The IDF’s Golani Brigade has completed a week-long drill, simulating fighting against Hezbollah, just weeks after Israel’s military carried out the most extensive training exercises conducted by the Ground Forces’ 36th Armored Division. - Jerusalem Post
Caroline B. Glick writes: On the face of things, the US-Israeli demand that Iran remove its forces from Syria seems to ignore the elephant in the room. Hezbollah is the second-most powerful military force in the Middle East – second only to the Israel Defense Forces, and the most daunting conventional threat Israel faces. This week, the IDF carried out a massive war exercise in the Golan Heights to prepare its forces for a war with Hezbollah. - Jerusalem Post
The U.S. soldier who died of injuries in a helicopter crash in Iraq this week was a member of an elite special operations unit and had deployed nine times in support of the U.S. conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, officials said Tuesday. - Associated Press
Geoffrey Aronson writes: There are numerous, unmistakable signs that the crisis in Syria is moving to a new phase, one that will push Washington further to the sidelines. [...]The challenge for Washington is to understand that both the means and ends of Syria policy need to account for the failure of U.S. policy beyond the defeat of ISIS, and to plan for the future informed but unburdened by past failures. - Middle East Institute
via New York Post
President Trump recently offered to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani without any preconditions to discuss issues of common concern. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei seemingly rejected this appeal, professing, “There will be no war nor will we negotiate with the US.” In typical fashion for this ayatollah, however, he left the door open: “The Islamic Republic can negotiate with America whenever it achieves the power to resist America’s pressure and blackmail. Today this is not the case.”