1. Turkey has conducted a series of airstrikes in northern Syria against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—the United States’ sole security partner in the country—since October 5. These attacks are placing significant pressure on the SDF, which, in turn, puts at risk the US mission to defeat ISIS. The US relies heavily on the SDF to conduct and facilitate counter-ISIS operations in Syria.[2] The SDF is already under significant strain in eastern Syria, where a tribal insurgency erupted in August 2023 and has motivated the SDF to commit resources toward fighting.[3] The Turkish airstrikes could create space for the tribal insurgency to expand and for ISIS to consolidate its position in SDF-held territory, given that the SDF faces bandwidth constraints. CTP continues to assess that ISIS aims to reimpose its control over territory in Syria and has the capability to do so, should the opportunity arise.[4]
2. Iran has demanded that the Iraqi central government extradite members of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups to Iran, according to independent Iraqi outlet Al Mada. Such a demand would appear to violate international law. States cannot send refugees to territories where their “life or freedom would be threatened on account of [their] race, religion, nationality, or membership of a particular social group or political opinion,” according to the 1967 Protocol of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.[22] The UN High Commissioner for Refugees defined a “refugee” as an individual who has “a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political, is outside the country of [their] nationality, and... unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”[23] Iraqi government extradition of Kurdish Iranian opposition groups would also appear to violate the international legal principle of non-refoulment. Non-refoulment guarantees that migrants irrespective of migrant status should not be returned to a country of origin where they would come under “torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and other irreparable harm.”[24]
Read more: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-october-6-2023
Syria and Iran are cooperating with Russia. Since Russia has problems in Ukraine, Iran has ordered Hamas to attack Israel.
Hezbollah is next.
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/10/07/Hezbollah-Hamas-operation-is-message-to-those-seeking-normalization-with-Israel-
Promised insights on the situation in Israel. Let's go through the points.
✅Hamas launched one of the worst attacks on Israel in decades. Thousands of missiles, drones, and groups of armed men have been infiltrated. There is chaos in the border areas of Israel, accompanied by the killing of civilians. One of Israel's bases on the border has been taken over by the Palestinians.
✅Many (including the Israelis themselves) complain that Israeli intelligence allegedly slept through the attack. But it is not so. According to satellite data, in two weeks some of the IDF military equipment was withdrawn from border towns and villages. They were preparing for the attack, but probably did not expect it to be so massive.
✅Hamas’s military success is unlikely to last, because the forces are not equal. And here is an important point that may be related to the previous point. In the eyes of the whole world, it is Israel that is now the victim of aggression and, in fact, all restrictions on the destruction of “terrorists” have been lifted. This is important to understand in the context of the US-Israel-Saudi Arabia triangle.
✅The Saudis have repeatedly advocated normalization with Israel in order to normalize economic relations, but the Palestinians have also repeatedly prevented this. It is worth understanding that the conflict around the Gaza Strip is not just a war between Israel and Palestine, everything is much more complicated. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Turkey, Syria, Russia, USA, China, Great Britain - this is not the entire list of countries that are in one way or another connected with this conflict.
✅And now the most important thing - why was the attack on Israeli positions by Hamas carried out precisely on the night of October 7 ? There is a lot of conspiracy theory about Vladimir Putin's birthday, but it's more banal - 50 years ago the so-called “Yom Kippur War” began, when Israel and Syria tried to recapture territories that they had lost several years earlier. It is foolish to pretend that Israel did not know that this date was approaching.
Hamas managed to train several hundred fighters who commit jihad essentially with their bare hands - their task is not just to attack, but to show it live. To encourage as many people as possible to join. It can be assumed that the regular Israeli army will stabilize the situation militarily in the coming days and will probably storm the Gaza Strip.
✅Political elites lost communication over the war. A very long public reaction was associated with the negotiations that Netanyahu held with the Americans, Saudis, Germans and Chinese. Four major calls were made before his release with public reaction. It is significant that the Israeli Prime Minister did not call Moscow. Three hours later, the Foreign Intelligence Service [of Russia SVR] received a letter containing the following phrase: “We know about your contacts with terrorists and advise you to refrain from escalation.” And in this context, the last point is important.
✅Is there a Russian connection to Hamas’s attack on Israel? Yes and no. It is stupid to reject public contacts with the Palestinians, since Moscow has been working closely in this field since the times of the Soviet Union. Moreover, the emergence of the state of Israel was the result of the coincidence of geopolitical interests of the USA and the USSR.
If we talk about today's attack, it is easy to guess that it is beneficial for Russia as a factor in diverting the attention of the world community from the Ukrainian crisis. Less attention to Ukraine means less help to Kyiv, making it easier for Russia itself to fight. Did Russia supply weapons to the Palestinians? Over the past two years, no, but weapons production technologies have been transferred. There was also financial assistance to the Palestinians, which since the beginning of 2023 has exceeded a billion dollars.
The role of our ally Iran is much more important - Tehran was just transferring weapons and training fighters with their subsequent transportation to the Gaza Strip through Egyptian territory. The Hamas operation, according to our data, was coordinated and worked out not only with our special services, but also with the Iranian Intelligence.
Hamas leaders may expect the conflict that they have ignited to expand to include other Palestinian militias as well as Iran and its so-called “Axis of Resistance.
Hamas may have based its current operation on Iranian leaders’ thinking about defeating Israel. Major General Hossein Salami—the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—presented in August 2022 the most explicit articulation from an Iranian official yet on how to destroy Israel.[9] Salami downplayed the role of drones and missiles and instead argued for Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian militias to conduct more ground operations and urban combat inside Israel. Salami asserted that such activities would generate internal displacement and sow chaos, which would ultimately destabilize Israel and lead to its decline. Hamas’ decision to conduct a ground attack into Israel and how it went about doing so are noteworthy in this context. The group indiscriminately killed, abused, and abducted civilians in the towns its fighters reached and posted images and videos of the acts online, likely in part to instill terror among Israelis.[10]
Hamas may have sought to disrupt the US-led negotiations to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The United States and its allies must remain vigilant against the danger that Iran and its partners may seek to expand the crisis caused by the Hamas attacks on Israel and must avoid the tendency to become narrowly focused on Gaza and the immediate Israeli response to this attack. Iran has been pursuing an offensive strategy in the Middle East aimed at expelling the United States, among many other things, for years, as CTP has previously assessed.[12] The October 7 Hamas attack could be a part of that larger effort.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-special-edition-october-7-2023