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Israeli officials told The New York Times that Israel considered a broader response to Iran’s attempted strikes but limited its action because allies pressed for de-escalation. Ayatollah Khamenei minimizing the significance of the strike’s operational details.
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Israeli officials told The New York Times that Israel considered a broader response to Iran’s attempted strikes but limited its action because allies pressed for de-escalation. Ayatollah Khamenei minimizing the significance of the strike’s operational details.
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Ayatollah Khamenei dossier
1 mapped developments across 1 map positions. Centroid markers show geographic scope, not an exact incident site.
Isfahan
Israeli officials told The New York Times that Israel considered a broader response to Iran’s attempted strikes but limited its action because allies pressed for de-escalation. Ayatollah Khamenei minimizing the significance of the strike’s operational details.
Approximate map position: country centroid. The extracted place did not have provider-resolved coordinates.
Chronology
Off Leash update 25 October Gaza •U.S. diplomats are hopeful that there's still a window to secure a Gaza ceasefire / hostage release deal following the death of Hamas's antagonistic leader, Yahya Sinwar. •CIA Director Burns is traveling to Qatar this weekend to meet Israeli officials and push for a deal. It's not clear whether Hamas agreed to join the Qatar talks - or who would represent Hamas if it does join talks. •Qatari mediators said they and Egyptian interlocutors had both had "some meetings...in the last couple of days" with representatives of Hamas's political office in Doha, but said there was "no clarity" over the group's negotiating plans. •PM Netanyahu said he hopes the talks will result in a ceasefire and hostage release deal, but media reports suggest he's the one who blocked previous truce proposals by moving the goalposts. There are no indications he's more willing to negotiate now that his position is stronger. Haiti •Gang violence has worsened lately in Haiti - despite the presence of a Kenya-led and UN-backed police force that arrived in June. •Earlier this week, two gangs - 400 Mawozo and Chen Mechan - seemingly deliberately targeted U.S. Embassy vehicles in Port-au-Prince, leading the Embassy to evacuate up to 20 of its "non-emergency" diplomats from the post. •Yesterday, armed gangsters shot at a UN humanitarian helicopter flying over the capital, landing at least eight shots and leading the UN to cancel its aid flights today. •The head of the UN's Integrated Office in Haiti told the UN Security Council: "The situation in Haiti has regrettably worsened." Iran •Mounting murmurs suggest Israel will launch its carefully-planned re-retaliation against Iran imminently. •Iran seems to be bracing for it and hoping it will be muted. Iranian officials have hinted that if Israel demonstrates restraint with a symbolic strike instead of a devastating one, Iran will let it be the last word and won't re-re-retaliate. •On the other hand, Iranian officials told the NYT that Ayatollah Khamenei has ordered a response if Israel assassinates senior officials or strikes oil or nuclear facilities. Russia •This week's BRICS summit in Kazan was widely seen as a victory for Pres. Putin: despite Western sanctions and opprobrium, he attracted 36 world leaders - as well as UN SecDef Guterres - to a forum where he fueled grievances with the West and its "perverse methods" and cast himself as an unfairly maligned counterweight. •Meanwhile, the WSJ reported that Russia has engaged in some perverse methods of its own by providing Yemen's Houthi rebels with satellite data to target their attacks on Red Sea shipping. Analysts said Russia's motive is to provoke instability and distract U.S. resources away from Ukraine. Sahel •Armed militants attacked a northern Nigerien border post near the frontier with Mali. Both Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wa al Muslimeen (JNIM) - a jihadist group - and Nigerien Tuareg rebels claimed the attack. The Institute for the Study of War said the dual claim "possibly indicate[s] that the two groups are coordinating their operations." JNIM hasn't previously attacked so far north, but it has previously coordinated with Malian Tuaregs - so coordinating with their Nigerien counterparts is well within the realm of possibility. Strategic Minerals •The U.S. Interior Dept. approved Australian mining company ioneer's mining project in Nevada, which will supply lithium for up to 370,000 electric vehicle batteries per year at full capacity. Environmentalists opposed and stalled the proposal, but a six-year review process led to a "science-based decision" to approve it. Construction will be funded by a $700 million loan from the U.S. Dept. of Energy and a $450 million investment from Sibanye Stillwater.
Open source reportOff Leash update 24 April Iran and Israel •Israeli officials told the NYT they contemplated a broader strike on Iran in return for Iran's (mostly harmlessly intercepted) attempted strikes inside Israel, but settled for a limited strike on Isfahan because of diplomatic pressure from allies to avoid further escalation. •Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei seemed happy to let Israel have the last word with the Isfahan strike: at a meeting of senior officials, Khamenei brushed off the damage it did: "Debates by the other party about how many missiles were fired, how many of them hit the target and how many didn’t, these are of secondary importance." •Meanwhile, Iran's proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, launched drone attacks into northern Israel yesterday as Jewish families began the Passover holiday. All drones were intercepted. •Hezbollah's attempted Passover attack was probably a reprisal for an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon that killed Hussein Ali Azkul - who Israel called "a significant terrorist operative" - on Monday. Ukraine •Pres. Biden promised Pres. Zelensky that the U.S. weapons funded in the Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan support bill the Senate approved late last night will arrive "quickly." Ukraine will be eager to get them: its military is already suffering setbacks due to delays in U.S. funding. China •The Senate's foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan also included a provision obligating ByteDance - the Chinese company that owns TikTok - to sell the app to a non-Chinese owner or shut it down in the U.S. •ByteDance's shareholders - which include the Chinese government - seem averse to divesting the app, so it will likely face a ban. Russia •Russian investigators detained former deputy defense minister Timur Ivanov on suspicion of taking bribes "on a particularly large scale" in connection with construction projects he managed in Mariupol, Ukraine. •Russia doesn't usually censure senior officials for corruption [perhaps because bribery is so endemic among senior ranks that no hands are clean enough to throw the first stone] and Ivanov is a close ally of powerful defense minister Sergey Shoigu, who should have been able to shield him from scrutiny. •The fact that Shoigu didn't step in led some to speculate that Ivanov's real offense was something much more grave than graft - like treason (though the Kremlin denied it). Venezuela •Venezuela's oil minister, Pedro Tellechea, told Reuters that his ministry is exploring cryptocurrencies as a way to receive payments for oil sales once U.S. sanctions sink back in. •One cryptocurrency that Venezuela won't be accepting is the Petro (PTR): Pres. Maduro's Patria Platform gave up on that idea earlier this year after a corruption scandal. North Korea •North Korea launched more short-range ballistic missiles into the sea on Monday, and analysts are guessing it could try to launch a satellite into orbit tomorrow on the anniversary of the founding of the Korean People's Army. Other News •After two years of heated debate, the UK's parliament finally passed a bill that allows asylum-seekers to be deported to Rwanda. Human rights activists are united with some fiscal conservatives against the program, which would cost an estimated £1.8 million ($2.2 million) per deportee for the first 300 people expelled. Flights would start in July, but will probably be delayed or blocked by legal challenges. •Voters in Ecuador approved a referendum that gives Pres. Noboa even more authority to fight drug gangs. Noboa has already taken a hard stance against the gangs - he deployed the military against them in January - and voters apparently support it: nine of its 11 proposals look likely to pass once all votes are counted.
Open source report