English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For June 27/2025
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 16/25-28/:‘I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures, but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day you will ask in my name. I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father.’

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 26-27/2025
Walid Jumblatt Insults the Intelligence of the Lebanese People/Elias Bejjani/June 26/2025
Saint Dominic Founding the Dominican Order & Patron of Astronomers/Data collected and prepared by Elias Bejjani/June 26/2025
The Mullahs Go Hollywood: Iran’s Theatrical Missile Show at Al-Udeid/Elias Bejjani/June 23/2025
The "Sick Arab Mind" Behind the Contradictory Arab Stance on the Iranian Mullahs' Regime/Dr. Kamal Yaziji/Facebook/June 26/2025
Israeli strikes kill 2 in south Lebanon
Musk calls Lebanese president as Starlink seeks license
Israeli strike targets Shaqra as lasting peace proves elusive
Hezbollah's Raad says Iran 'regional deterrent force, like it or not'
Electoral amendments: The battle for expatriate voting rights in Lebanon
US letter to Lebanon: Pushing Lebanon toward Hezbollah disarmament
Suspect in Damascus church bombing? Lebanon arrest raises ISIS concerns — here’s what we know
Jumblatt Urges Disarmament Under State Authority
Lebanese Army Targets Smugglers’ Vehicle Loaded with Weapons in Hermel
Teachers’ Syndicate Condemns Arbitrary Practices, Demands Salary Increase
ExplainerIsrael Cracks Down on Hezbollah’s Financial Hubs/Natasha Metni Torbey/This is Beirut
Tom Barrack’s Doctrine and Lebanon’s Political Hustlers/Makram Rabah/Now Lebanon/June 26/2025

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 26-27/2025
No known intelligence that Iran moved uranium, US defense chief says
Battered Iran faces uncertain future after grinding war with Israel
No known intelligence that Iran moved uranium, US defense chief says
Guardian Council in Iran approves law to end cooperation with nuclear watchdog
Trump says US and Iran officials to meet next week as ceasefire holds
WHO delivers its first medical aid to Gaza since March 2
How Israel used Iran's massive attacks to enhance its top ballistic missile shield
Netanyahu sees chance to 'enlarge peace accords' after Iran-Israel war
Israel says Iran's Supreme Leader avoided assassination by going underground
State Department approves $30 million for funding of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
The top US general gave a play-by-play of the historic Patriot battle to shoot down Iranian missiles
US asked France to speak to Iran before Israel truce
White House wants deep cut in US funding for war crimes investigations, sources say
EU leaders meet to discuss Russia sanctions, US tariffs and Middle East conflicts
Israel eyes Syria amid US push to expand Abraham Accords, debate grows over Lebanon front

Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on June 26-27/2025
Towards Jihadist Pogroms in Europe?/Drieu Godefridi Gatestone Institute/June 26/2025
Islamic State Resurfaces in Damascus With Deadly Bombing/Ahmad Sharawi/FDD- Policy Brief/June 26/2025
After the Ceasefire, Will Iran Abandon its ‘Axis of Resistance’?/Seth J. Frantzman/National Security Journal/June 26/2025
The dagger in the Ayatollah’s cloak...President Trump decided to take it away from him/Clifford D. May/The Washington Times/June 26/2025
Trump's 'revenge tax' on other countries could hit U.S./CBC/June 26, 2025
The Perverse Roots of Muslim Hatred for Dogs/Raymond Ibrahim/The Stream/June 26/2025
AI disruption is real — and so are the opportunities/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/June 26, 2025
US is at war with Iran — and with itself/Nadim Shehadi/Arab News/June 26, 2025

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 26-27/2025
Walid Jumblatt Insults the Intelligence of the Lebanese People
Elias Bejjani/June 26/2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb2Jp_5F0vk
Mr. Walid Jumblatt remains a prisoner of the outdated, un-Lebanese, unpeaceful, and jihadist mentality of the so-called "National Movement"—with all the connotations these terms carry in the classical language of Sibawayh. He has always been, and continues to be, a captive of a culture rooted in hatred, contempt, intellectual manipulation, terrorism, invasions, arrogance, and a relentless drive to eliminate and displace Lebanese citizens whom he sees—through his twisted mindset—as a “worthless category.”
He willingly and submissively worked against Lebanon’s identity, state, traditions, coexistence, and diverse social fabric, all under the banner of the “anti-national movement.” That’s why he wrapped himself in the terrorist, jihadist Arafat-style keffiyeh—side by side with his ally Nabih Berri and a bitter faction of the left that despises even itself. He then shamefully and obediently aligned with the criminal Assad regime, which openly admitted to assassinating his father.
Now, he resurfaces in a childish, Hollywood-style media appearance to inform us that he has handed over his party’s  weapons to the state—implying that everyone else should do the same. But because he cannot remove the Palestinian keffiyeh or break free from the ideological chains of the anti-national movement, he justified the continued existence of Hezbollah’s weapons and linked the arms in the Palestinian camps to the so-called human rights of the Palestinians.
These are chameleon-like positions—ever-shifting in a hundred directions—understandable only through the lens of his mindset, his ideology, and the keffiyeh he still proudly wears. None of this is hidden from the Lebanese people. Trapped in his feudal and arrogant mentality, he began his speech with: “I agreed with Taymour,” as if the country belongs to him and his son, and they alone have the authority to decide the fate of Lebanon.
In conclusion, this is a man who has not only become addicted to—but has also inherited—a culture that belongs to the past, one that time has cast aside and rejected. Accordingly, Lebanon will never see real and positive change as long as he, Nabih Berri, the terrorist Hezbollah, and the majority of these so-called political parties—local and foreign proxies—along with their entrenched deep state, continue to control the levers of power.
As for the stupidity and intellectual barrenness — not to mention the lack of patriotism — of the cheerleading herd of politicians and media mouthpieces who praise the  Jumblat's so-called wisdom and vision… the less said, the better.

Saint Dominic Founding the Dominican Order & Patron of Astronomers
Data collected and prepared by Elias Bejjani/June 26/2025
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2025/06/144603/
Full Name: Dominic de Guzmán
Born: circa 1170, Caleruega, Castile (modern-day Spain)
Died: August 6, 1221, Bologna, Italy
Canonized: July 13, 1234, by Pope Gregory IX
Feast Day: August 8 (formerly August 4 in some calendars)
Patron of: Astronomers, the Dominican Republic, scientists, and educators
Early Life and Education
Saint Dominic was born into a noble family. His father, Félix de Guzmán, was a respected nobleman, and his mother, Blessed Joan of Aza, was renowned for her piety and charity. According to tradition, she had a prophetic dream before his birth of a dog leaping from her womb holding a torch in its mouth, which would “set the world on fire” — a symbol later interpreted as Dominic’s preaching mission.
Dominic received a classical education in Palencia, one of the oldest universities in Spain. He studied liberal arts and theology, and distinguished himself for both academic brilliance and deep spirituality. During a time of great famine in Spain, he sold his precious books to feed the poor, saying, “Would you have me study from these dead skins while people are dying of hunger?”
Priesthood and Early Ministry
In 1196, Dominic joined the cathedral chapter of Osma and was ordained a priest. He accompanied Bishop Diego de Acebo on diplomatic and missionary journeys, including a critical trip through southern France in 1206. There, they encountered the growing heretical movement of the Albigensians (also called Cathars), who rejected Catholic sacraments, the physical world, and Church authority.
Dominic was profoundly moved by the spiritual ignorance and error he saw. Rather than using force to convert heretics — as was becoming common — Dominic believed in conversion through persuasion, preaching, and personal example. He adopted a lifestyle of radical poverty and simplicity, mirroring the Apostles, to better reach the common people.
Founding the Dominican Order
In 1215, while in Toulouse, Dominic gathered a group of men committed to preaching and living simply in imitation of Christ. He traveled to Rome in 1216 to seek papal approval for his community. On December 22, 1216, Pope Honorius III officially approved the Order of Preachers (Ordo Praedicatorum), now commonly known as the Dominicans.
Key Features of the Dominican Order:
Purpose: Combat heresy through sound preaching and theology.
Lifestyle: A blend of monastic discipline, academic study, and active preaching.
Vows: Poverty, chastity, and obedience.
Motto: Veritas (Latin for “Truth”).
Dominic emphasized education. Dominicans were trained in philosophy and theology at major universities like Paris and Bologna. This academic focus enabled the order to counter heretical teachings intellectually and spiritually.
Mission and Legacy
Dominic spent the remainder of his life organizing the new order, founding convents and sending missionaries across Europe. He tirelessly preached in France, Spain, and Italy. He was known for:
His compassion and humility.
A deep devotion to prayer, often spending nights in contemplation.
Miracles, including healings and prophecies (documented by early hagiographers).
Spreading devotion to the Rosary — tradition holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary gave Dominic the Rosary as a spiritual weapon against heresy. While the historical roots are complex, this tradition had a lasting impact.
He died on August 6, 1221, in Bologna, Italy, worn out from travel and work, surrounded by his brothers. He was canonized only 13 years later, a testament to his sanctity and widespread veneration.
Influence and the Dominican Legacy
Saint Dominic’s foundation left a profound and lasting mark on the Church. Among the most notable Dominicans:
Saint Thomas Aquinas – a towering figure in Catholic theology.
Saint Catherine of Siena – mystic, reformer, and Doctor of the Church.
Bartolomé de las Casas – advocate for Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Dominican friars played crucial roles in:
The medieval university system
The Inquisition (though this came later and is a complex part of their history)
Global missionary work
The intellectual defense of the faith through the centuries
Today, Dominicans serve worldwide in preaching, education, and pastoral ministry.
Spiritual Legacy
Saint Dominic remains a model of:
Evangelical zeal
Intellectual integrity
Apostolic poverty
Devotion to truth and to Mary
His motto, “Speak only to God or about God,” reflects his singular focus on the salvation of souls and the glory of God.

The Mullahs Go Hollywood: Iran’s Theatrical Missile Show at Al-Udeid
Elias Bejjani/June 23/2025
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2025/06/144519/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bFJ_h-Ju3s&t=110s
In what can only be described as a cheap, theatrical, and utterly absurd Hollywood-style display, Iran today staged what it claimed was a "decisive response" to the destruction of its nuclear facilities—by launching a laughably choreographed missile attack on the U.S. Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. This childish performance could easily be titled: "We fired the missiles—but told everyone in advance so no one would get hurt!"
Yes, these are the same deceitful, arrogant Iranian mullahs who have been chanting “Death to the Great Satan” (America) and “Death to the Little Satan” (Israel) since 1979, while vowing to “erase Israel from the map in seven and a half minutes.” Yet they were the very ones who reportedly sent advance warnings to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and maybe even to Google Maps, politely informing them of the exact time and location of the "attack"—not so they could take cover, but so they could applaud.
President Donald Trump, watching the spectacle from the Situation Room as if it were a Disneyland parade, innocently commented: “I’d like to thank Iran for the early warning. No lives lost. No one injured. Let’s move on to peace!”
A Prearranged, Pathetic Response
From The New York Times to Reuters, and even President Macron, nearly all Western and Arab sources agreed: this was not a military retaliation, but a theatrical stunt. A premeditated performance aimed at helping Iran’s Supreme Leader and his bunker-dwelling clerical gang save face—while they preached “resistance” and “dignity” as they sought permission from their enemies to fire harmless "plastic fury."
We’ve seen this movie before—specifically in January 2020, after Qassem Soleimani’s assassination. Back then, Iran "retaliated" by lobbing unarmed missiles at Ain al-Assad base in Iraq, in a carefully scripted performance designed to avoid casualties—and, more importantly, not to wake the Revolutionary Guards from their naps.
Resistance? Or Just a Failing Film Studio?
Iran today is no longer a nation in the traditional sense. It has become a failed film studio. The mullahs of Tehran don’t fight real wars—they perform them. Their missiles fly like props in a sci-fi movie: either intercepted mid-air, explode silently, or land harmlessly. Meanwhile, Iranian state TV airs “glorious victory” footage set to triumphant military music and accompanied by sound effects seemingly borrowed from a 1980s B-movie.
The result?
Zero injuries.
Zero American retaliation.
Zero impact on U.S. military operations in the region.
The only message Tehran managed to send was this: “We lack courage, but we have cameras and sound effects.”
Defeat Since 1979—But Who’s Counting?
For those with short memories, this isn’t a one-time act. These same delusional rulers, obsessed with wiping Israel “off the map in 7.5 minutes,” have only succeeded in having their own leaders and scientists eliminated—one after another—by pinpoint Israeli strikes. Israel has entered and exited Syria at will, assassinated Iranian commanders and nuclear experts from Tehran to Damascus, to Baghdad, Beirut, and Yemen. The U.S. has repeatedly crippled Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
And Iran? It has responded with empty threats, followed by… “We gave you a heads-up so you could prepare.”
Iran: The Rogue State That Only Fights Its Own People
Let’s be blunt: The Islamic Republic doesn’t know how to fight its enemies, but it has mastered the art of brutalizing its own people. It leads the world in executions. It silences dissent. It lashes women, shuts down universities, bans music, restricts the internet, and would outlaw oxygen if it weren’t filtered through the Supreme Leader’s ideology.
These laughable “pre-informed retaliations” might fool only the hopelessly naïve. Iran is not a resistance. It is not a symbol of values or principles. It is not liberation. It is farce. A rogue regime with a talent for media terrorism and a track record of consistent failure in every real military encounter.
The Bottom Line: Theater of the Absurd
When a state becomes rogue, its leaders become actors, its missiles become props, and its retaliations become prepaid performances, every Iranian “response” to serious American or Israeli military actions becomes nothing more than a commercial for delusion, hallucination, and empty bluster.
And in the end, President Trump thanked Iran’s Hollywood mullahs for their theatrical coordination. Perhaps Qatar should too. Because at this point, let’s face it: Hollywood isn’t in California anymore… it’s in Tehran.

The "Sick Arab Mind" Behind the Contradictory Arab Stance on the Iranian Mullahs' Regime
Dr. Kamal Yaziji/Facebook/June 26/2025
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2025/06/144611/
The Arab mind, if one can even call it that, is sick, distorted, or twisted, and it doesn't adhere to the rules of logic. This explains the Arabs' backwardness in all fields. They complain about Iran all year long, and then when someone comes along who wants to relieve them of it, they get "stomach cramps," become extremely sensitive towards the person doing the job, question whether it aligns with their standards, and try to disavow and distance themselves from what's happening. They then start praying: "Oh God, strike down the oppressors with the oppressors!" And if the hypocrite is Lebanese, they say: "Let the pots break each other."You must make up your minds. If the Iranian regime isn't that bad and you can coexist with it—to the point where we feel you secretly sympathize with it when it's struck, and you don't want to believe its end is near—then congratulations to you.
But stop complaining about it throughout the year. If it is truly bad, trying to impose imperialist hegemony on the region, destabilizing it, boasting that it controls four Arab capitals, and directly threatening you, in addition to your religious sensitivity towards it...
If that's the case, then you have two options: either summon Saad ibn Abi Waqqas to undertake the mission—and there's nothing wrong with that—or shut up and stop being reserved about those who are doing the job for you and washing your hands of it.
In other words: stop the hypocrisy and let those who can do what you cannot do finish their work. You're not asked to openly support; just stop the hypocrisy.

Israeli strikes kill 2 in south Lebanon
AFP/June 26, 2025
BEIRUT: Israeli strikes in south Lebanon on Thursday killed two people, the Lebanese health ministry said, with the Israeli army saying its raids targeted Hezbollah operatives. In statements carried by the official National News Agency, Lebanon’s health ministry said a man wounded “in an Israeli enemy drone strike targeting his bulldozer” and another injured in a strike on a motorcycle both died in hospital. The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces “eliminated... a commander in Hezbollah’s Radwan Force” in the Baraasheet area, referring to the Iran-backed group’s elite unit, and an operative from “Hezbollah’s observation force” in Beit Lif. Israel has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon, particularly in the south, since a November 27 ceasefire meant to end over a year of hostilities that left Hezbollah severely weakened. Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah was to pull its fighters back north of the Litani river, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, leaving the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the area. Israel was required to fully withdraw its troops but has kept them in five locations in south Lebanon that it deems strategic. On Tuesday, the health ministry said three people were killed in an Israeli strike on a vehicle in south Lebanon’s Nabatiyeh district. The Israeli military said it killed the head of a currency exchange firm who worked with Hezbollah to transfer funds for the Iran-backed group’s “terrorist activities.”

Musk calls Lebanese president as Starlink seeks license
Reuters/June 26, 2025
BEIRUT: Billionaire businessman Elon Musk and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun spoke by phone to discuss making elements of Musk’s sprawling business empire available in Lebanon, a statement from Aoun’s office said on Thursday. The statement said Musk called Aoun and “expressed his interest in Lebanon and its telecommunications and Internet sectors.”Aoun invited Musk to visit Lebanon and said he was open to having Musk’s companies present in the country, which ranks among the countries with the lowest Internet speeds. The call came just weeks after Aoun and other top Lebanese officials met with Starlink’s Global Director of Licensing and Development, Sam Turner, in Beirut for talks on providing satellite Internet services in Lebanon. US ambassador Lisa Johnson was pictured attending those meetings. The negotiations have prompted some pushback in Lebanon. Internet access in the country has so far been operated exclusively by state-owned companies and their affiliates, who are lobbying the government not to license Starlink.
Starlink recently received licenses to operate in India and Lesotho.

Israeli strike targets Shaqra as lasting peace proves elusive
Agence France Presse/June 26, 2025
An Israeli strike targeted Thursday a bulldozer on the Baraasheet-Shaqra road after an Israeli infantry force entered the outskirts of Houla at dawn and detonated a house there. Israeli troops entered Lebanon on September 30, 2024, after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges launched by Hezbollah in support of Gaza. Under a November truce, which was based on a United Nations resolution that ended the 2006 war, only U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army may bear arms south of the Litani river, which runs around 30 kilometers from the Israeli border. Israel was supposed to withdraw all of its forces but has kept troops in five areas it deems strategic.It has continued to launch frequent strikes, mainly on what it says are suspected Hezbollah positions and operatives.
A strike on Tuesday killed three people, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
The Israeli military said it had killed a currency dealer responsible for transferring funds from Iran to Hezbollah. Lebanon saw Israeli ground invasions in 1978 and 1982 that prompted the creation of U.N. peacekeeping force UNIFIL, which remains in place to this day, and the formation of Hezbollah with Iran's support. The militant group went on to fight devastating wars with Israel in 2006 and 2024. After the 2006 ceasefire, rocket launches from Lebanon and Israeli raids and air strikes on Hezbollah targets occurred sporadically until an uptick in hostilities in 2023. Truces involving Israel have a history of unravelling with no long-term settlement with its foes. While the war with Iran was the first direct confrontation between the arch enemies, Israel's wars in Lebanon and Gaza saw it battle Tehran-backed militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas repeatedly over several decades.
Iran
Israel and Iran had fought a low-intensity shadow war for decades before they entered into direct hostilities on June 13. Prior to the war, Israel had acknowledged cyberattacks on Iran's nuclear program, while its intelligence services have been linked to assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.Iran has long been accused by Israel and Western governments of funding and transferring weapons to militant groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and the Palestinian territories -- its so-called "axis of resistance". After the ceasefire was announced on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to prevent Tehran ever rebuilding its nuclear facilities, raising the prospect of further conflict.
Syria
Israel's last formal ceasefire with Syria was the 1974 disengagement agreement which followed the previous year's Arab-Israeli war. As in Lebanon, a U.N. peacekeeping mission formed to monitor the agreement, UNDOF, remains in place today. After the overthrow of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December last year, Israel sent troops into the buffer zone set up by the agreement to separate Syrian and Israeli forces. It also carried out an intensive bombing campaign against Syrian military assets to prevent them falling into the hands of the new Islamist-led government, which it regards as jihadist. Iranian-backed groups, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, which had been severely weakened in its war with Israel, had helped keep Assad in power through more than 13 years of civil war and were repeatedly pounded by previous Israeli air strikes.
Gaza
Israel launched a withering offensive in Gaza after Hamas's attack of October 2023 left 1,219 people dead. Now in its 21st month, the conflict has killed 56,156 Palestinians. A first truce in November 2023 allowed the release of hostages seized during the Hamas attack, but did not achieve lasting peace. Another ceasefire did not come until January 2025, lasting six weeks despite occasional strikes, but collapsed in March when Israel resumed major operations. Previous wars in Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2023 ended with ceasefires, mostly brokered by Egypt. They were all repeatedly broken by Israeli strikes and incursions or by rocket fire from Palestinian factions inside Gaza.

Hezbollah's Raad says Iran 'regional deterrent force, like it or not'
Agence France Presse/June 26, 2025
Hundreds of people rallied outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut Wednesday, responding to a call from Hezbollah to celebrate "the culmination of the struggle and sacrifices" of the Iranian people "who triumphed over the Israeli-American aggression".
Ahmed Mohebbi, 42, who was among the crowd, said: "We are very happy about this victory that Iran achieved, despite the hits it took and attacks by America and Israel to prevent it from continuing its nuclear program. "Our steadfastness is a victory," he told AFP.
The head of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc Mohammad Raad said in a speech that Iran is today "a regional deterrent force, like it or not.""It proved this with its steadfastness" and by standing up against "a tyrannical enemy who sought to impose its hegemony on the whole region," he said. Iran has backed Hezbollah since the group's founding in the 1980s, providing it with financial and military support. The group was severely weakened in its latest confrontation with Israel, which killed most of its top leadership and destroyed much of its arsenal.

Electoral amendments: The battle for expatriate voting rights in Lebanon
LBCI/June 26, 2025
On May 9, 2025, MPs of the Lebanese Forces Party, Change and Opposition blocs, and the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) submitted an urgent draft law to amend the electoral law. The proposal sought to abolish the six seats reserved for expatriates, instead allowing them to vote in their place of registration, meaning each voter would cast a ballot for the seats allocated to their district. On June 23, a month and a half later, the Parliament's bureau convened to prepare the agenda for a legislative session scheduled for June 30. LBCI learned from parliamentary sources that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri refused to include the aforementioned draft law on the session's agenda during the meeting, despite persuasion attempts by MPs Hadi Aboul Hosn and Alain Aoun.  Berri insisted on referring it to the sub-committee studying electoral law amendments, justifying his decision by stating, "Just as I referred the draft law submitted by MP Samy Gemayel, which did not have urgency status, to the sub-committee, I am referring this proposal as well."Berri's decision sparked outrage among the proponents of the proposal, as they were already aware that the Amal-Hezbollah duo completely rejects the principle of expatriate voting, and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) also opposes abolishing the six seats reserved for expatriates. Given this precise alignment, a crucial question arises: If Speaker Berri maintains his stance and the draft law remains stalled in committees, will MPs from the Lebanese Forces, the Change bloc, the Socialist Party, Armenians, and their allies resort to obstructing Parliament and preventing its sessions from convening by breaking the quorum? For the Lebanese Forces, this option is on the table. However, for others, specifically the PSP MPs, disrupting the Parliament's quorum is not an option, as MP Bilal Abdallah told LBCI. He stated that historically, even in the most challenging circumstances, they have never disrupted the Parliament or any other constitutional institution. Similarly, Armenian MPs who signed the draft law also reject disrupting Parliament. Practically, the 68 MPs who support the draft law to abolish the six seats will not remain 68, or even 65, if the option of disrupting Parliament is tabled. Therefore, if they are faced with a choice between two options —either proceeding with the six seats as MP Gebran Bassil desires or completely abolishing expatriate voting as preferred by the duo —the answer is no answer until this moment.

US letter to Lebanon: Pushing Lebanon toward Hezbollah disarmament
LBCI/June 26, 2025
July is expected to be a pivotal month for the issue of Hezbollah's weapons in Lebanon.
The United States is exerting pressure through a letter delivered by U.S. presidential envoy Tom Barrack to President Joseph Aoun, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. The aim is for the Lebanese government to issue a statement confirming that the disarmament process has begun and that implementation will occur within months. Although Barrack's document did not specify a timeline for withdrawal, the Lebanese side was informed that the deadline was not open-ended. Otherwise, the U.S. might be compelled to establish a clear implementation schedule.
The American paper includes arrangements concerning the surrender of weapons by Lebanon and arrangements related to Israel's withdrawal from occupied hills, the release of prisoners, and the resolution of reservations at the Blue Line. Additionally, it offers incentives to the Lebanese government, particularly for reconstruction efforts. According to LBCI's sources, Barrack delved into the details of the disarmament process, especially with Army Commander General Rodolph Haykal. Barrack is expected to return to Beirut within days to receive the Lebanese response to the presented letter. Hezbollah received the letter through Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Three teams have been formed to study it and provide feedback in Baabda, Ain el-Tineh, and the Grand Serail. These teams are holding meetings, including an anticipated gathering on Friday, in an attempt to reach a unified response that will then be presented to the Cabinet. Subsequently, the American side will examine these responses to assess their seriousness and ensure they are not merely a delaying tactic. Key Lebanese observations emphasize the need to synchronize disarmament steps with Israeli actions. Sources monitoring the situation believe that Lebanon, through the American letter, has succeeded in solidifying its demands from Israel, which had tried to disregard them despite Lebanon having implemented many of its obligations, especially south of the Litani River. Observers have expressed hope that the matter of Hezbollah's arms will find a resolution, given what appears to be a separation between the group's trajectory and regional developments. Hezbollah withdrew from supporting the Gaza war, does not respond to Israeli attacks on Lebanon, and has not engaged in the war alongside Iran, leading to questions about the remaining role of its weapons.

Suspect in Damascus church bombing? Lebanon arrest raises ISIS concerns — here’s what we know
LBCI/June 26, 2025
Years after ISIS lost most of its territory in Syria, the group's extremist offshoots and ideology remain active—evident in the continued targeting of minorities in Syria and recent arrests in Lebanon. In the Lebanese town of Bouar, suspicions about a stranger prompted Lebanon's State Security office in Keserwan to detain him. What initially appeared to be a routine arrest soon revealed more troubling details. The detainee, identified as 31-year-old Hassan A., had illegally crossed into Lebanon from Syria via the northern border. During questioning, he claimed he had been promised a job. He admitted to paying a smuggler, identified as Syrian national Mostafa Q., $100 to facilitate his entry. He arrived in Lebanon just hours after the bombing of Saint Elias Church in Damascus. However, the contents of his phone—seized by State Security—told a deeper story. Investigators found images of him standing in front of an ISIS flag, holding a dagger, and wearing military fatigues with ISIS insignia. His phone also contained photos of him carrying a tactical vest and, more disturbingly, video footage of a beheading—evidence strongly suggesting an extremist ideology. Despite this, Hassan denied any affiliation with ISIS or Saraya Ansar al-Sunna, the group that claimed responsibility for the Damascus church bombing. He also denied participating in any executions. He told investigators the videos had been automatically downloaded to his phone through a WhatsApp group he had joined. Authorities have referred him to the Internal Security Forces' Information Branch for further investigation and technical analysis of his device. He only confirmed that he had received religious training from an extremist Syrian group and military training from groups of various Arab nationalities. So far, there is no conclusive evidence linking Hassan to the Damascus church attack. However, the timing of his arrival—just hours after the bombing—raises serious questions. Was it merely a coincidence, or was he fleeing the Syrian regime, which has pledged to eradicate ISIS—a commitment Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa reaffirmed during a recent meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump? The case has reignited concerns over whether Lebanon is becoming a new battleground for internal Syrian conflicts.

Jumblatt Urges Disarmament Under State Authority
This is Beirut/June 26, 2025
In a firm call for national sovereignty, former Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) leader Walid Jumblatt urged that all weapons in Lebanon be placed solely under the control of the state, stressing that the region is entering a “new page” in its history. Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Jumblatt called on all parties in Lebanon—both local and foreign—to hand over any weapons they possess to the Lebanese state, adding that the moment demands collective responsibility. He revealed that he had informed President Joseph Aoun of the presence of weapons in Mukhtara and requested that the competent security agencies address the matter. The weapons, he said, were fully handed over more than three weeks ago. Jumblatt explained that the arms, classified as light and medium, had been amassed following the violent events of May 7, 2008, during a period of tension between Hezbollah and the PSP. But beyond weapons, Jumblatt emphasized the importance of preserving collective memory. “The most useful weapon for future generations is the weapon of memory,” he said, urging the Lebanese to pass on the legacy of “heroism and resistance against Israel and its collaborators.”Touching on the latest regional conflict, Jumblatt acknowledged that the current round has seen Israel, backed by the United States, emerge victorious, noting, however, that “nothing lasts forever.”He also weighed in on the sensitive issue of the Shebaa Farms, stating unequivocally that they fall under United Nations Resolution 242 and constitute “Syrian territory occupied by Israel”—a position consistent with long-held Lebanese claims. In closing, Jumblatt offered a sobering message: only through the establishment of a strong, unified state can Lebanon navigate the uncertainties ahead.

Lebanese Army Targets Smugglers’ Vehicle Loaded with Weapons in Hermel
This is Beirut/June 26, 2025
A pickup truck, loaded with weapons and ammunition and belonging to smugglers, was destroyed on the outskirts of Hermel following an armed clash with the Lebanese Army, which aimed to prevent cross-border smuggling. According to preliminary reports, the Lebanese Army opened fire on the vehicle after the driver failed to stop at a military checkpoint in the Fisan area of northern Hermel. While attempting to flee, the truck crashed into an electricity pole and immediately caught fire. The driver reportedly escaped and remains at large. Sources confirmed that the truck was carrying weapons and ammunition.
Civil Defense teams were dispatched to the scene to extinguish the fire. The Lebanese Army has been expanding and reinforcing its presence across the Beqaa, Hermel, and along the Lebanese-Syrian border to maintain security and stability in the region amid the current situation.

Teachers’ Syndicate Condemns Arbitrary Practices, Demands Salary Increase
This is Beirut/June 26, 2025
The Executive Council of the Teachers’ Syndicate on Thursday called on private schools to implement salary increases of at least 100% in urban areas and 80% in rural and remote areas.This demand was part of a broader set of concerns raised during a council meeting convened to address the growing number of violations against teachers in private schools, particularly as the academic year draws to a close. The meeting, chaired by Syndicate President Nehme Mahfoud and attended by branch heads from various regions, highlighted that many teachers have not received their full salaries for the past six years, despite tuition fees having returned to their real value in US dollars. The council also reaffirmed its opposition to private school administrations imposing new employment contracts on tenured teachers, emphasizing that such contracts are automatically renewed by law. Teachers were strongly advised not to sign any unlawfully imposed agreements, with the Syndicate maintaining communication with the Union of Institutions to demand the withdrawal of such contracts. They were asked to consult their respective Syndicate branches before signing any resignation or contract to ensure their rights are protected. Additionally, the Syndicate urged them to report any arbitrary practices, such as being pressured to resign before July 5 or being dismissed with insufficient compensation paid solely in Lebanese pounds. Based on legal counsel, the Syndicate stated that compensation for arbitrary dismissal must be calculated and paid in both US dollars and Lebanese pounds, in accordance with the salary structure in place during the teacher's period of service. Any failure to comply constitutes a legal violation. The Syndicate also held school administrations responsible for the deterioration of educational relations and called on the Minister of Finance to release 650 billion Lebanese pounds to improve pensions for retired teachers.

ExplainerIsrael Cracks Down on Hezbollah’s Financial Hubs
Natasha Metni Torbey/This is Beirut
As Israeli airstrikes and drone attacks continue to pound South Lebanon, a strategic front is rapidly emerging. Israel is now openly targeting Hezbollah’s financial infrastructure, marking a shift from battlefield confrontation to economic warfare.
This week was a turning point. On Wednesday, the Israeli military released an unprecedented map exposing several Lebanese currency exchange offices accused of financing Hezbollah. The message could not be clearer: in Tel Aviv’s campaign against Iran’s regional proxies, no actor or asset is off limits.
Precision Warfare, Financial Targets
That same day, the Israeli army announced the killing of Haitham Abdallah Bakri, described as a “pillar of Hezbollah’s financial apparatus” and head of the al-Sadek exchange network. Based on military intelligence, the operation in South Lebanon was part of a broader effort to dismantle what Israel calls “the economic infrastructure of terrorism.”Alongside the announcement, a detailed map pinpointed currency exchange offices in Beirut, the Beqaa (notably Chtaura) and South Lebanon. These offices form a crucial financial corridor between Tehran and Hezbollah’s base in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Among the named entities now in Israel’s crosshairs: Maliha Exchange (run by Hussein Chahine), al-Insaf Exchange (Ali Chams), Hassan Ayache, Ramez Mecattaf and Yara Exchange (Mohammad Badr Barbir).
A Hit List in Disguise?
This map appears to be more than just a tool of psychological warfare; it may be an active kill list. Two recent assassinations suggest as much: Mohammad Srour, a currency trader shot dead in his Beit Mery villa in April 2024, and Haitham Bakri, eliminated by a precision missile strike this past Tuesday. Two high-profile targets. Two calculated operations. One shared role: moving money for Hezbollah.
Hezbollah’s Shadow Economy
For years, international sanctions, then Lebanon’s economic collapse in 2020, have forced Hezbollah to adapt its financial operations. Under a new government that has imposed strict border controls, these operations have increasingly shifted underground.
Today, Hezbollah’s funding flows through an opaque ecosystem of informal currency exchanges. These are often family-run, lightly regulated outfits capable of moving millions in near-total secrecy. According to US Treasury reports, Hezbollah’s financial lifelines rely on a complex web of anonymized bank accounts, shell companies and informal money transfer networks spanning Turkey, Iraq, the Gulf countries, and even Russia. At the heart of this system was Behnam Shahriari, the commander of Unit 190 of Iran’s Quds Force, recently killed in Iran. He was reportedly responsible for overseeing the laundering and transfer of hard currency into Hezbollah’s hands via Lebanese exchange offices. The battlefield has shifted. The war is no longer solely fought on South Lebanon’s ridges, but also in quiet exchange shops where bundles of US dollars change hands out of sight. A financial expert who studied Hezbollah’s illicit funding structure told This is Beirut: “Israel isn’t just bombing rocket sites or weapons depots anymore. It’s cutting off the blood supply that keeps Hezbollah fighting. Every rocket fired, every fighter paid, begins with a bank transfer.”He pointed to the recent killings of Mohammad Srour and Haitham Bakri as unmistakable signals: “The speed and precision of their eliminations leave little doubt: a financial kill list exists and is being methodically executed.”For the first time, Israel’s war isn’t just targeting commanders or engineers; it’s going after Hezbollah’s financial brain – its war accountants.
Hawala, the Hidden Backbone of Hezbollah’s Financial Network
Behind the currency exchange counters now targeted by Israeli drones lies a far more extensive and elusive system, one far harder to dismantle than precision strikes suggest. This is hawala, an age-old informal money transfer network that has operated across the Middle East for centuries.
Unlike traditional banking, hawala operates on personal trust between brokers and leaves virtually no electronic trace. Its resilience against sanctions and surveillance makes it an ideal conduit for discreet financial flows.
Declassified US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) documents reveal Hezbollah’s use of hawala through tightly knit, community-based networks that covertly transfer tens of millions of dollars while avoiding banking sanctions.
Investigations by the US Treasury, the United Nations and financial crime watchdogs identify hawala as a cornerstone of Hezbollah’s global funding apparatus. The Iran-backed group systematically channels money across a vast geography – Iran, Iraq, Syria, the Gulf, European, Asian and African countries, and Lebanon – through a web of partner offices, often family-run and concealed behind legitimate businesses.
Reports from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) reveal that some currency exchange offices in Beirut, Zahle and Nabatieh act as hawala clearinghouses. They balance inter-broker debts through trade payments, sham imports or fictitious loans.
An expert told This is Beirut: “The process is simple. A sender gives cash to a local ‘hawaladar’ (broker), who relays the payment instruction, via phone or encrypted message, to a counterpart in another country, whether Turkey, the UAE, Syria, Iraq, Iran, or even Germany, Belgium or Côte d’Ivoire. The recipient receives the equivalent amount, often without any formal record. The brokers settle their debts later through trade offsets or concealed transfers.”In Lebanon, once funds arrive, they are funneled through al-Qard al-Hassan, Hezbollah’s quasi-financial institution. Disguised as an Islamic charity, it collects hawala-sourced funds from the Lebanese diaspora and redistributes them as loans, salaries or investments. Though these networks appear civilian, Israel now regards them as strategically vital, as critical as missile stockpiles, and is determined to strike at their core.
CTEX and the Expansive Reach of Hezbollah’s Hawala Network
At the forefront of Israel’s financial offensive is CTEX Exchange Company, one of Lebanon’s leading money transfer firms. In February 2023, CTEX was sanctioned by the US Treasury’s OFAC for funneling millions of dollars into Lebanon to finance Hezbollah through covert channels. OFAC investigations found that CTEX acted as a clandestine conduit for Iran’s Quds Force, working closely with Hezbollah’s financial operatives. The company played a central role in settling debts among “hawaladars” operating in Damascus, Beirut, Tehran and Baghdad, facilitating money laundering via shell companies, sham contracts and inflated invoices. In April 2023, US security sources identified 52 shell companies linked to Nazem Said Ahmad, a Beirut-based diamond dealer. These entities operated across South Africa, Angola, Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and laundered as much as $440 million between 2020 and 2022. Funds flowing through these channels were routed to al-Qard al-Hassan or to individuals close to Hezbollah’s military leadership.CTEX’s name also appears in confidential European investigations probing transfers from the Shia diaspora in Belgium, Germany and Sweden. These networks use CTEX-affiliated agents to receive funds, convert them into cash, and channel them into Hezbollah’s internal financial system. By targeting exchange houses like CTEX, Israel is reshaping the contours of this covert conflict, and shifting the battlefield from weapons caches to financial arteries.

Tom Barrack’s Doctrine and Lebanon’s Political Hustlers
Makram Rabah/Now Lebanon/June 26/2025
Last week, U.S. Presidential Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack made a brief yet noteworthy stop in Lebanon, meeting with the country’s top officials. His visit came as part of an ongoing international effort to remind Lebanon’s leadership of its long-overdue commitments—chief among them, disarming Hezbollah and initiating long-promised political and economic reforms, in that precise order.
Lebanese officials welcomed Barrack with a warmth that stood in sharp contrast to their reception of his predecessor, Morgan Ortagus. While Ortagus was known for her bluntness and refusal to sugarcoat criticism, Barrack arrived cloaked in diplomatic finesse. Yet this contrast is deceptive: Barrack may prove even more uncompromising than Ortagus. His mission is not just to talk reforms but to ensure the dismantling of what remains of Iran’s paramilitary arm in Lebanon.
A man of Lebanese (Zahlé) origin, Barrack fancies himself the architect of an “Abrahamic Peace” between Syria and Lebanon on one side, and Israel on the other. It’s a vision he pledged personally to his close friend, former President Donald Trump: that both Syria and Lebanon will eventually join the Abraham Accords. It’s a reality that Lebanon’s top officials—President Joseph Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam—seem determined to ignore, choosing instead to dwell on Israel’s occupation of the five border hills while sidestepping any concrete roadmap for disarmament south of the Litani River or elsewhere.
Barrack’s visit, in this context, aimed not just to mediate Lebanese-Israeli tensions but also to address the lingering dispute between Lebanon and Syria over the Shebaa Farms—a file long exploited by Bashar al-Assad’s regime to justify Hezbollah’s continued armament. On the Syrian front, Barrack’s close relationship with President Ahmad al-Sharaa and their alignment on key issues, especially Syria’s potential peace with Israel, now puts Lebanon in a new and uncomfortable light: that of the spoiler.
While many in Lebanon claimed that the main obstacle to peace lies in Damascus, Syria’s current leadership appears increasingly pragmatic. It seeks peace not to appease Trump or Netanyahu, but because national self-preservation demands it. Lebanon, by contrast, remains mired in the political black hole of the Palestinian cause—weaponized by factions who have long benefitted from perpetual crisis.
In terms of international and regional support, Syria today outpaces Lebanon. Despite the slow pace of state reconstruction and the looming threats of ISIS—both in its original form and in its Iranian-backed offshoots—Syria is advancing on a path of calculated recovery. Lebanon, on the other hand, remains in deep denial about changing regional dynamics. The recent war on Iran was not merely aimed at breaking the “Axis of Resistance”; it was also intended to shatter one of Lebanon’s most harmful delusions: its exaggerated sense of uniqueness and political cleverness.
Thus, the presumed “Tom Barrack Doctrine” may look appealing on the surface, but at its core, it reflects the transactional realism of the Trump doctrine: nothing is given for free. When Barrack sits in Nabih Berri’s salon, he expects to be addressing the Speaker of Parliament—not the leader of a political militia nor Hezbollah’s primary enabler. Otherwise, in classic Trumpian fashion, sanctions are on the table.
Like many in the Trump sphere, Barrack hails from the world of business and investment. Lebanese politicians, by contrast, behave like street peddlers of political scrap—“selling by the piece” and assuming that private conversations carry no consequences. They think they can dodge the regional wave of normalization, even when it could benefit their own people.
But such political gamesmanship may well backfire. In their smugness, Lebanon’s ruling class might end up accelerating the one outcome they fear the most: their own irrelevance and ultimate demise.
*This article original appeared in Nidaa al-Watan
*Makram Rabah is the managing editor at Now Lebanon and an Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut, Department of History. His book Conflict on Mount Lebanon: The Druze, the Maronites and Collective Memory (Edinburgh University Press) cover collective identities and the Lebanese Civil War. He tweets at @makramrabah

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 26-27/2025
No known intelligence that Iran moved uranium, US defense chief says
Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart and Susan Heavey/Reuters/June 26, 2025
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said he was unaware of any intelligence suggesting Iran had moved any of its highly enriched uranium to shield it from U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear program over the weekend. U.S. military bombers carried out strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities early Sunday local time using more than a dozen 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs. The results of the strikes are being closely watched to see how far they may have set back Iran's nuclear program. "I'm not aware of any intelligence that I've reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be, moved or otherwise," Hegseth said in an often fiery news conference.Trump, who watched the exchange with reporters, echoed his defense secretary, saying it would have taken too long to remove anything."The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts. Nothing was taken out of (the) facility," Trump wrote on his social media platform, without providing evidence. Several experts cautioned this week that Iran likely moved a stockpile of near weapons-grade highly enriched uranium out of the deeply buried Fordow site before the strikes, and could be hiding it and other nuclear components in locations unknown to Israel, the U.S. and U.N. nuclear inspectors. They noted satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showing "unusual activity" at Fordow on Thursday and Friday, with a long line of vehicles waiting outside an entrance to the facility. A senior Iranian source told Reuters on Sunday that most of the 60% highly enriched uranium had been moved to an undisclosed location before the U.S. attack. The Financial Times, citing European capitals, reported that Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile remains largely intact since it was not concentrated at Fordow. Hegseth's comments denying such claims came at the news briefing where he also accused the media of downplaying the success of the U.S. strikes following a leaked, preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency suggesting they may have only set back Iran by months. He said the assessment was low confidence, and, citing comments from CIA Director John Ratcliffe, said it had been overtaken by intelligence showing Iran's nuclear program was severely damaged and would take years to rebuild. Hegseth described the strikes as "historically successful." His comments came after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday that Iran would respond to any future U.S. attack by striking American military bases in the Middle East.
Khamenei, 86, claimed victory after 12 days of war, and promised Iran would not surrender despite Trump's calls.
MEDIA 'HATRED'
During the news conference, Hegseth criticized the media, without evidence, for having an anti-Trump bias. "It's in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad," Hegseth said. "There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did that ... because of the hatred of this press corps, are undermined," he said. Trump, who announced the press conference on Truth Social on Wednesday evening, praised it as: "One of the greatest, most professional, and most 'confirming' News Conferences I have ever seen!" On X, Hegseth thanked Trump for his praise. During the press conference, the top U.S. general largely stuck to technical details, outlining the history of the bunker-busting bombs used. General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, showed a video testing the bombs on a bunker like the ones struck on Sunday. Caine declined to provide his own assessment of the strike and deferred to the intelligence community. He denied being under any pressure to change his assessment to present a more optimistic view of the U.S. strikes. He also said he would not change his assessment due to politics. Uniformed military officials are supposed to remain apolitical and provide their best military advice. "I've never been pressured by the president or the secretary to do anything other than tell them exactly what I'm thinking, and that's exactly what I've done," he said.

Battered Iran faces uncertain future after grinding war with Israel
Associated Press/June 26, 2025
The bombing has quieted in Iran's 12-day conflict with Israel. Now its battered theocracy and 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei must regroup and rebuild in a changed landscape. Israeli airstrikes decimated the upper ranks of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard and depleted its arsenal of ballistic missiles. Israeli missiles and American bunker-buster bombs damaged the nuclear program — though how much remains disputed. Khamenei, who took shelter in a secret location during the bombardment, has not appeared since issuing a video message a week ago.
Iran's self-described "Axis of Resistance," a group of allied countries and militias in the Mideast, has been mauled by the Israelis since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Foreign support Tehran may have expected from China and Russia never materialized. At home, old problems remain, particularly an economy wrecked by international sanctions, corruption and mismanagement. "Iran's leadership has been dealt a heavy blow and will be conscious of preserving the ceasefire, which gives the regime breathing room and allows space to focus on internal security and reconstruction," the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, said in an analysis Wednesday.
Shoring up loyalty
One thing Israel's campaign showed was how much its intelligence agencies have infiltrated Iran — particularly its swift pinpointing of military and Guard commanders and top nuclear scientists for strikes. The No. 1 task for Khamenei may be to root out any suspected disloyalty in the ranks. "There must be some sort of purge. But who will implement it? That is the question," said Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. "This level of distrust that apparently exists now is going to paralyze any effective planning or security overhaul," he said. Aziz said the mistrust and uncertainty could be "why Khamenei hasn't come out of his shelter."In that atmosphere, rebuilding Iran's military, particularly its Revolutionary Guard, will be a challenge. But the forces have a deep bench of officers. One top survivor of the war, Gen. Esmail Qaani, in charge of the Guard's expeditionary Quds Force, was seen in videos of a pro-government demonstration in Tehran on Tuesday. On the civilian side, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi found himself empowered to the level of almost a de facto prime minister, publishing announcements on even the ceasefire while others in Tehran remained silent.
Khamenei also has to rethink the security policy he wove together over the past two decades. The "Axis of Resistance" alliances allowed Iran to project its power across the Mideast but also was seen as a defensive buffer, intended to keep conflict away from Iranian borders. That buffer has now been shown to be a failure.
Race for a bomb?
After Israel's campaign exposed Iran's vulnerabilities, Khamenei might conclude that his country can only protect itself by turning its nuclear capability into an actual bomb, as North Korea did. Iran has always said its nuclear program is peaceful. But it is the only non-nuclear armed state to have enriched uranium to 60%, a short step from weapons-grade. Many observers believe Khamenei opposed taking that step to a weapon to avoid a war, Azizi said. But now voices within the system demanding a bomb are likely growing, he said. "We might have already passed that threshold for Khamenei's viewpoint to change."
Still, any drive for a nuclear weapon would be a major gamble. The extent of damage from the U.S. and Israeli barrages remains unclear, but Iran certainly needs to rebuild its nuclear facilities and centrifuge infrastructure, whether that takes months or years.
And it would have to do all that in extreme secrecy, concealed from Israeli and U.S. intelligence. Were Israel to catch wind, it could resume strikes. Khamenei could also take the opposite path, resuming talks with the United States in hopes of winning sanctions relief.
U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff, appearing Tuesday night on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle," called the chance for future negotiations "promising." "We're already talking to each other," he said. "We are hopeful we can have a long-term peace agreement that resurrects Iran."
Challenges at home
Many also fear an intensified crackdown on dissent, as a leadership battered by war regroups amid mounting problems at home. Iran's frail economy has been wrecked by international sanctions, corruption and years of mismanagement. For months, the ailing power grid has been plagued by hourslong, rolling blackouts. The flight of much of Tehran's population during the war temporarily eased the strain. But as they return, even longer blackouts are likely to come roaring back during the worst of the summer months, disrupting everything from bakeries to factories. The war also shut down Tehran's stock market and currency exchange shops, pausing a collapse of Iran's riyal currency. Back in 2015 when Iran reached its nuclear deal with world powers, the rial traded at 32,000 to $1. Today, it is near 1 million rials to the dollar. Once businesses reopen in force, the plunge could resume. The economy has sparked unrest in the past. After state-set gasoline prices rose in 2019, protests spread across some 100 cities and towns, with gas stations and banks burned down. In the ensuing crackdown, at least 321 people were killed and thousands detained, according to Amnesty International.
Then there's the 2022 protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who had been detained by security forces allegedly over not wearing her headscarf, or hijab, to their liking. In a monthslong crackdown, more than 500 were killed and over 22,000 detained.
Many women in Tehran still refuse to wear the hijab. But activists worry the war will trigger new restrictions. In an open letter last weekend, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi wrote that "the Islamic Republic is a religious, authoritarian, and misogynistic regime — incapable of reform and systematically violating the fundamental rights of the Iranian people."But she called for a ceasefire in the war "because I firmly believe that democracy and peace will not emerge from the dark and terrifying corridors of war and violence."Questions persist over Khamenei's successor
Despite Israel's talk of eliminating him, Khamenei survived this confrontation. What comes after him remains unknown. The war could fuel a change in the Islamic Republic itself, pushing more towards a military-style rule. Under the Islamic Republic, leading Shiite clerics stand at the top of the hierarchy, drawing the lines to which the civilian government, the military and intelligence and security establishment must submit. As supreme leader, Khamenei symbolizes that clerical power. A panel of Shiite clerics is tasked with choosing one of their own as his successor. Several names have been touted, including Khamenei's son and the grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Some candidates are seen as more hard-line, some more open to reform. Whoever is chosen, military and Guard commanders may more than ever be the power behind the robes."People have been talking of a transition from clergy-dominated Islamic Republic to a military-dominated Islamic Republic," Azizi said. "This war has made that scenario more plausible. … The next government will be more military-security oriented."

No known intelligence that Iran moved uranium, US defense chief says
Reuters/June 26, 2025
WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said he was unaware of any intelligence suggesting Iran had moved any of its highly enriched uranium to shield it from US strikes on Iran’s nuclear program during the weekend. US military bombers carried out strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities early Sunday local time using more than a dozen 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs.The results of the strikes are being closely watched to see how far they may have set back Iran’s nuclear program. “I’m not aware of any intelligence that I’ve reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be, moved or otherwise,” Hegseth told an often fiery news conference. US President Donald Trump, who watched the exchange with reporters, echoed his defense secretary, saying it would have taken too long to remove anything.
“The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts. Nothing was taken out of (the) facility,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, without providing evidence. Several experts have cautioned that Iran likely moved a stockpile of near weapons-grade highly enriched uranium out of the deeply buried Fordow site before the strikes, and could be hiding it in locations unknown to Israel, the US and UN nuclear inspectors. They noted satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showing “unusual activity” at Fordow on Thursday and Friday, with a long line of vehicles waiting outside an entrance to the facility. A senior Iranian source told Reuters on Sunday most of the 60 percent highly enriched uranium had been moved to an undisclosed location before the attack.The Financial Times, citing European intelligence assessments, reported that Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile remains largely intact since it was not concentrated at Fordow. Hegseth’s comments denying such claims came at the news briefing where he also accused journalists of downplaying the success of the US strikes following a leaked preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency suggesting they may have only set back Iran by months.
He said the assessment was low confidence, and, citing comments from CIA Director John Ratcliffe, said it had been overtaken by intelligence showing Iran’s nuclear program was severely damaged and would take years to rebuild. Ratcliffe, Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held a classified briefing on the strikes on Thursday for all 100 members of the US Senate. Tulsi Gabbard, who normally would conduct such briefings as director of national intelligence, was not scheduled to participate. Trump said last week that she was wrong in suggesting there was no evidence Iran was building a nuclear weapon. The Senate briefing had been scheduled for Tuesday, but was postponed. Senators are expected to vote this week on a resolution that would require congressional approval for strikes against Iran, although the measure is not expected to be enacted. At the Pentagon news conference, Hegseth described the strikes as “historically successful.”During the press conference, Caine, the top US general largely stuck to technical details, outlining the history of the bunker-busting bombs used. Caine showed a video testing the bombs on a bunker like the ones struck on Sunday. Caine declined to provide his own assessment of the strike and deferred to the intelligence community. He denied being under any pressure to change his assessment to present a more optimistic view of the US strikes. He also said he would not change his assessment due to politics. Uniformed military officials are supposed to remain apolitical and provide their best military advice. “I’ve never been pressured by the president or the secretary to do anything other than tell them exactly what I’m thinking, and that’s exactly what I’ve done,” he said.

Guardian Council in Iran approves law to end cooperation with nuclear watchdog
Reuters/June 27, 2025
TEHRAN: Iran’s powerful Guardian Council on Thursday approved legislation that would suspend Tehran’s cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. The proposed suspension, which will now be submitted to President Masoud Pezeshkian for final ratification, would “ensure full respect for the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran ... especially with regard to uranium enrichment,” spokesman Hadi Tahan Nazif said. The watchdog passed a resolution two weeks ago accusing Iran of non-compliance with its nuclear obligations. A suspension of cooperation with the agency would deny UN inspectors access to Iran’s uranium enrichment operations at Fordow, Isfan and Natanz, which were attacked in US bombing raids last Sunday. Meanwhile confusion continued to surround the location of Iran’s stockpile of about 400 kg of highy enriched uranium. Satellite images from before Sunday’s attacks showed a long line of vehicles outside the Fordow plant. Some experts believe Iran used the convoy to move the uranium and other nuclear components, and is hiding them elsewhere. However, US President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth both insisted on Thursday that the stockpile at Fordow had been destroyed. “The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts. Nothing was taken out,” Trump said. Hegseth said: “I’m not aware of any intelligence that I’ve reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be.”

Trump says US and Iran officials to meet next week as ceasefire holds
Associated Press/June 26, 2025
Israel and Iran seemed to honor the fragile ceasefire between them for a second day Wednesday and U.S. President Donald Trump asserted that American and Iranian officials will talk next week, giving rise to cautious hope for longer-term peace. Trump, who helped negotiate the ceasefire that took hold Tuesday on the 12th day of the war, told reporters at a NATO summit that he was not particularly interested in restarting negotiations with Iran, insisting that U.S. strikes had destroyed its nuclear program. Earlier in the day, an Iranian official questioned whether the United States could be trusted after its weekend attack.
"We may sign an agreement, I don't know," Trump said. "The way I look at it, they fought, the war is done."Iran has not acknowledged any talks taking place next week, though U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has said there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries. A sixth round of U.S.-Iran negotiations was scheduled for earlier this month in Oman but was canceled after Israel attacked Iran. Earlier, Trump said the ceasefire was going "very well," and added that Iran was "not going to have a bomb, and they're not going to enrich."Iran has insisted that it will not give up its nuclear program. In a vote underscoring the tough path ahead, its parliament agreed to fast-track a proposal that would effectively stop the country's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. watchdog that has monitored the program for years. Ahead of the vote, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf criticized the IAEA for refusing "to even pretend to condemn the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities" that the U.S. carried out Sunday. "For this reason, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran will suspend cooperation with the IAEA until security of nuclear facilities is ensured, and Iran's peaceful nuclear program will move forward at a faster pace," Qalibaf told lawmakers. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said he wrote to Iran to discuss resuming inspections of their nuclear facilities. Among other things, Iran claims to have moved its highly enriched uranium ahead of the U.S. strikes, and Grossi said his inspectors need to reassess the country's stockpiles. "We need to return," he said. "We need to engage."French President Emmanuel Macron said he hoped Tehran would come back to the table. France was part of the 2015 deal with Iran that restricted its nuclear program, but the agreement began unraveling after Trump pulled the U.S. out in his first term. Macron spoke multiple times to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian during the war. International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi said Wednesday that Iran must quickly resume cooperation with international inspectors, telling French broadcaster France 2 that the IAEA had lost visibility over sensitive nuclear materials since the onset of hostilities. Grossi said Iran is legally obligated to cooperate with the IAEA under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. "During a war, inspections are not possible. But now that hostilities have ceased, and given the sensitivity of this material, I believe it is in everyone's interest that we resume our activities as soon as possible," he said. Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, and U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb. However, Israeli leaders have argued that Iran could quickly assemble a nuclear weapon. Israel is widely believed to be the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons, which it has never acknowledged.
Questions over effectiveness of the US strikes
The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said its assessment was that the U.S. and Israeli strikes have "set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years." It did not give evidence to back up its claim. The U.S. strikes hit three Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump said "completely and fully obliterated" the country's nuclear program. When asked about a U.S. intelligence report that found Iran's nuclear program has been set back only a few months, Trump scoffed and said it would at least take years to rebuild. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, confirmed that the strikes by American B-2 bombers using bunker-buster bombs had caused significant damage. "Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that's for sure," he told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, refusing to go into detail. He seemed to suggest Iran might not shut out IAEA inspectors for good, noting that the bill before parliament only talks of suspending work with the agency, not ending it. He also insisted Iran has the right to pursue a nuclear energy program. "Iran is determined to preserve that right under any circumstances," he said. Witkoff said late Tuesday on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" that Israel and the U.S. had achieved their objective with "the total destruction of the enrichment capacity" in Iran, and Iran's prerequisite for talks — that Israel end its campaign — had been fulfilled. "The proof is in the pudding," he said. "No one's shooting at each other. It's over."
Hopes for a long-term peace agreement
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the ceasefire agreement with Iran amounted to "quiet for quiet," with no further understandings about Iran's nuclear program going ahead. Witkoff told Fox News that Trump is now looking to land "a comprehensive peace agreement that goes beyond even the ceasefire.""We're already talking to each other, not just directly, but also through interlocutors," Witkoff said, adding that the conversations were promising. However, Baghaei, the Iranian spokesman, said Washington had "torpedoed diplomacy" with its attacks on nuclear sites, and that while Iran in principle was always open to talks, national security was the priority. "We have to make sure whether the other parties are really serious when they're talking about diplomacy, or is it again part of their tactics to make more problems for the region and for my country," he said. Grossi said Iran and the international community should seize the opportunity of the ceasefire for a long-term diplomatic solution. "Out of the ... bad things that military conflict brings, there's also now a possibility, an opening," he said. "We shouldn't miss that opportunity."
A rare video by Mossad
Israel revealed details of the intelligence and covert operations that it said allowed the country to effectively target Iranian military commanders, nuclear scientists and key facilities. In a rare video released by Israel's Mossad spy agency, chief David Barnea thanked the CIA for being a key partner, and his own agents for work over years to achieve what was "unimaginable at first.""Thanks to accurate intelligence, advanced technologies and operational capabilities beyond imagination, we helped the air force strike the Iranian nuclear project, establish aerial superiority in Iranian skies and reduce the missile threat," the agency said in a Facebook post alongside the video. Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the military chief of staff, asserted that commandos had operated secretly "deep inside enemy territory" during the war. Tehran on Tuesday put the death toll in Iran at 606, with 5,332 people wounded. The Washington-based Human Rights Activists group released figures Wednesday suggesting Israeli strikes on Iran had killed at least 1,054 and wounded 4,476. The group, which has provided detailed casualty figures from multiple rounds of unrest in Iran, said 417 of those killed were civilians and 318 were security forces. At least 28 people were killed in Israel and more than 1,000 wounded, according to officials.In the past two weeks, Iran has executed six prisoners accused of spying for Israel, including three on Wednesday.

WHO delivers its first medical aid to Gaza since March 2
AFP/June 26, 2025
GENEVA: The World Health Organization said Thursday that it had delivered its first medical shipment into Gaza since March 2, adding though that the nine truckloads were “a drop in the ocean.”Wednesday’s shipment of supplies, plasma and blood will be distributed among hospitals in the Palestinian territory in the coming days, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.Israel imposed a total blockade on the Gaza Strip on March 2. More than two months later, it began allowing some food in, but no other aid items until now. Tedros said nine trucks carrying essential medical supplies, 2,000 units of blood and 1,500 units of plasma were delivered via the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, “without any looting incident, despite the high-risk conditions along the route.”“These supplies will be distributed to priority hospitals in the coming days,” Tedros said. “The blood and plasma were delivered to Nasser Medical Complex’s cold storage facility for onward distribution to hospitals facing critical shortages, amid a growing influx of injuries, many linked to incidents at food distribution sites.”Last week the WHO said only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were minimally to partially functional, with the rest unable to function at all. Tedros said four WHO trucks were still at Kerem Shalom and more were on their way toward Gaza.“However, these medical supplies are only a drop in the ocean. Aid at scale is essential to save lives,” he said. “WHO calls for the immediate, unimpeded and sustained delivery of health aid into Gaza through all possible routes.”Israel began allowing supplies to trickle in at the end of May following its more than two-month total blockade, but distribution has been marred by chaotic scenes and near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on people waiting to collect rations. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a new US- and Israel-backed food distribution system, began handing out food in Gaza on May 26. But the UN and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with the GHF — an officially private effort with opaque funding — over concerns it was designed to cater to Israeli military objectives. Israel is pressing its bombardment of the territory in a military offensive it says is aimed at defeating the militant group Hamas, whose unprecedented October 2023 attack on Israel triggered the war.

How Israel used Iran's massive attacks to enhance its top ballistic missile shield
Jake Epstein/Business Insider/June 26, 2025
Why did Israel unleash hundreds of warplanes against Iran?Scroll back up to restore default view. Israel's top ballistic missile defense system, Arrow, has played a key role against Iran's missiles. Arrow's maker said it intercepted most of the missiles it engaged during the latest clash between Israel and Iran. The CEO of Arrow's manufacturer told BI that it has been upgraded since its first battle with Iran. Israel's top ballistic missile defenses — its Arrow systems — were just tested in their third-ever direct conflict with Iran. The first two battles last year helped the manufacturer prepare for this latest fight, the toughest yet. Boaz Levy, the CEO of the state-run Israel Aerospace Industries, told Business Insider in an interview on Wednesday that the company is "analyzing each missile attack" against Israel on a case-by-case basis, whether it's a single shot or a barrage of fire.
"We do have lessons learned about system operation, about threat capabilities, and more," he said. The highly advanced Arrow systems are a joint product of IAI and the US aerospace contractor Boeing. Arrow 2, which was first deployed in 2000, can intercept missiles in the upper atmosphere. The newer Arrow 3 became operational in 2017 and can hit targets in space. Both of the Arrow systems use a two-stage solid-fueled interceptor to destroy incoming ballistic missiles. Together, they make up the top echelon of Israel's vaunted air defense network, the most famous part of which is Iron Dome for combating rockets, mortars, and artillery. The Arrow systems have seen combat over the years, but they faced an unprecedented test in April 2024 when Iran fired some 120 ballistic missiles at Israel as part of a huge attack with cruise missiles and drones. Nearly all the threats were shot down. Arrow then defended against another large-scale barrage in early October when Iran launched over 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. And over the following months, the system has frequently been used to intercept missiles launched by the Tehran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Levy, Arrow's chief engineer, explained that all these engagements ultimately helped prepare Arrow for its most significant test yet: the most recent conflict with Iran, which fired hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel over a 12-day stretch. He said IAI develops Arrow in a "building blocks mechanism, which means that, every now and then, we are upgrading the system capability, utilizing a new building block." "During this time, between April last year to this attack, we did have several upgradations of the systems," he said. "I believe that this is the right way to deal with it. So yes, we had lessons learned, and we improved the systems accordingly."An "Arrow 3" ballistic missile interceptor is seen during its test launch near Ashdod December 10, 2015. "It's a software change that will lead us to a better capability," he added. The latest conflict began on June 13, when Israeli officials announced the start of a new operation to degrade Iran's nuclear program and its military capabilities. Israel then carried out sweeping airstrikes across the country over the next week and a half. Iran retaliated by launching over 550 ballistic missiles and more than 1,000 drones at Israel, the latest Israeli government data shows. Most of those munitions were intercepted by air defenses. Levy declined to say how many Iranian missiles Arrow engaged. But he said an initial analysis revealed that the systems intercepted at least 90% of the missiles that it targeted since June 13. "I think that Arrow performed as expected," Levy said. Israel said the Iranian missiles have caused over 50 impact sites across the country. Some missiles are allowed to go through if the impact site is irrelevant, but Iranian weapons have also, at times, made it through to strike civilian areas.
Missiles fired from Iran are seen streaking across the skies over the city of Ramallah in the West Bank on June 19, 2025.
US Navy destroyers positioned in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea also provided air defense support for Israel in the latest conflict, as have American ground forces based in the Middle East. US officials have not disclosed exactly how many Iranian missiles American forces shot down. Washington has provided air defense for Israel during all three of its clashes with Tehran.Levy hailed the air defense partnership between Israel and the US, describing it as "the right way to deal with a ballistic missile attack. I believe that this collaboration and coalition between allies is the right solution for that, especially when we are speaking about salvos," referring to large waves of attacks. The US military joined Israel's offensive campaign last weekend, using stealth aircraft and a guided-missile submarine to launch airstrikes on three of Iran's top nuclear facilities. Tehran retaliated on Monday by firing a volley of missiles at a major American base in Qatar. That retaliation was neutralized by the Patriot systems. Later that day, as Israel and Iran continued to trade attacks, President Donald Trump announced that the two countries had agreed to a ceasefire. Several days later, the fragile deal appears to be holding up.

Netanyahu sees chance to 'enlarge peace accords' after Iran-Israel war
LBCI/AFP/June 26, 2025
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he saw an opportunity to "enlarge peace accords" after the end of a 12-day war against Iran. "We have fought with determination against Iran and achieved a great victory. This victory opens the path to dramatically enlarge the peace accords," he said in a video address.His comment was an apparent reference to the Abraham Accords, U.S.-sponsored agreements struck by Israel to normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

Israel says Iran's Supreme Leader avoided assassination by going underground
LBCI/Reuters/June 26, 2025
Israel would have killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were it possible during the countries' 12-day war, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday. "I estimate that if Khamenei had been in our sights, we would have taken him out," Katz said in the interview with Israel's Kan public television. "But Khamenei understood this, went underground to very great depths, and broke off contacts with the commanders who replaced those commanders who were eliminated, so it wasn’t realistic in the end," he said.

State Department approves $30 million for funding of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
LBCI/Reuters/June 26, 2025
The U.S. State Department has approved $30 million in funding for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the State Department said on Thursday, calling on other countries to also support the group delivering aid in war-torn Gaza. "This support is simply the latest iteration of President Trump's and Secretary Rubio's pursuit of peace in the region," State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott told reporters. Reuters reported earlier this week the United States was giving $30 million to the controversial humanitarian group.

The top US general gave a play-by-play of the historic Patriot battle to shoot down Iranian missiles
Chris Panella/Business Insider/June 26, 2025
Gen. Dan Caine gave a step-by-step recounting of how Patriot crews shot down Iranian missiles. US and Qatari air defenses intercepted Iran's ballistic missile strikes on Monday night at Al Udeid Air Base. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said officials believe it's the largest single Patriot engagement in US military history. The top US general shared new details at a Pentagon briefing on how Patriot air defense systems shot down Iran's missile strikes on Monday. "We believe that this is the largest single Patriot engagement in US military history," Gen. Dan 'Razin' Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday morning.At a press conference on Thursday, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Caine walked through both the US strike and Iran's response. Caine first spoke about air defense operators at Al Udeid. US military leaders, as US President Donald Trump confirmed earlier this week, received warnings that Iran intended to attack US bases in the region earlier on Monday. Even with a warning, intercepting a ballistic missile isn't necessarily easy. The Patriot system is a sophisticated defense platform, but there are several technical, operational, and strategic challenges that complicate intercept attempts. The system is a hit-to-kill weapon requiring precision against threats coming in fast, and in the case of Iran's retaliatory attacks, there were over a dozen ballistic missiles. At Al Udeid, American forces assumed a minimum force posture, the general said. "Most folks had moved off the base to extend the security perimeter out away from what we assessed might be a target zone," Caine said. Roughly 44 US Army soldiers remained at Al Udeid operating two Patriot batteries. A Patriot battery consists of radar and control systems, launchers armed with interceptor missiles, power generation units, and communication equipment all operated by trained crews to detect, track, and intercept incoming threats. Caine said those soldiers were "responsible for defending the entire base," noting the oldest one was a 28-year-old captain and the youngest a 21-year-old private who'd been in service for less than two years. The crews operating the Patriots were deployed from US forces in South Korea and Japan, Caine said. As night fell in the area, the Patriot crews were instructed to point their missile batteries north toward Iran. Control of the Patriot systems were transferred from the service members outside of the vehicles — a hot crew of one non-commissioned office and four soldiers — to the Patriot operators.
And then, Caine said, crews waited.
"You know that you're going to have approximately two minutes, 120 seconds, to either succeed or fail," he said, referring to how fast a ballistic missile can arrive.At around 7:30 p.m. local time, Iran launched its attack. As incoming missiles were detected, "round after round of Patriot missiles are ejected from their canisters by an initial launch charge," Caine said. While he declined to reveal how many rounds were fired because those details are classified, Caine said that there was reason to believe it was the largest single Patriot use in US military history. The air defense efforts were joined by Qatari Patriot crews. The US has sent three Patriot batteries to Ukraine, along with associated interceptor missiles. The event was described as "a lot of metal flying around," as Patriots took out missiles and boosters, and debris was falling to the ground. It has been confirmed that none of Iran's missiles hit the base. Furthermore, there have been no reported casualties. Patriot surface-to-air missile systems and the interceptor missiles, manufactured by Raytheon, a subsidiary of RTX, and Lockheed Martin, respectively, have seen extensive and recent use by Ukraine, helping it engage and eliminate Russia's ballistic missiles, aircraft, drones, and other threats throughout the war. Before its deployment in Ukraine, the Patriot missile system was somewhat controversial due to some exaggerated success claims from the Gulf War and inconsistent real-world performance in later conflicts, which raised doubts about its effectiveness.
The system has seen significant upgrades, and the results in combat have made the Patriot a celebrated asset. Ukrainian officials have praised this system for its effectiveness. Kyiv's main complaint is that it doesn't have enough of them. The briefing Thursday was in response to media reports that the strikes on Iran may not have sufficiently devastated its key nuclear facilities. Though there are indications the strikes dealt significant damage, questions remain about the future of the program, specifically Iran's ability to rebuild and the whereabouts of Iranian stockpiles of highly enriched uranium.

US asked France to speak to Iran before Israel truce
RFI/June 26, 2025
France conveyed to Iran the terms of a US-proposed ceasefire with Israel at the request of Washington in the hours leading up to the truce, a French diplomatic source said Wednesday. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called his French counterpart Jean-Noël Barrot to "inform him of the US wish for a ceasefire provided there was no Iranian retaliation," according to the source cited in French news agency AFP, said on Monday night. "Rubio asked Jean-Noël Barrot to transmit this information to [Foreign Minister] Abbas Araghchi," their Iranian counterpart, the source added. France says 'spiral of chaos must end' amid fragile Israel-Iran ceasefire. "After the call, the (French) minister spoke to his Iranian counterpart to transmit the terms and details of the discussions (between) Americans and Israelis," according to the same source. Araghchi then indicated his "availability to continue negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme" including with France, Britain and Germany, and "after these discussions, the ceasefire was able to go into force", it said. Earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron cautioned that the situation surrounding the Israel-Iran conflict remains "unstable", reinforcing the view that diplomacy should preside over military might in resolving the Middle East crisis.

White House wants deep cut in US funding for war crimes investigations, sources say
Reuters/June 26, 2025
WASHINGTON/THE HAGUE: The White House on Wednesday recommended terminating US funding for nearly two dozen programs that conduct war crimes and accountability work globally, including in Myanmar, Syria and on alleged Russian atrocities in Ukraine, according to two US sources familiar with the matter and internal government documents reviewed by Reuters. The recommendation from the Office of Management and Budget, which has not been previously reported, is not the final decision to end the programs since it gives the State Department the option to appeal. But it sets up a potential back-and-forth between the OMB and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his aides, who will reply to OMB with their suggestions on which programs deserve to continue. The programs also include work in Iraq, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Gambia. The State Department and OMB did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The expectation that Rubio would argue for many of the programs to be continued is slim, according to two US officials. However, the top US diplomat could make a case to keep crucial programs, such as aiding potential war. Several of the programs earmarked for termination operate war crimes accountability projects in Ukraine, three sources familiar with the matter said, including Global Rights Compliance, which is helping to collect evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity across Ukraine, such as sexual violence and torture. Another is the Legal Action Network, a legal aid group which supports local efforts to bring cases against Russian suspects of war crimes in Ukraine, the sources said. Requests seeking comment from the groups were not immediately answered. State Department bureaus that would like to preserve any war crimes and accountability programs should send their justifications by close of business day on July 11, said an internal State Department email seen by Reuters.
CHANGING PRIORITIES
The administration of President Donald Trump has frozen and then cut back billions of dollars of foreign aid since taking office on January 20 to ensure American-taxpayer money funds programs that are aligned with his “America First” policies. The unprecedented cutbacks have effectively shut down its premier aid arm US Agency for International Development, jeopardized the delivery of life-saving food and medical aid and thrown global humanitarian relief operations into chaos. The OMB recommendation is yet another sign that the administration is increasingly de-prioritizing advocacy for human rights and rule of law globally, an objective that previous US administrations have pursued. While US foreign aid freezes had already started hampering an international effort to hold Russia responsible for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, Wednesday’s recommendations raise the risk of US completely abandoning those efforts. Among the programs that are recommended for termination is a $18 million State Department grant for Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office that is implemented by Georgetown University’s International Criminal Justice Initiative, two sources said. While the programs do not directly impact Ukraine’s frontline efforts to fend off Russia’s invasion, supporters say they represent the best chance of extensively documenting reported battlefield atrocities in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two, now grinding toward a fourth year. Ukraine has opened more than 140,000 war crime cases since Moscow’s February 2022 invasion, which has killed tens of thousands, ravaged vast swathes of the country and left behind mental and physical scars from occupation. Russia consistently denies war crimes have been committed by its forces in the conflict.
PATH TO APPEAL
Other programs include one that does accountability work on Myanmar army’s atrocities against Rohingya minorities as well as on the persecution of Christians and other minorities by Syria’s ousted former president Bashar Assad, two sources said. While the OMB recommendations could face State Department push-back, the criteria to appeal are set very strictly. In an internal State Department email, the administration cautioned that any effort to preserve programs that were recommended to be terminated should be thoroughly argued and directly aligned with Washington’s priorities.“Bureaus must clearly and succinctly identify direct alignment to administration priorities,” the email, reviewed by Reuters said.

EU leaders meet to discuss Russia sanctions, US tariffs and Middle East conflicts
Associated Press/June 26, 2025
The heads of the European Union's 27 member nations will meet Thursday in Brussels to discuss tougher sanctions on Russia, ways to prevent painful new U.S. tariffs, and how to make their voices heard in the Middle East conflicts. Most of the leaders will arrive from a brief but intense NATO summit where they pledged a big boost in defense spending, and papered over some of their differences with U.S. President Donald Trump. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will join the EU summit by videoconference, after meeting Trump on Wednesday. U.S.-led NATO downgraded Ukraine from a top priority to a side player this week, but Russia's war in Ukraine remains of paramount concern for the EU. Members will be discussing an 18th round of sanctions against Russia and whether to maintain a price cap on Russian oil, measures that some nations oppose because it could raise energy prices. Meanwhile, Trump's threatened tariffs are weighing on the EU, which negotiates trade deals on behalf of all 27 member countries. He lashed out at Spain on Wednesday for not spending more on defense and suggested yet more tariffs. France's president called Trump to task for starting a trade war with longtime allies. European leaders are also concerned about fallout from the wars in the Middle East, and the EU is pushing to revive diplomatic negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. EU members have internal disagreements to overcome. They are divided over what to do about European policy toward Israel because of its conduct in Gaza. And left-leaning parties are attacking European Commissioner Ursula von Der Leyen's pivot away from the EU's climate leadership in favor of military investment. Defense and security are likely to top the agenda. The summit will end with a statement of conclusions that will set the agenda for the bloc for the next four months and can be seen as a bellwether for political sentiment in Europe on major regional and global issues.

Israel eyes Syria amid US push to expand Abraham Accords, debate grows over Lebanon front
LBCI/June 26, 2025
As Israeli officials place growing hopes on comments by U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff suggesting an imminent expansion of the Abraham Accords, attention has turned toward Syria, which Israeli sources view as the most likely candidate for normalization with Tel Aviv. At the same time, internal divisions are deepening over the future of the war with Lebanon, amid reports that U.S. President Donald Trump is making a new push to resolve the conflict. In Israel, concern is rising over proposed arrangements that critics say fail to ensure long-term security on the Lebanese front. During the most recent meeting in Ras Naqoura, the Israeli military rejected calls to withdraw from five strategic points unless Hezbollah’s weapons are dismantled across Lebanon. While security officials have expressed optimism that Trump may succeed in persuading Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a U.S. proposal during his upcoming visit to Washington, warnings have resurfaced about the risks of failing to secure clear guarantees for Israel’s safety. Israeli officials say Iran continues to bolster Hezbollah despite the ongoing war, funneling funds used to purchase weapons, rebuild weapons production infrastructure, and pay Hezbollah fighters’ salaries. This, they argue, justifies continued military operations in Lebanon. They also remain wary of any U.S. roadmap that does not explicitly remove the threat posed by Hezbollah—drawing parallels to the ceasefire with Iran, which ended the conflict without eliminating what Israel sees as existential threats from Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile capabilities.

The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on June 26-27/2025
Towards Jihadist Pogroms in Europe?
Drieu Godefridi Gatestone Institute/June 26/2025
Europol reports indicate that Europe is now home to tens of thousands of radicalized individuals. The attacks in Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016) demonstrate the feasibility of complex operations by small groups.
Will people who criticize Islam be dragged through the courts by a desperate regime, while those who outspokenly fantasize about murdering Jews are granted a blank check?
Is quoting Islamic law "inflammatory"? The answer is completely arbitrary. The European Court of Human Rights often upholds convictions if statements about Islam are deemed to disrupt "religious peace" or "target Muslims". This subjective determination reflects a legal trend in Europe to prioritize "social cohesion" over freedom of speech, unlike the U.S. First Amendment.
"Whomsoever God has cursed, and with whom He is wroth, and made some of them apes and swine, and worshippers of idols — they are worse situated, and have gone further astray from the right way." — Qur'an 5:65.
"And He brought down those of the People of the Book who supported them from their fortresses and cast terror in their hearts; some you slew, some you made captive. And He bequeathed upon you their lands, their habitations, and their possessions, and a land you never trod. God is powerful over everything." — Qur'an 33:26.
In such a cultural context, in this atmosphere of hatred, can it not be considered legitimate or even desirable, from that perspective, to participate in collective action against Jews?
Let us never forget that the vast majority of Muslims in Europe are peaceful and take no part in terrorist activity. But even if only 0.01% of Europe's Muslims were to take up the cause and seek revenge for the supposed "genocide" committed by "the Jews", this would still represent thousands of potential "jihadists".
Europol reports indicate that Europe is now home to tens of thousands of radicalized individuals. The attacks in Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016) demonstrate the feasibility of complex operations by small groups.
Europe in 2025 has been facing rising tensions linked to Islamist radicalization, These have been fueled by conflicts in the Middle East, jihadist propaganda on social networks and gaps in security coordination among countries.
Imagine a handful of individuals, mostly radicalized European Muslims, between the ages of 18 and 35, operating in major European cities such as Brussels, Paris or Berlin, and determined to avenge "the Palestinians". This network decides to strike Jewish Europeans, massacre as many as possible, spread terror among Jews and non-Muslims – all "kuffars", unbelievers in Allah -- and to pit one community against another. They gather in unmonitored mosques, on encrypted internet forums or through recruiters in the Middle East. Together, to maximize the psychological and media impact, they plan a coordinated attack, inspired by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Their target: a high-profile public event, such as a cultural festival, a march against antisemitism, a pro-Israel rally, or a so-called "republican march", as it is known in France. Their attack could be paired with a secondary target, such as a Jewish community center or synagogue, to remind the international community who the villain is supposed to be.
The group acquires edged weapons, smuggled firearms (pistols and assault rifles from the Balkans or local criminal networks) — which in Brussels, for example, are reportedly as easy to obtain as a packet of cigarettes — and homemade explosives, produced with available chemicals. Rental vans are available for vehicle-ramming attacks. These "vigilante terrorists", ostensibly supporting Palestine -- although it is still unclear how killing "infidels" makes the lives of Palestinian Arabs any better; there will still be the same atrocious governance and no economic future -- they communicate via encrypted apps, such as Signal, and prepare videos to be streamed live on TikTok. Their subsequent attacks end with the intervention of special forces. The Muslims among the assailants might prefer to die as "martyrs" rather than negotiate.
The death toll could rise to hundreds, depending on the effectiveness of the attack and the speed of the security response. Authorities would declare a state of emergency, tighten border controls and increase surveillance of communities deemed at risk. Demonstrations and counter-demonstrations would break out, deepening social tensions. A group affiliated with the Islamic State or Hamas would claim responsibility for the attacks via a video posted on X, and call for more such actions.
Unthinkable? Europol reports indicate that Europe is now home to tens of thousands of radicalized individuals. The attacks in Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016) demonstrate the feasibility of complex operations by small groups. Conflicts in the Middle East, combined with insufficient coordination among intelligence services and the easy availability of weapons on the black market, have increased vulnerabilities.
In Europe, hatred of Jews is again the norm
What makes the resurgence of jihadist pogroms in Europe not just plausible, but perhaps even likely, is the silky normalization of antisemitic rhetoric. Already in 2018, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights published its second survey on antisemitism in the EU. The survey stated that "antisemitic harassment is so widespread, it has become normalized." In other words, a discourse of murderous hatred towards Jews is resurfacing on European streets at levels not seen since the 1930s and 1940s. In countries such as France, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, those who publicly express hatred of Jews enjoy near-total impunity. In Belgium, the author Herman Brusselmans expressed that "I want to ram a pointed knife straight down the throat of every Jew I meet," and faced no consequences. Adolf Hitler, in his public declarations, was often more restrained than that.
In recent years, the "left" and "far-left" who have attempted to cloak their antisemitism under term "anti-Zionism," increasingly no longer bother with such pretenses. Why should they, when prosecutions for inciting hatred against Jews remain rare? Will people who criticize Islam be dragged through the courts by a desperate regime, while those who outspokenly fantasize about murdering Jews are granted a blank check?
Most European countries lack explicit blasphemy laws (the UK repealed theirs in 2008, as did Ireland in 2020), but hate speech, public order, and anti-discrimination laws are often applied to critique of Islam. The 2008 EU Framework Decision on combating racism and xenophobia requires member states to criminalize incitement to hatred based on religion, which includes criticism perceived as inflammatory. For instance, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a lecturer, was convicted for comments made during a seminar on Islam in Austria, where she described the Islamic Prophet Muhammad's marriage to Aisha as having "pedophile tendencies" due to Aisha's age (married at six, with the marriage consummated when she was nine). This event is said to be historical fact, related by the Hadith, the second most sacred source of Islamic law after the Qur'an. Is quoting Islamic law "inflammatory"? The answer is completely arbitrary. The European Court of Human Rights often upholds convictions if statements about Islam are deemed to disrupt "religious peace" or "target Muslims". This subjective determination reflects a legal trend in Europe to prioritize "social cohesion" over freedom of speech, unlike the U.S. First Amendment.
Organizations such as the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) argue that these laws create a chilling effect, where factual or historical criticism of Islam (such as discussing Muhammad's life) risks prosecution if deemed offensive. Yet these cautions, when it comes to protecting Islam, disappear completely when it comes to demonizing Jews. Then, it is suddenly an open bar. Everything, absolutely anything, can be said about the Jews, the more psychopathic, the better. It is quite obvious that Brusselmans' statements, in the context of anti-Jewish hatred in Europe, can only make simple minds more resolute to "make the Jews pay" for "Palestine". This is not free speech. It is a call to murder.
Can we not see the disturbing similarity between this rhetoric and that of National Socialism in the 1920s? Are we now supposed to distinguish between "bad Nazism" and "good Nazism" — that still calls to murder Jews, this time ostensibly "for the Palestinians"?
In addition, the European "left" and "far-left" — often indistinguishable — have adopted Hamas's false claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Genocide presumably means the total eradication of the Palestinian people. Yet no available data, not even from Hamas, supports this claim. Nonetheless, "left-wing" and "far-left" parties in Europe have made "fighting the genocide of the Palestinian people" a key electoral argument.
Imagine, for a moment, being a young Muslim there — newly arrived or not, or a convert. This individual is saturated daily with messages, both on social media and in the mainstream press, declaring that Israel — "the Jews" — are committing one of the greatest massacres in modern history against Muslims. From birth, this young person has been told day-in and day-out that his primary identity is Muslim, that he belongs to the ummah (the Muslim nation) and to Allah — and that his ties to his family or nationality are secondary, irrelevant, or even meaningless. The Koran, the sunnah and fiqh -- Islamic laws "essential for every Muslim as it ensures correct worship, guides moral conduct, and provides practical solutions for personal and social challenges. By integrating faith into every aspect of life, fiqh helps Muslims live in harmony," teach that Muslims have both the right and the duty to take up arms and fight "in the path of Allah" against the enemies of Islam. "A jihadist," wrote David Patterson, "by sacred Islamic definition, must fight and kill in order to be righteous." Starting, of course, with the Jews — who are described as the sworn enemies of Muslims even in the Qur'an:
Say: "People of the Book, do you blame us for any other cause than that we believe in God, and what has been sent down to us, and what was sent down before, and that most of you are ungodly?..."
Whomsoever God has cursed, and with whom He is wroth, and made some of them apes and swine, and worshippers of idols — they are worse situated, and have gone further astray from the right way. (5:64-65)
And He brought down those of the People of the Book who supported them from their fortresses and cast terror in their hearts; some you slew, some you made captive. And He bequeathed upon you their lands, their habitations, and their possessions, and a land you never trod. God is powerful over everything. (33:26)
In such a cultural context, in this atmosphere of hatred, can it not be considered legitimate or even desirable, from that perspective, to participate in collective action against Jews?
Let us never forget that the vast majority of Muslims in Europe are peaceful and take no part in terrorist activity. But even if only 0.01% of Europe's Muslims were to take up the cause and seek revenge for the supposed "genocide" committed by "the Jews", this would still represent thousands of potential "jihadists".
We owe our Jewish fellow citizens the highest level of protection — and solidarity. It is a moral and civilizational imperative.
*Drieu Godefridi is a jurist (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain), philosopher (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain) and PhD in legal theory (Paris IV-Sorbonne). He is an entrepreneur, CEO of a European private education group and director of PAN Medias Group. He is the author of The Green Reich (2020).
© 2025 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Islamic State Resurfaces in Damascus With Deadly Bombing
Ahmad Sharawi/FDD- Policy Brief/June 26/2025
The Islamic State (IS) has returned to the spotlight in Damascus. According to the Syrian Ministry of Interior, the group conducted a suicide bombing on June 22 at a Greek Orthodox church in the Syrian capital, killing at least 25 and wounding more than 60. The bombing marked the group’s first attack in Damascus since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime. Although the new Syrian authorities have thwarted multiple attempts by IS to target religious sites and launched operations to dismantle the group’s networks, the threat persists. Since Assad’s ouster, IS has issued repeated threats against the country’s new leadership and carried out numerous attacks targeting security forces, including one that killed three personnel in May in the Deir ez-Zor countryside of eastern Syria.
Government’s Forces Spread Too Thin
While Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa controls a majority of Syria, his forces remain overstretched. Government troops are concentrated in major cities, focused primarily on curbing smuggling into Lebanon and monitoring Assad loyalists along the coast. IS, meanwhile, has entrenched itself in the vast, barren, and remote Badiya region, where the state’s presence is thin. Sleeper cells have also infiltrated major cities. In May, Syrian forces dismantled one such cell in Aleppo, but the danger remains, and it requires precise intelligence to neutralize it effectively. A U.S.-led international coalition continues to fight IS in northeast Syria with the help of local allies but does not operate with the same numbers in Badiya.
Delayed Implementation of Sharaa-SDF Deal
Another factor contributing to the recent surge in IS activity is the delay in implementing the March agreement between Sharaa’s government and the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an integral component of the anti-IS coalition. The agreement called for the SDF’s integration into the Syrian army as a step toward stabilizing the country, yet months later, no meaningful progress has resulted. On June 21, SDF Commander Mazloum Abdi noted, “Military joint committees have started working, but the progress has been minimal, as the government is not serious enough in providing real guarantees to the non-Sunni components, especially the Kurds and the Druze.”Prior to the Damascus bombing, most IS attacks were concentrated in northeastern Syria — which the SDF controls with coalition support. The delay in implementing the integration deal has provided IS with an opportunity to exploit gaps in security. Sharaa’s forces are overstretched, and integrating the SDF into the Syrian Armed Forces would boost troop numbers in northeastern Syria and reinforce urban centers vulnerable to IS attacks. The suicide bomber in the church attack came from the al-Hol camp — an IS camp still under SDF control — where unresolved issues about future oversight have led to the increase of cells that have operated outside the camp.
U.S. Must Pressure Sharaa and SDF to Implement March Agreement
In April, the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed that it would consolidate and reduce its military presence in Syria, retaining fewer than 1,000 troops under Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve. Reuters reported that America evacuated two U.S. bases in Hasakah on June 16, bringing the total number of evacuated bases to four in just over a month. The timing is troubling because IS attacks have surged since the United States began drawing down its forces — from around five per month earlier in the year to more than 15. A premature departure risks creating precisely the kind of vacuum in which IS thrives. The U.S. military has few troops in Syria, but they provide the intelligence, surveillance, and firepower that the SDF needs. The Sharaa-SDF deal remains stalled because the SDF wants assurances that integration into the national army will not result in Sharaa assuming authoritarian powers over areas the SDF now controls. Conversely, Sharaa does not want the SDF to become a military force independent of Damascus. Given that Sharaa is an interim president whom voters never elected, with few checks on his power, Washington should help resolve the impasse while ensuring the deal promotes balanced cooperation, not Sharaa’s supremacy.
*Ahmad Sharawi is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from Ahmad and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow Ahmad on X @AhmadA_Sharawi. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

After the Ceasefire, Will Iran Abandon its ‘Axis of Resistance’?
Seth J. Frantzman/National Security Journal/June 26/2025
https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/after-the-ceasefire-will-iran-abandon-its-axis-of-resistance/
The Decline of Iran’s Proxies: How Tehran’s Regional Power Crumbled
On June 23, Iran launched a ballistic missile attack targeting the US Al-Udeid base in Qatar. The United States was well prepared for the attack. The State Department had urged Americans to shelter in place, and US Central Command coordinated closely with the Qataris to intercept the threats.
Iran carried out the attack in response to the US airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear sites on June 22.
Axis of Resistance in the Region
Iran’s attack appears to have been limited and intended to secure the ceasefire that President Donald Trump announced several hours after the missiles were intercepted. With no one killed in Qatar, it was easier to enable de-escalation. Trump urged Israel to end its attacks on Iran, which began on June 13, and Doha urged Iran to stop its attacks on Israel. The ceasefire deal commenced on June 24. With the shaky agreement in place, the region can breathe a sigh of relief. Now, the deal may pave the way for changes in the Middle East. A new trajectory could emerge, enabling Iran to scale back its regional ambitions and reduce conflicts in various regions. Iran’s ambitions have led to conflict in many areas of the Middle East. Iran has portrayed itself as leading an “axis of resistance” to the US and Israel in the region. It has funded and backed numerous armed proxy groups.
These groups include Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as the Houthis in Yemen. In addition, Iran has backed Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It has also backed militias in Iraq. Before the fall of the Assad regime on December 8, 2024, Iran also backed militias in Syria that helped prop up the Assad regime.
If one looked at a map of the Middle East over the last decade, it was clear that Iran’s influence and power were growing.
For instance, the Houthis not only grew in power in 2014 and 2015, but they also began to be able to target shipping in the Red Sea and built a ballistic missile and drone program that could target large parts of Saudi Arabia. In Iraq, the Popular Mobilization Forces of Shi’ite militias helped defeat ISIS.
However, they then stayed in power in parts of Iraq and began targeting US forces in 2019, including the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq. Hezbollah also grew beyond Lebanon’s borders to play a key role in the Syrian civil war. Iran’s power grew to such an extent in the Middle East that it controlled a swath of the region. By 2018, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could drive from Tehran to Baghdad. They could then drive west to the border with Syria and cross at Albukamal, where Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah had a headquarters. From there, they could drive to Lebanon and link up with Hezbollah. If they preferred the maritime route, they could leave from Iran by boat and reach Yemen. This route was a testament to Iranian influence in the region, an arc of unprecedented regional hegemonic power. Iran wasn’t the only power in the region, but the weakness of countries such as Iraq had enabled Iran to spread its wings in various directions. Most Arab countries, such as Jordan or Egypt, were busy with internal affairs. Iran was projecting power.
Projecting Power
This power projection led to increasing conflicts. Iran targeted Saudi Arabia with cruise missiles and drones in 2019. Its backing of Hamas also likely led the group to gamble with the massive attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas was likely convinced, via meetings with Hezbollah and other elements of the Iranian proxy network, that a multi-front war would defeat Israel. Israel wasn’t defeated. Instead, Israel clawed its way back, weakened Hamas, and forced Hezbollah into a ceasefire by November 2024. By December 8, 2024, the Assad regime had also fallen. Iran rapidly saw the region slip from beneath its feet. The weakness of the Iranian proxies enabled the Israeli attack on June 13. Iran was exposed. Iran invested a lot in the proxies and did not invest as much in its air defenses and systems to deal with Israel’s 5th Generation aircraft, such as the F-35I Adir.
Iran likely had no way to defend against these aircraft, but Tehran didn’t calculate this challenge. Instead, it continued in the spring of 2025 as if things hadn’t changed. This arrogance and hubris in Tehran led it to take a drubbing in a war that began on June 13. It also encouraged Trump to carry out the strikes on June 22. Now Iran has a chance to reverse course. Qatar, a major non-NATO ally, has played a key role in facilitating the ceasefire deal. Iran could now choose a new course. The nuclear weapons program has become a sunk cost. Fordow, Isfahan, Natanz, Arak, and other nuclear program sites are damaged. A huge investment is lost. Iran has also lost many ballistic missiles. Iran’s drones, which it launched in the hundreds between June 13 and June 24, did not penetrate Israel’s air defenses. Iran must re-think its defense doctrine and strategy in the region. Most countries did not have sympathy for Iran because of its past behavior in the region. Even friends of Tehran, such as Moscow and Beijing, did not step up.
Tehran can use the ceasefire to climb down from its past drive for regional hegemony.
**Seth Frantzman is the author of The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza (2024) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The dagger in the Ayatollah’s cloak...President Trump decided to take it away from him
Clifford D. May/The Washington Times/June 26/2025
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jun/24/no-appeasement-trump-took-irans-nuclear-crown-jewel-others-talked/
The uranium enrichment plant at Fordow was known as the jewel in the crown of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s “supreme leader.” It would have been more accurate to call it the dagger in the ayatollah’s cloak, or maybe the bomb in the terrorist’s backpack.
It was one ingredient in a decades-long strategic cocktail: Cook up terrorist proxies to kill and die for you and your goals; place them in a “ring of fire” around Israel; obtain a nuclear weapons capability; stir or shake vigorously.
All this and more grew out of the revolution that erupted in Iran in 1979. Its objective was not to make Iran great again but to restore Islamic power and preeminence in the Middle East and far beyond.
For more than a thousand years, much of the world was dominated by Islamic caliphates. The last of them was based in Istanbul, a city once called Constantinople – a great Christian capital until 1453 when it was conquered by Sultan Mehmed II leading an Ottoman army.
Centuries later, the Ottoman Empire and Caliphate chose the wrong side in World War I. By 1922, it all collapsed.
From the ashes arose Turkey, a nation-state straddling the West and the Middle East. For more than 20 years, Turkey has been ruled by Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Once seen as moderate and pro-Western, he is today neo-Ottoman and Islamist.
Six years after the fall of the Ottomans, Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian scholar, founded the Muslim Brotherhood. Its mission: the re-establishment of a new and mightier caliphate.
As a young man, Mr. Khamenei studied the Muslim Brotherhood. He even translated the writings of Sayyid Qutb, a leading thinker of the Egyptian branch, an advocate of revolution and jihad against the West.
But enough history. Let’s talk about the fast-moving events taking place right now.
Last week, President Trump demonstrated both vision and courage. It’s being said that he deceived Mr. Khamenei. But he did so by telling the truth – the last thing the 86-year-old jihadi expected.
Mr. Trump gave him 60 days to agree to a diplomatic solution. On the 61st day, Israel began striking military targets in Iran.
As expected, missiles were soon fired and drones launched from Iran at military and civilian targets in Israel. The Israelis knew this was the price they’d have to pay.
Israel’s advanced air-defense systems, augmented by significant American support, prevented most – but by no means all – Iranian drones and ballistic missiles from reaching their intended victims.
Last Thursday, Mr. Trump said he’d decide “within two weeks whether to go or not to go.” On Saturday, he went.
He utilized B-2s, also known as Stealth Bombers, to drop Massive Ordnance Penetrators on Fordow.
Only the U.S. has such sophisticated planes along with the 30,000-pound steel-encased MOPs which dig deep into the ground before exploding.
Why did he make this tough and fateful decision which so many people predicted he wouldn’t because TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out)?
As far back as his first administration, he recognized how dangerous it would be to let the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, a regime that for 46 years has vowed “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” acquire the world’s most destructive weapons.
Other presidents vowed that Iran’s rulers would not be permitted to have nukes. But other presidents took no serious steps to stop them.
Indeed, President Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action gave the mullahs a smooth path to the doors of the nuclear-weapons club. The deal left a vast nuclear infrastructure in place and imposed only temporary restrictions, most of which would lift overtime.
One of the JCPOA’s “sunset clauses,” set to soon expire, would have allowed Iran to use advanced centrifuges capable of enriching uranium to weapons grade in a matter of weeks. The regime would even have been permitted to continue developing nuclear warheads and delivery systems.
Of course, there were coherent arguments against Mr. Trump going kinetic. For example, it is plausible that agents of Tehran entered the U.S. during the Biden open-border years and have set up sleeper cells that are even now preparing to carry out terrorist attacks.
It was also possible that the MOPs would fail to function as designed. Though wouldn’t we want to know that?
And while there was little chance of the B-2s being shot down – they’re not called Stealth Bombers for nothing, and the Israelis destroyed most if not all of Tehran’s air defenses – wars are always uncertain endeavors.
Against these arguments, President Trump may have contemplated the risks of inaction. What would be required, over the decades ahead, to contain a nuclear-armed regime committed to jihad, and increasingly allied with the anti-American dictators in Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang?
Viewed in this light, defanging Ayatollah Khamenei is unmistakably an America-First and Make-America-Great-Again policy.
Had President Trump decided not to act, I’m convinced the Israelis had a plan to at least degrade Fordow. It’s likely that such a plan would have been high risk, and it probably wouldn’t have set back Tehran’s nuclear program for very long.
On Monday night, Mr. Trump announced a ceasefire. Maybe it will hold, maybe not. Even if it does, expect Mr. Khamenei to attempt to – you should excuse the expression – build back better.
If so, both the U.S. and Israel have the means to bomb back better. Their current leaders have demonstrated that they also have the will.
It is useful, from time to time, to remind one’s enemies of that.
**Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a columnist for the Washington Times, and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.

Trump's 'revenge tax' on other countries could hit U.S.
CBC/June 26, 2025
A controversial tax being proposed by President Donald Trump's administration that could cost Canadians and Canadian businesses billions is also likely to cost the U.S. government, according to an assessment by a non-partisan U.S. congressional office. It is also likely to cost American companies by prompting investors from countries hit with the tax to move investments out of the U.S, according to the assessment. Dubbed the "revenge tax," Section 899 of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act calls for a new withholding tax to be imposed on investment income paid out by American companies to investors who live in countries the U.S. government considers to have unfair or discriminatory taxes. Canada's digital services tax, which hits companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber and Airbnb with a tax on revenue from Canadian users, is among the taxes the U.S. considers discriminatory. Top Canadian officials acknowledge privately that they are concerned by the prospect of Trump's new withholding tax and are closely watching what is happening in Washington — as are Canadian investors, companies, investment advisors and tax lawyers.
Digital services tax in crosshairs
Federal Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne says he's standing by the tax — which has its first big payment due June 30. "The DST is in force and it's going to be applied," he told reporters on Parliament Hill last week. Two different versions of Section 899 are currently before Congress, but both versions risk hitting Canadians and Canadian companies with a new withholding tax. The version adopted by the House of Representatives would take effect quickly and impose a five per cent withholding tax on things like dividends to Canadians from U.S. companies, adding another five per cent each year to a maximum of 20 per cent.An amendment to that section, currently before the Senate, would delay the tax until 2027 and would top it out at 15 per cent. The Senate has not yet voted on the bill, although it is being pressured by Trump to approve the legislation by July 4, the U.S. national holiday.
A study of Section 899 by the U.S. Congress's non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), which performs a function similar to Canada's Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, predicts that the new tax would initially bring billions into the U.S. Treasury. However, it also predicts those revenues would then start to decline — and that by 2033 or 2034 it would actually lead to a drop in revenue.
The version of Section 899 adopted by the House of Representatives is expected to rake in an estimated $116.3 billion US between 2025 and 2034 for the U.S. Treasury, with $12.5 billion US in 2026 rising to $28.7 billion US in 2027 and $31.8 billion US in 2028.
However, the analysis projects that revenues would then start to decline. By 2033, the withholding tax is projected to cost the U.S. Treasury $4.8 billion US in lost revenue and, by 2034, $8.1 billion US. The amended version of Section 899 is projected to bring in only $52.2 billion US between 2025 and 2034. But by 2034 it too would cost the U.S. government $2.5 billion US in lost revenue.
A source familiar with the JCT's work said its analysis assumes that the U.S. gross national product will remain fixed and foreign laws, like the DST, will not change. What it assumes will change, however, is the behaviour of individuals and companies to avoid the withholding tax. The JCT projects that the reduction in demand for direct and portfolio investment on the part of foreign investors will reduce the value of U.S. assets. In turn, that drop in value will lead to a loss in tax revenue for the U.S. Treasury.
David Macdonald, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says a lot of Canadians will miss out on benefits they're entitled due to mass confusion over the transition from CERB to EI. David Macdonald, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said the JCT's analysis makes a very big assumption — that countries like Canada won't hit back at the U.S. with their own retaliatory taxes. He said the ongoing trade war has shown that Canada is willing to hit back. Should Canada retaliate, Macdonald said the U.S. is more exposed than Canada on the tax front because a lot of American companies operate here. "They make a lot more profits in Canada than Canadian companies make in profits operating in the U.S.," Macdonald said. Macdonald agreed with the JCT's assessment that the withholding tax could prompt an exodus of investment in U.S. securities, predicting that many companies are probably already figuring out ways to hedge their investments. He said this is bad for business and risks damaging the economies of both countries. "Nobody wins a trade war and nobody wins a tax war," said Macdonald.

The Perverse Roots of Muslim Hatred for Dogs
Raymond Ibrahim/The Stream/June 26/2025
If you’ve paid any attention to global headlines, you might have noticed something deeply unsettling: Muslims, as a general trend, often seem to harbor an unusual hostility toward dogs. While the rest of the world hails dogs as “man’s best friend,” in many Islamic societies, they’re treated as filth, vermin, or worse — literal devils.I’ve written about this before (see links below), but in case you’re new to the topic, consider just a few recent developments from the Islamic world:
Dog Deaths, Abuse, and Massacres: A Global Trend
May 2025, UK: A Muslim man running a dog rescue shelter called Save a Paw was arrested after the carcasses of 37 dogs were discovered on his property. His was a cruel scam: accepting dogs from desperate owners who could no longer care for them, charging a fee to rehome them, then simply letting them die.
January 2025, Morocco: In preparation for the 2030 FIFA World Cup, Morocco launched a horrific dog extermination campaign. Reports estimated some three million dogs would be culled from the streets. Slaughter squads were seen clubbing and shooting strays across urban areas.
August 2024, Turkey: Journalist Uzay Bulut warned that a new government law legalizing the removal of stray dogs had effectively turned municipalities into killing machines. Dogs were poisoned, shot, even beheaded by private citizens and city workers alike. Some were even buried alive.
November 2022, Hebron (Palestinian Territories): The city’s mayor publicly offered 20 shekels for every dog killed. Videos circulated of mobs chasing, beating, and killing dogs in the streets.July 2022, Iran: Authorities raided shelters and killed 1,700 dogs taken in by volunteers. One video showed a woman weeping over the lifeless body of a dog she had once saved.Qatar, 2022: Armed gunmen stormed shelters, killing 29 dogs — including puppies — in an incident that caused public outcry on social media. Afghanistan, 2021: When Kabul fell to the Taliban, some 200 dogs at the airport were reportedly abandoned and left to die. This isn’t just a Middle Eastern quirk: it’s systemic, global — and religious. In short, if “in Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” across much of the Islamic world, they’re killing them like rats.
Western Symptoms of the Same Disease
Islamic hostility toward dogs has bled into the West. In the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia, there have been numerous reports of Muslim cab and Uber drivers refusing to transport blind passengers accompanied by seeing-eye dogs — despite such refusals being illegal under disability law. The problem is especially rampant in Britain, the “diversity and inclusion” capital of Europe.
Just a few headlines:
Muslim taxi driver refuses to pick up blind passenger
UK driver fined for refusing guide dog
BBC: Blind man denied taxi
Australian blind woman refused Uber ride
In Muslim-dominated neighborhoods in cities like London, signs have even appeared warning dog walkers to stay away — because “Muslims don’t like dogs.”
So Where Does This Hate Come From?
To understand the roots of this hatred, we must turn to the source of Islamic doctrine: Muhammad. And here, things get bizarre.
According to Islam’s most authoritative hadith collections (Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari), Muhammad not only disapproved of dogs, he called for their extermination.
“Allah’s Messenger ordered us to kill dogs, and we carried out this order so thoroughly that we even killed the dog accompanying a woman from the desert.”
— Sahih Muslim 1572
Eventually, Muhammad softened his stance — limiting the slaughter only to black dogs:
“You should kill the jet-black dog with two spots on the eyes — for it is a devil.”
Keep in mind, these “orders” weren’t carried out with tranquilizers or firearms. This was seventh-century Arabia. These dogs were stoned, stabbed, strangled, or drowned by Muhammad’s zealous followers.
The Puppy That Interrupted the Prophet’s Rendezvous
Why the obsession with killing dogs? One clue lies in a very telling hadith from Sahih Muslim. One night, Muhammad was expecting a visit from the angel Gabriel. The prophet waited and waited —but Gabriel never came.
Frustrated, he noticed a puppy under his bed. Upon removing the dog, Gabriel finally appeared and explained that angels do not enter homes with dogs. Compare this to the Bible: Angels never hesitate to appear among animals. In Mark 1:13, Jesus was “with the wild animals,” and “angels attended him.” In Luke 2, angels appeared to shepherds surrounded by flocks. In Numbers 22, a donkey sees an angel before a prophet does.
Why, then, does an all-powerful angel flee from a puppy?
Enter Dihyah al-Kalbi
This is where things take an even stranger turn.
Muhammad had a close companion, Dihyah al-Kalbi, known throughout Arabia for his striking beauty. Several hadiths record that Gabriel would appear in the form of Dihyah during his late “visits” to Muhammad. In one telling case, Muhammad’s wife saw Dihyah arriving late at night, assumed it was him — but Muhammad insisted it was Gabriel. So let’s connect the dots, as many ex-Muslims in the Arab world have. According to them, Muhammad and Dihyah were engaged in a secret homosexual relationship. To disguise their late night rendezvouses, whenever Dihyah showed up and was seen by someone, Muhammad insisted it was actually “Gabriel” in disguise. This explains a lot. Why would an angel need to “borrow” a man’s face? Why Dihyah, every time? And more importantly — why would a dog prevent this angel from entering Muhammad’s house? Because, critics say, Dihyah didn’t want to be barked at and exposed during a nighttime tryst. The dog might alert neighbors. So “Gabriel” stayed away until the puppy was removed. Once Muhammad pieced it together, the easiest solution? Ban dogs. Declare them devils. Order their killing.
And so it began.
The Legacy of the Dog Ban
Nearly 1,400 years later, Muslims are still taught that angels won’t enter a house with a dog — and that black dogs are literally possessed. In a fatwa on the widely respected Islamic site Islam Q&A, we find this: “We must ensure that Muslims continue to be averse to dogs … even amidst what non-Muslims are used to doing … And Allah knows best.”In other words: even if you’re living in the West, surrounded by dog-loving culture, stay vigilant. Resist assimilation. Do not start liking dogs. Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic, and Moral Issues of Our Day.
Even worse, because this topic is taboo, causing few in the West to understand it, the West remains complicit in this cruelty. According to one report, the U.S. government spends millions in taxpayer money to train bomb-sniffing dogs — then gifts them to Arab regimes like Bahrain, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Morocco, which have a history of killing or abusing dogs.
A Final, Diabolical Interpretation
There’s one final — and darker — theory. Some believe Gabriel wasn’t an angel at all, but a fallen angel, a demon — or even Satan. This would explain his aversion to dogs. Many cultures (including Christian ones) believe dogs can sense and bark at evil spirits.
If Gabriel truly feared dogs, maybe it’s because they saw him for what he was.And just to twist the knife: Dihyah’s tribal name, Kalbi, literally means “dog.”So now you know. The Islamic world’s hatred for dogs isn’t just cultural, or coincidental. It’s foundational. It’s theological. And it’s tragic. **Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

AI disruption is real — and so are the opportunities
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/June 26, 2025
Artificial intelligence has become a powerful and visible force that is rapidly transforming how work is done across all industries, job categories and economic levels. From factory floors to corporate boardrooms, AI is automating tasks, shifting responsibilities and even altering the definition of entire professions. What began as a tool to enhance productivity has now evolved into a disruptive presence that is challenging the foundational structures of modern employment. In the industrial and blue-collar sectors, AI is driving dramatic changes that were once thought to be decades away. Smart robots and AI-driven machinery are taking on tasks once carried out by humans — such as quality control, equipment monitoring and even basic assembly. Warehouses and fulfillment centers like those operated by Amazon now rely on automated systems not just to move goods, but to predict inventory levels, route shipments more efficiently and even communicate with customer service systems.These developments do not simply reduce the number of people needed; they also reduce the need for human decision-making in day-to-day operations. What is especially striking is that these technological advancements were not introduced gradually over a generation — they have arrived and taken hold within just a few years.White-collar professions are undergoing their own revolution. Traditionally thought of as insulated from automation, jobs in finance, law, marketing and administration are now increasingly being augmented — or even replaced — by AI tools. Companies are using natural language processing models to write legal documents, analyze spreadsheets, draft marketing campaigns and even screen job candidates.
Many organizations are choosing to redeploy human workers to more valuable, customer-facing or analytical positions
For example, customer service centers have begun deploying conversational AI agents capable of resolving complex inquiries without any human intervention. AI is not merely a background support system anymore — it is becoming the face of many services.
Large corporations like IBM and BT have announced the elimination of thousands of white-collar roles, explaining that AI systems can now perform certain functions faster, more accurately and at a lower cost than humans. Yet the story is not solely about loss. New roles are emerging in the shadows of the old ones. The rise of AI has created an entirely new category of employment — roles that would have sounded strange just a few years ago. Jobs such as AI prompt engineers, data annotation specialists, algorithmic auditors and machine learning operations managers are now being listed alongside traditional career paths. Major institutions like the US army and Carnegie Mellon University have launched programs to train “AI technicians” — a sign that the need for skilled personnel to manage, interpret and maintain AI systems is already pressing. This is a fundamental shift. Whereas previous waves of automation might have displaced workers and then paused, AI is creating a cycle of destruction and regeneration that is still accelerating. The broader implications for the global workforce are profound. As AI continues to mature, it is expected to impact nearly every economic sector — altering not just which jobs are available, but also what those jobs demand in terms of skill, knowledge and mindset. A growing body of research suggests that AI’s reach will be both wide and deep. In fields like finance, healthcare, legal services, transport, education and manufacturing, AI is already altering employment patterns. Companies are rethinking job descriptions, team structures and even organizational hierarchies. Where once a financial analyst might have spent hours poring over spreadsheets to detect market patterns, AI models can now generate predictive analytics in seconds — leaving the analyst to focus on interpreting results and providing strategic recommendations.The jobs most vulnerable to elimination are those that involve repetitive, rules-based tasks, such as data entry, routine customer service and basic accounting. Yet, even in these areas, AI’s role is not absolute. Many organizations are choosing to redeploy human workers to more valuable, customer-facing or analytical positions.
In healthcare, for example, AI handles the complexities of insurance billing and coding, allowing nurses and administrative staff to focus on patient engagement. Meanwhile, diagnostic tools powered by machine learning assist radiologists in identifying diseases, helping to reduce errors and accelerate treatment decisions. These technologies do not replace the radiologist — they empower them to be faster and more accurate.
This transformation also affects skill requirements. A report published by the World Economic Forum in January projects that more than 90 million jobs may be displaced by 2030, but 170 million new roles will be created — many of which will require a blend of technical and human-centric capabilities. Increasingly, workers must be comfortable working alongside AI systems, interpreting their outputs and making ethical decisions based on data-driven suggestions. It is no longer enough to be good at a job; workers must understand how to complement intelligent systems that are better, faster and always learning.
The pressure to adapt extends beyond individuals. Employers, educators and policymakers all share responsibility in preparing society for the AI era. Businesses that invest in upskilling their workforce are not just avoiding layoffs — they are future-proofing their organizations. Workers who receive on-the-job training in AI applications, cybersecurity, digital literacy and analytics are better equipped to contribute to innovation and long-term growth. Firms that fail to provide such opportunities risk not just employee dissatisfaction, but a dangerous decline in competitiveness.
Without bold action, the AI revolution risks deepening inequality and creating a new underclass of the digitally unprepared. Educators are also being called upon to redefine their missions. Traditional four-year degrees may no longer be the optimal path for many careers. Instead, micro-credentials, certificate programs and short-term skill-building initiatives are becoming more valuable and relevant. Schools, colleges and vocational institutes must prepare students not just to find a job, but to thrive in a career landscape where jobs and industries are in a constant state of flux. The education system must prioritize flexibility, interdisciplinary learning and the ability to work effectively with AI systems. For policymakers, the stakes are even higher. The challenge of managing a workforce in transition goes beyond education or employment — it touches the core of economic stability and social equity. Governments must think holistically. They must consider policies that provide a safety net for displaced workers, while also incentivizing businesses to reskill rather than fire. Investments in public-private partnerships, lifelong learning and inclusive digital infrastructure are not luxuries — they are necessities. Without bold, coordinated action, the AI revolution risks deepening inequality and creating a new underclass of the digitally unprepared.
While the changes may seem daunting, individuals can take meaningful steps to ensure they thrive in an AI-driven economy. The first and most important is to embrace lifelong learning. Workers who continually update their skills — especially in areas like AI literacy, data analytics, cybersecurity and cloud platforms — will remain competitive. Those who understand how to work with, supervise and evaluate AI tools will be indispensable in organizations that are navigating complex digital transformations. In addition to technical skills, human qualities are becoming more valuable than ever. Emotional intelligence, creativity, critical thinking and adaptability are now considered essential competencies. Unlike machines, humans can understand context, navigate ambiguity and build trust — qualities that are vital in leadership, negotiation and team collaboration. A person who can combine digital fluency with interpersonal strength will always have a place in the future workplace.There are also practical actions people can take. Enroll in courses that teach AI tools and digital workflows. Participate in industry-specific webinars or boot camps that explain how AI is being used in your field. Join professional networks or online forums where people discuss real-world applications of AI and share resources. Seek mentorship from colleagues who are already working with these tools. Most importantly, remain curious and open to change. The willingness to experiment with new tools, learn from failure and adapt quickly will be far more valuable than any static credential.AI is reshaping the world of work at a breathtaking pace. It is automating the mundane, augmenting the complex and redefining what it means to be employed. The disruptions are real, but so are the opportunities. To meet this moment, we must act with urgency, vision and a commitment to inclusive progress. This is not the time to resist change — it is the time to lead it. The future of work will not be dictated by machines, but by how well we as a society rise to the challenge of reinventing ourselves.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian American political scientist. X: @Dr_Rafizadeh

US is at war with Iran — and with itself
Nadim Shehadi/Arab News/June 26, 2025
Forget about the war with Iran for a moment. The conflict inside the US, with universities, foreign students, immigrants, and the polarization between interventionists and isolationists, may have far more impact on the country’s future as a world power or on the empire it has built itself up to be in the 20th century. In this conflict, the US is at war with itself and has much to lose. When the dust settles, what will matter is whether what the US achieved through war can be preserved in times of peace. We have seen how that failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, when after a military victory and occupation, the US did not succeed in creating a local government that could control the country as its ally. For an empire, military power is important for expansion, but empires consolidate their control by recruitment.
Former empires controlled vast territories with very few people because they could co-opt the locals who then ruled on their behalf. Romans ruled most of the known world for almost a millennium because the conquered could become Romans, absorbing the culture and language and serving the empire. Some emperors, such as Septimius Severus and Philip the Arab, were from Carthage or the town of Shahba in the Roman province of Arabia, now in Syria. The British in India ruled over tens of millions with tens of thousands, incorporating officials, administrators and the military. Several early Ottoman grand viziers were also originally recruited as slave boys in the Balkan provinces, such as Serbia and Croatia, and rose through the ranks both through meritocracy and by joining Sufi religious orders. The empire that America built is ruled by global corporations and cultural influence through technology, education, innovation and lifestyle. You know you have landed in one of its provinces from the signs in the streets, the way people dress and, to a certain extent, what can loosely be described as American values. It is a system that anyone can join and become part of. Immigrants become Americans in ways that they can never become Chinese or Russian. When the dust settles, what will matter is whether what the US achieved through war can be preserved in times of peace
America spread its influence through education, immigration and its belief in a universal mission to uphold and preserve American values of freedom, democracy and human rights. This universalism is deeply rooted in puritan beliefs and emphasizes education and equality among people as a model — the city upon a hill that was meant to be a model for all nations. These are the three pillars of American soft power. America was always a reluctant empire. After all, it revolted against the British Empire and is composed of a population that left Europe to create a free and egalitarian society. So, the pendulum swings between interventionism and isolationism, with one administration dismantling what the previous one achieved. I lived in the US for seven years and barely began to understand the complexity of its society. But then again, I am also Lebanese and, believe me, I can recognize acute and toxic polarization when I see it. I am not sure if the Trump phenomenon is behind the polarization of the country, whether it is a symptom of it or if it is a kind of backlash against a system that has become so rigid that half the country feels alienated by it. The result is what we have now — a feeling that the country is imploding under the tension of extreme polarization, which future historians will probably describe far better than I can.Symptoms of the American malaise are obvious: complicated phenomena like the conflict between the Trump administration and universities such as Harvard, together with the protests in California about immigration policies. America has also proved to be an unreliable ally when each administration reverses the policies of its predecessors.
When foreign students are seen as a threat to the US, it means that the country is losing confidence in itself, its cultural values and recruiting power. An experience of living and studying in the US should be seen as producing assets to America and a threat to students’ own strict societies if, say, they come from China, Russia or Iran. Even when they protest against the US itself, these foreign students are learning that protests are possible and realize that they are not possible at home. They are becoming American.
US power is challenged by China and its BRICS allies, but America has the upper hand as long as students choose it for education. It is also absurd to think that the protests in California are directed against the application of immigration laws. It is precisely because the US is a country that is governed by the rule of law that it attracts immigrants, especially those escaping the rule of drug cartels and failed states in Latin America. If faith in the rule of law is no longer there, and immigrants are no longer welcome, then this is far more dangerous to what America stands for.
Silicon Valley, which produced many of the leaders of the tech industry, was also part of that recruitment ability. The brightest and most creative, whether products of Syrian, Indian or South African immigration, all became part of America’s empire, together with countless executives of American companies and banks. In occupied Iraq, the US lost its alliances among both Shiite and Sunni because it proved to be an unreliable ally when President Barack Obama fixed a date for withdrawal as an election campaign promise. The Iraqi Shiites were eventually recruited by Iran, which gained more control in the country. The Sunnis also felt abandoned after Sunni tribes had worked with the Bush administration to fight Al-Qaeda in the north. Afghanistan is another story. American power is challenged by China and its BRICS allies, but America has the upper hand as long as students choose it for education. Every emigrant wants to become American and its allies will not worry that the next administration will reverse policies and abandon them. In the war with Iran, these are battles that cannot be lost and that will affect the outcome as much as, if not more than, the military operations.
**Nadim Shehadi is an economist and political adviser. X: @Confusezeus

Selected Twitters For Today June 26/2025
Ahmad El Chaara Is Al Julani & Will neve r Change
How did people come to believe that this terrorist is now a good person?
https://x.com/i/status/1937962799541407872

Eastern_christians
https://x.com/i/status/1938156817177067532
A mother cries over her martyred son, saying through tears, “He left to Jesus.” Talk about the Christians in Syria

Reza Pahlavi
https://x.com/i/status/1938187656200147154

This is our Berlin wall moment.
We stand at a crossroads. One road leads to bloodshed and chaos. The other—to a peaceful and democratic transition. The difference in these two roads depends on one factor alone: whether the current regime in Iran is allowed to survive.

Fady Moẓaya
We can claim Geo Historical Lebanon / Phoenicia from Amanus to Askelon once we admit the ethnocide that has been going on since the 1969 Arab takeover of our country, and we criminalize every link to ANY other nation, including Arabs, Israelis,Turkish and Iranians.

Sara El-Yafi
https://x.com/i/status/1937862962800164892
In case you were still wondering what ISRAELwants from Lebanon

Zeina Mansour زينا منصور
The left’s alliance with political Islam is rooted in anti-Western sentiment, demonization of Israel,and a narrative that frames the region’s history inseparable from Islamist dominance. This is a methodology of distorting history to manipulate the minds ofMiddle Eastern peoples.

Bechara Gerges
Sara El-Yafi has outlined Israel’s territorial ambitions at length. Assuming everything she stated is entirely accurate, the question remains: beyond diagnosing the issue, what clear and actionable course does she believe Lebanon should pursue?

Hicham Bou Nassif
George: Israel has no territorial ambitions in Lebanon. I am saying this as an academic who has been working on the archives of the Lebanese civil war, including the May 17 agreement, for four years. The extrapolation she made re Weizman's letter is ridiculous.

Beirut007 ܠܒܝܢܙܐ ܟܪܝܣܬܝܐܢ
https://x.com/i/status/1937928781580075208
The sorrow in her eyes moved every person with a shred of humanity
This young girl lost her entire family in the Syrian church explosion ,yet ,somehow some people and even journalists still defend Julani’s gang

Eastern_christians
https://x.com/i/status/1937857776438628593
“Mr. President, declare this day not simply a day of mourning. As Christians, we do not seek pity. Rather, I say it would be appropriate if this day were declared a day of mourning for the government itself.”
— Greek Orthodox Patriarch John X

Ambassador Tom Barrack
@POTUS and HRH Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s historic meeting with President al-Sharaa in May, many transformative steps have taken place in Syria. On behalf of @SecRubio , I had productive meetings today at @KSAMOFA
with HRH @FaisalbinFarhan , which were focused on advancement of those steps that will benefit the Syrian people, the Syrian economy, and the entire region. Grateful to be an emissary for those great leaders.

Eastern_christians
https://x.com/i/status/1938151167600824771
Video footage captured Christian convoys driving through the streets of Syria, honking horns, waving crosses, and chanting with pride. The scenes reflected a strong show of unity, as communities came together in faith and resilience. #Syria #EasternChristians

Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו
Thank you @realDonaldTrump
. I was deeply moved by your heartfelt support for me and your incredible support for Israel and the Jewish people.I look forward to continue working with you to defeat our common enemies, liberate our hostages and quickly expand the circle of peace.

Donald J. Trump  TRUTH POSTS
( Donald J. Trump - Jun 25, 2025, 6:27 PM ET )
BREAKING NEWS…I was shocked to hear that the State of Israel, which has just had one of its Greatest Moments in History, and is strongly led by Bibi Netanyahu, is continuing its ridiculous Witch Hunt against their Great War Time Prime Minister! Bibi and I just went through HELL together, fighting a very tough and brilliant longtime enemy of Israel, Iran, and Bibi could not have been better, sharper, or stronger in his LOVE for the incredible Holy Land. Anybody else would have suffered losses, embarrassment, and chaos! Bibi Netanyahu was a WARRIOR, like perhaps no other Warrior in the History of Israel, and the result was something that nobody thought was possible, a complete elimination of potentially one of the biggest and most powerful Nuclear Weapons anywhere in the World, and it was going to happen, SOON! We were fighting, literally, for the Survival of Israel, and there is nobody in Israel’s History that fought harder or more competently than Bibi Netanyahu. Despite all of this, I just learned that Bibi has been summoned to Court on Monday for the continuation of this long running, (He has been going through this “Horror Show” since May of 2020 – Unheard of! This is the first time a sitting Israeli Prime Minister has ever been on trial.), politically motivated case, “concerning cigars, a Bugs Bunny doll, and numerous other unfair charges” in order to do him great harm. Such a WITCH HUNT, for a man who has given so much, is unthinkable to me. He deserves much better than this, and so does the State of Israel. Bibi Netanyahu’s trial should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a Pardon given to a Great Hero, who has done so much for the State. Perhaps there is no one that I know who could have worked in better harmony with the President of the United States, ME, than Bibi Netanyahu. It was the United States of America that saved Israel, and now it is going to be the United States of America that saves Bibi Netanyahu. THIS TRAVESTY OF “JUSTICE” CAN NOT BE ALLOWED!

henri
@realhzakaria
What is happening at the hands of Al-Julani’s terrorist group against Christians in Syria should serve as a warning and call for vigilance in Mount Lebanon. Al-Julani’s networks are not limited to Syrian territory alone.Remain alert, especially on Sundays, during holidays, and around churches. This terrorist is beginning to show his true face through the rats he has scattered from northern Lebanon to Arsal and deep into Syria.

Dr. David I. Ramadan
What I heard from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs confirms what I’ve been saying for days—using logic & common sense: when 12 bunker-busters hit Fordow, Iran’s #nuclear program is effectively over. The U.S. strike crippled its core reactors.