English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For  May 28/2026
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 14/01-07/:”‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Titles For Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on 27-28 May/2026
There is no hope and no promise from the rulers of Lebanon and its subservient political parties salvation, if it is destined to come, will be through the State of Israel and its army./Elias Bejjani/May 27/2026
Video & Text: The “South Liberation Day” Is a Heresy and a Falsification of History; It Must Be Abolished and Erased from the Memory of Lebanon and the Lebanese/Elias Youssef Bejjani/May 25, 2026
The General Directorate of Civil Defense Mourns Martyr Kamel Zein
The Army Mourns Martyr Trainee Soldier Kamel Marwan Markiz
Lebanese Army Delegation Prepares for Crucial Meetings in Washington
Israeli Army: We Struck Around 550 Targets and More Than 150 Infrastructure Sites Belonging to "The Party"
Israel: We Are Escalating the Pace of Our Operations in Lebanon to Inflict Greater Damage on Hezbollah
Israeli strikes kill 31 in south Lebanon as Israel expands ground operations
Hezbollah says clashed with Israeli troops north of Litani river
Israel issues immediate evacuation warning for South Lebanon residents
Israel's Adraee issues evacuation warning for Tyre and surrounding areas
Lebanese Army recovers soldier's body after Israeli strike near Qaraoun Lake
A race between war and diplomacy: Israel intensifies strikes in Lebanon
Attack on Beirut: Trump-Netanyahu call shapes Israel's next move in Lebanon
'US veto' prohibits Israel from striking Beirut and its southern suburbs
Israel declares most of south Lebanon ‘combat zones’
Israel Seeks To Defeat Hezbollah Again, What Might Be Different this Time?/Seth J. Frantzman/This is Beirut/May 27/2026
Hezbollah’s Constitutional Contradiction/Kaline Antoun/This is Beirut/May 27/2026
Lebanon draws red lines ahead of high-stakes U.S.-Israel military talks/Fares Khashan/Annahar/May 27/2026
Lebanon’s escalating crisis and the weight of external negotiations/Nabil Bou Monsef/Annahar/May 27/2026
Curbing Iran Means an Israel Unfettered in Lebanon/Mark Dubowitz/FDD-Policy Brief/Mat 272/026

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on 27-28 May/2026
Trump says US not satisfied yet on deal with Iran, Rubio notes ‘some’ progress
Trump admin dismisses draft Iran agreement as 'complete fabrication' but claims 'progress' on peace deal
Iran says US commits to ending naval blockade in draft deal; Washington denies
Iran–US tensions escalate amid ceasefire accusations, nuclear talks, and Strait of Hormuz stakes
Iran Guards official says 'low' possibility of renewed war with US
Netherlands deploys minesweeper amid Hormuz contingency planning
Israel kills new chief of Hamas armed wing in Gaza strike
Hamas armed wing confirms leader killed in Gaza strike
Zelenskyy asked Trump for air defense munitions: Letter
Rubio says US cannot allow any Ebola cases to enter the country

Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on 27-28 May/2026
Coexistence as a foundation for stability and resilience/Mohamed Jalal Alrayssi/Annahar/May 27/2026
Yemen between unity’s collapse and regional power struggles/Khairallah Khairallah/Annahar/May 27/2026
Video & Text/The Iran Deal: What Trump Got, What Iran Got, and What Comes Next/Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg/FDD/May 27/2026
Makkah Speaks to the World: Peace in Times of War/Bandar bin Abdul Rahman bin Moammar/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 27/2026
‘The Lebanonization’ of Iraq: A Lesson that Washington Never Learned and that Tehran Mastered/Alaa Shahine Salha/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 27/2026
Selected Face Book & X tweets on 27 May/2026

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on 27-28 May/2026
There is no hope and no promise from the rulers of Lebanon and its subservient political parties salvation, if it is destined to come, will be through the State of Israel and its army.
Elias Bejjani/May 27/2026
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2026/05/154855/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE4KSTqfiVM
What the "Land of the Cedars," the land of holiness and saints, is currently suffering from is not only the Iranian occupation with its debauchery, obscenity, terror, jihadism, hallucinations, delusions, and the culture of death it promotes; rather, the bitter truth that must not be ignored lies also in this: all the rulers of Lebanon and the so called falsely political parties are nothing but diabolical tools operated by the "Party of Satan" via remote control. No president has any authority of his own, and no official exercises his responsibilities. They are merely Trojan horses, stripped of both will and decision-making power, and no hope or promise can be expected from them.
It clearly remains that salvation and liberation as is clear even to the blind—will not come, if it is ordained to come, except by way of the State of Israel and its army. Therefore, to uphold facts and reality, it is the duty of every sovereign Lebanese who realizes that the cancerous "Hezbollah" occupies Lebanon and is destroying it, to thank Israel; because it is executing militarily what the Lebanese lack the capacity to do themselves.
In summary, the actual reality shows us clearly that the evil Iranian terrorist Hezbollah continues to occupy Lebanon; the state is its state, the decision-making is its own, and all institutions are under its command, as it drives rulers and politicians with a whip. It is a bitter and shocking truth, yet it is the very reality that Lebanon lives and the Lebanese endure.

Video & Text: The “South Liberation Day” Is a Heresy and a Falsification of History; It Must Be Abolished and Erased from the Memory of Lebanon and the Lebanese
Elias Youssef Bejjani/May 25, 2026
“Woe to you, destroyer, you who have not been destroyed! Woe to you, betrayer, you who have not been betrayed! When you stop destroying, you will be destroyed; when you stop betraying, you will be betrayed.” (Isaiah 33:01)
May 25, 2000, was a pivotal moment in the history of South Lebanon—or so it seemed. The Israeli army withdrew, fulfilling a campaign promise made by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. However, what followed was not a true liberation. Instead, it was a betrayal resulting from a secret deal between Israel, Iran, and Syria. This arrangement left the Lebanese residents of the southern border zone and their military, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), at the mercy of the Syrian Ba'athist occupation and the Iranian-backed jihadist proxy blasphemously named “Hezbollah.”
While Ehud Barak's electoral promise appeared noble on the surface, it was overshadowed by shady negotiations prior to the withdrawal. Conducted through intermediaries from Germany, Sweden, and Jordan, this secret deal with the dictatorial regimes in Syria and Iran effectively handed South Lebanon and its population over to Hezbollah. The agreement involved dismantling the SLA and locking the border gates with Israel, leaving the local population completely defenseless against Hezbollah's aggression.
Contrary to Hezbollah’s claims, the withdrawal was not a liberation. It was a calculated geopolitical move orchestrated through political hypocrisy and opportunism, rather than genuine emancipation. The official annual celebration of May 25 as “Liberation Day” by the Lebanese state and Hezbollah since the year 2000 is nothing but a charade built on lies, deception, and manipulation.
It is crucial not to overlook a vital historical fact: just days before the Israeli withdrawal, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah openly threatened the residents of South Lebanon through all media outlets. He instilled terror by warning of horrific acts—slaughtering people, slitting throats, ripping open bellies, and gouging out eyes in their own beds. This is exactly what he stated verbatim in the video attached below:
“By Allah, we will enter your homes and slaughter you in your beds. These criminals and traitors face three options: they either leave with the enemy, surrender to the Lebanese judiciary, or be killed after the enemy leaves. After the enemy departs, if you do not leave with them, we are coming to you—not with peace, but with rifles.”
These terrorist threats forced the majority of the border zone residents to flee and seek refuge in Israel. To this day, they remain unjustly branded as traitors and agents, denied their fundamental right to return to their homeland and homes. Furthermore, the role of the Syrian occupation during that era must be acknowledged. The so-called “Liberation Day” was not the result of heroic efforts by Hezbollah, but rather the product of foreign geopolitical deals. The Syrian occupation imposed this false liberation narrative without any concrete basis on the ground. As we reflect on May 25, 2000, we must strip away this facade and recognize the truth behind Hezbollah’s deceptive narrative.
The people of South Lebanon deserve justice, not manipulation and coercion. It is time to expose the dark realities obscured by political agendas and honor the resilience of those who were unjustly abandoned to terrorism. We firmly believe that this so-called “Liberation Day” must be officially abolished and completely erased from the memory of the Lebanese people.
In conclusion, Hezbollah is a criminal, terrorist, and jihadist military division completely subordinate to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—a treasonous Trojan Horse reality that Nasrallah and his mercenary gang frequently boasted about. Operating on Iranian orders, Hezbollah attacked Israel on October 8, 2023, completely bypassing the will and decision-making of the Lebanese state and its people. Consequently, Hezbollah bears full responsibility for the subsequent killing, destruction, and assassinations carried out by Israel.
Despite its resounding military defeat and the assassination of most of its top leadership, Hezbollah continues to hijack Lebanese state decisions. The group is neither truly Lebanese nor a liberator; it does not represent a legitimate Lebanese faction, nor does it legitimately represent the Shiite community in Parliament. Instead, it holds Lebanon and the Shiite community hostage, sacrifices their youth, destroys the South, displaces its residents, and has caused the devastation of dozens of southern towns and villages.
In reality, this Iranian-controlled proxy is a humanitarian, cultural, and national catastrophe that specializes in crime, smuggling, and global mafia operations. There is no salvation for Lebanon without completely dismantling Hezbollah's political, military, cultural, media, and occupational presence.
Therefore, General Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese government, political parties, and leaders across all factions are called upon to speak the truth. They must explicitly label Hezbollah by its criminal, Iranian, and jihadist reality, strip away its false “resistance” status, and actively support the enforcement of all international resolutions and ceasefire agreements. This is the only way to end its military occupation, free the Shiite community from being held hostage, and halt the destruction of their regions. Most importantly, Lebanon must end the state of war with Israel, recognize it, and normalize relations, just as Lebanon does with the rest of the world. Furthermore, it is critical to bar any Hezbollah elements from integrating into the Lebanese Army or security forces, prosecute its remaining leaders, and ban them from political activity. The heresy of endless “dialogue” must stop. The group must be disarmed and its intelligence apparatus dismantled by all means necessary, including force if required. Ultimately, a draft resolution must be submitted to Parliament to officially abolish the lie of “Liberation Day.”

The General Directorate of Civil Defense Mourns Martyr Kamel Zein
Al-Markazia /May 27, 2026 (Translated from Arabic)
The General Directorate of Civil Defense mourned staff member Martyr Kamel Youssef Zein, from the cadre of the Sahmar Organic Center - West Bekaa Regional Department, who was martyred on May 26, 2026, as a result of the Israeli aggression on the town of Qaraoun while performing his humanitarian duty.
According to details, an Israeli airstrike targeted a citizen traveling on a motorcycle near the Qaraoun Dam. Concurrently, Civil Defense member Martyr Kamel Youssef Zein happened to be passing by in his car, accompanied by his family. He immediately stepped out of his vehicle, leaving his family inside, and rushed to assist the wounded person and perform his humanitarian duty in administering first aid. While executing this mission, hostile aircraft launched a second raid on the exact same location, inflicting severe injuries upon the Civil Defense member, who subsequently passed away succumbing to his wounds.
Below is a summary of his life:
Born on December 3, 1972, in Sahmar (West Bekaa District).
Voluntarily joined the General Directorate of Civil Defense on January 2, 2001.
Granted permanent tenure at the General Directorate of Civil Defense on August 25, 2023.
Attended numerous training courses in firefighting, first aid, and rescue operations.
Received multiple commendations and letters of appreciation from the Director General of Civil Defense.
Participated in numerous dangerous and critical missions.
Family Status: Married with 4 children.
The General Directorate of Civil Defense, while bowing in reverence before the sacrifices of its righteous martyrs, affirms that its personnel will remain true to their pledge to fulfill their humanitarian mission regardless of the sacrifices. We pray to God to cover him with His vast mercy, grant him a place in His spacious paradise, and inspire us, his family, and his colleagues with patience and solace.

The Army Mourns Martyr Trainee Soldier Kamel Marwan Markiz
Nidaa Al-Watan/May 27, 2026 (Translated from Arabic)
Martyr Trainee Soldier Kamel Marwan Markiz
The Army Command – Directorate of Orientation mourns Trainee Soldier Kamel Marwan Markiz, who was martyred on May 27, 2026, after being targeted by a hostile Israeli airstrike on the Kfar Remen – Al-Khardali road.
Below is a summary of the martyr's life:
Born on April 10, 2001, in Taalabaya – Zahle.
Recipient of commendations from the Army Commander General on several occasions.
Family Status: Single.
(Funeral arrangements will be determined later).

Lebanese Army Delegation Prepares for Crucial Meetings in Washington
Al-Markazia /May 27, 2026
Information obtained by MTV reported that the Lebanese technical military delegation headed yesterday, Tuesday, to the United States after meeting with President Joseph Aoun and Army Commander Rudolf Heikal, where they received the necessary directives. The delegation is scheduled to meet today with an American delegation in preparation for Friday's meetings.

Israeli Army: We Struck Around 550 Targets and More Than 150 Infrastructure Sites Belonging to "The Party"
Al-Markazia/May 27, 2026 (Translated from Arabic)
The spokesperson for the Israeli army, Avichay Adraee [Note: The text mentions Ella Waweya], announced that "the Israeli army is attacking military buildings, headquarters, and launch sites in the Bekaa, and since the beginning of the week, around 550 targets belonging to the Hezbollah organization in Lebanon have been attacked."
She stated: "Throughout the day (Wednesday), the Israeli army attacked military buildings, headquarters, and launch sites used by the Hezbollah organization in the Bekaa region and several areas in southern Lebanon." She concluded: "Attacks on headquarters in the Tyre region are also continuing at this time."
[https://twitter.com/i/status/2059679999683125736](https://twitter.com/i/status/2059679999683125736)
In a previous post on the "X" platform, Ella Waweya wrote: "In Tyre, Nabatieh, and the Bekaa, the Defense Forces have attacked more than 150 terrorist infrastructure sites and operatives belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization over the past twenty-four hours."
She added: "The Defense Forces continue to attack terrorist infrastructure and operatives belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization."
[https://twitter.com/i/status/2059582261402456304](https://twitter.com/i/status/2059582261402456304)

Israel: We Are Escalating the Pace of Our Operations in Lebanon to Inflict Greater Damage on Hezbollah
Riyadh - Al-Arabiya.net/May 27, 2026 (Translated from Arabic)
Israeli Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir announced on Wednesday that Israel is escalating the pace of its operations in Lebanon to inflict greater damage on Hezbollah, following the military's warning to residents of southern Lebanon that areas located south of the Zahrani River—about forty kilometers from the border between Israel and Lebanon—are considered a "combat zone." He also stated in a video recording during a ceremony receiving a new supply aircraft for the Air Force: "This operation is being executed with precision, on all fronts, by air and by land, with responsibility and determination to confront an enemy that has been severely weakened and disrupted." He continued, stating that "Hezbollah directs broad threats against us, most notably explosive drones," pledging to continue "relentless efforts to exact a heavy price from the enemy, whether on the frontlines or deep within."This came after the Israeli army requested residents of southern Lebanon to leave their homes, expanding the scope of its military operations against Hezbollah. The army stated in a declaration on Wednesday that it would use "extreme force" against the group.
The First Warning
This marks the first warning since the ceasefire agreement entered into force on April 17, and comes amid a growing escalation in confrontations between Israel and Hezbollah, with Israeli forces crossing the Litani River and approaching the southern city of Nabatieh.
This follows a day of clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah along a strategic river in southern Lebanon, as Israeli forces advanced northward, days before scheduled talks in Washington between Lebanese and Israeli delegations. Earlier, the Israeli army had called on residents of the cities of Nabatieh and Tyre, located in southern Lebanon along the Mediterranean coast, to leave areas it claimed contained military sites and Hezbollah personnel. Israel vowed this week to escalate its operations in Lebanon, coinciding with both countries preparing to engage in new talks in Washington, which will be initiated by military delegations on Friday and completed by a round of negotiations between representatives of the two countries on June 2 and 3.

Israeli strikes kill 31 in south Lebanon as Israel expands ground operations
Agence France Presse/May 27/2026
Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon killed 31 people on Tuesday, the Lebanese health ministry said, as Israel said it was intensifying attacks despite a truce in its war with Hezbollah. The Iran-backed group meanwhile said it faced Israeli troops entering the southern town of Zawtar al-Sharqiyeh, as the Israeli military said it was expanding its ground operations. In a statement, the health ministry said 31 people, including at least four children and three women, were killed in attacks and 40 wounded. Fourteen were killed in Burj al-Shamali near Tyre, five in Kawthariyat al-Riz, four in Habboush, six in Maarakeh and two in Salaa. An AFP correspondent in the southern city of Nabatieh reported airstrikes following an unprecedented warning on the city and saw plumes of smoke rising from various locations within it. Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said one of the strikes hit the vicinity of a public hospital, causing "significant damage to the hospital's departments." The Israeli military issued evacuation warnings for at least 50 southern and eastern towns and villages on Tuesday, including Nabatieh city. An Israeli military official told AFP that troops had begun operating beyond the Israel-announced "Yellow Line" in south Lebanon, which runs around 10 kilometers (six miles) deep inside Lebanese territory. As Israel's operations moved deeper into south Lebanon, Hezbollah said its fighters confronted Israeli troops trying to advance into a town that overlooks Nabatieh city on Tuesday. Hezbollah said in a statement that its fighters repelled an Israeli force early Tuesday that had moved toward Zawtar al-Sharqiyeh after airstrikes and heavy artillery fire. The group claimed responsibility for a series of drone and rocket fires on Israeli forces in the town, and said it engaged directly with them.
In eastern Lebanon, the health ministry said "yesterday's Israeli enemy airstrike on the town of Mashghara in West Bekaa resulted in a preliminary toll of 11 martyrs, including two girls and a woman, and 15 wounded, including a child".Rescuers were still clearing the rubble in the eastern town, the ministry added. The Israeli military in a statement said it launched "several strikes... in the area of Mashghara" on "Hezbollah infrastructure sites where terrorists' activity was identified". Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) also reported several Israeli strikes across the south and east. A strike on Srifa in the south killed a rescuer and wounded two others from the Risala Scouts association, linked to the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement, according to the health ministry, raising the rescuer death toll in the war to 121.
Drone attacks
Several strikes also hit near Lebanon's largest dam in the Litani river's Qaraoun lake in the east.
The Litani River Authority issued a statement warning that "any direct or indirect targeting of the Qaraoun Dam or its facilities could lead to catastrophic risks for residents, infrastructure, and vital installations in the areas downstream". It called on authorities to "make the necessary contacts and take the necessary actions at the international and diplomatic levels to protect the Qaraoun Dam... from any attacks". Lebanon's civil defense said one of its rescuers succumbed to his wounds after a double-tap strike on the town of Qaraoun, near the dam, as he was tending to a man hit by a previous attack. The Israeli military said on Tuesday it had bombed more than 100 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon overnight. The Iran-backed movement also claimed drone attacks on an Israeli army barracks in northern Israel on Tuesday.
The Israeli army on Tuesday said it "intercepted several explosive drones launched by the Hezbollah terrorist organization toward Israeli territory". Netanyahu on Tuesday said his country was intensifying operations in Lebanon. "The (Israeli army) is operating with substantial forces on the ground and securing strategically dominant positions. We are reinforcing the security buffer zone in order to protect the communities of northern Israel," he added. U.N. secretary general spokesperson Farhan Haq said on Tuesday that on Monday U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon detected "91 airspace violations, the highest number since the cessation of hostilities came into effect". "Also yesterday, Unifil reported 399 firing incidents attributed to the (Israeli army), and 11 trajectories of projectiles attributed to Hezbollah." Israel has repeatedly bombed Lebanon despite a truce in its war with Hezbollah, saying it is targeting the group, while the latter has claimed several attacks on Israeli positions in southern Lebanon and Northern Israel. Lebanese authorities say more than 3,100 people have been killed by Israeli strikes since March 2, when Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war by attacking Israel in support of its backer Iran.

Hezbollah says clashed with Israeli troops north of Litani river
Agence France Presse/May 27/2026
Hezbollah said its fighters clashed with Israeli forces in a town north of the Litani river on Wednesday, a day after Israel's military said it was expanding its ground operations in the country's south. In a statement, the Iran-backed group said its fighters "clashed with the enemy forces at point-blank range" in the town of Zawtar al-Sharqiyeh, located at the edge of an Israeli-declared "yellow line" in south Lebanon where its soldiers have been operating.

Israel issues immediate evacuation warning for South Lebanon residents
LBCI/May 27/2026Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued an urgent warning to residents across South Lebanon, saying the military would act "with great force" against Hezbollah in response to what it described as repeated violations of the ceasefire agreement. In the statement, residents in South Lebanon were urged to avoid Hezbollah members, facilities, and military equipment, with the army warning that proximity to such sites could put civilians at risk. The warning also advised residents to evacuate toward areas north of the Zahrani River, saying that all locations south of the river are considered active combat zones. It added that the Israeli army does not intend to harm civilians. The statement further accused Hezbollah of "bringing destruction" upon Lebanon and of endangering civilians by operating within populated areas and allegedly using them as cover for military activity.

Israel's Adraee issues evacuation warning for Tyre and surrounding areas
LBCI/May 27/2026
Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued an urgent evacuation warning to residents of the southern Lebanese city of Tyre and nearby camps and neighborhoods, citing "Hezbollah’s violations of the ceasefire and attacks on Israeli territory."
In a statement accompanied by a map, Adraee said the Israeli army would act “with force” against Hezbollah but claimed it did not intend to harm civilians. The warning called on residents to immediately evacuate homes in the designated areas and move north of the Zahrani River. The evacuation order included the areas of Chabriha, Hammadiyeh, Jal al-Bahr, Zoqoq al-Mafdi, El-Buss, Maachouq, Borj El Chmali, Nabaa, Haoush, Rashidieh, and Ain Baal. Adraee warned that anyone located near Hezbollah members, facilities, or military equipment was putting their life at risk, adding that any building allegedly used by Hezbollah for military purposes could become a target. He also cautioned residents against movement south of the Zahrani River, saying such movement could endanger their lives.

Lebanese Army recovers soldier's body after Israeli strike near Qaraoun Lake
LBCI/May 27/2026
The Lebanese Army announced that on Wednesday, an army unit succeeded in recovering the body of a soldier who was killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting the vicinity of his military position near the Qaraoun Lake in western Bekaa. The operation followed ongoing field efforts carried out amid heavy surveillance by Israeli drones. The army said it had been unable to reach the soldier's body the previous day because of continuing security threats and repeated Israeli strikes on the area. According to the statement, the region was subjected to several Israeli airstrikes on May 26, which killed the soldier along with several paramedics who were attempting to carry out a humanitarian mission to evacuate him.

A race between war and diplomacy: Israel intensifies strikes in Lebanon
LBCI/May 27/2026
The security situation from South Lebanon to the Bekaa region is moving toward further escalation, amid what appears to be an Israeli effort to impose new military and political realities on the ground. According to LBCI sources, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has intensified contacts with U.S. officials in an effort to pressure Israel into respecting the ceasefire. The sources said Washington has required Israel to avoid targeting Beirut and its southern suburbs, as well as Lebanese civilian infrastructure, including Beirut's airport. However, they added that the U.S. has simultaneously allowed Israel to carry out what are described as precise, targeted assassinations of Hezbollah leaders, even if they occur in Beirut or its southern suburbs. In South Lebanon and the Bekaa, Washington is reportedly less restrictive, allowing Israel significant operational freedom and an escalation of military activity currently underway. President Aoun, who met with a Lebanese military delegation before its departure to Washington, reiterated the need to prioritize a sustained ceasefire and halt the demolition of southern villages. Lebanese officials continue to question how negotiations can proceed under ongoing military pressure and what they describe as a lack of Israeli compliance with any operational constraints. On the ground, Israel is reportedly attempting to reshape the battlefield through expanded territorial control across three axes. In the eastern sector, Israeli forces advanced from Deir Seryan toward Zawtar El Charqiyeh, reaching the center of the town, while also attempting to impose fire control over Zawtar El Gharbiyeh, Yohmor al-Shaqif, and Arnoun. In the central sector, Israeli forces are said to be seeking fire control over Haddatha and Aaita El Jabal. In the western sector, operations reportedly aim to establish fire dominance over Mazraat Byout El Saiyad, Majdal Zoun, Zibqin, Mansouri, and Qlaileh. The developments reflect what appears to be a race between military escalation and diplomatic efforts ahead of any broader Iranian-American understanding, with the future of a ceasefire in Lebanon still uncertain and subject to ongoing negotiations.

Attack on Beirut: Trump-Netanyahu call shapes Israel's next move in Lebanon
LBCI/May 27/2026
A tense and heated meeting of Israel's security cabinet reportedly descended into shouting as officials debated expanding military operations in Lebanon, amid growing concern over regional escalation and ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations.
During the discussions, U.S. President Donald Trump held a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which Washington reportedly rejected any Israeli attack on Beirut, fearing it could ignite a broader regional conflict and undermine ongoing American-Iranian talks. "We do not want to see destroyed buildings in Beirut," Trump reportedly told Netanyahu, according to an Israeli official who attended the meeting. However, the same official said that Israel received a green light from Washington for limited operations, including assassinations targeting Hezbollah leaders and strikes on infrastructure linked to Hezbollah. At the conclusion of the meeting, Israel's political leadership authorized the army to implement operational plans presented to the cabinet, though those plans reportedly excluded Beirut. Some ministers attending the session viewed the American restrictions as a major blow to Israeli security. Others, including Energy Minister Eli Cohen, reportedly called for ignoring the U.S. limitations altogether. Far-right minister Orit Strook urged consideration of operations that would inflict pain on Lebanon, Hezbollah, and the Lebanese state. Defense Minister Israel Katz responded by arguing that expanding territorial control would be more damaging to Hezbollah, a position reportedly backed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who called for flattening Beirut's southern suburbs. As disagreements over restrictions on Beirut deepen political divisions inside Israel, the Israeli army has continued mobilizing reserve forces and reinforcing border areas with additional military units. The army also announced ongoing efforts to locate Hezbollah drone factories and storage facilities. At the same time, Israel reportedly agreed to purchase protective anti-drone net systems from several European countries to protect not only troops operating in Lebanon but also communities in northern Israel.

'US veto' prohibits Israel from striking Beirut and its southern suburbs
Naharnet/May 27/2026
The reason the Israeli army has not carried out an attack in Beirut and its southern suburbs despite the latest escalation is an "American veto," unnamed sources told Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on Wednesday. Israel's Channel 12 meanwhile reported that "there are behind-the-scenes disagreements between the political and military echelons in Israel regarding managing the escalation in Lebanon." Channel 12 had reported Tuesday that the U.S. had asked Israel on Monday not to attack Beirut and not to "destroy buildings" in it, but an Israeli official said "there is approval for targeted assassinations in Beirut given an operational opportunity."

Israel declares most of south Lebanon ‘combat zones’
AFP/27 May ,2026
Israel on Wednesday declared all areas south of Lebanon’s Zahrani River, which runs roughly 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border, “combat zones” and urged residents to evacuate ahead of strikes against Hezbollah. The first such sweeping warning since an April 17 ceasefire came as Israel’s military launched broad raids on the country’s south and east, and as Hezbollah said its fighters clashed with Israeli forces beyond an Israeli-declared “Yellow Line” in the south. It also came as many Lebanese tried to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. Israel this week vowed to intensify operations in Lebanon and said it was expanding ground operations there, a move that comes ahead of talks on Friday between Lebanese and Israeli military delegations at the Pentagon and a new round of direct negotiations next week aimed at ending the hostilities. “We advise the residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate to the north of the Zahrani River, as all areas south of the river are considered combat zones,” the Israeli military said on social media, warning it would “act against it with great force” against Hezbollah. It had earlier issued evacuation warnings for the southern city of Nabatieh, and swathes of the coastal city of Tyre and surrounding areas. An AFP correspondent said residents from threatened Tyre areas had converged on parts of the city not covered by the warning. Authorities, however, warned that shelters were full and urged people to head to Beirut instead.
‘Yellow Line’
The state-run National News Agency (NNA) later reported strikes on Tyre and its surroundings, as Israel’s army said it was attacking “Hezbollah command centers.”The NNA also reported Israeli strikes elsewhere in the country’s south and in the eastern Bekaa valley, with Israel’s military saying it was hitting “Hezbollah infrastructure sites.”Iran-backed Hezbollah said its fighters “clashed with the enemy forces at point-blank range” in the town of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah, just beyond the Israeli-declared “Yellow Line” in south Lebanon where its troops have been operating. The town is strategically located just six kilometers (four miles) from Nabatieh. An Israeli military official said Tuesday that soldiers had begun operating beyond the “Yellow Line,” which runs around 10 kilometers deep inside Lebanese territory. Lebanon’s health ministry on Wednesday raised the overall death toll since the war erupted on March 2 to 3,269, an increase of 56 compared to a day earlier, which saw heavy Israeli strikes. At the site of a strike in south Lebanon’s Burj al-Shemali, an AFP correspondent saw rescuers carrying a body bag from the rubble, which was littered with items including rugs and cushions. The NNA, citing the mayor, said 15 people were killed in Tuesday’s strike.
West Bekaa
After Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war with rocket fire at Israel in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Israel has repeatedly struck Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa valley and warned residents to evacuate. Strikes have intensified in recent days, focusing on the West Bekaa town of Mashghara. Mayor Iskandar Barakeh expressed worry that the West Bekaa region would become a further scene of confrontations between Israel and Hezbollah. The area links south Lebanon with Hezbollah strongholds in the northern Bekaa and is a key supply route for the group. Lebanese military expert Hassan Jouni told AFP that the West Bekaa “is a necessary corridor for Hezbollah members if they want to move between the Bekaa and the south” and could become the focus of further Israeli strikes. He said Israeli operations might soon expand to “target the north Bekaa intensively or even Beirut’s southern suburbs,” both areas that have been relatively spared since the ceasefire. A military delegation comprising six Lebanese officers, headed by the army’s director of operations Georges Rizkallah, will participate in the talks at the Pentagon on Friday. A military source told AFP the delegation will “emphasize the need for a ceasefire, and will present the army’s plan for a state weapons monopoly and the extension of state authority across the country.”

Israel Seeks To Defeat Hezbollah Again, What Might Be Different this Time?
Seth J. Frantzman/This is Beirut/May 27/2026
Facing an increasingly deadly threat from Hezbollah’s first-person view (FPV) drones, Israel is back on the offensive in Lebanon. Since the night of May 25, the Israel Defense Forces have launched large-scale airstrikes across southern Lebanon while pressing ground advances. As Israel once again turns to military force, amid U.S.-Iran talks, the question is what might change this time. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on May 26 that a national effort was underway to counter Hezbollah’s fiber-optic FPV drones. He also vowed that “more was to come” against the militia amid intensifying fighting in southern Lebanon. The threat posed by the drones has grown since Israel scaled back military operations in Lebanon following the April 17, 2026 ceasefire between Beirut and Jerusalem. In Israel, the reduction in military activity was widely perceived as linked to the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, raising concerns that it could tie the hands of the IDF. Hezbollah, for its part, seized the opportunity to experiment with new drone technology.
The IDF is returning to the offensive in Lebanon after a series of campaigns since Hezbollah opened a front against Israel following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attacks. Israel was cautious in the first year of this conflict, focusing instead on Gaza while evacuating residents from northern communities near the border with Lebanon. This essentially let Hezbollah dictate the tempo of the conflict.
In September 2024, Israel changed the equation of the conflict and launched a widescale military campaign against Hezbollah. The ensuing November 27, 2024 ceasefire reduced fighting while Hezbollah rebuilt its military capacities. The cycle of violence intensified on March 2, 2026, after Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran. Now, Hezbollah and Israel are potentially back on a path toward a wider battle. Israel faces many challenges in Lebanon today. The Trump administration is engaged in negotiations with Iran, which has called for a comprehensive ceasefire in Lebanon. Regional powers involved in this diplomatic track, including Pakistan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, are fine with pressuring Israel to end its fighting in Lebanon to help facilitate a deal with Iran. As such, the IDF may have a timetable imposed on its operations in Lebanon. Israel’s current position in Lebanon differs significantly from the past, as nearly 1,000 days of war have brought about major shifts on the ground. The IDF, while it has advanced slowly, has forced the evacuation of dozens of Lebanese villages. The Israeli military has razed Shiite-populated villages near the border as part of a policy modeled on its Gaza campaign. This strategy aims to deny terrorists the ability to use homes and tunnels to attack Israel, a threat that is all too real.
When I visited northern Israeli communities along the Lebanese border in October 2023, I saw a van in Shtula that had been struck by a Hezbollah anti-tank guided missile. Houses on the Lebanese side of the border had direct line-of-sight into Israel. All Hezbollah had to do was hide in a building and launch a missile from a second-floor window.
In mid-May 2026, I was back along Israel’s northern border, this time in Rosh HaNikra. At the time, with Israel’s ceasefire with Lebanon supposedly reducing fighting, some tourists returned to take in views of the beautiful Mediterranean from the heights near Rosh HaNikra. Days later, a Hezbollah FPV drone struck the area. This is how Hezbollah has changed the battlefield. These fiber-optic guided drones cannot be jammed. Instead, the IDF has taken to improvising nets, as was done in Ukraine, to stop the explosive drones. As the IDF searches for a technological solution to this deadly challenge, the military’s new offensive in Lebanon is supposed to roll back the threat of Hezbollah. Netanyahu on May 26 briefed Israel’s security cabinet on these efforts.
"We are deepening our operation in Lebanon. The IDF is operating with large forces on the ground and seizing dominant terrain. We are fortifying the security zone to protect the communities of the north,” he said. He had vowed the day before to put the proverbial pedal to the metal to crush Hezbollah. However, the Israeli public has heard these claims before, and Hezbollah’s threats have remained. What might change this time?
Hezbollah’s drone threats can be rolled back by pushing more deeply into Lebanon. However, Lebanon’s government will need to step up. On May 25, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio slammed Hezbollah’s defiance of Lebanese state authorities.
“Hezbollah has ignored repeated calls from the legitimate government of Lebanon to cease its attacks and respect a ceasefire,” Rubio said. He added that the militia’s recent attacks were part of a “deliberate campaign to destabilize the country and maintain its power at the expense of the future of the Lebanese people.”It’s clear now that Hezbollah may be trying to goad Israel into a wider operation. This could dovetail with Hezbollah’s efforts to weaken the Lebanese government or possibly even try to overthrow it. At the same time, Hezbollah may seek to draw Israel into escalation in a bid to sabotage the U.S.-mediated Lebanon-Israel talks while portraying itself as “defending” Lebanon. The IDF has so far been unable to eliminate Hezbollah through force. Airstrikes alone have not been enough to get rid of the militia. Years of fighting have made this clear. Can the U.S. and other stakeholders put forward a path for Lebanon to disarm the group? Such an effort could start with disarmament in specific geographic areas, with achievable goals that could be verified and certified. If a system of disarmament in one region of Lebanon could be shown to work, it could create incentives to apply the model elsewhere. Hezbollah will likely look again to Iran for rescue, with Tehran pushing mediators to include Lebanon in any new regional deal. The group wants to preserve just enough firepower to be able to drag Israel into renewed fighting and sabotage any positive change in Beirut.

Hezbollah’s Constitutional Contradiction
Kaline Antoun/This is Beirut/May 27/2026
In a statement issued on the centennial of the Lebanese Constitution, Hezbollah presented itself Monday as a defender of constitutional legitimacy, national unity, and Lebanese sovereignty, while simultaneously reaffirming that armed “resistance” remains a protected and legitimate right beyond any governmental decision. The statement repeatedly called for adherence to the Constitution “more than ever,” while rejecting “foreign tutelage,” federalism, and “disguised separation projects.” This rhetoric comes at a moment of renewed debate over Hezbollah’s weapons, state sovereignty, and the implementation of the Taif Agreement.  But legal expert and former head of the State Council Choukri Sader told This is Beirut that Hezbollah’s interpretation of the Constitution fundamentally contradicts the constitutional framework governing the Lebanese state itself.
Sader argued that under the Lebanese Constitution, exclusive authority over decisions of war and peace rests solely with the Council of Ministers. “No armed group has the right to independently declare war on a foreign state.”
Moreover, the statement’s repeated references to constitutional legitimacy and the rule of law raise broader questions surrounding Hezbollah’s own legal status within the Lebanese state framework. While the party has been politically represented in parliament and successive governments for decades, Hezbollah did not emerge through the conventional state licensing framework traditionally used for Lebanese political parties. The contradiction is particularly striking as the party invokes the Constitution and state sovereignty while continuing to maintain an armed structure operating outside the Lebanese state’s exclusive authority over military force and decisions of war and peace.
Commitment to the Constitution
In its statement, Hezbollah argued that Lebanon is facing a highly sensitive internal and regional moment that “requires, more than ever, adherence to the Lebanese Constitution.” The party also called for “leaving behind the era of mandates, high commissioners, and foreign tutelage.”
Yet for Sader, moments of regional escalation require stronger adherence to the state, not parallel military decision-making outside its institutions. Sader argued that amid heightened internal and regional tensions, all Lebanese parties should rally around the Constitution and state institutions. Sader argued that Hezbollah is using constitutional rhetoric to justify maintaining an armed structure outside state institutions, warning that allowing any group to independently decide war would undermine the existence of the Lebanese state itself.
War and Peace
Much of Hezbollah’s statement focused on defending what it described as the Lebanese people’s “full right” to defend their land and sovereignty against Israel. The party argued that armed “resistance” against occupation and aggression remains constitutionally legitimate and that no political or governmental authority can revoke what it described as the Lebanese people’s right to defend their land. Sader rejected that argument, stating that “when there is a state, that state possesses exclusive privileges, first and foremost the monopoly over weapons,” he said.
Article 65 of the Lebanese Constitution states that executive authority is vested in the Council of Ministers, which also exercises authority over the armed forces. The same article classifies “war and peace” among the fundamental national issues decided by the Cabinet.
For Sader, this leaves little room for Hezbollah’s constitutional interpretation. “No right supersedes the state’s right to decide war and peace,” he said. “Any military action outside the framework of the state and outside the Constitution cannot be legally justified.”
‘A Final Homeland’
Lebanon was characterized as “a final homeland for all its citizens” in the statement, describing the country as “one land, one people, and one set of institutions.”
However, Sader argued that Hezbollah’s military structure itself undermines the concept of a unified state. “The moment a group independently declares war outside the framework of the state, especially in support of a foreign power, it places itself outside the constitutional order,” he said, in an apparent reference to Hezbollah’s alignment with Iran and its regional military role. The contradiction runs through much of Hezbollah’s statement: a repeated call for full implementation of the Constitution alongside a defense of an armed structure operating independently from the institutions constitutionally tasked with military authority.
Taif, Sectarianism, and State Authority
Hezbollah additionally argued that Lebanon’s sectarian political system “is no longer capable of producing a fair, effective, and stable state,” calling for the implementation of all constitutional reforms outlined in the Taif Agreement, particularly the abolition of political sectarianism.
While the militant group presented itself as advocating for a more equitable and less sectarian state, Hezbollah itself was founded as an Islamist Shiite movement built around a distinct religious and ideological identity tied to the doctrine of Iran’s Islamic Revolution and Wilayat al-Faqih. And like much of Lebanon’s ruling class, it continues to operate within, and benefit from, the country’s sectarian power-sharing structure, despite publicly calling for reforms to transcend it. Sader agreed that Lebanon failed to fully implement the post-war constitutional framework but argued that the responsibility lies with the entire political class, including Hezbollah itself. “We never truly implemented the Constitution,” he said. “Instead, everyone interpreted it according to their own interests.” The Taif Agreement, which amended Lebanon’s Constitution after the civil war, explicitly called for extending state authority over all Lebanese territory and limiting military authority to state institutions. Critics of Hezbollah have long argued that the party’s military wing exists outside that framework despite its political integration into the Lebanese system. Hezbollah’s constitutional centennial statement repeatedly invoked the language of state sovereignty, constitutional legitimacy, and institutional authority while defending the legitimacy of armed resistance beyond the state itself.
“You do not open a state of your own and independently decide war and peace,” he said.

Lebanon draws red lines ahead of high-stakes U.S.-Israel military talks
Fares Khashan/Annahar/May 27/2026
Beirut’s military leadership says no future arrangement is possible without a full Israeli withdrawal and a genuine ceasefire.
The military meeting organized by the U.S. Department of Defense for delegations from the Lebanese and Israeli armies, according to the principles document prepared by the Lebanese army leadership, will merely continue the discussions previously held during the “mechanism” meetings in Naqoura. The Lebanese military institution sees no room for any future arrangements without a genuine ceasefire as a first step and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Early on, Lebanese Army Commander General Rodolphe Haykal rejected, both in form and substance, a proposal publicly put forward by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for the creation of a Lebanese military force tasked with disarming “Hezbollah.” The proposal contradicts the unity of the Lebanese military institution, which cannot accept the existence of different types of brigades assigned according to specific missions.
General Haykal informed the preparatory committee for the Pentagon meeting that the Lebanese army considers it impossible to accept an American-Israeli proposal involving direct coordination between Lebanese military forces on the ground and Israeli military units to address issues that may arise. General Haykal insists that any coordination must take place through the mechanism traditionally followed by the “mechanism” committee established under the 2024 cessation of hostilities agreement. At a minimum, he is open to communication with the Israeli army through the American mediator.
Disagreement on Concepts and Coordination Mechanisms
The deliberations that the military delegations will conduct at the U.S. Department of Defense are an integral part of the core negotiations taking place at the U.S. Department of State. They cannot, in any way, be considered parallel negotiations, as the military track is intended to clarify matters for the political and diplomatic level and provide definitions that would make ceasefire agreements solid and sustainable. Manipulating meanings is what leads each side to accuse the other of violating ceasefire agreements.
A military source involved in these negotiations cites examples highlighting the importance of agreeing on terminology, stressing the need to clearly define what constitutes an “imminent threat.”From Lebanon’s perspective, such a threat would mean that the Israeli army detected, for example, a rocket launcher on Lebanese territory and found that the Lebanese army either refused or failed to confiscate it. If the launcher were being loaded with rockets, an attack could then be justified. According to the source, this has not occurred in the past, as Israel has typically targeted what it considers priorities on its list without taking the surrounding circumstances into account and often without regard for the destruction caused to buildings or the resulting casualties. The Lebanese army believes that this Israeli approach exploits ambiguity in terminology, potentially rendering every ceasefire agreement fragile.
The Lebanese army leadership believes that Israel’s underlying intentions can quickly undermine ceasefire agreements, while better intentions could help prevent potential disasters. A senior military source cites the example of Hezbollah launching six rockets at Israel on the morning of March 2.
According to the source, had Israel allowed the Lebanese army to pursue the launch sites and arrest those responsible, both Lebanon and Israel could have avoided the subsequent war. Following the launch of the six rockets from Lebanon toward Israel, the Lebanese army offered the “mechanism” committee the opportunity to act swiftly, but Israel ignored the Lebanese proposal and chose instead to launch a major military campaign.
According to accounts attributed to Lebanese Army Commander General Rudolf Haikal, it is impossible for Washington to accept this type of Israeli conduct. Lebanon, he argues, cannot be treated as “two Lebanons” — one represented by the state with which negotiations are held, and the other by “Hezbollah,” with which confrontation is pursued. Either the state bears responsibility, or there is no value in negotiations or in considering any form of coordination.
These positions may not satisfy the American and Israeli sides, but they represent the minimum that the army leadership considers necessary to achieve productive and positive outcomes.
Based on this, achieving positive results from the upcoming May 29 meeting may prove extremely difficult, but the talks could help clarify the line between what is possible and what remains unattainable.

Lebanon’s escalating crisis and the weight of external negotiations
Nabil Bou Monsef/Annahar/May 27/2026
Amid rising regional tensions and internal political confrontation, Lebanon’s evolving negotiations with Israel and the United States are increasingly seen as a pivotal test of sovereignty, deterrence, and the balance of power in the region.
It has become almost impossible to dedicate the days of the year, across their entirety, to commemorating here or there the tragedies of wars, crises, and successive events in Lebanon over the last six decades, given the dramatic events that have marked Lebanon’s fate and have not yet come to an end. Nevertheless, it seems illogical to ignore the deadly interconnection in the “doctrine” of “Hezbollah” between igniting catastrophic and absurd arenas of confrontation with Israel, in order to serve its Iranian regional role, and igniting arenas of internal strife in order to implement a strategy of intimidating “all others” without exception.
The standards of the party’s “success” in this do not apply to the rest of the repeated catastrophic experiences that witnessed this linkage, even if it has succeeded solely in keeping Lebanon as a pawn tied to its Iranian connections, before and after the fall of the other regional ally, the Assad regime in Syria.
However, what is happening in the current phase reveals something that many of those who claim deep knowledge of the party’s secrets cannot say they had been sufficiently aware of discovering, namely that the party, which is based on a strategy driven by the boasting of terror, intimidation, and domination, is in its core possessed by a fear of the principle and course of direct negotiations undertaken by the Lebanese state, a fear far more intense than its fear of disarmament.
In any case, regardless of hasty expectations of decisive outcomes in favor of the Lebanese state and the independence of the Lebanese direct negotiation track with Israel under U.S. administration, and despite all concerns about possible disappointments or waves of rise and fall in the upcoming negotiation rounds in Washington, Hezbollah, in the fiery inferno it has recently ignited and in its increased justification for Israel to expand the war, has left no room to expose its fear of negotiations as a weapon threatening it with “ultimate endings.”
This is reflected in that dangerous impulsiveness in invoking a tone of intimidation about killing or confronting everything that may emerge from the negotiations, people and reality alike, to the extent of a reckless evocation of the image of the party’s terrorism in the May 7 events, as well as threats of assassinations, not to mention the worst misstep of threatening to topple the government in the streets.
All of this coincides with the party’s rush to escalate confrontations in the south and its boasting of targeting northern Israel, to the point of the inevitable outcome of providing the anticipated pretext for a return of intense Israeli war into the heart of the southern suburbs, as if Tehran only feels comfortable with its proxies and instruments when tens and hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Shiites are lined up in scenes of humiliating flight from their homes, towns, and villages, even when Tehran itself may be on the verge of announcing an agreement with the American “great Satan.”In doing so, the “added value” of the Lebanese–Israeli–American negotiations in their independent course becomes increasingly clear in practical terms, more than ever before, even if clouds of doubt and serious concerns rise among many, both Lebanese and non-Lebanese, regarding the direct or indirect consequences of a bad agreement between the Trump administration and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps regime in Iran.
The Lebanese–Israeli–American negotiations, which constituted a decisive step to strip Iran of its dominance over Lebanon, have in practice proven to be the most forceful and effective development against Iran and its arm, to the point of a chaotic and catastrophic breakdown in the conduct of war management by “Hezbollah.” No reasonable person could have imagined the party igniting all these overlapping battles at once, coupled with an increasingly tense and offensive campaign against the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, at this timing, within this framework, and under these circumstances, were it not for something called panic.

Curbing Iran Means an Israel Unfettered in Lebanon
Mark Dubowitz/FDD-Policy Brief/Mat 272/026
Amid the ongoing, fitful diplomacy to end the war between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, the conflict’s second front, between Lebanon and Israel, is picking up pace.
While Israel has limited its attacks on Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese terror proxy, since a renewed ceasefire was brokered by the United States in April, its patience is running out. Low-tech drone attacks by Hezbollah are bleeding the IDF and threatening Israeli border communities.
Washington must understand that unfettered Israeli actions are not only vital for its defense. They also undercut Tehran’s bid to sustain its regional hegemony as it pretends to seek peace.
Israel Steps Up Operations Against Hezbollah
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on May 25 to “step on the gas” in the war against Hezbollah, which continues to pose a threat despite being driven out of its former fiefdom in southern Lebanon and losing the bulk of its missile arsenal. The following day the IDF ordered residents of some border communities to avoid congregating in large numbers.
Since the April 17 ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, the IDF has lost 10 soldiers on the Lebanese front. The bulk of these casualties were mostly the result of fiber optic-guided exploding drones, whose ability to skirt electronic jamming has also posed a constant menace to civilians in northern Israel.
This escalation fueled demands in Israel to take the fight to the enemy. After Netanyahu’s latest warning, Israel struck Hezbollah targets in the Bekaa Valley and around Tyre. In Dahiyeh, the Beirut district that houses Hezbollah headquarters, some residents fled in anticipation.
According to Gila Gamliel, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, Netanyahu wants to enlist the United States, together with the Lebanese government, in a partnership that would decisively strip Hezbollah of its weapons and advance an Israeli-Lebanese accord.
Tehran Using Negotiations With U.S. To Protect Hezbollah
Unsurprisingly, a Lebanon linkage is among the points of leverage that Iran has been using in its negotiations with the Trump administration. As well as demanding financial relief and downstream nuclear negotiations, Tehran is also pushing for an “all fronts” ceasefire — code for ending Israeli operations against Hezbollah — as part of any initial understanding with Washington. So far, the United States has been unmoved by this Iranian condition. “If Hezbollah is going to launch missiles or launches missiles at them, Israel has every right to respond to that, or to prevent that from happening,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on May 25. Rubio also condemned a speech by Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem calling for the ouster of the Lebanese government, asserting that the terrorist organization is “actively trying to drag Lebanon back into chaos and destruction.”
Regional Peace Impossible Without Removal of Hezbollah
President Donald Trump should push back against Iran’s attempt to rescue Hezbollah, the jewel in its crown when it comes to Tehran’s proxies around the region.
Bullet-proofing Hezbollah at this juncture in the war would be equivalent to letting Iran recover its enriched uranium from the ruins of Isfahan and secretly stow away the material elsewhere.
Defanging Hezbollah in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701, passed 20 years ago, would assist with pacifying Lebanon by removing Iran’s malign influence from the country. Until that happens, Israel will legitimately want to preserve its southern Lebanese buffer zone — with firepower, if necessary. That approach deserves the full-throated support not only of the Trump administration, but also of the Lebanese government, which has publicly condemned Israel even as the sides privately discuss ways of eliminating the mutual burden of Hezbollah. Trump wants any peace deal with Iran to bring about an expansion of the Abraham Accords, with Lebanon among the front-runners in terms of potential signatories. As welcome a development as that would be, the terrorist threat must be snuffed out before any ceremony can be held.
**Mark Dubowitz is the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from Mark and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on X @FDD. Follow Mark on X @mdubowitz. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on 27-28 May/2026
Trump says US not satisfied yet on deal with Iran, Rubio notes ‘some’ progress
Al Arabiya English/27 May ,2026
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he was not yet satisfied on a deal with Iran, adding that the US was not discussing easing sanctions on the country. Speaking to reporters at a cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump said that Iran wants to make a deal. “Iran is very much intent, they want very much to make a deal. So far they haven’t gotten there ... we’re not satisfied with it, but we will be. We will be either that or we’ll have to just finish the job,” Trump said.He added that under a potential framework deal with Tehran, the Strait of Hormuz would open immediately but that it would not be controlled by anybody. “We’ll watch over it, but nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have. They would like to control it. Nobody’s going to control it,” Trump said.
Trump also said that he was not comfortable with Russia or China taking Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there has been some progress in negotiations. “I think there’s been some progress and some interest, and we’ll see over the next few hours and days whether progress could be made,” Rubio said during the cabinet meeting.With Reuters

Trump admin dismisses draft Iran agreement as 'complete fabrication' but claims 'progress' on peace deal
Andrew Romano, Reporter/Yahoo News/May 27, 2026
"We're not satisfied with it, but we will be," the president insisted at Wednesday's Cabinet meeting. Could the war actually end soon? President Trump held an emergency Cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday as his administration continues to push for a peace deal with Iran.
The meeting was initially supposed to take place at Camp David in Maryland — a rare occurrence — but the location was changed due to weather. Trump insisted at the start of the meeting that Tehran is “very much intent” on making a deal and expressed confidence that his administration would get an agreement across the finish line.“So far they haven’t gotten there, we’re not satisfied with it, but we will be,” the president said. He went on to claim that Iran is “negotiating on fumes,” because “their navy is gone, their air force is gone, everything’s gone” and “their economy is in free fall.” “Either [Iran makes a deal], or we’ll just have to finish the job” militarily, Trump said. “I don’t think they have a choice.”The president also rejected speculation that he’s feeling pressure to end the war before the upcoming midterm elections. “[Iran] thought they were gonna outwait me. You know, 'We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms,'” Trump said. “I don’t care about the midterms.”Yet three months in, the future of the conflict still seems as uncertain as ever. Negotiators met earlier this week in Qatar to consider the latest U.S. peace proposal — then top Iranian officials left after U.S. forces struck the Islamic Republic’s missile launch sites and mine-laying boats, triggering threats of a “decisive reciprocal response” from Tehran. Iran also accused the United States of a “grave violation” of the current ceasefire. The U.S. claimed it was acting in self-defense. Trump said on Saturday that an agreement had already “been largely negotiated” and would “be announced shortly." But by Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was telling reporters that a possible deal was still “a few days” away. “There’s a lot of talking back and forth going on about specific language in the initial document,” Rubio said — adding that Trump is “either going to make a good deal or no deal” at all. Rubio didn’t provide any new details at Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, saying only that he thinks “there’s been some progress and some interest, and we’ll see over the next few hours and days whether [more] progress can be made.”Around the same time, Iranian state media reported on an “initial, unofficial document” outlining the framework of a potential 14-point agreement. But the White House dismissed it as a “complete fabrication.” the-cuff Cabinet meeting remark
For months, Iran has been effectively blockading the Strait of Hormuz, choking off one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. That’s why the average U.S. gas price has skyrocketed from about $2.90 in late February to about $4.50 today. In April, Trump decided to counter with a naval blockade of his own: If Iran won’t let ships carrying cargo from other countries cross the strait, the thinking went, then ships carrying Iranian cargo can’t cross either. The U.S. is now proposing to lift its blockade on Iranian ports, according to Axios — if Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz and removes the mines it has deployed there. Both the Iranian economy and the global economy would get some relief. After that, the current ceasefire would be extended for another 60 days, giving both sides “breathing room” to resolve their thornier issues. From Iran’s perspective, this means getting the United States to agree to lift sanctions and unfreeze funds; from the U.S. perspective, it means getting Iran to agree to suspend its uranium enrichment program and relinquish its stockpile of highly enriched nuclear fuel. A senior U.S. official told reporters on Sunday that the administration believes Iranian supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei has “endorsed the broad template of the deal,” but “whether this becomes an agreement is still an open question.”The big sticking points are (1) how much enriched uranium Iran would agree to dispose of and (2) how long the country would be willing to put its entire enrichment program on hold. At Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, Trump dismissed the idea of letting Russia or China take control of Iran’s nuclear stockpiles, saying “that would not make me comfortable.” He said that if a deal is signed, “the strait will open immediately” and “nobody’s going to control it.” And he insisted his administration is “not talking about any easing of sanctions” against Iran as part of negotiations. “When they behave properly, we’ll let them have [the] money” that’s been frozen, the president said. “But one thing is not contingent on the other. “
Why is this taking so long?
Trump also complained on Wednesday about public impatience with peace talks. “We’ve been doing this for a few months,” the president said when a reporter asked for a “timeframe” to end the war. “Vietnam lasted 19 years. Korea lasted 8 years. Afghanistan lasted many, many years.” “We’ve been doing this for a few months,” Trump repeated. “But people like you [keep saying], ‘What’s taking so long?’” The current ceasefire started on April 8, just minutes before Trump’s threatened deadline for launching crippling attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure. The Strait of Hormuz was supposed to reopen back then. But Iran didn’t comply, and Trump launched his naval blockade. When the initial two-week ceasefire was about to expire in late April, Trump decided to extend it until “discussions are concluded, one way or the other.” In May, the president announced “Project Freedom” — an effort by U.S. forces to protect ships as they exited the strait. Only two vessels made it through, though, and Trump abandoned the initiative the following day. Since then, “Trump has veered between talk of negotiating, bombing and blockading — sometimes all in the same day,” as the New York Times recently put it. “He has even suggested more than once that the war is already over.”In total, Trump has “threatened to restart high-intensity fighting on at least seven different occasions,” according to Times columnist Bret Stephens. But he has “backed down every time.”Meanwhile, the Iranian regime — seemingly emboldened by all the back-and-forth — hasn’t really budged at the negotiating table.

Iran says US commits to ending naval blockade in draft deal; Washington denies
AFP/27 May ,2026
Iranian state TV said on Wednesday a draft framework with the US included a commitment to lift the naval blockade on Iran, restore traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and withdraw American forces from the Gulf region, but the White House issued a prompt denial.
Tehran and Washington have in recent days been swapping proposals to end the war, which broke out on February 28 and engulfed the Middle East, while a fragile ceasefire has been in place since April 8. The report cited what it described as a draft outline of a potential memorandum of understanding, but said the text was “still not finalized.”Iran has kept tight control over the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a vital global energy conduit, while the US has imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports and coasts since April 13. “The United States has committed itself to lifting Iran’s naval blockade and to cease harassing ships passing to or from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the state TV report said. But Washington blasted the report, calling it false. “This report from Iranian controlled media is not true and the MOU they ‘released’ is a complete fabrication. Nobody should believe what Iranian state media is putting out. FACTS MATTER,” the White House said on X, lashing out at US media for publishing the claims. According to the draft, in return for the US move, Iran would within one month allow commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to resume as it had before the war. The draft says Iran would continue to manage shipping lanes, inspect vessels, and impose service fees on ships – measures which have only been imposed since the war. Iran’s commitments would not apply to military vessels, and Tehran had not agreed “to unconditionally reopen the strait,” it added. On the withdrawal of US troops from the region, the draft said Washington had given “a commitment to the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding this issue.” State TV added that it remained unclear whether the commitment referred only to forces deployed before and during the war, or if it also included preexisting US military bases in the Gulf. Following agreement on the framework Tehran and Washington would enter a 60-day negotiation period, the draft said, without specifying which issues would be discussed. “If negotiations reach a final agreement during the 60-day period, this agreement is expected to be approved by a binding resolution of the United Nations Security Council,” it added.

Iran–US tensions escalate amid ceasefire accusations, nuclear talks, and Strait of Hormuz stakes
Annahar/May 27/2026
Mutual accusations of ceasefire violations, renewed military incidents, and competing signals over nuclear negotiations deepen uncertainty, while global markets react to fears of disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. Signs of cautious de-escalation continue between Iran and the United States, despite rising accusations of violating the ceasefire, as a commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard considered the possibility of renewed war to be “very low,” while Tehran at the same time affirms its readiness for any escalation and links any potential agreement to guarantees that go beyond signatures, most notably control over the Strait of Hormuz. A commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard said that the likelihood of renewed war with the United States is “very low,” while also stressing that Iranian forces are ready for any possible military developments, at a time when mutual accusations between the two sides over violating the ceasefire are increasing. Tasnim News Agency reported that the Deputy Head of Political Affairs in the naval forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohammad Akbarzadeh, said that the “possibility of war is very low due to the weakness of the enemy,” noting that the Iranian armed forces are “qualified and equipped with ammunition.”
The Strait of Hormuz is the real guarantor of any agreement
In a related context, adviser to the Iranian Supreme Leader, Mohammad Mokhber, said that the “real guarantor of any agreement with the United States is the Strait of Hormuz.”He added that “papers and signatures alone are not a guarantee for any potential agreement.”
Vance: Optimistic about an agreement with Iran to prevent nuclear weapons development. In turn, NBC News reported that US Vice President J. D. Vance said he is optimistic that “Iran may agree, within any potential deal, not to develop nuclear weapons.”
He added that “the difficult question is whether Iran will agree to mechanisms that ensure the agreement is not violated in the future.”
Mutual accusations of violating the ceasefire
Iran accused the United States on Tuesday of violating the ceasefire after American airstrikes targeted southern parts of the country overnight, saying that this “hinders diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the war in the Middle East.” The Iranian Foreign Ministry said that “US forces committed a serious violation in the Hormozgan region,” warning that Tehran “will not leave any attack without a response.” In contrast, the US Central Command announced that it had targeted rocket launch sites in southern Iran, while Iranian media reported explosions in Bandar Abbas and the opening of an investigation to determine their source. The Revolutionary Guard also spoke about downing a US drone and firing at other aircraft that attempted to enter Iranian airspace, without specifying the timing of those incidents.
Fragile negotiations and escalating economic consequences
Despite ongoing diplomatic activity, including a visit by a high-level Iranian delegation to Doha, the atmosphere of negotiations remains tense amid disputes over the nuclear file and frozen financial assets. Meanwhile, the escalation has been reflected in global markets, with oil prices rising to around 100 dollars per barrel amid fears that tensions could affect navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, while global stock markets have recorded volatile performance. Iran has also announced steps to gradually restore internet service after a widespread outage, while reports indicate partial service has returned in some areas. This escalation comes amid a fragile ceasefire since April, with repeated tensions between Tehran and Washington over regional security and the nuclear issue.

Iran Guards official says 'low' possibility of renewed war with US
Agence France Presse/May 27/2026
Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday said a return to war with the United States was unlikely, while warning that the Islamic republic stood ready against any attack. The statement came a day after Iran accused the U.S. of breaching the ceasefire in place since April, and warned it was ready to retaliate after the most serious strikes since the truce took effect. In Lebanon, where violence has far from ceased despite a truce in Israel's war with Hezbollah, Israeli strikes killed 31 people on Tuesday, four of them children, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The Middle East war erupted in late February with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, spreading swiftly across multiple fronts and engulfing the region while throwing global energy markets into chaos. "The possibility of war is low because of the enemy's weakness, the armed forces are lying in wait with full magazines," said Mohammad Akbarzadeh, deputy political chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, was quoted by Tasnim news agency as saying. "Do not doubt that we will turn the area from Chabahar to Mahshahr into a graveyard for aggressors," he said, naming places at each end of Iran's lengthy southern coast. Iran and the U.S. have for weeks been engaged in a war of words as they negotiate a deal with mediation efforts led by Pakistan. With no clear winner in the war, neither side appears ready to compromise on the key sticking points in negotiations, which include the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's nuclear program. Iran blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that is vital to global energy flows, in retaliation for the war, while the U.S. responded with a counterblockade of Iranian ports. Stock markets were mixed on Wednesday, with guarded optimism that the U.S. and Iran could reach a deal.
Within reach
Iranian state media had reported blasts in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, near the Strait of Hormuz, and the Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday its forces downed a U.S. drone entering its airspace and fired at an F-35 fighter jet. "The U.S. terrorist army, continuing its illegal and unjustified actions since the ceasefire... has, in the past 48 hours, committed a gross violation of the ceasefire in the Hormozgan region," the Iranian foreign ministry said. It added that Tehran "will not leave any evil unanswered and will not hesitate to defend the Iranian nation," without elaborating. Hours earlier, CENTCOM spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins had announced the new American strikes on Iran. "U.S. forces conducted self-defence strikes in southern Iran today to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces," Hawkins said. He gave few details of the attacks and said only that the targets included missile launch sites and boats trying to "emplace mines". In a statement marking the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday, Tehran's supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei declared Washington was losing its influence in the Middle East and warned countries in the region to stop hosting bases from which the U.S. could launch attacks. The United States, he said in a written statement, "in addition to no longer having any safe haven in the region for aggression and the establishment of military bases, is moving further and further away from its former position with each passing day". Despite the strikes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that a peace deal remained within reach, while insisting that the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened "one way or the other".
Dozens dead in Lebanon -
In southern Lebanon, Israel carried out strikes on Tuesday that Beirut's health ministry said killed 31 people, including at least four children. Iran has demanded that any peace accord apply to Lebanon, where an April 17 truce has failed to stop fighting that began when militant group Hezbollah attacked Israel in early March. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday vowed to "crush" Hezbollah, and an Israeli military official told AFP the following day that the country's forces were expanding their ground operations deeper inside Lebanon. Work on a peace deal between Washington and Tehran is still ongoing, with Iranian state broadcaster IRIB saying a top delegation returned from a two-day visit to Qatar on Tuesday while Iran said it was finalising a 14-point framework for a deal on ending the war. In a telephone conversation with Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Tuesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country was "ready to reach a respectful framework to end the war," according to IRIB.

Netherlands deploys minesweeper amid Hormuz contingency planning
Reuters/27 May ,2026
The Netherlands will send a minesweeper to the Mediterranean Sea as part of NATO operations to allow a possible rapid deployment to the Strait of Hormuz, should a mission there be agreed once the Iran war ends, ministers said on Wednesday in a letter to parliament.
The minesweeper, departing this week, will be able to contribute to the NATO standing mine countermeasures group from mid-June, the letter from defense minister Dilan Yesligoz and foreign minister Tom Berendsen said. They said preparations were under way for a possible Dutch role in ensuring safe shipping routes in the Gulf region. NATO chief Mark Rutte has said several countries are “pre-positioning” logistical and other support such as minehunters and minesweepers near the Gulf to be ready for any possible mission in the strait, a crucial global waterway for oil and gas transport. One option for the Dutch could be to deploy a combined team for search, diving and explosive ordnance disposal. The letter also said the Netherlands was assessing whether it could contribute staff capacity to any international coalition involved in the mission.

Israel kills new chief of Hamas armed wing in Gaza strike
Agence France Presse/May 27/2026
Israel said on Wednesday it had killed the new head of Hamas' armed wing in Gaza, Mohammed Odeh, after killing his predecessor earlier this month despite an ongoing ceasefire. Since Hamas' October 2023 attack, Israel has systematically targeted the group's leaders, both in Gaza and across the region. Odeh is the fourth head of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades Israel claims to have killed since the start of the Gaza war. In a joint statement, the Israeli military and the Shin Bet domestic security agency confirmed Odeh's death on Tuesday, saying he had been appointed head of the brigades after the May 15 killing of Ezzedine al-Haddad. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the "commander of the armed wing of the Hamas terrorist organisation in Gaza was eliminated yesterday and sent to meet his associates in the depths of hell". Contacted by AFP, a Hamas source said that Odeh's wife and two children were also killed in the airstrike, and that a funeral procession would take place on Wednesday in Gaza City. The group never officially announced or confirmed Odeh as head of the brigades, but he had long been the head of its intelligence service and was one of the group's most senior surviving figures in the Gaza Strip. On Tuesday evening, a security source in Gaza told AFP that there was intense Israeli bombardment in western Gaza City. The source said he had "no information on the target", but that "the scale and intensity of the attack fuelled speculation that the target was commander Mohammed Odeh, who succeeded the martyred commander Ezzedine al-Haddad".
'Marked for death' -
"We committed ourselves to eliminating everyone who led the October 7 massacre, and that is what we will do: they are all marked for death, wherever they may be," Katz said in his post on X. He also repeated Israel's goal of ending Hamas's rule over the Palestinian territory and alluded to a plan for the forced displacement of its residents. "The plan for voluntary migration from Gaza will also be implemented -- everything will be done at the right time and in the right way," he said. The displacement of Gazans is a project backed by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. U.S. President Donald Trump previously expressed support for the idea before ditching it. In February, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, denounced plans "aimed at making a permanent demographic change in Gaza".
Six killed in strikes -
Since a ceasefire took hold in Gaza in October 2025, 910 people were killed by Israel, according to the territory's health ministry. Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza's civil defense agency, told AFP that six people were killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza City's upscale Rimal neighbourhood on Tuesday night. Meanwhile, a security source in the Palestinian territory reported shelling in the south. Israel still retains control over 60 percent of the Gaza Strip, including all entry and exit points, while the population is concentrated on the coast.
In the aftermath of Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to target and eliminate the leaders behind it. The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Israel's retaliatory response in Gaza has killed at least 72,803 people, according to the territory's health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority. Israel has previously killed Hamas's former political chief Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, who was widely regarded as the mastermind of the October 7 attack. It also killed Mohammed Deif, the longtime commander of Hamas's armed wing, known as the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, as well as Mohammed Sinwar, who succeeded his brother Yahya Sinwar as Gaza chief. Israeli strikes have also targeted Hamas operatives in Lebanon.

Hamas armed wing confirms leader killed in Gaza strike
LBCI/May 27/2026
Hamas' armed wing confirmed on Wednesday that its chief, Mohammed Odeh, was killed a day earlier in an Israeli strike in Gaza, after Israel had earlier announced his death. In a statement naming him as the "Chief of Staff of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades", Hamas' armed wing said Odeh died "on Tuesday evening... in a cowardly assassination operation that resulted in the martyrdom of him, his wife and his children."AFP

Zelenskyy asked Trump for air defense munitions: Letter
AFP, Kyiv/27 May ,2026
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged the United States to provide more ammunition for its Patriot air defense systems to counter Russian ballistic missiles, according to a document reviewed by AFP on Wednesday. The appeal underscores Ukraine’s almost total reliance on its Western allies to down Russian missile barrages, despite having pioneered a system for intercepting long-range drones that is the envy of some of the world’s most advanced militaries. The request comes just days after one of the worst combined missile and drone attacks launched against Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine more than four years ago, which wrought devastation across the capital. In a letter dated May 26 and addressed to President Donald Trump, Zelenskyy asked Washington to “help us secure this vital tool of protection against Russian terror - Patriot missiles PAC-3 and additional systems - to stop Russian ballistic missiles and other Russian missile attacks.”Zelenskyy conceded in the five-page document, which was also addressed to Congress, that: “when it comes to defending against ballistic missiles, we rely almost exclusively on the United States.”“And it is in Ukrainian hands that Patriot systems have proven something extremely important: The majority of Russian missiles can be stopped,” the Ukrainian leader added. Zelenskyy’s appeal comes at a turbulent moment in ties between Ukraine and the United States. Trump re-entered the White House last year vowing to bring about a speedy end to Russia’s invasion - now grinding through its fifth year.
‘Hard to find missiles’
But US-led efforts to bring Kyiv and Moscow back to the negotiating table have been derailed by the US and Israeli war with Iran, as well as a failure to make progress on key sticking points toward any peace deal, in particular who would control swathes of eastern Ukraine.
Both sides have stepped up their long-range drone and missiles attacks since a series of bilateral talks mediated by the United States earlier this year appeared to stall.

Rubio says US cannot allow any Ebola cases to enter the country
LBCI/May 27/2026
The United States must prevent any cases of Ebola from entering the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an outbreak has already caused a suspected 220 deaths and 900 cases, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.
"We cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola ⁠to enter the United States," Rubio told President Donald Trump at a cabinet meeting. "The State Department and other agencies represented here, the Centers for Disease Control, HHS, others, are working very, very hard to contain this crisis to the countries where it's currently located, particularly the Democratic ⁠Republic of the Congo, and so we surged assistance to make sure that it is being contained there," Rubio said. Reuters

The Latest LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on 27-28 May/2026
Coexistence as a foundation for stability and resilience
Mohamed Jalal Alrayssi/Annahar/May 27/2026
In a world shaped by accelerating crises and deepening divisions, the experience of diverse societies shows that tolerance and reconciliation are not idealistic aspirations but essential conditions for security, unity, and long term survival. In a time when crises and wars are accelerating, the unique experience of countries that adopted coexistence and tolerance has emerged as one of the most important secrets of resilience and stability. The recent war with Iran was not merely a military or political confrontation, but a real test of the strength of societies from within. The experience proved that countries which built a model based on respect for human beings and diversity were the most capable of maintaining their cohesion and sustaining normal life despite threats and tensions.
A single front
In countries such as the United Arab Emirates, it became clearly visible how a multicultural and multinational society can turn into a source of strength rather than a weakness. Citizens and residents stood together on the same front in defense of stability and the continuity of normal life, while campaigns of intimidation and media warfare attempted to spread fear and division without significant success. This experience proved that investing in coexistence is not a political luxury or media slogans, but an essential part of real national security.
This model was not built overnight. It came as a result of years of work to entrench the values of citizenship, the rule of law, respect for diversity, and providing opportunities for everyone without regard to religious, cultural, or ethnic backgrounds. Education, media, and official discourse also played an important role in strengthening the idea that a country’s strength lies in the unity of its society and people’s trust in its institutions. In contrast, wars and crises in other parts of the world have shown that countries which allowed sectarianism, hatred, and divisions to grow have paid a heavy price, as some political crises turned into devastating internal conflicts that drained both human and economic resources for decades.
The future is built through reconciliation
The world today has successful models that confirm coexistence is not impossible. In Singapore, a small multiethnic and multireligious country has managed to become one of the most stable and prosperous nations in the world. In Canada, cultural diversity has become part of national identity, while Switzerland has offered a long standing model for managing linguistic and cultural differences within a stable and strong state. Even Rwanda, which experienced some of the worst genocides in modern history, later realized that the future can only be built through reconciliation and coexistence. Great civilizations throughout history were not built on hatred or exclusion, but on the ability to embrace people, diversity, and different ideas. The more space there is for coexistence, the greater the opportunities for creativity, stability, and growth become. In contrast, societies built on fanaticism and fear remain vulnerable to division at the first real crisis. Perhaps the most important message the world needs today amid rising wars and polarization is that humanity does not need more conflict as much as it needs more coexistence. Tolerance is no longer merely an ethical choice, but a necessity for the survival of societies and the continuity of civilizations.

Yemen between unity’s collapse and regional power struggles
Khairallah Khairallah/Annahar/May 27/2026
Yemen’s fragmentation, foreign influence, and the struggle for regional control reshape its future beyond unity. There are important dates that, over the years, turn into forgotten dates. This is due to certain events of the kind that Yemen has gone through. Yemen was unified on 22 May 1990 and is now a state on the path of fragmentation in the absence of a central authority of any kind that can bring life back to a country of great strategic importance.Yemen has strategic importance, at least from the perspective that it is an integral part of the Arabian Peninsula on one hand, and because of the coastline it possesses, stretching from the Arabian Sea to the Red Sea on the other hand. If the current Gulf war has revealed anything, it has revealed that Yemen should have been a greater focus of Gulf attention so that it would be possible to dispense, even relatively, with the Strait of Hormuz, which the "Islamic Republic" in Iran uses as part of an ongoing process of pressure and exploitation against the countries of the region and the world.
Birth of unity
It is no secret that Yemeni unity, which brought together two independent states, the “Yemen Arab Republic” in the north and the “People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen” in the south, was born under specific circumstances that are unlikely ever to be repeated. Foremost among these circumstances was the collapse of the Soviet Union, in whose orbit South Yemen had been aligned. The collapse of the Soviet Union played a role in the downfall of the regime in the south, and the result was a unified state led by Ali Abdullah Saleh. From the state of unity to the current state of fragmentation, it is necessary to acknowledge that unified Yemen was a centralized state. Sanaa represented the center. The late president managed to control all of Yemen, both north and south, especially after he eliminated the Socialist Party following the summer war of 1994. The Socialist Party was represented by the late Ali Salem al-Beidh, Saleh’s partner in unity. There is no need to revisit the events in Yemen since the attempt to end unity through an adventure led by Ali Salem al-Beidh, who early on realized that there was no chemistry between him and Ali Abdullah Saleh. The latter was determined to rule Yemen in his own way, based on balances whose secrets only he knew. What is notable, however, is that the Yemeni “leader’s” allies from the Muslim Brotherhood and those aligned with them later turned against him. These actors played a central role in bringing an end to the system of Ali Abdullah Saleh’s family in 2011. In reality, the issue was not merely about a family-based regime; the matter was far more complex than that. What cannot be avoided is that Yemeni unity played a highly important role in defining the Yemen–Saudi borders and, before that, the Yemen–Oman borders. It also helped in countering the threat posed by Eritrea under Isaias Afwerki, which sought to seize the Yemeni Greater Hanish Island in the Red Sea. Unity also allowed sensitive border issues with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman to be handled calmly, away from the provocations of the north against the south and the south against the north.
New Yemeni reality
What is also impossible to ignore today is that there is no room left for Gulf Arab states to deal with a new Yemeni reality after Iran has established a foothold in northern Yemeni areas. Through the Houthis, Iran has set up a base of its own in Yemen. It is true that the Houthis have been relatively calm in recent months, but it is also true that Iran may once again seek to activate them in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Will this Houthi calm last for long? Will the incentives that help keep them quiet continue to work like a sedative, or will the effect of these “painkillers” soon wear off? There is a need to approach Yemen from a new regional perspective. This perspective is based on acknowledging that Yemeni unity is now a thing of the past and that it is no longer possible to rely on the current “legitimacy,” which has been unable to exert any kind of pressure on the Houthis. What remains is the most important question: how should Yemen be dealt with in the future, and how can the Gulf benefit from its land and long coastline in order to bypass the Strait of Hormuz? This is the central question that cannot be ignored. It is also a question tied to the future of the Houthis and Iran in Yemen, and to how to eliminate the military base that the “Islamic Republic” has established in the Arabian Peninsula. This base was created primarily to blackmail each Gulf Arab state and keep it under the constant sense of Iranian threat.

Video & Text/The Iran Deal: What Trump Got, What Iran Got, and What Comes Next
Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg/FDD/May 27/2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBJ-vqNheVI&t=1s
A deal has been struck. The Strait of Hormuz is reopening. Iran’s nuclear program is — allegedly — being curtailed. And sanctions relief is on the way. But what did the United States actually get? What did the Islamic Republic walk away with? And does this agreement close the door on Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon — or just delay it? Richard Goldberg — FDD’s senior director for energy and national security, former White House NSC director for countering Iranian WMD, and one of the architects of maximum pressure — joins Mark Dubowitz to break down the deal, assess the terms, and ask the question that will define its legacy: vice grip or open door?
DUBOWITZ: Welcome back to The Iran Breakdown. I’m your host, Mark Dubowitz. Over the weekend, Washington and Tehran began moving towards a deal. It comes after nearly two and a half years of Israeli and US military action against Iran’s so-called axis of resistance, and almost a year after the June 12th Day War, followed by the most recent 40-day war in which the combined forces of the United States and Israel fundamentally reshaped the regional balance of power through direct military confrontation with the regime in Iran. After these military operations, combined with the naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, and what may be the most severe strategic blow the Islamic Republic has suffered in its 47-year history, Iran appears prepared to reopen Hormuz. In return, the regime could gain access perhaps to frozen funds, sanctions relief, and a pathway back to oil markets and maybe economic recovery.
The Trump administration is framing this as a major diplomatic breakthrough. Tehran is portraying it as proof the regime survived maximum pressure yet again. But behind the headlines, the reality is far murkier. This is not the end of the conflict. It’s a pause. A weakened Iran is still a dangerous Iran. The regime has suffered massive economic and strategic damage from sanctions, maritime pressure, strikes on military infrastructure, and disruption to oil exports. But Tehran still retains escalation tools, proxy networks, remaining missile capabilities, and the ability to threaten the global economy through Hormuz. That’s why there is enormous skepticism this arrangement will hold. Israel had already been preparing follow-on operations targeting Iranian energy infrastructure and leadership targets before diplomacy intervened. At the same time, there is a view in both Washington and Jerusalem that President Trump wants to give diplomacy one more opportunity before potentially returning to force.
There’s also a hard economic reality behind the pause. The United States and its allies were imposing severe costs on the Iranian economy through the blockade. Iran, meanwhile, was imposing serious costs on the global economy through its own disruption of energy flows and shipping lanes. And President Trump appears to have decided, at least for now, not to follow Israeli recommendations for major military strikes against Iran’s energy infrastructure. Meanwhile, the administration insists this is not a giveaway to Tehran. The deal is reportedly still being finalized with key language unresolved, and the structure under discussion could require Iran to surrender enriched uranium and make many other nuclear concessions before receiving meaningful sanctions relief. But enormous questions remain. What exactly is Iran committing to on enrichment, on verification, on missiles, on its terror proxy networks? And if Tehran violates the agreement, will there be any consequences, especially once President Trump is no longer in the White House?
Because history matters here. The Islamic Republic has spent four decades negotiating agreements while preserving leverage, delaying compliance, and maintaining nuclear optionality. The 2015 nuclear deal is the clearest example. It may not be the last. And there is a strategic question hanging over all of this. After years of Israeli operations systematically degrading Iran’s terror proxy network, and after American and Israeli operations severely degrading Iran’s nuclear, missile, and broader military infrastructure, is the United States now merely trying to manage Iranian coercion temporarily, or is it prepared to help dismantle Tehran’s ability to threaten the region and the global economy for good? That debate is now at the center of American strategy. Today we’re going to break down what exactly this deal may actually mean, why so many officials doubt its durability, what Iran has really lost over the last two and a half years, and what happens if diplomacy collapses once again.
To do that, I’m joined by my friend Rich Goldberg. Rich is FDD senior advisor. He also serves as senior director for FDD’s Energy Economics and Security Program. He’s a former director on the National Security Council responsible for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction and built the National Energy Dominance Council at the White House. Rich is also a former US Navy Intel officer, and in his time in the White House, in Congress, and at FDD, he led the architecting of the maximum pressure campaign on Iran and has been sanctioned by the regime for his work. I share that badge of honor with Rich, and we’ve been working together on Iran for more than two decades. Rich, welcome back to The Iran Breakdown.
GOLDBERG: Thank you, Mark. Great to be back.
DUBOWITZ: It’s great to see you, Rich. So Rich, let’s dive right into it. What is exactly in this deal? What do we know about it? What do we not know about it? Let’s actually just get the core elements out first before we jump into an assessment.
GOLDBERG: Let’s start with the caveat, which is nobody has seen a deal, and therefore we are working off of background briefings and readouts of background briefings provided by senior administration officials that cannot be identified, based on the background nature of the briefings. At least two briefings taking place, one for media, one for, let’s call them influencers, and obviously ongoing dialogue behind the scenes with various stakeholders. There’s been a lot of leaked media reports. Sometimes the administration has rushed to deny them, sometimes not. But let’s go off of sort of what we have seen from the background briefings. I think from Sunday forward, I would say, when the communications became more proactive from the White House to stop relying on framing by various media and instead sort of take the ball themselves and frame what they are describing. And that is this: the president apparently has a structure proposed of two phases.
The first phase is simply to get the Strait of Hormuz open. Now there are some question marks that I have in exactly how we are proposing to do that. And I think that there is still pushback from the Iranian side on what they want in order for that to happen. Our conditions, our red lines, are that there’s no military threat being imposed on the Strait of Hormuz, there’s obviously no attacks going on, any mines that have been laid are removed over the days and weeks ahead. Obviously we know from Project Freedom, the United States has mapped the strait and the Persian Gulf to a certain extent, and has provided guidance to ships in the past. We would probably do that rather quickly again to have at least what we believe is a safe path without mines, but for where we may not know where mines are, or the Iranians might – to have that be a mission to clear any mines.
And then also no tolls being charged to any tankers or other commercial vessels that are going back and forth through the Strait of Hormuz. This has been this tolling authority idea of $2 million plus for every ship that Secretary Rubio has continued to say is simply unacceptable, that nobody will allow. But the question then is, okay, that’s what the regime is supposedly giving. What are they getting for that? Well, it would seem the blockade at that point sort of doesn’t go away. The Navy remains in place. The blockade is there to be affirmed at any point, but certain vessels – whether it is sort of willy-nilly, if you say you’re an oil tanker you just get out, or if it’s specific tankers authorized in certain ways – we don’t know yet. Whether there’s some sort of broad waiver being issued to allow all Iranian oil exports to be licit rather than illicit, or if it’s simply, “Hey, if you got a tanker and you get out, the blockade won’t stop you, you’ll end up delivering illicit cargo to China like you used to.”
And that, of course, pre-Epic Fury levels were 1.5 million to two million barrels per day, and that is somehow the payment, so to speak. The quid pro quo for the regime allowing the rest of the Middle East oil and gas and petrochemicals and other byproducts to flow out of the Strait of Hormuz without charging a fee and without being harassed. So the regime stands to make, I would imagine, several billion dollars on their end of being able to get all of the oil that’s been stored up and is ready to go out to market out the door, empty tankers coming back in to refill, and have that be a continued ongoing cycle. I have questions here as to how this is administered. I mean, the blockade supposedly remains in place from what we’re being told, and the end of the quarantine will still be there.
Will the blockade still stop incoming traffic? If it’s not an empty oil tanker, how will you know what’s on the tanker? Will gasoline come into the country – again, as being denied right now? Will they be able to just get other exports out to market as well simply on container ships, or hidden on some other sort of commercial vessel? Are we really going to shoot at a vessel that’s not an oil tanker and risk the whole deal collapsing? I think these are obvious questions that you’d have to have in mind. The most stringent way of doing this, by the way, which I doubt the Iranians would go for, but would be in my view the sort of safest way to do this without maximizing the benefit to the regime, would actually be to say specific tankers with specific destinations and legitimate buyers on some end then operate with a specific waiver or license, so long as money is deposited into an escrow account that the regime actually can’t access, but it’s hanging there, building up funds once again, which could be released if the regime commits to all the follow-on concessions that we’ll talk about that are supposed to happen in phase two.
My fear obviously is if you just get willy-nilly, the blockade sort of goes away, you don’t know what ship is which, stuff comes out, stuff comes in – the balloon has exploded, right? You put a little pin in it, all the air has gone out. They’re getting billions of dollars. There’s no incentive at that point to go further than that to a phase two. And furthermore, why would you ever collapse that arrangement thereafter, if the whole purpose of this arrangement was to get the Strait of Hormuz open without going back to a Project Freedom or a military action of some other kind? For whatever reason you didn’t want to do that or didn’t believe in it at that point, obviously the construct here – I don’t want to say if it’s just sort of blockade for Strait of Hormuz, it’s not exactly an extortion payment, but it’s certainly a quid pro quo that can be permanent in nature, that if you take one side of the arrangement away, then the Iranians would simply close down the strait again and then you’re back to where you started, and it would seem obvious that you won’t take away that side of the equation because you don’t want that side to come back in that construct.
So those are a lot of the worries and unknowns and gaps in our understanding of this phase one. But in this construct, this will get oil out to market, this will bring stability to the global energy market and other downstream effects thereof that we’ve seen, whether it’s in agriculture or food, et cetera. This will obviously bring prices way down. I mean, that will definitely happen as far as gas prices are concerned in the United States and oil prices globally. The global stocks that have been tapped and continued to be tapped and released will start getting refilled as more and more oil comes out, and obviously you’ll have gas coming out and other byproducts. So that is a benefit to the United States. It’s a benefit to the world and to the global economy, and certainly if there is a determination or an assessment in the White House that our timeline, our clock on economic effects is going faster, our runway is shorter than the regime’s runway on the impacts of the blockade and on a further military action, then you might make that assessment.
At that point, by the way, let me just pause there and say: while you’re supposed to then move from there to a phase two, which is then Iran gives up all of its enriched uranium, the president has just issued a Truth Social post that sort of goes beyond what the initial background briefing was on this last piece, where you’re supposed to get all the nuclear concessions that the president has been demanding. He calls it the nuclear dust to come out of the country and be destroyed. This is the enriched uranium stockpiles that exist at multiple levels of purity, not just the 60% highly enriched uranium that’s most in the news, but 20% highly enriched uranium and low enriched uranium that if further enriched obviously still provide you pathways to a nuclear weapon – at least the fissile material thereof. And so we now have a Truth Social post that maybe it doesn’t have to come to the United States, maybe it can go to a third party, maybe it can stay in Iran. The president is still using the language “destroyed.” He wants the material destroyed, even if it’s in Iran with inspectors watching the destruction. That’s not dilution, which is what happened in the JCPOA where we had some portion of their stockpile shipped out to Russia and their remaining stockpile diluted to a lower purity level, and then continued enrichment going on at a certain stockpile cap. That still sounds like no enriched uranium allowed in Iran from the president, but the question would be: if you’ve already released so much pressure from the blockade upfront, why would the regime ever follow through on that? And of course they’re asking for more money. By the way, they’re asking for more money upfront than just the blockade being lifted or the oil sanctions going…
DUBOWITZ: …on. Yeah. Rich, I want to ask you about that because there’s a lot of confusion on exactly that. So I just want to stick with phase one here – discussion about releasing oil, maybe it’s $12 billion, maybe it’s $15 billion, whatever that is, that’s going to be allowed to be sold. But there’s this question of frozen oil assets held in Qatar, Oman, Iraq. And there’s also a question of whether, if there’s no release of the frozen assets, whether the Qataris are going to pay the Iranians billions of dollars in humanitarian aid, which the regime has already admitted they’re going to be using part of that money to actually rebuild their missile capability. What do you know about this question of upfront payments, either from frozen assets or through some kind of quote-unquote humanitarian payment or loan?
GOLDBERG: Yeah. I mean, my expectation at the moment, based on what the president has said, what the background briefing said – as far as no dust, no dollars – which I think is a little disingenuous if you’re providing upfront oil sanctions relief. You’ve already sort of not done “no dust, no dollars.” But if they’re sort of saying actual cash as opposed to sort of theoretical cash from revenue of trade, there are pockets of money that the Biden administration was actually preparing to tap, or in some cases did allow Iran to tap, that mostly exist now in Qatar and Oman. Though there are other pockets, there are other accounts I would imagine that still exist, maybe in other former importers of Iranian oil during the time period that the Trump administration had sort of started locking down accounts getting out of the JCPOA back in 2018, allowing certain importers of Iranian oil during the JCPOA to start winding down but slowly getting exceptions so they could keep importing every six months and get these waivers.
We called them significant reduction exceptions. That money had to be put into escrow so it couldn’t go back to the regime. This is, by the way, why I suggest having an escrow model now upfront if you’re going to do this, instead of just letting the regime just go to market and get as much money as it can – having it be more controlled. The escrow account model pre-JCPOA was credited with bringing the regime to the table for JCPOA. It’s very effective in sort of not attacking the barrels but attacking the revenue instead, which is what we want to do right now. And so that money existed in South Korea, in Japan, in China, in India, a couple other countries. The Iranians knew the money was sitting there, billions of dollars that had built up. And then of course in 2019, when the Trump administration cut off this idea of giving these waivers out and giving these significant reduction exceptions out to these countries and said, “You’ve got to get off now. I’m driving Iranian exports to zero via sanctions.” And he did, for a period of time. That money just got trapped there and never moved, and it’s a violation of US sanctions for that bank in Seoul or in Tokyo or in Beijing to move the money somewhere else, whether to Iran or anywhere else.
So the Iranians, during the Biden administration, started knocking on doors saying, “Hey, we want our money. We want our money.” And so Rob Malley, who was the special envoy for Iran at that point, 2021, 2022, started understanding that they’re asking about these money pots and they’re in nuclear negotiations. They want to go back to JCPOA. Where can they find money? Oh, there’s money in South Korea, there’s money. Oh, well, then also there was this idea of money that had been building up in Iraq, because it wasn’t the same situation as oil imports, but similarly, Iraq was purchasing – and still today, unfortunately, still purchases and imports – electricity from Iran and relies heavily on Iran for electricity and gas and all that, and has never gotten into true energy independence, even though it’s an energy abundant country. We’re working on it but not fast enough.
And so what we said to the Iraqis back in the first Trump administration was, “We understand you’re dependent on Iran, unfortunately, for electricity. So you can import physically the electricity into your country, but you can’t make payment to the Iranians. We’re going to set up the same escrow account model. In exchange for issuing this waiver, you’ve got to put the money into the Trade Bank of Iraq.” And so that ended up being like $10 billion, just building up over years. And then Tehran again, under Biden, started knocking on everybody’s door saying, “We’re going to turn off the lights in Baghdad. We’re going to come for you.” The Iraqis were saying to the Biden folks, “Help us, help us. What do you want us to do here? We can’t lose the electricity. You have to do something. We don’t want this money. We don’t want to be held hostage here.”
So there was this whole arrangement, right? Because by 2023, they were working on a whole bunch of things with the Iranians and the Biden administration. They were working on hostage deals. They were working on nuclear diplomacy. They couldn’t get back to JCPOA, but maybe they could offer some cash to keep the Iranians from going to 90% weapons-grade uranium from where they were at 60%. And so pots of money started appearing. They allowed the South Koreans to move $6 billion of that oil money into Qatar. That was ostensibly viewed as the payment for five American hostages being released from Iran, but we understood that money was going to be made available, obviously, to Iran for other purposes. $10 billion was moved out of Iraq into Oman and converted into euros, where it sits today.
And then suddenly the scheme that was worked out was that the Iranians could come to the Treasury Department, work with the Omanis or the Qataris depending on where the money was, to say, “We’d like to pay this bill now. We’d like to fund this import now. We’d like to pay off this debt now.” And so it was budget support. Now the sleight of hand here – which I’m seeing some indications of from some of the people who may or may not be in the know of what’s going on here, but the language is very similar – where you’d say, “Oh, we’re not giving cash to the regime. We’re not going to give sanctions relief. It’s their money. It’s sitting in these accounts and it won’t come into Iran. It will stay in Oman, it will stay in Qatar, and maybe they’ll be able to access it for humanitarian purposes or for non-sanctionable purposes.”
But let’s be clear: that’s sanctions relief. That’s money. Whether it’s sitting in a bank account in Oman or Qatar, and Tehran – if they say, “Here’s the balance sheet, here’s what we owe, here’s where we’re running out of money, we need $6 billion, we need $10 billion,” and they’re able to then reallocate money somewhere else – money is fungible. That’s budget support. That’s all that is. And by the way, over the weekend, Mark – I think you tweeted this out, you posted this on X – the foreign ministry of Iran spokesperson was asked about this money and he said point blank, “Yeah, we’re going to spend it on missiles and drones.” I mean, it’s like they’re not even hiding it. It’s not even like a humanitarian cover story. This is just going to be money that’s handed over to the regime for bad things to hurt us and the region in the future.
So obviously I would have great concerns about unlocking those funds. This seems to be a demand from the Iranian side, and it seems to be a question of when do these funds become available, not if these funds become available. How much would, if any, become available during phase one or at the outset of phase one as a sweetener to get the Strait of Hormuz open? Or would it all be sort of back-ended to when they turn over enriched uranium, where we say, “No, you don’t get any of this cash. You only get the quote-unquote limited temporary oil sanctions relief, which is really just permanent oil sanctions relief, to get the Strait of Hormuz open, but you don’t get additional cash or anything else unless we get the enriched uranium out of your country in phase two.” That seems to be the setup of what’s going on here.
DUBOWITZ: Right. Rich, if I were to tie together the threads of this conversation and put the most negative spin on it from our perspective – what I’d be most concerned about based on your assessment is that we are not maintaining a quarantine on imports into Iran. So Iran can import whatever it wants. Iran is going to get $15 billion by selling its oil. It’s going to go out there mostly to the Chinese, so that the Iranians can use that money to spend on Chinese goods. The Chinese goods that they spend it on are precursor chemicals to help them rebuild their ballistic missile program that has been so devastated by Israeli and American strikes.
And we are moving then, with less leverage and Iran reconstituting its deadly capabilities, into a phase two where we’re now going to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran where we’re going to require them to give up all of their enriched material – thousands of pounds of enriched material – and dismantle nuclear sites, and ensure that we have anytime, anywhere inspections. And we’re going to get to some kind of deal where there’s zero enrichment forever. But we’re going to be walking into that trying to get those nuclear concessions with far less leverage than we had a week ago, after all the devastating damage that we’ve done. And on the Hormuz, what we’ve effectively done is we’ve gotten temporary relief for the global economy and for the US economy, but we’ve essentially established the precedent that Iran can close the straits at any time. And indeed what the Iranians are saying is we don’t agree to going back to pre-war status quo on sovereignty. We maintain the sovereignty. We and the Omanis own that strait, but we will temporarily allow numbers of ships. So if there are 140 or 150 ships a day moving through the straits, they can move through the strait with our permission.
So worst-case assessment of this is: President Trump blinked at the last minute. He stopped Israeli military strikes against energy infrastructure and further leadership strikes. He got temporary relief by getting some oil to global markets, but the price that we’ve paid has been $15 billion in oil exports, maybe another $8 billion in the release of frozen funds or some cutesy fiction about a humanitarian transfer. We move into a phase two, then the Iranians are absolutely not willing to make further concessions on anything that would meet President Trump’s minimum nuclear demands. And then we are stuck with the decision of either conceding that there’ll be no nuclear agreement and we’ve given all this relief to the Iranians, or we’re going to return back to major military operations. But the return back to them is in September or October, and it’s getting much closer to the midterms, and President Trump is not willing to return to major military operations that close to the midterms and risk losing the House and the Senate. Is that a fair pessimistic assessment?
GOLDBERG: I think it’s unfair in certain respects. In certain, there’s fairness here. And so what I would say is let’s put all the different cards on the table to have an honest assessment of the situation.
It is absolutely true that the situation we are talking about right now is nothing like 2015, or 2013 before that, when the Obama administration was negotiating the first interim nuclear deal, the Joint Plan of Action, the JPOA, that people forget about. We always skip to the JCPOA. But you and me, Mark – we remember the JPOA, which was sort of it. That was it. The minute we let up on sanctions relief, and there was sort of a framework to it, that was done. We were cooked. The JCPOA was inevitable, and it obviously didn’t have legitimacy in the Congress by the end of the debate, but the president had the prerogatives. All he needed to do was waive sanctions, and he never got anything better.
DUBOWITZ: Well, Rich, I want to say this because I’m going to take a shot at my old friend Jake Sullivan here. Because everybody said that the worst deal ever negotiated was the 2015 deal. I mean, this is what Trump said when Kerry and Sherman went to negotiate the 2015 deal. Actually, the worst deal I ever saw negotiated on the Iran side was the 2013 deal, when Jake Sullivan and Bill Burns flew to Oman and effectively gave the Iranians – for the first time, despite multiple Security Council resolutions – effectively the right to enrich, and paid them billions of dollars in sanctions relief while giving up our most valuable concession. After that was done, the table was essentially set for a deeply flawed 2015 deal. But it was actually that temporary deal, the JPOA, that was actually the worst deal that we’ve ever negotiated. So you’re saying this is not that deal.
GOLDBERG: Well, no, no, I’m not saying… Well, first of all, nothing can be this deal because the state of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs today is completely different. That’s my starting point for all of the strategic conversation here. We can’t make these JCPOA, JPOA comparisons on a strategic level. I can make it on a tactical level and on a strategic communications level. For instance, I saw our good friend Mike Doran has a very good piece today – I commend it – in The Free Press. It sort of summarizes one of these background briefings that a senior administration official had conducted, walks you through the two phases, if you want to get more detail. But there’s this idea that the upfront oil sanctions relief is limited and reversible. I was like, “Wow, these terms, they resonate in my mind. I have to have seen this.” And I just did a quick Google and I was like, “Did the Obama administration ever say limited, temporary, reversible sanctions?” Yeah, go look at it. November 24th, 2013, it was the senior administration official background briefing announcing the JPOA. That’s exactly how they described the interim nuclear deal sanctions relief. And of course it was not temporary, it was not reversible, because if you reversed it, you lost your negotiation, you lost the deal, you lost everything on the other side. And so if you are invested that much in the deal, you’re never going to take it away. Okay, and that was my point on the Strait of Hormuz piece.
However, enrichment – they can’t enrich today, right? And multiple aspects of the nuclear supply chain have been destroyed or degraded. Conversion capability does not seem to be there at this point, in addition to enrichment capability. Years of rebuilding have to take place. Yes, they have a stockpile of enriched uranium, the state of which is not actually fully known since the IAEA hasn’t been down there into the tunnels. We don’t have full fidelity on the state of all this material, but we go off press reports, we go off leaks and assessments, apparently, on what we think might be down there at highly enriched uranium and other locations on low enriched uranium that need to be accounted for. We know that nuclear scientists, more of them, were killed during the Israeli portion of Epic Fury, Roaring Lion. We know that research and development into weaponization was targeted – a lot of the universities and R&D locations during the war. And of course, the missile side of the house has also been heavily degraded. The actual industrial base, the ability to make a ballistic missile, particularly long range missiles, has been heavily set back, potentially for a long time.
I understand there are reports of like they’re trying to reconstitute and all. Yeah, they’re going to try to reconstitute. But right now, I mean, it’s just a completely different world that we’re living in. So your space-time analysis and strategy have to account for…
DUBOWITZ: Pressures…
GOLDBERG: …on ourselves, pressures on the world, and where they actually sit strategically as a threat to the United States.
DUBOWITZ: Okay. So let me summarize this, because I sent out a post. I think you would agree with this, but I think it’s important that President Trump is negotiating with Iran from a position of leverage that no American president has ever held. The US and Israel have shattered the regime’s enrichment capabilities, destroyed key nuclear weapons facilities, decimated its defense industrial base, killed an experienced generation of senior military commanders, intelligence chiefs, and nuclear weapons scientists, and severely degraded its medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missile programs and capabilities that were on a deadly trajectory. The regime’s terror proxy network has been mauled across the region. Its economy is collapsing under the weight of war, sanctions, corruption, and isolation. Okay. I think you would agree with that assessment.
GOLDBERG: Totally.
DUBOWITZ: And just one more piece here. With that kind of leverage, Trump has a real opportunity to secure a strong deal, one that dismantles Iran’s pathways to the bomb rather than temporarily managing them, and constrains the regime’s ability to reconstitute its defense and missile programs. And then I would just add a final point which we can talk about: then he needs to pivot to maximum support for the Iranian people to help them reclaim their country from a failed, bankrupt, and brutal regime. So your…
GOLDBERG: Point –
DUBOWITZ: Particularly…
GOLDBERG: Now, with news that the internet is coming back on today, I mean, that’s a huge opportunity for us.
DUBOWITZ: Right. So I think to your point, I mean, people forget this, but we’re nowhere close to where we were ever in terms of destroying their deadly capabilities.
GOLDBERG: But to your point, they retain capabilities. They have these underground missile cities that perhaps we were not able to penetrate for whatever reason. They have command and control bunkers, like the missile cities, deep underground, that potentially we did not penetrate for whatever reason. They have short-range capabilities to hold the world hostage in the Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, that they have demonstrated. And that’s obviously from an inventory perspective probably their largest stockpile of weapons – the capability in their nearest short-term neighborhood to inflict damage and harm. You talk about the potential to wreck havoc on their energy infrastructure, just start targeting their oil, starting with their refineries, Israeli recommendations you mentioned. They still retain the retaliatory capability and command and control to then rain down on the rest of the Gulf and their energy infrastructure as well. And so you wouldn’t be talking about $100 Brent oil at that point.
And by the way, they would still be able to stop anything else potentially from coming out of Strait of Hormuz, if anything is even left to come out of the Strait of Hormuz after this sort of apocalyptic everybody-blow-each-other-up on their regional energy infrastructure. I would imagine that’s why the president doesn’t want to go down that road. And frankly, I wouldn’t advise that road at this point. I would love to see refineries stop working in Iran right now for whatever reason. I feel like the United States and Israel should be able to do that. I would like to see other groups – the Iraqi militias haven’t stopped launching drones into the Gulf throughout the ceasefire. Wouldn’t it be something if a drone just comes out of nowhere from somewhere else and hits a refinery or something? I mean, that could happen, because I do think if you exacerbate the gasoline crisis even more with taking down their domestic refineries without hitting the oil, you would do an enormous amount of damage.
Desalination plants, by the way, is another concern, obviously in the Gulf, of water and a water crisis being sparked if the regime was able to take out all the desalination plants throughout the Gulf. So these are the concerns you have of getting into an infrastructure back-and-forth war without knowing that the enemy will actually not be able to respond. If you could decapitate more leaders, if you can penetrate these missile cities now, if we’ve learned things about them, if we’ve improved our ideas of how to get to things we didn’t accomplish during Epic Fury that we would still like to, that sounds good to me. It hasn’t become apparent to me that that is the case yet, but if it has, then maybe we will see that. That’s why I’ve always fallen back to the blockade – economic fury, compounding that which was already done during Epic Fury and making life really, really hard for the regime internally, and keeping the fracture and focus getting worse and worse.
But then moving forward with a military operation that’s totally focused on the Strait of Hormuz, which is a different target set, which is a different mindset. It’s a different strategic objective. Something like Project Freedom, but Project Freedom Plus. The biggest question in my mind, that I think has thrown a wrench into all of this and perhaps moved us into this trajectory of controversy and deal-making, is why did Project Freedom shut down after 24 hours? That was exactly the right move. If you can reopen the strait on your terms, defend against whatever they want to do to you, destroy or degrade the capabilities that they’re using to respond inside the Gulf or in the strait, take out all the bases on the islands like Larak Island and Qeshm Island and elsewhere, all the coastal areas where they’re launching missiles, have airplanes in the sky to take out small boat swarms and drones, et cetera. And you can move tankers through – you will have neutered their ability to hold you hostage while also keeping the blockade in place. That’s game over.
DUBOWITZ: Yeah. And I have perhaps some insight, maybe some speculation, but I think it’s well informed. Why did Project Freedom last for such a short period of time? Because the Saudis – you know this – the Saudis came out and said, “We’re not going to provide the United States with overflight rights,” and without those overflight rights, it’s very difficult to execute on what you’re talking about.
GOLDBERG: Yeah. The country that won’t join the Abraham Accords because it’s too hard for them, I guess, would instead like to take away the best card that Donald Trump has to actually win and force him into a bad deal with Iran. Maybe that’s why the president decided on a phone call to say, “I expect you all to join the Abraham Accords as part of this deal,” to which there was apparently a lot of silence. But in the end, if you are able to demonstrate to these Gulf countries that there is no other viable choice for them and us, then Project Freedom or Project Freedom Plus – and you’re able to get back to there – I obviously think that’s a much better strategy. I have written that. The president posted a link to my op-ed a few days ago on Truth Social. I don’t know what to read into it or not – that was three steps there.
And by the way, one of the steps, whether you go through Project Freedom or you cut a deal on the strait or whatever, I think we have to talk about as well. Because in my view, step one was keep the blockade, economic fury. Step two was something like Operation Freedom, Project Freedom. I called it “Epic Passage” in the op-ed. It came out the weekend before Project Freedom started. And then the third piece was on energy and on rendering the Strait of Hormuz moot over the long term. And this is where I think you come back to. Because my caveat on, “Oh, this could look terrible – we’re trading oil sanctions relief, we’re lifting the blockade for the Strait of Hormuz being open and we’re not going to get to anything else” – that’s quite possible under that construct. Maybe not. The president has other ideas and maybe he has the political will to keep the blockade. Maybe he will fire on vessels that come out that aren’t specific oil tankers that have been approved. I don’t know. This is Donald Trump. It’s not Barack Obama. It’s not Joe Biden.
However, the sooner we work with the Gulf to build pipelines in every possible direction to get all the material that we need out without relying on the Strait of Hormuz, the sooner that happens, you will have taken this final extortion card off the table for the regime. And so long as you’ve actually destroyed and degraded their nuclear capability for several years, and set them back on their ballistic missile program for several years, and you’re able to, through covert action as you say, continue to support the people on the ground – Project Freedom is a different kind of project. Project Freedom might have in mind it’s not for the Strait of Hormuz, it’s for the Iranian people – while then completing pipelines like what the UAE has already announced, a second Fujairah pipeline adding another two million barrels per day of export, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz.
Where are the Saudis right now with a second East-West pipeline? Where are the Qataris talking about a gas pipeline? Where are additional players coming and saying, “Hey, let’s form a consortium and render the Strait of Hormuz moot for the future.” We can play a part. The Development Finance Corporation can be part of that. It could be a US-led consortium. I branded it in the op-ed and other interviews I’ve given: the “Aram Express,” like Aramco. The history of Saudi Aramco, of course, is an Arabian American joint venture, in that case in oil. This can be a Gulf-American joint venture consortium in pipelines, with offtake obviously in Europe and Asia. I fear that until we get that done, if we get into this sort of bargain of Hormuz for oil sanctions relief or Hormuz for blockade relief, we’ll sort of just stay in that phase one until you get to all the pipelines being done.
DUBOWITZ: Well, I think that’s right. I mean, the pipelines are going to take years to build. I do think as part of Abraham Accords and IMEC, building pipelines that actually go through Israel to the Mediterranean would be smart, because then you’re not being held hostage by Iran in Hormuz, or Iran and the Houthis in the Red Sea. You have now another set of pipelines that go into the Mediterranean, which will be well defended by Israeli air defenses and the IDF. But Rich, those pipelines are going to take a while to build. Absolutely a great way to remove the threat of blackmail from the Islamic Republic. But I don’t know if you agree with me – I don’t think there’s going to be a nuclear deal. I think this whole phase two negotiation, I think President Trump actually believes he can get a deal. I think he is a deal maker and I think he certainly wants to give it a try, but I just find it really difficult to believe that the Iranians are going to give a deal that meets the minimum demands that President Trump has on all of this – on nuclear material, zero enrichment, dismantlement, inspections. Never mind, I don’t even think we’re going to even be negotiating over ballistic missiles or terror. Am I wrong?
GOLDBERG: I think that is a high possibility, that there is no deal, and he has to then go to the Gulf Arabs who objected or pulled the rug out on Project Freedom and say, “Project Freedom is the only way forward. I have literally done everything possible to get a deal with these people, but they are crazy.” And what has happened in the last 72 hours or something? They’re mining the strait while we’re supposedly closing in on dotting i’s and crossing t’s. They released a new statement from the invisible Supreme Leader, reaffirming death to America, that this will always be the ethos of this regime forever.
They’re trying to say, “Oh, we want all the money out from the Qatari bank accounts in Oman. What you’re offering us isn’t good enough, et cetera.” So by the way, we just had the New York Post – I think they had the exclusive – on a plot, an arrest originally, and then it started moving, of a plot to assassinate Ivanka Trump from the IRGC. I mean, this is the regime that the president is having his people negotiate with through all these intermediaries. I think he’s pretty clear-eyed on all of that, by the way. And so what I hope is the case, and what I believe is the case, is that we are in – and this is the danger when you get into deal-making mode and diplomacy mode – all the news, all the focus, all the sort of rabbit-hole minutiae is just all about what’s in a deal, even if there’s never going to be a deal. It’s just all about the deal, and you lose sight of the big picture. You lose sight of the blockade and the impacts going on, and economic fury, and what else could be done there, and the conversation shifts. And that’s what’s happening here.
The strategic communications window is shifting to the onus on the United States and looking at our own pressures instead of looking at their pressures right now. And if the president has confidence in the current policy of the blockade, which I believe he should, and if he has confidence in Admiral Cooper’s plan for Project Freedom Plus, which I think he should, then fine, go along with this process. We’re in Hajj Week right now. The Saudis, I’m sure, asked to make sure there’s no military conflict during Hajj Week. That’s certainly something that they would have valued. That’s going to end in a couple days. At that point, there’s still no deal if there is none, and they go to the Saudis and say, “We’ve given you more time. You had Hajj Week. You pulled the rug out last time. We’re committed to your defense. There’s no other path forward. We need to get the strait open. Will you support us in Project Freedom?” And I hope that the Crown Prince would say yes. I hope that the Emiratis would say yes and everybody else in the region would say yes.
DUBOWITZ: Yeah. I mean, the thing that worries me, Rich – and you know about American politics better than I do – I worry that as this thing gets protracted and we get closer and closer to the midterms, it becomes more difficult for President Trump to run Project Freedom, return to major military operations against Iran, unleash the Israelis, do any of the other things that he may need to do if there is no possibility of a nuclear agreement that’s going to satisfy President Trump with respect to all of the conditions that he’s laid out. And that the American political clock – which the Iranians are very aware of – is ticking away, and as it gets closer to November, it gives leverage to Iran and takes leverage away from us.
GOLDBERG: If the president were to prioritize the sort of politics of it – the domestic politics in the short term and the impact on the ballot in the House and Senate over legacy outcomes of the strategy – then yes, I would imagine that is possible. If for some reason Kevin Hassett or the Council of Economic Advisers is producing some sort of PowerPoint for the president that lays out some dire forecast of “we’re scraping bottom on stocks, and Asia’s about to go into a depression, and that’s going to roll into us and then we’re going to have to raise interest rates, and everything you’ve worked for will collapse over this, we need to get the strait open,” I would imagine that would have an impact on the president. Now, by the way, I’m not agreeing with that. I talk to a lot of people in the energy world, as you know, on a daily basis, and that is not the picture that they paint.
They actually think – and are surprised that the president wouldn’t perceive much more flexibility right now than he has, than he’s portraying – because they believe that prices reflect the market. That is the point of a market. And some of the incongruity that we’ve seen between present prices and future prices has started to relax. The market is no longer feeling like it is in immediate crisis where supply is about to be gone. Now, I know a lot of people say, “Oh, well, the market’s only reacting to the ebb and flow of the news cycle and President Trump’s statements and betting on duration.” But the people who actually are in this world are not seeing it. They’re seeing the market adapting. They’re seeing demand adapting to supply. They’re seeing all kinds of structural changes that allow for the market to cope with what is happening here. Yes, there are additional SPR releases that we are making, that Europe is making, that Asia is making, and at some point you could have that alarm bell set off. But it doesn’t look like it’s today. But still, Memorial Day has passed, you’re entering the summer months, driving season, vacation season.
The spike in jet fuel has come down back a little bit. Again, another indicator from the energy industry. They say the crisis may be a little overblown from some of the hype that you see. But still, it’s expensive. You don’t want to go to the pump and pay what you’re paying all summer long. That sets in a frame, it sets in a feeling of the economy and of the future and outlook for the United States. And so there are repercussions for that, and the president probably wants to get on with Cuba and other big-picture issues. I come back to the beginning: he has already made amazing strategic gains in Operation Epic Fury on top of Midnight Hammer. That is absolutely true. I am very skeptical he can get further gains by relieving pressure too early just to get the Strait of Hormuz open, and not trying to pursue Project Freedom or some other sort of military action first. But if that is what he chooses to do, we better get those pipelines built as soon as possible.
The Emiratis, by the way, say they’ve already 50% completed on theirs and it’ll be ready next year. That’s unbelievable. And we think about pipelines in the United States, we’re like, “Well, we’ll never build a pipeline.” Well, that’s the United States, okay? That’s with the trial bar and the environmental regulations and NGOs suing and all the permitting problems that this administration has tried their best to clear out as much as possible. When you’re in the Middle East and it’s your entire economy and you’re a dictatorship, it’s amazing how fast you can build a pipeline. So I expect if the Saudis wanted to build a second East-West pipeline, that’ll happen pretty fast. And in fact, we could completely restructure global markets, excluding the Strait of Hormuz, by the time President Trump leaves office, which would at least provide a new lever and leverage opportunity over the regime long term.
DUBOWITZ: Okay. So as a final scenario, I want to run this by you based on everything you’ve said, and just sort of thinking through maybe what President Trump has in mind. Let’s say, for example, President Trump decided: look, there’s an economic game of chicken going on. I’ve got the blockade, they’ve closed Hormuz. Energy markets is not a crisis, but it’s serious, particularly for Asia and Europe, and that may start to kick in in the United States as we head to midterms. We’ve done severe damage to their nuclear, missile, defense, navy – I mean, serious strategic gains. By the way, we haven’t talked about it right now, but I’m not going to link these negotiations with Hezbollah, and the Israelis keep whacking Hezbollah, but I need a short-term negotiation to open up our moves and get oil flowing. I’ll pay a price for that. Maybe it’s $12 billion, $15 billion, maybe it’s an additional $8 billion, but even if I gave them $20 billion, even if it was all in cash, they have sustained probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 to $300 billion in damage during the 40-day war.
Not to mention the fact they came into the war already on their knees economically, and that is a rounding error compared to the amount of money they’re going to need to rebuild their economy and any kind of leverage. So I’ll do the short-term deal. We’ll negotiate for 60 days. I’m not delusional. I don’t think I’m going to get a deal in 60 days. I’ll keep extending it. I’ll extend it while Treasury Department is behind the scenes imposing sanctions and going after proliferators and going after sanctions evaders. And I’m going to basically extend this until November. I’m going to focus on the election in the fall. I’m going to hopefully keep the House, and I for sure want and need to keep the Senate. And once that’s over, I now have about two years, maybe two years plus, to bring this to a successful conclusion.
And it’s at that point that I’m going to instruct the US Navy to operationalize Project Freedom. We’re going to open up the strait. I’m going to work with the Israelis, and we’re going to come up with a comprehensive return to major military operations. I am going to work with the Saudis and the Emiratis and others in order to do what you’ve suggested, which is to mitigate the importance of Hormuz. So we establish by the time I’m gone that there are alternative pipelines. And then I am going to push forward with Operation Epic Fury, economic fury, and I’m actually going to do something serious in providing support to the Iranian people and having a whole program of maximum pressure, maximum support, maximum fracturing. So we will severely weaken this regime, and the next time the Iranians come to the streets, they’re going to be armed, they’re going to be able to communicate, they’re going to be financed, and we’re going to have a serious plan that we’re going to operationalize to January 2029.
So at the point that I leave office in January 2029 – because I’m not confident that the next president is going to be as focused on Iran or as tough on Iran as I am – we are going to run this comprehensive Iran strategy, but I’m going to do it after midterms, not before. And right now I’m just buying myself some short-term relief for the economy and short-term relief on the political front.
GOLDBERG: Possible. You’d also add in having the European navies come into the Gulf as well in this interim period, set up a process of effectively getting used to a multinational convoy effort that’s running in and out of the Gulf, so they can’t have the excuse of “we’re not coming to help next time,” which has been also a major disappointment of some of our closest NATO allies in this process, given that it’s their supply that’s at stake at the moment. So that could also get operationalized in the meantime. So if you do return to the blockade and shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, you would be in a stronger position potentially to prepare for that operation. US military obviously would still be there. That’s a long time. Just maintain the supposed ongoing blockade presence, by the way, of phase one, if we’re not moving all those naval vessels elsewhere in the world. Obviously at some point they’ll need some relief, but it’s possible.
I would say we’re also releasing the SPR at top dollar, and once a phase one would happen, we’ll obviously see a massive drop in oil prices, which would be the point at which you would buy back oil for our SPR. Caveat to that: it takes a lot longer to refill our SPR than it does to release it, unfortunately, and it’s gotten worse because of the rapid drawdowns that happened under Biden for Russia and Ukraine that literally broke parts of the SPR.
But still, I mean, take a page out of the Iranian playbook, I guess. Let’s find storage where we can and buy it up while it’s cheaper, and have ourselves what China had during this conflict, which is a really important strategic reserve. But yeah, all those things are possible. But if we haven’t had a covert campaign already with the Israelis since the start of this to arm people and organize people, that’s malpractice. I hope that already exists and is ongoing, and has expanded now with the internet up, that should give additional opportunities there. So yeah, I think all those things are possible. But again, the president may see this and just say, “I don’t feel desperate in any way. I don’t think I have a crisis in front of me. We can go another few weeks with higher gas prices than we’d like to.” The Iranians might not have a few more weeks to deal with what we can still deal with them.
He may be willing, with the support of allies, to restart Project Freedom, and if he does that, obviously it’s checkmate for the regime if we can sustain Project Freedom. So he has a lot of options in front of him. My ultimate point, if he were to be watching right now, is this: right now he’s at maximum leverage. That’s just true. He’s got a full blockade in place with economic fury and all the damage that has been done from economic fury, from Epic Fury. The minute you come off of that maximum leverage, you obviously have less than maximum leverage. So if you give up some of that leverage or a lot of that leverage in exchange for less than all of what you wanted out of a deal, it’s unlikely you will get the rest of it until you bring back that leverage. It’s sort of common sense.
So there’s a lot on the table here. He’s dealing with a lot of different moving pieces. He is not Barack Obama. He is not Joe Biden. He’s done enormous damage to Iran along with the Israelis. We should celebrate that as a national security victory, and now we’ll see what he chooses to do, and if the regime actually even wants a deal that’s reasonable, that doesn’t put us into a worse position for our national security.
DUBOWITZ: Yeah, I think that’s right. And it’s also, Rich – I try to remind people because it’s worth remembering – I think the Iranians played their Hormuz card at the wrong time and at the worst time. Because I think the trajectory we were on under JCPOA, and the trajectory we could have been on under a different president, was Iran would have nuclear weapons, ICBMs, 11,500 medium-range ballistic missiles, 500,000 drones, a Chinese and Russian-built military, hundreds of billions of dollars of sanctions relief. And at that point, so powerful, that when they played the Hormuz card, we would have no card to play, and they would have not temporary control over Hormuz but permanent control over Hormuz. Instead, we’re confronting the Iranians now where they have been severely weakened across all lines of power projection. And this is the moment to finally take the card away from them through Project Freedom, open up Hormuz militarily, and make it very clear, not only to the Iranians but to the Gulf allies and to the Chinese, that the United States of America will not allow any power to close down these vital shipping lanes and use that as blackmail against the global economy and against the United States of America.
So we have an opportunity to win the Battle of Hormuz. I hope the president will do so, and we also have an opportunity to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program permanently, at a time where severe damage has been done. And finally, and I would just say this as an American: I celebrate the fact that Iran’s defense industrial base has been destroyed and that their ICBM program has been destroyed and that they’re not going to be building intercontinental missiles anytime soon to threaten the American homeland. People gloss over that. Maybe people take that as a given. I don’t, because you and I know, over many, many years of thinking about the ICBM program and Iran’s missile program, it was always difficult to imagine how this could be solved diplomatically or through sanctions, and instead it was solved by these US and Israeli air forces destroying that very dangerous capability.
So much has been done. I’d love to have you back where we’ll keep breaking it down all over again. And thank you for your service, Rich Goldberg.
GOLDBERG: Thank you. And my only final thought is: if the president actually holds firm to this last idea, that if he does this deal, he only does it if the Saudis and the Qataris and others join the Abraham Accords – I mean, that would be a pretty amazing thing. I will say that. So he should stick to his guns on that, see if he can get that done, because obviously that changes the entire course of history in the region and the course of history for the regime in Iran, being completely encircled by a whole new kind of alliance.
DUBOWITZ: Amen to that. Thanks, Rich.
GOLDBERG: You bet.
END

Makkah Speaks to the World: Peace in Times of War
Bandar bin Abdul Rahman bin Moammar/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 27/2026
Between the corridors of the Grand Mosque, the plains of Makkah, the valley of Mina, the plain of Arafat, and the grounds of Muzdalifah, millions of pilgrims move these days answering the call of their Lord. They have come from every corner of the earth, with their diverse races, languages, cultures, and colors. Many belong to countries torn apart by conflict and exhausted by wars and divisions. Yet they converge upon Makkah, united by Hajj in a scene that refutes the rhetoric of war and embodies the possibility of coexistence.
At a time when Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people continue, and as the region’s crises and the suffering of its peoples persist, from Sudan to Libya, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria despite occasional signs of relief here and there, the American-Israeli war on one side and Iran on the other has placed not only the region, but the world itself, before a major crisis.
From the outset, the position of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was that it would not allow its airspace or territory to be used to target Iran. However, Iranian attacks on Riyadh and other cities and capitals led the world to anticipate the Saudi response. As some voices called for drawing Riyadh into the conflict, Saudi decision-making circles handled the situation with calm restraint.
Despite the nature of the Iranian attacks and their immediate repercussions, the Saudi response operated on several fronts. In the media sphere, Riyadh neither denied nor downplayed the Iranian attacks. On the security front, the Saudi authorities took all necessary measures to protect the country’s assets and achievements. Politically, Saudi diplomacy leveraged those attacks in international forums and conferences, transforming them from incidents demanding retaliation into part of an accusatory record on which international pressure could be built, a strategy viewed as more effective than an immediate military response.
Amid these tensions, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced, through Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that it had placed all its capabilities at the service of supporting brotherly countries subjected to Iranian attacks. It opened its territory, airports, and ports to them and kept supply chains running.
At the same time, it continued receiving millions of pilgrims and providing them with every service, including pilgrims holding the nationalities of countries involved in the crisis or sympathetic to one side or another. This Saudi approach delivers a political message: Makkah is not governed by the logic of war; rather, war is managed according to the logic of Makkah.
Strategic calculation is what gives Saudi policy its real weight. Saudi diplomacy often operates behind the scenes, and the countries that forge peace in times of war are remembered in history with a different kind of distinction than those who fought battles, won them, and still lost much in the process. Throughout its history, and even during its most turbulent periods, Saudi Arabia has preserved the voice of Makkah and the call of Islam as a unifying force for Muslims, while keeping peace a possible choice.
Yet the most distinctive element of the Saudi experience remains tied to its service to the Two Holy Mosques and its care for Hajj and the pilgrims. This responsibility, in particular, is what gives Saudi policy a different dimension. Saudi Arabia acts not only as a state defending its interests, but also as a country carrying a religious and symbolic responsibility that makes its calculations more delicate.
The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques does not merely represent a local political authority; in the global Islamic consciousness, the role is tied to safeguarding the holy sites and preserving the unity of the Ummah. As a result, the choice of war becomes a complex decision that extends beyond purely political calculations and military equations.
Saudi wisdom becomes especially evident as the human caravans move between Makkah and the holy sites. Much of the world’s political geography collapses before a scene unlike any other: millions of pilgrims answering the call with one voice and gathering on the same plain. Though they arrived aboard planes from countries competing over borders, interests, and ideologies, with governments clashing across security councils and media platforms, the Saudi government receives them and provides them with care and support so they may perform their rites with peace of mind and ease.
In Makkah, the Iranian stands beside the Arab, the Asian beside the European, the American beside the Chinese, and the Russian beside the African, without any of them asking the other about political positions or international alignments. The language of war dissolves before the cry of “Labbayk Allahumma Labbayk,” and the entire scene becomes a living refutation of the idea that conflict is the eternal destiny of peoples.
Makkah does not merely present a theoretical discourse on coexistence; it produces coexistence as a lived reality every year, transforming difference into temporary unity under the canopy of worship. At a time when the world has become more divided and polarized, Hajj seems to deliver a message to humanity that people can still come together despite everything.
It is an expression of the responsibility of serving the Two Holy Mosques and a moral commitment before more than two billion Muslims, upheld by a state that has dedicated itself to serving Islam and striving for peace from the era of King Abdulaziz to that of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz.

‘The Lebanonization’ of Iraq: A Lesson that Washington Never Learned and that Tehran Mastered
Alaa Shahine Salha/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 27/2026
I first encountered the term “the Lebanonization of Iraq” in the headline of a Reuters story published shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein, when the American occupation authorities were considering the adoption of an ethno-sectarian quota system resembling the political system that has been in place in Lebanon since the early twentieth century. The problems inherent in this decision were as clear to us Lebanese then, and they are even more clear today.
That decision alone was not responsible for dragging Iraq into sectarian civil war, nor for the rise of ISIS, but it poured fuel onto the sectarian flames that tore the country apart and opened the door to Iran’s penetration of Iraq’s political and security institutions.
Today, the Iraqi government finds itself unable to control the Iran-aligned Shiite militias that have launched numerous attacks against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states in defense of the regime in Tehran since the war began at the end of February, including a serious drone attack on a nuclear facility in the UAE earlier this month. This paralysis may not yet have become as grave as the Lebanese state’s failure to control “Hezbollah” yet, nor has it had the same catastrophic humanitarian, economic, and political implications, but it remains a driving force of Iraq’s instability and threat to Gulf security more broadly.
The quota system (which stipulated that the premiership be reserved for Shiites, the speakership of parliament for Sunni Arabs, and the presidency for the Kurds) facilitated Iran’s infiltration of the Iraqi political landscape and its hold over successive governments and prime ministers, not to mention its military expansion through support for militias, some of which have effectively become integrated into the country’s security apparatus.
With each of those militias’ attack against the Gulf states or Jordan, Iraqi officials issue statements condemning them, as though those statements were coming from another planet, reminding us of Lebanon’s reiterations that armament must be restricted to the hands of the statem and that Gulf security is an inseparable part of Iraq’s security. The point, here, is not to question the sincerity of those statements, but to highlight the weakness of central authority in both countries.
Lebanon’s crisis, of course, runs far deeper because of Israel and its ongoing attacks on the one hand, and because, on the other, Hezbollah has all but abandoned what remained of the Lebanese national identity that once formed the backbone of its cross-sectarian popularity, at least after its success in liberating the south in 2000. The party’s militia dragged Lebanon into the Gaza support war in 2023 and then into Iran’s war without consulting the Lebanese people. Its leaders then rejected the state’s decision to negotiate through Washington to end the war and occupation, under the pretext of lacking internal consensus. Israel’s assault continues to reinforce the party’s legitimacy, so much so that one sometimes feels there is a wager on Israel escalating its criminality in the hope of sustaining the armed militia that can no longer truly protect Lebanon as it once claimed.
Unlike Lebanon, Israel does not pose an existential threat to Iraq, nor does it bomb Iraqi villages or violate Iraqi territory on a daily basis in ways that could legitimize the continued existence of armed factions loyal to any entity other than the state.
But none of this means Iraq’s predicament is minor, especially amid the American administration’s apparent desire to isolate Iran’s regional proxies from the main negotiations with Tehran, which could incentivize the Iranian regime to sabotage those diplomatic tracks.
Although sources cited by Asharq Al-Awsat in a report published this week spoke of five factions that are not opposed to disarmament and handing their arms to the authorities, the same report pointed to the difficulty of implementing this after those factions expanded at the expense of the state and its institutions, not to mention Iran’s opposition, for years.
The sectarian system has always been, and will remain, a principal reason for Lebanon’s inability to consolidate central authority and combat corruption and patronage. The same dynamic can be seen in Iraq, which is likewise drowning in entrenched corruption scandals and suffering from a crushing failure to implement economic reforms that would reduce the state’s dependence on oil revenues.
The result, even if it does not yet rival the scale of Lebanon’s catastrophe, is no less grim: threats to the security of neighboring states and American interests. The problem is significant enough to Washington to feel compelled to halt monthly dollar shipments to Baghdad in an attempt to pressure the government. Yet, as we see in Lebanon, it is exceedingly difficult to confront militias purely through security measures without risking civil war.
So what is the solution? The irony in Asharq Al-Awsat’s report is that one expert believes the Shiite religious authority in Najaf could deprive the factions that refuse to surrender their weapons of justification on religious grounds, a “solution” that in itself reveals the depth of Iraq’s dysfunction today.
Incidentally, among the factions refusing to disarm is one called the Hezbollah Brigades. This is not a joke. We are not laughing.

Selected Face Book & X tweets on 27 May/2026
Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Told Michella Haddad on Sky News Arabia سكاي نيوز عربية that President Trump has three choices on Iran:
1- Concede to the Iranians and agree to their demands
2- Maintain status quo in the hope that America and the world have more stamina and can outlast the Iranians in terms of economy and popular will
3- Forcefully open Hormuz Strait by using military force, which America can do but president Trump does not think warrant the cost. Maybe his calculus changes, moving forward.
Also, the Iran regime is delusional and seems to believe its own propaganda. We don't know what Iran will really look like when it get itself off war footing (turns on the internet and try to resume normal life). See less

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Discussing my article on Saudi Arabia's voodoo magic foreign policy on I24 News:
1- When IRGC torched Saudi embassy in Tehran in January 2016, Riyad severed ties. In this war, Iran pummeled Saudi energy facilities with ballistic missiles, inflicting losses in the tens of billions, the Iranian ambassador is still in Riyadh.
2- Instead of leading a diplomatic offensive against Iran, Saudi Arabia rallies 15 states to denounce Somaliland opening an embassy in Jerusalem.
3- Saudi is the 8th biggest defense spender on the planet. If it doesn't use all this military to respond to Iranian missiles attacks on Saudi territory, what does it need this military for. If Saudis politically aligned with the US, Israel and the UAE, they could have caused Iran a lot of damage.
4- Saudi economy is suffering an increasing annual deficit. Riyadh lost its financial tool to influence policies. It says diplomacy, but then refuses to talk to Israel until after the problem is solved (what's the point of diplomacy if not to talk and solve problems?) Only Iran gets preferential treatment from Saudi Arabia, which is inexplicable and hence my calling it voodoo policy. See less

Hicham Bou Nassif
Declassified letter fom King Hussein of Jordan to President Ronald Reagan, June 22, 1982: "The Palestinians must neither be destroyed by the Israelis in Lebanon nor humiliated by the Lebanese." Interestingly, a few years before pleading with Reagan to prevent the Lebanese from "humiliating" the Palestinians, Hussein had overseen the killing of several thousand of them during the Black September events in order to rid his country of the PLO. (Arafat claimed that 25,000 were killed, though that was likely an exaggeration in typical Arafat fashion.) Yet when circumstances seemed to allow Lebanon to become free of the PLO as well, Hussein objected. It is interesting how Arab elites rediscover human rights and their love for Palestine whenever Lebanon gets a chance to unshackle itself from that burden.
Hussein’s love for Palestine disappeared a few weeks later of course when he was asked to take some Palestinians back into Jordan. He had to be cajoled into accepting even a small number of them, despite the fact that they held Jordanian citizenship. Until 1982, all Arab regimes - and I mean every single one - were happy letting the Lebanese bear the burden alone.

Gad Saad
Dear @EvanLSolomon, your empty words are so uplifting. Thank you for uttering vacuous platitudinous BS as my family flees Canada because of Jew-hatred.
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Evan Solomon
Hatred and antisemitism have no place in Canada.
The display of a Jewish person in effigy is vile, deeply disturbing, and a clear act of hate. This incident must be taken seriously and investigated by the appropriate authorities.
To Jewish Canadians: you are not alone. We stand with you. We will always defend the safety, dignity, and belonging of every community in this country.

Hanin Ghaddar
Join us tomorrow
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Washington Institute
Join us for an expert conversation with @haningdr, @davidschenker1, and Assaf Orion exploring the next round of U.S.-brokered talks between Israel and Lebanon as the Pentagon hosts new security negotiations. @robsatloff will moderate the discussion. #TWIPolicyForum

Congressman Randy Fine
You’re either in or you’re out. To Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and our so-called allies: no more going halfway. Israel is a democracy and the permanent superpower of the Middle East.
The time to live in the fiction that it might somehow go away is long past.
It’s time everyone rows in the same direction and deals with reality.

Rep. Marlin Stutzman
Pleasure to meet with you again Mr. Prime Minister.
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Prime Minister of Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met this evening, at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, with US Rep. Abraham Hamadeh @AbrahamHamadeh and US Rep. Marlin Stutzman @RepStutzman.

Gideon Sa'ar | גדעון סער
Great meeting Members of Congress @RepStutzman and @AbrahamHamadeh in Israel.
We had an in-depth discussion on regional issues, including Lebanon and Syria. I stressed the need to safeguard Syria’s minorities.
I also described the aim of Israel’s activities in southern Lebanon:

Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Congressman Hamadeh, is among the sharpest on Middle East affairs, has vast connections in Syria and Lebanon, including among counterpart parliamentarians and lawmakers. Good to see the Arab diaspora playing a role in bridging the gap and pushing for peace, not only instigation, antisemitism and mob rallies.