The Levant Files

A 12-hour cascade of incursions, airstrikes and drone attacks shatters an already-collapsing ceasefire The Middle East lurched closer to all-out regional war overnight as Israeli forces simultaneously deepened their occupation of Lebanon, pushed fresh ground incursions into southern Syria, and Iran rained drones and missiles down on Kurdish targets in northern Iraq — a triple escalation unfolding in barely half a day. In Lebanon, Israel expanded its ground assault on Sunday into what officials describe as its broadest incursion in more than a quarter of a century. Israeli forces now occupy roughly 2,000 square kilometres — nearly one-fifth of the country — having pushed far beyond the Litani River, with evacuation orders now stretching north toward the Zahrani. Troops have reached Zawtar al-Sharqiyah and Choukine on the edge of Nabatieh, a Hezbollah stronghold. Hezbollah answered with more than 300 projectiles fired at Israeli soldiers and northern Israel over the weekend; dawn strikes...

Inside the conservative movement, the fight isn't over whether to stop a nuclear Iran — it's over whether Trump should talk, threaten, or strike. For the movement that put Donald Trump back in the White House on a promise to end forever wars, no foreign-policy question cuts deeper than Iran. As negotiations with Tehran grind forward, the MAGA coalition has split — not over the threat, but over the method. Almost everyone on the populist right agrees Iran must never obtain a nuclear weapon. Almost no one agrees on how to guarantee it. The cleavage runs through the heart of Trumpism itself. On one flank stand the dealmakers, figures like Larry Kudlow who cast sanctions, military pressure, and blunt ultimatums not as warmongering but as leverage — the raw materials of "the art of the deal" applied to a regime that respects only strength. In their telling, talks are a feature of coercion, not a retreat from it. Trump corners the mullahs, extracts concessions Barack Obama ...

U.S. President floats a “very good” agreement with Tehran even as American officials contradict one another and Iranian seafarers report the hostile maritime siege is still in force. U.S. President Donald Trump has once again claimed that Washington is close to a “very good” deal with Iran, praising the experience of Tehran's negotiators while insisting he is “in no rush.” Speaking to Fox News, Trump said disputes are best resolved through diplomacy. Yet the remarks landed more like a publicity show than a policy statement, coming as Washington simultaneously hardened its demands and as competing American accounts of the talks exposed deep contradictions within the administration. According to the Iranian-state supported Nournews, Trump repeated his familiar line that the goal is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon — an assertion Tehran has long rejected, reaffirming the peaceful nature of its program and conditioning any agreement on sanctions relief, the protection of...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu views the emerging US-Iran agreement as a disaster and holds President Donald Trump responsible for it, a senior political source told Ben Caspit of Al-Monitor. With the Tehran regime still in power and a possible accord taking shape, members of Netanyahu's circle warn that Israel's longest-serving leader could pay the ultimate political price as elections approach. The prospect of a deal has fueled speculation that Netanyahu may be forced to step down to avoid losing the upcoming vote and risking prison over his corruption indictment. “This time, the prime minister's hands are tied. He is completely paralyzed and knows that he will not be able to do anything,” one associate told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, adding that Netanyahu now longs for the days of Presidents Joe Biden and even Barack Obama. “Now, all he can do is salute Trump.” Since Trump announced an April 8 ceasefire with Tehran, opponents have rejected Netanyahu...

A separatist movement long confined to Pakistan sees opportunity in Tehran's weakness — even as analysts caution it is not yet ready to open a front inside Iran. As US and Israeli strikes battered Iran through early 2026, one actor has watched the unfolding crisis more intently than most, and with more to gain. The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a separatist organization that has waged a decades-long insurgency against Pakistan, has positioned itself to exploit any opening created by Tehran's distress. Yet for all its calculation, the group remains largely absent from international headlines dominated by missiles over Tehran and diplomacy in Islamabad. The BLA's intentions are not hidden. In March 2026, the group issued a formal statement welcoming the US-Israeli strikes on Iran and, according to regional reporting, urged the attackers to be "more effective, coordinated and result-oriented." Analysts read the endorsement less as ideological alignment than as a...

Nournews, an outlet linked to Iran's Supreme National Security Council, argues that the current standoff between Tehran and Washington is better described as a “threshold of decision” than a “threshold of agreement,” casting Donald Trump's negotiating posture as a “diplomacy of suspension” — an imaginary weapon meant to wear down Iran's resolve. In the Iranian state-aligned outlet's telling, the two sides have never appeared closer to an understanding, yet have also never been mired in such deliberate ambiguity, where neither war nor peace is certain and neither a deal nor a breakdown has materialized. According to the analysis, Washington keeps signaling that an accord is near, with American media citing drafts and preliminary understandings and senior Trump officials describing the talks as hopeful. On the ground, however, Nournews contends that U.S. pressure has not fully eased, a naval blockade has not ended, and Washington has shown no willingness to pay the polit...

A nation cornered between a war it cannot win, a collapse it cannot fund, and a fracture it cannot close Lebanon is no longer merely in crisis — it is being dismantled in plain sight, and the world is treating its agony as a diplomatic footnote. Since Israel intensified its war on March 2, 2026, more than 3,000 people have been killed and over a million displaced — more than a fifth of the entire population driven from their homes. The southern third of the country lies in ruins; Israeli forces occupy Lebanese soil and continue to raze entire border villages. A so-called ceasefire signed on April 16 exists only on paper: children are still bein g killed at a rate of several a day, paramedics are bombed in their ambulances, and Beirut's suburbs have been struck again. If this is peace, it is the peace of the graveyard. And the bombs are falling on a country that was already bankrupt. Lebanon's financial collapse — branded by the World Bank as one of the worst the world has seen ...

On the night of May 28, 1453, the light of an eleven-hundred-year-old empire began to fade. Inside Constantinople, a coalition of Greek defenders and Italian volunteers prepared for a final stand against Sultan Mehmed II’s massive Ottoman army. This was not merely a battle for a city, but the collision of two eras. For centuries, the triple-layered Theodosian Walls were deemed impregnable. However, they faced a new reality: early modern gunpowder warfare. Orban's massive bronze super-cannon systematically fractured the stone defenses, while Ottoman forces executed the remarkable feat of dragging seventy warships overland to bypass the harbor's defensive chain. The city’s defense, coordinated by the Genoese commander Giovanni Giustiniani, held for seven weeks. But in the pre-dawn hours of May 29, fortune shifted. Giustiniani was gravely wounded and evacuated. Simultaneously, Ottoman scouts discovered the Kerkoporta—a minor tactical sally port left unlocked in the chaos. Realizin...

A critical assessment of renewed Greek–Turkish air confrontations and the diplomacy unraveling beneath them The Aegean is once again echoing with the sound of fighter jets locking onto one another. On Monday, armed Turkish F-16s, escorted by CN-235 maritime-surveillance aircraft, breached Greek airspace ten times and were drawn into a simulated dogfight with intercepting Greek jets. It was the second such mock engagement of 2026, after a March incident, and a sharp reminder that the much-advertised Greek–Turkish "thaw" rests on very thin ice. The numbers tell a more careful story than the alarm suggests. Greece has logged 159 airspace violations since January — already on pace to exceed the 225 recorded across all of 2025, when only a single dogfight occurred. Yet both figures are dwarfed by 2023, when Greek data counted 1,172 violations and 87 dogfights. Read against that benchmark, 2026 is not a return to the worst days of the rivalry; it is a controlled escalation, calibra...

For two years the world was told Israel sought a “buffer zone” in southern Lebanon — a temporary security margin to keep Hezbollah’s rockets away from northern towns. That story died this week in the rubble of Tyre. On 26 May, just two hours after ordering some 200,000 residents of one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities to flee north of the Zahrani River — roughly 40 kilometers from the border — Israeli aircraft began pounding the city, damaging a UNESCO World Heritage site. The same week, ground troops pushed north of the Litani, past the very “Yellow Line” Israel itself drew at the start of the ceasefire. A buffer zone does not advance. An occupation does. The military map no longer matches the military rhetoric. Five divisions now operate inside Lebanon, and officials decline to say how deep they intend to go. The Litani — long treated as the red line of Lebanese sovereignty — has been crossed. The method is deliberate strangulation: since March, at least nine bridg...

Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz used the assassination of a Hamas military commander on Wednesday to reaffirm, without apparent embarrassment, that his government intends to depopulate Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants. The plan, dressed in the bureaucratic euphemism of "voluntary emigration," would proceed, he said, "at the proper time and in the proper manner." The timing and the manner may be unspecified. The intent, at this point, is not. Katz made the statement in a post on X alongside Israel's announcement that it had killed Mohammed Odeh, the head of Hamas's armed wing, in an airstrike in Gaza City on Tuesday night. The juxtaposition was telling: a killing and a demographic program, announced in the same breath, as instruments of the same policy. Israel's security cabinet formally approved a proposal by Katz in March to establish a dedicated directorate within his ministry to facilitate "migration" from the enclave. This is n...

In a development that has sent shockwaves through the international diplomatic community, The Jerusalem Post learned exclusively on Wednesday night that the United Nations has officially added Israeli entities to its blacklist of parties suspected of committing patterns of sexual violence in armed conflict. The decision places the State of Israel on a list that includes designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas and ISIS, marking a historic and highly controversial shift in the UN’s stance toward the Middle East’s only democracy. The Israel Prison Service (IPS) is slated for inclusion on the 2026 list, while other Israeli authorities have been placed under a monitoring framework for potential future inclusion. This follows a period of "notice" initiated by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in August 2025, during which he cited "significant concerns" regarding alleged patterns of abuse. Under UN protocols, any entity added to this blacklist remains for a mi...

Three months into the most reckless military adventure of the twenty-first century, the architects of the 2026 Iran war — the Trump administration in Washington and the IRGC-dominated government in Tehran — have achieved something remarkable: they have turned a regional conflict into a genuine threat to the global economic order. Congratulations to both. Let us dispense with the euphemisms. On February 28, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury — a coordinated air campaign against Iran conducted, astonishingly, while nuclear negotiations were ongoing. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had warned President Trump that striking Iran could prompt the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump dismissed those warnings, telling advisers that Iran would simply capitulate. It did not. Within days, Iran sealed the strait, choking off roughly 20 percent of the world's seaborne oil trade and 25 percent of its LNG exports. The International Energy Agency has since called it 'the gre...

Lebanon finds itself engulfed in a deepening military crisis as Israeli forces intensified ground operations and airstrikes across southern Lebanon this week, effectively shattering a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that had been in place since mid-April. Over a period of barely 72 hours, the conflict escalated dramatically, leaving dozens dead, hundreds of thousands newly displaced, and diplomatic efforts in Washington hanging by a thread. On Monday, May 25, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in a video message posted to Telegram that his military would intensify its campaign against Hezbollah. "We are at war with Hezbollah, and we will intensify our strikes," Netanyahu declared, vowing to "crush" the Iran-backed armed group. The announcement came on Lebanon's Liberation Day — the anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 after an eighteen-year occupation — lending particular symbolic weight to the escalation. Netanyahu's...

Former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras formally launched a new political party on Tuesday night in Athens, naming it ELAS — short for Elliniki Aristeri Symparataxi (“Greek Left Alliance”) — during a public event in Thissio. The unveiling marked his official political comeback and included the party’s founding declaration, visual identity, and an initial outline of its political message. Speaking with the Acropolis in the background, Tsipras presented ELAS as a new vehicle for the broader progressive camp, sharply criticizing the ruling New Democracy government over inequality, scandals, and institutional decay. Reports preceding the launch indicated that the new formation aimed to appeal across the Left, ecological, and social-democratic spectrum. Organizers also prepared an online platform where supporters could sign the founding text. At the core of the launch was a seven-point founding pledge, which framed the party’s mission around “life with dignity,” strengthening democracy, ...

Cyprus has a new Member of Parliament, and this time it is not a grey-haired lawyer, a retired banker, or even a failed singer from a talent show.   No, this time the voters of Direct Democracy have sent to the House a 23‑year‑old ex‑poker‑pro, ex‑engineering‑student, ex‑soldier, current content creator, frequent flyer and part‑time Ironman, because the island apparently decided that LinkedIn must never look this empty again. According to his official biography, the honourable gentleman grew up in Pafos with family roots in Trikala, won a coveted place at the National Technical University of Athens to study Electrical Engineering, and then bravely dropped out — presumably after realising that Ohm’s Law offers fewer sponsorship deals than Instagram stories.   Where lesser mortals would have settled for a degree, Dimitris Baros opted instead for that most stable of career paths: professional poker, which he pursued from the age of 16 to 22, because nothing says “sound ...

In a shocking statement that has sent shockwaves through Israeli political circles, Eyal Megged—a writer and former close friend of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—publicly called for a military coup to overthrow the Israeli government during a radio interview on Tuesday morning. Speaking on 103FM radio station during a conversation with Haaretz editor Benny Ziffer, Megged made an unprecedented declaration. He said, "I would be happy if there were a military coup against Netanyahu. We cannot continue with this madness... I would be happy if there were a military coup in Israel. I would be happy." The statement grew even more scathing when Megged added what quickly became the most quoted line from the interview. He declared, "If my cat took power instead of Bibi, it would be better for the country." A Former Friend's Breaking Point Megged, described in reports as Netanyahu's "former friend," expressed profound disillusionment with the Prime Minist...

Diplomatic negotiations between the United States and Iran are pressing forward, but a shadow of deep suspicion hangs over every exchange — cast by the same American and Israeli bombs that have struck Iranian soil even as envoys talk peace. Senior Iranian and US officials acknowledged on Monday that progress has been made toward ending the three-month-old war, but both sides publicly cautioned that a final agreement is not imminent. Washington frames the current phase as one of "significant progress," while Iranian negotiators insist that no deal can be finalized under what Tehran calls conditions of ongoing military threat. Strikes Undercut Diplomatic Signals The credibility of the talks has been strained by the continuation of US military operations. American forces carried out fresh "self-defense" strikes on Iranian missile launch sites and mine-laying vessels in southern Iran even as Iranian negotiators were meeting Qatar's prime minister in Doha. Iran's...

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by Dr. Nikolaos Stelgias In the weeks leading up to Cyprus’s parliamentary elections, we repeatedly advanced a single, uncomfortable thesis: that 24 May could mark a watershed in the island’s political history—a moment in which established forces would haemorrhage support and a new cast of ultra-nationalist and populist actors would step into the spotlight. At first glance, Sunday night’s results appeared to render that prediction premature, perhaps even misplaced. The three traditional heavyweights of Cypriot politics largely held their ground. DISY, the conservative (or centre-right) party, finished first by a comfortable margin over AKEL—a result that, given pre-election polling placing it well below 20 percent, amounted to a quiet triumph. AKEL, for its part, marginally increased its share by roughly a percentage point. DIKO, the venerable “president-maker” of Cypriot politics, retained its voter base even as it relinquished its customary third-place position. Yet to read these res...

The interim government in Damascus is keeping an estimated 5,000 foreign fighters under arms inside Syria’s new security apparatus, a strategy that has eased the post‑Assad transition but is stirring deep unease at home and abroad. The policy, detailed in a recent commentary by the International Crisis Group, describes how Hayat Tahrir al‑Sham (HTS) and its allies integrated non‑Syrian militants into the regular army after the regime’s collapse in late 2024, banking on them as a disciplined reserve force even as many Syrians fear an entrenched jihadist influence in state institutions. In the months following the fall of Bashar al‑Assad, HTS offered foreign and Syrian factions a stark choice: fold into the new army hierarchy or face arrest, a move that brought once‑autonomous formations such as the Uighur‑dominated Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) under formal state command. While fighters now wear Syrian army uniforms and operate within numbered divisions, many units have preserved inter...