EsadeGeo Daily Digest, 04/04/2024

The Washington Post - Adam Taylor / Biden’s ‘red line’ on Gaza is nowhere to be found
 

• This week’s killing of aid workers in Gaza left no gray area. The workers were driving through a deconfliction zone in marked vehicles when they were repeatedly targeted, leaving one Palestinian and six foreign aid workers dead. That the seven dead were working with World Central Kitchen, headed by the widely admired chef José Andrés, made it almost impossible to ignore. 

• Some view the tragedy as a potential turning point in the Israel-Gaza war, which has dragged on for almost half a year. Notably, the strike on the WCK convoy led to the death of a U.S. citizen: 33-year-old Jacob Flickinger. “The killing of foreign aid workers in Gaza might finally exhaust the considerable patience of Israel’s allies, led by the United States,” Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s veteran international editor, wrote Wednesday. 

• But have the attacks crossed President Biden’s “red line”? Though Biden and U.S. officials have repeatedly criticized the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over recent months, they have so far refrained from exerting their real leverage: blocking military aid and the sale of weapons to Israel. 

• In fact, the Biden administration has arguably done the opposite. Biden requested a historic increase in the amount of military aid to Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks on that country. After months of growing concern about the war’s civilian toll and growing criticism of Israeli efforts to avoid civilian harm, U.S. weapons still flow. The Washington Post reported last week that Washington authorized the transfer of 1,800 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs and other weaponry to Israel.

Financial Times - Bita Ghaffari, Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Raya Jalabi / Iran grapples with response to deadly consulate strike
 

• Iran’s supreme leader vowed “tough revenge” in 2020 against those responsible for assassinating Qassem Soleimani, the Islamic republic’s most revered military commander. 

• Within days, Tehran launched a huge ballistic missile strike against a US base in Iraq in retaliation. But Iran also reportedly communicated its intentions in advance, helping to ensure that no American soldiers were killed. The risk of war with the US was averted. 

• Four years on, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has vowed again to avenge a general killed by another of Iran’s foes — this time a Revolutionary Guard commander who was among seven officers who died in a suspected Israeli air strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus. 

• It means Tehran is once more grappling with the dilemma over how to calibrate a retaliation that sends a robust message to its adversaries without igniting a wider conflagration.

   

Al-Jazeera / Myanmar deaths from mines, ordnance tripled in 2023: UN
 

• The United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) has said the number of people killed in Myanmar as a result of landmines and explosive ordnance tripled last year, with children accounting for 20 percent of the victims. 

• There were 1,052 verified civilian casualties from landmine and explosive ordnance incidents during 2023, compared with 390 incidents the year before, UNICEF said in a statement on Thursday to coincide with International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action. 

• “The use of landmines is not only reprehensible but also illegal under international humanitarian law,” said Debora Comini, UNICEF regional director for East Asia and the Pacific. “It is imperative that all parties to the conflict prioritize the safety and well-being of civilians, particularly children, and take immediate steps to halt the use of these indiscriminate weapons.” 

• Myanmar was plunged into crisis when Senior General Min Aung Hlaing led a military coup against elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.

   

Bloomberg - Jana Randow, Mark Schroers, and Greg Ritchie / Long Shadow of the Fed Shows Limits of ECB Talk of Independence
 

• The European Central Bank insists it won’t take any cues from the Federal Reserve on when to start cutting interest rates — but its subsequent policy path may well be shaped by what happens in the US all the same. 

• Trends driving the world’s largest economy usually don’t take long to spill into other regions, impacting financing conditions and exchange rates almost immediately — and inflation, trade and other metrics further out. 

• So policymakers elsewhere can’t really escape the Fed’s gravitational pull when assessing the fate of their own economies. For ECB officials gathering next week to discussing when, how quickly and how much to dial back their aggressive monetary tightening, that means keeping a close eye on the US — even as they stress they’ll chart their own path. 

• “The ECB can absolutely move before the Fed,” said Piet Christiansen, chief strategist at Danske Bank. “Imagining policies to diverge for longer — say nine months and beyond — is more difficult, because ultimately whatever drives decisions at the Fed will spill over to Europe and affect the euro zone as well.”

Our opinion reads for today:

• Foreign Affairs - Aynne Kokas / What the TikTok Bill Gets Wrong 

• Project Syndicate - Yanis Varoufakis / A European War Union?