A New Beginning for the Middle East | Washington’s Risky Bet on Argentina | New Approach in the Fight Against Transnational Violent Extremism is Needed, and more

US Targets Chinese Companies Over Drone Components Used by Hamas, Houthis  (Karen Freifeld, Reuters)
The United States said on Wednesday it was adding 15 Chinese companies to its restricted trade list for facilitating the purchase of American electronic components found in drones operated by Iranian proxies including Houthi and Hamas militants.
Ten companies in China were placed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List for facilitating the purchase of components found in weaponized unmanned aircraft systems operated by proxies including Yemen’s Houthi militants, according to a post in the Federal Register.

Microsoft’s Crackdown on Unit 8200 Reveals Tech’s Intermediary Role  (Yotam Berger, Lawfare)
Microsoft’s recent action against Israel’s Unit 8200 demonstrates Big Tech’s growing ability to limit state-operated surveillance practices.

Some Questions About Trump’s Order Pledging to Defend Qatar’s Security  (Michael Mattler, Just Security)
On September 29, President Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Ensuring the Security of the State of Qatar,” which sets out significant U.S. security commitments to Qatar in the event of an external attack against it.
The order announces that “it is the policy of the United States to guarantee the security and territorial integrity of the State of Qatar against external attack.” In pursuit of this policy, the order states that “the United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States” and that “in the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures — including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military — to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”
The order raises a number of important legal and policy questions that merit careful consideration by Congress and the public. The commitments it makes are extraordinary, both in that they are as far-reaching as the defense commitments the United States has made to its closest treaty allies and that they appear to have been made on a unilateral, rather than a reciprocal, basis. Congress does not appear to have had any formal role in the decision to make these weighty commitments, which is inconsistent with past practice and raises significant constitutional questions. It is unclear whether these commitments are legally binding on the international plane; and the significant policy ramifications of making these commitments have not been addressed publicly in any detail.

A New Approach in the Fight Against Transnational Violent Extremism is Needed  (Thomas E. Brzozowski, Just Security)
Through increased collaboration, countries can deploy their sanctions and designations authorities to strategically target transnational violent extremism.
In May 2025, federal authorities extradited Georgian national Michail Chkhikvishvili (aka “The Butcher”) on charges including soliciting hate crimes and acts of mass violence in New York City. According to the FBI, Chkhikvishvili is the leader of the Maniac Murder Cult (MKY), a transnational violent extremist group that “adheres to a neo-Nazi accelerationist ideology and promotes violence against racial minorities, the Jewish community and other groups it deems ‘undesirables.’” The charged offenses relate to a plot to conduct a mass casualty attack on New Year’s Eve involving, in part, a fake Santa Claus handing out candy laced with poison to Jewish children. To date, the United States has not designated MKY under any of its various counterterrorism sanctions programs. Yet on July 1, 2025, the United Kingdom’s Home Office announced plans to ban MKY under its proscription regime for providing instructional material on terrorist attack planning.
Although MKY poses a clear national security threat to both countries, each has chosen a different response. These divergent methods can be attributed, in part, to distinctions in the structure and criteria associated with each country’s designation authorities. But if the United States and the United Kingdom, along with other foreign partners similarly afflicted by the scourge of transnational violent extremism, could strategically deploy their respective counterterrorism proscription programs to deliberately target a common enemy, all would mutually benefit.

When Ideology Writes the Check: Washington’s Risky Bet on Argentina  (Benjamin Gedan, War on the Rocks)
Last month, Javier Milei, Argentina’s flashy libertarian leader, arrived in New York City not with his trademark chainsaw, but with his hat in his hand. He left with a stunning pledge from the U.S. government to loan $20 billion to stop a run on the peso that threatens to wreck Milei’s pro-market revolution.
For the United States, there is no economic logic to the rescue, to be ironed out at Milei’s Oval Office meeting on Oct. 14. Indeed, President Donald Trump and his Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, hardly hid the ideological motivations behind the risky bailout of Trump’s “favorite president.” That is unfortunate, because there is a foreign policy case for lending Argentina a hand, though perhaps not one stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.
The Trump administration’s formal reason for the bailout is that Argentina, in Bessent’s words, is “systemically important” to the U.S. economy. It obviously is not. Argentina buys just 12 percent of its imports from the United States. Last year, U.S. goods exports to the country totaled a meager $9.1 billion, compared to $334 billion to neighboring Mexico, the last country to receive a similar U.S. rescue package, in 1995. Yet another economic collapse in Argentina would hardly reverberate in the United States, 5,000 miles away.