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In-Depth Issues:
Why Did Trump Drop His Iran Ultimatum? - Ariel Kahana ( Israel Hayom)
President Trump decided to withdraw his ultimatum and not bomb Iran's power grid because such a move would have run counter to U.S. interests and to the war's objectives.
Last week, at Trump's request, Israel struck an Iranian gas production facility. It was an attempt to test Iran's response and determine whether such a blow would deter what remains of the regime.
At the same time, in order not to embarrass the U.S., it was agreed that the Israel Air Force would carry out the operation while Trump would pretend he knew nothing about it.
But Iran raised the stakes and struck energy facilities in Gulf states.
In response, Trump confronted Iran head-on and demanded the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, giving Iran 48 hours, but the threat did not deter it.
Iran's strategy, after all, is: "I may die, but on the way I'll take everyone down with me."
During those two days global energy prices surged and the shah's son called on Trump to reconsider, noting that damage to the electricity infrastructure would primarily hurt the Iranian people, while the regime has shown no sensitivity to the plight of its citizens.
In the coming week, oil markets are expected to stabilize and pressure on the Iranian regime will continue.
Report: Two Suspected Iranian Spies Arrested near UK Submarine Base ( Reuters)
Two suspected Iranian spies have been arrested after attempting to enter Britain's nuclear submarine base in Scotland, the Sun newspaper reported on Friday.
Police Scotland confirmed they had arrested a man and a woman on Thursday near HM Naval Base Clyde on the west coast of Scotland. The Sun reported the arrested man was believed to be an Iranian national.
The threat posed to Britain from Iran has been the subject of repeated warnings from the UK's domestic spy agency MI5, with accusations that Tehran was behind more than 20 suspected kidnap and assassination plots in the country.
There have been several cases of suspected Iranian spies being arrested in the UK over the last year.
Criticism of Hizbullah Growing in Lebanon - Batya Giladi ( Jerusalem Post)
Where public criticism of Hizbullah in Lebanon was once rare and dangerous, now more voices, even from within the Shi'ite population, are questioning its role and the consequences of its actions on the country.
While Lebanon has yet to see a broad or organized protest against Hizbullah, a certain loosening of the fear barrier can be identified, particularly on social media.
Jonathan Alkhouri, a Lebanese affairs analyst, told Maariv, "We are seeing more people speaking out openly, posting videos, giving interviews, and asking why Hizbullah operatives are acting within civilian populations despite the risks this creates. Such things would never have been aired before."
Alkhouri also pointed to a shift in Lebanon's media language, which is moving away from defining Hizbullah as a "resistance organization."
"There is more and more use of terms like 'militia,' and this is part of an attempt to deny it legitimacy." Lebanon's Ministry of Information issued a directive to state-run media to stop using the term "resistance" in reference to Hizbullah.
The Iran War Is Saving the West - Dan Zamansky ( Ynet News)
The war that the U.S. and Israel finally initiated against Iran is saving the West.
The entire world is a beneficiary of the Allied campaign, since there was no remaining alternative to war.
The decision to attack Iran should have been taken two decades ago, in February 2006, when Iran brazenly resumed uranium enrichment and was referred by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the Security Council.
The world was faced with the prospect of Iran attaining nuclear weapons and had absolutely no plan to prevent it.
The U.S. was, in practice, pursuing only one policy option: waiting for Iran to obtain the means to mass murder either Americans or America's allies.
Some experts are complaining that there is no clear endgame to the current war. But without the war, there was a very clear endgame - a nuclear Iran and very probably nuclear war.
What is absolutely clear is that the war brings the possibility of a positive outcome. Without war, a catastrophic outcome was certain.
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
- Iranians Say They're Exchanging Messages with U.S. to Avert Attacks on Energy Infrastructure - Luke Broadwater
President Trump said on Monday that the U.S. and Iran were negotiating a "total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East." According to four Iranian officials and an Iranian diplomat, Tehran and Washington have been exchanging messages through intermediaries aiming to avert attacks on critical energy infrastructure.
Three officials said Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and U.S. presidential advisor Steve Witkoff had spoken on the phone in recent days. (New York Times)
See also Back-Channel Diplomacy on Iran -
Summer Said
Foreign ministers from Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan gathered Thursday in Riyadh for talks aimed at finding a diplomatic off-ramp to the war in Iran. Egyptian intelligence officials open a channel with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and put forward a proposal to halt hostilities for five days to build confidence for a ceasefire, officials said.
But Arab mediators privately expressed skepticism that the U.S. and Iran could quickly reach an agreement, noting that the two sides remained far apart. Trump's assertion that the talks were productive was met with pushback from Iranian officials, who denied that the discussions were taking place.
The U.S. still wants what it sought from Iran before the war started: the dismantlement of Tehran's nuclear work, a suspension of its ballistic missile program, and a stop to its support for proxy militias.
(Wall Street Journal)
- Iran Lays Mines in Strait of Hormuz - James LaPorta
U.S. officials have told CBS News that Iran has laid at least a dozen underwater mines in the Strait of Hormuz, according to current American intelligence assessments. The mines currently employed by Iran in the strait are the Iranian-manufactured Maham 3 and Maham 7 Limpet Mine. (CBS News)
- Residents on Israel's Northern Border Stay Put despite Hizbullah Fire - Feliz Solomon
By the time the air-raid sirens sound in Kibbutz Kfar Giladi near the Lebanon border, Hizbullah's missiles are often only seconds away. The hundreds of people who live here keep mostly out of sight, trying to stay within steps of a shelter. The clap of outgoing Israeli artillery fire is almost constant.
Israel is trying to carve out a buffer zone inside neighboring Lebanon that is deep enough to put communities like this one beyond the reach of Hizbullah. Many Israelis think it is a better option than evacuating civilians from the border. After the Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli authorities feared a similar incursion by the much more powerful Hizbullah and ordered 65,000 people who lived along the northern border to leave their homes. Almost everyone from Kfar Giladi came back.
Long considered one of the world's most formidable militias, Hizbullah was weakened by Israeli attacks over the past two years. Tal Beeri, head of research at the Alma Center, an Israeli security think tank, said Hizbullah has retained a third of its pre-Oct. 7 missile arsenal. (Wall Street Journal)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
- Netanyahu: President Trump Believes There Is an Opportunity to Realize the Goals of the War through an Agreement
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday: "Earlier today, I spoke with our friend, President Trump. President Trump believes there is an opportunity to leverage the tremendous achievements we have reached alongside the U.S. military to realize the goals of the war through an agreement, an agreement that will safeguard our vital interests."
"At the same time, we are continuing to strike in both Iran and Lebanon. We are smashing the missile program and the nuclear program, and we continue to deal severe blows to Hizbullah. Just a few days ago, we eliminated two more nuclear scientists - and we are still active. We will safeguard our vital interests under all circumstances." (Prime Minister's Office)
- Mossad Predicted Iran Regime Change Likely to Take a Year - Yonah Jeremy Bob
On the eve of the Iran war, Mossad Director David Barnea predicted that regime change in Iran would most likely take a year, the Jerusalem Post has learned. (Jerusalem Post)
- IDF Campaigns in Iran, Lebanon Continue - Lilach Shoval
Even as President Trump declared progress in diplomatic contacts, the IDF clarified Monday that its operational plans in Iran and Lebanon are continuing at full force. The Israel Air Force conducted a broad wave of strikes in the heart of Tehran against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command centers and ballistic missile infrastructure.
In Lebanon, every night strategic targets in Dahieh (Hizbullah's stronghold in south Beirut) are being destroyed. The ultimate objective remains a fundamental change in the security situation and the disarmament of Hizbullah. (Israel Hayom)
- Iranian Rocket Strikes Tel Aviv - Charlie Summers
IDF Home Front Command Col. Miki David said an Iranian missile that struck a street in Tel Aviv on Tuesday caused significant damage to three nearby buildings, but resulted in no serious injuries. He said "there are only three light injuries," as most residents took cover in a nearby bomb shelter. (Times of Israel)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran
- Will the International Community Confront Iran's Illegal Use of Cluster Munitions? - Amb. Alan Baker
Iran's use of cluster munitions has become a dominant feature in its conduct of warfare against Israel and many of the Gulf states. International law acknowledges that such munitions may be used against purely military targets.
However, Iran's widespread and indiscriminate use of cluster bombs that could endanger civilians and civilian locations is strictly forbidden and constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law.
One of the principle international humanitarian law norms of armed conflict is that of distinction, requiring an attacker to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. When fired at targets where non-combatants are in close proximity, their use violates the international law principle of distinction.
During the present, ongoing hostilities, Iran has been indiscriminately and deliberately firing cluster munitions on a large scale against Israeli residential areas. In light of Iranian violations, there exists every legal necessity and justification to make appropriate representations to the international community, its institutions and to the international media and to provide evidence of such misuse by Iran.
The malicious, deliberate, and indiscriminate targeting by Iran and its proxy Hizbullah of Israel's civilian areas clearly violates all humanitarian norms and is absolutely prohibited.
The writer, former Legal Adviser and Deputy Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, heads the international law program at the Jerusalem Center.
(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs)
- Iran War Is Harder and More Necessary than Americans Expected - Walter Russell Mead
Iran doves in past U.S. administrations hoped that a mix of conciliation and deterrence would allow America to coexist with Iran. Kicking the can down the road in the hopes that something might turn up looked to a lot of smart people like the best of bad options.
Iran hawks saw an Iranian regime committed to a revolutionary religious vision and determined on economic and geopolitical grounds to seize control of the Gulf region to become a world power. Tehran was hell-bent on developing military capabilities and networks that, at some point, would pose unacceptable threats to free navigation of the Gulf - and of global access to its fossil fuels and other commodities.
Currently, Iran's ability to close the Gulf and inflict major damage on its neighbors, even after airstrikes from Israel and the U.S., underscores the unacceptable danger that Iran's military power poses to the region. At the same time, the massive economic result of the closing highlights the reality that American interests remain inextricably bound up in freedom of navigation in and around the Gulf.
So here we are. Despite military successes by air and sea, Israel and the U.S. have so far been unable to keep the Gulf open or to protect the Gulf states from Iranian attacks.
The writer, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, is Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Florida. (Wall Street Journal)
- Why Some Arabs Still Justify Iran's Aggression - Abdulrahman al-Rashed
There is a fundamental difference between those sitting in the audience as spectators and the victims who find themselves on the stage of events. Arabs who do not neighbor Iran do not feel its direct threat, nor do they see its proxies - such as the Houthis and Hizbullah - as an issue. In their thinking, the world is divided into black and white, reduced to Palestine and Israel. This is the result of a political and cultural discourse that justifies aggression.
Only those who border Iran truly feel its danger and understand its vast military project, including missile capabilities, proxy networks, and ongoing security threats. This is grounded in a long history of attacks on these countries since the 1980s, unrelated to Palestine or the West. Others neither feel nor prioritize this threat, and many even deny its existence, simplifying the world into positions for or against Israel.
The writer is the chairman of Al Arabiya's editorial board and former editor-in-chief of Asharq al-Awsat. (Al Arabiya)
Observations:
- "No imminent threat" is a talking point which has gained prominence with the joint U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran. For opponents of the operation, the phrase serves as evidence that the rationale for attacking Iran is fraudulent. It functions as a linguistic sedative to assure a nervous public that the wolf is not yet at the door, and to assert that any military action at this time constitutes reckless and unnecessary warmongering.
- But by reducing the complexity of strategic judgment to a single metric - is an attack occurring right this second? - we have traded genuine security for a dangerous and, ultimately temporary, emotional relief. Humans are hardwired to undervalue future risks in favor of present comforts.
- For a modern populace, the "immediate reward" of social stability today - no disruption of the daily routine - is so intoxicating that we are willing to accept the "delayed punishment" of an adversary completing a nuclear facility that renders future defense impossible. We are, in effect, choosing a quiet Tuesday today at the cost of a radioactive Wednesday tomorrow.
- The traditional legal formulation for anticipatory self-defense required a threat to be "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." It emerged in the mid-19th century
when armies moved at the speed of a horse.
- But modern warfare has compressed the timeline of destruction into a digital pulse. Today, an adversary can achieve a "breakthrough" that permanently alters the strategic balance before a single soldier crosses a border. Equating "imminent" with "immediate" risks transforming the sacred right of self-defense into a strategic suicide pact. If we wait until the missile is airborne, we have already lost.
- When we isolate "imminence" to the final seconds before a nuclear detonation, we allow the regime to build an irreversible capability under the cover of our own legalistic hesitation. Progressives who champion human rights and oppose authoritarianism find themselves trapped by a doctrine that effectively protects the world's most oppressive regimes during the only period when preventive action remains viable.
- Waiting for a "smoking gun" is a surrender of sovereignty. Strategic leadership requires acting before an adversary secures an irreversible advantage. Passivity framed as "restraint" does not prevent war; it emboldens the aggressor. When a state approaches irreversible nuclear weapons capability, coupled with ballistic missile capability, the "final effective window" for action is not a matter of hours before a launch, but the final realistic opportunity to prevent the breakthrough altogether.
The writer is a clinical psychologist and a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, specializing in political psychology.
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