I - On Defense Podcast

For review:
1. The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday night that it had finished clearing a “strategic” underground facility belonging to the Hezbollah terror group beneath a mountainous ridge in southern Lebanon in recent weeks.
The Ali Taher Ridge is located within Israel’s southern Lebanon buffer zone, near Nabatieh. According to the IDF, Hezbollah built tunnel systems beneath the hill, which served as the “nerve center” of the terror group’s Badr regional division — a unit tasked with the area of southern Lebanon that is north of the Litani River.
2. Iran has warned the United States that it would respond forcefully to any Israeli offensive on a mountainous ridge in southern Lebanon where Iranian military personnel are holed up alongside Hezbollah fighters, three officials briefed on the message told Reuters.
3. US Vice President JD Vance says Washington will only return to negotiations with Iran if Tehran stops targeting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
4. South Korea is preparing to deploy military assets to support freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and aims to dispatch them before the end of the year, local media reports, citing government and military sources.
5. Russia has been helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles, an advanced weapon that is harder to defend against than subsonic variants, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.
6. The German Navy said on Wednesday that it had successfully tested an Israeli ballistic missile system the previous night and would now begin to advance plans to procure the projectiles.
The Long-Range Artillery Weapon System, known by the acronym LORA, has a range of 400 kilometers and is accurate to within 10 meters, according to its manufacturer, Israel Aerospace Industries. It is classified as a short-range ballistic missile.
7. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday there was a chance of reaching an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said U.S. negotiators trying to broker a deal would soon visit both Moscow and Kyiv.
‌Putin, speaking at an economic forum in Russia's far east, said a number of countries including the U.S. and China were ready to support a peace settlement.
8. The U.S. government on Thursday slapped new sanctions on Cuba in a fresh push to strangle the island’s economy and deepen its multiple crises. 
9. American Rheinmetall delivered the first Lynx XM30 prototype to the Army this week, the company said in a Tuesday statement, the latest move in the service’s effort to replace the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
The vehicle is slated to start testing, while seven additional prototypes are scheduled for delivery later this year.

For review:
1. The US military hit targets in Iran on Tuesday, and Tehran fired missiles and drones in response, as hostilities flared once again.
2. Jordan’s army says it has intercepted 10 ballistic missiles launched from Iran while three others landed in remote areas.
3. A Syrian site held infrastructure “consistent with a nuclear reactor,” the UN nuclear watchdog said in a confidential report seen by AFP on Tuesday, adding that the country’s former authorities “failed to report nuclear material, facilities and activities.”
4. “Special forces” of the Shin Bet captured the commander of Hamas’s internal security apparatus in a “bold operation” in Gaza City on Tuesday morning, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the military, and the domestic security agency.
5. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is meeting Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to discuss a Washington-backed 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, Fox Business reported on Aug. 31.
The two reportedly met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Asheville, North Carolina, marking the first in-person attendance by the Russian finance minister since the outbreak of Moscow's all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
6. Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping could hold a trilateral meeting at the upcoming APEC summit in China, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Sept. 1.
Ushakov said the possibility of a three-way meeting between the leaders is being considered ahead of the summit, according to Russian state media.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit is scheduled to take place in Shenzhen, China, on Nov. 18-19.
7. Two weeks after the Army picked a winner to provide prototypes for its next-gen wheeled howitzer, the service’s fires acquisition shop is now seeking a tracked variant.
8. The Army has announced it awarded Georgia Tech Research Institute up to $33.4 million to be the lead weapons systems integrator for the service’s Common Autonomous Multidomain Launcher (CAML) prototype program.
The CAML program is set to serve as a replacement for the Army’s Typhon — its Mid-Range Capability (MRC) long-range launcher — after the service discovered it was too large to operate on the battlefield.

For review:
1. The U.S. military struck Iranian military targets to prevent the deployment of sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. official said.
2. Jordan’s army says it intercepted eight missiles, shortly after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it attacked US military targets in the Washington-allied kingdom.
“Air defense systems intercepted eight missiles that breached the kingdom’s airspace at dawn today, Monday,” reads a statement quoting the army’s spokesperson.
3. Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Sunday called on leaders of Muslim countries, and particularly those in the Gulf, to stand together against Israel and the United States, imploring them to “know your real enemy.”
4. The Trump administration plans to impose sanctions on another bank this week in an effort to clamp down on Iran transactions, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says.
5. The Hezbollah terror group has so far rejected overtures by the Lebanese government to pull its forces out of the contested Ali Taher Ridge in south Lebanon, according to a Saturday report.
6. Cuba is preparing to loosen some of the tightest controls over its communist economy, allowing private companies to trade directly with foreign businesses, giving foreign investors greater freedom to hire workers and expanding their ability to develop real estate on the island.
7. In a bid to accelerate missile production, India has approved the transfer of technologies for all conventional missile systems from a state-run organization to private companies.
8. The US Air Force has awarded aerospace giant Boeing a broad contract for the company’s F-15 fighter jet worth up to $131.2 billion, according to a DoW announcement.

For review:
1. CIA Director John Ratcliffe was in Moscow, Russia, for meetings on Tuesday, sources familiar with the situation told CBS News.
2. Russia warned on Thursday that it could strike British military ​targets inside and outside Ukraine in response to Ukrainian attacks on targets inside Russia using long-range British cruise missiles.
3. The United States on Friday issued fresh Iran-related sanctions as the war hit its six-month mark in a move that was rebuffed by Tehran as “state terrorism.”
Iran condemned the United States’ new economic sanctions and said other countries were legally obliged not to implement them. 
4. The United Kingdom warned on Friday that expelling its representatives from the US-led coordination center for postwar Gaza, located in southern Israel, would “undermine” efforts to improve the situation in the war-torn Strip.
5. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced on Tuesday that Dutch representatives will be expelled from the US-backed international coordination center for Gaza, citing a series of “anti-Israel measures” by the Netherlands.
6. US President Donald Trump signed an order on Friday creating a US Space Academy, billing it as a new military and civilian institution modeled after West Point and other military service academies.
7. USN Aircraft Carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) will leave from San Diego in the coming weeks. The the strike group expected to move into US Central Command AOR to relieve the Japan-based USS George Wshington (CVN-73), which entered US 5th Fleet last week.
8. The Pentagon is betting big on a $1.15 trillion discretionary budget request with a further $350 billion coming from the reconciliation process — together adding up to a historic $1.5 trillion defense budget.

For review:
1. US President Donald Trump on Tuesday lamented what he called a “humanitarian crisis” in Iran, saying it “must be stopped,” as he accused the Tehran regime of killing protesters and failing to pay its armed forces.
“The failing Islamic Republic of Iran is not paying large segments of their military, while at the same time killing protesters, even when they are not protesting, at levels not seen before,” he wrote on Truth Social.
2. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has told counterparts around the world that Washington does not currently expect to launch new offensive strikes against Iran, as the Trump administration shifts its focus to economic pressure and restoring shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, Channel 12 reported Tuesday.
Rubio did not rule out US military action if Iran initiates new hostilities, according to two sources familiar with the conversations.
3. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in footage broadcast Wednesday that he urged US President Donald Trump to consider tightening the “siege” on Iran during their July meeting in Washington.
4. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani will visit Tehran tomorrow, where he will meet a number of Iranian officials to discuss ways to de-escalate tensions, foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari says on Wednesday on X.
5. The Board of Peace’s Gaza envoy briefed the UN Security on Wednesday, touting Hamas’s acceptance of a disarmament plan while effectively acknowledging that progress has since stalled amid Israel’s rejection of the proposal.
6. Defense Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday told troops in southern Syria that the Israeli military would not leave its buffer zone there as long as “jihadist threats” remain, issuing a belligerent message to Damascus as the US tries to secure a security deal between the countries.
7. The first-ever road bridge linking North Korea and Russia across the Tumen River appears close to completion, according to satellite imagery reviewed by Defense News.
The border between North Korea and Russia is just 17 kilometers, or 11 miles, long, but increasingly geopolitically significant.
8. The Army is looking for a weapon that is similar to the existing Hellfire and Joint Air-to-Ground Missile, according to the Army’s Sources Sought notice. The deadline is Sept. 15.