'A Game of Snakes and Ladders’ - Iran Official on US Negotiations

Common sense coming from an Iranian official.

Democracy Now! Iran Warns Israel over Attacks on Lebanon after Iran, Israel Exchange Strikes: Trita Parsi

Jun 8, 2026 | Iran and Israel exchanged fire overnight in the most serious escalation since a U.S.-Iranian truce was reached in April. Iran launched a wave of missiles at northern Israel in retaliation for Israeli attacks near Beirut on Sunday. Israel responded with attacks on Iran, with explosions reported in Tehran, Tabriz and Isfahan. This comes as peace talks appear stalled between the United States and Iran, largely over Iran's insistence that any agreement must include Lebanon and halt Israel's attacks on that country. President Donald Trump has also repeatedly expressed frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and reports from NBC News and The New York Times indicate the Pentagon is growing increasingly concerned over Israel spying on U.S. officials.

"I was not surprised by the Iranian attack on Israel," says analyst Trita Parsi, who notes that Iran's leaders want to "extend their deterrence" to Lebanon. "What is perhaps a bit surprising is … that the Israelis defied Trump's expressed wishes."


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Trump Tells BBC: “If I Tell Netanyahu to Do Something, He Does It” | BBC News

Jun 8, 2026 | The US President Donald Trump has told the BBC that if he tells Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to do something, he does it”.

The president was speaking to the BBC’s North America Editor Sarah Smith in a telephone interview, following the recent new round of hostilities between Israel and Iran.

Israel had launched attacks on Iran’s capital Tehran on Sunday, in apparent defiance of a demand from the White House to comply with the fragile ceasefire in force since April. Israel said the action was in retaliation for attacks by the Iranian backed Hezbollah militia group in Southern Lebanon. Iran responded to the airstrikes by firing multiple missiles at Israel, the first such attack since April.

Hours before Israel launched its attacks, President Trump had declared “I call the shots” and had instructed Benjamin Netanyahu to comply with the ceasefire. The President told the BBC that Israel had already launched its attacks, at the time when he had requested that Israel exercise restraint.

Donald Trump said he had persuaded Mr Netanyahu to return to the ceasefire, telling him: “We have to use sense. We’re very close to signing a very good deal” with Iran.

Reeta Chakrabarti presents BBC News at Ten reporting by Sarah Smith, Wyre Davies and Jeremy Bowen.

Von innen gespalten, von außen gehasst? - Israel im Dauerkrieg | Tracks East | ARTE

Jun 4, 2026 | Trotz Waffenstillständen bleibt der Alltag in Israel geprägt von Raketenalarm und gesellschaftlicher Erschöpfung. Zwischen Cafébesuchen und Luftschutzbunkern stellt "Tracks East" die Frage: Was macht der Dauerkrieg mit einer Gesellschaft? Israel lebt zwischen Alltag und Ausnahmezustand.

"Tracks East" über Menschen im Dauerkrieg. Journalist David Issacharoff begleitet Menschen, die mit den Widersprüchen eines Landes leben, das trotz des Krieges funktionieren muss.

In Tel Aviv trifft "Tracks East" den Streetfotografen Shahar Dekel. Sein Kibbuz nahe Gaza wurde am 7. Oktober 2023 zerstört; Freunde starben oder kämpfen bis heute mit Traumata. Dreimal wurde er seitdem eingezogen.

Mit seiner Kamera dokumentierte er den Krieg. Nahe der libanesischen Grenze betreibt Nitzan Yulzari ein Café. Manchmal bebt dort der Boden von den Explosionen in der Ferne. Eigentlich wollte er mit seiner Familie nach Portugal auswandern. Jetzt steht die Entscheidung erneut bevor.

Sein Café ist Treffpunkt und Rückzugsort zugleich – doch der Krieg begleitet ihn jeden Tag. Eine andere Perspektive zeigt die palästinensisch-israelische Journalistin Amal Ghawi.

Auf Social Media spricht sie über Vertreibung, Diskriminierung und die Verengung des öffentlichen Diskurses. Sie berichtet auf Hebräisch und Arabisch. Für ihre Kritik wird sie von beiden Seiten angegriffen. "Tracks East" zeigt ein Land, das erschöpft ist – und dennoch weitermacht.

Magazin (D 2026, 30 Min)

Ana Kasparian Is Fired Up

She speaks of Israel’s treachery.
I have always been pro-Israel, especially because of how the Jews suffered in the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, and how they have been persecuted throughout the ages. However, I am absolutely shocked that a people with such awful experience of pain and hardship are seemingly incapable of mercy and compassion for the people they now themselves persecute. This is utterly incomprehensible to me. — © Mark Alexander

Trump Reportedly Erupts at Netanyahu over Lebanon Attacks | DW News

June 3, 2026 | A major rift appears to be emerging between the United States and Israel. Reports say Donald Trump confronted Benjamin Netanyahu over Israeli strikes on Lebanon, warning they could derail sensitive talks with Iran. While a partial de-escalation was announced, Israeli attacks have continued in the south - and officials say Beirut could still be targeted. We look at what this clash means for the region and whether Washington is losing influence over its key ally.

Iran Suspends US Talks, Warns of Wider Escalation as Israel Targets Lebanon's Tyre | DW News

June 1, 2026 | Iran has suspended indirect negotiations with the United States, explicitly linking future talks to developments in Lebanon, where Israeli strikes are intensifying. The move suggests Tehran is shifting from diplomacy to pressure through the battlefield, as Hezbollah and Israel exchange fire and civilians are displaced. With France calling for urgent UN talks, the decision highlights how quickly the conflict is spilling beyond national borders.

Netanyahu Orders Israeli Bombing of Southern Beirut

THE GUARDIAN: Thousands leave homes after Israeli military instructed to strike ‘terrorist targets’ in largest escalation of war since ceasefire

Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed the Israeli military to bomb the southern suburbs of Beirut, the most serious escalation of Israel’s war in Lebanon since a supposed ceasefire was announced on 17 April.

The Israeli prime minister and his defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Monday they had given instructions to strike “terrorist targets” in the southern suburbs for what they called “repeated and ongoing violations of the ceasefire by Hezbollah”.

Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has not stopped despite the 17 April ceasefire, and Israeli strikes have killed more than 800 people in Lebanon since its announcement. Hezbollah has targeted Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, and in recent days, launched rockets towards northern Israel.

The ceasefire was previously understood to exempt Beirut from Israeli strikes, though Israel has struck the southern suburbs twice in what is still a reduction from the daily bombing of the capital before 17 April.

People began to leave the southern suburbs minutes after Netanyahu’s statement, with roads leading out of the area choked with cars. The displacement was a familiar one; residents there have been forced out of their homes several times over the last three months. » | William Christou in Beirut and Jonathan Yerushalmy | Monday, June 1, 2026

Breaking: I Just Got Banned from the UK! What Got Me Banned?

June 1, 2026

Starmer is the banning dude! First, it was pleasure, by banning cigarettes for adults; now, it is the truth by banning Cenk Uygur for criticizing Israel. What will the banning dude be banning next, I wonder? — © Mark Alexander

Hasan Piker & Cenk Uygur Banned from UK for Criticizing Israel

June 1, 2026

Very strong language alert!

Two US political commentators banned from entering UK: Home Office says presence of Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker in UK ‘may not be conducive to the public good’ »

Israel Captures Crusader Castle That Symbolized Its Long Lebanon Occupation

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The seizure of Beaufort in southern Lebanon called up bitter memories in both countries amid a widening Israeli conflict with Hezbollah that seems far from over.

This screenshot has been taken from this NYT article. | A view of the Beaufort Castle fortification atop a cliff above the Litani River in southern Lebanon, last year. | David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Israeli soldiers have captured a strategic hilltop crowned by the Crusader castle of Beaufort in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military announced on Sunday, part of the most sweeping Israeli invasion in the country in decades.

The seizure of Beaufort, while hailed by Israel’s top leaders, evoked bitter memories in both countries of the deadly fighting there during Israel’s nearly two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel finally withdrew in 2000 after a bloody insurgency led by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group.

Now, more than a quarter century later, Hezbollah is once again fighting a guerrilla war against invading Israeli forces; Israeli leaders openly discuss a return to a long-term Israeli “security belt” in Lebanon to fend off Hezbollah attacks; and an Israeli flag flutters over the fortress at Beaufort.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, praised the reconquest of Beaufort on Sunday as a “dramatic step” and vowed that Israeli forces would “deepen and expand” their control of territory in Lebanon. » | Aaron Boxerman and Natan Odenheimer | Sunday, May 31, 2026

Trump Demand for Gulf Countries to Recognise Israel Reportedly Met with Stunned Silence | ABC NEWS

May 26, 2026 | US President Donald Trump is demanding Arab states formally recognise Israel and sign the Abraham Accords as part of efforts to secure peace with Iran in the Middle East. The request, initially made in an audio-visual link up, was reportedly met with a silence so long the US President asked if the leaders were still on the line. Saudi Arabia has signalled it will not accept the request unless a deal on Palestinian statehood is guaranteed and Israeli forces withdraw from the Palestinian territories. ABC global affairs editor Laura Tingle says the US president’s demands suggest he is attempting to blame Gulf states for stifling negotiations for a truce with Iran.

President Trump must be living in la-la land! The cuckoo must surely already be in the cloud! — © Mark Alexander

Early War Goal Was to Install Hard Line Former President as Iran’s Leader

THE NEW YORK TIMES: An Israeli strike designed to free Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from house arrest in Tehran, U.S. officials said, was part of an effort to bring about regime change and put him in power.

This image comes from this NYT article. | Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran registering as a candidate in the presidential election in Tehran in 2024. | Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times
Days after Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader and other top officials in the opening salvos of the war, President Trump mused publicly that it would be best if “someone from within” Iran took over the country.

It turns out that the United States and Israel went into the conflict with a particular and very surprising someone in mind: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president known for his hard-line, anti-Israel and anti-American views.

But the audacious plan, developed by the Israelis and which Mr. Ahmadinejad had been consulted about, quickly went awry, according to the U.S. officials who were briefed on it.

Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war’s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan.

He has not been seen publicly since then and his current whereabouts and condition are unknown. » | Mark Mazzetti, Julian E. Barnes, Farnaz Fassihi and Ronen Bergman | The reporters have been covering the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. | Published: Tuesday, May 19, 2026. Updated: Wednesday, May 20, 2026

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Haftbefehl gegen Israels Finanzminister Smotrich

FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE: Den Haftbefehl machte Smotrich am Dienstag selbst öffentlich. Er sprach von einer „Kriegserklärung“ der palästinensischen Autonomiebehörde.

Der Internationale Strafgerichtshof (IStGH) in Den Haag hat nach Angaben des israelischen Finanzministers Bezalel Smotrich einen geheimen Haftbefehl gegen ⁠ihn beantragt. Der rechtsextreme Politiker sagte am Dienstag auf einer Pressekonferenz, er sei am Montagabend darüber informiert worden. Wer ihm dies mitgeteilt habe und welche Gründe das Gericht anführe, ließ er offen. Der IStGH und die zuständige Anklagebehörde äußerten sich zunächst nicht dazu. » | Quelle: Reuters | Dienstag, 19. Mai 2026

Palestinians Forced to Demolish Own Homes to Make Way for Israeli Theme Park

Screenshot taken from this Guardian article. | More than 57 homes in al-Bustan have been demolished in the past two years with at least eight designated for demolition in the next few weeks. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
THE GUARDIAN: Residents of al-Bustan district told to make way for Kings Garden, with knocking down own houses cheaper option

At the bottom of a steep and densely populated valley just below Jerusalem’s old city walls, the earth has been shaken in recent weeks by jackhammers and bulldozers.

These have been the sounds of Jerusalem for decades as the Israeli state has relentlessly sought to stamp a uniformly Jewish identity on to the occupied east of the city, while erasing its Palestinian character.

Typically it is workers for the state and municipality at the wheel of the bulldozers, but in the al-Bustan neighbourhood, in the shadow of the 11th-century al-Aqsa mosque, the clamour is from a more recent development.

It is the sound of Palestinians demolishing their own family homes.

“This is something really hard. This is something bitter,” Jalal al-Tawil said as he watched a tractor he had hired, with a front loader at the front and jackhammer at the back, rip apart the last remnants of the house his father had built, which in turn had been on the site of his grandparents’ home. » | Julian Borger, Quique Kierszenbaum and Sufian Taha in Jerusalem | Saturday, May 16, 2026

One can but weep! How much more, and how much longer, must these poor, downtrodden people suffer?

Ironically, it was watching black and white documentaries on the Holocaust on BBC TV as a little boy in the 1950s that awakened my interest in, and later, love for, the German language! I wanted to understand how a people could commit such atrocities and such heinous crimes against their fellow man, against innocent, helpless and unsuspecting people?

Naturally, and unsurprisingly, my sympathies from that time forward were always with the downtrodden Jews. It goes without saying that I have loathed anti-Semitism ever since.

It took years for me to master German. It’s a very beautiful language, but with very complicated grammar, especially until the rules of the language all fall into place. But when I did master it, I found a people just like my own, the British. They had all the strong points and weaknesses that every other people have. I found a people capable of loving and hating, no different from my own compatriots. A people with all the same needs and aspirations as my own people.

I grew to love the German language, and by extension, the German people. In fact, I love all things German. The bottom line is this: Germans in the Third Reich were programmed to commit evil acts, led by a man who was without normal human feelings, without morals, and with an evil and wicked nature. This could happen to a people from any culture.

I never thought that all these years later, I would again have to watch documentaries and news footage about suffering of yet another people—this time the Palestinians—this time in colour, but this time committed by the very people I had watched on television being persecuted by the Nazis! One would have thought that having suffered persecution they would have known better.

There are common threads, though. Germany was led in the 1930s and 1940s by a megalomaniacal madman, who understood no limits and who understood no barriers to the fulfilment of his warped and twisted dreams. Now, Israel is led by such a ruthless person. The average Jew will surely be horrified by what is going on in Netanyahu’s Israel. Netanyahu has turned the dream of a homeland for the once suffering Jews into a nightmare for the longsuffering Palestinians. Surely, in the name of compassion and civility and decency, this persecution must STOP.

It defies comprehension that a once persecuted people could themselves persecute another people in this manner, bereft as it is of all mercy and compassion. One would have imagined that if any people would have mercy and compassion for the downtrodden, Jewry would.

It is high time that the civilized world put a STOP to the suffering of Palestinians, the majority of whom are fine people just wanting to live a normal, peaceful existence. Just like you and me. — © Mark Alexander

Tucker Turns the Tables on New York Times Reporter

May 6, 2026

A Watershed Moment? | John Mearsheimer and Sir Max Hastings

Apr 24 2026 | Historians reserve the term “watershed” for those rare moments when events do not merely shock the established order but upend it. Think of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which hastened the end of the Cold War and ushered in an era of American unipolarity. Or the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US, which ignited the global war on terror and culminated in the long, costly entanglements of the so-called forever wars.

In each case, those living through the moment could sense they were witnessing events whose consequences would extend far beyond the immediate crisis. The question now is whether the Iran war belongs in that category. On the world stage, many allies and partners increasingly worry that the United States as a friend is shrinking with extraordinary rapidity. If this is true, what does this mean for international affairs after the Iran war?

Guests are Sir Max Hastings, the British military historian, columnist and former newspaper editor, and John Mearsheimer, professor of political science from the University of Chicago.


To put it succinctly, Trump is a chump who is also off his chump! — © Mark Alexander

Jeffrey Sachs: Iran Exposed the Limits of American Power

Apr 23, 2026 | World-renowned economics professor Jeffrey Sachs discusses the global fallout from the US and Israeli war on Iran, as the conflict approaches the two-month mark.

Inside Israel’s ‘Security Zone’ in Southern Lebanon

Apr 22, 2026 | In southern Lebanon, an Israeli airstrike is reported to have killed two people in a vehicle and injured two journalists.

Iran's ally Hezbollah also said it attacked Israeli forces with a drone - all of this straining the 10-day ceasefire. Israel has established a 'security zone' which, at its deepest point, extends some seven miles into southern Lebanon.

It's marked out by what Israel is calling a Forward Defence, or Yellow Line, similar to that in Gaza. Israeli troops are still deployed there, demolishing buildings in villages near the line, like Mansouri and Majdal Zoun.

Israeli Soldier Destroys Jesus Statue in Lebanon | BBC News

Apr 20, 2026 | There has been widespread condemnation after an image of an Israeli soldier apparently hitting a statue of Jesus with a sledgehammer in southern Lebanon went viral.

Israel's prime minister said he was "stunned and saddened”. Its foreign minister said: "We apologise for this incident and to every Christian whose feelings were hurt."

Locals say the statue was on a crucifix outside a family home on the edge of Debel, one of the few villages where residents have remained during Israel's war with Hezbollah.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it viewed the incident "with great severity and emphasises that the soldier's conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops".