The Rest of the World Report | May 12, 2026 — Morning Edition
The View From Everywhere Else
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THE IRAQ SECRET BASE
Before the first US-Israeli strike on Iran on February 28, Israel quietly built a military outpost in the Iraqi desert. It wasn’t there with Iraq’s knowledge or permission. When a local shepherd spotted unusual activity and Iraqi troops came to investigate, Israel struck them from the air, killing one soldier and wounding two. Baghdad complained to the United Nations and blamed the United States. The US said nothing to correct the record. Israel said nothing at all.
The Wall Street Journal reported the base’s existence Saturday, citing US officials and other sources. AFP independently confirmed it Sunday with two Iraqi security officials. The facility — carved into a dry lakebed in Wadi Hmeir, roughly 180 kilometers southwest of Najaf — served as a logistics hub for the Israeli Air Force and housed IDF special forces and search-and-rescue teams positioned to recover pilots downed over Iran. Satellite imagery dated March 8, confirmed by Copernicus Sentinel-2 data, shows a 1.6-kilometer airstrip at coordinates 31.66777°N, 42.44849°E. One AFP source said the site contained a jamming radar that Israeli forces left behind when they departed.
The base was built “with the knowledge of the United States,” per the WSJ. Israel’s Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar had signaled as much in March without naming the location, saying special forces were carrying out “extraordinary missions that can spark one’s imagination.” The base became operationally unnecessary by late March. Heavy rains and flash flooding had turned the dry lakebed to mud. Its existence was only revealed publicly on May 9, the same day the US MOU response deadline expired. i24NEWS, analyzing the timing, called the disclosure a calculated power projection message to Tehran: Israel can insert forces deep into hostile territory, defend the position when threatened, and operate with impunity. The timing was not random.
The Iraq base is not an isolated disclosure. It lands four days after the Wall Street Journal and AFP confirmed, separately, that the UAE conducted covert strikes on an Iranian refinery on Lavan Island during the same period, also unacknowledged and also denied. Two WSJ/AFP disclosures in one week have established that the US, Israel, and at least one Gulf state have been conducting offensive operations in sovereign third-party countries throughout this conflict, without those countries’ knowledge or formal consent, and in some cases while publicly denying any offensive role.
In Gaza, meanwhile, the overt dimension of the same military is expanding. Israel has called up additional reservists and announced plans to broaden its ground offensive. The IDF said it is targeting Hamas command infrastructure and weapons manufacturing facilities across northern and southern Gaza. The Gaza Health Ministry puts the death toll since the October 2025 “ceasefire” at 837 killed and over 2,400 wounded. The total since October 2023 exceeds 72,600. The expanding ground operation is proceeding on the same week that Israeli and Lebanese delegations are scheduled to meet in Washington for ceasefire talks, a word that is acquiring the same editorial weight in Lebanon as it already carries in Gaza.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Israel built a covert military base on Iraqi sovereign territory, struck Iraqi soldiers to protect it, and allowed Baghdad to blame the US for the attack. Washington knew about the base and said nothing to correct Iraq’s public account. That is not a passive role. The pattern across the Iraq base, the UAE covert strikes, and the Gaza expanding offensive is of a military operating simultaneously on acknowledged and unacknowledged fronts, with American knowledge and in some cases active support, while the American public is told only what is confirmed. Trump goes to Beijing today. The full picture of what the US and its allies have actually been doing in this war is still coming into focus.
Sources: Times of Israel / WSJ (wire — base confirmed, US knowledge, IDF special forces, shepherd incident, confirmed this session); Asharq Al-Awsat / AFP (wire — two Iraqi security officials confirmed base, jamming radar detail, confirmed this session); i24NEWS (Israel, broadly centrist — Copernicus satellite imagery confirmation, timing analysis, confirmed this session); Israel Hayom (Israel, right-leaning — Bar quote, F-15 rescue offer detail, confirmed this session)
THE MAP THAT WAS ALREADY STRUCK DOWN
Late Monday evening, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority handed Alabama officials permission to use a congressional map that federal courts had previously voided as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. The 2026 primary is in eight days. Absentee ballots have already been cast.
SCOTUSblog confirmed the ruling at 6:49 p.m. EDT Monday. The Washington Post reported the conservative majority handed Alabama “a major win” in light of the court’s April decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which severely weakened the scope of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The order means Alabama will discard its court-ordered map and revert to the 2023 map that a three-judge federal panel had struck down as racially discriminatory. That map, if used, would eliminate the majority-Black district currently held by Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, who won that seat in 2024 as a direct result of the court-ordered remedy. Governor Kay Ivey called a special session this week to authorize a new primary date if the injunction was lifted.
Alabama is not alone. The ruling has triggered a cascade across the South. Louisiana postponed its May 16 primary to July 15 to redraw its maps. Tennessee called a special session. Virginia’s Supreme Court separately blocked a Democratic redistricting referendum that could have produced four additional Democratic House seats. Republicans believe they can gain as many as 14 House seats nationally from this redistricting wave. Democrats estimate they could gain up to six.
South Carolina is the state to watch today. The Senate is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to extend its legislative session past the May 14 deadline to allow redistricting. Trump posted on Truth Social Monday night that he is “watching closely,” urging Senate Republicans to “be bold and courageous.” The target is Rep. James Clyburn’s 6th District, which Clyburn has held since 1993. A White House-endorsed map circulating at the statehouse would give Republicans a three-point advantage in the redrawn district. More than 5,000 absentee ballots have already been distributed under the current lines and would be discarded if the map changes. Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, a Republican, has publicly expressed opposition despite two personal calls from Trump, warning the new map could backfire by making currently safe Republican seats competitive. The vote requires a two-thirds majority. Whether Massey’s resistance holds, against direct presidential pressure on the day of the vote, is the question.
Outside the courthouse, the reaction was unambiguous. “I was out there in 1965 marching for the right to vote, and now we are back here in 2026 doing the same thing,” said Alabama advocate Betty White Boynton. NPR’s reporting from the Alabama special session captured activists describing a “coordinated effort to push anti-Blackness and white supremacy through the redistricting of maps” across the Deep South. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall told CNN: “The Alabama in 2026 is not the Alabama of the early 1960s. It’s a new time and a different era.”
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The Supreme Court just cleared the way for a state to use a congressional map that was struck down by federal courts as racially discriminatory, eight days before a primary in which absentee voting has already begun. South Carolina’s Senate votes today on whether to do the same, with Trump calling Republican senators personally and posting public pressure on Truth Social. The structural consequence of Louisiana v. Callais, which ROTWR reported in our Voting Rights Architecture Special Report, is moving faster than the courts that will be asked to stop it.
Sources: SCOTUSblog (primary — ruling confirmed 6:49 p.m. Monday, confirmed this session); Washington Post (US, centre-left — conservative majority framing, Callais connection, confirmed this session); Democracy Docket (voting rights specialist outlet — map details, absentee ballot timing, Figures district, confirmed this session); CNN Politics (US — state cascade, Louisiana postponement, confirmed this session); Post and Courier (South Carolina — 5,000 absentee ballots, three-point advantage, Massey opposition, confirmed this session); ABC News 4 / Trump Truth Social post (US — Tuesday Senate vote, Trump pressure, confirmed this session); NPR (US — activist quotes, Boynton quote, confirmed this session)
WHAT THE BLOCKADE COSTS TO BREATHE
Inside Iran, the Strait of Hormuz is not an abstraction about oil prices and diplomatic leverage. It is the reason wheat is running short, medicine is disappearing from pharmacies, and the government is struggling to meet payroll. The blockade has been in effect for a month. The civilian cost is now visible from the outside.
Iran is demanding a temporary ceasefire and gradual reopening of the strait, according to Euronews. Jorge Moreira da Silva, executive director of the United Nations Office for Project Services, has warned of severe shortages of food, medicine, and cash inside the country. In contacts with US mediators around the delivery of Iran’s counter-proposal, Iranian officials presented what Israel Hayom, citing sources familiar with the negotiations and noted here for its Israeli editorial orientation, described as “a bleak picture of the developing shortages, with what they described as a real fear of hunger in parts of Iran.” Iran’s unemployment has reached more than 50 percent according to the same sourcing; those still employed are earning wages that cannot keep pace with inflation. The Iranian rial has continued to lose value as oil export revenues, the state’s primary source of foreign exchange, have been cut off by the blockade.
The food picture is specific. The Al Habtoor Research Centre’s analysis, drawing on Iranian agricultural data through March, found that operational grain inventories — the wheat available for milling and distribution — represented roughly five to six months of supply at normal consumption rates. Iran’s poultry sector, which operates on a just-in-time basis for feed inputs, began forced premature culls of flocks by mid-March as corn and soybean imports stopped arriving, creating a temporary meat surplus followed by a prolonged protein shortage. Food inflation was running at 90 percent before the strikes began. It is now moving toward triple digits.
The humanitarian consequences extend well beyond Iran’s borders. The executive director of the United Nations Office for Project Services warned this week that there are “just a few weeks left to avert a potentially massive humanitarian crisis,” saying: “We may witness a crisis that will force 45 million more people into hunger and starvation.” The Council on Foreign Relations published an analysis May 6 describing the food and water dimensions of the conflict as “rapidly becoming the conflict’s most consequential terrain,” noting that Iranian strikes on Gulf desalination plants have added a water security layer to the food crisis across a region where Kuwait, Oman, and Saudi Arabia depend on desalination for 70-90 percent of their drinking water.
The US has said it is willing to allow partial passage of ships carrying wheat and basic goods, but only with guarantees that the political leadership’s agreements will not be overridden by IRGC commanders. That condition reflects Washington’s read of the internal Iranian dynamic: the IRGC, whose commanders are under financial pressure from the blockade’s effect on their own payrolls, is the hardline faction resisting a deal. The civilians bearing the cost of that standoff are not IRGC commanders.
That distinction is sharpened by a confidential CIA assessment delivered to the White House this week. The Washington Post reported that the analysis concludes Iran can survive the blockade for approximately 120 days before facing severe economic hardship, potentially longer if the regime successfully smuggles oil through land convoys. An intelligence official did not confirm the CIA conclusion but told the Post the blockade is “inflicting real, compounding damage.” The 120-day clock from the blockade’s April 8 start puts the CIA’s severe-hardship threshold around early August. That is the regime’s timeline. The civilian population is on a different one: food inflation above 90 percent, unemployment above 50 percent, and medicine shortages are conditions Iranian civilians are living with now, not in August. The CIA is measuring when the government breaks. The UN is measuring when people go hungry. Those are not the same question.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: The blockade the US Navy is enforcing is not being felt only in oil markets and diplomatic cables. It is being felt in Iranian pharmacies, grain mills, and poultry farms. The CIA says the Iranian regime can outlast it for months. The UN says 45 million more people globally could be pushed toward hunger if it continues. The US has offered a partial humanitarian carveout, wheat and basic goods, with conditions attached. Those conditions are leverage. The people waiting for medicine in Tehran are part of that leverage calculation, whether Washington says so or not.
Sources: Euronews / AP (wire — Iranian demands, da Silva UNOPS quote, fertilizer shortage, confirmed this session); Israel Hayom (Israel, right-leaning — internal food/medicine/cash crisis details, IRGC payroll pressure, confirmed this session — note editorial orientation); Al Habtoor Research Centre (UAE-based policy research — grain inventory figures, poultry sector analysis, food inflation data, confirmed this session); Council on Foreign Relations (non-partisan — desalination plant vulnerability, food/water as strategic terrain, confirmed this session); Washington Post (US, centre-left — CIA 120-day assessment, intelligence official quote, confirmed this session)
NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION
🇮🇷 Iran: 3,636+ killed (HRANA floor estimate — FROZEN since April 7; no updated HRANA report this session; Iranian Health Ministry figure as of May 5: 3,468 — methodology differs)
🇱🇧 Lebanon: 2,700+ killed and rising (Lebanese Ministry of Public Health — figure updating daily)
🇮🇱 Israel: At least 19 military KIA since Lebanon war began (AFP, May 11); at least 26 killed across all fronts (Al Jazeera tracker, as of May 5)
🌍 Gulf states: At least 28 killed (Al Jazeera live tracker — figure stable, no update this session)
🇺🇸 US military: 14 KIA confirmed (GlobalSecurity.org, May 7)
🛢️ Brent crude: $107.90/barrel (OilPrice.com, Tuesday morning, editor-confirmed)
⛽ US gas: $4.52/gallon national average (AAA, Monday)
Sourcing note: Iran casualties sourced to HRANA (US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency), a floor estimate. Iranian Health Ministry figure cited separately. Methodology differs; figures should not be treated as directly comparable.
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789