The President's Daily Brief
PDB Afternoon Bulletin | March 27th, 2025: Israel Eliminates Hezbollah Chief & US Blacklists 50 Chinese Tech Firms In Major Crackdown
27 Mar 2025
In this episode of The PDB Afternoon Bulletin: First, Israel is upping the pressure on Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, launching another series of overnight strikes that killed a senior commander of the terror group’s elite Radwan force, as well as a group of weapons smugglers. Later in the show, the Trump administration is tightening the screws on Beijing, adding 50 Chinese tech firms to the U.S. export blacklist in an effort to restrict the CCP’s access to advanced American technology, including artificial intelligence. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Kikoff: Build credit fast and get your first month for just a dollar at https://GetKikoff.com/mike today. Thanks to Kikoff for sponsoring us! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
It's Thursday, the 27th of March. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First, Israel is upping the pressure on Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, launching another series of overnight strikes that killed a senior commander of the terror group's elite Radwan force, as well as a group of weapons smugglers.
Later in the show, the Trump administration is tightening the screws on Beijing, adding 50 Chinese tech firms to the US export blacklist in an effort to restrict the Chinese Communist Party's access to advanced American technology including artificial intelligence. But first, today's afternoon spotlight.
Tensions continue to flare between Israel and Lebanon as leaders in Jerusalem press forward in their campaign to degrade Hezbollah's operations and foil the terror group's attempts to rearm. The latest strikes came overnight on Thursday, with the IDF confirming they took out a senior battalion commander in Hezbollah's elite Radwan force in a drone strike in the Tyre district of southern Lebanon.
The commander was one of the highest-ranking members of Hezbollah killed in Israeli operations since a ceasefire took hold last November. That ceasefire is now barely holding together. That's all according to our report from the Times of Israel.
Officials with the IDF said the militant leader was involved in directing numerous attacks on Israel and IDF troops during the war last year, and in recent months, quote, continued to engage in advancing terror attacks on the Israeli home front. The military added that they will continue to, quote, operate in order to remove any threat posed to the state of Israel, end quote.
Separately, in another strike on Thursday morning, Israeli forces took out three Hezbollah operatives who were identified as they were transferring weapons in southern Lebanon near the Latani River. The targeted operations followed airstrikes on Sunday and Monday that also took out key members of the terror group, including the commander of the anti-tank unit in Hezbollah's southern front.
As we discussed earlier this week on the PDB, fighting significantly escalated between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend after militants launched a rocket barrage into Israel on Saturday. Israel responded with two waves of airstrikes in southern Lebanon that targeted dozens of Hezbollah positions, including weapons depots, command hubs, launch pads, and infrastructure nodes.
The strikes killed, reportedly, at least seven Hezbollah militants and marked the most serious flare-up with the terror group since last year's U.S.-brokered ceasefire began to unravel.
As a reminder, the terms of the truce, which ended more than a year of hostilities, including two months of full-scale war, required Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters and weapons north of the Latani River, that's roughly 18 miles from the Israeli border.
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