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Title: December 23, 2025

GRAY ZONE BRIEF 23 DECEMBER 2025
SYRIA
 
**IDF says it nabbed suspected ISIS jihadist in southern Syria operation** - The Israel Defense Forces said they captured a suspected Islamic State member during an overnight raid in the southern Syrian village of al-Rafid, within a UN-patrolled buffer zone. The suspect was reportedly brought to Israel for interrogation, and weapons were seized during the operation. The raid was conducted by the 52nd Armored Battalion and Unit 504 under the Golan Regional Brigade’s command. It follows recent U.S. and Jordanian airstrikes on ISIS targets after an attack that killed two U.S. soldiers, underscoring continuing cross-border counterterrorism efforts.
 
U.N. PEACEKEEPERS KILLED
 
**UN’s grim week: 6 peacekeepers and an interpreter killed, while 10 more staffers detained in Yemen** - The United Nations has reported a sharp rise in deadly attacks and detentions targeting its personnel, underscoring what it called a disturbing erosion of respect for the U.N. flag. In recent days, six peacekeepers were killed in a drone strike in Sudan, a U.N. interpreter died in South Sudanese security custody, and Yemen’s Houthi rebels detained 10 more U.N. staff, bringing the total held to 69. U.N. officials cited similar heavy losses in Gaza and Mali and warned that attacks on peacekeepers may constitute war crimes, urging accountability and the immediate release of detainees.
 
ISIS AUSTRALIAN ATTACKS
 
**Australia terror attack exposes ISIS resurgence as experts warn of global jihadist networks** - The terror attack in Australia has renewed urgent warnings from intelligence officials and counterterrorism experts that global jihadist networks are intensifying their reach, even as Western governments continue to frame groups like ISIS as weakened or in retreat. Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and one of the longest-running trackers of jihadist movements, said the Australia attack highlights a persistent miscalculation in Western capitals. "We’ve always been quick to declare terrorist organizations defeated and insignificant, and that couldn’t be further from the truth," Roggio told Fox News Digital. Roggio, who is also managing editor of The Long War Journal, said ISIS remains far from dismantled despite the collapse of its territorial "caliphate." He pointed to ISIS’ enduring presence in Afghanistan. "I just read the U.N. report. There are 2,000 ISIS fighters there, according to the United Nations," Roggio said. "That’s not what a defeated group looks like."
 
FRANCE NUCLEAR POWERED AIR CRAFT CARRIER
 
Out with the old. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that he had given final approval to replace France’s flagship nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The Charles de Gaulle, which entered service in 2001, will be replaced with a much larger nuclear-powered carrier, stretching roughly 310 meters long and capable of carrying around 30 fighter jets and a crew of 2,000. Macron made the announcement during a visit with French troops stationed in the United Arab Emirates. He also met with the Emirati president to discuss regional stability and defense cooperation.
 
IRAN
 
Israeli warnings. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will press U.S. President Donald Trump to agree to more strikes on Iran during a meeting in Florida set for Dec. 29, NBC News reported. Netanyahu will apparently present evidence that Iran is expanding its ballistic missile program, posing a threat to the broader region, including U.S. troops stationed there. Israeli officials are also concerned about Iran rebuilding the nuclear facilities that were targeted by U.S. strikes in June. Relatedly, Axios reported that Israel told the Trump administration over the weekend that missile exercises conducted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could be preparations for an attack on Israel.
 
IRAN AEROSPACE FORCE ACTIVITY
 
Suspicious activity. Western intelligence agencies have detected “unusual movements” by the IRGC Aerospace Force, according to the London-based Iran International news outlet According to the story, the activity involves IRGC drone, missile and air defense units. The movements could be related to military drills, but their scope has prompted close monitoring.
 
LET’S TALK TURKEY
 
Talking Gaza. Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin met with officials from Hamas’ political bureau in Istanbul. They discussed the transition to the second phase of the Gaza peace plan, as well as Turkish humanitarian aid for Palestinians in the enclave. Meanwhile, officials from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey held talks on Gaza in Miami with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff – which the Turkish foreign minister described as “promising.”
 
TURKEY & POLAND
 
Defense deal. Turkish defense company ASELSAN signed a $410 million contract with Poland to supply electronic warfare and counter-drone systems. The deal reflects Poland’s growing investment in electronic reconnaissance and counter-drone capabilities.
 
NATO & UKRAINE
 
Bolstering the eastern flank. NATO will open a large logistics center in Romania in January to help coordinate and deliver military equipment to Ukraine, the deputy commander of NATO Security Assistance Ukraine confirmed. It will be the bloc’s second-largest such facility. Last week, Poland's president confirmed his country would transfer MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine that are being decommissioned by Poland’s own air force.
 
CAMBODIA & THAILAND CONFLICT
 
Displacement. Nearly a million people have been displaced in Cambodia and Thailand since border clashes reignited two weeks ago. Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior said over the weekend that more than 518,000 citizens have fled their homes as a result of the fighting. Thai authorities, meanwhile, have reported that more than 400,000 people have been displaced on the Thai side of the border.
 
RUSSIA & THE EAEU
 
Trade deal. The Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union signed a free trade agreement with Indonesia at a leaders’ summit in St. Petersburg. The deal will reduce 80-90 percent of customs duties between the signatories to zero. According to EAEU estimates, trade turnover will double within three to five years after the agreement’s implementation.
 
Russian energy exports. Russian natural gas exports to the Central Asian countries of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan could more than double by 2030, according to analysts from Russia's state gas company Gazprom. The largest growth will come from exports to Uzbekistan, where demand is growing but where many large gas fields are now depleted.
 
*NOTE: Gazprom analysts were likely told to come up with something — some good news somewhere, as Russia’s Gazprom is circling the drain and its petroleum and natural gas industry is in decline. It takes a long time for a big ship to sink, but it still sinks. GZB believes that the Russian gas industry is past the tipping point. At the onset of Russia’s 2022 phase of the invasion of Ukraine (the war started in 2014), Putin needed Ural crude, for example, to be at $62 a barrel to sustain both the Russian war effort and the economy. Four years later, currently Ural crude is $34 a barrel — an all time low.
 
RUSSIA & SOUTH KOREA
 
Undisclosed meeting. A senior official from South Korea’s Foreign Ministry recently paid a secret trip to Moscow for talks with Russian authorities on the North Korean nuclear issue. Aside from a meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September, the two countries have had no known discussions on North Korea.
 
GZB INFOCUS: U.S. INTERVENTION IN LATIN AMERICA
 
The Strategy
 
The U.S. National Security Strategy released earlier this month contained a couple of related priorities that have informed recent U.S. actions abroad: reducing U.S. exposure to the Eastern Hemisphere and focusing on its strategy for the Western Hemisphere. Since the U.S. cannot fully disengage from the Eastern Hemisphere, it must end or at least improve hostile relationships that have drawn Washington into several costly and failed wars there – all while maintaining critical economic relations. Efforts toward that end are underway but far from final.
 
As important, the new strategy tacitly demands more active engagement in the Western Hemisphere, the point of which is to assert U.S. security dominance and dramatically enhance the economic capabilities of Latin America so that the U.S. can disengage from the Eastern Hemisphere. For that to happen, Latin American nations must become more politically stable and economically productive.
 
After World War II, the U.S. based its national security on the reconstruction of Eastern Hemisphere countries in Europe and Asia. There was a security component to its strategy, of course, rooted as it was in Cold War logic, but it also evinced a less conscious reality: Successful, developed economies will eventually incur higher wages and higher costs such that national economic growth doesn’t necessarily mean economic well-being for its people. To keep costs down, countries import cheaper products from less developed economies. Such was the case for Europe and Japan. “Made in Japan” made consumption more affordable in much of the Western world, but as Japan matured and prices rose, China became the go-to source for lower-cost production. Coupled with U.S. investment, this fueled China’s economic rise. This was not so much a conscious policy but a matter of fiduciary responsibility.
 
Wealthy economies need low-cost imports from less prosperous countries, but excessive dependence on those imports gives the exporters political leverage as they evolve economically and geopolitically. As China has matured, the U.S. addiction to Chinese goods is now more dangerous and more damaging to the U.S. economy.
In this context, Washington’s renewed military focus on Venezuela is thus linked to an unintended evolution of not only the military dimension of geopolitics but also the economic. The geopolitical logic is that greater economic growth in Latin America will reduce vulnerabilities in the Eastern Hemisphere and, in time, could moderate immigration to the United States. This would require greater political stability in certain Latin American countries.
 
The broad imperative, to a great extent, is clear. The tactical imperative – that is, what steps Washington needs to take to achieve its goals – is not. Even if Latin American countries benefit from this in the long term, their political systems will be substantially unstable in the short term. One may ask what right the U.S. has to impose itself on Latin America. That is not an unreasonable question, but human history is the history of such impositions.
 
Some Latin American political economies are based on the export of narcotics, and the exporters – the cartels – have created economic and political systems that make broader economic evolution impossible. Aside from its impact on American life, the drug trade undermines the development of more diverse and powerful economies.
The ongoing military operations in the Caribbean are a first step toward that end. A massive U.S. military force has been deployed to weaken and destroy cartels and thus their military and economic power. The focus on the cartels is intended both to stop the flow of narcotics into the U.S. and to allow the implicit wealth of Venezuela to emerge – not as an act of kindness but as an act of U.S. interest.
 
But there is an oddity in the tactics being used. The amount of force deployed in the Caribbean is far more than is necessary to blockade Venezuela. It is also far less than would be required to invade and occupy Venezuela, a necessary precursor to destroying the production of drugs in the Venezuelan hinterlands. But the deployment can be understood by considering another dimension of the American problem: Cuba.
 
Cuba
 
Cuba has been a potential problem for the U.S. for about 65 years, ever since Fidel Castro established a communist regime. In moving to reshape Latin America, Washington must address the Cuban problem. When the U.S. was considering sending long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, for example, Russia was in the process of signing a new defense agreement with Cuba. The message was clear: If the U.S. delivered Tomahawks, Russia might send similar munitions to Cuba. The forces deployed in the Caribbean, then, have two uses: unseating Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and thus disrupting the cartels, and threatening Cuba.
 
Cuba became an economic disaster marked by massive failures of its electrical system and frequent scarcity in many basic necessities. But for all its failure, Cuba poses a real strategic threat to the U.S., given its relationship with Russia – which to some extent is shared by Venezuela. The potential (if hard to imagine) presence of Russian forces in Cuba is a threat to U.S. trade routes and national security.
 
If the U.S. wants to energize Latin American economies, it must deal with Cuba, which continues to carry out operations in Latin America, despite its economic hardships, and has a loose relationship with Venezuela. Cuba's intelligence services help protect the Maduro government, and Caracas is by far Cuba’s largest supplier of oil. The recent seizure of oil tankers shows American intent to sever these supplies and thus disrupt both economies.
 
Conclusions
 
There is a strategy emerging in Washington and, with it, a more detailed tactic the government plans to use to achieve its goals. If this analysis of U.S. strategy is correct, then the strategy requires dealing with Cuba, toward which the blockade of oil from Venezuela is a rational step. For the strategy to move forward, Cuba, not Venezuela, should be the priority because it would address the potential, if unlikely, threat of a significant Russian presence close to the U.S. mainland.
 
The shift in U.S. attention to the Western Hemisphere and the extension of the oil tanker blockade of Venezuela, along with the size of the U.S. deployment, seem to be tactical movements in a much broader plan that was stated in the National Security Strategy. Washington has announced its intentions, and now it’s following through.
 
Pray.
 
Train.
 
Stay informed.
 
Build resilient communities.
 
—END REPORT