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Plane descends through air strike smoke to land at airport in Beirut, Lebanon in this screengrab obtained on October 1, 2024.
Israel broadens the battlefield
The world still awaits Israel’s retaliation against Iran for Tehran’s brazen missile attack last Tuesday. But in the meantime, Israeli forcesconducted further airstrikes in Syria, hitting a weapons depot south of Homs and a rocket depot in the eastern countryside on Sunday. The strikes – which apparently aimed to stem the flow of weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon –caused “material losses,” according to Syrian state media. They came two days after Israel launched rocket attacks near a Russian airbase in Syria, where Russian forces were reportedly “confronting” the missiles for over 40 minutes, raising concerns that Russia — an Iranian ally – could become embroiled in the escalating regional war.
Meanwhile, on Sunday night, Israel resumed bombardment of targets in Beirut while Hezbollah rockets struck the Israeli port city of Haifa. This followed a weekend of intense Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah targets in suburban Beirut, which took the lives of 23 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Key leaders targeted. The Israeli foreign ministry claims that its air force killed Hezbollah commander Hader Ali Taweel on Sunday. Iran’s Quds Force commander Esmail Qaaniis also missing after Israeli strikes on Beirut last week, though it is unclear whether he is dead or wounded. The Quds Force oversees dealings with militias allied with Tehran across the Middle East, including Hezbollah, and confusion about Qaani’s fate is reportedly causing panic among the troops. The strike was in fact targeting senior Hezbollah figure Hashem Safieddine, who is also unaccounted for, and who was seen as a possible successor to Hezbollah’s former leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
But is Hezbollah the real target? Israel’s increased military operations have led observers to speculate that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expanding operations to target Iran – and drag the US into the conflict. Bibi is also suspected of seeking to torpedo a cease-fire in Gaza to harm the Democrats’ chances in the upcoming US election while boosting his own favorability at home. His poll numbers have climbed since the war with Hezbollah heated up but not far enough to allow him to form a majority government if an election were held today.
When asked on Friday whether Netanyahu was attempting to influence the US election, a frustrated US President Joe Biden said “I don’t know” before adding, “No administration has helped Israel more than I have … And I think [Netanyahu] should remember that.”Smoke rises from an explosion in Gaza, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, near the Israel-Gaza border, as seen from Israel, September 9, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Oct. 7 Edition
1,200: Hamas launched terror attacks inside Israel and killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023 – making it the deadliest day in Israel’s 76-year history. The kibbutz of Be’eri, near the Supernova music festival, suffered the highest death toll with 332 lives lost. The militants targeted the festival, 19 kibbutzim, and five cooperatives, among other targets.
251: Hamas militants took 251 people, including civilians and Israeli security personnel, hostage on Oct. 7, taking them into Gaza. As of Sept. 1, 2024, 101 hostages remained in Gaza, according to Israeli sources cited by the UN. Sixty-four are believed to be alive, while 33 are confirmed dead (four of the hostages were taken before Oct. 7).
41,870: The number of Gazans killed in the war between Israel and Hamas now stands at 41,870, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The number has been disputed by groups that peg it as either higher, due to an inability to locate people under the rubble, or lower, due to the inflation of numbers. The GHM also does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. According to Israeli authorities, as of Sept. 1, the number of dead includes 17,000 Hamas terrorists.
1,664: Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, 1,664 Israelis have been killed, including 706 soldiers, according to a report by the Institute for National Security Studies.
1,900: At least 1,900 Lebanese, including civilians, medics, and Hezbollah terrorists, have been killed since Oct. 8, 2023, according to Lebanese officials, and several thousand have been wounded.
1.9 million: UNRWA says 1.9 million people have been displaced in Gaza due to the war instigated by Hamas. 143,000 people have been displaced in Israel due to Hezbollah rocket bombardment, according to an INSS report, including 60,000 evacuated from the border with Lebanon.
1.2 million: Just over 20% of Lebanon’s 5.4-million-strong population – a whopping 1.2 million people – have been driven from their homes by the recent Israeli offensive, according to Lebanese officials.
38: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity has risen since Israel launched its offensive against Hezbollah. According to Israel’s Channel 12, Netanyahu is the preferred candidate for prime minister over the centrist opposition leader, Yair Lapid, at 38% to 27% support. The latest poll gives his Likud Party a possible 25 seats, but that would not be enough to form a government with its current coalition partners.
Homes are leveled in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Horseshoe Beach, Florida, U.S., September 27, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Helene hits hard, Zuckerberg enters the big leagues, US strikes Islamic State in Syria, Majority of Argentines live in poverty
90: At least 90 people across the southeastern United States are dead in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which made landfall as a category 4 storm on Thursday. The high winds and storm surge destroyed an unknown number of homes and caused power outages for millions. The White House declared major disasters in Florida and North Carolina, allowing federal emergency management resources to flow to those states.
201 billion: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly amassed a net worth of $201 billion, making him the fourth wealthiest person in the world after Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bernard Arnault, whose assets all surpass $200 billion. For context, if you made $10,000 an hour, every hour for the last 2,024 years, you would still fall short of the mark with $177 billion.
37: US Central Command said Sunday that it had killed 37 Islamic State-linked operatives in two separate strikes in Syria this month. The first strike, on Sept. 16, killed 28 militants at an IS training ground in central Syria, while the second killed nine IS-affiliated militants in the northwest last Tuesday.
52.9: According to new government data, more than half of Argentines – a whopping 52.9% – lived below the poverty line during the first half of the year, the highest level in two decades. That’s up from 41.7% in the last half of 2023, with a 237% annual inflation rate driving much of the increase. President Javier Milei has managed to bring inflation somewhat more under control, but he is making unlikely promises to bring the rate down to 18% by the end of 2025.A poster depicting Syria's President Bashar al-Assad is seen at a damaged area in the aftermath of what Syrian state media reported was an Israeli strike in Hama, Syria September 9, 2024.
Do strikes on Syria signal a bolder Netanyahu?
Israeli strikes in Syria overnight on Sunday killed at least 18 people and wounded dozens more. The main target appears to have been a facility reportedly used in the development of chemical weapons.
Israel has not confirmed its involvement, but it has routinely carried out attacks in Syria – targeting Syrian government forces and Iran-backed militias – in recent years. The Jewish state generally does not publicly comment on such operations.
These strikes led to a larger death toll than previous attacks and came in the face of rising tensions between Israel and Iran amid the war in Gaza. Israel has been bracing for an attack from Iran in recent weeks, following the late July assassination of a top Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. It was thought that Iran would respond harshly and swiftly to that attack, but it’s held off so far.
What’s Israel playing at? Israel probably feels somewhat emboldened given the lack of a quick, significant Iranian response to Haniyeh’s assassination — and the Jewish state is likely to continue to take action against threats in the region “where Israel knows that the risk of retaliation is not great,” says Eurasia Group senior analyst Omar Monieb.
The strikes also came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces rising domestic calls to secure a cease-fire deal with Hamas to bring hostages home – and they could be an attempt to ease that pressure. They help Netanyahu’s government show that even if it’s “not successful in striking a deal, it is successful in eliminating threats” to Israel elsewhere, says Monieb.
Iran attacks Israel
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take on a Sunday, which usually means something is not going well, and that is certainly the case in the Middle East, where you had unprecedented strikes by Iran and its proxies against Israel.
Now, on the one hand, clearly a very dangerous thing to do, on the other hand, could have been a hell of a lot worse. What do I mean by that? Well, it is not World War III. Americans warned Iran not to hit the United States, and the Iranians gave a heads-up, days in advance, through a number of actors, most importantly through Iraq. This reminds me very much of after the American servicemen and women, three were killed in Jordan, by an Iranian proxy. The Americans did not want a war to break out with the Iranians directly, waited about a week, gave a heads up through Iraq, of the kind of attack that the Americans were planning, waited four days, gave the Iranians a chance to basically prepare and get their own forces out, and warned them that if this were to happen again, there would be direct consequences, a direct strike on Iran itself.
In this case, you had the Iranian heads-up that gave the Americans and allies time to pre-position, to provide diplomatic support, both publicly and privately, to the Israelis. Send the head of CENTCOM to Israel, say that American support for Israel was ironclad, help ensure that the Israelis would be able to most effectively defend itself against the coming Iranian attack. That was, on the one hand, a really big deal by the Iranians that was meant to be a maximal display of force and a minimum likelihood of casualties. But still, there was a significant possibility of accident, that you could have a risk that would lead to a war directly between Iran and Israel. Something that the Americans desperately wanted to avoid because it would bring the US in. It would spike oil prices. It would probably mean the end of Biden's, potential of a second presidency. And it, of course, would also mean that Iran was going to get hit massively by the United States and Israel, something they wanted to avoid.
We saw hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles, many from proxies, but many from Iran itself, over 99% of which were taken down. And they were aimed solely at military targets in Israel. So again, lots of effort to try to reduce the risk but the potential that you would have had a number get through, accidentally hitting civilians or having significant military hit, that was a risk that the Iranians were prepared to take. So, it's a big deal, it’s a clear escalation, and it is certainly an effort by the Iranians to say, that if this is to happen again, that the likelihood that there will be a major war between Iran and Israel come what may, is very real. And the Iranians also said, and they said this before the missiles even hit their targets, or in the case of the vast majority of them were intercepted, said through the United Nations mission that this was directly in retaliation for the Israeli strike against an Iranian leader in Damascus, and that the matter, from Iran's perspective, should be considered closed.
In other words, no further attacks were coming. So, trying to in a sense, you know, reduce the likelihood of further escalation, in advance. And clearly, all of that kept the United States from responding directly. So, the US strategy here is do everything possible to show that you will get massive support for Israeli defense and national security in the event of an attack, any attack, but also to try to put maximum constraint on the Israeli government against a response directly against Iran, and that the Americans don't want to support Israel if they were to engage in offensive attacks against Iran at this point.
What are the Israelis going to do? I mean, the hope for the United States is that while Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to do more and suck the United States into a broader war against Iran, that he is going to be constrained from doing so. In part because he was so successful, they now have a major victory on their belt under his watch, being able to defend the Israeli people completely in response to an unprecedented Iranian attack. And there's also going to be a big distraction away from the war in Gaza. Doesn't mean that Israel suddenly loses its isolation or wins the PR war globally, I think that's certainly not going to happen, but, there's less pressure on the Israelis, on the prime minister, in terms of Gaza right now as a consequence of what Iran has done. And there's also less pressure for Netanyahu to be forced out domestically in the near, in the immediate future.
Further, if he were to try to go considerably farther than Benny Gantz wants to, and the war cabinet wants to, in a response against Iran, then Netanyahu risks that they would bolt from the war cabinet and that his government would then fall apart. That's certainly a proximate risk that contains what the Israelis are likely to do. I don't think they'll sit on their hands and do nothing. At the very least, I think there'll be more significant strikes against Iranian proxies in the coming days. And the Israelis will also continue to engage in strikes against Iranian targets as they see them, as is opportune, in proxy states going forward. This is the problem, of course, is that, even though you have averted major escalation in a very dangerous period over the weekend, the Israelis and the Iranians haven't accomplished anything to stabilize their relationship longer-term.
Israel has shown that they are capable of taking out Iranian leaders in Syria, and Iran can't defend them. Iran has no intention of suddenly leaving those proxies to fend for themselves. And further, the likelihood that Israel now gets a breakthrough agreement on hostage release by Hamas, and that leads to a ceasefire, has gone down, at least in the near-term. The other side of that is the likelihood that the Israelis proceed with at least some form of ground attack into Rafah, which the Americans have warned them not to, also has gone up.
So the Hamas war with Israel is nowhere close to ending, the likelihood of continued Palestinian civilian casualties continues to grow, and the potential for further military engagement, both vis-a-vis proxies, including the Houthis in the Red Sea, the fact that the Iranians have also boarded an Israeli linked vessel in the Red Sea and that there is no effective deterrent in place right now between Israel and Iran, despite all sorts of other actors not wanting this to expand into a broader war, that all makes the Middle East right now, more dangerous.
So, I mean, none of us know, what the next shoe is going to be to drop. But if you are looking ahead over the next, let's say, six months, a couple things I think you can say. First, it is more likely that the present Israeli government is going to be in place for longer, and that the war in Gaza is going to continue without a serious effort at stabilization, or at least not one that's consequential.
That's problematic for Biden as you look ahead to the election in November. The potential that this war expands and eventually does drag in the United States and Iran more directly, is also going up. It's not imminent but it is certainly reasonably plausible, and the guardrails on that war are becoming, they are eroding as both sides are taking shots against each other.
So, a dangerous environment. A second war that is not going the way the Americans or anyone else in the world would like it to. And that's how we're kicking off our week.
That's it for me and I'll talk to you all real soon.
- Iran launches ballistic missiles at Israel in revenge attack ›
- Islamic State group spoils efforts to blame Israel for deadly Iran blasts ›
- Israel's war in Gaza has emboldened Iran, says Karim Sadjadpour ›
- Who will Iran blame for deadly explosions near Soleimani’s grave? ›
- Biden’s Iran dilemma ›
- Will Iran attack Israel? ›
- Iran-Israel crisis: Dangers still high with little room for diplomacy - GZERO Media ›
- Israel attacks Iran - GZERO Media ›
Smoke rises after what the Iranian media said was an Israeli strike on a building close to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria April 1, 2024.
Israel kills top Iranian commanders in Damascus
The freshly un-herniated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flexed some muscle beyond Israel’s borders on Monday, as an apparent IDF air strike flattened a section of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing several senior Iranian military figures responsible for proxy groups in Syria and Lebanon, as well as a handful of Iranian diplomats.
The strike marks an escalation between the Jewish State and the Islamic Republic. While Israel has conducted assassinations within Iran over the years and has struck a number of military targets belonging to Iran or its proxies in Syria and Lebanon in recent months, the strike on a diplomatic building was a particularly bold taunt of Tehran.
Iran said the strike suggested Netanyahu had lost his mind over his inability to master the Gaza situation — a colorful view that does little to mask a more black-and-white problem for the Supreme Leader and his generals: how to respond to a provocation like this without sliding into a direct conflict with Israel that Tehran has so far tried to avoid.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said that the Israeli strike had flattened the entire Iranian consulate building, rather than just an annex of the building. We regret the error.
An Ethiopian family in search of food from fleeing remote villages where wells have dried up due to drought arrives in Korom, northeast Ethiopia.
Hard Numbers: Ethiopia is starving, US allies killed, Earth’s near miss, Paris parking drama, Myorkas impeachment vote
3,000,000: At least three million Ethiopians are at acute risk of hunger in the north of the country, where the federal government and ethnic Tigrayan separatists fought a grinding war from 2020 to 2022. The UK government says it is setting aside £100 million ($125.4 million) to aid people at risk of starvation in the region.
6: A drone attack early Monday killed six Kurdish fighters allied to the US on a military base housing US troops in Syria. No US deaths or injuries were reported, and the Biden administration says it will continue to target Iranian proxies in the region.
1,700,000: Did you feel that impending sense of doom over the weekend? It wasn’t (only) the Sunday Scaries. A skyscraper-sized meteorite is hurtling toward Earth and will come within just 1.7 million miles of our little blue marble on Friday. Scientists say we’ll be fine … but the asteroid is swinging back around in 2032.
18: The good people of Paris have voted to triple parking fees for SUVs, which will now run you €18 ($19.50) an hour in the city center and €12 further out. Mayor Anne Hidalgo celebrated the measure as an environmentalist victory – but at least one woman in the fashionable 8th arrondissement told Voice of America she’s sick of the mayor’s “diktats.”
2: The House will vote on whether to impeach Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, on charges that he has willfully refused to enforce border laws and breached the public trust. The vote marks an escalation of Republicans’ efforts to attack President Joe Biden and Democrats over immigration. Because of the GOP's thin majority, they can only afford to lose 2 lawmakers, but If they succeed, Mayorkas would become the only sitting cabinet member to be impeached in American history.
President Joe Biden attends the return of the remains of the three slain US soldiers — Sgt. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, and Sgt. Kennedy Ladon Sanders — at Dover Air Force Base on Friday.
US strikes back after deadly drone attack
Nearly a week after a drone attack killed three American service members at a small US base in Jordan, the US responded late Friday by launching strikes against more than 85 targets in Syria and Iraq. The Pentagon blames the Iran-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq for the deadly drone attack.
The strikes hit command and intel centers and storage facilities affiliated with the Quds Force, a unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and local Iran-supported militias.
Tehran condemned the US strikes, calling them a “strategic error.” Baghdad said the attacks killed at least 16 people, including civilians. Syria, meanwhile, criticized the US and said the attacks would “fuel conflict in the Middle East in a very dangerous way.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based watchdog, said the strikes in Syria had killed 23 pro-Iran fighters, but no civilians.
The strikes came hours after President Joe Biden, first lady Dr. Jill Biden, and US Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin attended the return of the remains of the three slain US soldiers — Sgt. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, and Sgt. Kennedy Ladon Sanders — at Dover Air Force Base on Friday.
Biden had threatened to deliver a “tiered response” over time, so these strikes are expected to be just the first salvo of a broader campaign. We’ll be watching for Washington's next moves — and for any signs of escalation in the form of responses from Iran, Iraq, or Syria.