🇱🇧⚔️🇮🇱 Two more Iron Dome air-defense launchers were taken out by Hezbollah fiber-optic-guided FPV drones.

The attack took place on May 23, and Hezbollah has just released the footage.

Number of Iron Dome launchers destroyed has risen to 7 (6? one might've been a decoy)

🔗 Egypt's Intel Observer (@EGYOSINT)

🇸🇦🤝🇮🇷 Iranian opposition/monarchist news outlet, Iran International, based in London, received a 650 million pound Sterling bailout from a Saudi investment fund

The company that owns UK-based broadcaster Iran International received £650mn of debt relief from its shareholders, strengthening the balance sheet of the prominent platform for anti-regime voices.

The previously unreported debt-for-equity swap in December shored up the finances of the network, which claims to be the most watched Persian news channel and has burnt through hundreds of millions of pounds since it was founded with backing from British-Saudi investors in 2017.

It came shortly before mass protests erupted across Iran, marking the start of a turbulent period in which the regime killed thousands of demonstrators in a brutal crackdown. Weeks later the US and Israel launched a war on Iran, assassinating its longtime supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran International — which employs about 700 people globally — broadcasts into Iran from London through satellite, radio and a massive social media following. Critics accuse it of pushing a pro-war narrative and using its reach to promote Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of the last shah.

The network has not disclosed the source of its funding, a decision that has long unsettled some of its journalists, who have privately raised concerns about its editorial decisions, said a person with direct knowledge of its operations.

Iran International’s parent company, Volant Media UK, has lost more than £410mn in the past five years and it owed related entities about £482mn, according to its last set of accounts covering the financial year ending December 2024. Volant also runs a separate network called Afghanistan International.

Volant says it is editorially independent, has never received state funding from Saudi Arabia, Israel or elsewhere, and is backed by a consortium of private, commercial investors. It declined to comment on their identity.

Filings for Volant in the UK’s corporate registry show that an allotment of 648mn shares, valued at £648mn, was issued on December 13.

A separate confirmation statement shows that on the same date all of Volant’s original 50,000 shares were transferred from the British-Saudi film executive Adel Abdulkarim Alabdulkarim, who serves as Volant’s company director and secretary, to offshore company Info-Cast Cayman Limited.

The sole director of Info-Cast Cayman is Saleh Hussain Aldowais, according to Cayman corporate records consulted this month. A person with that name is the chief operations officer of state-backed Saudi Research and Media Group, the kingdom’s biggest media organisation. SRMG did not respond to requests for comment.

🔗 https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.ft.com/content/9d8dccaa-8a7d-452e-bdfc-786a07da5f8e

🇮🇱⚔️🇱🇧 New reporting from Reuters indicates that Israel has issued evacuation orders covering 20% of Lebanon, far beyond the "buffer zone" it previously announced to the Litani River.

More than half of the evacuation orders were *north* of Litani. Some evacuation orders were given for areas north of the Zahrani river.

Gaza tactics in Lebanon.

55 killed, 187 injured in Israeli attacks on Lebanon on Wednesday.

The Lebanese Ministry of Health announced today 3,324 killed and 10,027 injured across the country since March 2nd.

Over 25 people killed in Israeli attacks across Lebanon on Thursday, L’Orient Today reported.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-has-emptied-southern-lebanon-far-beyond-front-lines-2026-05-28/

🇷🇴❌🇷🇺 Romania expelled the Russian consul in the port of Constanța and closed down the Russian consulate in the city as a response to the drone attack last night.

🔗 https://www.gandul.ro/actualitate/nicusor-dan-avem-acorduri-pentru-echipamente-care-urmeaza-sa-vina-in-curand-consulatul-federatiei-ruse-se-va-inchide-20907080

🇺🇸🛢 Exxon Senior Vice President Neil Chapman warned Thursday:

“Commercial inventories of crude oil, of liquids, think petroleum, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, they’ve all run down... We’re approaching unheard of inventory levels. I mean, really, really low levels.

You can debate whether that’s going to hit those really low levels in two weeks or three weeks. Once you get to that point, then you’ll see price shoot up. I mean, I think dated Brent, most people, well, a model would say dated Brent will shoot up. Once you get to that really low inventory level, up to $150, $160.

The models would tell you that. And then what happens is when the price gets to a certain level, demand destruction brings it back into balance. Prices go so high, it becomes unaffordable. And that’s what happens. And so we’re at that level right now.

And I think crude being in this sort of $90 to $110 for the last whatever it is, six weeks, has really been mitigated by running down inventories. It can’t last forever.“

🔗 DropSite