Iran’s Foreign Minister to visit Pakistan, Russia, and Oman in regional tour. Third U.S. aircraft carrier arrives in Middle East. Israel threatens to return Iran to the “Stone Age.” President Donald Trump claims Iran’s oil infrastructure will “explode” within days without a deal. Analysis: Less than a third of buildings hit in Tehran linked to military. NYT says Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei gravely wounded and governing via handwritten messages. The Iran war has eaten into U.S. stockpiles: report. Israeli strikes continue in Lebanon despite ceasefire extension. Hezbollah targets Israeli troops and downs drone. Trump says Lebanon ceasefire to be extended by three weeks. Israeli attacks continue across the Gaza Strip. Parents describe Israeli attack that killed their children. Gaza’s amputee crisis deepening. Israel approves new settlement-linked school in occupied East Jerusalem. Israeli minister says West Bank settlement expansion has Trump’s support. Netanyahu treated for early-stage prostate cancer. U.S. soldier charged with using classified information to win $400,000. Justice Department wants to strip 384 naturalized citizens of citizenship: NYT. Warner Bros shareholders approve merger with Paramount. Meatpacking workers win historic strike against JBS in Colorado. Pentagon email floats suspending Spain from NATO. Javier Milei bars accredited journalists from Argentina’s presidential palace. Gunmen kill at least nine at copper-gold mine in Pakistan. Meningitis and measles in eastern Chad. Russian drone strike on Odesa kills elderly couple, wounds at least 14.

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Iran and Ceasefire

• Iran’s Foreign Minister to visit Pakistan, Russia, and Oman in regional tour: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is expected to arrive in Islamabad with a small delegation as part of a regional diplomatic tour that may contribute to efforts to restart talks with the United States. Pakistani officials confirmed the visit following recent phone calls between Araghchi and senior Pakistani leaders. However, Iran’s state news agency IRNA said the trip is currently bilateral in nature, focused on “consultations” with Pakistani officials rather than immediate negotiations with the U.S. Araghchi is also expected to travel to Moscow and Muscat as part of the same diplomatic tour.
• Third U.S. aircraft carrier arrives in Middle East: A third U.S. aircraft carrier has arrived in the Middle East in a further buildup of naval firepower. “For the first time in decades, three aircraft carriers are operating in the Middle East at the same time,” U.S. Central Command said in a social media post. “Accompanied by their carrier air wings, the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) and USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) include over 200 aircraft and 15,000 Sailors and Marines.”
• Israel threatens to return Iran to the “Stone Age”: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that Israeli forces are waiting for a “green light from the United States” to renew war with Iran. Israel is ready, Katz said in a video, “to complete the elimination of the Khamenei dynasty,” and he threatened to “return Iran to the Dark Age and the Stone Age by destroying key energy and electricity facilities and dismantling its national economic infrastructure.”
• Trump claims Iran’s oil infrastructure will “explode” within days without a deal: President Donald Trump warned Thursday that if a deal is not reached soon, Iran’s “whole oil infrastructure is going to explode” within days. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office he was “in no rush” for a deal and felt no “pressure whatsoever,” repeating his claim that delays were due to the Iranian government being “disorganized.” He also commented on the Strait of Hormuz, saying that Iran “came to us and said, ‘we will agree to open the Strait.’” He said, however, that he is the “one who kept” the Strait closed. “And it’ll open,” he threatened, “when they make a deal, or something else happens.”
• Analysis: Less than a third of buildings hit in Tehran linked to military: An analysis of damaged and destroyed buildings in Tehran by Bloomberg found that between the start of the Iran war on February 28 and the ceasefire on April 8, at least 2,816 buildings were hit in the capital, of which 32%—less than a third—were linked to the military. The analysis found that 25% were linked to industry, 21% to civilians, 19% were commercial and 2% governmental.
• NYT says Khamenei gravely wounded and governing via handwritten messages: A report from the New York Times alleges that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sustained severe injuries during the war—including a leg requiring three surgeries and awaiting a prosthetic, a hand that was operated on, and burns to his face and lips that have made speaking difficult. The Times also says that senior military commanders and government officials no longer visit him directly, fearing Israel could track them to his location; messages are instead passed through a human courier chain by car and motorcycle in handwritten, sealed envelopes. Khamenei is described as “mentally sharp and engaged,” with President Masoud Pezeshkian—a heart surgeon by training—involved in his care.
• Iran’s Supreme Leader, top officials issue coordinated rebuke of Trump’s claim that they are too divided to negotiate: Iran’s executive, legislative, and judicial branches issued near-identical statements on X Thursday, directly rejecting President Donald Trump’s assertion that Iran’s leadership is too fractured to negotiate. President Masoud Pezeshkian, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and Judiciary Chief Gholam-Hossein Ejei wrote in unison: “In Iran, there are no ‘radicals’ or ‘moderates.’ We are all Iranian and revolutionary. With the firm unity of the nation and the state, and in full obedience to the Supreme Leader of the Revolution, we will make the aggressor criminal regret his actions.” Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei also emphasized national unity in a post, saying that as a result of this unity among Iranians, “the enemy has been fractured.”
• Trump amplifies op-ed calling for assassination of Iranian leaders: President Donald Trump reposted a Washington Post opinion column by Bush administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen, arguing he should resume bombing Iran and specifically target its leaders if Tehran fails to submit a serious counteroffer within days. Thiessen argued that Iran is “on the ropes” due to near-exhausted oil storage, impending domestic gas shortages, and a military dependent on oil revenue, and called on Trump to give Iran 72 hours before resuming strikes.
• The Iran war has eaten into U.S. stockpiles: report: The war in Iran has cost the United States between $28 billion and $35 billion, or roughly $1 billion a day, with $5.6 billion in munitions expended in the first two days alone, according to a new joint report by the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Meanwhile, the United States has expended approximately 1,100 JASSM-ER stealth cruise missiles—nearly matching the total remaining stockpile—along with more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, more than 1,200 Patriot interceptors, and more than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles during the 38-day Iran war, leaving inventories at worrisomely low levels, according to a New York Times report. The drawdowns have forced the Pentagon to redirect weapons from commands in Europe and Asia, including THAAD interceptors from South Korea. At current production rates, Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) warned this week, “reconstituting what we have expended could take years.”
• Kuwait says drones fired from Iraq struck border posts: The Kuwaiti military said on Friday that two drones launched from Iraq targeted border posts on its northern frontier. “This morning, two of Kuwait’s northern land border posts were targeted in a criminal act of aggression involving two explosive-laden drones guided by fibre-optic cables, originating from the Republic of Iraq, resulting in material damage but…no human casualties,” the military said in a statement.

Lebanon

• Israeli strikes continue in Lebanon despite ceasefire extension: Israel continued to carry out air strikes and demolitions across southern Lebanon during and after U.S.-brokered ceasefire talks between Israeli and Lebanese officials at the White House on Thursday. An Israeli airstrike on the town of Touline in the Marjayoun district early Friday killed two people, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency. Israeli forces also continued demolition operations in Al-Bayyada and Khiam, where multiple blasts were reported. Artillery shelling also targeted the outskirts of Al-Mansouri and Bayt al-Sayyad in the Tyre district, as well as the town of Qantara in Marjayoun. Israeli forces issued an evacuation warning to residents of Deir Aames in the Tyre district, ordering them to leave their homes immediately.
• Hezbollah targets Israeli troops and downs drone: Hezbollah said Friday it targeted a gathering of Israeli soldiers in the town of Qantara in southern Lebanon using an explosive drone, in response to “Israeli violations of the ceasefire by attacking civilians in Touline.” In a separate statement, the group also announced that it had shot down an Israeli military drone of the “Hermes 450” type over the Tyre–Al-Housh area using a surface-to-air missile.
• Trump says Lebanon ceasefire to be extended by three weeks: President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, which was due to expire on Sunday, would be extended for three weeks. The announcement came after Trump hosted a meeting at the Oval Office with Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors at the White House for a second round of direct talks between the two countries. Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, said that thanks to Trump’s leadership, “the possibility of degrading Hezbollah and liberating Lebanon from their occupation is real.” The Lebanese ambassador, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, thanked Trump and said, “I think with your help, your support, we can make Lebanon great again.” Trump said he plans to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun for a joint meeting at the White House “over the next couple of weeks.”
• Hezbollah rejects ongoing negotiations, warns they grant Israel “exception” to continue attacks: Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc chief, MP Mohammad Raad, called on Lebanese authorities to withdraw from direct negotiations with Israel. In a statement on Friday, Raad said that “the authorities should be ashamed of their people and withdraw from what is called direct negotiations with the Zionist enemy,” warning that any “so-called truce” could give Israel “a special exception to open fire or carry out any military movement or action in areas of confrontation within Lebanese territory.”

Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel

• Israeli attacks continue across the Gaza Strip: Two Palestinians were killed and others injured Friday in an Israeli drone attack on the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza City, according to WAFA. A Palestinian girl was shot in the head by Israeli forces during a separate attack on displacement shelters in the Beit Lahia Project area. Several other displaced civilians were also injured inside a shelter at Khalifa School amid artillery shelling and gunfire. Israeli forces shelled the Al-Tuffah neighborhood east of Gaza City, while naval forces opened fire off the coast of Khan Younis. Nearly 800 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since a so-called ceasefire agreement was signed in October.
• Parents describe Israeli attack that killed their children: Funerals were held at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Thursday for five Palestinians, including three children, killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beit Lahia. Amna Al-Abed, the mother of two children killed in the attack—9-year-old Abdullah and 10-year-old Salah—told Drop Site her sons had gone out to eat with their father when an Israeli strike hit. “My husband was injured. My kids were dead,” she said, through tears, adding that one of her sons “took his last breath” in front of her after calling out, “Mama.” Bahaa Balousha, whose 14-year-old son Mohammed was also killed in the strike, told Drop Site the family had gone out after his children encouraged him to get dinner. “We go down to shop. Then tragedy struck us.” Balousha said despite the declared ceasefire, “There isn’t an hour of quiet during the day.”

• Gaza’s amputee crisis deepening: Gaza’s already unprecedented amputation crisis will continue to worsen, Humanity & Inclusion UK warned this week, as Israel continues to restrict medical supplies. The World Health Organization estimates that between 5,000 and 6,000 people have undergone amputations since the October 2025 ceasefire. At the height of the genocide, reports indicated up to 10 children per day were undergoing one or both leg amputations. Six months into the ceasefire, only nine prosthetists are operating in Gaza. Humanity & Inclusion UK has itself been blocked from bringing humanitarian supplies and prosthetics into the territory since February 2025.
• Israel approves new settlement-linked school in occupied East Jerusalem: Israeli authorities have approved plans to build a large ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious school in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, according to WAFA. In a statement, the Jerusalem governorate said the approval reflects “a clear exploitation of the current regional escalation” to push forward settlement plans, warning the project could lead to “dangerous demographic and geographic changes” in Sheikh Jarrah. The governorate described the move as part of a wider pattern of policies in the neighborhood, calling it a “full-fledged forced displacement” strategy amid ongoing threats to evict dozens of Palestinian families.
• Israeli minister says West Bank settlement expansion has Trump’s support: Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told the Jerusalem Post that Israel’s accelerating settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank is being carried out with full U.S. support, coordinated directly with President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Ambassador Mike Huckabee. Over the past four years, over 51,000 housing units have been approved for the West Bank, according to Smotrich’s office. He acknowledged Trump has not yet backed full West Bank annexation, but claimed “we will also succeed in that.”
• UK shuts unit monitoring Israel’s international law violations: The British Foreign Office has closed the internal unit responsible for tracking potential breaches of international humanitarian law by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, the Guardian reports, citing budget cuts. The shutdown ends UK funding for the Conflict and Security Monitoring Project, run by the Centre for Information Resilience, which operated the world’s largest open-source monitoring system for human rights incidents across Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon. Officials warned this closure means the Foreign Office will lose access to a database of 26,000 verified incidents in the Middle East.
• Netanyahu treated for early-stage prostate cancer: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has revealed, in a post on X, that he was treated for an early-stage prostate cancer, saying the condition was detected during routine medical monitoring and has since been successfully removed. Netanyahu said he asked to delay the publication of his annual medical report “so that it would not be released at the height of the war,” adding that he did not want it to be used by Iran for “false propaganda against Israel.”

U.S. News

By Julian Andreone, with Ryan Grim. Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email Andreone at Julian@dropsitenews.com.

• U.S. soldier charged with using classified information to win $400,000: A U.S. Army Master Sergeant, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, 38, has been charged with using classified information about the January operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to place roughly 13 bets on the prediction market platform Polymarket, winning more than $400,000, federal prosecutors in New York announced Thursday. Van Dyke, a special forces soldier stationed at Fort Bragg, allegedly created a Polymarket account in late December and bet on outcomes including U.S. forces being present in Venezuela and Maduro being removed by January 31, 2026; after the operation he moved most of his winnings into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and asked Polymarket to delete his account.
• Justice Department wants to denaturalize 384 U.S. citizens: NYT: The Justice Department will seek to revoke citizenship for 384 foreign-born Americans, anonymous officials told the New York Times in what a Justice Department spokesman said was “the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history.” The officials described it as “the first wave” of a broader denaturalization campaign and a dramatic escalation. Between 1990 and 2017, the government filed an average of 11 denaturalization cases per year.
• Warner Bros shareholders approve merger with Paramount: Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Thursday that shareholders had voted to approve a $111 billion merger with Paramount Skydance, run by David Ellison, son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison, who are both vocal supporters of President Trump. The deal will still require approval from regulators in the U.S. and Europe. The merger would create the largest media conglomerate in U.S. history, spanning news, sports, movies, video games, theme parks, and more.
• Protest outside Ellison-Trump dinner: Dozens of protesters, including members of Congress, gathered on the National Mall in Washington D.C. close to where David Ellison hosted an invitation-only dinner attended by Trump at the U.S. Institute of Peace “in celebration of the First Amendment” and “honoring the Trump White House and CBS White House Correspondents.” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland criticized the deal at the demonstration, saying “In the building behind us, David Ellison is hosting a dinner to honor President Trump, a dinner that’s designed to cement the Ellisons to the president in their years-running corrupt merger scheme.”
• AIPAC moving secret money to Philly House race: AIPAC has been funneling money into the campaign of Dr. Ala Stanford in Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, before the next slate of Democratic primaries, new federal campaign filings reveal. Stanford has denied taking AIPAC money in the race for an open Philadelphia seat, but the records show the pro-Israel group has been routing money directly to her campaign, using the AIPAC-linked Democracy Engine platform, as well as into a super PAC supporting her. The structure allows Stanford, a pediatrician, to distance herself from the group’s increasingly toxic political reputation with the American public, while still benefiting from its cash outlays. Read the full report from Ryan Grim and Julian Andreone here.
• EEOC allegedly refuses to enforce civil rights laws in cases involving LGBTQ Americans: The Legal Accountability Center filed a complaint Thursday with the Virginia State Bar alleging that Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Andrea Lucas violated professional conduct rules by directing agency investigators to stop processing certain discrimination claims—including all charges based on disparate impact, sexual orientation, and gender identity. The complaint also alleges Lucas sent unauthorized information demands on official EEOC letterhead to 20 major law firms seeking extensive data on their diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. The complaint argues Lucas had no legal authority to send the firm letters, characterizing them as “an effort to intimidate and scare these employers into abandoning their DEI efforts in violation of Title VII — the very federal law the EEOC is supposed to enforce.”
• Trump administration considers doubling refugee cap for white South Africans: The Trump administration may expand the current 7,500-person annual refugee cap by 10,000 to allow more Afrikaners into the United States, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has been redirected almost exclusively toward white South Africans since Trump paused all other refugee admissions at the start of his term. Of the roughly 4,500 South Africans admitted as refugees through the first six months of fiscal year 2026, the only non-South African refugees to enter the country were three Afghans, according to State Department statistics—a dramatic departure from the program’s 125,000-person ceiling under former President Joe Biden.
• Meatpacking workers win historic strike against JBS in Colorado: Some 3,800 workers at UFCW Local 7’s JBS Greeley beef packing plant in Colorado ended a three-week strike with near-total victory, winning $1.50 an hour in wage increases over two years, reimbursement for out-of-pocket protective equipment costs, and an end to the company’s practice of garnishing wages—sometimes up to $1,100—to replace lost or damaged safety gear. The strike united a workforce speaking 57 languages and cost JBS an estimated $20 to $30 million in daily revenue. Read more about the strike at Labor Notes here.

Other International News

• Pentagon email floats suspending Spain from NATO: An internal Pentagon email circulated within the Defense Department outlines potential measures against NATO allies—including suspending Spain from the alliance and re-evaluating Washington’s position on the British-held Falkland Islands—over what it describes as insufficient support for the U.S. war on Iran, a U.S. official told Reuters. The email, which alleges “a sense of entitlement on the part of the Europeans,” is intended as a signal to NATO partners and asserts that basing and overflight rights should be “just the absolute baseline for NATO”; Spain has refused to allow U.S. attacks on Iran from its airspace or bases, while the United Kingdom initially withheld authorization before allowing use of two British bases for what Prime Minister Keir Starmer described as “defensive purposes.”
• Javier Milei bars accredited journalists from Argentina’s presidential palace: Argentine President Javier Milei’s administration blocked accredited journalists from entering the Casa Rosada on Thursday, after two journalists were accused of secretly filming restricted areas of the governmental palace. Since taking office in 2023, Milei has called journalists “repugnant trash” and limited access at the palace, prompting Reporters Without Borders to condemn the “sharp decline in press freedom” in Argentina.
• Gunmen kill at least nine at copper-gold mine in Pakistan: At least nine employees, including two security guards, were killed when gunmen attacked National Resources Ltd’s Darigwan copper and gold project in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Wednesday evening, a local official told Reuters.
• Meningitis and measles in eastern Chad: Médecins Sans Frontières reported Thursday that a deadly meningitis surge in eastern Chad has killed 25 of 212 children admitted to its facilities between March and April—a case fatality rate the group called “shocking”—in an area housing more than 1.3 million Sudanese refugees, including survivors of mass killings and famine in Darfur. Measles is also spreading in the border town of Adre, where a recent surge in arrivals has left camps overcrowded, with MSF medical activity manager Isabelle Kavira warning that bed occupancy for meningitis is “close to 100%.” Chad’s health ministry and MSF are administering emergency vaccinations.
• Russian drone strike on Odesa kills elderly couple, wounds at least 14: A Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa overnight killed a married couple, both aged 75, and wounded at least 14 others, Ukrainian officials said Friday. The strike wrecked two two-story buildings and damaged two others, triggering fires and leaving a visible hole in the side of one structure, according to emergency services.

More from Drop Site

• Unmasking Canary Mission: The pro-Israel doxxing site Canary Mission has been notoriously secretive since its creation in 2015. The anonymous website, which began as an online blacklist targeting academics and activists who expressed pro-Palestine views, over the last year has been used by the Trump administration to select international students for arrest, detention, and deportation. Despite its increasingly high profile, the website’s operators have remained largely unknown. Drop Site contributor Jacqueline Sweet has now identified five more people employed by Megamot Shalom, a closely related group, as content writers, editors, and consultants. Read Drop Site’s full investigation.

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