Iran

• The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed responsibility for a missile strike that killed four civilians in Erbil.
• The IRGC said it was targeting an Israeli "espionage headquarters" for "anti-Iranian terrorist groups," but its missile apparently hit the home of Pershraw Dizayi, a wealthy Kurdish businessman who was a former deputy speaker of Kurdistan's parliament.
• The IRGC also claimed a second ballistic-missile strike on Islamic State in Syria.
• These two strikes are unusual: the IRGC usually has its proxies do the dirty work.
• Separately, Iran added 15 months to the 12-year sentence Narges Mohammadi - an activist who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize - is serving for promoting women's rights in Iran. The new extension was for allegedly spreading propaganda against the regime from prison.

North Korea

• Kim Jong Un doubled down on anomosity against South Korea, calling for the North's constitution to be changed to officially designate the South its "primary foe and invariable principal enemy."
• Tensions between the North and South have risen in the past few months. Analysts at 38 South assessed: "we believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war. We do not know when or how Kim plans to pull the trigger."

DRC

• U.S. SecState Blinken commended Pres. Kagame for his efforts to deescalate tensions with neighboring DRC (which accuses Rwanda of backing M-23 rebels stoking violence in the east)...
• But at almost the same time as Blinken and Kagame were meeting, Rwanda's army said it shot one Congolese soldier dead and arrested two others for illegally crossing into Rwanda.

Venezuela

• Pres. Maduro is actively trying to curry favor with a dissatisfied electorate ahead of elections later this year.
• First, he announced subsidies that will effectively boost the minimum wage by 40%; then he celebrated 2023 gross domestic product growth of 8% and predicted 2024 inflation of less than 100% - which sounds awful in any other context, but would be a significant improvement over Venezuela's 190% inflation rate last year (which itself was an improvement over 2022's inflation of 234%).
• The Economist says Maduro's annexation referendum and subsequent feints towards Guyana last month were also "an electoral ploy" to rally nationalist support for his government - and an unsuccessful one, at that.

Gaza

• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published its data on the Gaza war through Jan. 9: in that period, the IDF says it struck 30,000 targets in Gaza and eliminated around 9,000 terrorists.
• Long War Journal (LWJ) estimates Hamas still has around 20,000 fighters active in Gaza.
• LWJ's assessment of the IDF report is pasted below and the original IDF report is here.

Ukraine

• Ukraine claimed it shot down a Russian A-50 surveillance plane and damaged (and may have downed) a Russian IL-22 M command plane over the Sea of Azov on Sunday.
• Both planes are integral to Russia's ability to target Ukrainian positions, and Russia doesn't have many of them to spare: before this, Russia was thought to have nine A-50s and perhaps 11 IL-22s in service.
• At Pres. Zelensky's request, Switzerland agreed to host a summit to pitch Ukraine's Peace Formula at some future date. Dozens of countries have already embraced the plan Zelensky hopes to pitch in Switzerland, but Russia categorically rejected its terms.

Yemen

• Yemen's Houthis struck the Gibraltar Eagle - a U.S.-owned cargo vessel - off the coast of Yemen yesterday, causing no casualties but forcing the ship to turn around.
• The U.S. is considering fresh strikes on Houthi arsenals in Yemen, and the Houthis warned their response "is coming."
• The UN Security Council will hold meetings on the Middle East - with a focus on Yemen - today.

Israel releases data on three months of fighting in Gaza (LWJ)

The Israel Defense Forces published extensive data collected from the last three months of fighting Hamas in Gaza. The data also includes information on the threats Israel has faced from Hezbollah and Iranian-backed terrorist groups in Syria. This information is released as Israel is transitioning its Gaza operations into lower intensity conflict and bringing home some of the reservists who had fought for more than 90 days against Hamas.

The IDF data is mostly relevant for the dates October 7 to January 9, covering three months of war. The IDF says it has struck 30,000 targets in Gaza, including 22,000 targets that were struck by December 10, illustrating that the number of targets struck did not decline greatly in the last weeks of December. However, the size or quality of the targets may have changed. 750 targets have been struck in what Israel calls the “northern arena.” This includes Lebanon and may also include Syria, although the IDF does not specify. The IDF has waged a “campaign between the wars” in Syria over the last decade, and has not often specified the number of targets struck there. The number struck in Syria is in the thousands according to details released in 2019.

In Gaza, the IDF has eliminated an estimated 9,000 terrorists, according to the new data. This includes 19 Hamas battalion commanders and “over 50 Hamas company commanders.” This would appear to mean that Hamas has lost a significant number of its mid-level commanders, but Hamas still has up to 20,000 fighters in Gaza. Hamas has lost control of northern Gaza and parts of central and southern Gaza. In strikes on Hezbollah and other terrorist groups in the north, the IDF estimates it has eliminated 170 terrorists. More than 9,000 rockets have crossed into Israel from Gaza. Some rockets do not launch properly and fall inside Gaza, meaning the real number of rockets launched by Hamas and other terror groups is likely higher. There have also been 2,000 rockets launched into Israel from Lebanon and 30 from Syria since October 7. The data on Lebanon does not distinguish between rocket fire and anti-tank missile fire, and a lot of the munitions used by Hezbollah have been ATGMs.

The IDF also says that 522 soldiers have been killed since the war began, 188 of them since ground operations began on October 27. A total of 2,536 IDF soldiers have been injured, 388 of them severely. More than 400 IDF soldiers are still in Israeli hospitals due to their injuries.

The data set was released as the IDF continued to fight on multiple fronts. In Khan Younis in Gaza, the IDF said it identified two terrorists on January 15 and called in an air strike to eliminate them. In another incident the IDF found a compound for manufacturing mortar shells and producing rockets in the area of Nuseirat in central Gaza.

Threats to Israel continued from Lebanon. On January 14, two civilians were killed in Israel by anti-tank missile fire. The IDF also identified a group of terrorists along the Lebanese border seeking to infiltrate the Mount Dov area. This area includes a mountain on the Lebanon-Israel-Syria border. Hezbollah claims the area is part of Lebanon and has often threatened Israeli forces patrolling the mountain. IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said IDF “soldiers guarding the Har Dov area for the past three months identified a terrorist cell that had infiltrated from Lebanese territory. The soldiers acted professionally, under challenging weather conditions and limited visibility, engaged the enemy, and eliminated the three terrorists. The terrorists were found with AK-47s and grenades.”

While the threats in the north and in Gaza are now known to Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned on January 14 that Israel may also face escalation in the West Bank: “Hamas is trying to tie Gaza, and Judea and Samaria, and to ‘ignite’ the arena. We must do everything possible to prevent this,” he said.