A US-brokered plan to hand two areas of south Lebanon to the Lebanese Army is taking shape—but Israel keeps adding requirements, and its airstrikes haven't slowed down.

• US Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Joseph Clearfield is expected to arrive in Beirut within days to oversee a joint operations room managing the handover of two pilot areas: the Nabatieh area and the towns of Froun and Zawtar al-Sharqiyah, according to Al-Modon.
• Israel submitted a list of Lebanese army officers it suspects of leaking intelligence to Hezbollah, demanding they be excluded from the new military mechanism—a condition Beirut views as a direct encroachment on military sovereignty.
• Simultaneously, Israeli forces declared full operational control over Haddatha, dismantling 90 positions and confiscating 150 weapons, while carrying out demolitions across Ayta ash-Shaab, At-Tiri, Kounin, Houla, and Bint Jbeil.
• Speaker Nabih Berri warned that systematic village demolitions reveal Israeli intent to render the South uninhabitable—a demographic vacuum, he said, as a substitute for direct occupation.

What to watch: Whether Clearfield's Beirut visit produces a clear timetable and an actual halt to demolitions—or simply adds another layer of conditions to an already conditional withdrawal.

An Israeli drone killed four people in southern Lebanon—including a school principal, her mother, and a domestic worker—making it the deadliest Israeli attack since the Jun⁠e ceasefire renewal, according to the BBC.

• The victims were returning to their family home in Nabatieh al-Fawqa when a drone struck their car with a guided missile; the Israeli military said the vehicle had approached a security zone and posed a threat to its soldiers.
• Lebanese health ministry figures show Israeli attacks have killed at least 4,319 people and injured more than 12,203 since the current round of hostilities began in Mar⁠ch, displacing over 1.2 million.
• A US-brokered ceasefire on Apr⁠il 16 failed to end the fighting; a renewed truce agreed in Jun⁠e has held only partially, with Israel continuing sporadic strikes it attributes to Hezbollah violations.

Why it matters: Each strike that kills civilians while withdrawal talks are ongoing narrows the political space for the Lebanese Army deployment that both the ceasefire deal and Washington's pilot-zone plan depend on.

The Lebanese Military Court is moving toward releasing pop star Fadel Chaker, long jailed over his ties to Islamist cleric Ahmad al-Assir and charges related to the deadly Abra clashes—a case that has dragged through the courts for years.

• Military Court President Brig. Gen. Wassim Fayad is expected to hold an initial session as early as Wednes⁠day to hear witnesses; Chaker is unlikely to appear in person due to his health condition following hospitalization for medical examinations.
• A judicial source told Al-Modon that witness testimonies are expected to favor Chaker, and that release requests will be decided immediately after the session concludes.
• President Joseph Aoun has signaled no objection to Chaker's release, with a message from Baabda Palace to the judiciary summarized as: apply the law, wrong no one who wasn't involved, acquit no one who shed army blood.

Zooming out: The case has become a barometer for whether the general climate in the country can disentangle long-pending judicial files from the sectarian and political pressures that froze them for years.

Israel's largest arms supplier revealed at a London military conference that its digital army program identified roughly 1,000 potential targets a day during the first two years of its wars in Gaza and Lebanon—a figure that has alarmed civilian harm experts.

• Elbit Systems executive Miki Edelstein presented a slide at a Royal United Services Institute conference citing 850,000 real-time intelligence targets and more than 20,000 IDF battle plans generated between Oct⁠ober 7, 2023 and end of 2025 across all theaters.
• Former US Pentagon targeting adviser Wes Bryant said it is definitively impossible to thoroughly assess each target for civilian harm at that volume, noting that even characterizing 50 targets a day is hard but possible.
• Elbit disputed the characterization after The Guardian contacted them, saying the figure reflected "aggregated system activity and operational data" rather than discrete enemy targets or actual strikes.
• A Cambridge University researcher said any military vetting 1,000 targets daily would struggle to do so without outsourcing verification to automated systems, raising accountability concerns.

The bigger picture: The disclosure illustrates how AI-accelerated targeting is reshaping the pace of modern warfare faster than the international legal frameworks designed to govern it.

Eight years after Assad's forces ended their siege of Eastern Ghouta, the tunnels residents dug to survive are collapsing under the streets—and nobody has a complete map of where they run, according to a Daraj investigation.

• Investigators documented at least 10 sinkholes and land collapses across Eastern Ghouta cities and towns since the start of 2026, including a 10-meter-deep hole on the main road in Zamalka.
• The Assad regime stripped reinforcing iron from the tunnels after retaking the area in 2018, which destabilized the structures; heavy winter rains this⁠ year accelerated collapses, breaking sewage pipes and contaminating groundwater.
• Ain Terma municipality has managed to map approximately 60 percent of its tunnels by contacting returning fighters; about 50 buildings with tunnels beneath them have been marked to restrict sale, though many residents refused to evacuate.

What to watch: Whether Syria's Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management can secure funding for systematic backfilling before summer heat compounds the sewage contamination and structural risk beneath populated neighborhoods.

Iraq's anti-corruption campaign has seized staggering sums, but the country's own legal framework has no clear mechanism to stop the recovered money from disappearing back into the general budget.

• Economic specialist Haidar Al-Sheikh estimates recovered cash may exceed $500 million, rising to roughly $1 billion once real estate and movable assets are included; funds are being held in a special account that requires a direct prime ministerial order to access.
• In one case alone, authorities seized approximately 98 billion Iraqi dinars and $11 million from an Oil Ministry undersecretary, plus 70 properties and 21 vehicles; a separate case involving an MP yielded 50 kilograms of gold.
• Legal specialist Mohammad Jamal warns that current legislation does not explicitly earmark recovered funds for specific sectors, risking their absorption into general revenues without independent tracking or public reporting.

Zooming out: Estimates of funds looted from Iraq since 2003 range from $60 billion to over $2 trillion, meaning the current haul, however historic, is a fraction of what accountability reformers say still needs to be recovered.