Mideast Week in Review - July 3 // FAI ONLINE

Israel - The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) conducted two separate military operations on Saturday, in an effort to contain the growing threat of Iranian-aligned actors along Israel’s northern frontier. Syrian media claimed that Israeli warplanes flying over the Mediterranean Sea struck a “poultry farm” with missiles in the southern coastal town of al-Hamidiyah, near Syria’s border with Lebanon. The “air aggression” allegedly injured two civilians. The IDF had no comment, although the Israeli military has often targeted Iranian weapons shipments arriving in Syrian ports.

In the second incident, the IDF shot down 3 drones launched by the Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist organization towards the Karish natural gas field in the Eastern Mediterranean. Hezbollah admitted responsibility for the operation in a public statement, claiming that the UAV’s were on a reconnaissance mission. The Karish gas field presently falls within Israel’s exclusive economic zone in the Eastern Mediterranean, although the Lebanese government has claimed in recent years that Karish falls within its territorial waters. The absence of normal diplomatic relations between Israel and Lebanon makes the delineation of maritime borders difficult, although the US government has been working to mediate an agreement in recent years.

Saturday’s IDF actions were the first test for new Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid. The Israeli television-personality-turned-politician took office Friday after the resignation of former premier Naftali Bennett last week. Lapid was previously the foreign minister and alternate prime minister in a power sharing government with Bennett, when the two party leaders led a broad coalition of Arab, centrist and right-wing parties to defeat former Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu last year. The fragile coalition failed after several members of parliament withdrew earlier this year, erasing the bloc’s slim majority and triggering Israel’s fifth round of elections in three years, scheduled for later this fall. Yair Lapid leads the center-left party Yesh Atid (Hebrew for “There is a Future”) which he founded in 2012, focusing on domestic issues such as lowering the cost of living in Israel, abolishing religious exemptions for the ultra-orthodox, and legalizing gay marriage in the Jewish State.

Iran - At least 5 are dead and almost 50 injured after a 6.1 earthquake rocked southern Iran on Saturday morning, followed by two dozen aftershocks measuring as high as 6.3 on the Richter scale. It was the region’s second major incident of seismic activity in the last 10 days, after another 6.1 earthquake killed over 1,000 people in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Khost on June 23rd. Recue operations began in earnest yesterday in the town of Sayeh Khosh near Iran’s Persian Gulf coast, which has been almost entirely reduced to rubble by the powerful series of tremors.

Several major fault lines run through Iranian territory, which has suffered major earthquakes periodically, including one in 2003 which killed 31,000 people in and around the southeast city of Bam. Saturday’s quake adds to Iran’s running list of national woes, including spiraling inflation, drought, food shortages and social unrest.

Meanwhile in Iran, a Marxist dissident group known as Muhajadeen Halk claimed responsibility for an attack on the Malik Eshtar militia base southeast of the capital of Tehran on Friday. The revolutionary faction is part of an umbrella organization of Iranian dissident groups known as Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization/People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran (PEK/PMOI). Amateur video posted to social media showed two explosions at the base, which houses the Basij militia. The Basij are a volunteer paramilitary force which is most often used by the Iranian regime for “internal security,” including the repression of public demonstrations and the enforcement of religious restrictions in Iran, such as the mandate for women to wear a head covering in public. The role of the Basij in brutally repressing recent public uprisings in Iran has made it a prime target of insurgent groups. The Iranian government did not officially comment on the Malik Eshtar attack, although private Telegram channels associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reported the incident extensively, blaming Israel for empowering the dissidents.

Iraqi Kurdistan - The Kurdish Peshmerga militia found itself pressed on two sides last week, as the Iraqi military made an “uncoordinated deployment” toward the Khor Mor gas field on Saturday. The field north of Kirkuk is the largest developed natural gas deposit in Iraqi Kurdistan, and has been the target of several rocket attacks by Iranian-aligned militias in recent days, after the announcement of a pipeline which would ferry natural gas to Turkey. The Peshmerga “pushed back” a unit of the Iraqi army attempting to establish a checkpoint outside the town of Qadir Karam, near the gas field. The checkpoint violated previous agreements between the central Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which stipulate a demilitarized zone between the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga. The buffer zone has become a haven for the remnants of ISIS, as well as Iranian-aligned militias, which were folded into the Iraqi military in 2017, but which still often take their orders from Tehran instead of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the conflict between the Turkish government and Kurdish PKK militia continued in Duhok Province, along Kurdistan’s northwestern borders with Syria and Turkey. PKK units shelled a Turkish base near the town of Shiladze on Saturday. No immediate report of casualties or damage was available. The shelling comes after Turkey announced on Tuesday that 4 PKK militants were killed by airstrikes in its ongoing “Claw-Lock” operation. The cross-border offensive was launched on April 18, the third such incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan since 2020, during which time the Turkish military has created a “buffer zone” along 60% of the Turkey-Kurdistan border, and has established bases deep within Duhok province.

As incidents of war, strife, earthquakes and famines continue to mount across the Middle East, we would ask the Maranatha global community to continue in prayer for unreached people groups across the region. We pray for the schemes of the enemy to be restrained, for divine wisdom to be granted to international leaders, and for each calamity and catastrophe to open “wide, effectual doors” for laborers of the Mideast harvest fields.

Maranatha!