Project Leon

🇱🇧🇮🇱 Israel and Lebanon are talking in Washington and nobody is pretending it's going smoothly. Lebanon's position is straightforward. Stop the fighting first, get Israeli forces out of the south second, and we'll handle Hezbollah's weapons ourselves politically after that. Israel's position is also straightforward. Disarm Hezbollah now and let's talk full normalization, embassies, borders, tourism, everything. Those two starting points are so far apart it's hard to see how you bridge them in a single round of talks. Hezbollah isn't even in the room and wants nothing to do with any of this. A drone hit Israeli civilians hours before the session started. Israel kept striking Lebanon this week, killing 22 people including six children. Lebanon is essentially asking Washington to hand it some leverage because it doesn't have much of its own. The Lebanese president told Trump he won't shake Netanyahu's hand until there's actually something worth celebrating. Trump told him he liked that approach. The ceasefire exists on paper. On the ground it's a different story. Source: NBC NEWS

🇮🇷 Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson posts seven words that just rattled every Gulf capital: "He who betrays in secret shall be exposed in public." After the Mossad-UAE coordination story, Netanyahu's secret Abu Dhabi visit, and Saudi Arabia's covert strikes on Iran, everyone who read this knows exactly who it's aimed at.