The D Brief: Gaza pier, done; Can Hamas rebuild?; NATO’s hybrid-war defenses; ISIS’ Syria surge; And a bit more.
It’s official: The U.S. military has formally ended its Gaza pier operation to deliver additional humanitarian aid to thousands of Palestinians displaced by Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas, which is in its ninth consecutive month. Since May, the pier has been open, then closed, then open again—most often resulting from poor weather conditions in the Mediterranean Sea.
“The maritime surge mission involving the pier is complete, so there's no more need to use the pier,” said U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of Central Command, in a call with reporters Wednesday. “Our assessment is that the temporary pier has achieved its intended effect,” which was “to surge a very high volume of aid into Gaza and ensure that aid reaches the civilians in Gaza in a quick manner.” According to Cooper, “It's the highest volume of humanitarian assistance that the U.S. military has ever delivered into the Middle East.”
By the numbers: About 1,000 U.S. troops helped facilitate the delivery of 19.4 million pounds of humanitarian aid via the pier over a period of “a little more than 20 days” and at a cost of about $210 million, U.S. officials said. However, Cooper acknowledged, “redeployment costs” will still have to be figured in with the final bill, as it were; and it’s not clear yet how much those will add to the tally.
The humanitarian aid outlook from here isn’t terribly hopeful. And that’s at least partly because “We are unfortunately in a situation where the insecurity has increased again, and we're seeing a rise in looting and other kinds of criminal activities,” said Sonali Korde, Assistant to the Administrator of USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. “And that is definitely causing problems for a distribution right now as we go forward in Gaza,” she said.
Still, “The most effective and efficient way to get aid into Gaza is to the land routes, and that's something that we continue to press” with Israel, Cooper told reporters. “The Cypress-Ashdod maritime corridor offers a more sustainable path,” he continued, and said, “In the past few weeks, we've begun utilizing this new hybrid pathway from the sea and land to deliver aid from Cyprus to the port of Ashdod, Israel, then into North Gaza via the [United Nations] and [the World Food Program] and it's been successful.”
Sometime over the next “coming weeks, we expect that millions of pounds of aid will enter into Gaza via this new pathway,” said Cooper.
Voice of dissent: The pier project was a “national embarrassment,” said the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker of Mississippi. “The only miracle is that this doomed-from-the-start operation did not cost any American lives,” Wicker said in a bitter statement Wednesday. “I have been calling for an end to this election-year gimmick since its primetime inception at the State of the Union,” he said, and added he still has “significant questions…about the Biden administration’s poor planning for this mission.”
Worth noting: Wicker does not appear to have pitched any alternatives to the White House’s still-evolving aid distribution plans for besieged Palestinians. Rather, he’s spent the past several months hoping in vain for Hamas to surrender while referencing an attack from four decades ago and name-checking a 1980s president whose values today’s Republicans do not share.
“This chapter might be over in President Biden’s mind, but the national embarrassment that this project has caused is not,” Wicker said in his statement Wednesday. Read the rest, here.
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Gaza war outlook: “Hamas likely retains the institutional knowledge and skilled commanders required to reconstitute despite the loss of several high-ranking Hamas commanders in the Gaza Strip since October 2023,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted in its Wednesday evening assessment. “These deputies and subordinates have survived nine months in a Darwinian combat environment, which can help lower-ranking commanders develop skills and teach them lessons they may not otherwise develop in peacetime when the stakes are much lower.”
Also: “Iranian-backed Iraqi militias appear to have resumed their attack campaign targeting US forces in Iraq,” ISW noted separately. That includes two attempted drone attacks Tuesday at the Ain al Asad Airbase in Anbar Province, according to the Associated Press; U.S. forces reportedly intercepted those drones before causing any damage.
Context: “The Iranian-backed Iraqi militias previously threatened on or before June 5 to attack US forces in Iraq if the Iraqi prime minister failed to set a date for US troop withdrawal within 40 days, and the militias’ coordinating body also threatened to resume attacks on June 19,” ISW writes.
Related reading:
- “CENTCOM says ISIS is reconstituting in Syria and Iraq, but the reality is even worse,” Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute warned Wednesday;
- “Far-right Israeli minister visits sensitive Jerusalem holy site, a threat to Gaza cease-fire talks,” the Associated Press reported Thursday from Jerusalem;
- “Israeli strikes in southern, central Gaza kill more than 60 Palestinians, including in ‘safe zone’,” AP reported Tuesday; the BBC has similar coverage here;
- “G.O.P. Puts Israel and Antisemitism Front and Center, Courting U.S. Jews,” the New York Times reported Thursday from Milwaukee;
- “How 'energy islands' could help Israel build resilience for wartime,” Reuters reported Thursday from Israel;
- “Israel’s Undercover Forces Emerge as Gaza’s Newest Battlefield Player,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday from Tel Aviv;
- Check out “The Hidden Ties Between Google and Amazon’s Project Nimbus and Israel's Military,” via WIRED, reporting Monday;
- And “U.S. privately warned Iran over suspicious nuclear activities,” Axios reported Wednesday.
Europe, U.S. make plans to counter Russian hybrid warfare. Over the last several months, European and U.S. intelligence officials have highlighted Moscow’s various efforts to sow mayhem in Europe: attempts to recruit ethnic Russians in Estonia to attack the property of government officials; disinformation campaigns to influence French elections and turn Moldovan citizens against their leaders; and a plot to assassinate the German head of arms manufacturer Rheinmetall.
“These are part of a pattern, part of an ongoing Russian campaign. And the purpose of this campaign is, of course, to intimidate NATO allies from supporting Ukraine,” Jens Stoltenberg, the outgoing NATO Secretary General, said last Thursday.
The alliance has been watching out for such a pattern, writes D1’s Patrick Tucker. Its 2022 Strategic Concept warns about hybrid warfare by both Russia and China and calls on members to “invest in our ability to prepare for, deter, and defend against the coercive use of political, economic, energy, information and other hybrid tactics by states and nonstate actors.”
Now, alliance members are trying to do just that. “We've been working to turn it into real plans, real programs that demonstrate that NATO is capable and effective in dealing with exactly these kinds of challenges that's going to be carried forward at this summit,” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said last Wednesday. Read on, here.
Germany officials are planning on more than $4 billion in military aid for Ukraine in 2025, which is half of what Berlin set aside for Kyiv this calendar year, Reuters reported Wednesday. “Officials say EU leaders agreed to the idea in part because it reduces the chance of Ukraine being short of funds if Trump returns to the White House.” Read more, here.
Russia may be learning dangerous lessons from its space mischief, DIA says. “Russia [is] actively targeting, through electronic warfare, the lower orbit domain, and, you know, having minimal repercussions,” Lt. Gen. Jeff Kruse, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Aspen Security Forum on Wednesday. “We need to make sure we understand what lessons Russia might be drawing from that. And then how do we want to change the environment so that we understand essentially that there may be repercussions with respect to that?” D1’s Patrick Tucker reports from Aspen, here.
Concepts expected soon for NATO's next-gen rotorcraft. Up to three manufacturers are imminently expected to offer their take on NATO’s Next Generation Rotorcraft Capability project, which aims to field an advanced medium-lift rotorcraft between 2035 and 2040 for NATO fleets. The multinational project includes France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK.
NATO has not officially disclosed the prime aircraft builders vying for the bid. However, three major players are anticipated: Airbus, Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky, and a collaborative effort between Bell and Leonardo. It remains uncertain how current models or prototypes will inform or align with new designs for the NGRC initiative. More from Forecast International, here.
And lastly: The U.S. Navy just exonerated 258 Black sailors who had been unjustly court-martialed after an explosion at a California port that killed 320 sailors on July 17, 1944.
“Following the 1944 explosion, white supervising officers at Port Chicago were given hardship leave while the surviving African-American Sailors were ordered back to work,” the Navy announced Wednesday, explaining, “The circumstances surrounding the disaster were reflective of the Navy’s personnel policies at the time, which barred African-American Sailors from nearly all seagoing jobs.”
SecDef Austin: “We honor the memory of the 320 dedicated Americans who lost their lives in the Port Chicago explosion, and we honor the service of the 258 brave Americans who refused afterward to bend to racist and cruel treatment,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement Wednesday. “The Department of Defense must always ensure that our Service members, our military families, and our civilian employees are treated with fairness and dignity, especially within our military justice systems,” he added. Read more about the incident at AP.