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A Multinational Force in Gaza: UNIFIL Redux?

Rena Gabber — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 14:07:23 +0000

On July 30, the Board of Peace (BoP) surprised the world with its Gaza Roadmap—an agreement with Hamas to implement the second phase of President Trump’s peace plan. To the shock of many, the terror group officially committed to surrendering its weapons, relinquishing any role in governance, and ceding all power to a new Palestinian administration. An International Stabilization Force, or ISF, commanded by U.S. Major General Jasper Jeffers, would play an overarching role holding it all together—monitoring Hamas compliance, training Palestinian police, securing humanitarian aid, and eventually acting as a buffer between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and a new Gazan government.

It’s a serious framework that deserves being taken seriously. If successful, it could mark a major turning point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Middle East history is littered with well-intended frameworks that foundered on implementation. It’s fine to be hopeful about the Roadmap’s promise. It’s essential to anticipate what might go wrong.

The most obvious concern receiving the greatest attention is that the deal hinges on Hamas living up to its word. Are the fanatics who perpetrated October 7—whose entire identity is bound up with their weapons, military infrastructure, and commitment to destroying Israel—really prepared to give it all up and throw themselves onto history’s ash heap? The mere suggestion sounds preposterous. Far more likely that Hamas sees the Roadmap as a necessary tactical retreat, one that provides breathing space to rebuild strength until conditions are ripe for resurgence.

Which brings us to the ISF, which has so far received much less attention—even though its role as the world’s independent, on-the-ground eyes and ears will be crucial not just in verifying Hamas compliance, but in helping prevent its reconstitution in what will inevitably be a fragile effort to build a new Gazan reality.

The first concern is whether the ISF will have the capacity to adequately perform its assigned missions. In February, Jeffers indicated he would command 20,000 foreign soldiers, who would support approximately 12,000 Palestinian police tasked with maintaining internal security. Those numbers are already dangerously low—most guidelines suggest that at least 40,000 to 50,000 personnel would be needed to secure Gaza’s two million people in a post-war environment that will likely remain vulnerable to terrorist remnants for years. But the picture may be much worse than that—we’ve heard from authoritative sources that the ISF could end up with as few as 5,000 soldiers.

Even greater concerns surround how the ISF will perform once deployed in close proximity to both the IDF and the bulk of Gaza’s population. It’s a safe bet that elements from Hamas will eventually try to violate the Roadmap—by rebuilding capabilities and plotting new operations against Israel. Some no doubt will purposefully work to foment situations designed to bring the IDF into conflict with the ISF, with the goal of triggering an international incident that results in condemnation of Israel and the delegitimization of Gaza’s nascent administration.

What happens the first time the IDF gets intelligence that a Hamas planning cell is operating in a populated area, the Palestinian police refuse to act, and Israel demands that the ISF vacate their positions so a raid or precision strike can be conducted? What if the ISF refuses the request—because it doubts Israel’s information, judges IDF action would be too destabilizing, or worries that compliance would jeopardize its relations with the local population? Does Israel back down and compromise its freedom of action? Or does it risk having ISF troops caught in the crossfire and even killed, triggering exactly the kind of blowback Hamas was banking on? It’s not just a theoretical problem. It’s an entirely foreseeable consequence of inserting foreign forces into such a combustible situation, where one of the parties is a terrorist group whose existence depends on the framework’s failure.

The main cautionary tale in this regard, of course, is the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL. Tasked after the 2006 war with supporting the Lebanese army’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah, UNIFIL instead morphed into the buffer Hezbollah hid behind to become the most powerful terrorist army in history. Established with the best intentions, UNIFIL’s multinational contingent invariably ended up prioritizing short-term stability over confronting Hezbollah’s transgressions. Its measure of success became the absence of visible conflict rather than achieving the mission of ensuring disarmament. Israel is still dealing with that failure today.

The risk is real that a small multinational force in Gaza will face the same structural pressures that doomed UNIFIL. Recognizing that danger and dealing with it head on must be a priority for the ISF and BoP. A U.S. general with Jeffers’ credibility is well positioned to manage the risk, but it will require making close coordination with the IDF a permanent operational imperative. That coordination—systematic, detailed, binding—needs to be built into the ISF’s rules of engagement from the start, not negotiated on the fly as problems emerge.

The Roadmap is worth testing. An effective ISF is essential for it to succeed. But UNIFIL’s lesson—that a multinational force can easily slip from being part of the solution to part of the problem—needs to be absorbed before the first foreign soldier is deployed, not after.

John Hannah is the Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, including as former Vice President Cheney’s national security advisor.

Read the original piece in The Times of Israel.

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The Red Sea Fight Needs an African Shore

Jonah Brody — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 13:37:58 +0000

The war between the US and Iran has opened a new maritime front along the Red Sea. As Washington and Tehran contest the Strait of Hormuz, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have declared a blockade of Saudi commerce through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait—the narrow waterway splitting Yemen and Djibouti that forms the southern gateway to the Red Sea. The corridor’s importance has grown for the global economy as Saudi Arabia now leans on the passage to export oil, now that the Strait of Hormuz has seized up. Ships still transit, but under enough risk that Saudi tankers now run dark and reroute. The threat reaches past Saudi Arabia: Houthi missiles have struck vessels flying non-Saudi flags and left merchant crews dead. That southern access point to the Red Sea is now contested, and the US posture there was built for an important but entirely different fight.

The Counterterrorism Posture Meets a Maritime War

The US military posture in East Africa is well placed but too narrowly tasked. For two decades, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) has optimized its East Africa presence for counterterrorism in Somalia: surveillance flights, strikes, special operations, and partner training against al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based al-Qaeda affiliate, and the Islamic State. That fight is necessary, and it has helped prevent al-Shabaab from overtaking the Somali capital of Mogadishu and driven the Islamic State’s Somalia branch into hiding. But while US forces in Africa, concentrated in Djibouti, sit almost exactly where a Red Sea fight would want them, their basing arrangements were built for striking and advising inland counterterrorism operations, and Djibouti’s restrictions constrain the offshore operations the Houthi threat now requires. The strategic landscape has outgrown an access architecture built for a narrower fight.

Geography compounds the problem. The Bab el-Mandeb divides two US combatant commands, AFRICOM to its west and Central Command (CENTCOM)—which remains focused on the fight against Iran—to its east. Adversaries have long worked that seam. Recent public reporting from the Wall Street Journal describes Houthi technicians supplying al-Shabaab with drone and explosive-device expertise. The two groups have not merged their campaigns, but they share a common enemy. Their cooperation shows how untenable it is to treat the two shores as separate files.

Djibouti Is Not Enough

On the African shore, the American presence rests solely on one installation. Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti sits close to the strait—offering prime real estate for operations—but Djibouti has refused to let US forces strike Houthi positions that threaten the Bab el-Mandeb. Ironically, America’s only base in Africa cannot be used to defend the strait critical to its economic well-being. China’s only overseas base sits a few miles away, a separate reason not to stake America’s presence on one location. On the Arabian side, major CENTCOM operating locations sit well away from the chokepoint.

A single base in Djibouti is not enough; Washington needs options.

Build a Distributed Network at Berbera and Bosaso

The near-term answer to the Houthi challenge is distributed access, and the US can build it quickly. Somaliland has offered the US the use of Berbera, which pairs one of the longest runways in Africa with a deep-water port on the Gulf of Aden. From Berbera, US forces could fly persistent surveillance over the strait; base maritime patrol and counter-drone assets; refuel and stage naval and special operations; and hold a recovery airfield on the chokepoint’s southern flank. Berbera would not win the maritime fight by itself, but it would give the US an additional, politically unencumbered foothold that Djibouti will not provide.

The semi-autonomous Somali state of Puntland offers a second option. The US has agreed to expand the base at Bosaso, another Gulf of Aden port, for counterterrorism and maritime security. The deal is young and its results are unproven, but its significance is the shift it represents: the US has demonstrated a willingness to make direct security arrangements with capable sub-federal authorities when operations demand it, rather than wait on the federal government in Mogadishu. Bosaso and Berbera together would give American forces a network across the coast that matters most.

Access at Berbera would also align the US with Israel, which recognized Somaliland in December and, according to Bloomberg, has established a small intelligence presence there and is exploring a base from which to monitor and strike the Houthis. Somaliland’s leaders have been guarded about hosting foreign forces, so this remains unsettled. But a shared foothold on the southern flank would knit together partners already hitting the same Iranian adversary.

Access Without Immediate Recognition

The US needs only enough access to improve its ability to defend the Bab el-Mandeb, and that does not require recognizing Somaliland now. Skeptics will call a base at Berbera a de facto recognition of Somaliland, even if the US does not say so in an official capacity. But access can rest on a security agreement with the Somaliland authorities that govern Berbera by dealing with them as the party in control on the ground, which avoids recognizing Somaliland as a sovereign state. That is the approach the US just took at Bosaso, where it dealt directly with Puntland’s local authorities instead of Somalia’s federal government in Mogadishu. Going around the federal government does carry real costs: strain on a fragile federal system; propaganda for al-Shabaab; and friction with the African Union, Turkey, the UAE, and Ethiopia.

But two facts blunt the sovereignty charge.

The federal government cannot deliver quick, reliable coastal access in a crisis. And in early 2025 Somalia itself offered the US its strategic ports, Berbera and Bosaso among them, that it does not control.

The Houthi threat predates this war and will likely outlast it. The tools to manage it—runways, ports, sensors, patrol aircraft, and counter-drone systems—are available on both shores of the chokepoint. If we have learned anything from the current fight in the Persian Gulf, it is that getting the geography right in front of a full-blown crisis matters.

MajGen Robert Sofge, USMC (ret.), former commander of United States Marine Corps Forces Europe and Africa, is a 2026 Generals & Admirals Program participant in the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).
Jonah Brody is a policy analyst at JINSA.

Read the original piece in Small Wars Journal.

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America Can’t Import Its Way Out of the Critical Minerals Crisis

Nolan Judd — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 14:35:50 +0000

The U.S. defense industrial base today faces a critical minerals challenge—one with serious national security implications.

On August 4, media reports indicated that a major U.S. defense contractor is, for the first time, planning to source germanium and scandium—critical minerals used to build high-end defense items—from American firms. Here’s the problem: the prospective supplier does not have an operational mine—and will not until at least 2028. To highlight the scope of this challenge, consider the fact that the United States has not mined scandium since the 1960s.

Critical minerals are vital elements used in numerous defense platforms: warships, stealth bombers, fighter jets, missiles, sensors, and radars. Today the United States is import-reliant when it comes to critical minerals. China accounts for 90 percent of worldwide refining and processing capacity and is the top global refiner for 19 of 20 strategic minerals especially relevant to defense production.

Beijing’s critical minerals dominance is a threat to the national security of the United States and must end. For that reason, Washington is seeking to curtail critical mineral imports from China. It is also working to stockpile its own critical minerals. To that end, the Trump administration ordered the creation of the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve, or Project Vault, in February—a logical complement to America’s existing petroleum and uranium strategic reserves.

To create viable domestic stockpiles, the United States has looked beyond its borders. The Trump administration has recently signed nearly 20 bilateral framework deals, and created multilateral forums like Pax Silica designed to form U.S.-friendly critical minerals supply chains. Washington is right to pursue a multilateral approach to U.S. critical minerals security, but there are better ways to do so.

Relying on partners’ reserves to meet U.S. demand, however, is problematic. For reasons of geography alone, even the most U.S.-friendly countries cannot be relied upon to supply the United States’ needs in a true crisis.

The geostrategic vulnerabilities are glaring. The United States signed a critical minerals deal in 2023 with Mongolia, a landlocked country surrounded by China and Russia. Similarly, Kazakhstan, a Pax Silica member, shares long and arguably indefensible borders with both China and Russia. And the COVID-19 pandemic, Iran, and the Houthis have exposed the extant fragility of global supply chains more broadly.

During a great power conflict, depending on global shipping would become problematic—potentially jeopardizing America’s ability to import critical minerals. Key sea lines of communication (SLOCs) through chokepoints like Asia’s Strait of Malacca and Europe’s Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap would be threatened by U.S. adversaries. Imagine the United States, in World War II, having to import defense production items through the same waters where it was fighting the German Navy.

Even in peacetime, overseas sources have perils. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has large cobalt, nickel, and lithium reserves, has become a focal point of U.S. critical minerals strategy. Washington likely seeks to counter China’s own strategic mining in the DRC. However, the country’s track record of corruption and instability—including its recent yearslong war with Rwanda—makes it a risky bet for U.S. sourcing.

Fortunately, low-cost alternatives are emerging. The Trump administration, on July 30, gave the Commerce Department authority to impose export controls on industrial waste, which is often shipped abroad despite containing recoverable minerals. Extracting those critical minerals requires considerable technical capacity and expertise—which is where America’s allies can help.

Washington should consider forming a critical minerals consortium with friendly countries to boost American extraction, recycling, and reprocessing capacity. Pooling that technology and know-how would accelerate the U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve’s progress. In exchange, the United States could offer mutually beneficial defense arrangements. Such inducements can include new or expanded joint research and development (R&D) projects and defense co-production.

The timing is auspicious: several major U.S. bilateral defense pacts are up for renewal. For example, the next version of the soon-to-expire U.S.-Greek Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement could leverage Greece’s new advances in refining gallium. Currently, China enjoys a near-monopoly on gallium, which is reportedly used in over 11,000 U.S. military components. The upcoming expiration of the U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding presents another opportunity. Israel is making significant advances in neodymium-iron-boron recycling and accelerating state-backed critical minerals research.

This approach has several advantages. First, reducing U.S. dependence on foreign-based mining hedges against potential supply disruption. Second, utilizing cheap and plentiful American materials—like industrial waste—would boost U.S. stockpiles at low expense. Third, harnessing partners’ existing R&D efforts would reduce private-sector research costs. That could stimulate industry interest in those U.S. critical minerals projects for which, as Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) recently said, “no free market [demand] exists.”

With challenges come opportunities. By better leveraging its partners and allies in the critical minerals race, Washington can breathe new life into its defense industrial base. The United States is, unfortunately, in another interwar period; it is time to act accordingly.

MajGen Tracy King, USMC (ret). is former Commander of Marine Corps Forces Europe and Africa, and a Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) Generals and Admirals Program Participant. MajGen King also has served as Director of Asia Strategy on the Joint Staff.

Yoni Tobin is a Senior Policy Analyst at JINSA.

Originally published in RealClearDefense.

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U.S. Strikes Iranian Oil Tankers in Response to Tehran’s Attacks on Navy Ships

Nolan Judd — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 16:30:22 +0000

The U.S. destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday in response to fresh attempts by Tehran to strike U.S. warships in the Middle East in recent days, according to U.S. Central Command.

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However, Iran would still need to know the approximate location of U.S. warships when its attacks began, raising concerns that China and Russia could be helping Iran track the locations of American warships, officials said.

The fact that Iran is able to target warships at all after the U.S. degraded its ability to see the battlefield is a key concern, according to retired Vice Adm. John “Fozzie” Miller, who commanded U.S. naval forces in the Middle East. “They don’t really have the capacity to reach out and find someone out in the Arabian Sea on radar any longer,” he said.

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Read the full piece in the Wall Street Journal.

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Military Tech Cooperation With Israel Is Less Radical Than Critics Claim

Nolan Judd — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 16:34:24 +0000

For nearly 20 years, the United States’ military aid to Israel has come in the form of foreign military financing. A provision in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act would deepen the military ties between the two countries at a time when many Americans are increasingly skeptical of the relationship and some members of Congress would prefer to cut aid ties entirely.

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“This bill would be important, but still less impactful than either its U.S. supporters or critics claim. As with most everything else in American political debate nowadays, people will read into this bill whatever they want,” Jonathan Ruhe, the fellow for American strategy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told The Dispatch.

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“Israel is not an industrial superpower, but in some areas they are a technology superpower,” Bowman said. Israeli technologies like the Iron Beam, a directed-energy air defense system, are one example and could be an area for manufacturing collaboration with the United States, according to Ruhe. Countering drones with traditional air-defense systems is expensive and resource-intensive, but Iron Beam can theoretically eliminate an unlimited number of incoming drones, according to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the Israeli defense company behind the technology.

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“Neither the U.S., nor Israeli governments, nor defense companies in either country, want to give one another the types of control that this bill’s critics say it does,” Ruhe told The Dispatch. “Israelis’ sensitivities about such issues are innately high, and have only risen higher amid tussles with Biden and Trump over arms resupplies, Gaza, Lebanon, and a potential nuclear deal with Iran.”

Read the full piece in the Dispatch.

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Turkey’s Kurdish Peace Process Is Not About Erdogan

jinsa-shavdala — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 18:33:29 +0000

In August, Turkey’s parliament passed a law that will allow thousands of members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to lay down their weapons and thousands more political prisoners and exiles to return to normal life. Over the coming months, hundreds of PKK members are expected to travel to Turkey to take advantage of the new law and reintegrate into a country that they left behind to take up arms against. This was unimaginable only a few years ago, when Turkey and the PKK were locked in a conflict that stretched across Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. Now, for the first time in 30 years of on-and-off negotiations between the PKK and the Turkish state, a legal basis for the end of armed conflict exists.

For decades, a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish conflict was long seen as vital for Turkey’s full democratization. Yet last month’s development was met with widespread criticism from some of the most outspoken supporters of Turkish democracy. Their concern, which has been voiced widely in Turkey, is that the agreement is a cynical ploy by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to win Kurdish support for perpetuating his authoritarian rule. Moreover, many question whether the government will actually follow through and provide real political concessions to the country’s Kurds.

When it comes to Erdogan, suspicion is always prudent, and the concerns raised about the peace process are hardly unreasonable. It is true that Erdogan faces constitutional constraints on securing a third term that require him to navigate significant parliamentary hurdles. It is also true that he will seek to extract domestic political benefit from this process, as he does from most political developments.

Yet this is not the full story. The government’s willingness to make peace with the PKK is also driven by important national security concerns. Understanding the agreement on foreign-policy terms is crucial to appreciating why it will likely succeed—and ultimately prove beneficial for Turkey.

The primary drivers of this peace process have always lain beyond Turkey’s borders, in a cascading series of events that began with Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and led through the destruction of Hezbollah, fall of the Assad regime in Syria in December 2024, and the current war with Iran.

The fall of the Assad regime “is a direct result of the blows we have inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed at the time. He was not wrong, and in Turkey, Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and Erdogan’s coalition partner, agreed with him: “The fire that began in Gaza spread to Lebanon, extended its shadow over Syria, reached Iraq, and ultimately produced a shock wave that penetrated the heart of Iran.”

In October of 2024, shortly before the rebel assault that brought down Assad, Erdogan spoke at the opening of the Turkish parliament. In his speech, he warned that “Israel’s next target will be Turkey” and called for the “strengthening of the home front.” The very same day, Bahceli shook hands with pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party representatives in parliament—something that he had previously refrained from doing with members of a party that he had called to be banned on multiple occasions. This action alone immediately ignited talks of a new peace process between Turkey and the Kurds.

Amid these geopolitical dynamics, Erdogan’s domestic political concerns played a more complicated role in the process. While he no doubt ultimately hopes to secure Kurdish support for a new term in office, any concessions to the PKK or the Kurdish movement also risk an intense nationalist backlash. Erdogan has consistently appeared uncertain about how the process would be received by Turkish nationalists and whether the Kurdish support he may be banking on will be sufficient to carry him over the line in the next election.

Indeed, it was precisely the same fears that led to the collapse of the last significant peace process between the two sides more than 10 years ago. In this context, Bahceli himself has often taken the lead in publicly promoting the process, working to overcome the delays by pushing for several measures that the government had been slow to implement.

Initially, as Turkey’s regional anxieties overrode Erdogan’s political hesitations, the peace process got off to a hectic start. Numan Kurtulmus, the speaker of the Turkish parliament and a senior figure in Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, framed the urgency of the new peace process through a familiar conspiratorial trope in Turkish nationalist and Islamist traditions: the belief that external powers seek to weaken and ultimately partition Turkey. Warning that “in the so-called ‘Greater Israel’ project, Turkey is seen as the primary force to be absorbed,” he argued that this reality requires Ankara to “fortify its home front.”

Since the outset of the process, fortifying the home front against “global imperialist conspiracies and Zionist ambitions” has emerged as a central organizing concept across the Turkish government’s public messaging. While the Palestinian cause is an ideological issue for Erdogan, the widening instability in the region—and its implications for Kurdish aspirations—is a unifying concern for the entire Turkish political and security establishment.

With Operation Midnight Hammer in 2025, a major fear for Turkey had become reality. Iran—the country with the second-largest Kurdish population after Turkey—was now in the crosshairs, and, after Iraq in 2003 and Syria in 2011, the Kurds once again appeared to be poised to take center stage. In both Syria and Iran, the most capable forces on the ground are PKK-affiliated groups—the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), respectively. In an attempt to get ahead of the curve, the Turkish government turned to negotiating with the person whom both organizations see as their leader: Abdullah Ocalan.

Ankara’s main concern was that regional upheaval, especially in Syria and Iran, could strengthen Kurdish autonomy or political leverage in ways that eventually reverberate inside Turkey. A second concern is the prospect of Israel deepening ties with Kurdish actors—again, especially in Syria and Iran.

From Ankara’s perspective, closer Israeli-Kurdish relations would not only empower Kurdish movements in ways that complicate Turkey’s own domestic challenges but would also alter the regional balance of power by enhancing Israel’s reach and capabilities in the emerging Turkey-Israel regional rivalry. While it was widely reported last year that Syrian Kurdish officials had met with Israeli counterparts, such contacts remained far removed from the kind of sustained and institutional engagement that Ankara fears. Ankara regularly hosts Hamas, but we remain far from seeing the PKK in Tel Aviv.

In effect, the presence and operational capabilities of the SDF and PJAK have given Ocalan more leverage in his negotiations with the Turkish government than the PKK ever possessed within Turkey alone. It is no coincidence, then, that the earliest and most visible outcomes of the negotiations have so far materialized in these two arenas. Ocalan reportedly intervened in Syria to help peacefully resolve the fighting between the SDF and the new government in Damascus at the beginning of this year, leading to the SDF’s integration into the new Syrian state.

The Turkey-PKK peace process’s impact on Iran has yet to fully manifest itself, but Turkish columnist Abdulkadir Selvi—widely seen as a conduit for government messaging—recently argued that it prevented the United States from deploying PKK-affiliated groups into Iran during Operation Epic Fury, forcing Washington to instead engage with less-capable Kurdish organizations.

The chain of regional events set in motion on Oct. 7, 2023, coupled with a need to transcend Turkey’s historic vulnerabilities, have both energized and unified Turkey’s ruling elites around a new Kurdish policy. Even the main opposition party has backed the peace process, despite its leading presidential contender, Ekrem Imamoglu, being imprisoned in what is widely viewed as a politically motivated trial.

This exceptionally rare political consensus reflects a deeper, if paradoxical, reality: No other country has grasped the significance of Kurdish agency in the Middle East quite like Turkey has.

In a recent statement, Bahceli characterized the peace process as “not merely a matter of security, but one of strengthening brotherhood, national unity, and solidarity.”

In a country where a significant portion of the population has been willing to take up arms in pursuit of ethnic rights, there is a lot to do for true unity to be achieved. It will ultimately require legal and constitutional reforms that allow Kurds to govern their towns and their local economies without the risk of arbitrary intervention by the government. What’s more, it is unrealistic to expect Kurds to feel secure in their rights unless Turkey’s authoritarian downtrend is reversed and members of other political parties are no longer being systematically jailed.

That said, the PKK’s immediate expectations are more limited and pragmatic than a wholesale democratization of Turkey. At the outset of negotiations, Ocalan made it clear that he had no cultural or ethnic preconditions for ending the armed struggle. At this stage, the process rests on the PKK’s confidence that it can transition from an armed movement into a legitimate political and civil actor without being dismantled or excluded from public life.

The most immediate test for Ankara will be Ocalan’s status. The PKK expects improvements to his working conditions in prison and, crucially, greater access to the outside world so that he can communicate freely with the movement and play an effective role in managing its transition away from armed struggle.

None of this necessarily requires Erdogan to stop repressing political opponents or suddenly embrace liberal democracy, and Ocalan’s willingness to bring the process this far without such commitments suggests that he does not regard broader democratization as a prerequisite for taking the first steps.

But for the process to advance beyond disarmament, the PKK will need evidence that laying down its weapons creates political space rather than simply eliminating the only leverage that it has possessed for half a century. In that sense, the immediate question is less about whether Erdogan is prepared to democratize Turkey than whether he is prepared to accommodate the PKK’s transformation into a legitimate, exclusively civilian actor.

Peace does not guarantee democracy, but it is a prerequisite for it. Pro-democracy critics of the current process should recognize that even while the fate of Turkish democracy will remain dangerously uncertain whatever happens with the Kurds, ending the state’s military conflict with the PKK is an important achievement in its own right. The PKK has now laid down its arms. If Turkey permanently ends its military operations against all Kurdish organizations, including those in Syria, Iraq, and Iran, then the process will have succeeded on geopolitical terms. This will measurably improve the lives of all people in the region and set the stage for the fight for democracy to continue on more favorable terrain.

At a moment when the Middle East appears to be poised for prolonged turbulence, stabilizing the Kurdish question at home may prove to be Turkey’s most consequential strategic investment in its own future.

Giran Ozcan is Fellow for Kurdish Affairs at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).

Originally published in Foreign Policy.

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Western Intelligence Reports: Chinese Ships Secretly Used to Gather Intelligence – Passed on to Iran

Nolan Judd — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 19:57:17 +0000

Western intelligence reports recently revealed that much of China’s fleet of commercial-civilian ships serve as a secret arm of military intelligence. This means that civilian cargo ships of the state-owned shipping giant COSCO, along with fishing vessels belonging to China’s “naval militia,” carry sophisticated and camouflaged signal intelligence collection systems (SIGINT), as Western intelligence sources claim.

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A study by the American think tank JINSA have long warned that Chinese control of the port is an ideal platform for gathering intelligence, signals, and physically tracking our forces. The concern in Washington is so grave that U.S. officials have warned that Chinese activity at the port could jeopardize the sharing of sensitive intelligence and operational data communication between Israel and the United States.

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Read the full piece in Mako (originally in Hebrew).

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Six Months Into the Iran War, Is Trump’s Economic Pressure Campaign Yielding Dividends?

Nolan Judd — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 20:08:23 +0000

As the conflict between the United States and Iran passes the six month mark, former White House officials and regional analysts remain divided over whether Washington’s economic campaign and naval blockade are meaningfully changing the strategic landscape.

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Jonathan Ruhe, Fellow for American Strategy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, argued it is still unclear whether either side has the edge six months into the conflict, but suggested that Iran “more likely” retains an advantage.

“At best, the verdict is still out on whether the U.S. has regained meaningful leverage over Iran,” Ruhe said. “More likely though, Iran retains the initiative and escalation dominance over the U.S. and its partners.”

Ruhe suggested Tehran views Washington’s shift toward sanctions as a sign that the U.S. has expended its military options.

“Economic pain is a small price to pay, especially because Iran’s regime thinks the latest sanctions regime is shot full of holes, and because it clearly doesn’t care if its own people suffer in the process,” Ruhe said. “If anything, the sanctions-first approach will merely embolden Tehran to step up its military threats to shipping, U.S. bases, and our Gulf partners.”

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Read the full piece in Jewish Insider.

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Six Months on, Israel Waiting in the Wings as Trump’s War on Iran Shifts to Economic Pressure

Nolan Judd — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 20:03:05 +0000

“Help has arrived,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Feb. 28, speaking after the Israeli and U.S. militaries launched a joint operation, “Roaring Lion/Epic Fury,” against Iran, killing then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the opening salvo.

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IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu, told JNS that Iran is currently prioritizing control of the Strait of Hormuz and that Jerusalem is watching closely, as its ability to assist the United States in this regard is limited.

“We are preparing all our efforts for the future in case we need to bomb Iran to stop or delay its nuclear project. We currently see that it is not yet urgent, and we want to give the Americans the space they need to solve the Hormuz problem,” said Amidror, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America in Washington.

He said that the parliamentary elections in Israel on Oct. 27 are likely to have little impact on military decisions, as nearly all candidates support preventing Iran from acquiring the bomb.

“There may be differences in the level of involvement, but at the end of the day, I think almost everyone agrees on the need for Israel to prevent Iran from reaching nuclear military capability,” said Amidror.

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Read the full piece in JNS.

The post Six Months on, Israel Waiting in the Wings as Trump’s War on Iran Shifts to Economic Pressure appeared first on JINSA.

Israel Must Spend More on Defense – and Rethink Its U.S. Alliance

Nolan Judd — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 19:51:45 +0000

The Knesset will be asked over the coming month, meeting in special recess session, to vote on expansion of the defense budget for urgent IDF weapons procurement from NIS 70 billion to NIS 90b. (a rise from $20b. to $25b.).

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The Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) also believes that such a shift will benefit both countries. “Closer alignment and cooperation with Israel across military, technological and economic lines of effort will help make America safer abroad, more prosperous at home and one step ahead of its adversaries,” it argues in a new report entitled “Shifting the Center of Gravity: Transforming the US-Israel Security Partnership.”

JINSA would have the two countries sign one more aid MOU to maintain $3.8b. in annual US assistance through fiscal year 2038, while pairing that funding with a series of initiatives designed to deepen operational and strategic integration between the two militaries over the long term.

It suggests a “Model Ally” status for Israel that would provide a framework for deeper joint research and development, co-production, and reciprocal offsets. The report argues that greater integration of the two countries’ defense industries would strengthen their respective industrial bases and supply chains.

JINSA also supports a larger US military footprint in Israel, including a permanent air force presence at Israel’s Uvda Air Force Base, a forward CENTCOM headquarters in Israel for regional planning, expansion and modernization of the prepositioned US arsenal hub and war reserve stockpile in Israel, and even a limited US-Israel mutual defense treaty (with a deliberately narrow threshold for activation).

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Read the full piece in the Jerusalem Post.

The post Israel Must Spend More on Defense – and Rethink Its U.S. Alliance appeared first on JINSA.