with only the tuna sandwich, fruit bowl and milkshake approved for publication.
In a January memo, White House chief of staff Ron Klain offered a compromise plan, to have Biden do one town hall each month to at least grab some unscripted moments and media exposure. That got sucked into the maw of blaming and dysfunction like so much else: Some aides embraced the idea for at least shaking things up a little, some mocked it for being an outdated idea, some complained that the logistics of making that happen would be impossibly time consuming.
In the end, not a single town hall was scheduled. A White House aide said Wednesday that now more town halls are expected in the near future.
Conducting the presidency 'from the set of Jeopardy'
Biden administration 'optimistic' inflation will ease over the coming months, top economic official says 03:28
The most effective way Biden aides found to convince people the President isn't the doddering right-wing media caricature is when people see him in action, they'll say in meetings and emails and memos. And the best way to convince voters that he's taking action on a list of complaints, which is growing longer almost by the week, is to show him actually doing things.
Those little moments which have always been his magic, the retail politics virtuosity of finding the humanity in almost anyone he talks to and having them find the humanity in him -- that's what they need more of, they say. And anyway, that's what makes him the happiest.
Yet Biden keeps showing up behind the same podiums surrounded by the same big screens, talking from a remove about what he feels and what he wants to do about it. He's coming across disconnected, aides have acknowledged to allies in Congress and beyond. And then, they say, the same events keep getting planned.
"World's most interactive man," sighed one person familiar with White House operations after one of the recent events, "and we're going to have him conduct the presidency from the set of Jeopardy."
Excited as White House aides were by the appearance by the K-pop superstars BTS showing up at the daily press briefing on Tuesday, with more than 180,000 people watching the live stream at one point and fans pressed up against the security gates asking what the singers smelled like, they also acknowledged the downside some wish would be more instructive: That brief BTS visit will likely be seen more than anything Biden will do for weeks.
'He has so much more to offer'
They also agree that they're being held back by the President's own reluctance to hit harder, steeped in both his attempt to push America back to what he insists can't be a bygone era of cooperation and his sense that a president shouldn't get petty.
When he said over Memorial Day weekend that he counted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Texas Sen. John Cornyn as "rational Republicans" whom he could get an agreement with on new gun laws, the forehead smacks among staff and other involved Democrats echoed around the Tidal Basin.
On assault weapons and other priorities, that "do something!" anger is bubbling throughout Biden's base, but what voters are getting back instead is what the President would call a frank assessment that there's not much he actually can do.
Aides are facing their own constraints, and not just from the national security officials who've assessed that Biden can't go on TikTok because of security concerns around the Chinese government's stake in the company.
Lawyers in the White House Counsel's Office, continually on edge over potential violations of the Hatch Act prohibitions around mixing politics and government, needed to review Biden's new "ultra MAGA" line in order for government-salaried aides to be allowed to repeat it, since having them talk about Donald Trump by name was deemed too political. "Congressional Republicans" was allowed for official statements because the term refers to a specific target, but using "Republicans" generally was also deemed too political.
Many in the West Wing are counting on the recent return of Anita Dunn, who helped both manage Biden and bring a directed sense of mission to the staff during an often otherwise haphazard presidential campaign. She'll be able to shake the President from patterns that have become ingrained, they believe, and to get everyone else organized ahead of the midterms around a clearer, more connected sense of mission.
A White House aide cited stats to show just how much aides have been able to do with Biden's online presence when they can get everyone on the same page. The video Biden shot in the Oval Office with BTS to talk about anti-Asian hate crimes racked up over 50 million views in the first 24 hours, the President's mental health chat with actress Selena Gomez passed 5 million, Jimmy Fallon at the Easter Egg Roll passed 4 million. Pop star Olivia Rodrigo's video with Biden on vaccines is at over 100 million views, but even a less snazzy YouTube town hall on vaccines is over 2 million views.
The irony, according to a number of top Democrats, is that with the country still battered and shaken from politics, the pandemic, the wobbly economy and just about everything else from the last few years, Joe Biden's persona has all the pieces to meet the moment -- if he came out to meet it.
He's the empathetic guy. He's the middle-class guy. He's the come together and work it out guy.
So, while some Democrats in tight races have started distancing themselves from Biden, others have kept asking aides to get more -- so long as he doesn't bring his podium along for the trip.
Rep. Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota working to hold onto his seat in the fall, said that he's struck by how much of a difference there was between the distant Biden whom he knows his constituents are seeing every day and the engaged President he talked with on Air Force One at the end of April, flying to the Land of 10,000 Lakes to attend the memorial service for Walter Mondale.
"I wish every American could have been with us because he was so engaging, empathetic, resolute, and kind. Those are his superpowers," Phillips said.
"It astounds and disappoints me that the magic of the tools of that office are being so under-utilized. He's the grandfather of the country at a time we need one more than ever. He should be giving fireside chats, speaking to -- and hearing from -- Americans directly about their concerns and anxieties. He has so much more to offer America than he has been able to share, and I still hope the country gets to see and feel what I did during that hour with him."
CNN · by Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN
21. FDD | Hamas as Tehran's Agent
Conclusion:
During the 2021 Gaza war, Tehran did not hide its patronage of Hamas. Supreme Leader Khamenei openly cheered Hamas.[64] Esmail Qaani, who succeeded Soleimani as Quds Force commander, called Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to offer moral support and lauded Hamas military chief Muhammad Deif as a “living martyr.” An IRGC statement warned that “in the future, the Zionists can expect to endure deadly blows from within the occupied territories.”[65] After the war, Haniyeh thanked “the Islamic Republic of Iran, [which] did not hold back with money, weapons, and technical support.”[66]
As of March 2022, according to one senior Israeli intelligence official, Hamas received $80 million annually from Iran. Hamas engineers are also studying precision guided munition (PGM) technology in Iran to learn how to target Israel more accurately in future wars.[67] And while Hamas has other patrons, including Turkey, Qatar, and Malaysia, none of them have influenced the organization’s military or financial capabilities like the Islamist regime in Tehran. This assistance and money will only grow if the Biden administration resuscitates the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and relaxes sanctions on Tehran.
FDD | Hamas as Tehran's Agent
fdd.org · by Jonathan Schanzer Senior Vice President for Research · June 2, 2022
Since the late 1980s, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been plying the Hamas terrorist group with cash and weapons while also teaching it how to be self-sufficient. With hundreds of millions of dollars from the Islamist Shiite regime in Tehran pouring into its coffers, the Sunni group has evolved over the past decades into the foremost Palestinian terror organization, capable of hitting Israel’s main population centers and strategic infrastructure. Yet Iran’s role is often overlooked when assessing the performance of Hamas in its multiple armed confrontations with Israel. Surprisingly, Israeli officials tend to downplay the Iranian regime’s role even though history shows that Tehran has played a major part. With continued Iranian assistance, Hamas can only be expected to grow in sophistication and lethality.
The Early Years
The Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas as it is known after its Arab acronym, is the Palestinian offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, with roots dating back to the late 1920s. It was founded under its current name in December 1987 during the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or intifada, with the explicit goal of destroying the State of Israel and “rais[ing] the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine,” as a stepping-stone to the creation of a worldwide Islamic community.[1]
Within a couple of years, the nascent terror organization found assistance from the Islamic Republic in Iran, following what Hamas spokesman Ibrahim Goshi called “meetings at the highest level.”[2] Until then, Tehran had primarily funded its Lebanese offshoot Hezbollah and, to a lesser extent, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a small terrorist group that also vowed to destroy Israel.
While Hamas attracted funds from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab sources, according to Israeli security sources, Iran initially provided it with an estimated US$30 million annually, along with military training abroad.[3] In 1991, Hamas opened offices in Tehran and, later that year, Tehran invited the organization to a conference with other Iranian clients to promote the “Islamic intifada.”[4]
Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin expected the PLO to counter the rise of Hamas.
With assistance from Iran, Hamas began to professionalize. In 1991, the organization established its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and the following year Egyptian intelligence reported that Iran was training up to three thousand Hamas terrorists.[5] That same year, a Hamas delegation led by Politburo chief Musa Abu Marzouk visited Tehran for meetings with key Iranian officials, report-edly including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.[6]
The Oslo Years
In September 1993, the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed a historic declaration of principles that provided for Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a transitional period of up to five years, during which Jerusalem and the Palestinians would negotiate a permanent peace settlement. The PLO had been exiled to Tunisia in 1982 after a decade of terror attacks on Israel launched from Lebanese soil. The PLO was further ostracized by most Arab states following its support for Saddam Hussein’s brutal occupation of Kuwait in 1990. For Yasser Arafat, the Oslo process offered a golden opportunity to reassert the PLO’s (and his own) relevance and to push Hamas to the periphery. Hamas was keenly aware of this as was Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who expected the PLO to counter the rise of Hamas without the constraints of Israel’s supreme court or human rights groups. Hamas, thus, vowed to derail the PLO’s “betrayal of the Palestinian cause.” The group found encouragement from Iran’s supreme leader, who urged Palestinian clerics to “fill their sermons with slogans against Israel and the White House and the treasonous PLO leaders.”[7]
In December 1993, Marzouk returned to Iran and met with President Ali Rafsanjani. Soon after, Hamas launched its first wave of suicide bombings—a tactic up to that point associated with the Iran-backed Hezbollah. Hamas’s first successful suicide bombing rocked the northern Israeli town of Afula in April 1994, and by the autumn, the organization had launched three more suicide bombings. Amidst the carnage, Osama Hamdan, the group’s envoy to Tehran, boasted of flourishing ties with the regime.[8]
During the 1990s, Hamas terrorists refined their tactics in Iranian training camps located in Iran, Syria, and Sudan. Indoctrinated by Iran and ready to die for their cause, the fighters returned to the West Bank and Gaza to carry out terror attacks and suicide bombings. Iran also hosted conferences with Hamas, PIJ, and other terror groups, during which the regime pledged money, training, arms, and operational guidance.[9] And while Arafat turned a blind eye to Hamas’s murderous campaign—if not tacitly encouraged it—his Gaza chief, Muhammad Dahlan, accused the organization of acting on behalf of “foreign interests”—a clear reference to Iran.[10]
In 1998, Hamas founding leader Ahmad Yassin visited Tehran for what was effectively a state visit where he lauded “Iran’s support for the Palestinians’ struggle against Israel.”[11] The following year, Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati boasted that “Iran is the main supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah and their struggle against Israel.”[12] By 2000, Iran had gifted Hamas as much as $50 million annually, plus training and other assistance.[13]
When Arafat waged his war of terror at the end of September 2000 (euphemized as “al-Aqsa Intifada”), Hamas viewed the development as both a vindication of its militant approach and a golden opportunity to erode the control of the PLO-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Gaza. So did the ayatollahs in Tehran, who quickly transferred at least an additional $400,000 to Hamas.[14] In April 2001, Hamas Politburo chief Khaled Meshal attended a conference in Iran alongside Hezbollah and PIJ leaders, asking the regime for political, financial, and military support.[15] According to a leaked South African document from later that year, Hamas maintained a military headquarters in Iran with the regime financing the organization through a “Fallen Soldiers Fund” in Lebanon.”[16] Israeli intelligence at the time assessed that Hamas leaders traveled to Tehran “every three to four weeks.”[17]
As the Palestinian war of terror progressed, Hamas took a leading role in the violence with Arafat’s tacit blessing. This allowed the PLO chairman to instigate the most horrendous atrocities and then feign innocence by ascribing them to “extremist fringe groups” over which he allegedly had no control. In the coming years, Hamas perpetrated the greatest number of terror attacks and the most gruesome suicide bombings, including the June 2001 bombing of a Tel Aviv disco in which twenty-one people were murdered and the March 2002 Passover massacre in which twenty-nine people were killed. The Passover massacre triggered Operation Defensive Shield, the biggest Israeli military operation since the 1982 Lebanon war, and signaled a turning point in the war of terror.[18]
By the time the Israelis quelled the Palestinian terrorist campaign in mid-2005, and despite their killing of top Hamas leaders (including Yassin), Hamas had emerged as equal politically and superior militarily to the PLO. This was the result of an Israel miscalculation; the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had emasculated the PLO’s West Bank’s terror infrastructure while leaving Hamas’ primarily Gaza-based infrastructure largely intact. This led to internecine strife in the territories, contributing to chaos that ultimately favored Hamas, not to mention its patron in Tehran.
Hamas Conquers Gaza
Jerusalem’s summer 2005 withdrawal of its military forces from the Gaza Strip and the evacuation of twenty-two Israeli villages with their 8,600-strong population[19] provided the next major boost for Hamas. Though the move was designed to bolster the PLO’s standing in the area, in the eyes of the local population, it appeared to be an Israeli defeat at the hands of Hamas as the group that had spearheaded the anti-Israel “armed struggle.”
The Gaza withdrawal was not the only Israeli error. Jerusalem also acquiesced in Washington’s call for Palestinian parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza (held on January 25, 2006). Again, the idea was to sideline Hamas, but instead the organization reaped the fruit of its burgeoning prestige and won 74 of the 132 parliamentary seats. Fatah, the PLO’s foremost constituent organization, which had dominated the Palestinian Authority since its creation in May 1994, was roundly defeated, winning only 45 seats.[20]
Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip provided a major boost for Hamas.
A stalemate ensued for a year-and-a-half as Mahmoud Abbas, who became PLO chairman and PA president upon Arafat’s death in November 2004, refused to recognize the elected Hamas government. Hamas responded by intensifying its military buildup in Gaza, taking full advantage of the Israeli withdrawal, which left the Philadelphi security route along the Egyptian border and the Rafah crossing—the strip’s main entry point to Egypt—wide open. This enabled Hamas to smuggle huge quantities of weapons and explosives into Gaza with significant help from Tehran. They did so through a network of rapidly expanding underground tunnels built with Iranian assistance. Hamas terrorists were also able to leave the enclave at will for training in Iran.[21]
No less importantly, the tunnels enabled Hamas to smuggle large sums of money into the strip with little difficulty. According to a prominent Hamas leader, Iran provided $22 million in cash in 2006. During a December 2006 Tehran visit by the Hamas-led government’s prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, the Khamenei regime pledged $250 million—a significant increase over previous years.[22]
A full-blown crisis emerged in early June 2007 when Hamas and the PLO fought for the strip’s control. By June 14, all of Gaza had come under Hamas’s domination with some 160 PLO fighters killed and another 700 wounded.[23] Tehran was suspected to be behind the Islamist group’s success, with U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice voicing concerns about Iranian support for Hamas during congressional testimony later that year.[24] Hamas never denied Tehran’s support. During his December 2006 visit to Tehran, Hanieh applauded the Islamic Republic as “the Palestinians’ strategic depth”—reaffirming the unanimity within the organization’s leadership regarding Tehran’s championship of the Palestinian cause:
[Israelis] assume the Palestinian nation is alone … This is an illusion … We have a strategic depth in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This country [Iran] is our powerful, dynamic, and stable depth.[25]
Hamas-affiliated journalist Zaki Chehab reported, “The Iranian connection is real and long-standing. It is one whose deep roots I witnessed at first hand.” He confirmed that by way of countering the sanctions on Hamas, Iran “was prepared to cover the entire deficit in the Palestinian budget, and [to do so] continuously.” The Bonyad-e Mostazafan za Janbaza (Foundation of the Oppressed and War Veterans), a fund controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reportedly provided significant support.[26] Hamas fighters also continued to train in Iran.[27]
The Early Gaza Wars
In the wake of the Gaza takeover, Washington attempted to halt Iranian assistance to Hamas. In July 2007, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Iran’s Martyrs Foundation, citing declassified intelligence showing that the foundation funneled money to Hamas, among others.[28] Later that year, Treasury targeted the IRGC’s elite Quds Force and Bank Saderat, also citing declassified evidence that they funded Hamas (as well as Hezbollah and PIJ).[29] However, Iranian cash continued to flow to Gaza as did Iranian weapons. The tunnels connecting Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula, many dug with Iranian funding or technical assistance, facilitated the smuggling of weapons to the coastal enclave.[30]
Better armed and trained than ever thanks to Tehran, and flush with large quantities of weapons and ammunition won by the defeat of the PLO/PA, Hamas continued to overhaul its fighting capabilities. By the end of 2008, according to Israeli intelligence sources, there were more than twenty thousand armed terrorists directly subordinate to the organization’s Izz ad-Din Brigades or designated to be integrated into this force during a conflict.[31]
By the end of 2008, according to Israeli intelligence sources, Hamas had more than twenty thousand armed terrorists.
This Iran-backed military buildup, together with its absolute control of the Gaza Strip, enabled Hamas to establish a balance of deterrence with Jerusalem whereby it disrupted the lives of a growing number of Israeli cities and villages at the relatively low cost of limited retaliatory Israeli air strikes. During 2008, 1,665 rockets landed in Israeli territory—more than twice the previous year and nearly ten times as many as in 2005—endangering the country’s strategic infrastructure (e.g., the Ashdod port, the Ashkelon power station, hospitals, educational and academic institutions) and disrupting the daily lives of nearly one million Israeli citizens—about 15 percent of the total population.[32] Many of these rockets were either provided by Iran, or were assembled locally with assistance from the Tehran regime.
In late February 2008, as Hamas intermittently battered Israeli population centers with rockets, Jerusalem mounted its first major military response. Operation Warm Winter was brief, just four days, targeting a handful of Hamas terrorists along with the organization’s rocket facilities.[33]
The next war came on December 27, 2008, eight days after Hamas had unilaterally abrogated an Egyptian-mediated, informal six-month lull agreement (tahdi’a) with Israel and resumed its rocket attacks. Codenamed Operation Cast Lead, Jerusalem’s immediate goal was to strike tunnels, rocket facilities, and other Hamas military assets built with Iranian largesse. One week into the war, the IDF sent in ground troops. Israeli troops found booby traps and other deadly surprises waiting for them, courtesy of Iran. The IDF pushed forward under air cover, achieving most of its objectives. By the time Jerusalem ended the operation on January 18, 2009, and withdrew its forces from Gaza after twenty-two days of fighting, Hamas’s infrastructure had been seriously damaged despite the organization’s attempts to downplay its losses.[34]
After Cast Lead, it was clear that Tehran was helping Hamas prepare for the next round. In January 2010, Mossad agents assassinated a senior Hamas official in Dubai who had acted as liaison to Iran for weapons procurement.[35] Seven months later, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a senior Quds Force official who, according to the accompanying press release, “oversees distribution of funds to Levant-based terrorist groups and provides financial support for designated terrorist entities including … Hamas.”[36] In March 2011, the IDF interdicted a Liberian ship sailing to Egypt and seized Iranian weapons, including anti-ship missiles, destined for Hamas. The following month, Israeli forces killed two Hamas weapons procurers, striking their car near Port Sudan in eastern Sudan—a jurisdiction that Iran often used to transfer weapons to the African continent. For its part, the State Department designated a senior Hamas official as a terrorist that year, noting extensive links to Iran.[37]
In March 2011, the IDF interdicted a Liberian ship and seized Iranian weapons destined for Hamas.
War came to Gaza again in 2012. This time the context was perhaps even more important than the conflict itself. On the night of October 23, Israeli fighter jets entered the skies over Khartoum and bombed the Yarmouk weapons factory, which belonged to the IRGC.[38] The targeted weapons—Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets—were bound for Gaza and Hamas.
Three weeks later, as Hamas once again fired rockets into southern Israel, the Israeli Air Force launched Operation Pillar of Defense against Hamas targets throughout the strip. The operation’s primary target was the Iranian-provided Fajr-5 rockets, most of which (about 100) were destroyed in the early days of fighting.[39]
The following year, the speaker of Iran’s parliament met with Imad Alami, the Hamas representative to Tehran and a key figure in procuring funds and weapons, who had been sanctioned a decade earlier by U.S. Treasury.[40] Suspicions that the meeting was part of an Iranian effort to replenish Hamas’s arsenal were confirmed in March 2014 when the IDF intercepted a Panamanian-flagged cargo vessel carrying Iranian-supplied M-302 rockets and other advanced weapons bound for Gaza.[41]
War began again in early July 2014 and lasted for fifty-one days (July 4-August 21). Hamas fired nearly five thousand rockets and missiles that struck deep in Israeli territory with some targeting Jerusalem and even Israel’s international airport. As Hamas rockets were pounding Israel’s cities and villages, an Iranian official boasted that Tehran was “sending rockets and military aid [to the organization].” Following the war, Khamenei’s foreign affairs advisor Ali Akbar Velayati stated, “Without the help of Iran, [Hamas] could not have obtained these rockets, with such long range and accuracy.”[42]
Velayati was not lying. Hamas’s longer-range M-302 and M-75 rockets had been smuggled to Gaza courtesy of Iran. Hamas also had more shorter-range rockets thanks to Tehran, as the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, boasted.[43] During the war, the IDF was also surprised by the extent of Hamas’s underground attack tunnels that snaked into Israeli territory, believed to have been built with Iranian assistance.[44]
After the conflict, Hamas’s deputy leader Abu Marzouk spoke of positive “bilateral relations between us and the Islamic Republic of Iran” while Qassem Soleimani, Quds Force commander and a favored Khamenei protégé, described Hamas leaders as “my dear brothers” and reaffirmed Tehran’s support.[45]
On September 9, 2015, U.S. Treasury sanctioned four Hamas financial facilitators and one company. Among those sanctioned was Saleh Arouri, head of Hamas military operations in the West Bank, who was also a Hamas fundraiser. In the years that followed, Arouri visited Iran at least five times.[46]
In August 2019, the Treasury Department issued more sanctions, this time targeting “financial facilitators moving tens of millions of dollars between Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and HAMAS’s operational arm, the Izz-Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza.” One key figure Treasury indicated was Muhammad Sarur,
[a] middle-man between the IRGC-QF and HAMAS and worked with Hezbollah operatives to ensure funds were provided to the Izz-Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades. … in the past four years, the IRGC-QF transferred over U.S. $200 million dollars to the Izz-Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades.[47]
In May 2020, Iran’s supreme leader stated,
Iran realized Palestinian fighters’ only problem was lack of access to weapons. With divine guidance and assistance, we planned, and the balance of power has been transformed in Palestine, and today the Gaza Strip can stand against the aggression of the Zionist enemy and defeat it.[48]
A few months later, Jerusalem seized $4 million from Gaza businessman Zuhair Shamalach, who tried to funnel the money from Iran to Hamas.[49]
Iranian Arms Fuel 2021 Gaza War
On May 10, 2021, Hamas again began firing rockets toward Jerusalem. The terror group claimed to be defending al-Aqsa Mosque from “Zionist machinations”—the standard Palestinian-Arab rallying cry for anti-Jewish violence since the 1920s. But there was another aspect to its action that escaped notice at the time: the growing number of Israeli strikes against Iranian targets in Syria in an attempt to halt Tehran’s military entrenchment in that country and the smuggling of advanced weapons to Hezbollah.
In April, weeks before the war, an Iranian general warned,
The Zionists imagine that they can continuously target the Syrian territories and conduct mischief in different places and in the sea and receive no response. … the Resistance Front will give a principal response.[50]
Similarly, IRGC commander Hossein Salami declared that “the evil deeds committed by the Zionists in the region will turn against themselves and expose them to real dangers in the future.” Shortly thereafter, Salami declared that Israel’s “biggest weakness is that any tactical action could bring about a strategic defeat … just a single operation can ruin this regime.”[51]
Once war erupted, Hamas revealed the advances it made with Iranian help, firing off larger salvos of rockets than ever before. Also, as analyst Michael J. Armstrong observed,
Accuracy has improved … About 50 per cent of the rockets arriving over Israel have threatened populated areas. That’s up from 22 per cent in 2012 and 18 per cent in 2014. Fewer rockets land in empty fields after missing their targets.[52]
For the IDF, rocket range was also a concern. Most Hamas rockets were short-range threats. The locally produced Ayyash rocket, however, could fly 240 kilometers, reaching deep into Israel. Hamas claimed to have thousands of rockets with a similar range, thanks to Iran. It also managed to import Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets from Iran and M-302 rockets from Syria, with ranges of 480, 750, and 180 kilometers, respectively.[53]
Hamas also succeeded in flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the skies over Israel. Hamas said its drones were built locally, but weapons specialists noted similarities with Iranian drones. Ephraim Sneh, a retired Israeli brigadier general and former deputy defense minister, noted, “The design [of Hamas weapons] is Iranian but the production is local.” Or as Scott Crino, the CEO of consulting firm Red Six Solutions, said, “Iran’s hands are all over this.” Upon closer examination, the Shehab Kamikaze drones Hamas launched at Israel resembled the Iranian Ababil-T and Qasef-series UAVs deployed in Yemen by the Iran-backed Houthis.[54]
The May 2021 Gaza war also witnessed another Hamas innovation with Iranian assistance: unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). The Israeli navy intercepted one, reportedly deployed to attack the Tamar offshore natural gas rig. The UUV was reportedly a commercial vehicle converted for military use and loaded with up to 110 pounds of explosives.[55]
The 2021 war also revealed a massive underground project, which the IDF called the “Hamas Metro.” This labyrinth of subterranean commando tunnels was suspected to have been built with Iranian financial or even technical assistance.[56]
Hamas in Lebanon
One aspect of the 2021 Gaza war that baffled the Israeli political and security establishments was the mass riots by Israel’s Arabs in support of Hamas. The cities of Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Ramla, and Lod, among others—long considered show-cases of Arab-Jewish coexistence—were rocked by violence as Arab rioters attacked their Jewish neighbors, burned cars, synagogues, and other buildings, threw stones and Molotov cocktails, and even fired weapons. Here, too, Iran had a hand. As noted by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Israeli security officials see the outbreak of violence by Israeli Arabs as a response to incitement choreographed by Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards sitting in a Beirut command center.[57]
The existence of this command center was confirmed by a senior Israeli intelligence official.[58]
Iran’s role was evident in other ways, too. On the night of May 13, terrorists fired three rockets at Israel from Lebanon; all landed in the Mediterranean Sea. Four days later, another six rockets were fired into Israel from the Shebaa Farms border area on the intersection of the Lebanese-Syrian-Israeli border; all landed in Lebanese territory. On May 19, terrorists fired four more projectiles from near the city of Tyre. Israel’s Iron Dome defense system knocked one out of the sky. Another landed in an uninhabited area, and two more splashed into the Mediterranean.[59]
Israel’s U.N. ambassador warned, “Hamas has been building its own military force covertly in Lebanon.”
The rockets were a reminder of Jerusalem’s warning to the United Nations in 2017 that Hamas was “colluding with Hezbollah and its sponsor in Tehran to expand its malicious activities … to areas within Lebanon.” A 2018 letter by Israel’s U.N. ambassador Danny Dannon further detailed the military cooperation between Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas in Lebanon. It placed a special emphasis on an operation
led by Saleh al-Arouri, the Lebanon-based deputy head of Hamas’ Politburo, and Saeed Izadi, head of the Palestinian Branch of the Iranian al-Quds Force … Iran has publicly declared its commitment to increase its support for Hamas.[60]
The letter also stated that
Hamas has been building its own military force covertly in Lebanon. Hamas has recruited and trained hundreds of fighters … who will operate as a force on Hamas’ behalf in Lebanon. At the direction of Hamas operative Majid Hader, Hamas has assembled infrastructure in Lebanon ready to manufacture its own missiles and unmanned aircraft. … [Hamas] also intends to use its armed force and growing arsenal of rockets to pull Lebanon into conflict with Israel. This intention increases the possibility of a conflict that could engulf the entire Middle East.[61]
That same year, then-Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman warned that “Hamas was trying to build a ‘post’ in Lebanon.”[62] One Lebanese outlet picked up on the story, noting that Hamas intended to drag Lebanon into a future Hamas-Israel conflict, forcing Israel to fight on two fronts.[63]
Conclusion
During the 2021 Gaza war, Tehran did not hide its patronage of Hamas. Supreme Leader Khamenei openly cheered Hamas.[64] Esmail Qaani, who succeeded Soleimani as Quds Force commander, called Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to offer moral support and lauded Hamas military chief Muhammad Deif as a “living martyr.” An IRGC statement warned that “in the future, the Zionists can expect to endure deadly blows from within the occupied territories.”[65] After the war, Haniyeh thanked “the Islamic Republic of Iran, [which] did not hold back with money, weapons, and technical support.”[66]
As of March 2022, according to one senior Israeli intelligence official, Hamas received $80 million annually from Iran. Hamas engineers are also studying precision guided munition (PGM) technology in Iran to learn how to target Israel more accurately in future wars.[67] And while Hamas has other patrons, including Turkey, Qatar, and Malaysia, none of them have influenced the organization’s military or financial capabilities like the Islamist regime in Tehran. This assistance and money will only grow if the Biden administration resuscitates the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and relaxes sanctions on Tehran.
Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War (FDD Press, 2021). Follow him on Twitter @JSchanzer. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Jonathan Schanzer Senior Vice President for Research · June 2, 2022
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
