Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

- George Bernard Shaw

“We must be ready to dare all for our country. For history does not long and trust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. We must be willing, individually, and as a nation, to accept whatever sacrifices may be required of us. A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”

- Dwight D Eisenhower.

"We must either learn to live together as brothers, or we are all going to perish together as fools."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

1. Israel Was Prepared for a Different War

2. CNN Boss Mark Thompson to Staff: Network Is ‘Nowhere Near Ready for the Future’

3. The Gaza Strip and its history, explained

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 9, 2023

5. Iran Update, October 9, 2023

6. Hamas received weapons and training from Iran, officials say

7. The Israel-Hamas War Is Drowning X in Disinformation

8.'Menu of options': What the Ford carrier strike group brings to Israel's defense

9. In wake of Hamas attack, Israel may have to change intel, tech strategy

10. Wake Up, Washington

11. US Army moves to pre-position materials in Pacific

12. Potential flash points for World War 3 – an analysis

13. Hamas’s Global Test for Biden

14.U.S. Can't Easily Meet Israel's Requests for Ammo, Official Says

15. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: A chronology

16. Vietnam tried to hack U.S. officials, CNN with posts on X, probe finds

17. Change of plans: US Army embraces lessons learned from war in Ukraine

18. US Weaves web of intelligence links in Asia

19. Israel’s Intelligence Failure

20. Israel’s 9/11? How Hamas Terrorist Attacks Will Change the Middle East

21. There Is No Consensus on American Decline in Beijing

1.Israel Was Prepared for a Different War

We should ask ourselves: Are we preparing for the right war in Asia?

Israel Was Prepared for a Different War

The Israeli military’s focus on intelligence, air power and technology left it vulnerable to a low-tech ground assault

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-military-preparedness-gaza-west-bank-ad1a6313

By Rory JonesFollow

and Dion NissenbaumFollow

Oct. 9, 2023 9:00 pm ET

TEL AVIV—Israel spent three years building a 40-mile-long, state-of-the-art, high-tech security barrier along the Gaza Strip, with radar and sensors designed to detect furtive incursions by Palestinians bent on carrying out covert attacks in Israel.

On Saturday, Hamas used bulldozers and other rudimentary means to punch through the 20-foot-high fence and flooded men through the gaps in pickups and on foot, a frontal assault on southern Israel that was the largest breach of the country’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

It was a stark illustration of the limits to the Israeli military’s shift in focus to cyber capabilities, intelligence-gathering and advanced weaponry and its concentration on countering terrorist attacks. The armed forces were caught off guard by a relatively low-tech ground assault.

Now, the Israeli military is preparing for the possibility of a large-scale operation in Gaza, where it will have to rely more heavily on infantry and conventional artillery, areas deprioritized in recent years, and where it could be drawn into street-by-street fighting and urban warfare.

Israel’s military “has been preparing for the wrong war,” said Avi Jager, a researcher at the Israel-based International Institute for Counter-Terrorism.

Recent military attention was directed at the West Bank, where Israel deployed forces to quell a Palestinian militant insurgency. Israeli intelligence warnings of potential war had focused on the north and the threat from Hezbollah, Hamas’s Lebanese ally, military analysts said.

Palestinians broke through the border fence with Israel from the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday. PHOTO: ZUMA PRESS

A Palestinian gunman who infiltrated Israel through the border fence on Saturday. PHOTO: STRINGER/REUTERS

Until Saturday, Israeli officials widely believed a policy of boosting Gaza’s economy meant the leaders of Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Europe and Israel, had no interest in launching the kind of cross-border attack it staged.

At the same time, as the weekend’s events showed, Hamas has become more sophisticated. Saturday’s assault used a combination of missiles, naval vessels, drones and armed fighters who reached as far as the city of Ofakim, more than 20 miles inside Israel.

“Israel has suffered a strategic surprise, despite all its sophisticated high-tech, weaponry, spyware and world-renowned intelligence agency,” said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator with the Palestinians and president of U.S./Middle East Project, which works to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict. “Israel cannot keep its people safe anymore—and that will be hard to recover from.”

Israeli Army Chief: ‘Long’ Fighting Ahead as Troops Gather Near Gaza

CNN Boss Mark Thompson to Staff: Network Is ‘Nowhere Near Ready for the Future’

In video message on first day, Thompson urges staff to avoid distracting debates about balance and false equivalency

By Isabella Simonetti

Oct. 9, 2023 6:17 pm ET

Mark Thompson said he would draw on his earlier experience as CEO of the New York Times to modernize CNN. PHOTO: SANJIT DAS/BLOOMBERG NEWS

CNN Chief Executive Mark Thompson told staff that the network needs to step up its digital game, saying conventional TV “can no longer define us,” and said its journalists shouldn’t be distracted by debates about balance or false equivalency.

Speaking to employees in a video message on Monday, his first official day at CNN, Thompson said he would draw on his earlier experience as CEO of the

New York Times to modernize the network. “For most people under retirement age, the first place they turn for news is their phones, not their TVs. And news players who can’t or won’t respond to that revolution risk losing their audience and their business,” Thompson said.

He said CNN needs to act swiftly, and that despite some progress, such as the recent launch of CNN Max—a collection of programming from the network on the Max streaming service—“this company is still nowhere near ready for the future.”

“TV is vital and there’s urgent work to do there, especially as we rebuild prime time. But TV is also too dominant at CNN and digital too marginal,” Thompson said.

Let’s cover political news proportionately and fairly, but not be frightened of our own shadows.”

Thompson spent eight years as CEO of the Times, stepping down in 2020 after supersizing its digital-subscription business and expanding into areas such as cooking and games.

Even before his first official day, Thompson had been meeting with some CNN employees. He arrives after the tumultuous tenure of former CNN boss Chris Licht, who sought to push the network’s coverage to the political center.

That strategy ran into problems—notably, when CNN held a town hall with former President Donald Trump that prompted criticism from staffers and a variety of political pundits. Critics said CNN could have aired a pretaped, edited interview with Trump instead. Licht left the network abruptly in June after an unflattering profile in the Atlantic.

Licht’s critics said he focused too much on the TV operation—its editorial philosophy and lineup of talent—and not enough on digital operations. The TV business is where the bulk of the profits are, given longstanding and lucrative arrangements with cable providers. But that business is shrinking and the ad business has been choppy.

CNN has some formidable digital assets, including one of the most-trafficked news sites on the web. In October 2022, the network hired Athan Stephanopoulos, the former president of NowThis, a news outlet focused on young audiences, to serve as its chief digital officer and help expand CNN’s digital products.

Write to Isabella Simonetti at isabella.simonetti@wsj.com

Appeared in the October 10, 2023, print edition as 'CNN Boss Prods Network on Digital'.

3. The Gaza Strip and its history, explained

Please go to the link for proper formatting and to view the graphics: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/09/gaza-strip-israel-hamas-explained/

The Gaza Strip and its history, explained

By Timothy Bella

Updated October 9, 2023 at 3:16 p.m. EDT|Published October 9, 2023 at 1:42 p.m. EDT

Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip on Monday. (Fatima Shbair/AP)

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Israel is at war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, and more than 1,200 people have been killed in the days since the group’s surprise attack on Saturday signaled a major escalation of the conflict between the two sides and engulfed the region in chaos.

Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

As images and videos of the devastation come out of Israel, many are also watching the violence unfolding on the Gaza Strip, one of the world’s most densely populated and impoverished strips of land. Israel ordered a siege of the Gaza Strip on Monday, with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying there would be “no electricity, no food, no fuel” for the more than 2 million Palestinians living there.

Live updates: Israel-Hamas war

Here’s what to know about the Gaza Strip and its history up to the current war between Israel and Hamas:

WHAT TO KNOW

What is the Gaza Strip?

Return to menu

The Gaza Strip is a small area bordering Israel and Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of two Palestinian territories. The other is the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem and borders Jordan and the Dead Sea.

Beirut

Population density

LEBANON

Low

High

Damascus

SYRIA

Mediterranean Sea

Tel Aviv

WEST

BANK

Amman

Gaza City

Jerusalem

GAZA

ISRAEL

EGYPT

JORDAN

Sinai

Peninsula

100 MILES

Cairo

Population

density

Haifa

2019 population:

285,316

High

Nazareth

ISRAEL

Low

Jenin

Netanya

Tulkarm

Nablus

161,630

Qalqilya

Tel Aviv

WEST

BANK

460,613

Ben Gurion

Airport

Ramallah

Modin

Jericho

Ashdod

225,939

Jerusalem

936,425

1949 armistice

Green Line

Ashkelon

Bethlehem

Gaza City

614,071

Hebron

210,081

ISRAEL

GAZA

Dead

Sea

Khan Younis

Rafah

180,354

Beersheba

10 MILES

EGYPT

Gaza was part of the Ottoman Empire before being occupied by the United Kingdom from 1918 to 1948 and Egypt from 1948 to 1967. Nearly 20 years after Israel declared its statehood in 1948, the country captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war. Palestinians claim these territories and see them as part of a future state.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: A chronology

Israel controlled Gaza for 38 years, building up 21 Jewish settlements in that period. Tension and violence sustained for years, including the first intifada, a stretch of nearly four years of protests and riots in the Palestinian territories and Israel over Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The bloodshed led Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to say in 1992, “I would like Gaza to sink into the sea, but that won’t happen, and a solution must be found.”

In 1993, the agreements known as the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization aimed at fulfilling the “right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.” In 1994, Palestinians took control as the governmental authority of Gaza. Part of the larger push for peace involved Israel following through on a unilateral disengagement plan proposed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2003 that would dismantle the Israeli settlements on the Gaza Strip.

In 2005, Israel gave up control of the Gaza Strip under domestic and international pressure, withdrawing 9,000 Israeli settlers and military forces from Gaza.

Who governs the Gaza Strip? When did Hamas take control?

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Hamas, one of the two major political parties in the Palestinian territories, clashed with Palestinian leaders as the Oslo accords were being brokered in the ’90s. Hamas came into power in Gaza after winning the 2006 election. No elections have been held since then.

What is Hamas, and why did it attack Israel now?

Even though Israel gave up control of the Gaza Strip, it has kept a land, air and sea blockade on Gaza since 2007. The result has been damaging for Palestinians, with the United Nations saying in 2009 that the blockade from both Israel and Egypt had been “devastating livelihoods” and causing gradual “de-development” in Gaza. Israel has argued the blockade has been done to keep control of Gaza’s border, obstruct Hamas from getting stronger and protect Israelis from Palestinian rocket attacks.

The blockade has faced criticism by human rights groups and the U.N., which consider Gaza to still be under Israeli military occupation. The U.N. estimates that the blockade has cost the Palestinian territory’s economy nearly $17 billion over roughly a decade. The International Committee of the Red Cross has gone one step further in recent years to say the blockade violates the Geneva Conventions — a claim that Israeli officials have rejected.

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: A chronology

How a night of dancing and revelry in Israel turned into a massacre

Grief and anger in southern Israel as fight against militants continues

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Israeli forces still pursuing militants in southern Israel

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End of carousel

How many people live on the Gaza Strip? Who lives there?

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More than 2 million people live in Gaza, making it “one of the world’s most densely populated territories,” according to Gisha, an Israeli nongovernmental organization.

At roughly 140 square miles, the Gaza Strip is just over twice the size of Washington, D.C., but has triple the population. Gaza is smaller than the West Bank, which is more than 2,200 square miles.

Gaza

City

Gaza

2.1 million

people

Washington D.C.

Khan

Younis

690,000

Rafah

5 MILES

The population in Gaza is extraordinarily young. UNICEF has estimated that there are roughly 1 million children living in the Gaza Strip, meaning almost half of the people in Gaza are children. Almost 40 percent of the population is under the age of 15, according to the CIA.

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More than 1.4 million of the residents of the Gaza Strip are Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

From 2021: How conflict, blockades and history have shaped the geography of Gaza

The territory has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, World Bank statistics show, and the U.N. estimates that roughly 80 percent of the population relies on international aid to survive and access basic services.

“For at least the last decade and a half, the socioeconomic situation in Gaza has been in steady decline,” the UNRWA website says. “There are now very few options left for the people of Gaza, who have been living under collective punishment as a result of the blockade that continues to have a devastating effect as people’s movement to and from the Gaza Strip, as well as access to markets, remains severely restricted.”

What makes the Gaza Strip vulnerable?

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Since Gaza City is more densely populated than Tel Aviv and other major cities around the world such as London and Shanghai, targeted counterstrikes like the ones Israel launched in recent days have a high likelihood of hitting civilians. Previous conflicts have killed hundreds of children. After more than 700 Israelis were killed in Hamas’s surprise attacks over the weekend, according to Israeli media, a swelling counterattack by Israeli forces in Gaza also killed at least 560 people, according to the local health ministry, including at least 78 children.

Living conditions in Gaza are bleak: 95 percent of the population does not have access to clean water, according to the UNRWA, and electricity shortages periodically bring life to a halt.

The Gaza Strip heavily relies on Israel for water, electricity and food. The primary imports for Gaza are food, consumer goods and construction materials from Israel and Egypt, its two main trade partners. Most of Gaza’s fresh fruit and vegetables come from the farms along its border with Israel.

Gaza gets most of its electricity from Israel, though the strip does have one aged power plant. The enclave has groundwater sources, but many wells have become ruined by pollution and saltwater. More than 90 percent of the water in Gaza’s sole aquifer is no longer potable.

Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, told the Southern Command on Monday that there would be a “full siege” of the Gaza Strip in the early stages of the war — cutting off all electricity, food and fuel.

Ruby Mellen, Laris Karklis and Júlia Ledur contributed to this report.

Israel-Hamas war

Israel announced a full siege of the Gaza Strip a day after issuing a formal declaration of war against Hamas after an unprecedented attack by the militant group surprised Israeli security forces. As the death toll rises on both sides, follow live updates.

Photos and videos: See scenes from the Gaza Strip and videos verified by The Washington Post of Palestinian fighters breaching the border. Read first-hand accounts from an Israeli music festival that was among the first targets in the attacks.

Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Here is a timeline of the decades-old problem that led to the recent flare-up and what to know about the more recent violence in Israel and Gaza. Learn about the Gaza Strip and its history up to the current war.

Americans killed: Nine U.S. citizens have been killed and others are unaccounted for, the State Department said Monday. At least a half-dozen other nations are working to verify similar reports about their own citizens.

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By Timothy Bella

Timothy Bella is a staff writer and editor for the General Assignment team, focusing on national news. His work has appeared in outlets such as Esquire, the Atlantic, New York magazine and the Undefeated. Twitter

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 9, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-9-2023

Key Takeaways:

The Kremlin remains focused on promoting the purported legality and legitimacy of Russian internal politics despite Kremlin officials’ admissions to the contrary.
Peskov’s strong comments also indicate the Kremlin's desire to posture confidence and steadfastness against the backdrop of Kremlin concerns over Russian opinions on and support for Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations and reportedly advanced in western Zaporizhia Oblast and near Bakhmut on October 9 amid reports of deteriorating weather conditions in Ukraine.
Russian forces reportedly launched localized offensive operations south of Hulyaipole, Zaporizhia Oblast, and may have reorganized the Southern Grouping of Forces, likely in an attempt to further defend against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations.
Imprisoned former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin reiterated his previous claims that the Russian military will continue to conduct a strategic defense to freeze the frontlines before the Russian presidential elections in March 2024.
The Russian government is moving toward revoking Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on October 9.
Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut, in western Donetsk Oblast, and western Zaporizhia Oblast, and reportedly advanced in some areas.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 9, 2023

Oct 9, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 9, 2023

Grace Mappes, Karolina Hird, Nicole Wolkov, Christina Harward, and Mason Clark

October 9, 2023, 5:15pm ET

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1pm ET on October 9. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the October 10 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

NOTE: ISW has added a new section on Russian information operations and narratives to the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, found at the end of the update.

The Kremlin remains focused on promoting the purported legality and legitimacy of Russian internal politics despite Kremlin officials’ admissions to the contrary. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded on October 9 to Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov’s October 7 proposal to cancel the upcoming 2024 presidential election and instead hold a unanimous vote for Russian President Vladimir Putin, remarking that this will not happen because Putin has “emphasized the need to comply with all of the requirements of democracy, the constitution, and accordingly, to hold these elections.”[1] Peskov then claimed that Russian society has consolidated behind Putin with unprecedented unanimity and suggested that Putin is “a politician with whom it is unlikely that anyone, even theoretically, can compete in any way electorally.”[2] Peskov’s statements indicate that while the Kremlin is invested in creating the guise that the 2024 elections will be free and fair by encouraging Russians to at least nominally participate in the practices of democracy, the Russian government does not intend for any alternative political candidate to pose an actual threat to Putin’s re-election. Russian opposition outlet Meduza similarly noted in July that its internal sources claimed that the Kremlin has already decided that Putin will win over 80 percent of the vote in the upcoming presidential elections.[3]

Peskov’s strong comments also indicate the Kremlin's desire to posture confidence and steadfastness against the backdrop of Kremlin concerns over Russian opinions on and support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Peskov’s suggestion that Russia intends to hold regular elections has the effect of emphasizing that Russia is still a functioning and confident state despite the war, and the insinuation that Putin will win the elections unanimously also frames him as an effective and capable war-time leader with the total support of his society. ISW has recently reported on several instances of the Kremlin strengthening efforts to control the information space and seeking to dispel concerns over another mobilization wave prior to 2024, enabling the Kremlin to consolidate its narratives within the Russian information space.[4] ISW has also consistently observed several indicators that the Kremlin is concerned about the impact of the war on domestic Russian support for Putin and his regime, including refusing to conduct additional mobilization or otherwise move Russian society to a full wartime footing.[5]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations and reportedly advanced in western Zaporizhia Oblast and near Bakhmut on October 9 amid reports of deteriorating weather conditions in Ukraine. The Ukrainian General Staff and Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun reported that Ukrainian forces achieved partial success west of Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv), and near Klishchiivka (5km southwest of Bakhmut) and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[6] Russian milbloggers claimed that rainfall has worsened visibility in southern Ukraine, hindering Russian and Ukrainian reconnaissance drone operations.[7] One Russian milblogger claimed that the ground has become muddy and obstructs tracked vehicle movement, though another milblogger claimed that the ground has not yet become muddy enough to inhibit vehicle movement.[8] Exact conditions likely vary along the frontline, though weather conditions are generally worsening. Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash reported that Russian forces are relying less heavily on aviation and drone activity in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction due to heavy rainfall.[9]

Russian forces reportedly launched localized offensive operations south of Hulyaipole, Zaporizhia Oblast, and may have reorganized the Southern Grouping of Forces, likely in an attempt to further defend against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations. A Russian milblogger and a Ukrainian military observer both independently reported that elements of the Russian 64th Motorized Rifle Brigade (35th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) advanced several hundred meters in a contested ”gray zone” in the Marfopil-Chervone (6km southeast of Hulyaipole) direction on October 9.[10] Russian forces reportedly attacked at the battalion level or less, indicating that these operations are likely tactical and aim to draw and pin Ukrainian forces south of Hulyaipole rather than further west in Zaporizhia Oblast.[11] The Ukrainian military observer reported that the Russian military command recently reorganized the Southern Grouping of Forces to operate in two directions: the Mariupol direction in the western Donetsk Oblast; and the Berdyansk direction in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area, where Russian forces have concentrated the most and highest quality forces.[12] The observer reported that this grouping contains mostly motorized rifle units; the Eastern Military District’s (EMD) “most powerful” army, the 5th Combined Arms Army (CAA); the EMD’s two “least powerful” armies, the 29th and 36th CAAs; the Black Sea Fleet’s 40th and 155th Naval Infantry brigades; and the Pacific Fleet’s 336th Naval Infantry Brigade.[13] The military observer reported that the Russian military command has prioritized allocating additional new forces and means to the Southern Grouping of Forces over other force groupings in the theater.[14]

Imprisoned former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin reiterated his previous claims that the Russian military will continue to conduct a strategic defense to freeze the frontlines before the Russian presidential elections in March 2024. Girkin’s wife published a letter on October 9 which Girkin reportedly wrote on September 29 in which Girkin discussed the current state of the war and his forecast of Russian actions. Girkin has continually claimed that a specific faction within the Russian leadership has advocated for freezing the current frontline in Ukraine and has opposed another faction that advocates for continued Russian offensive operations and domestically improving the war effort.[15] Girkin claimed he is “99 percent” certain that the Kremlin will decide to “freeze the frontline” until after the Russian presidential elections in March 2024.[16] Girkin claimed that Russian forces will likely continue conducting a strategic defense on the existing frontlines and focus on preventing Ukrainian breakthroughs or “sensitive operational successes.”[17] Girkin further claimed that any Russian government actions to strengthen the Russian military before the 2024 presidential elections would likely aggravate the Russian social, economic, and internal political situations.[18] Girkin also claimed that the Russian government would likely gradually increase domestic repressions ahead of the elections.[19]

The Russian government is moving toward revoking Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Reuters reported on October 9 that Russian State Duma leaders gave the Duma International Affairs Committee until October 18 to discuss the process of revoking Russia’s ratification of the treaty.[20] Russian President Vladimir Putin first commented on the possibility of Russia revoking Russia’s ratification of the treaty on October 5.[21] ISW has previously assessed that the Kremlin uses nuclear rhetoric to prompt the United States and its allies to pressure Ukraine to negotiate and that Russian nuclear use in Ukraine remains unlikely.[22]

Key Takeaways:

The Kremlin remains focused on promoting the purported legality and legitimacy of Russian internal politics despite Kremlin officials’ admissions to the contrary.
Peskov’s strong comments also indicate the Kremlin's desire to posture confidence and steadfastness against the backdrop of Kremlin concerns over Russian opinions on and support for Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations and reportedly advanced in western Zaporizhia Oblast and near Bakhmut on October 9 amid reports of deteriorating weather conditions in Ukraine.
Russian forces reportedly launched localized offensive operations south of Hulyaipole, Zaporizhia Oblast, and may have reorganized the Southern Grouping of Forces, likely in an attempt to further defend against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations.
Imprisoned former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin reiterated his previous claims that the Russian military will continue to conduct a strategic defense to freeze the frontlines before the Russian presidential elections in March 2024.
The Russian government is moving toward revoking Russia’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on October 9.
Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut, in western Donetsk Oblast, and western Zaporizhia Oblast, and reportedly advanced in some areas.

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied areas
Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Kupyansk on October 9 but did not make confirmed advances. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces captured unspecified positions near Ivanivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk) and northeast of Kupyansk.[23] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk) and Ivanivka.[24] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash reported that Russian operations near Synkivka and Ivanivka have escalated despite a decrease in aviation and drone activity in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction due to heavy rainfall.[25]

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed on October 9 that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Synkivka and Orlyanka (22km east of Kupyansk).[26]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line on October 9 and did not make confirmed gains. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 1km near Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna) and captured unspecified positions near Nevske (18km northwest of Kreminna), though ISW has not observed visual evidence to confirm this claim.[27] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Makiivka.[28] Footage published on October 9 purportedly shows elements of the 88th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People's Republic Army Corps) operating near Berestove (30km south of Kreminna).[29]

The Russian MoD claimed on October 9 that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Makiivka, Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna), Torske (15km west of Kreminna), and the Serebryanske forest area (11km south of Kreminna).[30]

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

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Bakhmut direction on October 9 and reportedly advanced. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces achieved partial success southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka (5km southwest) and Andriivka (10km southwest).[31] Russian milbloggers claimed that heavy fighting is ongoing for tactical heights near the railway line between Klishchiivka and Andriivka.[32]

Russian forces continued counterattacks in the Bakhmut direction on October 9 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks north of Bohdanivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka, and Andriivka.[33] Ukrainian “Rubizh” Rapid Response Brigade Spokesperson Pavlo Storozhuk noted that Russian forces have changed their tactics in the Bakhmut direction and are increasingly using small groups of four to eight people to bypass Ukrainian forces by “maneuvering competently” instead of throwing large waves of infantry at Ukrainian positions.[34] The Ukrainian 3rd Separate Assault Brigade reported that its fighters captured the commander of the “Alga” volunteer battalion of the 72nd Motorized Rifle Brigade (3rd Army Corps, Western Military District).[35] A Russian obituary posted on October 8 confirms that elements of the 331st Guards Airborne (VDV) Regiment (98th VDV Division) are fighting in the Andriivka area.[36]

Ukrainian forces did not conduct any claimed or confirmed ground attacks on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on October 9.

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on October 9 and made marginal advances south of Donetsk City. Geolocated footage posted on October 9 shows that Russian forces have advanced southeast of Novomykhailivka (about 12km southwest of Donetsk City).[37] Ukrainian military sources stated that Russian forces conducted nearly 15 unsuccessful attacks north of Donetsk City near Avdiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Marinka and Novomykhailivka.[38] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces are continuing ground attacks along the entire Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline.[39] One milblogger noted that “Storm-Z” assault units and elements of the 39th Motorized Rifle Brigade (68th Army Corps, Eastern Military District) advanced south of Novomykhailivka.[40] One milblogger characterized the pace of operations near Novomykhailivka as “creeping” and noted that Russian forces have failed to take the settlement and open avenues for further attacks into western Donetsk Oblast.[41]

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

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area but did not make any confirmed advances on October 9. Russian sources claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Pryyutne (16km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) and Mykilske (3km southeast of Vuhledar and about 30km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[42] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces continue attempts to seize the tactical battlefield initiative near Pryyutne.[43]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area but did not advance on October 9. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) and Levadne (18km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[44] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Mykilske and Novodonetske (13km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[45]

Some Russian and Ukrainian sources indicated that Russian forces conducted localized offensive operations south of Hulyaipole and made tactical territorial gains on October 9. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian and Ukrainian forces are fighting meeting engagements near Marfopil (9km south of Hulyaipole), and the milblogger claimed that Russian forces have gained the tactical initiative in the area.[46] A Ukrainian military observer reported that elements of the Russian 64th Motorized Rifle Brigade (35th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) advanced several hundred meters in a contested “gray zone” in the Marfopil-Chervone (6km southeast of Hulyaipole) direction.[47] The observer stated that these attacks are only tactical as Russian forces are attacking at the scale of a battalion or less.

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and reportedly advanced on October 9. The Ukrainian General Staff and Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun reported that Ukrainian forces achieved partial success west of Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv).[48] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces marginally advanced towards Kopani (10km southwest of Orikhiv) and between Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv) and Novodanylivka (4km south of Orikhiv).[49] A Russian milblogger claimed that a small Ukrainian group entered the outskirts of Novoprokopivka (14km south of Orikhiv) but that elements of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division (58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) ultimately repelled the group.[50] Geolocated footage published on October 8 shows elements of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division conducting clearing operations in the northern outskirts of Novoprokopivka, suggesting that Ukrainian forces may have temporarily advanced here.[51] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Novoprokopivka.[52] Russian milbloggers claimed that heavy fighting continues on the Robotyne-Verbove line and that Ukrainian forces did not advance.[53]

Russian forces conducted a limited unsuccessful offensive operation in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 9. The Ukrainian General Staff and Shtupun reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian attack north of Novoprokopivka.[54] A Ukrainian military observer reported that the Russian 1152nd and 1441st Motorized Rifle regiments replaced the 1429th and 1430th Motorized Rifle regiments defending the Novoprokopivka-Verbove line after the 1429th and 1430th regiments rotated from the front after intense fighting degraded their combat capabilities.[55] The military observer reported that fighting on the Novoprokopivka-Verbove line is for control of a tactical height that elements of the 71st and likely 291st Motorized Rifle regiments (both of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division) reinforced by the Russian Combat Army Reserve (BARS)-3 unit are defending.

Ukrainian forces reportedly attempted a limited raid across the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast overnight on October 8-9. A Russian milblogger claimed that several boats of Ukrainian forces attempted to conduct a reconnaissance-in-force near the Antonivsky Bridge but that Russian forces repelled the landing attempt.[56] Russian milbloggers expressed continued concern that Ukrainian forces in the west (right) Kherson Oblast are preparing for an offensive operation across the Dnipro River on the east (left) bank.[57]

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

The Russian military continues to suffer from tensions between Russian military personnel of different ethnicities and between regular and irregular Russian military formations. Ukrainian Mariupol Mayor Advisor Petro Andryushenko stated on October 9 that a conflict broke out between Russian military personnel and Chechen “Kadyrovites” in central Mariupol.[58] ISW previously reported that interethnic tensions have increased recently in the Russian military, government, and information space and that efforts to integrate irregular forces into the regular Russian military are likely complicated by rifts between regular Russian forces and irregular formations.[59]

Russian companies continue to use intermediaries to import Chinese military supplies for the war in Ukraine. Russian opposition media outlet Vazhnye Istorii reported on October 9 that the Russian company Sts Technology LLC imported body armor, armored helmets, and protective glasses worth about 10 billion rubles (about $100,249,000) from the Chinese Xinxing Guangzhou Import and Export company via Turkish intermediaries from March 2022 to October 2023.[60] Vazhnye Istorii cited customs data as indicating that Sts Technology openly marked the imports as “for the ‘special military operation’” and “for military service and combat tasks.” Vashnye Istorii reported that the owner of Sts Technology claimed to have no knowledge of the imports as unspecified “bandits” confiscated the company from him three years ago - a practice the owner claimed is common.

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

The Kremlin continues to direct efforts to impose a Russian cultural identity on Ukrainians in occupied areas. Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Russian Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova on October 9 to discuss the development of “cultural institutions” such as cinemas, libraries, children’s centers, art schools, and museums in occupied Ukraine.[61] Lyubimova stated that the Russian Ministry of Culture is especially focusing on developing children’s centers in Russian-run museums in occupied areas and reported that a group from the “Fanagoria” museum in Krasnodar Krai arrived in Henichesk, occupied Kherson Oblast, to set up such a children’s center.[62] A Kherson Oblast occupation administration-affiliated news agency posted footage of children at the center and claimed that they were learning about ancient Russian history.[63] These efforts to impose Russian culture and history on residents of occupied Ukraine, especially young children, are likely in support of the Kremlin’s wider aims of eradicating Ukrainian identity and forcibly Russifying occupied territories.

The Russian government continues to promote tourism in occupied Crimea even though it is an active war zone. Crimean occupation head Sergei Aksyonov stated that the Russian government has allocated 2.2 billion rubles (about $22,055,000) towards subsidies meant to stimulate the tourism industry in occupied Crimea.[64] Aksyonov stated that the Crimean occupation government began distributing these subsidies to local businesses in the tourism industry on October 9. ISW previously reported that an influx of tourists to Crimea generated serious traffic jams along major Russian ground lines of communications (GLOCs) and that these pervasive civilian and transport issues in Crimea are partially due to the Russian government’s refusal to fully mobilize Russian society onto a wartime footing.[65]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives:

NOTE: ISW continues to assess that the Kremlin has and will continue to exploit the Hamas attacks in Israel to advance several Russian information operations about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, ISW has notably not observed any evidence – and does not assess – that the Kremlin supported, directed, or is involved in the Hamas attacks.

The Kremlin appears to be promoting two parallel narratives regarding the impact of the Hamas attacks on Israel on the Russian war in Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed on October 9 that US naval support of Israel “causes deep concern” and that “there is a high risk of third forces being involved” in the conflict following the initial Hamas attacks in Israel.”[66] Peskov also reiterated the ongoing Russian narrative claiming that Western support to Ukraine will decline as the West provides resources to Israel.[67] Peskov also answered a journalist’s question about whether the Hamas attacks in Israel will affect the war in Ukraine by stating that “the situation in Israel is an entirely different event” and that the war in Ukraine is going according to Putin’s “instructions” and plans.[68] Peskov’s statements indicate that the Kremlin is promoting two parallel narratives regarding the Hamas attacks: Western support for and attention to Ukraine will decline, but any future Russian activity in Ukraine will be independent of larger geopolitical events and will occur due to the competent actions of the Russian leadership and military.

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

Nothing significant to report.

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

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

5. Iran Update, October 9, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-october-9-2023

IRAN UPDATE, OCTOBER 9, 2023

Oct 9, 2023 - ISW Press

Iran Update, October 9, 2023

Ashka Jhaveri, Annika Ganzeveld, Johanna Moore

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

Hamas is expanding its incursions into southern Israel as Palestinian militias in the West Bank and Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) clash with Israeli security forces in the northern province of the country. The situation could expand the war to a second front. Hamas launched a surprise ground and air attack into Israel on October 7 which included sending hundreds of fighters into Israel to attack nearby border posts, military sites, and residential areas. Israel is conducting airstrikes in Gaza to retaliate. Iran’s Axis of Resistance is aligning itself with Hamas’ operation, however.

Hamas’ militant wing the Al Qassam Brigade launched an attack into the Israeli town of Rahat, which is approximately 30 kilometers east of Gaza on October 9. The Al Qassam Brigade also fired rockets into Israeli territory on October 9, including into Jerusalem as Hamas called on people in the city to attack Israelis and be at the forefront of resistance.[1]
Palestinian militias conducted attacks against Israelis in the West Bank on October 9 in response to calls from The Lions’ Den (TLD), a West Bank militia that Israel Hayom claims is receiving funding from Hamas.[2] These attacks are consistent with Hamas’ stated objective for the Al Aqsa Flood Operation to extend to the West Bank.[3]
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted airstrikes on more than 500 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)-affiliated positions, including operational headquarters in Gaza on October 9.[4] The Israeli defense minister imposed a “complete siege” on Gaza, which cut off over two million people from electricity, food, water, and fuel.[5] Israel has mobilized 300,000 military reservists in Israel amid reports of preparations for a ground incursion into Gaza.[6]

Members of the Axis of Resistance have issued threats that may lead the war between Israel and Palestinian militias to expand into the region. Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani said separately on October 9 that Iran would give a “devastating response” to any Israeli attack on Iran. This follows a warning from an unidentified Iranian official that Iran would respond to an Israeli attack on Iran with missile strikes from across the Middle East. ISW previously assessed that LH and Palestinian militia attacks could expand Hamas’s war with Israel into a second front.[7]

An unidentified Iranian official told Western media on October 8 that Iran would respond to an Israeli attack with missile strikes on Israel from Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen.[8] Missile strikes from Lebanon and Yemen would require the Iranian-backed militants in these countries—LH and the Houthi movement, respectively—to conduct the strikes. The official added that Iran would send fighters into Israel from Syria to attack northern and eastern Israel.
Head of the Iranian-backed Badr Organization Hadi al Ameri threatened to attack US forces if the United States intervened in the war to support Israel.[9] Ameri’s statement came after the United States announced it would send a carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to support Israel and supply Israeli forces with military equipment and ammunition. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq attacked US forces in Syria in March while Ameri advocated for diplomatic engagement with the United States to resolve issues in Iraq.[10]
LH conducted artillery strikes into Israel for the second consecutive day and at least six PIJ members attempted to cross into Israeli territory from southern Lebanon.[11] The Israeli government threatened to attack LH with the assistance of the US carrier strike group if LH continued to engage in the war with Hamas. Israel also warned that it would consider striking Damascus, Syria.[12]

The war in Israel is the focus of international attention, and Iran may exploit the situation to advance one or more of its strategic objectives. The table below lists some of Iran’s strategic objectives, their status, and how Iran could advance them.

The Iranian regime is categorically denying Iran’s involvement in Hamas’s ground and air attack against Israel. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 8 that Iran helped plan the Al Aqsa Flood Operation in meetings with representatives from Hamas, LH, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Beirut since August 2023.[18] Iran’s Mission to the United Nations emphasized Iran’s “unflinching support” for Palestine but denied any Iranian involvement in the Al Aqsa Flood Operation in a statement on October 8.[19] Political advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Ali Shamkhani similarly described the Palestinian resistance movement as an “independent movement” on October 8.[20] Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani responded directly to the Wall Street Journal’s allegations on October 9, describing them as “based on political motives."[21]

US and Israeli officials have responded cautiously to reports of Iranian involvement in Hamas’s attack. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stated on October 8 that the US government has not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind the October 7 attack. Blinken noted, however, that Iran and Hamas have a “long relationship.”[22] Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Brigadier General Daniel Hagari stated on October 9 that the Israeli military cannot yet determine whether Iran was involved in planning or training for the attack.[23]
Iran and Hamas improved relations in 2014 following a series of disagreements on regional developments in the early 2010s.[24] Iran has since then provided extensive material and financial support to Hamas. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed in April 2023 that Iran annually sends $100 million to Hamas, $700 million to LH, and tens of millions of dollars to PIJ.[25]

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) deployed forces to the southwestern Syrian border on October 9, however. Iran has built up a large military footprint in Syria to include weapons storage facilities, headquarters, and barracks to house its affiliated militias. The Iranian and LH-directed deployments are consistent with the scenario in which the Gaza War expands into a multi-front war surrounding Israel.

Iran instructed the IRGC in eastern Syria to deploy militants to Quneitra Province on October 9.[26] The IRGC transferred 50 foreign fighters to Damascus on October 9 who are capable of using anti-aircraft missiles and rockets.[27]
An IRGC officer oversaw the deployment of Syrian Arab Army and IRGC deployments to the border strip with Israeli territory from Sayyida Zeinab which Iran uses as an operational headquarters.[28] The LH Radwan Unit, which is a special unit focused on infiltrating Israeli territory, arrived in Syria to spread out along the border with Israel as well.[29]

6. Hamas received weapons and training from Iran, officials say

I wonder why they overlook the possibility of north Korea providing weapons and training - at least through Iran. There is no mention of north Korea in this article

Hamas received weapons and training from Iran, officials say

Iran ‘broadly complicit’ in supporting Palestinian militants, but no evidence seen of a direct role in slaughter, officials say

By Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris and Souad Mekhennet

Updated October 9, 2023 at 11:21 p.m. EDT|Published October 9, 2023 at 8:26 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Joby Warrick · October 10, 2023

The Palestinian militants behind the surprise weekend attack on Israel began planning the assault at least a year ago, with key support from Iranian allies who provided military training and logistical help as well as tens of millions of dollars for weapons, current and former Western and Middle Eastern intelligence officials said Monday.

While Iran’s precise role in Saturday’s violence remained unclear, the officials said, the assault reflected Tehran’s years-long ambition to surround Israel with legions of paramilitary fighters armed with increasingly sophisticated weapons systems capable of striking deep inside the Jewish state.

Hamas, the Gaza-based Palestinian militant organization that led the attack, has historically maintained a degree of independence from Tehran compared with true Iranian proxy groups such as the Lebanese-based Hezbollah. But in recent years, Hamas has benefited from massive infusions of Iranian cash as well as technical help for manufacturing rockets and drones with advanced guidance systems, in addition to training in military tactics — some of which occurred in camps outside Gaza, the officials said.

U.S. and Israeli officials said they have no firm evidence so far that Iran authorized or directly coordinated the attack that killed more than Israelis and wounded thousands. But current and former intelligence officials said the assault bore hallmarks of Iranian support, and noted officials in Tehran have boasted publicly about the huge sums in military aid provided to Hamas in recent years.

“If you train people on how to use weapons, you expect them to eventually use them,” said a Western intelligence official who, like others interviewed, requested that his name and nationality be withheld to freely discuss the rapidly unfolding events in southern Israel. The official, and a second Western analyst with access to sensitive intelligence, said the analysis conducted in the wake of the attack pointed to many months of preparation by Hamas, beginning at least as early as mid-2022.

In interviews, more than a dozen intelligence analysts and military experts expressed astonishment at the stealth and sophistication of the Hamas assault, which involved coordinated raids across the Israeli border by hundreds of gunmen traveling by land, sea and air — including motorized paragliders. The ground offensive was accompanied by swarms of rockets and drones that began streaking across the border early Saturday, hitting targets with a degree of precision not seen in previous Hamas attacks. While the Palestinian group has a capable militia and indigenous assembly lines for rockets and drones, an attack of Saturday’s scale would have been extremely challenging without considerable outside help, analysts said.

Israel-Hamas war

End of carousel

“The amount of training, logistics, communication, personnel, and weapons required provides a massive footprint,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA senior operations officer who served in counterterrorism roles in the Middle East. “This suggests both Iranian involvement, given the complexity of the attack, and highlights the colossal intelligence failure.” The use of paragliders — reminiscent of a spectacular 1987 attack by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Israel that killed several soldiers — “surely required training outside of Gaza,” Polymeropoulos said.

The view was echoed on Monday by Jonathan Finer, the White House’s deputy national security adviser. “What I can say without a doubt is that Iran is broadly complicit in these attacks,” Finer said in an interview with CBS News. “Iran has been Hamas’s primary backer for decades. They have provided them weapons. They have provided them training. They have provided them financial support. And so, in terms of broad complicity, we are very clear about a role for Iran.”

Iran denied a direct role in Saturday’s attack, while also praising the Hamas militants who carried it out. “We are not involved in Palestine’s response, as it is taken solely by Palestine itself,” Tehran’s mission to the United Nations said in a statement released Monday. But other Iranian officials publicly celebrated the attack while highlighting their close relationship with Hamas.

“You really made the Islamic Ummah happy with this innovative and victorious operation,” Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, quoted President Ebrahim Raisi as saying, using the Arabic word for the wider Muslim community.

The leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, acknowledged in an interview last year that his group received $70 million in military assistance from Iran. According to a State Department report from 2020, Iran provides about $100 million annually to Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

Current and former intelligence officials confirmed that Iran had provided technical help to Hamas in manufacturing the more than 4,000 rockets and armed drones launched into Israel since Saturday. At least some Hamas militants also have undergone training in advanced military tactics, including at Lebanese camps staffed by technical advisers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah, the officials said.

The Hamas militants who received training were likely elite officers who passed along skills to other fighters inside Gaza itself, said Michael Knights, an expert on Iranian-backed militia groups and founder of the Militia Spotlight blog.

“It’s a ‘train the trainer’ approach,” Knights said. “You don’t have to do a lot to train someone to be capable of operating a drone system, which is not complicated stuff anymore.” On the other hand, he said, the combined-arms breaching capability exhibited during Saturday’s assault “clearly was practiced and carefully planned somewhere. A whole bunch of fortified positions fell to sophisticated combined arms-breaching attacks. And you don’t just wing that.”

For years, Iran’s principal militia ally in Gaza was a different group: Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But gradually Tehran began bolstering its ties with Hamas leaders and increasing its support, said Ray Takeyh, senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“That relationship has deepened in the past few years,” Takeyh said. “It’s financial, political, at some level operational.”

Michael Eisenstadt, director of the Washington Institute’s Military and Security Studies Program, said that the relationship with Iran developed as a result of the Oslo peace process in the early 1990s when Tehran was looking for ways to scuttle efforts to forge a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel. That was when Iran first provided the know-how for the explosive belts used by Palestinian suicide bombers.

The suicide bombing campaigns by both Hamas and Islamic Jihad had a “significant impact” on the peace process, he said. Hamas launched its first homemade rocket, the Qassam, in 2001 during the second intifada. But it was very rudimentary, using pipes and a homemade fuel mixture derived from sugar and other common components.

“Iran over the years has provided a lot of assistance to Hamas in terms of rocket capability,” Eisenstadt said. “The signature weapon of Iran proxies are rockets, and increasingly missiles. You see that everywhere — with Iraq, Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah. That’s very much inspired by Iranian example and advice.”

But other analysts stressed Hamas’s record as an independent actor, capable of carrying out sophisticated terrorism operations without outside instruction or supervision.

“This is a war between Hamas and Israel in which Iran is supporting Hamas, but Hamas is calling the shots,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA counterterrorism expert and now senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

While there’s “no doubt” that Hamas coordinates with Iran, the group’s relative independence makes it a harder target for Israeli and Western intelligence agencies, Riedel added. “They do not routinely provide information to Iranian advisers who then communicate it home,” he said. “There aren’t any advisers in Gaza.”

The rockets and missiles launched by Hamas may have been locally produced, but they possess a clear Iranian pedigree, analysts and weapons experts said.

Years ago, Iranian rockets were smuggled from Egypt through Sinai into Gaza. But after President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi came to power, Egypt closed many of the tunnels that connected Sinai to Gaza, and Iran began helping Hamas develop an indigenous capability.

“It’s better to give your proxies the ability to produce this stuff themselves than to have to worry about logistical pipelines that can be interdicted and cut off,” Eisenstadt said.

Some of the rockets produced by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas have Farsi terms in the blueprints, Eisenstadt said. And a drone used by Hamas, called the Shahab, is based on the Iranian Ababil-2, a loitering munition which Eisenstadt said is almost identical to a model being used in Yemen by the Houthis, another Iranian proxy.

Though Israel Defense Forces have said there is no evidence of Iranian operational involvement in the attack, the tactics used are very much “in accordance with Iran’s concept of operations,” to create a “crossroads of fire” — launching an attack every few months or years to “undermine Israeli morale, sap Israeli resilience” with the aim of “undermining the long-term viability of Israel,” Eisenstadt said.

Adam Taylor and Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Joby Warrick · October 10, 2023

7. The Israel-Hamas War Is Drowning X in Disinformation

Excerpts:

“For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors & @sentdefender are good,” Musk wrote in a post to his 150 million followers on Sunday morning. Both the accounts Musk referenced are well-known spreaders of disinformation. For example, both accounts spread the lie that there had been an explosion near the White House in May, a story that made the US stock market briefly plummet before it was debunked.

Many users also pointed out that the @WarMonitors account had a history of posting antisemitic comments on X. Last year, the account replied to a post from Ye (formerly Kanye West) thanking the rapper and adding: “The overwhelming majority of people in the media and banks are zi0nists” while telling another X user in June to “go worship a jew lil bro.”

DAVID GILBERT SECURITYOCT 9, 2023 11:53 AM

The Israel-Hamas War Is Drowning X in Disinformation

People who have turned to X for breaking news about the Israel-Hamas conflict are being hit with old videos, fake photos, and video game footage at a level researchers have never seen.

Wired · by Condé Nast · October 9, 2023

In the wake of Hamas’ deadly attacks on Israel this weekend—and the Israeli military’s response—journalists, researchers, open source intelligence (OSINT) experts, and fact-checkers rushed to verify the deluge of raw video footage and images being shared online by people on the ground. But users of X (formerly Twitter) seeking information on the conflict faced a flood of disinformation.

While all major world events are now accompanied almost instantly by a deluge of disinformation aimed at controlling the narrative, the scale and speed at which disinformation was being seeded about the Israel-Hamas conflict is unprecedented—particularly on X.

“For many reasons, this is the hardest time I’ve ever had covering a crisis on here,” Justin Peden, an OSINT researcher from Alabama known online as the Intel Crab, posted on X. “Credible links are now photos. On the ground news outlets struggle to reach audiences without an expensive blue check mark. Xenophobic goons are boosted by the platform’s CEO. End times, folks.”

When Peden covered the escalation in Gaza in 2021, the sources he was seeing in his feed were from people on the ground or credible news agencies. This weekend, he says, verified content or primary sources were virtually impossible to find on X.

“It’s getting incredibly hard to find people that actually live in Palestine or in southern Israel,” Peden tells WIRED. “It’s been incredibly hard to find their preliminary information and share their videos and photos. You have this perfect storm where on the ground, preliminary sources are not being amplified, especially those that maybe don’t speak English, which is a large majority of users in that area.”

Boosted by the algorithm that promotes users willing to pay X $8 a month for a premium subscription, posts from those with a blue checkmark shot to the top of news feeds for people seeking information about the conflict.

Rather than being shown verified and fact-checked information, X users were presented with video game footage passed off as footage of a Hamas attack and images of firework celebrations in Algeria presented as Israeli strikes on Hamas. There were faked pictures of soccer superstar Ronaldo holding the Palestinian flag, while a three-year-old video from the Syrian civil war repurposed to look like it was taken this weekend.

As a result, Peden says that he and his fellow OSINT researchers have to spend their time debunking years-old content rather than verifying and sharing real footage from the conflict.

Many of these videos and images racked up hundreds of thousands of views and engagements. While some later featured a note from X’s decimated community fact-checking system, many more remained untouched. And as Elon Musk has repeatedly done in recent incidents, the platform’s CEO made the situation much worse.

“For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors & @sentdefender are good,” Musk wrote in a post to his 150 million followers on Sunday morning. Both the accounts Musk referenced are well-known spreaders of disinformation. For example, both accounts spread the lie that there had been an explosion near the White House in May, a story that made the US stock market briefly plummet before it was debunked.

Many users also pointed out that the @WarMonitors account had a history of posting antisemitic comments on X. Last year, the account replied to a post from Ye (formerly Kanye West) thanking the rapper and adding: “The overwhelming majority of people in the media and banks are zi0nists” while telling another X user in June to “go worship a jew lil bro.”

X content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Musk deleted his recommendation soon after posting it, but not before it was viewed over 11 million times. Later on Sunday, Musk wrote: “As always, please try to stay as close to the truth as possible, even for stuff you don’t like.”

Experts believe that the proliferation of disinformation on X around the Israel-Hamas conflict this weekend is largely the result of changes Musk has made to the platform over the past year, including his decision to fire most of the people responsible for tackling disinformation.

“Elon Musk’s changes to the platform work entirely to the benefit of terrorists and war propagandists,” Emerson Brooking, a researcher at the Atlantic Council Digital Forensics Research Lab, tells WIRED. “Changes in profit and incentive structure mean that there’s a lot more tendency for people to share at high volume information which may not be true because they are trying to maximize view counts. Anyone can buy one of those little blue checks and change their profile picture to something that’s seemingly a media outlet. It takes quite a bit of work to vet who’s telling the truth and who’s not.”

X, which eliminated its entire PR team last year, responded to WIRED’s request for comment on the proliferation of disinformation on its platform with the automated message: “Busy now, please check back later.”

Peden says the Twitter algorithm has been designed to boost content that gets the most engagement, which incentivizes bad actors to share disinformation.

“The videos and images that you’re seeing of air strikes, they’re very prolific,” Peden says. “They’re very hard-hitting, and unfortunately that means engagement does incredibly, incredibly well. These images are horrible and dramatic, and they perform well. So there is an incentive by others, especially those trying to push a narrative to share an old video from years ago, just because people love looking at the stuff.”

In an echo of what happened when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, much of the primary footage emerging from the Israel-Hamas conflict over the weekend was posted first on the encrypted message platform Telegram. From there, it was taken and reshared on other platforms, but in most cases the footage was not fact-checked first or it was taken out of context to suit the narrative being pushed by the poster.

“There’s an immense amount of primary content that was first posted in Telegram groups in one form or another, but there’s essentially no way to vet that information. Then that primary information hits others platforms, notably Twitter, where there’s an immense battle of spin and narrative taking place,” Brooking says. “You have artisans on every side, as well as sympathizers from one group or another, who are also joining this [battle].”

The situation is so bad on X right now that even seasoned OSINT researchers are being duped by fake accounts, including one that shared a false claim about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu being hospitalized over the weekend.

“Any sort of ground truth, which was always hard to get on Twitter, is now entirely out of reach,” Brooking says.

Wired · by Condé Nast · October 9, 2023

8. 'Menu of options': What the Ford carrier strike group brings to Israel's defense

Excerpts:

For instance, the carrier strike group, which is comprised of the carrier, a cruiser and four destroyers, could provide ballistic missile defense for Israel while its forces are preoccupied on other tasks, said Mark Montgomery, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“The Israelis are historically loath to ask another country to use that country’s troops in combat on their behalf; however, the one exception is in ballistic missile defense against Iranian missiles,” said Montgomery, a retired US Navy rear admiral who worked directly with the Israeli military while on active duty. “Any ballistic missile defense ships in the [carrier strike group] can support the defense of Israel against an attack from Iran.

However, Montgomery said the “geometry is such that” ships’ ballistic missile defense wouldn’t be effective against attacks from Gaza or Lebanon. And though some rockets have reportedly been fired into Israeli territory from Lebanon, the senior defense official said one reason the US rushed the strike group to the region was to deter Hezbollah from “making the wrong decision” and widening the conflict further.

To counteract the kind of rockets coming out of Gaza, Israel famously uses the “Iron Dome,” a missile defense system made by Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries and heavily invested in by the United States. POLITICO today reported that administration officials told lawmakers the country is in urgent need of more interceptors for the Iron Dome.

Resupply is another role with which the carrier strike group could assist, multiple analysts noted in comments to Breaking Defense.

“In all likelihood, [the Ford] can provide assistance with her helicopters for establishing aid and carrying supplies for sure. She also has a huge magazine of weapons,” said Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute, an Indianapolis-based think tank. “That could be transferred to Israel, depending on whether they have any shortages.”

Brad Bowman, a director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the strike group brings a variety of intelligence collection and communications capabilities that can be used to quickly relay early warnings to the Israel Defense Forces ahead of incoming attacks.

He also said the Israelis are experienced working with a US Navy carrier strike group, having taken part in the “Juniper Oak” exercise in January, which featured the George H. W. Bush (CVN-77) strike group.

'Menu of options': What the Ford carrier strike group brings to Israel's defense - Breaking Defense

The strike group, to arrive "very soon," has practical and strategic advantages beyond just a "show of force."

breakingdefense.com · by Justin Katz · October 9, 2023

The aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) transits the Mediterranean Sea. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jackson Adkins)

AUSA 2023 — Following the deadly attacks by Hamas on Israel over the weekend, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday ordered the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean to support the United States’ biggest ally in the Middle East. The move, often called a “show of force,” was lauded by military experts and analysts.

But while the focus of the move is on the signal it sends regionally, experts and a senior defense official say that there are practical benefits beyond flying the flag: The ships also offer the White House the ability to resupply the Israelis, collect intelligence, provide another layer of long-range protection for Israel and, the Pentagon hopes, deter other players from widening the conflict.

“The US Navy presence in the area of this war in the Middle East is absolutely critical and the right thing to do,” said John Ferrari, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The phrase “show of force” is often used to describe positioning ships, warplanes and other assets nearby potential conflict zones to demonstrate the US is ready to act militarily if necessary. A senior defense official said the move was absolutely made in part to show America’s commitment to Israel’s defense — with the carrier arriving in the region “very soon.”

“Bringing the carrier strike group into the eastern Mediterranean affords President [Joe] Biden, a whole menu of options to support Israel,” said Jonathan Lord, a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security and formerly a congressional staffer on the House Armed Services Committee.

For instance, the carrier strike group, which is comprised of the carrier, a cruiser and four destroyers, could provide ballistic missile defense for Israel while its forces are preoccupied on other tasks, said Mark Montgomery, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“The Israelis are historically loath to ask another country to use that country’s troops in combat on their behalf; however, the one exception is in ballistic missile defense against Iranian missiles,” said Montgomery, a retired US Navy rear admiral who worked directly with the Israeli military while on active duty. “Any ballistic missile defense ships in the [carrier strike group] can support the defense of Israel against an attack from Iran.

However, Montgomery said the “geometry is such that” ships’ ballistic missile defense wouldn’t be effective against attacks from Gaza or Lebanon. And though some rockets have reportedly been fired into Israeli territory from Lebanon, the senior defense official said one reason the US rushed the strike group to the region was to deter Hezbollah from “making the wrong decision” and widening the conflict further.

To counteract the kind of rockets coming out of Gaza, Israel famously uses the “Iron Dome,” a missile defense system made by Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries and heavily invested in by the United States. POLITICO today reported that administration officials told lawmakers the country is in urgent need of more interceptors for the Iron Dome.

Resupply is another role with which the carrier strike group could assist, multiple analysts noted in comments to Breaking Defense.

“In all likelihood, [the Ford] can provide assistance with her helicopters for establishing aid and carrying supplies for sure. She also has a huge magazine of weapons,” said Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute, an Indianapolis-based think tank. “That could be transferred to Israel, depending on whether they have any shortages.”

Priority 1 will be getting Israel resupply of precision-guided munitions and Tamir interceptors for Iron Dome. Not immediately, but will ultimately require Congressional action once the President has supplied as much as he can from US stocks. https://t.co/RfZneUiLL2

— Jonathan Lord (@JonathanLordDC) October 9, 2023

Brad Bowman, a director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the strike group brings a variety of intelligence collection and communications capabilities that can be used to quickly relay early warnings to the Israel Defense Forces ahead of incoming attacks.

He also said the Israelis are experienced working with a US Navy carrier strike group, having taken part in the “Juniper Oak” exercise in January, which featured the George H. W. Bush (CVN-77) strike group.

Will The Money Follow The Missiles?

For all the support the strike group can provide Israel, Ferrari said a new protracted conflict may test the limits of the Pentagon’s defense strategy — and budgeting strategies.

“We have the Army maintaining the proverbial ‘front line’ for an active war in Europe and now the Navy is maintaining the proverbial ‘front line’ for an active war in the Middle East,” he said, adding that special operations are conducting counterterrorism operations in Africa.

“It appears that the current defense strategy no longer reflects the world we live in, and if we were short munitions in Ukraine, now we have to arm the Israelis and Taiwan at the same time, with a strategy of ‘divest-to-invest,’” he said.

The question of money and how long the Pentagon will have the funds to extend its support to both Ukraine and Israel was on the minds of Army leaders here at the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington.

“I would argue that just as we lean forward with Ukraine, I think, you know, the intent is to lean forward in support of Israel,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told reporters on Monday. “One thing that is really important in terms of the munitions in particular, and our ability to support both potentially the Israelis and the Ukrainian simultaneously, is additional funding from Congress to be able to increase our capacity. … So I hope we’ll see that soon.”

Army acquisition head Doug Bush, speaking later in the day, said it was still too early to disclose specific weapons that may be bound for Israel but said it could “hypothetically cut across a wide range of things from small arms all the way up to more sophisticated munitions.”

“The army stockpiles are not extended: We’re not diminished,” Bush told reporters. “ They might be a little lower in some cases, but we keep reserves and this is a good example of why…. The world’s an unpredictable place.”

Notably, the Army has two operational Iron Dome batteries fielded to soldiers based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in Washington, and “close to” two full basic loads of Tamir interceptors, Bush said.

“Hypothetically,” he said the Army could also send those interceptors or launchers to Israel.“[Those] conversations are happening now,” Bush told reporters.

Ashley Roque in Washington contributed to this report.

breakingdefense.com · by Justin Katz · October 9, 2023

9. In wake of Hamas attack, Israel may have to change intel, tech strategy

Excerpts:

The Middle East Forum’s Spyer called the attacks a failure of intelligence across the board, at both the strategic and technical level.

On the tactical level, Hamas “succeeded in knocking out the monitoring system at an early stage, using drones and weapons dropped from drones. There were facilities close to the border responsible for watching real time developments, and these were destroyed and disabled … I‘m sure there will be ways put in place to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

The bigger issue he see is the “complete failure of analysis and assessment” at the strategic level, in terms of Israel’s understanding of what Hamas’ goals and capabilities are. Since Hamas took over as a governing faction in Gaza, Spyer said, Jerusalem has treated them as if they are more interested in ruling than in fighting Israel — an assessment that now appears to have been incorrect.

In wake of Hamas attack, Israel may have to change intel, tech strategy - Breaking Defense

“I would imagine there will be a very, very major and deep-rooted inquiry,” said Jonathan Spyer, director of research at the Middle East Forum. “And I assume heads will roll, because what just happened is a very, very major event.”

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN and AARON MEHTA

on October 09, 2023 at 1:57 PM

breakingdefense.com · by Seth J. Frantzman, Aaron Mehta · October 9, 2023

Israeli artillery forces are deployed near the Israel-Gaza border. Fighting between Israeli soldiers and Islamist Hamas militants continues in the border area with Gaza. (Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images)

JERUSALEM and WASHINGTON — With active fighting still ongoing along the Israeli-Gaza border, it is still too early to know how exactly Hamas pulled off the biggest assault on Israel in 50 years, killing hundreds and capturing dozens of hostages. But analysts agree that the Israeli security establishment is going to have to ask itself hard questions about why it didn’t see the assault coming, and whether its bet on high-tech defenses is enough.

“I would imagine there will be a very, very major and deep-rooted inquiry,” Jonathan Spyer, director of research at the Middle East Forum told Breaking Defense. “And I assume heads will roll, because what just happened is a very, very major event.”

The attack began in the early hours of the morning on Oct. 7 with rocket fire, including barrages directed at Jerusalem, a rare long-distance target for Hamas. Under cover of the rockets, Hamas neutralized observation points along the border, according to video the terrorist group posted on social media, and then cut holes in the border fence as part of an assault that included bulldozers and paragliders. The group then attacked more than 20 Israeli communities, according to an IDF briefing.

By the end of the first day of fighting more than 3,000 rockets had been fired at Israel, an assault that has continued more than 48 hours later. Israeli counterattacks are reported to have killed hundreds in Gaza. One soldier who spoke with Breaking Defense on Oct. 8 said this was his generation’s version of the Yom Kippur War, the conflict that began with an intelligence failure and surprise attack on Israel in 1973 — and set the course of Israel’s defense posture for decades to come.

It’s a stunning failure of Israel’s intelligence apparatus and defense strategy, which has largely been built around using technology to check Hamas. The failure of intelligence to learn of the attack, and failures at the tactical level to respond to the attack quickly, raise questions about Israel’s multi-year Momentum plan and the technology that has been pushed to frontline forces.

The overall theme in Israel in the last several years has been investment in technology and digitization for warfare. This runs the gamut from laser defenses, to the use of sensors that are supposed to provide intelligence in real time to inform decision making rapidly from border areas. In addition, Israel has increased its air defense systems, so that Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow make up a multi-layered defense that can stop missiles fired from Gaza or elsewhere. Israel has also concentrated on threats from Iran, and Iranian-backed groups such as Hezbollah, that exist in Lebanon and Syria, keeping Gaza on the back burner.

Still, along the border, Israeli precautions include a “smart” security fence along the border that detects underground threats, such as tunnels. The border also includes aerostats for observation and detection, and Israel has used drone swarms and AI-driven technology in past conflicts in Gaza. Unmanned robots were also deployed along the border.

And yet, as advanced as these systems are, they largely appear to have been overcome by Hamas on Oct. 7. From observation towers to sensors, and protection systems for armored vehicles, Hamas was able to strike at numerous points and infiltrate Israeli military posts.

In the short term, the fight to push Hamas militants out of Israeli territory and recovering hostages is the biggest focus. But longer term, the question becomes about lessons learned, and if the Israeli reliance on technology was bad gamble. Analysts, however, say it’s not about technology, it’s about people.

Bilal Saab, Senior Fellow and Director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute, put it bluntly: “Over reliance on tech always has its drawbacks. But the problem here wasn’t tech. There was a failure of imagination, first and foremost, and total disrespect of the opponent.”

Similarly, Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, warned about jumping to conclusions about technology when people are involved.

“We don’t know if there was human intelligence warning of an impending attack, and warnings can be ambiguous. This doesn’t mean that technical surveillance in the form of space [and] air surveillance, signal intelligence, and cyber-network penetration has been devalued,” Callan wrote in a note to investors. “Rather, it again underscores the value of human sources and human assessments. It also means that the risk of military surprise is likely to be an enduring factor in the 2020s.”

The Middle East Forum’s Spyer called the attacks a failure of intelligence across the board, at both the strategic and technical level.

On the tactical level, Hamas “succeeded in knocking out the monitoring system at an early stage, using drones and weapons dropped from drones. There were facilities close to the border responsible for watching real time developments, and these were destroyed and disabled … I‘m sure there will be ways put in place to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

The bigger issue he see is the “complete failure of analysis and assessment” at the strategic level, in terms of Israel’s understanding of what Hamas’ goals and capabilities are. Since Hamas took over as a governing faction in Gaza, Spyer said, Jerusalem has treated them as if they are more interested in ruling than in fighting Israel — an assessment that now appears to have been incorrect.

10. Wake Up, Washington

Wake Up, Washington

A second regional war, first Ukraine and now Israel, calls for an urgent bipartisan defense effort.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-hamas-war-gaza-congress-military-iran-hezbollah-russia-china-a1d6b914?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

By The Editorial Board

Oct. 9, 2023 6:31 pm ET

Secretary of State Antony Blinken listens while President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7. PHOTO: ZUMA PRESS

At least 11 Americans were among the hundreds killed in the weekend attack in Israel, which has begun striking back at Hamas. The invasion, planned with an assist from Iran, ought to wake up both parties in Washington. The world is awash in threats that will inevitably wash up on our shore if America doesn’t get its act together.

The Israelis have launched air strikes as a prelude to a larger effort in Gaza, and more volatile days are ahead—especially if Hezbollah, another Iranian client, opens a second front on Israel’s northern border.

The larger context is that the U.S. and its allies now face two regional wars provoked by rogue states that are increasingly aligned. Israel and Ukraine are on the front lines, but the risk of an expanded conflict is real. Iran is feeding weapons into Vladimir Putin’s invasion in Ukraine. Mr. Putin is a junior partner of the Chinese Communist Party, which could try to exploit the moment in the Pacific.

The strategic and political point is that the return of war against Israel isn’t an isolated event. It’s the latest installment in the unraveling of global order as American political will and military primacy are called into question.

The President now has an obligation to increase the defense budget and stop treating the U.S. military as a political wedge to feed the American welfare state. For three years Mr. Biden has proposed cuts in defense spending after inflation, even as the world has become more dangerous.

The President can stop the budget games—the demands that every dollar on U.S. forces be matched with another for solar panels or food stamps—and work with Republicans to rebuild U.S. military power. That package should include aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. It should feature a generational effort to expand U.S. munitions inventories, from 155mm artillery to sophisticated long-range antiship missiles. Ditto for a plan to build more U.S. attack submarines for the Pacific.

Already officials are leaking that the U.S. may struggle to supply both Israel and Ukraine with artillery or other weapons while also deterring China. But America can either meet the moment or regret it later when the world’s rogues attack other allies, or U.S. forces deployed abroad, or even the homeland.

The weekend’s bloodshed in Israel should finally end illusions that Iran can be coaxed or paid off to change its behavior. The Iranian regime’s ambition is to destroy Israel, dominate the Middle East, and become a nuclear power that can menace Europe and the U.S. It is a revolutionary state, not a status quo power. The U.S. needs a strategy that recognizes that reality and challenges Iran at home and abroad.

Mr. Biden could also stop trashing all Republicans as stooges of Donald Trump. The world moment looks increasingly comparable to the 1930s, with gathering threats. Mr. Biden will need bipartisan help in a crisis. That means working with Sens. Mitch McConnell (see nearby) and Tom Cotton, Reps. Mike Gallagher and Michael McCaul, and other Republicans who are serious about U.S. security.

As for Republicans in Congress, they will have to get serious about governing and elect a new Speaker with dispatch. They need to isolate the Steve Bannon acolytes who treat shutting down the government for no good reason like a personal power play. Americans may be among Hamas’s hostages, and the GOP should support Mr. Biden if he sends a military mission to rescue them. The world needs to see that the U.S. can unite in a common security purpose.

If Mr. Biden does reach out to build a bipartisan coalition on U.S. military spending and foreign policy, Republicans should welcome it. They can influence him in the right direction rather than descend into partisan opposition like some have on support for Ukraine.

***

The growing global disorder is a result in part of American retreat, not least Mr. Biden’s departure from Afghanistan that told the world’s rogues the U.S. was preoccupied with its internal divisions. But too many Republicans are also falling for the siren song of isolationism and floating a defense cut in the name of fiscal restraint. The Hamas invasion should blow up dreams the U.S. can “focus on China” and write off other parts of the world.

Donald Trump didn’t rebuild U.S. defenses as much as he claims, and his political competitors should say so. Former Vice President Mike Pence was correct when he said over the weekend that the awful scenes abroad are what happens when political leaders are “signaling retreat from America’s role as leader of the free world.” Nikki Haley sounded similar notes.

They seem to know what time it is. The rest of Washington needs an alarm clock.

WSJ Opinion: The Republican Divide Over Ukraine

US Army moves to pre-position materials in Pacific

armytimes.com · by Jen Judson · October 9, 2023

WASHINGTON — The Army is hoping progress made at Talisman Sabre, the joint U.S.-Australian exercise this summer, could open doors for it to position more equipment in the Indo-Pacific region.

The service sees expanding its pre-positioned equipment in the area as part of its contribution to deterring China.

And the Army made headway this summer when it was permitted to permanently keep three company sets of equipment in Australia following Talisman Sabre, Gen. Charles Hamilton, Army Materiel Command commander, told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

The sets are considered pre-positioned stock, which means they consist of equipment kept at a high readiness level so they are ready to go for exercises or operations, he said.

“I would suspect that in the future, as we get more resources, we can get more equipment. That will become something that we can do with other great allies and partners as well,” Hamilton added.

The Army is still using exercises throughout the region to learn more about where it might make sense to leave equipment and what types and how much equipment should be included, he said.

Brig. Gen. Jered Helwig, the Army’s 8th Theater Sustainment Command commander, in an interview during the Talisman Sabre exercise said it the Army was granted approval to leave equipment in Australia around the time the exercise began.

Pre-positioning the equipment there, Helwig said, will “help us develop into Pathways exercises, really look at how you set up the ability to hold that equipment in places like Australia, [including] the maintenance and supply transactions that need to happen, so we can export those lessons learned to other exercises.”

Operation Pathways is a large exercise meant to assess Army capability in the Indo-Pacific region and the service’s connectivity to joint forces and allies and partners.

Talisman Sabre included 13 participating countries and over 35,000 service members, Helwig said. He said it was an unprecedented opportunity to assess large-scale logistics and sustainment capabilities for the U.S. Army.

The exercise included a joint logistics over-the-shore exercise where the Army took 17 M1 Abrams tanks off its Army Pre-positioned Stock Afloat ship and onto watercraft as well as 400 pieces of rolling stock, which had never been exercised at that size in the theater.

And the service built a 3-mile pipeline from the shore to an airfield in less than 48 hours. Setting the conditions to build took about two weeks, Helwig said. The Army pumped water through the system due to Australia’s environmental concerns, but normally in an operation the pipeline would be used to transfer fuel.

Talisman Sabre “gave us an opportunity to see how a joint force works in real time, how they order supplies, how they issue to the different services, etc.,” Hamilton said. “But the process was working very well for the Australian joint force.”

About Jen Judson

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 degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

12. Potential flash points for World War 3 – an analysis

No mention of north Korea. Then again this is from an Indian perspective.

Videos at the link: https://www.nriaffairs.com/potential-flash-points-for-world-war-3-analysis/?utm_source=pocket_saves

Excerpts:

In conclusion, India can fight a war with China but must prepare well for years, but it would not be easy run or desirable for either side. China has been active in war preparations since 2017 and improved its capabilities many folds in the disputed Indian region where war is expected. There are reports of India starting a limited war with Pakistan in Kashmir region to disrupt CPEC infrastructure passing through northern areas of Pakistan. This can automatically involve China into war dimension thereby India has to fight two front war which India is not ready as per own defence experts analysis; these two clips would help you understand the situation better:

Both countries have formidable military capabilities, but also significant vulnerabilities. Both countries have strong political reasons, but also serious risks. Both countries have some diplomatic advantages, but also many challenges. Therefore, both countries should avoid a war at all costs, and instead seek peaceful resolution of their disputes through dialogue and cooperation. Wars have never solved any issues, rather it create m any challenges.

Potential flash points for World War 3 – an analysis - NRI Affairs

nriaffairs.com · by Imran Hanif · October 9, 2023

A flash point is a situation or place where a conflict or war could erupt suddenly and violently. According to some experts, there are several flash points around the world that could trigger a global conflict in the near future. Here are four examples:

Ukraine: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has sparked a humanitarian crisis and a geopolitical standoff between Moscow and the West. The US and its allies have imposed sanctions on Russia and provided unbelievable military aid to Ukraine, while Russia has deployed more troops and weapons along its borders and threatened to use nuclear weapons if attacked. The risk of escalation and miscalculation is high, especially as winter conditions worsen the plight of millions of displaced people in Ukraine.

Iran: Iran has faced widespread protests and civil unrest since 2022, following the death of a young woman in custody of the morality police. The Iranian regime has cracked down on the opposition and accused foreign powers of fomenting the uprising. The US and Israel have also intensified their pressure on Iran over its nuclear program and its support for militant groups in the region. A military confrontation or a regime change in Iran could have major implications for the stability and security of the Middle East.

South China Sea: The South China Sea is a strategic waterway that is claimed by several countries, including China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. China has asserted its sovereignty over most of the sea by building artificial islands and military bases, while the US and its allies have conducted freedom of navigation operations and challenged China’s claims. The tensions have increased in recent years, as both sides have accused each other of violating international law and norms. A clash or an accident in the South China Sea could spark a wider conflict involving regional and global powers.

Pakistan-India: The dispute between Pakistan and India over the Kashmir region has been a source of tension and conflict for decades. Both countries claim the territory as their own, and have fought several wars over it. The dispute also involves other actors, such as China, the United States, and various militant groups. The situation is complex and volatile, and could potentially escalate into a larger crisis that affects the stability and security of the world.

One of the main reasons why the Pakistan-India dispute is a flash point for world dispute is the fact that both countries possess nuclear weapons. According to some estimates, Pakistan has about 160 nuclear warheads, while India has about 150. Both countries have also developed ballistic missiles that can deliver these weapons to each other’s territory. A nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India would have devastating consequences for the region and the world, causing millions of deaths, environmental damage, and global cooling.

Another reason why the Pakistan-India dispute is a flash point for world dispute is the involvement of other major powers in the region. China, which also claims part of Kashmir, has been a close ally of Pakistan and has provided it with economic and military assistance. The United States, on the other hand, has been a strategic partner of India and has supported its development and modernization. Both China and the United States have interests and influence in the region, andcould be drawn into a conflict between Pakistan and India. Moreover, the rivalry between China and the United States could also affect the dynamics of the dispute, as both countries compete for dominance and leadership in Asia and beyond.

Understanding India’s role in future conflict in SCS?

India is a rising power in Asia and the world, with a large population, a growing economy, and a nuclear-armed military. India faces various geopolitical challenges in the 21st century, such as maintaining its territorial integrity, balancing its relations with the United States and Russia, and managing its rivalry with China and Pakistan. India’s role in future conflicts will depend on how it adapts to the changing security environment and develops its capabilities to deal with different types of threats.

One of the main challenges for India is to secure its borders with China and Pakistan, which are both unresolved and prone to violence. India has fought wars with both countries in the past, and continues to face skirmishes and standoffs along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China and the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan. India also perceives a two-front threat from China and Pakistan, which have a close strategic and military partnership. India needs to be prepared for both conventional and unconventional warfare, as well as cyberattacks and information operations, from its adversaries.

Another challenge for India is to balance its relations with the United States and Russia, which are both important partners but also have divergent interests in some areas. India has deepened its strategic ties with the United States in recent years, especially in the Indo-Pacific region, where they share a common vision of a free and open order. India is also a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), along with the United States, Japan, and Australia, which aims to enhance cooperation on maritime security, counter-terrorism, disaster relief, and other issues. However, India also maintains a long-standing relationship with Russia, which is a major supplier of arms and energy to India. India has recently acquired the Russian S-400 air defence system, which could trigger US sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). India needs to manage this potential friction with the United States, while also ensuring that Russia does not drift further towards China.

Hamas’s Global Test for Biden

His response to the attack on Israel will show the world what he is made of.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hamas-sets-a-global-test-for-biden-attack-israel-gaza-iran-dfe8b26c?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

By Walter Russell Mead

Oct. 9, 2023 6:13 pm ET

President Biden delivers remarks about Hamas’s attacks on Israel at the White House in Washington, Oct. 7. PHOTO: ZUMA PRESS

Gaza is burning as Israeli forces methodically proceed to dismantle its structures of terror. The coming retribution will be terrible, but it is necessary and just. Hamas has lost the right to rule Gaza. It must be dismantled and disarmed, and neither Israel nor its neighbors can permit the group to return to power. Despite the best efforts of the Israel Defense Forces, innocent civilians will suffer, and too many will die. Urban warfare against a brutal enemy that doesn’t scruple to use civilians as shields can have no other result, but what is coming to Gaza is not the fault of the IDF.

What will follow the fighting can’t be foreseen. The establishment of a new Palestinian governing authority for the territory, linked to Fatah, closely guarded by Israel and Egypt, and funded by the Gulf states would be perhaps the best outcome for all concerned, but the war must be won before peace can be built.

At best, Gaza’s future seems bleak. More than two million people are crowded into a barren wasteland with few natural resources and little hope. A rational Palestinian leadership would understand that, so situated, the only hope for the people of Gaza lies in close collaboration with Egypt and Israel. It would then settle down to the hard but necessary task of creating an economy that can support its people with dignity and security.

Hamas has had other ideas. The misery and poverty of the Palestinian people is the soil, the only soil, in which a movement this perverted can flourish. Hamas has done all it could to keep Gaza wretched while inculcating an ideology of genocidal rage.

Israelis are temporarily setting their differences aside in the face of this hideous shock, as well they should. But there will be a reckoning in Israel too. Those who missed or misread the signs of danger will be driven ingloriously from office if they lack the grace to resign. A national-security establishment that wasted the past year in frenzied political infighting shouldn’t be allowed to escape harsh public scrutiny. From the prime minister to the intelligence chiefs, those at the helm of Israel’s affairs will have to account for their actions.

We aren’t yet past the height of this crisis. While the exact details of Iranian involvement in the attacks are unknown, there is no doubt that Iran trained, supported, advised and equipped the killers. The hands of the mullahs are dripping with Jewish blood, and no one in Israel doubts that the fanatics in Tehran are hungry for more. In self-defense, Israel can’t allow Iran’s engagement with Hamas to go unpunished, but taking on a near-nuclear regional superpower means potentially a much wider war.

The consequences of the Hamas attack for President Biden’s Middle East policy are, as Iran may well have calculated, devastating. Desperate to avoid a Middle East crisis while war rages in Europe, oil prices rise and tensions over Taiwan mount, the Biden administration has consistently sought to pacify Iran.

Believing détente with the mullahs to be America’s best hope of avoiding yet another conflict in the Middle East, Mr. Biden has extended olive branch after olive branch to Tehran, which has slapped them away. Iran turned down the Biden administration’s offer to re-enter the nuclear deal. It wasn’t moved by the administration’s quiet but dramatic loosening of sanctions. It released five hostages in exchange for $6 billion but is obviously more interested in collecting ransoms than in building bridges to Washington.

There’s a pattern here. When he arrived in the White House, Mr. Biden hoped, in a phrase administration officials often used at the time, to “park Russia.” In the spring of 2021 he exempted a company engaged in the construction of the massive Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from U.S. sanctions and publicly contradicted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was ready to accept Ukrainian membership. Instead of applauding Mr. Biden’s statesmanship, Vladimir Putin thought he smelled Western weakness and cast his covetous eyes toward Kyiv.

Mr. Biden has tried even harder to park Iran, but as Tehran’s support for Hamas’s attack on Israel demonstrates, he hasn’t had much success. It’s a failure Franklin D. Roosevelt would have foreseen. “No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it,” FDR said. “There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb.” The Biden administration hasn’t merely been stroking the Iranian tiger, it has fed it salmon and cream, yet the tiger isn’t satisfied.

The Hamas attack was not only an assault on Israel. In recent months, Mr. Biden’s efforts to promote normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations began to bear fruit. American backing for a security and diplomatic partnership between Israel and Saudi Arabia has the potential to stabilize the Middle East while limiting America’s direct military role. A major war between Israel and Hamas, the Iranians hope, will throw a monkey wrench into Team Biden’s plans.

The world will now see what Mr. Biden is made of. Will he stand up against terrorists seeking to derail what could otherwise be his greatest diplomatic accomplishment? Will he offer Jerusalem his full military and diplomatic support when and if it is ready to show Iran the price of supporting mass murder in Israel? Or will he abandon America’s closest Middle East partners in their hour of greatest need?

Fecklessness in Washington breeds recklessness abroad. Standing by Israel in a confrontation with Iran carries risk, but yielding to Iranian threats is more dangerous still. As Winston Churchill said to Neville Chamberlain after Munich, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”

Unless Israel and the U.S. acting together can deter Iran from more aggression, Mr. Biden could soon face a similar choice.

WSJ Opinion: War Returns to the Middle East

Israel at War With Hamas: Live Updates

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-gaza-rockets-attack-palestinians/card/u-s-can-t-easily-meet-israel-s-requests-for-ammo-official-says-STbBF5wjz3qW9goCt4bn?utm_source=pocket_saves

Fighting raged on the conflict's third day as Israel launched a barrage of strikes on Gaza and troops amassed at the border.

Last Updated:

Oct. 10, 2023 at 5:17 AM EDT

U.S. Can't Easily Meet Israel's Requests for Ammo, Official Says

Nancy A. Youssef

The U.S. expects Israel to request more munitions from Washington imminently, though the U.S. cannot easily meet all those requests, a congressional official said.

Israel launched advanced U.S.-produced GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs over the weekend and is expected to seek more from the U.S., the official said. The U.S. also anticipates Israel will request small arms, ammunition, 122mm tank rounds and mortars, the official said. Providing Israel with enough Tamir interceptors for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system “is the most worrisome,” the official said.

15. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: A chronology

Please go to the link for proper formatting and to view the maps/graphics: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/israel-palestine-conflict-timeline-history-explained/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: A chronology

By Sammy Westfall, Brian Murphy, Adam Taylor and Bryan Pietsch

Updated October 9, 2023 at 5:41 p.m. EDT|Published October 9, 2023 at 11:59 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Sammy Westfall · October 9, 2023

A surprise, coordinated assault on Israel by Palestinian militants — one of the deadliest and most brazen attacks in years — brought renewed attention to an old and continuing problem: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has vexed the Middle East for decades. The death toll has risen to more than 1,000 people — at least 900 Israelis, according to Israeli media, and 680 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Dozens of Israeli soldiers, citizens and possibly foreign nationals have been taken as captives, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Israeli media is reporting that more than 100 are missing.

The roots of the conflict and mistrust are deep and complex, predating the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Both Palestinians and Israelis see the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as their own, and Christians, Jews and Muslims all hold parts of the land as sacred. The past seven decades have brought war, uprisings and, at times, glimmers of hope for compromise. Here is a timeline beginning around 1948, including the latest violence in the Gaza Strip:

World War I: The question of Palestine

The Ottoman Empire had controlled that part of the Middle East from the early 16th century until control of most of the region was granted to the British after World War I.

Both Israelis and Palestinians were struggling for self-determination and sovereignty over the territory, developing respective movements for their causes.

As World War I began, several controversial diplomatic efforts — some contradicting each other — by the Great Powers tried to shape the map of the modern Middle East, including the Palestinian territories. Palestinians cite a series of letters in 1915 to 1916 between Mecca’s emir and the British high commissioner in Egypt, known as the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, as outlining a promise of an independent Arab state.

In 1916, the Sykes-Picot Agreement secretly negotiated between Britain and France planned to carve up the Middle East into spheres of influence, and determined that the land in question was to be internationalized.

In 1917, Britain’s foreign secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, expressed his government’s support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” in a letter to Baron Walter Rothschild, the head of the British wing of the influential European Jewish banking family.

To Israelis, the missive marks a formal utterance of the Israeli state’s right to exist; to Palestinians, it was an early sign of their dispossession. The declaration also noted that it was “clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” nodding to the overwhelming majority Arab population in the region at the time. (About 90 percent of the population was Muslim in 1850, and about 80 percent in 1914.)

Large-scale Jewish immigration followed in succeeding decades, including during Nazi persecution and Holocaust. Both sides continued to assert their right to establish a state.

1948: Israel declares independence

After World War II, nearing the end of the British Mandate for Palestine, the United Nations General Assembly in 1947 passes Resolution 181, urging the partition of the land into two independent states — one Arab and one Jewish. Religiously significant Jerusalem is to be under special international administration. The plan is not implemented after the Arab side rejects it, arguing that it is unfavorable to their majority population. Violence in the regional conflict grows.

Israel declares independence in May 1948. The next day, a coalition of Arab states, allied with Palestinian factions, attack Israeli forces in what becomes the first of several Arab-Israeli wars. In the end, Israel gains control of an even larger portion of territory — not including the areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. An estimated 700,000 Palestinians flee or are driven from their land in what Palestinians refer to as the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe” in Arabic.

July 1956: The Suez Crisis

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, a vital trade route connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. Israel invades Egypt, followed by forces from Britain and France. A peace deal, backed by the United States and Soviet Union, ends the fighting. But the canal is blocked by sunken ships and doesn’t reopen until 1957.

June 1967: 1967 war

In June of 1967, a war known as the “Six-Day War” or the 1967 Arab-Israeli War breaks out amid lingering conflicts, including Egypt’s continued blockade of shipping into the Gulf of Aqaba. Israeli warplanes strike Egyptian airfields, and Israeli ground forces enter the Sinai Peninsula. Jordan joins the fighting alongside Egypt, but Israeli forces have the upper hand after nearly wiping out Egypt’s air power. Israel takes control of the Gaza Strip, Sinai, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem. The Arab armies suffer massive losses.

September 1972: Munich Olympics attack

At the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, a group of Palestinian extremists from the Black September group raid the Olympic Village dorm where Israeli athletes are housed. They kill two athletes and take nine others as hostages, all of whom are killed soon after.

October 1973: Arab coalition attacks Israel

A coalition of Arab nations, led by Egypt and Syria, launch a surprise, coordinated attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, a Jewish holy day. The Arab forces initially gain ground but are driven back by an Israeli counteroffensive aided by supplies from allies, including the United States. There are heavy death tolls on both sides.

September 1978: Camp David Accords

A peace agreement between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, known as the Camp David Accords, is brokered in September 1978 by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. It lays the foundation to a peace deal between the two countries the next year, including Israel’s eventual withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula. It also sets out a framework for a process of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza. Potential Palestinian peace proposals are discussed but never carried out.

December 1987: First intifada

A Palestinian uprising, or intifada, brings largely spontaneous clashes, protests and civil disobedience against Israeli occupation in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, leading to harsh Israeli military crackdowns. Unrest continues for years, with many killed or injured on both sides.

1993: Oslo accords

The first of two pacts, known as the Oslo accords, are signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), setting out a peace process based on previous U.N. resolutions and charting the expansion of a limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (A follow-up accord is signed in 1995.) The agreements create the Palestinian Authority to oversee most administrative affairs in those areas. The PLO is recognized by Israel and the United States as a negotiating partner. Left unresolved, however, are key issues such as Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the status of Jerusalem, which is viewed by the Palestinians as the capital of any future state.

2000: Second intifada

The second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, begins after riots broke out following a visit by right-wing Israeli political figure Ariel Sharon (later prime minister) to a compound in Jerusalem that is venerated in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Clashes and other violence continue until 2005, leaving hundreds dead on both sides.

2006: Hamas elected in Gaza

Israel withdraws its troops from Gaza in 2005. The Palestinian militant group Hamas wins legislative elections the next year, leading to political strains with the more moderate Fatah party controlling the West Bank.

After Hamas’s 2007 takeover of the Gaza Strip, Israel imposes a 16-year blockade on the small, overcrowded Palestinian enclave that’s home to 2 million Palestinians. Limiting the mobility of goods and people in and out of the territory, Israel has deepened Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, the United Nations says. Most Gazans live in refugee camps and rely on U.N. rations.

The West Bank, home to 3 million Palestinians — and more than a half-million Jews living in settlements deemed illegal under international law — is occupied by Israel and subject to its military administration.

Several rights groups have said Israel’s regime over Palestinians amounts to “apartheid.”

In a 2022 report, Amnesty International said it analyzed “Israel’s intent to create and maintain a system of oppression and domination over Palestinians,” including through “territorial fragmentation; segregation and control; dispossession of land and property; and denial of economic and social rights.” The group concluded: “This is apartheid.”

December 2008: Israel attacks Gaza

Israel begins three weeks of attacks on Gaza after rocket barrages into Israel by Palestinian militants, who are supplied by tunnels from Egypt. More than 1,110 Palestinians and at least 13 Israelis are killed.

November 2012: Israel kills Hamas military chief

Israel kills Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari, touching off more than a week of rocket fire from Gaza and Israeli airstrikes. At least 150 Palestinians and six Israelis are killed.

Population

density

Haifa

2019 pop.:

285,316

High

Nazareth

ISRAEL

Jenin

Low

Netanya

Tulkarm

Nablus

Qalqilya

161,630

Tel Aviv

WEST

BANK

460,613

Ben Gurion

Airport

Ramallah

Modin

Ashdod

Jerusalem

225,939

936,425

Bethlehem

Ashkelon

Gaza City

Hebron

614,071

210,081

GAZA

ISRAEL

Beersheba

20 MILES

EGYPT

Population

density

Haifa

2019 population:

285,316

High

Nazareth

ISRAEL

Jenin

Low

Netanya

Tulkarm

Nablus

161,630

Qalqilya

Tel Aviv

WEST

BANK

JOR.

460,613

Ben Gurion

Airport

Ramallah

Modin

Jericho

Ashdod

Jerusalem

225,939

936,425

Bethlehem

Ashkelon

ISRAEL

Gaza City

Hebron

614,071

210,081

GAZA

Beersheba

20 MILES

EGYPT

Population

density

Haifa

2019 population:

285,316

High

Nazareth

ISRAEL

Low

Jenin

Netanya

Tulkarm

Nablus

161,630

Qalqilya

Tel Aviv

WEST

BANK

460,613

Ben Gurion

Airport

Ramallah

Modin

Jericho

Ashdod

225,939

Jerusalem

936,425

1949 armistice

Green Line

Ashkelon

Bethlehem

Gaza City

614,071

Hebron

210,081

ISRAEL

GAZA

Dead

Sea

Khan Younis

Rafah

180,354

Beersheba

10 MILES

EGYPT

Sea of

Galilee

Population

density

Haifa

2019 population:

285,316

High

Nazareth

ISRAEL

Low

Jenin

Netanya

Tulkarm

Nablus

161,630

Qalqilya

Tel Aviv

JOR.

WEST

BANK

460,613

Ben Gurion

Airport

Ramallah

Jordan

River

Modin

Jericho

Ashdod

225,939

Jerusalem

936,425

1949 armistice

Green Line

Ashkelon

Bethlehem

Gaza City

Dead

Sea

614,071

Hebron

210,081

ISRAEL

GAZA

Khan Younis

Rafah

10 MILES

180,354

Beersheba

EGYPT

Summer 2014: Hamas kills three Israeli teenagers

Hamas militants kill three Israeli teenagers kidnapped near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, prompting an Israeli military response. Hamas answers with rocket attacks from Gaza. A seven-week conflict leaves more than 2,200 Palestinians dead in Gaza. In Israel, 67 soldiers and six civilians are killed.

December 2017: U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as capital

The Trump administration recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announces that it plans to shift the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv, stirring outrage from Palestinians.

2018: Protests in Gaza

Protests take place in Gaza along the fence with Israel, including demonstrators hurling rocks and gasoline bombs across the barrier. Israeli troops kill more than 170 protesters over several months. In November, Israel stages a covert raid into Gaza. At least seven suspected Palestinian militants and a senior Israeli army officer are killed. From Gaza, hundreds of rockets are fired into Israel.

May 2021: Israeli police raid al-Aqsa Mosque

After weeks of tension in Jerusalem lead to Israeli police raiding al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam, Hamas fires thousands rockets toward the city, prompting Israel to retaliate with hundreds of airstrikes. In the fiercest fighting since at least 2014, more than 200 are killed in Gaza and at least 10 killed in Israel.

Spring 2022: String of terrorist attacks in Israel

A spate of violence on Israelis by Palestinians leaves 14 Israelis dead in a handful of attacks between March 22 and April 8. In response, Israel clamps down on militants and activists, and launches the “Break the Wave” military operation in the West Bank, which makes 2022 a particularly deadly year.

Israeli forces kill 146 Palestinians in the West Bank in 2022, a death toll higher than in any other year since the United Nations began keeping records in 2005. Israel’s Foreign Ministry says Palestinians killed 29 Israelis that year.

December 2022: Netanyahu sworn in for sixth term

Benjamin Netanyahu is sworn in again as Israeli prime minister, after winning an election that gives him his sixth term and elevates a once-fringe bloc of far-right politicians into powerful seats. He cobbles together the most far-right government in Israeli history, which critics say has begun to crush any prospect of a two-state solution.

It’s also the most pro-settler government, with some members encouraging an expansion in settlement activity in occupied Palestinian territories. Settler violence against Palestinian civilians, with settlers emboldened by the government, surges too.

January 2023: Israeli raid on Jenin

Israeli forces raid the Palestinian city of Jenin, killing nine people in a shootout. The next day, a Palestinian gunman kills seven people, including children, during prayers at an East Jerusalem synagogue.

Summer 2023: Retaliatory attacks flare

Tit-for-tat attacks flare.

Israel launches surprise airstrikes across the Gaza Strip in May, killing three top militants and 10 others, including women and children, health officials say. That sets up a five-day bout of violence that kills at least 33 people in Gaza and two in Israel.

On June 19, Israeli forces raid Jenin, deploying helicopter gunships to the West Bank for the first time since the second intifada.

The next day, two Hamas gunmen open fire at a hummus restaurant at an Israeli settlement, killing four Israelis

Hundreds of Israeli settlers then rampage through Palestinian villages, torching homes and cars, and shooting at residents, according to local officials. Israel also carries out its first drone strike in the West Bank since 2006, killing three suspected militants.

In July, Israel stages an air and ground attack with 1,000 soldiers backed by drone strikes against a refugee camp inside Jenin, killing 12 people. The operation marks the start of an “extensive counterterrorism effort” that the Israel Defense Forces says will continue indefinitely.

October 2023: Israel says it’s ‘at war’ after Hamas attack

Netanyahu formally declares war on Hamas on Oct. 8 following a surprise assault by Hamas militants that came a day after the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Israel’s air force begin striking Hamas targets in Gaza after Hamas militants “infiltrate” Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip, including by paraglider and over the sea, Israeli military leaders say. Israel says at least 900 Israelis have been killed.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant group in Gaza, says it is holding Israeli soldiers captive. Israel Defense Forces and Israeli media are reporting that dozens of civilians have also been kidnapped, including the elderly, women and children.

Meanwhile, a Hamas military commander, Mohammed Deif, urges Arab neighbors including Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen to “start marching now,” saying that “it is time for the Arab resistance to unite. We call for the movement towards Palestine.”

A counterattack of airstrikes by Israel in Gaza kills more than 680 Palestinians.

Claire Parker, Steve Hendrix, Shira Rubin, and Hazem Balousha contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Sammy Westfall · October 9, 2023

16. Vietnam tried to hack U.S. officials, CNN with posts on X, probe finds

Vietnam tried to hack U.S. officials, CNN with posts on X, probe finds

The attempts appear to have been unsuccessful, but came as the U.S. and Vietnam were negotiating an agreement that President Biden signed last month in Hanoi

By Joseph Menn, Max Hoppenstedt, Michael Birnbaum, Yann Philippin, Rafael Buschmann and Nicola Naber

Updated October 9, 2023 at 8:22 p.m. EDT|Published October 9, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Joseph Menn · October 9, 2023

Vietnamese government agents tried to plant spyware on the phones of members of Congress, American policy experts and U.S. journalists this year in a brazen campaign that underscores the rapid proliferation of state-of-the-art hacking tools, according to forensic examination of links posted to Twitter and documents uncovered by a consortium of news outlets that includes The Washington Post.

Targeted were two of the most influential foreign policy voices on Capitol Hill: Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and chair of its subcommittee on the Middle East. Also targeted were Asia experts at Washington think tanks and journalists from CNN, including Jim Sciutto, the outlet’s chief national security analyst, and two Asia-based reporters.

The targeting came as Vietnamese and American diplomats were negotiating a major cooperation agreement intended to counter growing Chinese influence in the region, when Vietnamese diplomats would have been particularly interested in Washington’s views on China and issues in Asia. President Biden signed the agreement in September during a visit to Vietnam.

The State Department did not respond to a question about whether it had raised the spyware issue with the Vietnamese government, but said in a statement that the agreement would give the United States a forum for such a discussion. A CNN spokeswoman declined to answer emailed questions about the targeting. None of the targeted individuals contacted by The Post said their devices had been infected.

The spies used the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, to try to induce the politicians and others to visit websites designed to install a hacking software known as Predator, according to the probe.

Like its better-known competitor Pegasus, Predator is a powerful and hard-to-detect surveillance program that can turn on the microphones and cameras of Apple iPhones and devices running on Google’s Android software, retrieve all files and read private messages, even when they are end-to-end encrypted.

Predator is distributed by an evolving network that includes the European company Intellexa and a related firm, Cytrox, both of which the U.S. Commerce Department added in July to its “Entity List,” a designation that requires U.S. businesses to seek a license before doing business with them. Officials were acting under a March executive order that set out policies to encourage “the use of commercial spyware … consistent with respect for the rule of law, human rights, and democratic norms and values.”

The new hacking attempts followed lengthy conversations and technology shipments between Vietnamese agencies and subsidiaries of the spyware’s creators, according to documents made available to the Paris-based news outlet Mediapart and the Hamburg-based weekly Der Spiegel. Amnesty International uncovered the extent of the hacking attempts and shared its findings with The Post and 14 international media outlets whose investigation was coordinated by European Investigative Collaborations, a journalism consortium.

“Through all the evidence and documents we have seen we believe that Predator was sold from Intellexa through several intermediaries to the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security,” Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty’s Security Lab, told The Post. The Vietnamese government declined to comment.

Vietnam has been implicated in other hacking campaigns, including against human rights activists in other countries. It also has used commercial spyware programs previously. In 2020, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab said it had detected a Vietnamese installation of a hacking program from Circles, which like Cytrox and Intellexa was founded by Israeli military hacking veteran and entrepreneur Tal Dilian. Dilian had previously sold Circles to Francisco Partners, which combined it with NSO Group, the owner of Pegasus. Francisco Partners sold the merged company in 2019.

Dilian, Cytrox, Intellexa and Intellexa director Sara Hamou did not respond to questions from European Investigative Collaborations. In the past, Dilian has said he sells to “good guys” who sometimes misbehave.

The Biden administration found the targeting of members of Congress very concerning, said an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. He said that 50 U.S. officials serving abroad were known to have been targeted previously with commercial spyware, a key factor leading to the March executive order. The recent campaign vindicates the decision to add Cytrox and Intellexa to the entity list alongside NSO Group, which was added in 2021, the official said.

The intended U.S. victims who responded to questions from The Post all said they never saw the links that would have installed the hacking program or believed they did not click on them, and no evidence has emerged that the hacking tries succeeded. But the effort was surprisingly public, with the links posted by an anonymous account on X in replies to the targets’ tweets or in replies that tagged the targets.

Top-tier spyware vendors and buyers almost always strive to keep their campaigns secret to avoid repercussions and to reuse the techniques and infrastructure. Even in this case, anyone who clicked would have been infected with only an early-stage tool that would screen out unintended victims, investigators said.

X did not comment when asked about the campaign.

The malicious account on X bore the handle @Joseph_Gordon16. It deleted many of the tweets within a day or two, probably to avoid detection. The account vanished entirely in recent weeks, after journalists began asking Cytrox and Intellexa executives about it.

“As a Predator customer is clearly in the process of learning in a painful way, exploiting across Twitter is a terrible idea,” said researcher John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab, which did its own investigation and said it agreed with Amnesty’s findings. “The fact that would even happen proves Predator is still going to reckless operators.”

The EIC’s Predator Files investigation found that the companies selling Predator also offered the capability to infect devices through WiFi wireless networks and through websites or telecom networks under national control.

Bills are being considered in Congress and in other countries to attempt stronger oversight of the spyware industry after rampant abuses have been uncovered in Mexico, Greece, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. While companies such as Cytrox and NSO Group say they sell only to governments and forbid misuse, their clients have used the spy gear against nonviolent activists, journalists and political figures. NSO has said it has terminated customers for improper targeting.

Both Predator and Pegasus can be delivered in ways that require a target to click, as in this case, or with no interaction, which requires knowledge and exploitation of a security flaw that has been undiscovered by phone makers or has not yet been fixed with a software update. Those exploits can cost millions of dollars by themselves to develop or buy, which is another reason the hacks are usually reserved for the highest-value targets and kept stealthy.

Acting on a tip from Google, which first spotted the campaign in late May, Citizen Lab found a half-dozen replies on X that could have led to infections. Scott-Railton said the links went to sites that connected to pages that had installed Predator previously, including in a recent attempt to hack a phone belonging to an opposition presidential candidate in Egypt.

Amnesty said it found 59 replies and tweets tagging targets around the world that contained the link, including more than a dozen aimed at people in the United States. It shared its findings with the media outlets.

In addition to McCaul and Murphy, the members of Congress targeted included U.S. Sens. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.). Even if they had clicked on the link, they might not have been infected if they had done so from a phone set up in the United States; some creators of spyware, notably NSO Group, say their tools are designed not to work against phones with U.S. numbers. Apple’s optional Lockdown Mode, which limits some iPhone functions, has so far blocked multiple methods used to deliver Predator to targets, according to Citizen Lab. That is no guarantee for the future, however, and some infections may have occurred already without detection.

Leslie Shedd, a spokeswoman for McCaul, said the congressman doesn’t manage his own social media accounts and would not have seen the targeting tweet. She added that staffers who operate his Twitter account would not have clicked on the link.

An aide to Murphy confirmed that Google had notified his office of the targeting attempt but said that no one in the office had clicked the link “to the best of our knowledge.”

Peters’ office said in a statement that it was aware of the link but did not believe it had been targeted or compromised.

Kami Capener, a spokeswoman for Hoeven, said “We have not been made aware of an attempted spyware attack on our office.”

A screenshot shows that on April 14, a few hours after Hoeven met Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and the Taiwanese president posted about it on X, the Joseph Gordon account replied, citing what it said was a relevant news article. “US defence contractors visiting Taiwan in May to boost security tie-up,” the article was headlined, seemingly in the South China Morning Post. But the link sent by the X account led to an impostor website that could have installed Predator, Amnesty said, adding that both Hoeven and Tsai would have received the link.

Citizen Lab said that over the weekend of Sept. 30, after contacts from reporters, more than half of Cytrox’s active servers for distributing the spyware were taken offline. “I’d describe this as a radical shutdown,” Scott-Railton said.

A person familiar with Google’s probe, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted, said the would-be hackers might have chosen to send public links to a member of Congress or other high-profile targets because such a link might seem less suspicious than an out-of-the-blue text message or email. In addition, the preview of the link that appeared in the tweet might have made it look more genuine.

But Scott-Railton said he thought the attempts probably were carried out by someone with little experience. In a forthcoming post, Citizen Lab writes: “We believe that targeting using mercenary spyware 1-click links via public-facing posts is quite rare because of the substantial risk of discovery and exposure, as well as the possibility of a link being crawled and clicked by the wrong party or service.”

The same technique was used over Twitter in Kenya in 2015, targeting a political candidate, but neither Google nor Citizen Lab could identify a similar public attack in the intervening years. Meta said it has detected public comments with links to powerful spyware on its platforms, but not by top-tier national attackers.

In addition to exposing more Predator customers, the investigation into the Vietnamese campaign revealed at least one new way of attacking a phone, which has been fixed as a result, according to a person familiar with Google’s work.

The Google team tried visiting the dangerous links from a variety of test devices and was able to infect an Android phone with a first stage of malware. That infection came via a previously unknown flaw in the Chrome web browser, which Google studied and patched within days, the person said.

Google’s Threat Analysis Group, which specializes in the most serious attacks, spotted the campaign on May 23 or 24, about a day after a suspicious link was posted. In addition to initiating its own investigation, the team notified X and Citizen Lab.

Apparent targets, including those in the House and Senate, would have received a notification from Google beginning in June stating that a nation-state attack attempt had been detected. Those alerts go out monthly and do not identify the method or likely perpetrator.

Relations between Vietnam and the United States, once warring rivals, have warmed in recent years, but the upgraded partnership Biden signed in Hanoi in September was a significant shift. The Biden administration had made signing a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Vietnam a top priority, and the accord placed Washington on the same level as Beijing and Moscow within Hanoi’s hierarchy of international relations.

Vietnam retains deep ties to China, a fellow communist power that has also embraced state-driven capitalism. But Hanoi has pushed back against Chinese claims over the South China Sea and has indicated it is open to new friends. The new deal will help the United States diversify its supply chain away from China, with U.S. technology companies indicating a willingness to invest in advanced semiconductor manufacturing in Vietnam. Google is interested in investing, and Apple is ramping up production of MacBooks and other hardware in the country.

The effort to deepen ties with Washington would have made insight into U.S. thinking on China and Taiwan important for Vietnam. Senior lawmakers whose congressional committees are nodes for lobbying and communications with the White House, State Department and Department of Defense would have been natural targets, staffers said. So too would be analysts at think tanks who are often in close contact with decision-makers.

Amnesty determined that an Asia expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States was targeted by the Joseph Gordon account, along with the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “We checked and see no evidence that these attempts to penetrate our network were successful,” CSIS spokesman Andrew Schwartz said. “Attempts are common given the nature of our work.” The German Marshall Fund declined to comment.

Amnesty concluded that the Joseph Gordon account “was acting on behalf of Vietnamese authorities or interest groups.” Google said the technical infrastructure that Amnesty was tracking “is associated with a government actor in Vietnam.”

A Facebook account labeled Anh Tram, aimed at Vietnamese speakers, linked to some of the same Predator pages, according to investigators for Meta, Facebook’s parent company. They said that they had linked the operation to previous Predator infection attempts. The account was recently deleted.

Researchers said the clumsy Predator attacks allowed them to identify new customer nations and attack vectors. Amnesty said it found new technical indicators of customers, targets or both in Vietnam, Indonesia, Egypt, Madagascar, Kazakhstan, Sudan, Mongolia and Angola. Previous research by Citizen Lab had pointed to the first four and to Saudi Arabia, Oman, Greece, Serbia, Armenia, Germany, Colombia, Philippines, Ivory Coast and Trinidad and Tobago.

U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said the attempted spying on his colleagues was not surprising by itself. But he said it is a sour reminder that efforts to regulate high-end spyware are progressing more slowly than is the capability of countries to wield it.

“It’s quite possible that this technology can be developed faster than our ability to detect it as a threat and put its maker on the entity list,” said Himes, who has a bill under consideration in the House that would punish countries that use spyware against U.S. officials.

“It’s pretty uncomfortable for us to worry about nation-states we normally wouldn’t worry about,” Himes said, adding that the United States and other large countries also spy through hard-to-detect software. “We do this, but it’s subject to immense amounts of oversight, usually consistent with our values, which are good values.”

The documents obtained by Mediapart show that Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security signed a deal for “infection solutions” with a company from what was called the Intellexa Alliance in 2020. The two-year deal, known to Intellexa executives as “AnglerFish,” brought in 5.6 million euros or nearly $6 million. Later documents indicate that an extension was discussed for “Blue Arrow,” a brand name Intellexa used to market Predator.

The documents also raise questions about the effectiveness of spyware regulation by the European Union. Managers from the French firm Nexa and their Dubai-based sister company, Advanced Middle East Systems, which was part of the Intellexa Alliance from at least 2019 to 2021, arranged the sale of Predator to Vietnam, documents show.

In 2018, Nexa employees discussed the difficulties of shipping surveillance technology for a live demonstration to Vietnam without having obtained the required dual-use license. Then one of the company executives suggested bringing the technology in carry-on luggage. “We have done that many times,” he wrote.

When a deal closed two years later, a Nexa executive announced it in a chat and Dilian responded “Wooow!!!!” French officials, including a member of the European Parliament, would later be targeted with Vietnam’s Predator.

Nexa, which has also supplied French intelligence services, declined to respond to questions about specific deals with Vietnam but told the EIC that it respects “all applicable regulations” governing spyware exports. Nexa said it had stopped selling offensive spyware such as Predator in the third quarter of 2021.

“This case shows that the E.U. regulatory regime is failing to prevent powerful spyware being developed, financed and exported from Europe globally,” Ó Cearbhaill said. “It is clear that Intellexa has been willing to sell Predator to governments with a history of abusing cyber-surveillance tools to spy on innocent dissidents, politicians or activists.”

Yann Philippin is an investigative reporter for the French online outlet Mediapart. Rafael Buschmann and Nicola Naber are investigative reporters for the German weekly Der Spiegel. They are members of the European Investigative Collaborations network (EIC), which brings together 11 European media outlets for cross-border investigations.

About this story

This article is part of the “Predator Files,” an investigative project based on hundreds of confidential documents obtained by Mediapart and Der Spiegel. The project was undertaken by 15 news outlets coordinated by EIC, with the technical assistance of the Security Lab of Amnesty International. It reveals the inside story of Intellexa, an alliance of surveillance vendors operating in Europe that sold powerful spyware like Predator to authoritarian regimes.

Participating media are EIC members Mediapart (France), Der Spiegel (Germany), NRC (Netherlands), Politiken (Denmark), Expresso (Portugal), Le Soir and De Standaard (Belgium), VG (Norway), Infolibre (Spain) and Domani (Italy), and their partners The Washington Post, Shomrim (Israel), Die Wochenzeitung (Switzerland), Reporters United (Greece) and Daraj Media (Lebanon).

The Washington Post · by Joseph Menn · October 9, 2023

17. Change of plans: US Army embraces lessons learned from war in Ukraine

For both Putin's War in Ukraine and Hamas attack on Israel I am reminded of Eliot Cohen and John Gooch and their book Military Misfortune. They assessed that all military failures are a result of three things: The failure to learn, the failure to adapt, and the failure to anticipate. I expect we will do a lot of learning and adapting in short order. But the failure to anticipate is the most difficult one to overcome in my opinion.

Change of plans: US Army embraces lessons learned from war in Ukraine

Defense News · by Jen Judson · October 9, 2023

WASHINGTON — Expensive, massive tanks destroyed by small and cheap loitering munitions.

Drones helping artillery locate targets.

A battlefield so flooded with sensors that it’s impossible to stay hidden for long.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Army has carefully taken note of these trends. Now those changes are reshaping the service’s plans from acquisition to how to approach formations to reimagining logistics. Already, the Army has rethought its plans to modernize tanks and altering its strategies with drones.

“The character of war is changing,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. “It’s changed more in the last couple of years because of the war in Ukraine. And I think it will continue to change at a very rapid pace and we have to have the mindset to change with it.”

Gen. James Rainey, who leads Army Futures Command, the service’s organization in charge of modernizing the force, said the service needs to adapt its artillery strategy based on both “what’s happening in Ukraine” as well as what U.S. Army Pacific requires from conventional fires.

“Everything we’re seeing in Ukraine [is] about the relevance of precision fires, all the emerging technology, but the big killer on the battlefield is conventional artillery, high-explosive artillery,” he said.

The U.S. Army plans to issue a new conventional fires strategy by the end of the year, he added.

Ukraine and Russia are locked in daily heavy artillery battles. The U.S. and its partners and allies have sent a wide variety of artillery weapons, including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, and millions of rounds of ammunition to counter Russia’s firepower.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has credited HIMARS with making a “huge difference” in liberating critical areas of the country under Russian occupation.

The war in Ukraine has also made clear artillery is still critical, said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who previously led U.S. Army Europe. A layered approach to artillery in formations — meaning using towed or mobile systems with different types of munitions that achieve different ranges — is required, he said.

A man walks on top of a damaged Russian tank in Dmytrivka, Ukraine. (Karl Ritter/AP)

The new artillery strategy will determine both the existing capability and capacity while also detailing future needs, Rainey said. The strategy will also consider new technology to enhance conventional fires on the battlefield, such as advances in propellant allowing midrange cannons to shoot as far as longer-range systems.

The document will also address the role of robotics, such as autoloaders for munitions. The Army has experimented with technology like autoloaders, which take a burden off of artillery operators and improve firing rates.

Army acquisition chief Doug Bush told Defense News in September the fires strategy will drive key decisions within his portfolio, including how to pursue the Extended Range Cannon Artillery requirement.

“The strategy is looking at a combination of factors,” Bush said. “Where do you need towed artillery versus perhaps tracked versus perhaps wheeled? What can you do with munitions to get range versus building new cannons?”

The Army is developing an Extended Range Cannon Artillery system that uses a service-built 58-caliber gun tube mounted on the chassis of a BAE Systems-made Paladin Integrated Management howitzer.

But the service in 2020 also assessed available 155mm mobile howitzers seeking improvements in range, rate of fire, and mobility over the artillery systems used within Stryker brigade combat teams. The Army evaluated at least four foreign companies’ offerings in a shoot-off, but ultimately did not move forward with a new capability.

A new artillery strategy could renew the push for rapid procurement of a field-proven 155mm mobile howitzer.

“Some of our NATO allies have some really good kit [and] capability that we’re interested in,” Rainey noted.

Bush recently visited 18th Airborne Corps, which consist of very light units and they “still value towed artillery, because they can move it around with helicopters. ... But other parts of the Army might want something different,” he said.

Taking a new look at an off-the-shelf mobile howitzer is a part of the strategy’s purview, he noted. “From an acquisition standpoint, if I get a requirement, we’ve got some options to go pretty fast, if it is acceptable, for example, to take a foreign system rather than building a new one from scratch,” Bush said.

“The broad lesson is that you still need artillery. It is the No. 1 killer on the battlefield, still in this conflict [in Ukraine],” he said.

A fresh take on tanks

The Army in September, after watching loitering munitions destroy tanks in Ukraine and observing both sides struggle to maneuver tanks on the battlefield, opted to scrap its upgrade plan for the M1 Abrams tank and instead pursue a new variant: the M1E3.

The Abrams tank “can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in a statement at the time. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protection for soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”

The Abrams tank “with all its hood ornaments is already too heavy,” Hodges told Defense News. “Getting heavier is not the answer.”

Part of the new effort will take weight off the tank, increasing its mobility and sustainability. Today, if a tank breaks or gets hit in combat, it requires two recovery vehicles to pull it out of the fight. Reducing the tank’s weight would help, Dean said.

The new design is also intended to integrate active protection capability, including protection from attacks to the roof from loitering munitions and drones.

A Ukrainian soldier equips a drone with grenades in the Donetsk region on March 15, 2023. (Roman Chop/AP)

Dean told Defense News in a recent interview the new design will consider how to reduce the supply chain and make it easier to maintain the vehicle while on the battlefield. It will also improve reliability.

Ukraine has begun to receive its 31 M1 Abrams tanks from the U.S. military, and the U.S. Army is likely to soon learn more about how the tank holds up against the Russians, Dean said.

The tank “remains very, very relevant,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at a recent think tank event. “The claims that we’re seeing the end of the value of tanks were a little bit premature.”

According to reports, in the first two months of the war, Russia lost well over 400 tanks, spurring a debate over whether tanks were too cumbersome for the modern battlefield.

Wormuth acknowledged munitions that can hit the top of armored vehicles and tanks remain a challenge and said “we are working to develop capabilities to defend against that.”

Dean, noting he could not discuss details, said the Army is working extensively on how to protect tanks and combat vehicles from loitering munitions. Loitering munitions regularly destroy tanks and combat vehicles on both the Ukrainian and Russian sides.

“We have got to get better at top-attack inbound defeat,” Rainey said at the AUSA Warfighter Summit in July. “It’s solvable.”

While the service has long focused on protecting combat vehicles from the side and has integrated Rafael’s Trophy active protection system on the M1 Abrams tank, the protection has decreased the tank’s mobility. The same problem applies to the APS kits, which provide protection from anti-tank weapons. The service has yet to field APS on either the Stryker combat vehicle or the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle.

Moving in minutes

The Army has long set up elaborate command posts on the battlefield, putting up climate-controlled tents equipped with generators. The service has said these tactical operations centers must get smaller, both in size and in electromagnetic signature.

But the war in Ukraine has put more pressure on the service to act.

“Gone are the days where you’re setting up a whole [tactical operations center]. And two hours is too much time,” George said. “We need to be able to move in minutes. We need to be able to command and control on the move.”

He noted the war has also proven the need for open architecture that is mobile and can be rapidly updated.

The Army “has to fix what it has and then pivot to what the C2 architecture is going to be in the future,” George added.

He told Defense News he was struck recently by watching a unit going through a large exercise and only relying on five Stryker combat vehicles and 35 people to provide command-and-control for the entire brigade combat team. The Strykers, equipped with commercial, off-the-shelf laptops, tablets and radios, never had to be together physically as they were connected through a network operating as one node, George said.

Wormuth also recalled a similar visit to a training rotation at Fort Johnson where a unit had designed its TOC to be “much more mobile” and could break down and set up within two hours.

“That’s definitely something that we’re going to be spending time on, developing the capabilities to do that,” she said.

Ukraine has taught the Army it is going to have to learn how to “fight under constant observation of commercially available space, the electromagnetic spectrum, social media,” Rainey said. “We are going to have to figure out how to fight when the enemy’s going to know where we are or prevent him; so concealment, deception, camouflage, constantly good tactics.”

Wormuth also noted the Army must be able to operate even if command posts are cut off due to failed signals or enemy jamming. The Army is experimenting in this type of environment regularly during events like Project Convergence, a large exercise focused on developing a modernized force.

Remote logistics

The U.S. quickly faced a challenge early in the war in Ukraine. It was sending complex equipment to Ukraine — but without the experienced maintainers to fix it.

From a parking lot in Poland just months after the war began, the U.S. Army started answering the call for help, offering remote maintenance support. Army maintainers virtually demonstrated maintenance to their Ukrainian counterparts.

Since then, the Army has expanded its use of remote maintenance support to nearly every platform sent to Ukraine, including those of allies and partners. The service built a facility and a repair parts warehouse in Poland and began offering expertise through text message, prerecorded video or live stream.

This effort is now providing a road map for future logistics. George said at a recent event Ukraine is changing how the service “is looking at things on the logistics side,” citing virtual maintenance and 3D printing of parts.

U.S. soldiers offload M1A1 Abrams tanks needed for training Ukrainian forces at Grafenwoehr, Germany, on May 14, 2023. (Spc. Christian Carrillo/U.S. Army)

The Army now weighing how to apply tele-maintenance to the Indo-Pacific region, George told Defense News.

Additionally, the Army, watching Ukraine, is preparing for what it calls contested logistics, meaning its logistical efforts would be under constant attack.

“There’s been a theoretical recognition that logistics were going to be contested, but the Ukraine conflict, I think, has really made that very real to all of us,” Wormuth said at a recent event.

The Army has established a new cross-functional team for contested logistics under Army Futures Command focused on this challenge.

Preparing for the future

The war in Ukraine has, according to service leaders, validated many of the Army’s modernization priorities, laid out a little over five years ago.

The Army was already focused on countering unmanned aircraft systems because of operations in the Middle East and had set up a joint office at the Pentagon. The use of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine has accelerated efforts to come up with a layered approach to defeating the systems, both big and small.

“The scale of [drones on the battlefield] has been sort of astonishing and it has reinvigorated this focus on the lowest sort of short-range air defenses that would be needed for that,” Stacie Pettyjohn, a defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security, told Defense News.

Ukrainian servicemen fly a drone on the outskirts of Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on Dec. 30, 2022. (Sameer al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images)

And not all technology used to defeat drones needs to be exquisite. While the Army is working on directed-energy and high power microwave capabilities to defend against drone swarms, “you’re seeing that the Ukrainians need things like a smart shooter, a sight that they can put on a rifle that allows them to use [artificial intelligence]. It’s still pretty advanced, but it’s this tech that improves existing guns and allow them to take out some of the smallest quadcopters,” Pettyjohn said.

Formations may also need to change, Wormuth said. The Army “need[s] to probably have organic air defense with our fires in our maneuver units so that they can protect against drones.”

Air and missile defense for threats beyond drones is also receiving new attention. Russia has shown it will use multimillion dollar rockets and missiles against apartment buildings, Hodges said.

Wormuth said the Army is beginning to grow the air and missile defense force. The service is in the process of building an additional Patriot battalion, but it’s not dedicated to a specific combatant command yet. The Army also wants to grow additional Indirect Fire Protection Capability units as well, she noted.

These new units will be able to defend against cruise missiles and drones along with rockets, artillery and mortars at fixed and semi-fixed sites. The Army is still developing prototypes.

Having the ability to see or sense as much as possible at all times, is another way the Army is changing because of Ukraine. “There’s a lot of interest in drones to be able to provide us with [persistent sensing],” Wormuth told Defense News. “But we’re going to have a layered approach to that ... we’re investing in the [High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System], fixed-wing platform. ... I think you’ll see aerostats.”

Drawing from Ukraine, “there’s no shortage of observations that we should think about,” Rainey said. And the Army is “committed to turning those observations genuinely into lessons learned.”

About Jen Judson

Defense News · by Jen Judson · October 9, 2023

18. US Weaves web of intelligence links in Asia

Good. As we should. We need intelligence networks to prevent the "failure to anticipate."

US Weaves web of intelligence links in Asia

moderndiplomacy.eu · by By Newsroom · October 8, 2023

US Weaves web of intelligence links in Asia - Modern Diplomacy

October 8, 2023

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The US is deepening intelligence cooperation with countries across Asia as it looks to counter Beijing’s sophisticated spying apparatus and blunt Chinese cyber attacks, writes Bloomberg.

The Biden administration has developed a set of separate but overlapping partnerships in Asia, including an intelligence-sharing arrangement with the “Quad” grouping of the US, India, Japan and Australia, according to US officials who asked not to be identified discussing matters that aren’t public.

The web of relationships also includes trilateral partnerships among the US, Japan and South Korea, and one encompassing the US, Japan and the Philippines, the officials said.

These new and strengthened partnerships, known formally as intelligence liaison relationships, are in part aimed at reducing the growing power of China’s spy apparatus, which a recent UK parliamentary report described as the world’s largest. The administration effort is part of a broader drive to deepen links across the region amid growing alarm at the threat from Beijing.

“Intelligence liaison can serve as an important force multiplier,” said Daniel Byman, a specialist on the topic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It can expand overall collection as different countries will have access to different secrets in different parts of the world.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the relationships. A White House spokesperson said US cooperation in the region includes sharing information but declined to comment on specific relationships.

Japan has been deepening security cooperation with like-minded countries in Asia and the Indo-Pacific, including on intelligence and information, Cabinet Secretary for Public Affairs Noriyuki Shikata said by email.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs declined to comment. The South Korean, Australian, Philippine, and Vietnamese governments did not respond to requests for comment.

In a meeting with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Japan’s defense minister Minoru Kihara vowed to carry out a drastic upgrade of information protection and cyber security capabilities with American help, according to a readout from the Japanese Defense Ministry.

Still, obstacles remain — not least because of questions about the US’s own ability to keep a secret. In April, the Justice Department charged a 21-year-old National Guard airman, Jack Teixeira, with illegally disseminating classified information, including sensitive battlefield data about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and revelations that the US eavesdropped on allies such as South Korea.

The partnerships will complement the “Five Eyes” arrangement that has long been the cornerstone of US intelligence partnerships. That informal network consisting of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand has shifted its focus to China in recent years, but its exclusive English-speaking membership limits its reach and relevance in Asia.

Five Eyes countries have been sharing secret information for decades through intimate networks of officials that permeate their intelligence, defense and foreign ministries. Asia’s emerging spy pacts are much newer and will likely take time to rival the Five Eyes.

“The Five Eyes’ dominance is pretty established, but when you start to work on different problems you get different priorities,” Byman said. “As we shift to China, then countries like Japan and South Korea become more important, alongside Five Eyes partners in the region like Australia and New Zealand.”

moderndiplomacy.eu · by By Newsroom · October 8, 2023

19. Israel’s Intelligence Failure

Key point:

Evidently it was all a delusion. Hamas, just like Arafat’s PLO, is willing to do everything for Palestine—and nothing at all for Palestinians.

Israel’s Intelligence Failure

A tragic political misjudgment about Hamas’ intentions

EDWARD N. LUTTWAK

Tablet · by Edward N. Luttwak · October 8, 2023

In recent months Hamas refused to join the much smaller Islamic Jihad in launching rockets against Israel, which seems to have convinced Israeli leaders that, at long last, the leading terror group in Gaza had decided to prioritize the welfare of its subjects over more futile rocket attacks.

Israel promptly reciprocated the de facto Hamas ceasefire by allowing thousands of Gazans to work in Israel—first 17,000, then 20,000, with the potential for many more. Their earnings were changing the lives of 100,000 family members with the possibility of even wider benefits. What was happening on the ground seemed to open a path toward tranquility for Israel and a degree of prosperity for Gaza.

Evidently it was all a delusion. Hamas, just like Arafat’s PLO, is willing to do everything for Palestine—and nothing at all for Palestinians.

The New October War

Israel’s political misjudgments about Hamas’ intentions, especially in the context of recent hopeful movements toward further peace agreements with Arab countries including a deal with Saudi Arabia, may well have played a background role in lowering the country’s vigilance. But it is no excuse for the massive intelligence failure that allowed Hamas to pull off its deadly surprise offensive. Indeed, Israeli wishful thinking is not even relevant to Saturday’s disaster, because the 24/7 scrutiny of enemy doings and undoings to detect “threat indicators” is not supposed to be switched off for any reason, ever.

In theory one may have to wait for years to find out what happened. But in reality there is only one way Hamas could have pulled off Saturday’s massive surprise: by feeding valuable, indeed “actionable” information to individuals who were Israeli intelligence sources, even though that information allowed the Israelis to destroy rockets before they could be launched against them and achieve other such successes.

Because the destroyed rockets belonged to Islamic Jihad, which is the chief competitor for Hamas and Shia-leaning to boot (Iran pays the bills), Hamas itself paid no price to thus fill the “espionage horizon” below which yesterday’s attacks were planned.

There are techniques that with much skill and patience can uncover double agents, but no tricks can detect agents who are reporting as best they can what they actually know—and who report enough good intelligence to keep everybody too busy to look for what they do not know.

Evidently years of war with Israel and its intelligence services have taught Hamas how to fight them effectively.

Caught by surprise, because of errors that allowed Hamas to take the initiative, it is now Israel’s turn to act—and not just by bombing Hamas headquarters. A new approach altogether is needed, with nothing off the table.

Edward N. Luttwak is a contractual strategic consultant for the U.S. government and an author.

Tablet · by Edward N. Luttwak · October 8, 2023

20. Israel’s 9/11? How Hamas Terrorist Attacks Will Change the Middle East

Excerpts:

The big question at the moment is whether the fighting will remain confined to Gaza and restricted to Israel and Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, the terrorists directly responsible for Saturday’s attacks. Hezbollah, we can be certain, will be monitoring these developments and perhaps looking for an opportunity to expand the war by striking Israel from the north thus locking the Jewish state into a multi-front struggle, should Palestinians on the West Bank rise up as well. In 2006, Hezbollah was initially castigated throughout the region for its recklessness, but eventually was lauded for its success in withstanding the inevitable Israeli onslaught and ultimately further isolating Israel among the world’s nations.

In other words, if anything approaching the worst case scenario — a full-scale, full-theater, total war in the Middle East, involving Israel defending itself against Iran and its proxies — comes to fruition, the security and stability of the world will be affected in ways that would eclipse the impact of the 9/11 attacks 22 years ago.

Israel’s 9/11? How Hamas Terrorist Attacks Will Change the Middle East - War on the Rocks

BRUCE HOFFMAN AND JACOB WARE

warontherocks.com · by Bruce Hoffman · October 10, 2023

Perhaps the most surprising part of Hamas’ devastating cross-border attack was its complexity. Rarely in history has a terrorist organization been able to fight from the air, sea, and land. Both al-Qaeda and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka had similar capabilities but even they were incapable of launching simultaneous, coordinated assaults utilizing all three. Hamas, working alongside Palestine Islamic Jihad, and, per the Wall Street Journal’s reporting, supported and guided by Iran, the patron and financier of both, has now achieved an infamous notoriety. The potential for this war to expand to three fronts, should Hezbollah decide to attack Israel from the north — as it did when Israel and Hamas clashed over Gaza in 2006 — and for violence to erupt from Palestinians on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would gravely complicate an already complex and fraught situation. Should Israel decide to strike Iran or Tehran decide to intervene more directly in the conflict, the consequences would be catastrophic for the region. With terrorist groups as far afield as Afghanistan pledging to support Hamas, the introduction of a diverse array of foreign fighters cannot be discounted either.

For Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, the timing was propitious. For months, Israel has been beset with internecine political fights. These internal frictions were progressively sharpened by greater polarization, highly controversial proposed judicial reforms, political vituperation, sustained mass protests, and boycotts of military service by reservists. Meanwhile, the Israeli government was nevertheless seeking normalization of relations with several countries across the Arab and Muslim worlds, with some success.

Terrorists are always studying their enemies and probing for opportunities to strike precisely when their opponents are distracted or preoccupied with other matters. It was thus the perfect storm in Israel for Hamas, given the current government’s fractious coalition, its unpopularity with many Israelis, the prime minister’s ongoing legal travails, and the recent clashes both on the Temple Mount, which is sacred to both Muslims and Jews, and the West Bank.

Become a Member

The surprise terrorist attacks that shattered Israel on October 7 are without precedent. And, the repercussions of a war that will surely escalate and likely have wide-ranging and longstanding repercussions will be a watershed moment in national, regional, and international security on par with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Much will depend on Israel’s next steps, with options likely ranging from a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip to perhaps a more ambitious and consequential strike directly against Iran. Either eventuality will reshape the Middle East for the foreseeable future — not least by likely derailing the Abraham Accords peace talks, as Hamas and Iran clearly intended.

A Barbaric Attack on Israel’s Civilians — and a Stunning Intelligence Failure

The failure of Israeli intelligence — arguably among the most sophisticated in the world — to detect the preparations and logistical staging that were likely months in the planning will result in independent inquiries, systemic reforms, and a new mindset regarding security and homeland defense.

It is hard not to draw a parallel with the other epic intelligence failure in Israel’s history — the 1973 Yom Kippur War. And, the fact that these attacks occurred nearly 50 years later to the day makes this comparison even more compelling. But, with at least 700 killed, 2,000 wounded, and hundreds more missing and presumed being held captive in Gaza, the scope and magnitude of this weekend’s surprise attacks will almost certainly approach — if not surpass — the 2,656 killed and 9,000 wounded half a century ago. Viewed from another perspective, Saturday’s casualty toll alone was already double the number of Israelis killed on the worst day of the Yom Kippur War: Oct. 7, 1973.

In terms of population proportions, this conflict will be much worse than the attacks suffered by the United States on 9/11. Indeed, much like in 2001 when many Americans knew someone or someone who knew someone who died at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or on United Flight 93, Israelis will all be grieving the loss of relatives, friends, and neighbors. In the first day alone, it is the equivalent of if 20,000 Americans had been killed on 9/11. Even in the darkest days of the Yom Kippur War, the Egyptian and Syrian armies never pierced the defensive ring around the country maintained by the Israel Defense Forces. Civilians then were not hunted down in their own homes and murdered, sexually assaulted, and wantonly killed and kidnapped. These recent events will forever change the security calculus of Israel in assuring the safety of its population. Having once seemed practical and effective, Israel’s “mowing the grass” counterterrorism strategy now appears unforgivably short sighted and insufficient and will surely be replaced by a far harsher regime.

This situation arguably was foretold 35 years ago in Hamas’ covenant. Just as Hitler’s genocidal intentions toward the Jews in his 1923 book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), were ignored or dismissed as bluster, so too have Hamas’ identical intentions. “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it,” is how the document begins. Article 7 then clearly states, “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” And, Article 13 completely disdains negotiations or a peaceful resolution of Jewish and Palestinian territorial claims. “There is no solution for the Palestinian question,” the covenant proclaims, “except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” Nor are these words historical artifacts. Every Hamas “military” communiqué since the attacks began has ended with the words, “It is a jihad of victory or martyrdom.”

Many commentators have rightly decried the attack as terrorism. And, Hamas has long been designated by the U.S. Department of State, at least half a dozen other countries, and two international organizations as a terrorist organization. But the reports of indiscriminate executions of civilians, sexual crimes, and the young, old, and disabled being dragged into captivity make even that pejorative label inadequate. Instead, clearer language is needed when civilians are treated like this. Pogroms, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and perhaps even crimes against humanity may thus be more accurate — particularly given that Oct. 7 likely now marks the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

War in the Middle East?

Saturday’s attacks should offer a stark reminder of terrorism’s unique ability to drive geopolitical agendas and completely upend status quos. The timing of the attacks was likely a response to the normalization process in diplomatic relations between Israel and many Muslim countries in the Gulf and North Africa. Since 2020, the Abraham Accords have produced the historic opening of formal ties between Israel and a succession of Middle Eastern and African countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. The possible conclusion of a U.S.-brokered establishment of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel was widely seen as a game-changer in regional security alignments. The attendant promised defense pact between Saudi Arabia and the United States was something Tehran was desperate to derail since it was obviously directed against Iran. Throughout history, the absolute worst enemy of terrorists has always been moderates and peacemakers. With Saturday’s surprise attacks, Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad and their Iranian government patrons may have achieved their goal of upending a peace process that was on the verge of a major breakthrough.

What is less clear is how Hamas hopes the next days will unfold. Terrorism is, at its very core, strategic violence, selected by actors who no longer seek political solutions. It is unclear what specific strategic result Hamas is seeking. Perhaps Hamas is attempting to provoke an overwhelming response, as al-Qaeda did on Sept. 11, inspiring both Palestinians and their allies in Lebanon and beyond to attack Israel. Or perhaps they are merely acting as spoilers of a newly invigorated peace process, just like the Jewish far-right extremists whose killing of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 stymied the Oslo Accords that he had worked so hard to achieve. But this attack came at a time of unprecedented support for the Palestinian cause around the globe (and shortly after a controversial judicial reform proposal in Israel had shocked the democratic world). And, it was broadcast on social media, showing genuinely horrendous imagery of innocent civilians being butchered in the streets and taken hostage. It seems inevitable that the attacks will only set back the Palestinian cause, perhaps fatally. This may yet prove, then, a stunning miscalculation — and perhaps one only possible among actors blinded by hate.

Or, actors with no care whatsoever for the humanity they are charged with presiding over. Like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant during the 20-year war on terror, Hamas has seemingly demonstrated a disregard for the blood of those they purport to represent. In launching their jihad, the leaders of the group and many of its rank-and-file will be mercilessly hunted by Israeli security forces. But the path to their neutralization will be paved with the corpses of everyday Palestinian men, women, and children who want nothing but a more promising future. Almost half of Palestinians across Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank view the Abraham Accords positively, a greater percentage than in the rest of the Arab world. Hamas’ hijacking of that process will not lead to anything but more violence — and will do nothing to improve the lives of those genuinely suffering in the Gaza Strip.

Perhaps the greatest threat now comes from further miscalculations by state actors. Indeed, as we write, the war is both far from over and will not be contained. An Israeli ground operation to end once-and-for-all the threats from Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised, would almost certainly trigger an uprising on the West Bank and attacks in the north on Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon — Iran’s other regional terrorist minion. Already, this past weekend, Hezbollah fired rockets from Lebanon into the contested Shebaa Farms along the border with Israel. And, on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces was warning Israelis living in the north about a suspected cross-border infiltration. If accurate, it was precisely this kind of cross-border activity by Hezbollah that triggered the 2006 Lebanon War. Faced with a three-front war of almost existential dimensions and fueled by decades of frustrations over failed peace processes, continued occupation and repression, and land annexation, the Palestinians may embrace the situation as their only hope of altering a status quo that has dragged on for 56 years — since Israel’s lightning victory in the 1967 Six Day War.

Israel may thus feel driven to target the groups’ enablers in Iran rather than the individual terrorist movements directly attacking it from three directions. The allure of dealing such a knock-out blow will be difficult for the Israeli leadership to resist, given the right-wing composition of this particular ruling coalition. But it would unleash powerful forces that would likely prove impossible to control and would certainly engulf the entire region. Perhaps most concerningly, an Israeli government with unprecedented far-right and nationalist factions will be uncontainable in its response. As Steven Cook writes for the Council on Foreign Relations, “Under these circumstances, no foreign government, including the United States, will have any leverage on Israel to respond with restraint.”

Terrorism’s power to upend peace processes, trigger dangerous escalations, and set countries on the path to far more destructive, lethal, and consequential wars has so often been dismissed. But it was an assassin’s bullet in Sarajevo that resulted in World War I and produced 40 million casualties, and it was the 3,000 persons killed on Sept. 11 that launched the U.S.-led global war on terror in which an estimated 3.6 to 3.8 million have since perished. Saturday’s attacks will profoundly change the Middle East, as the 1948, 1967, and 1973 wars and Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon did before them. Preventing the profound repercussions of Sarajevo in 1914 and the response to 9/11 that launched a two-decade-long struggle that many would argue did not end with the United States leaving Afghanistan two years ago, should be of paramount importance in ending this war and containing its spread before the entire region erupts in violence. A task, sadly, far easier said than done.

Implications Worldwide

Moreover, the conflict will also have ramifications far beyond the Middle East. Already, reports have emerged of non-Israeli citizens — including U.S. citizens — being killed or captured by the dozens. Pressure is sure to increase on the world’s governments to respond, perhaps with force, particularly if foreign nationals are among the hostages held in Gaza. What happened on Saturday in Israel should additionally be ringing alarm bells in Washington, D.C., about America’s own enemies who opportunistically will seek to exploit the country’s political paralysis, divisiveness, and distraction with multiple international security challenges alongside the ongoing possibility of domestic political violence as the country approaches among the most contentious presidential races in its history.

But the implications go even further. At a time when a war for the future of democracy rages in Eastern Europe, perhaps only an existential threat to Israel could draw American attention away from the Ukrainian cause, possibly smoothing a path toward a Russian triumph in Europe. Refugee flows from several countries and regions would further destabilize surrounding states as well as the European continent, encouraging the same backlashes seen after the Arab Spring. And, Jewish communities in Europe, the United States, and beyond will also pay a dear price — doubtless finding themselves in the crosshairs of anti-Semitic terrorists driven by the same hatred that drove the Hamas militants across the Gazan border.

The big question at the moment is whether the fighting will remain confined to Gaza and restricted to Israel and Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, the terrorists directly responsible for Saturday’s attacks. Hezbollah, we can be certain, will be monitoring these developments and perhaps looking for an opportunity to expand the war by striking Israel from the north thus locking the Jewish state into a multi-front struggle, should Palestinians on the West Bank rise up as well. In 2006, Hezbollah was initially castigated throughout the region for its recklessness, but eventually was lauded for its success in withstanding the inevitable Israeli onslaught and ultimately further isolating Israel among the world’s nations.

In other words, if anything approaching the worst case scenario — a full-scale, full-theater, total war in the Middle East, involving Israel defending itself against Iran and its proxies — comes to fruition, the security and stability of the world will be affected in ways that would eclipse the impact of the 9/11 attacks 22 years ago.

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Bruce Hoffman is senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council of Foreign Relations and a professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917–1947. Jacob Ware is a research fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and DeSales University. Together, they are the authors of the forthcoming God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Bruce Hoffman · October 10, 2023

21. There Is No Consensus on American Decline in Beijing

There Is No Consensus on American Decline in Beijing

It is inaccurate – and dangerous – to assume that Chinese policy elites broadly perceive the U.S. to be in perpetual decline.

By Daniel Fu and Arran Hope

October 09, 2023

thediplomat.com · by Daniel Fu · October 9, 2023

Western writing on China is rife with commentary and analysis suggesting that there is an established consensus among Chinese policy elites and academics that the United States is in a state of perpetual decline. This analysis accurately diagnoses increasing confidence in China about Beijing’s material capabilities and technological prowess, and often passes for conventional wisdom. However, it ignores several recently published Chinese-language articles and commentaries that suggest there is far from a uniform consensus in Beijing about U.S. decline.

Many prominent Chinese elites have detailed how the United States continues to occupy a leading position in the international system, how its economic capabilities and influence have not waned and remain robust, and how it still holds sizable advantages in areas related to science and technology. An awareness of the diversity of views among those who help shape the discourse in Beijing’s policymaking circles allows for a more accurate appraisal of China’s approach to strategic competition. This in turn can help Washington craft smarter policy towards its principal strategic rival.

Party rhetoric from Beijing regularly trumpets China’s rise as inevitable and part of “changes not seen for a century.” This triumphalism has been largely coterminous with Xi Jinping’s time in office, though its origins extend back to the global financial crisis of 2008, when many Chinese elites began to express skepticism about U.S. leadership and hegemony. This hubris was then amplified during the Trump administration and into the pandemic, as rifts between the United States and its allies became more apparent and as Washington’s capacity to protect its citizens at home was called into question.

Prominent Chinese elites have sought more recently to dispel this common narrative. The political scientist Zheng Yongnian emphasized in 2022 that while “China has risen rapidly, the West has not fallen; it has just risen a little slower. Many people have not understood this point.” Sun Zhe, the director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations and professor of International Relations at Tsinghua University, has similarly warned that “discussion underestimating the U.S. and thinking that the importance of the U.S. has declined has restricted China’s objective judgment of the U.S. and the healthy development of U.S.-China relations.”

Zhao Kejin, an associate professor of International Studies at Tsinghua University, wrote that “many people think the United States is in decline now, but I personally think the United States has not declined.” He drew attention to issues endemic within U.S. politics, but chalked these up to various kinds of “confusion” in U.S. democracy and did not suggest that these are indicative of decline relative to China.

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Even Jin Canrong, the associate dean of the School of International Relations at Renmin University in Beijing whose views on U.S. decline are discussed extensively in Rush Doshi’s book “The Long Game,” stated in 2023 that the balance of power between the United States and China has remained unchanged, let alone the “advantage of power” enjoyed by the U.S. in the international system.

The notion that the U.S. economy is in decline or that Washington’s economic influence abroad is diminishing has also received pushback. Wang Jisi, president of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at Peking University, argued in 2022 that he has “doubts about assertions regarding the economic decline of the United States.” He noted that the U.S. economy has consistently accounted for “25-30 percent of world GDP” and that even though it has “occasionally slipped out of this range, it always recovers within a short period of time.” He concluded that “it is illogical to think that the U.S. will decline in the short-term,” pointing to enduring advantages the U.S. possesses in its natural resources, demographic trends, and geography.

Other experts such as Lu Feng, chair professor of economics at Peking University, have emphasized that the rate of China’s “catch-up” vis-a-vis the United States is “slowing down.” Lu pointed out that between 2011 and 2021, China’s “catch-up rate” vis-a-vis the U.S. slowed by 55 percent. Between 2017 and 2021, China’s GDP only grew an aggregate total of 8.5 percent against the United States while China’s annual “catch-up rate” in that period averaged only 1.7 percent per year.

The decline of U.S. manufacturing over the past two decades is often taken as an indicator of American decline by observers on both sides of the Pacific. However, Ma Xue, an associate researcher at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a government-connected think tank, has even countered this argument. In 2023, she asserted that the manufacturing industry in the U.S. has never been in “true decline,” and emphasized that the scale of U.S. manufacturing has grown rapidly in the last 40 years in absolute terms and in terms of productivity, maintaining its “competitive edge.”

Claims that China is ahead in the bilateral competition over high-tech innovation and research have also been met with some skepticism by Chinese elites. Wu Guosheng, professor and chair of the Department of the History of Science at Tsinghua University, has asserted that the “gap between the U.S. and China in science and technology is still relatively large” and that only by “reversing our fundamental views on science, basic research, and innovative culture, can we truly narrow the gap.” Wu lamented what he sees as China’s “rigid, old-fashioned” teachers and a restrictive “scientific culture,” which he believes obstructs efforts to foster a culture of true innovation akin to that of the United States.

Ren Zhengfei, founder of the telecoms giant Huawei, has expressed a similar sentiment. During a speech delivered at Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2023, he argued that “American politicians may come and go, but the United States’ innovative soil has lasted for hundreds of years and will not degrade because of them.” Ren added that “the soft power of the United States in science and education is something we cannot achieve in a few decades.”

The scientist Shi Yigong, the former dean of Tsinghua University’s School of Life Sciences, asserted in 2023 that “American science is much more powerful than you can imagine” and emphasized that “it is not only not in decline, but it will also lead world development in coming decades.” He stated that “according to the data, the U.S. has continued nurturing leading talent” and continues to occupy a “leading position in the world in innovation and various lines of scientific research, regardless of whether it is military or aerospace technology or any other area.”

Wang Wen, the executive dean of the Chaoyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University, echoed Wu, Ren, and Shi, writing around the same time that while China may ultimately surpass the United States, it is necessary for China to “objectively face the basic fact that the U.S. is not declining and will not decline.” He argued that the West still holds “obvious advantages” in that Washington maintains “an absolute leading position in finance, science and technology, military, and education.”

It is inaccurate and dangerous to assume that Chinese policy elites broadly perceive the U.S. to be in perpetual decline. This is not to ignore the significant contingent of U.S. declinists in academic and policy positions throughout China’s network of universities and think tanks. It may be the case that their views represent the majority of the contemporary Chinese academy. It is a mistake, however, to assume that there is a monolithic view in Beijing on Washington’s stature, position, and influence in the world. Debate in elite Chinese policy circles on the current stature and future of the United States is as contested as its inverse in the West.

Assuming that there are uniform views of U.S. decline in Beijing contributes to threat inflation, by interpreting China as being convinced that it is on a trajectory, buoyed by a historical narrative, toward a successful power transition. This misperception could also lead to miscalculations on the U.S. side. As certain narratives in Washington’s strategic discourse calcify into conventional wisdom, they can go uninterrogated, and if policymakers stop critically assessing these basic assumptions, they might fail to observe significant shifts in trends that could otherwise be leveraged to deescalate tensions.

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The extent to which discourse has shifted in recent years, from discussion oriented around China’s ascendancy to suggestions now that China is “peaking,” is indicative of how rapidly geopolitical conditions can change. Those changes require an equally flexible ability to reevaluate some conventional views when necessary.

Daniel Fu

Daniel Fu is a research associate at Harvard Business School. He was formerly the editor of the Party Watch Initiative and an open-source analyst at the Center for Advanced China Research (CACR) in Washington D.C. He received his M.A. in Political Science with a specialization in International Relations from Columbia University and his B.A. in Political Science from Boston College. His research has been published by the Jamestown Foundation, Pacific Forum, and The Diplomat.

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Arran Hope

Arran Hope is the editor-in-chief of the Jamestown Foundation's China Brief. He was formerly a business reporter at the China Project in New York. He received his M.A. in East Asian Studies from Columbia University and his B.A. in Chinese Studies and Japanese at the University of Cambridge.

thediplomat.com · by Daniel Fu · October 9, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"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."

Access NSS HERE

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