Click to jump to an expert analysis:

William F. Wechsler: With the parties eager to avoid a wider war, the primary danger remains miscalculation

Kirsten Fontenrose: The Gaza conflict is already spilling over into a regional war

Jonathan Panikoff: The strikes were a tactical success for Israel. But the strategic impact will depend on Iran’s response.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: Watch for a split within Hamas, and pressure on Iran and Hezbollah for a calibrated retaliation 

Beth Sanner: Israel boldly threads a needle

Thomas Warrick: Haniyeh’s death will not change Hamas’s goal of destroying Israel

Danny Citrinowicz: Even if the current escalation stops here, the next one is around the corner

Alex Plitsas: The difference between these strikes and Israel’s Iran strike in April

Holly Dagres: The attacks reveal—yet again—the Islamic Republic’s intelligence weaknesses

Nour Dabboussi: Dark clouds now hang over Beirut

With the parties eager to avoid a wider war, the primary danger remains miscalculation

It was a bad day to be an Iranian proxy. From Tehran’s perspective, the significance wasn’t only the importance of the targets—Hamas’s Haniyeh, Lebanese Hezbollah’s Shukur, and Kataib Hezbollah’s drone bases—but the locations, the near simultaneous timing, and what they demonstrate about the reach of Israel and the United States.

Israel was able to find, fix, and finish Shukur in Beirut, in a building close to Hezbollah’s Shura Council. It was able to do the same (presumably, as Jerusalem hasn’t confirmed this action) to Haniyeh in Tehran, at his state-provided residence while he was visiting to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. And the US strikes in Iraq, the first since February, took place south of Baghdad against a key element of the Iranian-backed umbrella organization Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which has taken credit for attacks on US forces and on Israel.

Together, the United States and Israel have demonstrated, once again, their impressive intelligence and strike capacities in places that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) undoubtedly has put on the top of their list to defend. It is also notable that senior US officials are currently in Riyadh to discuss US defensive maritime and air operations against the Houthis, another key Tehran terrorist partner whose recent deadly drone attack in Tel Aviv triggered a direct Israeli counterattack in Hodeidah. I hope these talks are intended to gain Saudi cooperation for a wider US special operations campaign to target Houthi leadership. This all follows, of course, Israel’s successful killing in April of senior Quds Force leader Mohammad Reza Zahedi in what was purported to be the Iranian consulate in Damascus, an attack that prompted Iran to launch an unprecedented, large-scale, direct strike on Israel less than two weeks later. If it were not for the US-led, region-wide air defenses, that Iranian attack would have killed a large number of Israelis.

Of course, Iran and its proxies have promised to respond to these attacks once again. But as I have described previously, the current environment in the wake of Hamas’s terrorist attacks on October 7 is one that unfortunately advantages the Iranian regime. Indeed, Israel’s actions can be seen as attempts to degrade this advantage. From Tehran’s perspective, they would thus be foolhardy to intentionally provoke the kind of regional war that would reverse this progress, especially one that risks involving the United States. Therefore, just as it was predictable that Israel would respond to Hezbollah’s attack against civilians in Majdal Shams in a targeted fashion rather than launching a full-scale war in Lebanon, I suspect Tehran will also respond in a manner that it believes will avoid a regional war. The primary danger today therefore remains more a question of miscalculation than of intent. 

—William F. Wechsler is the senior director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. His most recent US government position was deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism.

The Gaza conflict is already spilling over into a regional war

The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh should surprise no one other than Iran’s Air Defense Force. Israel was clear on October 8 that it would seek to eliminate Hamas leadership anywhere in the world. Israel has not targeted the group’s political leadership in Doha out of respect for Qatar’s role as mediator, at the behest of the United States. Traveling to Tehran to attend Pezeshkian’s inauguration was a known risk. 

One thing is certain: This assassination will not alter Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar’s calculus. In fact, when news of the assassination first broke, I heard questions among Palestinians about whether this was an inside job orchestrated by Sinwar to eliminate a colleague who might sell him out. It would not be the first Sinwar assassination of his own political leaders. Sinwar likely reads this probable Israeli operation as confirmation that Israel cannot reach him, since he is higher on the target list than was Haniyeh. Sinwar will be as unenthusiastic now about making a hostage deal with Israel as he was before Haniyeh’s death. Haniyeh and his political ilk have not figured into Sinwar’s calculus at any point, and were rarely looped in on it.

Smart questions are being asked after this event. Will it force the new Iranian president to abandon his reformist tendencies and move to the right? This depends on how “reformist” you believe he is; Israel’s assessment is “not very.” Pezeshkian’s statements affirming allegiance with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis immediately after his election seem to support this assessment, as do videos of him warmly embracing Haniyeh this week in Tehran. But we can expect ongoing debate about whether coming hardline decisions out of his office were inevitable or colored by the assassination. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for his part, has threatened revenge against Israel.

Another question being asked: Does this assassination in Tehran indicate that Israel can reach all of its adversaries inside Iran? Mulling this over will unnerve IRGC and Iranian political leadership and could influence decision making. It will make Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah wonder why he is alive. It will make Abdulmalik al-Houthi in Yemen glad he did not attend. In the United States, calls from some corners for Doha to expel Hamas political leadership were countered with the argument that it would not be as easy to track and monitor them if they relocated to Iran. This remains comparatively true, but the assassination of Haniyeh makes the argument almost moot.

A third question under discussion: How will this event, on the heels of the assassination of Hezbollah senior military advisor Fuad Shukur, impact Hezbollah’s strategy? Shukur’s death was in retaliation for a strike on a dozen Syrian Druze children that Hezbollah was loath to claim. The group may have wished to consider the case closed, a tit for tat. The strike on Haniyeh will put pressure on Hezbollah from their peers inside Gaza and Tehran to bundle the two assassinations and retaliate for both. Hezbollah would be wise to analyze the two events separately, focus bilaterally, recall Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s statement of regret after the 2006 war with Israel, and consider their own interests. 

The fourth question resurfacing is whether the conflict in Gaza is now spilling over and threatening to engulf the region. Attacks on Israel from as far as Iran and Yemen as well as Syria and Iraq, the quick action of regional states such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan in preventing further loss of life in such attacks, and creeping escalation despite the tireless diplomatic energy of Egypt and Qatar all indicate that we are already at the point of regional spillover. It is the interests of the parties in the conflict themselves that have dictated the ebb and flow of escalation thus far.

—Kirsten Fontenrose is a nonresident fellow at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. She was previously the senior director for the Gulf at the National Security Council.

The strikes were a tactical success for Israel. But the strategic impact will depend on Iran’s response.

In a matter of twenty-four hours, Israel killed not one but two of the most senior officials in the so-called Axis of Resistance. The deaths of both Hezbollah senior military leader and Jihad Council member, Fuad Shukur, and Hamas’s political leader, Ismael Haniyeh, led to Israel having its most impactful day of tactical successes in months. But tactical success does not always beget strategic victory, and Israel’s short- and long-term strategy remains unclear, likely to be driven in part by the answers to two key questions.

Will Iran independently respond or seek to attach itself to whatever retaliation Hamas and Hezbollah undertake? For Iran, which always prioritizes regime stability above everything else, it might see the timing and targets of the assassination as an opportunity to claim retaliation while foisting the actual kinetic response off on Hezbollah and Hamas. This would be the traditional pathway of response and is probably the most likely one. But two potentially interceding considerations may challenge Iran in taking this path.

First, Haniyeh’s assassination happened in Iran. In April, following Israel’s killing of senior IRGC officials in Damascus, Iran decided it had to respond directly, opening a new stage in the shadow war between Iran and Israel. In this case, it was not an Iranian official killed, but Iran may decide that it has to respond itself in order to not fall into a deterrence deficit against Israel.

Second, Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the Pezeshkian’s inauguration. The new president was viewed as the “reformist” in the election and lacks the depth of ties to Iran’s security establishment and IRGC that some of the other candidates had. Ultimately, it will be the supreme leader who signs off on any response. But Pezeshkian may decide, one day into his term, that he needs to align with whatever response the IRGC prefers or risk diminished standing and immediate tensions with one of the most important power bases in the Iranian government.

What does this mean for the hostage negotiations? The killing of Haniyeh, one of the primary negotiators for Hamas, does not mean the chances of a hostage release and temporary ceasefire are over, but they will almost certainly be delayed—again. Haniyeh was negotiating from Doha, but decision making power has always rested with Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and the mastermind behind the October 7 terrorist attack. That reality does not change because of the assassination.

Sinwar has long calculated that for Hamas, continued civilian deaths is ultimately a net positive, and has been more reluctant to agree to a ceasefire than others. But the conditions on the ground in Gaza don’t shift because of Haniyeh’s assassination. Hamas fighters are reported to be exhausted and desperate for the reprieve a ceasefire might bring.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has continuously changed the terms of a ceasefire but has always been clear since immediately after October 7 that Israel will hunt and kill the leaders of Hamas responsible for the attack. The prime minister may view a byproduct of Haniyeh’s death to be that it provides him sufficient political goodwill to make a deal that the ultranationalists in his coalition continue to oppose.

Iran’s, Hezbollah’s, and Hamas’s responses will drive the direction of the Middle East for the coming weeks and months: a reversion to current tensions or toward a potential broader regional war.

—Jonathan Panikoff is the director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative. He is a former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the US National Intelligence Council.

Watch for a split within Hamas, and pressure on Iran and Hezbollah for a calibrated retaliation

There is no doubt that the assassination of Haniyeh, Hamas’s head of the Politburo and chief political figure, will impact the war in Gaza and the entire region in numerous ways. Here are six thoughts on this significant event: 

1. Israel could have killed Haniyeh months ago but didn’t want to compromise its relationship with Qatar, which remains the chief mediator with the Islamist group. Plus, the presence of the Al Udeid Air Base, the largest US military installation in the region, in Qatar prevents Israel from carrying out political assassinations in the Gulf Emirate. That’s why when Haniyeh entered Iran, which is known to be compromised by Israeli intelligence assets, and following the attack on the Golan Heights, an opportunity presented itself to take him out. After this assassination, Hamas is unlikely to move its headquarters out of Qatar, which affords the group unparalleled safety. 
2. The assassination was likely ordered to coincide with the strike against Hezbollah’s senior commander in Beirut’s suburbs hours earlier to send a strong signal that Israel could fight on two fronts simultaneously. However, Netanyahu’s government may have intended for the assassination to pressure Hamas’s senior leadership into accepting a hostage deal and ending the war in Gaza, given the limits to how much more can be done on the ground in the coastal enclave. This is especially so following the assassination of senior military commanders in the Gaza Strip, including Marwan Issa and probably Mohammed Deif—not to mention the assassination of Saleh al-Arouri in January in Lebanon. Yahya Sinwar remains the only major figure still out of Israel’s reach. 
3. This event will likely generate pressure on Hamas, even if the group doesn’t capitulate or change its stance immediately, to end the war and seek to preserve what remains of its political structures. The group is weakened militarily despite not being outright defeated. However, it is interested in self-preservation, and the group’s political wing may view this event as a monumental shift that necessitates ending the war quickly to ensure the continuity of Hamas’s political relevance, which requires the survival of its senior political figures. In the months following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and during negotiations, Haniyeh was a mere messenger and courier of communication that was sent to Sinwar in Gaza. This means that Haniyeh’s actual influence over Hamas’s military wing was quite limited. The assassination will likely widen the gap between the political and military wings of Hamas, both of whom have divergent interests that are increasingly disconnected. 
4. Haniyeh’s assassination may expedite political reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, integrating the group into the Palestine Liberation Organization and offering it a political off-ramp that could save it from its trouble. While the agreement last week in China is part of a long series of attempts to reconcile Hamas and Fatah, the assassination may finally force Hamas to feel unprecedented pressure that finally bridges the seemingly irreconcilable differences between it and its chief political rival. 
5. Iran will likely respond to the assassination in a manner similar to its missile and drone strikes against Israel in April. Haniyeh’s death mere hours after the inauguration of the new Iranian president on Iranian soil is a huge, humiliating blow to the Islamic Republic’s prowess and prestige. There’s no way that the IRGC will not respond directly or in a dramatic fashion. Iran is unlikely to launch an all-out confrontation with Israel over Haniyeh’s assassination. However, Tehran has no choice but to attempt to restore its deterrence capability, fearing that its people and regional proxies will start doubting the country’s power. For Pezeshkian, his tenure begins with a major embarrassment and security incident that forces him to take a hardline position toward Israel and the United States. He’ll quickly lose whatever “moderate” margins he was hoping to operate within, especially as he vowed to remove Western sanctions, which are crippling the nation’s economy. Pezeshkian will have to toe the line of hardliners seeking revenge and retaliation, greatly frustrating his efforts to usher in new geopolitical opportunities for his nation. 
6. Hezbollah is facing a difficult choice to either return to the pre-Majdal Shams strike established rules of engagement with Israel or escalate to retaliate for the strike on Beirut’s suburb and avenge the assassination of Haniyeh. The group does not want an escalation that triggers an all-out war but will nevertheless face immense pressure to respond to a significant slap in the face of its partner Hamas and chief sponsor Iran.

—Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He is an American writer and analyst who grew up in Gaza City.

Israel boldly threads a needle

Israel has carefully calibrated blows against its main adversaries in the region in the past week, with an assist (although not intended as such) of the United States in its own strike against Iranian-backed proxies in Iraq. Israel is executing deterrence in its most bold and raw form, and may have done so without the full blessing, or even foreknowledge, of the United States. This could have long-term implications for the bilateral relationship. But for now, the question is whether Israel has calibrated correctly in deterring Iran and its proxies or if they have set off an escalatory cycle. The answer to that cannot be known until Iran’s supreme leader decides on Tehran’s next steps.

The target selections and methods speak volumes about Israel’s capabilities and the intended effects:

Beirut: The strike that killed Fuad Shukur not only demonstrates that Israel has the intelligence and capability to conduct a precision strike on Hezbollah’s senior leadership on its home turf, but it also removes its main operational commander, which could affect Hezbollah’s military command-and-control in the near term. Israel seems to have conducted this strike against the wishes of the United States. But because Shukur played a central role in the attack on the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, (which killed more than three hundred people including 241 US soldiers) it is impossible for the United States to object.

Tehran: The audacious strike on Haniyah in Tehran is part of Netanyahu’s goal of decapitating Hamas’s leadership. More importantly, it clearly establishes, following Iran’s retaliatory strike on Israel and Israel’s counterstrike inside Iran, the new normal of direct strikes between Israel and Iran. Iran’s failure to prevent this will rightfully terrify the regime, but also force it to respond in some way. That said, the statement from the Iranian United Nations mission that it will respond with special operations suggests that we will not see a missile attack on Israel as we did in April. The strike also exposes Netanyahu’s willingness to forge ahead with his main goal—deterring Iran—even at the expense of a hostage-ceasefire deal, Washington’s key objective as a first step toward its broader goals in the region. 

—Beth Sanner is a member of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project advisory committee and a former US deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration.

Haniyeh’s death will not change Hamas’s goal of destroying Israel

Israel’s strike on Haniyeh is a strategic gamble. While many Israelis will take grim satisfaction at the death of a leader of the group that organized the October 7 attack that killed 1,200 Israelis and started a war that has killed almost 40,000 Gazans, previous attacks on Hamas’s top leadership like Ahmed Yassin in 2004 have not changed Hamas’s intent to destroy the state of Israel. The strike will almost certainly derail ceasefire-for-hostages talks for weeks, at best, so the short-term consequences could be considerable.

The medium-term consequences for how the war ends are likely smaller, however. Israel is determined that Hamas not have a role in postwar governance in Gaza, and Hamas has been angling for a role that preserves its ability to rebuild itself militarily into a Hezbollah-like military power without the burden of civil governance. Hamas’s military leaders are more important to the group’s strategy than its exiled political leadership like Haniyeh.

—Thomas S. Warrick is a senior fellow and director of the Future of DHS Project at the Atlantic Council. He served in the Department of State from 1997-2007 and as deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security from 2008 to 2019.

Even if the current escalation stops here, the next one is around the corner

The recent assassinations of Shukur (Hajj Mahsan) in Beirut and Haniyeh in Tehran might lead to a strong reaction from Iran and especially Hezbollah, which likely see these assassinations as crossing all red lines by Israel and in complete contradiction to the rules of the game between Israel and the Axis of Resistance. 

These reactions may drive the parties, despite their reluctance, into a regional war in light of the desire of Iran and Hezbollah to restore the deterrence equation vis-à-vis Israel and to prevent similar acts from It in the future.

Israel’s ability to thwart the expected attacks by the axis elements, along with Israel’s relatively measured response to these reactions, may lead to the containment of the current event. It is still important to remember that without a ceasefire in Gaza, even if the current escalation is prevented, the next escalation is around the corner. Very tense days lie ahead.

—Danny Citrinowicz is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and a member of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project working group. He previously served for twenty-five years in a variety of command positions units in Israel Defense Intelligence.

The difference between these strikes and Israel’s Iran strike in April

Yesterday, Israel launched lethal strikes against Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran, following his attendance of Iran’s presidential inauguration, and Shukur, architect of the 1983 bombings of the US Marine Corps barracks that killed 241 US servicemembers and French barracks that killed fifty-eight French servicemembers. The strikes served several purposes: decapitating Hamas and Hezbollah leadership as well as making it clear that Israel will find and eliminate its enemies anywhere in the world, including in nonpermissive environments such as Iran. The strikes likely eliminated a false sense of security for leaders in the Iran threat network of proxy forces and were also meant to reestablish deterrence against attacking Israel. The strikes also were a response to a recent Hezbollah attack that targeted a soccer field in northern Israel and killed twelve Israeli children and adolescents.

While still measured, Israel’s strikes were stronger than the retaliatory strike Israel launched against Iran in April, which had followed Iran’s failed attack on Israel involving several hundred one-way attack drones and missiles. At that time, Israel chose to respond in a way that communicated that Israel was capable of evading Iranian defenses and striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel did so through a missile strike at a single site in Isfahan, home of Iran’s nuclear program, that didn’t cause significant damage but made it clear that Israel could do so if and when it wants. While the April strike was more symbolic and meant to convey a deterrence message, the strikes in the last two days decapitated senior leaders in the threat network attacking Israel.

 —Alex Plitsas is a nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East Programs’ N7 Initiative and former chief of sensitive activities for special operations and combating terrorism in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

The attacks reveal—yet again—the Islamic Republic’s intelligence weaknesses

In Karaj, a city west of Tehran, two boxes of pastries were placed on a street corner with signs saying these were sweets to celebrate the news of Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran. For anti-regime Iranians, inside Iran and in the diaspora, this news was much welcomed because of the Islamic Republic’s material and financial backing of Hamas. For years, Iranians have been honing in on the reality that the people’s money is being spent on proxies abroad, as noted in the popular chant, “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon, our lives for Iran.”

Haniyeh’s assassination, presumably by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, was yet another major blow to the intelligence apparatuses of the Islamic Republic, which have repeatedly failed to prevent sabotage, assassinations, and cyber attacks on Iranian soil. In 2022, IRGC intelligence chief Hossein Taeb was sacked, in part because he failed to thwart those very events during his ten-year tenure. Some officials have pointed to the fact that the intelligence apparatuses have invested too much in domestic “threats,” in other words suppressing civil society and arresting and imprisoning dissidents.

While Haniyeh was technically the second member of a terrorist organization killed in Iran by Mossad—the first being Abu Muhammad al-Masri, al-Qaeda’s second-highest leader, in 2020—the fact that this happened while on a visit for Pezeshkian’s inauguration sends a big message about Israel’s ability to infiltrate Iran at a moment of its choosing, even if that moment is during heightened security for more than one hundred foreign delegations.

—Holly Dagres is editor of the Atlantic Council’s IranSource and MENASource blogs, and a nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East Programs. She also curates The Iranist newsletter.

Dark clouds now hang over Beirut

I left Lebanon less than a week ago—it was brimming with life as it always does during summertime, with an airport bustling with tourists and restaurants filled with long-awaited expats family reunions, bringing a light of hope during these somber times. Yet, since yesterday, and for the first time since the region’s conflict, serious anguish has started to fill the air of Beirut.

In the aftermath Israel’s assassination of Shukur in Hezbollah’s heartland, Haret Hreik, on Tuesday, Lebanon has maintained its official position of not wanting war with Israel by calling for the full implementation of UN Resolution 1701, which it reiterated in a letter of concern to the UN Security Council. Despite asking to give peace a chance, the country’s caretaker foreign minister also announced that “there’s going to be retaliation,” which he said he hoped would not be met by an Israeli response. With a quasi-functioning Lebanese government under Hezbollah’s influence over military, political, and security institutions, these contradictory statements do little more than reveal the government’s frailty. 

Ultimately, the intensity, timing, and nature of this declared retaliation remains at the discretion of Iran and under the execution of Hezbollah. Lebanese opinion about such a decision seems divided between those who support Hezbollah’s rhetoric and those who want to avoid any escalatory action that could take the country back to 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel fought a destructive thirty-four-day war.

Following Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh, Iran’s supreme leader gave an order to strike Israel directly, a statement which, in the eyes of many, gives the green light for its Lebanese proxy to execute a direct response. 

Hezbollah’s response will be critical for its leadership to maintain credibility in light of its repeated pledge to respond to any Israeli aggression on Lebanon. Still, such a response will need to be carefully calibrated. A direct response by Hezbollah that, for example, hits important Israeli military sites might lead to an all-out war, which the group has been trying to avoid, despite its repeated claims of being ready for such a scenario.  

Alternatively, Hezbollah could aim for a more diluted attack that might avenge the killing of Shukur while also containing further escalation. But such a response threatens to undermine the group’s deterrence strategy; after all, this isn’t the first time Hezbollah is being cornered to respond to an Israeli political assassination of a high-level target on Lebanese soil. Earlier in January, the group retaliated against the killing of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut by firing rockets into Israel, and since then, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, has vowed that “any assassination on Lebanese territory targeting a Lebanese, Palestinian, Iranian, or Syrian . . . [would] be met with a strong reaction.” Cognizant of this dilemma, Hezbollah is tactically limited.

The international community may very well get additional clarity on what Hezbollah’s response will entail during Nasrallah’s speech Thursday at Shukur’s funeral. In the meantime, amid growing fears of what looms ahead, Beirut International Airport has started to grapple with frantic travelers again; yet this time, facing delayed or canceled flights as they try to return back.

—Nour Dabboussi is the assistant director to the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs.

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I was honored to be seated close to the two freed holy men. Their features were tight and drawn from months of captivity and starvation, but this only served to accentuate the smiles on their faces from being able to once again worship without threat of Russian violence. Their strength and courage permeated the room like incense.

The Ukrainian National Prayer Breakfast, organized by Ukrainian evangelical Christian leader Pavlo Unguryan, first emerged from the regional prayer breakfast movement in Ukraine almost twenty years ago. The late June event was Ukraine’s tenth national prayer breakfast and notably, the first held under the auspices of the Office of the President. This presidential backing reflects the importance attached to religious freedom in Ukraine’s fight for national survival.

A former member of the Ukrainian Parliament from Black Sea port city Odesa, Ukrainian Prayer Breakfast organizer Unguryan has been building bridges between the American and Ukrainian evangelical communities for more than a decade. His relationships with key members of the US Congress reportedly helped provide the spiritual and emotional connection that convinced many Republicans to vote for a major new Ukraine aid package in April 2024. US officials were among the participants at this year’s breakfast in Kyiv, with a series of video addresses from members of Congress including Speaker Mike Johnson along with senators Richard Blumenthal and James Lankford.

The event was held in Kyiv’s Mystetskyi Arsenal, a cavernous former munitions plant located across the street from the one thousand year old Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, one of the holiest sites in Orthodox Christianity. The list of attendees reflected the diversity of religious belief in today’s Ukraine. At one table close to mine, a Japanese Buddhist monk broke bread with Crimean Tatar Muslims during a service led by an evangelical Protestant, with prayers offered in Hebrew by Ukraine’s chief rabbi.

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

Ukraine’s National Prayer Breakfast represents an important reality check to Russian propaganda, which seeks to accuse the Ukrainian authorities of engaging in religious persecution. In fact, it is the Russian Orthodox Church itself that has declared a “Holy War” against Ukraine and the West. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has offered spiritual justification for the current invasion, and has said that Russians who die while fighting in Ukraine will have all their sins washed away.

Kirill has allies in today’s Ukraine. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) is historically the local Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church and remains the second largest Orthodox denomination in the country in terms of parishioners. Despite some effort to distance itself from the Kremlin following the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the UOC remains closely associated with the Russian Orthodox Church and is staffed with clergy who have spent their entire careers reporting to Moscow. Around one hundred members of the UOC clergy are currently in prison or awaiting trial for a range of national security-related offenses including actively aiding the Russian military.

Recent research and polling data indicates that large numbers of former adherents are now leaving the UOC, while as many as eight-five percent of Ukrainians want their government to take action against the Russian-linked Church. However, while the Ukrainian authorities attempt to address this complex national security challenge, Kremlin-friendly public figures in the US such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owen, and Marjorie Taylor Greene have accused Ukraine of persecuting Christians. A team of lobbyists, allegedly funded by a prominent pro-Kremlin Ukrainian oligarch, is currently canvassing Capitol Hill giving this message to members of Congress.

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Claims of religious persecution by the Ukrainian authorities are not only deliberately misleading; they also serve to obscure the very real crimes being committed against Ukraine’s Christian communities by Russian occupation forces. In areas of Ukraine that are currently under Kremlin control, virtually all churches other than the Russian Orthodox Church have been forced out. Even more alarmingly, a significant number of Christian community leaders have been abducted, imprisoned, tortured, or killed.

The details of Russia’s alleged crimes are often shocking. Baptist children’s pastor Azat Azatyan says Russians attached electrical wires to his genitals. In many cases, Russian Orthodox Church clergy are directly implicated. Evangelical pastor Viktor Cherniiavskyi claims to have been tortured with a taser while a Russian Orthodox priest tried to cast demons out of him. His alleged crime? Being an evangelical Christian.

International awareness of Russia’s hard line campaign against religious freedom in occupied regions of Ukraine is now finally growing. This is shaping attitudes among Christians toward the Russian invasion. While waves of Russian propaganda succeeded in sowing doubt among some Republicans during 2023, recent research has found that seventy percent of Republicans who identity as evangelical Christians are more likely to support aid to Ukraine when they learn of Russia’s oppressive policies against Christians in occupied Ukrainian regions.

The Kremlin is openly using religion to further the Russian war effort. The Russian Orthodox Church routinely portrays the invasion of Ukraine in religious terms, while members of the ROC clergy promote the war as a sacred mission. Throughout occupied Ukraine, all other Christian denominations are prevented from operating, with individual community leaders at risk of being detained or worse.

In stark contrast, the recent Ukrainian National Prayer Breakfast in Kyiv highlighted the Ukrainian government’s commitment to values of religious tolerance and diversity. This is the pluralistic Ukraine that millions of Ukrainians are now struggling to defend. They deserve the support of everyone who values freedom of religion.

Steven Moore is the Founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project.

Further reading

UkraineAlert May 30, 2024

If the West wants a sustainable peace it must commit to Ukrainian victory

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Since 2022, Western policies of escalation management have failed to appease Putin and have only emboldened the Kremlin. If the West wants peace, it must help Ukraine win, write Hanna Hopko and Andrius Kubilius.

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Vladimir Putin just tacitly admitted Crimea is not really part of Russia

By Peter Dickinson

Russia claims to have annexed five Ukrainian provinces but refuses to extend security red lines to these regions. This highlights the pragmatic political realities behind Putin’s talk of historic conquests, writes Peter Dickinson.

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Ukraine is making the Russian occupation of Crimea untenable

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post Ukraine’s prayer breakfast challenges Kremlin claims of religious persecution appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In early June, new developments in The Hague served as a reminder to key Russian propagandists, including one of Russia’s former presidents, that they may one day face similar charges. As allowed by Article 15 of the Rome Statute, a coalition of non-government organizations jointly submitted a formal Communication to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) requesting an investigation into six Russian nationals involved in state propaganda. Notably, this coalition included international and Ukrainian groups, as well as one Russian NGO.

The Communication urged the ICC to investigate the Russians for criminal hate speech. The accused include Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and current Security Council Deputy Chairman; Vladimir Solovyov, a popular host on Russian state-owned television channel Rossiya-1; Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russia Today; Dmitry Kiselyov, head of the state-owned media consortium Rossiya Segodnya; and Sergey Mardan, a popular television and radio host. The Communication also named Alexey Gromov, First Deputy to the Presidential Executive Office’s Chief of Staff, stating his role in ordering or failing to prevent over 300 examples of criminal incitement to violence from February 24, 2022 to February 24, 2024. 

This initiative is arguably long overdue. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began more than two years ago, Russian state and state-aligned actors are accused of committing a daily litany of horrific atrocities against Ukrainians. In such a context, it is tempting to overlook the rhetoric behind these actions, but the Russia-Ukraine War illustrates the dangers of ignoring the threats made by powerful Russian media figures. Many in the Russian media have openly telegraphed eliminationist rhetoric against Ukrainians for years, setting the stage for the largest military attack in Europe since World War II. Their continuing threats against the existence of Ukraine, and against other Western countries, pose a direct threat to international security.  

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

Since 2022, it has become increasingly apparent that Russia’s highly sophisticated propaganda machine requires novel legal and policy responses. New dangerous and diffuse platforms for Russia’s inciting language and other disinformation continue to emerge. In addition to the kind of conventional propaganda most are familiar with, Russian actors now spread public incitement and more subtle disinformation through social media, bot farms, video games, movies, and manipulated content (including deepfakes). International law does not yet cover each of these categories, as older legal frameworks concentrate on historical understandings of propaganda in legacy media formats.

These realities pose serious challenges for anyone seeking to protect victimized groups from atrocity crimes. International law, including the United Nations Genocide Convention, prohibits all means of disseminating direct and public incitement. Still, Russia’s sophisticated networks of propaganda platforms make upholding these provisions difficult. As these challenges increase, Russian techniques of shaping subconscious dehumanization continue to evolve. This fostering of cascading radicalization within Russian society may prove even more impactful than one-time calls for violence, while being more difficult to trace and prosecute.

Some Russian efforts to stay ahead of judicial accountability are clear. Even the Russian authorities felt compelled to respond to Russian journalist Anton Kravosky’s call to drown Ukrainian children in a river (he was suspended from RT for these comments, although an investigative committee later stated he had committed no crime). After these events, some Russian propagandists became noticeably more careful, cloaking their rhetoric through allusions and metaphors. Still, even this “hidden rhetoric” often meets legal requirements for incitement and other criminal propaganda. 

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

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The gravity of alleged Russian atrocities against Ukrainians compels international urgency to disrupt Moscow’s escalation in direct violence and associated inciting propaganda to destroy Ukraine and Ukrainians. Days after posting a profanity-filled acknowledgement of the NGO-led Communication to the ICC, Dmitry Medvedev followed up with a video showing all of Ukraine as “belonging” to Russia. This complete obliteration of Ukraine from world maps was the first time a top Kremlin official had overtly claimed the entirety of Ukraine as a stated goal, showing a link between words and projected actions.

The international community now faces a critical moment. It also has a unique chance to create a legal framework and enforcement mechanism capable of implementation through international cooperation. Beginning at home, Ukraine’s legal system requires amendments to systematize prosecutions in absentia for genocidal incitement. International partners must support these efforts by surging law enforcement resources to monitor the flood of calls for violence emanating from Russian media and from more shadowy Kremlin-backed propaganda platforms.

For Russian propagandists to face the criminal consequences of their conduct, international arrest warrants are indispensable. Bolstering political will for judicial accountability and opening criminal proceedings should be the two major areas of focus. To ensure accountability, Ukraine and its partners must now plan for realistic enforcement mechanisms that implement trial verdicts and deny safe havens of non-extradition. The words and actions of Kremlin propagandists have combined to fuel unimaginable atrocities in Ukraine. To protect Ukrainians and other victims, and to prevent further armed conflicts fuelled by propaganda, the international community must break the cycle of Russia’s real or imagined impunity.

Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Anna Vyshniakova is a war crimes lawyer and a legal consultant, head of legal NGO LingvaLexa, and author of the book “Incitement to Genocide: How to Bring Propagandists to Justice.”

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jun 12, 2024

Ukraine is making the Russian occupation of Crimea untenable

By Olivia Yanchik

Ukraine’s growing air strike capabilities are decimating Russian air defenses in Crimea and making the occupation of the peninsula increasingly untenable, writes Olivia Yanchik.

Conflict Defense Technologies

UkraineAlert Jun 4, 2024

Vladimir Putin just tacitly admitted Crimea is not really part of Russia

By Peter Dickinson

Russia claims to have annexed five Ukrainian provinces but refuses to extend security red lines to these regions. This highlights the pragmatic political realities behind Putin’s talk of historic conquests, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert May 30, 2024

If the West wants a sustainable peace it must commit to Ukrainian victory

By Hanna Hopko, Andrius Kubilius

Since 2022, Western policies of escalation management have failed to appease Putin and have only emboldened the Kremlin. If the West wants peace, it must help Ukraine win, write Hanna Hopko and Andrius Kubilius.

Civil Society Conflict

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Holding Putin’s propagandists accountable for crimes in Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

But even so, Raisi’s death does leave a power vacuum in Iran. Section 131 of the Iranian constitution calls for First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber to assume power next. But Mokhber is unlikely to have any meaningful influence or seek to succeed Raisi. He will instead, as long as the constitution is followed, be replaced by a successor following an election within fifty days from when Raisi’s death was declared.

For the regime, another round of presidential elections is a headache that it would almost certainly have preferred to avoid. The Guardian Council—the body that determines which candidates are sufficiently loyal enough to the Islamic Republic’s ideology to be permitted to run—thought it had in Raisi a leader who would be around to take Iran into the next generation, likely a post-Khamenei one.

With that plan now shattered, the Guardian Council will likely be even more strict about who it allows to campaign, determined to ensure the next president can defend and protect the revolution at a time of domestic and regional upheaval.

But the exclusion of more reformist candidates is likely to suppress enthusiasm and ensure that many Iranians view the election as neither open, nor fair, nor free. As a result, there’s good reason to be skeptical that the vote will engender a high turnout, especially given recent history. In the parliamentary elections in March of this year, officials reported a historic low turnout of under 41 percent, and some polling experts claim that the real turnout was far lower, closer to 15 or 16 percent.

At the same time, Raisi was not only widely expected to steer the succession of the supreme leader through the Assembly of Experts, but was also himself a top contender to succeed Khamenei. In the coming days there will be a lot of conjecture that without Raisi, Mojtaba Khamenei, the current supreme leader’s son, is more likely to accede to the supreme leader post.

Maybe. The reality is, it’s far too early for such a declaration. It’s likely that whoever succeeds Raisi as president will be someone who has a similar profile: regime insider, religious credentials, and ultra-conservative. The long-held criticism against Mojtaba is that he lacks the sufficient religious qualifications to serve in the position of supreme leader. The fact that his accession would produce a question of dynastic succession—which would fly in the face of the 1979 revolution in which the shah of Iran was overthrown in favor of a leader with impeccable religious credentials—also works against him. Mojtaba might find sufficient support, however, if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is determined to play an even more prominent and influential role under the next supreme leader. If the IRGC was preparing to do so, it would be highly unlikely that anyone would be elevated to the position without the IRGC’s acquiescence. That could work in Mojtaba’s favor given his years-long close association with the IRGC and closeness to the broader Iranian security apparatus.

For some Iranians, Raisi will be mourned as a president and a devotee of the revolution. For a small, select group of the most influential Iranian leaders, he will be both mourned and appreciated for his unintentional sacrifice—since his death ensures an unexpected opportunity for someone to gain a level of power and influence far sooner than anyone expected.

But for many ordinary Iranians, his death is already being celebrated by those who view him first and foremost as the “Butcher of Tehran,” the man under whose authority thousands of political prisoners were sent to their deaths after essentially show trials.

Iranian leaders and political institutions are already under significant pressure stemming from the country-wide protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022. Iranian leaders and officials are almost certain to be concerned that Raisi’s death could prompt new protests and rounds of anger in Iran. That’s not because Raisi drew a disproportionate amount of protesters’ anger—rather the opposite. He largely was viewed as little more than Khamenei’s pawn. Given that, some Iranians may see this moment as an opportunity to reignite broader anger toward the regime as a reminder that it does not really matter who the president is, only that the regime itself remains in power and is unwilling to change.

But any such protests are likely to be crushed not only by the police but by the Basij, the voluntary militia that constitutes one branch of the IRGC and will be prepared for such a situation, eager to stamp it out as quickly as possible.

Raisi’s death is surely unexpected but unlikely to be particularly impactful. Meaningful change in Iran’s strategic direction can only come from the supreme leader, and his position is not yet vacant.

Jonathan Panikoff is the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’ s Middle East Programs and a former US deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East.

The post What comes after Ebrahim Raisi appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Watch the event

Public Event Fri, April 19, 2024 • 2:30 pm ET

Iraq’s prime minister on building a stronger relationship with the United States

AN #ACFRONTPAGE EVENT—Mohammed Shia’ Al-Sudani, the prime minister of Iraq, discusses his state visit to the United States.

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“I came to Washington to open a new chapter in the relationship between Iraq and the United States,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al-Sudani at an Atlantic Council Front Page event on April 19.

This new chapter in US-Iraqi relations will entail Washington and Baghdad activating the Strategic Framework Agreement, which he said will encompass the economic, cultural, education, and energy sectors and “move away” from “restricting the relationship to security and military cooperation.”

Sudani outlined the meetings he had had with US officials in Washington last week, including discussions with US President Joe Biden on April 15. The two leaders reached an agreement on the US-Iraqi security dialogue, pledging to follow the US-Iraq Higher Coordinating Committee’s recommendations for updating the two countries’ relations.

“We are looking forward to a more sustainable relation with the United States that rests on mutual interests, reciprocal respect, and fruitful cooperation between our people,” said Sudani.

Below are more highlights from the discussion with Sudani—moderated by Abbas Kadhim, director of the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative—on US-Iraqi relations, Iraq’s diplomacy with Turkey, and the Israel-Hamas war.

US-Iraq relations

• Sudani said his diplomatic goal for his country “is to make Iraq a common ground for cooperation” rather than “a ground for settling scores of the exchange of messages of hostility.”
• The emphasis on military and security cooperation in Iraq’s relations with the United States was “required in certain times in the past,” Sudani said. But, he argued, Iraq is now experiencing “a new reality of adequate security and stability.” He added that Iraqi “security forces today cooperate well with their counterparts in many Arab countries and other partners.”
• In addition to US government officials, Sudani also met last week with “a large number of US companies,” some of which are already operating in Iraq and some “interested in doing business in our country.”

Erdoğan’s Iraq visit

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s April 22 trip to Iraq “is not a casual visit,” said Sudani, as the trip comes after years of diplomatic work and preparation.
• On Iraqi-Turkish security issues, Sudani stated: “We do not allow anyone to use Iraqi territories to threaten Turkey, and we will not accept any operations against threats to Turkey without coordination with the Iraqi government.”
• Sudani also said that he and Erdoğan would discuss improving cooperation on water management as well as the “development road” project planned to link an Iraqi port in Basra to Turkey, which Sudani said he expects to be “operational in a short time.”

Regional challenges

• “We all, with the United States in the lead,” said Sudani, need to work toward “ending the war in Gaza immediately and terminating the bloodshed once and for all,” as well as to “create the conditions to form a Palestinian state.”
• Sudani spoke of the need to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from becoming a wider regional conflict, stating that the expansion of the war “will constitute a real threat to international peace and security.”
• Sudani also addressed the case of Elizabeth Tsurkov, the Russian-Israeli researcher who has been held hostage by Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq since March 2023. “This is not a case we have abandoned,” Sudani said, adding that Iraq has formed an investigative team and is working with other countries “in order to find her and to take all the culprits in the kidnapping to the justice system.”

Daniel Hojnacki is an assistant editor on the editorial team at the Atlantic Council.

Watch the full event

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The post Lichfield quoted by Bloomberg on Russian reaction to Moscow theater attack appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Today’s invasion is the latest chapter in a far longer history of Russian imperial aggression against Ukraine. For hundreds of years, generations of Russian rulers have sought to suppress Ukrainian national identity and force Ukrainians to abandon their quest for independence. Russia has used everything from language bans, targeted killings, mass deportations, and settler colonialism, to artificial famines and wave upon wave of ruthless russification.

These efforts continue. I recently returned from Izyum in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, a town that was under Russian occupation for much of 2022 and remains close to the front lines. The scars of occupation are everywhere, with large parts of the town in ruins and nearby villages still surrounded by landmines. Along with death and destruction, the Russian army also brought school textbooks, military newspapers, and other propaganda tools glorifying the Russian Empire. Russification was obviously a top priority for the occupying forces.

The local residents we met during our recent visit recalled how the most violent Russian troops had seemed to sincerely believe that by killing Ukrainians they were saving Russia. Nevertheless, those who lived through the occupation did not express fear. Despite facing desperate living conditions and constant insecurity, there was no sense of despair. Instead, they were surer than ever in their identity. We are Ukrainians, they told us.

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

Vladimir Putin provided ample indication of his intentions during the buildup to the February 2022 invasion. In a remarkable summer 2021 essay, he argued at length that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”), while portraying independent Ukraine as an artificial and hostile entity. This document was widely interpreted as a declaration of war on Ukrainian national identity. It was soon being distributed to Russian soldiers, with the aim of convincing them that it was both necessary and justified to apply the harshest possible measures against anyone who insists on identifying as Ukrainian.

Once the invasion began, it was immediately apparent that this was a war against every aspect of Ukrainian national identity including language, culture, and heritage. This genocidal agenda was spelled out in a high-profile editorial that briefly appeared on Kremlin media platforms in the first days of the invasion before being quietly deleted once it became clear that the triumphant tone of the article was premature. Employing the lexicon of imperial conquest, the author credited Putin with solving the “Ukrainian question” for future generations, and trumpeted the restoration of Russia to its “historic fullness.”

As the invasion unfolded, advancing Russian troops were soon putting the Kremlin’s imperialistic ideology into practice. In a chilling echo of tsarist and Soviet crimes against humanity, Ukrainian community leaders, activists, and patriots were hunted down and abducted, while hundreds of thousands of people living in occupied areas were subjected to forced deportation. Those who remained were confronted with blanket russification and pressured to accept Russian citizenship.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

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The Russian invasion has also targeted Ukraine’s national heritage. Hundreds of cultural heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed including museums, galleries, churches, and places of historical importance. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian artifacts and priceless national treasures have been stolen and shipped back to Russia, where they have in many cases been repackaged as Russian relics. Significant numbers of Russian academics and museum curators have acted as accomplices in these crimes.

Today’s war on Ukrainian culture is reminiscent of the Stalin regime’s campaign to destroy an entire generation of Ukrainian cultural leaders during the early decades of the Soviet era. This doomed generation of 1920s and 1930s Ukrainian poets, writers, and artists has come to be known as the “Executed Renaissance.” Like their Soviet predecessors, Putin’s invading army has also targeted contemporary writers, musicians, and artists as living symbols of Ukrainian cultural identity.

In a very real sense, Russia’s total war against Ukrainian identity and culture is actually an admission of failure. It reflects the fact that Ukrainians have resoundingly rejected the Kremlin’s so-called “Russian World,” recognizing it as a ploy to subjugate Ukraine. This has left Putin with no option but to resort to force.

Russia’s invasion recently passed the two-year mark with no end in sight. But while nobody knows when or how the war will end, it is already apparent that Russia will not succeed in erasing Ukraine. On the contrary, the invasion has helped fuel an unprecedented consolidation of Ukrainian identity that many have likened to a national coming of age. Putin believed Ukraine was weak and would soon collapse under the overwhelming weight of his invading army. Instead, Ukrainian national identity has been strengthened in a manner so profound that it may only become fully apparent in the decades to come.

Danylo Lubkivsky is director of the Kyiv Security Forum. He is the former Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine and ex-Chair of Ukraine’s UNESCO Commission.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Mar 5, 2024

Putin is on an historic mission and will not stop until he is finally defeated

By Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin believes he is on an historic mission to reclaim “Russian lands” and will inevitably go further if he is not stopped in Ukraine, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Feb 20, 2024

Outgunned Ukraine bets on drones as Russian invasion enters third year

By Mykola Bielieskov

As Putin’s invasion passes the two-year mark, tech-savvy Ukraine is betting on drones as the best way to overcome Russia’s increasingly overwhelming advantage in traditional firepower, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Mar 2, 2024

Ukraine needs enhanced air defenses as Russia expands missile arsenal

By Olivia Yanchik

With Russia now reportedly receiving missiles from both Iran and North Korea, it is time for Ukraine’s partners to step up their own deliveries of air defense systems, writes Olivia Yanchik.

Conflict Drones

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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The post Vladimir Putin is losing Russia’s long war against Ukrainian identity appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This post will be updated in the coming days as the US response continues to unfold.

Click to jump to an expert analysis:

Daniel E. Mouton: The US makes the case for escalation dominance—without giving Iran justification to respond

Abbas Kadhim: The US shows Iran that the loss of American lives is a clear red line

Nathan Sales: To make Iran stop, the US must impose more meaningful costs

Carmiel Arbit: Israel wants the US to take a more forceful approach against Iran

The US makes the case for escalation dominance—without giving Iran justification to respond

The recent US strikes in Iraq and Syria represented the most significant series of US military strikes in the region for the Biden-Harris administration to date. The US strikes were probably the minimum level for an initial US response to the Iranian proxy group attack against Tower 22 in Jordan, which killed three US soldiers and wounded dozens more. Despite some public criticism of the time delay in the US response and the geographic limitation to Iraq and Syria, the US message to the region was clear.

First, based on the use of strategic bombers to strike some of the targets, the United States is demonstrating what it showed during Exercise Juniper Oak in January 2023. Juniper Oak was the largest ever joint US and Israeli military exercise. Strategic bombers were employed during the exercise in such a way as to communicate the ability to conduct US long-range strikes into the Middle East. Last week’s response strikes were a reiteration of this capability as a clear warning to Iran.

Secondly, the amount of targets and ordnance meant that the United States was seeking to inflict casualties at the target locations while also seeking to degrade and disrupt future Iranian proxy group attacks against US forces. The geographic bounding of these strikes to Iraq and Syria, meanwhile, gave no justification to Iran to respond to the strikes and thus trigger a potential escalation cycle.

This brings in another element currently at play in the Middle East. The region is unsettled due to Hamas’s October 7 attack, Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, and Shia militia group attacks against US forces. However, the recent repositioning of US airpower, both carrier and ground-based, to the region means that the United States can make a credible argument that it has escalation dominance against Iran and its proxy groups. This surge in US airpower in the region allowed the United States and United Kingdom to conduct strikes in Yemen shortly after the US strikes in Iraq and Syria. 

Taken together, the United States is sending a clear message of deterrence to the region.

—Daniel E. Mouton is a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He served on the National Security Council from 2021 to 2023 as the director for defense and political-military policy for the Middle East and North Africa for Coordinator Brett McGurk.

The US shows Iran that the loss of American lives is a clear red line

The US strikes in Iraq and Syria conveyed several messages. Primarily, that no attack resulting in the loss of US military personnel will remain without a strong response. The United States may absorb certain attacks that leave damaged infrastructure, but American lives remain a clear red line.

The second message is related to the general US military policy in the Middle East: the Biden administration made clear, in both words and through its actions, that it is not interested in military escalation which may lead to a widespread regional conflict.

The third message underscores that the Biden administration has no intention of altering its current military posture in the Middle East and is particularly resolute about refusing to make drastic changes under hostile conditions.

What remains to be seen is whether the militant entities targeted by these messages will relent in their efforts to force the United States to alter its own policies across the region. The weeks ahead will unveil the answer to this uncertainty.

—Abbas Kadhim leads the Iraq Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. 

To make Iran stop, the US must impose more meaningful costs

Friday’s strikes were the Biden administration’s most robust response to date to the ongoing campaign by Iran-backed terrorists against US forces in the region. Since January 2021, Tehran’s proxies have attacked US troops some 250 times, including last month’s drone attack that killed three US servicemembers in Jordan. Will the US response accomplish the White House’s goal of establishing deterrence? Time will tell, but initial signs are not encouraging.

First, the administration spent nearly a week telegraphing its punch, giving Iran time to move key people and equipment out of harm’s way. Second, the White House opted for relatively low rungs on the escalation ladder. It didn’t target senior IRGC figures in the region or Iranian naval assets. Nor did it hit any targets inside Iran. (Note that Iran itself shows no such restraint, as it is actively trying to assassinate former senior US officials and activists on US soil.)

Iranian proxies were back at it yesterday, using a drone to attack another base in Syria used by US forces; six allied Kurdish fighters were killed.

To make Iran stop, the administration needs to impose meaningful costs on the Islamic Republic. It needs to hit targets that matter to Tehran, and it has not yet shown that it’s willing to do so.

—Nathan Sales is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and a former US ambassador-at-large and coordinator for counterterrorism.

Israel wants the US to take a more forceful approach against Iran

The United States’ retaliatory strikes against Iranian targets highlight the convergence—and divergence—in the United States’ and Israel’s priorities in the region. While attacks on US interests in the region have escalated since the Gaza war, these provocations predate it. Iran and its network of proxies have long sought to send a message to Washington that it must withdraw US troops from the Middle East and disengage from the region.

The United States has responded forcefully but with restraint. Rather than attacking Iran directly, the United States, replicating Israel’s approach, responded with targeted attacks outside of Iranian territory—and noticeably gave the Iranians ample warning to remove their leaders from harm’s way. The United States has made clear it is seeking to restore deterrence—while avoiding escalation.

It is here that the convergence of interests ends. While Israel has to date exercised restraint in engaging Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is eager to see the United States take a more forceful approach, including direct attacks. US President Joe Biden feels the pressure: Reports suggest that he is indeed concerned that Netanyahu is trying to drag him into a wider regional war. But the Biden administration continues to resist. Instead, it is taking meaningful steps to deplete the capabilities of groups such as the Houthis in Yemen and working to restore deterrence in the short term, while at the same time charging ahead with key diplomatic efforts to bring about agreements between Israel and its adversaries, such as Hezbollah and Hamas. 

At the same time, the Biden administration is looking to reconfigure the region for the long term through diplomacy, including by courting the Saudis in pursuit of a wider regional agreement that will send a clear message to the Iranians about the future of the Middle East. Such a deal will only further incite Iran and its proxies. Whether these efforts will succeed in deterring them in the short term remains to be seen.

—Carmiel Arbit is a nonresident senior fellow for Middle East Programs and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

The post Experts react: US retaliation for the deadly attack in Jordan has begun. What’s next? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The Houthi rebels are funded and trained by Iran. As non-state proxies of the Islamic Republic, the Houthis remain a pernicious threat to regional stability, security, and global commerce. Through their Houthi proxies, Iran has purposefully targeted civilians across borders to project their power in the Middle East against Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The pattern of threats from the Iran-backed Houthis has even forced sanctions from the United Nations Security Council in response to the systematic targeting of civilians.

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Ever since the 2021 lifting of FTO status, the world has witnessed the increased threats emanating from Yemen, which include recent repeated attacks on commercial ships with drones and missiles, the seizure of a cargo ship in November, and the launching of missiles toward Israel. On December 3, the US Navy disabled and shot down three Houthi drones during a persistent drone and missile attack on several commercial vessels in the Red Sea. In response to the latest attacks, US officials have emphasized consideration of “appropriate actions” and declared that “the entire world needs to step up together.” 

When the Houthis fired at US Navy ships in 2016, the US aptly responded with a barrage of Tomahawk missiles, destroying three Houthi-controlled radar sites. Today, however, as President Biden and his top cabinet members are assessing the conditions of increasing risks to Americans in the Middle East, they are also factoring in the regional sensitivities associated with the increasingly unstable United Nations-mediated truce among the warring parties in Yemen. Such assessments will include a posture review of the Houthis’ threat capability to American interests since 2021 and how to counter their associated risks.

There are perennial US measures to disrupt terrorist facilitation, such as the targeted sanctions announced on December 7, but they are not enough to address the Iran-sponsored threats emanating from Yemen. Yes, further US and international diplomatic pressure, targeted sanctions, and precision counterterrorism operations can be applied, but more needs to be done. The immediate actions the Biden administration can take now—absent a US military response—include the FTO re-designation of the Houthis. 

Such an FTO re-designation will keep Houthis firmly accountable for their transregional attacks on civilian populations, infrastructure, and commercial shipping. Further, with the FTO designation applied, the president can be publicly steadfast in clarifying that the US will not fail to protect its interests and that it will aggressively support its partners in the defense of their sovereign territory from the Houthis’ terrorist attacks. Short of FTO designation, the president can also re-designate the Houthis as an SDGT entity. This would at least allow the Treasury Department to freeze any US-held assets of the Houthis and their backers and restrict Houthi backers’ access to US financial institutions. Biden can also implore the international community to support collective naval efforts to keep the Bab el-Mandeb Strait—linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden—open and navigable for commercial shipping.

The strong and decisive action of FTO designation is clearly not the only foreign policy tool available for the US to disrupt support to terrorist facilitation, but it is a timely one that can be immediately deployed concurrently to the considerations for other courses of action.

R. Clarke Cooper is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and is the founder and president of Guard Hill House, LLC. He previously served as assistant secretary for political-military affairs at the US Department of State.

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Online Event Fri, November 17, 2023 • 10:00 am ET

David Petraeus on Israel, Ukraine, and the evolution of warfare

AN #ACFRONTPAGE EVENT — A conversation with former CIA director and retired US Army General David Petraeus on Israel, Ukraine, and the evolution of warfare.

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With so many global challenges emerging, the United States seems like a circus performer keeping a bunch of plates spinning, former Central Intelligence Agency director and US Army General David Petraeus said Friday. And some of those plates are the most “challenging” that the country has seen “since the end of World War II,” he added.

At an Atlantic Council Front Page event, Petraeus discussed the threats facing the United States in the modern-day security environment, drawing from Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine, his new book co-authored with historian Andrew Roberts.

Of the plates Washington is spinning, the West’s relationship with China is the biggest—or, even, “bigger than all the others in the [circus] tent put together,” according to Petraeus, a member of the Atlantic Council board of directors. Deterrence in the Indo-Pacific is “the most important mission not just for the US,” he explained, “but really for the US and all of our allies and partners around the world. . . Were deterrence to break down into conflict there, the results would be catastrophic.”

But smaller plates also contribute to this “period of the greatest number of challenges and the greatest complexity of challenges,” Petraeus added, pointing to Russia’s aggression, the Israel-Hamas war, Islamist extremist groups, Iran, cyber threats, and climate change, among others.

Below are highlights from the conversation, moderated by PBS NewsHour’s Ali Rogin, which touched upon how conflict and deterrence have changed—and what those changes mean for Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.

The right—and the wrong—type of leadership

• Petraeus, in reflecting on conflicts since 1945, said that the success of “strategic leadership” is of “critical importance.” That means top-level officials, such as presidents and prime ministers, but also senior battlefield commanders.
• He said that between his tours in Iraq as a three- and four-star general, he mapped out four tasks that these leaders must “perform superbly” to prevail: get “the big ideas” right, communicate them effectively, oversee their implementation, and, later, have a process to refine them.
• Petraeus said that Russia’s war in Ukraine is a study in leadership contrasts. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he argued, is a “truly brilliant strategic leader as a wartime leader,” who “got the big ideas right” by opting to stay and defend Kyiv “until the end”—and by employing his “Churchillian” communication skills.
• In contrast, Petraeus said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the “exact opposite” because he “got the big ideas wrong. . . underestimated the Ukrainians, [and] overestimated his forces,” in addition to employing a “terrible campaign design”—although Petraeus warned that the Russian military “has been a learning organization” and that it has now established a “formidable” force in the south.

So, what is the big idea?

• On Israel, Petraeus said that “the biggest of the big ideas” is clear “right now”: The destruction of Hamas. He said that, despite facing “a difficult context,” Israelis have “made impressive gains so far.” And, given that they have to “clear every building, every room,” he explained, “this really should be thought of as more of a counterinsurgency campaign than a conventional military campaign.”
• “[Israel has] been able to get many. . . civilians out of the way,” Petraeus said, but he added that Israel should set its sights on securing hospitals in Gaza, supporting medical treatment there, and taking wounded Hamas fighters to secure medical facilities. He reflected on how, during the second battle of Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004, US special forces secured Fallujah General Hospital early. “You need to be thinking at the outset about hearts and minds,” he cautioned. “Make it what ‘right’ looks like.”
• But “there need to be additional big ideas,” he warned, explaining that those big ideas should include ensuring that “life for the Palestinian people. . . will be vastly improved after Hamas is no longer part of it,” “ensuring that Hamas cannot reconstitute,” and seeking a “return to the two-state solution.”

The challenges of deterrence

• The last decade shows that “what happens in one part of the world reverberates in other parts,” Petraeus said. If senior officials say they have a red line, but don’t act when that red line is crossed, it impacts “deterrence and perceptions” in other regions. For example, the United States “had alternatives” to withdrawing from Afghanistan, Petraeus said, and “the decision. . . sent a message to Moscow; it also sent a message to Beijing.”
• Petraeus argued that nonmilitary tools such as diplomacy and economic and trade measures are a “crucial” part of deterrence abroad. Military-to-military communications, he added, can help prevent tensions from erupting into conflict.
• He pointed to the US-China relationship, saying there wasn’t enough communication between Washington and Beijing when a Chinese spy balloon floated over the United States in February. “We need to get. . . guardrails on this relationship,” he said. “Yes, it is a severe competition. . . but we have to make very sure that that does not erupt into conflict.”
• “What we need there is a comprehensive, integrated whole of governments—with an ‘s’ on the end—approach to China, and by the ‘s’ on the end, [I mean] that it’s our allies and partners together,” Petraeus said.

Katherine Walla is an associate director of editorial at the Atlantic Council.

Watch the full event

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Events in Dagestan unfolded against a backdrop of heightened international tension over the recent escalation of hostilities in Israel. Russia has adopted what many see as a pro-Palestinian position toward the crisis, further straining what was already a tense relationship with Israel. In recent years, Russia has rebuffed calls to recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization and has deepened its alliance with anti-Israel Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

On the eve of the recent unrest in Dagestan, Russia welcomed a Hamas delegation to Moscow in what was the group’s first high-profile foreign visit since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Hamas officials reportedly vowed to give priority treatment to Russian citizens among the hostages seized in southern Israel, noting that Russia was “a closest friend.”

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

Dagestan and the surrounding North Caucasus region have a long record of ethnic nationalism and religious extremism, especially following the import of Wahhabism in the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Conflicts between nationalist and religious extremist groups have plagued the region for years. This extremist influence was on full display during the storming of Makhachkala Airport.

The attempted pogrom also echoed the worst excesses of Russian nationalism, which has a history of antisemitism stretching back hundreds of years. The term “pogrom” itself can be traced to imperial Russia, which witnessed frequent outbreaks of deadly violence targeting Jewish communities. Meanwhile, the most notorious antisemitic forgery in history, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, originated in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century.

This legacy of antisemitic baggage is particularly important at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin is actively promoting an aggressive brand of imperial nostalgia. Officially, modern Russia is a pluralistic state that celebrates its ethnic and religious diversity. Indeed, Putin has accused neighboring Ukraine of antisemitism and has framed the current invasion as a quest to “de-Nazify” the country. Unfortunately for the Kremlin, there is little evidence to support such assertions.

The groundless claim that Russia invaded Ukraine to combat Nazism is a transparent attempt to justify an old-fashioned war of imperial aggression. When confronted with the uncomfortable fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is himself Jewish, top Kremlin officials have retreated into the quagmire of antisemitic conspiracy theories. In May 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attempted to dismiss Zelenskyy’s Jewish identity by declaring that “Hitler also had Jewish blood.” More recently, Putin alleged that Zelenskyy had been deliberately chosen by the West as a Jewish puppet to cover up the “anti-human essence” of the Ukrainian state.

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Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict Russia Security & Defense Ukraine

There is antisemitism in Ukraine, of course, just as there is in all states. The real issue is whether extremist actors have inordinate political power, enjoy the support (or at least inaction) of the government, or the ability to coordinate large-scale violence. In Putin’s Russia, that may well be the case. Many see the recent attempted pogrom at Makhachkala Airport as a direct consequence of the antisemitic invective that has become increasingly normalized in the Russian public discourse following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

In the nationalistic environment of wartime Russia, the country’s Jewish community has faced accusations from some quarters of being insufficiently supportive of the invasion. Senior Rabbi Berel Lazar has felt obliged to speak out against “vulgar antisemitism” that poses a “huge danger” to Russian Jews. In one particularly chilling incident, prominent Russian journalist Alexei Venediktov found a pig’s head with the word “Judensau” (German for “Jewish pig”) placed outside his apartment.

Russian Jews with close ties to the Kremlin have also become targets of antisemitic attacks. Russia’s most high-profile propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, recently faced criticism that his media network employs too many Jewish staffers. When Solovyov’s colleague and fellow pundit Yevgeny Satanovsky, who is also Jewish, used strong language to accuse senior Russian Foreign Ministry officials of antisemitism and criticize the government’s policy on Israel, he was promptly dismissed.

These developments are fueling alarm among Russia’s remaining Jews and reawakening painful historical memories, while also sparking debate over the future security of the community. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt was Chief Rabbi of Moscow for almost thirty years, but was forced to flee the country in March 2022 after refusing a request from state officials to publicly support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He has since called on Russian Jews to leave the country.

“When we look back over Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger you saw the government trying to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses toward the Jewish community,” Rabbi Goldschmidt told The Guardian in December 2022. “We’re seeing rising antisemitism while Russia is going back to a new kind of Soviet Union, and step by step the iron curtain is coming down again. This is why I believe the best option for Russian Jews is to leave.”

Joshua Stein holds a PhD from the University of Calgary and is a researcher on antisemitism and ethics.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Oct 4, 2023

Putin’s fleet retreats: Ukraine is winning the Battle of the Black Sea

By Peter Dickinson

Putin was already struggling to account for his army’s evident inability to conquer a nation that he insists does not exist. He must now also explain how his once vaunted Black Sea Fleet is being defeated by a country without a navy, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Technologies

UkraineAlert Oct 24, 2023

Battle of Avdiivka: Putin’s new offensive continues despite heavy Russian losses

By Olivia Yanchik

Russia has returned to the offensive in Ukraine in recent weeks with a major assault on the town of Avdiivka. The Russian offensive continues despite reports of catastrophic losses, underlining Putin’s determination to secure victory at any price in Ukraine, writes Olivia Yanchik.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Oct 19, 2023

Zelenskyy should say a Churchillian “no” to wartime elections in Ukraine

By Alan Riley

If Winston Churchill were still with us, he would surely be advising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ignore mounting international pressure to call elections in wartime Ukraine, writes Alan Riley.

Civil Society Conflict

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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Atlantic Council experts are keeping close watch on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and on the reactions around the globe. As the conflict continues into its third week, find the latest updates below.

Click here to get caught up on last week’s expert analysis.

The latest updates

• Six steps to disrupt Hamas and other terrorist groups’ finances

• The kidnapping of a peace activist by Hamas reveals the cruel irony of the situation Israel faces

• The legal challenges in holding Iran accountable for supporting Hamas

• Smart in 60 Seconds: Iran shares responsibility for Hamas’s attack

• The Gaza war will be the final straw for Netanyahu’s long political career

• The US is cracking down on the kinds of crypto transactions that fund Hamas and other terrorist groups

• Biden’s inflection point and history’s sobering lessons

• The conflict in Gaza threatens Iraq’s stability, progress in US-Iraq relations

Six steps to disrupt Hamas and other terrorist groups’ finances

Just over thirty-eight years ago, on October 8, 1985, the modern American struggle against terrorism financing began. On that tragic day, terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Organization summarily executed an American hostage, Leon Klinghoffer, a sixty-nine-year-old, wheelchair-bound entrepreneur and World War II veteran on vacation celebrating his wedding anniversary with his wife. The terrorists subsequently dumped his corpse overboard on the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise ship. This horrific tragedy led to the eventual passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1990, which for the first time provided a legal cause of action for American terrorism victims to seek justice for acts of international terrorism. Since then, the United States has continued to refine its financial toolkit to go after terrorist organizations and their financial enablers through a variety of civil and criminal legal tools.

In its October 7 attack on Israel, Hamas and other terrorist groups killed more than 1,400 people and took at least 222 hostages. Among the dead are at least thirty-two Americans, making it the deadliest foreign terrorist attack against Americans since 9/11.

The United States must again learn from tragedy. The US government has an opportunity to use its robust financial authorities to disrupt Hamas’s tactical financial capabilities. To do so, it must implement structural changes to strengthen both US and partner capabilities to combat terrorism financing and other illicit finance threats in the Middle East and beyond. 

Read more from Alex Zerden, founder of Capitol Peak Strategies, a risk advisory firm, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and a former Treasury Department financial attaché:

New Atlanticist

Oct 25, 2023

Six steps to disrupt Hamas and other terrorist groups’ finances

By Alex Zerden

After Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, the United States must strengthen its capabilities to combat terrorism financing and other illicit finance threats in the Middle East and beyond.

Economic Sanctions Economy & Business

The kidnapping of a peace activist by Hamas reveals the cruel irony of the situation Israel faces

Last April, my dad sent a Passover greeting to his longtime friend, Vivian Silver. He shared a small joke in the form of a traditional Passover saying: “in every generation, we must see ourselves in Egypt,” but replaced Egypt with “Kaplan Street.” He was referring to the hub of the protests that had broken out across Israel this past year, which were a response to the Israeli government’s divisive judicial reform proposals.

“My eldest grandson joined me on Kaplan,” she replied. “What a source of pride!” The friends then proceeded to exchange photos of their grandchildren and wished each other well.

At seventy-four years old, Silver—who was abducted by the militant group Hamas on October 7—is no ordinary grandmother; she is a titan of the peace movement. The international media has profiled Silver extensively. Throughout her life, Silver has worked as a tireless champion for Arabs, spending decades supporting and building friendships with her Bedouin and Gazan neighbors. She founded the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation in the 1990s to promote a shared society.

Read more from Carmiel Arbit, nonresident senior fellow for Middle East Programs and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council:

MENASource

Oct 25, 2023

The kidnapping of a peace activist by Hamas reveals the cruel irony of the situation Israel faces

By Carmiel Arbit

The hostage crisis Israel is facing is unprecedented. Yet, there is some familiarity with the territory.

Human Rights Israel

The legal challenges in holding Iran accountable for supporting Hamas

On October 7, Hamas conducted a devastating attack on Israel, where its militants murdered civilians, took hostages, and committed other atrocities. Hamas, however, did not accomplish this attack alone. At a minimum, Iran provided funding, weapons, and training, enabling the group to achieve unprecedented scale and complexity. What is less clear is Iran’s involvement in the conduct of the attack and the accompanying atrocities. That uncertainty has limited the international community’s response. Limits in international law and consensus regarding state actor responsibility for proxy actions preclude imposing meaningful costs on Iran without expanding the conflict. Now may be the time to overcome these limits, develop consensus, and strengthen legal regimes to constrain Iran’s destabilizing support for its proxies.

There are few doubts that Hamas used Iranian-supplied weapons, equipment, and training to conduct the October 7 attacks. Since 1992, Iran has overtly provided tens of millions of dollars annually in military assistance, trained combatants, and provided political support. However, regarding the October 7 attacks, reports of Iranian involvement are mixed. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denied Iran’s involvement but praised the attack. Other reports suggested more direct involvement. For example, senior Hamas and Hezbollah officials stated that not only did Tehran approve the attack in advance, but Iranian advisors also played a role in its planning. On the other hand, there were reports that some Iranian officials were surprised by the attack.

US officials have accused Iran of being “broadly complicit” in the attacks but stopped short of saying Tehran was directly involved. In response to Iran’s broad complicity, the United States and Qatar have limited Iran’s access to the six billion dollars recently released in exchange for US hostages. More sanctions are anticipated. While such sanctions are certainly warranted, sanctions, in general, have had little coercive impact on Tehran. If Iran’s interest was to disrupt the continued normalization of Israel’s relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, Tehran might consider that money well spent. Israel normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia would significantly diminish its influence in the region and could lead to the creation of a joint air defense system that would undermine its ballistic missile threat.

Read more from C. Anthony Pfaff, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative:

New Atlanticist

Oct 24, 2023

The legal challenges in holding Iran accountable for supporting Hamas

By C. Anthony Pfaff

Under current international law, a state actor may only be responsible for the actions of a proxy if it directs the proxy to take those actions or knows that the provided material would be used to commit certain crimes.

Iran Israel

Smart in 60 Seconds: Iran shares responsibility for Hamas’s attack

The Gaza war will be the final straw for Netanyahu’s long political career

Just a few weeks ago, it finally seemed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had played a winning card after a few difficult months since the inauguration of his sixth government. In the wake of being shunned by the Joe Biden administration and having visits to Arab capitals indefinitely delayed, Netanyahu hoped to secure a grand deal with Saudi Arabia—something that could not only quell the protests against the embattled prime minister but also win him a Nobel Prize and cement his reputation as the most talented statesman in Israel. Riyadh, it seemed, was almost within reach.

But then Hamas executed a massacre in the south of Israel on October 7. The Israeli army failed to prevent and protect, Israel’s intelligence agencies failed to predict, and the Netanyahu government was slow to react to the disaster. It was the 1973 Yom Kippur War all over again. However, this time, the civilians were the ones who largely paid the horrific price of negligence and arrogance.

“We are at war; the enemy will pay an enormous price. I ordered the army to clear the towns from terrorists, and that is being done right now. We are at war, and we will win,” Netanyahu said on October 7, confident as always. At that very hour, 11:00 am, hundreds of Israelis—civilians and soldiers—were already dead. Others were hiding from terrorists or fighting for their lives, not knowing that Hamas had conquered the entire Gaza Envelope, which is part of the Western Negev within roughly four miles of the Gaza Strip border.

By the end of the day, the whole nation watched the news silently; they were in disbelief that such a scenario could happen in Israel. After being told time after time by politicians and army chiefs that Hamas had suffered severe blows and that “what will be is not what we had,” many realized that these statements were no more than hot air.

Read more from Ksenia Svetlova, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and the director of the Israel-Middle East Relations Program at Mitvim:

MENASource

Oct 23, 2023

The Gaza war will be the final straw for Netanyahu’s long political career

By Ksenia Svetlova

Despite the public anger and the frequent calls for him to resign, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still busy with petty politics.

Conflict Israel

The US is cracking down on the kinds of crypto transactions that fund Hamas and other terrorist groups

On October 19, the US Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a Section 311 action and a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) identifying international Convertible Virtual Currency Mixing (CVC mixing) as a class of transactions of primary money laundering concern. CVC mixing makes cryptocurrency transactions untraceable and anonymous, thereby making it an attractive option for illicit actors who are trying to avoid detection while receiving, transacting, and cashing out their cryptocurrency holdings into fiat currency.

Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act is one of the most powerful tools the Treasury Department has in its toolkit to combat financial crime, including terrorist financing. Section 311 authority is delegated to FinCEN, the primary regulator for the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and the Financial Intelligence Unit of the United States. Section 311 provides a range of measures to defend the US financial system from money laundering and terrorist financing risks from increased due diligence and reporting requirements to prohibiting the opening and maintaining of correspondent accounts.

This decision comes as the US government continues to craft a response to Hamas’s attack on Israel and the resulting war in Gaza. Based on recent Treasury Department designations and media reporting, Hamas has used cryptocurrency to raise money and CVC mixing to hide its involvement. FinCEN’s action aims to increase transparency into CVC mixing services so authorities can take the appropriate action to prevent and disrupt terrorist financing.

The use of FinCEN’s Section 311 authority to target a class of transactions is unprecedented. The proposed rule “would require covered financial institutions to report information about transactions when they know, suspect, or have reason to suspect the transaction involves CVC mixing within or involving jurisdictions outside the United States.”

With the NPRM, FinCEN is seeking comments from the private sector and the public to provide an even-handed approach to CVC mixers going forward. It is likely that privacy advocates will have strong disagreements to these developments.

Congress has also requested answers on how Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups could raise millions of dollars in cryptocurrency despite being sanctioned and designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. While terrorist financing and money laundering remain a challenge for the formal financial system, such as banks, Thursday’s action is a significant step in understanding how Hamas and other terrorist groups and illicit actors are evading sanctions to raise money and fund their operations through cryptocurrency and how they are converting those assets into the fiat currencies. Expect to see more Treasury Department actions targeting Hamas and other terrorist groups’ financing through cryptocurrency and the formal financial system, based on the information derived from the Section 311 reporting.

—Kimberly Donovan is the director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. Donovan was previously acting associate director of the FinCEN Intelligence Division, as well as FinCEN’s chief of staff and senior advisor to the director.

Biden’s inflection point and history’s sobering lessons

Historians may come to know US President Joe Biden’s speech to the nation this week as his “Inflection Point Address,” and it was as eloquent and compelling as any he has delivered in his lifetime.

It has the potential to be the most significant of his presidency, and it was choreographed to be seen as such. It was only the second time he has chosen to speak from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, and he did it with the backdrop of wars in Ukraine and Israel and simmering tensions around Taiwan.

Beyond that, the eighty-year-old commander in chief, who had been in Israel just a day earlier, looked sharp and spoke with the vigor of a man who understands the historic moment and his role in it. He connected the dots between Russia’s criminal war in Ukraine and Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel, assisted by Iran.

“We’re facing an inflection point in history,” he said, “one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come.”

He was also clear about what connects the two, seemingly disparate conflicts. “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common,” he said. “They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy—completely annihilate it.”

Read more from Frederick Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council:

Inflection Points

Oct 21, 2023

Biden’s inflection point and history’s sobering lessons

By Frederick Kempe

Now that Biden has identified this inflection point and its actors, it’s worth reflecting on what the term means—and what it demands from the United States and its global partners.

Israel Middle East

The conflict in Gaza threatens Iraq’s stability, progress in US-Iraq relations

Militant group Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel threatens to disrupt more than normalizing relations with Israel. Before the attack, the Middle East and North Africa were on a slow path to stabilization. Arab states and Israel were beginning to settle their differences, Saudi Arabia and Iran had established relations, and the Yemen conflict was slowly ending. In Iraq, economic prospects were slowly improving after its economy contracted due to the pandemic, exacerbated by ongoing anti-Iran protests and sectarian strife. Moreover, as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute pointed out in March, Iraq was “enjoying its most stable period since 2003.” US-Iraq security relations even improved after the Iraqi Parliament  called for the withdrawal of US troops in 2020. In August, both countries reaffirmed their commitment to increasing security cooperation.

That period of relative stability may be coming to an end. After Israel responded to Hamas’s deadly October 7 attacks, Iraqis took to the streets in massive pro-Palestinian protests, burning Israeli flags and chanting anti-American slogans. Iraqi Prime Minister Muhammed al-Sudani expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause and has described the Israeli response as “brutal Zionist aggression.” His predecessors, including Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Haidar al-Abadi, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, and Nouri al-Maliki, echoed Sudani’s solidarity, adding that the Hamas attacks were a “natural response” to “Israeli provocations and violations.” Iraq’s Iran-backed militias, such as the Badr Organization, Asa’ib Ahl al Haq, and Kataib Hezbollah, expressed their support for the attacks and declared their readiness to attack American targets should the US intervene. 

As Amir al-Kaabi and Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy point out, much of the Iraqi response is theater. Many militia threats were conditioned on unlikely events, such as direct US intervention or escalation. These threats also employ a little strategic ambiguity: what counts as direct or indirect intervention is up for interpretation. In fact, Kaabi and Knights describe the general response, even by Iraq’s most rabid militias, as “cautious” and, in some cases, “muted.” It should also be of little surprise that the Iraqi response is overwhelmingly pro-Hamas. As other Arab states were normalizing relations in 2022, Iraq enacted a law that made establishing relations with Israel punishable by death or life imprisonment. Anti-Israel sentiment runs deep, and the facts about the brutality of Hamas’s attack are not likely to resonate.

Read more from C. Anthony Pfaff, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative:

MENASource

Oct 20, 2023

The conflict in Gaza threatens Iraq’s stability, progress in US-Iraq relations

By C. Anthony Pfaff

After Israel responded to Hamas’s deadly October 7 attacks, Iraqis took to the streets in massive pro-Palestinian protests, burning Israeli flags and chanting anti-American slogans.

Conflict Crisis Management

The post Live expertise: The latest insight as the Israel-Hamas war intensifies appeared first on Atlantic Council.

That period of relative stability may be coming to an end. After Israel responded to Hamas’s deadly October 7 attacks, Iraqis took to the streets in massive pro-Palestinian protests, burning Israeli flags and chanting anti-American slogans. Iraqi Prime Minister Muhammed al-Sudani expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause and has described the Israeli response as “brutal Zionist aggression.” His predecessors, including Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Haidar al-Abadi, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, and Nouri al-Maliki, echoed Sudani’s solidarity, adding that the Hamas attacks were a “natural response” to “Israeli provocations and violations.” Iraq’s Iran-backed militias, such as the Badr Organization, Asa’ib Ahl al Haq, and Kataib Hezbollah, expressed their support for the attacks and declared their readiness to attack American targets should the US intervene. 

As Amir al-Kaabi and Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy point out, much of the Iraqi response is theater. Many militia threats were conditioned on unlikely events, such as direct US intervention or escalation. These threats also employ a little strategic ambiguity: what counts as direct or indirect intervention is up for interpretation. In fact, Kaabi and Knights describe the general response, even by Iraq’s most rabid militias, as “cautious” and, in some cases, “muted.” It should also be of little surprise that the Iraqi response is overwhelmingly pro-Hamas. As other Arab states were normalizing relations in 2022, Iraq enacted a law that made establishing relations with Israel punishable by death or life imprisonment. Anti-Israel sentiment runs deep, and the facts about the brutality of Hamas’s attack are not likely to resonate.

Still, the situation poses several difficulties for the United States. First, as Israel’s response continues and the conditions of the Palestinians in Gaza deteriorate, there will be increased pressure on the militias to act. For example, Abu Azrael, arguably Iraq’s most famous Iran-backed militant group, has reportedly gone to Lebanon and is awaiting any opportunity to enter Israel. Should such a “grassroots” intervention expand, the potential for escalation—and, thus, a greater US role—will increase. Second, strategic ambiguity can be a double-edged sword. Should Israel’s efforts to defeat Hamas succeed, militias may lower the standard for what counts as intervention, again setting conditions for escalation.

Perhaps more difficult for the United States is that it may not be in its interest, this time, to ignore this predictable, if muted, pro-Hamas response, given the brutality of the last Hamas attack. Indeed, it is in everyone’s interest to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people and it is reasonable to express concern—even outrage—over their worsening conditions. However, committing atrocity, even where there is a just cause, should not be tolerated.

As Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal points out, direct attacks against civilians are becoming the “new normal.” While Hamas’s attacks were particularly shocking, Russia has also deliberately attacked civilians in its war against Ukraine, killing around ten thousand. To reverse this trend, there is little option other than finding ways to hold actors who engage in war crimes accountable. In the case of Russia, the United States has intervened on behalf of Ukraine and, along with its European allies, imposed sanctions on Russia. If the Iraqi militia reaction is to be taken seriously, a similar intervention in Gaza may lead to an escalation that undermines its larger relationship with Iraq.

For example, Kataib Hezbollah’s attacks against US forces in Iraq and Syria draw little support from the Iraqi people. However, US attempts to defend itself enable these militias to mobilize large protests when those defensive operations occur in Iraq. Still, Iraqi popular disinterest in what they view as an external conflict has provided something of an obstacle to escalation. However, given the largely anti-Israel-pro-Palestinian sentiment of the Iraqi people, militia attacks against US targets as part of a defense of the Palestinian people will likely draw support. Moreover, whatever little leverage the Iraqi government has to curb such attacks will have disappeared.

Making matters more complicated is the fact that escalation is not simply dependent on Israeli and US action. After the destruction of the Baptist Hospital in Gaza on October 17, Sudani immediately attributed it to Israeli action and called for a day of mourning. Shortly thereafter, unknown actors used drones to attack US troops. That the destruction of the hospital may be due to the actions of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group will not likely impact Iraqi public opinion nor the Iraqi government’s position, which means the potential for escalation increases.

Thus, the way ahead for the United States is not clear. The simple message that innocent civilians should not be subject to murder, kidnap, and torture will get muted as Palestinian civilians flee their homes and their casualties climb, even if Israeli operations conform to the law of war. Still, the United States can chart a way forward by pressuring its regional partners, including Iraq, to condemn the brutality, if not the reason, for the Hamas attacks. Most may not, but even a superficial acknowledgment of the indefensible nature of responding to injustice with atrocity will reinforce norms against directly targeting civilians.

The United States should also act as a moderating influence on the conflict and find ways to avoid escalation while enabling Israel’s efforts to defend itself against Hamas and its allies. While doing so will be difficult, the United States can begin by mobilizing humanitarian relief for those affected by the conflict. It should also closely monitor the conflict for potential escalation on any side and condition assistance to any partner on cooperation to de-escalate the conflict. For the Iraqi government, its influence over the militias is limited, even if it did want to intervene. However, it can partner with the United States to ensure U.S. intentions are effectively communicated and misunderstandings kept to a minimum..

Taking these steps will not fundamentally change the dynamics of the conflict nor alleviate the pressure on Israel to destroy Hamas. But it may create opportunities to mitigate the damage the conflict may cause to Middle East stability and US influence.

Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative and the research professor for Strategy, the Military Profession, and Ethics at the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), US Army War College in Carlisle, PA. The Opinions expressed here are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the US government.

The post The conflict in Gaza threatens Iraq’s stability, progress in US-Iraq relations appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Below, Atlantic Council experts share their insights on the implications of Biden’s visit for Israel and the wider region. This post will be updated as more reactions come in.

Click to jump to an expert analysis:

Carmiel Arbit: Amid strong show of support, Biden delivers a tough but necessary message to Israel

Alia Brahimi: 9/11 is the right analogy—for the wrong reasons

William F. Wechsler: The Israel visit was just the start. Here’s what Biden needs to do next.

Ariel Ezrahi: Thank god for the United States

Emadeddin Badi: Biden should change his tune on Israel if he wants to play a constructive role in the conflict

Richard LeBaron: Showing up was half the battle. Now the hard work of diplomacy begins.

Amjad Ahmad: Biden is falling short on moral clarity and leadership in this conflict

Shalom Lipner: Biden’s unprecedented visit tries to reassert the US as a player in the Middle East

Alissa Pavia: Biden gives a subtle warning about an invasion of Gaza

Nadereh Chamlou: Biden may have bought Muslim and Arab governments some time

Amid strong show of support, Biden delivers a tough but necessary message to Israel

Biden delivered yet another passionate, personal speech in Israel on Wednesday reaffirming his continued unwavering support for Israel and its grieving population as it confronts Hamas in Gaza. But he also showed that he can stand firmly behind Israel while simultaneously delivering difficult messages calling for caution and humanitarian support.  

Among an ambitious list of priorities—from deterrence to American hostages—Biden used the trip to secure an agreement for humanitarian measures that Israel must take as it wages war in Gaza, announcing a surprise one hundred million dollar assistance package to Gaza and the West Bank—small but symbolic in the context of the wider aid that will go to assisting Israel in its war with Hamas. Biden reminded Israel in no uncertain terms that it is both Jewish and a democracy and it must meet its responsibilities as such. Israel, he reminded the country, believes in fundamental human rights and must act accordingly.

Biden is uniquely positioned to pressure Israel on these issues. Through his incredible embrace of the country, Biden has secured the leverage and good will to deliver tough if necessary messages to Israel that it must act according to Western standards as it engages in war. And in so doing, no one in Israel can ever accuse the United States of abandoning the country or its security needs. To the contrary, Biden was met in Israel with a hero’s welcome: At a moment when Netanyahu faces abysmal approval ratings in Israel, Biden, the first US president to travel to Israel during a war, was welcomed by posters that read “Thank You, Mr. President.” Both the public and Israeli press has been overwhelmed—“verklempt”—with his support for the nation in what is arguably its darkest hour.  This is in direct contrast to his Democratic Party predecessor Barack Obama, whose cool and detached response to Israel during wartime was met with an equally chilly response from Israelis. Biden’s firm messages in Tel Aviv today about Israel’s rights and responsibilities may be a tougher pill to swallow than the message he delivered to the American people last week when the war broke out, but there is no better leader to deliver them credibly to the Israeli people.  

—Carmiel Arbit is a nonresident senior fellow for Middle East Programs and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

9/11 is the right analogy—for the wrong reasons 

At this morning’s joint news conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Hamas’s October massacre as “twenty 9/11s” relative to the population of Israel and the United States. He also spoke of a battle between “the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism,” echoing the diagnosis made by the George W. Bush administration after the September 11 attacks. 

There are of course close parallels between the two traumas, not least the element of strategic surprise, the asymmetric balance of power, the deliberate mass murder of civilians, and the shattering of prevailing myths about dominance and omniscience.  

Unfortunately, the analogy risks running deeper than Netanyahu intends. The United States pursued a maximalist response after 9/11, invading Afghanistan and occupying Iraq, without a clear exit strategy or an (achievable) definition of success. This violence unleashed a tsunami of radicalization across the Middle East that continued to drive the threat, bringing the fringe ideology of the perpetrators into the mainstream of a newly destabilized region and inadvertently confirming some of its canons. The elements of dehumanization in the United States’ response to 9/11, both systematic and spontaneous, unraveled global faith in the US-led rules-based order, precipitated a moral crisis at home, and helped to reshape domestic politics in profound and unexpected ways.  

The Israeli armed forces have promised “hell” in Gaza, already dropping six thousand bombs in five days on the small territory, cutting off food, water, medicine, and electricity to the population, and amassing three hundred thousand Israeli troops for a probable ground invasion—with, seemingly, no plan for the day after it is all over. Its airstrikes have killed 3,300 Palestinians, one third of whom were children, a reality which will both devastate and radicalize, and perhaps fuel further savage attacks. Dehumanization is also at work in Israel’s response and is deeply ensconced within official narratives, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant observing that “we are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly,” a former prime minister protesting “are you seriously asking me about Palestinian civilians… we’re fighting Nazis,” and members of parliament calling for a second Nakba and the use of nuclear weapons against Gaza. This all may portend a moral crisis for Israel, as well as a deepening of international skepticism about the intentions of the West.   

Using a slightly smaller figure than Netanyahu, Biden agreed in his afternoon remarks that the Hamas attack was “like fifteen 9/11s,” but he also recognized that “we made mistakes after 9/11” and cautioned Israel not to be consumed by rage in its own decision making. Whether this much-needed corrective has come in time will be seen in the coming hours and days. But what is certain is that, for millions of people across the Middle East and beyond, 9/11 and its aftermath serve as a deeply troubling—and triggering—precedent.  

—Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow within the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. 

The Israel visit was just the start. Here’s what Biden needs to do next.

Biden arrived in Tel Aviv far more popular among Israelis than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over whom he has significant leverage as a result. In the days following this visit, Biden should not hesitate to use this leverage, though he must do so wisely.

Given this context, the United States has core objectives that are public, military, political, and diplomatic. By his very presence, Biden clearly demonstrated US resolve and friendship to Israelis. His words reinforced this core message. He was willing to put the credibility of the United States on the line to support the Israeli narrative on the recent deadly explosion at the hospital in Gaza City, a critical action given the lack of Israeli credibility among many global audiences. Given the trend lines in the region and in Europe, this in and of itself made the trip worthwhile. But if this is all that emerges from the trip in the end, then it will have been largely a missed opportunity.

Outside observers don’t know the details of the military matters that were discussed when Biden met privately with the Israeli war cabinet—and let’s hope secrets can actually be kept on this subject. But here’s what I would have advised Biden to put on the table. First, in the weeks and months ahead, there must be no daylight between the United States and Israel when it comes to the specifics of the requests for US military assistance. It would be a mistake if the United States were to give Israel a proverbial blank check only for a narrative to develop, as has been the case with Ukraine, that the administration is reluctant to provide what is desired. And differences on this subject should be resolved behind closed doors.

Read more from William F. Wechsler, senior director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council and former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combatting terrorism.

New Atlanticist

Oct 18, 2023

The Israel visit was just the start. Here’s what Biden needs to do next. 

By William F. Wechsler

The US and Israel should develop and publicly issue a joint set of common principles that will guide the future of Gaza, once Israel’s full military objectives against Hamas are reached.

Conflict Israel

Thank god for the United States

The importance of Biden’s visit to Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas massacre of children, women, and men in Israel cannot be overstated.

The US president found himself in a challenging situation. The Netanyahu government has been intent on undermining Israeli democracy to satisfy the zealots in his government to help him evade prison. This has caused an unprecedented fracture within Israeli society and, dangerously, in the army as well. In addition, the Netanyahu government’s policies alienated Israel’s traditional democratic allies around the world, including its closest friends. Moreover, his policy of “divide and conquer,” namely his unwritten pact with Hamas and weakening of the Palestinian Authority, has clearly failed to ensure security let alone provide peace. What is now also becoming abundantly clear is that prior to the attack, the Netanyahu government shifted critical weapons and military personnel away from the Gaza border, leaving it dangerously exposed in favor of safeguarding settlements in the West Bank. Moreover, the Netanyahu government’s intelligence failure has been reverberating as a shock throughout Israel and the world.

Biden’s statement that the devastating explosion in the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, which reportedly killed hundreds of Gazan people, was not caused by Israel but rather by “the other team” due to a failed Palestinian militant rocket, was especially important at this time as a message to the Arab street.

But there is another reason for his visit. As has been clear in US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s direct supervision of the Israeli cabinet’s plan for humanitarian aid to Gaza and in the entrance of Benny Gantz and General Gadi Eisenkot into Israel’s wartime unity government, neither the Israeli public nor the US administration trust that Netanyahu and his coalition will make the right decisions alone in this war and beyond. For Israel, this is an existential question and for the United States, it is about its interests in the region and beyond.  

Therefore, the visit will ultimately be judged as successful if it succeeds in:

• Demonstrating the United States’ unwavering military support for Israel’s defense and the eradication of Hamas military and government officials and institutions from the Gaza Strip.
• Providing the necessary deterrence against other terrorist actors supported by Iran from entering the war.
• Securing the release of the Israeli hostages from Gaza.
• Ensuring agreements are in place so Gazan civilians will be protected during the conflict.
• Aligning with the United States’ allies in the region and beyond to bring stability to the region.
• Setting in motion with Israeli, regional, and international leaders a plan for the “day after” on securing long-term Israeli borders, establishing a Palestinian Authority or international protectorate regime governing Gaza, launching reconstruction of southern Israel and Gaza that can be the basis for an eventual peaceful settlement, and ensuring Israel remains a democracy both in times of peace and in terms of the standards of its conduct in combat.

Time will tell whether the visit will succeed in all of the above (and some of the details will remain classified for now) but certainly the visit itself is a step in that direction.

—Ariel Ezrahi is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs.

Biden should change his tune on Israel if he wants to play a constructive role in the conflict

The deadly explosion from the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza has sent ripples across Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa. From Rabat to Baghdad, thousands of anti-Israeli protesters mobilized, galvanized by solidarity with Palestinians and outrage over the horrific scenes of the tragedy’s aftermath. Even Arab leaders, whose political maneuvering tends to disregard public sentiment, were forced to heed the regional groundswell of frustration. More out of self-preservation than sincere indignation, the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia all attributed responsibility to Israel and publicly condemned the purported strike. The Israel Defense Forces said the rocket came from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, and both Biden and the Pentagon said Wednesday that their evidence showed Israel was not responsible.

The explosion of the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital could not have happened at a more critical time. First, it comes after Egypt categorically refused to facilitate what the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestine called the “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza’s residents into Sinai by opening its border. The Israeli military has also amassed troops and is threatening to move forward with an ill-conceived ground invasion of Gaza, which would increase the risk of regional escalation, as Iran and Hezbollah would likely openly join the conflict. Lastly, the explosion has derailed Biden’s planned summit with Palestinian, Jordanian, and Egyptian leaders, which was canceled by his counterparts. Biden only visited Israel on his trip. 

Biden’s messaging is defining the conflict’s trajectory and the tone he strikes is shaping the global zeitgeist. In the Middle East and North Africa region and beyond, the US administration’s stance is viewed as objectionable and tone-deaf. Biden’s one-sided solidarity with Israel and his emphasis on Israel’s right to self-defense ad nauseam are fast becoming counterproductive public postures. By blindly doubling down on these mantras, Biden is making a strategic mistake that is damaging the United States’ global image. He is also rendering US diplomacy incapable of playing a mediating role in this conflict for the foreseeable future. Biden would do well to “read the region” and, at least privately, push the need for a durable ceasefire to give Israel an off-ramp. In so doing, he would preserve US interests by saving Israel from its worst impulses and gain the goodwill of Arab audiences and his many other interlocutors in the region. More importantly, he would also usher in a much-needed de-escalation that would save both Palestinian and Israeli lives.

—Emadeddin Badi is a nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council.

Showing up was half the battle. Now the hard work of diplomacy begins.

Biden knows that “showing up is half the battle.” It is the message his brief visit to Israel has sent around the world and it is the message that his senior officials have sent by their consultations in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East over the days since the October 7 attack. 

But now the showing up chapter turns into the “long slog” phase. This will include continued intense diplomatic efforts to enlist other leaders in the region to help de-escalate the situation. This phase will include behind the scenes efforts to extricate hostages from Hamas and its allies. It will call for the negotiation of temporary ceasefires to allow for humanitarian movement of people and goods. It will require others in the region to exert influence on Hamas and other radical Palestinian groups in order to establish some hope for Israeli acquiescence to a path forward that minimizes further human catastrophes. 

The full resources of US diplomacy will be called upon to make sure there is no situation that requires nearby US forces to move from deterrence to active intervention, with the risk of war with Iran. A big part of that job will include helping the Israeli leadership choose options that have some chance of achieving reasonable objectives without making the situation worse.

Biden is fortunate to be surrounded by a capable team of senior officials. We are all depending on their skill and tenacity in the coming weeks and months. 

—Richard LeBaron is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs focusing on the Gulf and on broad social change in the MENA region.

Biden is falling short on moral clarity and leadership in this conflict

Biden’s trip to Israel is fraught with challenges at this delicate time in the Middle East. But it also presents a unique opportunity. While he expectedly reiterated his unwavering support for Israel and denounced Hamas, messaging that speaks directly to domestic interests and audiences ahead of a challenging 2024 US presidential campaign, he should also provide the moral clarity and leadership required of the United States by acknowledging the plight of the Palestinian people and supporting a clearer path to a just solution.

In the case of Ukraine, Biden has been rightly unambiguous in condemning Russia and using economic and political influence to mobilize the world to end its aggression. But he has been unwilling to compel Israel, arguably the closest US ally and one of its largest financial beneficiaries, to end its decades of occupation of the Palestinian people. This hypocrisy has tarnished the reputation of the United States across the world, especially in the Global South and among young people. Moreover, it has given ammunition to competitors, such as China, to make the case worldwide that the United States only stands up for human rights when it suits its interests.

Rather than seeking justice for the Palestinians and lasting regional peace, successive US administrations pursued the Abraham Accords, a shallow strategy built on transactional deals with Arab nations to strengthen Israel’s regional position and create a security architecture to counter Iran. A just solution for the Palestinian people was put aside for political expediency and to subjugate them to accept whatever was on offer, no matter how little. Until the United States and Israel realize that real peace is predicated on getting the buy-in of the people of the region rather than just that of their leaders, the Palestinian issue will continue to erode the United States’ standing in the Middle East and beyond. And it will continue to contribute to a cycle of violence that destabilizes the broader region and prevents the full economic and social development that its people deserve and desire.

 —Amjad Ahmad is chairman of the empowerME Initiative at the Atlantic Council and managing partner and emerging market advisor at 500 Global.

Biden’s unprecedented visit tries to reassert the US as a player in the Middle East

Biden’s unprecedented mission to Israel—no US president has ever paid a wartime visit to the country—took place against the inauspicious backdrop of the tragic explosion of Gaza’s al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on Tuesday. The initial recriminations of Hamas, together with subsequently released Israeli footage which appears to substantiate claims that the facility was struck by an errant rocket launched from within Gaza—a narrative that Biden endorsed on Wednesday, based on data provided by the Pentagon—are illustrative of the dense fog of war that greeted Biden as he arrived in the region.

With the originally planned Amman leg of Biden’s trip canceled after the rulers of Jordan and Egypt, as well as the Palestinian Authority, called off a summit meeting, all eyes were trained on Tel Aviv, where Biden convened with Israeli principals. He arrived at a critical time, with the Israel Defense Forces poised to embark on expanded ground operations in the Gaza Strip and also deployed on Israel’s northern frontier with Lebanon, where cross-border exchanges with Hezbollah are intensifying. Biden—whose overwhelming support for the Netanyahu government’s campaign to eradicate Hamas has made him more popular in Israel than the country’s own leaders—came looking to contain an already explosive situation.

The deployment of two US Navy carrier strike groups in the Eastern Mediterranean aims to deter Hezbollah, Iran’s local proxy, from being tempted to widen the conflict by opening a second front against Israel. (Administration officials have reportedly been discussing the possibility of employing genuine force if that more subtle message is ignored.) Additionally, Biden sought to facilitate the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, in the hope of relieving the suffering of noncombatants and mitigating criticism of Israel’s US-backed offensive against Hamas and other terrorist factions; Israel’s war cabinet has promised to oblige.

More broadly, the White House is hoping to boost its credentials as an engaged player in the Middle East theater, at a time when several of its ostensible partners have questioned the United States’ commitment to their welfare and been courted simultaneously by Chinese and Russian suitors. But with regional powers—including Turkey and Saudi Arabia—now expressing vociferous condemnation of Israel’s response to the brutal October 7 raid, and with Israel promising that “what was in Gaza will no longer be,” the immediate horizon for any US pursuit of Israel’s greater integration into the region seems bleak.                             

—Shalom Lipner is a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He previously served seven consecutive Israeli premiers over a quarter-century at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

Biden gives a subtle warning about an invasion of Gaza

Biden, in characterizing Israel as a “democracy” much like the United States, underscored his view that Israel operates under the “rule of law” rather than adhering to the tactics of terrorists. This depiction creates a narrative that pits the West against entities like Hamas, framing it as a battle between democratic values and extremism. The president’s intention was likely to emphasize Israel’s right to self-defense and convey that the fight against Hamas is not just Israel’s, but a cause supported by the entire Western world; that this is not solely about US interests but is also about the broader human interest in countering terrorism.

Biden also expressed words of regret for some aspects of US policy after 9/11, when he reiterated that “While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes,” likely in reference to the US invasion of Iraq. These are strong words that hint he advises against an invasion of Gaza, as such a move could hinder the path to Palestinian statehood. It will also place Israel in a position of responsibility for the well-being of Palestinians in Gaza under occupation, which Israel has historically neglected time and time again. Occupying Gaza will draw harsh criticism toward Israel, which in turn will reflect on the United States, as its main ally in the region, and make future US commitments to Israel harder to justify to Congress as well as the US public at large.

—Alissa Pavia is the associate director of the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Program.

Biden may have bought Muslim and Arab governments some time

The loudest sound around the world Wednesday morning must have been the sigh of relief of Arab and other Muslim leaders that the initial evidence indicates that the explosions at the el-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza were the work of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and not Israel. Otherwise, the pressure on such governments would be immeasurable in how to balance the sentiments of their people as expressed by the rage of pro-Palestinian protesters, generally young men, with the need to contain the conflict. There is great hope that this early finding and Israel’s denials will be confirmed in the long run and not reversed as were Israel’s earlier denials about the 2022 killing of Al-Jazeera journalist Shirin Ab-Akleh or the 1982 massacre in Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. These were also initially refuted, but later confirmed by the Israeli government itself. At least for the moment, and with Biden putting his credibility on the line, there is room for doubt as to who to blame. Perhaps the president is more careful this time about confirming Israeli claims than he was about having seen pictures of beheaded children, a statement the White House had to reverse. Nonetheless, the strong message he sent that the United States would jump in should the conflict metastasize heralds potential unimaginable carnage on a region that the Economist saw as highly promising a few weeks ago. It may help Muslim and Arab governments to buy some time—though the anger in Arab streets persists.    

This said, all fingers in this fight continue to be pointed to the Islamic Republic of Iran as the mastermind of the current crisis. While its direct role has still yet to be demonstrated, the regime ordered its supporters into pro-Hamas demonstrations, and it is noteworthy that the Iranian people inside and outside the country have voiced their opposition to Hamas. From slogans at soccer games and expressions of sympathy for Israeli victims to anti-Hamas demonstrations abroad—they have been clear that Israel, as the nemesis of the regime they oppose, is not their enemy. 

Among the signs of the Iranian public’s sentiment vis-à-vis the Hamas-Israeli conflict was Wednesday’s memorial for the world-renowned Iranian film director Darioush Mehrjoui and his wife, Vahideh Mohammadifar, who were bludgeoned to death in their home a few days ago. Mehrjoui had recently raised his voice in favor of the opposition to the regime. Though some ten people seem to have been arrested in the meantime, there is widespread belief that it was a government-ordered assassination, as there are many similarities to the 1990s serial killings of intellectuals. The memorial attracted a who’s-who of the Iranian art world, with many women openly defying the compulsory hijab. 

When a prominent actress uttered a few words in support of the regime’s fight against Israel and Zionism, the audience booed extensively and instead chanted “No Gaza, no Lebanon—my life is for Iran.” In response to the flood of fierce criticism, she has since walked back her statement. So strong is the pressure of public opinion. Hence, while the regime may be cheering from afar and grandstanding to incite more Arab resistance, the leaders of the Islamic Republic know well that should the conflict come to Iran’s shore, they can no longer count on people’s sacrifice as they did during the Iran-Iraq war. They themselves may be among the first casualties.  

—Nadereh Chamlou is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s empowerME initiative and an international development advisor.

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Atlantic Council experts are keeping close watch on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and on the reactions around the globe. As the conflict continues into its second week, find the latest updates below.

Click here to get caught up on last week’s expert analysis.

The latest updates

• Experts react to Biden’s ‘inflection point’ address on Ukraine and Israel

• Smart in 60 Seconds: What to expect from Israel’s possible ground invasion of Gaza

• Israel misread Iran’s way of war. A proper understanding could help predict Hezbollah’s next moves.

• A welcome announcement on humanitarian aid for Gaza

• The Israel visit was just the start. Here’s what Biden needs to do next. 

• Experts react: What did Biden achieve in his visit to Israel?

• Peacemaking can follow the Israel-Hamas war. History shows it.

• Dispatch from Abu Dhabi: Do the Israelis know about the Basus War?

• Network of South Asian Twitter accounts spreading Israel-Palestine war disinfo

• Egypt, the United States, and Israel are in a stalemate over opening the Gaza-Egypt border

• Biden arrives at the very moment Israel needs its closest ally

• The cancellation of the Biden summit reveals Jordan’s juggling act

• More updates

Experts react to Biden’s ‘inflection point’ address on Ukraine and Israel

Biden’s second bravura presidential moment in two days is a legacy-builder

It has been a good week for Joe Biden. In a tour de force, he visited Israel and delivered a pitch-perfect message of support for its embattled people and some careful observations on how to deal with the challenges ahead. Then one day after that trip, he gave a powerful speech from the Oval Office laying out the major dangers presented to global order, vital US interests, and US leadership by Vladimir Putin’s aggression to subdue Ukraine and Hamas’s savage attack on Israel. US presidents are usually elected for reasons related to the economy and other domestic issues, but presidents often establish their legacy at moments of international peril.

Even before Putin launched his massive invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, the Biden administration laid out a sensible policy to deter Russia and then to make sure it did not succeed: 1. major sanctions on Russia; 2. political isolation of Russia; 3. the provision of substantial military and economic support to Ukraine; and 4. strengthening NATO defenses in the east. It took great effort to implement this successfully. 

But one thing the White House had not done was to explain to the American people why the United States was leading this major effort. Biden checked that box tonight. He explained that if Putin wins in Ukraine, he might march west and attack our NATO allies, which the United States would be obliged to defend. He reminded the American public that Ukraine was only asking for the means to defend itself. Providing the military and economic assistance that Ukraine needs is therefore the smart and economical way to protect the United States and its allies. He pointed out that if Putin wins in Ukraine, it would also embolden aggressors elsewhere. That would erode American leadership. He noted too that Ukraine and Israel are democracies attacked by authoritarians bent on their destruction. Stopping them is consistent with our values as Americans. 

To help defend our interests, the president noted that he was sending a request to Congress for substantial aid to Ukraine and Israel, and he expected us to overcome our divisions in dealing with these challenges. That aid is essential to defend American interests, and his handling of it was a smart, statesmanlike way to address the disorder in the US House of Representatives. 

It was Biden’s second bravura presidential moment in two days. In its clarity, strategic focus, and sunny summons of American values and leadership, it recalled Ronald Reagan at his best. This is good for Biden and better for us.

—John E. Herbst is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a former US ambassador to Ukraine.

Biden rallies Americans as global defenders of democracy. Will it work?

Biden’s Oval Office address to the nation sought to answer one central question regarding the conflicts between Israel and Hamas and Russia and Ukraine: “Why should the American people care?” Against the domestic political backdrop of a speaker-less Republican Party, a barely avoided government shutdown, and a deeply divided nation, Biden sought to unify the American people as global defenders of democracy. 

The rhetoric was about more than drawing important parallels between the wars in Ukraine and Israel. Biden is hoping that his message will compel lawmakers—under pressure from their constituents—to pass the forthcoming package of direct military aid to both nations that he previewed tonight. An omnibus aid package could offer something for a spectrum of Israel supporters and Ukraine skeptics alike. Or, alternatively, some could weaponize its sticker shock to draw the nation inward. But this is where Biden’s appeal for support rightly extended beyond the theoretical: Just twelve days after Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel, American Jews and Muslims have begun to face heightened threats to their safety as a result of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic violence across the nation—with deadly consequences already in Illinois, where a six-year-old Palestinian-American child was brutally murdered for his faith.

The big question is whether Biden’s case was strong enough to move Republican lawmakers reluctant to cede any perceived win to a president with just thirteen months to go in his quest for reelection. The unity that the United States experienced after the 9/11 attacks seems a distant memory. Can Biden, who has invoked 9/11 to describe the aftermath of Hamas’s terrorist attack in Israel, summon the same resolve that followed that national trauma? The forthcoming funding request will serve as a test, and US allies and foes alike will be watching to see if the United States passes it.

—Jenna Ben-Yehuda is the executive vice president of the Atlantic Council, and the former president and chief executive officer of the Truman National Security Project and the Truman Center for National Policy.

Read more expert reactions to the Oval Office address:

New Atlanticist

Oct 19, 2023

Experts react to Biden’s ‘inflection point’ address on Ukraine and Israel

By Atlantic Council experts

Biden tied together the conflicts in Israel and Ukraine as part of a larger struggle for democracy and freedom. Here’s what Atlantic Council experts had to say about the Oval Office address.

Conflict Europe & Eurasia

Smart in 60 Seconds: What to expect from Israel’s possible ground invasion of Gaza

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Israel misread Iran’s way of war. A proper understanding could help predict Hezbollah’s next moves.

In perhaps the Israeli political echelon’s first—and, to date, highest ranking—admission of failure to preempt the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, National Security Council chairman Tzachi Hanegbi said misunderstanding the group’s intentions was “my mistake, first and foremost.” Hanegbi explained that Israel “believed Hamas internalized the lessons” of Operation Guardian of the Walls “when it was dealt a heavy blow” in 2021.

As proof, he pointed to Hamas’s seeming indifference to Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) “pleas for help”—as he put it—when PIJ clashed with Israel in August 2022 and May of this year. “Hamas decided to remain outside the battle,” Hanegbi said. Though accurate on a technical level, Israel’s analysis of Hamas’s intentions, as reflected in Hanegbi’s statement, demonstrates a fundamental failure in understanding how Iran and its proxy forces operate, cooperate, and make war.

Iran’s proxies have long ceased to work as geographically contained entities or in isolation. Particularly with the onset of the Syrian civil war, Tehran has worked on integrating its various extensions and proxies into a mutually reinforcing and symbiotic regional alliance—a true “Axis of Resistance.” This also applies to Hamas, both within the Palestinian Territories and outside them.

Read more from David Daoud, nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs and director of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria Research at United Against Nuclear Iran:

IranSource

Oct 19, 2023

Israel misread Iran’s way of war. A proper understanding could help predict Hezbollah’s next moves.

By David Daoud

Iran—through Hezbollah—has spent almost two decades and considerable effort and funds building the Gaza Strip into the Axis of Resistance’s Southern Front against Israel.

Iran Israel

A welcome announcement on humanitarian aid for Gaza

Today’s announcement that Israel will allow Egypt to deliver limited quantities of aid to Gaza was a positive step forward in what has otherwise been a bleak humanitarian situation during a ten-day siege on the territory. While the exact determination of what duties Israel has turn on a legal classification of the conflict, the laws of war are at least clear on the basics: there is at a minimum an obligation to allow humanitarian assistance to be delivered to the civilian population by an impartial and non-discriminatory humanitarian organization if refusal to do so would result in mass starvation. With the United Nations warning that water shortages in Gaza have now “become a matter of life and death,” and the conflict is exacerbating the already precarious nature of life in Gaza, where more than 60 percent of the population faced food insecurity, it is imperative that the new announcement stick. 

Given the clearly deteriorating situation in Gaza, and the extremely rare statement issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross that the denial of food, water, and electricity to civilians, crucial for their survival, is not compatible with international humanitarian law, it is evident that humanitarian assistance delivered by impartial and non-discriminatory humanitarian organizations must be allowed to enter Gaza. Israel’s approval of the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza from Egypt, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hour-long meeting with US President Joe Biden, is a step in the right direction. At the same time, it is also important to ensure that this life-saving aid actually makes it to the intended recipients—civilians—and that Hamas does not divert or seize aid. As the commentary to Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention reminds us, “constant surveillance is necessary to ensure that the articles are in actual fact received by those for whom they are intended and that any illegal trafficking is made impossible.” But even that cannot be carried out if the aid is not allowed to enter as soon as possible. The survival of civilians depends on it.

Read more from Lisandra Novo, staff lawyer for the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council:

MENASource

Oct 18, 2023

Humanitarian aid cannot be weaponized. Gazans are depending on it.

By Lisandra Novo

Despite urgent appeals for aid and multiple deliveries to Egypt, no outside aid appears to have made it into Gaza.

Civil Society Conflict

The Israel visit was just the start. Here’s what Biden needs to do next. 

Biden arrived in Tel Aviv far more popular among Israelis than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over whom he has significant leverage as a result. In the days following this visit, Biden should not hesitate to use this leverage, though he must do so wisely.

Given this context, the United States has core objectives that are public, military, political, and diplomatic. By his very presence, Biden clearly demonstrated US resolve and friendship to Israelis. His words reinforced this core message. He was willing to put the credibility of the United States on the line to support the Israeli narrative on the recent deadly explosion at the hospital in Gaza City, a critical action given the lack of Israeli credibility among many global audiences. Given the trend lines in the region and in Europe, this in and of itself made the trip worthwhile. But if this is all that emerges from the trip in the end, then it will have been largely a missed opportunity.

Outside observers don’t know the details of the military matters that were discussed when Biden met privately with the Israeli war cabinet—and let’s hope secrets can actually be kept on this subject. But here’s what I would have advised Biden to put on the table. First, in the weeks and months ahead, there must be no daylight between the United States and Israel when it comes to the specifics of the requests for US military assistance. It would be a mistake if the United States were to give Israel a proverbial blank check only for a narrative to develop, as has been the case with Ukraine, that the administration is reluctant to provide what is desired. And differences on this subject should be resolved behind closed doors.

Read more from William F. Wechsler, senior director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council and former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combatting terrorism.

New Atlanticist

Oct 18, 2023

The Israel visit was just the start. Here’s what Biden needs to do next. 

By William F. Wechsler

The US and Israel should develop and publicly issue a joint set of common principles that will guide the future of Gaza, once Israel’s full military objectives against Hamas are reached.

Conflict Israel

Experts react: What did Biden achieve in his visit to Israel?

Amid strong show of support, Biden delivers a tough but necessary message to Israel

Biden delivered yet another passionate, personal speech in Israel on Wednesday reaffirming his continued unwavering support for Israel and its grieving population as it confronts Hamas in Gaza. But he also showed that he can stand firmly behind Israel while simultaneously delivering difficult messages calling for caution and humanitarian support.  

Among an ambitious list of priorities—from deterrence to American hostages—Biden used the trip to secure an agreement for humanitarian measures that Israel must take as it wages war in Gaza, announcing a surprise one hundred million dollar assistance package to Gaza and the West Bank—small but symbolic in the context of the wider aid that will go to assisting Israel in its war with Hamas. Biden reminded Israel in no uncertain terms that it is both Jewish and a democracy and it must meet its responsibilities as such. Israel, he reminded the country, believes in fundamental human rights and must act accordingly.

Biden is uniquely positioned to pressure Israel on these issues. Through his incredible embrace of the country, Biden has secured the leverage and good will to deliver tough if necessary messages to Israel that it must act according to Western standards as it engages in war. And in so doing, no one in Israel can ever accuse the United States of abandoning the country or its security needs. To the contrary, Biden was met in Israel with a hero’s welcome: At a moment when Netanyahu faces abysmal approval ratings in Israel, Biden, the first US president to travel to Israel during a war, was welcomed by posters that read “Thank You, Mr. President.” Both the public and Israeli press has been overwhelmed—“verklempt”—with his support for the nation in what is arguably its darkest hour.  This is in direct contrast to his Democratic Party predecessor Barack Obama, whose cool and detached response to Israel during wartime was met with an equally chilly response from Israelis. Biden’s firm messages in Tel Aviv today about Israel’s rights and responsibilities may be a tougher pill to swallow than the message he delivered to the American people last week when the war broke out, but there is no better leader to deliver them credibly to the Israeli people.  

—Carmiel Arbit is a nonresident senior fellow for Middle East Programs and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

9/11 is the right analogy—for the wrong reasons 

At this morning’s joint news conference, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Hamas’s October massacre as “twenty 9/11s” relative to the population of Israel and the United States. He also spoke of a battle between “the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism,” echoing the diagnosis made by the George W. Bush administration after the September 11 attacks. 

There are of course close parallels between the two traumas, not least the element of strategic surprise, the asymmetric balance of power, the deliberate mass murder of civilians, and the shattering of prevailing myths about dominance and omniscience.  

Unfortunately, the analogy risks running deeper than Netanyahu intends. The United States pursued a maximalist response after 9/11, invading Afghanistan and occupying Iraq, without a clear exit strategy or an (achievable) definition of success. This violence unleashed a tsunami of radicalization across the Middle East that continued to drive the threat, bringing the fringe ideology of the perpetrators into the mainstream of a newly destabilized region and inadvertently confirming some of its canons. The elements of dehumanization in the United States’ response to 9/11, both systematic and spontaneous, unraveled global faith in the US-led rules-based order, precipitated a moral crisis at home, and helped to reshape domestic politics in profound and unexpected ways.  

The Israeli armed forces have promised “hell” in Gaza, already dropping six thousand bombs in five days on the small territory, cutting off food, water, medicine, and electricity to the population, and amassing three hundred thousand Israeli troops for a probable ground invasion—with, seemingly, no plan for the day after it is all over. Its airstrikes have killed 3,300 Palestinians, one third of whom were children, a reality which will both devastate and radicalize, and perhaps fuel further savage attacks. Dehumanization is also at work in Israel’s response and is deeply ensconced within official narratives, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant observing that “we are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly,” a former prime minister protesting “are you seriously asking me about Palestinian civilians… we’re fighting Nazis,” and members of parliament calling for a second Nakba and the use of nuclear weapons against Gaza. This all may portend a moral crisis for Israel, as well as a deepening of international skepticism about the intentions of the West.   

Using a slightly smaller figure than Netanyahu, Biden agreed in his afternoon remarks that the Hamas attack was “like fifteen 9/11s,” but he also recognized that “we made mistakes after 9/11” and cautioned Israel not to be consumed by rage in its own decision making. Whether this much-needed corrective has come in time will be seen in the coming hours and days. But what is certain is that, for millions of people across the Middle East and beyond, 9/11 and its aftermath serve as a deeply troubling—and triggering—precedent.  

—Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow within the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs.

Read more expert reactions to Biden’s visit to Tel Aviv.

New Atlanticist

Oct 18, 2023

Experts react: What did Biden achieve in his visit to Israel?

By Atlantic Council experts

Atlantic Council experts share their insights on the implications of Biden’s visit for Israel and the wider region.

Conflict Crisis Management

Peacemaking can follow the Israel-Hamas war. History shows it.

The leaders of Israel, the Arab states, and the United States should take some critical lessons from past conflicts. True statesmen do not fight wars just to kill more adversaries than their own people lose through fighting. No one can doubt that Israel can kill many times more Palestinians than the number of Israelis that the militant group Hamas killed and took hostage on October 7. The United States has the military means to help Israel do that. However, the real test of leadership is to turn the tragedies of conflict into peacemaking.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat understood that. When he launched a surprise attack in October 1973—along with Syria and eventually a coalition of other Arab states to recover territories lost to Israel after Israel’s own surprise attack in June 1967 wiped out most of the Egyptian air forces—I was part of the State Department team that helped Secretary Henry Kissinger’s diplomacy bring Egypt and Israel to a standoff and a ceasefire. Sadat did not accept that status quo, leaving Israel to occupy the Sinai Peninsula. Instead, the Egyptian president found innovative ways to reach out to both the United States and Israel, culminating with his historic visit to Jerusalem to address the Israeli Knesset. 

President Jimmy Carter took it from there. He brought Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to Camp David in September 1978 for twelve days of secret talks that led to the March 26, 1979 peace treaty between their two countries, known as the Camp David Accords. 

Read more from David Mack, nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, and former US ambassador to the United Arab Emirates.

MENASource

Oct 18, 2023

Peacemaking can follow the Israel-Hamas war. History shows it.

By David Mack

The leaders of Israel, the Arab states, and the United States should take some critical lessons from past conflicts.

Israel Middle East

Dispatch from Abu Dhabi: Do the Israelis know about the Basus War?

The government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has great sympathy for the Palestinian people, but it is clear-eyed about Hamas, which it has long recognized to be a terrorist organization. Therefore, it was unsurprising that the UAE, joined by its Abraham Accords partner Bahrain, would issue the Arab world’s strongest condemnations of Hamas soon after October 7. They referred to Hamas’s escalation as “serious and grave” or “dangerous” for the region, and the UAE specifically noted that it was “appalled” by Hamas taking Israeli citizens as hostages, while Bahrain issued a “denunciation” of the kidnappings. In contrast, their neighbor Qatar declared “Israel alone is responsible for the current escalation”—a view that is sadly much more representative of the Arab street. And given how vocal the UAE has been in promoting the Abraham Accords over the last three years, the government feels especially exposed and vulnerable to shifts in Arab public opinion now.

A senior government official here told me that they were proud of that statement—the feeling I heard from many here was that it was the right thing to do. That said, they also knew in advance that the cost for positioning the UAE as “a voice of reason”—another phrase I heard repeated several times—would not be cheap. And in both domestic and pan-Arab social media the country is paying that price today. At the same time, UAE officials have also made clear that economic ties between Emiratis and Israelis would continue despite the coming war and that, as Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Trade Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi put it, “We don’t mix the economy and trade with politics.”

Read more from William F. Wechsler, senior director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council and former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combatting terrorism.

New Atlanticist

Oct 18, 2023

Dispatch from Abu Dhabi: Do the Israelis know about the Basus War?

By William F. Wechsler

Even if Israel prevails relatively rapidly against Hamas, UAE officials are concerned with what will happen in Gaza afterwards.

Conflict Israel

Network of South Asian Twitter accounts spreading Israel-Palestine war disinfo

The DFRLab identified at least twenty-five accounts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that appear to be coordinating to spread copy-and-pasted messages about the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. Many of the accounts claim to be based in India, though their precise location cannot be determined. They previously focused on India-related topics before switching to posting false, misleading, and divisive content in support of both Israel and Palestine, sometimes jumping back and forth within a series of posts.

Israel declared war against Hamas after the militant group launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. At the time of writing, the war had resulted in the death of over 3,600 lives on both sides, and the displacement of approximately one million people – almost half of Gaza’s population. Social media content has circulated rapidly since the start of the conflict, and platforms have been flooded with disinformation and misinformation. X has faced criticism for concerns that the platform allows the spread of false information and graphically violent footage.

Fact-checking website BOOM recently reported on verified Indian accounts on X spreading false information and inflammatory content about the conflict, using similar tactics to the accounts found by the DFRLab.

Read more from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

Egypt, the United States, and Israel are in a stalemate over opening the Gaza-Egypt border

On October 16, Israeli aircraft reportedly bombed the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which Israeli forces appear to have done several times now since October 7. The attack sparked outrage in Egypt, with some activists tweeting that the bombardment of the only possible crossing out of Gaza would hamper relief efforts and stop humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinians who had fled to the south to escape the incessant shelling of northern Gaza and an expected ground offensive.

Before Israel’s latest bombardment of the crossing, expectations were high that the gateway would reopen to allow the evacuation of foreign nationals, including at least five hundred US citizens in Gaza. A reopening would also allow for food and medical supplies to enter southern Gaza, as had reportedly been agreed to in negotiations between the Egyptian and US sides during US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s October 15 visit to Cairo. But the bombing of the sole exit point from Gaza into Egypt has dashed hopes of a breakthrough anytime soon. A source on Egypt’s side of the border who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, said that the bombing was certain to block—at least temporarily—the delivery of badly needed humanitarian assistance to entrapped Palestinians and may likely delay the evacuation of foreigners. 

US-Egyptian relations are already tense after Cairo refused to cave in to US pressure to allow one million Palestinians to enter Sinai. Egypt’s national security council convened on October 15 and declared that it categorically rejects the US and Israeli proposal to take in Palestinians fleeing the war, arguing that such a move would undermine national security. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had earlier stated that the Palestinian issue cannot be resolved at the expense of other parties and that negotiations were the only way forward. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a security source said to me that Egypt “will not play a part in the forced displacement of Palestinians.”

But with food, fuel, water, and other basic necessities quickly running out in Gaza, civilian deaths may likely surge in the coming days, piling even greater pressure on the Egyptian leadership. On October 16, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denied that an agreement had been reached for a ceasefire in southern Gaza and for the transfer of humanitarian assistance into Gaza in exchange for the evacuation of foreign nationals. Israel had earlier warned that trucks carrying relief supplies would be bombed if they tried to enter Gaza without coordination with the Israeli side. It seems that the situation is at a stalemate, with both Egypt and Israel standing their ground. 

Meanwhile, the death toll for Palestinians continues to rise each day, and the threat of other parties, such as Iran, opening a new front against Israel in the war on Hamas is also growing by the minute—compounding the risks of destabilizing the region.

—Shahira Amin is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative focusing on Egypt, economics, energy, water access, and women’s issues.

Biden arrives at the very moment Israel needs its closest ally

US President Joe Biden arrives on Wednesday in an Israel still reeling from Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack, but also in a broader Middle East irate over the tragic strike on the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City that reportedly killed hundreds. Biden’s trip was always designed to highlight, in the most direct manner possible, public support for Israel. But the trip took on additional symbolic significance after media reports and statements by Arab countries and Turkey condemned Israel for the attack—despite Israel’s denials of involvement in the explosion at the hospital.

Arab residents across the region took to the streets in protest against both Israel and the United States. Never mind that there was no factual confirmation that Israel was responsible for the blast at the hospital, regional press and social media declared it to be true. Against the backdrop of Arab states, even friendly ones, whose publics are far more hostile to Israel than their leaders are—and whose publics made clear Tuesday night that they will not allow their kings and presidents to be neutral toward, let alone supportive of, Israel over the coming weeks and months of the war—Biden’s visit highlights again the criticality of the US alliance. 

Biden was privately probably planning to use this trip to understand Israel’s strategic endgame in Gaza or push Jerusalem to figure out what it should be. Now, following the hospital’s destruction, there will be an additional goal. If Israel turns out to ultimately be responsible for the strike, then we should expect the private conversations to also be an early test of how much leverage and goodwill Biden truly has with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as Biden may seek to coax Netanyahu to ease restrictions in Gaza and allow greater access to basic needs.

Conversely, if Israel verifies that it was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) rocket that destroyed the hospital, then Biden will have a level of greater moral authority—especially after Jordanian King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas canceled on him—to try to cajole those leaders to help the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza by opening up their borders at a time when it is the last thing they want to do, out of fear for their own countries’ security. It probably won’t work, but he has a greater chance if PIJ is responsible for the strike and not Israel.

But no matter who is responsible, the demonstrations across the Arab world showed that Israel is in for a long, hard battle not just on the ground in Gaza, but in the public eye of the Middle East. It encapsulates why Israel so often feels so alone in the world and why Biden’s decision to visit is even more important than it was when originally announced.

— Jonathan Panikoff is the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Middle East Programs and a former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the US National Intelligence Council.

The cancellation of the Biden summit reveals Jordan’s juggling act

Today, Jordan’s longstanding position as a US ally and arbiter with the Palestinians in times of crisis faced its ultimate test. As images of the carnage in al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza began to circulate on the world’s screens, protests erupted in Arab and Muslim capitals. In Amman, protestors attacked the Israeli embassy late into the night, and videos on social media appeared to show Jordanian police trying to control the angry crowds with tear gas and rubber bullets. Within hours, the protests had spread to other parts of the country. As the strongest condemnations from Arab capitals began to emerge, Jordan was in an unenviable position as it was set to host a summit with US President Joe Biden, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday. 

The Jordanian government’s response became progressively stronger as images of the horrors in the al-Ahli hospital were beamed across televisions and social media channels and the number of casualties rose well into the hundreds. A strongly worded condemnation from the foreign ministry was followed by a statement from King Abdullah II, who called it a “massacre” and “heinous war crime” and warned that the war will drag the whole region into a catastrophe. Less than an hour later, Jordan announced three days of official mourning for the Palestinian “martyrs,” followed soon after with an official announcement that Jordan will no longer host the planned summit.

Jordanian officials were quick to read the Arab street—images of protests from Tunisia to Istanbul were being projected alongside images of Gazans amidst the carnage in al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, which was initially reported widely in Arab and some Western outlets as the result of an Israeli attack. Claims from Israeli official sources denying responsibility and blaming Palestinian militant groups fell on deaf ears in the Arab street. 

Hosting Biden in the aftermath of what may be the deadliest attack on a hospital ever documented would have been disastrous for Jordan domestically, as the United States has taken the strongest position among global powers in siding with Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack. For the majority of the Arab world, the US position is seen as a double standard, as it failed to condemn at all Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza’s civilian population and its displacement of hundreds of thousands of them.

For Jordan, it must juggle domestic anger and frustration over Israel’s actions against its Palestinian neighbors while maintaining its relationship with the United States and its nearly thirty-year peace agreement with Israel. Both Jordan and Egypt will find themselves in a difficult position as they try to untangle the most serious crisis to face the region since the Arab spring a decade ago. The implications for regional spillover, Jordan’s large border with Israel, and its furious population, including Palestinian refugees and citizens of Palestinian origin, present the biggest threat to the country’s stability and security in decades.     

 —Tuqa Nusairat is the director of strategy, operations, and finance for the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East Programs.

More updates:

• This may be the single deadliest attack on a hospital ever documented

• Understanding Iron Dome and Israel’s need for layered defense

• Arabs and Muslims in the US braced for the worst. Then it happened in Chicago.

• Hamas’s actions are war crimes. Israel should not respond with further war crimes.

• Frozen Iranian assets pose a challenging policy question for the Biden administration

• What was Hamas thinking? And what is it thinking now?

• Israel’s information blockade on Gaza will challenge how we think about war

This may be the single deadliest attack on a hospital ever documented

Reports of a strike on al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City that killed hundreds and destroyed the hospital, according to Gazan health officials, are devastating. This may be the single deadliest attack on a hospital ever documented, an appalling statistic considering the hundreds of hospital attacks in Syria and Ukraine in the past decade. Initial reports stated the bombing came from an Israeli airstrike, while Israel has since stated that militants with Islamic Jihad misfired a rocket that hit the hospital.

While it is too early to offer a legal determination on this specific attack, it is worth reinforcing the laws of war related to the protection of hospitals, which both the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas are bound by. 

In addition to the general protection accorded civilians, hospitals receive additional protection under the laws of war. In many cases, targeting a hospital is a war crime, according to the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and customary international law.

There are extremely limited circumstances, with four strict requirements, when an attack directed at a hospital would not violate the laws of war: 

1. The hospital must be used outside of its medical purpose to commit acts harmful to the attacking force. Use of the hospital for a military purpose—for instance, sheltering able-bodied combatants or launching attacks—meets this requirement. Treating wounded or sick combatants, storing munitions taken from sick or wounded, or guarding a hospital does not. 
2. The attacking force must give advance warning of the attack. If feasible, the warning must set a reasonable time to cease the military operations in the hospital or evacuate civilians.  
3. Any attack must be proportional: the resulting harm to civilians—considering both near-term direct and longer-term indirect casualties—cannot be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.  
4. If the military advantage from the attack can be achieved through any other feasible means with decreased harm to civilians, the less harmful means must be pursued instead. 

It will take time to determine exactly what happened to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. But current credible reporting indicates that the hospital is well-established with a readily identifiable location and was known to be providing essential medical services amid a siege resulting in shortages of medical care and conflict that has caused thousands of casualties. It is hard to imagine any facts that could justify the destruction of al-Ahli Hospital and reported killing of hundreds of people inside.

—Elise Baker is a staff lawyer for the Strategic Litigation Project and previously documented attacks on hospitals in Syria.

Understanding Iron Dome and Israel’s need for layered defense

Between October 7 and October 10, Hamas militants fired more than 4,500 rockets from Gaza into Israel, according to an estimate by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Early reports indicate that Hamas fired almost half of these rockets during the opening hours of the attack on October 7. Massed rocket launches of this nature can overwhelm ever the most formidable air defenses.

Looking back to the previous rounds of Hamas rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, Israel’s Iron Dome air defense systems achieved an estimated 90 percent intercept rate in 2021 and an estimated 97 percent intercept rate in 2022. On October 7, Hamas’s massed rocket fire made it impossible for Iron Dome to have the same level of success. The reason why is based on the nature of how all missile-based air defense system are limited by the number of their “loaded” interceptor-missiles. If the number of incoming rockets outnumber the Iron Dome’s loaded interceptors, then rockets can strike targets inside Israel. Notably, there is also a time delay to reload an Iron Dome battery that fired off all its interceptors. Thus, even the best air defense can be overcome.

Importantly, the United States provides funding and technical assistance to help Israel field one of the world’s most capable integrated air defense networks, of which Iron Dome is one layer. The layered defenses protecting Israeli airspace include the Iron Dome short-range system, David’s Sling medium-range system, Israeli purchased Patriot air defenses, and Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 long-range systems. With the threat that an expanded conflict poses to Israel, US funding and US-Israeli technical cooperation become even more important. With the IDF and Lebanese Hezbollah exchanging fire across the Blue Line demarcation between Israel and Lebanon, Hezbollah could cause significant harm to Israel if it were to wait for the IDF to begin its ground operation into Gaza and then unleash its stockpile of more than one hundred thousand rockets and missiles against Israel.

This threat was clearly on the mind of US President Joe Biden when he warned against Iran or its proxies intervening in the conflict and subsequently approved the first Carrier Strike Group to the eastern Mediterranean. Equally important, Israeli and US officials didn’t wait for this recent crisis to begin to work on an additional layer of protection for Israel’s air defense network. Israel has been in the process of finalizing the development of the Iron Beam, a high-energy laser weapons system that will allow Israel’s other air defense systems to preserve their limited quantities of interceptors. Importantly, Iron Beam development is occurring in partnership with the US defense industry and was something that Biden highlighted during his July 2022 visit to Israel.

—Daniel E. Mouton is a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs.

Arabs and Muslims in the US braced for the worst. Then it happened in Chicago. 

When something happens in the Middle East, Arabs and Muslims in the United States brace for the worst. This time was no different. While still trying to absorb the shocking news of the latest devastation from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, these communities were already preparing for the backlash. The pace of news emerging was unrelenting, and the graphic nature of the content and headlines was some of the worst we have seen in years. Still, Palestinian-, Arab-, and Muslim-American communities quickly warned that such rampant disinformation, misinformation, and racist rhetoric would undoubtedly lead to an increase in Islamophobic and hate-filled incidents across the country. One of the most disturbing examples of misinformation is the “beheaded babies” news, from which journalists and Israeli officials have now backtracked. The fact that such unverified information was publicly repeated by US President Joe Biden is an example of how far fake news can go. 

And it can have devastating and tragic consequences, as we witnessed Sunday with the news of the hateful stabbing of a six-year-old Palestinian-American child and his mother in Chicago. The news sent fear and shock through the Arab and Muslim community. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest civil rights organizations serving Arab and Muslim communities in the United States, have reported a nearly unprecedented increase in reports of intimidation, violent attacks, and hate speech reaching their offices across the country. It also appears that their early attempts to meet with the White House to share these concerns were rebuffed. Sunday night, the president issued a statement on the hate crime in Chicago, but many in the community felt the sentiment was too little, too late. In the coming weeks, politicians, journalists, and other public figures must understand that the way this conflict is reported on, the way some victims are dehumanized, and the spread of unverified information can lead to the radicalization of some individuals —with deadly consequences.

—Tuqa Nusairat is the director of strategy, operations, and finance for the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East Programs.

Hamas’s actions are war crimes. Israel should not respond with further war crimes.

Hamas’s attacks in Israel on October 7 and Israel’s response in the Gaza Strip have been war crimes met with more apparent war crimes. International humanitarian law (IHL), or the law of war, is clear that targeting or indiscriminately attacking civilians is prohibited, and parties must take precautions to protect civilian life when pursuing legitimate military aims. There are clear indications that both Hamas and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have violated IHL, and some of their attacks constitute grave violations, amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This piece discusses provisions of IHL and international criminal law as they apply to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. While events are developing rapidly, continued loss of civilian life looks all but guaranteed. Hamas and Israel must change their tactics to halt the continued commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Read more from Elise Baker, a staff lawyer with the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project.

MENASource

Oct 16, 2023

Hamas’s actions are war crimes. Israel should not respond with further war crimes.

By Elise Baker

There are clear indications that both Hamas and the IDF have violated international humanitarian law, and some of their attacks constitute grave violations.

Human Rights Israel

Frozen Iranian assets pose a challenging policy question for the Biden administration

The Biden administration’s move to restrict Iran’s access to the six billion dollars transferred from South Korea to Qatar in the wake of Hamas’s vicious assault on Israel was met with approval in Washington and reprobation in Tehran. The move followed substantial bipartisan pressure, but the publicity surrounding the announcement to Democratic legislators sets up a challenging policy question in the future. The Biden team has sought to engage Tehran in negotiations after the Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, and one reason such entreaties have failed is Iran’s mistrust of Washington’s follow-through on deals.

Given that backdrop, the Biden administration may want at some point to let these funds be used for their original purpose—humanitarian goods exchanged for American hostages in Iran—especially if it wants to revive negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program (or, if Iran takes more hostages). To do so, it will have to navigate the complex political issues surrounding the US relationship with Israel (which will likely be upset by any release of funds to Iran), potential bipartisan backlash, and a looming presidential election. All to say that should these funds be opened back up to Iran, it seems likely that the timing of that release will not be until after November 2024.

—Brian O’Toole is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. He is a former senior adviser to the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the US Department of the Treasury.

What was Hamas thinking? And what is it thinking now?

The size, scale, and brutality of Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel suggests that the group’s aim was to fundamentally change the strategic dynamic with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and probably in the larger region, as well. 

Hamas may have believed Israel was weakened, distracted, and divided by its internal political turmoil over the past year, making this a good time to strike. Perhaps Hamas thought a surprise attack would widen political divisions in Israel, upend the Israeli government, and sap the resilience and determination of the Israeli people to prevail, rather than produce the unity and resolve the world is currently seeing. Hamas may also have calculated that it had an opportunity to deal a knockout blow to the Palestinian Authority. The popularity of President Mahmoud Abbas and the Authority itself had been plummeting, and hardline factions, including Hamas cells, had begun to gain traction in the West Bank by taking the fight to Israel. The October 7 attack appears to have been specifically timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur war—in which Israel’s apparent invulnerability was called into question by successful surprise attacks from Egyptian and Syrian armies—to catch the Jewish state off guard and deal it a major blow.

It also appears that a key aim of the attack was to derail the ongoing Saudi-Israeli talks aimed at normalizing relations between the two countries. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian officials have publicly condemned the Saudi-Israeli discussions, and Hamas and Hezbollah officials reportedly also have cited the talks—which they view as a sellout of resistance to Israel’s presence in Muslim lands and a betrayal of the Palestinians—as a major motivation for Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel. These groups recognize that the establishment of normal relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel poses a strategic threat to their cause that would strengthen the pro-Western countries in the region and leave the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” isolated. 

Read more from Alan Pino, a former US national intelligence officer for the Near East.

New Atlanticist

Oct 16, 2023

What was Hamas thinking? And what is it thinking now?

By Alan Pino

Ahead of the October 7 attacks, Hamas may have believed Israel was weakened, distracted, and divided by its internal political turmoil. But it also may have misjudged both the international support it will enjoy and Israeli determination to sustain the fight now.

Conflict Crisis Management

Israel’s information blockade on Gaza will challenge how we think about war

In a thread on X (formerly Twitter), Emerson T. Brooking, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and co-author of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media, analyzed the impact and implications of a possible Israeli blockade of the internet in Gaza.

New Atlanticist

Oct 10, 2023

Live expertise: Get the latest insight on the Israel-Hamas war

By Atlantic Council experts

Atlantic Council experts are analyzing the rapidly unfolding events in the Middle East as they happen. Find the latest here.

Conflict Extremism

The post Live expertise: The latest insight as Israel prepares for a ground invasion of Gaza appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Nusairat in ISPI: Jordan: internal security first  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On October 11, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow and retired Marine Corps Major General, Arnold Punaro was featured on Fox Business discussing the attacks on Israel by Hamas. Punaro stressed that it was important to identify the state actors associated with training and equipping terrorists in the region.

Advisory Council member

Arnold Punaro

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Industry Defense Policy

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Punaro on Fox Business appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Hamas has long ceased to be a lone militant organization. Since 2018, the group has officially operated as a first among equals of the twelve-member “Joint Operations Room of the Palestinian Resistance Factions,” an entity whose technical genesis stretches back to 2006. Indeed, judging from the headbands worn by some of the assailants who infiltrated southern Israel, these other factions were well represented among the attackers. More broadly, since the 1990s Hamas has been gradually integrated into the Iranian-led “Resistance Axis,” a regional network of anti-Israel political parties and militant groups. Among Tehran’s constellation of forces, Hezbollah has taken point on coordinating the Khomeinist regime’s relationship with its Palestinian proxies, and the Shia group’s fingerprints can be detected all over this week’s attack on Israel.

For years, Hezbollah has been promising to “liberate the Galilee” in a future war with Israel. Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, stated this objective in a February 2011 speech, and the group has conducted exercises simulating the execution of this promise since then. At different times, Hezbollah threatened that it would launch a traditional invasion, meant to seize and permanently hold territory. But such a conventional military maneuver was then, and remains, beyond the group’s capabilities. Such an action would require Hezbollah to establish static supply lines and expose massive numbers of its fighters on Israeli territory, where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would possess the numerical and qualitative advantage, in addition to armor, artillery, and air power. In other words, Hezbollah would be discarding the advantages conferred by its hybrid-guerilla warfare methods, without developing the conventional methods or doctrine necessary to match or neutralize the IDF’s vast superiority in conventional warfare.

What, then, would the intended invasion of the Galilee have looked like? Precisely how Hamas’s October 7 attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, unfolded: a territorially limited surprise incursion, focused on murdering and kidnapping as many Israelis as possible, and capturing the attack on video to maximize the psychological impact on Israeli society and to boost the morale of the supporters of the “resistance.” It would appear, then, that Hezbollah imparted its plans, and the training to execute them, to its Resistance Axis partners in the Gaza Strip. In fact, Hezbollah appears to have shared this knowledge with Hamas and other Gaza-based militant groups at least a decade ago: Israeli security sources noted that the IDF launched 2014’s Operation Protective Edge to preempt exactly such a mass casualty scenario that had been planned by Hamas for that year’s Rosh Hashanah. 

Hezbollah appears to have contributed more to the execution of Al-Aqsa Flood than the operational blueprint. The Shia group—constrained in its direct ability to attack Israel by Lebanon’s economic collapse, and not wanting to be seen as compounding Lebanese misery with a security conflagration—has effectively exported its attacks against Israel to Palestinian actors, both within Israel and Israeli-held territories, and from inside Lebanon. Either working directly with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or separately at its behest, Hezbollah has spent considerable efforts recruiting assets inside Israel—from among Arab Israelis and Palestinians—to gather intelligence and establish sleeper cells within Israel to plan terror attacks. Here, Hezbollah’s ties to Lebanese and Arab Israeli criminal networks have proven invaluable.

The Shia organization has also spent the past eighteen years building up the warfighting capabilities of militant groups in the Gaza Strip. This effort began in earnest after Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, when Hezbollah’s then-military commander Imad Mughniyeh spent months training Palestinian militants in a coastal enclave. This training included producing rockets and launching pads, as well as tunnel and rocket warfare. Credible reporting—and the admissions of Hamas spokesmen—also reveals that the inception of this particular attack occurred months ago in Beirut, in coordination with the IRGC, but also doubtlessly under the watchful eye and with the input of Hezbollah.

The genesis of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood appears to originate with Hezbollah, at least in part. The pressing question now is what will Hezbollah do next?

So far, Hezbollah’s actions have differed little from the group’s prior behavior during fighting between Gaza-based militants and the IDF, particularly since the October 17, 2019, economic crisis further complicated its ability to act openly or aggressively against Israel. The group has voiced its now customary support for Hamas, stressing the attack on Israel was a message “to the Arab and Islamic world . . . especially those seeking normalization” with the Jewish state (and thus signaling that Hamas’s attack was intended to derail ongoing Saudi-Israeli normalization talks). One of its ad-hoc formations, named after Imad Mughniyeh, conducted a largely symbolic solidarity mortar strike in Shebaa Farms—in other words, in a territory understood by both Hezbollah and Israel as within the red lines governing their conflict. Likely by design, the strike caused no casualties. Israeli forces have exchanged fire with Hezbollah every day since October 7.

But otherwise, Hezbollah has so far sat out the fight. It was quick to deny involvement in a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) infiltration into northern Israel on October 9. The group’s response to Israel killing three Hezbollah fighters while retaliating for that incursion was also limited and measured. Hezbollah’s promise that this reprisal was only its “preliminary response,” and other belligerent statements, should be taken in the context of similar previously unfulfilled vows to avenge fallen fighters—either to say it will delay avenging them until a time more suitable to Hezbollah or, as happened on October 10, carrying out a limited attack meant to convey the message to the Israelis that the matter is now considered closed. 

Furthermore, it should also be understood in the context of its other statements—a promise to Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib to abstain from getting involved in the Gaza conflict unless Israel “harasses” Lebanon. Hezbollah spokesman and Lebanese Member of Parliament Ibrahim al-Mousaoui said on Tuesday that Hamas’s operation was a “preview of what the resistance factions will execute in the future.”

The likeliest scenario, therefore, is that Hezbollah will continue to allow Palestinian militants to engage in limited harassment against Israel from Lebanon, thus contributing to Gaza-based militant war efforts by keeping the IDF partially focused on the northern border but without sparking a major conflagration. Hezbollah’s calculus could change, however, as the IDF’s battle against Hamas and the remaining Resistance Axis factions in Gaza progresses. If Hamas and its allies find themselves in dire straits against an expected Israeli ground incursion, Iran could deem it necessary to activate Hezbollah. Alternatively, the Shia organization may already have its orders to enter the war. Its direct and indirect harassment on the northern border may be intended to goad the IDF into a serious enough retaliation that Hezbollah could then use it to justify attacking Israel to its supporters and the broader Lebanese public as an act of self-defense against so-called “Zionist aggression.”

David Daoud is the director of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria Research at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) and is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council.

A version of this article originally appeared in United Against Nuclear Iran. It is reprinted here with the author’s and publisher’s permission.

The post Hamas’s attack on Israel was straight out of Hezbollah’s playbook appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Wechsler joins News Nation to discuss the Israel-Hamas war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

So far, the pattern of violence along the Blue Line, the United Nations­–delineated boundary that corresponds to Lebanon’s southern border, has been relatively predictable, consisting of shelling and minor incursions. There has been some talk in recent months about the “unification of the fronts,” meaning the closer coordination between anti-Israel groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), along with myriad other Iran-backed groups in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Therefore, it would have been difficult for Hezbollah to simply stand back and do nothing as Israel wages its massive offensive against Hamas in Gaza.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has said that his government’s priority is to maintain calm and stability in south Lebanon. Yet, given the weakness of the Lebanese government in the face of the powerful Hezbollah, there is little the state can do to maintain stability in the south.

Hezbollah has an array of options to put pressure on Israel along the Blue Line. It could ambush Israelis with improvised explosive devices or launch mortar or rocket attacks in the Shebaa Farms, a mountainside running along Lebanon’s southeastern border that has been occupied by Israel since 1967 and claimed by Beirut as Lebanese territory. It would likely claim those attacks as its own. But it could also initiate unclaimed, deniable operations, such as launching anonymous rocket attacks into Israel (as seen in past conflicts between Hamas and Israel in Gaza and usually blamed on Palestinian groups) or organizing infiltration attempts by Palestinian militants (like the October 9 attempt, which Hezbollah almost certainly facilitated). Israel could also face attacks from inside Syria in areas of the Golan Heights, where Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups have a presence.

At this initial stage, it appears that Hezbollah wants to keep its actions (whether claimed or unclaimed) below a certain threshold so as not to force Israel into a more powerful retaliation. If Hezbollah were to overshoot, it could trigger an unintended escalatory cycle. It is, however, Iran that has the final say in whether Hezbollah goes to war with Israel. Iran recognizes Hezbollah as its most potent external asset and a key component of its deterrence architecture against a potential attack by Israel or the United States. It is unlikely that Tehran will want to waste Hezbollah in a futile full-scale war with Israel for the sake of supporting Hamas in Gaza. By the same token, it seems evident that Israel is not seeking the opening of a second front with Lebanon while it focuses on prosecuting its offensive against Hamas. The risk lies in Hezbollah possibly feeling compelled to raise its operational tempo closer to the threshold point as the war in Gaza intensifies and the destruction and loss of life mounts, especially in the event of a major ground incursion by the Israeli military. The closer Hezbollah moves to the threshold level, the higher the chance of miscalculation that leads to a war that neither side currently appears to desire.

Israel has long recognized that if war breaks out with Hezbollah, employing air power alone will be insufficient to defeat the organization. Israel would have to commit a sizeable number of ground forces for an incursion deep into Lebanon at the inevitable cost of high combat casualties. Waging major air and ground offensives in Gaza and Lebanon simultaneously would be a tough call for the Israeli government, especially as it would not be confined to just Lebanon and Israel. A war with Hezbollah would turn regional with the Syria front opening up and the possibility of attacks from Iraq, Yemen, and even Iran.

As for Hezbollah, if Iran’s calculus was to change and its leadership ordered its Lebanese proxy to attack Israel with full force, the organization would comply, such is the discipline inherent in the concept of the wilayat al-faqih, which is the hallmark of the Iranian system of governance. As a result, Hezbollah’s military capacity would face a mauling, Lebanon would be plunged into even further misery, and there would likely be a strong cross-sectarian backlash against Hezbollah, including from its Shia constituency.

Given the reluctance on both sides for a full-scale war, there is a possibility that clashes could escalate into several days of sustained fighting that remains localized to southern Lebanon and northern Israel but falls short of all-out war. In such a scenario, Hezbollah’s Radwan Brigade might mount its own cross-border raids—it has been training for such operations since at least 2007. In response, Israel might launch air strikes on Lebanese infrastructure targets and stage limited armored incursions across the Blue Line. Such a scenario raises the risk of miscalculation to a breaking point. 

For example, after, say, five days of fighting, Hezbollah’s military commanders might assess that Israel is on the brink of launching a major pre-emptive strike against the organization’s arsenal of long-range precision-guided missiles. They might then recommend to the group’s leadership that a mass missile attack must be launched against targets across Israel before the weapons can be destroyed, a case of “use them or lose them.” Such a move would guarantee all-out war. By the same token, the Israelis might conclude that, after five days of fighting, Hezbollah is about to launch its missiles toward Israeli cities and that Israel must launch a preemptive strike, thus guaranteeing a full war that neither side had sought.

With the unprecedented and deadly Hamas assault on southern Israel and Israel’s punishing response on Gaza, the Arab-Israeli conflict has entered uncharted, unpredictable, and extremely dangerous waters. The coming days will determine whether the region heads to a full-scale war.

Nicholas Blanford is a Beirut-based nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs, consultant, and defense and security correspondent for IHS/Janes.

The post What will Hezbollah do next? Here’s how the Hamas-Israel conflict could engulf the region. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The latest updates

• Egypt cornered over Israel’s war on Hamas

• What do Iranians think of Israel? Their views might surprise you.

• It doesn’t matter whether Iran planned the Hamas attack—Tehran is still to blame

• What does the US deployment of a carrier strike group indicate?

• More updates

Egypt cornered over Israel’s war on Hamas

Cairo is watching with trepidation as Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip on Egypt’s northern border continues unabated for a week. The Egyptian leadership fears that the violence on its doorstep may spill over into its territory and that Israeli airstrikes would result in a mass exodus of Gazans into the Sinai Peninsula. The fact that Israel has bombed the Rafah border crossing—the main gateway for Gazans to Sinai and the outside world—three times in twenty-four hours between October 9 and October 10 has only compounded Cairo’s fears.  …

Some Western leaders and officials are pinning their hopes on Cairo to negotiate the release of hostages abducted by Hamas, given the thaw in relations between Egypt and the militant group, which shares Muslim Brotherhood affiliations. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said she had a “valued exchange” with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and had shared her concerns about the fate of the hostages who must be released and returned home safely. In 2015, Egypt rescinded an earlier decision to designate Hamas as a terrorist organization because the court that had issued the ruling had no jurisdiction. The move paved the way for a marked improvement in relations between the two sides. 

Egypt, which has long been a key mediator between Israel and the Palestinians and between Palestinian factions, also has strong security ties with Israel. In this latest round of violence, it finds its hands tied as Israel has made clear it rejects any mediation or calls for self-restraint. 

Read more from Shahira Amin, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and an independent journalist based in Cairo:

MENASource

Oct 14, 2023

Egypt cornered over Israel’s war on Hamas

By Shahira Amin

Whether Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will bow under US and Israeli pressure remains to be seen.

Israel Middle East

What do Iranians think of Israel? Their views might surprise you.

A public fireworks celebration at Tehran’s Palestine Square, home of the Palestinian embassy, was organized to celebrate the horrific attacks of October 7 by militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of whom receive significant military and financial help from the Islamic Republic of Iran. A few dozen gathered, waving massive Palestinian flags and holding up portraits of assassinated Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, who directed the regime’s help to Hamas and other proxies in the region before he was killed by a US drone strike in January 2020. Loudspeakers blasted propaganda songs in Persian and Arabic. One went, “Israel is my enemy; its wiping off the map will bring me a bright future.”

On that very day, Iranian officials took turns declaring open support for the attacks on Israel. Tehran’s Valiasr Square, used for years for in-your-face propaganda posters by the regime, soon featured a fading flag of Israel, supposedly representing the coming destruction of the Jewish State. But before long, on October 10, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denied having had a direct operational role.

Ordinary Iranians are raised with this anti-Israel and antisemitic content, which fills television and radio broadcasts and even school textbooks. Yet, anyone familiar with Iranian society knows that anti-Israel attitudes have mostly failed to go beyond the most vociferous supporters of the regime despite years of attempted indoctrination.

Read more from Arash Azizi, author of The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran’s Global Ambitions:

IranSource

Oct 13, 2023

What do Iranians think of Israel? Their views might surprise you

By Arash Azizi

Anyone familiar with Iranian society knows that anti-Israel attitudes have mostly failed to go beyond the most vociferous supporters of the regime despite years of attempted forced indoctrination.

Iran Israel

It doesn’t matter whether Iran planned the Hamas attack—Tehran is still to blame

Whether or not Iran helped plan Hamas’s terrorist attack that killed at least 1,300 Israelis is needlessly distracting analysts and the media from the far more important conclusion that we already know: Iran is culpable for the attack.

On Monday, Washington was set abuzz when the Wall Street Journal published a story claiming that Iran helped Hamas plan this past weekend’s mass terrorist attack against Israel. Amwaj.media—a relatively new outfit focused on Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf—posted a competing story shortly afterward in which Iranian officials insisted they were not involved with the operation at all. The Washington Post added to the dialogue by concluding that Iran’s role is not clear. And the New York Times on Wednesday reported that Iran was surprised by the attack.  

Implicit in the ongoing debate about what role Iran played in helping Hamas prepare for these attacks is a belief that reaching a definitive answer will inform or alter the decision making and next steps by Israel, the United States, and other allies. But the premise is false.

Iran’s confirmed participation in the planning would be unlikely to change the size and scale of Jerusalem’s air campaign that has already started. Nor would it alter the ground operation Israel is almost certain to launch in the coming days to degrade Hamas’s capabilities and eliminate those most responsible for the operation. It would not change how Israel will respond if Hezbollah opens a new front from the north or Palestinian militants attack from the West Bank. And Israel’s shadow war with Iran will continue regardless.

Read more from Jonathan Panikoff, the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Middle East Programs and a former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the US National Intelligence Council:

New Atlanticist

Oct 13, 2023

It doesn’t matter whether Iran planned the Hamas attack—Tehran is still to blame

By Jonathan Panikoff

For years, Tehran has provided Hamas the overwhelming majority of its funding, weapons, and training—all of which were leveraged for this attack.

Conflict Iran

What does the US deployment of a carrier strike group indicate?

Americans should not be surprised by the rapid deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group (CSG) to the eastern Mediterranean. This deployment provides significant military options for the United States to consider employing if Hamas’s brutal attacks on October 7 and Israel’s military response were to lead to a regional conflict. Furthermore, the decision to deploy the CSG is in line with other, recent Biden administration deployments to the region. When Houthi forces in Yemen attacked the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in January 2022, the Depart of Defense (DoD) immediately deployed an F-22 squadron to the UAE. When Iran began harassing and seizing merchant ships in the summer of 2023, the DoD deployed additional combat forces to the region. Based on US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s announcement of the CSG deployment, this move is clearly intended to deter Iran and its proxies from expanding the conflict beyond the current scope of Israel’s response to Hamas’s brutal attack. However, the deployment announcement does not provide a clear idea of what a CSG would do if deterrence efforts were to prove insufficient. 

Helpfully, the January 2023 Juniper Oak exercise between the United States and Israel gives an idea of how this recently arrived CSG might respond in the event of an expanded regional conflict. Juniper Oak included a similar grouping of warships, the USS George H.W. Bush CSG, that contributed to the combat aircraft and warships that participated in the exercise. General Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of US Central Command, described Juniper Oak as a combined, joint all-domain exercise that improved US-Israel combat interoperability on land, in the air, at sea, in space, and in cyberspace. 

Although not all the aircraft that participated in Juniper Oak came from the CSG, the practiced missions included everything that the USS Gerald R. Ford and its accompanying escort ships can perform. These missions included US-Israeli command and control of combat operations, maritime surface warfare, combat search and rescue, strike coordination and reconnaissance, and air interdiction. Since these missions are the same as those that the USS Gerald R. Ford can perform, the DoD’s Juniper Oak exercise video provides an idea as to the power of these combined missions. Consequently, the USS Gerald R. Ford CSG provides significant military options, including airstrikes and maritime security operations, for the United States to employ if military conflict were to expand beyond Gaza and include other regional actors. The unique capability to globally surge significant combat forces remains a unique strategic advantage of the United States and serves as a reminder to Iran and its proxies—as well as to Russian forces that have a history of escalatory behavior in Syria.

—Daniel E. Mouton is a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs.

Updates from October 12

• Turkey balances work on prisoner exchanges with risks in playing mediator

• In Israel-Hamas conflict, social media become tools of propaganda and disinformation

• China’s tepid response to Hamas’s attack shows Beijing is not a leading actor in the Middle East

• Gaza under siege: A doctor recounts the humanitarian cost of war

• Hamas wants the world (and especially Iran) to watch it take Israelis hostage

• Israel, Ukraine, and how Biden should connect the dots

• More updates

Turkey balances work on prisoner exchanges with risks in playing mediator

Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East, as elsewhere, is a balancing act. Ankara has reasons to protect its normalization and re-convergence with Israel on energy, security, and regional geopolitics—but also sustains sympathy for the Palestinian people and a belief that Israel exercises too heavy a hand against them. Ironically, Turkish steps to reduce the activities of Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups on its territory as part of Turkey’s reconciliation with Israel have deepened those groups’ dependence on Iran, and strengthened the terror/military wings within those groups at the expense of their political wings. 

Turkish efforts to arrange a prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel are welcome and another sign of the balanced approach they are trying to achieve.

While Ankara will press for an early de-escalation, there is a parallel between Israel’s response to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror and Ankara’s response to Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, terror that will keep any Turkish protestations from becoming too strident. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his AK Party have been far more sympathetic to Hamas than previous Turkish governments and are likely to struggle to maintain the position of an honest broker for any sort of mediating role. This may prove to be an exception to the activist foreign policy that Ankara has practiced effectively in the past half-decade—there is more to lose in an active role here than to be gained. 

—Rich Outzen is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY and a geopolitical analyst and consultant currently serving private sector clients as Dragoman LLC.

In Israel-Hamas conflict, social media become tools of propaganda and disinformation

In the wake of renewed warfare between Hamas and Israel, false and unverified information, old footage, and graphic material have flooded social media platforms, in some cases amplified by journalists and media outlets. Misinformation is spreading alongside posts containing violent rhetoric, whether in the form of encouraging further bloodshed by Hamas or calling for collective punishment against Palestinians.

An already tense conflict is being inflamed by an information environment rife with false information, hate speech, and incitements of violence. The desire for up-to-date information is far outpacing the availability of verifiable information, leading many to buy into false or unsubstantiated reports that are difficult, if not impossible, to substantiate in real time.

The significant escalation of the Israel-Hamas conflict comes amid rising tensions and increased incidents of violence. Following an attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem that killed seven in January 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised a “strong, swift and precise” response. Later that month, Gaza militants fired rockets into Israel in response to Israeli troops killing nine Palestinians. This year also witnessed a deadly escalation between Israeli security forces and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, increased raids in the West Bank, and deployment of Israeli forces to Jenin. In August, Israeli government minister Amichai Eliyahu called for the annexation of West Bank “as quickly as possible,” describing the Green Line separating Israel and the Palestinian territories “fictitious.”

The DFRLab analyzed social media platforms popular in the region, including Telegram and X (formerly Twitter), where much of the content about the conflict is actively circulating.

Read more from Dina Sadek, Middle East research fellow, and Layla Mashkoor, associate editor, at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab:

China’s tepid response to Hamas’s attack shows Beijing is not a leading actor in the Middle East

It was only four months ago, still cresting the wave of the Saudi-Iran rapprochement in Beijing, that China hosted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing and its ambassador to Israel spoke of an upcoming visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Prior to the visit, Qin Gang, China’s former minister of foreign affairs, had offered to facilitate peace talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. With a trio of summits in Riyadh last December, a state visit from Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi in February, and BRICS+ and Shanghai Cooperation Organization expansion into the Middle East, China was projecting itself as a major regional actor.

Yet its response to an actual crisis was a tepid call for restraint: “We call on relevant parties to remain calm, exercise restraint and immediately end the hostilities to protect civilians and avoid further deterioration of the situation.” Beijing’s quiet retreat was even more notable in that it did not even condemn the attack from Hamas until after a meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US Senator Chuck Schumer, during which Schumer “pointedly requested” that China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs “strengthen their statement.” 

This underscores a fundamental problem with the assumption that China will play a great power position in the Middle East. Its primary interests in the region are economic, not strategic, and while it is an important actor in political, diplomatic, and security affairs, it is nowhere near a leading actor, nor is it likely to become one for a long time, if ever. First and foremost, the Middle East is a region where China trades and builds. Its strategic interests are closer to home. 

For years, Chinese leaders have promoted “peace through development” as Beijing’s approach to security in the Global South. The idea is that insecurity is the result of underlying economic pressures. Remove those pressures through development, the thinking goes, and the result will be peace. Any number of countries in the developing world will gladly accept the assistance and the know-how; China’s transformation since the 1970s has lessons for governments everywhere. At the same time, Hamas’s attack last weekend demonstrates that there are times when security requires more than an economic agenda. Beijing’s response may have been so muted because its blueprint for Middle East peace appears remarkably hollow right now. 

That said, there is space for a positive Chinese role here. Everyone has to be concerned about Iranian involvement should the conflict escalate, and China is a great power with influence in Tehran. As noted above, China’s interests in the Middle East are primarily economic, and a wider conflict would have an adverse effect on those interests. People in Beijing are no doubt talking with people in Tehran and urging restraint, and we should all hope they are persuasive. 

—Jonathan Fulton is a nonresident senior fellow for Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative. 

Gaza under siege: A doctor recounts the humanitarian cost of war

“The bombing is so intense I haven’t been able to get to the hospital,” Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta messaged me on WhatsApp on October 9. I’ve known him for nearly a decade. He’s a brusque bleeding heart who, like many, floats in and out of the spheres of war and disaster zones and has adopted a dark sense of humor to cope.

When Dr. G, as we call him, finally does get to the hospital, the situation is harrowing. Israel has been relentlessly bombing the Gaza Strip and its two million inhabitants since the militant group Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7. Dr. G can’t let himself ponder on the gravity of the calamity, and he certainly can’t let his mind wander into his own pain. It’s a coping mechanism born out of the necessity for self-preservation and, more importantly, to deal with the overwhelming scope of the task at hand.

“Unknown child no. six: Ten or eleven years old. Brought out from the rubble of his family home in Sheik Radwan neighborhood. Half [of his] face missing and a fist-sized defect in his left axilla. Total operative time three hours,” Dr. G posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

I have to Google “axilla”—it’s the part of the body where the shoulder and arm connect. I know Dr. G well enough to know that he’s defaulting into medical terminology not just because that is what he speaks, but because it creates a wall. He’s sticking to the medical side of it, avoiding treading into the emotional space from which there will be no return. He can’t risk that now. If he does, he will not be able to breathe, stand, nor hold the scalpel.

“That is someone’s baby boy,” he wrote, closing the X thread.

Read more from Arwa Damon, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and president and founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance:

MENASource

Oct 12, 2023

Gaza under siege: A doctor recounts the humanitarian cost of war

By Arwa Damon

Dr. G is no stranger to war zones. He’s a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who often volunteers when bombs and disasters strike.

Civil Society Israel

Hamas wants the world (and especially Iran) to watch it take Israelis hostage

The indefensible violence and destruction that terrorist organizations commit can obscure an important reality: Whatever else they are, terrorist organizations are also organizations. They have to fundraise, justify their existence to supporters and donors, and provide results that move their stated mandate forward. For Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), attacks and operations that garner international attention against Israeli targets help to justify continued support from their primary sponsor, Iran. It also means that they must stay relevant in order to drive additional fundraising and increase their credibility. The bigger the attack or operation, the better the potential financial and material return.

In its brazen assault on Israel on October 7, Hamas and PIJ abducted around 150 Israeli and foreign hostages—many of them children and the elderly. On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden confirmed that Americans were among Hamas’s hostages. As Israel, the United States, and other countries decide what to do next, they will need to factor in the full complexity of the situation.  

Often hostage situations are about financial gain and are local in nature. The abductors seek to enter into a negotiation in which the abductees’ family or government trade something of value for their release. To some extent, this is true of the hostages in Gaza, but they are also an international play for Hamas and the PIJ, and that distinction makes a big difference.

Read more from Jennifer A. Counter, nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense program in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security:

New Atlanticist

Oct 12, 2023

Hamas wants the world (and especially Iran) to watch it take Israelis hostage

By Jennifer A. Counter

For Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, high-profile attacks against Israeli targets help to justify continued support from Iran.

Conflict Crisis Management

Israel, Ukraine, and how Biden should connect the dots

It now seems like it was ages ago, but only last week US President Joe Biden said he would address the American people soon on why it was “overwhelmingly in the interest of the United States” that Ukraine prevails in Russia’s criminal war against it.

Hamas’s horrifying attack on Israel on October 7, resulting in Biden’s powerful and unambiguous statement of support for Israel this week, would appear to have put Ukraine on the back burner for the moment, replaced by a war that might appear more urgent.

But viewing these wars as entirely distinct from each other would be a mistake.

When Biden does get around to making his speech on Ukraine, he should expand his message and tell Americans, and at the same time our partners around the world, that together we face the greatest threat to global order since the 1930s.

What the wars in Ukraine and Israel have in common is that they are both the result of state-sponsored terrorism. In Ukraine’s case, Russia is acting brazenly and directly. In the case of Israel, Iran is acting through Hamas and others. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that although there is no direct evidence that Iran was involved in the planning or execution of the attack, it was “complicit.” Indeed, the alarming scale and competence of Hamas’s attacks couldn’t have happened without Iran’s funding, weaponry, training, and intelligence. And without its deepening partnership with Russia and China, Iran would be a far less potent actor.

Read more from Atlantic Council President and CEO Frederick Kempe:

Inflection Points

Oct 12, 2023

Israel, Ukraine, and how Biden should connect the dots

By Frederick Kempe

When Biden does get around to making his speech on Ukraine, he should discuss the attacks on Israel and how the US and its allies face the greatest threat to global order since the 1930s.

Israel Middle East

Updates from October 11

• Israel’s unity government is only valuable if it restores security and deterrence

• Scalise’s nomination for House speaker may hasten new US aid to Israel—and Ukraine

• The finance world braces for impact from the Israel-Hamas war

• Hamas’s attack on Israel was straight out of Hezbollah’s playbook

• What to expect from Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza

• More updates

Israel’s unity government is only valuable if it restores security and deterrence

Five days after the brutal killing of more than 1,200 Israelis—that provisional number keeps on climbing—at the hands of terrorists from Hamas and its sister groups in Gaza, Israel finally has the emergency government that the country desperately needs.

On the cusp of tough decisions concerning the prosecution of an almost-certain IDF counteroffensive in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu found himself surrounded by a cohort of largely inexperienced ministers, who are being lambasted in public opinion as responsible for an intelligence and operational failure which Israelis are comparing to 9/11. The legitimacy deficit of his coalition—which engineered the judicial overhaul process that has brought hundreds of thousands of protestors into the streets for the last ten months—compelled Netanyahu now to join forces (at least temporarily) with former Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz, whose credibility will bolster the new government’s latitude to deploy troops while simultaneously working to achieve the release of at least 150 Israeli captives—among them, infants and senior citizens—being held in Gaza.

But the refurbishment of Israel’s leadership team is only a means to an end. A consensus of Israelis supported the formation of a unity government immediately after Saturday’s massacre. And after a protracted delay in achieving this milestone, which is being attributed widely to the prime minister’s political machinations, the burden of proof is on Netanyahu and Gantz to deliver the goods. If this merger proves incapable of restoring security and deterrence to Israel, it will have demonstrated little value, and public confidence in Israel’s decision makers will erode further. In that scenario, civil society, which has stepped up confidently to fill the vacuum left by evidently dysfunctional ministries, will be left to continue fending for itself.

—Shalom Lipner is a nonresident senior fellow for the Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. He previously served seven consecutive Israeli premiers in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Scalise’s nomination for House speaker may hasten new US aid to Israel—and Ukraine

The Republican conference’s decision Wednesday to nominate Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) for speaker of the House is a small but important forward step to allow Congress to address in a bipartisan way the assaults on the United States’ two democratic allies who are under attack, Israel and Ukraine. Scalise still needs to be elected speaker, and he could fall short of the needed majority of all House members present and voting.

The Biden administration has asked Congress for emergency funding to support Israel’s campaign against the Hamas terrorist group, which is responsible for more than a thousand Israelis, mostly civilians, being killed—not to mention Hamas’s plans to use Israeli, American, and other countries’ nationals as hostages. Hamas’s campaign even uses Gaza residents as human shields in an effort to make Israel’s campaign more difficult and costly in human lives. Russia, for its part, continues to target civilians in Ukraine and has used time bought by Chinese trench-digging equipment and delays in Western weapons reaching Ukrainian troops to prevent a breakthrough that could have threatened Russia’s hold on the Crimean peninsula. Both Israel and Ukraine need urgent replenishment of munitions and other military hardware.

The speaker of the House has the authority to guide legislation to the floor, but while the speaker has considerable influence, he does not control the agenda on the floor. That is the purview of the House Rules Committee, which has a diverse group of Republicans, including several staunch opponents of further aid to Ukraine. However, the choice of Scalise as the Republican conference’s nominee—if he is formally elected speaker, which is not a sure thing—is likely to have a significant effect on what comes before the House. Scalise earned a grade of “B” from Republicans for Ukraine, an advocacy group that looked at key House votes and public statements. In contrast, Scalise’s main challenger, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), received an “F” from the same pro-Ukraine Republican group. Assistance for both Israel and Ukraine has strong, bipartisan support. The choice of Scalise as the Republican nominee for speaker makes it more likely that Congress will act quickly and favorably.

—Thomas S. Warrick is a senior fellow and director of the Future of DHS Project at the Atlantic Council. He served in the Department of State from 1997-2007 and as deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security from 2008-2019.

The finance world braces for impact from the Israel-Hamas war

The shockwaves of the Israel-Hamas war have finally reached Marrakesh. It took several days—as it often does in the technocratic world of international economics—for financial leaders gathered here at the Meetings to grasp that the conflict could affect everyone.

Here on the ground, the full scale of the devastating human tragedy and military conflict unleashed by Hamas’s assault on Israel last Saturday is coming into focus—and with it a focus on the war’s economic ramifications. Several conversations are happening at once. 

First and foremost, there is growing horror as reports about the terrorist attacks and fallout in Israel and Gaza play on TV screens and phones inside and outside the official venue for the Meetings.

There is also discussion of the global economic fallout. Energy prices have understandably been a big focus, with memories of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and ensuing oil embargo front of mind for ministers. But as many of the economists milling about the pavilions have noted, the global energy market has shifted dramatically in the fifty years since that war. The world doesn’t solely rely on the Middle East for energy. And—for now—the conflict hasn’t spread through the region.

Then there’s the shekel and Israel’s economy. Israel’s central bank intervened to prop up the currency by selling thirty billion dollars in foreign reserves, but the shekel’s slump continues. There is wider concern that foreign investment in Israel will dry up and create a recession in the Israeli economy.

With regard to Gaza, the question is about reconstruction—whenever that time comes. Will the World Bank and other development banks play a role and step in with aid? A European commissioner initially signaled that the Commission would stop sending some aid to Palestinians, but that decision was quickly reversed by the European Union. There are open questions in Marrakesh right now about 1) what kind of aid will flow to Gaza in the near term and 2) what kind of money will be requested in the long term. Because these are questions for the development banks, the IMF has, so far, been able to sidestep the questions.

But don’t expect avoidance of these issues to continue. By the end of the week, the ministers and governors in Marrakesh will realize what many around the world already see clearly: What is unfolding in Israel and Gaza will have global political and economic impacts.

—Josh Lipsky is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and a former IMF advisor.

Hamas’s attack on Israel was straight out of Hezbollah’s playbook

Hamas has long ceased to be a lone militant organization. Since 2018, the group has officially operated as a first among equals of the twelve-member “Joint Operations Room of the Palestinian Resistance Factions,” an entity whose technical genesis stretches back to 2006. Indeed, judging from the headbands worn by some of the assailants who infiltrated southern Israel, these other factions were well represented among the attackers. More broadly, since the 1990s Hamas has been gradually integrated into the Iranian-led “Resistance Axis,” a regional network of anti-Israel political parties and militant groups. Among Tehran’s constellation of forces, Hezbollah has taken point on coordinating the Khomeinist regime’s relationship with its Palestinian proxies, and the Shia group’s fingerprints can be detected all over this week’s attack on Israel.

For years, Hezbollah has been promising to “liberate the Galilee” in a future war with Israel. Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, stated this objective in a February 2011 speech, and the group has conducted exercises simulating the execution of this promise since then. At different times, Hezbollah threatened that it would launch a traditional invasion, meant to seize and permanently hold territory. But such a conventional military maneuver was then, and remains, beyond the group’s capabilities. Such an action would require Hezbollah to establish static supply lines and expose massive numbers of its fighters on Israeli territory, where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would possess the numerical and qualitative advantage, in addition to armor, artillery, and air power. In other words, Hezbollah would be discarding the advantages conferred by its hybrid-guerilla warfare methods, without developing the conventional methods or doctrine necessary to match or neutralize the IDF’s vast superiority in conventional warfare.

Read more from David Daoud, nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs and director of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria Research at United Against Nuclear Iran.

MENASource

Oct 11, 2023

Hamas’s attack on Israel was straight out of Hezbollah’s playbook

By David Daoud

The genesis of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood appears to originate with Hezbollah, at least in part. The pressing question now is what will Hezbollah do next?

Conflict Crisis Management

What to expect from Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza

The terrorist attacks launched by Hamas inside Israeli territory have left more than 1,200 Israelis dead, the most Jewish people murdered in one day since the Holocaust. In response to these heinous terrorist attacks, Israel has launched a major military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. It could be a long campaign, lasting months or more, but the first days and weeks matter a great deal to its ultimate success. 

So what is success? Israeli officials have stated that the goal of the operation is the complete destruction of Hamas’s military capabilities. A limited air campaign alone will not achieve this goal, and it is reasonable to expect a ground campaign into Gaza commencing soon. Indeed, already there are signs of what it will look like. …

Israel appears set to initiate a months-long ground campaign that is designed to completely eliminate the terrorist threat posed by Hamas and to prevent and deter a terrorist attack like this from ever happening again. The operation faces risks given hostages on the battlefield and the difficult nature of urban warfare that requires house-to-house clearing operations. Yet another significant risk to the success of the operation is regional and international condemnation of a humanitarian crisis that the operation is likely to cause. 

The threat of the war expanding into a regional conflict also looms. Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is reported to have around 150,000 rockets capable of striking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, could get involved. Thus far, neither Hezbollah nor Palestinian factions in the West Bank have fully joined Hamas in its war against Israel, but that could change in this quickly evolving conflict. These risks and others that will surface in time must factor into military planning as Israel begins its ground operations in Gaza. 

Read more from Alex Plitsas, nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East Programs’ N7 Initiative:

New Atlanticist

Oct 11, 2023

What to expect from Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza

By Alex Plitsas

Israel appears set to initiate a months-long ground campaign that is designed to completely eliminate the terrorist threat posed by Hamas and to prevent and deter a attack like October 7 from ever happening again

Conflict Crisis Management

Updates from October 7-10

• What will Hezbollah do next? Here’s how the Hamas-Israel conflict could engulf the region.

• Israel and Ukraine may reveal the true cost of a defense industrial base in crisis

• Hamas’s attack underscores the need for US and Israeli policy to change course

• Two conflicting moods prevail as financial leaders gather

• Dispatch from Jerusalem: How does this end?

• Dispatch from Tel Aviv: A new kind of conflict has begun

• Video: What comes next after Hamas attack on Israel

• Experts react: Israel is ‘at war’ after Hamas militants launch major assault

What will Hezbollah do next? Here’s how the Hamas-Israel conflict could engulf the region.

As Israel prosecutes its offensive against Hamas in Gaza, eyes are nervously turning toward Lebanon, where a series of clashes along the border has raised fears of a second front breaking out, an outcome that could trigger a full regional war. Neither side appears to want an escalation, but the risks are high for a disastrous miscalculation. 

So far, the pattern of violence along the Blue Line, the United Nations­–delineated boundary that corresponds to Lebanon’s southern border, has been relatively predictable, consisting of shelling and minor incursions. There has been some talk in recent months about the “unification of the fronts,” meaning the closer coordination between anti-Israel groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), along with myriad other Iran-backed groups in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Therefore, it would have been difficult for Hezbollah to simply stand back and do nothing as Israel wages its massive offensive against Hamas in Gaza. …

At this initial stage, it appears that Hezbollah wants to keep its actions (whether claimed or unclaimed) below a certain threshold so as not to force Israel into a more powerful retaliation. If Hezbollah were to overshoot, it could trigger an unintended escalatory cycle. It is, however, Iran that has the final say in whether Hezbollah goes to war with Israel. Iran recognizes Hezbollah as its most potent external asset and a key component of its deterrence architecture against a potential attack by Israel or the United States. It is unlikely that Tehran will want to waste Hezbollah in a futile full-scale war with Israel for the sake of supporting Hamas in Gaza.

By the same token, it seems evident that Israel is not seeking the opening of a second front with Lebanon while it focuses on prosecuting its offensive against Hamas. The risk lies in Hezbollah possibly feeling compelled to raise its operational tempo closer to the threshold point as the war in Gaza intensifies and the destruction and loss of life mounts, especially in the event of a major ground incursion by the Israeli military. The closer Hezbollah moves to the threshold level, the higher the chance of miscalculation that leads to a war that neither side currently appears to desire.

Read more from Nicholas Blanford, a Beirut-based nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs, consultant, and defense and security correspondent for IHS/Janes.

New Atlanticist

Oct 10, 2023

What will Hezbollah do next? Here’s how the Hamas-Israel conflict could engulf the region.

By Nicholas Blanford

Neither Israel nor Hezbollah appears to want an escalation, but the risks are high for a disastrous miscalculation. 

Conflict Crisis Management

Israel and Ukraine may reveal the true cost of a defense industrial base in crisis

The health of the US defense industrial base has long been problematic, but it may be allies and partners who pay the price.

Upholding US commitments to supply Israel with the munitions and equipment necessary to fend off Hamas while simultaneously sustaining Ukraine’s fight against Russia is an expensive undertaking. Many are calling on Congress to provide emergency appropriations to the US Department of Defense in order to deliver on these promises, however funding is only the first hurdle. The next question is if the US industrial base has the infrastructure to adequately supply armaments to both nations.

The United States’ limited defense industrial production capacity has long been described as “just-in-time,” meaning the industry operates such that raw materials arrive as production is scheduled to begin to reduce warehousing costs. Inventories are practically nonexistent. This approach reduces the risk incurred by industry that would otherwise have to hedge astronomical bets on unpredictable forecasts, rather than respond accordingly to a steady demand signal from the Department of Defense. While deemed more efficient, this environment prevents industry from responding at scale to urgent and unforeseen requests to produce complex weapons that typically require two to three years to manufacture.

Workforce deficiencies in skilled labor and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) expertise have compounded this problem. This is in large part a result of the United States’ pivot toward a digital and services-based economy over the last thirty years. The impact of this transition is mirrored in the job market and shrinking manufacturing sector, which has lost nearly five million jobs in the last twenty-five years. A nationwide lack of skilled labor, and one that is insufficiently incentivized to support the US government and its industrial base, does not bode well for ramping up current or near-term capacity.  

While securing funding from Congress is crucial, it means little until the administration puts a premium back on national security and the industrial base that supports it. The US government can do this by streamlining the acquisition process, mitigating budgetary constraints posed by continuing resolutions and inflation, and matching and surpassing incentives offered by the other industries for skilled labor in a diminished job market—to start. Until then, the United States will struggle to keep well-intentioned commitments to arm Israel and Ukraine as they fight for sovereignty.

—Kathryn Levantovscaia is an associate director in the Forward Defense program of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Hamas’s attack underscores the need for US and Israeli policy to change course

The significant attack on Israel launched by Hamas on Saturday—dubbed “Al-Aqsa Storm” by the Palestinian militant group—is an indictment of the policies pursued by both the governments of Israel and the United States. Unrest caused by the domestic debate over judicial reform in Israel may have compromised the country’s deterrence. And US policies aimed at de-escalating tensions with Iran did nothing to halt Tehran’s coordination with Hamas, likely including support for its attack against Israel.

The drivers of the attack and the failure to deter it are manifold. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s proxy and partner network—comprised of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—perhaps perceived Israel as weakening from within. Unrest over Israeli judicial reforms this summer—during which reservists threatened to refuse to serve—likely reinforced Tehran’s impression that the Jewish state is collapsing. This may have in part prompted all these groups to push the envelope in recent months—in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza—to realize the Iranian supreme leader’s ambition to surround Israel in a “ring of fire.”

Read more from Jason M. Brodsky, the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran:

MENASource

Oct 10, 2023

Hamas’s attack underscores the need for US and Israeli policy to change course

By Jason M. Brodsky

Both Israel and the United States should engage in deep introspection at the policy level over their failure to deter Hamas’s brutal attack. 

Conflict Crisis Management

Two conflicting moods prevail as financial leaders gather

Flying into Marrakesh this weekend, I could see clearly how the city is split in two. The older part of the city—a medina originating from the eleventh century—is nestled within red clay walls that separate it from the newer parts of the city, where gleaming hotels line the roads and nearly every international brand is represented.

Finance ministers and central bank governors from over 180 countries are gathering right now in Marrakesh for the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings, the first time the Meetings are being held on the African continent in fifty years. And the mood—just like the city—is split in two.

There’s optimism: The IMF is hinting that tomorrow it will revise its projections upwards and that there is now an increased chance of a “soft landing” not just for the United States, but for the entire global economy. But there’s also worry: War in Europe, and now in Israel, has reminded the fourteen thousand participants at these Meetings how quickly geopolitics can change their calculations.

It is not lost on anyone here that the last time these Meetings happened in Africa was 1973—just days before the start of the Yom Kippur War, which led to an oil embargo that sent the price of gas skyrocketing.

Once again, foreign policy and finance have become intertwined. And that’s why the Atlantic Council has come to the Meetings: to help map how Bretton Woods institutions can navigate this new era of geoeconomics.

—Josh Lipsky is senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. Read more from our experts at the IMF/World Bank Meetings:

New Atlanticist

Oct 9, 2023

Go behind the scenes as financial leaders gather in Marrakesh for the IMF-World Bank meetings

By Atlantic Council

Atlantic Council experts are on the ground in Morocco to gauge whether global financial leaders can get the world on a trajectory toward ending poverty and attaining sustainable growth.

Africa Economy & Business

How does this end?

The streets of Jerusalem near government offices were unnervingly quiet today. Intersections famous for being the sites of regular protests were empty. Nearby shops were closed. The halls of the foreign ministry were sparsely populated as diplomats worked in shifts and from home, both to manage the heavy workload already upon them and also as a strategy to disperse risk. If the headquarters is hit by rockets, then the ministry would only lose a manageable percentage of its officers. When I visited the foreign ministry and the National Security Council staff in the mid-afternoon, the usual long line of appointment holders was entirely absent. The person at the foreign ministry security desk said I was the first American passport seen on her shift. This was a different Israel than I’m used to seeing.

Friends from think tanks and foundations whom I would typically call to exchange views on Israeli military strategies are now suddenly unavailable, called up immediately as reservists to help plan the war to come and already working through the first night. Today the government made official what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Saturday, formally establishing that Israel is in a state of war, a legal determination that allows for far more Israelis to be called back into military service. Initial air strikes on Gaza have already begun, and questions about the coming military campaign understandably dominates the news.

From a purely military perspective, however, Hamas lost the war the moment it decided to start it. Israel is a vastly superior power, and while war plans never survive first contact with the enemy, the military outcome of this one is hardly in doubt. One day after Hamas’s terrorist attacks, the Israeli public appears deeply shocked, impressively united, and firmly resolute in the work to be done. The Israeli public is eager for retribution, and Israeli politicians across the political spectrum are competing to sound the toughest, implicitly challenging each other to come up with new adjectives to describe the devastation that will rain upon Hamas.

The stories of Hamas’s massacres and abductions are only beginning to be told, and when all of the grim accounting is done it may be that more Israelis were murdered in one day than were during the entirety of the second intifada. Many outside of Israel may find it difficult to fully appreciate the depth of the emotional reaction here the day after the 10/7 attacks, but those Americans who remember what it felt like the day after 9/11 will find it eerily familiar. And just as 9/11 began a war that could only result in the eventual death of Osama bin Laden and the dismantlement of al-Qaeda, a similar fate awaits Hamas and its leadership in Gaza.

Read more from William F. Wechsler, senior director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council and former deputy assistant US secretary of defense for special operations and combatting terrorism:

New Atlanticist

Oct 8, 2023

Dispatch from Jerusalem: How does this end?

By William F. Wechsler

Israel must not make the same mistakes that the United States made after 9/11. Here are some critical questions to ask now.

Conflict Extremism

A new kind of conflict has begun

I took the redeye flight from Washington to Tel Aviv on Friday night, preparing to host a historic multilateral conference on regional economic integration with government officials from Israel, the United States, and multiple Arab and Muslim countries. But I arrived here on Saturday to find a country reeling from the most significant surprise military attack in fifty years. Our conference has now been postponed and Israel is girding for war. What a difference a day makes.

Ever since Hamas defeated Fatah in the 2007 Battle of Gaza, only two years after Israeli disengagement from the territory, the rhythm of the Israel-Hamas conflict had become increasingly routine, with regular Hamas terrorism followed by predictable Israeli reprisals. Whenever the destructive cycles became especially violent, outside mediators would help negotiate a temporary ceasefire. Israel would typically accomplish its primary goal of enhancing its security, and Hamas would usually accomplish its goal of presenting itself as the leader of the “resistance.” And the people in Gaza, those who Hamas claims to support, would continue to suffer.

This routine is no more. Hamas has proven itself more operationally ambitious and tactically capable than anticipated. Proportionately, the casualties that Israel suffered today add up to a bigger blow than the one the United States experienced on 9/11. The Israeli military response will reflect that reality, with ground operations accompanying air strikes. The likely result will be a significantly degraded Hamas and substantial destruction within Gaza. And just as 9/11 proved to be a long-term strategic mistake for Al Qaeda, 10/7 will likely prove to be a similar strategic mistake for Hamas.

Indeed, the only way Hamas can achieve anything resembling a victory in the war to come is if other actors make decisions in the days ahead that further Hamas’s strategic objectives. All eyes will be on the leadership of the Palestinian Authority to see if it will be able to walk a fine line, as it has done before, offering rhetorical support to the people of Gaza while preventing a parallel outbreak of violence in the West Bank. If it fails, or if it chooses a different path this time, Israel will confront a two-front war and Hamas will go a long way toward achieving its primary goal: positioning itself for a sequel to the 2007 Battle of Gaza on the day after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dies.

Read more from William F. Wechsler, senior director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council and former deputy assistant US secretary of defense for special operations and combatting terrorism:

New Atlanticist

Oct 7, 2023

Dispatch from Tel Aviv: A new kind of conflict has begun

By William F. Wechsler

The international community cannot reflexively repeat the threadbare slogans that have accompanied previous cycles of Israel-Hamas clashes.

Conflict Iran

Video: What comes next after Hamas attack on Israel?

Jonathan Panikoff, the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Middle East Programs and a former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the US National Intelligence Council, breaks down the emerging conflict. 

Experts react: Israel is ‘at war’ after Hamas militants launch major assault

If the attack is an attempt by Hamas or its arms dealer Iran to halt the Saudi-Israeli normalization talks, it backfired. Israel will lock down Gaza with an unprecedented presence and suffocating restrictions. That will be the new baseline from which Riyadh will now have to negotiate the “path forward” for Palestinians that they’ve insisted on during talks with Israel. Hamas has done a disservice to all Palestinians.

Saudi Arabia reacted to the attack by stressing the need to address Palestinian grievances. But international opinion is predominantly with Israel as the victim of this re-sparking of violence. Saudi Arabia, in its role as godfather of Muslims globally, could choose to invite civilian leaders from Gaza to Riyadh now, to hear them out as talks with Israel continue. But the agenda will be centered on a future Gaza without Hamas, and that will be a non-negotiable starting point. 

Israel has to be careful not to hand Iran and Hamas the deal-spoiling win they want by responding militarily in ways that result in the mass deaths of uninvolved Palestinians and make it impossible for Saudi Arabia to sidestep those actions in pursuit of an integration deal.

—Kirsten Fontenrose is a nonresident senior fellow in the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and former senior director for the Gulf on the US National Security Council.

Read more expert reactions here:

New Atlanticist

Oct 7, 2023

Experts react: Israel is ‘at war’ after Hamas militants launch major assault

By Atlantic Council experts

The Palestinian militant group Hamas launched its boldest assault on Israel in decades. Atlantic Council experts offer their thoughts on the events.

Conflict Israel

The post Live expertise: Get the latest insight on the Israel-Hamas war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

For the American think tanker, there are a number of questions — from the future of the Strip to new fronts, from regional integration to domestic politics — that Israel is asking itself in deciding the timing and methods of the counter-offensive against Hamas

The post Wechsler mentioned in Formiche on the Israel-Hamas war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Friends from think tanks and foundations whom I would typically call to exchange views on Israeli military strategies are now suddenly unavailable, called up immediately as reservists to help plan the war to come and already working through the first night. Today the government made official what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Saturday, formally establishing that Israel is in a state of war, a legal determination that allows for far more Israelis to be called back into military service. Initial air strikes on Gaza have already begun, and questions about the coming military campaign understandably dominates the news.

From a purely military perspective, however, Hamas lost the war the moment it decided to start it. Israel is a vastly superior power, and while war plans never survive first contact with the enemy, the military outcome of this one is hardly in doubt. One day after Hamas’s terrorist attacks, the Israeli public appears deeply shocked, impressively united, and firmly resolute in the work to be done. The Israeli public is eager for retribution, and Israeli politicians across the political spectrum are competing to sound the toughest, implicitly challenging each other to come up with new adjectives to describe the devastation that will rain upon Hamas.

The stories of Hamas’s massacres and abductions are only beginning to be told, and when all of the grim accounting is done it may be that more Israelis were murdered in one day than were during the entirety of the second intifada. Many outside of Israel may find it difficult to fully appreciate the depth of the emotional reaction here the day after the 10/7 attacks, but those Americans who remember what it felt like the day after 9/11 will find it eerily familiar. And just as 9/11 began a war that could only result in the eventual death of Osama bin Laden and the dismantlement of al-Qaeda, a similar fate awaits Hamas and its leadership in Gaza.

But wars are actually not won or lost on military factors alone. The United States learned this timeless lesson anew, and especially painfully, in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2003, in the opening weeks of the US invasion of Iraq, General David Petraeus famously asked, “Tell me how this ends.” The George W. Bush administration went to war without a clear answer to that fundamental question, without a realistic vision for how Iraq was to be governed after Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

Israel must not make a similar mistake. As its generals plan for the war, its political leaders must plan for the peace that follows. And that begins by ensuring that the right questions get asked at the outset. Here are a few of the most important that came up in my discussions today.

How can Israel ensure the campaign against Hamas doesn’t expand to a multi-front, regional war?

As I wrote Saturday, the only way for Hamas to achieve its strategic objectives is for the conflict to widen. Today’s news that Tehran reportedly advised and approved the 10/7 attacks is not surprising in the least, but it was notable that the sourcing for the story included senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, and an advisor to the Syrian government. Iran clearly wants this story out, likely hoping to trigger an Israeli reaction resulting in a regional war.

How will Gaza be governed after the war?

Even before the 10/7 attacks, there were many in Israel who argued, incorrectly, in my opinion, that the 2005 disengagement from Gaza was a mistake. These voices will become louder in the weeks to come. I expect there is a consensus within the Israeli government that Gaza will not be allowed to return to the status quo of Hamas dominance after the war, but I don’t see any evidence of consensus yet on the preferred alternative. Some will argue for another occupation, at least in part, and still others will see an opportunity to renew the settler movement there. The downsides here are obvious, and one hopes that in the end, calmer heads will prevail. Others will argue for reextending the remit of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, but its leadership is already having increasing difficulty managing the West Bank. And still, others will imagine importing a new strongman who opposes both Hamas and the current leadership of Fatah.

How will Israel be viewed internationally after the war?

Israeli diplomats are very familiar with being on the receiving end of unfair foreign narratives that seek to delegitimize its right to self-defense. As such, they are already assessing the “legitimacy window” for the war, the period of time during which its actions will be generally seen as appropriate by the foreign governments they care about most. The dynamics of this challenge are generally well understood, but the presence of so many foreign hostages presents a new set of potential problems. What will be the reaction when Hamas uses them as human shields and some are killed by Israeli operations? How can Israel ensure that perceptions about the outcome of the war don’t undermine Israeli efforts to promote greater regional integration?

How will this war impact Israel’s domestic politics and national identity?

The second intifada left an indelible mark on Israeli politics, ushering in a clear center-right majority consensus on national security matters that has held ever since, and clearing the path toward the current divisions within Israeli society on matters of identity and governance. Will this war move Israeli politics farther to the right? Or will leaders take advantage of the opportunity to establish a national unity coalition and begin the process of stepping back from the country’s divisions?

None of these questions is easy to answer. But it’s encouraging to know that Israelis are beginning to ask them even before this war begins.

William Wechsler is the senior director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. His most recent US government position was deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combatting terrorism.

The post Dispatch from Jerusalem: How does this end? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Zelenskyy’s words made headlines, but it is not clear if UN officials were listening. Two weeks earlier, United Nations investigators in Kyiv confirmed that they had not yet conclusively established whether Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine. Erik Mose, who heads the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, informed journalists in the Ukrainian capital that while his investigation was ongoing, “as of now, we do not have sufficient evidence to meet the legal qualifications of the Genocide Convention.”

The cautious approach adopted by United Nations investigators sparked considerable anger and exasperation, but it is not entirely surprising. After all, the legal bar for determining genocide is necessarily high. Crucially, in order to confirm that a genocide is taking place, evidence of the relevant war crimes must be supported by conclusive proof of genocidal intent. In this case, efforts to demonstrate Russia’s genocidal intent will be bolstered by the unprecedented amount of genocidal rhetoric coming from senior Kremlin officials and regime propagandists in Moscow over a period stretching back at least fifteen years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has set the tone for Russia’s viciously anti-Ukrainian public dialogue and has frequently engaged in what could be classed as genocidal language. He routinely asserts that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”), and has repeatedly denied Ukraine’s right to exist while insisting the country is guilty of occupying “historical Russian lands.” In one particularly chilling recent outburst in September 2023, Putin denounced the “anti-human essence” of the modern Ukrainian state. Such dehumanization is widely recognized as an important indicator of genocidal intent.

Others throughout the Russian establishment have enthusiastically echoed Putin. According to research conducted by the Washington-based New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights in Montreal, Russia’s state-orchestrated incitement to genocide includes “the denial of the existence of a Ukrainian identity” by senior Russian officials and state media.

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

The UN defines genocide as “the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part.” The five acts internationally defined as genocide include killings, causing serious harm, deliberately inflicting physically destructive conditions of life, imposing birth prevention measures, and forcibly transferring children to another group. Russia stands accused of committing all five acts against Ukrainians.

Evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine is extensive. An array of state and non-state international organizations have documented a vast amount of Russian crimes in Ukraine including the torture and execution of civilians and POWs, forced deportations, and the targeting of Ukrainian cultural, historical, and religious sites. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians were killed during the Russian attack on Mariupol in spring 2022. Dozens of other Ukrainian towns and cities have since suffered similar fates.

The Kremlin began setting the stage for these crimes many years before the onset of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. According to the Just Security forum at the New York University School of Law, this process dates back to at least 2008 or 2009, and has been marked by “increasingly hostile language laying the groundwork for rejecting Ukraine’s existence as a state, a national group, and a culture.”

Even casual consumers of Russia’s mainstream media will be immediately familiar with this poisonous anti-Ukrainian agenda. Indeed, the demonization of Ukraine has long since become totally normalized throughout the Russian information space, with the Ukrainian authorities groundlessly portrayed as fascists and symbols of Ukrainian national identity routinely equated with Nazism. Russian television hosts and invited “experts” regularly talk of the need to destroy Ukraine.

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Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

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For more than a decade, Putin’s powerful propaganda machine has prepared the Russian public for the genocide they are now committing in Ukraine. This process has included the coordinated promotion of anti-Ukrainian messaging designed to rob the country of legitimacy and position it as an existential threat to Russia. Ukraine has consistently been portrayed as a failed state, an anti-Russian project devised by the West, and a puppet of anti-Russian forces. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian language and all other expressions of Ukrainian national identity have been derided as artificial and historically illegitimate.

This relentless flood of anti-Ukrainian propaganda appears to have conditioned the majority of Russians to accept the current invasion. Independent polls indicate overwhelming levels of public support for the war, despite widespread awareness of atrocities such as the destruction of entire Ukrainian cities and the deliberate bombing of Ukraine’s essential civilian infrastructure.

President Zelenskyy is not the only prominent figure to accuse Russia of committing genocide in Ukraine. Indeed, US President Joe Biden and his rival Donald Trump both did so during the early months of the invasion. More recently, US lawmakers visiting The Hague in September 2023 said Putin had “tried to erase a culture, a people, and a religion, and that is the definition of genocide.” They join a growing chorus of experts and academics who unambiguously state that Russia’s actions in Ukraine represent a genocide.

It will be some time before the United Nations and other relevant international bodies arrive at a definitive legal verdict on the genocide question. At this relatively early stage in the investigation process, the International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for Putin over the mass abduction of Ukrainian children, which itself likely qualifies as an act of genocide. As investigations progress, the role of Russia’s propaganda machine and the genocidal intent displayed by Kremlin officials including Putin himself will be closely scrutinized.

Dr. Taras Kuzio is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. His latest book “Fascism and Genocide. Russia’s War Against Ukrainians” was published by Columbia University Press this year.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Aug 3, 2023

Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Kirill’s unholy war against Ukraine

By Borys Gudziak

Russia’s Unholy War: Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill has provided the ideological justification for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Russian efforts to eliminate Ukrainian national identity.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Sep 19, 2023

Putin “knows very well” NATO poses no security threat to Russia

By Peter Dickinson

Russia’s recent demilitarization of its NATO borders proves that Putin does not view alliance as a genuine security threat and makes a complete mockery of Kremlin propaganda blaming the invasion of Ukraine on NATO, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Sep 14, 2023

It is still far too early to write off Ukraine’s counteroffensive

By Dennis Soltys

The slow pace of Ukraine’s much hyped counteroffensive is sparking fresh calls for a negotiated peace, but the Ukrainian military may yet achieve its goals as long as international support continues, writes Dennis Soltys.

Conflict Disinformation

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Zelenskyy tells United Nations: Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Reznikov is set to be replaced by Rustem Umerov (pictured), who currently chairs Ukraine’s State Property Fund and has previously played key roles as a negotiator in prisoner exchanges with Russia and the UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative. While Umerov is a strong candidate in his own right, his status as a member of Ukraine’s Muslim Crimean Tatar minority makes his anticipated appointment particularly significant on a symbolic level. Once Umerov is confirmed, Ukraine will have a Jewish President and a Muslim Minister of Defense, underlining the diversity of the country’s leadership while exposing the absurdity of Russia’s “Nazi Ukraine” propaganda.

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

When Russian President Vladimir Putin first launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he identified the “de-Nazification” of the country as one of his two key war aims, alongside the complete demilitarization of Ukraine. In doing so, he was building on decades of similar disinformation. Indeed, the Putin regime’s degrading depictions of Ukrainians as fascists can be traced all the way back to the Stalin era.

Throughout the Cold War, Moscow propagandists sought to discredit Ukraine’s centuries-long independence struggle by associating it with Nazi collaboration. In the post-Soviet era, Russian officials have actively sought to revive these slurs, and have argued consistently that Ukraine’s pro-democracy 2014 Euromaidan Revolution was in fact a far-right coup that transformed the country into a hotbed of fascism. By the time of last year’s full-scale invasion, references to “Nazi Ukraine” had become completely normalized throughout Russia’s carefully choreographed and heavily censored mainstream media.

This Nazi narrative has played predictably well among domestic Russian audiences conditioned to view contemporary politics through the distorting prism of the Soviet Union’s cataclysmic World War II experience. Perhaps more surprisingly, it has also been embraced beyond Russia by some leftists and opponents of America’s dominant role in international affairs. Crucially, however, nobody has been able to provide any convincing evidence to support the Kremlin’s lurid claims.

While Russian propagandists insist today’s Ukraine is overrun with Nazis, Ukrainian far-right groups are actually confined to the margins of the country’s political landscape. During Ukraine’s 2014 presidential election, which took place just a few months after a popular uprising that Russia had characterized as a fascist putsch, the two leading far-right candidates were backed by less than 2% of the Ukrainian electorate. Five years later, Ukraine’s main nationalist parties sought to overcome a long record of ballot box rejection by forming a coalition to contest the country’s parliamentary elections. They received just 2.15% of the vote. These pathetic results are a reminder that contrary to the Kremlin’s wild assertions, support for far-right politicians in today’s Ukraine is lower than in virtually any other European country.

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Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

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The election of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as president of Ukraine in spring 2019 served as a further blow to Russia’s fact-free fantasies about “fascist Ukraine.” Zelenskyy’s Jewish roots and high-profile showbiz career as a Russian-speaking comic should theoretically have made him the archetypal enemy of the allegedly nationalistic Ukrainian population; instead, Zelenskyy’s Jewish identity was never an issue among Ukrainian voters, who elected him by a landslide margin of over 73%.

Russian officials and propagandists have twisted themselves into all sorts of knots in their desperate attempts to explain how a supposedly Nazi country could so overwhelmingly support a Jewish leader. Most notoriously, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared during a spring 2022 interview on Italian television that Zelenskyy’s Jewish roots meant nothing as Adolf Hitler “also had Jewish blood.” The fallout from Lavrov’s disgraceful comments was predictably severe. Following a chorus of international condemnation led by Israel, Putin was obliged to intervene and personally apologized to the Israeli PM on behalf of his foreign minister.

The Kremlin must now also explain how their nightmarish vision of xenophobic, intolerant Ukraine tallies with the appointment of an ethnic minority Muslim as defense minister during arguably the most important war in the country’s entire history. Rustem Umerov has not been chosen on the basis of his ethnicity or faith, of course; he has been picked to succeed Oleksii Reznikov because he is viewed as the best person for the job. Nevertheless, his selection would have been unthinkable if Ukraine even vaguely resembled the far-right dystopia of Russian propaganda.

All this is just one more reminder that Putin’s whole invasion has been based on shameless lies. In an effort to disguise its illegal war of aggression, Russia has sought to cynically exploit some of Europe’s most painful historical wounds, and has attempted to dehumanize its Ukrainian victims by baselessly branding them as modern-day successors to Nazi Germany. In reality, the only fascists in Ukraine are the Russian troops sent by Putin to extinguish Ukrainian statehood and erase Ukrainian identity. These soldiers of authoritarian empire are fighting a brutal but ultimately losing battle against an increasingly self-confident Ukraine that is comfortable in its diversity and united by its European identity.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Aug 3, 2023

Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Kirill’s unholy war against Ukraine

By Borys Gudziak

Russia’s Unholy War: Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill has provided the ideological justification for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Russian efforts to eliminate Ukrainian national identity.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Aug 29, 2023

Ukraine’s remarkable resilience may prove decisive in long war with Russia

By Peter Dickinson

With hopes of a decisive Russian military victory fading fast, Vladimir Putin is pinning his hopes on outlasting the West and breaking Ukraine’s will to resist. However, he may have fatally underestimated Ukrainian resilience, writes Peter Dickinson.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Aug 31, 2023

Putin’s Russia must not be allowed to normalize nuclear blackmail

By Olivia Yanchik

Vladimir Putin has used nuclear threats to intimidate the West and reduce the flow of military aid to Ukraine. If this trend does not change, Russia will succeed in normalizing nuclear blackmail as a foreign policy tool, writes Olivia Yanchik.

Arms Control Conflict

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Jewish president picks Muslim defense minister: Ukraine’s diverse leadership debunks Russia’s “Nazi” slurs appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The United States urgently needs a nationwide, community-grounded initiative on a similar scale to put out a different type of fire: the threat posed by domestic violent extremists. In May, four members of the Proud Boys were convicted for seditious conspiracy for their role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. On June 1, four Oath Keepers were sentenced for their role in January 6; more than a thousand others have been charged. The May 6 killing of eight people by a white supremacist at a suburban Texas shopping mall, the May 22 attempt by a Nazi sympathizer to attack the White House, and the August 10 arrest of a white supremacist threatening the jury and witnesses in the trial of the Pittsburgh 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting—also by an anti-Semitic violent extremist—all highlight the need for more serious national efforts to confront this threat.

As former senior officials with more than forty-five years of combined experience in fighting terrorism at home and abroad in the Departments of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), we know that the country needs the same kind of national determination it had after September 11, 2001 to reduce the threat from violent political extremists.

The number of violent extremists is considerable and the danger they pose to the peaceful resolution of political issues is growing. In addition to the Proud Boys, like-minded extremist groups such as the Oath Keepers shared the spotlight on January 6, when the Oath Keepers were “one of the largest and most prominent organizations of the militia/patriot movement,” according to Stanford University’s Mapping Militants Project. At one time, two-thirds of this organization were former police officers and military members, according to a reportedly leaked membership database.

The participation of former military members in these groups is especially troubling because it gives these groups tactical training. These groups claim to use skills they learned in law enforcement and military service to “protect” the US Constitution from internal threats. Yet they were the threat to the peaceful transfer of power under the Constitution on January 6, 2021. These groups also claim to be preparing for a new US civil war. History tells us to be concerned about groups that predict civil wars—they may create what they predict.

The United States has also had its share of extremist groups in other parts of the political spectrum. Among the more active groups between the 1960s and 1980s were the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. These were responsible for six hundred criminal acts causing more than forty-two million dollars in damages between the mid-1990s and 2002, according to FBI data. Today, Antifa has decentralized, autonomous cells that use extremist tactics to counter “fascist” extremists but cause property damage and take on police officers in several US cities. 

Property damage does not equate to the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 or threats to constitutional democracy, but there is a real danger that if threats from violent extremism to constitutional democracy are not addressed, armed extremists from the other side will believe they have the answer. According to counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen, small groups such as Redneck Revolt and the John Brown Gun Club claim to espouse social justice or anti-racist messages, and say they arm themselves for defensive purposes, but they create the situation where each extreme believes it must be armed to prevent the other from stealing power. This makes violent conflict more likely, not less likely. The solution to violent extremism should not be more violent extremism.

Local solutions can “catch fire“ with federal help

US policymakers need to head off attempts to use violence to settle political disputes. The best way to achieve this is at the local level. One lesson of recent years, proven by pilot projects around the country, is that community-based programs that bring together teams of law enforcement, mental health, and social work professionals can help provide “off-ramps” that divert potentially extremist actors, regardless of ideology, before they become violent.  

The US military should also continue to develop programs to educate servicemembers on violent extremist groups and how they recruit members into their ranks. They should also institute a zero-tolerance policy for individuals that join armed extremist groups, as identified by DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Community-based programs are resource-intensive, and different communities have different challenges, but they pay off in lives saved. These programs work best when they are tailored to local needs and staffed by people with roots in their communities.

However, local governments alone do not have sufficient resources, and the last thing they need is another unfunded mandate from Washington. Instead, the federal government should provide funding and limited oversight without micromanagement. As an example, with bipartisan support, Congress appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars for mental health programs in 2022, and the Biden administration in February announced two billion dollars for state and local preparedness programs. These were both steps in the right direction, but to scale up successful programs nationwide a rough calculation shows the right number to be closer to twenty billion dollars. This amount would fund the kind of combined teams at the community level around the country of law enforcement, mental health professionals, and social workers that experience shows to have been successful in steering troubled individuals away from violence. The goal of these teams is to reach people before they resort to violence, after which the community’s only remaining option is law enforcement’s use of force to neutralize them. Doing these community programs nationwide is not cheap, but just as fire prevention is cheaper than fire-fighting, these programs can help save lives across the nation.

Just as Franklin’s firefighters took years to scale up throughout the country, these programs will take several years to spread nationwide, so the two years of budget caps in the recently passed Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 are not a showstopper. The time for pilot projects is over. We need to start now to scale up these programs on a national basis.

US policymakers need to approach this threat with Franklin’s hard-headed pragmatism. US policymakers need to provide communities with the level of resources necessary to put out the fires of violent political extremism in the United States.

Thomas S. Warrick is a senior fellow and director of the Future of DHS Project at the Atlantic Council. He served in the Department of State from 1997-2007 and as deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security from 2008-2019. He is a co-chair of the Atlantic Council Counterterrorism Study Group.

Mick Mulroy is the former deputy assistant secretary of defense, a retired CIA paramilitary operations officer from its Special Activities Center, a retired US Marine, an ABC News national security and defense analyst, and the co-founder of the Lobo Institute. He is a member of the Atlantic Council Counterterrorism Study Group.

The post How to put out the fires of violent political extremism appeared first on Atlantic Council.

For the majority of Afghanistan’s new generation—those who worked, fought, and aspired for a free, democratic, and prosperous country—it has been a harrowing two years. It has been two long years of processing grief and overcoming the anguish of abandonment and collapse, but also two years of engaging in self-reflection, reorganization, and resistance.

The country is in a deep crisis; the status quo is not sustainable. The challenges ahead are enormous and multidimensional, but all is not lost. Afghanistan’s most precious asset, developed over the past two decades, is its professional and well-connected youth. More than 60 percent of Afghanistan’s population is under the age of twenty-five. The burden of resolving this crisis by spotting and exploiting opportunities amid this calamity falls on this generation. They are slowly but surely rising to the task.

The challenges ahead are indeed colossal. Afghanistan faces a deeply divided society, a demoralized elite, a broken economy, an exhausted civil society, and an extremist ethnoreligious group in control of the country. The Taliban reneged on the promises they made during the Doha negotiation process to form an inclusive government and provide women and girls with access to education. Instating exclusively male and essentially Pashtun mullahs, they failed to gain domestic and international legitimacy. They continue to impose draconian and regressive laws, which are pushing the country into a downward spiral in every socioeconomic, human-rights, and fundamental-freedoms index. After systematically erasing women and girls from public life, the Taliban administration is on the brink of being designated as a gender apartheid regime by United Nations–appointed rights experts. Its symbiotic relations with foreign terrorist groups, drug production and trafficking, and systematic promotion of violent extremist ideology pose imminent threats to the immediate region and beyond.

The international community, weary and incoherent in its approach to the crises, has retreated to the background, only to engage in narrow humanitarian diplomacy. With each new edict from the Taliban’s reclusive leader, the bar on the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms lowers further. International demands for an inclusive and representative government are confined to written reports. International leaders have dropped democratization from their talking points on the Taliban regime altogether.

Yet members of Afghanistan’s new generation—inside the country and in exile—have not given up, neither on their country nor on their hope and aspiration for the creation of a free, rights-based, and prosperous state that can serve as a home to all its citizens. Only two days after the Taliban’s military takeover, women and girls took to the streets of Kabul and other major cities to demand their fundamental rights. The call by women for “food, work, and freedom” ignited the first sparks of a civil resistance movement in the cities. Similarly, despite the chaotic disintegration of Afghanistan’s national security forces, some soldiers and officers have laid the foundations of a national resistance front in the rural mountains of Afghanistan. Afghan diaspora communities have organized protests and launched advocacy campaigns for the restoration of rights and dignity around the world.

The most excruciating challenge of all is the spread of a self-deprecating narrative among certain circles outside Afghanistan that there is no alternative to the Taliban government and that it is the “reality” that Afghans have to live with. This narrative is wrong and lazy. The Taliban are not and never were an acceptable alternative to a democratic state in a pluralistic society such as Afghanistan. While they are a part of the country’s “reality,” this does not mean that the people of Afghanistan shouldn’t rise above and aspire for better. Hence Afghans’ struggle for a better Afghanistan entails standing against the brutality of a formidable foe but also enduring the selective amnesia of retreating friends.

More serious than often-cited tribal or regional rifts—Durrani versus Ghilzai or east versus south—are the inherent internal contradictions in the Taliban attitude toward contemporary governance, education, economics, and foreign affairs. The concept of equality of treatment and opportunities for citizens and long-term peaceful coexistence with the outside world, the two prerequisites of enduring stability in Afghanistan, are not ingrained in the movement’s DNA. Their dogmatic, anti-Enlightenment, and misogynist ideas and practices are not only a nuisance for the developed world, but also a threat to the new wave of modernization in Muslim-majority nations. 

History has shown that dogmatic regimes defy the normative principle of diplomatic engagement. Concessions don’t lead to counter-concessions but to the strengthening of power. The Taliban’s behavior during the peace talks and after their assumption of power vindicates this argument. They are running in the opposite direction of the caravan of human progress. International engagement should prioritize containment and damage control rather than offering more concessions. 

The international community’s nonrecognition of the Taliban regime has created an enabling environment for Afghanistan’s civil and political forces to coalesce around common values and principles and demand the restoration of human rights, fundamental freedoms, and an inclusive and representative government. International civil society, parliamentarians, academic institutions, women’s rights groups, associations of veterans, and friends of Afghanistan are actively supporting these endeavors. Taking note of the Taliban’s intransigence and regressive policies, their failure to gain international legitimacy, and the emergence of a civil resistance movement, many Afghans inside the country have not settled with the Taliban and do not perceive them as a legitimate and permanent government.

A realistic assessment of the above challenges points to opportunities to positively engage all relevant stakeholders. Afghanistan’s professional and emerging political forces, journalists, and academics are rapidly establishing themselves as units of a mass resistance and reform movement. It is these Afghans, particularly among the youth, who must unite to save the country.

Nasir Andisha is the ambassador and permanent representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations in Geneva. He is a former vice president of the Human Rights Council (2020) and deputy foreign minister of Afghanistan (2015-2019).

The post Afghanistan’s next generation must rise above the Taliban’s ‘reality’ appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In the mind of the Kremlin and in the explicit words of Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill, the current invasion of Ukraine is “a metaphysical battle,” for which the Russian Orthodox Church has been happy to provide ideological justification. “Any war must have guns and ideas. In this war, the Kremlin has provided the guns, and I believe the Russian Orthodox Church is providing the ideas,” states Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun, an Orthodox priest and theologian who in the 2000s worked in the central offices of the Moscow Patriarchate and is now a professor at Loyola Marymount University in California.

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

The Russian Orthodox Church has traditionally been a strong supporter of the secular authorities in Russia. This was true for centuries during the era of the Russian Empire. It was also the case after Stalin revived and reorganized the Russian Orthodox Church in 1943 following 25 years of brutal Soviet persecution. Similarly, in more recent times the Church has been instrumental in promoting Vladimir Putin’s dream of restoring the Russian Empire. In 2012, Patriarch Kirill addressed Putin personally as the savior of modern Russia and compared his reign to a “miracle of God.”

The support of the Russian Orthodox Church has grown as the invasion of Ukraine has progressed, with Patriarch Kirill becoming one of the war’s most prominent promoters. In his sermons, he has accused “foreign forces” of trying to divide Russia and Ukraine, which he often describes as “one people.” These thinly veiled attempts to blame the war on the Western world while denying Ukraine’s right to an independent national identity closely echo the Kremlin’s own imperialistic talking points.

Patriarch Kirill has continued to defend the invasion despite mounting evidence of Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine. He has remained unmoved by the atrocities uncovered in liberated towns such as Bucha, or the seemingly endless accounts of mass killings, sexual violence, torture chambers, child abductions, and forced deportations throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine. He is silent regarding the constant missile and drone assaults against civilian targets including homes, apartment buildings, shopping centers, churches, hospitals, schools, and grain storage facilities.

Instead, Patriarch Kirill has indicated that the Russian Orthodox Church may even be willing to overlook such crimes. “The Church realizes that if someone, driven by a sense of duty and the need to honor his oath, stays loyal to his vocation and dies while carrying out his military duty, then he is without any doubt doing a deed that is equal to sacrifice. He sacrifices himself for others. And therefore, we believe that this sacrifice washes away all the sins that a person has committed,” Kirill stated in a September 2022 sermon.

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Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

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While Patriarch Kirill’s efforts to justify the invasion of Ukraine have garnered considerable international attention, his stance is far from exceptional and appears to be broadly representative of the mood in today’s Russia. Indeed, Russian aggression against Ukraine is not the result of plans determined by President Putin alone; nor is Patriarch Kirill the only establishment figure to publicly back the invasion. On the contrary, levels of support, or at least acquiescence, among the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian society as a whole remain scandalously high.

Not one of the approximately 400 Russian Orthodox Church bishops in Russia has spoken out against the war. The Russian Orthodox Church clergy is a huge body including more than 40,000 full-time clerics, priests, and deacons internationally. Only approximately 300 members of the clergy signed a joint public statement criticizing the war, with many of the signatories based outside of Russia. Moreover, 700 university rectors have signed a public statement supporting the war.

While opinion polls in totalitarian societies must be treated with a high degree of skepticism, the available data indicates that Russian public support for the invasion of Ukraine has remained consistently higher than 70% for the past eighteen months, according to Russia’s only internationally respected independent pollster, the Levada Center. The contribution of the Russian Orthodox Church to this pro-war consensus has been considerable and is damning.

Russian theologian Sergei Chapnin, who formerly served as deputy editor-in-chief of the Moscow Patriarchate Publishing House and is now based at the Orthodox Christian Study Center of Fordham University, has been highly critical of what he sees as the hypocrisy of the Russian Orthodox Church bishops. In an open letter published in February 2023, he reproached them for being “embittered castle-builders swilling the cocktail of imperial myth, resentment, and unbelievably primitive eschatology. You stand by a man [Patriarch Kirill] who justifies war crimes and has betrayed the Church. You repeat his words, retell his criminal arguments.”

In a January 2023 sermon, Patriarch Kirill predicted the Russian invasion would leave the Russian Orthodox Church triumphant in Ukraine and warned: “there will be no trace left of the schismatics because they are fulfilling the devil’s evil bidding of eroding Orthodoxy on Kyivan land.” This chilling prophesy is unlikely to be fulfilled. While Kirill attempts to justify imperial aggression, Ukrainians are demonstrating their own spiritual values through solidarity. Despite the horrors of the Russian invasion, Ukrainians of all faiths and walks of life remain united. They are driven by a commitment to freedom that is the opposite of the intolerance preached by Kirill.

Borys Gudziak is Metropolitan Archbishop of Philadelphia of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States, Head of the Department of External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and President of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jul 13, 2023

After Wagner: Could the Russian army now turn against Putin?

By Mercedes Sapuppo

With dozens of senior Russian officers reportedly detained following the Wagner revolt and a senior commander dismissed this week for criticizing the conduct of the Ukraine invasion, could Putin face a mutiny within the Russian army?

Conflict Crisis Management

UkraineAlert Jul 31, 2023

Zelenskyy advisor: Defeat in Ukraine will spark collapse of Putin regime

By Peter Dickinson

Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak says the Wagner mutiny has exposed Russia’s internal weakness and predicts battlefield defeats in Ukraine will spark the collapse of the Putin regime, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Jun 21, 2023

Putin’s nuclear threats will escalate as Ukraine’s counteroffensive unfolds

By Diane Francis

As Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive gets underway, there are fears that Russia’s deteriorating military predicament could lead to an escalation in Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats, writes Diane Francis.

Conflict Disinformation

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Kirill’s unholy war against Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Svetlova quoted in Newsroom Post wishing a full recovery for a Yazidi girl who reunited with her family after nine years under ISIS captivity appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Roya Rahmani and Melanne Verveer discuss Afghan women as the way forward and how the international community should engage now, nearly two years after the fall of Kabul. (Rahmani and Verveer’s biographies are below.)

• During the twenty-year US intervention in Afghanistan, metrics gauging women’s health and education and women’s presence in local and national politics all improved.
• Since August 2021, those gains are at risk of reversal. Women’s rights have deteriorated, and the international community’s efforts to engage with the Taliban and support Afghan women have been unsuccessful.
• Carrots such as international recognition and sticks such as public condemnations and threats of NGO withdrawal have proven ineffective, yet these strategies are endlessly recycled.
• The international community and multilateral organizations remain disengaged from strategic policymaking, passively supplying humanitarian aid without directing funding toward strategic future goals.
• The West lacks both knowledge of and leverage over Afghanistan’s leadership.

Establish a more robust forum for international consultation. Ad hoc consultations aren’t working: Regular meetings of experienced representatives need to be established. The core group should include the United States, the United Kingdom, several European Union countries, key Islamic countries such as Qatar and Indonesia, and NGO and multilateral representatives with on-the-ground knowledge.

Keep security strategy at the heart of engagement. Place the security implications of women’s oppression on every agenda of every meeting. As society disintegrates further, more room is created for terrorist groups to flourish, as shown by the growth of the Islamic State group’s offshoot ISIS-K.

Send female diplomats and delegations from Islamic countries. Bilateral engagement should feature overwhelmingly female delegations and prioritize consultative meetings with Afghan women to hear their perspectives on community needs. Furthermore, Islamic countries and organizations need to be key partners in the West’s efforts for humanitarian relief and overall engagement. Not only do they have the expertise and credibility needed to engage and advise on practical mechanisms for the implementation of programming, but direct engagement between more moderate Islamic countries and the Taliban could be influential. Qatar is a particularly important partner because of its role as an international interlocutor with access to the highest ranks of the Taliban.

Use aid as leverage by strategizing beyond immediate relief. Shifting Western aid from a focus on emergency humanitarian assistance to more sustainable, large-scale economic development initiatives reorients the sense of dependency from the people to the Taliban regime, which also creates a new potential point of leverage for the international community. Donors should craft aid distribution networks that are more local and grassroots, and use creative approaches to keep women at the center of all aid initiatives. This could mean developing aid programs specifically for widows, forming local partnerships that explicitly require the adoption of female-specific tasks.

Take advantage of the internet, and prioritize development projects that keep Afghans connected. Unlike during the 1990s Taliban regime, most Afghans have a mobile phone, internet access, and social media. These new tools must be used proactively by the international community to disseminate key information about the Taliban’s failures, coordinate mobilization, and provide educational resources. Development projects focused on connectivity and subsidizing local media will help keep information flowing into and out of Afghanistan.

A personal note

“While the regime stays in power, concrete steps have to be taken within the current context to counteract urgent security threats, provide critical aid, get children back in schools after a year-and-a-half gap, and address other imminent issues. Recycling policies from 1996 will not work. After twenty years of societal transformation, Afghanistan is a fundamentally different place.

Without innovation, no progress can be made.

Similarly, without engagement, no progress can be made.

Like other Afghan women, my entire life has been shaped by one conflict after another. Born on the eve of the Saur Revolution, I lived through the Soviet invasion, the Civil War, and the Taliban’s 1990s rule. Until the intervention, each chapter that unfolded was heartbreak anew. The revival of democracy and freedom brought hope. The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 was even more painful and shocking than anything before because it shattered an era that had been characterized by so much progress.

I have fought for women’s rights my whole life: the right to go to school and have an income, a voice, and autonomy. I am deeply disturbed and angered by what Afghan women are currently experiencing, and I share the instinctive desire to disengage from Afghanistan entirely given the Taliban’s inhumanity—or at the very least condition aid on women’s rights. However, this does nothing to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis. People simply suffer. Ultimately, we must be doing all that is possible to save lives. It is my hope that this report can help to make the road ahead clearer. The futures of so many Afghans—young girls banned from school, women imprisoned in their own homes, and an entire generation whose dreams have been crushed—depend on what we do now.”

—Roya Rahmani

Like what you read? Check out the full report here:

Ambassador Roya Rahmani has over twenty years’ experience working with governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector. She currently serves as a distinguished fellow at Georgetown University’s Global Institute for Women Peace and Security, the chair of Delphos International LTD, a global financial advisory firm based in Washington, DC, and a senior adviser at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. Rahmani was the first woman to serve as Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States of America and held the role from 2018 to 2021. She was also the first woman to serve as Afghanistan’s ambassador to Indonesia, serving from 2016 to 2018. She holds a bachelor’s degree in software engineering from McGill University and a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University.

Ambassador Melanne Verveer is executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace & Security, and board director at the Atlantic Council. Verveer previously served as the first US Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, a position to which she was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2009. She coordinated foreign policy issues and activities relating to the political, economic and social advancement of women, traveling to nearly sixty countries. She worked to ensure that women’s participation and rights are fully integrated into US foreign policy, and she played a leadership role in the administration’s development of the US National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. President Obama also appointed her to serve as the US Representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

The South Asia Center is the hub for the Atlantic Council’s analysis of the political, social, geographical, and cultural diversity of the region. ​At the intersection of South Asia and its geopolitics, SAC cultivates dialogue to shape policy and forge ties between the region and the global community.

Learn more

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SouthAsiaSource Oct 20, 2022

The lionesses of Kabul & Tehran in Khorasan

By Davood Moradian

Afghan and Iranian women continue to be denied their basic human rights, and this shared struggle is built on an overlapping Iranian-Afghan history and civilizational space known as the Iranian plateau.

Afghanistan Human Rights

SouthAsiaSource Sep 26, 2022

To support Afghan women activists, prioritize local knowledge over numbers

By Sophie Mae Berman and Yelena Biberman

Though Afghan women have been included in certain peacebuilding efforts, these experiences were largely tokenist and minimally empowering.

Afghanistan Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding

SouthAsiaSource Mar 29, 2022

Let Afghan girls learn

By Nilofar Sakhi

The Taliban must be held accountable for the damage they have caused and continue to inflict upon the people–and most critically the women and girls–of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan Education

The post How to advance women’s rights in Afghanistan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On April 20, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released the third Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR). DHS calls the QHSR its “capstone strategy document,” setting out the short- and medium-term direction for the US government’s third-largest cabinet department. By law, the QHSR is a “review,” not a “strategy,” and so it devotes much of its ninety-two pages to a summary of DHS’s current activities and recent accomplishments, more than a pure strategy would contain. With these caveats in mind, experts with the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense program read the 2023 QHSR and offered their assessment of its depth and importance for our latest scorecard.

Thomas Warrick

Senior fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security; director, Future of DHS Project

Given DHS’s size and the breadth of its missions—counterterrorism; law enforcement; cybersecurity; aviation, border, and maritime security; immigration; and infrastructure protection—the QHSR should be considered one of the most important strategic documents put out by a major US cabinet department. The QHSR, while subordinate to the Biden administration’s October 2022 National Security Strategy, should, in theory, be comparable to the Department of Defense (DOD) National Defense Strategy (NDS), which gets enormous attention in Washington and around the world.

The QHSR’s reality is rather different. No major news outlet covered the QHSR’s release on April 20. Only specialized news sites and a few others reported on it or on Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas’s speech the next day announcing the QHSR’s release along with DHS’s ninety-day “sprint” focusing on US nonmilitary vulnerabilities to China and establishing a DHS task force on uses and threats from artificial intelligence.

One reason for this lack of coverage may be that the QHSR, being a “review,” is more of a summary of DHS’s current activities and recent accomplishments. Lists of accomplish­ments seldom make news in today’s contentious Washington political scene. While the QHSR should educate the public about what DHS does, the people who need educating the most about DHS are probably the least likely to read ninety-two pages of government prose, even with pictures. Nevertheless, the QHSR is an important strategic road map to where the Biden administration and Mayorkas want to go.

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

This QHSR is distinctive in three ways. First, it exists—the Trump administration did not release a QHSR during its four years between January 2017 to January 2021. While the Trump administration never produced a QHSR, it had a coherent—and divisive—approach to immigration and domestic terrorism, much of which was led from the White House, not DHS. Second, the Biden administration promised during the campaign and afterwards a break with many of the Trump administration’s homeland security policies, especially on immigration and domestic terrorism, and the QHSR makes this very clear. Third, this QHSR intentionally returns to the tone and structure of the two Obama administration QHSRs, released in 2010 and 2014, with three changes from the Obama QHSRs: 

1. showing how the threat landscape has changed since 2014,
2. highlighting the importance of partnerships to the Biden administration’s and Mayorkas’s model of the homeland security enterprise, and
3. recognizing a new mission area for DHS: combating crimes of exploitation and protecting victims.

DHS has long fought crimes of exploitation—this QHSR elevates the importance of this work and explicitly aligns DHS with the victims of such crimes. This will make it hard for future administrations to backslide from protecting exploited victims.

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

Just as the National Defense Strategy is primarily, though not exclusively, focused on military threats to the United States, the QHSR should bring equal focus and vigor on the nonmilitary threats to the United States. The third QHSR provides a good summary of today’s dynamic terrorism threats (both international and homegrown), the challenges and strains on what it calls our “broken” immigration system (Mayorkas goes so far as to call it “completely broken;” his critics would no doubt agree), cyber threats from criminals and hostile nation-states, crimes of exploitation, the threat from fentanyl and transnational organized crime, natural and man-made risks to critical infrastructure, and other challenges to homeland security. Of particular importance is elevating fentanyl, transnational organized crime, and crimes of exploitation to the strategic level—no longer are they issues of only crime. The third QHSR wants the United States to see these as strategic threats, requiring a more strategic response.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

A sound strategy needs to define what “victory” looks like. In DOD’s mission space, victory is understandable: the goal is victory in war, coupled with deterrence and maintaining the peace at all other times. It’s a lot harder to define the end state in homeland security, and this QHSR, like many national security strategies of previous administrations of both parties, often uses phrases like “preventing and mitigating active threats” and “continue advancing national efforts” that give the direction but leave the ultimate goal fuzzy. There are few concrete end states against which this QHSR’s success or failure can be judged, but this is not unique to this QHSR or this administration.

For example, no responsible counterterrorism strategy would publicly set itself the goal of “no successful terrorist attacks.” The difficulty of detecting lone violent extremists and their ability to get semiautomatic assault rifles, coupled with political realities in the United States, mean that the QHSR needs—rightly—to point toward other approaches like community programs (see QHSR numbered page 8) needed to reduce active shooter events well below their levels in recent years, which would be a worthy goal. In cybersecurity, the QHSR describes the many innovative programs that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has undertaken in the past two years, but mentions only at the end of the cybersecurity section (QHSR numbered page 35) the truly transformational National Cybersecurity Strategy’s effort to shift fundamental risks from end users to the tech companies that are best situated to build security into their hardware and software. This will fundamentally change the future of cybersecurity and is a worthy goal.

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of activities? 

The third QHSR, like its predecessors, makes clear which DHS components are responsible for which missions and lines of effort. Unlike DOD’s military services, which encompass different domains but serve a (mostly) unified strategic mission, DHS’s eight components are organized functionally, and thus contribute differently to the QHSR’s six mission areas: 

• Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to aviation security (part of mission 1, counterterrorism and threat prevention).
• CBP, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to land border security (mission 2, border security, but also part of mission 1) and immigration (mission 3).
• The US Coast Guard (USCG) and CBP to maritime security (part of missions 1 and 2).
• CISA, ICE, TSA (for pipelines), USCG (maritime cybersecurity) and the US Secret Service (USSS) to cybersecurity and fighting cybercrime (mission 4).
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency and CISA to infrastructure protection and resilience (mission 5); however both CBP and USCG have a part of mission 5.
• ICE, CBP, USSS, and USCIS to law enforcement (mission 6, combating crimes of exploitation and protecting victims, but also part of other missions).

While this QHSR, like its predecessors (and like similar strategic summaries of DHS’s missions during the Trump administration), contains extensive descriptions of DHS activities, this QHSR proves the aphorism that—unlike DOD, where missions end when a war is over and the military pivots (for example) from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific—at DHS, missions never go away. In this respect, the “new” mission 6 of combating crimes of exploitation and protecting victims is not at all new—it is the recognition of a mission DHS has had almost since its inception in 2003.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

The QHSR is not a budget, but any DHS report on its missions raises the question whether DHS has the resources to succeed in those missions. Alignment between policy and resources is one of DHS’s greatest challenges. 

After the October 2022 National Defense Strategy, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in March 2023 that DOD’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 budget request was “the most strategy-driven request we’ve ever produced from the Department of Defense.” DOD is asking for $842 billion in FY 2024, $26 billion more than in FY 2023. A look at the China and Russia section of the NDS shows the link between DOD’s strategy and its budget request. 

DHS cannot say the same thing about the third QHSR and DHS’s FY 2024 budget, which calls for a 1.1 percent increase over FY 2023. DHS officials understand this. The QHSR calls for more efforts and resources on cybersecurity; border and immigration security; community-based programs to prevent future mass shootings as happened in recent years in Uvalde, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and elsewhere; and to head off threats to critical infrastructure from natural causes and nation-state adversaries.

The third QHSR does not have to quantify the resources required to achieve its goals, but it has rightly laid out this secretary’s road map for where DHS and the homeland security enterprise need to do more. One of the third QHSR’s most important benefits should be to focus a much-needed debate—inside the administration and with the Congress and the American people—over whether the United States is spending enough on homeland security.

Brigadier General Francis X. Taylor (ret.)

Nonresident senior fellow, Forward Defense, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Overall, DHS’s QHSR sets forth a comprehensive review of the challenges facing the homeland security enterprise. The program initiatives outlined in the report, if successful, will improve the security posture of the homeland. There are some concerns about whether there is sufficient political and popular support for the initiatives outlined in the report. In addition, DHS should consider an annual review of outcomes that have resulted from its initiatives to give US citizens a sense of how effective the department has been in improving security of the homeland. This report is a good start but needs annual reiteration that reflects sustained improvement in the United States’ overall security posture. 

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

The QHSR sets forth in clear detail the myriad of threats that face the homeland and the challenges for the homeland security enterprise to effectively address those threats. The world continues to evolve, as does the threat environment since the creation of DHS and this QHSR reflects the complexity of the threat environment and DHS’s initiatives to address that environment in new and innovative ways. 

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

The strategic context of the QHSR is sound and does not underplay the seriousness and challenges of the threat that faces the homeland security enterprise. The emphasis on partnerships to meet the challenges is an important underlying principle for DHS. Never has it been more important for DHS to strengthen and broaden its partnerships as the threat environment continues to change.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

The QHSR clearly defines the programs undertaken to address each mission area to address the threats that face the US homeland, but the mere implementation of programs does not ensure effective outcomes. 

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of activities? 

There are clear lines of effort that are identified in the QHSR. The core mission areas are addressed effectively, but it is not clear that the programs initiated are yet effective in achieving the goals of DHS. Time will tell what outcomes are achieved and how effective DHS has been in mitigating the threats to the homeland.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

The QHSR fundamentally outlines the challenges that DHS must address to keep the homeland safe. It is not clear that there are sufficient resources to execute this mission as outlined in the QHSR. Congressional support of these initiatives and funding will be critical to DHS’s success. 

Seth Stodder

Nonresident senior fellow, Forward Defense, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Like any strategy or planning document produced by a federal bureaucracy, the report on the 2023 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review inevitably provokes some trepidation from a potential reader, as such documents produced by Washington bureaucrats rarely last five seconds in an email inbox and never touch a printer.  

But in all seriousness, this year’s QHSR is somewhat of a page-turner. It is the first one since 2014—almost a decade. And what a decade it has been! ISIS and Al Qaeda, while still threats, have taken a back seat to AR15-wielding white nationalist extremists in the minds of counterterrorism professionals. The sense of operational control of the border that US officials felt they had in 2010 seems like a quaint bygone era, as compared to the massive challenges the United States faces today at the US-Mexico border. The cyber threats are much more varied, with the rise of catastrophic ransomware attacks and the drumbeat of cyber threats to our critical infrastructure and our electoral system. Meanwhile, emerging technology presents opportunities and threats like nothing before—from the rising concerns about social media invasions of privacy, disinformation campaigns, and deep fakes, to the threat of quantum computing and the potentially civilization-altering challenge presented by artificial intelligence. Nation-state threats to the homeland from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea have become far more serious since 2010. On the other hand, the ultimate challenge to the US homeland may be environmental, as the force and impact of global climate change and the likelihood of more deadly pandemics have become ever more severe.

The 2023 QHSR—and the evolving mission of DHS—aptly reflect the tectonic shifts happening in the global security environment overall and its implications for US homeland security. To be sure, the original five homeland security missions from the first QHSR Report in 2010 are still there: (1) preventing terrorism and enhancing security; (2) securing and managing US borders; (3) enforcing and administering US immigration laws; (4) safeguarding and securing cyberspace; and (5) ensuring resilience to disasters. But so many of the characters in the play have changed, or assumed greater or lesser prominence.  

Suffice it to say, DHS has its hands full—with a sprawling and ever-more important set of missions, all of which requiring close partnerships with other federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal agencies, the domestic and global private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and the millions of Americans and other nationals who interact with DHS every single day. And this new QHSR ably reflects this massive and growing responsibility. 

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

The key theme is the steadily evolving and, in some cases, radically changing and ever more complex threat picture, and the need for DHS and its components to evolve its missions and focus accordingly. This is expressed forcefully in the document. Unsurprisingly, most of the missions are the same—with one addition—as those stated in the previous QHSRs. But that does not necessarily warrant any effect on its score here as the missions of DHS and homeland security are what they are. Rather, it is the threat and broader strategic environment that has, in some cases, radically changed. And the 2023 QHSR articulates this extremely well.

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions? 

The 2023 QHSR is extremely clear on the security environment facing the United States and, specifically, the US homeland. The QHSR also effectively nestles DHS and its six core missions neatly within the Biden administration’s broader strategic framework for the United States, as expressed in the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and other key documents. The analysis here is sound, and it does not rest on any specious or unfounded assumptions—either about the threat or the missions and capabilities of DHS.

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals? 

The 2023 QHSR clearly sets forth various goals, backed up with various vignettes and descriptions of ongoing or past programs, initiatives, and other actions reflecting efforts in furtherance of goals. That said, the goals are for the most part relatively vague (e.g., “DHS must be a leader in the responsible use and adaptation of emerging technologies” or “DHS remains committed to facilitating and expanding naturalization pathways for new Americans”), without specifying any particular measurable outputs against which one might assess success or failure. However, one could argue the point of how does one know when the border is actually “secure” or under “operational control,” or when the asylum system is processing claims “fairly” or “efficiently?” And, from a fiscal standpoint, is there a way of knowing when increasing budgets hit a point of diminishing returns—where an additional dollar invested in, say, detection equipment or in efforts against drug smuggling might be better invested elsewhere, such as public health or education? It is hard to clearly find measurable goalposts for these from the QHSR. 

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of activities? 

The QHSR—and previous DHS documents—have outlined the key missions and lines of effort, and the DHS operational components and management offices have (for the most part) worked out relatively delineated areas of focus meant to maximize unity of effort within DHS, while minimizing interagency conflict and rivalry. As is the nature of this kind of beast, the QHSR does have a bit of the whiff of a laundry list (or lists) of various component activities and success stories (albeit clean laundry, thankfully), but the lists are placed within an intelligently articulated framework of clear priorities. Again, as discussed above, it is difficult to discern measurable outputs or where the signposts are toward achieving mission goals and objectives—but the lines of effort are clearly stated.

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

This is somewhere between an unfair question and an incomplete one—in the sense that the QHSR is not meant to be a budgetary document, and indeed there is no sense here as to whether resources are remotely adequate to achieving the goals. Moreover, as noted above, some of the goals are so vague or total (e.g., “preventing labor exploitation”), that it is hard to assess—judging solely from the QHSR—exactly how these goals might be achieved, how success or progress toward the goals could be measured, or at what point diminishing returns might be reached for additional spending. So, it’s hard to grade this one—but it surely isn’t a perfect score.

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

This article is part of the Future of DHS Project by the Forward Defense program with financial support from Deloitte.

Further reading

Scorecard Jul 7, 2022

Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard: NATO’s Strategic Concept clear on threats, but will require sustained commitment from Alliance

By Atlantic Council

Several of the Scowcroft Center’s strategy experts analyzed the Alliance’s new Strategic Concept, assessing the strategy based on five criteria. The reviewers generally agreed that the document was clear-sighted about threats facing the Alliance. However, implementing the ambitious strategy will require sustained commitment and high investment from Alliance members. Here are the full assessments.

Europe & Eurasia International Organizations

Scorecard Oct 14, 2022

Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard: What grade does Biden’s National Security Strategy get?

By Atlantic Council

Our strategy experts praised the document for being clear-eyed about the challenges posed by Russia and China, but downgraded it for a lack of focus as well as concerns about how to implement its ambitious aims.

National Security Politics & Diplomacy

Issue Brief Jan 31, 2022

Biometrics at the border: Balancing security, convenience, and civil liberties

By Seth Stodder, Thomas S. Warrick

Forward Defense nonresident senior fellows Seth Stodder and Tom Warrick consider how US Customs and Border Protection can employ biometrics for safer, more efficient border operations.

Defense Policy Defense Technologies

The post Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard: Does the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review make the grade? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In this Pakistan Initiative conversation, Uzair Younus talks to Hassan Abbas, distinguished professor at National Defense University, about his recently published book The Return of the Taliban, the run-up to the fall of Kabul, and the group’s strategy in navigating their engagement on the world stage.

The South Asia Center is the hub for the Atlantic Council’s analysis of the political, social, geographical, and cultural diversity of the region. ​At the intersection of South Asia and its geopolitics, SAC cultivates dialogue to shape policy and forge ties between the region and the global community.

Learn more

Related content

SouthAsiaSource Apr 28, 2023

The stark choice facing the United States in Afghanistan: Leave entirely or finish the job

By Davood Moradian

The release of the White House’s review of the chaotic 2021 troop withdrawal showed once again that the realities of Afghanistan and US partisan politics take precedence over President Biden’s desire to permanently disentangle Washington from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan International Organizations

SouthAsiaSource Feb 2, 2023

For Pakistan, dealing with its Taliban problem is a walk on eggshells

By Javid Ahmad

Islamabad faces a lose-lose scenario against the Pakistani Taliban. But it is not too late for Pakistan to stop peeling the banana from the wrong end.

Afghanistan Pakistan

SouthAsiaSource Dec 22, 2022

Afghanistan and regional realignments since August 2021

By South Asia Center

When looking towards future solutions, there is no easy fix for Afghanistan.

Afghanistan Central Asia

The post A conversation with Hassan Abbas on his new book “The Return of the Taliban” appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Terrorism has reemerged in Pakistan; since August of 2021, attacks have spiked approximately 50 percent, with Voice of America reporting that “violence claimed by or blamed on the TTP [Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan] and other militant groups killed almost 1,000 Pakistanis, including nearly 300 security forces, in some 376 terrorist attacks in 2022.”

Pakistan has long struggled to contain non-state groups operating on its soil, and it is a country familiar with intersecting crises. Today, the Islamic Republic is facing deep economic and financial challenges combined with political turmoil as various power centers vie for control of its fragile democracy.

In this context, Pakistan cannot afford complacency regarding its growing terrorism threat. The TTP’s operational capacity has grown significantly following the takeover of the Afghan Taliban next door, and it along with peer militant groups present an existential threat to Pakistan’s security and the stability of its neighborhood.

To understand how Islamabad should respond to this heightened threat, South Asia Center Distinguished Fellow Shuja Nawaz led a series of conversations with experts about fighting terrorism and militancy in Pakistan.

The interviews have been categorized into three segments:

• State security, cross-border dynamics, and law enforcement, featuring Sen. Mushahid Hussain, Lt. Gen. Aamer Riaz, and IGP Naveed Khan.
• Society, human security, and government-people social contract, featuring Dr. Farhat Taj, MP Mohsin Dawar, and Dr. Madiha Afzal.
• A conversation with Inspector General Police Tariq Parvez, former inspector general of police and the first coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Authority of Pakistan (NACTA).

State security, cross-border dynamics, and law enforcement

Featuring

Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed is a current Pakistani Senator and Chairman of the Senate Defence Committee. A graduate of the Georgetown Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program (Class of 1975), Senator Hussain Sayed has a distinguished career in the Pakistan public service as a four-time elected senator from the Islamabad Federal Capital. His public service career also includes positions as the Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Central Asia (1992), Leader of Pakistan’s Delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva (1993), Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (handling relations with the U.S. & Central Asia) (1993), and Minister for Information, Culture & Tourism (1997-1999).

Lt. Gen. Aamer Riaz (Retd) was commissioned in the Pakistan Army in 1984. He commanded two corps, one on the western border and one on the eastern border and held various higher staff assignments, namely, Chief of Staff of a corps and Director, General Military Operations Directorate at GHQ. Lt. Gen. Riaz held instructional assignments at various military institutions and also remained president of National Defence University Islamabad. During his service, he remained engaged in military diplomacy to bring peace and stability in the region. Lt. Gen. Riaz has had speaking engagements at several civil and military institutions. Lt. Gen. Riaz is also a member of the board of governors of a newly established National University of Security Sciences, NUSS.

Inspector General Naveed Khan was born in Kohat, Pakistan in 1950. He graduated from Punjab University (Lahore) and joined the Police Service of Pakistan in 1972. Khan served as the Head of several district and divisional Police forces, provincial and federal intelligence agencies in KPK and as Commandant of Paramilitary force (Frontier Constabulary). He spent 5 years in the Middle East as a diplomat. His last posting before retirement in August 2010 was the Inspector General of Police, KPK province where he headed a 75,000 strong police force in the most difficult period during the height of Taliban militancy.

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Society, human security, and government-people social contract

Featuring

Dr. Farhat Taj has a Ph.D. degree in Sociology of Law. She is associate professor at the University of Tromso, Norway. She has also worked as Assistant Director, Colleges and as Planning Officer (education) in the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. She successfully led three field research projects (2011, 2011 and 2012) for the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, IDMC Geneva, on conflict-driven displacement in the northwest of Pakistan. Dr. Taj also conducted independent research funded by the Norwegian Writers Association and Fritt Ord. The research is reported in her books, Taliban and Anti-Taliban (2011) and The Real Pashtun Question (forthcoming 2016). 

Mohsin Javed Dawar is a Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from North Waziristan, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the National Assembly of Pakistan, and Central Chairman in the National Democratic Movement. He is the co-founder of the human rights movement Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM). He has formerly served as president of the National Youth Organisation (NYO) and the Pashtun Students Federation (PSF), the allied wings of the Awami National Party (ANP). From 11 to 14 March 2022, he was part of the Pashtun National Jirga, which was held in Bannu to discuss the critical issues faced by Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Dr. Madiha Afzal is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Her research lies at the intersection of political economy, development, and security, with a focus on Pakistan. She previously worked as an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Afzal is the author of “Pakistan Under Siege: Extremism, Society, and the State,” published by the Brookings Institution Press in 2018. She has also published several journal articles, book chapters, policy reports, and essays.

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A conversation with Inspector General Police Tariq Parvez on the rise of terrorism and militancy in Pakistan

Tariq Parvez joined the Police Service of Pakistan in the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police in 1973 and retired in the rank of Inspector General of Police in 2008, from the post of Director General of Federal Investigation Agency, Pakistan. Terrorism in the name of religion started in Pakistan, on a sustained basis in 1990 from Punjab. Parvez dealt with the phenomenon indirectly as DIG of Gujranwala, Bahawalpur, and Lahore from 1993 to 1997. In 1997, he was posted as Executive Head of Counter Terrorism Department Punjab, thus dealing directly with extremism and terrorism. He was awarded Sitara e Imtiaz by the President of Pakistan in 2004 for services in the field of CT. Parvez was posted as the Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency from 2005 to 2008 and dealt with terrorism at the national level. After retirement he was tasked to establish the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) and appointed its first National Coordinator. Presently he is a member of NACTA’s committee of experts as well as President, Advisory Board, National Initiative against Organized Crime.

Shuja Nawaz: In light of the recent attack on the Peshawar mosque, the bombing that killed large numbers of people, I wanted to ask you whether you see a similarity in the way the government is approaching this incident, as it handled the nine-year-old incident when the army public school in Peshawar was attacked and many lives were lost. Subsequently, attacks took place in Balochistan also where up to sixty people in one attack were killed. Do you see a similarity?

Tariq Parvez: Before I respond to your question specifically, I would like to give a brief overview of the context. 2009 was the worst year ever in Pakistan in terms of terrorist attacks in a year. Ever since then, there was a consistent and significant decline in the number of terrorist attacks over 2009-2020. In fact, the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan decreased by almost 95 percent during these years. Then in 2021, we witnessed a reversal in this trend. For the first time in ten years, the terrorist attacks in 2021 were more than the terrorist attacks in the preceding year, i.e., 2020. A cause for further concern was that during 2022 this trend continued and the realization that this was not a short-term development, but a more sustained trend. 

I wasn’t surprised by this reversal of trend. Why? For two reasons. Number one, that while we got the short-term objectives right in countering terrorism, we erred in terms of formulating long-term policies and responses to the terrorist threat. The result was, that while we succeeded in effectively dealing with the terrorist threat in the short term, from 2009 to 2020, this effectiveness could not be sustained. The reasons were two-fold. One, the counter-terrorism effort was, primarily, military led, with the civilian institutions playing a secondary role. This was an ad-hoc approach because, for the long-term solution to succeed, you should let the civilian institutions, whose role it is to counter terrorism, play their role. That was one weak area in our earlier response. The second weak area was that our entire focus was on kinetic actions. Of course, eliminating these militant networks is required, and kinetic actions are a very important part of counter-terrorism, but that doesn’t mean that the non-dynamic part, the ideological part, the part that deals with the factors that breed terrorism, should be ignored. We chose only the kinetic approach. So while the TTP, the main terrorist organization in Pakistan, went down and was cleared from the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) it wasn’t eliminated. Its ideology continued to resonate with segments of our society, because we had ignored addressing the non-kinetic dimension. And as soon as it got an opportunity to come up, it did.

One important factor for the recent resurgence of terrorism by TTP in Pakistan was the change of its leadership. The TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah was killed in a reported drone attack in June 2018. He was succeeded by a leader from the Mehsud tribe again, Mufti Noor-Wali Mehsud. He focused on uniting the TTP factions. The TTP had become a fragmented organization with about twenty factions and they all were fighting each other. In fact, it was easier for the government to deal with factions, but now after two years of his efforts, he brought back all the factions and hence we are confronted with a united TTP once again. That is one factor, is important for the resurgence of terrorism, and more important than this unification is the takeover by the Taliban in Afghanistan which helped the TTP in two ways. One, it was a huge morale booster: the TTP morale had been low. They were down in the dumps. Suddenly they stood up and said, “well if the Taliban can defeat the American army and its allies, we can do it also.” Number two, their main safe haven was Afghanistan and so they got a very important sanctuary which was not there earlier. Now they can move freely, and they have active assistance also. That is the basic reason why we see the resurgence. 

Coming back to your question on the response of the Pakistani state, one of the weak areas of the response now is the Pakistan state itself is in a very weak position compared with 2009. Today we have political instability, we have an economic meltdown, and we have these security issues. 

Unless the government is completely focused on dealing with the terrorism and is not consumed by these issues of economic survival, or political partisanship, the terrorists may survive for long. They take economic and political chaos in Pakistan as an opportunity. We need to act comprehensively against them, focusing equally on kinetic and non-kinetic measures, to defeat them in the long term. We have to drain the swamp that breeds them.

SN: What non-kinetic actions need to be taken?

TP: Non-kinetic actions means two or three things. Number one, countering the narrative of the TTP. Unless the narrative of the TTP resonates with the roots of the TTP and within their strongholds, they’re not likely to get volunteers. We didn’t do anything to counter that ideology. That is one area of a non-kinetic aspect that we ignored. A second area is that we took a very important decision of merging Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province with FATA districts. FATA was a stronghold of the terrorists. The feedback which I have gotten from the people there about the commitments made to the people of the FATA in terms of investments for their development were not fulfilled. So what has happened is that while we have formally and institutionally made former FATA part of the KP province, we did not follow up with the promises which we made, and the result of that is resentment amongst the local population which provides fertile ground for the TTP.  

Another factor that I think was a policy decision to open negotiations with the TPP. I think that was an ill-advised move, not well thought out. It was probably not inclusive. By inclusive, I mean having all points of views of the local inhabitants contributing to it. It was confined to a very small group of people who decided to go ahead with it. I remember police officers in Swat told me they were informing the government that there were reports by the local inhabitants of sighting Taliban, although in small groups, in their villages. It was pointed out that it may be a planned return of the Taliban to their villages in Swat. No one paid any heed to these police reports. And then the Taliban told the locals that “we are coming here as the result of an agreement. We have been allowed to leave Afghanistan and come back to our homes in the villages in Pakistan.” They expressed their surprise that the local police were not told about this agreement. The police weren’t aware of it, the local people weren’t aware of it. 

We were told by the decision makers that “they are Pakistanis, who had left their homes as a result of the military operations against the terrorists, and they have to come back to their country.” They are Pakistanis, certainly, but they are criminals, they are terrorists. I think we were in too much of a hurry or trying to be too generous in taking them back. But thank God, thank God the people of Swat protested in a very powerful way, against the return of these members of TTP back to their homes and villages. As a result of these massive public protests against the return of the TTP members, the government was forced to give up the repatriation and resettlement plan of these Afghanistan based TTP members.

SN: What are the ties between the TTP and Punjabi militant organizations?

TP: Before the TTP came into existence in 2007, we used to have two terrorist organizations based in Punjab, v.i.z. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which was focused exclusively on targeting Shias, and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which was Punjab-based and with strong roots in South Punjab. In fact, that was the mother organization that fed other jihadist Islamist militant groups. After the emergence of the TTP, militancy in Pakistan became predominantly, if not primarily, a Pakhtun phenomenon. And the Punjabis slowly slid into the background. Maybe there are some factions which did fight in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban against the Coalition forces. But, I think the link now is much weaker than it was. In fact, this is a very important point that you raise. The TTP might be looking for ties in the Punjab, to expand its activities to the biggest province of Pakistan, instead of confining itself to Pakhtun communities.  

Another important point I would like to highlight is the anti-Shia sentiment in Pakistan. The militant organizations which held anti-Shia agendas have gone into the background. But those elements of militancy in Afghanistan who are anti-Shia are looking for alternative sources of support. In Afghanistan, the Islamic State-Khorasan has a strongly anti-Shia agenda and is looking for allies in Pakistan. In the years ahead, we might witness a resurgence of sectarian terrorism in Punjab, through a liaison between the Afghanistan-based IS-K and anti-Shia militants, spread over into many religiously motivated terrorist organizations like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Mohammad, even TTP, because all these militant organizations belong to the Sunni subsect of Deobandis, which has streaks of anti-Shiaism. 

SN: So, who needs to coordinate the fight against militancy and terrorism inside Pakistan? Will it be NACTA?

TP: Absolutely. In fact, that was the original rationale for NACTA. Based on my own experience, I found that one weak area of counter-terrorism was that the provinces were acting in silos. The federal government, its Intelligence Bureau (IB), and the provinces, were not in touch with each other. ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and IB were not partnering or sharing information. There was no formal structure for collaboration. Whatever happened was sort of informal, on a friendly basis or whatever. That is why I proposed that there should be an organization which gives unity to the anti-terrorism effort, and that has to be a civilian institution. I remember people used to ask me, you are setting up NACTA, what if the military doesn’t cooperate? My reply was that the basic problem is the lack of coordination between the civilian agencies. Even the provinces are not talking to each other. So in the first place let the civilian intelligence bureau, and other civilian agencies share that information, and then after the ISI would also join in. 

The main point that I want to make is that the need of NACTA is based on the fact that there is no oversight body to inform the government about the implementation of the various policy layers. I don’t know who is supposed to do it. 

A twenty-point National Action Plan to counter terrorism was formally launched after the Peshawar public school incident in December 2014. It was expressly stated in the National Action Plan that for every point (twenty in all, I was a member of that committee so I know), specific action plans will be drawn up with specific measurable objectives. And for that the PM (prime minister) of Pakistan at that time, Mr. Nawaz Sharif, set up thirteen committees. But no follow-up occurred, because NACTA could not play an effective role due to various reasons.

Second, while the set of players for kinetic action are the military and the criminal justice system, for non-kinetic measures, a different set of players is needed, maybe headed by media experts, IT (information technology) specialists, development experts, religious leaders, youth leaders, education experts, etc. Carrying out the non-kinetic aspect of counter-terrorism through military or police is not likely to be effective, because it is not their expertise or field. So if there is a civilian organization that would give greater importance to this effort, then let us move forward with that. 

A lot of initiatives to win the hearts and minds of youth are being taken in Balochistan, but when I meet the Baloch youth, they care about the disappearances. They forget the good part, but they remember that so-and-so’s brother was picked up, so-and-so has been killed. We have to take these views into account.

I think NACTA is the way forward, although at present I don’t think an all-powerful interior minister is going to let it go. But I remember the day you told me that the DG-ISI (director-general, Inter-Services Intelligence) had said to you that if NACTA reports to the prime minister, we will cooperate. I hope that comes to pass.

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Moderated by

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Shuja Nawaz

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With violence escalating once again, Netanyahu will be under pressure from members of his cabinet and his right-wing base to enact tougher measures against Palestinians. But if the prime minister is to achieve his long-sought goal of normalization with Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, he will have to find a way to end the bloodshed—and keep a lid on his far-right ministers who too often only inflame tensions.

In recent days, international condemnations poured in quickly against both the Jenin raid and the synagogue attack. Saudi Arabia called the raid a “serious violations of international law” and advocated for an “end to the occupation.” The statement was followed by criticism from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, and Oman. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with Netanyahu on Monday, called the East Jerusalem attack “abhorrent,” while Saudi Arabia said it “condemns all targeting of civilians,” a rare show of support to Israel.

This renewed wave of violence is the culimination of tensions that have been mounting between Israelis and Palestinians ever since Netanyahu’s government took office in early January. On January 3, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir staged a provocative visit to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount—also known as the Al-Aqsa Mosque—the holiest site for Jews and third-holiest for Muslims, where a delicate status quo allows only Muslims to pray, with Israel overseeing the security of the site and Jordan managing its religious buildings. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two countries involved in normalization and peace talks with Israel, called the visit an “attack” on the holy site. (Netanyahu was forced to postpone a trip to Abu Dhabi that was slated to be his first official foreign visit since becoming prime minister again.) Oman, a country that many had believed was next in line to sign the Abraham Accords, outlawed any relations with Israel. While Oman’s decision was most likely an appeasement strategy toward Iran, Ben-Gvir’s actions gave the sultanate the perfect way out.

The security minister has become the face of the most far-right faction of Netanyahu’s new cabinet. Ben-Gvir has advocated for reinstating the death penalty for Palestinians sentenced of crimes against Jews, was convicted of terrorism incitement in 2007, and supports unilaterally ending the agreement about the Temple Mount that has been in place since Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967. After visiting the Temple Mount, Ben-Gvir continued his stream of contentious behavior when he ordered the removal of Palestinian flags from public spaces.

It’s not just Ben-Gvir stirring the pot. Netanyahu’s new cabinet includes ministers who have called for the annexation of the entire West Bank, are activitely limiting Israel’s Supreme Court’s powers through a deeply controversial justice reform, are fervently against the LGBTQ+ community, wish to reduce women’s rights in the military, and seek to limit Jewish immigration to Israel only to those who fit the Orthodox criteria. More recently, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich boasted about his refusal to cooperate with the United Arab List party, while the new Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar seeks to either completely halt or significantly reduce state funding to artwork and movies that in his view offend Israel.

Netanyahu has far greater plans for Israel than solely steering the country to the far right on domestic issues. Internationally, Netanyahu’s most ambitious goal is to expand the Abraham Accords’ reach to include Saudi Arabia, a once far-fetched notion that has become more realistic given the two countries’ recent rapprochement. Normalization would be a major diplomatic win for Netanyahu, as it would help define his legacy, bring about enormous economic gains for the region, and pave the way for other Arab and Muslim-majority countries to normalize ties with the Jewish state. Netanyahu has made this point clear time and time again, most recently stating that normalization with Saudi Arabia would be a “quantum leap” for peace with Palestinians and pressuring the Biden administration to move past the murder of Saudi journalist (and US resident) Jamal Khashoggi and “reaffirm” its alliance with Saudi Arabia.

Whether Saudi Arabia also intends to negotiate a peace deal with Israel is the multi-billion-dollar question. The kingdom certainly views the deal as advantageous, first and foremost for security reasons.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia view Iran as the most acute threat in the region, and a peace deal would strengthen the anti-Iran bloc that the Abraham Accords has already established through the Bahrain-UAE-Israel alliance. Additionally, a deal with Israel would strengthen Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman’s (MBS) attempts to show Western allies that he is a moderate leader and Saudi Arabia is a moderate country, a quest he has been pursuing since 2018 when he approved a series of reforms to reduce the country’s strict adherence to Islamic law, including wide-reaching reforms ameliorating women’s lives in the kingdom.

It would also undoubtedly help restore the longstanding US-Saudi alliance, which has seen major setbacks since the 2018 killing of Khashoggi (for which the Central Intelligence Agency found MBS responsible) and last year’s Saudi agreement with Russia to cut oil production—which led US President Joe Biden to vow unspecified “consequences” for the kingdom. MBS reportedly told a visiting delegation of Americans that he had three main demands of Washington in exchange for peace with Israel: assurance over the strength of the US-Saudi alliance, consistent weapons supplies, and a deal allowing a civilian nuclear program.

However, Saudi Arabia is also a historic champion of the Palestinian cause, and it has made it clear on several occasions that normalization with Israel must come hand-in hand with the creation of a Palestinian state. At the recent Davos conference, Prince Faisal bin Farhan claimed that peace with Israel will only come by “giving the Palestinians a state”—and it’s hard to imagine Israel’s current government ever agreeing to that. Saudi Arabia is also home to Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest sites, and is keen to maintain its legitimacy as their rightful religious custodian in the eyes of the Muslim world.

A careful reading of the tea leaves shows that Netanyahu may, in fact, be able to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia without a two-state solution. But actions by his far-right ministers and his own further crackdowns on Palestinians may push Arab countries further away from normalization. Support for the Palestinians is still a uniting (perhaps the only uniting) cause among the Arab world, as evidenced by the most recent Arab Barometer survey, which indicated that the vast majority of citizens in most Arab countries still oppose normalization with Israel. At the Qatar World Cup, soccer players and fans alike showed their support for the cause by brandishing Palestinian flags on multiple occasions.

Netanyahu is showing a willingness to save face with his Arab neighbors at the expense of political allies at home. He recently backed the Israel defense minister’s decision to evacuate an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank, creating fractures within his coalition, as Netanyahu defied Smotrich, who leads the far-right Religious Zionism Party. Netanyahu also paid a surprise visit to King Abdullah in Jordan, home to some three million Palestinians.

The Abraham Accords are undoubtedly a significant milestone for peace and prosperity in the region. The Accords could generate up to one trillion dollars in new economic activity if everything goes as planned and new countries normalize ties with Israel. They would create new jobs, incentivize trade, and create new business opportunities for millions. Yet, if left unchecked, Netanyahu’s far-right ministers will make it harder to continue on this trajectory. Witness how after Netanyahu’s surprise Jordan visit, Ben-Gvir stated that he will continue to “go up to the Temple Mount” regardless of Jordan’s stances on the matter.

If Netanyahu wants to move forward with his most ambitious foreign-policy aim, he will need to find a way to tamp down the right-wing domestic political theater—including from his own ministers—and make things right with his putative Arab allies. And none of that is possible unless he is able to first stop this cycle of violence.

Alissa Pavia is an associate director at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs.

The post Escalating violence and right-wing provocations are threatening Netanyahu’s Abraham Accords agenda appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Speaking on January 18, Lavrov claimed a coalition of Western countries led by the United States was following in the footsteps of Napoleon and Hitler with the goal of destroying Russia. “They are waging war against our country with the same task: the final solution of the Russian question,” he said in direct reference to Hitler’s infamous “final solution” of the Jewish question.

Lavrov’s Holocaust comparison was met with widespread international criticism. In a strongly worded statement, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said his Russian counterpart’s comments were “entirely misplaced, disrespectful, and trample on the memory of the six million Jewish people, and other victims, who were systematically murdered in the Holocaust. The Russian regime’s manipulation of the truth to justify their illegal war of aggression against Ukraine has reached another unacceptable and despicable low point.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry branded Lavrov’s remarks “unacceptable,” while French diplomats said the Russian foreign minister’s attempt to compare international opposition to the invasion of Ukraine with the Holocaust was “outrageous and disgraceful.” Meanwhile, UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly called Lavrov’s comments “totally abhorrent” while noting, “Russia is not the victim. Russia is the aggressor.”

In the US, national security spokesperson John Kirby expressed indignation at Lavrov’s attempt to draw parallels between the Nazi genocide and the response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. “How dare he compare anything to the Holocaust, let alone a war that they started,” he told reporters at the White House. “It’s almost so absurd that it’s not worth responding to, other than the truly offensive manner in which he tried to cast us in terms of Hitler and the Holocaust.”

This was not Lavrov’s first flirtation with anti-Semitic historical distortions. During an appearance on Italian TV in spring 2022, Russia’s top diplomat sparked outrage by repeating the notorious anti-Semitic trope that Hitler was Jewish. When asked why Russia insists on calling Ukraine a “Nazi state” despite the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish, Lavrov replied that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “also had Jewish blood.”

The fallout from Lavrov’s very public descent into the squalid world of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories was predictably severe. Following a chorus of international condemnation led by Israel, Vladimir Putin was eventually obliged to intervene. In early May, the Russian dictator called the Israeli Prime Minister to personally apologize on behalf of his foreign minister.

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

The international backlash over Lavrov’s blunders illustrates the limitations of the propaganda narratives developed by Moscow to justify the invasion of Ukraine. While captive audiences inside Russia have been largely convinced by attempts to blame hostilities on “Ukrainian Nazis” and the “Russophobic West,” these unsubstantiated arguments have proven far less persuasive internationally and have served to further undermine the Kremlin’s dwindling credibility.

Russian attempts to portray Ukrainians as Nazis are nothing new and can be traced back to Soviet wartime propaganda. The tactic has been enthusiastically revived by the Kremlin in recent years to dehumanize Ukrainians and legitimize attempts to extinguish Ukrainian independence. This plays well in modern Russia, where the Putin regime has fostered a cult-like reverence for the Soviet role in World War II that includes the demonizing of all opponents as “fascists.” However, the lack of any actual evidence to support these poisonous allegations has left outside observers deeply skeptical.

As Lavrov himself discovered during last year’s disastrous Italian TV interview, most people living beyond the suffocating confines of the Kremlin propaganda bubble regard the election of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking Jewish President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as convincing proof that Ukraine is anything but a Nazi state. Likewise, the consistent failure of Ukraine’s far right parties to secure more than 2% of the vote in national ballots makes a mockery of Moscow’s entire “Nazi Ukraine” narrative. In the eleven months since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, Russia has yet to identify any of the “Nazis” it claims to be fighting or define exactly what the stated war aim of “de-Nazification” means in practice.

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Lavrov’s lurid allegations of anti-Russian plots suffer from similar problems. While domestic audiences in Russia have been conditioned for decades to view their country as a blameless victim of irrational Western Russophobia, there is a growing consensus in the wider world that the international community has actually been much too slow to react to the mounting threats posed by Putin’s Russia.

Far from pursuing the destruction of Russia, the West responded to Moscow’s wars of aggression in Georgia and Ukraine with a series of misguided resets and endless policies of appeasement. Indeed, it was not until Putin launched the biggest European conflict since World War II last February that Western leaders finally and reluctantly acknowledged the necessity of countering the Kremlin. Even now, as Russia’s invasion approaches the one-year mark, the debate over Western support for Ukraine remains dominated by excessive caution and a debilitating desire to avoid escalation. These are self-evidently not the actions of an international coalition seeking “the final solution to the Russian question,” as Lavrov so absurdly claims.

It is still far too early for Ukraine to declare victory in the information war. Russian disinformation narratives continue to resonate on the vocal fringes of Western society while also appealing to widespread anti-Western sentiment in much of Asia, Africa, and South America. Nevertheless, the wholesale revulsion over Lavrov’s recent Holocaust remarks is a timely reminder of the increasingly unbridgeable gap separating Russia’s alternative reality from the real world.

Almost one year since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, only a handful of fellow pariah states are still prepared to stand with Russia on the global stage as international audiences reject Kremlin claims of phantom fascists and anti-Russian conspiracies. Instead, there is growing recognition that the war in Ukraine is an act of naked imperial aggression that threatens to destabilize the wider world.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has been built on an unprecedented web of deceit and distortion. As these lies lose their power and the reality of Putin’s genocidal agenda becomes impossible to ignore, a consensus is emerging that the war in Ukraine will only end when Russia is decisively defeated.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Dec 26, 2022

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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Security

Reports emerge of internal power struggles between Wagner and Russian defense ministry

Russian forces allegedly use incendiary munitions in Kherson, youth center burns

Missile fragments, rocket warhead fall on Moldovan territory

Tracking narratives

Animation depicts Wagner forces fighting French “zombies” in West Africa

Flurry of conflicting theories circulate among pro-Kremlin sources following deadly helicopter crash

Belarusian state TV accuses Ukrainian embassy of recruiting foreign fighters

Russian media amplify and exploit Wagner story about French Foreign Legion deserter killed in Ukraine

International response

Serbian president accuses Wagner of recruiting Serbian citizens

Ukraine’s allies continue to send military aid, including heavy equipment

Reports emerge of internal power struggles between Wagner and Russian defense ministry

On January 13, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed its forces had taken control of Soledar and could encircle Bakhmut, threatening Ukrainian supply lines. In the statement, the MoD praised the efforts of aviation, artillery, and airborne troops, but did not mention the notable role Wagner played in securing Soledar.

Moscow’s announcement highlighted a long-simmering tension between Wagner and the official structure of the Russian MoD. On January 17, an old letter written by Valery Gerasimov, commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, re-circulated online. The letter, dated December 29, 2022, stated that Wagner is not included in the structure of the Russian armed forces. Gerasimov wrote the letter in response to an inquiry to the Russian MoD made by Evgeny Stupin, a lawyer for the Moscow City Duma. On January 15, President Vladimir Putin also attributed the Soledar success to the MoD.

On the day that Russia claimed Soledar, military bloggers affiliated with the Kremlin claimed there was an ongoing conflict between the MoD and Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. On January 15, Prigozhin awarded medals to Wagner soldiers for the capture of Soledar. On January 16, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dispelled reports of an ongoing conflict between Prigozhin and Russian army command, claiming the reports are “products of information manipulation.” Later in the day, when asked about Peskov’s comments, Prigozhin also dispelled the reports, saying, “I see no reason not to trust Peskov.”

On January 19, Prigozhin said that Wagner soldiers were concentrating on taking the suburban city of Klishchiivka, south of Bakhmut. This information has yet to be confirmed by the Russian MoD.

Elsewhere, on January 14, Ukrainian officials reported that Russia conducted fifty missile and three air strikes against Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Vinnytsia, and other settlements in West Ukraine. Ukrainian forces said that Russia used S-300 and S-400 systems against ground targets in Kyiv in the morning and later launched high-precision weapons, including twenty-eight cruise missile strikes using Kh-101, Kh-555, and Kh-59 guided air missiles and the sea-based 3M-14 Kalibr.

In Marinka, the Ukrainian army repelled renewed Russian attacks on January 17 and 18. Russian forces have been storming the settlement since last March, resulting in widespread destruction. The Russian forces also conducted raids in the area of Bilohorivka in Luhansk oblast and Krasna Hora, Bakhmut, Klischiyivka, Vodyane, Nevelske, and Pobieda in Donetsk oblast.

Chechen volunteer forces have become increasingly active in the fight around Bakhmut. There are at least two battalions of Chechens—the Sheikh Mansur Battalion and Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalion—fighting for the Ukrainian army on the Bakhmut frontline. On a tactical level, the Chechen battalions are working together in some areas, like in Opytne, where they attacked Russian positions. The Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalion also maintains a reconnaissance unit, “Adam,” currently located in Donetsk oblast.

On January 16, a Russian rocket struck a civilian building in Dnipro, killing at least forty-five people, including six children, marking the single deadliest civilian attack since the war began. Ukraine said it does not have air-defense systems that can intercept Russian KH-22 missiles; to ward off future missiles would require Western partners to donate advanced air defenses such as the US MIM-104 Patriot missile system.  

—Ruslan Trad, resident fellow for security research, Sofia, Bulgaria

—Valentin Châtelet, research associate, Brussels, Belgium

Russian forces allegedly use incendiary munitions in Kherson, youth center burns

On January 18, Russian shelling intensified on the southern frontline in Ukraine, which stretches from Kamianske in the Zaporizhzhia region to Vuhledar in the south of Donetsk oblast. After a night of heavy shelling, videos and photos emerged online showing that the Russian army had used what appears to incendiary ammunition in city of Kherson and nearby Beryslav.

The morning after the strike, videos and photos shared online showed the resulting damage. A local Kherson newspaper reported that a religious youth center had burned down as a result of the shelling. The DFRLab geolocated the youth center and confirmed that it was along the pathway of the airstrike but cannot confirm whether incendiary munitions were involved.

—Valentin Châtelet, research associate, Brussels, Belgium

Missile fragments, rocket warhead fall on Moldovan territory

Fragments of a Russian missile targeting Ukraine fell on Moldova territory on January 14 in the town of Larga, Briceni district. According to Moldova’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, a warhead fueled with approximately eighty kilograms of explosive material was also discovered among the debris. The next day, authorities reported that specialist teams had carried out controlled detonations of the remaining explosives. The Ministry of Defense noted that the army’s aerial surveillance system did not record a violation of Moldovan airspace, however.

Authorities in Chisinau have strongly condemned the attacks on neighboring Ukraine. “This is the reality of war, imposed by the aggressor, right here in our region,” stressed Moldovan President Maia Sandu. “The missiles reach Moldova as well—the fragments discovered yesterday in the Briceni district testify to this. We strongly condemn Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Attacks on urban infrastructure and the killing of civilians are war crimes; they have no justification.”

Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita also condemned Russia’s January 14 missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. “There is no political, historical, and even more so moral justification for killing civilians and attacking the infrastructure that ensures the survival of the population,” she said. “I express my deep indignation at the new massive attack on Ukraine. I express my support for the heroic Ukrainian people and our support for the victims of Russia’s barbaric attacks.”

This is the third time missile fragments have landed in Moldova, which is not a member of the European Union or NATO. On December 5, Moldovan border police discovered a missile in an orchard, also in the Briceni district. In October 2022, a Russian missile shot down by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft system fell in the village of Naslavcea, located along the border with Ukraine, shattering windows of several residences as a result of the explosion.

—Victoria Olari, research assistant, Chisinau, Moldova

Animation depicts Wagner forces fighting French “zombies” in West Africa

An animated video showing a Wagner operative helping West African countries defeat zombie French soldiers began circulating on social media and pro-Kremlin Telegram channels this week. While the origin of the video is currently unknown, it appears to have first shown up on Twitter on January 14th, then migrated to alternative video platforms before being shared across pro-Russian Telegram channels.

By depicting Wagner forces as heroes, the video promotes a pro-Russian, anti-French narrative that has spread in recent years across West African social media. The animation depicts Wagner soldiers assisting local militaries in Mali and Burkina Faso in removing French forces, represented in the animation as hordes of zombies and a giant cobra. In Mali, a Wagner operative parachutes into the zombie horde and provides ammunition to a Malian soldier who is subsequently able to defeat the undead, while in Burkina Faso, Wagner provides a rocket-propelled grenade to kill the French cobra.

Russia’s involvement in West Africa does not come in the form of simple weapons deliveries, however. Recent reports indicate that since Russia’s deployment in Mali more than one year ago, violence against civilians has significantly increased, and extremist forces have grown stronger.

The video ends with Wagner forces heading towards Côte d’Ivoire, where French zombies overwhelm an Ivorian soldier. The imagery implies that Wagner aims to send forces to the coastal country.

This is not the first time Wagner has created animated propaganda. In another animation, France was represented as a rat killed by Wagner. And in a comic strip spread in Central African Republic (CAR), Wagner operatives are again depicted fighting zombies, however in the case of CAR the zombies do not represent the French.

Support for France has declined significantly in Francophone Africa, while calls for Russian assistance to fight jihadists has increased.

—Tessa Knight, research associate, London, United Kingdom

Flurry of conflicting theories circulate among pro-Kremlin sources following deadly helicopter crash

On January 18, a helicopter crash in Brovary, near Kyiv, killed sixteen people, including three children, Ukraine’s interior minister, his deputy, and the ministry secretary. The helicopter crashed near a kindergarten. Ukrainian security services investigating the crash are considering three possible scenarios, including a violation of flight rules, a technical malfunction, or intentional sabotage. In the meantime, pro-Kremlin sources are already sharing conflicting narratives about the incident.

One of the first narratives to emerge suggested that Ukraine’s air-defense systems shot down the helicopter. The claim was amplified by pro-Kremlin TV host Olga Skabeyeva on her Telegram channel. Another pro-Kremlin Telegram channel added more details to the claim, saying that “unofficial Ukrainian sources” said the aircraft was shot down by the Stinger or Igla air-defense systems. The claim was also shared on Twitter by a pro-Kremlin account, spreading the narrative to English-speaking audiences. At the time of writing, the English tweet had more than one million views.

Other sources took the claim further. The pro-Kremlin Russian outlet Regnum hypothesized that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was behind the crash, publishing a story with the headline, “The crash of the helicopter of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in Brovary – executed by Zelenskyy?”

Meanwhile, pro-Kremlin reporter Sasha Kots reported that European countries had suspended the helicopter model, either a Eurocopter EC225 Super Puma or a H225M, after a 2016 crash in Norway. While it is true that the European Aviation Safety Agency grounded both aircraft type after the Norway crash, it allowed flights to resume roughly six months later. Helicopters of this type are used by both military and civilian operators in France, Brazil, Vietnam, and many other countries. Kots also claimed that after the two models were grounded, France sold its supply to Ukraine, implying that France is also responsible for the tragedy.

In December 2021, Romania and Ukraine entered into an agreement to upgrade five of these helicopter models.

—Roman Osadchuk, research associate

Belarusian state TV accuses Ukrainian embassy of recruiting foreign fighters

On January 16, the state-controlled TV channel Belarus 1 reported that Belarusian security services had arrested Georgian citizen Giorgi Zirakishvili for allegedly trying to enter Ukraine via Belarus to fight against Russia. Belarus 1 reported that the Ukrainian Embassy in Georgia had advised Zirakishvili to travel from Georgia to Ukraine through Belarus. The broadcaster also claimed that Zirakishvili had planned to meet Igor Kizim, Ukraine’s ambassador to Belarus, upon arrival to receive instructions on how to reach Ukraine and join the Georgian Legion, a paramilitary unit mostly comprised of ethnically Georgian volunteers who fight for Ukraine. Belarus 1 also broadcast an alleged recording of a phone conversation in which Zirakishvili believes he is speaking to representatives from the Ukrainian embassy in Belarus. However, Belarus 1 reported that Zirakishvili was actually speaking to representatives from Belarusian security services, who discovered Zirakishvili’s alleged intentions and connected with him by impersonating Ukrainian embassy staff. The report also contains a video recording of Zirakishvili’s meeting with representatives from Belarusian security services, who he apparently believed were representatives of the Ukrainian embassy.

Belarus 1 did not provide any concrete evidence that Zirakishvili had communicated with anyone from the Ukrainian embassy in Belarus. Despite this, the report claims that Kizim is actively recruiting foreign fighters to send to Ukraine. The ambassador responded to the allegations, saying the Belarus 1 story was “nonsense” and “lies, manipulation, and hypocrisy.” He added that the Ukrainian embassy was in contact with the Belarusian foreign affairs ministry regarding the matter.

—Givi Gigitashvili, research associate, Warsaw, Poland

Russian media amplify and exploit Wagner story about French Foreign Legion deserter killed in Ukraine

A January 17 Telegram post published on Yevgeny Prigozhin’s press channel claimed that Wagner forces tracked down and killed a Ukrainian member of the French Foreign Legion in Donetsk. The channel also shared identity cards belonging to a YevheniiKoulyk, including a Ukrainian driver’s license, a French military card, and a French train card.

The post was reshared by the Telegram channel WarDonbass and the pro-Russian news outlet DonbassInsider. The Russian press agency TASS also reported on the claim. Several Russian-owned media outlets and Telegram channels shared the post, garnering at least 647,000 views at the time of writing.

The story was then picked up by the Russian news outlet Argumenty I fakty (Arguments and facts), which claimed Koulyk was a NATO agent. One VK post suggested Koulyk was a foreign mercenary and accused Ukraine of not disclosing the number of foreign soldiers killed in the war. The author compared Koulyk’s death to that of Hryhorii Tsekhmystrenko, a Ukrainian-born Canadian volunteer reported killed in Ukraine this week.

According to French journalist and military expert Philippe Chapeleau, the French Foreign Legion allowed its Ukrainian-born fighters a period of leave so they could safely resettle their families in neighboring countries. Those who did not return would be considered deserters. According to that same source, Koulyk had been missing since August 2022 and was therefore considered a deserter.

Koulyk’s death was previously reported as early as January 12. As of January 19, there were a total of 189 posts across news outlets and social media discussing Koulyk.

—Valentin Châtelet, research associate, Brussels, Belgium

Serbian president accuses Wagner of recruiting Serbian citizens

In a TV interview on January 16, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic criticized Wagner Group for its attempts to recruit Serbian citizens to participate in the Ukraine war. Vucic slammed Wagner, saying, “Why do you do that to Serbia? Why do you, from Wagner, call anyone from Serbia when you know that it is against our regulations?” He also noted that Serbian legislation prohibits its citizens from participating in foreign armed conflicts and denied recent allegations that Wagner has a presence in Serbia. On January 17, Yevgeny Prigozhin stated that there are no Serbian citizens active in Wagner and that Wagner has never been active in Serbia. The DFRLab previously reported on claims made by Wagner that it was establishing a presence in Serbia.

Vucic also condemned a Wagner advertisement published by the newly established Serbian arm of RT. On January 5, RT Balkan reportedly published an article with the headline, “Wagner published an ad for volunteers, the conditions are more than tempting.” The article, which is no longer available on RT Balkan’s website, allegedly said that Wagner was looking for volunteers ages twenty-two to fifty who are not citizens of Ukraine or any EU or NATO member states. Volunteers were required to be physically healthy, interested in learning, patriots, and strong in spirit; in turn, “everything else will be taught by Wagner members.”

A Google search for the original headline, “Vagnerovci objavili oglas za dobrovoljce, uslovi više nego primamljivi,” retrieved an article with the same title, but the original URL now leads to a different article about Russian prisoners who joined Wagner, fought in Ukraine, and peacefully returned to Russia, where all charges against them were dropped.

—Givi Gigitashvili, research associate, Warsaw, Poland

Ukraine’s allies continue to send military aid, including heavy equipment

Ukraine will receive an unspecified number of Archer systems from Sweden, with Swedish media reporting that Kyiv will receive twelve units. Stockholm will also send fifty CV90 vehicles. Latvia will deliver another military aid package to Ukraine that includes Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, helicopters, small arms, and drones.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on January 10 that the country would donate more NASAMS air-defense systems to Ukraine. These systems will enable Ukrainian forces to enhance ground protection around troop deployments and civilian infrastructure. Canada will also transfer another two hundred armored LAV ACSV Super Bison vehicles to Ukraine.

According to the New York Times, the Pentagon is tapping into a stockpile of US ammunition in Israel to help meet Ukraine’s need for artillery shells. The arms and ammunition stockpile is typically reserved for the Pentagon to use in the Middle East. Meanwhile, on January 19, the Pentagon announced a $2.5 billion security package for Ukraine, including for the first time ninety Stryker armored personnel carriers. These mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles could help infantry advance further into the frontlines. Additionally, the US will provide energy equipment to help Ukraine deal with energy shortages. The $125 million support pack would include turbines, backup power banks, and high-voltage transformers.

On January 14, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and announced that the United Kingdom will send Ukraine fourteen Challenger 2 battle tanks and artillery systems. As of 2021, the British army possessed 227 battle tanks. Sending additional tanks is likely to increase pressure on Germany to send its own Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, though Germany’s defense minister said Friday that Berlin has not yet decided on the Leopard 2.

Russian citizens living in Bulgaria donated three pickup trucks to the Ukrainian army. They will be used by the Freedom of Russia Legion, a battalion made up of Russian citizens who defected to fight for Ukraine’s Foreign Legion.

—Ruslan Trad, resident fellow for security research, Sofia, Bulgaria

—Valentin Châtelet, research associate, Brussels, Belgium

The post Russian War Report: Wagner Group fights French ‘zombies’ in cartoon propaganda appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Like many dictators throughout history, Putin believed he could strengthen his position at home by waging a small, victorious war. However, he is now learning a painful lesson: if you stake your position as dictator on a quick victory but fail to deliver, you may suffer the fate of Khrushchev after the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Argentinian junta after their disastrous invasion of the Falklands. Losing a conflict that you are expected to win is so thoroughly demoralizing that it puts your entire reign at risk.

Many people now question why Putin embarked on such a reckless invasion at all. In fact, the Russian dictator has always been a betting man. His entire career has been marked by gambles that have paid off handsomely. However, with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, his luck may finally have run out.

US President Joe Biden describes Putin as a rational actor who has miscalculated. This is probably true, but it is also important to recognize Putin’s miscalculation as a symptom of a flawed worldview that is disconnected from reality. In short, Putin fell into the same trap that eventually catches out many long-serving dictators; he drank his own Kool-Aid.

In a military context, believing in one’s own inflated prowess is catastrophically dangerous. Thanks to decades of propaganda, Russians take it for granted that their country is a military superpower. This myth has been shattered in Ukraine. Despite having less than one-third of Russia’s population, a far smaller economy, and being an emerging democracy rather than a militarized dictatorship, Ukraine has more than held its own for almost a year against the invading Russian army.

While the West has provided Ukraine with significant military aid, the extent of Western involvement in the war should not be overstated. So far, only about one percent of the relevant available Western weaponry has actually been sent to Ukraine. Key partners such as the US, UK, France, and Germany have resisted Ukrainian pleas for tanks, jets, and long-range missiles. Instead, they have provided anti-tank weapons, limited quantities of artillery, and shorter range missile systems. Nevertheless, this has proved sufficient to stop Russia’s offensive and liberate about half of the territory occupied by Putin’s troops during the initial stages of the invasion.

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

Faced with mounting setbacks in Ukraine, Putin has become increasingly delusional. Rather than acknowledge Russia’s embarrassing defeats and catastrophic losses, he insists everything is going according to plan. This is creating opportunities for Russia’s far right forces, which do not suffer from the same limitations. While Kremlin officials absurdly attempt to portray retreats as “goodwill gestures,” the far right wins over the Russian public by speaking frankly about the country’s military disasters in Ukraine.

Until the invasion began in February 2022, the only political opposition in Russia was represented by jailed anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who had attempted to play broadly by Western democratic rules. When the war started, the remnants of Russian civil society were ruthlessly stamped out. Prominent opposition figures were jailed or forced into exile, while new laws criminalized all forms of public dissent. These trends have intensified over the intervening nine months, extinguishing any lingering hopes of a serious democratic opposition to the Putin regime.

Instead, the most serious challenge to Putinism may come from a newly emerging political movement that is even further to the right on the political spectrum than Putin himself. At present, this is a disorganized but vocal movement that has found its voice in the many unofficial Russian “war correspondents” and social media accounts reporting on the invasion while bypassing the Russia’s Kremlin-controlled mainstream information space. Most write from a Russian nationalist perspective while employing ethnic slurs for Ukrainians. They are unambiguously pro-war and often apparently pro-Putin. However, their content is frequently at odds with Russia’s official propaganda and highly critical of the military officials leading the invasion.

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Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict Russia Security & Defense Ukraine

While there is currently no single nationalist leader, the most prominent figure among Russian ultra-nationalists is Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group paramilitary force. Prigozhin once sought to distance himself from Wagner but has recently made his connection very public. He has released footage of his recruitment speeches and has opened a swanky head office in Saint Petersburg. This reflects the rising profile of Wagner itself. Formerly seen as a shadowy mercenary group used by the Kremlin in hybrid war hot spots such as Ukraine, Syria, and Africa to create a veneer of plausible deniability, Wagner has been one of the few Russian military units to perform credibly during the initial stages of the Ukraine invasion and has visibly grown in stature.

With his own public profile on the rise, Prigozhin has begun testing the boundaries by publicly deriding senior figures within the Russian military hierarchy. Meanwhile, his Wagner troops operate in Ukraine as an army-within-an-army, pursuing their own clearly defined battlefield objectives and openly positioning themselves as a military elite in contrast to the under-performing regular Russian army.

Wagner fighters have become the poster boys of the ultra-nationalists, who are themselves less prone to official delusions and more interested in the realities of hard power. Freedom from the constraints of the Kremlin propaganda machine is a major asset in their struggle for credibility among Russian audiences. This makes the far right a potentially formidable opponent in a future internal power struggle against the Putin regime.

It is hard to predict what the world could expect from a post-Putin Russia ruled by far right forces, but there is clearly little room for optimism. An ultra-nationalist successor regime would likely be even more inclined to wage war against Russia’s neighbors while ruthlessly targeting civilians. This extremism would be driven in part by the growing conviction within nationalist circles that Putin is failing in Ukraine precisely because he has not been ruthless enough in his leadership of the war.

Putin’s domestic position is not yet sufficiently weak to talk of an imminent fall from power, but it is already apparent that he is far weaker today than he was just one year ago. At the same time, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has catapulted a wide range of formerly fringe nationalist figures into the Russian mainstream and transformed Yevgeny Prigozhin into a political heavyweight. This swing to the right has not yet been fully appreciated by many Western observers, but it offers alarming indications of where Russia may be heading politically and must be watched carefully in the months ahead.

Stanislav Shalunov is founder and CEO of NewNode and creator of FireChat.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Nov 10, 2022

Battle of Kherson: Russian retreat confirms Putin is losing the war

By Andriy Zagorodnyuk

The war is still far from over, but Ukraine’s victory in the Battle of Kherson may eventually come to be seen as one of the key turning points in the defeat of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, writes Andriy Zagorodnyuk.

Conflict Freedom and Prosperity

UkraineAlert Dec 13, 2022

Vladimir Putin: 2022 Loser of the Year

By Peter Dickinson

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is the biggest loser of 2022. His disastrous decision to invade Ukraine has left Russia internationally isolated and shattered the country’s reputation as a military superpower.

Belarus Central Asia

UkraineAlert Oct 17, 2022

Putin’s blackout blitz: Russia aims to freeze Ukrainians into surrender

By Suriya Evans-Pritchard Jayanti

Russia is seeking to plunge Ukraine into darkness ahead of the winter heating season by destroying the country’s energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s partners must step in to make sure Ukrainians are not frozen into surrender.

Conflict Energy Markets & Governance

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Vladimir Putin’s failing invasion is fueling the rise of Russia’s far right appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Nawaz quoted in Dawn: US to tighten noose around TTP, IS-K: State Dept appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Since the early 1990s, modern Russia has consistently called on the West to acknowledge the former USSR (excluding the three Baltic states) as its exclusive sphere of influence. This reflects strong imperial instincts inside the Kremlin and throughout Russian society. It also highlights the ongoing confusion among the Russian public and the country’s elites over exactly what constitutes “Russia.”

This is hardly surprising given that Russian and Soviet identities had been virtually indistinguishable within the USSR. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, the Russian Federation simply took control of Soviet institutions in Moscow and began the process of post-Soviet state-building. Russia’s reluctance to completely disassociate itself from the USSR was already obvious in December 1991 when Moscow pushed for the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Throughout the 1990s, civic attachment to the Russian Federation remained weak. Meanwhile, more overtly imperial forms of identity proved to be far more popular, leading to calls for a return to the Soviet and Czarist eras or for a resurgent Russia to lead a new Eurasian empire. This trend was evident even before the Soviet Empire fell, with celebrated dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn calling in 1990 for a new Russian Union of the three Eastern Slavic nations (Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus). This concept would be revived and broadened almost two decades later to serve as the basis for Putin’s “Russian World” ideology.

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

The continued popularity of supra-national imperial identities in post-Soviet Russia was clear during the 1993 constitutional crisis, which saw an alliance of communists and extreme nationalists attempt to overthrow President Yeltsin. Three years later during the Russian presidential election, Yeltsin embraced the imperial agenda of a union state with Belarus to help counter strong revanchist support for Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.

By the time KGB veteran Vladimir Putin became president at the turn of the millennium, Russia was already visibly shifting away from its brief flirtation with European integration. Putin openly embraced Russia’s imperial identity and laid claim to Eurasia as the Kremlin’s exclusive sphere of influence. He was reportedly obsessed from the very start of his presidency with the idea of bringing Ukraine firmly back into the Russian orbit.

Putin’s position was perhaps predictable. The Soviet KGB where he spent the formative years of his professional career was a strikingly chauvinistic institution that openly embraced a sense of Russia’s imperial mission. This mentality was passed on to the KGB’s post-Soviet successor agencies, which assumed a dominant role in Russia following Putin’s rise to power.

Among policymakers in Putin’s Russia, other former Soviet nations such as Ukraine were never credited with real agency or genuine sovereignty. Instead, they were routinely regarded as part of modern Russia’s informal empire. Such ideas enjoyed widespread support among the Russian public and were heavily promoted in the carefully curated Russian mainstream media.

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Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

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In 2012, Putin returned to the presidency with the goal of entering history as the gatherer of Russian lands. In practice, this meant completing the reintegration of Belarus and Ukraine. Putin had always viewed these two East Slavic states are core members of his envisioned Eurasian Economic Union. With Crimea annexed in 2014 and Belarus transformed into a Russian puppet state in 2020, the last and decisive step in this historic process was to be the complete subjugation of Ukraine in 2022.

Unfortunately for Putin, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has not gone according to plan. Far from completing his historic reunification mission, the rapidly unraveling attack on Ukraine has shattered Russia’s reputation as a Great Power and as a military force to be reckoned with. As a consequence, many now view Russia as a declining power.

Moscow’s ability to project influence throughout its former empire has suffered accordingly. This presents Russia’s neighbors and the Western world with a golden opportunity to encourage the evolution of a post-imperial Russian identity that could serve as the basis for Russia’s reintegration into the wider international community.

In order to achieve this goal, the democratic world must rethink its own policies toward Russia and stop informally acknowledging Moscow’s claims to a sphere of influence. This outdated and unhelpful approach merely serves to legitimize Russia’s imperial ambitions. Instead, the West should treat Russia as an ordinary nation state and hold Moscow to the same standards applied to others.

Western leaders should also encourage the non-Russian states of the former USSR to stop buttressing Russia’s supra-national identity and end their participation in post-Soviet structures whose main purpose is to prolong Russia’s regional dominance. Members of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) and Eurasian Economic Union should be encouraged to withdraw. Armenia should be encouraged to return to the EU Association Agreement it abandoned under Russian pressure in 2013.

Another key step toward a post-imperial Russia is elimination of the grey zone between NATO and the EU on one side, and a Russia-dominated Eurasia on the other. While the current war in Ukraine cannot continue forever, a fresh Russian invasion is virtually inevitable unless Ukraine in offered a clear road map toward NATO membership. Ukraine’s current position in the geopolitical grey zone helps keep Russia’s imperial aspirations alive and makes a lasting peace in Europe unattainable.

Ukraine’s integration into NATO and the EU would rule out any further Russian invasions and dramatically reduce the scope for new imperial adventures. This would lead to a decline in support within Russia for aggressive imperial ideologies and discredit the entire notion of Putin’s “Russian World.” Instead, we would likely witness the growth of Russian civic identity.

Three decades after the fall of the USSR, Russia is currently in real danger of losing its Great Power status. The disastrous invasion of Ukraine has exposed internal weaknesses and sparked an unprecedented collapse in Russian influence throughout the former Soviet Empire. It is clearly in the interests of the democratic world to encourage this process of imperial retreat. The transformation of Russian national identity into a post-imperial and civic form would pave the way for a new era of European peace and productivity. The ultimate beneficiaries of this would be the Russian people themselves.

Taras Kuzio is a professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. His forthcoming book is “Genocide and Fascism, Russia’s War Against Ukrainians.”

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jul 28, 2022

Putin believed his own propaganda and fatally underestimated Ukraine

By Taras Kuzio

Vladimir Putin likes to pose as an expert on all things Ukrainian but in reality his understanding of Ukraine is hopelessly distorted by propaganda that has led him to fatally underestimate Ukrainian resilience.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Nov 10, 2022

Battle of Kherson: Russian retreat confirms Putin is losing the war

By Andriy Zagorodnyuk

The war is still far from over, but Ukraine’s victory in the Battle of Kherson may eventually come to be seen as one of the key turning points in the defeat of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, writes Andriy Zagorodnyuk.

Conflict Freedom and Prosperity

UkraineAlert Nov 17, 2022

Kherson euphoria highlights the folly of a premature peace with Putin

By Peter Dickinson

Footage of the euphoric scenes in liberated Kherson should be compulsory viewing for anyone who still believes in the possibility of a negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia, argues Peter Dickinson.

Civil Society Conflict

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

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This grim process has already been repeated in hundreds of liberated villages, towns, and cities throughout northern and eastern Ukraine. On each occasion, retreating Russian troops have left behind a vast crime scene of mass graves, torture chambers, sexual violence, and deeply traumatized communities. Specific accounts of civilian suffering are strikingly similar from region to region, indicating that these crimes are the result of deliberate Kremlin policy rather than the rogue actions of individual Russian army units.

Wherever Russia establishes control, anyone regarded as posing a potential threat to the occupation authorities is at risk of abduction. This includes elected local officials, military veterans, civil society activists, journalists, and anyone suspected of overtly pro-Ukrainian sympathies. Many victims are subjected to torture and execution. Others simply disappear. Those who avoid abduction face the threat of forced deportation to the Russian Federation. Millions of Ukrainian civilians, including thousands of children, are believed to have been deported in this manner over the past nine months.

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

The atrocities committed by Russian troops in occupied regions of Ukraine are only one part of a wider genocidal agenda that defines the invasion unleashed by Vladimir Putin on February 24. In areas of Ukraine occupied by the Kremlin, all symbols of Ukrainian statehood have been methodically removed and a new Russian imperial identity imposed on the civilian population. Teachers have been brought in from Russia to indoctrinate Ukrainian schoolchildren, while access to the Ukrainian media has been blocked and the Ukrainian language suppressed.

Putin’s intention to extinguish Ukrainian statehood and eradicate Ukrainian national identity was evident long before Russian tanks crossed the border in early 2022. His menacing statements have since been matched by the criminal actions of his army. Apologists had earlier been able to dismiss the Russian dictator’s genocidal rhetoric as mere political hyperbole, but that is no longer possible.

For years prior to the current invasion, Putin publicly denied Ukraine’s right to exist and insisted Ukrainians were actually Russians (“one people”) who had been artificially and unjustly separated from the motherland. In summer 2021, he took the highly unusual and revealing step of publishing a 5000-word treatise arguing the illegitimacy of Ukrainian statehood.

On the eve of the invasion, Putin lambasted today’s independent Ukrainian state as an intolerable “anti-Russia” and declared that Ukraine was an “inalienable part of Russia’s own history, culture, and spiritual space.” More recently, he has directly compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great and boasted that he is “returning historically Russian lands.” In late September, he illegally annexed four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces while proclaiming that they had joined the Russian Federation “forever.”

Other senior Kremlin officials and regime propagandists have been even more explicit in terms of the genocidal language they have employed to champion the invasion. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently described Ukrainians as “cockroaches” while dismissing the Ukrainian nation as “mythical.” Meanwhile, on Russia’s carefully curated state TV political talk shows, calls for genocide against Ukrainians have become completely normalized. Pundits dehumanize and demonize Ukrainians while routinely questioning the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation and casually discussing the necessity of destroying the Ukrainian state.

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