The Dictatorship
PILOT RESCUED
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A U.S. service member who has been missing since Iran shot down a fighter jet has been rescued, President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post early Sunday.
A frantic U.S. search-and-rescue operation unfolded after the crash of the F-15E Strike Eaglejet on Friday, as Iran also promised a reward for anyone who turned in the “enemy pilot.”
A second crew member was rescued earlier.
Trump wrote that the aviator is injured but “will be just fine,” adding that he took refuge “in the treacherous mountains of Iran.”
Trump added that the rescue involved “dozens of aircraft” and that U.S. had been monitoring his location “24 hours a day, and diligently planning for his rescue.”
The fighter jet was the first U.S. aircraft to have crashed in Iranian territory since the conflict in late February.
Israel’s military warns the public of another missile barrage coming from Iran, the third-such alert of the day
Another airstrike in southeastern Tehran hits a home, killing at least three people, Iranian state TV reports
Strikes in southern Iran kill 6 people
From Sunday into Monday across Iran, local media and activists reported strikes on Ahvaz, Bandar Lengeh, Karaj and Shiraz as well.
The strikes in Bandar Lengeh and Kong killed at least six people and wounded 17 others, the state-run IRAN newspaper said.
Iranian strikes hit Haifa
Israel’s Magen David Adom and Fire and Rescue services said early Monday that there are two reported sites of Iranian missile hits in the northern city of Haifa.
Video footage provided by Magen David Adom of the affected sites show active fire and bombed cars in what appears to be a residential area.
It is still unclear whether those were direct hits or damage from falling shrapnel from interceptions.
The missile strikes comes a day after another attack from Iran also hit a Haifa residential area, killing two people and injuring others.
Two people were still trapped in the rubble caused by the Sunday attack and their fate is unknown.
Latest reports of live fire in the war
- Israel’s military warned the public Monday morning of another missile barrage coming from Iran, the third-such alert of the day.
- Kuwait again Monday morning said it was firing air defenses over an incoming Iranian missile and drone barrage.
- The United Arab Emirates again said its air defenses also were firing over incoming Iranian fire on Monday morning.
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Israel claimed a wave of airstrikes early Monday targeting Iran, without offering any immediate information about its targets.
Israel claims a wave of airstrikes targeting Iran early Monday without offering information about its targets
Iranian strike in Haifa kills 2 people
Israel’s Fire and Rescue Authority said early Monday two people were found dead under rubble due to an Iranian missile strike on a residential building in Israel northern city of Haifa.
The rescue mission, which started Sunday evening, is still ongoing as two other people remain under the rubble.
Their fate is still unknown.
Paramedics said Sunday they rushed to the scene and searched through the rubble to dig out the injured, finding an older man in serious condition.
They added that three other people, including a baby, were slightly injured.
Airstrike on Iranian city of Eslamshar kills at least 13
An airstrike early Monday struck a residential building in a city southwest of Iran’s capital, Tehran, killing at least 13 people, Iranian media reported.
The semiofficial Fars news agency and Nour News reported the strike near Eslamshar.
It wasn’t clear why the building had been struck.
Neither Israel nor the United States claimed the strikes early Monday, but they came after Trump issued a profanity-laced threat to Iran that it must reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
JUST IN: At least 13 killed in an airstrike that hit a building in a city southwest of Tehran, Iranian media report
Airstrikes hit Tehran university linked to weapons work
Airstrikes early Monday morning on Iran’s capital, Tehran, targeted the Sharif University of Technology.
Iranian media reported the strikes and damage to buildings there, as well as a natural gas distribution site next to the campus.
It wasn’t immediately clear what had been targeted on the grounds of the university, which is empty of students as the war has forced all schools in the country into online classes.
However, multiple countries over the years have sanctioned the university for its work with the military, particularly on Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is controlled by the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Meanwhile, the Guard and other security forces have been using secondary sites as rally points as their bases have come under repeated attack during the war.
Airstrike in the Irani city of Qom kills at least 5, state-run media reports
The state-run IRAN daily newspaper said in an online message that an airstrike in a residential area of Qom killed at least five people. Qom is a holy Shiite seminary city just south of Tehran.
It wasn’t unclear what the target of the strike was.
Iran has not provided overall casualty figures from the war in days. It also hasn’t discussed its materiel losses.
Airstrikes hit Iran’s capital
Before dawn Monday, a series of airstrikes hit Iran’s capital, Tehran. Explosions rang out into the night, though it wasn’t immediately clear what had been struck.
The sound of low-flying fighter jets could be heard off and on for hours.
In Israel, authorities sounded one missile alert. In Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, two such alerts went off with air defenses firing, but it wasn’t immediately clear what had been targeted by Iran. Kuwait also said its air defenses worked multiple times overnight to intercept incoming
The sound of a low-flying fighter jet is heard over northern Tehran
The sound was followed by at least three massive explosions.
Crude oil prices jump in early trading after Trump threats
Crude oil prices jumped sharply in early trading Sunday after President Trump issued fresh, heightened threats against Iran and its infrastructure.
The price of Brent crude, the international standard, rose more than 2% to $111.25. U.S. crude oil prices were up nearly 3% to $114.54 a barrel.
The last time front-month prices for U.S. crude oil prices were above $115 a barrel was the summer of 2022, in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and during a period of high inflation across the globe.
Trump on social media vowed to hit Iran’s power plants and bridges and said the country would be “living in Hell” if the Strait of Hormuz, crucial for global trade, isn’t opened by Tuesday.
Official with Lebanese Christian party killed in Israeli strike
Pierre Mouawad, an official with the Lebanese Forces party, was killed along with his wife in an Israeli strike Sunday on an apartment building in the village of Ain Saadeh in the mountains east of Beirut, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Another woman was killed and three women were wounded, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
The Israeli military has made no statement about the strike, and its intended target remains unclear.
The Lebanese Forces party is opposed to Hezbollah and has blamed the Shiite militant group for dragging Lebanon into a new war with Israel.
Israeli strikes in Christian-majority areas have led to sectarian tensions, with local residents fearing that Hezbollah members may be hiding among displaced Shiite civilians taking refuge there.
Doctors Without Borders condemns Israeli strike in Beirut neighborhood
The international aid group, known by its French acronym MSF, said the strike in Beirut’s Jnah neighborhood on Sunday hit “a densely populated residential area … only meters from Rafik Hariri Public Hospital.”
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the strike, which came without a warning, killed five people, including a 15-year-old girl, and 52 wounded, including eight children.
“We are seeing elderly people and adolescents arriving with critical injuries to the head, chest, and abdomen, including shrapnel wounds,” Luna Hammad, MSF medical coordinator working in the hospital, said in a statement. “When strikes hit crowded residential areas without warning, the consequences are severe, both in human casualties and in hospitals’ capacity to respond.”
MSF said that “strikes this close to a hospital spread fear and can stop people from seeking lifesaving care.”
The Israeli military has not named the intended target of the strike, which comes five weeks into the renewed Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon.
Iran says US bombarded its own aircraft, personnel
Iran’s joint military command spokesperson said Sunday that the U.S. had to bombard its own military aircraft and personnel that were struck and downed by Iranian fighters to “prevent embarrassment for President Trump and the hollow image of its military.”
Ebrahim Zolfaghari added that several U.S. military aircraft entered Iranian airspace to carry out a rescue operation for the pilot of a downed U.S. fighter jet, but said Iranian fighters and air defense systems struck the aircraft and forced them to make an emergency landing in an area south of Isfahan.
A regional intelligence official, who was briefed on the covert mission and who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss it, said the U.S. military blew up two transport planes due to a technical malfunction that forced them to bring in additional aircraft to complete the rescue.
Over the weekend, the United States pulled off a daring rescue of two aviators whose fighter jet was shot down by Iran, plucking the pilot from behind enemy lines before setting off a complicated extraction of the second service member who hid deep in the mountains as Tehran called for Iranians to help capture him.
Bahrain’s foreign minister urges action on Strait of Hormuz
Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani wrote in a statement Sunday that Iran’s weekslong chokehold on the critical waterway has created an “escalating crisis that threatens global stability, food security, and the foundational principles of international law.”
He urged action by the United Nations Security Council on a Bahrain draft proposal, which has faced crucial opposition from Russia, China and France over several issues, including language authorizing the use of force to open the strait. All three countries wield veto power over any resolution in the 15-member council.
The vote on the heavily revised and watered-down draft was scheduled to take place last week, but has been postponed due to lack of consensus.
Al-Zayani noted that the “window of opportunity is narrowing day by day” and failure by the international community to act “sends a dangerous message that vital arteries of the global economy can be threatened without consequence.”
Iranian negotiators have ‘immunity from death,’ Trump says
The U.S. president made the comments during an off-camera interview with Fox News.
“We’ve given them immunity from death. And we’ve told the people that we’re dealing with, who are the top people,” the president said.
Trump contended that the Iranians had already conceded on having a nuclear weapon.
“They’re not even negotiating that point, it’s so easy,” Trump told Fox News. “That’s already been conceded. Most of the points are conceded.”
Four people were injured in a fire at the UAE’s Khor Fakkan port
The United Arab Emirates’ Sharjah government said that one Nepali and three Pakistani nationals were wounded Sunday in a fire caused by falling debris from an intercepted Iranian projectile at Khor Fakkan port, according to a statement posted on the social platform X.
One individual was severely wounded and had to be hospitalized, while the others suffered mild and moderate injuries, the statement said.
The statement did not specify whether the intercepted projectile was a missile or a drone.
4 missing in Haifa apartment building strike
Israel’s Fire and Rescue Authority said Sunday they were searching for four people in the northern Israeli city of Haifa after an Iranian missile strike.
Paramedics said they rushed to the scene and searched through the rubble to dig out the injured, finding an older man in serious condition. They added that three other people were mildly injured, including a baby.
Associated Press video filmed at the scene showed much of the multistory building reduced to rubble.
The rescuers described the damage as resulting from a direct hit, but it was not immediately clear if the building had been struck by a missile or shrapnel from an interception.
Israeli security forces and rescue teams work amid the rubble of a residential building struck by an Iranian missile in Haifa, Israel, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Israeli security forces and rescue teams work amid the rubble of a residential building struck by an Iranian missile in Haifa, Israel, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Israeli fire kills 1 Palestinian in Gaza City, health officials say
The strike on a group of people also wounded others, according to health officials at the Shifa hospital, where the casualties arrived.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Gaza Strip has seen near-daily Israeli fire and strikes since a fragile ceasefire was reached in October, and more than 700 Palestinians have been killed since then, according to figures from the Gaza Health Ministry.
The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. But it does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants.
Since the Iran war began over a month ago, Gaza militants have sat out the conflict and haven’t claimed any attacks against Israel.
Iran’s head of parliament lashes back at Trump
In a social media post on Sunday, Iran’s parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf dismissed Trump’s recent threats of targeting Iran’s infrastructure as “reckless.”
“You won’t gain anything through war crimes,” Qalibaf wrote on X. “The only real solution is respecting the rights of the Iranian people and ending this dangerous game.”
Top Iranian official threatens closure of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait
A former foreign minister and adviser to the supreme leader warned Sunday that “the resistance front” could target the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off the Red Sea, through which about 12% of the world’s trade typically passes.
“If the White House thinks of repeating its stupid mistakes, it will quickly realize that the flow of global energy and trade can be disrupted with a single signal,” Ali Akbar Velayati said on social media, signaling possible closure of the vital waterway if the U.S. escalates attacks.
Iran leads the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” which includes armed groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, where Houthi rebels had in the past cut off transit through Bab el-Mandeb with attacks on vessels.
Iran has effectively stopped cargo traffic through the Strait of Hormuz during the conflict, leading to higher oil and gas prices globally.
Iran floats a new condition for Strait of Hormuz reopening
Seyyed Mohammad Mehdi Tabatabaei, a presidential spokesperson, wrote Sunday on the social platform X that the reopening of the vital waterway can only happen if transit revenues are partially earmarked to compensate Iran for war damages.
There has been growing alarm over Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz, critical for shipments of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf to Europe and Asia. Trump has threatened to attack Iran’s infrastructure if it fails to reopen the strait by Monday.
Oil-producing countries decide on symbolic output increase
Eight countries from the OPEC+ oil cartel say they will increase production again in May to ensure stability on the oil market — a decision overshadowed by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic due to the Iran war.
The countries said in a statement carried Sunday on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries website that production would be increased by 206,000 barrels per day.
That, however, remains largely on paper due to the loss of an estimated 12 million barrels a day from Persian Gulf producers due to the Hormuz closure.
The countries — Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman — warned that damage from attacks on oil infrastructure will take “a long time” to repair and return supply to previous levels.
Such attacks, as well as disruption of navigation, undermine efforts to support stable prices “for the benefit of producers, consumers and the global economy,” they said.
Iranian government minister dismisses Trump threat in AP interview
Iran’s culture minister has dismissed President Donald Trump’s latest threats, calling the U.S. leader an “unstable, delusional figure.”
“Iranian society generally does not pay attention to his statements, as it believes he lacks personal, behavioral and verbal balance, and constantly shifts between contradictory positions,” Sayed Reza Salihi-Amiri told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday.
Trump on Sunday said he would strike Iran’s power plants and bridges this Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to marine traffic. In an expletive-laden post, Trump promised the Iranians would be “living in Hell” if the waterway isn’t opened.
“It seems Trump has become a phenomenon that neither Iranians nor Americans are able to fully analyze,” said Salihi-Amiri.
He said the Strait of Hormuz is “open to the world but closed to Iran’s enemies.”
Latest attack from Iran hits Haifa apartment building, Israel’s rescue services say
Paramedics say they rushed to the scene and searched through the rubble to dig out the injured, finding an older man in serious condition. They say three other people were mildly injured, including a baby.
Photos and video showed much of the multistory building reduced to rubble.
The rescuers described the damage as resulting from a direct hit. It was not immediately clear if the building had been struck by an Iranian missile or shrapnel from a missile interception.
2 Black Hawk helicopters were hit during the rescue, but got to safety
The two helicopters were able to navigate to safe airspace, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information.
It was not clear where the Black Hawks landed or if their crew members were injured.
Iran’s joint military command has claimed it struck two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters.
Kuwait and Qatar report further aerial attacks
The Kuwaiti army said Sunday that Iran had fired a total of nine ballistic missiles, four cruise missiles and 31 drones at Kuwaiti territory over the past 24 hours.
That brings the total number of projectiles that have targeted Kuwait since the war erupted to 740 drones, 336 ballistic missiles and 13 cruise missiles, according to an official statement posted on the social platform X.
Also, the Qatari army reported that it had on Sunday intercepted several drones and two cruise missiles fired by Iran, according to another statement on X.
Muslim civil rights group accuses Trump of mocking Islam
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a nationwide advocacy group, assailed Trump for invoking Allah in his Truth Social post threatening Iran.
“President Trump’s deranged mocking of Islam and his threats to attack civilian infrastructure in Iran are reckless, dangerous, and indicative of a mindset that shows indifference to human life and contempt for religious beliefs,” CAIR said in a statement.
Trump, in his post on Easter Sunday, demanded that Iran open the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday, “or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
“The casual use of ‘Praise be to Allah’ in the context of violent threats reflects a disturbing willingness to weaponize religious language while simultaneously denigrating Islam and its followers,” CAIR said.
Iranians say Trump’s threats to strike infrastructure is ‘intent to commit war crime’
Hours after Trump’s expletive-laden post promising Iran will be “living in Hell” over the Strait of Hormuz closure, Tehran’s mission to the U.N. called the open threats to target civilian infrastructure “a direct and public incitement to terrorise civilians and clear evidence of intent to commit war crime.”
“The international community and all States have legal obligations to prevent such atrocious acts of war crimes,” the mission said in a post on the social platform X. “They must act now. Tomorrow is too late.”
Iran says Ahvaz Shahid Soleimani airport hit
Iran state-run television IRIB quoted a security official as saying that so far, no casualties were reported in the aftermath of a US-Israeli strike on Sunday.
Also on Sunday, the United Arab Emirates’ Sharjah government said that Khor Fakkan port was targeted and that no casualties were reported so far, according to a post on the social platform X by the government’s media office.
Earlier, UKMTO said that a captain had witnessed multiple splashes from unknown projectiles near his vessel while conducting loading operations at the same port.
Border crossing between Lebanon and Syria awaits threatened Israeli strikes
The main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria was closed Sunday after the Israeli military warned of plans to strike it the night before, alleging that Hezbollah was using it to smuggle military equipment.
Samir Abdelkhaleq from the Lebanese border town of Majdal Anjar said the closure is an economic blow to many.
“These are real losses for people and for business owners,” he said. “Everyone is just waiting for the strike to be over.”
Syrian authorities, who have a hostile relationship with Hezbollah, have denied that the crossing is being used for smuggling. In recent days, Syria announced the discovery and closure of several tunnels they said were being used by Hezbollah for smuggling.
More than 200,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria in the five weeks since the outbreak of renewed war between Israel and Hezbollah.
US official says CIA launched ‘deception campaign’ to find second crew member
Details about the rescue of a second U.S. crew member in Iran, who was a weapons systems officer, are trickling out hours after Trump’s announcement.
A senior U.S. administration official said Sunday that prior to locating the crew member, the CIA spread word inside Iran that U.S. forces had already found him and were moving him on the ground for exfiltration.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public, said the campaign managed to confuse Iranian officials while the agency conducted its search-and-rescue operations.
Over 1,400 people in Lebanon have been killed in war between Israel and Hezbollah militant group
Among the 1,461 killed are 97 women, 129 children, and 54 paramedics, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
4,430 people have been wounded since the latest fighting began on March 2.
After Hezbollah fired rockets toward northern Israel, the Israeli military launched an intense military operation with daily strikes across the country and a ground invasion into southern Lebanon.
Top satellite imagery provider says US asked it to suspend access to Mideast imagery
The U.S. government has asked top providers of satellite imagery to stop publishing p hotos from parts of the Middle East because of the Iran war, says the company Planet Labs.
Planet Labs and companies like it provide near-daily imagery crucial to reporting on regions where on-the-ground access for journalists is impossible, limited or unsafe. That has made it an especially key tool for reporting on the Iran war, which has impacted nearly all Middle Eastern countries.
In a Saturday email to users, including the AP, Planet Labs said it was complying with the U.S. government’s requests and would indefinitely delay publication of imagery taken after March 9, 2026. It said it would release new imagery on a “case-by-case basis and for urgent, mission-critical requirements or in the public interest.”
The company said the new measures would be in place until the end of the conflict.
Democratic US Sen. Kaine warns Trump administration on war rhetoric
As he expressed “overwhelming relief” at the rescue of the military personnel in a downed U.S fighter jet in Iran, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine called on the president and his top officials to dial down their rhetoric amid the war in the Middle East.
Kaine referenced remarks from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last month when the latter declared “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” at a news conference.
“This kind of rhetoric is really dangerous,” Kaine said Sunday in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.
He added: “That really encourages them to mistreat our folks.”
Turkish foreign minister to meet with Syrian and Ukrainian presidents
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan arrived in Damascus Sunday, with Turkish media reporting that he will hold a trilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa.
According to state-run Anadolu Agency, topics of discussion will include joint projects for the rebuilding of Syria as well as regional developments, such as the integration of northeast Syria into the central government and the impact of nearby conflicts in Iran and Lebanon.
Fidan’s last visit to Syria was on Dec. 22, 2025, alongside Defense Minister Yasar Guler and National Intelligence Chief Ibrahim Kalin.
Christians celebrate Easter in wartime Tehran
Armenian Christians celebrated Easter at a church in Iran’s capital on Sunday, striving to maintain a sense of normalcy five weeks into the war.
Families embraced and children exchanged painted eggs at the St. Sarkis Cathedral in central Tehran. Iran’s capital has been targeted by daily airstrikes since the United States and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28.
“Whether we like it or not, we have young children who do not understand what’s going on,” said Juanita Arakel, 40, an English language teacher. “They just need to feel normal.”
The Islamic Republic, with a population of around 90 million, is home to some 300,000 Christians, mostly Armenians, and three seats in parliament are reserved for Christians.
“My appeal first is to those who started the war to look up to the sky where love and mutual respect was given to us, whether through the birth of Jesus or his rising from the dead,” said Sepuh Sargsyan, the archbishop of the Armenian Diocese of Tehran.
“Our calls and prayers are that we will be able to end this war.”
Across the Middle East, Christians have departed in large numbers in recent decades, fleeing war, persecution and upheaval, and seeking economic opportunities in the West.
Trump offers details of ‘seriously wounded’ pilot’s rescue
U.S. President Donald Trump said the effort to rescue the second pilot was a rarely attempted type of operation because of the potential dangers.
He said in a social media post on Sunday that the pilot was “seriously wounded and really brave” and rescued from “deep inside the mountains” in Iran.
Trump said the pilot is a “highly respected Colonel” and that Iranian forces were “looking hard, in big numbers” and “getting close” to him.
He also gave details of the rescue of the first pilot, who Trump said was rescued in “broad daylight” after seven hours over Iran.
Trump repeats threat to strike Iran’s infrastructure if Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he would strike Iran’s power plants and bridges this Tuesday if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to marine traffic.
In an expletive-laden post, Trump promised they would be “living in Hell” if the waterway isn’t opened.
JUST IN: Trump promises to strike Iran’s power plants and bridges on Tuesday if Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened.
Iran threatens more forceful attacks if its civilian installations are targeted
Iran’s joint command threatened on Sunday to step up its attacks on oil and other civilian infrastructure facilities if the U.S. and Israel attack Iranian civilian facilities.
Iran’s state-run news agency quoted the Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters as saying that it it had attacked a number of oil other infrastructure facilities in Israel and in the Gulf Arab countries after an Israeli airstrike struck Iran’s largest petrochemical complex.
President Donald Trump has threatened to unleash “all Hell” on Iran if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened.
Iran says it has destroyed four US aircraft
Iran’s joint command claimed on Sunday that the aircraft were destroyed during a complex rescue of a crew member whose fighter jet was shot down on Friday.
Iran’s state TV quoted the Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters as saying that the aircraft, which included two C-130 military transport planes and two Black Hawk helicopters, were destroyed in the province of Isfahan, where the rescue took place.
Earlier Sunday, Iran’s state TV aired a video showing what it claimed were parts of U.S. aircraft that they had shot down and a photo of thick black smoke rising into the air.
The claims could not be independently verified.
Israeli strike causes severe damage to three-story building south of central Beirut
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the building in the Jnah neighborhood was filled with residents and was located across the street from the government-run Rafic Hariri University Hospital.
The strike came without warning soon after a previous one in the area that came with advance notice.
There was no immediate word on the number of casualties.
UAE reports attacks with dozens of missiles and drones
The United Arab Emirates’ Defense Ministry said on Sunday that among the 60 projectiles fired at the country were nine ballistic missiles, 50 drones and one cruise missile.
This brings the total number of projectiles that have targeted the UAE during the war to 507 ballistic missiles, 24 cruise missiles, and 2,191 drones.
Iran’s internet blackout becomes the world’s longest
An internet monitoring group said on Sunday that Iran’s internet blackout is now the world’s longest nation-scale internet shutdown on record.
NetBlocks said the internet blackout in Iran has lasted for 37 consecutive days, exceeding all other comparable incidents the group has recorded.
Drone attacks ignite fires, cause serious damage at oil and petrochemical facilities in Kuwait
The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said on Sunday fires ignited at several of the company’s operational facilities as well as to facilities at the Petrochemical Industries Company, causing “significant” damage.
It said firefighters were working to control the fires.
No casualties were reported.
Israel says Iran has launched new missile barrage
The Israeli military said on Sunday that its air defenses are being activated.
Although Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had already earned a reputation as the most scandal-plagued U.S. Senate candidate in recent memory, the Republican’s troubles have managed to take a turn for the worse.
Just in the past couple of weeks, Paxton has been accused of using an address where he did not live while voting in recent elections and has faced allegations that he and his estranged wife declared three separate homes as their primary residence in mortgage documents — a practice that his party has, in other situations, characterized as an outrageous abuse.
Complicating matters, property records now suggest that the state attorney general, either in his personal capacity or through his trusts, now owns at least 15 properties, worth roughly $9 million.
The good news is, Paxton finally held a press conference Tuesday — a “rare” occurrenceas one outlet called it, for a politician who doesn’t seem to care for questions — offering journalists an opportunity to ask the Texan about his many controversies. The bad news is, Paxton didn’t want to answer any questions about his many controversies, and he then abruptly abandoned his own event when reporters treated him like a Senate candidate.
“General, I wanted to give you a chance to respond to [Democratic state Rep. James Talarico] and his campaign,” one reporter said. “They’ve made a lot about the reports that have come out, one in The New York Times about you acquiring properties worth —”
At that point, Paxton, surrounded by 22 local sheriffs who support his candidacy, interrupted and said he only wanted to field questions related to “law enforcement.”
But in the United States, politicians don’t get to limit the scope of journalists’ questions, and so another reporter asked the state attorney general why he allegedly voted in one county while living in another. A Paxton aide, seemingly eager to rescue her boss, tried to intervene as the Republican walked away from his podium.
A Talarico spokesperson said in a statement, “Ken Paxton just refused to answer basic questions about reports he committed voter fraud and expanded his real estate portfolio to 15 properties on a government salary — because he has no answers for his corruption. If Ken Paxton can’t answer these simple questions, what is he planning to do in a debate?”
For the record, Paxton hasn’t agreed to any debates. He also hasn’t offered substantive answers to the same questions ahead of Tuesday’s event.
Stepping back, the embarrassing display underscored two notable elements of the Senate race in the Lone Star State. First, Paxton genuinely seems to believe he can go the entire campaign without fielding questions from independent news organizations about the brutal list of scandals that follows him like cans tied to a bumper.
And second, Republicans invested a remarkable amount of time and energy into trying to make the Texas race a referendum on, of all things, masculinity. But watching Paxton flee his own press conference in response to predictable and reasonable questions, a variety of words came to mind. “Manly” wasn’t one of them.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
President Donald Trump says he is worried about foreign interference in U.S. elections. That was the reason he gave when he released declassified intelligence documents last week that ended up undercutting his own baseless claims about rigged elections.
In his primetime address on July 16, Trump said the U.S. “must take urgent action” to protect voting infrastructure against foreign actors. But shortly after taking office last year, Trump gutted a key agency designed to protect America’s elections from exactly that.
It’s called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — an office created during Trump’s first term. CISA is one of the main federal partners for states on election security, sharing intelligence on potential threats to voting infrastructure and providing quick regional support.
After Trump returned to office, the cyber agency housed under the Department of Homeland Security took a major hit. Elon Musk’s DOGE fired more than 100 workers, including election security advisers. More than 600 others were placed on administrative leave, were reassigned or took buyouts.
Now the Trump administration is telling states they will only receive resources if they hand over voter rolls to be screened through a new federal database that a judge recently deemed unlawful in its current form.
That database is known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, which experts and a federal judge are concerned has a high error rate that could disenfranchise voters.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said CISA will release an “election infrastructure plan” in the next 30 days — barely three months out from the midterms, which will determine which party controls Congress.
“If they participate in the SAVE program, we’ll provide the resources and training to support state election integrity,” Mullin said last week. “We’re not trying to change the outcome.”
‘They’re flying blind’
Multiple current and former senior election and national security officials told MS NOW that they could not recall a time when the federal government held back resources and money meant to secure America’s elections.
And multiple state election officials have said they are not receiving any briefings on possible foreign threats to election security from the federal government. Such briefings were once a regular occurrence, they said.
During the first Trump administration, “we were collaborative — carrots rather than sticks,” said one of the former officials, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. The second Trump administration is “very much focused on sticks.”
One election official in a swing state said the difference from 2024 is stark, saying that “it’s every state for themselves.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity over concerns about retaliation from federal officials. During the last cycle, the state official said they had a regional federal cybersecurity expert “on speed dial” who could “see the whole puzzle.”
That doesn’t exist anymore, and without it, the state election official said, “we’re less informed on the pattern of the attackers and are slower to respond.”
“I’ve literally never heard anybody effectively say ‘to keep you safe, you have to give me what I want,’” said the swing state election official, referring to DHS threats to withhold resources if states don’t hand over sensitive voter data.
The risks compound at the local level, they added: “Does [a clerk’s] laptop have the IT infrastructure to defend against an attack from Iran? That’s what keeps me up at night.”
Cait Conley, a West Point graduate and combat veteran who served as the senior adviser to the director of CISA during the Biden administration, accused Trump of gutting the agency and sowing doubt about the security of U.S. elections in his speech last week.
“If Donald Trump were truly concerned about election security, he would not have fired hundreds of federal workers whose jobs were to secure our elections,” she said. Conley is now running for Congress in New York as a Democrat.
“His lies and misrepresentations are very clearly trying to lay the groundwork for calling this November’s election results into question when his party loses,” she said.
When asked about election officials telling MS NOW that they have received no intelligence briefings on possible foreign threats to election security, and have no access to regional cybersecurity advisers, DHS did not respond. DHS also did not respond directly to questions about the agency withholding resources unless states hand over voter data.
Instead, they provided a statement from acting CISA Director Nick Andersen, which said CISA “works with critical infrastructure owners and operators to assist them in securing both the physical security and cybersecurity of the systems and assets that support the nation’s elections.”
When an election infrastructure plan is done in the next 30 days, it will “offer to states the cyber resources they need, including information about available no-cost voluntary services such as the sharing of threat information, technical expertise, vulnerability scanning, and other risk mitigation support,” Andersen said.
Under Trump, CISA halted its funding of the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which provides local governments with free access to election security operations centers, election security training, technical support and threat monitoring.
Tim Harper, who leads the elections team at the nonpartisan Center for Democracy and Technology, said teams across the FBI, the State Department and the Justice Department that worked on countering foreign influence have also been eliminated or sidelined.
But CISA was key to sharing and compiling intelligence across the federal government.
Parts of CISA’s election work, Harper explained, included granting security clearances to state election officials to give them real-time information to stop threats before they spread. His organization has direct knowledge of officials receiving no response when they have asked the federal government to provide assistance on cyber and physical security.
“Expecting local election officials to handle nation-state cyberattacks without federal support isn’t commonsense policy,” Harper said. “It’s a national security failure.”
States are trying to fill the gap with outside vendors and networks of cyber experts.
“It has taken a lot of work, and it shouldn’t have to be this hard, but the states are ensuring the 2026 election is secure despite federal withdrawal,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, which works with elections officials from both parties on ways to build trust with voters in election results.
Becker said that the Trump administration’s near-weekly threats to arrest election officials have “become a running joke among election officials,” adding that they find it “laughable.”
Protecting elections
Established in 2018 during Trump’s first administration, CISA initially enjoyed sweeping bipartisan support. But Trump attacked the agency after Chris Krebs, then the director, said the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history.” Trump, who lost the election, immediately fired Krebs.
After Trump returned to office in 2025, his administration proposed a 17% cut — roughly $500 million — to CISA’s budget. It also proposed mass layoffs that would cut CISA staff nearly 30%, eliminating 1,083 of its 3,732 staffers. The plan was paused after almost 600 people accepted a buyout offer from the administration, Politico reported at the time.
Trump and members of his new administration have also accused CISA of undermining democracy instead of defending it. As DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, in a surprise keynote speech at a major cybersecurity conference last year, said CISA’s efforts to counter the spread of misinformation from America’s enemies, such as Russia and China, was an infringement on free speech.
“They were deciding what was truth and what was not,” she said of CISA. “And it’s not the job of CISA to be the Ministry of Truth.”
Former CISA officials called those claims patently false. And they warned that tech firms were hiring top CISA leaders, as well as CISA staffers, for their cybersecurity skills, and that the agency was being gutted.
“I’ve personally seen how CISA has lost its very best,” Jack Cable, a former CISA employee who left the agency in January, told lawmakers in a June hearing. “In the face of increasing threats, we can’t undermine the capacity of America’s cyber defense agency and its ability to attract and retain the best technical talent.”
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
The resumption of hostilities between the United States and Iran has caused an uptick in U.S. casualties. Last week, CENTCOM confirmed the deaths of three more U.S. service members killed in actionand the total number of troops killed during the war currently stands at 18. Meanwhile nearly 100 troops have been injured over the past two weeks as Iran escalates attacks on U.S. bases across the Middle East.
President Donald Trump continues to try to cast the war as an operation of total U.S. domination against a defanged regime, but Iran is striking back, with American lives at stake, making justifications for continuing the unpopular war even harder for Trump. And with the president signaling an openness to escalating the conflict even further in the coming weeks, the human toll is likely to increase. (Iranian casualties are far worse, with at least 1,700 Iranian civilians killed, according to estimates from the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.)
It will be nearly impossible for the Trump administration to ward off the reality that casualties make wars less popular.
Already lacking in meaningful transparency, the Trump administration appears to be growing more cagey about releasing information about casualties. But efforts to delay or obscure the information are unlikely to prevent the inevitable — the war will become even more widely despised as more people die.
CNN reported on Monday that the Pentagon has been “slow to disclose injuries to U.S. troops during the ongoing war with Iran, avoiding publicly confirming the fallout from Iranian attacks and mostly reserving totals to a military website that lags events by several days or even weeks.” And its mode of communication about casualties has shifted: “While earlier in the war U.S. Central Command, the military headquarters overseeing the war effort, would provide periodic updates on injuries, it has not been regularly disclosing non-fatal attacks in recent months,” BLN reported. (The Pentagon’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, told BLN that reporting delays are necessary, saying, “Providing real-time information on non-fatal casualties to the media is the same as providing that information directly to our adversaries, which could put even more service members at risk with access to that quick information.”)
The New York Times pointed out that the Pentagon declined to divulge Iranian strikes on U.S. bases in Jordan last week, which in turn may have misled the public about why the U.S. was conducting airstrikes against Iranian military sites. And that happened amid a broader reticence to brief the public about the direction of the war: “The last major Pentagon briefing on the war was in early May.” (Parnell responded to the Times article in a statementsaying that “claims of concealment are fabrications.”)
Given the Trump administration’s dishonesty about the warthe president has long ago forfeited any right to be given the benefit of the doubt. But regardless of whether the Trump administration’s changes in its communication style has been motivated by operational security or making it harder for the public to see how much blood has been shed on its orders, the news is trickling out: The troops are being killed and injured.
Ultimately, it will be nearly impossible for the Trump administration to ward off the reality that casualties make wars less popular. In the 1970s the political scientist John Mueller found that support for the Vietnam and Korean wars “declined as a logarithmic function of American casualties.” Various scholars have since pointed out that there are nuances to how the public is affected by casualties, such as a sensitivity to a notable increase in the rate of casualties rather than just the absolute number of casualties themselves.
But there’s one particularly damning piece of scholarship out there for the Trump administration: a 2006 study by political scientists from Duke University and the Loyola University Chicago, which found that the public’s tolerance for the human costs of war is heavily shaped by the public’s “beliefs about the rightness or wrongness of the war” as well as “beliefs about the war’s likely success.”
That doesn’t bode well for Trump.
A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that 68% of Americans said the Iran war was not “worth fighting,” and just 28% said it was. (BLN pointed out that the “negative 40-point split is worse than for either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars in Washington Post-ABC News polling.”) And in Aprila Post-ABC poll found that 61% of Americans believed the Iran war was a “mistake.” As high oil prices pinch Americans’ wallets and the Trump administration continually fails to bring Iran to heel, it’s hard to imagine that those numbers will look better for Trump.
The war with Iran has so far produced a fraction of the U.S. casualties of major U.S. wars of the past, and it is unlikely to reach comparable numbers unless Trump deploys ground troops. But widespread skepticism that this war is worthwhile or effective likely makes the administration more vulnerable to public anger over whatever casualties do emerge. It’s one thing for troops to die for a just cause or even a controversial cause, it’s another to die for no obvious reason at all.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
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