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Al Jazeera Claims The US-Iran Deal is Done… Not So Fast

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | May 27, 2026 

Notwithstanding the Al Jazeera report, there are still significant areas of disagreement that make a deal between Iran and the US unlikely. The Pakistan-Qatar mediation channel toward a possible memorandum of understanding remains active. But “active” does not mean “settled.” The unresolved center of gravity remains sequencing. The following is based on information I received from a knowledgeable source with access to the negotiations. It mirrors my analysis.

Washington and Israel want Iranian concessions first, while Tehran wants tangible, front-loaded economic and security relief before it gives ground on anything that matters. That is the heart of the present deadlock.

Iran’s position is not theatrical. It is rooted in a clear strategic doctrine: after decades of sanctions, pressure, assassinations, sabotage, and military threats, Tehran will not trade hard leverage for verbal assurances or a memorandum of understanding.

Promises are not enough. Mechanisms matter. Sequencing matters. Asset movement matters. Enforcement matters. The central judgment is this: Iran is not blinking.

Tehran is not operating from weakness, confusion, or desperation. It is executing a highly disciplined strategic posture: firmness on the fundamentals, flexibility on the margins, and careful use of its available leverage across the nuclear file, the Strait of Hormuz, regional alliances, frozen assets, and the Pakistan-Qatar mediation channel.

This is not the behavior of a state preparing for unconditional surrender. Nor is it the behavior of a state recklessly lurching toward total war. It is the behavior of a state converting pressure into leverage — and leverage into economic and security guarantees.

The Nuclear File: Sovereignty Is the Red Line

According to a knowledgeable source, enrichment is not a negotiable bargaining chip. Tehran views enrichment as three things simultaneously:

  1. A sovereign right;
  2. A deterrence instrument;
  3. A domestic legitimacy anchor.

No meaningful quantity of enriched uranium will leave Iranian territory under the present framework. That line is firm.

On weaponization, the assessment is more nuanced. Iran is not presently building a bomb. But it is deliberately preserving the capability to move toward one if it concludes that its survival is at stake.

The phrase “all bets are off” should not be read as an announcement of imminent weaponization. It should be read as doctrine: if Iran faces an existential assault, it will not leave any strategic option permanently closed. That is virtual deterrence — and, at least for now, it is working.

Strait of Hormuz: Tehran’s Non-Nuclear Strategic Lever

The Strait of Hormuz is Iran’s most powerful non-nuclear instrument. The logic from Tehran is blunt: the United States cannot freeze Iranian assets, sanction Iranian exports, suffocate Iranian banking channels, and then expect unconditional maritime passage as though nothing has happened.

Iran’s emerging posture appears tiered and deliberate. Friendly states receive passage. Neutral states are handled selectively. Hostile or adversary-linked shipping will face interdiction, delay, or denial. This is not simply military posturing. Tehran is attempting to convert maritime geography into a regional security architecture based on reciprocity: if Iran’s economy is strangled, the economic arteries of others will not remain entirely immune.

The reported MOU framework involving the Strait appears real: Iranian de-escalation in exchange for sanctions relief, asset movement, and restoration of commercial access. But the sequencing dispute remains unresolved. Iran wants assets released before surrendering maritime leverage. Washington wants compliance in the Strait before releasing assets. As I write this (Tuesday evening eastern time) this issues remains unresolved.

The Drone and Air-Defense War: Contested Skies, Real Costs

The airspace over Iran, the Persian Gulf, and adjacent maritime corridors has become a live drone and air-defense battlespace. Iran’s message is clear: it may not dominate the air domain, but it can make aerial operations expensive, politically visible, and operationally imperfect. Every drone interdicted, every platform forced down, every failed or disrupted operation adds friction. That friction shapes how Washington and Tel Aviv assess the real cost of escalation.

This is deterrence by attrition. Not absolute deterrence. Not total denial. But enough to complicate operational planning and raise the political price of continued pressure.

Frozen Assets: The Economic Core of the Negotiation

The frozen-assets file is not peripheral. It is central. According to a knowledgeable source with access, Iran is demanding immediate movement on approximately $12 billion held through Qatar-linked channels, within a much larger claim that Tehran places at more than $100 billion in frozen overseas assets.

This is the economic heart of the negotiation. Tehran wants asset release as a precondition for meaningful concessions. Washington wants asset relief conditioned on Iranian performance first. Until this is resolved in a concrete, enforceable way — not with vague language or aspirational language — no MOU is likely to hold. Iran is leery of any verbal assurances from the West and does not trust a MOU having been burned previously on this issue after signing the JCPOA.

For Tehran, this is not merely about money. It is about proof of seriousness. If Washington cannot or will not move assets, Tehran will conclude that the negotiation is designed to extract concessions without delivering relief.

Lebanon and Hezbollah: The Detonator Built Into the System

Lebanon remains the most dangerous variable in the entire equation. The diplomatic architecture now being constructed contains a structural flaw, and that flaw runs directly through Beirut. Lebanon is not a side theater. It is the tripwire.

Israel wants continued freedom of operation in southern Lebanon. Iran views Hezbollah as a central pillar of its regional deterrence architecture. From Tehran’s perspective, Hezbollah is not a disposable card. It is non-negotiable. Hezbollah has not agreed to disarm. Israel has not abandoned its operational doctrine. Iran has not agreed to separate the Lebanese file from its broader regional deterrence posture.

The American formula — that if Hezbollah behaves, Israel will behave — is not a guarantee. It is an aspiration dressed up as a diplomatic condition. This means that even a signed MOU between Washington and Tehran could be blown apart by one Israeli operation in Lebanon, or one Hezbollah response, that crosses a threshold neither side can fully control. In fact, Israel has renewed its offensive in Lebanon on Tuesday, but apparently acceded to Donald Trump’s demand to halt bombings of Beirut.

The ground war in southern Lebanon, however, is back on in its full fury, with Israel trying to push beyond the Yellow Line while Hezbollah is scoring major hits on Israeli forces, tanks and vehicles. Netanyahu is facing major pressure from Ben Gvir and Smotrich to expand military operations

Abraham Accords and the Pakistan Variable

Iran’s rejection of the Abraham Accords is categorical. Tehran views the Accords as a U.S.-backed normalization architecture designed to entrench Israeli regional legitimacy while hollowing out the Palestinian cause. Any attempt to fold that architecture into an Iran settlement cuts directly against Tehran’s strategic and ideological position.

The Pakistan dimension is especially sensitive. Islamabad is functioning as a key mediation channel between Washington and Tehran. But pressuring Pakistan to join or support the Abraham Accords while simultaneously relying on Pakistan to carry messages to Tehran creates a structural contradiction. Pakistan understands this. Its public rejection of forced linkage is not diplomatic boilerplate. It is the condition under which Islamabad preserves credibility with Tehran and keeps the mediation channel alive.

Saudi Arabia remains in its established position: no normalization without a credible path to Palestinian statehood. In the current environment, that condition cannot be met.

Three Triggers That Could Blow This Up

The negotiations remain alive because both sides understand the danger of uncontrolled escalation. But there is no strategic trust. The situation remains combustible and highly sequenced. One operational incident could change the trajectory very quickly.

The three most dangerous triggers are:

1. Failure of the frozen-asset transfer mechanism
If Tehran concludes that Washington is blocking relief while extracting concessions, the entire diplomatic framework could collapse.

2. An Israeli operation in Lebanon that crosses Iran’s response threshold
This could force Hezbollah into a major confrontation and pull Iran back into a harder regional posture.

3. Renewed US strikes during the ceasefire or negotiation window
If Iran reads such strikes as negotiation under fire, it is likely to conclude that diplomacy is merely cover for coercion.

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May 27, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Al Jazeera Claims The US-Iran Deal is Done… Not So Fast

May 25: South Lebanon continues to liberate the homeland

By Lea Akil | Al Mayadeen | May 25, 2026

Marking the 2000 Israeli withdrawal after 22 years of occupation, the Resistance today is still standing strong on the frontlines. Here is a look into the history of occupation and the deterrence written in blood.

Every year, the Resistance and Liberation Day in Lebanon is marked across the country, especially in the South, with ululations echoing through the streets, feet shaking the ground to liberation songs, and motorcades filling the roads of villages and towns. It is a day that recalls the moment southern Lebanon was liberated from 22 years of Israeli occupation on May 25, 2000, marking the defeat of what was once known as an “invincible army”.

But as I write these words today, southern Lebanon is bleeding again. This year, the memory is no longer only about ululations and celebrations; it is about the resilience of the South, the same resilience that made liberation possible in the first place.

Twenty-six years later, the Israeli occupation has not ended its efforts to occupy southern Lebanon, nor its attacks on civilians, nor its broader expansionist agenda. However, since May 25, a new equation of deterrence has been written across the border. And as the occupation escalates, the resistance continues to adapt; as military capabilities evolve on one side, the other continues to consistently work to deter and resist, even with a hefty price paid in blood.

The occupation came first

The Israeli occupation has always sold a false narrative about its occupation and aggression against southern Lebanon by justifying its attacks under the umbrella of so-called security measures, but history has proven otherwise.

Way before any well-established resistance movement was recorded in southern Lebanon, the Israeli occupation invaded the area on November 1, 1948, and occupied 15 villages, simultaneously with the occupation of Palestine. On October 24, the Israeli Carmeli Brigade invaded the town of Houla and committed a massacre, which resulted in at least 67 martyrs.

There were records of 14 massacres in one week during the so-called “Operation Hiram”, which was launched “in a bid to cleanse the area of its population,” according to records by MERIP. As mentioned in its records, Israeli soldiers violently and forcibly expelled the residents of at least seven Lebanese villages in areas near the northern border of Palestine during that period.

The IOF then withdrew from occupied Lebanese villages by mid-March 1949 (Houla, al-Mansoura, Suruh, Ghabbatiyya, Kafr ‘Inan, Marus, al-Ras al-Ahmar, Kafr Bir’im, Iqrit, Iribbin, Mi’ilya, Arab al-Samniyya, and Nabi Rubin), as under the negotiated armistice terms, “Israel” was compelled to withdraw from occupied villages. Seven villages (Ibl al-Qamh, Hounin, al-Nabi Yusha’, Qadas, al-Malikiyya, Salha, and Tarbikha) remained under occupation and were turned into illegal Israeli settlements.

The aggression, however, didn’t stop there. In 1967, the UN ISPAL recorded Israeli massacres in Houla and Hanin.

The second Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon began on March 14, 1978, killing approximately a thousand civilians, before the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) withdrew under the UNSC Resolution 425, which demanded an immediate withdrawal of the IOF and the transfer of control to the UNFIL. But “Israel” transferred control of border areas to Saad Haddad’s “Army of Free Lebanon” (AFL), an Israeli-backed splinter faction of the Lebanese Army, which emerged in 1976, before being renamed the “South Lebanon Army” (SLA) in May 1980.

“Israel” reinvaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982, advancing all the way to Beirut and killing at least 19,000 civilians, before it was forced to withdraw to the so-called “security zone” in southern Lebanon, a point at which a resistance nucleus began to take shape.

Israeli pressure tools in southern Lebanon

The occupation operated through two parallel chains of command: the Israeli Occupation Forces as the occupying power, and the so-called South Lebanon Army (SLA) as “Israel’s” collaborationist force and punching bag, also carrying out different tactics of aggression, targeting the people economically, physically, and psychologically.

One of the crimes carried out by the occupation was the SLA’s practice of forced conscription of Lebanese civilian men. All males over 18 living in the occupied area were required to serve one year as SLA military recruits, effectively fighting for a force occupying their own territory. Human Rights Watch documented that the SLA “filled its ranks through the involuntary conscription of residents of the ‘security zone,’ including children.” Men who refused faced harassment, detention, economic punishment, and their houses were demolished with their families inside.

Khiam Detention Center: Systematic torture

As part of the occupation’s torture tactics was the established Khiam Detention Center in al-Khiam, which was targeted in an Israeli airstrike during the 2006 war on Lebanon and completely razed during the ongoing war today, in an effort to erase the footprints of Israeli barbarism and the subsequent heroic resistance that forced its closure for good.

During the Israeli occupation, the established detention center replaced the Ansar detention camp (located in the southern town of Ansar) and housed more than 5,000 Lebanese citizens, resistance supporters, and fighters, who were held in harsh conditions and subjected to systematic torture by the SLA.

In the center, the Israeli-backed forces exercised extensive torture practices, including electric shocks, prolonged suspension from ceilings, sleep deprivation, deprivation of food and water, and extended solitary confinement, as well as the “red box”, a metal container where the detainee had to sit in a squatting position and the guards would bang on it with metal rods, with the sound reportedly reaching nearby villages.

Additionally, “Israel” denied Red Cross access to detainees despite the evidence of savage torture. The detention system was also reportedly used as a coercive leverage mechanism, with families of detainees pressured to provide information on resistance activities in exchange for updates about, or the release of, their relatives. Today, “Israel” isn’t preventing healthcare workers; it’s deliberately bombing them, alongside journalists, further exposing its savagery against civilians in southern Lebanon and its fear of the truth.

Economic strangulation of occupied South

The Israeli occupation also heavily relied on the economic strangulation of South Lebanon and its people by establishing chokepoints, setting the grounds for economic dependency, destroying the region’s agriculture, and completely isolating the region from the rest of Lebanon.

The IOF’s checkpoint system established economic control as a deliberate instrument of occupation. The occupation installed curfews, bans on night travel, motorcycles, and multiple passengers per vehicle, alongside extensive searches and unpredictable closures. The Awali River checkpoint, which was established in 1982 during the Israeli invasion, became the primary chokepoint for all goods moving between south and north Lebanon, causing delays, confiscations, and arbitrary shutdowns that made normal commerce structurally impossible. Supply chains collapsed, contracts could not be honoured, and agriculture and industry were effectively severed from national markets.

Economic dependency was simultaneously engineered from the other direction. Israeli goods flooded the occupied zone while southern producers were barred from Lebanese markets and forced to sell primarily to “Israel”.

The land itself was targeted. Crop destruction, contamination of farmland with mines, military deployment across cultivated areas, and later use of white phosphorus rendered large tracts unusable. Moreover, significant portions of agricultural land remain inaccessible to this day due to unexploded ordnance.

Approximately 180,000 residents lived outside effective Lebanese state administration for the duration of the occupation. Services, infrastructure, and governance were mediated through the SLA rather than Beirut. Movement restrictions severed access to national courts, healthcare, education, and family networks. Lebanese state investment halted at the occupation perimeter, triggering a long-term demographic displacement.

The cumulative economic disruption did not end with the 2000 withdrawal. The wars of 2006, 2024, and now 2026 have continued the same cycles of infrastructural and agricultural loss, attempting to fracture any attempt at a full economic reset by committing acts of agriecocide and ecocide.

Israeli massacres in southern Lebanon 

Beyond the structural violence of occupation, Israeli forces conducted periodic large-scale attacks that killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians, in an effort to carry out mass killings and trigger mass displacement. Some of the notable attacks are the Israeli massacre in 1993 and the April aggression (Udwan Nisan) in 1996.

Israeli massacre in July 1993

“Israel” launched the so-called “Operation Accountability” on July 25, 1993. For seven days, the IOF bombarded southern Lebanese villages with massed artillery and airstrikes. Approximately 118 to 120 Lebanese civilians were killed and close to 500 were wounded. The attack displaced an estimated 300,000 people northward toward Beirut, a displacement that was not incidental but declared as a strategic objective. The IOF’s logic, openly stated by Israeli officials, was to generate a humanitarian crisis.

April aggression in 1996

Known in Lebanon as Udwan Nisan, the April Aggression was carried out for seventeen days from April 11 to 27 in 1996, authorized by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. The IOF flew over 600 air sorties and fired approximately 25,000 artillery shells against Lebanese territory. Evacuation threats were issued to 86 villages, displacing approximately 400,000 people. Among the deliberate targets struck by a helicopter gunship was an ambulance carrying fleeing civilians near Tyre, killing two women and four children.

On April 18, 1996, at 2:07 in the afternoon, Israeli artillery fired 36 shells at the UNIFIL compound near Qana, which was sheltering between 800 and 845 civilians who had fled the bombardment of surrounding villages. One hundred and six people were killed, among them a disproportionate number of children.

Resistance born under occupation

As it has become clear, before any organized armed group existed in South Lebanon, the region was reeling under Israeli invasions and attacks. The resistance then emerged from the very ground Israeli boots were forced to leave, as the South saw the sprouting of small groups individually targeting the Israeli occupation.

Among the first Lebanese to take up arms were secular leftists. Following the 1978 invasion and “Israel’s” installation of Haddad’s AFL, cadres of the Lebanese Communist Party and the Organization of Communist Action began conducting small-scale armed operations in the South. Simultaneously, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, with deep roots in southern Lebanese villages, was running parallel operations against Israeli patrols and AFL positions.

These operations were scattered and uncoordinated, but they established something essential: an armed Lebanese refusal of the occupation, rooted in the land itself; a mission protected by international law that broadly acknowledges the right of people under foreign occupation to resist, including the use of armed struggle, to achieve self-determination.

The resistance that eventually drove “Israel” out was never the product of a single sect or ideology. It was communist, nationalist, and Islamic. It was Shia, Sunni, Druze, and Christian, unlike how some try to portray it under tight sectarian titles. What unified these currents was a common geography, the occupied South.

The same occupation planted in the land also saw the blossoming of the Movement of the Deprived, co-founded by Imam Musa al-Sadr and Greek Catholic Bishop Grégoire Haddad in 1974. On January 20, 1975, the military wing was established as the Lebanese Resistance Regiments to fight and repel the occupation. The regiments engaged in operations against the Israelis before evolving toward institutional politics in 1980 after the disappearance of Imam al-Sadr.

34 years after the first Israeli invasion, Hezbollah was formed in 1982 from the very seed that Sayyed al-Sadr had planted against the occupation.

Hezbollah: An imposed deterrent equation

The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon – Hezbollah did not emerge from a conference room; it emerged from under occupation.

The first phase of Hezbollah’s operational strategy was not guerrilla-like in the classical sense. The Resistance group adopted the methodology of strategic coercion through hard-scale operations, designed to make the cost of Israeli presence in Lebanon so high that continued presence became untenable. Hezbollah began engaging in jihadist operations using car bombs.

On November 11, 1982, an explosive-laden truck was driven by a resistance fighter into the Israeli military headquarters in Tyre, before exploding and killing 75 soldiers. A year later, on November 4, 1983, the IOF headquarters in Tyre was bombed again, killing 28 Israelis.

After “Israel’s” partial withdrawal to the so-called “security zone” in 1985, the nature of the campaign shifted. Hezbollah, at the time, fought a grinding occupation over a defined strip of territory rather than a sprawling invasion and carried out large-scale frontal raids on IOF and SLA outposts, which resulted in heavy losses.

Katyusha\Grad rockets: A new deterrent equation

In parallel, the Katyusha\Grad rocket was first used in the mid-1980s and was highly visible on the battlefield in the 1990s. What the Katyusha\Grad introduced was not a military victory but something more durable, a deterrence equation. Hezbollah did not fire the rockets indiscriminately. It fired them in calibrated, declared responses to Israeli strikes on Lebanese civilians, establishing through practice what eventually became an informal but understood rule: attacks on Lebanese civilian areas would be met with rockets into northern “Israel”.

This equation was visible during the aforementioned Israeli aggression in 1993 under “Operation Accountability”, and seventeen days in 1996 under the April aggression, “Israel” unleashed its full air and artillery power on southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah retaliated every single day with Katyusha\Grad rockets on northern occupied Palestine, emptiying Kiryat Shmona, paralyzed the economy in occupied al-Jalil, and placed the Israeli government under unbearable domestic political pressure, pushing it to turn to Washignton and Paris to broker the 1993 and 1996 understandings.

IED war, tactical adaptation

The 1990s were defined by a single tactical contest: Hezbollah’s roadside bombs against any IOF deployment. When the IOF used sniffer dogs to detect wire-triggered devices, Hezbollah concealed IEDs inside fiberglass rocks and switched to radio detonation.

When the IOF swept radio frequencies from Mount Hermon listening posts, Hezbollah switched to cell phone receivers. By the end of the war in 2000, IOF mine-clearing patrols were physically counting rocks along roads to identify which were fiberglass, an image that captured the dramatic shift in the military balance.

By 1998, the rate of operations had reached nearly four operations per day. The attack on the Ansariyye beach landing in September 1997, in which twelve Shayetet 13 commandos were killed in a single night, after Hezbollah obtained Israeli drone reconnaissance footage of the landing zone four days before the operation, demonstrated that Hezbollah had achieved not just tactical superiority but intelligence penetration of IOF operational planning.

On February 28, 1999, the IED campaign reached its peak, with the killing of Brigadier General Erez Gerstein, the senior IOF commander in Lebanon, in a roadside bomb disguised as a rock near Kfar Shouba.

The day of resistance and liberation

By 1995, a paratrooper unit had been disbanded after soldiers refused a Lebanon deployment, and by 2000, 200 IOF soldiers had been imprisoned for refusing to serve in the area, fearing the Resistance’s operations, thus weakening the Israeli occupation.

When “Israel” completed its withdrawal on May 24, 2000, no IOF officer could credibly claim the army had achieved anything in Lebanon. On the contrary, “Israel” had a designed exit scenario, but the Resistance shattered it before it could have been executed.

May 25, 2000, was announced as a national historic day, marking the IOF’s forced, unconditional withdrawal from southern Lebanon, ending an 18-year military occupation.

Martyred Hezbollah Secretary-General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, during his famous Bint Jbeil speech on May 26, 2000, declared that the IOF intended to withdraw gradually over several weeks beyond May 25. When the UN Security Council issued a resolution and UNIFIL arrived to take charge, “Israel” intended to frame the departure as a sovereign, orderly transition and, crucially, could have claimed to be “liberating” the al-Khiam detainees as a gesture of goodwill, to sell the narrative of an Israeli choice rather than Israeli defeat.

But instead, civilians from the occupied villages, side by side with Resistance fighters, broke through to liberated areas in the towns of al-Qantara, Deir Seryan, al-Qusair, and al-Taybeh on May 22 and 23. SLA positions began collapsing one after another in a single night. The central sector of the so-called “security zone” collapsed within hours, and Israeli soldiers fled, leaving everything behind.

On the morning of May 23, 2000, residents of al-Khiam marched to the Khiam Detention Center, chanting Allahu Akbar (God is Great), tore the bars off the cells with their bare hands, and carried the detainees who had been unlawfully imprisoned for months and years, out into the sun. Some fainted, some wept, others kissed the ground; southern Lebanon was liberated.

The most notorious symbol of the occupation was liberated by its own people and fighters.

From IEDs to FPVs: The equation still holds

Today, the pattern has not changed. In the 1990s, Hezbollah defeated “Israel’s” wire-detection technology with fiberglass. In 2006, it defeated “Israel’s” air supremacy with Kornet rockets, and in 2026, it continues to defeat “Israel’s” electronic dominance with a fiber-optic cable, introducing the FPV drone, and more specifically, the Ababil FPV drones.

The occupation, indeed, has become more aggressive and bloodier, but the Resistance has proven to be more adaptable. The equation written on May 25, 2000, endures: that the people of this land, given will and time, can raise the cost of occupation beyond what it can bear. It is being rewritten, kilometer by kilometer, in the hills, forests, and valleys of southern Lebanon, with a spool of cable and a low-cost drone.

The equation Hezbollah established in 2000 was not a peace agreement, a ceasefire, or a diplomatic settlement. It was a demonstrated fact that an occupying army, regardless of its technological superiority, can be forced out through sustained, adaptive resistance that raises the cost of presence beyond what the occupying entity is willing to pay.

Twenty-six years later, that same demonstration is being performed again, and “Israel”, with five divisions on Lebanese soil and an “unlimited budget” allocated to counter $400 drones, is on the wrong side of the equation again. The organization that Israeli officials described as “significantly weakened” after the war in 2024 is conducting an average of 24 separate operations on Israeli soldiers, vehicles, and positions in a single day.

Liberation continues to be rewritten right now, in the hills around al-Khiam and in Bint Jbeil, al-Taybeh, Ayta al-Shaab, al-Naqoura, Maroun al-Ras, Ainata, and al-Ghandouriyeh. It is being rewritten across all of southern Lebanon. And the South, our South, remains steadfast and forever-present, holding steady under the boots of the very men that stand their ground on the frontlines, steadfast and resilient.

And “Israel”? as martyr Sayyed Nasrallah put it during his famous speech in Bint Jbeil, “By Allah, Israel, which owns nuclear weapons and the strongest air fleets in the region, is indeed frailer than a spider web.”

May 25, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on May 25: South Lebanon continues to liberate the homeland

The journey to the second liberation of South Lebanon

The spider’s web theory lives on

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | May 25, 2026

Twenty-six years on from the liberation of South Lebanon, the message has become clear: as long as the Israeli regime remains, peace will never be possible. This year’s Liberation Day anniversary will be observed by a population that is now fighting another struggle against occupation, one that will have implications beyond the freeing of Lebanese lands alone.

On May 25, 2000, the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from most of the Lebanese lands they had occupied illegally in 1982; a move that came following nearly two decades of brutal oppression and was triggered as a result of the fierce resistance waged by the local population. For the Arab World, and specifically for the Palestinian cause for national liberation, that day became a signal that resistance does work.

A day later, former Hezbollah Secretary General, martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, delivered his famous ‘Spider’s Web’ speech from a small football stadium in Bint Jbeil, arguing that the Lebanese model of armed resistance is a blueprint for the Palestinian people. This address has haunted the Israeli senior leadership ever since.

What Sayyed Nasrallah laid out was the theory that the Zionist regime was frailer than a spider’s web, meaning that despite its exterior, internally it was weak and could easily be cut down. He paid particular attention, when stating this metaphor, to ensuring the public knew precisely what he meant, which was that the Israeli society was incapable of enduring the repercussions of the regime’s policies. Today, this speech could not be more relevant.

The Israeli military doctrine, since the entity’s founding, has been based on the concept of always fighting short wars and avoiding wars of attrition. David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, was the first to ensure that his settler project implemented this doctrine, arguing that because his military was more advanced, they could manage to inflict defeats on the enemies, but that the wars it fought had to be limited due to the overwhelming numerical advantages on the Arab side.

If you look back through Israeli military history, you will also notice a pattern of short wars, especially those in which the Zionist entity achieved significant gains. Their most successful war was the “6-Day War” for example. Even last year, their attack on Iran became the “12-Day War”.

The Israelis withdrew from South Lebanon because they understood that the fight they were facing was going to bog them down and drain them, especially as the Lebanese Resistance was gradually growing in strength. In the Gaza Strip, the same concept applied in 2005. They ran cost-benefit analyses and decided it was best to leave.

Over the years, having only fought short wars against militarily inferior opponents, the Israeli society was able to live in its own bubble world. The consequences of their actions were a small price to pay, especially if these consequences were only felt during shorter periods of time. Other than this, they maintained belligerent occupations, meaning that their army was transformed into more of a riot police force than a proper standing army.

During the Second Intifada, which began in 2000, only months after the liberation of South Lebanon, the Israelis then transitioned into a method of warfare that depended more heavily on “targeted assassinations” and special forces raids. They implemented this strategy, alongside their counterinsurgency approach to warfare, and specialized in occupying civilian populations.

In 2006, they encountered a new obstacle, sustained rocket fire on their settlements, managing to blast as deep into occupied Palestine as Haifa. Later on, the Palestinian Resistance would develop its own rockets and eventually reach Tel Aviv and beyond. However, due to Gaza’s resistance being significantly weaker than Hezbollah, they settled for limited wars of aggression where they would implement the infamous “Dahieh Doctrine” – targeting the civilian population as a means of achieving future “deterrence”.

Lebanese Hezbollah managed to deter the Israelis for 17 years, even managing to force the Zionists to accept an agreement demarcating Lebanese maritime borders. However, the October 7 Al-Aqsa Flood operation jolted the Israelis into a reactionary and accelerationist mindset; they were no longer willing to slowly achieve their goals; instead, they had to do things at a pace in their minds.

But they fell into a trap; they were dragged into a war of attrition. In Gaza, this was something they could survive because the rocket fire gradually dwindled, and their soldiers refused to actually fight the Palestinian Resistance head-on. Instead, they carried out a genocide from a distance, mainly, with their main goal being to destroy buildings.

Which brings us back to South Lebanon. As you read this, the second guerrilla war of liberation is being waged, aiming at achieving an even bigger goal than was achieved in 2000. Hezbollah is now facing a similar predicament to what occurred in 1982 when the Israelis declared a “security zone” in southern Lebanon, which they maintained until the formal occupation was declared in 1985.

The major difference is that the Lebanese Resistance was still in its infancy in the 1980s, and the Palestinian Resistance had left in 1982. This time, the Israelis have been drawn into a trap, one that they cannot easily get out of. It is the beginning of the spider’s web theory proving itself in real time.

Although the war is being fought at a somewhat lower intensity since the announcement of a temporary ceasefire, the invading Zionist militants are being dealt blows on an hourly basis in the south and northern occupied Palestine. You need only look at their media to realize that Israeli society is under pressure in the north already, and the war of attrition has just begun.

The people of Lebanon and Palestine, who form the backbone of their national liberation movements, have proven themselves hardy and capable of enduring the hardships of war, while standing behind their Resistance fighters who come from amongst them. In the case of the Zionists, their army is formed of their public, who are conscripted into it, meaning it is a settlers’ armed forces, but they are a fundamentally weak society.

For the Israelis, they are more interested in living a Western European style of life and aren’t willing to make the necessary sacrifices to win wars of attrition, despite the superiority of their military equipment and intelligence services. A few occasional rockets are enough for tens of thousands to flee their homes, while a Lebanese farmer will remain in his fields as the bombs drop on his village. Right after the so-called ceasefire of November 2024, the people of the South immediately returned home; the settlers did not.

The Israeli army is also suffering a manpower shortage, has drawn back its presence in South Lebanon already due to the FPV drone threat, and has to score fake symbolic victories, such as planting flags in Bint Jbeil, while failing to properly maintain control of the area where Hezbollah fighters continue to watch and target them.

While the initial period between 1982 and 1985 was simple for the Israelis in the way of securing their occupation of the South, this time they are already being battered and have not achieved one goal yet. Desperately, they cling to their targeted assassinations, believing this will transform the battlefield. Another mistake born out of arrogance.

South Lebanon’s liberation in May 2000 birthed the Spider’s Web Theory of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. In May 2026, that theory is being put to the test. So far, we see that the fighters on the ground are proving Sayyed Nasrallah correct.

May 25, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Comments Off on The journey to the second liberation of South Lebanon

Iran lawmaker outlines five conditions for any understanding with US

Al Mayadeen | May 26, 2026

The head of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Ebrahim Azizi, said there is “no meaning” to any understanding or negotiations with the United States unless Washington takes five concrete confidence-building measures.

Speaking to Iranian state television, Azizi said the measures include ending the war on all fronts, particularly in Lebanon, lifting the maritime blockade, guaranteeing the passage of non-military vessels through the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian supervision, suspending oil sanctions for 30 to 60 days, and releasing frozen Iranian assets.

Azizi stressed that even if an agreement is reached, it would not signify the end of confrontation with the United States, adding that “Iran after the war is completely different from Iran before the war.”

His remarks come amid growing anticipation over indirect US-Iran contacts being conducted through regional mediators, including Pakistan and Qatar. In this context, Iranian Parliament Speaker and head of the negotiating delegation Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf visited the Qatari capital, Doha, on Monday.

For his part, US President Donald Trump said negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran were “going well,” describing the process as one that could either lead to “a great deal for everybody” or “no deal at all.” Trump also linked any potential agreement to the need for Arab and Islamic states backing the talks to sign normalization agreements.

On the Lebanese front, which Iran insists must be included in any prospective agreement aimed at halting the war, the Israeli occupation continues its large-scale attacks on towns in southern Lebanon and the western Bekaa.

Israeli media also reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the occupation’s security minister approved plans to expand the war and target civilian buildings in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, after drone operations carried out by the Islamic Resistance that have inflicted losses on occupation forces.

May 25, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Iran lawmaker outlines five conditions for any understanding with US

Fars debunks NYT claims ‘Israel’ was exempted from US-Iran agreement

Al Mayadeen | May 24, 2026

Claims that President Donald Trump exempted “Israel” from commitments under a potential agreement with Iran appear to be baseless, Fars News Agency revealed, based on a review of the final draft text.

Fars reported that The New York Times had alleged “Israel” was granted an exemption from the obligations outlined in the emerging draft MoU with Tehran.

However, an examination of the explicit wording of the prospective agreement shows the opposite. According to the draft text, should the agreement be finalized, the United States and its allies would be bound not to launch any form of aggression against Iran or its allies.

In return, Iran has committed that neither it nor its allies would carry out preemptive military strikes against the United States and its allies.

Consequently, the media outlet’s claim that “Israel’s” regime is exempt from any commitments toward Iran directly contradicts the explicit provisions of the final agreement, rendering the assertion false and unfounded.

US and Iran reportedly near agreement

This closely follows a report by Axios citing a US official familiar with the talks, stating that the United States and Iran are nearing a draft agreement that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, ease pressure on global oil markets, and launch a new round of talks over Tehran’s nuclear program.

The proposed deal, which mediators and President Donald Trump have suggested could be announced as early as Sunday, would establish a 60-day ceasefire framework that could later be extended by mutual consent. However, officials cautioned that talks remain ongoing and the agreement could still collapse before being finalized.

According to the US official, both sides would sign a memorandum of understanding under which Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, remove naval mines deployed in the waterway, and allow unrestricted maritime traffic to resume. In return, Washington would lift its blockade on Iranian ports and issue sanctions waivers enabling Tehran to freely export oil.

The official acknowledged that the arrangement would provide a major boost to Iran’s economy, but argued that it would also stabilize global energy markets by restoring oil flows through one of the world’s most strategically important shipping lanes.

May 24, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Fars debunks NYT claims ‘Israel’ was exempted from US-Iran agreement

Why the Israeli assassination strategy is leading them to defeat

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | May 10, 2026

The Zionist Entity cannot fight real wars, instead it uses assassinations and terror bombing campaigns to avoid having to actually engage its opponents. Since October of 2023, it has been proven that this strategy is a liability, especially when it is attempting to expand its occupation.

On March 3, 2026, Lebanese Hezbollah debunked the Israeli illusion that it was nearing “total victory” in a 7-front war. Now the reality is setting in for everyone. The Israelis have carried out their most successful assassination strikes, Mossad operations, and implemented the most destructive air attacks that the world has ever witnessed against a defenseless civilian population in Gaza.

All of this, and they haven’t defeated a single opponent. So why then did almost everyone believe that the Israelis had managed to overcome the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance? The answer is quite simple: propaganda.

Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Allah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Iran’s IRGC are all still in existence today. In fact, the Israelis failed through committing a genocide in Gaza to fully defeat even one of the some dozen Palestinian Resistance factions that exist there. This is not to say that nothing has been achieved and no blows were suffered, evidently that would be delusional, but the fact of the matter is that the Zionist Entity has thrown everything they have at securing “total victory”.

Some would then come along and argue that Hezbollah did suffer significant blows, with the assassination of their senior leadership, the terrorist pager attacks, that Hamas and the other Palestinian factions have also lost much of their senior leadership, as has the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). All of this is true, but that isn’t what wins a war.

This is especially the case when it comes to the Israelis, who possess the most advanced military technology and are on paper supposed to be a complete mismatch when facing up against Hezbollah or Hamas.

Their biggest issue lies in their military doctrine, the overreliance on technology, and beyond this the ideological weakness that runs through their society. In the year 2000, former Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah issued perhaps his most well-known address, which would later be referred to as the “Spider’s Web Speech”.

26 years later, and the Israeli political and military leadership, along with their media, are still obsessed with the speech. The reason why is because it cuts deep into the Israeli psyche and their self-perception. Israeli society is a military society, one that is obsessed with its citizen army. “The IDF is the most moral army” is the settler mantra, a concept so ridiculous to the rest of the world, yet a concept that the settlers themselves cling to with every ounce of their being. This is because the entire occupying regime is centred around the armed forces and militarism.

A soldier’s death is infinitely more difficult for the Israelis to accept than that of a non-combatant, which is why they do their utmost to cover up soldier casualties. If their soldiers are being killed in enormous numbers, then this begins to rock the entire society to its core and impact their belief in themselves to uphold their settler colonial project. Hence Nasrallah’s Spider’s Web theory. The idea of the Zionist entity being a spider’s web, is that its society is weak, not its technology, not its ability to drop bombs and carry out complex intelligence operations.

The concept of fighting short wars is enshrined in Israeli military thinking; it is a concept that dates back to its first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. This is to say, fighting short and intense wars is safe, because the Israelis are militarily superior to their opponents, yet fighting long, drawn out conflicts of attrition is a danger due to the sheer size of their enemies.

The most successful Israeli war of aggression, the “6-Day War,” reinforced this view. Over the years, since the US has fully thrown its weight behind the occupying ethno-supremacist regime, the United States military has itself shifted to become risk adverse and implement a counter-insurgency doctrine.

In the Second Intifada, the Israelis then leaned into the use of “targeted assassinations”, special forces raids and counter-insurgency strategies, in a way that they hadn’t previously implemented at such a scale. Palestinian Resistance groups in the West Bank were indeed defeated as a result of it, but in Gaza, they managed to adapt and develop in strength.

After originally withdrawing from Lebanon, the Israelis realised that the threat of Hezbollah had grown to a level where it now posed a significant threat, but when they tried to defeat it in 2006, they failed. Therefore, they developed the Dahiyeh Doctrine, the concept of inflicting massive death and destruction against civilian populations.

The belief was that this achieved “deterrence”; in reality, it was Hezbollah that had deterred the Israelis, because Hezbollah was not the aggressor or attempting to implement a belligerent occupation. In order to deal with their defeat in Lebanon, the Israelis then implemented the Dahiyeh Doctrine in the Gaza Strip, where they were dealing with a weaker Resistance group under siege.

Over the years, the Dahiyeh Doctrine was repeatedly used against the Gaza Strip, alongside assassination campaigns, aimed at “mowing the lawn”, a twisted way of saying subduing the threat and achieving “deterrence”. Yet, this also backfired in Gaza, because eventually the Resistance would become so strong that they pulled off the largest military defeat of the Israelis that had ever been inflicted.

As a reaction to October 7, 2023, the Israelis went bad; they initiated a genocide in the Gaza Strip, before going on the offensive across the region. They relied on those same tactics that had failed them time and again, which led them to the Hamas-led surprise attack.

Assassination after assassination, terrorist tactics against civilian populations in order to try and force them into submission, economic warfare, using proxy groups, doing everything possible without having to actually make the sacrifices necessary to attain victory. The reason why they couldn’t simply fight on the ground and go after the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, nor wage costly and bloody battles against Hezbollah, is because the Spider’s Web theory is true.

If the Israelis were to actually do what is necessary to truly defeat their opponents, they would have to accept losing tens of thousands of soldiers. This is a price that their citizens’ army is simply not willing to pay. The Palestinians, Lebanese, Yemeni and Iranians are willing to make that level of sacrifice, but the Israelis aren’t.

The Zionist regime seeks to achieve “Greater Israel”, but doesn’t want to make any real sacrifice in order to attain that project; they want to do it the easy way, but an easy way doesn’t exist. People are not simply going to bow down and accept enslavement, to live under the rule of an ethno-supremacist regime that treats them as animals, nor will they stop resisting because you slaughter their families.

Sneaky assassinations, surprise attacks and killing babies do not win wars against populations who are fighting for their ability to live freely in their lands. The Zionist entity had the opportunity to actually secure its existence, which was through accepting the so-called “Two-State solution”, but that would have defeated their entire purpose, despite it being the only route to securing their place in the region.

The “Two-State solution” was the Zionist solution that could have given them the ability to remain, but they chose to go down the path of no return. They couldn’t accept living as equals, because the Zionist project is one of ethno-supremacy, so now they are stuck. The illusion of victory over Lebanon is crumbling, as they fail to produce any solutions other than mass murder against civilian populations and ethnic cleansing across the region.

Especially when the Israelis are a weak society, they can’t succeed. This is why there is an obsession with achieving regime change in Iran and using the US to do it for them, because they are desperately betting on the idea that if they do succeed, the resistance against them will end.

May 10, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why the Israeli assassination strategy is leading them to defeat

Israeli ‘double tap’ strike hits paramedics in south Lebanon hours after renewed bombing of Beirut

The Cradle | May 7, 2026

An Israeli “double tap” strike targeted paramedics in the southern Lebanese town of Toul on 7 May, coinciding with brutal attacks across southern Lebanon and just hours after Tel Aviv’s first attack on Beirut since the start of the so-called “ceasefire.”

“An enemy drone struck the Toul area. After the attack, the Islamic Health Authority’s Civil Defense team went to inspect the site, before enemy warplanes launched another raid on the area, which resulted in the injury of two members of the rescue team and significant damage to the ambulance,” Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported.

Video footage captured the exact moment the Islamic Health Authority’s vehicle was bombed by the occupation army. Over 100 Lebanese medics have been killed by Israel since the war began.

Footage on social media also showed large explosions as a result of violent Israeli strikes on the town of Yater on Thursday. The town has been bombed 27 times over the past 24 hours.

Earlier, an Israeli attack hit the vicinity of the Evangelical School in Nabatieh, killing a delivery driver who was on duty.

Additionally, strikes hit Zefta, Qaqaait al-Jisr, Adchit, and several other Lebanese towns.

The violent attacks came as Hezbollah continues to confront Israeli troops occupying southern Lebanon.

“The Mujahideen of the Islamic Resistance targeted a D9 bulldozer belonging to the Israeli enemy army at Khalleh al-Raj in the town of Deir Siryan at 08:45 AM on Thursday, 07-05-2026, with an attack drone, and achieved a confirmed hit,” the Lebanese resistance announced.

Al-Jarmaq News, citing Hebrew sources, reported that 10 Israeli soldiers were wounded in an explosive drone attack in southern Lebanon and transferred to Rambam Hospital in Haifa on Thursday morning.

Seventeen soldiers are currently being treated at the hospital, including four in serious condition, the report added.

On Wednesday night, Israel carried out its first strikes in Beirut since Iran imposed a truce on the capital last month. The attack targeted a building in Haret Hreik.

The Israeli military claimed this was a targeted assassination of the chief of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Unit, identifying him as Ahmad Ghaleb Ballout.

Hezbollah has yet to comment on the deadly violation, which resulted in one death and multiple injuries.

Israel’s Channel 14 said Tel Aviv will continue assassinations and “act anywhere” against Hezbollah figures if the opportunity arises.

Other Hebrew reports said Israel does not consider this a ceasefire violation but rather a “preemptive” attack aimed at “thwarting threats.”

Since Tel Aviv’s war and ground assault against Lebanon began in early March, the Israeli army has occupied dozens of Lebanese villages, establishing a Gaza-style buffer zone area which has been labeled the “Forward Defense Line.”

Hezbollah fighters remain present across this line, carrying out daily FPV drone attacks which have become a major challenge to Israeli forces.

May 7, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on Israeli ‘double tap’ strike hits paramedics in south Lebanon hours after renewed bombing of Beirut

Hezbollah denies activity in Syria amid persistent and false claims

Al Mayadeen | May 5, 2026

Hezbollah’s Media Relations categorically denied the false accusations issued by the Syrian Interior Ministry, which claimed to have dismantled a “Hezbollah-affiliated cell” that was planning to carry out security operations inside Syrian territory.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Hezbollah noted the repeated accusations issued by the Syrian government despite the resistance’s consistent assertions that it maintains no activity in Syria.

It further said that the repetition of such allegations “raises serious questions and confirms that there are those seeking to ignite tension and discord between the Syrian and Lebanese peoples.”

Consequently, Hezbollah said it wishes only well for Syria and its people, and that any threat to Syria’s security would also constitute a threat to Lebanon’s security. It also reiterated that it never sought and would never seek to destabilize the security of any state, stressing that its confrontation remains against the Israeli entity and its expansionist project.

“Hezbollah has been and will remain in a defensive position in confronting the Zionist enemy and its expansionist projects, an enemy of Lebanon and Syria that occupies their lands and covets their resources and the wealth of their peoples,” the statement concluded.

Hezbollah urges vigilance 

Several statements have been issued by Syria’s transitional leadership accusing Hezbollah of operating inside its territories, which have been consistently rejected. This is also a trend that stretches beyond Syria, with recent fabricated allegations coming out of Bahrain and Kuwait.

Hezbollah has warned against such narratives, urging the countries to remain vigilant in the face of what appears to be a foreign plot to ignite tensions between Arab nations and the Axis of Resistance.

May 5, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Hezbollah denies activity in Syria amid persistent and false claims

Israeli strikes intensify across southern Lebanon, casualties reported

 Al Mayadeen | May 2, 2026

The Israeli occupation has intensified its attacks on villages and towns in southern Lebanon, with fresh airstrikes and artillery shelling reported across several districts, according to field reports from the south.

Al Mayadeen’s correspondent in southern Lebanon reported that three people were killed after an Israeli raid struck a house in the town of al-Louaizeh in the Jezzine district at dawn on Friday, with the escalation extending beyond the area as Israeli airstrikes also hit the towns of Harouf and Shoukin, as well as the al-Tuffah heights region.

The National News Agency (NNA) reported that an earlier strike on Shoukin resulted in the killing of civilians and the injury of several others, including the town’s mayor, Hussein Ali Ahmad.

Further raids targeted multiple towns in the Nabatieh district, including Zawtar al-Sharqiyah, A’dshit, Mayfadoun, Kfar Joz, and Ebba. An additional strike hit a vehicle on the Kfar Dajjal road in the same district.

Strikes across Tyre, Bint Jbeil, and Hasbaya

Southern Lebanon also came under intensified attacks across a wider area, with strikes hitting Majdal Zoun in the Tyre district and Burj Qalaway in the Bint Jbeil district.

The town of Qounine was targeted in an aerial attack, while heavy artillery shelling struck Touline and Qabrikha in the Marjeyoun district. Another airstrike hit Kfarshouba in the Hasbaya district.

Israeli artillery also struck residential areas and outskirts, including al-Mansouri in the Tyre district, while military aircraft maintained intensive overflights across southern Lebanese airspace.

The aggression has continued despite the so-called temporary ceasefire agreement, which took effect on April 17 for 10 days and was later extended for a further three weeks on April 24. However, since the agreement came into force, the Israeli occupation has maintained its attacks, while also facing continued retaliatory attacks from the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

Since March 2, the cumulative toll has reportedly exceeded 2,618 martyrs and more than 8,094 injured, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. Officials say the ceasefire framework involving Lebanon has not prevented continued strikes, with repeated attacks reported across multiple regions.

May 2, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , | Comments Off on Israeli strikes intensify across southern Lebanon, casualties reported

Left in Disbelief: Israel in Panic over Hezbollah FPV Drone Nightmare

By Robert Inlakesh | The Palestine Chronicle | May 1, 2026

Left in disbelief, an already drained Israeli military is left without any viable solutions to the ever-growing threat of first-person view (FPV) drones, now used by Hezbollah to overwhelm their newly assumed positions in southern Lebanon.

On April 16, Tel Aviv and Beirut agreed to a temporary ceasefire imposed by US President Donald Trump. Within the first hour of the ceasefire’s imposition, Israel had already violated the agreement 10 times, including an attack on an ambulance. What they sought to achieve was a return to the pre-war status quo, whereby the Israeli military attacked Lebanon at will, without any return fire.

It soon became clear that the 15-month ceasefire period, following November 27, 2024, during which the Israeli military violated the agreement 15,400 times according to UNIFIL, was not going to be replicated. The first wave of retaliation against Israeli violations began with Hezbollah detonating improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and destroying convoys of Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs), after carrying out reconnaissance and anticipating the movement of armed convoys.

Initially, the Israeli military passed three successive IED attacks off as incidents occurring due to explosives previously left behind by Hezbollah fighters. Later, the Lebanese Party officially announced it had taken out four Israeli Merkava tanks in a single IED attack, forcing the Israelis to issue a statement acknowledging it.

Before long, Hezbollah was issuing statements claiming responsibility for a number of retaliatory attacks each day, including rocket fire on Israeli army positions across the Lebanon Blue Line (Lebanese border).

Then came the prominence of Hezbollah’s usage of the cheap, but highly effective FPV drones, inflicting considerable numbers of casualties amongst Israeli soldiers in retaliation for ceasefire violations and the attempt to illegally occupy a strip of territory in southern Lebanon.

Contrary to Israel’s initial claims to have established a considerable “buffer zone” and that only a small number of Hezbollah fighters had remained in the area, it would become clear that nothing of the sort had truly taken place. There was never any “full operational control” of the “buffer zone”, instead, the Israelis were practicing the Gaza strategy of deploying forces in their heavily armoured vehicles to towns and villages, where they would then be tasked with blowing up civilian infrastructure.

Hezbollah fighters remain positioned throughout this newly declared zone, a terrain that favors a defending force using guerrilla warfare tactics. Perhaps the most menacing is the usage of the FPV drones for both reconnaissance and attacks alike.

In a new article, written for Yediot Aharanot in Hebrew, correspondent Elisha Ben Kimon wrote the following:

 “For years, the IDF has invested billions in sophisticated interception systems, precision missiles, and the intelligence capabilities of superpowers. But when Hezbollah, with simple and deadly ingenuity, decided to lower its flight altitude and switch to drones, with fiber optics that make it difficult to detect and intercept, Israel found itself in a situation of dealing with a “low-tech” threat that disrupted all work plans.”

The FPV UAVs can be cheaply acquired for only hundreds of dollars per unit, yet when assembled domestically, they can be put together for as little as 50 dollars in some instances. Successful FPV drone deployment for war was pioneered by the Ukrainians and Russians during the Ukraine War. According to some sources, the majority of battlefield casualties in that war have been a result of this drone, which Kyiv can mass-produce at around 300 dollars per unit.

Equipped with a fiber-optic cable, the drones are completely immune to electronic warfare jamming, negating the high-tech advantages that the Israelis have previously enjoyed. Hezbollah does have access to a range of different attack drones, including various Iranian models, which have proven highly effective also. Yet, they are not available in as high quantities, and their most sophisticated technology is used to target high-value targets.

This development has meant that Hezbollah drone operator teams can safely fly these drones from up to and over 10 kilometers away, without being detected. The process of detecting these drones is the same as it is for Hezbollah’s arsenal of more sophisticated radio frequency (RF) drones, relying on acoustic sensors, radars and thermal imaging, yet FPV drones fly at such low altitudes and use the terrain of southern Lebanon to make them more difficult to detect until it is too late.

A recent article published by the Israeli daily Haaretz noted that back in 2024, the Israeli political and military leadership claimed to be on top of deploying solutions to the Hezbollah drone threat, stressing that a range of Israeli defense companies were engineering solutions.

However, an anonymous source “involved in the field” told Haaretz that “There is a need for a systemic response – not to acquire a little of this and a little of that, but a broad plan to address all unmanned threats along our borders. DDR&D (Directorate of Defense Research & Development) has known about this threat for many years but has not mobilized to address it.”

In a nightmare situation for the Israeli military, Hezbollah recently launched a retaliatory attack using FPV drones, inflicting 6 soldier casualties near the Lebanese town of Taybeh. Israel announced that one of its sergeants, Ithan Fukes, was killed in the attack. What happened next was perhaps even more damning.

Hezbollah followed up their attack with an FPV drone strike targeting the medivac helicopter. The incident caused such a stir because the Israeli military leaked videos of the incident. Despite the Israeli soldiers wearing body cams or GoPros on their helmets, this was the first time such footage has been released, due to Israel’s strict military censor laws.

The first video released was from a distance, showing the FPV drone impacting the site where the evacuation of soldiers was happening, causing them to fall back and the helicopter to abruptly take off. From the footage, it was unclear whether the drone hit any target or not, triggering criticism from the Israeli media over why it was released.

Then, a second video was released, from a soldier’s helmet camera, revealing that the drone fell just short, either due to the wind force of the helicopter or due to the soldier’s gunfire. Any release of footage of this kind is deliberate; in this case, it was to jolt the Israeli leadership into action.

An enormous amount of criticism has been leveled at the Israeli political leadership over its failure to achieve its announced goals in Lebanon, and the army itself is even joining that parade. What this demonstrates is that the psychological impact of the FPVs is greatly burdening soldiers on the ground, while the army is left to sit in southern Lebanon twiddling its thumbs.

Hezbollah’s asymmetric warfare is already causing enormous strain on the some 6 Israeli divisions deployed to fight against Lebanon. Just as they were in Gaza, the Israelis are not doing much beyond demolishing civilian infrastructure, proving so risk-averse as to fear entering a fight in which they actually seek to degrade Hezbollah in any significant way. They may have gotten away with this in Gaza, but in South Lebanon, they are dealing with a much more powerful opponent and a more difficult terrain.

Israeli Merkava tanks, worth between 3.5 to 6 million dollars each, are being taken out day after day by FPV drones, carrying explosive charges, worth a maximum of a few hundred dollars each. Hezbollah is taking out mobile telecommunications equipment, command and control vehicles, APCs, D-9 bulldozers, and excavation equipment, with cheap drones that they continue to mass produce with ease. They also do this while their fighters are kept out of harm’s way.

Israel has attempted to consult Ukrainian advisors in order to learn new tactics to deal with the threat and has purchased its own FPV drones, yet none of this has borne fruit. Instead, individual soldiers have tried experimenting with netting to place over vehicles and the use of shotguns, while relying on soldiers to watch the skies for incoming drones.

Despite some of this being effective, out of fear, the Israelis do not normally deploy infantry next to their tanks while on the move. In Gaza, this tactic of hiding inside heavily armored vehicles and tanks did manage to reduce soldier deaths and injuries, but in Lebanon, it could actually be causing the opposite effect, at least when it comes to FPV drone attacks.

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.

May 2, 2026 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , | Comments Off on Left in Disbelief: Israel in Panic over Hezbollah FPV Drone Nightmare

Israeli strikes kill 10 in southern Lebanon, including 3 rescue workers

Press TV – April 29, 2026

At least ten people, including three rescue workers, have been killed in Israeli airstrikes against residential neighborhoods in southern Lebanon, marking the latest violations of a ceasefire that began on April 16 after weeks of fighting between the Tel Aviv regime and Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported that an Israeli aerial raid destroyed a four-storey building in the village of Jabchit in the Nabatieh district on Tuesday night, killing Mohammad Jawad Bahja, his wife Lotfiya, as well as Amani Jaber and her daughters.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health announced in a statement that at least 13 people also sustained injuries in the attack.

Separately, two successive ⁠Israeli strikes on a building in the town of Majdal Zoun on Tuesday killed five people, including three rescue workers who went to help those injured in ⁠the initial Israeli attack on the targeted building.

The three Lebanese civil defense rescue workers were later identified as Hussein Ghadbouri, Hussein Sati and Hadi Daher.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam strongly condemned the deadly Israeli strike.“Targeting elements of the Civil Defense in Majdal Zoun, and their killing while carrying out their humanitarian duty, constitutes a new and described war crime perpetrated by Israel,” he wrote in a post on social media.

“It represents a flagrant violation of the principles and rules of international humanitarian law,” Salam said.

“The government will spare no effort to condemn this heinous crime in international forums and to mobilize all efforts to compel Israel to cease its ongoing violations of the ceasefire agreement.”

Israeli forces also shelled the towns of Mansouri, Chehabiyeh, Tiri, Jouaiyya, Touline and Khirbet Selm. There were no immediate reports about possible casualties and the extent of damage caused.

The occupation troops also dropped white phosphorus shells on Yohmor al-Shaqif village.

Elsewhere in Naqoura region, Israeli forces pressed ahead with their demolition activities. Residents of adjacent municipalities felt a strong tremor as the occupation troops set off a considerable amount of explosives to flatten designated buildings.

On Wednesday, kamikaze drones launched by Hezbollah resistance fighters targeted and destroyed two Israeli Merkava battle tanks in Naqoura.

Hezbollah said in a brief statement that the operation was carried out in defense of Lebanon as well as its nation, and in response to the Israeli aggression against villages in southern Lebanon.

April 29, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on Israeli strikes kill 10 in southern Lebanon, including 3 rescue workers

Israeli military ‘failed on all fronts’: Poll

The Cradle | April 28, 2026

A poll published by Israel’s Public Broadcaster (KAN) on 28 April found that a majority of Israelis believe the state has failed to secure victory in any war since October 2023.

According to the survey, 57 percent of respondents said no victory had been achieved, while 28 percent believed success had been reached in at least one arena, and a further 15 percent said they were unsure.

The findings come after more than two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – which Israel threatens to reignite –  during which Tel Aviv waged multiple offensive military campaigns against Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, alongside attacks in Yemen and Syria and a campaign of destruction and displacement in the occupied West Bank.

Confidence levels across all the fronts remain low, with only 17 percent viewing operations in Syria as successful and 16 percent saying the same for Gaza and Iran.

Perceptions dropped further on the Lebanese front at 14 percent, followed by Yemen at 12 percent and the occupied West Bank at 11 percent.

The poll also points to persistent security concerns, with a total of 73 percent of respondents saying the continued armed presence of Hamas and Hezbollah poses a direct threat of a repeat of a 7 October-style event.

Only 10 percent dismissed that possibility, while 17 percent remained uncertain.

On the ground, Israel has reportedly begun withdrawing troops from southern Lebanon. Israeli outlet Maariv described the campaign as ending in “failure” and “bitterness,” as forces pull back under continued Hezbollah attacks, including drone strikes that exposed major gaps in Israeli preparedness.

The poll also showed divisions over Netanyahu’s legal status, with a majority – 56 percent – supporting a pardon for his corruption charges, while 26 percent opposed the move and 18 percent remained undecided.

Netanyahu had requested a presidential pardon on 30 November without admitting guilt or stepping down from office, despite Israeli law requiring an admission of guilt for such a measure.

He is currently facing trial in three separate corruption cases involving fraud, bribery, and abuse of power, with court proceedings ongoing since 2020 after charges were filed in 2019.

Netanyahu’s court testimony was delayed once again on 27 April over a “serious” security incident in southern Lebanon, as the prime minister seeks to prolong the wars to keep his corruption trial from moving forward.

At the same time, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has listed Netanyahu as wanted since 2024, issuing arrest warrants for him and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their direct involvement and orchestration of the genocide in Gaza, as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of starvation as a weapon.

April 29, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Israeli military ‘failed on all fronts’: Poll

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