Full-blown ground war in Yemen; Gulf blessing for Iran deal; Smarter, deadlier drones; Sailors board Ford; And a bit more.
The war in Yemen has moved from air campaign to full-blown ground offensive. Not long after some 2,800 Saudi-led troops, including a brigade from the United Arab Emirates, landed in the port city of Aden this weekend, they joined Yemeni troops in clearing most of the Houthi rebels from the country’s largest air base, Al-Anad, “once the site of U.S. intelligence [and drone] operations against al-Qaida’s powerful Yemeni affiliate,” AP reports this morning.
“It took several days to capture Al-Anad, with pro-government troops, backed by tanks and armored personnel carriers, pushing toward the base as coalition airstrikes cleared the path for their advance. Military officials said allied fighters had cut off the main road between al-Anad and the embattled city of Taiz for the first time since the Houthis took control of it in March.”
“The UAE and the Saudis are putting a lot into this,” a senior U.S. military official told the New York Times, adding that it shows both countries’ “concerns over Iran’s expanding influence.” The addition of Emirati troops also “marks the first time a large foreign force had entered the ground war” in Yemen.
The Houthis’ spin machine, naturally, cast Monday’s developments very differently. “A report Tuesday by the Houthi-run Saba news agency denied that Al Anad base had been taken,” the Wall Street Journal reports, adding that the Houthis say they’ve “‘crushed all [coalition] offensives’ against the base and destroyed scores of military vehicles.”
What’s next for Riyadh’s coalition? Advancing further north to clear Houthis from the rest of Aden’s Lahj province, WSJ notes, citing a local spokesman for the coalition-aligned Popular Resistance forces who led the operation.
Kerry gets Gulf blessing for Iran deal. The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council on Monday threw their support behind one of U.S. President Barack Obama’s premiere foreign-policy gambles.
“This was the best option amongst other options in order to try to come up with a solution for the nuclear weapons of Iran through dialogue, and this came up as a result of the efforts exerted by the United States of America and its allies,” said the foreign minister of Qatar, the nation that currently chairs the GCC.
Deal sweeteners. Kerry “said the United States would expedite military sales and assistance that President Obama promised in May,” the Washington Post’s Carol Morello reports from Doha. Those perks include “more intelligence-sharing, special forces training and exercises, ballistic-missile defense systems, cybersecurity and maritime interdiction of weapons. Kerry also pledged $62 million in humanitarian aid to assist Iraqis displaced by the sectarian violence in their country.”
“The GCC support leaves Israel as the only country in the Middle East to vehemently oppose the agreement,” Morello writes.
Meanwhile back stateside, the White House is gaining support on the Democratic side for the deal, which Congress is set to vote on in September. Based on an “extensive review,” Iran deal skeptic and ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has changed his tune, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg writes.
“Rejection of the deal would not lead to something credible,” Schiff said. “The U.S. and Israel share the same imperative: to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. There is not division of interest here. I am comfortable saying that this deal is in the best interest of Israel, as well as the best interest of the United States.” Read Goldberg’s full interview with Schiff here.
But there are still a lot of fence-sitters in Congress, and WaPo’s Mike DeBonis rolls them up—along with a status report on the White House’s veto math—here.
From Japan to Israel to Eastern Europe, America is on a diplomatic reassurance offensive, and U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter is leading the charge, NYT’s Helene Cooper writes.
Still, the U.S. needs to offer even more reassurance, argue the German Marshall Fund’s Derek Cholet and CNAS’ Julianne Smith in Defense One. This requires a few things, they say:
First, realize that “easing fully the anxieties of our allies would require a level of resources that would be very difficult to muster and even harder to maintain...The next President will have to be more creative as he or she seeks to balance competing demands in a way that is effective, realistic and sustainable,” Cholet and Smith write.
“Second, the defense budget must rise.” Read the rest here.
When to go to war? U.S. academics, public disagree. A new study from researchers at William & Mary and the University of Wisconsin “asked an identical set of questions about war to a random sample of Americans and academics who study international relations,” and “found that in almost all situations, the public is more likely to support wars than the experts are.” Vox puts the study in context over here.
From Defense One
Smarter, deadlier drones: The U.S. Air Force wants to upgrade its MQ-9 Reapers so they can be sent into non-permissive airspace with a wider array of weaponry. Defense One Technology Editor Patrick Tucker reports.
Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of The D Brief, from Ben Watson and Brad Peniston. Want to share The D Brief with a friend? Find our subscribe link here. And please tell us what you like, don’t like, or want to drop on our radar right here at the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
The Nusra Front has reportedly captured five more U.S.-trained rebels in Syria, AFP’s Iraq bureau chief Jean-Marc Mojon reports this morning. As well, U.S. officials believe the first U.S.-trained rebel was killed Friday in clashes with Nusra fighters, Reuters reported last night. Citing operational security, Pentagon officials declined to elaborate.
Need a refresher on the battle lines inside Syria? The Guardian has you covered with this explainer on the dire straits facing the Assad regime in Damascus along with a map courtesy of the folks at the Institute for the Study of War.
The coalition air campaign will not end soon, according to British Defense Minister Michael Fallon, who just announced that Britain has extended its air campaign against ISIS through March 2017, AFP reports.
The U.S. has begun launching armed drone flights from Turkey’s Incirlik air base, WaPo reported yesterday.
And a bit eastward, the lines are getting blurry near that planned “ISIS-free” zone the U.S. and Turkey agreed upon. An anxious Ankara doesn’t want Kurds to inhabit the space despite the fact that the Kurdish YPG militia is “the most effective ground force fighting the Islamic State,” WSJ reports.
Turkey’s internal strife continues. Kurdish PKK rebels reportedly ambushed Turkish troops in the southeastern Sirnak province, bringing the total number of Ankara troops killed in the last 10 days to at least 30, AP reports this morning.
Today, Pentagon reps head west to the land of tech giants. Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work and Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall are wheels up for California today, continuing the Defense Department's push to deepen relations with the tech community. Defense One’s Marcus Weisgerber, who is along for the ride, sends us this: Work and Kendall are scheduled to visit the Pentagon’s new Silicon Valley outreach office (dubbed the Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental), drop by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and observe a massive Army exercise at the National Training Center. They’re also scheduled to meet with former Defense Secretary Bill Perry. Check back here later for Weisgerber’s report from sunny California.
Fear and posturing in New Hampshire: From Defense One Politics Reporter Molly O’Toole, here’s a sample of what voters heard when 14 GOP presidential candidates took the stage at Monday’s “Voters First Forum”: “China is taking over the South China Sea. Russia’s threatening the unity of Europe and NATO. Iran is on the verge of acquiring not just a nuclear weapon—but as Senator [Ted] Cruz pointed out—the ability to deliver it to the United States,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said. “Radical jihadists have now spread across multiple continents across the world, and some are even located here within the United States.”
Cruz, R-Texas, went further, framing the Iran deal itself as “the single greatest national security threat facing America…If this administration is responsible for sending billions of dollars to Iran, and those billions go to jihadists who use that money to murder Americans, Israelis, and Europeans, then this administration is responsible.”
Not to be outdone by his fellow senators, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said, “As the threats to this country grow, we’re disarming ourselves and we’re moving to neuter the FBI and the CIA at the time we need it the most.” Graham’s synopsis, which is a campaign slogan if we’ve ever heard one: “Too many terrorists, too much debt, too few jobs.” Read more on the New Hampshire forum over here.
Sailors board Ford. About 240 “mostly junior” sailors have lugged their seabags aboard the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, now in “the final stages of construction at Newport News Shipbuilding,” reports the Daily Press. They are the first to live aboard the $13 billion, first-in-class ship, blazing trail for the untold thousands who will call it home over the next 50 years.
Are nuclear forces unaffordable? The Pentagon’s nuclear triad is aging, and replacing its subs, bombers, missiles, and weapons will come with a huge price tag — well, just how huge? Today at 2 p.m. EST, at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, Todd Harrison and Evan Montgomery will roll out their best estimate in a new report, “The Cost of U.S. Nuclear Forces: From BCA to Bow Wave and Beyond.”
Construction halted on Okinawa airfield. The U.S. Marines are trying to move their air station from the busy city of Futenma to a new one elsewhere in the prefecture — but local residents don’t want it there at all. The new governor, elected last year in a wave of anti-base fervor, has forced a monthlong suspension of work while legal questions are reviewed. Read more at Reuters and Stars & Stripes.
A recent “clean” audit of the Marine Corps’ accounting practices is called into question. “The Marine Corps ‘schedule of budgetary activity,’ which was for fiscal 2012, wasn’t thoroughly evaluated by the inspector general for the completeness of reported transactions,” Bloomberg’s Tony Capaccio wrote yesterday after getting his hands on a new GAO report. Catch all the gritty details here.