| DAILY ALERT |
Tuesday, May 5, 2026 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
U.S. ships shot down cruise missiles and drones that Iran fired at the ships and commercial vessels the Navy was guiding through the Strait of Hormuz, Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, said Monday. Apache helicopter gunships sank six Iranian military speedboats that threatened the vessels. None of the Navy ships or commercial tankers were damaged. President Trump is seeking to break Iran's blockade of the strait by ordering American military forces to help stranded vessels exit the waterway. Adm. Cooper said multiple Navy destroyers had steamed through the strait by way of a sea lane the Navy has cleared of mines using naval robots. "We've now opened a passage through the Strait of Hormuz to allow for the free flow of commerce to proceed," he said. "U.S. forces are helping the international community in restoring the flow of global commerce, where the IRGC, on the other hand, is doing everything it can to terrorize and threaten commercial shipping." (New York Times) See also U.S. Seeks to Protect Commercial Ships from Iran in Strait of Hormuz - Ron Ben-Yishai The Iranians launched a missile and drone attack Monday on the UAE and the Omani capital, and senior Revolutionary Guards officials may not be done. Tehran appears to understand that if the U.S. succeeds in even partially reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, Iran will lose its only bargaining chip in negotiations and suffer a humiliation that could threaten the regime's survival. The U.S. used the ceasefire to build up a massive naval, air and ground force facing southern Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. The Americans also diligently gathered intelligence on the locations of naval mines laid by the Revolutionary Guards in the Strait of Hormuz and identified safe routes for commercial ships. U.S. Navy destroyers now stand between the Iranian coast and the vessels, ready to respond to attacks against them, with missile-jamming systems and reconnaissance aircraft and drones detecting every launch and striking it. (Ynet News) For a country that has been on an effective war footing for almost three years, the Bank of Israel still expects Israel's economy to grow by 3.8% in 2026. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that Israel's economy will grow by 3.5% in 2026, compared to 2.3% for the U.S. and 1.3% for the EU. It also means Israel's GDP is forecast to outperform all G7 countries in 2026. The IMF forecasts a debt-to-GDP ratio for Israel of 69.8% in 2026, much lower than the G7's rate of 123.7%. Israel's unemployment rate was 3.2% in March, below America's 4.3% and the euro zone's 6.2%. (CNBC) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
According to Nikolay Mladenov, director general of President Trump's Board of Peace for Gaza, talks in Cairo with a Hamas delegation in April produced preliminary understandings that Hamas is willing in principle to discuss partial, phased disarmament involving heavy weapons, such as missiles, rockets, medium and heavy mortars, anti-tank missiles, heavy machine guns, drones and possibly large explosive devices. But Hamas refuses to give up pistols, rifles, light machine guns, RPG launchers, and grenades. According to officials, each stage of heavy-weapons disarmament would require a parallel Israeli step. Israel says Hamas's maximum offer on disarmament remains far from Israel's minimum demands. Other parts of Trump's plan are also stalled. The multinational stabilization force has not been established, and the funds needed to fund, equip and deploy it have not been secured. The Palestinian technocratic committee meant to manage Gaza is also not functioning. Senior IDF officials say Israel must act. The Oct. 2025 ceasefire left 43% of Gaza under Hamas control, and Hamas has used the situation to strengthen its rule. The officials argue that Israel should use the fact that there are no longer Israeli hostages in Gaza to act with full force to disarm Hamas and collapse its rule. Those officials note that because the fighting in Lebanon is limited, forces are now available to operate in Gaza. (Ynet News) The ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese government is significant, except that the war Israel is waging is against Hizbullah, with whom no ceasefire agreement was reached. Israel is deployed in a buffer zone 3 to 8 km. inside Lebanese territory, with freedom of action to operate and respond in southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. The restrictions on Israeli operations north of the Litani prevent it from responding in Hizbullah's core areas in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut or in the Beqaa Valley. This leaves the IDF in a position where it is unable to take real action that produces a meaningful change in reality. The IDF is using this time to destroy the infrastructure in the area it has seized in the manner it has done in Gaza, meaning the destruction of the entire built-up area adjacent to the border. (Israel Hayom) Finland's parliament rejected a citizens' initiative calling for a ban on arms trade between Finland and Israel in a 140-20 vote on April 24. (Ynet News) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran Iran's strategy to close the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a major conflict with the U.S. has been well known for decades. The U.S. sidelined the Strait at the outset of the conflict, but the threat from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) must now be addressed. The IRGCN is built around shore-based anti-ship cruise missiles, naval mines, fast attack craft, and drones. The shore-based missiles are located in "missile cities" up to 500 meters underground, making U.S. strikes difficult. In an abundance of caution, the U.S. is actively hunting for mines that may have been laid. The U.S. Navy has four Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships in the region and two littoral combat ships which have been augmented with counter-mine capabilities. These forces have some of the most advanced mine-countermeasure resources, including unmanned undersea systems, helicopters, and divers. The MH-60S Seahawk can employ the Airborne Laser Mine Detection System to locate mines from the air and then help neutralize them. The Knifefish unmanned undersea vehicle can hunt mines below the surface. The IRGCN, though significantly degraded, still retains enough capability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait. However, rather than rush major naval forces into a confined battlespace built for attrition, Washington and Jerusalem widened the fight, dismantled key elements of Iran's military system, and then combined limited operations in and around the Strait with economic coercion and diplomatic pressure. The writer, a former U.S. Navy Commander, was the Director for Theater Security Cooperation for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. (Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Every Iranian action underscores why this regime cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons. During the two months of the current conflict, Iran has managed to make its opponents' case for them time and again. Iran has made it clear with each action why it wants nuclear weapons, what it would do with nuclear weapons, and on whom it would turn them. Iran's refusal to renounce its intention to obtain nuclear weapons brought on the preemptive strike that buried much of Iran's nuclear material under heaps of rubble last year. Their continued intention to pursue nuclear weapons brought on the current conflict. Iran has used the weapons at its disposal, mostly ballistic missiles and drones, with little concern about civilian casualties (nine in one attack on Israel; Iran has also used cluster bombs on Israel). These have been fired in enormous quantities at virtually every target in the region. None of Iran's massive firings have improved its position militarily or diplomatically. The result has only been terror; the same terrorism that Iran once sponsored through its myriad proxies, it now pursues baldly on its own. Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is an economic version of its military tactics. It is an indiscriminate use of an economic weapon against any and all parties within reach. It inflicts pain on those residing half a world away from the conflict. It is simply another version of terrorism. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, it will use them the same way it has used the weapons it currently has at hand - indiscriminately. Just as it has had no compunction on inflicting slaughter now, it would have none inflicting slaughter on anyone who would oppose its goals later. In every future dispute with this Iranian regime, its nuclear capability would be in the background. Appeasing Iran will mean arming Iran; arming Iran will mean nuclear weapons. The writer served in the U.S. Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget. (Substack) The small group of Islamist regime loyalists now ruling Iran can't escape the reality of an American naval blockade pushing their economy off the cliff. Whether Iran's oil storage completely runs out in a day or a month, Iran is no longer exporting oil - the lifeblood of its economy - or petrochemicals, steel or any other product at a level needed to keep the government afloat, banks capitalized, and employees paid. The currency is in free fall, domestic prices are skyrocketing, reserves are being drained, and escape hatches - sanctions evasion routes the regime typically relies upon - are getting closed soon after they open. Every department and agency in the U.S. government has been directed to prioritize economic warfare against the Revolutionary Guard. The intelligence community is now laser focused on this objective in a way it hasn't been in years. Every bank account - and crypto wallet - where the regime has cash is being frozen. The writer, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, was director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the National Security Council. (New York Post) In response to the U.S. operation to move ships through the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranians fired at the vessels and also directly attacked the UAE. The Americans and Israel are now holding intensive consultations on the nature of their response. According to three officials, the most likely options include targeted strikes on launchers and military targets threatening the strait, or a strike on an Iranian energy facility, in response to Iran's attack on Fujairah, a UAE port on the Gulf of Oman. A U.S. official told Israel Hayom that despite the determination to secure the shipping lane and maintain the naval blockade on Iran, there was no intention of being dragged into a full resumption of the war. The assessment in Israel's security establishment is that the confrontation will remain "contained" in the Gulf area and will not spill over into Israel. According to foreign sources, an Israeli Iron Dome battery sent to the UAE took part in the interception of the latest Iranian fire. (Israel Hayom) The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is no longer merely smuggling pallets of physical cash across the Zagros Mountains; it has constructed a sophisticated, transnational laundering apparatus. The financial architecture utilized by the IRGC to circumvent U.S. sanctions and fund its proxies is a masterclass in layered obfuscation. By the end of 2025, blockchain analytics revealed that IRGC-controlled addresses accounted for 50% of Iran's entire crypto ecosystem, receiving billions in illicit volume. Pakistan has emerged as the critical geographic and financial bridge for this deployment. The IRGC is heavily leveraging established Pakistani money laundering syndicates, entities that historically serviced narcotics cartels and human trafficking rings. The IRGC contracts these syndicates to convert Iranian digital assets into Pakistani rupees or hard Western currency. The writer is an Iran and financial terrorism expert and a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Iranians have suffered such extensive economic blows in recent years that their situation would not qualify as good even if an agreement is reached soon to decisively end the current conflict. Consider where Iran was before the damage to key economic sites caused by the Israeli-American bombing of 13,000 targets. In November, President Pezeshkian warned that Tehran might have to be evacuated due to acute water shortages. In addition, for months before the war, electricity was cut off in major cities for hours at a time. Natural gas shortages this past winter forced authorities to close industrial plants powered by gas and cut the wages of factory workers. Iran depends on natural gas for 69% of its total energy. The writer directs the Program on Iran and U.S. Policy at The Washington Institute. (Washington Institute for Near East Policy) It is shocking how many people with major media platforms would rather see Iran win its battle to preserve its nuclear program. Both the U.S. and Israel are taking proper military action against a tyrannical and unlawful regime that might well use a nuclear arsenal against its enemies, were it be allowed to develop one. Preventive wars against threatened nuclear attacks are justified both morally, legally, and under any theory of just war. No decent person should be on Iran's side or remain ambivalent about the need to defeat Iran's genocidal ambitions. No decent person should support Iran's repression and murder of tens of thousands of its own citizens just this year. There can be little dispute about these democracies being on the right side in their conflict with a tyrannical regime sworn to their destruction. The First Amendment gives Americans the right to cheer for Iran if they want, just as it gave them the right to cheer for Nazi Germany. But that doesn't mean that others don't also have the right to point out that they are wrong on the merits. The writer is professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. (The Hill) Hizbullah More than 6,000 rockets and drones have been fired into Israel in the two months since Hizbullah began its latest round of attacks on March 2. In the Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona there have been 180 rocket sirens and 87 drone alerts. That comes out to more than four sirens a day - every day. Yet, if you follow much of the international media coverage of Lebanon, you wouldn't know any of this. Instead, the stories run according to the familiar script: Israel is once again striking its northern neighbor. There is little mention of the relentless rocket fire, the daily drone incursions, or the inability of the Lebanese government to rein in Hizbullah. Israel is cast, almost exclusively, as the aggressor. This is the same storyline we saw 2 1/2 years ago when after the initial shock of the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion faded, coverage of the war in Gaza shifted almost entirely to the suffering of Palestinians, making it seem like there was only one side to the war and as if Israel's actions existed in a vacuum, disconnected from the massacre that had triggered the conflict. In Lebanon, the fact that Hizbullah - a designated terrorist organization - is actively firing thousands of rockets and drones at Israeli communities and Israel is acting in self-defense like any country that wishes to survive would do, does not fit into that narrative, and so it is sidelined. The way the media cover wars is by reducing them to a scoreboard - how many people have been killed on each side. The result creates a distorted moral equivalence, where a sovereign state defending its citizens is seen in the same way as a terrorist organization whose stated goal is destruction. But Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7. Hizbullah opened a second front from Lebanon. Israel did not choose these wars; it was forced into them. Do people expect Israel to simply evacuate again an entire swath of the country? Should it tolerate a situation where communities live under constant threat of rockets and drones? Should it simply concede the territory? We know that this would only embolden Hizbullah and send a dangerous message across the region - that sustained attacks on civilians provide results. Moral clarity is needed when media ignores who initiated the war and why it continues. The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute. (Jewish Chronicle-UK) Israeli Arabs The number of volunteers for National Service among the Israeli Arab population is gradually increasing. If 20 years ago there were barely 500 young Arabs and Bedouin who volunteered for the program, in 2022 their number stood at 3,319. There are currently 4,138 Israeli Arabs doing National Service. Sammy Smooha, professor emeritus in sociology at the University of Haifa, told Ha'aretz, "I was sure that in the wake of the war in Gaza, Israel's legitimacy in the eyes of the Arabs here would decline. But it actually rose. They felt more of a connection with Israel, and that is also reflected in volunteering for National Service." "90% and perhaps more of the volunteers are Arab and Druze girls, and for them it's a case of 'women's liberation.' They open a bank account and a monthly sum is deposited in it. That creates a feeling of independence. They have a job." "They saw what it's like to be a Palestinian in Gaza and the West Bank. They understood that their situation in Israel is far better, that they are relatively protected here - they have employment, citizenship, they can vote for the Knesset." Somaya Bashir, 50, founded a nonprofit called We Have No Other Land that advocates for Jewish-Arab cooperation and promotes National Service in the county's Arab community. One of her daughters is currently doing National Service. She says "there are some who are against [doing National Service]....Contributing to the country in which you are a citizen reflects a self-perception that projects strength - it is the opposite of a feeling of inferiority. A citizen who contributes to the country sees himself as an equal." "October 7 shocked me so much. The image of [hostage] Shiri Bibas with her children haunts me. What happened touches us all; Arabs were murdered, too, and no one is safe anymore....There were some who denied the rapes and claimed that the Jews are making it up in order to take over Gaza - all nourished by Al Jazeera. There were some who made excuses for the massacre....But there is no excuse for the barbaric things that were done. It's not humane and that should be clear to everyone.... As a human being and as a mother, I could not remain silent." (Ha'aretz) Saudi Arabia In 1981, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected the sale of Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes to Saudi Arabia by a vote of 301-111, while the Senate narrowly approved it by a vote of 52-48. The aircraft were initially intended for the Shah's Iran, but the U.S. froze arms transfers after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The AWACS sale also symbolized a sea change in U.S. policy, establishing Saudi Arabia as a "pillar" of American policy in the Middle East. Today, the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) operates more than 200 very lethal F-15s, making it the second-largest F-15 fleet in the world, behind only the U.S. Saudi Arabia has publicly stated it will not undertake offensive operations against Iran, despite hundreds of Iranian drone, ballistic, and cruise missile attacks targeting Saudi bases (some housing American troops) and energy infrastructure. The Saudis claim their F-15s conduct exclusively defensive missions - intercepting drones and missiles from within Saudi borders. (Substack) International Law The leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Norway and most European countries have made statements on the essential importance of obeying international law while waging war against Iran and its terror proxies, such as Hizbullah, claiming preventive force against murderous regimes is somehow illegal. Such statements reveal a shallow and dangerous Western discourse on war, law, and justice. A chorus of morally blind academics claiming legal expertise promote an imaginary "rules-based international order" that paralyzes democracies while protecting despotic dictators and terrorist tyrants. Helen Clark, New Zealand's former prime minister, claimed "international law has been breached" by U.S.-Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime whose mottos are "death to America" and "death to Israel." In this view, reminiscent of European pacifists of the 1920s and 1930s, nothing can be done to restrain the world's malicious dictators and warmongering aggressors before they begin mass slaughter. In particular, those who condemn the strikes against Iran by claiming the mantle of international law erase more than four decades in which the Islamic Republic waged a murderous campaign against the U.S. and Israel. The nuclear dimension of Iran's aggressive ambitions makes stopping the threat of mass destruction from Iran more urgent still. A regime that blatantly calls for the elimination of another state and works to implement that objective cannot plausibly expect its neighbors to view the nuclear project as legitimate civilian energy production. In reality, no legitimate legal system, including international law, can expect victims to ignore visible and credible threats of annihilation. Since the 19th century, states have recognized that a government facing an overwhelming and accelerating threat may - indeed, must - act to defend its citizens before they are attacked. This is the essence of justice. When a terror regime builds missiles, arms proxy militias, and advances toward nuclear capability while proclaiming its desire to destroy its neighbors, inaction is suicidal. The writer is founder and president of NGO Monitor. (Gatestone Institute) Antisemitism The Palestinian cause and the fictitious Palestinian identity that underpins it are devoted to the destruction of Israel and the theft of the Jews' own ancestral history in the land. Far from being moral, it's an evil cause. The stock in trade of the Palestinian Arabs is to project their own crimes onto the Jews and to accuse the Jews in turn of committing atrocities of which they have, in fact, been the victims. Everyone who has perpetrated these lies is an accessory to murderous violence against Jews. Horrifyingly, anti-Zionism and antisemitism have become so deeply ingrained in the West as an unchallenged narrative presenting Israel as the fount of all evil that they've developed into a belief system that defines an individual's moral identity. The shocking outcome, therefore, is that the West has framed antisemitism and anti-Zionism as conscience itself. Small wonder that Jews and all decent people feel as if they're now inhabiting a looking-glass world where truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor have all been reversed. The writer is a columnist for The Times-UK. (JNS) You cannot solve a problem if you do not name it. The problem is extremist Islamist jihadism and their compatriots on the far left. I know quite well that the far right also poses a very real threat. But the stabbings, firebombs, assaults, and the like are currently coming in the main from Islamist extremists. When politicians and leaders refuse to acknowledge that, they throw moderate Muslims under the bus. It is not solely Jews who are being threatened. This is an attack on Western culture and civilization. This is an attack on British society in its entirety, including mainstream Muslims. This is a brutal assault on us all. It has started with the Jews, but it will not end with them. I have seen some people proclaiming on social media, "We stand with British Jews." I would like to amend that slogan to: "We stand with British Jews, not out of sympathy, but because they are us." The writer, an American historian and diplomat, served as the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism (2022-25). (Jewish News-UK) According to recent data, a typical Jewish organization spends about 14% of its overall budget on security, with the total communal expenditure now reaching $765 million every year. The image of a heavily fortified synagogue guarded by professional sentries sends a message to our fellow citizens that it is normal for Jews in the U.S. to require extensive security in order to safely practice their religion. This is a radical departure from this country's self-conception. Perhaps even more toxic is the message it drills into Jewish children. We're teaching our children that it is normal to associate Jewish life and identity with anxiety and insecurity. (Tablet) Observations: To Students Protesting an Honorary Doctorate to Israeli President Herzog - Prof. Gil Troy (Los Angeles Jewish Journal)
The writer, a Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University, is a Senior Fellow in Zionist Thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute. |
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