(CENTCOM) U.S. Central Command issued a safety warning to civilians in Iran on Sunday. "The Iranian regime is using heavily populated civilian areas to conduct military operations, including launching one-way attack drones and ballistic missiles. This dangerous decision risks the lives of all civilians in Iran since locations used for military purposes lose protected status and could become legitimate military targets under international law." "U.S. forces strongly urge civilians in Iran to stay at home. The Iranian regime is knowingly endangering innocent lives. Additionally, Iranian forces are jeopardizing the safety of innocent people throughout the Middle East by deliberately and indiscriminately targeting civilian airports, hotels, and residential neighborhoods." "The U.S. military takes every feasible precaution to minimize harm to civilians but cannot guarantee civilian safety in or near facilities used by the Iranian regime for military purposes."

(Wall Street Journal) Dov Lieber - An Iranian drone attack damaged a desalination plant in Bahrain, the Gulf state's Interior Ministry said Sunday. A day earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi said the U.S. had attacked an Iranian desalination plant, which U.S. Central Command denied. In a region where many countries have limited onshore sources of fresh water, Bahrain is almost completely dependent on its plants for drinking water. On Saturday, a drone exploded near Dubai's airport, forcing the temporary suspension of flights. Fragments of another projectile hit a residential building in the touristy Dubai Marina neighborhood. Saudi Aramco's Berri oil field was targeted Saturday by a drone. Saudi officials also said the kingdom downed two ballistic missiles headed to a military base and intercepted several waves of drones headed for the Shaybah oil field. Two fuel tanks at Kuwait's main airport were hit by drones, Kuwait's Defense Ministry said Sunday.

(Wall Street Journal) David S. Cloud - The war in the Middle East is pushing the U.S. military back into combat in Iraq against an old foe - Iran-backed militia groups that two decades ago battled American troops on the streets of Baghdad. Iraqi militias have attempted dozens of small-scale drone and rocket attacks since the war began in a show of support for Tehran, including against a U.S. military base and consulate in northern Iraq and a State Department facility at the Baghdad International Airport. On Saturday, rockets targeted the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The U.S. said Sunday it has been carrying out attacks against the militias. Iraqi officials say there have been multiple airstrikes apparently by U.S. warplanes on militia strongholds, including along the Iraqi-Syria border. A March 4 airstrike in Babil, in central Iraq, killed Abu Hassan al-Fariji, a commander of the U.S.-designated terror group Kataib Hizbullah. Tamer Badawi, who studies Iraqi militias at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said that since the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran began, there have been at least two dozen reported attacks on Iraqi militias, most likely by U.S. forces or its allies.

(Jerusalem Post) Maya Zanger-Nadis - Two people have been killed and another seriously wounded during an Iranian missile attack on central Israel, Magen David Adom confirmed on Monday. Cluster munitions were used and at least six sites were hit. At least seven people were wounded on Sunday after fragments of Iranian ballistic missiles showered down over central Israel.

(Ynet News) Yossi Yehoshua - A senior IDF General Staff officer said, "It is impossible to miss this opportunity. We must not take our foot off the gas until this regime collapses - neither we nor the United States. This is an opportunity we will not get again." IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir said Sunday, "Israel has been in a state of ongoing emergency for two years. What we need now above all is persistence and patience. It will take more time - however long it takes, it will take. This is the war of our generation, and it will determine our future and our security here for many years to come." Military officials say the limited size of Iranian missile barrages is not due to their conservation of weapons but rather the impact of Israeli strikes. "There are entire [Iranian] surface-to-surface missile commands that cannot function," Israel Air Force officials said. "If we stop now, they will rebuild the missile array," one official said. "China and North Korea will help them, and we will find ourselves facing the same problem again in a short time."

(Israel Hayom) Danny Zaken - Three leaders from Gulf states have separately delivered clear messages to the U.S.: any scenario for ending the war must ensure the elimination of the Iranian threat against them. A Gulf Arab diplomat told Israel Hayom, "Why would the GCC states (the Gulf Cooperation Council) want the war to end before defeating a regime that, at its first opportunity, fired hundreds of missiles at them indiscriminately?" "Why should we leave that risk hanging over us and over our most important economic interests, when it is clear that the missiles and drones will be directed at us in the next confrontation as well?"

(Jerusalem Post) Amichai Stein - Israel's National Security Council (NSC) has raised travel warnings for several countries bordering or in close proximity to Iran: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, joining existing high-level warnings for the UAE and other nations in the region. A senior NSC official described a regime that is "eager for battle....An Israeli, wherever he is, needs extra caution these days."

(Ha'aretz) Oded Yaron - The UAE, Azerbaijan and Cyprus, all attacked by Iran in recent days, are equipped with Barak and SPYDER air defense systems produced by Israel.

(Ynet News) Ron Ben-Yishai - Hizbullah is increasingly causing casualties among Israeli troops and carrying out attacks against communities in northern Israel. Small Hizbullah anti-tank missile teams have begun returning to areas from which they had withdrawn. These units are targeting Israeli forces deployed in forward defensive positions intended to prevent attacks on northern Israeli communities. To counter the threat, the IDF will need to improve intelligence collection and airstrike capabilities in southern Lebanon. Hizbullah is estimated to retain about 20% of its original military capabilities. It still possesses thousands of missiles, most of them short-range. Hundreds are precision-guided and capable of reaching the Tel Aviv area. Hizbullah also retains thousands of anti-tank missiles as well as anti-ship missiles that threaten Israel's offshore gas platforms. Hizbullah's Radwan force has rebuilt its strength and currently numbers 5,000 fighters. Its anti-tank teams are positioned 5 km. from the Israeli border and sometimes even closer.

(Ynet News) Elisha Ben Kimon - IDF officials said, "Our working assumption was that fighting with Iran could draw Hizbullah into the war. Northern Command fully prepared for this scenario. There was no surprise from our side. There were orderly plans and advance preparations. The combination of strikes on Iran and Hizbullah will give the IDF a unique window of opportunity in which conditions may emerge to dismantle Hizbullah." "The IDF began with a preemptive strike targeting command-and-control components and senior Hizbullah figures across Lebanon. The IDF continues to strike everything connected to the Iranian axis, including its economic infrastructure and senior operatives." Hizbullah is firing from locations known to the Israeli military, they added, noting that nearly 40 launchers have already been struck. "Every threat to Israel will be removed immediately." A series of operations carried out in recent days, and planned in the coming days, are intended to ensure a forward security zone that is demilitarized and cleared of civilians and enemy forces. "This is a type of defensive buffer that gives us high confidence in our goal of avoiding the evacuation of [Israeli] residents," an official said.

(Times of Israel) Emanuel Fabian - The IDF said Sunday that 200 members of Hizbullah and other terror groups have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon in the past week. They include 80 members of Hizbullah's Radwan Force, 70 Hizbullah artillery operatives, and a number of top commanders, including the chief of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Lebanon.

(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Yoni Ben Menachem - The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran successfully secured the appointment of their ally, Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, as the new Supreme Leader of Iran, following the elimination of his father, Ali Khamenei, by Israel on the first day of the war. In Iran, Mojtaba is considered significantly more hardline than his father. His appointment signals near-complete ideological continuity with the principles established since the Islamic Revolution, including its regional "resistance" doctrine. Senior Israeli security officials assess that Mojtaba Khamenei is now a top potential target. They argue that such a move could be necessary to dismantle the Iranian regime. Mojtaba Khamenei has been considered the individual most closely linked to the IRGC's commanders and internal power networks. The writer, a veteran Arab affairs and diplomatic commentator for Israel Radio and Television, is a senior Middle East analyst for the Jerusalem Center.

(Al Arabiya) Abdulrahman al-Rashed - After only one week since the outbreak of large-scale war, the early conclusion is that the existential threat Iran once posed to the region through its arsenal has effectively been neutralized. The war demonstrated clearly that the Iranian regime had both the plans and the capability to devastate the Gulf region. Its attacks targeted more than ten countries. Although the regime claimed its strikes were directed at military targets, in reality many of them hit civilian sites, including ports, airports, hotels and residential neighborhoods. Iran built these capabilities with the aim of dominating the region. Tehran's strategy of developing destructive capacities capable of paralyzing or even toppling neighboring states was never a secret. The question was always when "zero hour" would arrive, perhaps after the regime achieved nuclear deterrence, which would have granted Tehran protection from international military intervention. Stripping the regime of its military claws would represent a historic achievement of enormous significance. Regardless of whether the current regime survives or a successor emerges from within it, Iran's ability to threaten the region will have been largely eliminated by the end of the war, and its regional tools of influence will likely disappear. The writer is the chairman of Al Arabiya's editorial board and former editor-in-chief of Asharq al-Awsat.

(Tablet) Lee Smith - Some say Trump and America are being led to war by Israel. Others don't understand why Iran is so important. Iran has been waging a war against Americans, U.S. interests, and allies for nearly five decades, and no other American leader before Trump had the courage to stand up against that. Shortly after the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, career U.S. diplomat George Kennan told a Senate committee that the U.S. should declare war on the Islamic Republic. Iranian officials, he said, should be interned and released only in exchange for the Americans held by the revolutionary regime. The idea that Trump himself only lately started to worry about Iran's war on America is not true. In an October 1980 interview, Trump said of Iran: "That they hold our hostages is just absolutely and totally ridiculous. That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror." Since then, Trump has made numerous, well-documented statements about Iran, its nuclear weapons program, and the war it's been waging on America since 1979. Here's a president who means not only to dismantle Iran's threat to Americans but also to avenge the many thousands of Americans kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the Iranians in the past five decades. It's inspiring to see a commander-in-chief picking up the gauntlet for the purpose of killing terrorists who target Americans.

(New York Post) Mark Dubowitz - A dangerous lie has taken hold in Washington: that Israel somehow pressured the U.S. into war with Iran. Both President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio have said this is wrong. Rubio said the U.S. faced "a threat that was untenable." Iran has spent years building nuclear weapons, developing long-range ballistic missiles, and encircling Israel with a terror army stretching from Lebanon to Gaza to Yemen. It has fired ballistic missiles directly at Israeli civilians. No Israeli government could ignore that. Jerusalem's decision to join a combined American-Israeli operation targeting Iran's missile and nuclear capabilities drew near-universal support across Israel's political spectrum. It was a national security imperative. When Netanyahu met Trump at Mar-a-Lago last December, the president had already green-lighted an Israeli strike on Iran's missile infrastructure. When they met again at the White House, Washington knew exactly what was coming and decided to lead the war. The claim that Israel pressured the U.S. president into war is not just factually hollow - it veers dangerously close to antisemitic fringe narratives. But the bigger point that keeps getting buried is that Iran's missiles and nuclear program and terror are America's problem. They are being fired right now at U.S. forces, American bases, our embassies, and our Gulf Arab allies. Iran is actively developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that could one day reach the American homeland. Dismantling that regime's nuclear, missile, and terror infrastructure is core American national security. Israel didn't drag us into this war. It enabled us to fight it smarter, faster, and at far less cost than we ever could have alone. The writer is CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

(Quillette-Australia) Benny Morris - On Day Three of the war with Iran, Hizbullah launched a salvo of short-range rockets toward Israel's northern communities. The IDF responded with bombardments of targets in southern and eastern Lebanon and in the Dahiya quarter of southern Beirut, Hizbullah's main stronghold. Moreover, the IDF ordered the inhabitants of southern Lebanon, most of whom are Shi'ites, to completely evacuate the villages south of the Litani River as well as the Dahiya district. More than half a million Lebanese are reportedly on the move and seeking shelter. On Friday, the Israel Air Force began toppling multistorey apartment blocks in Dahiya. So far, Hizbullah rockets and drones have been largely ineffectual. Over the past few days, the Lebanese Christian and Sunni publics, who together form the bulk of the country's population, have been outspoken in their condemnations of Hizbullah for dragging Lebanon into a destructive war contrary to the country's interests. And many Lebanese Shi'ites, including Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, have joined the chorus of disapproval. The writer is professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University.

(Tablet) Eyal Zisser - Hizbullah is again firing rockets at Israel. Israel retaliated immediately with a wave of targeted strikes and has now begun limited ground operations in south Lebanon. For Israel, Hizbullah is unfinished business. By the end of 2024, Hizbullah was at a low point after the blows Israel inflicted on it during the war that began in Oct. 2023, culminating in the elimination of nearly its entire top echelon and in the loss of an essential logistical and financial lifeline with the collapse of Assad's regime in Syria in Dec. 2024. Yet in Nov. 2024, under American pressure and amid a desire to prioritize other arenas, Israel was forced to accept a ceasefire. In doing so, it granted Hizbullah a lifeline - one it used to regroup and rebuild. Hizbullah's disarmament will not result from persuasion or internal Lebanese pressure. As in the case of Iran, the issue is not the terms of negotiation, but the continued existence of a heavily armed militia operating outside state control. Hizbullah will not voluntarily relinquish its weapons. What is needed is a decisive military campaign that will lead to its defeat. The writer is a lecturer in the Middle East History Department at Tel Aviv University.

(Wall Street Journal) Editorial - The war with Iran is also being waged in Lebanon, now that Iran's flagship foreign proxy, Hizbullah, has chosen to join the fight. Hizbullah began firing rockets and drones into Israel on Monday and has carried out 100 more attacks since. Hizbullah's entry into the war, with disregard for the Lebanese people, is another reminder of the terror and destruction Iran's regime has spread.

(Ynet News) Tal Shahaf - Israeli air defense systems have new capabilities that enable missile alerts to arrive earlier and more precisely predict impact locations, based on artificial intelligence. The system includes details of 60,000 flight paths of every missile and drone launched toward Israel since Oct. 7. Another system is the SkEye, installed on an Air Force drone, that observes the battlefield from high altitude. It automatically detects events - such as preparations for a missile launch - at the moment they begin. It can replay events backward, allowing analysts to determine where a threat originated, and present commanders with recommendations about how to respond. Shuki Yehuda, Chief Technology Officer at Elbit Systems, said, "In the past, the Air Force would conduct reconnaissance missions, land, develop the film, study it for months, and then determine what the enemy's airport looked like. Today...the entire process takes less than a minute. I can have an (IA) agent that constantly scans a large area and finds targets," Yehuda explained. Instead of soldiers watching surveillance screens, AI systems can detect vehicles, motorcycles, and even partially concealed individuals with high probability. Once suspicious activity is detected, AI can zoom in on the area.

(Telegraph-UK) David Harris - At its core, antisemitism is an elaborate conspiracy theory. It attributes to Jews both malevolent intent and extraordinary power. Jews have been cast as the hidden force behind society's misfortunes. Jews are seen as everywhere, responsible for everything that goes wrong. This obsessive, all-enveloping worldview has long defied rational rebuttal. For several decades after the Holocaust, antisemitism receded. Jewish communities experienced unprecedented acceptance and integration. It appeared that liberal democracy had created an environment in which antisemitism could no longer flourish openly. But this proved premature. Antisemitism had not disappeared. It was hibernating. Hostility towards Israel and Zionism - the movement for Jewish self-determination - became, in certain circles, a socially acceptable means of expressing ideas that would once have been recognized as antisemitic. At the same time, social media enabled the widespread availability of Holocaust denial, distortion, and denigration, reaching millions without the filters to distinguish fact from fiction. The Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, marked a watershed moment. In a single day, over 1,200 Israelis were murdered and over 250 were taken hostage, including young children and elderly survivors of the Holocaust. Yet as Israelis mourned, demonstrations erupted in cities and on university campuses across the democratic world with protesters chanting slogans calling for Israel's destruction. Denying the very legitimacy of Israel's existence - or calling for its elimination - crosses a fundamental line. No other nation is subjected to daily demands that it justify its very existence. No other people are told that their right to collective self-determination is inherently illegitimate. What is required in response is outrage - not only from Jewish communities, but from political leaders across the spectrum, civil society, and the public at large. When Jews are attacked we will link arms and say, "not on our watch and not in our name." This should be followed by action, not merely symbolic gestures, to monitor and confront the sources. And there is a need for the courage to recognize that antisemitism is not solely a Jewish concern, but a much broader threat to democratic society. Antisemitism must be confronted clearly, consistently, and without illusion. The writer is executive vice chair of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.