English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For August 31/2024
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
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Bible Quotations For today
Parable Of The The Widow & The judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people
Luke 18/01-08: “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.” ’And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’”.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 30-31/2024
Israeli military says it killed local Hamas commander in West Bank
Blinken promised Israel US support for preemptive strike on Hezbollah - NYT
Israel’s Defense Minister Calls for ‘Expanding Goals of War’ in Lebanon
Lebanon joins Saudi Arabia’s Middle East Green Initiative
Israeli army stages defense drill near Lebanon's border
Gallant suggests 'expanding war goals' in north but still urges deal
Hezbollah-Israel border clashes: Latest developments
South Lebanon: Intermittent Fire Exchange
Death toll from Israeli airstrike on Wadi al-Kfour, south Lebanon, rises to eleven
Israeli warplanes target southern Lebanese villages, causing damage
Fadlallah says Israel hasn't shown any pic to prove Glilot not hit
Report: 6 Hezbollah drones hit target in Glilot last Sunday successfully
Report: Presidential quintet expected to resume its efforts soon
Borrell pledges increased support for Lebanese army next year
EU and UNFPA continue supporting vulnerable women and girls in Lebanon
Lebanon's MP Makhzoumi receives Belgian Ambassador: Urges the need to end war in south Lebanon
Saudi Ambassador visits Lebanon's former President Suleiman to discuss current developments
August 30: The Fate of the Disappeared/Michael Al Andary/This Is Beirut/August 30/2024
No Plans to Save the School Year in the South/Samar Yamout/This Is Beirut/August 30/2024
Question: “How can I know if I am hearing God, hearing Satan, or hearing my own thoughts?/GotQuestions.org/August 30/2024

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 30-31/2024
Israeli Military Says Killed Local Hamas Commander in West Bank
Israeli army announces conclusion of month-long operation in southern and central Gaza
Israel hits convoy to hospital in Gaza, says it hit gunmen who seized car
President of the UAE allocates vaccines, funding for polio vaccination drive in Gaza
UN’s Gaza polio vaccinations will rely on pauses in fighting
Jordanian, Iranian foreign ministers discuss Gaza and West Bank crises
Iran Does Not Want War
Britain 'Deeply Concerned' by Israel's Operation in West Bank
US imposes visa restrictions on Syrian officials, South Sudan individuals
Britain Places Travel Ban on Two Men Under Counter-Terrorism Sanctions
Israeli FM Accuses ‘Octopus’ Khamenei of Smuggling Weapons into West Bank via Jordan
Aid Group Says Israel Hit Convoy to Hospital in Gaza. Israel Says it Hit Gunmen Who Seized the Car
Iranian Documentary Shows Soleimani Touring Saddam Hussein’s Palace
Salvage of stricken oil tanker in Red Sea expected in coming days, say sources
Power, Politics, and Social Media: The Battle for Influence in a Digital World
Pope Francis says Earth is ‘sick’ in new climate change warning

Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on August 30-31/2024
What Is Zionism and Is It Fueling the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict?/Dave Roos/HowStuffWorks/August 30, 2024
Germany Vows 'Knife Control' After ISIS Refugee Slashes Throats at Diversity Festival/Daniel Greenfield/Gatestone Institute./August 30, 2024
If I Had Known!/Hanna Saleh/Asharq Al Awsat/August 30/2024
US Elections: The Collectivist Option/Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/August 30/2024
US withdrawal from Iraq isn’t as simple as it looks/Luke Coffey/Arab News/August 30, 2024
Why US-led Gaza truce talks are doomed to fail/Daoud Kuttab/Arab News/August 30, 2024
Deterring Iran’s Dash to the Bomb/Defence Of Democracy FDD/Orde Kittrie, Bradley Bowman, Behnam Ben Taleblu/August 30/2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 30-31/2024
Israeli military says it killed local Hamas commander in West Bank
Reuters/August 30, 2024
JERUSALEM: Israeli forces killed a local commander of the militant group Hamas in the flashpoint city of Jenin on Friday as they pressed a major operation in the occupied West Bank for a third day, the Israeli military said. The military said Border Police forces had killed Wassem Hazem, who it said was the head of Hamas in Jenin and was involved in shooting and bombing attacks in the Palestinian territory. Two other Hamas gunmen who tried to escape the car they were all traveling in were killed by a drone, it said. Weapons, explosives and large sums of cash were found in the vehicle, it said. There was no immediate comment from Hamas. In the village of Zababdeh, just outside Jenin, a burnt-out car riddled with bullet holes stood against a wall where the driver crashed the vehicle after being pursued by an Israeli special forces unit, residents said. Villager Saif Ghannam, 25, said one of the two other men who escaped from the vehicle was killed just outside his house by a small drone strike that shattered the windows, while a second man was killed a short distance away. Ghannam said Israeli forces had removed the bodies but large pools of blood lay on the ground where he said the men were killed. The incident occurred as Israeli forces kept up a large-scale operation involving hundreds of troops and police that was launched in the early hours of Wednesday morning in Jenin and Tulkarm, another volatile city in the northern West Bank, as well as the Jordan Valley. Israeli armored personnel carriers backed by helicopters and drones pushed into Jenin and Tulkarm on Friday while armored bulldozers plowed up roads to destroy roadside bombs planted by the militant groups. The escalation in hostilities in the West Bank takes place as fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants still rages in the Gaza Strip nearly 11 months since it began, and clashes with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in the Israel-Lebanon border area have intensified. In the first two days of the West Bank operation, at least 17 Palestinians were killed, including the local commander of the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad forces in Tulkarm.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel last October that triggered the Gaza war, more than 660 Palestinians — combatants and civilians — have been killed in the West Bank, according to Palestinian tallies, some by Israeli troops and some by Jewish settlers who have carried out frequent attacks on West Bank Palestinian communities. Israel says Iran provides weapons and support to militant factions in the West Bank — under Israeli occupation since the 1967 Middle East war — and the military has as a result cranked up its operations there. The British government said on Friday it was “deeply concerned” by Israel’s operation in the West Bank and said there was an urgent need for de-escalation. “We recognize Israel’s need to defend itself against security threats, but we are deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed and by reports of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure,” a Foreign Office statement said.

Blinken promised Israel US support for preemptive strike on Hezbollah - NYT
Jerusalem Post/August 30/2024
Blinken also affirmed that if the IDF would indeed launch such a strike, Israel should not use it to broaden its attack on the terror group. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised Israel the US would support an IDF preemptive strike on Hezbollah forces or equipment in Lebanon used for an immediate attack on the Jewish State, according to the New York Times on Thursday, citing an anonymous senior US official. Blinken also affirmed that if the IDF would indeed launch such a strike, Israel should not use it to broaden its attack on the terror group, the official added. Blinken's promise reportedly came during his visit to Israel and the region earlier in August as part of the US push to achieve a hostage deal and in an attempt to quell tensions in the area. Earlier this week, following intelligence information indicating Hezbollah was set to launch aerial threats on vast areas of Israel, including Tel Aviv and central Israel, the IDF struck preemptively Hezbollah targets.  Israel's preemptive strike . The IDF conducted some 100 strikes simultaneously, targeting Hezbollah rocket launchers ready to be fired at Israel, with IDF Spokesperson R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari later noting that out of the targets struck, 90% "were short-range rockets directed at Israel's North." Hezbollah claimed it fired 320 rockets at Israel's North, targeting northern localities such as Safed and Acre, among other places. The terror group said it had carried out the attack in response to the July killing of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut.
Yonah Jeremy Bob, Mathilda Heller, Tovah Lazaroff and Reuters contributed to this report.

Israel’s Defense Minister Calls for ‘Expanding Goals of War’ in Lebanon
Beirut: Asharq Al Awsat/August 30/2024
Israel's defense minister on Thursday called for the expansion of the stated goals of the war in Gaza to include enabling residents to return to communities in northern Israel that have been evacuated due to attacks by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. "Our mission on the northern front is clear - to ensure the safe return of northern communities to their homes. In order to achieve this goal, we must expand the goals of the war, and include the safe return of Israel’s northern residents to their homes," said Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in a statement from his office. Hamas' Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza. Hezbollah opened a second front against Israel a day later and fighting across the Israel-Lebanon border has since escalated, threatening to ignite a regional conflict. Many border towns in northern Israel were evacuated and residents have yet to return. Gallant, at a meeting with top military officials, reviewed Israel's achievements so far in Gaza, where its aim is to topple the group Hamas and return Israeli hostages. He said he would bring the proposal to include the goal of returning residents to northern Israel to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the cabinet.
On the ground, Israeli strikes razed an entire residential neighborhood in the Lebanese border town of Kfar Kila. Lebanese media said Israeli jets carried out four simultaneous strikes on Kfar Kila, destroying several homes and shops. "The attacks destroyed an entire neighborhood adjacent to the border wall" with the Israeli Metula settlement, they added.
No casualties or injuries were reported.
Since the beginning of the week, Israel has been carrying out its most intense raids on border areas since the eruption of the conflict. It said the attacks were preempting Hezbollah’s retaliation to Israel’s assassination of one of its top military commanders in Beirut’s southern suburbs in July. Hezbollah, meanwhile, launched five operations against Israeli military positions. One attack, carried out by drones, targeted the 210th Golan Division in the Nafah barracks, said a statement from the party. Israeli media reported fires in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as a result of the drone attack. No one was injured and no damage was reported. Hezbollah added that its attacks targeted Israeli soldiers deployed near the Kfar Yuval settlement, the Dovev barracks and Tallet al-Tayhat. David Azoulai, head of the Metula Council, told Israeli media that over 40 percent of houses have been damaged in the conflict with Hezbollah. He vowed that the homes will be renovated and repaired, "but we won’t be able to renovate society." He believed that some 20 percent of the residents won’t return, "but that depends on how the situation will be resolved." If Hezbollah is dealt a strong strike, then I believe much more will return, he remarked, noting that the for the first time in 128 years, schools will not open in Metula this academic year given the unrest.

Lebanon joins Saudi Arabia’s Middle East Green Initiative
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/August 30, 2024
BEIRUT: Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati confirmed on Friday that “Lebanon has joined the Green Middle East Initiative, launched by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.”Mikati described the step as “essential for Lebanon, especially as southern villages and towns have suffered significant environmental and agricultural damage, necessitating cooperation with all of Lebanon’s friends.” Mikati told Agriculture Minister Abbas Al-Hajj Hassan, and Environment Minister Nasser Yassin about the country’s inclusion in the initiative, and Hassan said: “Israel is destroying large areas, whether agricultural lands, fruit-bearing trees, or forests.
“Approving Lebanon’s participation in the initiative is a very positive sign for us Lebanese, the government, and especially for the Agriculture and Environment Ministries.
“The timing of today’s announcement comes amid the ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon. We thank the Kingdom for its efforts, as it has always stood by Lebanon in the toughest of times.”Yassin said that one of the initiative’s goals was “to plant 40 billion trees across the Middle East.”He added: “A key part of Saudi Arabia’s initiative is to protect the region, the Gulf, and Middle Eastern countries from ongoing climate change; halt land degradation and desertification; and explore ways to adapt more effectively to potential future changes.”
Yassin thanked “Saudi Arabia for agreeing to consider Lebanon’s file and for its inclusion in this very important initiative.”He said: “This is part of the continuous and long-standing cooperation with Saudi Arabia over the decades. This initiative is timely and will be followed up by the Ministries of Agriculture and Environment and all concerned parties through joint reserves to increase vegetation cover.”
The cost of the damage to southern Lebanese border towns during the first six months of Israeli attacks has exceeded $1.5 billion, according to government figures.
The shelling and airstrikes have damaged the livelihoods of residents in the border area and their agricultural holdings. Satellite images show the destruction of entire neighborhoods in villages along the Blue Line and the disappearance of forested areas covering mountain slopes and valleys. Israeli attacks have displaced more than 110,000 people from dozens of villages. Lebanese authorities have accused Israel of using phosphorus bombs to destroy forests and crops, while the Ministry of Agriculture has been unable to conduct a final assessment of the extent of the damage due to the ongoing Israeli operation.
The Ministry of Agriculture said in July: “The Israeli bombardment with white phosphorus (has) led to 700 small and large fires. More than 2,500 dunams (617 acres) of land have been completely burned, and the area of affected land consisting of forest and agricultural lands has reached 6,000 dunams (1,482 acres), with the targeted trees being olive, pine and oak. “The damage to forested areas home to oak, Mount Tabor oak and laurel trees amounts to 55 percent, agricultural and citrus trees to 35 percent, and grasslands to 10 percent.”Lebanese authorities are waiting for a ceasefire to conduct a final survey of the damage, but compensation is uncertain in a country that has been affected by a severe economic crisis for nearly five years. Israeli raids on border villages continued on Friday, including valleys and forested areas, causing extensive damage. The Israeli military fired flares over border villages near the Blue Line in the western and central sectors, reaching the outskirts of the city of Tyre. It also dropped incendiary bombs on the outskirts of the towns of Naqoura and Alma Al-Shaab. The Israelis claimed that its warplanes “targeted several Hezbollah rocket launchers in southern Lebanon.”

Israeli army stages defense drill near Lebanon's border
Naharnet/August 30, 2024
This week (Monday) the forces of the Israeli army’s Formation 91 in the eastern Galilee, near Lebanon, practiced defense scenarios and the transition from routine to emergency, the Israeli army said on Friday. “The exercise took place in cooperation with police forces, the settlement defense departments, MDA (the Magen David Adom national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance and blood bank service) and other security forces,” the army added.“The exercise was designed to improve the competence and readiness of the fighting forces and commanders and to practice the abilities of using gunfire; making operational decisions on the field; treating and evacuating the wounded; and strengthening cooperation between the various bodies,” the Israeli army said.

Gallant suggests 'expanding war goals' in north but still urges deal
Naharnet/August 30, 2024
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has presented the security cabinet with a document strongly advocating for a hostage-ceasefire deal and an addition to the war goals: the return of evacuees to their homes in northern Israel. "Over the past 11 months, we have faced attacks from seven different fronts and responded effectively. In Gaza, we have defeated most of Hamas' brigades and battalions, including their military leader, Mohammad Deif, along with numerous other terrorists," Gallant noted, according to Israeli reports. "The IDF's (Israeli army’s) military success in the Gaza Strip has enabled the return of many residents to their homes in the Gaza border communities. It has also created favorable conditions for the return of a significant number of abductees and is paving the way for the release of additional hostages," he continued. Since Wednesday, Israel's negotiations team -- comprising representatives from the Mossad, the Israeli army and internal security agency Shin Bet -- has been in Doha for talks on the hostage-ceasefire deal. "Currently, we are also engaged in conflicts with other forces, including Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. A month ago, the IDF (Israeli army) eliminated Hezbollah's Chief of Staff, al-Hajj Mohsin (Fouad Shukur). Earlier this week, we neutralized a significant threat of a major attack against residents in the north and center," Gallant added, referring to Israel’s claims that it thwarted Hezbollah’s retaliatory attack over Shukur’s assassination, allegations that the Lebanese group has dismissed.
Gallant also emphasized the urgency of returning evacuated residents to their homes on Israel's northern borders. According to the Israeli parliament’s Research and Information Center, approximately 68,500 Israelis remain evacuated. "Our mission on the northern front is clear: to ensure the safe return of northern residents to their homes. Achieving this objective requires broadening our war goals to include the secure return of these residents," Gallant said. "This adjustment will not diminish our unwavering commitment to eradicating Hamas and securing the return of abductees. Once formulated, we will present this proposal to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet," Gallant added. The Prime Minister's Office issued a statement shortly afterward, noting that the goal "goes without saying," and that "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already stated this many times in recent months."Gallant’s document also presents Israel as standing at a “strategic crossroads.”If Israel accepts and can finalize a ceasefire-hostage deal, this will not only achieve the return of the hostages but also enable a diplomatic arrangement to calm hostilities with Hezbollah across the northern border and prevent regional war, the document says. A deal would also increase the likelihood that Iran would shelve plans to avenge the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month, it adds. By contrast, Gallant’s document reportedly warns that if Israel does not move to strike a deal, it would be leaving the hostages in captivity and would face the danger of an “imminent deterioration into a multi-front war.”

Hezbollah-Israel border clashes: Latest developments
Naharnet/August 30, 2024
Israeli warplanes raided overnight into Friday the outskirts of Tayrharfa, Yaroun, Zebqine, al-Naqoura and Wadi Hamoul in south Lebanon. The Israeli army also shelled with flare and incendiary bombs villages along the border, including al-Naqoura and Alma al-Shaab. Hezbollah for its part targeted the Bayyad Blida post overnight and Menara and Metula on Thursday evening. Hezbollah has been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas’ surprise attack into Israel on Oct. 7. More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes since Oct. 8, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and other armed groups but also more than 100 civilians. In northern Israel, 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the tense border.

South Lebanon: Intermittent Fire Exchange
This Is Beirut/August 30, 2024
Intermittent exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli army continued throughout the day in southern Lebanon on Friday. Late in the day, Israeli aircraft launched air strikes on the outskirts of the village of Zebqine in the western sector. A drone then targeted the same area, and artillery bombarded the plains of Marjayoun and Kfar Kila. The town of Yaroun was also struck by a guided missile. In the evening, Israeli warplanes attacked the village of Tayr Harfa. At dawn, Israeli warplanes had carried out a series of raids on the outskirts of the villages of Zebqine, Naqoura and Wadi Hamoul in the western sector, causing extensive damage to property, crops and surrounding forests. The Israeli army also fired several mortar shells at the outskirts of the town of Aita al-Shaab. The outskirts of the villages of Naqoura and Alma al-Shaab were the target of Israeli artillery fire.
The Israeli army’s Arabic-speaking spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, stated on X that “readiness on the northern front has been stepped up; the Galilee Division (91) carried out a joint maneuver with police forces and other security agencies.” For its part, in a series of communiqués, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for strikes on the Zabdin barracks and on deployments of Israeli soldiers in Horsh Baram and Metula.

Death toll from Israeli airstrike on Wadi al-Kfour, south Lebanon, rises to eleven
LBCI/August 30, 2024
The Public Health Emergency Operations Center of the Ministry of Public Health announced the death of one of the wounded from the Israeli airstrike that targeted the Wadi al-Kfour area in Nabatieh on the morning of August 17. The death toll from the Israeli airstrike has risen to eleven.

Israeli warplanes target southern Lebanese villages, causing damage
LBCI/August 30, 2024
Israeli warplanes launched a series of airstrikes at dawn Friday on the outskirts of several villages in southern Lebanon, causing extensive damage to property, crops, and surrounding woodlands. The strikes targeted the villages of Zibqin, Naqoura, and Hamoul Valley in the western sector. Moreover, reconnaissance and drone aircraft flew over Tyre district and the coastal area throughout the morning. Overnight, the Israeli army fired flares over border villages adjacent to the Blue Line in the western and central sectors, reaching the outskirts of Tyre. Additionally, incendiary bombs were dropped on the outskirts of Naqoura and Aalma El Chaeb.

Fadlallah says Israel hasn't shown any pic to prove Glilot not hit
Naharnet/August 30, 2024
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah on Friday said that Israel “thought that it targeted key weapons with a harsh and painful strike before realizing that it bombed its shadow.” Fadlallah was referring to Israel’s claim that it waged a preemptive strike to foil Hezbollah’s retaliation to Fouad Shukur’s killing, an allegation that was dismissed by Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who said that Israel staged its airstrikes half an hour before his group launched over 300 rockets and several drones into Israel. “The enemy’s prime minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu retracted his remarks and said that they bombed short-range rockets, because they found out that they had fallen into a trap and deception practiced against them by the resistance,” Fadlallah said. “They believed that they had information and the resistance, one way or another, carried out measures that foiled what they called a preemptive strike,” the MP added. “When the enemy wants to refute something, it brings journalists and publishes pictures, except for this strike (on the Glilot intelligence base near Tel Aviv), when it took measures and prevented any camera from entering a certain diameter. To date, it has not published any picture, even taken from afar, for the facilities to prove that they have not been targeted,” Fadlallah went on to say. He added: “According to the resistance’s verified information, a number of its drones accurately reached the selected targets … and the enemy kept that under wraps because it does not want to acknowledge the resistance’s achievement and because it is incapable of targeting Lebanon with a broad war.”“It remained mum to suggest that nothing has happened and to avoid being asked for responses by its society,” Fadlallah said.

Report: 6 Hezbollah drones hit target in Glilot last Sunday successfully
Naharnet/August 30, 2024
Hezbollah's retaliation to the killing of one of its top commanders Fouad Shukur was successful, sources told pro-Hezbollah al-Mayadeen news channel and al-Akhbar newspaper. The sources told al-Mayadeen, in remarks published late Thursday, that Hezbollah has succeeded in the targeting of an intelligence base just outside Tel Aviv last Sunday. At least six drones launched by Hezbollah reached their target in Glilot near Tel Aviv, around 110 kilometers from Lebanon's border, al-Mayadeen and al-Akhbar said, based on information they received from "trusted sources inside occupied Palestine".
Hezbollah had claimed an attack on Israel that targeted on Sunday morning the Glilot intelligence base and an air defense base in the heart of Israel. Israel said its intelligence base wasn’t hit and that an initial assessment showed "very little damage" in Israel. Al-Mayadeen and al-Akhbar said that, according to the sources, authorities in Israel prevented civilians and journalists from reaching the area, enforcing a media blackout. Hezbollah had called the attack an initial response to the targeted killing of Shukur in Beirut last month. Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the group would "reserve the right to respond at a later time" if the results of Sunday’s attack aren’t sufficient.

Report: Presidential quintet expected to resume its efforts soon
Naharnet/August 30, 2024
The five-nation committee for Lebanon is expected to resume its efforts soon regarding the country’s presidential election file, media reports said on Friday. The quintet comprises representatives of the U.S., France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt. Following talks with Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan on Thursday, Egyptian Ambassador to Lebanon Alaa Moussa had announced that “the coming period will witness more positive efforts regarding the presidential file,” calling on the Lebanese parties to “cooperate with this endeavor because the matter has become pressing.”“Hopefully in the coming period we will find a way to restart dialogue and discuss the details in order to reach a tangible result as to the election of a new president,” Moussa added. “We discussed the importance of giving a new momentum to the presidential file,” the ambassador went on to say, noting that swiftness is required “because the coming challenges for Lebanon and for the entire region will be big.”“Lebanon should address its domestic file to be able to face these challenges,” Moussa added.

UN peacekeeper chief warns of risk of an 'unintended' Israel-Hezbollah escalation
Agence France Presse/August 30, 2024
A broader regional war in the Middle East where conflict already rages between Hamas and Israel remains a "significant risk," the head of the U.N. peacekeeping force warned Friday. Speaking to reporters in Brussels, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix warned against making assumptions about how regional actors will behave. "The perception could exist that there are certain rules that neither parties want to trespass and therefore that we are in a situation that is more stable than one could think," Lacroix said on the sidelines of an EU defense ministers' meeting.
"There is still a very significant risk of escalation at the regional level," he said, adding: "We are still very much in a very, very dangerous type of situation."Tensions have risen since the October start of Israel's war in Gaza, with Hezbollah supporting the Palestinian armed group Hamas with operations in southern Lebanon, including daily exchanges of fire with Israeli troops. Hundreds of Hezbollah fighters have been killed in cross-border fighting, while around 100,000 people on both sides of the border have been displaced. Lacroix warned of the risk of an "unintended" escalation or a "misunderstanding.""One of the risks, in particular in southern Lebanon, is both parties not exactly understanding where the other is in terms of calculus," he said. On Sunday, Hezbollah carried out a major drone and rocket attack against Israel, in retaliation for the death of one of its military leaders, Fouad Shukur, killed in an Israeli strike near Beirut on July 30. In response, Israel launched air strikes into Lebanon the same day. Amid escalating tensions, the U.N. Security Council extended the mandate of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon -- numbering around 10,000 -- for a year. The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of Israelis. Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,602 people in Gaza. Israel this week also pressed a large-scale military operation in the occupied West Bank, despite U.N. concerns it is "fueling an already explosive situation."

Borrell pledges increased support for Lebanese army next year
LBCI/August 30, 2024
High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell has affirmed the EU's continued support for the Lebanese army, announcing plans to provide additional assistance in the coming year.

EU and UNFPA continue supporting vulnerable women and girls in Lebanon
Naharnet/August 30, 2024
The European Union (EU) is continuing its partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Lebanon to ensure that the most vulnerable women and girls have access to affordable, accessible, and lifesaving sexual and reproductive health services, the EU and the UNFPA said in a joint statement Friday. In partnership with local partners Amel, Salama, Nabaa, and Society for Inclusion and Development in Communities (SIDC), UNFPA is supporting six primary health centers, two dispensaries, and a safe shelter for women and girls across Lebanon to provide integrated gender-based-violence (GBV) prevention and response services while enhancing access to inclusive sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services for 42,420 people in need. "The ongoing partnership with the EU through its Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations has been instrumental in increasing access to key services for women and girls including antenatal care, postnatal care and family planning", said Pamela Di Camillo, UNFPA Lebanon Officer in Charge. "Supporting GBV survivors are interventions that are not really visible but truly lifesaving. It takes time for communities to trust these kinds of services. Thanks to the continuous support of ECHO, UNFPA could build solid services with increased demand."This is also complemented with capacity development to health frontliners and GBV service providers, as well as the provision of dignity kits and essential reproductive health drugs and kits. As Lebanon continues to struggle with multifaceted crises, women and girls remain to be the most vulnerable as they face increased rates of GBV and limited access to SRH services, the statement said. In 2023, Internal Security Forces (ISF) reported a three-fold increase in femicide compared to 2022, and ABAAD reported a 42% increase in sexual abuse of women and girls. Moreover, since October 2023, consequences of armed confrontation in the South, forced 102,523 people to leave their homes to safer areas, affecting an estimated 28,706 women of reproductive age and 8,202 adolescent girls. According to Technical Assistant for ECHO in Lebanon, Branko Golubovic, "for the third consecutive year, ECHO is providing humanitarian funding to UNFPA in Lebanon and its four national partners. This support is aimed at delivering emergency, vital, sustainable, and lifesaving sexual and reproductive healthcare services. Additionally, it includes prevention and response to gender-based violence. This EU-funded intervention aims to reach over 40,000 individuals, most of whom are highly vulnerable Lebanese women and girls who will get access to these much-needed services across Lebanon, but in particular in areas currently affected by the conflict. However, in adherence to humanitarian principles, refugees, migrants, and other vulnerable individuals will also be granted access to these services." UNFPA said it continues to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, and adapt its programs to provide SRH and GBV life-saving services to those in need. Through this project, UNFPA also aims to support internally displaced people in the south and affected areas. "Learning about different birthing options and the role of midwives has made me much more confident about my upcoming delivery amid this turbulent security situation. It’s good to know I have other options in case hospitals are not available while I’m in labor", said 28-year-old mother-to-be Samia, who was forced into displacement from South Lebanon due to cross-border hostilities. "Although the items in the provided dignity kit may seem simple, they are incredibly essential during these difficult times and given our limited resources", said Mira, who was also displaced from her village near the southern border. Over the past three years, almost 104,000 women and girls have benefited from UNFPA and partners’ assistance thanks to EU funding, through GBV-SRH integrated services including peer-to-peer awareness raising, distribution of dignity kits, SRH services, and GBV prevention and response services.

Lebanon's MP Makhzoumi receives Belgian Ambassador: Urges the need to end war in south Lebanon
LBCI/August 30, 2024
MP Fouad Makhzoumi received Belgian Ambassador Arnout Pauwels for a courtesy visit, during which the latest developments in the Lebanese and regional arenas were discussed, in light of recent developments in Gaza and the South. Makhzoumi wrote on X: "During the meeting, I reiterated the need to end the ongoing war in the South, emphasizing the necessity for both parties to implement Resolution 1701 to prevent the expansion of the war into other parts of Lebanon. It is crucial to note that no one wants this war, as its consequences would be dire for our country and its people." He added: "We discussed the presidential election issue, and I emphasized the urgent need to elect a president as soon as possible to restore the state's functioning, revive its institutions, form a government, and implement the reforms that are crucial for rescuing Lebanon from its economic and social crises. Additionally, we discussed ways to strengthen relations between the two countries in various fields."

Saudi Ambassador visits Lebanon's former President Suleiman to discuss current developments
LBCI/August 30, 2024
Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Waleed Bukhari visited former President Michel Suleiman on Friday at his residence in Yarzeh. The meeting covered critical current political developments in Lebanon and the region and several topics of mutual interest. After the meeting, Suleiman commented that it marks a "new momentum toward electing a president and avoiding the pitfalls of international politics and power struggles, preventing Lebanon from being used as a pawn in global games. '' He emphasized that the process starts with electing a head of state and must include serious oversight of Resolution 1701, as restoring the state's presence and economic recovery will be lengthy.

August 30: The Fate of the Disappeared
Michael Al Andary/This Is Beirut/August 30/2024
August 30 of each year marks the International Day of the Disappeared, established to raise awareness about the whereabouts of individuals held in undisclosed locations under harsh conditions without informing their families or legal representatives.
The inspiration for this day was provided by the Latin American Federation of Associations for Relatives of Detained-Disappeared, an NGO established in 1981 in Costa Rica to combat secret imprisonment, forced disappearances, and abductions in various Latin American countries. Engaging in addressing secret imprisonment is a crucial aspect of the work carried out by various global entities and groups focused on human rights advocacy and humanitarian assistance, such as Amnesty International (AI), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The observance of the International Day of the Disappeared serves as a chance to showcase the efforts of these organizations, raise awareness among the general public, and appeal for contributions and support from volunteers.
Among those organizations, the ICRC holds extra benefits thanks to its unique position as an independent, non-governmental entity and its unwavering commitment to impartiality.
In certain situations, the ICRC is the sole organization allowed to visit certain prisoners, giving way for at least some level of contact and monitoring of their conditions. Messages from the ICRC are usually the only information families of the prisoners receive about their loved ones’ well-being.
In its 13th annual report on enforced disappearance in Syria, the Syrian Network for Human Rights notes that since March 2011, at least 113,218 of the people arrested by the parties to the conflict in Syria, including 3,129 children and 6,71 women, have forcibly disappeared.
The report adds that the Syrian regime has used enforced disappearance as a strategic instrument to consolidate control and crush its opponents. To achieve this objective, the regime has utilized this strategy in a deliberate and direct manner against all those who became activists or participated in the popular uprising for democracy, particularly in its early years that saw the highest rates of enforced disappearances, in order to crush and undermine the anti-regime protests.
While the report holds the Syrian regime forces responsible for the vast majority of arrests and enforced disappearances, it also stresses that ISIS, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and all armed opposition factions have also been responsible for thousands of enforced disappearances, including children and women.
In Lebanon, the problem of missing and forcibly disappeared individuals continues to be a painful unresolved issue, greatly impacting many families still searching for answers about their missing loved ones who disappeared in past conflicts over several decades.
Meetings by the ICRC with Lebanese presidents and prime ministers haven’t yielded any results in the file of Lebanese people in Syrian prisons.
During last year’s memorial event, multiple parliamentary groups and the Association of Lebanese Political Detainees in Syria submitted a request to the United States to add the issue of these detainees to a UN resolution passed last summer.
The resolution received support from 83 votes and was adopted. It asks for information on the whereabouts of hundreds of missing people to be released if they are alive and returned to their families if they are deceased. The resolution also demands an inquiry into the reasons for the deaths of some and the individuals accountable. Afterward, 44 Lebanese parliament members, in partnership with NGOs, presented a petition to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres asking for “the missing Lebanese” to be covered by this independent mechanism. The petition was showcased at a press briefing in Achrafieh. MPs from the Lebanese Forces, Kataeb, the Democratic Gathering, the Renewal Movement, and a few independent MPs signed the document. Unfortunately, all trials came to no avail, as the number of abducted and missing Lebanese, according to human rights organizations, “numbered around 17,000 people from 1975 until 1990 during the Lebanese civil war.”Cases of these disappeared vary from being kidnapped by Lebanese, Syrian, or Palestinian militias. However, their outcome is similar; their families have no clue where they are or if they are still alive.

No Plans to Save the School Year in the South
Samar Yamout/This Is Beirut/August 30/2024
There’s currently no tangible plan in place to save the school year in Southern Lebanon, as discussions on this matter are still ongoing. Students in conflict areas may be moved to safer schools or those closer to their temporary new homes.
As security conditions worsen and the war in Lebanon continues, families and students in southern border towns are anxious about the start of the school year in just a few days. The Ministry of Education and Higher Education is urgently working to find solutions to ensure a smooth beginning, uphold educational standards, complete the curriculum, and address the numerous challenges facing a sector that has historically been a leader.
Educational authorities, particularly in southern Lebanon, are closely monitoring the situation and its potential impact on education. In this context, Hussein Jawad, President of the Lebanese Association of Primary Education Teachers, reports that the Ministry of Education and Higher Education is “working on a plan for displaced residents in the south.”
A meeting is scheduled soon with Caretaker Minister of Education Abbas Halabi, Education Parliamentary Commission’s Chairman Hassan Mrad, and MPs Achraf Beydoun and Ali Khreiss from the Development and Liberation parliamentary bloc to discuss the current educational situation and find the best solutions for southern students and teachers to start and continue the new school year.
Jawad tells Houna Loubnan that “there’s currently no tangible plan in place, as discussions are still ongoing. Students in conflict areas may be moved to safer schools or those closer to their homes.”Jawad also reports “that since the war began last October, 42 schools—both public and private—have been damaged. Over 7,000 students cannot return to their classrooms, and about 3,000 teachers have been forced to leave conflict zones.” He underscores “the urgent need for a swift and fair solution for everyone.”
Furthermore, Jawad asks a crucial question to the Ministry of Education: “What will be done for teachers who chose to stay in their country, resisting relocation and denying the enemy a victory? I want to ensure their contractual rights are honored.”
With limited options available for ensuring education in war-torn villages and towns, Hussein Jawad argues that “online” classes might be a last resort. But how can this be implemented with Lebanon’s widespread power outages? And if the school year starts during the current total blackout, how will the authorities manage? He concludes that “the best solution is to enable teachers to continue their work while safeguarding their rights and preventing them from being undermined by the war.”
As the new school year approaches, the Ministry of Education faces numerous challenges, with the situation for students in southern villages being the most pressing. A ministry source tells Houna Loubnan that “all options are under consideration to ensure the 2024-2025 school year begins smoothly and pupils can resume their education.” The source adds that “various scenarios are being explored, including transferring students to safer schools or implementing remote learning. This latter option is gaining traction among families and students who prefer to stay in their towns rather than enroll their children in distant areas. Discussions are ongoing, and a decision is expected soon.”An anonymous source reports a “sharp decline in student enrollment at schools and high schools, particularly in more than twelve high schools in the south, where numbers have dropped from around 500 to about 130. These students might be able to continue their education through remote learning. Others have transferred to other schools in the south, Beirut, Mount Lebanon, and the Bekaa, depending on their residency.” The source also notes that “the war’s challenging living and security conditions have led to a shift from private to public schools, especially due to improvements in the quality of public education.”
Balancing Worry With the Determination to Excel
Despite the tough conditions in many southern towns, the achievements of students who excelled in last year’s official exams cannot be overlooked. Layal Jawad from Aita al-Shaab, who has moved with her family to Tyre, affirms, “We are committed to continuing our studies no matter the difficulties. Our passion for learning remains as strong as ever, and we are determined to succeed because our future is at stake.”Ali Hamdan, from Shebaa, who has temporarily moved with his family to his maternal aunt’s house in Beirut, says that “he is diligently preparing for his baccalaureate official exams and remains committed to achieving excellent results by attending his registered school.” Ali also aspires to pursue higher education abroad if the opportunity arises. However, “Um Ali” is anxiously awaiting the chance to return to her damaged home in Aita al-Shaab. She is calling for displaced students to be exempted from school fees and for the provision of essential educational supplies—such as tablets, laptops or stationery—especially for those whose homes have been destroyed or damaged, or who have lost their livelihoods and farmland, which were essential for their daily sustenance. She points out that her family and neighbors used to rely on stored products like olives, labneh, makdous and almonds to make a living, and on selling the surplus. In light of these significant losses, she questions how they can manage the costs of education and school supplies for their children. Last year, Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education implemented a plan that distributed over six thousand laptops and tablets to students in border regions who are displaced, facilitating their access to remote learning. Will this year’s measures replicate those of the previous year, or will new approaches be adopted to address the prolonged hardships faced by displaced families over the past year?

Question: “How can I know if I am hearing God, hearing Satan, or hearing my own thoughts?”
GotQuestions.org/August 30/2024
Answer: Life is full of decisions that do not have absolute, specific-by-name, how-to directions in the Bible. How many hours a day should my kids spend on screens? Is it okay to play certain video games? Am I allowed to go on a date with a coworker ? Is it okay to miss work because I stayed up too late the night before? We all have notions about the truth, but how do we know for sure that these ideas are coming from God? Am I hearing God? Or am I only hearing myself? Worse yet, am I hearing the temptations of Satan disguised as the leading of the Holy Spirit? Sometimes distinguishing our own ideas from God’s leading is difficult. And what if our urges are actually coming from the enemy of our souls and not from God? How do we “take every thought captive” (2 Corinthians 10:5) when we aren’t sure where the thoughts are coming from?
Most commonly, God communicates through the Bible, His inspired Word, preserved through the centuries for us today. It is through the Word that we are sanctified (John 17:17), and the Word is the light for our path (Psalm 119:105). God can also guide us through circumstances (2 Corinthians 2:12), the promptings of the Spirit (Galatians 5:16), and godly mentors providing wise counsel (Proverbs 12:15). If God wants to speak to us, nothing can stop Him. Here are some ways to discern the source of our thoughts:
Pray
If we are confused about whether or not we are hearing God, it is good to pray for wisdom (James 1:5). (It’s good to pray for wisdom even when we don’t think we’re confused!) We should ask God to make His will known to us clearly. When we pray, we “must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind” (James 1:6). If we have no faith, we “should not expect to receive anything from the Lord” (James 1:7).
Talk to God in prayer and earnestly wait for His answer. However, keep in mind that God doesn’t give us everything we desire, and sometimes His answer is, “No.” He knows what we need at any given time, and He will show us what is best. If God says, “No,” then we can thank Him for the clarity of His direction and move on from there.
Study the Word
The Bible is called “God’s Word” for a reason—it is the primary way God speaks to us. It is also the way we learn about God’s character and His dealings with people throughout history. All Scripture is “breathed out by God” and is the guide for a righteous life (2 Timothy 3:16–17). While we speak to God in prayer, He speaks to us through His Word. As we read, we must consider the words of the Bible to be the very words of God.
Any thought, desire, inclination, or urge we may have must be brought to the Word of God for comparison and approval. Let the Bible be the judge of every thought. “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). No matter how urgent the urge, if it goes against what Scripture says, then it is not of God and must be rejected.
Follow the Holy Spirit’s Leading
The Holy Spirit is God—a divine Being with a mind, emotions, and will. He is always with us (Psalm 139:7–8). His purposes include interceding for us (Romans 8:26–27) and giving gifts to benefit the church (1 Corinthians 12:7–11).
The Holy Spirit wills to fill us (Ephesians 5:18) and produce in us His fruit (Galatians 5:22–25). No matter what decisions we’re making day to day, we can’t go wrong when we exhibit love, joy, peace, etc., to the glory of God. When we have a random thought pop into our heads, we must learn to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1). Will following this inclination lead to more Christlikeness? Will dwelling on this thought produce more of the fruit of the Spirit in me? The Holy Spirit will never lead us to gratify the sinful desires of the flesh (Galatians 5:16); He will always lead us toward sanctification (1 Peter 1:2). Life on earth is a spiritual battle. The enemy is eager to supply diversions to distract us from God’s will (1 Peter 5:8). We must be vigilant to ensure that what we heed is more than a feeling but is truly from God Himself.
Remember, God wants to show us the right path to take. He’s not in the business of hiding His will from those who seek Him.
Here are some good questions to ask as we examine whether or not we are hearing God: Are the promptings confusing or vague? God is not the author of confusion; He is the bringer of peace (1 Corinthians 14:33). Do the thoughts go against God’s Word? God will not contradict Himself. Will following these promptings lead to sin? Those who “keep in step with the Spirit” have “crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24–25).
In addition, it is good to seek counsel from a Christian friend, family member, or pastor (Proverbs 15:22). Our pastors are there to help shepherd us: “Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account” (Hebrews 13:17).
God does not want us to fail. The more we listen to God, the better we will be at distinguishing His voice from the other noises in our heads. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, gives His promise: “He goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice” (John 10:4). Others may speak, “but the sheep [do] not listen to them” (verse 8). The better we know our Shepherd, the less we have to worry about heeding the wrong voice.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 30-31/2024
Israeli Military Says Killed Local Hamas Commander in West Bank
Asharq Al Awsat/August 30/2024
Israeli border police killed a senior Hamas commander in the West Bank on Friday, the military said. It said Wassem Hazem, identified as the commander of Hamas in the volatile city of Jenin, was killed in a car it said contained weapons, ammunition and large quantities of cash. Two other Hamas gunmen were killed by a drone while trying to escape from the vehicle, it added. Israel’s large-scale military operation in the West Bank entered a third day on Friday, with both sides reporting at least 16 Palestinians killed. Israeli armored personnel carriers backed by helicopters and drones pushed into Jenin and Tulkarm on Friday while armored bulldozers ploughed up roads to destroy roadside bombs planted by militant groups.

Israeli army announces conclusion of month-long operation in southern and central Gaza
AFP/August 30/2024
The Israeli army announced that it has concluded a month-long operation in southern and central Gaza, claiming it resulted in the killing of over 250 Palestinian fighters. A military statement reported that "the 98th Division forces have completed their operation in the Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah areas, after nearly a month of simultaneous operational activity both above and below ground." It added, "As part of the operation, the forces eliminated over 250 fighters and destroyed dozens of infrastructures." A military spokesperson confirmed to Agence France-Presse that no further operations are occurring in these areas.

Israel hits convoy to hospital in Gaza, says it hit gunmen who seized car
Associated Press/August 30, 2024
An Israeli missile hit a convoy carrying medical supplies and fuel to an Emirati hospital in the Gaza Strip, killing several people from a local transportation company, the American Near East Refugee Aid group said Friday. Israel claimed without immediate evidence that it opened fire after gunmen seized the convoy. The strike killed several people employed by a transportation company that the aid group was using to bring supplies to the Emirates Red Crescent Hospital in Rafah, said Sandra Rasheed, Anera's director for the Palestinian territories.The strike happened Thursday on the Salah al-Din Road in the Gaza Strip and hit the convoy's first vehicle. "The convoy, which was coordinated by Anera and approved by Israeli authorities, included an Anera employee who was fortunately unharmed," Rasheed said in a statement. "Despite this devastating incident, our understanding is that the remaining vehicles in the convoy were able to continue and successfully deliver the aid to the hospital. We are urgently seeking further details about what happened." Anera planned to release more information later Friday. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday from The Associated Press. However, Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee posted to the social platform X that "gunmen seized a car at the head of the convoy (a jeep) and began driving.""After the seizure operation and after confirming the possibility of attacking the militants' vehicle alone, the raid was carried out, as the rest of the convoy vehicles were not harmed and reached their target according to the plan," Adraee wrote. "The operation to target the militants removed the risk of seizing the humanitarian convoy." He added: "The presence of armed men inside a humanitarian convoy in an uncoordinated manner makes it difficult to secure the convoys and their staff and harms the humanitarian effort." The United Arab Emirates, which reached a diplomatic recognition deal with Israel in 2020 and has been providing aid to Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began, did not immediately acknowledge the attack. Israeli forces have opened fire on other aid convoys in the Gaza Strip. The World Food Program announced Wednesday it is pausing all staff movement in Gaza until further notice over Israeli troops opening fire on one of its marked vehicles, hitting it with at least 10 rounds. The shooting came despite having received multiple clearances from Israeli authorities. On July 23, UNICEF said two of its vehicles were hit with live ammunition while waiting at a designated holding point. An Israeli attack in April hit three World Central Kitchen vehicles, killing seven people.

President of the UAE allocates vaccines, funding for polio vaccination drive in Gaza
Arab News/August 30, 2024
LONDON: The president of the UAE has allocated vaccines and funding for a polio vaccination drive in Gaza following the reemergence of the virus within the territory, the Emirates News Agency reported on Friday. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan announced that the vaccination campaign would be supported by a $5 million pledge from the UAE. The two-round vaccination campaign will be delivered in collaboration with the World Health Organization, the UN Children’s Fund, and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. It will provide more than 640,000 Palestinian children in Gaza under the age of 10 with two doses of the polio vaccine, in an effort to stop the spread of the virus and prevent a wider regional outbreak. The campaign will begin on Sunday, WAM reported, in a staggered schedule starting in central Gaza and then moving to the south and north.
Each phase will continue for three days during area-specific humanitarian pauses announced this week, to enable children and families to access health facilities, and community workers to reach children. Some 1.26 million doses of the polio vaccine have been delivered to Gaza in preparation for distribution, with a further 400,000 doses due to arrive soon. More than 2,100 health workers, including mobile teams, will support the delivery of both rounds of the campaign, WAM reported. At least 90 percent vaccination coverage is needed during each round to prevent the spread of polio, given the overcrowding, displacement and severely disrupted health, water and sanitation systems within Gaza, it added. Campaign planning began after the poliovirus was detected in Gaza in July. The World Health Organization confirmed on Aug. 23 that at least one child in Gaza had been paralyzed by the variant type 2 poliovirus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years. Under the direction of the country’s president, the UAE has also delivered more than 40,000 tonnes of urgent supplies, including food, medical aid and shelter materials, since Israel’s military offensive against Hamas was launched in Gaza last October.
It has also established a field hospital in southern Gaza and a floating hospital at the Egyptian port of Al-Arish, providing medical care to thousands of injured Palestinians. The UAE has established six water desalination plants in Rafah on the border with Egypt, with a capacity of 1.6 million gallons per day, supplying water to more than 600,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

UN’s Gaza polio vaccinations will rely on pauses in fighting
Reuters/August 30, 2024
GAZA: United Nations officials are preparing to launch a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza on Sunday that will rely on a series of limited pauses in fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants holding out in the besieged enclave. The World Health Organization says it will need to vaccinate at least 90 percent of the children in Gaza for the campaign to succeed but it faces huge challenges in the Palestinian enclave, which has been largely destroyed by nearly 11 months of war. The campaign has been organized after the WHO said on Aug. 23 that a baby had been paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years, and UN agencies appealed for an urgent vaccination effort. Some 1.2 million vaccine doses have already been delivered to Gaza ahead of the campaign, which aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children, a WHO official said on Friday. An additional 400,000 doses are en route to the territory, said Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative for the occupied Palestinian territories. The planned pauses are unconnected with negotiations that have been underway for months to try to agree a halt in the fighting in Gaza and a return of Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. COGAT, the Israeli agency that coordinates administration in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the pauses would be coordinated as part of a series of humanitarian pauses implemented periodically since the start of the Israeli campaign in Gaza last October. Hamas has also agreed to the pauses, which the UN says are needed for the campaign to begin at all. A second round of vaccinations will be needed once the first round is complete. The WHO has said the Israeli military and Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting to allow the first round of vaccinations to be undertaken by UN agencies in coordination with the Palestinian health ministry. More than 2,180 staff have been trained to provide vaccinations and information about the campaign to people in Gaza. The pauses, due to run for three days between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m (0300-1200 GMT), will begin in central Gaza, before moving to south and then northern Gaza. However due to the logistical and security challenges facing the campaign, an extra day may be needed for each round, WHO officials have said. Most of Gaza’s hospitals have been damaged or destroyed with only 17 out of the 36 hospitals in the territory partially functional and less than half of the 132 primary health centers still operational, according to WHO figures.

Jordanian, Iranian foreign ministers discuss Gaza and West Bank crises
Arab News/August 30, 2024
LONDON: Jordan’s foreign minister and his Iranian counterpart on Friday discussed increased Israeli aggression in the occupied West Bank as well as measures to end hostilities in Gaza. Ayman Safadi and Abbas Araghchi spoke over the phone, Jordan News Agency reported. During their conversation, Safadi emphasized that halting Israeli aggression in Gaza was the first step in preventing a regional war. Safadi also congratulated Araghchi on his appointment and wished him well in his new position. The two ministers followed up on the talks held by Safadi with the Araghchi’s acting predecessor Ali Bagheri Kani in Tehran on Aug. 4. They also spoke on a variety of other topics, while emphasizing the “need to maintain open communication between the two countries in order to address any unresolved matters and build partnerships based on respect and cooperation,” Jordan News Agency added. The two ministers agreed to meet next month at the UN General Assembly sessions in New York City.

Iran Does Not Want War
This Is Beirut/August 30, 2024
According to a Western diplomat, citing a Russian official, Iran is not willing to escalate tensions that could lead to a large confrontation in the Middle East. Iranian officials have informed Moscow that Tehran will not respond to the assassination of Hamas Politburo Chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in an attack attributed to Israel, as it does not want to bear the responsibility of starting a war in the region. “Instead, Iran prioritizes continuing negotiations in Oman with the Americans, hoping to reach an agreement on a nuclear deal. As such, meetings in Muscat did not stop and are attended occasionally by security officials from Arab countries. However, no public information has emerged on the progress of the negotiations.

Britain 'Deeply Concerned' by Israel's Operation in West Bank
Asharq Al Awsat/August 30/2024
The British government said on Friday it was "deeply concerned" by Israel's ongoing operation in the occupied West Bank, warning that risk of instability was serious and that there was an urgent need for de-escalation. "We continue to call on Israeli authorities to exercise restraint, adhere to international law, and clamp down on the actions of those who seek to inflame tensions," a spokesperson for Britain's Foreign Office said in a statement. Clashes with Israeli forces in the West Bank have escalated since Israel's war with Hamas militants began in Gaza nearly 11 months ago. More than 660 people - combatants and civilians - have been killed, according to Palestinian tallies, some by Jewish settlers who have carried out frequent vigilante-style attacks on West Bank Palestinian communities. "We recognize Israel's need to defend itself against security threats, but we are deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed and by reports of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure," the Foreign Office spokesperson said. The spokesperson added the UK "strongly condemns settler violence", and that it was in no one's interest further conflict and instability to spread in the West Bank.

US imposes visa restrictions on Syrian officials, South Sudan individuals
Reuters/August 30, 2024
WASHINGTON: The United States is imposing visa restrictions on 14 Syrian officials, the State Department said on Friday, citing their connection to enforced disappearances. These restrictions are in addition to the 21 Syrian officials announced by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in March, it said in a statement. The State Department said more than 96,000 men, women, and children have been "disappeared" by the Syrian government as a way of dealing with critics. The visa restrictions also include members of South Sudan government and others who have obstructed humanitarian aid to the country by taxing shipments, the State Department said on Friday. South Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of civil war from 2013-2018, is experiencing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises as a result of persistent conflict, natural disasters and poverty. UN missions there have said South Sudanese authorities are holding up United Nations fuel tankers over a tax dispute, jeopardizing the delivery of millions of dollars of aid during a humanitarian crisis. “Despite assurances, the government has yet to effectively reduce the unacceptably high costs, bureaucratic obstacles, and risks of providing humanitarian assistance to South Sudanese people in need,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. “This raises questions about its willingness and capacity to abide by its 2018 peace agreement commitment to create an enabling environment for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and protection,” he said in a statement. The visa restrictions would make those cited ineligible entry into the United States.

Britain Places Travel Ban on Two Men Under Counter-Terrorism Sanctions
Asharq Al Awsat/August 30/2024
The British government said on Thursday it had imposed a travel ban on Mustafa Ayash, who it sanctioned earlier this year for promoting terrorism, and suspected Hezbollah financier Nazem Ahmad. The pair, who were already subject to asset freezes under domestic counter-terrorism powers, now cannot enter Britain, it said. "The travel bans are a part of continued efforts to protect the integrity of the UK economy from terrorist financing threats," the British government said in a statement. Ayash was sanctioned in March this year for providing financial support to a media network which the government said supported the Palestinian Hamas group and promoted terrorism, Reuters said. Britain banned Hamas in 2021 and under the Terrorism Act, anyone expressing support for the group, flying its flag or arranging meetings for the organization is in breach of the law. Britain sanctioned Ahmad in April 2023 on suspicion of financing Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement. He was also sanctioned by the US in 2019. He has an extensive art collection in the UK and conducts business with multiple UK-based artists, art galleries and auction houses, according to a 2023 statement by the British government.

Israeli FM Accuses ‘Octopus’ Khamenei of Smuggling Weapons into West Bank via Jordan
Tel Aviv: Asharq Al Awsat/August 30/2024
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz accused on Thursday Iran of attempting to establish an “eastern terror front” against Israel via Jordan, the Times of Israel reported. Katz — who has faced some criticism for his style of online diplomatic attacks — published an AI-generated image showing Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei as an octopus with many tentacles. The foreign minister said the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is smuggling weapons from Syria into Jordan, “attempting to destabilize the regime and turn the Israel-Jordan border from a peaceful one into a volatile front.”
The weapons are then brought into the West Bank, he added, “where an Iranian-Hamas terror infrastructure is being established.”Katz called for a security fence to be built “quickly” along the Israel-Jordan border, something that has been promised for more than a decade by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but has been dismissed by security officials as a pipe dream.

Aid Group Says Israel Hit Convoy to Hospital in Gaza. Israel Says it Hit Gunmen Who Seized the Car
Asharq Al Awsat/August 30/2024
An Israeli missile hit a convoy carrying medical supplies and fuel to a hospital in the Gaza Strip, killing several people from a local transportation company, the American Near East Refugee Aid group said Friday. Israel claimed without immediate evidence that it opened fire after gunmen seized the convoy. The strike killed several people employed by a transportation company that the aid group was using to bring supplies to the Emirates Red Crescent Hospital in Rafah, said Sandra Rasheed, Anera’s director for the Palestinian territories. The strike happened Thursday on the Salah al-Din Road in the Gaza Strip and hit the convoy’s first vehicle, The Associated Press reported. “The convoy, which was coordinated by Anera and approved by Israeli authorities, included an Anera employee who was fortunately unharmed,” Rasheed said in a statement. “Despite this devastating incident, our understanding is that the remaining vehicles in the convoy were able to continue and successfully deliver the aid to the hospital. We are urgently seeking further details about what happened.”Anera planned to release more information later Friday. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday from The Associated Press. However, Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee posted to the social platform X that “gunmen seized a car at the head of the convoy (a jeep) and began driving.” “After the seizure operation and after confirming the possibility of attacking the militants’ vehicle alone, the raid was carried out, as the rest of the convoy vehicles were not harmed and reached their target according to the plan,” Adraee wrote. “The operation to target the militants removed the risk of seizing the humanitarian convoy.”He added: “The presence of armed men inside a humanitarian convoy in an uncoordinated manner makes it difficult to secure the convoys and their staff and harms the humanitarian effort.”Israeli forces have opened fire on other aid convoys in the Gaza Strip. The World Food Program announced Wednesday it is pausing all staff movement in Gaza until further notice over Israeli troops opening fire on one of its marked vehicles, hitting it with at least 10 rounds. The shooting came despite having received multiple clearances from Israeli authorities. On July 23, UNICEF said two of its vehicles were hit with live ammunition while waiting at a designated holding point. An Israeli attack in April hit three World Central Kitchen vehicles, killing seven people.

Iranian Documentary Shows Soleimani Touring Saddam Hussein’s Palace
Asharq Al Awsat/August 30/2024
A video showing Qassem Soleimani, the late commander of Iran’s Quds Force, exploring one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces has stirred significant controversy on social media. The 30-second video, released by the Tasnim news agency, shows Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an Iran-backed paramilitary group in Iraq, walking through a ruined palace once owned by the former Iraqi president. Tasnim, which is affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, said the footage, aired for the first time, is part of an Iranian documentary.
Also in the video are Ahmed al-Asadi, Iraq’s current Labor Minister, and Mohammed Sahib al-Daraji, a former Minister of Construction and Housing. On January 3, 2020, Soleimani was killed alongside al-Muhandis in a US airstrike near Baghdad International Airport. Years earlier, the US Treasury Department had placed Soleimani on its blacklist for his alleged “terrorist” activities in the region. Later, an Iranian TV station (TW) released the full documentary titled “The Builder... and The Destroyer,” focusing on Qassem Soleimani and Saddam Hussein. The video doesn’t specify when Soleimani visited Saddam’s palace, but the presence of Iraqi officials suggests it was after 2014. The footage shows Soleimani inspecting the palace’s damage and touching a marble column, with al-Muhandis explaining the details. The documentary also includes clips of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad shortly before the 2003 US invasion, with Iraqis discussing their inability to visit Shiite shrines under the Baath regime. The documentary highlights the role of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in restoring Shiite shrines in Najaf and Karbala, which were damaged in 1991. It features Iranian officials, including former Iranian ambassador to Baghdad Iraj Masjedi, who discuss the Revolutionary Guard’s efforts in expanding and developing these shrines. The film presents these efforts as a way to enhance annual Muharram visits, which were suppressed under the Baath regime. It also describes the Revolutionary Guard's fight against ISIS as a mission to protect Shiite shrines in Iraq and Syria. At the end of the documentary, Soleimani is seen at the Sayyida Zainab shrine in Syria, receiving a key from a soldier. Iraqis reacted strongly to the video, with many criticizing officials for letting Soleimani enter Saddam’s palace. Bloggers pointed out that the US, which invaded Iraq, allowed Iran to gain influence there and later was responsible for Soleimani’s assassination.

Salvage of stricken oil tanker in Red Sea expected in coming days, say sources
Reuters/August 30, 2024
ATHENS: A salvage operation to recover a Greek-registered oil tanker stranded ablaze in the Red Sea after an attack by Houthi militants is expected to start in the coming days, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Friday. The Sounion, which the Houthis and maritime sources have said has been rigged with explosives, is laden with about 1 million barrels of crude oil. If a spill occurs, it has the potential to be among the largest from a ship in recorded history and could cause an environmental catastrophe in an area that is particularly dangerous to access. “What was decided yesterday is an initial game plan, of the operation starting in 48 hours,” one of the sources said. A second source said the operation was likely to be complex, given Houthis have planted explosives on board. Greece said in a letter circulated through the UN shipping agency on Friday that what it called a “potential spill” of 2.2 nautical miles (4.2 km) in length had been detected in the area matching the location of the Sounion in the Red Sea. However, an official with the European Union’s ASPIDES naval monitoring mission told Reuters that the potential spill was from the vessel’s engine and not from the oil cargo onboard. “The potential spill is from the tanker’s engine after the first hit,” the ASPIDES official said. Greece urged “all nations and all actors involved to assist in preventing the environmental hazard and resolving the situation the soonest possible” in its letter dated Aug. 29 and published on Friday by the UN’s International Maritime Organization.
Yemen’s Houthi militants carried out multiple assaults, including planting bombs on the already disabled 900-foot (274-meter) Sounion, which is operated by Athens-based Delta Tankers.On Wednesday, the Iran-aligned militants said they would allow salvage teams to tow the ship — which has been on fire since Aug. 23 — to safety. The ship’s crew has been evacuated. The sources said the priority of the operation — to decide whether to tow the vessel to a port or arrange a transfer of its cargo — depended on an inspection of the vessel. “It is not an easy task, transferring the oil cargo to another ship, when there are explosives on it,” said one of the sources. “In any case, ASPIDES ships will protect and escort the vessel to a safe port.”Greece has also been in touch with Saudi Arabia, a key player in the region, to ask for assistance. “Delta Tankers is doing everything it can to move the vessel (and cargo). For security reasons, we are not in a position to comment further,” a spokesperson for the tanker operator said. There had been conflicting accounts earlier in the week over whether the Sounion had started leaking its cargo.
“Houthis have agreed to allow its towing because at the end of the day any environmental disaster would affect their region,” said a shipping industry source.

Power, Politics, and Social Media: The Battle for Influence in a Digital World
LBCI/August 30, 2024
Imagine that a Russian court requested the US company Google to pay three Russian TV channels huge amounts of money as compensation for removing these channels from YouTube and deleting their accounts on Google.
Google had taken this step in response to Russia's actions in Ukraine and accused Moscow of spreading misinformation in support of the Russian government's policies. What happened between Russia and America is an example of major powers trying to extend their influence over major social media companies and access users' personal data to serve their policies and interests. This is similar to what happened to the Russian billionaire Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram. Durov spent several days in jail in France, where French authorities investigated him regarding several accusations, including fraud, promoting terrorism, cyberbullying, child exploitation in pornography, and other crimes. The UAE, of which Durov is a citizen, intervened and requested French authorities to allow it to provide consular support to him. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron had offered Durov the opportunity to move Telegram's headquarters to Paris, but Durov declined, according to the US newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. Some linked what happened to Durov to issues of freedom of expression. This was echoed by Elon Musk, CEO and owner of the platform X, who posted on X saying: "In my view, by 2030, you might be executed in Europe just for liking a satirical meme." However, the issue seems to go beyond that. According to some observers, the reasons vary, with the most prominent being related to national security. Social media companies hold user data, which can be used for espionage purposes. For instance, former US President Donald Trump launched a fierce attack on the TikTok app, threatening to ban it in the United States due to concerns that China might exploit the data to spy on American citizens. Social media data could also be sold or shared with third parties for political or commercial purposes. For example, Cambridge Analytica obtained data from around 50 million Facebook users to influence their opinions during the US presidential election, which led to Donald Trump's victory in 2016. From a commercial perspective, according to the Financial Times, TikTok, owned by a Chinese company, generated about $16 billion in revenue in the US last year.

Pope Francis says Earth is ‘sick’ in new climate change warning
Reuters/August 30, 2024
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis on Friday urged people around the world to better protect the environment, ahead of a 12-day trip to Southeast Asia next week in which the pontiff is expected to urge global action on climate change. “If we took the planet’s temperature, it will tell us that the Earth has a fever. And it is sick,” the pontiff said in a video message. “We must commit ourselves to ... the protection of nature, changing our personal and community habits.” Francis releases a video message each month to announce his prayer intentions for that month. The intention for September is “for the cry of the Earth.” The 87-year-old leader of the global Catholic Church leaves on Monday to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. Francis has stressed the importance of environmental issues throughout his 11-year papacy. Each of the countries on his Sept. 2-13 tour are facing dangers from the warming global climate, including rising sea levels and increasingly severe and unpredictable heat waves and typhoons. In his video, Francis said climate change required actions “that are not only ecological, but are also social, economic and political.” “The ones suffering most from the consequences of these disasters are the poor, those who are forced to leave their homes because of floods, heat waves or drought,” the pope said.

The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on August 30-31/2024
What Is Zionism and Is It Fueling the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict?
Dave Roos/HowStuffWorks/August 30, 2024
As the conflict over the Gaza Strip continues, you may have heard the term "Zionism." But what is Zionism?
Zionism Defined
Zionism is a nationalist movement that successfully established an independent state for the Jewish people in 1948 and continues to support Judaism's claim to the region we now know as Israel. It is also one of the most complex and controversial political ideas of the past 150 years. Although Zionism draws its name from the biblical Mount Zion, it isn't primarily a religious movement. True, many of the Jewish people have yearned for a return to Abraham's "Promised Land" for 2,000 years, but messianic zeal isn't what the modern Zionist movement had in mind.
In fact, most were secular and even agnostic Jews who identified the Jewish population as a nation rather than a religion. Zionism for them meant the creation of an independent Jewish national home, not just a home for religious Jews.
Criticisms of Zionism
Zionism itself wouldn't be problematic if the Jewish people were the only ones with claims on the Holy Land. Palestinian Arabs, who comprised the majority of people living in the land known as Palestine for centuries under both the Ottoman and British empires, feel that the land should be rightfully theirs.
The result is one of the thorniest and most hotly debated political issues in the modern world. Zionists and other supporters of Israel argue that the safety and continued existence of the Jewish people depends on the existence of a Jewish state, and the rightful place for that state is Judaism's ancestral homeland.
Meanwhile, Palestinians and their supporters cast Zionism as an imperialist or racist movement that forcefully colonized Arab lands and subjugated the native Palestinian people as second-class citizens.
Beyond those already striking divisions, decades of war and sectarian violence have inflicted deep emotional wounds that turn any discussion of Zionism into a potential minefield.
European Enlightenment and Haskala
With European Enlightenment underway during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Jewish Enlightenment (or the Haskalah) also arose as a way to preserve Jewish identity.
"Haskalah... is the movement which originated in 18th-century Germany with the aim of broadening the intellectual and social horizons of the Jews to enable them to take their place in Western society," writes Rabbi Louis Jacob in My Jewish Learning.
Eventually, the Haskalah helped inform the Zionist movement.
The 'Jewish Question'
Nationalist movements swept across Europe in the early and mid-19th century. For centuries, sprawling empires and kingdoms forced different ethnic and cultural groups to live together. But now, in places like Italy and Germany, new European states have been forged around people with a shared language and cultural history.
This left some European Jews wondering, are we not also a nation? Jews were living in a scattered diaspora in nation-states that often treated them as suspect foreigners and occasionally welcomed them as full citizens, as France did in 1790.
Even before the eruption of violent anti-Jewish raids (pogroms) in Eastern Europe, Jewish intellectuals struggled with the "Jewish question" or the "Jewish problem." The issue was whether it was even possible for Jews to be truly free and equal in someone else's nation. And as anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence increased in the 19th century, this question became far more urgent.
"In many ways, modern Zionism was a response to the 'Jewish question,'" says Daniel Kotzin, a history professor at Medaille College in upstate New York, who has conducted extensive research on the Zionist movement and teaches a course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "What is the place of Jews in Europe in a post-Enlightenment age?"
The Dreyfus Affair and Theodor Herzl, the Father of Zionism
If Europe's Jews needed a catalyst to pursue independent nationhood, they found it in the Dreyfus Affair.
In 1894, a French army captain named Henry Dreyfus was falsely accused and convicted of treason in a highly publicized trial. Dreyfus, a secular Jew, became the target of openly anti-Semitic attacks in the press.
"Here is this army officer, the epitome of an emancipated and assimilated Jew," Kotzin says, but even Dreyfus wasn't seen as a true Frenchman. "The people behind the treasonous accusations spread this false idea that Jews could never be part of the European nation-state and should always be viewed with suspicion."
Herzl Chimes In
Among the journalists covering the Dreyfus Affair was an Austrian playwright named Theodor Herzl, who was living in Paris as a foreign correspondent for a Viennese newspaper. Herzl, a fully assimilated and nonreligious European Jew, wrote later that he identified deeply with Dreyfus. If a man of Dreyfus' stature wasn't immune from anti-Semitism, who was?
In 1896, Herzl published "Der Judenstaat" ("The Jewish State"), a call to Jewish nationhood that launched the modern Zionist movement. In it, Herzl argued that the establishment of an independent Jewish nation would not only be good for Jews, but good for Europe.
"Herzl said that anti-Semitism causes divisions within nations," says Kotzin. "If you can find a place for Jews to go, then that would solve a problem that was more than a 'Jewish problem.' It was a problem that plagued Europe."
Coming on the heels of the Dreyfus Affair, Herzl's writings found a ready audience among many Jewish intellectuals. In 1897, the First Zionist Congress met in Basel, Switzerland, and Herzl dedicated the rest of his short life — he died at 44 from a heart attack in 1904 — to securing political and financial support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Zionism in the 19th and 20th Centuries
Kotzin points out that while we now recognize Herzl as the father of the "Political Zionist" movement, there are several different streams of Zionism present in the 19th and 20th centuries. "Cultural Zionism," for example, was a movement that Ukrainian-born intellectual Ahad Ha-Am led. It called for a spiritual rebirth of Judaism in Israel, not necessarily an independent state.
There's also "Labor Zionism," which took elements from socialism. Before the third Zionist Congress, Nachman Syrkin put forth the idea that a Jewish state could only materialize through the efforts of the working class.
The Balfour Declaration
To Zionists, there are few documents more important than a short letter British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote in 1917 to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, heir to the Rothschild banking fortune and president of the British Zionist Federation.
The letter, known as the "Balfour Declaration," expresses a "declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations" and states that "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object."
While far from a mandate or official compact, the Balfour letter was a huge step forward for the Zionist movement, which to that date had only sent small delegations of Jewish emigres to settle in Palestine, much to the dismay of Arab Palestinians. "Here you have the most powerful empire in the world at the time saying to the Jewish people, we're going to help you find a home in your native land of Palestine," Kotzinn says. "This was enormously important." When the British took control of Palestine after World War I, the stage was set for conflict. Jewish immigration to Palestine increased, and Arab resentment of Balfour's betrayal boiled over into violent clashes. The next two decades saw Arab riots and rebellions, and when the British tried to clamp down on Jewish immigration, Zionists also fought back. To critics of Zionism, the Balfour Declaration was a betrayal. Kotzin says that the British "were making promises left, right and center" between 1915 and 1917, including a promise to help create a pan-Arab state in the Middle East in return for Arab support fighting the Ottomans in World War I. Arab Palestinians kept their end of the bargain, and the Balfour Declaration essentially reneged on the deal.
The Holocaust
In his book, "Zionism: A Very Short Introduction," Columbia University historian Michael Stanislawski says that until 1945, Zionism remained a "small minority movement" within the global Jewish community with loud critics from both the religious and secular camps. But the situation changed dramatically after the murder of 6 million Jews at the hands of the Nazis. "The need for an independent Jewish state to serve as a safe haven for Jews became not only widespread but central to Jewish consciousness throughout the world," writes Stanislawski.
Large numbers of Holocaust survivors were living at makeshift refugee camps in Europe while Allied governments argued over what to do with them.
Zionism
Founding of the State of Israel
In November 1947, the U.N. passed a resolution to partition or divide Palestine into two states — one Jewish and one Arab — of roughly equal sizes (at the time the 1.85 million-strong population of Palestine was one-third Jewish and two-thirds Arab.) The Palestinians rejected the U.N. plan and took up arms against the Zionists in what was essentially a civil war.
David Ben-Gurion's Secular Declaration
As internal fighting raged on, the British set a date of May 15, 1948, for its official departure. The day before British armed forces left Palestine, the Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel, knowing full well that such a provocation would invite all-out war with neighboring Arab nations. Stanislawski notes that Ben-Gurion's declaration makes no mention of God or the biblical promise of a Jewish homeland. That wasn't the Zionist message. Instead, Ben-Gurion declared the right of the Jews to establish Israel was "the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State." As Ben-Gurion and the Zionists expected, five different Arab nations immediately declared war on the new state of Israel.
A Division in Name and in Narrative
To demonstrate the opposing perspectives of this war and its outcome, Israelis call it the "war of independence" and Arabs call it nakba or "the catastrophe."It's not just the names that are different. As historian Benny Morris has demonstrated, there are also two starkly opposing narratives about how and why hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs left Palestine during the war and became refugees in Jordan and Syria. In the Zionist account, Palestinians willingly fled the war zone because their Arab allies warned of an imminent invasion that would "drive the Jews into the sea." In the Palestinian account, the Israeli army raided their villages and brutally drove them out at gunpoint. According to historical documents, there is clear evidence that some Palestinians fled their homes out of fear of violence by the Israeli government, both real and imagined. Morris, a defender of Israel, conceded in his book "1948: The First Arab-Israeli War," that "the Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians and PoWs in deliberate acts of brutality in the course of 1948." Ultimately, Israel won the war and walked away with 50 percent more territory than what the U.N. partition plan laid out. That territory did not yet include the so-called Occupied Territories in Gaza and the West Bank, which were added after Israel's victory in the Six-Day War of 1967.
Gaza Strip violence
Zionism and Its Critics Today
The troubling "Jewish Question" that led to the creation of the Zionist movement has now become the "Palestinian Question." After decades of conflict, can Israelis and Palestinians find a way to live in peace? Many left-leaning Israelis and other Zionists recognize the plight of the Palestinians and support a two-state solution similar to the U.N. partition, while more conservative backers of Israel oppose such concessions, claiming that Palestinian leaders and their Arab allies continue to seek the destruction of the Jewish homeland.
Not only is the history of Zionism complex and messy but so are the emotions and opinions surrounding it. Criticism of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians has stoked protests on college campuses and calls for economic boycotts of Israel similar to those levied against South Africa during Apartheid. Such criticisms of Israel strike a nerve in Jewish supporters of Israel because the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is dangerously thin.
Now That's Interesting
Herzl and early Zionists explored the possibility of establishing a temporary Jewish state in East Africa while plans for Palestine could be formalized. The plan was called the "Uganda Scheme" though the area proposed was in modern-day Kenya.
Original article: What Is Zionism and Is It Fueling the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict?
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Germany Vows 'Knife Control' After ISIS Refugee Slashes Throats at Diversity Festival
Daniel Greenfield/Gatestone Institute./August 30, 2024
After laying a white rose at the site of the Diversity Festival slashing that left three dead and eight wounded, Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised rapid action would be taken against knives. Right now, people in Germany can carry knives up to 4.7 inches long. The law will be modified so that they can only carry knives up to 2.4 inches long. No one appears to have considered the possibility that Muslim terrorists on the way to killing as many infidels as possible might violate the law and carry a concealed knife of 4 inches or longer. Such thoughts are unthinkable. There were 13,844 "knife crime" incidents in Germany in 2023, which the authorities are blaming on the existence of knives and not the perpetrators, who are reportedly mostly young Muslim men.
But locating the source of the problem is probably "not a very helpful insight," In the UK, people sharing such insights are being locked up even as Islamic terrorists are being freed.
The German government is more moderate than the Marxist lunatics at Whitehall. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Justice Minister Shabana Mahmood, a supporter of Islamic terrorism, have decided to ruthlessly suppress all British opposition to mass migration with raids and prison sentences.
Much like the American liberal obsession with gun control, literally objectifying the problem, talking about things so that they don't have to talk about people, and then talking about broader social and economic issues, is a useful distraction from seeing what is actually taking place.
There were 13,844 "knife crime" incidents in Germany in 2023, which the authorities are blaming on the existence of knives and not the perpetrators, who are reportedly mostly young Muslim men.
After a Syrian Muslim refugee slashed the throats of a few middle-aged people at the Festival of Diversity, the German government has announced that it will ban knives over three inches long. The ISIS terrorist was one of over a million migrants who had invaded Germany while claiming to be "refugees". The migrant was also one of the many scheduled to be deported, but was not. All that the Muslim terrorist had to do to evade deportation was leave government housing when the authorities came looking for him. And then when the military-age Arab Muslim migrant came back, the deportation order had expired and he couldn't be deported. Undeported Muslim refugees have been one of the largest sources of terrorism, crime and violence in Europe.
So the German government is proposing a ban on knives over three inches.
After laying a white rose at the site of the Diversity Festival slashing that left three dead and eight wounded, Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised rapid action would be taken against knives.
Right now, people in Germany can carry knives up to 4.7 inches long. The law will be modified so that they can only carry knives up to 2.4 inches long. No one appears to have considered the possibility that Muslim terrorists on the way to killing as many infidels as possible might violate the law and carry a concealed knife of 4 inches or longer. Such thoughts are unthinkable.
However, the authorities are also proposing "knife-free" zones around railway stations and other areas where stabbings and slashings tend to happen, to finally put an end to the violence.
In May, an Afghan Muslim refugee had attacked a counter-Jihad rally in Germany, stabbing and slashing attendees along with a police officer who had tried to restrain the anti-migrant activists from fighting back against the Muslim refugee trying to kill them.
German authorities responded by vowing to crack down on "knife crime" with "stronger measures to control the possession and carrying of knives, tougher penalties for their misuse and intensive awareness campaigns about the dangers."
If any Muslim terrorists still don't know about the dangers of stabbing people, the awareness campaign would let them know.
There were 13,844 "knife crime" incidents in Germany in 2023, which the authorities are blaming on the existence of knives and not the perpetrators, who are reportedly mostly young Muslim men. The authorities have resisted linking the nearly 10% increase in knife crime to Muslim migration.
"Though non-Germans are disproportionately represented in police knife crime statistics, that in itself is not a very helpful insight," a 'criminologist' interviewed by the Deutsche Welle media outlet argued.
In 2023, nearly 1 in 5 criminals were refugees.
The mostly Muslim migrants were responsible for over 1 in 10 sexual assaults in just one year. They have carried out around 7,000 sexual assaults since the beginning of the migrant crisis. Half of gang rapists are foreigners, and there are on average almost two gang rapes committed in Germany every single day.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the state where the latest Muslim terrorist attack took place, 1 in 3 sex offenders, half of shoplifters and burglars, and 4 out of 5 pickpockets were foreigners.
Typical of this kind of violence was an altercation between two Arab Muslims, which ended with one of them stabbed in Magdeburg, migrants fighting with knives in a refugee center in Bavaria, and a litany of young foreign men confronting and stabbing each other all across Germany.
But locating the source of the problem is probably "not a very helpful insight," In the UK, people sharing such insights are being locked up even as Islamic terrorists are being freed.
The German government is more moderate than the Marxist lunatics at Whitehall. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Justice Minister Shabana Mahmood, a supporter of Islamic terrorism, have decided to ruthlessly suppress all British opposition to mass migration with raids and prison sentences.
But a "moderate" European government is one that mostly ignores the problem while promising to increase deportations after every Islamic terrorist attack, before realizing that it can do nothing. There is little difference between the putatively conservative Merkel government and the putatively leftist Scholz government, much as every French government, whatever its formal political orientation, has offered the same meaningless condemnations and empty promises.
If the Communist and Islamist party La France Insoumise, which rose to parliamentary victory due to its alliance with President Emmanuel Macron, succeeds in taking over, it can be expected to turn the police loose on political opponents the way that the Starmer regime has done on critics of migration in the UK.
For now, the German authorities are deploring all the stabbings and promising knife control.
Creating "knife-free" zones, limiting the length of knives that can be carried (except for newly purchased knives still in their plastic wrapping) and creating social media campaigns about the dangers of knives is the sort nonsense that the UK and other governments indulged in as a distraction from the reality of who is actually doing the stabbing (not to mention acid-throwing).
Much like the American liberal obsession with gun control, literally objectifying the problem, talking about things so that they don't have to talk about people, and then talking about broader social and economic issues, is a useful distraction from seeing what is actually taking place.
The Festival of Diversity ended in bloodshed, as it always does, but there will be another one. Much of the West now exists in the throes of an endless diversity festival where no one notices the killers, only the number of rounds in their magazines and the lengths of their blades.
*Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
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If I Had Known!
Hanna Saleh/Asharq Al Awsat/August 30/2024
The seven southern towns that were cut off of Lebanon during the French Mandate, and have now become Israeli settlements, remain in the Lebanese collective memory, particularly that of the South.
There are several reasons to remember these towns, given the emerging threats to geographic integrity. About a week ago, Republican Party candidate Donald Trump lamented the size of the Israeli entity, voicing his aspiration for its expansion as he stood before a map of the Eastern Mediterranean. As a reminder, President Trump supported Israel’s annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, as well as the annexation of Jerusalem, to which he relocated the American embassy. This coincided with a threat made by an "Israeli military source" who warned that "our borders with Lebanon will change, and they will not remain as they had been before the war!"
This threat was reiterated last Sunday, this time by Netanyahu. It was made just hours after the seemingly choreographed and prearranged clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, with Israel announcing preemptive airstrikes on Hezbollah sites before Hezbollah retaliated (25 days later) to the assassination of their military commander, Fuad Shukr, by launching 340 Katyusha rockets. Netanyahu boasted that Israel had thwarted Hezbollah's offensive plans, saying that Nasrallah and the Iranian regime should know that "this is a step towards changing the situation in the north!”
We should also remember that, when the brutal war on the Gaza Strip began, Washington sent the Israeli leadership a list of actions that the latter was prohibited from undertaking, including the annexation of any segment of the Gaza Strip. However, the Israeli extremist government established a "security belt" that ranges between 2 and 4 kilometers to the north of the Strip. It amounts to over 15 percent of Gaza, whose 2.3 million citizens are crammed into its 365 square kilometers. The pretext was preventing a repeat of the October 7 attack from the south.
It is worth mentioning the discussions between the foreign delegations that visited Beirut in succession- especially US Envoy Amos Hochstein- and Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Najib Mikati, the two main frontmen for the Resistance Axis in Lebanon. the cessation of escalation by Hezbollah, which had declared a "distraction" and "support" war. The delegations demanded that the South be addressed separately from Gaza and that serious steps be taken to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701, through Hezbollah’s withdrawal to around 10 kilometers to the north of the Litani River. This first step, in their proposals, would be followed by settling the border dispute that has not been addressed since the delineation of the Blue Line.
The officials, who had accepted the role of messengers, adhered to the positions dictated to them by Hezbollah. They demanded that Israel stop violations of the Resolution and comply with the resolution, which Lebanon has abided by (...) expressing astonishment at the withdrawal request because Hezbollah militants are residents of these villages... then saying that the envoys had no other aim than to ensure stability in northern Israel and allow the settlers to return to their home, allowing the Lebanese who had been displaced to also return to their towns and villages.
Many catastrophic outcomes could have been avoided if the officials making decisions had complied with their constitutional duties. For once, they could have prioritized the national interests over covering the project that Iran has assigned to Hezbollah. The "distraction" campaigns have backfired and precipitated a systematic assault through which the enemy created several small Gazas on the southern border. They imposed a security belt through fire, burning orchards and forests, destroying livestock, and contaminating soil and water with phosphorus, which has made living and working there impossible. As a result, Hezbollah was forced to retreat from the borders, and in some areas, to retreat to the north of the Litani River.
Not a single official batted an eye following this systematic destruction, nor did any officials heed the cries of over 100,000 people who had been uprooted from their land, lost their life savings, and were left exposed. Highlighting the destruction left by this campaign, as well as its 625 casualties (including around 400 Hezbollah cadres and field leaders) condemns both sides: Hezbollah, which dragged Lebanon into a destructive war without managing to protect a single roof or save a single life in Gaza, and of the remnants of state authority that accepted to play the role of messenger and parrot the positions of the statelet.
As Israel regained the initiative and re-established deterrence, it began targeting cadres and leaders. Its immense firepower, intelligence breaches, and advanced technology have allowed it to take lives. The objective of the war in the south is clear: preventing an "October 7" from Lebanon. Thus, no settlement could allow for a return to the pre-Aqsa Flood status quo. To that end, dozens of towns could be made to remain uninhabited rubble that is under control, either directly or by fire, to ensure northern Israel’s security, and Israel would receive international support in this effort.
Talking about the persistence of "resistance" would do nothing to help. By then, isolated from its surroundings and a pawn in the Iranian project, Lebanon would not benefit from recalling Nasrallah's famous phrase from the July 2006 war, "if I had known." Indeed, we could see a multiple of seven villages! Accommodating the displaced in other regions could open the door to grave tragedies in a country that has been sharply split by Hezbollah's arrogance and disregard for the interests and lives of the Lebanese people.

US Elections: The Collectivist Option
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/August 30/2024
In one of those outbursts that he specializes in Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s nominee for the US Presidency, called his Democrat rival, Vice-President Kamala Harris, a “Communist.” Since I doubt that Ms. Harris has anything but the faintest notion about Communism, a zombie ideology that went out of fashion decades ago, I think the Republican standard-bearer was off the mark. Off the mark but not totally wrong insofar as the Democrat champion implicitly identifies with a strand of politics dating back to Plato, a strand of which Communism is one of many variations.
In political philosophy this is called collectivism.
Plato, at least in his magnum opus The Republic, depicts the ideal society as one ruled by those who know best with the mission to look after the populace from cradle to grave. All that people have to do is obey the rules and enjoy the good life offered by ruling philosophers. Aristotle, in contrast, focuses on the individual who is, with the exception of occasion when gods intervene, master of his destiny.
Aristotle is wary of the masses and large societies. In fact, he is worried that a city that grows beyond 100,000 inhabitants may face trouble.
The settlers who created the United States were closer to Aristotle’s cult of the individual than to Plato’s collective utopia. They came to the New World as individuals or in groups too small to try to impose a collective identity on others. They were farmers who became path-finders, trailblazers and eventually nation-builders, always operating as individuals and coming together only in emergencies and exceptional circumstances such as fighting enemies. The state-structures that the Founding Fathers erected were also meant to intervene in exceptional circumstances.
Two of the first five presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, served as ambassadors respectively to the Court of St. James and Versailles where the individual’s identity was summed up as subjects of the monarch.
Adams and Jefferson along with most other early builders of the United States promoted the idea of a small government. Even then, they called it “the administration,” a neutral term that excluded transcendental pretensions.
Nevertheless, it was inevitable that in a world of nation states with centralized wielding of power and collectivist illusions, the newly created US would not remain unaffected by the modus operandi prevalent all over the world.
A series of wars with England, Mexico and the Spanish Empire highlighted the necessity of collective action in a nation that didn’t even have standing army.
The War of Secession highlighted the necessity of collective action to preserve the union but also created collectivist habits that would not fade once the emergency had ended.
William Jennings Bryan’s campaign against the gold standard laced with rhetorical flourish about helping the poor and curbing the rich contained faint but distinctive echoes of collectivism.
The need to raise huge armies during two world wars that ended with victory, further popularized the concept of collectivism.
The stock market crash of the 1929s boosted the attraction of collectivist action in a non-military emergency. President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, inspired by Keynesian economics, was the first major show of collectivism in American politics.
Partly thanks to its apparent success, it broke the mental dam that had kept collectivist ideas out of US politics outside emergencies.
It was further boosted after World War II and the entry into the American political sphere of concepts such as welfare state, industrial democracy, liberalism (which in American political lexicon means being on the left) progressivism, social market, the third way and even socialism.
Though the US ended up having a small Communist Party with a limited circle of sympathizers, mainly among the literary and artistic elites, Communism never became a major force in American politics.
As Communism is supposed to be successful in developed industrial societies such as the United States, Lenin wondered why America remained indifferent to its message.
Some historians suggest that this was due to the US elite’s success in portraying Communism as a military-security or even an existential threat illustrated by the “reds under the bed” witch-hunt of the 1950s rather than a rival view of the world.
My guess is that the US was vaccinated against Communist collectivism because of the tragedy that spanned seven decades in the Soviet Union. Without that, Communism might have had a better chance in seducing more Americans.
In the 1920s and 30s, other forms of collectivism, Italian Fascism and German Nazism, also found admirers in the US but never gained a popular base.
In literature, there were American writers such as Mark Twain, HD Thoreau, James Fennimore-Cooper, Herman Melville and Jack London, who chose the theme of the individual as hero while others like Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, John Ds Pasos and Erskine Caldwell veered towards social-realism.
In politics, the US took a sharp turn towards collectivism under President Lyndon Johnson with features such as positive discrimination, communitarianism, feminism and the early ramblings of environmentalism.
Fast forward, President John Kennedy’s “Ask not..” rhetoric, perhaps inspired by Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book,” designated the individual as one who ought to do something for the state rather than query what the state does for him.
Bill Clinton’s election slogan “It’s the economy stupid!” was a rehash of Marx’s belief that the economy provides the infrastructure of society with politics as the superstructure.
In his 780-page autobiography, Barack Obama mocks critics who suggest he may be a “closet socialist.”
He then reveals his attachment to collectivism, praising “the collective spirit, a thing we all wish for, a sense of connection that overrides our differences.”
He adds: “Regulatory state has made American lives a lot better”-words that echo Benito Mussolini’s declamations about the big corporatist state that redistributes the fruits of national endeavor.
Hilary Clinton, too, built her presidential message on the collectivist mantra of “It takes a village to raise a child.”
Over the decades, the traditional American cult of the individual as hero has lost much of its aura, being replaced by a new cult of the victim who is owed apology and compensation.
Whether Trump likes it or not, collectivist tropes are now deeply anchored in US politics with large constituencies, especially among ethnic minorities and millions of new immigrants mostly from the so-called “Third World” where the state is the secular Baal that decides everything.
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney once noted that almost half of all Americans depended on federal handouts and perks one way or another and thus wouldn’t vote for a candidate who argued for a smaller state and the cult of the individual as hero.
Well, they didn’t vote for him.

US withdrawal from Iraq isn’t as simple as it looks
Luke Coffey/Arab News/August 30, 2024
An important story that could have implications for Middle East security is not getting the attention it deserves: the future of the US military presence in Iraq, where about 2,500 American troops are stationed.
They are part of an international operation to prevent the resurgence of Daesh. A significant portion of this mission involves joint operations with local forces, including the Iraqi Security Forces. Writing from America, I can tell you that the US military presence in Iraq rarely makes headlines. Furthermore, there has been no meaningful debate about America’s presence in Iraq during the US presidential campaign.
However, behind the scenes, the US and Iraqi governments have been in continuous discussion of the issue. A total withdrawal of US forces, as in Afghanistan in August 2021, is unlikely. Instead, the US will probably transition away from combat operations, with the troop presence evolving into a more traditional US-Iraq security partnership.
So far there is no timeline for US troops to leave and agreement between Washington and Baghdad have been progressing slowly. This is because several factors must be considered before any final decision can be made.
The first is the reemerging threat of Daesh. After suffering defeat in 2019, Daesh has been rebounding. In the first half of this year, it carried out 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria, double the number from the same period in 2023. A total of 196 counterterrorism operations targeting Daesh were carried out in the first half of 2024, with the vast majority — 137 operations —in Iraq. Clearly the threat is increasing and cannot be ignored.
Second, regional geopolitics, particularly concerning Iran, must be considered. While the American military presence in Iraq is primarily focused on counterterrorism, it would be naive to think that Iran’s increasingly aggressive role in the region isn’t also a factor. In recent months, Iran and its proxies have stepped up their attacks. This will undoubtedly influence US policymakers. Although Baghdad may never admit it publicly, it will be a consideration for them too. Also, the US military presence in Iraq cannot be viewed in isolation. If the US wants to continue its military presence in northern Syria to fight Daesh then it must maintain a military footprint in Iraq for logistical reasons.
It is in the interest of both sides that the US-Iraq military relationship evolves into a more traditional security partnership
Third, the Iraqi army’s capabilities must be evaluated. After its calamitous breakdown in 2014 in the face of Daesh’s onslaught on Mosul, a lot of progress has been made. With the help of international forces, the army played an instrumental role in the liberation of northern Iraq from Daesh. However, it is still largely reliant on US assistance to carry out counterterrorism operations. For example, last year the army conducted only five independent counterterrorism operations against Daesh without coalition assistance. Considering the increase in Daesh activity in Iraq, the army still has a long way to go before it can fully take over the counterterrorism mission.
Finally, Washington and Baghdad will want to coordinate with NATO. Many may not realize that NATO conducts a training mission in Iraq, and relations between Iraq and NATO have been deepening in recent years. Gen. Michael Kurilla, head of US Central Command, told Congress this year that any decision to withdraw US forces from Iraq would be taken in close coordination with NATO. Iraq’s national security adviser, Qasim Al-Araji, visited NATO last week to discuss improving relations with Baghdad and the ongoing and future NATO training mission in the country.
With all these factors in mind, it’s clear that a US withdrawal from Iraq in a realistic timeframe will not occur soon. There was some talk of aiming for the end of this year, but the geopolitical circumstances and logistical challenges make this unlikely, if not irresponsible. While there is no formal agreement between Washington and Baghdad, discussions will continue. However, like the rest of the world, Iraq’s government will be closely watching what happens in the US at the presidential election in November. Regardless of the outcome, Joe Biden will be presiding over a lame-duck administration, making it unlikely that Baghdad would want to finalize talks with the White House on such an important matter knowing there will be a new president by January 2025.
There is no doubt that both Americans and Iraqis would prefer to see most US troops withdrawn from Iraq. However, it must be done in a responsible and realistic way. The last thing that Iraq or the broader region needs is a repeat of Barack Obama’s withdrawal in 2011. Despite experts calling for the US to leave behind a small residual force to help the Iraqi army, Obama was determined to remove all troops to fulfill a campaign promise. Within three years, Daesh had captured a huge chunk of northern Iraq, and the Iraqi military had largely disintegrated. Before long, US troops were back in Iraq fighting Daesh, where they remain. It is in the interest of both sides that the US-Iraq military relationship evolves into a more traditional security partnership. But the timeframe for this must be determined by the realities on the ground, not by wishful thinking.
• Luke Coffey is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. X: @LukeDCoffey.

Why US-led Gaza truce talks are doomed to fail
Daoud Kuttab/Arab News/August 30, 2024
The powerful US and Israeli media machines keep claiming that Hamas is the party that consistently rejects Gaza ceasefire proposals. However, a careful reading of the group’s official statement shows that it has accepted US President Joe Biden’s earlier proposal, which the UN Security Council also approved.
The problem that has been dogging any breakthrough is a lack of trust. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been constantly moving the goalposts and always blaming Hamas for rejecting ceasefire proposals. US and Arab mediators largely begin with the proposed Israeli text and then offer it to Hamas in an effort to get the group to take the blame for its rejection. A well-known Palestinian analyst, Nasser Laham, wrote this week that, over the last 40 years, the US has failed every time it has tried to mediate between the parties in the Middle East. This is largely because America cannot be a strong ally with Israel and at the same time an honest broker.
The major sticking point at this juncture is important. Hamas, as well as all Palestinians and actually the entire world, wants this war to end. Any proposal that leaves out an end to the war and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will ultimately be rejected.
Any proposal that leaves out an end to the war and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will ultimately be rejected.
Wars end with a ceasefire that is well observed, an exchange of prisoners and a sincere effort aimed at tackling the root causes of the violence. Netanyahu, who is hobbled by a corruption case and a mandatory, neutral investigation into Oct. 7, does not want to end the war without his version of a victory, which includes the annihilation of a deep-rooted Palestinian resistance movement and the unilateral release of Israeli soldiers and civilians. The Americans and many well-respected Israeli experts and retired military officials keep telling him that this will not happen.
Unable or unwilling to force Netanyahu to accept this reality, the US has partially adopted the Israeli PM’s obstinance by offering proposals that delay a decision to end the war. The American proposal says, “trust us.” But how can Palestinians trust a country that is physically supplying the weapons that are being used against them? No wonder protesters outside the Democratic National Convention zeroed in on the need to put a stop to America’s supply of weapons to Israel if Washington wants to be accepted as an honest broker. Palestinian Hamas leaders cannot and will not trust the US because it has repeatedly failed to deliver on what it has publicly stated about wanting to end the war, while it has still signed a $20 billion military deal and continues to supply the weapons and ammunition that are being used to kill Palestinian civilians.
The US and its weak Arab negotiators have a clear path they can follow, but they have resisted it. The UNSC is the world’s top body for peace and security. It has ordered a ceasefire, but Israel refused to even pay attention to its decision. The UN Charter’s Chapter VII deals with what to do with parties that refuse to implement binding resolutions agreed by the UNSC.
The US alone is calling all the shots and is regularly only doing so after getting Israel’s approval on what is offered.
If the members of the UNSC are serious about wanting an end to the war, they can simply pass a resolution that details steps to this end and that does not include any vague wording about allowing the Israeli army to stay in Gaza. Such a resolution, which would include a prisoner exchange, an observation mechanism for its implementation and a path to the globally accepted two-state solution, should also include a mention of Chapter VII sanctions on any party that refuses to implement its provisions.
The US, whose president began the current process with a proposal that both Israel and Hamas accepted, should want to make sure that both parties mean what they say by agreeing on a text that the global community can support and which will end this carnage.
At present, the negotiation process that Washington participates in has little chance of success, so long as the US alone is calling all the shots and is regularly only doing so after getting Israel’s approval on what is offered. The time has come for a global ceasefire offer that is fair and that clearly includes an immediate end to the war and an Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza. Continuing the current process is playing into the hands of the Israeli prime minister, whose interests are focused on his own political survival. Allowing Israel to continue with its unending revenge war is a formula for disaster and an invitation for the widening of a conflict that everyone wants to end immediately.
**Daoud Kuttab, an award-winning Palestinian journalist, is a director of Community Media Network. X: @daoudkuttab

Defence Of Democracy “FDD”/Deterring Iran’s Dash to the Bomb/By: Orde Kittrie, Bradley Bowman, Behnam Ben Taleblu/
دراسة مطولة ومهمة من موقع الدفاع عن الديمقراطية تتناول سبل ردع إيران لمنعها من الحصول على القنبلة النووية
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/08/133847/
ملخص الدراسة: إن العواقب المترتبة على الفشل في ردع إيران عن امتلاك القنبلة النووية وخيمة إلى الحد الذي يجعل الاستعداد لمثل هذه الحملة من بين أولويات الإدارة العليا. إن عدم اتخاذ خطوات لتعزيز الردع الآن من شأنه أن يؤدي إلى تكاليف أعلى كثيراً في المستقبل إذا ما استحوذت الدولة الأكثر رعاية للإرهاب في العالم على أخطر سلاح في العالم. وسوف تساعد كل من هذه الخطوات الموصى بها، ولكن التحدي الأساسي الذي يواجه الإدارة يتلخص في إقناع طهران بأن هذه الإدارة لديها الإرادة السياسية اللازمة لاستخدام كافة عناصر القوة الأميركية لمنع إيران من التقدم نحو امتلاك الأسلحة النووية.

Deterring Iran’s Dash to the Bomb
Defence Of Democracy FDD/Orde Kittrie, Bradley Bowman, Behnam Ben Taleblu/August 30/2024
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/08/29/deterring-irans-dash-to-the-bomb/#easy-footnote-bottom-1-241635
Executive Summary
The Islamic Republic of Iran appears to be in the process of significantly advancing its nuclear weapons program in the coming weeks while Americans are preoccupied with politics at home and Israel is busy battling Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran may seek to establish a nuclear fait accompli before the next administration takes office in January 2025, especially if Iran perceives the new administration to be more hawkish, unpredictable, or otherwise less constrained.1 This monograph is designed to recommend military and non-military steps the Biden-Harris administration should quickly take to deter Iran from making significant progress toward a nuclear weapon before the U.S. election on November 5 and the presidential inauguration on January 20.
The monograph begins with an analysis of the current status of Iran’s nuclear program. It then lists specific nuclear weapons program advances that Iran might, unless deterred, undertake and complete in the coming weeks. Within the overall scope of its nuclear weapons program, Iran is evidently attempting to advance in two major categories. The first is enrichment activities other than enriching uranium to 90 percent U-235 (weapons-grade level). The second is nuclear weaponization activities (advancing toward construction of an explosive device capable of unleashing the destructive power of the weapons-grade uranium (WGU) inserted therein). The next section derives key principles for deterring Iran based on previous successful U.S. efforts to deter Iran. The monograph then recommends specific military and non-military steps that the administration should take.
The concern that Iran may be in the process of significantly advancing its nuclear program appears consistent with a classified report on Iran’s nuclear weapons program issued by the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI) in late July. On July 28, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) described the classified ODNI report about Iran’s nuclear program as “stunning.”2
Graham said the report made him “very worried” that Iran “could use these three or four months before our election to sprint to a nuclear weapon” and warned, “we have to put them on notice that cannot happen.”3 Graham added, in a July 31 press conference, that “after having viewed the DNI report, I believe it is a certainty that if we do not change course, Iran will in the coming weeks or months possess a nuclear weapon.”4
The unclassified version of the ODNI report on Iran’s nuclear program, dated July 23,5 contains a deeply troubling change from both an analogous 2023 report6 and the Iran section of the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (published in February 2024).7 The July report is missing the following sentence contained in the February 2024 report (and nearly identically in the 2023 report): “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.”
The absence of this sentence,8 when added to factors including Sen. Graham’s response to the classified version of the July 2024 report, suggests that the U.S. intelligence community may assess that Iran is currently undertaking key nuclear weaponization activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.
Recent U.S. and European efforts to deter Iranian nuclear progress have focused largely on persuading Iran not to enrich uranium to 90 percent uranium-235.9 That level is typically referred to as weapons-grade uranium because it is the optimal level for nuclear weapons.10 However, solely focusing on the enrichment level is far too narrow to effectively prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon or positioning itself at the brink of one, which would provide nearly all of the same benefits for Iran.
While U.S. and allied attention is focused on deterring Iran from crossing the 90 percent redline, evidence including the ODNI report indicates that Iran is attempting to significantly advance other elements of its enrichment program and its nuclear weaponization activities (to advance toward construction of an explosive device capable of unleashing the destructive power of the enriched uranium).
Iran could achieve sufficient progress in these other two categories (non-90 percent enrichment steps and nuclear weaponization activities), perhaps before November 5 and almost certainly by January 20, so that the cumulative effect will make it extremely difficult to stop an Iranian nuclear weapon by solely patrolling the 90 percent redline. In addition, the cumulative effect of these other advances will make it impossible to stop Iran from getting so close to a weapon that the regime will enjoy nearly all the benefits of having such a capability.
The goal of U.S. policy should be to roll back Iran’s nuclear weapons program. If the administration fails to quickly take tangible steps to strengthen deterrence, Iran will advance closer to a bomb and rollback will become even more difficult for this administration or the next.
The United States therefore must immediately act to deter the Iranian nuclear enrichment and weaponization advances specified in the first section of this monograph. The Iranian enrichment program advances could render it very difficult for the United States and Israel to stop Iran from producing a sufficient quantity of 90 percent enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. These enrichment program advances include, but are not limited to, Iran shifting enrichment to hidden or deeply buried locations and Iran further decreasing the already very short time it would need to produce sufficient 90 percent enriched uranium for multiple nuclear weapons.11
On June 9 and 10, Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it would over the next three to four weeks be installing some 1,400 advanced centrifuges at its Fordow facility.12 According to noted nuclear expert David Albright, that means that Iran had by mid-July likely sufficiently enhanced and arranged its enrichment capacity so that it could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for three nuclear weapons in just 10 days, and do so in a deeply fortified underground facility (Fordow) that presents challenges for any military that attempts to destroy it with airstrikes.13 Once Iran produces sufficient weapons-grade uranium, the additional time needed to produce a functional nuclear weapon will be dependent on the time (if any) that Iran still needs to build a nuclear explosive device.
The Iranian nuclear weaponization program advances specified in the first section of this monograph would greatly shorten the time needed to complete the production of a nuclear explosive device.14 The advances would also considerably increase the likelihood that the device would function effectively, even absent a test blast.15 It may be impossible for the West to detect the final stages of assembly and storage of an Iranian nuclear weapon, which can occur in a small, hidden facility.16 Iran must be kept as far as possible from that point.
There is strong reason to believe that the U.S. government has the ability to deter Iran when Washington chooses to do so. This is demonstrated by the success of U.S. deterrence in a different arena earlier this year. Strong U.S. military action in early February 2024 led Iran to halt a campaign of near-daily attacks by Iranian proxies on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. While Iranian proxies had attacked U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria over 160 times in the 17 weeks between October 7, 2023, and February 4, 2024,17 Iranian proxies attacked only two times (with no U.S. casualties or significant property damage) in the 23 weeks between February 4 and July 16, 2024.18 Admittedly, as the deterrent impact of the February U.S. military responses has eroded, attacks on U.S. forces have resumed. The lesson from February, however, is still instructive.
Specific evidence that Iran’s nuclear program is guided by a cost-benefit approach and thus deterrable can be derived from the regime’s decisions to curtail key aspects of its nuclear program in 2003 and 2015. According to the public portions of a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), “in fall 2003, Tehran halted its … nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work.” 19 While the NIE’s phrasing and scope remain controversial, Iran did significantly ramp down its nuclear weapons program in fall 2003.20
The 2007 NIE assessed that the halt came “in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.” This, said the NIE, indicated that “Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.” 21
A 2011 National Intelligence Estimate, which was not made public, reportedly reached a similar conclusion,22 which was then reflected in the following language in 2012 congressional testimony delivered by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper: “We judge Iran’s nuclear decision-making is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the international community opportunities to influence Tehran.”23
The Islamic Republic’s decision to enter into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal in July 2015 was evidently also the result of a cost-benefit calculation. Iran agreed to various constraints on its nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of various sanctions that had taken a massive toll on the Iranian economy.
After providing an up-to-date analysis of how close Iran may already be to producing sufficient weapons-grade uranium and to constructing a nuclear explosive device, this monograph includes a list of two dozen nuclear program advances that Iran might, unless deterred, undertake and complete in the coming weeks.
If Iran succeeds in completing these steps between now and November 5, the regime could be in position to dash to a crude nuclear bomb between November 5 and January 20. Alternatively, the regime could be in position to stop just short of a completed nuclear bomb and present the new U.S. administration with the fait accompli of an Iran that is a true nuclear threshold state, as close as a few screw turns away from possessing a workable nuclear weapon.
Deterring these Iranian nuclear weapons program advances will be more complicated than deterring the bright red line of Iranian enrichment to 90 percent in facilities monitored by the IAEA. Several of these potential advances are more incremental than the bright line of whether 90 percent has been reached or exceeded. Several of these advances would take place in facilities that are not monitored by the IAEA. For many of the weaponization advances, Iran has carefully concocted (or will undoubtedly try to concoct) cover stories, claiming that the work is for civilian or non-nuclear military purposes. In other instances, Iran is likely to claim these advances are a response to U.S. or Israeli actions.
Shahab-3 and Zolfaghar missiles at Tehran rally featuring “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” chants. The IAEA has reported evidence of Iran working to develop a nuclear warhead for the Shahab-3. (Photo by Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)
While the cumulative effect of some or all of the nuclear weapons program advances would equal or outweigh the significance of Iran crossing the 90 percent line, it is difficult to envision the United States threatening to respond, or responding, to each of these individual advances with the same force it has implied it would use in response to a bright-line-crossing Iranian move to acquire a nuclear weapon. It is thus essential that the United States develop, and apply to these individual advances, a more nuanced and graduated deterrence toolkit.
In the interest of refining the U.S. deterrence toolkit to effectively deter the specified Iranian nuclear advances, this monograph sets forth 12 principles for deterring Iran. These principles reflect lessons learned from previous successful efforts to deter Iran.
The monograph includes six case studies of particularly relevant U.S. successes in deterring Iran, which include both large-scale and much smaller-scale deterrent successes using military, economic, and diplomatic tools.
The principles for deterring Iran also draw from analysis of Iranian culture, politics, and leadership statements as well as general deterrence theory and some past U.S. failures to deter Iran. Each of these principles will likely be applicable to deterring Iran after, as well as before, the inauguration of a new U.S. president on January 20, 2025.
In the past, the United States has relied on sanctions, isolation, sabotage, and the threat of force as its key tools to rein in Iran’s nuclear weapons program.24 Iran’s current partnership with Russia,25 and greatly increased supply of oil to China,26 means that sanctions and isolation may be less useful than they were before. In addition, the growth of Iran’s nuclear program and stockpiles means that sabotage may be less impactful. Thus, it is more important than ever for the United States to more effectively use the threat of force to deter Iranian nuclear advances of various types.
This monograph includes recommended steps the Biden-Harris administration should quickly take to enhance its ability to deter the regime in Iran from advancing toward a nuclear arsenal before the U.S. election on November 5 and the presidential inauguration on January 20.
The monograph recommends the United States adopt and implement the following steps to enact a whole-of-government strategy to identify and deter Iranian nuclear advances:
The United States should internally identify the full range of potentially significant Iranian nuclear advances and develop a set of U.S. and allied military and non-military responses to employ if Iran undertakes each advance.
Responses should not merely seek to reverse the advance but also impose a larger cost on the regime.
The United States should also determine which of the potential advances the United States should declare a redline, either publicly or in private messaging to the regime in Iran.
The section on recommended military steps for the United States to take to deter Iranian nuclear advances in the coming months contains the following:
The administration should consider declassifying intelligence assessments related to Iran’s nuclear weapons program to build domestic and international consensus for necessary deterrent strategies.
To deter additional significant nuclear advances or a full Iranian nuclear sprint, the administration should consider deploying select U.S. military forces affiliated with strategic targeting mission sets to the region, at least on a temporary basis, to signal the administration’s political will to stop an Iranian nuclear breakout, if necessary.
U.S. forces should regularly take part in military exercises that demonstrate targeting capabilities against hardened and deeply buried targets as well as expand the number of ground, air, and naval exercises with the military forces of Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Iraq. These exercises should incorporate assets deployed for deterrence against regional escalation.
Building on the success of the January 2023 Juniper Oak bilateral exercise with Israel (the largest in history), the administration should work with Israel to conduct by October a Juniper Oak 2024 exercise.
The administration should learn from past successful deterrence of Iran and respond more quickly and forcefully to attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. That will better protect deployed U.S. troops and increase concerns in Tehran that the United States might be willing to use military force.
The administration should formally announce a major effort to systematically deepen and expand U.S.-Israel intelligence sharing.
The Pentagon could lease to Israel a number of its own KC-46 refueling planes.
The administration should announce in the next couple months, and implement as quickly as possible, steps to expedite the delivery of Israel’s order for new F-15IA fighter aircraft and the modernization of its existing F-15I fighters.
The White House should lift its hold on the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs (MK-84) to Israel to provide Jerusalem with vital capabilities and signal to the Iran axis that U.S. support is unwavering.
Congress and the administration should ensure that there are no delays in delivering hundreds of the BLU-109 Penetrator Bomb to Israel, which can help it destroy modestly hardened targets while minimizing civilian casualties.
Congress and the administration should ensure that any air-launched munitions, guidance kits, and fuses requested by Israel since October 7 that require congressional notification are sent to Capitol Hill and delivered to Israel without delay.
The monograph’s recommended non-military steps to deter Iranian nuclear advances in the coming months include:
President Joe Biden should make an unambiguous statement such as the following: “If Iran takes additional decisive steps toward producing a nuclear bomb, I will use military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and impose crippling costs on the regime, including by destroying other targets important to it.” The additional decisive steps, which need not be publicly specified, could include the most important of the potential Iranian advances set forth in this monograph, including enriching uranium to 90 percent, expelling IAEA inspectors, or undertaking significant additional weaponization activities.
The U.S. deterrent statement will resonate more if it is not just a line or two in a presidential speech but is instead accompanied by an explanation of why it is essential to U.S. national security that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons.
Particularly during the election season and transition period, other top U.S. officials and candidates should also issue strong messages of U.S. commitment to use force, if necessary, against Iran’s nuclear program. Those officials and candidates should include: Vice President Kamala Harris, Governor Tim Walz, Secretaries Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken, former President Donald Trump, Senator JD Vance, and members of Congress from both parties.
President Biden should reiterate and strengthen the existing U.S. commitment to support Israeli action to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb. It is important to deterrence that other top U.S. officials and candidates also express strong support for Israel’s freedom of action to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb. Those officials and candidates should again include: Vice President Harris, Governor Walz, Secretaries Austin and Blinken, former President Trump, Senator Vance, and leading legislators from both parties.
The Biden administration should massively increase economic sanctions immediately until Iran curtails its nuclear weapons program. If the administration is unwilling to do so, it should at least make clear to Iran that specific additional advances would incur severe economic consequences (along with other types of U.S.-imposed consequences).
The United States should work with the United Kingdom, France, and Germany to trigger the snapback process by which pre-JCPOA UN sanctions and restrictions can be re-imposed on Iran in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2231. Resolution 2231, which endorsed the JCPOA, terminated numerous sanctions and restrictions previously imposed on Iran by several prior Security Council resolutions. As a result, the threat of a snapback constitutes significant leverage over Iran. Iran is clearly in significant non-compliance with its JCPOA commitments and thus subject to snapback.
The United States should enhance plans and prepare to deploy cyber capabilities to disrupt and disable Iran’s nuclear weapons-related infrastructure. This includes not just the core operations of the Natanz and Fordow facilities but also the critical infrastructure and the physical security of those facilities.
The United States should prepare to deploy cyber capabilities to deter and respond to relevant nuclear advances by attacking the command-and-control capabilities of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and degrading Iran’s capabilities to mobilize and direct its paramilitary forces.
The United States should prepare to deploy cyber capabilities to deter and respond to relevant nuclear advances by disrupting or degrading the operations of Iran’s military facilities.
The United States should enhance its cyber engagement and collaboration with Israel. Given the reported impact on Iran’s nuclear program of the apparent U.S.-Israeli partnership on Stuxnet, it seems likely that announcements of relevant new U.S.-Israeli cyber partnerships (phrased as vaguely as necessary to protect secrecy) could add to the deterrent pressure on Iran.
The administration should implement, without delay, a graduated offensive information war campaign inside Iran that systematically exposes the Iranian people to the corruption, hypocrisy, lies, and oppression by regime leaders and ensures the Iranian people know the truth regarding the regime’s foreign and domestic policies.
The United States should strongly encourage, and assist, the IAEA to continue pressing concerns that Iran’s nuclear program is not peaceful.
Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Current Status and Possible Next Steps
Iran is Rapidly Advancing Toward a Nuclear Bomb
Iran’s breakout time — the amount of time needed to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear weapon — “is now probably one or two weeks,” said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on July 19.27 This is reportedly the shortest period of time that U.S. officials have ever publicly referenced for Iran producing that quantity of weapons-grade uranium.28 As of May 2024, the Institute for Science and International Security assessed that Tehran could make enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon in one week and enough for 13 weapons in four months.29
Increasing the danger, Iran has evidently added new enrichment capacity at its deeply buried Fordow facility this summer. According to Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright, this added capacity is sufficient for Iran, using only Fordow, to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for three nuclear weapons in just 10 days.30 To complicate matters, targeting the deeply buried nuclear facilities at Fordow presents unique challenges for military planners.31
Once Iran produces sufficient weapons-grade uranium, the time needed to produce a functional nuclear weapon will depend on the amount of time (if any) that Iran still needs to build a nuclear explosive device. Iran acquired vast knowledge and experience in developing and building nuclear weapons during the early 2000s under the regime’s “Amad Plan.”32 Certain U.S. sources have repeatedly assessed that Iran has not yet “mastered all of the necessary technologies” for building nuclear weapons.33 Based on that assessment, those U.S. government sources estimated, prior to recent developments, that Iran would need one year to complete the nuclear weapons production steps besides the acquisition of weapons-grade uranium.34
However, Olli Heinonen, former deputy general of the IAEA, recently estimated that Iran may be able to create an arsenal of eight nuclear warheads within six months.35 And in 2023, Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated that once Iran has sufficient weapons-grade uranium, it “would only take several more months to produce an actual nuclear weapon.”36
Albright has assessed, based on analysis of hundreds of Amad Plan documents that Israel seized from Iran in 2018, that “Iran already knows how to build nuclear weapons, although there are some unfinished tasks related to the actual construction of them.”37 Albright assessed in late 2023 that Iran would need six months between deciding to construct a nuclear weapon and testing such a weapon.38 He estimates Tehran could further shorten the timeline for a Western response if Iran produced weapons-grade uranium toward the end of a breakout instead of at the start.39 That time would also shrink enormously if Iran were to achieve the relevant nuclear weaponization advances specified in this monograph.
At least two Iranian officials have claimed that Iran is much closer than six months to a nuclear bomb. In February, former Atomic Energy Organization of Iran chief Ali-Akbar Salehi claimed that Iran has crossed “all the scientific and technological nuclear thresholds” to build a bomb40 and hinted that Tehran already has all the pieces of a nuclear weapon completed but disassembled.41
Days later, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi reacted to Salehi’s comments by saying that Iran is “not entirely transparent” regarding its nuclear program. “Let me know what you have,” he warned.42 Grossi also said in an interview published on April 10, “All this loose talk about nuclear weapons is extremely unhelpful, and I frankly deplore it,” reflecting the gravity of Salehi’s comments.43 “If you are a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” said Grossi, “you are not supposed to have nuclear weapons in any way — assembled, disassembled, in a drawer, in a cupboard, or whatever. You should not pursue it; you should not have it. Period.”44
Notwithstanding Grossi’s sharp rebuke of Salehi, Javad Karimi Ghodousi, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Commission, made another worrisome statement less than two weeks later. Ghodousi declared that if the supreme leader “issues permission, we would be a week away from testing the first [nuclear bomb].”45 The next day, Ghodousi elaborated, saying that Iran “needs half a day or maximum a week to build a nuclear warhead.”46 Ghodousi’s statement is consistent with that of Salehi but inconsistent with the assessment of many Western experts.
The U.S. and IAEA Have Limited Visibility Into Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program
There is a significant possibility that Iran could enrich sufficient uranium to weapons-grade levels, manufacture nuclear weapon components, or even assemble complete bombs, in small, covert facilities undetected by the United States or the IAEA.47 Heinonen recently stated that an Iranian breakout “would be difficult to detect by the technical means used by Western intelligence agencies.”48
Heinonen explained that “the enrichment installation needed for the one, decisive last leap would require less than 1,000 advanced centrifuges, which can be put to work in a small and relatively easily hidden floor space.”49 He added that the “necessary workshop for uranium conversion to metal, and machining of weapon components, would be even smaller” and “difficult to find.”50 Iran reportedly also may be working on a new, secret enrichment facility in mountains near the Natanz enrichment site that is 100 meters deep.51 Such a site would create additional challenges for any effort to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.52
Iran has greatly limited IAEA monitoring of its nuclear activities.53 Thus, the IAEA lacks a comprehensive picture of the regime’s nuclear activities, which eases Iran’s task of stockpiling advanced centrifuges at a secret enrichment site for use in a breakout to nuclear weapons.
Iran Can Significantly Advance Toward a Nuclear Bomb in the Coming Weeks
Iranian officials have long claimed that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa (a reversible ruling on a point of Islamic law) that the “use” of nuclear weapons is “haram” (forbidden).54 However, as one Iran analyst has noted, Khamenei’s purported fatwa that the “use” of nuclear arms is forbidden did not forbid the “‘production and storage’ of nuclear arms.”55
Recent comments by Salehi and others suggesting that the regime now possesses the requisite equipment and technical expertise necessary to build nuclear weapons represent a significant deviation from prior Iranian statements. Previous Iranian official public discussions of nuclear weapons focused on the fatwa and rarely hinted at acquiring nuclear weapons.
In addition, there have been several worrisome statements hinting at a potential change in the purported fatwa. In April, amidst the Israeli-Iranian military conflict that month, an IRGC official in charge of nuclear security threatened, “If the fake Zionist regime decides to use the threat of attacking our country’s nuclear centers as a tool to put pressure on Iran, it is possible and conceivable to revise the nuclear doctrine and policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran and deviate from the previously declared considerations.”56
This was echoed by a former foreign minister of Iran, Kamal Kharrazi in a May interview: “Two years ago, in an interview with Al Jazeera, I announced that Iran has the potential to produce a nuclear bomb; and today we still have that capacity, but we have no decision to produce a nuclear bomb … but if Iran’s existence is threatened, we will have to change our nuclear doctrine.”57
In the coming weeks, many Americans will be preoccupied with domestic politics, and Israel will almost certainly be busy battling Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran’s disposition against a possible second Trump term, as documented by the ODNI,58 could tempt Tehran to create a nuclear fait accompli before a potential Trump inauguration on January 20.
There is evidence that the regime is already attempting to use this period to significantly advance its nuclear program. The unclassified version of the ODNI report on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, dated July 23, indicates that the U.S. intelligence community can no longer attest that “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.”59
Another phrase in the unclassified report underscores that at least some of the increase in Iranian nuclear activity involves weaponization. ODNI states that Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”60 This is a notable and concerning change from the identically placed language in the previous year’s report, which stated that Iran has “undertaken research and development activities that would bring it closer to producing the fissile material needed for completing a nuclear device following a decision to do so.”61
In July, Axios reported that the United States and Israel both detected suspicious activities that “could be part of a covert Iranian effort to use the period around the U.S. presidential election to make progress toward nuclear weaponization.”62 The activities reportedly involved computer modeling and other research to develop nuclear weapons.63
In June and early July, Iran also dramatically increased its enrichment capacity (adding 1,400 advanced centrifuges) at its deeply buried Fordow facility.64
According to Albright, Iran appears likely, in the period before January 20, to attempt to achieve two categories of major advances toward a nuclear arsenal. One is to further decrease the time the regime would need to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium for nuclear weapons. The second category is to increase the possibility of success for, and shorten the time required to complete, the production of nuclear explosive devices.65
Albright estimates that the regime could thereby reduce considerably the time it would need to build a crude nuclear weapon. Unlike analysts who assume that Iran is only interested in the ability to produce numerous warheads suitable for delivery by ballistic missiles, Albright assesses that Iran might choose to simply dash to produce a crude nuclear weapon (deliverable by ship or truck).66 This would “signal Iran’s entry into the nuclear weapons club as the tenth member, either dramatically via an underground nuclear test, or stealthily via leaks about its accomplishment.”67 Albright notes that entry into the nuclear weapons club with a crude device was the approach taken by both North Korea and Pakistan.68
Albright explains that since it is unclear whether the United States and IAEA could quickly detect an Iranian dash to a bomb, reducing the time required for such a dash would facilitate Iran being able to do so before the United States could detect the activity and respond.69
Albright estimates that Iran appears less likely to attempt to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels before January 20. This is because the Biden administration has made such enrichment (to 90 percent) a red line. This is a clearly definable line (unlike some weaponization activities for which Iran can concoct a cover story), and enriching to 90 percent is easier to monitor (given the IAEA’s presence).70
An Iranian dash to weapons-grade levels before January 20 is more likely to occur if Western estimates are wrong that Iran still needs several months of weaponization research and development and Salehi is right (or closer to right) in indicating that Iran already has all the pieces of a nuclear weapon completed but disassembled. It is possible that Iran has been progressing related activities secretly, perhaps at military sites. If Iran reaches a point where it only needs hours or days to construct a nuclear explosive device, it might increase the regime’s willingness to gamble. A pre-January 20 Iranian crossing of the 90 percent redline may also be more likely to occur if Trump wins the election on November 5 and Iran calculates it is in its interest to achieve 90 percent (and perhaps even a bomb) between Trump’s election and inauguration.
“Policy options narrow considerably when responding to a state that is advancing rapidly toward the nuclear threshold,” FDD nonproliferation experts Anthony Ruggiero and Andrea Stricker noted in a March 2022 memo. “If the Islamic Republic chooses to move closer to threshold status — or dash to nuclear weapons — there would likely be substantial uncertainty surrounding its precise intentions and activities.”71 That is why it is important to understand in detail all the possible actions that Iran is taking — or may be taking in the coming weeks — to move closer to the nuclear threshold.72
Key Potential Steps for Iranian Nuclear Advancement
The following, drawn largely from Albright,73 is a list of key advancement steps (other than 90 percent enrichment) that Iran might, unless deterred, undertake before January 20:
Enrichment and other fissile material advances
further decrease the time the regime would need to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium for multiple nuclear weapons, for example by:
installing new equipment noticeably designed for enrichment up to 90 percent, say under the cover of producing a naval propulsion reactor (which may be under construction or is in advanced planning)
producing additional uranium enriched to 60 percent
installing additional, more efficient centrifuges
building/finishing and outfitting another enrichment plant, perhaps invoking its illegal interpretation of Code 3.1 that it need not yet inform the IAEA about the plant. This could happen at a deeply buried site near the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant.
otherwise make it harder for the United States or Israel to halt such enrichment (for example by shifting more activities to deeply buried, or more deeply buried, locations)
finish enriched uranium metal line at Isfahan
produce more uranium metal enriched to 20 percent
produce 60 percent enriched uranium metal
practice making weapons-grade uranium nuclear weapons components using surrogate materials such as titanium
Iranian steps to reduce IAEA access to data and equipment
destroy video tapes from earlier JCPOA monitoring
assemble centrifuges in new, secret facilities without monitoring equipment
employ hackers to target IAEA safeguards or dissemination systems
further curtail or interfere with IAEA inspector presence, such as by falsely declaring security or accident emergencies
Weaponization advances
to increase the possibility of success for, and shorten the time the regime would require for completing the production of nuclear explosive devices
update and finalize a detailed task plan and schedule (e.g., a Gantt diagram) for building a nuclear explosive device and then warheads for ballistic missiles74
computer modeling, for example simulating nuclear explosive devices
accelerated development, production, or assembly work on a neutron initiator
advancing and re-energizing work on multi-point explosive initiation systems suitable for a nuclear explosive device (Iran might attempt under a civilian or non-nuclear military cover story)
testing explosive diagnostic systems and neutron detection systems for pulsed neutron sources (Iran might attempt under a civilian or non-nuclear military cover story)
undertake development of dual-use nuclear weaponization components under the cover of a non-nuclear military purpose, such as arming and fusing systems, self-destruct mechanisms, flyer plates, or a high-altitude altimeter for the detonation of explosives inside a ballistic missile re-entry vehicle
build or prepare a camouflaged, underground nuclear test facility in an existing mountain tunnel complex located in a semi-remote area of Iran
secretly carry out a so-called “cold test” of a prototype nuclear explosive device that uses a surrogate material for weapons-grade uranium and, if caught, declare it a non-nuclear military experiment
Other
reversing or reinterpreting Khamenei’s purported fatwa that the “use” of nuclear weapons is forbidden
statements by regime officials that Iran has, is on the brink of, or needs nuclear weapons
Iranian withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty
progress on developing or building a ballistic missile re-entry vehicle suitable for carrying a nuclear warhead
a combination of developments that leaves U.S. officials with insufficient confidence they would identify an Iranian dash to a bomb before it was too late75
Principles for Deterring Iran
Iran Does Occasionally Retreat, But Only Tactically, and Typically Only When Regime Survival is at Risk
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Tehran has persistently pursued the same core strategic objectives: ensuring regime survival, exporting its revolution, sponsoring terrorist proxies, becoming the region’s pre-eminent ballistic missile power, and developing a nuclear threshold capability or weapon. However, the regime has on several occasions changed tactics, backing away or recalibrating its approach, in the face of international efforts to coerce, constrain, or otherwise shape its choices. The regime often uses the term “expediency” to describe a change of tactics without altering its ultimate objectives.
History demonstrates that the Islamic Republic will only significantly change its tactics when faced with meaningful risks to its top priority, staying in power, without which it would be unable to pursue any of its other strategic and ideological objectives. Faced with costs and risks of a significant but lesser magnitude, Tehran typically oscillates between escalation and de-escalation, only truly settling for a suboptimal outcome with a face-saving line of retreat when it senses that pursuit of a tactic can meaningfully impact regime survival.
To effectively deter or coerce Iran, the United States need not issue a direct threat to end the regime. To bolster deterrence, U.S. policy should credibly threaten to impose costs that would, if continued, pose an existential threat to the regime.
There is bipartisan concern that the United States may be insufficiently deterring Iran from advancing its nuclear weapons program. That concern was eloquently addressed in a December 2021 joint statement by Howard Berman (former Democratic chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee); Michele Flournoy (former under secretary of defense for policy under President Barack Obama); Jane Harman (former Democratic ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee); Leon Panetta (former secretary of defense and CIA director under President Obama); David Petraeus (former CIA director under President Obama after serving as commander of U.S. Central Command); and others.76
The joint statement explained why it is “essential” to “stop the dangerous advance of the Iranian nuclear program.” 77 The following excerpt is even more relevant today given recent and pending Iranian nuclear advances:
Without convincing Iran it will suffer severe consequences if it stays on its current path, there is little reason to hope for the success of diplomacy. And given the speed with which Iran is moving forward with its nuclear program, such consequences cannot be limited to political isolation, condemnatory resolutions in international fora and additional economic sanctions, all of which are a necessary part of an American strategy toward Iran but are not sufficient at this stage to convince Iran’s leaders that the price they will pay requires them to alter their course.
Therefore, for the sake of our diplomatic effort to resolve this crisis, we believe it is vital to restore Iran’s fear that its current nuclear path will trigger the use of force against it by the United States. The challenge is how to restore U.S. credibility in the eyes of Iran’s leaders. Words—including formulations that are more pointed and direct than “all options are on the table”—are also necessary but not sufficient.
In that context, we believe it is important for the Biden administration to take steps that lead Iran to believe that persisting in its current behavior and rejecting a reasonable diplomatic resolution will put to risk its entire nuclear infrastructure, one built painstakingly over the last three decades.78
Since the 1980s, there have been several cases in which Iran is widely believed to have backed down. Cases that are several decades old are valuable in the Iranian context because of the regime’s remarkable continuity in leadership, with Ali Khamenei serving as Iran’s supreme leader since 1989 after serving as president from 1981 to 1989.
Lessons learned from past successful U.S. efforts to coerce or deter Iran must take into account that Iran may be more skeptical now than it was in prior decades regarding Washington’s willingness to use its unmatched military power to launch the attacks necessary to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Thus, a U.S. action that sent a successful deterrent message to Iran in the past may not be sufficient today. Tehran’s closer ties to China and Russia than in prior decades may also make it more difficult to isolate Iran internationally.
One definition of deterrence is “causing someone not to do something because they expect or fear that they will be worse off if they do it than if they do not.” By contrast, the other principal form of coercion is “compellence,” which seeks “to propel a target to take an action, or to stop taking an action it has already started.”79 Compellence is typically harder to achieve than deterrence.
This monograph focuses on deterrence, offering recommendations designed principally to persuade Iran to refrain from advancing its nuclear program. However, some case studies below include both deterrence and compellence.
The following are illustrative examples of where the United States succeeded in deterring or compelling Iran.
Iran Halted Maritime Harassment
In spring 1988, Iran backed off from engaging the U.S. military after a forcible response by the U.S. Navy. In 1987 and early 1988, during the Iran-Iraq War, Iran repeatedly engaged in maritime harassment operations. One U.S. Navy guided-missile frigate was severely damaged by an Iranian mine. The United States responded on April 18, 1988, with Operation Praying Mantis, a one-day campaign that was at the time the largest U.S. Navy surface action since World War II.80
American forces destroyed two Iranian surveillance platforms, sank two Iranian warships, and severely damaged another.81 According to David Crist, senior historian for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “After Operation Praying Mantis, Iran backed off from engaging the U.S. military. Having lost its most capable ships, the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy kept its remaining combatants in port for most of the remainder of the Iran-Iraq War.”82
More recently, an FDD study examined 26 instances between January 2021 and July 2023 of Iranian maritime aggression involving harassments, attacks, or seizures. The study revealed a consistent trend. When U.S. Navy and partner vessels were present, Iranian forces tended to back down, demonstrating how American military power can help deter or defeat Iranian malign behavior.83
Iran Terminated the War Against Iraq
In July 1988, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ended the eight-year Iran-Iraq War (a conflict the regime called the “Holy Defense”)84 that he had previously pledged to continue until “the last drop of blood and the last breath.”85 Khomeini halted the war in the face of heavy battlefield losses to Iraq, an Iraqi missile campaign against civilian targets, a significant naval defeat by the United States, an economic crisis at home, the accidental downing of an Iranian airliner by U.S. forces,86 and a sense that Iran was isolated internationally.
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was then both parliamentary speaker and acting commander-in-chief, said, “Time is not on our side anymore. The world … has decided to make a serious effort to save Saddam and tie our hands.”87 Khomeini explained that he was halting the war in order to preserve the Islamic Revolution and its system of government.
Iran Decelerated its Nuclear Weapons Program in 2003
According to a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), portions of which were made public, “in fall 2003, Tehran halted its … nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work.”88 While the NIE’s phrasing and scope remains controversial, it is apparent that Iran did dial down some of its nuclear weapons program in fall 2003,89 including by suspending some enrichment activity.90 In addition, Iran that year allowed the IAEA to visit two formerly clandestine Iranian nuclear facilities and started implementing the IAEA’s Additional Protocol.
The 2007 NIE assessed that the halt was “directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.”91 This, said the 2007 NIE, indicated that “Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.”92
A 2011 National Intelligence Estimate, which was not made public, reportedly also concluded that Iran’s nuclear calculus is guided by a cost-benefit approach.93 This was then reflected in the following language in 2012 testimony by then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper: “We judge Iran’s nuclear decision-making is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the international community opportunities to influence Tehran.”94
The principal source of pressure leading Iran to decelerate its nuclear weapons program in 2003 was reportedly the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 200395 to “disarm Iraq” of weapons of mass destruction, “end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism,” and “free the Iraqi people.” According to the Congressional Research Service, “[s]tatements from current and former Iranian officials indicate that, during fall 2003, Tehran feared that the United States might … undertake military action or other coercive measures against Iran.”96 Regardless of the overall merits of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the exercise of American military power that year in Iraq reportedly contributed to Iran decelerating its nuclear program.
Iran Backed Down From Challenging U.S. Drone Flights
In November 2012, a robust U.S. response caused Iran to back down from challenging U.S. drone flights. This “demonstrated,” in the words of then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, “that diplomacy is most effective when the message is clear, the determination unambiguous, and the force behind it sufficient to make it stick.”97
An Iranian fighter jet had fired three times on an American Predator drone monitoring activity in the Strait of Hormuz from international airspace. According to Panetta, the United States responded by informing the Iranians that Washington would fly the mission again the next day and “[i]f you come near us, we are going to shoot you down.” The next day, when the drone flew the mission accompanied by two F-16s, the “Iranians let the drone and its escorts pass overhead unimpeded.”98
Iran Agreed to Nuclear Concessions as Part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
In July 2015, Iran agreed to the JCPOA nuclear deal, which placed several time-limited restrictions on its nuclear program. Many commentators, and many members of Congress from both parties, criticized the JCPOA’s curtailments of Iran’s nuclear program for being insufficiently long-term and verifiable.99
Although they were divided on the sufficiency of the JCPOA, many leading supporters and opponents of the JCPOA seemed to agree that the U.S. economic sanctions campaign that had preceded it was a valuable tool to contain Iran’s nuclear weapons program. A broad range of commentators credited the sanctions campaign with achieving significant (albeit, to some, insufficient) curtailment of Iran’s nuclear progress.
For example, in statements praising the JCPOA in July and August 2015, President Obama attributed the Iranian concessions to “the sanctions that have proven so effective”100 that “were put in place precisely to get Iran to agree to constraints on its program.”101 In April 2015, then CIA Director John Brennan stated that Khamenei had become more flexible in negotiations with the West because he was persuaded that “six years of sanctions had really hit,” and Iran’s economy was “destined to go down” unless a deal was reached with the West and sanctions were lifted.102
The JCPOA could have further curtailed Iran’s nuclear program if the economic pressure had been stronger. Announcing in August 2015 that he would vote against the JCPOA, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said it would be “better to keep U.S. sanctions in place, strengthen them, enforce secondary sanctions on other nations, and pursue the hard-trodden path of diplomacy once more, difficult as it may be.”103 Other critics suggested the U.S. negotiating position could also have been strengthened if economic pressure had been supplemented with a more credible threat to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program by force if all other options failed.104
Iran Largely Halted Attacks on U.S. Forces in Iraq and Syria for 23 Weeks in 2024
According to a July 2024 report by the ODNI, “[s]ince February, Iran-aligned militant groups in Iraq have adhered to an Iranian-ordered pause on attacks against U.S. military and diplomatic targets in Iraq and Syria.”105 Indeed, Iranian proxies entirely halted attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria for the 11 weeks between February 4 and April 21.106
On April 21-22, U.S. troops faced two rocket and drone attacks that caused no casualties or significant damage. But there were again no Iranian proxy attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria in the 12 weeks between April 22 and July 16.107
This was in stark contrast to the 17 weeks between October 7, 2023, (the day Hamas attacked Israel) and February 4, during which Iranian proxies attacked U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria over 160 times.108 The July 2024 ODNI report described how, during that October 7 to February 4 period, Iranian-sponsored militants had “conducted a campaign of near-daily attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.”
The 23-week nearly complete halt in attacks by Iranian proxies followed unusually strong U.S. retaliatory strikes on Iranian interests on February 2 and 7. Those U.S. strikes came in response to a drone attack, attributed to the Islamic Resistance in Iraq — a coalition of Iranian-backed militias — that killed three U.S. Army Reserve soldiers in Jordan on January 28.109
The U.S. military strike on February 2 struck more than 85 targets at seven facilities in Iraq and Syria that were utilized by the IRGC and Iran’s proxies.110 The strike reportedly killed dozens of militants.111 There were reportedly112 no Iranian officials killed in the attack. 113 However, the U.S. announcement of its February 2 strike specified that the targets were “facilities utilized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps” as well as the militant groups that they sponsor. Then, on February 7, a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed an Iranian proxy group’s senior commander, whom the United States held “responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on U.S. forces.”114
The U.S. strikes in February represented a major change from the roughly nine low-level strikes that the United States had ineffectually mounted in response to more than 160 Iranian proxy attacks between October 7 and the end of January.115 The low-level U.S. strikes between October 7 and the end of January were clearly insufficient to deter Iran or its proxies. By contrast, the much stronger and IRGC-targeting U.S. strikes of February 2 and 7 evidently had a positive deterrent effect on the risk calculus of Iran and its proxies in Iraq and Syria.
Deterrence Must be Sufficient to Outweigh Perceived Intelligence Gaps
There is a significant possibility that Iran could enrich sufficient uranium to weapons-grade levels, manufacture nuclear weapon components, or even assemble complete bombs, in small, covert facilities.116 Heinonen stated that an Iranian breakout “would be difficult to detect by the technical means used by Western intelligence agencies.”117
Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant Mt. Kolang Gaz La Complex New Construction. April 4, 2024. (Image (c) Airbus Pleiades 2024 via Google Earth; Institute for Science and International Security)
Heinonen explained that “the enrichment installation needed for the one, decisive last leap would require less than 1,000 advanced centrifuges, which can be put to work in a small and relatively easily hidden floor space.”118 He added that the “necessary workshop for uranium conversion to metal, and machining of weapon components, would be even smaller” and “difficult to find.”119
The United States and the IAEA may not currently have the capacity in all cases to detect, with sufficient reliability and speed, a nuclear weapons program hidden at clandestine facilities. In addition, even if the United States were to detect an Iranian dash to a bomb, it might not be able to react in time. Because weaponization work can occur in small facilities that are undetectable120 and Iran is known to have conducted such work in the past,121 it is particularly unclear that the United States knows for certain how much, if any, additional progress Iran needs to make toward mastering weaponization.
The United States cannot simply depend on its ability to detect — and head off — a dash when it occurs. Washington needs to persuade Tehran that it will pay a sufficiently high price, if caught before completion, that it is not worthwhile for the regime to dash for a bomb even if it calculates that it might not get caught before it possesses a nuclear weapon.
Tehran Likely Doubts the Current U.S. Will to Forcibly Halt Iran’s Nuclear Program
If the American threat to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program is to be credible, the United States must both possess the capacity to halt the program and demonstrate the will to use that capacity if necessary. The Islamic Republic is apparently not currently persuaded that the United States has the will to launch the magnitude of attacks necessary to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program or to engage in other significant military action directly against Iran.122
Iranian military statements are not always straightforward. They often involve hyperbole or deception, and they often address multiple audiences at once, domestic and foreign. But it is clear that the regime in Tehran increasingly feels (thanks in part to its improved missile and drone capabilities) that it is not defenseless against, and thus could impose significant costs in response to, a major U.S. attack on targets in Iran.123
Writing in September 2022 about the need to enhance the credibility of U.S. deterrence vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclear program, Dennis Ross said that Iranian leaders “do not believe Washington will ever use force against them.”124 Iran began enriching up to 60 percent in April 2021.125 Before it did so, there was reportedly a debate within the regime over whether doing so was too risky.126 “Those who pushed to enrich,” said Ross, “no doubt feel vindicated and even more confident that the United States will not respond with force.”127
The decision to enrich to 60 percent followed the Iranian parliament’s passage of a bill pressing for escalatory measures, including resuming uranium enrichment to 20 percent purity.128 The bill was in response to Israel’s November 2020 killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s chief military nuclear scientist.129
“The America of today is not the America of the past 10, 20, or 30 years,”130 declared IRGC Chief Hossein Salami after the bungled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The way Iranian decision-makers see U.S. staying power today is fundamentally different than three decades ago.
America’s eroded deterrence is further demonstrated by Tehran’s repeated plots to conduct assassinations on U.S. soil.131 Over the summer, Iran reportedly plotted to assassinate Donald Trump.132 On August 6, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani national tied to Iran with allegedly plotting to assassinate a politician or U.S. government official on U.S. soil.133 In 2022, the Justice Department charged an Iranian national, working on behalf of the IRGC, with attempting to arrange the murder of former National Security Advisor John Bolton.134
In 2021 and then again in 2023, the Justice Department charged several persons with Iran-directed plots to kidnap or kill Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American who has spoken out against Iran.135 While neither plot succeeded, both involved considerable preparatory activity around her home.
According to a July 2024 ODNI report, “Tehran publicly vows to conduct lethal operations inside the United States and continues to identify the former U.S. President, former Secretary of State, and former Commander of U.S. Central Command as among its priority targets.”136 This is hardly the behavior of a regime that fears American power.
These failures of U.S. deterrence speak to a U.S. credibility gap — not a capability gap — in the mind of Iranian decision-makers. Given Iran’s current skepticism of American will regarding Iran’s nuclear program, a U.S. step (or package of steps) sufficient to send a deterrent message to an Iran less skeptical of American resolve must be stronger today than was needed in the past.
Iran Is More Likely to Back Down When It Feels Isolated Internationally
Iran is more likely to back down when it feels isolated internationally. International isolation contributed to the Iranian regime agreeing to halt the Iran-Iraq War. Iran was again isolated between 2006 and 2015, this time by a series of UN Security Council resolutions passed with Chinese and Russian support, which pressured Iran to curb its nuclear program.137 This isolation contributed to the Iranian nuclear concessions contained in the Joint Plan of Action and Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.138
Then Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi speaks during BRICS Extraordinary Joint Meeting in Tehran, Iran, on November 21, 2023. (Photo by Iranian Presidency/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Iran is currently much less isolated. Its military cooperation with Russia has vastly expanded since Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, 139 and its oil sales to China have dramatically increased over the last 18 months.140 In addition, Iran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a China-founded regional security grouping, in July 2023.141 It also joined the BRICS alliance of emerging market countries in August 2023.142 Iran has even been enhancing diplomatic ties with U.S. partners, including, for example, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Azerbaijan.143
Iran’s current lack of isolation may mean that a U.S. deterrent message to Iran would need to be significantly magnified today if it is to be effective.
Private Warnings to Iran Can Sometimes Contribute to Deterrence
There is a history of U.S. administrations sending private warnings to Iran. For example, Iranian proxy attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in April 2008 and against U.S. bases in Iraq in June 2011 reportedly stopped after quiet U.S. threats to respond militarily.144
Private messaging with Iran can be useful because it enables the regime to be conciliatory without losing face. Private messaging may thus be useful for deterring some attempted Iranian nuclear advances. However, as former Secretary of State George P. Shultz famously said, “the hard reality is that diplomacy not backed by strength is ineffectual” — and that is true whether messages are sent publicly or privately.145
Irregular Warfare Can Contribute to Deterring Iran, With Reduced Risk of Escalation
The U.S. Department of Defense defines the term “irregular warfare” to mean “a form of warfare where states and non-state actors campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities.”146 Iran has long been an exceptionally effective practitioner of irregular warfare, including by using proxies to create plausible deniability in a manner that facilitates eroding and circumventing redlines while reducing escalation risk.
The Islamic Republic’s use of irregular warfare has been successful against the United States because U.S. policymakers tend to think about war and peace with state actors like Iran in stark, binary terms, and have frequently been constrained by concerns about escalation leading to all-out war.147 In fact, a central element of Iranian security policy involves attempting to extract concessions by preying on its adversaries’ fear of a wider conflict.
Due to its greater array of interests, its fundamentally different approach to war and peace, and general risk aversion, the United States has often responded with military inaction (responding only with economic sanctions and verbal condemnations) when Iran undertakes irregular warfare or engages in graduated escalation.148
By contrast, Israel has repeatedly wielded irregular warfare against Iran’s nuclear weapons program — including sabotage, unacknowledged assassinations and other overt attacks, and cyber operations. Israel has done so in a way that has imposed costs on the regime and hindered its operations while enabling Tehran to save face by denying the attack has occurred.
If Iran continues escalating its nuclear program, the United States should strongly consider employing irregular warfare operations to both impede and deter Iranian nuclear weapons program advances. Such operations that are not acknowledged by the United States can achieve key objectives while providing Tehran the option of not escalating without losing face.
U.S. Can Strengthen its Deterrence by Holding Iran Responsible for Its Proxies
The United States rarely attacks Iranian forces in response to attacks on U.S. forces by Iranian proxies. One exception was the U.S. military strike on February 2, which struck more than 85 targets at seven facilities in Iraq and Syria utilized by the IRGC and its proxies.149 It reportedly killed dozens of militants (and was followed by the killing of a commander of the Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah militia group).150 The relatively rare February 2 attack on an IRGC facility (rather than merely that of an Iranian proxy) had an effective deterrent effect, with Iranian proxies launching only two attacks in the subsequent 23 weeks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.
The United States should more readily strike Iranian targets in response to Iranian proxy attacks. Washington should do so with strike packages that are more powerful than any launched by Iran’s proxies.151 This could have a deterrent effect that is both longer-lasting and also broader (e.g., potentially deterring Iranian nuclear advances rather than solely attacks on U.S. forces). Depending on the severity of the Iranian attacks, targets could include not only IRGC installations and personnel in Iraq and Syria but could also potentially be scaled up to include Iranian naval assets supporting attacks on civilian vessels in and near the Red Sea.
Iran Derives Lessons From Both U.S. Responses and Failures to Respond
Reflecting on his time at U.S. Central Command, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., deemed the decision by the Trump administration to cancel a strike on Iran in response to the downing of an American drone in June 2019 a “mistake.” He noted, “Had we executed it, it’s possible that the escalatory trajectory we were on could have been suppressed. Instead, the Iranians drew a lesson: the United States was feckless. Our friends in the region drew similar conclusions. This would shape Iranian behavior in the following months.”152 U.S. policymakers must think carefully not only about the impact of every U.S. response but also of every failure to respond to Iranian escalation, including nuclear escalation.
The U.S. Must Prepare for Iranian Counterpunches
Whenever Washington uses force to signal resolve and deter Tehran, it must also prepare for an Iranian response (including a face-saving one).153 The United States should not be deterred by potential Iranian responses, particularly kinetic ones, once the United States manages to land a blow against a core regime interest or asset. In fact, it would be highly irregular for the regime not to contest the use of force in initial rounds of a conflict or crisis.154 Iranian counterpunches are core elements of Iran’s propensity to threaten, and prey on its adversaries’ fear of, a wider conflict. The regime also constantly tests its adversaries’ persistence and resolve.
One example of a U.S. lack of preparedness for an Iranian response came in January 2020 after the United States killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC-Quds Force, in Iraq. According to McKenzie, the idea that Iran would absorb the strike was born out of a faulty belief of “advisors at the national level that Iran would not retaliate. No one at CENTCOM or in the intelligence community shared that view.”155
The strike against Soleimani did not achieve “deterrence” per se in its immediate aftermath — Tehran responded with the largest ballistic missile barrage against U.S. forces in history.156 More than 100 U.S. servicemembers suffered brain injuries from the attack because their bases lacked ballistic missile defenses.157 Following that strike, Iran-backed militias in Iraq escalated their attacks on the U.S. force presence in that country, making January the second most dangerous month for U.S. forces in Iraq that year. 158
However, the attack on Soleimani made it more difficult for Tehran to manage its militia network in the short term. The attack also landed a psychological blow against Tehran given the surprise nature of the strike and the high value of the target, shaping Iranian thinking regarding the American will to use force. These factors, when combined with the Trump administration’s strategy of maximum pressure on Iran, are widely viewed to have played a contributing role in preventing wider Iranian nuclear escalation at the time.159 According to McKenzie, “They didn’t think we would take bold and aggressive action. Because we did so, they were forced to recalculate.”160
The Impact of a U.S. Deterrent Act Fades Over Time
The impact on Iran of a U.S. deterrent act evidently fades over time. For example, after 23 weeks of almost entirely refraining from attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, Iranian proxies began to mount attacks again starting in mid-July 2024.
On July 16, two drones attacked al-Asad Air Base in Iraq, where U.S. forces are stationed.161 On July 25, three rockets were launched at al-Asad,162 injuring four U.S. servicemembers and one U.S. contractor.163 A U.S. troop location in Syria was attacked successively on July 25, 26, and 27.164
Similarly, notwithstanding the 1988 and 2012 U.S. deterrent acts described above, Iran eventually resumed its harassment of U.S. surveillance aircraft and naval vessels.165
The impact on Iran of a particular deterrent act can be short-lived in large part because of the regime’s fundamentally revisionist nature. Unlike status quo states, revisionist states such as Iran seek to change their current place in the international order.
An Iranian perspective on how deterrence fades over time was colorfully expressed by Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who has served since 2009166 as commander of the IRGC Aerospace Forces: “Maintaining deterrence is like riding a bicycle. When riding a bicycle, you have to keep pedaling all the time, or else, the bicycle will fall. Therefore, deterrence does not mean that you reach a certain point, and then you frame it, put it in some corner, and say that you have deterrence. No. You have to preserve it,” he said.167
To successfully deter Iranian nuclear advances, the United States must regularly employ and re-employ its relevant deterrent toolkit.
ence by Denial Must be Combined With Deterrence by Punishment
Deterrence by denial works by convincing the adversary that its attempts will not succeed. By contrast, deterrence by punishment works by convincing the adversary that its attempts will incur unacceptable costs.168
As Michael Eisenstadt has explained, the United States has “increasingly relied on deterrence by denial” to counter Iran.169 The United States has strengthened air and missile defenses, and organized maritime task forces, to persuade Iran that its attacks or other actions will be blocked or otherwise frustrated.170 By contrast, Washington has increasingly avoided military actions that would impose costs on Iran for fear of escalation.
This approach is exemplified by the U.S. response to the over 300 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles Iran launched at Israel on April 13-14.171 This was the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic that the regime directly attacked Israel from Iranian territory.
U.S. forces helped Israel intercept most of the drones and missiles.172 President Biden and other U.S. officials reportedly urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “take the win”173 and not impose costs on Iran by retaliating for the strike. Israel subsequently limited itself to a targeted counterstrike on an Iranian air defense radar site, for which Israel did not take public credit.174
Photographers stand by the remains of a missile that landed on the shore of the Dead Sea, a week after the missile barrage fired by Iran on April 13, 2024. (Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images)
Eisenstadt argues persuasively that “America’s own experience shows that a balanced strategy that blends both denial and punishment—to thwart Iranian activities and hold at risk or destroy assets that it values—is a more effective way to deter and contain the Islamic Republic.”175 Deterrence strategies that rely only on denial enable Iran “to wager only those assets it considers expendable” and to “set the terms of engagement and impose costs on its enemies with impunity.”176
Successfully intercepting a missile or drone is often much more expensive than the cost of the missile or drone itself. For example, the United States has reportedly been using interceptors, which cost up to $2.1 million each,177 to destroy drones fired by Iran’s Houthi proxies, which cost only a few thousand dollars each.178
Israel, the United States, and their allies are estimated to have spent some $1.1 billion intercepting the missiles and drones Iran launched at Israel on April 13-14.179 This likely far exceeded the cost to Iran of the missiles and drones it launched.
Thus, the United States should not limit itself to attempting to block malign Iranian activities, or to responding in a precisely proportionate manner to whatever damage Iran is able to cause. The current U.S. focus on blocking Iranian activities, and responding in a proportionate manner if and only if Iran happens to draw American blood, allows Iran to define the rules of the game. The United States should instead respond unpredictably, including by attacking regime targets beyond those that Tehran chooses to employ in a particular exchange.180 Iran is more likely to halt its malign activities if they result in greater costs than benefits.
It is essential to ensure that the Islamic Republic fears U.S. escalation, because the United States’ superior military power constitutes one of Washington’s most important advantages when confronting Tehran.181 A U.S. strategy that better supplements deterrence by denial with deterrence by punishment would go a long way toward deterring Iranian nuclear advances. America’s reflexive unwillingness to counter Iran dangerously makes the United States, its interests, and its allies a far more tempting target.
Deterrence by Early Detection Can Usefully Supplement Deterrence by Denial and Punishment
A major reason Iran has not yet succeeded in building a nuclear weapon is the continued detection, exposure, disruption, and punishment of its illicit procurement, construction of nuclear facilities, undeclared research, and more. Detecting an Iranian nuclear advance before it is completed can help deter by providing the United States time to spur international condemnation, to disrupt, and to threaten punishment for the impending Iranian nuclear advance.
An example of deterrence by early detection in the nuclear arena is the revelation in August 2002, by Iranian dissidents, that Iran had clandestinely built nuclear facilities at Arak and Natanz and that it had not reported them to the IAEA.182 Another is the announcement of the United States and the E3 (France, Germany, and the UK) about the Fordow facility in 2009.183 There are also several examples in recent years of Iran canceling conventional attacks when its adversaries announced that they were impending, thereby depriving Iran of deniability and surprise.184
The Islamic Republic is more likely to make a future dash for a bomb the less it assesses its chances are of getting caught. Therefore, the United States and its allies must maximize Iran’s fear of getting caught making nuclear advances.
The United States must expose Iranian vulnerabilities through public disclosures, prosecutions, cyber-attacks, network penetration, espionage, sanctions, and evidence of Western capacity to co-opt everyone from Iranian scientists to procurement agents. All of this can decrease the confidence Tehran might have in the security of its nuclear weapons program. Such covert and overt activities can also force the regime to expend its finite resources on hiding its activities, potentially reducing the resources available for advancing those same activities.
While deterrence by detection alone — just like deterrence by denial alone — is insufficient to deter Iranian nuclear activities such as weaponization, it is a necessary component in the overall deterrence campaign.
Recommended Adoption of Whole-of-Government U.S. Strategy to Identify and Deter Individual Significant Iranian Nuclear Advances
The United States should internally identify the full range of unacceptable Iranian nuclear activities, including the “Key Steps for Potential Iranian Nuclear Advancement” listed in this monograph, and develop a set of U.S. and allied military and non-military responses to be employed.
Responses should not merely seek to reverse the advance but also impose additional costs on Iran. The United States cannot depend on its ability to detect — and head off — each potential advance when it occurs. If the cost to Iran of a foiled Iranian advance is simply that Iran does not reap the benefit of the advance, Iran will be incentivized to try again. Thus, Washington needs to persuade the regime that Iran will pay such a high price if it is caught attempting an advance that it is not worthwhile for the regime to attempt that advance again.
The United States should also consider which advances the United States should declare a red line, either publicly or in private messaging to the Islamic Republic. It is often preferable to provide advance notification to the Iranians that a step would cross a red line (to deter them from crossing it) rather than relying on detecting the activity and then attempting to compel them to halt or reverse it. Detection may not occur in a timely manner, and many steps are largely or entirely irreversible (e.g., activity undertaken by Iran while it bars IAEA inspectors or weaponization knowledge that Iran gains). It is important to factor in that the Islamic Republic might treat as yellow-lighted or green-lighted any activity that the United States does not communicate is red-lighted. It is also important to declare a red line only if there is a willingness to enforce it. Each red line that is established and then not enforced would deal a blow to America’s already tattered deterrence of Iran.
Recommended U.S. Military Steps to Deter Significant Iranian Nuclear Advances in the Coming Weeks
The Biden administration will be more successful in deterring Iran from advancing its nuclear weapons program if the regime believes that Washington has both the military means and the political will to stop Iranian advances. For deterrence to be effective, it must be clear to Iran that the costs of pursuing a nuclear advance are significantly greater than the potential benefits. It must also be clear that the United States understands and is politically willing to incur the costs of military operations to prevent a nuclear advance. This section recommends steps in six categories that the Biden administration could implement in the next few weeks and months.
This list of steps will contribute significantly to more effectively deterring a full-scale Iranian dash to a bomb. However, the United States also needs to become far more effective at deterring the individual smaller-scale advances that Iran is currently undertaking or might undertake if not deterred.
The United States should strongly consider how it can use U.S. military steps, in the categories set forth below, to deter or respond to such individual smaller-scale Iranian nuclear advances. Even if a U.S. military step comes too late to reverse a particular smaller-scale advance, the response can help deter future advances by making clear that Tehran will incur costs that outweigh benefits.
Build Consensus
The unclassified version of the ODNI report on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, dated July 23, strongly implies (including by removing a sentence that had appeared in prior reports) that Iran is currently undertaking key nuclear weaponization activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.185 But the unclassified version does not say so directly. Nor does it provide any examples of such activities.
Based on Sen. Graham’s strong public response to the classified version of the report, however, the ODNI apparently possesses concerning information on Iran’s recent nuclear weaponization advances.
In the days prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Biden administration declassified intelligence assessments that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made the decision to invade Ukraine.186 This proactive step helped expedite and solidify international support for Ukraine once Putin launched his invasion. But the administration’s decision to declassify intelligence was belated. More benefit could have been derived if the administration had declassified relevant intelligence when indications and warnings of an invasion first emerged in 2021.
The administration should consider declassifying intelligence assessments related to Iran’s nuclear weapons program advances in order to help build domestic and international support for necessary deterrent strategies. Declassification could also help signal to Iran that the administration is preparing to back up its warnings with actions, if necessary. That could impact Tehran’s decision on whether to pursue additional significant nuclear advances or conduct a nuclear breakout.
Deployments
The deployment of U.S. forces can have positive deterrent effects by underscoring that the United States has the means to prevent Iran from advancing toward a nuclear weapon. But the type, scope, and timing of deployments impact their effectiveness.187 If not properly designed and implemented, some types of deployments will be seen by Tehran as worthy of little more than a shrug — a deployment that is perceived as all muscle and no punch. That’s especially true because Iran has strengthened and diversified its lethal and non-lethal options against U.S. assets in the region since 2015.188
In the aftermath of the October 7 terror attack, the Biden administration deployed significant U.S. military forces to the region, including two carrier strike groups, a marine expeditionary unit, strike aircraft, and additional air defenses.189 As Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin confirmed during his October 13 trip to Tel Aviv, “I ordered additional assets to the region to bolster deterrence.”190 In his July 24 address to the U.S. Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu lauded the administration’s October decision to deploy two carrier strike groups, which likely helped dissuade Hezbollah from launching a full-scale assault on Israel while the Israel Defense Forces was still conducting clearing operations to remove Hamas terrorists from its borders.191 Open debates in Congress signaled that the United States was considering the commitment of forces.192
Subsequent deployments to the region, such as those of the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and USS Wasp Amphibious Ready Group, signal the administration’s willingness to use force to deter regional escalation.193 But those deployments are insufficient. To deter significant nuclear advances or a full-fledged Iranian nuclear sprint, the administration should consider deploying select U.S. military forces affiliated with strategic targeting missions to the region, at least on a temporary basis, to signal the administration’s political will to stop an Iranian nuclear breakout, if necessary.
Deploying a single weapon system capability does not necessarily signal the administration’s willingness to use that capability. Because policymakers and military planners understand that the United States would incur costs in the event of a direct confrontation with Iran over nuclear weaponization, the most resonant deterrent message requires deploying offensive capabilities and simultaneously deploying the defensive capabilities necessary to mitigate Iran’s retaliatory options.194 Temporarily deploying and exercising bomber task forces,195 fighter squadrons,196 air and missile defense formations,197 aerial refuelers,198 guided-missile submarines (SSGN),199 and minesweepers,200 are all examples of what U.S. Central Command has demonstrated and published for public knowledge. Such moves communicate to Iran that the United States can hold its nuclear program at risk and has the capability to address follow-on retaliation both by Iran and its threat network.201 Demonstrating many of these capabilities simultaneously sends a more resonant message than in isolated events or in iterations.
Policymakers must consider that the Iranian integrated air defense system (IADS) continues to improve, and its complex lattice of networks includes both fixed, long-range strategic surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems and a growing number of difficult to track medium- to long-range mobile air defense systems whose pop-up operational model poses a significant challenge to U.S. airborne assets.202 The long-range strike capabilities of SSGNs, strategic bomber aircraft, and fighter aircraft, communicate the ability to defeat Iran’s IADS so that subsequent missions can destroy hardened targets, including Iranian nuclear facilities and missile bases.203 Minesweepers and other maritime forces demonstrate the ability of the United States to re-open the Strait of Hormuz and other maritime chokepoints if Iran and its proxies attempt to close them. The difficulty that the United States and its partners have had in responding to Houthi actions in and near the Red Sea since October indicates that this could be a considerable challenge.204
Currently, many U.S. bases that would be used in a direct confrontation with Iran are within range of Iranian ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. This endangers the lives of U.S. servicemembers and makes it more likely that the United States may incur significant costs to conduct a campaign against Iran. Both smaller forward operating locations and larger airbases within the CENTCOM footprint require improved and more efficient indirect-fires protection and counter-unmanned aerial systems (UAS) capabilities and capacity. This includes kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities as well as hardened sheltering.205 Deploying sufficient counter-rocket, artillery, mortar systems, and the panoply of counter-UAS systems is critical to a full deterrence posture, including both offensive and defensive capabilities. Assuming sufficient air and missile defense capabilities are available for a more dispersed system of airfields to support military operations, this could reduce the effectiveness of any Iranian retaliatory strike directed at a single base. That would create dilemmas for Iranian military planners and make them think twice about either additional significant nuclear advances or a full-fledged sprint to a nuclear weapons capability.206
U.S. military personnel and assets are finite, and there are opportunity costs associated with increasing deployments. Short-term deployments that demonstrate the U.S. ability to rapidly surge forces to the region with little to no notice can effectively demonstrate U.S. capability, while mitigating some of the costs associated with lengthier or permanent deployments.
Military Exercises
In addition to deployments, military exercises can send a positive deterrent message by displaying U.S. combat and logistics capabilities necessary to target Iran’s nuclear program. Military exercises can also demonstrate the ability to operate with allies and partners and to respond to any Iranian retaliation.
While in the region, U.S. forces should regularly take part in military exercises that demonstrate targeting capabilities against hardened and deeply buried targets. The United States should also expand the number of ground, air, and naval exercises that include the military forces of Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Iraq. These exercises should incorporate available assets deployed for deterrence against regional escalation. The United States should seek to expand the complexity of the exercises and the number of participants over time to increase the readiness of individual forces, their ability to operate together, and their deterrence against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including its terror proxies. The goal is to create the most unified and capable combined military coalition possible.207 While U.S. Arab partners would be unlikely to help with offensive operations against Iran, exercises with Arab partners focused on air defense and maritime security can generate positive deterrent messages and rehearse defensive capabilities for a potential conflict. Over time, these exercises and interactions can facilitate a multilateral security architecture, previewed in the successful response to Iran’s April 13-14 attack on Israel.
Rapidly flowing forces into the region should be a part of these exercises. Specific capabilities include long-range strike, electronic attack, suppression/destruction of enemy air defenses, defending against fast attack craft, maritime interdiction, and counter-air. Live-fire exercises with bunker-busting munitions would send a particularly pointed message to Tehran. Several of these missions were practiced in the recent Juniper Oak 2023, Inspired Union 2024, Spears of Victory, and Eager Defender 24 exercises.208
Building on the success of the January 2023 Juniper Oak bilateral exercise with Israel (the largest in history) the administration should work with Israel to conduct a Juniper Oak 2024 exercise as soon as possible. That exercise should match or exceed the scope and scale of the 2023 iteration.209 Though Israel is already busy with combat operations, it may have the military capability and political will to support such an exercise in the coming months, assuming the conflict with Hezbollah does not devolve into a full-scale war. The exercise could take place in Israel and in the eastern Mediterranean near Lebanon. U.S. forces could simultaneously conduct exercises in the Arabian Sea and even the Persian Gulf. Incorporating the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, the USS Wasp, and the USS Georgia, as well as U.S. Air Force F-15 and F-35 fighter aircraft, B-2 bombers, and KC-46 air refuelers, could strengthen the exercise and enhance its deterrence messaging. Israel could, among other things, also rehearse some UAS operations from U.S. naval vessels operating in the Arabian Sea.
Such an exercise could send a powerful deterrent message to Hezbollah and Iran, demonstrating that the United States and Israel have the capability to conduct complex, simultaneous, combined, and joint operations in different areas on short notice. The general blueprint for such an exercise already exists and could be organized in a matter of weeks as the Department of Defense and Israel’s Ministry of Defense did with Juniper Oak 2023.
Employment of Forces
Even if the administration adopts the recommendations above, those steps are unlikely to have a deterrent effect if Tehran believes the administration lacks the will to use military force.
Attacks by Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria against U.S. forces may provide an opportunity to address this fundamental challenge for the administration. U.S. military forces are in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan to support partners and secure core American interests. However, if Washington is going to keep U.S. troops in harm’s way, it must provide them with the military means and political permission to defend themselves and impose consequences that make adversaries think twice before they try to attack Americans.210 If Iran assesses that the Biden administration is reluctant to use force even to protect U.S. forces, deployments and exercises in the region will not change Tehran’s nuclear calculus.
Recent history provides an instructive lesson on what happens when such political permission is withheld and then belatedly granted. Between October 17, 2023, and February 4, 2024, Iranian proxies attacked U.S. forces approximately 165 times. The United States only responded with approximately nine limited airstrikes before the fatal Tower 22 attack in Jordan on January 28.211 That American “restraint,” accompanied by regular statements from Washington that it sought to avoid a regional war, was seen by Iran as a green light for additional attacks on U.S. forces. Following the deaths of three Americans in the Tower 22 attack, the United States finally responded forcefully by striking 85 targets across Iraq and Syria.212 Less than a week later, the United States killed a Kata’ib Hezbollah commander in a drone strike in Baghdad.213 In the ensuing 23 weeks, there were only two additional attacks on U.S. forces by Iranian proxies.
Unfortunately, on July 16, an Iranian proxy attacked al-Asad Air Base in Iraq, which houses U.S. personnel.214 It is likely that attacks on U.S. forces will increase in frequency over the next several weeks as the deterrent effect of the February retaliatory strikes dissipates. The probability of attacks on U.S. forces will significantly increase if the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalates and if the administration is once again indecisive in responding to attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.
The administration should learn from the outcomes from February 2024 and respond more quickly and forcefully to attacks on U.S. forces. That will better protect deployed U.S. troops and increase concerns in Tehran that the United States might be willing to use military force to stop a sprint to a nuclear weapon. If Tehran believes the administration’s top priority is avoiding escalation, that will encourage Iranian risk-taking and more aggression — not just when it comes to attacks on U.S. forces but also potentially with respect to its nuclear program.
Actions and Announcements
The administration should also formally announce a major effort to systematically deepen and expand U.S.-Israel intelligence sharing.
Deepening already significant intelligence sharing and cooperation with Israel, specifically regarding, at a minimum, Iranian smuggling in Syria/Lebanon, Iranian arms smuggling to the Houthis in Yemen, Iran’s nuclear program, and cooperation between Iran and China, could serve the interests of both countries. Such an announcement would also increase concern in Tehran regarding its ability to conceal malign activities or escape the consequences. That could discourage Iranian adventurism and risk-taking.
U.S.-Israel intelligence sharing was reportedly expanded shortly after October 7 to help locate Hamas military leaders, find hostages, and monitor Israel’s borders.215 This increased cooperation reportedly included airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance collection, satellite imagery, communications intercepts, and data analysis.216 Deepening cooperation in other areas would send a message to Iran that, despite some bumps in the U.S.-Israel political relationship, both countries are focused on the threat from Iran and its proxies. A public announcement of cooperation would enhance that message.
In addition, building on the progress217 of the U.S.-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Working Group, the administration should make an announcement as soon as possible regarding the construction of a regional security architecture focused on air and missile defense, maritime security, and counterterrorism. The announcement could highlight progress achieved so far and set milestones for the near future. Building on the multilateral response to Iran’s attack on Israel in April, particular emphasis should be paid in the announcement to cooperation related to air and missile defense and regional radar sharing. To the degree relations and regional politics permit, the administration should also seek to incrementally include Israel in these U.S.-GCC discussions and regional security architecture.
Security Assistance to Israel
To empower American diplomacy and discourage Tehran from pursuing additional nuclear advances or a nuclear breakout, the administration should look for opportunities to expedite and expand the delivery of key weapon systems and munitions to Israel that are relevant to Iran’s nuclear program. Some in the administration may oppose such efforts, but the more Tehran believes Israel can strike Iran’s nuclear program and mitigate the response, the more it might empower American diplomacy and deter Tehran.
A critical capability for Israel to successfully conduct a strike on Iran’s nuclear program is air refueling aircraft. Israel’s current fleet is old and insufficient in size to conduct extended operations over Iran. Israel decided to purchase four KC-46s from the United States in 2020, and a contract has been awarded, but the aircraft are not scheduled to arrive until at least 2025.218 This delay is costly to Israeli readiness and unhelpful to deterring Tehran.
In advance of delivery, the United States could lease to Israel a number of its own KC-46s, similar to what was done with the U.S. Army’s Iron Dome batteries after October 7.219 An accelerated course for Israeli pilots, ground crew, and maintenance personnel could accompany the lease. Depending on how aggressively the United States and Israel initiate training and complete the leasing, KC-46s could perhaps arrive in Israel by November 2024. Moreover, if the United States and Israel conduct a Juniper Oak 2024 or a similar military exercise this fall, the United States should send American KC-46s to provide Israeli pilots opportunities to practice refueling from the new tanker.
In addition to these steps related to the KC-46, the administration should announce in the next couple months, and implement as quickly as possible, steps to expedite the delivery of Israel’s order for new F-15IA fighter aircraft and the modernization of its existing F-15Is.220 These aircraft will provide Israel with additional capacity to deliver the large munitions needed to destroy hardened, deeply buried targets within Iran, including some of its nuclear facilities. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency finally delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale on August 13.221 Even though the new aircraft would not arrive in Israel for years, announcing this decision prominently sends a message that this administration stands with Israel and is determined to ensure it can defend itself. But delivering the new aircraft and upgrading the existing aircraft sooner would send an even stronger message.
Moreover, and most immediately, the Biden administration should lift its hold on the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs (MK-84) meant for Israel. These munitions are needed for a potential major war with Hezbollah, one that would likely accompany any military actions against Iran’s nuclear program. Moreover, the administration’s continued refusal to deliver the 2,000-pound bombs risks leaving Iran with the impression that tension in the U.S.-Israel relationship provides a window of opportunity to pursue additional nuclear advances or a nuclear breakout.
The administration should also ensure that there are no delays in delivering hundreds of the BLU-109 Penetrator Bomb, which can help Israel destroy modestly hardened targets while minimizing civilian casualties.
More broadly, the administration should ensure that any air-launched munitions, guidance kits, and fuses requested by Israel since October 7 that require congressional notification are sent to the Hill and delivered to Israel without delay. Given the urgent threats Israel confronts and the American interest in deterring an Iranian sprint to a nuclear weapon, it should not take the administration months to process foreign military sales or direct commercial sales requests before they are sent to Congress. Ensuring Israel has these capabilities in sufficient quantities as soon as possible will impact Iran’s assessment of Israeli military capabilities and potentially decrease the chances that Tehran decides to sprint to a nuclear weapon or undertake another significant nuclear advance.
Recommended Non-Military U.S. Steps for Deterring Significant Iranian Nuclear Advances in the Coming Weeks
Reiterate and Strengthen Declared U.S. Commitment to Prevent an Iranian Nuclear Bomb
Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden have all implied a commitment to use force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Bush declared that “the United States and Israel are united in our objective to make sure that Iran does not have a [nuclear] weapon … all options are on the table.”222
In a March 2012 speech, Obama stated:
I have said that when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power: A political effort aimed at isolating Iran; a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored; an economic effort that imposes crippling sanctions; and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.
Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.223
In a March 2013 speech, Obama similarly said:
I’ve made the position of the United States of America clear: Iran must not get a nuclear weapon. This is not a danger that can be contained, and as President, I’ve said all options are on the table for achieving our objectives. America will do what we must to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.224
Trump formally declared in a presidential memorandum that “[i]t is the policy of the United States that Iran be denied a nuclear weapon” and that “[t]he Department of Defense shall ensure that the United States develops and retains the means to stop Iran from developing or acquiring a nuclear weapon.”225
President Biden and his administration have also repeatedly implied a commitment to use force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The strongest formal expression of that is in the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration adopted by President Biden and Prime Minister Yair Lapid in Jerusalem on July 14, 2022.226
The declaration includes that “[t]he United States stresses … the commitment never to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, and that it is prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure that outcome.” When asked, during an interview that same week, whether he would “use force” to ensure Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons, Biden replied that he would so if “that was a last resort.”227
Biden’s strongest statement was weaker than Obama’s strongest statement on the same topic, which explicitly referenced the use of force and of the U.S. military. Obama’s formulation strongly implied that, if faced with a choice between the use of U.S. military force and Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, he would choose the use of force.228
Statements by Secretary of State Antony Blinken have been noticeably weaker than Biden’s strongest statement. For example, Blinken said in June 2023 that “[i]f Iran rejects the path of diplomacy, then — as President Biden has repeatedly made clear — all options are on the table to ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.”229 Secretary Blinken has also on several occasions used even weaker variants of the “all options are on the table” and “commitment that Iran never acquire a nuclear weapon” formulations.230
Implying that a military option “is on the table” is not the same as stating that the option will, if necessary, be used. Technically, the “all options are on the table” phrase merely indicates that a military option has not been removed. “Saying that ‘every option remains on the table’ … impresses no one, least of all the Iranians,” wrote Dennis Ross in March 2023.231
In addition, the “commitment that Iran never acquire a nuclear weapon” formulation leaves unclear the parameters of the undesirable result. Does the “commitment that Iran never acquire a nuclear weapon” include a commitment only to prevent Iran from building a fully assembled nuclear weapon? Or does it also include a commitment to prevent Iran from producing all the elements of an unassembled nuclear weapon, or all the elements except those, such as weapons-grade uranium, that could be produced currently in a matter of days and eventually in a matter of hours?
This question was underscored by March 2023 congressional testimony by General Mark Milley, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who declared that “[t]he United States remains committed as a matter of policy that Iran will not have fielded nuclear weapons.”232 Milley’s formulation suggests that if Iran produces weapons-grade uranium and builds all necessary components for a nuclear explosive device, it would not run afoul of the U.S. commitment unless Iran actually assembles a bomb and fields the weapon.233
Yet Iran need not actually assemble the components, let alone deploy the bomb, to achieve the benefits of a nuclear weapon, including providing an umbrella for Iranian regional aggression conducted using conventional weapons. Iran can achieve these benefits as a nuclear threshold state while remaining several screw turns away from a completed nuclear bomb.234
Generally, U.S. officials prefer to preserve flexibility by avoiding specific statements as to what actions by adversaries would trigger U.S. military strikes. However, it seems unlikely that Iran will halt its nuclear advances unless it is convinced that proceeding with the program will result in a military strike sufficient both to destroy the program and impose additional costs on the regime in Iran.
As a result, President Biden should make an unambiguous statement such as the following: “If Iran takes additional decisive steps toward producing a nuclear bomb, I will use military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and impose crippling costs on the regime, including by destroying other targets important to it.” The additional decisive steps,235 which need not be publicly specified, could include the most important of the potential Iranian advances, such as enriching uranium to 90 percent, expelling IAEA inspectors, or undertaking significant additional weaponization activities.
With Iran now closer than ever to a nuclear bomb, the United States should issue a crystal clear message to Iran’s leaders that it is futile for them to continue to seek nuclear weapons — fielded or unfielded, tested or untested, assembled or disassembled — because U.S. military action will ultimately prevent them from succeeding.236 The message will resonate more if it is not just a line or two in a presidential speech but is instead embedded in a policy address explaining why it is essential to U.S. national security that Iran not acquire nuclear weapons.237
Obama did this in his 2012 and 2013 speeches.238 A similar explanation by President Biden or one of his cabinet secretaries would signal239 to Iran that the administration is beginning to “condition the environment,” internationally and with the American people, for possible U.S. or Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear program.240
Given the current political climate in the United States, it is important to deterrence that several other top U.S. officials and candidates also issue strong messages of U.S. commitment to use force if necessary against Iran’s nuclear program. Those officials and candidates should include: Vice President Harris, Governor Walz, Secretaries Austin and Blinken, former President Trump, Senator Vance, and leading members of Congress from both parties.
U.S. President Joe Biden (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid (R) on July 14, 2022, signing the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration, which includes a U.S. “commitment never to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.” (Photo by Atef Safadi/Pool/ AFP via Getty Images)
Reiterate and Strengthen the U.S. Commitment to Support Israeli Action to Prevent an Iranian Nuclear Bomb
Because Israel perceives Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons to be a potential threat to Israel’s very existence, Prime Minister Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials repeatedly have underscored that Israel is prepared to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities if necessary. While the U.S. military’s capacity to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities is far stronger than Israel’s, Iran likely perceives Israel as more motivated to do so.
Iran also recognizes that Israel is more likely to strike if it has a green or yellow light from Washington. The Iranian regime, wrote Dennis Ross in March 2023, “is under two misapprehensions: It does not believe that we will act militarily against Iran, and it thinks we will also stop the Israelis from doing so.”241
The Biden administration has already committed not to block Israeli action to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb. That was expressed by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in May 2023:
[W]e have made clear to Iran that it can never be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon. As President Biden has repeatedly reaffirmed, he will take the actions that are necessary to stand by this statement, including by recognizing Israel’s freedom of action.242
In addition, in February 2023, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides stated:

As President Biden has said, we will not stand by and watch Iran get a nuclear weapon, number one. Number two, he said, all options are on the table. Number three, Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with and we’ve got their back.243
President Biden should reiterate and strengthen the existing U.S. commitment to support Israeli action to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb. In light of the current election cycle, it is important that other top U.S. officials and candidates also express strong support for Israel’s freedom of action to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb. Those officials and candidates should include: Vice President Harris, Governor Walz, Secretaries Austin and Blinken, former President Trump, Senator Vance, and leading members of Congress from both parties.
Strengthen the Use of Economic Sanctions to Deter Iranian Nuclear Advances
The Biden administration’s insufficient use of economic sanctions against Iran has been discussed extensively in other publications.244 The Biden administration could employ sanctions far more effectively to deter Iran from advancing its nuclear weapons program.
In January 2023, FDD published a monograph titled “Strategy for a New Comprehensive U.S. Policy on Iran,” which suggested dozens of steps the U.S. could take to tighten and expand economic sanctions on Iran.245 Many have yet to be implemented.
Iran has typically only changed tactics, including curtailing its nuclear program, when faced with meaningful risks to its top priority: staying in power. The United States need not pose a direct or immediate threat to end the regime.
But efforts to shape the regime’s choices will only succeed when they credibly threaten to impose costs that would, if continued, pose an existential threat to the regime. As noted above, CIA Director John Brennan stated that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had become more flexible in nuclear negotiations with the West because he was persuaded that sanctions would hammer Iran’s economy unless a deal was reached with the West and sanctions were lifted.
The Biden administration should immediately and massively increase economic sanctions on Iran until Tehran curtails its nuclear weapons program. If the administration is unwilling to do so, it should at least make clear to Iran that any additional nuclear advances would incur severe economic (and other) consequences. This would be consistent with the analysis, set forth above, that U.S. deterrence by denial must be combined with deterrence by punishment. By expanding the U.S. retaliatory target set to the economic sanctions domain, the United States can better incentivize Iranian restraint by ensuring that each attempted Iranian advance results in greater costs than benefits for Tehran.
Trigger or Credibly Threaten to Trigger Snapback of UN Security Council Sanctions on Iran
The United States should work with the United Kingdom, France, and Germany to trigger the snapback process246 by which pre-JCPOA UN sanctions and restrictions can be re-imposed on Iran in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2231.247 Resolution 2231, which endorsed the JCPOA, terminated the numerous sanctions and restrictions imposed on Iran by several prior Security Council resolutions. The threat of a snapback thus constitutes significant leverage over Iran. The ability to trigger snapback is scheduled to expire in October 2025, 10 years since the JCPOA came into effect.248
A snapback would trigger the re-imposition of sanctions and restrictions imposed on Iran by pre-JCPOA Security Council Resolutions 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008), 1835 (2008), and 1929 (2010). This would include reinstatement of:
indefinite obligatory suspension by Iran of “all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development”;249
an obligation that Iran “shall not begin construction on any new uranium-enrichment, reprocessing, or heavy water-related facility and shall discontinue any ongoing construction of any uranium-enrichment, reprocessing, or heavy water-related facility”;250
an indefinite prohibition on Iran undertaking “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons” and on international support for such Iranian activities;251 and
an indefinite embargo on the transfer of specified conventional arms to,252 and of any conventional arms from, Iran.253
The snapback process begins when a “JCPOA participant State” — as defined in UNSCR 2231 — notifies the UN Security Council of an issue that constitutes “significant non-performance of commitments under the JCPOA.” Since July 2019, the IAEA has consistently reported that Iran is violating a wide range of its commitments under the JCPOA.254 Since at least January 2020, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have repeatedly declared that Iran is not meeting its JCPOA commitments.255 As a result, they could join the United States in making the case that Iran is in significant non-performance of its JCPOA commitments and thus subject to snapback.
Unless the Security Council then adopts a resolution within 30 days to continue the termination of the provisions of UNSCRs 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008), 1835 (2008), and 1929 (2010) that had been terminated by UNSCR 2231, those provisions come back into force. This process is called “snapback” because prior sanctions and restrictions on Iran snap back into place. The resolution to continue terminations can be vetoed by any permanent member of the Security Council, in which case the snapback will come into force at the end of the 30 days.
Strengthen the Use of Cyber to Deter Iranian Nuclear Advances
The United States has reportedly been more willing to engage in cyber-attacks on Iran than to engage in kinetic attacks. Cyber can play a very useful role in deterring Iranian nuclear advances.
First, cyber exploitations can be used to facilitate deterrence by achieving detection before an attempted Iranian nuclear advance is completed (perhaps even before the attempt is commenced). Detecting an attempted Iranian nuclear advance before it is completed can provide the United States time to spur international condemnation, disrupt the advance, and threaten punishment of the impending Iranian nuclear advance.
Second, cyber exploitations can heighten Iran’s fear of getting caught. Cyber penetrations can decrease the confidence Tehran might have in the security of its nuclear weapons program.
Third, cyber-attacks both inside and outside the nuclear arena can be used to benefit U.S. deterrence by serving as a means of punishment. It is not sufficient for the United States to merely block or reverse attempted Iranian nuclear weapons advances. By expanding the U.S. retaliatory toolkit to include cyber activity, both within and outside the nuclear arena, the United States is better able to incentivize Iranian nuclear restraint by ensuring that each attempted Iranian advance results in greater costs than benefits for Tehran.
Fourth, the United States can benefit by engaging in irregular warfare activities, including cyber, which can create plausible deniability for the United States, thereby reducing escalation risk. If Iran conducts a nuclear advance with a modicum of plausible deniability, the United States can respond with a cyber-attack (for which Washington does not take credit). Iran will incur a cost, which could help deter other advances, even if Iran can save face and claim the cyber-attack did not occur.
In addition, cyber-enabled disruption or destruction can increase the cost to the regime of its nuclear activity. A prime example of this is Stuxnet, a cyberweapon developed by the United States with Israeli assistance, which reportedly destroyed some 1,000 of Iran’s 6,000 centrifuges at the time.256 U.S. government experts reportedly estimated that Stuxnet set Iran’s nuclear program back by up to two years.257
The United States should initiate or refine an offensive cyber campaign against Iran. The Trump administration issued — and the Biden administration has largely reaffirmed — National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) 13, delegating certain authorities to the secretary of defense to conduct time-sensitive military operations in cyberspace.
Plans developed under NSPM-13 authorities are highly classified. If it has not already, the Biden administration should develop or enhance offensive cyber operation plans to disable or disrupt Iran’s nuclear, military, and other strategic capabilities.
The United States should be prepared to deploy cyber capabilities to disrupt and disable Iran’s nuclear weapons-related infrastructure. This includes not just the operations of Natanz and Fordow themselves but also the civilian critical infrastructure and the physical security of those facilities.
The United States should prepare to deploy cyber capabilities to deter and respond to relevant nuclear advances by attacking the command-and-control capabilities of the IRGC and degrading Iran’s capabilities to mobilize and direct its paramilitary forces. Notably, the operation of military bases and the movement of troops rely on civilian critical infrastructure to provide power, water, and transportation. This is all susceptible to cyber penetration.
The United States should enhance plans and prepare to deploy cyber capabilities to deter and respond to relevant nuclear advances by disrupting or degrading the operation of Iran’s military facilities. The United States should also conduct operational preparation of the environment — that is, preposition cyber assets — to enable its future operations.
As one of Iran’s most significant regional adversaries, Israel has faced significant cyber-attacks from Iran and has (reportedly) conducted offensive cyber operations against the Islamic Republic. Israel has significant intelligence and cyber capabilities of its own. As part of America’s NSPM-13 process (as well as through ongoing military-to-military and diplomatic processes), the United States should enhance its cyber engagement and collaboration with Israel. Given the significant reported impact on Iran’s nuclear program of the U.S.-Israeli partnership via Stuxnet, announcements of relevant new U.S.-Israeli cyber partnerships (phrased as vaguely as necessary to protect secrecy) could helpfully add to the deterrent pressure.
Implement Offensive Information Warfare Against the Islamic Republic
The Islamic Republic of Iran is waging an information warfare campaign to oppress the Iranian people, threaten dissidents, magnify anti-American voices, manipulate Western opinions, threaten Israel, and enfeeble U.S. foreign policy. Despite this fact, the U.S. government is barely playing defense in the information domain and is reflexively avoiding implementing effective offensive information warfare measures inside Iran out of fear of “provoking” the regime. This is the equivalent of a kinetic war in which one combatant is relentlessly firing mortars, rockets, and missiles and the recipient of the strikes assiduously refuses to respond for fear of provoking an aggressor already launching salvos.258
The failure of Washington to go on the offense in the ongoing information war with Iran has left the regime with the impression that it can wage information warfare openly on Americans, our security, and our democracy with few consequences. A more effective deterrent strategy against Tehran should also include an aggressive new campaign of offensive information warfare inside Iran. The administration should implement, without delay, a graduated offensive information war campaign inside Iran that systematically exposes the Iranian people to the corruption, hypocrisy, lies, and oppression of regime leaders and ensures the Iranian people know the truth regarding their regime’s foreign and domestic policies. The administration could make clear to Tehran that Washington will escalate this campaign inside Iran each time Tehran takes specific steps in its nuclear program and will continue until those steps are reversed and Tehran halts its information warfare activities in the United States.
Press Iran at the IAEA
The United States should strongly encourage and assist the IAEA to continue pressing Iran to address the IAEA’s doubts that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful.259
This will continue to underscore that Iran’s violations are unacceptable.260 IAEA pressure can also complicate Iranian efforts to advance its nuclear weapons program.261
There is a long list of issues on which the United States can press Iran at the IAEA. As Laura Holgate, the U.S. envoy to the IAEA, stated in March: “After five years of only limited, last-minute cooperation by Iran; five years of failure by Iran to follow through on its commitments; and five years of unresolved questions related to the presence of nuclear material at undeclared locations in Iran, we cannot allow Iran’s current pattern of behavior to continue.”262
Conclusion
The ramifications of a failure to deter Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb are so dire that preparation for such a campaign should be among the administration’s highest priorities. Not taking steps to bolster deterrence now could result in far higher costs in the future if the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism acquires the world’s most dangerous weapon. Each of these recommended steps will help, but the fundamental challenge for the administration is to convince Tehran that this administration has the political will to employ all elements of American power to stop Iran from advancing towards nuclear weapons.
https://www.fdd.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/fdd-monograph-deterring-irans-dash-to-the-bomb.pdf
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/08/29/deterring-irans-dash-to-the-bomb/#easy-footnote-bottom-1-241635