Among the documents found was an Arabic-Hebrew phrasebook with Hebrew words and phrases transliterated into Arabic characters. The pamphlet was found in the possession of the Jerusalem Battalion of the Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, and was apparently distributed to terrorists who participated in the October 7, 2023 attack and massacre.  Its contents are shocking and testify to the terrorists’ intentions and plans, including attacking and humiliating civilians, stealing their vehicles, separating men, women and children, capturing and murdering civilians. Some of the Hebrew phrases are, “Take off your pants,” “Where is your weapon?” “I will kill you,” “You are a prisoner,” “Where is the head of the kibbutz?” “We have hostages,” “We will kill the captives,” “Where are the car keys?” “Men are here,” “Women are here,” “The children are here,” “Take off your clothes,” “Where is the commander?”

[img]https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/app/uploads/2024/01/020_24_01-1.jpg" />

A document seized by the IDF in one of the Hamas strongholds in the Gaza Strip revealed details of the preparations made by Hamas operatives prior to the terrorist attack and massacre in the cities, towns and villages near the Gaza Strip, indicating that the planning of the attack included locating the shelters to deliberately harm as well as kidnap civilians, including women, children and the elderly. The document includes a follow-up report on a platoon exercise carried out by Hamas operatives in preparation for the massacre as well as a review, apparently written by one of the commanders, about the operatives’ performance during the exercise. Among the criticisms it was written, “No thorough operation was carried out to increase the number of hostages (number of women, children, men…),” indicating that the terrorists planned to kidnap civilians.

WSJ News Exclusive | U.S. Secretly Alerted Iran Ahead of Islamic State Terrorist Attack

WASHINGTON—The U.S. secretly warned Iran that Islamic State was preparing to carry out the terrorist attack early this month that killed more than 80 Iranians in a pair of coordinated suicide bombings, U.S. officials said.

The confidential alert came after the U.S. acquired intelligence that Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, ISIS-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, was plotting to attack Iran, they said.

American officials said the information passed to Iran was specific enough about the location and sufficiently timely that it might have proved useful to Tehran in thwarting the attack on Jan. 3 or at least mitigating the casualty toll.

Iran, however, failed to prevent the suicide bombings in the southeastern town of Kerman, which targeted a crowd that was commemorating the anniversary of the death of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds force. Soleimani was killed in a January 2020 drone attack near the Baghdad airport ordered by then-President Donald Trump.

“Prior to ISIS’s terrorist attack on January 3, 2024, in Kerman, Iran, the U.S. government provided Iran with a private warning that there was a terrorist threat within Iranian borders,” a U.S. official said, using an acronym for Islamic State. “The U.S. government followed a longstanding ‘duty to warn’  policy that has been implemented across administrations to warn governments against potential lethal threats. We provide these warnings in part because we do not want to see innocent lives lost in terror attacks.”

Officials with Iran’s mission to the United Nations didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Despite the American warning, some Iranian hard-liners have suggested that Islamic State perpetrators were linked to the U.S. and Israel. At a ceremony in Kerman honoring the victims, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, the most senior Revolutionary Guard commander said Islamic State “has disappeared nowadays,” arguing the jihadists “only act as mercenaries” for U.S. and Israeli interests.

U.S. officials declined to say what channels were used to warn Iran or divulge details of what was passed.  Nor did they say if this was the first time Washington has passed such a warning  to the Iranian regime.

Iranian officials didn’t respond to the U.S. about the warning, said one American official. It wasn’t clear why the Iranians failed to thwart or blunt the attack, several officials said.

The U.S. routinely shares warnings of potential terrorist activity with allies and partners. In some cases, it also warns  potential adversaries. In December 2019, Russian President Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked President Trump for sharing intelligence that helped the Kremlin thwart a plot in  St. Petersburg.

The bombings in Kerman, which killed 84 Iranians and wounded hundreds more, were the bloodiest terrorist attack inside Iran since the current government took over in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi honored the victims of the suicide bombings.Photo: Iranian Presidency/Zuma Press
Islamic State claimed responsibility after the attack, saying that two of its operatives had detonated explosive belts. The ideology of Islamic State, a hard-line Sunni group, considers Shiite Muslims, a majority of Iran’s population, to be apostates. Islamic State and Iran have previously clashed.

ISIS-K first emerged in Afghanistan in 2015 after Islamic State militants declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. It was responsible for the bombing near the Kabul airport in August 2021 that killed 13 American troops and about 170 Afghan civilians as the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan.

The group has been a mortal enemy of the Taliban and had been greatly weakened during the American military presence in Afghanistan by attacks from U.S. and Afghan government forces and by the Taliban themselves.

With the departure of U.S. forces, ISIS-K has grown in strength. U.S. officials say it is one of the most dangerous groups in the region, eclipsing al Qaeda, with ambitions to strike targets in the West.

Biden administration officials confirmed soon after the Jan. 3 attack in Iran that they had information that ISIS-K was the culprit. But they didn’t reveal that the U.S. had advance intelligence about the attack or that they had tipped off the Iranians.

A U.S. intelligence community directive known as “duty to warn” requires spy agencies to warn intended victims, both U.S. citizens and non-Americans, if they are the target of a terrorist attack. There are exceptions, including if the intended victims are themselves terrorists or criminals, or if issuing a warning would endanger U.S. or allied government personnel, or intelligence or military operations.

In the case of Iran, Washington alerted an adversary that has armed multiple proxies, including Yemen’s Houthis as well as militias in Syria and Iraq that have carried out more than 150 attacks on American forces since mid-October.

One former U.S. official said there could be a number of reasons for Washington to warn Iran. In addition to protecting innocent civilians, such a warning might be intended to prevent Tehran from responding to the attack in a way that could create further instability in the region and potentially undermine U.S. interests.  

Other former officials said that providing such a warning might also be a way to spur dialogue on foreign policy issues.

“With Iran, it gets gray,” said former CIA officer Douglas London, because the U.S. has designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization and yet most of the intended victims of the ISIS-K attack were civilians.

London, who worked on counterterrorism including duty-to-warn issues at the spy agency, said the decision to tip off Iran was likely made by senior officials at the White House and CIA. Passing the intelligence, he said, allowed the U.S. to take the moral high ground and could also be intended to encourage Iran to be receptive to dealing with Washington on some security matters.

Within the U.S. government, the warning to Iran has been a carefully guarded secret, a U.S. official said, suggesting that Washington was trying to minimize the risk that its contact with Tehran, even indirect, might be disclosed.

The ISIS-K bombings have posed a conundrum for Iran’s hard-liners, who have  portrayed the U.S. and Israel as the regime’s enduring foes.

After ISIS-K took responsibility for the attack, Iran on Jan. 15 fired four Kheibar Shekan ballistic missiles at targets Tehran claimed were linked to Islamic State in Syria’s Idlib province.  Fired from Iran’s Khuzestan Province, it was Iran’s longest missile strike, according to the IRGC Aerospace force commander.  

An investigation by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, published on Jan. 10, reported that the attack was carried out by a team of Tajik operatives based in Afghanistan—where the local branch of Islamic State’s ISIS-Khorasan Province is based.

Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, said that the ISIS-K attack was a humiliating setback for Tehran, whose strategy calls for training and equipping proxies across the Middle East so it doesn’t have to fight its foes at home.

“ISIS operatives were able to come in and attack in the birthplace of Soleimani,” Vatanka said. “The headlines wrote themselves: the Islamic Republic cannot protect the Iranian homeland.”

Israel Builds Buffer Zone Along Gaza Border, Risking New Rift With U.S.

TEL AVIV—Beginning last November, an Israeli soldier and members of his reserve unit worked day after day in a northern section of the Gaza Strip to create a wasteland.

Their orders were to clear a 1-kilometer-wide area along the border, the soldier said, as part of an Israeli plan to construct a security zone just inside Gaza—to which Palestinians would be barred entry.

With bulldozers and other heavy equipment, they leveled greenhouses and other structures, filled Hamas militants’ tunnel shafts and plowed under farm fields.

“Everything has been flattened,” the soldier said. “It was mostly agriculture. Now it’s a military zone, a complete no man’s land.”

To Israeli officials, the buffer zone is a critical security measure in their plan to demilitarize Gaza and assure Israelis that they can return safely to the towns and communities near the border that were evacuated after the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people.

The project is a source of growing frustration for U.S. officials, who say they first voiced their opposition to such plans shortly after the Gaza war began and have watched with growing dismay as Israel has pushed ahead anyway.

U.S. officials warn that turning the border along the 25-mile-long Gaza Strip into a no man’s land would deepen Palestinian fears that Israel intends to occupy all or part of the crowded enclave, and make it harder to persuade Arab governments to help rebuild the shattered territory after the fighting stops.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced opposition to the concept Tuesday after the Israeli military said 21 soldiers had been killed during demolitions of buildings while attempting to create a security zone.

“We’ve been very clear about our opposition to the forced displacement of people. We’ve been very clear about maintaining in effect the territorial integrity of Gaza,” Blinken told reporters.

But, in a sign of the difficulty the U.S. faces in pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to halt the project, Blinken indicated Washington might accept a zone temporarily, saying questions remained about “transitional arrangements” when Israeli military operations slow.

Israeli officials agree the buffer zone could be temporary, but they have given no timetable for how long it might be necessary. Nor have they publicly described the size of the planned strip and other details.

Some sections might be one-kilometer wide but that could vary, depending on the topography and how close Palestinian communities are to the border, according to a former Israeli official familiar with the plans.

In some areas, Israel’s military might not remove all structures in the zone, as they already have in some places, two current officials and the former official said. Israeli officials haven’t said what would happen to people who enter the zone.

Israel already had a no-go zone for Gazans near sections of the border before Oct. 7, but the restrictions weren’t always enforced. Jonathan Conricus, a former Israeli military spokesman, said Hamas was able to send operatives close to the security fence disguised as protesters, allowing them to conduct reconnaissance in preparation for the Oct. 7 attack.

A kilometer-wide zone likely wouldn’t prevent future rocket launches or drone attacks from within Gaza by Hamas fighters and other militants who survive the war, analysts said.

Asked about the clearance of areas along the border, Israel’s military said in a statement that it was removing “terror infrastructure,” calling the work “imperative…in order to implement a defense plan that will provide improved security in Southern Israel.”

The work is already well advanced in some areas, according to a study by Adi Ben Nun, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who examined satellite imagery since the beginning of the war for an Israeli Channel 12 report on the project. The Israeli military appears to have demolished 1,072 out of 2,824 structures located one kilometer or less from the border, he said. Most of the buildings were residential, according to his study.

The most built-up area of the potential buffer zone is near Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza and where Israeli troops have been operating for over a month. There 67%, or 704 of 1,048, buildings have been demolished within one kilometer of the border, the study found.

Houthis Attack U.S. Warship as China Urges Iran to Rein In Rebels

A Yemeni rebel group launched missiles at a U.S. destroyer and a British tanker, as China pressed Iran to lean on the Houthis to halt their attacks in the Red Sea that have sent global shipping costs surging.

The Marlin Luanda, a fuel tanker sailing on behalf of trading giant Trafigura Group, was struck by a missile in the Gulf of Aden, in one of the most significant attacks yet by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on an oil-carrying vessel.

“Firefighting equipment on board is being deployed to suppress and control the fire caused in one cargo tank on the starboard side,” a Trafigura spokesperson said in a statement. “We remain in contact with the vessel and are monitoring the situation carefully.”

In conversations in Tehran and Beijing, Chinese officials asked their Iranian counterparts to rein in their Yemeni ally, an Iranian official and an Iranian government adviser said. Iran officials told the Chinese that they weren’t in control of the group and that turmoil in the region would end if Israel agreed to a cease-fire, the Iranians said.

China hasn’t commented directly on its talks with Iran, but a spokesman for its foreign ministry in Beijing said Friday the country had “actively deescalated the situation, called for an end to the disturbance to civilian ships, and urged relevant parties to avoid fueling the tensions.”

A spokesman for the Iranian delegation at the United Nations didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Administration officials have asked Beijing to convey messages to Iran about avoiding a broader conflict in the region, since the Oct. 7 start of Israel’s war in Gaza. The U.S. says Iran supplies the Houthis with weapons, funding and other support. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met in Thailand Thursday with Beijing’s top foreign-policy official, Wang Yi, to discuss the matter.

On Friday, a U.S. destroyer, the USS Carney, shot down a ballistic missile fired toward it from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen, the Pentagon said, marking the second time the U.S. has announced that the group has targeted one of its military vessels.

In each instance, the rebels have targeted Navy destroyers within days of coalition attacks aimed at Houthi sites. The strikes by the U.S. and U.K. are intended to weaken the group and secure ships passing through the Gulf of Aden and Rea Sea.

The exchange of fire caused no damages or casualties, U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, said in a tweet.

Yahya Saree, a Houthi spokesman, in a statement confirmed the group had fired on the Marlin Luanda “in support of the injustice against the Palestinian people and as a response to the American-British aggression on our country.”

The ship’s managing company, Oceonix Services in London, couldn’t be reached for comment.

The U.S. is trying to stop the attacks by the Iranian-backed group without escalating tensions in an already volatile region. The Houthis have said their campaign will continue until Israel halts the fighting in Gaza and humanitarian aid is let in. The Houthis may be targeting U.S. Navy ships shortly after major strikes to demonstrate they haven’t been stopped, U.S. officials said.

China is Iran’s largest oil buyer, giving it leverage on the heavily-sanctioned Islamic Republic. Last year, Beijing also brokered a deal to normalize relations between Tehran and Saudi Arabia after years of tensions.

The Houthis began attacking ships traveling through the Red Sea and on the Gulf of Aden at the end of November in what they said was a response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, rattling global markets and upending international shipping routes.

Though eager to protect global shipping, the Biden administration has been reluctant to respond too forcefully to the Houthis lest it trigger a war in the region, in part because of the group’s backing from Tehran, Western security officials and advisers have said.

The U.S. led a coalition that has launched two major assaults on Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen, including one last week, while the U.S. alone has launched at least six other limited strikes. Targets included rocket launchers, missile depots, an underground weapons storage facility, warehouses, drones used by the Houthis and radar, missile and air surveillance sites, some of them near the capital San’a, U.S., British and Houthi officials have said.

Days after the first major coalition assault, which targeted more than a dozen sites, the USS Laboon, another American destroyer, shot down an antiship cruise missile launched by the Houthis, Central Command said. There were no reports of damages on the Laboon or casualties, the Pentagon said then.

The U.S. has so far refused to say the impact of the coalition assaults on the Houthis except to say they have had “good effects,” destroying roughly 30% of Houthi capabilities. Despite that, the Houthis have continued launching attacks on commercial ships passing, more than 30 in all. And the Houthis have been defiant after each strike, saying that they would keep attacking ships.

Houthi fighters overthrew the Yemeni government in 2014, leading Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations to mount a military campaign against the rebels. Months of talks between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have produced a road map that the U.S. hopes could lead to resolution of the conflict. But those talks have since stalled.

Privately, U.S. defense officials have said that strikes alone are unlikely to deter the Houthis, who both have survived a decade of war and, since their attacks on nearby waters, enjoyed an elevated status in a region angered by Israel’s war in Gaza.

Biden administration officials have said that Beijing is pressing the Iranians, but they don’t know the exact substance of those conversations. The U.S. says Iran supplies the Houthis with weapons, funding and other support.

The Carney has come under Houthi attacks in the past, but in those instances, the U.S. has stopped short of saying its military ships were the targets. And some of those strikes have come as the destroyer responded to distress calls from nearby commercial ships also under Houthi attack. In December, the Carney struck a drone that was headed toward the destroyer, “although its specific target is not clear,” the Pentagon said at the time.

Shortly after that shootdown, the M/V Unity Explorer, a Bahamas-flagged bulk cargo ship, came under ballistic-missile attack and sent a distress call, leading the Carney to move toward the ship in response, Central Command said.

As the Carney was assessing the damage on the commercial ship, it spotted a second drone operating nearby and shot it down, Central Command said.