Kernow Damo

Right, so Iran fired missiles at Israel after Israel struck Beirut, and COGAT, the Israeli Defence Ministry body that controls civilian coordination and access for Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territory, said crossings into Gaza would be closed until further notice as a result, including Kerem Shalom and Rafah. So Netanyahu's government took a hit from Iran, and then, right on cue, took it out on Gaza, as Gaza's humanitarian lifeline gets squeezed at the crossing. For all the language around security measures, escalation management, ceasefire pressure and humanitarian reassurance aid still has to pass, in the end, through one very simple object, that being a closed gate. Netanyahu now carries the question of whether his response contained the crisis or dragged another live wire into it, and he comes out of it looking less like a man controlling escalation and more like a man reaching, again, for the one lever he can still pull whenever the bigger war starts getting away from him.

COGAT sits under Israel's Defence Ministry and helps control how Gaza is managed from the outside, the crossings, the permits, the coordination, the practical routes through which people, goods and aid can move or be blocked. So when COGAT says crossings are closed, that is not background noise, it is Israel's control system saying out loud which part of Gaza's life support is being tightened. Kerem Shalom is one of the main cargo crossings used for aid and goods into Gaza. Rafah is the crossing tied to the Egypt-Gaza border, and in political terms it has become one of the words that means whether Gaza has any exit at all, any relief, any route that is not run through Israeli permission. Once those names turn up in the same sentence as "closed until further notice", the story has already moved well past the missile exchange and into who can Israel punch down on after getting their backsides handed to them and of course the answer is always those who can fight back the least.

Right, so Israel struck Beirut's southern suburb after widening its attacks across Lebanon, Israeli-linked reporting framed it as a warning, an equation-setting attack, rather than some uniquely urgent assassination that could not wait all in defiance of that supposed ceasefire in place, things Israel never seems to trouble itself with anyway. And at this point, well, Iran then decided it had had enough.

Israel hit Beirut, and Iran fired back by dropping Israeli airbases into the middle of the story. That is the one outcome Netanyahu spent weeks trying to dodge, and he walked straight into it the moment he treated Dahiyeh like somewhere he could lob a warning shot. Iran launched missiles. The IRGC named Ramat David Airbase, and later Iranian claims named Nevatim and Tel Nof as well. So the answer to the obvious question is yes. Iran tied its response to Beirut, as they have always said was their red line, and what it pointed it’s missiles at was Israeli military infrastructure. And Trump gets pulled into all of it on the spot, doesn't he, seeing as he had been leaning on Netanyahu to go easy on Beirut while telling anyone who would listen that he is the one calling the shots on Iran. Netanyahu sent Beirut a warning. Iran sent one straight back. Trump spent the day trying to keep his own ally from making the whole thing worse, as if it could actually get any worse here.

Right, so Iran has just done something no enemy of the United States was supposed to manage. It has run the most expensive air force on earth out of drones. The US has reportedly lost nearly 30 MQ-9 Reapers in its war with Iran, and now the Air Force is going cap in hand to General Atomics, the company that builds them, only to be told there are fewer than 10 "new" MQ-9As left for any customer anywhere in the world. So the superpower that outspends the entire planet on its military is not topping up losses like it is changing batteries in a remote control. It is rummaging for spare drones from a model that is no longer in proper production, while Donald Trump keeps selling American power as if the machine were limitless. It isn't. Iran has shoved the US into the stockroom, and the stockroom is nearly bare. And that same fallout is already turning into a possible $2bn counter-drone sale to Kuwait, because the moment Gulf bases start carrying the risk, Washington's answer isn't restraint. It is another invoice.

The MQ-9 Reaper is not some side gadget in this story. It is a large remotely piloted aircraft used by the US Air Force for surveillance, intelligence-gathering and strikes, carrying sensors, cameras, data links and weapons while pilots operate it from somewhere else. No wonder Washington loves it. It can sit over a target area for hours, watch, track, hit, guide other aircraft and do it all without a pilot sitting inside the thing being shot at. General Kenneth Wilsbach, a senior US Air Force commander, has described the MQ-9 as perhaps the most valuable player of the Iran war, which is not exactly a throwaway line when the same platform is taking serious losses. The US military has used Reapers heavily in Operation Epic Fury, the American campaign against Iran, including in missions involving mobile targets and higher-risk areas. That makes the loss rate politically very awkward, because the aircraft Washington relies on for reach without pilot risk is also the aircraft being consumed at a rate the Air Force now has to explain.

Right, so Netanyahu just lost something money and lobbying cannot buy back, and he did not lose it to Iran or to Hezbollah. He lost it to America's own Pentagon. The US military's intelligence arm has reportedly moved Israel from high to critical on its counterintelligence threat list, which means America's closest regional ally is now being treated like a hostile spy service by the very people who have spent decades treating it as untouchable. And it happened in the worst possible week for him so break out the tiny violins. This did not start with a dusty classification chart that only three people and a defence contractor pretending not to lobby for a living could love. It started with phones. American phones, used by US personnel inside Israel, with communications-tapping software reportedly installed on them in secret. Israel denies spying on American officials, because of course they do, though of course an allegation is not a conviction and a report is not a trial. But the damage does not wait for a courtroom, because the timing is brutal. At the exact moment the Pentagon is reportedly warning its own people to watch Israel, Congress is looking at a defence-bill provision that would pull Israel deeper into US military technology, weapons production and data cooperation. Netanyahu does not need to be caught holding the screwdriver for this to land on his desk. He runs the Israeli government, he has been driving the war pressure on Iran, and the machinery being suspected belongs to the state he leads. So America's favourite client state has ended up in the American security warning column at the same moment Washington is debating whether to wire it deeper into the American war machine, and that hands Trump a problem he cannot solve by pretending it is just another awkward phone call with a man he keeps letting take the wheel.

And that word critical is doing a lot of work here and with good reason. The Defence Intelligence Agency is the Pentagon's military intelligence body, the part of the US state built to assess threats, collect military intelligence and warn the armed forces when the security picture turns dangerous. Counterintelligence is the business of protecting your own side from other people's spies, eavesdroppers, informants and technical collection. So the Pentagon is reportedly warning its own people that Israeli intelligence activity around the US military has become a top-tier problem. Not a social-media spat, not a cable-news mood swing, but the military bureaucracy of the United States, the same bureaucracy that has treated Israel as a privileged partner for decades, now telling its own people to take extra care around Israeli agencies. Israel can deny it, the White House can wave it away, and the embassy in Washington can call the reporting false, but the internal warning still sits exactly where it sits and you can’t exactly dismiss the Pentagon as a bunch of cranks can you?

Right, so Starmer's courts are about to hang the terrorist label on four people no jury ever convicted of terrorism, and the jury that did convict them was reportedly never told it was coming. That is the move being made right now. No terrorism conviction. No jury finding that these people were terrorists. They were found guilty of criminal damage for an action at an Elbit Systems factory near Bristol, where Israeli quadcopter drones were damaged, and Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson is now expected to attach a terrorist connection at sentencing anyway. So when Starmer and his lot want to posture about law and order, they can start with the part where an Israeli arms firm becomes the protected object, while Palestine activists convicted of criminal damage are pushed towards terror-law treatment. That is not neutral justice wearing a wig. That is the British state looking at Elbit drone kit, looking at Palestine protesters, and somehow deciding the protesters are the terror problem.

The activists were not accused of damaging a random garden shed, or some poor bloke's lawnmower, or a council grit bin in a fit of revolutionary zeal. The case concerns an arms manufacturer linked to Israel, with Israeli quadcopter drones damaged during an August 2024 action. The four convicted activists are Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani. Two others, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin, were acquitted of criminal damage. The whole Filton case sits in that dirty gap between what Britain says it is doing and what Britain actually protects, because the state is not treating an Israeli arms firm's role in Israel's war machine as the central political scandal here. It is treating the people who interfered with that machinery as the danger requiring terrorism language.

Right, so Kuwait's main airport has been hit. Terminal 1 wrecked. One person dead. Dozens wounded by Kuwait's own count. The runway frozen, the building emptied, flights diverted, and the national carrier crawling back to life out of a different terminal hours later like nothing happened. And the question half the internet is asking is the right one, in a lot of ways: why Kuwait? Why not the UAE, sitting right there, just as wired into the American war machine, just as cosy with Washington? Because Kuwait was supposed to be the safe bit. The background. The country you filed under harmless, the one that had rented out some tarmac and otherwise stayed off the board entirely. That assumption just died on a runway. And the honest answer to why is the one that does the most damage, not to Kuwait, but to the people who put the targets there in the first place. Iran isn't ranking Gulf monarchies by guilt. It's hitting where the American war machine is parked and made reachable. Kuwait didn't get hit because it's the worst of them. Kuwait got hit because it's the most useful of them.

Netanyahu isn't so much jumping to Trump's tune as judging how far he can be pushed and 'crazy' frankly isn't a strong enough word... Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has just been told no by the one man on earth he was certain would never say it to him. He couldn’t afford to surely? Not a soft no, not a diplomatic cough into the sleeve, not one of those meaningless little Washington noises that gets dressed up as pressure while Israel carries on exactly as it pleases. Donald Trump has gone public to announce there will be no Israeli troops going into Beirut, that any already on their way have been turned round, and the reporting coming out of both Washington and Israel has him losing his rag down the phone and calling Netanyahu, and this is the word that's stuck, crazy. This is the man who's spent the whole war holding Israel's coat, nodding along to every last thing it fancied doing, giving it the weapons, the cover, the vetoes, the excuses, the language, the diplomatic padding, the whole imperial travel cushion, and even he has reached across the Atlantic and hauled Netanyahu back by the collar now. Some of his ministers however, of course had to lay it on that bit thicker though. Ben Gvir there, he’ll have gone a shade of beetroot over this never mind thanking Trump, so there’s a happy little thought to have free of charge at any rate. The Prime Minister of Israel pointed his air force at the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Dahieh, made the threat in public, let his own ministers swagger about it, and got told to sit down and behave, in public, with the convoy already rolling. This literally never happens. Not like this. Not with Israel. Not with Netanyahu, who has built an entire career on knowing Washington will eventually swallow whatever he shoves in its mouth.

Donald Trump has already had Iran demonstrate once that hitting them will see him hit back, but being hard of thinking, of course he's done it again... Right, so Donald Trump is out there telling everyone the Iran war is basically sorted, the deal is close, Tehran is desperate and the grown-ups have it under control. And then Kuwait spent this morning shooting things out of its own sky. The Kuwaiti army had to put out a public notice telling its own citizens not to panic at the explosions overhead, because that was just the air defences intercepting incoming Iranian missiles and drones. That is what Trump's ceasefire looks like on the ground. That is the big problem sitting underneath his deal that he cannot talk his way out of: a country full of American troops, hearing sirens, today, while he takes his bow. And this isn't some stale echo from a fortnight ago. It happened this morning, on top of an almost identical interception last Thursday, on top of the ones back in April when an Iranian drone put a hole in a government building in Kuwait City. The man selling you peace has a region underneath him that keeps tripping the alarms. And the IRGC hasn’t been shy in underlining the fact. And the reason he can't talk his way out of it is sitting in his own military's paperwork. Over the weekend, American forces bombed Iran again. US Central Command, the American military command that runs the entire Gulf theatre, came out late on Sunday and admitted it had struck Iranian radar and drone-control sites at a place called Goruk and out on Qeshm Island, which sits right at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz. They called it self-defence. They always call it self-defence.

Israel's ongoing problems with Hezbollah's FPV drones have peaked again, as his conquest of a castle blows up in their faces. Right, so Saturday night into Sunday, Israeli troops climbed a hill in southern Lebanon, walked into a 900-year-old Crusader fortress called Beaufort, and ran two flags up over it, the flag of the state and the flag of the Golani Brigade. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, stood in front of a great big photograph of the place and called it a dramatic turning point in the policy he is pursuing. He said they had broken the barrier of fear. He said Israel was seizing the initiative on all fronts, in Syria, in Gaza, in Lebanon. Chest out, flag up, the lot. A fortress on a ridge and a prime minister doing his strongman face for the cameras, as if medieval stone, a camera crew, and a bit of blue and white cloth could somehow add up to security. And then, the very same night, on the very same front, within a few hours of that flag going up, a 21-year-old Israeli soldier called Michael Tyukin was killed where he stood by a drone that costs less than the camera Netanyahu filmed his little speech on. Four more soldiers wounded in the same strike. Tyukin was the twenty-fifth Israeli soldier killed on this front since the start of March, and the weapon that killed him is one the Israeli military has openly admitted it cannot reliably stop. So that is the turning point. That is the broken barrier of fear. A castle taken at the top of the hill and a coffin filled at the bottom of it, by something you could order the parts for off your phone.

Barring far right incitement from entering the UK is one thing, but now it is happening for the sake of protecting Israel only. Right, so Keir Starmer's government has just stopped two of the loudest critics of Israel in American media from getting into Britain, and the only reason it's prepared to say out loud is a phrase with no content in it. Cenk Uygur, the founder of the US online network The Young Turks, and his nephew Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer with an audience in the millions, were both on their way over to speak this week when they were stopped cold at the border. Well, here’s an excerpt of Piker from last year’s Oxford Union address. I wonder if you can spot the reason you think he might be getting banned then! The two men say it's because they criticise Israel, which they do and it almost certainly is isn’t it? Piker says, in his own words, that it was done "at the behest of Israel." And the Home Office? It will only say their presence "may not be conducive to the public good," which is Whitehall for "we'd rather not explain ourselves." So a country that lectures everyone else about free speech has used its own border as an opinion filter, won't tell you the standard it applied, and has decided two blokes with microphones are a danger to the realm. Not men with weapons. Not men charged with anything here. Not men coming over to organise violence. Men coming to talk. And the British state, in all its alleged confidence and maturity, looked at two people with opinions on Israel and decided the safe thing to do was pull up the drawbridge. And it gets more ridiculous the closer you look. The pair were booked for SXSW London, the big film, music and tech festival, and Uygur was also down to speak at the Oxford Union, the posh student debating society that loves to cast itself as the last home of free argument in the country.