Hostage and wrongful detention cases remain a key US national security priority regardless of the fact that they represent a relatively small number of instances, as their impacts reverberate well beyond the hostage and their family. Countries like China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela have adopted the practice of wrongful detention—hostage-taking by state actors—precisely because they
In Season 2, Episode 6 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi chats with defense researcher Jack Margolin about his new book on the Wagner Group. They focus on its operations in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the country’s central place within the Wagner subculture. They also discuss the ever-present profit motive
Download PDF A year after the Hamas attacks that led to war in Gaza, there can be no doubt: This latest outbreak of violence in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict has wrought by far the most significant damage, expanding to include attacks on shipping in the Red Sea by the Houthis, Israeli operations against Hezbollah in
In 1982, up to six divisions of the Israeli army charged into Lebanon to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). They reached the outskirts of Beirut in nine days, launching a two-month siege of the Lebanese capital that ended with the departure of the PLO. In the 2006 war against Hezbollah, Israel anticipated that
Hamas is headless. On Thursday, Israel confirmed that it had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in southern Gaza. The terrorist group’s top commander was the architect of the October 7, 2023 attack in Israel that killed 1,200 people. Israel has “settled its account” with the Hamas leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, adding that
The Iranian attack against Israel on October 1 did not take place in a void. It was strongly connected to the significant Israeli military success against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the failure of Iranian proxies to force Israel to stop the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. To better understand the origins of this
Although the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was officially defeated by coalition forces in 2019, its offshoot branch focused on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia has recently pursued high-profile attacks outside of the region. Central Asian nationals, particularly Tajiks, carried out many of the recent Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) attacks and plots in Europe
He certainly didn’t know it, but Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah signed his death warrant on July 27. That day, an errant Hezbollah rocket landed on a soccer field in Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, where it killed twelve children—Israeli by citizenship but Syrian Druze by ethnicity. Hezbollah deployed every rhetorical and propaganda trick possible
The ongoing Israel-Iran hostilities risk disrupting global oil markets and reigniting inflation. But the United States and its allies should not hesitate to release strategic reserves if this conflict threatens to spike oil prices. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) of crude oil is currently well-stocked for domestic needs. After accounting for fifty-two-week averages of
History sometimes gets stuck on a bad outcome, without any hope of altering it at acceptable risk and over a reasonable time frame. For more than thirty years, that has been the case with Iran’s destabilization of the Middle East alongside its proxy network, which includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Houthis
