(New York Times) Adam Rasgon - Iran has launched missiles with cluster-munition warheads at Israel over the course of the war, according to verified footage and Israeli officials - actions that experts say could violate the laws of war. More than 10 Iranian missiles with these warheads have been fired at the country since Feb. 28, according to Chief Superintendent Doron Lavi of the Israel Police bomb disposal unit. Cluster munitions have warheads that burst and scatter into bomblets, which can cause indiscriminate harm if fired near civilians.

(Reuters) Cassell Bryan-Low - Explosive-laden unmanned surface vessels - naval drones - have been used in at least two attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf region since war erupted between the U.S., Israel and Iran, demonstrating a dangerous new threat in the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane. Robert Peters of the maritime security firm Ambrey said sea drones can carry more explosives than aerial ones, potentially rivaling the payload of ballistic missiles.

(Defense News) Anjana Pasricha - Two Iranian warships have docked in India and Sri Lanka after a U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean last week. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told parliament Monday the Iranian ship Iris Lavan sailed into the port of Kochi last week after it reported a technical problem. Its crew have been housed at Indian naval facilities. Sri Lanka took control of Iran's Irins Bushehr and offloaded 288 crew members at Trincomalee port after the ship had sought assistance, saying one of its engines malfunctioned.

(Jerusalem Post) Corinne Baum - Hizbullah launched over 200 rockets against northern Israel on Wednesday night. The IDF responded by conducting strikes on the Hizbullah stronghold of Dahiyeh in Beirut.

(Ynet News) A senior Israeli official said Wednesday: "We are on the eve of opening a broad campaign in Lebanon. We will call up reservists....The campaign in Lebanon is set to expand significantly. Hizbullah, in its view, wants to divert our attention from Iran and believes that if it pulls us in deeper, we will ease off the campaign against Iran. It wants to create a new equation under which Israeli enforcement policy in Lebanon stops and we do not strike at all. That will not happen. So this entire event is heading toward a serious escalation." "It does not appear that Hizbullah is listening to calls from the Lebanese government to stop. They do not care about the Lebanese government....We will be able to conduct a campaign simultaneously in Iran and Lebanon. We have fought on seven fronts." Dozens of rockets were fired toward the Haifa Bay area. One rocket scored a direct hit on a house in the Lower Galilee Arab town of Bi'ina, injuring two. Officials said the latest barrage from Lebanon was coordinated and launched simultaneously from several areas, and the military said it was working to disrupt the fire. Since the war began, the military has identified more than 250 launches from Iran and more than 450 from Lebanon. In addition, more than 150 drones have been launched from Iran and more than 50 from Lebanon.

(Jerusalem Post) The IDF struck ten Hizbullah headquarters and command centers in the Dahiyeh neighborhood of Beirut in Lebanon early Thursday. The military also destroyed dozens of missile launchers prepared to attack Israel, killing the Hizbullah terrorists operating the launchers.

(Ha'aretz) Yaniv Kubovich - Hizbullah has redeployed units of its Radwan force, comprising hundreds of fighters and combat support personnel, south of the Litani River, military intelligence officials say. Hizbullah forces are currently operating in small squads that execute offensive actions, including firing anti-tank missiles at IDF units in Lebanon and launching rockets and mortar shells at communities in northern Israel and IDF forces near the border.

(Ynet News) Yossi Yehoshua - With the U.S. expected to intensify its attacks in Iran, the IDF may shift more resources to Lebanon. Before the war with Iran, the IDF maintained five permanent defensive outposts inside Lebanon. Today there are 18 additional fortified positions deeper inside the territory, where Israeli forces are tasked with hunting Radwan terrorists.

(Ynet News) Yair Kraus - Every night, Israeli forces carried out raids in villages in southern Lebanon near the border, encountering small Hizbullah terrorist cells armed with anti-tank missiles. The risk of terrorist infiltration into Israel is now considered far lower due to the scale of forces deployed and the forward positioning of Israeli troops beyond civilian areas inside enemy territory. IDF officials say the campaign against Hizbullah will not be short and will not be limited by a fixed timeline. The goal is to push the fighting deeper into enemy territory and clear it from within, similar to operations carried out in Gaza. "What we were afraid to do for years, we are now doing," said Lt.-Col. D, a reserve battalion commander.

(Israel Hayom) Ariel Kahana - U.S. President Donald Trump approved Israel's limited ground incursion into Lebanon, which began last week, Israel Hayom has learned. Trump also agreed that the operation could be expanded significantly if necessary. The U.S. had previously set Jan. 1, 2026, as the final deadline for Hizbullah to disarm under the ceasefire agreement reached in late 2024.

(Jerusalem Post) Ariella Roitman - At least ten Iranian regime security personnel and Basij militia members were killed in a series of Israeli drone strikes on checkpoints in Tehran, according to a report from Iran International citing Iran's Fars News Agency on Wednesday.

(Globes) Assaf Gilead - Google has announced the completion of the acquisition of cybersecurity company Wiz for $32 billion - the biggest-ever acquisition of an Israeli company. The company's four founders left jobs at Microsoft in 2020 to set up their cloud security startup and will each receive $2.2 billion.

(Wall Street Journal) Yaakov Katz and Gil Troy - Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should be credited with elevating the Israel-U.S. military alliance to an unprecedented peak. Demonizing the "twin devils" of America and Israel was central to Khamenei's ideology and his regime. His followers murdered Americans, Israelis and Jews worldwide. The network of terror and nuclear ambition that this malevolent matchmaker built ultimately forced the U.S. and Israel to integrate their militaries in ways that would have been almost unimaginable a few years ago. The moment that symbolized this transformation came with Khamenei's death. Central Intelligence Agency information from a human source pinpointed the location of the supreme leader. The intelligence was passed on to Israel, which sent 100 aircraft into Tehran to attack Khamenei's compound, killing him alongside other top officials. Today, the operations are completely merged. American and Israeli F-15s and F-35s are flying almost side-by-side simultaneous strike packages, guided by shared intelligence. Hundreds of Israeli sorties have already been refueled by U.S. Air Force tankers. For the first time, the Israeli and American militaries are fighting the same war, in the same battle space, at the same time. Khamenei created the conditions for the most powerful military alliance the region has ever seen. Mr. Katz is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute. Mr. Troy is a senior fellow in Zionist Thought at JPPI.

(Media Line-Ynet News) Felice Friedson - Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter warned that the confrontation with Iran is about far more than Israel. Leiter argued that the U.S.-Israeli campaign is aimed at stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, exporting terrorism, and threatening the free flow of oil. "You can't have nuclear bombs in the hands of a tyrannical, apocalyptic regime that intends on using them and calls America the 'great Satan' and Israel 'the little Satan' and talks about eliminating Western civilization." The Iranians "have been planning this day for many years when they can come into negotiations and say that they have 462 kg. of enriched uranium at 60%, which could, within a week, be brought up to 90% and provide them with 11 nuclear bombs. So this had to be eliminated." "We're talking about regime collapse. We're not talking about regime change. The people on the ground have to do the change. We have to collapse them so that we can protect our own future, our own citizens, our own people....I don't think there's any inclination for either Israel or the U.S. to put boots on the ground. I don't think we need a ground operation." "This is an American operation. We're a junior partner. We're a model ally. We're a loyal ally. We don't ask for American boots on the ground. We fight side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, wing-to-wing." "If a nuclear Iran were to take control of the Straits of Hormuz, well, who's going to control the flow of oil throughout the world? The American people are good people. They understand that this is a battle for the future of Western civilization, and they're the leaders in making sure that we survive."

(Washington Post) Geoffrey Corn and Orde Kittrie - Critics of the latest U.S. military attacks against Iran argue that the Iranian threat was insufficiently imminent to justify self-defense. However, this campaign continues an ongoing and long-term armed conflict with Iran. Iran's assaults against U.S. personnel, bases, ships and Israel over the years triggered the right to act in self-defense in response to an actual or imminent unlawful armed attack under Article 51 of the UN Charter. That U.S. right of self-defense continues until Iran's willingness or capacity to continue such aggression ends. International law does not require a distinct self-defense justification for every attack conducted once the right of self-defense is triggered. Once that right is initiated, military action is justified to achieve the overall self-defense objective, in this case terminating Iran's capacity to strike the U.S. and its allies. There are strong arguments that the conflict has been ongoing for the 47 years since the Iranian Revolution. Iran has been held responsible for the deaths of 603 U.S. troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, 241 service members in the 1983 U.S. Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, three soldiers in Jordan in January 2024, and dozens of U.S. civilians. That the U.S. has historically chosen to tolerate acts of Iranian aggression or respond in limited ways in no way negates the reality of this conflict. It is logical and legally valid for the U.S. to target enemy military sites when and where such strikes are most likely to accomplish objectives and produce maximum advantage. This approach is inherent in the numerous times U.S. presidents and military officials have stated the U.S. will respond to Iranian aggression "at a time and place of our choosing." International law does not require the U.S. and its allies to endlessly endure and absorb Iranian aggression. The U.S. military is engaged in decisive action to permanently stop Iranian attacks. America is fighting a war that Iran chose. Lt.-Col. (ret.) Geoffrey Corn, a Texas Tech University law professor, previously served as the U.S. Army's senior law of war expert. Orde Kittrie, an Arizona State University law professor, previously served as the lead U.S. State Department attorney for nuclear issues.

(Daily Caller) James Carter and Jacob Choe - Thirty years of engagement with Iran - the diplomacy, the frameworks, the endless European intermediaries - produced a regime with more centrifuges, more proxies, and more confidence than when the process started. The foreign policy establishment responded to each setback by calling for more of the same. Trump looked at that record and found it embarrassing. At this point, Iran's nuclear sites are rubble. Its proxy network is the weakest it's been in a decade. The regime spent years believing it could outlast American attention. The assumptions that the regime would moderate with engagement, that Europe could broker something durable, and that military options were too destabilizing to seriously consider are gone. Iran's capabilities are degraded, its proxies weakened, and its assumptions shattered. That's not a starting point previous administrations managed to reach. For the first time in 30 years, America is doing the work from a position of strength rather than wishful thinking. James Carter served as Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor. Jacob Choe serves as the Eurasia Center's Asia Program Director.

(Washington Post) Marc A. Thiessen - A patient Trump can achieve what no modern president before him came anywhere close to: the irreversible elimination of the Iranian threat. By contrast, if victory is not decisive, Iran's surviving leaders could conclude that America lost its nerve and was too weak to defeat them. One level of success would be that the U.S. eliminates the regime's ability to project force beyond its borders. The U.S.-Israeli combined force is systematically dismantling Iran's air, ground and naval forces, its command and control, nuclear and ballistic missile stockpiles and production capacity, and terrorist infrastructure. "We're not just hitting what they have," says Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command. "We're destroying their ability to rebuild." There are thousands more targets that need to be hit, but if the U.S. and Israel finish the job, Iran will be militarily neutered - unable to launch missiles, drones or rockets or to provide these weapons to its terrorist proxies. That will be a world-changing accomplishment. But this success will be temporary and reversible if the current Iranian regime survives with its will intact. The greatest risk would be in ending the military campaign too soon before the Iranian regime collapses. Not only would that represent a lost opportunity, but regime remnants could conclude that they had actually won a contest of wills with Trump. For them, any form of survival is victory. Indeed, they may take the lesson that they were saved by providence to continue their campaign of jihad against the West. The writer is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

(Wall Street Journal) Yaroslav Trofimov - If Trump proclaims victory, stops the bombing and begins to withdraw the huge air and naval assets he assembled in the Middle East, it could soothe global markets and reassure American voters uneasy about the prospect of another forever war. But leaving in place Iran's theocratic regime - angry, defiant and in possession of its nuclear stockpile and what remains of its arsenal of missiles and drones - would essentially grant Tehran control over the world's energy markets. It would also sacrifice the security of America's partners and allies, and make another war likely. Iranian officials say they will fight on, until an agreement is reached on Iran's terms, including America paying reparations to Tehran. Marc Sievers, a former U.S. ambassador to Oman, said, "The regime lost a lot of its military capability, but not all of it clearly. If they are left standing, they will do everything they can to rebuild, and to do once again all these things that they were doing that triggered this." "The bad news is you would leave Iran potentially in a position where it can produce nuclear weapons, and you also leave Iran potentially with more motive to produce nuclear weapons," said Eric Brewer, an expert at the Nuclear Threat Initiative who served in senior nuclear-related roles in the White House and the U.S. intelligence community. "A wounded, angry Iran is not the best-case scenario for the Gulf states. While the U.S. has to a large degree castrated Iran in terms of its ability to attack Israel, this gives Iran only one other option: to attack the Gulf states and to weaponize the Strait of Hormuz," said Dania Thafer, executive director of the Gulf International Forum think tank.

(Telegraph-UK) Jake Wallis Simons - The Iranian regime has recently managed to close the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit through which 20% of the world's oil passes. Hundreds of ships are now loitering outside the Gulf while Western powers work up a plan to reopen the waterway. Closing the Strait harms Iran as well, hampering both its oil exports to China and its imports of food and other supplies. It is a sign that Tehran is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Of the 2,000 Iranian drones and more than 500 ballistic and cruise missiles fired into neighboring countries since the start of the war, the overwhelming majority have been intercepted. The few that sneaked through have caused a handful of deaths and injuries and destroyed some military equipment, but no major base has been disabled.

(Jewish Chronicle-UK) Jonathan Spyer - The Iranian regime, so far at least, appears to be maintaining the crucial loyalty of its own security personnel, and of the 20% of the population that is generally reckoned to support it. It is aware that it is fighting for its life. It is difficult to see how anything more than severe damage to the regime can be achieved. Moreover, the likelihood is slim in the extreme that the Lebanese Armed Forces will act to enforce Prime Minister Nawaf Salam's declaration that Hizbullah's military activity is illegal. Lebanese Chief of Staff Rodolphe Haykal's forces consists of 50% Shia Lebanese, including 30% of its officer corps. Israel has no intention of invading Lebanon in its entirety, while nothing in Lebanon is willing or able to dismantle Hizbullah. Israel can severely degrade Tehran's Lebanese clients, but it is difficult to see how it can finish them. The result is that it appears likely, unless something significantly changes, that both Iran and its Lebanese proxy will survive the present war.

(Jewish Chronicle-UK) Jamie Shapiro - Iranian dissidents rushed to Kensington on Friday night to protect the Israeli embassy from an anti-Zionist mob. The Palestinian Youth Movement had called on their members and followers to descend on the embassy to protest against the "Zionist entity," but when they arrived, they found a 200-strong crowd of pro-Israel supporters and anti-regime Iranians defending the entrance of the road that leads to the embassy. That counter-protest, arranged by Jewish campaign group Stop The Hate, dwarfed the Palestinian Youth Movement's demonstration and forced them away from the vicinity. Since the Iranian uprising began, Jews and Israelis in London have been marching in solidarity every week.

(JNS) Daniel Winston - For generations, Jews have been told that antisemitism can be defeated through explanation, education, dialogue and moral appeal - that ignorance is the real problem, that it is primarily a misunderstanding. It is not. At its core, antisemitism is not a problem of insufficient information. People don't cling to bigotry and hatred because they have not yet encountered the right educational brochure. They latch on to it because it offers moral simplification, group bonding, grievance and permission. It hands people a villain onto whom frustrations may be projected. It is a pathology that cannot be permanently disarmed by messaging because its function is not to describe reality, but to relieve the antisemite of reality. Education has its place. Historical knowledge matters. But education is not a shield. Awareness is not deterrence. Naming hatred is not the same as stopping the hater. What works instead? Situational awareness works. Hardened security works. Trained self-defense works. Lawful civilian preparedness works. Serious policing works. Clear and unwavering consequences work. Unapologetic exercise of national sovereignty works. The visible capacity and will to fight back work. This is not cynicism. It is adulthood. The mature response begins by abandoning the sentimental belief that all hostility is merely wounded confusion awaiting therapeutic engagement. Jewish survival has never depended chiefly on acceptance. It has depended on clarity, cohesion, memory, strength and the refusal to surrender reality to those who hate us.

(Newsweek) Stuart Gottlieb - Nearly all critics of the joint U.S.-Israeli decapitation strike against the Iranian regime on Feb. 28 claim support for the demise of the bloody-handed Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while simultaneously expressing outrage that the operation itself has supposedly violated a litany of laws, norms and other requirements that were necessary to proceed. The primary objectives of the operation are obvious and reasonable. For nearly 50 years, the Iranian regime has been at war against America and its interests in the region, and over the past decade it had been escalating dramatically. Not only was Tehran moving ahead full steam toward a nuclear weapons capability, it radically increased its support for terror proxies in the region, culminating with the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in Israel. Repeated criticism that the administration hasn't yet offered a specific "endgame" for the operation misses the point entirely - the only requirement is an Iran no longer able to threaten the region, or beyond. The notion that the action is "unconstitutional" or "unlawful" betrays a misunderstanding of both the Constitution and historic practice. Ever since Thomas Jefferson waged "undeclared" war against North African pirates in the Mediterranean, all presidents have claimed such authority. And while the 1973 War Powers Act tried to curb its excesses, the Trump administration met the letter of that law by informing Congressional leaders prior to the strike, and now has 60 days to garner formal approvals. America's international allies were by no means neglected. If the initial military operation aimed at taking out Khamenei and his inner circle was to have any chance of success, extreme secrecy was required. Attempting to form an international coalition in advance - while the regime in Tehran prepared for war - would have been impractical and unwise. The charge that the Trump administration ignored the possibility that diplomacy could achieve better outcomes than military action belies reality. White House envoys made several attempts at diplomacy, but the barriers between the two sides - mostly centered on eliminating Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile threats - were all but unbreachable. Diplomacy with this regime had been a dead end for decades. This was not a specific "regime change" operation requiring a direct U.S. long-term commitment. It was a rare opportunity to eliminate a decades-old security threat to the region and the world, and offer the possibility of a better future for the Iranian people. We can all join in wishing for its success. The writer is Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.