Lebanon and Israel have been operating under a supposed “ceasefire”framework since April 2026, extended multiple times under U.S. mediation. On 4 June 2026, a further agreement was announced in Washington following four rounds of direct talks. The Lebanese president said implementation could begin within 24 hours, while Hezbollah, who had not been invited to the talks, rejected the terms the same day.

No ceasefire has meaningfully halted the fighting. Israeli forces have continued to strike targets across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley throughout. Hezbollah has continued to respond to Israeli. A UN peacekeeper was killed on the night the latest agreement was announced.

As a result of the consistent failed ceasefires, and the fact that an invading army is the main culprit for the failures, we will now have a daily “tracker” of violations.

This tracker records confirmed violations of the existing ceasefire framework from 4 June 2026. It exists to provide a transparent public record of how the agreement is being handled by all parties. The count at the top of each day’s record reflects confirmed incidents and is a minimum figure, and represent the attacks that have been reported at the time of the most recent update. All times are CET (UTC+2).

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Ceasefire violations as of 16:35 CET on 4 June

Israeli strikes 34+ | Hezbollah strikes 10+

~01:10 | Israeli airstrike
Al-Ghaziyah, southern Lebanon. Strike carried out minutes before the ceasefire was formally declared. (Al Jazeera / AFP)

~00:08 | Israeli airstrike
Al-Qatrani farm, Jezzine district. Artillery bombardment on farm perimeter. (Al Jazeera)

~00:15 | Israeli airstrike

Al-Marwaniyah, Jal Al-Arab, Hanaweyah, Al-Daoudiya, southern Lebanon. Multiple simultaneous raids. (Al Jazeera)

~00:31 | Israeli airstrike

Al-Abassiya, Tyre district. (Al Jazeera)

~00:32 | Hezbollah strike

Qal’at al-Shaqif area, southern Lebanon. Two drones targeted Israeli command post. (Hezbollah statement via Al Jazeera)

~05:49 | Israeli airstrike

Kafr Wah/Zafta road, southern Lebanon. Car targeted. (Al Jazeera)

~07:08 | Israeli airstrike

Kafr Rumman-Haboush road, Nabatiyah district. (Al Jazeera)

~07:45 | Israeli airstrike

Namiriya outskirts, southern Lebanon. (Al Jazeera)

~09:31 | Israeli airstrike

Hezbollah-affiliated sites and infrastructure, southern Lebanon. IDF confirmed ongoing targeting. (Israeli Army statement)

~10:09 | Unattributed strike

UNIFIL position, near Marjayoun. Mortar shells struck UN base. Serbian Senior Sergeant Milovan Jovanovic killed. Two others wounded (Spanish and Salvadoran nationals). Investigation ongoing, origin unconfirmed. (UNIFIL statement / Serbian Defence Ministry)

~10:15 | Israeli airstrike

Zbedin, Nabatiyah district. (Al Jazeera)

~10:33 | Hezbollah strike

Southern Lebanon. Drone hit Israeli Northern Command vehicle. No injuries reported. (Israeli Broadcasting Authority)

~11:02 | Israeli airstrike

Sahamr, western Bekaa region. (Al Jazeera)

~11:03 | Hezbollah strike

Qantara, southern Lebanon. Strike on gathering of Israeli vehicles and soldiers. (Hezbollah statement via Al Jazeera)

~11:06 | Israeli airstrike

Maaroub, Tyre district. (Al Jazeera)

~11:19 | Israeli airstrike

Sahamr, western Bekaa (second strike). (Al Jazeera)

~11:20 | Israeli airstrike

Mifdun outskirts, Nabatiyah district. (Al Jazeera)

~11:30 | Israeli airstrike

Tebnine and Nabatieh Al-Fawqa, southern Lebanon. (Al Jazeera)

~11:33 | Israeli airstrike

Tibnin, Bint Jbeil district. (Al Jazeera)

~11:43 | Israeli airstrike

Qaroun Dam perimeter, western Bekaa. (Al Jazeera)

~12:04 | Israeli airstrike

Al-Dawir, Nabatiyah district. (Al Jazeera)

~12:13 | Israeli airstrike

Kafr Jouz area, Nabatiyah district. (Al Jazeera)

~12:32 | Israeli airstrike

Maarakeh, Tyre district. (Al Jazeera)

~12:35 | Israeli airstrike

Adshit outskirts, Nabatiyah district. (Al Jazeera)

~12:55 | Israeli airstrike

Al-Qatranah, Jezzine district. (Al Jazeera)

~13:02 | Israeli airstrike

Labaya, western Bekaa. (Al Jazeera)

~13:42 | Israeli airstrike

Beit Yahun, Bint Jbeil district. (Al Jazeera)

~13:46 | Israeli airstrike

Ramadi outskirts, Tyre district. (Al Jazeera)

~14:00 | Israeli airstrike

Harouf, Nabatiyah district (third strike). (Al Jazeera)

~14:00 | Israeli airstrike

Zoutar Al-Gharbiya and Mifdun, southern Lebanon (second strike on Mifdun). (Al Jazeera)

~14:00 | Israeli airstrike

Haris, Bint Jbeil district. (Al Jazeera)

~14:00 | Hezbollah strike

Qantara, southern Lebanon (second strike). Strike on Israeli vehicles and soldiers. (Hezbollah statement via Al Jazeera)

~16:00 | Israeli airstrike

Al-Mansouri, Tyre district (third strike). (Al Jazeera)

~16:20 | Hezbollah strike

Southern Lebanon. Several drones struck near Israeli forces. No injuries reported. IDF confirmed aerial targets falling on operational sites. (IDF statement / Al Jazeera)

~16:25 | Hezbollah strike

Shlomi, Western Galilee. Warning sirens sounded three times. Interceptor missiles fired. No injuries reported. (Israeli Channel 12 / Al Jazeera)

~16:39 | Israeli airstrike

Qaq’a Al-Jisr, southern Lebanon. Artillery bombardment. (Al Jazeera)

~16:40 | Israeli airstrike

Srifa, southern Lebanon. Artillery bombardment. (Al Jazeera)

~16:40 | Hezbollah strike

Qal’at al-Shaqif Castle vicinity, southern Lebanon. Merkava tanks targeted with anti-tank weapons. (Hezbollah statement)

~16:45 | Hezbollah strike

Metula, northern Israel. Warning sirens and general alert in eastern border sector following rocket launches. (Israeli Home Front Command)

~16:48 | Hezbollah strike

Four towns, eastern border sector, northern Israel. Warning sirens following rocket launches. (Israeli Home Front Command)

~16:49 | Israeli airstrike

Majdal Zun, Tyre district, southern Lebanon. (Al Jazeera)

This piece is accurate as of 16:55 CET, and will be updated periodically throughout the day.

After four rounds of talks at the U.S. State Department, Israel and Lebanon announced a ceasefire on Wednesday night. By Thursday morning, Israeli warplanes had struck more than twenty-five locations across southern Lebanon. The Lebanese president was telling the press that implementation might begin within 24 hours, and that the agreement was Lebanon’s “last chance.”

The deal, brokered under American auspices and announced around 1am Beirut time, is conditional on a complete cessation of fire by Hezbollah and the withdrawal of its forces south of the Litani River. The U.S. State Department announced simultaneously that Israel retains the freedom to strike Beirut in response to any firing toward Israeli settlements. The Israeli Defence Minister confirmed his forces would remain in Lebanon’s south until the Yellow Line, that a demilitarised zone would be established south of the Litani, and that Israel would “continue to target Hezbollah’s infrastructure in Lebanon.”

None of that is a ceasefire. That is a list of Israeli military objectives. Hezbollah cited this directly in rejecting the agreement, stating that any ceasefire must mean a cessation of hostilities across all of Lebanon.

Hezbollah maintains that they retain the right to respond to continued Israeli aggression, a position with significant grounding in international law. UN Charter Article 51 preserves the right of self-defence against armed attack, and UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 explicitly protects the right of peoples to resist domination and occupation from outside forces. Israel's continued military presence in Lebanese territory, in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, strengthens the group’s argument.

With strikes continuing across Lebanon, even minutes after the ceasefire was announced, it’s clear that the attacks from Israel show no end, and therefore, Hezbollah’s responses will also continue. The loose language of the ceasefire dooming the agreement before ink dried on the document.

The asymmetry of the agreement is not incidental. It is the agreement. Lebanon is being asked to guarantee the behaviour of Hezbollah, a non-state actor the Lebanese state does not control, as a precondition for Israel stopping its bombardment. Israel, meanwhile, has reserved for itself the unilateral right to determine whether those conditions have been met, and to respond with force if it decides they have not.

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Lebanese President Joseph Salam described the negotiations as “difficult,” noting they nearly collapsed before U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio intervened to keep the Lebanese delegation at the table.

Lebanon almost walked out of talks it needed more than Israel did, in a negotiation it entered with no leverage and left with no guarantee of protection. Lebanon has no ability to fight back against Israel as there is an extreme gap between the military capabilities of the two.

By the time the announcement was made, Israeli warplanes had already struck Al-Ghaziyah in southern Lebanon at approximately 1:10am, minutes before the ceasefire was formally declared, and presumably, after most negotiations had concluded. Strikes continued through the night and into Thursday morning, we counted at least twenty-five strikes across Nabatiyah, Tyre, Jezzine, and the western Bekaa region. The IDF reiterated evacuation warnings for all residents south of the Zahrani River. The Golani Brigade established what the Israeli army described as operational control over the Shebaa Farms.

Over twenty-five attacks, a forced evacuation order, seizing of territory. These are not signs of a ceasefire.

Israel’s ambassador to Washington announced the ceasefire and added, in the same breath, that there is no place in Lebanon safe from an Israeli response. Setting the expectations that there will be no cessation of hostilities, as would be implied by announcement of a ceasefire.

Amid all of this, a UN peacekeeper has been killed in a strike. Serbian Senior Sergeant Milovan Jovanovic was killed after mortar shells struck his UNIFIL position near Marjayoun on Wednesday night. Two UNIFIL colleagues had also been wounded. UNIFIL has launched an investigation and has not yet assigned blame, but they have condemned both Israel and Hezbollah for repeated strikes near their positions.

What it has noted is an “increasingly high number of trajectories and impacts” across southern Lebanon. UNIFIL itself is due to wind down its mission by the end of 2026, leaving a peacekeeping vacuum in a region where the current ceasefire is already not holding.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called the agreement “a grave mistake” and “a fantasy.” On this specific point, the evidence this morning suggests he may be the most accurate voice in the room, though not for the reasons he intends.

The Lebanese Armed Forces have deployed along the Dabbin road following an Israeli withdrawal from Dabbin and Blat, and the Marjayoun-Dabbin-Ibl al-Saqi route has begun reopening. Lebanese President Salam has said he is awaiting responses from “all relevant internal parties, especially Hezbollah.” The next round of negotiations is scheduled for June 22.

Between now and June 22, the bombs will continue to fall. That is not a prediction. It is what is happening right now.

Joint Task Force Southern Spear carried out the strike on June 3 at the direction of SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, targeting a vessel the command described as operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations and transiting known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific.

The military has released a video of the attack and statements describing its targets as tied to designated terrorist organisations, but has generally not publicly released evidence identifying those killed or proving the vessels were carrying drugs. This is the pattern. It has been the pattern since September. It will be the pattern next week, and will be the pattern until the international community steps in.

Even if every one of those 207 people was exactly who the regime claims, the USA would still have no legal right to kill them. Drug trafficking does not carry a death sentence. The USA has no legal jurisdiction over international waters. It has never been granted UN authority to take on this mission. Three distinct legal prohibitions, none of them answered, none of them seriously addressed by any U.S. official. The executions began anyway. They continue.

Prior to Operation Southern Spear, countering illicit drug trafficking was handled by law enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard, and suspected smugglers were treated as criminals with due process rights. That regime of law was discarded quietly, without legislation, without debate, without a vote. The executions began. They continue.

Our own investigation found the same thing on every strike where information could be obtained: fishing vessels, fishing crews, fishing routes. One thing we have not found, is evidence of “drug vessels”, and the USA has no intention of providing that evidence. Currently, based on all available evidence, the U.S. military is on a serial killing campaign targeting fishing boats. We welcome any release of evidence that overturns this conclusion, but we must report on the evidence available to us.

207 people. The campaign shows no signs of stopping, and shows no signs of being legally justified anytime soon.

At 07:00 GMT on Monday morning, Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel Katz issued a joint order. The Israeli military was to strike Beirut’s southern suburbs. Residents of Dahiyeh began evacuating immediately. Those of us covering the invasion of Lebanon are aware that there is functionally no ceasefire, but by the end of Monday, Israel’s Defence Minister would confirm it.

Before publicly dismissing the ceasefire, Katz had issued a statement on Beirut. There would be “no calm in Beirut” if Hezbollah kept responding to Israeli attacks. The Litani River zone would be placed under Israeli military control, “free of weapons and terrorists.” The day before, Israeli forces had seized Beaufort Castle north of the Litani, their deepest push into Lebanon in over 25 years.

Within hours, Israel had called off the attack, while Iran called off negotiations with the USA in response to the ongoing Israeli attacks by Israel.

Iran had issued a warning that northern Israel would need to evacuate if any strike on Beirut was launched, according to Israeli media, the warning reportedly alarmed the Israeli government. By 6 o’clock, Donald Trump had chimed in, claiming he had persuaded Israel to call off the strikes, it appears the call to cancel the strikes was made before Trump’s claimed intervention became public.

Inside Israel, the decision to call off the strike caused some political turmoil, with ministers like Itamar Ben Gvir publicly scolding Netanyahu for cancelling the plans.

That evening, the Defence Minister Israel Katz appeared on Channel 14, Israel’s right-wing television channel, speaking in Hebrew. “There is no ceasefire in Lebanon,” he said. Netanyahu, separately, confirmed the Israeli military would continue operating in southern Lebanon “as planned.”

This is a statement that has appeared across Israeli media since it was uttered, but has been almost entirely absent from international outlets. While it is clear to anyone observing that the ceasefire is long over, most major outlets continue to discuss the deal, even though now Israel’s own Defence Minister has stated clearly that they do not believe the deal is in effect.

This was not the first time. A ceasefire was declared on April 17, but Israeli strikes and military operations continued almost immediately. Lebanon’s death toll since March 2 now stands above 3,400.

The day the Israeli minister confirmed the ceasefire was not in place, we saw a bizarre piece of misinformation in real time. CNN’s live feed gave us the conflicting reports that the ceasefire was on and off. Somehow, the U.S. outlet reported on the ceasefire being in place, on the same page where they covered an Israeli minister denying it. We doubt this would happen had the signatory been anyone other than Israel.

The party conducting the strikes stated plainly, in the language spoken by the soldiers carrying them out, that there is no ceasefire in Lebanon.

Yet major international outlets continue to describe the ceasefire as though it remains meaningfully in effect. CNN managed to report both positions simultaneously on the same live page: that a ceasefire existed, and that Israel’s Defence Minister had publicly denied one existed.

We have searched far and wide, and cannot find an outlet who will state that Israel has dismissed the ceasefire, despite that being an operational and rhetorical fact.

If any other state openly declared a ceasefire void while continuing military operations inside a neighbouring country, most Western outlets would describe the ceasefire as collapsed. Israel continues to receive markedly different framing.

The U.S. military’s Central Command told the world on June 2nd that Iran’s missile and drone strikes had failed entirely. “Iran launched several ballistic missiles toward regional neighbors,” CENTCOM posted to X. “However, all failed to hit their intended targets.” Hours later, Kuwait’s own Defence Ministry confirmed that Iranian drones had struck the passenger terminal at Kuwait International Airport, wounding several people and forcing the suspension of all commercial flights.

So, plain as day, the U.S. military lied, and not the only time that night. Their claim that their attacks were in “self-defence” is countered by the fact that U.S. strikes came hours before an Iranian response.

“All failed to hit their intended targets.” Kuwait International Airport is a regional neighbor’s target. Its Terminal 1 sustained what Kuwaiti officials described as significant material damage. The airport’s radar system, already destroyed in earlier rounds of this conflict, was hit again. Passengers and staff were wounded and taken to hospital. Kuwait Airways suspended all operations. Indian carrier IndiGo halted flights until June 4th. Emirates and other international carriers diverted incoming aircraft to Doha, Riyadh and Dubai.

None of that happened in a country whose infrastructure was successfully defended, as the U.S. military claimed.

The airport had only reopened Terminal 1 to international airlines two days earlier, on June 1st, following months of closures caused by this same conflict. It lasted 48 hours before Iranian drones put it out of service again, while the U.S. military lied about the strike hitting.

The U.S. regime’s track record in this conflict includes a pattern of declaring attacks defeated while fires burn, sirens wail and hospitals fill. On the night of June 2nd alone, explosions were reported in Kuwait, Bahrain and Iraq. Air raid sirens activated across all three countries. Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE closed their airspaces. None of that is consistent with the claims made, but the strike on Kuwait’s airport shoots a clean hole through the statement entirley.

CENTCOM posted a second statement that night, this one narrower: “All Iranian attacks on American forces failed.” The framing is deliberate. The first statement covered the region. The second covered U.S. forces. Read together, they are designed to let the broader falsehood stand while retreating to a defensible position. But, given that the first statement was entirely false, what are we to think this one.

The USA claimed on February 28, the day they launched their war against Iran, that no U.S. personnel had been hurt in Iran’s retaliation. The truth was very different, three soldiers had been killed and another five injured. On that basis, the claim that no one was injured last night cannot be determined to be true on the strength of the U.S. military’s statement alone.

What the evidence shows is this: Iran launched a coordinated wave of missiles and drones across multiple countries on June 2nd, in direct response to a strike on their territory by the USA. Some were intercepted. Some were not. A civilian airport was struck, damaged and closed. People were hurt. The U.S. military told the world that everything had been stopped, the U.S. military lied, it’s up to you if you want to dismiss precedent and believe their future statements.

Fresh satellite imagery published by open-source analyst Egypt’s Intel Observer (@EGYOSINT) on June 3rd adds a second confirmed strike from the same attack wave. Imagery geolocated to 29°21’04.72”N, 47°30’14.06”E shows the destruction of a drone and aircraft shelter at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, a facility that hosts U.S. military personnel. The before-and-after comparison is unambiguous: the structure is gone.

That matters because CENTCOM issued a second statement that same night, narrower in scope: “All Iranian attacks on American forces failed.” Ali Al Salem is a base where U.S. forces are stationed. A confirmed strike on its infrastructure cannot be squared with that claim, and given that the broader statement was demonstrably false, the narrower one deserves exactly the same scepticism.

U.S. forces have struck Qeshm Island in Iran, according to Iran’s semi-official IRIB news outlet, in what would mark a fresh violation of the fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran. The U.S. military has since accepted responsibility, confirming an attack on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island, which it describes as a “self-defence” operation. It was not. The strike violated the ceasefire and triggered retaliatory missile and drone launches across the region.

The U.S. framing is further undermined by the timeline: explosions were reported on Qeshm Island before Iran launched its missiles, contradicting CENTCOM's claim that the strike was a response to "attempted Iranian attacks."

The strike on Qeshm Island is not the only report of explosions inside Iran, with further blasts heard in Fars and Isfahan provinces. Fighter jet activity has been reported above Tehran and other areas of the country. Beyond Iran, the strikes appear to have also targeted the Komala Party, a Kurdish separatist group headquartered in the Alana Valley northeast of Erbil, Iraq, with two missiles striking their headquarters at 23:00 local time

Iran has responded across multiple fronts. The IRGC claimed responsibility for missile strikes on U.S. bases in Kuwait, saying they were launched in direct response to the Qeshm strike. Iran also struck the vessel Panya with missiles, the IRGC said, in direct retaliation for the U.S. attack on the Iranian-linked tanker M/T Lexie the previous night.

“In response to the provocation and blatant aggression of American terrorist forces targeting the national sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the precious island of Qeshm,” the IRGC said, “the IRGC Aerospace Forces carried out precise and intensive missile strikes on the military bases of the American occupation in the State of Kuwait, which resulted in the successful destruction of their targets and the ignition of the aggressors’ fortresses.”

A second wave of missiles has since been launched, with further impacts reported around the Ali Al Salem airbase. Sirens are now active at the U.S. Navy base in Bahrain, Ali Al Salem and Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, and at U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, which are now also being targeted. Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE have closed their airspaces due to ongoing hostilities.

The USA has launched further airstrikes on Qeshm Island. Bahrain is now also a target of Iranian attacks, with public alerts, air defences and explosions reported in the country.

CENTCOM claims none of Iran’s counter-attacks reached their targets. Crust News cannot verify this claim, as explosions have been reported in at least three countries tonight, and the claim sits alongside a U.S. regime track record of minimising or misrepresenting battlefield outcomes in this conflict. According to CENTCOM, missiles fired toward Kuwait and Bahrain were either intercepted or failed in flight, and three Iranian attack drones targeting vessels in regional waters were shot down. They also claim no U.S. personnel were injured.

As missiles fall across the region, a U.S. official has told reporters: "We remain committed to the ceasefire with Iran. The ceasefire still stands."

CENTCOM confirmed the strike on the Botswana-flagged M/T Lexie on June 2, as the unladen tanker transited international waters toward Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil export terminal. The U.S. regime claims the crew ignored repeated warnings over a 24-hour period before a U.S. aircraft disabled the vessel. The USA has no legal basis for such attacks, holding no legal jurisdiction, nor any UN approval to launch the attack.

The Lexie carried no cargo, according to CENTCOM. Attacking objects that presented no threat seems to be the USA’s new standard, having launched the Iran war without any threat from Iran, as well as a killing spree on the sea that has now killed over 200 people.

The attack comes as a fragile April 8 ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran remains, by the U.S. regime’s own assessment, on “life support.” Iran has repeatedly described the blockade as a potential ceasefire violation. Iran pulled out of negotiations yesterday, citing Israel’s continued attacks in Lebanon and Gaza, with a promise to return to the table should Israel follow the ceasefires they agreed to.

Under international law, a naval blockade imposed without UN Security Council authorisation and enforced against third-country vessels in international waters constitutes an act of war. The M/T Lexie is not an Iranian vessel. Botswana is not a party to any conflict with the United States. Its crew was given a choice between compliance and a missile.

CENTCOM frames this as enforcement, let us be clear, it is an attack on an innocent ship, and a fresh incitement to the Iranian government.

On Monday the U.S. ruling regime declared the Pentagon press office a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility”, a SCIF, the most secure category of room the U.S. government keeps. Acting press secretary Joel Valdez explained that speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War now share the space, that they handle classified material, that journalists therefore can no longer enter. There is, he assured everyone, “nothing controversial about that.”

The press office is the one room where, for decades, a reporter could walk up to a public affairs officer and ask a question without an escort, an appointment, or a minder logging the encounter. To close that room you would normally have to ban the press, and a ban is the kind of thing a court can strike down. So the regime did not ban the press in name, but they have done in practice. It moved its speechwriters into the room, declared the room classified on account of the speechwriters, and now the journalists are banned.

It’s clear at this point that this is not one decision, and reading it as one is the mistake the U.S. public cannot afford to make, not in the current political environment.

Walk it with us. In February 2025 the Pentagon invented an “Annual Media Rotation Program” and used it to evict the New York Times, NBC, NPR, and Politico from desks they had worked from for half a century. That same month the regime barred the Associated Press from the Oval Office for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, and seized the White House press pool from the correspondents who had run it for generations. When a Trump-appointed judge ordered the AP reinstated, the regime did not reinstate it. It abolished the guaranteed wire-service slots entirely, so that no order could be said to have been disobeyed, because the thing the AP had been excluded from no longer existed.

Then the Defence Secretary took the template to his building. In May 2025 he banned reporters from moving freely through the Pentagon. In September he demanded they pledge not to publish information, including unclassified information, the department had not approved. In October the major outlets handed back their badges rather than sign. It was the right call, and it changed nothing, they were cornered either way, sign and be muzzled or leave and be locked out.

In December the Times sued, and in March 2026 a federal judge found the policy’s true purpose was to weed out disfavoured journalists, and struck it down.

We have seen this regime come after journalists, and we have seen the method before, in the way Vladimir Putin came up. Find the loophole, normalise the loophole, widen it, until the day a free press is stripped from the people who rely on it is just another day in the country, unremarkable, unremarked.

And it does not stop at journalists. The regime has trained the same focus on comedians, on satirists, on anyone whose job is to say the quiet thing out loud, which is Putin’s playbook to the letter. So when the press secretary tells you there is nothing controversial about closing the one room a reporter could walk in and ask a question, understand what you are being asked to find unremarkable. We are not reassured, and nor should you be.

Israel has pulled its planned strikes on Beirut. Netanyahu had ordered an operation against Dahiyeh and the capital and issued an evacuation order for residents, with the strikes set to go ahead. Citizens in the suburb had already been evacuating throughout the day following the order.

Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the central command of the Iranian regime’s armed forces, then warned that if it did, residents of northern Israel and its military settlements should leave if they did not wish to be harmed. Within the hour, the strikes were off.

Israel’s public broadcaster Kann reported that Netanyahu postponed the strikes on Dahiyeh following an urgent call from Trump, just after 7pm, and Israeli media tied the decision directly to the Iranian warning.

Within a chaotic fifteen minutes, Trump announced that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to stop all attacks on one another, casting it as a complete new ceasefire sealed by a 'very good call with Hezbollah.'

The claim ran ahead of the facts, and it’s currently unclear if there are any facts. A real but narrow arrangement may exist, but if it does, it’s still being negotiated. The Lebanese Presidency confirmed a US proposal for a mutual cessation, Israeli strikes on Dahiyeh to stop in exchange for Hezbollah holding fire, and a Lebanese official told Reuters that Hezbollah, through Speaker Nabih Berri, had signalled it would halt attacks on northern Israel if Israel spared Beirut and its suburbs.

Hezbollah itself has confirmed none of it, and Israeli strikes continue to fall on Lebanon. What Trump cast as a finished, comprehensive ceasefire, Netanyahu described as something far narrower and entirely conditional. In his own statement the Israeli prime minister said he had told Trump that Israel will strike Beirut if Hezbollah does not stop attacking its cities, that this position is unchanged, and that the IDF will keep operating as planned in southern Lebanon.

We will follow up on the proposed ceasefire if it begins to look like an element of reality.

Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the central command of the Iranian regime’s armed forces, has warned residents of northern Israel to evacuate if Israel carries out its threat to strike Beirut and the Dahieh district. The district

The warning mirrors those of the kind used by Israel daily in Lebanon, where over 1.2 million people are currently displaced.

This news comes while every ceasefire in the area looks to be either collapsed, or close to it. Earlier today, Iran pulled out of negotiations with the USA, with the promise to return to the negotiating table if Israel abides by ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza, which they see as a prerequisite to any agreement with the USA.

Iran seems willing to absorb U.S. ceasefire violations while remaining in the peace talks, as the overnight strikes by the USA had not been mentioned by Iran in their withdrawal from the discussions.

Elsewhere, Israel has entirely disregarded the ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza, launching new land grabs in each, which seems to be the red line for Iran in the ongoing negotiations.

Israel had been vetoed by the USA on the idea of strikes in Beirut, that veto now over and attacks imminent on the city. There had been reports that the USA was worried an escalation by Israel would lead to Iran pulling out, as Iran had warned just that would happen. It appears the USA may have been so used to empty warnings and lies that they assumed Iran’s warnings could be dismissed.

Iran has stopped talks and message exchanges with the USA through intermediaries, Tasnim reports. Iran cites continued Israeli operations in Gaza and Lebanon and the violation of the April ceasefire on all fronts. No dialogue will resume, the agency reports, until the Israeli regime ceases its operations in Gaza and Lebanon and fully withdraws from the occupied areas of Lebanese territory.

Iran and the resistance front have also resolved to completely block the Strait of Hormuz and to activate further fronts including the Bab al-Mandeb.

The conditions are really simple in any sane world, Israel needs to obey the agreement they themselves signed. Iran is not asking for concessions, it is not even asking for the USA to stop their own ceasefire violations, like the ones seen last night and earlier last week.

Israel walked out of their ceasefire in Lebanon almost immediately, and it has spent the last week expanding on their violations, with a fresh invasion into Lebanon, forced displacements hitting as far north as Beirut and the killing of now 11 children per day. Israel has already taken the historic Beaufort castle in this new invasion.

The campaign in Gaza, already a UN-confirmed genocide, is being expanded to a 70% occupation of the strip on Netanyahu’s instruction, with a café being targeted yesterday, killing at least two and injuring 12 others.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman this morning was still calling a Lebanon ceasefire the “essential condition” for any deal. The hardline Kayhan was calling outright for full suspension. Even while U.S. strikes were incoming, the Iranian regime put the condition of Lebanon at a higher priority level than any halt to U.S. strikes.

This is a developing story, we will post further updates as they are confirmed.

Aircraft belonging to the USA struck a telecommunications tower on Sirik Island in Iran’s Hormozgan Province overnight, the latest in a series of attacks on Iranian territory carried out during a ceasefire. CENTCOM’s own statement claimed these were “measured and deliberate” self-defense strikes on radar and drone command-and-control sites at Goruk and Qeshm Island. Self defence, in the absence of an attack, is not a legal reality, nor a logical one.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded roughly an hour later, launching a ballistic missile strike on Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, which it named as the airfield the U.S. attack originated from. Kuwait’s military confirmed its air defenses engaged incoming missiles and drones. The IRGC Aerospace Force called Washington a “child-killing regime” and warned that any repetition would draw a “completely different” response.

The structure of the peace talks has run on the same template of threats and coercion for weeks. The USA claims a deal is close publicly, strikes Iran, labels the strike defensive, demands concessions, threatens annihilation if concessions are slow, then claims peace is close again to the media.

We’ve just spent the last week begging the wider world to pay attention to both sides of the peace talks, after every outlet we could find parroted a U.S. claim that peace was close.

The USA has attacked twice since that claim was made. We don’t have a readership large enough to counter claims made by CNN, Reuters and others. As a result of this, you reading this will be among the most informed on this topic.

We are not bragging that Crust News is some infallible source, we are not. However, outside of Al Jazeera, we seem to be the only outlet you’ll know who has the common sense to report on both the Iranian and U.S. position. It’s almost embarrassing to see the wider media report endlessly that peace is close, only to watch their reports fall apart in ceasefire violations, perhaps it’s time for them to avoid the risk of embarrassment and report on both sides of a two-sided negotiation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a joint statement this morning ordering the IDF to strike Dahieh, the densely populated southern suburbs of Beirut. Several hundred thousand people live in Dahieh, with videos showing an enormous evacuation of the population, it’s impossible to say how many people remain in the suburbs at this time.

A U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon was announced on 16 April. That ceasefire has been entirely ripped up by Israel, who has launched a new ground invasion, engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign across the south of Lebanon, and now announced plans to begin strikes in the capital city. By late May, the Israeli regime had declared roughly 14% of Lebanese territory a combat zone. With a death toll now above 3,000, and climbing, alongside the fact that 11 children are being killed per day, it is clear that the ceasefire is now firmly in the rearview mirror. For Lebanon, it never existed in the first place.

The order arrives as the U.S. regime is itself busy breaking ceasefire with Iran, with fresh attacks over night. Washington attacked Iran a number of times last week despite ongoing peace talks in Pakistan. That same USA gave the green light for Israel to attack today, on Friday Marco Rubio called Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to tell him, in the State Department’s own readout, that Hezbollah is “entirely responsible” for the fighting. No mention of the ceasefire. No mention of the strikes. Yesterday Israel had petitioned for permission to strike the Lebanese capital, with today’s order, it is clear that permission was granted.

Smotrich said in March that Dahieh would become Khan Younis. If the world doesn’t act, and the media sphere doesn’t immediately default to international law as a baseline, rather than pro-Israel biases, his threat will become reality.

The Israeli military announced on Sunday that its forces had captured Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon, crossed the Litani River, and intend to hold the ground “until further notice.” This is the deepest Israeli ground operation in Lebanese territory since the regime ended its eighteen-year occupation in May 2000.

As we go to publish, we are learning that Israeli warplanes are striking Bint Jbeil. The town has been under sustained Israeli ground and air attack since 9 April, when the regime opened what Israel and the United States insist is a separate war from the one being negotiated to a close with Iran. You’ll notice that is before the current “ceasefire” was announced, because the reality is, for Israel, there is no ceasefire.

The IDF is now operating within five kilometres of Nabatieh, the largest urban centre in southern Lebanon. Crucially, the territory Israel is “operating in” is not territory Israel controls or even has boots on the ground in. Most of the territory Israel has demanded emptied faces carpet bombing, but Israeli troops are struggling against Hezbollah’s defence, so they aren’t being risked in the areas recently emptied of their population.

Apparently, there is a ceasefire, as you can see, there is not. An ongoing invasion, the killing of 11 children per day, the seizing and attack of UNESCO heritage sites, this is no ceasefire. Israel has ripped up the deal, but hides behind a world media sphere willing to pretend it is still in effect.

On Friday, Lebanese and Israeli military officials met at the Pentagon for direct talks. The Pentagon called the talks “productive”, despite the clear evidence that Israel and the USA have backed the Lebanese government into a corner. Either pretend there’s a ceasefire and hand over the south of the country to Israel, or face total conquest across the entire country.

The Lebanese delegation went to Washington to request enforcement of that ceasefire, which as we noted has never been respected by Israel. Those “productive” talks led to that request being entirely dismissed in favour of further Israeli land expansion.

An analysis published by Ynet on Sunday describes the Litani crossing as a trap of the regime’s own making, with one division left to carry the campaign, no clear exit strategy, and Hezbollah rockets reaching deeper into northern Israel each day. Crucially, in the Ynet report, the language of war is not hidden, Israeli media are not pretending there is a ceasefire. While Reuters and others continue to offer the cover of an agreement, Ynet, knowing their audience, don’t need to hide the reality.

Western coverage has so far called this a “capture,” an “incursion,” an “advance.” Reuters reports the seizure of a 900-year-old castle “despite a ceasefire,” as if the ceasefire were the weather. A ceasefire isn’t a rain shower you can run to the store in, a ceasefire is a cessation of hostilities, and nothing less than that. We at Crust News are sick of this mask offered to Israel by the media, and you should be too.

This can only get worse, and the journalists who have the ability to hold power to account are being used as weapons of the ongoing invasion.

SOUTHCOM ran the same script it always runs, a “known narco-trafficking route,” “narco-terrorists,” a “lethal kinetic strike.” No evidence was produced, as no evidence has ever been produced. No vessel struck in this campaign has been shown to have carried a gram of anything.

In the absence of evidence, these killings are unlawful under both U.S. and international law. Should evidence ever appear, they remain unlawful under both. There is no version of this in which blowing up a boat and the men aboard it, without warning, without arrest, without trial, becomes a lawful act.

Our own investigation found the same thing on every strike where information existed; fishing vessels, fishing crews, fishing routes.

202 people have now been killed by the serial killers in Washington D.C. The campaign shows no signs of stopping, and nor should we expect it to.

Our efforts fighting ICE have now gone on for an entire year, and despite threats, attempts to suppress us, efforts from tech giants to block our website and a piece of legislation being written in a desperate attempt to stop us, we still have the largest database of ICE agents available to the public. The database in its second year is going to multiply in size, a testament to how little effect the U.S. government has had on trying to stop us.

On 31 May 2025, Kristi Noem, then the Trump regime’s Secretary of Homeland Security, issued a threat: any citizen who dared share the identity of an ICE agent online would be arrested. We reposted it, informing the U.S. public that this threat was not lawful. What’s more, we added that we would share any identities U.S. citizens wanted to get out there, and as we were based outside the United States, we were beyond her reach. Anyone who wished to share the identity of an ICE agent could send it to us, and we would publish it, and we have done that over 1,500 times so far, and are sitting on thousands of more names that are under verification.

I went to bed that night and thought nothing more of it. By the time I woke, the post had passed hundreds of thousands of views, and our inbox was full of people who wanted to help us find ICE agents. That is the morning ICE List began.

From May to December we ran on a barebones website, which solely named the individual agent identities. In December we launched the ICE List Wiki and told the world we were building the Wikipedia of ICE. That site now runs to thousands of pages, with well over a thousand agents documented, each held to our standard.

In the year since that initial tweet, we have been covered across the press, a Spanish television documentary was built largely around the project, and we were handed one of the largest leaks in the history of the U.S. government.

The regime, for its part, was not pleased, which we count as one of the clearest signals we are doing something right. There were public warnings, there were threats from officials, and then there was a bill.

I was named, by name, in the press release announcing Senator Marsha Blackburn’s “Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act.” It has yet to be voted on. As far as we know, it is the first piece of legislation written in response to our work. A government deporting people by the hundreds of thousands, chasing a million a year, and the thing it found worth legislating against was our little website. That’s a sign that they know how effective we could be.

So, we’re now at year two, and we’re going into our second year of operations with a head start we did not have last year, and a vision on how to operate that took a year of building to find. Over the next fortnight you will see the first of it, with more to come across the year.

• Hundreds of new identities added, and we intend to beat that number.

• A visual overhaul of the site, some of it already live, with more to follow.

• A “Worst of the Worst”, putting the agents whose conduct we have documented most thoroughly front and centre. We hope to have a catalogue of the worst agents in every state

• Free advertising space for anti-ICE organisations, entirely free ads on the ICE List, and they are only for companies who help those effected by ICE, those protesting ICE, or companies who have made a public stand against the Trump regime.

• A homepage rebuilt as a hub for anyone resisting the regime: guides for protesters, advice on staying safe, and the products and services that resistance actually requires.

We are glad to be entering year two, and glad to be causing what John Lewis called good trouble along the way. Which brings us to the question we came here to ask: are you willing to come and make some good trouble with us?

What we need most is hands. If you have time, any time at all, we can use it. ICE List runs entirely on volunteers, and year two needs more of them than year one did. You do not need to be an investigator, you do not need credentials, you do not need to be anyone in particular. Whoever you are and whatever you are good at, there is a place for you, from an hour a week watching social media to the careful work of confirming an identity against the record.

Volunteer with the ICE List

The agencies we document are counting on one thing above all, which is that no one will bother. For a year, we have proven them wrong. Help us spend year two proving it harder.

Thank you for the support that led to the largest database on ICE in the public sphere. Here’s to year two.

SOUTHCOM ran the same excuse it always does, a “Designated Terrorist Organization,” a “known narco-trafficking route,” “narco-trafficking operations.” No evidence was produced, as no evidence has ever been produced. No vessel struck in this campaign has been shown to have carried a gram of any drug.

In the absence of evidence, these killings are unlawful under both U.S. and international law. Should evidence ever appear, they remain unlawful under both. There is no version of this in which blowing up a boat and the men aboard it, without warning, without arrest, without trial, becomes a lawful act.

Our own investigation found the same thing on each strike that had available information; fishing vessels, fishing crews, fishing routes. Families are now pursuing legal action over the execution of their fathers and husbands.

199 people have now been killed by the serial killers in Washington D.C. The disgusting and illegal campaign shows no signs of slowing down.

In the clip, Bessent says some holders may not yet realize their assets have been seized, and argues the funds were “stolen from the Iranian people.” The remarks come amid an expanding U.S. sanctions and financial pressure campaign targeting Iran’s banking, oil and cryptocurrency networks.

Trump posted on Truth Social today that the U.S. naval blockade of Iran will be lifted, framing it as the centrepiece of a sweeping accord covering the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, the demining of the waterway, and the extraction and destruction of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile in coordination with the IAEA.

Per Al Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem, citing a well-informed source, Iran had insisted on a formal public announcement from Trump as the first confidence-building step before any further movement on the understanding. What Iran did not agree to is most of what Trump then put in it.

Tehran's semi-official Fars News Agency has called Trump's statement "a mix of truth and lies" and an attempt to manufacture a "fake victory." Per Fars, the MoU contains no clause obliging Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz without fees, Iran will open the strait on its own predetermined arrangements covering monitoring, inspection, services and security. On uranium, the MoU contains no clause requiring destruction or dismantlement of Iran's stockpile, Fars calls that claim "fundamentally baseless," and Iran's Foreign Ministry has confirmed today that nuclear matters have not even been discussed at this stage.

Trump also made no mention of what Iranian media report as preconditional clauses, the immediate release of $12 billion in frozen Iranian assets, and crucially, a real ceasefire in Lebanon.

Two days ago, when IRIB reported the same 14-point framework Trump is now claiming as his accord, the White House called it a "complete fabrication" and told the public not to believe Iranian state media. The framework has not changed in 48 hours, the U.S. regime's posture has, now supporting a framework they labelled a fabrication.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ismael Baqaei put the question precisely today: "Regarding his announcement on lifting the naval blockade, we need to see what happens in practice; is this a real action or a propaganda claim?"

He also rejected the imperative framing of Trump's post, "nobody can use the language 'should' or 'must' with Iran. Trump cannot tell us what we 'must' do, we decide it by ourselves." The spokesman added that the “Negotiations are still ongoing and a text for the MoU has not yet been finalised”.

Other outlets are running with Trump’s position alone, but there are two sides to this negotiation, and it will take two sides to come to an agreement. Reporting that a deal is imminent, while one side of the deal says the text hasn’t even been finalised, is irresponsible reporting.

We have seen this pattern for seven weeks now, U.S. sources claiming imminent deals, Trump pre-claiming terms Iran has not agreed to, Iran denying the details publicly.

We are not convinced this is what an agreement looks like, and nor should you be. As always, the only deal we believe in, is one that has been signed.

Houthi rebels in Yemen claim they have downed a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone, releasing footage of the drone falling from the sky. The group also released images of the wreckage recovered on the ground. The images look somewhat convincing, but they do not appear to be of a Reaper drone, the wreckage shows a piston engine with exposed cylinders driving the propeller, where a Reaper carries a turboprop.

The group appears to have legitimately shot down a drone, but we are skeptical that it is the drone they claim it to be. The group has been a thorn in the side of the USA, as they have been targeting their drones since 2023. In 2025 alone, the rebel group had downed over $200 million worth of U.S. drones.

This is the second claim of a downed Reaper drone in as many days, as Iran claimed to have taken one out of the sky above the Bushehr region of the country. While the USA has denied the claim that the drone had been downed, they have not offered the same rejection to the claim that the drone had entered Iranian airspace.

This is a developing story, we will bring you updates as they are confirmed to us.