The Financial Times, the Telegraph, BBC News Online and the Independent report that Russia has stepped up its warnings against US military action over last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria. “We may be standing on the verge of very grave and tragic events,” Vasily Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, said late on Tuesday night. “I would once again implore you — refrain from those plans that you have in mind for Syria.” The Telegraph reports that Prime Minister Theresa May has given her strongest signal yet that Britain would support US President Donald Trump in military action against the Syrian regime, as the two leaders resolved “not to allow the use of chemical weapons to continue”. May spoke to both Trump and the French President Emmanuel Macron by telephone, during which all three agreed that President Bashar al-Assad had shown “total disregard” for international laws against the use of such weapons. Whitehall sources suggest May would prefer to have the backing of Parliament in any decision to join a military response against Syria, but with both Trump and Macron eager to strike swiftly, that option is unlikely to be open to May. Julian Lewis, the Conservative chair of the Commons Defence Select Committee, said that while Governments might have to act first and seek MPs’ approval later if the UK was under attack, a strike on another country was another matter. Conservative MP Bob Seely said the “right to debate should rest with Parliament”.

The Guardian, BBC News Online, the Times, City AM,  Huff Post, Middle East Eye and LBC radio all report that the leader of the Israeli Labour Party, Avi Gabbay, has said he will cut ties with Jeremy Corbyn and his office over the handling of antisemitism, but would preserve the link with the party as a whole. BICOM CEO James Sorene told LBC the announcement was “a powerful signal that [the Israeli Labour Party] wants action by Jeremy Corbyn”. Gabbay said in a letter sent to the British Labour Party leader on Tuesday that it was “my responsibility to acknowledge the hostility that you have shown to the Jewish community and the antisemitic statements and actions you have allowed”. Gabbay said he was instigating a “temporary suspension” of relations with Corbyn but not severing the official link between the two parties, saying they had “a long history of friendship” and citing better relations with former prime ministers Harold Wilson, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The Independent, Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph and BBC News Online report that Israeli ministers have defended a group of soldiers filmed laughing and cheering as a sniper appears to shoot an unarmed Palestinian man on the Gaza border. The brief video appears to have been filmed by an Israeli soldier through a pair of binoculars and captures the moment a sniper shot an unidentified Palestinian near the border fence which separates Israel from Gaza. The man is standing still in the video and does not appear to be armed.

The Telegraph and the Financial Times report that Russia blamed Israel for a missile attack on a Syrian air base on Monday morning, which came after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad triggered international outrage by carrying out a suspected chemical attack in a besieged suburb of Damascus. Russia said Israel launched eight missiles, five of which were shot down, from outside of Syrian airspace. At least 14 fighters, including Iranians, were killed in the early morning strike, according to the monitoring organisation the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Syria also accused Israel of carrying out the strike.

BBC News Online and the Guardian report that Iran’s currency, the rial, lost some 20 per cent against the US dollar in two weeks as Iranians rushed to hedge against depreciation of their assets. Some fear an imminent collapse of the nuclear deal and return of economic sanctions.

The Guardian published an article by Peter Beaumont who argues that Israel has misjudged Russia in Syria and that the consequences could be grave.

Metro reports that after the biggest ever Eurovision Song Contest preview event, Israel Calling 2018, all the talk is on the host entry. Netta’s first live performance of Toy proved why Israel is the red-hot favourite to land the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 crown.

The Israeli media is dominated by tension in the north, with Haaretz reporting that the security establishment is bracing for a possible Iranian response to the attack on the T4 base in Syria, a story also covered by Yediot Ahronot and Maariv. Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman is widely quoted as claiming that “we won’t allow an Iranian entrenchment in Syria, whatever the price. To agree to that would be like agreeing to place a noose around our neck, and that isn’t going to happen”.

In Maariv, Ben Caspit quotes senior security officials as saying: “If the Iranians take action against Israel from Syrian territory, the ones to pay the price will be Assad and his regime. The Assad regime and Assad himself will disappear from the map and from the world if the Iranians truly do try to harm Israel or its interests from Syrian territory. We would advise Iran not to try that because Israel is determined on this issue to go all the way.”

One Israeli assessment is that Iran will try to retaliate against the attack on Saturday night, which they have ascribed to Israel from inside Syrian territory, either by means of Iranian weapon systems that are brought into Syria from Iran or by “borrowing” weapon systems owned by Assad’s army.

Haaretz reports that the target in Syria allegedly hit by Israel was a large aerial compound built by Iran. On a similar theme, Ehud Yaari and Roni Daniel write in Mako that the “ferocity of the Russian and Iranian reactions to the attack in Syria that was ascribed to Israel would seem to indicate that the target that was struck was not just another shipment of missiles of the kind that Israel, according to numerous foreign reports, has attacked several times in the past… The target of the attack apparently was equipment that would have been able to disrupt or impede the IAF’s ability to operate in Lebanese and Syrian airspace. Israel’s freedom of action in the air and its accurate intelligence are the Iranians’ weak spot in their efforts to entrench themselves in Syria and Lebanon.”