Welcome again Foreign PolicyStatus Report, where we will cover one of the biggest open questions despite a two-week ceasefire in Iran.
Here’s what’s available for today: Israel continues to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran’s cyber-warriors it targets the infrastructure of the United States, and the Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte makes a sad visit to Washington.
Israel’s ongoing offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon has emerged as the biggest challenge to Iran’s fragile ceasefire since it was announced on Tuesday night.
Pakistan, which initiated the accord and is ready to host peace talks between Washington and Tehran, has said Lebanon is part of the accord. Iran, Hezbollah’s closest ally, too he insisted that is what it is. But Israel and the United States have said that Lebanon is not part of the agreement.
And hours after the ceasefire began, Israel on Wednesday launched its biggest wave of attacks against Lebanon since fresh fighting with Hezbollah broke out on March 2, striking more than 100 targets in 10 minutes, killing. more than 300 people, and injured more than 1,100.
Iran has threatened to abandon the ceasefire process and implement “STRONG responses” on the continued bombing of Lebanon and its exclusion from the accord, with Israel now under rising pressure from the Trump administration to slow down his campaign. US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he has asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for more “low key” operation against Hezbollah.
In response, Netanyahu he announced that Israel will soon begin direct talks with the Lebanese government on establishing peaceful relations and disarming Hezbollah. However, he vowed to continue targeting the group, insisting that “there is no ceasefire in Lebanon.”
“A sense of chaos.” At the same time, humanitarian aid organizations in Lebanon are reporting horrific incidents of human suffering as a result of Israel’s bombing campaign and sounding the alarm about the effects of these attacks on the country’s citizens.
Jeremy Ristord, who serves as the head of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) mission in Lebanon, told SitRep that Wednesday was the “bloodiest day” since the resumption of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in early March. At Rafik Hariri University Hospital, one of the hospitals MSF teams are supporting, there was a “sense of chaos.” It was a “very difficult day,” Ristord said, even after people woke up with a sense of hope following news of the ceasefire.
“When the strikes started, some of them were very close, so there was smoke everywhere in the emergency room,” Ristord said. Ambulances brought “a great influx of the wounded,” Ristord said, including women, children, and the elderly. Many of the people who arrived at the hospital had head injuries, shrapnel wounds, and blunt force trauma, he said, and others also came out looking for lost loved ones. One patient arrived with “both legs amputated,” among other injuries, and “sadly could not be saved,” Ristord said, adding that there were similar incidents in hospitals across Beirut.
While Israel has maintained that it is targeting Hezbollah targets, the Israeli military has repeatedly targeted populated areas. United Nations and top human rights organizations he questioned the validity of his claims and the proportionality of his attacks as well he warned that actions taken by Israel and Hezbollah may constitute war crimes.
Observers have also warned that Israel is targeting Lebanon’s health system, which the Israeli army was also in accused of doing in Gaza. The Lebanese government has done just that he said dozens of doctors have been killed by Israel in the war so far. The World Health Organization said on Sunday that it had confirmed more than 90 attacks at health care facilities in Lebanon since late February, although it did not name the parties involved.
Moving indefinitely. The dire humanitarian situation is also “exacerbating the layer of vulnerability” in Lebanon, Ristord said. Before the latest conflict erupted, the country was already dealing with the aftermath of the 2024 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah—which saw Israel occupy southern Lebanon and continue its near-daily attacks even after a cease-fire agreement reached in November of this year. years of economic instability.
More than 1 million people have been forced from their homes in Lebanon since early March, and more than 1,500 people had already been killed in the fighting before Wednesday’s strike. About 14 percent of Lebanon’s territory is under “so-called evacuation orders” from Israel that “have no beginning and no end,” Ristord said, stressing that in the United States, this area would be almost twice the size of Texas. Ristord said groups that were already facing challenges in Lebanon before the new fighting, such as Palestinian refugees and migrant workers, are more vulnerable in this environment.
“My biggest concern is the scale of the evacuation and the lack of clarity about when, if at all, the military campaign will end,” Kate Phillips-Barrasso, vice president of international policy and advocacy at Mercy Corps, told SitRep. “So that means you’re looking at a situation where 20 percent of the population or more could be displaced indefinitely.”
American men aged 18 to 25 can be straight registered for eligibility for the military draft as soon as December under a new proposed law from the Selective Service System (SSS), the US agency that manages draft eligibility. That doesn’t mean there’s a draft coming, though—the last one was during the Vietnam War in the 1970s, and military service has been voluntary ever since. Any future military draft would have to be approved by Congress and the president of the United States, according to the SSS website.
However, according to the law, men who are eligible for the draft must still register with the SSS. The process has for decades been based on voluntary compliance at the federal level (automatic registration already place in 46 states and districts), but National Defense Authorization Act that Trump signed into law in December 2025 included a requirement that registration be automatic nationwide. The proposed legislation has yet to be passed.
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
Internet anxiety. The conflict between the US and Iran has eased since Trump announced a two-week ceasefire on Tuesday, but Iran’s cyber-warriors remain a threat to critical US infrastructure. An advice released by US government agencies on Tuesday said hackers linked to Iran had compromised Internet-connected control systems made by US company Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley, which could affect the water and energy sectors, among others. Iran has a long history of using cyber attacks to compromise US industrial systems, and experts and former officials have done just that he warned that worsening cyberspace means Iran’s cyberwar may continue even if the missiles stop flying.
In other disturbing internet news, Anthropic (yes, that Anthropic) he announced A new artificial intelligence model that says “you can fix cyber security.” The unreleased mod, known as the Claude Mythos Preview, has reached a point where it can “outsmart all but the most skilled humans in finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities,” the company claims, and has already found vulnerabilities in every major web browser and operating system. Anthropic said it has launched an initiative called Project Glasswing, a collection of companies including Amazon Web Services, Apple, JPMorganChase, Microsoft, and Nvidia that will work with Anthropic to fix vulnerabilities found in Mythos to improve its security before public release.
Rutte wake up. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s visit to Washington this week may have been planned in advance, but it came at a critical and critical time for the Atlantic alliance. Trump has spent weeks blasting NATO allies for their lack of support and involvement in his war on Iran, and continued to do so after is reported controversial meeting with Rutte at the White House on Wednesday. “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WILL NOT BE THERE WHEN WE NEED THEM AGAIN,” Trump. has been published on Social Reality Wednesday evening after the meeting.
Rutte tried to reduce the rift in a speech at the Reagan Institute in Washington on Thursday, saying that NATO was not “whistling past graves” but was in the midst of a “big change.”
Regarding the Iran war, Rutte admitted that “some allies were slow” to support the United States but added that they were “also surprised” because Trump did not inform them beforehand – a decision that the NATO chief said he could “understand.”
A view of Earth captured from the Orion spacecraft as the Artemis II crew flew by the moon on April 6. NASA via Getty Images
April 13: Canada will host a by-election that could see Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party win a majority.
The spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group begin in Washington.
April 15: Three years since the outbreak of the disease The Sudanese Civil War.
April 17: Turkey is hosting the Antalya Diplomacy Conference.
April 19: The US sanctions relief period for the purchase of Iranian oil at sea is expiring.
Bulgaria holds early parliamentary elections.
41-The number of days the recent Iranian blackout has lasted, according to for the NetBlocks web traffic monitoring platform. That’s almost 1,000 hours.
“A cease-fire is always good news. Especially if it brings a just and lasting peace. But this temporary relief cannot make us forget the chaos, the destruction, and the lives lost. The Spanish government will not congratulate those who set the world on fire just because they showed up with a bucket.”
—Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pointing the finger at Trump in the face Post X about the ceasefire between the United States and Iran.
