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The United States will construct a temporary pier on the coast of the Gaza Strip to facilitate the arrival and distribution of humanitarian aid. US President Joe Biden said during the State of the Union address on March 7 that he ordered the US military to lead an “emergency mission” to establish the pier.

Recent PRC diplomatic outreach in Europe may aim to advance the PRC’s September 2023 Proposal on the Reform and Development of Global Governance, which faults the West for the war in Ukraine. The proposal calls the root of the “Ukraine crisis” lying “in the problem of security governance in Europe.” The “parties concerned… [must] accommodate each other’s legitimate concerns… [and] abandon the Cold War mentality.” These are thinly veiled references to accommodating Russian historical grievances at the price of NATO unity and Ukrainian territorial sovereignty. The alleged “stabilizing force” of any PRC-negotiated ceasefire along these lines would normalize the principle of revisionist international aggression. This principle would provide the CCP with a precedent for the party to falsely justify aggressive coercion aimed at Taiwan, with the eventual political objective of annexing Taiwan into the PRC.

Lithuanian intelligence assessed that Russia has the capability to continue sustaining the current tempo of its war in Ukraine and will likely have the capability to gradually expand its military capabilities in the near term. Lithuanian intelligence published its 2024 national threat assessment on March 7 wherein it assessed that Russia has the manpower, material, and financial resources to sustain its war effort in Ukraine in the near term. Lithuanian intelligence noted that Russia reconstituted and increased its deployed manpower in Ukraine in 2023 despite suffering heavy losses but continues to prioritize quantity of manpower and materiel over quality of forces. Lithuanian intelligence also assessed that Russia’s defense industrial base (DIB) has become a driving force within the Russian economy at the expense of other economic sectors and that Russia had allocated at least 10.8 trillion rubles (about $119 billion) to military spending in 2023.

IRGC Quds Force Commander Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani said on March 6 that Iran’s proxies and partners have taken a more “offensive stance” in the Israel-Hamas war, which frames the war in terms consistent with Iran’s regional military doctrine. Ghaani issued this statement during a speech to the Assembly of Experts. Iran and the Axis aim to seize the operational initiative to dictate the tempo and terms of action in conflict and force Iran’s adversaries to react constantly. IRGC Commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami said in 2022 that Palestinian militias needed to focus on successive offensive ground operations into Israel instead of defensive, static wars using their rocket systems. CTP-ISW previously assessed that Hamas’ decision to conduct a ground attack into Israel on October 7 may have been based on what Salami outlined in August 2022.