Plus, Caldwell returns from the cold
Bilal Hussein/AP
Iranian Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani, speaks during a press conference after his meeting with the Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, in Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 13, 2025.
Add JewishInsider on Google👋 Good Tuesday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on the breaking news that Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s National Security Council, was killed in an overnight Israeli strike, and cover the IDF’s plans for a limited ground operation in Lebanon. We look at how Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is navigating conversations about Israel in recent podcast interviews, and report on a settlement between the Justice Department and the Iran-linked Alavi Foundation that will allow a successor to the New York-based group to continue to recoup control of its assets. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Kamran Hekmati, Emmanuel Navon and Jon Hornstein.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed this morning that Israel had killed Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s National Security Council, in overnight strikes. Larijani had been designated in January by since-assassinated Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to ensure the regime’s survival. Also killed in the overnight strikes was Basij paramilitary force commander Gholamreza Soleimani. Read more here.
- In Washington, White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is slated to brief a small bipartisan group of senators on the status of the Iran war in a meeting organized by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.
- The meeting comes after a report that Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had engaged in direct communication in recent days. On Monday night, Araghchi denied the back channel, saying that their last communication took place prior to the onset of the war late last month.
- On Capitol Hill, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding a hearing on reforming U.S. defense sales with officials from the State and Defense Departments as well as the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
- In the wake of last week’s attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., a delegation of Jewish officials from the Detroit area, including Jewish Federations of North America Chair (and Michigan native) Gary Torgow, Jewish Federation of Detroit CEO Steve Ingber, Temple Israel Rabbi Jennifer Lader and Gary Sikorski, the Detroit federation’s security director, will be meeting with legislators.
- It’s primary day in Illinois. We’ll be closely watching the results of a handful of high-profile Democratic congressional primaries in the Chicagoland area that will offer an early test of pro-Israel groups’ clout.
- The Jewish Funders Network convening wraps up today in San Diego.
- The Anti-Defamation League’s Never is Now conference also concludes today. At this morning’s plenary, New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft will be awarded with the group’s Changemaker Award. The Carlyle Group’s David Rubenstein and author and former NFL player Emmanuel Acho are also slated to speak. At this afternoon’s closing session, Scott Galloway, Dan Senor, Pamela Nadell and Nancy and Bob Milgrim, the parents of slain Israeli Embassy staffer Sarah Milgrim, will speak. More below.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S LAHAV HARKOV
Israel has a long history of conflict and military operations in Lebanon, and the IDF is now preparing for a broader ground incursion against Hezbollah.
After Hezbollah joined Hamas in attacking Israel a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Israel launched a ground invasion into southern Lebanon and airstrikes against Hezbollah targets throughout the country, most famously killing the terrorist organization’s then-leader Hassan Nasrallah, and conducting its exploding pager operation in the fall of 2024.
But a few months after taking out the group’s entire leadership, leaving in place an uncharismatic and apparently flailing Naim Qassem in charge, Israel, at the behest of the Biden administration, reached a ceasefire with Lebanon in November 2024.
According to that ceasefire, the Lebanese government and military were meant to disarm Hezbollah and ensure it stays out of the area south of the Litani River, some 17 miles north of the border with Israel. Late last year, Israel started to voice concerns that Beirut was not keeping its commitments and that Hezbollah was regrouping.
Now, Israelis are experiencing deja vu: Once again, Hezbollah joined an attack on Israel a day later — this time, from its main patron, Iran — and has frequently launched rockets and missiles at Israel’s north. Israel started out with airstrikes in response, then, over a week later, began limited ground incursions into southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese government said a million residents — 20% of the country’s population — have been evacuated; the IDF has acknowledged about half that number. Israelis have not been evacuated from Israel’s north — the 2023-2024 policy was unpopular and many residents have not returned — but they are living under constant attack.
ON PRINCIPLE
As Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro eyes a 2028 presidential run, he is using a series of big-name podcast interviews to refine and test out his messaging on Israel — and taking aim at California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential rival, in the process. In interviews with the “Pod Save America” and “Higher Learning” podcasts that dropped in recent days, Shapiro put himself in the line of fire from interviewers with more left-wing views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than he holds. In response, he made the case that, as the starting point for any public political conversation about Israel, the fact of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state must be respected, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Podcast playback: “I think what is dangerous here, and I’m not accusing you of this by any stretch, is for those who think Israel doesn’t have a right to exist in [the] conversation. That to me is a recipe for permanent war,” Shapiro told “Higher Learning” host Van Lathan, who said a national conversation about Israel is needed. At an event earlier this month, Newsom said that Israel could “appropriately” be described as an apartheid state. In response to a question about Newsom’s comment from “Pod Save America” co-host Jon Lovett, Shapiro castigated the California governor — without invoking his name — for using inflammatory language. “If we really want peace, and I believe you want that, then we’ve also got to be acknowledging that language matters here, that words matter.”
NAMING NAMES
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, called out two Democratic lawmakers from the main stage of the organization’s Never is Now conference in Manhattan on Monday, accusing them of perpetuating antisemitism, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
What he said: “For the senior senator from Maryland — a state with one of the largest, most active and most observant Jewish populations in the country — he blamed AIPAC, which he slandered as ‘un-American,’” Greenblatt said during his State of Hate address, referring to Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-MD) address at the J Street convention where he attacked the pro-Israel advocacy group earlier this month. “Then, there is the U.S. congressman who stated that he stands against the ‘neoconservatives’ who led the U.S. into the current war [with Iran] and instead is ‘proud to stand’ with Hasan Piker, one of the most outspoken, virulent antisemitic influencers in the world … who the congressman described as one of the representatives of the ‘new moral order,’” continued Greenblatt, a reference to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA).
CALDWELL’S CALLBACK
Dan Caldwell, a vocal GOP critic of the administration’s Middle East strategy from the isolationist wing of the party, has been hired for a job at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under DNI Tulsi Gabbard, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Caldwell, once a top advisor and ally to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, was dismissed last spring, accused of leaking to the press, and publicly criticized by Hegseth. Caldwell blamed his firing on opposition from the “foreign policy establishment.”
Big picture: Caldwell’s hiring comes as isolationist wing of the party has established an apparent power base inside ODNI under officials including Gabbard, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent and Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration Will Ruger, who like Caldwell worked for the isolationist Koch-backed Defense Priorities think tank before joining the Trump administration.
COMMUNAL PRIORITY
Following an attack last Thursday on Temple Israel and its early learning facility in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., the Jewish Federations of North America is making a renewed push for expanded security funding and resources to protect the Jewish community, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What they said: In a letter sent to every member of Congress on Friday, JFNA Chair Gary Torgow and President Eric Fingerhut highlighted the significant degree of security support that Temple Israel received from its own membership, from the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and JFNA. “We are grateful that philanthropic funding and security planning played a decisive role in ensuring no harm came to any of the children or staff at Temple Israel,” the letter reads. “However, safeguarding communities at risk of violence is not the responsibility of philanthropic organizations. Rather, it is the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens in their places of worship and communal gathering.”
DOMESTIC FRONT
As tensions intensified between the U.S. and Iran amid the regime’s violent repression of protesters in January, and as Tehran vowed itself “prepared for war,” a long-running battle with the Islamic Republic’s forces in Manhattan came to an end. The final stages of the conflict between the Justice Department and the New York-based Alavi Foundation, which since 2008 has faced allegations of acting under Iranian direction, took place in secrecy — with scores of legal documents sealed and even vaulted away, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports.
Settlement: But materials filed on Jan. 12 with the New York State Charities Bureau revealed its ultimate outcome: a settlement that will provide compensation for numerous American and Israeli victims of Tehran-backed terror, but also enable a successor organization to recoup control of the foundation’s vast assets, including its 36-story crown jewel skyscraper on Fifth Avenue. The final deal — which a filing this month shows came together confidentially in the last days of the Biden administration, and has just begun to go into effect — will officially dismantle the Alavi Foundation and strip it of hundreds of millions of dollars.
CHARGES FILED
Three men accused of assaulting two Israeli American men outside a restaurant in a Silicon Valley shopping mall last week were arrested on Monday, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office announced. The alleged assailants were charged with both misdemeanor and felony offenses, but they were not charged with hate crime-related offenses, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Details: On Sunday, March 8, videos show the two men being assaulted in the middle of the day as other diners and shoppers looked on. The victims, Lior Zeevi, 47, and Daniel Levy, 48, told J., The Jewish News of Northern California that the attack began after they were overheard speaking Hebrew, and that one of the assailants yelled “f***ing Jew.” According to a police report, a witness heard one of the perpetrators shout “Don’t f*** with Iran” as he ran away. The charges filed “do not reflect allegations of a hate crime at this time. However, this remains an active investigation,” according to a statement from the Santa Clara DA. A spokesperson for the DA’s office declined to comment when asked why hate crimes charges were not filed.
Worthy Reads
Threat Assessment: In Al Jazeera, Qatar-based author and academic Muhanad Seloom posits that the U.S. and Israel’s military strategy in Iran is working. “When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power – its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air defences, its navy and its proxy command architecture – the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades. …. What the critics described as an expanding regional war is better understood as the death spasm of a proxy architecture whose authorising centre has been shattered.” [AlJazeera]
Lasting Legacy: In The Wall Street Journal, Walter Russell Mead suggests that the outcome of the Iran war will cement President Donald Trump’s legacy. “For the president, the question is whether he pulls back or dives deeper in. The answer will define his place in history. If the U.S. pulls back from the new Gulf war without reopening the Strait of Hormuz and achieving goals like securing Iran’s nuclear materials, the consequences for Mr. Trump’s power and prestige, at home and abroad, will be profound. ‘Trump always chickens out’ won’t merely be an insult his enemies hurl at him. It will be carved on his tombstone.” [WSJ]
Off Message: In The Argument, Jerusalem Demsas observes the outsized role the homogenous “messenger class” — whom she describes as “the tech industry, academics, nonprofit leaders, influencers, and those who work in politics” — plays in modern society. “But if our mediating institutions are all staffed by people drawn from the same narrow demographic band, then the picture they produce will be skewed in ways nobody intends and few notice. This isn’t about whether the messenger class is full of bad people — it’s largely not — it’s about whether it’s even possible to know when you’re acting as a mirror to society, or a spotlight on what you personally happen to care about.” [TheArgument]
Explaining Away Hate: On Substack, Jewish Democratic Council of America CEO Halie Soifer raises concerns about efforts to rationalize attacks on Jewish targets, citing Jewish institutional support for Israel. “If we go down the road of allowing blame of Israel to serve as excuses for antisemitic violence, then we are saying that some forms of violence and hate, in some political contexts or conflicts, are more justified or understandable than others. Is violence targeting Americans, either abroad or at home, acceptable because the U.S. military is engaged in war in Iran? Is targeting Russian Americans because of the war in Ukraine acceptable? Of course not, and we’re all more vulnerable to such violence if we try to explain away antisemitic violence related to Israel.” [Substack]
Word on the Street
Senior members of President Donald Trump‘s Board of Peace, including administration official Aryeh Lightstone, reportedly met with Hamas officials in Cairo over the weekend, with further meetings expected to take place this week…
Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly recently sent a cable encouraging American diplomats to work with local Israeli embassies on messaging efforts to encourage foreign governments to collaborate with the U.S. in its war against Iran, ABC News reported on Monday…
The State Department officially designated Kamran Hekmati, an Iranian American Jewish man who was arrested while visiting Iran last year and sentenced to two years in prison for having attended his son’s bar mitzvah in Israel more than a decade ago, as “wrongfully detained”…
The United Arab Emirates briefly closed its airspace overnight amid drone attacks from Iran, including one that ignited a fire at the airport in Dubai, while a tanker anchored off the coast of the Gulf nation, near the Strait of Hormuz, suffered minor damage after being hit by a projectile…
Online betting site Polymarket said it had banned a number of users who had harassed and threatened Times of Israel reporter Emanuel Fabian in an effort to get him to change his reporting on Iranian ballistic missile strikes…
Iran is in talks with FIFA about moving its World Cup matches, which had been slated to be played in the U.S., to Mexico…
U.S. Border Patrol head Greg Bovino will retire in the coming weeks, amid an internal investigation over Bovino’s alleged disparagement of the Jewish faith of federal prosecutor Daniel Rosen…
Immigration officials released from custody Leqaa Kordani, a Palestinian woman who had been detained for more than a year for overstaying her visa after being arrested during an anti-Israel protest at Columbia University, where she was not a student…
The House of Representatives passed a bill extending the decade-old Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act, which will make it easier for the descendants of Holocaust survivors and victims whose art was looted by the Nazis to recover the works; the legislation passed the Senate in December and will head to the president’s desk…
A Maryland man was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison for sending threatening letters and postcards to more than two dozen Jewish institutions around the country from March 2024-June 2025…
The New York Times looks at efforts by Turning Point USA, whose founder, Charlie Kirk, was killed at a campus event in September, to expand to high schools…
Former Apollo Global Management CEO Leon Black is selling his Beverly Hills property, which he purchased a decade ago from Tom Cruise, for $47 million…
A Sydney, Australia-based soccer team apologized for editing a speech to remove a reference to the Jewish community during a ceremony honoring the victims of the Hanukkah terror attack at the city’s Bondi Beach; the apology from the Sydney Swans came after the league was referred to Canberra’s antisemitism commission over the script switch…
Former Rolling Stone Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman is joining The New York Times’ opinion section as a contributing writer…
Former ELNET-Israel CEO Emmanuel Navon was tapped as Israel’s next ambassador to Japan…
Pic of the Day
The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation’s Jon Hornstein (right, with Jewish Funders Network board member Jeffrey Schoenfeld) was awarded the J.J. Greenberg Memorial Award on Monday during JFN’s annual conference in San Diego. Read more here from eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher.
Birthdays
Television writer and producer, he co-created the Netflix animated series “Big Mouth,” Andrew Goldberg turns 48…
Washington columnist for The Dallas Morning News, Carl Philipp Leubsdorf turns 88… Retail and real estate executive, CEO of Wilherst Developers and trustee of publicly traded Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust, Mark K. Rosenfeld… Oral and maxillofacial surgeon in Fort Wayne, Ind., Michael Iczkovitz… Susan Schwartz Sklarin… DOJ official for 20 years, he has also served as a defense attorney, author of a NYT bestseller about his time working on the Mueller Investigation, Andrew Weissmann turns 68… Founder, president and CEO of Laurel Strategies, Alan H. H. Fleischmann turns 61… Director of legislative affairs at B’nai B’rith International since 2003, Rabbi Eric A. Fusfield… Member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, she served on the board of the San Francisco JCRC, Myrna Elizabeth Melgar turns 58… Lead field/floor/sideline reporter for CBS Sports football and basketball broadcasts, Tracy Wolfson turns 51… CEO and president at Las Vegas-based Gold Coast Promotions, assisting nonprofits in fundraising, Richard Metzler… Hasidic singer, entertainer and composer, Lipa Schmeltzer turns 48… Actor, music producer and stand-up comedian, best known as Gustavo Rocque on the Nickelodeon television series “Big Time Rush,” Stephen Kramer Glickman turns 48… Musician and digital strategy executive, Rick Sorkin turns 47… Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit since 2019, Judge Robert Joshua Luck turns 47… Digital reporter and producer for ABC News including “World News Tonight With David Muir,” Emily Claire Friedman Cohen… Associate professor at GW University in the School of Media and Public Affairs, Ethan Porter turns 41… Senior grants officer at the Open Society Foundations, Jackie Fishman… Senior director and general manager at Uber Eats, Annaliese Rosenthal… Los Angeles-based tech journalist and founder of the TechSesh blog, Jessica Elizabeth Naziri… Associate VP of business development at ContinuServe, Zachary Silver… Director of e-commerce strategy at TAGeX Brands, Zach Sherman…
By Jacob Kornbluh & JI Staff
DEEP DIVE: “How To Lose $1 Billion: Yeshiva University Blows Its Future on Loser Hedge Funds” by Steven I. Weiss in TakePart: “What they couldn’t have known… a decade ago was that the real danger in Yeshiva’s new leadership was not to the school’s spiritual welfare but to its very existence. Over the years to come, the new leadership at Yeshiva would ramp up risk in the school’s investment portfolio, vastly increase spending, and do little to insure against a rainy day. When rainy days did arrive, with the global financial meltdown of 2008, Yeshiva was heavily exposed. Today, its finances are overwhelmed by a sea of red ink. According to a recent announcement by credit ratings agency Moody’s, the school will run out of cash next year. (more…)
Scene Last Night: The Becket Fund honored Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks at its Canterbury Medal dinner for defending religious freedom. Some highlights from Rabbi Sacks’s speech – “Every persons faith is a flame – your flame doesn’t take from mine – and together we can light the world.” — “Secular societies are much less tolerant than the religions they accuse of intolerance.” — “Religion is the root of America… Don’t believe that when you sever these roots, the tree will survive.” — “America’s great contribution was to make faith into a force for liberty.” Cardinal Tim Dolan also spoke and said, “Rabbi Sacks reminds us that “a world without religion is a world condemned to violence and tyranny.” Mark Kellner profiled Rabbi Sacks for [DesertNews]…. Chelsea Clinton’s Jewish Mother-in-law skipped her own fundraiser headlined by Hillary Clinton: Congressional hopeful, Marjorie Margolies, instead attended a local Montgomery County Democratic Party dinner in her district. It didn’t matter too much as most donors were clearly only there to show early support for a likely Hillary 2016 campaign. The event marked Hillary’s first campaign appearance of 2014. Last night’s host, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, supported Hillary in the 2008 primary but then switched to support McCain in the general election. (more…)
Driving the Day: Bipartisan Senate group nears deal on new Iran sanctions – “A bipartisan group of Senators is close to an agreement on tougher Iran sanctions in opposition to the White House, which is easing them as part of an interim accord Tehran struck with world powers aimed at curbing its nuclear ambitions, CNN has learned. A Senate deal would include a new round of sanctions to begin in six months and would not allow for the enrichment of uranium. But it would permit commercial nuclear power as long as it was monitored by the international community. The bipartisan group includes Democrats Chuck Schumer of New York; Robert Menendez of New Jersey; Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mark Kirk of Illinois.” [CNN] “Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Time magazine in Tehran during the weekend that new sanctions – even if delayed – would kill the agreement reached in Geneva. “The entire deal (would be) dead,” Zarif said, adding that Iran’s parliament could also adopt legislation that would go into effect if talks fail. “But if we start doing that, I don’t think that we will be getting anywhere.” [Reuters]
Secretary of State John Kerry to Visit Israel, Again! – According to the State Department, John Kerry will travel to Jerusalem, Ramallah, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Tacloban, and Manila from Dec. 11-18, 2013. In Jerusalem, Kerry will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss a range of issues including Iran and the ongoing final status negotiations with the Palestinians. In Ramallah, Kerry will meet with President Abbas, where he will also discuss the ongoing final status negotiations, among other issues. [StateDept]
Last Night: John Kerry and David Brooks addressed the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Centennial Celebration Dinner in DC — Kerry: “We will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Not now. Not Ever.” “Spoke today with Netanyahu, after my 8th trip to Israel, back for dinner with Bibi on Thursday – this is a commute folks.” David Brooks: “When we do philanthropy, it’s not enough to give money. It’s important to communicate the soft and squishy things.” [JewishInsider] — (Also watch David Brook’s Keynote at Yeshiva University’s Hanukkah Convocation [YouTube]) (more…)
Top Talker – Report: Iran and Israel met for secret talks – “Iranian and Israeli diplomats, as well as those from the U.S. and Arab countries, participated in a secret meeting last month to discuss the possibility of an international conference on banning nuclear weapons in the Middle East, according to The Jerusalem Post. Diplomats told the Israeli newspaper Tuesday the meeting occurred Oct. 21-22 in a hotel in Glion, Switzerland. The envoys expressed their positions, but the Israeli representatives had no direct communication with the Iranians and Arabs, the report says. An Arab diplomat told Reuters, however, “that they were there, the Israelis and Iran, is the main thing.”
–More than a dozen delegations attended the meeting along with Jaakko Laajava, Finland’s undersecretary of state, who is responsible for organizing the conference, a diplomat said in the reports. The source also described the meeting as “quite constructive,” and suggested another meeting would take place in November. “This was a completely procedural meeting,” a foreign ministry official in Jerusalem told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. President Obama tasked Secretary of State John Kerry with navigating peace talks with the Iranians on their nuclear program. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in September he would not produce nuclear weapons and told Obama he’s open to negotiating the limits of his country’s program with the international community. During his international trip Tuesday, Kerry said in Poland the U.S. does not yet have a deal with Iran. The G-5 — the U.S., France, Britain, Russia and China, plus Germany — are slated to hold a new round of negotiations in Geneva on Thursday and Friday.” [The Hill] (more…)
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