| DAILY ALERT |
Sunday, January 4, 2026 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
According to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, the U.S. struck a facility in or near the port city of Maracaibo linked to the assembly of Iranian drones. Hizbullah was responsible for setting up domestic assembly for Iranian-designed drones such as the ANSU-100 at Maracaibo. Hizbullah operatives provided the expertise needed to weaponize these drones. Hizbullah also ran a Margarita Island facility which served as Hizbullah's most critical operational base in the Western Hemisphere. The facility was a hub for document forgery, allowing operatives to obtain Venezuelan identification and travel throughout Latin America undetected. There was a paramilitary training center on the island, managed by the Nassereddine clan (a family with deep ties to Hizbullah and senior Venezuelan officials). In addition, the facility was also a consequential money laundering operation. The writer is a former U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense. (Substack) Tear gas filled the air as Iranian security forces attacked a crowd of protesters in central Tehran last week, hitting them with batons and firing rubber bullets into their faces. Arash Sadeghi, a human rights activist who has spent years in Iranian prisons, watched as plainclothes agents and Revolutionary Guards militiamen beat women and teenagers, and loaded others into steel mesh cages mounted on the back of riot police vehicles. "They showed no mercy," he said. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Saturday that "rioters must be put in their place." He also reiterated claims that foreign powers were behind the protests. There have now been demonstrations in more than 100 locations in 22 of Iran's 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said. (Sunday Times-UK) Royal Air Force Typhoon jets have joined French aircraft in a joint strike on an Islamic State underground arms cache in Syria in mountains just north of Palmyra, the UK Ministry of Defence says. (BBC News) Pro-Palestinian activists wearing kaffiyehs attacked machinery at the Bruntons Aero Products site outside Edinburgh, Scotland, on Thursday. The firm appeared to have been targeted because it supplies specialist parts for defense companies Leonardo and BAE Systems, both of which have been criticized for their alleged links to Israel. Baroness Foster reacted to footage of the hammer-wielding activists damaging CNC machines, servers, and computers in a post on X: "Treason and terrorism...all rolled into one." (Telegraph-UK) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar wrote on X on Saturday: "Israel commends the United States' operation, led by President Trump, which acted as the leader of the Free World. At this historic moment, Israel stands alongside the freedom-loving Venezuelan people, who have suffered under Maduro's illegal tyranny. Israel welcomes the removal of the dictator who led a network of drugs and terror and hopes for the return of democracy to the country and for friendly relations between the states." "The people of Venezuela deserve to exercise their democratic rights. South America deserves a future free from the axis of terror and drugs." (Jerusalem Post) Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez told state television that the operation to capture President Nicolas Maduro has "Zionist fingerprints." (Ynet News) Israeli officials see Saturday's U.S. military attack on Venezuela as a blow to the Iranian axis, which has established itself in the country in recent decades through Hizbullah and the Revolutionary Guards. Jerusalem views the Maduro regime as Iran's gateway to Latin America. Senior Revolutionary Guards figures have acquired Venezuelan citizenship, allowing them to move freely throughout South America and expand Iran's influence in the region. Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez, severed diplomatic relations with Jerusalem in 2009. Since the days Chavez was in power, the Islamic Republic has been one of Venezuela's main allies, with extensive economic and military cooperation. Aiding Hizbullah's entrenchment in Venezuela is the country's large Lebanese community. Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, said Iran has used Venezuela as a base for terrorist cells, including one involved in a plot to assassinate Israel's ambassador to Mexico, which was thwarted by Mexican authorities in November. The Israeli government would prefer to see as president Edmundo Gonzalez, the diplomat and opposition figure who ran against Maduro in 2024 and who, according to extensive evidence, actually won the election. (Ha'aretz) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Jewish community leaders in Florida on Dec. 31, 2025: "We have changed Jewish history with the establishment of the sovereign Jewish state and the sovereign Jewish army....We restored the capacity of the Jewish people to defend themselves by themselves." "It's the spirit of our forefathers. It's the spirit of the heroes of Israel. It's the spirit of the Maccabees that has been reincarnated in the modern State of Israel - the bravery of our soldiers, the resolute stance of our people....Our enemies saw that we would do what is necessary to protect the life of our state and the life of our citizens." "For many, they see the wonder of Israel. They see how this small nation, gigantic in talent and in spirit, can take on enemies 10, 20 times their size and win....Israel has come out of this war stronger than ever before militarily, stronger than ever before economically....That bodes well for the future, because you make alliances with the strong, you make peace with the strong, and we have opened up opportunities for peace that have never existed before." "Just as we fight the physical battle on the battlefield and we win, we must also fight the battle for truth. We must also stand up to the scourge of antisemitism that endangers not only us, but every society it has infected. It starts with the Jews, it never ends with the Jews." "The last thing you should do [with antisemitic attacks] is lower your head and seek cover....You should stand up and be counted. You should fight back. You should speak up. You should attack your attackers. You should delegitimize the delegitimizers....Nobody will fight for you more than you fight for yourself. That's what happens when Israel fights for itself." (Prime Minister's Office) Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) "practiced advancing an extreme anti-Israeli narrative under the guise of humanitarian activity," according to Israeli government documents viewed by the Jerusalem Post. The organization is one of several dozen NGOs prohibited from operating in Gaza and the West Bank since January 1. Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli said MSF maintained active ties to terrorist organizations: in June 2024, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative was identified as an MSF employee, and in September 2024, another MSF employee was identified as a Hamas sniper. "Despite repeated and explicit demands," MSF did not provide full transparency regarding the identities, roles, and activities of those individuals. "The message is unequivocal: humanitarian aid is welcome; terror under the guise of humanitarianism is not," said Chikli. An MSF employee in Gaza, Fadi Al-Wadiya, was revealed to be a senior operative of Islamic Jihad and an expert in rocket systems. Another staff member, Mahmoud Abunejeila, has publicly expressed support for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The IDF said the 24 organizations that have not been banned are producing 99% of the total aid and that the current ban changes nothing on the ground. (Jerusalem Post) Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the IDF to prepare for the possibility of returning to intense fighting against Hamas in Gaza, Walla learned on Friday. (Jerusalem Post) In one of his first acts in office on Thursday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani revoked the city's implementation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which says that some forms of Israel criticism are antisemitic. The definition has been adopted by a broad range of national and local governments worldwide. It says that denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination is discriminatory, and says it is antisemitic to claim "that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor." Mamdani also nullified an order that opposed the campaign to boycott Israel. Mamdani is a longtime supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel. (Times of Israel) See also Mamdani Revokes Ban on Protesting in Front of Synagogues - Etan Nechin (Ha'aretz) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran Many protests have been crushed over the decades in Iran. If the administration wants this time to be different, it will need to oversee a patient, sustained campaign of maximum pressure against the government. Iran is deeply degraded. The country's regional proxies are in disarray. Israel has shown an ability to inflict pain deep inside Iran's borders - hitting critical military facilities and targeting nuclear scientists. UN sanctions went into effect in September, and the rial is at a record low. Spontaneous street protests have grown every day. The optimal strategy is to economically squeeze the regime as hard as possible at this moment of maximum vulnerability. More stringent enforcement of existing oil sanctions would go a long way. President Joe Biden undermined the progress Trump had made in his first term on maximum pressure and strengthened Iran as he sought to revive an obviously dead nuclear deal. Beyond the moral case, hard-nosed realism makes clear that weakening Iran is the right move. The country props up Maduro in Venezuela and supplies the Russian war machine in Ukraine. The reality is that Trump is comfortable intervening abroad when he senses weakness and an opportunity to advance American interests. The Islamic Republic won't last forever, and perhaps it will survive this bout of discontent, but squeezing consistently will have positive knock-on effects for U.S. policy far beyond the Middle East. (Washington Post) I was a witness to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 while serving as military attache and head of the Israel Ministry of Defense mission in Iran. The Iranian regime enjoys significant support from the residents of tens of thousands of villages in Iran, a population that is significantly behind urban residents and opposes any process of modernization or profound change. The most important condition that could significantly undermine the regime's stability, similar to that which occurred in the 1979 revolution, is a prolonged general strike by the country's central sectors, primarily the oil and gas sector. Another significant factor is the defection of security forces from the regime to the side of the people. Yet another condition is the continued economic and environmental deterioration. When conditions are created in which many families struggle to meet their children's basic needs, a sense of helplessness that extends across broad segments of the population can shift to explosive public outrage. Another factor is the urgent need for internal leadership with broad public legitimacy. Past experience shows that justified popular protests that failed to organize into a clear political force faded and did not bring about real change. (Jerusalem Post) Iran's currency has slumped to a historic low against the dollar and inflation is surging. Iran isn't a typical candidate for a currency crisis. It is oil-rich, with an educated population and a glistening stock of foreign reserves. The issue is that its economic problems have a specific political source: Its leaders won't contemplate dialing back their nuclear program, which the U.S. and its allies fear is a cover for developing an atomic weapon. Barring a deal over its nuclear program, "Iran is likely to continue limping along toward deeper economic insolvency, recurrent protest cycles, and a default reliance on force rather than reform to maintain control," said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London think tank. Iran has suffered from years of economic mismanagement. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls much of the economy and much of the government's budget outlays. Patronage systems allocate jobs, public-works contracts, cheap loans and access to foreign cash, hollowing out the entrepreneurial class. But it is the immediate aftermath of the disastrous war with Israel that brought the swift dive in the Iranian rial and the latest crisis. For years, international sanctions have restricted Iran's ability to bank and trade with the rest of the world. Nor can it access the bulk of its foreign-exchange reserves held offshore; international banks don't allow transfers to Tehran because of sanctions. "Without access to reserves, the artificial pressure on the rial won't subside," said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, chief executive of Iran-focused think tank Bourse & Bazaar. The cash-strapped government is now running out of options to cushion its population from the impact of sanctions, said Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. A poll in October 2024 found that 78% of Iranians see Tehran's foreign policy as the cause of their economic problems, according to the Middle East Institute. 47% of Iranians want Tehran to halt uranium enrichment to prevent another war, while 36% want the program to continue, according to a November survey by Gamaan, a Netherlands-based research group. (Wall Street Journal) Political Islam The occasional terrorist acts flaring up around the world, often by self-radicalized Islamic State sympathizers, overshadow the broader trajectory of political Islam in the Middle East and beyond. "Jihadism and radicalism are in demise. And that's because they have never had a successful model to present to society, not once in the past 100 years," said Hemin Hawrami, former deputy parliament speaker of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region. The ideology of modern political Islam emerged with the Muslim Brotherhood's founding in 1928. It sought a utopian new world, aspiring to overthrow the global order or, at a minimum, the contemporary Muslim nation-states. The dream of a pan-Islamic caliphate fueled transnational jihadist networks. Now, this wave is receding. The Islamists that have managed to gain power proclaim their desire to go local, instead of worldwide holy war. To them, the nation-state is something to be developed, not erased. "There is a retreat from the transnational utopian element, both on the violent level and on the political level, the level of the caliphate," said Turkish scholar of Islamist politics Mustafa Akyol, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Part of this transformation is the direct result of American-led wars overseas: Many Islamist leaders realized that transnational ambitions carry an unacceptable cost. (Wall Street Journal) Somaliland Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, has sharply criticized Arab countries and other opponents for their condemnation of Israel's recognition of Somaliland as an independent state, describing their reaction as a clear case of double standards. Danon pointed out the inconsistency that when countries unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, it is accepted without discussion or objection. But when Israel exercises its sovereign right to recognize Somaliland - a stable, democratic entity that has functioned independently for over three decades - the Security Council rushes to convene an emergency session. In statements on X on Jan. 2, Danon emphasized that establishing a state for Somaliland "is not a choice but a necessity and not a favor but a right - the integral right of the people of Somaliland." He noted that such rhetoric - said first by Algeria's foreign minister at the UN General Assembly in September - drew support and applause when applied to Palestinians, but draws condemnation when applied to Somaliland. "In the UN, you have one standard for the Palestinians and another standard for the entire world - shameful." (Somaliland Standard) Other Issues Last year, during Hanukkah, on the Gaza front, Britain's Col. Richard Kemp, a veteran of 30 years of service and a seasoned commander in combat zones across the globe, stood alongside my IDF unit to light the candles. Col. Kemp highlighted three key reasons for the IDF's exceptional commitment to safeguarding civilian lives during the conflict. First, he emphasized Israel's democratic principles and Western values, underlining its inherent desire for peace and self-defense. Second, he acknowledged the profound influence of Judaism's moral standards, the nation's ethical foundation. Last, he commended the army's composition of citizen soldiers, its ordinary individuals called upon to defend their homes with unflinching dedication. He said, "No army takes such risks to protect civilians as the Israeli army does. I say this as a professional soldier. I say it because it's true, and people who care about truth should know it....The IDF are our friends and allies, and they are fighting the same war we are to protect Western civilization. How could any civilized and right-thinking Westerner not support that fight?" (Times of Israel) On Jan. 9, 2026, Mahmoud Abbas will begin his 22nd year of his first four-year term as Chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA). According to PA law, elections for the position of PA Chairman/President are to be held every four years and an incumbent can only serve for two terms. The last elections for the position were held in 2005. As the elections were boycotted by Hamas, only 802,077 Palestinians actually cast their ballot, of which only 501,448 voted for Abbas - 28% of the potential 1,760,481 voters. Abbas knows perfectly well why he has never allowed additional elections to be held. The last polls published in October 2025 show that only 23% of Palestinians were satisfied with his performance and 80% want him to resign. The writer, former director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria, is director of the Palestinian Authority Accountability Initiative at the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Israeli startups raised $1.635 billion in December, the strongest month since 2022. Cybersecurity, healthcare and life sciences, and artificial intelligence companies benefited the most. (Calcalist) Observations: The Keffiyeh Crew's Curious Silence on Iran - Brendan O'Neill (Spectator-UK)
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