A US warning puts a Moscow park on alert, Hormuz has its worst month, Jordan strikes Syria

Moscow: a warning from Washington, and Moscow listens

On Saturday 31 October, the US Embassy in Moscow issued a security alert: it was aware of a credible threat of a mass-casualty event that same day at the Tsaritsyno Museum Reserve, an 18th-century palace and park complex in southern Moscow that is popular with families at weekends. The embassy told people to avoid the site and large crowds, and said the US government was coordinating with Russian authorities. Canada issued a similar warning.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) confirmed that it had received the information from the United States through established channels of cooperation and said appropriate action was under way. The park was closed and evacuated, and police were deployed around it. Neither side has said who was behind the plot or what kind of attack was expected. As of 1 November, no attack had been reported, and the authorities had not said whether the threat had been neutralised. Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev presented the alert as a sign of goodwill and of the value of US–Russian security cooperation.

The obvious precedent is Crocus City Hall. On 7 March 2024, the same embassy warned that extremists planned to target large gatherings in Moscow, including concerts. Two weeks later, gunmen linked to the Islamic State's Afghan branch (ISIS-K) killed more than 140 people at a concert hall near the capital. At the time, the Kremlin dismissed the Western warnings as provocative, and Russian intelligence later complained that they lacked detail. This time the alert named a place and a date, and Moscow acted within hours.

The lesson for analysts is a classic one. Intelligence is only useful if it is specific enough to act on — and if the recipient is willing to believe it, even when it comes from an adversary. A duty to warn also explains why Washington shares such threats with a hostile government: lives are at stake, and a public warning puts the US on record.

Source : Jerusalem Post, Newsweek, Egypt Today, Raw Story

Hormuz: a record month of attacks on shipping

October was the worst month for attacks on commercial ships in and around the Strait of Hormuz since the US–Israeli war with Iran began on 28 February. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy counted 28 confirmed and reported attacks in October, and 113 since the start of the war. The Greek consultancy Marisks recorded a dozen ships hit in a single week, from 5 to 11 October. More than 30 supertankers have been damaged since February, eleven of them in October alone — about 3.5 per cent of the world fleet of these giant ships.

Why the surge? Shipowners had become more willing to load cargoes inside the Gulf, attracted by daily freight rates above one million dollars. According to Noam Raydan of the Washington Institute, Iran is stepping up attacks to slow that recovery and keep pressure on energy markets ahead of the US midterm elections on 3 November. On the diplomatic front, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on 1 November that Tehran's "seven-day plan" was still on the table: if Washington lifts its naval blockade, waives oil sanctions and accepts a ceasefire that includes Lebanon, the strait would reopen on day six and negotiations would resume on day seven. Washington has not accepted.

The real numbers are probably higher. UKMTO, the British maritime security service, had logged 135 incidents by 16 October but says it cannot see the whole picture, because many shipowners do not report attacks. This matters for anyone who assesses risk at sea: insurance premiums, crew safety and routing decisions all rest on incident data, and when reporting is voluntary, a quiet week may simply be an under-reported one. Hormuz today is less a closed strait than a contested one — open to those willing to pay the price and run the risk.

Source : Al-Monitor / Reuters, Gulf News

The littorals: drones in the harbour

In an essay for the Center for Maritime Strategy published on 22 October, retired US Navy Captain Chris Rawley argues that the Navy and the Marine Corps are not ready to defend ports and coastal bases against modern weapons. His opening example is painful. On 1 March 2026, the second day of the Iran war, an Iranian one-way attack drone flew low and slow past air defences and hit an unprotected US tactical operations centre at Port Shuaiba, south of Kuwait City. Six US Army Reserve soldiers were killed and more than thirty wounded. There was no usable warning, and essentially no counter-drone capability on site.

The irony is that the same port was defended in 2002–2003 by Naval Coastal Warfare units: small detachments with coastal radar and sonar, patrol boats and an operations centre that built a picture of the coastline for the fleet. Their roots go back to the coast watchers of the Second World War and to harbour defence in Vietnam. After the suicide-boat attack on USS Cole in 2000, the community focused on small boats, and around 2005 the Navy cut the mobile sensor units. Meanwhile, the Marines' new Marine Littoral Regiments, designed to fire anti-ship missiles from small island bases inside an enemy's range, still lack the organisation to find and track enemy ships on their own.

Rawley's proposal is to revive reserve Naval Coastal Warfare Units built around a deployable operations centre, cheap and expendable sensors (acoustic, radar, electro-optical), drones, satellite communications and mobile counter-drone systems — and to train them with the Marines in peacetime. His key idea is that protecting a port and targeting the enemy have become one problem: the same cheap drones threaten both, and the same sensors serve both.

The point goes beyond the US. From the Gulf to the Black Sea, low-cost drones have turned every port and logistics hub into part of the front line. For the French reader, note the doctrinal pair: force protection (protecting one's own forces) and targeting (finding and engaging the enemy) used to be separate disciplines; Rawley's argument is that they now merge.

Source : Center for Maritime Strategy

Amman: strikes in Syria after a church attack

On Friday 23 October, three gunmen opened fire on mourners at a funeral at St George's Greek Orthodox Church in the village of Hamoud, in Jordan's Karak governorate, south of Amman. Nine people were killed and at least 34 wounded. Attacks on Jordan's Christian minority, about 2 to 3 per cent of the population, are rare. King Abdullah II promised the harshest response, and the government declared three days of national mourning.

On Monday 26 October, after a three-hour gun battle in the nearby village of al-Jadeeda, security forces arrested three suspects: two brothers and a relative, all Jordanian, all severely injured. The interior minister said there was no sign that they had links to other cells. That same evening, the Jordanian air force struck what it called armed-group hideouts in southern Syria, in the provinces of Deraa and Suweyda. Amman said the strikes were coordinated with Damascus and killed 20 Islamic State fighters, while acknowledging civilian deaths. Syria's civil defence reported seven dead, including a father, a mother and their three children killed in a tent. Damascus said there had been no prior coordination, called the strikes a "treacherous attack" and closed the Nassib crossing, the only route for travellers and goods between the two countries.

The two official stories do not fit easily together. The attackers were described as a family acting alone, yet the strikes were justified by links to groups in Syria, and Jordan has not publicly shown the evidence. The strikes answer strong pressure at home to show strength, but they come at a cost: civilian casualties, friction with the new Syrian government and a closed trade route. Two things to watch: whether Nassib reopens, and whether Amman shares what it knows about the attackers' links.

Source : Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera