The Middle East may have backed off from the brink of a regional war – for now

Northern Israel 

The Middle East may have backed off from the brink of a regional war – for now 

Analysis by Tamara Qiblawi, CNN Sun August 25, 2024

For nearly a month, people in Lebanon and Israel braced for a wider war. A deadly rocket strike from Lebanon last month on the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights was followed by an Israeli retaliatory strike that killed Hezbollah’s top commander in southern Beirut.

The powerful Iran-backed group vowed to respond. The threat triggered a slew of flight cancelations on both sides of the border, a chorus of governments imploring their citizens to leave Lebanon and Israel, and a breathless diplomatic effort to avert an escalation that Western governments feared would spark a regional conflict.

On Sunday morning, Hezbollah said it had delivered its anticipated response by launching hundreds of drones and Katyusha rockets, Soviet-era short-range projectiles.

The swarm of airborne weapons, it said, sought to overwhelm Israel’s vaunted air defense systems and pave a path for its targets: 11 Israeli military sites in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said all of Hezbollah’s drone’s were intercepted.

Israeli officials said that it had pre-emptively struck Hezbollah targets overnight to prevent a much wider attack, saying it hit many rocket launchers in Lebanon.

The risk of an all-out conflict appears to be significantly lower in the aftermath of Sunday’s cross-fire. Yet Iran’s open-ended threat will continue to contribute to the war of nerves that has defined much of the low-grade conflict between the Tehran-led axis and Israel, and the region will remain on a knife’s edge for as long as the war in Gaza goes on.

Three people were killed in those Israeli attacks, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The cross-border fire on Sunday morning marked a significant escalation after 11 months of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. But it appears to have dampened fears of a wider war, for now.

In Israel, authorities soon lifted security restrictions in the country’s northern-most territory, known as the upper Galilee. In Lebanon, Hezbollah said it had concluded attacks on Israel for the day.

This signals the resumption of the low-intensity conflict at the border. It also seems to mark the conclusion of the anticipated Lebanese escalation that brought the Middle East, once again, to the brink of all-out war. Hezbollah has said its attack on Israel was “meticulously” completed but further strikes could be carried out.

But while Hezbollah’s promised response appears to be largely out of the way, Israel must continue to wait for another threat to transpire: Iran’s vowed “revenge” for the killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which it blamed on Israel.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, said that “what happened today is not the end.”

A region on a knife’s edge

After the attacks in Beirut and Tehran at the end of last month, Western and Israeli intelligence officials, diplomats and analysts scrambled to figure out what the retaliations promised by Iran and its most powerful non-state partner might look like.

It sparked shuttle diplomacy with the United States, the United Kingdom and France urging Hezbollah and Iran to exercise restraint. This appeared to expedite another round of talks over a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, in a bid to ward off another escalation by the Iran-led axis, which has repeatedly conditioned stopping its attacks on Israel and its allies on an end to the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

The talks to end the war continue to move at a glacial pace, despite intense diplomatic efforts by the US. But the latest escalation has shown that neither Iran nor its allied non-state fighting groups in the region can stomach the prospect of a wider war.

Hezbollah had repeatedly vowed to retaliate to any Israeli strike in Beirut with an attack on major urban centers in Israel. Yet, whether by design or due to Israel’s claimed pre-emptive strikes, it fell short of that threat. Its stated targets remain within the border area that has been the site of the hostilities since October and the short-range Soviet-era rockets it used have been a mainstay of Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli forces for decades.

The risk of an all-out conflict appears to be significantly lower in the aftermath of Sunday’s cross-fire. Yet Iran’s open-ended threat will continue to contribute to the war of nerves that has defined much of the low-grade conflict between the Tehran-led axis and Israel, and the region will remain on a knife’s edge for as long as the war in Gaza goes on⍐.

NASA Decides to Bring Starliner Spacecraft Back to Earth Without Crew

 Wilmore and Williams will continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew through February 2025. They will fly home aboard a Dragon spacecraft with two other crew members assigned to the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission. Starliner is expected to depart from the space station and make a safe, controlled autonomous re-entry and landing in early September.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and leadership participate in a live news conference on Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024, at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston where they provided an update about NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test Credit: NASA

NASA Decides to Bring Starliner Spacecraft Back to Earth Without Crew

NASA will return Boeing’s Starliner to Earth without astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the spacecraft, the agency announced Saturday. The uncrewed return allows NASA and Boeing to continue gathering testing data on Starliner during its upcoming flight home, while also not accepting more risk than necessary for its crew.Wilmore and Williams, who flew to the International Space Station in June aboard NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, have been busy supporting station research, maintenance, and Starliner system testing and data analysis, among other activities.

“Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and most routine. A test flight, by nature, is neither safe, nor routine. The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value and our North Star,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “I’m grateful to both the NASA and Boeing teams for all their incredible and detailed work.”

Wilmore and Williams will continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew through February 2025. They will fly home aboard a Dragon spacecraft with two other crew members assigned to the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission. Starliner is expected to depart from the space station and make a safe, controlled autonomous re-entry and landing in early September. 

NASA and Boeing identified helium leaks and experienced issues with the spacecraft reaction control thrusters on June 6 as Starliner approached the space station. Since then, engineering teams have completed a significant amount of work, including reviewing a collection of data, conducting flight and ground testing, hosting independent reviews with agency propulsion experts, and developing various return contingency plans. The uncertainty and lack of expert concurrence does not meet the agency’s safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight, thus prompting NASA leadership to move the astronauts to the Crew-9 mission.

“Decisions like this are never easy, but I want to commend our NASA and Boeing teams for their thorough analysis, transparent discussions, and focus on safety during the Crew Flight Test,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. “We’ve learned a lot about the spacecraft during its journey to the station and its docked operations. We also will continue to gather more data about Starliner during the uncrewed return and improve the system for future flights to the space station.”

The Boeing Starliner is a class of partially reusable spacecraft designed to transport crew to and from the International Space Station and other low-Earth-orbit destinations. It is manufactured by Boeing, with the Commercial Crew Program of NASA as the lead customer. Wikipedia

Starliner is designed to operate autonomously and previously completed two uncrewed flights. NASA and Boeing will work together to adjust end-of-mission planning and Starliner’s systems to set up for the uncrewed return in the coming weeks. Starliner must return to Earth before the Crew-9 mission launches to ensure a docking port is available on station.

“Starliner is a very capable spacecraft and, ultimately, this comes down to needing a higher level of certainty to perform a crewed return,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “The NASA and Boeing teams have completed a tremendous amount of testing and analysis, and this flight test is providing critical information on Starliner’s performance in space. Our efforts will help prepare for the uncrewed return and will greatly benefit future corrective actions for the spacecraft.”

 NASA’s Commercial Crew Program requires spacecraft fly a crewed test flight to prove the system is ready for
regular flights to and from the space station. Following Starliner’s return, the agency will review all mission-related
data to inform what additional actions are required to meet NASA’s certification requirements.

The agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission, originally slated with four crew members, will launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 24. The agency will share more information about the Crew-9 complement when details are finalized. 

NASA and SpaceX currently are working several items before launch, including reconfiguring seats on the Crew-9 Dragon, and adjusting the manifest to carry additional cargo, personal effects, and Dragon-specific spacesuits for Wilmore and Williams. In addition, NASA and SpaceX now will use new facilities at Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida to launch Crew-9, which provides increased operational flexibility around NASA’s planned Europa Clipper launch.

 

The Crew-9 mission will be the ninth rotational mission to the space station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which works with the American aerospace industry to meet the goal of safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the orbital outpost on American-made rockets and spacecraft launching from American soil.

 For more than two decades, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The station is a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and to expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. As commercial companies focus on providing human space transportation services and destinations as part of a robust low Earth orbit economy, NASA’s Artemis campaign is underway at the Moon where the agency is preparing for future human exploration of Mars.

Source: News & Pictures NASA