By Ricardo Martins – New Eastern Outlook – June 5, 2026
Netanyahu and Trump are conditioning the end of the war in Iran on the condition that all countries in the region sign the Abraham Accords, a tacit submission to Israel. Drawing on Daniel Levy, Omer Bartov, and the Pew Survey, I address the reasons, the urgency, and the limits of Netanyahu’s simultaneous battles on several fronts in the quest for a Greater Israel project.
When Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich talks about expanding Israel’s reach “to Damascus,” or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expresses personal attachment to broad territorial ambitions or Israel being not only a “regional superpower” but “in some respects, a global superpower,” these are not just messianic daydreams. They reflect a deliberate, and deeply destabilizing strategic doctrine. For years, the idea of Greater Israel was dismissed by Western analysts as the rhetoric of a few Israeli hardliners. Sustaining this dismissive position is no longer possible.
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and now head of the U.S./Middle East Project, offers a sharp analytical lens for understanding today’s events. He suggests that Greater Israel isn’t just about land—it’s about Israel aiming to establish itself as the dominant hard-power player across the Middle East. As Levy puts it, this is about seeing how far Israel can extend its reach and consolidate its role as the region’s unrivaled hegemon.
Territorial control—occupying the Golan, reasserting presence in southern Lebanon, pushing forward with West Bank annexation, and the continuation of the genocide in Gaza—is only the most visible layer. The deeper game is about forging new regional alliances, as the one with the UAE, systematically weakening rival states, and building webs of hard-power dependency that lock neighboring governments into Israel’s orbit.
The ideological consolidation of this project was the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, which constitutionally defined Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people.” For many, including the PLO’s Saeb Erekat, this law was the moment when a Zionist aspiration became a formal legal reality, and for critics, a codification of a system of apartheid. What was once an ambition is now written into the legal foundations of the state.
Omer Bartov, a leading scholar on genocide and Israeli history, traces this shift with a heavy sense of loss. In his book Israel: What Went Wrong?, he shows how Zionism, once rooted in the humanitarian ideals of 19th-century Jewish emancipation, has been transformed into a state project of ethno-nationalism, exclusion, and, in the end, violence. As Bartov puts it, what began as a struggle for Jewish liberation has become a machinery for dominating Palestinians, with all the tragedy that implies.
The Logic of Urgency
The pace and simultaneity of Israeli military operations in recent years demand careful analysis. In just two years, Israel has bombed Gaza, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Qatar and Yemen; it has occupied the Golan Heights, Gaza, the West Bank, and parts of southern Lebanon. Israel even succeeded in drawing the United States into a direct conflict with Iran, a move that, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio accidentally admitted, was driven more by Israeli rather than American priorities. As for Netanyahu, this is a posture of someone convinced that the window for reshaping the region is closing fast, and determined to act before it closes.
Levy describes the current moment as the “Pax Greater Israel” era, a time when the old constraints of American power, the so-called Pax Americana, have faded. With a more pliable U.S. administration, Israel’s room to maneuver has expanded. Iran still hasn’t rebuilt the deterrence it once had before Israel and America struck last year. The region’s strategic balance is more fluid—and more precarious—than it’s been in a generation.
While there’s international outrage over Israel’s actions in Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon, Israel has not suffered any punishment. The European Union, which heralds itself as the guardian of morals and Western values, has seen these values undermined by Israel, yet no single action has been taken. Netanyahu, who has piloted Israeli politics for nearly two decades, is unlikely to let an opportunity like this slip by.
Netanyahu’s sense of urgency isn’t just strategic. It is also deeply personal and political. He faces criminal charges, widespread public disapproval (polls showed most Israelis wanted him out even before the Gaza war), and an election looming in 2026. His personal survival and his political project are now intertwined. History teaches us that war often delays accountability, and Netanyahu knows that he has survived through wars.
By keeping the nation in a constant state of crisis, Netanyahu postpones his own reckoning while pushing forward his broader regional ambitions. There is always a danger when embattled leaders manipulate the machinery of state.
The Collapse of the Impunity Consensus
For decades, Israel benefited from an unspoken Western consensus that gave it extraordinary complacency on international law. UN resolutions could be swept aside, settlements could expand, human rights abuses against Palestinians could be perpetrated, and the memory of the Holocaust—too often used as a diplomatic shield—offered a kind of moral immunity no other state enjoyed. That consensus is now breaking down, even if its institutional traces remain stubbornly in place.
The visibility of the Gaza war and its horrendous violence has triggered a generational break like never before and a breakdown of this consensus. According to an April 2026 Pew survey, 60% of Americans have unfavorable views of Israel and 37% favorable ones. This becomes more important, as it is the first in history. The same survey also showed Netanyahu’s administration with 27% approval and 59% disapproval. In the last Global Country Perceptions Survey, Israel ranked in the last position, several points behind North Korea and Afghanistan.
The generational divide is even sharper among young people, many of whom reject any complicity in what prominent scholars, including Bartov, now formally call genocide. Netanyahu’s act of tearing up the UN Charter at the General Assembly, followed by a mass walkout, was more than symbolism. It marked the end of an era for both Netanyahu and Israel. Criticism of Israel or Zionism is no longer quickly conflated with antisemitism, especially among the younger generations.
And yet the institutional lag is severe. The European Union, bound by Article 2 of its Association Agreement with Israel, which explicitly conditions the relationship on respect for human rights, has consistently refused to act on its own legal framework. The cost of this cowardice is not merely moral. The EU, having lost industrial competitiveness, seeks its international influence as a regulatory and normative superpower. This claim rests on credibility. A bloc that intends to police the digital practices of technology companies but cannot enforce a human rights clause in its own trade agreement with a small state faces difficulties in imposing itself as a normative power, and the Global South has drawn that conclusion because of the lack of moral authority and double standard.
The pro-Israel lobby in the United States, sensing the tide turning, has responded by intensifying rather than moderating. More money is being spent, more countries are being pressured, more political careers are being threatened or terminated, as was the case with Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and more communication and online platforms are being acquired; censorship is being imposed, especially on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, and algorithms are being “re-educated,” as Mr. Larry Ellison said when he acquired TikTok. The main lobby, AIPAC, has, in great measure, turned into a politically toxic brand, according to The Intercept.
But Levy is right to note the structural limits of this approach. Lobbying is most effective when it moves with the current of public opinion or when it operates in the dark. It is least effective when it operates openly against an overwhelming public majority, against a country’s perceived national interest, and against the values of the rising generation. The lobby is fighting a rearguard action — powerful, well-resourced, and increasingly desperate.
The Next Iran and the Regional Order
It’s no accident that Israeli security officials—from Naftali Bennett to the current establishment—have started designating Türkiye as “the next Iran.” This isn’t just rhetoric; it is also part of “Greater Israel” strategy. Three decades ago, Israel argued that Iran was the existential threat that had to be contained before it led the region. Now, the same logic and language are applied to Türkiye: any regional power capable of building a new security order outside Israeli influence is seen as a threat to be isolated or confronted before it can consolidate.
But Türkiye is a different kind of challenge. As a NATO member with the largest NATO army in Europe, a strong economy, and the anchor of a coalition with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, Türkiye is not easily marginalized. Recent agreements point to a regional bloc that aims to build security frameworks explicitly outside Israeli (and, by extension, Western) dominance. This coalition news has not pleased Israel and soon reached the EU, with Ursula von der Leyen declaring, “We do not want to live under the influence of China, Russia, or Türkiye.”
The regional threat map has changed. For much of the Arab world and for Türkiye’s Erdoğan, Israel—not Iran—is now seen as the chief destabilizer. This shift in perception has real geopolitical consequences, and it’s not something American air power can easily undo.
Are we at the point of no return? In some ways, yes. The two-state solution, no matter how often it’s invoked in diplomatic statements, is functionally dead. It wasn’t killed by a single act, but by decades of illegal settlements, legal discrimination, disproportionate violence, and the systematic fragmentation of Palestinian territory. The ethnostate is already a reality on the ground. Bartov’s assessment is sobering but direct: unless there is sustained, structural pressure and actions from the international community, a real course correction is unlikely, and so far, that pressure hasn’t materialized.
But in another sense, we’re not quite past the point of no return for Netanyahu’s grand project. The conditions that have enabled the Greater Israel strategy are starting to slip away. American public opinion is shifting faster than the country’s political leaders; the support for Palestine is now higher than the support for Israel. A new regional bloc—with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt—offers a real counterweight. Iran, for all its setbacks, still possesses significant strategic resources and has the backing of China and Russia. And inside Israel, recent polling shows that a large majority (71%) support replacing the current Basic Laws with a formal constitution. Beneath the surface noise of hardline politics, there’s evidence that Israeli society hasn’t wholly given in to the ethnonationalist vision Bartov describes.
One thing is clear: this current trajectory of forever war and continued violence and humiliation of Palestinians can’t last forever. As Levy notes, Netanyahu is playing a high-stakes game of “use it or lose it.” The real question isn’t whether this moment will end — sure it will — but what the aftermath will look like. Will the region be forcibly remade in the image of Greater Israel, or will a new order, forged through painful resistance, emerge in its place? The stakes for Israelis, Palestinians, and the broader Middle East couldn’t be higher.
Ricardo Martins – Doctor of Sociology, specialist in European and international politics as well as geopolitics
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – June 4, 2026
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | June 4, 2026
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Mojtaba Khamenei said that the US and Israel had suffered a humiliating defeat.
In a statement published on Thursday, Khamenei said the US and Israel’s “system of domination” has suffered a historic defeat. He explained that Washington and Tehran had shifted to targeting Iranian society through psychological warfare.
“The vile enemy, having suffered defeat at the hands of your brave sons in the armed forces, and having experienced a profound and meaningful humiliation — both on the military battlefield and in the streets.” The statement continued, “Which has visibly caused countries to drift away from it, has now focused its hybrid war on two points: breaking the people’s endurance and creating errors in the calculations of the country’s officials.”
Khamenei’s remarks came after President Donald Trump expressed that he wanted to meet with the Iranian leader. In an interview with the New York Times released on Wednesday, Trump said that he is “getting along quite well” with Khamenei. The President added, “I’d like to meet him. I’d love to meet everybody.”
It’s unclear whether Trump’s remarks are rooted in reality, as the US and Iran have not engaged in direct meetings but have instead exchanged messages through Lebanon. Additionally, Khamenei’s father was assassinated on the first day of the war.
Notably, Trump suggested that Khamenei is running Iran. The President told the New York Post that Khamenei has “absolutely” been involved in talks and other Iranian leaders have a lot of respect for him.” Trump continued, “They say he is approving, because that’s the way it has been for a long, long time. His father and then him, I guess it’s a succession. But we seem to be getting along quite well.”
US officials previously suggested that Khamenei was incapacitated, and the government was fractured. Trump claimed the Iranian leader was “not doing well” and “missing a lot of parts.”
The rare statement from Khamenei comes as the ceasefire appears on the brink of collapse.
Press TV – June 4, 2026
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps has stated that no peace will be established in the region without the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territories in Lebanon, as it condemns ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians.
In a statement issued on the recent events in Lebanon on Thursday, the IRGC declared that international condemnations and expressions of disgust from countries and nations around the world have had no effect on the behavior of Tel Aviv’s “bloodthirsty rulers.”
“The arrogant American regime, under the pretext of establishing peace, has only increased crime and genocide through its interventions,” the statement read.
The IRGC described the Israeli army as “cowardly and incapable,” stating that it tries to compensate for its battlefield defeats by killing civilians and destroying homes, hospitals, and schools.
“This racist regime, despite unlimited support from America and European countries, has not even been able to win the hearts of the people of a single occupied village during its shameful existence,” the statement said.
“Its skill is merely ruling over burned lands, and every day we witness the destruction of the homes of the oppressed people of Palestine and Lebanon at the hands of this aggressor regime,” it further said.
The IRGC asserted that the Lebanese nation will not allow the occupying regime to achieve through a forced agreement what it could not achieve through war, even with the support of the “child-killing American regime.”
“Our primary condition for accepting a ceasefire in the regional war has been a ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon,” the statement said.
The IRGC stated that the enemy must urgently halt its attacks on the Lebanese people, immediately withdraw from occupied Lebanese territories back behind international borders, and recognize Lebanon’s territorial integrity.
“The Lebanese nation is the pride of the Ummah and a symbol of the honor of the region’s peoples. We will support them with all our being. No peace will be established in the region without withdrawal from the occupied territories of Lebanon,” it said.
On Monday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered strikes on the Dahiyeh area, a predominantly Shia district in Beirut’s southern suburbs, and issued evacuation orders covering the entire area.
In response, Iran’s central military command warned that if Israel carried out its threat to bomb southern Beirut, Iranian forces would retaliate against the northern occupied territories.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry also said Tehran was ready to help Lebanon resist the “illegal aggression,” adding that a Lebanon ceasefire is “an integral part of any ceasefire and any final agreement” with the United States.
Shortly after Iran’s warning, US President Donald Trump said on social media that he had intervened, claiming he had held a “very productive conversation” with Netanyahu that prevented further escalation.
He also said he had reached an understanding with Hezbollah through senior representatives, stating that the resistance group had agreed to halt attacks in exchange for Israel refraining from strikes.
A Pakistan-brokered ceasefire between Tehran and Washington, which also covers Lebanon, has been in place since early April, though Israel has continued carrying out daily attacks on the Arab country in violation of the truce.
Iran has repeatedly said that any ceasefire must be comprehensive, covering all fronts, including Lebanon, and has warned it will not tolerate continued Israeli attacks on the country.
Press TV – June 1, 2026
More than 300 non-Iranian vessels, mostly oil tankers, have submitted their information to secure a safe passage permit from the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) since the entity began its operations in early May, the PGSA announced in a post on X on Tuesday.
The majority of these requests came from outbound ships, which accounted for 77 percent of the total applications. Inbound ships made up the remaining 23 percent.
The PGSA noted that the primary destinations for outbound vessels have been Asian countries, particularly China and India, while the main destination for inbound ships has been the United Arab Emirates.
Iran established the PGSA following the imposition of its sovereign regulatory framework for maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman.
According to the PGSA, the authority does not have the power to issue permits for ships from hostile countries.
The move comes as Washington has attempted to prevent Iran from exercising its sovereign rights in the strait.
On May 27, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the PGSA, accusing the body of funnelling revenue from a toll system to the IRGC.
The PGSA has dismissed the sanctions as an extension of Washington’s “failed” attempts to dominate the waterway, stating that it “considers being sanctioned by a country whose president boasts about piracy to be a sign of its positive performance”.
Press TV – June 1, 2026
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says it has carried out a retaliatory strike against an air base used by the United States to launch a military attack on a telecommunications tower in southern Iran.
In a statement on Monday, the IRGC said its Aerospace Force struck and destroyed the air base from which the “aggressor US military” launched an attack on the telecom tower on Sirik Island in Iran’s southern province of Hormozgan.
“Following the aggression carried out hours ago by the aggressor US military against a communications tower on Sirik Island in Hormozgan Province, the fighters of the IRGC Aerospace Force targeted the air base from which the attack originated, and the predetermined targets were destroyed,” the statement added.
The IRGC Aerospace Force also issued a stern warning against further military action, emphasizing that any future attacks would prompt more severe responses.
“The IRGC Aerospace Force warns that if the aggression is repeated, the response will be completely different, and responsibility for its consequences will rest with the aggressor and child-killing US regime,” the statement said.
The developments came after the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) said late Sunday that it conducted “self-defense strikes” over the weekend against Iranian radar and drone command-and-control facilities in the city of Goruk and on Qeshm Island.
“The measured and deliberate strikes occurred on Saturday and Sunday,” CENTCOM said in response to what it called “aggressive Iranian actions that included the shootdown of a US MQ-1 drone that was operating over international waters.”
The IRGC Public Relations Department announced in a statement on Sunday that the elite force’s air defense units detected and successfully shot down an intruding MQ-1 Predator drone belonging to the “aggressor US military”, shortly after it encroached upon Iranian airspace over the Persian Gulf.
It added that the multi-mission and long-endurance remotely piloted aircraft was intercepted and destroyed as it entered the Iranian skies in the early hours of Sunday.
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – May 30, 2026
Prof. Glenn Diesen on Neutrality Studies – May 30, 2026
NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine is morphing into a direct EU-Russia war. And the war hawks in Brussels are further escalating by attacking civilians in the Donbas and Russia proper. The doves in the Kremlin are running out of options to keep their own hawks under wraps. As things stand now, an all-out EU-Russia war is not only a possible, but by now a likely scenario. But to what end?
By Jose Nino | Occidental Observer | May 30, 2026
For decades, prominent Jewish voices have wrestled privately with an uncomfortable question. Does aggressive Israeli government conduct expose diaspora Jewish communities to backlash they did not invite? In early March, Ezra Klein brought that question back into public view. Speaking with former Obama senior adviser Ben Rhodes on a podcast episode titled “The Great Lie of War”, the New York Times columnist warned that Israel’s central role in the joint U.S. assault on Iran could fuel a new wave of antisemitism.
The two men spent most of the interview discussing the strategic recklessness of the Iran operation where the United States and Israel launched an assault that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and much of his senior command. They examined the lack of congressional authorization, the absence of an endgame, the risk of a massive refugee crisis, and what they described as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s long-sought goal of drawing the United States into direct military confrontation with Iran.
The antisemitism remark came near the end of that segment, specifically as a follow-on to a discussion about Saudi ambivalence toward the war and the question of what Israel actually wants from the conflict. Klein’s exact words in the transcript were, “I’m not saying this is the biggest issue at this moment, but the centrality of Israel in the operation has raised some concerns for me about what this is going to mean for anti-Semitism. You see the amount of talk on the MAGA right, but elsewhere as well that, you know, Israel’s leverage over Donald Trump or that, you know, this is all just some kind of Israeli plot.”
Klein then noted that Netanyahu appeared to be gambling with Israel’s long term political standing in America and in the world at a time of “very, very sharply rising anti-Semitism,” expressing uncertainty about how it would all pan out. The New York Times columnist’s concern, stated plainly, was that Israel’s highly visible, central role in what many perceived as an unjustified war of aggression would fuel conspiracy theories rather than defuse them. His worry was that Netanyahu’s short-term tactical success, finally getting a U.S. president to strike Iran, risked long-term consequences for Jews, especially in the United States.
This dilemma is not new. Jewish billionaire George Soros articulated a similar concern over two decades ago. Soros has largely steered clear of public association with Jewish communal life and seldom appears at exclusively Jewish functions. That changed in 2003, when he took the stage at a New York City meeting hosted by the Jewish Funders Network. Questioned about the spread of antisemitism across Europe, Soros offered an unexpected diagnosis, laying blame at the feet of U.S. and Israeli policy. “There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that,” he stated. “If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish. I can’t see how one could confront it directly.”
At the time, the reaction from Jewish leadership was furious. Elan Steinberg, who served as senior adviser to the World Jewish Congress after a stint as its executive director, fired back. “Let’s understand things clearly: Anti-Semitism is not caused by Jews; it’s caused by anti-Semites.” Abraham Foxman dismissed Soros’s words as “absolutely obscene.” The head of the ADL elaborated. “He buys into the stereotype. It’s a simplistic, counterproductive, biased and bigoted perception of what’s out there. It’s blaming the victim for all of Israel’s and the Jewish people’s ills.”
The Foxman and Steinberg responses reflected an orthodox position within Jewish communal leadership. Antisemitism, in this view, is a pathology of antisemites, and any attempt to link it to Israeli behavior constitutes victim blaming. Yet this position has always co-existed uneasily with a practical awareness that Israeli actions, particularly those perceived as disproportionate or aggressive, create public relations challenges for diaspora Jewish communities.
Klein’s 2026 remarks fall squarely within this tension. He was warning that Netanyahu’s gamble, making Israel so visibly central to an unpopular war, would hand ammunition to those who already believed such theories. Polling data suggests that Klein’s concerns about Israel’s political standing are well-founded. Gallup’s 2025 Annual World Affairs Survey documented a broader collapse in American sentiment toward Israel. Only 46% of Americans sympathized with Israelis, the lowest figure in 25 years of Gallup tracking. Among Democrats, 59% sympathized more with Palestinians—with only 21% sympathizing with Israelis—creating a nearly 3-to-1 ratio, the first time Palestinians had held such a commanding lead among members of a major U.S. party. A majority of Americans, and a record-high 76% of Democrats, supported an independent Palestinian state.
These trends predate the Iran strike and reflect cumulative damage from Israel’s conduct in Gaza. The joint United States and Israel operation against Iran, with Israel’s role so prominently featured, is unlikely to reverse this trajectory and will more than likely heighten Western populations’ hostility toward Israel. The polling numbers bear this out.
The Jewish People Policy Institute found that only 28% of strong liberal Jews support the war while 62% oppose it. Support climbs to 100% among strong conservative Jews. The partisan split is even more dramatic. Trump voters among American Jews back the war at 99%, while Harris voters divide 47% to 42%.
The picture among Americans generally looks very different. Pew Research found that 59% of Americans said the United States made the wrong decision in using military force and 61% disapprove of Trump’s handling of the conflict. An AP-NORC poll found that 59% of Americans believe U.S. military action has gone “too far,” while a Quinnipiac survey reported 74% oppose sending U.S. ground troops into Iran. The immediate unpopularity of the Iran war combined with Israel’s sullied image as a result of the Gaza genocide may explain why elements of American Jewry are embracing certain forms of controlled opposition to the Netanyahu regime, while stopping short of criticizing the entire Zionist project and its thoroughly Jewish nature.
It should be said that rational anti-Semitism is never about all Jews. Klein’s worry that “Jewish communities globally could be stained with guilt by association in the eyes of those who conflate the Israeli government with all Jews” should be seen as relying on the idea that anti-Semitism refers to complaints about “all Jews.” Most commonly complaints about Jews rely on understanding where the power of the Jewish community is directed, and in this case it’s obvious that the mainstream Jewish community in the U.S. and its powerful lobbying organizations (here and here) are entirely on board with the war. This is especially true in the Trump administration where the more conservative elements of the Jewish community, including Chabad Lubavitch, have increased their influence greatly.
It is simply that their vision [of conservative Jewish groups] for Jewish flourishing in America is radically at odds with the basic assumptions that have grounded American Jewish politics for much of the last century: chiefly, that Jewish interests are best served by the separation of religion and state; that American Jews are best protected through multiethnic, pluralistic coalitions rather than an alliance with the Christian majority; and that the invisibility of Jewish group interests is preferable to visible Jewish particularity.
Ezra Klein’s warnings about the centrality of Israel in the Iran war are a tacit admission that the Jewish establishment has lost its ability to operate from behind a veil. By leveraging control over U.S. administrations to initiate wars of choice, this power structure has forced a public reckoning that no amount of image-polishing can reverse. History has repeatedly shown that Jewish overreach eventually triggers an immune response from the host population.
We are currently in the midst of that reaction, and the path forward lies in the unapologetic identification and systematic dismantling of the Jewish influence networks that have compromised the highest levels of our government and financial institutions.
Press TV – May 30, 2026
An Iranian ballistic missile attack on a Kuwaiti air base has wounded several American military personnel and caused serious damage to two US MQ-9 Reaper drones, according to a new report.
The American news outlet Bloomberg, citing an informed source, said in a report published on Saturday that the attack on the Ali Al Salem Air Base resulted in minor injuries to approximately five individuals, including US service members and contractors.
It also caused significant damage to two MQ-9 Reaper drones, with one reportedly destroyed and another heavily damaged. Each drone is valued at around $30 million.
According to Bloomberg, Kuwaiti air defences intercepted an Iranian Fateh-110 missile before it reached its intended target. However, debris from the intercepted projectile fell onto the US-operated Ali Al Salem Air Base, causing the injuries and damage.
The latest development comes amid heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran.
On Thursday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) claimed that Iran had launched a missile toward Kuwait, describing the action as a “gross violation of the ceasefire.”
In a statement issued later in the day, Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said it had deliberately targeted the US base, noting that it had been used to launch an earlier American attack.
The IRGC went on to say that US forces had conducted a strike using aerial projectiles against a location near Bandar Abbas airport earlier that morning, describing its missile attack as a warning to the US.
It also vowed that any future acts of aggression would be met with a stronger response, stressing that responsibility for any escalation would rest with the party initiating hostile actions.
The US and Israel started an aggression against Iran on February 28, some eight months after they carried out unprovoked attacks on the country.
Iran began to swiftly retaliate against the strikes by launching a barrage of missiles and drone attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories as well as on US bases in regional countries.
On April 8, forty days into the war, a Pakistan-brokered temporary ceasefire between Iran and the US took effect.
Negotiations ensued in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, but stopped short of an agreement amid Washington’s maximalist demands and insistence on unreasonable positions.
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – May 29, 2026
By Dr Oroub El-Abed | MEMO | May 29, 2026
The War on Gaza continues and has not stopped. It is even expanding to wider geography of displacement and has been unfolding across the Eastern Mediterranean. The Zionists are empowered to widen their gradual restructuring of the land: depopulating borderlands, fragmenting societies, erasing cultural landscapes, and normalising permanent instability across the whole of Palestine, southern Lebanon, and southern Syria.
This week, the Israeli military ordered the immediate evacuation of the ancient Lebanese city of Tyre. Tyre A city that carries thousands of years of Mediterranean history, Phoenician heritage, trade, memory, and civilization was suddenly reduced to a military target. Residents were ordered to move north of the Zahrani River as Israeli bombardment intensified across southern Lebanon despite the language of a “ceasefire.” Entire communities were once again placed on the road during Eid, carrying children, blankets, medicine, and fragments of home while others elsewhere exchanged sweets and celebratory visits.
The symbolism of Tyre matters. Cities like Tyre are archives of human civilization. Their ports, neighbourhoods, cemeteries, mosques, churches, markets, and coastal life embody centuries of coexistence and cultural production. When such places are emptied, bombed, or transformed into militarized zones, the damage extends beyond physical destruction. A civilization itself becomes vulnerable to erasure.
The same logic that devastated Gaza is now visibly extending outward. In Gaza, entire archaeological sites were destroyed. Urban landscapes have been flattened under the justification of war. Universities, hospitals, archives, schools, libraries, bakeries, agricultural lands, and refugee camps have been systematically destroyed. The assault has targeted the infrastructure of Palestinian life itself, it has dismantled the social, cultural, and demographic foundations necessary for collective survival.
In the occupied West Bank, Palestinians continue to face settler violence, military raids, land confiscation, and forced displacement. Villages are emptied through intimidation, checkpoints fragment movement, and economic suffocation deepens dependency and precarity. Yet the expansionist vision articulated through biblical and historical claims is now stretching beyond Palestine.
Now southern Lebanon and southern Syria are being pulled into the same spatial planning.
Reports and online campaigns promoting land acquisition in areas near Daraa and southern Syria reveal a deeply alarming trend: the normalization of territorial expansion beyond internationally recognized borders. References to ancient “Davidic routes” or biblical entitlement are increasingly integrated into public discourse, settlement imaginaries, and strategic military narratives. The danger lies in transforming expansion into something culturally acceptable and politically negotiable.
This is occurring at the very moment Syrian refugees are being pressured to return “home” after years of displacement with many Global North countries issuing deportation regulation letters against them. Governments and international actors increasingly speak of refugee return as though Syria has become stable enough for repatriation. But what does “return” mean if homes are destroyed, lands fragmented, economies collapsed, and territories themselves vulnerable to new forms of Zionist militarization and external control? Refugees are told to go back while the geography they once belonged to is simultaneously being reconfigured.
The contradiction
The publicised initiatives presented under the language of “peace” and “reconstruction” now stand exposed as hollow political theater. Donor fatigue deepens. Funding commitments evaporate. Humanitarian systems are collapsing under both political paralysis, Israeli persist with insolence to continue the attacks against Palestinians and deliberate underfunding. Gaza’s Peace Board, created by Trump remains largely unfunded while displacement spreads regionally. The promise of rebuilding has become another mechanism for managing headlines with peace illusions rather than protecting people.
Meanwhile, millions remain displaced across the region. In Lebanon alone, over a million people have reportedly fled their homes since the escalation intensified. Entire southern communities now live between temporary shelters, schools, relatives’ apartments, or overcrowded Beirut neighbourhoods.
Families displaced during Eid navigate trauma while attempting to preserve dignity amid uncertainty. The contrast is painful: festive tables offering ka’ek and chocolate exist alongside families searching for mattresses, medication, and safety.
This widening geography of displacement reveals a deeper transformation underway in the Middle East. Forced migration is becoming a governing logic of regional order. Populations are uprooted, contained, redistributed, or rendered permanently precarious while territorial realities are reshaped through military violence and demographic engineering.
Tyre should alarm the world not only because people were forced to flee, but because an ancient city carrying human civilization is being drawn into a broader architecture of destruction. Southern Syria should alarm the world not only because of geopolitical tensions, but because territorial expansion is increasingly discussed openly while refugees themselves remain disposable. Gaza should alarm the world not only because of death tolls, but because the destruction of an entire society is unfolding in front of global institutions that are unable or unwilling to stop it.
What is happening today exceeds the boundaries of a single conflict. It is the expansion of a political project that treats land as empty once people are displaced from it, culture as expendable, and civilian existence as negotiable. The fear is that this geography of displacement may continue and widen far beyond Gaza, unless confronted with nationalist power and regional unity.
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200 Years of US Interventionism
By MANUEL R. GÓMEZ | CounterPunch | February 27, 2015
… As far back as 1809, Jefferson tried to purchase Cuba. In 1820 he went further; he told Secretary of War J.C. Calhoun that the U.S. “ought, at the first possible opportunity, to take Cuba.” As President, John Quincy Adams predicted that Cuba would fall “like a ripening plum into the lap of the union.” These are but two of many prominent examples of a widespread ambition to annex Cuba, or at least to control its destiny, from very early in U.S. history. After “the West,” Cuba figured as a prominent second place in U.S. expansionist aims from the beginning of the Republic. … Read full article
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