U.S. President Donald Trump warned Iran’s government on Friday that Washington was “locked and loaded” and ready to intervene if the authorities kill protesters in nationwide demonstrations against the clerical regime’s economic mismanagement. Trump’s threat of U.S. intervention comes six months after American forces attacked Iranian nuclear facilities, and the president began the week by saying he would back an Israeli attack on Iran if the country rebuilt its atomic capabilities. “If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social network. Ali Shamkhani, political adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, warned Trump to back off. “The people of Iran are well acquainted with the experience of Americans coming to the rescue, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza. Any hand of intervention that approaches Iranian security with pretexts will be severed by a regret-inducing response. Iran’s national security is a red line, not fodder for adventurist tweets,” Shamkhani wrote on X. Protests have been taking place in several Iranian cities since December 28, driven by people angered by soaring living costs and opposition to the country’s clerical regime. Local media reported six or seven deaths.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Neue Regierungserklärung, alte Herausforderungen: Friedrich Merz nutzt seinen Auftritt im Bundestag, um außenpolitisch Flagge zu zeigen, von der Ukraine über Verteidigung bis Bürokratieabbau. Hans von der Burchard analysiert, welche Botschaften der Kanzler vor dem EU-Gipfel kommende Woche in Brüssel richtet. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview spricht Ron Prosor, Israels Botschafter in Deutschland, über die fragile Waffenruhe mit der Hamas, über die Hoffnung auf einen neuen Friedensprozess und über die Rolle Deutschlands an Israels Seite. Innenpolitisch bröckelt der Konsens: In der CDU wird die Brandmauer zur AfD teils infrage gestellt. Pauline von Pezold erklärt, warum der Druck vor den Landtagswahlen steigt, welche Strategen an Öffnungen denken und wie die AfD das als Bestätigung feiert Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

Mark T. Kimmitt is a retired U.S. Army brigadier general and has also served as the U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. In May, Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems acknowledged the use of high-power laser systems in combat. Part of the company’s previously undisclosed Iron Lite program, it’s already credited with intercepting “scores of enemy threats.” Most crucially, its high effectiveness, far lower cost and scalability, combined with dozens of other counter-drone and defensive programs under development around the world, ends the argument over whether the drone has been a revolution in modern warfare: It has not. And the brief era of drone supremacy has ended. In 2022, drones became the iconic weapon of the war in Ukraine. Grainy videos showing hundreds of Russian tanks and combat vehicles destroyed by handheld drones grew to be a staple on our screens. Leveraging equal parts battlefield effectiveness, YouTube propagation and morbid entertainment, Ukraine’s media-savvy charismatic president used drone warfare as a way to boost both public morale and international support. Scores of reports, studies and respected military analysts all suggested this use of drones in Ukraine wasn’t a one-time anomaly, but rather signaled a fundamental change in warfare: Drones are cheap, plentiful and hard to destroy; they end the ability to camouflage rear-echelon troops and command posts; and most importantly, they are unmanned and uncrewed, so the only casualties are targeted adversaries and civilians. While they seem to be near-perfect weapons, however, drones are no longer invincible. The battlefield adapts quickly. And like the record of so many other combat disrupters throughout history — cavalry stirrups, Roman phalanxes, longbows, submarines and other supposedly transformative technology that proclaimed to fundamentally change the character of warfare — offensive drones have had a brief window of domination. But it was only a matter of time before effective counter-drone (C-UAS) capabilities emerged. In the period between the two world wars, for example, airpower theorists promoted the long-range bomber as invincible, even to the point where British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin proclaimed in 1932 that “there is no power on earth that can protect (us) from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through.” Yet, the rapid development of early radar detection, interceptor aircraft and anti-aircraft guns quickly became effective countermeasures, leaving the long-range bomber a functional role on the battlefield, but it was no longer the “invincible weapon.” Similarly, there are many reasons why drones no longer dominate today: First, the battlefield is brutal and unforgiving. Just weeks after the appearance of armed drones in Ukraine, Russian units became more skilled at early detection, camouflage, electronic defense and modifying combat vehicles with additional armor to defeat or mitigate incoming kamikaze drones. There are many reasons why drones no longer dominate today. | Jose Colon/Anadolu via Getty Images Yes, rates of significant drone kills have dropped measurably because of counter-drone technology, but they’ve also done so because of changes in tactics, techniques and procedures. Next, with urgent demand and increased budgets for new technology significantly escalating, market forces took over. Today, there are few large defense companies that don’t have a C-UAS system under development, and the diversity of solutions is breathtaking. To that end, the further development and use of overlapping technologies to detect and defend units are significantly increasing the probability of defeating drone attacks. Most pressingly, drone-on-drone combat enabled by artificial intelligence is currently within reach. Swarm attacks from both enemy UAS and missiles can overwhelm many, if not all, manually controlled defenses. Humans are simply unable to process dozens of targets simultaneously, and the relatively limited number of defense systems that can handle multiple targets are prohibitively expensive. As we saw with the attacks from the Houthis, Hezbollah and Iran in the ongoing Israeli conflict, Israel’s and Ukraine’s defenders have been hard-pressed to address all incoming attacks, and the costs have been staggering — which means cheap counter-drones, produced at scale, enabled by AI are the most promising technology to defeat an offensive drone threat. In many ways, AI-enabled UAS could mimic air force tactics developed soon after the invention of the combat aircraft. There would be intelligence gathering, attack and bomber drones for the forward battlefield, interceptors to warn of inbound attacks and fighter variants for aerial combat. Thus, AI-enabled drones will undoubtedly be a potent 21st century air force, augmenting, if not replacing, a human in the cockpit — a capability that’s dangerously inexpensive and no longer exclusive to nation states. This is not to say that UAS are already obsolete. The use of drones in Iran were impressive but relied more on surprise than on a revolutionary technology. And recent attacks in Ukraine have relied on mass rather than invincibility, demonstrating Joseph Stalin’s dictum that “quantity has a quality all its own.” But they just have not — as some breathless analysts proclaim — changed the fundamental character of modern warfare, and one can expect swarms of AI-enabled drones augmented by ground-based lasers can provide an effective and low-cost method to defeat swarms of incoming drones. General George Patton once declared that victory in combat is achieved by the “Musicians of Mars” — the commanders who understand how to properly employ all the weapons of war. Drones are on today’s battlefield, and they have a significant role in combat now, as they will for the foreseeable future. They were the most important weapon for the outnumbered Ukrainian army to blunt Russia’s Vladimir Putin’s massive armored attack in 2022, destroying a staggering number of Russian tanks and combat vehicles. Without those drones, we may have been faced with completely different state of play today. Of course, drones still play a critical role in maintaining the near stalemate in Ukraine, and they will have a role on the battlefield for years to come. But like so many other wonder weapons once thought revolutionary and invincible, drone supremacy has already had its moment on the modern battlefield.

The European Union’s top diplomat said Tuesday the bloc’s executive was helping EU countries to evacuate their citizens from Israel amid the country’s war with Iran. EU High Representative Kaja Kallas told reporters in Brussels that the European Commission had activated its civil protection mechanism, used to help coordinate the bloc’s response during wars, natural disasters and other crises. “We are assisting member states to evacuate their citizens that wish to leave [Israel],” she said. Israel and Iran have been exchanging rocket and drone fire for almost a week since Israel launched a surprise attack, killing several top-ranking Iranian officials in a bid to stop Tehran from developing its nuclear program. Iranian missiles have rained on Tel Aviv in response, killing dozens and destroying buildings in the heart of the country. Poland, Czechia, Latvia and Lithuania announced this week they were evacuating citizens from Israel amid the conflict. With Israeli airspace closed, the Polish foreign ministry said it would evacuate about 200 citizens by bus to Jordan, where they would fly to Warsaw. Israel’s National Security Council has issued a Level 4 travel warning for Israelis traveling across land from Sinai or Jordan to Israel, the same routes that the evacuees will have to take. Yurii Stasiuk contributed to this report.

Germany is by far the largest defense spender in Europe as the continent rearms to face down the threat from Russia. But even Berlin’s spending boost falls well short of what Russia is pouring into its military as its invasion of Ukraine grinds into a fourth year. According to data published Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), more than 100 countries increased their military spending in 2024, including all European countries except Malta.  “Russia once again significantly increased its military spending, widening the spending gap with Ukraine,” said Diego Lopes da Silva, SIPRI’s senior researcher. According to SIPRI’s data, Russia increased military spending by 38 percent, reaching $149 billion, making Moscow the world’s third-largest military spender at 7.1 percent of its GDP. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military spending grew by only 2.9 percent compared to 2023. However, the $64.7 billion spent on its military represents 34 percent of the country’s GDP, making it the largest military burden borne by any country.  “Ukraine currently allocates all of its tax revenues to its military. In such a tight fiscal space, it will be challenging for Ukraine to keep increasing its military spending,” Lopes da Silva stressed. Meanwhile, Germany increased its military spending by 28 percent last year, reaching $88.5 billion. This makes Berlin the largest military spender in Europe since German reunification in 1990 and the fourth-largest spender worldwide.  Poland’s military spending rose by 31 percent to $38 billion, representing 4.2 percent of the country’s GDP. With increased defense budgets across the continent, 18 out of NATO’s 32 members reached the alliance’s 2 percent defense spending target last year, the highest number since the guideline was adopted in 2014. However, the $454 billion spent by NATO’s European allies is still dwarfed by the $997 billion spent by the world’s largest military power, the United States. Washington increased defense spending by 5.7 percent last year. China is the world’s second-largest military spender, allocating $314 billion, which accounts for 50 percent of all defense expenditure in Asia and Oceania.  In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia topped the list with a $80.3 billion defense budget. Amid its ongoing war in the Gaza Strip against Hamas and recent clashes in Lebanon against Hezbollah, Israel increased its defense spending by 65 percent to $46.5 billion. Meanwhile, Iran’s spending fell by 10 percent to $7.9 billion due to sanctions that limited its capacity to grow its budget, according to SIPRI.

Israel’s military on Saturday launched large-scale airstrikes against southern Lebanon after it said it intercepted three rockets coming from the neighboring country. The Israeli strikes targeted “dozens” of rocket launchers controlled by the Hezbollah militant group, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in statement. The strikes are endangering a fragile truce struck last November to put an end to 14 months of intense fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed group. Hezbollah has denied being responsible for the rocket strikes on Israel and reiterated its “commitment to the truce agreement,” Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le-Jour reported. Two people were killed and eight other injured by the Israeli strikes, according to the Lebanese news agency. In a statement, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called for restraint and warned against “a new war which would be devastating for Lebanon.” The escalation comes just days after Israel resumed extensive strikes on Gaza, and amid a growing judicial and political crisis in Israel following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to dismiss the head of the Israeli domestic intelligence service. Israel’s military said on Friday evening that it had killed the head of Hamas’ military intelligence in southern Gaza.

Nimrod Goren is president of Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policy, and an executive board member at Diplomeds, the Council for Mediterranean Diplomacy. After 15 months of devastating news from the Middle East, a silver lining has appeared in the form of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire. The Israeli public has been waiting for this for months, with consecutive public opinion polls indicating that a large majority supported ending the war in Gaza in return for the release of all Israeli hostages held by Hamas. As months went by, however, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing governing coalition worked to avoid such a deal — Hamas was doing the same. And the U.S. administration, although heavily invested in mediation efforts, simply didn’t apply effective pressure to make either party change course. At the same time, the number of living Israeli hostages gradually decreased; casualties among Israeli soldiers increased; and the suffering of Gaza’s civilian population continued. Today, Israelis are supportive of the cease-fire deal, but they also can’t help but ask why it wasn’t reached six, seven or eight months ago. The terms that were discussed and rejected at the time were nearly identical to the ones agreed upon now. Why was it necessary for additional hostages, soldiers and civilians to die before leaders finally took action? Still, the deal brings with it a sigh of relief. We, Israelis, have all come to know and care so much about the hostages. Hope for their release and concern for their fate have become part of our daily lives. Their families have been leading a brave and furious struggle to bring them back home, sometimes in the face of unbearable, ugly attacks by the far right. The number of living Israeli hostages gradually decreased; casualties among Israeli soldiers increased; and the suffering of Gaza’s civilian population continued. | Omar Al-Qattaa/Getty Images Many Israelis showed solidarity and support, feeling a basic Israeli principle had been jeopardized — the state’s responsibility to do whatever it takes to bring its people back home. And it was often claimed in recent months that until the hostages returned, Israeli society couldn’t heal from the trauma of Oct. 7. Now, things are finally moving forward. The excitement upon the return of the first three hostages was felt in every corner. But we also receive the cease-fire announcement with a heavy heart. Not all of the 33 hostages who are to be gradually released in the deal’s first phase are said to be alive, and no one definitively knows which hostages will return on their feet. More questions arise too: What will be the health condition of those returning? What will be the fate of the remaining 65 hostages who are to be released in later phases of the deal, which Netanyahu doesn’t seem eager to implement? What will be the future of Gaza after Israel’s withdrawal? And will residents of southern Israel finally be able to return home safely? There are still many unknowns. But since the cease-fire was announced, they also carry a spark of optimism. This deal shows that, eventually, diplomacy can work. International mediators can deliver. Sides to a bitter conflict can reach an agreement, and public pressure can make an impact. It shows that suffering can come to an end, that families can reunite and a better future can emerge. Taking place in the context of many other regional changes, this cease-fire also creates new opportunities. From the Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire in Lebanon to the transition in Syria and the weakening of Iran, all these developments improve Israel’s geopolitical situation. If only the country had a government that would seek to leverage this to advance a two-state solution, we could have witnessed a much more dramatic transformation — including normalization in Israeli-Saudi relations. The window of opportunity for such change will still exist for a while to come, but its realization would require different, more moderate Israeli leadership, as well as curbing and sidelining far-right extremism, reversing anti-democratic trends within Israeli society and politics, and reviving pro-peace attitudes and practices. The immediate priority, however, is fully implementing all phases of the cease-fire agreement, and setting in motion a constructive “day after” plan in the Gaza Strip — one involving the Palestinian Authority and regional countries, at the expense of Hamas. Israelis and Palestinians will need a continuous international helping hand to do this, especially from the U.S. It’s time to turn the page on the dark chapter that Oct. 7 brought, and start charting the better, more peaceful future that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve. The cease-fire inches us closer to that reality, and the mediators who, however belatedly, made it happen deserve appreciation and thanks, and they should follow the process through till it is fully implemented.

OPTICS ABANDONED AND NOWHERE TO GO: A SNAPSHOT OF MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS STRANDED IN LEBANON War is a magnifier of the best and worst of human behavior, and it’s often those already vulnerable who suffer most. Text and photos by HEIDI PETT in Beirut, Lebanon Heidi Pett is a freelance journalist. Her work in radio, print and television has been featured in publications like the Economist, the BBC and Sky News UK. In an old Chevrolet factory building on the edge of Beirut’s southern suburbs, nearly 200 women from Sierra Leone lined up for lunch. The night before, airstrikes had rattled the windows, echoing round the cavernous space. But now, in the daylight, laughter and chatter bounced off the walls. It was early October, it was hot inside, and as sweat beaded on their foreheads, the women walked slowly, scuffing their plastic slides on the concrete floor.  They were some of the 176,000 migrant domestic workers in Lebanon — many of them separated from or abandoned by their employers who fled Israel’s aerial and ground assaults on the country. War is a magnifier of the best and worst of human behavior, and it’s often those already vulnerable who suffer most. “The madam, she left me at the roadside,” said Patricia Sellu. Advertisement In late September, an Israeli airstrike had targeted the house next to where Patricia was a live-in domestic worker. She was sweeping outside, on the opposite side of the home, which shielded her from the blast’s direct impact. Still, she was enveloped by the sound, the falling debris and the choking black smoke. Both houses were on fire, and she didn’t have a chance to grab her phone, clothes or the wages she’d been hoping to send back home to pay for her children’s school.   Out of confusion — or a lack of care — the family she was working for left without her. She had no way of contacting them. And as the village neighbors drove past without stopping or slowing, she had no idea how to get to safety, or which way to go. She wasn’t even sure exactly where she was. Having fled her previous workplace because the husband was sexually assaulting her — not that she had permission to leave — she’d only been with this family for a few weeks, and the agency that brought her to Lebanon hadn’t told her the name of the village. All Patricia knew was that it was a long journey to Beirut in the army truck that eventually picked her up. They dropped her in Sabra, a Palestinian refugee camp in the capital, where she found other live-in domestic workers from Ethiopia, the Philippines and Sierra Leone. These workers came to Lebanon under the kafala sponsorship system. Their residency and work rights are bound to a specific employer, and they aren’t covered by the country’s labor laws, which leaves them vulnerable to abuse and conditions that amount to slavery. Those who attempt to leave their designated sponsor are subject to detention and deportation, and it’s common for employers to withhold passports and wages. “I just want to go to my country,” Patricia said. “The struggle is too much for us. Lebanon is not our country, we just came here to make our living, so when this happened, we didn’t have anywhere to go.” The expansion of Israel’s bombing campaign and the ground invasion that followed caused more than a quarter of Lebanon’s population to flee their homes. Only Lebanese citizens were allowed in government shelters, which were already at capacity. So, Patricia and the other women she met in Sabra made their way to one of Beirut’s beaches where they slept in the open for four days before hearing about a makeshift shelter welcoming migrant workers. In peacetime, the old factory building was an events space used for parties, exhibitions and photo shoots, and jewelry designer Déa Hage-Chahine used to hold parties there. Déa had started supporting migrant workers four years ago, when the impact of Lebanon’s financial crash, the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 port explosion meant many families could no longer afford to employ domestic workers and just dumped them. At that stage she was mostly just fundraising. However, when the war caused a second, much larger wave of abandonments, also displacing migrant workers who had been living in shared apartments in Dahieh, which were subject to an intensive Israeli bombing campaign until the cease-fire, she took action. Déa sought permission to host the women in the empty building, and has since spent her days sourcing mattresses, food, clothes and medicine for the rapidly expanding number of women she became responsible for.  Each time I visited, the volunteers would have transformed the shelter in some way, whether constructing furniture from discarded pallets, walling off a storage area, or bringing in cots for the five small children there. For the first few days, they fed the women with ready-meals delivered by one of the many volunteer groups supporting Lebanon’s displaced. But soon, they had a kitchen up and running, and assigned the women into groups responsible for cooking meals. It gave them back some agency and dignity — able to choose what they ate, cook familiar meals and pass the time.  The volunteers — mostly young women from a loose group of friends — would take turns on shifts as well, doling out medicine, settling small arguments over phone chargers and food. They weren’t acting in any official capacity. They were simply young Lebanese who took on an enormous responsibility, working in solidarity with a community that had fallen through the cracks. Advertisement One day, signs appeared by the kitchen, trying to confirm reports about a young woman from Sierra Leona who was killed in an airstrike in the Beirut suburb of Dahieh. Her name hadn’t been recorded on any official lists. Over the next two days, the volunteers then registered all the women at the shelter and asked whether they’d like to return to Sierra Leone or stay in Lebanon and attempt to find new jobs and a more permanent place to stay. Most wanted to go home, but of the 200 women they interviewed, only one had possession of her passport. Nena Ghajar was among the many who didn’t. Her employers had fled the country and took her papers. “I said ‘Madam, please give me my documents,’ and she said, ‘No, I paid a lot of money to bring you here, so I will not give you your passport unless you finish your contract.” Nena told me she was willing to finish the contract but wondered how she was supposed to do that given the family had left Lebanon, and she had no way of contacting them. She had cooked, cleaned and looked after the family’s children and grandchildren for 18 months, saving the money to send back home to cover the school fees for her own four kids. “The madam didn’t look back, only the little children. The little one, the 2-year-old was crying, saying ‘Nena, yalla let’s go,’ and I had to tell her I couldn’t go with her because I don’t have a ticket and visa.” When the family left for the airport, they locked the door behind them, leaving Nena homeless. She couldn’t go back even if she wanted to — the house was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike shortly after. But when we first spoke, Nena still wanted to stay in Lebanon and find another job; she hadn’t yet made enough to cover her children’s schooling. Thankfully, while the Lebanese state struggled to support its own citizens during the most intense period of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, immigration authorities agreed to waive fines and fees for women who wanted to leave but had lost their documents or changed employers. And while Déa and her team worked entirely on their own, they set up online fundraisers to cover costs of food, water deliveries, fuel, medicine and, eventually, flights home. It was three weeks later that the shelter started receiving visits from groups like Médecins Sans Frontières, or got word that the International Office for Migration would cover the cost of a repatriation flight. On the day Déa announced this, the women broke out into riotous singing. Some cried as they belted out the chorus of “When Shall I See My Home?” a Nigerian folk song that had become an unofficial anthem of the shelter. The women weren’t able to return with much, though — those on the first repatriation flight were allowed just a 10-kilogram bag. After years of hard work and hardship, many left Lebanon with less than what they arrived with. In January, two months after the cease-fire was announced, only 30 women remained at the shelter. The volunteers now plan to close it after the final repatriation flights. However, they’ve found apartments and are covering rent for those who stayed but are still looking for work, as well as the cost of medical treatment and surgery for those too ill or injured to travel.  Meanwhile, the women who made it home are relieved and elated. In the voice note she left me after landing in Sierra Leona, Nena’s voice cracked with tears: “I’m so glad. I’m so very, very happy now I’m back in my country.” Advertisement

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. WASHINGTON — “Is that a joke?” That was U.S. President Joe Biden’s response when asked whether it was him or President-elect Donald Trump who should take a bow for the cease-fire-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas. Indeed, Trump was quick to assert he was the crucial force behind the deal, claiming credit before Biden had even opened his mouth: “This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” he wrote on his social media site Truth Social. The deal bringing an end to the 15-month conflict in Gaza still may unravel, of course. But with the Israeli cabinet now set to cast its vote, all signs point toward approval — unless, that is, key hard-right member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition Bezalel Smotrich abruptly threatens to quit. But Trump’s determination to claim the breakthrough as his own sticks in the craw for Biden and his aides. As far as the president is concerned, the deal is within “the precise contours” of a plan he set out in May, and was relentlessly pushed by the likes of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Mideast envoy Brett McGurk, as well as by Qatari and Egyptian mediators. Biden’s team simply invited Trump officials to join in the effort as they would inherit any deal that was struck. So, who’s right? Was this a Biden or Trump win? Truth is, Biden aides have been tireless in their efforts to wrestle Netanyahu and Hamas’ leadership into an agreement. And at various times over the past 15 months, they really believed they were close — only for everything to fall apart. Almost a year ago, in February, Biden told reporters he was hopeful there would be a deal struck very soon. And again, in the run-up to the Democratic convention, U.S. officials said agreement was near. But each time, they were frustrated. What really appears to have shifted the dynamic, however, was a Jan. 7 remark by Trump, coupled with a very aggressive push by his soon-to-be special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff — at least that’s the view of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and several seasoned observers of the region.  “All hell will break out. If those hostages aren’t back, I don’t want to hurt your negotiation, if they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” Trump told reporters. At the time, most commentators took the warning to be directed at Hamas and scoffed at the threat. After all, what more could Trump do against Hamas that Netanyahu hadn’t done already? The Palestinian militant group lost its top military commanders, including Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, and its ranks have been devastated. But it wasn’t really Hamas that Trump was addressing. “It wasn’t a warning to Hamas. It was a warning to Netanyahu. To Bibi,” Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, told POLITICO. A senior Israeli official, who asked to remain anonymous as they aren’t authorized to talk with the media, agreed that was how Netanyahu read it as well. And when asked by POLITICO why the Israeli prime minister now appeared ready to agree to a deal he’d dismissed before, Olmert simply said:“Because he’s afraid of Trump.” Olmert and Bannon aren’t alone in their view either. No one disputes that the context of the negotiations has changed recently. “The humanitarian toll in Gaza and Hezbollah’s decision to ink a separate cease-fire deal with Israel in November made Hamas more flexible,” noted Hugh Lovatt and Muhammad Shehada of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Most decisive, however, appears to be pressure from the incoming Trump administration on Netanyahu to accept the deal.” For Sanam Vakil of Chatham House, “Donald Trump’s pressure tactics and warnings to Hamas and Israel” were effective in reviving the drawn-out negotiations. “The Biden administration proved unwilling to exert adequate pressure on Israel’s leadership,” he said. Frustrated Arab leaders and their officials had been imploring Biden to do so for months. But Biden and his aides were reluctant — most likely for fear that it would have cost their party Jewish-American votes and political donations ahead of the election. And they were seemingly wary of giving Republicans the opportunity to argue that Democrats were deserting America’s key Middle East ally. But the pressure coming from Trump finally allowed Netanyahu to overcome the doubts of some in his rambunctious right-wing coalition, and to brave the opposition of hard-right cabinet members Itamar Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, who have contributed to the scuppering of past Gaza peace proposals. (Smotrich has dubbed the agreement “bad and dangerous to Israel’s national security” but, at the time of writing, has held off explicitly threatening to quit.) Netanyahu also feared crossing Trump might wreck other things he hopes to get backing for , including even tougher action against Iran and protection from Arab pressure for serious steps toward a two-state solution. Witkoff, who was in Doha alongside McGurk for negotiations last week, had no qualms playing hardball with the Israeli leader. Flying into Tel Aviv to discuss the deal with Netanyahu last Saturday, Witkoff was brusque when told the Israeli leader was observing the Sabbath and couldn’t meet until the evening, brushing off the objection in “salty” terms. And according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, it prompted Netanyahu to break Sabbath and go meet him — all so that Trump could close the deal.

Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist. She is a CNN contributor, the senior columnist at World Politics Review and a contributing columnist for the Washington Post.  No one would accuse Hamas leaders of being the first to make a strategic miscalculation of epic proportions in the Middle East. After all, from Napoleon to former U.S. President George W. Bush, the region’s history is strewn with the calling cards of leaders whose ambitions turned to disaster. Even so, the collapse of Syria’s Assad family dynasty — a more than half-century-old enterprise of brutality, repression and corruption — places Hamas’ plans to reshape the Middle East in firm contention for the title of (to paraphrase another contender, Iraq’s former dictator Saddam Hussein) the Mother of all Miscalculations. Hamas did mean to cause regional upheaval. But surely, the last thing it wanted was to trigger the unraveling of the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” Israel’s encirclement engineered by Iran. Yet that’s exactly what it did. Shortly after the Oct. 7 rampage — or the “big project” as Hamas called it — one of its leaders explained to the New York Times that the goal was to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash” with Israel. And indeed, the entire equation has now changed, just not in the way Hamas intended. Obtained by news organizations, detailed minutes of the militant group’s planning meetings describe the deliberations that took place during its secret stages. Later dubbed the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” the plan aimed to bring in Iran’s network of proxies, along with Palestinians across Israel, the West Bank and other Arab countries, to start a renewed perennial war against Israel. Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy that had become the most powerful player in Lebanon and a crucial element in Iran’s international network, provided Hamas with support in this, although it seemed less than wholehearted. Even so, it ended up costing Hezbollah dearly, just as it later did Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. The documents also show a perfunctory comment by Yahya Sinwar, the group’s then leader in the enclave, saying ordinary Gazans would face sacrifices. Similarly, in a television interview, exiled Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad explained that Palestinians are “proud to sacrifice martyrs.” And unsurprisingly, the only part of Hamas’ project that unfolded as expected was the calamity that befell the Palestinians of Gaza. Initially, however, the operation succeeded beyond Sinwar’s wildest dreams. Oct. 7 was a catastrophe for Israel, the deadliest day since the Holocaust for the Jewish people. And Israel has undoubtedly paid a high price in diplomacy and reputation in the wake of its ferocious response to the attack. And yet, Hamas’ decision resulted in much greater devastation — human, strategic and political — to its own side. Israel’s furious counterattack has left Gaza in ruins and crushed Hamas into a faint remnant of its former self. And the tsunami triggered by Oct. 7 hasn’t stopped sweeping the region since. Yahya Sinwar was killed in Gaza two months ago, shortly after the group’s exiled leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the stunning explosion of an Iranian government guesthouse in Tehran. | Mahmud Hams/Getty Images A few days after the attacks, Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif urged Palestinians in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa and across the West Bank to join in the fight, telling them to “kill, burn, destroy…” But no such uprising occurred, and Deif himself was killed by Israel last summer — as were most of Hamas’ leaders, including Sinwar, the mastermind of the attack. Sinwar was killed in Gaza two months ago, shortly after the group’s exiled leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the stunning explosion of an Iranian government guesthouse in Tehran. Only hours earlier, at the inauguration of the Islamic Republic’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian, the two had clasped their hands in the air, conspicuously reaffirming their partnership. But by then, Iran’s dominance over several Arab countries was already facing disaster. In solidarity with Hamas, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had started launching rockets at Israel on Oct. 8, vowing keep going as long as the war continued. Israel, meanwhile, demanded an end to the bombing so that tens of thousands of displaced Israelis could return to their homes. Then, one day in mid-September 2024, in an operation that seemed like crude science fiction, the pagers of Hezbollah fighters started exploding, maiming hundreds across Lebanon. Their walkie-talkies blew up next. It wasn’t just Hezbollah’s equipment that was infiltrated either. Day after day, Israel bombed the meeting places of the Shiite militia’s top echelons. And on Sept. 27, an Israeli strike in Beirut killed Nasrallah, the man who had led Hezbollah for more than 30 years. Under Nasrallah’s leadership, and later with Russia’s support, Hezbollah had saved Assad from his own people in a raging civil war. He had worked to establish pro-Iran militias in Iraq, build the Houthis in Yemen and, above all, turned his group into one of the most important component of Iran’s anti-Israel strategy. The mightiest of Tehran’s proxies, the group seemingly guaranteed that if Israel tried to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, its vast arsenal could be unleashed against the Jewish state. But Israel killed Nasrallah, followed by his presumed successor Hashem Safieddine and then, among other top leaders, Hezbollah’s military commander Ibrahim Akil, who was wanted by the U.S. in connection with the 1983 bombing of its Beirut embassy. Hezbollah’s top echelons were essentially destroyed, along with much of its deadly arsenal. So, with thousands of Hezbollah fighters injured or dead, the group’s leadership decimated, and Rusia — Assad’s other patron — tangled up in another conflict, unlikely to forcefully come to his aide, rebels in Syria saw their moment. There was no one left to defend Assad, and the offensive took less than two weeks. The Syrian leader had to flee, and the Alawite regime he inherited — built by his father Hafez Assad more than 50 years ago — quickly crumbled. Who could have imagined that the Oct. 7 attacks would end in the collapse of the Assad regime, the death of Nasrallah, the defanging (at least for now) of Hezbollah, the collapse of much of Iran’s ability to project power across the Middle East and the humiliation of Russia as its protégé became a political refugee? Who could have imagined that the Oct. 7 attacks would end in the collapse of the Assad regime, the death of Nasrallah, the defanging (at least for now) of Hezbollah, the collapse of much of Iran’s ability to project power across the Middle East and the humiliation of Russia as its protégé became a political refugee and Moscow’s ability to project power in the region was crippled? Alas, nobody knows what’s next for the region. Nerves are on edge. It’s too soon for anyone to confidently declare anything like a lasting victory. The aftermath of Hamas’ monumental miscalculation is yet another Middle East lesson in the law of unexpected consequences.