EsadeGeo Daily Digest, 11/04/2024

Bloomberg - Donato Paolo Mancini, Jennifer Jacobs, and Galit Altstein / US Sees Imminent Missile Strike on Israel by Iran, Proxies

• The US and its allies believe major missile or drone strikes by Iran or its proxies against military and government targets in Israel are imminent, in what would mark a significant widening of the six-month-old conflict, according to people familiar with the intelligence. 

• The potential assault, possibly using high-precision missiles, may happen in the coming days, the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss confidential matters. It is seen as more a matter of when, not if, one of the people said, based on assessments from US and Israeli intelligence. 

• Brent crude, the global benchmark, spiked more than 1% to trade above $90 a barrel following the news. Oil is up 16% this year, buoyed by war risk premium since the conflict in the Middle East began. 

• Iran has threatened to hit Israel in retaliation for an attack on a diplomatic compound in the Syrian capital of Damascus last week that killed senior Iranian military officials. Israel has not explicitly acknowledged it was behind that attack, though it has traditionally followed a policy of ambiguity on operations in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.

Euractiv - Max Griera / EU’s historic migration pact passes amidst divisions and far-right fears
 

• Despite a nerve-racking buildup leading up to the vote on Wednesday (10 April) afternoon, and the final agreement to no one’s liking, the EU’s asylum and migration pact ultimately passed with a thin majority on certain parts of the package. 

• The file was only passed through due to abstentions, which were used by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who disagreed with the text but wanted the file to pass, as a means to state their grievances. 

• In the hours before the vote, one political group leader after another, and the law’s negotiators, repeatedly appealed to the MEPs’ sense of responsibility, to deliver for citizens, after almost ten years of deadlock, a reform of the bloc’s migration and asylum seekers’ entrance procedures. 

• The voting session had barely started when a visitors group erupted, chanting “This Pact kills, vote no”, stopping the session, repeating the calls from several NGOs, worried that the texts did not protect human lives and fundamental rights well enough.

The New York Times - Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Vivian Yee and Lauren Leatherby / Few Signs of Progress on Aid to Gaza After Israeli Pledges
 

• There has been no apparent work done yet on increasing aid to Gaza by opening an additional border crossing from Israel and accepting shipments at a nearby Israeli port, but Israel said on Wednesday that both changes remain in the works. 
• Facing international condemnation after an Israeli airstrike killed seven workers for an international aid group, Israel said last week that it would reopen the Erez crossing between Israel and northern Gaza for aid delivery. 
• But satellite imagery taken on Tuesday showed that the road leading to Erez on the Gaza side was blocked by rubble from a destroyed building, a crater and other damage that was also visible in images from last week and last month. 
• A spokeswoman for the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Wednesday that another crossing into northern Gaza, near Zikim, a kibbutz, would open instead, and not the one near Erez. It was not clear if that was because of the damage at Erez. 

Financial Times - Demetri Sevastopulo and Kana Inagaki / US and Japan announce ‘most significant’ upgrade to military alliance
 

• The US and Japan plan to modernise their military command and control structures in what President Joe Biden said was the “most significant” upgrade to their alliance since it was created decades ago. 

• Speaking alongside Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at a news conference on Wednesday, Biden said the allies were taking significant steps to ensure their militaries could “work together in a seamless and effective way”. 

• The US president added that the two countries had transformed their relationship into a “truly global partnership” over the past three years, and that the alliance now served as a “beacon to their entire world”. 

• Kishida is visiting Washington for a historic summit that is designed to bolster the robust US-Japan alliance as the nations become increasingly concerned about what they view as threats from China.

Our opinion reads for today:

Project Syndicate - Yang Yao / How to Tackle China’s Overcapacity Problem
The Washington Post - Adam Taylor / Israel’s war in Gaza reaches an inflection point