Daily News Brief

January 4, 2024

Top of the Agenda

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will leave today (VOA) for a trip to several Middle Eastern countries that include Israel, an unnamed U.S. official told reporters. He is expected to discuss increasing humanitarian aid and ramping up pressure on Israel to reduce Palestinian civilian casualties. It comes after the leader of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah warned of retaliation following the killing of a top official of Palestinian militant group Hamas in Beirut on Tuesday. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also pledged to respond (NYT) after two explosions in Iran killed around one hundred people yesterday. The United States and its allies, for their part, have warned Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis of consequences if they do not stop attacking ships in the Red Sea. 

Tensions related to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas have also spread to Iraq, where an Iran-backed militia group reported a local group commander was killed (Reuters) in an air strike today. Iraq blamed the U.S.-led coalition fighting in the country for the incident; the United States did not immediately comment on the attack.

Analysis

“If the United States wants to protect freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and its environs, it is going to have to take the fight directly to the Houthis. There is precedent for this,” CFR expert Steven A. Cook writes for Foreign Policy.

“A sudden escalation is still possible on [several Middle East] fronts. However, a slow metastasising of the violence over months across the region, including a possible Hamas insurgency against Israeli troops in Gaza, is a more likely, but no less concerning scenario,” Columbia University’s Kim Ghattas posts.

Read the full suite of Foreign Affairs and CFR.org resources on Israel and the current conflict.

Pacific Rim

North Korea called (Reuters) the weeklong exercises that wrapped up today “reckless war maneuvers” that pushed the region closer to “an inferno of nuclear war.” The drills involved large and heavy weaponry and come as Seoul and Washington have increased their joint military exercises over the past year in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear threat. 

This Backgrounder looks at North Korea’s military capabilities. 

Japan: Police arrested a woman (AP) who allegedly stabbed and injured four passengers on a Tokyo subway yesterday. Violent crime is rare in Japan, though there have been a string of attacks on subways in recent years.

South and Central Asia

The prisoners are being freed (AP) on humanitarian grounds to mark Myanmar’s independence day today, state media reported. Thousands remain jailed in the country for protesting against the military government.

The Center for Preventive Action tracks conflict in Myanmar. 

India: A national union of transport workers paused a strike (Reuters) after two days, following assurances from the government that it would not implement new laws requiring prison time or financial penalties for hit-and-run accidents until further talks with union representatives.

Middle East and North Africa

The law that makes it more difficult to require the prime minister’s recusal must only go into effect (Times of Israel) after the next general elections, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled. The law was part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan, which was struck down by the court earlier this week.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s government posted on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that the memorandum of understanding allows Addis Ababa fifty years of access to the Gulf of Aden through Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland and permission to build naval bases on the Gulf. Ethiopia says the deal enables it to consider formally recognizing (Bloomberg) Somaliland’s sovereignty, while Somalia has protested the deal.

U.S./Benin/Ghana/Ivory Coast: Washington is in talks with the three West African countries about basing reconnaissance drones there in an effort to stop Islamist militants in the region, U.S. and African officials told the Wall Street Journal. The United States previously backed French anti-extremist efforts in Sahel countries that have now turned against hosting French forces.

Europe

The United Arab Emirates mediated the swap (BBC), which Ukraine called the largest prisoner exchange since the start of the war and the first major one since August 2023.

On The President’s Inbox podcast, Kori Schake discusses the future of the war in Ukraine. 

Russia/Ukraine: More than 220 Russian soldiers had defected to Ukraine as of December after calling a special telephone hotline set up by Ukraine’s military intelligence unit that allows Russian soldiers to surrender peacefully and voluntarily, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s prisoner of war department told the Financial Times. More than one thousand additional cases are pending. 

Americas

The judges ruled yesterday that President Javier Milei’s sweeping changes to labor laws did not meet (Buenos Aires Herald) the standard of urgency that is required for a presidential decree rather than passing laws through the legislature. The decree cut protections (AFP) in the cases of layoffs and pregnancies. Milei said he would appeal. 

Brazil: Health authorities began their first (Reuters) mass vaccination campaign against dengue fever in the city of Dourados yesterday. Dengue deaths in the country increased by around 5 percent between 2022 and 2023.

United States

Researchers from Harvard University and drug company Hoffmann-La Roche said in an article in Nature that they found (CNN) a new antibiotic that can effectively kill a type of bacteria that causes up to 20 percent of infections in intensive care units worldwide.

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