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In-Depth Issues:
Israel: No Permanent Gaza Ceasefire until Hamas Disarmed; Iran's Enriched Uranium Remained at Bombed Sites ( Reuters)
Speaking during Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to Washington, a senior Israeli official said Wednesday that if Hamas agrees to a proposed 60-day ceasefire, Israel would use that time to offer a permanent ceasefire that would require Hamas to disarm.
If Hamas refuses, "we'll proceed" with military operations in Gaza, the official said.
The Israeli official also said Israeli intelligence indicated that Iran's enriched uranium remained at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, the sites hit last month, and had not been moved.
The official suggested that the Iranians might still be able to gain access to Isfahan but it would be hard to remove any of the material there.
2 Killed and 15 Missing after Houthis Sink Second Ship - Abbie Cheeseman ( Washington Post)
The Houthis attacked the Eternity C, a Liberian-flagged cargo ship, on Monday night west of Yemen's port of Hodeidah. At least two crew members were killed and 15 were reported missing.
The attack happened hours after the Houthis attacked a different Liberian-flagged ship, the Magic Seas.
Text: The Dinah Project Report - Hamas Used Sexual Violence as a Tactical Weapon of War ( The Dinah Project)
The Dinah Project was established to achieve recognition and justice for victims and survivors
of sexual violence during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and for those taken hostage.
This report represents the most comprehensive assessment to date of the sexual violence
that occurred during and after the attack.
Since the vast majority of the victims are no longer alive or are still engaged in the process of recovering from trauma and are unable to describe what they experienced, the testimonies of those who saw or heard sexual violence taking place serve as a main source of information.
Some testimonies entail people who saw the attacks while in hiding, others heard sounds and voices, including screams of women begging for help or begging the perpetrator to stop, that leave no doubt as to what went on.
Follow the Jerusalem Center on:
The End of Drone Supremacy - Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Mark T. Kimmitt ( Politico-EU)
In May, Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems acknowledged the use of high-power laser systems in combat.
Part of the Iron Lite program, it's already credited with intercepting "scores of enemy threats."
Its high effectiveness, far lower cost and scalability, combined with dozens of other counter-drone and defensive programs under development around the world, ends the argument over whether the drone has been a revolution in modern warfare: It has not. And the brief era of drone supremacy has ended.
Throughout history, supposedly transformative technology would have a brief window of domination. For offensive drones, it was only a matter of time before effective counter-drone (C-UAS) capabilities emerged.
The writer served as U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs.
See also Iran Launched 1,000 Drones at Israel, All But One Were Downed - Amos Harel ( Ha'aretz)
Despite Boycott Threats: Spain Buys Israeli Defense Tech - Nissan Shtrauchler ( Israel Hayom)
Spain's Al Mundo has revealed that despite Madrid's public commitment to halt military technology purchases from Israel, the Spanish government is authorizing the acquisition of Israeli
tactical radio communication systems from Elbit, with initial funding of $393 million in the 2025 defense budget.
The deal includes subsequent phases and additional acquisitions totaling $862 million.
According to new "royal decree" documentation, in light of NATO membership obligations, Spanish forces will proceed with Israeli radio system acquisitions since "domestic industry presently lacks adequate capacity for producing and delivering required systems."
Britain Offers to Build Surveillance Towers for Lebanon along Israeli Border - Nazeer Rida ( Asharq Al-Awsat)
Britain has formally proposed to Lebanon the construction of surveillance towers along the country's southern border with Israel, aiming to bolster security and stability in the area.
The initiative mirrors similar towers Britain has installed over the past decade on the Lebanese-Syrian frontier.
Romania to Import Israel's Iron Dome Air Defense System - Radu Dumitrescu ( Romania Insider)
Romanian Defense Minister Ionut Mosteanu announced this week that the government aims to import the Iron Dome air defense system used by Israel to protect against short-range missiles.
"These are defensive missile batteries that we don't have, and we need them," Mosteanu said.
Search the Recent History of Israel and the Middle East
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
- U.S. Sanctions UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday:
"Today, I am imposing sanctions on Francesca Paola Albanese, the United Nations Human Rights Council 'Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967,' pursuant to President Trump's Executive Order."
"Albanese has directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries. Neither the United States nor Israel is party to the Rome Statute, making this action a gross infringement on the sovereignty of both countries."
"The United States has repeatedly condemned and objected to the biased and malicious activities of Albanese that have long made her unfit for service as a Special Rapporteur. Albanese has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West." (U.S. State Department)
See also The U.S. Sanctions the Notorious Francesca Albanese - Editorial
UN staff rarely have to answer for their anti-Israel agenda, but the blue moon arrived Wednesday when the U.S. sanctioned UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. It's about time.
Albanese has a history of anti-Israel and antisemitic remarks. In 2014 she wrote that the U.S. is "subjugated by the Jewish lobby." At a pro-Palestine conference in November 2022 that included members of Hamas, she told the audience they had a "right to resist" the Israeli "occupation." She has equated Israel with Nazi Germany and called the U.S. "a nation founded upon genocide." The sanctions will prevent Albanese, an Italian citizen, from entering the U.S.
(Wall Street Journal)
- After Decades as Enemies, Syria and Israel Now Share a Common Foe in Iran - Christina Goldbaum
Syria's president, Ahmed al-Shara, is engaging in discussions with Israel to resolve problems along their common border, according to Syrian, Israeli and American officials. While the goals appear modest, these are the most serious talks between them in more than a decade and a departure from the former government's animosity toward Israel. The negotiations reflect a power shift across the Middle East, where Israel and Syria now share an antipathy toward Iran.
Israel and the new Syrian leadership also share security concerns about Iran-backed proxy groups, which they want to prevent from infiltrating Syria. However, Syrian officials have shown no inclination to join the Abraham Accords imminently, or otherwise normalize ties with Israel. The aim of the current talks appears to be more limited.
"We're less likely to hear about the Abraham Accords in the short term and more likely to hear about de-conflicting and making sure Israel and Syria are not enemies," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, director for global social action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization.
Rabbi Cooper met with al-Shara last month in Damascus.
Mohanad Hage Ali, a fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said, "There seems to be an understanding taking shape on the security level. But on the political level, we haven't seen any grand gestures." (New York Times)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
- Netanyahu: Israel's Objective Is to Ensure that Gaza Will Not Constitute a Threat to Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Washington on Tuesday that Israel is determined "to achieve our objectives for the war in Gaza: To release all of our hostages, to eliminate Hamas's military and governing capabilities, and - of course - to ensure that Gaza will not constitute a threat to Israel."
"This means - there will be no Hamas. This must be understood. This is not just something that we are saying, nor will it be. This entails a certain strategy, which I will not detail here. This entails efforts, some of which are painful, and some which will be very painful to Hamas, but the end result will be the release of all our hostages, and the defeat and dismantling of Hamas. Gaza will no longer constitute a threat to Israel, and we have yet to finish the work." (Prime Minister's Office)
- GHF Head: UN's Aid Mafia Monopoly Preserves Hamas Control of Gaza - Amichai Stein
Johnnie Moore, who oversees the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, described to the Jerusalem Post a corrupt and complicit international aid system that empowered Hamas for years.
"I've watched a broken system that professes to help people when very often it only helps itself," Moore said. "Hamas controlling aid isn't the exception - it's the rule." GHF operates large-scale distribution centers aimed at bypassing Hamas and getting food directly to Palestinian civilians.
"It's incredibly telling that the first thing Hamas wanted to negotiate was preserving the UN's monopoly on Gaza aid," Moore said. He accused UN agencies of maintaining a monopoly that, in practice, enabled Hamas to control nearly every food parcel that entered Gaza. Moore said Hamas is now stealing food from civilians after they collect it. "We actually have video of Hamas terrorists intercepting aid beneficiaries and taking their food as they return home."
The GHF has been quietly supported by staff within major aid organizations who are fed up with the system. "We have a growing list of whistleblowers from the international aid community," Moore said. "They believe the entire sector is corrupt from the top down." He recently met with EU leaders in Brussels, where "many admitted the old system empowered Hamas, but they're still too invested in it to change." (Jerusalem Post)
- Houthi Missile Fire at Israel Continues
The Houthis in Yemen continued to fire missiles at Israel on Thursday morning. The IDF intercepted the missile.
(Jerusalem Post)
- Israeli Air Force Strikes 180 Targets in Gaza in Past Day - Emanuel Fabian
The Israeli Air Force struck over 180 targets in Gaza over the past day, including operatives, booby-trapped buildings, weapons depots, anti-tank launch posts, tunnels, and other infrastructure, the IDF said Thursday. (Times of Israel)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
War with Iran
- Post-War Iran Remains Dangerous - Maj.-Gen. (res.) Tamir Hayman
The campaign against Iran was necessary at this time. The operation's goals were achieved, and in the short term, Israel's security has improved. However, in the long run, the threat has not disappeared. Unless regime change occurs, Iran will likely remain a source of threats to Israel. Post-war Iran is weaker but no less dangerous. Israel must maintain preparedness against the Iranian threat, including intervention capabilities to disrupt any nuclear breakout.
At the same time, Israel should not rule out a nuclear agreement between the U.S. and Iran, provided it meets key conditions: No independent Iranian uranium enrichment. Thorough and ongoing international oversight, including weapons components. A binding agreement without an expiration "sunset" clause.
The writer, former head of the IDF Intelligence Directorate, is the executive director of INSS. (Institute for National Security Studies)
- What Was the Status of Iran's Nuclear Program on the Eve of the War? - Avner Cohen
The accepted Iranian discourse was to categorically deny that Iran has any interest in nuclear weapons.
However, in early 2024, I noticed a significant change in the discourse of well-informed Iranians regarding nuclear capabilities.
In a Feb. 12 interview on Iranian TV, Ali Akbar Salehi, who had served as Iran's foreign minister and as head of its Atomic Energy Organization, said: "We've crossed all the significant nuclear scientific and technological thresholds. Let me give you an example. What does a car require? A chassis, engine, steering system, gearbox and so on. You're asking whether we've produced the gearbox, and I say yes. Have we produced the engine, and I say yes, and so on."
I believe Salehi was trying to hint that Iran already has the knowhow and the ability to produce all or most of the components of a nuclear weapon, not just the ability to produce fissile material by enrichment. His remarks conveyed an understanding that the difference between a finished nuclear device and a collection of its components amounts to no more than a quick change of phase. I took his remarks to be a veiled admission that Iran had completed - or was very close to completing - most of the research and development necessary to produce a nuclear explosion and was a few weeks or even days from being able to assemble the entire device.
A study of remarks about the nuclear program by senior government and nuclear officials beginning in 2015 confirmed that Salehi was not alone. Since October 7, 2023, a significant shift in the Iranian nuclear and bomb discourse occurred. This is reflected in pronouncements that Iran had cleared all the relevant technical thresholds for building a device, and that the Iranian commitment not to develop a nuclear weapon wasn't absolute but conditional.
The writer is Professor of Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey College, and the author of Israel and the Bomb.
(Ha'aretz)
- Tehran Regime Change: Lessons from Chernobyl - Gerald Steinberg
With the end of the 12-day war, the question of regime change in Iran remains central.
To assess this scenario, it is useful to consider the collapse of the Soviet Union that began with the catastrophic accident at the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in April 1986. Moscow tried to cover-up the disaster to avoid embarrassment, like the response in Tehran. The Chernobyl catastrophe symbolized a closed and incompetent political system that endangered the entire population, and the institutions lost legitimacy, power, and control.
In examining the prospects of a similar scenario in Iran, many of the same factors are evident. The regime maintains power through repressive power and secrecy, but the Israeli military quickly destroyed Iran's defenses, followed by 12 days of continuous attacks, highlighting the government's vulnerability and incompetence.
As in the Soviet strategy after Chernobyl, Tehran's propaganda platforms, including statements by the Supreme Leader, are desperately attempting to control the narrative by denying the blatant failures and making absurd claims of a great victory over the Zionist enemy. In Russia, the public greeted such efforts with sarcasm and derision.
In the case of the Soviet Union, the erosion of legitimacy took four years until the final collapse. While there is no guarantee of regime change, the openings have been created.
The writer is President of NGO Monitor and emeritus professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University.
(American Spectator)
Hizbullah
- Despite U.S. Pressure on Lebanon to Disarm Hizbullah, Tehran Alone Has the Leverage to Make It Happen - Michael Young
The U.S. envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, presented a plan to the Lebanese on June 19 outlining Hizbullah's disarmament, which would lead to Israel's withdrawal from hills it occupies in southern Lebanon.
He returned to Beirut on Monday and declared he was "satisfied and grateful for the Lebanese response."
Barrack also made it clear that if Lebanon failed to implement Hizbullah's disarmament, it would not benefit from outside investment or aid to rebuild the country.
A major part of the problem is that, ultimately, any decision on Hizbullah's weapons will be taken in Tehran, given that the party's senior leadership was largely eliminated last year and Iran now has a more central say in its affairs. (The National-UAE)
Israeli Security
- Most Israelis Value Their Security over the Opinions of Spectators - Jonathan S. Tobin
Since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks on Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, the strategic situation in the Middle East has been substantially altered in favor of the Jewish state. Although Israel has become extremely unpopular around the globe and even lost favor with many Americans as a result of the war with Hamas in Gaza post-Oct. 7, most Israelis value their security over the opinions of spectators.
Israelis prefer to be live pariahs rather than a fondly remembered people to be memorialized.
The choice facing Israel and the Jewish people is clear: If they refuse to let themselves be slaughtered and their state demolished, then they're going to be mightily judged by a double standard applied to no other nation or people on the planet. Somehow, Israelis are portrayed as heartless people because they support removing existential threats in the form of genocidal Islamist terrorist movements such as Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis and their Iranian paymasters.
If Israelis are indifferent to international opinion, it's because they know they've taken risks for peace and paid for them not only in bad press clippings but in oceans of blood. Israelis and Jews understand what it means to be faced not only with fanatics who seek their deaths but the very real possibility that they may succeed. The mass murder, torture, rape, kidnapping and wanton destruction that took place on Oct. 7 was just the trailer for what the Palestinian Arabs intend for the rest of Israel.
Anyone who thinks Israelis should choose policies that put their lives at risk to avoid being falsely accused of genocide knows nothing of Jewish history or the reality of the Middle East.
The Jews need a state and the ability to defend themselves far more than the good opinion of the multitudes that didn't wait until the bodies of the Oct. 7 victims were buried to start sympathizing with the murderers. (JNS)
Palestinian Arabs
- Farewell to the "Two-State Solution" Delusion - Amb. Michael Oren
A "two-state solution" is an oxymoron. The Palestinians, who hold the world record for rejecting such proposals since the 1930s, clearly oppose it. Since the massacres of Oct. 7, 2023, the majority of Israelis view a Palestinian state as a dangerous reward for terror. Nobody knows whether that state would be democratic and peaceful or Islamic and jihadist. Nobody can adduce evidence that the Palestinians are capable of maintaining a nation-state.
Yet these facts haven't prevented generations of world leaders, scholars and commentators from insisting that the two-state solution isn't merely implementable but the only path to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The victims of this delusion have been the Palestinians.
To date, no Palestinian leader has ever abandoned the demand for repatriating millions of Palestinian refugees to Israel. None have recognized the existence of the Jewish people indigenous to the Land of Israel or acknowledged the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
The writer was Israel's ambassador to the U.S., 2009-13. (Wall Street Journal)
Observations:
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A core misconception about Israel's policy since Oct. 7 is that the country has favored military action at the expense of diplomacy. The truth is that Israel's decisive battlefield victories have created diplomatic openings that have been out of reach for decades and would have remained so if Israel hadn't won.
- In Beirut on Monday, Tom Barrack, the U.S. special envoy for Syria, said he was "unbelievably satisfied" by the response he got from President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon on U.S. proposals to disarm Hizbullah, reportedly in exchange for critical financial aid. It's because Israel destroyed Hizbullah as an effective fighting force last year that it's now possible for the Lebanese state to again possess the most basic form of sovereignty, a monopoly on the use of force within its borders.
- There's a similarly hopeful story in Syria, where the Trump administration lifted sanctions on the government of President Ahmed al-Shara. Now there are reports of talks between Jerusalem and Damascus aiming at a de facto peace agreement. It's unlikely that al-Shara's insurgents could have come to power if Israel hadn't first destroyed Hizbullah, depriving Bashar al-Assad's regime of its most effective military arm. And neither Jerusalem nor Damascus might have been amenable to talks if Israel hadn't first destroyed many of Syria's remaining weapon stockpiles in December.
- In Gaza, Hamas's growing diplomatic flexibility is almost entirely a result of its proximity to total defeat. Many Gazans have turned against Hamas, looting the offices of its security headquarters and increasingly turning to local clans for food and protection.
- With its military success over Iran, crowned, from an Israeli point of view, by America's participation in the campaign, Israel humiliated its most formidable adversary (and Hamas's principal patron), demonstrating not only its capacity but also its courage to take on the mullahs directly and survive their reprisals intact.
- Israel exists to protect Jewish life and uphold Jewish dignity in a world too intent on destroying both. If diplomacy now has a chance of succeeding, it's because in geopolitics, as in life, it pays to be a winner.
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