Fdd's overnight brief

Israel

Israel and the Red Cross accused Hamas of staging the recovery of a hostage’s body this week, the latest in a string of incidents straining a cease-fire that the Trump administration is trying to hold together. – Wall Street Journal

The Israeli military said it would return to upholding a cease-fire in Gaza, as the fragile deal continued to hold despite increasingly frequent flare-ups of violence. – Wall Street Journal

The Israeli military said on Wednesday it conducted a “targeted” strike in the area of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip targeting an infrastructure site where weapons were stored. – Reuters

Pope Leo XIV acknowledged Wednesday that there had been misunderstandings and conflicts with Jews over Israel’s war in Gaza. But he strongly confirmed the Catholic Church’s condemnation of antisemitism and commitment to fighting it as part of Christians’ Gospel-mandated friendship with the Jewish people. – Associated Press

Tensions over the controversial haredi (ultra-Orthodox) conscription law have continued to escalate ahead of Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chair MK Boaz Bismuth’s expected presentation of the bill’s outline next week, with a massive haredi protest scheduled for Thursday in Jerusalem. – Jerusalem Post 

Israel is seeking “the disarming of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza,” which “will be achieved,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during his first official visit to US Central Command (CENTCOM)’s Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat on Wednesday. – Jerusalem Post 

Roughly 6,000 Palestinians looking for work illegally crossed the security barrier outside Jerusalem in 2025, the Knesset’s National Security Committee was told Wednesday. – Jerusalem Post

US President Donald Trump vetoed an Israeli proposal to shift the yellow line in the Gaza Strip and expand IDF control in response to a serious ceasefire violation by Hamas that resulted in the death of Master Sergeant (Res.) Yona Efraim Feldbaum. – Arutz Sheva 

A commander in the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization, claimed the group succeeded in downing Israeli UAVs in Judea and Samaria and extracting intelligence data from them. – Arutz Sheva 

Executives at Israel Aerospace Industries are awaiting news on the U.S. Golden Dome missile shield architecture, hoping that defense leaders here will consider the company’s Arrow interceptor technology for two layers of the project, according to IAI chief executive Boaz Levy. – Defense News

Editorial: Continue the search with professionalism. Keep the channels open when they produce results, and shut them when they are abused. Press the case with allies and mediators, using facts, not only fury. And insist that those who turned a grave into a set be named, sanctioned, and judged. Israel fights to survive. It should also fight to live by a standard that refuses to let any person, under any circumstances, become a staged corpse in the service of terrorism. – Jerusalem Post

Liron Rose and Amit Shavi write: The strike in Doha upended the game. It forced every double-playing actor to choose a side. It exposed Qatar’s facade of neutrality, put it on the defensive, and made it clear to the Saudis that one cannot have it both ways. It derailed Macron’s initiative, neutralized Qatar’s maneuvering, and restored a regional order in which the US and Israel once again set the rules. If the 20th century was a game of checkers – fast, flat, and predictable – the 21st century is chess. Every move is calculated several steps ahead, and a single mistake can topple kings. The Israeli strike in Doha was not merely a show of force; it was a game-changing move, a strategic gambit that redefined the region’s rules. Israel did not strike Doha to eliminate Hamas leaders but to rewrite the Middle East’s playbook. – Jerusalem Post

Russia and Ukraine

The Trump administration’s nominee for a top federal position promoting international commerce has withdrawn his candidacy amid scrutiny of his role as a senior executive at a steel-trading business co-owned by one of Russia’s richest oligarchs, and his relations by marriage to a Russian family with extensive ties to the Kremlin. – Washington Post 

President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia had successfully tested a Poseidon nuclear-powered super torpedo that military analysts say is capable of devastating coastal regions by triggering vast radioactive ocean swells. – Reuters

Ukrainian forces are struggling to fend off intensifying Russian advances on the eastern city of Pokrovsk, the military and open-source analysts said on Wednesday. Moscow’s troops have in recent weeks closed in on the key logistics hub after more than a year of grinding advances, which Kyiv says have come at a staggering human cost to Russia. – Reuters

A group of young Russian street musicians who went viral on social media for playing banned anti-Kremlin songs received more jail time on Wednesday, as authorities crack down on buskers who have staged performances across Russia in support of them. – Reuters

Editorial: Over the longer term, strengthening defenses will be vital. Improving Europe’s grid resilience and protecting critical infrastructure will limit the damage Russia can cause with small-scale attacks and force President Vladimir Putin to weigh the risks of escalating. Taiwan has shown that inoculating the public against gray-zone disinformation campaigns can blunt their impact. Finally, the best way to demonstrate the futility of these attacks is to bolster Europe’s conventional defenses and support for Ukraine, both military and financial. If Putin confronts a more formidable Europe and a weakened Russian military, he may rethink the wisdom of his shadow war. – Bloomberg

Daniel F. Runde writes: With broad coalition support, confiscating the assets can transform a symbolic freeze into real consequences for Russia’s belligerence. Confiscating frozen Russian sovereign assets by all the G7 democracies would be the next option on the table to impose costs on Russia. This step needs to be thought through to ensure that all other G7 nations follow America’s lead. This step would show that aggression has a price. If the Trump administration were to say, “We will confiscate these assets if Europe confiscates these assets,” Europe would likely be pressured into following suit. – The National Interest

Dimitar Bechev writes: In the end, Russia was unable to effectively use oil and gas as a means of coercion. Even the threat of soaring prices has not deterred its Western adversaries from sanctioning its energy assets. In fact, the international oil market has remained surprisingly stable, as OPEC+ announced plans to raise output. The trade in hydrocarbons certainly helped Russia buy favor and deepen interdependence when times were good. But when the going got tough, Moscow discovered that consumers wield as much power as producers. – Foreign Policy

Middle East & North Africa

The world’s largest multilateral climate fund has made its largest financial commitment to date to help build a $6 billion water desalination project in Jordan, its top executive said. – Reuters

Egypt’s Kemet Industries Group signed a memorandum of understanding with Emirati-Chinese Al Qalaa Red Flag group to build three industrial projects in Suez Canal Economic Zone’s Ain Sokhna Industrial Zone, SCZONE said in a statement on Wednesday. – Reuters

Paraguay plans to open a consulate in Western Sahara, joining African and Arab countries that have established diplomatic missions there in a sign of support for Morocco’s claim to the disputed territory, the Moroccan foreign ministry said on Wednesday. – Reuters

Turkey’s deal to buy 20 Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets from Britain for 8 billion pounds ($10.7 billion) also includes a comprehensive weapons package, including MBDA Meteor air-to-air missiles and Brimstone ground attack missiles, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. – Reuters

Syria’s president pitched his country to the titans gathered at Saudi Arabia’s flagship financial event on Wednesday, touting it as a trade corridor that is ripe for even more than the $28 billion in foreign investment he said it had attracted this year. – Reuters

A prominent activist in Bahrain imprisoned since the country’s 2011 Arab Spring protests began a new hunger strike Wednesday, seeking to pressure the island kingdom and Europe over his internationally criticized detention. – Associated Press

Morocco has charged more than 2,400 people over recent youth-led protests that turned violent, a sweeping response to some of the country’s largest anti-government demonstrations in years. – Associated Press

Senior officials in the Trump administration have recently approached top Lebanese government officials and urged them to open dialogue with Israel, several sources told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday. – Jerusalem Post 

Patricia Karam writes: Expansion of diaspora participation opens space for a different reality — one where reformist, independent and opposition voices have a fair chance to compete, and where Hezbollah’s dominance is finally broken. In the end, what is at stake is far more than a few seats in Parliament. The fight over diaspora voting is a fight over Lebanon’s future: It is Lebanon’s clearest path to breaking Hezbollah’s stranglehold on power and charting a sovereign path rooted in accountability, pluralism and the will of its people. – The Hill

China

President Trump said after meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping that the U.S. would cut tariffs on Chinese goods as part of a broader framework to reduce trade tensions. – Wall Street Journal

Days before meeting President Trump in South Korea, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping laid out the next stage in a strategy of long-term competition with the United States and the West that centers on securing a global lead in advanced manufacturing and technology. – New York Times

U.S. President Donald Trump will visit China next year, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday following talks between Trump and President Xi Jinping in South Korea. – Reuters

China said Thursday it’s on track to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 as it introduced the next crew of astronauts who will head to its space station as part of the country’s ambitious plans to be a leader in space exploration. – Associated Press

Even as China embarks on a massive military buildup, America comforts itself with an ironclad belief: As with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, superior Communist numbers will be undercut by rigid command and clumsy tactics that can be exploited by more agile U.S. forces. – Military Times

Editorial: Ukraine has also identified the Russian company Morgan LLC, which is not under U.S. sanction, as a supplier of long-range drone components for the Alabuga facility. Since 2024 Morgan imported nearly $5 million in goods from China, the report finds. That included 7,800 units of lithium-polymer batteries “listed in the documents as products for the needs of a ‘special military operation’ (as the Russian Federation calls the war unleashed in Ukraine),” the report notes. There are dozens of such examples in these reports. They add to the case for imposing secondary sanctions on Chinese businesses that aid Russia’s imperialism. – Wall Street Journal

Shohret Hoshur writes: China will one day be held accountable for its crimes. The Uyghur people will endure, strengthened by their suffering. What we ask from the world is not pity but responsibility. Stand with justice in the face of atrocity. Those who fail to do so will be judged not only by history, but by the measure of their own humanity. Let the Turkish visitors keep their free meals and their propaganda video. Their words will fade, but the truth will remain. – The Hill

Aaron Bartnick writes: These tools are also scalable, creating sector-wide conditions for success rather than picking individual winners and losers for individual awards and government control. Washington will not out‑command Beijing, and it should not try. We will win this economic competition by doubling down on the competitive advantages that helped us build the world’s most dynamic economy: setting clear rules, letting competitive markets allocate capital and drive innovation, and using policy tools for narrowly-tailored interventions that apply equally across firms. We should strive to beat China, not become it. – The National Interest

Asia

A golden crown in a golden city. Golden desserts served by a foreign leader donning a golden tie. A golden golf ball for the man proclaiming to have ushered in a “golden age.” For President Trump, much of his whirlwind diplomatic tour across Asia was golden—often quite literally. – Wall Street Journal

Radio Free Asia, one of four federally funded news organizations the Trump administration has aimed to close, will shut down its news operations on Friday for the first time since its founding in 1996, removing one of the few independent journalism outlets in Asian countries with limited press freedoms. – New York Times

The Vietnamese authorities are preventing a BBC journalist from leaving the country, holding her passport after prolonged interrogation and drawing sharp criticism from human rights advocates during a high-profile trip to Britain by Vietnam’s top leader. – New York Times   

Japan’s new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told U.S. President Donald Trump during their meeting in Tokyo that banning Russian liquefied natural gas imports would be difficult, two Japanese government officials told Reuters on Wednesday. – Reuters

Taiwan is “confident” in its relations with the U.S., Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said on Thursday, ahead of a meeting between the U.S. and Chinese presidents where the issue of the island Beijing claims as its own could come up. – Reuters

New Zealand on Thursday announced expanded sanctions on Russia’s oil industry and shadow fleet while meeting with the Nordic 5 foreign ministers in Stockholm. New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand was sanctioning a further 65 shadow fleet vessels and actors from Belarus, Iran and North Korea involved in refining and transporting Russian oil, and in facilitating oil-related payments. – Reuters

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had his first in-person meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump late on Wednesday in South Korea, ahead of a dinner hosted by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. – Reuters

Britain said on Wednesday it had agreed to a deal with Vietnam to curb illegal migration in what it described as the strongest Hanoi had ever agreed with another country. – Reuters

Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, has appealed last week’s decision by the International Criminal Court to continue its case against him and is seeking his release, court documents showed on Wednesday. – Reuters

Africa

Election season in Tanzania has followed a familiar pattern. Posters went up and ballots were mailed out. Then activists were abducted and opposition leaders were jailed. – Washington Post 

Cameroon’s opposition leader has vowed to resist until the “final victory” over President Paul Biya, calling on his supporters to stay mobilised as a civil society group denounced deaths and arrests in protests in multiple cities. – Reuters

Italy warned on Wednesday against travel to Mali because of security concerns as the government there comes under increasing pressure from al Qaeda-linked insurgents, who are imposing a fuel blockade. – Reuters

The French government is concerned about the violent repression against post-election protests in Cameroon and called the authorities to guarantee the safety and physical integrity of the country’s citizens, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. – Reuters

Liberia has replaced its mining minister and top mining regulator, the office of President Joseph Boakai announced, as the West African nation and iron ore producer pursues talks with Washington on investments in its critical minerals sector. – Reuters

Sudan’s paramilitary forces killed hundreds of people at a hospital, including patients, after they seized the provincial capital of North Darfur over the weekend, according to the U.N., displaced residents and aid workers, who described harrowing details of the atrocities. – Associated Press

United States

A group of Senate Democrats led by Chuck Schumer on Wednesday urged President Donald Trump not to lift national security restrictions on China in pursuit of a trade deal. – Reuters

The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly called for an end to a U.S. economic embargo on Cuba despite lobbying by Washington that included sharing an accusation that up to 5,000 Cubans are fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine. – Reuters

Republican and Democratic U.S. senators called for a strong response from President Donald Trump’s administration after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seized new territory in Sudan, reportedly attacking civilians. – Reuters

U.S. lawmakers have tried four times since September last year to close what they called a glaring loophole: China is getting around export bans on the sale of powerful American AI chips by renting them through U.S. cloud services instead. – Associated Press

US President Donald Trump acknowledged on Wednesday that he is “not allowed” to run for a third term due to the constitutional limits on presidential tenure. The statement, made aboard Air Force One, comes amid growing speculation among Trump supporters about a possible 2028 run. – Arutz Sheva 

Jeanne Shaheen writes: I don’t pretend that finding common ground on anything in Washington these days is easy. But I do know that both sides of the aisle and the president acknowledge the generational threat China poses. Getting this relationship right matters, and it will define America’s place in the world for the rest of the century. We can’t let our policy swing wildly back and forth or succumb to partisan politics. If we do, the consequences will be felt far from the halls of power in Washington. – Wall Street Journal

Rabbi Dovid Hofstedter and Mark Walker write: Allowing antisemitism to grow unchecked is not just a threat to Jews; it is a threat to the moral survival of the free world. The hatred that begins with the Jews never ends there. It undermines the values that sustain Western democracy — truth, justice, freedom and faith itself. We know where this road leads. We’ve seen it before. The only question is whether we have the courage to stop it before history repeats itself. Faith demands it. Freedom depends on it. And civilization itself may hinge on it. – Fox News

Defense

The Trump administration is reducing American forces in Europe as it finalizes a new defense strategy that gives priority to the U.S. military presence in the Western Hemisphere and Asia, U.S. and European officials said Wednesday. – Wall Street Journal

President Trump said that he has ordered the Pentagon to “start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis” with Russia and China. – Wall Street Journal

The U.S. military destroyed another vessel in the eastern Pacific on Wednesday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said was carrying illegal drugs toward the United States, killing four males on board whom he described as “narco-terrorists.” – Washington Post 

Lockheed Martin is investing $50 million in Saildrone to accelerate the deployment of armed, long-endurance unmanned surface vessels (USV) capable of operating across all maritime domains. – Jerusalem Post 

The Air Force says it needs to dramatically grow its fighter fleet by hundreds of manned, combat-ready jets over the next decade in order to meet expected threats to America — a massive expansion of procurement plans that may not be feasible due to funding limits and production constraints. – Breaking Defense