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Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (L) and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in Jerusalem. [Photo by AMIR COHEN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images]
Two Israeli Cabinet ministers called Sunday for resuming airstrikes on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital of Beirut despite an ongoing ceasefire, Anadolu Agency reports.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Israel should “fire for every violation” by Hezbollah and for every drone launched by the Lebanese group.
“Dahiyeh must tremble,” he said on US social media company X, referring to Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also demanded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “take down buildings in Dahiyeh today.”
“The fire toward the northern settlements is a test of the Dahiyeh equation that the Prime Minister announced,” Smotrich said on X.
The call by the hardline politicians came after the Israeli army reported a drone attack from Lebanon targeting military positions in northern Israel.
The Israeli army continued its daily airstrikes in Lebanon despite a fragile ceasefire agreement that has been in effect since April 17.
The Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,700 people, wounded nearly 11,500 and displaced over 1.5 million since March 2, according to Lebanese officials.
John Swinney speaking at a press conference after the 2026 Holyrood elections. Photograph: David Young/PA
Cyber agency says BlackCore targeted John Swinney, as well as interfering in New York and French elections
France’s cybersecurity agency has accused the Israeli tech company BlackCore of interfering in the Scottish elections earlier this year by targeting the first minister, John Swinney.
The disinformation detection agency Viginum said BlackCore had this year used proxy social media accounts to target Swinney, the Scottish National party, and the Scottish government on four occasions.
Viginum said BlackCore had focused its operations on municipal elections in France but had also targeted the mayoral elections in New York, won by Zohran Mamdani, and other countries such as Togo and Angola.
…
The Viginum report alleges that Swinney, the SNP and the devolved government in Edinburgh were targeted by a specific campaign between 6 January and 8 May, before and during a hard-fought election for the Scottish parliament.
It said BlackCore had been involved with the “coordinated posting” and mobilisation of at least 256 accounts on the social media platform X, which enabled the distribution of about 1,400 comments. Swinney’s account was targeted 652 times, the SNP’s 338 and the Scottish government’s 112.
Swinney and fellow ministers have been vocal in their criticism of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and have imposed a form of sanctions on the Israel Defense Forces by withholding state grants to arms firms that supply the IDF and freezing support for exports to Israel.
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
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A view of streets as daily life continues amid fragile ceasefire in Tehran, Iran on May 12, 2026, as geopolitical tensions rise following recent statements from the United States. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]
Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf warned on Sunday that negotiations for a peace deal with the US could be halted if Israeli attacks on Lebanon continue, Anadolu reports.
In a post on US social media company X, Qalibaf explained that the ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon reflect the US’ inability to fulfill its commitments.
“The Zionist attacks on the southern suburbs of Beirut once again demonstrate the United States’ lack of will or ability to fulfill its commitments,” he added.
The Israeli attacks on Lebanon “will not go unanswered,” Gen. Mohammad Jafar Asadi, deputy inspector brigadier general at Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters of the Iranian Armed Forces, said in a statement, according to Fars News Agency.
Asadi added that the Israeli attacks targeting the southern suburbs of Beirut “will not go unanswered.”
At least three people were killed and 15 others injured when the Israeli army launched airstrikes on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday despite an ongoing ceasefire, state news agency NNA reported.
The Israeli army has continued a bombing campaign on Lebanon since March 2 and occupied several towns in the country’s south.
The attacks have killed over 3,700 people, wounded nearly 11,500, and displaced over 1.5 million since March 2, according to Lebanese officials.
While US President Donald Trump said the deal with Iran that will open the Strait of Hormuz will be signed on Sunday, Iran has disputed the timeline, and said a final decision is under consideration. After the Israeli strike in Beirut on Sunday, Trump said the attack “should not have happened … when we are so close” to the deal. He urged both Israel and Hezbollah to “stand down,” and hoped for a “long and beautiful peace.”
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose country has been mediating between the US and Iran, also said on Saturday that the deal could be finalized in the next 24 hours.
While Iran has called for ending the war on all fronts including Lebanon, release of its frozen assets and end of US blockade of its ports; the US is demanding that Tehran halt its nuclear program and fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
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US President Donald J. Trump monitors U.S. military operations in Iran: Operation Epic Fury, February 28, 2026. [White House X Account – Anadolu Agency]
In January 2026, flushed with the swift, covert removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration rolled the dice on a far more volatile and deeply rooted adversary. President Donald Trump operated under the seductive assumption that a high-tech, stealth excursion against the Islamic Republic of Iran would yield a parallel, cost-free triumph. Yet, months into the conflict sparked by the administration’s aggressive “Maximum Pressure 2.0” campaign and escalated via Operation Epic Fury, Washington finds itself trapped in a familiar, agonizing quagmire. Tactical brilliance has once again been mistaken for strategic victory. As Winston Churchill famously observed in the wake of early wartime triumphs, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” By prioritizing spectacular kinetic displays over coherent political end states, the administration has committed critical strategic errors that echo America’s past blunders in the region, ultimately leaving the United States more vulnerable, its deterrence degraded, and the Middle East fundamentally destabilized.
The administration’s first and most glaring mistake was the illusion of the “quick win”—a fundamental misreading of Iranian resilience, nationalism, and asymmetric depth.
The opening salvos of the 2026 campaign achieved extraordinary tactical milestones, including the systematic destruction of Iran’s conventional naval assets and the stunning decapitation of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Yet, as the Cato Institute observed shortly after the dust settled, “tactical successes cannot mask what has quickly become another strategic failure… the administration’s strategy is divorced from its ostensible aims.” Airpower and targeted assassinations did not trigger a domestic democratic uprising, nor did they erase decades of deeply entrenched institutional control. Instead, power quickly consolidated around an even harder-line, war-hardened faction of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), proving General Omar Bradley’s timeless maxim that “amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics” and long-term sustainability.
Furthermore, the administration drastically underestimated Iran’s capacity for regional, asymmetric retaliation. For years, Washington’s defense establishment operated under the comfortable assumption that Tehran would limit its responses to localized attacks on U.S. assets or proxy skirmishes.
Instead, the conflict immediately metastasized into a multi-theatre conflagration. On day one, Iranian missiles and sophisticated loitering munitions struck across all six Gulf Arab states, completely shattering the regional security umbrella and exposing the fiction of impenetrable air defenses. Rather than dismantling Iran’s missile architecture, the war revealed that a staggering 70 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile stockpile and mobile launchers remained entirely intact, deeply buried in hardened underground “missile cities” and fully operational weeks into the fighting.
This massive miscalculation triggered the second strategic error: a failure to anticipate and mitigate crippling global economic blowback. The administration’s aggressive naval blockade was met with a brutal, symmetric counter-strategy in the maritime chokepoints. Tehran seized effective de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz—the vital artery through which 25 percent of the world’s oil transits—implementing a coercive toll and mining system that drove global crude prices past $100 a barrel. The economic ripples disrupted fragile global supply chains and sparked inflationary spikes across Western economies. In a supreme irony, the administration was forced to quietly ease certain oil sanctions and grant waivers to keep global energy markets afloat, giving Tehran unexpected economic leverage in the middle of a war meant to break its financial resolve.
This economic vulnerability recalls the warning of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who noted that defense cannot be sustained if it destroys the economic foundation upon which national power rests.
The deeper tragedy of this conflict lies in how it has perversely incentivized the very behavior Washington sought to deter. The administration’s stated rationale for military intervention was the total, permanent elimination of Iran’s nuclear program. However, by demanding what amounted to “unconditional surrender” while systematically dismantling the remaining diplomatic guardrails, the administration left Tehran with zero peaceful off-ramps. Before the outbreak of hostilities, regional intermediaries noted that Iran was willing to offer nuclear concessions that went well beyond the original international agreements. By replacing diplomacy with existential military threats, Washington has practically guaranteed that any post-war Iranian regime will view a functional nuclear deterrent not as a negotiable luxury, but as an absolute requirement for national survival. As the legendary strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously wrote, “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” When war loses its political objective and becomes merely punitive, it transforms into an engine of endless escalation.
Finally, the war has accelerated a structural shift toward an aggressively post-American global order, severely damaging U.S. credibility among allies and adversaries alike. Writing on the cascading geopolitical fallout of the conflict, foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan noted that the war has triggered an “accelerating global adjustment to a post-American world as a result of this massive miscalculation.” Far from isolating Iran, the conflict has bound Washington’s primary geopolitical rivals closer together. U.S. forces have faced an adversary heavily fortified by external collaboration, ranging from advanced Chinese semiconductor chips and real-time satellite imagery to shared tactical innovations in drone warfare.
The Trump administration entered this conflict under the hubristic assumption that it could unilaterally dictate the terms of a short, low-cost engagement. Instead, it has ignored the foundational rule of strategic statecraft: never launch a war without a clear, achievable definition of peace.
By chasing the mirage of an effortless regime collapse, the administration has degraded America’s conventional deterrence, exposed the global economy to severe energy shocks, and driven a resilient adversary deeper into the camp of our most formidable global competitors. If Washington does not pivot swiftly toward a realistic, diplomatically enforceable ceasefire, Operation Epic Fury will not be remembered as a historic triumph but as a textbook case of how tactical hubris breeds strategic disaster.
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Former Israeli Prime Minister and leader of Israel Democratic party, Ehud Barak speaks at the Party’s Election campaign event in Tel Aviv on July 17, 2019. [Gili Yaari/NurPhoto via Getty Images]
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be removed “with sticks and stones” if he attempts to undermine the upcoming general election, Anadolu reports.
Barak, who served as Israel’s prime minister from 1999 to 2001, made the remarks in an interview with Israel’s public broadcaster KAN.
“I fear Netanyahu may try to sabotage the elections, and he can do it very easily,” Barak said. “If he tries, we will have no choice but to remove him with sticks and stones.”
Netanyahu, 76, has led the current government since late December 2022. His coalition has been widely described as the most right-wing since Israel was established on Palestinian territories in 1948.
The Knesset’s current term expires in October 2026, with elections expected to be held in September or October.
Barak argued that Netanyahu “could sabotage the elections by launching operations in Lebanon that would provoke retaliation from Hezbollah and Iran.
“Netanyahu wants an endless war because he understands that ending it would accelerate his trial,” Barak said. “Just as he obstructed some prisoner-exchange deals (with Hamas), he also blocked the possibility of progress in Lebanon.”
Netanyahu is currently standing trial in Israel on corruption charges and is also wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) since 2024 on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Barak also criticized the emerging agreement between the US and Iran. “In one word: bad. In two words: very bad,” he said.
He warned that “Israel is paying the price for Netanyahu’s arrogance and lack of foresight,” adding that the arrangement under discussion was “not an agreement, but a memorandum of understanding that failed to address either missiles or Iran’s regional allies.”
Barak argued that “none of the objectives of the war against Iran have been achieved.”
The remarks drew immediate criticism from Netanyahu’s allies.
Boaz Bismuth, a Likud lawmaker and chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, called for a criminal investigation into Barak for what he described as legitimizing violence against the prime minister.
“He should be sent to a psychiatrist, and if he is found mentally fit, a criminal investigation should be opened against him immediately,” Bismuth said in a post on US social media company X.
While US President Donald Trump said an agreement with Iran that would open the Strait of Hormuz would be signed on Sunday, Tehran has disputed the timeline and says the signing could happen in the coming days.
Since the April 8 ceasefire mediated by Pakistan, efforts aimed at ending the war launched by the US and Israel against Iran on Feb. 28 have continued.
