Middle East

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israel and Iran continued to trade airstrikes on each other on Saturday. Israel struck the Iranian Ministry of Defense, petroleum and gas sites, and, it said, further nuclear-related sites. So writes the Israeli newspaper Arab 48. Iran for its part hit military and intelligence sites nestled among civilians in Tel […]

Iran

Bernie Sanders Says US Must Not Be ‘Dragged Into Another Netanyahu War’

Common Dreams

The independent U.S. senator condemned the “illegal unilateral attack on Iran” by Israel that “risks a full-blown regional war.” By Jon Queally | – ( Commondreams.org ) – As Iranian missiles were being shot down over Israel on Friday following the IDF’s unprovoked bombings of Iranian targets earlier in the day, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) […]

Donald Trump

Why did Israel defy Trump – and risk a major War – by striking Iran now? And what happens next?

The Conversation

By Amin Saikal, Victoria University (The Conversation) – Alarmed by an intelligence assessment that Iran will be able to produce nuclear weapons within months if not weeks, Israel has launched a massive air campaign aiming to destroy the country’s nuclear program. Israel’s air strikes hit Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz, as well as […]

Featured

A Pariah State? Western Nations Sanction Israeli Cabinet Members

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, CA (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The Israel Likud party under PM Benjamin Netanyahu had made Israel a rogue, pariah state even before the bombing of military and civilian areas in Iran this week. A casual observer might expect an onslaught of global sanctions against Israel as a result. But five Western allies […]

Israel/ Palestine

Despite Iran, Israeli Attacks on Gaza Continue, killing Dozens

International Middle East Media Center

(IMEMC ) – Israeli forces continued their relentless bombardment of the entire civilian population of the Gaza Strip on Friday, day 614 since the Israeli genocide of the people of Gaza began on October 7, 2023 (with only a brief respite between January 27 and March 18, 2025). Local sources report that at least 51 […]

Iran

Will Iran reply to Israeli Attacks with “War of Attrition?” Will its Nuclear Red Line Hold?

Ibrahim Al-Marashi

By Ibrahim Al-Marashi and Mohammad Eslami ( Al Jazeera ) – Historians may well mark June 13, 2025, as the day the world crossed a line it may not easily step back from. In a move that shocked the international community and sent global markets reeling, Israel launched a wide-scale military operation against Iran in the early hours […]

Featured

Israel’s Netanyahu banks on TACO Trump as he Launches War on Iran to disrupt Negotiations

Juan Cole

Israel Iran War Nuclear Enrichment

Featured

Women’s Cancer Rates are Rising in the Oil Gulf: is Global Heating causing it?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Human-caused global heating is hitting the Middle East hard, and rates of cancer in Middle Eastern women are increasing. Is there a correlation? This is the question asked by Wafa Abu El Kheir-Mataria and Sungsoo Chun at Frontiers . These scholars are at the American University in Cairo, my alma […]

Haredim

Israel: Will Ultra-Orthodox Jews’ Opposition to Conscription Bring down Netanyahu’s Gov’t

Middle East Monitor

( Middle East Monitor ) – It may not have occurred to David Ben-Gurion 77 years ago, when he approved a limited exemption from military service for a few hundred yeshiva students, that he was sowing the seeds of a crisis that would threaten Israel’s existence. The goal at the time was purely political, as […]