Breaking: Israel’s military carried out an attack inside Qatar’s capital city on Tuesday, which is more than 1,000 miles away, including “a precise [air] strike targeting the senior leadership of the Hamas terrorist organization,” the Israeli Defense Forces announced on social media. 

Targets inside Doha included Khalil al-Hayya, the top negotiator for Hamas, according to Reuters, citing Israeli media. The IDF says those it sought to kill “are directly responsible for the brutal October 7 massacre, and have been orchestrating and managing the war against the State of Israel.” Unnamed sources told Reuters separately that the negotiating team survived the Tuesday strikes in Doha; the claim has not been verified at press time.  

Bibi: “Today's action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on social media. “Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” he added. According to Axios, “The assassination attempt in the Qatari capital comes amid a renewed U.S. effort to reach a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.”

Notable: Israel’s Channel 12 reported U.S. President Donald Trump authorized the Israeli strikes, according to an Israeli official. 

Qatar’s top diplomat condemned the “cowardly Israeli attack,” which he said struck “residential buildings housing several members of the Political Bureau of Hamas.” 

Jordan’s top diplomat also condemned “the cowardly Israeli aggression against the sisterly State of Qatar as a flagrant violation of international law,” Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi wrote on social media. 

Safadi added that he expects more attacks from Israel outside its own borders, warning, “Israel will continue to escalate its aggression, its brutal wars, and its violations of international law, and its threats to regional and international security and peace, unless the international community, particularly the Security Council, takes the necessary steps to deter it and curb its aggression.” His Kuwaiti counterpart expressed similar disdain for the attack on social media Tuesday as well. 

Israel also attacked at least three targets in Syria on Monday, Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute flagged on social media. Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned those attacks on social media on Tuesday, describing them as a “flagrant violation of international law and the 1974 Disengagement Agreement between Syria and Israel.” 

ICYMI: The Israeli military destroyed Syria’s Ministry of Defense in a series of airstrikes in July. MEI’s Lister has a bit more on that situation, here. 

New: Israel used leaflets to warn the estimated million or so people still living in Gaza City to evacuate ahead of an upcoming attack by ground forces, the Associated Press reported Tuesday from the Gaza Strip. “Previously, the military has warned specific sections of Gaza City to evacuate ahead of concentrated operations or strikes,” but never the full city until now. 

However, “many families can’t evacuate even if they want to, because displacement sites are overcrowded and because it can cost more than $1,000 in transportation and other costs to move to southern Gaza, a prohibitive amount for many,” AP reports, citing United Nations officials. 

Notable: “Hamas' armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a shooting that killed six people on the outskirts of Jerusalem” on Monday, Reuters reports. 

By the way: Israel’s military has destroyed at least 50 high-rise buildings in Gaza over just the past two days, which Bibi described as “only the beginning of the main intensive operation, the ground incursion of our forces.” 

Big picture: “We are in an intense war against terrorism on several fronts: in Gaza, in Judea and Samaria, in Lebanon, and in Iran that backs them all,” Netanyahu announced Monday. 

Panning out: “Israel has been accused of genocide, including this month by the world's biggest group of genocide scholars, over its nearly two-year campaign in the Palestinian enclave that has killed more than 64,000 people according to local authorities,” Reuters adds. 

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Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1948, Soviet army Capt. Kim Il Sung was appointed the first-ever premier of North Korea, which had just been founded with the help of the Soviet military. 

Caribbean ops

The U.S. naval presence in the Caribbean is up sixfold, counting not by number of hulls but their total displacement, write CSIS’s Mark Cancian and Chris Park, who use that lens and several others in their new report, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications.” 

The effort extends from Trump’s campaign vow to “demolish the foreign drug cartels.” But now, Cancian and Park ask, “With Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warning that military action ‘won’t stop” with the Sept. 3 attack on a speedboat, “what does a war on cartels mean in military terms?” Read their analysis, here.

FWIW: “Members of the U.S. Congress have asked for the legal rationale for the deadly strike, noting that the administration has yet to say how it knew who was in the boat or what it was carrying,” Reuters reports. In response, White House officials “had agreed to provide a classified briefing for congressional staff on Friday, but the meeting was abruptly rescheduled for Tuesday.” Read more, here.

Commentary: “A killing at sea marks America’s descent into lawless power.” Jon Duffy, a retired Navy captain who held command at sea as well as policy positions in the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill, and on the National Security Council, writes that the U.S. “has crossed a dangerous line” with the speedboat strike. “This was not a counterdrug operation. It was not law enforcement. It was killing without process. And it was, to all appearances, against the letter and the spirit of the law.”

Duffy adds, “This strike is not only about 11 lives lost at sea. It is about the precedent set when the military is unmoored from law, and when silence from senior leaders normalizes the abuse….The oath is clear: unlawful orders—foreign or domestic—must be disobeyed. To stand silent as the military is misused is not restraint. It is betrayal.” Read that, here.

Related: “Republicans in Congress are eager for Trump to expand his use of the military on US soil,” AP reported Monday.

Around the Defense Department

Marines press ahead with JLTV purchase after Army quits program. The Marine Corps will keep buying the Humvee-replacing Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, though it may end up with fewer than planned if the Army’s sudden exit drives up the cost per vehicle. Defense One’s Meghann Myers has a bit more, here.

Anduril and Palantir-backed startup Rivet are officially competing to make the Army’s futuristic wearable gear with virtual displays, Defense One’s Myers reported separately Monday. 

The $350 million competition is a follow-on project to the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, which was just a headset. This new program—called Soldier Borne Mission Command—includes complementary computers and wearables like watches. In the end, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey told reporters on Monday, there will probably be “dozens” of different headsets under the program, rather than one contractor picked to make one product. 

For what it’s worth, Luckey has dubbed himself “the world’s best head-mounted display designer,” going back to his creation of the Oculus Rift, an early, commercially-available VR headset. “There's nobody better than me, and I know what I'm doing, and I'm going to make sure that we do it the right way,” he said Monday. Continue reading, here. 

New: Space Development Agency Director Derek Tournear is leaving soon to take a job at Auburn University, Breaking Defense reported Monday. 

Tournear’s been in the post since October 2019, which is long enough to leave with a few accomplishments under his belt, he said in an interview. Those include “proving that Link 16 could be used by satellites to transmit targeting data to weapons platforms in the air, on land and at sea,” and “proving that satellites based in low Earth orbit (LEO) could successfully detect and track missiles.” Continue reading, here. 

Related: Need a “Golden Dome” primer? Shera Frankel of the New York Times turned in this explainer Monday (gift link). 

Additional reading: 

• “New docuseries shows a different side of fighter pilots: humility,” Military Times reported Monday ahead of the premiere on National Geographic next Tuesday; 
• “In a First, Korean Women Target U.S. Military in Suit Over Prostitution,” the New York Times reported Monday from Seoul; 
• “Monterey's Defense Language Institute to keep name despite Department of War name change,” local KSBW reported Monday; 
• “White House Deletes Video With Bizarre Stolen Valor Claim,” The Daily Beast reported Sunday.

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