| DAILY ALERT |
Sunday, June 28, 2026 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
The governments of Israel and Lebanon, with the full support of the U.S., signed an agreement in Washington on June 26 in which "the two countries declare their ambition to end conflict between them, ensure the sovereignty and security of both countries, and establish peaceful neighborly relations between the two countries. Israel and Lebanon affirm the right of each state to exist in peace, and their mutual desire to live in security as neighboring sovereign states. Israel and Lebanon hereby declare their intent to conclusively end the conflict, address its underlying causes, and to therewith formally conclude any state of war between them." The two governments "commit to a reciprocal, sequenced process, with clear conditions, whereby the LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces) will restore effective sovereign authority over all Lebanese territory, pending the verified disarmament of non-state armed groups and dismantlement of associated infrastructure....The Framework will set out the requisite measures, security arrangements, and verification mechanisms to advance this process....The LAF will gradually assume full and effective security responsibility in pilot zones....Two initial zones have been agreed to by the IDF and the LAF." "The Government of Lebanon reaffirms its resolute and irreversible commitment to restoring and exercising full sovereignty over all its territory. The Government of Lebanon will rebuild the state's monopoly on the use of force, achieve the complete and verified disarmament of all non-state armed groups, and ensure that such groups will have no military or security role and no armed capabilities anywhere in Lebanon." "The Government of Israel stresses that its military actions in Lebanon are solely a consequence of the attacks, threat posed by, and hostile intent of non-state armed groups, particularly Hizbullah....The termination of this threat...will eliminate any future need for IDF military action or presence in Lebanon....The Government of Israel declares that it has no territorial ambitions in Lebanon." "The Government of Lebanon" recognizes "that any new U.S. assistance will be strictly conditioned on verifiable milestones, full transparency, demonstrated results, and ongoing oversight." (U.S. State Department) See also Senior Israeli Source: The Goal of the Agreement with Lebanon Is to End the Conflict - Itamar Eichner A senior Israeli political source said the trilateral framework negotiated with the U.S., Israel and Lebanon is designed to lead to future agreements to end the conflict and reach a peace agreement. "Israel will maintain its security zone within the boundaries of the Yellow Line in Lebanon until the day Hizbullah and other terrorist organizations in Lebanon are disarmed. The IDF's freedom of military action will be preserved throughout the entire security zone to remove threats of any kind." "Israel and Lebanon have agreed on two areas adjacent to the Yellow Line that were recommended by the IDF where there will be a pilot program for the dismantling of Hizbullah and the transfer of territory to the control of the Lebanese army: one area outside the Yellow Line and south of the Litani, and the other outside the original Yellow Line and north of the Litani." (Ynet News) U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted additional strikes against multiple targets in Iran on Saturday after Iran elected not to honor the ceasefire agreement and launched a one-way attack drone that hit the oil tanker M/T Kiku. In direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping, U.S. military aircraft targeted Iranian military surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities, and minelayer capabilities. (CENTCOM) See also Iran Widens Attacks on Bahrain, Hormuz Tanker - Benoit Faucon Bahrain said it came under attack from Iranian drones, and a tanker was hit Saturday while crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian state media said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had carried out strikes against American targets and reasserted Iran's claim of control over traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. A U.S. official said two Iranian drones were detected in the attack on Bahrain. One was shot down and the other landed in a remote airfield area without hitting any target. He added that an Iranian drone struck a tanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude near the Strait of Hormuz, while two other drones targeting commercial shipping were shot down by U.S. forces. (Wall Street Journal) The U.S. launched a fresh attack Friday on Iran one day after Tehran struck a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. "U.S. aircraft struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites after Iran hit M/V Ever Lovely on June 25 with a one-way attack drone," U.S. Central Command said. President Trump said on social media Friday that Iran fired at least four attack drones at ships transiting the strait on Thursday. The U.S. shot down three, he said. "Obviously, this is a foolish violation of our ceasefire agreement," he wrote. (Wall Street Journal) See also Iran Strikes Ship in Strait of Hormuz - Peter Eavis An Iranian drone struck a container ship passing through the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had warned ships on Thursday that they must coordinate with its navy and not take an alternative route through Omani territorial waters. An Iranian official said Oman's providing an alternative route to vessels for transiting the strait instead of the route designated by Iran had angered Iran and undermined its control over the passageway, therefore it had decided to act. He added that Oman did not have the ability to provide security guarantees to vessels without Iran on board, and that Iran was insisting on maintaining its control over the area. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meeting with Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers on Thursday, rejected Iran's continued claim to control passage through the strait. "International waterways do not belong to any nation state," he said. "This is a foundational principle in the world today." (New York Times) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that a new agreement between Israel and Lebanon strengthens both countries while weakening Iran and Hizbullah. Netanyahu said the Israeli military has destroyed 90% of Hizbullah's rocket and missile stockpiles, killed Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and commanders of the Radwan Force, and killed more than 9,000 Hizbullah militants since the start of the war, including more than 200 in the past two weeks. (Ha'aretz) See also Hizbullah Rejects Israel-Lebanon Deal - Jack Khoury Hizbullah Secretary-General Naim Qassem on Saturday criticized the Israel-Lebanon framework agreement reached in Washington on Friday. Linking an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon to Hizbullah's disarmament throughout the country crosses "red lines," Qassem said. He said the agreement is a "humiliation, a disgrace," and called for the U.S.-Iran preliminary agreement to be implemented instead. The Shi'ite Amal Movement, led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, also criticized the framework agreement, saying it "largely serves Israel." The movement emphasized its consistent opposition to holding direct negotiations with Israel. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF had been ordered to "prepare for an extended stay in the security zone" in Lebanon. He added, "Iran tried to force Israel into withdrawing from Lebanon through threats and pressure on the United States - and failed. If Iran attempts to attack Israel to prevent the implementation of the agreement, we will act against it with great force and demonstrate the power gap that exists between us." (Ha'aretz) An official source at the U.S. State Department discussed the relationship between the trilateral framework agreement between Israel, Lebanon and the U.S., and the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding. "The trilateral framework directly addresses what was promised in the first clause of the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran - genuine sovereignty and territorial integrity for Lebanon, and a permanent end to the conflict. This can only be realized once Hizbullah ceases to function as a state within a state." "The framework agreement is a roadmap for achieving the sovereignty and ending the conflict in Lebanon....Arming Hizbullah and supporting a state within a state does the opposite. Iran cannot wage wars through its proxy organizations and complain when those proxies are required to disarm." "Lebanon will regain its sovereignty, Hizbullah's terrorist infrastructure will be dismantled, and Israel will be able to return to its secure borders once the threat has been removed." (Ha'aretz) Four IDF soldiers were wounded Thursday in southern Lebanon, the military said. A terrorist threw a grenade at the troops from inside a building. The troops returned fire and killed him. (Ynet News) Sources in Gaza said Hamas security forces prevented protests against its rule on Friday, with armed pro-Hamas activists positioned near planned gathering points, civilian movement around displaced-person camps restricted, and cellphones confiscated from people taking part in the protests or identified with the calls to demonstrate. One source said, "Every attempt at public organization was met immediately by the presence of security forces." (Ynet News) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran When viewed from a broader perspective, the outcome of the war with Iran looks different. The almost three-year-long regional conflict that started with Hamas's attack on Israel in October 2023 has put the U.S. and its partners in a far stronger position in the Middle East and left Iran much weaker. Iran's proxy network of militant groups is largely in ruins; Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, one of Iran's key partners, is gone; Tehran has been mostly ignored by its supposed allies in Beijing and Moscow; and Iran's conventional forces, and much of its defense and nuclear industrial base, have been decimated. Iran's sole victory has come from its ability to close the Strait of Hormuz and cause economic damage across the world. But closing the strait also harms Iran itself, and the impact of a closure is likely to weaken over time as countries seek alternative suppliers, substitutes for oil, and new shipping routes to avoid the strait. Iran's actions after the 12-day war in 2025 reinforced the perception that it was insistent on maintaining its regional dominance. In January, the Iranian regime brutally suppressed a nationwide popular uprising. The Islamic regime thus showed it was not changing. The Trump administration and Israel decided that it was better to attack while Iran was still relatively weak from the 12-day war and the popular uprising than to wait until it had rebuilt missile stocks. The U.S., Israel, and Gulf Arab partners intercepted the vast majority of Iran's missiles and drones. Those that got through did little damage to Israeli targets and only moderate damage to U.S. bases in the region and Gulf states' infrastructure. The writer, a former U.S. Special Representative for Syria Engagement and Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. (Foreign Affairs) President Trump went to war to stop Iran from acquiring a game-changing nuclear weapon, the regime's project for imposing its will on the region and making the American people less safe. So is Iran stronger now than it was on Jan. 1? "You'd have to be delirious to think that's the case," said nuclear weapons expert David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security. "When we look at it strictly technically, this war was...very successful in seriously setting back Iran's ability to make a nuclear weapon." Assessing the damage done to Iran's nuclear program, Albright said the "gas centrifuge program, the enrichment program, the secret program to turn weapon-grade uranium into a nuclear weapon...is severely damaged." "The centrifuge program as it was no longer exists. And what we're essentially discussing are remnants." Those remnants "are dangerous, but nonetheless this is an enrichment program - it's not enriching, it's not making centrifuges, and it's going to have a very hard time reconstituting anything close to what it had for years." Not only did the U.S. and Israel strike Iran's known nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, he said. "Israel revealed sites that it struck that were not known publicly that they said were related to making the nuclear weapon itself." You have "roughly 10 nuclear-weapons-related sites destroyed" - including Iran's storage, conversion, and research and development facilities - and "many scientists and engineers killed." Albright said that before Trump launched Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025, Iran had "a program that had 22,000 centrifuges, many of which were operating, enriching all the way up to 60%. Now they're not enriching at all and most of those centrifuges are destroyed." The writer is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. (Washington Post) The U.S. is rethinking its footprint in the Middle East after Iranian missile and drone attacks damaged at least 20 U.S. bases. Between late February and June, Iran repeatedly targeted the Navy's base in Bahrain. Hit hard were the command headquarters and at least a dozen other buildings, along with two satellite communications terminals.< The military said no one was killed and that the strikes didn't significantly affect operations. The U.S. evacuated most personnel. The U.S. is now considering revamping the base in Bahrain, reducing the U.S. presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and moving some bases or base functions farther from Iran. Over the course of the war, "Iran shot more than 8,000 missiles and drones and only two hits resulted in U.S. fatalities," said Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command. (Wall Street Journal) Sanctions waivers that allow Iran to sell oil in U.S. dollars and commitments to unfreeze Iranian assets could grant Iran's government access to billions of dollars. Trump administration officials say the deal is "performance based," and most of the economic incentives demand that Iran comply with the terms of the initial agreement, including that it open the Strait of Hormuz and allow nuclear inspections. "For Iran to benefit long-term, it has to achieve a final deal with the United States," said a U.S. official. "We can simply rescind waivers and restore pressure if Iran fails to implement its commitments. The waiver does not diminish our leverage, it strengthens it." (Washington Post) For decades, people in the wealthy Gulf Arab nations watched the wars of the region unfold on their televisions. That illusion was shattered by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. It upended these countries' sense of security, hobbled their energy-rich economies, and pushed them to reconsider defense strategies. The American military bases on their soil - rather than shielding them from any harm - had made them the targets for thousands of Iranian missiles and drones. Many Gulf countries are now intent on boosting their hard power, spending more on military hardware and defense. The scenes that unfolded over the past few months in Gulf cities like Dubai and Doha, including massive explosions and smoldering luxury towers, were once unthinkable to most residents. Parents huddled with children in hallways as incoming missile alerts blared on their phones. In the Emirates, schools closed for weeks. While the Gulf countries were able to intercept the vast majority of Iran's missile and drone attacks, more than 30 people were killed and scores were injured. (New York Times) Lebanon The Israel-Lebanon framework agreement signed in Washington is an American attempt to create a new security reality in southern Lebanon, in the hope that it will eventually become a diplomatic reality as well. For the first time, Israel and Lebanon have publicly signed a joint document that speaks of neighborly relations, sovereignty, and even future peace. However, the agreement rests on the assumption that the Lebanese army will succeed in doing what it has failed to do for decades, disarm Hizbullah, which is not bound by the agreement at all. One of the key differences from previous arrangements is the American role. This time, the U.S. is building its own monitoring mechanism, with close involvement from the American defense establishment, and wants to ensure that any Israeli withdrawal depends on real progress by the Lebanese army. Yet while the Americans can monitor, mediate and apply diplomatic and economic pressure, they cannot disarm Hizbullah themselves. For Israel, the central achievement is a change in the formula. In the past, Israel was pressured to withdraw from south Lebanon according to predetermined timetables. This time, withdrawal is not automatic, but conditioned on the dismantling of the security threat. This is a significant diplomatic achievement because it establishes, for the first time, international recognition that the Israeli presence is directly linked to the security threat. Diplomatically, the agreement is a message aimed at Tehran. The document states that the Lebanese government is the only body authorized to use force on its territory, denying, at least declaratively, Hizbullah's legitimacy to operate as a "parallel army" in Lebanon's name. (Ynet News) The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has initiated a campaign to encourage young Iranians to join Hizbullah militias with a monthly salary of $1,000 in a country where the average minimum wage does not exceed $140 - while emphasizing "religious and military duty." The campaign seeks to compensate for manpower shortages within Hizbullah following Israeli attacks. The Israeli army has eliminated thousands of Hizbullah members and inflicted severe damage on its leadership structure. (Daily Beirut-Lebanon) When the Iranian regime demanded a Lebanon ceasefire clause in the memorandum of understanding with the U.S., the regime sought to protect Hizbullah, its most powerful terror proxy, from Israel's efforts to dismantle it. The clause placed Israel, which didn't have a hand in the negotiations, in a painful bind. Israelis are under daily assault by Hizbullah. If they don't respond, they lose momentum in their northern front, while dozens of soldiers fall on the battlefield. If they do respond, they risk losing the support of Washington. Hizbullah's decision to enter the war on March 2 has proved disastrous for the terror group. Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, a former chairman of Israel's National Security Council, estimates Hizbullah has lost 75% of its prewar strength and firepower. The Iranian regime is now the backbone of Hizbullah's command structure. Iran has deployed 150 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers to Lebanon. Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said this spring that the IRGC was commanding Hizbullah operations. If Washington wants to break Iran's grip on Lebanon, it has to help Beirut enforce its ban on IRGC activity and expel all Iranian personnel operating in Lebanon. Until Hizbullah's attacks cease and Iran is out of Lebanon, the U.S. should greenlight Israeli reprisals. Jonathan Schanzer is executive director and Ahmad Sharawi is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. (Wall Street Journal) Israel and the West The UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry has published a 94-page paper claiming Israel "deliberately targeted" Palestinian children during the war in Gaza - language implying war crimes and crimes against humanity. So you would expect, at minimum, one clearly documented case: a soldier who identified a child as a child, and killed that child for no reason other than that they were a child. But the Commission cannot produce one. What it produces instead, according to a detailed rebuttal by the watchdog UN Watch, is a chain of assumptions dressed up as findings. Instead, case after case follows the same pattern: a family account, a doctor's guess about which weapon caused a wound, and a conclusion of premeditated murder. The report leans heavily on doctors, who are, generally speaking, highly trusted members of society. But they are people trained to treat gunshot wounds, not to identify which weapon fired the bullet, from where, or why. They aren't eye witnesses and have no way of knowing the veracity of the story told to them. Throughout the report, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters simply vanish. Strip the enemy out of a war and every dead child looks like a deliberate execution rather than what war actually is: chaotic and lethal. The Commission then quietly invents a new rule of war, treating any Israeli strike on a position embedded with civilians as proof of intent to kill those civilians. This is a standard no army on earth has ever been held to. The public sees "UN report finds Israel deliberately killed children" and takes it as established truth, when an advocacy narrative has simply been given a UN letterhead. That is how bias gets dressed up as authority - and how a country can be convicted in the court of world opinion before any real court has heard a shred of tested evidence. Worse still, these reports will be used as "evidence" in real courts, and nobody will question it because it came from the UN. Israel's conduct in Gaza deserves scrutiny like any other military's. But scrutiny built on speculation and unverifiable testimony does not provide that accountability. UN bodies damage not only Israel's reputation, but also their own, when they simply launder wild allegations with little or no evidence. (Spectator-UK) It's good to give people the benefit of the doubt. But there's one mob I'll never do that for - the 8 October people. These are the people who marched against Israel before the blood of Hamas's pogrom was even dry. The people who were on the streets calling the Jewish state a Nazi regime before it had even counted its dead. Unbelievably, one of these lowlifes now looks set to get a seat in the U.S. Congress. On 8 October 2023, Israelophobe Darializa Avila Chevalier joined a mob in Times Square who were screaming blue murder about the Jewish nation. As Jews in Israel were still succumbing to the wounds inflicted on them by Hamas, as Israeli women were still reeling from Hamas's sexual atrocities, these demonstrators were all but celebrating. The mob chanted for the destruction of Israel, all the way "from the river to sea" - echoing the ideology of the Jew-killers who had just invaded Israel. In response to the storm over her 8 October behavior, Ms. Chevalier says she knew there would be an "outsized reaction" in response to Hamas's antisemitic terror. Imagine hearing about the rape and murder of Jews and thinking: "Oh shit, how are the Jews going to respond?" Imagine hearing of the worst pogrom in 80 years and saying: "I hope the victims of this fascist slaughter don't overreact." It is the very definition of moral depravity. These weren't "pro-Palestinian" rallies - they were pro-pogrom rallies. It was as horrific as if people in NYC and London had poured on to the streets to whoop for Kristallnacht. Ms. Chevalier was a co-founder of Columbia University Apartheid and Divest, a whackjob outfit that gushed over Yahya Sinwar, the chief architect of the Jew slaughter of 7 October. It hailed him as a "hero of the revolution" and called on Columbia students to "reflect on how we can make ourselves more like him." These were the Hamasniks who saw in Hamas's savagery the sexiness of purpose and agency. Who willfully mistook Hamas's imperious barbarism on behalf of the Islamic Republic for an act of "anti-imperialism." Who viewed the murder of those "settler-colonial" Jews as an act of decolonization. And now the Hamasniks are coming to power. (Spiked-UK) "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough declared on cable news channel MS NOW that the person most responsible for the march of anti-Israel extremism in New York City's Democratic primaries wasn't New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What was shaping views now, he said, were images that Israel had brutalized children and women in Gaza "with bombing that looks indiscriminate on TV day in and day out for years." Scarborough did not draw the reasonable conclusion that these images had persuaded millions of people to believe libelous falsehoods that had been propagated to delegitimize the State of Israel as a prelude to its destruction. Instead, he suggested that these lies were true. A moment's thought shows how ludicrous this is. Hatred of the Jewish homeland not only long predated Netanyahu's first period as prime minister but predated the establishment of the State of Israel itself. The writer is a columnist for The Times-UK. (JNS) Which country offers the strongest legal protections and lowest risk of persecution for Christians in the Middle East? Where do believers enjoy the greatest safety and the richest opportunities to flourish? The answer, of course, is Israel. Yet the new Archbishop of Canterbury's pilgrimage to the Holy Land last week sought to highlight "stories of the immense hardships" facing Palestinian Christians, apparently at the hands of Israel. At the end of her pilgrimage, Sarah Mullally released an open letter to Anglicans calling for a "viable two-state solution," with Jerusalem as a "shared capital. Strangely, she did not mention that Ramallah had previously rejected this precise offer when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert tabled it in 2008. The charity Open Doors publishes the annual World Watch List, one of the best-known indexes of persecution against Christians globally. The charity says: "In Palestine, anyone born into a Christian family faces all kinds of opposition to their faith. And converts from Islam who become followers of Jesus Christ often face harsh persecution." Did the Archbishop mention the "20-year-old woman who converted at the end of 2024 [and] was killed by her family in February 2025"? By far the greatest threat to Christians around the world is Islamist extremism. The Jewish state, by contrast, a wonderful place for Christians, stands on the frontlines against the very enemy that comes for followers of Christ. Israel, despite her failings, is on the side of the angels. If the Church is to be a beacon of truth, the Archbishop should loudly proclaim this. While essentially ignoring the true enemies of the Church and implying that Israel is a malevolent force, she is falling victim to trendy bigotry and has lent her Anglican stamp to the wave of Israelophobia that engulfs us. (Telegraph-UK) The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) has been ordered to pay costs after defeat in court in its attempt to bring a prosecution against a dual British-Israeli citizen who returned to his IDF reserve unit following the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023. Senior District Judge Paul Goldspring, Chief Magistrate of Westminster Magistrates' Court, rejected the application in its entirety, finding that it was fundamentally misconceived in law, unsupported by evidence, and tainted by serious disclosure failures. Judge Goldspring stated that the courts "must not be used as a vehicle for political debate." (UK Lawyers for Israel) Observations: America's Founders Fought a Middle East War Centuries Ago. We Could Learn a Lot from Them - Amb. Michael Oren (Fox News)
The writer is a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. |
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