The war in Gaza is now very complex

I don't know how long the Israelis thought their war in Gaza would last but I bet it wouldn't have been longer than three months. But now there are so many additional complexities that it looks like it could go on for much longer. In other words, well into next year. The war has to be seen from multiple perspectives: more fighting between Israel and Hamas in the north and then switching to the south; the humanitarian disaster which is getting worse by the day; the herding of Palestinian citizens to alleged places of safety in some patch of territory in the south, away from the expected fighting in that part of Gaza; the releaase of more hostages; diplomatic/political to-and-froing between Washington and Tel Aviv; and world opinion. All these factors have to be taken into account by Binyamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet over the next few weeks. They are all so interlinked, Netanyahu has to guage how one element will impact on the other elements as he makes decisions. For all these reasons, this terrible war could go on for a long time. With the Ukraine/Russsia war looking to go on for ever, Joe Biden will have very little time to campaign to beat Donald Trump in the November election next year.

Will Israel be allowed to finish the job?

As negotiations get underway for more pauses in the fghting in Gaza for the release of other hostages, it has to be asked: will Israel be able or allowed to actually finish what they started, the elimination of Hamas, rulers of Gaza? As each negotiation starts and finishes, that objective looks less and less likely. The reason is obvious. Gaza and the rest of the world, especially the US, are getting more and more accustomed to ceasefires and basically want them to continue for ever to help the Palestinians recover from the seven weeks of airstrikes and artillery bombardment, to receive humanitarian aid, and just to survive. If Israel approves one more negotiated hostage-release and then goes ahead with all-out war to kill as many Hamas fighters as possible and destroy their infrastructure in the south, they will face the risk of being condemned by the rest of the world. Hamas leaders knew this was how it would work out as soon as they started to release hostages. The more hostages released the more difficult it will be for Israel to restart the fighting because Hamas will hang on to just enough hostages to deter Israel from launching an attack in southern Gaza. It's a clever and deadly strategy. I don't see how Israel is going to win this one.

Trucks away!

China has begun launching “trucks” from its new-generation aircraft carrier to test an advanced electromagnetic system for catapulting fighter jets into the air. The Chinese navy has copied the US by turning to an electromagnetic-powered catapult for its third carrier, the Fujian. The two other carriers in its fleet, the Liaoning and Shandong, use a ski jump at the end of the deck for launching aircraft. China’s navy has also turned to the technique used by the US for testing the new catapult by launching what are called trucks instead of aircraft for the first series of launches, to avoid the risk of losing fighter jets. The trucks are purpose-built sleds on four wheels loaded with up to 30,000lbs in weights which can be recovered from shallow waters and used again. The catapult system and truck launches are identical to the equipment used for the US Navy’s new class of nuclear-powered carriers, the first of which, USS Gerald R Ford, is currently off Gaza in the eastern Mediterranean. All the other American carries use steam-driven catapults. Electromagnetic catapult systems need less manpower to operate. Each three-second launch consumes about 100 million watts of electricity. The truck-launches from the Fujian, also known as Type 003, have appeared on video images. They demonstrate that the new carrier is now approaching the final stages of its development at the Jiangnan shipyard in Shanghai before it carries out sea trials and enters operational service, expected in 2025. A naval version of China’s J-35 stealth fighter is being developed to operate from the Fujian. The construction of multiple carriers is a key part of Beijing’s ambition to have a navy capable of competing with the US for global reach and power projection. Apart from the Gerald R Ford carrier operating off Gaza, the US Navy currently as the USS Dwight D Eisenhower in the Middle East region. Yesterday the carrier, with its steam-driven catapult system, entered the Gulf waterway after passing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz. The carrier was sent to the Gulf after an increasing number of rocket and missile attacks by Iran-backed militia against US troops in Iraq and Syria.

Israel wants the October 7 planner

Probably more than anything, Israel wants to get to and eliminate the man who planned the October 7 atrocities on Israeli soil. Yahya Sinwar is the Hamas political leader in Gaza and is on Israel's Most Wanted list. He is believed to be in a bunker in southern Gaza, possibly under the city of Khan Yunis. Either he was initially underground in one of the many tunnels under Gaza City and then moved south, also through tunnels, or he has always been in southern Gaza, knowing that the Israel Defence Forces would start their campaign by hammering the north. Several Hamas leaders are known to have been killed in the north during Israeli airstrikes. Sinwar is said to have not only planned the October 7 brutalities and massacres but is also now the chief strategist behind the drip-drip hostage releases to get as many jailed Palestinians out of Israeli prisons as possible. He will no doubt also be involved in regrouping his Hamas fighters and preparing them for whatever Israel has in store once the war gets going again, if it ever does. It is estimated that Hamas may have lost between 1,000 and 1,500 members since the Israeli counter-attack began. He will still have more than 35,000, and possiby closer to 40,000, fighters left to destribute around Gaza. So as soon as the Israel Defence Forces gets the green light from Binyamin Netanhyahu to continue the war, Sinwar will have a target on his back. But because Hamas is largely operating from underground, we may never know whether Sinwar is alive or dead.

Hamas and psychological warfare

Hamas is using every aspect of psychological warfare against the Israelis and it's working. When the current pause in the fighting ends tomorrow, all Hamas has to do is announce that it will start preparing a next list of hostages to be released provided the ceasefire is extended, and when that period comes to an end, to make another statement that it will be willing to consider another 20 or so hostage releases, as long as the ceasefire holds, and then when that finishes to accounce a few more releases etc etc, and drag it out for as long as possible and then say that the final 40, let's say, will remain hostages until Israel agrees to withdraw all troops from Gaza. And guess what, three of the final 40 will be Americans, just to keep the pressure on Washington to restrain the Tel Aviv government. The Israelis know this is what's going to happen, so at some point they will have to make a decision, prosecute the war as planned and hope for the best re the remaining hostages or give up and go home. I can't imagine them doing the latter, so it will become a huge psychological warfare confrontation to see who blinks first.

After the pause in fighting how will Israel continue the war?

After four days of no airstrikes or artillery bombardment in Gaza, there is going to be a huge appetite for a permanent ceasefire. But Israel has vowed to carry on where it left off before the first pause-for-hostage-release ceasefire. But I think it's going to get increasingly difficult for Israel to prosecute the war in southern Gaza in the same way it did in the north for seven weeks. And this is what Hamas is counting on. The strategy is obvious. If Israel starts battering the south and destroying apartment blocks where Hamas is said to be hiding beneath, Hamas will probably announce it will release no more hostages until the bombardment stops. Tel Aviv will then come under huge pressure from the hostage families, as well as from Washington and the world to stop. Then what does Binyamin Netanyahu do? He has committed to eliminating Hamas and has Washington's backing. But reducing southern Gaza towns and cities to rubble would bring worldwide condemnation. As I wrote yesterday, Hamas holds the trump cards because it can play the hostages game for as long as it wants. For Netanyahu to achieve his objective before his own people and the rest of the world turn against him, time is running out.

Hamas holds all the hostage cards

Negotiating with terrorists has always been anathema to successive US administrations. Yet President Biden himself has taken a leading role behind the scenes in forging the agreement between Israel and Hamas , designated a terrorist organisation by the US in 1997, for the release of a first batch of 50 hostages held in underground tunnels in Gaza since October 7. The remaining 190-200 hostages will now be subject to future deals in which Hamas will have the controlling hand, providing their military commanders with maximum leverage over the Israeli government and, as a consequence, also over the US. However this is interpreted, it is not an ideal situation. But it does underline one crucial reality after six weeks of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza: freeing the hostages by military means must have been assessed as too risky both for the hostages and for the Israeli commandos who would have carried out the mission. Doing a deal with Hamas became the only practical option and that is to the Gaza terror organisation’s advantage, something which their leaders would have planned for and anticipated before the October 7 brutal assaults on Israel took place. They may also have anticipated that Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, would come under such pressure to get the hostages released, most of them Israeli citizens, that he would have no alternative but to negotiate, through the good offices of the Qatari government. Hamas can now be expected to exploit the hostages in every which way to try and frustrate and stall and, ultimately, stop the Israel Defence Forces from continuing the attacks in Gaza. Key to this planning would have been the selection of hostages. Hamas grabbed women and children as well as male civilians in order to generate maximum emotional outrage, creating the greatest possible pressure on Tel Aviv, and Washington, to negotiate on their terms. The kidnapping of Israeli soldiers would have been crucial to their thinking. The soldiers are likely to be the last to be released because of the high value placed on each one of them by the Israeli government. It’s classic terrorist pragmatism. In 2011, Israel agreed to release 1,100 Palestinian prisoners, including Yahya Sinwar, the organisation’s current leader in Gaza, in exchange for just one Israeli soldier captured in a cross-border raid in 2006. With up to 40,000 members, according to CIA estimates, including at least 60 currently in Israeli jails, Hamas will attempt to dictate its terms, forcing Israel to agree continuous pauses in the fighting, leading to an eventual permanent ceasefire. The US state department includes in its definition of terrorist activity, “the seizing or detaining and threatening to kill, injure or continuing to detain another individual in order to compel a third person (including a governmental organisation) to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the individual seized or detained”. Political and military reality has forced both Israel and the US to discard this golden rule in dealing with a terrorist-designated organisation.

Can there be any doubt that Putin will stand again in March and win?

There is lots of speculation over whether Vladimir Putin will stand for reelection next March. That has to be the haha joke of the month. Of course Putin will stand for and win next March's election. Even though there must be some Russians who hate the fact that their sons and husbands and brothers etc have been forced to fight a terrible war in Ukraine with thousands of them dying or suffering injuries, Putin will still be president post-March because that's the way Russia is and always has been. They like a guy who struts the world stage and even though Putin has been afraid to go anywhere abroad because of the risk of being arrested for war crimes, he has remained a global figure. So there is no way he is suddenly going to decide to step down and retire to his dacha/palace on the Black Sea. We're stuck with Putin for many years to come. Meanwhile, autocracy is becoming more prevalent around the world. Donald Trump could well become the US president again next November. An extreme right-wing ideologue has just won the election in The Netherlands, and also in Argentina. Marie Le Pen must be getting excited for when she has another go at becoming president of France. But here in Britain, we will be going the other way if we have an election next year, as expected. The Conservatives will be thrown out after 13 years in charge and a centrist Labour politician, Keir Starmer, looks set to become the new leader of the country. We like being different.

US deterrence in the Middle East has worked. So far

Sending two aircraft carriers, each with around 90 aircraft on board, plus guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, nuclear-powered submarines and a US Marine amphibious force does actually work. Since they all arrived in the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea, this superpowe presence has shown that the United States is still the dominant mi;itary power on the planet, despite superpower pretensions from China and Russia. They are not in the same league, although China is desperately trying to catch up. We could by now be in a Middle East regional war, but thanks to the US firepower sitting off the coast of Gaza, the potential participants in a wider conflict, notably Iran and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, have held back. Very wise in my view. Instead, we have had a few fairly meaningless stroppy strikes from these regional actors just to remind the US that they are around. So, some rockets from Hezbollah aimed at Israel, a handful of cruise missiles and drones from the Houthis in Yemen, and nearly six dozen drone, mortar and short-range ballistic missile Iran-backed Islamic militia attacks targeting American troops in Iraq and Syria. It sounds a lot but compared to what is happening between Hamas and Israel, it's small-fry stuff, all adequately dealt with by the US. So, so far, the big power game being played by the US in the Middle East is doing the trick.

What does Hamas want in return for releasing hostages?

What is Hamas's game plan? They seized, violently and brutally, about 240 hostages on October 7, most of them Israeli civilians, but also some soldiers and people of other nationalities living at the kibbutz which Hamas invaded. They took them into Gaza and hurried them underground into the maze of tunnels built everywhere. They did it for a malign purpose, to put leverage on Israel either to restrict or stop retaliatory strikes or as a bargaining chip to get the Israelis to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in jail. So far ony four hostages have been freed but now Hamas is ready to release a lot more. But what do they want in return and will Israel play ball? Obviously Binyamin Netanyahu is under huge pressure from the families of the hostages to agree a release deal. But agreeing anything with Hamas will be difficult for a leader who has vowed to kill every Hamas fighter in Gaza. The Israeli military will be itching to get on with the mission given them by Israel's war cabinet but they will be expected to call a halt to all bombardments while some of the hostages are released. The deal, whatever it is, was inevitable when it became very clear to the military that they simply didn't have enough precise intelligence to know where each hostage was being held. Apart from one female soldier hostage rescued in the early stages of the Israeli offensive in Gaza, the details of which remain fuzzy, no military action has been taken to find and free the other hostages because, presumably, it was decided such a mission was too risky. So Netanyahu had no choice but to do a deal with Hamas. I'm sure Hamas has other plans for the hostages not released in this initial deal. One thing for sure, Hamas will exploit the hostages they keep. That's why they seized them in the first place.

The hunt for Hamas command HQ

For six weeks Israel defence forces (IDF)have been engaged in the toughest urban warfare operation in modern times, confronting an enemy concealed underground in a population-dense environment. Now, with an expected five-day pause in the fighting to allow for the release of women and children held hostage since October 7, Israeli commanders still have to resolve one of the biggest challenges, finding and destroying the main underground bunkers from where Hamas leaders have been orchestrating their war with Israel. Once northern Gaza was under their control, much of the IDF focus has been aimed at proving to the world that the headquarters of Hamas was buried under the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Initially, apart from an abandoned-looking entrance to a possible tunnel near the hospital and an array of Kalashnikovs and other fighting material laid out for visiting world media, there was little evidence that the IDF had uncovered the beating heart of Hamas’s military stronghold. However, in new evidence last night, the IDF revealed it had found a deep tunnel structure beneath the hospital, complete with reinforced doors to protect Hamas commanders and fighters. Israel will see this discovery as a breakthrough in convincing doubters that Hamas has been using bunkers beneath civilian buildings to prosecute its terror campaign. The IDF has a special unit called Yahalom (diamond in Hebrew) which is armed with precision explosives and other high-tech weapons to destroy tunnels. But the uncertain whereabouts of the 240 hostages as well as questions raised about the Hamas headquarters under the hospital stalled the plans. Will the IDF special unit now set about destroying the tunnel complex under the al-Shifa hospital or will attention shift to southern Gaza and, in particular, to the city of Khan Yunis where “the real” Hamas headquarters is based underground, according to Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister? The IDF will still be faced with the same dual challenge it found in northern Gaza, eliminating Hamas structures without causing catastrophic collateral damage. It failed in the northern phase because thousands of civilians died and apartment blocks were reduced to rubble. The southern phase will have to be more focused, especially as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians moved there from the north, as advised by the IDF.

From now on Israel will have to temper its attacks on Gaza

After six weeks of Israel's retaliatory strikes against Hamas in which thousands of civilians have been killed and injured and homes destroyed, the next phases of the war with Hamas will have to be moderated to account for the increasing opposition expressed around the world. No war can be fought in isolation, especially in the Middle East. Washington is getting worried about the civilian deaths which have been far higher than could ever be described as acceptable or unavoidable in a place as small as Gaza. No civilian deaths are acceptable but it is an unfortunate reality that in a war which involves thousands of airstrikes and artillery bombardments, the dreaded phrase collateral damage will happen. But the scale of the collateral damage in Gaza in the last six weeks has been devastating. Israel knows it cannot prosecute this war in the same way over the next few months or the whole world will turn against them. This mean that Israeli commanders will have to take a much more limited and refined approach to eliminating Hamas, still the main objective of the war from Israel's point of view. But restraint in war is far more difficult than all-out war. The next few weeks are going to be crucial if Israel has a hope of achieving what it wants to achieve without losing the support of its principal allies.

Is Israel beating Hamas?

It's six weeks since hundreds of Hamas terrorist rulers of Gaza poured over the border and slaughtered more than 1,200 mainly Israeli civilians and took 240 hostages. In that time the Israeli defence forces have launched an aerial bombardment of Gaza, destroying hundreds of buildings, inclding apartment blocks, and sent thousandws of soldiers into the Strip with tanks and armoured vehicles, all with the specific aim of eliminating every member of Hamas. In other words, an annihilation of the whole organisation. How successful have they been? How many Hamas fighters are left? There is no doubt that hundreds of Hamas gunmen have been killed, including several leading figures. But have the Israelis got close to eliminating Hamas? I think not. There were perhaps anything between 30,000 and 40,000 Hamas fighters before the retaliatory Israeli action began. That may have ben reduced by 1,000-1,500 although there are no official figures from either side. That means the vast majority of Hamas members are still alive and fighting. Many of them will have transferred to southern Gaza to allow them to hide amongst the one million or so Palestinians who fled to the south. So, after six weeks, Israel has killed a small proportion of Hamas fighters but in the process has laid waste much of the most-densely populated parts of Gaza and have effectively bulldozed or bomb-strucked tens of thousands of Palestinian homes. So, Gaza destroyed, but not Hamas.

Where is the Hamas command and control bunker?

With the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza surrounded and occupied by Israeli troops, Israel now really does need to prove to the world its accusation that directly under the hospital is the Hamas command and control bunker. This accusation has been around for years but so far the Israeli defence forces have only allowed reporters to see very limited evidence - a bunch of AK-47s lined up on a floor and what looks like an abandoned entry underground. I guess what the world was expecting was a large operations centre, with laptops and computers and screens showing targets in Israel and Hamas fighters with headphones. But nothing like that has been uncovered. So where are all these tunnels and bunkers and what are the Israeli troops going to do about them? We know they exist because a released hostage described how she was forced to walk along a spider's web of tunnels. To bring this war to an end these tunnels and bunkers need to be closed up for ever. But somewhere down there are the 240 hostages still being detained. Fighting their way to get to them isn't going to free them and it will lead to countless casualties. But unless these hostages, most of them Israeli, are freed soon, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is going to be confronted by an angry and rebellious nation.

Xi Zinping is a dictator, says Biden. Again

Joe Biden just can't hold himself back. After a four-hour session with the Chinese president in San Francisco in which at least some attempt was made to warm relations after a very cold spell, Biden got chatting to reporters and in off-the-cuff remarks said Xi was a dictator. He had used that term before, way back. Now most historians would probably agree with him. Technically, the way Communism works in China, the Communist party appoints its leader and he is the Boss from then on. He doesn't have to worry about being thrown out by the people in a democratic vote. So, the word dictator is sort of ok. But is it ok for Biden to call him a dictator which is a pejorative word in western thinking? Well, surely not after the first session together for a year. He must have known it would irritate Xi and why call him that when they had been getting on slightly better than before? In the world of diplomacy it was the wrong thing to say at the wrong moment but it did show that Biden likes to be honest about his feelings. He thinks Xi is a dictator and when asked it just slips out. Perhaps his honesty will win him votes in the US but I doubt it will win him friends in Beijing. So after the four hours together in San Francisco it's three steps forward in terms of Washington/Beijing relations and two steps back.

The Rwanda plan for deporting illegal immigrants is dead

The UK Supreme Court has ruled that sending immigrants to Rwanda is unlawful. Yet Rishi Sunak still wants to hang on to the idea and find another way round the judges' decision. But the whole idea of sending immigrants to Rwanda was always a totally daft and uncharitable way of dealing with the so-called boat problem - the thousands of people who come to the UK in boats across the Channel. It was an idea espoused with great vigour by Suella Braverman, the now deposed Home Secretary. You would have thought that Sunak who has a reputation for being a decent human being, would have finally got the message that sending people to Rwanda should be abandoned. But ths government is so desperate to find a solution to the boat problem that it will grab on to anything that offers even a remote chance of succeeding. It wasn't that long ago that they wanted to send immigrants to Albania. That came to nothing. Sunak should now show a bit of common and humane sense and announce that Rwanda is no longer an option. Going against the judges of the Supreme Court would be a grave error.

Will David Cameron back in government make a difference?

Government reshuffles in the UK don't normally include bombshells and usually ministerial changes are well leaked in the weeks or days prior to the Number 10 announcement. This time there was a bombshell appointment and absolutely no leak beforehand. Quite an achievement by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The bombshell of course was the announcement that David Cameron, ex prime minister, was to be foreign secretary. Bizarre! Very very unusual for a former prime minister to be asked to come back into government, but Cameron looked and sounded chuffed. He'll probably make a perfectly satisfactory foreign secretary because most of the leaders around the globe will know him or at least know of him. He also knows how government works and the civil service is accustomed to his ways. But for many people in this country he is always remembered as the prime minister who risked the future of this country by agreeing to hold a referendum on whether to stay in the European Union in the belief that voters would want to stay. He was wrong and had to resign as a consequence, and since then the UK's economy has been struggling to adapt to the new so-called independence, free of EU bureaucracy. None of the promises made by the Leavers campaigners have been met and I bet a lot of the Leavers now wish they had been Remainers. So Cameron has a lot to answer for. But now he is foreign secretary, so let's see what he can do to make up for the biggest political mistake of his career.

The war between Israel and Hamas is now about babies

It has become the babies war. It began with the most terrifying and inhuman reports of Hamas fighters killing Israeli babies and children on that terrible October 7 assault, including graphic accounts of how they disembowelled a pregnant woman and tore the foetus from her womb, and now it's all about saving Palestinian babies from Israeli bombs. President Macron has appealed to Israel to take every precaution to avoid killing babies who are with their mothers in hospital in Gaza. I'm sure the Israeli defence forces are doing everything they can to do just that but the fact is that hospitals in the heart of Gaza City have suffered from the constant assaults by bombs and artillery shells, and babies are dying. This is the tragedy of war. It makes it imperative for Israel to bring this war to an end as rapidly as possible. But it's in Hamas's interest to prolong the war because they know that the longer it goes on, the more civilians will die and the more criticism Israel will face from around the world. The hostages are key. If Israel can release them all, the troops can then focus on destroying the tunnels and underground bunkers. But Hamas will hang on to them as bargaining chips. So until the hostage crisis is resolved there will be a total impasse, and that means more babies will die.

Hundreds of thousands of pro-Palestinians on the streets

The Home Secretary of the UK, Suella Braverman, has described the pro-Palestinian protesters on the streets of London as being engaged in a "hate march". But hate of what: hate of the Israelis/Jews, hate of war (we all agree with that), just plain hate? I think she is wrong and disrepectful to accuse all those protesters as hate marchers because it simply isn't true. I suspect the vast majority of the 300,000 who protested today in London were there because they can't stand the terrible images of women and children being killed and want it to stop. But because it has been called a pro-Palestinian march, a lot of commentators and critics, including Ms Braverman, seem to have concluded they are either anti-Semitic because they are not protesting against the appalling atrocities committed by Hamas on Israeli civilians on October 7, of they are just there to cause violence and mayhem. I agree it's strange and unsettling that thousands didn't protest on the streets about the suffering of those poor Israeli families butchered by Hamas gunmen. But the problem for Israel is that that terrible day was one day whereas the retaliatory Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling have been going on for more than three weeks and ten times as many people have been killed in the process. The butchery of October 7, the horror of which will never be forgotten or forgiven by Israel, has been shoved to one side by the marchers who are focusing all their energy and banner-waving on behalf of the Palestinians who are now going through the terrible trauma of war every day and night. I have total sympathy for the Palestinians because I know how frightening war is. But the pro-Palestinian protesters should all have in their minds what happened on October 7. If they don't, then people like Ms Braverman with her hate-march accusation, will win the day.

William "Bill" Burns, the diplomatic CIA chief

William "Bill" Burns had 33 years' experiene as a diplomat before he was appointed CIA director and is widely acknowledged to have a unique and invaluable background for acting as a special envoy in world crises. All the leaders in the Middle East, as well as their intelligence chiefs, know him personally.So great expectations were weighing on his shoulders when he arrived in Qatar on Thursday as part of a mission to contain the war between Israel and Hamas and to free the hostages still being held in underground bunkers and tunnels in Gaza. His trip to Qatar which is in the forefront of negotiations with Hamas over the hostages follows visits to Israel to speak to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his intelligence counterpart, the head of Mossad, and also to Egypt to confer with President Sisi. The first career diplomat to serve as the director of the CIA, Burns came to the job on March 19, 2021, with a determination, as he put it, to provide intelligence “with honesty and integrity”, an indirect finger-pointing at the outgoing president, Donald Trump, who notoriously lambasted the American intelligence agencies for what he described as their “naive” assessments of global challenges. The 67-year-old spy chief, with his full head of white hair and dapper grey moustache, was described by the New York Times as someone you could imagine “in a John Le Carre novel whispering into a dignitary’s ear at an embassy party that the city is falling to the rebels and a boat would be waiting in the harbour at midnight”. Burns, married with two daughters, is a Le Carre fan and was amused when he read the description. A former British spy chief once said that the head of an intelligence service needed to know what it was like to stand on a street corner at night waiting to meet with an agent. But Burns’ greatest attribute comes from his years in diplomacy, getting to know and decode the minds of world leaders. President Biden has used him as his secret back channel to warn President Putin against invading Ukraine, sent him to Beijing to consult with Chinese spy chiefs when other communications were cut off, and to Kabul for a face-to-face encounter with the leader of the Taliban after the militants seized the Afghan capital. He regularly travels to Ukraine, normally on secret missions, unlike the trips made by Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, who has a more public role to play. As ambassador to Moscow from 2005 to 2008, Burns became one of America’s most experienced Kremlinologists. But his career also embraced the Middle East. His first posting as ambassador was to Jordan in 1998 and a later appointment at the state department put him charge of the Middle East region. Burns wrote in a memoir appropriately called The Back Channel that diplomacy “is by nature an unheroic, quiet endeavour, less swaggering than unrelenting, often unfolding in back channels out of sight and out of mind”. His style of quiet diplomacy as spy chief is in stark contrast to some of his more politically-animated predecessors such as Mike Pompeo under the Trump administration and John Brennan in President Obama’s first term. It’s why Biden is trusting him to use his decades of experience and knowledge to help get the hostages released and prepare for a future in the region after the war between Israel and Hamas has ended.

Huge pressure on Israel brings daily operational pauses in war

Benjamin Netanyahu has been under the most extraordinary diplomatic pressure to allow for humanitarian pauses in the war in Gaza to enable Palestinian families to seek safety and get the food and water and medicine they desperately need. At the same time he has been under pressure from the Israeli military to give them the freedom to pursue the battle with Hamas relentlessly and without pauses of any kind. All army generals want that, to prosecute a war without political interference. But the US has been instrumental in persuading Netanyahu to offer a compromise, a four-hour operational pause each day. It's a good outcome for the sake of the Palestinian people, but it's also a reflection of the intense focus around the world on the bitterness and anger that has once again erupted in this part of the planet. It is a terrible conclusion to have to make but I cannot see Israel living in harmony alongside an independent Palestinian state in the near or even far future. Not for decades, especially after the slaughter committed by Hamas on October 7th that set this war off.

Has Biden any chance of beating Trump?

Will Joe Biden's handling of the Middle East crisis help or harm his chances of being reelected in November next year? Right now I would say his strong support for Israel but his constant appeal for a softly softly approach, so no civilians are killed, won't necessarily boost his fan club. But it's difficult to see what else he could have done. Trump probably believes that if he was president the war would be over by now or would never have happened but I doubt anyone would go along with that. So maybe Biden will get some kudos from the way he has handled the Israel/Gaza war, provided it doesn't go on for months. But the way it's going at the moment there must be a risk of a protracted war or at the very least a long presence of Israeli troops in Gaza which would cause outrage among Arab nations. A bitter occupation of Gaza throughout 2024 could be disastrous for Biden and for his prospects of a second term. There's a year to go. Biden is going to need a lot of luck and some political or foreign policy successes if he has a chance of overcoming the Trump bandwagon.

The Pentagon ups deterrence in Middle East

The Pentagon has boosted its deterrence presence in the Middle East with the openly-declared arrival of a nuclear-powered, guided-missile submarine. The unidentified submarine is an Ohio-class boat, the largest in the US Navy. Originally exclusively armed with strategic nuclear ballistic missiles, four of the 18 in the class have been converted to carry up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Although US Central Command tweeted the arrival of the Ohio submarine in the region, it did not specify which version of the boat had been sent. However, the submarine seen passing through the Suez Canal would appear to be the guided-missile conversion model . The four converted Ohio-class submarines are the USS Ohio, USS Florida, USS Michigan and USS Georgia. In the latest show of deterrence, the Ohio-class guided-missile submarine, probably with a full complement of 154 1,000-mile-range, land-attack Tomahawk, has joined two US Navy aircraft carrier strike groups: the USS Gerald R Ford with five escort warships in the eastern Mediterranean off Israel, and the USS Dwight D Eisenhower with three ships in the Red Sea. The 26th US Marine Expeditionary Force on three amphibious warships, with 2,400 marines, is also in the eastern Mediterranean, along with USS Mount Whitney, a command ship sent from Italy which has on board Vice Admiral Thomas Ishee, commander of the 6th Fleet. The Pentagon normally makes no comment about the location of any of its nuclear-powered submarines, either the ballistic-missile class or the converted guided-missile version or the smaller hunter-killer class. However, in recent years, occasional announcements have been made to underscore America’s deterrence capabilities. In October last year, General Michael Kurilla, commander of Central Command, was officially photographed boarding the USS West Virginia, a strategic-missile deterrent Ohio-class submarine, at an undisclosed location in the Arabian Sea. This version of the submarine can carry up to 20 ballistic missiles with a range of 4,000 miles. In July, the USS Kentucky, also a ballistic-missile version of the Ohio-class submarine, made a port call in South Korea, the first publicly-declared visit of a US Navy boomer in 42 years.

Trump rants in court as Gaza burns

There are three wars going on at the moment: Israel v Hamas, Russia v Ukraine and Trump v America's courts. I don't mean that to sound trite as far as the Trump war is concerned but it strikes me as extraordinary that at a time when appalling images of death and slaughter are being sent around the world every day, the former president spends his time boiling with rage at judges who are trying to do what they are paid to do which is to conduct trials in which he is the defendant without bias or prejudice. In the UK, a defendant simply wouldn't be allowed to get away with this behaviour. In fact he would be accused of contempt of court and be sent smartly down to the cells. But Trump continues using the courts and his appearances at them as opportunities to berate the federal justice system and to promote his a-million-times-repeated allegation that he is the victim of a Biden-orchestrated witchhunt. And while he does this, the latest polls are saying Trump is miles ahead of Biden in America's key states. If he becomes president again does he have a master plan to bring peace and stability to the Middle East and to resolve the Israel/Palestine issue once and for all? Who knows? He's too busy shouting at judges.

Balancing act between Israel and the US over Gaza war

Increasingly as the Israeli airstrikes and artillery attacks into Gaza continue, Washington is getting cold feet about backing the full-scale assault which has killed so many civilians. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, has been back in Jerusalem yet again to plead for more restraint and to guarantee a humanitarian corridor. The trouble is, war is never about restraint. The US-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 didn't tiptoe in and shoot dead only the bad guys. In total war, innocent people die. In Gaza, more than two million civilians are packed into the tiny territory, so calling on Israel to use restraint is like asking armed police trying to find a shooter with an assault rifle to use water pistols. The war in Gaza has provided terrible and heart-wrenching photographs of maimed children in hospitals amd women screaming with fear and panic. Washington wants Israel to go in softer while supporting Jerusalem's desire to eliminate Hamas once and for ever. The twin approaches are contradictory. I assume Washington realises this but then the US has to try and maintain a balancing act between supporting Israel as a rock-solid ally and keeping the Arab world on side at the same time to prevent a wider war. It's a contradiction that's going to end up in catastrophe if the war goes on and on.

How long will Hezbollah wait?

Even though the leader of Hamas indicated Hezbollah would remain on the sdelines at the moment and that Hamas was on its own in its war with Israel, there will be serious concerns in Tel Aviv and Washington that the terrorist-designated group in Lebanon could change its mind and eventually join forces. Hezbollah has already launched rocket attacks across the border but the Iran-backed terror organisation has hundreds of thousands of rockets which if launched in a massive barrage would present Israel's Iron Dome defence system with its greatest challenge. The danger is that if Hezbollah did launch an attack on a large scale, the US might be forced to enter the war, using its carrier-borne fighter jets to attack targets in southern Lebanon. This could potentially be a disastrous move because other potential players in this Middle East crisis, especially Iran, could then join in too. At this stage in the war my instinctive feeling is that neither Hezbollah nor Iran want to choose this moment in history to go all out against Israel. The US has assembled a huge naval force in the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Gulf, so both Hezbollah and Iran know what will happen if they join Hamas. I doubt Iran will risk it and Tehran effectively runs Hezbollah. So, at least for the next few weeks, it's Israel versus Hamas and the other Islamic groups in Gaza. For this reason it is imperative that Israel completes its objective - the elimination of Hamas - as quickly as possible.

Hamas asymmetric warfare versus Israeli modern firepower

Hamas is demonstrating every day that it has learned a crucial warfighting lesson from other terror groups such as the Islamic State (Isis) which is that superior military might can be countered by deadly asymmetric tactics. In Iraq and Syria Isis launched hundreds of commercially-acquired standard drones and quadcopters which had been adapted to drop grenades and other explosive munitions. Hamas will also have taken into account the successful use of drones by the Russians and Ukrainians in the last 20 months. Hamas is using similar modified drones to target Israeli soldiers and tanks. A video released by Hamas showed how one drone dropped a home-made winged grenade with an impact plunger on a group of Israeli troops, scattering them in all directions as it exploded on the ground close to them. With Iranian technological assistance, Hamas has developed a sophisticated indigenous drone programme in Gaza, according to the Royal United Services Institute. A weapons development division within the Izz al-Din Qassim Brigades has built kamikaze drones that blow up on impact, as revealed in the Hamas video. One kamikaze drone called Zouari, named after a dead Hamas engineer, Mohammed Zouari, has a loitering capability, enabling Hamas operators to wait for the optimum moment to launch a munition. Hamas also have unarmed surveillance drones which are being used to track Israeli troop and tank movements. The use of quadcopters by Hamas was first revealed on October 7, during the day of killings and hostage-taking. A video showed a quadcopter dropping a munition onto an Israeli Merkava tank. Drones were also used on that day to destroy Israeli observation towers, border cameras and communications which successfully thwarted Israeli defence systems. There is another key aspect of Hamas's use of drones. Every day they are providing images of the battles going on in Gaza, giving Hamas a propaganda tool against an enemy which is attempting to prosecute a war in carefully-orchestrated secrecy. Hamas's greatest tactical asset is surprise. Emerging from their "Gaza Metro" tunnels, they can launch attacks with armed drones, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and anti-tank missiles and then vanish back underground. Several videos released have shown how the rabbit warren of tunnels has given Hamas an exploitable advantage against a force equipped with far superior weapons.

Rising cost of two wars for Pentagon

The Pentagon is seeking an extra $55 billion from Congress as the US faces the prospect of backing two long-running wars. Two supplementary requests of nearly $44 billion for arming Ukraine and more than $10 billion for Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, both sent to Congress this week, have underscored two growing challenges for the Pentagon: *The increasing cost of providing arms for two countries at war simultaneously. *The need to preserve sufficient stockpiles back home in the event of a third conflict where the US would be expected to intervene militarily. Mark Cancian, an American weapons expert and former Pentagon official, said much would depend on how long the war in Gaza continued. “If the war goes on for a long time, Israel will use up more and more of its own stockpiles and will rely on the US,” he said. Were China to attempt an invasion of Taiwan while the US was focused on Israel and Ukraine, the Pentagon might be forced to assess its priorities, Cancian, a senior adviser at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said. “I think it would be Israel first, then Ukraine and Taiwan third,” he said. The Pentagon insists it can cope with the demands of both Israel and Ukraine at the same time, and has taken huge strides in expanding America’s defence industrial base. More than $50 billion has been requested for this weapons-building expansion. Pentagon officials also point out that the weapons requirements from Ukraine and from Israel don’t always overlap, although both countries have appealed for large stocks of 155mm artillery shells. To meet that demand, the US had more than doubled production of 155mm shells in the last year and a half and was planning a six-fold increase by late 2024, Brigadier-General Pat Ryder, chief Pentagon spokesman, said. “For Israel and the Indo-Pacific, while there is certainly overlap in some equipment and munitions, there are significant operational differences in these theatres that drive our requirements,” Ryder said. “In Israel, we’re providing precision-guided and Iron Dome munitions which are not used in Ukraine. In the Indo-Pacific, we anticipate longer-range fires and systems which will be key to addressing the challenges we potentially could confront there,” he said. Meanwhile, there are daily shipments of arms arriving in Israel from the US. “We’re looking at every possible way to get Israel what it needs as fast as we can get it to them,” a senior US defence official said. Israel’s needs would be significantly smaller than Ukraine’s, Mark Cancian said. But if the war in Gaza continued for an extended period, some key systems might have to be diverted from Ukraine to Israel, he said. Realistic funding by Congress for the Pentagon to continue backing Ukraine and Israel could be the one obstacle in the US ability to support both countries at war. After weeks of wrangling within the Republican party over the choice of Speaker of the House of Representatives, the war-funding issues have been held in abeyance. The speaker crisis has been resolved with the appointment of Mike Johnson. But there are concerns in the Pentagon that some Republicans, already cautious about the rising cost of the war in Ukraine, might begin to focus their support more for Israel than for the Kyiv government. “One thing that is really important in terms of our ability to support both the Israelis and the Ukrainians simultaneously is additional funding from Congress,” Christine Wormuth, US army secretary, said recently.

The fate of hundreds of thousands of Afghans in Pakistan

Just another example of the cruelty of this world: hundreds of thousands of Afghans who had fled Afghanistan to Pakistan for safety, some of them decades ago, are being forced to leave their homes and return to the country they fear. They have no documents and the Pakstan government set a deadline of today for them to get out of the country. There are potentially more than a million of them but so far about 200,000 have left for an uncertain future. How will the Taliban treat them when they cross the border? Afghanistan's economy is staggering under debt and lack of funds, so the sudden arrival of so many Afghans seeking jobs and homes is going to put an unbelievable strain on the country's fragile economic state. So much slaughter and cruelty is going on around the world that the fate of these poor Afghan families is largely being ignored. Shame on Pakistan.