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WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a solemn and moving White House ceremony Thursday, former President Donald Trump presented the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military’s highest decoration for valor, to three veterans whose extraordinary acts of bravery saved countless lives and turned the tide of enemy advances during conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Two of the honorees, retired Marine Corps Maj. James Capers Jr. and Army Maj. Nicholas Dockery, accepted the award in person, while the third, retired Marine Corps Col. John W. Ripley, received the honor posthumously more than 15 years after his 2008 passing. Opening the ceremony, Trump paid tribute to the three men, saying, “These are great men, great people. We thank you and we will never, ever forget you.”

At 88 years old, Capers was recognized for his selfless leadership during a fatal 1967 Vietnam ambush. What began as a routine reconnaissance mission targeting a suspected North Vietnamese Army base camp quickly devolved into days of brutal close-quarters combat in the thick, unforgiving Vietnamese jungle. On the fourth day of the operation, Capers’ small team was surrounded and outnumbered by enemy fighters, and a hidden land mine blast left the major with a broken leg and severe abdominal wounds. Despite his life-threatening injuries, Capers insisted on retaining command after receiving a dose of morphine, Trump recounted. “He took over like nobody’s ever seen before,” the former president said.

Capers immediately called in targeted air support to repel the attacking force, and when a rescue helicopter arrived to evacuate the unit, he insisted all wounded Marines be loaded onto the aircraft before he boarded himself. A heartfelt, unscripted moment unfolded during the medal presentation: after pinning the Medal of Honor around Capers’ neck, Trump adjusted the decoration to sit straight against the veteran’s chest, pulling him forward in a gesture of respect. The 88-year-old, who had held a composed expression up to that point, broke into a warm smile when Trump grinned back at him.

The second posthumous honor went to Ripley, celebrated for a one-man mission that halted a massive North Vietnamese advance in 1972. When more than 30,000 enemy troops and 200 tanks advanced toward a critical strategic bridge in the village of Dong Ha, Ripley took on the high-risk task of destroying the crossing single-handedly. Over five grueling hours, he repeatedly climbed across the bridge’s exposed steel beams while under constant enemy fire, placing a total of 500 pounds of explosives in key positions. “John completed not one, not two, but five such trips,” Trump noted, calling Ripley a “very strong guy.” After placing the final charge, Ripley said a prayer before triggering the detonation, sending the entire bridge collapsing into the river below and stopping the enemy advance in its tracks. Ripley’s three sons and other extended family members attended the ceremony to accept the medal on his behalf.

The final living recipient, Dockery, was honored for his extraordinary courage during a 2012 Taliban ambush in Afghanistan’s Kapisa Province, where his platoon was tasked with guarding a local compound. Outnumbered by an estimated 150 attacking insurgents, Dockery immediately sprinted across open, enemy-exposed ground to rally his scattered troops, then set out to locate missing service members. After carrying one wounded soldier out of active gunfire, he spotted two enemy fighters moving to kill a second wounded American troops trapped in an alley. Dockery eliminated the two insurgents before administering CPR to the wounded soldier, restoring his breathing, according to his official citation.

After calling in mortar support to target enemy positions, Dockery used his own body to shield the wounded soldier from incoming blast shrapnel. After hours of intense urban combat, Dockery deployed smoke grenades to mark enemy positions for U.S. attack gunships, and he refused to leave the battle site until every last wounded service member had been evacuated to safety. “You were the last man to depart the battlefield that day,” Trump told Dockery. “and you left it a legend and a hero.”

On Thursday, just hours after the United States and Iran signed a landmark memorandum of understanding to guide negotiations ending a regional war launched in late February, the Israeli military launched two targeted drone strikes across southern Lebanon, leaving one person dead and three others injured, according to local official media.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency confirmed the details of the attacks: the first strike hit the town of Beit Yahoun, where an Israeli drone dropped an explosive device that wounded two local residents. A second attack targeted a vehicle at a roundabout connecting the villages of Kfartebnit and Arnoun, killing one passenger and leaving a second in critical condition.

The unprovoked attacks have immediately raised urgent questions about the future of the new US-Iran peace deal, whose text explicitly includes provisions for Lebanese security and requires an immediate end to all military operations across the country. The MOU, signed by both leaders during a diplomatic gathering in France late Wednesday, formalizes a binding commitment to end all active hostilities on every front—including Lebanon—between the two nations and their respective allies. It also requires all signatory parties to abandon threats of force, respect each other’s territorial sovereignty, and guarantee the full territorial integrity and political independence of Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long faced accusations of actively working to derail diplomatic progress between Washington and Tehran, and he has openly defied the terms of the new framework, refusing to issue any commitment to withdraw Israeli military forces currently occupying large swathes of southern Lebanon. Since Israeli military operations against targets in Lebanon began on March 2, Lebanese official data records that nearly 3,800 people have been killed in these attacks, hundreds of whom are children.

Reuters reported Thursday that Israeli officials are currently holding closed-door negotiations with the United States to push for permission to maintain a permanent military presence in southern Lebanon. An anonymous senior Israeli official close to Netanyahu told the outlet that the Israeli government would not back away from its demands, including keeping troops deployed in the strategic area south of Lebanon’s Litani River. A second senior Israeli official added that the final outcome of these negotiations will depend entirely on whether US President Donald Trump is willing to pressure Israel into compliance, by threatening concrete repercussions if Jerusalem refuses to adhere to the interim peace pact’s terms.

During a press conference held Wednesday, one day after the MOU was signed, Trump struck a diplomatic tone when speaking about Netanyahu, calling the Israeli leader “a very good man” and an “amazing prime minister.” He did, however, acknowledge the ongoing rift over Lebanon, saying, “We have a little dispute over Lebanon. I say, ‘You can do a little softer touch, Bibi. You don’t have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that’s from Hezbollah.’”

Iran has already issued a clear warning that the entire MOU will be invalidated if Israel refuses to fully withdraw all its forces from Lebanese territory and end all military attacks. Speaking Thursday, Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said that the United States bears full responsibility for forcing Israel to uphold the commitments Washington made to Tehran in the signed document, saying “It is the responsibility of the US to force Israel to respect the US commitments to Iran in this document.”

A senior far-right Israeli cabinet member from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party has stoked regional tensions this week with explosive comments forecasting that Israel will ultimately go to war with Syria, and outlining a sweeping new anti-Israel alliance he claims is taking shape across the Muslim world.

Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, laid out his controversial assessment in a series of radio interviews conducted across Wednesday and Thursday, framing the emerging bloc as a far greater threat to Israeli national security than Iran and its recently finalized ceasefire agreement with the United States.

Chikli centered his criticism on the new government led by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, claiming its jihadist ideological roots tied to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, paired with its stated goal of securing the unification of Jerusalem, make peaceful coexistence with Israel impossible. From that foundation, he argued that a full military confrontation between Israel and Syria is inevitable. “There is no way that a jihadist regime rooted in Isis and al-Qaeda, whose aspiration is the unification of Jerusalem, can live in peace alongside the State of Israel,” Chikli stated.

The minister went on to identify a three-country coalition he calls the “radical Sunni axis of evil”, made up of Pakistan, Turkey, and Qatar. In remarks to Israel’s Army Radio, he emphasized that this unreported new alliance poses a far more acute danger to Israel than Tehran, even as he acknowledged that Iran has secured major strategic gains through its U.S.-brokered ceasefire. “What is far more troubling is the new axis emerging in the Middle East,” Chikli explained.

He argued Pakistan and Turkey earned their place in the bloc through their outsized influence during U.S.-Iran negotiations, while he dismissed Qatar as the global public relations mouthpiece for jihadist movements during an interview with Kol Barama Radio. Chikli reserved his sharpest criticism for Ankara, describing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regional ambitions as “an extremely dangerous combination” for Israel. He claimed Turkey has effectively installed a protectorate over much of Syria, and doubled down on his assessment by saying “Turkey and Syria are ten thousand times more concerning than Iran.”

Chikli’s comments come amid a sharp upward trajectory in bilateral tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem. Erdogan earlier this month declared that Israel’s ongoing military strikes in Syria and Lebanon constitute a direct threat to Turkish national security, stating that “Israel must be stopped, this is the duty of humanity.” Just weeks prior, Turkish Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci publicly called for the “liberation” of Jerusalem, further ramping up rhetorical hostility between the two countries.

Chikli is not an outlier in his hardline stance toward Turkey among senior Israeli political figures. Last week, fellow Likud lawmaker Ariel Kellner officially labeled Turkey an “enemy state,” while Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar argued last month that Israel must reclassify Turkey as an enemy state, warning that Ankara would face devastating consequences in any future conflict with Israel. Even former Israeli Prime Minister and opposition figure Naftali Bennett backed that framing back in February, declaring that “Turkey is the new Iran.”

Outside of his regional security assessments, Chikli used his recent media appearances to defend a high-profile far-right British political agitator. After UK police detained Tommy Robinson, whose legal name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and seized his electronic devices upon his return from a trip to Russia, Chikla called the action an attack on free speech. “One of Britain’s clearest voices against real Islamic terrorism is now being hunted under anti-terrorism laws. At this rate Britain will become the second Islamic Republic in Europe,” he claimed.

Chikli also pushed back against the idea that the region is set for a long period of peace after two and a half years of continuous conflict. When asked if Israelis could expect an extended period of calm, he said he hoped for that outcome but did not expect it to hold. He argued that Turkey has open regional ambitions that directly undermine Israeli interests, though he was careful to clarify that Israel has no intention of capturing the Turkish capital of Ankara, and would welcome lasting peace with both Syria and Turkey. He closed by referencing the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel as a lesson: “When the enemy says something, I listen.”

For years, Chikli has worked to build close working relationships with far-right political figures and governments across the globe, aligning with their anti-Islam and anti-immigration policy platforms.

In a recent diplomatic development that has sent ripples across global geopolitics, the leaders of the United States and Iran have signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding (MOU) designed to end active hostilities between the two nations, as well as halt Israel’s ongoing military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. But according to analysis from Jessica Genauer, Academic Director of the Public Policy Institute at UNSW Sydney, the agreement is rife with critical structural flaws, unfulfillable promises, and one-sided concessions that leave the U.S. with few tangible gains while abandoning key regional allies and endangering long-term regional stability.

Genauer frames the deal as a classic “emperor has no clothes” moment: despite the Trump administration’s loud claims of a historic diplomatic victory, the agreement delivers almost no new benefits to the U.S. that were not already in place before the outbreak of war. Even the limited nuclear concessions offered by Iran are nothing new, she argues, and the U.S. has given up significant leverage in exchange for almost no meaningful progress on core national security priorities. Beyond that, the MOU abandons long-standing U.S. partners, most notably Gulf Cooperation Council states, while sidelining core Israeli security interests and ignoring the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people. Worse, many of the core commitments laid out in the document are impossible for the U.S. to deliver on, particularly pledges around broad sanctions relief and the unfreezing of billions in Iranian assets held around the world.

Breaking down the most problematic provisions of the MOU, Genauer first examines the clause calling for an immediate and permanent end to all military operations across all fronts, including Lebanon. A glaring oversight here is that the agreement never mentions the two primary parties to the Lebanese conflict — Israel and Hezbollah — and neither side was consulted before the clause was added to the MOU. The text also fails to clarify whether the ceasefire requires a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, a step that is all but politically impossible for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to implement. A solid majority of the Israeli public supports continued military pressure on Hezbollah and retaining control over southern Lebanon to eliminate the group’s cross-border threat. While a temporary ceasefire may hold in the short term, Genauer concludes the underlying conflict will almost certainly reignite in the near future.

Next, the MOU includes a provision requiring Iran to allow unimpeded, fee-free safe passage for commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz for a 60-day period, a clause Genauer calls deeply problematic. In effect, the agreement explicitly concedes Iran’s right to begin charging shipping fees for passage through the strait once the 60-day window expires — a major win for the Iranian regime that upends decades of international consensus around free navigation through the critical global energy chokepoint. This provision places Gulf states and Oman in an extraordinarily difficult position: the agreement includes no binding security guarantees to protect these nations from Iranian aggression, leaving them with little choice but to accept Iran’s demand for fees to keep their energy and commodity exports flowing.

The MOU also includes a commitment from the U.S. and unspecified regional partners to develop a $300 billion fund for Iranian post-conflict reconstruction and economic development. Genauer notes the U.S. is highly unlikely to contribute any of its own funding to the initiative, meaning the entire burden will fall on Gulf regional partners. For Iran, this provision creates a powerful new coercive tool: Tehran can pressure Gulf states to fund the reconstruction plan, threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz and resume cross-border attacks if they refuse. Faced with a choice between paying billions or enduring sustained economic and security damage, most Gulf states will likely concede to Iran’s demands. This dynamic also pushes Gulf nations into a delicate position with the U.S.: while they remain dependent on Washington for military security and will not openly break with the U.S., they are almost certain to pursue deeper diplomatic and economic partnerships with other global powers, particularly China, to hedge their bets.

On the critical issues of sanctions relief and unfreezing Iranian assets, two core pledges laid out in points 7 and 11 of the MOU, Genauer highlights that the U.S. simply cannot deliver on most of its promises. Washington can only lift unilateral U.S. sanctions and unfreeze assets held directly on U.S. territory, which make up a tiny fraction of Iran’s total frozen assets globally. The agreement requires the U.S. to also cancel United Nations Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sanctions resolutions, a step that is completely outside Washington’s unilateral control. What’s more, the U.S. did not consult with its allies who hold the vast majority of Iran’s frozen assets before signing the MOU, leaving no clear path to pressure those allies to release the funds.

Finally, on the nuclear issue that has been at the center of U.S.-Iran tensions for decades, the MOU delivers almost no new progress. The agreement only reaffirms Iran’s existing pre-war commitment not to develop nuclear weapons, and deliberately omits any ban on Iranian uranium enrichment — a core long-standing red line for U.S. negotiators. The only concrete nuclear provision requires Iran to dilute its existing stockpiles of enriched uranium under IAEA supervision in exchange for sanctions relief, and the text only commits both sides to “discuss the issue of enrichment” at some future date. Genauer notes it is extremely unlikely that a more detailed, binding agreement on enrichment will be reached within the 60-day window outlined in the MOU; any future negotiations would take months at a minimum, and a final deal is far from guaranteed. Despite this lack of progress, the U.S. has already agreed to offer sweeping sanctions relief, representing a major one-sided concession to Tehran.

This analysis, originally published in *The Conversation* under a Creative Commons license, offers a critical, detailed breakdown of the gaps and risks of the new U.S.-Iran diplomatic agreement.

For nearly 30 years, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has built a legacy of clashing with sitting U.S. presidents, leaving even the most powerful leaders in the world reaching for expletives to express their frustration. A candid new analysis traces this long-running pattern of tension, revealing how Netanyahu’s strategic choices and the unique structure of U.S.-Israel relations have repeatedly put the two allies at odds – with escalating consequences that now threaten Israel’s long-standing bipartisan support in America.

The string of high-profile friction stretches back to 1996, when Netanyahu met newly elected U.S. president Bill Clinton for the first time. After Netanyahu delivered a lengthy, unsolicited lecture on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, an exasperated Clinton turned to his aides afterward asking, “Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”

Relations between Netanyahu and Barack Obama were hostile from the start, and deteriorated rapidly after Obama launched negotiations for a landmark nuclear deal with Iran. In a 2011 open-mic incident years before the deal was finalized, then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy described Netanyahu to Obama as “a liar,” to which Obama replied: “You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day.” Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg later documented that Obama’s senior staffers privately referred to Netanyahu with the scathing insult “chickenshit.”

Most recently, the pattern repeated with Donald Trump in June 2024, after Netanyahu ordered a military strike on Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Concerned the attack would upend a fragile pending agreement to end escalating conflict with Iran, Trump lashed out publicly, saying Netanyahu has “no fucking judgment.” Even current president Joe Biden has joined the long list of frustrated leaders, with reports indicating Biden called Netanyahu a “fucking liar” over his management of the devastating post-October 2023 war in Gaza.

While many observers attribute this repeated friction to Netanyahu’s stubborn, single-minded personality, the analysis argues there is a deeper structural explanation rooted in the unique nature of U.S.-Israel relations. Unlike other foreign leaders who clash with U.S. presidents, sitting American chief executives cannot simply dismiss Netanyahu or cut off U.S. military and diplomatic support for Israel, thanks to the powerful, well-organized pro-Israel constituencies that exert major influence over U.S. domestic politics.

Netanyahu has actively leveraged this dynamic to advance his own policy goals, mobilizing U.S. domestic pro-Israel groups to pressure sitting presidents when their priorities diverge from his. In 1998, for example, when Clinton pressured Netanyahu to cede territory in the Israeli-occupied West Bank during a Washington visit, Netanyahu spoke the night before his meeting with Clinton to 1,000 members of the pro-Israel Christian right, a core constituency that openly opposed Clinton’s agenda, and held separate meetings with top Republican leaders. When Clinton met him the next day, he dryly noted, “I know where you were last night.”

This strategy reached new heights during the Obama administration, when Netanyahu rallied broad opposition within U.S. political circles to derail Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. Whenever Obama pressured Netanyahu to curb settlement expansion in the West Bank, Netanyahu stoked domestic U.S. political backlash that ultimately forced Obama to back down rather than absorb the political cost of confrontation.

In recent years, Netanyahu has doubled down on this approach by making a deliberate strategic choice to align himself closely with the U.S. Republican conservative right. This partisan alignment has amplified tensions with Democratic presidents, who have historically been more willing to challenge Israeli policy, and has turned U.S. support for Israel into an increasingly divisive partisan issue – a shift that critics warn has already eroded support for Israel among the American left.

The 2024 clash with Trump marks a major turning point, however: it is the first time a sitting Republican president has openly and harshly criticized Netanyahu, undermining the core of his long-standing partisan strategy. The analysis argues that over the past year, Netanyahu overextended his influence, pushing aggressively to draw the U.S. into a direct military confrontation with Iran, a goal he has pursued for decades. From Trump’s perspective, Netanyahu maneuvered the U.S. into a costly, intractable conflict that damages U.S. economic and global interests, and Netanyahu refuses to prioritize a quick cease-fire that would ease global economic pressure.

Today, the consequences of Netanyahu’s decades-long strategy are playing out against a dramatically shifted backdrop. Broad public support for Israel across the U.S. political spectrum has collapsed amid mounting casualties from the Gaza war, and even traditionally pro-Israel conservative voters are growing frustrated over the economic harm of the escalating regional conflict. Netanyahu now finds that his partisan alignment has left his country with no solid base of bipartisan support in the U.S. The article concludes that future Israeli leaders will likely look back at Netanyahu’s approach and share the frustrated assessment that led Trump to reach for a curse word – that the long-serving prime minister lacked the judgment to protect Israel’s most critical alliance.