Fdd's overnight brief

Israel

Israel approved a cease-fire with Lebanon that is intended to bring a halt to more than a year of fighting with the Hezbollah militia and could help defuse a broader regional crisis that has threatened to ensnare the U.S. and other world powers. – Wall Street Journal

The deal calls for Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group, to retreat north of the Litani River in southern Lebanon in exchange for a gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops over an initial 60-day period. At the same time, the Lebanese military and U.N. peacekeepers will redeploy and secure the region — terms that have been accepted by both parties, President Joe Biden said in a speech announcing the cease-fire on Tuesday. – Washington Post

Foreign ministers from leading industrialized countries threw their strong support Tuesday behind an immediate ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah but sidestepped the question of whether to enforce an international arrest warrant for Israel’s leader over the war in Gaza. – Associated Press

An Israeli air strike killed at least 13 Palestinians at a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City, medics said on Tuesday. – Reuters

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Wednesday the group “appreciates” Lebanon’s right to reach an agreement that protects its people, and it hopes for a deal to end the war in Gaza. – Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he was ready to implement a ceasefire deal with Lebanon and would “respond forcefully to any violation” by Hezbollah. – Reuters

A growing number of European financial institutions have a business relationship with companies with ties to Israeli settlements, according to a study by civil society groups on Tuesday, calling for heightened due diligence. – Reuters

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday his administration was pushing for an elusive ceasefire in Gaza and that it is possible that Saudi Arabia and Israel could normalize relations. – Reuters

Benjamin Netanyahu presented the ceasefire deal in the context of what he said were Israel’s “unprecedented achievements” over the past year of a seven-front war.He said Israel had set Hezbollah back “tens of years” and that it was not the same group it had been before. There was a lot of focus on Israel’s strength in doing what it believed needed to be done – in Gaza, in Lebanon and elsewhere – despite international opposition. – BBC

The Defense Ministry and defense industry giant Rafael Advanced Defense Systems are set to sign a major new deal in the coming months to procure compact anti-missile laser systems for intercepting anti-tank missiles and other aerial threats designed to protect infantry soldiers. – Ynet

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a pre-recorded statement Tuesday evening following a meeting of his political-security cabinet and ahead of the cease-fire in the north which is expected to take effect Wednesday morning according to the plan – almost a year and two months after Hezbollah joined the fighting against Israel, after the surprise attack by Hamas in the south. – Ynet

Editorial: If the deal survives the 60-day transition period, Israel will be able to greet the second Trump Presidency with Iran newly vulnerable, Hamas isolated in Gaza, and a major diplomatic opportunity for a deal with Saudi Arabia. Second-guessed at every point, Israel has fought through to its strongest strategic position in at least a decade. – Wall Street Journal

Editorial: The government must look at the end of the fighting in the north as an important step on the way to ending all of the fighting – in the south as well. Israel must take advantage of Hamas’ loss of Hezbollah’s active support and move to a cease-fire agreement and hostage deal, which will save the lives of the hostages who have survived their ordeal. That is the State of Israel’s highest moral imperative. The time to act is now. – Haaretz

Lior Ben Ari writes: Just as it seemed Hamas had no incentive to jeopardize its economic gains and development in Gaza or to escalate during the Islamic Jihad’s earlier rocket fire against Israel, a similar misconception could take place on other fronts. Still, we mustn’t delude ourselves: the massive underground tunnels Hezbollah showcased in its recent propaganda videos still exist, with rockets ready for launch. Even now, Hezbollah is rearming and Iran continues to voice its aspirations for “the end of Israel.” Iranian officials publicly proclaim our defeat. – Ynet

Daniel Byman writes: Israel and Hezbollah have reached a cease-fire deal, ending a war that has lasted more than 13 months. U.S. President Joe Biden announced the agreement on Tuesday, and it is supposed to go into effect overnight in the region. To date, the war has killed almost 4,000 Hezbollah fighters and Lebanese civilians and more than 100 Israeli civilians and soldiers. Around 60,000 Israelis and 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced. – Foreign Policy

Russia & Ukraine

Russia said on Tuesday that Ukraine had struck its territory again with U.S.-supplied missiles, just as the Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russia had unleashed an immense air assault overnight that involved nearly 200 drones. – New York Times

Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss energy ties on a visit to Kazakhstan this week, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, a trip that comes amid trade tensions with the Central Asian nation, which exports most of its oil through Russia. – Reuters

Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response. – Reuters

Russia opposes simply freezing the conflict in Ukraine because Moscow needs a “solid and long-term peace” that resolves the core reasons for the crisis, President Vladimir Putin’s foreign intelligence chief said on Tuesday. – Reuters

Russian state-controlled gas giant Gazprom is making the assumption that no more gas will flow to Europe via Ukraine after Dec. 31 in its internal planning for 2025, a person familiar with the plans said. – Reuters

A new ballistic missile fired by Russia at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro last week carried multiple warheads but no explosives, and caused limited damage, two senior Ukrainian government sources said. – Reuters

Russia said on Tuesday it was expelling a British diplomat for spying – an accusation denied by London – in the latest blow to the already dire state of relations between the two countries. – Reuters

Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers said on Tuesday. – Reuters

NATO’s new Secretary General Mark Rutte on Tuesday said the alliance “needs to go further” to support Ukraine in its fight against a Russian invasion and accused Moscow of dangerously escalating the conflict by bringing in thousands of North Korean troops. – Associated Press

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces were preparing a response to Ukraine’s recent attacks using US-supplied ATACMS missiles on air defense units in the Kursk border region. – Bloomberg

In a wide-ranging — and pessimistic — interview with POLITICO, Kuleba insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin was in no mood to strike a deal, and said Trump instead risked collapsing Ukrainian front lines if the new U.S. administration starved Kyiv of weapons. – Politico

Michael Peck writes: Either way, it’s time to withdraw from the Kursk bulge, rest and refit the assault brigades, and redeploy them to threatened areas such as the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Pokrovsk sectors. Withdrawal under fire is painful, militarily and psychologically. Russian propaganda will portray this as a great victory, and neglect to mention the complacency and incompetence that allowed Ukraine to mount a surprise attack in the first place. No less unpleasant will be the Western critics who decried Ukraine’s counteroffensive from the start. – Centre for European Policy Analysis

Syria

Israeli strikes late on Tuesday targeted Lebanon’s three northern border crossings with Syria for the first time, Lebanon’s transport minister Ali Hamieh told Reuters. – Reuters 

The US Army on Tuesday struck a target of the Iranian-backed militias in Syria, saying in a statement the strike was in response to an attack on US personnel. – Arutz Sheva

As the crisis in the Middle East continues, the European Union has said it wants to be more involved in Syria, where, after years of war, the situation for civilians is increasingly precarious. – DW

Turkey

Turkey has reduced its planned $23 billion acquisition of an F-16 fighter jet package from the United States, scrapping the purchase of 79 modernisation kits for its existing fleet, Defence Minister Yasar Guler said late on Tuesday. – Reuters

The United Arab Emirates foreign ministry announced on Tuesday that Turkish authorities assisted in the arrest of the suspects accused of murdering an Israeli rabbi in the UAE. – Reuters

Turkey is in talks with the US over a sanctions waiver that would allow the country to keep using Russia’s Gazprombank to pay for natural gas imports. – Bloomberg

Middle East & North Africa

Finally, President Biden got his Rose Garden peace deal. It was not exactly the one he has been straining to land for most of the past year, but it was a breakthrough nonetheless — and, coming after a bitter election, a sweet moment of validation. – New York Times

David Ignatius writes: Israel’s assault on Hezbollah has included more than 8,000 separate attacks since Sept. 23, according to a website prepared by faculty members of the American University of Beirut. Hezbollah, for its part, launched repeated attacks against Israeli targets, including strikes on urban centers such as Tel Aviv and Haifa. Both sides ended with a crescendo of violence on Tuesday, with Hezbollah firing a volley of rockets on at least five Israeli targets and Israel striking sites in Beirut, including the Hamra area in the heart of the city. The Middle East remains a cockpit of war. But after so many months of fighting, and U.S. diplomatic frustration, Tuesday’s news offered hope that this nightmare is beginning to end. – Washington Post

Michael Wahid Hanna writes: Although Trump will probably not push for major policy recalibrations, his administration should press Cairo to enact the sort of political and economic reforms that will be essential for its longer-term stability. Injections of new funding from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, along with major new investments from the United Arab Emirates, have helped stabilize the economy for the moment. Further stability could be achieved by convincing Egypt to denationalize its state-owned—particularly military-owned—firms, which pose a major hurdle for the private sector. – Foreign Affairs

China

Beijing has a powerful tool for responding to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threatened new tariffs on Chinese goods: It could start a currency war, a step that poses formidable risks for China as well as the United States. – New York Times

Chinese ambassador to New Zealand Wang Xiaolong said that if New Zealand were to join security grouping AUKUS it would “inevitably” have negative consequences for the country’s relationship with China. – Reuters

China is likely to launch military drills in the coming days near Taiwan, using President Lai Ching-te’s upcoming trip to the Pacific and scheduled U.S. transit as a pretext, according to assessments by Taiwan and regional security officials. – Reuters

Shares were mixed in Asia on Wednesday after U.S. stocks rose to records despite President-elect Donald Trump’s latest talk about tariffs, which caused only ripples on Wall Street. – Associated Press

China is investigating its defense minister for corruption, according to the Financial Times, the latest scandal to rock the People’s Liberation Army after a slew of high-profile purges took down both of his predecessors. – Bloomberg

Delegates of a major Indo-Pacific trade bloc will sidestep politically sensitive decisions on China and Taiwan’s membership when they meet in Canada this week, multiple people familiar with the discussions have told POLITICO. – Politico

Gregory C. Allen writes: There is simply no policy that the United States could articulate that would persuade China to abandon its goals of de-Americanization and decoupling in the semiconductor equipment sector. As the United States and allied governments consider reforms to semiconductor equipment controls, they should focus less on how to change China’s goals and more on how to make achieving those goals as expensive and complicated as possible. – Centre for Strategic and International Studies

Europe

The U.K. military deployed around 60 personnel to help protect U.S. military bases in East England after a spate of mystery drone sightings. – Wall Street Journal

Italy on Tuesday said there were “many doubts” about an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying it was not feasible to arrest him as long as he remained in charge of the government. – Reuters

The European Union needs to boost its defence role and arms industry and improve cooperation with NATO, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Tuesday after talks with the military alliance’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte. – Reuters

France’s draft 2025 budget and medium-term plan to bring down public debt are in line with EU rules and credible, while spending plans of the normally frugal Netherlands are too high, the European Commission said on Tuesday. – Reuters

Sweden is asking a Chinese vessel to return to Swedish waters to help facilitate an investigation into recent breaches of undersea fibre-optic cables in the Baltic Sea, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Tuesday, but stressed he was not making any accusations. – Reuters

Europe needs to take more risks, spend more, be faster and cut bureaucracy to win the new global arms race, a top NATO commander told POLITICO. – Politico

European Union member countries want to gut a list of critical technologies that would be subject to foreign direct investment (FDI) screening, three EU diplomats told POLITICO, in a move that could make it easier for them to fall into the hands of unfriendly powers like China. – Politico

Lucas F. Hellemeier writes: Despite Trump’s insistence to cut down on U.S. security commitments to Europe, the incoming president’s transactional approach will likely exacerbate existing dependencies, pushing European countries to prioritize U.S. procurement over building autonomous capacities. While European defense spending may increase, the strategic alignment of those resources could drift toward reinforcing bilateral ties to Washington, rather than fostering a genuinely integrated and self-sustaining European defense industry. – War On The Rocks

Garvan Walshe writes: On Feb. 3, 2022, just three weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Russian navy conducted mysterious exercises in a surprising location: off the Irish coast. Coincidentally, of course, the exercises took place directly above a point dense with trans-Atlantic data cables, three quarters of which pass near Ireland. These were not routine exercises, and Russia did not ask for permission to conduct them, but the incident exposed Ireland’s inability to deter attacks on waters within its exclusive economic zone. – Foreign Policy

The Americas

Chile launched a preliminary investigation into a sexual harassment complaint against President Gabriel Boric on Tuesday in a blow to his leftwing administration that is grappling with a separate scandal involving sexual abuse and low poll ratings. – Reuters

United Nations evacuation flights are set to land in Panama City this week as the international organization removes staff from Haiti due to a sharp escalation in violence by armed gangs that have expanded their control over the capital Port-au-Prince. – Reuters

Brazil’s federal police presented evidence to the Supreme Court that former President Jair Bolsonaro was directly involved in plotting a coup to overturn the outcome of the 2022 election he lost, according to an 884-page report unsealed on Tuesday. – Reuters

Chile President Gabriel Boric’s lawyer said sexual harassment allegations against the head of state are false as a new scandal grips the government, just weeks after a former top official was charged with rape. – Bloomberg

United States

The array of issues that top diplomats from the United States and allied nations tried to tackle in Rome over two days this week was dizzying: embattled Ukraine, multiple Middle East conflicts, the Sudan civil war and other hostilities in Africa, instability in Haiti and Venezuela, and tensions arising from military actions by China and North Korea. – New York Times

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has agreed to testify publicly at a House of Representatives committee hearing on the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, the panel said on Tuesday, after a long dispute with the Republican-led committee. – Reuters

The Biden administration kept President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration closely apprised of its efforts to broker the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah that took effect early Wednesday, according to the outgoing Democratic administration. – Associated Press

After nearly three years of fighting, people in the U.S. appear to be growing weary of aiding Ukraine in its war with Russia. A new poll found that over half of the country now opposes sending aid and weapons to Ukraine. – Washington Examiner

A war between the United States and Russia or China is not unlikely, as “it can happen at any time,” U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warned during a speech recently. – Newsweek

Editorial: Trump should seek to build on this progress. In addition to cajoling allies to spend more, the US should push Europe to expand its capabilities and gradually take on more responsibility for conventional operations. Improved defense-funding mechanisms and procurement protocols should be a priority. Strengthened coordination on global threats from China’s militarization to attacks on undersea infrastructure to cyberaggression would serve the alliance well. The president-elect should see that fracturing the alliance would not only empower the US’s enemies and jeopardize Europe’s stability — it will also put America’s own security and prosperity at risk. – Bloomberg

Scott Kennedy writes: Washington should intensify multilateral cooperation to set new rules for global economic activity in order to avoid a race to the bottom. The United States may in some instances need to take unilateral steps to maintain its relative technology superiority, but excessive economic security measures will mean less innovation, slower economic growth, reduced profits, and fewer jobs. With a combination of wise domestic policies, collaboration with allies, and investment in international institutions, the United States can achieve both prosperity and security. – Foreign Affairs

Bryan Burack writes: Time is of the essence. Ending outbound investment in China is a matter of protecting the United States’ remaining technological edge and preventing further erosion of the military balance. China has already leveraged U.S. financing and technology to conduct gain-of-function research in Wuhan, develop hypersonic weapons the United States cannot counter, and operate high-altitude surveillance balloons over the continental United States. China should not be allowed to exploit the U.S. economy against U.S. national security for a single day more. – Heritage Foundation

Defense

Two B-52 Stratofortress bombers of the United States were intercepted by two Russian SU-27 fighter jets near Russia’s Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad on Monday, a U.S. official said on Tuesday. – Reuters

The United States has upgraded its naval power to keep China at bay by deploying an advanced nuclear-powered submarine to a key Pacific Ocean strategic outpost.- Newsweek

If NATO’s European members are to fully harness commercial-space offerings, the alliance must lower bureaucratic and financial barriers, industry executives say. – Defense One

Todd Harrison writes: Nearly everyone in Washington recognizes that the Pentagon is in dire need of reform, including many of the people that lead or have led the Pentagon. Defense reform is not and should not be a partisan issue, but it cannot help being a political issue because politics is about the allocation of resources within society: who gets what. The budget is a key tool for reforming defense, but reformers should remember that the budget is ultimately an expression of political values. How much security and what kind of security the nation wants is a value judgement made by elected and appointed leaders that represent the people. – Defense One

Seth G. Jones writes: The U.S. also needs to cut defense-contracting regulations to make it easier for commercial firms, including start-ups, to work with the Pentagon. The U.S. has some of the most innovative companies in unmanned systems, sensors and artificial intelligence. But many of their products never make it from prototype to contract because Defense Department acquisition processes are often prohibitively long and burdensome. Fortunately, there is a growing bipartisan consensus that the U.S. needs to revitalize its defense industrial base. – Wall Street Journal