The pathologically cruel and soulless leader of HAMAS, has been confirmed as dead, in Gaza
What does this mean for "what comes next?"
TAT readers,
Today’s planned essay must take a backseat for the breaking news, that Yahya al-Sinwar, Hamas’ Political Bureau chief since July 2024 is confirmed dead in Khan Younis, Gaza. This official title is misleading. The IDF and others considered him pathological in his willingness to employ the most barbaric tactics against his foes, Israeli and Palestinian alike. Known as the “butcher of Khan Younis, his hometown, he ruthlessly rose through the ranks of Hamas via manipulation, cruelty and a willingness to inflict the deepest and most disturbing pain on his victims, enthusiastically. He became the leader of Hamas in 2017 and after the West Bank’s Palestinian leader, Haniyeh was killed by Israel Afterwards, Sinwar added the title of Political Bureau Chief for Hamas to his duties as the DeFacto leader of Hamas.
Yayha Sinwar has been a central figure in Hamas for decades, and the most pivotal person behind the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the bloody conflict in Gaza that has followed in the year since then. A short wiry man with close cropped hair that is now white, Sinwar was known for his obsessive levels of secrecy and security precautions, and was labeled a psychopath by Israeli politicians and security officials. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar looks on as Palestinian Hamas supporters take part in an anti-Israel rally over tension in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Gaza City, Oct. 1, 2022. Sinwar's death in an Israeli assault in Gaza fulfilled a promise made by Israeli leaders made last year, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who swore they would assassinate him in retribution for the wave of killings and hostage-taking that horrified Israel a year ago. - Who was Yahya Sinwar? - NPR - By Daniel Estrin, Willem Marx - October 17, 2024
Exuberance when committing the most horrific of crimes, including the barbarism of the October 7th, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, which he masterminded along with Iranian assistance, was his calling card. No one will miss him, except those who benefited from his infamous butchery, such as the theocratic, terrorist regime in Tehran and even, Putin. Sinwar, despite his value to Iran, could be troublesome for their foreign policy too, if he followed his predecessors who had been extremely critical of Syrian President Assad’s genocide against his own people in Syria.
After Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran, the choice to replace him came down to pragmatism and leadership, with Iranian input, and placed Sinwar in the top spot and high-profile Political Bureau leadership role. Over the years, Sinwar, has learned the pragmatism of not being just another hothead. Despite a long dislike for Egypt, Sinwar found that a relationship with Egypt to be beneficial to Hamas’ goals. After all, their shared border on the south end of Gaza has long been a primary smuggling route for technology, building materials, weapons and other military equipment.
Sinwar, often claimed by the press to be a mastermind or master strategist, also had his vulnerabilities. For example, he misunderstood that despite Israel’s disgust with Netanyahu’s administration, Israelis would still rally together to fend off any threat to state security. Critically and especially so for Palestinians in Gaza, Sinwar also failed to understand that Netanyahu’s response would be so severe and extended, counting as usual on world pressure to slow or stop, Israel’s full-scale invasion. He was wrong… dead wrong.
His calculated intentions of sacrificing Palestinian lives for the purpose of propaganda, ended up being far outside his calculations. His placement of innocent Palestinians as human shields, along with Israeli, American and other foreign national hostages, inflamed passions in Israel and beyond. The human tragedy on both sides is horrendous and Sinwar’s refusal to consider any real hostage deal continues to exacerbate a war that has taken a severe toll on Hamas. I can’t say that Netanyahu has done all that he could either, but there is no real comparison. As much as I despise Netanyahu and his racist, extreme-right-wing administration, Sinwar was pure evil.
Sinwar, Iran and Hizbollah also made their most decisive strategic errors by failing to fathom the extent of which Israel had penetrated their leadership circles. This miscalculation has deprived Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas of their leadership from the bottom, all the way up to and through senior leadership. Hamas leaders have been dropping at an unprecedented rate and are now followed by Hizbollah. Both are now chaotically attempting to rebuild their terrorist organizations, and even Iranian leadership at the most critical operational levels, have succumbed to what is known as, “decapitation targeting.” In lay terms, they have created a vacuum at leadership levels that cannot be easily filled.
From my long experience in CT/ Counterterrorism, at home and abroad, I have some important insights into “decapitation” targeting. Within my community, we say that removing an HVI, high value target, creates whitespace. In other words, that “whitespace” is nothing more than an opportunity to alter the dynamics within the conflict that allows the good guys to make progress against enemy combatants, and in building resilience within the local populace. That whitespace must be filled quickly, in order to have success. How that is done, must be well planned and executable for the decapitation to have any longer-term success. These ideas inform the rest of what I describe as “opportunity” in the rest of this essay. Hopefully, Israel and her allies have these well-considered plans.
After the loss of so many key senior and primary leaders in this little club of thugs and terrorists, Israel played their trump card, a masterful decimation of mid-level leadership via pager and other comms, literally exploding in the faces of over 3,000 mid-level players. It is safe to assume that there is chaos within the ranks of Hamas, Hizbollah and somewhat, Iran. Iran and even Putin have lost powerful proxies in the Middle East, and it will get worse, before there can be a ceasefire. Hizbollah in particular was prior to Israeli targeting, the best equipped, led, managed, stand-alone terrorist army in the region, perhaps the world. With Nasrallah’s death Hizbollah has lost much of their capacity to operate effectively against Israel.
For the purpose of conflict in and around Israel, killing Sinwar is the rough equivalent of killing Soleimani. The operative question is… where do we go from here?” This matters a great deal and today, the opportunities are greater than at any time in roughly twenty years. Can the US, Israel, NATO and other invested nations, come to an agreement and take action before the opportunities pass? It is not too much of a fantasy to shoot for the ultimate goal, of a more stable and sustainable peace. With every primary leader now “martyred” there is a relatively high degree of chaos within the ranks of the primary opposition players,
Let’s look for a moment at Putin, Ukraine and the loss of capable proxy armies, like Hamas and Hizbollah. Then there is the case of Iran, the primary nexus of evil in this conflict. Iran is a precious, commodity to Putin. It was the Oct 7th attack that refocused global media attention from Putin’s disastrous, genocidal invasion of his neighbor, Ukraine, onto the war in Gaza. Like a coup in Niger, support for Serbian troublemakers in the Balkans and Azerbaijan’s aggression against Armenia, global Russian proxies were already doing all possible to take media attention from Putin’s laughable, military incompetence.
At the same time, we were learning that Xi, the senior partner in the Axis of Evil headed a military that was far more bark than bite. Like most Russian systems on the battlefield, Xi’s military is demonstrably not up to speed either. Putin acquiring aging hardware from N. Korea and a handful of soldiers, some of whom have gone, “missing.” have performed about as well as N. Korean artillery rounds that have high percentage rates of failure. Please note the sarcasm with this point. Most of the serious technology such as drones, missiles, systems etc., came via Tehran and is indispensable to Russian war efforts.
Who now will do Putin’s dirty work? Iran, also losing leadership and suffering her own post assassination chaos, is now far less assistance to Putin. The dominoes are beginning to fall. Xi needs Iran’s oil and strategic location for his China Dream strategy largely accomplished via a massive influence operation called the BRI/ Belt and Road Initiative or series of “Silk Roads. The once perceived strength of the Chinese, Russian, Iranian and N. Korean Axis of Evil, is all of a sudden, far less formidable. We must do all possible to ensure that it stays this way and killing Sinwar, was an important step in altering the former perception.
As the old proverb says, nature abhors a vacuum and very quickly, someone or some alliance, will attempt to fill it. We and the RBIO/ Rules Based, International Order, must act expediently and wisely. This does not mean war or occupation, but building a more resilience RBIO that collectively pushes back on the aggression of these nations and enforces laws, policies and norms when aggressor nations, attempt to change the rules so that only they benefit.
For all of Iran’s boisterous threats, their military is a paper tiger. The use of our B-2 Stealth bomber a couple of nights ago against deep Houthi (another Iranian proxy force) bunkers in Yemen, was a couple of powerful messages to not only Iran, but Putin and Xi too. It says that we can get to you when and at the time of our choosing and we have the tools to end your nuke pursuit. It also tells Iran that we are calling their bellicose and laughable threats. The choice is quite clear, Iran’s government can survive or not and the decision is theirs.
It will require swift decision-making and a commitment to significantly degrade Iranian military manufacturing and research. This would also have a dramatic impact on Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine. Xi would begin to backpedal a bit and generally speaking, the Axis of Evil, becomes more of a housecat than tiger.
Stability would put the region’s feet onto the path towards an era absent serious threats from current and former superpowers. For one, stability and a working strategy towards peace, would likely be the end of Netanyahu’s administration and lead directly to his felony trials. Israel can then begin deepening relationships within the region that are less hostile. The Gulf states, despite enormous oil wealth would likely be a bit tamer in stirring up trouble behind the scenes. Iran, without a powerful Russia or China as big brothers, weakens the terrorist regime, already as hated at home as they are despised abroad. This could possibly provide the long brutally oppressed Iranian people, the opportunity they have needed to remove their extremist, theocratic oppression.
At home, we must stop the insanity of the GOP and corner them into dealing with reality, instead of Trumpian conspiracy theories. Any sane and honest national security expert, can clearly show the correlation of GOP actions in the Trump era, as backing Putin, due to Trump’s allegiance to Vlad. Backing Putin is to also back Iran. This is a national disgrace. If our republic survives Trump free on Nov. 5th, MAGA will lose steam and eventually crawl back under the dark, damp rock that they crawled out from under.
The last thing that I will say on the issue of opportunity is that we cannot afford to waste time in slowly building a coalition of the willing and only then, effectively acting on a new strategy that embraces; the RBIO, consequences for aggressors and their witting supporters and finally, to stop issuing long, rhetorical opinions like the UN. As earlier noted, the window for opportunity after decapitation is only open briefly. This is all a tall order but not terribly crazy either. We have the brains, resources, allies and plenty of global friends, long desiring to come out from under Putin and Xi’s thumbs.
Yes, all of this is made possible because Israel has created opportunity for everyone by decapitating the most important operational leaders within the Axis of Evil and their surrogate thugs like Hamas and Hizbollah.
The one issue that is the Achilles Heel within the US national security community is that all of this requires competence and campaigning in ethical, truthful influence operations. Herein lies the problem, we have near zero competence within the US national security community for influence. This can change, as soon as senior leadership stops rewarding failure to nepotistic defense contractors and perpetually failing experts.
After forty years of resounding failure within the influence community, don’t you think it is time we stopped throwing good money after bad and found real experts. Every single thing within our NSS/ National Security Strategy, requires influence. Power vacuums tend to be filled by the first person that shows up. We don’t have time for another forty years of failed research and demonstrable failure. We will, as is often said in my old military community, “we’re going to have to build this airplane while we fly it.”
My friends, there is a lot to digest here so I had better give you a break and wrap this up. It is time to get serious about peace again, if for no other reason, than to give innocent human being, to be neighbor, not enemies. I am grateful to all of you who have followed along with my writing and recommendations for solving the most complex and overlapping series of acute national security threats. The opportunity created by eliminating a series of truly evil leaders, can go two ways; we can live in decades of more chaos, or we can do as the Romans recommended, carpe diem or seize the day. Good fortune favors the bold. I say, let’s get at it.
Good evening and the best for your Friday tomorrow.
Paul