| DAILY ALERT |
Thursday, March 19, 2026 |
|
News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
Qatar's state oil giant QatarEnergy, the world's second-largest LNG exporter, said on Wednesday that Iranian missile attacks on Ras Laffan, the site of the country's core LNG processing operations, caused "extensive damage." Qatar's foreign ministry told Iran's security and military attaches to leave the country within 24 hours and declared them "persona non grata." (Reuters) U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday: "The Intelligence Community (IC) assesses that Operation Epic Fury is advancing fundamental change in the region...resulting in weakening Iran and its proxies." "The regime in Iran appears to be intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities. Its conventional military power-projection capabilities have largely been destroyed, leaving limited options. Iran's strategic position has been significantly degraded." "Even if the regime remains intact, the IC assesses that internal tensions are likely to increase as Iran's economy worsens....If a hostile regime survives, it will likely seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its military missiles and UAV forces....Iran has long viewed the U.S. as an adversary and is engaged in active conflict with the U.S." "The United States continues to face a complex and evolving threat landscape with a geographically diverse set of Islamist terrorist actors seeking to propagate their ideology globally and harm Americans....The spread of Islamist ideology, in some cases led by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, poses a fundamental threat to freedom and the foundational principles that underpin Western civilization." "Islamist groups and individuals use this ideology for recruiting and financial support for terrorist groups and individuals around the world and to advance their political objectives of establishing an Islamist caliphate which governs based on Sharia." (U.S. Director of National Intelligence) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
An Iranian cluster missile killed four Palestinian women at a beauty salon in the West Bank town of Beit Awwa and wounded another six on Wednesday night. (Ynet News) Facilities linked to Iran's gas and oil industry in South Pars and Asaluyeh were targeted in an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday. The South Pars gas field is the world's largest natural gas reserve. The Israeli strike was coordinated with the U.S., Axios reported. (Jerusalem Post) See also U.S. Officials Aware of Israeli Plan to Attack Iranian Gas Field - Summer Said The U.S. was informed of Israel's plan to strike Iran's South Pars gas field ahead of time and had no issues with it, American and Israeli officials said Wednesday. President Trump approved of the strike, U.S. officials said, to pressure Iran to unblock the Strait of Hormuz. The officials said Trump believed Tehran received the message and wants to refrain from further strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure. On Wednesday night, Trump said on social media, "The United States knew nothing about this particular attack" on South Pars. "No more attacks will be made by Israel." However, if Iran strikes Qatar's gas hub again, the U.S. "will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field." (Wall Street Journal) See also Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel: Trump Approved Strikes on Iran Gas Facilities Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro wrote on X on Thursday: "There is zero, I mean zero, chance the IDF would conduct a strike in that location [the South Pars gas field] without giving CENTCOM full visibility. Trump knew (and approved)." Shapiro added: "I know how the IDF and CENTCOM work together. An Israeli strike on the South Pars gas field...could not have been carried out without U.S. knowledge, and explicit or implicit approval." (Ynet News) The Israel Air Force on Wednesday struck more than five Iranian navy vessels in the Caspian Sea, attacking the port city of Bandar Anzali, home to the headquarters of the Iranian navy's Northern Fleet. (Ynet News) See also IDF's Caspian Strike Hits Iran-Russia Supply Lifeline - Dudi Kogan The port of Bandar Anzali plays a central role in the maritime trade route between Iran and Russia. The Caspian Sea became a vital supply artery that helped feed the Russian war machine. Tehran has used the route to send Moscow drones, missiles, bullets and mortar shells for use against Ukraine. With the outbreak of the current war, the route is also operating in reverse. Russia is supplying Iran with the Geran-2, the upgraded Russian version of the Shahed drone. (Israel Hayom) The ongoing Israeli strikes against Iran and Hizbullah in Lebanon are steadily eroding the power of the regime in Tehran, IDF spokesman Brig.-Gen. Effie Defrin said Wednesday. Derfin said the cumulative impact of Israeli strikes that targeted senior Iranian officials, Hizbullah commanders, economic networks, and weapons routes is an effort to erode the military and political architecture Tehran uses to project power across the region. "The regime is already unstable, and we are continuing to weaken it." That was "exactly our purpose." Israel was achieving it "step-by-step according to an orderly plan." (Ynet News) On Tuesday, there were 11 waves of Iranian ballistic missile attacks against Israel. The Tel Aviv area sustained 6 attacks. In addition, 2 waves were recorded in the north, 2 in the south, and one in the Jerusalem area. Since the beginning of the campaign, 268 Iranian attack waves against Israel have been identified. They included 105 in the Tel Aviv area, 64 in the south, 60 in the north, and 39 in the Jerusalem area. After the peak at the beginning of the campaign (44 attacks on Feb. 28 and 55 on March 1), the rate of attacks has averaged 10-11 per day. Since the beginning of the war, 15 civilians in Israel have been killed, and 3,604 people have been injured as a result of direct hits, interception debris, and secondary damage. Significant damage has been caused to residential buildings and civilian infrastructure. (Alma Research & Education Center) On Tuesday, 43 attack waves by Hizbullah against Israel were identified, including 32 using rockets and missiles, 9 using UAVs, and 2 using anti-tank missiles. Most of the attacks were directed toward border communities and the Galilee. In addition, 17 attacks during the day targeted IDF forces operating in southern Lebanon. Since Hizbullah joined the fighting on March 2, 565 attack waves against Israel have been identified, including 394 using rockets and missiles, 152 UAV attack waves, 18 anti-tank missile attacks, and one IED attack. While the daily pattern alternates between more intense and more moderate days, the average is 35 attack waves per day. (Alma Research & Education Center) "[Kuwait's] State Security Service has dismantled sleeper cells seeking to undermine the country's security. Following intensive surveillance and security investigations, 10 citizens who are members of a terrorist group affiliated with the banned Hizbullah terrorist organization were apprehended." The individuals had been coordinating with foreign entities to provide them with the coordinates of targeted sites. "Investigations revealed that the cell members received training abroad in Hizbullah camps on using weapons and drone operation, in preparation for carrying out sabotage operations." (Kuwait Times) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran A disturbing number of Britons, it seems, would gladly see the survival of the world's worst regime, which reportedly killed more than 30,000 people in two days, destabilizes the Middle East, and has plotted countless acts of terror on our shores. Ask a bereaved Iranian parent who has lost a child to the regime what they think of that. What's wrong with these people? Don't they realize that if this campaign fails, the world - in which their children happen to live - will take a far more dangerous turn? This is a regime with a tripartite strategy - ballistic missiles, overseas proxy militias, nuclear weapons - literally to trigger the apocalypse, which, according to its dogma, would herald a new dawn of global sharia domination. Diplomacy hadn't worked, appeasement hadn't worked. What was the alternative? Israelis understand what is at stake. Support for the campaign is high across their society, even as they huddle in bomb shelters amid the sound of explosions overhead. Gulf states, whose defensive strategy once involved maintaining a degree of friendship with Iran, are now urging the U.S. to hold its nerve and finish the job. The Iranian people are desperate for the regime to be overthrown and cheer Israeli and American strikes as they rain down around them. One of the most contemptible claims is that fighting Iran will only make it more dangerous. Forgive me, but the Iranian regime was pretty radical to begin with. This is the kind of thing we used to call appeasement. In truth, the American-Israeli alliance is subjecting Iran to a stupendous battering. Vast destruction has been visited upon their missile and drone programs. The allies have been intensifying attacks on underground storage facilities, hitting them so hard that their entire munitions supply chain is being laid waste. Night by night, the worst regime in the world is being robbed of its power to hurt us by an alliance whose byword is courage. (Telegraph-UK) What are the political goals of the war with Iran? For the U.S., the objectives have been clear. Deny Iran a nuclear weapon. Destroy its missile and drone programs. Neutralize its ability to threaten maritime commerce. Reduce its capacity to project power externally. This is not a war of regime change. It is a war for regime behavior change. The U.S. is not seeking to replace the Iranian system of governance. It is seeking to force that system to abandon the behaviors that threaten core U.S. national interests. Iran's goals are equally clear. The regime seeks to survive. It seeks to retain its nuclear potential, preserve its missile and drone arsenals, and maintain its ability to use the Strait of Hormuz as a tool of global economic coercion. It seeks to continue projecting power while maintaining internal control through repression. The question then becomes: who is achieving their goals? On Day 19 of Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. and Israel are still winning. The scale of what has been accomplished is measurable. American forces have flown 6,500 combat flights and struck 7,000 targets across Iran. The Israeli military reports dropping 10,000 munitions in 7,600 strikes against 2,200 regime targets, conducted across 5,000 sorties. These numbers reflect sustained, large-scale combat operations designed to dismantle the regime's military architecture. The most senior figures across Iran's political, military, and internal security echelons have been eliminated, along with multiple brigadier generals, intelligence chiefs, and nuclear program leaders. This is the systematic removal of entire echelons of leadership across political, military, intelligence, and internal repression structures. It is not accurate to assume that replacements will simply step in and think, act, and perform exactly like those who were removed. What is happening in Iran is without modern precedent. Entire layers of leadership, networks, institutional knowledge, and personal authority have been eliminated simultaneously. When those are removed in waves, what follows is not seamless continuity. It is disruption, fragmentation, competition, and uncertainty. The cumulative effects strike at regime cohesion, morale, and will. As of Day 19, the U.S. and Israel are achieving their strategic aims. Iran is not. The writer is chair of urban warfare studies at West Point's Modern War Institute. (Substack) Donald Trump has nearly three years remaining in office, and that fact alone impacts the calculus in Tehran in ways that should not be underestimated. Even if the regime manages to survive the current war and begins, as it inevitably will, to rebuild its capabilities over the coming months and years, it will be doing so under the shadow of a president who has time and determination to act again. Trump will not want to leave office in 2029 with Iran back on track. This reality - known to the Iranians - creates a strategic window during which the regime will need to consider not only how to survive the current conflict, but how to operate in a reality in which renewed military action remains an ongoing possibility for years to come. From a purely military perspective, what has been achieved over the past weeks is nothing short of extraordinary. Israel has managed to establish air superiority over a country nearly 2,000 km. away, with its air force operating over Tehran with a level of freedom that would have been difficult to imagine not long ago. Iran's senior military leadership has been systematically targeted and degraded, while key components of its defense-industrial base have been struck - not only the missile launchers, but the factories, supply chains, and infrastructure that sustain them. The writer is a co-founder of the MEAD policy forum and a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute. (Jewish Chronicle-UK) In the opening hours of the war, the U.S. fired ballistic missiles that slammed into targets in Iran, the first use of the Army's highly accurate Precision Strike Missiles and Atacms in combat. The strikes underscore the Pentagon's growing reliance on land-based missiles. Newer versions of the weapons are fired from mobile Himars truck launchers that can shoot and move, making them less vulnerable in an era of drone warfare. Atacms stands for Army Tactical Missile System, while Himars is an acronym for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, an Army truck that carries expendable pods of short-range missiles. Given their range of 200-300 miles, they likely were fired from the territory of Persian Gulf countries, though none have admitted to allowing their land or airspace to be used to attack Iran. Videos indicate that at least some of the launches came from Bahrain, 125 miles across the Gulf from Iran. (Wall Street Journal) Operation Epic Fury has greatly diminished Iran's offensive capabilities. Gone are many of its air defenses, missiles, drones, radars, planes, warships, bases, airfields, command-and-control centers, security headquarters, bunkers and hiding places - along with many leaders of the regime that has pledged "Death to America" since the shah fell in 1979. At home, the U.S. and Israeli air assault has revealed a significant divide between MAGA voters and a small but influential group of MAGA media figures who claim to speak for them. Much of the criticism of Operation Epic Fury comes from the blame-it-on-the-Jews chorus. But do voters who identify themselves as MAGA Republicans share their opinions? A poll conducted March 3-5 by the Vandenberg Coalition among 1,232 Trump voters found 84% approval of Mr. Trump's "decision to authorize military action against Iran." A big part of the president's appeal has been his determination to make the U.S. military the greatest force for good on the planet and to project American strength. The Vandenberg poll shows the MAGA base is lining up behind this and ignoring Mr. Trump's isolationist critics. The writer was senior adviser and deputy chief of staff for President George W. Bush. (Wall Street Journal) The death of Ali Larijani is a stunning operational coup for the Israeli-American alliance. Removing Iran's national security chief, the man responsible for the brutal slaughter of thousands of protesters, is a necessary step in degrading and destroying Tehran's command networks, and towards a just conclusion of this conflict. Yet BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson responded to Larijani's death by describing the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as "clever and reasonable - the kind of person you might want to negotiate a peace deal with." Mr. Simpson mused, was it "a good idea for Israel to take out people like him?" The answer is an unequivocal yes. Iran has posed a threat to the U.S., to Israel, and to its neighbors for decades. It had shown no intention of changing course. If it had been left to its own devices, Tehran would surely have continued to make progress towards viable nuclear weapons. It would have continued to develop and stockpile ballistic missiles and drones. And it would have continued to sponsor terrorism around the world, striking at Western interests. (Telegraph-UK) The Shia have an entrenched understanding of the virtue of suffering for their beliefs. An understanding of suffering and of striving in the way of Allah has been married to the theology of end time, when the twelfth Imam or Mahdi will return and establish a rule of justice. As the Iran-Iraq war demonstrated, if this struggle results in mass martyrdom, this is thought to only hasten the coming of the Imam Mahdi. Iran's creating and strengthening its proxies is based on establishing the rule of God and thus hastening the return of the Mahdi. What the West, and its allies, need to understand is that the rhetoric coming from Tehran is influenced by this martyr complex. If the regime were to fall, the Islamist revolutionaries have a ready-made force for indefinite resistance to whatever takes the place of the present regime and to its allies. Withdrawal to the mountains and deserts, as well as exile, is an aspect of sharing in the sufferings of their imams, and resistance to the "ungodly" will be understood as hastening the return of Imam Mahdi. If the regime survives, this will be seen as a vindication by Allah of the sacrifices made by the IRGC, the Basij and the regime generally. If the military action results in a change of regime, there must be preparations to prevent the Basij and other elements from being able to wage an indefinite guerrilla war. (Telegraph-UK) Hizbullah All over Lebanon there are villages where Hizbullah's patronage, guns and narrative of "resistance" continue to hold sway. It is the same in Dahiyeh, the group's stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Yet Hizbullah does not represent all of Lebanon. Shia Muslims make up a third of the six million population and most have nothing to do with the group. Its decision to enter the war explicitly on behalf of its spiritual and financial backers in Tehran has exacerbated sectarian divides. Julien Barnes-Darcy, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, says Hizbullah is no longer fighting from a position of strength, but from the realization that its existence is threatened. "You've got Israel squeezing from the outside [and] a strong segment of the population within Lebanon who see both a need and potentially an opportunity to finally cut Hizbullah down to size." "Hizbullah's situation, in a sense, mirrors Iran's wider position. For both of them, this is seen through an existential lens. It's seen as a moment of truth, and if they are unable to put up a meaningful fight, then others are going to go for the jugular and look to finally get rid of them." Nicholas Blanford, who has documented Hizbullah's rise to become the world's most powerful non-state army, said, "The guys doing the fighting, I don't think they care one way or the other about the Iranians. They see this as part of their jihadi struggle against the Israelis. They've gone into this battle highly motivated. They've been itching to get back into the scrap with the Israelis." But "I hear this a lot from Shias who have had to evacuate Dahiyeh or come from the south. You know, they are saying, 'this is ridiculous. We're already suffering now. They've just made things even worse. Enough! We've had it with Hizbullah'." (Telegraph-UK) Weekend Feature Despite another year of war on several fronts, Israel once again ranked eighth in the World Happiness Report published on Thursday, for the second year in a row. The U.S. was 23rd, the UK 29th, and France 35th. Anat Fanti, a researcher at Bar-Ilan University, said, "It doesn't surprise me because Israelis have a sense of meaning and purpose, which contributes to their overall satisfaction with life." In sharp contrast to other Western nations, Israelis under the age of 25 were found to be the happiest demographic within Israeli society, ranking third globally. In the U.S., the happiness of young people has plummeted to 60th place. "Young Israeli people are much more grounded compared to their age group in other countries," Fanti said. They go into military service and "make decisions between 18 and 21 that are far beyond their years." Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics found that overall life satisfaction among Israelis aged 20 plus remained remarkably high at 91.1% through 2024. (Times of Israel) Observations: Understanding Iran's Imminent Threat to America - Dr. Dan Diker and Tirza Shorr (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs)
Dr. Dan Diker is President of the Jerusalem Center, where Tirza Shorr is a senior researcher. |
|