SPECIAL REPORT — As we look back at the major national and global security events of 2024, it’s tempting to overuse certain words: stunning; staggering; seismic; paradigm shift. You get the idea. Maybe, in the case of this particular year and our particular focus, those words aren’t really exaggerations. It has been a mind-bending 12 months.
Nowhere has the impact been more profound than in the Middle East, where assumptions have fallen like dominoes, with implications that will last a long time and reach well beyond the region.
So we start there, in this compilation of stories and events that changed the world in 2024. There were many to choose from.
No one saw it coming; the fall of Assad
It was the story that caught the world off guard, the one that even the most prescient forecasters hadn’t seen coming: a lightning-fast rebellion that ended the brutal reign of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
The nature of the revolt was also a surprise. First, there was the speed with which a coalition of rebel groups captured city after city, culminating in a takeover of the capital, Damascus, and Assad’s rushed departure. In 11 days, Syria’s 13-year-long civil war and 53 years of Ba’ath Party and Assad family rule had come to an end.
Second, there was the absence of large-scale violence; even those who believed the regime would be overthrown – at some point – had imagined a bloody end.
It was, as we said here, “a kind of Berlin Wall moment for Syria,” and a seismic event for the entire Middle East.
On the day after Assad’s ouster, Cipher Brief expert Ambassador Gary Grappo, a diplomat with decades of experience in the Middle East, said he never thought he’d see it happen. “The day was certainly going to come,” Amb. Grappo told us. “I was just not certain I’d be around to see it.”
The impacts were felt from Russia to Iran — two nations whose once powerful influence in Syria took a hit; in Turkey and Israel, which both made military incursions into the country in the rebellion’s aftermath; and in the U.S., which still maintains a military presence in the country (double the number, we just learned – now roughly 2,000 troops) as part of a mission to counter the Islamic State.
“Just look at a map,” Cipher Brief expert and former top NATO Commander Adm. James Stavridis said, on the day after the rebels reached Damascus. “If you think of it as that old game of Risk we played as kids – poof, goes the bridge that runs from Iran over to Syria into Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea. Poof, go the Russian bases on the Mediterranean, the warm weather port that they have cherished the ideal of for so long. Their ability to operate in that eastern Mediterranean, gone overnight. All of this is a remarkable twist of fate.”
Two weeks after the rebellion, uncertainties abound. Will clashes between the country’s competing factions devolve into a new civil war? Could ISIS or other terrorist groups find safe haven in the power vacuum? And what will the many powers jockeying for influence in Syria do next?
But for now, this was a moment to celebrate, for millions of Syrians, and perhaps for the region writ large. The Economist reminded us of an Assad regime slogan – qaidna lil abad – or “our leader, forever.” That’s what many people thought, until a stunning two weeks at the end of 2024.
North Korean troops fighting – and dying – in Europe
From another part of the world, another headline that would have seemed unimaginable a year ago: thousands of “elite forces” from North Korea, fighting — and now reportedly dying — in a European war.
The deployment of more than 11,000 North Koreans turned the Russia-Ukraine war into a truly global conflict. It was also a dramatic example of collaboration within the so-called “Axis of Authoritarians,” the anti-U.S. quartet made up of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
The North Koreans deployed first to Russian bases for training, to learn the language and the operational workings of their new fellow soldiers. In the last weeks of the year, they were in the fight – trying to push back Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk Province (more on that below). Officials in Ukraine and the U.S. said several hundred North Korean troops had been killed or injured in the fighting.
As with other items on this list, the North Korean deployment carried implications well beyond the battlefield.
“I think this means that we have to stop thinking of North Korea as just an isolated rogue threat, and start thinking of the country as an international collaborator that could cause harm to the broader international community,” Dr. Naoko Aoki, a political scientist at RAND, told The Cipher Brief.
Depending who you asked, the deployment was either a sign of Russian desperation, given the country’s staggering losses in Ukraine, or a clever way to make practical use of the new “Axis”, and the Russia-North Korea relationship in particular. Both analyses may be true. And the Russia-North Korea wing of that “axis” may well bring fresh trouble in the new year.
Another Cipher Brief expert, Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, had one big worry.
“North Korea is now aligned with a revanchist Russian Federation, with a mutual defense treaty that commits each to come to the defense of the other if attacked,” DeTrani told us. “The likelihood of an emboldened North Korea, now aligned with Russia, using conventional weapons to incite conflict with South Korea is greater than any time since the Korean War.”
Ukraine invades Russia
There’s another headline that would have seemed fanciful one year ago, but it happened. Two and a half years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, thousands of Ukrainian troops stormed into Russia’s Kursk province, in the first large-scale invasion of Russian territory since the second world war.
It was a strategic and dangerous gambit by the Ukrainians, but it worked – and a second surprise came in the slow and ineffective Russian response. The Kremlin vowed swift retribution and the recapture of its territory, but at this writing, more than four months later, the Ukrainians are still there. It’s hardly a game-changer for the war, but many experts said the Kursk assault sent powerful messages to all sides: Russia saw Ukraine could bring the war to its front door; the West saw Ukraine was not backing down; and the Ukrainians showed the world they were still fighting to win.
“It is very significant because the only way for us to win, whatever the political definition of victory is, is to do something outside of the box, something which is not according to the book,” Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian Defense Minister, told us. “Because according to the book, the Ukrainian and Russian army would fight very similarly, and then the resources difference would kick in, and that’s what happens with pretty much all symmetrical wars. So we need to fight asymmetrically.”
The incursion – and its staying power – have also laid bare fundamental weaknesses in Russian defenses. And the occupation has given Ukraine two things it badly needed: a bargaining chip if and when negotiations begin to end the war; and the ability to deliver a dose of their own medicine to the Russians.
When the pagers exploded – and what came next
One moment — or series of moments — in September changed two fundamental assumptions in the Middle East, about Israel and its arch enemy Iran.
Over the course of two days in Lebanon, thousands of pagers exploded in the hands or pockets of operatives of the militant group Hezbollah. 12 people were killed and more 2,000 were wounded, but the effects reached well beyond the casualty toll. The operation showed the depth of Israeli intelligence agencies’ penetration of Hezbollah, drove Hezbollah operatives to seek alternative communications, and sent the group’s leadership reeling.
Things only got worse, from the perspective of Hezbollah, when it became clear that the mid-September pager attacks were only the opening salvo in a bigger onslaught.
Ten days after the first pagers blew up, Israel assassinated the longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and then embarked on an air and ground campaign that decimated the group’s leadership and arsenal of weapons. All of which weakened their patron Iran as well.
“Hezbollah as a fighting force has been seriously degraded and diminished,” Ambassador Dennis Ross, Mideast envoy in both the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, told The Cipher Brief. “Its entire leadership cohort has been eliminated. Its command and control [capability] is largely in tatters. It cannot trust its communications… Hezbollah operatives and fighters are focused now on their own survival.”
Cipher Brief expert Paula Doyle, a former Assistant Deputy Director for Operations at CIA, posed questions that showed the enormity of the moment. “Are Hezbollah and the other groups now nervous that Iran does not have their back? And that they therefore cannot re-equip, cannot rebuild, cannot retrain fast enough to keep up with the pace of Israel’s actions? This is a major change.”
Hezbollah heads into 2025 as a shadow of its former self. And that’s largely due to the operation that set off those pagers in Lebanon, on that mid-September afternoon.
Iran and Israel go to war
For years it’s been a nightmare scenario for the Middle East: Israel and Iran would climb the so-called “escalation ladder” from small-scale or proxy attacks to major military strikes against one another. It happened twice in 2024, first in April and then again in October, exchanges that brought the Middle East to the brink of an unprecedented, full-scale regional war.
Iran launched its first-ever major missile and drone attack against Israel in April, in response to an Israeli air strike that had killed three Iranian generals and four others at Iran’s embassy in Damascus. Israel countered, but war seemed to have been averted – and then a heavier exchange played out in October.
To some, the twin episodes of strike-counterstrike meant that the nightmare scenario had arrived.
“I would argue that perhaps we’re in the wider war now,” former CENTCOM Commander and Cipher Brief expert Gen. Frank McKenzie told us in October. “We continue to redefine what a wider war is, as each step is crossed. I think we entered a period of ‘wider war’ back in April, when Iran attacked Israel directly.”
Here, as with Ukraine’s Kursk invasion, there was a secondary surprise in what didn’t happen: Iran proved unwilling or unable to make good on pledges – including public vows made by the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – to rain a heavy retaliation down on Israel.
“I think Iran here is on really tricky ground, really uncertain ground,” former Defense Secretary Mark Esper told us. “They no longer have a viable proxy in Hamas. Their proxy, their favorite one, the crown jewel in their ring of fire, Hezbollah, has been decimated. The leadership is gone. They’re on their back heels…so the question is, what is left for Iran to do?”
“Salt Typhoon” – the cyberattack that the NSA missed
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Jen Easterly, has a wish: that the names given to two major attacks linked to China sound less like cool spy novels, and more like what they really are. “I wish I hadn’t ever heard any of these names, like ‘Volt Typhoon,’ ‘Salt Typhoon,’ ‘Midnight Blizzard,’ ‘Tempest Panda’…that really glorify these villains that frankly want to do enormous harm to the United States of America,” she said. “I’m on a mission to try and rename some of these bad actors to things like Weak Weasel and Doofus Dingo.”
For now, though, “Salt Typhoon” and “Volt Typhoon” are still the names for a series of attacks that have targeted – successfully – critical U.S. infrastructure. Salt Typhoon was the one that struck in 2024 – or, to be more accurate, the one that came to light in 2024. It involved a cyber invasion and breaching of major American telecommunications companies – including AT&T and Verizon. The attacks were startling both for their brazenness and the time it took for the cybersecurity officials to realize what was happening. In fact, as the National Security Agency (NSA) Director General Timothy Haugh said, in a piece we published earlier this month, the NSA knew nothing of Salt Typhoon until it received an alert from Microsoft. “We did not see activity in U.S. telecommunications networks,” he said.
Salt Typhoon didn’t just show China’s ability to breach American telecommunication companies; U.S. officials said the hackers also reached into files associated with federal wiretapping operations, likely compromising intelligence community investigations. The earlier attack, the one known as Volt Typhoon, had also caught authorities flatfooted. “It combines this perfect storm of ‘not ready,’” Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery told us, adding that recent research showed water supply systems lacked proper security, infrastructure, and public-private collaboration. “All three elements were missing,” Montgomery said. “It’s extremely vulnerable.”
Russia’s “hybrid war” against Europe
It’s known as “hybrid warfare,” war waged with a blend of traditional and unconventional tactics, and by its nature it’s often not something seen out in the open. But increasingly in 2024, the scope and gravity of Russia’s efforts in this space became clear, ranging from suspected arson attacks, alleged disruption of transportation and communication networks, and assassination plots.
“Russia’s lethal operations are meant to create fear and coerce governments to refrain from acting against Moscow’s interests,” Philip Wasielewski wrote in The Cipher Brief. He and others called these actions a form of terrorism, and urged a commensurate response.
“NATO must respond forcefully to these attacks so that Russia recognizes the inviolability of NATO soil,” Wasielewski said. “A failure to do so raises a risk that the alliance will face not only continued attacks, but likely ones of increased lethality.”
And again, given the nature of such activities, we may well not know the half of it.
Trump’s return
Any American presidential election carries global implications, and while Donald Trump is an unpredictable figure, his election may bring far-reaching national and global security implications.
As The Cipher Brief has reported, Trump will take office having pledged to end the Mideast and Ukraine wars, and curtail or end American aid for Ukraine. He has regularly criticized NATO, questioned other longstanding U.S. alliances, boasted of warm relations with dictators, and as a general matter vowed a retrenchment when it comes to U.S. engagement in many parts of the world.
To take a recent example, as the rebels routed Assad from power, and many Cipher Brief experts and others urged the U.S. to engage in what one called an “extraordinary opportunity,” Trump made his views clear: “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED.”
Trump has also promised unprecedented tariffs against China – not a national-security issue, per se, but a policy that could easily bring national-security ramifications, depending on the response from Beijing. And he has suggested or pledged better relationships with a host of dictators – from Vladimir Putin to Kim Jong Un to Xi Jinping. He even invited Xi to his inauguration.
So without question, Donald Trump’s election was a global game-changer. But it bears repeating: the former and future president is unpredictable.
A resurgence for the Islamic State
It’s a measure of just how turbulent 2024 has been that this item barely makes the list.
The Islamic State made headlines in the early part of the year with attacks that showed its geographic reach – bombings in Iran that killed 95 people, and then an assault that killed more than 130 at a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow. Other IS plots were thwarted, including one aimed at the American election and another reportedly targeting a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna.
The good news? Western intelligence appeared plugged in enough to have stopped several plots before they came to fruition; and in Afghanistan, where the Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) makes its home, the group has a powerful enemy in the ruling Taliban.
But it’s also the case that IS attacks overall jumped in 2024, and as we reported last week, there are concerns that ISIS, the Islamic State’s franchise in Iraq and Syria, might take advantage of the chaos following the Syrian rebellion, and begin a renaissance in that country.
“Is there the potential for [IS] to come here (to the U.S.) because it’s broadened into the region?” Cipher Brief expert Javed Ali said in a conversation with us after the Moscow attacks. “You take it one step further: baked into the jihadist ideology are attacks against the U.S. homeland.”
Dangerous waters: Clashes on the South China Sea
The South China Sea has been a geopolitical flashpoint for decades, but it’s typically been a place where tensions are kept to a low boil. In 2024, China turned up the heat.
China has claimed increasing areas of the South China Sea, and attempted to create facts on the water, as it were, building up small, often uninhabited islands, and in some cases installing military outposts on those islands. China’s claims have been countered by Southeast Asian nations, and an international tribunal upheld a case brought by the Philippines on its claims of sovereignty in 2016.
But in 2024, Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval vessels found themselves in increasingly hostile confrontations. In the most violent incident, a Chinese ship rammed a Philippine boat attempting to resupply a garrison of Filipino troops on the grounded warship Sierra Madre in the disputed Second Thomas Shoal. Philippine officials said Chinese crew members armed with spears and knives boarded their vessel, and that several Filipinos were injured in the incident. The Philippines have also taken a stronger rhetorical stand against China lately, under President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. Last month, Marcos signed laws reaffirming the reach of his country’s maritime territories and right to resources, including in the South China Sea. China issued a “stern protest” in response.
This is a national security issue for the United States as well, which has regularly sailed ships through the South China Sea as an expression of the right to navigation, and the U.S. has a longstanding alliance with the Philippines.
“If China physically attacks a treaty ally of the United States,” said Cipher Brief expert RADM Mark Montgomery (Ret), “it’s going to put us in a very tough position because this isn’t like Ukraine and Russia, where Ukraine was not a treaty ally. This becomes a credibility issue for the United States.”
It may well be that 2025 is one more year of high tension without actual kinetic conflict; but the South China Sea could just as easily vault to the top of a list like this one, one year from now.
Ethan Masucol contributed to reporting.
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