Important Takeaways:
- Israel is ‘the most concrete threat to regional and global peace’ says Erdoğan
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told local media on Saturday that Russia, Iran and Syria should do more to protect Syria’s “territorial integrity.”
- “It is essential that Russia, Iran and Syria take more effective measures against this situation, which poses the greatest threat to Syria’s territorial integrity,” Erdoğan said when asked about the recent alleged Israeli airstrike in the nation’s capital, Damascus.
- Shortly after the Hamas invasion and massacre of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Turkish president canceled a planned trip to Israel and refused to condemn Hamas.
- “Hamas is not a terror organization,” Erdoğan said at the time. “It is waging a battle for its land.”
- In November, Erdoğan slammed Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza, calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “the butcher of Gaza.”
- In May 2024, at Erdoğan’s urging, Turkey announced that it was halting all trade with Israel. That same month, it announced it would join South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
- The country also sent its intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, to Doha, Qatar to meet with Ismail Haniyeh, then the political leader of Hamas.
- In July, Erdoğan appeared to threaten an invasion of Israel in support of Palestinians in Gaza during a party speech.
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Important Takeaways:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin met Iran’s president on Friday, at a time when Tehran is supplying weapons for Moscow’s war in Ukraine and concerns are growing over escalating attacks between Israel and Iran and its militant allies.
- “We have many opportunities now, and we must help each other in our relationships. Our principles, our positions in the international arena are similar to yours,” Pezeshkian said at the start of his meeting with Putin.
- Pezeshkian said that Israel’s “savage attacks,” on Lebanon are “beyond description.”
- Both countries were accused this week by Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, of carrying out a “staggering” rise in attempts at assassination, sabotage and other crimes on U.K. soil.
- McCallum said his agents and police have tackled 20 “potentially lethal” plots backed by Iran since 2022 and warned that it could expand its targets in the U.K. if conflicts in the Middle East deepen.
- Speaking Friday as the forum opened, Putin said he wants to create a “new world order” of Moscow’s allies to counter the West, according to video provided by the Kremlin`
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Important Takeaways:
- The country’s adversaries are stepping up efforts to influence the U.S. election, including down-ballot races, intelligence officials told the press on Monday.
- Officials said China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba have sought to “launder their narratives” into election discourse, as well as aggravate divisions among Americans through hot-button issues such as immigration.
- Though four weeks remain before Election Day, more than 16 million Americans had requested mail-in ballots or opted for early in-person voting as of Tuesday, according to an NBC News poll sourced from state officials and market research firm TargetSmart.
- One official said agencies have been privately briefing candidates for president, congress and local elections about foreign influence efforts.
- More of these notifications have already been carried out than during any past election, according to another official, who said suspected cases of foreign influence campaigns against public officials have seen a “more than threefold increase.”
- China-linked actors were said to have directly interfered in “tens” of down-ballot races, particularly when it comes to issues that most concern the Chinese Communist Party, Reuters reported.
- Russia and Iran have been focused on shaping the views of the U.S. electorate,” the intelligence officials said.
- Moscow’s efforts have reportedly been to drive down support for Ukraine, which is struggling against invading Russian forces in the eastern part of the country. Iran has been covertly seeking to drum up support for Democratic candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris, according to officials.
- They believe Cuba has concentrated on giving a boost to its preferred candidates by swaying Spanish-speaking voters on social media.
- The news follows a report released last month by social network analysis firm Graphika that detailed a Chinese “spamouflage” operation attempting to sow division in U.S. social media spaces through fake accounts.
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Important Takeaways:
- Supreme leader defends Iran’s attack on Israel as ‘legitimate’, and calls on Muslim countries to unite.
- “The resistance in the region will not back down even with the killing of its leaders,” Khamenei said, calling Iran’s attack on Israel “legal and legitimate”.
- “The operations were … in return for the heinous crimes committed by this bloodthirsty criminal entity,” he said.
- He said Iran would fulfill its “duty” to allies in a considered manner.
- It was the supreme leader’s first such sermon in more than four years, coming just before the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel
- Iran’s proxies in its “axis of resistance” – Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq – have carried out attacks in the region in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza war.
- Addressing massive crowds, Khamenei issued a rallying call to Muslim nations – “from Afghanistan to Yemen, from Iran to Gaza and Lebanon” – saying they should unite against common “enemy” Israel, which he claimed had deployed “psychological”, “economic” and “military” warfare against them.
- Early on Friday, Israel hit Beirut with a barrage of attacks reportedly targeting senior Hezbollah figure Hashem Safieddine, a putative successor to Nasrallah.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel and Iran have never been closer to opening up a new and far more dangerous front in the war that has engulfed the Middle East.
- Iran threatened on Tuesday that if Israel responds with force to the nearly 200 missiles it launched on Tuesday, it will attack again.
- If that happens, Israeli officials say all options will be on the table – including strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
- Many Israeli officials point to Iran’s oil facilities as a likely target, but some say targeted assassinations and taking out Iran’s air defense systems are also possibilities.
- “The regime in Iran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and our determination to retaliate against our enemies. They will understand. We will stand by the rule we established: whoever attacks us, we will attack him,” Netanyahu said.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Islamic Republic will collapse sooner than people think, and the Iranian people will be free, paving the way for relations between these two ancient cultures, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.
- “When Iran is finally free and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think – everything will be different,” he said.
- “When that day comes, the terror network that the regime built in five continents will be bankrupt, dismantled,” Netanyahu explained, adding that Iran will thrive as never before.”
- “There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach,” Netanyahu said on Monday. “There is nowhere we will not go to protect our people and protect our country.”
- On Monday he released a statement in English aimed at the Iranian people, explaining that “at this pivotal moment, I want to address you – the people of Iran. I want to do so directly, without filters, without middlemen.
- “Every day, you see a regime that subjugates you, make fiery speeches about defending Lebanon, defending Gaza.
- “Yet every day, that regime plunges our region deeper into darkness and deeper into war,” he said.
- “With every passing moment, the regime is bringing you — the noble Persian people — closer to the abyss,” he stated.
- “The vast majority of Iranians know their regime doesn’t care a whit about them,” Netanyahu said.
- “There are tens of millions of good and decent people with thousands of years of history behind them and a bright future ahead of them,” he said.
- When that day comes, he said, “Our two ancient peoples, the Jewish people and the Persian people, will finally be at peace.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia and Iran are using artificial intelligence to influence the American election, U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday.
- “Foreign actors are using AI to more quickly and convincingly tailor synthetic content,” an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. “The IC (intelligence community) considers AI a malign influence, accelerant, not yet a revolutionary influence tool.”
- Officials saw AI being used in overseas elections, but it has now made its way to American elections, according to intelligence officials, who says there is evidence Russian manipulated Vice President Kamala Harris’ speeches.
- Russia “has generated the most AI content related to the election, and has done so across all four mediums, text, images, audio and video,” an ODNI official said.
- “Russia is a much more sophisticated actor in the influence space in general, and they have a better understanding of how U.S. elections work and what states to target,” an ODNI official said.
- Iran has also used AI in its election influence efforts, including help in writing fake social media posts and news articles to further Iran’s objectives, which are to denigrate the former President Donald Trump’s candidacy, the official said.
- Officials have previously assessed Iran prefers that Vice President Harris win the 2024 election.
- The intelligence community assesses that AI is an “accelerant” to influence operations, but the risk to U.S. elections depends the ability of foreign actors to overcome restrictions built into many AI tools and remain undetected, develop their own sophisticated models, and strategically target and disseminate such content.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israeli police said Thursday that agents thwarted a recent Iranian assassination attempt, arresting an individual suspected of receiving money from Iran to coordinate an attack on top officials, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
- The citizen had met with Iranian officials over the spring in Iran and was asked to take photographs of sensitive locations and to transfer money and guns into Israel, according to Israeli police.
- The person was asked in another visit in August to promote an assassination of Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the head of Shin Bet, Ronan Bar.
- Iranian officials also asked the person to look into a potential assassination attempt on former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, officials said.
- Israeli police said the foiled Iranian plot was in response to the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, which Iran has blamed on Israel.
- The citizen requested $1 million to carry out the plots but was refused, police said. He was given more than $5,000 for his work.
- Hezbollah blamed Israel for a deadly wave of explosions in Lebanon this week in which pager messaging devices and handheld radios detonated, killing more than two dozen people and wounding thousands.
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Important Takeaways:
- The raid on Sunday was the first ground operation the IDF has conducted in recent years against Iranian targets in Syria.
- The destruction of the factory appears to be a significant blow to an effort by Iran and Hezbollah to produce precision medium-range missiles on Syrian soil.
- Two sources said Israel briefed the Biden administration in advance of the sensitive operation and the U.S. didn’t oppose it.
- Two sources with direct knowledge told Axios the Iranians began building the underground facility in coordination with Hezbollah and Syria in 2018 after a series of Israeli airstrikes destroyed most of the Iranian missile production infrastructure in Syria.
- According to the sources, the Iranians decided to build an underground factory deep inside a mountain in Masyaf because it would be impenetrable to Israeli air strikes.
- The sources claimed the Iranian plan was to produce the precision missiles in this protected facility near the border with Lebanon so that the delivery process to Hezbollah in Lebanon could take place quickly and with less risk of Israeli airstrikes.
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Important Takeaways:
- The story of the transfer of Iranian missiles to Russia is not just about the missiles; it is about the larger symbol.
- “We are aware of the credible information provided by allies on the delivery of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia,” EU spokesman Peter Stano said, according to reports. The reports claim Iran has sent short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. Russia has been fighting a war against Ukraine for more than two years. The Iranian ties with Russia are not new; the countries have worked together for decades on various issues, and Iran increasingly wants to partner with Russia on numerous issues.
- Iran’s Mehr News also reported on the claims. Iran’s foreign ministry has denied the claims.
- The CNN report noted that it is not clear when the missiles were delivered. “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told allies at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Germany on Friday that Ukraine urgently needed more air defense systems,” CNN noted.
- Reports that Turkey will attend an upcoming Arab League meeting and that Turkey and the Syrian regime could reconcile are also part of the story. Syria’s regime is a key ally of Moscow. Iran uses Syria to threaten Israel. Iran traffics weapons via Syria to Lebanon and also bases weapons in Syria.
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