| DAILY ALERT |
Tuesday, August 4, 2026 |
|
News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
Iran said Monday that there weren't any talks underway with the U.S. nor were any meetings planned, after President Trump said he had called off a major strike on the country to provide more time for negotiations on freeing up traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Iran hadn't sent any delegations or negotiators to take part in any discussions. In a social-media post Monday, Trump described Iran's leadership as "unbelievably duplicitous," saying they had asked for talks on ending the war and then announced that no discussions were being held. "Nothing gets through to Iran, unless we want it to, and nothing will get through, unless a Deal, or Total Surrender, is accomplished," he said. (Wall Street Journal) U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied a request by the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization on Monday to halt $655.5 million in damages that Palestinian authorities were ordered to pay plaintiffs in a U.S. civil lawsuit concerning attacks that killed and injured Americans in shootings and bombings in Israel from 2002 to 2004. (Reuters) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
The Board of Peace, tasked with overseeing postwar Gaza governance, said on Monday that Israel will need to pull back from territories it currently holds in Gaza only after Hamas's disarmament, correcting its announcement last week that the two moves would take place simultaneously. A source on the Board of Peace told Ha'aretz that "as part of a phased, sequential process, the IDF will withdraw beyond the Yellow Line after the decommissioning process has been completed and verified." (Ha'aretz) A senior Israeli spokesman said Monday that a U.S.-backed roadmap for Gaza disarmament "does not reflect Israel's positions," and "stands in direct contrast to the current reality." Another Israeli official said Monday that "Israel will not withdraw from the current line in Gaza, and will continue to eliminate any threats to our citizens and our soldiers." (Times of Israel) IDF airstrikes on Hamas commanders continued in Gaza on Sunday despite reports that a proposed agreement with Hamas could require a halt to Israeli strikes, as Israeli officials reiterated that any military withdrawal would depend on Hamas's complete disarmament. Prime Minister Netanyahu's spokesman Doron Spielman told AP on Sunday that Israel had shared its "serious security concerns" about the proposed agreement with the White House. Spielman said Israeli intelligence assessments indicate Hamas remains committed to rebuilding its military capabilities rather than disarming. "Our assessment is that if we redeploy before Hamas is truly disarmed, it will quickly expand its presence throughout Gaza, rebuild its terrorist infrastructure, once again threaten Israeli communities, and seek to carry out another Oct. 7-style attack. Disarming means physically giving up the weapons. Nothing less." (Ynet News) On Saturday and Sunday, the IDF announced a series of precision strikes against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Army of Islam operatives, including killing field commanders and Nukhba terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre. All of those targeted were actively advancing terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops, and were eliminated to remove imminent threats. Even as diplomatic efforts continue, Jerusalem maintains that it cannot relinquish its right - or its obligation - to act against terrorists actively plotting attacks. Senior White House and Board of Peace officials argue that the roadmap is not built on trust but on verification. Every phase is conditional upon independent confirmation that the previous phase has been completed. In other words, Washington is not asking Israel to trust Hamas. It is asking Israel to trust the verification mechanism that it is constructing. That does not mean Washington opposes Israeli military operations. The officials stressed that the roadmap's ultimate objective is to ensure Gaza can never again serve as a launching pad for attacks against Israel. From Israel's standpoint, there is little indication that military planners would suspend targeted operations against active terrorists simply to protect the diplomatic process. As long as threats remain, Israel's military will continue acting against them. (Jerusalem Post) The IDF on Monday said it had eliminated Mahmoud Fatair, a Nukhba commander in Palestinian Islamic Jihad who participated in the Oct. 7 attack and helped hold Rom Braslavski hostage. (Ynet News) See also Ex-Hostage Lauds Captor's Death Former hostage Rom Braslavski hailed the IDF's recent killing of Mahmoud Fatair, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who held him while in captivity. Braslavski, who learned Arabic during his two years in Gaza, says in an Arabic-language video message: "Yes, you were criminals, and yes, I was weak while with you, and you did whatever you wanted. But now, you are being killed one after the other, and not even one will be left of you. Whoever works for Islamic Jihad, Hamas, or any terror group will die, one by one." (Times of Israel) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran Dr. Dan Diker, President of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), told NewsNation on Monday: "[We are seeing] a continuation of Iranian regime deception warfare....For the Iranian regime itself, diplomacy is an act of war. It is not the pathway to peace. That's the way they operate. That is their DNA." "The Iranian regime is trying to corner Israel by creating a frontal, head-on, fatal collision between Washington and Jerusalem....We have a very strong empirical record about dealing with the Islamic Republic. They want to tie up President Trump and the administration in knots while cornering Israel as being the bad guy here. That's their strategy. Iran-watchers have been seeing this for decades." "You can't bring an apocalyptic, messianic, jihadistic regime to a table because, for them, every day they survive is a victory for them. In the Middle East, if you negotiate before you defeat your enemy, you are considered a loser." "Ultimately, the bottom line here is: regime change is the only way to guarantee stability, security, peace and prosperity for the Middle East and safety for the United States, because the Iranian republic will use nuclear weapons against the United States if they get them." "The Trump Administration together with the Israel Defense Forces successfully prevented an acute acquisition by the Iranian regime of nuclear weapons. This was done back in February 2026. That was the strategic goal and they succeeded in that goal in preventing what was an imminent acquisition and even usage of nuclear weapons, as was confirmed by the Iranian foreign minister." (NewsNation) The Iranian press reframed the decision by President Trump to halt a planned strike against Iran as an American surrender. However, Trump's announcement did not constitute a surrender or an end to the war. The American president emphasized that the military remained ready to act and that the suspension of the strike was contingent upon reaching a rapid agreement that must include the immediate and complete reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the elimination of Iran's nuclear threat. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) The approach currently favored in Washington and most Gulf capitals is to weaken the Iranian regime through economic means. A senior regional diplomatic official told Israel Hayom that all sides are currently playing for time. The Iranians expect further U.S. concessions because of the partial obstruction of the Strait of Hormuz. The Americans are trying to prevent oil prices from rising before the November midterm elections. The Gulf states want to avert attacks on their strategic facilities until a path has been mapped out for removing the Iranian threat. "The current Iranian regime cannot be allowed to remain in place while retaining a threatening military force. The only disagreement is over how to get there, and on what timetable," the official claimed. He said that Israel was providing logistical and intelligence support "behind the scenes." Despite denials from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials, contacts between the U.S. and Iran are continuing, both through intermediaries such as Pakistan and through direct communication between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff. Inside Iran, severe shortages of natural gas for power plants and fuel for transportation are worsening. The authorities have been forced to impose power outages and ration fuel. (Israel Hayom) What do Iranians think about the conflict and the current state of their country after nearly half a year of war? A new internet-based survey conducted by GAMAAN, a Netherlands-based polling group, focused on assessing attitudes within Iran. One surprising revelation is that the January 2026 protests against the Islamic Republic were far broader in scope than has been commonly understood in the West. Of the 31,000 respondents surveyed by GAMAAN using VPN and other circumvention technology, a quarter "reported having participated in the January 2026 street protests," corresponding "to an estimated 14 million literate people aged 15 and above" taking part in Iran's latest opposition wave. That helps explain the extreme lengths to which the Iranian regime went to put down the protests. "About 40% viewed the U.S. and Israeli military operation as a form of 'humanitarian intervention.'" That figure is a reflection of the fact that ordinary Iranians understand full well that they are captives of the Islamic Republic, and continue to hold out hope that the West will somehow free them. President Trump garners 44% approval, while Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu gets 51%. That suggests a generally benign view of American and Israeli intentions. The survey results underscore that the potential for meaningful political change within Iran persists, despite the country's new military-dominated order. The writer is senior vice president at the American Foreign Policy Council. (National Interest) Gaza Last week, President Trump announced that the Board of Peace, set up by the White House last year, had secured Hamas's agreement to a "roadmap" for its "complete disarmament." Within hours, Hamas negotiator Ghazi Hamad told the Wall Street Journal, "We didn't say disarmament, we didn't say handing over the weapons." Western powers continue to misunderstand Hamas. They treat it as a stack of rifles with a political office attached. But it's far more than an armed force. It ruled Gaza for almost two decades and infested its civil machinery. It shaped schooling through the education bureaucracy. The health sector operated under its government, while Hamas-run courts enforced its authority. Municipal employees and emergency committees kept its presence visible. Collecting the weapons leaves Hamas's human infrastructure in place. Hamas has sought to carry over 40,000 civil servants and security personnel into the new technocratic order. Roughly 10,000 belong to the Hamas-run police. A new nameplate on a ministry changes little if the same officials control salaries and local permits, with loyal policemen on the streets. Hamas can surrender the administrative title while retaining its governance networks. Verification of Hamas's surrendering of weapons is going to be nigh-on impossible. No audited inventory exists for an arsenal dispersed across ruins and private buildings. Inspectors must prove the absence of hidden rifles and explosives across a dense urban landscape designed to frustrate surveillance. Hamas can hand over expendable weapons and reveal tunnels Israel already knows about, while continuing to conceal those Israel is unaware of. The Board of Peace's roadmap offers Hamas an opportunity. Surrender enough metal to secure Israeli withdrawal, then protect the organization embedded within Gaza's new administration. Rearmament can wait until scrutiny fades. If its weapons are left inside Gaza, they will be waiting, too. The writer, a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, served for 16 years in the British Army. (Spiked-UK) The International Stabilization Force for Gaza is supposed to support demilitarization, assist vetted Palestinian police, secure humanitarian aid, and eventually help enable further Israeli withdrawals based on verified progress. Yet the central question remains unanswered: Who will compel Hamas to disarm, and what will happen when it refuses? Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2007. For nearly two decades, it has prevented meaningful political alternatives from developing and crushed potential challengers. There is no reason to assume that, after retaining its coercive power through a devastating war, it will voluntarily allow a technocratic committee or a new police force to take away its real authority. Hamas will seek to retain what truly determines who rules: weapons, tunnels, operatives, intelligence networks, intimidation and the ability to veto decisions by force. Transferring civilian responsibility is not necessarily a transfer of power. It may simply improve the Hamas model as it continues to rule from behind the scenes. After the 2014 Gaza war, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the UN established the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism to facilitate rebuilding while tracking construction materials and preventing dual-use supplies from reaching Hamas. As head of the Operations Branch of COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) at the time, I dealt with this mechanism daily. I saw how Hamas learned to exploit it. Needs were inflated during data entry and approval, allowing quantities greater than those actually required to be authorized. High-quality materials entering from Israel were diverted to the black market and terrorist infrastructure. International organizations produced databases, tables and monitoring procedures. Hamas produced a different reality. The mechanism functioned administratively but failed to achieve its security purpose. The experience of UNIFIL in Southern Lebanon provides an additional warning. On paper, the UN force was supposed to help create an area free of weapons and armed forces other than those of the Lebanese state. In practice, Hizbullah spent years building military infrastructure within UNIFIL's area of operations and, in some cases, close to its positions. Will contributing countries risk their soldiers to dismantle Hamas's military power? Or will they report a "temporary difficulty" and refer the matter to a coordination mechanism? If so, this will not be a demilitarization force. It will become a Hamas-preservation force. A stabilization force can be useful only if it enters Gaza to dismantle Hamas's military power, not to learn how to live alongside it. The writer, founder and commander of "Operation Good Neighbor" on the Syrian border, has served in the Israel Defense Forces for more than 30 years. (JNS) Hamas disarming? It's about as convincing as a crocodile going vegan. In an interview with Al Jazeera earlier this year, senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said, "Not for a single moment did we talk about the surrender of weapons, or any formula about destroying, surrendering, or disarmament." This is a group that from its very inception has been committed to the butchery of all Jews in the region and the establishment of an Islamist caliphate. These are the people who embarked upon the most depraved display of savagery in recent history. Yet now, in a deal mediated by Qatar and Turkey, the two main sponsors of Hamas, this group of death cultists has apparently agreed to throw in the towel. (Telegraph-UK) Dr. Dan Diker, President of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), was asked on Newsmax on Thursday: Q: We just heard of this disarmament agreement between Turkey, Qatar and Egypt with Hamas. What do you make of it? Diker: "Isn't it an irony that this breaking news happens with Hamas and the three mediators who are also involved on the Iranian file, the day that President Trump ordered massive counterstrikes against the Iranian regime? The Iranian regime is the most cunning, sophisticated, evil regime on the face of the earth and they are behind this Hamas move." "They are trying to distract the world's attention away from the Strait [of Hormuz] which they have closed, and they are trying to put massive pressure on Israel by the Board of Peace in order to force an Israeli pullback, which will never happen until Hamas is disarmed, and Hamas will never disarm voluntarily." (Newsmax) U.S.-Israel Relations On August 1, 2026, the Washington Post reported that Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the head of U.S. European Command, had warned the Pentagon that he lacked enough naval forces to keep defending Israel against ballistic missiles. He said that without another Aegis-equipped destroyer, he might eventually have to choose between defending Israel and defending the American "homeland." This followed a May Post report titled "U.S. Bears Brunt of Israel's Missile Defense, Pentagon Assessments Show." It said the U.S. had consumed a substantial share of its most advanced interceptors while defending Israel from Iran - more, he said, than Israel itself had expended. Omitted from the report was that American missile-defense systems in and around Israel were not protecting only Israeli civilians and military installations. They were also protecting American aircraft, crews, fuel, munitions, communications nodes, and support personnel operating from or through Israeli bases during the campaign against Iran. The dozens of KC-46 and KC-135 refueling tankers at Ben-Gurion airport and Uvda and Ramon airbases, together with their crews and fuel infrastructure, enabled American combat aircraft to reach Iranian targets and return. Any Iranian ballistic-missile attack on the Israeli airfields supporting those operations threatened American combat power directly. The U.S. was defending a joint military operation, including exposed U.S. assets. The writer, a former AIPAC official and Israeli diplomat, is a research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. (Substack) Israel and the West Opposite UN headquarters in New York is a large wall inscribed with the words: "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." That vision of peace came from the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,700 years ago, and captured the essence of the Jewish quest for peace over millennia. Israel's Declaration of Independence included: "We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness," reflecting Hebrew Psalm 34, written more than two millennia ago. But Israel's outstretched hand was rejected. The result was a war of annihilation launched by five Arab armies, the first of several wars. Israelis need no sanctimonious lectures from afar about the virtues of peace. They understood those virtues better than most. What they needed were genuine peace partners. To achieve peace in 1979, Prime Minister Menachem Begin agreed to a full withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, three times the size of Israel itself, and from the strategic depth it represented. Yitzhak Rabin agreed to more Israeli concessions with Jordan for a peace treaty in 1994. In 2020, Israel chose a normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates over partial annexation of the disputed West Bank. In addition, the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 could have led to peaceful coexistence, but was used by Hamas to create a new launching pad for its war to the death with the Jewish state. Anyone visiting Israel and speaking with people would be hard-pressed to find an Israeli who welcomes decades of army reserve duty, rejoices as their children enter life-and-death military service, looks forward to 3 a.m. dashes to bomb shelters while carrying toddlers or helping elderly relatives, or relaxes on a bus while wondering whether a nearby package contains groceries or nail bombs. The writer is executive vice chair of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). (Telegraph-UK) Whatever the extremists of Hamas intended to achieve through their attack on Israel, their actions appear to have strengthened the country's core and brought out a collective national spirit that was tangible to me as I traveled through the country. After attending a conference in Haifa, I was struck by the changing nature of Israeli Arab employment and the growing involvement of Arab citizens in key sectors of the Israeli economy. At the University of Haifa, I was particularly struck by the number of young Israeli Arab women studying on campus. I could hear Arabic being spoken all around me. Consider Israel's healthcare system. One in four doctors in Israel is Arab. Just over one in four dentists is Arab, as is just over one in four nurses. Almost one in every two pharmacists in Israel is Arab. These are highly specialized professions requiring years of education, training and accreditation. Moreover, Israel has suffered thousands of casualties since the Oct. 7 attack and many of those injured were treated by Arab doctors and nurses. The blanket term of "apartheid" in Israel against its Arab population simply does not stack up when compared to what happened in South Africa. There are social disparities - but Israeli Arabs are part and parcel of Israel's future. That is patently obvious to any social observer. Israel's critics overlook the countless interactions that take place between Arab and Jewish citizens every day. They remind us that reality is far more complicated than the slogans through which Israel is so often discussed in Britain. The writer, founder of Muslims Against Antisemitism, was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2009 for his work on social cohesion and preventing extremism. (Telegraph-UK) Observations: The AI Revolution in Warfare - Maj.-Gen. (res.) Saar Tzur (Jerusalem Post)
The writer led the IDF Northern Command in the war that began on Oct. 7. |
|