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Operation Epic Fury helped improve coordination among US partners and allies in the region on air defenses and other areas. A recent Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress, which covers operations of Epic Fury from April to June, provided new details on the types of cooperation. Although the report is general, it sheds light on an important trend in the Middle East.

The report says that “US forces embedded in partner air operations centers across the region, which supported coordination, deconfliction, and synchronization of air defense efforts.”

It also discusses a Middle East Defense network, “an integrated missile defense architecture in the region – intercepted more than 6,000 OWUAS and more than 1,500 ballistic missiles that targeted US and partner forces.”

In addition, the report discusses how the US partnered with Israel. “Coordinated air and missile defense with Israel was also substantial, with US Patriot and THAAD systems operating alongside Israeli Arrow, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome systems. The United States and Israel maintained shared awareness and recurring reporting on readiness and intercept activity via embedded liaison officers in the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, known as HaKirya.”

The origins of this unprecedented cooperation grew out of foundations laid over the past few years. These include US Central Command (CENTCOM coordinating with Gulf partners and also with Israel.

Increasing cooperation throughout the Middle East

Over the last decade, Israel and CENTCOM have increasingly cooperated. This resulted in Israel moving from being under US European Command to being in CENTCOM’s area of operations. The Abraham Accords paved the way for this move because it meant Israel could not work more openly with Gulf partners. In the past, Arab countries had generally refrained from any joint exercises with Israel. This made coordination difficult, even if it occurred quietly.

Much has changed in the Middle East in the last decade. In the wake of the 2015 Iran deal, Tehran increased its role in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. At the same time, countries in the region had to deal with ISIS threats that only began to decline after 2017.

Turkey’s hostile attitude to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE shifted considerably after 2019. Other trends began to change as well. Israel, Greece and Cyprus became closer partners. While COVID reduced joint exercises, Israel, the US, and other countries still had many opportunities to train together using advanced platforms such as the F-35.

After the Abraham Accords, there was increasing discussion about how Israel might integrate with the Gulf countries to coordinate defenses. Some saw a potential Middle Eastern defense pact, or a kind of regional NATO. That would require Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with Israel. Normalization didn’t happen.

Nevertheless, in January 2022, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) published a report called A Stronger and Wider Peace: A US Strategy for Advancing the Abraham Accords.

“The report heralded the Accords as an historic breakthrough and urged the US government to seize the opportunity to start building a new Middle East defense architecture premised on bringing America’s regional partners together in common cause to counter the growing menace from Iran.”

The goal was also for Congress to help support this cooperation and support a “region-wide air defense network to help deter and defeat the escalating missile and drone threat posed by Iran and its terrorist proxies.”

The result was the Deterring Enemy Forces and Enabling National Defenses Act (DEFEND Act) of 2022.

JINSA noted in a May 2023 report called “Build it, and they will come: A US strategy for integrating Middle East air and missile defenses,” that there were opportunities to move toward a  “region-wide integrated air and missile defense (IAMD).”

JINSA noted that “animosities among US partners have historically acted as a severe constraint on their willingness to engage in the levels of intelligence sharing and cooperation that meaningful air defense integration would require.” The opportunities in 2023 were clear. Israel could work with the US and Gulf partners.

Hamas, Iran, Houthi attacks shifting sands of Middle Eastern relations

The October 7 Hamas attack was a setback to this regional integration. Iran wanted it to be a setback, and in some ways Tehran initially got its wish. Israel had to wage a grueling, long war in Gaza and then in Lebanon. The Houthis attacked Israel. Iran also carried out large direct attacks using hundreds of ballistic missiles.

The Iranian attacks and the Houthi attacks led to close cooperation between the US, Israel, and also regional partners against the ballistic missile and drone threat. This laid the foundations for what came next in 2025 and 2026.

The full extent of cooperation during Epic Fury is yet to be revealed. Nevertheless, the fact that air defense systems, such as THAAD, Patriots, and Israel’s David’s Sling, Arrow, and Iron Dome, were able to work together is important.

The US is also selling more defense systems to the Gulf. As the Gulf countries modernize their systems, more opportunities for joint cooperation will occur. In addition, there will be more chances for joint exercises and drills in the future.

The tempo of war since 2023 has largely pushed off some of these drills. It remains to be seen if Saudi Arabia will acquire the F-35. If it does, it would join Israel and CENTCOM as an operator of the 5th-generation warplane over the next decade.

The recent Lead Inspector General Report sheds light on how Iran targets countries in the region. It also shows how the US has “been helping grow the sovereign military defense of Gulf partners for decades to counter Iranian attacks and safeguard regional stability. This has included the provision of military sales, training, and information-sharing to Gulf partners.”

This is all good news. The fact that such a large number of 6,000 drone attacks and 1,500 ballistic missile attacks were intercepted further illustrates the success.

Iran has hinted that it is developing new threats. The learning curve has already shown that Israel and other countries in the region are prepared for many of these threats.

Nevertheless, the war will result in some changes. There is talk of the US shifting away from some bases in the Gulf. This could mean more deployment in Jordan or in Israel.

CENTCOM will be learning many lessons alongside Israel regarding what comes next. 

Russia carried out a large-scale disinformation campaign surrounding the Jewish pilgrimage to Uman, Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD) has claimed.

CCD is a Ukrainian government body that monitors and responds to disinformation, propaganda and information operations directed at Ukraine. It is part of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC).

A record number of Jewish pilgrims traveled to the Ukrainian city of Uman for Rosh Hashanah this year, according to local statistics. The local Cherkasy Regional Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 49,000 pilgrims had arrived in the city by the morning of September 11, while Israeli figures place it higher at 52,000.

Regardless, the number surpassed even pre-war years, which typically saw between 30,000 and 35,000 pilgrims. There was also a significantly increased proportion of non-Ashkenazi Jews – Sephardim and Mizrahim – which Ukrainian Jewish media said accounted for up to half of all visitors.

Numbers aside, the pilgrimage has been the subject of media attention for another reason: Russian fake news.

Russian-controlled TikTok accounts circulated AI videos with fake pilgrims

CCD reported that during and after Rosh Hashanah, Russia-controlled TikTok account networks circulated a series of AI-generated videos in an interview format.

In the videos, fake pilgrims claim that they are supposedly moving to Ukraine permanently.

The videos also contain fabricated claims about “payments from the Ukrainian government of 200,000 hryvnias,” “special benefits,” and even alleged plans to “make Uman an independent entity.”

CCD said the campaign is “entirely disinformation.”

It said there is no “mass resettlement” of foreigners and that this is an annual temporary religious pilgrimage, after which Hasidic pilgrims return to their home countries.

It also stressed that Ukraine has no government programs or financial payments designed to encourage foreign citizens to relocate to the country.

“The enemy’s main goal is to exploit the heightened attention surrounding the event in order to destabilize Ukrainian society from within and artificially provoke antisemitic sentiments,” it said.

Tracing the campaign

The Israel-based, Ukrainian-founded media site Nikk traced the disinformation campaign back further, to May 2019, when then-adviser to the Russian president Sergey Glazyev published a text suggesting the possibility of mass resettlement in southeastern Ukraine of residents of Israel and other Middle Eastern countries.

At the time, Israel’s Foreign Ministry described Glazyev’s comments as conspiratorial and antisemitic.

Fast forward seven years, an adviser is no longer needed to spread it, “all you need is AI and TikTok,” Nikk said.

Six months ago, in April 2026, researchers documented new activity by the Russia-linked Matryoshka network in the form of fake videos circulating claims that Ukraine was planning to ban Israelis from making their annual pilgrimage to Uman.

Alongside this appeared a fictional “Orthodox rabbi” who supposedly cursed Vladimir Zelensky over the Ukrainian-Israeli dispute concerning Ukrainian grain taken by Russia.

This same network then replaced the narrative with September’s one that Ukraine gives Jews special treatment, state money, and is preparing to settle them there permanently.

Additionally, on August 17, the Russian-language Telegram channel Fikrat Shabanov published a long article describing the expected arrival of approximately 30,000 Hasidim as a “rehearsal” for the future mass resettlement of Jews in Ukraine

While there is no evidence that this Telegram channel is operated by the Russian state, the content is relevant.

The Telegram article said coordination between police and border guards was described as training for the “absorption of millions of new Israelis,” while the 2026 pilgrimage was called the “last major rehearsal” before the year 5788, which begins in autumn 2027.

It also said Ukraine closed its borders to some people while Jews are allowed to arrive in the tens of thousands.

None of this is based on fact, and there is no Israeli government decision or Ukrainian government document agreeing to transferring territory or a program for resettling millions of people.

Nikk, however, spoke of how actual facts on the ground could be slightly altered to fit the ‘resettlement narrative.’

For example, on September 5, Ukraine’s National Police announced the arrival of Israeli police officers in Uman. The Israeli officers patrolled the areas where Hasidic pilgrims were staying and visiting together with Ukrainian police, emergency services and the National Guard.

Nikk noted that within the disinformation environment, open coordination between two law-enforcement systems “becomes evidence of preparations for mass resettlement.”

“Ukraine and Israel coordinating security for tens of thousands of Israelis – true. Does that mean they are training to resettle “millions of new Israelis” there? No.”

Another fact is partially true: there is a Ukrainian state program involving a payment of exactly 200,000 hryvnias, but it has nothing to do with Hasidim, Israelis, or foreigners wishing to settle in Uman.

Essentially, the trajectory looked like this: April 2026, fake reports circulate that Ukraine supposedly planned to prevent Israelis from entering Uman; May 2026 Russian AI networks promoting “population replacement” and antisemitic narratives; August 2026 “Heavenly Jerusalem” and a supposed “rehearsal” for the resettlement of millions; September 11, “privileged Hasidim” and a Russian state media report about the “takeover” of Uman; and September 14, an AI-generated pilgrim supposedly “confessing” to receiving money and planning to remain in Ukraine.

“There is no need even to invent one enormous fake story; it would quickly collapse,” said Nikk. “It is much more effective to take real Uman, real pilgrims, real police officers, a real Ukrainian payment of 200,000 hryvnias, and real everyday tensions surrounding Rosh Hashanah, and then slightly alter the relationships between them.

“The result is a story that never happened.”

American influencer Jake Paul said that US citizens should be allowed access to rocket launchers and called for an amendment to the Constitution during an interview at the sixth annual All-In Summit in Los Angeles last week.

“I think we need an amended and updated Constitution. It was written in 1781, I believe, and life is just so much different now,” said Paul. “Especially, I think the Second Amendment was made so that if the government was doing ridiculous things to us and controlling us in harmful ways, citizens could overthrow them.”

“That’s obviously what happened and why people came to the United States initially. They revolted, fought back, and became independent.”

“And so I think, as weapons systems get more advanced, a pistol or a shotgun is not going to be able to overthrow the government if we, the people, decide that the United States government is taking advantage of us and that we maybe need to be able to bear more advanced weapons systems as citizens.”

“Drone EMPs, RPGs, potential anti-helicopter [weapons]. I don’t know what it is,” said Paul.

“But if the government can just come in with autonomous robots and take us all out, and we are now powerless, essentially the Second Amendment is just a hobby now for people to go and shoot guns.”

“So I don’t know what it looks like, but I feel like in the very short term, near future, there are going to be such systems that will make us powerless against our own government. And I don’t think that is a smart thing, because then, at some point in time, we must be obedient as American citizens.”

Antifund’s @jakepaul says the US needs a new Constitution

“The 2nd Amendment was made so that if the government was doing ridiculous things to us and controlling us in harmful ways, that the citizens could upthrow them.”

“As weapons systems get more advanced, a pistol or a… pic.twitter.com/hfUl5mFUeF

— Molly O’Shea (@MollySOShea) September 18, 2026

Jake, Logan Paul visit Pentagon, meet with Hegseth

The interview came days before he and his brother, Logan, arrived in Washington on Thursday to visit the Pentagon.

During the visit, the two met with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, US Vice President JD Vance, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and US service members.

Bessent welcomed Paul to the Treasury Department in a post to X/Twitter, calling his “path from content creator to entrepreneur and professional boxer [is] a distinctly American story.”

The Pentagon’s decision to invite the brothers has drawn considerable criticism online. In response, Paul took to X to address the backlash.

“America is not a spectator sport,” said Paul. “Apparently Logan and I going to Washington meeting with the Vice President, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of War, and other leaders of this country really pisses some people off.”

America is not a spectator sport

Apparently Logan and I going to Washington meeting with the Vice President, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of War, and other leaders of this country really pisses some people off

Good.

Because I’d rather be in the room asking… pic.twitter.com/f3p71yDNgu

— Jake Paul (@jakepaul) September 21, 2026

“Good. Because I’d rather be in the room asking questions, learning, challenging ideas, building relationships, and figuring out how I can help than sitting behind a screen telling everyone else what they should be doing,” he said.

“Washington doesn’t belong to commentators. It doesn’t belong to celebrities. It doesn’t belong to politicians. It belongs to the American people. And whether people like me or hate me, I’m going to keep showing up.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday the US is open to speaking with Iranians at the UN General Assembly, but no meeting is currently scheduled.

“We’re open to that. I don’t think anything is scheduled at this point, but we’re certainly open to something like that, especially if it has the prospects of leading to something positive and ultimately achieving the goal of what this is all about,” Rubio said in an interview with NBC’s “Today” show.

“And that is the fact that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. They just simply can’t.”

‘It would be a disaster for the world,’ Rubio tells FOX News

In similar Tuesday statements made to FOX, Rubio reiterated his assertion that Iran “must never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.”

“At some point,” he told FOX, “somebody has to do something about it, otherwise it is going to happen. And then imagine North Korea, but in the Middle East. It would be a disaster for the world.”

Rubio also claimed that Iran is suffering the economic effects of the US naval blockade and “severe, cripping sanctions,” while maintaining that the US is still open to “the diplomatic path.”

“You never close the door to agreements or diplomacy,” Rubio said, “because sometimes things change within the system. Maybe the system changes, maybe something happens from within, or they make a pragmatic decision for the time being that it is better for them to go down the diplomatic path.”

Social media “looksmaxxing” influencer Clavicular, whose real name is Braden Peters, has been charged in Massachusetts with one count each of rape, drugging a person for sex, and providing alcohol to a minor, The Hollywood Reporter reported Tuesday.

The charges stem from an alleged May 23, 2025 incident. Prosecutors filed the case in a Cape Cod courthouse on September 8, with Peters’s arraignment scheduled for October 14. The allegations appear to overlap with claims in a separate civil lawsuit filed against Peters in Florida in April involving Alorah Ziva, whose real name is Aleksandra Vasilevna Mendoza.

According to CBS 4 Miami, Mendoza, 18, accused Peters in the civil complaint of battery, fraud, and sexual misconduct. She alleged that Peters injected her without consent during a 2025 livestream with Aqualyx, a fat-dissolving substance not approved by the FDA, and accused him of nonconsensual sexual encounters at his parents’ Cape Cod home while she was intoxicated and still a minor.

The Bulwark said it could not obtain additional records in the criminal case but reported that the timeline appeared to correspond with the Florida lawsuit. Peters moved in July to dismiss several counts in the civil case.

Peters’s representative Mitchell Jackson disputed The Bulwark’s reporting and said Peters had not been served and the outlet is exaggerating, Jackson said in a text message Monday night, according to NBC News.

Clavicular’s Israel visit draws controversy

Peters also drew attention in Israel this summer, visiting the country in July, seven months after a January 17 video showed him singing along to Kanye West’s antisemitic song “Heil Hitler.”

During the visit, Peters walked out of an interview with Channel 13’s Bar Shem-Ur after being questioned about the video.

“I’m here for a good thing, and you are trying to drag me into the mud and damage my reputation. This interview is over,” Peters said before leaving.

The visit also prompted disciplinary action against Shira Braun, an IDF soldier in the Spokesperson’s Unit who appeared on Peters’s livestream. Braun was formally reprimanded, removed from her position, and reassigned as a cook, Israeli media reported.

Shir Perets contributed to this report. 

The Islamic Republic is responsible for gross human rights violations committed in January in response to the widespread outbreak of protests, the United Nations’ Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran concluded in a report published Monday, which also condemned the United States and Israel for attacks against the regime.

Though the Islamic Republic failed to fully cooperate with the mission, denying it unhindered access to the country as it did following the crackdown on the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests, the mission concluded that Tehran had violated individuals’ rights to life, freedom from torture and ill-treatment, personal security and liberty, a fair trial and an effective remedy, as well as the rights to peaceful assembly and association, freedom of expression, equality and non-discrimination, privacy and health.

The mission sent 47 information requests to the Islamic Republic, of which only 12 received responses, none of which provided the information requested.

Despite the Islamic Republic’s failure to cooperate with the investigation and its internet shutdown hindering access to information, the mission gathered testimonies from 73 individuals, satellite imagery, video and photographic material, as well as information from credible human rights organizations and forensic and military experts.

After the Islamic Republic restored internet connectivity to no more than 30% of pre-shutdown levels, access to online spaces and communication remained heavily restricted. A tiered system requiring prior authorization and identity verification prevented unauthorized users from accessing certain systems, which the mission said had “appeared to strengthen its control over digital space.”

Internet shutdown blocked communications to family, emergency services

The internet shutdown meant that, at the height of the violent repression of the protests on January 8 and 9, Iranian civilians were deprived of the ability to communicate, access information and seek medical or emergency assistance. Health workers told the mission that the shutdown made it difficult to reach colleagues, coordinate treatment and follow up with sick or wounded individuals. Protesters wounded by security forces also struggled to arrange medical treatment.

Families inside and outside Iran were unable to learn the fate of their loved ones during the demonstrations, leaving them anxious about their well-being. Additionally, when war broke out with the United States and Israel on February 28, the internet shutdown left the civilian population without access to timely, potentially lifesaving information.

Though the full extent of the regime’s violence was not determined by the mission, the report confirmed that the crackdown on the January protests resulted in at least three and a half times as many injuries and five and a half times as many deaths as the repression of the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

This demonstrated, the mission concluded, that the suppression “went beyond a simple continuation of familiar patterns and represented a marked escalation in the use of lethal force and mass arrests.”

The Islamic Republic acknowledged the deaths of only 3,038 individuals and the wounding of 25,000, more than 50% of whom it said required surgery, while attributing most of the casualties to “terrorists.”

However, based on information from credible organizations and discrepancies in figures provided by the regime, the mission concluded that the true death toll was significantly higher than the figures reported by Tehran and that security forces were responsible for the violence.

Tear gas, shotguns fired at protesters

Security forces routinely fired tear gas before firing shotguns loaded with metal pellets at protesters who did not present an imminent threat, the mission found. Evidence collected from witnesses and healthcare workers, including medical records, showed that protesters sustained metal pellet injuries to the eyes, head, chest and upper body, “suggesting that security forces intended to maximize the damage caused by this type of ammunition.”

Officials from Farabi Hospital in Tehran confirmed that between January 8 and the morning of January 10, more than 700 people had sought treatment for eye injuries, some of which resulted in severe or total loss of vision. One health professional told the mission that the injuries indicated that shotgun rounds had been fired from close range at protesters.

Another healthcare worker described treating protesters who were injured after tear gas canisters were fired directly at their faces from close range.

Medical staff, wounded protesters and other unnamed sources told the mission that security forces monitored hospitals to search for and arrest those they believed had been demonstrating. In some cases, medical personnel were also arrested for providing the treatment. The apparent presence of security forces also led to many avoiding medical treatment, with some dying from their wounds as a result.

Further highlighting the pattern of violence, the mission was able to verify a video posted online on January 10 showing individuals firing on fleeing crowds from the roof of a police station in Tehran. The individuals appeared to be firing assault rifles, and there was no evidence to suggest an imminent threat. Another series of verified videos showed individuals firing from a roof outside a police station in Karaj, again where there was no evidence of an imminent threat.

Witnesses also described hearing sustained automatic gunfire during demonstrations in Tehran, Karaj, Mashhad and Abadan and seeing protesters collapse after being shot, some from the back, suggesting that they had been fleeing when they were killed.

Children were not spared from the violence. The mission confirmed that a 16-year-old boy was shot in both eyes with metal pellets, resulting in the loss of vision in his right eye, while another boy was blinded in one eye after being shot with metal pellets at close range. The second boy sustained pellet wounds to the upper half of his face and the back of his forearm, “indicating that he likely had adopted a defensive posture before being shot.”

Small children treated for shotgun wounds

One healthcare professional also told the mission that they had treated children as young as 10 for shotgun pellet injuries, while credible sources told the mission that children as young as five were injured during the demonstrations. An unnamed human rights organization also provided the names of at least 221 children who were killed during the protests, including by lethal ammunition. According to the organization, six of the children were under the age of 10, and two were only two years old.

The mission was also able to confirm that at least three individuals were sentenced to death despite being minors at the time of the alleged offense. Two 17-year-old boys were sentenced to death alongside Hosseinipour Hesarlou, now 19, for allegedly setting fire to the Seyyed al-Shohada Mosque, which allegedly resulted in the death of two individuals.

The mission was told the death sentences were upheld, and a lawyer representing one of the defendants complained that he had been barred by the judge from representing his client.

Witnesses who were detained by the security forces also recounted to the mission the torture and ill-treatment they had witnessed or experienced. One individual, who was detained in Karaj, recounted how he had been kicked in the mouth when he questioned why he was being arrested, and another described being detained in a continuously lit room in solitary confinement for around one month, where she was deprived of prescribed medication and subjected to regular interrogation sessions lasting up to six hours each without the presence of a lawyer.

Families of the regime’s victims also told the mission that authorities had refused to release the bodies of their loved ones, in some cases demanding payment or refusing to return the body until the family signed a document with false information that would support the regime’s narrative of the events. 

Concern is growing in Israel over the possibility that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could use his visit to New York for the UN General Assembly to promote Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan as a candidate to become the next UN secretary-general, potentially even announcing the move during his Tuesday UNGA address.

Sources familiar with the matter told The Jerusalem Post that the possibility of putting Fidan forward for the top UN post is on the table and has been considered more than once.

Turkish officials, however, strongly denied that any such move is planned.

The possibility carries particular significance as the race to succeed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres enters a crucial stage without a consensus candidate.

Guterres’s second term expires on December 31, with his successor due to take office on January 1. Under the UN Charter, the secretary-general is appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

Erdogan arrived in New York on Sunday for the UNGA and has already begun a series of diplomatic meetings. Fidan is also in New York and has been holding meetings with foreign counterparts on the sidelines of the UNGA.

The timing is particularly sensitive because the succession race remains unsettled.

In the third secret straw poll held by the Security Council on Friday, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan emerged as the narrow front-runner, receiving nine “encourage” votes, five “discourage” votes and one “no opinion.”

Guyana’s UN Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett followed with eight votes encouraging her candidacy, six discouraging it and one expressing no opinion.

At this stage, the ballots do not distinguish publicly between votes cast by the Security Council’s five permanent members and those cast by its 10 elected members, meaning it is not yet known whether any of the leading candidates face opposition from a veto-wielding power.

The field became even more fluid over the weekend when former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet withdrew her candidacy following a weak showing in the latest poll.

New candidates can still enter the race, leaving open the possibility that Security Council members could ultimately coalesce around a late entrant if the current field fails to produce a consensus.

Fidan is Erdogan’s longtime confidant

Fidan, 58, has for years been regarded as one of Erdogan’s most trusted figures in Turkey’s foreign policy and national security establishment.

Before becoming foreign minister in 2023, he spent 13 years as head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, known as the MIT. He previously held several senior government positions, including serving as a special representative to the prime minister and president and as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors.

The concern in Jerusalem comes against the backdrop of Fidan’s sharply critical stance toward Israel since the October 7 massacre and the Israel-Hamas War.

Fidan has repeatedly accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza and has described what he calls “Israeli expansionism” as a threat extending beyond the region. In April, he argued that such policies had become a global security concern and said the international community needed to act to stop them.

He has also maintained direct contacts with senior Hamas officials as part of Turkey’s involvement in Gaza ceasefire diplomacy.

Fidan met members of Hamas’s political leadership in Ankara in December for talks on implementation of the Gaza ceasefire, and Turkish officials have repeatedly argued that Hamas has shown willingness to advance ceasefire arrangements while accusing Israel of failing to fulfill parts of previous agreements.

Relations between Israel and Turkey have deteriorated dramatically in recent years. Ankara halted direct bilateral trade with Israel in May 2024, while Erdogan and Fidan have made the Gaza war a central focus of Turkish foreign policy and international diplomacy.

Race to become next UN secretary-general remains unresolved

The formal process to select the next UN secretary-general began in November 2025, when UN member states were invited to submit nominations.

Candidates are formally nominated by member states before being considered by the 15-member Security Council. Council members have been conducting confidential straw polls in which they mark candidates as “encourage,” “discourage,” or “no opinion.”

Ultimately, a successful candidate needs at least nine votes in the Security Council and must avoid a veto from any of its five permanent members, the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. The Security Council then recommends one candidate to the General Assembly for formal appointment.

There is a strong, though non-binding, expectation within the UN that the next secretary-general should come from the Latin American and Caribbean regional group, which has not held the post for decades. There has also been a significant push for the UN to appoint a woman as secretary-general for the first time in its history.

Neither convention is legally binding, however, and the eventual choice will depend above all on whether a candidate can secure agreement among the Security Council’s major powers.

If Turkey does decide to nominate Fidan, he would therefore enter the contest relatively late and outside the regional expectation surrounding this year’s race.

But he would also enter at a moment when three rounds of Security Council straw polls have yet to produce a candidate capable of commanding clear consensus, leaving the door open for the race to take an unexpected turn.

Doha is attempting to publicly distance itself from Hamas, denying that it knowingly funded the group, as attacks on its oil infrastructure have pushed Qatar to pursue financial relationships with Western groups that are less willing to engage with a country associated with the Palestinian terrorist organization, Dr. Ariel Admoni, a researcher of Qatari policy at Ariel University and the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Admoni spoke with the Post after Qatar’s International Media Office issued multiple statements rejecting accusations that Doha had directly funded Hamas. The office claimed that the allegations originated from a “sustained campaign involving pro-Israel media, lobbyists, lawyers, think tanks and so-called research organizations.”

The office further argued that any Qatari funds that reached Hamas did so as a result of Israeli failures, while maintaining that Qatar had coordinated with international partners to ensure humanitarian aid reached Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Admoni said the statements represented a noticeable change in tone for a country that hosts Hamas’s leadership, whose state-funded media reportedly operates under a directive to portray Hamas sympathetically and which has allegedly spent years financing the terrorist group, according to Hamas’s own documentation.

According to Hamas documents seized by Israel and obtained by The New Yorker, Hamas officials directly thanked Qatari leaders for financial support, describing Qatari grants as “the main artery of the Hamas movement.” Qatar has rejected the documents as “falsified and fabricated information.”

Doha had also rejected accusations that it supported Hamas financially in the past, notably denying US House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer’s 2024 claim that Qatar had paid Hamas $30 million per month since 2018.

Though Qatar has long denied the allegations, Admoni noted that the seriousness of its response, including threats of legal action and countering with allegations that Israel’s far right is using Doha to “deflect attention from domestic political failure,” was a sign that Qatar wanted to “rebrand itself.”

Admoni: Qatar relying on American financial systems

“This is a delicate time for Qatar because right now they rely on American financial systems,” he explained, highlighting recent meetings Qatar has held with potential investors.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheihk Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani met with Alphabet and Google President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat and Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates on Monday, on the sidelines of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Doha’s Foreign Ministry confirmed.

It was also announced on Monday that the Qatar Investment Authority and J.P. Morgan Asset Management agreed to a $20 billion strategic partnership spanning public equities and private credit, expanding the fund’s investment ties with the US.

With Qatar’s energy-based economy still suffering from Iranian attacks, “they need the American financial system by their side,” Admoni said, adding that Doha was particularly aware of the “importance of narrative” and image when engaging with American industry giants.

Iran’s attacks knocked out 17% of Qatari LNG in March alone

The hydrocarbon sector contributed around 60% of Qatar’s GDP in 2024, making it a significant resource for the Qatari economy, and Iran’s attacks in March alone knocked out 17% of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue, according to statements made by QatarEnergy’s CEO and Energy Affairs Minister Saad al-Kaabi to Reuters.

Though Admoni said that Qatar’s “vulnerability is showing” as a result of the war, and “Qatari money seems less persuasive than before,” he maintained that he had not witnessed a drastic change in attitude from the West, which still seems willing to accept Qatar’s “peace-maker” image. Still, he insisted that the excuse Qatar has so far used to maintain ties with Hamas would continue to be threatened as international media probes deeper into the “terror kingpin” funding the Islamist groups.

Nazi salutes. A swastika flag. Fights in the stands. They were all part of the scene at a recent combat sports event in Orlando that pitted an Israeli Jew against an avowed racist with SS bolts tattooed on his chest – and ended with the latter mocking his defeated foe as “a short little f***king Jew prick.” 

The condemnation that followed the Aug. 29 event was aimed in a number of directions: at Paul Miller, the fighter who performed the Hitler salute after his win; at the attendees who returned the salute and displayed the Nazi flag; and at the Kia Center, the city-owned arena best known as the home of the NBA’s Orlando Magic, which hosted the fight night. 

Politicians were shocked by the display and wrote statements condemning the event — but the Nazi symbols were nothing new for Duel, the online cryptocurrency casino behind the promotion.

Founded last year and billing itself as “the first casino that gives a f***,” Duel has used Nazi symbols and racist language in its gambling programming. And its owner, Ossi Ketola, a Finnish high-stakes poker player, is himself a self-described First Amendment absolutist with his own history of racially charged comments. He celebrated his devotion to free speech just one week after the Orlando event, in a social media post featuring a photo of himself with Donald Trump Jr.

One of Duel’s blackjack dealers, Nelli Levonyan, has worn a Nazi outfit with a swastika armband on multiple occasions while dealing cards on the blackjack stream. In a skit from the blackjack table that circulated online, a man, dressed up as an Orthodox Jew and holding an Israeli flag, attacked Levonyan by throwing coins at her. Levonyan’s character then sprayed something at the Jewish man — “Gassing!” he yelled — and said, “Go away from me, you dirty k***.” 

In another blackjack stream, the dealer imitated one of the two San Diego mosque shooters, who killed five people in May. Levonyan has sung the lyrics to “Heil Hitler,” the Ye (formerly Kanye West) song, during a stream. She has also appeared alongside Miller while hosting the card game.

Earlier this month, Ketola joined a neo-fascist rally in Helsinki staged by the far-right party Sinimusta Liike, or the Blue-and-Black Movement. Ketola, who was dressed in a SpongeBob costume, livestreamed the rally and posted the footage with the title “Saving white Finland.” Speaking about immigrants, he said that people “need to be educated about how the genes work, and how these people realistically cannot be integrated here.” 

Ketola heard off-camera yelling Nazi phrase ‘sieg heil’

He then attended an anti-fascist rally held elsewhere in Helsinki simultaneously, prompting left-wing demonstrators to chase him and his video crew back to their car. Ketola could be heard off-camera yelling “Sieg heil” as they drove away.

“What f–king violent pussies. Imagine what f***ing leftists,” Ketola said after taking off the SpongeBob costume. “You see? These right-wing people, white people, the most friendly people. I just walked there, we didn’t say anything, we didn’t do anything — we go to these leftists, and they try to f***ing attack us. F***ing dumb stupid f***ing n***ers.”

The following night, Ketola attended the dinner with Trump and about a dozen others in Tallinn, Estonia, hosted by Studioworks, a company that develops software for online casino sites. Ketola posted a photo of himself and the US president’s son on Instagram, and wrote that he discussed “Duel, the state of the world and current political climate with him and his staff.”

“The political situations in our respective countries have become increasingly similar, with a rising tide of violence and radical leftism in both America and Finland,” Ketola wrote. “As a firm 1st Amendment absolutist and an individual with many values that coincide with Republicans and [US President] Donald Trump himself, this was a great chance to align on many things important to both.”

Neither the Trump Organization, Miller, Ketola, nor Levonyan responded to requests for comment.

Duel was founded last summer and has featured prominent personalities on its streams, including boxing great Mike Tyson — who told Levonyan, “You dumb b***h, you like Hitler” — and the “looksmaxxing” influencer Braden Peters, known as Clavicular. 

The fight night that it organized and promoted in Orlando was its first foray into combat sports and made for the company’s biggest splash yet. It also caught the attention of at least one watchdog and a local lawmaker.

“Right after the event there was a lot of criticism put on the venue, which didn’t have much responsibility in this, and not enough eyes on the people who actually made it happen,” Mark Pitcavage, senior fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

State Rep. Anna Eskamani called for the Florida Athletic Commission to revoke Duel Arena’s license. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed the commission’s members, who have not commented on the event. The governor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from JTA. 

DeSantis’ immediate predecessor and fellow Republican, US Senator Rick Scott, posted that the event was “utterly disturbing” and that “Antisemitism has NO PLACE in Florida.”

Pitcavage said that combat sports are “a draw for far-right extremists and white supremacists” who often view themselves as “white warriors.” He noted, however, that they make up a small portion of the participants and fans. 

“It’s not at all surprising that some of them will get into various types of what they would consider manly, or warrior-like athletics,” he said.

Duel’s involvement in the Orlando event put the intersection of online gambling sites and far-right ideologies on his radar. “It’s something we’re starting to look into,” Pitcavage said. He noted that Duel is registered and licensed offshore on the autonomous island of Anjouan, making it more difficult to investigate. 

Eskamani, who is running for mayor of Orlando, told JTA that Duel should not be allowed to operate in Florida, citing reasons that she says would beat the city’s First Amendment defense.

“These offshore cryptocurrency — I mean, there are so many red flags in how this entity is operating that from a purely financial security position for a public venue, I would not want to accept a reservation,” Eskamani said.

Duel set and promoted the matchups on the fight card, which included the kickboxing match between Miller, who goes by the moniker “Gypsy Crusader,” and his fellow influencer Ben “King” Azoulay. 

Miller known for use of racial slurs, denigration of minority groups

Miller, who has made numerous appearances on Duel’s casino games streams, has been known to use racial slurs and denigrate minority groups in his online content. He was convicted in 2021 of felony weapons charges and sentenced to 41 months in federal prison. He had posted about initiating a race-based civil war.

During a livestreamed conversation with Adin Ross, a Jewish streamer who has interviewed or maintained friendly relationships with controversial figures including Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, Miller said there are no exceptions in his feelings toward Jews.

“I respect you for having an opinion that is different from the Jews,” Miller told Ross. “But that doesn’t mean that I would not laugh if I see you in a gas chamber.”

Clips from the Orlando event showed Miller performing the Nazi salute twice after his victory — something he has done after winning previous fights — prompting a number of attendees to do the same. One fan brought a Nazi Germany flag and waved it in his seat. 

“He’s not a tough guy, he’s not an alpha male. He’s a short little f***ing Jew prick,” Miller declared about his opponent Azoulay in his post-fight interview, eliciting some cheers from the crowd. 

US Rep. Randy Fine, the Jewish Republican firebrand whose district includes Palm Coast and Daytona Beach, posted a video of the Nazi flag being unfurled and wrote, “This is not a joke, and it is not edgy. The guy who did this is old enough to know exactly what that symbol means and to know that it’s not funny. We will make an example out of him.”

Asked what he meant by making an example of the attendee, Fine told JTA, “We put the video out so he would be recognized and be held publicly accountable. Most folks are unwilling to associate with Nazis.”

Cheering Miller on ringside was Jake Shields, a former mixed martial artist-turned far-right influencer who has espoused conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel. Shields wore a shirt reading “FCK ISRL.” Myron Gaines, a prominent streamer who has spread similar conspiracy theories and performed Nazi salutes, was in the stands and told Miller before the fight, “You fight for the goyim,” according to clips shared on social media.

Pitcavage said he has been tracking a trend of the far-right getting involved in combat sports since the late 1990s, as mixed martial arts and the UFC became more mainstream and amateur gyms became widespread and increasingly accessible. 

The ADL has flagged that in recent years “active clubs,” or “localized white supremacist crews” that gather for fight training, have become more common. The ADL writes that these groups “see themselves as fighters training for an ongoing war against a system that they claim is deliberately plotting against the white race.”

As news outlets covered backlash to the Orlando fight night, Duel issued its own statement saying it was horrified “to learn that a group of viewers was displaying symbols of hate at our event.” The company criticized the city’s “shocking remarks that the ‘First Amendment’ applies and that ‘free speech’ is permitted at their arena,” and pledged to “work with local activist groups to push back on this and ensure that this kind of hate does not fester ever again.”

The statement appeared to be an example of Duel trolling with deadpan, buttoned-up language. Before the fight, Ketola released a similar promotional video that appeared to condemn Miller’s views. “Paul Miller is a Nazi. Being a Nazi is bad,” Ketola narrated, over footage of him shaking his head. “We cannot support this. The only reason we are allowing him to fight is to ensure the good guys get to add another victory to their record.”

Then, after Miller’s win, Duel’s Instagram account left a comment that told a different story.

“The good guys won,” Duel wrote.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday threatened to expose “the truth” about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at the United Nations General Assembly in a video shared on X/Twitter.

“Shame on you, Mr. Mamdani,” Netanyahu said. “Shame on you for supporting the Hamas terrorist monsters who butchered our people. Shame on you for inciting riots against New York Jews.”

“I’m coming to the UN. I’m going to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers, and I’m going to tell the truth about you.”

ממדאני – אני בא לאו״ם כדי להילחם על האמת של החיילים הגיבורים שלנו – וכדי לחשוף את האמת עליך! pic.twitter.com/141PPbSFHm

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) September 22, 2026

Netanyahu is slated to arrive in New York on Thursday morning, address the UNGA at 2 p.m., before returning to Israel soon afterward.

His visit was originally planned to stretch several days and include a visit to Texas and a meeting with US President Donald Trump. 

Israeli Consul-General in New York Ofir Akunis echoed Netanyahu’s sentiment in his own X post, calling out Mamdani for spreading antisemitism. 

“Mamdani continues doing the only thing he knows how to do: incitement and the spreading of lies and blood libels against the State of Israel: classic antisemitism,” Akunis wrote. “Once again, not a single word about the savage and monstrous massacre of October 7 committed by the barbaric people who invaded Israel from Gaza.”

“The Prime Minister of Israel will arrive in New York City, address the UN, and tell the entire world who the Ayatollahs, Hezbollah, and Hamas truly are: enemies of the United States and the West.”

Mamdani continues doing the only thing he knows how to do: incitement and the spreading of lies and blood libels against the State of Israel: classic antisemitism.

Once again, not a single word about the savage and monstrous massacre of October 7 committed by the barbaric…

— Ofir Akunis (@Ofir_Akunis) September 22, 2026

Mamdani again calls for Netanyahu’s arrest

The comments follow a Monday CNN interview with Mamdani, where the mayor again called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to honor Netanyahu’s arrest warrant.

Mamdani told CNN that he believes Netanyahu to be “a war criminal and an architect of a horrific genocide of the Palestinian people.”

In July, Mamdani said he was investigating the possibility of arresting Netanyahu based on the ICC’s warrant, concluding after a few days that he could not legally do so, but still warning that Netanyahu was “not welcome” in New York City.

“I do believe that that is something that should be honored,” he told CNN, “because what we want to see, and we’ve been talking about this today, is a faith in our politics, a faith in accountability.”

He added, “If the International Criminal Court deems someone worthy of an arrest because of a violation of those laws, then who are we to say that anyone should be above that? And I think very clearly that everyone should be held accountable to it.”

Tzvi Jasper contributed to this report.

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa arrived in New York on Monday ahead of the United Nations General Assembly. This is an important trip for the Syrian leader, during which he will meet with the leaders of other countries and will also seek to increase investment in Syria.

At the same time, the prime minister of Iraq, Ali al-Zaidi, also traveled to New York, hoping to push a message about how Iraq will rein in Iranian-backed militias.

Taken together, Iraq and Syria form a key bloc in the Middle East. Both are large and populous countries. Both countries were also divided by conflict up until recently. For instance, ISIS once controlled a swath of both Iraq and Syria. These countries are the heartland of the historic Levant.

Iraq is the land of the two rivers, which played a role in the birth of civilization in the region. Syria is also an ancient land, with ruins from the Roman and Crusader eras. Both Baghdad and Damascus played key roles in Islamic history.

Today, Iraq and Syria are quite different. Iraq suffers from Iranian influence and Iranian-backed militias. It is suffering economically because it can’t export as much oil due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Syria, by contrast, is trying to get back on its feet after many years of civil war. Syria is closer in ties to Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Syria recently embraced by US as Israel opposes new government, Turkish influence

It has also been embraced by the US over the last year. Israel, in contrast to the US and other countries that embraced the new Syria, has tended to oppose the new Syrian government and threaten Turkey’s role in Syria. Aware of Israel’s military strength and clout in the US, Syria is being careful not to create more tensions with Jerusalem.

Syria’s delegation to the UN confab includes “minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, Emergency and Disaster Management Minister Raed al-Saleh, and a number of other officials.” Syrian state SANA media says that “during his visit, President al-Sharaa is scheduled to deliver the Syrian Arab Republic’s address before the General Assembly, hold talks with a number of world leaders and senior officials, and meet members of the Syrian community in the United States.”

Syrian state media also noted that. “President Ahmad al-Sharaa met with members of the U.S. Congress in New York on Tuesday for talks on bilateral relations, developments in Syria and regional and international issues.” It added that “Foreign and Expatriates Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani and other officials attended the meeting. The talks addressed relations between Syria and the United States and the situation in Syria, as well as the latest regional and international developments.”

Meanwhile, The National in the UAE noted that “US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi discussed the importance of disarming militia groups in Iraq, as the deadline to bring arms under state control was pushed from the end of this month to June next year.”

This is an important meeting. Rubio and the Iraqi prime minister “agreed on the importance of Iraq dismantling terrorist militias, preventing attacks from Iraqi territory, and fully exercising its sovereignty”, a statement from the US State Department said.

The goal is to get Iraq to rein in the Iranian-backed militias, many of which are designated terrorist groups by the US. Zaidi has now said that he wants to see the arms under state control by June 2027, according to an interview with The New York Times.

“Militia groups have largely pushed back against the deadline to disarm. Two prominent pro-Tehran armed groups, Asaib Ahl Al Haq and Kataib Imam Ali, alongside cleric Moqtada Al Sadr’s Saraya Al Salam faction, claim they have placed their weapons under state authority. But hardline factions – mainly Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah Al Nujaba – have said they will not disarm until foreign troops leave,” The National added.

Zaidi’s US meetings aimed at getting support for Iraq

Zaidi’s meetings in the US, with Rubio and others, are aimed at getting support for Iraq. He wants more investment and hopes for a new partnership with the US after US forces leave.

Both Iraq and Syria are at a crossroads. The meetings at the UN suggest they are seeking a new future for the region. If they succeed, then that will stabilize a large swath of the Middle East between Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. If they can’t bring home the investment they need, difficult times lie ahead. 

Rita Flores, a Russian activist, artist, and former member of Pussy Riot, told The Guardian that she was forced to work with Russia’s FSB to spy on others in her left-wing circle

Flores, whose real name is Margarita Konovalova, said the FSB recruited and handled her for at least three years. In a recent video with her lawyer, Dmitry Zakhvatov, she admitted to providing the Russian security service with personal information about her fellow artists and activists. She said the wanted to go public with her story so others in a similar predicament would feel bold enough to break their ties with the FSB.

“For the first time in years, I feel calm. All this time I was dreaming about getting out and being able to talk about it all,” she told The Guardian.

The Guardian noted that its reporters could not corroborate her claims, but that there have been numerous cases over the years in which the FSB has recruited activists and artists to spy on opposition groups.

Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist punk artist collective that protests against the Kremlin with guerrilla art performances in public spaces. Many of its members have been exiled from Russia or imprisoned.

How did the FSB recruit a Pussy Riot member?

Flores was recruited in 2023 when police searched her house, which had become a semi-routine occurrence, after she made an Instagram post criticizing the war in Ukraine.

Two police officers introduced themselves as FSB agents, threatened to open a criminal case against her for the Instagram post, and insinuated that they would kill her mother if she did not agree to work with them.

“I believed them. I believed they could do everything they said they would … My fear was too great. I was so worried for my family and also for myself,” she told The Guardian.

She claimed that, as a reward for signing cooperation papers, she received a cash payment of around 40,000 roubles.

Her first task was to collect information on other opposition activists in the same circles as her.

She was not supposed to tell anyone about her arrangement, but she told “about 20 people” anyways, claiming that it was because she enjoyed gossiping. However, she neglected to inform many of the people she was meant to report on. She claimed she established contact with them using pre-planned pretexts designed to keep them away from her and from sharing personal information.

She noted that because of the war in Ukraine, many opposition-minded artists had fled the country, and those who remained understood the threats they faced for speaking out.

“Moscow is booming; restaurants, bars and clubs are opening, and there are a huge number of events. But those people who understand things have empty eyes and speak empty words.

“People who have stayed in Russia have accepted the rules of a game. You go to a gallery, and every artwork may as well come with a sign saying ‘we were forbidden from saying anything’ … there are artists who used to make strong statements, and in 2026 they are drawing flowers in a vase.”

The officers who recruited her in the 2023 raid became her regular handlers. Flores said that they tended to play up a good-cop, bad-cop act, and identified one as “the Jacket” and the other as Ivan. She told The Guardian that Ivan seemed friendlier and more helpful on the surface, and that he would let the Jacket make any direct threats.

“Whenever I met with Ivan and the Jacket together, Ivan was silent. The Jacket would be rude, threatening; he’d insult me as a woman. He was the devil incarnate. Then just me and Ivan would meet, and Ivan would be nice, friendly,” she told The Guardian.

“He liked to say, ‘The FSB will re-educate you, I will re-educate you, you’ll have a nice and calm life, and you’ll love Russia, have children and be an obedient wife.’”

In late Spring, Ivan and the Jacket began asking her questions about Pyotr Verzilov, an artist and activist associated with Pussy Riot who later moved to Ukraine to serve in the Ukrainian Army. He had been considered an enemy of the Kremlin for a long while, and reportedly faced an assassination attempt in 2018.

FSB’s plot to kill Russian artist Verzilov

Flores’s handlers asked her to get more information from Verzilov, including his address in Ukraine, and then to arrange a meeting with him in Serbia. FSB operatives would then travel there to kidnap and kill Verzilov. Her handlers promised her an additional 50,000 roubles a month to help with the case.

In the meantime, Flores married her partner later that summer, and told the FSB agents that he would never allow her to take a trip to go to a private meeting with another man.

She noted that before that, her handlers had banned her from leaving the country. When she met her lawyer, Zakhvatov, she realized escape would be easier than she had realized.

She claims that, to her knowledge, no one was killed or arrested because of the work she did with the FSB.

Flores left Russia last month to live in exile.

Notably, her escape was not as dramatic as some other Pussy Riot members who were forced to leave Russia in disguise or in the back of a delivery truck, but she and Zakhvatov did not disclose the details.

Since Flores’s escape, Zakhvatov has opened a secure line to others in a similar predicament. Flores said she wants to work to help others in similar situations to hers, and added that she is certain FSB’s recruitment of activists and artists is a “mass phenomenon.”

Flores claimed in a video last month that she called those whom she informed on to explain herself, as well as other old friends in Russia.

She claimed that everyone has been supportive of these conversations.

British singer and Culture Club frontman Boy George will perform at Menora Mivtachim Arena in Tel Aviv on November 4 in a 360-degree show.

George’s arrival in Israel is not particularly surprising given the support he has expressed for the country over the years. The star has performed in Israel before, and last July he released “We Will Dance Again,” a song inspired by the October 7 massacre and the Nova music festival.

The accompanying music video focuses on victims of the massacre and young people who were murdered at the festival.

The Tel Aviv concert comes at a time when performances by international artists in Israel are still far from returning to normal, making George’s decision to perform there a relatively unusual event on the local music scene in recent years.

Ticket sales will open on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at noon on the Ticketmaster website, with prices ranging from NIS 280 to NIS 799.

Boy George performs with Dana International in Israel

His last performance in Israel took place nearly a decade ago at Yad Eliyahu Arena, with Dana International among the artists who appeared alongside him.

The setlist included nine classic Culture Club songs, two new songs written specifically for the tour, and four covers. Among them, George performed the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” paired with Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side.”

Ahead of the encore, the band performed “The War Song,” after which Dana International joined George for a joint performance of “Karma Chameleon.”

Iran can reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States eases military pressure and lifts its blockade on Iranian ports, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday.

On Sunday, Iran’s military central command said it was informed the US was preparing to restart military operations with the support of regional countries, and warned this would lead to Tehran’s retaliation “without limitations and considerations.”

“The US needs to announce that it wants to resolve the issue diplomatically, make that official, and then agree on a timeline for how the process will move forward,” the senior Iranian official said, adding that the Iranian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly is in New York and has full authority to revive diplomacy with the United States.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, who left Tehran for New York on Tuesday morning, will not meet US President Donald Trump at the UN headquarters in New York, the official told Reuters.

Iranian official: Tehran delivered its proposal to US via mediators on September 16

The Iranian official said details of an agreement to end hostilities with Washington can be discussed in New York through mediators, explaining that Tehran delivered its proposal to the US via mediators on September 16.

“The UN General Assembly is a golden opportunity for the US to return to diplomacy,” the official said, adding that Tehran would welcome a revival of diplomacy if Washington takes tangible steps.

How can the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, or Hezbollah in Lebanon continue fighting enemies with vastly greater military power?

The answer is not that these movements are secretly stronger than the armies confronting them; it is that military strength and strategic endurance are not the same thing.

The weaker side often has several advantages.

First, there is a large pool of young people with too few opportunities.

Where economies cannot provide jobs, dignity, or a plausible future, an armed movement can provide money, status, comradeship, protection, and purpose.

This does not mean that poor young men inevitably become fighters – the majority do not. But it gives an organization a large potential recruiting pool.

Second, there is ideology.

Religion is often the vehicle, but it need not be. Nationalism, Marxism, ethnic identity, or revolutionary ideology can perform the same function.

Ideology transforms a military struggle into a moral one. The fighter is no longer simply fighting an enemy; he is defending his people, his faith, or his historical mission.

Third, there is institutional weakness.

When the state cannot reliably provide security, justice, electricity, water, employment, or education, an armed movement becomes a parallel society. The organization supplies services, distributes money, settles disputes, and creates a sense of belonging.

Fourth, there is outside sponsorship.

A local movement that could otherwise be contained can become a formidable strategic problem when an external power supplies money, weapons, training, intelligence, and technology.

Iran’s support for regional armed groups is a particularly important example of how a relatively poor movement can acquire capabilities far beyond what its local economy could produce.

And then comes the fifth advantage: time.

This is where the arithmetic becomes particularly cruel.

A powerful democratic country generally wants wars to be short. Its citizens will tolerate casualties for a compelling objective, but tolerance for an open-ended war tends to decline as the years pass.

Soldiers have families. Reservists have jobs. Businesses suffer. Governments face elections. The public begins asking the most dangerous question a government can hear during wartime: When does this end?

The weaker side often faces a very different calculation.

It may not need to win; it may only need to survive.

If it can survive long enough, the stronger enemy may eventually begin fighting its own domestic clock.

This creates a great strategic asymmetry: the stronger side has something to lose every day; the weaker side often turns survival itself into victory.

The longer the war continues, the more the stronger side’s military superiority is offset by political exhaustion.

This dynamic has appeared repeatedly in modern warfare. Vietnam demonstrated the enormous difficulty of translating overwhelming American military power into a political settlement. 

Afghanistan demonstrated the difficulty of defeating an insurgency whose organizational and social foundations survived successive military campaigns.

And Gaza has again demonstrated how military superiority does not automatically determine the political end-state.

The lesson is not that democracies are weak. It is almost the opposite.

The most important strategic lesson

Democratic societies possess enormous military and economic resources. But those societies also place constraints on the use of those resources. They debate, protest, hold elections, count casualties, and eventually demand results.

Their enemies understand this and use strategic patience as a weapon.

But there is another recurring advantage enjoyed by the weaker side: the hubris of the stronger side.

Military superiority creates a dangerous psychological trap. Leaders with enormous capabilities can begin to believe that they possess enormous understanding.

More often than not, they do not.

Before major conflicts, powerful states repeatedly underestimated the adversary’s willingness to fight, its ability to absorb punishment, and the depth of its social support.

Israel’s October 7, 2023 experience – the Hamas-led massacre and subsequent war – provides a contemporary warning.

Whatever the eventual findings about individual decisions and intelligence failures, the central lesson is unmistakable: a technologically sophisticated intelligence system does not necessarily guarantee correct understanding of the enemy.

And this is where hubris becomes particularly dangerous.

When an enemy appears weak, intelligence can seem like an unnecessary expense. Why devote enormous resources to understanding a movement that appears incapable of defeating you?

Because the enemy does not have to defeat you.

It only has to surprise you, then survive and wait.

The combination of demographic pressure, ideology, institutional weakness, external sponsorship, strategic patience, and the stronger side’s own political constraints creates a remarkably powerful formula.

It explains why the history of modern warfare is filled with apparently irrational confrontations in which the weaker side refuses to surrender despite overwhelming odds.

The weaker side understands something the stronger side sometimes forgets: You do not have to win the war today. You only have to make sure the other side eventually wants it to end more than you do.

That may be the most important strategic lesson of all.

The writer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Neaman Institute and an Emeritus Professor at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, where he has served in various leadership positions. He also serves as a member of the Board and as a strategic consultant to some companies and organizations.

A former Rwandan official appeared in a London court on Tuesday charged with encouraging the massacre of Tutsis and ordering six killings in the first week of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Vincent Brown, formerly known as Vincent Bajinya, is the first person to be charged in Britain over the genocide, in which more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in 100 days in massacres orchestrated by the Hutu ruling majority.

He is charged with one offense of conduct ancillary to genocide in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, between April 6 and 13, 1994 – the first week of the genocide, after Rwanda’s president Juvenal Habyarimana was killed alongside Burundi’s president Cyprien Ntaryamira in a rocket attack on their plane.

Brown also faces six offenses of conduct ancillary to murder as a crime against humanity, alleging he ordered six killings in four days, including a young mother and her baby son.

Prosecutor: Brown was Rwanda’s Family Health Department chief when genocide began

The 65-year-old appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where prosecutor Jane Stansfield said Brown was head of the Department of Family Health within Rwanda’s National Office of Population when the genocide began.

Stansfield said Brown was alleged by witnesses, including his neighbors, to have been “the leader and supervisor of physical acts of violence which were carried out by others.”

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Elbit Systems, and other Israeli defense companies are heading to Morocco’s Marrakesh Air Show next month with a broad portfolio of air-defense, precision-strike, unmanned, and space technologies, as the Jewish state seeks to deepen its position in a market long served by French and US defense companies.

Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post has confirmed that IAI, Elbit Systems, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Xtend, Shilat, Uvision, and Orbit Technologies will be officially participating for the first time in the Moroccan exhibition, which will take place October 7-10 at the Royal Moroccan Air Force base in Marrakesh. 

At the airshow, IAI will showcase its Barak air-defense solution, LORA precision-strike system, Heron MK II unmanned aircraft, OPAL collaborative-combat technology, and communications satellites. The company will also promote its aircraft conversion and maintenance capabilities. IAI said it will also use the exhibition to pursue local cooperation, industrial collaboration, knowledge sharing and technology transfer with Moroccan and regional partners.

Elbit Systems will exhibit its PULS multiple rocket launcher, Lizard modular precision guidance kits, SPECTRO advanced, multi-spectral electro-optical (EO) payload system, and several families of drones including the Hermes 900 unmanned aerial system, TerminaTHOR tactical airdrop munition system, the THOR tactical multi-purpose UAS, and others.

It has not been shared what the other defense companies will exhibit.

Rapid expansion

Morocco has had close economic, diplomatic, and military ties with Israel for years, and in 2020, Jerusalem and Rabat reestablished ties under the Abraham Accords.

A year later, the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) surrounding arms deals, intelligence cooperation, and joint military projects. The North African kingdom has since signed several deals with Israeli defense companies as it has significantly increased its defense budget over the past year. This increase is part of the country’s effort to modernize its military and build a domestic military industry to reduce its reliance on foreign imports.

In January, the two countries signed a joint military work plan for 2026 and agreed to upgrade diplomatic ties last week.

For IAI, Morocco is already a major customer. The company signed a $500 million deal with Morocco for the Barak MX air-defense system, adding a major Israeli layer to the kingdom’s air-defense architecture. The system was jointly developed in close collaboration between India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and IAI’s RAFAEL ELTA Systems. 

The versatile system can fire three types of missiles from the same vertical launcher, including the Barak MRAD for short-to-medium range of up to 35 kilometers, the Barak LRAD of up to 70 km., and the Barak ER, which can reach targets up to 150 km.

IAI has also been linked to a much larger space deal. In 2024, the company disclosed a $1 billion contract with an unnamed customer to be executed over five years. While neither IAI nor Marrakesh commented on the report, Reuters said at the time that Moroccan media had identified Morocco as the customer for an Ofek 13 reconnaissance satellite, which would replace Morocco’s existing satellites supplied by France’s Airbus and Thales. 

IAI’s Moroccan footprint has also expanded through BlueBird Aero Systems, its unmanned-systems subsidiary. In 2025, the company opened a factory to produce SpyX loitering munitions, the first time advanced Israeli drone technology will be produced locally in North Africa.

The plant in Benslimane, Morocco, will focus on producing SpyX drones, which are lightweight, portable loitering munitions designed for precision strikes. With an endurance of two hours and a range of 50 km., these drones can carry a variety of warheads of up to 2.5 kilograms and enable tactical teams to detect, confirm, and strike targets.

Rabat has also purchased Elbit Systems’ ATMOS Howitzer and Elbit’s EXTRA rockets (cost-effective, precise, and with a range of up to 150 km. and an accuracy of 10 meters CEP), among others.

In addition to IAI’s Barak system, Rafael’s Spyder surface-to-air missile system has been deployed to the Sidi Yahia El Gharb military base outside of the capital.

The French connection

The deals between Israel and Morocco – as well as the strong Israeli presence at the Marrakesh Air Show – illustrate the scale of the competition now emerging between Israeli and French defense industries.

France remains deeply embedded in Morocco’s aerospace and defense ecosystem, with French companies, including Airbus, Thales, Safran, and Dassault, having long supplied the kingdom. But Israeli companies are now moving into the market as Morocco expands its requirements.

The companies set to display in Marrakesh also reflect where Morocco’s defense requirements are moving. Alongside traditional aerospace products, the Israeli companies are showcasing integrated air defense, long-range precision strike, unmanned systems, collaborative combat, and space-based capabilities.

The Israeli push in Morocco comes against a complicated backdrop in relations between the Israeli defense industry and France. French authorities excluded Israeli defense companies from the 2024 Eurosatory exhibition and 2025 Paris Airshow. The French Defence Ministry publicly said that conditions were not appropriate for their participation due to the war in Gaza and Lebanon, though Israeli officials criticized the move and blamed it on competition.

The same Israeli companies blocked from exhibiting their systems in France are now preparing to display many of the same categories of capabilities at the Marrakesh airshow, this time geared toward a market where French companies remain major players and where Israeli companies will not be blocked by large black walls like in Paris. 

Approximately 300 pages of World War II American Prisoner of War (POW) interrogation reports and ancillary reports were recovered by the US’s National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) earlier this summer. 

The documents were discovered by Waterloo resident Jason Hurdle inside a cardboard box hidden in a previously unknown crawlspace in his garage, The Washington Post reported last week.

Marked with a “SECRET” stamp on the first page, the files are made up of mostly handwritten, first-person accounts of over 120 American POWs held by the Germans during World War II.

After finding the documents, Hurdle brought them to a nearby museum where he was recommended to contact NARA. In January, NARA sent two representatives to Hurdle’s home, and in July, it announced that its Archival Recovery Team (ART) had safely recovered the documents.

“I’m in podunk little Waterloo, New York, and this went all the way to the National Archives,” Hurdle told The Washington Post. “We’re kind of in shock here.”

The documents appear to be part of a larger American initiative investigating whether or not Germany was upholding its end of the international treaty regarding the dignified treatment of future POWs, signed in Geneva in 1929.

Handwritten accounts detail inhumane conditions

Pictures of the documents, shared by The Washington Post, show soldiers recounting being held in inhumane conditions by the Germans after being captured during the Battle of the Bulge.

Over 23,000 American soldiers were taken as POWs from the Battle of the Bulge.

“During an air raid near 7A, an unteroffizier [NCO] shot at and wounded an American from our barracks. I did not know his name,” wrote Private First Class Waldon Joseph Green, adding that he had been witness to a bombing that killed three Americans and left 28 missing.

Private First Class Henry Daly, in his account, wrote that when he had been first captured, “we were marched for days at times without food and water, at times we were crammed into boxcars as many as 80 men to a car, and we were not even allowed to get off and relieve ourselves.”

Second lieutenant Robert Warren Bieber shared that Nuremberg had very little medical supplies and food, and that he had seen “one boy die of malnutrition, name unknown.”

“A prisoner [stopped] to adjust his pack and a guard shot him. I do not know the boy’s name,” wrote First Sergeant Eugene William Eidschun.

According to The Washington Post, the files did not appear on NARA’s list of missing federal documents. 

No one has yet figured out how they ended up in Hurdle’s garage, though The Washington Post said Hurdle suggested they may have come from a former neighbor. 

Documents now displayed at archives

Kimberly Guise, the National World War II Museum’s associate vice president of curatorial affairs, told The Washington Post that the documents found by Hurdle are significant for the large number of firsthand accounts they contain.

“It’s really lucky that this material was discovered, that the gentleman looked inside the box, and that he got it to a safe place,” Guise said. “It’s pretty great in terms of POW research.”

The documents are now displayed inside a gray box with a typed label marking them “declassified,” according to The Washington Post, in the same order they were found in. 

The Washington Post noted that at least one page, which had been partially ripped, has been preserved in a clear plastic sleeve, and that NARA archivists are the only ones allowed to handle the fragile files.

NARA spokeswoman Grace McCaffrey explained to The Washington Post that the archives is planning to digitize the records and make them available to the public.

“This stuff was stuff that you don’t learn in history books,” Hurdle told The Washington Post. “You actually see this and read this; that to me is very, very special. I was like, I got to find a place these can go.”

The United States faked the rescue of the American pilot who was shot down over Iran, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spokesperson Hossein Mohebbi claimed during an interview with the official news agency IRNA on Tuesday.

Mohebbi called the rescue saga “Hollywood propaganda,” alleging it was not the first time the US had done so.

He pointed to what he claimed were inconsistencies in the narrative, saying that the pilot could not have survived a fall at 160 kph without a parachute as the US said.

“What is certain is that we hit an American fighter jet and it crashed,” Mohebbi said. “At such a height and speed and with such a weight, along with the weight of the parachute and the equipment they usually carry, this pilot’s back could only be broken!”

Explaining why the US would invent such a story, Mohebbi claimed it was to preserve their reputation.

“They want to recreate their power, to say that we have the power that if one of our pilots is in such a situation, we have the ability to save him.”

He also challenged the US to showcase its power in a different way.

“Use this power that you use to show the rescue of a pilot to show the openness of the Strait of Hormuz, why don’t you do this?” he said.

Iran shot down a US F-15 in April, with one of the pilots being rescued only a few days after the crash.

US pilot shares story of crash in Iran, rescue

The pilot, identified only by his mission callsign, “Bravo,” shared the details of his rescue on CBS’s 60 Minutes earlier this month.

“My parachute was damaged in the initial attack. At one point, when I looked up and saw no parachute, that was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. So I paused right then, and I prayed, ‘Lord, you will be done. But if I’m getting through this, I need help,'” Bravo said.

Bravo broke his back, arm, and shoulder, as well as suffering a sprained ankle and bleeding from lesions across his head and face caused by the incredibly hard landing, according to CBS.

Almost immediately following the crash, Iranian media announced a bounty for the capture. 

Jonah Davidov contributed to this report.

Tens of thousands more people could be driven from homes in Yemen by an upsurge of fighting that has already displaced more than 130,000 people this month, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.

“Intensifying fighting in Yemen could drive more mass displacement, with growing numbers of people expected to flee, both within Yemen and to Djibouti, Somalia, and other countries,” UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch told a Geneva press briefing.

He said that planning projections indicated that an additional 100,000 people could be forced from their homes within the next three months.

Iran-backed Houthi fighters have advanced this month in a battle against forces of a Saudi-backed government, seizing the Red Sea coast and extending the wider Middle East conflict to a new theater.

Over 3,000 Yemenis have fled across Red Sea to Africa by boat

Most of those displaced so far remain within Yemen, but more than 3,000 people have fled by boat across the Red Sea to Africa. This figure could rise to 10,000 next month when calmer seas are likely to encourage more departures, Baloch said.

A UNHCR response plan for Yemen was less than 20% funded before the renewed violence caused a surge in needs, a statement said.

Defense Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday threatened to destroy all that remains of Gaza City and to force around one million Gazans to evacuate if Hamas, egged on by Iran or Turkey, takes a single Israeli hostage.

Katz said he was responding to the increasing threat picture about potential aggressive actions by Iran, Turkey, and proxies like Hamas.

The defense minister said that such threats and actions were the only way to deter jihadist enemies of Israel from attacking it.

While a theoretical statement and possibly a popular one domestically within Israel, Katz’s threat may make the lives of Israeli lawyers trying to defend the Jewish state in The Hague from genocide and war crimes accusations more difficult in convincing judges that Israel’s leaders honor the proportionality rules of international law.

Further, in the public relations sphere, critics of Israel may use his statement to bolster allegations they recently broadcast through the NAZA documentary film, though the film itself reportedly provides few specific, concrete incidents. 

Katz: IDF will not partially withdraw until Hamas fully disarms

In addition, Katz said that the IDF would not make any partial withdrawals from the 63% of Gaza the IDF currently controls back either to the 53% point, the around 30% point, or the around 15% point, until Hamas is fully disarmed.

This statement will likely hold true until at least the US midterm elections on November 3.

However, after that date, US foreign affairs envoy Jared Kushner has dropped numerous public hints that the Trump administration will renew its push for Israel to make partial Gaza withdrawals in exchange for Hamas to take partial disarmament actions. 

Children under the age of 15 will soon be offered training to join the Islamic Republic’s Janfada (self-sacrifice) campaign, the campaign’s spokesperson, Sasan Zare, confirmed to the Iranian Labour News Agency last week.

Acknowledging that individuals as young as 15 have already begun training, Zare said that, due to high demand, “special training appropriate for younger ages will also be arranged.”

Zare, however, asserted that only male children would be provided with training, while women would need to enlist after reaching the age of 18.

The planned recruitment of children comes despite international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions, prohibiting the recruitment of minors under the age of 15 by both state armed forces and non-state armed groups. The Islamic Republic has nevertheless admitted to recruiting children as young as 12.

In March, Rahim Nadali, the cultural and artistic deputy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’s Mohammad Rasoulollah Corps, told Iran’s Defa Press Agency that the minimum age for joining the homeland defense fighters was set at 12. Days after Nadali’s announcement, 11-year-old Alireza Jafari was killed at a military checkpoint, according to Iranian state media. The Basij Teachers Organization confirmed that the minor was killed “on duty.”

The Jerusalem Post has contacted the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict for comment on the planned recruitment of minors for the Janfada Campaign.

Military training set to begin this week in Tehran

Military training for the campaign is set to begin in Tehran this week. Training exercises will be carried out at military centers and in “high-traffic squares,” Zare said, admitting that the major public Imam Hussein Square would be converted into a “fully equipped military training pseudo-camp.”

Those who sign up will be trained in “ensuring local security, general war preparations, observation, surveillance, and intelligence measures,” as well as “guiding micro-aircraft (drones), which are used in military operations,” and “the possibility of using shoulder-launched weapons.”

“The training platform is the Basij community, and the content is approved by the Basij organization, and the training capacity of all armed forces will be used,” he said. “There is also full preparation to ensure the security of the training sites.”

Zare further alleged that of the 31 million Iranians he said had enlisted in the campaign, 26% had signed up for military and security duties.

Zare: campaign centered on slogan: ‘We have one life, and we give it for Iran’

He said the campaign was centered on the cultural slogan, “We have one life, and we give it for Iran,” which he acknowledged had drawn international criticism.

Zare also alleged that many Iranians living abroad had signed up for the campaign and would soon be included in “cultural and educational events.”

TJO Youth-Galilee, a delegation from the Jerusalem Orchestra East & West, is in New York this week for a series of performances, including an appearance Tuesday evening at an event marking the opening of the annual United Nations General Assembly session.

The ensemble, conducted by Maestro Tom Cohen, is expected to be the only musical act performing at the event.

Before taking the UN stage, however, the young musicians fulfilled another ambition: playing with veteran Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza, one of the most beloved Israeli artists of all time.

The orchestra members, ages 14 to 23, include Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze musicians from communities throughout the Galilee. They joined Broza in a New York rehearsal room for an informal jam session featuring songs drawn from a wide range of Eastern and Western musical traditions.

A Jewish businessman and philanthropist invited the youth ensemble to New York to show how musicians from different backgrounds can come together through music.

Group’s UN repertoire intended to bridge cultures

At Tuesday evening’s performance, the group is scheduled to present a repertoire intended to bridge cultures, including Zohar Argov’s “Yam Shel Dmaot” (“A Sea of Tears”), Abdel Wahab’s “Khayy Khay,” and a closing performance of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

Cohen described the meeting with Broza as particularly meaningful for both the young musicians and for him personally.

“During this trip to New York, the soloists of our youth orchestra had the privilege of meeting an artist they admire, and the person who helped me, as an enthusiastic child full of dreams, become the mature musician I am today,” Cohen said.

“The same generosity David showed me two decades ago, he gave with endless patience and love to our young musicians, who eagerly absorbed everything they could from this special encounter. Together, we experienced once again that when you follow the path of music — particularly the musical paths of David and of our orchestra — there is the potential for a colorful and exciting future in the meeting between East and West.”

Polish authorities said on Tuesday that they have charged a man linked to neo-Nazi groups with offenses including preparing attacks on a school and a mosque.

Prosecutors said that Pawel G., a Polish national born in 2009 whose surname cannot be published due to privacy laws, was detained on Friday.

Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) said that his arrest came after the previously announced detention of two 16-year-olds he had been in contact with online via extremist and neo-Nazi circles on the Telegram and Discord services.

Polish authorities charge teens linked to neo-Nazi groups

“He participated in discussions regarding past terrorist attacks and their perpetrators. Some conversations also touched upon the planning of potential attacks; participants analyzed the methods used by terrorists and viewed the perpetrators as sources of inspiration,” ABW said.

Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek said targets included a mosque and a school. “There is not and will not be any leniency for fascism, hatred, or the planning of bloody attacks in Poland,” he said on X.

Pawel G. could face up to 15 years in prison.

The two 16-year-olds, Kacper K. and Wiktor S., have been placed in juvenile detention centers.

Germany’s far-left Die Linke won Sunday’s election in Berlin while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) captured Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, delivering major gains to parties on the political margins and a severe setback to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

The results are putting new pressure on Germany’s governing parties while raising immediate questions in Berlin over Die Linke’s relations with pro-Palestinian activists and allegations of antisemitism within parts of the party.

Die Linke finished first in Berlin with 25.7% of the vote, according to the provisional final result, more than doubling its support from the previous election. The CDU, which has governed the capital, finished second, while the AfD placed third with about 16%, its strongest result in a Berlin election.

Die Linke’s lead candidate, Elif Eralp, is seeking to form a coalition with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens, a combination that would give the three parties enough seats to govern the capital. A CDU-SPD-Green coalition is also mathematically possible. If Eralp succeeds in forming a government, Die Linke would lead Berlin for the first time.

Eralp, the daughter of Turkish asylum seekers, campaigned heavily on Berlin’s housing shortage and high rents. Die Linke wants to bring large corporate landlords into public ownership, following a 2021 referendum in which Berlin voters backed the expropriation of major housing companies. The proposal could involve more than 200,000 apartments and has emerged as one of the major potential points of disagreement in coalition negotiations.

Farther north, the AfD won Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with 38.2% of the vote, ahead of the SPD. The CDU received only 4.9%, leaving it below the 5% threshold required to enter the state parliament. It was the first time the CDU had failed to enter a German state legislature and its worst state election performance of the postwar era.

The results continued a broader shift away from Germany’s traditional center-right and center-left parties. The AfD has expanded sharply in eastern Germany, campaigning against immigration, support for Ukraine and existing energy policies, while Die Linke has drawn support in Berlin through housing, cost-of-living and redistribution issues. The simultaneous gains by the two parties have complicated coalition building and intensified debate over the durability of Germany’s established political alignments.

Merz rejects suggestions to step aside, says CDU’s performance a ‘disaster’

Merz described the CDU’s performance as a “disaster” but rejected suggestions that he should step aside. He said he intended to remain in office and pursue planned economic, tax and pension reforms. The chancellor’s coalition of the CDU and SPD has faced dissatisfaction over the economy and living costs, while the rise of the AfD has also increased pressure on the longstanding policy by mainstream parties of refusing cooperation with the far-right party.

In Berlin, the election result quickly became intertwined with a separate controversy over Die Linke’s relationship with elements of the pro-Palestinian movement.

On election day, Die Linke candidate Basem Said shared an Instagram appeal by Palestinian activist Majed Abusalama, a co-founder of Palästina Spricht, or Palestine Speaks, which Berlin’s domestic intelligence service has classified as a confirmed extremist organization. Abusalama described the election as a “Wahlintifada,” or “election intifada,” and urged voters to support several Die Linke candidates, including Eralp. Said thanked him for the appeal. German media first reported the episode, and the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel detailed it.

Further controversy followed Die Linke’s election-night celebrations. Ibrahim Ibrahim, a pro-Palestinian activist identified by the research group Democ as a supporter of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was photographed at a party event with Die Linke Bundestag member Ferat Koçak.

The PFLP is listed as a terrorist organization by the European Union and is described as a Palestinian terrorist organization by Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Issa Remmo, identified in German reporting as a leading member of Berlin’s Remmo family, whose members have been linked to organized crime cases, also appeared at Die Linke celebrations. Eralp distanced the party from his presence.

“He was not invited and was sent out again,” Eralp said. “We have nothing to do with organized crime; we fight it.”

The disputes follow an earlier campaign controversy involving rapper Dahabflex, who performed at a Die Linke event in Berlin’s Neukölln district in late August. His performance included the lines “Yalla Yalla Intifada” and “Death to the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces. Eralp subsequently criticized the event and demanded that the Neukölln organization investigate what had happened.

“I stand clearly for the protection of Jewish life and against every form of antisemitism,” Eralp said at the time.

Those incidents have now become an issue in negotiations over Berlin’s next government. SPD lead candidate Steffen Krach has demanded a clear commitment against antisemitism from Die Linke’s entire parliamentary group, while Green lead candidate Werner Graf has called on the party to confront antisemitism within its ranks and explain how it intends to restrain members whose positions have caused controversy.

Central Council of Jews in Germany president urges parties to avoid Die Linke coalition

Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, went further, urging the SPD and Greens not to enter a Die Linke-led coalition. Schuster said the party had repeatedly crossed antisemitic boundaries during the campaign and accused it of failing to deal credibly with antisemitism in its ranks.

Die Linke’s national leadership has rejected the broader accusation. Heidi Reichinnek, leader of the party’s parliamentary group in the Bundestag, said the party has a clear position against antisemitism and described that position as a “red line,” saying anyone who crosses it has no place in Die Linke.

The dispute leaves Eralp facing two negotiations at once: one over the policy program of a possible left-wing Berlin government and another over whether prospective coalition partners are satisfied that Die Linke can contain the elements of its organization that have generated controversy over Israel, antisemitism, and ties to radical pro-Palestinian activists.

The broader election results present a different problem for Germany’s national leadership. With the AfD consolidating support in the east and Die Linke recording a historic victory in the capital, the weekend’s votes showed voters moving away from the parties that have dominated German politics for much of the postwar period, less than three years before the next federal election is due in 2029.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused Israel of being given “a completely free hand to do whatever it wishes” while speaking to reporters after arriving in New York City on Monday night, ahead of the United Nations General Assembly.

According to Araghchi, Iran’s primary goal during UNGA is to “defend the legitimacy, rights and interests of the Iranian people.”

He also denounced other countries’ governments for not condemning “atrocities” which had allegedly been committed in Iran.

“In the face of the atrocities that occurred – where 168 innocent children were deliberately massacred in a single instant – these countries do not even issue a simple condemnation.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said that, during his visit to New York, Araghchi would hold “talks and consultations” with officials and foreign ministers.

Araghchi claims Israel seeking stronger grip on US policy

Araghchi, before his arrival in New York, accused Israel of having a “grip” on US policy in Iran.

The Israel lobby is getting less shy about its grip on US policy toward Iran. In Miriam Adelson’s publication, the Lobby’s loudspeaker says US policy must ensure America pays a price for any slight against Israel.

High time for Washington to break free from these shackles. pic.twitter.com/KUiVPZdQXF

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) September 21, 2026

The Iranian Foreign Minister cited an article by Israel Hayom, which he called “Miriam Adelson’s publication,” in which the writer recommended that Israel deepen its military, technological, intelligence, and economic integration with the US so financial harm to Israel would rebound onto Washington as well.

“High time for Washington to break free from these shackles,” Araghchi said.

Iranian official compares US to Hitler over fuel price increase blame

Several hours after Araghchi’s arrival, Baghaei compared the US’s actions against Iran to Hitler’s during World War II in a post on X/Twitter.

Baghaei wrote that the US blaming Iran for the increase in fuel prices was similar to Hitler framing his invasion of Poland as an act of defense.

US officials blame Iran for rising fuel prices, as if the public’s memory is short enough to forget who actually initiated the war of aggression, and whose actions created the crisis that led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the disruption of commercial shipping.…

— Esmaeil Baqaei (@IRIMFA_SPOX) September 22, 2026

“As if the public’s memory is short enough to forget who actually initiated the war of aggression, and whose actions created the crisis that led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the disruption of commercial shipping,” Baghaei wrote.

“When the instigator of an unlawful ‘war of choice’ blames the victim for the fallout, should this be viewed as ‘strategic brilliance’, or is it simply a textbook symptom of ‘The March of Folly’?!”

Terror victim Netanel Chkroun saved his son’s life by warning him of the terrorist’s presence at Neveh Tzuf, 16-year-old Yoav Chkroun told KAN News on Tuesday.

“We got into the car, Dad was sitting in the second row drying off, and I was in the front passenger seat. Suddenly, he shouted to me, ‘Yoav, there’s a terrorist here,’ or ‘Yoav, it’s an attack’ – something along the lines of ‘Run!'”

Yoav said that he hadn’t realized a terror attack was in progress until his father shouted at him. By the time he realized, the terrorist was only a few centimeters away, right outside the car door.

“He opened fire toward Dad, during which time I passed between the driver’s side seats, opened the door, and ran away,” he said. “The terrorist kept shooting at me while I was running to hide between the bushes on the other side of the road.”

Yoav remained in hiding until after military forces arrived at the scene. 

“It was a very difficult and special Yom Kippur,” he said. “Suddenly you understand the true meaning of ‘The Day of Judgment.'”

During Netanel’s funeral, Yoav thanked his father for saving his life.

“Thank you, Dad, for what you told me and for saving me,” he said.

Terror victim had been at Neveh Tzuf for immersion ahead of Yom Kippur

Netanel was a father of six and worked as an information systems analyst at Hachshara Insurance Company, the Samaria Regional Council said. His wife, Dr. Merav Chkroun, is a lecturer at Ariel University.

He had arrived at Neveh Tzuf to immerse himself alongside Yoav, his eldest son, an 11th-grade student. His youngest child is four years old.

“[He was] a man of kindness, humility, and love for his fellow man, murdered just after finishing his immersion with his son ahead of Yom Kippur,” said council head Yossi Dagan. “These barbarians will never break us; we will build up our land even further.”

James Genn and Miriam Sela-Eitam contributed to this report.

The deadly shooting attack in Binyamin ahead of Yom Kippur, in which Netanel Chkroun was killed, came amid mounting tensions in the West Bank that had been widely anticipated, Haaretz’s Amos Harel and Dr. Michael Milshtein of Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center told 103FM on Tuesday.

“This was unfortunately expected,” Harel said. “All the assessments pointed to tensions rising during this period. The Tishrei holidays attract attacks, the election issue is heating up here, and the Palestinians are taking the opportunity to make noise. There is also the ongoing friction between settlers, primarily on farms, and Palestinians. The terrorist was caught in a hospital in Ramallah. The impression is that this was a lone terrorist, but it is clear that Hamas will try to inflame the situation as much as possible.”

Turning to the Gaza Strip, Milshtein said, “Despite Israel’s control of the territory, it is not airtight. Hamas, specifically when it comes to explosive devices, not only has no problem; it simply dismantles a large portion of the unexploded ordnance that is there.”

He noted that Israel was continuing to carry out strikes in the Gaza Strip.

“The incident is ostensibly tactical and local, but it may be the kind of pattern we will see intensify, because in Gaza we are in a static situation, as in Lebanon and as in Syria,” Milshtein said.

“I have been in the Gaza Strip twice, close to the Yellow Line. Controlling the territory is genuinely difficult. You are sitting in the area, and the other side has chosen to wage a war of attrition against you. That is the price we will pay. It could also cost lives. There is no real ceasefire there,” Harel agreed.

US strike on Houthi targets canceled at last moment

Milshtein also addressed reports that a planned US strike on Houthi targets had been canceled at the last moment.

“You look at the international discussion surrounding the headache called the Houthis, and you understand that there is a fairly bitter memory here,” he said. “We still have a great many other fronts open, and there is reluctance to enter another arena when it is unclear how you would be able to deal with it.”

“Ultimately, you see Americans holding talks with Houthi elements, and I assess that the Saudis too, despite all our enthusiasm in Israel, would prefer to close the matter through some form of understandings,” Milshtein added. “The Houthis themselves are also not rushing to launch an all-out confrontation. There is more measured conduct here, so it may be that all the players except Israel would like to close the matter through understandings.”

Harel: ‘Things are not working out as Trump would like’ ahead of midterm elections

Harel concluded by discussing what he described as Trump’s current political and foreign policy situation.

“We are moving toward the midterm elections in the United States, and the Knesset elections here, and things are not working out as Trump would like,” he said. 

“Despite the successes of the economic warfare and the successful effort to smuggle ships through the Strait of Hormuz, the story is not over. He is still stuck in a situation that he is struggling to resolve, and he is hesitant to go all the way. Trump’s renewed threats against the Iranian regime are also less effective in his view. There is a series of foreign policy problems here, and the method of noise, distraction, and threats is no longer working so well.”

Adir Capital and Sling Capital were announced as tender winners on Tuesday for state-backed venture capital funds specializing in advanced defense technologies, the Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry announced jointly.

The announcement, made by the Finance Ministry Accountant-General’s Division and the Directorate of Defense Research and Development (MAFAT), expressed the tender committee’s full confidence in the companies regarding how the funding would “achieve significant milestones and foster breakthrough capabilities for the defense establishment and the entire Israeli economy.”

Adir Capital is a component of Idan Financial Instruments, while Sling Capital is part of Giza.

Defense Ministry Director-General Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amir Baram described the funds as marking “a pivotal milestone in realizing the Defense Ministry’s strategy to transform Israel’s unique ecosystem, which integrates the Defense Ministry and the IDF with defense industries and local entrepreneurship, into a global leader in the defense-tech industry.”

“After three years of war, we must increase investment in research and development to preserve the defense establishment’s qualitative-strategic edge and to develop the next generation of technological ‘surprises,'” he added.

Accountant-General marks milestone as recognizing defense establishment partnership

Accountant-General Michal Abadi-Boiangiu further marked the milestone as a recognition of the “close and vital collaboration between the Accountant-General’s Division and the defense establishment.”

“We are now seeing this vision become reality,” she said. “Strengthening Israel’s technological and industrial independence, supporting local entrepreneurship, and securing critical supply chains for both routine operations and times of emergency.”

MAFAT chief Brig.-Gen. (res.) Dr. Danny Gold called the move a “vital strategic step toward reinforcing Israel’s technological superiority.”

“This move directly advances the policy MAFAT has championed in recent years to develop and grow the ‘Defense-Tech’ ecosystem, driven by a deep commitment to supporting Israeli startups and entrepreneurs,” he said. “The close integration of private capital, the innovation ecosystem, and the needs of the defense establishment will enable us to accelerate the development of groundbreaking technologies, maintain the IDF’s qualitative edge, and strengthen the State of Israel’s manufacturing independence.”

Finance Division Chief: State guarantee ‘a strategic engine for the economy’

Accountant-General Senior Deputy and Finance Division Chief Gil Cohen discussed the importance of a state guarantee as “a strategic engine for the economy.”

“Through state guarantees, we enable the economy to leverage investments in national defense and develop the defense-technology sector, a field vital to Israel’s strength, resilience, and growth,” said Cohen. 

Cohen, who further serves as the tender committee chairperson, commended the companies’ “impressive” proposals.

He added that the Finance Ministry was “confident” that the Israeli defense-tech market would achieve “significant milestones” under the management of the tender winners.

Israel’s defense establishment recommended expanding the Navy’s submarine fleet to eight vessels amid Turkey’s naval buildup, Army Radio reported on Tuesday.

The officials made their recommendation to Israel’s political leadership as the country monitors Turkey’s acquisition of German-made submarines, with the current Turkish fleet of fourteen set to expand to eighteen in the coming years.

The Israel Navy currently operates 5 such submarines, with a sixth, the INS Drakon, on its way to Israeli shores.

The defense officials emphasized that the fleet expansion should involve the replacement of older vessels, instead of simply increasing the numbers overall, according to Army Radio. 

The report noted that Israel’s contract with Germany currently allows for the order of a seventh submarine, each costing around one billion euros.

Senior defense officials told Army Radio that they intend to push the issue in a “structured manner,” as the procurement cannot take place until the October elections are over.

Final German ‘Dragon’ submarine on its way to Israel

The report follows a send-off ceremony in late August for the INS Drakon, attended by Israel Navy Chief V.-Adm. Eyal Harel and German Naval Chief V.-Adm. Jan Christian Kaack, along with other top Israeli and German officials.

The IDF and the Defense Ministry announced the vessel’s departure for Israel on September 1, with the new submarine one of Germany’s new “Dragon” models.

The German-made submarines can deliver nuclear weapons, according to foreign reports, which further reported on Israel’s alleged triad of nuclear deterrence, namely land-, sea-, and air-based attack capabilities.

Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.

Canadian police have yet to formally determine the motive behind the shooting outside Congregation Beth Jacob in Belleville, Canada, which occured as worshipers gathered for Yom Kippur prayers on Sunday.

Shortly after the shooting, Israel’s Ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed described the incident as a “terror attack” and called for an immediate increase in protection for the Jewish community.

Belleville Police Deputy Chief Sheri Meeks said during a briefing that the shooter was 29-year-old Sean Ward of nearby Quinte West, about 18 kilometers from Belleville. He remains hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.

Meeks identified the wounded officer as Jeff Smith, a veteran police officer who has served for 13 years. She said Smith was hospitalized in intensive care and faces a significant recovery, but that his condition had stabilized.

Kristy Denette, a spokeswoman for Ontario‘s Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which is investigating the incident, said in response to a question that logic pointed toward a terrorist incident targeting the Jewish community. She stressed, however, that the SIU’s investigation was focused on the actions of the police officer.

Denette said the scene was complex and that forensic investigators would need several days to complete their work there.

Belleville Mayor Neil Ellis said it was “too early to determine that this was a hate crime,” but noted that the location and timing, outside a synagogue on the eve of Yom Kippur, “point in that direction.”

None of synagogue’s 24 worshippers injured in attack

About 24 worshipers were inside the synagogue at the time of the shooting, Meeks said. None were injured. She added that antisemitism, hatred, and violence were unacceptable in the community.

Following the incident, police increased their presence across the city, including around houses of worship.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said the terror attack against Congregation Beth Jacob in Belleville on the eve of Yom Kippur marked a further escalation in Canada’s antisemitism crisis.

“Our thoughts are with the police officer who acted with extraordinary courage and was wounded in the line of duty. We pray for his full and speedy recovery,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said. “Israel stands in solidarity with the Jewish community in Canada, which is confronting an increasingly threatening reality.”

The ministry added that “open incitement that goes untreated in the public sphere, together with anti-Israel policies, fuels antisemitism. A change is needed.”

Denette said Belleville Police were conducting a parallel investigation that included examining the suspect’s motive. She declined to say whether others directed or activated the suspect, repeatedly saying the question fell outside the scope of the SIU’s investigation.

On-duty police officer guarding synagogue was first target of shooting

According to Denette, the suspect arrived in his vehicle, believed to have been a pickup truck, at around 7 p.m. while armed with a shotgun. He fired first, initially targeting the on-duty police officer who was securing the synagogue.

The officer returned fire, and a second officer later arrived and also opened fire. The suspect and the first officer were both struck.

The scene extended for roughly half a block. Witness accounts and the preliminary investigation indicated that as many as 30 rounds were fired. A police cruiser, other vehicles, and nearby homes were hit.

A team of four investigators and two forensic investigators was assigned to the case. They collected evidence, reviewed security footage, police body-camera recordings, and vehicle-camera footage, and took witness statements.

The Israel Football Association (IFA) responded on Monday to comments from Republic of Ireland National Team Coach Heimir Hallgrímsson about the team’s boycott of an upcoming Israel-Ireland game.

“We have contributed to the world and humanity in countless fields, earning an impressive number of Nobel Prizes along the way,” the association wrote in an X/Twitter post. “Unfortunately, we have not yet found a cure for stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy displayed by @IrelandFootball team coach.”

We have contributed to the world and humanity in countless fields, earning an impressive number of Nobel Prizes along the way. Unfortunately, we have not yet found a cure for stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy displayed by @IrelandFootball team coach. We’re not playing with…

— ISRAEL FA (@ISRAELFA) September 21, 2026

“We’re not playing with ignorance, hypocrisy and stupidity,” the IFA added. “We’re playing against the coach who embodies them.”

Hallgrimsson said last week he had spoken individually to players about facing Israel and that “none of us feel comfortable playing in these games.”

His comments followed the signing of an open letter by more than 160 Irish sportspeople asking the Ireland national football team to boycott its upcoming UEFA Nations League fixtures against Israel, currently scheduled for September 27.

‘Not playing the game would be the most sporting thing you could do’

The Irish Sport for Palestine Group announced the open letter on Monday, saying the signatories included Olympian Ciara Mageean, former footballer Louise Quinn, former rugby flyhalf Tony Ward and boxers Tyrone McKenna and Eric Donovan.

“This is a significant moment, and with this moment you have an opportunity to do the right thing,” the letter said. “Not playing the game would be the most sporting thing you could do. Through your leadership and courage, it would show the power of sport to unite, remind us of the shared values that connect us all, and have an impact far beyond the game.”

The letter was signed following Irish boycott efforts in May, when Irish footballers joined celebrities in a campaign urging Ireland to boycott the Nations League matches against Israel.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius said his country has made evacuation plans in response the threats from Russia, but added it “will not surrender” if attacked, the BBC reported Tuesday.

Sinkevicius told BBC Newsnight that Lithuanians feel “constantly threatened” by Russia, in part because of drones entering the nation’s airspace. He said that if his country, a NATO member, was attacked, “we will fight back… we will engage.”

“We’re thinking about a variety of scenarios; not all of them are being discussed very much publicly,” Sinkevicius told the BBC.

“We face concrete threats, not on a daily basis, but we’re experiencing them, and it’s a true reality for us.”

Russia ramps up attacks on European countries

This comes after Russia attacked a truck near Ukraine’s border with Poland last Sunday. 

It was the latest strike to hit areas near NATO as Moscow and Kyiv intensify their long-distance strikes to try to shift momentum in the war.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had targeted infrastructure facilitating military cargoes from Europe in Western Ukraine.

Russia has begun targeting Ukraine’s border crossings with its Western allies in recent weeks, part of a growing campaign by both sides to erode the other’s economic infrastructure more than four years into Russia’s invasion.

Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party continued to strengthen in election prediction markets on Tuesday, with Polymarket showing a significant gap between Yashar and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud on which party will win the most seats in the Knesset. 

The market currently prices Yashar’s chances at about 62%, compared with about 39% for Likud. This is the highest figure we found in the available market record for Eisenkot’s party.

The shift has been sharp and has happened in just a few weeks. Polymarket data from about a month ago showed Likud leading with 59%, while Yashar stood at just 41%. Since then, the picture in the market has reversed, with a gap of nearly 20 percentage points in Likud’s favor turning into an advantage of more than 20 points for Yashar.

Trading volume in the market on which party will win the most Knesset seats has already surpassed $300,000. Under Polymarket’s rules, the market will be resolved based on the party or electoral list that wins the most seats in the election, rather than on which candidate ultimately succeeds in forming a coalition and becoming prime minister. Polymarket currently lists total volume in the market at just over $301,000.

The trend on Polymarket is also broadly consistent with the latest polling picture, although the question of who will be able to form a government remains more complicated and depends on the distribution of seats between the political blocs and the ability to assemble a Knesset majority.

Eisenkot tops Netanyahu on who will serve as PM in separate Polymarket

Eisenkot also leads in a separate market on who will serve as prime minister after the election. Polymarket currently prices his chances at about 52% to 53%, compared with about 29% for Netanyahu.

Polymarket figures, however, are not public opinion polls. They reflect the prices of prediction-market contracts, which change with trading activity and can therefore move quickly. The markets on the largest party and the identity of the next prime minister also measure different outcomes: Winning the most Knesset seats does not by itself determine which candidate will ultimately be able to form a governing coalition.

Coalition chairman Ofir Katz backed National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s push to apply the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law to the terrorist who carried out the deadly attack in Neveh Tzuf, saying on Tuesday that the case met the law’s criteria.

In an interview with Aryeh Golan on KAN Reshet Bet, Katz said, “The murder in Binyamin meets exactly the criteria that Otzma Yehudit’s law addresses, one for one. We need to fight these criminal terrorists, and this is one of the tools for fighting them.”

“Most Knesset members voted in favor. I very much hope the High Court of Justice does not block what the legislature intended,” Katz added. “Force must be met with even greater force.”

His comments came after a small-scale meeting was held two hours before the start of Yom Kippur to discuss the security situation in the West Bank. During the meeting, Ben-Gvir raised the issue of imposing the death penalty on terrorists.

Ben-Gvir argued that the current case was the first to meet the criteria for applying the law.

Netanyahu interested in law’s application, asks IDF for information

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed interest in the issue and asked IDF officials for answers regarding the possibility of implementing the law in the current case.

The Military Advocate-General did not participate in the discussion, while IDF representatives who attended said that, from their perspective, there was no obstacle to doing so.

After the discussion, the limited cabinet decided to hold an additional professional meeting on the issue, with the Military Advocate-General participating, to examine how to proceed and whether the law could be applied.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has urged the United States to ease sanctions on North Korea in exchange for an agreement under which Pyongyang would freeze its nuclear weapons programs, The New York Times reported. 

“I believe there is significant value in a trade-off between sanctions — which are not particularly effective anyway — and a stop to the development of additional nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile technology,” the newspaper quoted Lee as saying in an interview.

Lee also said that pursuing denuclearization under the current circumstances would accomplish nothing. Once a nuclear weapons freeze was secured, trust could be built through reciprocal incentives and concessions to eventually convince North Korea to reduce its nuclear arsenal, he said.

The current stalemate was simply too risky to be allowed to continue, Lee said, citing South Korean assessments that North Korea was now capable of producing, or may already be producing, an additional 10 to 20 nuclear weapons each year.

“Once it believes it has accumulated enough nuclear weapons and missiles to guarantee its survival, it will be tempted to export them to make money,” he said. “That will be a truly dangerous moment.”

Trump, Kim Jong Un set to have talks

South Korean officials have said that they are moving away from a “denuclearization first” policy in favor ‌of a “peace first” approach towards North Korea, with Lee pledging ‌last year to respect North Korea’s system and seek peaceful coexistence with Pyongyang.

Relations between the Koreas remain frozen, however. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has abandoned Pyongyang’s reunification ​policy, describing ​the South ⁠as its most hostile state and ordering stronger frontline defenses.

US President Donald Trump is seeking to hold a new meeting with Kim, and the South Korean president has said that he is keen to see the talks happen.

Lee intends to present his vision for peace and coexistence on the Korean Peninsula to the United Nations this week during the UN General Assembly.

North Korea said it successfully tested a new weapon showcasing “ultra-modern defense technology” on Sunday, in a launch overseen by leader Kim Jong Un, who praised progress in strengthening the country’s war readiness, state media reported on Tuesday.

Kim said the test, conducted by North Korea’s Missile Administration, demonstrated a significant development in the country’s armed forces’ ability to fight, and “the enemy will know better what such progress means without any explanation.”

“He affirmed that such reality would give the enemy an incurable headache and a very cruel and unavoidable blow,” Kim was cited as saying.

The KCNA report did not specify the type of weapon tested.

Photographs released by KCNA showed Kim, accompanied by his teenage daughter, inspecting a screen displaying a map of the country’s east coast and the “flight trajectory” of Hwasongpho-11-ma-1, likely part of a series of short-range ballistic missiles Pyongyang is upgrading.

North Korea fires ballistic missile into ocean

NK News, a Seoul-based website specializing in North Korea, said the projectile appeared to be an upgraded variant of a missile equipped with a hypersonic glide vehicle.

Mounting a glide vehicle on a missile means the warhead can maneuver to evade anti-missile defenses and also potentially be launched partially into orbit.

Hypersonic missiles are among a range of weapons that Kim has called for development to upgrade its nuclear capabilities.

The South Korean military said on Sunday that North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast.

The test came days after Pyongyang accused the US of raising tensions on the Korean Peninsula through a series of military drills.

On Monday, the foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan, and the United States met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York to agree to coordinate closely on peace, stability, and denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, according to Seoul’s foreign ministry.

Unsurprisingly, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party won a vast majority of seats in the State Duma elections. 

Preliminary results released on Monday indicated that United Russia won 355 of 450 seats in the state’s lower house of the legislature, or approximately 57.8% of the vote, Russia’s Central Election Commission announced. 

Notably, at least 86 veterans of the war in Ukraine are expected to take seats in the Duma, The Moscow Times reported. 

This does not include the hundreds of regional officials elected across the world’s largest landmass. The CEC said it will release the final results no later than October 5. 

United Russia’s victory was an unfortunate but obvious conclusion. It is concerning that this election maintains Putin’s hold on power and could lay the groundwork to further escalate the war in Ukraine, especially as many fear another round of draft orders.

However, it is vital to understand why this election turned out this way in the first place. 

How does Russia manipulate election results?

Some analysts and exiled journalists called this election Russia’s most uncompetitive election in its modern history, not only because of the way politicians campaigned, but also because of how easily the Kremlin manipulated the results 

First, the way Russia conducts its elections already makes the results easier to distort.  

Russia offered electronic voting in 33 of its 89 federally recognized regions. The election also spanned three days. Both factors made it much easier to tamper with results in an already rigged election. 

Secondly, Putin manipulated the fact that Russians even have elections in the first place as proof that his citizens support his increasingly authoritarian actions.   

In several appearances before the elections, he pointed to the fact that Russia is having elections despite the conflict in Ukraine as proof of three different things.

His primary unspoken claim is that Russia is still democratic, or at least a “managed” democracy. His second claim is that Russians are supportive of the “special military operation” in Ukraine (Putin’s government does not call the war a war in an effort to delegitimize Kyiv and control the domestic narrative within Russia). Finally, he uses the fact that Ukraine has not had an election since it declared martial law over four years ago as proof that Zelensky runs a fascist regime. 

“We have to stand for election, not be afraid to run for office,” Putin said in June. “And I would advise everyone to do the same. Especially in Ukraine.”

This is Russia’s first parliamentary election since it began the war in Ukraine. Over the course of election season, Putin also framed elections as a way to show support for the war.

“Your choice and resolve will show once again that millions of people stand behind our fighters,” Putin said last week. “Participating in the elections is our shared contribution to Russia’s victory.”

United Russia’s public approval rating was at a notable low of 33% before Friday

However, United Russia’s public approval rating was at a notable low of 33% before ballots were cast on Friday, according to Russia’s Public Opinion Foundation, which is regarded as Kremlin-friendly. 

Still, Kremlin-friendly paper Kommersant claimed that this year had the highest voter turnout since the early 2000s, at about 60%. 

This is part of the reason why, if the claims are true, it is so interesting that there was also notably little campaigning in this year’s State Duma race.

In more than one instance, Russian state TV channels were set to moderate a debate between candidates, but none showed up. 

“Good evening, and welcome to tonight’s campaign speeches by candidates for Duma Electoral District 158,” one Russian state TV News anchor said in one clip circulating online. The camera then cuts to six empty podiums.  

“The candidates haven’t turned up. So, it’s goodbye from me.”

It’s worth noting that Putin has never participated in a televised electoral debate during his nearly 20 years in office. It’s fair to assume that other members of his party have since followed suit. 

However, the fact that this happened more than once shows that Russian politicians know that there is little competition. United Russia will take most of the seats in the federal government as well as state and local elections, and a  few opposition candidates will make the cut to maintain a veneer of democracy. 

Only four other parties cleared the electoral threshold

In the 2026 election, only four other parties cleared the electoral threshold: the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, New People, and A Just Russia. 

Put together, they have 89 seats.

It can be hard to distinguish between these parties. Some obviously tilt more to the right or left, but on the “special military operation,” they all vote the same way and therefore function as systemic opposition. 

Under Putin, the Kremlin has eliminated dissenting parties from the ballot. Russians now have only 17 registered political parties that can run in elections, down from around 100 in the 1980s. 

A prime example is Yabloko, a left-leaning party that explicitly called for a ceasefire in Ukraine and was eliminated from the ballot this summer.

Some individual candidates have run, but 29 of at least 36 opposition candidates barred from the elections were Yabloko candidates, according to reporting by the Moscow Times and the independent Russian-language outlet Vyorstka. 

Notably, some Yabloko candidates were fined for interacting with materials involving slain Russian activist Alexei Navalny. While they have denied the charges, they were still disqualified, fined thousands of rubles, and in some cases were declared “foreign agents”, the Kremlin’s label to brand someone a traitor with foreign influence.

This election in Russia has not changed anything. Because there is no way to see the real breakdown of the data, there’s no way to know how Russians actually feel about their government. That, in and of itself, is the biggest indicator of how rotted Russia’s political system is. 

So United Russia will take another supermajority in the State Duma, the so-called opposition will continue to play by the Kremlin’s rules, and ordinary Russians will continue to live under a “managed” democracy. 

No one ever thought the Kremlin would lose in this election. But it has shamefully signaled to its citizens and to the world that it’s not going anywhere. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to make one of his shortest visits to the United States, arriving in New York Thursday morning, addressing the United Nations General Assembly at 2 p.m. local time (9 p.m. Israel time), and departing for Israel shortly afterward.

Under the latest plan, the prime minister may not spend a single night in the United States.

The schedule has undergone several changes in recent days. At an earlier stage, Netanyahu was expected to arrive in the US as early as Wednesday, and a stop in Texas was later added, where a meeting with Elon Musk had been planned.

An advance team on Netanyahu’s behalf had already arrived in the state and begun preparations for the visit and meeting, with a possible visit to SpaceX facilities also under consideration. Over the weekend, the team was informed that the visit had been canceled. According to Israeli officials, Netanyahu canceled the Texas stop.

The cancellation significantly shortened the trip, which will now be devoted mostly to Netanyahu’s address to the General Assembly. He is expected to arrive in New York on the day of the speech itself and leave the city later that same day.

The Texas stop also presented logistical complications. Officials described it as a “complex event,” in part because “Wing of Zion” cannot fly from Israel to Texas without a refueling stop. Some members of the delegation might also have been required to travel separately on commercial flights. However, there was no indication that the logistical difficulty was the reason Netanyahu decided to cancel the visit.

A meeting with US President Donald Trump, which Netanyahu’s aides had sought to arrange, is also not planned under the current schedule. A senior US official said Netanyahu was not among the leaders Trump was expected to meet on the sidelines of the General Assembly. According to another US official, Netanyahu is expected to arrive in New York only after Trump has already left the city.

Trump, Netanyahu schedules do not overlap under current plans

Efforts to arrange a meeting between the two continued even as the planned visit broadened. According to the schedules currently known, their stays in New York will not overlap.

Trump is expected to be in New York at the beginning of the week and address the General Assembly on Tuesday. During his stay, he is scheduled to hold a series of meetings with foreign leaders, after which the focus will shift to Washington, where a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected on Thursday.

Iran, trade between the two powers, Taiwan, and artificial intelligence are expected to be among the issues on the agenda. When Netanyahu takes the UN podium in New York on Thursday, Trump is expected to be in Washington.

Barring a last-minute change, the most senior US official Netanyahu is expected to meet will be Secretary of State Marco Rubio. A meeting between the two is planned, although the Prime Minister’s Office stressed that the final schedule for the visit has not yet been finalized. Rubio is already in New York and is holding diplomatic meetings as part of UN General Assembly week.

Alongside contacts with the US administration, Israeli officials also sought to explore the possibility of meetings with leaders from Gulf states. At this stage, no such meetings are known to have been finalized, and the shortened stay in New York further narrows the window for bilateral meetings.

Trump himself is expected to meet leaders from Gulf states during General Assembly week, with Iran and the regional situation expected to be central topics in the talks.

Netanyahu’s speech will take place during an especially busy diplomatic week, with Iran and the wars in the Middle East at the center of the agenda. Nearly 130 heads of state and government are expected to attend the General Assembly.

Trump is expected to address Iran in his speech and in his discussions with Gulf leaders. Iran, the regional situation and the war in Gaza are also expected to feature in the Israeli delegation’s diplomatic contacts during the visit.

Netanyahu is also expected to face a hostile reception inside the General Assembly hall. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, estimated that protests would take place during the speech, after many representatives walked out of the hall as Netanyahu began speaking last year. Demonstrations against the prime minister are expected outside the UN compound, alongside pro-Israel events.

New York is already carrying out broad security preparations ahead of General Assembly week. Thousands of police officers are being deployed across the city alongside the Secret Service and other security agencies as part of the operation to protect dozens of leaders and delegations.

No specific threat known against General Assembly, US security officials say

Local security officials said that, as of now, there is no known specific threat against the General Assembly, but security around the UN compound and major traffic routes has been significantly reinforced.

The visit also comes against the backdrop of sharp statements by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani against Netanyahu. Mamdani has previously raised the possibility of acting on the basis of the arrest warrant issued against the prime minister by the International Criminal Court, but later clarified that any action would be subject to US law. The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court.

Danon has previously said that Mamdani’s remarks make Netanyahu’s arrival in New York all the more important.

The plan that initially guided preparations for the visit looked different only a few days ago. The Texas stop and meeting with Musk have been removed, and a meeting with Trump does not appear on the schedule.

Unless there is another change, Netanyahu is expected to conclude one of his shortest visits to the United States on the same day he arrives, possibly without spending even a single night in the country.

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil spoke at a Yom Kippur Yizkor event arranged by multiple left-wing Jewish groups in New York City on Monday, condemning Israel’s activity in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.

“It’s tough to repent at a time where our tuition fees, our tax dollars, our votes are being used to kill, to maim, to displace Palestinians,” he said. “To displace Lebanese, to bomb Iranians, and just really to forget that we are all humans.”

He added a prayer that God “remember that Israel is committing genocide.”

NOW: Mahmoud Khalil Speaks at Yom Kippur Yizkor Service for Gaza at Grand Army Plaza Brooklyn NYC

Video By Jonathan Fernandes | Licensing @FreedomNTV Desk@freedomnews.tv pic.twitter.com/IVn6ZB9O15

— ☀️✨ Rachel Speaks Out 🌙💜 (@Rachelspeakout1) September 22, 2026

Khalil, who has previously been arrested following anti-Israel protests he conducted at Columbia University, also called for unity against Israel and its warfare, saying the “Zionist project” and “this particular fascist government in this country” were trying to make the people forget “that we are all one. That we are all humans.”

Khalil, concluding his speech, called for an end to the bombing of Gaza, an end to “the engineered famine,” an end to “this country’s money paying for it,” and an end to “the lie any of it was inevitable.

“May God, through us all, all of us, hold Israel accountable,” he said.

Left-wing Jewish groups atone for ‘genocide’

The event was organized by the left-wing group Rabbis for Ceasefire, along with Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, IfNotNow, and the American Council for Judaism.

It centered on the Yizkor prayer, part of the Yom Kippur liturgy which commemorates those who have died.

As Khalil spoke at the event, a banner above him read “Refuse, Remember, Recommit,” while a plaque on his podium read, “for the sin of genocide we atone.” 

Also in attendance at the event were Jewish Democratic Congressional candidate Brad Lander, Palestinian-American Democratic Senate nominee Aber Kawas, and several New York City Council members.

For decades, the US-Israel relationship has been defined largely by what America provides Israel: military aid, diplomatic backing, and security guarantees. But that model is no longer enough for the world now taking shape. 

As Washington redefines what it expects from its closest allies, Israel faces a strategic question of its own: What unique value can it bring to the United States in the next decade? The answer may determine not only the future of the alliance, but Israel’s place in the emerging technological order.

The new US National Security Science and Technology Strategy offers a clear clue. It states that the United States will increasingly use the scientific and technological capabilities of its allies as a “force multiplier” for national security. In other words, the alliances of the future will not be measured only by military commitments, but by the technologies trusted partners can build together.

This matters because the traditional alliance model is changing. The post World War II model was built primarily around US-provided defense: American military presence, security guarantees and assistance, and above all – American nuclear deterrence. That foundation remains vital. But Washington is also asking capable partners to carry more of their own security burden, while the technologies that determine economic strength, military advantage, and geopolitical influence increasingly sit outside the traditional defense relationship.

A 21st-century alliance therefore needs a second pillar: technology.

Israel is well positioned to be among the first US partners to institutionalize this new model.

The US-Israel relationship already demonstrates why partnership should be understood in terms of mutual value, not simply assistance. According to MIND Israel’s assessment, every dollar of American security assistance to Israel generates approximately four dollars in direct economic value for the United States. 

The existing security relationship functions as an investment in a shared security and technological ecosystem, generating value on both sides. The next step is to apply the same logic to the technologies that will shape national power in the decades ahead.

This is the purpose of the US-Israel Tech Alliance proposed by MIND Israel and the Special Competitive Studies Project. Developed through a Track 1.5 process involving more than 50 experts from government, industry, and academia in both countries, the proposal sets out a practical framework for strategic technology cooperation across artificial intelligence, semiconductors, advanced energy, quantum, bioconvergence, and critical materials. Its core principle is complementarity.

The United States brings assets few countries can match: capital, frontier research, national laboratories, advanced computing infrastructure, industrial scale, procurement power, and global reach.

Israel contributes different strengths: speed, experimentation, and the ability to solve complex engineering problems under severe constraints. Its capabilities in AI efficiency and cybersecurity, semiconductor architecture, quantum systems, advanced materials, energy technologies, and critical-material processing can help address specific technological bottlenecks facing the US.

The point is not that either country should become technologically self-sufficient. The goal is a trusted ecosystem in which each partner contributes differentiated capabilities, creating greater resilience and strategic advantage together than either could achieve alone.

Private companies already cooperate extensively across the two economies. But private-sector cooperation by itself cannot build a strategic alliance. Governments must create the ground on which companies, investors, and researchers can build.

That means shared access to research infrastructure and national laboratories, pathways into federal programs and procurement, regulatory and standards coordination, strong intellectual-property protections, and financing mechanisms appropriate for deep technologies with long development cycles.

Public funding should serve as seed capital, not as a substitute for the market. Its purpose is to reduce risk, remove barriers, signal strategic demand, and unlock much larger flows of private capital. The government provides the infrastructure, incentives, and strategic direction. Industry and academia provide innovation, investment, and scale.

There is also a less tangible but equally important dividend. Alliances endure not only through agreements between governments, but through relationships between people. American and Israeli scientists conducting research together, companies building technologies together, business leaders creating new jobs in both countries and driving economic growth, and young engineers moving between laboratories and institutions create bonds that survive political cycles.

The US-Israel relationship has always been unusual. It has never fit neatly into a simple patron-client model. Its strength has come from shared interests, shared values, and the ability of both countries to contribute to one another.

The new American technology strategy creates an opportunity to translate that history into a model suited to this century.

A US-Israel Tech Alliance could become an early model for strategic partnerships centered on the capabilities trusted allies can develop together. That is not a retreat from the US-Israel alliance. It is how we strengthen it for the age ahead.

The Iraqi government has given the country’s pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias until the end of September to disarm, as Israeli defense officials closely monitor the situation amid concerns that the groups could seek to “flex their muscles” and launch attacks against Israel after the deadline expires.

So far, the militias have rejected the demand, but have conveyed messages that they would agree to discuss disarmament only after a complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

The pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias in Iraq are funded by the Iranian regime, and some of their weapons depots are located near Iraq’s borders. The militias have drawn increased attention from Israel’s intelligence community in recent weeks.

In recent years, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq have aligned themselves with Iranian and Houthi policy and launched cruise missiles and drones toward Israel. The IDF responded, while Israel’s political leadership in Jerusalem sent clear messages to Baghdad that unless the militias were restrained, the Israeli response would intensify accordingly.

The challenge facing Israeli intelligence, which, according to foreign reports, has established bases throughout Iraq to closely monitor Iranian activity, is the country’s vast geographic expanse. The enormous distances pose difficulties for any intelligence organization attempting to locate the key centers of activity of the Iran-backed militias and strike their main weapons depots.

US played central role in pushing Iraqi government to restrain pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias

During the war, as well as during Operation Roaring Lion, the United States played a central role in mediation and in conveying messages to the Iraqi government demanding that it restrain the pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias. According to the US position, the militias, like the Houthis, are undermining stability in the Middle East. The Americans also called for the groups to disarm, warning that otherwise they would respond militarily.

Following American pressure, though not because of it alone, the Iraqi government issued an ultimatum ordering the militias to disarm and hand their weapons over to the state. In exchange for the disarmament, the Iraqi government offered the withdrawal of US military troops from Iraq.

The Iraqi ultimatum expires at the end of September. The pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias, led by Kataib Hezbollah, have flatly rejected the demand to disarm. They have, however, agreed to discuss the issue on their own terms, and only after US troops withdraw.

Israel, US officials concerned Iraqi militias may demonstrate strength through attacks

Israeli defense officials and the United States are concerned that once the ultimatum expires, the militias could seek to demonstrate their strength by attacking US bases in the Middle East and the Israeli home front, with encouragement from the Iranian regime.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is seeking to preserve its strategic alliance with the militias, as well as with the Houthis and Hezbollah. These groups give Tehran a way to maneuver amid intense US pressure over the Strait of Hormuz and on the Iranian economy.

Houthi fighters pushed to seize strategic heights in Yemen on Monday to cut off the Red Sea coast from remaining areas held by Saudi-backed forces, after a report that US President Donald Trump had called off American strikes on the group at the last minute.

A lightning advance by the Iran-backed group this month has extended the wider Middle East conflict to a new theater and further threatened global energy supplies. The US has so far rebuffed repeated pleas from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to join the fight in Yemen.

The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had prepared to launch airstrikes on Sunday against the Houthis after fresh pleas from the Saudi crown prince. But the newspaper said Trump called off the airstrikes at the last minute, even as troops were loading bombs onto aircraft.

Reuters could not verify the Times‘ report. The US military’s Central Command referred questions to the White House. The White House did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Rashid al-Alimi, the Riyadh-based president of Yemen’s Saudi-backed, internationally recognized government, asked Trump by phone on Sunday for US military help, four sources told Reuters. Two of the people, one Yemeni and one Western, said Trump made no direct pledge of support during the call.

Riyadh was apparently struck on Saturday for the first time since the escalation began, with explosions heard and smoke visible near the airport. The Houthis said they had fired missiles at the Saudi capital; the Saudis have not commented.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said on Monday he had agreed to Saudi Arabia’s request to provide defensive air-to-air refueling for a limited time, a move he described as helping to stabilize the wider region. Britain and Saudi Arabia have been close military allies for decades, with Britain serving as one of the kingdom’s largest arms suppliers.

A French diplomatic source said Paris was ready to help secure Saudi Arabia’s energy infrastructure in Yanbu on the Red Sea coast and the East-West pipeline corridor.

Where have the Houthis advanced to?

The Houthis, who have controlled Yemen’s capital since 2014, seized the country’s Red Sea coast this month in an advance that routed forces of the Saudi-backed government.

Saudi Arabia has launched hundreds of strikes in recent days on the fighters’ positions in the highlands, the Houthis say.

According to the United Nations, nearly 700 people have been killed and thousands injured in the fighting. Nearly 130,000 Yemenis have fled their homes within Yemen, and more than 3,000 have fled by boat across the Red Sea to Africa.

Five Yemeni military sources told Reuters the Houthis were now seeking to seize strategic heights, known as the Kahboub Mountains, in two provinces, Taiz and Lahij, which separate the Red Sea coast from the government-held south.

Fighting has centered on the outskirts of the remote mountain Al-Wazi’iyah district in Taiz province, and Ras al-Ara along the Indian Ocean coast between the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the Red Sea’s mouth and the government’s base in Aden, the sources said.

“The government forces appear to remain largely in a defensive posture following the loss of the Bab el-Mandeb area, while the Houthis are seeking to maintain the momentum of their advance, despite being exposed to intensive air strikes,” said Mohammed Al-Qadhi, a veteran Yemeni journalist now working as a political analyst.

“These mountains could become critical to determining whether the Houthis succeed in consolidating their recent territorial gains or whether government forces will be able to retain the positions necessary to mount a counteroffensive.”

Will Trump strike the Houthis?

The surge in fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis creates a dilemma for Trump, under pressure to help Saudi allies but anxious not to further expand the deeply unpopular war he launched alongside Israel as “Operation Epic Fury” in February against Iran.

The US bombed the Houthis for two months in early 2025, but Trump called off those strikes after reaching a ceasefire, and has kept out of the Yemen conflict since.

The Houthis’ Red Sea advance risks cutting off the main alternative route Saudi Arabia has used for oil exports that bypass disruption through the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia has responded by increasing shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, where a small number of tankers are increasingly shuttling back and forth to bring out oil, charging record fees of as much as a quarter of the cargo’s value to brave the wartime risk. They then transfer the oil to other ships in the Indian Ocean, bound for customers in Asia or elsewhere.

Traders say Saudi Arabia has sold 60 million barrels of oil both this month and next, to be loaded from off Oman on the far side of Hormuz. Satellite data shows Saudi exports through Hormuz reaching 2.9 million barrels per day in recent days, up from just 700,000 in August.

That has helped cap the global price of crude, which has retreated closer to $100 a barrel after approaching $110 last week. But consumers and industries are still paying record prices for some refined fuels, with the US retail price of diesel hitting another all-time high on Monday.

In the latest reported attack in Hormuz, Britain’s UKMTO maritime security agency said a ship sailing into the strait had been hit with a projectile, causing minor injuries to crew. It also said it had learned of an earlier strike on a gas tanker.

Diplomacy in the wider conflict has largely been stalled since a June interim ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran collapsed within weeks. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian is due to fly to New York on Tuesday to attend the UN General Assembly.

The sharp escalation between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis has raised concerns that the confrontation could spread further across the region, with Washington worried that the conflict could intensify and potentially lead the Houthis to resume direct attacks on Israel, diplomatic officials told Maariv on Tuesday.

The officials said the key question is whether the situation can be brought under control or whether the confrontation will continue to escalate. Among the regional consequences being considered is the possibility that the Houthis could again try to attack Israel directly, as they did last year.

The concerns come after the US State Department updated its security guidance for American citizens in the Middle East, warning that the military confrontation between the Iran-backed Houthis and Saudi Arabia could escalate rapidly. The US Embassy in Israel also issued an alert urging citizens to remain vigilant and consider the possibility of flight disruptions, airspace closures, and transportation disruptions.

Diplomatic officials stressed that the updated and expanded warnings should not necessarily be seen as a sign that immediate developments are expected. The wording, they said, also reflects the administration’s responsibility to warn American citizens in the region and make clear the seriousness of the situation should the confrontation intensify.

The warnings come against the backdrop of the latest escalation in the confrontation. Saudi Arabia confirmed that the Houthis launched a ballistic missile toward Riyadh, which was intercepted by the Saudi air defense system.

It was the first time the Saudi capital had been targeted since the current wave of escalation began. Residents reported hearing an explosion, and smoke was later seen near Riyadh’s airport. No casualties or damage were reported.

The Houthis claimed they attacked “sensitive targets” in Riyadh with missiles and drones, as well as facilities belonging to oil giant Aramco in Yanbu. Saudi Arabia said it had also thwarted attempts to strike civilian infrastructure in Yanbu, Taif, Baish, and the Farasan Islands. Houthi claims that Aramco facilities were hit have not been verified.

Saudis divide efforts between defending territory, Red Sea shipping

The wave of attacks has forced Saudi Arabia to divide its efforts between defending cities and infrastructure from missiles and drones, securing energy facilities, and protecting shipping routes in the Red Sea.

In recent months, the Houthis have expanded their attacks on Saudi Arabia and shipping in the region, and in July they declared a naval blockade against the kingdom. Any disruption to traffic through the Bab al-Mandab Strait could significantly increase the economic and strategic cost of the confrontation.

Amid the tensions, US President Donald Trump returned to the White House from Camp David earlier than planned. No official explanation was given for the schedule change, and no confirmation links his early return to developments in the Middle East.

The return came as discussions were underway in Washington over the desired extent of US involvement in the confrontation. US media reported that options for action against the Houthis were examined while Trump was at Camp David, but no US decision to launch a strike was announced.

Washington has so far refrained from direct military intervention alongside Saudi Arabia in the current round of fighting and has not agreed to Riyadh’s request to take military action against the Houthis.

Israel is closely monitoring developments. Israeli officials believe the pressure facing Saudi Arabia could also affect Riyadh’s diplomatic calculations.

“Such an escalation could actually help the Abraham Accords,” the officials said.

Israeli officials: Saudis recognizing alliances insufficient for Houthi threat

According to the officials, the Saudis are under pressure and are discovering that the relationships and alliances they have built are not currently providing a complete response to the threat. If the Houthi threat intensifies and the assistance the kingdom receives from its allies remains limited, they assess that Israeli capabilities could carry greater weight in the eyes of the Saudi leadership.

Saudi Arabia has been working in recent weeks to secure outside assistance. According to reports, amid a shortage of interceptors, it has requested air-defense assistance from France, the UK, Pakistan, and Egypt.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also traveled to Cairo and, according to the reports, sought Egyptian support against the Houthis.

Security cooperation among Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan is also being tested by developments on the ground.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara was prepared to assist with Saudi military needs under the defense agreement among the three countries. Pakistan has so far not joined military action against the Houthis.

The gap between Riyadh’s security needs and the assistance it is actually receiving is at the heart of the Israeli assessment. Israeli officials point in this context to the experience and capabilities Israel has accumulated in intelligence and air defense against the Houthis.

As the campaign continues, they assess that those capabilities could also become part of Saudi Arabia’s broader considerations.

A delegation of 21 senior executives and managers from emergency medical services organizations in Latin America and Spain arrived in Israel last week for a professional workshop with Magen David Adom.

As part of the Foreign Ministry’s 545 Project, delegation members from Spain, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Chile, and Honduras visited MDA’s national headquarters in Ramle, toured southern Israel, and visited the MDA station in Jerusalem.

The visit was organized through cooperation between the Foreign Ministry and MDA and was intended to share Israeli knowledge and experience in emergency medicine with professionals and decision-makers from abroad while strengthening professional ties between MDA and emergency medical organizations worldwide.

A national asset for Israel’s resilience

This “knowledge that Magen David Adom has accumulated over the years, in routine and emergency situations, is a national asset that helps strengthen the resilience of the State of Israel,” said MDA Director-General Eli Bin.

“The visit of senior officials from the emergency systems from Spain and Latin America to Israel is an expression of the strength of international cooperation based on shared values and a single goal – saving lives,” he added.

Irit Savyon, head of the division at the Israeli Center for International Cooperation and Assistance at the Foreign Ministry, supported this statement by calling it “an important milestone in strengthening bilateral relations and preparedness for emergency situations.”

Throughout the week, delegation members were introduced to the operations of MDA’s 101 National Emergency Hotline and the technologies the organization uses to receive calls, dispatch teams, and manage incidents in real time. They also received an overview from the Health Ministry of Israel’s healthcare system during routine and emergency situations.

The workshop continued with tours of MDA’s blood services laboratories and the national breast milk bank the organization operates. Delegation members also underwent professional training related to mass-casualty incidents.

At MDA’s training and simulation center at its Ramle headquarters, the delegation explored the advanced training system used for Israeli emergency medical teams, experienced the simulators used for training, and learned about the organization’s working methods and professional models.

Among the delegation members were senior officials from national emergency systems in their respective countries, including the director of Civil Defense of Panama, the minister of 911 and his deputy, the deputy emergency minister of Honduras, and the director of the emergency system of the Neocane Province in Argentina.

“Coming to Israel was truly an enriching experience. Seeing first-hand what world-class practices look like inspired us to think about what we can achieve in our own country,” said Luis René Suasó, Honduras’ Deputy Minister of the Permanent Committee for Emergencies (COPECO).

“We are very pleased and grateful for this opportunity, and look forward to taking all this knowledge back home and putting it into practice,” he added.

Mass-casualty response and MDA’s rescue fleet

During another professional session, delegation members received an in-depth presentation on MDA’s operational approach to mass-casualty incidents and lessons learned from responding to large-scale emergencies.

They were also introduced to MDA’s specialized rescue vehicles, including intensive care buses capable of treating and evacuating up to seven critically ill patients, Unimog vehicles used to evacuate casualties from difficult terrain, emergency motorcycles, and off-road vehicles.

In addition, the delegation received an overview of the work carried out by MDA’s 39,000 volunteers and employees during routine operations, emergencies, and wartime, particularly during operations Roaring Lion and Rising Lion.

The delegation continued its professional tour with visits to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv before traveling south to the Nova complex and to Barzilai and Soroka hospitals, both of which have extensive experience treating casualties from conflict along Israel’s southern border.

While in the South, delegation members visited the MDA station in Sderot, where they heard about the organization’s role during the October 7 massacre and met the family of the late MDA paramedic Amit Mann, who was murdered by terrorists while treating wounded people in Be’eri.

In the final part of the workshop, the delegation traveled to Jerusalem and visited the MDA station in the capital.

Members met servicemen and women from across the city’s communities who serve at the station and were reportedly deeply impressed by their commitment to saving lives.

At the station, they were also introduced to a specialized emergency vehicle that enables MDA teams to manage complex incidents in the field.

“What I appreciated most was not only seeing how MDA operates, but also having very open and practical discussions about the challenges we face in pre-hospital emergency medicine,” said Jorge A. Morales, Medical Director of the Emergency Medical Services System of Catalonia, Spain.

He noted the differences between his own country’s systems and MDA’s operations: “coming from the Catalan Emergency Medical Services System and other systems in Latin America and Spain, it is very interesting to compare the experience and perspectives of the different systems, and to understand how much we can learn from each other.”

Over the years, MDA has partnered in “transferring knowledge and assisting in the establishment and development of emergency medical systems in various countries.” Some members of the current delegation had previously taken part in professional programs conducted in cooperation with the organization.

The knowledge-sharing initiative is intended to continue in the future. “Upon the participants’ return to their countries, they are expected to apply the tools they have acquired and serve as goodwill ambassadors for Israel,” says Sayvon.

CNN, MS NOW, and Politico sued President Donald Trump and other members of his administration on Monday for banning them from White House grounds, saying the action violated their First Amendment rights to free speech and a free press under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.

The news outlets are seeking a temporary restraining order to block Trump’s action in federal court in Washington, D.C., with a hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the lawsuit stated.

“Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference,” the outlets wrote in a joint statement. “The government does not decide what the press reports or publishes.”

Trump announced the ban on Friday on social media, saying those news outlets “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States,” and defended it in another post on Monday.

“The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!” Trump wrote on Monday, without providing evidence of a national security threat.

Trump’s unprecedented campaign against the media

Past presidents have battled with the press, but Trump’s campaign against the media has been unprecedented. He has upended decades of tradition by denying basic access to many major news organizations, launching personal attacks on journalists for their reporting and elevating media outlets seen as more sympathetic to the administration. He has also filed lawsuits against multiple news outlets.

The White House launched a “Trump TV” stream on Monday evening, days after Trump banned the media outlets from the White House.

The White House said the stream will run videos and highlights of what it calls the Trump administration’s achievements, but a press freedom advocate said it amounted to “a steady diet of government propaganda.”

A 60-second trailer displayed the Republican leader’s 2024 presidential win, and the first video streamed after the platform went live was Trump’s remarks on July 3 at Mount Rushmore. The stream had only about 8,000 live views 15 minutes after it was launched on YouTube.

“This just makes it even clearer that the real goal here is to ensure that the American public is fed a steady diet of government propaganda,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said.

CNN is one of the five news organizations – along with ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC – that make up the primary White House television pool. They share the costs of covering the president, take turns organizing coverage and share the footage with outlets around the country.

CNN was scheduled to cover Trump’s trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, but it could not provide a pool feed.

Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC suspend presidential pool coverage in response to Trump ban

In response, the other major TV networks suspended presidential pool coverage. This effectively eliminated the most widespread video source for White House events just as Trump is set to meet with numerous world leaders on the sidelines of the General Assembly and host Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington later in the week.

“This is to advise that, effective today (Monday), the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Bryan Boughton, who runs the Fox News Washington bureau and is the current TV pool chair, said in an email Monday. “There will be no replacement pool put in place.”

Otherwise, it was business as usual in the White House press room on Monday as reporters planned for the day’s events, including an afternoon ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Republican president’s new Marine One helipad on the South Lawn.

The audio on the White House’s own live stream of the ceremony, which it promoted as an alternative to the pool feed, was inaudible.

Trump’s party is seeking to retain its narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress in the November midterm elections. Polls show the public souring on Republicans and Trump’s own approval ratings stand near historic lows.

A person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Natalie Harp, a close presidential aide, showed Trump clips and graphics of recent news coverage, which contributed to his decision to ban the three outlets.

Trump has been “very unhappy” with coverage of the midterm elections, the person added, and his frustration intensified after last week’s Supreme Court ruling that blocked his attempt to limit mail-in voting.

“The Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office,” the White House said in response to Reuters questions about the lawsuit, Harp’s role and Trump’s views on election coverage. “They’re completely capable of reporting from directly outside.”

The affected news organizations moved quickly to present a united front. Within 10 minutes of Trump’s announcement on Friday, CNN reached out to MS NOW and Politico to discuss joint legal action, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Banning news organizations from the White House prevents them from confronting government officials face-to-face and perhaps eliciting off-the-cuff unguarded comments that might shed new light onto political matters, which is especially important during an election year,” said Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.

Last year, Trump banned the Associated Press from the pool of reporters that cover his movements because the news agency did not adopt his preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico. The AP has sued over the ban. His administration also has limited the access of many journalists to the Pentagon.

In his ​first term, Trump’s White House sought to take away the credentials of then-CNN correspondent Jim Acosta and Playboy correspondent Brian Karem. Federal ​judges ordered the White House to restore their press passes.

The lawsuit was assigned to US District Judge Timothy Kelly, who was appointed by Trump in 2017. Kelly ruled against Trump in 2018 in the Acosta case.

Trump has stepped up his actions targeting the media since winning a second term, suing multiple outlets and repeatedly urging broadcasters to drop programs he deems unfair.

He has called on the Federal Communications Commission to strip disfavored broadcast stations of their licenses.

Charges against five former and current Stanford University students will be dismissed in relation to a 2024 pro-Palestinian demonstration in which protesters barricaded themselves inside the school president’s office.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said on Monday it would dismiss the charges if the five defendants completed 100 hours of community service each and paid about $52,000 combined in restitution to the university.

Santa Clara County Deputy Public Defender Avi Singh, who represented one of the defendants, said all had “made full restitution and agreed to complete substantial community service so they can move forward with their lives,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

A judge declared a mistrial in February in the case after jurors could not reach a verdict. Twelve protesters were initially charged with felony vandalism. Seven of them previously accepted plea deals or diversion programs.

Prosecutors said at the time the charges were filed that at least one suspect entered the building by breaking a window. Police arrested 13 people on June 5, 2024, in relation to the incident, and the university said the building sustained “extensive” damage.

Approx. 3,000 arrested during 2024 US pro-Palestinian protest movement

The charges were among the most serious against participants in the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest movement on US colleges in which demonstrators demanded an end to Israeli attacks and strikes on Gaza and to Washington’s support for its ally, along with a divestment of funds by their universities from companies supporting Israel.

Protesters had renamed the building “Dr. Adnan’s Office” after Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian doctor who died in an Israeli prison after months of detention.

Over 3,000 people were arrested during the 2024 US pro-Palestinian protest movement, according to media tallies. Some students faced suspension, expulsion and the revocation of their degrees.

After the mistrial, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said he would seek a new trial. However, defense attorneys were able to successfully argue that his office should be removed from the case, citing concerns including his past remarks. The California Attorney-General’s Office took over the case.

A man identified as the Venezuelan who was shot and wounded by a federal immigration agent in Texas said on Monday that he was in pain and being held at an ICE detention center with a bullet lodged in his back.

Attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch introduced the man who phoned into a news conference she was holding in Austin as her client, Wilber Rafael Garces Perez. He said he was bleeding and was not receiving adequate medical care in a Texas detention facility.

“I’m not doing well because of the gunshot I received,” Perez, 28, said in Spanish as reporters listened to a speakerphone, adding that he had to sleep on the floor at the detention center.

Attorney Lincoln-Goldfinch said at the news conference that Perez was being held at the South Texas ICE Processing Center, about 130 miles southwest of Austin, and that he was undergoing questioning by agents.

Perez said he was released within four hours of arriving at a hospital, and that a doctor treating him told him ICE agents were in a hurry to transfer him to a detention center.

Perez says he was shot in his car, police say he ran from agents

He said that he had been out working as a DoorDash food delivery driver on Sunday when his car was sideswiped by the agents, who he said did not identify themselves or turn on any sort of lights or siren. He said that an agent shot him while he was still in his car and that there had been no foot chase. Austin police said on Sunday that he had run from agents.

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, responded to requests for comment on Monday.

DHS on Sunday released a written statement saying that Perez was in the US illegally and that he had a final order of removal from the country. They did not provide details on the circumstances of the shooting.

The New York Times, citing two unnamed people it said were familiar with the federal investigation into the shooting, reported on Monday that ICE agents were out in Austin checking license plates when they discovered that Perez had a deportation order.

The agents, the newspaper reported, pulled Perez over around 12:45 p.m., identified themselves, and said he was going to be arrested, at which point Perez allegedly fled in his car, leading to a short chase, sideswiping and shooting.

Multiple shootings by ICE this year

Lincoln-Goldfinch, speaking on CNN, said that account of the events “doesn’t match” what Perez told her, though she provided no details on whether he had been stopped by ICE agents before being shot.

Federal immigration officials have been involved in multiple shootings this year, including the killing of two US citizens in Minnesota, which sparked a widespread backlash. More than 50 people have died in ICE detention since Trump returned to office last year.

Yesterday, businesses closed across Israel, and cars largely disappeared from the roads. People who rarely enter a synagogue found themselves seated beside those who go every week. For a day, even this country managed to lower the volume.

The attachment to Yom Kippur runs deep. In a recent Israel Democracy Institute survey, 74% of Jewish Israeli adults said they fasted fully or partially; 57% usually attended prayers. Plenty of Israelis who disagree with the rabbinate, or have little patience for organized religion, still make room for this day.

Then the fast ends, the phones come out, and we remember what everyone else needs to apologize for.

We know the routine. Someone from the other political camp says something outrageous, and we demand a reckoning. Someone we voted for does the same, and suddenly context becomes very important. There is always an explanation, always an older offense committed by the other side.

After everything Israel has been through since October 7, we ought to be able to do better.

The country has considerable reason for pride. Reservists have returned to duty again and again, leaving spouses to manage homes and children, and employers to manage without them. Volunteers have spent years helping families whose lives were overturned. Much of that work attracts little attention and continues long after the cameras leave.

Those Israelis are entitled to ask hard questions of the people who made decisions on their behalf. Who accepted the assessment that Hamas was deterred? What happened to the warnings? Why were families left waiting for help on October 7?

Israel waits for answers

The answers matter to parents deciding whether they can raise children near a border, as well as to soldiers being asked to trust their commanders. They deserve to know what has changed.

Political and military leaders should be expected to explain their own decisions. An admission of responsibility ought to include an account of what went wrong under their authority and what they intend to do about it. The public can judge the explanation. It should have the chance to hear one.

There is a danger, too, in making “we all failed” so broad that everyone escapes. The responsibility of a prime minister or a senior commander is different from that of a voter who believed them. A bereaved family needs answers from those entrusted with protecting it.

For everyone else, there is the less comfortable business of examining our own habits. Have we passed along a claim because it suited us, without checking whether it was true? Have we excused cruelty because we shared the speaker’s politics?

There is a practical place to start: the family WhatsApp group. If we shared a false story there, we can correct it there. If we accused someone unfairly, we can tell the same people who heard the accusation that we got it wrong.

This newspaper belongs in that discussion. We choose which claims to examine, whose assurances to challenge, and how prominently to acknowledge an error. When we get something wrong, readers deserve a clear correction. We should expect to be questioned with the same persistence we bring to questioning others.

Before Yom Kippur, about 150,000 people attended the final slihot prayers at the Western Wall and in the surrounding area. Former hostages were there, along with a Nova massacre survivor and political and religious leaders. The penitential prayers gave people with very different lives words they could say together.

The plural and personal confession of sin

The confession is in the plural: We have sinned. Each person saying it still has to consider what he or she has done.

That becomes harder once the election campaign gets going again. A candidate who admits an error can expect to see the clip in an opponent’s advertisement. Voters have a part in this: We can listen to an explanation before deciding that changing one’s mind is disqualifying.

Israel will keep arguing. The questions facing it are too serious for anything else. We would argue more honestly if we allowed for the possibility that we had missed something, trusted the wrong person, or defended a decision for too long.

“We were wrong” should be a sentence we can say after Yom Kippur, too.

Thousands of Yemeni people have found refuge in northern Djibouti after fleeing by boat from Yemen’s Houthis across the Bab al-Mandab Strait, according to the BBC’s Frank Gardner, who interviewed some of the refugees in northern Africa. 

Some of the refugees whom Gardner interviewed are from the town of Dhubab, which the BBC noted is on the front lines of the war between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed pro-government Yemeni forces fighting them. 

“How could I just sit there when my kids are screaming and shaking in terror?” Ibrahim Issa, a 50-year-old fisherman, told Gardner. “When the sound of the planes starts, and the kids hear the planes, they begin shouting and screaming. As parents, it is our responsibility; what can you do when you see this? That is why we fled, to save them.”

Gardner added that several refugees gave him the same message:  “We don’t care which side it is that’s attacking. It’s the bombs falling all around us that have caused us to flee.”

The refugees’ accounts come as the conflict in Yemen continues to escalate, with the US weighing renewed military action against the Houthis.

Trump calls off planned US strikes on Houthis at last minute after Saudi plea

US President Donald Trump came close to ordering a new American military campaign against the Houthis in Yemen this weekend, after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally urged him to intervene, but called off the planned strikes as they were nearing execution, The New York Times reported.

According to the report, Trump had spent roughly two weeks weighing repeated Saudi appeals for US military assistance against the Iran-backed Houthis, whose renewed offensive has expanded the conflict in Yemen and increased pressure on Saudi Arabia.

Trump had told advisers on Wednesday that he did not favor launching strikes. But after speaking with bin Salman on Thursday, he reversed course and instructed the Pentagon to prepare airstrikes against Houthi targets, according to administration officials cited by the NYT.

By midday Sunday, however, Trump had changed his mind again.

The planned US strikes were halted at a late stage, when military commanders had already approved target lists, troops were loading bombs onto aircraft selected for the operation, and the first wave of attacks was close to beginning, according to people briefed on the planning.

Idan Kweller contributed to this report.

The European Union’s naval mission to protect shipping in the Red Sea would need to increase its fleet to more than 10 warships, its foreign policy chief said on Monday, adding that there were not many in the area at the moment.

The EU’s Aspides mission was launched in 2024 to protect shipping from attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, and diplomats have said there are currently six warships operating.

“When Aspides was put in place, then the indication was that it needs at least 10 ships. The situation, I think, is even more grave right now,” Kaja Kallas told reporters on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

Houthis have made rapid advances in recent weeks along the Red Sea coast

The Houthis have made rapid advances in recent weeks along the Red Sea coast, further complicating routes in a region that also includes the Strait of Hormuz, where traffic had already dwindled because of the US-Iran war.

Italy, one of the key countries in the Aspides mission, announced on Thursday it was preparing a naval mission in the area for its own ships, saying it could not wait for the EU to respond to the new crisis.

Kallas said the Houthi attacks were affecting European interests and impacting the global economy.

“The EU operation Aspides is making a crucial contribution to security in the region and global shipping, but the operation needs more naval assets and more air assets to address the increased level of threats in the region,” she said.

Kallas sent a letter to the EU’s 27 member states on September 19 asking them to up their contributions. The issue would be discussed at upcoming defense and foreign ministers’ meetings, she said in the letter.

“This situation, which is still evolving as we speak, is already affecting European interests with repercussions on our supply chains and could have implications for our ability to support our economies, which were already hit by rising fuel prices,” she said in the letter.

“For the moment, although the Houthis communicate that they would only target Saudi-linked interests, there is uncertainty over their course of action with respect to vessels that transit through the Strait. Regardless, they are now in a better position to potentially harm maritime shipping.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday barred the state’s environmental agency from issuing new permits for data centers until regulators complete a massive audit of the energy-hungry facilities seeking to connect to the Texas electrical grid.

The Republican governor’s directive to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality effectively freezes all state-issued permits to data center developers, which had flocked to the region for its abundant electricity, land and pro-business reputation.

Since the artificial intelligence boom began roughly three years ago, Texas has become one of the fastest-growing data hubs in the world. But intensifying public backlash over the facilities, and fears about AI more broadly, prompted Abbott last month to freeze the connection of new data centers to the state grid and order an audit of the facilities.

By the time of that directive, there were more than 470 gigawatts’ worth of data center projects and other large energy users in line to connect to the grid – more than five times the state’s peak demand.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state grid, is in the early stages of auditing data center power use, tax incentives, and water consumption, among other factors.

‘Data centers must… protect our grid and water’ in Texas

“Simply put, Texans must come first,” Abbott said in a statement. “Data centers must pay their own way, protect our grid and water, and complete the (audits).”

Abbott is among a swelling number of governors who once raced to attract data center investments – and touted their public benefit – but are now tightening restrictions on the developments to ease their constituents’ fears about rising power bills and environmental issues caused by the facilities.

Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, said Abbott was walking back “his earlier pronouncements about data centers leading to lower electricity prices.”