The D Brief: Israel kills Hezbollah chief; $600M for Taiwan; DOD’s uneven study of Ukraine; BBC visits Diego Garcia; And a bit more.

After killing Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, in an airstrike in Beirut on Friday, the Israeli military is keeping up its pressure on high-level terrorist leaders in the region, including two commanders from Hamas and Hezbollah targeted in additional airstrikes over the weekend. 

Allegedly killed: “Fateh Sherif, Head of the Lebanon Branch in the Hamas terrorist organization,” and “The Commander of Hezbollah’s Preventative Security Unit and a member of their Executive Council, Nabil Qaouk,” according to the Israeli Defense Forces. 

“Sherif was responsible for coordinating Hamas’ terror activities in Lebanon with Hezbollah operatives, as well as Hamas’ efforts in Lebanon to recruit operatives and acquire weapons.” As for Qaouk, “He joined Hezbollah in the 1980s and was regarded as an important source of expertise in his field, having served as the Deputy Commander of the southern region on the Operational Council, Commander of the southern region and Deputy Commander of the Operational Council,” the IDF announced on social media Monday and Sunday, respectively. 

Israel said Monday it also recently killed two Lebanon-based officials from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Nidal Abdel-Aal and Imad Odeh. The IDF said “Abdel-Aal took part in planning and carrying out terror attacks against Israel and directed terror activities in Judea and Samaria,” and he “directed the bus bombing attack in Beitar Illit on March 9, 2023, and the shooting attack from a passing vehicle at the Huwara Junction on March 25, 2023.” Not much is known yet about Odeh.

Parallel to this: “Israeli special forces have been carrying out small, targeted raids into southern Lebanon, gathering intelligence and probing ahead of a possible broader ground incursion that could come as soon as this week,” the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing former Israeli military officials. 

Driving this strategy: “Israel’s government is under pressure to create a buffer zone to stop Hezbollah attacks that have forced some 60,000 people from their homes in the north and prevent the sort of cross-border attack that Hamas led against Israel on Oct. 7, which many in the country still fear. Hezbollah has threatened for years to invade parts of northern Israel,” the Journal writes. 

About that Nasrallah strike: It was most likely carried out using “2,000-pound bombs, including the American-manufactured BLU-109 with a JDAM kit,” the New York Times reported after analyzing video released by the Israeli military. “These bombs, a type of munition known as bunker busters, can penetrate underground before detonating,” the Times writes. 

According to Israel, Nasrallah and about 20 of his followers “were in Hezbollah’s central headquarters, located in the heart of Beirut, embedded beneath civilian buildings” when they were killed. That building was just 53 meters from a United Nations-run school, the IDF said with an accompanying map. 

Coverage continues below the fold…

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Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1938, UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from Nazi Germany to announce a new agreement that he said guaranteed “peace in our time.” Spoiler alert: It did not. 

The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen attacked Israel with a ballistic missile on Saturday. Israel’s military confirmed the attack afterward, and said they intercepted it before it could strike the Ben Gurion International Airport.  

In response, Israeli jets bombed the Houthi port of Hodeida, on Yemen’s western coast, on Sunday. The targets included “power plants and a seaport, which were used by the Houthis to transfer Iranian weapons to the region, in addition to military supplies and oil,” the Israeli Defense Forces said on social media. The IDF also released video of the strikes Monday. 

Worth noting: This is not a first for Israel. Their jets attacked alleged Houthi targets at Hodeidah back in July, for example.

The Houthis also say they targeted three U.S. Navy vessels in the Red Sea on Friday using 23 missiles and drones. Those would possibly be from the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. See what other U.S. assets are reportedly in the region via this map from conflict-watcher Ian Ellis.

And in case you missed it, Iran is allegedly “brokering talks to send advanced Russian missiles to Yemen’s Houthis,” Reuters reported last week. The missiles, known as P-800 Oniks, have a range of about 180 miles. Russia is known to have previously sent them to Hezbollah as well. 

Amid all the airstrikes and missile attacks, the Pentagon reminded the world Sunday it has the authorization to deploy troops at short notice. The U.S. military “continues to maintain a significant amount of capability in the region and to dynamically adjust our force posture based on the evolving security situation,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement. 

POTUS: “I directed my Secretary of Defense to further enhance the defense posture of U.S. military forces in the Middle East region to deter aggression and reduce the risk of a broader regional war,” President Joe Biden said in his own statement Saturday. “Ultimately, our aim is to de-escalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means,” he added. 

SecDef Austin has ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln to “remain in the USCENTCOM theater and that the USS Wasp Amphibious Ready Group / Marine Expeditionary Unit will continue to operate in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Ryder said. 

Next up: “We will further reinforce our defensive air-support capabilities in the coming days,” said Ryder, without elaborating. 

Elsewhere in the region, U.S. troops in Syria are under attack again from Iran-backed proxies, Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute noted on social media Monday. “Though the attacks were small in scale, they illustrate a clear escalation that’s unlikely to calm,” he predicted.  

And CENTCOM announced Sunday that it killed 37 ISIS and AQ-linked fighters in Syria with targeted airstrikes last week (Sept. 24) and the week prior (on Sept. 16). Those strikes took place in central and northwestern Syria, and are believed to have killed Marwan Bassam ‘Abd-al-Ra’uf, a senior leader of the al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Din militants. The other strike occurred in the early morning “on a remote ISIS training camp in central Syria, killing at least 28 ISIS operatives, including at least four [unspecified] senior leaders,” CENTCOM said in its statement Sunday. 

Related reading: 

Is the U.S. military learning enough from Ukraine? Relatively few analysts are working full-time to glean lessons from the war at the services’ doctrine organizations, which appear to treat the grinding yet tech-forward war with NATO’s top potential adversary as just one topic among many. Defense One’s Sam Skove reports.

Aerojet digging ‘out of this hole’ as it clears rocket backlog, president says. The L3Harris subsidiary, which was thousands of motors behind schedule last year, says its deliveries are catching up again, company president Ross Niebergall told Defense One’s Audrey Decker in an interview.

The U.S. quietly announced almost $600 million in more military aid to Taiwan, according to a short notice from the White House Sunday. The president said he’s authorized “the drawdown of up to $567 million in defense articles and services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training” for Taiwan—but there are no more details than that. 

For what it’s worth: “Taipei has complained of delayed U.S. arms deliveries, including for upgraded F-14 fighter jets,” Reuters noted Sunday. 

An unprecedented media report from Diego Garcia. Few, if any, outsiders have set foot on the 12-square-mile atoll since the mid-1970s, when its inhabitants were deported so the U.S. and UK could build what has become a key logistics and bomber base in the Indian Ocean. (One of your D Brief-ers is among the many journalists so rebuffed.) But after months of effort, the BBC’s Alice Cuddy obtained a court order compelling the militaries to allow her a five-day visit to cover a migrant-asylum case. 

They did so, grudgingly. “But despite the constraints, I was still able to observe illuminating details, all of which helped to paint a picture of one of the most restricted locations in the world,” Cuddy writes. Read the rest, here.

Additional coverage: 

Defense One