“The US and Israel still hold the upper hand because the foundations of Iranian power have been systematically reduced in ways that will take years to rebuild, if they can be rebuilt at all”

Posted on May 11, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

URBAN WARFARE
Who has the upper hand in Iran?
John Spencer
May 10, 2026

One of the strangest habits in modern war analysis is how quickly survival gets confused with victory. Iran has not collapsed overnight. The regime still broadcasts threats, launches missiles and drones, and floods television and social media with declarations of imagined strength. From that surface-level reality, a growing chorus of commentators has rushed to claim that Iran has embarrassed the United States, exposed Israeli weakness, and seized control of escalation through its ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz. Much of that analysis mistakes continued existence for strategic success and ignores nearly every measurable indicator of national power. READ MORE

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“Israel, for its part, responds that the “withdraw first, disarm Hezbollah second” approach has been tried at least three times in the past quarter-century”

Posted on May 11, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

THIS IS BEIRUT
Lebanon and Israel Agree on Peace, Disagree on Sequence
Hussain Abdul-Hussain
May 11, 2026

The Lebanese and Israeli governments are fully aligned on the goal of their diplomatic talks. When all is said and done, Hezbollah will be fully disarmed, Israel will have ended its security actions in Lebanon and fully withdrawn, and the border will be demarcated. The two countries will then have reached a bilateral peace agreement. The challenge is how Lebanon and Israel get there, and in what order. Lebanon wants Israel to first completely stop its military campaign against Hezbollah, fully withdraw from Lebanese territory, and engage in border demarcation. Once these steps are concluded, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam will be ready to travel to the White House to sign a bilateral peace treaty with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Salam has explained how he interprets peace with Israel. For him, it would be a treaty without people-to-people normalization, a “cold peace” modeled on Egypt and Jordan’s peace treaties with Israel. READ MORE

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Max Long: “I was attacked for who I am, for being Jewish and Israeli and not being afraid to say that”

Posted on May 11, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

ABC NEWS
2nd man charged with attacking 2 Jewish students at DePaul campus in 2024
Mark Rivera and Barb Markoff, Christine Tressel and Tom Jones
May 7, 2026

A second man has been charged in a violent attack on two Jewish students at DePaul University in November 2024. The ABC7 I-Team has been following their story from the very beginning. The I-Team learned Kasem Noubani now faces battery and hate crime charges. He appeared in court Thursday. ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. A pair of masked men attacked Max Long, a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces, and his friend, Michael Kaminsky. Long was concussed and Kaminsky needed surgery after the attack…The other man charged, Adam Erkan, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor battery charges last year…Erkan worked with authorities to identify Kasem Noubani as the second attacker, according to court documents. READ MORE

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“The base in Iraq allowed Israel to get closer to the battlefield. Israel’s air force carried out thousands of strikes against targets in Iran during the five-week campaign”

Posted on May 10, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

WALL STREET JOURNAL
Israel Built and Defended a Secret Iran War
Base in Iraq
Anat Peled and Jared Malsin
May 9, 2026

Israel set up a clandestine military outpost in the Iraqi desert to support its air campaign against Iran and launched airstrikes against Iraqi troops who almost discovered it early in the war, people familiar with the matter including U.S. officials said. Israel built the installation, which housed special forces and served as a logistical hub for the Israeli air force, just before the war started with the knowledge of the U.S., the people said. Search-and-rescue teams were positioned there in case Israeli pilots were downed. None have been. READ MORE

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Bay Area judge who had spoken out about antisemitism is removed from case involving anti-Israel protesters

Posted on May 10, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Judge bars Jewish DA from trying Stanford anti-Israel protesters, alleging conflict
Niva Ashkenazi
May 12, 2026

Jewish groups in the Bay Area of California are protesting a judge’s removal of a local Jewish district attorney from a case involving pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters accused of vandalizing the office of Stanford University’s president. The district attorney, Jeff Rosen, was disqualified from retrying a felony case against five protesters after the judge ruled that Rosen had crossed a legal line when suggesting in a campaign message that the protest was antisemitic…“This decision uniquely targets minority prosecutors, suggesting they are incapable of pursuing justice in cases perceived to be impacting their own communities,” the statement says, adding that it “risks reinforcing longstanding antisemitic prejudices and invites future defendants to weaponize a prosecutor’s identity against them.” READ MORE

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“The book doesn’t teach us how to grieve. It’s not about any one of our griefs. It teaches us what walking looks like when walking is the only thing left. Rachel parcelled out what she could not carry alone, and asked us to help”

Posted on May 10, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

FUTURE OF JEWISH
The Most Tragically Beautiful Book I’ve Ever Read
Adam Hummel
May 9, 2026

I stayed up late one night this week reading the book, “When We See You Again,” published last month and written by Rachel Goldberg-Polin — the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the Israeli hostages kidnapped on October 7th. It is the most tragically beautiful book I’ve ever read. Somewhere in the middle of the book, Rachel writes that she wants to parcel out the pain — to shove some of it under the bed in a pile. She describes how, when she went to summer camp as a child, her mom and family members used to write her so many letters that she started to give them out to other kids who had less, so that they also had something to read from home. She talked about parceling out her pain the same way she distributed her her mother’s letters at camp, for others to help her carry. READ MORE

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“Had Trump allowed Israel one final operation in Iran, the IDF would have chosen to destroy the uranium. The Mossad, by contrast, would have chosen an all-out effort to stir Iranians into action and topple the regime”

Posted on May 7, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
Israeli assessment: This is when Iranians will take to the streets to topple the regime.
Amit Segal
May 10, 2026

A severe dispute has erupted, and still persists, between the army and the Mossad over the ultimate goal of the war in Iran. The IDF views the removal of uranium from Iranian territory as the ultimate achievement. The Mossad, however, believes the objective is toppling the regime…The second approach argues: what good does it do to extract it via an operation or an agreement? If the regime stands, and even if tons of three-percent enriched uranium remain, you’ve only set them back a few years—a blink of an eye in geopolitical terms. A regime without sanctions will be richer, more despicable, and will want to destroy Israel just as before. Only regime change will uproot the plans for Israel’s destruction from the source…The practical expression of this lies in a hypothetical question: what happens if President Trump tells Israel, “You have a green light for one operation”? Most of the security establishment would say thank you and send the Air Force to raid the uranium stockpiles. READ MORE

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“Mohamed Soliman sentenced to life without parole for deadly firebomb attack on Boulder rally supporting Israeli hostages in Gaza”

Posted on May 7, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

ARUTZ SHEVA
Mohamed Soliman sentenced to life without parole for deadly firebomb attack on Boulder rally supporting Israeli hostages in Gaza.
May 7, 2026

A man who carried out a deadly firebomb attack on a demonstration in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza was sentenced on Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to murder and multiple other charges. Mohamed Sabry Soliman was sentenced in connection with the June 1, 2025, attack in Boulder, Colorado, in which one woman was killed, and more than a dozen others were injured. According to authorities, Soliman threw two Molotov cocktails at participants gathered at Boulder’s Pearl Street pedestrian mall for a weekly demonstration supporting the Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Karen Diamond, 82, later died from injuries sustained in the attack. Twelve others were injured. READ MORE

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“Expecting Hamas to disarm voluntarily is like expecting ISIS or Al-Qaeda to renounce jihad and become peaceful political movements”

Posted on May 7, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE INSTITUTE
Hamas is Humiliating Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’
Khaled Abu Toameh
May 7, 2026

Six months after US President Donald J. Trump unveiled his ambitious ceasefire and reconstruction plan for the Gaza Strip, the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group remains more armed, entrenched, and openly defiant than ever. Far from disarming, the Islamist group now controls roughly half the Gaza Strip and much of its population, while making a mockery of Trump’s “Board of Peace” initiative and the international mediators sponsoring it. It is now clear that the Trump administration’s strategy was based on a misguided assumption that Hamas (a theocratic terror regime like Iran’s) could somehow be persuaded through negotiations, incentives, and diplomatic pressure to voluntarily surrender its weapons and abandon its jihadist ideology. The exact opposite has happened. Hamas not only rejected disarmament, but also used the ceasefire periods to solidify control, regroup politically and militarily, and humiliate the people negotiating with them. READ MORE

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“Lebanese-Iraqi writer and analyst Hussain Abdul-Hussain discusses Hezbollah, Lebanon’s future and the personal journey that transformed him from an anti-Israel youth into a prominent Arab advocate for normalization and peace with Israel”

Posted on May 7, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH INSIDER
Hussain Abdul-Hussain on his anti-Israel upbringing to then making ‘The Arab Case for Israel’
Lahav Harkov
May 7, 2026

Writer and researcher Hussain Abdul-Hussain has an unusual story: A Shia Muslim raised in Iraq and Lebanon and taught to hate Israel and the West, he is now a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies living in Washington, and the author of a book called The Arab Case for Israel…Abdul-Hussain credited the Trump administration for “giving Lebanon more attention than any administration since the early days of Ronald Reagan. … I’m happy that someone sees Lebanon as it is, not as we imagine it to be or just dismiss it and say ‘This is too complicated for us and we’re not going to go into it.’” That attention is “a golden opportunity … to help disarm Hezbollah and live at peace with Israel, Syria, Turkey, Iran, everybody else,” he said. “If the Lebanese don’t grasp it, I’m not sure there will be another opportunity in the coming future.” READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL US to host third round of talks between Israel and Lebanon next week Military representatives from both sides set to participate for first time, Israeli official says, as sides aim to advance concrete measures for disarming Hezbollah

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