Middle East Insider · Issue 051 · Friday, September 25, 2026

Four to Five Days

Good morning. The daily brief returns after the holidays with the General Assembly’s Iran week in one edition. On Tuesday the President told the hall he has “a big decision to make”: a deal that lets Iran rebuild, or the annihilation of the Islamic Republic, and his envoys spent three hours with Qatari mediators shuttling between their room and Abbas Araghchi’s. On Wednesday Pezeshkian answered from the same rostrum, “We will never bow our head or bend at the knee,” and Tehran’s security chief put a clock on Washington: four to five days to accept Iran’s conditions, or the strait stays shut. On Thursday Reuters reported that the negotiators are sketching a phased swap, the blockade for the strait, while 80 countries signed Bahrain’s demand that Hormuz reopen without tolls, a Khamenei adviser threatened the Indian Ocean, Brent went back above $106, and Netanyahu spoke to a hall that scores of delegates had just left. This brief opens with the three days, then reads the Red Sea war, the strait, Israel and the Levant, and the Western front, with twenty-four new Forum pieces.

This is the first daily brief since the High Holidays, and it carries the General Assembly’s Iran week from the President’s Tuesday speech through Netanyahu’s Thursday address. Sunday’s two free Long Views are live: The Forum Is Building Something, on the systems that now sit behind this newsletter, and Will Washington Strike Again?, which entered five strike questions in the Forum’s forecast log. The first of those questions is tested on the Red Sea file below.

On Tuesday the Forum launched MEF Translations: seven language editions of its analysis, in Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Sorani Kurdish, French, German, and Spanish, with 307 articles at launch and every new MEF-original piece added within a day of its English publication. The Forum card below lists twelve pieces from Tuesday’s digest and twelve more that went up on Wednesday and Thursday. Sukkot begins this evening; chag sameach to every reader building a sukkah today.

A big decision, a bent knee refused, and a clock set at four to five days.

The week’s first act was the President’s. On Tuesday morning he spent most of a 37-minute address on Iran, called the regime “the number one sponsor of terror,” and stated the choice in his own words: “I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?” He expects a deal “right after the election,” and he asked every government in the room “to join us in enforcing the complete economic isolation of Iran until they stop their attacks on commercial shipping, relinquish their nuclear ambitions, and cease their support of terror” (Reuters, UN News, JPost, ToI). Most of Iran’s delegation walked out. Within hours Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner spent about three hours on the sidelines with Abbas Araghchi’s delegation, and the President told twelve regional leaders there is “a lot of momentum” for a deal (ToI). The shape of that meeting became clear by Wednesday: the envoys sat in one room, Araghchi in another, and Qatari mediators carried the messages between them. Witkoff wrote that mediators shuttled throughout the day and that the round would, he hoped, “prove constructive and promising.” Channel 12 added that the American side dismissed Tehran’s offer to reopen the strait, telling the Iranians they do not control the waterway and questioning their standing to make the offer, and that the mediators are now waiting on the President’s decision whether to continue (ToI, Iran International).

The second act was Pezeshkian’s, Wednesday morning, from the same rostrum, holding up photographs of the late Supreme Leader and of the schoolchildren killed at Minab. “Yesterday the United States president described us as terrorists. We have been the victims of terrorism,” he said, and then the line that led every wire: “We will never bow our head or bend at the knee. Iran must be understood by Mr. Trump and those who seek to bully us that we are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force.” On the program: “no nuclear weapons and no limitations to new peaceful nuclear technology.” On the strait: no freedom of navigation while sanctions and the blockade remain (PBS, NBC, AP, CNBC). Secretary Rubio, speaking right after him, called Tuesday’s contact significant and the speech the pot calling the kettle black: “Slaughtering 10,000 of your own people in protests is a violation of the U.N. I hope it’s a violation of the U.N. principles. I think sponsoring terrorist organizations in the region to attack your neighbors, attack energy infrastructure, attack civilian sites is a violation of the U.N. system. So I don’t know what standing Iran has to lecture anyone on human rights.” A deal, he told reporters, will take hard work over a period of time, and the President keeps his military options (PBS, Reuters). Iran International reported that the President, meeting the Gulf leaders on Wednesday, said the United States would attack “immediately” if Iran resumed activity at the Kolang underground site, and that after seeing Britain’s new prime minister he said the talks continue and he believes the two sides will reach an agreement (Iran International).

The third act came from Tehran, and it came with a clock. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, told state television on Wednesday: “We have given the Americans four to five days to comply with Iran’s conditions. Until Iran’s conditions are accepted, there will be no negotiations and the Strait of Hormuz will not be reopened.” He said Iran is “not going back to the diplomacy of the past,” warned Arab neighbors that “if you stand with America, we will not just watch you,” and threatened their airports if Iranian flights are grounded with their help (Iran International, Iran International). The same day the Guards’ agency, Tasnim, called Araghchi’s account of the New York meeting “childish and vile,” said the approved plan had been to pass seven conditions through mediators and never to meet Witkoff, and called the contact “a major error”; a parliamentary committee spokesman asked “on the basis of which authorization and policy” the foreign minister “met the representative of the aggressor enemy,” and on Thursday deputies filed a motion to impeach him (Iran International). The armed forces’ general staff promised “stronger, crushing and unpredictable blows” if America strikes again (Iran International). A senior Iranian official gave Reuters the diplomatic version on Wednesday night: Tehran is reviewing Washington’s response to its proposals, “there are still many differences between the Iranian and US positions, but diplomacy is continuing” (Reuters).

Thursday brought the outline of what the mediators are carrying. Reuters, citing two Iranian sources, two regional officials, and two Western diplomats, reported that the negotiators are exploring a phased path out of the war: Tehran reopens the strait, Washington lifts the economic blockade, in stages. “One way forward would be to solve the crisis in stages,” a senior Iranian official said. “The first would be to end the blockade and reopen Hormuz.” The Gulf states have rejected any transit fee, any arrangement would be temporary rather than a formal Iranian retreat, and the sources described a President who would have to accept another temporary fix after July’s collapse. A senior European official said Iran has “a very long list of demands.” The same Iranian official added: “Our fingers are on the trigger. The Americans know what they need to do but, because of their excessive demands, the chances of diplomacy resolving this are extremely low” (Reuters, Iran International, Reuters). Hours later Yahya Rahim Safavi, adviser to Mojtaba Khamenei, said in a Fars video that “since the conflict has spread from the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea, it is possible that, in response to more war, the front will expand even further, reaching the Indian Ocean and perhaps beyond,” and Brent, which had settled near $99 on Tuesday, went above $106 (OilPrice, Hindustan Times).

The coalition answered on the same afternoon with a document. Bahrain’s foreign minister, Abdullatif Al Zayani, read a joint statement backed by 80 countries, the Gulf states and the major Western powers among them, calling for “the urgent and full re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the safe, secure and unimpeded transit of all vessels” and for passage “without the imposition of tolls, conditions or illegal charges.” It condemned Iran’s actions in the strait, the Houthis’ return to war, their strikes on Saudi Arabia, and their attacks in the Red Sea, reaffirmed Security Council Resolution 2817, and said, “Commercial shipping and seafarers must never be used as leverage” (gCaptain, Straits Times, The National). At the White House, Xi Jinping told the President, by Xinhua’s account, that Beijing supports Washington and Tehran returning to the June arrangement that was meant to end the war and reopen the strait; the two sides had extended their trade truce by two months the day before, and the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese suppliers sent about 1,300 shipments of dual-use components to Iran’s defense ministry in the first half of the year (Iran International, Guardian, AP, Iran International). Rezaei’s four to five days run out this weekend. The mediators are waiting on one decision, and it is the one the President named on Tuesday.

Give the President credit for the framing, and for what it produced in three days. He stated the choice in its true terms, a rebuilt Iran under a deal or a destroyed regime, and asked the hall to enforce Iran’s complete economic isolation; by Thursday 80 governments had signed Bahrain’s statement demanding the strait reopened without tolls, conditions, or charges, which is the coalition’s policy with signatures on it. Tehran’s answer was a deadline and a purge. Rezaei gave Washington four to five days, and the Guards’ press spent the same days attacking their own foreign minister for sitting in a room near Americans. A government that cannot agree whether its negotiator was allowed to negotiate is not a government that can deliver a reopened strait. The phased swap in Reuters is the June memorandum’s sequence restated: Washington lifts the blockade first, Tehran reopens the strait in stages, and the fees move to an annex rather than off the table. Every step asks the coalition to give back leverage the blockade took seven months to build, in exchange for a passage Tehran closed itself and can close again. The Hormuz Mandate, this newsletter’s standing rule that the strait is reopened by the coalition’s navies and not leased back from Tehran, holds: Bessent’s 10 to 17 million barrels a day are moving under American escort now, and the Cape Dao’s dead seafarer is the price Tehran charges for the difference. A swap of the blockade for the strait is a pause, not a victory. April’s ceasefire and June’s memorandum both collapsed, and satellite imagery this month shows Taleghan 2 at Parchin under reconstruction for the second time. Two clocks are running, Tehran’s four to five days and Washington’s “after the election,” and neither is an end state. The End-State Standard, end states rather than end dates, asks what condition Iran is in when the deal is signed. The standing conclusion holds. The permanent guarantee against an Iranian bomb is the end of this regime, and the Iranian people are the most underused weapon against it; the regime’s own list of a hundred exiles it would now let come home, in Shay Khatiri’s Observer piece below, says what it fears.

MEF Online, Inside the Houthi Advance: How Iran’s Allies Are Helping Tighten Tehran’s Grip on the Red Sea (Sept 22): Jonathan Spyer on the seizure of the Hanish islands after Mocha, Perim, and Zuqar, which gives the Houthis effective control of Bab el-Mandeb, and on the Iranian and allied expertise behind the advance, including a coordinated Iraqi militia drone strike on the Saudi East-West pipeline.

MEF Online, Trump’s $24 Billion F-35 Stealth Fighter Sale to Saudi Arabia Won’t Solve the Houthi Problem (Sept 22): Michael Rubin on the 48-aircraft sale notified to Congress on September 17: it does nothing for Riyadh’s immediate Red Sea crisis, and Israel’s qualitative military edge and the kingdom’s dealings with China and Turkey give Congress grounds for concern.

MEF Observer, Which Forces Could Pakistan Deploy to Saudi Arabia? (Sept 22): Kaswar Klasra, after Pakistan’s September 17 pledge to defend the kingdom “to any extent,” on which formations Rawalpindi could send under the Mecca pact and how fast, as Houthi attacks on Saudi territory grow.

MEF Observer, Schrödinger’s Turkey (Sept 22): Michael Rubin on regional responses to the fall of Mocha: Turkey will not honor the Mecca pact in practice, because Erdoğan will not expose an army and a navy the author describes as hollow.

MEF Observer, To Combat Iranian Proxies, Trump Should Target Their Penetration of Iraqi Telecom (Sept 21): Michael Rubin on the business holdings that American pressure on Iraq’s militias ignores, and the case for going after their hold on the telecom sector as Prime Minister al-Zaidi hedges on his promises. Al-Zaidi told Rubio on Monday that Baghdad will restrict arms to the state; the telecom file is the test.

MEF Observer, Will Instability and War Jump-Start the Gulf Arab Railway? (Sept 19): Radhika Lakshminarayanan on the long-delayed 1,315-mile line from Kuwait to Oman, now a question of supply resilience: closed airspace and attacks on ports have shown that cross-border trucking cannot replace the sea.

MEF Observer, Which Countries Face the Greatest Fuel Vulnerability in the Middle East? (Sept 20): Umud Shokri finds that fuel risk turns on refining, storage, supply routes, and money for emergency imports rather than crude output, and ranks Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen as the states most exposed to physical shortages.

MEF Observer, Europe’s Misreading of Libya Compounds Its Energy Crisis (Sept 20): Michael Rubin on the Saudi halt to oil shipments to Europe: the capitals could offset the shortfall with Libyan oil by working with Khalifa Haftar rather than Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, and past European policy toward Iran and China is part of the bill.

MEF Observer, Eritrea’s Old Red Sea Narrative Meets a New Middle East (Sept 21): Blen M. Diriba traces Foreign Minister Osman Saleh’s warning of a UAE-Israel-Ethiopia convergence to the secessionist-era framing of Ethiopia as an Israeli foothold on the Red Sea, and argues the Gulf states can keep their Israel ties while engaging the Horn.

MEF Observer, Turkey Takes Its Aegean Claims Into Greece’s Energy Plans (Sept 22): Nicoletta Kouroushi reports that Ankara now contests Greek offshore wind zones, marine parks, and power cables, including an August objection to Greece’s renewables framework, and uses energy licensing to press old sovereignty claims before Greek practice becomes settled.

Focus on Western Islamism, Journalist Sues Dearborn and Its Mayor for Anti-Christian, Anti-Jewish Discrimination (Sept 18): Dexter Van Zile on the Establishment Clause suit that Margot Cleveland filed on September 17 through the American Freedom Law Center against Dearborn and Mayor Abdullah Hammoud: city money for Ramadan displays and no equal recognition of Christian or Jewish holidays.

Dhimmitude Project, The Betrayal of Lausanne in the ‘Forgotten Holy Land’ (Sept 19): Craig Considine’s paper on Turkey’s Jews and Christians under a nationalist “neo-dhimmitude” in spite of the 1923 Lausanne guarantees: five mechanisms, from state control of clergy to religion on identity documents, traced from Ottoman through Kemalist to Erdoğan-era policy.

Since the digest closed · Wednesday and Thursday

MEF Online, A Month from Elections, U.N. Speech Is an Opportunity for Netanyahu (Sept 24): Lazar Berman, written before Thursday’s address: with the vote a month out, the prime minister has few chances left to capture headlines and move votes at home, and the General Assembly rostrum was one of them.

MEF Online, The Hatred for Israel Boils Over at the UN (Sept 24): Phyllis Chesler on the week’s campaign to push Israel outside the community of nations, from the walkouts to the mayor’s call for an arrest, as one expression of a wider hostility toward Jews.

MEF Online, A New Strategy to Instill Loyalty in Iran (Sept 24): Saeid Golkar on the regime’s new police high schools, which extend ideological recruitment into adolescence and give the state more time to identify and train the people it needs for repression.

MEF Online, Secret Records Reveal How Turkey’s Gülen Purge Follows Children into University (Sept 24): Abdullah Bozkurt on secret police files that target students for their relatives’ alleged Gülen ties, a decade after the purge began.

MEF Online, Signs of Life in a Massachusetts Suburb (Sept 24): Dexter Van Zile on Newton, a city of 90,000 with close to 18,000 Jewish residents, which has hired a middle-school social studies teacher with apparent family ties to Hamas, and on the parents who noticed.

MEF Observer, Souda Bay Shows Greece’s Growing Value to U.S. Strategy (Sept 24): Nicoletta Kouroushi on the Cretan base that gives the United States an operating point outside the Middle East but close enough to support missions there.

MEF Observer, Why Is Nobody Talking About the Turkish Occupation of Syria?: Sirwan Kajjo picks up Ambassador Danon’s September 17 remark to the Security Council that Turkey holds far more Syrian ground in the north than Israel does in the south, and asks why no capital says so.

MEF Observer, What Does the Iranian Regime’s Changing Position on Exiles Suggest? (Sept 23): Shay Khatiri on the list of more than 100 diaspora figures the regime says it will allow home, and what a government that once treated every exile as an enemy is signaling when it starts to pardon them.

MEF Observer, Syria’s Jihadists in Yemen’s Battlefield (Sept 23): Ali Almrayatee on the Syrian Salafi influencers turning memories of Assad-era and Iran-backed atrocities into recruitment for the fight against the Houthis, and the risk that countering the Houthis regenerates the jihadist networks three decades of American counterterrorism sought to contain.

MEF Observer, Is Haj Hamed’s Network Iran’s Most Secretive Armed Network in Iraq? (Sept 23): A look at the smaller cells tied to the Revolutionary Guard that Tehran may now prefer to the traditional militias, as Prime Minister al-Zaidi promises Washington a state monopoly on arms.

MEF Observer, Erdoğan Took His War on Turkey’s LGBT Citizens to the United Nations (Sept 23): Yuval David on Ankara’s “My Family Is Safe” raids and the state-enforced religious doctrine behind them.

MEF Online, Why Is Tehran Terrified of French Verbs? (Sept 23): Amine Ayoub on the judicial order closing the French embassy’s language institute in Tehran, and what a regime that treats a grammar class as a security threat is saying about its readiness for confrontation.

Also on the site since Tuesday: Nine Hundred Kilometers to Riyadh, the Geospatial Intelligence Unit’s satellite reading of the Houthi claims against Saudi Arabia, under my byline; the Red Sea brief below uses it. New reader? The frameworks in every MEF Take live in the Field Guide. Every Forum donor receives Insider Premium with our compliments; if your invitation has not arrived, write [email protected].

Netanyahu’s emptied hall, Rubio’s reply, Bahrain’s 80, and the week’s other speeches.

The walkout, and what followed it. Scores of delegates left the hall as Netanyahu reached the rostrum on Thursday, the Assembly’s president called for order several times, and the prime minister opened on the empty seats: “If there are any other moral cowards who have not yet left the hall, please do so now.” He called the genocide charge “the biggest lie of the century,” said attacking Iran “was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make,” and told the room, “In defending itself, Israel is also defending many of the countries whose delegates just left this hall. In fact, I want you to know that many of their leaders even thank us privately for taking out Iran’s nukes” (PBS, Haaretz). He answered Mayor Mamdani, who had called him a war criminal on CNN on Monday and urged federal authorities to act on the ICC warrant, as he had promised to in Tuesday’s video (NBC New York). Iran’s delegation walked out as he began and left a photograph of Qassem Soleimani on its desk (Iran International). The trip was an abbreviated one, with Sukkot beginning Friday evening. Lazar Berman’s Forum piece, written that morning, framed the speech as one of the last chances to move votes before an election a month away.

Rubio’s answer. The Secretary of State took the microphone minutes after Pezeshkian on Wednesday and called the Iranian president’s speech the pot calling the kettle black: “Slaughtering 10,000 of your own people in protests is a violation of the U.N. I hope it’s a violation of the U.N. principles,” and “I don’t know what standing Iran has to lecture anyone on human rights or the international system when they habitually violate it.” He said Tuesday’s contact was significant, that a deal will take hard work over time, and that the President retains military options; on WABC he listed what continues regardless: oil moving under escort, “a total blockade,” and “crushing sanctions” (PBS, Reuters, State Department).

Bahrain’s statement. The joint statement Al Zayani read on Thursday carries 80 signatures and three demands: the strait reopened without tolls, conditions, or charges; an end to Iran’s attacks on its neighbors; and an end to the Houthis’ war on Yemen’s government, Saudi Arabia, and Red Sea shipping. “The threat is very real and continues to grow,” he told reporters, and warned that the Houthi advance toward Bab el-Mandeb puts a second chokepoint at risk (The National, gCaptain, Straits Times). Xi Jinping’s White House visit ran on the same day. Xinhua’s account has him backing a return to the June arrangement; the Guardian’s has him backing a deal to end the war and reopen the strait; and the President, who welcomed him at Andrews on Wednesday, called it a great meeting. Beijing had extended the trade truce for two months the day before (Iran International, Guardian, AP).

Earlier in the week. Antonio Guterres opened the debate with about 100 days left in his term and asked for “a recognition, especially by superpowers, that their power isn’t so super” (UN News, Guardian). Israel’s delegation left the hall during Erdogan, who accused Israel of “a genocidal mindset that cannot get enough of killing” (ToI, DW). King Abdullah called this Israeli government a “regional threat” and credited the President for having “pushed hard for peace” (Arab News). Macron, in his last address, hit the rostrum over Gaza, “a spectacle that should shame us all,” and backed freedom of navigation in Hormuz (UN News). Qatar’s Emir asked for the strait to reopen and talks to resume without naming Iran or the United States once (DW). The ICJ announced that Colombia has withdrawn from South Africa’s genocide case (JPost), and the President told every ICC member to “resign from this rogue institution immediately” (Reuters).

Mecca on alert, the Cape Dao, and the price of a barrel.

Six missiles, five alerts. Saudi civil defense issued alerts on Thursday for Mecca, Jeddah, Yanbu, Taif, and Tabuk, the last a first for the northwest in this round, and lifted them within minutes; the coalition then said it had intercepted six ballistic missiles aimed at Taif and Yanbu, the kingdom’s main alternative outlet for oil, and its spokesman promised that the Houthis’ “escalations and violations” would be “dealt with firmly.” The Houthis claimed dozens of missiles and drones at “operations rooms, command and control centers, weapons depots” and camps in Jazan. Last week the kingdom accused the group of sending a drone at Mecca for the first time since 2017 (Reuters, AFP, Iran International). In Yemen, AFP put the dead in the latest fighting at 150 or more on both sides. The Kahboub heights above Bab el-Mandeb, which the Houthis need in order to cut the coast they seized this month from the government’s remaining ground to the south, remain contested; government forces said early in the week they had retaken hilltops there and captured a Houthi commander (Reuters, Asharq Al-Awsat, The National). The Forum’s satellite reading of the week’s Houthi claims found damaged houses, a mosque, and one burned fuel tank in Riyadh, and no sign the two air bases they claimed to have wrecked were reached (MEF).

The strike that did not fly, one week on. The New York Times account stands: the President ordered strikes on the Houthis prepared after a call with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and called them off by midday on the 20th with crews loading bombs, because Washington keeps a direct channel to the group through Oman and the Houthis have agreed not to engage American forces (JPost, Media Line). Since then: Rubio said the administration will live up to its defense commitments to Saudi Arabia and is looking to see whether the attacks can be resolved without American military intervention (AP); more than 100 American personnel are in the kingdom on intelligence and targeting (Ynet); Britain committed a tanker aircraft from Akrotiri for Saudi defensive missions (The National); and 80 countries condemned the Houthi campaign by name on Thursday. Sunday’s Long View put the odds of American strikes on Houthi targets by October 15 at likely, 55 to 65 percent; four days, six missiles, and a Mecca alert later, the question stays open.

The Cape Dao, and the barrels that get through. On Wednesday the Antigua and Barbuda-flagged bulk carrier Cape Dao, outbound from the Gulf toward India with 28 crew, was hit off Oman’s coast. The attack started a fire and killed one crew member, and the Omani navy took off the other 27. India named the dead seafarer as Suraj Yadav, 26, and its seamen’s union asked for naval escorts (ToI, Iran International). Treasury Secretary Bessent gave the other side of the same day on Fox: “Our great Navy is blocking them, but we are getting between 10, 15, sometimes 17 million barrels a day out,” against about 20 million before the war and roughly 3 million more on alternative routes; “The tankers, they may get hit. Many of them just sail on” (Iran International, Israel National News). Clarksons had put the daily flow near 8 million barrels earlier this month (Bloomberg). The price followed the week: Brent settled near $99 on Tuesday on the reopening talk and the Saudi pipeline restart (The National), rose after the Cape Dao and Pezeshkian’s speech, and went above $106 on Thursday after Safavi’s Indian Ocean warning (OilPrice). UKMTO’s threat level stays at severe, and at least four tankers were hit in the strait in the week before the Cape Dao (Maritime Executive).

Baghdad and Beijing. Iraq’s prime minister said Iran has stopped Iraqi tankers in the strait and put Iraq’s lost revenue since February at about $60 billion (Iran International); he told Rubio on Monday that his government will restrict the possession of arms to the state (Iraqi News). The militias’ telecom holdings, in Michael Rubin’s Observer piece above, and the smaller Guard-linked cells in the Haj Hamed piece, are where that promise gets measured. In Washington, the Wall Street Journal’s 1,300 dual-use shipments to Iran’s defense ministry, one of them arriving the day the June truce was signed, sat on the table with Xi (Iran International); Xinhua says he backed a return to the June arrangement, which is the arrangement Tehran broke.

Beit Horon, Gaza’s price list, and Damascus says no.

Beit Horon. On Wednesday afternoon a Palestinian driver accelerated at the checkpoint where the roads from Beit Ur and Ramallah meet Route 443, the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, and ran down Neria Leiter, 39, a reservist on duty beside a police cruiser and the son of Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador in Washington. Troops shot the attacker, Mahmoud Suleiman, 29, of Beit Ur al-Tahta, dead at the scene; Hamas praised the ramming as “a natural response.” Neria Leiter underwent emergency brain surgery at Shaare Zedek and is in a medically induced coma. “Neria needs a miracle,” the ambassador wrote from New York, then flew home; at the hospital on Thursday he said he is “full of hope,” that his son’s life is “still in danger,” and that Palestinian violence seeks “to uproot the Jews from this land.” His elder son, Moshe Yedidya, was killed in Gaza in November 2023 (CNN, AP, ToI). The attack came three days after Netanel Shukrun, a father of six, was shot dead at the Ein Raya spring while immersing before Yom Kippur; his 16-year-old son ran on his warning, and the gunman, a Hamas operative, was arrested in a Ramallah clinic (JNS, Jewish Chronicle). The 98th Division is adding forces along 443.

The warning that stands. Defense Minister Katz’s line from Mount Herzl holds over the Board’s plan: “If even one Israeli soldier or civilian is abducted, the entire city of Gaza, with its homes and terror towers, will be evacuated southward, along with its million residents,” and Israel will not leave the Yellow Line until Hamas is eliminated and Gaza is stripped of weapons and tunnels (ToI, VINnews).

Gaza’s price list. The Board of Peace briefed several hundred diplomats in New York on Wednesday on its six-month recovery program: 66 projects at $2.45 billion, “from preparation to implementation,” in Tony Blair’s words, with no start date, because nearly all of it waits on Hamas handing its weapons and its control of the territory to the technocratic committee. Roughly a dozen countries pledged $17 billion in February; $280 million has been transferred, and Nickolay Mladenov said the board asks for money only when it is ready to spend it. One project is caravans for about 400,000 people now in tents; Turkey has pledged 70,000 mobile homes, and 5,000 from Egypt and Qatar sit on the Egyptian side of the border (ToI). Blair said Hamas has agreed to dismantle its tunnels, weapons stockpiles, and arms factories. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, commanding the stabilization force, said 500 troops from Morocco and Kosovo are trained, Albania and Kazakhstan are next, a Kosovar weapons-neutralization team is already with him, and the disarmament plan runs sector by sector: “There are hundreds of kilometers of tunnels and tens of thousands of weapons. We will dismantle or neutralize the tunnels and the weapons, follow the technocratic committee as it takes responsibility for the territory, and that will later lead to the IDF’s withdrawal” (Ynet). The plan’s first test is the one Katz named.

Damascus and the Lebanon question. Ahmad al-Sharaa, at the President’s table with the Gulf leaders and then at the Atlantic Council, said Damascus and Jerusalem “almost reached 90% of agreements” before Israel withdrew from the talks, and turned down the suggestion that Syrian forces move into Lebanon against Hezbollah: Syria “has its own problems and challenges.” He wants no foreign bases in Syria, with the Turkish outposts left to parliament (Jewish Insider); Sirwan Kajjo’s Observer piece above puts the size of that Turkish presence on the record. At home, a fourth explosion this month at a Syrian army depot, near al-Eis south of Aleppo, injured at least four (Arab News).

Belleville’s motive, Manchester’s plot, and Berlin’s coalition test.

Belleville, ruled. Chief Murray Rodd played the audio on Thursday: a man shouting “you’re going to die for the Jews,” then two shots, outside the Sons of Jacob Synagogue at just after 7 p.m. on Sunday as about 25 congregants began Yom Kippur. “Make no mistake, this was a targeted attack against the Jewish community,” he said. “The suspect had the means, the motive and the mechanisms to cause a mass casualty.” Sean Ward, 29, a former infantry corporal, carried multiple guns and a large quantity of ammunition; Constable Jeff Smith, shot several times in the head and body, got out of his cruiser, confronted him, and stayed in the fight for nearly three minutes until a second officer arrived; Ward died in hospital on Monday. Rodd told chiefs across the country that “it is clearly time that we all be proactive” (CTV, AP, CBC). In Durham Region, police had charged a 19-year-old from Whitby on September 19 over online threats to shoot a synagogue (National Post).

Manchester. The two men arrested on Newton Street on the eve of Yom Kippur remain in custody; counter-terrorism police say a long-running investigation led to “the disruption of what we believe to be a plot to target the Jewish community in the Manchester area,” days before the anniversary of the Heaton Park synagogue attack (Guardian, PA).

Berlin’s coalition test, and the Dutch border. Die Linke’s 25.7 percent in Sunday’s Berlin election, more than double its last result, has become a test for the Social Democrats and Greens it needs to govern. Josef Schuster of the Central Council of Jews in Germany urged both parties to refuse any coalition that brings Die Linke to power, and Berlin’s community chairman said the party “bears a special responsibility for the consequences” of tolerating Islamist extremism, left-wing antisemitism, and clan crime. Ambassador Ron Prosor called the result “a concrete and immediate existential danger” for the city’s Jews: “We are long past the point of talking about isolated slip-ups. This is a pattern.” Chancellor Merz: “This is a disgrace for Germany, and I will do everything in my power to bring it under control and push it back. The fact that Jewish life is no longer safe in our country is the greatest burden we have faced in recent years” (Algemeiner, Forward, JPost). In the Netherlands, the ban on goods from Israeli communities in the West Bank and the Golan took effect on Tuesday, with up to six years in prison for intentional violations (NL Times).

Newton, Dearborn, Berkeley. Dexter Van Zile’s Forum piece on Newton, Massachusetts, above, reports that a middle school in a city with close to 18,000 Jewish residents has hired a social studies teacher with apparent family ties to Hamas, whose senior thesis gave cover to anti-Israel protesters at the University of Connecticut (FWI). The Dearborn suit filed on September 17 puts $6,500 in public money on the city’s Ramadan displays and quotes Mayor Hammoud telling a pastor “you are not welcome here,” six weeks before Michigan’s Senate election (Michigan News Source, FWI). California’s education department has ordered antisemitism training at two Berkeley schools after posters and assemblies described the Gaza war as genocide with no reference to the Hamas attack (Berkeleyside).

Governments behind the statement Bahrain’s foreign minister read at the United Nations on Thursday, demanding “the urgent and full re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz” and passage “without the imposition of tolls, conditions or illegal charges,” and condemning Iran’s actions in the strait and the Houthis’ war by name (gCaptain, Straits Times). Set against it: four to five days, the time Mohsen Rezaei says Washington has to accept Iran’s conditions before the strait stays shut for good (Iran International). One side has signatures. The other has a deadline that runs out this weekend.

Corrections Desk. Clear this morning. The desk was dark over the holidays; if either of Sunday’s Long Views earns a case, reply and it runs here. When today’s brief gets something wrong, write [email protected]; corrections run in print.

Forward this brief to one person who heard “four to five days” this week and wants to know what Tehran actually put on the table, and who signed the answer. The Forum reads the Farsi press, the naval advisories, and the satellite passes every morning; if you want that desk funded, support the work directly.

Reply and tell me: when Rezaei’s clock runs out this weekend, should the President take the phased swap in Reuters, or hold the blockade until the strait is open under the coalition’s escort and the 80 signatures mean what they say? I read every answer, and the sharpest ones run in the next mailbag.