Security

Bakhmut: Russian forces, led by the paramilitary Wagner Group, are encircling the eastern Ukrainian city and are on the verge of taking it. Bakhmut doesn’t hold immense strategic value but would give the Kremlin an important win in its drive to capture Ukraine’s Donetsk region, its most populous province. Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin posted a video calling on Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to surrender the city.

Tehran: Iran agreed on Saturday to allow inspectors from the U.N.’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, to reinstall cameras monitoring the production of nuclear fuel at an underground facility, called Fordo. It remained unclear, though, if a visit to Iran by the IAEA’s director-general, Rafael Grossi, won any other commitments from Tehran to resolve a years-long investigation into its suspected — and clandestine — nuclear weapons work. The IAEA recently reported that Iran, for the first time, enriched uranium at Fordo to near weapons-grade levels.

Seoul: South Korea’s prime minister, in an interview with CNN, walked back comments made by President Yoon Suk Yeol and other ruling politicians that said Seoul may need nuclear weapons to combat the North. Recent polls in South Korea show the public is increasingly in favor of the country developing a nuclear arsenal. South Korea leaders have also raised the prospect of the country joining the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that the U.S. leads along with the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Gulf states and Israel are secretly lobbying Russia not to arm Iran

THE SCOOP

Israel and key Gulf states are lobbying Russia not to send advanced military hardware — including helicopters and fighter jets — to Iran, fearing that their strengthening alliance could affect the balance of power in the Middle East.

Officials from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have directly raised their concerns with Vladimir Putin’s government in recent months, according to Mideast and U.S. officials briefed on the discussions.

Leaders in the three countries are also becoming more broadly concerned with the military know-how Iran is acquiring by helping Russia wage war in Europe, particularly when it comes to executing drone strikes, officials said.

The tensions come after the Saudis, Emiratis, and Israelis have all sought to maintain relatively strong ties with Russia since the war in Ukraine began. The U.S. has accused the Saudis and other Arab oil states of siding with Moscow in the war by agreeing to production cuts, a charge they deny. Israel coordinates with the Russian military before striking Iranian interests in Syria.

Arab diplomats have told Russian officials that supplying Tehran with advanced weapons would not only destabilize the military balance in the Persian Gulf but also place Russia firmly on the side of Iran in a potential conflict, isolating Moscow from its Arab partners. Arab officials say they have asked Russia to at least delay any weapons shipments to Iran if it won’t agree to cancel them outright.

But those briefed on the recent discussions said they’re skeptical Putin can be swayed given his dependence on Iranian aid in a war that is centrally important to Russia.

“I think it will only get worse,” said a senior Arab official briefed on the deliberations. “The Russian-Iranian relationship will only get stronger since they now need each other.”

Spokespeople for Iran and Russia didn’t respond to requests seeking comment.

JAY’S VIEW

Acquiring Russian jets and helicopters could be transformative for Iran’s military, which currently suffers from a depleted air force and a limited ability to source parts and technology due to Western sanctions. It would vastly strengthen Tehran’s ability to operate in theaters like Syria, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf, defense strategists told Semafor.

Norman Roule, who served as the U.S. government’s national intelligence manager for Iran from 2008-2017, said that Iran is also picking up valuable expertise by learning how to orchestrate drone strikes against a conventional military equipped with NATO weapons systems and intelligence.

The conflict could “provide Tehran with important lessons on how to conduct saturation attacks against civilian and military targets that will likely be used against Iran’s neighbors and U.S. forces,” said Roule, referring to tactics designed to overwhelm an adversary’s defenses.

KNOW MORE

If Russia does choose to send Iran advanced weapons, it would mark a dramatic new step forward in a military partnership that has already had profound consequences for both the Middle East and Europe. U.S. and Western officials say there’s evidence Iranian pilots have already begun training in Russia on advanced Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets.

Though adversaries in the past, Tehran and Moscow developed a close relationship over the last decade as they teamed up to counter U.S. interests abroad. The alliance solidified in Syria, where the two countries fused their military operations to support President Bashar al-Assad against rebels, some of whom have received U.S. backing.

Their alliance has been critical to Putin’s war effort in Ukraine. Iran started supplying Russia with one-way kamikaze drones last fall that the Kremlin has used to conduct devastating attacks, including on civilian targets. U.S. and Ukrainian officials say trainers from Iran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, have been deployed in Crimea to assist in the strikes.

Moscow and Tehran already have plans to deepen their partnership. The two countries have begun taking steps to build a drone factory in central Russia, according to officials who’ve seen the intelligence. And they’re building a “transcontinental trade route” to move supplies while evading Western sanctions.

The U.S. and its allies have been closely tracking the movement of Russian and Iranian delegations to one another’s capitals, where some discussions have focused on the future supply of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia.

Iran is seeking to purchase more advanced weapons systems from Russia in return. Iranian state media has reported that Tehran expects to acquire dozens of the Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets starting sometime this year, as well as a range of attack helicopters and other weapons. White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters late last month the administration would watch “very closely” to see “what, if any, transactions are actually made.”

THE VIEW FROM THE PENTAGON

The Defense Department says it is already accelerating efforts with allies to track and halt weapons shipments from Iran to Russia, and that they are closely monitoring for the flows of Russian arms back to Iran. A Western official said there’s intelligence showing Russia has shared captured Ukrainian munitions, such as U.S-.supplied Javelin and Stinger missiles, with Iran. Tehran can then re-engineer the weapons, either to better combat them or produce them domestically.

“It is reasonable to expect that the tactics, techniques and procedures that the Iranians are learning and perfecting in Ukraine will one day come back to threaten our partners in the Middle East,” Dana Stroul, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, said in Dubai this month. “We are increasing cooperation now — intelligence-sharing, understanding these networks, and increasing our collective defensive capabilities — so that we are prepared to counter these threats in the region.”

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Not all military strategists, even in allied Mideast countries, are as alarmed by the prospects of this Russian-Iranian collaboration. “A dozen jet aircraft does not make an air force — Iran has invested in drones for a reason,” said a February analysis piece in the Jerusalem Post. “Iran’s potential acquisitions in Russia’s flailing aircraft market is more a sign of the weakness of the two countries, than a real gamechanger.”

NOTABLE

• Iran watchers believe there’s a potential that Tehran could deploy military forces in Ukraine made up of conscripts recruited from Shiite populations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon. Tehran has already utilized its Fatemiyoun and Zainebiyoun Brigades alongside Russia air power in Syria. These units are seen as adept at using drone and missile technologies in the battlefield.

Vasyl Malyuk is Ukraine’s domestic spy chief.

⋉ Advance: Arab Cash. Saudi Arabia pledged $400 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine last week during a trip to Kyiv by Riyadh’s foreign minister — the first time an Arab leader has visited the country since Russia’s invasion. Gulf states have sought throughout the war to maintain close relations with the Kremlin and coordinate on global energy policy. But the new aid to Ukraine may signal that their position on the conflict is shifting. Two Saudi planes ferried energy and medical assistance to the Polish-Ukrainian border on Friday.

⋊ Retreat: Hypersonic Flash. The U.S. and Russia are both aggressively pursuing hypersonic weapons systems, but their development is facing hurdles. The Kremlin didn’t test its Zicron missile system last month off South Africa, despite Russian state media suggesting it would. And the Congressional Budget Office recently issued a new report claiming the Pentagon’s hypersonic program is still plagued by failures as technicians manage the heat the missiles face at high speeds.

Saif al-Adel

The United Nations and U.S. government both identified Saif al-Adel as al-Qaida’s new overall commander — truly, one of the world’s most hazardous jobs. The Egyptian was a close confidante of al-Qaida’s late founder, Osama bin Laden, and there was already a $10 million bounty out to secure his arrest for the 1998 African embassy bombings.

The designation may answer some questions about the leadership of al-Qaida, and its strength, after the Biden administration killed former leader Ayman al-Zawahiri last July in Kabul. Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban government has refused to acknowledge Zawahiri’s death. While al-Qaida has released messages from Zawahiri in recent months, U.S. intelligence believes they were recorded well before the July drone strike.

The UN and U.S. also claim that Adel is based in Iran, a country in which he’s found safe haven since al-Qaida’s 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Tehran has long denied harboring al-Qaida leaders and, as a predominantly Shiite-Muslim country, publicly opposes the types of extremism promoted by bin Laden and other Sunni terrorist organizations, like the Islamic State. But U.S. officials believe Iran has allowed Adel to operate from within its borders for strategic reasons: For one, it can monitor al-Qaida’s actions and make sure they’re not turned against Shiite Muslims. Adel’s presence also gives Tehran leverage in its conflict with the U.S.

I’m joining Semafor after a five-year hiatus from daily journalism, which I’ve missed immensely. I served as The Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign affairs correspondent for a decade before a hack-and-smear operation cost me my job in 2017 (which you can read about at length in the Columbia Journalism Review). I sued the people and entities I believe conducted the attack (you can read the complaint here) and will not write about them while at Semafor.

During my hiatus from journalism, I worked in business consulting. I’ve ended all of my engagements related to this work, but I’ll also recuse myself from writing about any entities that I worked with directly.

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— Jay