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Iran is capable of producing fissile material for use in a nuclear weapon within "one or two weeks," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday. News of Iran's capabilities follows the recent election of President Masoud Pezeshkian, who has said his goal is to "get Iran out of its isolation," and who favors reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and global powers. Blinken said that "what we've seen in the last weeks and months is an Iran that's actually moving forward" with its nuclear program. The United States unilaterally withdrew in 2018 from the Iran nuclear deal, which...

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez was found guilty Tuesday of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes — including 1-kilogram gold bars — in exchange for using his powerful post to enrich and protect three businessmen and the Egyptian and Qatari governments. The bombshell jury verdict was delivered in Manhattan federal court after about 12½ hours of deliberations spread over three days. It capped a nine-week trial that revealed how the senator leveraged his position as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to cater to the whims of men who showered him and his wife with...

War rooms, parts for UAV assembly, tactical drones, rockets, and machine guns were among the weapons and infrastructure located by the IDF. During raids over the last week on a Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad combat complex embedded in a former UNRWA compound, troops of the Commando Brigade’s combat team, operating under the direction of the 99th Division, located significant terror infrastructure embedded in the facility. Among the weapons and infrastructure located in the UNRWA complex were war rooms used for surveillance operations, parts for UAV assembly, tactical drones, rockets, machine guns, mortars, explosives, and grenades, the IDF added. Terror...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Friday that Israel has no intention of withdrawing from the Gaza-Egypt border, known as the Philadelphi corridor, in a hostage deal, despite media reports to the contrary. In a statement, Netanyahu said (via Government Press Office): The Reuters report, according to which, Israel has discussed the possibility of withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor, is absolute fake news. The Prime Minister insists that Israel remain on the Philadelphi Corridor. He has instructed the negotiating teams accordingly, made this clear to US representatives this week, and updated the Security Cabinet to this effect last night. However,...

Hamas has softened some of its stances in hostage talks, with intelligence assessments indicating the terror group wants a ceasefire in Gaza due to its weakening military position, the Axios outlet reported Thursday, citing Israeli and American officials. An Israeli official involved in the negotiations told Axios that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in turn, has toughened Israel’s demands for a deal as a result of this intelligence, explaining that the premier “is trying to use Hamas’s weakness to get as much as he can out of the negotiations.” “But there is a risk that he will go too far and...

A "breakthrough" has been made in efforts to negotiate a framework agreement for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas that might end months of fighting in Gaza and lead to the release of hostages, a senior Biden administration official said Thursday. "We've had a breakthrough on a critical impasse," the official said on a media briefing call, attributing the development to a shift in Hamas' stance on a framework deal, which the official said was now "fully consistent" with the U.S.-drafted agreement passed by the United Nations Security Council last month. "Now we’re on to the implementation steps," the...

Hamas leaders are planning to leave Qatar for Iraq, due to Washington's insistence that Qatar increase pressure on the terror group to agree to a prisoner swap deal. According to The National, the Iraqi government has approved the move, as well as the opening of new Hamas offices in Baghdad. The report noted that Iran will take responsibility for the safety of the Hamas officials in Iraq. In recent weeks, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh held talks with officials in Iran and Iraq, consulting about that matter, which United Arab Emirates reports say is expected to come to fruition. .....

Negotiators from the US, Egypt and Qatar have been trying for months to mediate a ceasefire and free the hostages, more than 100 of whom are believed to remain captive in Gaza. Hamas wants written guarantees from the United States for a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip in order to sign off on a US-backed truce proposal, two Egyptian security sources said. Mediators Qatar and Egypt said Hamas had responded on Tuesday to the phased ceasefire plan for an end to the eight-month war between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group, without giving...

CNN drew criticism online on Saturday after the cable news network described the Israeli military’s rescue of four hostages Saturday as a hostage “release” rather than a “rescue.” The four hostages had been kidnapped by the terrorist group Hamas from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7. The term “hostage release” was shown in CNN’s chyron with the network’s anchor Victor Blackwell using it himself, before making a correction since Hamas did not intentionally release the hostages. After discussing a scheduled press conference by Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz, Blackwell said, “That was postponed because of the release today...

Gaza-based Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar believes that “[W]e have the Israelis right where we want them,” despite massive losses to the terror organization, because of growing international pressure on Israel to stop short of victory. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Sinwar, who is likely hiding in a tunnel in southern Gaza, possibly surrounded by Israeli hostages as human shields, is happy with how the war is going — civilian casualties and all. The Journal noted: For months, Yahya Sinwar has resisted pressure to cut a ceasefire-and-hostages deal with Israel. Behind his decision, messages the Hamas military leader in...

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Yahya Sinwar has been in direct contact with Hamas leaders in Qatar, saying civilian casualties are "necessary sacrifices." A Wall Street Journal report has revealed messages penned by Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, to various Hamas officials and hostage deal mediators. According to the report, referring to the war, Sinwar recently wrote to Hamas officials negotiating a hostage deal, “We have the Israelis right where we want them.” In a message to Hamas leaders in Qatar, Sinwar presented as an example the civilian casualties during the Algerian war, affirming such...

In the lead up to the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) operation to destroy Hamas and secure the release of over 100 hostages – including 8 Americas – believed to be in and around Rafah, leaders around the world from Joe Biden to the collective leftist leaders of the European Union to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi panicked and ordered Israel to forestall its necessary means to end the war.Why did world leaders clamor for Israel to do nothing?What are they hiding?It turns out they are hiding a lot.Over one million Gazans were said to be sheltering in humanitarian safe areas...

Egyptian intelligence quietly changed the terms of a ceasefire proposal that Israel had already signed off on earlier this month, ultimately scuttling a deal that could have released hostages and Palestinian Arab prisoners, and set a pathway to temporarily end the fighting in Gaza, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing three people familiar with the discussions. The ceasefire agreement that Hamas said on May 6 it had agreed to was not what the Qataris or the Americans believed had been submitted to Hamas for a potential final review, the sources told the network. The changes made by Egyptian intelligence, the details...

JERUSALEM — Israel’s government moved Sunday to shut down the Al Jazeera Media Network’s operations in Israel, clamping down on one of the few international broadcasters providing largely uninterrupted coverage of the Gaza war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the decision followed a unanimous vote by Israel’s war cabinet, posting on Twitter/X that “the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel.” In a separate statement, he accused Al Jazeera correspondents of having “harmed the security of Israel” and said “the time has come to eject Hamas’s mouthpiece from our country.” Israel’s actions placed it in the company of...

Northern Gaza is experiencing a “full-blown famine”, the head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has said, and warned that it is “moving its way south”. In an interview with NBC News set to air on Sunday, Cindy McCain said that her remarks are based on what the WFP has seen and experienced on the ground. UN officials and aid agencies have for months warned of such a scenario. “It’s horror. It’s so hard to look at and it’s so hard to hear,” McCain told the US broadcaster’s Meet the Press programme. “What we are asking for and...

An unprecedented wave of antisemitism has been rising in the United States, including violent protests, tent encampments, harassment of Jewish and Israeli students, and aggressive anti-Israel and anti-Jewish messages. Those who monitored Qatar's covert activity in the US and its massive financial influx saw it as a natural continuation of promoting extremist agendas under the guise of supporting science and students. "Qatar had ideological goals, primarily to promote the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood," explained Dr. Charles Asher Small, CEO of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism (ISGAP), and organization Vice Chairman David Harris, in a New York...

The president’s brother, James Biden, will likely receive renewed focus from the fledgling House impeachment inquiry following disclosures about his involvement with Qatari government officials and his attempts to gain access to the country’s sovereign wealth fund. James Biden — who has already appeared for a transcribed interview with the impeachment investigators — has been scrutinized for more than a year due to his decades-long career as a lobbyist. The first brother has made tens of millions of dollars over the years by working for the tobacco and healthcare industries, among other ventures. His foray into Qatar and its sovereign...

I have long been wondering about Qatar's willingness to host Hamas' leadership post-10/7. As non-Western as Qatar is, the Emirate has been working assiduously to court Western approval and is hardly a radical Islamist state. This is not to suggest the regime is liberal or Liberal, but rather that they aren't exactly Iranian-style fanatics. The state is pretty much what you would expect in a country that is in a dangerous region filled with radicals but with an elite who are Western-educated and resolutely capitalist. I had long suspected that Western governments had given implicit approval for Qatar's hosting of...

Qatar accused Israel on Wednesday of deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza and called on the international community to put more pressure on Israel to facilitate deliveries of aid without restrictions. Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said aid provided to Gaza “is a very small part of what the residents of the strip need. There are 2.3 million people living in the complete absence of health and emergency services. More than one million live in tents in the south of the strip”. […] Speaking to the US news network CNN on Tuesday from Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, Norwegian Refugee...

Qatar, the oil-rich Middle Eastern nation that provides shelter and cash to the Hamas terror group’s top leaders, has spent nearly $6 billion since 2007 lobbying the American government and funneling cash to the United States’ top universities, funding that is generating scrutiny in Congress. With Qatar emerging as a central mediator in the United States’ attempts to reach a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, Doha’s decades-long influence peddling operation in America is raising concerns about the country’s ties to the Iran-backed terror group. Qatar has given or contracted more than $5.6 billion to 61 American schools since 2007,...