In Thursday’s newsletter, I mentioned the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s apparent threat to send troops to attack Israel. Erdogan specifically referred to Turkey’s interventions in Azerbaijan and Libya, where it sent not members of its armed forces but of a private security contractor with close ties to the government. Jonathan Spyer tries to make sense of these remarks:

The Turkish leader was hinting that the methods of proxy warfare which have characterized Turkish activity in the region over the last decade might be applied also to the Israel-Palestinian context. Erdogan is known for his rhetorical verbosity and extravagance. In this case, however, it would be a mistake to dismiss the statement as mere hot air.

Turkey’s continued domiciling of an active Hamas office and its provision of passports to Hamas operatives are a matter of public record. In July 2023, Israeli customs authorities intercepted sixteen tons of explosive material on its way from Turkey to Gaza, disguised as building material. Thus Erdogan’s, and Turkey’s, support for Hamas is already far beyond the realm of rhetoric.

Why does Turkey, a NATO member, think it can get away with this behavior? Benny Avni notes that Ankara played an important role as a mediator in securing the release of Evan Gershkovich and other American hostages held by Russia. But now that they are free, the U.S. can afford to take the gloves off:

Washington has tools to lean on Ankara, including by conditioning any new arms sale on ending threats to Israel and Greece. The Pentagon, meanwhile, is reportedly making contingency plans for the “nuclear option,” . . . redeploying America’s largest airbase in the region to a neighboring country from Turkey’s Incirlik.

Perhaps unconcerned about such drastic moves, Mr. Erdogan seems increasingly to deflect political pressures at home by lashing out at neighbors. His latest anti-Greek statements were made on July 20, which marked the 50th anniversary of Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Cyprus.

Ankara’s provocative statements should concern not just the U.S., but NATO as a whole, writes Ben Cohen. Not only because Greece is also a member of the alliance but also because of a recent comment from Turkey’s former ambassador to NATO, Fatih Ceylan, regarding Ismail Haniyeh’s death:

After dismissing the likelihood of similar operations on Turkish soil, Ceylan added that were one to happen, . . . “Turkey will certainly take this move to NATO.” . . . [W]hen Ceyhan breezily says that Turkey will raise any Israeli operations on its territory with NATO—hoping, no doubt, that doing so will trigger Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which enshrines the principle that an attack on one member is an attack on all—one might reasonably expect, given this woeful record, that the other NATO members will proffer a middle finger in Ankara’s direction.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.