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Wednesday, March 18, 2026

03/18 Links Pt1: ‘Get Him Before God Does’; Iran Strikes Qatar's refinery, Prompting Doha to Expel Iranian Diplomats; Iranian missile struck WB town, killing 3 Palestinian women

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Stopping Tehran's Apocalyptic Goals Is Important
Two weeks after the start of the U.S.-Israeli offensive against Iran, naysayers about the wisdom of the operation remain pervasive and loud. Yet, Iran was steadily rebuilding its nuclear program with an imminent option to race to a bomb, expanding missile production, and continuing to orchestrate an "axis of resistance" dedicated to fomenting chaos and war.

That's more than enough to justify the risks that are an inevitable part of all wars. Even now it's obvious that continuing a policy of kicking the can down the road that Trump's predecessors chose would have been as colossal a mistake as even the costliest military blunder.

The first purpose of the campaign is the eradication of Iran's nuclear and ballistic-missile programs, in addition to its support and active participation in international terrorism. Washington and Jerusalem have also stated that they favor regime change in Iran. That's something Israel believes is absolutely necessary to achieve. The Trump administration would like it to happen, but could live without it, as long as the ayatollahs were stripped of their nukes and missiles, and had their terrorist option foreclosed.

While the success of the U.S.-Israeli offensive won't be able to be fully evaluated until after the conflict is over, it's clear that both militaries have systematically eliminated Iran's military capabilities, hunted down its missile-launchers, and done more damage to its nuclear program.

The fact that a country as large as Iran is not completely defeated in two weeks is not a reason to believe the war has so far been a failure. If the armed forces of the two allies are allowed to continue their military efforts, the already devastating results for Iran will likely become even more impressive. There is no reason to believe that the war is already a "quagmire."

The arguments that say the U.S. would have been better off delaying action or even appeasing Iran ring false. The policy of enriching and empowering Tehran that was the consequence of the 2015 nuclear deal led to a stronger and more aggressive Islamist regime. Letting Iran get a nuclear weapon became an increasingly likely scenario in the last year and would have done far more damage to U.S. interests than even a permanent hike in gas prices.

Letting a tyrannical regime ruled by religious fanatics bent on imposing their version of fanatical Islam on the Middle East and the rest of the world get a nuclear weapon would be a nightmare. And that would have been the inevitable result if the U.S. hadn't prepared to act at some point in the near future.
Seth Mandel: ‘Get Him Before God Does’
There is a line in an Israeli spy movie, Walk on Water, that sums up this idea quite nicely. As the Mossad director gives his employee an important assassination assignment, he says to the younger man: “Get him before God does.”

The assignment is to eliminate an old Nazi war criminal. But the aging German will die of old age sooner than later, so why go through all the trouble now? The answer is that Nazi war criminals should stop feeling hunted only when they shuffle off this mortal coil. Eliminating the Nazi official means delivering justice to his victims and to those who will never be his victims now. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

Israel does so much that benefits the rest of the world that sometimes people seem to forget that it is its own country with its own interests. Hence the increasing absurdity of the discourse around Israel’s objectively-successful military campaigns. Will killing Ali Larijani solve global warming? Will taking out Hassan Nasrallah end world poverty? Will any one action by the IDF end all wars forever? If not, the media doesn’t see a reason to do it.

But Israel is defending its citizens and dispensing justice, and that is reason enough. “Someone else will just replace Larijani” entirely misses the point. Because by this logic, putting a mob boss in prison will only cause someone else to take over the family, continuing a cycle of crime and retribution without eliminating the existence of organized crime itself.

As a matter of course, we punish criminals for the crimes they commit. Only when it comes to Israel do we suddenly agonize over the point of it all.

But Israel doesn’t agonize over the point of it all. Israel was reconstituted as a modern state during an era when Jews were being killed in the most horrible ways imaginable with no recourse. Those days are over.

Truth is, that section of the Times story about the history of Israel’s retaliatory missions is a fair guide to the near future as well. A lot of bad people and groups were involved in starting this war. The fact that Israel’s retaliatory campaign is so protracted should not be a criticism of Israel but a reminder of just how destructive and shattering October 7 was, and how widely the culpability for it is spread. The victims of that terrible day are no less deserving of justice just because there are so many of them.
Israel Is Hunting Down Iranian Regime Members in Their Hideouts
Ali Larijani, Iran's top security official, strolled confidently Friday through a rally of regime loyalists in central Tehran. Early Tuesday, Israel's intelligence services found Larijani with other officials at a hideout on the outskirts of Tehran and killed him with a missile strike.

The same night, Israel got a tip from ordinary Iranians that the leader of the Basij militia, Gholamreza Soleimani, was holed up with his deputies in a tent in a wooded area in Tehran. He, too, was struck and killed. The killings were made possible by a growing harvest of intelligence about possible targets.

With thousands of regime members killed, Iranians are reporting that a sense of disorder is starting to take hold. Security forces are under stress and on the run. Israel is chasing security forces from their headquarters to muster points, then on to hide-outs under bridges. The advanced technology deployed by Israel and the penetration of Iranian society by its agents are creating the greatest threat yet to the regime.

Israeli intelligence learned that Iran had a fallback plan for its internal security forces in the event their facilities were destroyed - mustering at local sports complexes. Israel watched the sites fill up and then hit them, killing hundreds of members of the security services and military, the vast majority at Azadi Stadium, a large venue for soccer games.

Israeli intelligence officials began placing calls to individual commanders, threatening them and their families by name if they didn't stand aside in the event of an uprising. In one call between a senior Iranian police commander and an agent of the Mossad, Israel's foreign-intelligence service, the agent said in Farsi, "I called to warn you in advance that you should stand with your people's side, and if you will not do that, your destiny will be as your leader." The commander responded, "Brother, I swear on the Quran, I'm not your enemy. I'm a dead man already. Just please come help us."

Israel's air force began operating fleets of loitering drones above Tehran and other areas. Their attacks were in many cases guided by tips sent by ordinary Iranians, Israeli security officials said. On Sunday night, Israeli forces conducted a targeted hunt for Basij checkpoints, hitting 11. Residents said many security officers are hiding in residential buildings. When they move in, the neighbors evacuate, fearing a strike.

Israel's security establishment believes Iran's crumbling economy and popular anger have put the regime on an irreversible path to collapse, whether it happens during the war or down the road.


Jeffrey Herf: A Paradoxical War
There is never a good time to go to war, and no one, no matter how confident they are of disaster or victory, knows how this one is going to end. But the degrading of Hezbollah and Hamas after 7 October and the fall of the Assad regime created an opportunity that Trump and Netanyahu both realised they had to act upon before it vanished. Israel has the world’s second-most capable air force and its government is deeply familiar with Iran. Given all of this, any American president would be derelict in not seizing the chance to do what his predecessors could not. Trump had at last connected the necessary means of military force to the goal of a nuclear-free Iran that the entire US Senate had long supported.

By uniting against Trump’s war, the Democratic Party and the liberal press have demonstrated an irrational faith in the power of diplomacy and inspections even when experience shows that these approaches stand no chance of success. Eloquent about the dangers and costs of war, the Democrats are unable to consider the foreseeable costs of inaction. Once an Iranian dictatorship driven by religious fanaticism actually acquires nuclear weapons, the logic of rationality that has allowed it to reach multiple accords of nuclear deterrence—however ineffective—with its bitter enemies over the past eight decades will no longer apply.

Like many people who long to see the end of the Islamic Republic, I would prefer that America were led by anyone but Trump during the Iranian regime’s present moment of acute vulnerability. But since we don’t live in that world, we have to make the best of this one. The paradox of this conflict is that a thoroughgoing authoritarian at home has been the man selected by circumstance to finally confront the theofascists of the Middle East. This profoundly flawed president has, in this one matter, at last taken the decision that has a chance to end the 47-year war against the liberal West begun by the religious and political reactionaries in Iran.
Britain’s Half-Measures on Iran
The government’s current position is that while existing procedures allow for the proscription of non-state or sub-state terrorist actors, designating the military arm of a sovereign state as a terrorist organisation would require additional legal scrutiny, and likely further legislation. This argument is based on a January 2023 report by Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. According to Hall, Parliament would need to amend the Terrorism Act 2000 to distinguish between terroristic and lawful state violence before an organisation such as the IRGC could be formally proscribed.

Yet more than three years have elapsed since Hall’s report and his recommendations have yet to be implemented. During a House of Commons debate on 3 March, the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was asked by her Labour colleague Mark Sewards whether, in light of Iran’s massacre of its own people and its indiscriminate attacks across the region, the government would move to proscribe the IRGC. Cooper’s reply was evasive: “We keep all proscription decisions under close review.”

Moreover, Hall’s objections had already been undermined when the Wagner Group was proscribed by Rishi Sunak’s government in September 2023. Wagner, a hybrid paramilitary-mercenary organisation with longstanding links to the Russian state, is precisely the sort of state-adjacent structure Hall claimed could not easily be captured under the Terrorism Act. Yet Parliament added Wagner to the list of proscribed organisations, making membership of or support for the group a criminal offence.

If the United Kingdom is ever going to proscribe the IRGC, now is the time to do it. As the Islamic Republic falls into disarray, British military personnel, including at an RAF base in Cyprus, have been targeted in Iranian strikes. The European Union has added the IRGC to its terror list. Australia has listed the IRGC as a state sponsor of terrorism.

In July 2025, a heavily redacted parliamentary report on Iranian state hostility revealed that the IRGC Intelligence Organisation (IRGC-IO)—the same group recently sanctioned by the US Treasury for managing Iran’s “national campaign of mass violence, arbitrary detentions, and intimidation”—maintains undeclared agent networks in the United Kingdom. MI5 Director-General Ken McCallum has warned that, since January 2022, at least twenty Iran-backed plots have posed potentially lethal threats to British citizens and residents. Meanwhile, the Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, an IRGC front located a few hundred yards away from a Jewish primary school, openly hosts Hezbollah-themed yard sales. The Ahlulbayt (Shi’a) Islamic Mission—whose senior figures have repeatedly been linked to Iran and which presents itself as a charity despite not being registered as one—nearly succeeded in operating a Khomeinist youth camp. Most recently, twenty-seven Ahlulbayt student societies across Britain issued statements mourning Ali Khamenei.

So long as the government refuses to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, the situation will only worsen. Solutions outside of full proscription will do little to prevent Iran from relocating thousands of its most dangerous underground assets within Britain’s borders, where it knows that they cannot be prosecuted for IRGC membership. Should that ever occur, the “safe, just, and tolerant society” Jack Straw once envisioned will have been sacrificed to jihadist thuggery on the altar of political expedience and legal technicality. If the Labour government truly values Britain’s security, it must avoid this.
U.S. and Israel Focused on Final Stage of Iran War
A senior U.S. source told Israel Hayom: "It is getting close. The stage at which we will be able to choose how to end the war, either through an agreement on our terms with whoever remains from the current regime, or through the complete removal of all its representatives, with others taking their place."

The source estimated that this was a matter of only a few weeks.

The U.S. and Israel are focused on two main goals expected to bring about the final stage: continuing to eliminate leaders and commanders, and the sustained degradation of Iran's launch capabilities. Alongside that, attacks on Basij personnel are continuing.

Israeli and U.S. sources say the flow of information coming from inside Iran is steadily increasing, including information used in the elimination of senior Iranian officials.

Regarding the Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. plan of action is supposed to reopen the maritime passage within days.

In Lebanon, calls on the government to implement its decisions against Hizbullah are coming from leaders of all communities: Christians, Sunni Muslims, the Shiite Amal movement and the Druze.
Iran's 'Doomsday Clock' Against Israel No Longer Ticking But Guess Who Is Waiting in the Wings
Erdogan, from his comments, seems to consider himself the rightful leader of the entire Muslim world. In the interim, he evidently sees himself as "the Middle East's next great power broker, claiming leadership while chaos reigns."

Now, just as Israel is overcoming its primary enemy, the Iranian regime, which seeks to wipe Israel off the map and then establish a Caliphate under Sharia law in the region -- along comes yet another Muslim extremist of a similar kind, Turkey's Erdogan.

In March 2025, Erdogan doubled down on his anti-Israel rhetoric: "[I]n Turkey's largest mosque, he reportedly told a crowd of worshippers: 'May Allah, for the sake of his name, Al-Qahhar'—the Vanquisher—'destroy and devastate Israel.'"

Turkey, it seems, will become Iran's successor in continuing venomous anti-Israel threats in the Muslim sphere, with "Death to Israel" voiced even in the Turkish parliament.

Perhaps only when Turkey's leader openly declares, "Death to America" will the US realize that the Islamist monster it has naively supported has simply been stringing the West along.


Yair Rosenberg: The Dangerous Logic of the Joe Kent Letter
Kent’s resignation letter reflects this worldview—and its fundamental flaws. In it, he blames Israel not just for somehow suborning Trump into war in Iran but also for being behind the Iraq War. The president, Kent writes, has fallen prey to “the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war.” The historical record, however, suggests the opposite. “The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy—Iran is the enemy,” Lawrence Wilkerson, the chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell and a vituperative Israel critic, told the anti-war reporter Gareth Porter in 2007. The Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal has recounted being told by then–Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2002 that Washington was set on fighting “the wrong war.” (Trump, meanwhile, initially supported the Iraq invasion.)

In his letter, Kent also blames Israel for the death of his first wife, a Navy cryptologist, writing that she was killed “in a war manufactured by Israel.” But Shannon Kent was not killed in Iran or Iraq. She was killed by the Islamic State in Syria during the Trump administration’s campaign against the group—which Kent praises elsewhere in the same letter.

None of these claims makes much sense from a logical or factual perspective. But they are perfectly coherent as part of the long tradition of conspiratorial anti-Semitism, which blames groups of Jews for being behind the world’s problems. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian forgery considered the most influential anti-Semitic work of all time, purports to record Jewish schemers plotting to profit by keeping the world in a state of perpetual war. The Hamas charter, which cites The Protocols, similarly blames Jews for the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, World War I, and World War II.

Like Kent’s letter, these works do not represent reality but rather an attempt to impose an ideology on reality. They pin crimes on a preconceived perpetrator. This fallacy is precisely the reason that movements—and countries—overtaken by anti-Semitism inevitably unravel. Societies that adopt conspiratorial explanations for political, social, and economic problems lose the ability to rationally redress them. “Why did the stock market crash?” is a good question. So is “Why did the U.S. invade Iraq?” But a person who blames a financial meltdown on the Jews or spends their time chasing phantom Israeli culprits instead of a war’s actual American instigators will never understand the calamities in question and will fail to prevent future ones.

Anti-Semitic explanations of events rob people of their agency and prevent them from acting effectively to improve their circumstances. Seen from this vantage point, Joe Kent is a cautionary tale. He advocated for and worked for a president who then launched a war that he ardently opposed, because he fundamentally misunderstood the world he lived in.
Michael Oren: A new war revives a hateful old lie
Israel and the Jews have been accused of dragging the U.S. into another endless and unwinnable war in the Middle East.

Ironically, these accusations are emerging at a moment of unprecedented U.S.-Israel strategic coordination. Far from manipulation, the partnership reflects shared threat assessments developed over multiple administrations.

With none of America's other allies willing to join the effort or even defend themselves against Iranian threats, and with NATO revealed as a toothless tiger, Israel is today America's only dependable military ally.

Trump and Netanyahu conceived and coordinated the Iran operation as partners addressing a common intolerable threat.

Six American presidents viewed Iran as a national threat. The one who finally decided to act did not
Jake Wallis Simons: Trump critics need a reality check. The stupendous battering of Iran is a good thing
Israelis understand what is at stake. Support for the campaign is high across their society, even as they huddle in bomb shelters amid the sound of explosions overhead. Gulf states whose defensive strategy once involved maintaining a degree of friendship with Iran are now urging the US to hold its nerve and finish the job. The Iranian people are desperate for the regime to be overthrown and cheer Israeli and American strikes as they rain down around them. But the West seems to know only the language of defeat.

One of the most contemptible claims is that fighting Iran will only make it more dangerous. As the American academic Vali Nasr remarked on X in the wake of the killing of regime mastermind Ali Larijani: “With every assassination, US and Israel are engineering greater radicalisation of Iran’s leadership… Makes it far more difficult for the US to disentangle itself from endless conflict in the region.” Forgive me, but the Iranian regime was pretty radical to begin with. This is the kind of thing we used to call appeasement.

In truth, although you’d never know it from much of the coverage, the American-Israeli alliance is subjecting Iran to a stupendous battering. Vast destruction has been visited upon their missile and drone programmes, as evidenced by the precipitous fall in their launch cadence, which has reduced by 90 per cent. The allies have been intensifying attacks on underground storage facilities, hitting them so hard that their entire munitions supply chain is being laid waste.

Iran’s coastal defences are gone. Its naval defences are gone. Allied pilots enjoy total freedom of the skies, having destroyed Iran’s air defences. Fuel depots have been hit. The Ayatollah himself has been killed, together with scores of other commanders. The regime’s apparatus of suppression, such as Basij checkpoints, is being degraded with great precision.

Nuclear facilities, such as the one at Natanz, have been targeted, with much more to come on that front; a cache of 440kg of enriched uranium remains at large in the country. Overseas, Iran’s proxies are no longer receiving coherent commands from above, so their attacks resemble the thrashing tentacles of an octopus that has been shot in the head.
Collapse of the Cranks By Abe Greenwald
Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.
Whether they’re kicked out or they decide to leave the Trump coalition, the paranoids of the right are in the minority. Polls show that Republicans, and specifically MAGA voters, overwhelmingly support the war in Iran and the U.S.-Israel alliance.

The anti-Semites who sought to dominate the right and steer American foreign policy are watching their dreams die. And those who either naively or cynically believed that the right could accommodate both Israel supporters and activists dedicated to sundering the U.S.-Israeli relationship are being proven wrong.

If, God willing, the war in Iran continues on its current trajectory and ends in American and Israeli victory, the anti-American Israel-haters will be cast deep into the wilderness. At which point, I have no doubt, they will overtly join the left.

Then there’s poor JD Vance. Nothing about the current state of play works in his favor. That he is the vice president in an administration carrying out the exact foreign policy he has denounced makes him look like a non-entity. He’s already considered a sell-out among the groypers he’s tried to reassure. And in the event of American victory, no one will forget where he stood at the start—and where Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stood all along. That’s what happens when you throw in your lot with conspiracy-theorizing podcasters instead of your country.

So the war is flushing the Jew-haters and anti-Americans out of MAGA. Ideally, liberals would purge the mirror-image maniacs of the left from their movement. They’ve chosen instead to elevate them. The United States can survive, miraculously, if one major political party welcomes America-haters and anti-Semites. But a United States dominated by two competing visions of destruction and revolution is national suicide. Donald Trump is now winning more than one war for the future of the United States.


Israel, U.S. destroyed Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities, IDF says
U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian production sites during the ongoing war have destroyed the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile production capabilities, the IDF told Jewish Insider on Wednesday.

”Right now, they are unable, during this war, to produce ballistic missiles … due to steps we and the Americans took,” IDF Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani, the IDF’s international spokesperson, said in response to a query from JI.

The elimination of production facilities and stores of material for manufacturing the missiles means that Iran has a finite number of ballistic missiles that they produce domestically. The Islamic Republic has been burning through its ballistic missile stockpile daily, shooting at Israel and others in the region.

Shoshani noted that ahead of the war, Iran engaged in the “hyper-production” of ballistic missiles, and suggested that the Islamic Republic could restart production after the war, as it did after last year’s 12-day June war.

”But right now, as they’re fighting and desperate, they are unable to produce more missiles,” he added.

The White House said in an X post on Saturday that “Iran’s ballistic missile capacity is functionally destroyed.”

Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI that stopping Iran’s ballistic missile production “is a major achievement for both Israel and the United States. It’s a both a sign of tremendous intelligence collection and the ability to act on that intelligence.”

“The regime now has roughly 500 to 1,000 ballistic missiles,” Schanzer added. “Every time they fire one, their arsenal thins out. This is good news for Israelis who are tired of running to shelter.”


IDF strikes Iranian assets in Caspian Sea for first time in war, hits 200 terror targets in one day
The IDF struck Iranian military targets in the Caspian Sea for the first time in three weeks of war, sources told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

No Israeli officials have confirmed the matter.

This comes after Israel Air Force fighter jets struck over 200 Iranian regime targets in western and central Iran over the past day, the IDF announced on Wednesday.

Targets included sites used by the Iranian regime to store and launch ballistic missiles and UAVs, as well as air defense systems, ballistic missile launchers, and weapon production sites.

According to the IDF, the aim of the strikes was to reduce the scope of fire toward the State of Israel and to expand the IAF's aerial superiority in Iran.

IDF targets IRGC headquarters in Tehran strikes
The IDF completed a round of strikes across Tehran on Tuesday, including against several command centers used by the regime's security forces, the military announced on Wednesday.

Among the sites targeted were the IRGC Security Unit's headquarters, a General Logistics and Support Department of Internal Security Forces maintenance center, and a ballistic missile array command center.

Several air defense systems were also destroyed, the IDF said, explaining that "the completed strikes are part of a phase aimed at further deepening the damage to the core systems and foundations of the Iranian terror regime."

Ali Larijani, Basij head Soleimani, killed by IDF
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Larijani was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike in Iran overnight on Tuesday, the IDF and Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed.

The IDF also confirmed it had assassinated Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Basij paramilitary militia, and his deputy, Seyyed Karishi.

The two were killed in a makeshift tent area, which had been set up to make it harder to follow them than if they had been based in their headquarters.
Israel says Iran’s intelligence minister Esmaeil Khatib killed in Tehran strike
The Israel Defense Forces killed Iran’s intelligence minister, Esmaeil Khatib, in an overnight airstrike on Tehran, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday, adding that “significant surprises” were expected later in the day.

Khatib was the third senior Iranian official slain within 24 hours.

“On this day, significant surprises are expected across all arenas that will escalate the war we are conducting against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Katz said during a security assessment, in remarks provided by his office.

“The intensity of the strikes in Iran is increasing. The Iranian intelligence minister Khatib was also eliminated overnight,” he said.

Hours later, Israel attacked Iran’s largest gas-processing facility, in the Bushehr Province.

Katz said that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “authorized the IDF to [eliminate] any senior Iranian figure… without the need for additional approval.”

Khatib, who had served as intelligence minister since 2021, was targeted by Israeli Air Force fighter jets in the capital, Tehran.

The military said the Intelligence Ministry is “the Iranian terrorist regime’s primary intelligence organization, which also played a key role in supporting the regime’s repression and terrorist activities.”


Foreign worker killed in central Israel by shrapnel from Iranian cluster missile
A man was killed by an apparent cluster bomb impact at Moshav Adanim in central Israel following Iran’s latest ballistic missile attack, first responders say.

Magen David Adom says it had treated the man, who it identified as a 30-year-old foreign worker, after he sustained critical injuries from shrapnel. His death was declared a short while later, medics say.

Several apparent cluster munition impacts were reported across central Israel.
Three Palestinian women killed in Iranian missile attack near Hebron, Palestinian Red Crescent says Three Palestinian women were killed in an Iranian missile attack in the West Bank late on Wednesday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, in the first deadly Iranian strike there, and the first to kill Palestinians, since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran.

The missiles struck a hair salon in the town of Beit Awwa, southwest of Hebron, the Palestinian Authority's official news agency WAFA reported. Thirteen were wounded, one of them seriously.

The Israeli military said it understood the strike was caused by a cluster munition, a warhead that splits into tiny bomblets that scatter into a disparate area.

Most Israelis have access to bomb shelters that protect them from cluster munitions and falling debris, but virtually no such shelters exist for Palestinians in the West Bank.

Iran Strikes Qatar's Ras Laffan Energy Hub, Prompting Doha to Expel Iranian Diplomats
A major escalation unfolded on Wednesday, as Iran struck key energy infrastructure in Qatar and launched missiles toward Saudi Arabia, triggering regional alarm and sharp diplomatic responses.

QatarEnergy reported “extensive damage” after Iranian missiles hit Ras Laffan Industrial City, a major energy hub. The strike caused large fires and widespread material damage to energy facilities, though emergency teams managed to contain the blaze and no casualties were reported among workers.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, announced it had intercepted and destroyed four ballistic missiles launched toward Riyadh on the same day, in addition to thwarting a drone attack targeting a gas facility in the country’s eastern region.

In a strong response, Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the missile strike, describing it as a dangerous escalation and a direct threat to national security and regional stability. Doha stated that despite its efforts to remain neutral and avoid involvement in the conflict, Iran had deliberately targeted neighboring countries, posing a threat to global peace.

Qatar formally summoned Iran’s embassy and delivered an official memorandum declaring the military and security attachés, along with all staff in those departments, persona non grata. Authorities gave them less than 24 hours to leave the country.

The ministry emphasized that this step came in response to repeated and violent missile attacks targeting Qatari facilities, which it described as a clear violation of national sovereignty.


IDF strikes Hezbollah financial, military sites; Lebanese authorities report 14 dead
Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon on Wednesday killed at least 14 people and wounded dozens, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, as the Israel Defense Forces said it struck Hezbollah targets in response to the Iran-backed terror group’s rocket barrage on northern Israel overnight.

The military also renewed its call for residents of Hezbollah’s southern Lebanon heartland to flee northward, and said it would bomb crossings used by Hezbollah to move troops and equipment south over the Litani River, which runs some 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of the Israeli border.

Israel has escalated airstrikes and pushed troops farther into Lebanon after Hezbollah earlier this month started launching attacks on Israel for the first time since the November 2024 Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire agreement, which ended over a year of conflict.

Hezbollah has said the strikes were in response to both Israel’s continued presence and strikes in Lebanon since the agreement, and the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at the start of the US-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran on February 28.

Israeli strikes on central Beirut’s Basta and Zuqaq al-Blat neighborhoods on Wednesday morning killed at least 12 people and wounded 41, said Lebanon’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

“It was at 4 a.m., we were asleep,” said Sara Saleh, a 29-year-old woman displaced from Beirut’s southern district, a densely populated Hezbollah stronghold.

“We fled in our pyjamas,” she told AFP, after she and her family fled a school they were sheltering in nearby.


Ben Shapiro: Iran's Regime Is Collapsing Faster Than You Think
The US and Israel keep on killing Iran’s leadership class; the anti-American class keeps pushing lies about supposed American failure in Iran; and we examine whether our allies are really true allies.


Ask Haviv Anything: Episode 99: Are we winning?
The rules of engagement just shattered. From the death of Ali Khamenei to the elimination of wartime mastermind Ali Larijani, Iran’s leadership hasn't just been eroded—it’s been erased. As the regime retreats into a fractured "mosaic" of local commanders and a collapsing barter economy, the US-Israeli coalition is pivoting to a final, surgical strike on the regime’s last lifeline: its internal energy grid. Can a regime built on the theology of "resistance" survive when it can no longer keep the lights on? We break down the apparent strategic shift from a war of missiles to a war of endurance.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the War with Iran
02:13 The Shifting Battlefield Dynamics
11:08 Understanding the Mukkawamah Strategy
15:40 Iran's Vulnerabilities and Strategic Miscalculations
23:30 The Role of the Iranian People in the Conflict
33:23 The Current State of the Regime and Future Prospects


The Brink: MI6 Spymaster Reveals The Shadow War in Iran
In this episode of The Brink, we are joined by Richard Dearlove, former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, for a wide-ranging conversation about intelligence, geopolitics, and the mounting confrontation between the West and the Iranian regime.

Sir Richard draws on decades of experience at the heart of Britain’s intelligence community to explain how the current crisis with Iran should be understood. We discuss the strategic calculations behind Western and Israeli actions, how intelligence agencies assess regime stability, and why the Islamic Republic remains such a persistent threat to regional and global security.

The conversation also explores the role of intelligence in modern conflict, from covert operations and alliance cooperation to the limits of diplomacy when dealing with ideological regimes. Sir Richard reflects on how Western intelligence services interpret signals from Tehran, the risks of escalation in the Middle East, and what the conflict could mean for the wider balance of power.

Finally, we look at the long-term future of the Iranian regime and whether internal pressure, economic strain, and external confrontation could ultimately lead to its collapse.

This is a rare and revealing conversation with one of Britain’s most experienced intelligence figures about espionage, statecraft, and the high-stakes struggle now unfolding in the Middle East.




Visegrad24: Why Is Iran Bombing Muslim Countries? | Imam of Peace
Stefan Tompson sits down with the world famous "Imam of Peace" to discuss the US-Iran War, the dangers of the shadowy and powerful Muslim Brothehood and Islamists in general, as well as how to counter them in the West.

00:00 - Trailer
01:13 - Intro - Meet the Imam of Peace
01:58 - Death Penalty for Islamists?
04:11 - Ayatollah Khamenei and the Muslim Brotherhood
06:26 - Diplomatic Relations with Tehran?
08:17 - Why Is Iran Bombing the Middle East?
09:51 - Why Gulf Countries Are Being Bombed?
11:19 - Wishes For Iran And The Iranian People
13:12 - Women Of Iran Need FREEDOM
13:43 - Political Islam Is DANGEROUS
14:27 - The UAE's Leadership Is Forward Thinking
16:02 - Qatar's Links To The Muslim Brotherhood
16:50 - Sheikh Zayed Is A VISIONARY
18:10 - Different Countries: Pivots vs Players




Commentary Podcast: Kentridiction
Our old friend Noah Rothman joins us today to discuss Joe Kent's resignation letter and reinvention as a Tuckerite - the strange new respect by anti-Trump pundits, the true purpose of the career Israel-bashers, and will others follow his lead? Plus, the latest developments on the Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz.




‘Should be defunded’: ABC and SBS under fire over coverage of US-Iran conflict
Sky News host Rowan Dean criticises the ABC’s disgraceful coverage of the US-Iran conflict, claiming both the ABC and the SBS should be defunded.

“We should be defunding the ABC and the SBS, not because they’re so chronically biased, but because they employ such stupid people,” Mr Dean told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

“Ignorance, and just kind of unaware of what’s happening in the world, or so morally bankrupt that they think that, you know, it’s quite alright to have a regime that goes around murdering women with snipers if they happen to show a bit of hair.”






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