The Levant Files

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ویژه TLF: اولتیماتوم‌ها، سرکشی و شمارش معکوس تا تشدید تنش

Please note that the Persian service of TLf is currently in a beta phase. We have launched this initiative with the support of our followers, volunteers, and AI technology. Please keep in mind that during this first phase, the Persian text may contain slight phrasing or translation errors. We aim to launch a fully professional Persian service in the near future. لطفاً توجه داشته باشید که بخش فارسی TLf در حال حاضر در مرحله بتا قرار دارد. ما این ابتکار را با همراهی دنبال‌کنندگان، داوطلبان و با کمک فناوری هوش مصنوعی راه‌اندازی کرده‌ایم. لطفاً در نظر داشته باشید که در این مرحله نخست، متن فارسی ممکن است حاوی برخی ناهماهنگی‌ها در نگارش یا خطاهای جزئی در ترجمه باشد. هدف ما این است که در آینده نزدیک، یک بخش فارسی کاملاً حرفه‌ای راه‌اندازی کنیم. مهلت ۴۸ ساعته ترامپ، مخالفت ایران و وعده اسرائیل برای تشدید حملات، همگی به یک سمت اشاره دارند دکتر نیکولائوس استلگیاس آخرین چیزی که خاورمیانه در بحبوحه چهارمین هفته حملات و افزایش تلفات غیرنظامیان به آن نیاز داشت، یک اولتیماتوم بود. با این حال، دقیقاً ه...

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW: Trump Issues 48-Hour Ultimatum As Conflict Enters Day 23

The US-Israel war on Iran escalated sharply on Sunday as President Donald Trump threatened to destroy Iranian power plants if Tehran does not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, while Iranian missiles struck two southern Israeli cities near the country's main nuclear research facility, wounding at least 180 people. Trump issued the ultimatum late Saturday on his Truth Social platform, warning that the United States would "hit and obliterate" Iranian energy infrastructure — "starting with the biggest one first" — if freedom of navigation through the Hormuz Strait was not fully restored. The deadline is set to expire at approximately 23:44 GMT on Monday. Iran responded swiftly and defiantly. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned on X that any attack on Iranian power plants would "immediately" trigger retaliatory strikes on energy and oil infrastructure across the entire region. "Critical infrastructure and energy and oil ...

Houthis Warn (Again) of Entry into War Alongside Iran

Yemen's Ansar Allah movement has warned again that it will not remain on the sidelines as the Israeli-American war on Iran continues to escalate, threatening that any expansion of hostilities would reverberate across global supply chains, energy markets, and the wider world economy, according to a report by the pan-Arab outlet Raialyoum. In a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry of the Houthi government and published by the Houthi-aligned Saba news agency late Saturday, the movement said that "the United States, through its aggression against the nation's people, has driven itself into a major strategic quagmire and is attempting to drag others into the swamp it has entered." The statement issued a direct warning against the deployment of foreign forces to the region, saying that any power brought in "from the corners of the earth" would be "among the first to lose in this battle." It also cautioned that any attempt to widen the circle of aggre...

We're Losing Cuba: Trump Will Take It as Compensation for Failure in Iran*

Against the backdrop of setbacks in Iran and across the broader Middle East, the United States is expected to pivot toward Cuba, as President Donald Trump is in urgent need of at least some semblance of victory. This is the assessment of military blogger Yuri Podolyaka. Trump was quoted as saying: "Cuba is, in its own way — the tourism, all the rest of it — a beautiful island with wonderful weather. They're not in the hurricane zone, which is nice, you know? They won't have to come knocking every week asking for money to deal with hurricanes. I believe I will have the honour of taking Cuba. It's a great honour. To take Cuba in some form, you understand. To take Cuba. I mean, whether I liberate it or whether I take it — I can do whatever I want with it, if you want to know the truth." With the world's attention currently directed elsewhere, Trump will likely get his way there, Podolyaka argues. Such a move would allow him to temporarily shore up his standing a...

An Appeal to the Reasonable: “We’re Not Up to This”*

Fadi Abboud Today, we stand at a pivotal moment, and the real question is this: do we choose national solidarity, or do we allow strife to destroy the country? The harsh truth that must be stated plainly is that if the structure collapses, it will not fall on one side and spare the other—it will come down on everyone’s heads. What we are witnessing today—the escalation of rhetoric, the fueling of sectarian tensions, and the internal and external attempts to pit one Lebanese group against another—is nothing less than a ready-made recipe for national ruin. Mutual vilification is no longer merely a form of political disagreement; it has become a tool for dismantling what remains of our national fabric. We have accumulated multiple crises—economic, financial, and political—and instead of addressing them at their roots, we have allowed them to fester and become intertwined. Every issue now seems suspended, waiting on another: those who want transparency and those who do not; those who suppo...

Why The World Should Worry About Israel’s Nuclear Doctrine*

The threshold the Israeli authorities have set for the use of a nuclear weapon is dangerously low. By Ahmed Najar For decades, the world has treated Israel’s nuclear arsenal as an awkward secret — something everyone knows exists but few are willing to discuss openly. Israel has never officially acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons, yet it is widely understood among security experts that the country maintains a significant nuclear capability. Estimates from institutions such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute suggest Israel possesses roughly around 80 nuclear warheads, along with delivery systems that could include aircraft and ballistic missiles. The policy governing this arsenal is known as “nuclear opacity.” Israel neither confirms nor denies the existence of its weapons. In practice, this ambiguity has allowed the international community to avoid confronting a difficult question: under what circumstances would Israel actually use them? That question matters m...

IMMEDIATE ANALYSIS: The War in Limbo. Why Neither Peace nor Victory Is Within Reach [Updated]

Three weeks into the US-Israel-Iran conflict, the diplomatic infrastructure for a ceasefire does not yet exist — while the military logic of escalation remains politically irresistible for both sides. The result is a managed limbo whose costs are cascading across the region. On the night of 21 March 2026, the twenty-first day of the US-Israel-Iran war, Iranian ballistic missiles struck the southern Israeli cities of Dimona and Arad. More than sixty people were wounded, including a five-year-old girl left in serious condition. Earlier, the Israeli Air Force struck Malek Ashtar University in Tehran — a sanctioned institution assessed to be involved in nuclear weapons component development. The United States, according to multiple reports, had already hit the Natanz uranium enrichment facility the previous hours. On the same morning, Iran fired two missiles at Diego Garcia, the remote Indian Ocean base shared by Washington and London, demonstrating a strike range that — as Israeli militar...

TLF SPECIAL: Gulf States Warn Iran. Restraint Is Running Out

As missile barrages continue, the region edges toward a wider war The Gulf is on the brink of a dramatic and dangerous escalation. For weeks, Iran has bombarded its neighbors with an unprecedented torrent of drones and ballistic missiles, striking airports, energy facilities, and areas near American military installations across all six Gulf Cooperation Council states. Now, the patience of those states is expiring — and the threat of a direct military counterstrike is no longer hypothetical. Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan has warned publicly that the kingdom and its allies possess significant capabilities that can be activated if needed, stressing that their current restraint is not boundless — and hinting that Iran has only days, or perhaps a week, before a potential shift in posture. These are not the words of a government searching for a diplomatic off-ramp. These are the words of a government preparing its public — and its adversary — for war. The scale of what Iran has u...

Israel Cannot Achieve 'Total Victory' Over Hezbollah, Warns Former Minister

Israel will never fully eliminate the Hezbollah threat regardless of how hard it strikes the Lebanese militant group, a former Israeli cabinet minister and special forces commander has warned, calling on the government to abandon what he describes as dangerous illusions of total victory. Writing in an opinion piece published Thursday in Haaretz, Omer Bar-Lev — a former public security minister and commander of the elite Sayeret Matkal unit — argued that both Hezbollah and Iran have repeatedly demonstrated their capacity to recover significant military capabilities within months of being struck, rendering the current approach strategically futile. "However hard we hit Iran and Hezbollah, in a few months they recover a significant part of their military capabilities," Bar-Lev wrote, invoking the maxim attributed to Albert Einstein about the insanity of repeating the same actions while expecting different results. Bar-Lev pointed to the ongoing Gaza war as further evidence of th...