“President Joe Biden held a ‘direct,’ 30-minute phone call with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, their first conversation in almost two months and a chance to confer over Israel’s planned response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack,” CNN reports.

“Israeli leaders still have not briefed the United States on specific details of their military response to last week’s ballistic missile attack by Iran, even after American military officials have discussed possibly supporting Israeli retaliation with intelligence or airstrikes of their own,” NBC News reports.

“That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!”

— President Biden, quoted by CNN in Bob Woodward’s new book, War.

“The Biden administration has in recent weeks grown increasingly distrustful of what the Israeli government says about its military and diplomatic plans in the multi-front war it is fighting,” Axios reports.

“The worsening trust crisis is magnified by Israel’s planned retaliation against Iran for its massive missile attack, which requires coordination with the U.S. in case Iran responds.”

“Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer known as the ‘Merchant of Death,’ walked out of a U.S. jail almost two years ago in a trade with Moscow for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Now he is back in business, trying to broker the sale of small arms to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants.”

Washington Post: “The AR924 pager was slightly bulky but rugged, built to survive battlefield conditions. It boasted a waterproof Taiwanese design and an oversized battery that could operate for months without charging. Best of all, there was no risk that the pagers could ever be tracked by Israel’s intelligence services. Hezbollah’s leaders were so impressed they bought 5,000 of them and began handing them out to mid-level fighters and support personnel in February.”

“None of the users suspected they were wearing an ingeniously crafted Israeli bomb. And even after thousands of the devices exploded in Lebanon and Syria, few appreciated the pagers’ most sinister feature: a two-step de-encryption procedure that ensured most users would be holding the pager with both hands when it detonated.”

“As many as 3,000 Hezbollah officers and members — most of them rear-echelon figures — were killed or maimed, along with an unknown number of civilians, according to Israeli, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials, when Israel’s Mossad intelligence service triggered the devices remotely on Sept. 17.”

Foreign Affairs: “Amid a growing bipartisan consensus that the United States needs to do more to contain China, much of the policy debate in Washington has focused on China’s economic and technological clout. Now, given China’s economic problems—high youth unemployment, a troubled real estate market, increased government debt, an aging society, and lower-than-expected growth—some scholars and policymakers hope that Beijing will be forced to constrain its defense spending. Others go so far as to say the Chinese military is overrated, contending that it will not challenge U.S. dominance any time soon.”

“But these assessments fail to recognize how much China’s defense industrial base is growing. Despite the country’s current economic challenges, its defense spending is soaring and its defense industry is on a wartime footing. Indeed, China is rapidly developing and producing weapons systems designed to deter the United States and, if deterrence fails, to emerge victorious in a great-power war.”

Arash Azizi: “This is a terrifying moment for Iran. Khamenei has long pursued what he calls a ‘no peace, no war’ strategy: Iran supports regional militias opposed to Western interests and the Jewish state but avoids actually getting into a war. The approach was always untenable.”

“But Iran is not ready for an all-out war: Its economically battered society does not share its leaders’ animus toward Israel, and its military capabilities don’t even begin to match Israel’s sophisticated arsenal. Iran lacks significant air-defense capabilities on its own, and Russia has not leapt to complement them.”

Said a source in close to the Iranian military: “We don’t have a fucking air force… I don’t know what they are thinking.”

“Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Hezbollah leader Syyed Hassan Nasrallah to flee Lebanon days before he was killed in an Israeli strike and is now deeply worried about Israeli infiltration of senior government ranks in Tehran,” Reuters reports.

“Iran’s fears for the safety of Khamenei and the loss of trust, within both Hezbollah and Iran’s establishment and between them, emerged in the conversations with 10 sources for this story, who described a situation that could complicate the effective functioning of Iran’s Axis of Resistance alliance of anti-Israel irregular armed groups.”

“The long-feared ‘wider war’ in the Middle East is here,” the New York Times reports.

“For the last 360 days, since the images of the slaughter of about 1,200 people in Israel last Oct. 7 flashed around the world, President Biden has warned at every turn against allowing a terrorist attack by Hamas to spread into a conflict with Iran’s other proxy, Hezbollah, and ultimately with Iran itself.”

“Now, after Israel assassinated the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, and began a ground invasion of Lebanon, and after Iran retaliated on Tuesday by launching nearly 200 missiles at Israel, it has turned into one of the region’s most dangerous moments since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.”

“The main questions now are how much the conflict might escalate and whether the United States will get more directly involved.”

“President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill allowing criminal suspects to avoid prosecution by enlisting in Russia’s military,” Bloomberg reports.

“Iran made a big mistake tonight – and will pay for it.”

— Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, quoted by the Times of Israel.

“Iran on Tuesday evening fired missiles on Israel, an attack that could spark a sharp escalation in the long-simmering conflict between Israel and Iran and tip the region further into turmoil and a widening war,” the New York Times reports.

“The salvo of missiles from Iran came a day after Israeli forces began a rare ground invasion of southern Lebanon aimed at crippling the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah there. Iran backs Hezbollah and Hamas, the two militias currently fighting Israel, as well as the Houthis in Yemen.”

Wall Street Journal: “Iran’s involvement risks a wider conflict that could stretch Israel’s military and air defenses and threatens to spark an all-out war in the Middle East that the Biden administration has tried to avoid.”