The Chinese military is ramping up its ability to disrupt key American infrastructure, including power and water utilities as well as communications and transportation systems, according to U.S. officials and industry security officials.

Hackers affiliated with China’s People’s Liberation Army have burrowed into the computer systems of about two dozen critical entities over the past year, these experts said.

The intrusions are part of a broader effort to develop ways to sow panic and chaos or snarl logistics in the event of a U.S.-China conflict in the Pacific, they said.

Among the victims are a water utility in Hawaii, a major West Coast port and at least one oil and gas pipeline, people familiar with the incidents told The Washington Post. The hackers also attempted to break into the operator of Texas’s power grid, which operates independently from electrical systems in the rest of the country.

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The Chinese military is ramping up its ability to disrupt key American infrastructure, including power and water utilities as well as communications and transportation systems, according to U.S. officials and industry security officials.https://t.co/o1z71pOf0F

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 11, 2023

Just south of Baghdad, the urban sprawl gives way to glimpses of green, with lush date palm groves bordering the Euphrates River. But few risk spending much time there. Not even the Iraqi military or government officials venture without permission.

A farmer, Ali Hussein, who once lived on that land, said, “We do not dare to even ask if we can go there.”

That’s because this stretch of Iraq — more than twice the size of San Francisco — is controlled by an Iraqi militia linked to Iran and designated a terrorist group by the United States. Militia members man checkpoints around the borders. And though sovereign Iraqi territory, the area, known as Jurf al-Nasr, functions as a “forward operating base for Iran,” according to one of the dozens of Western and Iraqi intelligence and military officers, diplomats and others interviewed for this article.

The militia that controls the land, Khataib Hezbollah, uses it to assemble drones and retrofit rockets, with parts largely obtained from Iran, senior military and intelligence officials say. Those weapons have then been distributed for use in attacks by Iranian-linked groups across the Middle East — putting this former farmland at the center of fears that the war in Gaza could grow into a wider conflict.

Read it all (my emphasis).

Thick palm groves near Baghdad hide a base where an Iranian-backed militia assembles drones, retrofits missiles and stores them for use regionally against U.S. targets. https://t.co/I3RahEWkQ1

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) December 9, 2023

This week, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London published the latest edition of its authoritative annual Armed Conflict Survey, and it’s not predicting much peace for the holidays. It paints a grim picture of rising violence in in many regions, of wars chronically resistant to broking of peace. The survey — which addresses regional conflicts rather than the superpower confrontation between China, Russia, the US and its allies — documents 183 conflicts for 2023, the highest number in three decades.

It highlights “intractability as the defining feature of the contemporary global conflict landscape.” Nonstate armed groups, of which Hamas in Gaza is only the most immediately conspicuous, play a baleful role. In many places these forces are supported by disruptive major powers, notably Russia and Iran.

Although the world is not immediately threatened by a great war, such as those of 1914-18 and 1939-45, tensions are rising, especially between the US and China. I would identify an issue that seems to me, as a historian, especially important and dangerous. One of the primary reasons Europe went to war in 1914 is that none of the big players were as frightened as they should have been, of conflict as a supreme human catastrophe. After a century in which the continent had experienced only limited wars, from which Prussia had been an especially conspicuous profiteer, too many statesmen viewed war as a usable instrument of policy, which proved a catastrophic misjudgment.

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An authoritative new study from the International Institute for Strategic Studies finds there are 183 regional and local conflicts underway in 2023, the highest number in three decades, Sir Max Hastings writes https://t.co/CeckeihcVY via @opinion

— Bloomberg (@business) December 10, 2023

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was blunt when he addressed G7 leaders this week.

“Russia hopes only for one thing: that next year the free world’s consolidation will collapse. Russia believes that America and Europe will show weakness, and will not maintain support for Ukraine,” he said in a video call on Wednesday evening with his most important political allies.

“The free world vitally needs to . . . maintain support for those whose freedom is being attacked,” he said. “Ukraine has strength. And I ask you to be as strong as you can be.”

Zelenskyy’s plea is not mere rhetoric. Hours after he spoke, the US Senate rejected the White House’s latest bid to pass legislation authorising $60bn in financial support for Ukraine. Across the Atlantic, a European Commission proposal that would provide €50bn to prop up Kyiv’s budget for the next four years hangs in the balance ahead of a summit of EU leaders next week, following months of bickering between member states over how to fund it. 

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“We know from intelligence community assessments that Putin believes Ukraine will fall within just months without renewed US support,” Mark Warner, the chair of the Senate intelligence committeehttps://t.co/6XQyEOSHdF

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) December 9, 2023

Starved of ammunition, the gunners of Ukraine’s 47th Brigade were not able to hit the Russian convoy before it was upon their infantry on Avdiivka’s northern flank.

Five armoured vehicles rolled into the village of Stepove, guns firing, allowing about 40 Russian soldiers to run for cover in the houses around Ukrainian positions. A Bradley fighting vehicle was deployed towards the Russians. American armour was to be put to the test against Russian.

This fierce battle was part of a desperate action to save Avdiivka, in the east of the country, from imminent collapse and prevent a victory for President Putin in time for the launch of his election campaign and New Year festivities.

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Surrounded and low on ammo, the elite troops out to spoil Putin’s New Year

One of Ukraine’s finest brigades has been sent to defend the key city of Avdiivka. Without more gear their chances are dwindling, they tell Maxim Tuckerhttps://t.co/0nBvh4I5FV

— Antti Rautiainen (@ARautiainen) December 8, 2023

The reason the Hamas-Israel war can be hard for outsiders to understand is that three wars are going on at the same time: a war between Israeli Jews and the Palestinians exacerbated by a terrorist group, a war within Israeli and Palestinian societies over the future, and a war between Iran and its proxies and America and its allies.

But before we dig into those wars, here’s the most important thing to keep in mind about them: There’s a single formula that can maximize the chances that the forces of decency can prevail in all three. It is the formula that I think President Biden is pushing, even if he can’t spell it all out publicly now — and we should all push it with him: You should want Hamas defeated; as many Gazan civilians as possible spared; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his extremist allies booted; all the hostages returned; Iran deterred; and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank reinvigorated in partnership with moderate Arab states.

Pay particular attention to that last point: a revamped Palestinian Authority is the keystone for the forces of moderation, coexistence and decency triumphing in all three wars.

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“The reason the Hamas-Israel war can be hard for outsiders to understand is that three wars are going on at the same time,” writes @tomfriedman.

Read: https://t.co/kM3pqjs4Ma

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) November 29, 2023

In the nearly two years since Russia launched its “special military operation” against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russian society has gotten used to living against the backdrop of a brutal armed conflict. A significant part of the population has reconciled itself to the idea that they will be living under the current state of affairs for quite some time, and that they must therefore adjust to reality, which ordinary Russians are in any case unable—and often unwilling—to change.

All the naïve predictions that popular discontent triggered by sanctions and the wartime restrictions imposed on daily life would bring down Vladimir Putin’s regime have come to nothing. In many ways, quite the opposite has happened. Most Russians might not identify with the regime, but they have consolidated around the Kremlin, which they believe to be fighting tooth and nail against a West that is seeking to destroy Russia. Despite the fact that such a depiction is at odds with reality, a great many Russians have accepted it as the most logical explanation for this protracted nightmare.

Naturally, some Russians are unhappy with the situation. Millions of people are opposed to authoritarianism and bloodshed, and some of them openly express their views and resist. There are also those known as “turbo-patriots,” who earnestly and aggressively support Putin. But the vast majority is apathetic, and simply passively and automatically “mostly supports” what the regime is doing while waiting for “all this” to end. This part of the population has chosen to become apathetic: their condition can be referred to as “learned indifference.” Putin is a legitimate leader in such people’s eyes, so his “special military operation” must be too. The next ritual imitation of a presidential election in March 2024 will surely confirm that there is no alternative to Putin. The apathetic majority can do little but wait for this difficult time to pass.

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My colleague @AndrKolesnikov and @levada_ru's Denis Volkov have published a new @CarnegieEndow paper documenting Russian attitudes towards the war. Main conclusion: support for the Kremlin's disastrous course is undiminished. Key findings in a🧵1/ https://t.co/nsgjD3ohhN

— Alexander Gabuev 陳寒士 (@AlexGabuev) November 28, 2023

Russia sent waves of explosive drones to strike cities across Ukraine in the largest attack since last winter that likely marks the start of a fresh campaign aimed at demoralizing and dislocating Ukrainians.

Ukraine’s military said it intercepted all but one of 75 Shahed drones overnight, most of which were targeted at Kyiv. Authorities in the capital said five people were slightly injured, including an 11-year-old child, and several buildings damaged.

Russia has spent much of the year rebuilding its stocks of explosive drones and missiles with the aim, Ukrainian officials say, of trying to knock out power and heat in cities over winter. By forcing Ukraine to use air-defense systems to defend cities, Russia is also seeking to divert them from the front line and use up precious missiles, allowing Russian warplanes more freedom to launch attacks on Ukraine’s military.

Russia targeted Ukraine’s power grid with drones and missiles last winter, damaging around 40% of the system and knocking out power in several cities for hours at a time. But a combination of quick repairs and air-defense systems hurriedly delivered by allies prevented lengthy outages of power and heat that could have led people to flee.

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This is Putin’s Russia: massive drone strikes targeting cities, civilian infrastructure. “The leadership of Russia is proud that it can kill.” https://t.co/LGG5f3vpE0

— Antonia Ferrier (@ahrferrier) November 27, 2023

Pendjari and two adjacent national parks comprise West Africa’s largest surviving protected wilderness—4.2 million acres spread across remote areas of Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso. The expanse of emerald-green savannah, jagged cliffs and stands of ancient baobab trees has also become the latest battlefield pitting the U.S. and its allies against al Qaeda and Islamic State fighters.

Militants carried out 71 killings, kidnappings and other attacks in Benin in the first half of this year, compared with five in 2021, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit monitoring service, and the Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies. Most of the violence took place inside the parks or nearby.

Washington is increasingly worried the Islamist insurgency that has engulfed Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger will undermine Benin and other relatively prosperous, pro-Western states along the Gulf of Guinea. U.S. Special Forces are stationed in Benin to gather intelligence and advise the local military on counterinsurgency operations.

U.S. concerns are geopolitical—the prospect of weakened Western influence, growing militant strength and Russian inroads—as well as environmental. If the wilderness areas are lost to militants, “then forget conservation in West Africa,” said Hugues Akpona, an operations manager for Johannesburg-based African Parks, a nonprofit that runs the Pendjari and W national parks for Benin.

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West Africa's national parks have elephants, lions and rare cheetahs. Islamist militants have now moved in and are using the parks to launch attacks on neighboring countries https://t.co/XFlGCnsSY5 https://t.co/XFlGCnsSY5

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 19, 2023

The first clues came from the bodies of slain militants: maps, drawings, notes, and the weapons and gear they carried.

In Beeri, a kibbutz town overrun by Hamas on Oct. 7, one dead fighter had a notebook with hand-scrawled Quranic verses and orders that read, simply, “Kill as many people and take as many hostages as possible.” Others were equipped with gas canisters, handcuffs and thermobaric grenades designed to instantly turn houses into infernos.

Each was like a piece from a grisly puzzle, a snippet of fine detail from an operation that called for hundreds of discrete crimes in specific locations. Five weeks later, the reassembled fragments are beginning to reveal the contours of Hamas’s broader plan, one that analysts say was intended not just to kill and capture Israelis, but to spark a conflagration that would sweep the region and lead to a wider conflict.

The evidence, described by more than a dozen current and former intelligence and security officials from four Western and Middle Eastern countries, reveals an intention by Hamas planners to strike a blow of historic proportions, in the expectation that the group’s actions would compel an overwhelming Israeli response.

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Breaking news: New evidence reveals that Hamas planners intended to strike a blow of historic proportions on Oct. 7 with the expectation that their actions would compel an overwhelming Israeli response. https://t.co/B3Ss0Q3LLq

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 12, 2023

Around the world the cry is going up for a ceasefire or for Israel to abandon its ground invasion. Hearing some Israeli politicians call for vengeance, including the discredited prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, many people conclude that Israel’s actions are disproportionate and immoral. Many of those arguing this believe in the need for a Jewish state, but fear for a Jewish state that seems to value Palestinian lives so cheaply. They worry that the slender hopes for peace in this age-old conflict will be buried under Gaza’s rubble.

Those are powerful arguments, but they lead to the wrong conclusion. Israel is inflicting terrible civilian casualties. It must minimise them and be seen to do so. Palestinians are lacking essential humanitarian supplies. Israel must let a lot more aid pass into Gaza. However, even if Israel chooses to honour these responsibilities, the only path to peace lies in dramatically reducing Hamas’s capacity to use Gaza as a source of supplies and a base for its army. Tragically, that requires war.

To grasp why, you have to understand what happened on October 7th. When Israelis talk about Hamas’s attack as an existential threat they mean it literally, not as a figure of speech. Because of pogroms and the Holocaust, Israel has a unique social contract: to create a land where Jews know they will not be killed or persecuted for being Jews. The state has long honoured that promise with a strategic doctrine that calls for deterrence, early warnings of an attack, protection on the home front and decisive Israeli victories.

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The bombardment of Gaza is inflicting a terrible toll. But unless Hamas’s power is broken, peace will remain out of reach.

This is why Israel must fight on: https://t.co/plnjRqZ7oh👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) November 2, 2023

The US Defense Department believes the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is developing a new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. That is, a heavy, multi-stage missile that leaves the Earth’s atmosphere and travels around the world at huge velocities before re-entering and descending toward its target at 20 times the speed of sound. Such missiles normally have a nuclear warhead: but this one, uniquely, would be armed with conventional explosives.

It’s an incredibly dangerous idea. A bad idea the Pentagon is intimately familiar with. After all, it tried to develop the same kind of “conventional” ICBM years ago – and ultimately gave up as it began to appreciate everything that could go wrong.

Namely, there seemed to be a good chance that, if US forces ever fired a conventional ICBM in anger, nuclear-armed countries would detect the launch, recognize the energy and trajectory of an ICBM – and be faced with an impossible dilemma.

Were the Americans launching a nuclear first strike? Would they lie, if asked? And how long could America’s nuclear rivals wait for clarification before launching their own nukes?

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"China is working on a weapon too dangerous to exist.

A heavy, multi-stage missile that leaves the Earth’s atmosphere & travels around the world at huge velocities before re-entering & descending toward its target at 20 times the speed of sound."

Ugh!https://t.co/2NeYYeHK02

— Chris Fenton (@TheDragonFeeder) November 2, 2023

Violent conflict is increasing in multiple parts of the world. In addition to Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, and the Israeli offensive on Gaza, raising the specter of a wider war in the Middle East, there has been a surge in violence across Syria, including a wave of armed drone attacks that threatened U.S. troops stationed there. In the Caucasus in late September, Azerbaijan seized the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh—forcing an estimated 150,000 ethnic Armenians to flee their historical home in the territory and setting the stage for renewed fighting with Armenia. Meanwhile, in Africa, the civil war in Sudan rages on, conflict has returned to Ethiopia, and a military takeover of Niger in July was the sixth coup across the Sahel and West Africa since 2020.

In fact, according to an analysis of data gathered by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, conducted by the Peace Research Institute Oslo, the number, intensity, and length of conflicts worldwide is at its highest level since before the end of the Cold War. The study found that there were 55 active conflicts in 2022, with the average one lasting about eight to 11 years, a substantial increase from the 33 active conflicts lasting an average of seven years a decade earlier.

Notwithstanding the increase in conflicts, it has been more than a decade since an internationally mediated comprehensive peace deal has been brokered to end a war. UN-led or UN-assisted political processes in Libya, Sudan, and Yemen have stalled or collapsed. Seemingly frozen conflicts—in countries including Ethiopia, Israel, and Myanmar—are thawing at an alarming pace. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, high-intensity conflict has even returned to Europe, which had previously enjoyed several decades of relative peace and stability. Alongside the proliferation of war has come record levels of human upheaval. In 2022, a quarter of the world’s population—two billion people—lived in conflict-affected areas. The number of people forcibly displaced worldwide reached a record 108 million by the start of 2023.

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A World at War: What Is Behind the Global Explosion of Violent Conflict? https://t.co/2ZXtqyHqSn via @ForeignAffairs

— Nino Brodin (@Orgetorix) October 30, 2023

Read it all.

“Being a teacher means having hope in a new future,” he said. “We are teaching the children to be strong mentally and physically so that they can go back to Sudan and be the new generation that rebuilds Sudan.” https://t.co/JiFoFl3Ctg pic.twitter.com/n9rvJ7J42I

— Marc Porter Magee 🎓 (@marcportermagee) October 27, 2023

To paraphrase an observation attributed to Leon Trotsky, you may not be interested in the Middle East but the Middle East is interested in you. After a decade of tapering down its military presence in the region, America is back with a huge display of force. In the past few days two fighter squadrons have flown in. They follow the deployment of two aircraft-carrier strike groups, multiple air-defence systems and much aid to Israel. More units have been told to prepare to deploy.

America’s goal is to deter attacks on American interests, on Israel and to a degree on its Arab allies. But what if deterrence fails? The daunting possibilities range from attacks against American soldiers to strikes on shipping in the Persian Gulf and rocket attacks that overwhelm Israel’s air defences. Under what circumstances would America’s forces then be used? And could it be dragged into a deeper Middle East war of the kind its leaders hoped would never happen again after the hell of the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Those questions are both uncomfortable and all too real. Attacks on American interests have been proliferating even as Israel’s invasion of Gaza has been delayed. Between October 17th and 24th there were 13 strikes on American and coalition forces in Iraq and Syria by drones and rockets, the Pentagon says. They came from “Iranian proxy forces and ultimately from Iran”. Such activity has been fairly common in recent years. But these strikes are significant because they break an informal truce that had held in recent months.

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After a decade of tapering down its military presence in the Middle East, America is back with a huge display of force.

Could the superpower be dragged back into another war in the region? Read more https://t.co/n8PjAIo4As 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) October 26, 2023

Europe’s deadliest war in generations remains exceedingly violent, precariously balanced and increasingly complicated by factors far from the battlefield.

Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are squared off across trench lines that have barely shifted for nearly a year. Meanwhile, tens of millions of Ukrainians are bracing for another winter of terror and suffering as Moscow stockpiles missiles that could be used to target their nation’s infrastructure in an attempt to demoralize civilians and make cities uninhabitable.

Ukrainian forces are still fighting to break through heavily fortified Russian lines in the south, but the pace of their advance has been slow, averaging only 90 yards per day during the peak of the summer offensive, according to a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That is the same pace as the Allied forces during the bloody five-month Battle of the Somme in 1916, the analysis said.

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The fighting in Ukraine remains exceedingly violent as both sides try to muster the weapons and personnel to endure.https://t.co/Z0XCWT5TvC

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 23, 2023

Iran-backed militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah are closely coordinating their next steps in fighting against Israel, a senior Hamas representative in Lebanon told POLITICO on Tuesday, just hours after Tehran warned of “preemptive action” against Israel.

Ahmed Abdul-Hadi, the head of Hamas’ political bureau in Beirut, insisted Gaza-based Hamas had not given its ally Hezbollah any advance notice of its attacks against Israel on October 7, which killed more than 1,400 people. Despite this, however, he described a continual cooperation between the two groups, stressing Hezbollah was now “geared for a major war” against Israel in the north, while Hamas would burst Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “dream” of driving it out of Gaza.

The remarks will heighten fears the conflict in the Middle East could be about to spill onto two fronts and engulf Lebanon, particularly if Israel launches a ground invasion of Gaza, where its bombardments have already killed more than 2,700 people, and Tehran commits its fellow-Shiite Hezbollah proxies into all-out war.

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Hamas says it's closely coordinating the war's next moves with Hezbollah in Lebanon.https://t.co/qM5SIPK0zG

— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) October 18, 2023

The grand bargain between the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia is already a dead letter. This has large implications for oil at a time when the crude market is already in deficit and prices are at the upper band of their historical range – pushed higher by Saudi and OPEC production cuts of two million barrels a day (b/d), otherwise known as cartel price manipulation.

The unspoken terms of the deal were that Saudi Aramco would feed back one million b/d as a unilateral gesture. But this depended on Israel beefing up the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, one reason why Hamas was so determined to thwart it. The accord is now almost unthinkable.

One can only assume that Hamas intended to provoke total conflagration by decapitating women and children in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Events must now follow their Sophoclean script with a haunting inevitability.

There must be a high risk that the unstoppable chain of events will trigger an assault by the Lebanese Hezbollah, backed by Iran and armed with 150,000 missiles on the northern Blue Line, in turn spreading to Syria. Israel bombed Damascus and Aleppo airports in a preemptive strike on Thursday. “The longer the war, the greater the probability that Hezbollah joins in,” said Dr Walid Abdel Hay, a Jordanian political analyst.

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We are one miscalculation short of a Middle East firestorm and the next world #oil crisis, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes: The strange calm on world oil markets is unlikely to survive blockade of Gaza. The only way to knock out Hamas is house-to-house, block-to-block, urban… pic.twitter.com/ZhFXBl0zo4

— Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner) October 14, 2023

To discern the second and third- order effects of this crisis, half a century later, is not easy. One way to grasp their potential magnitude is to ask whether the former US defence secretary, Robert Gates, writing in Foreign Affairs before the onslaught on Israel, is right that: “The United States now confronts graver threats to its security than it has in decades, perhaps ever. Never before has it faced four allied antagonists at the same time — Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — whose collective nuclear arsenal could within a few years be nearly double the size of its own.”

The problem, Gates argued, is that at the very moment events demand a strong and coherent response from America, “the country cannot provide one”.

I have argued for five years that the United States and its allies already find themselves in a new cold war, this time with the People’s Republic of China. I have argued for a year and a half that the war in Ukraine is roughly equivalent to the Korean War during the first Cold War, revealing an ideological as well as geopolitical division between the countries of the “Rimland” (the Anglosphere, western Europe and Japan) and those of the Eurasian “Heartland” (China, Russia and Iran plus North Korea).

And I have warned since January that a war in the Middle East might be the next crisis in a cascade of conflict that has the potential to escalate to a Third World War, especially if China seizes the moment — perhaps as early as next year — to impose a blockade on Taiwan. Now that the Middle Eastern war has indeed broken out, what course will history take?

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This feels right on the money. What’s happening now is awful… but I’m really genuinely concerned about what’s coming.

Will there be a World War Three? Israel-Hamas war risks escalationhttps://t.co/LQzMvmC7DL

— Richard Suchet (@RichSuchet) October 15, 2023

Will machines with superhuman capabilities threaten humanity’s status as master of the universe? Will AI undermine nations’ monopoly on the means of mass violence? Will AI enable individuals or small groups to produce viruses capable of killing on a scale that was previously the preserve of great powers? Could AI erode the nuclear deterrents that have been a pillar of today’s world order?

At this point, no one can answer these questions with confidence. But as we have explored these issues for the last two years with a group of technology leaders at the forefront of the AI revolution, we have concluded that the prospects that the unconstrained advance of AI will create catastrophic consequences for the United States and the world are so compelling that leaders in governments must act now. Even though neither they nor anyone else can know what the future holds, enough is understood to begin making hard choices and taking actions today—recognizing that these will be subject to repeated revision as more is discovered

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“The prospects that the unconstrained advance of AI will create catastrophic consequences for the United States and the world are so compelling that leaders in governments must act now,” write Henry Kissinger and Graham Allison.https://t.co/EPleuTTDZ7

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) October 13, 2023

As oil markets react to the return of a Middle East risk premium, Tehran may be tempted to resume its attacks and harassment of shipping vessels in the Persian Gulf. U.S. General C. Q. Brown, the newly confirmed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was right to warn Tehran to stay on the sidelines and “not to get involved.” But his choice of words unfortunately suggests a failure to appreciate that the Iranians are already deeply, inextricably involved.

For the Biden administration, it is long past time to shed the mindset that shaped prior diplomacy toward Iran: a conviction that the Islamic Republic could be persuaded to accept pragmatic compromises that served its country’s interests. Once upon a time, that may have been credible. But the Iranian regime has reverted to its foundational premise: a determination to upend the regional order by any means necessary. Washington should dispense with the illusions of a truce with Iran’s theocratic oligarchs.

On every other geopolitical challenge, Biden’s position has evolved considerably from the Obama-era approach. Only U.S. policy toward Iran remains mired in the outdated assumptions of a decade ago. In the current environment, American diplomatic engagement with Iranian officials in Gulf capitals will not produce durable restraint on Tehran’s part. Washington needs to deploy the same tough-minded realism toward Iran that has informed recent U.S. policy on Russia and China: building coalitions of the willing to ratchet up pressure and cripple Iran’s transnational terror network; reinstating meaningful enforcement of U.S. sanctions on the Iranian economy; and conveying clearly—through diplomacy, force posture, and actions to preempt or respond to Iranian provocations—that the United States is prepared to deter Iran’s regional aggression and nuclear advances. The Middle East has a way of forcing itself to the top of every president’s agenda; in the aftermath of this devastating attack, the White House must rise to the challenge.

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“The Iranian regime has reverted to its foundational premise: a determination to upend the regional order by any means necessary.” Read @MaloneySuzanne on Iran’s role in Hamas’s attack on Israel:https://t.co/N9Y8snkJW9

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) October 11, 2023

As Israel prosecutes its offensive against Hamas in Gaza, eyes are nervously turning toward Lebanon, where a series of clashes along the border has raised fears of a second front breaking out, an outcome that could trigger a full regional war. Neither side appears to want an escalation, but the risks are high for a disastrous miscalculation.

So far, the pattern of violence along the Blue Line, the United Nations­–delineated boundary that corresponds to Lebanon’s southern border, has been relatively predictable, consisting of shelling and minor incursions. There has been some talk in recent months about the “unification of the fronts,” meaning the closer coordination between anti-Israel groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), along with myriad other Iran-backed groups in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Therefore, it would have been difficult for Hezbollah to simply stand back and do nothing as Israel wages its massive offensive against Hamas in Gaza. …

At this initial stage, it appears that Hezbollah wants to keep its actions (whether claimed or unclaimed) below a certain threshold so as not to force Israel into a more powerful retaliation. If Hezbollah were to overshoot, it could trigger an unintended escalatory cycle. It is, however, Iran that has the final say in whether Hezbollah goes to war with Israel. Iran recognizes Hezbollah as its most potent external asset and a key component of its deterrence architecture against a potential attack by Israel or the United States. It is unlikely that Tehran will want to waste Hezbollah in a futile full-scale war with Israel for the sake of supporting Hamas in Gaza.

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Must-read piece from Nicholas Blanford in Beirut on the big question: What will Hezbollah do next? https://t.co/o0922YNI4x

— Daniel Malloy (@DanielPMalloy) October 11, 2023

As Israel combats the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it faces the strategic question of whether Iran will direct its other protégé, the Lebanese Hezbollah, to open a second front in the north. Hezbollah and Israel have already engaged in limited artillery exchanges that, according to the militant group, Monday killed three of its fighters. Hezbollah said it struck two Israeli military bases near the border using guided missiles and mortars, while the Pentagon warned the group to “think twice” before opening a second front and said the U.S. was prepared to come to Israel’s defense. Iran and Hezbollah have strongly supported Saturday’s invasion of southern Israel by Hamas, which briefly overran Israeli military bases and several villages and towns, killing at least 900 Israelis and taking many others hostage to Gaza.

With its arsenal of precision missiles that could target Israeli air bases and infantry forces hardened by the Syrian war, Hezbollah is a much more powerful enemy than Hamas. Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran, which has long supplied Hezbollah with weapons, helped plan Hamas’s attack on Israel. Hezbollah’s entry into the war, however, could unleash direct Israeli strikes not just against Lebanon but also against Iran. Such an escalation could drag the U.S. into a much wider conflict—not something that Tehran is likely to be interested in at this stage

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As Israel combats the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it faces the strategic question of whether Iran will direct its other protégé, the Lebanese Hezbollah, to open a second front in the north https://t.co/VCheIcdocR

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 9, 2023

Why did Hamas launch this war now, without any immediate provocation? One has to wonder if it was not on behalf of the Palestinian people but rather at the behest of Iran, an important supplier of money and arms to Hamas, to help prevent the budding normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia, Iran’s rival, and Israel. Such a deal, as it was being drawn up, would also benefit the more moderate West Bank Palestinian Authority — by delivering to it a huge infusion of cash from Saudi Arabia, as well as curbs on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and other advances to preserve a two-state solution. As a result, West Bank leaders might have earned a desperately needed boost of legitimacy from the Palestinian masses, threatening the legitimacy of Hamas.

That U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal also would have been a diplomatic earthquake that would have most likely required Netanyahu to jettison the most extreme members of his cabinet in return for forging an alliance between the Jewish state and the Sunni-led states of the Persian Gulf against Iran. Altogether, it would have been one of the biggest shifts in the tectonic plates of the region in 75 years. In the wake of this Hamas attack, that deal is now in the deep freeze, as the Saudis have had to link themselves more closely than ever with Palestinian interests, not just their own.

Indeed, within hours of the Hamas invasion, Saudi Arabia issued a statement saying, according to Al Arabiya network: “The kingdom is closely following up on the unprecedented developments between a number of Palestinian factions and the Israeli occupying forces,” adding that it has “repeatedly warned of the consequences of [the deterioration] of the situation as a result of the occupation as well as of depriving the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights and of [not halting] systematic provocations against their holy [sites].”

I am watching how the Hamas-Israel earthquake will shake up another earthquake..:Ukraine…

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“Hamas has been a deadly curse for the Palestinian people….The billion-plus dollars in aid that it received from Qatar…could have gone into building Gaza into a productive society….Instead, Hamas has devoted most of its…resources to” attacking Israel. https://t.co/JQ4v9Sp0nx

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) October 8, 2023

For many years, coups in Africa seemed a thing of the past. But in the 2020s they are back with a vengeance: the nine this decade account for more than a third of successful African putsches this century. At this rate there will be more of them in the 2020s than in any decade since the 1960s.

Aside from the latest one, in Gabon on August 30th, the seizures of power have been in the “coup belt”. It is possible, if inadvisable, to walk some 6,000km from the Atlantic coast of west Africa to the shore of the Red Sea and stride only through countries where there have been coups in the past three years (see map). The trek from Guinea to Sudan would cross the Sahel, the region south of the Sahara where there have been two coups each in Mali and Burkina Faso since August 2020, and one in Niger in July.

Africa—which covers an area larger than America, China, India, Japan and western Europe combined—is more than its coup belt. Yet the takeovers are part of a much broader political crisis. The most recent surveys by Afrobarometer, a pollster, find that in 24 of 30 countries approval of military rule has risen since 2014.

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Democracy is under threat from graft, stagnation and violence https://t.co/FupUyTcOkU

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) October 3, 2023

Islamist militants in Mali began a blockade of Timbuktu by cutting road access in August and then shut off river and air routes in an offensive that has put the city once again on the frontline of a jihadist insurgency.

The bombing began soon after. On Sept. 21, witnesses said rockets hit a hospital, killing two children, and landed near a school where survivors of a passenger boat attack that killed more than 100 people were sheltering.

“Our worry is the shelling,” businessman Sory Touré said in Timbuktu, which was occupied by jihadists a decade ago. “It creates a real psychosis and leaves a lasting impression. I have this fear within me.”

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Mali in meltdown as militants advance and U.N. withdraws https://t.co/cVfhMM39a5 pic.twitter.com/teqDkM4spf

— Reuters Africa (@ReutersAfrica) October 3, 2023

It was a bloody reminder that the dark days of extremist violence appeared to have returned to Pakistan: a suicide attack on a religious festival in the country’s southwest this past week that left around 60 people dead.

For nearly a decade, Pakistan had seemingly broken the cycle of such deadly attacks. In 2014, the country’s security forces carried out a large-scale military operation in the tribal areas near Afghanistan, forcing militants across the border and returning a relative peace to the restive frontier region.

But since the Taliban seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021, offering some groups safe haven on Afghan soil and starting a crackdown on others that pushed their fighters into neighboring Pakistan, the violence has roared back. The number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan rose by around 50 percent during the Taliban’s first year in power, compared with the year before, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, which monitors extremist violence and is based in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan.

This year, the pace of attacks have continued to rise.

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“The number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan rose by around 50 percent during the Taliban’s first year in power, compared with the year before, according to the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, which monitors extremist violence and is based in Islamabad” https://t.co/rFjtOa7ShS

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) October 3, 2023

The city of El Paso, a West Texas way station long accustomed to migrants arriving from Mexico, has begun to buckle under the pressure of thousands upon thousands of people coming over the border, day after day.

The usual shelters have been filled. So too have the hundreds of hotel rooms wrangled by the city to house migrants. A new city-run shelter opened over the weekend in a recreational center, and rapidly filled all of its roughly 400 beds. Another shelter is planned in a vacant middle school.

Mayor Oscar Leeser said over the weekend that the city had reached a “breaking point” and was no longer able to help all the migrants on its own. He welcomed the buses, chartered by the administration of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, that once again began carrying hundreds of migrants out of the city to Denver, Chicago or New York. The mayor said he was seeking millions of dollars in additional aid from the Biden administration.

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El Paso, Texas, has begun to buckle under the pressure of thousands upon thousands of people coming over the border. Mayor Oscar Leeser said the city reached a “breaking point,” and is seeking millions of dollars in additional aid from the White House. https://t.co/QfxKxft3us

— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 27, 2023

Adama Zourkaleini Maiga is soft-spoken, but her eyes suggest steely determination.

The single mother-of-two lives in a quiet, middle-class part of Niger’s capital Niamey, but is originally from Tillabéry, one of the regions worst-hit by violence.

“My mother’s cousin was chief of a village called Téra,” she tells me over lunch. “He was assassinated just seven months ago.

“The terrorists were looking for him and when they found out he’d rented a car to flee, they caught up with him and killed him. They slit his throat. It was a real shock for our whole family.”

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"Why is Macron saying he doesn't recognise our authorities, when he's accepted coups in other countries like in Gabon and Chad?" The doubt raised by an Iman in Niger echoes the ill feeling of many there towards France, tells the BBC's @MayeniJones. https://t.co/N2e9oWkth4

— BBC News Africa (@BBCAfrica) September 26, 2023