October 23rd, 2024: Israel’s Victory in Lebanon, Iranian Assassination Plot, & Ukraine’s Population Crisis
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It's Wednesday, 23 October. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Let's get briefed. Coming up on today's show, we'll kick things off with an update on Israel's continuing offensive in Lebanon, with the IDF's regional commander declaring that his troops have defeated Hezbollah in every area in which they've operated.

Later in the program, federal prosecutors have charged a senior Iranian military official and three others connected to Iran's government with plotting to kill an Iranian-American author residing in the U.S.

Plus, the long-term impact of the war in Ukraine is coming into sharper focus. A new UN report reveals that Ukraine's population has dropped by roughly 10 million people since Russia's initial invasion began back in 2014. Now, you might recall that that was when Putin annexed Crimea. Apparently, at the time, the international community really didn't care.

I believe the U.S. administration at that time, and possibly the EU, wrote harshly worded memos. And in today's back of the brief, a case of mistaken identity in Sudan. Rebels aligned with Russia shot down a Russian crewed cargo plane packed with weapons intended for the rebels. But first, today's BDB Spotlight.

I want to begin today with a look at the state of Hezbollah and their remaining military capabilities in the wake of Israel's ongoing ground and air campaign in Lebanon. As we've been tracking here on the PDB, in just over a month of focused operations in Lebanon, Israel has managed to decimate Hezbollah, killing virtually all of their senior leaders, destroying much of their weapons stores, and crippling their financial reserves.

Considered the most powerful terror army in the world and Iran's most important strategic investment for decades, the militant group is now basically just a shell of its former self. The group's arsenal, which prior to the conflict included some 150,000 to 200,000 rockets and missiles, was estimated to be the largest stockpile of weapons in the world held by a non-state actor. So,

How much damage has Israel done?

According to the latest estimates from the IDF, Hezbollah has lost more than 70% of their firepower as a result of Israel's campaign. Most of those weapon stores have been destroyed during Israeli airstrikes, but the IDF also notes that they've shot down more than 10,000 rockets and missiles fired by the militants since Hezbollah began their strikes in the wake of the 7 October attacks by their Iranian-backed colleagues, Hamas.

Now, despite that, analysts warn that the threat is not fully contained, with Hezbollah still possessing as many as 60,000 rockets and missiles, some with the capability of reaching deep into Israeli territory.

But due to the elimination of Hezbollah's leadership, particularly senior field commanders, Israeli officials say Hezbollah has lost their ability to coordinate large-scale rocket attacks like those that they did while Israel's attention was focused on Hamas in Gaza. The IDF estimates that some 1,200 Hezbollah operatives have been killed since they began their ground invasion of Lebanon back on the 1st of October.

All told, since the fighting began in October of 2023, the IDF says they have killed at least 2,000 Hezbollah operatives, including seven brigade-level commanders, 21 battalion-level commanders, and two dozen company commanders. That's according to a report from the Times of Israel.

Due to the damage to both their personnel and arsenal, morale is said to be low among their operatives. Yeah, you would imagine it would be. And the group has struggled to mobilize reinforcements to the current fighting there in southern Lebanon.

Major General Ori Gordon, chief of the IDF Northern Command, said Hezbollah's defensive forces have been defeated in every area that the IDF has deployed so far. Gordon told the Times of Israel, quote, We have dealt a very serious blow to Hezbollah's command and control. Most of Hezbollah's brigade commanders have already been eliminated for the third time, end quote.

He stressed that despite the successes, though, IDF forces remain, quote, determined to reach every tunnel shaft, every underground site, and every stockpile of weapons, end quote. Israeli officials said they plan to wrap up operations inside Lebanon within the next, quote, few weeks, and that once the threat of Hezbollah has been neutralized, they will begin the process of returning tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to their homes along the northern border.

Now, before we go to break, a quick update on the fate of Hashim Safedin. If you'll remember, he was the head of Hezbollah's executive council and heir apparent to the group's late Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, who was his cousin. Well, Hashim Safedin is now officially dead.

Yesterday, the Israeli military confirmed that he was killed in an October 4 airstrike that targeted Hezbollah's intelligence division hiding in Beirut. According to the military, Safedine was killed alongside more than 25 other members of the group, including the head of its intelligence division. So much headroom in that organization now. All right, coming up next,

a senior Iranian military official is charged in a plot to kill an Iranian-American author on U.S. soil. Plus, a new U.N. report reveals the staggering population loss in Ukraine since Russia's 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea. I'll have those stories when we come back. Save me, sweetie

Welcome back to the BDB.

Let's turn our focus to the states, where U.S. authorities have disrupted another Iranian plot to carry out a covert assassination on American soil. The Department of Justice charged a senior official in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, on Tuesday for attempting to orchestrate a murder-for-hire plot targeting prominent Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih al-Najjad

And it's the first time that federal U.S. prosecutors have attempted to implicate a high-ranking member of Iran's IRGC in a U.S. murder-for-hire plot

The indictment names IRGC Brigadier General Ruhollah Bazgandi as the ringleader of the scheme, along with three other Iranian nationals with intelligence ties. We should note that Bazgandi, who is believed to be the chief of the IRGC's counterintelligence department, and the three other defendants live in Iran and, of course, remain at large. According to an exclusive report from the New York Times, a

Al-Najjad, who fled Iran in 2009, has long been a target of the mullahs for her criticism of the regimes of repression of women. Iranian operatives first attempted to kidnap Al-Najjad back in 2021 with the intent of bringing her back to Iranian soil. That scheme involved a network of hired private investigators who surveilled Al-Najjad and

and members of her household, including with a live feed of her home in New York. The plot was ultimately foiled, however, prompting the Iranian regime to pivot to assassination. The assassination plot was disrupted by American authorities back in 2022, at the time leading to the arrest of at least three members of an Eastern European criminal organization with links to the Islamic regime.

Authorities stressed that the conspirators came disturbingly close to achieving their ends. FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement, "The FBI's investigation led to the disruption of this plot as one of the conspirators was allegedly on their way to murder the victim in New York." While the plot against Al-Najjad ultimately failed, Buzgandi and the three Iranian nationals reportedly continued to research, monitor, and target the Iranian-born journalist.

Al-Inajad thanked authorities on Tuesday for their tireless work to protect her and to bring formal charges, noting the importance of directly tracing the plot to members of the IRGC. She told the New York Times, "...it is very significant that now we have proof that IRGC members, the senior members of the Revolutionary Guard, were sitting in Iran and ordering a guy in New York to kill a U.S. citizen."

Now, in recent years, Iran has been outsourcing their covert assassinations program to violent criminal groups from Europe to South America, seeking to shield itself from direct blame and to make it harder for intelligence services to piece together their schemes. It also lets them tap into existing criminal networks in the West, helping the regime expedite their operations.

as we've been tracking on the PDB. Iran also continues to actively target former President Trump and members of his administration over the killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani by the U.S. back in 2020. In a statement on Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said U.S. authorities continue to work tirelessly to disrupt these schemes, stating, quote,

the United States will not tolerate efforts by an authoritarian regime like Iran to undermine the fundamental rights guaranteed to every American, end quote. Well, you know, if that was the case,

you'd think the administration would be, I don't know, tougher on the Iranian regime. I mean, maybe take every step possible to shut off their revenues from their energy sector. Of course, that would possibly then cause a spike in oil prices, and I suppose the White House wouldn't want that to happen just before the U.S. election. But I guess I sound churlish again.

Okay, turning to Ukraine, where we're getting some startling news about the dramatic impact that the nation's war against Russia is having. According to an estimate by the United Nations, the population in Ukraine has decreased by 10 million people since Russia first invaded all the way back in 2014. This sharp decline is driven by several factors, including the mounting number of war casualties, refugees fleeing the country, and a declining birth rate.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine, like many of its Eastern European and Central Asian neighbors, has been grappling with significant population decline. In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, Ukraine's population stood at 45 million.

By February 2022, at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, that number had dwindled to 43 million. Now, it's plunged by around 8 million more to a population of approximately 35 million. That's according to data from the National Statistics Office and the UN Population Fund, also known as UNFPA, because everybody loves a good acronym.

The sharpest drop can be attributed to the nearly 7 million refugees who have fled the country since the war began, primarily, of course, seeking safety in Europe. This exodus accounts for a large portion of the population loss, with many regions in the Ukraine now severely depopulated.

In a news conference on Tuesday in Geneva, Florence Bauer, UNFPA's Eastern Europe Regional Director, explained that the war, "turned an already difficult demographic situation into something more severe."

Adding to the demographic crisis is Ukraine's plummeting birth rate, which currently sits at just one child per woman. This is among the lowest birth rates in the world and far below the replacement rate of about two children per woman needed to maintain a stable population.

Even before the war, Ukraine struggled with low birth rates and high emigration, but the ongoing conflict of wars furthered the country's ability to sustain its population. Compounding the problem, the war itself has claimed thousands of lives, of course. Bauer stated, "It's difficult to have exact numbers, but estimates range around tens of thousands of casualties."

Now, in August of 2023, U.S. officials estimated that at least 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed.

And as we've reported on the PDB since then, Russia has made incremental gains along the Eastern Front, of course, contributing to the ongoing toll. It's important to note, of course, that also both Ukraine and Russia have withheld official casualty numbers since the onset of Russia's full-scale invasion, and those numbers have been decidedly difficult to interpret on both sides. A comprehensive understanding of the war's impact on Ukraine's population,

frankly, will not be possible until a full census can be conducted. And that's something that obviously needs to wait until the conflict is over. Until then, the true scale of Ukraine's demographic collapse, well, it remains uncertain, but the numbers so far point to a long-term population crisis.

Okay, up next in the back of the brief, a fatal error in Sudan, where rebels shot down a Russian crewed cargo plane loaded with arms that were actually meant for the rebels, or the rebels who shot down the plane. I'll have the details after the break.

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In today's Back of the Brief...

A government cargo plane, believed to be carrying two Russian crew members, was downed by Sudanese paramilitary rebels, the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity. On Monday, the RSF claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft with an anti-aircraft missile in the western North Darfur state, though evidence suggests the plane was linked to an armed supply operation by the United Arab Emirates, UAE, Iran.

ironically for the very rebels who pulled the trigger. The RSF released video footage showing the wreckage, along with Russian passports and IDs belonging to the plane's crew, two Russians and three Sudanese. The Russian embassy in Sudan has since launched an investigation.

The plane, identified as an Ilyushin IL-76 by a crumpled safety guard that was found in the wreckage, was operated by a company called New Way Cargo. That's a Kyrgyzstan-based airline that's been linked to supplying weapons to the RSF this month. That's according to the U.S.-funded group Conflict Observatory. The UAE, however, claims the flight was delivering aid to a nearby hospital. Well, of course it was.

For background, Sudan's civil war, ongoing for 18 months, has devolved into a geopolitical free-for-all, with foreign powers vying for influence. Russia, for instance, has been playing both sides – that's odd – backing the RSF rebels with Wagner mercenaries – remember them – while also cozying up to the government forces. And you ask yourself, well, why would they play both sides?

Well, the Kremlin doesn't really care who wins, so long as they walk away with a new port on the Red Sea and access to Sudan's gold mines. The UAE, while denying direct involvement, is believed to be the primary backer of the RSF. Meanwhile, the civil war has claimed over 24,000 lives, with the Sudanese army ramping up its offensive in Khartoum and Darfur.

The incident occurred just as Russian President Putin was busy rolling out the red carpet for his BRICS buddies, including China's Xi Jinping and India's Narendra Modi, all while plotting their latest strategy for developing economies to supplant Western influence. Good luck with that, fellas.

And that, my friends, is the President's Daily Brief for Wednesday, 23 October. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at pdbatthefirsttv.com. And of course, to listen to the show ad-free, well, it's relatively simple. Just become a premium member of the President's Daily Brief by visiting pdbpremium.com. See? Told you it was simple. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back later today with the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. Until then...

Stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool.