Military Archive

Kelly Knight Craft, America’s new ambassador to the United Nations, is about to have a tough week at work. With the crisis escalating over Saturday’s airstrikes on an oil processing facility and nearby oil field in Saudi Arabia, there’s no telling how things will go between now and the kick-off of the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 24. There is little doubt though that Craft will play a leading role as the U.S. and Saudi Arabia seek to make a case for the U.N. Security Council to take strong action against Iran, which Washington and Riyadh have […]

If Iran is in fact responsible for the recent attack on Saudi oil facilities, whether directly or through its proxies in Yemen, it suggests that Iranian cruise missiles and drones are getting more sophisticated. Unlike its ballistic missile program, which receives considerable international attention, Iran’s cruise missile capabilities have long stayed under the radar. That may change following the damage done to oil infrastructure in eastern Saudi Arabia. With more accurate strike capabilities, Iran’s cruise missiles have major implications for the military balance of power in the Persian Gulf. Although Iran has one of the largest arsenals of ballistic missiles […]

BEIRUT—In late August, an Israeli airstrike on a compound south of Damascus killed two Hezbollah fighters, who had reportedly been working alongside members of the Quds Force, the elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to launch drone attacks on Israeli territory. According to the Israeli army, the airstrike thwarted an imminent attack. Hours later, two mini rotary drones, one fitted with explosives, crashed into the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, damaging a Hezbollah media office. Details of the incident remain foggy, but reports suggest that Israel had dispatched the drones to target a machine used to […]

Over the past half century, the United States and its two key allies in Northeast Asia, South Korea and Japan, have established a limited yet effective framework for trilateral defense cooperation. That system has largely remained intact despite a history of bad blood between Seoul and Tokyo, specifically over Japan’s brutal occupation of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 until 1945. But regional observers are now increasingly worried that this edifice is beginning to crumble. The latest sign of trouble was South Korea’s decision last month to scrap a 2016 intelligence-sharing pact with Japan. The General Security of Military Information Agreement, […]

After 18 years, it is hard for most Americans to picture the forever wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan actually coming to an end. Yet over the past week, there were growing signs that what seemed unimaginable could really happen soon. First, on Sunday, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, revealed in an Afghan television news interview the partial details of a deal for a U.S. withdrawal of 5,400 troops in exchange for a pledge from the Taliban to cut ties with terrorist groups like al-Qaida and reduce violence. Then, on Tuesday, members of Congress once again […]

After a four-year pause, Iran resumed its satellite program earlier this year, although two attempted launches in January and February both failed, followed by a third failed launch in late August. Together, they are a major setback for a space program that has long been hampered by the strains of international sanctions, including the ones these tests provoke, like the latest U.S. sanctions on Iran’s space agencies imposed this week. Even though a failed test is an opportunity for Iranian engineers to troubleshoot their rocket designs, the series of failures this year demonstrate the challenges that Iran must overcome before […]