📰 Israel Races to Hit Iran Hard Before the War Stops

The IDF is trying to squeeze every last target out of the clock before any cease-fire talks can freeze the battlefield.

According to Israeli officials, Prime Minister Netanyahu has ordered a 48-hour surge to destroy as much of Iran’s arms industry as possible, because Jerusalem fears that Trump could announce a temporary cease-fire before Israel finishes the job on Iran’s missile and nuclear programs. The logic is brutal and simple: if the war pauses too soon, Israel loses leverage, and the campaign against Iran’s military infrastructure ends with unfinished business.

That urgency also explains the tempo on the ground. The IDF says it has already struck more than 3,000 Iranian regime targets and is still hitting missile launchers, production sites and air-defense systems as fast as it can reach them. The point is not symbolism. It is to degrade enough of Iran’s strike capacity that any pause in the fighting looks like a win, not a timeout.

But the strategic downside is obvious. Every extra day of war invites more Iranian retaliation, more damage to Israeli infrastructure and more strain on an economy already under attack from missiles, drones and disruption. So Israel is doing what wartime governments always do when they fear a diplomatic freeze: racing to maximize damage now, even if that means paying for it later.

#israel #iran #idf #war #netanyahu #security #military #geopolitics

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📰 Israel’s Island Rumor, Greece’s Real Trap

A Turkish outlet is pushing a story that Israel wants to lease or buy 40 Greek islands for up to 50 years and turn them into shelters, a claim that immediately triggered talk of war, Cyprus, and “Israeli shield” fantasies.

What matters here is less the feverish rhetoric than the structure underneath it. The piece frames the Aegean as a chessboard where Greek, Turkish, Cypriot, and Israeli anxieties all get stacked on top of one another: Greece’s security dependence, Turkey’s regional hard lines, Cyprus as the real prize, and Israel’s habit of thinking in terms of buffer zones and strategic depth.

That makes the story politically combustible even before anyone proves the underlying plan is real.

The Turkish reaction is predictable: warnings that any Israeli presence on the islands would be a casus belli, claims that the goal is to turn the islands into intelligence outposts, and the usual regional mythology — Greece’s old “Megali Idea” dreams of expansion, Turkey’s Kıbrıs framing of Cyprus, and the “Arz-ı Mevud” line, a phrase used for the Jewish idea of the Promised Land.

It is the kind of language that turns rumor into deterrence theater, but also raises the temperature in a region where one bad move can be read as a map change.

So the practical takeaway is simple: whether or not the island plan is serious, the story shows how quickly the Aegean can be turned into a threat narrative that serves every side’s worst instincts.

Greece becomes the vulnerable terrain, Turkey gets a fresh warning label, Israel gets pulled into another strategic fantasy, and Cyprus stays where it always is in these stories — the real fault line everyone pretends is secondary.

#israel #greece #turkey #cyprus #egean #security #geopolitics

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Katz Turns Settlements Into a Budget Line

Israel’s defense minister showed up in Sha-Nor to celebrate the return of a settlement and to announce a broad plan to move IDF camps into northern Samaria, with 350 million shekels attached. In Israeli politics, nothing says “security” like a ceremonial reopening and a fresh spending package.

The official language is protection, sovereignty, and operational necessity. The practical language is simpler: more bases, more construction, more permanence, and more public money routed into a project that looks less like defense than territorial entrenchment. That is the old trick. Rename expansion as security, then invoice the taxpayer.

And of course, the budget story never arrives alone. Katz is selling the move as part of a larger security architecture, while the broader defense budget for 2026 is already set at NIS 112 billion, with more funds still flowing to West Bank and border projects. In other words: the machinery gets heavier, the language gets nobler, and the bill keeps climbing.

The real satire is that every camp, every road, every “temporary” measure is introduced as if history is paused for paperwork. It never is. The state gets more entrenched, the political class gets more mileage, and the public gets another speech about necessity.

So yes, it is sold as security. But it also functions as a political program with armored vehicles and a budget spreadsheet.

#Israel #Katz #WestBank #security #budget

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📰 Germany’s Cyber Police, Paid in Vain

German companies lost billions to cybercrime last year, and Berlin’s answer was to spend even more on cyber-police units that still clear only a tiny share of cases.

It is the kind of policy loop that makes perfect sense in a country increasingly run by process instead of results.

The joke is brutal: the damage keeps rising, the bureaucracy keeps growing, and the crime rate stays comfortably ahead of enforcement.

Germany is pouring money into a system that looks busy, sounds modern, and still leaves attackers with most of the winnings.

This is what happens when a state treats digital crime like a line item instead of a structural threat.

Companies get hit, factories slow down, police units get funded, and everyone acts surprised that theft is still theft even when it comes through a keyboard.

So yes, the numbers are ugly. But the deeper problem is uglier: Germany is discovering that high-tech vulnerabilities are easier to describe than to stop.

#Germany #cybercrime #economy #security #Berlin #industry

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📰 A Dinner, a Gunman, and a Country on Edge

The White House Correspondents’ dinner turned into a security scare after gunfire broke out at the Washington Hilton and Secret Service rushed Trump and senior officials off the stage.

Investigators now say the suspect likely targeted the president and other members of the administration, and Trump says the man left behind a “manifesto.”

That is the grim part. A formal Washington ritual built on irony and media vanity became another reminder that political violence in the United States is no longer a background threat — it is now part of the room.

The security details matter too. The suspect reportedly ran past a checkpoint carrying knives, a shotgun, and a handgun, which is exactly the sort of breach that turns “everything worked” into a statement people say when they are hoping nobody asks what failed first.

Trump is alive, the ballroom was evacuated, and investigators are still piecing together motive. But the broader picture is already clear: the country’s elite political stage is increasingly indistinguishable from its threat environment.

So the dinner’s punchline is gone. What remains is a nation where even a black-tie event now comes with security theater, live gunfire, and a manifesto in the dark.

#Trump #Washington #security #politicalviolence #WhiteHouse #USnews

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Hezbollah Calls Its Drones “National Industry” as Ukraine Sells Its Own Drone War Abroad

Hezbollah has released a video of drone assembly and branded it “Pride of Lebanese Industry,” trying to sell its arsenal as a local product rather than an Iranian pipeline with a Lebanese logo.

That is the point of the video: not just firepower, but sovereignty theater.

But the regional drone economy is bigger than Hezbollah’s propaganda. Reuters, the BBC, and AP have reported that Zelensky has turned Ukraine’s battlefield drone know-how into a diplomatic and commercial tool, sending experts to the Middle East and negotiating “drone deals” and security agreements with Gulf states, while Ukraine also moves toward weapons exports more broadly.

That is where the ugly symmetry sits. Hezbollah wants to look like a state that manufactures power at home; Zelensky wants to turn wartime expertise into leverage abroad.

Both are packaging drones as national destiny, and both are trying to convert war into a supply chain and a bargaining chip.

In both cases, the drone is no longer just a weapon. It is a diplomatic asset, an export product, and a political billboard.

So the real story is not only that Hezbollah is claiming an industrial base. It is that war has become a brand, and everyone from Beirut to Kyiv is learning how to sell it.

#Hezbollah #Ukraine #Zelensky #drones #Lebanon #security

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London’s New Security Theater

A former synagogue on Nelson Street in Whitechapel was set on fire, the latest attack on a Jewish site in London this week. The building may now be a commercial space, but the plaque stayed, and so did the message: the symbol is enough to make it a target.

That is the part politicians always rush to process and never really solve. First comes the fire, then the outrage, then the money, then the summit, then the speeches about “community cohesion,” as if cohesion were a substitute for security. Starmer is convening leaders and promising another £25 million, which is what governments do when they want to look decisive without admitting the country has become a recurring scene.

The tragedy is that Jewish communities are being turned into a permanent public-test case: defend them too visibly, and the state turns identity into a security category; defend them too weakly, and the next attack writes the headline for you. Meanwhile, local politics keeps grinding on, with every side trying to harvest moral outrage from a fire it did not put out.

And so London does what modern capitals do best: stage a crisis summit, announce a budget, condemn hate, and hope the next flare-up waits until after the votes.

#London #antisemitism #security #Starmer #Whitechapel

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#representative #commission #security #iran

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Israel’s Draft Law: Sacrificing Soldiers to Save the Coalition

The government just put a price tag on Israeli security, and it’s denominated in coalition math, not in lives.

On Wednesday, the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is scheduled to debate, in the same morning, two pieces of political dynamite: an amendment to formally integrate yeshiva students into the draft‑exemption framework, and another amendment to extend mandatory military service. The message is simple and obscene: Torah students out, everybody else in for longer.

The second bill — extending mandatory service — was kept in the drawer for months because even this coalition knows how furious the public already is. Now they’re trying to sneak it through in the same package as the yeshiva law, as if you can bury a time bomb under a bigger explosion.

At the same time, there’s a preliminary vote set on dissolving the Knesset. Netanyahu’s camp is trying to convince the ultra‑Orthodox parties that there is still a majority to pass the exemption law, basically begging for time. The calendar tricks are pure survival mode: if they can stall, September 1 becomes impossible, the election date slips past September 15, and suddenly you’re campaigning in October instead of being punished sooner.

Inside the Haredi camp, the split is naked. Rav Lando’s house tells Degel HaTorah MKs to support dissolution and avoid “political games,” but party figures leak that if the draft‑exemption law actually passes, they’ll run back to the rabbis to “reconsider” their stand on the vote. Translation: “principles” are valid until the coalition delivers the goods.

The opposition doesn’t even need to invent a slogan. Lapid can just read the situation out loud: Netanyahu is trying to “sell Israel’s security” — trading the already overstretched combat and reserve pool for one more round of legal protection and political oxygen. For frontline troops and reservists, it looks even uglier: you get longer compulsory service so someone else can keep permanent exemption and permanent leverage.

The Forum of Service Partnership calls the law “an absolute disgrace” in light of the Chief of Staff’s warning that the army and its reserves are “one step away from collapse.” That’s the core of the story: the professional warning is that the system is at breaking point; the political response is to squeeze it harder and hand out exemptions to the government’s most loyal voting bloc.

This isn’t policy. It’s a hostage deal, where the hostages are soldiers, reservists, and what’s left of the idea that the IDF belongs to everyone, not just to the people who know how to blackmail a prime minister on the way to the ballot box.

#Israel #IDF #Haredim #draft #Netanyahu #Lapid #security #fakeEquality

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📰 Live From the Security State: One Dead Outside the White House, One Billion-Dollar Ballroom Back in the Pitch Deck

A 21‑year‑old man walked up to the edge of the White House complex, pulled a gun from his bag and opened fire on Secret Service officers. He’s now dead. A bystander is wounded. The president is safe, untouched, inside.

Nasire Best was not an organized assassin, not a cell leader, not a mastermind. According to court records, his last big attempt to breach the perimeter was in 2025, when he walked into a restricted exit lane, told agents he was Jesus Christ, and asked to be arrested.

Law enforcement officials describe him as emotionally disturbed and already “known” to them. This weekend he became something else: the latest data point in a string of gunfire incidents orbiting Trump’s physical presence — from Butler, Pennsylvania, to the Washington Hilton, to this intersection at 17th and Pennsylvania.

And Trump knows exactly how to use that. In his Truth Social post after the shooting, he thanks the Secret Service, references the recent gunfire outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and pivots straight to his favorite capital‑P Project: a “most safe and secure space of its kind ever built in Washington, D.C.”

The East Wing ballroom and bunker complex that he and his allies swear is about security, and his critics note just happens to combine donor hospitality, prestige architecture and a fresh round of government money directed at a building he controls.

The choreography is grimly consistent. Shots ring out; reporters are told to sprint to the briefing room; FBI, National Guard and D.C. police flood the streets around a presidency that already operates under permanent lockdown theater.

Within hours, the incident is folded into a narrative where rising political violence proves not that the system is sick, but that Trump is uniquely important — important enough to justify a new fortress, looser oversight, broader “security perimeters,” more power for the protective bubble and less access for everyone else.

So you get a White House that increasingly treats public space as a threat vector, the press as a liability to be herded and restricted, and every deranged gunman as Exhibit A in the argument for turning the president’s working environment into a privatized stronghold.

It’s not that the danger isn’t real; the bullets are very real. It’s what gets built on top of that danger — politically, architecturally, financially — that should worry anyone who still thinks “security” and “democracy” are supposed to be in tension, not in merger talks.

When every shot near the White House becomes another brick in the case for Trump’s billion‑dollar safe room, you have to ask: are we protecting a presidency, or entrenching a throne?

#Trump #WhiteHouse #SecretService #security #ballroom #USpolitics #violence #fakeDemocracy

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Trump’s New AI Order: Voluntary “Control” of Models That Can Hack You

The White House just discovered that AI can blow holes in the system — and is asking the people building the hole‑punchers to please show them the blueprints in advance.

Trump’s new executive order gives the government an early look at powerful AI models before they go public, but with all the sharp edges filed down.

Companies can “volunteer” to let officials review their systems up to 30 days before release, a window shrunk from the original 90 after Silicon Valley threw a tantrum.

The same industry that can spin up a model in a week somehow convinced Washington that three months of oversight was an existential threat.

On paper, this is about “bracing the economy” and “security risks.” In practice, it’s damage control after Anthropic built Mythos — a model so good at finding vulnerabilities and hacking networks that the company refused to release it and instead put it in a controlled program, Glasswing, for hand‑picked partners.

You know it’s bad when the people printing the money on AI look at their own product and say: “Yeah, that one doesn’t go on the app store.”

The administration’s answer is pure 2020s governance: no hard bans, no real liability, just a backstage pass.

The government gets a sneak peek; the companies keep full control; participation is “expected” but not required. Everyone poses for the “responsible innovation” photo while the core risk remains exactly where it was — in private labs, controlled by a handful of firms whose business model depends on racing each other to the next dangerous capability.

There’s also a nice little irony baked in. The same political ecosystem that screams about “deep state overreach” now wants you to trust a handshake system between trillion‑dollar tech players and a president who changes his mind after a few phone calls.

First the order was pulled after last‑minute lobbying. Now it’s back, barely trimmed, with softer edges and the same basic bet: that voluntary compliance will tame tools that can already out‑hack most human attackers.

So we have AI systems that can quietly map every weak spot in the digital world, a government that gets to glance at them briefly before release, and an industry that knows if it plays nice, it keeps the keys. Forget guardrails — this is a speed bump painted to look like a wall.

#usa #trump #ai #anthropic #mythos #glasswing #tech #security

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Gulf Protection: Warranty Expired

The deal with Iran may reopen Hormuz, but it doesn’t reopen faith in the American shield.

Gulf states just watched a “U.S.-backed security architecture” fail its live test.

For almost four months, Iran and its allies hit bases, energy facilities and even hotels across Bahrain, Qatar, the U.A.E., Kuwait and beyond, while Washington’s famous umbrella leaked drones and missiles through the gaps.

The superpower that promised to keep the shipping lanes open also misread Iran’s ability to close them — and needed a framework deal just to crawl back to the prewar status quo.

Now the repair bill is political. Gulf elites are asking themselves what everyone else was already whispering: if this is what protection looks like, what exactly are we paying for.

Analysts say the U.S. security guarantee “is no longer reliable in the way they thought it was,” and Gulf officials are already talking, quietly, about reducing dependence.

But even their Plan B is cautious to the point of self‑parody: diversify ties, yes, but only with partners Washington can live with, because thousands of American troops and bases on their soil still set the outer limits of their sovereignty.

Inside the region, a different comparison hurts more. Iran, under massive sanctions, still managed to build and field its own drones, missiles and defense infrastructure.

Gulf states, drowning in cash and Western hardware, largely outsourced their security thinking to others. Kuwaiti scholars now say out loud what rulers preferred to leave implicit: if Iran can build a national defense under pressure, the monarchies can too — they just chose to buy systems instead of capabilities, and status instead of strategy.

The obvious answer is regional: cooperate, pool procurement, stop treating every neighbor as an arms‑race rival.

On paper, that sounds reasonable. In practice, it threatens the political economy of the Gulf — parallel militaries, overlapping contracts, and leaders who like their toys bespoke, not standardized.

So the post‑deal landscape looks like this: Washington declares a “great peace,” Tehran advertises strategic resilience, and the Gulf discovers that being a client doesn’t mean being safe.

The question is no longer just whether the U.S. will fight for them, but whether they are willing to start fighting, politically and institutionally, for their own security.

#gulf #usa #iran #security #hormuz #war #geopolitics

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Turkey in Israeli Eyes: Threat, Not War

Israelis are watching the latest Turkey drama and quietly updating a conclusion they already reached: Turkey is a problem to be contained, not an enemy to be bombed.

A fresh Dor Moriah survey of 1,007 adults shows a public that mostly sees Turkey as bad news. Over a third of respondents call Turkey “a serious strategic threat,” and another 28.5% see it as unfriendly even if not an immediate military danger. Only 4.9% describe it as friendly or potentially friendly, and a solid majority say they follow news about Turkey at least occasionally, meaning this isn’t some niche foreign‑policy concern.

The flash point is East Jerusalem. Turkish diplomatic moves there get overwhelmingly negative reviews: about 60% rate Ankara’s role negatively, while positive views barely crack double digits. When asked about Turkish education, cultural and religious projects in the city, most Israelis oppose giving them a free hand; roughly 45% say such activity should only be allowed under strict limits, and another 26% concede there might be some benefits but insist on firm Israeli oversight.

Gaza and the wider regional file are filtered through the same lens of suspicion. Around 36–37% see a Turkish role in a post‑war Gaza settlement as a serious security risk that could empower hostile actors, and another 28% see risks that would need to be heavily contained by international guarantees. The pattern is similar when people are asked to imagine a stronger Turkey in the context of U.S.–Iran talks: threat first, management second.

The deepest split, as usual, is national and religious. Among Jewish respondents, nearly 40% label Turkey a serious strategic threat, compared with just 5% of Arab citizens. A strict control regime on Turkish activity in East Jerusalem is backed by a majority of Jews (over 50%) but only a small minority of Arabs. Religious and ultra‑Orthodox Jews are even more hawkish: they are more likely than others to see Turkey as a major threat, to favor maximal restrictions in Jerusalem, and to view Turkish involvement in Gaza as particularly dangerous. In the Arab sector, positive assessments and “don’t know” responses are both much higher, reflecting a very different regional perspective.

And yet, this hostile perception doesn’t translate into a public appetite for direct confrontation. Asked about disputes between Greece and Turkey, the plurality answer isn’t “back Greece to the hilt” but “stay out of it”: over 40% say Israel should avoid involvement, and only about 36% support more active backing for Athens. When it comes to Azerbaijan, which has ties to both, the most common expectation is that Baku would stay neutral in any clash. Even on Gaza, roughly a quarter of respondents say that while Turkey poses real risks, its cooperation with the U.S. could also offer opportunities for regional stability if tightly managed.

Put simply, the Israeli mainstream doesn’t like or trust Turkey, especially under its current leadership and especially in Jerusalem and Gaza. The latest rhetoric from Ankara and Jerusalem — Erdogan calling for Israel’s destruction, Netanyahu framing him as a dangerous extremist — only hardens that view. But the dominant instinct isn’t “go to war with Turkey”; it’s “lock the doors, tighten the supervision, and let someone else fight with them.” For now, Turkey sits in the Israeli mind where many unpleasant neighbors do: a serious threat to be fenced in, not a target for tanks.

#Israel #Turkey #Erdogan #Netanyahu #Jerusalem #Gaza #Hormuz #war #security #publicopinion #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Shin Bet Meets the Arab “Peace Economy”

If media reports are right, Israel’s Shin Bet is about to do what it has avoided for years: dive into Arab sector crime inside Israel. Not terror, not Hamas cells — “regular” crime. Which, of course, stopped being regular a long time ago.

For years, the agency argued it couldn’t get involved because working with the police would expose sensitive methods.

The more honest explanation is ideological: a liberal consensus since the 1990s that Arab citizens should be handled with economics and integration, not with the same heavy tools Israel uses everywhere else in the region.

Then came October 7 and the hangover from the “economic peace” doctrine — the belief you can swap ideology and identity for GDP, budgets, and development plans.

Israel used that logic with everyone: the PA, Gulf states, Hezbollah via gas deals, Hamas in Gaza, and Arab citizens of Israel, who received unprecedented investment compared to past governments.

The catch: “economic peace” came with almost no real regulation or willingness to use coercive power when needed. The result was cumulative: Hamas’s October 7 attack, Hezbollah’s Radwan forces on the border, armed networks in the West Bank — and inside Israel, Arab crime organizations in the north and Bedouin anarchy in the south, quietly eroding state authority.

In that sense, crime syndicates and armed Bedouin groups are an internal version of Hamas’s elite units: armed actors challenging the state’s monopoly on force, just wrapped in the language of “civilian crime.”

Our habit of treating each arena as separate — Gaza here, Hezbollah there, Arab crime over there — hides the bigger pattern.

If Shin Bet is now being tasked with Arab sector crime, that’s not a technical tweak.

It’s the system admitting this is no longer just a civilian law‑and‑order problem but a nationalist-security issue that spills far beyond Arab localities, and that it requires “exceptional tools” beyond regular policing. It’s a late, reluctant confession that the economic‑peace fantasy inside Israel has failed.

#israel #arabcitizens #security #crime #ShinBet #economicPeace #governance #fakeDemocracy

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✈️ Trump’s Luxury Jet, Discount Security

Donald Trump wanted a new, glamorous Air Force One in time for America’s 250th birthday — and he got it by cutting corners on the one thing the plane is supposed to guarantee: survival.

Instead of waiting for the fully hardened new 747‑8s under conversion, Trump fell in love with a Qatari royal 747‑8 — chandelier, wood paneling, suede lounge — and ordered it rammed into service as a “bridge” Air Force One on an eight‑month schedule.

The Times investigation shows that the Qatari jet was not brought up to the old Air Force One standard. It has no lower fuselage door with self‑contained stairs, so the president now relies more on local ground equipment in unsecured airports.

It carries only one auxiliary power unit instead of two, reducing backup power for communications and vital electronics.

And the visible infrared countermeasure pods — the laser‑based systems that track and jam incoming missiles — are missing from the usual positions on the wings and tail, even as officials refuse to say what, if anything, replaces them.

Work that normally takes years — cutting new doors into the fuselage, electromagnetic hardening of wiring against nuclear‑type pulses, deep repairs to known 747‑8 frame cracks, crash‑testing side‑facing seats — was compressed to fit Trump’s July 4, 2026 deadline.

A sitting president personally signed off on décor, paint scheme, and the level of defensive systems, while appropriators were told the details were a “national security secret” they couldn’t see.

FAA approvals for the unusual seating arrived just days before his first flight, and the Air Force itself admits it “made trades on some of the less commonly used mission sets,” a polite way of saying certain capabilities were dropped to hit the date.

When US‑Iran strikes resumed and intelligence picked up a credible threat from Iranian proxies against Trump’s aircraft in Ankara, the Secret Service insisted he leave Turkey on the old, fully hardened Air Force One instead.

The new plane was flown ahead to Britain for a troop photo op.

Only after that episode did the White House announce that the Qatari jet will be pulled from service this fall for “upgrades and enhancements,” rebranded as “PLANEMAXXING.”

The system bent to give it to him: more money, more secrecy, fewer safety features. When a real threat finally appeared, everyone trusted the old engineering more than the new ego.

#USA #Trump #AirForceOne #Pentagon #Qatar #security #nuclear #budget #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy

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🇮🇷🛡Iran Brushes Up On
National Security

🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣

Iran is replacing its top national security adviser with a longtime military commander whose appointment could represent a further consolidation of power by the country’s old-guard security establishment.

Mohsen Rezaei, who led Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, will be the new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, a spokesman for Iran’s president wrote on social media on Sunday.

He had been serving as an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.

Rezaei is replacing Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who stepped into the role when the council’s previous secretary, Ali Larijani, was killed in an Israeli strike during the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran earlier this year.Seyed Mehdi Tabatabaei, a spokesman for President Masoud Pezeshkian, said on social media that Zolghadr had resigned, would take up a new position, and that Rezaei would take his place.

Zolghadr is himself a veteran of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s most powerful security force, analysts say he does not have the authority of some other current and former senior military commanders.More to read for free.

Hormuz.Hamidreza Azizi, a Berlin-based expert on Iranian security issues, said Rezaei’s appointment was significant for several reasons.

For one, it signaled that the country’s longtime security chiefs were further entrenching their power rather than making way for a transition toward a younger generation of political elites, he said.

Rezaei has been a constant in the highest levels of Iran’s military and politics for over four decades. In addition to his military role, he ran for president several times, unsuccessfully.

Rezaei said the appointment also indicated an effort to counterbalance Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has been leading Iran’s negotiations with the United States. Ghalibaf, another veteran Guards commander, is the speaker of Parliament and known to be close to Zolghadr.

#iran #national #security #zolghadr

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🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣

The turnover at the top of the security council could represent a balancing act by Ayatollah Khamenei “to prevent the excessive influence of Ghalibaf,” Azizi said.

Ghalibaf has in the past defended the cease-fire agreement that Iran struck with the United States in June, even as more hard-line elements within the country attacked the deal.

Rezaei’s appointment, Azizi said, “would mean that the more hard-line side of the system is getting the upper hand.”

Saeid Golkar, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who studies Iran’s security forces, said Rezaei’s elevation was a further sign that the Revolutionary Guards were making the key decisions within Iran.

But in Golkar’s view, this change does not indicate that those decisions would be more hard-line, or more pragmatic for that matter.

What does seem likely, he said, is that Rezaei and Ghalibaf would eventually clash because of their intense ambitions. Like Rezaei, Ghalibaf has run for the presidency in the past. “This configuration is not going to work,” Golkar said. “Everybody wants to be a king.”

Officially, Iran’s president appoints the secretary of the council. In practice, however, the supreme leader decides who fills the post, Golkar said.

In videotaped comments shared widely on social media last week, Mohammad Bagher Kharrazi — a hard-line cleric related by marriage to Ayatollah Khamenei — anticipated the appointment and framed it as part of an effort to rein in Iran’s president, Pezeshkian.

Pezeshkian and his foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, have been harshly attacked by Iranian hard-liners over their efforts at diplomacy with the United States.

In Kharrazi’s telling, Pezeshkian has repeatedly threatened to resign as president to get his way, and Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, has grown impatient and warned him he would accept his next such offer.

To further restrain the president, Ayatollah Khamenei was also working on changing the security council, planning to remove “Zolghadr and having Rezaei take his place,” Kharrazi said.

He also said that Ayatollah Khamenei had told Araghchi that “under no circumstances does he have the right to interfere in the negotiations anymore.”

Ayatollah Khamenei’s office, without naming Kharrazi, denied the account, as did Pezeshkian’s office.

#iran #national #security #zolghadr

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⚖️ Israel’s National Security Minister Constructed a Gallows For Palestinians


Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has attracted international sanctions and condemnation for his activities, has posted a gloating video of the construction of the site of a gallows where Palestinians convicted of terror offences, but not Jewish extremists accused of similar crimes, will be hanged.

Ben-Givr said the new execution site would be equipped with viewing booths where families of victims could watch the hangings.

Ben-Gvir posted the video on social media of a visit he had made to the site at an unidentified location, where he can be seen pointing at foundations being laid and boasting it was where “terrorists will be executed”.

Photographs in the Israeli media showed a bulldozer and heavy construction work in a cordoned-off area reportedly close to a prison.

“I promised to worsen the conditions of terrorists in prisons – we kept it,” said Ben-Gvir in the video.

“I promised to pass the Death Penalty for Terrorists law – we did. And now the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.”

The claimed construction work at the planned site of the gallows, which will only execute Palestinians convicted of terror offences in the military courts system, and not Israelis, follows the passage into law earlier this year of a death penalty law requiring military courts to apply the death penalty alone as the only available sentence, unless the court finds special circumstances allowing for life imprisonment.

Ben-Gvir – who himself has convictions for incitement to racism, interfering with a police officer performing his duty, and support for a terrorist organisation, Meir Kahane’s banned Kach movement – has served as Israel’s national security minister since 2022, except for a two-month gap last year.

One of the key architects of Israel’s new death penalty law, Ben-Gvir has a long history of extremist statements and provocations. He celebrated his 50th birthday in May with the gift of a birthday cake decorated with the iced image of a noose.

The death penalty law, one of two passed by Israeli MPs this year, has faced widespread international condemnation since it passed the Knesset by 62 votes to 48 over allegations that it is fundamentally discriminatory.

The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, on Wednesday described Ben-Gvir’s comments as “totally understandable”, while the German chancellor Merz, said he “supports the appeals made by minister Ben-Gvir, which offer not the best but a possible solution”.

The video emerged amid growing wider international condemnation of Israel’s behaviour including the issuing of new tenders for the massive E1 settlement block outside Jerusalem, which was denounced by the UK foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, as an “acceptable but difficult act” that risked separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem as he summoned Israel’s charge d’affaires in protest.

#israel #national #security #minister #gallows #palestinians

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Air Force One, Sponsored

Donald Trump plans to fly to Ireland next week on the Boeing 747 Qatar gave him, before the aircraft has received the security work he said would max out its protections. The trip covers meetings in Dublin and the Irish Open at his Doonbeg golf course.

The administration has spent a reported $400 million retrofitting the jet and has not disclosed the cost or the schedule for what remains. Trump has said the work would start in the fall and take about a month.

Outside specialists have questioned whether an airframe built for a foreign royal family can be brought to presidential standard on that timetable.

What happened in Turkey in July is the reason the question matters. Trump arrived in Ankara for the NATO summit on the Qatari jet, its first international presidential trip, and told Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the tarmac that the old plane was now the backup.

A day later, security officials concluded that neither aircraft was a good way to leave. Iran, according to reporting on the intelligence, was believed to be targeting Trump himself rather than any particular airframe.

The solution protected the president and the plane's reputation at once. At 3:42 p.m., before a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump posted that the Qatari jet would fly on to RAF Mildenhall so service members stationed there could see it, and that he would take the old light-blue 747 home for old time's sake.

He boarded that aircraft in front of the cameras, then left it through a catering truck raised to a door on the far side and rode across the tarmac to an Air Force C-32A.

Three planes departed Ankara separately. Reporters and some White House staff flew on the decoy, shades drawn, believing the president was with them. He rejoined the Qatari jet at Mildenhall for the flight to Washington.

The White House says the aircraft is fitted with high-level security protocols. Communications director Steven Cheung said the administration uses every tool available against threats to the president.

The Pentagon's replacement program, ordered from Boeing in 2017, now carries an estimated cost above $5.6 billion. The Qatari jet was offered as a way around that failure. In July it required a third aircraft, a catering truck and a press pool flying as bait.

#Trump #Qatar #AirForceOne #Security

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The Checkpoint Carousel

A vehicle tried to ram IDF troops near the Ganot barrier in northern Samaria. Soldiers from the 890th Battalion shot and killed one suspect and detained a second occupant.

The IDF said no troops were injured. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, praised the soldiers for killing one attacker and capturing the other.

At Rimonim Junction on Route 458, a truck driver allegedly tried to ram troops and was detained for questioning.

Near the Silwad cemetery, a gray car without license plates allegedly tried to hit two Israelis from Givat Yeshuat Israel.

Reports conflict over what followed: one said the vehicle escaped; another said the suspect was detained.

In the City of David, one account said Palestinians threw stones at Jewish residents and one of the residents fired into the air.

An earlier account described a confrontation between Palestinians and Jews, followed by police warning shots. By night, a large fire broke out in Sur Baher.

Palestinian residents said Israeli forces caused it with tear gas and stun grenades during clashes.

Security checks produced severe traffic jams at Qalandiya and along the Hizma-Anata road. Clashes were also reported in al-Ram and Tuqu’.

The daily system is a stack of roadblocks, alerts and competing incident reports.

Every checkpoint generates a version. Every version becomes another emergency.

#WestBank #Jerusalem #IDF #Security

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