Shalom, friends.

The April halt was a pause Tehran could end whenever it found a pretext, and yesterday’s strike on Dahiyeh handed it one. Iran fired the first direct barrage on Israel in two months, Israel cleared a path into western Iran before dawn, and the conventional-escalation call we have carried above fifty-fifty for weeks is now simply the weather. The regime testing the ceiling is settled. The live variable is whether the man guarding the talks lets Jerusalem manage its own affairs.

⚡️ Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less

Iran barrage: Tehran fires its first direct missiles in two months; the IAF answers into Iran before dawn. See The War Today.
Trump: The president tells Netanyahu not to retaliate and tells the Financial Times the prime minister “doesn’t call the shots.” See The War Today.
Beaufort: Under the captured ridge, the IDF uncovers a Hezbollah garrison tunnel built to hold hundreds for years. See The War Today.
Dahiyeh: Israel’s low-grade Beirut strike lands after Hezbollah fires through the June 1 freeze. See The War Today.
Home front: Nationwide restricted activity, schools shut, hospitals underground until tonight as the missiles resume. See Inside Israel.
High Court: Levin loses a second case in a week as the Comptroller petition heads for a hearing. See Inside Israel.
Basic Law: Shas moves to enshrine Torah study constitutionally while the IDF runs 12,000 short. See Inside Israel.
Maine: Democrats nominate Graham Platner, and Jewish Democrats stand by. See Israel and the World.
Watch: Gallant names the uranium-extraction option as Hamas calls on Israeli Arabs to follow Tayibe. See Developments to Watch.

Below: what the IAF cleared Iran’s air defenses to do next, the garrison the LAF was never going to confiscate, and the court that beat Levin twice in a week still cannot make the coalition write a real draft law.

Every front we have called one continuous battlespace is live at once, and what binds the day is the permission to answer the fire, not the fire itself. Israel struck Iran before Washington licensed it, which is rare, and Trump spent the day reminding the prime minister whose hand is on the throttle. Underneath the regional exchange, the home front absorbs a cost it has learned to absorb too well, and a coalition answers a manpower shortage by writing exemption into Basic Law.

The War Today

Israel Strikes Iran Overnight After the First Tehran Barrage in Two Months, Over Trump’s Objection

Iran fired two waves of ballistic missiles at the Ramat David air base in northern Israel late last night, the first direct Iranian fire since the April ceasefire, in stated retaliation for the afternoon strike on Beirut. Sirens ran across the north and into Haifa, the Air Force intercepted the volley, and no Israelis were hurt. Israel answered before dawn: directed by Military Intelligence and commanded from an Air Force bunker, the IAF struck air defenses, radars, military sites, and secondary petrochemical plants at Mahshahr, with explosions reported in Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan, and Karaj. The strike deliberately left Iran’s core energy infrastructure untouched. Iran fired fresh waves through this morning, one missile scoring a direct hit on four homes in a Samaria community without casualties, and the Houthis joined with a missile at central Israel and a declaration that any Israeli movement through the Red Sea is now a target. All projectiles were intercepted. Trump told Netanyahu not to retaliate, said the strikes “did not kick at all,” told the Financial Times the prime minister “won’t have any choice” but to accept a deal and “doesn’t call the shots,” and on Fox told Tehran “you’ve shot your missiles, that’s enough” and to return to the table. Zamir approved written plans for several days of fighting. COGAT shut Kerem Shalom and Rafah and halted aid into Gaza.

Assessment: The April halt was never a peace, and Tehran fired the moment Beirut gave it a pretext, then dared Jerusalem to answer with the talks Trump is guarding as the cost. Israel answered anyway, and clearing air defenses first is the IAF opening routes for the next wave — the rare instance the field moved before Washington licensed it. But hitting evacuated Dahiyeh and secondary Mahshahr sites while sparing Iran’s energy core is a country still more wary of Trump’s reaction than of Tehran’s. The president telling the Financial Times that Netanyahu “doesn’t call the shots” is the permission problem stated without the diplomatic wrapping: total capability for Israel, the decision to use it migrating to a man who measures the barrage by whether it “kicked.” The open question is no longer whether Tehran tests the ceiling but whether the response stays in Iran or the Houthi blockade and a shuttered Gaza pull the other fronts back to live [the one continuous battlespace doing Iran’s bidding once again].

IDF Hits Dahiyeh and Uncovers a Hezbollah Garrison Under Beaufort as the Cabinet Hears 1,000 Killed

The Air Force struck Hezbollah’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut yesterday afternoon, a deliberately low-grade hit after the group kept firing through the June 1 freeze and the fourth Washington round — the strike Netanyahu and Katz had foreshadowed, and the one Tehran seized as its opening to fire. Washington said it had no part in it, though CENTCOM was notified. Hours earlier, ministers heard the gap between the front the public sees and the one the IDF sees: more than 1,000 Hezbollah operatives killed since the ceasefire, roughly 2,000 rockets fired and most aimed at troops, with the towns hearing alerts but taking few impacts, 1.2 million south-Lebanon residents displaced, and about a fifth of Lebanon under Israeli control. On the newly held Beaufort Ridge, Golani, Maglan, and Yahalom uncovered a tunnel network built to garrison hundreds of operatives for the long term — living quarters, plumbing, power, a kilometer-long shaft holding anti-tank launchers, missiles, and weapons stores, all stood up as the fallback for the ground the 36th Division took last week.

Assessment: The garrison under Beaufort is the answer to anyone still reading the Litani-north stockpile as a paper problem the LAF would one day confiscate — Hezbollah was digging in to hold the ridge for years, and the only institution that cleared it was the IDF. The thousand killed and the fifth of Lebanon held are the operational reality the envoys at the State Department negotiate against while the text still asks whether the disarmament will happen. Katz kept the Dahiyeh strike small to lean on Hezbollah without handing Iran the excuse, and Tehran took the excuse anyway — which tells you the Beirut decision was never really Israel’s to calibrate once Washington bargained Israeli freedom of action into the Iran file. The enforcement has sat on the IDF all spring [the ceasefire being the fire-control regime Hezbollah reads as cover to rebuild], and the ridge is what enforcement looks like when nobody else will do it.

Inside Israel

Iran’s Resumed Fire Puts the Home Front Back on Emergency Footing

Israel moved to nationwide restricted activity at 10 p.m. last night after Iran resumed missile fire, and the order holds until 8 p.m. tonight. The entire education system is shut — early childhood through university, special education included, the biology matriculation exam postponed and the rest of the week’s exams under review. Hospitals are operating under sealed guidelines, moving into underground compounds, discharging the lightly ill to clear beds, with IDF teams mobilizing alongside. Workplaces run only where a protected space is reachable in time, gatherings cap at 200 outdoors and 500 indoors, beaches are closed, and the Red Line light rail’s underground stations in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Bnei Brak, and Petah Tikva are staffed around the clock as public shelters. Ben-Gurion stayed open after Regev’s situation assessment, though the Home Front Command wants the passenger cap down near 2,500 against the Transportation Ministry’s push for 5,000. A Hapoel Tel Aviv–Hapoel Jerusalem semifinal was halted before the fourth quarter and the arena cleared — one year, almost to the week, after the last Iran round stopped the championship series mid-game.

Assessment: The country has done this before and the machinery moves on muscle memory now — the schools close, the hospitals go underground, the playoff empties out, and nobody has to be told twice. That fluency is the achievement and the warning in the same breath. A state that can flip 10 million people into shelter posture overnight without panic has built something real. A state that has had to build it, and is using it again and again and again, is paying a standing cost in lost school days, deferred surgeries, and an economy that throttles to a protected-space footprint on a few hours’ notice [the wedding halls and the MRI machines both go dark, and only one of those reschedules cleanly].

The High Court Hands Levin a Second Loss in a Week While the Comptroller Petition Heads for a Hearing

The High Court ruled unanimously that Levin must cooperate with Court President Amit on the joint appointments the two offices sign off on together — court presidents, deputy presidents, a Supreme Court registrar, parole-board judges — calling his refusal to recognize Amit’s eighteen-month-old appointment an extension of his campaign to block it and his legal arguments “spurious.” Levin answered that he would work with the president “when there is one.” The ruling lands a week after the Court ordered him to convene the Judicial Selection Committee he had left idle for sixteen months, and it points to Beersheba and Haifa, short five and three judges, as the priority benches. Separately, the petition to annul Michael Rabello’s election as State Comptroller is set for a hearing in roughly two weeks, and the coalition’s amended October 7 inquiry bill — advancing in the Knesset this week — would let the incoming comptroller appoint any panel seats Lapid leaves empty if the opposition makes good on its boycott.

Assessment: The committee whose composition the reform was written to rebalance is the same committee now generating the rulings the guild cites as proof the reform is an assault on the courts — the structure produces the friction, then names the friction the crisis. Rabello’s bill closes the trap the opposition built for itself: refuse to seat members on a panel you’ve branded illegitimate, and the chair you refused gets filled by the man you spent last week trying to keep out of the comptroller’s office. The petition hearing arrives inside the dissolution window, which means the guild gets one more swing at the appointment before the election settles who holds the pen [the body that selected its own president petitioning to unselect the elected branch’s comptroller, on the same calendar].

The Coalition Moves Torah Study Into Basic Law as the Manpower Math Worsens

Deri and Goldknopf visited haredi draft evaders at Neve Tzedek military prison on Sunday, Deri handing out books and pledging Shas would soon pass legislation enshrining Torah study as a Basic Law — a move that would write exemption into the country’s constitutional core even as the IDF runs roughly 12,000 short and the evader roll passes 39,000. The bill heads to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Tuesday, with Gafni demanding a preliminary plenum reading by Wednesday, and it sits inside an emerging deal: Netanyahu gets the haredi parties’ votes for an October 20 election in exchange for advancing the Basic Law, the daycare-subsidy bill, and the kashrut law. Likud’s Dan Illouz vowed to vote against it, rightly calling it “Basic Law: Desecration of the Torah.” The push runs alongside a week of street action — dozens blocked Jerusalem’s Tunnel Checkpoint Sunday, the latest in the wave that followed the riot at Justice Sohlberg’s home over his order to intensify enforcement, with 52 of the arrested rioters held four more days.

Assessment: The coalition is answering a court order to build an enforcement regime by drafting the opposite — a constitutional shield for the men sitting in Neve Tzedek, traded for the votes that buy Netanyahu six more weeks before the country votes. Deri can hand out books to draft evaders because the absence of a statute leaves the street free to set the price of enforcement, and a police force that called off last week’s joint detention sweep noting most targets were secular has already told the next checkpoint blockade what defiance costs. Illouz naming it desecration from inside Likud is the tell that the burden question has stopped sorting cleanly along coalition lines — which is exactly the fracture the security axis was always going to open as the manpower gap stops being a briefing-room figure and starts being the reservist who served three rounds while the yeshiva roll grew.

Israel and the World

Maine Democrats Nominate a Candidate Jewish Democrats Will Not Touch

Graham Platner heads into tomorrow’s Maine primary the presumptive nominee against Susan Collins. Platner wore a skull tattoo recognized as a Nazi symbol, defended an SS-bolt-tattooed man who impersonated a federal officer at a 2020 protest, accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza, wants all American aid to Israel cut, and called Collins “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu.” Ro Khanna campaigned beside him through the domestic-abuse allegations and held the line on “Face the Nation.” Hakeem Jeffries, Mark Warner, and Chuck Schumer have not endorsed and have not rescinded, and Schumer met Platner in Washington last week to keep the Collins seat in play. In related happenings, Mamdani’s pick to unseat Adriano Espaillat defended joining an anti-Israel rally on October 8, 2023 and would not condemn the hostage-taking, while New Jersey’s Democratic nominee Adam Hamawy — who once testified for the Blind Sheikh — drew a congratulations from Jeffries and a sidestep when asked about it.

Assessment: Asked outright whether his party has a Jew-hate problem, Jeffries answered that Platner would “have to speak for himself” and that the fight should not be partisan [the leadership cannot say the word without first reaching for the both-sides exit]. The sorting we have tracked at the vocabulary layer has now reached the vetting one: the question is no longer whether a Democrat will say “genocide” on a primary stage, it is whether a Nazi tattoo and a Blind Sheikh witness clear the bar in a seat the leadership wants more than it wants the line [spoiler alert: the answer isn’t good for Jews or society-at-large]. The Jewish caucus has worked out that withholding an endorsement is the most it can do and still keep its chair, which is, frankly, isn’t a good enough excuse.

Quebec Synagogue Arson Lands the Week Carney Stands Up a “Council to Study the Problem”

A 38-year-old man broke a window at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Westmount, Canada's oldest Reform synagogue, shortly after midnight Friday and tried to set the sanctuary on fire before police arrested him at the scene. The building was empty, the damage minor, the same shul tagged with a swastika last year. B'nai Brith Canada asked prosecutors to treat the attempt as terrorism. The arrest came days after Prime Minister Mark Carney, conceding the country was "failing Jewish Canadians" as Jew-hate hit its highest level ever, named a seven-member advisory council with a broad anti-"hate" mandate — one Jewish member, another with documented ties to lobbying on behalf of Hezbollah, and several others with ties to political Islamism (i.e., jihad). Two days later in Toronto, a record 60,000 walked the UJA's Walk With Israel behind Israeli, Canadian, Pahlavi, and Indian flags, a 95-year-old in the crowd who first walked it in 1979.

Assessment: A government that meets a synagogue arson by seating a Hezbollah lobbyist on the panel it sold as protection for Jewish Canadians has told you what the panel is for, and it is not the Jews. Seven members, one of them Jewish, several with documented ties to political Islamism, and a mandate stretched across every "hate" so the Jews become one grievance line the council can spend against whoever shouts loudest. This is the body that will address antisemitism. Sure. Want to buy a bridge in Brooklyn? The Westmount window arrived before the terms of reference were drafted, and the 60,000 who walked Toronto behind their flag two days later are what Am Yisrael and its friends do while the state processes the threat into press releases.

Briefly Noted

Frontline & Security

Jerusalem Post: The IDF released new footage marking two years since Operation Arnon, the broad-daylight Nuseirat raid that brought Noa Argamani, Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Jan, and Andrey Kozlov home and cost YAMAM commander Arnon Zamora z”l his life.
Jerusalem Post: Police and Border Police rolled up a weekend’s worth of southern Israel gun-running — three M-16 rifles in Rahat, three Glocks and suspected crystal meth in a Bedouin-occupied vehicle, a handgun stashed in an abandoned car — and separately indicted a Hebron resident in Israel without a permit who was caught with a loaded pistol at Damascus Gate.

Diplomacy & Geopolitics

Ynet News: Trump signed off on the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III, carrying messages between Moscow and Kyiv toward a ceasefire, with a Putin meeting expected later this month. The same Jerusalem prelate helped broker Naama Issachar out of a Russian prison, and the channel rests on his being trusted by both capitals and owned by neither.

Public Diplomacy & Media

JNS: CyberWell is pressing the platforms to act on a viral trend of AI-generated clips that put gym-goers in triceps-rope “payot” claiming the equipment was “promised 3,000 years ago,” recycling the greed-and-entitlement caricature the moderation systems wave through as satire. The same line has already surfaced offline, used by an assailant harassing a Jewish woman in New York — the meme moderators treated as a joke arriving on the street.

Domestic & Law

Times of Israel: The Shin Bet and police moved to charge a Bat Yam man in his 30s who took money to run tasks for an Iranian handler he met online, alongside a Kafr Qasim man charged over Hamas propaganda — the latest pair in Tehran’s recruitment of ordinary Israelis through social media.

Economy, Tech & Infrastructure

Globes: The TASE-35 opened down another 1.57% as Iran’s fire resumed, on top of last week’s 4.5% slide, and real-estate group Tidhar’s market debut sank 5.55% out of the gate. A war that empties the trading floor is the wrong week to float a company, and the cool welcome at an NIS 8 billion valuation is the number to watch as the next IPO tests its nerve.
Jerusalem Post: Netafim, the Kibbutz Hatzerim drip-irrigation pioneer, opened its largest plant to date in Hermosillo, Mexico, even as its Mexican parent Orbia weighs selling control to a China-based investor after the Israeli Fortissimo bid collapsed.
Globes: The Bank of Israel bought $801 million in May to hold down a shekel that had strengthened to NIS 2.799 against the dollar, ending the month with record reserves of $238.7 billion — and the renewed Wall Street selloff and Iran fighting have since done the work for it, snapping the shekel back nearly 5% on their own.
Ynet News: With more than 25,000 wounded since October 7 in the Defense Ministry’s rehabilitation system and a projected 100,000 by 2028, the program’s annual run-rate has already doubled from a planned NIS 5.2 billion to NIS 10 billion, with a committee now asking for NIS 2 billion more a year.

Culture, Religion & Society

JTA: Jerusalem’s Pardes Institute released “Talmud of America,” four essays by its faculty reading the Declaration of Independence and Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” by the methods of the beit midrash, timed to the country’s 250th — and the Faith250 interfaith push built around it has 246 congregations signed up.

Developments to Watch

Northern Front (Lebanon / Syria)

Smotrich presses to answer Iran in Lebanon — Smotrich pushed the cabinet to route the answer to Iran’s barrage into an intensified Lebanon operation. If Tehran fired over Beirut, the cheapest place to make Iran pay is the proxy holding the ground the 36th Division just opened toward Nabatieh.

Gaza & Southern Theater

The shuttered crossings become a lever — COGAT closed Kerem Shalom and Rafah and stopped aid the moment the missiles flew. A closure justified by the Iran emergency is the surface Cairo runs through to fold Gaza into the Tehran track.

Regional Axis (Iran, Houthis, Militias)

Gallant names the uranium-extraction option — Gallant said an operation to physically pull out Iran’s enriched stockpile exists, dangerous but worth the price against an existential risk. The talks Trump is guarding defer exactly that question.
The next rung is energy for energy — Israel is reported seeking a US green light to hit Iranian oil and gas beyond the petrochemical plant it already struck. The IRGC answered that any blow to Iran’s energy means every energy target in the region. The exchange moves to the export economy both sides live on.
Iran signals a second wave loaded — The Majlis security committee put Iran’s readiness above its February 28 posture, and Khatam al-Anbiya declared itself ready for a “Vow of Truth 5.” A Tehran rally chanted for the air force to hit Tel Aviv. The regime is staging the mobilization that precedes a round, and the question is whether the next salvo aims past the empty fields it hit overnight.
The barrage spills onto third states — Sirens ran in Jordan, the US Embassy in Amman ordered shelter, and Iraq and the Gulf closed airspace as Iran denied firing at Saudi soil. A stray Iranian missile on a Gulf monarchy or on US personnel in Jordan is the one event that pulls Washington back across Trump’s line. The barrage is now wide enough for it to happen by accident.

Diplomatic & Legal

The Iraqi militia front reactivates — A claimed strike hit a “terrorist HQ” in Sulaymaniyah as Iraqi airspace closed against the live exchange. The militias Washington is pressing Baghdad to disarm are the axis arm with the shortest path to US troops. A strike inside Iraq forces the next premier’s hand before he is ready to use it.

Home Front & Politics

Hamas incites the internal front after Kochav Yair — Abu Obaida praised the Tayibe gunman’s three-site shooting and called openly on Israeli Arabs to follow it. A homemade Carlo killed a reservist inside the Green Line yesterday. The call lands while the country is in shelter posture and police are stretched across every front.

The interception rate held. What this round exposed is the other number — the capability is entirely Israel’s, and the decision to use it is migrating to a president who measures an eleven-missile barrage by whether it “kicked.” Tehran will keep firing into empty fields until the day it aims past them, and the question Jerusalem cannot answer on its own is whether it still gets to respond when that day arrives.

— Uri Zehavi · Intelligence Editor
With Modi Zehavi · Data + Research Analyst

Got a friend who heard “ceasefire” in April and stopped paying attention? They need this back.