(Reuters) Steve Holland - President Trump told Fox News on Sunday that if the Iranians "want to talk, they can come to us, or they can call us. You know, there is a telephone. We have nice, secure lines. They know what has to be in the agreement. It's very simple: They cannot have a nuclear weapon, otherwise there's no reason to meet."

(U.S. State Department) Asked about the main roadblock to an agreement with the Iranian government, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News on Monday: "The country's run by radical Shia clerics; that's a pretty big impediment....People talk about moderates and hardliners. They're all hardliners in Iran. But there are hardliners who understand they have to run a country and an economy, and there are hardliners that are completely motivated by theology....Unfortunately, the hardliners with an apocalyptic vision of the future have the ultimate power in that country." "If what they mean by opening the straits [of Hormuz] is, 'Yes, the straits are open as long as you coordinate with Iran, get our permission or we'll blow you up, and you pay us,' that's not opening the straits. Those are international waterways. They cannot normalize, nor can we tolerate them trying to normalize, a system in which the Iranians decide who gets to use an international waterway and how much you have to pay them to use it." "The nuclear question is the reason why we're in this in the first place....They seek to dominate the region. And imagine that with a nuclear weapon. Look what they've done with the straits - great example. The straits is basically the equivalent of an economic nuclear weapon that they're trying to use against the world, and they're bragging about it. They're putting up billboards in Tehran bragging about how they can hold 20% of the world's energy hostage. Imagine if those same people had access to a nuclear weapon. They would hold the whole region hostage." "I think they're serious about figuring out how can they buy themselves more time. We can't let them get away with it....They're very experienced negotiators, and we have to ensure that any deal that is made, any agreement that is made, is one that definitively prevents them from sprinting towards a nuclear weapon at any point."

(Wall Street Journal) Benoit Faucon - As a U.S. naval blockade bottles up Iran's oil exports and with oil backing up at home, Iran is reviving derelict storage sites. Every barrel that can't leave the country must go somewhere: into a tank, onto a ship, into an improvised storage site - or remain underground. Many analysts think Iran will run out of room to store the crude it pumps in less than two weeks. President Trump said Sunday that it would be about three days before Iran's oil infrastructure backs up.

(Axios) Barak Ravid - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Forces to send an Iron Dome battery with interceptors and several dozen IDF operators to the United Arab Emirates early in the war with Iran after a call with Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed, two Israeli officials said. The system intercepted dozens of Iranian missiles and was the first time Israel had sent an Iron Dome battery to another country. The Israeli Air Force also conducted numerous strikes to take out short-range missiles positioned in southern Iran before they could strike the UAE and other Gulf countries. Tareq al-Otaiba, a former official at the UAE's national security council, wrote: "Primarily, the United States and Israel have proved to be true allies by offering support through extensive military aid, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic backing." "We are not going to forget it," a senior Emirati official said.

(CENTCOM) For the first time in decades, three aircraft carriers are operating in the Middle East at the same time. Accompanied by their carrier air wings, the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Gerald R. Ford, and USS George H.W. Bush include over 200 aircraft and 15,000 sailors and marines.

(Times of Israel) Emanuel Fabian - Sgt. Idan Fooks, 19, was killed and six were wounded, three seriously, in a Hizbullah explosive drone attack in southern Lebanon on Sunday.

(Ynet News) Elisha Ben Kimon - The uncle of Sgt. Idan Fooks, who was killed in a Hizbullah drone attack on Sunday, said Idan's girlfriend, who serves as a surveillance soldier, saw the attack on her screen. "She saw the incident...and asked if Idan was there....She had a feeling he was. In retrospect, it turned out she saw her boyfriend, whom she loved so much and who loved her, killed in Lebanon. She is in shock, like all of us."

(Ynet News) Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Monday that since Hizbullah joined the war on March 2, it has fired 10,000 missiles, rockets and drones at Israel.

(Ynet News) Elisha Ben Kimon - The reality emerging in southern Lebanon over the past two weeks leaves the IDF unable to act with full freedom against Hizbullah, paying the price of its strategic "partnership" with a superpower. Israel's security relationship with Washington is indeed critical when it comes to Iran. But in Lebanon, that partnership is starting to look like a liability. The result: The IDF is fighting with one hand tied behind its back, as diplomacy constrains its room to maneuver. The ceasefire is unraveling daily. In 11 days, Israel has lost three soldiers. Hizbullah is moving operatives from central Lebanon into the south. It is laying IEDs, firing rockets at northern communities and IDF forces, and launching attack drones. This is not a ceasefire. It is a slow-drip war of attrition. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Monday: "There will be no reality in which a ceasefire exists in Lebanon while there is fire on our forces and on communities in the Galilee....The Lebanese government must ensure that Hizbullah is disarmed, first south of the Litani [River] up to the yellow line and then throughout Lebanon."

(The National-UAE) Jamie Prentis - Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Monday, "My goal is to reach an end to the state of war with Israel, along the lines of an armistice agreement....What we are doing is not betrayal. Betrayal is committed by those who drag their country into war to serve external interests. Some criticize us for deciding to go to negotiations on the grounds that there is no national consensus. I ask: when you chose war, did you have national consensus first?" "How long will the people of the south continue to pay the price for others' wars on our land, most recently the war in support of Gaza and the war in support of Iran? If the war were for Lebanon, we would have supported it. But when its purpose serves the interests of others, I reject it entirely."

(Al Jazeera) Jason D. Greenblatt - The New York Times published a detailed account last week of Iran's new leadership structure. It states that power has shifted to "an entrenched, hard-line military" and that "the broad influence of the clerics is waning." The implication is that this represents a radicalization of what came before. It does not. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the cleric who led Iran for 35 years, advanced Iran's nuclear program to the edge of weaponization, built the ballistic missile program, the drone program, and the network of proxies including Hizbullah, Hamas, the Houthis and the Shia militias in Iraq that threatened Israel, the Gulf states, and American forces across the region for decades. He crushed the Green Movement in 2009. His regime executed protesters in the crackdown that followed the 2022 uprising. He directed the IRGC's Quds Force under Qassem Soleimani, whose operations killed and maimed American soldiers for years. The IRGC was not a force that the clerics restrained. It was the instrument through which the clerical vision was executed. A claim repeated in media commentary and on Capitol Hill held that the U.S. was not already at war with Iran before the February strikes. That claim has always been a fiction. Iran had been waging war on the U.S. and its allies for decades, through terror proxies, attacks on American troops, and a nuclear program designed to hold the region hostage. Pretending otherwise did not make Americans or our allies in the Gulf and Israel safer. It made the eventual reckoning easier to mischaracterize as aggression rather than a long-overdue response to a severe threat that had been growing for 45 years. The clerics built this. The IRGC executed it. They are not in tension. They are in partnership. The only thing that has changed is that sustained military pressure has left them with fewer options than they have ever had. The writer is a former White House Middle East Envoy.

(Wall Street Journal) Walter Russell Mead - The establishment consensus is that President Trump's war with Iran is a disaster. Time will tell, but it would be a mistake to assume that Mr. Trump is desperately looking for the exits. Viewed from the Oval Office, the war may seem less costly than critics charge, and the likelihood of a favorable outcome may appear significantly greater than a horrified foreign-policy establishment can bring itself to believe. True, the war has gone on longer than originally hoped and is taking a toll on the president's popularity. But he may feel less trapped than critics think he should. In the Gulf, American naval forces have, without taking casualties, consolidated a crushing blockade of Iran that Tehran seems unable to counter. And support in the Gulf for a decisive effort against Iran is stronger now than at the outbreak of hostilities. For now, the president can afford to wait and see how mounting pressure affects the Iranian side. The writer, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, is Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Florida.

(Algemeiner) Shoshana Bryen - The common belief is that Iran's original goal was nuclear capability, either to prevent the U.S. from attacking it (the North Korea strategy) or to use it against the Great and the Little Satan. Perhaps. But the mullahs had/have a second strategic goal - which appears to be working quite well: The undermining and elimination of political, military, economic, and social ties between the U.S. and what has always been their alliance base: primarily NATO, the EU, and the UN, but also the Gulf Arab states and parts of South America. The horrors of Oct. 7 were not designed to destroy Israel. Neither Iran nor Hamas believed it could do that, even if Hizbullah had helped. After years of relatively small-scale attacks and limited Israeli responses followed by ceasefires, this monstrosity was designed to ensure massive Israeli retaliation that would produce a significant political cost on the Jewish state. The Iranian and Hamas objective against Israel was achieved. France, the UK, Canada, Australia, Italy, the EU as a body, Denmark, and many more all pulled away from Jerusalem. (Norway, Spain, and Ireland were always hostile, so they don't count.) Israeli and American intelligence were monitoring the enrichment of Iranian uranium beyond Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) limits and ballistic missile ranges beyond UN sanctions. As Iran's capabilities grew, the margins narrowed. And the U.S. and Israel found themselves in a war they didn't ask for, didn't want, but have to win. Unfortunately, the allied response in Europe and across the world produced the diplomatic response Iran wanted. The more European countries and institutions, plus the UN, castigate and punish Israel and the U.S., the happier the mullahs and the Revolutionary Guards Corps are. The histrionic anti-American, anti-Israel, and antisemitic caterwauling has Iran claiming it is winning. The writer is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center.

(Brussels Signal-Belgium) Struan Stevenson - For decades, some argued that engagement and appeasement would moderate Tehran's behavior. They insisted there were "reformists" and "pragmatists" lurking within the clerical establishment, figures who could be trusted to steer Iran toward a more responsible path. It was always a fantasy. Time and again, those illusions were exposed. The regime exploited diplomatic openings not to reform, but to regroup. It extended its influence across the Middle East, fueling proxy wars, sponsoring terrorism, and destabilizing fragile states. All the while, it lied, obfuscated and advanced its nuclear ambitions alongside an expanding arsenal of ballistic missiles and drones. Appeasement did not change the regime. It emboldened it. Now, not only has the regime survived, it has adapted. Iran today is a country gripped by fear. Arrests are rising sharply. Surveillance is pervasive. Executions are carried out with chilling regularity. Inside the prisons, conditions are inhumane. Detainees are starved, denied medical care, and subjected to prolonged isolation. The silence from the international community has been as shocking as it is shameful. The recent executions of political prisoners and young protesters swept up during the January uprising should have provoked global outrage. Instead, they passed with barely a murmur. But repression cannot extinguish the underlying reality. Iran is a country on the brink. Beneath the surface lies a seething reservoir of anger among workers, pensioners, students and women. The demand for change is not fading. It is growing. The responsibility of the West is clear. It is to stand consistently and unequivocally with the Iranian people. The writer was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014).

(Israel Hayom) Meir Ben Shabbat - The restrictions imposed on IDF activity in Lebanon are allowing Hizbullah to continue violating the ceasefire. In practice, this gives Hizbullah the ability to set new rules. President Donald Trump sought to restrain Israel in order to pave the way for diplomatic dialogue between Jerusalem and President Joseph Aoun's government. In practice, he has denied Israel part of the freedom of action it had until two months ago. The restraint he has imposed actually serves Hizbullah, the main opponent of the diplomatic process. If Gen. Aoun were capable of removing the security threat posed to Israel by Hizbullah, perhaps there would be room to discuss the price with him. But he comes to the negotiations with a different expectation: to stop Israel's military activity and establish a process that will lead to the IDF's withdrawal and restrict Israeli activity in his country. Aoun would indeed like to see Hizbullah disarmed, but he does not pretend to present this as a realistic goal that the Lebanese Army can achieve on its own. Restrictions on Israel's activity in Lebanon not only fail to strengthen Aoun's government against Hizbullah, but also entrench Iran's grip on this arena and encourage the regime in Tehran. Israel should not play by the rules Hizbullah sets. Its responses to ceasefire violations should be disproportionate in order to shake Hizbullah's basic assumptions as it plans operations against us. The writer, head of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, served as Israel's National Security Council head during 2017-2021.

(Times of Israel) David E. Bernstein - In his essay on the "sorting" of American politics and its implications for Israel advocacy, Uriel Zehavi argues that Israel lost Democratic support not because of any one war or settlement announcement, but rather that Israel became trapped inside the broader "great sort" of American politics, the decades-long process by which nearly every politically salient issue gets absorbed into partisan identity. Once that happened, a bipartisan consensus on Israel became structurally unstable. In an earlier era, both parties contained ideological diversity. Liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats created overlapping coalitions. But modern American politics no longer functions that way. Party identity now acts as a master category through which voters interpret almost every issue. Once progressive activists increasingly coded Israel as aligned with nationalism, militarism, and American conservatism, many Democratic voters followed elite cues from their own ideological ecosystem. At the same time, evangelical Christians and conservatives embraced Israel even more strongly, making support for Israel increasingly identified with Republican identity. The result was a widening partisan gap that could not have been avoided regardless of Israeli policy choices. Organizations built for a consensus era are trying to defend ground that no longer exists. Instead of one message aimed at a unified political center, Israel advocates may need entirely different arguments, messengers, and vocabularies for Republican and Democratic audiences. Nevertheless, there remains overwhelming revulsion among mainstream Americans, including most Democrats, toward terrorism and overt antisemitism. After Oct. 7, many Americans were horrified not only by the massacre itself but by celebrations of the attacks on elite campuses and social media. The more that radical anti-Israel movements fuse themselves with excuses for terrorism, harassment of Jewish students, or conspiracy-laden rhetoric about Jews and power, the more they may repel most Americans who still distinguish between criticizing Israeli policy and celebrating mass murder. The writer is a professor at the George Mason University Law School.

(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch - As part of the Oslo Accords, Israel agreed to pursue peace and coexistence with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO promised to end terrorism and "armed struggle" against Israel, prevent incitement to violence, actively combat terrorism, and avoid unilateral actions. The core concept was mutual commitment: the PLO-PA would deliver peace and coexistence, while Israel would provide financial support. The PLO and the PA never fulfilled their commitments. The PLO, dominated by Fatah, the party of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, never truly abandoned terror. Fatah leaders have repeatedly stressed this. The PA education system has been consistently criticized for radicalization, antisemitism, and the promotion of violence against Israel and Israelis. Instead of combating terror, the Palestinian leadership refers to the genocidal terrorists of Hamas, who planned and executed the October 7, 2023, massacre, as legitimate "Palestinian factions." Incitement to violence, terror, and murder, as well as the glorification of terrorist murderers, led by the PA, remain commonplace. The PLO-PA also developed and implemented a multi-million dollar "Pay-for-Slay" terror reward policy. In the international arena, the PLO-PA repeatedly acted unilaterally, requesting that the UN recognize the "State of Palestine." While the PLO-PA did not fulfill most Oslo commitments, Israel continued to collect and transfer taxes which accounted for 65-70% of the PA's total budget. By continuing to transfer these funds to the PA, Israel was bankrolling its own potential demise. In June 2025, Israel ceased transferring the taxes to the PLO-PA. Since the PLO-PA has fundamentally breached every provision of the Oslo Accords, Israel is fully within its rights to refuse to continue transferring the funds. If the PLO-PA does not fulfill its commitments, there is no reason whatsoever why Israel should be expected to continue funding Palestinian terror, whether the physical murder of Jews or the diplomatic terror in international forums. The writer, former director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria, is director of the Palestinian Authority Accountability Initiative at the Jerusalem Center.

(RealClear Books & Culture) Roy K. Altman - Relatively speaking, the modern State of Israel is a rather old country. When the UN accepted it as a member state on May 11, 1949, Israel became the 59th country in the world. Today, the UN counts 193 member states, which means that Israel is older than two-thirds (134 of 193) of the world's countries. Even so, Israel is the only country whose existence is constantly being questioned and debated. The claim that Israel is "an illegitimate state" is one of the most widely accepted assertions I've heard since Hamas's Oct. 7 invasion of Israel. A nation doesn't become a state simply by declaring its statehood. Anthropologists and linguists have identified 7,000 different ethnic groups around the world today. But there are only 193 nation-states represented at the UN, which means that 98% of the world's ethnic groups don't have their own state. To become a state under international law (according to the Montevideo Convention of 1933), a nation must show it has a permanent population, a defined territory, an effective government, and the capacity to conduct foreign relations. Israel meets all four of these factors today, as it did in 1948 when the Jewish state was founded. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted 33-13 to recognize the Land of Israel as the ancestral home of the Jewish people and to ratify their ancient claim to the land. This was once seen as uncontroversial, as both the U.S. and the Soviet Union voted to recognize Israel's foundation. Israel was unquestionably a legitimate state when it came into being in 1948. Yet the so-called "State of Palestine," which has been recognized by more than 140 countries, fails the Montevideo test. It has no defined borders. According to every poll conducted on the issue, the Palestinian people would roundly reject any proposed border that allows for the existence of a Jewish state. It also has no single effective government. The writer serves as a U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Florida.

(Foreign Affairs) Raphael BenLevi - The cooperation between Israel and the U.S. during the war with Iran marks the culmination of a long shift in the relationship between the two countries. For years, Washington effectively served as Israel's patron, providing funding to purchase U.S. military equipment and a diplomatic umbrella (including veto protection in the UN Security Council) in exchange for general alignment with U.S. policy preferences and close cooperation on intelligence and military technology. Through the latest joint military action against a mutual enemy, the relationship has now entered a qualitatively different phase. Rather than acting alone or being excluded from a U.S.-led coalition, as it was during both Gulf wars, Israel has operated as a full partner, sharing targets and operational responsibilities with U.S. forces. The existing U.S.-Israeli framework for defense industrial cooperation has served both sides well for decades, but it is no longer suited to the realities of the Middle East today. Israel is now a major regional power, boasts an advanced economy, and is no longer at odds with many of its neighbors. It does not need American financial aid to either survive or thrive. At the time the aid model was instituted in the 1970s, U.S. aid constituted 19% of Israel's GDP and 23% of its state budget. Today, the aid amounts to less than 1% of GDP and just under 3% of the state budget. Israel's reliance on the U.S. defense industry has also hampered its domestic industry, especially its independent munitions production capabilities. Moreover, at a time of deep partisan polarization in the U.S., the need for Congress to regularly approve aid gets Israel unnecessarily tangled up in American domestic politics. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently insisted that Israel should seek to wind down the U.S. military aid it receives. Washington should maintain the mutually beneficial aspects of technological, intelligence, and military cooperation but stop supplying aid to Israel, allowing the country to stand on its own feet. Instead of a client, Israel should be the U.S.' genuine partner. The transition away from U.S. military aid should be understood as the natural evolution of a relationship that has matured over decades. By replacing a patronage-based aid structure with a deeper technological, industrial, and strategic relationship, the two countries can build a partnership better suited for today's geopolitical realities. The writer is a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security and director of the Churchill Program for Statecraft and Security at the Argaman Institute in Jerusalem.