Weeks of violence across the Middle East have seen U.S. and Israeli forces bombard targets across Iran, Lebanon and Syria as Iranian armaments strike positions across Israel and the Persian Gulf at large. To date, those attacks have targeted not only American and Israeli assets but also those of host nations like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, forcing Iran’s regional neighbors to consider the once unimaginable: actively joining the currently binational Iranian campaign. 

Iran’s “persistent attacks” have “disrupted” many Gulf State economies and “risk giving Tehran long-term leverage” over the oil-crucial Strait of Hormuz, said The Wall Street Journal. Gulf States are now “inching toward joining the fight” with operational support, but “don’t yet go as far as deploying their militaries openly.” The “attack against us is unjust,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan at a regional summit last weekend, articulating Gulf State concerns. “We need to respond to it.” 

Iran’s bombardments and Trump’s shifting wartime narratives are “forcing Gulf nations into a stark decision,” said NBC News. Iranian attacks on Qatari and Saudi gas and oil production facilities have “in particular angered Gulf allies,” prompting a “reassessment of how to deal with Tehran,” said Middle East Eye.

Still, while there remains “some frustration” among Gulf States over how the U.S. and Israel are conducting this war, there’s a “desire,” particularly in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar, to see the conflict ended with Iran’s military power “sufficiently degraded to cease posing a threat to them,” said The Times of Israel.

Bruising Democratic primaries in Illinois have highlighted a growing dynamic within the party and its candidates: a deteriorating relationship with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of the most high-profile and highly contentious special-interest groups in the country. AIPAC has broadly become a “wedge issue in Democratic midterm primaries,” said Jewish News Syndicate. The group has spent tens of millions against candidates it “considers insufficiently pro-Israel,” often doing so through dark money PACs with “innocuous names.” 

But AIPAC is “fighting a losing rear guard battle” in Democratic political circles, said Hadar Susskind, who leads the progressive nonprofit New Jewish Narrative, to JNS. “Both the constituency and the elected officials are not with them.”

AIPAC’s 40% success rate in the five Illinois races it participated in suggests that although outside spending “can play a role” in races, the campaigns themselves “still matter, and money can’t outright buy a seat in Congress,” said Puck. “Rebukes” of AIPAC from Democratic elected officials like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego reflect “increased frustrations” with the group, which has “waded into competitive elections” even as “popular opinion on the political powerhouse and Israel, writ large, has rapidly declined,” said The Hill. 

Democrats eyeing White House bids in 2028 are also “preemptively breaking up with AIPAC,” said Politico. The “retreat” from the longtime lobbying juggernaut “underscores how rapidly AIPAC has become a bogeyman for Democrats” following the Gaza war and the ongoing attacks on Iran. 

Attacking Iran with advanced AI across multiple battlefields offers a preview of a new generation of wide-scale automated war