US concerned for Ukraine’s Kursk assault as Russia prepares counterattack
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(MOSCOW) — Ukrainian forces have yet to set up defensive lines as they continue their operation into the Kursk region of Russia, a U.S. official told ABC News on Wednesday.
While this might reflect Ukrainian confidence in further success for the offensive, there is concern among some American officials that failure to dig in soon could leave its troops vulnerable to a coming Russian counterattack.
“Russia didn’t take it very serious at first,” the U.S. official said. On Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said the U.S. had seen only a “small number” of Russian forces heading to Kursk.
But the U.S. now sees a significant second wave of Russian troops preparing to reinforce the region, coming from positions in both Ukraine and Russia, according to the official, who said some units could arrive within days, with the majority of reinforcements expected within two weeks.
It could be a costly tradeoff for Ukraine to seek incremental gains in the region at the expense of shoring up its defenses, according to Mark Cancian, former Marine colonel and senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“They should draw the most defensible line inside this enclave and dig in … and then try to hold that,” Cancian said.
This advice is in line with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s stated goal of creating a “buffer zone” inside Russia.
“When you’re on the attack, you tend to take more casualties,” Cancian said. “And it would be fine if that opens up the front for some follow-on movement, but that’s doesn’t appear to be what’s going on. It looks like they’re just sort of plodding forward.”
Despite the danger posed by incoming Russian forces, and risks of being overextended, having foreword units cut off, or leaving other areas of the front undermanned, experts say Ukraine’s initiative in Kursk has already succeeded in forcing Russia to make hard decisions about how to allocate its finite resources; in boosting confidence in the Ukrainian military both domestically and with key allies; and in obtaining territory that could be used as bargaining leverage later on.
The Kremlin was by all accounts taken off guard by Ukraine’s incursion, but Kyiv might itself have been surprised by its quick gains.
“It was initially intended for psychological purposes, similar to the Doolittle Raid after Pearl Harbor, but it has evolved based on its success,” said Mick Mulroy, an ABC News contributor who served as a CIA paramilitary officer and deputy assistant secretary of defense.
Ukrainian forces have now been in the Kursk region for more than two weeks.
“Over the next couple days, we’ll see what the Ukrainians do and whether they keep this strategy of just nibbling away, whether they go on to the defensive, whether they try to make a big attack, which I think is unlikely, but not impossible,” Cancian said.
Masoud Pezeshkian (R), the winner of the 14th presidential elections in Iran, attends to receive presidential decree from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (L) during an endorsement ceremony at the Imam Khomeini Husseiniya in Tehran, Iran on July 28, 2024 (Iranian Leader Press Office/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — After the supreme leader of Iran signaled a willingness to return to nuclear negotiations with the United States, the Biden administration cast doubt on the likelihood of resuming talks in the near future.
“We will judge Iran’s leadership by their actions, not their words,” a State Department spokesperson said Tuesday.
“If Iran wants to demonstrate seriousness or a new approach, they should stop nuclear escalations and start meaningfully cooperating with the IAEA,” they added, referencing the International Atomic Energy Agency, an intergovernmental watchdog that Tehran has often subverted.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave Iran’s newly installed president, reformist Masoud Pezeshkian, the go-ahead to relaunch talks with the U.S. on Tuesday while warning the country’s government against putting any trust in Washington.
“This does not mean that we cannot interact with the same enemy in certain situations,” Khamenei said, according to the official transcript of his remarks. “There is no harm in that, but do not place your hopes in them.”
The State Department spokesperson said the administration still saw a negotiated solution as the best way to contain Iran’s nuclear program, but that Iran’s failure to cooperate with the IAEA and its escalatory actions made diplomacy impossible.
“We are far away from anything like that right now,” they said.
Members of the administration also largely view the prospect of returning to indirect talks with Iran as a politically unfavorable step that could prove detrimental to Vice President Kamala Harris’ and other Democrats’ chances at winning in November, several officials told ABC News.
The doubtful outlook for resuscitating negotiations in the coming months further diminishes the already low odds of securing a deal with Iran before President Joe Biden’s time in the White House comes to an end, all but pushing his promise to negotiate a “longer and stronger” agreement out of reach.
Khamenei’s comments Tuesday echo the position he took around the time Tehran signed off on the 2015 nuclear pact known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the JCPOA — a landmark accord that granted Iran relief from economic sanctions in exchange for limiting its nuclear program.
Former President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” and reimposing financial restrictions on Iran.
In the years since, Khamenei’s public comments on the matter have oscillated between encouraging negotiations with the U.S. and outright dismissing the possibility of a renewed pact.
Foreign policy observers say the upcoming U.S. presidential election is injecting even more uncertainty into the prospects of reaching another nuclear agreement with Iran.
Trump has previously made unsubstantiated claims that Iran was ready to accept conditions that were highly favorable to the U.S. at the end of his term and that he was “ready to make a deal.” But on the campaign trail, Trump — a sworn enemy of the Iranian regime — has taken an increasingly hawkish stance against the country, which reportedly carried out a cyberattack targeting his campaign and has plotted against him and his former Cabinet officials.
Harris has also promised to take an aggressive approach to curbing Iran’s malign influence in the Middle East, but she supported the JCPOA, as well as the current administration’s efforts to cut a new deal. However, she has not clearly said whether she would attempt to pick up where Biden left off.
Indirect talks with Iran under the Biden administration officially kicked off in April 2021. Despite mediators’ initial optimism, talks eventually sputtered out after multiple rounds of stop-start diplomacy failed to move both sides toward an agreement.
So far, Biden has made good on another of his major promises regarding Iran: his declaration that the country would “never get a nuclear weapon on my watch.”
However, officials within his administration say Tehran has made substantial progress toward that goal in recent years.
In July, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Iran was likely only “one or two weeks away” from having breakout capacity to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon, and that the U.S. was watching “very, very carefully” to see whether the country would move toward weaponizing its nuclear program, a step the administration says the regime has not yet taken.
The U.S. shutting down the possibility of any renewed talks with Iran right now comes amid heightened tensions in the Middle East, including Israel’s preemptive strike Saturday night on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
(NEW YORK) — Israelis broadly pick former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris as better for Israel’s security and in turn favor Trump for the U.S. presidency, albeit with sharp political divisions, a national survey by Langer Research Associates and PORI (Public Opinion Research Israel) finds.
Fifty-eight percent of Israelis in the survey, conducted in September, said Trump would be better for Israel’s security, vs. 20% for Harris. If they had a vote in the U.S. election, Israelis said they’d pick Trump over Harris by a similar 54%-24%, with the rest taking a pass.
To a large degree, these attitudes follow the fault lines in Israeli politics. Among people who would support parties in the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if an election in Israel were today, 88% picked Trump as better for Israel’s security and 84% preferred him for the U.S. presidency — results that may reflect tensions between Netanyahu’s government and the Biden administration.
Supporters of Israeli opposition parties, by contrast, split closely, 39%-37%, Harris-Trump, in preference for the presidency. That said, even opposition party supporters picked Trump over Harris as better for Israel’s security, albeit by a comparatively close 41%-32%.
While much attention now is on the conflict with Hezbollah and Iran, another question finds majority Israeli rejection of the suggestion that Israel is doing too little to avoid civilian casualties in the war in Gaza. To the contrary, “considering the challenges of conducting battles in populated areas,” 54% said Israel is doing too much to avoid such casualties. Twenty-eight percent said it’s doing the right amount; 14%, too little.
The three questions in this study were included in a random-sample, face-to-face survey of 1,012 Israelis, with fieldwork by PORI, Sept. 8-22, before the bulk of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah and Iran’s subsequent missile attack this week. (Eighty-two percent of interviews were completed before Sept. 17, when thousands of Hezbollah pagers exploded.)
The U.S. election
In addition to the political gaps in attitudes toward the U.S. presidential candidates, ethnic and religious differences are sharp. Sixty-four percent of Jews picked Trump over Harris as better for Israel’s security, while Arabs, who account for about 17% of Israel’s adult citizen population, divided essentially evenly, 27%-24%; 36% saw no difference between the two. In vote preference, Jews went for Trump by 58%-23%, while Arabs split 28%-26%; the rest said they wouldn’t participate or didn’t express a preference.
Gaps also are present within the Jewish population. The shares picking Trump as better on security ranged from 53% of secular Jews to 88% of Orthodox Jews. Patterns are similar in preference for the presidency: Secular Jews favored Trump by 11 points, 46%-35%, widening to 65%-17% among traditional Jews and 69%-3% among ultra-Orthodox Jews, and peaking for Trump at 85%-4% among Orthodox Jews.
U.S. election preferences among Israeli Jews overall are sharply different from those of Jews in the United States. In ABC News/Ipsos polling, combining late August and mid-September surveys for an adequate sample size, U.S. Jews favored Harris over Trump by 63%-33%.
Another difference is by age. In the United States, Harris does best with younger adults. In Israel, it’s Trump who does best in this group, with 65% of those younger than 35 picking Trump on security and 58% supporting him for president. These drop to 52% and 48% for Trump, respectively, among Israelis age 65 and older.
Trump also prevails among Israelis in strength of sentiment. Thirty percent overall said they’d “surely” support Trump for president, vs. 10% who said this about Harris; and 37% said Trump would be “much” better for Israel’s security, compared with 12% for Harris.
Civilian casualties in Gaza
There also are ethnic, religious and political gaps in views of efforts to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, given the challenges of urban combat. Strikingly, while just 7% of Jews said Israel is doing too little to avoid such casualties, that rises to 50% of Israeli Arabs.
Among Jews, about eight in 10 of those who are Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox said Israel is doing too much to avoid civilian casualties. This falls to 63% of traditional Jews and 47% of secular Jews.
Politically, among those who favor coalition parties, 76% said Israel is doing too much to avoid civilian casualties. This declines to 41% of opposition party supporters, with 21% saying Israel is doing too little; 34%, about the right amount.
About this survey
This survey is a joint project of Langer Research Associates, a New York-based firm that specializes in the design, management and analysis of public opinion research domestically and internationally; and PORI (Public Opinion Research Israel), a leading Israeli public opinion research firm founded in 1966. The study’s questions were asked as a part of PORI’s September face-to-face omnibus survey.
The survey was conducted in Hebrew and Arabic among 1,012 respondents across Israel via area probability sampling. One hundred primary sampling units were randomly selected, with households selected via random walk and respondents selected via the last-birthday method. Up to three revisits were made at each selected household. In quality control, 20% of each interviewer’s work was re-checked randomly by phone.
Data were weighted for probability of selection and calibrated to census data for sex by age and region. Results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 points for the full sample, including a design effect due to weighting of 1.05. As in any survey, error margins are larger for subgroups. Sampling error is not the only source of differences in polls.
(NEW YORK) — The Republican Nebraska lawmaker who effectively helped kill an 11th-hour push to make the winner of the state receive all of the Electoral College votes on Election Day — a move that would have likely benefited former President Donald Trump in a tight race with Vice President Kamala Harris — told ABC News Prime Anchor Linsey Davis that effort “did not seem fair.”
“I’m always willing to listen to people and try to find a compromise, but also try to understand why they’re voting yes … But this just did not seem fair. If we’re going to go ahead and change [the rules] in the state of Nebraska, I think we should do it mid-term. I think we should do it two years before the presidential election,” Nebraska State Sen. Mike McDonnell told Davis on Tuesday of the timing around a potential law change.
The potential winner-take-all electoral change would have been pivotal if the Republican-leaning state then allocated all of its five electoral votes solely to Trump if he won statewide, instead of dividing them with Harris if she won in one of Nebraska’s three congressional districts. Nebraska gives three Electoral College votes to the statewide winner and one to the winner of each congressional district.
Earlier this week, McDonnell, who was one of three state Republican holdouts that Gov. Jim Pillen needed to break an expected filibuster in a special legislative session, said he would not support the change before November. This announcement effectively killed the winner-take-all push.
Instead, McDonnell said he believed the legislature should take up the issue in next year’s legislative session, which tentatively starts the first week of January 2025.
“We do listen, as Nebraskans, and sometimes people say, oh, ‘Nebraska nice,’ that means, you know, you’re kind of weak — and it’s not. We work hard and we play by the rules and we’re just asking everyone to come in, work hard in Omaha, the 2nd Congressional District, and play by the rules,” McDonnell said Tuesday.
McDonnell mentioned that he had been opposed previously to “winner-take-all” in the state since he ran for legislature starting in 2016.
Pressed by Davis if anyone or anything could make him change his decision, McDonnell was resolute: “No. I’ve tried to listen and I always will listen. I think the rest of the country should follow us and look at the unicameral [Nebraska Legislature] and look at getting rid of the winner-take-all.”
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen later released a statement Tuesday confirming he has “no plans” to call a special session before the November general election.
Trump on Monday thanked Pillen for attempting to “simplify the complexity” of the state’s electoral map, while attacking McDonnell for opposing it, calling him a “Grandstander.”
“Unfortunately, a Democrat turned Republican(?) State Senator named Mike McDonnell decided, for no reason whatsoever, to get in the way of a great Republican, common sense, victory. Just another ‘Grandstander!'” Trump wrote in a social media post.
Meanwhile, Harris’ running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, while speaking at a New York fundraiser on Monday night, celebrated McDonnell’s decision, saying that the race would be close because the “Electoral College is the way it is,” before stating, “Thank God for that one guy in Omaha” — a reference to McDonnell.
Asked to respond to Trump’s comments, McDonnell said, “Well, today’s the first day I’ve talked to the media and I’m always willing to get, as I said, over the last eight years, serving in the legislature – willing to talk to people and listen.”
And asked about Walz’s comments and if Harris and Trump should make campaign stops in Omaha — as well as if his own decision may have changed the outcome of the election — McDonnell stayed away from making any predictions, but invited them both to Omaha.
“I’m inviting both Vice President Harris and President Trump. Come to Omaha. Come have a debate here! There’s still 42 days. Listen to the people. Talk to the people and answer the questions,” McDonnell said.
McDonnell emphasized that most — if not all — of the feedback he had gotten about the issue had been civil.
“We know it’s a very important issue. It’s a passionate issue, and people are passionate about it … 90% of them have been professional and polite,” McDonnell told Davis.
