Israel says 'no decision yet' on Hamas response to Gaza truce proposal
"No decision has been made yet on that issue," a government official told on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak publicly about it. Israel's security cabinet was due to meet later on Saturday, after the end of the Jewish sabbath at sundown, Israeli media reported.
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UN Nuclear Inspectors Depart Tehran As Iran Vows To Keep Enriching
A group of inspectors from the United Nations' nuclear watchdog has finally and formally departed Iran after the country decided to halt its cooperation with the agency, following last month's surprise bombing raids by Israel and the United States. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed in statement shared on X on Friday that its personnel are returning to the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria. Al Jazeera's Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, clarified that it's as yet unclear just how many IAEA inspectors left the country in this 'final' wave of departures. 'The language used doesn't clarify whether all or only some of the staff departed, but it appears that a number of them are still in Iran,' he said. IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi has urged Iran to resume monitoring and verification efforts as soon as possible, saying it is of 'crucial importance' that direct dialogue with Tehran continues. 'The inspectors have been housed in Tehran unable to visit Iran's nuclear sites since Israel attacked the country on June 13,' The Wall Street Journal details. 'They were housed at a hotel in the capital but may have later moved to a U.N. location, according to one of the people.' All of this comes after the Trump White House has threatened the potential for more military action should Iran resume enrichment of uranium, which it has promised to do undeterred. According to more from WSJ: Their departure makes the prospect of any significant international access to Iran's nuclear sites extremely unlikely, allowing it to carry out nuclear work unchecked. Iran's activities are, however, being watched closely by Western and Israeli intelligence agencies, and the IAEA has access to satellite imagery of its sites. It also raises the prospect of a standoff over Iran's participation in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which bans it from nuclear weapons and requires regular inspections of its atomic program. For decades, Iran has been subject to rigorous inspections of its core nuclear sites. Inspectors would visit its enrichment sites and check its stockpile of enriched uranium every couple of days, ensuring that Iran wasn't diverting fissile material for a nuclear weapon. An IAEA team of inspectors today safely departed from Iran to return to the Agency headquarters in Vienna, after staying in Tehran throughout the recent military conflict. — IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency ⚛️ (@iaeaorg) July 4, 2025 Iran has meanwhile said that while it doesn't plan to retaliate further against the United States, it will carry on peaceful nuclear energy activities as a matter of national sovereignty. 'As long as there is no act of aggression being perpetrated by the United States against us, we will not respond again,' Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi told NBC News on Thursday. 'Our policy has not changed on enrichment,' Takht-Ravanchi crucially added. 'Iran has every right to do enrichment within its territory. The only thing that we have to observe is not to go for militarization.'
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Weakened By War And Syrian Regime Change, Hezbollah Considers Major Demilitarization
Prompted by military losses and shifting regional geopolitics, the Lebanese political and militant group Hezbollah is considering a major strategic shift that would see the group undertake a major disarmament, Reuters has reported, citing three sources familiar with the group's deliberations. In solidarity with Gaza, Hezbollah began attacking Israel on the day after the Oct 7 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel, but suffered mightily for doing so. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) hammered Lebanon with airstrikes and then an invasion. In September 2024, Israel unleashed a devious mass attack on Hezbollah members, detonating thousands of pagers that Israeli intelligence had loaded with the explosive PETN. Nearly 3,000 people were wounded and at least a dozen killed, including two children. That same month, an Israeli airstrike killed the group's leader for 32 years, Hassan Nasrallah. Pursuant to the November ceasefire that ended its recent war with Israel, Hezbollah has turned over security responsibilities south of the Litani River to the Lebanese Armed Forces. Alongside that shift, the group has also handed over weapons depots in that part of the country, Reuters reports. Now the group's leadership is considering a handover of its formidable missile and drone arsenal — which pose the greatest threat to Israel — provided Israel withdraws its remaining troops from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah would retain lighter weapons, including antitank missiles. Israel has continued to strike targets in southern Lebanon. Late June brought the biggest Israeli attack on Lebanon since the ceasefire agreement, with the IDF claiming it had struck a 'significant underground project' used by Hezbollah. Thursday brought this bystander-endangering strike, which the IDF said was aimed at an arms smuggler associated with Iran's Quds Force: Hezbollah's position has also been weakened by the December fall of Syria's Assad regime, as a years-long US-led regime-change effort finally culminated in the secular, Iran-friendly Bashar al-Assad being replaced by the former leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian offshoot of al Qaeda that Hezbollah had fought against; Hezbollah also helped turn the tide against ISIS. The turnover of Syrian control severed the overland supply route connecting Hezbollah to its principal sponsor, Iran. In February, the Lebanese government banned commercial flights between Beirut and Tehran, in deference to Israeli accusations that Iran used the flights to ship cash to Hezbollah. Last month brought a telling illustration of Hezbollah's weakened position. After years of anticipation that the group would unleash its missile arsenal in the event Israel launched a major attack on Iran, Hezbollah stood on the sidelines during last month's 12-day war, choosing to confine its support of Iran to official statements condemning Israel's aggression, with a side of saber-rattling. In 2018, Hezbollah was estimated to have a rocket and missile arsenal comprising more than 130,000 projectiles, making it the most potent non-state military force on Earth. Internal Lebanese politics are also playing a role in Hezbollah's reconsideration of the extent to which it remains a military force in addition to a political one: Lebanon's government also wants Hezbollah to surrender the rest of its weapons as it works to establish a state monopoly on arms. Failure to do so could stir tensions with the group's Lebanese rivals, which accuse Hezbollah of leveraging its military might to impose its will in state affairs and repeatedly dragging Lebanon into conflicts. — Reuters If it comes to pass, Hezbollah's demilitarization would represent a huge shift in the Levant's geopolitical picture. With the group having served as both a defender of Lebanon and an instigator of fighting with Israel that brought destruction upon Lebanon, time will tell if the development is a net positive for the country.
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US Support For Israel Comes At A Staggering, Multifaceted Price
When asked about the cost of their government's support of the State of Israel, some Americans will say it's $3.8 billion a year — the amount of annual military aid the United States is committed to under its current, 10-year 'memorandum of understanding' with Israel. However, that answer massively understates the true cost of the relationship, not only because it doesn't capture various, vast expenditures springing from it, but even more so because the relationship's steepest costs can't be measured in dollars. Since its 1948 founding, Israel has been far and away the largest recipient of American foreign assistance. Though the Ukraine war created a brief anomaly, Israel generally tops the list every year, despite the fact that Israel is among the world's richest countries — ranked three spots below the UK and two spots above Japan in per capita GDP. Driving that point home, even when using the grossly-understating $3.8 billion figure for US expenditures on Israel, America gave the Zionist state $404 per person in the 2023 fiscal year, compared to just $15 per person for Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries on Earth and America's third-largest beneficiary that year. Israel's cumulative post-World War II haul has been nearly double that of runner-up Egypt. What most Americans don't realize, however, is that much of Egypt's take — $1.4 billion in 2023 — should be chalked up to Israel too, because of ongoing US aid commitments rising from the 1978 Camp David Accords that brokered peace between Egypt and Israel. The same can be said for Jordan — America's fourth-largest beneficiary in fiscal 2023 at $1.7 billion. US aid to the kingdom surged after it signed its own 1994 treaty with Israel, and a wedge of Jordan's aid is intended to address the country's large refugee population, comprising not only Palestinians displaced by Israel's creation, but also masses who've fled US-led regime-change wars pursued on Israel's behalf. Then there's the supplemental aid to Israel that Congress periodically authorizes on top of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) commitment. Since the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel, these supplements have exceeded the MOU commitment by leaps and bounds. In just the first year of the war in Gaza, Congress and President Biden approved an additional $14.1 billion in 'emergency' military aid to Israel, bringing the total for that year to $17.9 billion. One must also consider the fact that, given the US government runs perpetual deficits that now easily exceed $1 trillion, every marginal expenditure, including aid to Israel, is financed with debt that bears an interest expense, increasing Americans' tax-and-inflation burden. On top of money given to Israel, the US government spends huge sums on activities either meant to benefit Israel or that spring from Israel's actions. For example, during just the first year of Israel's post-Oct 7 war in Gaza, increased US Navy offensive and defensive operations in the Middle East theater cost America an estimated $4.86 billion. Those Gaza-war-related outflows have not only continued but accelerated. For example, earlier this year, the Pentagon engaged in an intense campaign against Yemen's Houthis. In proclaimed retaliation for Israel's systematic destruction of Gaza, the Houthis have targeted Israel, and ships the Houthis said were linked to Israel. In response, America unleashed 'Operation Rough Rider,' which often saw $2 million American missiles being used against $10,000 Houthi drones, and cost between one and two billion dollars. President Trump's military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities — amid a war initiated by Israel on contrived premises — cost America another one to two billion dollars, according to early estimates. Even before the attack on a nuclear program the US intelligence community continues to assess is not aimed at producing a weapon, the Pentagon was already spending more money on Israel's behalf, helping to defend the country from Iran's response to Israel's unprovoked aggression. The run-up to US strikes itself entailed a massive and costly mobilization of American forces and equipment to the region, as the Pentagon readied for multiple scenarios. Propelled by Israel's powerful US-based lobby, by Israel-pandering legislators, and by a revolving cast of Israel-favoring presidents, cabinet members, and national security officials, the United States has consistently pursued policies in the Middle East that place top priority on securing Israel's regional supremacy. Among the many avenues used to pursue that goal, none has been more costly than that of regime change, where an outcome that results in a shattered, chaotic state is seemingly just as pleasing to Israel and its American collaborators as one that spawns a functioning state with an Israel-accommodating government — and where the cost is often measured not only in US dollars but in American lives and limbs. Of course, the most infamous such regime-change effort was the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. 'If you take out Saddam, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,' current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured a US congressional hearing. Doing his part to aid a Bush administration dominated by Israel-aligned neoconservatives bent on taking out one of Israel's regional adversaries, Netanyahu also said there was 'no question whatsoever' that Hussein was 'hell-bent on achieving atomic bombs.' The drive to topple Syria's Iran-allied Assad government is another prominent example of regime change on behalf of Israel, as the two countries sought to sever the 'Shia Crescent' that — due in great part to Saddam's ouster — presented a continuous pipeline of Iranian influence extending to Israel's borders. To the contentment of the US and Israeli governments, Syria is now led by an al Qaeda alumnus who's reportedly poised to relinquish Syria's long-standing claim on the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in 1967. Taken together, the price tag of US military operations in Iraq and Syria, including past and future medical and disability care for veterans, totals $2.9 trillion, according to Brown University's Costs of War Project. The human toll has been even more mind-boggling: upwards of 580,000 civilians and combatants killed, with perhaps two to four times that number indirectly perishing from displacement, disease and other factors. More than 4,600 US service-members died in Iraq, and 32,000 were injured, many of them enduring amputations and burns. Alongside mass suffering, these and other US interventions undertaken to ensure Israel's regional supremacy have fomented enormous resentment of the United States across the region. Click here to read more…
