In the early morning hours of June 13, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched Operation Rising Lion—a sustained campaign of airstrikes targeting Iran's nuclear program. That effort is still ongoing; Israeli officials have indicated that the strikes will come in multiple waves, over multiple days, as the country works to erode Iran's extensive nuclear enterprise and hobble any potential regime retaliation. The current campaign is dramatic, but it can hardly be said to be a surprise. Israeli officials warned for years that a nuclearizing Iran was an existential threat to the Jewish state, and might require direct military action to mitigate. So, too, had Iran-watchers tracking the advancing state of the Islamic Republic's nuclear effort. (My first book on Iran, Tehran Rising, which dealt extensively with the probability of an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program, was published two decades ago, in the summer of 2005.) Nevertheless, the timing of Israel's strike was unexpected, coming amid efforts by the Trump administration to negotiate a more durable deal with the Iranian regime over its nuclear program. Conventional assumptions held that Israel will refrain from any action until those negotiations either failed altogether or concluded in unsatisfactory fashion—and that, if a deal with the Islamic Republic was struck, no Israeli military action would be forthcoming at all. So what happened, precisely? While additional details will undoubtedly be disclosed in the coming days, we already know a substantial amount about what transpired, and why.

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A statue of Josef Stalin was recently unveiled in Moscow's Taganskaya subway station. It's no anomaly. Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, more than 100 monuments to the Soviet dictator have been erected across Russia.

This tells you all you need to know about Mr. Putin. More importantly, this should tell President Trump all he needs to know about Mr. Putin.

But Mr. Trump is juggling multiple crises, as are his advisors. So, in case they've missed this development, I will endeavor to explain its significance.

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In a world that often seems turned upside down, where democracies coddle terrorists and lecture their victims, recent threats by France, the United Kingdom, and Canada to unilaterally recognize a so-called Palestinian state hardly come as a surprise.

But that in no way makes them any less outrageous.

These governments, with breathtaking hypocrisy, want to reward the perpetrators of Oct. 7 with a state of their own.

In a joint statement issued early last week, they also warned that unless Israel refrains from expanding military operations in Gaza and halts all "settlement activity," they would "not hesitate" to take action against the Jewish state, "including targeted sanctions."

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The Department of Justice (DOJ) last month took a potentially giant step in the effort to combat the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas by asserting that UNRWA, unlike other UN agencies, is not immune from U.S. criminal and civil law. The decision may not just open the door for victims of October 7 to sue UNRWA for damages, it may enable the Treasury Department to impose terrorism sanctions and shut down a significant terror-financing threat.

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Two weeks ago, a judge ordered the release of a 34-year-old named Mohsen Mahdawi, a graduate student detained weeks earlier by Department of Homeland Security agents in Vermont. The usual suspects, including pundits, professors, and our self-appointed intellectual and moral betters, celebrated Mahdawi's newfound freedom, arguing that detaining him—during his naturalization interview, no less—was an egregious overreach and that the Trump administration had no good case to make against Mahdawi. It was such a perfect storm of virtue signaling, complete with Mahdawi himself delivering a defiant speech from the courthouse steps, that the facts, as they usually do in such cases, were drowned out by the sound and fury.

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As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth struggles with internal dissension and questions about his handling of classified information, he joins a long line of Pentagon chiefs who had to fight for their positions. Looking back at their experiences may be instructive to both him and President Donald Trump in determining whether he survives the ordeal.

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President Donald J. Trump failed to achieve his often repeated preelection vow to end Russia's war against Ukraine "in 24 hours," but the 47th president still accomplished something extraordinary.

In less than three months, he called into question the security architecture that not only has deterred Russian aggression, but also kept Europe relatively peaceful and prosperous for over 75 years through 14 different administrations, including his own first term.

The U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an alliance of 31 European nations plus Canada, has been the backbone of Europe's defense since its creation in the ashes of World War II 80 years ago.

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The Biden administration's decision to cut off weapons supplies to Israel during the war in Gaza has raised concerns that the Jewish state is overly dependent on the United States for its security. Washington has supplied Israel with more than 10,000 tons of munitions since October 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered more than 1,200 Israelis. However, the White House has threatened to suspend further arms transfers to restrain the Israeli military by conditioning how American armaments can be used against Hamas and Hezbollah, the Iranian- backed terrorist proxy in Lebanon.

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I can't believe we're having this discussion in September 2023, just as the fall respiratory virus season commences and we're experiencing a new wave of COVID-19, but the politicizers of COVID won't let up. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) this week introduced legislation that "would prohibit any federal official, including the President, from issuing mask mandates applying to domestic air travel, public transit systems, or primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools."

There was also the ill-timed article by John Tierney in City Journal on August 27th claiming that "maskaholics are incorrigible" and everyone should reject masks because "we're rational."

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While the ongoing protests in Syria's southern province of al-Suwayda' against the Syrian government and its policies are noteworthy, the tribal uprising in the eastern countryside of the eastern province of Dayr al-Zur against the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is arguably of greater significance, as it amounts to an actual armed revolt that has posed a serious challenge to the SDF's authority over the area- an authority that was only established because of the American-led campaign against the Islamic State. In turn the revolt raises very serious issues about U.S. policy in the region and the supposed ongoing American mission to ensure the "enduring defeat" of the Islamic State.

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