Attention to the Unseen

The Guardian reports: Benjamin Netanyahu has said he has given orders to the Israeli army to seize control of 70% of the Gaza Strip in a move that threatens to torpedo an already fragile ceasefire and create catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the already devastated territory. Under the US-brokered ceasefire in October, the Israeli army withdrew to a demarcation line which gave Israel direct control of 53% of the occupied territory. Since then, Israeli forces have steadily advanced their positions westward…

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Jonathan Lemire and Nancy A. Youssef write: In 2015, then–Secretary of State John Kerry testified before a Senate committee about a new deal to restrict Iran’s nuclear development. After more than a year of talks, with Iran on one side and several nations—including the U.S., China, and Russia—on the other, an agreement was on the table, full of hyper-technical details about what Tehran could and couldn’t do for the next two-plus decades. The U.S. had plenty of other complaints about…

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The New York Times reports: Israel intensified its military campaign against Hezbollah on Tuesday, striking targets across Lebanon and advancing deeper into Lebanese territory after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the military to “increase the blows” against the Iran-backed group. The Israeli military said it had struck more than 100 Hezbollah sites overnight in southern and eastern Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and command centers. It also issued an evacuation warning on Tuesday for the entire city…

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The New York Times reports: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said on Tuesday that it would launch a “decisive reciprocal response” to any attack that violated the cease-fire, injecting more uncertainty into fragile diplomatic efforts a day after the U.S. military struck targets in southern Iran. Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, also suggested that the country could renew strikes on U.S. military installations in the Persian Gulf, which Tehran had repeatedly targeted after the United States and Israel started bombing…

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The Guardian reports: When Donald Trump launched a pre-emptive war on Iran with Israel in February, many in the country hailed the campaign as the crowning triumph of Benjamin Netanyahu’s political and diplomatic career. Three months on the regime is still in power in Tehran, Trump is chasing a deal that will reopen the strait of Hormuz to oil tankers, and the reported terms have provoked alarm, dismay and anger in Israel. “Israel is completely beholden to the decisions of…

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The New York Times reports: Since President Trump announced a cease-fire with Iran in April, he has sought to force Tehran to accept his terms for a peace deal with a mixture of threats and limited military operations. But more than a month later, the contours of a deal emerging this week to end the war reflected how Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign does not appear to have decisively shifted Iran’s stance on its nuclear program. The impending deal could reopen…

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The Washington Post reports: Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s push for a deal to end the war with Iran, even as it came under attack from Republican hawks urging the United States to restart hostilities against Tehran. “There is no one who has been stronger on this issue than President Trump,” Rubio said, while noting he expects “some good news” in the coming hours regarding a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which…

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The Times of Israel spoke to regime opponents in Iran: All five respondents who spoke to The Times of Israel claimed the vast majority of Iranians oppose the regime and want it overthrown — a stance that is difficult to measure in a country where polling is restricted, dissent is criminalized, and internet access has been repeatedly curtailed. Nasrin, a 35-year-old from the northernmost part of Iran, said that while some 10% of Iranians still support the regime, ordinary Iranians…

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The Guardian reports: Gaza is in a grim limbo more than seven months after Donald Trump brokered a ceasefire deal: no reconstruction is under way, the so-called Board of Peace is struggling with funding and Palestinian technocrats chosen to run the strip are sidelined in Egypt. In a 15 May submission to the UN security council, the Board of Peace said the “principal obstacle” to realising Trump’s plan for Gaza was Hamas’s refusal to hand over its weapons and cede…

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Pjotr Sauer and Shaun Walker write: Vladimir Putin pulled up to a hotel in central Moscow earlier in May in a Russian-made SUV, dressed casually in jeans and a light jacket. Carrying a bouquet of flowers, he walked unhurriedly into the lobby and embraced his former schoolteacher Vera Gurevich, who kissed him on both cheeks. He then helped Gurevich into his car and drove her to dinner at the Kremlin. It came just a day after several western media outlets,…

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CBS News reports: The Trump administration was preparing Friday for a fresh round of military strikes against Iran, according to sources with direct knowledge of the planning, even as diplomacy continued. No final decision on strikes had been reached as of Friday afternoon. “Circumstances pertaining to Government” are keeping President Trump from attending his son Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding this weekend, he said in a social media post. The president had planned to spend Memorial Day weekend at his golf…

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The Washington Post reports: The U.S. military has depleted much of its inventory of advanced missile-defense interceptors after expending far more high-end munitions defending Israel amid hostilities with Iran than Israeli forces used themselves, according to Defense Department assessments described to The Washington Post. The imbalance, according to three U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters, underscores the extent to which Washington has shouldered the burden of countering Iranian ballistic missile strikes during…

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