Iran 

U.S. Unseals an Indictment of Eastern European Criminal Syndicate Targeting Masih Alinejad 

On Friday, the U.S. Justice Department announced the unsealing of an Iran regime-linked murder-for-hire scheme targeting Iranian American activist Masih Alinejad. In July of last year, Khalid Mehdiyev was found with an assault rifle, two ammunition magazines, and around 66 rounds of ammunition near Alinejad’s residence in Brooklyn, New York. The U.S. government charges he was not a lone operative. He was acting with Rafat Amirov, a leader in an Eastern European criminal organization who resides in Iran, and Polad Omarov. All three defendants are currently in custody.  

Israel and the Palestinian Territories 

Israel Strikes Gaza in Retaliatory Strikes over Rocket Fire into Southern Israel 

Gaza-based militants fired several rockets toward southern Israel and Israeli Air Force warplanes carried out retaliatory strikes in the Gaza Strip early Friday as tit-for-tat fighting broke out amid high tensions following an IDF raid in Jenin that left nine Palestinian dead a day earlier. 

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad issued their now-customary threats in response to the deaths, which included several militants linked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The IDF said its latest operation in Jenin was meant to thwart a terrorist attack by the growing militant presence in the city. 

At least three rockets were fired from Gaza at around 3:30 a.m. Friday, as Israeli jets bombed sites said to belong to the Hamas terror group in retaliation for a rocket attack hours earlier. One of the rockets was intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system, another landed in an open field, and a third fell short of the border, the army said, after alarms sounded in the towns Nir Oz, Ein Habesor, and Magen. 

The rocket attacks came as Israeli jets carried out a series of bombing raids in the central Gaza Strip in response to Gazan terrorists firing two rockets toward Ashkelon at midnight. Both projectiles were intercepted by Iron Dome. 

The military said it targeted an underground facility where rockets are manufactured in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza. It said the site was in an area surrounded by residential buildings and 180 meters (590 feet) from a storage facility maintained by UNRWA, the United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees. 

No injuries on either the Palestinian or Israeli side were reported, and a tense calm had prevailed over the border area by Friday morning. 

Shin Bet Reveals Hamas Attempt to Recruit West Bank Palestinians for Terror Attacks 

The Shin Bet security agency on Wednesday said Israel was revoking the entry permits to Israel from 230 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, relatives of Hamas members who allegedly worked to recruit West Bank Palestinians to help commit attacks. 

In a statement, the Shin Bet said in recent weeks dozens of West Bank Palestinians had been arrested and questioned over their alleged ties with Hamas operatives in Gaza. The agency said many of the young suspects were unaware that Hamas was using them to prepare attacks against Israeli targets. According to the Shin Bet, the Hamas operatives hid their real identities by masquerading as companies and other entities, while recruiting West Bank Palestinians for paid work. The Palestinians in the West Bank would be tasked with transferring funds intended for purchasing weapons or delivering packages of weapons and ammunition to Hamas operatives, it said. “All this is without the couriers being aware, in most cases, that they are transferring weapons or are involved in terror activity,” the Shin Bet said.  

The agency says the operation was led by Farah Hamed, 45, a Hamas member from the West Bank town of Silwad who was deported to Gaza as part of the 2011 Gilad Shalit release deal. 

The Shin Bet said Hamed was a member of the Gaza-based terror group’s so-called “West Bank headquarters,” a unit involved in advancing terror attacks against Israel from the West Bank. Several of the suspects have also been indicted at a military court for various security offenses, including illegal arms dealing. 

In response to the attempts by the Hamas operatives to set up attacks, Israel revoked the entry permits to Israel from 230 of their relatives. A senior security official said “the actions of Hamas and the other terror groups in the Gaza Strip will lead to a reduction in the number of entry permits for workers from Gaza to Israel.” The service warned that the Gaza-based terrorist group was increasingly trying to carry out attacks in the West Bank and Israel.  

The arrests came at a time of rising violence in the West Bank, with the IDF pressing on with an anti-terror offensive to deal with a series of attacks that left 31 people in Israel dead in 2022. The IDF’s operation has netted more than 2,500 arrests in near-nightly raids. It also left 171 Palestinians dead in 2022, and another 19 since the beginning of the year, many of them while carrying out attacks or during clashes with security forces, though some were uninvolved civilians.  

Lebanon 

U.S. Sanctions Hezbollah Financier 

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Tuesday it was placing sanctions on Lebanese money exchanger Hassan Moukalled and his business, CTEX Exchange, for alleged financial ties to Hezbollah. Its announcement said Moukalled was a financial adviser to Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which is also sanctioned by the United States, and carried out financial transactions on its behalf that earned him hundreds of thousands of dollars.  

"Today, the Treasury Department is taking action against a corrupt money exchanger, whose financial engineering actively supports and enables Hezbollah and its interests at the expense of the Lebanese people and economy," Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism Brian E. Nelson said. Treasury also sanctioned Moukalled's two sons, saying they were involved in the same financial dealings. 

Moukalled's business CTEX was licensed by Lebanon's central bank. Moukalled regularly appears on Lebanese television channels as a financial expert and has more than 50,000 followers on Twitter, making him one of the rare public-facing figures sanctioned by Washington for financial links to Hezbollah. 

Moukalled on Thursday denied that he or his company CTEX have financial ties to Hezbollah and said he would mount legal challenges to U.S. Treasury sanctions against him. "The claims are wrong - all wrong," Moukalled told Reuters. "We will take all legal measures to respond to this in Lebanon and the U.S." 

Lebanon's central bank on Thursday said it had suspended that license and frozen accounts belonging to CTEX, Moukalled, and his two sons, whom the Treasury also alleged were involved in the same financial dealings. 

Hezbollah Erects New Watchtowers on Lebanon Border as IDF Builds Defensive Wall 

Hezbollah terror group has established new tall observation posts on Israel’s northern border as the IDF has ramped up the construction of a defensive wall. Residents of the northern town of Shtula who spoke to the Israeli media said one such 18-meter-high tower, a few dozen meters from the border, had been constructed over the past month, right where the IDF was replacing its aging border fence with a nine-meter-high concrete wall.  

The Israeli military has long accused Hezbollah of conducting clandestine activities along the Israel-Lebanon border under the guise of an environmental group known as “Green Without Borders,” and published details of one such new site last year.

Ynet’s northern correspondent reported that at least 20 posts manned 24 hours a day by Hezbollah members in civilian clothing have been built over the past year. Some of the posts are just meters away from the Blue Line — the UN delineated boundary serving as a de facto border between Israel and Lebanon – and IDF positions on the other side of the fence.

Green Without Borders and Hezbollah deny any mutual connections. “We are not an arm for anyone,” the head of Green Without Borders, Zouher Nahli, told The Associated Press. “We as an environmental association work for all the people and we are not politicized.” He spoke at the Bassam Tabaja Nature Reserve, named for a Hezbollah fighter killed in Syria in 2014, where the NGO has planted hundreds of trees.  

He said the organization’s funding comes from the ministries of environment and agriculture as well as from wealthy Lebanese who care about the environment and municipalities, mainly in the eastern Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon. He said he is an Agriculture Ministry employee. Since it began operations in 2009, the group has helped plant about 2 million trees, Nahli said. 

Syria 

Syria’s Defense Minister Visits Iran 

This week, Syria’s Defense Minister Ali Mahmoud Abbas visited Iran, where he met with a variety of Iranian officials including President Ebrahim Raisi, Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC Hossein Salami, and Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff Mohammad Bagheri. Raisi said “relations between the two countries are based on common beliefs and the spirit of resilience as well.” He also offered comprehensive economic cooperation, but there are tensions beneath the surface, with reports that Tehran has told Damascus that it would have to pay more for new shipments of oil, doubling the price to more than $70 per barrel. It is also asking Syria’s regime to pay in advance for the oil and refusing deliveries on credit. Salami himself offered exchange of expertise in cybersecurity, intelligence, and electronic warfare.