President Donald Trump warned on Tuesday that the U.S. would “pretty soon” strike Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, the underground facility suspected of housing components of Tehran’s nuclear program.

The president made the comments from the Oval Office while welcoming Lebanese President Joseph Aoun for a meeting about the ongoing U.S.-led talks between Israel and Lebanon. Trump was asked about a Wall Street Journal report that Israeli intelligence shared with the U.S. indicated that Iran moved thousands of centrifuges into its clandestine Pickaxe Mountain site last fall.

A group of House Democrats urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday to pressure Malaysia to walk back plans to deport Israeli citizens by leveraging U.S. military assistance to the Southeast Asian nation.

Malaysia’s prime minister said last week that the country, which does not recognize Israel and does not permit Israeli passport holders to enter the country, would immediately deport any Israeli nationals in the country. The comments came in response to a report that Israeli dual citizens were participating in a technology retreat in the country, having entered using other passports.

The College Democrats of America’s decision to platform far-left, antisemitic influencer Hasan Piker at its recent conference was “a direct threat to Jewish safety and inclusion,” the group’s Jewish Caucus said on Tuesday. 

Piker, who has a long-standing history of antisemitic rhetoric — including justifying Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, calling Orthodox Jews “inbred” and asserting that America deserved 9/11 — was announced on Friday as the convention’s “surprise speaker,” just hours before it began. CDA is the official collegiate arm and student outreach branch of the Democratic National Committee

SEATTLE — David Kaplan has been attending Washington state Democratic conventions since he was 6 years old. 

He was brought to his first convention in 1960 by his mother, who was, as Kaplan put it, a “Warren Magnuson Democrat,” while his father was a “Henry Jackson Democrat.” The two legendary former Washington senators who served from roughly the 1940s to the ‘80s differed on several issues, including Cold War and defense policy, “but one common denominator has always been support for Israel,” Kaplan said.

In recent weeks, following the collapse of the memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has fired dozens of times on Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

At the same time, it has sustained fire from the U.S., whose military bases across the region have been targeted by the Islamic Republic, with several service members killed. And all the while, Tehran has targeted commercial ships transiting through the strait.

ASPEN, Colo. — Joel Rubin, a former State Department official who led Jewish outreach for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) 2020 presidential campaign, is now excoriating his former boss and the movement he has built for elevating stridently anti-Israel candidates — most notably former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner.

The anti-Israel and antisemitic wave that’s taken hold on the left as a result of the efforts of Sanders and his allies, Rubin said, is bad for the Jewish community and politically unwise for the Democratic Party and for the U.S.’ own strategic interests.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said on Monday that the votes by more than 100 House Democrats last week in favor of an effort to end all U.S. aid to Israel indicates the party is “flirting with” making opposition to Israel the official party stance, something he said would lead him to leave the caucus. 

Fetterman, who has dismissed discussions about him leaving the party in recent years despite his increasing isolation from Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill, said in a series of media appearances last week that he would leave the Democratic Party if it called for opposing offensive or defensive aid to Israel or ending the U.S.-Israel relationship in its official platform.

Ed Miliband’s appointment on Monday as U.K. foreign secretary is raising questions about how the former Labour chief will influence Israel and Middle East policy under Andy Burnham, the country’s new prime minister.

Miliband, 56, had served as energy secretary under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who announced his resignation last month and officially departed 10 Downing St. on Monday. As the first Jewish leader of the Labour party, which he helmed from 2010-2015, Miliband has long balanced his commitment to Israel’s security with vocal criticism of the Jewish state that has fueled some tensions with British Jewish leaders.