(New York Times) Raja Abdulrahim - An Iranian drone strike in Sitra, an island near Bahrain's capital, Manama, wounded 32 Bahrainis, four of them seriously, according to Bahraini authorities. The country, a key American ally, hosts the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet and U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. Bahrain's Defense Force said Monday that its air defense systems had destroyed 102 missiles and 171 drones since the start of Iranian attacks on Feb. 28. Iran has hit regional U.S. allies every day since the start of the conflict.

(AP-Military Times) Emma Burrows - While the U.S. has used Patriot and THAAD missile systems to take down Iranian missiles successfully, there are limited effective anti-drone defenses now in the Middle East, according to a U.S. defense official. An American anti-drone system proven to work against Russian drones in Ukraine will soon be sent to the Middle East, two U.S. officials said Friday. The Merops system flies drones against drones. It can fit in the back of a midsize pickup truck, can identify drones and close in on them.

(JTA) Philissa Cramer - Two-thirds of "connected" American Jews support the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, according to a survey taken last week by Israel's Jewish People Policy Institute. 57% of "leaning liberal" Jews said they support the war. 52% of those polled said they expected the war to increase antisemitism in the U.S. 72% rejected the narrative that Trump was forced into the conflict by Netanyahu, believing that Trump needed no convincing.

(Israel Hayom) Danny Zaken - Washington and Gulf capitals assessed Monday that Iran plans to intensify attacks on Gulf oil and gas facilities. Diplomatic sources from the Gulf said Iran is broadening its effort to pressure the U.S. by driving up global oil prices through those attacks. "If Iran is attacking the oil facilities of its Arab neighbors, it means it feels the end is near and must use every maximum measure available to force the Americans to stop," a Gulf diplomat said. The current expectation is that this situation will last several days or perhaps somewhat longer, with oil prices rising to some degree, more so in Europe and the East than in the U.S., but not over the long term. The American scenario anticipates that after several days, Iranian attacks will taper off due to the daily attrition from American and Israeli strikes and from damage to the regime's leadership and infrastructure. An Israeli official assessed that the current Tehran leadership, facing acute distress, is playing every remaining card to bring the war to a quick end. The official said Iran's current strategy of fire directed at Israel amounts to a war of attrition - firing individual missiles during daylight hours to disrupt the Israeli economy, while carefully managing its weapons inventory to sustain weeks of harassment. Israel and the U.S. are working to degrade launch capabilities and hit symbols of regime power and its infrastructure.

(Jerusalem Post) Yehuda Shlezinger - A senior Israeli official said that the IDF "will eliminate most of the missile launchers, the Israeli public will return to routine, and then [operations] will not be limited in time," in an interview with Walla on Tuesday. "The challenge for the air force is to try to reduce Iran's firing capability to a negligible minimum, and then we will continue in a situation with unlimited time to do the job in Iran." "We have destroyed 80% of the launchers. We need to destroy 95% of the launchers, and then if there is the firing of one missile every few days, it will be possible to return to normal life, like during the period of fire from the Houthis. Larger groups of launchers are easier to hunt than individual launchers here and there. We will hunt the remainder down, but it is impossible to predict the exact day when this will be achieved."

(Ynet News) Ron Ben-Yishai - While Israel is shifting some intelligence resources toward Lebanon and carrying out additional strikes there, its strategic focus remains on attacks in Iran, even after Hizbullah fired rockets toward central Israel. Israel's defensive effort in Lebanon includes brigade-level raids south of the Litani River designed to push Hizbullah's Radwan force back to the north. The campaign also includes continued strikes on Hizbullah infrastructure, mainly in Beirut's Dahieh district and in northern areas of the Bekaa Valley. In addition, rapid strikes are being carried out on targets that emerge after Hizbullah rocket launches. So far, more than 350 Hizbullah terrorists have been killed in Lebanon.

(Ynet News) More than 1,900 Iranian regime soldiers and commanders have been killed since the start of the war, IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Effie Defrin said Monday. He said the air force completed a series of strikes on six major Iranian military airports overnight Sunday. The attacks destroyed multiple aircraft, including 16 transport planes used by the IRGC-Quds Force and Iranian combat helicopters. Runways and air defense and detection systems were also struck.

(Times of Israel) Emanuel Fabian - The Israel Defense Forces said Monday it had pushed deeper into southern Lebanon to create a buffer zone to protect northern communities after Hizbullah began attacking Israel a week ago, firing multiple rocket barrages at civilian areas. The IDF said Hizbullah is launching most of its attacks from deeper within southern Lebanon and not from close to the border.

(Ha'aretz) Zvi Bar'el - There is strident criticism of Hizbullah's decision to join the war even among Lebanon's Shi'ite minority. Local Shi'ite groups emerged, demanding that Hizbullah not bring another disaster upon the Lebanese people and Shi'ite Muslims in particular, who suffered the brunt of the damage and casualties in Hizbullah's war of support for Gaza. About 1 million Lebanese citizens have been displaced, forced to sleep in public buildings, construction sites and makeshift shelters, without even minimal living conditions. Food prices have soared, and another harvest for the villages in the south is about to go to waste. Today, Hizbullah cannot count on Iran for the funds that it needs to compensate the affected citizens and pay rent to the displaced.

(Washington Post) Douglas J. Feith - The Trump logic seems to run as follows: There are two possible outcomes of the U.S.-Israeli air campaign. The first is that the Iranian people oust the current regime and create a new one. The second is that they don't. History says there aren't many cases of air campaigns producing regime change. The president may figure that the second possibility would also be a good result. The air campaign is intended to destroy the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran's navy, air force, air defenses, missile capabilities, and nuclear weapons program. Even if new leaders arise out of the old Islamic regime, they will have far less power to harm their neighbors or the U.S. Moreover, if the new leaders remain fanatical and hostile, oppressive and aggressive, Trump may assume he can hit them again. He appears confident that, as the U.S. is powerful and the Iranian authorities impotent, he will be able to do whatever he considers necessary. That thinking is altogether different from the ideas that shaped U.S. foreign policy after 9/11. When U.S. troops overthrew the regimes of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, President George W. Bush was intent on helping those countries lay foundations for governments that would neither be repressive nor give safe harbor or support to anti-American terrorists. Trump sees giving the Iranians a chance to take control away from the ayatollahs as a gift. He doesn't think the U.S. owes Iranians an on-the-ground effort to make their country stable, let alone democratic and prosperous. The president's goal is to deprive Iran of the power to hurt the U.S. and its interests. If dangers develop down the road, he expects to be able to deal with them far more easily than if he had left in place the Islamic regime that was pursuing nuclear weapons and developing ever-longer-range missiles. Ironically, critics who are demanding to know the "day after" plan are implying that Trump should adopt Bush's outlook. The writer, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, served as undersecretary of defense for policy from 2001 to 2005.

(Wall Street Journal) Walter Russell Mead - So far, air supremacy hasn't prevented Iran from putting massive political and economic pressure on Washington by choking off the Middle East's oil flow to the world. There are no signs yet of a popular rebellion capable of toppling the regime. And waves of attacks against Iran's strongholds and assets haven't yet enabled any surviving pragmatists to steer the regime away from its radical approach. Yet the pessimism is likely premature. The lesson so far is that Iran's threat to America is both greater than many Iran doves understood and more difficult to address than many Iran hawks hoped. Since World War II, U.S. presidents of both parties believed that preventing any hostile country from blackmailing the rest of the world by blocking exports from the Gulf was a vital national interest. This reality, not Israeli lobbying, has been the driving force behind American Middle East policy. If Iran pressures the U.S. to end the war before it can break the blockade and cripple Tehran's ability to impose new blockades down the road, the mullahs will hold an acknowledged veto power over the ability of their Gulf neighbors to trade with the world. The Iranian regime could then threaten a global economic crisis at will and would build up the weapons and war chests that will make its position unassailable. The writer, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, is Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Florida.

(Israel Hayom) Oded Granot - For many leaders of the Revolutionary Guards who are still fighting, this ceased long ago to be an ideological war. It is a fight for survival. If they lose, they will, at the very least, lose the billions they have pocketed and the privileges they accumulated over years at the expense of the Iranian people. There is no dispute about the basic facts of this war. A vast majority of Iranian citizens are fed up with the rule of the ayatollahs, want lives of freedom and liberty, and cannot understand why the brutal regime has devoted decades to the illusion of destroying Israel instead of ensuring the welfare of its own people. The same is true in Lebanon, perhaps even more so. Lebanon's entire government, along with a large majority of the Lebanese public, do not want the war with Israel to continue. They do not accept the absurd claim that Israel has territorial ambitions in Lebanon, and they are convinced that Hizbullah, since its founding 44 years ago, has brought the country nothing but disasters and destruction. Operation "Roaring Lion" cannot end without the full and complete removal of the Hizbullah threat to residents of northern Israel and the opening of a real possibility of a peace agreement with the Lebanese government and its eventual entry into the Abraham Accords. The writer headed the Middle East desk and was senior commentator at Israel's Channel 1 Television (2001-2017).

(Ynet News) Amb. Michael Oren - Among the American public, more and more voices are accusing Israel of dragging the U.S. into yet another unnecessary and endless war. They argue that the cunning Benjamin Netanyahu persuaded Donald Trump to attack Iran and wage a war on Israel's behalf. This relies on the classic antisemitic accusation of the cunning Jew manipulating the naive gentile like a puppeteer. The growing popularity of this theory threatens to intensify the antisemitism that is already affecting the U.S. To confront this harsh outcome, Israeli and American Jews must emphasize what U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently declared: that Israel is "a true ally with real capabilities," a "steadfast partner" acting with "unparalleled skill and iron determination." We must stress that these exceptional qualities help safeguard not only Israel's security, but America's as well. The writer was Israel's ambassador to the U.S., 2009-13.

(Telegraph-UK) Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp - The recent strike on the runway at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus was delivered by an Iranian-made Shahed suicide drone. It has been assessed that it was fired from Lebanon by Hizbullah, a key Iranian proxy. RAF Akrotiri is not just another military base on foreign soil. It is British sovereign territory, one of two areas retained by the UK under the 1960 Treaty of Establishment that created the independent Republic of Cyprus. British territory had been deliberately attacked by the Iranian axis. Meanwhile, Israel is doing our fighting for us by going in against Hizbullah. Israel is defending its own citizens, of course, but its expanding assaults against the terrorists in Lebanon will also be protecting us. Can we expect to see a word of thanks to a country that is putting its own soldiers' lives on the line and has consistently supported Britain with lifesaving intelligence and defense technology over many decades? Hizbullah and Iran were directly responsible for murdering and maiming dozens of British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq during the conflicts there. And Hizbullah and Iran have been involved in at least 20 potentially lethal terrorist plots in the UK, orchestrated by Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The writer, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, was chairman of the UK's national crisis management committee, COBRA.

(Fox News) Victoria Coates - According to conventional wisdom about foreign policy in Washington, it was assumed that the following would be inevitable if the U.S. and/or Israel were to take significant military action against Iran: 1) Iran's supreme leader would be untouchable. 2) The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would deploy its terrorist proxies to ignite a regional war. 3) Israel would be isolated in the Middle East and vulnerable to attack from Arab neighbors. 4) The U.S. would be isolated on the world stage and limited in what it could do to support Israel. All four assumptions were dead wrong. The supreme leader was eliminated in one of the opening strikes, along with much of Iran's senior leadership. The predicted mass regional attack on Israel has not materialized. Because of Iran's disastrous decision to launch missiles against its neighbors, the region has unified not against Israel, but against Iran. And America is re-established as the pre-eminent military power on the planet. This war will continue to cost American lives and treasure to successfully prosecute. But there's no denying it is very different from what the "experts" have predicted for the last 47 years. President Trump's mission is not nation-building. It is to give the American people the opportunity to go through the next half-century freed from the deadly threat of the Islamic Republic. The writer is a former U.S. deputy national security adviser for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs.

(Jerusalem Post) Khosro Isfahani - At some point, atrocity stops being abstract and becomes undeniable. Images of broken bodies, infants hit with bullets, faces demolished with shotgun pellets, corpses strewn on the floor, and flesh and blood flash before your eyes. This is what systematic atrocity looks like when it becomes the lived reality of a nation. It is light versus darkness. In the furnace of industrialized repression and mass killing, a nation has been born in Iran. Many Iranians are looking to the lessons of the Zionist movement and the founding of Israel as one example of how a nation scarred by unimaginable atrocities can build a resilient state. The regime has killed tens of thousands of innocent Iranians since the beginning of what many Iranians now call the Lion and Sun Revolution in late December. The accumulated number of lives crushed by the Islamic Republic over the past two decades is at least ten times higher. But the U.S. and Israel have finally provided us with a chance to liberate Iran, to reclaim our motherland. The writer is director of research at the National Union for Democracy in Iran.

(Jewish Chronicle-UK) Jamie Shapiro - Flight cancellations triggered by the outbreak of the Iran war left some 1,000 Israelis stuck in Britain, the vast majority of them in London. However, the London Jewish community has mobilized, with many households opening up their homes to Israelis, providing them with a free place to stay until flights resume. Nivi, who works in collaboration with the Israeli Community Europe Network, found it "incredibly moving" to see how quickly people have stepped forward to help. "As an Israeli living outside Israel...helping Israelis here makes me feel that I am at least doing something meaningful to support people who have been living under immense pressure, especially since Oct. 7." Emanuella, who volunteered her spare room in north London, said, "It is funny, in the beginning on the group chat, people were fighting to host....We took in two 18-year-old girls who were here on holiday. They ended up stranded when their flights were cancelled....At least these girls got to stay in a safe Jewish home with a family until they left."

(The Times-UK) Melanie Phillips - In Israel, the public are having to run repeatedly into the shelters day and night under barrages of missiles and drones, including banned cluster bombs, from Iran and more barrages from its proxy army in Lebanon, Hizbullah. Most missiles are being intercepted, but the fragments that hurtle down from the sky can be as big as a bus, destroying houses and killing people. The Gulf states, whose defenses are less sophisticated than Israel's, have been attacked by even heavier barrages of missiles from Iran. Despite this, both the Israelis and the Gulf rulers want the war waged by America and Israel to continue until the Iranian regime has been destroyed. The Gulf states - including Iran's erstwhile ally, Qatar - are astounded and outraged that Iran has turned on them. The Israelis - who for more than four decades have been attacked by Iranian proxy terrorism and rockets, and have shuddered at the regime's steady advance towards nuclear capacity and mass-production of missiles designed to wipe them off the face of the earth - are united in support of the war. There is little understanding in the West of the Tehran regime's particular kind of fanaticism. Its dominant members are Shia "Twelvers," who believe that an apocalypse will bring to earth the Shia messiah, the "Twelfth Imam." Anyone who thinks there can ever be any compromise with such fanatics is on a different planet. The Iranian threat can never be totally neutralized unless the regime itself is brought down. This war could be seen as utterly reckless - unless the alternative is fully understood. Then it becomes utterly imperative, and essential that it is pursued until the Iranian Islamic regime is no more.