InFocus Magazine Fall Edition 2024

Stephen Bryen | Oct 3

President Truman signs the NATO Treaty

Despite efforts to reinforce its presence in Poland, Romania, and Estonia, the alliance faces significant problems: a critical shortage of armaments; untested and undermanned armed forces; and a US presence that is still mostly expeditionary.

Ukraine

Although NATO has expanded and continues to feed arms into Ukraine, the prospect for Ukraine surviving Russian attacks seems poor. Meanwhile, Russia has learned a great deal about how to deal with NATO weapons using its air defenses and electronic jamming capabilities. The cupboards in the United States are noticeably empty as a result of the conflict, and there is no reason to think that, aside from air power, NATO could do any better in Ukraine than the Ukrainians.

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FDD Flash Brief | Oct 3, 2024

Latest Developments

Israeli forces enabled the escape from Gaza of a Yazidi woman who had been brought there as a sex slave from Iraq, the Israeli military revealed on October 3.

Fawzia Amin Sido was 11 years old when she was abducted from the Iraqi town Sinjar a decade ago during the ISIS genocide against the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking religious minority group. She was taken to the Palestinian enclave by an ISIS-affiliated Hamas member. According to The Jerusalem Post, which first reported on her case, she was kept as his “bride,” facing regular abuses from his family.

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Peloni:  Safieddine was meeting with what was left of the Hezbollah command.  Since Khomeni wasn’t present, perhaps Israel will seek him out next.

That was fast!

Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s replacement and the father in law of late IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani’s daughter, eliminated by the IDF in an airstrike.

Now he joins Nasrallah, Haniyeh and the rest of Hezbollah in hell pic.twitter.com/jaxks4l8kG

— Emily Schrader – ????? ?????? ????? ????? (@emilykschrader) October 3, 2024

Peloni:  This is an unbelievable story.  How this is not being more widely reported is disturbing.

FEMA is a fraud. The Federal ‘Emergency’ Management Agency is ‘nowhere to be found’ in hurricane-ravaged areas where decomposing bodies are being discovered amid the rubble and debris.

Leo Hohmann | Oct 03, 2024

There is a heart-wrenching story developing in the mountans and hills of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, a story that is not being told in the mainstream corporate media.

Stories of starving, dehydrated people being left to die. And bodies, lots of bodies, washing up in rural areas, many of them unrecognizable.

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By David Wurmser, CSP  October 2, 2024

Iran declared war in 1979 as one of the first acts after the Islamic Revolution. Along with declaring the aim of bringing about the demise of the United States, it embarked on a war of extermination against Israel. It has been relentless in building the capacity over the intervening five decades to realize its objectives. We are now seeing the start of the final, acute phase of that war in which Iran promises to exterminate Israel, and Israel – fifty year later – has moved to try to destabilize the Iranian regime.

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It’s revealing that groups have been putting pressure on only one side: Israel.

Moshe Phillips | Oct 1, 2024

Photographs of Hassan Nasrallah (left) and Yahya Sinwar posted near Begin boulevard in Jerusalem. April 2, 2024. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90,

At almost the exact moment that Israeli forces were eliminating Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon—one of the world’s most notorious mass murderers of Israelis and Americans—left-of-center American Jewish groups were delivering a letter to Israel’s ambassador in Washington, demanding that Israel make more concessions to Hamas. The juxtaposition of the two developments shines a light on the extreme tone-deafness that has overtaken many on the U.S. Jewish left.

The letter that the liberal groups delivered to the Israeli embassy pressed Israel to “do everything it can” to “sign a deal” with Hamas. In practical terms, that means that Israel should release even more imprisoned terrorists, cease firing at Hamas for an even longer period than previously offered and withdraw from vital territory such as the Philadelphi corridor.

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Peloni:  I had hoped that the Trump administration would have instituted exactly the wise policy expressed here, but that unfortunately did not occur, albeit that there was significant public gesticulating prior to the continued funding being quietly approved.  The second term of Pres. Trump must insist upon radical reforms in Lebanon and complete removal of Iran’s terror army from its governing institution.  Failing this, all aid to Lebanon must be ended.

Bonnie Glick | Oct 2, 2024

Don’t pop the champagne corks yet. While there is certainly reason to cheer for the termination of the bloody terrorist leadership of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel’s military strikes in and around Beirut only addressed part of the problem. Israel’s approach, using airstrikes, beeper strikes, and walkie-talkie strikes, is nothing short of miraculous. But the disease that spreads from Lebanon is not solely driven by Hezbollah and its paymasters in Tehran. 

Certainly Iran’s most recent launch of hundreds of missiles at Israel “in retaliation” for the successful hit on Hassan Nasrallah in his Beirut bunker is an important and highly escalatory move by Iran, but it also is not the whole picture in Lebanon.

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HUDSON INSTITUTE

Middle East and North Africa Defense Intelligence Digest

Senior Fellow Can Kasapolu gives an overview of the tactical and strategic implications of Iran’s October 1 ballistic missile strike against Israel.

Executive Summary

— By launching a missile attack against Israel on October 1, Iran has made a critical attempt to regain escalation dominance.

— This strike differed from Iran’s April 13 attack. This time, Iran employed a blitz salvo of ballistic missiles rather than a mixed strike package of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, giving Israel minimal warning.

— The Iranian ballistic missile barrage saturated, and to some extent evaded, Israel’s air and missile defense architecture. Israel’s passive defenses, especially its public shelters and hardened military bases, provided extensive protection to civilians and defense equipment.

— An Iranian attack with weapons of mass destruction would be catastrophic for Israel at its current interception rate.

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Peloni:  As Hezbollah is caught in a state of dissembling chaos, it was left to the Mullahs to either respond on their own or not at all.  They chose to launch a vast ballistic missile assault on Israel, providing Israel with an inarguable basis for dealing with the Mullahs directly.  Of course, it can not be known what the context might have been which brought Iran’s leadership to make such a decision, but they will come to find in due time that no matter the basis for doing so, this was an extraordinary mistake.

Iran has assumed for too long that it can wreak havoc without retribution – that needs to change.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN | OCTOBER 1, 2024

A person uses a phone on the ground, on the day Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, near Tel Aviv, Israel, October 1, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/Ammar Awad TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Iran’s massive ballistic missile attack on Israel on October 1 is part of the Tehran regime’s attempt to make these types of attacks a new normal. They carried out a large attack in April and threatened another attack in August. This has led Israel into crisis each time as people must be prepared to go to shelters, and activities are canceled.

We have become too used to the idea that hundreds of Iranian missiles can fly through the sky of Israel. Because Israel has air defenses, these kinds of unprecedented attacks, which would usually mark the beginning of a major war, are portrayed as acceptable. Media abroad portrays them as Iran trying to “retaliate” or “even the score” or “deter” Israel. This is a false attempt to downplay the Iranian threat.

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Israel’s current war with a not-yet-nuclear Iran could represent the Jewish State’s last best chance to prevent nuclear war in the Middle East.

Prof. Louis René Beres | Oct 2, 2024

Louis René Beres  PR

Ironically, Iran’s ballistic missile aggression of October 1 offers Israel an exceptional opportunity. Because the most significant security threat to the Jewish State is a nuclear Iran, Jerusalem’s overriding objective should be to keep that enemy non-nuclear. Until today, fulfilling that objective could have required a “bolt-from-the-blue” Israeli preemption (non-nuclear), but now it can be sought within an already-ongoing conventional war.

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US foreign aid to Israel is a two-way street, with Israel providing the US with a wide range of security benefits it can obtain nowhere else – US aid to Israel is a secure investment yielding high returns.

Amb. (ret.) Yoram Ettinger | Oct 1, 2024

Biden, Lapid and Gantz inspecing Iron Dome   Flash90

Even if Israel had the heaviest bunker-busting bombs, it would be difficult to deliver them to the target. According to estimates, Israel may be able to modernize F-15s to carry GBU-57 bombs, along with additional fuel and munitions. This is a technically complex task, but sometimes even the impossible gets done.

By  Elie Klutstein/Makor Rishon, ISRAEL HAYOM  10-02-2024 10:00

Iranian attend a rally commemorating the 36th anniversary of Islamic Revolution under Azadi Tower, Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015 | Photo: AP / Ebrahim Noroozi

Around 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) more or less, separate Israel from the sites of Iran’s nuclear program. These facilities are scattered across the distant enemy nation, fortified and protected. In recent weeks, reports have repeatedly surfaced that the nuclear program continues to progress: The International Atomic Energy Agency warned in late May that Iran possesses enough material to produce at least three nuclear warheads. On the other hand, senior Israeli officials assert that the IDF knows how to deal with this threat. The claim that Israel is capable of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons has been heard for many years, including from the country’s prime ministers.

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By Andrea Widburg | Am Thinker | October 2, 2024

The debate really depressed me. It wasn’t J.D. Vance, who gave the best debate performance of any political candidate in decades. Nor was it Tim Walz because I knew going in that he was, as he described himself, a “knucklehead.” It wasn’t even the biased harpies who called themselves moderators because that was to be expected (although they angered me). What depressed me was that our political discourse has devolved into watching candidates get asked stupid questions so that they can give canned statements for two minutes and then bicker for a few seconds with each other.

Let’s start with the general review. First, the greatest non-verbal moment in American debate history:

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The equivocation of Biden, Harris and other leaders should cause us all to feel a degree of shame.

By Gerard Baker, WSJ     Sept. 30, 2024,

How will we ever repay the debt we owe Israel?

What the Jewish state has done in the past year—for its own defense, but in the process and not coincidentally for the security of all of us—will rank among the most important contributions to the defense of Western civilization in the past three-quarters of a century.

Having been hit with a devastating attack on its people, beyond the fetid imagining of some of the vilest antisemites, Israel has in 12 months done nothing less than redraw the balance of global security, not just in the region, but in the wider world.

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According to Axios; Israeli Officials state that they will soon launch a “Significant Retaliation” against Iran for Tuesday’s Large-Scale Ballistic Missile Attack, with Targets to likely include the Iranian Oil Industry, Air Defense Systems, and other Strategic Sites across Iran,… pic.twitter.com/hlWPjUARsp

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) October 2, 2024

Peloni:  Shana Tova!

Rabbi Herzog tweeted the following:

Rabbi Jacob Y. Herzog

Today’s Information
The assassination of seven senior Hezbollah leaders before the end of the year. One will be very significant.

Internal problems in Lebanon and confrontations between the displaced and residents on the outskirts of Beirut and in Tripoli. Slogans will appear demanding that the displaced return to their homes.

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