Damascus is reportedly prepared to reconsider its position if Tel Aviv were to withdraw its occupation troops from Syria.

Syrian President and former Al-Qaeda chief Ahmad al-Sharaa is "unprepared and unwilling" to launch a military offensive against Lebanon despite growing US pressure, Israel's Broadcasting Corporation (KAN) reported on 16 June.

KAN cited an informed Syrian source who said that Sharaa is "concerned" that an attack by Damascus against Hezbollah will be seen across the region as "serving" Israel's interests.

This could negatively impact Damascus's "legitimacy."

For now, the self-appointed Syrian president is ruling out an attack against Lebanon and its resistance forces unless Israel decides to pull its forces out of Syria, the report states.

Israel has rejected withdrawal from both Syria and Lebanon.

Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a trove of files Friday detailing Dr. Anthony Fauci's role in the COVID-19 pandemic — showing that officials protected him from a whistleblower complaint alleging he lied to Congress about "gain of function" research after he suggested pangolins were to blame for the outbreak that killed millions.

Fauci, the documents show, met with a group of CIA officials on June 4, 2021, weeks after his fiery May 11 denial to Congress that he funded risky research into coronaviruses in the same Chinese city where the pandemic began.

While briefing the CIA, Fauci "keyed in on specifics" about the Wuhan Institute of Virology's (WIV) experiments on pangolin samples, according to a summary report.

The Hudson Institute hosted Dr. Steven Quay on Monday afternoon for a discussion on COVID-19 origins, during which he presented genetic evidence from his new book, The Code as Witness, arguing that the virus originated through gain-of-function research in a Chinese lab.

Years later, there has still been no accountability for what Quay argues was a Chinese lab leak that killed more than one million Americans and caused U.S. economic damages in excess of $18 trillion. Nor has there been a unified U.S. government consensus on the lab-leak theory, let alone on potential consequences for China or Dr. Anthony Fauci.

In the roughly one-hour discussion, which was opened by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), a leading voice for stronger oversight of high-risk biological research, Quay, a Hudson senior fellow, said features encoded in the virus's genetic material point directly to lab manipulation rather than natural zoonosis.

A simple message to the people of Iran...

So Trump and Iran's president have at last come to terms, jointly signing a Memorandum of Understanding that 'solidifies', if that's not too strong a word, the de facto ceasefire between the US and Iran that stretches back some 16 weeks.

It's the shakiest of peace deals, not least because key issues like charging shipping tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz have been 'kicked down the road' for two months, but most are surprised to see the US accept the first of the document's 14 points, which stipulates that Israel must not only stop attacking Lebanon, it must withdraw from its neighbor entirely.

The US government is strongly signalling that it will hold Israel to that... but this is the maniacal Israel we're talking about here. Can anyone or anything on this Earth rein it in? We're going to find out in the coming weeks and months...


Running Time: 01:49:53

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The US's once-unwavering support for Israel is rapidly eroding due to shifting public opinion driven by open information and Netanyahu's own actions, leading to a rethinking of US-Israel relations.

From Political Taboo to Open Rejection

Not long ago, questioning Washington's unconditional support for Israel was a political death sentence. American lawmakers, presidential candidates, and even human rights advocates steered clear of the topic as if it were a cursed circle. Today, that circle has been broken. Since October 2023, public opinion in the United States has undergone a tectonic shift. What was built over decades with billions of dollars in lobbying efforts is collapsing before our very eyes. And the numbers are relentless.

Numbers You Can't Ignore

American approval of Israel's military actions in the Gaza Strip has fallen to a catastrophic 32 percent. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Among Americans under 35, that figure is a paltry 9 percent. Nine. Percent.

The Chicago Council on International Relations, which has tracked U.S.-Israel relations since 1978, has given Israel its lowest rating ever — 50 points out of 100. The worst score in nearly half a century.

This isn't a statistical blip. This is a historic failure.

The US vice president also called out Smotrich and Ben Gvir, saying they can't 'kill their way' out of every problem.

Vice President JD Vance said at a press briefing at the White House on Thursday that members of the Israeli government should realize that President Trump is the only head of state in the world who is still "sympathetic" to Israel.

The vice president made the comments when discussing Israeli officials who have been harshly critical of the Memorandum of Understanding President Trump signed with Iran on Wednesday. He said:

"I guess my message to them would be twofold. Number one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world's superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world."

In his first encyclical, issued on May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV condemned the growing automation of weapons in global conflicts. This document is a direct criticism of the West's overreliance on artificial intelligence systems in warfare.

War is as old as humanity. Over the ages, the nature and tools of warfare have undergone a dramatic change. In this context, different religious societies have evolved their suitable intellectual positions on what constitutes a war, how it is fought, and with what tools it is fought.

Keeping all these considerations in mind, Christian intellectual traditions propounded the idea of the Just War theory. Tracing its roots, most notably, to the teachings of the Italian theologian and friar St. Thomas Aquinas and other notable thinkers over the years, the just war theory posits that whenever humans indulge in war, there are certain strict rules communities in general and nation-states in particular must follow.

These rules find their expression in the form of two key principles — Jus Ad Bellum and Jus in Bello.

Germany's top brass is proclaiming its readiness to "fight tonight," seemingly eager to rush toward total annihilation.
Remember Taurusgate? When several German officers, including its former air force head, were caught making insane and childish plans for plastering Russia with German missiles but from Ukraine? That and the amateurish manner in which these grand strategists in prankster mode let themselves be caught were daft as well as sadly comical. But lessons have not been learned, even if the German Air Force is now under new management.

Recently, its new commander-in-chief gave a combative and intriguingly ill-considered, even jejune interview. Speaking to Britain's Telegraph, General Holger Neumann released several inflammatory statements. The one that has found most attention was his proud claim that his pilots stand ready not merely to fight Russia at a moment's notice, but to strike with immediate, large-scale, and - he assumes with that special German military optimism some call fatal arrogance - devastating operations.

Neumann, who has a Lego model of Luke Skywalker's helmet in his office and has admitted that Star Wars was among the things that made him want to be a fighter pilot, is likely to fantasize about taking out a Death Star or two singlehandedly. But stuck in the real world, his dream targets, he let the Telegraph readers know, include the Black Sea area, the Kola Peninsula, the Kaliningrad exclave, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. That is, places whose military and political importance would make rapid and severe Russian retaliation inevitable.

Neumann did hedge a little: Before presenting his brilliant idea for taking Germany from initial hostilities - however remote (say, in Estonia), however small ("every inch," in former US President Joe Biden's, words which Neumann parroted) - to total, possibly nuclear, war in the blink of an eye, the air force chief offered the usual disclaimer: All of this would only happen in case of a Russian attack on NATO.

It is hard to imagine anyone naive enough to fall for that rhetorical device and feel reassured. For several reasons: Generally speaking, 'all we want is to defend ourselves and keep others from attacking us, just trust us' has been the favorite line of every single warmonger since the dawn of times. Regarding German history, the two world wars that Germany managed to start within less than three decades were also preceded by copious assurances of this sort.

And as we learn in political science or international relations 101 - except wherever they train Germany's top brass - there is also such a thing as a security dilemma: What one side may feel is merely arming itself for defense, its potential opponent may easily perceive as preparations for attack. But in this regard, let's not blame Neumann individually: The obstinate refusal to see one's own near-hysterical and also ruinous armament drive from the other side's point of view is not one German officer's bug but a Berlin feature now.

Peace becomes impossible when one side still believes regional hegemony is within reach.
When discussions began around a possible memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran, many observers rushed to interpret it as the beginning of a new chapter in the Middle East. Some spoke of diplomacy finally prevailing over confrontation. Others suggested that after years of sanctions, assassinations, covert operations, and military escalation, Washington had finally accepted that Iran could neither be invaded nor coerced into submission. The assumption behind these interpretations is that once both sides recognize the costs of continued conflict, peace becomes the rational choice.

I find that assumption difficult to accept.

Not because diplomacy is impossible, nor because Iran and the United States are incapable of reaching temporary understandings. States negotiate with their adversaries all the time. History is full of examples where bitter enemies reached agreements that served immediate interests. But there is a fundamental difference between a tactical pause and a strategic settlement. A ceasefire can freeze a battlefield. It cannot eliminate the forces that created the conflict in the first place. And that is precisely why I believe any memorandum between Washington and Tehran should be understood as an intermission in a much longer struggle.

The war against Iran was never solely an American project. It was, above all, an Israeli project that depended on American power.

This distinction matters because it changes how we interpret everything that follows. If Washington were acting exclusively according to its own strategic calculations, one could plausibly argue that reducing tensions with Iran serves American interests. The United States has spent decades exhausting itself through endless wars in the Middle East while simultaneously confronting the rise of China in the Indo-Pacific. From a purely American perspective, reducing another costly regional confrontation could be interpreted as strategic realism.

But Israel's calculations are different.

For the Israeli political and security establishment, Iran is not simply another regional rival. It is the only state in West Asia capable of preventing Israel from transforming military superiority into regional hegemony. Every other major Arab military has either been defeated, neutralized, fragmented, or incorporated into a regional order that increasingly revolves around normalization through the Abraham Accords. Iraq and Syria were destroyed. Libya collapsed. Egypt abandoned confrontation decades ago. The Gulf monarchies have gradually moved toward strategic accommodation. What remains is Iran and the network of allies that Tehran spent decades building precisely because it understood that direct confrontation with Israel alone would be unsustainable.

Once viewed from this perspective, the larger objective of the recent war becomes easier to understand.

Military strikes alone were never the end goal.

They were intended to create the political conditions for something much larger.