A Nigerian airstrike this month on a village in the country’s northwest killed 33 people, according to four residents and a local traditional leader. It is the latest in a long-running series of attacks on civilians by the government of Nigeria, one of the United States’ closest allies in Africa and the recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. weapons and military assistance.

The April 10 attack, the latest errant strike in a Nigerian counterterrorism campaign against militants and “bandits,” came as villagers prepared for Eid prayers marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

“The pattern of Nigeria’s military operations resulting in civilian casualties is deeply troubling.”

“Arriving at the scene, I saw children, men and women … were killed and trapped inside the collapsed buildings that were hit by a bomb,” Lawali Ango, the traditional leader of Dogon Daji village, told Reuters . (A Nigerian military spokesperson, Maj. Gen. Edward Buba, denied that civilians were killed in the April 10 strike.)

“The pattern of Nigeria’s military operations resulting in civilian casualties is deeply troubling,” Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., told The Intercept. “One of the biggest factors contributing to violent extremism is security sector violence against you or someone you know — so we’ll likely see the reverberations of this civilian harm for years to come unless there’s justice and accountability.”

Between 2000 and 2022, the U.S. provided, facilitated, or approved more than $2 billion in security aid, including weapons and equipment sales, to Nigeria, according to report by Brown University’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies and the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. Over that time, the U.S. also carried out more than 41,000 training courses for Nigerian military personnel.

The U.S. has repeatedly raised the subject of civilian casualties with Nigeria’s government. Earlier this year, in the wake of an attack that killed more than 120 civilians, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly discussed the issue with Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu.

When pressed by The Intercept following Blinken’s visit on what actions the State Department would take if Nigeria’s military continued to kill civilians, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee said, at the time, “I’m not going to get into hypotheticals.”

Since the April 10 attack that killed more than 30 civilians, requests for comment from or to speak with Phee, while acknowledged, have gone unanswered, and the State Department failed to respond to questions on the record.

“Of course, as we always do when we meet with our Nigerian partners, we talk about how to minimize harm to civilians,” Phee told The Intercept in January, asserting that the U.S. seeks “to support Nigeria’s wish to make sure that the country is safe and secure for all of its citizens.”

Since it ramped up its U.S.-backed counterterror campaign in 2017, however, Nigeria has regularly attacked its own people.

U.S. Weapons and Civilian Deaths

A January 17, 2017, airstrike on a displaced persons camp in Rann, Nigeria — revealed by The Intercept to involve the U.S. — killed more than 160 civilians and seriously wounded more than 120 people.

In September 2021, the Nigerian Air Force admitted that it attacked a village, killing 10 civilians and injuring another 20. That April, a Nigerian military helicopter reportedly launched indiscriminate attacks on homes , farms, and a school.

A reported Nigerian airstrike on a village in neighboring Niger in February 2022 killed at least 12 civilians . Another attack in August 2022 left at least eight civilians dead . Witnesses and local officials said a December 2022 strike killed at least 64 people , including civilians. An attack in January 2023 killed 39 civilians and injured at least six others.

And a December 2023 strike killed more than 120 villagers celebrating Maulud, the birthday of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, according to Amnesty International.

A 2023 Reuters analysis of data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S.-based armed violence monitoring group, found more than 2,600 people were killed in 248 airstrikes outside the most active war zones in Nigeria during the previous five years. Most victims were identified as “communal militia,” a catchall category that includes local self-defense forces, criminal gangs, and so-called bandits.

Nigeria’s government has frequently been accused of covering up civilian deaths , including running what a 2023 investigation by Nigeria’s Premium Times called “a systemic propaganda scheme to keep the atrocities of its troops under wraps.”

In 2021, the U.S. provided Nigeria 12 Super Tucano warplanes as part of a $593 million package that also included bombs and rockets. Last May, as part of the sale, the U.S. completed a $38 million project to construct new facilities for those aircraft.

The State Department also approved a 2022 sale to Nigeria of nearly $1 billion in AH-1Z attack helicopters and supporting munitions and equipment.

Last year, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and Jacobs, the California Democrat, called on the Biden administration to scuttle the nearly $1 billion attack helicopter deal.

“We write to express our concern with current U.S. policy on and military support to Nigeria,” the lawmakers said, urging “a review of security assistance and cooperation programs in Nigeria, including a risk assessment of civilian casualties and abuses.”

Jacobs remains opposed to the sale and called for a thorough investigation of the April 10 strike, stressing the need for justice for the victims and survivors. “But more than that,” she said, “I will continue to push the United States to prioritize human rights and accountability in its relationship with the Nigerian military.”

The post Biden Says He Told Nigeria to Kill Fewer Civilians — but Nigeria Keeps Killing Lots of Civilians appeared first on The Intercept .

Burkina Faso’s military summarily executed more than 220 civilians, including at least 56 children, in two villages in late February, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

“We saw the bloody corpses riddled with bullets. We were able to save a 2-year-old child whose mother was killed shielding him with her body,” a 19-year-old witness, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Intercept. “The attackers were soldiers from our own army. They arrived on motorbikes and in vehicles, and they were armed with Kalashnikovs and heavy weapons.”

“The attackers were soldiers from our own army. They arrived on motorbikes and in vehicles, and they were armed.”

The mass killings came as the U.S. counterterrorism strategy in the West African Sahel crumbled, with U.S.-trained military officers launching a long string of coups , including in Burkina Faso itself. Despite the coups and massacres, the U.S. has not cut ties with Burkina Faso, and a contingent of U.S. personnel remain in-country to “engage” with the armed forces serving the ruling junta.

Burkinabè soldiers killed 44 people, including 20 children, in Nondin village, and 179 people, including 36 children and four pregnant women, in nearby Soro village in the north of the country on February 25, according to HRW. The mass killings are part of a long-running counterterrorism campaign aimed at civilians accused of collaborating with Islamist militants.

“The massacres in Nondin and Soro villages are just the latest mass killings of civilians by the Burkina Faso military in their counterinsurgency operations,” said Tirana Hassan, executive director at Human Rights Watch. “The repeated failure of the Burkinabè authorities to prevent and investigate such atrocities underlines why international assistance is critical to support a credible investigation into abuses that may amount to crimes against humanity.”

The West African Sahel was once touted as an American foreign-policy success story, but persistent violence over the last decade intensified as the U.S. implemented its counterterror strategy.

Putsches by U.S.-linked military officers, prompted by spiking militant attacks, have brought with them seismic geopolitical changes. Niger, for example, the site of the most recent coup by U.S.-trained officers in the Sahel, severed its lon-gstanding ties with the American military and welcomed in Russian trainers .

“They Showed No Mercy”

The February massacres followed several attacks by Islamist militants which killed scores of soldiers and civilians, including an assault on a military base almost 15 miles from Nondin.

Witnesses in Nondin told HRW that a military convoy with over 100 Burkinabè soldiers arrived on motorbikes, pickup trucks, and armored cars about 30 minutes after a group of Islamist fighters on motorcycles passed near the village yelling “Allah Akbar!” The eyewitnesses said the soldiers went door to door, rounding up locals before gunning them down. Villagers said a similar sequence played out in Soro.

“Before the soldiers started shooting at us, they accused us of being complicit with the jihadists,” a 32-year-old survivor from Soro, who was shot in the leg, told HRW. “They showed no mercy. They shot at everything that moved, they killed men, women, and children alike,” said a 60-year-old farmer who witnessed the murders.

The Burkinabè Embassy in Washington did not respond to repeated requests from The Intercept to speak with the defense attaché or other officials.

The United States has assisted Burkina Faso with counterterrorism aid since the 2000s, providing funds, weapons, equipment, and American advisers, as well as deploying commandos on low-profile combat missions .

In 2018 and 2019, alone, the U.S. pumped a total of $100 million in “security cooperation” funding into Burkina Faso, making it one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid in West Africa. U.S.-trained Burkinabè military officers have also repeatedly overthrown their government, in 2014, 2015, and 2022 .

At the same time, militant Islamist violence skyrocketed. Across all of Africa, the State Department counted just 23 casualties from terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003, combined. Burkina Faso alone suffered 7,762 fatalities from militant Islamist attacks last year, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. That represents an almost 34,000 percent spike.

In 2020, Simon Compaoré, who previously served as Burkina Faso’s interior minister and was then president of the ruling political party, admitted to me that the Burkinabè government was conducting targeted executions of terrorist suspects. “We’re doing this, but we’re not shouting it from the rooftops,” he said.

The democratically elected government of that time was overthrown in 2022 by the U.S.-trained Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba , who himself was ousted months later by Capt. Ibrahim Traoré. The extrajudicial killings continued.

“Significant human rights issues included credible reports of unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by security forces,” reads the most recent U.S. State Department report on human rights in Burkina Faso, adding that “impunity for human rights abuses and corruption remained widespread.”

Earlier this year, The Intercept reported on three 2023 drone strikes by Burkina Faso’s government — targeting Islamist militants in crowded marketplaces and at a funeral — that killed at least 60 civilians and left dozens more injured.

U.S. Risking Complicity

The “Leahy laws” prohibit U.S. funding for foreign security forces implicated in gross violations of human rights. U.S. law also generally restricts countries from receiving military aid following military coups. The United States, however, has continued to provide training to Burkinabè forces, Gen. Michael Langley , the chief of Africa Command, or AFRICOM, told the House Armed Services Committee last year.

The U.S. provided millions of dollars in counterterrorism assistance to Burkina Faso in 2023, according to State Department data. Last month, a State Department press release touted the fact that the U.S. has given Burkina Faso “hundreds of millions of dollars in development and humanitarian assistance, as well as counterterrorism support to civilian security and law enforcement actors.”

Burkinabè soldiers also took part in Flintlock 2023, an annual exercise sponsored by U.S. Special Operations Command Africa. (Past Flintlock attendees, including Damiba, have overthrown the government .)

“The United States should stop all military cooperation with Burkina Faso, otherwise they risk becoming complicit in the abuses,” a civil society activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation, told The Intercept.

Last October, senior White House, Pentagon, and State Department officials told Traoré, now Burkinabè president, that working with Russia-linked Wagner Group mercenaries would irreparably damage his relationship with the U.S. In January, Russia’s Africa Corps — described by Russian officials as the successor to the Wagner Group following the death of its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin — deployed troops to Burkina Faso to, according to their post on Telegram , protect Traoré and battle terrorists.

Even with the raft of atrocities, coups, and transgressions against the Russian red line, a small contingent of U.S. military personnel are nonetheless deployed to Burkina Faso to, according to AFRICOM spokesperson Kelly Cahalan, “engage and interact” with the Burkinabè military and “keep lines of communication and dialogue open.”

On March 1, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called on the junta to conduct “complete investigations” of the massacres “with integrity and transparency and hold those responsible to account.” (The State Department failed to provide on-the-record responses to questions by The Intercept.)

The Burkinabè activist scoffed at the suggestion that the Burkinabè military could investigate itself and said that the junta would “erase” evidence of the massacres.

“The United States and the international community must demand concrete actions,” the activist told The Intercept. “Real repercussions are needed, such as sanctions against the perpetrators of the crimes, in order to deter them.”

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The Biden Administration is “actively suppressing intelligence reports” about the state of U.S. military relations with Niger, according to a new report issued by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. U.S. military service members told Gaetz’s office that they can’t get medicine, mail, or other support from the Pentagon.

“The Biden Administration and the State Department are engaged in a massive cover-up,” Gaetz told The Intercept. “They are hiding the true conditions on the ground of U.S. diplomatic relations in Niger and are effectively abandoning our troops in that country with no help in sight.”

Last month, Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, a spokesperson for Niger’s ruling junta, took to the national television network to denounce the United States and end the long-standing counterterrorism partnership between the two countries. Abdramane revoked his country’s agreement allowing U.S. troops and civilian Defense Department employees to operate in Niger, declaring that the security pact, in effect since 2012 , violated Niger’s constitution.

The Pentagon has maintained in the month since that it is seeking clarification.

“The Biden Administration and the State Department are engaged in a massive cover-up.”

“The U.S. government continues to work to obtain clarification,” Gen. Michael Langley, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, told The Intercept on Thursday.

Gaetz’s report contends that the U.S. Embassy in Niger, under Ambassador Kathleen FitzGibbon, is “covering up the failure of their U.S. diplomatic efforts in Niger.” The report says the embassy is “dismissing or suppressing” intelligence from the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, or OSI, as well as Special Operations Command Africa.

“When our AFRICOM leaders look to us to provide atmospherics on the ground, they go to the Embassy first and hear a watered down or false story than what is being reported,” according to one service member quoted in the report. “I know of at least 3 reports from OSI about Nigerien sentiment that have been discredited by the Embassy and turned out to be 100% true.” (The State Department denied the allegations but did not provide a statement on the record.)

Gaetz said, “They are suppressing intelligence because they don’t want to acknowledge that their multibillion-dollar flop for Niger to be centerpiece of their Africa Strategy has been a complete and total failure.”

In interviews conducted by Gaetz’s office, U.S. service members currently serving in Niger said they are, as the report put it, “functionally stranded” in the increasingly hostile country. The military officials said they are prohibited from conducting missions or from returning home at the scheduled end of their deployments.

“No flights are authorized by Niger to enter or exit the country in support of DoD efforts or requirements,” reads the report which notes that mail, food, equipment, and medical supplies “are being prevented from reaching” Air Base 201, the large U.S. drone base in the town of Agadez , on the southern fringe of the Sahara Desert.

“Some diplomatic clearances for military flights have recently been denied or not responded to, which has forced extended deployments in some cases,” Langley said, in a statement to The Intercept.

Pentagon spokesperson Pete Nguyen told The Intercept that “sustainment” of U.S. personnel has continued through commercial means, and the Pentagon is in “discussions” with the junta “to approve clearances on our upcoming regularly scheduled flights.”

Military personnel said the blood bank at Air Base 201 is not being replenished, possibly jeopardizing troops in the event of a mass casualty situation.

Next month, critical medications will also run out for individual service members. U.S. personnel “have repeatedly reached out for assistance but their strategic higher headquarters such as AFRICOM routinely overlook their concerns and those of AB101’s higher chain of command, or simply do not provide relief or guidance,” reads the report, referring to Air Base 101, located at the main commercial airport in Niger’s capital, Niamey.

“The Biden administration needs to acknowledge that their plan in Niger has failed and they need to bring these troops home immediately,” Gaetz told The Intercept. “If there is no remedy between Niger and the United States before the end of the month, our troops will be in immediate danger.”

The post U.S. Troops in Niger Say They’re “Stranded” and Can’t Get Mail, Medicine appeared first on The Intercept .

The United States shot down more drones and missiles than Israel did on Saturday night during Iran’s attack, The Intercept can report.

More than half of Iran’s weapons were destroyed by U.S. aircraft and missiles before they ever reached Israel. In fact, by commanding a multinational air defense operation and scrambling American fighter jets, this was a U.S. military triumph.

The extent of the U.S. military operation is unbeknownst to the American public, but the Pentagon coordinated a multination, regionwide defense extending from northern Iraq to the southern Persian Gulf on Saturday. During the operation, the U.S., U.K., France, and Jordan all shot down the majority of Iranian drones and missiles. In fact, where U.S. aircraft originated from has not been officially announced, an omission that has been repeated by the mainstream media. Additionally, the role of Saudi Arabia is unclear, both as a base for the United States and in terms of any actions by the Saudi military.

In calculating the size of Iran’s attack and the overwhelming role of the United States, U.S. military sources say that the preliminary estimate is that half of Iran’s weapons experienced technical failures of some sort.

“U.S. intelligence estimates that half of the weapons fired by Iran failed upon launch or in flight due to technical issues,” a U.S. Air Force senior officer told The Intercept. Of the remaining 160 or so, the U.S. shot down the majority, the officer said. The officer was granted anonymity to speak about sensitive operational matters.

Asked to comment on the United States shooting down half of Iran’s drones and missiles, the Israel Defense Forces and the White House National Security Council did not respond at the time of publication. The Pentagon referred The Intercept to U.S. Central Command, which pointed to a press release saying CENTCOM forces supported by U.S. European Command destroyers “successfully engaged and destroyed more than 80 one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles (OWA UAV) and at least six ballistic missiles intended to strike Israel from Iran and Yemen.”

Israel says that more than 330 drones, low-flying cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles were launched by Iran, including some 30 Paveh-type cruise missiles, 180 or so Shahed drones, and 120 Emad intermediate-range ballistic missiles, as well as other types of weapons. All of the drones and cruise missiles were launched from Iranian territory, Israel says. Some additional missiles were also launched from inside Yemen, according to IDF data.

Most media reports say that none of the cruise missiles or drones ever entered Israeli airspace. According to a statement by IDF spokesperson Adm. Daniel Hagari, some 25 cruise missiles “were intercepted by IAF [Israeli Air Force] fighter jets outside the country’s borders,” most likely over Jordanian territory.

Israel’s statement that it shot down the majority of Iranian “cruise missiles” is probably an exaggeration. According to U.S. military sources and preliminary reporting, U.S. and allied aircraft shot down the majority of drones and cruise missiles. U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that the Royal Air Force Typhoons intercepted “a number” of Iranian weapons over Iraqi and Syrian airspace.

The Jordanian government has also hinted that its aircraft downed some Iranian weapons. “We will intercept every drone or missile that violates Jordan’s airspace to avert any danger. Anything posing a threat to Jordan and the security of Jordanians, we will confront it with all our capabilities and resources,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said during an interview on the Al-Mamlaka news channel.

French fighters also shot down some drones and possibly cruise missiles.

U.S. aircraft, however, shot down “more than” 80 Iranian weapons, according to U.S. military sources. President Joe Biden spoke with members of two F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft squadrons to “commend them for their exceptional airmanship and skill in defending Israel from an unprecedented aerial attack by Iran.” Two F-15 squadrons — the 494th Fighter Squadron based at Royal Air Force Lakenheath in the United Kingdom, and the 335th Fighter Squadron from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina — are forward deployed to the Middle East, at least half of the planes at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.

Two U.S. warships stationed in the Mediterranean — the USS Carney (DDG 64) and the USS Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) — shot down at least six ballistic missiles, the Pentagon says. The War Zone is reporting that those ships may have fired Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) interceptors in combat for the first time. A U.S. Army Patriot surface-to-air missile battery in Erbil, Iraq, shot down at least one ballistic missile. Wreckage of an Iranian missile was also found outside Erbil, as well as in an open area outside the province of Najaf.

Iran’s attack marks the first time since 1991 that a nation state has attacked Israel directly. Contending with extremely long distances and utilizing scores of decoys and swarm tactics to attempt to overwhelm Middle East air defenses, Iran managed to hit two military targets on the ground in Israel, including Nevatim Air Base. According to the IDF, five missiles hit Nevatim Air Base and four hit another base. Despite the low number of munitions successfully landing, the dramatic spectacle of hundreds of rockets streaking across the night sky in Syria, Iraq, and Iran has left Tehran contented with its show of force.

Iran “has achieved all its goals, and in our view the operation has ended, and we do not intend to continue,” Iranian President Mohammad Bagheri said over the weekend. Still, he cautioned, “If the Zionist regime or its supporters demonstrate reckless behavior, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response.”

The U.S. coordinated the overall operation from the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where the overall commander was Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the air commander of CENTCOM. “We take whatever assets we have that are in theater … under our tactical control or in a direct support role across the joint force and the coalition, and we stitch them together so that we can synchronize the fires and effects when we get into that air defense fight,” Grynkewich told Air & Space Forces Magazine after the Iran attack. “We’re trying to stitch together partners in the region who share a perspective of a threat, share concern of the threats to stability in the region — which primarily emanate from Iran with a large number of ballistic missiles — and be in a position where we’re able to share information, share threat warning. And the ultimate goal is to get to a much deeper and fuller integration. We’ve made tremendous progress.”

In a call immediately following Iran’s attack, Biden reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange” and warned of the “risks of escalation” — as if that hadn’t already happened.

The post U.S. Shot Down Most Iran Drones and Missiles Launched at Israel appeared first on The Intercept .

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets U.S. President Joe Biden upon his arrival at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on October 18, 2023. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

The Israeli bombing of an Iranian consular office in Damascus on April 1 was the first salvo in a new phase of a regional conflict between the two countries. The attack, which killed several senior Iranian military officials, took the conflict from proxy warfare to direct confrontation.

On Saturday night, Iran launched its long-expected response to Israel, targeting the country with hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles. The attacks, reportedly telegraphed in the days beforehand as part of backchannel negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, were mostly intercepted on route to Israel.

The first direct attack by a state military against Israel since Iraq’s Scud missile launches during 1991’s Gulf War, the Iranian salvo — slow, deliberate, and forewarned — appeared calculated not to escalate the situation. The same cannot be said of Israel’s strike against the Iranians in Syria.

While Israeli officials, not least Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have sought to portray the Jewish state as the victims of an unprovoked Iranian attack, it was their own deadly strike on the Damascus consulate that triggered the new phase of the conflict. Though the U.S. created the conditions that may have encouraged Netanyahu’s gambit, it was reportedly Israel, acting on its own behalf, without coordination with its allies, that precipitated the latest grave escalation.

Even Israel’s patron and closest partner, the U.S., indicated it had not been involved or aware of planning for the consulate attack. Following this weekend’s Iranian response, which did very limited damage, the U.S. cautioned patience and encouraged Israel to see the barrage as an end to the current standoff.

The reciprocal blows between Israel and Iran have now pushed the Middle East into dangerously uncharted waters, at a time when many U.S. policymakers are seeking to leave the region and refocus attention on Europe and east Asia.

Despite reported pleading from the Biden administration to seek a diplomatic off-ramp, Israeli officials are promising an escalated response to Iran. They are threatening to target of military sites inside Iran, as well as sites tied to the country’s nuclear program, a longtime Israeli obsession.

The Iranians have said continuing this cycle of strikes would trigger another reciprocal attack against Israel, far broader in scope and less likely to be coordinated with the U.S. or other regional powers to minimize damage. The result could be a full-scale war between two powerful states, including one whose security is all but politically guaranteed by the U.S. military. In that light, the prospect of the U.S. “pivoting to Asia,” or even recommitting fully to the defense of Ukraine would likely become farcical.

The potential handcuffing of U.S. policy has not gone unnoticed in Washington. A report by NBC News on the morning after Iran’s strikes quoted three individuals close to Joe Biden as saying that the president “privately expressed concern that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to drag Washington into a broader conflict.”

President Joe Biden meets with members of his national security team on April 13, 2024, regarding the unfolding missile attacks on Israel from Iran, in the White House Situation Room. Photo: Adam Schultz/White House

Reaping What is Sown

Despite Biden’s concerns, the U.S. is the one that created a moral hazard by encouraging Israel to act more recklessly. Israel’s decision to attack Iran’s consulate building, where it killed a number of top officials from the elite Quds Force, itself was unlikely to have happened without Netanyahu’s belief that he could count on U.S. support no matter what Israel does .

Who could blame him? There have been sudden U.S. shifts on the war in Gaza and Biden apparently rejected further Israeli strikes against Iran, but American officials including the president have by and large struck a tone of total, unflinching support for Israel. Though this support has not always extended to Netanyahu himself, the strike against Damascus seemed to be a test of that distinction.

And the violent exchange with Iran also highlights a much wider chasm between the interests of the U.S. and Israel — and the countries’ leaders. The U.S. has material incentives to draw down its focus on the Middle East and does not want to fight another major war in the region, but for Israel and for Netanyahu personally there are strong reasons to start a direct confrontation with Iran and its allies.

Since the start of its post-October 7 assault on Gaza, Israeli civilians have mostly abandoned the northern are of the country due to the nearby presence, across the Lebanese border, of fighters from the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. Many Israeli security officials feel that a war with Hezbollah and by extension Iran is inevitable . They prefer a strategy of initiating one now on Israel’s terms while the U.S. still has a military presence in the region that could be forced into the fight.

From Netanyahu’s perspective, once the current war ends, he is likely to face serious political and legal problems inside Israel. Expanding the conflict to a regional one could delay his day of reckoning — or even change his personally fortunes entirely.

Israeli incentives for war with Iran should logically put it on a crash course with the U.S. political establishment. Yet the deep ideological, economic, and political ties that supporters of Israel have cultivated with U.S. politicians and security elites, make it possible that the U.S. may wind up in a war with Iran whether they like it or not.

It would not be a cakewalk. Iran is larger than Iraq, boasting vastly more sophisticated defenses and a huge web of regional military assets. A major war would not be limited in time or scope. At a moment when the U.S. is running short of munitions and funding to support Ukraine and is nervously eyeing China’s military buildup in east Asia, it is hard to think of worse timing for such a conflict, regardless of how opportune it may be for Israel.

Israeli officials are now reportedly debating whether to “go big” with strikes against Iran, or take a more measured response. Iran meanwhile has said that if Israel lashes out, it will hit back harder — ostensibly in a manner calculated to overwhelm Israeli air defenses. If that happens, Biden will have to confront the contradictions of a policy of embracing Israel and enabling its most extreme tendencies, while at the same time trying to do what is best for the U.S.

Contrary to the words of some sycophantic U.S. politicians, the interests of the two countries are not identical, and, today, do not even appear to be aligned.

The post Israel and Israel Alone Kicked Off This Escalation — In a Bid to Drag U.S. Into War With Iran appeared first on The Intercept .

The regional war in the Middle East now involves at least 16 different countries and includes the first strikes from Iranian territory on Israel, but the United States continues to insist that there is no broader war, hiding the extent of American military involvement. And yet in response to Iran’s drone and missile attacks Saturday, the U.S. flew aircraft and launched air defense missiles from at least eight countries, while Iran and its proxies fired weapons from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

The news media has been complicit in its portrayal of the regional war as nonexistent. “Biden Seeks to Head Off Escalation After Israel’s Successful Defense,” the New York Times blared this morning, ignoring that the conflict had already spread. “Iran attacks Israel, risking a full-blown regional war,” says The Economist. “Some top U.S. officials are worried that Israel may respond hastily to Iran’s unprecedented drone and missile attacks and provoke a wider regional conflict that the U.S. could get dragged into,” says NBC, parroting the White House’s deception.

The Washington-based reporting follows repeated Biden administration statements that none of this amounts to a regional war. “So far, there is not … a wider regional conflict,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Thursday, in response to a question about Israel’s strike on the Iranian Embassy. Ryder’s statement followed repeated assertions by Iranian leadership that retaliation would follow — and even a private message from the Iranians to the U.S . that if it helped defend Israel, the U.S. would also be a viable target — after which the White House reiterated its “ironclad” support for Israel.

While the world has been focused on — and the Pentagon has been stressing — the comings and goings of aircraft carriers and fighter jets to serve as a “deterrent” against Iran, the U.S. has quietly built a network of air defenses to fight its regional war. “At my direction, to support the defense of Israel, the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Saturday. “Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles.”

As part of that network, Army long-range Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense surface-to-air missile batteries have been deployed in Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and at the secretive Site 512 base in Israel. These assets — plus American aircraft based in Kuwait, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia — are knitted together in order to communicate and cooperate with each other to provide a dome over Israel (and its own regional bases). The United Kingdom is also intimately tied into the regional war network, while additional countries such as Bahrain have purchased Patriot missiles to be part of the network.

Despite this unambiguous regional network, and even after Israel’s attack on Iran’s embassy in Syria earlier this month, the Biden administration has consistently denied that the Hamas war has spread beyond Gaza. It is a policy stance — and a deception — that has held since Hamas’s October 7 attack. “The Middle East region is quieter than it has been in two decades,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an ill-timed remark eight days before October 7. “We don’t see this conflict widening as it still remains contained to Gaza,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said the day after three U.S. troops were killed by a kamikaze drone launched by an Iran-backed militia at a U.S. base in Jordan . Since then (and even before this weekend), the fighting has spread to Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Yemen.

As part of the regional war network, four American ships, part of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) battle group, have played a central role in thwarting Iran-backed attacks. The ships are equipped with long-range Standard surface-to-air missiles and the Phalanx close-in weapon system, a Gatling gun that serves as the ship’s last lines of defense against attack. All of the ships have been conducting offensive and defensive operations in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, focused on Houthi attacks (they all shot Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missiles at targets in Yemen on January 12).

According to maritime spotters and the Navy, the destroyer USS Gravely (DDG 107) has been conducting defensive and offensive operations in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since mid-March. It has been engaging Houthi drones and missiles fired from inside Yemen toward Israel and toward maritime traffic. The destroyer USS Mason (DDG 87) has also been operating in the Red Sea. Just on Tuesday, it targeted a Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile that was targeting the U.S. commercial ship M/V Yorktown, according to the Navy. The destroyer USS Laboon (DDG 58) arrived in the region in December and has been operating mostly in the Gulf of Aden. The guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea (CG 58) arrived around Christmas and has served as the main air defense command-and-control hub.

American ships have quietly called at ports in Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Djibouti (the port of Duqm in Oman has been the most often visited foreign port). Lebanon is also involved in the conflict as Israel and Hezbollah have traded attacks.

The White House has also said that U.S. fighter jets were involved in some of the shootdowns of Iranian missiles. Flight trackers noticed a U.S. Air Force refueling plane, stationed in Qatar, flying missions over Iraq during the Iranian attack. In total, according to CNN , around 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles, and more than 120 ballistic missiles were launched at Israel overnight Saturday. All told, US forces were responsible for over 100 interceptions of Iranian drones and missiles, according to Israeli officials.

The post As Israel Conflict Spreads to 16 Nations, Biden Administration Says There’s No War appeared first on The Intercept .

The White House is worried that Iran might strike a U.S. target as part of a potential retaliation for Israel’s April 1 attack on its embassy in Damascus, Syria, according to notes from a meeting involving National Security Council officials earlier this week. Tehran has vowed that “Israel will be punished” for the Syria strike and the killing of Quds Force commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi.

New concern about a potential Iranian strike comes even though the Biden administration has sought to distance itself from the Israeli airstrike, stressing that it had no advance knowledge of the operation.

“I don’t have anything more to say about the strike in Damascus, except that we weren’t involved in any way whatsoever,” NSC spokesperson retired Adm. John Kirby said on Monday.

On Monday night, Iran conveyed to the Biden administration that if it involved itself in defending Israel were Tehran to undertake a retaliatory strike, it would consider the United States a viable target as well. The issue was discussed at a Tuesday NSC meeting, according to notes reviewed by The Intercept. (The NSC did not respond to a request for comment.)

At the Tuesday meeting, an NSC official conveyed high-level concerns that the administration did not want to publicly appear to be in any official dialogue with Tehran, with whom the U.S. does not have formal diplomatic relations.

Last Friday, four days after the Israeli airstrike, over a dozen Republican senators signed a letter accusing the Biden administration of undertaking a “strategy of appeasement” with Iran.

Despite an-ever widening and escalating military action since the Gaza war began, the Biden administration has insisted that the war remains contained to Israel, despite attacks by Israel in Syria and Lebanon; despite repeated attacks by Houthi forces in Yemen and the retaliatory strike that have followed; and despite attacks and responses against U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. The strikes by the U.S. (and its coalition partners) are always described as taking place against “Iran-backed” organizations and militias.

In January, three American Army soldiers were killed by a kamikaze drone launched by an Iranian-backed militia at a U.S. base in Jordan called Tower 22. There have been over 150 attacks on U.S. Middle East forces since the Israel–Hamas war began. U.S. Central Command, the Pentagon’s Middle East combatant command, has launched a seemingly endless barrage of strikes on Iranian-backed targets throughout the region, as well as undertaken naval and air attacks in and around Yemen.

The position of the Biden administration has consistently been that it doesn’t see any of this as escalation. “We don’t seek a wider war with Iran,” Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said the day after the three U.S. troops were killed in Jordan. “We don’t seek further conflict, we don’t want to see this widen out into a regional conflict.”

Since then, the U.S. has quietly conducted talks with Iranian officials to seek to avoid direct confrontation between the two countries’ armed forces, according to CNN and other media reports. On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Biden and his team are working to prevent escalation with Iran in the Middle East.

On Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Israel “must be punished and it shall be.” That same day, Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz said his country would respond with a direct attack. “If Iran attacks from its own territory, Israel will respond and attack in Iran,” Katz posted on X. Since April 2023, the U.S. and Israel have been in close cooperation in sharing and building common Iran contingency plans.

The post Biden Administration Fears Iran Might Target U.S. Forces If Israel Strikes appeared first on The Intercept .

In light of the deadly ISIS-K attack on the Crocus City Hall in Russia last month, the homeland security complex is newly focusing on a high-profile Islamic State attack inside the United States, according to new government reports and statements. For seven months, Hamas has been the primary focus of federal counterterror operations, with the FBI anticipating a terrorist strike intended to highlight America’s military support for Israel.

“I see blinking lights everywhere I turn,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in December, addressing post-October 7 domestic threats and a new obsession with Hamas that came out of the Gaza war.

Within the past week though, members of Congress are demanding that the government provide classified briefings on the ISIS-K threat, expressing “serious concern” about the group’s reach. The New Jersey homeland security department, one of the country’s most active counterterrorism hubs, has also produced an intelligence brief this week warning about potential ISIS-K attacks. And the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has produced a hand-wringing report about the current U.S. capability to conduct “‘over-the-horizon’ counterterrorism operations” in Afghanistan to thwart the group’s future operations.

In a way, the shift from Hamas to ISIS-K is one welcomed by the terror fighters because the focus eliminates all of the tricky politics associated with the Gaza war, especially the difficulty the FBI and others have had separating pro-Palestinian sentiments from support for Hamas. And, not coincidentally, all of the focus on pro-Trump so-called domestic extremists. The Al Qaeda-like attack in Moscow also harkens back to a familiar threat and the 20-year war for the federal government, one even emanating from Afghanistan.

ISIS-K, known as Islamic State Khorasan, is the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate that is now active in south Asia and the Caucasus. The name Khorasan comes from ancient Persian and refers to the region that encompasses Afghanistan and northeastern Iran, and portions of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan. Surviving fighters from Al Qaeda have congregated under the banner of ISIS-K. The Director of National Intelligence labels ISIS-K, founded in 2015, as one of ISIS’s “most lethal branches.”

In some ways, ISIS-K is the actual successor to Al Qaeda, which introduced high-profile attacks in northwest Africa and Yemen, culminating in 9/11. Before the assault in Moscow which killed 140 last month, ISIS-K had attack the U.S. directly when during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan it sent a suicide bomber that killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghans at the Kabul airport . Since assuming command in 2020, the group’s leader, Sanaullah Ghafari, has pledged further attacks, and he has taken on the ISIS goal of trying to create a physical Islamic caliphate.

Beginning in 2022, ISIS-K has also increased its messaging targeted on the United States. The ISIS Al-Naba newspaper commented on the initial indictment of former President Donald Trump, claiming “American unrest is looming on the horizon” and that “this is taking place by the arrangement of Allah.” ISIS-K’s English-language Voice of Khurasan commented on the raid at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, claiming “America is a ‘banana republic’ corrupt at a level not seen before.” ISIS-K has also commented on gun violence, highlighting gun killings in America and calling them “tit for tat” for U.S. foreign policy failures.

Last month, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of Central Command, said that ISIS-K “retains the capability and the will to attack U.S. and Western interests abroad in as little as six months with little to no warning.” When asked whether the military is conducting sufficient strikes on ISIS-K in Afghanistan given the U.S. withdrawal, Kurilla told Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., “in a classified setting, ma’am, I can talk about where we are in terms of the find, fix, and finish on them.”

In a April 3 intelligence brief from the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness obtained by The Intercept, the agency warns, “The ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) attack in Russia highlights the group’s aspiration to become the most active ISIS affiliate, conduct global attacks, and inspire homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) to threaten the U.S. and Europe.”

In the same breath, the brief acknowledges that ISIS itself remains “a low threat to New Jersey and the surrounding region” and that the group has never “successfully conducted a directed attack within the U.S.” thanks to global efforts, such as that of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. The brief says that coalition and U.S. operations have “diminished ISIS’s military capability, territorial control, leadership, financial resources, and online influence.”

“The largest threat from ISIS still comes from [Homegrown Violent Extremists] who consume ISIS propaganda, radicalize, [and] often pledge allegiance to the group,” the brief concludes. (The FBI says that the majority of foreign-inspired terrorists in the U.S. continue to be ISIS-affiliated, as they have been for most of the past decade. On Saturday, the FBI arrested 18 year old Scott Mercurio, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, for planning to attack local churches and allegedly providing material support to ISIS. “This case should be an eye-opener to the dangers of self-radicalization, which is a real threat to our communities,” Shohini Sinha, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Salt Lake City field office said .)

The new threat posed by ISIS-K was further amplified in a recent letter sent by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., demanding a classified briefing on the ISIS-K threat.

“ISIS-K’s recent attacks further highlight their ability to strike around the globe. Their operations include a suicide bombing in Iran in January of 2024 and a massacre at a concert hall in Moscow in March,” the senators wrote . “Further, ISIS-K planned attacks against civilians in Germany and the Netherlands were also thwarted. It is evident the potential and desire for strikes by ISIS-K around the globe, including against the United States, remains significant. As former Director of Intelligence for CENTCOM, retired Army Major General Mark Quantock recently stated, ‘The U.S. remains target No. 1 for ISIS-K.’”

Late last month, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also said that Wray confirmed to him that an ISIS-linked smuggling network was penetrating the U.S. southern border. Rubio told ABC News that ISIS-K had “reconstituted itself as we warned would happen when we had this disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. One of the reasons why we didn’t want to withdraw precipitously is because you gave them operating space to reorganize themselves and plan externally.”

The post Terror Hunters Trade Hamas for ISIS-K, Perhaps With Some Relief appeared first on The Intercept .

As the NCAA finishes up March Madness, another type of madness is unfolding, as the U.S. military retools its weapons of mass destruction response apparatus to focus not on attacks by familiar foreign terror groups like Al Qaeda or ISIS, but by American citizens.

Late last month, for the first time ever, the National Guard conducted an exercise simulating a frantic search for a nuclear dirty bomb at a basketball and hockey arena in Trenton, New Jersey. What made the exercise different from hundreds of such similar war games held since 9/11 is that purely domestic terrorists were identified as the perpetrators.

“The FBI has just received intelligence that a well-resourced domestic terrorist group has planted bombs, including one with cesium-137 — a radioactive isotope — in the arena,” the military said about the scenario for the exercise. “The clock is ticking.”

The CURE Insurance Arena in Trenton is a multipurpose facility able to seat 8,000. The arena aims to attract more college basketball matches, having hosted Princeton vs. Rutgers in November.

The mock nuclear materials search took place from March 25-28 and involved National Guard “Civil Support Teams” from New Jersey, Delaware, and Idaho; other military teams; city, county, and state police and hazardous material teams; and federal government agencies, including the local FBI field office and experts from the national Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.

Established during the Clinton administration in 1998, the National Guard Civil Support Teams are charged with “consequence management” in the event of a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear — known as CBRN — incident. The 20- to 25-member teams can also be assigned to “incidents of national significance” and “national security events” that involve intentional and unintentional CBRN releases. They have been deployed on standby for the Super Bowl and Boston Marathon, as well as for NCAA tournaments. The teams were extensively employed during Covid-19.

The exercise scenario last month resembles the feverish plot of the post-9/11 TV series “24,” which dramatized the concept of a ticking time bomb and the extraordinary measures it might justify. (“24” also had its own sports tie-in, having aired its pilot episode right after the Super Bowl.) But “24” portrayed the dirty bomb plots as being masterminded by foreign terror groups similar to those that carried out 9/11. By pointing the finger at a “domestic terrorist group” — that is, Americans — the U.S. military outpaces not just Hollywood, but also the facts.

Though the FBI says in its fiscal year 2025 budget request to Congress that during 2023, its Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate “disrupted 42 incidents; made 62 arrests; and had 43 indictments, 56 sentencings and 56 convictions,” none involved actual nuclear materials or such a dirty bomb. There’s no evidence that any domestic terrorist group has ever been well-resourced enough to construct a nuclear dirty bomb. But that hasn’t stopped Washington from building on January 6 to feed its current domestic extremism obsession and fearmongering about it.

In November, the Washington-based Stimson Center published a report , “The Threat from Within,” that hypes the purported insider threat to nuclear security posed by “domestic violent extremists.” The report is funded by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. The Stimson Center also receives funding from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (the Defense Department agency charged with weapons of mass destruction).

“The January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol revealed the flaws in a system designed to weed out unsuitable candidates for sensitive work protecting nuclear materials, weapons, facilities, technology and personnel,” the Stimson report’s executive summary says.

The report acknowledges a shift from foreign to domestic terrorism, saying, “Rather than focusing on international extremists with foreign ideological motives, federal agencies and law enforcement have begun to recognize the prevalence of domestic violent extremist threats to national security and critical infrastructure, including the nuclear sector.”

As an example of the domestic extremist threat to nuclear security, the Stimson reports cites the case of Ashli Babbitt. An Air Force veteran who participated in the storming of the Capitol building before being killed by a law enforcement officer, the report points to Babbitt’s employment at a nuclear plant as “​​troubling — especially when considering the appeal of nuclear infrastructure as a target for extremists.”

That’s of course a long shot from saying Babbitt had any intention of targeting that nuclear infrastructure — which there’s no evidence for — in order to, say, construct a dirty bomb.

But that won’t stop the government from playing its own game.

The post Feds Search Basketball Arena for Domestic Nuclear Terrorists in Their Own March Madness appeared first on The Intercept .