Smoke rises after an Israeli strike, amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran continues, in southern Lebanon, March 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer

Lebanon declared Iran’s new ambassador to the country, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, persona non grata on Tuesday and ordered him to leave by Sunday, as relations with Tehran sharply deteriorate amid tensions over the Iranian regime’s continued support for Hezbollah and interference in Beirut’s affairs. 

Lebanese Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi announced the decision, accusing Tehran of violating diplomatic norms and interfering in Lebanon’s security, amid the regime’s backing of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.

I instructed today the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants to summon the Iranian Chargé d’Affaires in Lebanon to inform him of the decision to withdraw the agrément for the designated Iranian Ambassador, Mohammad Reza Shibani, declare him persona…

— Youssef Raggi (@YoussefRaggi) March 24, 2026

Even though Sheibani served as Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon in the 2000s, he was only reappointed to the role in February and had not yet presented his credentials.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised Lebanon’s move, calling it a “justified and necessary step against the state responsible for violating Lebanon’s sovereignty, for its indirect occupation through Hezbollah, and for dragging [the country] into war.”

“We call on the Lebanese government to take practical and meaningful measures against Hezbollah, whose representatives still serve as ministers within it,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.

I welcome the decision of the Lebanese Foreign Minister to expel the Iranian ambassador-designate from Lebanon.
This is a justified and necessary step against the state responsible for violating Lebanon’s sovereignty, for its indirect occupation through Hezbollah, and for…

— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) March 24, 2026

This latest diplomatic escalation comes after a week of high-level meetings between Lebanese officials and regional leaders, many from countries that have faced Iranian missile and drone attacks or uncovered Hezbollah-linked networks on their soil.

Experts say the move also serves as a diplomatic signal toward Israel, as Beirut seeks to show a firmer stance against the Iranian proxy’s terrorist activities within the country ahead of possible future negotiations with Jerusalem

Last week, Raggi condemned the discovery of Hezbollah terrorist cells in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, expressing Lebanon’s solidarity with both states and reiterating that all military and security operations conducted by the Iran-backed group remain banned under Lebanese government authority.

The Lebanese diplomat also condemned Iran’s attacks on Saudi Arabia, warning that continued escalation by Tehran risks widening instability across the Gulf and further threatening regional security and economic cooperation.

“By targeting Arab and Islamic countries, Iran is attempting to hijack their security and peace and trade them for its own opportunistic objectives,” Raggi said during a diplomatic visit to Riyadh.

“The most dangerous aspect of these attacks is that they are directed against countries that have consistently pursued a policy of de-escalation with Iran. These are countries that have always adhered to good neighborly relations, extended bridges of cooperation, and strived to prevent the region from sliding into conflict … What message is Iran sending to our region when moderation is rewarded with aggression?” he continued. 

In an interview with Saudi outlet al-Hadath on Sunday, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam also condemned Iran’s role in the conflict, saying “the war was imposed on us,” and accused its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of directing Hezbollah’s military operations from behind the scenes.

“These people have forged passports and entered the country illegally,” the Lebanese leader said.

“Is it our role to provoke [Israel] or to avenge the death of [Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]? That is not the role of Lebanon. This war is by definition the war of others on our soil,” Salam continued.

Earlier this month, the Lebanese government formally declared Hezbollah’s military operations illegal, though the army has so far refrained from intervening to halt the group’s military activity in the country’s southern region, even as Israeli strikes continue across the area.

“I am not calling for a confrontation with Hezbollah. On the contrary, I want to avoid such a confrontation. But I do not accept yielding to Hezbollah’s blackmail, and I ask the group to respect government decisions,” Salam told al-Hadath.

“Ending this conflict in Lebanon is our top priority, and we are deploying every necessary diplomatic effort, including our proposal for direct negotiations,” he continued.

On Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that Israeli forces will deploy across southern Lebanon up to the Litani River and crease a “security zone” until the threat of Hezbollah is removed, saying they would “control the remaining bridges and ‌the security zone ‌up to the Litani” and create a “defensive buffer.”

In recent weeks, Israel has conducted strikes targeting Hezbollah, particularly south of the Litani River, where the group’s operatives have historically been most active against the Jewish state.

For years, Israel has demanded that Hezbollah be barred from carrying out activities south of the Litani, located roughly 15 miles from the Israeli border.

According to Katz, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are now moving into Lebanon to establish what he described as a “forward defensive line,” targeting Hezbollah infrastructure and destroying buildings he said were being used as operational “terrorist outposts.”

“The principle is clear: Where there are terror and missiles, there will be no homes and no residents, and the IDF will be inside,” he said.

Since Hezbollah joined the conflict in support of Iran at the beginning of the month, Israeli officials report the group has carried out over 900 coordinated attacks, showing a notable rise in cross-border activity and an expansion of operations across the region.

Wes Streeting, the British secretary of state for health and social care, is seen in Westminster as he appears on Sunday politics shows, London, England, United Kingdom, Oct. 26, 2025. Photo: Tayfun Salci/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

The United Kingdom on Tuesday announced a series of reforms to empower its General Medical Council (GMC), a key regulatory body, to act forcibly in removing bigots who endanger patients.

The move followed several high-profile cases both in the UK and around the world involving medical practitioners promoting antisemitic beliefs online and even threatening or boasting about their hate for Jewish people as well as Israelis.

John Mann, who serves in the House of Lords and as the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, was tasked in October with reviewing the severity of antisemitism in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and exploring methods to counter it in October.

“There are just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said at the time, directing Mann to “root out this problem and ensure perpetrators are always held to account.”

The results of that investigation led to the new reforms unveiled on Tuesday — changes described by the UK government as “key” and “the most significant overhaul of the regulation of medical professionals since 1983.”

Specifically, UK Secretary Wes Streeting and his Department of Health and Social Care focused on three main changes.

First, the GMC should “retain its existing right to appeal decisions made by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) to the courts, ensuring there remains a robust check on fitness to practice outcomes.” The MPTS adjudicates on complaints made against doctors.

Second, the Professional Standards Authority (PSA), which oversees all health-care regulators, will gain expanded authority to challenge decisions from the MPTS.

Third, regulatory bodies must now share information with the PSA when requested, a move intended to provide greater scrutiny of regulatory decisions and potential times to intervene.

“Racism, including anti-Jewish racism, has no place in the health sector or our NHS, and those who engage in it should face swift and meaningful consequences,” Mann said in a statement. “For too long, the system has been too slow and too cumbersome to deliver that.”

The GMC’s chief executive and registrar, Charlie Massey, called the reforms a “long-awaited step” and explained how the changes would work.

“Patients rightly expect assurance that doctors, PAs, and AAs are safe to practice and can be held to account if serious concerns are raised,” Massey said. “These proposed reforms will allow us to respond more quickly and flexibly when patient safety is at risk. They will also allow us to further improve our efficiency and effectiveness, while at the same time enabling us to help patients navigate the complaints and concerns process more easily.”

Mann said the reforms “will help deliver change” and added he was “pleased” the government moved quickly to act on his recommendations.

The UK health-care system has been riddled with cases of alleged antisemitism over the past several months,

The case of Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, particularly drew public attention. In November, Aladwan was suspended from practicing medicine in the UK for 15 months over social media posts denigrating Jews and celebrating terrorism.

Aladwan had called online for the ethnic cleaning of Jews and celebrated the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. She also described Israelis as “worse than Nazis” and Hamas operatives as “oppressed resistance fighters, not terrorists.”

The anti-Israel activist also made explicitly antisemitic claims, such as labeling the Royal Free Hospital in London “a Jewish supremacy cesspit” and asserting that “over 90% of the world’s Jews are genocidal.”

On a Feb. 7, 2026, episode of the “Blood Brothers” podcast, Aladwan called on Muslims in the countries around Israel to wage a violent jihad.

British law enforcement had arrested Aladwan on Oct. 21, charging her with four counts related to malicious communications and inciting racial hatred.

Aladwan’s arrest followed the GMC’s clearing her to continue treating patients, finding that her conduct had not done anything to “undermine public confidence in the medical profession” and that her comments did not “amount to bullying or harassment.” The MPTS panel concluded that “a reasonable and fully informed member of the public would not be alarmed or concerned” by her being allowed to continue treating patients.

However, following widespread backlash, the GMC said it had re-referred Aladwan’s case to the MPTS for “an interim orders tribunal,” adding that such referrals are made when an interim order “is necessary to protect the public or public confidence in doctors during an investigation.”

The 15-month suspension came about two weeks after Streeting called it “chilling” that some members of the Jewish community fear discrimination within the NHS, amid reports of widespread antisemitism in Britain’s health-care system.

Other incidents in the UK included a Jewish family fearing their London doctor’s antisemitism influenced their disabled son’s treatment. The North London hospital suspended the physician who was under investigation for publicly claiming that all Jews have “feelings of supremacy” and downplaying antisemitism.

Avishek Das / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect

Arabic-language Wikipedia is riddled with systemic bias and extreme terrorist propaganda, a new investigation shows, raising serious questions about the reliability of one of the world’s most widely used information sources and exposing millions of readers worldwide to potentially harmful content.

On Tuesday, the World Jewish Congress’s Institute for Technology and Human Rights released a report revealing that Arabic-language Wikipedia content repeatedly violates the platform’s core neutrality rules, specifically in articles covering the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Extremist influence runs deep in major Wikipedia articles, with 25 to over 50 percent of citations drawn from Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist propaganda sources, spreading radical narratives and terror-supporting content to millions of readers worldwide.

The World Jewish Congress (WJC)’s latest findings also reveal that the terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are often described as legitimate resistance factions, while attacks on civilians are labeled “martyrdom operations.”

Some articles go further, not only referring to designated terrorists as “martyrs” but also celebrating suicide bombings and attacks on civilians as historical “achievements.”

“This report demonstrates that one of the world’s most trusted knowledge platforms is being systematically manipulated to promote extremist narratives,” Yfat Barak-Cheney, executive director of WJC’s Institute for Technology and Human Rights, said in a statement.

“When terrorist propaganda and hate-driven narratives are allowed to masquerade as neutral information, the consequences extend far beyond Wikipedia itself. These distortions shape public understanding and views of Jews and Israelis across the Arabic-speaking world,” she continued.

In one of its most recent controversies, Wikipedia came under fire last month after a human rights group allegedly linked to Hamas began training Palestinians to edit pages on Israel and the war in Gaza, raising fears of anti-Israel propaganda and antisemitic content on the platform.

According to WJC, the newly released report shows that manipulated Wikipedia content is creating worldwide risks by influencing public discourse and the AI systems that millions rely on, allowing biased information to extend far beyond the site itself.

The report recommends that technology companies and search engines put safeguards in place when using Wikipedia content for AI training and search systems until meaningful reforms are implemented.

“We call on [the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates the Wikipedia website,] to take urgent action to restore neutrality and accountability on Arabic Wikipedia, including enforcing existing neutrality standards, removing administrators who enable extremist propaganda, and implementing centralized monitoring mechanisms for terrorism-related content,” the statement read.

Last year, the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, opened an investigation into the Wikimedia Foundation, demanding answers over concerns that hostile foreign actors are exploiting the online encyclopedia to insert anti-Israel or antisemitic framing designed to sway audiences.

Months earlier, the US Justice Department warned the Wikimedia Foundation that its nonprofit status could be jeopardized for possibly violating its “legal obligations and fiduciary responsibilities” under US law. 

Specifically, US officials expressed concern about accusations that the online encyclopedia has spread “propaganda” and allowed “foreign actors to manipulate information” while maintaining a systemic bias against Israel.

“Wikipedia has long presented itself as humanity’s shared knowledge repository,” Barak-Cheney said in a statement on Tuesday. “Ensuring that this knowledge remains factual is particularly critical as emerging AI platforms increasingly rely on multilingual information sources to formulate responses to user queries.”