The Financial Times, the Guardian, and the Times reports that Iran has announced that it will increase its capacity to enrich uranium in the light of US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approved plans to boost production of uranium hexafluoride, which is fed into enrichment machines to make fissile material for use in power plants or atomic weapons. The Iranian authorities also notified the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN monitoring body, that the country would recommence manufacturing parts for the centrifuges used in the enrichment process. The announcement drew an angry response from Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is meeting Theresa May in London today. He has argued vociferously for ending the nuclear deal and promised that he would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons under any circumstances.

The Times has published a column by diplomatic editor Roger Boyes who argues that “Israel must decide how it wants to fight Iran”. He writes that Netanyahu told German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “’Israel will not permit Iran to gain nuclear weapons’. But how does he intend to make good that pledge? That is the missing component in his road show and it’s what Theresa May needs to hear from him today before deciding whether to side with France and Germany in trying to preserve the status quo, or join the Trump administration’s attempts to pile pressure on Tehran.”

The Times reports that slowly and steadily Netanyahu is winning allies in his struggle with Tehran. In a whirlwind round of diplomacy, he is weakening Europe’s resolve to keep up its end of the bargain in the nuclear deal with Iran.

The Telegraph and the Daily Mail via AFP report that Yisrael Katz, Israel’s Intelligence Minister, called for a military coalition against Iran if the Islamic Republic was to defy the world powers who signed a nuclear deal with Iran. “If the Iranians don’t surrender now, and try to return” to unsupervised uranium enrichment, “there should be a clear statement by the President of the United States and all of the Western coalition,” he said. The message should be that “if the Iranians return” to enriching uranium that could enable them to build a nuclear bomb, “a military coalition will be formed against them,” Katz told Israeli public radio.

BBC News Online, the Sun, the Guardian and the Daily Mail report that Argentina has cancelled a World Cup warm-up match with Israel, apparently under political pressure over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. Argentina striker Gonzalo Higuain told the ESPN sports channel on Tuesday the game had been cancelled. “They’ve finally done the right thing,” Higuain said in an interview. The Israeli Embassy in Argentina tweeted to confirm that the football friendly between the two countries was off. Media reports say Netanyahu called Argentine President Mauricio Macri in an attempt to salvage the friendly tie, due to be played in Jerusalem on Saturday. News of the cancellation was met with cheers in Gaza, where at least 120 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces during recent riots. In Ramallah in the West Bank, the Palestinian Football Association issued a statement thanking Argentina striker Lionel Messi and his colleagues for the cancellation. “Values, morals and sport have secured a victory today and a red card was raised at Israel through the cancellation of the game,” said chairman Jibril Rajoub. The match, which was to be Argentina’s final game before the start of their World Cup campaign in Russia later this month, was set to be played at Teddy Stadium in West Jerusalem.

The Independent reports that Israel trolled Iran’s supreme leader with a Mean Girls animated image after he threatened to “eradicate” the country. The Israeli embassy in the US poked fun at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in response to a series of bombastic tweets in which he described the fellow Middle Eastern nation as a “malignant cancerous tumour”. In reply, the Israeli embassy taunted Ayatollah Khamenei with a meme from the 2004 US teen comedy film, in which Rachel McAdams’s character Regina George asks: “Why are you so obsessed with me?”

BBC News Online reports that Jordan’s King Abdullah has ordered the country’s new Prime Minister to conduct a review of a controversial new tax bill, following days of protests. Education Minister and former World Bank economist Omar al-Razzaz has replaced former Prime Minister Hani Mulki, who resigned on Monday. In the letter appointing Razzaz to form a new government on Tuesday, King Abdullah said that the cabinet “must carry out a comprehensive review of the tax system” to avoid “unjust taxes that do not achieve justice and balance between the incomes of the poor and the rich”.

The Times and the Daily Mail report that Palestinians have sent kites carrying coal embers and burning rags across the Gaza border with Israel to set fire to farmland and forests, a new tactic that an Israeli minister said should be countered with “targeted assassinations”. Nobody has been hurt by the fires but 2,250 acres of fields and nature reserve land, parched after a dry winter, have been burnt. Gilad Erdan, the Israeli security minister, called the kite flyers terrorists and said they should be shot by snipers.

The Daily Mail via AP reports that on Tuesday the IDF said the fatal shooting of a female Palestinian paramedic in the Gaza Strip last week was unintentional, an admission that added new fuel to a debate over the army’s open-fire policies. Razan Najjar, 21, was shot last Friday while trying to evacuate wounded people during a mass demonstration near the Israeli border. Announcing the results of an initial examination, the military said “a small number of bullets were fired during the incident, and that no shots were deliberately or directly aimed toward her.” It said the investigation was continuing, and the results would be passed to the military advocate general.

The Daily Mail via AFP reports that Israel has already been credited with making the desert bloom. Now it hopes to make it boom with tourists. Seeking to bolster tourism to its vast and largely undeveloped Negev desert region, Israel is promoting luxury camping trips, Bedouin hospitality and challenging outdoor activities like dune surfing. The Israeli Tourism Ministry says that it now seeks to grow the Negev’s share of total Israeli tourist revenue from the present five percent to 20 percent within two to three years. It also aims to increase the number of Negev hotel rooms from 2,000 to about 5,000 within six to seven years.

The Daily Mail via AP reports that after decades of planning and delays, Israel is opening the doors of a new national natural history museum in the city of Tel Aviv, a facility that aims to increase scientific education despite religious opposition to the theory of evolution. The ultra-modern ark-shaped edifice is set to open in July alongside the Tel Aviv University campus and houses over 5.5 million specimens of species from around the globe. But the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History places special emphasis on the flora and fauna indigenous to the Holy Land and Middle East.

All the Israeli press report on Argentina’s decision to cancel a friendly match that was scheduled to be held this coming Saturday in Israel. Yediot Ahronoth and Kan Radio claim that the national Argentinian team decided to cancel the match in response to intense political pressure from Palestinian officials and BDS activists, as well as threats to the families of Argentina’s players, while opposition figures in Israel blamed Netanyahu and Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev for their insistence that the game, which was originally supposed to be played in Haifa, be played in Jerusalem.

Maariv’s Ben Caspit reports that UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov has drafted a “large-scale plan… for the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip”. Caspit reported that the plan involves building factories and infrastructure for the rehabilitation of Gaza in the Sinai Peninsula and possibly in the Gaza Strip itself, using funds that the UN will raise from the international community. A high-ranking Israeli source claims that “Mladenov has been working hard and incessantly on a large Marshall Plan that is based partially on the plan that was presented in the past by the coordinator of government activities in the territories, Maj. Gen. Poli Mordechai” Barring any last minute changes, the Security Cabinet is scheduled on Sunday to discuss a plan to improve the situation in Gaza in order to ease the humanitarian situation in Gaza and to avert a humanitarian crisis there. Also in Maariv, Defence Minister Lieberman clarified that while Israel was looking into ways of alleviating the civilian suffering in Gaza, no arrangement would be implemented before the issue of the Israeli MIAs and the civilian captives in Gaza was resolved. “We’re working to improve [the situation], but there are three obstacles to overcome: Hamas, Abu Mazen and the issue of the captives and MIAs.” Yediot Ahronoth commentator Alex Fishman argues that the comments by Lieberman revealed the principled differences of opinion between him and the IDF General Staff in all that pertains to Israeli policy on the Gaza Strip.

Israel Hayom assesses that Islamic Jihad is pushing for an escalation at Tehran’s instructions.

Haaretz reports on Netanyahu’s visit to Paris, with French President Emmanuel Macron telling the Israeli PM that the Jerusalem Embassy move led to people dying and didn’t promote peace.

Kan Radio News reports that the Kulanu Party is formulating a comprehensive plan for investing in the Golan Heights. The plan was drawn up in the last few months by Deputy Minister Michael Oren and it will be called “Golan net,” similar to other plans promoted by the party in the past. The plan is projected to cost a few billion shekels over the course of several years and it is meant to double the number of residents in the Golan Heights to 100,000 within ten years.

The Times of Israel reports that the Shin Bet Security Agency yesterday announced that it has uncovered and thwarted the operations of a terrorist cell directed by a Syria-based terrorist that had planned to attack VIPs in recent weeks. The main suspect, 30-year-old Israeli Arab Muhammad Jamal Rashdeh, allegedly received his orders from members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), a Syria-based Palestinian terrorist group that fights alongside Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. According to Shin Bet statement, his investigation revealed that “he was directed by foreign-based terrorists and that he had planned to commit significant attacks against a variety of targets including VIPs such as Prime Minister Netanyahu and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.”