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On Friday, Israel launched a full-scale military operation against Iran, carrying out strikes across the country that killed at least 224 people by Sunday afternoon. Iran’s Health Ministry says over 90% of those killed were civilians. Hospitals describe a “bloodbath,” with a constant flow of wounded since the first strikes. Medical facilities have been struck, and Red Crescent workers are among the dead.

Israel says it is targeting nuclear and military infrastructure, including bases and defense facilities, but has also bombed energy sites and residential areas and called for the evacuation of a large residential area of Tehran.

This week, Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain are joined by Farzan Sabet (@IranWonk on X), Managing Researcher at the Geneva Graduate Institute and an expert on Iran and regional security. They examine Israel and Iran’s military strategies, the possibility of an off-ramp, and whether the U.S. is preparing to intervene directly.

Israel attacked Iran early on Friday morning, targeting the capital Tehran and other parts of the country with multiple airstrikes in a dramatic escalation of its regional war. Explosions were reported in cities home to major sites connected to the Iranian nuclear program. Initial reports indicate that Israel may have targeted the homes of Iranian political and military officials, as well as figures related to its nuclear program. Iranian state TV reported that a number of senior officials were killed, including the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami.

The attacks targeted at least six military bases around Tehran, including the Iranian military complex Parchin, according to the New York Times. Broadcasting the aftermath of the attacks in Tehran, Iranian state television showed that two residential buildings had collapsed, killing and injuring many, including at least one child.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu characterized the attack, named Operation Rising Lion, as a “pre-emptive strike,” before declaring a state of general emergency inside Israel in anticipation of a likely Iranian retaliation. In a speech delivered Thursday night, Netanyahu detailed a full-scale military operation targeting Iranian nuclear and missile infrastructure, claiming it was necessary to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons and vowing that the strikes would continue “for as many days as it takes.”

Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain discuss the breaking story on Drop Site's livestream.

Read Murtaza Hussain’s breakdown of Israel’s attacks on Iran at Drop Site.

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The failure of global and regional efforts to stop Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip is now giving rise to a burgeoning grassroots movement aimed at breaking the siege of the territory and building direct solidarity with Palestinians. On Monday, an activist group sailing on the ship the Madleen was intercepted by the Israeli military. That ship was attempting to break the naval blockade on the territory, while delivering a symbolic amount of aid to Gaza. The activists on the Madleen, including Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg, were detained by Israel after being abducted in international waters. Some were subsequently deported.

Their effort is only one of many civil society campaigns now trying to break Israel’s stranglehold over the territory. International activists are now preparing to march by land to the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza. A convoy drawing citizens from over 50 countries, and including members of labor unions, solidarity movements, and human rights organizations, is now commencing a campaign called the Global March to Gaza. Organizers and participants are planning to converge in Cairo this week, before marching from the Egyptian capital on foot towards Rafah, where they plan to stage a sit-in aimed at pressuring authorities to reopen the crossing.

The convoy hopes that their efforts with help halt the genocide against Palestinians, now nearing its second year, while forcing the resumption of humanitarian aid to the besieged coastal territory. Drop Site journalists Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Murtaza Hussain discussed the convoy and its aims this week with organizers Seif Abukeshek and Melanie Schweizer, who are preparing to depart as part of the campaign this week.

Protests have taken hold of Turkey in recent months, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to consolidate more and more power in the country. Recently, Erdogan’s government arrested a major political opponent, Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, leading to widespread demonstrations.

As Erdogan consolidates power, the government is engaging in a new peace process with left-leaning Kurdish groups that have long maintained an insurgency against the state. Simultaneously, Turkey has been expanding its influence in Syria, Ukraine, the Mediterranean, and even Western Europe.

Erdogan has led Turkey for over two decades, reshaping the country from its republican roots into a more right-wing, nationalist, and Islamist state. To discuss the history of Turkey, its political evolution, and recent developments, Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Selim Koru. Koru is the author of “New Turkey and the Far Right: How Reactionary Nationalism Remade a Country” and an analyst at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Gaza genocide has now surpassed its 600th day. Israel is violently corralling Palestinians like cattle into an ever-shrinking stretch of the Gaza Strip against its Western coast. It has now been three full months of Israel’s blockade of Gaza—no significant quantities of medicine, fuel or food have entered Gaza. And as the starvation spreads and thousands of children face acute malnutrition, the privatized “aid distribution” implemented by the U.S. and Israel is proving to be exactly what critics warned: a death trap that exploits the hunger and desperation spreading throughout Gaza.

Over the past 8 days, according to local health authorities, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces as they traveled to locations in southern Gaza where a U.S. mercenary company is overseeing the distribution of paltry boxes of basic food items. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear that the aim of this scheme is not to actually address the humanitarian crisis Israel’s war of annihilation has imposed, but rather a tool to further Israel’s stated aim to “conquer” Gaza and remove all Palestinians.

The fate of a potential Gaza ceasefire is uncertain. On May 25, Hamas announced that it had accepted a proposal drafted in coordination with Donald Trump’s envoys aimed at securing a deal to end the genocide, release all Israeli captives and hand over administration of the Gaza Strip to an independent technocratic committee of Palestinians. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff then denounced that deal—one in which Hamas said he was directly involved—and colluded with Israel to try to force Hamas to accept a draft written entirely with Israel’s genocidal aims at the center.

Drop Site journalists Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim are joined by Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a prominent Palestinian activist and academic. He is currently the Director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Zaim University. They also speak to Eyad Amawi, a coordinator with the Gaza Relief Committee, which coordinates NGOs operating in the Strip for an update on the ground reality in Gaza. Amawi recently published an op-ed in the Guardian titled, “I’ve seen the reality of the new Israel-backed ‘aid’ for Gaza. It’s nothing more than a deadly PR stunt.” Eyad joins us from Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Palestine.

The “humanitarian aid” scheme, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has characterized as necessary to maintain U.S. support for his war of annihilation against the Palestinians of Gaza, began on Tuesday. Within hours, Israeli forces opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians at a site near Rafah, while the family of a man who went to get a small box of food aid says he was kidnapped by Israeli forces. The program is managed by a shadowy “non-governmental organization” and is being staffed, in part, by U.S. mercenaries. Some eyewitness reports indicate U.S. contractors also fired at the crowd. No deaths or injuries have been reported as of publication. Photos released earlier in the day showed Palestinians packed into metal enclosures at the site, where, according to local sources, they were held for hours in intense heat with no clear system for distributing food. The aid center is one of two launched Tuesday under a controversial U.S.-Israeli mechanism that bypasses UN agencies and has drawn criticism from Palestinians and humanitarian groups.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Hamas announced it had reached an “understanding” with U.S. officials for a new ceasefire agreement, but almost immediately after the news broke, Israel denounced the plan and insisted it would not enter into any agreement with a clear path to halting the genocide or the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. On this week’s Drop Site News live stream, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim analyze the Trump administration’s approach to the war against Gaza, the specific terms of the agreement Hamas endorsed and the prospects that Trump might force Netanyahu to halt Israel’s genocidal onslaught.

While all international and regional players recognize that Trump is the only person with the power to stop Netanyahu, there are strong voices within his administration that want to see Israel continue on with its occupation and ultimate goal of erasing Palestinians from Gaza and seizing the territory. Pressure is mounting from European nations on Israel to end its war, but the hard reality is that it will all come down to whether Trump—for his own political and personal business interests—decides it must stop.

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The U.S. and Iran are headed into a new round of negotiations to address the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. Will it avert a military confrontation that seems closer than ever?

Reports this week indicated that Israel was preparing military assets in anticipation of a direct strike against Iran. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has sent mixed signals about whether Iran would be allowed to maintain a uranium enrichment capacity for a civilian nuclear program—an issue Iran has said is a red line for any negotiation.

To discuss the ongoing talks and the longer history between the U.S. and Iran, Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Dr. Vali Nasr, Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of the new book “Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History.”

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is currently in the midst of another campaign of sabotage to prevent a “ceasefire” agreement that would bring an end to Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians of Gaza. All parties—from Hamas, to the regional mediators Qatar and Egypt, to the Trump administration—know that Netanyahu is entrenched in his position that Israel will not agree to any deal that does not allow Israel to continue a campaign it has characterized as a war of conquest against Gaza. Israeli officials have made no secret about their aim of erasing Gaza as a Palestinian territory and removing its 2.3 million residents. Hamas has said it will not release any more Israeli captives unless an agreement is reached that includes a full withdrawal of Israeli forces and a clear path to a long term ceasefire.

In the latest Drop Site News livestream, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim discuss how Israel is using the veneer of agreeing to allow aid into the besieged territory to enable it to pursue its final solution in Gaza, with the full support and backing of the U.S. government. They also talk about the deal the U.S. made with Hamas to free Israeli soldier and U.S. citizen Edan Alexander. Hamas told Drop Site that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff personally promised the group it would compel Israel to lift its full spectrum blockade on Gaza two days after Alexander was released. Witkoff, Hamas said, also told Hamas that President Donald Trump would publicly call for a ceasefire and serious negotiations to end the war. Hamas accused the U.S. of “throwing the deal in the trash.” As Israel intensifies its attacks against Gaza and the humanitarian situation growing more grave by the day, the central question is whether Trump—for his own reasons—will force Netanyahu to end the war or whether Trump will continue to facilitate Israel’s campaign of annihilation.

Amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment, famine conditions, and the near-total collapse of humanitarian assistance in Gaza, on Monday, May 12, the Israeli military assassinated renowned Palestinian journalist Hassan Eslayeh in an airstrike on Nasser Hospital, where he was receiving treatment.

The next day, Israeli forces killed 12-year-old Mohammed Bardawil, an eyewitness who had testified to the Israeli military’s execution of fifteen paramedics, rescue workers, and UN staff in Rafah in March 2024. Mohammed had told investigators that some of the paramedics were shot at point-blank range—“from one meter away.”

After his administration met directly with Hamas to negotiate the release of U.S.-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, Trump arrived in Riyadh on May 13, kicking off a four-day Middle East tour. Following his stop in Saudi Arabia, Trump is expected to visit Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He has claimed the trip will secure “$1 trillion” in investment for the U.S.

Meanwhile, calls to end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid and genocide continue, as campus protests spread and escalate nationwide. On May 7, pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied the main library at Columbia University. Around eighty people were arrested, and some students have been suspended.

This week also saw a dramatic military escalation between India and Pakistan—the most intense in decades—marked by drone and missile exchanges. The hostilities have now paused under a fragile ceasefire.

Tune in to hear Drop Site’s journalists and correspondents break down these developments and more—and check back every Tuesday to stay informed.

Israeli ministers this week approved plans to capture the entire Gaza Strip and remain entrenched there indefinitely. This comes as ceasefire talks remain deadlocked after Israel abandoned the original three-phase framework—which stipulated a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the declaration of a permanent ceasefire—and issued a series of new demands, including the complete demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, a red line for Hamas.

Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill recently held a series of rare, in-depth interviews with senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan and other leading figures of Palestinian resistance groups about the state of the negotiations, disarmament, Egypt’s role as a mediator, Hamdan’s direct talks with Donald Trump’s envoy Adam Boehler, the group’s current view of what is often referred to as a “two state solution,” and much more.

Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Murtaza Hussain speak with Scahill about what Hamas and other groups told him. Hussain also discusses recent developments in Yemen and how the U.S. appears to be targeting coordinates posted by social media analysts online.