DAILY ALERT

Thursday,
December 19, 2024

In-Depth Issues:

Humiliated Abroad, Iran Is Also Enfeebled at Home - Kay Armin Serjoie (TIME)
In 2024, the Islamic Republic of Iran lost in Gaza, in Lebanon, and in Syria, where the Assads left behind a debt to Tehran of $30 billion.
The Axis of Resistance is down to rump militias in Iraq and the Houthi tribe of Yemen.
Inside Iran, things may be even worse. The economy is at its lowest point since the 1979 Revolution.
The Iranian rial has fallen 46% in the past year, and is officially the world's least valuable currency.
The devaluation of the rial means the heavily subsidized petrol prices ( 8-15 U.S. cents per gallon) have become untenable.
While price increases are planned, the last time that happened, in 2019, the country was plunged into nationwide protests, in which at least 304 people were killed.
Iran - home to the second largest natural gas reserves in the world - is facing gas shortages that are forcing the curtailment of electricity production, leading to planned blackouts for its populace.

Stopping Flow of Weapons to Houthis Key to Halting Merchant Shipping Attacks - John Grady (U.S. Naval Institute)
Interdicting the flow of missiles and drones from Iran to the Yemen-based Houthis is key to keepin g Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea safer for merchant shipping, U.S. Fleet Forces commander Adm. Daryl Caudle said Thursday.
"We just can't cede that chokepoint" to the Iranian-backed Houthis in what had been one of the most trafficked commercial sea lanes.
The Houthis have attacked 80 merchant ships since October 2023.

Israeli Strikes Leave Syrian Ammo Dump a Smoking Ruin - Dave Clark (AFP)
A Syrian bunker complex outside the port of Tartus was ablaze and rocked by explosions Monday, hours after an intense wave of Israeli air strikes. Even after the strikes ended, blasts continued to erupt.
Missile launch tubes, mortar shells and dama ged munitions were scattered on the ground and plumes of smoke rose from the terraced sides of the valley as parts of the arsenal continued to detonate.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Israel targeted "tunnels under the mountains" thought to hold "depots of ballistic missiles, ammunition, artillery shells and other military equipment."

IDF Establishes Reserve Division for Troops Aged 38-58 to Bolster Border Defense - Yoav Zitun (Ynet News)
The IDF announced the establishment of five new reserve brigades on Tuesday to enhance defensive capabilities along Israel's borders in response to lessons learned from the Oct. 7 terror attack.
The brigades will be tasked with providing a rapid defensive response to sudden events.
The units will primarily consist of reserve soldiers aged 38-58, most of whom are volunteers with extensive experience.
Maj.-Gen. (res.) Moti Baruch said, "We all understand that the security reality has changed, and we must adapt accordingly . These are people who are ready to volunteer and play a central role in strengthening security."
Reservists in the new division will be on high alert and able to mobilize rapidly from their homes during emergencies. They will keep their personal weapons at home.

Reasons to Be Hopeful - Nicky Blackburn (Israel21c)
In a crisis, you are going to want an Israeli on your side. In times of difficulty, Israelis have a way of stepping up to help that goes way beyond the norm.
Whether you were a farmer who couldn't get the crop in on time, the partner of a reservist struggling to support the family, or a business from the north or south in trouble, Israelis rushed in their hundreds of thousands to help.
During the first two weeks of the Oct. 7 war, more than 1,000 civil initiatives emerged across Israel and 48.6% of the Israeli population engaged in volunteering, according to a report from Hebrew University.
In addition, locally-based international humanitarian aid organizations continued to send out dedicated and trained staff to help in all sorts of crisis situations.
In January, SmartAID sent help to earthquake-hit Japan, then to Taiwan after another earthquake in April.
In October, SmartAID provided solar power units and communication systems to communities in Florida and North Carolina in the wake of two devastating hurricanes.
In June, IsraAID sent help to Papua New Guinea after a deadly landslide. It also expanded access to safe water in Ukraine and drilled new bore holes in Kenya after the country suffered its worst drought in 40 years.
Israeli villages and towns near Gaza are finally rebuilding. Destroyed buildings are being bulldozed and rebuilt, volunteers are cleaning and clearing, residents are returning, businesses reopening.
Since the ceasefire with Hizbullah on Nov. 27, the north has also seen signs of recovery.
Citizens are beginning to return home, communities are regrouping, farms are getting back to normal, businesses are reopening, and rebuilding is beginning.
Israel's air defense systems more than proved themselves in the last 15 months. According to Rafael CEO Yoav Turgeman, the Iron Dome and David's Sling systems intercepted more targets than all other air defense systems combined in the past 50 years.
In one year since Oct. 7, there had been 26,000 rockets, missiles and drones launched at Israel - 13,200 from Gaza, 12,400 from Lebanon, 400 from Iran, 180 from Yemen, and 60 from Syria.

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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:

UK, France, Germany: No "Credible Civilian" Purpose for Iran's Highly Enriched Uranium
Britain, France and Germany on Tuesday said Iran must "reverse its nuclear escalation," ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on Tehran's nuclear program. "Iran's stockpile of High Enriched Uranium [60%] has also reached unprecedented levels, again without any credible civilian justification. It gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons." (AFP)
Russia Withdraws Air-Defense Systems, Other Advanced Weaponry from Syria - Benoit Faucon
Russian cargo planes have flown air-defense equipment, including radars for S-400 and S-300 interceptor systems, from Syria to bases in eastern Libya controlled by Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, U.S. and Libyan officials said. Russia has also flown troops, military aircraft and weaponry out of Syria in a significant drawdown of its presence there. (Wall Street Journal)
Pro-Palestinian Activists Storm Basketball Court during Israel-France Game in Nanterre - Bradford Betz
A group of agitators waving Palestinian flags stormed the court during a basketball game between Israel's Hapoel Holon and France's Nanterre 92 in Nanterre, France, angering hundreds of attendees from the French Jewish community cheering for the Israeli team. (Fox News)

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Israel Shoots Down Houthi Missile on Thursday - Yoav Zitun
Israel's Arrow missile defense system intercepted a ballistic missile launched from Yemen early Thursday. Air raid sirens jolted central Israel overnight, triggered due to concerns over falling interceptor debris. An elementary school in Ramat Gan's Ramat Efal neighborhood near Tel Aviv sustained significant damage from missile debris. Several vehicles and adjacent structures were also affected, but there were no ca sualties. (Ynet News-Israel Hayom)
See also Israel Strikes Back at Houthis - Yoav Zitun
Israel responded to weeks of Houthi missile and drone attacks with its third strike in Yemen early Thursday. The Israeli strikes, carried out 2,000 km. from Israel, disabled three seaports, Yemen media said. In the Yemen capital of Sanaa, which came under Israeli attack for the first time, planes targeted fuel storage areas and a power station.
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the strikes aimed to degrade Houthi military capabilities and prevent the use of the targeted facilities for military operations, including the smuggling of Iranian weapons. (Y net News)
See also Israel Air Force Was on Its Way to Yemen as Missile Fired toward Israel - Shir Perets (Jerusalem Post)
Netanyahu: IDF to Remain on Mt. Hermon until "Another Arrangement" Found
Israel would remain on Mt. Hermon until "another arrangement is found that ensures Israel's security," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a situational assessment on Mt. Hermon on Tuesday. In response to the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria, Israel took over the Syrian side of the mount to enlarge the demilitarized buffer zone along the Syrian border in a "limited, temporary" action. (Jerusalem Post)

Israel's Foreign Minister Blasts Irish President

Times of Israel

Global Commentary and Thi nk-Tank Analysis:

The Gaza War

Hamas Is Not Invincible - Reuel Marc Gerecht
It has become conventional wisdom in Washington that Hamas will survive no matter how hard it is pummeled by Israel. However, Islamic history is littered with failed insurgencies and vanquished militants. It is certainly possible that with the killing of Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar and other senior commanders, the obliteration of most of Hamas's combat brigades, and the vast destruction wreaked on Gaza, Israel will succeed in annihilating Hamas.
The group's strength lies in its transcendent promise, never severely tested in battle, that a holy war could drive the Jews from Palestine sooner rather than later. This is the kind of delusional hope that once powered al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Hamas, like Hizbullah in Lebanon, didn't moderate in power. Its extremism stayed vibrant. Hamas's creed promised young men not just martyrdom but victory. Hamas believes in salvation through war, an idea that dates to the days of the Arab conquests. But as the Islamic State can attest, when Islamists start to lose wars, the faithful soon lose heart. Asking young men to kill themselves for the cause can be alluring. But such fanaticism always fades when the death toll gets too high and the promised conquest fails to materialize.
Hamas's future now depends on whether Gazans want to support a movement that has done its part to make most of them homeless. Whatever comes next likely won't have the spiritual allure - the promise of expected success - inside a Gazan wasteland. The vile "glory" of Oct. 7 is unlikely to sustain Hamas's young men - and the Palestinian population mor e broadly - through the years of misery that lie ahead for all of Gaza. Palestinians may yearn for vengeance against their Jewish foes. But Hamas may not benefit from this anger.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Iranian-targets officer in the CIA. (UnHerd)

U.S.-Israel Relations

U.S. Continues to Withhold Crucial Military Assistance to Israel - Ben Samuels
The withholding of crucial military assistance from Israel remains a point of con tention between the outgoing U.S. administration and the Israeli government. Israeli officials continue to say that U.S. officials have consistently and indiscriminately slow-rolled and halted military shipments to Israel.
The issue has been a thorn in the U.S.-Israel relationship since April, when President Joe Biden halted the shipment of 3,000 bombs due to concerns over Israel's looming military operations in Rafah. Biden publicly threatened to outright suspend offensive military assistance if Israel continued with its Rafah operation. Biden would eventually partially lift the freeze, permitting 500-pound bombs but not 2,000-pound bombs.
Senators supporting Israel said the delayed military assistance included "120 mm tank ammunition, 120 mm mortar ammunition, light tactical vehicles, air-to-air missiles, F-15s, F-35 engines, joint direct attack munition kits, 2,000 pound bombs, rifles, and guided missile systems," as well as Apache attack helicop ters and Caterpillar D9 bulldozers.
Rep. Michael McCaul, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote Biden saying he was "aware of more than 10 other weapons cases purchased via Direct Commercial Sale (DCS) that have experienced unusual, unexplained delays. Under National Security Presidential Directive-56, [the] State [Department] was directed to complete the review and adjudication of license applications within 60 days of receipt. However, these cases have been awaiting final approval for an average of over four months." (Ha'aretz)

Ireland

Israeli Ambassad or to Ireland Explains Embassy Closure - Mark Weiss
Israel's decision to close its embassy in Dublin is "the correct move at this juncture," according to Israel's ambassador to Ireland Dana Erlich, who claims there is "an anti-Israel obsession" in the country. She told Israel's Channel 11 on Monday that there had been "a systematic hate campaign specifically against me, as the person who represents the State of Israel in Ireland." This involved posters on the streets and negative commentary at demonstrations.
"Ultimately, the delegitimization that Israel has been undergoing, the fact that Zionist has become a dirty word in Ireland - we know that that is the modernization of antisemitism. It is the current incarnation of ancient antisemitism. So, to our regret, yes, we see the Irish Government advancing antisemitic measures."
"Time after time we saw an anti-Israel obsession that doesn't real ly help peace or coexistence. There was competition who could make the most extreme anti-Israel statements and there were no voices from the opposition or the media with a different view....What we see in Ireland is disproportionate, double standards and one-sided." (Irish Times)
Israel Is Right to Cut Ties with Ireland - Brendan O'Neill
Last week Ireland was gushed over by Hamas, that army of anti-Semites that carried out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. If you're getting love from racist terrorists, it's time for some self-reflection. In response to the Irish government's decision to join South Africa's "genocide" case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, Israel has taken the extraordinary decision to close its embass y in Dublin.
It's not often I feel ashamed to be Irish. But this unconscionable state of affairs, where my motherland finds greater favor among the neo-fascists of Hamas than it does with the democratic nation of Israel, makes me ashamed. Israel is right to cut ties with Ireland. It is right to say the Irish government's attitude to Israel is fueled by "double standards."
Micheal Martin, Ireland's minister for foreign affairs, said the ICJ should "broaden" its interpretation of what constitutes a genocide. To twist the rules of both war and language in order that Israel might finally get the comeuppance its Western haters think it deserves is the sign of a deeply unserious state - a state more committed to the cult of Israelophobia than to truth.
If you go mad when Israel dares to fight back against the anti-Semitic terrorists who raped and murdered more than a thousand of its people, then you are not "pro-peace" - you're just a gar den variety Israel-hater. Ireland has failed the great moral test of our time, the test set by the barbarous acts of Oct. 7, and now finds itself loved more by the killers of that day than by their victims. For shame. (Spectator-UK)
How Low Is the Irish Government Willing to Stoop? - Angela Epstein
The massacre in Israel by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 was genocide - as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The intention was to wipe out people purely because of their ethnic background. How ironic that the Irish Government is accusing the Jewish state of genocide. Dublin's politicians are asking the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to broaden its definition of genocide - claiming Israel has engaged in t he "collective punishment" of people in Gaza.
The move by the Irish government overlooks overwhelming evidence that Israel's campaign in Gaza is anything but genocide. Routinely Israel is lauded by military experts for the humane way in which it is fighting the war. If the determination was to kill for the sake of killing, why drop leaflets warning innocent people to take cover?
It remains unconscionable that Israel's attempts to protect its citizens and secure the release of hostages, while trying to avoid loss of innocent life, is labeled as genocide. Israel's war is not with the Palestinian people. Otherwise it would surely have flattened Gaza within days of the Oct. 7 attack. Hamas's founding charter shows that its raison d'etre is the killing of the Jewish people - in other words, genocide. (Daily Express-UK)
Ireland's Anti-Israel Stance - Michael Murphy
On Sunday, Israel announced it was closing its Dublin embassy because of the "extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government." Just last week, the Irish government called to "broaden" the definition of genocide to vaguely include civilian harm, effectively turning Israel into a perpetrator of a crime yet to exist.
For Jerusalem, this attempt to shift legal goalposts, redefining established terms to engineer guilt, was the final straw. After years of diplomatic snubs, boycotts, and genocide accusations - not to mention Ireland's recognition of a Palestinian state soon after Oct. 7 - Israel decided to cut its losses.
Ireland is for international law when it suits. That's why it now seeks to rewrite the Genocide Convention to retroacti vely lower the bar for convicting Israel. This more closely resembles authoritarian justice, where the accused is condemned first and the crime tailored to fit.
Ireland may claim to be "pro-peace," but when Irish peacekeepers stationed in southern Lebanon turned a blind eye to Hizbullah amassing rockets on Israel's border - in blatant violation of international law - Dublin remained silent. Had the peacekeepers done their job, Hizbullah's emboldening of Hamas, and this war, might have been avoided.
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris declared that Israel was not "entitled to have an alternative set of facts." But this cuts both ways. The facts reveal that Ireland's government is determined to accuse the Jewish state of genocide - a term born from the Holocaust - at any cost. Ireland abandons its principles when the violators aren't Jews but weaponizes them when they supposedly are. (Telegraph-UK)

Lebanon

Syria's Earthquake and the Aftershock in Lebanon - Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah
The collapse of Assad's regime in Syria was celebrated with jubilation and huge mass demonstrations in Lebanon, especially in the Sunni-dominated areas such as Tripoli, Sidon, and parts of the capital Beirut. The Sunni community in Lebanon has awakened from its lethargy into a proactive movement encouraged by the takeover of Syria by the jihadi Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). They mean to reassert Sunni dominance over the weakened Shiite Hizbullah.
The Lebanese Shiite community is trying to cope with the weakness of Hizbullah following its poor campaign against Israel. Heavi ly bruised by Israel and losing its popular support with the fall of Bashar Assad, Hizbullah is trying to survive as a military force and a central political player in Lebanon.
The writer, a special analyst at the Jerusalem Center, was formerly Deputy Head for Assessment of Israeli Military Intelligence. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs)

Observations:

Middle East Scholar: "The Sunnis Can Smell Blood" - Dr. Mordechai Kedar interviewed by Nadav Shragai (Israel Hayom)

Lt.-Col. (res.) Dr. Morde chai Kedar, 72, a frequent guest on Al-Jazeera, served for 25 years in IDF Military Intelligence. Now closely monitoring developments in Syria, he said, "Iran has abandoned its proxies - Hamas, Hizbullah, and Assad. The glue that has held the Shi'ite alliance together is now disintegrating, and the Sunnis can smell blood."
"I sense that Iraq, too, might disavow the Iranian presence there in the not-too-distant future, and we could even witness the fall of the Houthis in Yemen. The events in Syria have provided a real boost to the Sunnis everywhere, encouraging them to get organized against the Iranian presence."
"We need to encourage the minorities in Iran to rise up against the Persian hegemony....There is no Iranian people. There are Persians and other large groups, such as Baluchis, Arabs, Kurds, Azeris, and Turkmen, alongside an additional 40 or so smaller groups....In Iran t oday, at least 80 out of the 90 million people there are over the moon about what has been happening in Syria, as this is a blow to the Iranian government and its plans to spread out over the entire Middle East."
In Syria, "we have exchanged radical Alawites for Sunni jihadis, who are backed by a megalomaniac in the form of [Turkish President] Erdogan, who provides refuge for Hamas, who talks in favor of Hamas, from his land Hamas mastermind terrorist attacks carried out in Israel, who has sworn to revive the days of the Ottoman Empire....Only last July, he made a clear threat to invade Israel."
Regarding the hostage talks, he said, "Hamas will not release all of them. The hostages are their life insurance policy. That is the reason why, to date, they have yet to provide Israel with a complete list of names of all of them. In any deal, they will seek to keep hold of a c ertain number of hostages."
"Even after a deal, they will definitely suddenly discover some additional hostages, holed up somewhere or other, with some other organization or local clan, hostages of whom they really 'had no idea.' They have absolutely no intention of returning them all."

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