The CMA CGM EUGENIE docked in Tripoli this morning — a 366-meter, 15,000-TEU container giant that is the largest vessel in the port's history, and a rare signal that international shipping companies are betting on Lebanon's economic recovery.

• The ship, operated by CMA CGM, arrived as part of the company's strategic partnership with Tripoli Port, with executives saying the call reflects the port's upgraded infrastructure and its growing capacity to accommodate mega-vessels on global shipping lines.
• Officials present at the reception ceremony framed the arrival as part of a broader northern development vision linking Tripoli Port, a Special Economic Zone, a planned railway, and President René Moawad Airport in Qlayaat into a regional logistics hub.
• CMA CGM's executive director at the ceremony said the call will expand logistical options for Lebanese importers and exporters, improve transit times, and open the door to increased transshipment and re-export operations through Tripoli.

Why it matters: Tripoli has long played second fiddle to Beirut economically, so a flagship call from one of the world's largest shipping companies is the kind of concrete, measurable vote of confidence that northern Lebanon hasn't seen in years.

Beirut Port's new AI-powered scanners can process up to 100 containers per hour and correctly identified every shipment they screened — and that's exactly the problem: the technology sees what's in each box, but no one is asking what the boxes add up to.

• A Beirut Port Authority board member writing in War on the Rocks revealed that fiber optic cable imports surged 76 percent — from 83,000 tons in 2023 to 146,000 tons in 2024 — a jump that tracks with reporting from Al Hurra and NBC News on non-state militias assembling drones inside Lebanon.
• The AI system flagged each shipment accurately against its manifest, but was never programmed to cross-reference a drone-propeller shipment arriving one week against a battery shipment from three weeks prior — the pattern recognition gap that allowed component smuggling to go undetected.
• The author proposes three fixes: a Mediterranean-wide digital operations room linking port scanners to counter-terrorism agencies, a dedicated preemptive intelligence unit focused on militia procurement patterns, and closing the physical gap between AI engineers and port operators on the ground.

What to watch: With Iran increasingly shifting weapons supply chains to maritime routes after overland corridors through Syria were disrupted, the pressure on Beirut Port's detection architecture is set to grow, not shrink.

Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel Sun⁠day night — dubbed Operation "Nasr" — in direct response to Israeli strikes on Beirut's Dahieh suburb, marking a sharp break from Tehran's long-standing policy of absorbing hits before retaliating at a time and place of its own choosing.

• Iran fired missiles from multiple cities including Kermanshah, targeting sites in Tiberias, Nahariya, and three Israeli military airbases — Ramat David, Tel Nof, and Nevatim — according to Iranian state television.
• Israel struck back, hitting Tehran and other cities including the Karun petrochemical plant in Mahshahr and targeting what the Israeli army described as "infrastructure for producing raw materials for the Iranian terror regime's missile programme."
• Iran's Expediency Council head Sadegh Amoli Larijani called the response "the official announcement of a strategic doctrine," while the IRGC warned that energy infrastructure in other regional countries could be targeted if Iran's facilities are struck again.
• US President Donald Trump posted that Israel and Iran "are looking to do an immediate ceasefire" while saying he would keep port blockades on Iran in place.

Zooming out: Iran enforcing an immediate deterrent warning over Dahieh — rather than absorbing the strike and retaliating later — signals a recalibration of its escalation calculus that will ripple through every ongoing negotiation involving Lebanon.

The US Defense Intelligence Agency has quietly elevated Israel's counterintelligence threat rating to its highest level, after a series of incidents in which American officials discovered spyware on their phones and listening devices planted at sensitive facilities — all while the two countries are fighting a war together.

• The DIA report details a pattern of Israeli intelligence operations against senior US officials including Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff and Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, with counterintelligence incidents increasing since late 2024.
• Specific incidents include Israeli military intelligence officers caught planting listening devices at DIA headquarters in 2021, and Shin Bet officers discovered attempting to plant a device in a Secret Service vehicle last⁠ year.
• Israel's threat rating now sits higher than any other US ally — and higher than some adversarial countries — with only South Korea approaching a comparable level in certain situations.

What to watch: The Pentagon may impose new restrictions on information shared with Israeli officers embedded at US Central Command, which would complicate the unusually deep military coordination both countries have maintained throughout the Iran war.

A joint investigation by the Palestinian Youth Movement and Oxfam Denmark has found that Danish shipping giant Maersk transported more than 1.42 million kilograms of bullet cores and brass case cups to Israeli weapons producers — despite the company's repeated public insistence that it does not ship weapons to Israel.

• The report traces shipments of rifle and pistol parts, MK-84 "bunker buster" bomb casings, MPR-series bombs, and mortar components from ten companies — nine American and one Indian — to Elbit Systems and IMI Systems via Maersk vessels.
• Elbit Systems, the primary recipient, supplies around 85 percent of Israel's drones and land-based military equipment and has revenues of $2 billion with approximately 20,000 staff.
• Maersk responded that its compliance processes are based on EU, US, and Danish laws and that it has "maintained a strict policy of not shipping weapons or ammunition to Israel" since the conflict began.

The bigger picture: The report is part of the #MaskOffMaersk campaign demanding Maersk halt small arms shipments entirely — and it lands as corporate accountability for Gaza-related weapons supply chains faces growing legal and activist scrutiny across Europe.

Richard Scolyer — the Australian pathologist who tested a world-first experimental brain tumor treatment on himself, publicly documenting his illness to advance cancer research — died Sun⁠day night, roughly two years after his glioblastoma diagnosis.

• Scolyer, co-medical director at Melanoma Institute Australia and joint 2024 Australian of the Year, had applied insights from his groundbreaking melanoma immunotherapy research to his own aggressive brain cancer — a strategy that has since entered clinical trials in the US.
• His approach involved administering immunotherapy before surgery to stimulate an immune response against the tumor, a method developed with his long-time collaborator Georgina Long, whose work transformed advanced melanoma from a death sentence into a manageable condition for many patients.
• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that the Richard Scolyer Chair at Sydney cancer centre Chris O'Brien Lifehouse will carry his name.

Zooming out: The clinical trial Scolyer's self-experimentation helped launch is now running in the US, meaning his decision to treat his own illness as a research case may extend survival for future glioblastoma patients even as it could not save him.