Fdd's overnight brief

Israel

More than 60 service members were injured as a part of former President Joe Biden’s floating aid pier in Gaza, a Pentagon Inspector General report published on Tuesday said, a number significantly higher than had been previously disclosed. – Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump is not planning on visiting Israel at the tail end of a trip next week to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. – Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the situation in the Middle East and bilateral ties in a phone call on Tuesday, the Kremlin said. – Reuters

The Trump administration will fold the office that manages Washington’s relations with Palestinians into the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on Tuesday. – Reuters

Almost half of Gazans may be willing to apply to Israel to help them leave to other countries, according to a survey on Tuesday that also showed significant support for anti-Hamas protests. – Reuters

US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is pushing for progress on a deal for Hamas to release the remaining hostages before the end of President Donald Trump’s tour of the Middle East, Israel’s Channel 12 reported, a move that would break more than two months of deadlock. – Bloomberg

A senior Hamas official said Tuesday the terror group was no longer interested in truce talks with Israel and urged the international community to halt Israel’s “hunger war” against Gaza. – Agence France-Presse

US President Donald Trump revealed Tuesday that the number of living hostages in Gaza has dropped from 24 to 21, but Israel’s hostage point man asserted shortly thereafter that Jerusalem’s official figure remains at 24. – Times of Israel

Dozens of former Eurovision participants signed a letter published Tuesday demanding that the European Broadcasting Union bar Israel from taking part in this year’s competition, citing its war against Hamas in Gaza. – Times of Israel

National Unity party chief Benny Gantz said Tuesday that Israel should not have fully withdrawn from Gaza in 2005, and that the notions of further Israeli withdrawals or Palestinian statehood were “disconnected from the security reality.” – Times of Israel

The IDF’s revelation of the identity of the Nukhba terrorist who held hostages in the Gaza Strip and participated in the October 7 massacre harms ongoing investigations and contradicts the gag order, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and Police Lahav 433 Cyber Unit argued, Israel’s public broadcaster KAN reported on Wednesday. – Jerusalem Post

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir on Tuesday night ordered the IDF’s Human Resources Command to initiate a new maximal drafting of haredim (ultra-Orthodox) to help with the widening invasion of Gaza and the ongoing war effort. – Jerusalem Post

Israel’s airstrikes on Sanaa, conducted on Tuesday, likely cost approximately 13 million shekels based on reservist payments, the deployment of rescue planes and helicopters, fighter jet fuel, and other operational costs. – Jerusalem Post

Dr. Mike Evans, a close friend of President Donald Trump and a longtime evangelical leader, said the United States remains firmly aligned with Israel and will not negotiate with terror organizations, as tensions continue across the Middle East. – Ynet

The Houthi missile that evaded both Israeli and U.S. defense systems and landed near Ben-Gurion Airport on Sunday marked the group’s most successful attack on Israel since the start of the Gaza war. – Haaretz

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will dissolve the State Department’s Office of Palestinian Affairs (OPA), a Biden-era creation that elevated relations with the Palestinian Authority, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. – Free Beacon

Michael Ames writes: The New Yorker has published roughly 20 interviews that referred to famine or starvation in Gaza—and three that addressed the IPC system and the FRC’s authoritative role. In all that reporting, The New Yorker never mentioned the FRC’s rejection of USAID’s analysis or its no-famine verdict. As Haan and his FRC colleagues wrote about USAID’s slippery numbers last year, “High uncertainty is compounded through several layers of assumptions.” So many unthinkable tragedies have occurred since Hamas’s massacre on October 7, 2023, but a famine in Gaza isn’t one of them. – The Free Press

Russia and Ukraine

When the war eventually ends, tackling corruption will be one of Kyiv’s most important tasks. Failure to do so will hurt the economic recovery and make it harder for Ukraine to achieve its ambition of joining the European Union, which sets aspiring members specific goals on tackling graft. – Wall Street Journal

The Trump administration earlier this year urged the Ukrainian government to accept an unspecified number of U.S. deportees who are citizens of other countries, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post, an extraordinary request of a nation at war and dependent on American military and financial support for its survival. – Washington Post

Despite back-to-back drone attacks on Moscow and a degree of anxiety in the Russian capital, Ukrainian officials have dismissed the possibility of any attacks on Russia’s Victory Day celebrations this week. – Washington Post

A Ukrainian drone attack halted flights at airports across a wide swath of Russia overnight on Tuesday, Russian officials said, showing Kyiv’s ability to strike deep into Russian territory before a planned parade in Moscow to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. – New York Times

Russia and Ukraine launched more overnight air attacks on each other’s capitals on Wednesday, with two people killed as a result of the strikes on Kyiv and swarms of drones destroyed on their approach to Moscow. – Reuters

Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday swapped 205 prisoners of war each, the Russian Defence ministry said in a statement. – Reuters

Twenty-nine world leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, are expected to attend World War Two Victory Day commemorations in Moscow in the coming days, Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign policy adviser, said on Tuesday. – Reuters

Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping will discuss the “most sensitive” issues, including energy cooperation and a proposed Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline to China, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Tuesday. – Reuters

Russian air defence forces repelled dozens of Ukrainian drones that attacked Moscow and other parts of the country on Tuesday, the defence ministry said. – Reuters

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked his government on Tuesday to seek help from Ukraine’s Western allies to develop interceptor drones he said were vital to protecting the country from air attacks in the more than three-year-old war with Russia. – Reuters

The Kremlin announced on Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to China at the end of August and beginning of September, reciprocating Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia this week to attend festivities marking Victory Day in World War II. – Associated Press

US President Donald Trump said it is not a good time to invite Russia to rejoin the Group of Seven major economies, months after saying he’d like to see the nation reinstated. – Bloomberg

Barton Swaim writes: Mr. Trump’s lamentations about all the killing and destruction in Ukraine will likely have the opposite of the intended effect on Mr. Putin. That, at any rate, is a reasonable conclusion from Mr. Putin’s latest pronouncement that any agreement to end the war must include Russian control of four territories not currently under full Russian control: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. So after weeks of browbeating Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and portraying Mr. Putin as a reasonable man—“a straightforward guy,” as Mr. Witkoff called him in an interview with Tucker Carlson—the administration managed to extract from the Russian dictator exactly nothing. Less than nothing, actually. Mr. Putin now wants more, not less. – Wall Street Journal

Elena Davlikanova writes: Yet 2025’s sober marking of the day was also a reflection of isolation. Despite invitations, no major Western leaders accepted Zelenskyy’s call to join him for the anniversary.  So 80 years on, the victors of World War II are engaged in another battle: the war over memory. Russia reclaims the past to justify a militarized present, and the West to remember sacrifice. Ukraine uses it as a quiet rebellion, closer to its allies than to its would-be imperial master. – Center for European Policy Analysis

Turkey

Jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu is fighting a series of legal battles on charges of corruption, insulting officials and terrorism links amid a widening crackdown on the opposition in Turkey. – Reuters

Popular support for Ekrem Imamoglu, the Istanbul mayor whose arrest sparked Turkey’s largest protests in a decade, has risen further above President Tayyip Erdogan since he was detained and jailed in March, opinion polls show. – Reuters

Turkey’s intelligence service thwarted a remote attack using pagers last year in Lebanon, days after similar attacks by Israel killed dozens and wounded thousands, including members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, a Turkish daily and officials said Tuesday. – Associated Press

Yemen

President Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. had reached a truce with the Houthis in Yemen and would suspend its airstrikes there, claiming that the militants would no longer target ships navigating Middle Eastern waters. – Wall Street Journal

Israeli warplanes hit the main airport controlled by Yemen’s Houthi militia Tuesday, in Israel’s second day of retaliatory strikes after the group struck Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. – Wall Street Journal

All flights to and from Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport have been suspended until further notice due to extensive damage following Israeli strike, the airport’s general director said on Wednesday in a post on X. – Reuters

Oman said it mediated a ceasefire deal between Yemen’s Houthis and the U.S., marking a major shift in the Iran-aligned group’s policy since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023. – Reuters

The head of Yemen’s Houthi Supreme Political Council, Mahdi al-Mashat, said the Iran-aligned group will continue their attacks to support Gaza, Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV reported. – Reuters

Editorial: The deal with the U.S. blindsided Jerusalem, though Israel’s retaliation against the Houthis earlier on Tuesday, which destroyed their main airport and link to Iranian weapons, may have helped clinch it. Iran doesn’t need another proxy overwhelmed. The key for the U.S. will be keeping Iran in retreat. – Wall Street Journal

Robert F. Worth writes: Trump mentioned his upcoming trip during the Oval Office meeting with Carney today and added that before his departure, he will have a “very, very big announcement to make.” If that announcement turns out to be a new deal to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, maybe the Houthis will have had something to do with it. – The Atlantic

Korean Peninsula

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected munitions factories that make shells and machinery, state media KCNA said on Wednesday. – Reuters

South Korea’s central bank chief said currency volatility will likely continue for some time amid uncertainties in the global economy and domestic politics, the Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday. – Reuters

South Korea’s high court delayed its first hearing on sentencing leading presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung over a legal violation until after the upcoming election, enabling him to run for the country’s top office. – Bloomberg

South Korea’s former acting leader and current presidential hopeful Han Duck-soo vowed Wednesday to launch a new ministry to oversee the country’s artificial intelligence strategies and science innovation if he wins the election. – Bloomberg

South Asia

India said it conducted military strikes on nine sites in Pakistan in retaliation for a deadly militant attack on tourists in Kashmir, intensifying a confrontation between the nuclear-armed neighbors. – Wall Street Journal

India’s government has ordered officials to carry out civil defense drills in much of the country on Wednesday as it prepares for a potential military conflict with Pakistan, its neighbor and archrival. – New York Times 

Families are reinforcing their bunkers and confirming evacuation plans. Hospitals have stocked up on essential medicines. Schoolchildren are being trained on the essentials of first aid. – New York Times

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was very concerned about Indian attacks in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, his spokesperson said on Tuesday while calling for maximum military restraint from both nuclear-armed Asian neighbors. – Reuters

Three fighter jets crashed in India’s Jammu and Kashmir territory on Wednesday, four local government sources told Reuters, hours after India said it struck nine Pakistani “terrorist infrastructure” sites across the border. – Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump termed rising tension between India and Pakistan a shame, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke to officials in the nuclear-armed rivals after India attacked several sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. – Reuters

India Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday that water that previously was being sent outside the country would now be retained for internal use, days after New Delhi suspended a water-sharing pact with Pakistan. – Reuters

Britain and India clinched a long-coveted free trade pact on Tuesday after tariff turmoil sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump forced the two sides to hasten efforts to increase their trade in whisky, cars and food. – Reuters

Auction house Sotheby’s said on Wednesday that it had postponed the auction of a collection of hundreds of jewels linked to Buddha’s corporeal relics after India’s government threatened legal action and demanded the jewels be returned. – Reuters

Seven Pakistan army soldiers were killed on Tuesday when their vehicle was targeted by an improvised explosive device in the troubled southwestern province of Balochistan, Pakistan’s military said in a statement. – Reuters

James Stavridis writes: A similar situation, albeit on a smaller scale, could play out in the northern reaches of the Indian Ocean — with the US Navy’s Indo-Pacific Command caught in the middle. India and Pakistan would be wise to avoid inflaming tensions not only in Kashmir and across the subcontinent, but also on the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean. – Bloomberg

Shawn Rotsker writes: The United States need not intervene militarily but rather commit to targeted, measured, and cooperative diplomacy while time still permits. Action now will deliver strategic and political gains at minimal cost. A bloodier conflict between India and Pakistan threatens more than just South Asia—it has real consequences for broader U.S. strategic interests. How Washington navigates this moment will either reinforce those interests or undermine them by unnecessarily intensifying competition with China and complicating its Indo-Pacific priorities. – National Interest

Europe

Friedrich Merz was elected chancellor by the German parliament on Tuesday in a second round of voting, after failing to secure an absolute majority in an earlier round. His appointment ends six months of political deadlock in the country after the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government in November. But Merz’s initial defeat cast doubt on the stability of his governing coalition. – Washington Post

In the decades after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Poland became perhaps the most pro-American country in Europe. It joined NATO in 1999, hosts some 10,000 American troops and has benefited hugely from U.S. political and military support. – New York Times

Poland is facing an unprecedented attempt by Russia to interfere in its presidential election, the digital affairs minister said on Tuesday, as the first round of voting looms on May 18. – Reuters

New German Chancellor Friedrich Merz sets off on his first trip abroad on Wednesday to France and Poland in a bid to renew relations with the country’s top allies and show that Germany is back on the world stage despite a bumpy start to his government. – Reuters

The European Union is under no pressure to accept an unfair tariff deal with the United States, its trade chief said on Tuesday, adding that it was being contacted by other countries seeking to forge closer trade ties with the 27-nation bloc. – Reuters

Nationwide rioting that shook Britain last summer was not coordinated by specific groups, but police must do more to counter false narratives online to avoid similar events in future, England’s police watchdog said on Wednesday. – Reuters

The European Commission will next month propose legal measures to phase out the EU’s imports of all Russian gas and liquefied natural gas by the end of 2027, it said on Tuesday. – Reuters

Switzerland will host the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time since 1989 next week, amid familiar political criticism over LGBTQ+ rights and the participation of Israel. – Reuters

Romania’s hard-right presidential frontrunner George Simion said on Tuesday that if elected he would propose compensatory measures to U.S. President Donald Trump to mitigate the impact on Romanian companies of potential U.S. trade tariffs. – Reuters

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Tuesday the people of Greenland should be able to make their own choices free from external pressure, following repeated Trump administration calls for the Arctic territory to become part of the United States. – Reuters

Malta’s government said on Tuesday it would carry out repairs in international waters on a humanitarian aid ship which was reportedly bombed by two drones early on Friday. – Reuters

Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Tuesday that simply banning the far-right Alternative for Germany would not end the groundswell of support for it, noting it was key instead to fight the causes. – Reuters

Romania’s interim president appointed a new prime minister on Tuesday, a day after Marcel Ciolacu stepped down following the failure of his coalition’s candidate to make the runoff in a rerun of the presidential election. – Associated Press

The UK is pressing the European Union to more clearly back British participation in a €150 billion ($170 billion) defense fund after the first draft of a proposed security pact was largely silent on the demand, according to UK officials and documents seen by Bloomberg. – Bloomberg

The European Union’s executive arm is set to propose a new package of sanctions targeting Moscow’s covert fleet of oil tankers as it seek to crank up pressure on Russia over its war against Ukraine. – Bloomberg

University students in Serbia who have spearheaded months of street rallies against the government are now demanding early elections, posing a new challenge to the dominance of President Aleksandar Vucic. – Bloomberg

A group of French members of parliament said Tuesday they wanted Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French army captain wrongly convicted of treason in 1894, to be awarded the rank of brigadier general. – Agence France-Presse

The U.K. and Italian carrier strike groups will meet in the Ionian Sea this week as part of a NATO exercise while the U.S. 6th Fleet is leading NATO At Sea Demonstration Formidable Shield 25 which kicked off on Saturday and taking place in the North and Norwegian Seas and North Atlantic Ocean. – USNI News

Editorial: Mr. Merz was always likely to win in the end since no one wanted to call another snap election in which mainstream parties would fare even worse than they did this winter. But that’s hardly a ringing endorsement from lawmakers, let alone voters. The core problem is that mainstream parties are failing to offer voters a compelling alternative to the AfD’s disruption as a way of shaking Germany out of its malaise on migration, the economy and climate policy. If Mr. Merz also can’t do so, Tuesday’s excitement won’t be his last nasty political surprise. – Wall Street Journal

Katja Hoyer writes: The relief on the faces of MPs in the German parliament was palpable, even among many opposition politicians, once Merz was finally voted in. In the second round of voting, he received 325 votes, 9 more than required. He is now Germany’s new chancellor, but this is no happy ending. The rebels among his ranks have sent a strong signal of discontent that reverberated not just around the country but around the world. – Bloomberg

The Americas

Five Venezuelan opposition activists who had been hiding for months from President Nicolás Maduro’s regime in the Argentine embassy in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, have been freed and are now on American soil, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday night. – Wall Street Journal

The U.S. Embassy in Honduras warned U.S. citizens to avoid several locations in the capital due to information it received of threatened mass shootings on Tuesday and on May 16, prompting Honduran officials to launch an investigation. – Reuters

Ecuador’s electoral court dismissed a request from the nation’s biggest opposition party contesting the results of April’s presidential election, a document published on Tuesday showed, leaving the group with no further recourse. – Reuters

Matthew P. Funaiole, Brian Hart, Aidan Powers-Riggs, and Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr. write: In the unclassified space, there is no smoking gun linking China to any of these sites directly, and China has denied having any links to surveillance sites in Cuba. However, U.S. officials have repeatedly signaled that China has access to spy facilities on the island. These two sites are among those most likely to be supporting Chinese intelligence-gathering operations from the island. The United States should continue to monitor developments at these facilities. Major changes at Cuban SIGINT sites could indicate an escalation in Cuban—or Chinese—efforts to collect intelligence on the United States. – Center for Strategic and International Studies

United States

The U.S. is stepping up its intelligence-gathering efforts regarding Greenland, drawing America’s spying apparatus into President Trump’s campaign to take over the island, according to two people familiar with the effort. – Wall Street Journal

The U.S. government said on Tuesday it will review an incident at the University of Washington in which pro-Palestinian protesters occupied a university building while demanding the school cut ties with Boeing over its contracts with the Israeli military. – Reuters

The Trump administration urged a U.S. appeals court on Tuesday to allow immigration authorities to continue to detain students at Tufts University and Columbia University who were arrested after engaging in pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus. – Reuters

The US government is offering migrants who are in the country illegally a sum worth $1,000 (£751) and paid travel if they decide to leave the US. – BBC

Defense

A group of U.S. lawmakers plans to introduce a bill on Wednesday to boost the chances for the thousands of Americans with physical issues that disqualify them from military service to find civilian positions in the armed forces and defense industry. – Reuters

A U.S. F-18 fighter jet was lost in the Red Sea on Tuesday after tipping off the flight deck of the Harry S Truman aircraft carrier, in the second such incident in about a week, two U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. – Reuters

The top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee said the sale of wireless spectrum held by the Pentagon could put President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield and other military projects at risk. – Reuters

The US Supreme Court temporarily allowed President Donald Trump to enforce his ban on transgender people serving in the military while legal challenges to the policy move forward. – BBC

The Missile Defense Agency is facing a roughly three-year delay in its plan to deliver an interceptor capable of defeating a hypersonic weapon in the glide phase of flight, according to its director. – Defense News

Reduced launch costs over the last few decades could shave up to 40% off past cost estimates for a space-based missile defense layer, according to the Congressional Budget Office. – Defense News

The Air Force will have to dig entirely new nuclear missile silos for the LGM-35A Sentinel, creating another complication for a troubled program that is already facing future cost and schedule overruns. – Defense News

Boeing’s long-awaited upgrade to the KC-46 tanker’s remote-vision system has slipped once again, the latest delay for the beleaguered program. “The current projection for fielding RVS 2.0 is summer 2027. The Air Force and Boeing are exploring opportunities to prevent or mitigate the slip in schedule,” an Air Force spokesperson said. – Defense One

The modern battlefield exposes forces to a rapidly evolving threat scenario, with deadly threats increasing in number and in complexity. Large volumes of inexpensive suicide drones dive in on unsuspecting targets, and modified commercial drones drop mortar bombs or grenades on them. – Breaking Defense

The Space Force is talking to allies and partner nations about using their facilities to expand US options for national security launches, according to the senior service official responsible for launch programs. – Breaking Defense

Bollinger Shipyards and Edison Chouest Offshore today announced a strategic partnership called the United Shipbuilding Alliance (USA) that the companies say will expedite the “design, construction, and delivery of next-generation icebreakers.” – Breaking Defense

John Schindler writes: Vetting of legal immigrants leaves a great deal to be desired from any counterintelligence point of view. ICE simply isn’t asking the right questions, or enough of them, to foreigners coming to this country to work and live. It’s impractical to turn ICE into a full-time counterspy agency — that’s hardly necessary, but providing greater security scrutiny to immigrants from the top espionage threats we face is needed, without delay. – Washington Examiner