For review:
1. The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday night that it had finished clearing a “strategic” underground facility belonging to the Hezbollah terror group beneath a mountainous ridge in southern Lebanon in recent weeks.
The Ali Taher Ridge is located within Israel’s southern Lebanon buffer zone, near Nabatieh. According to the IDF, Hezbollah built tunnel systems beneath the hill, which served as the “nerve center” of the terror group’s Badr regional division — a unit tasked with the area of southern Lebanon that is north of the Litani River.
2. Iran has warned the United States that it would respond forcefully to any Israeli offensive on a mountainous ridge in southern Lebanon where Iranian military personnel are holed up alongside Hezbollah fighters, three officials briefed on the message told Reuters.
3. US Vice President JD Vance says Washington will only return to negotiations with Iran if Tehran stops targeting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
4. South Korea is preparing to deploy military assets to support freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and aims to dispatch them before the end of the year, local media reports, citing government and military sources.
5. Russia has been helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles, an advanced weapon that is harder to defend against than subsonic variants, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.
6. The German Navy said on Wednesday that it had successfully tested an Israeli ballistic missile system the previous night and would now begin to advance plans to procure the projectiles.
The Long-Range Artillery Weapon System, known by the acronym LORA, has a range of 400 kilometers and is accurate to within 10 meters, according to its manufacturer, Israel Aerospace Industries. It is classified as a short-range ballistic missile.
7. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday there was a chance of reaching an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said U.S. negotiators trying to broker a deal would soon visit both Moscow and Kyiv.
Putin, speaking at an economic forum in Russia's far east, said a number of countries including the U.S. and China were ready to support a peace settlement.
8. The U.S. government on Thursday slapped new sanctions on Cuba in a fresh push to strangle the island’s economy and deepen its multiple crises.
9. American Rheinmetall delivered the first Lynx XM30 prototype to the Army this week, the company said in a Tuesday statement, the latest move in the service’s effort to replace the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
The vehicle is slated to start testing, while seven additional prototypes are scheduled for delivery later this year.
