Weekend Edition.

Gimme Shelter.

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1. Tom Friedman:

U.S. diplomacy to end the Gaza war and forge a new relationship with Saudi Arabia has been converging in recent weeks into a single giant choice for Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: What do you want more — Rafah or Riyadh?

Do you want to mount a full-scale invasion of Rafah to try to finish off Hamas — if that is even possible — without offering any Israeli exit strategy from Gaza or any political horizon for a two-state solution with non-Hamas-led Palestinians? If you go this route, it will only compound Israel’s global isolation and force a real breach with the Biden administration.

Or do you want normalization with Saudi Arabia, an Arab peacekeeping force for Gaza and a U.S.-led security alliance against Iran? This would come with a different price: a commitment from your government to work toward a Palestinian state with a reformed Palestinian Authority — but with the benefit of embedding Israel in the widest U.S.-Arab-Israeli defense coalition the Jewish state has ever enjoyed and the biggest bridge to the rest of the Muslim world Israel has ever been offered, while creating at least some hope that the conflict with the Palestinians will not be a “forever war.’’

This is one of the most fateful choices Israel has ever had to make. (Source: nytimes.com)

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2. Egypt offered a new proposal for a truce between Israel and Hamas that would see the release of 20 Israeli hostages over an initial three-week cease-fire, in a bid to stave off an Israeli military offensive in the southern Gazan city of Rafah. The proposal, formulated jointly with Israel, starts with a shorter initial time frame for pausing fighting than mediators previously put forward, but it still aims for a prolonged period of vaguely defined calm that would lead to the end of the war, according to Egyptian officials. It represents a last-ditch effort to revive negotiations that have dragged on for about five months without an agreement. (Source: wsj.com)

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3. Israel and Hezbollah are locked in an escalating cycle of violence that risks spiraling further in the aftermath of an unprecedented exchange of direct fire between Israel and Iran. Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group and political party closely allied with Iran, has engaged in a slow-burning conflict with Israel since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, with the militia launching missiles and drones into Israel and Israeli forces countering with airstrikes, artillery and tank shells into Lebanon. Israel and Iran’s most powerful client militia have intensified their conflict in recent days, heightening fears that one or the other could miscalculate and trigger a more intense confrontation. Such a scenario could result in widespread death and destruction in both Lebanon and Israel.

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4. Lawrence Freedman:

Even if Trump wins the presidential election in November, that does not guarantee Putin a satisfactory outcome. Trump will want to push his peace plan but, from what has been reported, Putin will find the details as unacceptable as will Zelenskyy. Having publicly boasted for the past six months that Russia had seized the initiative in the war, Putin must now contemplate the possibility that it might yet again swing towards Ukraine. 

Prof. Freedman’s recent speech at Stanford University on this general subject — “Escalation, Red Lines, Risk and the Russo-Ukraine War” — is worth reading in full. (Sources: kcl.ac.uk, ft.com, samf.substack.com)

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5. Public meetings between officials from Russia, Belarus, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Iran, and North Korea have surged in recent days, with at least 10 high-level bilateral meetings between April 22 and 26, underscoring the deepening multilateral partnership these states are constructing to confront the West. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting of defense ministers in Astana, Kazakhstan on April 26. Shoigu met with PRC Minister of National Defense Dong Jun on the sidelines of the meeting and highlighted the “unprecedented” level of Russo-Sino relations. Shoigu also met with Iranian Defense Minister Mohammed Reza Ashtiani and stated that Russia is prepared to expand Russo-Iranian military and military-technical cooperation. Ashtiani is primarily responsible for managing arms procurement and sales and the Iranian defense industrial base, which makes these meetings particularly noteworthy. Dong and Ashtiani held a bilateral meeting and called for increased Sino-Iranian cooperation, including in the defense and military spheres. Belarusian Defense Minister Lieutenant General Viktor Khrenin also met with Dong and Ashtiani at the SCO meeting on April 26. The April 26 SCO meeting marked Iran’s first SCO meeting as a member state since joining the organization in July 2023. (Source: understandingwar.com)

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6. Taiwan has reported that a dozen Chinese warplanes flew sorties close to the island yesterday, in a sudden surge of military activity just hours after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, left Beijing following talks with President Xi Jinping and top Chinese officials. Before Blinken’s three-day visit to China, US officials had pointed to a period of relative calm in the Taiwan strait over the past few months, after years of aggressive Chinese military maneuvers and threats, as a factor in improving US-Chinese relations since Joe Biden held a summit meeting with Xi in November. (Source: theguardian.com)

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7. The commander of US forces in the Indo-Pacific region has accused China of pursuing a “boiling frog” strategy, raising tensions in the region with increasingly dangerous military activity. Admiral John “Lung” Aquilino said that during his three years as US Indo-Pacific commander, China has increased its pace of military development and matched its growing capabilities with more destabilising behaviour. “It’s getting more aggressive, they’re getting more bold and it’s getting more dangerous,” Aquilino told the Financial Times in an interview before he hands over command to Admiral Samuel “Pappy” Paparo next week. Aquilino said China was stepping up its aggressive conduct through a “boiling frog” strategy, in which it gradually raised the temperature so that the ultimate danger was under-appreciated until it was too late. (Source: ft.com)

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