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  • Trump’s Hormuz ‘protection’ seeks ‘pretext for escalation’: Iran

    Trump’s Hormuz ‘protection’ seeks ‘pretext for escalation’: Iran

    Tensions have escalated sharply in the Persian Gulf after former U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a new U.S. military-led initiative to escort stranded commercial vessels through the closed Strait of Hormuz, a move Iranian officials have decried as a deliberate provocation designed to trigger conflict and justify expanded military aggression against the Islamic Republic.

    The plan, branded “Project Freedom” and scheduled to launch Monday, was first announced by Trump on his social media platform Truth Social, and later confirmed by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). In his announcement, Trump framed the operation as a humanitarian gesture, stating his administration had notified nations with ships trapped in the key waterway that U.S. forces would safely guide vessels out of Iranian restricted areas so they could resume commercial activity. CENTCOM later released detailed force deployments for the mission: it will include guided-missile destroyers, more than 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned surveillance and combat systems, and a contingent of 15,000 active-duty service members. The command also noted the operation will be backed by a new cross-agency international coordination framework called the Maritime Freedom Construct, which pairs diplomatic outreach with military coordination to bolster maritime security in the strait.

    Iran, which closed the strategically critical strait in response to the U.S.-Israeli war and the Trump administration’s naval blockade of the country, has issued a firm, unified rejection of the plan. An anonymous senior Iranian official told independent outlet Drop Site that Trump’s proposal is engineered to goad Iran into firing the first shot, creating a false pretext for military escalation. The official stressed that any commercial vessel attempting to traverse restricted transit routes without prior coordination with Iranian authorities will be intercepted immediately by Iranian security forces. Should U.S. military vessels intervene to disrupt these interceptions, the official added, Iran will respond with immediate, proportional force. The official also noted that U.S. warships are currently positioned far from the restricted transit corridor, meaning Iran would engage non-compliant commercial vessels long before they could reach American assets, accusing Trump of leveraging civilian ships as political pawns in his domestic and geopolitical agenda.

    Ebrahim Azizi, chair of the Iranian Parliament’s national security commission, echoed the criticism, warning that any U.S. interference in Iran’s new maritime regulatory framework for the Strait of Hormuz constitutes a direct violation of the ceasefire brokered earlier this April. He dismissed Trump’s initiative outright, stating that the strategically vital waterway cannot be governed by “delusional posts” on social media.

    The escalation over the strait comes as both sides navigate fragile, indirect negotiations to end the three-month-long war. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei confirmed Sunday that Tehran is currently reviewing the U.S. government’s response to Iran’s 14-point peace proposal, which was shared via Pakistani intermediation. Baghaei clarified that the proposal is exclusively focused on ending immediate hostilities, and that no nuclear-related negotiations are currently underway, despite repeated claims from Trump and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that halting Iran’s purported nuclear weapons program is a core U.S. war aim. Iran has long denied pursuing nuclear weapons, and U.S. intelligence assessments have repeatedly concluded Iran does not maintain an active nuclear weapons program as described by U.S. officials. Trump has already cast doubt on the proposal’s viability, writing on social media Saturday that he cannot imagine the plan being acceptable, claiming Iran has not paid a sufficient price for its actions over the past 47 years.

    The exact details of the 14-point proposal remain publicly unconfirmed, but foreign policy analysts have offered preliminary assessments. Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued Sunday that the proposal represents an unstated push for a broad grand bargain to resolve the 47-year history of U.S.-Iran hostility, rather than just a temporary ceasefire. Parsi noted the plan implicitly calls for both sides to restrain their regional proxies, including Israel and Hezbollah, an approach that could align with Trump’s known negotiating instincts.

    Domestically, the war has become a growing political liability for Trump. A new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll released Friday found that 61% of U.S. voters view Trump’s decision to launch the war as a mistake, while 66% disapprove of his handling of the conflict. The poll also recorded Trump’s lowest presidential approval rating to date.

    Analysts have noted that Iran’s current strategy, which includes closing the Strait of Hormuz to disrupt global energy and commodity trade, aligns directly with a long-documented asymmetric warfare doctrine developed by Iran’s military leadership. Archival footage from the 1990s, recently shared online by journalist Séamus Malekafzali, featured late Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Hossein Salami — who was killed in a U.S.-Israeli strike last year — outlining the doctrine for IRGC staff. Salami argued that while direct conflict with the U.S. is possible, victory is achievable if Iran can shift fighting to terrain that neutralizes U.S. military advantages and exploits U.S. weaknesses. Geopolitical analysts paraphrase the doctrine as focusing on drawing out conflict to raise economic costs and fuel domestic political turmoil in the U.S., eroding its political will to sustain military engagement.

    This approach is already visible in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that carries roughly 25% of global seaborne oil trade and one-third of the world’s seaborne fertilizer trade annually. Harrison Mann, a fellow with the advocacy group Win Without War, explained the dynamic during a Sunday CNN appearance, noting that Iran is able to inflict meaningful economic pain on the U.S. and its allies through this form of economic warfare, a pressure campaign that will be unsustainable for Trump over the long term.

    Project Freedom has drawn immediate backing from hardline U.S. Iran war supporters, including South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading Republican advocate for military action against Tehran. Graham said he fully endorses Trump’s decision, stating that while he supports a diplomatic end to the conflict, it is past time to reestablish freedom of navigation in the strait and respond forcefully to Iran if it continues what Graham described as “terrorizing the world.”

  • Israel killing Palestinians ‘like we haven’t since 1967’, top commander says

    Israel killing Palestinians ‘like we haven’t since 1967’, top commander says

    Leaked closed-door comments from the head of Israeli military forces in the occupied West Bank have laid bare the staggering scale of Palestinian fatalities under current operational policies, with the commander admitting killings have reached a level unmatched since the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz has reported.

    Major General Avi Bluth, a West Bank settler who took command of the Israeli Army’s Central Command in 2024, made the explosive remarks during a closed forum, where he also defended relaxed rules of engagement that grant troops broad permission to open fire on unarmed Palestinian civilians. In a striking admission of systemic bias, Bluth confirmed that Israeli troops operate a discriminatory policy: Jewish Israelis who throw stones at security forces are never targeted with lethal force, while Palestinians who carry out the same actions are shot to kill.

    Claiming credit for the high death toll, Bluth stated that over a three-year period, Israeli forces had killed 1,500 people he labeled as “terrorists” — a term his command applies broadly to Palestinian individuals. Puzzling over the absence of large-scale popular unrest against Israeli occupation, he said, “So how is there no intifada? Why aren’t they taking to the streets? Why is the Palestinian public indifferent? Why are there no disturbances?” He went on to attribute the lack of mass uprisings to the deterrence created by the harsh crackdown, arguing, “The Arabs understand that ‘if someone rises to kill you, kill him first’ is part of the rules of the Middle East, and therefore we are killing like we have not killed since 1967.”

    Official data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) backs up the severity of the current surge in fatalities: since October 7, 2023 alone, Israeli forces have killed 1,081 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, including at least 235 children. Bluth explicitly linked the rising death toll to his own orders, which removed previous restrictions on soldiers opening fire on civilians. He detailed one policy that permits troops to shoot Palestinian people attempting to cross the West Bank separation barrier from the knee down, saying, “Today, there are many ‘limping memorials’ in Palestinian villages of those who tried to infiltrate and got hit, so there is a price that is paid.”

    When pressed on the double standard applied to Jewish and Palestinian stone-throwers, Bluth cited “sociological implications” as the reason his forces do not target Israelis engaging in the same activity he frames as terrorism for Palestinians. He confirmed that in 2025 alone, Israeli forces killed 42 Palestinians accused of throwing stones. When shown footage of extremist Israeli settlers throwing stones at troops, he pointed to a single incident in which two masked Israelis were shot, noting that the incident sparked a massive public outcry that would prevent similar action going forward.

    Bluth’s comments have emerged against a backdrop of growing tension between his command and extremist, hilltop settler militias that routinely carry out attacks on Palestinian communities in the West Bank. These militant settlers see Bluth as too soft, claiming he has bowed to pressure from left-wing Israeli groups and the international community. Last week, Haaretz reported that Bluth had publicly labeled rising settler violence against Palestinians as “terror,” and criticized unauthorized outposts built by hilltop youth without prior military coordination. Even so, Bluth also acknowledged that the military, working in coordination with settler groups, has established roughly 150 new unauthorized outposts in Area C of the West Bank over recent years. He claimed these outposts help prevent what he calls Palestinian “terror” and block Palestinian residential expansion.

    The commander’s remarks have already sparked political backlash: Knesset Member Limor Son Har-Melech, a prominent backer of settler militias, has publicly called on Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz to immediately dismiss Bluth from his post.

    Parallel to the political firestorm over Bluth’s comments, Israeli anti-settlement NGO Peace Now released a new report Sunday exposing that the Israeli government has allocated 130 million shekels (roughly $35 million) to the same settler groups responsible for frequent violence against Palestinians, under the false pretense of curbing settler violence. Official government documents frame the funding as aimed at “reducing risk situations and expanding positive responses for youth in the Judea and Samaria area” — the official Israeli terminology for the occupied West Bank. But Peace Now says the funding will in reality go toward expanding existing Israeli settlements and directing millions of public shekels to settler regional councils.

    In an official statement, Peace Now said, “The government uses every excuse to justify pouring more and more millions into settlements. This is a programme to expand settlements under the guise of combating violence.” The organization added that the government is directing most of the budget to the very groups and activities that are the primary backers of the unauthorized outposts and settler farms from which most anti-Palestinian violence originates, and called on the government to cancel the funding allocation while demanding the military and police crack down on ongoing settler violence.

    This report was originally carried by independent Middle Eastern news outlet Middle East Eye, which provides exclusive, unfiltered coverage of the Middle East and North Africa region.

  • AP, Reuters, Minnesota Star Tribune among Pulitzer winners for 2025 work

    AP, Reuters, Minnesota Star Tribune among Pulitzer winners for 2025 work

    NEW YORK — The 2026 Pulitzer Prizes, one of the most prestigious honors in global journalism, have named their latest recipients, recognizing groundbreaking investigative work spanning international surveillance, U.S. presidential power shifts, and community tragedy, just one week after a high-profile security incident targeting a major Washington journalism event.

    The Associated Press took home the coveted 2026 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for a years-long probe into mass surveillance infrastructure and its human and societal impacts within China. Over three years of work that involved combing through thousands of official documents and conducting dozens of on-the-ground interviews, the AP investigation uncovered a key, underreported link: U.S. tech firms have contributed to building the foundational framework of the Chinese government’s mass monitoring and citizen policing system. The project also exposed longstanding regulatory gaps across multiple U.S. presidential administrations that have allowed both American technology companies and Chinese officials to evade rules designed to block Beijing from accessing sensitive restricted materials, including cutting-edge advanced computer chips.

    In this year’s award cycle, Reuters secured two Pulitzer distinctions. The outlet won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for its in-depth examination of how former President and current U.S. President Donald Trump has leveraged the authority of the federal government and the influence of his political base to expand unilateral executive power and target political opponents, award judges confirmed. Reuters also took home a prize in the newly revived beat reporting category for its rigorous coverage of social media conglomerate Meta.

    The breaking news Pulitzer went to the *Minnesota Star Tribune* for its on-the-ground coverage of a 2025 mass shooting at a Minneapolis-area Catholic school. Judges commended the outlet’s work for its remarkable “thoroughness and compassion” in covering the devastating attack that unfolded during the first school Mass of the academic year. The shooting left two children dead and more than a dozen other people injured; the gunman was later found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

    This year’s award announcement, delivered via online livestream with the traditional awards dinner scheduled for later in the year, comes just over a week after a violent security incident outside the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington D.C., one of the most high-profile annual gatherings for U.S. journalists. A gunman rushed a security checkpoint outside the venue and exchanged gunfire with Secret Service agents; he has since been charged with attempting to assassinate Trump, who made his first appearance as sitting president at the annual event.

    Administered by Columbia University in New York, the Pulitzer Prizes recognize outstanding journalism produced in 2025 by U.S.-based newspapers, wire services, digital news outlets, magazines, and broadcaster websites that center text-focused submissions. Entries can include multimedia components such as video, photography, graphics, and audio alongside core written work. Beyond journalism, the 2026 awards also honor outstanding achievement in books, music, and theater.

    Established in 1917 through a provision in the will of iconic newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, the awards carry a $15,000 cash prize for most winning entries, while the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Public Service is awarded a gold medal. All winners are selected by the Pulitzer Prize Board, which counts AP Executive Editor Julie Pace among its newest appointed members this cycle.

  • Greens compare Reform UK’s detention centre pledge to racist 1960s Tory campaign slogan

    Greens compare Reform UK’s detention centre pledge to racist 1960s Tory campaign slogan

    Days ahead of the UK’s May 7 local elections, where both Reform UK and the Green Party are projecting major gains, the right-wing populist party has sparked national outrage with a controversial pledge that weaponizes migration policy for partisan gain.

    Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, has already made clamping down on unauthorized migration a core campaign promise, previously committing to deport 600,000 people residing in the UK illegally and construct a network of new detention facilities with capacity for up to 24,000 detainees. In a provocative announcement Sunday, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf laid out explicit partisan criteria for where these facilities will — and will not — be located.

    Yusuf confirmed that no detention centres would be sited in any parliamentary constituency represented by a Reform UK MP, nor in local councils controlled by the party. “Of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green-controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green-controlled councils to locate the detention centres,” he said. Yusuf framed the policy in blunt electoral terms: “Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you. If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.”

    Yusuf justified the policy by pointing to an internal Green Party policy document that states the party “wants to see a world without borders,” arguing the partisan siting was a fitting consequence of the Greens’ open-borders stance. To pre-empt expected legal challenges to the plan, Yusuf added that a Reform UK government would push through new legislation to block courts from halting construction, mandating that facilities be built in Green-leaning areas regardless of legal pushback. He framed the upcoming local elections as a fundamental clash for the UK’s future, claiming “the failed era of the Tory-Labour uniparty is over” and that the 7 May votes are “a battle for the soul of Britain between Reform and the Greens.”

    The pledge has drawn fierce condemnation from across the political spectrum, starting with the Green Party. A senior Green Party source told Middle East Eye that the policy is “reminiscent” of the racist 1960s campaigning by the Conservative Party, specifically calling out parallels to the 1964 election campaign of Conservative politician Peter Griffiths. Griffiths infamously distributed racist flyers in the Smethwick constituency urging voters: “If you want a n****r for a neighbour, vote Labour.” The source also dismissed Farage as a desperate “establishment stooge” whose credibility is eroding among his own base.

    Criticism has also extended to figures on the British right, who have rejected the policy as an unacceptable abuse of state power. Fraser Nelson, a conservative columnist for The Times, described the pledge as a “new departure for UK politics” that rejects the longstanding principle of a prime minister governing for all citizens, in favor of an overtly partisan approach to state policy.

    Simon Clarke, director of centre-right think tank UK Onward, called the proposal “abhorrent.” Clarke noted that the policy explicitly targets sites for detention centres as political punishment for communities that do not support Reform UK — a penalty that would not only apply to Green voters, but to supporters of the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour as well. He added that the plan would “almost certainly be deemed an abuse of ministerial power for political purposes, and as such would likely be struck down in court before ever being implemented, wasting millions for the taxpayer without detaining anyone.”

  • Israeli MP calls for ‘conquest, expulsion, settlement’ as she tours Gaza boundary

    Israeli MP calls for ‘conquest, expulsion, settlement’ as she tours Gaza boundary

    Against a backdrop of growing speculation that Israel is preparing to restart large-scale military operations in Gaza, a senior far-right Israeli lawmaker has reignited controversy with extreme new calls for the full occupation of the Gaza Strip and the forced expulsion of its civilian population, framing the move as the sole path to long-term Israeli security.

    Limor Son Har-Melech, a parliament member from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, made the remarks in a social media post on X Sunday following an official inspection tour of communities along the Gaza-Israel border. In the post, which included photos and video from her tour, she argued that Israel remains trapped in what she called a failed strategic framework for Gaza, and that there is no substitute for military conquest, mass displacement of local residents, and the establishment of new Jewish settlements across the enclave.

    “Any other solution is unfeasible and will bring upon us the next massacre,” she wrote. Son Har-Melech also emphasized that Israel has no choice but to seize full control of the Netzarim Corridor, a strategic strip of land that splits Gaza into separate northern and southern zones, and to build a permanent chain of Israeli settlements along the route.

    This latest statement is far from an outlier for the hardline politician, who has a long track record of incendiary rhetoric targeting Palestinians. In previous public remarks, she has praised an Israeli citizen convicted of murdering three members of a Palestinian family, and backed a group of Israeli prison staff accused of sexually assaulting Palestinian detainees, falsely claiming the officers were framed. Son Har-Melech has also organized and participated in multiple public events advocating for Israeli resettlement of occupied Palestinian territories, including a conference hosted inside Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, that explicitly called for the expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza and laid out detailed plans for Jewish settlement construction in the enclave.

    Son Har-Melech’s comments come as Israeli military leaders are pushing for an immediate resumption of offensive operations in Gaza, according to reporting from Israeli Army Radio. The outlet cited senior defense officials who argue that the current moment presents a unique and optimal window to defeat Hamas, the governing group of Gaza. Planners have already finalized military blueprints for the renewed offensive, Army Radio reported, with only a final sign-off from Israel’s top political leadership required to launch hostilities.

  • Smart borders, military gates and land seizures: How Israel is encroaching in southern Syria

    Smart borders, military gates and land seizures: How Israel is encroaching in southern Syria

    Two years after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government, a comprehensive new report from Syrian monitoring group the Sijil Centre has laid bare the full scale of Israel’s systematic military incursion and territorial expansion across southern Syria, documenting more than 1,600 violations of Syrian sovereignty between August 2024 and May 2026. The report, shared exclusively with Middle East Eye, reveals a sharp escalation of Israeli activity following the 2025 US-Israel war on Iran, with March 2026 alone seeing a record 321 military operations, 121 aerial strikes and the detention of 41 Syrian civilians.

    Israel’s steady encroachment into Syria began within hours of Assad’s government collapsing on 8 December 2024, when Israeli ground forces crossed the 1974 ceasefire line in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to seize the UN-monitored buffer zone between the two countries. This marked the first major breach of the ceasefire line by Israeli ground forces since the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Within 48 hours of Assad’s fall, Israeli troops had seized 350 square kilometers of Syrian territory stretching from Mount Hermon in the north to the Yarmouk Basin in southern Daraa province. Simultaneously, Israeli fighter jets carried out more than 350 air strikes across multiple Syrian provinces, destroying dozens of Syrian military aircraft, air defense systems and weapons stockpiles.

    In the 21 months since that initial incursion, Israel has consolidated its control over the region through a expanding network of military infrastructure. Hamza Ghadban, director of the Sijil Centre, told Middle East Eye that Israel has already completed construction of nine permanent military bases in southern Syria, with a 10th currently under development. The international community has largely remained silent on this expansion, with no major diplomatic or political pushback to curb Israel’s territorial advances.

    After two large-scale ground incursions into southern Daraa in March and April 2025 that resulted in deadly clashes between Israeli troops and local Syrian fighters, Ghadban said Israel shifted its strategy to what he terms “silent strangulation”: a sustained campaign of small-scale raids, cross-border incursions, and permanent checkpoint establishment. Israeli operations are concentrated in a 15-kilometer deep triangular zone running from Mount Hermon in the north to the Yarmouk Basin in the south, which Ghadban describes as the consistent “hotspot for Israeli activities in Syria.”

    The report’s detailed geographic analysis finds that over 80% of all documented violations are concentrated in Quneitra governorate, making it the primary theater of Israeli operations, followed by Daraa and Rif Dimashq. Within Quneitra, central and northern rural areas see the highest intensity of incursions, driven by topography and population distribution, while southern Quneitra sees systematic targeting of sheep herders grazing near the ceasefire line. Satellite imagery collected between December 2024 and November 2025 confirms a continuous chain of fortified military outposts stretching the full length of Quneitra’s countryside, built on seized civilian and agricultural land. In Jubata al-Khashab, Israeli forces cleared 2,500 dunams of forest and farmland to build a fortified outpost that has since been expanded into a full military base. In al-Hamidiya, 16 civilian homes were demolished to make way for a new base completed in just 50 days, displacing 12 local families and turning the area into a key surveillance and control hub.

    In Daraa province, Israeli operations are less frequent but more targeted, consisting primarily of selective artillery strikes and midnight raids on specific homes and individuals, rather than large-scale sweeps. Israeli forces have turned frontline Syrian villages into tactical entry corridors, with four dedicated “military gates” serving specific operational functions for armored vehicles, troop movements and heavy weapons convoys entering Syria. Ghadban explained that Israel’s end goal is to establish a continuous geographic security belt spanning the entire length of southern Syria, anchored on strategic high ground that allows full surveillance and fire control over all of southern Syria.

    Beyond direct military incursions, the report documents a systematic campaign of environmental damage targeting agricultural and grazing lands near the buffer zone, which Ghadban labels “environmental genocide.” Since January 2026, Israeli aircraft have sprayed unidentified chemical substances across more than 65 kilometers of land along the 1974 ceasefire line. Within days of spraying, vast stretches of vegetation withered, damaging an estimated 3,500 dunams of pasture land and 1,500 dunams of woodland in southern Quneitra alone. Agriculture and livestock herding are the primary livelihoods for local communities, leaving hundreds of families directly impacted. Ghadban said the spraying is a deliberate tactic to force civilian displacement by destroying local income sources. While Syria’s Ministry of Agriculture did not find acute toxicity in tests, it did not identify the chemicals used. The tactic mirrors spraying along the Israel-Lebanon border, where the substance used was confirmed as glyphosate, a herbicide classified by the World Health Organization as probably carcinogenic to humans.

    Israel is also moving forward with major long-term infrastructure projects to formalize its control over the expanded border area. In early 2026, the Israeli government announced a $1.7 billion plan to build the 500-kilometer “Eastern Border Security Barrier”, a continuous fortified line running from the southern Golan Heights to the Samar Dunes north of Eilat on Israel’s southern tip. Israel claims the project includes $80 million in contracts for demining with U.S. technology firm Ondas Holdings and its Israeli subsidiary 4M Defence, but the Sijil Centre analysis concludes demining is merely a cover for building an AI-powered “smart border” equipped with sensor networks, military drones and ground-based autonomous robots. Ghadban noted that the topographical changes and scale of equipment deployed far exceed what is required for demining, indicating the technology is intended for permanent long-term border security.

    The new smart barrier is being integrated with the long-planned Sufa 53 military road running parallel to the ceasefire line in Quneitra, which Israel began constructing in 2022. Together, the two projects form a permanent fortified corridor under the command of the newly created 96th “Gilad” Division, tasked with securing the tri-border region where Israel, Syria and Jordan meet. Ghadban linked the project to Israeli plans to expand Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights: in April 2026, the Israeli cabinet approved legislation to bring an additional 3,000 Israeli settlers to the Golan by 2030, centered on expanding the main settlement of Katzrin.

    Israeli officials have become increasingly open about their long-term territorial ambitions in Syria. Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a leading settlement advocate, stated in April 2026 that Israel will formally annex the Mount Hermon strategic summit and the buffer zone at minimum, expanding Israeli borders alongside similar territorial gains in Gaza and Lebanon. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz doubled down on this stance, declaring Israel “will not move a millimetre from Syria.”

    For local Syrian communities affected by the incursions, little has changed from the era of Assad rule, the report finds. The marginalized southern border regions received almost no state support under Hafez and Bashar al-Assad, and the new post-Assad Syrian government has yet to provide any meaningful support, compensation or formal engagement with affected communities. The only exception was a brief visit by Syrian officials and small-scale infrastructure repairs after a 17-year-old boy was killed in an Israeli strike in April 2026, a step Ghadban notes “hasn’t happened at all before.” Syria’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ibrahim Olabi, has formally raised the issue with the UN Security Council, accusing Israeli forces of terrorizing civilians, carrying out enforced disappearances, home raids and ongoing territorial encroachments in the buffer zone.

  • Iran threatens to attack US warships that enter Strait of Hormuz

    Iran threatens to attack US warships that enter Strait of Hormuz

    Escalating cross-border tensions have thrown the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz back into the global spotlight, after Iran’s top military commander issued a stark warning that any United States naval vessel entering the waterway will face immediate armed attack. The new threat comes just days after former US President Donald Trump launched what he calls “Project Freedom”, framed as a humanitarian mission to extract commercial ships stranded in the strait amid ongoing restrictions from Tehran.

    The warning, first reported by Reuters early Monday, came from Ali Abdollahi, commander of Iran’s unified military command. “We warn that any foreign armed forces, especially the aggressive US army, will be attacked if they intend to approach and enter the Strait of Hormuz,” Abdollahi stated, marking the second time in days that Iranian military officials have explicitly targeted the US with this threat.

    Trump, who had previously ordered a full blockade on Iranian ports and avoided deploying US naval assets into the strait over fears of retaliation, launched the new initiative Sunday. He has already issued a counter-warning to Iran, stating that any interference with the US mission will prompt a direct military response from American forces.

    Stretching between Iran and Oman, the Strait of Hormuz is widely considered the world’s most vital energy chokepoint. Roughly 20% of the globe’s daily crude oil output and a fifth of global liquefied natural gas shipments pass through the narrow waterway, according to International Energy Agency data. When the strait was closed amid recent conflict, the IEA recorded the largest single supply disruption in global energy history: output fell by more than 10 million barrels of oil per day, while global LNG supplies dropped by 20%.

    The sharp exchange of threats comes against a fragile backdrop of diplomatic efforts to end the ongoing US-Iran conflict, with Pakistan serving as the neutral mediator between the two sides. A ceasefire has been in place since April 8, but Iranian leadership has openly questioned the sincerity of US commitment to a lasting peace deal.
    Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei slammed Washington on Monday for dragging out negotiations, saying US demands throughout the talks have been “excessive”. “The other side must resolve to adopt a reasonable approach and abandon excessive demands regarding Iran,” Baghaei told reporters. He also added that all nations that have participated in the conflict, both directly and indirectly, bear collective responsibility for the ongoing crisis.

    Many Iranian political observers, including academic Mohammad Maraandi — who is widely viewed as aligned with senior Iranian government officials — share the widespread skepticism over US intentions. Maraandi has publicly argued that the US is using diplomatic talks as a cover to rebuild its military positioning in the region ahead of a new wave of attacks on Iran.

    According to reporting from Al Jazeera, Iran recently submitted a formal three-phase peace proposal to the US via Pakistani mediators, with the goal of turning the current fragile ceasefire into a permanent end to hostilities within 30 days. The core of the proposal centers on a binding regional non-aggression pact, which would require commitments from all regional actors including Israel to avoid future conflict and cement stability across the Middle East.

    Under the first phase of the proposal, the Strait of Hormuz would be gradually reopened to commercial traffic in tandem with the US lifting its blockade and trade restrictions on Iranian ports. Tehran has also offered to take full responsibility for clearing sea mines from the waterway to restore safe navigation for global shipping.

  • Afghanistan says cross-border attacks by Pakistan hit civilian areas and killed 3

    Afghanistan says cross-border attacks by Pakistan hit civilian areas and killed 3

    Cross-border hostilities have reignited between Afghanistan and Pakistan, marking another setback to fragile diplomatic efforts to de-escalate months of deadly confrontation between the two South Asian neighbors. On Monday, Afghanistan’s interim government issued formal accusations that Pakistan launched unprovoked cross-border artillery strikes that targeted civilian-populated areas in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar Province.

    Hamdullah Fitrat, Afghanistan’s deputy government spokesperson, announced the casualties and infrastructure damage in a post on the social platform X. According to Fitrat’s statement, the strikes left at least three civilians dead and 14 others injured. The attack also inflicted severe damage on key community infrastructure, destroying two local schools, two neighborhood mosques and a primary health care center that served residents of the affected area.

    Pakistan’s Ministry of Information swiftly rejected Kabul’s allegations in a counter-statement posted to X, pushing back against the claims and shifting blame for escalating tensions to the Afghan Taliban-led administration. The ministry noted that Afghanistan’s accusations come in direct response to a series of cross-border shootings launched from Afghan territory into Pakistan that took place in March and April. Those incursions, Pakistan says, killed nine civilian women and children in Bajaur District, located in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

    In its statement, the Information Ministry labeled the earlier cross-border attacks from Afghanistan “reckless and shameful actions” that expose the Kabul administration’s failure to control militant activity along the shared border. The ministry also questioned the veracity of the damage imagery released alongside Afghanistan’s latest accusation, pointing out that the photos show only localized structural damage with largely intact roofs, a pattern the ministry says is inconsistent with artillery impact and suggests the damage may have been deliberately staged.

    The latest exchange of accusations comes amid a months-long cycle of deadly cross-border clashes that has killed hundreds of people on both sides. The current spiral of violence began in late February, when Afghanistan launched a retaliatory cross-border strike against Pakistan after Pakistani warplanes carried out airstrikes inside Afghan territory that targeted militant groups Islamabad says operate from Afghan soil.

    Pakistan has long maintained that the Afghan Taliban government allows the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, to use Afghan territory as a base to plan and launch deadly attacks inside Pakistan. The TTP is a separate militant organization from the Afghan Taliban, but the two groups share close ideological and organizational ties and have remained allied since the Afghan Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in 2021 during the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led international forces. Afghan officials have repeatedly denied Pakistan’s accusations that they harbor TTP militants.

    In early April, senior officials from both countries met in western China for peace talks mediated by the Chinese government. Following the negotiations, Beijing announced that the two sides had reached a preliminary agreement to avoid further escalation of hostilities and committed to work toward exploring a comprehensive, long-term solution to their border disputes. Despite that diplomatic breakthrough, low-level cross-border clashes have continued intermittently in the weeks since the talks, failing to cement a lasting ceasefire along the 2,640-kilometer shared border.

  • Israel seizes nearly 60 percent of Gaza as it plans to resume war, report says

    Israel seizes nearly 60 percent of Gaza as it plans to resume war, report says

    Even with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire currently in place to de-escalate hostilities in the Gaza Strip, Israel has steadily extended its territorial control across nearly 60% of the enclave as it finalizes military plans for a potential full resumption of war, Israel’s Army Radio reported Sunday.

    Citing senior Israeli military officials, the state-run broadcaster confirmed that top defense commanders are pushing for an immediate return to offensive operations, framing the current moment as a strategic window to achieve their stated goal of dismantling Hamas. Full operational plans for renewed attacks have already been finalized by military planners, with only a final greenlight from Israel’s civilian political leadership still pending.

    As part of this military redeployment, the Israeli Defense Forces have drawn down troop presence in southern Lebanon to reposition multiple combat brigades to both Gaza and the occupied West Bank, the report added. Senior officials also noted that the IDF has recorded a gradual uptick in armed clashes and hostile actions across the frontlines in recent weeks.

    The expansion of Israeli control centers on the so-called “Yellow Line,” a unilateral demarcation Israel established to mark the territory under its military control. When the ceasefire took effect, Israel already held roughly half of Gaza’s total territory; it has since pushed this boundary deeper into the enclave, forcing the entire remaining Palestinian population to crowd into just 40% of Gaza’s original land mass, with Israeli troops permanently stationed across the 60% of territory spanning the enclave’s north, south and eastern sectors.

    The current ceasefire was mediated by the United States in October 2024, designed to end more than a year of full-scale Israeli military operations in Gaza that the text refers to as genocide. The deal’s core terms called for a halt to offensive attacks, the opening of border crossings to allow life-saving humanitarian aid into the blockaded territory, and a phased withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza in later stages of the agreement.

    But Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement repeatedly from its start, according to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, which records that near-daily Israeli shelling and raids have killed at least 832 Palestinians since the truce went into effect. Overall, the death toll from Israeli operations in Gaza since October 2023 has surpassed 72,000 Palestinians, with thousands more still unaccounted for and trapped under rubble from destroyed residential and infrastructure buildings.

    The ceasefire agreement also required Israel to remove entry restrictions to allow a minimum of 600 aid trucks carrying food, fuel, medical equipment, emergency shelter materials and commercial goods to enter Gaza daily. But local Gaza authorities report that Israeli bureaucratic and security limits have kept average daily aid deliveries to just over 200 trucks, far below the agreed-upon threshold, worsening a already catastrophic humanitarian crisis for the 2 million Palestinians crowded into the shrinking enclave.

    This report comes from Middle East Eye, an outlet that provides independent, specialized coverage of developments across the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding regions.

  • States across the wildfire-prone Western US are using AI for early detection

    States across the wildfire-prone Western US are using AI for early detection

    Against a backdrop of escalating wildfire risk driven by climate change, artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a critical new tool for early wildfire detection across fire-prone regions of the western United States, already proving its ability to stop blazes before they turn into catastrophic infernos.

    The technology delivered a convincing proof of concept on a March afternoon in Arizona’s Coconino National Forest, when an AI-enabled monitoring camera picked up a faint plume of smoke that did not match the signature of cloud cover or wind-blown dust. After human analysts confirmed the anomaly, alerts were immediately dispatched to Arizona’s state forest service and Arizona Public Service (APS), the state’s largest electric utility. First responders arrived on scene quickly and contained the resulting Diamond Fire to just 7 acres (2.8 hectares), a fraction of the size it could have reached if detected hours later.

    The Diamond Fire interception is far from an isolated success. As record-breaking high temperatures and record-low winter snowpack stoke fears of an extreme wildfire season, state agencies, power utilities and private tech firms have been rolling out AI monitoring systems across remote, high-risk regions where human spotters or casual 911 reports often fail to catch blazes in their earliest, most controllable stages.

    To date, APS already operates roughly 40 active AI smoke-detection cameras across Arizona, with expansion plans to bring the total to 71 by the end of the current summer. The Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management has also deployed seven of its own AI units, while Colorado-based utility Xcel Energy has installed 126 AI cameras, with goals to bring the system to all but one of the eight states it serves by the end of the year. In California, the ALERTCalifornia network operates more than 1,200 AI-integrated cameras that follow a detection model similar to Arizona’s system.

    “Earlier detection means we can launch aircraft and personnel to it and keep those fires as small as we can,” explained John Truett, fire management officer for the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management.

    Unlike populated areas where residents often spot and report fires quickly, most high-risk unpopulated rural and remote zones lack consistent human observation. It is exactly these gap areas that AI monitoring fills, providing 24/7 surveillance that frequently outpaces 911 reports by a significant margin. According to Neal Driscoll, a geology and geophysics professor at the University of California, San Diego and founder of ALERTCalifornia, human oversight paired with ongoing AI training has kept false positive rates very low, and the technology consistently outperforms traditional 911-based detection timelines.

    “It’s just the ones where we won’t get a 911 call for a long time, it is extremely helpful to have that AI always monitoring that camera,” said Brent Pascua, a battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). “In many cases, we’ve started a response before 911 was even called, and in a few cases, we’ve actually started a response, went there, put the fire out, and never received a 911 call.”

    Pano AI, one of the leading providers of this technology, integrates high-definition camera feeds, satellite data and artificial intelligence to scan for early smoke signs. Since launching in 2020, the company has seen surging demand for its systems, which are now deployed across 17 U.S. states plus Canada and Australia, serving forestry operators, public agencies and utilities including APS. In 2025 alone, the company’s technology detected 725 wildfires across the U.S.

    “In many of these situations, we hear from stakeholders that the visual intelligence, the time, really, really gives them a head start and some of these could have taken off into hundreds if not thousands of acres,” said Arvind Satyam, Pano AI co-founder and chief commercial officer. APS meteorologist Cindy Kobold confirms the technology delivers an average 45-minute head start over the first incoming 911 call, a gap that can make the difference between a contained small blaze and a destructive megafire.

    Satyam notes that the development of this technology was directly driven by the growing wildfire crisis fueled by climate change. Rising global temperatures from fossil fuel emissions have created drier, more fire-prone conditions that increase the frequency, intensity and speed of wildfire spread, and existing management tools have not kept pace. AI detection fills this gap, helping first responders act more effectively while protecting communities and critical infrastructure.

    Despite its clear benefits, the technology still faces notable limitations and challenges. The most significant barrier for many agencies is upfront and ongoing cost: Pano AI charges approximately $50,000 per camera annually, a price that includes 24/7 monitoring support and fire risk analysis. False alarms remain a persistent issue, wasting valuable first responder time and resources even as training reduces their frequency. Even when the AI correctly identifies a fire, it cannot guide decision-making on response strategy – questions of when to deploy crews, whether to order evacuations, or how to prioritize resources still require human judgment and decision support systems.

    In dense urban areas, where residents already report fires quickly, the technology offers less benefit, and it cannot keep pace with rapidly shifting fire behavior during extreme weather events such as the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, when hurricane-force winds reshaped fire lines hourly. Proponents emphasize that AI is designed to complement, not replace, human firefighting teams.

    “As the fire moves and shifts around, that’s where the human factor comes in and decides which tactics are best in fighting the fire. AI can only do so much,” Pascua said. “It just provides that real time information where we can make better decisions on the fire ground.”

    AI’s role in wildfire management extends far beyond early detection, researchers note. The technology can already map optimal zones for controlled burns and vegetation thinning, and monitor air quality for early smoke signatures with far greater sensitivity than traditional consumer detectors. At George Mason University, professor Chaowei “Phil” Yang is leading a collaboration with California State University Los Angeles, the city of Los Angeles and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop an AI system that forecasts wildfire spread and predicts which communities will face the worst smoke pollution impacts. The system will generate real-time maps to help agencies make faster, more effective decisions around evacuations, road and school closures, and public health warnings, with a target operational launch within three years.

    Experts agree that AI integration in wildfire management is no longer a future concept – it is already deployed in active response, and its use will only expand in coming years. “AI in wildfires, it’s no longer just speculative. It’s really being used,” said Patrick Roberts, a senior RAND Corporation researcher who recently completed a study on innovation in wildfire management. “The future is AI everywhere, and the lines will blur between AI wildfire detection and just wildfire detection as the lines will blur in other areas of our life.”