Fdd's overnight brief

Israel

President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a contentious call Tuesday evening, people familiar with the matter said, with Netanyahu railing against a pact to end the war with Iran and Trump defending the diplomatic process. – Wall Street Journal

Hours after militants crossed from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, a video surfaced of an Israeli woman screaming, “Don’t kill me,” as she was hauled away on a motorcycle, sandwiched between two kidnappers. – Wall Street Journal

President Donald ​Trump’s administration threatened to revoke the visas of the Palestinian delegation to the United Nations if the ‌Palestinian ambassador refuses to end his candidacy for the vice presidency of the U.N. General Assembly, according to an internal State Department cable seen by Reuters. – Reuters

Israel moved closer on Wednesday to a snap election after lawmakers ‌gave an initial nod to dissolve parliament, with opinion polls showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would lose the first national vote since the 2023 Hamas attacks. – Reuters

When Israeli defense officials approached Massivit last year about using its unique 3D printers to make military drone parts, CEO Yossi Azarzar jumped at the chance. – Associated Press

Israel’s national security minister drew a sharp rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and triggered a backlash abroad Wednesday, after releasing videos taunting detained flotilla activists who tried to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza, telling them they should be imprisoned for a long time. – Associated Press

As the IDF continues to face a severe shortage of combat fighters and the government has avoided pressuring the haredi sector to join the military in larger numbers, an ongoing increase in female combat fighters has been one of the few bright spots. – Jerusalem Post

Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka said that his nation will stand with Israel and do everything it can to block European Union sanctions against Israel while speaking at a press conference during Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s solidarity visit to Prague on Wednesday. – Jerusalem Post

The High Court of Justice has rejected a petition filed by AIDA, an umbrella organization representing 19 international non-governmental aid organizations operating in Gaza and the West Bank, against government NGO registration requirements. – Jerusalem Post

Seven IDF soldiers were injured after an explosive drone impact in southern Lebanon, the IDF announced on Wednesday. One soldier was severely injured, one officer was moderately injured, and two soldiers were moderately injured. – Jerusalem Post

A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem claimed that Hamas’s October 7 massacre was part of a careful plan to destabilize Israel and spark a wider regional war against it. – Jerusalem Post

Bret Stephens writes: These aren’t just questions of hypocrisy or double standards. They are evidence of minds that have lost the capacity to think dispassionately and critically. What we should really be worried about isn’t the future of Israel; it’s the fate of the West. Moral judgments should be made about Israel according to the same standards by which we judge other countries faced with similar circumstances. It’s when Israel is demanded to be a saint — and then, as it invariably falls short, is damned as the worst sinner — that we lose our sense of perspective and proportion. “Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world,” observed the philosopher Eric Hoffer in 1968. That remains true today. Hatred of Israel has become the sty in Western eyes that, as it grows larger, risks making too many people blind. – New York Times

Eli Avidar writes: The “Ben-Gurion Canal” could transform Israel from a regional transit state into an international infrastructure powerhouse. Not merely a canal, but an entire economic corridor: new ports, logistics hubs, industrial zones, jobs, dramatic development of the Negev, and energy production along the route. […] Today, the world is searching for stability: energy stability, security stability, and supply-chain stability. In this reality, the question is no longer whether the world needs an alternative to the Suez Canal. The real question is whether Israel has leaders bold enough to withstand Egyptian pressure and do what is right for Israel and for the international economy. – Jerusalem Post

Russia and Ukraine

Russia’s war against Ukraine has already shown the world a new type of warfare dominated by aerial drones. But on the ground, remotely controlled vehicles are the latest technological evolution. – Wall Street Journal

Russia delivered nuclear munitions ‌to field storage facilities in Belarus as part of major nuclear drills, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Thursday. – Reuters

Ukraine will send reinforcements to its northern regions and step up diplomatic pressure on Belarus to counter what Kyiv believes ​are Russian plans to launch a new offensive north of the capital, President ‌Volodymyr Zelenskiy said. – Reuters

Russia on Wednesday ​showed what it said was footage of troops delivering nuclear warheads to mobile Iskander-M missile launch ‌systems, loading them and moving them to launch sites as part of a major nuclear exercise. – Reuters

Ukraine said it attacked a major oil refinery in central Russia for the second time this week, as Kyiv continues to target the country’s energy infrastructure. – Bloomberg

Igor Bondar writes: Even more important than the physical damage is the psychological effect inside Russia itself. Millions of Russians have now seen that the war is no longer something happening only in distant Ukrainian cities. Explosions, panic, and disrupted infrastructure have reached Moscow. The Ukrainian drone campaign is also exposing a deeper strategic problem for Russia. Modern drone warfare favors cheaper, mass-produced systems over traditional, expensive air defense missiles. Russia is now forced to spend millions of rubles attempting to intercept relatively inexpensive drones. In a long war of attrition, that imbalance matters. – Washington Examiner

Alexander Kolyandr writes: The more important shift is conceptual. Until this spring, war and sanctions were officially treated as temporary shocks that would eventually pass. The new forecast moves them into the baseline. This is the economy Russia now has: chronically slower than the global average, chronically short of cash for anything other than the army and the state, increasingly dependent on China, technologically lagging, and steadily losing the people most likely to do something about it. It is not the picture of a country heading for the cliff. It is the picture of a country settling, with surprising equanimity, for a long, slow decline — and broadcasting to the world that while the state may endure, it will not prosper. – Center for European Policy Analysis

Gulf States

Saudi Arabia is expected to burn more imported fuel oil for power generation this summer following ​a loss of natural gas supply from oilfields that have been shut after the Iran war curbed its oil exports, ‌analysts said. – Reuters

The Jordanian military announced it had shot down a drone of unknown origin in its airspace on Wednesday. No casualties were reported. – Agence France-Presse

The cooperation between Iran and Pakistan has dwindled in the past two weeks, a diplomatic source told the Saudi Al-Hadath channel. According to the source, distrust is making coordination between the two countries increasingly difficult. – Arutz Sheva

Charbel A. Antoun writes: The tools will modernize — but the strategic reality will not. Only the U.S. can project force at scale, and that monopoly ensures that every Gulf adaptation remains nested inside the same asymmetric relationship. Washington must choose: address the cost-exchange asymmetry structurally, reduce the conditionality of its guarantee with binding commitments that survive domestic political cycles, or acknowledge honestly that it is asking fractured, resentful partners to indefinitely underwrite a conflict they never sanctioned. The trap has three locks: the cost-exchange ratio, the monopoly of protection, and the conditionality of the guarantee. Washington’s current posture turns none of them. Congress should ask why and demand a strategy that does. – The Hill

Anas Alqaed writes: Whether Abu Dhabi’s strategy ultimately succeeds will depend on factors largely outside Emirati control: Syria’s fragile internal stability, unresolved Israeli-Syrian tensions, and Turkish and Saudi competition. Still, the UAE enters this competition with significant advantages. It possesses greater financial liquidity than Turkey and maintains closer ties with Israel—the region’s emerging hegemonic power—than any other Gulf or Arab state. While Emirati investments alone are unlikely to stabilize Syria or fully insulate Gulf trade from future regional shocks, they could nevertheless prove effective in gradually expanding Abu Dhabi’s geopolitical leverage. – Foreign Policy

Korean Peninsula

For four decades, Chung Kyung-jo donned the uniform of the South Korean Army, rising to three-star general while guarding against North Korea. But on a rain-soaked Wednesday, as two women’s soccer teams from either side of the border clashed on the field, there was no question where his heart lay: with the athletes from Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. – New York Times

South Korea and the U.S. discussed potential changes in how parts of the heavily fortified border with ​North Korea are managed at recent defence talks in ‌Washington, Seoul’s defence ministry said on Thursday. – Reuters

South Korea’s presidential ​Blue House ‌said on Thursday that some ​of ​its nationals who had ⁠been in ​held in ​Israeli custody had been released. – Reuters

President Lee Jae Myung came to power promising stronger labor protection and social cohesion, while vowing to transform South Korea into an AI powerhouse competing with the US and China. Now, those ambitions are starting to collide. – Bloomberg

South Asia

Tea factory worker Jacintha Malar once relied on cooking gas to prepare meals for her family, but has switched to firewood after the Middle East conflict pushed ​up energy costs and battered the country’s tea industry. – Reuters

The International Monetary Fund mission concluded talks with Pakistani authorities on Wednesday, ​focusing on economic developments, fiscal plans for the ‌next financial year, and progress on reforms under the country’s IMF-supported programmes, the fund said in a statement. – Reuters

A Colosseum selfie and a pack of toffees triggered a series of memes that lit ‌up the internet on Wednesday, as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi ahead of talks in Rome. – Reuters

Europe

U.K. inflation cooled more than expected in April as government measures to reduce household energy bills that were announced last year kicked in, but it is anticipated to pick up again in response to rising oil and gas prices linked to the conflict in Iran. – Wall Street Journal

European Union negotiators on Wednesday said they reached a provisional deal to remove some tariffs on U.S. imports as part of the bloc’s trade deal signed last summer, ahead of a U.S. deadline to ramp up tariffs on cars. – Wall Street Journal

Britain was once a byword for stable, stolid democracy: the mother of parliaments, the country that keeps calm and carries on. But since the referendum a decade ago to quit the European Union, it has been more of a political “Gong Show,” with a half-dozen prime ministers trying and failing to revive a flatlined economy and appease furious voters. – Washington Post

Britain’s deputy ambassador to the United States, James Roscoe, has left his job, the British government said on Wednesday without offering any further details. – New York Times

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has ​proposed giving Ukraine a direct role in European Union structures as an interim step to EU ‌membership that he said could help facilitate a deal to end the war triggered by Russia’s invasion. – Reuters

An ​Austrian court found former intelligence officer Egisto Ott guilty of spying on Wednesday, for helping Russia hunt down opponents ‌and selling it state laptops and phones at the behest of suspected Moscow agent Jan Marsalek. – Reuters

A German married couple was arrested on suspicion of building contacts with ​German scientists to obtain intelligence on technologies ‌with possible military use for China, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday. – Reuters

Montenegro marks 20 years of independence from a union with Serbia this week, celebrating a two-decade transformation that has already brought the Balkan country into NATO. Now it is eyeing its next milestone: full integration into the European Union. – Associated Press

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Wednesday that Britain’s support for Ukraine remains steadfast, despite the U.K. delaying some new sanctions on Russian oil because of a cost-of-living squeeze triggered by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. – Associated Press

Polish officials on Wednesday welcomed U.S. statements clarifying that the decision not to deploy 4,000 U.S. troops to the central European country was a temporary measure. – Associated Press

In the midst of two major wars, the UK’s Foreign Office is undertaking job cuts so severe that it’s about to halve the size of its team dealing with the fallout from the conflict with Iran. – Bloomberg

Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy summoned Israel’s ambassadors over the treatment of activists detained by Israel after seeking to breach its naval blockade of Gaza in a flotilla. – Bloomberg

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said allies are unofficially talking about a potential role for the military alliance in the Strait of Hormuz, as economic anxieties mount over the blocked waterway. – Bloomberg

Lithuania’s president and top officials were rushed to shelters after an air alert was announced in the capital over a suspected unidentified drone that crossed into the Baltic country. – Bloomberg

Poland is expected to receive its first F-35 fighter jets “very, very soon”, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski told Fox News Digital, as American and Polish forces prepare together at a key NATO air base near the alliance’s eastern flank. – Fox News

UK defense authorities disclosed Wednesday that Russian fighter jets on multiple occasions carried out dangerous interceptions of British Royal Air Force reconnaissance flights in international airspace last month, risking a possible collision in what British Defense Secretary John Healey described as “dangerous and unacceptable.” – Jerusalem Post

Germany is facing persistently high levels of antisemitism, with new data from Berlin and Hesse underscoring a hostile environment for Jews and Israelis marked by sustained harassment, violence, and intimidation. – Algemeiner

European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas joined in on the criticism of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir over the video of his encounter with participants in the pro-Hamas flotilla to Gaza. – Arutz Sheva

Editorial: The EV mandates are part of a wider and destructive campaign against fossil fuels. Berlin’s decision to ramp up expensive and unreliable renewable power generation while shuttering nuclear plants is wrecking industries across the board. By some counts, German industrial energy prices are now about double what American manufacturers pay. Among the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Germany ranked 30th on corporate taxes on the Tax Foundation’s 2025 index. “Increasingly burdensome bureaucracy” is another reason one in 12 of all German companies are now worried about their survival, the Munich-based Ifo Institute reported this month. Economic suicide isn’t painless. – Wall Street Journal

Maria Malmer Stenergard writes: Escalating from a price cap to an outright prohibition would deal a significant blow to the Kremlin’s war chest. Sweden would like to see the European Union, and ideally the rest of the Group of 7, impose this measure. Russia’s economy, in nominal terms, is barely bigger than the State of New York’s, smaller than that of Texas and fragile. Russian households are feeling the pinch of daily expenses, and the lion’s share of the liquid assets in the country’s national wealth fund — its financial buffer — has been drained to finance the war. The weakness in the economy shows how effective Western sanctions have already been, and why further pressure is the best way to force Mr. Putin to engage in serious peace negotiations. We can’t change Mr. Putin’s wish to control Ukraine, but we can change how much it will cost him. – New York Times

Luka Ignac writes: The EU’s €150bn SAFE facility has a 65% European content rule, which covers EU members, EEA countries, and Ukraine, and production by US firms on European soil is included in the threshold. The European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP), adopted in November, adds €1.5bn ($1.8bn) targeted at the categories the Iran war exposed: air defense, counter-drone, and ammunition. But these instruments can be blunted: member states can invoke national-security exemptions to avoid EU joint procurement rules even while drawing SAFE loans, and there is a parallel risk that SAFE money simply substitutes for national budgets rather than adding to them. These instruments are the floor, not the ceiling, and the scale of the broader allied market is what will turn them into real capacity. The point is not to choose between US suppliers and European factories, but to build production capacity across the alliance. – Center for European Policy Analysis

The Americas

With the murder indictment of Cuban leader Raúl Castro, President Trump is applying the playbook he used to upend Venezuela’s leadership to force Havana’s Communist government into submission. – Wall Street Journal

The Trump administration has secured an indictment against Raúl Castro, Cuba’s aging patriarch and former president, escalating its pressure campaign as it seeks to force economic and political concessions from the country’s Communist regime. – Wall Street Journal

Canada needs to quickly improve the efficiency at its ports to achieve the goal of rebuilding economic resilience and reducing reliance on U.S.-bound exports to drive growth, according to Prime Minister Mark Carney. – Wall Street Journal

Cuba is open to changes to its economy and government, and eager to continue negotiations with the United States, but it does not believe Washington is participating in talks in good faith, Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations told The New York Times. – New York Times

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s parents emigrated from Cuba to the United States three years before Fidel Castro seized power through a Communist revolution in 1959. – New York Times

Mexican authorities arrested ​the municipal president of ‌Atlatlahucan and five other political figures in ​an investigation ​into corruption and organized crime ⁠in central ​Morelos state, special prosecutor ​Ulises Lara said in a video message late ​on Wednesday. – Reuters

Israel’s treatment of detained ​Gaza flotilla activists is “abominable,” Canadian Prime Minister ‌Mark Carney said Wednesday, using unusually harsh language to condemn a close ally. – Reuters

Cuba’s foreign ‌minister Bruno Rodriguez on Wednesday said a White House statement critical of ​the country’s communist-run government ​was “superficial and misinformed.” – Reuters

Canadian miner Sherritt International Corp. has signed a non-binding agreement with Gillon Capital LLC, a family office linked to a former adviser of U.S. President Donald Trump, that would allow Gillon to buy a majority stake in the company as it navigates sanctions on its operations in Cuba. – Associated Press

Editorial: Even so many years later, the indictment is a welcome attempt to provide justice for the murdered Americans. It also comes at a moment of growing vulnerability for the Havana regime that is running out of other people’s money as its Venezuelan sugar daddy has been cut off. The regime can’t keep the lights on as the electric grid fails, and the plight of the Cuban people is desperate. The U.S. has offered humanitarian aid but not while the thugs in charge would be able to confiscate it for themselves. It’s clear the U.S. wants regime change in Havana, though how that will happen is unknown. We do know that neither Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega nor Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro fared well after U.S. indictments. – Wall Street Journal

Arturo McFields writes: Axios reports that Havana possesses 300 military drones and is currently discussing plans to attack Guantanamo Bay, U.S. military vessels and potentially Key West, Florida. The U.S. continues to ratchet up the pressure on Cuba, and the likelihood of a brief, decisive military operation is growing steadily. This would not be another Bay of Pigs, but rather an updated version of Absolute Resolve, featuring symbolic objectives such as the destruction of the regime’s primary spy bases or the potential extraction of one or two high-ranking officials of significant stature. May 20, Cuban Independence Day, could mark the beginning of Cuba’s second independence — this time, not from Spain, but from a 67-year-old communist regime. This is history in the making. Viva Cuba libre! – The Hill

Juan Pablo Spinetto writes: That offer deserves serious consideration. To end the hardships afflicting its 11 million people, Cuba needs to overhaul its political and economic systems for its own sake, not simply because a foreign power demands it. The utopian promise of a fully egalitarian socialist society died long ago, leaving behind just an authoritarian kleptocracy. At some point, reality catches up even with the sturdiest of revolutions. – Bloomberg

United States

The United States’ Department of Homeland Security assisted Spanish police in a money-laundering probe that ​led to an investigation by Spain’s High Court of former Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, ‌a DHS spokesperson said. – Reuters

Opponents of President Donald Trump’s sweeping legal settlement with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service will face high hurdles in challenging its $1.776 billion fund for victims of alleged political “weaponization” and its provision barring audits of his taxes, according to legal experts. – Reuters

The United States has removed Francesca Albanese, a U.N. expert on the Palestinian ​territories, from its list of sanctioned individuals, according to the ‌U.S. Treasury Department website. – Reuters

The US Treasury Department announced sanctions against an operative for the Sinaloa Cartel who it says uses cryptocurrency to funnel drug-trafficking proceeds back into Mexico. – Bloomberg

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on AI and cybersecurity as soon as Thursday, two sources ​familiar with the matter told Reuters, as pressure grows from parts of his political base to increase oversight of new AI models, such as Anthropic’s Mythos. – Reuters

Democratic-socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City is being slammed by Jewish groups for his decision to miss the city’s historic Israel Day Parade. His decision comes as the Big Apple wrestles with record levels of antisemitism. – Fox News

The U.S. is targeting fentanyl distribution for the Sinaloa Cartel with new sanctions, according to the Treasury Department. In a Wednesday press release, the Treasury Department said that its Office of Foreign Assets Control had sanctioned over 12 entities and people “comprising two distinct networks, linked to the terrorist Sinaloa Cartel and its fentanyl trafficking activities.” – The Hill

Defense

U.S. Marines test fired a dozen rockets from a mobile launcher on Wednesday at a range in the foothills of Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji, in an exercise to keep sharp on weapon that is a growingly important component of the American military’s arsenal. – Associated Press

The top US commander overseeing forces in the Middle East says he needs more weapons for striking hardened targets buried deep underground. – Business Insider

Missiles, rockets, artillery, drones, and other weapons flew across the Philippines earlier this month in a large-scale military exercise that a top US commander described as a rehearsal for a Pacific fight. – Business Insider

Washington is seeking funding to construct a Coast Guard maintenance center and refurbish a joint airfield fuel depot that could bolster Philippine security infrastructure near the South China Sea, according to recent documents. – USNI News

While U.S. forces deployed to the southern border employ several fixed and mobile counter-drone systems, the top general in charge of stateside defense said troops lack adequate technology for patrols. – DefenseScoop

The Pentagon selected Shield AI to integrate swarm technology onto the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS), a one-way attack drone the U.S. military cloned from an Iranian variant, according to the company. – DefenseScoop

Peter Devine and Sam Slocum write: The solution isn’t to appeal to the major defense contractors’ patriotism; it’s to qualify a competitor. The presence of qualified alternative producers, waiting in the wings with government-owned designs and certified processes, is the only path to scalable production. Lockheed proudly reminds us it never forgets who it’s working for. Its earnings reports suggest it remembers its shareholders rather better. That isn’t a moral failing, it’s what firms in uncompetitive markets do. Give them competition and they’ll compete. That’s the free market. – Wall Street Journal