Fdd's overnight brief

Syria

Syria on Thursday dismissed a report by a global watchdog that said Syrian jets had carried out a series of chemical attacks on an opposition-held town, under orders from the top military command. – Reuters

Josh Rogin writes: The world has stood by for years without bringing real pressure on Assad for these most horrendous of crimes against humanity. If there were ever a time to press that case, it is right now. And if Assad can’t be persuaded to free these poor souls, perhaps the people torturing them will realize that’s the only way they can survive. – Washington Post

B. Lana Guggenheim writes: Many Syrians, including medical professionals, have fled the country. Constant and deliberate aerial bombardments by Russia and the Assad regime have destroyed hospitals, schools, and the logical sites to shelter in place — homes. […]What is now a few months of agony, economic distress, and rising death rates could drag on for years unless something is done to manage the crisis. The international community must wake up — again — to what’s happening in Syria. – Washington Examiner

Tom Rogan writes: Ultimately, Trump is the one who any action depends upon. Assad is protected at the U.N. Security Council by Putin’s veto power. And Britain and France aside, the Europeans are good only for hot air. But Trump can and should act here. And the OPCW has given him a new reason to do so. – Washington Examiner

Seth J. Frantzman writes: Iran uses Syria to transfer precision guided munitions to Hezbollah. It also supports the Syrian regime in the regime’s battle against Turkish-backed Syrian rebels. The Shayrat airbase is important to the regime. […]The Shayrat base is a strategic location and for Iran’s weapons transfers it is an easy way to bring weapons closer to the frontlines in Idlib or to move them via Hezbollah posts in Qusayr down the Beka’a valley. Now the Syrian regime and its Iranian allies will have to repair the runways. – Jerusalem Post

Sam Heller writes: As ever, it is debatable whether the elimination of HTS and adjacent jihadists in Idlib would actually be enough for Russia. Moscow might just go on to insist that all militants who resist Syrian state authority are terrorists who must be crushed. Still, Russia continues to insist publicly on steps to combat HTS and other internationally designated terrorist groups, and to extract promises from Turkey to that effect, including the new March 5 protocol. Now this leaked al-Farghali recording may indicate that this type of Turkish-Russian accommodation is more viable than at any time in the past several years. – War on the Rocks 

Israel

Hamas-run security forces have arrested several peace activists in the Gaza Strip on treason charges after they took part in a web conference with Israeli activists, officials said Thursday. – Associated Press

The Hamas terror group has relayed a proposal for a prisoner exchange with Israel, with Egypt as a mediator, a Lebanese newspaper reported Thursday. – Times of Israel

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed regional issues over the phone on Friday. – Jerusalem Post

Jonathan S. Tobin writes: Trump not unreasonably believes Netanyahu and the Israeli right are beholden to him for a number of reasons, including his rejection of the Iran nuclear deal. Any noises from Jerusalem that seek to justify annexation on the grounds that he is a lame duck are bound to infuriate the president. […]All that adds up to a likelihood that any move toward annexation until the pandemic subsides will generate the kind of negative response from the president that Israel has never experienced under Trump and which could potentially sour relations during second term, should he get one. – Haaretz

Saudi Arabia

Canada is lifting a moratorium on issuing new arms-export permits to Saudi Arabia and has secured “significant improvements” to a highly secretive $10 billion contract to sell Riyadh light armored vehicles from a Canadian subsidiary of General Dynamics, Canadian officials said Thursday. – Washington Post

A Republican U.S. senator introduced legislation on Thursday to remove American troops from Saudi Arabia, adding pressure on the kingdom to tighten its oil taps to reverse the crude price drop that has hurt domestic energy companies. – Reuters

A symbolic 60,000 tonne cargo of Russian wheat has set sail for Saudi Arabia from a Black Sea port seven months after conditions were set to allow the trade, three sources told Reuters on Thursday. – Reuters

President Donald Trump said a tentative agreement between Saudi Arabia and Russia to cut global oil production is a “very acceptable agreement.” – Bloomberg 

With Saudi Arabia and Russia agreeing on the contours of an unprecedented plan to slash crude output, President Donald Trump is on the verge of getting the global oil deal he wanted — without taking steps to ratchet down U.S. production. – Bloomberg  

Middle East & North Africa

The coronavirus has been widely described as the most significant event to hit humanity since World War II, with every corner of the globe feeling its impact. And just as the world order changed fundamentally after the war ended, so too is COVID-19 expected to create a new world order once the virus fades. Except, perhaps, in the Middle East, where – according to Amos Yadlin, the director of the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies – the virus has not hit as hard, at least until now, as it has in other parts of the world. – Jerusalem Post

Ben Fishman writes: Haftar is only as strong as his ability to monopolize the distribution of arms and funds in the east; changing those supply lines would substantially weaken him. […]Such a diplomatic sequence and political intervention will be difficult to orchestrate without a strong American initiative — an effort that has been lacking at senior levels for the past year. But absent a dramatic change, it is likely that Libya’s civil war will still be raging in April 2021. – The Hill

Jason Pack and Sami Zaptia write: Jibril’s passing closes a particular chapter in Libya’s post-Gadhafi history. Libya is still looking for leadership to unite its myriad competing political factions. Yet, the coronavirus pandemic is likely to sow further divisions and facilitate an uptick in the country’s civil war, while the Western world’s attention is turned inwards on fighting the virus. Like so many countries today, Libya is in need of a unifier and not a divider. Study of Jibril’s checkered legacy should serve as a cautionary tale for all those whose hubris allows them to imagine governing without compromising. – Middle East Institute 

China

Trump administration officials on Thursday sought to revoke federal licenses used by China Telecom Corp. to do business in the U.S. as part of a broader campaign to curb global Chinese technology interests on national security grounds. – Wall Street Journal

China has placed enormous pressure on foreign journalists during the novel coronavirus crisis. Bureaus have emptied as U.S. citizens have been forced out, while international travel restrictions have kept journalists from reentering the country. But if Beijing’s intention was to limit scrutiny of its coronavirus response, it has only partially succeeded. – Washington Post

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is increasingly being held to account for his organization’s stumbles at the outset of the coronavirus epidemic as critics around the world home in on his alleged collusion with China’s dishonesty about the outbreak. – Washington Examiner

China is the greatest national security threat facing the United States, according to Attorney General William Barr. – Washington Examiner

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic is threatening international peace and security[…]. Diplomats said the Security Council was initially blocked from issuing a statement or adopting a resolution by U.S. insistence that the origin of the virus in China or Wuhan be included, which China objected to. – Associated Press

Eli Lake writes: China’s gaming of international institutions is neither a response to America nor a reflection of its own autocratic impulses. It’s simply what authoritarian regimes do. Open societies support rules-based systems that benefit the world. Closed ones support rules-based systems only when it’s convenient. – Bloomberg

Mihir Sharma writes: This is when the developing countries that Beijing has spent years wooing will learn whether China can act like a true global leader. Sending a planeload or two of masks won’t be enough. […]It might have ignored China’s clumsy efforts to rewrite the narrative of its virus response and to promote conspiracy theories about the pandemic’s origins. But it would have to be given a genuine reason to do so. So far, China’s leaders have offered little more than platitudes and propaganda. – Bloomberg

Ryan Girdusky writes: Much can be done in the immediate aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic to protect Americans from future outbreaks. It’s possible that under President Trump’s direction, Peter Navarro could help move supply chains home. Nonetheless, the U.S. will always be vulnerable to China so long as our leaders are committed to the ideologies of globalism and neoliberalism. It’s up to either our leaders in Washington to reform themselves or to voters to elect new leaders in both parties who refuse to subscribe to that broken ideology. – Washington Examiner

South Asia

Indian and Pakistani troops in disputed Kashmir are engaged in their most frequent cross-border fighting of at least two years, official data shows, even as both nuclear-armed rivals battle surging coronavirus outbreaks. – Reuters

Pakistan’s military said Thursday its troops shot down a small Indian spy drone after it violated the country’s airspace in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. – Associated Press

A roadside bomb exploded near a Pakistani paramilitary vehicle in restive southwestern Baluchistan province Friday, killing two soldiers who were clearing the area for fencing the border with Afghanistan, two intelligence officials said. – Associated Press

Russia

Russian President Putin has no plans as of Thursday to discuss oil markets with U.S. President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia’s leadership, a Kremlin spokesman told Reuters. – Reuters

The Chinese Communist Party quickly backed off a campaign to accuse the U.S. Army of manufacturing the coronavirus, say defense officials, but disinformation emanating from Russia continues. – Washington Examiner

The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based global research and analysis group, says its operations will not be affected by Russia’s decision to add it to its list of “undesirable organizations.” – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

U.S. Air Force fighter jets intercepted two Russian patrol aircraft near Alaska on Wednesday, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) announced. – The Hill 

Tom Rogan writes: Finally, this is about playing to the domestic base. Putin views his ability to broadcast strength as a critical ingredient of his continued power. And whenever Putin can get his military close up to the U.S. Military, his media propagandists are happy to advertise it. In short, this is just another day in Alaskan airspace. – Washington Examiner

Steven A. Cook writes: Analysts expect that the oil war may come to an end during Thursday’s meeting of OPEC+. Either way, one likely outcome of this episode will be an end to the idea that Moscow will play a significant role in establishing a new regional order. […]We are in such a moment now, which is why those searching for a new order should not mistake the apparent strengthening of Saudi-Russian ties in the previous few years for anything other than a function of decay, not a feature of an emerging and novel global system. – Foreign Policy

Africa

African leaders have rallied around the Ethiopian head of the World Health Organization (WHO) after U.S. President Donald Trump criticised the United Nations agency and threatened to withhold his country’s contribution to its budget. – Reuters

Chad’s army said on Thursday it had killed as many as 1,000 Boko Haram fighters and lost 52 of its own soldiers in a 10-day old operation that followed the jihadist group’s deadliest-ever attack on national forces. – Reuters

African officials warned Thursday that if the coronavirus pandemic is left to spread on the continent, the rest of the world will remain at risk for COVID-19. – Fox News 

The coronavirus pandemic will plunge sub-Saharan Africa into its first recession in 25 years as global trade contracts in the commodities on which many of its economies rely, the World Bank has warned. – Financial Times

Matthew Taylor King writes: Only decisive American leadership can deliver debt relief at a speed and scale to save lives and restore livelihoods in Africa. A U.S.-backed campaign at the United Nations would have the best chance of forcing China to agree. If the crisis deepens, creditors could also consider providing health budget support or extending debt forbearance to hard-hit economies beyond Africa. American generosity would be remembered for generations. – Wall Street Journal

Cybersecurity

The Justice Department is tracking disinformation campaigns worldwide by Russia and China aimed at sowing divisions over the coronavirus crisis, according to John Demers, head of the department’s national security division. – Bloomberg

The Senate’s sergeant-at-arms is seeking industry assistance with insider-threat and privacy assessments for Senate networks, according to an April 6 solicitation. – Fifth Domain

Laura DeNardis and Jennifer Daskal write: The pandemic also lays bare the many vulnerabilities created by society’s dependence on the internet. These include the dangerous consequences of censorship, the constantly morphing spread of disinformation, supply chain vulnerabilities and the risks of weak cybersecurity. – Fifth Domain