CrossFireArarbia

Will There be Another Day Tomorrow!

CrossFireArabia
April 19, 2026

By Dr Marwan Asmar

By 1 pm Wednesday morning the whole of the Middle East region could turn pitch black, utter darkness. No neons no flicker with pylons fizzling out. It’s a slippery-slope to disaster that started with the ultimatums given by US President Donald Trump about his worldview.

He long told the Iranian leadership in voice but more like dictation, either open up the Strait of Hormuz or he will order the US army to start bombing the country’s infrastructure, power plants and electricity grids in a way that he has never done before “bombing the country to the Stone Age.”

His ultimatum was first made on 21 March giving Iran 48 hours or else he would start bombing the power plants then on the 23rd day of the same month, he extended the ultimatum for five more and then these dates kept being pushed forward till today, when 7 April, 2026 came; it has become a solid, no nonsensense cut-off date. But we are yet to say!

Two things happened in the last two to three weeks or so that made him delay his threat: First pressure from leaders of the Gulf countries. Iran’s leadership was very clear to the initial threat made by Trump. Its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp made it clear if their plants were struck they would turn their missiles on the energy plants and grids of the different Gulf countries which serve as lynchpins to their economies, societies and urbanizations.

Hearing of this, the Gulf governments quickly put the diplomatic pressure on the White House. For Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Oman, the Iranian threat which was very real since Iran has been striking with thousands of missiles of drones would be especially disastrous for the Gulf states which can’t live without electricity.

Second, from the first week of the war that started on 28 February, Trump, and realizing that something was seriously wrong – a point made clear by the unexpected ferosity of the Iranian missiles strikes and drones – made it clear that he was willing to stop the war if Iran surrendered its nuclear stockpile of enrichment and ended its ballistic missile program.

As the war “hotted up” and with Iran striking US ships in the Arabian Sea, US military bases in the Gulf states and Israel, Washington once again appealed for a ceasefire. But they couldn’t live up to this for they were already on the run as symbolized by the fact their destroyers – SS Gerald Ford which was towed away to Greece after wreckage and with SS Abraham Lincoln quitely moving 1500 kilometers away deep into the Arabia Sea – proved to be no match for the coming Iranian ballistic, and otherwise, missiles.

In came different actors like Turkey, Cairo, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to try to bring the two sides together. Very quickly, Islamabad took the lead with the negotiations in an attempt to grab a deal that started at least since mid-March, and maybe before. There was an earnest interest to stop what was seen as war that was becoming devastating for the economies of the region and the world.

Not a single drop of oil was passing the Strait of Hormuz, in a once bustling waterway that controlled 20 percent of the global petroleum market. The deal today, despite talks hangs in the balance, it is illusive, beyond immediate reach for Iran had conditions.

On top of that, things are not that simple especially when ideologies are far apart. The Iranians were always suspicious of the men in the White House! Its leaders wouldn’t directly talk to the Americans and had serious misgivings about ongoing US envoys Steve Witkoff and Gerard Koshner, Trump’s son-in-law, were regarded as pro-Israelis that couldn’t be trusted.

Besides that Iran had iron-clad conditions. If they agreed to a ceasefire they demanded it should be long-lasting and that Trump wouldn’t start the war again, not a replay of the June 2025 confrontation when the US and Israel first waged a war on Tehran and asked for a ceasefire then broke it. Other conditions include compensation for the destruction of their country, an end to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and new methods of payment for ships entrying and living the Hormuz Strait which they control.

Today, and despite the fact that Israeli cities like Tel Aviv are being struck on a daily basis from Iran, Hezbollah and now the Houthis from Yemen, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want the war on Iran to stop. He wants to continue hammering Iran even at the cost of his people for more than 6000 Israelis have been injured up until now, not to mention the fast devastation across Israel.

As the clock ticks to midnight Trump is verbally escalating. He said if Iran doesn’t agree to open the Hormuz Strait “a whole civilization will die tonight.” Iran’s Prime Minister Massoud Pezeshkian on the other hand is ready and waiting. He said 14 million people are ready to fight for Iran and called for human chains around the electricity plants all over the country.

Escalation is definitely reaching higher peaks. We wait for the next move. The conflict continues. The US Central Command says, and up-to-date the American Air Force carried out 13,000 raids on Iran.

By contrast, over 6000 missile and drone launches were carried by Iran on US warships, military bases, Gulf states and on Israel over the past 39 days of conflict. This is while Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Iran has the ability to continue for at least another six months at the current rate of launching ballistic missiles in the region.

Meanwhile we wait for Trump’s utterings and see of he is really prepared to bomb the country back into the Stone Age. Will there be another day tomorrow? We shall see for the deadly war may still have many surprises.

Dr Asmar is a writer from Amman and blogs for crossfirearabia.com

Analyses

Analysis: Middle East in Iranian Eyes

CrossFireArabia
April 19, 2026

CROSSFIREARABIA – During the Israeli Genocide on Gaza Benjamin Netanyahu used to stand up and say with a smirk: ‘We are changing the face of the Middle East’.

Upbeat about murdering the women and children of Gaza from the late 2023 onwards, he was talking about the further normalization of the Arab world as established by the Abraham Accords, establish an economic order under Israel’s hegemony and end Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis while clipping the wings of Iran.

Of course, Netanyahu’s face soon changed, albeit two-and-a-half years later, when Iran and Hezbollah were forced into a war generated by Israel and the USA on 29 February, 2026. While Iran got a battering, in the next 39 days, US ships and military bases in the Gulf and Jordan received such a hammering that soon forced US President Donald Trump to plead for a ceasefire.

In this war, Israel received a great shock, being attacked literally on an hourly and daily basis with its buildings, military basis and infrastructure taking directs hits while its millions of people living in underground shelters around-the-clock.

To use a metaphor Tel Aviv’s nose was being rubbed in the sand in a way that has never been imagined by Netanyahu nor his ilk of extremist right wing fascist politicians who started calling for the expulsion of Gaza Palestinians from their homeland ever since the Israeli genocide on them since 7 October, 2023.

Today’s Netanyahu’s vision of a new Middle East has been drastically changed, thrown in his face in fact! Iran’s political stances and its missiles have changed things around. The US and Israel were not able to change the current Iranian government in Iran despite killing the country’s spiritual leader Ali Khameini, have not ended the country’s nuclear program nor ended its ballistic missiles.

So what is Netanyahu talking about? Yes, today there is clearly a new Middle East emerging but it is not according to Netanyahu’s eyes nor his wishful thinking. If anybody should be ‘celebrating’ it is clearly Iran, it’s government, revolutionary guard, its Generals, officers and soldiers who are very probably changing the face of the Middle East and may even be setting the map of how the region should look like in form from now on.

From day one of the war, Trump started running scared despite his outlandish mutterings! He came to realize quickly that Netanyahu and the Mossad pushed him against Iran, convincing him it would be an easy fight and the government there would fall like a pack of cards. Trump since, started kicking himself as he finally fell to Netanyahu’s squinted prism to go after that country. Netanyahu kept pushing for this wild step since the 1990s through previous US presidents from Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

But they did not listen to him however, Trump fell into the trap and maybe this is why he is now privately kicking himself because he basically sent the globe into an economic tailspin and soaring exorbitant oil prices, a potentially deep recession and financial chaos.

In this war Netanyahu may have shot himself in the foot. His alliance with the USA juxtaposed by Hezbollah whose fighters laid dormant since November 2024 when it stopped firing at Tel Aviv was a big surprise to the latter. Israel had previously thought that Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire out of weakness and thus their entry into military action was unexpected. Hezbollah kept the military pressure on for six more days after Washington signed off with Iran and beating the Israeli army into submission.

On day 46 Trump intervened calling on the Israeli army to stop fighting Hezbollah. He had ulterior motive, he wanted to extract a normalization agreement between the Lebanese government and Israel; their ambassadors had just started meeting in Washington at the invitation of the US State Department in an upbeat atmosphere and inline for a final agreement to establish an accord between Tel Aviv and Beirut alongside the ones signed between Israel and four Arab states, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco starting September 2020.

Thus a normalization agreement would be a feather in Trump’s cap, a sort of prestige move for the US president. But his pressure may have been seen as a life-saving formula. Trump was saving Israel from Netanyahu’s insistence that his army to keep fighting in southern Lebanon. Its fight has already cost Israel at least 13 soldiers who were killed, more than 500 injured and more than 100 topnotch Merkava tanks destroyed. Israeli towns and cities were being hammered from the north.

Israel was being beaten from the north. Its towns, cities and military bases again were wide-open to incoming rockets from Lebanon and were not being deflected. It was a war that had to be stopped. This time Trump insisted. If a ceasefire with Iran was going to stick, then Netanyahu had to be forced to make his soldiers stop their fight in Lebanon.

Thus for the time being Netanyahu’s hand lie in check. Yet in the long run his dream for a new Middle East with Israel playing a central part in it may have been halted. After all, no Gulf or even Arab states now would think of normalizing with Israel despite the fact that Lebanon is being forced into it, but even for then its early days.

Netanyahu can kiss goodbye his long-life attempt to sign a normalization accord with Saudi Arabia for instance, a kingdom which is seen as a “major puller” in the Arab and Muslim world. It has already said that normalization is off the table with Israel. The Gulf has been disappointed in this war because it showed that America were not able to protect them from Iranian missiles that targeted their infrastructure as well the US military bases strewn across the region.

Netanyahu has lost on the economic level as well. His country stands economically devastated, army in ruins as admitted to by the Israeli chief of staff Eyal Zamir, and the dream of opening an ‘economic Middle East’ is definitely dashed for the time being.

America, as Trump knows, is left to pick up the pieces of a tattered world caused by war any choas in a region that is vital to the global system.

News

Iranian Missiles Destroy 1000 Flats in Tel Aviv

CrossFireArabia
April 19, 2026

CROSSFIREARABIA – Mayor of Tel Aviv Ron Huldai, said Sunday, that 1000 apartments in the Greater Tel Aviv areas, which covers around 1500 kilometers have been left uninhabitable because of the recent US-Israel war on Iran.

His statement is reverberating in the Hebrew media, being picked up internationally, and repeated on the social media.

“More than 1000 apartments in Tel Aviv are no longer fit for living,” he told the Israeli Channel 12.

The destruction is caused by the 39-day war that resulted in Iranian missiles and debris falling on different parts of the sprawling city.

This war, started through a US-Israeli alliance on Iran on 28 February, was precedented in its destruction across the Middle East region with Lebanon, the Gulf and Israel, as well as Iran itself taking a major battering.

Israel has been particularly hit on a daily basis through ballistic missiles, ordinary missiles and drones with Tel Aviv and its surrounding cities like Ramat Gan and Bnei Brak at the receiving end of theses projectiles.

Some of these missiles weighed up to one and two tons, similar to those Israel used on the people of Gaza, in its two-year genocide starting soon after 7 October, 2023.

Iran fired 650 missiles on Israel according to the Times of Israel. Sources say many, 92 percent of these were intercepted. However, 77 missiles landed on different parts of Israel.

But the extent of the damage increases when it is realized that the debris from those that were intercepted represent significant fall down on different Israeli towns, cities, military bases and infrastructure.

For Israel this war came at a great cost. The Israeli Ministry of Finance estimates that the war on Iran and Lebanon has cost its treasury $17.5 billion. Added to this, and that is yet to be included, is the cost of the destruction, like the 1000 apartments and other destroyed infrastructure.

Israeli media sources report that 30,000 Israelis have filed for compensation from the Israeli Tax Authority because of direct damages to their apartments and buildings, machinery and cars. The filing for the latter stood 6617.

The amount of compensation is aggregated to stand at $2.2 billion, a far higher figure than June 12-day war in 2025 were insurance companies forked out $1 billion in compensation.

Marwan Asmar is a writer from Amman and blogs for crossfirearabia.com

Culture

Beirut Weeps For a Poet

CrossFireArabia
April 16, 2026

Lebanon mourns Khatoun Salma, a Lebanese national poet who was killed along with her husband in an Israeli airstrike that targeted their home in the Tallet al-Khayat neighborhood of Beirut Wednesday, 8 April.

Rasha al-Amir, publisher of Dar al-Jadeed, announced that the bodies of Khatoun and her husband were recovered from the rubble, Thursday morning.

Lebanese journalist Maha Salma also mourned her sister Khatoun on her Instagram account, writing: “My dear sister is in God’s care. May God grant me patience in the pain of her loss and the burning of my heart and soul.”

Poet and playwright Yahya Jaber wrote a tribute to Khatoun on Facebook, saying: “Yesterday, the Israeli airstrike cut down a poet with its sharp scissors, a poet of delicate Arabic.” Under the rubble, the conjunction “waw,” the plural “waw,” the feminine plural “nun,” the feminine suffix “ta,” the definite article “al-“: a massacre of language at the hands of language. Jaber attached a picture of the building where Khatoun lived to his post, saying:

“Here is the Khayat Hill building, and here on one of these balconies, we used to stay up late with Khatoun and her husband, Muhammad Karsht, in the late 198s, spinning yarns of laughter and sewing memories. We would recite poetry and remember our city, Tyre, and love Beirut, the capital.”

Lebanese poet Majida Dagher wrote on her Facebook page in mourning for Khatoun: “Under the rubble of her house in Khayat Hill, they found a poet lying among her shattered rhymes. The death of a poet in an airstrike on Beirut makes you feel that war is very, very close. The sound of bones breaking has become louder, and the smell of blood deeper.

Salma fell from the heights of poetry before she could bid farewell to ‘the last inhabitant of the moon.'” She thought Beirut was her tent, Beirut the roof of her poem, where she would hide, “embracing a woman waiting” for the dust to settle. But the dust became the tent of a new Beirut, a Beirut weeping, broken, martyred.

Salma, who studied Arabic literature at the American University of Beirut, published two collections of poetry, “I Embraced a Woman Waiting” in 2009 and “The Last Inhabitants of the Moon” in 2012, both with the Lebanese publishing house Dar Al-Jadeed. She first gained recognition in the 1970s, during her secondary school years, when she won a poetry prize. Later, at the beginning of this century, she became known in cultural circles for her relatively small but distinguished poetic output and her academic pursuits, which included studies in Sufism and Sufi mystics.

She combined profound knowledge with poetic sensitivity. She left her mark on the Lebanese cultural scene with a unique poetic voice, manifested in her literary works that carried the pain of humanity, exile, and memory. With her tragic passing, Lebanon loses a literary and human figure who wrote of the wound in a language that resembled nothing but truth.

News

350 Palestinian Kids Held in Israeli Jails

CrossFireArabia
April 16, 2026

The Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education announced, Thursday, about 350 Palestinian children are currently held in Israeli jails.

This statement was made in a statement by the ministry on the eve of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, which falls on 17 April of every year.

The ministry stated the arrest of students and their denial of their right to education constitutes a systematic policy pursued by Israel, which continues to target them.

The ministry affirmed that the issue of prisoners “will remain present in the conscience of the Palestinian people and at the heart of the educational mission, especially with the continued targeting of students.”

It explained approximately 350 children are being held in Israeli prisons under “harsh conditions that violate international laws and conventions,” and are subjected to policies including nighttime arrests, harsh interrogations, solitary confinement, denial of education, medical neglect, and ill-treatment.

It added that based on documented testimonies, a number of children were arrested from their homes at night, handcuffed and blindfolded, while others were prevented from continuing their education and detained in conditions lacking the most basic necessities.

These practices are a “flagrant violation” of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and that the targeting of students are not isolated incident, but part of a policy to undermine their awareness and future.

Ministry officials stress the arrest of students constitutes a “direct attack” on Palestinian education system and an attempt to sabotage the future of generations, affirming their continued support for imprisoned students and commitment to strengthening their resilience.

Further, they called on international and human rights organizations to assume their responsibilities and work to stop the violations, demanding the immediate release of all prisoners, especially children and school students, and ensuring their safe return to their studies.

The Ministry affirmed that education will remain a “tool for survival and development” despite the challenges.

Palestinians commemorate “Prisoners’ Day” every year with events and marches in solidarity with prisoners in Israeli jails. This day was designated by the Palestinian National Council in 1974.

More than 9,600 Palestinians are currently imprisoned in Israel, including 350 children and 73 women. They suffer torture, starvation, and medical neglect, which has led to the deaths of dozens, according to Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations. Anadolu