Iran deal all but done, but natsec pros remain unsold; CIA’s secret drone war in Syria; SecNav sees female Marine infantry; And a bit more.
The White House is now one vote away from clinching the Iran deal, thanks to yesterday’s declarations of support from Democratic Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Chris Coons of Delaware, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
“Both senators, representing states with large Jewish populations and facing intense pressure from both sides of the debate, were seen as key swing votes as Congress prepares to weigh in this month,” PI reports.
“I believe that this is better for our security and better for Israel's security, without a doubt, short-term and long-term,” said Casey. “I support this deal with my eyes wide open, aware of the deal's flaws as well as its potential,” added Coons, who holds a spot on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“Obama needs only one more Democrat to reach the 34 votes needed to uphold a veto of the Republican-drafted resolution to block portions of the accord…There are now just 11 undecided Senate Democrats, and opponents need to get all 11 to oppose Obama in order to reach a veto-proof margin—an almost impossible task, given that several are core administration allies.” WaPo adds.
What do U.S. national security workers think of the deal? Just 26 percent believe the agreement is good for America, and even fewer think it will help Israel or Saudi Arabia, according to a new Defense One survey.
So what do these national security professionals think Washington should do about it? More than 60 percent said that the U.S. would be better off simply rejecting the deal and keeping current sanctions in place (31 percent disagreed). And about half said that the U.S. should compensate by increasing arms sales to countries in the Middle East (38 percent disagreed). Full survey results can be found right here.
For the 11 Senate Dems still on the fence, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg follows up his 10-point critical inquiry into the deal last week with this 10-point response from David Wade, John Kerry’s former chief of staff and Jeremy Ben-Ami, “the head of J Street, the pro-Obama, anti-Netanyahu Jewish organization, who is also the de facto chief pro-deal lobbyist inside (and outside) the Jewish community.”
The Obama administration has been carrying out a “secret” drone war against Islamic State leaders in Syria, WaPo’s Greg Miller reported Tuesday. The CIA’s Counterterrorism Center has been feeding targeting data to analysts and drone pilots from Joint Special Operations Command in a campaign carried out “separately from the broader U.S. military offensive against the Islamic State,” officials told Miller. Their latest known successful target: presumed former leader of the so-called Cyber Caliphate, 21-year-old British citizen Junaid Hussain (aka Abu Hussain al-Britani), killed last Tuesday in Raqqa, Syria.
Why separate from the Pentagon? Because of “rising anxiety among U.S. counterterrorism officials about the danger the Islamic State poses, as well as frustration with the failure of conventional strikes to degrade the group’s strength,” writes Miller.
The fine-print justification. “All of the strikes in Syria are being carried out under the military’s post-9/11 authority to pursue al-Qaeda, officials said, rather than a presidential directive or ‘finding’ issued to the CIA. The restriction means that armed CIA drones can be fired only if they are operating under JSOC authority.”
Selective targeting. The campaign so far has only executed “a handful of strikes, a tiny fraction of the more than 2,450 conducted in Syria over the past year.”
Alarm bells for policy wonks. Tying in “the CIA complicates one of President Obama’s remaining counterterrorism policy goals of gradually reversing the agency’s evolution from spy service to paramilitary force,” as well as shifting CIA drone ops to the Defense Department, sending the agency back to its traditional game of espionage—which happens to be something Senate Intelligence Committee leader strongly oppose, Miller reports. “Instead, Syria is a new front in a spreading campaign of secret operations and drone strikes that encompasses Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and parts of North Africa.” More on the ISIS fight below the fold.
Marine Corps should open its infantry to women, Navy Secretary says. As senior Marine leaders contemplate asking to keep some jobs all-male, Ray Mabus offered some handy advice. On Tuesday, the secretary “made clear that he must sign off on the decision to seek any exemptions to opening all jobs to women,” writes Military Times’ Meghann Myers. “That’s still my call, and I’ve been very public,” he said. ‘I do not see a reason for an exemption.”
If SEALs can do it… “His call for opening all military occupational specialties to women follows Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jon Greenert’s assertion in late August that the Navy would not seek an exemption for its legendary SEAL teams,” Myers writes.
Pentagon resumes its search for Gitmo North. Today and tomorrow, a team of roughly 10 officials from the Defense Department will drop by the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C., to assess its potential for holding Guantanamo detainees, Defense One’s Molly O’Toole reports.
The brig has long been on the short list of potential sites to serve as an alternative once President Obama achieved his goal of closing the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But as the White House preps its closure plan, lawmakers are already crying “Not in my backyard” — including Obama’s “let’s close Gitmo” ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who told U.S. troops Tuesday, “We gotta be realistic about the people who are in Guantanamo Bay—they are there for a reason.”
Speaking of objections: A stop-off at the brig at Charleston without “a comprehensive strategy [to close the prison] appears to be based on assisting the President achieve political goals rather than the best interests of our national security,” Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., and a member of the House Armed Services Committee wrote Carter in a letter obtained by The Hill. “I continue to believe that the safest and most secure place for detainees remains the facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” she said.
From Defense One
As drones flood U.S. skies, states are on a legal collision course. Tired of waiting on Washington, state governments are developing their own drone rules. But many of these laws may conflict with what the feds eventually impose. National Journal’s Kaveh Waddell reports.
DHS revives the virtual border fence. While GOP presidential contenders broach novel ideas for U.S. border control, the Department of Homeland Security has quietly resurrected a 10-year-old virtual fence concept. Over the past couple of weeks, DHS has begun installing sensor-studded turrets in pockets of Arizona to curb human trafficking and drug smuggling. That from NextGov’s Aliya Sternstein, here.
The West Point professor who contemplated a coup. A controversial law professor resigns after calling his intellectual opponents treasonous allies of Islamist extremism. He also may have exaggerated his academic credentials. The Atlantic’s Matt Ford has the story.
Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The D Brief, from Ben Watson and Brad Peniston. Want to share The D Brief with a friend? Here’s our subscribe link. 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.
In Baghdad this morning, masked gunmen in military uniforms poured out of a convoy of black SUVs and kidnapped 18 Turkish workers from a majority-Shiite district in the northeastern part of the capital at 3 a.m. local, Reuters reports.
A Turkish man is now wanted in conjunction with the Aug. 17 Bangkok bombing, Thai officials said today. He’s believed to be the husband of a woman who had rented a room where Thai authorities reportedly found bomb-making materials during the course of their investigation of the attack that killed 20 and injured nearly 100.
Turkish warplanes won’t be letting up on PKK militants anytime soon, this morning striking inside its own borders in the southeast of the country.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman visits the White House for the first time on Friday as Riyadh appears poised to straddle U.S.-Russia tensions while refusing to curb its oil production despite repeated requests from major oil producers, US News’ Paul Shinkman writes in this geopolitical tinderbox preview.
A suspected U.S. drone strike in northwest Pakistan killed six militants, including three Uzbeks, late Tuesday, AP and Long War Journal report.
And in Peshawar, three police were killed and seven others wounded in what Reuters called a “botched” raid on the Pakistani Taliban. “The police ran into trouble during a pre-dawn raid, when one of the militant suspects inside a home opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon...Another suspect fired rocket-propelled grenades at the team,” police officials said. One attacker was killed while the others reportedly escaped.
Across the border in Afghanistan, residents are deeply skeptical of a re-opened investigation by the U.S. military into the alleged killings of at least 18 civilians by a team of Green Berets back in November 2012, WaPo reports from Wardak province. “The inquiry is too late for us, as these people are no longer alive, and the Special Forces are out of Nerkh, too,” one resident said. “How can [the investigating panel] be fair to the victims’ families when you do not have the culprits and evidence around, and after so much time has elapsed?”
“All death investigations conducted by U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command special agents are conducted to a thoroughness standard, not necessarily to a timetable,” said Chris Grey, a spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command.
Australia is worried about accidental war in the South China Sea. Defence Minister Kevin Andrews said Wednesday that “China's recent assertiveness in the South China Sea has increased military and diplomatic tensions between it and rival claimants, including Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan,” Reuters reported. “Andrews refrained from taking sides, but his comments made clear that Australia’s greatest concerns arose from Chinese military construction on scraps of land that are internationally contested.”
“The greatest danger in the region is a miscalculation,” Andrews said after a speech to a think-tank during a visit to India. “We don’t believe that turning a reef into a military airport is enhancing the peace and security of that region.”
NATO’s rapid reaction force gains momentum. The alliance just activated roughly 250 officers from six command units in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania “to boost defence amid regional tensions over Russia's actions in Ukraine,” according to Lithuania’s defence ministry. The units will “facilitate the deployment of the newly forged NATO rapid reaction force and coordinate military drills,” AFP reports. There are also roughly 70 U.S. airmen training Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian officers on the use of two unarmed U.S. Predator drones at Lielvarde Air Base, Latvia’s defense ministry confirmed Tuesday.
Lastly today, don’t miss this candid chat with Anthony Sadler, one of the Americans who helped subdue the Thalys train attack on August 21. Sadler—“just a student,” he said, and not a member of the U.S. military—spoke about the experience on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.”