(Washington Post) Dan Lamothe - The number of U.S. troops who have been wounded or injured during the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran now exceeds 200 across seven countries, Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, chief spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said Monday. Hawkins said U.S. troops have been wounded in Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, primarily in the first few days of the conflict. More than 180 have returned to duty. The injuries have occurred as Iran has launched waves of missiles and attack drones on U.S. positions and civilian targets in countries across the region. U.S. strikes in recent days have focused heavily on taking out Iranian missile launchers and drone storage facilities. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday that the majority of U.S. injuries have been suffered in strikes by attack drones. U.S. forces have hit more than 7,000 targets in Iran since the beginning of the operation, Central Command said Monday. Israel has launched about 8,000 more, officials said.

(JTA) Shira Li Bartov - The U.S. in a formal filing on Thursday to the International Court of Justice defended Israel against the charge of genocide over its campaign in Gaza. The U.S. said the claim of genocide was "false" and part of a broader campaign "to delegitimize the State of Israel and the Jewish people and to justify or encourage terrorism against them." The U.S. argued that Israel did not show "specific intent" to destroy a group in whole or in part, a requirement of the legal definition of genocide. "Civilian casualties, even widespread civilian casualties, are not necessarily probative of genocidal intent, particularly when they occur in the context of an armed conflict involving urban combat." Israel has called the case "wholly unfounded in fact and law, morally repugnant, and represents an abuse both of the Genocide Convention and of the Court itself."

(Jerusalem Post) Yonah Jeremy Bob - Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani has been targeted and killed by the IDF, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed Tuesday. Some have viewed Larijani as the man running the Iranian regime since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was eliminated on Feb. 28, and he has been the Islamic regime's most public voice. Larijani was promoted to run day-to-day operations for the country and all negotiations with the West. Iranian authorities had stated that Larijani was due to give a public address on Tuesday.

(Ynet News) Elisha Ben Kimon - Brig.-Gen. Golam Reza Soleimani, the commander of Iran's Basij militia, which has been heavily involved in violent domestic crackdowns, was eliminated by the Israel Air Force in a strike in Tehran while staying in an alternative tent headquarters set up after the destruction of his headquarters. Deputy Basij commander Seyyed Karishi was also eliminated in the strike.

(Jerusalem Post) Amichai Stein - Israel's Ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter, said Tuesday that certain Gulf countries are using Israeli expertise in drone and missile interception against Iran, as they have faced more than 2,000 missiles and drones. "Iran continues to shoot missiles and suicide drones into all of its neighbors - shopping centers, airports, residential neighborhoods, and hotels. We've extended our help to all the Gulf countries interested in receiving it and there are those who are enjoying our expertise in these areas right now."

(X) Amb. Yechiel Leiter - "The daily calls between the prime minister and the president continue and the relationship is strong. There's no daylight in our positions."

(Times of Israel) Stav Levaton - Iran's military is "in distress" and incapable of launching many missiles at Israel, while members of the country's security forces stay indoors for fear of Israeli and U.S. planes, according to an assessment by IDF intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Shlomi Binder, Israel's Channel 12 reported. Binder said that lately "the Iranians are starting to realize what happened to them. They're discovering how exposed their command structure is and the damage that has been caused." "What they're firing is what they're capable of firing; it's not economy of ammunition - they're just incapable of any more than that." He added that Iran's underground missile bunkers were being "plugged up daily" by the U.S.-Israeli bombings to ensure Iran can't fire any more.

(Ha'aretz) Shrapnel from Iranian ballistic missiles intercepted over Israel fell Monday in Jerusalem's Old City, including the Temple Mount compound, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre complex, and the Jewish Quarter.

(Times of Israel) Emanuel Fabian - The Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday it has pushed even more forces deeper into southern Lebanon to create an expanded buffer zone, as Hizbullah attacked towns in northern Israel with rockets and drones. The military said it carried out massive airstrikes and artillery shelling before troops moved into the area. In Beirut, Lebanese state media said Israel carried out dawn airstrikes on three locations in the Hizbullah stronghold of Dahiyeh. The IDF issued an evacuation warning prior to the strikes. IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir said Monday: "Iran is the main arena. Weakening the regime and its capabilities will weaken the entire radical axis and, within that, the Hizbullah terror organization....Any damage to the military buildup capabilities of Iran and the Revolutionary Guards also harms Hizbullah's arming and financing capabilities. The shockwave of the strikes and the weakening of the radical regime in Iran are also felt in the campaign against Hizbullah." Since March 2, Hizbullah has launched around 100 rockets a day, according to the IDF, as well as more than 100 drones over the entire period.

(Ynet News) Lior Ben Ari - Israel has bombed bridges in southern Lebanon to disrupt Hizbullah's logistics and troop movements, isolating operational areas and complicating resupply efforts.

(Wall Street Journal) Editorial - Iran is blocking the Strait of Hormuz to pressure President Trump to end the war prematurely, establishing an Iranian veto on energy flows and winning impunity in the future. Asked Sunday about the political cost of rising oil and gas prices, Mr. Trump replied, 'I have to do what's right. I can't say that, 'Gee, I don't want to have any impact on oil prices for three or four weeks, or two months, and we're going to let Iran have a nuclear weapon.'" Armed with missiles and drones, Iran's regime has closed international waters and attacked neighbors' energy facilities. This is while Iran is relatively weak. Imagine how the regime would blackmail the world - and get away with it - if it were left to amass twice or three times the missiles, or nuclear weapons. Iran is giving Trump and Israel a reason to keep weakening the regime.

(Washington Post) Editorial - The U.S. Navy describes the Strait of Hormuz as an Iranian "kill box" that's too dangerous for escorts. The U.S. owns the skies over Iran, and reconnaissance drones can easily loiter over the coastline around the clock. But air supremacy is not the same as sea control. Iran's mobile anti-ship missiles are hidden in mountainous coastal terrain, designed to "shoot and scoot." The cheap Shahed drones it uses are easy to launch from almost anywhere. The Pentagon's own assessment is that escorts won't be feasible any time soon. Iran doesn't even need to hit a ship to keep the strait closed. The mere suspicion of mines or surviving missile launchers is enough to make insurers pull coverage or make its cost prohibitive, which halts commercial traffic as surely as any weapon. Declaring victory would not be stretching the truth. Trump has indeed extracted an enormous cost on Iran's regime. By stopping the bombing without agreeing to any formal peace, Trump keeps his options open for future strikes. And in doing so, he also hands the regime a catastrophe. The clerics will emerge to face a shattered military, a wrecked economy and, most important, a population that will ask: What was all this for? Air campaigns do not produce regime change on their own. NATO's 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 did not dislodge Slobodan Milosevic. But it weakened him enough that, little more than a year later, a popular revolution drove him from power. The same logic could hold for Iran. A regime that has just been as humiliated as this one is a regime living on borrowed time.

(Boston Globe) Alex Safian - Many experts have claimed that regime change cannot happen in Iran without the commission of ground forces. There are relevant counterexamples, however, such as the overthrow of Moammar Khadafy in Libya or ending of the rule of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia. In both instances, Western air power - primarily American - played the decisive role. In Milosevic's case, Western air power wreaked havoc on his regime, causing many of his senior officers to desert him and leading to his eventual ouster and arrest for war crimes. Western peacekeepers arrived after his removal from power. Once the U.S. and Israel pause their bombing, Iranian civilians could again take to the streets. With massive U.S. forces in the region, President Trump would not sit back and watch another slaughter of Iranian civilians. The continuous patrol of U.S. and Israeli drones and aircraft over major Iranian cities could intervene directly when the Basij and Revolutionary Guard again started attacking civilians. Israel's Iranian agents on the ground could also help pinpoint targets, directing drone and air strikes against Iran's security forces.

(Atlantic) Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg - Two weeks after the U.S. and Israel launched their combined military campaign against Iran's clerical regime, the outlines of victory are beginning to emerge. American and Israeli aircraft are operating over Iran with near-total freedom, striking military infrastructure, command nodes, and strategic assets across the country. Iran's air-defense network has been badly degraded. Its ballistic-missile program - the backbone of Tehran's ability to coerce the region - has suffered immense damage. Missile crews are reportedly reluctant to leave cover, desertions are increasing, and refusals to obey orders are surfacing. Each Iranian launch is becoming a suicide mission for those conducting the firing. Iran is also more diplomatically isolated than at any point since 1979. Its missile and drone campaign against Gulf Arab states has united the region against the regime. 135 countries co-sponsored a UN resolution condemning Iran. Mark Dubowitz is CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at FDD, is a former director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the U.S. National Security Council.

(Los Angeles Times) Josh Hammer - The Trump administration's goal in the joint American-Israeli military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran seems clear enough: the neutralization of Iran as an active, ongoing threat to the U.S. and our interests. That is how victory in the current campaign should be defined. At this point, it is undeniable that wholesale regime change is the most desirable outcome for the conflict in Iran. There are some foreign regimes that behave in a manner that is contrary to the American national interest. It is natural and logical that we would wish for those regimes to be heavily reformed or outright replaced - especially with the local populace leading the way. Perhaps even more to the point: One does not take out a 37-year-ruling despot like Ali Khamenei and not hope for full-scale regime change. All people of goodwill should be hoping for that outcome - for the Iranian people to rise up like lions and throw the yoke of tyranny off their necks once and for all. But it's entirely possible full-scale regime change won't happen. The people of Iran just witnessed tens of thousands of their countrymen brutally gunned down. The cleanest solution to the Iran quagmire is indeed full-scale regime change. I'm far from certain it will happen. But like many, I pray that it will.

(Ha'aretz) Hamza Azhar Salam - There is an extraordinary dynamic playing out across the Muslim world: Instead of rallying behind Iran, attacked two weeks ago by the U.S. and Israel, it is turning against the Islamic State. Last Wednesday, the UN Security Council adopted a Bahrain-sponsored resolution which explicitly condemned Iran's missile and drone strikes on seven sovereign nations. Among the co-sponsors was Pakistan, the only nuclear-armed, Muslim-majority nation in the world. The next day, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif flew to Jeddah to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, where he expressed Islamabad's "full solidarity and support" for Saudi Arabia in these "challenging times." In September 2025, Sharif and MBS signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement in Riyadh which pledged that any external aggression on one country would be considered an act of aggression against both. With Riyadh under attack by Iranian missiles and drones, the pact was activated. Islamabad's realignment is part of a broader fracture across the Muslim world, driven by Tehran's own actions. The Gulf states had sought to avoid confrontation, with statements declaring the U.S. would not be able to use their territory to attack Iran - but to no avail. This war has permanently fractured any solidarity the Muslim world may have once felt towards Iran. Tehran's actions have turned neighbors into adversaries and mediators into enemies. Trust, once shattered across an entire civilization, cannot be rebuilt. The writer is the founder and editor of The Pakistan Daily.

(Times of Israel) Zev Stub - Jerusalem municipal architect Sharon Dinur was talking about the city's public bomb shelters when the early warning for a missile attack sounded. "Now we'll get to see one in use," she said, as hundreds of workers in the municipal complex hurried underground. Minutes later, we resumed our conversation inside a heavy steel vault built nearly a century ago by Barclays Bank - a room once used to safeguard treasures belonging to Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie during his exile before World War II. We visited another shelter nearby, in what was once the morgue of one of Jerusalem's earliest hospitals. In a city where thousands of buildings predate Israel's founding, residents often improvise, turning ancient cisterns, bank vaults and forgotten basements into places of refuge when sirens sound.

(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch - The Palestinian Authority consistently inflates the Palestinian population in Judea and Samaria. In a recent "brief on the status of the Palestinian people at the end of 2025," the PA Central Bureau of Statistics claimed a population of 5.56 million in the State of Palestine, with 3.43 million in the West Bank. Yet, recent PA admissions for upcoming municipal elections reveal that the actual population in Judea and Samaria is at most 2.9 million - 530,000 fewer people than previously claimed. Similar to the death tolls in the war in Gaza, the PA and other Palestinian actors often distort population statistics to promote their political agenda.

(Ynet News) Oded Kramer - Herberts Cukurs, a Latvian pilot who joined Nazi forces during World War II, became one of the most notorious Holocaust perpetrators in Eastern Europe. Responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews, he earned the nickname "the Butcher of Riga" because of his extreme brutality. In 1965, Mossad agents tracked him down in Montevideo, Uruguay. Before the war, Cukurs was known in Latvia as a pioneering aviator, who was dismissed from the Latvian Air Force because of disciplinary issues. In 1940, Latvia lost its independence when it was annexed by the Soviet Union. A year later, Nazi Germany invaded the country. Cukurs joined the Arajs Commando, a Latvian unit operating under Nazi SS command. According to survivor testimony and Latvian witnesses, Cukurs played a central role in mass killings in the Riga Ghetto and in the Rumbula forest massacre, where about 25,000 Jews were murdered. He was known for riding through the streets of Riga on horseback, randomly shooting Jews. Witnesses said he took pleasure in burning synagogues with worshippers inside and throwing Jewish children from rooftops before shooting them. He was directly responsible for the murder of 13,000 Jews and oversaw the killing of 30,000 more. When Soviet forces recaptured Latvia, Cukurs escaped to Brazil. Latvian Holocaust survivors recognized him and began pursuing him. West Germany requested his extradition, but because he had never been a German citizen, the request was rejected. After being attacked by Jewish activists in Rio de Janeiro, he moved with his family to a fortified neighborhood in Sao Paulo. The Mossad decided the assassination could not take place in Brazil. Israeli officials feared backlash against the local Jewish community and the possibility that captured agents could face the death penalty. So an agent posing as an Austrian businessman convinced Cukurs to meet in Montevideo to discuss new investment opportunities. After he was killed, the team placed Cukurs' body inside a crate and attached a document listing the crimes he had committed. The message was signed: "Those Who Will Never Forget."