Israeli Military Rescues Hostage From Hamas Tunnel

Happy Wednesday! We live pretty day-to-day here on our daily morning newsletter, but if it’s ever called for, we hope we will have the ability to play the long game like John Sainsbury: He funded a wing of London’s National Gallery and hated the false columns in the lobby so much that he dropped a letter panning the design choice in the wet concrete of the column, to be discovered when they were demolished decades later.

“If you have found this note you must be engaged in demolishing one of the false columns that have been placed in the foyer of the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery,” he wrote. “I believe that the false columns are a mistake of the architect and that we would live to regret our accepting this detail of his design.” 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Special counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment on Tuesday in former President Donald Trump’s federal election interference case, removing allegations made in the original indictment that Trump attempted to use the Department of Justice (DOJ) to push false claims about the results of the 2020 election but otherwise keeping all four of the charges originally filed against the former president. The updated indictment also removes one person from the case—identified only as “Co-Conspirator No. 4”—who is widely believed to be former Trump administration DOJ official Jeffrey Clark. The revisions were likely prompted by the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling in Trump v. United States, which held that the president was immune from prosecution related to some official actions. Trump accused Smith of trying to “resurrect a ‘dead’ Witch Hunt” in order “to save face.”
• Trump announced on social media on Tuesday that he has agreed to a presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia on September 10, hosted by ABC News. After the two candidates went back and forth over whether the microphones would be muted while the other was speaking—Harris wanted them left on, while the Trump camp preferred they be muted—Trump claimed the rules would be the same as the CNN presidential debate in June, in which he and President Joe Biden used no notes, made no opening statements, and had muted microphones. The Harris campaign, however, pushed back on that assertion. “Both candidates have publicly made clear their willingness to debate with unmuted mics for the duration of the debate to fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates,” Harris campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said on Tuesday. “But it appears Donald Trump is letting his handlers overrule him. Sad!”
• CNN announced Tuesday the network will conduct the first sit-down interview with Vice President Kamala Harris since President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race more than a month ago. Host Dana Bash will interview the Democratic presidential nominee—who will be joined by her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—on Thursday afternoon, and the interview will run at 9 p.m. ET that night.
• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday rescued Qaid Farhan al-Qadi—a 52-year-old Israeli whom Hamas terrorists kidnapped in the October 7 attacks—from a tunnel beneath southern Gaza. Al-Qadi, now back in Israeli territory and reunited with his family, was checked into a hospital but is in a “stable medical condition,” per the IDF. “We work tirelessly to return all of our abductees,” Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, welcoming the safe return of al-Qadi. Israeli commandos discovered al-Qadi alive and unguarded when they were clearing a Hamas tunnel network. 
• The IDF also launched a wide-scale counterterrorism operation in four West Bank cities beginning Wednesday morning. As of TMD’s publication time, at least nine people had been killed, according to Palestinian health officials. The IDF said those nine individuals were “armed terrorists” and that it had confiscated weapons, ammunition, “military materials, and had dismantled several explosives in its operation.
• Ukrainian officials reported on Tuesday that the country’s military had used Western-supplied F-16 fighter jets for the first time to thwart Russian missiles and drones, though Tuesday’s attack across several regions of Ukraine killed at least six people and injured dozens more. The airstrikes came one day after a much larger Russian onslaught that saw some 100 missiles and 100 drones rain on Ukrainian territory and killed at least seven people. 
• Meanwhile, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military, claimed on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces now control about 500 square miles of Russian territory in the Kursk oblast, an area about the same size as Phoenix, Arizona. The Ukrainian leader said that Russia had moved about 30,000 soldiers to the Kursk region in an attempt to fend off the Ukrainian counteroffensive that, according to Syrskyi, has led to the capture of 100 Russian settlements and nearly 600 Russian soldiers. 
• Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador—who will be succeeded by President-Elect Claudia Sheinbaum on October 1—on Tuesday paused diplomatic relations with the United States and Canadian embassies in Mexico after both countries’ ambassadors to the country criticized his proposed judicial reforms, which would see the vast majority of Mexican judges be elected to their office, not appointed. “I believe popular direct election of judges is a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy,” U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, said last week. “Any judicial reform should have the right kinds of safeguards that will ensure the judicial branch will be strengthened and not subject to the corruption of politics.” However, Obrador criticized Salazar’s comments—and similar remarks made by Canada’s ambassador—and said the pause would remain until the embassies respect Mexican independence in its internal political affairs. Sheinbaum has embraced Obrador’s planned changes.  
• Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii were reportedly tapped on Tuesday as honorary co-chairs of Donald Trump’s potential transition team, just days after their respective endorsements of the former president. “I’ve been asked to go onto the [Trump] transition team, and, you know, to help pick the people who will be running the government,” Kennedy said Monday in an interview with Tucker Carlson. “I don’t know what would happen if they—if we lose.” 
• A New Hampshire resident of an unidentified age and gender died on Tuesday from a mosquito-transmitted viral disease, eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), state officials announced. Last weekend, the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, closed its public parks and fields at night, citing a “high risk status” of EEE. Although EEE is generally rare in the United States—there have only been four reported cases this year, and the death was the first in New Hampshire caused by EEE since 2014, according to state officials—the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that the virus is fatal in approximately 30 percent of cases.
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday that the Biden administration in 2021 “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content.” In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, who has been vocal in claiming tech companies are censoring conservatives, Zuckerberg said he regretted some of his actions during the pandemic. “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he wrote. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.” He also said Facebook shouldn’t have suppressed a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop while it awaited a fact check—a policy Zuckerberg says Facebook has since changed. 

Who Will Blink First? 

While Israelis slept on Sunday morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) went to work. In a matter of minutes shortly before 5 a.m. local time, Israeli air force jets struck hundreds of Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon that were poised to fire on Israel. 

That didn’t stop the Iranian-backed terrorist organization from launching more than 200 rockets and missiles at targets across northern Israel, a barrage that Hezbollah officials said was part of its response to the assassination of one of their top commanders, Fuad Shukr, several weeks ago. 

Israelis still remain on edge as they await Iran’s potential response to the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month. Hezbollah’s muted response—and Iran’s lack thereof—may deescalate Israeli fears for the movement. But while all this plays out, Israel’s ceasefire negotiations with Hamas drag on even as the country rejoices in the rare news that its military rescued another hostage from Gaza.

In the wake of Sunday’s exchange, Israeli intelligence said that many of Hezbollah’s rocket launchers and drones had been sitting ready to fire on Israeli military and intelligence targets in northern and central Israel, including near Tel Aviv, on Saturday night and Sunday morning. 

Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, confirmed later Sunday evening in a speech that the subsequent Hezbollah strike was intended to hit the Glilot base—home to a specialized intelligence unit and close to the headquarters of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad—just north of Tel Aviv. Nasrallah claimed the strike was successful, though Israeli officials said no military bases had been damaged. One Israeli Navy sailor was killed by shrapnel from an Israeli interceptor during the Hezbollah attack. 

After the largest exchange of fire between the two parties since October 8—when Hezbollah began its steady attacks on Israel after Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel—both Israel and Hezbollah seemed to step back from the brink. In speeches on Sunday, Nasrallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t rule out future attacks, but major exchanges have not followed in the intervening days. “Israel played it smart and gave Hezbollah a way to basically climb down the ladder,” said Joe Truzman, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who specializes in Hezbollah and Palestinian militant groups. 

“What [the Iranian proxies are] trying to do is demonstrate that they’re willing to impose consequences for taking on their top leadership or making attacks within their territory without triggering something that is going to prompt a massive attack from Israel that they can’t handle,” said Gabriel Noronha, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and a former State Department official who worked on Iran. 

The threat of a war that could involve the United States and Iran, as well as Hezbollah and Israel, has loomed since Israel’s dual assassinations several weeks ago. Israel claimed responsibility for the assassination of Shukr, a Hezbollah military leader and terrorist wanted in relation to the 1983 attack on U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon that killed more than 200 U.S. service members. Hezbollah has a significant arsenal of rockets and missiles that, if fired in conjunction with an Iranian attack, could overwhelm Israeli air defenses. 

In an indication of the perceived threat of a conflagration—and as an act of deterrence—U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier this month ordered an offensive, guided missile submarine to the Mediterranean. On Monday, the Pentagon extended the deployment of one of the two aircraft carrier strike groups in the region following the Israel-Hezbollah exchange on Sunday. “We continue to assess that there is a threat of attack [from Iran], and we again remain well postured to be able to support Israel’s defense as well as protect our forces should they be attacked,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Monday. 

But it remains to be seen whether Iran—which has yet to respond to the killing of Haniyeh, though Israel has never formally taken responsibility for the assassination—will meaningfully retaliate. “The more days that pass by, the less likely Iran is to respond, especially in a super overt manner,” Truzman told TMD. “If the Iranians are led to believe that there’s likely to be a ceasefire in the coming weeks—or maybe in a month—they’ll hold fire.” Tehran, Truzman argued, sees a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza as potentially the only way to preserve Hamas, its proxy. 

Still, even if Iran doesn’t pursue a major attack directly on Israeli territory—as it did in April—there are other potential responses. “I would expect them to set off a bomb by an Israeli embassy, in, say, Armenia or Azerbaijan,” Noronha told TMD. “Where … [Iran is] going to make it kind of obvious that it was them, officially deny it, and then sort of say, ‘Hey, this is what you get if you take out our people.’” 

There’s certainly been some strong mood music from U.S. officials on the ceasefire front. Though Hamas last week predictably rejected a so-called “bridging agreement”—the details of which were unclear—National Security Council spokesman John Kirby pushed back on claims the talks had stalled after high-level discussions concluded Sunday with no agreement. “The talks actually progressed to a point where they felt like the next logical step was to have working groups at lower levels to sit down to hammer out these finer details,” Kirby said of negotiations in Cairo, Egypt. 

The negotiations are based on a three-phase framework that was laid out by U.S.  President Joe Biden in May.  The plan would initiate a temporary ceasefire to allow for the return of Hamas-held hostages—there are about 100 remaining, including the remains of roughly 30 who have died since Hamas and other allied terrorists abducted them on October 7—and the release of Palestinian terrorists and others convicted by Israel and serving time in Israeli jail. The temporary ceasefire would, under the proposal, give way to a permanent cessation of the conflict after another period of negotiations. 

Though details are sparse, one of the major sticking points—as we wrote last week—seems to be continuing Israeli presence in parts of Gaza, including the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of territory in southern Gaza that abuts the border with Egypt. The area is rife with tunnels that Hamas has used to smuggle weapons into the enclave and, if left unaltered or undefended, could allow Hamas to reconstitute its military capabilities after hostilities have ended. 

Even as talks to return the hostages through a diplomatic agreement continue, the IDF on Tuesday recovered one of the captives in a Hamas tunnel. Israeli commandos had been exploring the tunnel network for days, expecting either hostages or terrorists. They discovered Qaid Farhan al-Qadi, an Israeli Bedouin who’d been abducted on October 7, unguarded in the tunnel. The 52-year-old is reportedly in good health. 

But such rescues—intentional or serendipitous, as al-Qadi’s return seemed to be—are few and far between, and unlikely to be an effective method to free the remaining hostages. “We hope there will be a celebration not just by us, but all the families of hostages will experience this joy,” al-Qadi’s brother told Israeli state TV, urging the parties to come to an agreement to free the remaining hostages. 

Assassinating Yahya Sinwar, the Gaza-based Hamas leader who formally replaced Haniyeh after his death, would likely give Israel an edge in negotiations and allow Jerusalem to end the war on its terms. But Sinwar, who seems uninterested in a deal, has evaded both Israeli and U.S. intelligence. In the meantime, Truzman says, negotiations will remain unpredictable: “It’s only a guess who blinks first.” 

Worth Your Time

• Former Trump staffer Kash Patel’s motivating principle is loyalty to former president Donald Trump. That makes him dangerous, Elaina Plott Calabro reported for The Atlantic. “When Patel was installed as chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense just after the 2020 election, Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised him not to break the law in order to keep President Donald Trump in power,” Plott Calabro wrote. “When Trump entertained naming Patel deputy director of the FBI, Attorney General Bill Barr confronted the White House chief of staff and said, ‘Over my dead body.’ … Even in an administration full of loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion. This was what seemed to disturb many of his colleagues the most: Patel was dangerous, several of them told me, not because of a certain plan he would be poised to carry out if given control of the CIA or FBI, but because he appeared to have no plan at all—his priorities today always subject to a mercurial president’s wishes tomorrow. (Patel disputes this characterization.) What wouldn’t a person like that do, if asked?”
• It was not too long ago that California Gov. Gavin Newsom was rumored as a potential last-minute presidential candidate. Now, with Vice President Kamala Harris having taken that mantle, where does that leave Newsom? “The Democratic governor had a brief cameo role delivering the state’s delegates to the vice president, in a ceremonial vote that ratified Harris as the party’s presidential nominee,” Mark Barabak wrote for the Los Angeles Times. “That was it for Newsom.” The two Californian politicians are no strangers. “The governor and vice president, both products of San Francisco’s elbows-out political culture, have been running side by side for more than two decades. They shared many of the same donors and the same geographic base. For a time, they had the same team of campaign strategists. … It was curious, then, to hear an interview released a day after Democrats closed up shop in Chicago, wherein Newsom sarcastically referred to the ‘30-minute’ convention that yielded Harris as the Democratic nominee. ‘We went through a very open process, a very inclusive process,’ he joked on the ‘Pod Save America’ podcast. ‘It was bottom-up, I don’t know if you know that. That’s what I’ve been told to say!’”

Presented Without Comment

Former President Donald Trump, in an interview with Dr. Phil: 

If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California, okay? In other words, if we had an honest vote counter, a really honest vote counter—I do great with the Hispanics, great, I mean, at a level no Republicans ever done—but if we had an honest vote counter, I would win California.

Also Presented Without Comment

BBC: Boy Accidentally Smashes 3,500-Year-Old Jar On Museum Visit

In the Zeitgeist

Stop crying your heart out: The English rock band Oasis is returning for a reunion tour next summer. Fifteen years after a feud between bandmates and brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher caused the band to split, the brothers decided to no longer look back in anger.

Toeing the Company Line

• Why do young men find Trump appealing? Is court packing on the Democratic agenda? What’s happening in Sudan? Kevin was joined by Drucker, John, Mary Katharine Ham, and Grayson to discuss all that and more on last night’s Dispatch Live (🔒). Members who missed the conversation can catch a rerun—video or audio-only—by clicking here. 
• In the newsletters: Nick explored (🔒) why Harris and Trump seem to be moving toward one another on policy. 
• On the podcasts: Jonah is joined on The Remnant by American Enterprise Institute scholar Roger Pielke to discuss energy, climate, and politicized science.
• On the site: Brian Riedl rolls out a report on how to begin addressing the national debt, Sam Raus writes about Nippon Steel and the Appalachian community he grew up in, and Jonah argues that calls for “unity” are nothing more than appeals to power. 

Let Us Know

What questions do you hope Dana Bash asks Kamala Harris and Tim Walz during their interview on Thursday?