MOGADISHU, Somalia—The city of Hargeisa, the capital of a breakaway territory known as Somaliland, was recently witness to a sight rarely seen in a Muslim-majority country: the public waving of Israeli flags—not in protest, but celebration. Videos shared on social media from Somaliland’s day of independence on May 18 showed Israelis dancing in the streets of Hargeisa alongside locals, with blue and white stars of David flying beside Somaliland’s red, white, and green tricolor flag.

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The decision to recognize Somaliland’s independence in December made Israel the first UN member state to establish full diplomatic ties with the territory after more than three decades of Hargeisa’s lobbying. “This is the first time we’re commemorating May 18 as the recognized Republic of Somaliland,” said President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, known locally as Irro, at an anniversary speech.

The most symbolically charged moment of the celebrations was the presentation to Irro of a fragment of an Iron Dome interceptor—the Israeli air defense system used to intercept rockets and drones fired by Iran and its regional allies—by a visiting Israeli delegation.

The embrace between Israel and Somaliland has deepened since the formal recognition at the end of last year. Israel has now established an intelligence presence in Somaliland, several officials including one from the Somaliland government and a senior Somali official told Drop Site, and news reports suggest that an Israeli military base is under discussion.

The base in question would allow Israel a military foothold on a crucial waterway near the Bab al-Mandab Strait—a maritime chokepoint comparable in importance to the Strait of Hormuz for exports from the Red Sea. Yemen’s Ansarallah already closed the Red Sea to Israeli ships, and has threatened to close the strait entirely in the context of the U.S.-Iran negotiations and Israel’s war in Lebanon.

Some analysts point to Berbera International Airport as a possible host to an expanded Israeli presence in the territory as part of an emerging alliance that would include Somaliland alongside Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. The United Arab Emirates has had an agreement since 2017 for a military base at Berbera International Airport that was linked to Emirati operations in the Yemeni civil war.

Earlier this year, Djibouti’s president, Ismail Omar Guelleh, whose country neighbors Somaliland to the west, described the UAE as “Israel’s vanguard” and said its intentions were “anything but peaceful.”

In an interview with a Somali media outlet on June 12, Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, also said that Israel had approached his government several times about establishing relations but that Somalia had rejected those overtures. Referring to Somaliland’s ties with Israel, Mohamud warned that “a big problem will come from this,” adding that “some signs are already visible.”

Aiding Israel’s Aims

Somaliland has a coastline of more than 800 kilometers along the Gulf of Aden and directly across the sea from Yemen, where the Ansarallah movement has emerged as one of Israel’s most persistent and hard-to-reach adversaries. Since October 2023, the group has fired sustained volleys of missiles and drones at Israel, and previously targeted Israeli-linked ships, in a de facto naval blockade in solidarity with Gaza.

The operations forced the closure of Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat and exposed critical vulnerabilities in the country’s air defenses. Israeli strikes from more than 2,000 kilometers away, including operations that killed several Ansarallah leaders, did little to degrade the group’s capacity and will to strike.

A Somaliland official close to the president told Drop Site that in talks between the two sides prior to the establishment of diplomatic ties, Israel raised its security challenges in the region as a factor. “It was a key issue for them,” another Somaliland official told Drop Site. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the issue.

The talks began last April at a meeting held in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. Somaliland was prepared to engage Israel’s concerns, one of the officials said, but only if it could receive what it wanted first: recognition.

“Hargeisa’s political class was searching for any partner that could shift the diplomatic arithmetic,” Jethro Norman, an expert on the region at the Danish Institute for International Studies told Drop Site. “For Somaliland it is the gamble of trading legitimacy in the Muslim world for a recognition that no other UN member state has yet done.”

After several rounds of negotiations, Israel agreed to meet that demand, and, when it did, it acquired significant leverage and goodwill in Hargeisa. In April, President Irro praised Israel at a state-of-the-nation address to parliament saying that it had proven itself a “reliable partner,” drawing almost the entire chamber of lawmakers to their feet in applause. He has repeatedly praised Israel’s decision.

In January, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar was dispatched to Somaliland, where he also visited Berbera, the country’s largest coastal city of 70,000 people, and said Israel was seeking defence cooperation and a “strategic partnership,” without elaborating on what that would mean. Berbera has historically hosted the Ottomans, the Soviet Union, and the U.S., owing to its large natural harbor and strategic position at the gateway to the Red Sea.

Hussam Radman, a research fellow at the Yemen-based Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, told Drop Site that Israel’s confrontation with Ansarallah, also known as the Houthis, had provided a pretext to establish a military presence in the breakaway territory.

“Operationally, the presence of a military-intelligence base in Somaliland would enable Israel to project power against the Houthis with greater ease and with broader access to information,” he said. “It is also to extend Israeli geopolitical influence in a sustainable manner south of the Red Sea, and to gain leverage over one of the world’s most important straits: Bab al-Mandab.” Radman added that Israel would exploit the international neglect of Somaliland’s desire for recognition to secure strong political cover.

Somaliland declared independence from Somalia in 1991 after its two largest cities were heavily bombarded during an armed uprising against the military regime of Siad Barre in Mogadishu. Estimates suggest that tens of thousands of people were killed, an experience that solidified Somaliland’s determination to pursue a separate political path. Efforts to resolve the territory’s status through negotiations have repeatedly faltered. Neither Somalia, nor the broader international community, has ever recognised Somaliland’s declaration of independence, with the exception of Israel.

Shiri Fein-Grossman, CEO of the Israel-Africa Relations Institute and a former member of Israel’s National Security Council, told Israeli news channel i24 that “everyone just looks at the map and understands what Israel is looking for here.” She added that Israel, increasingly isolated in the region because of its actions in Gaza, “needs as many friends as possible.”

Somaliland has also repeatedly sought to attract U.S. interest this year by offering access to its coastline for military purposes in exchange for recognition. Most recently, Somaliland’s foreign minister, Abdirahman Dahir Adam, reiterated the offer in an interview with Fox News, while another unnamed official said that Somaliland would be willing to host Tomahawk cruise missiles. Sen. Ted Cruz also publicly renewed his support for Somaliland’s recognition in a statement to Fox News.

In response, Somalia’s state minister for foreign affairs, Ali Omar, said in a lengthy post on X that the breakup of Somalia would undermine, rather than enhance, security in the Red Sea. AFRICOM previously told Fox News that the U.S. is not seeking a base in Somaliland. At the start of 2025, Somalia undercut the value of Somaliland’s offer in exchange for recognition by preemptively granting the U.S. access to all of its strategic ports.

Basing Rights

Somaliland officials have since been circumspect in how they have addressed the separate issue of a possible Israeli military base in the country, issuing ambivalent and at times contradictory statements about the subject. Following Israel’s recognition in December, Irro stressed the agreement would not be directed against third countries, and Somaliland’s foreign ministry initially said it would not host an Israeli military base.

A foreign ministry official later told Israel’s Channel 12 that the idea of an Israeli base was being discussed and was very much on the cards. Presidency minister Khadar Abdi later told Bloomberg there would definitely be “an analysis at some point” on the question.

Multiple current and former officials—including three Somali officials, a former Somali security official, an EU security official, and a Somaliland official—told Drop Site that Israel already has an intelligence presence at Berbera International Airport. The senior Somali official and the Somaliland official both confirmed that an elite Somaliland presidential guard unit had returned from training in Israel and that intelligence officers had also received training. A separate contingent of Somaliland maritime personnel had been sent to Kenya, the Somali official said.

Somaliland’s foreign ministry in a response to Drop Site declined to comment on the reports.

Jama Abdullahi Igal Gabuush, a foreign policy adviser to Somaliland’s president and widely regarded as a key figure in Somaliland’s efforts to broker the deal, told Israel’s Channel 14 that security cooperation was already underway and described it as “very significant.”

“But it is not something, you know, amplified. But it is there as a partnership and on a mutual basis,” he said.

Berbera International Airport is in the midst of a significant upgrade of its military infrastructure, according to an analysis by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, which argues the developments pave the way for Israeli army access to the site. The German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Germany’s leading foreign policy think tank, said the UAE has been working with Israel to help establish a military presence in Somaliland.

Swedish public radio outlet Ekot reported on Israeli plans to establish a base near Berbera, while the French newspaper Le Monde reported that Berbera’s main international airport was being upgraded to host the U.S. and Israel. Late last year, just weeks before the recognition, a delegation from the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) visited the site.

During an Eid address in Hargeisa, Irro suggested that relations with Israel may run deeper than previously understood, telling Somalia’s president in a pointed remark that “Somaliland is not alone today” should Somalia marshall support across the region against it. “As for you, we are capable of dealing with you on our own,” he added.

A senior Somali official told Drop Site: “We’re closely following Israel’s intervention, which doesn’t serve Somaliland or regional security. It only advances their interests at everyone’s expense.”

“Somaliland has to take the stage”

Somaliland’s recent decision to locate its embassy in Jerusalem—a controversial choice that helps entrench Israel’s political control over the disputed city—further underscores the value it attaches to its relationship with Israel. Somaliland’s newly appointed ambassador, Mohamed Hagi, announced the move on May 18, on Somaliland’s independence day. The decision made Somaliland and Kosovo the only two Muslim-majority states to maintain an ambassador in Jerusalem, breaking with the longstanding practice of locating embassies in Tel Aviv due to the city’s disputed status.

The announcement drew an immediate and unusually unified regional response. The foreign ministers of over a dozen countries—among them Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Somalia—issued a joint statement condemning what they called an “illegal and unacceptable” move by Somaliland.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have had increasingly strained relations with Israel amid the wider regional fallout from Israel’s attack on Iran. The dispute over Somaliland has now become a new regional fault line, with the United Arab Emirates supporting both normalization with Israel and Somaliland. “Israeli recognition does something specific,” Norman, the Somalia expert, told Drop Site, “it removes the ambiguity that has historically kept Somaliland out of the most dangerous alignments.”

Since December, Ansarallah has repeatedly threatened to target any Israeli presence in Somaliland, describing it as a “hostile” foothold on their doorstep.

In January, the ambassadors of Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia attended the inauguration of a regional leader in an eastern territory Somaliland lost to local forces that favor Somalia. That territory has since been formalized into the North East State of Somalia and has become a part of Somalia’s federal system. It has a militarized, closed border with Somaliland, across which people and trade can no longer move.

In an interview with the Middle East-focused magazine Al Majalla, Somalia’s Ali Omar said Mogadishu was seeking closer structural coordination with Saudi Arabia and Egypt on regional efforts to maintain stability in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. Somalia has maintained close defense and commercial ties with Turkey since 2011.

Jama Gabuush, the foreign policy adviser to Somaliland’s president, acknowledged at a panel marking Somaliland’s independence that engagement with Israel could risk regional isolation, but said Somaliland was prepared to accept that cost in pursuit of recognition. “Somaliland has to take the stage that it has to take, and you make enemies because of what you want and who you want to be,” he said. “And I think Somaliland is ready for that.” He said the self-declared republic had spent too many years assuming that holding elections and maintaining peace would automatically lead to recognition by the international community on the basis of democratic values, which hasn’t been vindicated.

Somaliland’s relationship with Israel has appeared generally popular with the public but has raised questions domestically about its substance and its broader implications.

On May 18, lawyer and human rights activist Guleid Dafac, who criticized the Jerusalem embassy decision as inconsistent with Somaliland’s values and international law in a Facebook post, was summoned twice by police. “I will not be silenced and no amount of intimidation will change my course,” he wrote on X. Dafac has more broadly supported the relationship, but said a Jerusalem embassy would weaken Somaliland’s case for wider recognition of its statehood.

Earlier this year, two clerics were arrested for criticizing the relationship with Israel, along with several others.

The tension between Somaliland’s aspirations and the costs of pursuing them was perhaps most starkly framed by Sheikh Mustafa Haji, one of Somaliland’s most prominent Islamic preachers earlier this year. While acknowledging the country’s right to seek recognition, he drew a direct line between Somaliland’s own history—when the now-autonomous territory suffered tremendous violence at the hands of the central government during a civil war in the 1980s—and what it now risks enabling. “Escaping the injustice you are facing,” he said, “should never lead you to support the greatest oppressor, who is killing Muslim people to this day.”

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Story by Tom Perkins and Ryan Grim

DETROIT, Michigan—Slowly at first, and now all at once, Michigan has turned into the central battleground in the country’s war over the U.S. relationship with Israel—and the American public’s ability to debate it freely.

Campuses across the country erupted in protest in 2024 against U.S. complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide, with crackdowns of various intensity rolling up encampments, disciplining students, and, in some cases, filing significant charges.

Michigan’s law enforcement moved perhaps the most aggressively. When a local prosecutor in Ann Arbor declined to press felony charges on a group of protest organizers, state Attorney General Dana Nessel moved to take matters into her own hands. Now that those charges have been met with acquittals and dismissals, the federal government is stepping in to target them with felonies, announcing a sweeping indictment filed Wednesday against eight pro-Palestinian advocates.

U M Indictment

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Along the way, protesters organized against the University of Michigan Regents who pushed for the charges. Jordan Acker, one of the most vitriolic advocates of criminalizing protest against Israel, was replaced by Lebanese American Amir Makled, who campaigned against the crackdown on protest. Then in the race for attorney general, Eli Savit—the very Ann Arbor prosecutor who refused to press charges on the protesters—won the Democratic Party’s nomination.

In the campaign for Senate, despite millions in outside spending from AIPAC, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed recently broke out as the frontrunner for the party’s nomination once the race began to focus on the question of American support for Israel. That primary is in August.

Across the board, voters in Michigan are loudly demanding a change in the relationship. At the heights of power, state and federal leaders are pulling every lever to thwart that democratic will. In the Michigan legislature, state lawmakers have responded to the shock upset in the Board of Regents election by proposing to end elections for the Board of Regents. The constitutional amendments were voted down, but a new proposal is expected to come up in August.

The three-pronged approach to suppressing dissent in Michigan—spending millions in the Senate primary, ending Regent elections, and criminalizing protest at the federal level—marks a dramatic escalation in the government’s crackdown on criticism of Israel.

The University of Michigan-affiliated protesters are accused of vandalizing the homes of the school’s leadership and targeting international businesses, like Rolls-Royce and shipping giant Maersk. But federal prosecutors with the Trump Department of Justice organized crime unit went much further than vandalism charges.

The indictment claims that regular activist activities—like using social media or “buying supplies”—amount to a broad “conspiracy” and “coordinated criminal acts.” Those activities ultimately aimed to threaten U-M leadership and foreign businesses over their support of Israel, the indictment claims, forming the basis for multiple counts of “conspiring to transmit threats in interstate and foreign commerce.”

The charges represent a change in tack from recent pro-Israel legal lawsuits and prosecutions alleging hate crimes or antisemitism. Courts have regularly struck down those, ruling that criticism of Israel is First Amendment-protected speech.

But the government did have success with effectively—and controversially—criminalizing activism in the Prairieland, Texas ICE protest case, in which the Trump administration accused activists of materially supporting terrorism in part because they had anarchist zines. The first Trump administration also tried to use similar tactics against 2017 inauguration protesters, and they have been wielded against animal rights activists.

Experts say they are not surprised the conspiracy charges are now being tested at the University of Michigan. In a statement, Arab-American Civil Rights League director Houda Berri-Harajli said that while vandalism should be investigated, the actions by University of Michigan, Nessel, and Trump represent “overreach” aimed at silencing pro-Palestinian advocates. “The concern is whether the government is increasingly using broad conspiracy theories, political speech, social media posts, and activism itself as evidence to build cases against individuals associated with a movement that has become politically unpopular in certain circles,” Berri-Harajli said.

The Charges

The protesters are largely members of the U-M’s TAHRIR Coalition and Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. Their campaign was aimed at pressuring U-M and businesses to divest from, or stop doing business with, Israel.

The eight defendants are accused of vandalizing the homes of former U-M President Santa Ono, U-M regents, and multiple businesses. The indictment states that the protesters spraypainted “pro-Palestinian” or “anti-Israel graffiti” on homes and businesses, and broke glass at some. In one instance, they allegedly threw a bottle of butyric acid, also known as a “stink bomb,” into a home, and allegedly padlocked or caulked shut the doors of certain businesses.

The DOJ lays the foundation for the “conspiracy” with statements that largely detail common activism activities. “[Protesters] planning efforts included purchasing supplies, meeting to coordinate and distribute supplies, mapping routes, performing surveillance, and using internet-based collaboration tools to draft threats to their targets,” the indictment states.

It further claims the defendants “used the internet” to research “targets,” who are largely public officials. It continues that protesters used “the internet and social media to broadcast their message to ensure their threats and commitment to continuing criminal activity were heard by their victims and others who support Israel.”

The prosecutors are attempting to create a “myth of criminality” in activism, said Liz Jacobs, an attorney for the protesters with Sugar Law Center.

Federal prosecutors allege the “threats” were made in slogans spraypainted on the homes and businesses, including “Intifada” and “Divest now.” The government also claims protesters used “threatening symbols” like red inverted triangles. Courts have ruled that these slogans and symbols are protected speech in most contexts.

The indictment also points to a note taped to the front door of one home: “No matter how many times you call on violent cops to brutalize students, cancel and move your meetings to hide from students, and refuse to admit this university’s and YOUR complicity in genocide, we will continue to protest. You cannot hide. We demand divestment and will remain relentless in the struggle for a free Palestine.”

The threat claims are “very loose,” said Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights and Dissent. “They are attempting to transform political speech that is undeniably protected by the First Amendment into overt acts of conspiracy,” he added. “It would be a struggle to see these as threats.”

The indictment includes one example of an alleged text exchange among two defendants in which they state that they want to “poison” one of the targets, or “burn down” a house. No such actions were ever taken, and those threats were never made to the regents or other alleged victims.

While the vandalism is illegal, the government is ultimately trying “to take something that is a low-level offense at best and ratchet it way up because of the political speech of the alleged perpetrator,” Gibbons said. “The FBI … is not supposed to be spending a lot of time on who is spray painting houses,” Gibbons added.

“A conscious choice by Nessel”

The indictment and escalation come amid a series of U-M-Nessel failures in its war on pro-Palestinian protesters, advocates say. “There is a popular movement across Michigan in support of Palestine, human rights, and disinvestment in Israel and the genocide,” Jacobs said. “Why keep running the same playbook?”

In May 2024, U-M dispatched police to violently break up a Palestinian solidarity encampment, but progressive Ann Arbor prosecutor Eli Savit declined to charge the students. The university then recruited Nessel, a pro-Israel political ally, to take over the investigation.

She filed dozens of encampment-related charges in late 2024, but dropped the cases after her political, personal, and financial connections to pro-Israel donors and the school’s regents were revealed.

Nessel has repeatedly praised herself for “stepping up to the plate” to take on Trump’s assault on Michiganders’ civil liberties, but in April 2025, she and Trump’s FBI opened up a second front, raiding the homes of a new set of protesters over the alleged vandalism.

On Wednesday morning, Nessel’s agents and the FBI again raided students’ homes, using flash bangs and battering rams in the dramatic arrests.

“That was a conscious choice by Nessel to bring in the Trump administration,” Jacobs said.

Amid all of this, the university has fired or suspended pro-Palestinian students and faculty, and spent millions of dollars on undercover surveillance of TAHRIR. Protesters have filed countersuits that judges have largely allowed to move forward.

Wednesday’s federal indictment is “consistent with a pattern of escalation and repression that we’ve been seeing unfolding over the last 2-3 years that’s unprecedented and frightening,” Eman Ali, a TAHRIR organizer, said outside the courthouse where supporters gathered on Wednesday afternoon.

Electoral Consequences

The draconian assault on protesters is having consequences for the political establishment. In the April Democratic primary nominating convention, TAHRIR attorney Amir Makled defeated pro-Israel U-M regent Jordan Acker, who led the attack on pro-Palestinian students.

In the attorney general race to replace Nessel, voters chose Savit, the progressive prosecutor. He beat a candidate backed by the pro-Israel establishment, and would likely end the Nessel investigations if he wins in November, though the Department of Justice likely would not.

The wins ignited establishment calls for a change to how state leaders are selected, and Democratic and GOP leaders responded last week by attempting to carry out what critics labeled a “power grab.” Currently, Michigan’s university board positions, the attorney general, and the secretary of state are voted on by delegates at party conventions.

Constitutional amendments that failed last week either aimed to undo Makled’s election or make university regents gubernatorial appointees. A proposal is expected to be reintroduced when lawmakers reconvene in August.

The constitutional amendment proposals are being pushed “because [the establishment] believes it will help them grab more power,” said Democrat State Rep. Dylan Wegela, a Democratic Socialist of America member who opposes both proposals.

“They’re doing this because progressives won at the convention,” Wegela said. “They’re doing this to strip voters’ ability to pick regents.”

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FROM DROP SITE: The Art of Capitulation: Trump Spins Victory as Iran Says its Red Lines Remain Intact

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Iran and Ceasefire

• Trump cancels planned strikes on Iran: President Donald Trump called off a third straight night of planned airstrikes on Iran Thursday, claiming talks with Tehran were close to producing a deal.

  • “Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening. Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Hours earlier, Trump had threatened to escalate the conflict by targeting Kharg Island and other oil facilities.

  • Trump later told reporters at the White House: “We just made a great settlement of the war with Iran…The strait will officially open as soon as we sign, which could be soon, very soon, maybe over the weekend in Europe,” Trump said.

  • Trump has made claims of an imminent deal nearly 40 times since the initial ceasefire deal was signed on April 7.

• Iran stresses no deal has been reached yet: Iran said that, while progress has been made on the text of a proposed memorandum of understanding with the United States, Tehran has not reached a final decision.

  • “The text has almost been finalized in its major parts,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Thursday. “The problem is that the contradictory positions of the United States have always caused turbulence and disruption in this process.”

  • “While they speak of diplomacy and negotiations, they simultaneously resort to force, illegal actions, and criminal behavior,” he added. “The decision-making process in our country is completely clear. The relevant authorities must review every detail of the text. As soon as we reach a final conclusion that serves the interests of the Iranian nation, it will be officially announced.”

• Details of a potential deal emerge: A number of terms in the memorandum of understanding (MOU) have been reported on by Iranian state media, although the details have yet to be finalized and have not been officially confirmed by Tehran or Washington. They include:

  • A permanent and immediate cessation of war on all fronts, including Lebanon.

  • Lifting of the U.S. naval blockade within 30 days.

  • Commitments from the U.S. not to expand its military presence in the region.

  • Sixty days of negotiations to reach a final agreement “based on nuclear issues and the complete lifting of” sanctions.

  • Reopening the strait of Hormuz within 30 days “with Iranian arrangements.”

  • Final negotiations will not begin before the release of half of Iran’s frozen funds, the suspension of oil sanctions and the lifting of the naval blockade. “Discussions about Iran’s missile program and support for resistance groups have been definitively removed from the agenda,” IRNA reported.

  • The 60-day period will address three issues left unresolved in the current MOU: the continuation of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, the lifting of sanctions, and a mechanism for compensating Iran for its losses.

  • “If Tehran decides to sign the memorandum, some of its frozen funds will be released immediately, and the rest gradually,” IRNA reported.

  • The question of U.S. sanctions will reportedly be adjudicated during the 60-day negotiating period.

  • The memorandum contains no Iranian commitments on the nuclear issue and no U.S. commitment to lift sanctions.

• Iran clarifies Hormuz control in light of the deal: Iran’s official state news agency released a statement stressing that “contrary to what is being circulated by Western media, Iran will not commit to relinquishing control of the Strait of Hormuz.” (More details in IRNA.)

• Trump lashes out over leaked deal terms: As details of the potential deal merged in Iranian state media, President Donald Trump lashed out on Friday and said they were inaccurate. “The terms that Iran leaked out to the Fake News have NOTHING to do with the terms that were agreed to, in writing,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “What they said, including their weak and pathetic statement on having a deal, bears no relation to the truth. Very dishonorable people to deal with. With them, there is no such thing as dealing in good faith.”

• Israel says Trump assured Netanyahu that his demands would be met in deal: A Thursday evening statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office claimed that, though Israel is not a party to the MOU touted by Trump, the U.S. president had assured his Israeli counterpart that its hardline demands would be met. The deal will include, according to the statement, “the removal of enriched material, the dismantling of enrichment infrastructure, limits on missile production,” and the “cessation of Iran’s support” for its regional proxies.

  • The Prime Minister’s office made another statement to this effect on Friday, saying that “as long as” Benjamin Netanyahu is prime minister of Israel, “Iran will not have nuclear weapons.” “President Trump and I are in full agreement on this issue,” the statement read.

• Hezbollah lawmaker asserts that Lebanon should be covered by the deal: Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said Friday that any peace agreement between Iran and the United States would encompass Lebanon, whether the Lebanese government accepts it or not, while sharply criticizing Beirut’s direct negotiations with Israel. “We do not trust a political administration that makes concession after concession at the country’s expense, especially when no viable or discussable political option has been presented to us,” he said at a memorial ceremony in Beirut.

• Iran threatens “more severe response than before” to U.S. strikes: Before Trump announced that he had canceled his plans to strike Iran on Thursday, Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters warned that any further American strikes would occasion a “more severe response than before.” “On the one hand, America talks about agreements and negotiations,” the statement read, “and on the other hand, it commits evil acts.” Khatam cautioned the U.S. that “either oil and gas exports are for everyone, or they will be impossible for everyone.”

• Iran fires on non-compliant tanker: IRGC forces opened fire on an oil tanker trying to transit the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, an Iranian military source told state broadcaster IRIB. Explosions heard in Sirik county were reportedly linked to the confrontation.

• Iran condemns U.S. strikes on tanker that killed three Indian citizens: Baghaei, of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, condemned on Friday a series of strikes on commercial tankers manned by Indian crews in the Strait of Oman that killed three Indian nationals, calling them “armed robbery and piracy” that threaten global shipping and freedom of navigation.

• Iran strikes Kuwait airport radar: Kuwait’s Civil Aviation Authority confirmed Friday that an Iranian strike on Kuwait International Airport damaged radar and air traffic management equipment and caused injuries.

• UAE and Iran hold first direct security talks since war began: Senior national security officials from the United Arab Emirates and Iran met in person this week, Bloomberg reported. The outlet described the unannounced talks as a deliberate de-escalation effort initiated by Abu Dhabi after it concluded that Iran’s government was unlikely to fall. The UAE is seeking to shield its major economic priorities (including its expanding AI and energy investments), while Iran seeks to maintain a working relationship with the UAE, which was one of its largest trading partners and a key channel for sanctioned oil exports before the war.

• Iran restores water service within 12 hours after attacks on facilities: Crews restored full service to two badly damaged reservoirs within 12 hours, after a U.S. strike on water storage and distribution facilities in Sirik County, according to the WANA news agency. The reservoirs served 20,000 residents in the city of Kouhestak and the Bamani district.

Lebanon

• Israeli strikes continue across southern Lebanon: Israel’s assault across Lebanon killed at least 12 people on Thursday in a wave of airstrikes, drone attacks and artillery fire across the south and the Bekaa Valley. Israel also said it had taken “operational control” of northern Wadi Slouki, a strategic valley in southern Lebanon it accused Hezbollah of using to launch drones and projectiles.

  • Two people were killed in Israeli strikes in Mashghara in western Bekaa, while another person was killed in nearby Sohmor, according to L’Orient Today.

  • Israeli strikes also killed one person each in Qatraneh, Ain al-Tineh and Nahleh in the Bekaa Valley.

  • In southern Lebanon, one person was killed in a motorcycle strike in Jwayya, another in Abbassieh; two people were killed in Deir Qanoun al-Nahr, and one person was killed in a strike on Habboush.

• Hezbollah continues operations against Israel: Hezbollah claimed its fighters carried out a wave of attacks against Israeli forces and military positions in southern Lebanon on Thursday. The reported operations stretch from the Mediterranean coast near Naqoura to the districts of Bint Jbeil, Marjayoun and Nabatieh, where Israeli forces have expanded their ground operations in recent days. Hezbollah said it engaged two Israeli Hermes 450 drones, shooting one and forcing another to retreat, while further claiming its fighters carried out an ambush against an advancing Israeli force moving toward Wadi Hassan.

• Two Malaysian UNIFIL peacekeepers wounded in Lebanon: Two Malaysian UN peacekeepers were lightly injured in an attack on a logistics convoy near the village of Harris in southern Lebanon, a UN spokesperson said Friday, describing their condition as stable. No responsible party was identified in his statement. Dujarric also said an Israeli military tank fired near a separate UN convoy close to Bint Jbeil, forcing it to detour, and that UNIFIL peacekeepers observed significant drone activity in the Biyyada area on Wednesday.

Palestine

• Israeli airstrikes near hospital, forced displacement in Al-Maghazi: Israel carried out an airstrike Thursday evening targeting a house near Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.

  • The Israeli military issued new forced displacement orders for several areas of Al-Maghazi refugee camp. The orders covered key civilian facilities, including schools, a kindergarten, a rehabilitation center, the municipality building, and the camp’s main source of fresh water. Hours later, Maghazi came under heavy bombardment, and an Israeli strike destroyed a home that had been among the buildings threatened with evacuation.

• One Red Crescent medic still missing: One of the two Palestinian Red Crescent Society medics forcibly disappeared on Wednesday was released Thursday, according to a statement from the group, though the other remains unaccounted for—presumably still held by armed militias operating under Israeli protection. The Society urged the international community to secure his release and to protect medical personnel, and held Israel responsible for his kidnapping.

• Hamas says Cairo talks moving forward “positively”: Hamas said that talks between the Palestinian factions in Cairo were proceeding in a “positive and constructive manner,” and that the factions are potentially advancing to an agreement concerning the implementation of the second phase of Trump’s Gaza peace plan. “We are also continuing our meetings with the mediators in a positive and responsible spirit, with the aim of ensuring the success of the current round, protecting our Palestinian people, and thwarting the objectives and plans of the occupation,” a member of the movement’s Political Bureau and its negotiating delegation said in a statement.

• Hamas co-founder freed from Israeli prison: Hassan Yousef, a co-founder and senior leader of Hamas in the occupied West Bank, was released from Israeli prison on Thursday. The 71-year-old was held for more than two years without trial, as part of Israel’s “administrative detention” system, which allows authorities to hold Palestinians for renewable six-month terms without charges or a trial. Upon release, Yousef was taken immediately to a hospital, as his health significantly deteriorated in Israeli custody.

• Global Sumud Flotilla participants will remain in detention in Libya: Ten participants in the Global Sumud Flotilla who were detained in eastern Libya by an armed group claiming affiliation with Khalifa Haftar’s ruling militia in late May will remain in detention in Benghazi for at least 30 more days. The detainees, who were part of a land mission en route to Gaza, include doctors, humanitarian workers, a filmmaker, and a journalist.

• Israel refuses entry to French journalist over critical coverage: Israeli authorities refused entry to French journalist Alice Froussard this week, according to AP. Israeli media reported that authorities recommended denying Froussard entry over reporting for Radio France Internationale critical of Israeli actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including her use of the term “apartheid” to describe policies toward Palestinians. Palestinian officials condemned the move as an attempt to obstruct journalists from “conveying the truth” about events in the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel has continued to refuse entry of foreign reporters to Gaza since October 2023, and has killed at least 260 Palestinian media workers and journalists in the Strip.

U.S. News

By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at Julian@dropsitenews.com.

• Trump swaps Bill Pulte for Manhattan U.S. attorney Jay Clayton for DNI post: Trump is nominating Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, as Director of National Intelligence, following a bipartisan congressional revolt over his interim appointment of housing official Bill Pulte. Clayton, 59, was recommended by CIA Director John Ratcliffe; his Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled for June 17. Clayton oversaw much of the document review related to the Jeffrey Epstein case and directed the office that brought a case against the kidnapped president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.

• Trump administration moves to deport migrants to Central African Republic: The Trump administration is preparing to deport roughly 20 migrants, including nationals from Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and Turkey, to the Central African Republic, a country to which none have personal ties and which the U.S. State Department designates a “Do Not Travel” zone due to armed conflict, crime, and severe human rights abuses, the New York Times reports. Among those facing removal are two Iranian women with no criminal records whom judges found were likely to be prosecuted or tortured upon return.

• Section 702 surveillance authority lapses: The House voted 198-218 on Thursday to reject a three-week extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the provision that allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans outside of the U.S. The authority lapsed at midnight. The vast majority of Democratic representatives joined a bloc of conservative Republicans to sink the measure, with Democrats having refused to back any extension unless President Donald Trump reversed his decision to install Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence (Trump announced a new DNI choice this morning, see above).

• Sixty-one congressional Democrats urge Trump to reopen medical corridor for cancer patients in Gaza: 61 Democratic representatives signed onto a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, urging the U.S. to reestablish a medical corridor out of Gaza, which Israel has refused to reopen since 2023.

  • “Cancer diagnoses have become a death sentence,” the letter reads, citing the nearly 18,500 Palestinians in need of urgent medical care in the Gaza Strip, and the nearly 11,000 cancer patients. Rep. James McGovern authored the letter alongside Sens. Ed Markey and Chris Van Hollen, and Reps. Madeleine Dean and Maxine Dexter; McGovern noted the case of a six-year-old boy with leukemia who died waiting for Israel to approve his evacuation.

• U.S. Postal Service proposes rule allowing it to withhold mail ballot delivery in states that refuse to share voter rolls: The U.S. Postal Service has proposed a rule that would allow it to refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that do not turn over voter registration data to the federal government. Democrats and voting rights groups say the rule amounts to an unconstitutional federal intrusion into elections, which the Constitution reserves to the states.

• Supreme Court blocks Alabama nitrogen gas execution: The Supreme Court blocked Alabama from executing Jeffery Lee, 49, on Thursday night, rejecting the state’s emergency appeal after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld a district court ruling that nitrogen hypoxia was “likely unconstitutional” in his case. The unusually late intervention by the court drew dissents from Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch Witnesses to prior Alabama nitrogen gas executions have described convulsions, violent shaking, and prolonged gasping.

• Former intelligence chief Avril Haines to lead Carnegie Endowment: Avril Haines, who served as director of national intelligence under President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2025, will become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Haines served as Biden’s DNI during the first 15 months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and was among the senior officials responsible for assessing whether Israel was using American weapons in compliance with U.S. and international law. Haines also drew condemnation from civil rights groups in July 2024 after she described U.S. campus protesters against the war as potential targets of Iranian influence operations.

• U.S. sanctions Cuba’s state oil company: The United States is sanctioning Cuba’s state-owned oil and gas company, Cuba Petróleo Union, further imperiling the island nation, which has been suffering from blackouts and fuel shortages since the United States escalated its sanctions regime earlier this year. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the company of “unlawfully” expropriating assets from American owners “years ago.” He also asserted, without evidence, that Cuban leaders are profiting off of selling oil barrels on the secondary market and rationing energy supplies as a “tool of social control.” Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez rebutted his claims, saying that Rubio, “driven by ambitions of conquest” and “presidential aspirations” was resorting to “vulgar lies” to justify the measure.

  • Separately on Thursday, Miami-Dade County revoked Vanguard Energy‘s Local Business Tax Receipt, which is functionally a license to do business in the county, citing the company’s dealings with Cuba’s state-owned oil company, claiming that these dealings violate U.S. sanctions on the island nation.

• American Axle workers reach tentative deal after 10-day strike, raising starting pay from $22 to $30 an hour by 2030: Some 1,000 United Auto Workers members at American Axle’s Three Rivers, Michigan plant reached a tentative agreement Wednesday that sets $22 as the new-hire starting wage, formerly the ceiling, and puts all workers on a path to $30 an hour by 2030. Workers also won additional paid days off and beat back proposed health care concessions, with legacy employees jumping immediately to $30 under the deal, which UAW Local 2093 President Pete Adams said sets a pay record for the union’s Independents, Parts and Suppliers Department. The strike had 98% authorization. Workers are continuing to picket ahead of a ratification vote Sunday, with leverage bolstered by GM’s dwindling two-week supply of axles needed to build its most profitable heavy-duty trucks, a supply that the strike nearly exhausted. Read more about the strike at Labor Notes, here.

• Two former Utah court clerks face federal charges for helping immigrants evade ICE arrest: Jennifer Joma, 27, and Lauren Kelsey Morrow, 26, former clerks at the Logan Justice Court in Utah, were indicted June 3 on federal charges, including conspiracy to harbor and transport undocumented immigrants and obstruction of agency proceedings, after authorities say they helped several people slip out a back door to avoid detention. The Justice Department alleges that when an ICE officer arrived on April 9 with an administrative warrant and waited outside in his vehicle, the two clerks misused court databases to identify people without permanent legal status among those scheduled to appear, escorted them through a secure area to a rear exit, and that Joma then left the courthouse with three people in her car before returning alone.

• Musk becomes world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX IPO: Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire (on paper) after his rocket, satellite, and AI company SpaceX made its Wall Street debut on Friday with an initial public offering of $135 a share. The IPO puts the valuation of SpaceX at around $1.77 trillion, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world despite not being profitable. Most of Musk’s wealth rests with SpaceX, where ⁠he holds a stake worth roughly $866 billion. “Along with Tesla and the rest of his properties, his net worth will exceed $1.1 trillion when the stock begins trading Friday,” according to Reuters.

  • Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote to the Chairman of Securities and Exchange Commission Paul Atkins on Wednesday asking for the agency to investigate the SpaceX stock sale. Warren said that SpaceX’s valuation has little precedent and “requires numerous leaps of faith” to justify. She added that “a non-traditional governance structure” int he company gives Musk “an unprecedented level of power.”

Other International News

• RSF drones kill at least 16 in overnight strikes on El Obeid: Rapid Support Forces drones killed at least 16 people and wounded dozens more in early morning strikes Thursday on multiple neighborhoods in El Obeid, North Kordofan, according to Sudan Tribune. This is one of the deadliest bombardments to hit El Obeid since Sudan’s civil war began, according to residents of the city. Recent intelligence reports suggest an unprecedented buildup of RSF fighters around El Obeid, raising fears of a large-scale ground offensive to seize the city.

  • Separately on Thursday, a Sudanese army drone strike killed at least one civilian and wounded another in the North Kordofan state’s Sodari locality, the Emergency Lawyers rights group said. Roughly 38 civilians have been killed in the region over the past 10 days. The Sudanese military has intensified drone operations over the past two weeks in the Sodari and Hamrat al-Sheikh localities, areas bordering Darfur currently controlled by the RSF.

• Taliban forces open fire on Herat protest: Taliban forces shot at and beat demonstrators Tuesday in the western Afghan city of Herat, where 70 to 150 men and women had gathered, chanting “education, work, and freedom” to protest the arrest of women over hijab violations, according to the AP. The UN said Taliban morality police had detained roughly 30 women and girls in Herat in recent days.

• South Sudanese anti-corruption whistleblower abducted in Nairobi and taken to Juba, wife says: Athorbey Al-Gaddhaffy-Dit, a South Sudanese whistleblower and Kenyan citizen who had shared allegations of high-level corruption in South Sudan with journalists and diplomats, was seized by armed, masked individuals in Nairobi early Tuesday morning and transported to Juba, according to a police report filed by his wife, reported on by Reuters. “I have no idea where he is currently being held in Juba, and I am very worried about his health and the conditions that he is being kept in,” she said. Amnesty International warned that his deportation to South Sudan posed “a serious and urgent threat to his life.”

• Turkey conducts large-scale naval exercises: Turkey is conducting a major naval exercise across the Black Sea, Aegean Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, and Sea of Marmara, in its largest such drill in years. The operation, known as DENİZKURDU-II (Sea Wolf II), includes live-fire missile tests, submarine operations and amphibious warfare training. The exercise comes amid ongoing maritime tensions with Greece and Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean and increased strategic coordination between these states and the Israeli government.

• Ukraine and Russia exchange drone strikes: Ukraine and Russia traded drone strikes overnight into Friday. Ukraine hit two oil refineries in Tatarstan, including Tatneft’s TANECO facility in Nizhnekamsk, one of Russia’s largest, as well as a synthetic rubber plant used in solid missile fuel production. Russia struck railway stations, electrical signaling posts, and substations in Ukraine’s Sumy region, killing at least one railway worker. Additional casualties were reported in Russia’s Bryansk border region, where two people were killed and 10 injured in a Ukrainian attack, and in Ukraine’s southern city of Mykolaiv, where three people were wounded and 14 buildings damaged.

• U.S. to scale back military assets assigned to NATO: The Trump administration plans to sharply reduce the U.S. military capabilities earmarked for NATO operations in Europe, according to reporting by The New York Times. The proposed changes would cut the number of American fighter jets, refueling tankers and radar equipment tasked with defending Europe, as well as naval assets including aircraft carriers and submarines.

• China detains U.S. scholar on espionage allegations: Chinese authorities have confirmed the arrest of U Min Zin, a U.S.-Myanmar dual citizen and prominent Myanmar scholar, on suspicion of espionage and endangering national security. The Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that Min Zin had been placed under criminal detention and that the U.S. Consulate General in Guangzhou had been formally notified. Chinese officials have not detailed the evidence underlying the accusations.

• South Korean court sentences ex-president Yoon to 30 years over Pyongyang drone operation: A Seoul court has sentenced former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in prison after finding him guilty of orchestrating a 2024 military drone incursion into North Korea that prosecutors said was designed to provoke a security crisis and pave the way for his later declaration of martial law. The Seoul Central District Court ruled that Yoon had conspired in the operation “from the outset,” convicting him of aiding the enemy and abuse of power.

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Throughout the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, President Donald Trump has constantly flailed in his campaign to portray it as a historic success. The blunt reality is that what Trump announced as a quick and easy war of regime change rapidly transformed into a quagmire. For the past two months, Trump has struggled to find a way to declare victory, alternating between claims that Iran is begging him for a deal and threats to destroy Iranian civilization.

On Thursday morning, Trump threatened to hit Iran “very hard.” Later in the day, Trump claimed a deal was now at hand, suggesting it could be signed as early as this weekend. “Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved.”

Trump has made such claims more than three dozen times since the initial two-week ceasefire was signed on April 7, and behind the scenes, Iranian officials maintain they have stood firm in protecting their own red lines in any deal framework.

This time, however, the initial response from Tehran indicates that a deal may well take shape. According to Iranian officials and state-affiliated media outlets, a breakthrough occurred this week when Trump backed off a series of new demands and ultimatums and accepted a deal that would adhere to a framework ironed out in May in indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington.

On Friday morning, Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill spoke to one of the top Iran analysts, Dr. Hassan Ahmadian, Associate Professor of Middle East Studies at Tehran University. Since the war began, Ahmadian has become one of the most prominent Iranian commentators in the Islamic world because of his viral appearances on Al Jazeera Arabic.

“The United States has hit the hard rock of a formidable force that stopped its aggression and they have to deal with it,” said Ahmadian. “President Trump realized that he cannot change the failure, the military failure of the war into a diplomatic win.”

They discuss the events leading up to Trump’s announcement on Thursday, Iran’s red lines—including the unfreezing of assets and an end to the war on Lebanon—and how Israel will seek to sabotage a deal while continuing its overt and covert actions targeting Iran. They also discuss the economic impact on Iran and the domestic political situation.

Sami Vanderlip produced this video interview. Thumbnail source photo by Kent NISHIMURA / AFP via Getty Images.

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Iran and Ceasefire

• Trump vows to hit Iran “very hard” tonight: President Donald Trump announced the U.S. will attack Iran again tonight following two days of back and forth strikes in the most serious escalation in the war since a ceasefire was declared on April 8. “The United States will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most of its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT,” Trump posted on social media. “At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela.”

• U.S. launches new strikes on Iran:

  • The U.S. military launched strikes “against multiple targets in Iran” overnight, claiming the strikes were in “self-defense” in response to “Iran’s unwarranted and continued aggression.”

  • Iranian media reported attacks in numerous locations, including the port city of Bandar Abbas, Qeshm Island, Sirik and Minab in the south, and Karaj west of Tehran.

  • Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said sites hit included a manufacturing complex, a military barracks and a local IRGC base outside of Tehran.

  • Explosions were heard across Hormozgan province, the southern coastal region bordering the Strait of Hormuz, with four blasts occurring in the coastal town of Sirik, according to Tasnim News.

  • A strike was reported near Minab, roughly 60 miles east of Bandar Abbas, and additional explosions were heard near Korgan Port on the Gulf of Oman Coast. Two people were wounded in the Korgan attack, according to an IRIB reporter in the city. A blast was also reported in Bandar Abbas itself by the Fars Gulf Broadcasting Center.

  • U.S. Central Command announced the end of the strikes Thursday morning and said they targeted “Iranian military surveillance capabilities, communication systems and air defense sites.”

  • Strikes were reported in the central Iranian city of Karaj, however, on Wednesday evening, with the Tehran province’s emergency chief announcing that three people had been injured by the attacks on Thursday. Strikes were also reported near Nazarabad, northwest of Tehran, and on an IRGC base in Pishva, southeast of the capital

• Iran strikes U.S. bases in response:

  • Iran launched retaliatory strikes on U.S. forces in the region, including Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan. The IRGC said its Aerospace Force and Navy had struck and destroyed 18 targets at U.S. military bases in the Gulf on Wednesday, including Ali al-Salem and Ahmad al-Jaber air bases in Kuwait and the Sheikh Isa air base in Bahrain.

  • In Bahrain, the Iranian military reportedly targeted communication antennas and radar facilities used by Sheikh Isa’s Patriot air defense system.

  • Early Thursday, the IRGC announced that it struck the U.S. Al-Azraq air base in Jordan with 12 ballistic missiles. It claimed the strikes destroyed aircraft parking areas, the base’s command center, and “a large number” of American F-35, F-15, and F-16 fighter jets.

• Iran closes Strait of Hormuz: Iran’s newly established body overseeing the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) and the Iranian military announced the complete closure of the strait until further notice. “Due to the tensions caused by the aggression of the American forces in the region and the announcement made last night by the Iranian armed forces, the Strait of Hormuz will be closed until further notice,” the PGSA said in a post on X. “Applicants who have been granted a transit permit are asked to be patient and wait for instructions from the PGSA.” Earlier, Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, warned that “any movement of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz will be targeted.” The command said the closure covered oil tankers and commercial ships alike, citing what it called the “criminal aggressions of the American enemy.” CENTCOM denied the strait was closed, saying in a social media post overnight, “Commercial ships are continuing to transit in and out of the Strait of Hormuz tonight.”

• Iran says ceasefire rendered “meaningless,” will target “American interests” throughout the Gulf:

  • The Iranian foreign ministry condemned the latest U.S. strikes, saying the attacks have rendered the ceasefire “practically meaningless.” In a statement, the ministry said: “The illegal and criminal attacks by the U.S. in recent hours are not only a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter and the fundamental rules of international law regarding respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, but have also rendered the ceasefire practically meaningless.”

  • After Fox News reported on Wednesday evening that Trump had spoken “directly” with Iranian officials who “asked him to stop bombing,” an official denied any such contact to Iran’s IRIB News Agency. The official argued that this “pure falsehood” was employed as a cover by Trump to avoid a full war with Iran.

  • Before Wednesday’s strikes were announced, an Iranian official told Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill that if the U.S. resumed the war, Iran would launch attacks targeting U.S. “interests” throughout the region. “We have taken advantage of the ceasefire to restore and strengthen our missile capabilities,” he said.

  • The official accused Trump of lacking “the ability to make the decision necessary to end his disgraceful war.” He also told Scahill that the basic outlines of a deal were in place and Trump “disrupted” the agreed-upon negotiating framework by making new demands. “From our perspective, there is absolutely no possibility of responding,” to these demands, the official said, as they fall “outside the framework of negotiations.”

• Trump claims U.S. has secretly moved “millions of barrels” of oil through Hormuz: President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that U.S. forces have been covertly moving “millions of barrels of oil” through the Strait of Hormuz each night to stabilize global energy markets amid the war with Iran, offering no evidence for a claim that is also not corroborated by any maritime traffic monitors. “Did you know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil?” he asked a press gaggle at the White House. “Nobody knows it,” Trump said. He credited these alleged shipments, which were also able to evade Iranian radar detection, with holding oil prices to the current $85–95 per barrel range, arguing they would otherwise have surged to $250.

• Three Indian seafarers killed after U.S. strikes oil tanker near Strait of Hormuz: Three Indian sailors were killed by a U.S. strike on the Palau-flagged oil tanker Settebello off the coast of Oman on Wednesday, India’s shipping minister Sarbananda Sonowal confirmed. The three were initially reported missing before their bodies were recovered; 21 of the 24 Indian crew members were rescued. CENTCOM said a U.S. aircraft fired precision munitions into the ship’s engine room late June 9 after the crew “repeatedly failed to comply” with American instructions, claiming the tanker was carrying Iranian oil in violation of its blockade. India condemned the strike and summoned the U.S. chargé d’affaires in New Delhi.

  • The U.S. attacked another ship overnight, according to a statement by CENTCOM, making it the third vessel attacked by the U.S. in the Gulf this week. The attack on the Guinea-Bissau-flagged and Indian-crewed Jalveer, prompted the Indian foreign ministry to call for U.S. operations against Gulf shipping vessels to “cease.” The spokesperson added that the ongoing attacks on “shipping in the region are deeply worrisome and are a direct consequence of the ongoing conflict there”.

• Israeli military confirms Iranian strikes caused damage at Ramat David Airbase: The Israeli military confirmed Thursday that this week’s Iranian missile barrage caused damage at the Israel Air Force’s Ramat David Airbase, though it claimed that the damage resulted from intercepted ballistic missile debris rather than a direct hit, according to the Times of Israel. Satellite imagery published Tuesday appeared to show damage to a warehouse on the base. The military said no equipment was damaged, no injuries were reported, and the airbase remained fully operational.

• Energy Secretary Wright claims Hormuz traffic rising: Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Congress Wednesday that ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is rising “very meaningfully,” though he acknowledged that he could not quantify the characterization. Kpler recorded just eight monitored commercial and non-commercial transits between June 5 and 7, and while Lloyd’s List and Windward found average daily “dark” transits have risen from two to six over the past week, that figure remains a small fraction of the roughly 135 ships per day that passed through Hormuz before the war.

• U.S. Treasury sanctions China- and Hong Kong-based networks over Iranian weapons: The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned nine individuals and entities Wednesday, accused of facilitating weapons procurement for Iran’s military. Most targets are based in China and Hong Kong, including a Hong Kong firm the U.S. accuses of operating within Iran’s covert banking network; the State Department concurrently sanctioned two entities and two individuals in Iran and Belarus over arms activities.

• U.S. strikes appear to have destroyed drinking water facility in southern Iran serving 20,000 people: U.S. airstrikes early Wednesday appear to have destroyed a drinking water facility in the village of Bemani on Iran’s southern coast near the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off water to more than 20,000 people, a New York Times analysis of satellite imagery and verified footage found. Weapon fragments recovered from the site were identified by researchers as remnants of a GBU-39 precision-guided glide bomb, consistent with a clean hole punched through a roof of the facility. Both buildings stood outside the village with no other infrastructure in the immediate vicinity, the report noted, and striking the center of a roof with a precision munition is considered an indicator of an intentional strike. Deliberately striking civilian water facilities could constitute a war crime under international law.

• Downed Apache helicopter was part of mission to escort ships through Strait of Hormuz, official says: The U.S. Army Apache helicopter that went down over the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday was participating in a previously undisclosed mission to protect commercial shipping through the waterway, a senior U.S. official told The Wall Street Journal. The covert operation, which Trump acknowledged during a press gaggle on Wednesday, has relied on U.S. fighter jets and helicopters escorting oil tankers and merchant vessels through the strait, the Journal reported. The official said the Apache was defending ships from Iranian drones and missiles when it went down.

Lebanon

• Killed and wounded: At least 3,711 people have been killed, and 11,483 wounded, in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

• Israeli strikes kill four, wound at least 25, including medical staff, across southern Lebanon:

  • Strike near hospital: An Israeli airstrike on a residential building near Hiram Hospital in the southern city of Tyre killed one person and wounded 17 others, including 10 nurses and hospital staff, according to the state’s National News Agency (NNA). The strike caused extensive damage to parts of the hospital, including patient rooms and the emergency department, while shattering windows and damaging vehicles belonging to doctors and employees.

  • One person was killed and seven wounded in Israeli strikes on the town of Abbasiya in the Tyre district, the NNA reported.

  • An Israeli drone strike on a motorcycle on the Habboush highway killed its rider, while another strike killed one person in Sahmar and wounded another in the Mashghara plain.

• Israeli soldier wounded in Hezbollah drone attack in southern Lebanon: An Israeli soldier was wounded on Thursday after an explosive-laden drone targeted Israeli forces operating in southern Lebanon, according to the Times of Israel. Earlier in the day, Hezbollah said in a series of statements that it had targeted Israeli military vehicles and troop gatherings in the southern Lebanese towns of Tayr Harfa, Deir Siryan, and Adaisseh with drones and rockets, as a “response to Israeli violations of the ceasefire and ongoing attacks.” At least 29 Israeli soldiers have been killed in southern Lebanon, according to the Israeli military.

• Saudi Arabia lifts years-long ban on Lebanese exports: Saudi Arabia will resume receiving Lebanese exports, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced Wednesday, ending a ban imposed in April 2021, stemming from concerns over drug-smuggling and Hezbollah’s influence over the Lebanese state. The decision was communicated in a call between Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, with Riyadh citing “positive steps” by Beirut, including rebuilding state institutions. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, whose outreach to Prince Salman prompted the move, called it a “tangible contribution to reviving the national economy”; Salam said it reflected Saudi “confidence in Lebanon.” Saudi Arabia was Lebanon’s top agricultural export recipient as recently as 2019, accounting for 22 percent of Lebanese agricultural exports that year.

Palestine

• Killed and wounded: Over the last 24 hours, seven Palestinians were injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 is at 72,991 killed, with 173,219 injured. Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 981 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 3,111, while 783 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

• Israeli strikes on Gaza kill two, wound three: Israeli shelling and airstrikes on Gaza killed two Palestinians and wounded at least three others, Wafa reported. A man was killed and several others were injured when Israeli aircraft bombed a house south of Gaza City on Thursday. Israeli forces also bombed a residential apartment north of the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, killing one, and a drone struck the Zeitoun neighborhood southeast of Gaza City, wounding two. Israeli gunfire also seriously injured a woman in the al-Salatin area of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.

• Two Palestinian Red Crescent medics forcibly disappeared: The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Thursday that two of its medics remain missing after armed militias intercepted two PRCS ambulances on Salah al-Din Street in southern Gaza while the crews were responding to a humanitarian call. Most crew members were released following field interrogation, but the two medics’ whereabouts remain unknown. PRCS held the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible, and called for their immediate and unconditional release.

• Israeli court cuts video feed of detained Gaza doctor Abu Safiya: Video from a Jerusalem court hearing on Wednesday showed Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, appearing by video link before Israeli court security blocked the screen and severed the connection, preventing his attorney from communicating with him; the court reportedly cut his feed to prevent journalists from filming. The incident deepened concerns over the detained physician’s treatment after he appeared emaciated at the hearing and bore apparent signs of physical abuse.

• Two Israeli soldiers wounded by explosive in Jenin: The Israeli army said Thursday that two soldiers were wounded by an explosive device during operational activity in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

U.S. News

By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at Julian@dropsitenews.com.

• Trump says “I love the inflation”: President Donald Trump told reporters, “I love the inflation” in response to new data showing the annual inflation rate hit 4.2% in May—the highest since early 2023 and the second consecutive month in which inflation outpaced wage growth. Trump framed the figures as a temporary byproduct of the Iran war, predicting prices would “come down like a rock” once hostilities end and saying he believed current levels represent the war’s peak. He later told the New York Post his words were taken out of context, saying what he loved was that inflation was not higher than anticipated.

  • A full year of inflation-adjusted wage growth has been erased in four months, leaving American workers effectively no better off than when President Donald Trump took office, Axios reported Wednesday. Real hourly earnings for all private-sector workers are flat since January 2025, while production and nonsupervisory workers—a widely used proxy for working-class employees—have seen nominal pay rise 4.9% over that period, only to have those gains fully offset by equivalent Consumer Price Index increases.

• House to vote on Section 702 surveillance program: The House will vote Thursday on a three-week extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, one day before its expiration, Speaker Mike Johnson announced Wednesday—but leaders of both parties expect the measure to fail, risking the first-ever lapse of the warrantless foreign surveillance program. The extension requires a two-thirds majority in favor to pass, a threshold Democrats say they will not help meet as long as President Donald Trump stands by his plan to install housing official Bill Pulte—a close political ally with no national security experience—as acting director of national intelligence. A small bloc of Republican holdouts adds further uncertainty.

• Trump demands Republicans immediately pass $350 billion defense boost and election overhaul: President Donald Trump called on congressional Republicans Wednesday night to pass a new party-line reconciliation bill “IMMEDIATELY,” demanding $350 billion in additional Pentagon spending on top of the administration’s pending fiscal 2027 budget request, along with the stalled SAVE America Act election overhaul. “No games, no delays, and no weak compromises!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The push would be Republicans’ third reconciliation bill this Congress, following last year’s tax-focused “big, beautiful bill” and the $70 billion immigration enforcement funding measure Trump signed Wednesday morning.

• Trump administration blocks Mamdani’s planned meeting with Colombian president, threatening arrest: The Trump administration quietly blocked New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani from holding his first meeting with a foreign leader this week, intervening behind the scenes to prevent a planned bilateral meeting with Colombian President Gustavo Petro, the Washington Post reported. State Department officials traveling to Bogotá made clear the meeting was unacceptable, in a move Colombian officials interpreted as a threat to arrest Petro if he proceeded. Colombia subsequently shortened Petro’s New York itinerary, cutting off the possibility of the encounter. A State Department official cited visa restrictions imposed on Petro last year following public comments in opposition to U.S. support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, arguing that visas are “a privilege” and that the President can revoke them at any time.

• Trump to press defense industry leaders on weapons production as missile stockpiles shrink amid Iran war: Leaders of roughly seven defense companies are expected to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House later this week, as the administration confronts growing alarm over thinning U.S. munitions stockpiles, NBC News reported. Trump has expressed anger to aides over the depleted arsenal as he weighs continued major combat operations against Iran. The Pentagon has yet to sign any new multiyear contracts to replenish munitions since Trump took office, NBC reported in May, having entered only non-binding framework agreements. The U.S. has been drawing down weapons stockpiles from Europe and Asia to sustain the Iran campaign; a Center for Strategic and International Studies study found particular shortfalls in long-range precision weapons, including Tomahawks, Patriot missiles, and THAAD interceptors.

• Platner responds to questions about Epstein: Graham Platner, who won yesterday’s Democratic Senate primary in Maine, was asked by Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe if he would have the ability “call for the release of the Epstein files” given recent reporting about his infidelity. “Yes, of course,” he responded. “I engaged in consensual romantic activities with adults at an earlier part of my life. That seems like a fairly normal thing most people do. Going to an island with billionaires to possibly assault children is a vastly, vastly different thing.”

  • Separately on Wednesday, President Trump called Platner a “thug” and “worse than any human being that has ever run for office, probably.” Trump, who has extensive connections to Epstein, also has a history of marital infidelity, his first marriage having dissolved after a highly publicized affair with Marla Maples, and having falsified business records to hide his affair with Stormy Daniels during his current marriage.

• Claire Valdez defends land-sale protests: At a congressional debate on Wednesday, New York Assemblymember Claire Valdez (D), who is running to represent the state’s 7th district, defended recent protests against land sales in the West Bank in New York City synagogues. “We also have to be clear about what these protesters are protesting,” Valdez said. “They’re protesting the illegal sale of land in the West Bank that’s in violation of international law.” Valdez also said protesters need to be “protected” when explaining why she opposed a law that would create “buffer zones” around protests at synagogues and houses of worship, a law which was proposed in Congress in April in response to these New York City protests.

• Senior aide to GOP Sen. Husted collected $22,000 from Ohio lobbying firm while serving in his office: Sean Dunn, senior adviser and counsel to Republican Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio, maintained a paid consulting relationship with Columbus-based lobbying firm Statehouse Impact Group while simultaneously serving in Husted’s Senate office, collecting $22,652 from the firm during 2025, according to a financial disclosure filing reported by NOTUS. A formal ethics complaint filed May 29 with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics argues the arrangement violates Senate Rule 37, which bars staffers from holding outside consulting roles that create a duty to an external client and prohibits using official positions for personal gain; the complaint also implicates Husted directly, arguing he bore responsibility for preventing staff conflicts of interest.

• FBI raids target pro-Palestine activists indicted on actions related to Univ. of Michigan divesting from Israel: The FBI arrested seven pro-Palestine activists in a series of raids Wednesday morning who have been indicted on federal charges for “a coordinated campaign of violent, criminal acts seeking to pressure University of Michigan leaders and other businesses in the Eastern District of Michigan to cut off all ties with Israel,” according to FBI Director Kash Patel. The eight defendants named in the 63-page grand jury indictment, whom Patel identified as “a group of college-aged adults” are accused of using encrypted messages, social media, and collaboration with overseas partners. Amy V. Doukoure, lead staff attorney for CAIR-Michigan, which is not representing the defendants, said in a statement that the indictment “appears to include extensive references to broader political events, protected viewpoints, and students’ lawful participation in peaceful protests calling for divestment and the recognition of Palestinian human rights. Criminal prosecutions should be based on alleged criminal acts—not on protected speech or association.”

• State Department launches investigation of political analyst Trita Parsi: The State Department has launched an investigation of Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), and could seek to deport him, according to U.S. officials and documents reviewed by The Free Press. Parsi, who holds a green card, is one of the most prominent U.S.-based critics of the war with Iran. He was born in Iran, grew up in Sweden, has lived in the United States for over 25 years. A Trump administration official said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was taking “a hard look” at anyone whose work “furthers” the agenda of U.S. adversaries, invoking a provision of federal immigration law allowing the secretary of state to personally determine that a noncitizen’s presence compromises a “compelling U.S. foreign policy interest”—the same authority Rubio used in the ongoing effort to deport Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil. Quincy’s CEO told staff and donors in April that the think tank was retaining an immigration lawyer and preparing a writ of habeas corpus “to have at the ready” if Parsi were suddenly detained.

Other International News

• Israeli forces raid villages in Syria: Israeli forces stormed the towns of Ma’ariya and al-Arda in the Yarmouk Basin area in southern Syria at dawn on Thursday, establishing checkpoints and obstructing civilian movement, Syria’s official SANA news agency reported, citing a local official. Israeli military vehicles reportedly entered the area and positioned themselves near Ma’ariya’s water well, conducting extensive searches of public and private vehicles until 7 a.m. before moving to Ma’ariya and Abidin to establish additional temporary checkpoints. Syria has repeatedly called for Israeli forces to withdraw from its territory.

• Colombian commission head proposes suspending President Petro: The president of Colombia’s Commission of Investigation and Accusation, Gloria Arizabaleta, on Wednesday proposed suspending President Gustavo Petro from his duties until June 21, Reuters reported, citing a published document. Petro’s opponents have alleged that he interfered to help the campaign of leftist candidate Iván Cepeda, who faces right-wing lawyer Abelardo De La Espriella in the second round of the presidential election. The proposal requires approval from all 16 commission members and then the Senate to take effect. Interior Minister Armando Benedetti rejected the move’s legality, arguing only the country’s Senate holds the authority to suspend a sitting president. Petro remains in office.

  • Separately, Petro addressed the UN Security Council on Wednesday—where Colombia holds the monthly presidency—attributing the violence in Gaza and the broader Middle East to greed and what he called a resurgence of “Nazi ideology.” He said the “fight for hydrocarbons, the fight for oil; that’s what makes missiles rain down on peoples, on babies.”

• Mexico to open World Cup against a backdrop of protests: Mexico City is set to host the opening match of the 2026 World Cup amid protests that have cast a shadow over the global sporting event. Teachers demanding pension reforms and higher pay, families searching for missing relatives, and other activist groups have used the global spotlight to pressure the government, arguing that authorities have prioritized World Cup investments over unresolved social and security problems. Officials have pledged a safe and successful tournament, deploying thousands of police, while President Claudia Sheinbaum has assured there will be no repeat of the sort of the repression that characterized the 1968 Olympics, where soldiers opened fire on protesting students.

• Two Kuki community members killed in dawn attack in India’s Manipur: Two members of the Kuki community were killed and two others were wounded when armed men attacked at daybreak Thursday in India’s northeastern state of Manipur, a day after authorities recovered the bodies of six Naga men believed to have been taken hostage, two senior police officers told Reuters. Seven houses were torched in the attack. Police have not identified the perpetrators and described the situation as “tense and volatile.”

• RSF drone strikes kill five in Sudan’s North Kordofan: Rapid Support Forces drone attacks killed five people and wounded 12 others in El Obeid, the capital of Sudan’s North Kordofan State, on Wednesday, Sudan Tribune reported. One drone struck the Dalil cemetery during a funeral procession, killing four people and injuring seven; a second struck a fuel station inside the city, leaving five people critically wounded.

  • In a separate incident, a truck driver was killed when his vehicle carrying food supplies was targeted in the Jebel Kordofan area. The Sudan Doctors Network condemned what it called the RSF’s “systematic shelling” of civilians, warning that casualties could rise given the sustained targeting of populated areas.

• Thousands march in Tirana in largest protest yet against Kushner-backed resort near protected Albanian wetland: Thousands of Albanians demonstrated in Tirana on Wednesday in the largest protest yet against a roughly €5 billion luxury resort development backed by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Reuters reported. Protests stretched half a mile down one of the capital’s main boulevards outside Prime Minister Edi Rama’s office. Protesters held signs reading “Albania is not for sale” and carried inflatable flamingos in what has been dubbed the Flamingo Revolution, a reference to the protected wetland near the southern coastal village of Zvernec where the resort is planned—a migratory habitat for flamingos, seals, and sea turtle nesting sites.

• Keiko Fujimori retakes lead from leftist rival in Peru vote count: Conservative candidate Keiko Fujimori regained a razor-thin lead over her leftist opponent Roberto Sánchez as overseas ballots that favored her were tabulated. With more than 98% of votes tallied, Fujimori led by only a few hundred votes out of roughly 18 million cast, while hundreds of thousands of ballots could be contested in a judicial review. Sánchez has raised the prospect of contesting the vote, and election authorities have warned that a final result could still take weeks to emerge.

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U.S. launches strikes on Iran, citing downed Apache helicopter. IRGC strikes U.S. military bases in response. President Donald Trump says Iran must “pay the price.” Iran condemns U.S. strikes as illegal, warns Gulf states, and calls for UN Security Council action. U.S. attack on Iranian water reservoirs reportedly leave 20,000 without drinking water. Tanker catches fire off Oman coast, one casualty and two missing. Israel continues attacks on Lebanon. Israeli forces abduct municipal official, worker in southern Lebanon. Erdogan says Israeli aggression threatens Turkey and the world. Likud says Netanyahu will seek reelection. Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israel is blocking 16,500 patients from seeking medical care abroad. Amnesty accuses Israel of state-driven ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Six western nations impose coordinated sanctions over Israeli settler violence in West Bank. Israeli soldier shoots and kills seven-month-old Palestinian infant in Hebron, B’Tselem footage shows. Primary results in Maine, South Carolina, Nevada. DCCC faces Democratic backlash after $135,000 intervention in California primary backfires. U.S. inflation hits three-year high of 4.2% in May. ICE detention of babies and toddlers has increased tenfold under Trump, new analysis finds. Government Accountability Office report finds mismanagement, detainee deaths, and wasted millions at Texas ICE facility. Pakistan air raids kill civilians including children in Afghanistan, Kabul says. Anti-immigrant riots erupt in Belfast. Brazil intercepts 108 Cuban migrants in single day.

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Iran and Ceasefire

• U.S. launches strikes on Iran, citing downed Apache helicopter: The U.S. military launched strikes against Iran overnight framing the operation as “a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression” and an act of “self-defense” following the downing of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz Monday that President Donald Trump blamed on Iran.

  • The strikes targeted the Iranian Gulf cities of Sirik, Jask, and Bandar Abbas, according to Iranian state media, as well as Qeshm Island.

  • U.S. Central Command later announced it had completed its strikes, saying Air Force and Navy fighter jets used precision munitions to target Iranian air defense systems, ground control stations, and surveillance radar sites. No specifics about casualties from the attacks, or the extent of damage, were initially reported by the Iranians or the U.S. military.

• IRGC strikes U.S. military bases in response: In response to the U.S. strikes, Iran launched a series of drone and missile attacks on American bases in Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed Wednesday it struck 21 targets at U.S. air and naval bases across the region, including Al-Azraq Air Base in Jordan. It claimed it employed long-range solid-fuel missiles to destroy four targets including F-35 fighter hangars and a command and control center, according to Khabar Fouri. The IRGC also reiterated its earlier claim of shooting down a U.S. MQ-9 drone over Jam County in Bushehr Province, warning that “the consequences of any renewed aggression lie with the American enemy.”

• Trump says Iran must “pay the price”: President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that Iran is taking “too long to negotiate a deal” and that “now they will have to pay the price” as a result. He again repeated unsubstantiated claims that Iran’s military capacity has been depleted in the war in a post on Truth Social. “They have been completely defeated. Iran is all talk and no action. The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!! They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!,” Trump wrote. His comments came two days after he suggested that a deal to end the war could be reached in a matter of days.

• Iran condemns U.S. strikes as illegal, warns Gulf states, and calls for UN Security Council action: Iran’s Foreign Ministry condemned Tuesday’s U.S. strikes on southern Iran as “savage attacks” and a “flagrant violation” of the UN Charter carried out under the “pretext” of a downed Apache helicopter.

  • Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that foreign military forces operating near Iran are at “constant risk on account of their own human errors, plain accidents, or potentially being caught in crossfire.” Araghchi said, “To reduce risk, the best solution is for foreign forces to exit, as soon as possible, an environment which will never be hospitable to a hostile presence.”

  • Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that continuing negotiations will be “under study” following the U.S. strikes. “Unfortunately, the United States is damaging this diplomatic process through the contradictory messages it sends, its repeated shifts in positions and demands, and, worst of all, through repeated violations of the ceasefire,” Baqaei said, according to Iranian media.

• Attack on water reservoirs leave 20,000 without drinking water: A reported U.S. attack on two water reservoirs in southern Iran has left 20,000 people without access to drinking water, according to their Mizan news agency. In a statement, the local Iranian water utility company said the reservoirs were “targeted and completely destroyed” on Wednesday morning in U.S. strikes in the Bemani area of Sirik in southern Iran.

• Tanker catches fire off Oman coast, one casualty and two missing: A tanker was on fire on Wednesday morning, approximately 20 nautical miles northeast of Sohar off the coast of Oman, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations. The UKMTO reported one casualty and two crew members missing following an engine room blaze; the cause of the fire was not given.

  • Another incident was reported by the UKMTO off the coast of Yemen, where a gunboat reportedly fired on a shipping vessel. The vessel was approached by a small craft carrying six armed individuals, the office said, and the exchange of fire forced the shipping vessel to turn away.

• Iran urges IAEA board members to resist U.S. attempts to weaponize nuclear watchdog: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi sent a letter Wednesday to foreign ministers represented on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors urging them not to allow the watchdog to be used as a “U.S. political instrument,” as the board’s quarterly meeting got underway in Vienna, where it is slated to discuss a U.S.-drafted resolution against Iran’s nuclear program. Araghchi called the resolution “politically motivated” and “made in bad faith,” saying the United States bears responsibility for the current crisis and should not be permitted to exploit the IAEA to justify “illegal measures” against Iran.

• Russia calls for restraint: Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called for both the U.S. and Iran to “immediately cease military attacks” on Wednesday. Zakharova did note that the initial blame for the region’s unrest lies with the U.S. and Israel, however, saying that this round follows “the unprovoked U.S.-Israeli aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Lebanon

• Killed and wounded: At least 3,696 people have been killed, and 11,413 wounded, in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Israeli attacks killed at least 30 people, and wounded 92 others, over the past day, the Ministry reported.

• Israel continues attacks on Lebanon:

  • Israeli attacks on Tyre and surrounding areas in southern Lebanon killed 13 people and wounded 15 others Wednesday, Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported, with nine killed and seven wounded in the town of Tayr Debba, three killed and three wounded in Deir Qanoun, and at least one person killed and five wounded in Tyre itself as rescue teams worked to clear rubble.

  • The Israeli military issued forced displacement orders on Wednesday for residents of the towns Ansariyeh, Ghassaniyeh, and Houmine El Faouqa in southern Lebanon,

  • Israeli aircraft also struck the town of el-Buss on Sour’s outskirts on Tuesday, killing three people and wounding nine, according to the NNA.

  • In Ansarieh, south of Saida, Israeli drones carried out at least five strikes in less than 45 minutes on Tuesday. One Syrian national and another person were killed when a motorcycle was struck, according to L’Orient Today. Locals report that Israeli drones repeatedly targeted moving vehicles and access roads, hindering Lebanese rescue efforts.

• Israeli forces abduct municipal official, worker in southern Lebanon: Israeli forces abducted two men in the southern Lebanese town of Kfarshouba on Wednesday while they were carrying out water pumping operations for local residents, according to NNA. The Agency identified the pair as municipal council member Mohammed Hassan al-Hajj and worker Ahmed Salah Diab, saying they were operating the town’s water supply system when an Israeli patrol detained them and took them to an unknown location. The Israeli military later confirmed it had apprehended two individuals in southern Lebanon, stating to AFP that troops identified “two suspected individuals” who they claim approached soldiers in Lebanese territory, and were taken to Israel for “further questioning.”

• Erdogan says Israeli aggression threatens Turkey and the world: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that Israeli attacks on Syria and Lebanon have reached a point where they threaten Turkey directly, telling his parliament that “if the Israeli thuggery is not stopped, the consequences will be borne by the entire region and all of humanity.”

Palestine

• Killed and wounded: Over the last 24 hours, three Palestinians were killed—one recovered from under the rubble, and two due to wounds sustained in earlier attacks—and five injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 has risen to 72,991 killed, with 173,212 injured. Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 981 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 3,104, while 783 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

• Likud says Netanyahu will seek reelection: Israel’s Likud Party said Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will seek re-election in Israel’s upcoming vote—which must be held by October—after President Donald Trump appeared to cast doubt on his candidacy, telling ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl “I don’t know, he’s had an amazing career. Does he want to continue?”

• Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israel is blocking 16,500 patients from seeking medical care abroad: More than 16,500 Palestinians requiring medical treatment abroad are being prevented by Israel from leaving the enclave, despite a nominal ceasefire in place since October, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported on Tuesday. The ministry warned that Israel was “killing patients with delays” by limiting Rafah crossing access to three days per week and allocating just one day per week for medical evacuations at the Karem Abu Salem crossing. Acting Undersecretary Maher Shamia called on human rights organizations to pressure Israel to allow free movement, adding that many patients could be treated locally if Israel also ceased blocking reconstruction of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure, which Israel has systematically destroyed.

• Amnesty accuses Israel of state-driven ethnic cleansing of Palestinians: Amnesty International has accused Israel of a state-driven campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting Palestinian Bedouins in the occupied West Bank and committing the crime against humanity of forcible transfer. According to UN data, at least 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding Palestinian communities have faced either full or partial displacement between January 2023 and  April 2026. In a 149-page report titled “Erasing Anything Palestinian,” Amnesty details how the ethnic cleansing campaign is an integral and organized part of state policy. “Over the past three and a half years Israeli authorities have accelerated a state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, uprooting, dispossessing and forcibly transferring Palestinian communities. This is not the work of rogue actors or what the international community has repeatedly labelled as extremist settlers, organizations or one or two ministers. What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world,” Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said in a statement.

• Six western nations impose coordinated sanctions over Israeli settler violence in West Bank: The United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, and Norway imposed coordinated sanctions Tuesday, targeting networks financing and enabling settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. France additionally banned Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, three settler group leaders, and 21 settlers from entering the country. UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told parliament that British citizens and businesses should conduct no economic or financial activities in illegal Israeli settlements, saying the Israeli government’s condemnations of settler violence “ring hollow when there is scant accountability.” Amnesty International called the measures “a step, but not enough.”

• Israel seizes Palestinian land in Jenin for military base: Israel has issued an order to seize Palestinian land in the Al-Jabariyat area overlooking Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank to build a military base, according to +972 Magazine—marking the first such seizure in Area A since the Oslo Accords established full Palestinian civil and security control over the territory in 1995. Rights groups warned that the move is part of a broader effort to expand Israeli military and settlement control around Jenin, where more than 18,000 Palestinians have already been displaced following an Israeli military assault in January 2025.

• Israeli soldier shoots and kills seven-month-old Palestinian infant in Hebron, B’Tselem footage shows: Footage released Tuesday by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem shows an Israeli soldier opening fire on a Palestinian family’s car as it slowed to a stop in Hebron on June 5, shooting seven-month-old Sam Abu Haikal in the head and killing him, and wounding both of his parents. B’Tselem said the footage shows the car posed “no danger” to the soldiers and was far from their position when they opened fire; it also shows the soldiers leaving the scene without providing aid to the infant or his injured mother.

• Gaza killings escalate as world’s attention shifts to Iran and Lebanon: An eight-year-old boy, Jad Suleiman, was killed by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike Monday while walking home from school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. Drop Site reported from Shifa hospital where his father clutched his son’s bloodied backpack and asked, “What was his crime?” As global attention shifts to the wars on Iran and Lebanon, and Gaza’s so-called ceasefire enters its ninth month, the genocide there continues to intensify. May was the deadliest month of 2026 for Palestinians in Gaza, with at least 119 killed including 19 children according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, and at least 46 more have been killed in the first nine days of June alone. Israel has also restricted the entry of life essentials into Gaza, allowing only 36% of agreed-upon aid and 15% of required fuel—leaving 77% of Gaza’s population facing acute food insecurity, according to the World Food Program. Read the full report from Abdel Qader Sabbah and Sharif Abdel Kouddous here.

U.S. News

By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at Julian@dropsitenews.com.

• Primary results in Maine, South Carolina, Nevada:

  • First-time candidate Graham Platner, a veteran and oyster farmer, won the Maine Democratic primary on Tuesday, setting up to face incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in the state’s general election in November. Addressing the controversies that surfaced throughout his primary campaign, Platner said in his victory speech, “If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change. And the reason I believe that is because I have lived it.” In the same speech, he attacked Collins for having “never met a war she didn’t like,” and for being “as spineless and corrupt as the establishment she now serves.”

  • Sen. Lindsey Graham won the South Carolina Republican primary Tuesday with more than half the vote, avoiding a runoff and putting himself on track for a fifth Senate term in a state that has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2005. Graham defeated five challengers including businessman Mark Lynch, who drew support from prominent MAGA critics of the Iran war—including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, and former counterterrorism official Joe Kent. Graham outspent the field heavily, raising $18 million dollars in the race, and received a last-minute telendorsement from President Donald Trump.

  • Rep. Nancy Mace failed to advance to a runoff Tuesday in the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary. Trump-backed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Attorney General Alan Wilson advanced to a June 23 runoff, extending Trump’s recent streak of successfully ousting Republican defectors from his agenda.

  • Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and Democrat Aaron Ford won their respective primaries Tuesday in Nevada, officially setting up what Cook Political Report rates as the only toss-up governor’s race featuring a Republican incumbent, in a state Lombardo won by fewer than 2 percentage points in 2022. Ford, who previously served as the state’s top Senate Democrat and attorney general, is seeking to become Nevada’s first Black governor, and has sought to tie Lombardo to President Donald Trump’s record on tariffs, Medicaid cuts in a state where roughly one in three residents rely on the program, and Iran war-driven gas prices that rank among the highest in the country. Lombardo enters the general election with a significant fundraising advantage—his campaign and allied groups have spent roughly $8.5 million on ads since January compared to Ford’s $67,000.

• California primary results continue to come in:

  • Trump-endorsed former Fox News host Steve Hilton secured the second spot in California’s November gubernatorial election Tuesday, defeating progressive billionaire Tom Steyer and setting up a contest between Hilton and former Biden administration Health Secretary Xavier Becerra.

  • Randy Villegas, a Bernie Sanders-backed progressive and single-payer health care supporter, defeated moderate Democratic state lawmaker Jasmeet Bains on Tuesday to advance to a runoff against Republican Rep. David Valadao in California’s redrawn Central Valley battleground district, despite the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee intervening on Bains’s behalf through its Red to Blue program. Bains also received nearly a half a million dollars in ad support from pro-Israel groups. Villegas has called for curtailing U.S. support for Israel’s military actions.

  • Progressive challenger Mai Vang holds the lead in California’s 7th congressional district Tuesday with 95% of votes reported, according to the Associated Press. Vang is attempting to unseat incumbent Democrat Doris Matsui in the Sacramento-area seat.

• DCCC faces Democratic backlash after $135,000 intervention in California primary backfires: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has reportedly been riven after spending $135,000 to boost Jasmeet Bains in California’s 22nd district primary. Rep. Adelita Grijalva of Arizona told Axios that it was “deeply disappointing that the DCCC tried to tip the scales in a very competitive Democratic primary,” and said the intervention personally motivated her to campaign harder for Villegas, while a second House Democrat said the spending “was weird” given that multiple caucuses had already made a different decision. Serious conversations are now underway with DCCC chair Suzan DelBene and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries over demands that the committee either stop intervening in primaries altogether or distribute support equally across the party’s ideological factions, with Villegas backers calling on the DCCC to now back him with the same resources it gave Bains.

• U.S. inflation hits three-year high of 4.2% in May: U.S. inflation rose to a three-year high of 4.2 percent in May, up from 3.8 percent in April and more than double the 2.4 percent rate recorded in late February when the Middle East conflict began, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday, with energy accounting for more than 60 percent of the monthly price increase as gasoline and diesel costs have risen roughly 40 percent since the war began. Core inflation, stripping out food and energy, edged up to 2.9 percent, while food prices also continued to climb.

• ICE detention of babies and toddlers has increased tenfold under Trump, new analysis finds: ICE held an average of 25 babies and toddlers per day between January 2025 and March 2026—ten times the rate under President Joe Biden—with at least 500 children aged 3 and under spending time in custody since Trump took office and at least 175 held beyond a court-mandated 20-day limit, according to a new analysis by The Marshall Project and MS NOW of federal immigration records. Parents detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, the primary family detention facility operated by private prison company CoreCivic, described children stopping eating, regressing in speech development, and contracting repeated illnesses amid inadequate medical care.

• GAO report finds mismanagement, detainee deaths, and wasted millions at Texas ICE facility: A federal Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday found that ICE’s Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in El Paso—which became the nation’s largest immigration detention facility after rushing to open in August before construction was complete—suffered from unsafe conditions that contributed to three detainee deaths in six months, a tuberculosis outbreak, a detainee escape, and a lost loaded firearm, while wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on an inexperienced contractor with no prior detention experience. Evidence in the January death of 55-year-old Cuban migrant Geraldo Lunas Campos, whose outside autopsy ruled the cause homicide by asphyxia after he was held down by guards, was found to be “missing or destroyed,” while a Nicaraguan detainee died by suicide after staff placed him in a room without a vision panel and left him unattended for intervals exceeding 15 minutes.

• SoFi Stadium food workers reach deal but threaten to strike if ICE appears at World Cup matches: UNITE HERE Local 11, which represents food and beverage workers at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, reached a wage agreement Tuesday with food contractor Legends Global ahead of Friday’s U.S. World Cup opener but reserved the contractual right to walk off the job if ICE agents appear at the stadium during matches. The union, which has represented predominantly immigrant hotel and restaurant workers in Los Angeles since the late 1980s and played a central role in turning California from a purple to a deep-blue state through Latino organizing drives in the 1990s and 2000s, said it would strike if it determined “in good faith that federal immigration enforcement threatens worker safety during a World Cup match.” Read more about Local 11 in the latest from Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect here.

• DIA raises Israel counterintelligence threat to “critical,” highest level, amid spying allegations: The Defense Intelligence Agency has reportedly elevated its counterintelligence threat assessment for Israel to “critical”—its highest designation, now ranking the U.S. ally above some adversaries—after American personnel in Israel discovered spyware on their phones. Targets of the alleged eavesdropping include Steve Witkoff, Trump’s top Iran negotiator, Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, and Michael DiMino IV, the Pentagon’s senior Middle East policy director; the DIA report also details Israeli military officers planting listening devices at DIA headquarters in 2021 and Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service attempting to bug a Secret Service vehicle last year. Drop Site’s Julian Andreone reported from Capitol Hill on lawmakers’ reactions to the findings. His interviews are available here.

Other International News

• Pakistan air raids kill civilians including children in Afghanistan, Kabul says: Pakistan carried out air strikes Wednesday on Afghanistan’s Kunar, Khost, and Paktika provinces, with Pakistani Information Minister Attaullah Tarar claiming 26 Pakistani Taliban (TTP) fighters were killed. Afghanistan’s Taliban government said the dead included 11 children, one woman, and an elderly man, with 14 more women and children wounded; an Afghan government spokesman condemned the raids as a “humanitarian crime and act of aggression.” The strikes, the deadliest in weeks following a period of relative calm, came in response to a series of recent TTP attacks on Pakistani security posts, including a June 9 assault that killed six paramilitary constabulary members.

• Anti-immigrant riots erupt in Belfast: Hundreds of masked protesters torched vehicles, a bus, and a building in Belfast on Tuesday after a 30-year-old Sudanese man was charged with attempted murder following a knife attack that left a man in his 40s with severe injuries. Crowds also gathered in the nearby town of Antrim. Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill condemned what she called “groups of masked men burning families out of their homes” as “disgusting cowardice,” while Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson declared a “critical incident” and appealed for calm.

• Ukrainian drone strikes hit museum and oil refinery targets: Ukrainian drones struck the historic Panorama Museum in Russian-occupied Crimea, as well as key Russian energy infrastructure including oil refineries in the Samara region. The attacks disrupted transport routes into Crimea adding to fuel shortages and rationing on the peninsula. The infrastructure strikes come amid an intensified strategy by Kyiv aimed at raising the economic cost of the war by hitting energy assets far from the front lines.

• Brazil intercepts 108 Cuban migrants in single day: Brazilian federal police intercepted 108 Cuban nationals in a single day Monday—the largest such operation ever recorded in the country’s Roima state—arresting five human smugglers as part of Operation Safe Route. Many of those rescued in the operation reported they had gone without food for at least two days. The surge is part of an exodus from the island in response to a U.S.-imposed fuel blockade that since January has blocked virtually all foreign oil from reaching Cuba, triggering island-wide blackouts and acute shortages of food and medication. Cuban refugee applications in Brazil surpassed those from Venezuelans in 2025, exceeding 40,000 requests.

• Private company secures oil deal in Cuba: A Florida energy company has signed an agreement to store and sell U.S. fuel inside Cuba, creating the first mechanism for large-scale gasoline and diesel deliveries aimed at the island’s private sector rather than the state, the Miami Herald reported. Coral Gables-based Vanguard Energy will lease storage facilities from Cuba’s state fuel company while retaining ownership and control of the fuel, which will be sold to vetted private businesses, embassies, religious groups and humanitarian organizations. The deal, enabled by the Trump administration’s oil blockade, which permits fuel exports only for private economic activity, could ease Cuba’s severe energy shortages and lower fuel costs. Supporters say it may open the door to broader market reforms, while critics question how authorities will prevent fuel diversion to the Cuban government. The deal comes as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned that oil restrictions imposed by the U.S. on Cuba are causing widespread harm to the population and endangering lives, urging that these sanctions be lifted.

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GAZA CITY—Eight-year-old Jad Suleiman was walking home from school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza on Monday when the Israeli airstrike hit. A piece of shrapnel lodged in his neck, killing him instantly. Outside Shifa hospital, his body lay on a stretcher wrapped in a loose white sheet. Dressed in jeans and a blue and red checkered shirt, the smallness of his body was accentuated by his oversized backpack, still on his limp shoulders.

Jad’s father, Youssef Suleiman, was beyond grief. He wept uncontrollably as he bent over his son’s lifeless body, caressing and kissing his face. “I am not able to speak,” Suleiman told Drop Site News. He was breathing heavily, almost gasping for air. He had removed his son’s backpack and was clutching it to his chest. “My son is 8 years old. What was his crime? He was coming home from school. This is his bag, there is blood on it. This is the bag. This is the bag,” he repeated, unable to continue.

Three Palestinians were killed in the attack, including eight-year-old Jad and a 70-year-old man. Several others were wounded in the strike and brought into Shifa on stretchers, bloodied and wincing in pain.

“You leave your house, not knowing whether you are going to return or whether you are going to die,” Jad’s aunt, Warda Muhaysin, told Drop Site. “There is blood in the streets. It’s enough. Enough…where is the ceasefire people are talking about?”

The body of Jad Suleiman, 8, arrives at Shifa hospital in Gaza City along with other casualties, after an Israeli airstrike in Jabaliya on June 8, 2026. Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah. Warning: graphic footage.

As the world has turned its attention to the wars on Iran and Lebanon, and with a “ceasefire” in Gaza entering its ninth month, the ongoing genocide is steadily becoming more acute.

May was the deadliest month in 2026 for Palestinians in Gaza, with at least 119 killed, including 19 children, according to a report last week by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights citing Gaza Health Ministry figures, which noted an “escalation in mass killings and assassinations that the Israeli occupation forces continue to perpetrate against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.”

And the killing is ramping up. At least 46 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks in the first nine days of June alone, according to a daily tally of Health Ministry figures, including several children.

A total of eight Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Monday across the enclave. In another attack, this time in Gaza City, an Israeli helicopter gunship flew menacingly low before firing a missile into a residential building in the neighborhood of Tel al-Hawa, wounding another Palestinian child.

“We were baking something in the oven, and our children were playing near this corner of the building,” an eyewitness told Drop Site. “All of a sudden, we saw the helicopter flying. We kept looking at it and asking, ‘Where is it going to bomb?’ It turned out that it was bombing us, not anyone else. We absolutely did not expect it to strike us because they were only little kids playing.”

Israel has killed nearly a thousand Palestinians since it signed a ceasefire agreement with Hamas on October 10, 2025, with more than 1,400 airstrikes and shelling attacks, and over 1,200 shooting incidents, according to a report shared by the Palestinian side with mediators and obtained by Drop Site. Over 3,000 have been wounded.

“The war has returned. Every day there are tens of martyrs and tens of wounded. It has returned, but without being announced. There is no coverage of Gaza,” Azmi Abu Sharby, a Palestinian who lives in Shujaiyeh, a neighborhood east of Gaza City, told Drop Site. “It is all about Iran and all about Lebanon, and Gaza is bombed every day and slaughtered every day.”

On Sunday, Israel again used its own war of aggression as a pretext to close all crossings into Gaza. Following Iran’s strikes on Israel—in retaliation for Israel’s strikes on Beirut in yet another violation of a ceasefire with Lebanon—Israel completely cut off the entry of humanitarian aid to roughly two million Palestinians. Two days later, the Israeli military said it was reopening Karam Abu Salem for the “gradual entry” of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the Rafah crossing for the limited movement of people. But the strangulation of Gaza had already been tightening before the latest measures. Only 36% of the aid agreed upon in the ceasefire has entered Gaza since the deal went into effect eight months ago. Fuel deliveries are even less, at just 15% of the required amount.

The World Food Program estimates that 77% of Gaza’s population face acute food insecurity, including 100,000 children and 37,000 pregnant women suffering from acute malnutrition. Gaza’s Interior Ministry announced this week that it recorded 1,701 births across all of Gaza in May—around 35% of the enclave’s pre-genocide monthly birth average of between 4,600 to 4,800.

“There appears to be a widespread perception, actively encouraged by Israel, the United States, and those governments complicit in the Gaza genocide, that the October 2025 Israel-Hamas agreement produced a meaningful ceasefire or at least an end to the killing. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth,” Mouin Rabbani, Managing Editor of Jadaliyya and a former UN official who worked as a senior analyst on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group, told Drop Site. “Although the Palestinians have scrupulously adhered to their commitments under the agreement, Israel’s killings continue on a daily basis, in attenuated form, and have in fact been increasing in intensity in recent weeks.”

“At least as importantly, the siege continues in a context in which Israel has rejected the proper fulfillment of every single one of its commitments under that agreement,” Rabbani added. “Those governments which like to refer to themselves as ‘the international community’ have been content to look the other way and pretend this is the most normal state of affairs in the world.”

Living Near the Yellow Line

In Shujaiyeh, a neighborhood east of Gaza City, Awni Shallah sat amid rubble in the shade of a badly damaged building. In the near distance, a wall of earth cut out the horizon—a massive barrier with a newly built Israeli military base perched on top, complete with a communications tower and spotlights. Shallah’s tent lay just meters from the “yellow line.”

“All the people in the tents here are very afraid of the ‘yellow line’ advancing,” Shallah told Drop Site. “There is no place, no alternative. We don’t know where to go, where to run to.”

Palestinians living in Shujaiyeh east of Gaza City near the “yellow line.” May 31, 2026. Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah.

The area near the “yellow line”—the line of Israeli control inside Gaza—has come under heavy assault by the Israeli military, with frequent shooting, bombing and shelling of Palestinians living there. Since the October deal gave Israel control of 53% of the Gaza Strip, the military has steadily encroached further west, effectively controlling over 60% of the territory, building 25 kilometers of earthen barriers to physically divide Gaza, fortifying military bases in the eastern half it controls, and corralling Palestinians onto even less land.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently announced he issued orders to the Israeli army to seize control of 70% of the enclave. “We are currently squeezing Hamas. We now control 60% of the territory in the strip. You know, we were at 50, we moved to 60. My directive is to move to … 70%,” Netanyahu said at a conference in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank on May 28.

“Israel is slowly approaching direct physical control of some two thirds of the Gaza Strip and has openly proclaimed its intention to seize even more of it,” Rabbani said. “Again, the self-style ‘international community’ has responded with a shrug, considering this perfectly normal behavior. Which it of course is in Israel’s case.”

At the same time, Israeli-backed Palestinian militias have also increasingly launched attacks and raids on the area, driving Palestinians further west.

“No one is looking out for us. There is gunfire every day. We wake up in the morning to gunfire, and we sleep to gunfire. There is also shelling, the shrapnel from the shells hits the tents,” Shallah said. “After sunset you don’t find any people in the street, everyone has gone into their tents. They don’t come out.”

President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” which was tasked with monitoring the ceasefire by a UN Security Council resolution in November, is enabling Israel’s plans. Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov, who was named High Representative of the Board of Peace and is tasked with implementing Trump’s agenda, has repeatedly blamed the lack of progress in the ceasefire on Hamas, accusing it of refusing to surrender its weapons despite the fact that disarmament was categorically not a part of the phase one deal signed by Hamas in October. Mladenov has also ignored Israel’s daily violations of the ceasefire and threatened that if Hamas did not disarm, the ceasefire terms would be canceled, allowing Israel to resume its full-scale genocidal assault.

“They always come to the weaker side, not to the stronger side. We feel that [U.S. Special Envoy Steve] Witkoff and Mladenov are members of the Israeli cabinet,” Abu Sharby, who also lives several meters from the “yellow line,” told Drop Site. “They pressure us to implement, rather than pressuring the occupation to implement what’s left of the clauses.”

Multiple residents living near the “yellow line” told Drop Site that aid agencies and humanitarian groups do not service the area and that there is no support, food, or water provided to them.

“Organizations, institutions, and volunteers are unable to provide any assistance, they are afraid because we are close to the line,” Abu Sharby said. “We did not find a place in western Gaza, and now it is likely that we will be displaced from this place, and we will not find any other place. The stadiums are full, the schools are full, the streets are full. We do not know where to go if this threat is carried out.”

On Tuesday, Israeli soldiers detained seven ambulance workers from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society while they were carrying out their humanitarian duties on Salah al-Din Street, the main north-south route in Gaza that runs close to the “yellow line.” Five of the medics were released following questioning, while two are still being held by Israeli forces.

“Every day they are advancing on us,” Gomaa Abeed, who lives in a tent in Shujaiyeh close to the “yellow line,” told Drop Site. “Every day the bombing increases, the attacks increase. We don’t see any hope.”

“There is no life here. There is no water. They stopped the community kitchens. They even cut the municipal water supply to us,” he added. “They have taken everything from us. They have taken away the possibility for life.”

Journalist Mohamed Ahmed in Gaza and Drop Site News Middle East Research Fellow Jawa Ahmad contributed to this report. Sami Vanderlip edited the video.

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On the Drop Site live stream, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim speak to Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Amwaj.Media, about the state of diplomacy and war, as well as Israel’s covert operations in Iran and whether Tehran will continue to define a ceasefire in Lebanon as a red line for any deal. Then, international law expert Maryam Jamshidi and political analyst Negar Mortazavi discuss the future of Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and how international law has been attacked since the Gaza genocide began.

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Israel continues attacks on southern Lebanon despite “ceasefire” and Iranian warnings. Hezbollah and Ansarallah launch drones toward Israel. Hezbollah continues attacks against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. Pakistani and Lebanese army chiefs meet. Lebanese turtle conservationist wounded in Israeli airstrike. Israeli forces detain Gaza ambulance workers, Health Ministry says. Nine Palestinian fishermen detained by Israel off Gaza coast. Israel reopens Gaza crossings after two-day closure. Israel continues assault on West Bank. Israeli parliament approves expanded deductions from Palestinian tax revenues. Italian prosecutors open investigation into Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Two Iranian air defense personnel killed in Monday’s Israeli strike. President Donald Trump talks Iran, Lebanon, in New York City. Voters in four states head to polls on Tuesday. Trump nominates Todd Blanche as attorney general. U.S. airline fuel costs surge 78%. Progressive city council member Nithya Raman advances to November runoff against incumbent L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. Trump DOJ killed criminal Clean Water Act investigation into Sen. Jim Justice’s coal empire. Donald Trump Jr. secretly holds stake in Texas oil refinery startup that secured nine-figure investment from Ambani family. Congo military court sentences 54 to death over 2017 killings of UN investigators. Pentagon expands blacklist of alleged Chinese military-linked firms. Switzerland weighs European air defense alternative. Venezuelan acting president Delcy Rodriguez meets Turkish President Recep Erdogan in Istanbul. Kenyan police fire tear gas at protesters opposing U.S. Ebola quarantine facility. Russian strikes kill five overnight in Ukraine. Eleven killed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

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Lebanon

• Killed and wounded: At least 3,666 people have been killed, and 11,321 wounded, in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Over 29 people were killed, and 133 wounded, in Israeli strikes during the past 24 hours.

• Israel continues attacks on southern Lebanon despite “ceasefire” and Iranian warnings:

  • Strikes and forced displacement in Tyre (Sour): At least 13 people were killed and 45 others wounded in Israeli attacks on the southern Lebanese city of Tyre over the past 24 hours, according to the state’s National News Agency. An Israeli airstrike on the al-Masaken neighbourhood Tuesday killed eight people and injured 32 others, with rescue teams continuing to search through the rubble, while a separate strike on a building in the al-Raml district wounded five more people. The Israeli military also issued a forced displacement order for residents of Tyre, including its historic Christian quarter, nearby neighbourhoods and refugee camps. A separate Israeli strike on Tyre on Monday, near a Red Cross center, killed five people and wounded eight, including four Red Cross paramedics.

  • “Double-tap” attack on Civil Defense: The Israeli military carried out a double-tap strike on the southern Lebanese town of Sharqiyeh on Tuesday, hitting civil defense workers who had responded to evacuate an injured person, wounding the two rescuers, Lebanon’s civil defense agency said. More than 100 rescuers have been killed in Israeli attacks in Lebanon since March 2.

  • Strikes across the south: A wave of Israeli attacks on towns in southern Lebanon killed at least four people on Tuesday, including an attack in front of a house in Habboush which killed one, and a drone strike on Kfar Reman which killed two, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported.

• Hezbollah and Ansarallah launch drones toward Israel: Hezbollah and Ansarallah forces launched drones toward Israel on Monday, with Hezbollah drones crossing into northern Israel, despite Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz having warned earlier in the day that further attacks on northern Israel would trigger new strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

• Hezbollah continues attacks against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon: Hezbollah claimed at least 16 attacks against Israeli forces Monday, nine of them concentrated around Yohmor al-Shaqif in Lebanon’s Nabatieh Governorate, in what local reporting described as an effort to repel an Israeli advance toward Kfar Tibnit.

  • Hezbollah also reported that it struck an Israeli military bulldozer with artillery and a guided missile, targeted multiple troop concentrations, and forced an Israeli Hermes 450 drone to retreat with a surface-to-air missile over the Iqlim al-Tuffah region.

• Hezbollah says Iran’s missile response is a “message of commitment” to Lebanon: In its first statement since Iran’s missile response following Israel’s strikes on Beirut, Hezbollah praised Iran’s strikes as “a message of moral, political and field commitment” to Lebanon. The Iranian response confirms that the priority for regional stability “is to ensure compliance with agreements by the Israeli enemy, before anyone else,” the group said in a statement, noting also the support from Yemen’s Ansarallah movement. Hezbollah called for Lebanese authorities to improve official ties with Tehran and “benefit from this support to achieve national goals,” including withdrawal of Israeli forces, the return of displaced people and post-war reconstruction.

• Pakistani and Lebanese army chiefs meet: Lebanese army chief Rodolphe Haykal met with Pakistani field marshal Asim Munir in Rawalpindi on Tuesday to discuss defense cooperation, Pakistan’s military said, as Pakistan continues to mediate between the United States and Iran to end their ongoing conflict. Munir “underscored [the] Pakistan Army’s commitment to expanding defence collaboration with the Lebanese Armed Forces,” according to a readout from the meeting. The latest “ceasefire” agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government states the United States would help guide the creation of “pilot zones” in Lebanon, “in which the Lebanese Armed Forces will take exclusive control…to the exclusion of all non-state actors,” referring to Hezbollah.

• Lebanese turtle conservationist wounded in Israeli airstrike: Mona Khalil, a pioneering Lebanese marine turtle conservationist who founded the Orange House Project on Mansouri Beach in southern Lebanon, was wounded in an Israeli airstrike on her home Thursday. Khalil underwent surgery for severe injuries, including a serious abdominal wound, before her condition stabilized Friday, according to Lebanese media and the NGO Green Southerners. “For more than two decades, her efforts helped transform this relatively small stretch of coastline into one of the most important sea turtle nesting sites on the eastern Mediterranean coast,” the NGO told the New Arab.

Palestine

• Killed and wounded: Over the last 24 hours, eight Palestinians were killed—seven in new attacks, and one due to wounds sustained in an earlier attack—and 43 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 has risen to 72,988 killed, with 173,205 injured. Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 978 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 3,097, while 782 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

• Israeli forces detain Gaza ambulance workers, Health Ministry says: Israeli soldiers detained seven ambulance workers from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society on Tuesday while they were carrying out their humanitarian duties on Salah al-Din Street in Gaza, according to the Strip’s Health Ministry. In a statement, the ministry condemned the detention and said five of the medics were released following questioning, while two are still being held by Israeli forces.

• Nine Palestinian fishermen detained by Israel off Gaza coast: The Israeli navy arrested nine Palestinian fishermen working off the coasts of Gaza City and Deir el-Balah on Tuesday, taking them to an unknown location, according to Wafa and Gaza fishermen’s committees. The detentions come amid ongoing Israeli attacks targeting Gaza’s fishing sector, including, shootings, detention and the confiscation of boats and fishing equipment. At least 238 fishermen have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023.

• Israel reopens Gaza crossings after two-day closure: Israel’s military coordination agency COGAT said the Kerem Shalom crossing will reopen on Tuesday for the gradual entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza after being shut during the recent Iran–Israel escalation. It also said the Rafah crossing will resume limited two-way movement of people under the previous operating mechanism, in coordination with Egypt and the World Health Organization. The announcement follows a suspension of aid deliveries and medical evacuations on Sunday, which left thousands of patients unable to leave Gaza for treatment. Israel continues to heavily restrict the entry of essential supplies and movement through crossings, with only 36.3% of the agreed volume of aid and commercial trucks allowed into the enclave, according to Palestinian reports.

• Israel continues assault on West Bank: Israeli forces carried out raids and arrests across multiple occupied West Bank cities and towns Tuesday, storming Bethlehem, Tulkarem, and the village of Husan with “heavy machinery.”

  • In another incident, Israeli bulldozers destroyed the main water pipeline east of Tammun town in the Tubas governorate, cutting off water to families, livestock, and crops, according to Wafa.

  • Israeli authorities also issued demolition notices for 12 homes in Masafer Yatta, settlers vandalized properties belonging to Bedouin residents near Taybeh village in Ramallah, and at least five Palestinians were detained across the occupied West Bank.

• Israeli parliament approves expanded deductions from Palestinian tax revenues: The Knesset approved a law expanding deductions from Palestinian tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA), allowing additional funds to be withheld to cover compensation and benefits paid to “Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks,” according to the Times of Israel. The legislation authorizes deductions for payments to injured individuals, families of those killed and property damage claims, with any surplus transferred to the Israeli treasury and the measures applied retroactively from January 1, 2025. Rawhi Fattouh, president of the Palestinian National Council, described the law as an “organized act of piracy” and a “blatant theft” of Palestinian funds, saying it was part of a systematic effort to “besiege the PA, dry up its financial resources and weaken its institutions.” Israel has withheld all of the PA’s clearance revenues over the past year, claiming the Authority allocates amounts for “terrorists and their families.”

• Italian prosecutors open investigation into Israeli minister Ben-Gvir: Italian prosecutors opened an investigation Monday into Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on suspicion of torture and kidnapping of Italian citizens, who were part of the group of activists detained in Israel from the Global Sumud Flotilla, according to a report from The New Arab. The probe follows mounting international backlash over Ben-Gvir’s posting of video showing detained activists kneeling with their hands bound, which the Italian government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called “unacceptable”—leading Italy to summon the Israeli ambassador, push the European Union to consider sanctions against Ben-Gvir, and France to ban him from its territory.

• Son of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya says his father’s life is at risk: The son of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza who has been held in Israeli detention since December 2024, warned on Monday that his father’s life is at risk after being transferred to solitary confinement in Nafha Prison. Abu Safiya’s son said that the doctor is being held in a two-meter cell with no food, water, medicine, or access to his lawyer. The family says his transfer is in direct retaliation for filing a legal appeal with the Israeli Supreme Court. “How can a person be punished for asking why he is being detained?” his son asked.

Iran and Ceasefire

• Two Iranian air defense personnel killed in Monday’s Israeli strike: At least two Iranian air defense personnel were killed in an Israeli attack Monday, with funeral ceremonies scheduled in Tehran for Tuesday, Iran’s state television reported.

• Trump talks Iran, Lebanon in New York City:

  • President Donald Trump told reporters on the tarmac of an airport in New York City on Monday that a deal between Iran and the United States was nearing, saying that “We’re in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal,” and that the Strait of Hormuz would “open up immediately upon signing.” He gave a tentative timeline of “two or three days” for the deal’s announcement, and said that no “sticking points” remained.

  • Trump also said he did not ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from retaliating for Iran’s strikes on Israel this weekend (which were retaliations for Israel’s strikes on Beirut) but urged him to end the fighting in Lebanon as quickly as possible, saying he told the Prime Minister, “I said do what’s right but I want you to stop as quickly as you can.”

  • CENTCOM confirms two Apache pilots rescued from Strait of Hormuz after helicopter crash: U.S. Central Command confirmed Tuesday that two U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter pilots who crashed into the Strait of Hormuz were recovered within approximately two hours and are in stable condition. The crew was retrieved by an unmanned maritime drone, an unnamed U.S. official told ABC News. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

World Cup 2026

• Visa denials and border detentions shadow World Cup: A pattern of visa denials and border incidents has emerged in the run-up to the World Cup in the United States, which it will host alongside Mexico and Canada.

• Iran says around 15 members of its technical and support staff were denied U.S. visas, with several officials remaining in Mexico. The team has, as a result, relocated its training base from Arizona to Tijuana, Mexico, forcing it to maintain a cross-border commute for much of the tournament.

• Iran’s football federation announced Tuesday that the United States revoked its allocated ticket quota for its World Cup group-stage matches against New Zealand, Belgium, and Egypt—all scheduled to be held on U.S. soil—leaving the federation unable to distribute tickets to supporters who had already begun making travel arrangements. The federation notes that this is a violation of FIFA regulations entitling participating federations to eight percent of tickets per match

• Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein was detained for nearly seven hours at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and the team’s photographer was denied entry outright over unspecified “vetting concerns,” according to the Chicago Sun Times.

• Members of Senegal’s national football team appeared to undergo unusually strict security screening after arriving in the United States for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, according to the Anadolu Agency. Footage appears to show players being individually searched on the airport tarmac before entering the terminal.

• At least 40 Moroccan supporters were denied U.S. visas without reason, despite having purchased packages and despite their group having traveled to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

• FIFA-appointed Somali referee Omar Artan was denied entry to the U.S. at Miami International Airport on Saturday over “vetting concerns,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement without elaborating. Artan was reportedly issued a visa to travel to the U.S. last week. He was held in a small room in the airport for 11 hours and interrogated by border officials before being flown to Istanbul, according to The New York Times. Artan was named referee of the year in 2025 by the Confederation of African Football and was due to be the first referee from Somalia to officiate at the World Cup after. FIFA did not condemn the move, saying that “In line with previous FIFA events, a host government ultimately determines who receives a visa and who is admitted into their country.” After being denied entry, FIFA subsequently dropped Artan from the official World Cup roster instead of having him officiate matches in the two other host countries, Canada or Mexico.

• New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday responded to growing U.S. restrictions for fans, players, and officials at the World Cup. “The World Cup is supposed to be a celebration of the world as a whole, and some of the decisions that we’ve seen been taken by the federal administration, be it the denial of visas for journalists from certain countries, or the rejection of a visa for a coach of a team, as well as single-day visas for specific foreign national teams, this is anathema to what this tournament is supposed to be about,” Mamdani said during a press conference with Gov. Kathy Hochul.

U.S. News

By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at Julian@dropsitenews.com.

• Voters in four states head to polls on Tuesday: Voters in Maine, Nevada, South Carolina, and North Dakota are casting ballots in primaries Tuesday, with the most-watched contest being Maine’s Democratic Senate primary, where progressive oyster farmer Graham Platner is expected to win despite last-minute attacks on his campaign. If he does, he will challenge long-time Republican incumbent Susan Collins in the general. Also in Maine, Troy Jackson, a logger and state senator who secured Platner’s endorsement, is running against Nirav Shah, a physician who oversaw the state’s COVID response in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

  • In South Carolina, Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette is favored in the Republican gubernatorial primary over Rep. Nancy Mace, though the race will likely head to a runoff, while four-term Sen. Lindsey Graham faces a five-person Republican primary field led by self-funding Greenville businessman Mark Lynch.

• Trump nominates Todd Blanche as attorney general: President Donald Trump on Monday nominated acting Attorney General Todd Blanche—his former personal defense lawyer—to lead the Justice Department permanently, setting up a contentious Senate confirmation fight amid bipartisan criticism of Blanche’s role in a since-abandoned proposal to create a $1.8 billion political slush fund, as well as his handling of the release of Jeffrey Epstein investigative files (Blanche told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham earlier this year that it is “not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein”). Blanche has overseen sweeping changes at the department since becoming deputy attorney general in early 2025, including the firing of more than 200 agents and prosecutors who worked on cases involving Trump or his allies, and greenlighting the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey over a social media post.

• U.S. airline fuel costs surge 78%: U.S. airlines spent nearly $6.5 billion on jet fuel in April—up 78 percent from $3.6 billion a year earlier despite consuming slightly less fuel, according to Bureau of Transportation Statistics data released Monday. The International Air Transport Association now forecasts global airline net profits will fall to $23 billion in 2026, down from a prior estimate of $41 billion, as jet fuel prices averaging $152 a barrel push the industry’s total fuel bill to roughly $350 billion, costs which have prompted American Airlines, Lufthansa, Air Canada, and other major airlines to cancel routes and cut schedules.

• Progressive city council member Raman advances to November runoff against L.A. Mayor Bass: Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman advanced to a November runoff against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass on Monday after overtaking Republican reality television personality Spencer Pratt by nearly 22,000 votes as the county continued processing mail ballots. This sets the stage for an all-Democrat matchup between Bass—who received under 35 percent of the primary vote—and Raman, who began her political career with the backing of the city’s DSA chapter and who entered the race after initially endorsing Bass for reelection. Raman, who was born in India and would be the city’s first South Asian woman mayor if elected, has moderated her earlier positions on policing and homeless encampments.

• Trump DOJ killed criminal Clean Water Act investigation into Sen. Jim Justice’s coal empire: The Trump administration shut down a federal criminal investigation into Sen. Jim Justice’s West Virginia coal empire earlier this year after prosecutors said they had a strong case and had already begun gathering evidence, including subpoenaing records and approaching former employees, ProPublica reported Monday. Authorities were investigating potential criminal violations of the Clean Water Act by companies operated by Sen. Justice’s son, Jay—part of a longer term effort to curtail serial pollution offenses by the family’s Southern Coal company. The Office of the Deputy Attorney General under Todd Blanche ordered prosecutors to stand down before they could fight the company’s legal challenge to the subpoenas, with the DOJ telling ProPublica the probe was “a politically motivated prosecution” inconsistent with the administration’s priorities. Read ProPublica’s full report on the DOJ’s aborted investigation here.

• Trump Jr. secretly holds stake in Texas oil refinery startup that secured nine-figure investment from Ambani family: Donald Trump Jr. secretly acquired a stake in America First Refining, a struggling Texas oil refinery startup that subsequently received a nine-figure investment from India’s Reliance Industries—owned by the Ambani family, whose patriarch had been publicly targeted by the Trump administration over Russian oil purchases just months earlier—according to a new investigation from ProPublica. The investment coincided with a series of U.S. policy wins for Reliance, including a dramatic tariff reduction on India, a license to purchase Venezuelan oil, and a sanctions waiver to buy Russian crude. Read more about the Trump-Ambani connection here.

• California Democrat fast-tracks bill to strip telecom oversight from state utility regulator: California Assemblywoman Tasha Boerner, a Democrat with significant support from the telecom industry, is advancing Assembly Constitutional Amendment 9, which would strip the California Public Utilities Commission of its constitutional authority to regulate telecommunications and ensure affordability. Critics say the bill, which passed the state Assembly 67-1 on May 18 and now goes to the senate, would dismantle one of the country’s most consumer-oriented telecom regulatory bodies, shifting oversight to the state legislature and a broadband office that does not yet exist. A full piece on this bill is available from The American Prospect, here.

• Justice Department moves to strip 17 naturalized citizens of citizenship: The U.S. Justice Department filed civil actions Monday seeking to revoke the citizenship of 17 naturalized Americans who it alleges concealed serious crimes or provided false information during the naturalization process, including 12 individuals already convicted of or who pleaded guilty to offenses ranging from child sexual abuse and healthcare fraud to drug trafficking and money laundering, according to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. The government is invoking the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows citizenship to be revoked if obtained through concealment of material facts.

Other International News

• U.S.-Nigerian airstrikes on Metele village killed at least 27 civilians: U.S. and Nigerian military airstrikes on the village of Metele in Borno state on May 16 killed at least 27 civilians including 12 women and children, according to the village head’s casualty list shared with Drop Site News, contradicting AFRICOM’s claim that the coordinated operation “eliminated more than 175 ISIS terrorists” with no mention of civilian death. “What remains with me most is the fear, confusion, and suffering that followed the explosions,” one villager said. “Many people were crying and calling out the names of their loved ones. Parents were searching for their children, and family members were trying to locate relatives amid the confusion. Those sounds are among the memories that remain with me most strongly” Read Adamu Aliyu Ngulde’s full report for Drop Site here.

  • Separately in Nigeria, a cholera outbreak that began in early May in the northeastern Borno state has killed at least 74 people and infected more than 7,850 across 14 local government areas, with infections rising sharply and more than 500 cases recorded in a single day on June 5, Médecins Sans Frontières reported Tuesday

  • Armed bandits in northwestern Nigeria’s Zamfara state abducted between 39 and 50 villagers Sunday after inviting them to a forest meeting near Magamin Diddi village under the pretense of peace negotiations to ease movement restrictions on the community, police and residents said Monday. The kidnappers are demanding 125 million naira ($91,880) in ransom, with several abductees released to relay the demand, as security forces deploy to locate the remaining captives in a state at the center of a long-running crisis of mass kidnappings and village raids by armed groups.

• Congo military court sentences 54 to death over 2017 killings of UN investigators: A military court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo sentenced 54 people to death Monday over the 2017 abduction and killing of United Nations investigators Michael Sharp, an American, and Zaida Catalán, a Swedish-Chilean national, who were murdered while probing violence in the country’s Kasai region. Among those convicted was Congolese army Col. Jean de Dieu Mambweni, whom prosecutors identified as a central figure in the killings.

• Pentagon expands blacklist of alleged Chinese military-linked firms: The U.S. Defense Department added dozens of Chinese companies to its updated contractor restriction list including tech giants Alibaba and Baidu as well as electric vehicle maker BYD, saying they are connected to China’s military or defense industrial base. The designation does not amount to formal sanctions, but it bars the Pentagon from contracting directly with listed firms later this month and from purchasing their products or services through intermediaries beginning in June 2027.

• Switzerland weighs European air defense alternative: Switzerland’s top security official Markus Mäder said Monday the country is prioritizing European interoperability as it considers alternatives to its U.S. Patriot air defense order, which was originally due in 2027 but has been delayed until 2032 or later. In his comments, he expressed interest in the French-Italian SAMP/T system. Switzerland, which remains outside both NATO and the EU, has received responses from France, Germany, Israel, and South Korea as part of its search for a second long-range air defense system.

• Venezuelan acting president Rodriguez meets Erdogan in Istanbul: Venezuelan acting President Delcy Rodriguez made an unannounced visit to Istanbul on Monday, meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for one-on-one and delegation-level talks focused on bilateral relations and regional developments, according to Turkey’s presidential office. Venezuela has become one of Turkey’s most important trade partners in South America; bilateral trade between the countries reached $448 million in 2025, according to official Turkish statistics.

• Kenyan police fire tear gas at protesters opposing U.S. Ebola quarantine facility: Kenyan police dispersed protesters with tear gas Tuesday in Nanyuki, where demonstrations have continued against a 50-bed U.S. quarantine facility being constructed at Laikipia airbase for Americans exposed to the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola. The construction of the facility has continued despite Kenyan court orders barring further work on the site, and U.S. military planes have continued ferrying staff and equipment to the base, with an official statement from the U.S. State Department claiming it is “working with the Kenyan government to resolve any objections.” Last week’s demonstrations resulted in two deaths.

• Russian strikes kill five overnight: Russian missile and drone strikes killed five people across Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Donetsk regions overnight, including a pregnant woman in the northeastern town of Chuhuiv, Ukrainian officials said, with 16 additional people wounded, including children.

  • President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described a “very positive” call with U.S. special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on Monday and met with British, French, and German leaders in London, where the three European governments reiterated their “unwavering” support for Ukraine and discussed coordinating further pressure on Russia’s war economy ahead of the G7, NATO, and Coalition of the Willing summits.

• Eleven killed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir: At least 11 people were killed and dozens were wounded Sunday when police clashed with supporters of the outlawed Joint Awami Action Committee in Rawalakot, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a day before a planned JAAC rally demanding greater political rights for people living in the region and the abolition of 12 legislative seats reserved for Indian Kashmiri refugees living in Pakistan—seats a Supreme Court ruling upheld as constitutionally protected just before the violence erupted. Four police officers and a bystander were killed when JAAC supporters opened fire on security forces, who killed six protesters in response. JAAC leader Shaukat Nawaz Mir called Sunday’s events “a massacre” and vowed the group would proceed with Tuesday’s rally.

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Story by Adamu Aliyu Ngulde

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria—On the evening of May 16, the village of Metele in Nigeria’s Borno state was hit by a series of airstrikes carried out in coordination between the U.S. and Nigerian militaries.

“Children were playing, women were preparing meals, and there was nothing to suggest that anything unusual was about to happen,” recalled Goni Ahmed, a local resident who directly witnessed the strikes. He described a scene in which village life was suddenly destroyed by the attack. “First, we heard aircraft overhead. Shortly afterward, there were loud explosions that shook the ground. After the blasts, I could hear people shouting, crying, and calling for assistance. The sounds of panic and confusion continued for quite some time.”

Panic enveloped Metele and villagers fled their homes, not knowing if further strikes would take place. “Many people in the community still remember those days as some of the most difficult we have experienced,” Ahmed recalled.

Ali Zagina lost four relatives in the strike, and his house was destroyed. “We are in great pain, a pain I believe we will never forget,” Zagina said. “As a resident of Metele this is one of the saddest days of my life.” Zagina, his wife and his four children are now renting a home in the Gomari neighborhood of Maiduguri. “I could not recognize my house or many parts of the community because almost the entire area had been reduced to ashes,” he told Drop Site News.

The strikes were part of an expanding war between the Nigerian government and local Islamist groups which has drawn the increased involvement of the Trump administration, with little scrutiny. Metele, a remote community in northern Borno State near the Nigeria-Niger border, has long been affected by insurgent activities. Security sources and local residents have frequently identified the area and its surroundings as locations where fighters affiliated with the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) operate.

In the days immediately after the bombing of Metele, U.S-Africa Command (AFRICOM) announced strikes across northeastern Nigeria, allegedly killing huge numbers of ISWAP fighters, claiming in a statement posted online that, “In coordination with the Nigerian Armed Forces our #counterterrorism efforts from May 16-18, 2026, eliminated more than 175 ISIS terrorists in Northeastern Nigeria.”

Trump claimed they had killed Abu Bilal al-Minuki, a global commander in the Islamic State, as well as a number of other senior leaders of the group. The Islamic State has not confirmed these or other killings; Nigeria previously claimed in 2024 to have killed al-Minuki. In a post on Truth Social the President described the strikes as “flawlessly executed” and called al-Minuki “the most active terrorist in the world.”

The Nigerian Army echoed these statements, calling it a “landmark joint counter-terrorism operation of historic significance.” The army said the raid in Metele was a “complex precision air-land operation” that killed other “terrorist commanders.”

Yet villagers in Metele said that the attacks hit residential areas and killed innocent people. “The community experienced a tragic airstrike attack recently which caused heavy casualties and destruction in Metele,” Zannah Abba Aji, the village head of Metele told Drop Site News. He was in Maiduguri, the state capital, when the strikes took place. “Many innocent civilians were affected during the incident,” he said.

In the aftermath of the attack, Aji gathered a list of 27 people that he said were civilians that were killed in the attack. The list, which he shared with Drop Site, included 12 women and children.

Other villagers who were injured in the bombings were sent by truck south to Maiduguri for treatment. In an interview, Dr. Adam Asil Tijjani, who works at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, confirmed that several noncombatants had been killed in the strikes, telling Drop Site that two women and four children received in the aftermath of the bombings had died from their injuries there. Tijjani said that the hospital was overwhelmed with patients with burns, fractures, shrapnel wounds, and trauma-related injuries—forcing them to route some of the casualties to another facility called the State Specialist Hospital. “We received many patients within a short period,” he said.

Neither AFRICOM nor the Nigerian army responded to a request for comment on the civilian deaths.

Civilian Toll

Nigeria has been at war for several years with ISWAP—an off-shoot of the insurgent army Boko Haram, which has also been fighting the Nigerian government since 2009. In addition to battling the government, ISWAP and Boko Haram have viciously fought each other across the Lake Chad Basin which spans West and Central Africa.

Besides trumpeting the elimination of senior militant leaders, the U.S. government has provided little detail or transparency about who is actually being killed in its attacks, while the Nigerian government has likewise shown little discretion in its own counterinsurgency practices. Last month, after a terrorist attack blamed on ISWAP at a crowded market killed nearly 200 people, the governor of Borno stated that civilian areas can be considered legitimate military targets for retaliatory strikes.

A report by the Pentagon’s Inspector General released days before the attack on Metele concluded that because of funding cuts and reassignments the Department of War is not equipped to comply with its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan. “We’re departing from the rules and norms that we’ve tried to establish as a global community since at least World War II,” Wes J. Bryant, an analyst who worked on civilian harm mitigation at the Pentagon said in an interview with ProPublica. “There’s zero accountability.” Bryant lost his job last year amid a purge of staff focused on mitigating civilian casualties in strikes.

Trump has justified military involvement in Nigeria as part of an attempt to halt attacks on Christians in the country by Islamist groups. People of all faiths have been killed in Nigeria during a complex and multisided insurgency against the government, and the Nigerian government itself is multiconfessional. But activists in the U.S. have spent years working to convince American leadership to view the war as a religious campaign in defense of Christians in particular.

The messaging appears to have been successful in convincing Trump to act. On December 25, 2025 the U.S. carried out its first confirmed airstrike in Nigeria, in Sokoto state in the northwest. No civilian casualties were reported. The strikes, President Trump said, targeted “ISIS Terrorist Scum” who have been “viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!”

Two months later, U.S. troops began arriving in the country for counterterrorism operations. In a press briefing at the time, AFRICOM Commander General Dagvin R.M. Anderson Commander confirmed the deployment, stating that a meeting with Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the end of 2025 had resulted in “increased collaboration between our two nations,” and describing Nigeria as “a very willing and capable partner who requested the unique capabilities that only the U.S. can bring.”

The series of strikes in May that allegedly killed al-Minuki, alongside dozens of civilians in Metele, has been celebrated by Trump administration officials as a major victory of this new intervention. In a cabinet meeting last week, War Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke about the strikes in Nigeria, claiming that the U.S. had killed a top ISIS commander “responsible for killing Christians and trying to target the U.S. homeland.” In an appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 3, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made similar comments, stating that the administration was “very concerned about violence against Christians,” and that counterterrorism cooperation with Nigeria would continue to help address this issue.

History of Violence

Metele has experienced major attacks by militant groups before. In November 2018, Islamist insurgents launched a deadly assault on a Nigerian military base in the town. The attack resulted in the deaths of at least 40 soldiers, making it one of the most significant attacks on military personnel during the insurgency in northeastern Nigeria.

For many residents, the recent events have revived memories of that earlier attack. Community members say the people of Metele have repeatedly found themselves caught in the middle of a conflict that has lasted for more than a decade.

According to residents interviewed for this report, the community has suffered from both insurgent violence and military operations over the years. They argue that the latest incident represents another tragic chapter in the history of a town that has endured repeated insecurity and loss.

In the meantime, the number of civilian victims of U.S. operations in the war in Nigeria continues to rise. One of the women who died at the hospital following the attack on Metele, Yagana Ya-Umar, had four children. Her brother, Ahmadu Ya-Umar, travelled with her down to the hospital in a pick up truck. “The family is deeply saddened by this tragic loss,” he said, adding that he hopes that government authorities will provide support to the people impacted.

Goni Ahmed, who witnessed the airstrikes, said that he remains haunted by the day of terror that devastated the village.

“What remains with me most is the fear, confusion, and suffering that followed the explosions,” he said. “I remember seeing families searching for one another and people trying to make sense of what had happened. Many people were crying and calling out the names of their loved ones. Parents were searching for their children, and family members were trying to locate relatives amid the confusion. Those sounds are among the memories that remain with me most strongly.”

Story published in collaboration with Egab.

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Iran and Israel exchange fire. Iran declares end to attacks against Israel. President Donald Trump calls for both sides to “stop shooting.” Tehran blames Washington for escalation with Israel. Iranian official says nuclear deal “not really feasible.” Ansarallah to resume attacks on Israel-affiliated vessels in Red Sea. Israeli strikes on Lebanon continue following exchange of fire with Iran. Israel strikes Beirut’s southern suburbs. Hezbollah denies direct contact with U.S. At least five killed in Gaza early Monday. Israeli strikes kill at least 13 in Gaza on Sunday. At least 3,189 ceasefire violations committed by Israel in Gaza, report says. Israeli soldier filmed joining settler mob attack on West Bank town of Huwara. Trump pushes back on rate hike expectations. Pentagon elevates Israel espionage threat to “critical.” Trump pardons former Indiana congressman convicted of insider trading. Flesh-eating parasite threatens Texas cattle herd as beef prices hit record highs. Sudanese army drone strikes kill at least 13 civilians at North Kordofan market. Russia strikes Chernobyl spent nuclear fuel facility. Israeli forces kidnap five Syrian civilians. Peru presidential runoff too close to call as quick count shows statistical tie. Bolivia’s legislature grants president authority to deploy military against protesters. Nigerian army rescues 360 people abducted by Boko Haram in Borno State. Xi visits North Korea for first time in seven years. Magnitude 7.8 earthquake kills 32 in southern Philippines. Pashinyan claims victory in Armenia election.

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Iran and Ceasefire

• Iran and Israel exchange fire: Iran and Israel exchanged strikes overnight and early Monday in the most serious escalation of fighting since a ceasefire was declared on April 8.

  • Iran launched a wave of strikes on northern Israel after Israel bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday without warning, enforcing, for the first time, its demand that Israel abide by a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of the deal. Three houses were damaged after a projectile struck a residential neighborhood in an illegal settlement in the northern West Bank, according to Israeli monitoring account MB Insider. No casualties were reported.

  • Israel launched strikes on central and western Iran and hit a petrochemical factory in the city of Mahshahr. The Security Deputy of Khuzestan Province said the strike caused partial damage. Iranian state television also reported the sound of explosions in Isfahan, Karaj, Tabriz, and Tehran.

  • Iran fired again in response, with the IRGC claiming it struck Israel’s Nevatim and Tel Nof air bases and targeted a petrochemical facility in Israel.

  • Israel closed all crossings into Gaza and halted the entry of humanitarian aid on Sunday following the Iranian strikes (more in Gaza section below).

• Iran declares end to attacks against Israel: Iran’s armed forces announced on Monday the end of military operations against Israel but warned of “harsher” attacks if Israel resumed strikes on Lebanon according to the Fars news agency—including in southern Lebanon, where Israel is trying to maintain a permanent presence. Israeli military sources speaking to the state’s Army Radio reported Monday that while they have received an order to stop attacks on Iran, strikes on Lebanon will continue.

• Trump calls for both sides to “stop shooting”: President Donald Trump claimed on Monday that “Israel and Iran are looking to do an immediate CEASEFIRE!” Writing on Truth Social, Trump said, “Final negotiations on ‘Peace’ are proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way. The Blockade will remain in place, and in full force and effect, until a ‘Final Deal’ is reached. Things should move quickly.” In an earlier Truth Social post, Trump said Israel and Iran must “immediately stop shooting.”

  • In an interview with The Financial Times on Sunday, Trump said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have “no choice” but to accept any agreement the United States reaches with Iran. “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots,” Trump said.

• Tehran blames Washington for escalation with Israel: After reporting on Sunday indicated that Trump had asked Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from striking Iran, and Israel subsequently carried out strikes anyway, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei blamed Washington for Israel’s escalation. “No one believes that the Israeli regime would take any action without coordination with the United States,” Baghaei said at a press briefing in Tehran on Monday.

• Iranian official says nuclear deal “not really feasible”: An Iranian official told Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill on Sunday that reaching an agreement with Trump is “not really feasible” at this point.

  • The official said a draft agreement has been on Trump’s desk for nearly 20 days, but Trump is “driven by his fear of the Israeli lobby and his hope that the naval blockade plan will prove effective,” adding that “Iran will no longer accept or tolerate his current position.”

  • The two central sticking points, the official claimed, are Israel’s ongoing war against Lebanon and its expanded occupation of southern Lebanon, and Trump’s refusal to unfreeze Iranian funds for reconstruction.

• Ansarallah to resume attacks on Israel-affiliated vessels in Red Sea: Yemen’s Ansarallah claimed an attack on Israel on Monday and said Israel-affiliated vessels would again be targeted in the Red Sea. The statement from Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree was broadcast on television. The group had previously targeted Israel-affiliated ships in the Red Sea, causing global trade disruptions in the Gulf of Aden and the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

• U.S. forces shoot down two Iranian drones over Strait of Hormuz: U.S. Central Command announced Saturday, previous to these attacks, that American forces in the Middle East intercepted and destroyed two Iranian one-way attack drones in the Strait of Hormuz.

• Iran prosecuting over 3,000 people accused of collaborating with U.S. and Israel: Iran’s judiciary launched legal proceedings against 3,121 people for “cooperating with the enemy,” a spokesperson told Iranian media, saying those under prosecution are “traitors to the homeland and mercenaries” who collaborated with the US and Israel. Jahangir said over 2,400 of them have been arrested and remain in custody.

Lebanon

• Casualty count: At least 3,613 people have been killed, and 11,072 wounded, in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

• Israeli strikes on Lebanon continue following exchange of fire with Iran: Israeli warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes across southern Lebanon on Monday, following Iranian retaliatory strikes on Israel in response to attacks on Beirut. The strikes hit multiple towns and villages in the Tyre, Zahrani, and Bint Jbeil districts, including al-Samaiyya, Burj al-Shamali, Kfarhouna, Khirbet Dweir, al-Khiraib, and Qalawiyah.

  • One person was killed and several others were wounded in an Israeli airstrike on the town of al-Khiraib in the Tyre district.

  • At dawn, four people were killed in a series of airstrikes on Zefta, including one attack that hit a shelter.

• Israel strikes Beirut’s southern suburbs: Israeli forces struck the Dahiyeh district of Beirut’s southern suburbs Sunday, killing at least 2 people and wounding 11 in strikes on residential apartments, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.

  • Israel reportedly informed the United States of the strikes in advance, according to Israeli public broadcaster Kan, though two senior U.S. officials denied to Axios’s Barak Ravid that the White House approved the strikes.

  • Iranian officials, who had previously warned against Israeli strikes on Beirut, responded to the attacks immediately with a wave of strikes on the northern parts of Israel. Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf, who leads Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, warned that the Beirut strike and the ongoing U.S. naval blockade had crossed a red line, and Iranian MP Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman for the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, warned of “a decisive and painful response,” adding: “Look at the sky over the occupied lands tonight.”

• Israel continues attacks on southern Lebanon over the weekend:

  • Israel struck a residential building in the town of Saksakiyeh in Lebanon’s Saida district Saturday, killing at least six people and wounding several others, according to Cradle Media.

  • Five Israeli attacks were reported Sunday in the Yater valley area of the Bint Jbeil District in southern Lebanon’s Nabatieh Governorate.

  • Lebanon’s army confirmed Saturday that Israel attacks had killed three of its personnel, including a brigadier general, a captain, and a soldier. An Israeli drone strike also killed a Lebanese paramedic on Saturday.

• Hezbollah denies direct contact with U.S.: Hezbollah parliament member Ali Moghaddad rejected Trump’s recent suggestion of direct communication with the group, saying Sunday that “there is no direct connection with the American side, whether with Trump or others.” Moghaddad said all communication runs exclusively through intermediaries—Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

• Israel bombed Lebanon nearly 3,500 times during “ceasefire”: Israel has ‌carried out nearly 3,500 airstrikes on Lebanon and demolished hundreds of structures since a “ceasefire” was announced by President Donald Trump on April 16, according to Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. In comments published by his office, Salam said between April 17 and ‌June 7, Israel carried out 3,491 airstrikes, 407 demolitions, and six “razing” operations to flatten entire villages in southern Lebanon.

• 29 Lebanese army soldiers killed by Israel since March: At least 29 Lebanese army members have been killed in Israeli attacks since March 2, according to Lebanese Information Minister Paul Morcos. Marcos added that three police, one member of the General Security Directorate and 13 state security members have also been killed in Israeli attacks.

• Four Israeli soldiers wounded in southern Lebanon: Four Israeli soldiers were wounded in a drone attack in southern Lebanon on Sunday morning, the Israeli military said. Israel’s Channel 12 reported Sunday that 16 Israeli soldiers and officers have been killed since the Lebanon ceasefire was announced on April 16, 2026.

Palestine

• Casualty count: Over the last 24 hours, nine Palestinians were killed and 43 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 has risen to 72,980 killed, with 173,171 injured. Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 970 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 3,063, while 782 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

• At least five killed in Gaza early Monday: Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least five Palestinians early Monday, according to WAFA. Three people were killed in an Israeli attack on Jabalia, while two others were killed and several more injured, some critically, when Israeli forces targeted a group of people in the al-Attar area west of Khan Younis. Separately, an Israeli drone strike on a vehicle in northwestern Khan Younis wounded three people, with several more Palestinians reported injured after Israeli aircraft struck Gaza City.

• Israel reimposes full siege on Gaza following Iranian strikes: Israel closed all crossings into Gaza and halted the entry of humanitarian aid on Sunday following Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes, cutting off supplies to roughly 2 million Palestinians in the territory. Israel has imposed similar blanket closures during previous periods of regional escalation, including immediately after the outbreak of war in late February.

• Israeli strikes kill at least 13 on Sunday: Israeli attacks across Gaza, which began at dawn on Sunday, killed at least 13 Palestinians and wounded more than 35 others.

  • Five people were killed, and 17 were injured when an Israeli airstrike struck a police post at Al-Nass Junction in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, and four more were killed when a vehicle near Al-Buraq School in western Gaza City was targeted.

• Israeli navy kills Gaza teenage fisherman off Deir el-Balah coast: Israeli naval vessels opened fire with machine guns on a fishing boat off the coast of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Sunday, killing a 16-year-old fisherman, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

  • At least 238 fishermen have been killed by Israel since October 2023, with more than 20 killed or detained since the ceasefire began, according to Gaza’s Fishermen Syndicate.

  • Israel has banned the entry of fishing equipment into Gaza since October 2023, crippling a sector that once supported roughly 5,000 fishermen, with total losses estimated at over $70 million and more than 90% of fishing infrastructure destroyed.

• Strikes on Saturday: Israeli attacks killed 10 Palestinians in Gaza on Saturday, according to the Health Ministry.

  • An Israeli strike on a tent sheltering displaced families west of Gaza City killed seven Palestinians, including a woman, and wounded at least 15 others Saturday, according to local reports.

  • A child was receiving treatment on Saturday after being shot in the head and arm by Israeli sniper fire in the Al-Mahatta area east of Gaza City.

• At least 3,189 ceasefire violations committed by Israel in Gaza, report says: Israeli forces have carried out at least 3,189 ceasefire violations in Gaza since the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement took effect in October 2025—an average of around 13 violations per day—according to the latest ceasefire monitoring report shared by the Palestinian side and obtained by Drop Site. Only 36.3% of the agreed volume of aid and commercial trucks and 14.8% of fuel deliveries have entered Gaza since the ceasefire came into force, the report says—and at the Rafah crossing, only 34.5% of scheduled travelers have crossed.

• Israeli soldier filmed joining settler mob attack on West Bank town of Huwara: An Israeli soldier was filmed assaulting Palestinian men alongside masked settlers during a violent mob attack on the occupied West Bank town of Huwara that left at least nine residents wounded, the Times of Israel reported Saturday. Dozens of settlers arrived in pickup trucks, beating residents, hurling stones, smashing vehicles and buildings, setting fire to an auto repair shop, and stealing livestock, with one Palestinian suffering serious head injuries. The Israeli military acknowledged the footage, called the soldier’s conduct “serious,” and said it had opened an investigation, though no arrests have been reported.

• Israeli forces arrest Palestinian academic and parents in pre-dawn Hebron raid: Israeli forces arrested Dr. Bilal Al-Shobaki, head of the Political Science Department at Hebron University, in a pre-dawn raid on his home Sunday, also detaining his parents Samira and Mahmoud Al-Shobaki at their residence earlier in the night. Al-Shobaki’s wife Zein Asqalan told The New Arab that a large force of soldiers stormed their building around 2 a.m., searched the home, damaged property, and took Al-Shobaki to an unknown location. Al-Shobaki had returned from an academic exchange program in Italy only hours before his arrest.

• Medicine shortages push West Bank healthcare toward collapse: More than a third of essential medicines stocked by the Palestinian Health Ministry in the occupied West Bank have completely run out, according to a report by Ultra Palestine—including 50 of 97 drug types used to treat cancer patients. Health officials warned that more than 4,000 cancer patients and thousands of kidney dialysis patients are at immediate risk, and that around 11,000 surgeries could be delayed due to shortages. The crisis has been driven in part by Israel’s withholding of Palestinian tax revenues, compounded by years of underinvestment and mounting debt, with drug suppliers reporting the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian governing body in the occupied West Bank, owes them roughly 1.35 billion shekels (approximately $385 million).

• Leaked documents reveal AI-powered mass surveillance built into Israeli drones: Internal Israeli military documents obtained by Haaretz reveal artificial intelligence and mass-surveillance capabilities built into the Israel Defense Forces’ drone fleet operating over Gaza and Lebanon. The documents show Israeli Hermes 450 and 900 drones, manufactured by Elbit Systems, have flown around the clock since October 7, 2023 using systems to automatically detect, classify, track, and pass targets to command centers, pilots, and ground troops.

U.S. News

By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at Julian@dropsitenews.com.

• Trump pushes back on rate hike expectations: Trump said that the Federal Reserve would be wrong to raise interest rates, pushing back against market sentiment following a stronger-than-expected May jobs report that spurred bets on a rate increase. “There’s no reason to raise interest rates,” Trump told NBC’s Meet the Press, adding that raising the benchmark rate is “the wrong thing to do” and that rates should instead be lowered

• Pentagon elevates Israel espionage threat to “critical”: The Defense Intelligence Agency has raised its counterintelligence threat assessment for Israel to “critical”—its highest level, now placing the U.S. ally above some adversarial nations—after American personnel in Israel discovered spyware on their phones, the New York Times reported Friday. Targets of the reported eavesdropping include Steve Witkoff, Trump’s top Iran negotiator, Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official, and Michael DiMino IV, the Pentagon’s senior Middle East policy director. The DIA report also details Israeli military officers planting listening devices at DIA headquarters in 2021 and Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service attempting to bug a Secret Service vehicle last year.

• Trump pardons former Indiana Rep. convicted of insider trading: President Trump pardoned former Republican Rep. Stephen E. Buyer of Indiana, who was convicted in 2023 on four counts of securities fraud and sentenced to 22 months in prison. Buyer was found to have traded stock on nonpublic information. He purchased $568,000 in Sprint securities after learning that T-Mobile planned to acquire Sprint from a T-Mobile executive, netting more than $107,000 in profit, and bought more than $1 million in Navigant stock after learning from client Guidehouse of its planned acquisition, making a profit of more than $227,000.

• Flesh-eating parasite threatens Texas cattle herd as beef prices hit record highs: The New World screwworm, a fly whose larvae eat living flesh and can kill untreated livestock, has been detected in two calves near the Mexican border in south Texas, alarming agriculture officials and beef industry leaders already contending with record-high prices. A USDA estimate warned a full outbreak could cause $1.8 billion in losses to the Texas economy and cost the state’s farmers $732 million per year. The primary countermeasure—releasing sterile male flies to collapse the pest population—faces a critical bottleneck: the only sterile fly production facility in North America is in Panama and produces roughly 100 million flies per week, far short of the 400 to 500 million needed, with a new Texas facility not set to open until November 2027.

• Trump to attend Game 3 of NBA Finals in NYC amid heightened security: President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend Game 3 of the NBA Final at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Monday night amid heightened security. Ticket holders have been told to arrive at least two hours before tip off without any bags. Mayor Zoran Mamdani is also expected to attend the game. A watch party that had been planned for Monday outside Madison Square Garden has also been canceled for security reasons. The Knicks are appearing in their first finals since 1999 and hold a 2-0 lead in the best of seven series against the San Antonio Spurs. The Knicks have not won the NBA national championship in 53 years. Rep. Jim McGovern, Democratic Co-Chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, said this weekend in a video campaign calling for the NBA to end its complicity in Sudan that, “Fans should know that the sport they are enjoying is fueling crimes against humanity. They should know that the NBA is investing in the UAE, and the UAE is investing in atrocities in Sudan.”

Other International News

• Sudanese army drone strikes kill at least 13 civilians at North Kordofan market: Sudanese Armed Forces drones struck the Abu Zuaima market in Hamrat al-Sheikh, North Kordofan state, Saturday morning, killing 11 civilians and wounding dozens. Less than 24 hours earlier, similar strikes on villages and civilian vehicles in the same area killed at least two more, according to Sudan Tribune. Hamrat al-Sheikh, held by theRapid Support Forces(RSF) sits at a strategic crossroads connecting Kordofan, Northern state, and the Darfur region, and has faced continuous SAF airstrikes.

  • Separately, a Rapid Support Forces drone struck a fuel station and other locations in El Obeid, a key North Kordofan city on Saturday, according to the Darfur Victims Support Organization.

• Russia strikes Chernobyl spent nuclear fuel facility: Russian forces targeted a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel near Ukraine’s Chernobyl power plant Sunday, significantly damaging a fuel-reception building meters away from where large amounts of nuclear material are stored, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which said it had been briefed by Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack “extremely vile” and accused Russia of using a Shahed drone. Ukraine’s state atomic agency Energoatom said no spent fuel was stored in the building at the time, the resulting fire was extinguished, and no injuries were reported. Radiation levels remained within normal range.

  • Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian attacks killed at least five people Sunday, including two killed by a guided bomb at a bus stop in Zaporizhzhia and two more killed in drone and aerial bomb strikes in Dnipropetrovsk.

• Israeli forces kidnap five Syrian civilians: Israeli forces kidnapped five civilians, including two minors, during two incursions into Syria’s Quneitra province early Sunday, according to the Sijil Centre, which documents Israeli violations in Syria. Four of those detained were from the village of Jbata al-Khashab in northern Quneitra and one from Sayda al-Hanout in the province’s south.

• Peru presidential runoff too close to call as quick count shows statistical tie: Peru’s presidential runoff remained too close to call Sunday as Ipsos Peru’s 100% quick count showed leftist Roberto Sánchez with 50.3% of verified votes against conservative Keiko Fujimori’s 49.7%, a margin within the poll’s ±1.9% margin of error.

• Bolivia’s legislature grants president authority to deploy military against protesters: Bolivia’s Chamber of Deputies passed a law Sunday granting President Rodrigo Paz the authority to use the military to clear roadblocks set up by anti-government protesters. The law allows soldiers to use force against protesters and grants them a “presumption of legality,” meaning their actions will be deemed lawful unless proven otherwise. Weeks of demonstrations have called for Paz to resign over rising inflation, low wages, and his abolition of fuel subsidies.

• Nigerian army rescues 360 people abducted by Boko Haram in Borno State: The Nigerian army secured the release of 360 people abducted by Boko Haram earlier this year in the country’s northeast, it announced Sunday, after state forces deployed in a rescue operation in the Mandara mountains in the country’s southern Borno state. Two infants died due to the difficult terrain and conditions of captivity, army spokesperson Haruna Sani said. A local youth leader and Borno senator confirmed the release to AFP but said the group included more than 400 people; Boko Haram had demanded millions of Nigerian naira in ransom.

• Xi visits North Korea for first time in seven years: Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Pyongyang on Sunday for his first visit to North Korea since 2019, holding talks with Kim Jong Un amid deepening military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow. North Korean outlets described the trip as a demonstration of the countries’ “invincible friendship.”

• Magnitude 7.8 earthquake kills 32 in southern Philippines: A powerful offshore earthquake struck near Mindanao in the southern Philippines on Monday, killing at least 32 people and triggering tsunami warnings across parts of Southeast Asia. Authorities reported widespread damage, power outages, and dozens of aftershocks as rescue crews searched collapsed structures, though tsunami alerts were lifted.

• Pashinyan claims victory in Armenia election: Incumbent Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan claimed victory early Monday after preliminary results showed his ruling Civil Contract party winning about 49% of the vote in Sunday’s parliamentary election. Pashinyan called the result a “historic victory,” while opposition figures alleged pressure and arrests during the campaign. Pashinyan ran on a campaign of building ties with the West and pivoting away from Russia in the wake of the loss of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to an earlier Azeri invasion and the lack of support from Moscow.

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Story by Paul Holden

After Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur were banned from entering the UK earlier this week, reportedly because of their criticism of Israel, Piker commented that he “would never have imagined that a [Labour] government would ban me from entering the UK.” Indeed, millions of UK voters would likely agree.

But Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government is not really a Labour government; it came to power on the back of a secret project to wrest control of the Labour Party back from an ascendant left wing. This secret project was resourced by illegally undeclared money from wealthy donors, funneled through a seemingly anodyne think tank called Labour Together. It involved covertly seeding promiscuous claims of antisemitism against political opponents, attempting to silence independent media that threatened to expose its project, and—ultimately—developing the dishonest leadership pitch that allowed Keir Starmer to trick a left-wing membership to elect him leader.

Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary responsible for the ban on Piker and Uygur, was one of a ‘brave band’ of eight MPs that guided the Labour Together project during the leadership of Starmer’s left-wing predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.

The MP who has most loudly demanded Piker and Uygur’s banning is David Taylor. Elected in 2024 as part of the Labour’s landslide, Taylor was closely vetted and approved by a Labour Party bureaucracy reporting directly to Labour Together’s long-time former managing director. And the single largest donor to Taylor’s election campaign was Labour Together.

Piker and Uygur were not banned by the Labour Party—they were banned by the Labour Together party. The primary architect of the Labour Together project is Morgan McSweeney, who was, until recently, Starmer’s chief of staff and widely understood as the real force running the government. McSweeney resigned in February after it was revealed he had pushed Peter Mandelsohn as the UK’s ambassador to the U.S., despite knowing of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

I know McSweeney’s capacity for destroying free speech—and especially criticism of Israel—first-hand. I have been investigating the Labour Together Project since 2021, setting out my findings in my book, “The Fraud.” As a result, I was one of multiple journalists targeted by Labour Together. I was reported by Labour Together to the UK’s cybersecurity agency, in an apparent attempt to catalyze criminal investigations into me and my colleagues.

I was forced to fend off repeated allegations, briefed to the media by Labour Together, that I was under investigation by the UK’s security services on the basis of ludicrous suggestions that my colleagues and I at the small anti-corruption non-profit Shadow World Investigations were patsies of Russia. The allegations are totally false, and obviously so, not least because we have faced legal and extra-legal threats for reporting on the corruption of Russian oligarchs. In 2026, the Guardian confirmed that, despite Labour Together’s best efforts, the UK’s security services declined to open an investigation into me based on tawdry and fabricated conspiracy theories.

I am still trying to find out exactly how far these damaging smears travelled. According to a senior investigative reporter at The Times, copies of a highly defamatory and genuinely insane report about me, my family, and colleagues was “disseminated widely in Westminster and Fleet Street.” Did this stop or chill mainstream reporting of my book? I’m still trying to find out.. But in a media environment already hostile to left-wing journalists, I doubt it helped.

When we launched Drop Site, we made a promise: expose the crimes of the powerful and hold them accountable, no matter the consequences. We knew we’d be targeted for it. We also knew reader support would be the only thing keeping us alive.

While legacy outlets stay silent or run interference, we keep publishing the facts they don’t want told and amplifying the voices they want silenced. And we’re paying the price.

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Labour Together’s War on British Democracy and Free Speech

Labour Together was founded in September 2015 in response to the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour’s most left-wing leader in decades. Corbyn was embedded within the anti-war and anti-imperialist movements that had emerged in response to the invasion of Iraq, and had a long history of vocal support for the Palestinian cause.

At first, Labour Together’s motivations were non-conspiratorial. Its founders, most prominently a well-respected MP named Jon Cruddas, believed that Labour Together could find a way to stop the party’s right-wing defecting in protest at Corbyn’s election. But Labour Together was fundamentally transformed in July 2017. The previous month, Corbyn had led the Party to win over 40% of the popular vote in a general election. Although it was not enough for him to form a government, it secured his position as leader for the foreseeable future.

It was at that point its board of directors tapped Morgan McSweeney as managing director and company secretary at Labour Together. McSweeney, a product of the Labour Party’s most reactionary right-wing, was implacably opposed to the progressive anti-imperialist politics of Corbynism, which he “despised” and believed to be “evil.”

McSweeney soon distributed an internal strategy document in which he set out a two-phased plan. First, Labour Together would work to undermine Corbyn’s leadership. Second, Labour Together would choose and groom a successor who would cleanse the party of the “hard left” Corbynites. McSweeney and his allies would eventually alight on Sir Keir Starmer to perform this role.

The Labour Together Project, of course, would fail if their true motives were uncovered. To prevent discovery, Labour Together would adopt a public façade of inter-party unity, promising a kumbaya project of dialogue and understanding that was a world away from its true, hyper-factional intentions. McSweeney called this defensive maneuver Operation Red Shield.

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The money came easily. McSweeney’s appointment heralded an influx of donations totaling over £800,000 between 2017 and 2020. Most of the money came from two sources. The first was Martin Taylor, a wealthy hedge-fund manager with investments in U.S. private healthcare and longtime donor to the right-wing and centrist wings of the Labour Party. The second was Sir Trevor Chinn, who also served as a board member for Labour Together.

Chinn is a long-time Israel lobbyist: “I spent my entire life working for Israel,” Chinn told a gathering in 2013. He is a prominent member of Labour Friends of Israel, a group pressuring Labour MPs to defend Israel’s conduct in Gaza, and criticized moves towards recognizing Palestinian statehood. In 2024, Chinn was awarded the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor by Isaac Herzog for services to Israel.

Chinn would remain on the Board of Labour Together until late 2024, including during the period in which the organization was funding the election campaigns of over a hundred hand-picked Labour MPs. Between August 2017 and June 2024, Chinn donated £406,500 to Labour Together, in addition to donating over £622,000 to various Labour MPs between 2010 and 2026. This included a donation of £50,000 to Starmer in 2020 to support his bid to become party leader.

The scale of donations received by Labour Together between 2017 and 2020 would normally have attracted scrutiny. But between early February 2018 and April 2020, McSweeney failed to report over £600,000 to the Electoral Commission, as required by law. Consequently, no one knew that Labour Together—then a low-key think tank—was being funded with huge sums from right-wing and pro-Israel donors.

Labour Together was found guilty of the offense, which it called an “administrative oversight,” by the Electoral Commission in 2021 and was made to pay a minimal £14,250 fine.

In 2021, I was leaked a substantial cache of documents by Labour Party whistleblowers concerned about widespread misconduct in the Party. Buried in this huge tranche of materials were a handful of damning documents about Labour Together, its secret projects, and its failure to report donations. I supplemented these documents with Freedom of Information requests and source work. By 2023, I was convinced that the “administrative oversight” story did not add up, and took the story to the Sunday Times.

The documents I gathered clearly undermined the narrative that it was all an administrative mix-up. For example, they show, beyond doubt, that McSweeney was repeatedly instructed by the Electoral Commission to report donations in late 2017 and early 2018, after he had attempted to argue that the organization was exempt. The leaked documents also raise questions about whether Labour Together was candid with the Electoral Commission when they were investigated.

The Slush Fund and the War on Free Speech

With his undeclared “slush fund”, McSweeney set about waging war on free speech. In this endeavour, he had a notable ally. Imran Ahmed, a one-time Labour Party spin doctor who disdained the Corbynite left, worked with McSweeney in a covert war on the left, culminating in the creation of an organisation called the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and its precursor campaign, Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN).

Ahmed and McSweeney helped to inflame Labour’s “antisemitism crisis,” working with mainstream outlets hostile to Corbynism to create the impression that Corbyn’s Labour Party was riddled with antisemitism and that this flowed inexorably from a left-wing, anti-imperialist, and pro-Palestinian politics. At no stage were Ahmed and McSweeney’s role declared, only coming to light many years later. In a highly effective pincer movement, SFFN and CCDH were then used to silence independent and left-leaning outlets who were fact-checking and debunking the stories Ahmed and McSweeney were placing in the media, rewriting justified skepticism as antisemitic “denialism.”

In April 2018, for example, the Sunday Times published a lurid front-page story on “Corbyn’s hate factory,” supported with multiple inside pages of alarmist filler. Corbyn’s so-called hate factory was revealed to be twenty popular pro-Corbyn Facebook groups. The Sunday Times claimed it had been given a dossier of over two thousand incidents of “hate” that had been found in the groups, including bullying, misogyny, homophobia and antisemitic comments. The dossier was provided by two unnamed whistleblowers—revealed to be Ahmed and McSweeney only in 2025.

But the article’s key claims didn’t withstand much scrutiny. The groups in question were mostly open to the public and hosted hundreds of thousands of members. One moderator of multiple Corbyn-supporting groups calculated that at least four million posts had been made across the twenty or so groups targeted by the Sunday Times during the period of investigation. The two thousand posts that had been religiously scoured were a minute drop in the ocean and did not reflect the overall tone or content of the groups, she argued.

The second vector of attack, closely related to the first, was to launch a vicious campaign against left-wing and independent media outlets. These outlets, which supported Corbyn, were seen by McSweeney as vital to Corbynism’s popularity with the Labour membership. The particular focus of McSweeney’s attention was an independent left-wing outlet called The Canary, which had exploded in readership and popularity after Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour Party.

As I have reported previously, McSweeney and Ahmed set about destroying The Canary via a campaign called Stop Funding Fake News. SFFN, launched in March 2019, was an archetypal astroturf campaign and presented itself as a group of concerned grassroots activists working on a shoe-string budget who couldn’t be identified for fear of reprisals.

Truthfully, SFFNwas launched by Ahmed with McSweeney, who later described it as a “precursor” to CCDH. Leaked documents strongly suggest that it was also created with the support of Labour Together, which provided resources to help incubate the project.

The SFFN campaign was brutally successful. With the backing and support of the UK celebrity Rachel Riley and amplified by a network of pre-existing Twitter campaigners called Labour Against Antisemitism, SFFN pressured advertisers to withdraw ads from The Canary on the basis that it was antisemitic. This allegation would later be comprehensively debunked by Impress, the independent media regulator with whom The Canary was registered.

Nevertheless, SFFN’s campaign slashed The Canary’s revenue and, perhaps most importantly, toxified its brand. Soon, left-wing Labour MPs were pressed by mainstream media outlets if they uttered any word of defense of The Canary, shared its content or agreed to be interviewed. The Canary’s questions about the campaign to label Corbyn as antisemitic were successfully neutralized.

Read more: Keir Starmer Machine Ran a Secret Campaign to Demonetize Breitbart News and Other Opposition Outlets

Some of the same groups that were involved in The Canary’s takedown also advocated for the entry ban for Piker and Uygur. One of the documents I was leaked was a briefing written by the aide of a prominent Labour Together MP who now serves in Starmer’s cabinet. The note claimed that Labour Together had sought input from pro-Israel Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) and the Community Security Trust (the UK’s version of the Anti-Defamation League) in setting up the SFFN campaign and CCDH. Neither organization replied to my request for comment at the time.

Both the JLC and CST were quoted two weeks ago pushing for the UK to ban Hasan Piker from entering the UK. “Hasan Piker should not be allowed to enter the UK to spread his 7 October denialism and apparent support for terrorist organizations to a British audience,” the JLC told the Jewish News. “This is not conducive to the public good and the government should ban him.”

The current and historical links between these groups and Labour Together are extensive. Trevor Chinn, the longtime Labour Together board member and funder, has served as vice president of the JLC since 2016. Another vice president of the JLC is Lord Jonathan Kestenbaum, who served on the board of Labour Together between May 2023 and May 2026. Kestenbaum’s stint as an IDF soldier in the late 1980s was only recently excavated by the journalist Jody McIntyre. Dave Rich, a director of policy at CST and a fierce critic of Corbyn, has served on the board of CCDH since 2022.

The success of the SFFN campaign against The Canary encouraged Ahmed to expand its scope. Soon, it was also targeting U.S. outlets, including Breitbart and Zero Hedge. The latter was subjected to a SFFN campaign to pressure Google to remove it from Google’s ad-delivery platform on the basis that it was spreading Covid-19 conspiracy theories, supported by a number of Labour MPs. Zero Hedge’s offense was to run an article questioning whether Covid-19 emerged from a lab-leak in Wuhan. In April 2020, Keir Starmer was elected Labour leader, making McSweeney his chief of staff. McSweeney stood down as director of CCDH, and Ahmed relocated to the U.S.

In the U.S., CCDH became closely allied with the Biden administration. Its report on Covid and the anti-vax movement, the ‘Disinformation Dozen’, was given prominent airtime in the U.S. media and cited by the Biden White House. It also partnered with the Anti-Defamation League in the US in 2023.

In the wake of October 7, Ahmed frequently appeared as an expert on misinformation in the U.S. media, warning people to get their news about Israel’s assault on Gaza from mainstream news outlets and not the social media platforms that were showing unfiltered evidence of Israeli atrocities. “Social media should not be trusted for information—full stop,” Ahmed told The New York Times, which made the warning its “quote of the day” on October 15, 2023.

Two years later, The Grayzone reported on emails leaked by a CCDH insider, showing that “top officials in the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. helped introduce Ahmed to potential funders, and were even invited to review a CCDH report before publication.” The report, published in mid-2024, urged Meta to remove several pro-Palestine groups on the basis that they were host to antisemitism.

The Labour Party Is Dead, Long-Live the Labour Together Party

The resounding defeat of the Labour Party in the 2019 general election set the stage for the next phase of the Labour Together project: installing a candidate as Corbyn’s successor.

The Labour Together project immediately swung in behind Starmer as their choice for future leadership contender, with McSweeney joining Starmer’s informal leadership working group in July 2019. McSweeney used extensive and expensive polling of the Labour membership, paid for with his slush fund, to minutely plan Starmer’s campaign messaging and policy platform.

McSweeney served as Starmer’s campaign chief between January and April 2020, during which time he still served as a director of CCDH and Labour Together. The former was busily attacking The Canary via its still-unmasked SFFN campaign, which warned Labour members not to vote for Stamer; the latter was still taking in large donations that McSweeney was unlawfully failing to declare.

For the life of the campaign, Starmer also declined to identify who was funding him. It was only after he was elected that Starmer disclosed that he had received combined donations of over £100,000 from Labour Together’s key donors, Chinn and Taylor. Though McSweeney remained company secretary during the campaign, Labour Together claimed that it was not backing Starmer, or any other candidate. Indeed, Shabana Mahmood—now the Home Secretary responsible for blocking Piker and Uygur—penned a letter to the Labour membership promising this was the case.

Only later did Labour Together brag about its role in making Starmer leader, seemingly oblivious to the idea that people would find it offensive to be misled so thoroughly. “We backed @Keir_Starmer & helped him win the leadership. Now we’re the think tank that helps Labour win,” Labour Together confirmed in a self-congratulatory thread on X in 2023.

Starmer’s campaign, written and choreographed by McSweeney, presented him as a radical eco-socialist and inheritor of the Corbynite tradition. Starmer promised an ethical foreign policy, to nationalise key industries, increase taxes on the rich, prioritize climate change and seek to unite the Party’s warring factions.

Every aspect of this pitch was unceremoniously dumped upon his election. The left-wing commentator and journalist Owen Jones has called it the “‘biggest political con in recent British political history.”

Unsurprisingly given Labour Together’s past, antisemitism became a dominant theme in the Labour Party’s remaking under McSweeney’s watch. Despite rhetorical flourishes claiming that the Party tolerated criticism of Israel, large numbers of Labour Party members were disciplined for criticising Israel in terms unacceptable to the leadership, like calling Israel an apartheid state or promoting BDS.

Any dissent over the nature of the “antisemitism crisis” became sufficient for a member to be purged. Jeremy Corbyn was kicked out of the Party, his slow-motion defenestration catalyzed when he publicly commented that the scale of antisemitism in the Labour Party had sometimes been exaggerated by political actors: an undeniable truth, in light of what we now know about the Labour Together Project.

McSweeney’s allies, placed throughout the Labour Party, then systematically blocked or purged left-wing members from being selected as candidates for local government or as MPs.

The Re-Emergence of Labour Together and the Second Offensive Against Journalism

Labour Together went into semi-dormancy after McSweeney left the organisation to run Starmer’s Labour Party in April 2020. In April 2023, with the Labour Party ascendant again, Labour Together relaunched as the “provisional wing of Starmerism” and a de facto policymaker of the incoming government. It was also used as a vehicle through which funds from millionaire donors would be directed into supporting the incoming Labour administration, paying for staff in the offices of multiple shadow Cabinet Ministers and directly funding the election campaigns of over a hundred incoming Labour MPs.

Overseeing this operation was Josh Simons, then aged just 29. Simons had a brief and undistinguished career under Corbyn. He resigned from the Labour Party in 2016 after less than a year, publicly insinuating that he was convinced that “the way Corbyn and those around him think about Jewish people is shaped by a frenetic anti-imperialism, focused on Israel and America.”

It was in the context of Labour’s imminent victory and Labour Together’s renewed ascendancy that I approached the UK’s Sunday Times with documents relating to Morgan McSweeney’s failure to report donations. This formed the basis of a front-page story, published in November 2023. The article concluded with a brief paragraph noting that I planned to publish a book about Starmer, McSweeney, and Labour Together.

A few days later, I published an article with Matt Taibbi, pitched as the first of a multi-part series about the role of Labour Together and McSweeney in creating SFFN and CCDH.

Within days of the Sunday Times story, Labour Together appointed the reputation management firm APCO Worldwide to get on top of what threatened to break as a scandal. Dogged investigative reporting by the journalists Peter Geoghehan and Khadija Shariffe, who recently won the coveted Paul Foot award, alongside more recent disclosures made to me by Labour Together, have revealed exactly what that meant.

According to a November 2023 contract signed by APCO and Labour Together, APCO was tasked with investigating “the sourcing, funding and origins of a Sunday Times article about Labour Together, as well as upcoming works by authors Paul Holden and Matt Taibbi—to establish who and what are behind the coordinated attacks on Labour Together.” APCO’s investigation would produce “a body of evidence that could be packaged up for use in the media in order to create narratives that would proactively undermine any future attacks on Labour Together.”

APCO promised to use a range of highly invasive investigative techniques in pursuing this investigation, including “human intelligence investigations,” “financial investigations,” and “stakeholder outreach.” APCO would be paid £30,000 by Labour Together for the work. The investigation would be led by a former Sunday Times journalist named Tom Harper (who, somewhat awkwardly, was the husband of the Sunday Times’s erstwhile political editor, Caroline Wheeler).

Internal APCO documents show that its investigation soon broadened to include anyone who had written about Labour Together or CCDH. In an internal document, given the codename Grimsby Town, an appendix listed several “persons of interest” to their investigation, including the U.S. journalist Paul Thacker (who would subsequently publish a series of stories about CCDH with Taibbi) and UK journalists now working at the Sunday Times and Guardian.

The result of APCO’s investigation was a report given the codename Project Cannon. I have only recently seen a full and unredacted copy of this report, which is astonishing and upsetting in equal measure. The report alleged—entirely falsely—that I was part of a pro-Kremlin network of journalists and speculated that I had received documents hacked from the Electoral Commission by Russia. This was entirely untrue. My investigations were based on legal leaks by Labour Party whistleblowers, Freedom of Information requests, and open-source digging.

The report shows that APCO “traced” my home address and identified that I lived with my partner Jessica, the daughter of Andrew Murray, a lobby journalist and a one-time advisor to Corbyn. Jessica, a fiercely private person, was my de facto investigative partner on “The Fraud,” discovering and tracing key leads. She ultimately decided not to put her name to the work for fear of reprisals after we became dimly aware that Labour Together had been fishing around our family. APCO’s investigation also targeted the small non-profit, Shadow World Investigations, that I launched with colleague Andrew Feinstein in 2018.

Taibbi and the Sunday Times journalist Gabriel Pogrund, who had published the 2023 story about McSweeney’s undeclared donations, were also given the Russia-gate treatment.

In late January 2024, armed with this report, Labour Together and Josh Simons reported me and my colleagues to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the UK’s version of the National Security Agency. Labour Together and Simons urged the NCSC to open an investigation into us alleging that we might have received documents hacked by Russia.

Documents show that Harper and APCO helped coach Labour Together on how to lay what he called a “crime complaint” to the NCSC. The emails, never before published and reproduced here for the first time, were sent with the subject line “Criminal complaint.”

When reached for comment, Labour Together directed Drop Site to a statement from May. CEO Alison Phillips said, “I remain shocked about the work undertaken by APCO in 2023 for Labour Together. While we remain committed to our responsibilities that follow from this process, it does not reflect and represent what this organisation stands for and how it operates today under my leadership.”

When the APCO and Labour Together scandal finally broke into the mainstream media in February 2026, prompted by new leaks about the scale of APCO’s investigation, it was spun as the rogue project of Josh Simons. But only two weeks ago, Labour Together’s new leadership, who have renamed the think-tank as ThinkLabour and criticized the APCO investigation as “indefensible,” released new documents to me that I was entitled to under the UK’s data protection laws.

The new documents show that the highest levels of the Labour Party were aware of APCO’s investigation into me. “Tom Harper (on copy) will be delivering his report on Paul Holden on Monday,” Simons wrote to McSweeney and the Labour Party’s senior communications officer, Paul Ovenden, in 2024. “Could we find a time for Tom, Morgan, Paul and me to Zoom or meet in HQ sometime next week?”

It is still hard for me to process that some of the most powerful people in British politics were discussing reports sharing my home address. In a remarkable twist of fate, eighteen months later, Ovenden would resign as the Chief of Strategy for Starmer (and McSweeney’s de facto number two) in September 2025—after my book revealed historic Labour Party internal messages showing Ovenden sharing offensive jokes about Diane Abbott, the country’s first black female MP.

The newly disclosed documents—reproduced here for the first time—show that Simons and Labour Together met with the NCSC in a video call to make their case that I and my colleagues deserved to be investigated by the UK’s security forces. Minutes of the meeting taken by Labour Together show that Simons told the NCSC that I and my colleague Andrew Feinstein “have tried to manufacture that antisemitism was manufactured in Labour.”

In other words, in a meeting where Simons was trying to convince UK security service officials that I should be investigated, my skeptical view of the “antisemitism crisis” that had been secretly inflamed by Labour Together itself was specifically cited as the grounds for suspicion.

Simons, was forced to resign after the APCO scandal broke into the open. In an ugly resignation letter sent to Starmer and published on the government’s official portal, Simons explained that he believed his decision to employ APCO was justified because he feared my investigation would “push” narratives that “downplay[ed]” the issue of antisemitism in the Labour Party.

“I was particularly concerned about the upcoming publication of a book by Paul Holden, who had obtained this confidential material,” Simons wrote to the prime minister in a letter that soon landed on the desk of every newspaper in the country. “I believe those concerns were justified. The book diminishes the antisemitism that infected Labour under its previous leadership.”

Simons also criticized my colleague Andrew Feinstein for speaking at an event called “How Jeremy Corbyn was destroyed by a smear campaign led by Israel.” Simons piously explained to Starmer that “the Labour Party must always be vigilant against denialism and as a Jewish Labour MP, I make no apologies for that vigilance.”

The implication that Andrew engaged in antisemitic denialism is absurd. In addition to running against Sir Keir Starmer in the 2024 General Election to protest the Labour Party’s stance on Gaza, Andrew is the son of a Holocaust survivor, has lectured at Auschwitz on genocide prevention, and was the first person to move a motion in South Africa’s Parliament noting the horrors of the Holocaust. Andrew, like many left-wing Jews, was placed under investigation by the Labour Party for alleged antisemitism in 2021. Andrew threatened to bring legal action against the Party, and the case was finally dismissed years later.

The Labour Together Government

In July 2024, Starmer’s Labour government swept to power with a massive majority, securing the election of 409 MPs (in a parliament of 650). Starmer’s cabinet was dominated by Labour Together alumni, and McSweeney was swiftly appointed his chief of staff. Seven years after McSweeney had hatched his secret plot to destroy Corbyn and recapture the Labour Party, Labour Together had taken over the British state.

To the great surprise of much of the voting public, the Labour Party’s vaunted offer to change the status quo turned out to be little more than a chimera. Starmer’s government soon announced significant welfare cuts, including plans to gut state support for the disabled, while commitments on the environment were quietly watered down.

But it was on civil liberties, and Israel, that Starmer’s Labour Together government has proved to be the most disturbing. Despite an early announcement that the UK would block certain arms exports to Israel, the UK remained deeply complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as comprehensively detailed by the journalist Peter Oborne.

At the same time, Starmer’s government introduced increasingly draconian measures to quell protest against Israel’s assaults on Gaza. In July 2025, the government proscribed the direct action group, Palestine Action, as a terrorist organization. Palestine Action has, for a number of years, regularly broken into UK production facilities run by Elbit, the Israeli arms company. The designation made it a terrorist offense for anyone to support Palestine Action. As of 2026, the police have arrested over 2,000 activists, including large numbers Jewish and elderly protestors, for holding up signs reading “I support Palestine Action.”

In February 2026, in an embarrassing blow to the government, the High Court ruled that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful. Undeterred, Shabana Mahmood, responsible for banning Piker and Uygur, announced that as Home Secretary she would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

New legislation passed into law in April 2026, widely panned by civil liberties campaigners, now gives the police the right to ban or limit protest marches if they take place too frequently. The police can now claim that repeated marches—against Israel, in effect—cause “cumulative disruption.” The restriction on protest rights has repeatedly been justified on the basis that frequent pro-Palestinian marches in London have made London’s Jewish community feel unsafe, despite the marches featuring prominent blocs of Jewish protestors.

In perhaps the most astonishing move, Starmer’s government has introduced plans to scrap jury trials for all but the most serious criminal offenses. If passed, the plans would overturn a nearly thousand-year convention that anyone charged with a criminal offense be judged by a jury of their peers. The plans have been introduced to widespread consternation in the legal community; many have noted that juries have, rather inconveniently for the government, repeatedly refused to convict environmental and pro-Palestinian direct action campaigners charged with criminal damage.

Unsurprisingly, Starmer and his government are widely despised. Starmer is famously the least popular prime minister since the introduction of modern polling. Vast numbers of former Labour members and voters have abandoned the Party in disgust.

In local elections held last month, the Labour Party lost nearly 1,500 local council seats. A “projected national share” analysis performed by the BBC showed that if voting patterns in the local elections were repeated in a General Election, Labour would receive just 17% of the country’s vote, almost exactly half what they received in the 2024 general election, 1% less than the Green Party, and 9% less than the far-right Reform Party.

The Green Party, led by the eco-populist, Jewish leader Zack Polanski, has witnessed an influx of over a hundred thousand paying members. Polanski has been steadfast in calling out Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Green Party and achieved a series of remarkable victories in the local elections, effectively displacing the Labour Party in left-leaning urban constituencies that used to be a bedrock of Labour support.

The Greens would likely have performed even better if had not been subject to a coordinated smear campaign ahead of the local elections that claimed that the Greens were—you guessed it—riddled with antisemitism. That campaign was largely pushed by Steve Reed, McSweeney’s longtime ally and Labour Together alum. In the days ahead of the election, the Labour Party published a vicious ‘dossier’ about Green Party candidates that was given credulous and alarmist coverage by the mainstream press.

In lurid front-page stories, Green candidates were dubbed extremists—for, among other things, sharing an interview with Jewish academic Norman Finkelstein or welcoming the High Court’s decision to rule that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful.

In this context, the ban on Piker and Uygur is not just unsurprising, it was practically inevitable. Indeed, the bans flow inexorably from the two persistent themes of the Labour Together story and Starmer’s rise to power: a punitive intolerance for robust speech on Israel, and outrageous attacks on independent, non-conformist journalists speaking truth to power.

Piker and Uygur now join a long list of journalists and commentators, who have had their lives turned upside down by a political project careening into the dustbin of history.

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Palestine

• Israeli attacks continue across Gaza: Israeli forces continued ceasefire violations across Gaza Thursday night and into early Friday, killing at least two Palestinians and wounding dozens. Israeli strikes hit a displacement tent, a gas station, residential buildings, civilian vehicles, and a bicycle, while naval gunboats opened fire on the Gaza City coastline, Palestine Online reported.

  • Israeli forces bombed a tent west of Khan Younis at 4:07 a.m., killing an 18-year-old and wounding a sleeping grandfather, according to Palestinian writer Mosab Abu Toha.

  • Another person was killed and others wounded in a strike on the Isleem Petroleum Station near Al-Sha’abiyya junction in Gaza City, five were wounded in a strike on a residential building in Tel al-Hawa, and Israeli drones struck a civilian vehicle on Al-Quds Street with three missiles before reportedly pursuing the fleeing driver with further strikes.

• “The war is not over”: Gaza grandfather whose daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren were burned alive rejects claims of ceasefire: Ibrahim Labad’s family was burned to death after an Israeli strike set their Gaza City apartment ablaze shortly after midnight Thursday. He told Drop Site contributor Mohamed Ahmed that claims the war has ended are a trick. “I only saw myself and my wife. Everything else was darkness and fire,” Labad said, describing being pulled out through a small opening under the door before learning five members of his family had been killed and several others wounded. Nine-year-old Hala Labad survived the strike as the sole remaining member of her immediate family. “Every day there are martyrs. Every single day. Everywhere in Gaza there are martyrs,” Labad said. “What war ended? It only ended for one side.”

• Iranian foreign minister reaffirms support for Palestinians: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke by phone on Thursday with Khalil Al-Hayya, head of Hamas in Gaza, covering developments in Palestine, Lebanon, and the broader region, according to a Hamas statement. Al-Hayya praised Iran’s insistence on a simultaneous cessation of war on all fronts and briefed Araghchi on conditions in Gaza, including Israel obstructing an implementation of the ceasefire while reaffirming the resistance factions’ commitment to continuing until Palestinian national objectives are achieved.

• Hamas arrives in Cairo ahead of new round of ceasefire talks: A Hamas delegation led by Khalil Al-Hayya, the group’s leader in Gaza, arrived in Cairo on Friday ahead of a new round of negotiations expected to begin on Saturday and continue for several days. Hamas said the talks with Egyptian officials and mediators would focus on completing implementation of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, stopping “repeated Zionist aggressions” on the Gaza Strip, and establishing mechanisms for moving to the second phase of the deal. The delegation is also expected to hold meetings with Palestinian factions to coordinate a unified national position.

• Gaza flotilla volunteers held 11 days in Libyan “black site” enter dry hunger and water strike: Ten volunteers with the Global Sumud Flotilla, detained in Benghazi, Libya for 11 days while attempting to reach Gaza, are in deteriorating condition after entering a dry hunger and water strike on Monday. The group has been held without access to lawyers, embassies, or independent medical teams. In a secretly placed phone call, one detainee described their location as “a black site similar to a CIA black site, a prison that has no name.” The organizations are calling on the Argentine government (one member is an Argentine national), the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the foreign ministries of all nationalities involved to intervene immediately to prevent irreversible harm.

• Ireland bans Ben Gvir and Smotrich from entering the country: Ireland announced a ban on Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, barring them from entering the country over their anti-Palestinian statements and conduct toward Gaza flotilla activists, according to the Times of Israel. Irish Prime Minister, Micheal Martin, said last month that the two extremist ministers’ statements “essentially amount to a desire to see the elimination of Palestinians from Palestine.” Both ministers have previously been sanctioned by several EU countries for inciting extremist violence.

• Israel transfers Gaza doctor to solitary confinement: Israeli authorities transferred detained Gaza doctor Hussam Abu Safiya to solitary confinement at Nafha Prison on June 3 following his legal team’s challenge to an extension of his detention, with his lawyer describing the move as punitive and saying it has left Abu Safiya without necessary medical treatment. Healthcare Workers Watch reports that at least 83 Palestinian healthcare workers are currently held by Israel, including 75 from Gaza.

• Palestinian rights group says May was deadliest month of 2026 in Gaza: May 2026 recorded the highest death toll for any month of 2026, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights announced Thursday, with 119 killed, including 19 children and 10 women. Women, children, and the elderly accounted for roughly 30% of Israel’s victims in May.

• Israeli forces shoot two Palestinians in Hebron: Israeli forces shot two Palestinians—injuring one seriously—when they attempted to access their land near Hebron, as armed settlers ploughed the property for a second consecutive day, raised Israeli flags, and blocked roads with earth mounds and stones to prevent residents from reaching their fields, Wafa reported. Settlers also assaulted a third Palestinian in the area, leaving him wounded.

Lebanon

• Casualty count: At least 3,558 people have been killed, and 10,870 wounded, in Israeli strikes across Lebanon since March 2, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

• Israeli strikes kill eight in Lebanon on Friday:

  • At least eight people were killed in Israeli attacks across southern Lebanon on Friday, according to the state’s National News Agency. Four people were killed in multiple Israeli drone strikes across areas in the south. Two men were killed in separate incidents in Nabatieh and Kfar Roumman after Israeli drones struck their vehicles. In two other strikes, Israeli drones targeted motorcycles in Bint Jbeil and in Deir al-Zahrani, killing one person in each attack.

  • An Israeli strike on Doueir destroyed a residential building and killed one person, leaving another in critical condition. In Habboush, two separate strikes killed two men, one of whom was a physician.

  • A strike on Qalawiya Tower killed one person and wounded another, and Israeli aircraft bombed Nabatieh al-Fawqa, Zibdine, Shoukin, and Jibchit. Near Tyre, warplanes struck close to Jabal Amel Hospital targeting the Bank Audi area, while Israeli forces carried out a demolition operation in Khiam.

  • The Israeli military also issued forced displacement orders on Friday to residents of nine towns in southern Lebanon.

• Parties continue to respond to Wednesday’s “ceasefire agreement”:

  • Israeli Defense Minister hails Lebanon ceasefire for codifying Israel’s right to maintain a presence: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that the U.S.-brokered Lebanon ceasefire declaration includes “unequivocal” support for Hezbollah’s disarmament, the removal of Hezbollah forces from south of the Litani River, continued IDF presence in Lebanon, as well as a “freedom of action for Israel.” Katz described the agreement as an “expression of the reality” Israel’s military has created in Lebanon and said it could eventually lead to a formal “peace” agreement with the Lebanese state.

  • Lebanese parliament speaker rejects “booby-trapped” ceasefire, says Hezbollah withdrawal contingent on Israeli pullback: Nabih Berri, speaker of the Lebanese parliament and leader of Lebanon’s Amal Movement, the Shia ally of Hezbollah, criticized the U.S.-brokered ceasefire plan as a “hybrid agreement” that had been “booby-trapped” with conditions, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency. Berri said the text could have been viewed positively had it simply called for an unconditional ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from occupied areas, but instead included provisions requiring “a complete cessation of fire by Hezbollah” and the withdrawal of its fighters from south of the Litani River. He said he would only accept two principles: “a full and comprehensive ceasefire without conditions” and a parallel withdrawal of both Hezbollah from south of the Litani and Israeli forces from territories they occupy. “The rest of the text is unjust and not worth mentioning,” he added.

  • IRGC demands full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force issued separate statements Thursday declaring that no calm will be established in the region without a full Israeli withdrawal. The IRGC said its primary condition for accepting a ceasefire in the regional war has been a halt to hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon, and warned that the Lebanese people will not allow Israel to achieve through a forced agreement what it failed to achieve through war. “The enemy must immediately halt its attacks on the people of Lebanon, and swiftly withdraw to international borders by evacuating the occupied Lebanese territories, and recognize the territorial integrity of Lebanon,” the IRGC said, according to Press TV. “Our primary condition for accepting a ceasefire in the regional war has been a ceasefire across all fronts, including Lebanon.”

• Israel killed 91 medical workers of one health body in Lebanon: At least 91 medical personnel of the Islamic Health Authority in Lebanon have been killed as a result of Israeli attacks across the country, the organization said Friday via Al-Araby TV. Mahmoud Karki, a media official in the healthcare and emergency service provider affiliated with Hezbollah, said Israeli forces claim, without evidence, that ambulances are being used to transport weapons. Israel has killed over 125 health workers in Lebanon since March 2, according to the state’s Health Ministry.

• Hezbollah claims operations in southern Lebanon: Hezbollah claimed strikes on six Merkava tanks around Beaufort Castle using guided missiles and Ababil suicide drones, and the downing of four Israeli Hermes-450 surveillance drones using surface-to-air missiles. The group also claimed strikes on a command position around Beaufort Castle, a newly established logistical support center in Yahmar al-Shaqif, a site in Al-Adaisseh hit with a drone swarm, and repeated rocket and artillery barrages targeting Israeli soldiers and vehicle concentrations throughout the night.

  • Israeli captain killed by Hezbollah anti-tank missile in southern Lebanon: An Israeli Armored Corps captain in the 75th Battalion of the 7th Armored Brigade was killed after a Hezbollah fighter fired a guided anti-tank missile at his tank north of the Litani River, according to Israeli military reports. The 21-year-old was the fourth Israeli soldier killed in Lebanon this week.

Iran and Ceasefire

• Iran’s foreign minister warns U.S. bases in region are legitimate targets: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned Friday that U.S. bases in the region used for any aggression against Iran are legitimate targets, and said Iran had warned regional states accordingly. When discussing the war more generally, Araghchi said that standing against the world’s greatest nuclear-armed power for 40 days has been “no joke” and that “the world has realized the true power of the Iranian nation.”

  • In the same remarks, Araghchi noted Iran’s commitment to “fostering sustainable, constructive ties with Saudi Arabia.”

• Oman reportedly briefly suspends oil loading at primary crude export terminal: Oman suspended oil loading operations at the Mina al Fahal terminal near Muscat on Thursday, its primary facility, after an explosion near its offshore berths, according to Reuters. Two sources familiar with the matter told the outlet that the shutdown is believed to have been caused by a drone attack. Oman’s largest oil producer later said the terminal was operating normally.

• CNN footage reveals fire aboard USS Gerald Ford was far more severe than Pentagon acknowledged: New footage obtained by CNN shows the fire, which was reported aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier two months ago, was more extensive than the Pentagon’s official account suggested, disrupting the operational capability of the $13 billion warship at the height of the U.S. war on Iran. The Navy had claimed the fire was quickly contained, and the carrier remained fully operational, but CNN’s footage shows devastated sailors’ quarters with collapsed ceilings, burnt metal, and deformed beds amid piles of ash.

• Houthi leader warns of readiness for escalation: Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said Thursday in a televised address on Al-Masirah TV that his group is prepared for regional escalation and is coordinating with its regional allies on developments in Lebanon and Palestine. Separately, Yemen’s Foreign Ministry expressed support for Hezbollah, calling resistance the “most effective option” to end Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory and halt attacks.

U.S. News

By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at Julian@dropsitenews.com.

• House Armed Services Committee rejects amendment to strip U.S.-Israel military integration provision from defense bill: The House Armed Services Committee rejected Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) amendment Thursday to strip Section 224 from the National Defense Authorization Act, a provision that would require the Pentagon to designate an executive agent to synchronize cooperative efforts between the U.S. and Israeli militaries. The measure failed in a voice vote.

  • The provision follows a letter from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Indiana) endorsing a “move from aid recipient to partner,” language Khanna said Section 224 directly mirrors. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the committee’s top Democrat, said he opposed Netanyahu’s leadership but backed the provision regardless. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has pledged to introduce an amendment to revoke Section 224 when the NDAA goes to a full House floor vote.

  • Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), the only other committee member to join Khanna in opposition to the measure, encouraged people to “Watch as a stream of Republicans and Democrats stand up in support of the enhanced cooperation.”

• Tlaib’s Lebanon War Powers Resolution defeated: The Lebanon War Powers Resolution proposed by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) was defeated on Thursday after drawing support from 90 lawmakers, prompting Democratic leadership to back a separate resolution they said would prevent direct U.S. involvement in the conflict. Ahead of the vote, Tlaib told Drop Site’s Julian Andreone that every day of inaction results in 11 more Lebanese children killed or injured by the Israeli military in what she called a U.S.-supported invasion. After the vote, Tlaib urged House Democratic leadership to move forward with a new Lebanon War Powers Resolution.

• Senate passes $70 billion immigration enforcement bill: The Senate voted 52-47 Friday morning to approve $70 billion in additional funding for ICE and Border Patrol, sending the bill to the House with no Democratic support; Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was the only Republican to vote against the bill. The marathon session was repeatedly upended by Trump’s controversial “anti-weaponization fund,” which Trump said Wednesday he considers “so important,” even as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress the Justice Department would not move forward with it. Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Jon Husted (Ohio), and Dan Sullivan (Alaska)—all facing competitive reelection races in November—voted with Democrats on a failed 50-49 motion to eliminate the provision.

• House passes agriculture spending bill that would slash WIC fruit and vegetable benefits: The House voted 213-210 Thursday to pass a bill to fund the Agriculture Department that would cut $141 million in fruit and vegetable funding from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, which serves nearly 5.4 million pregnant women and young children, according to the Washington Post. The National WIC Association estimated the cuts would reduce monthly produce benefits from $52 to $13 for breastfeeding mothers and from $26 to $10 for young children, as grocery prices continue to rise nationally.

• ICE eliminates requirement to report deaths occurring within 30 days of release from custody: ICE acting director David Venturella sent a memo to agency employees on Thursday announcing that the agency is ending its requirement to report deaths that occur within 30 days of a detainee’s release. The agency will report only deaths that occur while people remain in agency custody, the Washington Post reported, reverting a 30-day rule adopted under the Biden administration. The policy change comes as ICE has recorded 18 detainee deaths in the first five months of 2026.

• Trump administration has re-separated dozens of families protected by landmark settlement, AP investigation finds: The Trump administration has re-separated dozens of children from parents, in contravention of a 2023 court settlement that protects these families—a settlement that the first Trump administration’s policy of family separation precipitated—according to a new investigation by the Associated Press. In some cases, officials have deported parents even after being notified by the ACLU that they were off limits for removal.

  • Among those affected is Ederson Galicia Alva, an 11-year-old who was first taken from his mother at the border in 2018 at age three, then separated last June again when agents arrested his mother near Mar-a-Lago and deported her to Guatemala. “I felt the very same thing I went through the first time,” his mother said in response to the outlet. “I was living it all over again.” Read the AP’s full investigation here.

• AIPAC super PAC spends $1.2 million in Maryland congressional race to replace Steny Hoyer: AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has spent nearly $1.2 million to boost Adrian Boafo—retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer’s former campaign manager and a former lobbyist for Oracle, Jewish Insider reports. Prince George’s County Councilmember and congressional candidate Wala Blegay, speaking with Breaking Points, argued the race extends beyond AIPAC, with residents facing soaring utility bills, federal layoffs, and a wave of proposed AI data centers tied to the same corporate interests funding establishment politics.

• Whistleblower says DOGE sought to have 2.7 million living people declared dead to pressure immigrants into self-deportation: A former senior Social Security Administration official has disclosed in a whistleblower complaint to Senate investigators that DOGE officials sought to have 2.7 million living people, including U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, added to the agency’s Death Master File as part of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement strategy, the Washington Post reported Thursday. Jeremiah Schofield, who spent 25 years at the agency, said he refused to implement the plan after sampling 25 names from the list and finding all were alive, and that a DOGE official confirmed on a speakerphone call that the goal was to force immigrants to self-deport or show up at Social Security offices where they could be arrested. The Social Security Administration said the plan was never carried out, though the Post previously reported that a smaller version—marking 6,100 immigrants as dead—was implemented last year.

• New York Times drops investigation into Graham Platner: The New York Times published an investigation into Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s past relationships on Thursday, with the most serious allegation from ex-girlfriend Lyndsey Fifield stating that Platner shoved her into a room. Fifield is a longtime Republican operative, with past stints at the Heritage Foundation, super PACs, and the Chamber of Commerce. Notably, after publication, Fifield’s podcast co-host Bethany Mandel confirmed on X that Fifield was the original source of the claim that Platner had bragged about “my Totenkopf”—but that when that anonymous claim had not tanked his candidacy, she went to the Times.

Other International News

• WFP warns U.S.-Iran war is pushing 45 million people toward acute hunger: The United Nations World Food Programme warned on Friday that the ongoing U.S.-Iran war is putting millions at risk of hunger. The sharpest impacts of the war have been felt in fragile states already facing preexisting vulnerabilities. In Somalia, 6.5 million people—roughly a third of the population—are expected to face severe hunger in 2026, with an additional 2.5 million unable to afford a basic food basket, while Afghanistan could see 17.4 million people affected on top of 13.8 million who were already food insecure before the war. The WFP also warned of a “double squeeze” on the global humanitarian system from rising delivery costs, estimating it will serve 1.5 million fewer people than planned in 2026, and that a six-month continuation of the conflict could cause more than 9 million additional people to lose assistance altogether.

• Trump administration sanctions Cuban president, first lady, and Castro family members: The Trump administration sanctioned Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, First Lady Lis Cuesta Peraza, his stepson Manuel Anido Cuesta, Raúl Castro’s son Alejandro Castro Espín, and Castro’s grandson Raúl Alejandro Castro Calis on Thursday, along with five entities, including Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Díaz-Canel called the measures “illegitimate,” saying Washington’s “aggressiveness will clash with our determination to resist.”

  • Trump told reporters Thursday that the island nation is “sort of collapsed” and threatening to “handle that” as soon as the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran concludes. “We’ll take care of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and as soon as that is done, on our way back we’ll just make a brief stopover.”

• Trump administration backs Bolivian president against protests: War Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. military would “reject all attempts to overthrow the legitimate government” of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz, and framed mass anti-government protests by teachers, miners, farmers, and union workers as an attempted coup linked to “narco-terrorists.” Paz, who was elected in October and attended the Trump administration’s inaugural Americas Counter Cartel Coalition summit in March, has faced mounting unrest since scrapping fuel subsidies and pursuing economic reforms that have alarmed Bolivia’s powerful coca farming unions.

• Hundreds protest outside UNHCR headquarters in Tripoli demanding expulsion of migrants, closure of UN agency: Hundreds of Libyans gathered outside the UNHCR headquarters in Tripoli on Thursday in the largest of several recent anti-migrant demonstrations, chanting “Libya belongs to Libyans” and calling for the closure of the UN refugee agency, which they accused of seeking to permanently settle undocumented migrants in the country. Demonstrators erected tents, blocked the building’s main gate with a truckload of sand, and carried signs reading “Libya is not the world’s garbage bin.” The UN mission in Libya denied running any resettlement programs in the country, saying it works to find solutions outside Libya, including evacuation to third countries and voluntary returns, and warned against the spread of hate and incitement against UN staff. Libya, with a population of roughly 7 million, hosts an estimated 900,000 migrants according to the International Organization for Migration, many of them Sudanese refugees.

• Russian drone strike kills four outside Kyiv: A Russian drone strike on a dairy factory in the Kyiv region killed four people and wounded seven Friday, destroying an administrative building and damaging two vehicles at a facility that produced yogurt and baby food, regional governor Mykola Kalashnyk said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces also struck food warehouses and a postal facility in Dnipropetrovsk, an ambulance in Kherson, a school in Sumy, port infrastructure in Odesa, and an outpatient clinic in Kharkiv, and repeated his calls for additional air defense support and sustained economic pressure on Moscow.

  • Zelenskyy proposes direct talks with Putin: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued an open letter to Vladimir Putin to propose direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, saying it would be “wrong to simply wait” for the war in Europe to become Washington’s focus again and calling for a full ceasefire during talks—an idea Putin had earlier ruled out. While proposing a peace framework, the letter also included mockery of Putin, pointing to Ukraine’s recent strikes inside Russia and saying that “after 26 years in power, age is beginning to take its toll” on the Russian leader.

  • IAEA brokers localized ceasefire around Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant for repairs: The International Atomic Energy Agency announced Friday that it has brokered a localized ceasefire around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant—Europe’s largest—to allow technicians from both sides to repair war-related damage to the Dniprovska power line, which has been severed for more than two months and left the plant reliant on a single backup line to cool its six shutdown reactors.

• Xi Jinping to visit North Korea next week in first trip to Pyongyang in seven years: Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit North Korea on June 8–9 at Kim Jong Un’s invitation, state broadcaster CCTV announced Friday, marking Xi’s first trip to Pyongyang since 2019. Kim has supplied troops and weapons to Russia’s war in Ukraine, after Xi hosted Putin in Beijing last month to discuss the U.S. war with Iran, and Trump has expressed interest in reviving his own relationship with Kim. The visit comes as Kim called on Thursday for an “exponential” expansion of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.

• U.S. terrorist designations of Brazilian gangs raise fears of military intervention: The U.S. designation of Brazil’s Comando Vermelho and Primeiro Comando da Capital as foreign terrorist organizations, effective Friday, could shift investigations currently handled by the FBI, DEA, and U.S. immigration authorities to the CIA, according to two São Paulo state officials who spoke to Reuters anonymously. Brazilian officials in President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration also fear the designation could pave the way for U.S. military or covert actions in Brazil similar to operations carried out in Venezuela and against Mexican cartels. “We will not allow any form of foreign intervention ​in our country,” National Public Security Secretary Chico Lucas told the outlet.

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FROM DROP SITE:

• Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill discusses U.S.–Iran negotiations, Gaza, and the U.K. government’s crackdown on pro-Palestine speech in an interview with Sky News’s Yalda Hakim.

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Lebanon

• Hezbollah rejects “illusory” ceasefire, demands Israeli withdrawal and end to aggression: Hezbollah rejected a new ceasefire plan announced Wednesday by the U.S., Israel, and the Lebanese government that was negotiated without its participation.

  • The United States, Israel, and Lebanon issued a joint statement Wednesday announcing that they had signed a ceasefire agreement reportedly conditioned on Hezbollah’s withdrawal from south of the Litani River, complete cessation of Hezbollah fire, and the creation of “pilot zones” under exclusive Lebanese Armed Forces control. It includes no provision requiring Israel’s withdrawal from the country, nor does it call for a complete cessation of Israeli strikes.

  • In the statement, the three parties condemned Iran, citing its “ongoing activities that undermine stability throughout the Middle East.” The statement also notes that the U.S. has committed to supporting the Lebanese military in its attempt to assert control of the country. Talks between the parties are set to reconvene the week of June 22, when a “comprehensive agreement” will be under discussion.

  • Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem rejected the “illusory” ceasefire proposal in a televised statement, saying it was “a roadmap for the annihilation of a section of the Lebanese ​people and the enslavement of the rest.” Qassem said that any ceasefire must include southern Lebanon, and “ending the comprehensive aggression, achieving a ceasefire, and securing Israel’s withdrawal.” “We did not make any commitment to any party to stop resisting as long as there is occupation,” Qassem added.

  • Speaking with reporters on Thursday, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun described ceasefire negotiations as difficult, saying the head of the Lebanese delegation Simon Karam suspended participation at one point due to Israeli intransigence, prompting Secretary of State Marco Rubio to intervene and revive the talks. Aoun called the resulting agreement “a last opportunity,” and said implementation could begin within 24 hours once all parties provide their approval.

• Israeli officials signal that they will not respect ceasefire, continue strikes:

  • IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir declared on Wednesday, prior to the new ceasefire plan being announced, that “there is no ceasefire” for Israeli forces in Lebanon. “We are working to maximize the freedom of action that has been granted to us and will seize every opportunity to remove threats to the citizens of Israel and to our forces,” he said. He added that Israel would not withdraw from its self-declared “security zone” in southern Lebanon until it believes the “threats to northern Israeli communities have been removed”, and threatened to maintain troop positions along the so-called “Yellow Line” indefinitely.

  • Similarly, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that the ceasefire with Lebanon grants the Israeli military the “freedom” to strike Beirut in response to any Hezbollah fire on Israeli communities. Katz stated that Israeli forces would continue their military operations within the country, remain in the security zone up to the “Yellow Line,” and press on in its efforts to “dismantle” Hezbollah’s infrastructure.

• Casualty count: At least 3,526 people have been killed, and 10,733 injured, in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

• Israeli attacks on Lebanon continue Thursday:

  • Five people were killed and four others were wounded in an Israeli strike on Sohmor in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley on Thursday, according to the state-run National News Agency. An Israeli attack on a motorcycle in Maaroub killed one person and wounded another. Three people were also killed in a strike on Al-Abassiya in Tyre.

  • The Israeli military also issued an order to residents of southern Lebanon Thursday, demanding they not return to areas south of the Zahrani river, and stating that “anyone who travels south would be putting their life at risk.”

  • A series of mortar attacks killed a UNIFIL peacekeeper on Thursday morning at a Spanish base near Marjayoun in southern Lebanon and wounded two others, the UN mission said. UNIFIL later reported that the peacekeeper was a Serbian national, though it has yet announced who was responsible for the attack. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez confirmed Thursday that a mortar attack wounded two Spanish members of the UN mission, and offered his nation’s “most absolute condemnation of the violence” on X.

• Hezbollah reports strikes on Israeli officer, soldiers: A Hezbollah explosive FPV drone struck the vehicle of IDF Northern Command chief Major General Rafi Milo in southern Lebanon on Thursday, hitting it just after he and an aide stepped out during a field visit to a village with other officers. No casualties were reported from the attack, according to Israeli public broadcaster Kan. Hezbollah also announced on Thursday that it targeted a gathering of Israeli vehicles and soldiers with drones in the town of Al-Qantara.

• Israel kills five paramedics in Lebanon: An Israeli airstrike on the town of Zebdine in the Nabatieh district killed one paramedic and wounded a second on Wednesday, according to the country’s Health Ministry. This was at least the fifth paramedic killed in Lebanon that day.

Iran and Ceasefire

• Iranian foreign minister says ceasefire must cover Lebanon: In a wide-ranging interview with Al-Mayadeen earlier on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said any end to the war must halt hostilities across all fronts, declaring that, “Either the war stops in both Iran and Lebanon, or it doesn’t stop in either.” Araghchi said he personally lobbied Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to ensure Lebanon was explicitly included in any ceasefire text.

  • Also concerning Lebanon, Araghchi called Hezbollah “an integral part of Lebanon’s political structure,” and complimented the party’s current Secretary General, Naim Qassem, for exceeding Iran’s expectations in the current conflict.

  • Regarding negotiations, Araghchi said messages continue to be exchanged with Washington, but “no progress has been made in days.” He also argued that the 40-day war had disproved American assumptions that Iran was a “weak country,” stating that “the Americans were forced to seek negotiations,” because the Iranian people had united against it.

• Trump says Iran was “reciprocating” U.S. strikes, declares ceasefire still intact: President Donald Trump addressed this week’s hostilities in an Oval Office press gaggle on Wednesday. He told reporters that Iranian attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain were a direct response to prior U.S. military action, stating that Iran was “slightly provoked,” and stopped short of condemning the strikes. “There’s a reason for everything,” Trump said. Trump claimed that the broader ceasefire agreement remains in effect, and added that negotiations are progressing “very well.” “If it happens,” he said, referring to a potential ceasefire deal, “it may happen over the weekend.”

• Satellite imagery appears to show damage at U.S. air base in Kuwait following Iranian strikes: New satellite imagery released on Soar Atlas Thursday appears to show damage at the U.S. Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait following Wednesday’s Iranian attacks, undercutting the U.S. claim that all incoming missiles and drones were intercepted or failed.

• Khamenei warns of Israeli and U.S. attempts to sow division: Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said Thursday that the United States and Israel, having failed militarily and suffered what he called “deep humiliation,” have shifted to a hybrid war aimed at sowing doubt, despair, and division within Iran. “Any action that breeds cynicism or despair among the people is a form of helping the enemy of this country and its people,” he said, urging Iranians to respond to these efforts with “steadfastness, clear-sightedness and unity.”

Palestine

• Casualty count: Over the last 24 hours, 11 Palestinians were killed and 32 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 has risen to 72,956 killed, with 173,043 injured. Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 947 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 2,935, while 781 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

• Israel bombards Gaza City, killing at least 9: At least nine Palestinians were killed and 15 others were wounded in a wave of Israeli airstrikes that struck Gaza City shortly after midnight Thursday. The strikes hit homes in Al-Shati refugee camp, the Karama neighborhood, Tel al-Hawa, and Sheikh Radwan in Gaza City. Witnesses described widespread destruction and bodies burned beyond recognition after homes were hit while families were sleeping. One strike on an apartment in northwestern Gaza City killed five people, leaving a nine-year-old girl as the sole survivor among her relatives.

• Palestinian agencies say Gaza war generated 33.2 million tonnes of carbon emissions: The Israeli war on Gaza generated an estimated 33.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions—comparable to the annual emissions of some countries—according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and the Environmental Quality Authority via WAFA. About 1.9 million tonnes were linked directly to Israeli military operations and the remainder associated with debris removal and future reconstruction. In a joint statement marking World Environment Day, the agencies said Gaza is facing a severe environmental collapse, citing the destruction of more than 90% of wastewater infrastructure, the accumulation of around 710,000 tonnes of household waste and more than 60 million tonnes of rubble from the destruction of over 330,000 housing units. The statement also cited a recent UNOSAT report showing that about 86% of Gaza’s agricultural land had been damaged or destroyed by the end of June 2025, rising to 94% in northern Gaza. The agencies further reported a rise in Israeli environmental violations in the occupied West Bank, with 685 incidents recorded in 2025 compared with 535 in 2024.

• Israeli forces and settlers carry out raids, assaults, and detentions across the occupied West Bank: Israeli forces wounded five Palestinians during a Thursday raid on a home in Doha west of Bethlehem. In Nablus, dozens of Israeli military vehicles and a bulldozer stormed Joseph’s Tomb overnight, and in Beita, Israeli settlers reportedly beat a Palestinian man, according to Al Jazeera. Israeli troops also detained dozens of Palestinian workers near Tarqumiyah and Beit Ula northwest of Hebron. Eight Palestinians were also detained in Ramallah and al-Bireh, including a disabled woman.

• Israeli soldiers detain American college student, Palestine football team players in West Bank: Israeli soldiers raided the Ramallah home of Sama Safi, a 20-year-old American citizen and second-year student at Birzeit University, at around 3:00 a.m. on Monday, detaining her alongside three other female students—Natalie Abu Diya, Jolan Abu Awwad, and Laila Khalil—as part of a broader overnight sweep that resulted in at least 31 Palestinian detentions across the West Bank. Safi is being held without charge, and the Israeli government has not notified her family or the U.S. Embassy of her whereabouts or the basis for her detention. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) condemned the arrest on Thursday, calling upon the State Department to “secure her release NOW.” One of the women detained, Natalie Abu Diya, is a former player with Palestine’s national football team; another current player, Rand Halawani, was also detained after being summoned to an Israeli police station.

• More than 9,500 Palestinians reported missing in Gaza since October 2023, including thousands of women and children: More than 9,500 Palestinians have gone missing since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, among them approximately 4,700 women and children, Gaza-based human rights organization Al-Damir reported Thursday. More than 8,100 are believed trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings, while over 800 were detained by Israeli forces at military checkpoints during displacement between northern and southern Gaza. Al-Damir called the disappearances a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and said Israel bears full responsibility as the occupying power for disclosing the fate of the missing.

• Israeli court overturns Red Cross ban as Palestinian Prisoners Society condemns judicial “legal cover”: Israel’s High Court of Justice unanimously ruled that the government’s blanket ban on visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Palestinian prisoners is unlawful and must be revoked, according to the Times of Israel. The ban, imposed after October 7, 2023, was challenged by several rights groups. Responding to the ruling, Palestinian Prisoners’ Society head Abdullah Al-Zaghari said the decision would remain “devoid of practical effect” unless it results in the immediate resumption of Red Cross visits and meaningful protections for detainees. He also said the ruling should not serve as a pretext to overlook the Supreme Court’s longstanding role in providing “legal legitimacy” to occupation policies and a system of impunity. Al-Zaghari said Israeli courts have played an increasingly dangerous role since the start of the Gaza war by furnishing “legal cover” for ongoing abuses against Palestinians, including prisoners, who have been subjected to starvation, denial of medical treatment, and torture.

U.S. News

By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at Julian@dropsitenews.com.

• House passes war powers resolution directing Trump to end Iran war: The House passed a concurrent resolution Wednesday directing President Donald Trump to remove U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran unless Congress explicitly authorizes the use of military force, with four Republicans—Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Penn.), Tom Barrett (Mich.), and Warren Davidson (Ohio)—joining every Democrat in support. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.), the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, invokes the 1973 War Powers Act, whose 60-day window for unauthorized military operations closed in early May.

• Tlaib proposes Lebanon war powers resolution: The House is scheduled to vote on a Lebanon War Powers resolution brought forward by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). Members debated the bill yesterday; in one exchange, Tlaib explained to Republican Brian Mast (Fla.)—one of the House’s most ardent supporters of Israel and a former volunteer in its military—that the act only restricts U.S. forces from engaging in hostilities. “If U.S. armed forces are there and they’re not participating in this ethnic cleansing campaign [or] they’re training the Lebanese Armed Forces—then they’re fine,” she said.

  • Despite the passage of a similar bill regarding the administration’s power to wage war against Iran, Tlaib’s bill has a difficult path to passage, with Axios reporting that Reps. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.), Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Jim Himes (D-Conn.)—the top Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, and Intelligence Committees—are all on the fence. House Minority Leader Hakeem said he hasn’t “taken a look” at the bill when asked about his vote, and Rep. Jared Moskowitz (Fla.), an avowedly pro-Israel Democrat who initially hesitated to vote for the Iran war powers resolution, has said he would not vote in favor of the measure. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Calif.), the former chair of the House Armed Services Committee, told Drop Site’s Julian Andreone he plans to vote yes.

  • During the same deliberations, Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) upbraided Tlaib, accusing her of “advocating” for Hezbollah “on a daily basis.” He added to this a charge that she “liked to hang out” with the group, whom he described as “butchers” and “terrorists.” Tlaib protested the remarks, prompting a shouting match between the two, and requested Miller’s comments be stricken from the record, which they ultimately were.

• Gonzales-Torres advances in California: Progressive Democrat Angela Gonzales-Torres is projected to advance to the general election for U.S. House in California’s 34th Congressional District, the AP reported on Wednesday. She will face incumbent Rep. Jimmy Gomez, an AIPAC beneficiary facing a sexual misconduct investigation.

• Congress presses Rubio on Israel:

  • During congressional testimony on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio refused to answer a question from Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) about Israel’s nuclear capabilities. “That’s a question…you know, they’ve never acknowledged they’ve had a nuclear program,” Rubio answered. “Speaking frankly, I think most of the world assesses that they do, but they’ve never acknowledged that, probably,” he said, before adding that it was a “feature” of U.S. foreign policy that “we don’t discuss it.”

  • When Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Penn.) pressed Marco Rubio during his appearance about the number of Palestinians killed while attempting to access food aid in Gaza, Rubio deflected, attributing the deaths to Hamas. Dean pushed back, saying: “IDF soldiers shot some of them. Propaganda ain’t gonna work with me.”

• House moves forward on fusing U.S. and Israeli militaries: Responding to pressure to end U.S. support for the Israeli military, Israeli and U.S. leaders are instead pushing simply to merge the two militaries together, making decoupling them a complex process and giving Israel extraordinary leverage over the U.S. supply chain and weapons platforms. The House Armed Services Committee will vote Thursday on an amendment from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to strip the provision, known as Section 224, from the National Defense Authorization Act. Ex-State Department Official Josh Paul explained its significance yesterday on Breaking Points.

• DHS secretary says ICE training requirements will return to previous standards by July 1: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday that ICE officer training would return to its previous “regular” levels starting July 1, after documents released by Senate Democrats earlier this year showed training hours had dropped by roughly 40 percent following a major hiring push by the agency. A former ICE academy attorney publicly alleged in February that the agency had dismantled its training program by cutting 240 hours of instruction covering the U.S. Constitution, use of force, lawful arrests, and the limits of officer authority.

• Sanders and Sam Altman meet to discuss proposal for public ownership stake in major AI companies: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met Wednesday evening, at Altman’s request, to discuss Sanders’s proposal to transfer a 50 percent public ownership stake in the largest AI companies in the United States. Drop Site Capitol Hill correspondent Julian Andreone questioned Altman on the ethics of making “legalized bribes”; Altman denied doing so, and also denied that OpenAI had lobbied extensively. The company spent $1 million on federal lobbying in the first quarter of 2026 alone, according to the New York Times, which has also reported on the company’s activity in Washington as reaching a “fever pitch.”

• Jewish Columbia faculty file EEOC claims alleging harassment for supporting Palestinian rights: Several Jewish faculty members at Columbia University filed claims this week with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before the deadline closed, alleging a hostile work environment—but arguing the hostility they faced stemmed from their support for Palestinian rights rather than from pro-Palestinian protests, as the Trump administration intended the fund to address. In filings shared with the Guardian, faculty described being doxed, spat on, followed, screamed at, subjected to disciplinary charges, and receiving death threats. “I no longer consider Columbia University a safe place to work for Jews who dare to dissent from the political agenda of its most ardently pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian donors and trustees,” one professor wrote in his claim.

Other International News

• U.S. military kills two in latest boat strike in eastern Pacific: The U.S. military attacked a vessel it accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, killing two men. The strike brings the total number of people killed in U.S. military boat strikes in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean to at least 207 since the campaign began in early September.

• Haiti’s prime minister publishes electoral decree the country’s own electoral council says he secretly rewrote: Haiti’s de facto Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé published a long-awaited electoral decree this week, but the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP)—the independent body legally responsible for drafting such legislation—said the published text is totally different from what it submitted to the executive in April, calling the move unconstitutional. Critics say the modified decree creates a government-appointed Director General position within the CEP with no basis in the council’s organizational structure, effectively giving the executive branch control over the electoral process ahead of elections promised by December 2026. Haiti has had no elected president since 2021 and has not held elections since 2016.

• Bolivia’s Paz running out of options: Pressure is rapidly mounting against President Rodrigo Paz, leaving him with no good options. He has lost two cabinet ministers, coalition members have defected to the protests, and his own Vice-President continues public attacks. A senator and deputy are on hunger strike, while prominent conservative figures from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba are demanding martial law. His new Minister of Defence, Ernesto Justianiano, is known as the most far-right member of the cabinet, supportive of a state of exception. With over 100 blockades crippling the country, including key infrastructure in Potosí, Oruro, and Santa Cruz, Paz has declared a 90-day State of Emergency. He is now pleading with the Armed Forces and police to forcefully “unblock the nation.” Yet protesters have only expanded their reach, seizing an oil field in Santa Cruz. After 36 days of unrest, eight deaths, and hundreds of arrests, union leaders from the COB and Kataristas remain defiant despite arrest warrants, calling to “increase the pressure.” They reject Paz’s dialogue council and demand new elections within 90 days.

• U.S. investigates two more Mexican governors: The Trump administration is investigating two sitting Mexican governors, Sonora’s Alfonso Durazo and Américo Villarreal of Tamaulipas, as part of an expanding U.S. effort targeting public officials suspected of links to organized crime. Both governors have lost their U.S. visas amid ongoing criminal probes, according to the LA Times. The investigations come amid strained U.S.-Mexico relations, particularly over security cooperation and Washington’s increasingly aggressive actions against Mexican political figures. At a political rally on Sunday, President Claudia Sheinbaum denounced the investigations as interference in Mexico’s internal affairs, questioning whether they are driven by legitimate anti-crime concerns or U.S. domestic political interests. Both governors deny wrongdoing.

• Germany loses UN Security Council seat: Germany failed to win a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, losing out to Portugal and Austria in a major diplomatic blow to Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The result marks Germany’s first failure in decades to secure a Western European seat, with Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul calling it a “bitter defeat” and blaming backlash over Berlin’s support for Israel and Russian efforts to punish Germany for its backing of Ukraine.

• Unrest in Mogadishu: Heavy gunfire broke out in Mogadishu on Wednesday, the AFP reported, after former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire said government forces attacked him during a meeting in which he was preparing for anti-government demonstrations scheduled for Thursday. The protests are in opposition to current President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s decision to extend his own term by one year beyond its May 15 expiration. Witnesses described shooting in the central part of the capital lasting around 15 minutes, with audible explosions in surrounding districts.

• Sudanese army and RSF clash in Al-Barka: The Sudanese Armed Forces announced Wednesday they had repelled a large-scale attack by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) on the town of Al-Barka in the Blue Nile region, saying a precisely executed ambush destroyed and seized enemy combat vehicles and inflicted heavy casualties.

• Ukrainian strikes kill four in Russian-annexed Crimea: Ukrainian attacks killed four people and wounded ten in Russian-annexed Crimea on Thursday, according to Russian-aligned regional officials. Strikes reportedly hit a non-residential area of Simferopol, the peninsula’s main administrative city, killing three and wounding seven, and a separate Ukrainian drone strike on a commuter train in eastern Crimea killed one more person and wounded three.

• Islamic State-linked fighters kill 16 civilians in eastern Congo: Fighters from the Allied Democratic Forces, an Islamic State-linked armed group operating in eastern Congo, killed 16 civilians Tuesday night in an attack on a North Kivu village, according to Reuters. The attack occurred near four active Ebola cases, compounding the threat to health workers trying to contain the outbreak. The ADF had separately killed 15 civilians and a soldier in Beni over the weekend.

• China bans four New Zealand lawmakers for visiting Taiwan: China banned four New Zealand parliamentarians Thursday for visiting Taiwan in May, with the Chinese embassy in Wellington saying the lawmakers disregarded Beijing’s repeated warnings and caused serious adverse political impacts by meeting with high-level Taiwanese politicians. The year-long travel bans apply to three lawmakers from New Zealand’s ruling center-right coalition—Laura McClure, David Wilson, and Maureen Pugh—and Labour opposition lawmaker Duncan Webb, who can have the bans reduced or waived only by apologizing for the trip, according to Reuters. New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters expressed surprise at the move, noting lawmakers have visited Taiwan for decades without incident.

• Gunmen abduct at least seven students in northwest Nigeria: Suspected bandits stormed off-campus student accommodation in Nigeria’s Zamfara State on Tuesday morning, abducting at least seven students and fleeing to an unknown destination, the Zamfara State Police Command announced Thursday. Search-and-rescue operations involving joint police tactical teams and military personnel have been stepped up to secure the students’ release. Zamfara and other parts of northwest Nigeria have faced persistent attacks by heavily armed bandits who frequently carry out kidnappings for ransom.

More from Drop Site

• Jeremy Scahill discusses Iran, Gaza, and suppression of pro-Palestine speech: Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill told Sky News’s Yalda Hakim, in an interview on Wednesday, that Iran has emerged from the recent conflict in a stronger negotiating position than the U.S. and Israel anticipated, adding that Tehran believes the broad contours of a deal have already been settled and that Trump now needs a political off-ramp. On Gaza, Scahill said the term “ceasefire” has been used as a “surrender cudgel” against the Palestinians, arguing that Israel signed an agreement with Hamas but later violated it repeatedly by continuing to kill resistance figures and civilians in Gaza. “Israel signed a ceasefire with Hamas, not with the children in tents that they continue to burn alive,” he said. He also criticized U.K. policy on pro-Palestinian speech, referencing the barring of journalist colleagues Hassan Piker and Cenk Uygur from entering the United Kingdom.

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FROM DROP SITE

• “You Either Leave Right Now or You Die”—Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of a Village in Lebanon

• Livestream: Why the Iran Talks Now Hang on Lebanon + Election Primary Day

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Iran and Ceasefire

• Iran strikes Kuwait and Bahrain in retaliation for Qeshm Island attack: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for missile and drone strikes on Tuesday on U.S. military installations in Kuwait—including Camp Arifjan and Ali Al-Salem Airbase—and reported attacks on Bahrain, saying the strikes were retaliation for a U.S. strike on Qeshm Island. Kuwait’s defense ministry also confirmed that around 30 missiles and drones were launched toward its territory, with eight explosions reported in Bahrain. The IRGC also reportedly launched heavy strikes against opposition groups in Erbil, in Iran’s Kurdistan.

  • Kuwait’s Ministry of Defense reported on Wednesday that drones struck Terminal 1 at Kuwait International Airport, killing one and injuring as many as 63 people; the attack caused significant damage to the terminal.

  • U.S. Central Command released a statement Tuesday saying that it intercepted multiple Iranian ballistic missiles and drones targeting Kuwait and Bahrain, and conducted a strike on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island in “self-defense,” while denying that any U.S. personnel were harmed. CENTCOM’s statement did not address Iranian claims of successful strikes on the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, Camp Arifjan, or Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait.

  • Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke with the foreign ministers of France, Turkey, Qatar, Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia after Tuesday’s attacks in Kuwait, according to a post from Iran’s Foreign Ministry on X.

  • Kuwait demanded two members of the Iranian diplomatic mission leave the country within 24 hours following the strikes, according to the state’s Foreign Ministry, which said it delivered a formal protest note announcing a reduction in embassy staff and declaring two diplomats persona non grata.

• U.S. strikes tanker in the Gulf: CENTCOM confirmed on Tuesday that it struck the Botswana-flagged commercial tanker M/T Lexie after its crew ignored warnings while attempting to reach Iran’s Kharg Island. U.S. forces have now disabled six commercial vessels and redirected 122 since imposing a naval blockade of Iranian ports on April 13. War Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday shared footage of a U.S. Hellfire missile striking this tanker.

• IAEA chief says many Iranian nuclear activities have ceased since start of war: International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said on Tuesday that many of Iran’s previously active nuclear operations have stopped, telling reporters in the UAE that the conflict has brought a fundamental change in how the agency assesses Iran’s nuclear program. IAEA inspectors have remained in Iran throughout the war but have been unable to access nuclear sites since strikes began.

• Treasury sanctions Iran’s four largest cryptocurrency exchanges: The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Iran’s four largest cryptocurrency exchanges—Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex—along with four Iranian nationals on Tuesday, as part of what Washington calls “Operation Economic Fury,” its financial warfare campaign running parallel to its military conflict with Iran. Nobitex, the largest, processed more than half of all Iranian digital asset inflows in 2025; it also allegedly helped the Central Bank of Iran access hundreds of millions of dollars in stablecoins to stabilize the collapsing rial.

• Rubio tells Senate any sanctions relief for Iran depends on nuclear concessions, declares “the war is over”: Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday—his first public congressional appearance since the war began on February 28—insisting that any relief on sanctions for Iran is tied exclusively to concessions on its nuclear program.

  • Rubio alleged without providing evidence that Iran had undertaken plots to assassinate several prominent U.S. political figures on American soil. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei dismissed these allegations in a post on X on Wednesday morning. “Every accusation is a confession,” Baghaei wrote. “Playing victim can not whitewash your harrowing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Nation of Iran.”

  • Rubio also declared “the war is over” during a heated exchange with Democratic Senator Cory Booker, as Democratic lawmakers blasted the administration for bypassing congressional oversight and providing insufficient information about its strategy for ending the conflict.

• Trump says Supreme Leader “giving approval” in talks: Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is “giving approval” and “involved, absolutely,” in talks with the United States, President Donald Trump said, adding that “that’s the way it has been for a long, long time.” Speaking on the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast, Trump said he and Khamenei “seem to be getting along quite well,” suggesting a future meeting could be possible “depending on how it all works out.” Trump stated he prefers a negotiated settlement with Iran over authorising military action, warning, “The other way is not nice.”

  • On the same podcast, Trump acknowledged that Israel’s continued assault on Lebanon was complicating peace talks with Iran and admitted that he had called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “crazy” during a tense phone call Monday. “At some point I said, Bibi, we got to stop this. We got to stop it,” Trump said.

• Iran executes man convicted of killing security officer during antigovernment protests: Iran executed a man convicted of murdering Major Mohammad Javad Bakhshian, a security officer stabbed during antigovernment protests in the western city of Hamadan on January 18, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported Tuesday.

Lebanon

• Casualty count: At least 3,516 people have been killed, and 10,674 wounded, in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

• Israeli attacks continue on Tuesday and Wednesday:

  • Strikes on paramedics: An Israeli strike directly hit an ambulance belonging to the Al-Risala Association in the southern town of Shahour on Wednesday, killing two paramedics and seriously injuring a third, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency. Another paramedic from the Al-Risala was killed in a drone strike on the al-Ain neighborhood in Arab Salim. A Civil Defense team from the Islamic Health Authority was also struck Wednesday by an Israeli drone while responding to a previous strike in Zebdin, with reports of injuries among paramedics.

  • One Lebanese soldier was killed in an Israeli airstrike Wednesday on the Nabatieh–Kfour Tibnit road, according to the Lebanese army.

  • A strike on the town of al-Housh in the Tyre district killed six people. A separate strike in al-Zrarieh killed one person and injured another on Wednesday.

  • Israeli forces issued more forced displacement orders on Wednesday, telling residents of Sidon, Mazra’at Kawkariya al-Riz, and al-Zarariya in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately and move north of the Zahrani River.

  • The Israeli military claimed that part of its Givati Brigade crossed the Litani River on Wednesday morning and entered the villages of Zawtar al-Sharqieh and Zawtar al-Gharbieh in southern Lebanon, as part of an operation involving more than 100 airstrikes on the region. Israel claimed, without evidence, that its troops killed around 20 Hezbollah fighters and seized weapons caches.

  • A wave of strikes on Monday and Tuesday in the Bint Jbeil area killed 5 and injured 48 others, including a child and six medical staff at Tibnin Government Hospital; the hospital was also damaged, in what officials described as repeated Israeli strikes on medical facilities.

  • The Lebanese Army deployed intelligence units to search the Christian quarter of Tyre on Tuesday after the Israeli military alleged that Hezbollah fighters were operating there, according to L’Orient-Le Jour. Several families fled to Sidon and Beirut ahead of potential Israeli strikes, while residents told the outlet they were deeply skeptical of the Israeli military’s claim.

  • Hezbollah claimed two successful attacks on Tuesday against Israeli forces near Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon, one of which involved artillery and the other a missile barrage.

• “You Either Leave Right Now or You Die”: Israel’s forced displacement of Ain Arab in southern Lebanon: Israeli forces forcibly expelled residents of the border village of Ain Arab in southern Lebanon during a ground incursion that witnesses told Drop Site involved soldiers going door to door and ordering civilians out at gunpoint—as part of a broader Israeli campaign of redrawing lines in the south of Lebanon, which has left more than 1.2 million people displaced since early March. According to residents, soldiers declared the area inside a newly designated Israeli “yellow line” and told people they had two hours to leave, with one soldier reportedly saying, “You either leave right now or you die.” One resident, Nasreen Abd Elaal, said troops entered the village with armored vehicles and a bulldozer before ordering evacuation, adding that “they didn’t even give us that” time to prepare. “To say we are destroyed is not enough…We left our livelihoods in the soil and fled.” Read the full report from Drop Site contributor Lylla Younes here.

• U.S. weighing military training for Lebanese Army: The United States is considering a plan to train the Lebanese Army as part of broader efforts to disarm Hezbollah, according to Israeli public broadcaster Kan, citing sources familiar with ongoing Lebanese-Israeli negotiations in Washington.

Palestine

• Casualty count: Over the last 24 hours, three Palestinians were killed and 35 were injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 has risen to 72,945 killed, with 173,011 injured. Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 936 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 2,903, while 781 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

• Three Palestinians killed on Wednesday: Three Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across central and southern Gaza on Wednesday, according to WAFA. An Israeli drone strike in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza killed one person and injured several others, while another drone-fired missile in the Al-Maghraqa area killed a second person. In southern Gaza, a woman died from wounds sustained about a week earlier in an Israeli strike on Khan Younis.

• Gaza children surviving on 6 liters of water daily as summer heat raises epidemic fears: More than one million children in Gaza are surviving on roughly 6 liters of water per day—a fraction of the global standard—as infrastructure destruction and the ongoing Israeli blockade continue to devastate water supplies, Gaza Health Ministry chief Dr. Muneer Alboursh said Tuesday. He noted that overflowing sewage, accumulating garbage, and rodent infestations in displacement centers are creating mounting disease risks as temperatures rise in the summer.

• Hamas’s military spokesman tells mediators “moment of truth” has arrived amid escalating Israeli violations: Abu Obaida, spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said in a recorded speech released Tuesday that mediators and guarantors of the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement face “a moment of truth” amid continued Israeli attacks, assassinations, and ceasefire violations carried out under what he described as “false agreements and deceptive understandings.” “Where are your guarantees?” he asked, urging mediators to “restrain the occupation” and compel it to fulfill its obligations.

• Israel advances 2,162 new settlement units in occupied West Bank: Israeli authorities have approved 2,162 new housing units across three settlements in the occupied West Bank in a move that advances large-scale expansion plans, the Times of Israel reported. These expansions include 1,006 units in Gvaot, 922 units in Har Bracha in an early planning stage that could ultimately triple its size, and 234 units in Kiryat Arba near Hebron at the final approval stage. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described this move as strengthening Israeli control and preventing a Palestinian state. “This is not just a planning step, but a national development that solidifies our hold on the territory, strengthens Israel’s security, and establishes clear facts that prevent the establishment of an Arab terrorist state in the heart of the country,” Smotrich said.

• Abraham Accords states overtake U.S. as buyers of Israeli arms: Arab countries that signed the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization deals that bypassed the Palestinians, bought more Israeli defense equipment than the United States in 2025, according to Israeli Defense Ministry figures published Tuesday and reported by Haaretz. Israel’s arms exports surged 30 percent year-on-year to a record 55.25 billion shekels ($19.2 billion), with exports to Abraham Accords countries rising to 15 percent of total sales, jumping fivefold in two years, while Europe’s share fell sharply to 36 percent from 54 percent a year earlier and Asia-Pacific’s share climbed to 32 percent. The figures show Israeli defense exports have more than doubled in five years and now account for about 12 percent of Israel’s total exports, with roughly 90 percent of sales generated by Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

• UK has transferred no wounded Palestinian children for NHS care in 2026, Sky News reports: Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government pledged to evacuate up to 300 sick and injured Palestinian children from Gaza for National Health Service treatment, but only around 50 have arrived since the medical taskforce was established in late summer 2025, with zero transfers recorded in 2026, Sky News reported Tuesday. Officials and charities cite strict Home Office entry requirements—including biometric processing that cannot be conducted inside Gaza—as key bottlenecks, while a group of Palestinian children who had already received NHS care traveled to Parliament on Tuesday to lobby MPs to scale up the program.

U.S. News

By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at Julian@dropsitenews.com.

Primary results from Tuesday’s elections:

• Adam Hamawy, a former U.S. Army combat surgeon endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), won the Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District on Tuesday, defeating 12 other candidates. Hamawy, who served as a combat surgeon in Iraq, provided medical aid in Gaza in 2024, and supports Medicare for All and opposing military aid to Israel, overcame last-minute attacks which speciously linked his medical volunteer work in Bosnia to Al Qaeda and which sought to tie him to Omar Abdel-Rahman, after it was revealed he testified at his 1995 trial. He will face Republican Gregg Mele in the general election, though his victory is essentially guaranteed in the deep-blue district.

• California’s highly contested gubernatorial election remains uncalled. As of Wednesday morning, roughly 60 percent of the vote has been counted. Republican pundit Steve Hilton leads all candidates with 27.8 percent of the vote, closely followed by former Democratic congressman and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, at 25.4 percent. Tom Steyer, a billionaire running on a progressive platform of challenging the state’s utility monopolies and who has also advocated for a single-payer healthcare system for the state, has garnered 19.6 percent of the vote. Under California’s “jungle primary” arrangement, the top two finishers in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.

• In Los Angeles, incumbent mayor Karen Bass is guaranteed a spot in the general election. Bass will face either reality TV star Spencer Pratt, a right-wing populist, or Nithya Raman, a left-wing city councilwoman. With 63 percent of the vote counted, Pratt leads Raman by 8 points.

• Auto mechanic Randy Villegas leads his Democratic opponent, Dr. Jasmeet Bains, by 4 points in California’s 22nd district, which covers a sizable chunk of the state’s Central Valley. Bains has received the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and, notably, reversed her position on Israel after receiving support from the AIPAC-offshoot Democratic Majority for Israel. One of these Democrats will face Republican incumbent David Valdao, a moderate Republican who voted in favor of President Trump’s second impeachment in January 2021.

• San Diego city councilwoman Marni von Wilpert will advance to face Jim Desmond in the San Diego area’s 48th district. Von Wilpert defeats her primary challenger, Ammar Campa-Najjar, after her campaign received millions of dollars from pro-Israel groups, most notably receiving a $1 million ad-buy from DMFI.

• Incumbent Democrat Doris Matsui will likely face her progressive challenger, Mai Vang, in the November general election, though the race remains close and has yet to be called. Zachariah Wooden, a Republican who Matsui reportedly boosted in hopes of nullifying Vang’s challenge, trails Vang by less than a percentage point with less than 50 percent of votes counted.

• Longtime AIPAC ally and current Rep. Jimmy Gomez defeated his progressive challenger, Angela Gonzalez-Torres, in the 34th district, which covers much of east-central Los Angeles, according to a call by the AP. Gomez faces another non-electoral challenge, however: the House Ethics Committee has reportedly opened an investigation into sexual misconduct involving the congressman and aide, it was reported yesterday.

• State Sen. Scott Wiener will face San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan in California’s 11th district, where one of the Democrats will replace former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Chan, who had Pelosi’s endorsement, was able to defeat progressive challenger Saikat Chakrabarti in their contest for the second spot in the general; Wiener won a strong plurality of the vote and will be the presumptive favorite in November.

• Iowa state representative Josh Turek defeated state senator Zach Wahls in that state’s Democratic senate primary. Turek had received the clandestine backing of the Democratic leadership, with Chuck Schumer facilitating a dark-money campaign in support of Turek’s candidacy (involving $10 million funnelled to the campaign through a group called “Vote Vets). Turek will face Rep. Ashley Hinson, who Trump endorsed. The President’s endorsement was less decisive in Iowa’s gubernatorial primary, however. Rep. Randy Feenstra, who Trump endorsed, lost to businessman and farmer Zach Lahn. Lahn will face State Auditor Rob Sand in the general election.

• In Montana, firefighter Sam Forstag holds a 4-point lead over former gubernatorial candidate Ryan Busse in the Democratic primary for the state’s 1st congressional district, though the race has yet to be called. Forstag was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who held a rally for the candidate in Missoula last week.

• Trump names housing finance official Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence: President Donald Trump on Tuesday named Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte—a political ally with no intelligence background—as acting director of national intelligence. Because Pulte is assuming the title of “acting” director, he is able to bypass Senate confirmation. It is unclear whether he is Trump’s permanent choice for the role. Pulte replaces Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her resignation last month, and has previously used his FHFA post to pursue criminal referrals against Democratic political figures, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff.

• Senate Republicans circulate three-year Section 702 extension without key privacy protections: Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton and Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley are privately circulating a bill that would extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act through June 2029, Politico reports. The bill includes penalties for violating search standards and requires that an attorney sign off on some FBI searches, and also narrows the definition of “an electronic communications service provider.” It omits, however, two major demands made by a bipartisan privacy coalition: warrant requirements for searching Americans in foreign intelligence databases and for law enforcement purchases of Americans’ data from brokers.

• Supreme Court allows Alabama to use congressional map lower court found intentionally discriminates against Black voters: The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday ruled in favor of Alabama, allowing it to use a Republican-drawn congressional map that a lower court found contained “undisputed evidence” of intentional racial discrimination against Black voters. Alabama had appealed to the court requesting the ability to use a map that has just one majority Black district, as opposed to a map previously ordered by a court that had two. Alabama has seven congressional districts in total. The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor warning the ruling will lead to an election “held under a never-before-used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamians.”

• CBS fires Scott Pelley: CBS News terminated veteran journalist Scott Pelley on Tuesday, one day after he reportedly accused the network’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, of “murdering 60 Minutes” at a tense staff meeting with Nick Bilton, who was hired last week as executive producer of the program. Pelley released a statement following his termination, in which he claimed that “new management” had “instructed” him “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” the New York Times reported. “I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified,” Pelley said.

• Schumer meets with Maine Senate candidate Platner in Washington: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met Tuesday with Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, offering no details of their talk beyond a pledge to defeat incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Schumer initially backed Gov. Janet Mills for the race before endorsing Platner after Mills suspended her campaign in April. “I met with Graham Platner today,” Schumer told reporters. “We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate.”

Other International News

• Cuba calls recent U.S. sanctions an illegal escalation: The Cuban government on Tuesday defended the Grupo de Administración Empresarial (GAESA), a business conglomerate linked to its military, after the Trump administration designated it a sanctions target under Executive Order 14404 on May 1, and called the move “the most intense, disproportionate and dangerous escalation in recent history.” Responding in state outlet Granma, Havana rejected U.S. characterizations of the organization as corrupt, describing it instead as a legitimate economic institution that has funded housing, schools, clinics, and infrastructure.

  • More major international companies are withdrawing from Cuba ahead of a June 5 deadline for compliance with the executive order. Spanish hotel operators Iberostar and Meliá, Canadian mining giant Sherritt International, shipping firms CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd, and airlines including Air Canada have suspended or scaled back operations in the country. Foreign companies face exclusion from the U.S. financial system if they continue doing business with GAESA after the deadline.

• Ukrainian drone strikes kill seven on bus in Donetsk: A Ukrainian drone strike killed at least seven people and wounded 11 on a bus traveling through Russian-controlled Donetsk on Wednesday, Al Jazeera reports. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also confirmed additional overnight strikes on the Petersburg Oil Terminal, a weapons facility in the Tambov region, and military targets at the Kronstadt base.

• Tribal fighting in South Darfur kills at least 50 civilians: At least 50 civilians have been killed in clashes between the Salamat and Beni Halba tribes in South Darfur’s Kubum area since May 23, including approximately 21 people—among them women and children—killed in a drone strike launched from Nyala, according to a local community leader, the Sudan Tribune reported. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has been accused of backing one of the tribes with combat vehicles and drones, though both tribes had previously pledged allegiance to the group.

  • Sudanese Sovereign Council Chairman and Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan held unannounced talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara on Tuesday, with official state media having not disclosed his departure from Sudan in advance. The two leaders discussed bilateral cooperation and regional issues, according to a brief statement from the Sovereign Council’s media office.

  • Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly described Sudan’s conflict as a “proxy war” on Tuesday, noting that two U.S. allies, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are backing opposing sides in the war. This is the first acknowledgment by the Trump administration that the UAE is supporting a party to the conflict. The admission comes despite years of reporting and United Nations findings that the UAE has provided military and financial support to the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group credibly accused of genocide and crimes against humanity.

• Trump endorses far-right Colombian presidential candidate: President Donald Trump on Tuesday endorsed far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia’s June 21 presidential runoff, calling him a “smart, strong, and tough leader” and describing his opponent, leftist Senator Iván Cepeda, as a “radical left Marxist.” The country’s incumbent president, Gustavo Petro, swiftly condemned the endorsement as a threat to Colombian sovereignty, invoking the country’s founding fathers and writing that “when a country interferes in the decisions of another country, freedom dies.”

• Bolivia’s defense and education ministers resign: Bolivian Defense Minister Marcelo Salinas and Education Minister Beatriz Garcia resigned Tuesday amid a month of anti-government protests. The protesters have called upon center-right President Rodrigo Paz to roll back austerity measures and address rising living costs in the country. The resignations mark the highest-level departures yet under Paz as he considers implementing a state of emergency to bring an end to the widespread protests.

• Sexual torture, starvation, and TB reported in Ecuador’s military-run prisons: One inmate died every seven hours over the past year in Ecuador’s military-controlled prisons—surpassing death rates from the era of cartel control—with reports of sexual torture, mass starvation, physical abuse, and tuberculosis emerging from facilities that also hold political detainees. The U.S. has recently expanded its security cooperation with the Ecuadorian government, with the Pentagon transferring weapons and deploying military personnel to the country earlier this year.

• Tunisian court sentences opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi to life in prison plus 30 years: A Tunis court on Tuesday sentenced Ennahdha party leader and former parliamentary speaker Rached Ghannouchi to life imprisonment plus 30 years on terrorism-related charges in the so-called “secret apparatus” case, which stems from accusations linking his Islamist party to the 2013 assassinations of leftist politicians Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi. Twenty-four alleged co-conspirators received sentences related to the case, 11 of which were life sentences.

• Trump administration proposes 25% tariff on Brazilian imports: U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced a proposed 25 percent tariff on Brazilian imports under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 late on Monday, alleging unfair practices on the part of Brazil, including illegal deforestation, ethanol market access restrictions, and anticorruption enforcement failures. The tariff was announced despite recent data showing that the U.S. had a $420 million trade surplus with Brazil in March. The newest tariffs would partially replace a 50 percent levy imposed on Brazilian goods last year.

• U.S. sanctions Congolese militia leaders: The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday announced sanctions on M23 intelligence chief John Imani Nzenze and FDLR commander Gustave Kubwayo, high-profile leaders of armed groups on opposing sides of the ongoing conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Nzenze’s M23 has reportedly received Rwandan backing, and the FDLR, a Hutu militia, has been active since that country’s 1994 genocide. Fighting in the country has continued despite U.S. attempts at mediation.

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At the same time, Israel is pursuing a systematic campaign to empty entire communities across southern Lebanon and has destroyed approximately 60 villages near the southern border. Amnesty International warns the displacement orders “don’t constitute lawful advance warnings” and amount to the war crime of unlawful transfer.

• Drop Site’s Ryan Grim and Maysa Mustafa kicked off this week’s livestream speaking with Dr. Adam Hamawy, a plastic surgeon and U.S. veteran who performed surgeries in Gaza, and is now the frontrunner in New Jersey’s 12th congressional district in a primary where U.S. support for Israel’s wars in the Middle East have been defining issues.

• Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute joined to break down whether the Iran deal is collapsing in real time.

• Sean Vitka of Demand Progress discussed Rashida Tlaib’s Lebanon War Powers Resolution and Democratic Party inaction on the war.

• And Drop Site contributor Lylla Younes also joined live from Beirut, speaking on her reporting of the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon—including her latest report on the Ain Arab village, where soldiers went door to door telling residents: “You either leave right now or you die.”

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BEIRUT, Lebanon—When Lebanon and Israel announced a ceasefire agreement on April 16, Nasreen Abd Elaal and her husband and four children packed their few belongings and departed the public school in Marj al-Zuhoor where they had taken shelter—for the last time, they hoped. They returned the next day to their home in Ain Arab, a small village nestled in the plains near the southern border, where they run a small butcher shop and corner store. That same day, Israeli forces entered the village and established a curfew, warning local residents not to leave their homes after dark, before setting up a checkpoint on the exit road leading south.

Twelve days later, Abd Elaal was working behind the counter at the store when she saw a large armored bulldozer lumbering down the road, followed by a swarm of army vehicles carrying, by her estimation, more than one hundred Israeli soldiers. The troops spread through the village, pointed their guns at residents and told them that the area was located within Israel’s new “yellow line”—a line demarcating an Israeli zone of control along the southern border inside Lebanese territory that was unilaterally declared by Israel using the same terminology as in Gaza. The soldiers told Abd Elaal and the other village residents that they had two hours to evacuate north.

“They didn’t even give us that,” Abd Elaal recalled. She rushed home and put her children in their pickup truck, then went back into the house with her husband to pack what they could. They were interrupted by the sound of a car horn and ran back outside to find that an Israeli soldier had opened the door of their vehicle and begun honking the horn while their children were sitting inside. “He told us they had orders to empty the village. He said, ‘You either leave right now or you die.’” Residents were expelled from the village so rapidly, many weren’t even able to lock their front doors behind them, Abd Elaal said.

The forced expulsion of Ain Arab—where Israeli soldiers went door to door, forcing residents from their homes at gunpoint—was a striking example of the Israeli military’s campaign to ethnically cleanse villages across southern Lebanon. Human rights advocates and locals told Drop Site they hadn’t heard of a similar incident occurring in this latest phase of the war—the Israeli military typically bombs and shells areas to forcibly displace residents. Over 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon since March 2, and many have no idea if or when they will be able to return to their homes.

Abd Elaal returned with her family to the same school-turned-shelter in the village of Marj al-Zuhoor in the Bekaa Valley where she said four families share one room and water access is intermittent. After studying a map that the Israeli military published on April 19, they found that their village was actually located outside of Israel’s “yellow line,” prompting a group of men from the village, including Abd Elaal’s husband and a local official, to visit an army office in the village of Marjayoun on May 21 to ask if the state could work with UNFIL—the United Nations peacekeeping force stationed in the South—to return them to their lands. When the residents followed up a week later, army officials said they had not been able to secure them safe passage back home.

“To say we are destroyed is not enough,” Abd Elaal said. Most villagers lived off of the land, and their expulsion meant that they couldn’t prepare the fields for spring planting. “We left our livelihoods in the soil and fled.”

The story of Ain Arab underscores the brutal and sweeping nature of Israel’s ongoing military campaign in southern Lebanon, where a flurry of displacement orders are issued daily and lines of advance are drawn and redrawn without regard for civilian land or life. Israel did not adhere to the ceasefire announced in mid-April, and has steadily escalated its air and ground offensive, prompting Hezbollah to wage a campaign of resistance attacks. The Israeli assault moved gradually further north, culminating in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring on Sunday that he had ordered the Israeli military to strike targets in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh, prompting thousands to flee the area. The move caused Iran to consider suspending its own ceasefire talks with the U.S. entirely.

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to de-escalate the fighting after he spoke with Netanyahu and Hezbollah through mediators. Trump said no Israeli troops would be “going to Beirut” and that Hezbollah “agreed to stop shooting at Israel.” He said Hezbollah had “agreed that all shooting will stop—That Israel will not attack them, and they will not attack Israel.” A statement by the Lebanese embassy in Washington on Monday said that Hezbollah had agreed to not attack northern Israel. There was no immediate public statement from Hezbollah.

While the latest arrangement may have prevented another large-scale Israeli attack on the Lebanese capital, the deal did little to stop the fighting in the region south of the Zahrani River and in the Bekaa Valley. A day after Trump’s announcement, Israeli forces carried out multiple air strikes on the southern city of Nabatieh and reiterated a warning to all residents in the area to evacuate ahead of more planned attacks. At least eight people were killed, including two children, in Israeli strikes on Tuesday, while Hezbollah also continued launching dozens of projectiles and drones toward Israeli soldiers.

“The villages they issue warnings for are getting hammered,” said Abbas Atwe, a medic in the Islamic Health Authority stationed in Nabatieh. “On some days, we see up to 25 airstrikes in some places.” He added that while many have left the villages near Nabatieh, thousands remain, either unable to afford renting elsewhere or unwilling to abandon their homes.

The displacement orders typically arrive as lists of villages published by the Israeli military spokesperson on X, which are then disseminated among community Whatsapp groups and on social media. Occasionally, the occupation releases satellite imagery indicating precisely which buildings they plan to target. But in many cases, strikes rain down at random on civilian homes, leading to dozens of casualties a day. Since March 2, the Israeli military assault on Lebanon has killed 3,468 people and wounded more than 10,500 others. Over 600 of those deaths have occurred since the so-called ceasefire was declared in mid-April. During the last week of May, an average of 11 children were killed or wounded in Israeli attacks every 24 hours, according to UNICEF.

“These don’t constitute lawful advance warnings because they don’t actually give residents the information they need to know to actually leave,” Kristine Bekerle, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa told Drop Site. Under international law, she added, militaries can only displace residents for their own safety—not to achieve a strategic objective—and are required to ensure both the health and safety of these residents as well as their safe return as soon as the threat to their lives is past. To do otherwise is to commit “the war crime of unlawful transfer, which is basically one way of saying forced displacement.”

One way to determine whether an army is carrying out unlawful transfer, Bekerle said, is to examine what it is doing to prevent displaced residents from returning. In southern Lebanon, Israel has done so through two methods: the demarcation of its so-called “yellow line,” past which Lebanese civilians are barred, and a systematic campaign of mass destruction of civilian property, which ensures that residents have no homes to return to. She described the findings of a forthcoming report from Amnesty, which compares displacement orders issued in the current phase of the war with those issued in 2024. The researchers found that not only are displacement orders far more sweeping and frequent in this round of fighting, but that they are less frequently followed by instructions for exactly which buildings and neighborhoods to evacuate.

“It’s just getting worse,” Bekerle said.

In one of the largest recent attacks, an Israeli airstrike near Jabal Amel Hospital in the southern city of Tyre (Sour) killed four people, injured nearly 130—including dozens of the hospital’s medical, nursing, and administrative staff—and caused extensive damage to the hospital, including cutting off electricity to intensive care units. First responders worked for hours to rescue the injured from the rubble and the nearby Hayram Hospital issued an urgent call for blood donations. Lebanon’s health care system has come under repeated attack by Israel with hospitals being bombed and paramedics and rescue workers being targeted in double- or triple-tap strikes, with over 120 killed over the past three months.

Mohanad Hage Ali, a research director at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, told Drop Site that vast destruction of civilian property is one of Israel’s primary military objectives in southern Lebanon.

“If you look at the Gaza model, it’s not really about controlling Hamas; it’s about re-structuring the geographic surroundings of the state of Israel in ways that would change reality for good,” Ali said, adding that so far the Israelis had destroyed approximately 60 villages near the southern border. “You’ve pushed out Lebanese Shia, who the Israeli security mind equates with Hezbollah, further and further away from Israeli towns and settlements.”

Back at the shelter in Marj al-Zuhoor, Abd Elaal yearned to return to her land, where she hoped to find her home still standing. Since they arrived, her infant daughter has been in and out of the hospital battling illness from the cold shelter nights. Abd Elaal called on the state and UNIFIL forces to ensure their safe passage back to Ain Arab, before it was too late. While Lebanon and Israel have held several rounds of direct talks in Washington, Israel has refused to withdraw its troops from Lebanon and has only escalated its brutal assault, pushing deeper into Lebanese territory and forcing more people from their homes.

“Nothing is coming from these negotiations. We go to sleep to death and wake up to death,” Abd Elaal said. “They’ve destroyed everything. Tell me, what more do they want? What is left?”

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Ceasefire Negotiations

• Trump says Israel and Hezbollah agreed to de-escalate: President Donald Trump said Monday that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to de-escalate after he spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hezbollah through mediators. Writing on Truth Social, Trump said no Israeli troops would be “going to Beirut” and that Hezbollah “agreed to stop shooting at Israel.” The Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported later on Monday that the Israeli military had prepared a major strike on Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh district but postponed the operation after the U.S. intervention.

  • Neither Israel nor Hezbollah has confirmed the existence of an agreement.

  • The Lebanese embassy in Washington later claimed that Hezbollah had agreed to an arrangement, proposed by the United States, under which Israel would suspend strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs in exchange for Hezbollah halting attacks against Israel.

  • In a post on X on Monday night, Netanyahu threatened further escalation in Lebanon, saying, “If Hezbollah does not cease attacking our cities and citizens, Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut.”

  • Hezbollah has not claimed responsibility for any cross-border attacks since Trump’s announcement though it has claimed attacks against Israeli troops occupying southern Lebanon.

  • The fourth round of negotiations between the Lebanese government and Israel began in Washington on Tuesday, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.

• Iran warns Israel about its continued attacks on Lebanon, says a ceasefire there is precondition for an agreement:

  • Iran’s central military command, Khatam Al Anbiya, warned Israeli residents about the consequences of following through on Netanyahu’s earlier threats to bomb Dahiyeh and Beirut. “Given the regime’s repeated violations of the ceasefire, if this threat is carried out, we warn residents of the northern areas and military settlements in the occupied territories (northern Israel): If they do not want to be harmed, they should leave the area.”

  • Ebrahim Azizi, chair of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, published an “urgent warning” Monday urging residents of a broad swath of northern Israel—spanning Kiryat Shmona and Metula south to Haifa and the Galilee—to evacuate immediately. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf also reported in a post on X on Monday that he had told Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri that if Israel’s attack on Lebanon continues, Iran will not only halt U.S. dialogue but “stand firmly” against Israel.

  • Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement Monday accusing the United States of repeatedly violating the mid-April ceasefire agreement through attacks on Iranian commercial shipping, and Israel of “flagrant violations” by continuing operations in Lebanon that have killed and wounded thousands, displaced two million people, and destroyed civilian infrastructure.

  • Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said that a permanent ceasefire in Lebanon is a prerequisite for any memorandum of understanding with the United States, adding that Tehran is prepared to assist Lebanon in “whatever action that is needed” to help “resistance” (Hezbollah) repel Israeli aggression.

• Pakistan, Iran coordinate on Lebanon ceasefire: Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who asked Pakistan to continue supporting de-escalation efforts in Lebanon, according to a readout from the meeting. Dar stressed the importance of protecting the current ceasefire agreement and both sides agreed to remain in close contact.

• China renews call for full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon: Beijing renewed its demand for an immediate and complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory at a UN emergency Security Council session on Monday. China’s representative urged countries with influence to help achieve a ceasefire as soon as possible. Beijing has previously opposed Israel’s expanding ground operation and warned that “Lebanon must not become another Gaza.”

• Iran urges UN Security Council to adopt binding measures against Israel: Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi urged the UN Security Council Monday to move “beyond the stage of expressing concern” and adopt “punitive and binding decisions” against Israel, arguing that international law “is not upheld through low-cost and ineffective condemnations.”

Lebanon

• Casualty count: At least 3,468 people have been killed, and 10,577 wounded in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

• Israeli attacks continue on Tuesday:

  • Israeli attacks across southern Lebanon killed at least eight people on Tuesday—including two Syrian workers struck at a plant nursery in Jibchit, and two others killed in drone strikes on a motorcycle and a car in Toul and Ansar, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA). Israeli warplanes also struck a Lebanese civil defense center in Kfarsir.

  • The Israeli military issued a renewed forced displacement order on Tuesday for residents of the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh, citing Hezbollah’s “violation of the ceasefire agreement” as justification for planned strikes on the major urban center.

  • Lebanese civil defense teams recovered six bodies and rescued three wounded survivors on Tuesday from the rubble of a residential building struck by Israel in the town of Marwaniyah in the Sidon district.

• Rising casualties in hospital strike: The casualty toll from a Monday strike near Tyre’s Jabal Amel Hospital rose on Tuesday morning to at least four killed and 127 wounded, including 39 members of the hospital’s medical, nursing, and administrative staff, according to NNA. The attack destroyed a nearby building, knocking out the facility’s power, oxygen, and intensive care systems, with journalist Hadi Hoteit reporting the death of some ICU patients after life-sustaining equipment went offline. Jabal Amel was among the last hospitals in southern Lebanon still providing intensive care, surgery, and pediatric services.

• Israeli officer killed, seven wounded in drone strike near Beaufort Castle: An Israeli officer was killed, and seven others were wounded in a Hezbollah drone attack near Beaufort Castle on Monday, according to Walla News. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed at the site since Israeli forces seized it over the weekend. A Drop Site breakdown of Hezbollah’s counterattacks on the fort is available here.

• Hezbollah continues operations on Monday and Tuesday: Hezbollah launched multiple rocket barrages and drone attacks into northern Israel on Monday, triggering air raid sirens across large parts of the country. The group separately reported conducting 41 military operations on Monday, including strikes on four Merkava tanks, two armored vehicles, an Iron Dome platform, a newly established Israeli command headquarters, and multiple surveillance sites. Hezbollah also said it carried out a series of attacks on Tuesday, including targeting three “Nimr” military vehicles with explosive drones near the town of Zawtar al-Sharqiya. The group also said it struck Israeli forces in Hadatha with rockets and artillery at dawn, forcing them to withdraw.

• Lebanon’s war losses could reach $25 billion, finance minister warns: Lebanese Finance Minister Yassine Jaber said on Tuesday that war-related losses have already exceeded $20 billion and could climb toward $25 billion if Israeli attacks continue, and warned that the full scale of economic and social damage may not become clear until the fighting ends, Al Jazeera reported.

Iran

• IRGC strikes container ship MSC Sariska V in Gulf in retaliation for U.S. attack on Iranian vessel: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps struck the Panama-flagged container ship MSC Sariska V with a cruise missile in retaliation for a U.S. Hellfire missile strike on the cargo vessel Lian Star. The vessel was hit roughly 40 nautical miles southeast of Umm Qasr, Iraq, according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency, causing a large explosion and subsequent fire. No injuries were reported. Confirming the strike, the IRGC cited the Swiss-operated MSC Sariska V’s ties to the “American Zionist enemy”; investigations by Al Jazeera and the Palestinian Youth Movement found the company facilitated hundreds of shipments linked to illegal Israeli settlements.

• Iran publishes first Hormuz traffic data: Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority released its first operational statistics on Monday, reporting that more than 300 non-Iranian vessels had submitted information for safe passage permits through the Strait of Hormuz since the authority began operations in early May, with oil tankers comprising 42% of requests. China and India were the top destinations among outbound vessels.

• U.S. and British soldiers killed in training accident at Erbil Air Base: A U.S. Army soldier and a British soldier died in a non-combat training accident at Erbil Air Base in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region on May 31, according to U.S. Army Central, the same day Iran’s IRGC launched ballistic missile strikes against Iranian Kurdish opposition bases in Erbil Province. No connection between the training accident and the Iranian strikes has been established.

Palestine

• Casualty count: Over the last 24 hours, one Palestinian was killed and nine were injured across Gaza. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 has risen to 72,942 killed, with 172,967 injured. Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 933 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 2,868, while 781 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

• Israeli attacks on Gaza continue on Monday and Tuesday:

  • An Israeli drone strike on the town of Az-Zawayda in central Gaza killed one Palestinian and wounded two others Tuesday, WAFA reported.

  • An Israeli strike on a civilian vehicle in Deir al-Balah killed one man and wounded four others, some critically, Shehab News Agency reported on Monday.

• Israeli forces detain four female Birzeit University students: Israeli forces arrested four female Palestinian students in a pre-dawn raid on the town of Birzeit, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, according to WAFA. The number of Palestinian female detainees is now 89, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, including three minors, three pregnant prisoners, and 19 held without charge. Israel detained over 41 Palestinians in its overnight arrest campaign across the occupied West Bank on Tuesday.

• Hamas official lambasts “Board of Peace” Envoy: Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan charged Nickolay Mladenov, the Trump administration’s High Representative for Gaza, with adopting the Israeli narrative wholesale, failing to condemn any of Israel’s near-daily attacks on the Strip, and making deliberate efforts to sideline Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey—the mediators who brokered the Sharm el-Sheikh ceasefire. “Today we almost see Netanyahu’s face in Mladenov’s image,” Hamdan told Al Jazeera Mubasher, warning that Mladenov risks being remembered as “a partner in the genocide committed against the Palestinian people.”

• Palestinian rights groups say Israel using disease and medical neglect as torture in its prisons: Thousands of Palestinian detainees have contracted scabies in Israeli custody due to overcrowding, denial of hygiene supplies, restrictions on bathing, and withheld medical care, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, citing the case of Azmi Abu Hail, 31, from Dura near Hebron, who has gone over a year without diagnosis or treatment. The group accused prison authorities of using disease, starvation, and medical neglect as tools of torture in Israeli prisons.

• UN experts: Escalating settler attacks are “daily terror in Palestinian lives”: Intensifying Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is being used to forcibly displace Palestinians from their land, UN experts warned Monday. Attacks by settlers, carried out “with the support and acquiescence of the Israeli State,” have become a “daily terror in Palestinian lives” and serve as “an instrument of coercion” facilitating “ethnic cleansing,” the experts said. At least 13 Palestinians were killed and nearly 500 injured in the first five months of 2026 in the occupied West Bank, outpacing figures from previous years.

• Israeli forces detain Gaza medical student leaving for studies in Italy: Israeli forces detained a Palestinian medical student from Gaza after he left the Strip via the Kerem Shalom crossing on Monday en route to Italy to continue his studies, according to Quds News. The student, Mahmoud Al-Najjar, was reportedly stopped shortly after departure and taken to an unknown location, with no information about his fate, despite having received approval to travel and being expected at Italy’s Tor Vergata University to pursue medical specialization. He is the sole survivor of his immediate family after an Israeli strike on their home in Jabalia in October 2024 killed his wife, four children, and other relatives. Only 5,836 Palestinians were allowed to evacuate or return to Gaza through Rafah Crossing, out of a total of 18,000 individuals who were supposed to travel under the ceasefire agreement, amid Israeli restrictions on movement.

U.S. News

By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at Julian@dropsitenews.com.

• A slew of key primary races across the U.S. today: Yesterday’s Drop Site Daily goes into detail about races in California, New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico, Iowa, and South Dakota we are watching most closely.

  • Tonight, Drop Site’s Julian Andreone and Maysa Mustafa will be covering the race in New Jersey’s 12th congressional district, where Adam Hamawy and Sue Altman are competing to replace the seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman.

• Iowa GOP Senate frontrunner warns Iran war is becoming a “political liability”: Rep. Ashley Hinson, the likely Republican Senate nominee in Iowa, privately told voters last week that the Iran war would become “a political liability for us too” if it drags on much longer, according to an audio obtained by Politico. The candid acknowledgment comes from a Trump loyalist who has repeatedly voted against limiting the president’s military powers. Strait of Hormuz closures have sent fertilizer and diesel prices soaring, teeing up devastation in the state’s agriculture.

• Schumer-linked groups and billionaire-backed PACs quietly back moderate Iowa Senate candidate: Millions of dollars in outside spending from groups affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a billionaire-backed dark money network have quietly flowed into Iowa’s Democratic Senate primary to support state Rep. Josh Turek over progressive challenger state Sen. Zach Wahls, despite Schumer’s denials of involvement in the race, The Lever reported on Monday. The spending network includes Schumer’s Impact PAC, which contributed the maximum $10,000 directly to Turek, and VoteVets, which shares vendors with Schumer’s spending operation and has pumped $8.2 million into the race. Read the full report from our friends at the Lever here.

• New from Drop Site: Blue Dog PAC treasurer, Rep. Mike Thompson, gets $1.2 million backing from affiliated super PAC. Blue Dog Action Fund, the super PAC spending arm for a fiscally conservative caucus of House Democrats, has already spent $1,200,000 in ad buys backing Thompson’s bid for reelection this cycle while he sits as treasurer of the Blue Dog Political Action Committee. Half of that is going to ads attacking Thompson’s progressive challenger, Eric Jones. Both are likely to make it to the general in November. Read the full story.

• A third of Sen. Susan Collins’ campaign donations tied to AIPAC: Roughly $1.6 million—a third of Sen. Susan Collins’ campaign contributions—are directly tied to AIPAC, according to a review of her quarterly financial report. In February, Zeteo reported that Collins received more money from AIPAC than from small donors; Collins has repeatedly answered questions about the genocide in Gaza by responding, “I am pro-Israel.”

• Trump rule narrows “medically frail” exemption for Medicaid work requirements, threatening coverage for millions: A new Trump administration rule defines “medically frail” so narrowly that people with cancer, HIV/AIDS, and end-stage renal disease would not automatically be exempt from Medicaid work requirements unless their condition significantly impairs their ability to work. The change will cost millions of sick Americans their coverage, advocates say, when the requirements take effect next year. The Congressional Budget Office had already estimated that roughly five million people would lose Medicaid under the work requirement introduced last year, including many who work but cannot manage the paperwork burden.

• Trump administration to drop $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund: The Trump administration plans to abandon its controversial $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund—created as part of a settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns—after two federal judges moved against it last week and the proposal drew bipartisan pushback on Capitol Hill, two senior administration officials told Axios. “This has become a distraction,” one official said.

• Trump administration developing rule to reject asylum claims without interviews: The Trump administration is drafting a regulation that would allow immigration officials to reject asylum applications without interviewing applicants if their cases were filed more than a year after arrival, bypassing a longstanding U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services practice, according to a review of internal documents by CBS. USCIS would put rejected applicants immediately into deportation proceedings, requiring them to plead their cases from the country they are trying to flee, according to CBS’s report.

• Albanian anti-corruption prosecutors open investigation into Kushner luxury resort project amid protests: Albania’s special anti-corruption prosecution office, SPAK, opened an investigation into controversial changes to protected land status in the Vjosa-Narta coastal wetland area that opened the door to a luxury resort development linked to Jared Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners. The planned development includes an uninhabited Adriatic island and several hundred hectares of a protected landscape home to flamingos, seals, and sea turtle nesting sites. The investigation mirrors a 2025 controversy in Serbia that led Affinity Partners to abandon a separate large-scale development there following local anti-corruption probes.

• Alleged Kata’ib Hezbollah member pleads not guilty in New York: Iraqi national Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi pleaded not guilty Monday in Manhattan federal court to eight counts, including conspiracy to provide material support to Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia backed by Iran that the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization. Al-Saadi said in response to the plea, “I am not guilty and we are in a war situation,” and “children are being killed by your rockets” before Judge Colleen McMahon ordered him seated.

Other International News

• Petro calls Colombia runoff a fight against “mafia fascism,” urges mass mobilization: Colombian President Gustavo Petro issued an expansive statement Monday, casting the upcoming presidential runoff as a historic struggle between democracy and what he called “mafia fascism,” accusing right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella of ties to paramilitary networks and alleging widespread vote-buying of between 150,000 and 200,000 pesos per vote during the first round.

  • Left-wing Colombian presidential candidate Iván Cepeda challenged right-wing rival Abelardo de la Espriella to a public debate on Monday and called for an investigation into what he described as 885,000 electoral irregularities in Sunday’s first-round vote, also alleging foreign interference in the election. The results that have been reported, Drop Site contributor Sasi Alejandre reported from Bogotá, are drawn from a preliminary pre-count; they are not yet binding.

  • Hundreds of young Colombians marched through Bogotá on Monday in a spontaneous show of support for progressive presidential candidate Iván Cepeda.

• Russia launches massive overnight strike on Ukraine, killing at least 12: Russia launched 656 drones and 73 missiles at Ukraine overnight Tuesday, killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens across Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Poltava, and Zaporizhzhia. Four people were killed and 58 wounded in Kyiv, while eight were killed and 36 wounded in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

• Drone strikes marketplace and hospital in Sudan’s Kubum: A long-range drone struck a crowded marketplace and rural hospital in the South Darfur town of Kubum, killing and wounding multiple civilians, according to Sudan Tribune. The attack comes amid escalating clashes between the Salamat and Beni Halba tribes in the region—both aligned with the RSF. A local doctor treating the wounded accused the RSF of launching the strike from Nyala to provide air support for one faction.

• Hotel giant quits Cuba, citing shortages and looming U.S. sanctions: Canadian hotel group Blue Diamond Resorts announced it is ending all operations in Cuba, where it managed 62 hotels, citing flight reductions, fuel and power shortages, water scarcity, supply chain disruptions, and difficulties obtaining food and medicine, and ahead of U.S. sanctions on companies that do business with the country’s GAESA, expected to go into effect on June 5.

• Armenia rejects Russian demand for immediate EU referendum: Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rebuffed a Russian demand—delivered by President Vladimir Putin during a phone call Monday—to hold an immediate referendum on leaving the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union in favor of the EU, calling the request “unreasonable” and saying any such vote before Armenia formally applies for EU candidate status remains “purely theoretical.” Russia has sharply escalated pressure on Armenia ahead of its early June parliamentary elections, recalling its ambassador over the weekend and suspending fish and seafood imports from Armenia.

• Five Mozambicans killed in xenophobic attacks in South Africa: At least five Mozambican nationals were killed in xenophobic attacks in the southern coastal city of Mossel Bay over the weekend, the Mozambican government said Monday, with roughly 800 Mozambicans caught up in the violence. 300 have already returned home, and more than 500 others were sheltered in the Western Cape Province awaiting repatriation.

• Kenyan protests against U.S.-linked Ebola quarantine facility: Two people were killed during protests against an Ebola quarantine facility for American citizens at a military base in central Kenya, Reuters reports, though the circumstances of their deaths remain unclear.

  • On Tuesday, Kenya’s High Court ordered the country’s government to publicly disclose the details of its agreement with the U.S. regarding the facility, which will reportedly reserve 50 beds for U.S. citizens at Kenya’s Laikipia Air Base, and extended orders halting the installation’s establishment until more information was available. Kenya’s president, William Ruto, has defended the facility as “not…different from all the other facilities that we have across Kenya.”

  • Five healthcare workers infected with Ebola in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo have recovered and been discharged from the Evangelical Medical Center in Bunia, hospital director Calvin Ambitapio told Drop Site’s Godfrey Olukya on Monday, describing their recovery as “encouraging” and noting that he expected more recoveries soon.

• Oxford Union vows to host Piker and Uygur remotely: The Oxford Union said Monday it will proceed with its June 6 event featuring Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur after the UK Home Office revoked both of their travel authorizations on the grounds that their presence would not be “conducive to the public good,” announcing it would host the pair remotely. Union President Arwa Elrayess called the last-minute intervention “a direct threat to free expression” and said the organization would not seek “a permission slip from the state” for the events it chooses to host.

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Blue Dog Action Fund, the super PAC spending arm for a fiscally conservative caucus of House Democrats, has already spent $1,200,000 in ad buys backing Rep. Mike Thompson’s bid for reelection this cycle while he sits as treasurer of the Blue Dog Political Action Committee, an affiliated organization that also contributed $5,000 directly to his campaign.

The Blue Dog Coalition, who claim to represent “the center of the political spectrum” by pursuing “fiscally responsible” economic policies and a “strong national defense,” formed Blue Dog Action in 2025 for the upcoming election cycle. Federal election law requires that every political committee designate a treasurer, whose responsibilities include ensuring campaign finance reports are accurate, complete, and filed on time, before it can raise or spend money. An organization’s treasurer can thus, in some cases, be held personally liable for the committee’s actions.

The super PAC withheld its ad buys until April 2, two days after the March 31 filing deadline for first quarter FEC reports in an apparent effort to shelter the funding push from scrutiny.

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Aside from the $1,200,000 spent for Thompson, Blue Dog Action has spent $300,000 supporting Bobby Pulido in Texas’s 15th congressional district and roughly $1 million in independent expenditures supporting Johnny Garcia, who just won his primary in Texas’ 35th congressional district against his embattled challenger Maureen Galindo, who advocated for converting ICE detention facilities into concentration camps for Zionists.

Neither Thompson nor Blue Dog PAC responded to requests for comment.

Thompson’s role as treasurer of a PAC that has contributed directly to his campaign, and one that’s affiliated super PAC has bankrolled his re-election bid, raises significant questions about how coordination between the candidate and the super PAC could possibly be avoided. It is illegal for Super PACs to coordinate with the candidates or campaigns for whom they spend. This overlap also creates the appearance of a conflict of interests, introducing blanket ethical concerns outside of election law.

“It shows the complete fallacy of the Supreme Court decision of Citizens United, where it decided that Super PACs are separate from candidates and they operate independently. They don’t operate independently, and this is more proof of that,” said Craig Holman, an ethics expert at Public Citizen.

While Thompson’s position in the PAC “doesn’t violate any law in itself,” Holman said, “He’s using his position to help enrich his own campaign. If I were part of the Blue Dog Coalition I would start questioning that type of activity.”

“He can have an extraordinary amount of power over the decisions of the PAC,” Holman added.

Eric Jones, the candidate challenging Thompson to his left, has focused his campaign on lowering costs by breaking up utility monopolies like PG&E and rooting out corruption in D.C. by banning corporate PAC money from elections and prohibiting members of Congress from trading stocks. Of the $1.2 million Blue Dog Action Fund spent on Thompson’s behalf, $600,000 specifically went into funding oppositional ads against Jones across California’s 4th congressional district.

The district, encompassing significant portions of Sacramento, Sonoma, and Napa, is safely Democratic, and an increasingly likely outcome is that both Thompson and Jones will advance to the general election after the state’s jungle primary concludes on Tuesday.

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Primary season is in full swing: Pro-Israel groups play big in key California races. Adam Hamawy, retired Army doctor who volunteered in Gaza, faces last-minute smear campaign in New Jersey. And Drop Site reporting shakes up San Francisco congressional race.

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Iran and Ceasefire

• Iranian state media reports Tehran may be suspending ceasefire talks: On Monday, Iranian state news agency Tasnim reported that the Iranian negotiating team may be suspending talks through mediators as a result of ongoing Israeli attacks in Lebanon and Gaza, indicating that Iran may “activate other fronts, including the Bab al-Mandab Strait, in order to punish the Zionists and their supporters,” Tasnim said, in addition to completely blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on X: “The ceasefire between Iran and the US is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon. Its violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts. The U.S. and Israel are responsible for the consequences of any violation.”

• U.S. and Iranian strikes resume over the weekend:

  • IRGC claims downing of U.S. drone over Iranian waters: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced that it shot down a U.S. MQ-1 drone it described as attempting a “hostile operation” in Iranian territorial waters, saying the aircraft was “immediately detected and targeted by the Revolutionary Guard’s modern defense missiles.” The U.S. Air Force officially retired the MQ-1 Predator in 2018, though an upgraded variant, the MQ-1C Gray Eagle, remains in active service with the U.S. Army and Army National Guard. It remains unclear whether the downed aircraft was U.S.-operated or used by a Gulf ally.

  • IRGC says it struck U.S. airbase used to launch attack on Sirik Island: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Monday its Aerospace Force struck the airbase from which it said a recent U.S. attack on a telecommunications tower on Sirik Island in Hormozgan Province was launched, claiming the “predicted targets were destroyed.” The IRGC warned that “if the aggression is repeated, the response will be completely different.”

  • U.S. military confirms strikes on Iranian radar and drone sites: U.S. Central Command confirmed that it bombed Iranian radar, drone, and command and control sites on Saturday and Sunday around the city of Geruk and on Qeshm Island “in response to aggressive Iranian actions that included the shootdown of a U.S. MQ-1 drone that was operating over international waters.” U.S. forces also fired a missile into the engine room of a Gambia-flagged cargo ship trying to evade the U.S. blockade.

  • CENTCOM claims missile interception in Kuwait: CENTCOM said it intercepted two Iranian ballistic missiles targeting U.S. forces in Kuwait. Air raid sirens were also activated in Kuwait on Sunday. Last week, an Iranian Fateh-110 ballistic missile reportedly struck Ali Al Salem Air Base in northern Kuwait on Thursday, causing U.S. casualties and significant asset destruction, despite official claims the missile had been intercepted, according to Bloomberg.

• Nuclear talks stall as U.S. leadership continues to temporize:

  • President Donald Trump sent revised and tougher terms to Iran, the New York Times reported Saturday, citing three officials, though the specific changes from the previous proposal remain unclear. One official suggested to the Times that the tougher terms may be intended to pressure Iran into accepting the earlier framework already sent to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei for approval rather than to fundamentally alter the offer.

  • On Fox News on Saturday, President Trump told Lara Trump the U.S. is “slowly but surely” getting what it wants from “nuclear negotiations with Iran and is “close to a very good deal,” while warning that “if we don’t get what we want, we’re going to end it a different way.” He claimed that Iran had agreed to terms barring it from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons and that a final agreement would immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping.

  • Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei denied Iran’s nuclear program was part of the talks. “No negotiations have taken place on the details of the nuclear file. At this stage, our priority is ending the war,” Baghaei said at a news conference on Monday.

  • In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump told his congressional critics to “sit back and relax,” writing that it is “much tougher” to negotiate “when political hacks keep negatively ‘chirping.’”

  • Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Saturday that lawmakers will not approve any nuclear agreement until they are certain “the rights of the Iranian people have been secured,” adding that Iran’s negotiators “have no trust in the words and promises of the enemy” and that “our criterion is tangible achievements.”

• Qatar open to temporary Hormuz fees for mine-clearing: Doha and its Gulf partners oppose permanent transit fees through the Strait of Hormuz but would consider temporary charges tied to specific purposes such as mine-clearing operations, according to remarks by Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saoud Al-Thani. “For certain times that they say they will use it for mine-clearing or some usage of the fees for a temporary time, this is something that is negotiable,” Al-Thani said.

• Aid groups warn of resource shortfall for millions displaced inside Iran: Aid organizations lack the resources to address the needs of the more than 3.2 million people displaced inside the country during the recent U.S.-Israeli war, said Norwegian Refugee Council chief Jan Egeland on a visit to Iran. Egeland urged donors to increase support for the country, warning the war’s effects could last for years—a particularly acute concern given that Iran also hosts 4.4 million Afghan refugees.

• Iran restores gas production at three South Pars platforms after Israeli strikes: Iran has resumed gas production at three offshore platforms in the South Pars gasfield—the country’s largest domestic energy source—months after Israeli strikes on the facility in mid-March. Workers and engineers at the gas complex told Drop Site News that Israeli strikes on March 18 damaged vital electricity, water, and oxygen infrastructure across the facility, forcing emergency shutdowns of multiple refinery sections to prevent fires from spreading, with one engineer estimating the disruptions affected roughly 12% of gas production capacity linked to the South Pars network. Read more about the reopening in Drop Site’s latest collaboration with Egab here.

• Iran executes two on charges related to protests: Iran has executed two more men convicted on charges related to antigovernment protests in January, according to the Mizan news agency. The two men were identified as Mehrdad Mohammadinia and Ashkan Maleki.

Lebanon

• Casualty count: At least 3,433 people have been killed, and 10,395 wounded in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since March 2, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

• Six killed on Monday: A series of Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon on Monday killed at least six, including a strike on Zebdine near Choukin that killed two men, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency. One person was killed in a strike on Shahabiya, while a drone strike on a car on the Zefta-Nabatieh highway, near a civil defence ambulance point, killed the driver and injured a paramedic. Two more were killed in a drone strike on their vehicle in Breqaa, while another was killed in a strike on Toul. The Israeli military issued forced displacement orders on Monday to residents of a total of 16 towns and villages across southern Lebanon.

• Attacks on Sunday: At least 21 people were killed, and 126 wounded in Israeli strikes on Lebanon on Sunday. An Israeli airstrike on the town of Deir Al-Zahrani in southern Lebanon killed eight people and wounded 19 on Sunday, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. A drone strike on a motorcycle in Adoussiyeh, south Lebanon, killed a couple and left their young child wounded beside their bodies, footage from the scene showed.

• Israeli forces capture crusader-era castle in Lebanon: The Israeli military captured Beaufort Castle (Al-Shaqif), a crusader-era fortress in southern Lebanon, on Sunday. Defense Minister Israel Katz said the UNESCO-protected heritage site would remain part of a “security zone in Lebanon.” Beaufort Castle overlooks the Litani River and is considered a key observation point over southern Lebanon and northern parts of Israel—though observers say its military significance is more symbolic than tactical. Hezbollah said it is engaged in clashes with Israeli forces near the castle, stating that Israeli forces are facing “great difficulty in stabilizing their positions,” and adding that the fortress “was devoid of any military presence” when the Israelis entered it.

• Netanyahu and Katz order Beirut strikes, Dahiyeh displacement: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the Israeli military to strike targets in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district on Sunday. Netanyahu offered “repeated ceasefire violations” as a pretext for Israeli escalation, despite the nearly daily strikes Israel has carried out in Lebanon since the ceasefire went into effect in mid-April. The Israeli military spokesperson ordered all residents of Dahiyeh to leave. Residents began fleeing the area en masse, jamming roads in their exodus, according to Al Jazeera.

• IDF plans deeper invasion into Lebanon: Israeli military officers told Walla News on Saturday that forces have begun what they described as “extremely important operations” in southern Lebanon. The military reportedly built five bridges over the Litani River to enable a deeper ground invasion into Lebanese territory. The operation had been planned for over a year, according to Israel’s Broadcasting Authority.

• U.S. reportedly puts forward Lebanon de-escalation roadmap: A U.S. official told Al Jazeera that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has proposed a roadmap under which Hezbollah would halt all attacks on Israel in exchange for Israel refraining from further escalation in Beirut. The official said the proposal aims to create conditions for a “gradual de-escalation” leading to a complete cessation of hostilities.

• Security Council to hold emergency session on Lebanon: The UN Security Council is set to hold an emergency meeting today over Israel’s expanded military offensive, according to AFP. The meeting was requested by France, whose President Emmanuel Macron said “nothing justifies the major escalation underway.”

• Lebanese prime minister condemns Israeli escalation, defends talks: In a televised speech on Saturday, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the “dangerous and unprecedented” Israeli escalation in southern Lebanon, demanding a full ceasefire, complete Israeli withdrawal, and the release of all Lebanese prisoners held by Israel. Defending his government’s decision to enter direct talks with Israel, Salam acknowledged the negotiations were not guaranteed to succeed but described them as “the least costly path for our country and our people.”

• Hezbollah reports military successes:

  • Hezbollah carried out a sustained wave of rocket and drone attacks on Sunday, triggering air raid sirens at least 11 times in seven hours across northern Israel, including Safed, with strikes reaching as far as Acre. A fixed-wing drone struck Israel’s Beit Hillel base, wounding six soldiers—three critically. Five soldiers were urgently evacuated to Rambam Medical Center following a separate FPV attack, according to Israeli military monitoring channels.

  • On Saturday, Hezbollah said its operations included a guided missile strike on an Israeli Merkava tank in Bayadha, rocket barrages targeting Israeli troop concentrations in Bayadha and on the eastern outskirts of Yahmar al-Shaqif, and an ambush near Dabbin in which fighters detonated an explosive device against an advancing Israeli force before forcing a withdrawal. The Israeli military later confirmed that a soldier from the Givati Brigade was killed and four others were wounded by a Hezbollah FPV drone strike.

Palestine

• Casualty count: Over the last 24 hours, two Palestinians were killed and 40 were injured across Gaza. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 has risen to 72,941 killed, with 172,967 injured. Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 932 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 2,859, while 781 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

• Palestinian killed on Monday: A Palestinian man was killed and another injured on Monday after an Israeli airstrike targeted a bicycle in Bureij Refugee Camp in central Gaza, according to WAFA.

• Israeli attacks on Gaza continued over the weekend:

  • Israeli Apache helicopters shelled a gathering of civilians at Gaza Port Sunday, killing two and wounding at least 25 others, some critically, according to Al Jazeera.

  • Israeli forces killed Dr. Jamal Yousef Abu-Oun, the head of the anesthesia department at Al-Yafa Medical Hospital, in a drone strike on Saturday in Deir al-Balah.

  • Israeli aircraft fired two missiles at a civilian gathering near the Firas market in central Gaza City on Saturday, killing one and wounding two people, one critically. Also on Saturday, artillery strikes hit northeast of Al-Bureij camp, central and southern Khan Younis, and western Rafah, with a powerful explosion reported in the Mawasi area west of Rafah.

• Israeli reservists describe shoot-to-kill orders during Gaza “ceasefire”: Three Israeli reservists gave the Associated Press firsthand accounts of permissive rules of engagement along the “yellow line” dividing Gaza, with soldiers authorized to fire on anyone crossing the invisible boundary—including civilians unaware of its location. Strikes, they said, were sometimes called in based on a “hunch” from troops too distant to identify targets. One account appeared to reference the October killing of the Abu Shaaban family in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, in which Israeli tank fire killed 11 family members in a civilian vehicle, with soldiers described as celebrating. “To call it a ceasefire is a joke,” one soldier told AP.

• Israeli forces demolish Nablus market and make arrests across West Bank: Israeli forces demolished shops in the main vegetable market of Beita, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank early Monday morning, forcing shopkeepers to evacuate their goods before military bulldozers destroyed the produce stalls, according to Palestine Online and Quds News. In the nearby village of Burqa, forces backed by military vehicles and a bulldozer converted homes into military barracks, ransacked others, detained residents for field interrogations, and sealed all village entrances with earthen barriers.

• Freed Palestinian prisoner describes 33 years of abuse in Israeli jails: Nasser Abu Srour, who was held in Israeli prisons from 1993 to 2026, wrote a firsthand account of the abuse he encountered for Equator Magazine, describing guards cutting electricity to punish audible prayer, prohibitions on looking at block officers, and beatings carried out with canes, truncheons, tear gas, electric shocks, rubber bullets, and live ammunition. Abu Srour recounts guards rushing into cells, chaining prisoners, and dragging them to the yard for repeat beatings—sometimes accompanied by dogs set on restrained detainees—and describes a pepper spray attack on himself after truthfully denying possession of a hidden radio. “Any appeal for explanation resulted only in an extra measure of violence,” he writes. Abu Srour’s full account is available here.

U.S. News

By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at Julian@dropsitenews.com.

• Primary season is in full swing: On Tuesday, voters in California, New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico, Iowa, and South Dakota, go to the polls. The chaotic jungle primary for governor pits billionaire Tom Steyer, running a campaign centered on challenging corporate power and breaking up electric and utility monopolies, against Biden cabinet official Xavier Becerra. If Democrats can lock Republicans out of the top two slots, then GOP turnout would likely plummet in November, giving Democratic candidates for California House seats a leg up. In the L.A. mayor’s race, right-wing populist Spencer Pratt, a reality TV star, is battling to make the top two against incumbent Karen Bass and leftist Nithya Raman.

• Pro-Israel groups play big in key California races:

  • The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) endorsed Jasmeet Bains in her race against auto mechanic Randy Villegas. Bains had previously said Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza, but reversed herself as the AIPAC offshoot Democratic Majority For Isreal began spending millions to support her. The winner between the two will take on Republican incumbent David Valadao. Ryan Grim’s interview with Villegas is here.

  • DMFI appears to be making its largest push against Ammar Campa-Najjar, a Democrat getting right-wing media attention because of his grandfather, Palestinian militant Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar, who was killed by Israeli forces for his role in the 1972 Munich attack. A Rafah hospital was named for al-Najjar and his grandson Ammar spent three years in Gaza as a boy. Campa-Najjar’s Democratic opponent, Marni von Wilpert, is facing a last-minute scandal for a settlement reached with her former chief of staff who came under employment pressure amid chemotherapy treatments.

  • In Sacramento, longtime AIPAC-backed incumbent Doris Matsui is facing a serious challenge from Justice Democrats-backed Mai Vang; Matsui’s allies have spent considerable money trying to boost a Republican into the top two to block Vang from the general. Interview on Breaking Points here.

  • In the 34th District, Justice Democrats–backed Angela Gonzalez-Torres is facing incumbent Jimmy Gomez, a longtime AIPAC ally.

• Adam Hamawy, retired Army doctor who volunteered in Gaza, faces last-minute smear campaign in New Jersey: The New York Post and Jewish Insider have ratcheted up their attacks on Hamawy to startling new levels, absurdly accusing Hamawy of links to Al Qaeda, pointing to a volunteer trip he did in 1994 that was connected to a relief organization that was raided a decade later as an alleged Al Qaeda front. Streamer Hasan Piker rallied with Hamawy over the weekend. Watch his interview with Breaking Points Friday.

• Drop Site reporting shakes up San Francisco congressional race:

  • A network of super PACs backing Connie Chan received hundreds of thousands from AIPAC: San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, who has publicly refused support from AIPAC in her bid for California’s 11th congressional district, has nonetheless been the beneficiary of nearly $500,000 in spending from a network of super PACs that themselves have taken money from AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel. Chan, who received the endorsement of outgoing Rep. Nancy Pelosi, faces state Sen. Scott Wiener and Justice Democrats co-founder Saikat Chakrabarti in her primary race; the latest EMC Research poll has Wiener leading at 38%, with Chan and Chakrabarti virtually tied for second place. Read Ryan Grim and Julian Andreone’s full report here.

  • Chan’s campaign responded to Drop Site’s reporting on Sunday, saying it “would urge any organization supporting Connie to respect the very clear values she has laid out not to accept donations from AIPAC.”

  • Frontrunner Wiener allegedly told major donor he was forced to characterize Israel’s behavior in Gaza as a genocide: On a May 18 donor call, Moses Libitzky—president of the board of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a major real estate developer—told pro-Israel candidate Marie Hurabiell—who had dialed him hoping for a contribution—that he was a supporter of Scott Wiener’s and was told by Wiener that his characterization of Gaza as a genocide was made only out of political necessity and that Wiener remained a strong supporter of Israel. Hurabiell, without naming the door, discussed the conversation in a video posted to Twitter on Saturday. A source on the call confirmed to Drop Site that Libitzy was the donor on the phone. Libitzky, when contacted for comment, said that “whatever was said to me by Scott or Marie is up to them to discuss with you.” Libitzky gave the maximum allowable contribution to Wiener’s campaign. A Wiener spokesperson denied Hurabiell’s claim.

• Graham Platner hit with sexting scandal: Last summer, while the Platner campaign was doing what’s known as self-oppo—determining what potential lines of attack an opponent may have—Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, disclosed to campaign aide Genevieve McDonald that early in their marriage, Platner had engaged in explicit text messages with other women. McDonald subsequently left the campaign last fall and shared Gertner’s disclosure with both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Platner’s wife responded with a video on Instagram, saying, “No marriage is perfect and I don’t want a perfect marriage. I want my marriage.”

• New Jersey State Police take over Delaney Hall perimeter after week of clashes between ICE and protesters: New Jersey State Police assumed control of the perimeter outside the GEO Group-run Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark on Saturday under an executive order by Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill after more than a week of confrontations between ICE agents and demonstrators. Sherill, who called last week for the facility to be shut down, has faced significant backlash for her mobilization of the state police. The protests were sparked by a hunger strike involving 300 to 400 detainees.

• Far-right Israeli ministers appear in New York Israel Day parade: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich joined members of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party and several Likud lawmakers in marching Sunday in Manhattan’s annual Israel Day Parade, aimed at bolstering Israel’s public image in the United States. Last year, several countries placed Smotrich and Ben Gvir under sanctions for inciting extremist violence against Palestinians. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani declined to attend, though his administration did provide “enhanced security” for the event. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and other state and city officials attended.

  • Hochul used the occasion to sign her “buffer zone” bill into law, making it a crime to block entry to houses of worship and permitting protest restrictions within 50 feet of such sites, in response to recent protests against real estate expos held at NYC synagogues to sell land in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

• Trump-connected firm with no infrastructure experience nears $1B Bosnia pipeline contract: AAFS Infrastructure and Energy—represented by Jesse Binnall, a lawyer who has defended Donald Trump and his son in political cases, and Joe Flynn, brother of former national security adviser Michael Flynn—is close to securing a concession to build and operate a $1.2 billion gas pipeline across the Balkans in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with no competitive process, a Guardian investigation found. Ultranationalist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik’s U.S. sanctions were quietly lifted by the Trump administration after he hired Michael Flynn as a lobbyist for $100,000.

Other International News

• Far-right candidate leads in Colombia’s first-round election results: Far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella won 43.7% of the vote to leftist Iván Cepeda’s 40.9% in Colombia’s first-round presidential election, with 99.4% of polling stations reporting—setting up a runoff between de la Espriella and Cepeda on June 21. Pre-election polls had consistently shown Cepeda leading. Support for center-right candidate Paloma Valencia appears to have collapsed and consolidated behind de la Espriella in the final stretch, aided by late interventions from Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa and U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno. Drop Site correspondent Sasi Alejandre reports that coalition observers are closely scrutinizing the count and monitoring for potential irregularities.

• Sudanese army drone kills ten civilians in West Kordofan: A drone strike allegedly carried out by the Sudanese army in West Kordofan on Saturday killed ten people, including eight children, and wounded others, according to Sudan Tribune. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said on May 11 that drone strikes had killed 880 civilians in Sudan—more than 80% of all conflict-related civilian deaths—in the first four months of 2026.

  • Tribal clashes reignite in South Darfur: Fighting between the Salamat and Beni Halba tribes reignited around the town of Kubum in South Darfur state, Sudan Tribune reports, with armed fighters from both sides deploying Rapid Support Forces vehicles in clashes that have spread to nearby villages and to parts of Central Darfur state. Both sides deliberately burned villages, triggering mass displacement toward Ad al-Fursan, while an unconfirmed number of fighters were killed. The two tribes had reached an RSF-brokered reconciliation agreement in December 2025 following a previous round of fighting; the current clashes were triggered by the killing of a herder last week.

• WHO chief visits DRC Ebola epicenter as confirmed cases nearly double: The World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ituri province on Saturday, as confirmed Ebola cases in the country reached 225—nearly double the 121 reported two days earlier, alongside 1,028 suspected cases and more than 220 suspected deaths. Médecins Sans Frontières says the Ebola outbreak is one of the fastest-spreading on record, and the WHO has warned that the death rate associated with it could reach 30 to 50%. Global funding for a response to the disease has more than halved, from $498 million to $219 million, according to the Africa CDC.

• Ukraine strikes Russian energy infrastructure across multiple regions: Ukraine launched coordinated drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure over the weekend, setting off a major port fire in the Rostov Oblast after drones struck a tanker, fuel tank, and administrative building. Two civilians were wounded when a separate drone hit a private home.

  • Additional strikes hit an oil facility in Armavir, Krasnodar Krai—which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted lay some 500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border—ignited giant fuel tanks near Yaroslavl, and forced the shutdown of Russia’s Volgograd oil refinery.

  • Ukrainian drones also reportedly struck the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, punching a hole in a turbine hall wall without damaging key equipment, according to state nuclear company Rosatom. Ukraine’s military denied striking the plant, calling the Russian claims propaganda.

  • Russia launched 90 drones and two ballistic missiles at Ukraine overnight, hitting infrastructure in Ukraine’s Sumy region.

• Ammunition depot explosion kills 39 in northeast Myanmar: An explosion at an ammunition store controlled by the Ta’ang National Liberation Army in Myanmar’s Shan state killed at least 39 people and wounded 75 others Sunday, with the cause still under investigation, Al Jazeera reports. The TNLA said the stored explosives were used in mining operations in an area known for its ruby mines, and residents described bodies and debris scattered across a massive crater where more than half the village’s houses were destroyed.

• Truck carrying Afghan refugees from Pakistan overturns, killing 18: A cargo truck overloaded with recently returned Afghan refugee families overturned at an intersection in Afghanistan’s Laghman province on Saturday morning, after the driver reportedly fell asleep at the wheel, killing at least 18 people—including ten children—and critically injuring more than 30 others. The families had been temporarily sheltering in the country’s Kunar province and were en route to Kabul. The crash comes amid a mass return of Afghans from Pakistan, with the UN recording more than 447,000 crossings this year.

• Indigenous Nicaraguan leader Brooklyn Rivera dies in state custody: Brooklyn Rivera, a 73-year-old Miskito Indigenous leader and anti-government activist who had been held in Nicaraguan detention without outside contact since September 2023, died Sunday. The government attributed his death to a bacterial infection following Covid-19, but Reed Brody of the UN Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua said, “If he is dead, it cannot be said that the cause was illness”—“the cause would be that he was in government custody in conditions of enforced disappearance for over two years, denied independent medical oversight.”

• UK bans Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker ahead of SXSW London appearances: The UK Home Office banned American political commentators Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker from entering the country Sunday after calls by members of the country’s Labour Party and from a Jewish and pro-Israel group called the Community Security Trust to revoke their travel visas. Uygur and Piker planned to appear at SXSW London, with Uygur also barred from a planned Oxford University student event. The Home Office said their electronic travel authorizations were cancelled on grounds that their presence “may not be conducive to the public good.”

• Syrian president calls Trump to press for full sanctions relief: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa called Trump Sunday to ask the U.S. to lift its remaining sanctions on his country, claiming that such a move is essential to reviving the Syrian economy and attracting investment. The U.S. has dismantled most of its sanctions, but kept some measures in place to target associates of former President Bashar al-Assad, captagon traffickers, and others, and has said that a review of Syria’s state sponsor of terrorism designation is ongoing.

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