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PROGRAMMING NOTE: With apologies since I just came back from vacation, I am sick enough that there is a greater than 50 percent chance that I will need to take tomorrow off altogether. This only applies to paid subscribers but I just wanted to give you a heads up.
TODAY IN HISTORY
April 9, 1241: A small Mongolian army under the command of Orda, one of Genghis Khan’s grandsons, defeats a Polish force under the command of Grand Duke Henry II at the Battle of Legnica. Despite the victory the battle partially marks the end of the Mongols’ 1240-1241 invasion of Eastern Europe. The expedition’s overall commander, Batu, had to return east after the death of Great Khan Ögedei in 1241 and at any rate there were signs that the Mongol conquests were reaching their territorial/logistical limits the further they advanced into Europe.
April 9, 1288: The Đại Việt defeats the invading Mongols at the naval Battle of Bạch Đằng in what is today the Quảng Ninh province of modern Vietnam. Vietnamese forces capitalized on the Mongols’ unfamiliarity with tidal patterns on the Bạch Đằng River to sink or capture hundreds of Mongolian ships and kill or capture tens of thousands of warriors. The battle effectively ended the Mongols’ third and final attempted invasion of Vietnam. The Đại Việt eventually negotiated a tributary relationship with the Mongolian Yuan dynasty in China on relatively favorable terms that ended further threat of invasion.
April 9, 1865: Confederate General Robert E. Lee, along with his Army of Northern Virginia, surrenders to Union commander Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. Though there were still other Confederate armies in the field, Lee’s surrender is generally treated as the end of the US Civil War.
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
One day after a massive bombardment that drew surprisingly intense international criticism, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Thursday that he’s authorized direct negotiations between the Lebanese and Israeli governments. Lebanese officials have been requesting this for some time (predating the Iran war) so there was no question of their acceptance. Al-Monitor is reporting that the US State Department will host Israeli and Lebanese negotiators next week to begin the talks, which according to Netanyahu “will focus on disarming Hezbollah and establishing peaceful relations between Israel and Lebanon.”
(For whatever it’s worth, and I don’t think it’s worth very much anymore given subsequent developments, CBS News reported on Thursday that—as some of you may have already assumed—when the US and Iran agreed on their ceasefire on Thursday it was with the understanding that Lebanon was included. Netanyahu then rewrote the ceasefire after the fact to exclude Lebanon and the Trump administration went along with it. Now the line out of the administration, peddled most conspicuously by Vice President JD Vance, is that there was a “misunderstanding” on the Iranians’ part that led them erroneously to believe that the deal also covered Lebanon. As ever, the next honest word out of Vance’s mouth will be the first.)
The breakthrough here seems in part to have been Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s statement earlier on Thursday in which he rejected any notion that the Iranian government might negotiate a peace deal on Lebanon’s behalf, as part of its forthcoming talks with the US. But if Salam was hoping that this rhetoric would earn Lebanon a ceasefire he was wrong—Netanyahu made it clear that the Israeli military (IDF) will continue its Lebanese offensive. The Israeli negotiating position will presumably be less oriented toward stopping the violence than toward encouraging the Lebanese government to join it in waging war against Hezbollah, so a ceasefire could be a long way off.
Axios’s Barak Ravid is out with what feels like the 10 billionth iteration of his “Netanyahu under pressure from the US” story, and if that’s actually true we may see the IDF temper its Lebanese activities without entirely halting them. I do think there’s some possibility that Ravid’s story is accurate, in that the Trump administration could have solicited Salam’s statement divesting Lebanon’s conflict from Iran’s with the promise that it would force Netanyahu to open negotiations. The statement could (I stress could) lessen the risk that Tehran would walk away from negotiations with the US because of ongoing fighting in Lebanon.
Elsewhere, as I mentioned the IDF bombardment on Wednesday drew sharp international criticism, most notably from Europe. Lebanon is a special case for Europeans as far as the Middle East is concerned but even at that the level of unqualified opprobrium for Israel has been notable. And the World Health Organization is warning that the massive number of casualties on Wednesday has left many Lebanese hospitals at risk of running out of trauma supplies. This may not prove to be a serious issue unless the IDF decides to do it again in the near future.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The IDF killed a nine year old girl in northern Gaza on Thursday. It seems that Israeli fire hit a “school tent,” and the fact that we’re talking about children attending school in tents is grotesque enough without the IDF shelling those tents to boot. Israeli officials claim to have killed a Palestinian Islamic Jihad member, though whether it was in that same strike is unclear. According to Al Jazeera, the IDF has attacked Gaza on 36 of the past 40 days, as attention has shifted to the Iran war. It has also drastically restricted both aid entering the territory and medical evacuations leaving it.
In the West Bank, and also under the cover provided by the war, the Israeli government has reportedly legalized 34 new West Bank settlements on hitherto illegal outposts. This is possibly the largest single expansions of West Bank settlements in history and furthers the project of expelling Palestinians from most of the territory. In Israel proper, Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial is apparently set to resume this weekend. Its proceedings had been suspended due to the Iran war. This is another reason why Netanyahu may keep trying to scuttle the ceasefire.
SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi state media has revealed the extent of the damage that the war has caused to the kingdom’s oil sector, and it is fairly extensive. In total Saudi oil output has been cut by some 1.3 million barrels per day, most (700,000) due to a late Iranian strike on the East-West Pipeline that carries crude from fields in eastern Saudi Arabia to terminals on the country’s Red Sea coast. Strikes on oil facilities have reduced the kingdom’s total production capacity by some 600,000 barrels per day. Damage to their energy sectors may be one reason why Gulf Cooperation Council states are now rethinking their US investment portfolios, as Drop Site reported on Sunday prior to the ceasefire. Gulf investment has become a massive driver of the only real growth sector of the US economy, “AI,” and if there’s a disruption there it could have serious repercussions.
IRAN
As it currently stands the plan is for the US and Iran to begin peace talks in Pakistan on Saturday. Those plans could certainly change given the volatility of the ceasefire, though it may be worth noting that even as the Iranian government has been threatening to withdraw over Lebanon (Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, admittedly a bit player in this process, said on Thursday that the talks are “meaningless” while the war in Lebanon continues) its delegation is apparently already in Islamabad waiting for the US.
In other items:
Donald Trump issued what I guess was a threat late Wednesday, posting on social media that he’s leaving US forces deployed to the Middle East unless/until there is a “REAL AGREEMENT” between the US and Iran. He suggested that he will escalate the war if it resumes. Countering that, The New York Times became the latest in a string of outlets to report that the “Pakistani” ceasefire proposal that sealed the proverbial deal on Tuesday was effectively a US proposal issued under the imprimatur of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Trump, in short, was intent on ending the war.
We still don’t have anything I would consider an accurate casualty count from Iran, but state media is now reporting that the death toll after nearly six weeks of war was “over 3000.” That’s hundreds more than the figures currently being reported in Western outlets, which are around 2000.
The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed, which is not hugely surprising and wouldn’t be even if the Iranians hadn’t said that they were “halting” traffic due to the situation in Lebanon. Iranian military authorities published a map late Wednesday that suggests they’ve mined the strait, which would be consistent with reports that were circulating a couple of weeks ago. Even the suggestion of mines will force any shipping firm that is planning to transit the strait to work with the Iranian Navy to ensure safe passage, which in turn enables the Iranians to collect the tolls they seem intent on collecting. Trump currently seems displeased with this state of affairs but I say that knowing that he could write another post about this 20 minutes from now completely reversing himself.
The New Arab is claiming that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has opened up recruitment to children as young as 12, who could find themselves patrolling cities and manning IRGC checkpoints. If this is accurate it would indicate both extensive IRGC personnel losses and concern over potential internal unrest (requiring manpower/childpower to deter or suppress).
ASIA
INDIA
While I was away the Indian government’s March 31 deadline for eradicating the country’s Maoist insurgency lapsed, and although it sounds like they didn’t quite hit the mark Indian officials are nevertheless declaring mission accomplished:
On March 30, four days before [imprisoned Maoist leader Prashanta] Bose’s death, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah told parliament that the CPI (Maoist) had lost almost all its central leadership. This was a day before the deadline he had given the Indian security forces roughly two years ago to make the country Maoist-free.
“Our goal was a Naxal-free India by March 31, [2026]. The country will be informed once the entire process is formally completed, but I can say that we have become Naxal-free,” Shah said. Naxal is the Indian name for Maoists.
The surrender of Communist Party of India (Maoist) military leader Tippiri Tirupati in late February appears to have been the death knell for the movement, which has lost most of its leadership and large segments of its rank and file in recent years and especially since Shah made its elimination a top priority.
MYANMAR
New Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing unveiled his new cabinet on Thursday and—stop me if you’ve heard this already—it’s mostly military officers. With that I think we can finally close the book on this reskinning of the country’s junta as a notionally civilian government.
PHILIPPINES
The Philippine Coast Guard is opening a new command center on Thitu Island in the disputed South China Sea. This is squarely in a region where Philippine and Chinese vessels have tangled with one another in the past so I mention this only because there is a possibility of some sort of Chinese response.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The Sudan Tribune is reporting that a drone strike killed more than 40 people in a wedding party in Sudan’s North Darfur state on Wednesday evening. The Sudanese military hasn’t commented on this as far as I know but given that most of North Darfur is controlled by the Rapid Support Forces group and there were RSF personnel among the casualties it’s clear that this was a military attack.
The Iran war has had a deleterious effect on humanitarian aid operations around the world. By way of an example, Just Security’s Rachel George discusses what it’s doing to aid efforts in Sudan:
The Iran war has made this worse in both direct and structural ways. Sudan imports more than 50 percent of its fertilizer from the Persian Gulf region, meaning that the Strait closure has not only disrupted the delivery of existing humanitarian aid, but also is undermining the very agricultural foundation that Sudanese families depend on to feed themselves. Humanitarian shipments intended for Sudan have been rerouted as far as the Cape of Good Hope — a 6,000-mile, three-week extension in travel time.
The International Rescue Committee warned in March that pharmaceutical supplies worth $130,000 intended to support about 20,000 people in Sudan were stuck in Dubai, as disruptions to shipping routes delayed deliveries. Save the Children told the Council on Foreign Relations’ Think Global Health that almost $600,000 worth of essential medicines intended for 90 primary care facilities in Sudan were stuck in their Dubai shipping hub.
Sudanese women have been leading humanitarian efforts throughout the miltiary-RSF conflict and they are hardest hit by this new challenges. Funding challenges are contributing as well—the United Nations World Food Program warned on Thursday that it is facing a $428 million shortfall in its Sudanese refugee operations, threatening support for the more than 1.3 million Sudanese people who have fled this war into neighboring Chad.
LIBYA
According to The New Arab, a plan floated by US envoy Massad Boulos to end Libya’s lengthy political turmoil is falling apart as elites chafe against it. Boulos’s proposal seeks to create a unified national budget and joint military command bringing together the rival governments based in eastern and western Libya, mostly held together by an apparent interpersonal accord involving Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and Saddam Haftar, the chief of staff of the “Libyan National Army” and son of LNA grandee Khalifa Haftar.
Libya’s High Council of State, which is a legislature of sorts based in the west, is resisting these unification efforts and its leaders may be involved in a counter effort involving the head of Libya’s presidential council, Mohamed al-Menfi, and the speaker of the eastern-based House of Representatives, Aguila Saleh. Adding to this morass, there are indications that at least one of Saddam Haftar’s brothers is participating in this scheme because of intra-family rivalries. Khalifa Haftar’s position is unknown and he’s thought to be in poor health anyway.
NIGER
Islamic State in the Sahel Province issued a statement earlier this week declaring that its fighters had attacked a Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin encampment in Niger’s Tillabéri region last Thursday, killing at least 35 JNIM personnel. It claimed that the attack was a retaliation for a recent JNIM operation in a nearby village. IS and the al-Qaeda linked JNIM often struggle to coexist but this is apparently their first major clash in Niger and signals the deteriorating security situation in that country. JNIM has seemed in recent months to be expanding its Nigerien presence, which may have set the table for this clash.
NIGERIA
Unspecified jihadists attacked a military base in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state overnight, killing at least 18 people including a brigadier general. This is apparently part of a wave of violence that’s been sweeping the province since Sunday and seen at least 90 people killed in attacks on multiple villages this week.
DJIBOUTI
Djiboutian voters will choose a president on Friday, with 27 year incumbent Ismaïl Omar Guelleh all but a lock to win yet another term. Djiboutian votes aren’t outright rigged but Guelleh doesn’t permit any genuine opposition so elections are basically a token exercise. There was one obstacle to his re-election, a legal age limit for presidential candidates of 75 (Guelleh is 78), but parliament excised that restriction last year.
EUROPE
NATO
According to Reuters, the Trump administration is considering the withdrawal of some US military personnel from Europe as another way to “punish” NATO’s European members for their alleged failure to participate in the Iran war. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s visit to the White House on Wednesday does not appear to have materially satisfied Donald Trump’s grievances regarding the alliance, and he’s apparently now demanding that member-states produce their plans for fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz in the next few days. There are some preliminary efforts in motion to contribute to some sort of “freedom of navigation” mission in the Gulf, but none of these countries are going to send their navies barging into the strait unless they’re sure the war is over and they’re not going to be attacked. So whatever plans they offer are unlikely to satisfy Trump.
RUSSIA
The UK government is claiming that a recent joint military operation may have prevented Russian maritime sabotage:
Britain and Norway conducted a weekslong military operation to deter Russian spy submarines near undersea cables in the North Atlantic, the U.K. defense chief said Thursday, accusing Moscow of using the distraction of the Iran war to ramp up malign activity against Europe.
Defense Secretary John Healey said a Royal Navy frigate, aircraft and hundreds of personnel were involved in tracking a Russian attack sub and two spy submarines operating north of the U.K., and prevented the spy vessels from carrying out “nefarious” activities against underwater infrastructure.
He said the Russian vessels eventually left after the operation that lasted more than a month. There is no evidence of damage to any cables or pipes, he said.
The U.K. said other allies were also involved in the operation, but didn’t name them.
UKRAINE
In something of a surprise, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced an Orthodox Easter ceasefire in Ukraine on Thursday, which he’s intending to begin late Saturday afternoon and extend throughout the day on Sunday. There’s been no response from the Ukrainian government as yet, but since Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing at least a holiday break from attacks on public energy infrastructure one assumes he will reciprocate Putin’s offer.
UPDATE: Zelensky appears to have agreed to the ceasefire in a Telegram post.
AMERICAS
ECUADOR
One day after recalling its ambassador from Colombia, the Ecuadorian government imposed 100 percent tariffs on all products emanating from that country citing a supposed failure to secure the border. This is an increase on the 50 percent tariffs it had in place previously. Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the decision “a monstrosity” in a social media post.
MEXICO
UN rapporteur Marcos Orellana told The Guardian this week that Mexico is facing a “toxic crisis” due in large part to the fact that it has become a “garbage sink” for the United States:
[Orellana] cited one place he visited, the industrial corridor of Tula in the central Mexican state of Hidalgo, where steel plants, cement factories and petrochemical facilities operate near a river polluted by industrial waste and untreated sewage from Mexico City. He said proposals to bring in additional waste for recycling would only add to an already devastating environmental burden on communities there.
Meanwhile, companies are not held responsible for preventing, mitigating and repairing the damage, he said.
The result, he said, was the “legalized poisoning of people”.
The rapporteur highlighted the influx of plastic waste from the United States. He said once this waste crosses the border, there is often little clarity about its final destinations. In addition, he said he was concerned that microscopic plastic particles had been detected in rivers such as the Tecate in Baja California, the Atoyac in Puebla and the Jamapa in Veracruz.
Government records show the US ships hundreds of thousands of tons of hazardous waste to Mexico each year, including lead-acid car batteries, as well as common scrap such as plastic, paper and metal for recycling. Environmental groups have questioned whether the country is equipped to handle all this without it leading to pollution.
UNITED STATES
Finally, The Nation’s Julia Gledhill argues that the Trump administration’s new $1.5 trillion military budget request is a sign that the United States is “self-destructing”:
On Friday, the White House released preliminary details about the fiscal year 2027 federal budget. The president requested $1.15 trillion for the Pentagon, as well as an additional $350 billion for the military outside of the regular budget process. If Congress manages to approve the latter in a separate spending bill, it will deliver President Trump a $1.5 trillion top line—a 44 percent increase from last year.
The administration’s budget request to Congress comes as the United States surpasses the first month of its illegal, dangerous war against Iran—which according to YouGov, about 60 percent of Americans oppose. It remains to be seen whether the Pentagon will pursue additional funding for the war, though the Pentagon suggested a separate $200 billion spending package just two weeks ago. Even with a ceasefire, the Pentagon may still pursue a supplemental to refill weapons stockpiles. Either way, lawmakers have a clear mandate: Cut the Pentagon budget and salvage their chance to deliver the domestic rejuvenation the American people demand.
The president is forcing austerity on the American people while prioritizing arms dealers and warmongers. The administration has proposed a 10 percent cut to nonmilitary spending, a $73 billion reduction. But superfluous military spending is an accelerant of American decline, coming at the cost of childcare, healthcare, and social welfare writ large—as the president made explicit in his address last Wednesday. According to the president, “it’s not possible” for the federal government to take care of childcare or healthcare: “We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”
Needless to say Trump isn’t really doing that either.