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Friday, March 27, 2026

03/26 Links Pt1: Herzog warns Europe ‘you’re next,’ blasts UK's Kier Starmer over Iran terror response; Trump delays Iran energy sector strikes another 10 days

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: Bombs are the only form of diplomacy Iran understands
The truth is as tragic as it is disturbing: This is a zombie regime that can only be stopped by bombs. It doesn’t care for the welfare of its people and it doesn’t care for death. It cares only about its theology. To hear Keir Starmer and his ministers bleating on about how a “negotiated solution” was in the pipeline before Donald Trump went to war was to witness the final, preposterous gurgling of luxury pacifism. Very soon, Britain is going to be woken up good and hard. Alternatively, it will die in its sleep.

If Iran ever signs a meaningful deal that leads to regional and global stability, it will only be after its most fanatical and effective demagogues are dead; its armed forces, missile stockpiles and nuclear programme are destroyed; its ability to choke the Strait of Hormuz is eliminated; and its regime suffers the final humiliation. So much should be obvious: the West has been negotiating fruitlessly with this devious theocracy for decades. How long before we accept the conclusion?

It is high time we recognised that not all people are the same, not all cultures are like our own, and that the values of an open society are not universal. We hold precious things like democracy, freedom, tolerance and the rule of law because they are ours, which is to say, they were developed and defended by those who came before us and entrusted to the present generation. The Iranian regime is of a different, nihilistic tradition. They can no more abandon their mentality than we can abandon ours.

War is the worst thing mankind has invented. But we wage it out of necessity, not choice. For all Trump’s demonstrable failings and shortcomings, Britain’s fateful flaw has been exposed for the world to see: Our contemptible appetite for appeasement. How little we have learned since 1938!
Jared Kushner says Iran wasn’t serious about negotiations prior to war
Jared Kushner, an informal Middle East envoy to the White House, said Thursday that Iran had not been serious about reaching a nuclear deal with the United States before President Donald Trump, his father-in-law, chose to attack the country in a joint military operation with Israel.

“We basically saw that there was no seriousness, and that they were trying to play different games to just get beyond President Trump in order to preserve their capabilities and pathway to get to a nuclear weapon in a way that would have been very, very hard to be stopped in the future,” Kushner said at Saudi Arabia’s exclusive FII Priority summit, held in Miami this week.

Kushner, whom Trump tapped alongside Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to help lead talks with Iran amid the ongoing conflict, told the crowd of political and financial leaders gathered in South Florida that the Iranians’ public statements on the war should not be trusted.

“The one thing with the Iranians, and we’re seeing this even now, is you have to just ignore a lot of what they say publicly, because I think that their statements are usually more for their domestic audiences,” explained Kushner, who had met for indirect negotiations with the Iranians in Geneva two days before the war began in late February.

Likening Iran’s military tactics to a player losing at backgammon, Kushner said the Islamic Republic is now seeking “to create as much chaos as possible” across the region, as it has fired “indiscriminately” at nearby Gulf states and beyond. “That basically describes what they’ve been trying to do there.”

“President Trump’s focus is to try and get to a good outcome with them,” Kushner added. “He wants to just be in a position where they act like a normal country.”
Uganda is willing to fight alongside Israel, military chief says
Uganda’s military chief tweeted on Wednesday that his country is willing to go to war on Israel’s side.

“We want the war in the Middle East to end now. The world is tired of it. But any talk of destroying or defeating Israel will bring us into the war. On the side of Israel!” wrote Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the chief of the Uganda People’s Defence Force and the son of the country’s President Yoweri Museveni.

The tweet went viral, generating more than 1.3 million engagements on the social media platform as of Thursday morning.

Elaborating on his stance the following day, Kainerugaba tweeted: “We stand with Israel because we are Christians. Saved by the Holy Son of God ... Jesus Christ the only One who can forgive sins. The Bible says ‘Blessed are you Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is your shield and helper and your glorious sword.’ (Deuteronomy 33:29).”

In a separate tweet, he said, “Israel stood with us when we were nobodys in the 1980s and 1990s. Why wouldn’t we defend her now that our GDP is $100 billion? One of the largest in Africa.”

Last month, Kainerugaba revealed that his country was planning to erect a statue of IDF Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, the older brother of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was killed in action in Uganda during a counter-terrorism operation that rescued more than 100 hostages on July 4, 1976.

The statue is expected to be erected at Entebbe Airport, where Yonatan Netanyahu fell in battle, according to Kainerugaba.


Herzog warns Europe ‘you’re next,’ blasts UK's Kier Starmer over Iran terror response
President Isaac Herzog criticized Britain’s prime minister for what he described as a response to Iranian terror and said that while regime change in Tehran was not an official Israeli war aim, such a shift could help bring peace between Israelis and Iranians and transform the wider Middle East, in an interview with StandWithUs.

In the wide-ranging interview, conducted by StandWithUs Israel executive director Michael Dickson at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, Herzog returned repeatedly to two themes: Europe’s failure to grasp the scale of the Iranian threat, and the possibility that the current war could create conditions for historic political change in Iran.

The interview was based on questions submitted by social media followers around the world and covered the war effort, US-Israel ties, antisemitism, the hostages, and the future of the Abraham Accords.

Speaking about the war with Iran, Herzog said Israel was striking at what he called the regime’s two central tools of threat: its nuclear ambitions and long-range missile program. He said Israel was “absolutely winning the war” in that respect and argued that the fighting had already set Iran back by years.

Herzog added that a change inside Iran was a desirable outcome, though he stopped short of defining it as a formal objective.

Herzog also used the interview to deliver one of his sharpest public rebukes yet of European complacency. Referring to the reach of Iranian missiles, he said Israel was effectively defending Europe by confronting Tehran now. He pointed to an Iranian missile launch of 4,000 kilometers toward Diego Garcia and warned that such a range covered all of Europe, including Britain.


Trump’s moment of decision: force Iran’s surrender or squander a historic opening
The scale of this war’s achievements and the reach of its impact will be shaped by the arrangements forged at its conclusion. Even now, one thing can be said: Iran’s rush toward negotiations under fire – and after the elimination of its supreme leader and a large part of its leadership – may signal the beginning of a surrender.

“Accepting this decision is more bitter and lethal for me than drinking a cup of poison” – those were the words of Iran’s supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, in his famous address of July 20, 1988, in which he explained his acceptance of the ceasefire with Iraq and his retreat from the call to fight until victory. Eight years of bloody war were required to bring him to that point.

Experts argued at the time that this was the first instance in the history of modern revolutions in which a revolutionary leader had made such an extreme reversal on such a fundamental matter. The speech was considered a defining moment, precisely because of the sharp shift from the rhetoric of war-until-victory to painful compromise. The phrase “drinking a cup of poison” has since entered the lexicon of Iranian politics to describe situations in which a leader is compelled to make a pragmatic decision, contrary to his ideological convictions, in order to save the state or the regime.

According to reports on Al-Mayadeen (the Lebanese television channel affiliated with Hezbollah), the conditions Iran is placing on ending the war are sweeping. They include demands for guarantees against the resumption of hostilities, the closure of US military bases in the region, the payment of reparations to Iran, and a new order in the Strait of Hormuz that would expand Iran’s control over it. These can be assumed to be opening positions – negotiating tactics also designed to show regime supporters that it is not crawling to the table on its stomach.

In any case, Trump will have to accept that for as long as the Iranian regime exists – whoever its representatives may be – it will not change its aspirations and will not change its ways. On the contrary, the current war will provide it with a clear justification for the view that only a military nuclear capability can guarantee its survival. Accordingly, it will spare no effort to achieve precisely that.


Trump: Iranian negotiators ‘better get serious soon, before it is too late’
U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that Iranian negotiators were “begging” him for a ceasefire, even as they publicly said they were only reviewing Washington’s proposals.

“The Iranian negotiators are very different and ‘strange.’ They are ‘begging’ us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only ‘looking at our proposal,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social network.

“They better get serious soon, before it is too late, because once that happens, there is no turning back, and it won’t be pretty!” the president warned.

In a separate post on Thursday, Trump accused NATO member states of having done “absolutely nothing to help with the lunatic nation, now militarily decimated, of Iran.”

Washington “needs nothing from NATO, but ‘never forget’ this very important point in time!” he stated.

Most NATO members have turned down Trump’s request to help provide safe passage to ships through the Strait of Hormuz amid the Iranian blockade, he said last week, adding that the United States doesn’t need their help.


Trump delays Iran energy sector strikes another 10 days
President Donald Trump announced on Thursday afternoon that he would extend his pause on plans to strike Iran’s energy infrastructure, “per Iranian government request,” for an additional 10 days amid ongoing diplomatic negotiations to end the war.

Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform that he is “pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction by 10 Days to Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 P.M., Eastern Time.”

“Talks are ongoing and, despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the Fake News Media, and others, they are going very well,” Trump added.

The post comes a few hours after the president said that he wasn’t sure if he would follow through with his five-day delay, set to expire Friday, for strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure, which he had pushed back at the start of diplomatic negotiations on Monday.

“I don’t know yet,” Trump said when asked by reporters if the strikes would still take place Friday. “It’s a day. In Trump time, a day, you know what it is? That’s an eternity.”

Trump made the comments while speaking to reporters at the opening of his first Cabinet meeting since launching the war in Iran.

He alleged that Iranian leaders “are begging to make a deal” to end the war while criticizing press reports alleging that he was looking for a diplomatic off-ramp to the conflict, saying he has not decided whether he’ll agree to a diplomatic settlement if one were reached.


No, Trump's War in Iran Hasn't Been a Humiliating Defeat
Does the West's expert class really believe that the war against Iran is a disaster? It is far too soon to conclude how this war will end, regardless of what Iranian propagandists and other appeasers would have us believe. There are a number of principal errors clouding "expert" judgments in the West.

The first is the European establishment's inability to accept the scale of Iran's defeats since the Oct. 7, 2023, pogroms against Israel. The regime's decades-long plan for regional domination lies in tatters. It has wasted tens of billions of dollars, its proxies have been defanged, its economy plunged into depression, its mainland ravaged with 20,000 targets bombed, its navy sunk, its air defenses crippled, its missile stock and launchers decimated, its military-industrial complex blown up, and its nuclear capacity curtailed.

It is a strange kind of victory which has seen Iran fail to shoot down a single U.S. or Israeli manned plane or sink a single ship. The reality is that Iran has been downgraded from regional superpower to a pirate terror state, able only to shoot a few missiles and drones at civilian targets and to blackmail the shipping industry.

It proved remarkably easy to kill Ali Khamenei. Iran failed to overwhelm U.S. and Israeli defense systems. The stockpiles of allied interceptors have not run out. The Gulf states turned out to be more resilient than anticipated. U.S. combat losses have been smaller than expected.
Jonathan S. Tobin: The "Failed War" Narrative on Iran Is Political Spin
The debate currently taking place about the Iran war is not about the desirability of stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions, its ballistic-missile program, or ending its status as the world's leading state sponsor of terror. It's an assertion that the U.S.-Israel military campaign is failing in its goals. And that is palpably false.

No matter what follows, there is no question that the devastation of Iran's military capabilities, nuclear facilities, and missile program has, at the very least, set back the regime's ability to make mischief and inflict pain on the region for years to come. Should the campaign continue, that damage will be compounded. No longer is Iran the "strong horse" of the Middle East.

It's true that the conflict with Iran will never end until the Islamists are out of power. If Trump accepts a truce at some point with the theocrats still in control, Tehran will declare itself victorious. Yet what Trump and the Israelis have done is give the regime's opponents a better chance of success.

The U.S. and Israel have cut their oppressors down to size, killing their leaders and many of their operatives, and, perhaps most importantly, humiliating them with a resounding military defeat. Even if the Iran campaign ended immediately, the devastation that it wrought on the regime should still be counted as a success.

Israel has suffered through weeks of missile attacks, including some that have caused casualties and significant property damage. The U.S. has also suffered military casualties. But a dispassionate analysis would have to acknowledge that a dangerous regime that considers itself at war with the West, and allied to China and Russia, has been rendered far weaker. Whatever chance the Iranians had of racing to a nuclear weapon or achieving their hopes to dominate the Middle East is gone.

The war is not a personal project of Trump or Netanyahu. It is one started by the Islamists themselves. What Trump has done is to stop pretending that this existential struggle is something that can be solved by Western compromises. The effort to strip the mullahs of their military assets and make it much harder, if not impossible, to regain the strength they possessed before the current conflict was set in motion by the Oct. 7 atrocities.

At worst, the current conflict is a limited victory over a dangerous foe that will make the next round of conflict less dangerous for the West and Iran's Middle Eastern neighbors. At best, it has started a process that will eventually end with the collapse of an evil regime and the removal of one of the greatest threats to peace on the planet.


John Spencer: Build Alternative Pipelines to Make the Strait of Hormuz Irrelevant
For decades, the world has accepted a dangerous reality: One of its most important energy arteries runs through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow chokepoint repeatedly threatened by Iran. As long as the world depends on a narrow waterway, energy markets will remain vulnerable to coercion. The answer is to build infrastructure that makes the Strait of Hormuz strategically irrelevant.

Some bypass routes already exist. Saudi Arabia operates the East-West Pipeline, which carries oil from the kingdom's Gulf oil fields to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. The UAE built the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline from Abu Dhabi directly to the Gulf of Oman.

The Strait of Hormuz is a problem of infrastructure and strategy. The world has spent decades defending it. Now, the world needs to start investing in ways of bypassing it.

The writer is chair of urban warfare studies at West Point's Modern War Institute.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Arabs Did Not Help the Gulf States: What Do they See as the Central Source of Instability in the Middle East?
While the Gulf states find themselves directly in the line of fire, their frustration is not directed only at Tehran, but increasingly at fellow Arab states whose response has been muted, symbolic, or absent altogether. As far as the Gulf states are concerned, the Arab response is just background noise.

For decades, the Arab world has been organized around a single political narrative: Israel is the central threat to regional stability. This narrative has shaped diplomacy, media, education, and public discourse across the Arab world. It has served Arab regimes as a tool of legitimacy and deflection – a way to redirect internal frustrations toward an external enemy.

The Arabs' failure to help the Gulf states appears to stem from a desire to continue depicting Israel, and not Iran, as the central political issue.

Arab inaction is driven mainly by fear, weakness, and division, but it is reinforced by a lingering reluctance to fully abandon the old regional narrative centered on Israel.

If Arab states were to fully mobilize in defense of the Gulf against Iran – politically, militarily, and rhetorically – they would be forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: that the primary threat to Arab security no longer aligns with the anti-Israel narrative that has defined the region for generations.

For the people of the Gulf states, the conclusion is clear: When it matters most, Arab solidarity is unreliable, and, contrary to the political discourse in the Arab world, Israel is not the central threat to regional stability.
Iran's Strategic Doctrine of "Survive and Exhaust"
Iran's strategic doctrine is "survive and exhaust." The goal is not to defeat the U.S. or Israel in any conventional sense. It is to show them both that the cost of confronting Iran is militarily, economically, and politically unsustainable.

Tehran's job is to survive punishment long enough, and to inflict enough damage in return, that U.S. and Israeli will for continued conflict collapses.

This strategy is working for now. Iran is absorbing strikes and continuing to function.

Its military command has decentralized, and a new generation of commanders is even more willing than the old one to fight.

If the Islamic Republic survives this war, it will be led by younger, combat-hardened commanders who believe they defeated the U.S. and Israel, despite the enormous cost.

If these trends continue, the war could end with the Islamic Republic battered but intact.

Iran would emerge weakened in its conventional capabilities but stronger in the one currency that has always mattered most to Tehran: the demonstrated ability to defend its sovereignty against the most powerful militaries in the world.

Iran has had 35 years of preparation and a strategy calibrated to outlast rather than outgun.
Hizbullah's War for Survival
Hizbullah decided on March 2 to open a front against Israel, after refraining from doing so during the 15 months since the ceasefire with Israel in November 2024, despite knowing that this move would exact a heavy price.

Hizbullah sought to fulfill its commitment to Iran by drawing Israel into investing efforts on the Lebanese front, and out of concern that an Iranian defeat would lead to a halt or significant reduction in Iranian support. It also sought to improve its position in response to Israel's ongoing military operations against it and efforts by the Lebanese leadership to disarm it.

Hizbullah used its entire arsenal, launching dozens to hundreds of missiles and UAVs daily, mainly at northern Israeli communities but also reaching the outskirts of Haifa. A small number of ballistic missiles were also launched toward central Israel, with one even reaching the Israeli communities around Gaza.

From Israel's perspective, a war with Hizbullah alongside a war with Iran is not an optimal scenario. However, Hizbullah's entry into the conflict has worked in Israel's favor. Israel was prepared for another round in the north and appears to view the situation as an opportunity to act against Hizbullah. Its objective in Lebanon is to disarm the organization and eliminate the threat it poses. It appears that military operations against Hizbullah will continue even after the war with Iran ends.

The U.S., which shows only limited interest in the campaign against Hizbullah, has also granted it legitimacy. Accordingly, even if Hizbullah is not fully disarmed, the continuation of the campaign is expected to significantly degrade its capabilities, severely undermine its domestic standing, and reduce Iran's ability to support it.
IDF assassinated the commander of the Iranian Navy in an IRGC safe house | This is how the US responded
The assassination overnight between Wednesday and Thursday of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy commander Alireza Tangsiri took place in a safe house in the port city of Bandar Abbas, which had been turned into a headquarters following strikes on IRGC facilities in southern Iran. According to an Israeli military official, Military Intelligence identified the location of the apartment, which was ultimately struck from the air.

Tangsiri served in several key positions within the IRGC Navy, during which he oversaw the regime’s activities and coordinated efforts between the Iranian military forces in the Persian Gulf area. Over the years, Tangsiri was responsible for attacks on oil tankers and commercial vessels and personally threatened the freedom of navigation and trade in the Strait of Hormuz and the international maritime domain.

Alongside Tangsiri, the IDF eliminated the head of the IRGC Navy Intelligence Directorate, Behnam Rezaei, considered a key figure in maritime intelligence.

Rezaei served as the head of the IRGC Navy Intelligence Directorate for a number of years and constituted a central knowledge authority in maritime intelligence. As part of his role, Rezaei was responsible for intelligence collection on regional countries and led cooperation with various intelligence organizations.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) praised Israel for the assassination, saying it “makes the region safer.” According to the statement, “Tangsiri commanded for eight years, during which the IRGC harassed thousands of innocent mariners, attacked hundreds of vessels with drones and missiles, and killed countless civilians. He was designated a global terrorist by the U.S. Treasury in June 2019, along with additional sanctions imposed in 2024 related to drone development.”

CENTCOM added that, since the start of the war, 92% of Iran’s naval vessels have been destroyed, leaving the IRGC having “completely lost its ability to project power in the Middle East or globally.”

“With the loss of their long-serving leader, the IRGC is in irreversible decline. U.S. military strikes will continue, and we call on every IRGC servicemember to immediately abandon their post and return home to avoid unnecessary injury or death.” according to CENTCOM.


Zamir said to warn cabinet that IDF will ‘collapse in on itself’ amid manpower shortage
Military Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir reportedly warned the “IDF is going to collapse in on itself” during a security cabinet meeting this week, as the army deals with mounting operational demands and a growing manpower shortage.

“I am raising 10 red flags in front of you,” Zamir told ministers, according a Channel 13 news report on Thursday.

“Right now, the IDF needs a conscription law, a reserve duty law, and a law to extend mandatory service,” he was quoted as saying. “Before long, the IDF will not be ready for its routine missions and the reserve system will not last.”

The reported comments sparked criticism from opposition figures, who said the government was not attending to the country’s security and called for more efforts to draft ultra-Orthodox men. A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, conversely, attributed the blame to legal holdups in the passage of its legislation.

Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, who was also at the cabinet the meeting, said the government’s policies in the West Bank are placing a growing strain on the IDF’s already stretched manpower, Channel 12 reported. Bluth reportedly told ministers that over the past year, they approved the establishment of numerous settlements in the Jordan Valley and across the West Bank — developments that require increased security coverage.

“This is your policy,” Bluth reportedly said, “but it requires security and a full protection package, because the reality on the ground has completely changed — and that requires manpower.”
Israeli soldier killed, 4 wounded in southern Lebanon by Hezbollah anti-tank missile
An Israeli soldier was killed and four others were wounded in a Hezbollah anti-tank missile attack in southern Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces announced Thursday evening, the military’s second fatality of the day.

The slain soldier was named as Sgt. Aviaad Elchanan Volansky, 21, of the 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion, from Jerusalem. He is the fourth soldier to be killed in the conflict with Hezbollah that began on March 2, when the Lebanese terror group began firing rockets and drones at Israel amid the US-Israeli war with its sponsor, Iran.

Earlier in the day, the military said an IDF soldier was killed overnight during a firefight with Hezbollah operatives in southern Lebanon.

Throughout Thursday, Hezbollah fire continued to hit Israel, with the terror group launching more than 100 rockets and killing a man and seriously wounding another in the northern city of Nahariya.

Sirens sounded in the port city of Haifa later Thursday night.

Israel has responded to the attacks with heavy airstrikes on Hezbollah targets and by deepening its presence on the ground in Lebanon. Lebanese state media said Israeli strikes killed at least five people on Thursday, two of them in a raid on a building in the Nabatiyeh area in the south.

IDF says tank intercepted one missile before second hit it
Volansky, the second soldier killed by Hezbollah on Thursday, is the son of Defense Establishment Comptroller Brig. Gen. (res.) Yair Volansky, who previously commanded the 401st Armored Brigade.

According to an initial IDF probe, Hezbollah operatives launched two anti-tank missiles from an area north of the Litani River in the eastern sector of southern Lebanon, targeting an Israeli Merkava tank.

The first missile was intercepted by the Merkava’s TROPHY active protection system, while the second struck the tank, killing Volansky and wounding other crewmembers, according to the probe.

The IDF said two officers and two soldiers of the 77th Battalion were lightly wounded in the incident.


Father-of-four killed, another man seriously hurt in Hezbollah rocket attack on Nahariya
Uri Peretz, 43, was killed, and a man in his 50s was seriously wounded in a Hezbollah rocket strike on the city of Nahariya on Thursday, rescue services said.

Nahariya city council said local resident Peretz is survived by his parents, wife and four children.

According to police, Peretz was riding his bicycle at the time of the siren, and tried to enter a nearby shelter but did not make it in time. The rocket smashed into a parking lot outside the residential building where he and the man seriously injured were seeking shelter.

Both suffered severe shrapnel injuries, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said. Medics declared the death of the younger man at the scene.

Another 13 people were listed in good condition after also being hit by shrapnel or the blast, MDA said, adding that it also treated 11 people for acute anxiety.

All 25 were taken to a hospital.

“I’d never experienced an impact so close. The explosion was the craziest I’ve ever heard in my life,” Noa Avraham, a local mother of three, told the Ynet news site. Israeli rescue forces clean blood at the scene of a Hezbollah rocket strike in Nahariya, March 26, 2026. (David Cohen/Flash90)

“The street filled up with onlookers, glass shards were everywhere and people were crying, mothers holding their kids with blankets over them coming out of apartment blocks,” she said of the aftermath.

The shaken resident described a “feeling of fear, a feeling of distress, a feeling that the north is abandoned, invisible.”

Separately, two people were lightly injured in the Western Galilee by falling fragments following the interception of a Hezbollah drone, first responders said. Israeli security and rescue forces are seen at the scene where a rocket fired from Lebanon struck the northern city of Nahariya, March 26, 2026. (David Cohen/Flash90)

Hezbollah fired over 100 rockets at Israel on Thursday, in addition to dozens launched toward troops operating in southern Lebanon, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

During the pre-dawn hours, Hezbollah had also fired several missiles at central Israel, which the IDF said were intercepted.


Iranian missile debris kills two in Abu Dhabi
Debris from an intercepted Iranian missile killed two people in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday, bringing the death toll from Iranian attacks outside Israel to at least 66.

The incident in Abu Dhabi, which the Abu Dhabi Media Office said followed a successful interception, was one of thousands of attacks by Iran on 11 or 12 of its neighbors in an apparent effort to create international pressure on the U.S. and Israel to end their joint military operation, which they launched on Feb. 28 against Iran’s regime.

On Wednesday evening, Iranian drones penetrated the airspace of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the defense ministries of those countries said. Air defense intercepted and shot down the drones in both countries, they said.

Iran has fired at least 410 missiles at Israel and 550 drones or UAVs, according to Tel Aviv University’s Institute of National Security Studies. It has fired about 370 missiles and 1,800 drones at the UAE and 260 missiles and 570 drones at Kuwait, according to the INSS.

In Israel, Iranian projectiles have killed 19 people, including four Palestinian women near Hebron, according to INSS. More than 5,000 others have been wounded.

The Israel Defense Forces and other branches of the security establishment have focused on neutralizing Iran’s ability to fire missiles at Israel, as well as, along with the U.S., striking Iranian military infrastructure, including its nuclear facilities, the IDF has said. In parallel, the IDF has continued to target Iranian officials and top officers. On Thursday, Israeli officials said the IDF killed the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Navy, Alireza Tangsiri, in Bandar Abbas.

Tangrisi was in charge of enforcing Iran’s decision to block maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a bottleneck along a major shipping route for oil and LNG going from the Persian Gulf to China, India, other Asian markets and beyond.

U.S. efforts, including recent strikes on underground facilities used to store anti-ship missiles and mobile launchers, are now focused on securing the Strait of Hormuz, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a media briefing on Wednesday. “For all of these reasons, we are very close to meeting the core objectives of ‘Operation Epic Fury’ and this military mission continues unabated,” she said.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his envoys were negotiating with Iran on ending the hostilities, though Iranian officials denied this. Trump said the denial was the result of fear on the part of the Iranians to reveal a perceived sign of weakness.


Debunking ‘Genocide’: The Reality of Israel’s War Strategy
I sat down with urban warfare expert John Spencer to challenge the biggest claim dominating headlines: genocide. We break down the laws of war, what’s actually happening in Gaza, and why—according to one of the world’s leading experts—this war looks very different from what you’re being told.






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