The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail cover Iran’s unveiling of the Fattah, a new supersonic missile that has a speed of between Mach 13 and 15 and range of 1,400 km, meaning that Israel is within its range. Readiness of the weapon was trumpeted at a public event yesterday morning, attended by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Hossein Salami. Iranian State TV said the missile can target “the enemy’s advanced anti-missile systems and is a big generational leap in the field of missiles… It can bypass the most advanced anti-ballistic missile systems of the United States and the Zionist regime, including Israel’s Iron Dome.”

The BBC reports Iran reopening its embassy in Saudi Arabia, seven years after the regional rivals severed diplomatic ties, and in the wake of a recent Chinese-brokered thaw in relations. After years of bloody proxy conflict, particularly in Yemen, at a meeting with his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Cape Town last Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian expressed satisfaction with the “good progress made in bilateral ties”.

The Daily Mail details the New York-based Lawfare Project seeking to prevent Fatima Mousa Mohammed, the CUNY student who made headlines after delivering an anti-Israel commencement speech at the university last month, from becoming a lawyer. “Ms. Mohammed has a history of publicly expressing prejudiced and discriminatory views, specifically demonstrating a profound animosity towards the Jewish community,” said the group. “These views are fundamentally incompatible with the ethical obligations and principles upheld by the legal profession and leave no question that Ms. Mohammed lacks the character and fitness to practice law.”

The Independent runs a feature on the purchase of a 99-year lease of some 25% of the Old City of Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter sparking fear amongst the Armenian community. The Armenian patriarchate appears to have sold the land to an Israeli-Australian developer, prompting a furious reaction from both locals and other Christian officials. “From a Palestinian point of view, this is treason. From a peace activist point of view, this undermines possible solutions to the conflict,” said Dimitri Diliani, president of the National Christian Coalition of the Holy Land.

Haaretz features an aspect of our main story, on US Vice President Kamala Harris’s criticism of the judicial reform agenda. It quotes an interview Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen gave to Public Radio, in which Cohen responded that “If you ask her what bothers her in the reform, she wouldn’t be able to name one clause that bothers her… I have heard such comments in places I’ve visited, and I asked, what exactly bothers you? No one could put their finger on it.”

Ynet covers US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh yesterday, for what a US official called an “open, candid” conversation. The two “discussed the potential for normalisation of relations with Israel and agreed to continued dialogue on the issue.” At a speech in Washington, delivered shortly before his departure, Blinken said that the US had “a real national security interest” in pressing for normalisation, but acknowledged that “we have no illusions that this can be done quickly or easily.”

Channel 12 covers Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s comments yesterday, seemingly in response to Iran’s announcement of its Fattah missile. While in northern Israel to observe an IDF exercise that is currently underway Gallant said: “I’ve heard our enemies boasting about the development of various weapons. To everything of that kind, we’ve got a better response—in the air, at sea and on the ground, in defensive and offensive means. We will know how to defend the citizens of Israel and how to deal our enemies a decisive blow if they start a war against us.” In Yediot Ahronot, Ofer Shelah argues for an Iran strategy which “bring[s] the United States back to the region by presenting a vision of a Middle East in which America’s allies, including Israel, promote and even contribute to American interests in the global battle. This will require using a different language, a different way of thinking, mothballing the explosive rhetoric that is so prevalent in our domestic political discourse—and, of course, putting the diplomatic process vis-à-vis the Palestinians back in the centre of the stage.”

Maariv features local reaction to the arrival in Paris yesterday of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Smotrich is visiting to attend a conference of OECD ministers and avoided confrontation with protesters at the airport, though demonstrators are expected to continue their protests against him during the conference. French officials and prominent leaders of the French Jewish community have announced that they will avoid meeting with Smotrich whilst he was in France, as they did on his last trip, when he caused controversy with his claim that “there is no Palestinian people.” On arrival yesterday, Smotrich visited Hypercacher supermarket, where four Jews were murdered by a terrorist in 2015, and lit a candle in their memory.

Israel Hayom covers reaction to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s plans to ease access to guns in Israel. The move has drawn wide criticism, with women’s organisations, in particular, concerned by its implications. “One-third of all the women who were murdered in 2021 were killed by legal gun owners,” read a statement by Na’amat, whose chairwoman Hagit Pe’er also said, “The answer to the raging violence in Israel isn’t to flood the country with more and more guns.” Ben Gvir’s scheme has, however, met with approval from some in the Israeli police. Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai recently called on all citizens who have gun permits and who know how to use them to carry guns in public, and one senior police officer said of the plan, “The police are in favour of anyone who is trained and able to carry a gun to do so. The number of citizens has risen; the number of gun permits can’t remain static. The threat of enemy terror activity is never-ending.” Against the notion that public gun-carrying is an effective mitigation against terror attacks, Reli Mazali, co-founder of Gun Free Kitchen Tables, an organisation that seeks to reduce the number of firearms in the public space, said, “The plan wilfully ignores the bloody reality, denies the facts on the ground and is running after front-page headlines at the expense of harming personal security for men and women in this country. The minister’s argument as if civilian firearms have stopped many terror attacks has no basis in fact and raises a lot of questions about the police’s ability and willingness to take responsibility for domestic security.”

Kan Radio reports that the Israeli Foreign Ministry is set to send further humanitarian aid to Ukraine following the recent explosion of the Nova Kakhovka dam, which has affected both energy production and drinking water supply. Officials in Jerusalem have spoken with their Ukrainian counterparts and plan to send aid as soon as possible. Haaretz reports Israel’s statement on the incident which, while avoiding mentioning Russia by name, expressed support for the “thousands of innocent civilians” affected and called on the international community to condemn the “deliberate targeting of critical infrastructure”.