Today’s Top Story

Iran fired 180 missiles at Israel over the course of an hour yesterday, most of which were intercepted by Israel’s air defenses. The attack came a day after Israel launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, which Israel’s military said today will be joined by more troops, while also promising retaliation for Iran’s attack. (New York Times; Irish Times)

Our Take

Back in April, following Iran’s last major attack on Israel, we wrote that “any future standoffs between the two sides will start on a higher rung of the escalation ladder.” Indeed, that is exactly what happened yesterday: What was the conflict’s ceiling then is now the floor. That floor will also likely continue to rise, especially because Israel—having now proven the effectiveness of its defenses against Iranian attacks twice—might be less willing to show restraint.

More importantly, all of this signals that the full-blown regional conflict that observers have been so concerned about for nearly a year is now imminent, if it has not already arrived.

The U.S. in particular has been working to prevent this conflagration since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack last year. President Joe Biden even tacitly accepted the humanitarian cost to Palestinians in Gaza in the belief that doing so would maintain enough U.S. leverage over Israel to prevent the conflict from spiraling into a regional war. And for much of the past year, it seemed that those efforts were working.

So what happened? In short, Israel’s calculus changed. The main thing preventing Israel from expanding the war before had been the potential costs, but the constraints they imposed on Israel’s decision-making has significantly diminished now, for two reasons:

Most of them have already been paid, including the evacuation of northern Israel and the country’s isolation on the international stage.
Some of them have decreased, given the damage Israel has done to Hezbollah’s chain of command and arsenal, and the inability Hezbollah and Iran have shown so far to retaliate against Israel with significant effect.

Meanwhile, Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon achieved rapid and perhaps unexpected gains in September, making the benefits of escalating the conflict while momentum was on Israel’s side more tempting.

Indeed, Washington’s calculus may have changed as well, as evidenced by a messaging shift from the Biden administration in recent days. While the U.S. might not approve of the carnage and humanitarian impact that Israel’s military campaigns have unleashed, there is no displeasure in Washington from seeing Iran and its proxies weakened and humiliated. The same can be said of the Gulf states.

And while U.S. support for Israel may have had some impact on Washington’s standing in the region, the fallout has been relatively limited, even as the fighting in Gaza has wound down in intensity in recent weeks. Put simply, the U.S. has less reason to rein in Israel than it did before, especially because the eventual outcome of a wider conflict could very well be a new balance of power in the Middle East that benefits the U.S. and its regional partners.

Still, a regional conflagration creates some major risks for the Biden administration. It represents a failure to achieve its overriding goal of preventing one, and it comes at the worst possible time domestically, just over a month before the U.S. presidential election. And if the conflict takes an unexpected turn in the coming weeks, drawing the U.S. in from the sidelines, the political impact at home could be even more pronounced.

And, of course, there are the humanitarian implications. The human suffering caused by all-out war will likely be similar to what we’ve seen in Gaza over the past year in terms of intensity, only now it will be on a much wider scale. And globally, a regional conflict will have economic repercussions at a time when a cost-of-living crisis is already affecting much of the Global South.

On Our Radar

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said yesterday that the country can now produce up to 4 million drones annually, a massive jump considering drone production in Ukraine was virtually nonexistent before Russia’s all-out invasion in February 2022. Ukraine’s PM also said the country tripled its domestic weapons manufacturing in 2023 and had already doubled that amount this year.

Ukraine remains very reliant on aid from the U.S. and other Western allies for its war effort, but the delivery of that aid has grown increasingly uncertain, especially from the United States. As Zachary Popovich wrote in June, instead of relying on foreign aid, Ukraine should work with its international partners to create a domestic defense industrial base capable of producing the ammunition and defense equipment it needs to defend itself against Russia’s aggression.

A Ukrainian soldier carries a 155mm shell for use in a Ukrainian-made Bohdana howitzer.

Ukraine Needs Its Own Defense Manufacturing Base

June 27, 2024 | To win a war against Russia, Ukraine needs to reduce its reliance on foreign aid and build a stronger domestic defense industry. Read more.

A Chinese woman living in Germany has been arrested on charges of spying on behalf of Beijing. Authorities said yesterday that the woman, who worked at an airport, was accused of supplying Chinese intelligence services with information about German weapons exports.

The case is just the latest in an avalanche of arrests made in recent years by European authorities against alleged Chinese spies, as Europe becomes more aggressive in countering Beijing’s intelligence operations. As Frida Ghitis wrote in May, the ingredients for a crisis between China and the West are falling into place.

Europe’s Getting Spooked by China’s Spying

May 2, 2024 | Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Europe comes just after a tidal wave of counterespionage activity against alleged Chinese spies. Read more.

New French PM Michel Barnier spoke before parliament to present his government’s policy agenda, vowing to curb France’s debt even as he faced heckling from leftist lawmakers. Barnier’s appointment broke the political impasse created by snap parliamentary elections in July, but did little to resolve the broader crisis facing French politics. Read more in this edition of the Daily Review from last month.

The U.K. Conservative Party’s conference is taking place this week, with discussions dominated by the upcoming vote for a new Tory leader following the party’s massive electoral loss in July. Still, as Alexander Clarkson wrote in June, while many Tories blame the party’s leadership for the loss, there are much bigger structural factors that have led to the party’s demise.

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