Sid and Hillary’s Personal Spy Network, ServerGate

Posted on January 10, 2016January 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

There are only a handful of results of the FBI investigation into Hillary. 1. The DoJ’s Loretta Lynch will give Hillary as pass if there is a criminal referral. 2. Barack Obama will give Hillary full protection under ‘Executive Privilege’ under the excuse of national security. 3. There will be a full blown revolt by the whole intelligence community. 4. Leaks will come out forcing a criminal referral of Hillary Clinton and we could see a Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren ticket.

Hillary’s EmailGate Goes Nuclear

Does the latest release of Hillary’s State Department emails include highly classified U.S. intelligence?

Schlinder: Back in October I told you that Hillary Clinton’s email troubles were anything but over, and that the scandal over her misuse of communications while she was Secretary of State was sure to get worse. Sure enough, EmailGate continues to be a thorn in the side of Hillary’s presidential campaign and may have just entered a new, potentially explosive phase with grave ramifications, both political and legal.

The latest court-ordered dump of her email, just placed online by the State Department, brings more troubles for Team Hillary. This release of over 3,000 pages includes 66 “Unclassified” messages that the State Department subsequently determined actually were classified; however, all but one of those 66 were deemed Confidential, the lowest classification level, while one was found to be Secret, bringing the total of Secret messages discovered so far to seven. In all, 1,340 Hillary emails at State have been reassessed as classified.

There are gems here. It’s hard to miss the irony of Hillary expressing surprise about a State Department staffer using personal email for work, which the Secretary of State noted in her own personal email. More consequential was Hillary’s ordering a staffer to send classified talking points for a coming meeting via a non-secure fax machine, stripped of their classification markings. This appears to be a clear violation of Federal law and the sort of thing that is a career-ender, or worse, for normals. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee termed that July 2011 incident “disturbing,” and so it is to anyone acquainted with U.S. Government laws and regulations regarding the handling of classified material.

Part 1

But the biggest problem may be in a just-released email that has gotten little attention here, but plenty on the other side of the world. An email to Hillary from a close Clinton confidant late on June 8, 2011 about Sudan turns out to have explosive material in it. This message includes a detailed intelligence report from Sid Blumenthal, Hillary’s close friend, confidant, and factotum, who regularly supplied her with information from his private intelligence service. His usual source was Tyler Drumheller, a former CIA senior official and veteran spy-gadfly, who conveniently died just before EmailGate became a serious problem for Hillary’s campaign.

Part 2

However, the uncredited June 8 memo, which Mr. Blumenthal labeled as “Confidential” – his personal classification system, apparently – but which the State Department has labeled Unclassified, doesn’t appear to be from Drumheller, whose assessments were written just like CIA intelligence reports. This is not.

Part 3

Remarkably, the report emailed to Hillary by “sbwhoeop,” which was Mr. Blumenthal’s email handle, explains how Sudan’s government devised a clandestine plan, in coordination with two rebel generals, to secure control of oil reserves in the disputed region of Abyei. This is juicy, front-page stuff, straight out of an action movie, about a region of Africa that’s of high interest to the American and many other governments, and the report is astonishingly detailed.

Part 4

Its information comes from a high-ranking source with direct access to Sudan’s top military and intelligence officials, and Mr. Blumenthal’s write-up repeatedly states the sources – there turn out to be more than one – are well-placed and credible, with excellent access. It’s the usual spytalk boilerplate when you want the reader to understand this is golden information, not just gossip or rumors circulating on the street, what professionals dismiss as “RUMINT.” Needless to add, this is generating a lot of talk in Sudan, where the media is asking about this shady affair – and how Sid Blumenthal, who’s not exactly an old Africa hand, knew all about it.

Part 5

But the most interesting part is that the report describes a conversation “in confidence” that happened on the evening of June 7, just one day before Mr. Blumenthal sent the report to Secretary Clinton. It beggars the imagination to think that Sid’s private intelligence operation, which was just a handful of people, had operators who were well placed in Sudan, with top-level spy access, able to get this secret information, place it in a decently written assessment with proper espionage verbiage, and pass it all back to Washington, DC, inside 24 hours. That would be a feat even for the CIA, which has stations and officers all over Africa.

In fact, the June 8, 2011 Blumenthal report doesn’t read like CIA material at all, in other words human intelligence or HUMINT, but very much like signals intelligence or SIGINT. (For the differences see here). I know what SIGINT reports look like, because I used to write them for the National Security Agency, America’s biggest source of intelligence. SIGINT reports, which I’ve read thousands of, have a very distinct style and flavor to them and Blumenthal’s write-up matches it, right down to the “Source Comments,” which smack very much of NSA reporting and its “house rules.”

But is this an NSA assessment? If so, it would have to be classified at least Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information, a handling caveat that applies to most SIGINT, and quite possibly Top Secret/SCI, the highest normal classification we have. In that case, it was about as far from Unclassified as it’s possible for an email to be.

No surprise, NSA is aflutter this weekend over this strange matter. One Agency official expressed to me “at least 90 percent confidence” that Mr. Blumenthal’s June 8 report was derived from NSA reports, and the Agency ought to be investigating the matter right now.

There are many questions here. How did Sid Blumenthal, who had no position in the U.S. Government in 2011, and hasn’t since Bill Clinton left the White House fifteen years ago, possibly get his hands on such highly classified NSA reporting? Why did he place it an open, non-secure email to Hillary, who after all had plenty of legitimate access, as Secretary of State, to intelligence assessments from all our spy agencies? Moreover, how did the State Department think this was Unclassified and why did it release it to the public?

It’s possible this Blumenthal report did not come from NSA, but perhaps from another, non-American intelligence agency – but whose? If Sid was really able to get top-level intelligence like this for Hillary, using just his shoestring operation, and get it into her hands a day later, with precise information about the high-level conspiracy that was just discussed over in Sudan, the Intelligence Community needs to get him on our payroll stat. He’s a pro at the spy business.

*******

Hillary Clinton was battered with questions by CBS host John Dickerson on Sunday about new revelations from her private email server.

Appearing on Face The Nation, Clinton was asked about ordering an aide to send information through “nonsecure” channels and her hypocritical surprise that another State Department employee was not using a government account at the time.

The Free Beacon reported:

In the June 2011 email exchange, Jake Sullivan, then-Secretary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, discussed forthcoming “TPs,” appearing to refer to talking points, that Clinton was waiting to receive.

“They say they’ve had issues sending secure fax. They’re working on it,” Sullivan wrote of the forthcoming information in an email dated June 17, 2011.

“If they can’t, turn it into nonpaper [with] no identifying heading and send nonsecure,” Clinton wrote Sullivan in response the same day.

“Aren’t you ordering him to violate the laws on handling classified material there?” Dickerson asked.

“No, not all, and as the State Department said just this week, that did not happen, and it never would have happened, because that’s just not the way I treated classified information,” Clinton said. “Headings are not classification notices, and so, oftentimes, we are trying to get the best information we can, and obviously what I’m asking for is whatever can be transmitted, if it doesn’t come through secure, to be transmitted on the unclassified systems. So, no, there is nothing to that, like so much else has been talked about in the last year.”

Dickerson said the email was “striking” because it suggested she knew how to get around restrictions for sending classified information.

“You’re saying there was never an instance, any other instance, in which you did that?” Dickerson asked.

“No, and it wasn’t sent,” Clinton said. “This is another instance where what is common practice, namely, I need information. I had some points I had to make, and I was waiting for a secure fax that could get me the whole picture, but oftentimes there’s a lot of information that isn’t at all classified, so whatever information can be appropriately transmitted, unclassified, often was. That’s true for every agency in the government and everybody who does business with the government.”

Clinton said the “important point” was she had “great confidence“ she wasn’t in breach of government regulations on classification.

“In fact, as the State Department has said, there was no transmission of any classified information, so it’s another effort by people looking for something to throw against the wall … to see what sticks, but there’s no ‘there’ there,” she said.

Dickerson wasn’t finished, though, pointing to a 2011 email showing Clinton expressing surprise that another State Department staffer wasn’t using a government account, even while she was flouting rules by using a private email to do business.

That was “what you were doing,” Dickerson said, so “why was that a surprise to you?”

“Well, I emailed two people on their government accounts, because I knew that all of that would be part of the government system, and indeed, the vast majority of all my emails are in the government systems, so that’s how I conducted the business,” she said. “I was very clear about emailing anything having to do with business to people on their government accounts.”

In other words, Clinton did not answer the question about her fairly blatant hypocrisy.

State Dept Covered up Hillary’s Email Server for Years

Posted on January 7, 2016January 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

State Department covered up Hillary’s private email server for years even though ‘dozens of senior officials’ knew about it, says scathing inspector general report

Critical report from State Department’s own internal watchdog details abuse of Freedom of Information Act while Clinton ran the agency
177 of the 240 FOIA requests lodged for information about Hillary while she was secretary of state are still pending three years after she left office
State told a liberal group it had no information about Hillary’s emails in 2013 even though many senior officials were emailing her on her private server

The U.S. State Department told a watchdog group in 2013 that it didn’t have any information about former secretary Hillary Clinton’s emails, even though ‘dozens of senior officials’ knew she was using a private server for all her electronic communications.
A report released Thursday by the agency’s inspector general – a powerful and impartial internal investigator – described a cavalier culture about transparency inside Clinton’s agency, saying that 177 requests for documents about Clinton are still ‘pending’ nearly three years after she left office.
The Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to respond to requests for information within 20 business days.
The botched FOIA request, filed in December 2012 just before Clinton left office, specifically asked whether or not Clinton used an email account other than one hosted at state.gov.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal group, was reacting to news that former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson had used an alias – ‘Richard Windsor’ – to send and receive emails in a way that couldn’t be tied to her when FOIA requests came in.
In May 2013 the State Department responded to CREW’s request, saying it had ‘no records’ related to what the group asked for.
By then, Clinton had spent four years emailing department employees from her private home-brew account, but had never turned the messages over to the State Department.
That CREW request was filed in December 2012, just before Mrs. Clinton left office, and specifically asked whether Mrs. Clinton used anon-State.gov email account for government business.
‘At the time the request was received, dozens of senior officials throughout the Department, including members of Secretary Clinton’s immediate staff, exchanged emails with the Secretary using the personal accounts she used to conduct official business,’ the Office of Inspector General concluded.
‘OIG found evidence that the Secretary’s then-Chief of Staff was informed of the request at the time it was received and subsequently tasked staff to follow up. However, OIG found no evidence to indicate that any of these senior officials reviewed the search results or approved the response to CREW.’
The employees responsible for searching the State Department’s records, the report says, never ‘searched any email records, even though the request clearly encompassed emails.’
State has received an unprecedented crush of requests for Clinton-related documents – 240 in all, a number bigger than those related to secretaries Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and John Kerry combined.
But the inspector general found that the agency cut the number of people processing those FOIA requests as they poured in.
Clinton’s emails sat on her private server for years until the State Department asked her in 2014 to turn them over. She deleted more than half of the messages, calling them ‘personal’ in nature, before complying.
In the meantime, however, her emails were out of reach when federal employees searched for records that might satisfy FOIA requests.

Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said Thursday in a statement that ‘the FOIA process at the State Department is broken, and has been for several years.’

The agency’s breakdowns in performance, he said, ‘are particularly troubling in light of the report’s revelation that former Secretary Clinton’s exclusive use of a non-government email server was known to senior staff at the department, but unknown to the FOIA office, thus causing the FOIA office to provide false information about the Secretary’s use of email.’

The FOIA law, first enacted in 1966 before the advent of personal computers, ‘neither authorizes nor requires agencies to search for Federal records in personal email accounts maintained on private servers or through commercial providers,’ the inspector general report explained.

State Department employees have ‘no way to independently locate Federal records from such accounts unless employees take steps to preserve official emails in Department recordkeeping systems.’

Current law requires State Department employees to forward work-related personal emails to their official accounts within 20 days of sending or receiving them, so the agency has a record of them.

But Clinton never had a ‘state.gov’ account where her emails could be sent.

A federal judge ultimately ordered the State Department to collect her emails, vet them for classified material, and release them on a monthly schedule.

So far intelligence officials have had to block the release of portions of more than 1,200 emails because they contained classified information.

Russia’s Cyber Warfare, Threat Matrix to USA

Posted on January 7, 2016January 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

Cyber Warfare

The CipherBrief Piret Pernik

The Russian government is considered to be one of the most advanced cyber actors globally, with highly sophisticated cyber capabilities on par with the other major cyber powers. Open source information about Russian cyber programs and funding is scarce, but an ultimate goal of the government is to gain information superiority, both in peacetime and in military conflicts.

According to U.S. intelligence, Russia is a top nation state threat to American interests. Russian armed forces have been establishing a cyber command and a specialized branch to carry out computer network operations. It is likely that Russia aspires to integrate cyber into all military services. For example, the Russian government news agency TASS has reported that strategic missile forces are establishing special cyber units, and according to Russian general Yuri Kuznetsov, cyber defense units in the Russian armed forces will acquire operational capabilities by 2017.

Researchers from China have observed that Russian armed forces have rehearsed both attacking an adversary’s cyber targets and defending themselves against cyber attacks. It is believed that Russia, in addition to its espionage over the last decade against Western governments, is conducting its own active research and development of cyber weapons. It has also been alleged that FSB develops sophisticated computer malware programs.

However, despite a belief shared by many that Russia possesses capabilities to conduct cyber network attacks with physical effects equivalent to a kinetic attack, in the recent hybrid conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine, only a limited use of cyber attacks has been recorded. No physical damage, or disruption of critical infrastructure or weapons has been reported, but there is evidence that Russian actors are capable of taking down services. For example, Russian APT28 (Pawn Storm/Sofacy/Tsar Team) shut off transmissions of French TV5 Monde for 18 hours, and its cyber attacks allegedly resulted in significant damage to the channel’s infrastructure. Moreover, the Ukrainian security service (SBU) reported in December 2015 that Russian security services have planted malware into the networks of Ukrainian regional power companies. Power outages are reported to have occurred shortly thereafter. However, due to the lack of investigation and evidence, it is not possible to attribute these outages to any actors.

The majority of analysts concede that Russian cyber attacks have been closely coordinated with military operations both in Georgia and Ukraine. As part of their information warfare campaign, Russians used electronic warfare (EW) and signals intelligence in both theatres. Much less known is the fact that in March 2014, Russian EW forces rerouted internet traffic from Crimean servers to Russian servers, most likely for eavesdropping purposes. There is also consensus that the effects of Russian cyber attacks have been limited – in Georgia, cyber attacks created a military advantage only at the operational and tactical levels, and in Ukraine, Russian cyber attacks had only a short term tactical effect. Hence in both theatres, strategic effects (diminishing opponent’s will or capacity to resist) and military effects (degrading performance of opponent’s military) were not achieved.

The most sophisticated cyber capabilities used in these conflicts have been cyber espionage campaigns sponsored or supported by the Russian government. For example, security companies have gathered evidence indicating that APT28 (which targeted the Georgian government), and APT29 (whose targets are consistent with Russian government interests in regards to the Ukrainian conflict) were both sponsored by the Russian government. Russian APTs possess sophisticated cyber capabilities (e.g. ability to exploit zero-day vulnerabilities, target mobile devices, evade detection, and hide operational command and control). Furthermore, a prominent cyber espionage campaign against the Ukrainian military and government officials, Operation Armageddon, has been attributed by SBU to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). This has been corroborated by technical evidence from an independent security company.

In addition to gathering intelligence, some Russian APTs are able to remotely access industrial control systems (ICS). A cyber espionage group Sandworm (that has been active in Ukraine) uses BlackEnergy malware that is believed to also be embedded into critical infrastructure in the U.S. It is interesting to note that four Russian APTs have been using particular types of malware, which suggests links between these actors.

Russia is developing asymmetric measures to offset the West’s technological and conventional edge. While total information superiority has not been attained, the final outcome of the cyber build up is uncertain, and it will continue to be a topic of concern for businesses and nations for the foreseeable future.

Escalation by N. Korea with Hydrogen Bomb Launch

Posted on January 6, 2016January 6, 2016 by Denise Simon

Seismic event in country’s northeast measures 5.1 on Richter scale

North Korea nuclear brief

– Around 10 nuclear warheads
– Conducted 3 tests
– Maximum missile range of 4,000 km
– Seeks range to reach US

Earthquake, possible nuclear test, in North Korea

WASHINGTON — North Korea declared on Tuesday that it had detonated its first hydrogen bomb.

North Korea Says It Has Detonated Its First Hydrogen Bomb

NYT: The assertion, if true, would dramatically escalate the nuclear challenge from one of the world’s most isolated and dangerous states.

In an announcement, North Korea said that the test had been a “complete success.” But it was difficult to tell whether the statement was true. North Korea has made repeated claims about its nuclear capabilities that outside analysts have greeted with skepticism.

“This is the self-defensive measure we have to take to defend our right to live in the face of the nuclear threats and blackmail by the United States and to guarantee the security of the Korean Peninsula,” a female North Korean announcer said, reading the statement on Central Television, the state-run network.

The North’s announcement came about an hour after detection devices around the world had picked up a 5.1 seismic event along the country’s northeast coast.

It may be weeks or longer before detectors sent aloft by the United States and other powers can determine what kind of test was conducted. Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in a statement that American officials “cannot confirm these claims at this time.”

But he said the White House expected “North Korea to abide by its international obligations and commitments.”

The tremors occurred at or near the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where three previous tests have been conducted over the past nine years.

In recent weeks, the North’s aggressive young leader, Kim Jong-un, has boasted that the country has finally developed the technology to build a thermonuclear weapon — far more powerful than the low-yield devices tested first in 2006, then in different configurations months after President Obama took office in 2009 and again in 2013.

The North Korean announcement said the test had been personally ordered by Mr. Kim, only three days after he signed an order on Sunday for North Korean engineers to press ahead with the attempt.

The announcer added that for the North to give up its nuclear weapons while Washington’s “hostile policy” continued would be “as foolish as for a hunter to lay down his rifle while a ferocious wolf is charging at him.”

Satellite photographs analyzed by 38 North, a Washington research institute that follows the North’s nuclear activity closely, showed evidence of a new tunnel being dug in recent weeks.

Another test by itself would not be that remarkable. The North is believed to have enough plutonium for eight to 12 weapons, and several years ago it revealed a new program to enrich uranium, the other fuel for a nuclear weapon.

But if the North Korean claim about a hydrogen bomb is true, this test was of a different, and significantly more threatening, nature.

In recent weeks, Mr. Kim, believed to be in his early 30s and determined to accelerate the nuclear weapons program that his grandfather and his father promoted to give the broken country leverage and influence, boasted that North Korea had finally developed the technology to build a thermonuclear weapon.

When Mr. Kim first made the claim, in December, the White House expressed considerable skepticism, and several other experts say that the accomplishment would be a stretch, though not impossible.

Outside analysts took the claim as the latest of several hard-to-verify assertions that the isolated country has made about its nuclear capabilities. But some also said that although North Korea did not yet have H-bomb capability, it might be developing and preparing to test a boosted fission bomb, more powerful than a traditional nuclear weapon.

Weapon designers can easily boost the destructive power of an atom bomb by putting at its core a small amount of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen.

Lee Sang-cheol, the top nonproliferation official at the South Korean Defense Ministry, told a forum in Seoul last month that although Mr. Kim’s hydrogen bomb boasts might be propaganda for his domestic audience, there was a “high likelihood” that North Korea might have been developing such a boosted fission weapon.

And according to a paper obtained by the South Korean news agency Yonhap last week, the Chemical, Biological and Radiological Command of the South Korean military “did not rule out the possibility” of a boosted fission bomb test by the North, although it added it “does not believe it is yet capable of directly testing hydrogen bombs.”

For the Obama administration, which only six months ago defused the Iranian nuclear threat with an agreement to limit its capabilities for at least a decade, the announcement rekindles another major nuclear challenge — one that the administration has never found a way to manage.

The North has refused to enter the kind of negotiations that Iran did. Unlike Iran, which denies it has interest in nuclear weapons, the North has forged ahead with tests and told the West and China it would never give them up.

Mr. Obama, determined not to give the country new concessions, has neither acknowledged that North Korea is now a nuclear power nor negotiated with it. The White House has said that it would only restart talks with the North if the goal — agreed to by all parties — was a “denuclearized Korean Peninsula.”

China has also failed in its efforts to reign in Mr. Kim. He has never been invited to Beijing since his father’s death, and Chinese officials are fairly open in their expressions of contempt for him. But they have not abandoned him, or cut off the aid that keeps the country afloat.

With the test conducted Tuesday night — Wednesday in North Korea — three of the North’s four explosions will have occurred during Mr. Obama’s time in office.

Combined with the North’s gradually increasing missile technology, its nuclear program poses a growing threat to the region — though it is still not clear the North knows how to mount a nuclear weapon on one of its missiles.

The test is bound to figure in the American presidential campaign, where several candidates have already cited the North’s nuclear experimentation as evidence of American weakness — though they have not prescribed alternative strategies for choking off the program.

The United States did not develop its first thermonuclear weapons — commonly known as hydrogen bombs — until 1952, seven years after the first and only use of nuclear weapons in wartime, the weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Russia, China and other powers soon followed suit.

Iran unveils second underground missile site

Posted on January 5, 2016January 5, 2016 by Denise Simon

Oh, wonder if the Obama will give Tehran an Academy award for Iran’s theatrics, behavior and violations.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran unveiled a new underground missile depot on Tuesday with state television showing Emad precision-guided missiles in store which the United States says can take a nuclear warhead and violate a 2010 U.N. Security Council resolution.

The defiant move to publicize Iran’s missile program seemed certain to irk the United States as it plans to dismantle nearly all sanctions on Iran under a breakthrough nuclear agreement.

Tasnim news agency and state television video said the underground facility, situated in mountains and run by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, was inaugurated by the speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani. Release of one-minute video followed footage of another underground missile depot last October.

The United States says the Emad, which Iran tested in October, would be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and U.S. officials say Washington will respond to the Emad tests with fresh sanctions against Iranian individuals and businesses linked to the program.

Iran’s boasting about its missile capabilities are a challenge for U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration as the United States and European Union plan to dismantle nearly all international sanctions against Tehran under the nuclear deal reached in July.

Iran has abided by the main terms of the nuclear deal, which require it to give up material that world powers feared could be used to make an atomic weapon and accept other restrictions on its nuclear program.

But President Hassan Rouhani ordered his defense minister last week to expand the missile program.

The Iranian missiles under development boast much improved accuracy over the current generation, which experts say is likely to improve their effectiveness with conventional warheads.

The Revolutionary Guards’ second-in-command, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, said last Friday that Iran’s depots and underground facilities are so full that they do not know how to store their new missiles.

***

Iranian-Saudi Tensions May Distract Iran’s Efforts to Attack Israel

InvestigativeProject: The dramatic escalation in the Iranian-Saudi Arabian rivalry poses critical potential ramifications for Israeli national security, according to the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror.

Amidror – also formerly the head of Israeli military intelligence – told the Jerusalem Post that he expects the Iranian-Saudi crisis to prolong the Syrian civil war, leading both sides to increase support for their respective proxies in that country.

Such a scenario can intensify Israeli concerns of unpredictable and radical terrorist organizations consolidating bases of operations on the Jewish state’s northern borders.

However, other analysts view Syrian fragmentation as a strategic benefit – at least temporarily removing Syria as a conventional military threat and forcing Iranian proxies, including Hizballah, to divert resources and manpower to the Syrian front instead of conducting major attacks against Israel.

According to this perspective, Iran will also be more preoccupied with confronting Saudi Arabia in other regional theaters – including Bahrain, Yemen, and Iraq.

“That doesn’t meant they won’t do anything [toward Israel]. This doesn’t mean, for instance, that this will influence Hezbollah [backed by Iran] not to carry out revenge attacks against Israel. But it means that whenever there is something, there will be someone in Iran who will say that they have other problems to think about; we will not be the only issue they will be focusing on,” Amidror said.

This assessment supports other analyses that believe Hizballah failed to effectively retaliate to Israel’s reported assassination of arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar. On Monday, Hizballah detonated a large explosive on the Israel-Lebanon border, targeting two military vehicles. Israel said it suffered no casualties. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) followed with artillery fire against Hizballah targets in Lebanon, but limited its response to avoid escalating tensions.

The relatively weak show of force from Hizballah suggests that the terrorist organization continues to be bogged down in the Syrian civil war, unwilling and incapable of seriously challenging Israel at the moment. Fighting in Syria has cost Hizballah as much as a quarter of its fighters, Israeli military affairs journalist Yossi Melman points out.

Those losses “neutralized the Shi’ite-Lebanese organization’s ability to act against Israel,” he writes. At the least, it makes the prospect of opening a second front with Israel less appealing. Hizballah still enjoys an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets it can fire at Israel when it opts for a confrontation.

Even though Hizballah and other Iranian proxies continue to enhance their presence in the Golan Heights for the purposes of targeting Israel, recent Iranian-Saudi tensions will likely force terrorist organizations at Iran’s behest to focus more of their efforts and resources on other fronts beyond the Jewish state.