'Iran’s fundamental choice remains the same: negotiate from a weakening position or continue escalating against a president who has already shown that he is prepared to continue applying pressure,' former Trump administration Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt told JI
ATTA KENARE / AFP via Getty Images
Vessels transit the Hormuz Strait off the coast of Iran's southern port city of Bandar Abbas on September 7, 2026.
Add JewishInsider on GoogleU.S. efforts to protect commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz have helped revive Persian Gulf oil exports and weaken Iran’s grip on the waterway, experts now acknowledge, but a debate is brewing over how durable those gains are, and whether Washington is willing to sustain the costly naval commitment that underpins them.
Persian Gulf crude exports rebounded to nearly 13 million barrels a day in September, approaching 72% to 80% of pre-war volumes as regional flows head back toward normal levels. According to maritime tracker Kpler, crude oil moving specifically through the Strait of Hormuz climbed to a wartime high average of 7.4 million barrels a day — supplemented by alternative pipeline and ship-to-ship routes — with an average of 17 to 19 tankers securely transiting the waterway daily under U.S. military protection.
U.S. military protection and the absence of confirmed Iranian attacks for nearly a week have helped commercial traffic increase, while Gulf exporters have also relied on ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman and the United Arab Emirates’ Fujairah pipeline, which bypasses the Strait. In addition, Saudi Arabia resumed oil shipments from its Red Sea port of Yanbu after restarting the East-West pipeline, restoring a critical export route that allows the kingdom to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
Analysts said that pressure could potentially increase Tehran’s incentive to ratchet up military tensions. In a video address on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had received “indications” that adversaries would try to attack the country ahead of its upcoming elections, slated for Oct. 27.
Ari Cicurel, associate director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said the recent developments have challenged assumptions about how effectively Iran could use the strait to constrain international commerce.
“I think some in the foreign policy community underestimated the U.S. ability to break Iran’s effective hold over the strait, particularly the logistical capacity to sustain an alternative shipping route and protect commercial traffic,” Cicurel said. “Iran can impose costs on shipping, but the U.S. response has shown that the regime cannot translate those costs into a sustained blockade that preserves the same level of economic leverage as U.S. operations.”
The shift has reshaped Tehran’s relationship with the companies that depend on the waterway, Cicurel said, making it harder for Iran to dictate who can use the strait and on what terms. “The Navy’s blockade and protection of commercial shipping have shifted the cost of disrupting the strait onto Iran, which has lost most of its exports while its Gulf neighbors have increased their oil shipments,” he said. “Shippers now have a route through the strait that does not depend on Tehran’s permission” — eroding Iran’s leverage in negotiations.
But Cicurel said Iran can still attempt to influence decisions by creating enough uncertainty around the safety of the strait to deter companies from using it.
“Even with its leverage diminished, the Iranian regime has repeatedly withstood economic pressure by diverting money from the Iranian people to its military, and it will likely continue to do so to keep funding attacks as its revenue shrinks. Iran will likely keep launching calibrated attacks to extract as much of its remaining leverage as possible and to convince insurers and shipping companies the strait remains unsafe,” Cicurel said.
Jason Greenblatt, former White House Middle East envoy in the first Trump administration, similarly argued that U.S. efforts to reopen the strait were underestimated.
“As is often the case, much of the media, diplomatic community and foreign-policy establishment wrung their hands, predicted disaster, blamed President [Donald] Trump for the war and underestimated him and the enormous military and economic power of the United States,” Greenblatt said. “The conventional wisdom was that Iran’s leverage in the Strait of Hormuz could not be broken. President Trump demonstrated how that leverage can be eroded when Tehran is confronted with American military strength, relentless economic pressure and a president willing to use both.”
Greenblatt cautioned that the conflict is “far from over,” and warned that “complex and dangerous situations like this take time to resolve.”
“I expect Tehran will test the United States again,” he said. “But Iran’s fundamental choice remains the same: negotiate from a weakening position or continue escalating against a president who has already shown that he is prepared to continue applying pressure, regardless of the critics or the political calendar.”
Elliott Abrams, who served as Iran envoy during the first Trump administration and is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the U.S. Navy’s performance has exceeded some experts’ expectations.
Still, he said, “I do not expect a deal soon, before the U.S. elections, because that would be a gift to Trump — unless Trump is willing to accept terms that greatly advantage Iran, which I also don’t expect right now.”
Garrett Nada, a policy analyst at the Israel Policy Forum, however, asserted there was “little doubt” that the U.S. could effectively regain control of the strait. The harder question, he said, is whether the current approach can be maintained as the financial and operational costs accumulate.
Nada cited a Bloomberg report estimating that the U.S. naval blockade of Iran has costed $32.5 million per day, which he said captures only part of the resources Washington is committing to keeping commercial traffic moving.
“That estimate does not even include the additional operation costs of aerial and maritime drones, ships, manned aircraft, satellites, U.S. personnel and other U.S. assets used to guide and protect commercial traffic,” Nada said. “In the process, U.S. forces have come under Iranian attack, including from small boats, missiles, and drones. Two weeks ago, eight U.S. Marines were injured in a cruise missile attack, for example.”
That same report also outlined how Washington’s naval blockade has drained its global military power, decreasing available resources for deployment elsewhere in the world. Nada said the operation is also imposing costs on the private companies that have resumed using the waterway, creating another question about how long the current system can function.
“Aside from increased wait times for transit and more complicated travel arrangements, shippers have to pay higher crew compensation, charter rates, insurance and reinsurance premiums, and other operating expenses,” he added.
Even with those costs, Nada said the renewed traffic represents a meaningful strategic setback for Tehran because each vessel that successfully passes through the strait reduces Iran’s ability to use the waterway as leverage.
“The combination of sanctions and the blockade may be pushing Iran to try diplomacy with the U.S. again to secure its interests,” he said. “If diplomacy fails, however, Iran will be more likely to resort to military escalation as a way to restore some of its leverage.”
Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, similarly identified the durability of the U.S. commitment as the central unanswered question.
“The question is how long the United States will be willing to maintain the type of commitment necessary to enable oil flows at this level,” Levitt said. “This, even as customers have yet to feel economic relief at home and the price of diesel and other commodities like fertilizer remain sky high.”
Daniel Shapiro, the U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the increased oil flows are “significant” but cautioned against viewing them as evidence that the broader economic consequences of the conflict have been resolved.
“The increased flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz is significant. Combined with the blockade of Iranian ports and expanded sanctions, it is putting pressure on the Iranian economy and relieving some of the international economic fallout. But only some. Oil remains over $100 per barrel. Gas averages $4.50 per gallon. Diesel is at $6.50,” Shapiro said.
The recovery in oil traffic also masks continued disruptions elsewhere in the region, Shapiro said, with other commodities still struggling to reach global markets and attacks on alternative supply routes offsetting some of the gains through the strait.
“Few other commodities — natural gas, fertilizer, helium — are getting through the strait. And the Houthis offset some of the Hormuz gain by bombing the Saudi pipeline that was bringing 5 million barrels per day to the market via the Red Sea. Iran also has escalation options it has not activated yet,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro said the restored flows are a “limited tactical” achievement that do not resolve the underlying strategic problem. If the U.S. eventually reduces its presence, he said, Iran could again seek to assert control over the waterway.
“The limited tactical success of restoring some of the pre-war oil flow through the strait has come at enormous, and unsustainable, cost, and masks the lack of a strategy to keep Iran from ultimately reasserting its control over the strait when, inevitably, the U.S. scales down its operations,” Shapiro said. “The larger point is that the struggle for control of the Strait of Hormuz is a massive, costly undertaking made necessary by an ill-advised war. Will the U.S. Navy be called upon to maintain a blockade of Iranian ports and escort oil tankers … forever?”
“It has already put enormous strain on the Navy, pulled assets from elsewhere, and will leave us with delayed maintenance and disrupted deployment rotations for years to come,” he added.
Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, said alternative routes have been a key part of increased oil flows, but have not restored a fully reliable passageway through the region.
“U.S. and Gulf coordination on alternative routes and shuttle ships have increased the flow of oil and weakened Iran’s leverage in the Strait. But this is a daily battle that comes at some cost,” Diwan said. “The Iranians continue to strike ships involved in the transfer, preventing a consistent and reliable passage. And some products, most importantly diesel fuel and LNG, are more constrained and have few, if any, alternative routes.”
The pressure on Iran’s economy could nevertheless be creating an opening for diplomacy, Diwan said, as Tehran weighs whether to make concessions in exchange for an end to restrictions on its oil exports.
“The Iranians are contemplating compromise to end the ban on their oil exports which indicates that the economic blockade is beginning to bite. Still a ‘mini-deal,’ based on – but less than – the previous MOU agreement, appears to be a long-shot. Internal disagreement within the Iranian establishment and conflicting impulses from President Trump will be hard for Qatari mediators to overcome,” she said.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at JINSA, said the “real underestimation” was on the part of the Trump administration. He noted that while the oil is “flowing again,” Washington should have heeded presumptions that Tehran could potentially close the strait during the conflict.
“The real underestimation was the Trump administration’s failure to anticipate and preempt Iran’s initial efforts to threaten the strait. Extensive U.S. war plans built this exact scenario into their assumptions, but it was discounted,” Ruhe said. “The U.S. military, particularly the Navy, always had the ability to counter Iran’s unconventional maritime threats, but doing so became a lot harder once Iran dropped its first mines in the water and scared off commercial shipping with its opening drone strikes. Only recently have those mines, radars and other Iranian military assets been degraded, enabling the tough work of naval escorting to begin belatedly.”
Ruhe explained that while the flow of oil presents several diplomatic and economic benefits for the U.S. in its confrontation with Iran, he warned that Tehran’s leverage in talks may not shift.
“There are many diplomatic, economic, and operational benefits to getting oil flowing again. Yet it’s hard to imagine how any of this meaningfully changes Tehran’s negotiating posture,” Ruhe said. “Tellingly, Iran’s recent seven-day plan offered no concessions compared to the June MOU, when traffic through Hormuz was much lower. For all the military and economic pounding it has taken, the regime has been predictably stubborn in resisting Trump’s demands.”
“If the recent upsurge in Hormuz traffic proves sustainable, and if the U.S naval blockade on Iran remains effective, the regime could see diminishing downside in restarting attacks upstream from Hormuz, targeting the Arabian Gulf, commercial vessels, and energy sites with mines, drones, and missiles,” Ruhe continued. “Those strikes proved incredibly successful early in the war, and Iran currently has no reason to believe that’s no longer the case.”
Plus, Jewish authors write their own ending
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters while aboard Air Force One on June 5, 2026 en route to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
Good Friday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at concerns that President Donald Trump is ceding oversight to Iran as issues related to the Strait of Hormuz remain unresolved, and report on the opening of several literary houses that will focus on publishing Jewish authors. We interview Ludo Hood, who retired from the State Department last week after more than two decades of service, and report on the United Democracy Project’s involvement in the special election runoff in California’s 14th Congressional District to succeed Rep. Eric Swalwell. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Gov. Mikie Sherrill, Yoav Segalovitz and Lele Yutzy.
We also have a new on-demand Live Briefing that you can access throughout the day via our new app (on Apple and Android) and on our website.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider and eJewishPhilanthropy stories, including: Jewish Democrats in Michigan weigh crossing party lines after El-Sayed’s Senate primary win; Dara Horn’s shocking new title hides a serious argument about fighting antisemitism; and Darline Graham, backed by Trump, still faces obstacles in bid to succeed brother in the Senate. Print the latest edition here.
What We’re Watching
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is meeting today with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Riyadh, where the three are slated to sign a joint defense agreement.
- We’re keeping an eye out for a public statement from Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) after his primary defeat last night. The far-right lawmaker, who had the backing of President Donald Trump, was ousted by Charlie Hatcher, the state’s former agriculture commissioner. In his remarks at his victory party last night, Hatcher said Ogles had called to concede.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MELISSA WEISS
A meme circulated on social media earlier this week depicting a cartoon version of President Donald Trump addressing different stages of negotiations with Iran. In it, the president cycles between “We’re going to bomb their power plants,” “They called us begging for a deal,” “They’re giving us everything we want” and “They’re scum, you can’t negotiate with these people.”
It’s perhaps the most accurate commentary on the situation that has unfolded since early July, as the U.S. and Iran have continued to exchange fire, with Iran striking Arab states around the region. Every few days, the stage resets. The endless loop of diplomacy and military strikes has thrown the countries into a situation that is equal parts “Groundhog Day” and “The Apprentice” — military strikes on loop, with a major breakthrough soon to come.
Indeed, Trump suggested on Tuesday that “a lot of progress had been made” in negotiations that would see the Strait of Hormuz reopened and signaled a deal on the strategic waterway could be announced as soon as this week.
His rhetoric echoes comments he has made in recent weeks teasing a diplomatic breakthrough that is right around the corner, while the consistent reality is that diplomacy has been cyclical, devoid of significant progress and increasingly beneficial to Tehran, which has learned that it only needs to wait out the situation — at least until the midterms, if not until 2029.
It also raises questions about the limits of American deterrence — especially when taken alongside recent reports of dwindling American weapons stockpiles.
Trump understands optics (and markets) perhaps better than any other world leader, hence his constant claims that a major diplomatic breakthrough could be days away — whereas Iran, unburdened by looming midterms and the realities that come with living in a democracy, can afford to wait it out as Washington runs through the endless narrative loop.
Almost as cyclical as Trump’s pronouncements are Iran’s near-immediate denials of the president’s claims: the regular insistence that a deal is far off and unlikely to happen without significant American and Israeli concessions.
STRAIT TALK
Experts are expressing growing concern over reports that an emerging deal between Iran and Oman to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could grant Tehran unprecedented oversight over the international shipping route, ceding control to Iran that it did not possess prior to the conflict, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports. Under the proposed terms, inbound commercial vessels would be directed through a northern route in Iranian waters, while outbound ships would traverse a southern route in Omani waters, managed in coordination with Iran.
Waterway worries: Although a U.S. official told the Associated Press that such a deal would preclude Iran from issuing formal approvals for transiting ships, tolls or service fees, regional analysts warn that formalizing Iranian oversight over the chokepoint represents a significant strategic concession. Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told JI, “President Trump is very eager for a deal that reopens the strait, and seems inclined to accept a deal under which Iran has greater oversight of ships entering and exiting the strait. The key is denying Iran any way of monetizing the flow of traffic through this international waterway.”
REGIONAL RIFT
A coalition of foreign ministers from Arab and Muslim countries met in Jordan on Wednesday to launch a coordinated campaign against Israeli policies in Jerusalem — a gathering marked both by the notable absence of key regional players and rhetoric that dismissed Jewish ties to the city, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
The meeting brought together diplomats from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Algeria, Iraq, Tunisia, Somalia and Morocco, alongside representatives from the Arab League, Indonesia, Details: Pakistan, Turkey and Malaysia. Missing from the Amman summit were several close U.S. allies including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. In a joint statement, the group denounced what it called an “unprecedented Israeli escalation in occupied Jerusalem and its Islamic and Christian holy sites,” accusing Israel of trying to alter “the Arab Islamic and Christian identity of occupied Jerusalem and its legal and demographic status” — omitting any mention of Jewish historical or religious ties to the city.
PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
A number of literary professionals have announced in recent weeks the launch of their own Jewish publishing companies, aimed at fulfilling a need for frustrated authors who say they’ve hit the same wall: agents advising them to cut Jewish names and references to Israel, editors going silent on submissions that once would have been fast sales and a mounting sense that the industry’s embrace of the #ownvoices storytelling trend — a hashtag used to amplify the work of diverse and minority voices — has an unspoken exception for Jewish writers, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Elevating voices: Meg Keene, an established nonfiction author who has sold more than 150,000 copies of her two books offering tips for wedding planning, recently announced the launch of Meg Keene Books, her own imprint at Wicked Son Press, a Jewish publisher known mostly for right-leaning nonfiction. “Earlier this year I got to the point where I realized I didn’t have anything left to lose,” Keene told JI. “Jews were having all these conversations behind the scenes but it felt like whoever came forward was going to destroy their career. I felt like I was in a position — because of my past in digital publishing and connection to editors, I knew how to do it. So many authors couldn’t sell their first book.”
PAC PLAY
After a night of mixed results in Tuesday’s primary elections, AIPAC’s United Democracy Project super PAC is turning its eyes toward the special election runoff in California’s 14th Congressional District, where progressive state Sen. Aisha Wahab and a moderate local mayor, Melissa Hernandez, are competing to replace disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
About the race: Wahab, seen as the heavy favorite, brings a record raises concerns for some members of the Jewish community — she has not been supportive of numerous priority bills and resolutions aimed at tackling antisemitism and has been a vocal critic of Israel, including describing the war in Gaza as a genocide and championing legislation in the state Senate on the issue. But one Jewish leader in the district expressed skepticism that UDP’s spending would defeat her, and warned that it risked pushing her further left.
BILL BUFFERING
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) joined Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Reps. Brad Knott (R-NC) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) on Thursday in introducing the Right to Worship Act, a federal bill that would ban activity that knowingly disrupts or impedes access to scheduled religious services within 100 feet of the entrance to a house of worship during that time, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Details: The bill would ban activity that “meaningfully interferes with the ability of people to participate in the scheduled religious service, to the extent that the conduct causes a substantial interruption to the service’s normal operation” or “unreasonably hinders or deters a person from entering a house of worship, or threatens or intimidates a person, in a manner that prevents participation at a scheduled religious service.” The bill would carry escalating civil fines for repeated offenses, as well as allow impacted individuals, the U.S. attorney general or a state attorney general to commence a civil suit under the law.
LIFTING THE HOOD
After a career in the foreign service, where officers are obliged to keep their political views to themselves and promote the positions of the current U.S. administration, some retiring diplomats have a hard time getting used to speaking their minds. Ludo Hood is not one of those people. The 53-year-old retired from the U.S. Foreign Service last week after two decades of service. Hood sat down with Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch this week to reflect on a career representing the U.S. that included stints working on Iran policy during negotiations for the 2015 nuclear deal, relations with Gulf states during the fraught Arab Spring and antisemitism policy in the tense aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in 2023.
Exception to the rule: Through all those foreign postings and geopolitical flashpoints, one of the most “alarming and shocking” moments of Hood’s time as a foreign service officer came within the halls of Foggy Bottom — when, in the months after Oct. 7, the State Department hosted listening sessions for staffers to express anti-Israel views and bash the policies espoused by the federal government. “It was the only time in my career where active dissent against the elected president’s overall policy and strategic direction was allowed to be aired in the open, and was actually in many ways encouraged,” Hood told JI.
Worthy Reads
Sanders’ Sensibilities: In The New York Times, Matthew Yglesias raises concerns about the “political judgments” of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as the Vermont senator has sought to boost the insurgent left — causing damage to the Democratic Party along the way. “The very top electoral performers among Democrats — lawmakers who have a record of results in districts most liberals would lose, like Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington State, Tom Suozzi of New York and Don Davis of North Carolina — are independent thinkers who are critical of Democratic Party leaders and the establishment. The difference is that rather than positioning themselves even further left than a party that most Americans think is too left-wing, they pick issues and rhetoric that are heterodox and often more restrained.” [NYTimes]
Back to School: In Fox News Opinion, Teach Coalition CEO Sydney Altfield calls for a “whole-of-society response” to mounting antisemitism as students head back to school, following an NYPD report indicating a significant increase in antisemitic hate crimes since the start of the year. “Administrators should say plainly that antisemitism is unacceptable, whether it appears as a threat, a slur, a swastika, harassment over Jewish identity or intimidation tied to Israel or Zionism. Further, education must be more than a one-off assembly after an incident. Students should learn what antisemitism is, how it mutates across political movements, conspiracy theories and social media trends and why targeting Jews corrodes civic life for everyone.” [FoxNews]
Find more Worthy Reads in our Live Briefing via our new app (on Apple and Android) and website.
Word on the Street
Vice President JD Vance was pressed by Senate Republicans at a lunch on Thursday to provide more transparency into the Trump administration’s decision-making on Iran…
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he was discharged from a rehabilitation center nearly two months after he was first hospitalized following a fall…
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) demanded that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee step down over his handling of incidents in which U.S. citizens have allegedly been injured by the IDF and other Israelis…
Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) joined Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) in calling on Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), Moreno’s former son-in-law, to drop out of his reelection race and resign from Congress amid growing scrutiny of domestic violence allegations against Miller, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said on Wednesday that he believes Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan has put the state in play for Republicans in November. “He will quickly discover a primary is a much different situation in this state [than the general election], when you’re accountable for winning the other side. I can’t wait to see him campaign for the general. I have got my popcorn for that,” Fetterman told JI’s Emily Jacobs…
El-Sayed gave an extensive interview to The New York Times, in which he declined to say whether he’d continue to campaign with antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker, with whom he had appeared during the primary…
Politico looks at Republican efforts to win over disaffected Jewish and Black voters in Michigan following El-Sayed‘s primary win as the Michigan Democrat seeks to shore up support from the party’s base; El-Sayed has already reached out to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore as he looks to make inroads with Black voters…
In her first cable news interview since her Senate primary loss on Tuesday, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) told CNN that she identifies as “a Zionist Democrat in Michigan” and suggested that voters concerned about El-Sayed’s stance on Israel and rhetoric about the Jewish state “need to make a personal and private decision” as to who to support in November…
Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and 16 Democratic colleagues introduced the Honoring the Sacrifice of Troops in War Act, which aims to prevent the administration from manipulating Iran war casualty data and protects benefits for troops involved in the effort; Fetterman, who supports the Iran war and has broken with Democrats on other measures relating to it, is supporting the bill…
The Atlantic does a deep dive into how the U.S. “squandered” its advantage in the war with Iran, as Washington finds itself facing weapons shortages…
Reps. Derek Tran (D-CA), Ami Bera (D-CA) and Salud Carbajal (D-CA) led 65 House Democrats raising concerns about Israeli restrictions they said are preventing the entry of medical supplies and other humanitarian goods into Gaza…
Jonathan Cowan, president of the center-left group Third Way, told The New York Times that the group plans to spend $15 million ahead of the 2028 presidential election to target the Democratic Socialists of America after El-Sayed’s primary win in the Michigan Senate race…
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill‘s Mission to Deliver PAC endorsed a series of Democratic candidates with national security or military backgrounds, including Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) in his primary campaign to oust Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA)…
The Education Department announced probes into anti-Israel protests at San Jose State University and San Francisco State University, citing complaints alleging the schools’ administrators failed to adequately address antisemitism on campus…
Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz sold his Hawaii estate for $36 million, 11 years after purchasing the property for $25 million…
Nazi warships deliberately sunk by the Germans as they retreated from Romania in 1944 are emerging in the Danube River in Serbia as the waterway faces dropping water levels due to drought and recent heat waves…
The United Arab Emirates has successfully transported more oil through the Strait of Hormuz in the last two months than any other country despite ongoing military hostilities in the area, Bloomberg reports, by utilizing tankers that switch off their transponders during the risky crossing…
Israel charged Israeli settler activist Yinon Levy with reckless homicide following the death last month of a Palestinian activist in the West Bank who was killed in a confrontation that occurred when Levy allegedly directed settlers to enter a private property and then shot at a group of Palestinians at the site…
Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid announced that MK Yoav Segalovitz is departing the party; the announcement came amid reports that Segalovitz is considering joining the Ra’am party, a move that would make him the first Jewish official on the Arab party’s ticket. In his new Substack, former crime reporter Ben Hartman examines how Segalovitz, formerly the head of Israel’s police intelligence and investigations branch, could shake up Israeli politics if he joins Ra’am…
Longtime former Likud MKs Gilad Erdan, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N., and Yuli Edelstein announced the creation of a new, as-yet-unnamed party; the two former MKs said that they hoped to attract Likud voters disillusioned with the party’s direction under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with a special focus on military conscription…
Israeli media reported that Mossad head Roman Gofman dismissed the agency’s intelligence directorate head as well as the head of the Mossad’s Iran division over Israel’s failure to topple the Iranian regime earlier this year…
The Yemeni Defense Ministry said the Iran-backed Houthis attacked the internationally recognized government’s military forces in several locations — reportedly killing dozens of soldiers and officers — and that the military would retaliate against the terror group “at the appropriate time and place”…
Two former members of Iran’s national women’s soccer team were granted citizenship in Australia, where they sought humanitarian asylum earlier this year during a tournament in Melbourne…
California Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Lele Yutzy as the state’s first director of its Office of Civil Rights, which was created under a bill enacted last year that acknowledged the prevalence of antisemitism in the state’s public schools and pledged to tackle discrimination…
The Simon Wiesenthal Center announced that Steve Gamer was joining the organization as chief development officer…
Find on-demand Live Briefing updates throughout the day via our new app (on Apple and Android) and website.
Pic of the Day
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar met on Thursday with Colombia’s incoming president, Abelardo de la Espriella, in Barranquilla, Colombia, one day before his official inauguration. According to a readout from Sa’ar’s office, the two discussed steps to strengthen diplomatic, security and economic relations between their countries.
Birthdays
Former professional soccer player, he played for the U.S. in the 2009 Maccabiah Games in Israel, Zac MacMath turns 35 today…
FRIDAY: Brooklyn resident, Esther Holler… Former U.S. trade representative and then U.S. secretary of commerce, both positions during the Clinton administration, Michael “Mickey” Kantor turns 87… Co-founder of the world-wide chain of Hard Rock Café, Peter Morton turns 79… Retired lieutenant general in the Israeli Air Force, he also served as chief of staff of the IDF, Dan Halutz turns 78… Former PR director for the New York Yankees and author of more than 20 books, Marty Appel turns 78… President of private equity firm Palisades Associates, former CEO of Empire Kosher Poultry, Greg Rosenbaum turns 74… Former U.S. intelligence analyst, he pled guilty to espionage in 1986 and was released from prison in 2015 and moved to Israel in 2020, Jonathan Pollard turns 72… Spiritual leader of Agudas Israel of St. Louis since 1986, Rabbi Menachem Greenblatt… Founder of the Cayton Children’s Museum in Santa Monica, Esther Netter… Former comptroller of the city of Rockville Centre, N.Y., Michael Schussheim turns 68… Television cook, YouTuber, restaurateur and cookbook author, known as Sam the Cooking Guy, Samuel D. Zien turns 67… City council president of Westlake, Ohio, David S. Greenspan turns 61… Professor of computational biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Liran Carmel turns 55… CEO at Capital Camps & Retreat Center after 14 years at AIPAC, Havi Arbeter Goldscher… Governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger turns 47… Financial news anchor for CNBC, Sara Aliza Eisen turns 42… Emmy Award-winning political reporter for The New York Times, Jonathan V. Swan turns 41… Public address announcer for both MLB’s Athletics and the AHL’s San Jose Barracuda, Amelia Schimmel… Former MLB catcher, he batted .350 with two home runs for Team Israel at the 2020 Olympics, he is now a catching instructor for the Chicago Cubs, Ryan Lavarnway turns 39… Senior faculty at Ariel University, Anna Harwood-Gross… Product management director at Signify Health, Estee Goldschmidt… Professional Super Smash Bros. player, known as Dabuz, Samuel Robert Buzby turns 33… Founder of Love For Our Elders, a global nonprofit organization in dozens of countries, Jacob Cramer turns 26… Scott Harrison…
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Analysts warn the proposed 60-day arrangement, if signed as reported, would mark the first time Iran formally directs shipping through the international waterway, setting a dangerous precedent
Amirhossein KHORGOOEI / ISNA / AFP via Getty Images
Vessels are pictured anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on May 5, 2026.
Experts are expressing growing concern over reports that an emerging deal between Iran and Oman to reopen the Strait of Hormuz could grant Tehran unprecedented oversight over the international shipping route, ceding control to Iran that it did not possess prior to the conflict.
The potential agreement comes as President Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday that “a lot of progress had been made” in negotiations and signaled a deal on the strategic waterway could be announced as soon as this week. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei confirmed on Wednesday that an arrangement with Oman had reached the “final stage.”
Iran’s deputy foreign minister has denied direct negotiations with the U.S. and warned that an agreement would not automatically reopen the waterway. Iranian state media also reported that, under a draft bill currently being reviewed by an Iranian parliamentary committee, U.S. and Israeli ships may also be barred from crossing the strait.
Reports indicate any agreement would likely last for 60 days and require the U.S. to lift its naval blockade on Iranian ports. A deal would potentially initiate the clearing of naval mines in the strait, a return to a broader ceasefire and resumption of talks with the U.S. on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Under the proposed terms, inbound commercial vessels would be directed through a northern route in Iranian waters, while outbound ships would traverse a southern route in Omani waters, managed in coordination with Iran. Although a U.S. official told the Associated Press that such a deal would preclude Iran from issuing formal approvals for transiting ships, tolls or service fees, regional analysts warn that formalizing Iranian oversight over the chokepoint represents a significant strategic concession.
Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Jewish Insider that Washington’s drive for a resolution with Iran may be driving it to agree to a less-than-ideal scenario.
“President Trump is very eager for a deal that reopens the strait, and seems inclined to accept a deal under which Iran has greater oversight of ships entering and exiting the strait,” Levitt said. “The key is denying Iran any way of monetizing the flow of traffic through this international waterway.”
Daniel Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama who also served as President Joe Biden’s Iran liaison to Israel, told JI that “if the deal that is being described comes into effect, it is a strategic win for Iran.”
“[Iran] will emerge with effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, which was a fully open international waterway before the war,” Shapiro said. “The United States will be strategically worse off with this outcome than we were before the war, but it is almost certainly the only way to prevent an escalation that would produce even greater global economic disruption than we have already seen.”
Shapiro noted that even after a deal is made, Iran “will probably receive early sanctions relief … and they will only be expected to start negotiations on their nuclear program, which could turn out to be fruitless and endless.”
Analysts emphasized that the disconnect between Washington and Tehran regarding the scope of the agreement poses risks to maritime security.
Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America , pointed out that much like the June U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding, the potential deal means vastly different things to each side. While the U.S. expects international shipping to resume unencumbered, Tehran views the arrangement as a vehicle to establish long-term authority.
“Iran expects much more, including at least de facto ability to toll and veto passage through Hormuz,” Ruhe said. “Tehran’s redline for a deal is recognition of its ‘right’ to determine and deter shipping in Hormuz, as the spoils of its victory and a key counterweight to further U.S. pressure.”
“Combined with the complications of gaining signoff from Iran’s Supreme Leader, and Iran’s predictable tendency to seek additional U.S. concessions, these differences explain the lack of a deal so far – despite U.S. anticipation of an imminent announcement,” he continued.
Ruhe said that even if the Trump administration secures a deal that reopens the strait, the precedent set by such an agreement could remain dangerous.
“It would affirm that the fate of this critical waterway is subject to Iran’s approval, and undermine America’s abiding interest in free navigation,” he said. “By cementing a key wartime gain, it would embolden Tehran to take the hardest possible line in any follow-on talks.”
Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Trump administration official, cautioned that the final structure of the deal will determine whether Washington is conceding leverage or calling Tehran’s bluff.
“I find it difficult to believe we would ever cede formal control over a critical international waterway to a terrorist group, or otherwise tolerate that group collecting tolls or fees for what is already an international right to freedom of navigation,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg noted that Iran’s rhetoric may ultimately be bluster.
“Oftentimes the reality of a situation might differ from Iran’s propaganda — that is, in this case, Iran might claim it’s ‘allowing’ ships to pass through its claimed ‘territorial waters’ but in practice it could mean ships are just moving through the strait as they always used to without taking drone or missile fire,” Goldberg explained. “If we see formal control, tolls or fees, that’s a terrible outcome; if we see Iran just making claims that it’s allowing something to happen but there is no formalized control, no extortion payments being made, that could very well be a propaganda-disguised-victory for the United States.”
For now, Israel’s restraint is less about hesitation, and more of a calculation that deterrence, rather than direct military engagement, will serve Jerusalem’s interests in the long term
AFPTV / AFP via Getty Images
A cargo ship anchoring near the Strait of Hormuz off the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates on July 12, 2026.
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.
But as focus on the conflict with Iran has shifted from addressing the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions to the Strait of Hormuz, Israel has stayed out of the fighting — despite Iranian threats earlier this month to target the Jewish state if the U.S. attacks did not cease.
There is no upside for Israel to reenter the fight, especially when the issue of the Strait of Hormuz falls outside of the objectives set by Israel at the start of the war earlier this year. (This, despite the widespread sentiment among Israelis that this year’s war did not improve Israel’s security situation, according to polling last month from the Israel Democracy Institute.)
Key among the goals laid out by Israel was degrading Iran’s ballistic missile program and setting back elements of its nuclear program. Reopening Hormuz is an American objective, not an Israeli one. With Israel having made the calculus that the most immediate Iranian threats have been blunted — at least in the short term — the current mission has become an American one.
“Israel’s best move is to not move — yet,” Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Jewish Insider this morning. “Washington does the striking. Israel keeps its fire and its threats in reserve, waiting for one of two triggers: a U.S. request to join, or an Iranian regime foolish enough to hit Israel and invite the reprisal that has been promised.”
Despite Iran’s threats to target Israel, such a move would likely be a strategic misstep for the Islamic Republic. Iran’s blockade of the strait and its attacks on Arab and Gulf states are an attempt to reassert its dominance over the region and demonstrate its ability to impact the global energy market. Tehran also appears to be betting that sustained attacks across the region will push Arab states to pressure the U.S. to accept an agreement to reopen the strait, handing the Islamic Republic a win.
In that sense, Tehran is calibrating its escalation according to the expected retaliation, knowing that Arab states are, unlike Israel, hesitant to respond with military action.
One week ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking in Dimona, drew a line in the sand. “I have one message for Iran’s leaders: Do not count on there being calm if you attack us,” Netanyahu said. “Do not expect a repeat of what happened before, because there will be no repeat. The previous response was powerful enough, but any further attempt to harm us will be met with a different response — far more powerful.”
Thus far, the Arab states have shown little indication that they intend to escalate to match Iran’s attacks, and will not retaliate with a proportional response (or even a disproportionate response). But with the intermittent fire, Iran keeps the region on edge and Hormuz closed for business.
The question many Israelis are asking is how much longer the domestic quiet will continue. But unless Iran directly strikes Israel or acts in a way that compromises Jerusalem’s interests, there is little appetite in Israel to transform what has become a U.S. effort to reopen shipping routes into another round of intensive fighting between Iran and Israel. For now, Israel’s restraint is less about hesitation, and more of a calculation that deterrence, rather than direct military engagement, will serve Jerusalem’s interests in the long term.
Trump said the change came after ‘highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership’
SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine speaks as a map of the Strait of Hormuz is displayed during a press briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on April 16, 2026.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday walked back his announcement, made the previous day, that the U.S. would institute a 20% fee on cargo transiting the Strait of Hormuz, saying the toll would be replaced by trade deals with Gulf states.
Trump, having hosted Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi at the White House Tuesday morning, wrote on Truth Social that his change of heart was “based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership,” and that the deals “will be MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future.”
Trump did not name specific countries, provide figures or outline a timeline for the new arrangement.
Trump reiterated in his post that the U.S. blockade, reinstituted on Tuesday, will remain in place on Iranian ships and cargo.
The reversal follows a rapidly escalating military exchange in the Gulf: The U.S. carried out a third consecutive night of strikes against Iranian targets early Tuesday. Iran, in turn, claimed to have struck and disabled two tankers in the strait and fired on Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait.
The analysis by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America found that Tehran made 47% more in the three weeks following the MOU than it normally did in a month before the war
Photo by AFP via Getty Images
A cargo ship is pictured off coast of the Khor Fakkan Container Terminal, the only natural deep-sea port in the region, along the Gulf of Oman on June 28, 2026.
Iran netted nearly $5 billion in the 22 days after Washington and Tehran signed their memorandum of understanding on June 17, according to a new report from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
The findings come as President Donald Trump announced on Monday that the U.S. would reimpose its naval blockade on Iranian ports effective July 14 at 4 p.m. ET, with an added 20% U.S. toll on all shipping through the strait.
The U.S. had lifted the blockade last month upon the signing of the MOU with Iran, at which time the Trump administration also issued a waiver that allowed the sale of Iranian oil. That waiver was revoked last week in response to Iranian attacks on shipping vessels in the strait, but the damage, JINSA says, was already done.
The JINSA report, published on July 8, found that once the initial maritime blockade was lifted mid-June, the Iranian regime “rushed to export its oil at the first opportunity.” Shipping data analyzed in the report indicates that Iran exported 50 million barrels of crude within the first two weeks after the blockade was lifted. By early July, total exports under the temporary truce topped 55 million barrels, netting the regime more than $4.5 billion.
Before the conflict, Iran typically exported between 47 million and 50 million barrels in a single month, averaging roughly $3.05 billion in revenue, according to the report. Because the U.S. waiver allowed Iran to sell its crude at standard market prices rather than the heavily discounted rates it usually relied on to bypass international sanctions, the regime pulled in 47% more cash in the 22 days following the MOU than it normally did in an entire month before the war.
Tehran has simultaneously maintained a tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz that has severely constrained broader global shipping, in what the report describes as a “bad omen for the future of maritime security in the Middle East — and U.S. deterrence of Iran.”
Daily global transit through the Strait of Hormuz fell from 15 million barrels of crude oil per day before the war to 4.8 million barrels per day during the first week after the MOU was reached — less than a third of normal volumes. By contrast, Iran managed to export 5 million barrels of its own crude oil per day during that same week.
Beyond standard oil sales, the report notes that Iran maintained an aggressive financial squeeze on foreign vessels transiting the region. Citing Israeli media reports, the report said Iranian authorities blocked commercial oil tankers from passing through the Strait of Hormuz unless they paid a transit fee of up to $2 million per vessel.
Tracking data from the shipping analytics firm Kpler suggests that these unauthorized checkpoints generated roughly $300 million in extra revenue for Tehran, directly violating the agreement’s terms guaranteeing free passage for international trade.
The president also said he is reinstating a blockade on Iranian ports
AFPTV / AFP via Getty Images
A cargo ship anchoring near the Strait of Hormuz off the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates on July 12, 2026.
President Donald Trump declared on Monday that the U.S. will take control of the Strait of Hormuz and said Washington will institute a 20% fee on all cargo passing through the waterway “for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.”
“The Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped.”
Trump’s comments came after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced on Sunday that the strait was considered closed until further notice.
Trump also said he is reinstating the U.S. blockade on Iran, which had been lifted as part of the memorandum of understanding signed between the two countries last month. The blockade will once again prevent “Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving,” he said. “All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait.”
Earlier on Monday, Trump said during a “Fox & Friends” interview that “we’re going to keep the strait, and we’ll probably run it.”
Trump has declared the MOU, which said Iran would oversee arrangements for ships transiting the key waterway, as finished.
“We had a deal. It was a done deal, and then they broke it. They always break it,” Trump said of Iran on Monday, declaring his intent to “hit them very hard.” The U.S. struck Iranian targets near the strait on Sunday night after Iran hit a Cyprus-flagged container ship, prompting Iran to fire barrages of drones and missiles at Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
Iran has attacked several commercial tankers this month for traversing the strait through “unauthorized routes.”
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said that normal shipping traffic can only resume if the U.S. ends its military involvement in the strait entirely, according to Iranian state media.
A U.S. official called Iran's actions ‘wholly unacceptable’ but said negotiators continue to work ‘in good faith’ toward a final deal
Photo by Elke Scholiers/Getty Images
Crude oil tankers, bulk carriers and vessels sit anchored around Qaboos Port on June 22, 2026 in Muscat, Oman.
A brief window of U.S. sanctions relief for Tehran closed on Tuesday as the Trump administration revoked a waiver that allowed the sale of Iranian oil in response to continued Iranian attacks on shipping vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
Last month, the Treasury Department lifted sanctions on Iranian oil sales by issuing a 60-day license, a decision experts told Jewish Insider risked providing Tehran with significant revenue for malign activity. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had said the temporary license was issued due to Iran’s commitments under the memorandum of understanding, including guaranteeing safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz and inviting international nuclear inspectors back into the country — a claim that Iran swiftly denied. The license allowed Iran to produce, deliver and sell oil, including to U.S. importers, through Aug. 21.
But since the agreement was signed, Iran has since continued its attacks on commercial vessels navigating the Strait of Hormuz, including strikes on three commercial tankers since the beginning of the week, which a U.S. official called “wholly unacceptable.”
“As President [Donald] Trump and the administration have repeatedly affirmed, the MOU in effect with Iran is entirely performance-based. Iran will only reap benefits if they exhibit good behavior,” the official told JI. “Iran’s actions in the Strait were wholly unacceptable to the United States and will be met with consequences. Our negotiators continue to work in good faith towards a final deal.”
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson had warned that commercial vessels using routes outside of Iranian control could face consequences and said that Iran was “diligently fulfilling its commitments” within the MOU to manage the strait, according to Axios.
Jewish organizations across the political spectrum question whether the deal will curb Iran’s nuclear program or its support for regional proxies
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
President Donald Trump conducts a news conference in the White House briefing room about the war in Iran on Monday, April 6, 2026.
As details begin to emerge about the Trump administration’s agreement with Iran to end the war and lift the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, some mainstream Jewish organizations are treating the deal as a preliminary step — focusing on the 60-day negotiating period ahead, while others are expressing skepticism about the contours of the agreement.
AIPAC, in a statement that came late Monday afternoon after many other organizations had already spoken out, framed the current MOU as a preliminary step, focusing more on the upcoming negotiations, while emphasizing the need for more details about how the current deal affects Israel.
“The announced MOU kicks off a new 60-day window for talks. We look forward to learning the full details of the framework for these negotiations, including whether the deal preserves the sovereign right of our democratic ally Israel to respond to the security threats it confronts,” AIPAC said in a statement.
The group also emphasized that “Congress will play a critical role in working with the administration throughout these negotiations and in reviewing the ultimate agreement.”
It said any deal should require the removal of all enriched uranium from Iran, the dismantling of its enrichment capacity and should address Iran’s missile and drone programs and end its support for terrorist proxies.
The American Jewish Committee also did not take a definitive position on the current agreement, saying on X that the organization “await[s] developments about the reported 60-day ceasefire agreement” but emphasized the need to continue to focus on Iran’s long-running threats.
The AJC said that any ultimate deal with Iran at the conclusion of the upcoming 60-day negotiating period should ensure Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon, rebuild its ballistic missile program, continue to support terror proxies, threaten U.S. allies and partners or hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage.
“AJC also strongly supports the legitimate aspirations of the Iranian people for greater freedom, opportunity and dignity, and hopes that those aspirations are eventually realized,” the statement continued. “As the contours of this and future agreements become more clear, we will continue to engage with our partners in the U.S., the Middle East, and around the world to make this vision a reality.”
Other groups offered a more directly negative reaction to the emerging details of the MOU.
The Zionist Organization of America, which has been strongly supportive of Trump administration policies and President Donald Trump himself, praised the president for carrying out military operations against Iran but said that “the pending deal with Iran is concerning.”
“The deal appears to be an ‘agreement to negotiate’ — which enables the Iranian regime to obtain massive oil revenue and time to build up its military and terror arsenals, while leaving the genocidal Iranian regime and its nuclear and missile stockpiles in place, and positioning the Iranian regime to continue and strengthen its 47-year war to destroy the U.S., Israel, and the West,” ZOA National President Mort Klein said. “[T]he little that we know is deeply problematic.”
Klein said it “makes no sense” for the U.S. to let up on its blockade of Iran unless Iran fully gives up its nuclear program and missile stockpile. He also expressed concerns that the deal will allow Hezbollah to regroup and rearm, and that Trump demanded that Israel stand down against Hezbollah.
“Pressuring Israel to not respond to threats of annihilation and attacks on her people is not, as the president called it, a ‘Great Deal [that] will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region,’” Klein said.
“Disturbingly, the interim Iran deal does not appear to be even close to the U.S.-Israel war goals of eliminating the existential dangers of Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missiles, ending the Iranian regime’s support for its terror proxies, and helping the Iranian people overturn the brutal, genocidal Iranian regime,” he continued.
Democratic groups are also skeptical.
Democratic Majority for Israel CEO Brian Romick criticized the administration’s “incoherent and erratic strategy” and said that “there are concerning details about what is and isn’t in this deal.” Romick called on the administration to lean on “experienced negotiators and technical experts” in the next phases of talks, “rather than relying on friends, family, and donors.”
He said that any deal must permanently end Iran’s nuclear program, constrain its ballistic missiles, address Iran’s support for terrorism and ensure that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s terrorist proxies do not receive additional support as a result of sanctions relief or the unfreezing of assets, and that it must be thoroughly vetted by Congress.
“Despite this tentative deal, the reality is Israel still faces constant threats from Iranian-backed terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. President Trump must not limit or interfere with our ally’s ability to defend itself from very real threats along its border,” Romick continued.
The Jewish Democratic Council of America’s CEO Halie Soifer took an even more strident tone.
“Donald Trump’s deal with Iran isn’t a deal at all. At best, it’s a statement of intention — a ‘concept of a plan’ — lacking details. At worst, it’s an admission of defeat by the United States,” Soifer said, describing it as a weaker deal than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
She argued that the “reckless war” gave Iran a “chokehold” on the U.S. and global economy that it will continue to exercise in the future, gave Iran a stronger hand in nuclear negotiations, solidified the current regime, harmed the Iranian people and gained the U.S. nothing.
“Today, Iran is unquestionably further from regime change — and this Iranian regime is stronger — than before the war,” Soifer said. “Trump repeatedly berated the Obama administration for offering sanctions relief and unfreezing Iranian assets as part of the JCPOA. The amount of financial benefit Iran received from the JCPOA will be dwarfed by the amount of money going to Iran following Trump’s defeat.”
Soifer also criticized Trump for sidelining and ignoring Israel throughout the talks.
J Street has thus far been an outlier in expressing support for the deal.
The group’s president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said J Street “welcomes” the announcement, while also criticizing the war effort as a whole.
“The lesson is the same one many experts and former security officials have warned about for years: There is no sustainable military solution to the challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear diplomacy,” Ben-Ami said. “Durable constraints on Iran’s nuclear activities can only be achieved through pragmatic and sustained diplomacy.”
Ben-Ami argued that the deal would be largely similar to the JCPOA, adding, “We urge lawmakers to support this agreement to end the fighting and push to ensure future diplomatic efforts address the security threats presented by Iran.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition has not issued a full statement of its own on the deal, but has indicated support thus far, sharing on its X account two Truth Social posts from Trump about the Strait of Hormuz being reopened and the lifting of the U.S. blockade. RJC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The secretary of state acknowledged that granting Iran access to additional funds would risk Tehran using the money for malign activity in the region
Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, June 2, 2026.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that the U.S. is not offering Iran any sanctions relief in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and that sanctions relief would only be on the table if the Islamic Republic made concessions related to its nuclear program.
The secretary of state described the diplomatic talks as two-phased: The current phase is focused on getting Iran to agree to reopen the strait and to commit to enter further negotiations on disposing its highly enriched uranium and on “severe and long-term limitations and/or cancelation of enrichment.” In exchange, the U.S. would lift its blockade of Iranian ports.
“For example, they have to commit to say, ‘We will dispose of the enriched uranium.’ And the question now is what are the mechanisms by which we can dispose of it,” Rubio said.
The second phase would entail technical discussions on Iran’s nuclear program and fissile material, in exchange for potential U.S. sanctions relief, and could take months to work through.
“Any sanctions relief is condition-based, which means it has to be in return for the reason why the sanctions are put in place in the first place, which is their nuclear program,” Rubio said. “If they agree to give up [nuclear activities], there will be sanctions relief associated with their commitment and their compliance.”
He said that if Iran complies with U.S. demands including giving up nuclear enrichment and disposing of its enriched uranium, “that’s the place where the frozen assets could be discussed. The more they give, the more they would get.”
But he acknowledged that granting Iran access to additional funds would raise other challenges, including using such funding to support terrorist activities.
Rubio said later during a Tuesday afternoon hearing with the House Appropriations Committee that “if money is going to fund the proxies, it won’t be returned to them,” emphasizing that “there are specific sanctions that are in place related directly to the nuclear program” that could be removed as part of talks.
Republicans cried foul when the Biden administration made similar arguments during its own negotiations with Iran, arguing that any sanctions relief for Iran — even if funds were limited to certain specific humanitarian purposes — would ultimately allow the regime more room in its budget to fund proxy terrorism and other malign activities.
Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL), who questioned Rubio on the issue, urged him “not to give money to Iran to continue the work of their proxies.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) urged the administration in a Tuesday morning X post to ensure that any deal with Iran forecloses support for terrorism going forward.
“ANY DEAL WITH IRAN MUST CLEARLY STATE THAT IF IRAN PROVIDES FUTURE SUPPORT TO TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS LIKE HEZBOLLAH, IT WILL RESULT IN CRIPPLING SANCTIONS AND OTHER PUNITIVE MEASURES,” Graham wrote.
Rubio said during the Senate hearing that if Iran refuses to reopen the Strait of Hormuz voluntarily, “then we have other options available to us.”
He added that if the U.S. had refrained from action against Iran because of fears it could close the strait, it would have given Iran effective veto power over U.S. action and acceded to Iran the ability to develop nuclear weapons. “That’s an untenable situation.”
Rubio argued that the U.S. is in the strongest position diplomatically in his memory.
“They have agreed to negotiate aspects of the nuclear program that just a month ago, just a year ago, they were refusing to even mention, much less enter into discussion about,” he said. “That is not a guarantee that it will lead to a deal that is acceptable to the Senate or acceptable to the American people, but we were able to engage them in a process that truly tests the proposition of how far they’re willing to go.”
He insisted that any deal would be stronger than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed to by the Obama administration.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) — who recently lost his primary election to a Trump-backed challenger and may now have more leeway to oppose President Donald Trump’s initiatives for the remainder of his term — suggested he was skeptical of any diplomatic agreement with Iran. Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, the administration would be obligated to submit any nuclear deal with Iran for congressional review.
“I do applaud the president’s attempt to try to use some diplomacy here in order to deny them access to the enriched uranium and other weapons that they use against Israel and the West, but tell me, why do you think anything that the Iranian regime agrees to that they will comply with?” Cornyn asked. “What evidence is there that they will agree to anything that they ultimately will stick with?”
Rubio said that any deal will require verifiable steps, and that sanctions relief would come after “they actually do certain things,” not simply in exchange for Iran’s agreement in principle.
He also repeatedly said that issues inside Iran that predate the war, such as the growing economic crisis, have only further accelerated during the war.
He added that diplomatic talks have been slowed by Iran’s internal system and by communications issues inside the country, including divisions between elements of Iran’s government and leadership structure.
The “political class,” Rubio said, would “probably make a deal tomorrow,” but Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei — who was believed to have been injured in the Feb. 28 Israeli strike that killed his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are more insulated from economic and political pressure.
Rubio said that the U.S. has not seen or heard directly from Khamenei, but that there are indications that he is alive and increasingly engaging in governing matters.
Despite urging from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rubio said that he is not aware of any U.S. program or plans to arm Iranian protesters against the government.
Rubio also described Operation Epic Fury as “highly successful” in shutting down Iran’s defense industrial base and navy, though he acknowledged that “they still have a lot of drones,” framing that as a challenge that is not unique to Iran.
“There is no Iranian navy. … There’s a bunch of Boston whalers with machine guns on them, but there is no navy,” he said.
Cornyn said that it would be “ludicrous” to suggest that, before the war, Iran’s nuclear program did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. Rubio agreed, adding that if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon, it “could very well use it,” and even if it did not, having such capability would allow it to hold the world hostage and “hyper-scale” its support for terrorism.
Rubio said that Iran is attempting to drag out the conflict in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah by continuing to prop up the terror group. He said the U.S. aims to keep talks over Lebanon separate from negotiations with Iran, while Iran is attempting to merge the two issues.
“The Lebanese government and the Israeli government, they could do a peace deal tomorrow. Israel has no territorial claims in Lebanon, and Hezbollah … has called for the overthrow of the current Lebanese government. The impediment in Lebanon is the fact that Hezbollah has embedded itself in that country and is the reason for all the suffering that’s happening there right now.”
Lebanese and Israeli officials are meeting at the State Department for negotiations on Tuesday.
He said that there are continued difficulties in demilitarizing and defanging Hezbollah, explaining that the Lebanese Armed Forces’ capabilities “are not where they need to be” and that certain elements of the LAF have cooperated with Hezbollah, though he said that there has been progress by the Lebanese government.
Rubio praised the United Arab Emirates as having been “very aggressively cooperative” in the U.S. campaign against Iran and said Kuwait has been “fantastic.” He added that while other U.S. partners have been displeased with Iranian strikes on their energy infrastructure, he called those strikes a “reminder” of the threat they all face from Iran.
Asked about the Board of Peace, Rubio said that the group, which he said is now being structured as an international nongovernmental organization, has just begun to hire staff in the past few weeks. He said the organization aims to remain lean, with just five full-time staff now and a goal of growing to 15 to 20.
He also said that the U.S. has not provided any of the funding it pledged to the Board of Peace and has, for now, walked back the commitment of $50 million that Trump initially offered for the body.
Rubio also flatly denied reports that the U.S. was coordinating with Israel to remove Jordanian custodianship of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex on the Temple Mount.
‘There may be a freer market ahead,’ Sen. Blumenthal told JI
OPEC headquarters in Vienna
Lawmakers said that the United Arab Emirates’ decision to withdraw from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries could yield positive economic benefits for the U.S. and is a sign that the regional alignment of the Gulf countries is shifting.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told Jewish Insider that the recent move shows “the continued fragmentation of the Gulf Cooperation Council and of the relations between our Gulf partners as Saudi and the Emirates are pursuing different security paths.”
“I think it is a reminder that the Gulf is under enormous pressure because Iranian attacks have knocked out a fair amount of oil and gas production capability,” Coons said. “The closure of the Strait of Hormuz continues to threaten the stability of their economies, and some of the underlying tensions between our allies and partners in the region are becoming more evident.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told JI he was “trying to understand” what the move would mean, noting that if the UAE “wouldn’t be limited in terms of what they can produce into the world’s oil supply,” it would be a positive development.
“That would probably be a good thing in terms of increasing the supply and hopefully bringing down prices,” Cornyn said. “I think all they [OPEC countries] care about is themselves. As long as they can make money, they’ll do it. And they’re a cartel. We call them a cartel for a reason, but I think right now, more supply would be good and hopefully bring down gas prices.”
OPEC, which coordinates production policies among major oil producers to influence global supply and prices, is de facto led by Saudi Arabia with members including Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela and Algeria.
Cornyn added that he believes Iran has, through the course of the war, “done an amazing thing, which is to unify a bunch of countries in the Gulf that used to try to fight each other.”
“I’m hopeful after the Strait of Hormuz is open — which I think President [Donald] Trump should not stop until that happens — that we’ll hopefully see an increased normalization of relationships between Saudi Arabia and Israel,” Cornyn said. “And it looks to me like it could end up being a really positive thing in the long run.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) also said that Abu Dhabi’s departure from OPEC “may signal that the cohesion of OPEC is splintering and its power may be lessening … and there may be a freer market ahead.”
Experts said that the UAE has considered making such a move in the past, but it was the ongoing war with Iran that accelerated Abu Dhabi’s decision to break from the bloc and chart a more independent path.
Analysts also conveyed that the shift reflects both long-standing economic frustrations within OPEC and a broader geopolitical recalibration following the conflict — one that is likely to strengthen the UAE’s ties with the United States and Israel while widening its divide with Saudi Arabia.
“The political and economic predicates for this move have been building for a while, and events of the last two months accelerated the decision,” said Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
Ruhe noted that the UAE had long been constrained by OPEC production quotas, often “bearing the brunt” of cuts while other members failed to comply.
“All of this foregone revenue could have been spent on further diversifying the Emirati economy and pursuing ambitions to be a world leader in AI and other technologies,” Ruhe said, adding that tensions were compounded by political strains with Saudi Arabia over regional issues including conflicts in Yemen, Sudan and Israel.
“The UAE’s spare production capacity is at an even greater premium now, and it can bypass the Strait of Hormuz with some of these seaborne exports. And with no production cap, it can invest more in additional Hormuz bypass routes,” he added.
While those pressures have existed for years, experts said the Iran war proved to be a turning point. Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the UAE was “dismayed” by the lack of response from regional organizations during the conflict, particularly after Iranian strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure.
“The UAE was expecting at least some sort of move by OPEC to denounce all the strikes against energy facilities from a fellow OPEC member [Iran], and this didn’t happen,” Abdul-Hussain said, with a similar dynamic occurring in the Arab League.
Experts said the fallout from the war is also expected to bring the UAE closer to Washington and Jerusalem. Abdul-Hussain pointed to reports that Israel deployed an Iron Dome battery to the UAE during the conflict — a potential sign that the nations could share increased goodwill moving forward.
“The UAE has been adamant on saying that they will not forget those who took their side in the war, and they will not forget those who didn’t take their side,” Abdul-Hussain said. “On Israel, I think [their ties] … will grow much, much stronger moving forward.”
Beyond shifting regional ties, Abdul-Hussain said the move is likely to be welcomed by Washington, noting that in “the United States, regardless of who’s in the White House, we don’t like OPEC.”
“We call them an oil cartel,” he added. “They try to regulate oil prices and not always in our favor. So we’ll be happy to see the market play its role without having someone putting their thumb on the scale.”
Abdul-Hussain also noted that Saudi Arabia was “always trying to control the price of the market.” He said that the UAE’s decision “undermines the positions of both Saudi Arabia and Iran.”
“Before the war with Iran broke out, a schism had shown between the Saudis and the Emiratis,” Abdul-Hussain said. “Some thought that the war would bring them closer together, but I think the war didn’t, because you could see that the posture during the war and after the war was completely opposite.”
Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, echoed that “differences over strategy confronting Iran is driving the Gulf states in different directions.” She added that the UAE is willing to chart its own path, free from deference to Saudi Arabia. “I expect this will extend to other Arab and Islamic multilateral organizations as well.”
Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Abu Dhabi’s decision is a reflection of a broader regional realignment underway in which there will be “roughly two different blocs.” He noted in a statement that one such bloc might consist of “Israel, UAE, Bahrain, Kenya, Greece, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Somaliland, maybe Lebanon and Egypt,” with another consisting of “Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.”
“You have discussions among the Turks, Saudis, Egyptians and Pakistanis for a security pact. This is a long-held dream among Turkish Islamists and the others seem interested. On the other hand, the Emiratis, Israel and the rest are drawing closer to each other,” Cook said. “This does not bode well for regional integration that the Saudis, Americans, Israelis and others have been seeking, but CENTCOM will hold the GCC Plus and Israel together on security issues so it won’t be a total split,” Cook said.
Plus, Dems concerned over fraying Israel-Europe ties
Daniel Torok/The White House via Getty Images
President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) sit in the Situation Room as they monitor the mission that took out three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites, at the White House on June 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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President Donald Trump announced this afternoon, with the status of negotiations with Iran up in the air and the expiration of the ceasefire quickly approaching, that he is indefinitely extending the ceasefire at the request of Pakistani negotiators (despite having said, as recently as this morning, that he was not inclined to do so).
“Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured … we have been asked to hold our Attack … until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other”…
Talks were meant to begin shortly in Islamabad, but Vice President JD Vance’s trip was reportedly put on hold and he remains in Washington. Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were all spotted arriving at the White House for meetings this afternoon.
Iran also had not committed to sending its own delegation — Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the U.S. of violating the ceasefire through its blockade of Iranian ports and seizure of an Iranian-flagged cargo ship, calling it an “act of war. … Iran knows how to neutralize restrictions, how to defend its interests, and how to resist bullying,” he wrote…
U.S. forces boarded an oil tanker in the Indian Ocean that had been sanctioned for working with Iran which defense officials said was currently carrying Iranian oil, in a further escalation of the U.S. campaign against Tehran-aligned assets and actors outside of the Middle East.
The Treasury Department also announced sanctions on 14 individuals and entities in Iran, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates for “their involvement in procuring or transporting weapons or weapons components on behalf of the Iranian regime”…
Six weeks after he was announced as Iran’s new supreme leader after the assassination of his father, Mojtaba Khamenei has still not been seen in public, raising speculation he is incapacitated from injuries sustained in a U.S.-Israeli airstrike or has been smuggled abroad…
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch (R-ID) endorsed Sen. Roger Wicker’s (R-MS) view that the U.S. should reconsider its funding for the Lebanese Armed Forces in light of its continued inaction to disarm Hezbollah, in addition to the Lebanese government’s failure to “follow through on long-promised economic reform. The era of complacency & unconditional bailouts must come to end,” Risch said…
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) clarified that his post calling it “awesome” that several Iranian oil tankers had bypassed the U.S. blockade — reporting that has been disputed as Iranian propaganda — was written as sarcasm. “[O]bviously Trump’s bungled mismanagement of this war is not ‘awesome.’ As I have said a million times here, it’s a disaster and he should end the war immediately,” Murphy wrote on X…
Democratic lawmakers are expressing concern over Israel’s fracturing relationship with key European allies, while experts say the shifting dynamics could carry longer-term economic and political risks for Jerusalem, even if Israel weathers threats to unwind largely symbolic defense agreements, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Among other recent moves, Spain and Ireland led a push today to suspend the EU’s association agreement with Israel. The initiative stalled as member states remained divided on the issue; still, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) called the developments “deeply alarming.”
“NATO allies like Spain, France and Italy are turning their backs on Israel, a key democratic partner that is actively fighting on the front lines against Iran,” Gottheimer said. “Singling out Israel represents a double standard”…
The arsonist who pleaded guilty to attacking a North London synagogue on Saturday night was released on bail by the Westminster Magistrates’ Court today, JI’s Haley Cohen reports. The 17-year-old boy who threw a bottle containing accelerant through the window of Kenton United Synagogue must live and sleep at his home address and not enter any synagogue, the judge said. It was the third such attack on a Jewish institution in London within a week…
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) resigned from Congress this afternoon, half an hour before her House Ethics Committee sanctions hearing was due to begin. Having lost jurisdiction in the matter, the committee canceled the hearing…
The Board of Peace is reportedly in discussion with the UAE-owned DP World logistics company about managing supply chains and humanitarian aid in Gaza, including potentially building a new port and developing a free-trade zone, according to Financial Times, as part of the Trump administration’s vision of privatizing much of Gaza’s services and infrastructure…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look at how Jewish Democrats in Michigan are making sense of their place in the party in the wake of a state convention where pro-Israel voices were shouted down and a pro-Hezbollah candidate won the party’s nomination for a statewide race.
The House Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing evaluating the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions.
A vote on the fifth Iran war powers resolution in the Senate, expected today, has been pushed to tomorrow.
92NY will host a discussion on the future of New York’s Jewish community with New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal and New York City Comptroller Mark Levine.
The New York City Council’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism will hold its first hearing. The task force was established by Menin in January, shortly after her election, to make recommendations and work towards her five-point plan to combat antisemitism.
Robert Kraft’s Blue Square Alliance Against Hate will host a unity dinner in partnership with the NFL, Hillel International, United Negro College Fund and the Pittsburgh Steelers for Black and Jewish college students from the Pittsburgh area. The event will include a fireside chat featuring Kraft, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch.
Washington, D.C., mayoral candidate Kenyan McDuffie will hold a meet-and-greet with young Jewish professionals.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) will speak in conversation at Yeshiva University with its president, Rabbi Ari Berman, about her new book, Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities.
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IRON DOME DECISIONS
J Street’s Ilan Goldenberg said the surge in far-left calls to cut off missile-defense aid ‘stirred up the conversation a little more’ but says the group was moving that way regardless
CAMPAIGN CLASH
Adam Hamawy said on Hasan Piker’s show that he does not support Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system, arguing that it insulates Israel from the consequences of war
Plus, Israel-Lebanon talks to continue Thursday
Edna Leshowitz/Getty Images
Jack Schlossberg, grandson of former President John. F Kennedy who is currently running for Congress, on Jan. 12, 2026 in New York City.
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Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Iranian officials have signaled they will attend talks with the U.S. in Islamabad, Pakistan, this week, with Vice President JD Vance, White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner expected to depart for the meeting tomorrow (despite President Donald Trump’s claim that they were already in transit this morning).
Negotiators are up against a running clock, as Trump said today that his two-week ceasefire with Iran will end “Wednesday evening Washington time” and it’s “highly unlikely that I’d extend it” if no deal is reached…
In a series of heated social media posts, Trump again denied that Israel dragged the U.S. into war with Iran: “[T]he results of Oct. 7th, added to my lifelong opinion that IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON,” were his motivation, he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump also boasted that the deal under negotiation will be “far better” than the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. “If a Deal happens under ‘TRUMP,’ it will guarantee Peace, Security, and Safety, not only for Israel and the Middle East, but for Europe, America, and everywhere else,” he wrote. Lashing out at the media, Trump insisted, “I’m winning a War, BY A LOT, things are going very well,” claiming the U.S. blockade, “which we will not take off until there is a ‘DEAL,’ is absolutely destroying Iran”…
The State Department confirmed that the U.S. will host the second round of ambassador-level talks between Israel and Lebanon on Thursday, as the 10-day ceasefire between the two countries that began last Thursday, after the first round of talks, continues to hold…
Republican operatives and strategists are growing increasingly concerned that the GOP may lose the Senate in the midterm elections, several told Politico, as rising gas prices and unease around the war with Iran create a poor national environment for Trump’s party.
The New York Times’ Nate Cohn argues that Democrats have a “realistic chance” to flip the four seats they need to win back the chamber because “they’ve recruited unusually strong candidates in three states that supported Mr. Trump three times: North Carolina, Ohio and Alaska.”
“In all three states, the Democrats’ likely nominees are popular recent statewide office holders. They either won their last campaign or were highly competitive in losing re-election under less favorable political conditions. So far, the polls show those Democrats running well ahead of what one might otherwise expect,” Cohn writes…
Kennedy scion Jack Schlossberg’s shifting views on Israel policy and decision to skip two upcoming Jewish community candidate forums are raising eyebrows in New York’s heavily Jewish 12th Congressional District, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
During a candidate forum at 92NY last week, for example, Schlossberg rejected continued U.S. funding for offensive weapons to Israel amid the war in Iran — even as he emphasized support for boosting the Iron Dome missile-defense system, which he described as a “critical” technology…
Minnesota’s Democratic Party is poised to endorse progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan for U.S. Senate at its convention next month, Flanagan’s campaign said, after the lieutenant governor secured support from over 90% of Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party local conventions held statewide. The party endorsement, however, will not determine the nominee, as Democratic voters are set to choose their candidate in the Aug. 11 primary election.
The campaign of Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN), Flanagan’s primary opponent and the favorite of pro-Israel activists, called on the DFL last week to launch a formal investigation into a series of alleged instances of antisemitic activity among its delegates. One instance at a local convention last month reportedly saw an unnamed delegate argue that “we should nuke” Israel…
The Wall Street Journal reports on the growing feud between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, which “spilled out into public view on Thursday, when Driscoll described to lawmakers his fondness for the Army’s former top general, Randy George, whom Hegseth fired as the service’s chief of staff on April 2 while Driscoll was on vacation”…
A Washington Post investigation found that, since January 2025, neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes has made nearly $900,000 through paid messages on his livestreams from roughly 11,000 fans. His top 500 donors are responsible for almost half of that amount…
The UAE has asked the U.S. to consider offering it financial assistance amid the war with Iran, as the Gulf country has borne the brunt of Iran’s drone and missile strikes, taking a heavy toll on its oil, economic and tourism industries. Emirati officials raised the idea of a currency-swap line, which would allow Abu Dhabi inexpensive access to U.S. dollars…
European officials hosted two meetings on Gaza reconstruction today — one gathering, led by EU representative Kaja Kallas and Norway, centered on coordinating aid with the U.S.-led Board of Peace, where White House advisor Josh Gruenbaum requested international assistance in rebuilding the enclave. The other forum, led by Kallas and Belgium, focused on a two-state solution and was attended by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa…
In response to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s condemnation of an IDF soldier found to have desecrated a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon, Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister, accused the IDF of committing war crimes.
“Lessons should also be drawn regarding the way they are being trained,” Sikorski wrote on X. “IDF soldiers themselves admit to war crimes. They killed not only civilian Palestinians but even their own hostages”…
Incoming Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar affirmed that his country is bound by rules of the International Criminal Court to arrest those sought under its warrants, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Magyar said he intends to prevent Hungary from leaving the ICC, a move his predecessor, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, had initiated.
Responding to questions about Netanyahu’s claim that Magyar had invited him to the country for a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising, Magyar responded, “Every leader is welcome to attend this important commemoration,” but “we have a legal obligation to enforce the court’s rulings, and I’m sure [Netanyahu] knows this”…
Apple CEO Tim Cook announced this afternoon that he will step down from the helm of the tech giant and become its executive chairman in September. Succeeding Cook is John Ternus, head of the company’s hardware engineering…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for an interview with Rachel Goldberg-Polin on the release of her book, When We See You Again, which debuts tomorrow.
The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will hold a nomination hearing for Kevin Warsh, son-in-law of Jewish philanthropist Ronald Lauder, to be chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Democrats intend to press Warsh on his personal fortune, which he has only partially disclosed thus far.
The House Ethics Committee will hold a public hearing to determine whether to apply sanctions to Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), after finding last month that she had committed serious ethics violations and campaign finance misconduct.
The U.S. Helsinki Commission will hold a hearing on Iran’s support for Russia amid its war with Ukraine.
The Senate Foreign Relation Committee’s subcommittee on Africa will hold a hearing on U.S. approaches to counterterrorism on the continent.
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LATIN LINKS
An Israeli diplomatic source told JI that Ecuador and Paraguay are expected to join the Isaac Accords
MICHIGAN MOMENT
Platner, in Reddit post on Hamas terrorist attack: ‘From a strictly professional standpoint, this was a damn fine looking and successful raid against a superior opponent’
The president also denied reports that the U.S. is willing to exchange funds for Iran’s enriched uranium
SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine speaks as a map of the Strait of Hormuz is displayed during a press briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on April 16, 2026.
As the first day of the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire held strong, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declared the Strait of Hormuz “completely open” for the duration of the 10-day pause in hostilities.
President Donald Trump affirmed the strait is “ready for business and full passage” in a Truth Social post, but said the U.S.’ naval blockade “will remain in full force and effect as it pertains to Iran, only, until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100% complete.”
“This process should go very quickly in that most of the points are already negotiated,” he added, as Trump has indicated U.S. and Iranian negotiators may meet again in Islamabad, Pakistan, over the weekend.
“Iran, with the help of the U.S.A., has removed, or is removing, all sea mines” from the strait, Trump said in another post. “Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again. It will no longer be used as a weapon against the World!” he added later.
Trump seemingly denied an Axios report that the U.S. is prepared to offer Iran the release of $20 billion in frozen funds in exchange for Iran relinquishing its highly enriched uranium, which Trump often refers to as “nuclear dust.”
“The U.S.A. will get all Nuclear ‘Dust,’ created by our great B2 Bombers,” he wrote, but “no money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form.”
“This deal is in no way subject to Lebanon, either,” he added. “The USA will, separately, work with Lebanon, and deal with the Hezboolah [sic] situation in an appropriate manner. Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!!” Trump said.
The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, which began at 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, has held as of Friday morning. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement that, at Trump’s request, Israel will “provide an opportunity to advance an integrated diplomatic and military solution with the Lebanese government.”
Israel has destroyed 90% of Hezbollah’s missile and rocket stockpiles, Netanyahu said in the statement — which was made prior to Trump declaring that Israel is “prohibited” from striking Lebanon — “but I say honestly, we have not finished the job. There are things we plan to do regarding the remaining rocket threat and the drone threat, which I will not detail here.”
And, Netanyahu added, “we have an additional goal, and that is the dismantling of Hezbollah. Therefore, I tell you again in all honesty: This will not be achieved tomorrow. It requires sustained effort, patience and endurance, and it requires wise navigation of the diplomatic field.”
“For the first time in 43 years, representatives of the State of Israel are speaking directly with representatives of Lebanon. The road to peace is still long, but we have begun it. One of our hands holds a weapon; our other hand is extended in peace,” the prime minister said.
Plus, Vance courts pro-Israel donors ahead of 2028
Adri Salido/Getty Images
The Lebanese capital is seen from a viewpoint after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon that would commence at midnight local time on April 16, 2026 in Beirut, Lebanon.
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📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
President Donald Trump announced the start of a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon to begin at 5 p.m. ET today, after he held phone calls with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the day.
Trump added that he will be inviting Aoun and Netanyahu to the White House for “meaningful talks,” later telling reporters such a meeting could happen in the “next week or two.”
The text of the agreement released by the State Department indicates the ceasefire is a “gesture of goodwill” on Israel’s part “intended to enable good-faith negotiations” toward a permanent agreement. The temporary pause in hostilities could be extended if Lebanon “effectively demonstrates its ability to assert its sovereignty” and prevent Hezbollah from carrying out attacks against Israel…
Trump again indicated further talks with Iran could take place this weekend and said the two sides are “very close to making a deal,” telling reporters this afternoon that Iran has already agreed to “give us back the nuclear dust,” referring to its highly enriched uranium.
Hours earlier, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned at a press briefing that U.S. forces are “maximally postured” to return to military operations against Iran if negotiations are unsuccessful, and will look to attack “infrastructure, power and energy”…
The House narrowly voted to block a Democratic resolution to force an end to the war in Iran by a vote of 214-213-1, with all but one of the four Democrats who opposed a similar effort in March changing their votes to support today’s measure, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Reps. Greg Landsman (D-OH), Juan Vargas (D-CA) and Henry Cuellar (D-TX), who voted last month against a similar resolution, flipped their votes to support the war powers effort. But Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), who is retiring at the end of his term, voted no again. On the Republican side, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), who voted for the war powers resolution last time, switched his vote to “present.” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was the only Republican who voted for the resolution…
Vice President JD Vance, the first vice president to serve simultaneously as finance chair of his party, is building donor relationships that may prove useful should he choose to run for president in 2028, The New York Times reports, including attempting to woo some pro-Israel donors who have otherwise been wary of his ties to far-right commentator Tucker Carlson.
Among others, Vance has developed relationships with Jewish philanthropists Miriam Adelson, whom he spent New Years Eve with at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and Paul Singer; has appeared as the guest of honor at a dinner hosted by Palantir and 8VC co-founder Joe Lonsdale; and has been featured at a Republican National Committee event hosted by tech executive Keith Rabois, who is married to Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg…
With less than six weeks to go until the Texas primary runoff election, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is defending his seat against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton with a significantly larger war chest: As the first quarter of 2026 closed, Cornyn had more than $8 million in cash on hand (including a small donation from former President George W. Bush), while Paxton had $2.6 million in the bank. Whoever clinches the GOP nomination will face state Sen. James Talarico, who has nearly $10 million on hand…
Josef Palermo, who was the first curator of visual arts and special programming at the Kennedy Center until his dismissal last month, recounts his experience as Trump and the center’s then-President Richard Grenell initiated an overhaul of the building, a process Palermo describes as “cronyism, incompetence, and a series of bizarre moves.”
Palermo recounts an exhibition he organized commemorating the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in the building’s Israeli Lounge: “Speaking at the opening reception, Grenell warned the mostly Jewish audience that unless donors came forward to sponsor the space and pay for renovation costs, the lounge would be given away to a new donor. … Such a strong-armed fundraising pitch, at an event commemorating a pogrom, struck many of us in the room as inappropriate. I was mortified”…
Asked for his perspective on antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker’s reach on his platform, Twitch CEO Daniel Clancy said at the Semafor World Economy summit in Washington today that “one of the challenges is when you’re livestreaming you say a lot … you might say a lot of things that are over the top. … If you violate [community guidelines] then we take enforcement actions and we suspend you — it’s designed not to kick you off forever.”
“Whenever Hasan has stepped over the line, we’ve taken action … Folks will get worked up from both the right and the left on this because we have also conservative people that are saying certain things that some people don’t like. … In general, we think it is important for us to allow people to express themselves,” Clancy said…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a temperature check on support for Israel within the Democratic Party, in light of 85% of Democratic senators voting in favor of a Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)-led measure to block military sales to the Jewish state.
France and the U.K. will co-host a conference tomorrow focused on restoring freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, with leaders from several European, Asian and Gulf countries participating via video.
Michigan’s Democratic Party will hold its endorsement convention on Sunday, where party activists will nominate their two preferred candidates for the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents. The election has reignited the campus’ debate over Israel, as candidate and anti-Israel activist Amir Makled seeks to unseat Jewish regent Jordan Acker, who became the target of antisemitic vandalism and harassment in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. (The SEIU labor union recently pulled its endorsement of Makled over his past support of Hezbollah.)
National party leaders including former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) will appear at events in Detroit ahead of the convention.
We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!
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Plus, Senate Dems dominate 2026 fundraising
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) speaks at a press conference on committee assignments for the 118th U.S. Congress, at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 25, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
A war powers resolution brought by Senate Democrats to force an end to the war in Iran was blocked by Republicans yet again this afternoon, the fourth failed attempt mounted by Senate Democrats since the war began in late February, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Nevertheless, top Senate Democrats have said they intend to continue forcing such votes weekly (they have nine more resolutions already filed) in the hopes that more Republicans will change their votes as the war drags on…
Texas state Sen. James Talarico announced he raised $27 million in the first quarter of 2026 in his run for U.S. Senate, a massive haul that his campaign claimed is the largest amount ever raised by a Senate candidate in the first quarter of an election year. Democrats hope the funds will put Texas in play as Talarico seeks to challenge either Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) or Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who are still locked in their own hotly contested primary.
The top Senate fundraisers behind Talarico this quarter were also Democrats: Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) brought in $14 million — breaking the record for first-quarter fundraising in Georgia — former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper raised $13.8 million and former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) raised $12.5 million…
Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) said he raised $1.1 million in this year’s first quarter, bringing his total to $4.4 million raised — more than any other House incumbent or candidate in New Jersey this cycle, according to the New Jersey Globe — as he defends his swing seat from several well-funded Democratic challengers.
But even as he’s pulled in plenty of support, Kean has missed a month’s worth of votes on Capitol Hill due to an unspecified medical issue, with his staff declining to say when he will return…
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in an interview on the “Pod Save America” podcast praised former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — once a vocal Omar foe who called for the congresswoman’s deportation while they were both in the House — and far-right influencer Candace Owens over the pair’s break with President Donald Trump, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
“I believe the thing that has been very fascinating, especially about Marjorie and Candace, is that … they’re saying, ‘This action is wrong,’ right? They’re saying, ‘I am done with you.’ We should give them credit for that, the fact that they’ve had this wake-up call to finally seeing this con man, this corrupt, chaotic man for what he is,” Omar said…
Sebastian Gorka, the White House senior director for counterterrorism and a deputy assistant to the president, is reportedly angling for the position of director of the National Counterterrorism Center, which was recently vacated by Joe Kent amid Kent’s opposition to the Iran war. Gorka has been a staunch defender of Trump and backed his war with Iran, as well as repeatedly praised Israel amid its war in Gaza…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Péter Magyar, the presumptive next prime minister of Hungary, for the first time today, calling the conversation “warm” and saying that Magyar indicated he will continue the close relationship the countries enjoyed under his predecessor, outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán…
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul defended her proposal to bar demonstrations of more than two people from occurring within 25 feet of a house of worship today, JI’s Will Bredderman reports, legislation that has drawn legal scrutiny over its creation of a new felony offense for violators.
“I believe I have the right to protect people’s constitutional right to free exercise of religion,” Hochul told reporters when asked if she had concerns that the legislation might provoke challenges on First Amendment grounds. “So if that means we test it in court, bring it on”…
After holding its final public hearing earlier this week, the White House Religious Liberty Commission is now preparing a set of recommendations to be presented to the president next month. Ambiguity and confusion about the commission’s mandate has left commissioners unsure if they’ll continue to meet — their first year on the panel was marred by the firing of one commissioner over her disruption of a hearing on antisemitism…
Progressive media organization More Perfect Union is launching More Perfect University, an effort aimed at college students to act as an alternative to the conservative Turning Point USA, with a focus on urging young people to share left-wing political and economic messaging through social media. Faiz Shakir, the head of More Perfect Union who is also chief political advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign, said he hopes to jump-start “an economic populist movement for the next generation”…
Duke University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter has been suspended as a student group and had its funding frozen after it posted virulently antisemitic imagery depicting Israel and the U.S. as pigs frothing at the mouth on its Instagram page, prompting student complaints to campus administration…
University of Michigan President-elect Kent Syverud announced today he has been diagnosed with brain cancer and will no longer assume the presidency, leaving the future of the school’s leadership in question. Jewish leaders had praised Syverud’s appointment as a positive development for UM, which had seen rampant anti-Israel activity in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a preview of a first-of-its-kind antisemitism conference taking place tomorrow at Harvard, created as an outcome of last year’s settlement of a Title VI lawsuit against the school.
New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District will hold its special election for the remainder of Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s congressional term, where progressive Analilia Mejia is expected to prevail against Republican Joe Hathaway.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold nomination hearings for John Breslow to be U.S. ambassador to Cyprus, Todd Steggerda to be U.S. representative to the U.N. in Geneva and Preston Wells to be U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, among others.
The Shalom Hartman Institute will host a discussion at the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington with Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, on American Jewry ahead of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
The House Appropriations Committee will hold a budget hearing on the Department of Homeland Security, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.
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Plus, positive readouts from Israel-Lebanon talks in D.C.
Stefano Costantino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni addresses the Italian Chamber of Deputies in Rome.
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
U.S.-Iran talks could restart in the next two days, President Donald Trump told the New York Post. “[S]omething could be happening over the next two days, and we’re more inclined to go [back to Islamabad, Pakistan]” rather than a different mediating country, he said in an interview today.
Trump also indicated he wasn’t happy with reports that his own negotiating team had offered Iran a 20-year pause on its ability to enrich uranium. “I’ve been saying they can’t have nuclear weapons, so I don’t like the 20 years,” he said…
CENTCOM announced that no ships made it past the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in its first 24 hours, and six merchant ships “complied with direction from U.S. forces to turn around”…
Saudi Arabia is reportedly pressuring the U.S. to end the blockade, fearing retaliation and disruption to other trade routes. Iran has threatened to mobilize the Houthis in Yemen to close off the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which Riyadh utilizes to move its oil exports out of the Red Sea…
European countries are drafting a plan to restore freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz after the war ends, possibly without the participation of the U.S. As part of this effort, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France and the U.K. will co-host a conference on Friday of “non-belligerent countries ready to contribute” to the “multilateral and purely defensive mission”…
The Treasury Department said it will not renew a waiver set to expire later this week that temporarily lifted sanctions on Iranian oil — the waiver had drawn condemnation from some lawmakers who had worked to institute those sanctions…
Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized at the outset of negotiations between Israel and Lebanon in Washington this morning that the talks are a “process” that will “take time,” and that the objective of today’s meeting was to “outline a framework upon which a permanent and lasting peace can be developed” and bring a “permanent end to Hezbollah’s influence” in the region.
The State Department said after the meeting, the highest-level talks between Jerusalem and Beirut in over 30 years, that the sides “agreed to launch direct negotiations at a mutually agreed time and venue,” though it did not indicate when or where further talks may take place. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter told reporters that the parties “discovered today that we’re on the same side of the equation. That’s the most positive thing we could have come away with”…
Italy is suspending its defense agreement with Israel, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said today, declining to renew the agreement “in consideration of the current situation.” Italy had grown critical of Israel’s war in Gaza and has been noncooperative in the war with Iran, reportedly not allowing U.S. aircraft to land at its bases.
Trump railed against Meloni, who has thus far been an ally of his, in an interview with an Italian outlet today, saying he’s “shocked by her. I thought she was brave, but I was wrong,” and claiming she’s “no longer the same person” after she called the president’s attack on Pope Leo XIV yesterday “unacceptable.” “It’s her who’s unacceptable, because she doesn’t care if Iran has a nuclear weapon and would blow up Italy in two minutes if it had the chance,” Trump said…
Hamas has rejected the U.S.-led Board of Peace’s disarmament proposal, according to the BBC. The parties seem to once again be at an impasse, as Hamas tells mediators it will not continue onto the second phase of the ceasefire until it feels Israel has complied completely with the first phase, while Israel says it will not move forward until there is progress on disarming Hamas…
The New York Times details a tense event held by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in his Hudson Valley-based swing district where the lawmaker was pressed by constituents demanding answers and accountability on the Iran war; it’s seen as a harbinger of the growing discontent some Republicans will have to contend with around the largely unpopular war in the lead-up to the midterms…
The Union for Reform Judaism released a statement yesterday voicing concern about “efforts to single out AIPAC as a particularly malign influence in campaign finance. … [T]he harsh language being used by some to denigrate and vilify AIPAC borders on — and in some cases crosses over into — antisemitism.”
“Until such time as [C]ongress reforms the nation’s broken campaign finance system overall — an effort we would enthusiastically welcome — to single out AIPAC’s activity will continue to raise questions of antisemitic motivation,” the organization wrote, in a sign of how the demonization of pro-Israel donors and groups is raising alarms across the Jewish political and religious spectrum…
California state Sen. Scott Wiener, a progressive Jewish legislator running to fill Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) seat, was accused at a campaign event earlier this week of taking $50,000 from AIPAC by a constituent citing the far-left group TrackAIPAC. “I just want to be clear, I’m not accepting any support from AIPAC,” Wiener responded. “There are people who are gonna list out all my Jewish donors and say that. I’m not taking any support from AIPAC and I support the Block the Bombs Act”…
The Michigan arm of the powerful SEIU labor union announced today that it had rescinded its endorsement of Amir Makled, a candidate for the University of Michigan board of regents, in light of Makled’s deleted social media posts praising the terrorist group Hezbollah, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Makled is a Dearborn attorney who represented an anti-Israel protester who was arrested during the 2024 anti-Israel encampments at UM’s flagship Ann Arbor campus. A Detroit News report found that Makled had deleted posts praising Hezbollah’s leaders and retweets of antisemitic messages from the far-right influencer Candace Owens, as he now seeks to unseat Jewish regent Jordan Acker…
The relationship between New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin appears to be growing increasingly acrimonious as Menin publicly distances herself from some of the mayor’s policies, Politico reports, including apparently helping to plan a protest outside Mamdani’s speech marking his first 100 days in office…
France is exploring legal options to bar rapper Kanye West from entering the country to perform at a concert in Marseille in June, after he was similarly banned and prevented from performing in the U.K. earlier this month. “I refuse to let Marseille be a showcase for those who promote hatred and unapologetic Nazism,” the city’s mayor, Benoit Payan, wrote on social media…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look into the work of the Democratic National Committee’s Middle East working group, established last summer, including how it’s approaching intraparty divides over Israel policy.
Two of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) three joint resolutions of disapproval seeking to halt $658.8 million in sales of munitions to Israel are expected to receive a vote in the Senate tomorrow. Sanders and other progressive Democrats have forced votes on similar efforts to block arms sales to Israel on three previous occasions since the war in Gaza began, with a majority of the Democratic caucus — 27 lawmakers — voting to block at least one arms sale in July of last year, a significant jump in support from similar efforts in November 2024 and April 2025.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told reporters Democrats will likely force a vote tomorrow on another Iran war powers resolution, the third such vote after the previous two failed largely along party lines.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing on reforming the U.N. with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz and U.S. Representative for U.N. Management and Reform Jeff Bartos.
The Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan will host an antisemitism town hall with Senior Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch and Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.
Israel’s Sheba Medical Center will unveil ARC Landing Boston, its first health care accelerator based in the U.S., at an event featuring Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey.
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Trump said the sticking point in talks that ended early Sunday morning was Iran’s refusal to give up its nuclear program
Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Donald Trump walks toward reporters before answering questions prior to boarding Air Force One on April 10, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.
The U.S. will begin blockading the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump announced on Sunday, hours after negotiations in Islamabad, Pakistan, ended without reaching an agreement.
“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that “other countries will be involved with this blockade.”
Trump called Iran’s claim that it had lost track of the mines it dropped in the strait “world extortion.”
In addition, the president said that any vessel that pays Iran a toll to enter the strait will be interdicted and that “Iran will not be allowed to profit off this Illegal Act of EXTORTION.”
As to the negotiations, Trump wrote, “There is only one thing that matters, IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS! … They were very unyielding as to the single most important issue.”
Nuclear power cannot “be in the hands of such volatile, difficult, unpredictable people… IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” Trump added.
He also indicated military action will resume: “At an appropriate moment, we are fully ‘LOCKED AND LOADED,’ and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran,” he wrote.
Soon after, Trump told Fox News that the Iranians “haven’t left the bargaining table. I predict they come back and give us everything we want, and I told my people, ‘I want everything. I don’t want 90%, I don’t 95%.’ I told them, ‘I want everything.’ They have no cards. Their navy is gone, their air force is gone, totally gone.”
Earlier Sunday, Vice President JD Vance departed Islamabad after 20 hours of talks with Iranian negotiators.
“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vance said at a press conference shortly before his departure. “So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We’ve made very clear what our red lines are.”
Vance said he made “a very simple proposal” that was “our final and best offer.” Under the terms of Vance’s proposal, Iran would have been required to make an “affirmative commitment” not to seek a nuclear weapon or the tools to do so. The vice president said the U.S. was leaving its last proposal on the table as he left for Washington: “We’ll see if the Iranians accept it.”
At the same time, he said the U.S. had been flexible and negotiated in good faith.
The vice president did not mention in his press conference Iran’s promise to reopen the Strait of Hormuz during the ceasefire, nor any demands relating to Iran’s ballistic missiles or funding of proxies, and declined to respond to a question as to the status of the ceasefire.
Mohammad Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and negotiator with the U.S., wrote on X that his team had “no trust in the opposing side. My colleagues on the Iranian delegation raised forward-looking initiatives, but the opposing side ultimately failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation.”
Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, whose country hosted the talks, said it was “imperative” to continue the ceasefire despite the failure of the first round of negotiations to reach a resolution.
Ahead of the talks, Iran released its own ceasefire proposal that included continued control over the Strait of Hormuz, a ceasefire that would include Lebanon and the cancellation of primary and secondary sanctions. Iran also demanded their “acceptance of enrichment” of uranium.
Plus, Sine die dayenu
Mike Stewart/AP
Republican Clay Fuller speaks to supporters after learning he would advance to a runoff election during an election night watch party, Tuesday, March 10, 2026, in Rome, Ga.
👋 Good Tuesday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on President Donald Trump’s doubling down on his threat to strike Iranian power plants if Tehran does not reopen of the Strait of Hormuz by tonight’s 8 p.m. deadline, and look at how Iran’s closure of the key waterway is forcing countries to consider alternatives, such as the proposed India-Middle East-Europe Corridor. We preview today’s special election runoff in Georgia to fill the rest of former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s term, and report on plans by Texas Democrats to vote on a series of anti-Israel and anti-AIPAC resolutions at their upcoming party convention. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Esther Panitch, John Kirby and Bill Ackman.
Ed. note: In observance of Passover, the next Daily Kickoff will arrive on Friday, April 10.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- President Donald Trump’s deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz — or face attacks on its power grids and bridges — expires at 8 p.m. ET. Earlier today, the IDF reportedly warned civilians to stay away from trains, an indication that the Islamic Republic’s infrastructure could be targeted. More below.
- Members of the Democratic National Committee are kicking off a five-day meeting today in New Orleans, where the DNC’s resolutions committee is set to consider resolutions condemning AIPAC and Israel. The resolutions were proposed by a Florida delegate who last year attempted to push through a resolution calling for an arms embargo on Israel. Read more here.
- Voters in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District head to the polls today for the special election runoff to choose a successor to fill out the remainder of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) term. District Attorney Clay Fuller, a Republican, is the favorite against Democrat Shawn Harris — but will likely need a decisive win today to stave off potential primary challengers in the GOP primary for the regular election later this spring. More below.
- In Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) will hold rallies on the University of Michigan and Michigan State University campuses with far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who is coming under increasing criticism for his antisemitic and anti-American rhetoric.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR
Today’s special election runoff in Georgia between Republican Clay Fuller and Democrat Shawn Harris to determine the successor to former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) isn’t much in doubt. The northwestern Georgia district that Greene represented backed President Donald Trump by 37 points in 2024, one of the largest GOP margins in the country.
What makes the otherwise sleepy contest significant is the potential for the results to indicate if there are any fissures within the MAGA coalition, ones that may represent Republican discontent with Trump’s hawkish turn amid the Iran war. In this race, the margins will be as notable as the winner.
Greene, since leaving Congress, has emerged a loud Republican voice against the Iran war and against Trump’s strong alliance with Israel. Fuller, a military veteran with a background in counterterrorism operations and district attorney for the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit, has been a stalwart supporter of Trump’s military operations in the Middle East, and Trump has endorsed him in the race.
Harris, the Democrat, holds foreign policy views closer to the isolationist Greene, attacking the pro-Israel advocacy group AIPAC and describing Israel’s war against Hamas as a “genocide” — views which place him on the left flank of the Democratic Party. This despite Harris’ time serving as defense attache in Israel during his years in the National Guard, work history that he has not publicized during the campaign.
It’s worth noting that Greene, since she was first elected to the seat in 2020, has underperformed Trump’s standing in the district, only winning 64% of the vote against Harris in 2024 — four points below Trump’s 68% showing at the top of the ticket. And since breaking with Trump in his second term, her political standing has taken an even bigger hit.
Greene has not endorsed either candidate in the race.
WAY OF WATER
With Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz roiling energy markets, other countries in the region may begin to pursue alternative routes to transport energy and other goods, but they are far from ready to be put into use, experts told Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov this week.
Back in focus: One of the highest-profile routes is the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC), proposed by the Biden administration in September 2023 as a route for trade, energy and more; it would go from India, through Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Israel, then across the Mediterranean to Europe through Greece. Now that the Iranian threat to block the strait has been realized, IMEC and other alternative routes to ship oil and gas from the Gulf are back in focus. Gabriel Mitchell, an expert on energy security and a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund, told JI that “the threat and challenge posed with the Strait of Hormuz has raised questions about East-West shipping, traffic and global energy trade to the maximum.”
TEXAS TURMOIL
Texas Democratic Party activists are set to consider a series of resolutions condemning Israel for alleged genocide and pushing for an arms embargo, as well as criticizing pro-Israel involvement in U.S. politics — characterizing it as foreign influence in American elections — and urging penalties for candidates who accept their support, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What they’re doing: One resolution on AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel would set as party policy that Texas Democrats should reject campaign contributions, endorsements and other support from pro-Israel groups. Several of the resolutions accuse Israel of apartheid and genocide, and urge Democratic lawmakers from the state and nationally to support a halt to not only U.S. financial aid to Israel but also any shipments of weapons purchased from the U.S. and logistical support provided to Israel until international human rights groups declare that Israel is no longer engaged in apartheid or genocide.
TOUGH TALK
President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to escalate the war in Iran on Monday if Iranian leaders do not agree to a broad ceasefire deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz by his Tuesday evening deadline, warning that the U.S. would target every bridge and power plant still standing in the country, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.
What he said: Trump took a hawkish posture while speaking to reporters at the White House alongside senior U.S. defense officials about the ongoing war and diplomatic efforts to bring it to a close, warning that the U.S. has a plan to take out Iran’s entire transportation and energy infrastructure within “four hours” if Iran did not make a deal. “I can tell you they’re negotiating, we think, in good faith. We’re going to find out. … After [8 p.m. ET on Tuesday], they’re going to have no bridges. They’re going to have no power plants. Stone ages,” Trump said, referring to the deadline he set for Iran to agree to his terms, which has now been postponed three times.
FACT CHECK
Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned over his opposition to the Iran war, shared a post on social media spreading false claims from Iranian state-linked media and Drop Site News that the U.S. was attempting to kill the servicemember whose fighter jet was shot down over Iran over the weekend prior to him being rescued, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Propaganda post: The initial statement on Saturday from Drop Site, a far-left news outlet sympathetic to Hamas and totalitarian regimes, cited a report by Tasnim News, which is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, claiming that the U.S. had “lost hope” of recovering an airman whose jet was downed over Iran on Friday and was instead “attempting to kill him.” The post was then amplified by Kent with the message: “Praying for the rescue of our downed pilot & the safe return of our Special Operators going in to get him back. [U.S. Air Force Pararescuemen and Combat Search and Rescue] Air crews are top notch.”
SEDER AT THE STATEHOUS
On Thursday, a group of Jewish Georgia politicos gathered for a first-of-its-kind-event at the Georgia Statehouse: the “Sine Die Seder,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Organized by state Rep. Esther Panitch, a Democrat and the only Jewish member of the Georgia General Assembly, the event brought together around 30 Jewish staffers, journalists, lobbyists, interns, a former attorney general and more to celebrate Passover on the final night of the legislative session, known as sine die.
In the room: Panitch said that she had asked the House majority leader to cancel the House session on Wednesday, the first night of Passover — and he obliged — but the House was still scheduled to be in session for the second night. “And so I said, ‘Well, we’re going to be at the Capitol on the second night. Why don’t we have a Seder for probably the 10 of us in the building that are Jewish,’” Panitch told JI, referring to herself and a handful of interns, staff and reporters, during the hourlong dinner break during the session. Interest in the event ballooned, with the group ultimately growing to around 30.
NOT CONVINCED
From mass baptisms to packed pews, a new Fox Nation documentary chronicles a profound spiritual awakening it suggests is sweeping America. The five-part series, “Revival with Lawrence Jones,” includes a spotlight on the renewed embrace of religious identity among Jews following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Embrace of Jewish life: Episode 3 of the new series, “Jewish Identity,” highlights the record-breaking “Big Shabbat” held in New York City last November. It also features a conversation between “Fox and Friends” co-host Lawrence Jones, the series’ host, and Israeli activist Noa Tishby about her own Jewish identity; and an interview with Rabbi Joshua Davidson, who leads Temple Emanu-El, the oldest Reform congregation in New York City, which organized the “Big Shabbat.” “There’s no question that since Oct. 7 there has been a resurgence of interest in Jewish life and commitment to the organized Jewish community,” said Davidson.
Worthy Reads
Groypers Gripes: The New Yorker’s Antonia Hitchens examines the degree to which the far-right fringe is entrenching itself in Republican politics. “I asked a political consultant in Washington to summarize. ‘Groypers are about demographic change,’ the consultant said. ‘It’s a sovereignty issue. It’s literally, like, “Who runs my f***ing country? Why do all these people get access to my birthright — not just before me but that might be denied to me? Do I get a deal better than somebody who runs across a border?”’ [Nick] Fuentes offers a more concise gloss. ‘There are basically two things that are going on,’ he said recently. ‘White genocide and Jewish subversion.’” [NewYorker]
Everyone’s War: In The Wall Street Journal, Walter Russell Mead posits that “every great and near-great power is adjusting its foreign-policy strategies” in response to the Iran war. “The war shows us all that the security of the Gulf matters to everyone. If at the end of the war Iran retains the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, every country on earth will need Tehran’s blessing to access vital fuel and supplies. Whatever one thinks of Mr. Trump and his decision to initiate hostilities, a quick and comprehensive American victory offers the best hope for a peaceful future in the Gulf and beyond.” [WSJ]
Mind the Gap: In his Substack “Between Us,” Nadav Eyal considers the disconnect between Israeli and Diaspora Jewry as the two become increasingly distant even as both face steep challenges. “But diaspora Jews represent the ability to survive and flourish over thousands of years, sometimes in difficult conditions, and above all with a remarkable preservation of their identity. They have successfully created communities with thriving institutions based on self-generated investment. The call to recognize the deep and independent value of Jewish life in the diaspora is not a rejection or dilution of the Jewish right to Eretz Yisrael. It is simply a correction of an error — one that Israelis cannot afford to make.” [BetweenUs]
Word on the Street
The Trump administration’s Board of Peace has given Hamas until the end of the week to accept a disarmament proposal, with Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s director-general, warning on X, “He who will not cross the river will drown in the sea”…
The Wall Street Journal looks at Israeli and U.S. efforts to target Iran’s economy as Washington and Jerusalem appear poised to strike key Iranian infrastructure…
Politico profiles Harmeet Dhillon as the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights is rumored to be under consideration to replace former Attorney General Pam Bondi or to be tapped for another senior Justice Department role…
Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), the first Iranian American Democrat to serve in Congress, announced she was introducing articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the war in Iran, citing his “reckless endangerment of U.S. servicemembers and repeated war crimes”…
An appellate court reinstated a $656 million judgment against the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization following a 2025 Supreme Court ruling allowing American victims of Palestinian terror to sue the groups under the 1992 Anti-Terrorism Act…
The New Yorker does a deep dive into OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s professional trajectory and leadership of the artificial intelligence company…
Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital made a bid for Universal Music Group, valuing the company at $63.5 billion; if successful, the acquisition would merge Universal with Pershing Square Sparc Holdings and move its stock listing to the New York Stock Exchange…
The head of the University of Washington’s Middle East Center was removed from his leadership position shortly after sending an email through the center’s listserv criticizing the war in Iran; Aria Fani will continue to hold his position as an associate professor at the school…
A private Catholic school in Fairfield, Conn., said it had disciplined students who were involved in a series of antisemitic social media posts targeting a rival school’s hockey team…
U.K. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson called on organizers of this summer’s Wireless Festival to drop Kanye West as the concert’s headliner over his past “completely unacceptable and absolutely disgusting” antisemitic comments, as U.K. officials reportedly consider revoking permission for West, who offered to meet with the British Jewish community, to enter the country…
Meanwhile, the festival’s promoter defended West’s “legal right to perform” in the U.K., as Diageo and Anheuser-Busch InBev joined PepsiCo in dropping their sponsorships of the summer concert series…
Ret. Rear Adm. John Kirby, who served as White House national security communications advisor in the Biden administration, is joining MS NOW as a national security analyst…
Pic of the Day
Prominent Jewish figures and senior Trump administration officials gathered at the White House on Monday afternoon for an event hosted by President Donald Trump commemorating the Passover holiday, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.
Administration officials in attendance at the event, which was closed to the press and took place in the Indian Treaty Room, included Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick; White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf; James Blair, the White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs; Jacob Reses, chief of staff to Vice President JD Vance; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin; Martin Marks, the White House Jewish liaison; and Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the Trump administration’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism.
Others spotted at the event were Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, president of the Tzedek Association; Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition; William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Jeff Miller, chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council; Jonathan Burkan, United States Holocaust Memorial Council member; Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad); Paul Packer, the former chairman of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad; Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, member of the Religious Liberty Commission and vice chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Read more here.
Birthdays
Professional golfer who joined the PGA Tour in 2015 when he won Rookie of the Year, he has since won four tournaments, Daniel Berger turns 33…
Professor emerita of philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Marilyn Ann Friedman turns 81… President of Yale University for 20 years, then CEO of Coursera, an education-focused technology company, Richard Charles “Rick” Levin turns 79… Consultant on aging, longevity, law and policy, Naomi Karp turns 76… Software engineer at FlightView, Jonathan Ruby… Professor at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, he was born in Haifa, Israel, Simon J. Bronner turns 72… Los Angeles-based casting director, Jane Sobo… Former director of project staffing at Tower Legal Solutions in Addison, Texas, Ilene Robin Breitbarth… Former member of the House of Commons of Canada from the Winnipeg area, Martin B. Morantz turns 64… Screenwriter, actress and director, Andrea Berloff turns 52… White House and Congress editor for USA Today, Darren Samuelsohn… Chicago-based progressive activist, he is a co-founder of Project Shema, Oren Jacobson… Principal owner of JRL Strategy, helping expats relocate overseas, Justin Ross Lee… Senior director of communications at Leidos, Gregory Hellman… Reporter covering the White House and Washington for Politico, Daniel Lippman… Executive director of Camp Seneca Lake for the JCC of Greater Rochester (N.Y.), she was previously an associate director of communications at AIPAC, Marissa Wizig Klegman… Managing partner of Reno-based Mazal Capital, David Farahi… Pitcher and first baseman for Team Israel at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Ben Wanger turns 29…
The president said at a lengthy press conference: ‘I can tell you they're negotiating, we think, in good faith. We're going to find out’
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
President Donald Trump conducts a news conference in the White House briefing room about the war in Iran on Monday, April 6, 2026.
President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to escalate the war in Iran on Monday if Iranian leaders do not agree to a broad ceasefire deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz by his Tuesday evening deadline, threatening that the U.S. would target every bridge and power plant still standing in the country.
Trump took a hawkish posture while speaking to reporters at the White House alongside senior U.S. defense officials about the ongoing war and diplomatic efforts to bring it to a close, warning that the U.S. has a plan to take out Iran’s entire transportation and energy infrastructure within “four hours” if Iran did not make a deal.
“I can tell you they’re negotiating, we think, in good faith. We’re going to find out. … After [8 p.m. ET on Tuesday], they’re going to have no bridges. They’re going to have no power plants. Stone ages,” Trump said, referring to the deadline he set for Iran to agree to his terms, which has now been postponed three times.
The president said he extended the deadline from Monday to Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET because he “thought it was inappropriate” to demand a response “the day after Easter.” The comment came hours after telling reporters at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll that the Tuesday deadline was final and unlikely to have any additional extensions.
“The entire country can be taken out in one night and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump said from the briefing room. “We have a plan, because of the power of our military, [where] every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock, and it’ll happen over a period of four hours if we want it to.”
“We don’t want that to happen. We may even get involved with helping them rebuild their nation. If that’s the case, the last thing we want to do is start with power plants, which are among the most expensive things, and bridges,” he continued. “So do I want to do that? No. Do I want to destroy their infrastructure? No. It will take them 100 years to rebuild. Right now, if we left today, it would take them 20 years to rebuild their country and it would never be as good as it was. The only way they’re going to be able to rebuild their country is to utilize the genius of the United States of America.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who took part in the press conference alongside Trump, told reporters on Monday that, “per the president’s direction, today will be the largest volume which strikes since day one of this operation. Tomorrow, even more than today, and then Iran has a choice. Choose wisely, because this president does not play around.”
Trump repeatedly reiterated his commitment to ensuring that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon — after saying the country’s nuclear program was “obliterated” last June — and said that any agreement between Iran and the U.S. would need to adhere to his terms, including the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. “We have to have a deal that’s acceptable to me, and part of that deal is going to be [that] we want free traffic of oil and everything,” the president said.
“They’re not going to have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said of Iran, arguing that his actions were an insurance policy for the U.S. “if somebody that takes my place someday is weak and ineffective, which possibly that will happen, because we had numerous presidents that were weak, ineffective and afraid of Iran.”
The president described the Iranians as “very good bulls*** artists, that’s why for 47 years they’ve been bulls***ing other presidents,” while defending his decision to take military action against the regime.
“I think that 47 years of this stuff is long enough. They’re at the weakest point they’ve ever been,” Trump said, despite Iran’s continued missile strikes across the Gulf and in Israel. “In fact, the biggest problem we have in our negotiations is that they can’t communicate. … They have no method of communication. So we’re communicating like they used to communicate 2,000 years ago with children bringing a note back and forth.”
The India-Middle East-Europe Corridor, originally viewed as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, is being considered as another passage for trade
JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP via Getty Images
A person points at a page on the Marinetraffic website that shows commercial boats traffic on the edge of the Strait of Hormuz near the Iranian coast, in Paris on March 4, 2026.
With Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz roiling energy markets, other countries in the region may begin to pursue alternative routes to transport energy and other goods, but they are far from ready to be put into use, experts told Jewish Insider this week.
One of the highest-profile routes is the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC), proposed by the Biden administration in September 2023 as a route for trade, energy and more; it would go from India, through Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Israel, then across the Mediterranean to Europe through Greece.
While Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz and obstruct oil shipping for decades, the Islamic Republic was not the main reason for considering another route of transportation — it was initially conceived as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
But now that the Iranian threat has been realized, IMEC and other alternative routes to ship oil and gas from the Gulf are back in focus.
Gabriel Mitchell, an expert on energy security and a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund, told JI that “the threat and challenge posed with the Strait of Hormuz has raised questions about East-West shipping, traffic and global energy trade to the maximum.”
”If you look at it from the perspective of India on one end, Europe on the other and anywhere in between, they are thinking they need to create as much redundancy as possible for commercial shipping for their own economic security,” Mitchell said. “It doesn’t make a difference whether you’re Emirati or Qatari or just an international shipping company with a base of operations in [the UAE’s Port of] Fuajirah, you’re asking the same questions.”
Mitchell said the idea of redundant shipping routes initially came from a desire to lower costs and increase speed of delivery, and grew more popular due to challenges with the Suez Canal during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, in light of Iran’s obstruction of the Strait of Hormuz, “the argument in favor of IMEC [and] creation of redundancy has increased significantly.”
Increased regional connectivity can “take away Iran’s lever of closing the Strait of Hormuz,” Joseph Rozen, a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security and the former director for Asia-Pacific in Israel’s National Security Council, told JI. (The writer is a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute.)
Rozen said that “IMEC is a buzzword; the focus needs to be on inter-regional connectivity,” and noted that the Trump administration may be hesitant to adopt a Biden-era initiative, though it seemingly supports increasing connectivity more broadly through the Board of Peace.
Regional connectivity can increase stability and growth, Rozen said, and more countries can be brought in than those initially on board, such as Oman, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and even Gaza.
“The Iran war increased American involvement and its push for connectivity initiatives,” Rozen said. “Before the war [President Donald] Trump expressed interest, but now, the U.S. is more invested, and that encourages countries in the region to invest in regional connectivity if they know there’s an American security umbrella … over their investments and development.”
Rozen argued that existing infrastructure should be improved in the short term. The Saudi and Emirati pipelines combined can only transfer about 8.5 million barrels’ worth of oil per day, 42% of what passed through the Strait of Hormuz each day before the current war with Iran, he said. Another short-term move Rozen proposed is to continue to grant countries waivers to buy Russian gas, though this effort has seen resistance from members of Congress.
Mitchell said that IMEC faced a lot of skepticism when it was proposed, and none of its challenges have been resolved.
The commercial viability of alternative pipelines and routes is in question, Mitchell said: “Who is going to pay? Who is going to secure it? Which available ports will be able to manage that intake?”
Companies may prefer to try to find quick fixes rather than make multibillion-dollar investments that take a decade or more to bring returns, Mitchell argued, and the private sector and states will have to work together to make them viable. “I believe that will tip the scales in favor of these kinds of projects, but which end up getting green lit is yet to be determined.”
Some of the geopolitical challenges have grown more difficult since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, weeks after IMEC was announced. In addition, Mitchell pointed out that Turkey has obstructed joint energy projects between Israel, Greece and Cyprus in the past decade, demanding to be involved, and would likely do the same with IMEC.
”It’s hard to get everyone involved in one project … It’s hard to say how we are going to set aside our differences for these sets of initiatives … [and] what combination of carrots and sticks will convince people to pursue diversification. … I think in the end the answer will be yes, but it will take time to get there,” Mitchell said.
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel earlier this year, IMEC was part of the public conversation, but diplomats from both countries told JI on condition of anonymity that Saudi Arabia was hesitant to proceed because of Israel’s involvement — even though both countries were part of the plan from its inception.
Rozen said that Riyadh and Jerusalem can be part of the same project as long as the focus is on practical steps that serve the Saudis’ interests and not summits and bombastic statements that would “do more harm than good.”
”I understand their interest to maintain a certain kind of rhetoric, but there are other interests,” he said. “The more we advance through channels that are not political and are lower profile … I think the Saudis would be willing to do it. It can happen at any level of IMEC or other connectivity plans, in energy, trade and digital services. Cooperation led by the business sector would not carry the same political baggage … and under the current political circumstances it may be better for it not to be government-led.”
Mitchell also said that disputes between Saudi Arabia and the UAE that surfaced late last year could get in the way of developing IMEC, though in “a situation like now, when everyone is economically bleeding, there should be room for creative solutions.”
Israeli officials have made many positive statements about IMEC and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar took part in a summit last year with his counterparts from involved countries, but no progress has been made on the ground.
Rozen said that Israel will likely wait to develop the necessary infrastructure “as long as there is no commitment from Arab States, such as Jordan, to invest on their side.” However, he added that, in the interim, Israel can “focus on the technological aspects” of regional connectivity at a lower cost.
Mitchell said the big challenge for Israel is that other countries will be competing to be involved in connectivity projects. Egypt, he said, has been pushing to be the gateway to the Mediterranean, with support from France.
”The argument in Israel’s favor is the security-related coordination [with Arab states] that is happening informally in a lot of ways. We need to concretize that,” he said. “One would assume that Israeli companies would have the opportunity to present their offerings for cybersecurity infrastructure.”
”The real thorn in Israel’s side since Oct. 7 is the diplomatic element. Can Israel manifest any kind of diplomatic initiative or momentum to patch together meaningful cooperation?” Mitchell questioned. “It seems that as of right now, nobody is willing to meet in the middle, which is challenging if you’re Israel, but it’s also challenging for the U.S., which is trying to work with everybody in parallel and has struggled to bring them around the table [together].”
Plus, Temple Israel seeks to 'tell its story'
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Tulsi Gabbard is sworn in as Director of National Intelligence in the Oval Office at the White House on February 12, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard distanced herself — to a degree — from two of her isolationist-minded aides, Joe Kent and Dan Caldwell, who have taken a hostile stance to the U.S.’ Middle East policy, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Gabbard affirmed, after being pressed at a House Intelligence Committee hearing today, that the conspiratorial views about Israel espoused by Kent in his resignation letter earlier this week did concern her, and said about Caldwell that he would have no influence over intelligence reports at her agency.
Gabbard, who has previously been a vocal critic of military engagement with Iran, further acknowledged that her current position requires her to “check” her personal views “at the door”…
Reports of a potential $200 billion emergency funding request from the Pentagon for the war in Iran are drawing firm Democratic opposition and hedged responses from Republicans on the Hill: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he’ll “look at” the request “but obviously it’s a dangerous time in the world and we have to adequately fund defense,” while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he’d “hate to be the senator that denied the request if it made sense.” Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) responded with a simple “No,” while Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called it a “nonstarter”…
The Senate is set to hold another round of votes on blocking U.S. arms transfers to Israel, after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) filed three new joint resolutions of disapproval against $658.8 million in sales of over 20,000 bombs to Israel, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
A majority of the Democratic caucus — 27 lawmakers — voted to block at least one arms sale in July of last year, a significant jump in support from previous similar efforts; Israel’s standing in the party has largely declined since then amid Democratic criticism of the war with Iran…
During a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at the White House today, President Donald Trump reiterated that he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iranian oil facilities, after an Israeli strike on the South Pars gas field yesterday: “I told them, don’t do that. We didn’t discuss. … It’s coordinated, but on occasion, he’ll do something.”
Trump also put pressure on Takaichi to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, while European leaders released a joint statement “express[ing] our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait,” after repeatedly declining to get involved. A team of British military planners is now consulting with CENTCOM on options to assist short of military action, The New York Times reports…
Asked if he will deploy more U.S. troops in the region, Trump told reporters he’s “not putting troops anywhere. If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you — but I’m not putting troops”…
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth compared Iran to Hamas in a briefing today, saying that, “just like Hamas and their tunnels,” Iran has “poured any aid, any economic development … into tunnels and rockets”…
A group of congressional Democrats is urging the State Department to restart chartered evacuation flights out of Israel and take additional steps to help U.S. citizens who wish to leave the country amid the ongoing war with Iran, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
The lawmakers described the State Department’s current partnership with El Al, which launched on March 13 with a limited number of special evacuation flights for U.S. citizens, as insufficient. The Israeli airline has currently suspended registration for the flights, and government-imposed security restrictions are limiting passenger capacity on each flight and reducing airport operations…
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the U.S. may lift sanctions on Iranian oil already at sea in order to blunt rising gas prices. “In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians to keep the price down for the next 10 or 14 days as we continue this campaign,” he explained on Fox News…
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan warned the kingdom is reaching a breaking point after continued Iranian attacks, saying “what little trust” Riyadh had with Tehran has “completely been shattered.”
On a potential Saudi military response, Prince Faisal said, “Do they have a day, two, a week? I’m not going to telegraph that.” It’s a notable shift for Riyadh, which had been pivoting away from its traditional allies and towards Iran and other Islamist countries prior to the war…
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker condemned AIPAC after a primary cycle in which the pro-Israel group spent millions backing — and opposing — candidates across the state, calling it “an organization that was supporting Donald Trump and people who follow Donald Trump.”
Pritzker, a Jewish Democrat who was once an AIPAC donor himself, said it “really is not an organization that I think today I would want any part of.” He further echoed far-left sentiments that Israel dragged the U.S. into conflict with Iran, claiming Trump “simply follow[ed] Netanyahu into that war”…
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) details his experience with a would-be assailant, a man described by authorities as a “ticking time bomb,” who was arrested near his home last year after police discovered an arsenal of weapons and a handwritten list of targets that included Jewish sites and Moskowitz.
“Besides the police presence outside his house, Moskowitz himself will not appear in parades and says he won’t speak at outdoor staged events. ‘It’s not worth it. I’d rather lose my election,’” the lawmaker told Roll Call…
Temple Israel in suburban Detroit released photos of the devastation to the building caused by an attacker last week, noting that it had “chosen thus far not to make [the photos] public” but are doing so now “to take back control of our narrative” after several were leaked to the media.
“We share these images because our community deserves to see our building through eyes of love, not through the lens of spectacle. This is our sacred space, and we will be the ones to tell its story,” the synagogue wrote…
The University of California, Berkeley reached a settlement in its lawsuit with the federal government, agreeing to pay $1 million and make changes to its discrimination policy following accusations that the university had failed to properly address campus antisemitism.
Among the policy changes, the school will clarify that the word “Zionist” cannot be used as a proxy for Jew or Israeli. The claims in the lawsuit predate the recent campus unrest over Israel’s war in Gaza, stemming from an incident in 2022 when student groups adopted policies saying they would not host Zionist speakers…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look at the struggles facing international broadcasters Voice of America and Radio Free Europe in reaching Iranian citizens during the ongoing war due to budget cuts and roadblocks from the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
The House Appropriations Committee will hold a field hearing at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. in New York City on “accountability and reform” at the U.N.
We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!
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QUARREL ON THE QUAD
Anti-Israel activists are singling out regent Jordan Acker, hoping to unseat him with attorney Amir Makled, who represented a member of the school’s encampment
Plus, JD Vance says he likes Joe Kent
Oliver Contreras/AFP via Getty Images
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin testifies during a Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today that the Iranian regime “appears to be intact but largely degraded,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports, as the U.S. and Israel continue to target Iranian leaders and assets. If it survives the war, she said, the regime would “seek to begin a yearslong effort to rebuild its military, missiles and UAV forces.”
Gabbard, a longtime opponent of war with Iran, repeatedly declined to say whether the intelligence community had assessed Iran to be an imminent threat to the United States, after her former deputy, Joe Kent, alleged in his resignation letter yesterday that no such threat existed. CIA Director John Ratcliffe, however, was clear in his view that “Iran has been a constant threat to the United States for an extended period of time, and posed an immediate threat at this time”…
Regarding Kent’s resignation over his opposition to the war in Iran and claims that Israel coerced the U.S. into the war, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Kent “was not someone who was involved in … the president’s intelligence briefings over the last several months. Have not seen him here at the White House for quite some time.”
She said President Donald Trump finds it “disappointing” that Kent would “resign with a letter filled with falsehoods, accusing the president of the United States [of] being controlled by a foreign country. That’s both insulting and laughable.”
Vice President JD Vance told reporters, “I know Joe Kent a little bit. I like Joe Kent … It’s fine to disagree, but once the president makes a decision, it’s up to everybody who serves in his administration to make it as successful as possible. That’s how I do my job”…
In his nomination hearing to be secretary of homeland security, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said he will aim to “streamline the process” for grants, including the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, JI’s Matthew Shea reports, vowing to work to “cut out the redundancies.”
“The amount of paperwork once you’re approved to get the funding flowing, and then the paperwork that’s followed up on is way too encompassing,” Mullin said. “Taking years to get reimbursed is not acceptable. Taking months to get reimbursed is not acceptable.” His hearing was otherwise colored by personal hostility with Homeland Security Committee Chair Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), which could complicate Mullin’s path to nomination…
The Israeli Air Force reportedly struck the South Pars gas field in Iran, the largest in the world; Qatar, which owns half of the field, called it a “dangerous and irresponsible step.” The U.S. reportedly had knowledge of the operation, despite the Trump administration asking Israel earlier this month not to strike energy facilities…
Trump issued a veiled threat to American allies who have declined to assist in securing the Strait of Hormuz, musing on Truth Social, “I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Strait?’ That would get some of our non-responsive ‘Allies’ in gear, and fast!!!”…
Michael Blake, the Democrat challenging Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) whose campaign has focused extensively on criticism of Israel and AIPAC, expressed strong support for Kent’s resignation letter and his baseless claim of Israel’s role in initiating the war. “An absolutely breathtaking, courageous and bold resignation letter stating that Iran posed NO IMMINENT THREAT to us and Trump made this decision due to the Israeli government and its American Lobby,” Blake wrote on X…
Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner released an ad in response to one from his opponent, Gov. Janet Mills, highlighting social media comments he had made about sexual assault. “If I saw these ads, I’d have questions,” Platner says in the spot. “Maine, I’m asking you not to judge me for the worst thing I said on the internet on my worst day 14 years ago, but who I am today.”
Mills replied with another ad featuring an interview clip of Platner in which he said about his posts, “I made a lot of comments that I’m not, like, ashamed of. It’s not as though I have this ream of comments in which I look back and I’m like, oh my god, I was a terrible person back then”…
During an economic-focused visit to Detroit today, Vance remarked about the recent shooting attack at nearby Temple Israel, “When something happens to any member of our American family, and this particular incident happened to Jewish members of our American family, it is something that all of us have to stand up and say, it’s disgusting, it’s unacceptable”…
Also in response to the Temple Israel attack, Montgomery County, Md., a heavily Jewish suburb of Washington, announced it will provide $500,000 in supplemental funding for its Nonprofit Security Grant Program for current recipients over the next 90 days. It’s one of the few localities that provides its own funding in addition to the federal program…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look at the far-left candidates running against establishment Democrats in Colorado.
The Senate will vote on another war powers resolution this evening aiming to stop the U.S. operation in Iran. The resolution, sponsored by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), is expected to fail largely along party lines, as the previous one did earlier this month.
Administration intelligence officials including DNI Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe will appear before the House Intelligence Committee tomorrow for its rescheduled worldwide threats hearing.
The Senate’s Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee is set to hold a vote on Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s (R-OK) nomination to be secretary of homeland security, though Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) threatened to cancel it over personal animosity and outstanding questions about a 2016 overseas trip that Mullin claims was classified. If a vote is held, Mullin will need the support of at least one Democrat on the committee in order to advance without Paul’s support, which Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has previously pledged to provide.
After his appearance this evening on far-right commentator Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Joe Kent will be interviewed tomorrow by Candace Owens, who similarly deals in antisemitic conspiracy theories, at the Catholic Prayer for America gala in Washington. Also appearing at the gala is Carrie Prejean Boller, the former beauty pageant queen who was removed from the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission after berating Jewish hearing witnesses over antisemitism.
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LONE STAR LIABILITY
Bexar County sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia is facing off against Maureen Galindo, who has made antisemitic conspiracy theories a key feature in her campaign
HORSESHOE POLITICS
Democrats previously slammed Kent as an untrustworthy extremist in opposing his nomination. Now, amid his anti-Israel accusations, some argue he has a point
Plus, airlines push back direct flights to TLV
TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP via Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (2L), New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch (2R) and Cardinal Timothy Dolan (R) participate in annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York on March 17, 2026.
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📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned from his role today over opposition to the war in Iran, baselessly alleging that Israel had coerced the United States into what he characterized as a misguided military conflict, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
In a letter to President Donald Trump, Kent, a former Green Beret who had reported to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, wrote that he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” claiming that the Islamic Republic “posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Kent, a hard-right former congressional candidate with isolationist foreign policy leanings, has previously promoted conspiracy theories, echoed pro-Russia messaging and associated with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, among other controversies. He’s now expected to appear on the podcast of his ally and friend Tucker Carlson…
After being largely rejected by foreign leaders on his repeated calls to assist in the war with Iran, Trump claimed in a post on Truth Social that, “Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer ‘need,’ or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID! … WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”
Asked about the timeline of the war by reporters in the Oval Office this afternoon, Trump said, “We’re not ready to leave yet, but we will be leaving in the … very near future”…
Reports indicate Iran’s security forces, despite being badly battered by the U.S. and Israel, are conducting renewed crackdowns on the Iranian public and potential dissenters. At least 500 people have been arrested since the start of the war, and new security checkpoints are being deployed for regime oversight…
Major U.S. airlines have extended their suspensions of direct flights to Tel Aviv as the war continues, JI’s Haley Cohen reports, with both United and Delta airlines not offering any direct flights until June.
The first direct flight on United Airlines between Newark Liberty International Airport and Ben Gurion Airport is available on June 16, while the first direct New York to Tel Aviv flight on Delta Airlines is available June 1. United’s direct flights from Israel to Chicago O’Hare and Washington Dulles International Airport are also suspended…
U.S. Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack denied reports that the U.S. is encouraging Syria to deploy forces into eastern Lebanon to help disarm Hezbollah, as the IDF begins to carry out ground incursions in the south of the country…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to post “proof of life” videos on social media amid internet conspiracy theories that he has been killed and replaced by a look-alike…
Trump’s decision to withhold his endorsement in the Texas Senate GOP runoff all but guarantees that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will both appear on the May 26 runoff ballot, as neither have dropped out of the race ahead of this evening’s deadline…
Maine Gov. Janet Mills released her first attack ad against her Democratic primary rival in the race for U.S. Senate, oyster farmer Graham Platner, highlighting social media comments he made about sexual assault that have marred his campaign. In the ad, several women read disparaging comments made by Platner on Reddit over a decade ago relating to rape, and a picture of Platner’s Nazi tattoo — which he has since had covered — is displayed under a magnifying glass. “The closer you look, the worse it gets,” the ad’s narrator says…
The Wall Street Journal spotlights the gamble being made by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker as he expends political capital (and actual capital) backing his lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, in the state’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate taking place today. Pritzker’s involvement has drawn the ire of the Congressional Black Caucus, which is backing Rep. Robin Kelly (D-IL), even though both Stratton and Kelly are Black. The race is seen as a test of Pritzker’s political clout in his home state…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani took the occasion of St. Patrick’s Day and the presence of former Irish President Mary Robinson in New York to accuse Israel of committing genocide and to praise Robinson’s controversial tenure as the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, JI’s Will Bredderman reports.
“I think also of how she stood steadfast alongside the people of Palestine,” the mayor said in listing Robinson’s accomplishments. “I say this as over the past few years as we’ve witnessed a genocide unfold before our eyes, there has been deafening silence from so many. For those who have long cared about universal human rights and the extension of them to Palestinians, silence, however, is nothing new. For Palestinians are so often left to weep alone. Yet former President Robinson has never been silent”…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a rundown of the results of Illinois’ Democratic primaries, where polls close at 8 p.m. ET.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is expected to face questions over the departure of her deputy, Joe Kent, at the Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing on worldwide threats, where she will testify alongside other intelligence agency heads. Gabbard said today after Kent’s resignation that, as commander-in-chief, Trump “concluded that … Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion,” but did not say whether she agrees herself in that assessment, something she is likely to be pressed on tomorrow.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will receive a classified briefing on the war in Iran from State Department intelligence officials.
The Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a nomination hearing for Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) to be secretary of homeland security after Trump’s ouster of Secretary Kristi Noem.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom will hold a hearing on rising antisemitism abroad.
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DOMESTIC FRONT
Eighteen-year legal fight over the Iran-tied Alavi Foundation ends with a new group with similar leadership taking over its assets — and NYC skyscraper
NAMING NAMES
The ADL’s annual summit comes amid high-profile antisemitic attacks during the Iran war
And Europe to Trump: Iran is 'not our war'
Peter W. Stevenson/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro sits for an interview at the Pennsylvania State Capitol on June 11, 2025.
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📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
European countries are largely rebuffing President Donald Trump’s calls to join the war with Iran and help secure the largely impassable Strait of Hormuz. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said today, “This is not our war; we did not start it,” while the French foreign ministry said, “Posture has not changed: defensive it is.” Poland, the U.K. and Italy similarly made clear they would not be participating in an offensive capacity…
On potential negotiations with Iran, Trump told reporters, “We don’t even know their leaders. We have people wanting to negotiate. We have no idea who they are.” He said new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is “badly disfigured” and noted it’s “unusual” he hasn’t recently been seen in public.
Khamenei narrowly survived an airstrike on his compound on Feb. 28 as he briefly stepped outside, according to leaked audio obtained by The Telegraph, which reportedly contains remarks by an official in the office of deceased Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to senior clerics…
IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani denied reports that Israel is running low on missile interceptors, saying there is no “urgent problem” and that the military re-equips its supplies “in real time”…
Debris and missile fragments from Iranian attacks fell in the Old City of Jerusalem near several sensitive sites including the Western Wall Plaza and feet away from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre…
Twenty-three Democratic members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote to Trump requesting a public hearing with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to understand their role in “lead[ing] diplomatic engagement with Iran”…
Representatives of the U.S.-led Board of Peace met with Hamas officials over the weekend in Cairo, Egypt, Reuters reports, in an effort to keep ceasefire negotiations on track even as the war with Iran proceeds. Aryeh Lightstone, an aide to Witkoff, reportedly represented the U.S. delegation, with more meetings expected this week…
Times of Israel reporter Emanuel Fabian chronicles his experience receiving death threats from users of the prediction market platform Polymarket over his reporting on a recent Iranian missile strike in the city of Beit Shemesh…
Trump announced that Susie Wiles, his White House chief of staff, has been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer and will receive treatment while remaining in her post…
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a potential 2028 presidential contender, tested out his measured, pro-Israel messaging in a series of recent podcast interviews, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports. In his appearances on “Pod Save America” and “Higher Learning,” Shapiro 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.
“I think what is dangerous here … 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. He also pushed back on California Gov. Gavin Newsom, his potential 2028 opponent, for saying Israel could be described as an apartheid state…
Rep. Mike Lawler’s (R-NY) reelection campaign is employing a community activist, Darrell Davis, who has criticized Democratic politicians, including Rep. George Latimer (D-NY) and a county executive, for taking money from pro-Israel groups and traveling to Israel, Politico reports.
Davis accused Latimer of being on the receiving end of a “Jewish organized spending spree” and taking “about $30 million to buy a congressional seat, to represent the interests of Israel,” which he called “a horrific threat to democracy.” About Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins’ trip to Israel, Davis wrote, “Why are they in Israel?? What more proof do people need that black Dems don’t give a sh*t about you. They are up for sale”…
The day before her primary election in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, far-left social media influencer Kat Abughazaleh removed language from her campaign website claiming “There is no acceptable scenario that leaves Hamas in charge of the Gaza Strip,” after she had faced criticism from the Hamas-friendly outlet Drop Site News over its inclusion. Her site says that the earlier language on the page “did not accurately reflect Kat’s views or the values of this campaign”…
And the closing drama in the Illinois Senate Democratic primary is Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton’s claim that she received a deathbed endorsement from civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, which the Jackson family said today he had never finalized. The late reverend’s support is seen as meaningful in the race, which includes multiple prominent Black candidates, as well as Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL)…
The Atlantic spotlights one of the main obstacles facing Maine Gov. Janet Mills in her Democratic primary for U.S. Senate against oyster farmer Graham Platner: her age. Mills, 78, “does not have a dicey Reddit history or a recently covered-over Nazi tattoo” but is still trailing in the polls, even as Platner continues to be plagued by scandals. “One likely factor: If she is elected, Mills would be the oldest freshman senator in history”…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look at the tense runoff in the Democratic primary for Texas’ 35th Congressional District, where a fringe conspiracy theorist eked out a narrow victory over a sheriff’s deputy backed by the pro-Israel establishment.
All eyes will be on the Prairie State tomorrow, as several high-profile Democratic primaries will be decided across Illinois. Read JI’s coverage of the races to watch.
On the Hill, the House Intelligence Committee will hold its annual hearing on worldwide threats, with testimony from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel, NSA Acting Director William Hartman and DIA Director James Adams.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on reforming U.S. defense sales.
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BREAKING POINT
Democrats began calling out those who traffic in antisemitic rhetoric when they offered platitudes after an attack on a Michigan synagogue
UNDER PRESSURE
Tech entrepreneur Ethan Agarwal: ‘He thinks being racist against Jewish people is going to help him win the American left. I don’t care if he’s right. I just think it’s unethical and immoral’
Plus, Ro Khanna defends Hasan Piker amid Mich. attack
Emily Elconin/Getty Images
Law enforcement respond near Temple Israel following reports of an active shooter on March 12, 2026 in West Bloomfield, Mich.
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
A suspect was killed during an active shooter and car ramming incident at Temple Israel in the heavily Jewish Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield Township, Mich., this afternoon, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Armed synagogue security engaged the suspect with gunfire, and a security guard who was knocked unconscious is expected to recover. A preschool that was in session at the time of the incident was evacuated safely. Authorities are continuing to investigate the suspect’s identity and motive.
“Everyone is safe. All 140 students in our Susan and Harold Loss Early Childhood Center, our amazing staff, our courageous teachers, and our heroic security personnel are all accounted for and safe,” the synagogue wrote on social media. “This note is coming to you before we know anything about our future programming or services, or any investigation. We wanted you to know we are safe, and we love you all”…
Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, issued his first public statement today that indicates he’s as hard-line as his late father: Khamenei demanded the U.S. shut all its military bases in the Gulf immediately and said he’ll continue to target the Strait of Hormuz in order to “pressure the enemy.” His statement was read on state media indirectly by a presenter, as reports indicate the 56-year-old was injured in an Israeli strike and he has not been seen in public since.
President Donald Trump did not seem dissuaded — he posted on Truth Social, “when oil prices go up” the U.S. makes “a lot of money,” but “of far greater importance to me, as President, is stopping an evil Empire, Iran, from having Nuclear Weapons”…
Following a Republican convening this week focused on combating right-wing antisemitism, the center-left think tank Third Way urged fellow Democrats to follow the lead of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in calling out antisemitism within their own party.
“We certainly believe that Cruz was right and our side has a real antisemitism problem too that too many Democrats are failing to face squarely,” Matt Bennett, the group’s executive vice president for public affairs, told JI’s Gabby Deutch.
Similar comments from Third Way staff sparked a public clash with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who defended controversial left-wing figures including antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker and said the true issue lies with the “neocons” in the party…
Less than a week until primary election day in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, outside spending in the race is approaching $9 million, the majority of which is aimed at boosting state Sen. Laura Fine, a pro-Israel Democrat. Nearly half of all outside spending has come from the Elect Chicago Women super PAC, widely rumored to be connected to pro-Israel groups.
Another PAC rumored to be connected to AIPAC, Chicago Progressive Partnership, has spent over $1 million attacking anti-Israel social media influencer Kat Abughazaleh, including a new ad that spotlights her support from James “Fergie” Cox Chambers Jr., a communist political activist and scion of the billionaire Cox family often involved in radical-left causes…
A new poll commissioned by the far-left advocacy group Justice Democrats finds Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) in a competitive race for his seat — he’s now neck-and-neck with his primary opponent, state Rep. Justin Pearson. Pearson, a progressive legislator, gained public attention for being expelled from the Statehouse in 2023 for participating in a gun control protest on the floor…
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed Assemblyman Micah Lasher, his former staffer, in the hotly contested primary race for New York’s 12th Congressional District today, calling him “a key part of our team in City Hall.” Bloomberg plans to spend “millions of dollars” on a super PAC and ad campaign to boost Lasher, The New York Times reports, a notable effort by the popular former mayor to elevate Lasher among the pack…
Trump has delayed endorsing Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in the Texas Senate runoff against Attorney General Ken Paxton, which Trump implied last week he would do imminently, instead using the potential endorsement to pressure Senate Republicans to change filibuster rules and pass his voter-ID bill. Paxton raised the stakes by saying he might drop out if the bill passes, a move that forced Cornyn to shift his stance on the filibuster…
The Boston Globe looks at Rep. Seth Moulton’s (D-MA) efforts to get on the Democratic primary ballot in his race against Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), which will require him to receive support from 15% of delegates at the state Democratic Party’s upcoming convention. Moulton is attempting to recruit unregistered voters to become delegates in order to boost his chances, which observers are split on…
Politico uncovers the past political stances and writings of Morris Katz, the Democratic operative and anti-Israel whisperer now behind several high-profile progressive campaigns, when he lauded former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and derided progressive icon Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)…
Shortly after the organization elevated a new political director who is closely tied to neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, College Republicans of America’s chapter at Georgetown University came under investigation by the school for a social media post in which it claimed “Muslims have no place in American society”…
The Wall Street Journal spotlights Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of CENTCOM, as he “stay[s] out of the politics of the war” in Iran “and remains focused on waging it”…
The Treasury Department issued sanctions against four “sham charity” groups in Turkey and Indonesia that it said are funneling money and resources to Hamas’ military wing, JI’s Marc Rod reports…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for reaction to today’s attack on Michigan’s Temple Israel from Jewish leaders and leading lawmakers.
The South by Southwest festival will hold its annual #openShabbat experience for Jews in tech, film and music tomorrow in Austin, Texas.
A Saturday fundraiser for Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA) with an appearance by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Nunn’s home district in Iowa has been canceled; the event, called “Top Nunn” in reference to the “Top Gun” movies, had drawn scrutiny after several soldiers who had been stationed in Nunn’s district were killed in the course of the war with Iran.
The Jewish Funders Network international conference starts Sunday in San Diego.
HaZamir: The International Jewish Teen Choir performs at Lincoln Center in New York City on Sunday evening.
The Zionist Organization of America will host its Florida Superstar Gala Sunday evening, where it will honor Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel; Justice Department official Leo Terrell; and Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), among others.
We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!
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POLITICAL TIGHTROPE
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said she would likely have voted to authorize force against Iran if the administration had approached Congress properly before launching the war
FEELING THE HEAT
Republican senators argued to JI that the war will ultimately be to the Gulf’s benefit, even if they’re feeling the pain now
Plus, Israel considers building Somaliland base
Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Ben Rhodes, then-deputy national security advisor to President Barack Obama, participates in an interview with press at the White House in on Wednesday, December 14, 2016.
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
The Strait of Hormuz continues to be a key site of conflict in the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran — a spokesperson for the Iranian Armed Forces said in a video statement that the regime “will never allow even a single liter of oil to pass through the Strait of Hormuz for the benefit of America, the Zionists or their partners,” shortly after several ships were struck by missiles while passing through or near the strait…
The International Energy Agency announced its member countries will release 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves in order to blunt the impacts of the war, the largest emergency release in history…
President Donald Trump told Axios that the war will end “soon” because there’s “practically nothing left to target” in Iran. U.S. and Israeli officials are reportedly preparing for at least two more weeks of hostilities…
Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea speaks to experts and former Trump administration officials about Qatar’s potentially changing calculus on hosting Iranian-backed Hamas leaders as Tehran continues to attack the Gulf state…
A preliminary U.S. military investigation has found the deadly strike on a school in Iran was caused by the U.S. as it was targeting a nearby Iranian base, sources told The New York Times…
The FBI recently warned California police departments that Iran may launch a drone attack in the state, ABC News reports. As of last month, “Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United State Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event that the U.S. conducted strikes against Iran,” the bureau’s alert read…
Israel is considering building a base in Somaliland, which it recently recognized as an independent country, in order to combat the threat of the Houthis, which are based in Yemen just across the Gulf of Aden…
Iran will not participate in the 2026 World Cup after the U.S. “assassinated our leader,” Iran’s sports minister told state media, shortly after Trump said he would still “welcome” the team’s participation. Iran’s national men’s soccer team was set to compete in June in Los Angeles and Seattle; several athletes from the country’s women’s team recently defected to Australia after playing in a match there…
Spain permanently withdrew its ambassador to Israel, as the countries’ already tense relations worsen over Madrid’s opposition to the war in Iran…
House Republican leadership discussed ways to incorporate an expected emergency supplemental for the U.S. military into the budget reconciliation process, Politico reports, rather than attempting to rally support from Senate Democrats for the 60-vote threshold that would otherwise be required in the Senate on a stand-alone vote. The move would also sidestep a vote that could be politically challenging for some House Republicans…
Former Obama administration official Ben Rhodes, a leading Israel critic on the left, said on an episode of his “Pod Save the World” podcast that Democrats who vote in favor of funding for the war with Iran “should be primaried. I don’t want you in the Democratic Party.”
Rhodes and co-host Tommy Vietor referenced the four Democrats who voted against a war powers resolution in the House as ripe for primary challenges. Left unsaid: Three of the four — Reps. Greg Landsman (D-OH), Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and Jared Golden (D-ME) — represent GOP-leaning seats that would likely flip with a more progressive Democratic candidate…
In a sign of the political gulfs between the Israeli and American left, Yair Zivan, who is an advisor to Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, pushed back on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) after the senator criticized Israeli operations in Lebanon.
“Senator, I work for the Leader of the Opposition in Israel and I’m writing this from a bomb shelter with my children. Israel is under attack by fanatical terrorists who want to murder us. It never ceases to amaze that your humanity never seems to extend to Israeli lives,” Zivan wrote on X…
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said he called New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to “check in on him and his wife to make sure they’re doing okay” after the attempted terror attack outside Mamdani’s official residence over the weekend. “As someone who’s had to deal with political violence, I know it can take a toll,” Shapiro said. The governor previously spoke with Mamdani after his win in November to express concerns over his rhetoric about Israel…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look at the far-right ties of the new political director of College Republicans of America.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on foreign influence in American higher education, including testimony from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Craig Singleton.
The annual weeklong South by Southwest festival kicks off tomorrow in Austin, Texas. Appearing at the summit, whose 300,000 attendees include many film and media professionals, is anti-Israel protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who will speak about “the system that tried to silence him, and the personal and political stakes of resistance.”
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PRIMARY PRESSURE
The pro-Israel Democratic group warns that nominating far-left candidates will cost the party winnable seats against GOP incumbents
DEMOCRATIC DIVIDE
The Pennsylvania senator told JI about the U.S. military operation’s successes: ‘Why can’t a single Democrat agree that this is a good thing for the world and the region?’
President threatens further attacks if Iran blocks Strait of Hormuz; teases nation-building effort
The White House via X Account/Anadolu via Getty Images
U.S. President Donald J. Trump sits at a table monitoring military operations during Operation Epic Fury against Iran, with U.S. flags visible behind him, in Washington, United States, on March 02, 2026.
President Donald Trump drew two contradictory timelines for the ongoing war in Iran in remarks on Monday, saying that the conflict was both drawing to a close and in its early stages.
In a call with CBS News, Trump said, “The war is very complete, pretty much. [Iran has] no navy, no communications; they’ve got no air force. Their missiles are down to a scatter. Their drones are being blown up all over the place, including the manufacturing of drones. … There’s nothing left in a military sense.”
The war has progressed faster than initially expected, the president added: “We’re very far ahead of schedule.”
Also Monday, the Department of Defense posted on X that “we have only just begun to fight, with a graphic of a missile interceptor and the text: “No Mercy.”
At a news conference after his CBS News interview, Trump was asked whether the war is “very complete” or “just beginning.”
“I think you could say both,” the president responded. “It’s the beginning of building a new country. We could call it a tremendous success right now, or we could go further.”
“And we’re going to go further,” Trump added.
In his interview with CBS, Trump considered further steps, saying that he is “thinking about taking … over” the Strait of Hormuz.
The president later posted on Truth Social: “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
The Strait of Hormuz is the only passage by sea from the Gulf to the open ocean and a critical chokepoint in the global energy market.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said during a visit to Israel’s National Health Command Center on Monday that “our aspiration is to enable the Iranian people to cast off the yoke of tyranny; ultimately, it is up to them.”
“If we succeed together with the Iranian people, we will bring about a permanent end to the extent that such things exist in the lives of nations,” Netanyahu added. “We will bring about change, and we are already bringing about a massive shift in Israel’s international standing.”
The IDF Home Front Command reported only six missile launches from Iran to Israel in the past 24 hours, a significant slowdown from previous days of the war.
The IDF continued to strike targets in Iran, including a missile launcher, 10 minutes after it fired at Israel.
On Monday night, the IAF completed a wave of strikes against six major Iranian military airfields, destroying Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aircraft, including combat helicopters.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun reached out to the U.S. to start direct talks with Israel on “permanent arrangements for security and stability on [its] borders.” He called for a “complete truce” ending Israeli military activity, and lamented that Hezbollah — which Beirut had agreed to disarm as one of the terms of its 2024 ceasefire with Israel — “wanted to achieve the fall of the State of Lebanon, under aggression and chaos.”
Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon continued, with overnight attacks on command centers and the facilities of the Al-Quard Al-Hassan Association, which funds the Iran-backed terrorist group and works with cash, as well as a cell of Hezbollah terrorists approaching IDF soldiers and a structure in which commanders of the elite Radwan Force were said to be gathering.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar met with U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis in Jerusalem on Monday. In his readout of the meeting, he noted that Hezbollah joined the war on Iran’s side “against the interest of Lebanon.”
“Over the past week there have been more attacks against Israel from Lebanese territory than from Iran,” Sa’ar said. “Weakening Hezbollah is a mutual interest of both Israel and Lebanon. I also said that Hezbollah initiated an attack against us and no member of the international community is acting to stop it besides us.”
Sa’ar and Hennis also discussed Israel’s decision not to evacuate residents from its northern border towns, in contrast with October 2023, and said that “the deployment of IDF troops in the border area is critical for preventing an invasion of Hezbollah’s ground forces and attacks against Israeli citizens and communities.”
The IDF estimated in recent days that over half a million Lebanese residents evacuated southern Lebanon.
Magen David Adom emergency services reported treating 76 people as a result of Monday’s missile attacks, two of whom were killed and 18 injured by missile debris.
Since the start of Operation Lion’s Roar, there have been 14 fatalities. MDA reported treating 667 people for injuries resulting from missile attacks, 511 of whom were injured making their way to shelter or in traffic accidents when stopping for a missile alert.
The Senate Democrats said the Iranian moves were indicative of Iran’s broader continued malign activity
Mariam Zuhaib/AP Photo//Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Fair Share America
Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
Two Democratic senators expressed concern on Tuesday about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ seizure of an commercial oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical international shipping route.
The IRGC took credit on Friday for the seizure of the Talara, a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker, for what state media described as alleged cargo violations. The tanker, which began its journey in the United Arab Emirates, was carrying petrochemicals through the Strait of Hormuz to Singapore when it was diverted by the IRGC into Iranian territorial waters.
“It’s like the 1980s all over again,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a former fighter pilot, said. “The first time I was there was 1989, in the Strait of Hormuz, with the Iranians doing that same old shit, where they would harass shipping. A couple times, I felt like we were on the edge of getting in the conflict.”
“This was 40 years ago. It’s the same playbook with them, over and over and over again, harassing shipping, our planes, our naval vessels,” Kelly continued. “So what’s the solution? Hopefully, I think the solution is: The Iranian people get fed up with this at some point and just force out the ayatollah and his lackeys around there, because it has destroyed their economy.”
Asked if the development should impact the U.S. posture toward Iran, Kelly said it was too soon to determine that.
“We’ve got to stand on the side of the rule of law. The oil that comes through that Strait is critical to our economy, and we can’t let this become a major problem, but it’s one tanker,” Kelly said.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that the U.S. needs to remain vigilant against Iran’s other malign activities in spite of the setbacks to its nuclear program.
“Iran is Iran. They are the toxic element in the Middle East. We have no reason for complacency. Just because we set them back in their nuclear program, they remain a malevolent force, and the seizure of that tanker is just one indication of that,” Blumenthal said.
Asked if this latest development should be viewed as escalatory given that Tehran targeted commercial shipping, the Connecticut senator replied: “I’m troubled by the lack of an aggressive reaction to it. Maybe it’s just, with the press of everything else that’s going on.”
Jason Bordoff said at the Aspen Security Forum that ‘some measure of security’ came from ‘the fact that we’re in a global oil market and we’re all in this together’
Aspen Security Forum
Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, speaks on a panel on energy security at the Aspen Security Forum on July 16, 2025.
The pressures of the global oil market restrained Israel from bombing Iran’s Kharg Island oil facilities and Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil facilities, an energy policy analyst argued at the Aspen Security Forum on Wednesday.
“There was some measure of security that came from the fact that we’re in a global oil market and we’re all in this together,” Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, said on a panel on energy security. “If Iran had tried to do that, it would have imposed pain on itself, it would have imposed pain on China, it would have imposed pain on Gulf countries it was trying to keep on its side.”
Meghan O’Sullivan, the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, said on the same panel that the Gulf states’ work to develop both oil and renewable energy sources place them in a key role in the global AI race.
“The Gulf, particularly, I would say, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are really playing into this in a very significant way that I think will really accrue to their geopolitical and economic advantages,” O’Sullivan said, discussing renewable energy development. “They’re in the midst of managing an uncertain but somewhat inevitable energy transition, and they’re thinking about what are the other sources of strength in their economy.”
She said the Saudi energy transition in particular is designed “to really drive home to places, particularly the United States, that they have the advantage when it comes to energy, and the energy needs for AI.”
O’Sullivan said that Saudi Arabia’s continued development of both oil and alternative energy sources has allowed it to provide “guaranteed, low-price energy” to support AI development.
“This is part of the reason why President [Donald] Trump, when he went to visit the Gulf in May, was able to get agreement on some deals that would actually place the heart of American AI advantage in the Gulf,” she said.
Vice Admiral Brad Cooper also spoke at his confirmation hearing about the continued threat of Iranian proxies and U.S. engagement in Syria
YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images
Vice Admiral Brad Cooper Commander of the US Naval Forces Central Command speaks during a press conference in front of the USS Port Royal (CG 73) Guided-missile cruiser at al-Shuaiba port, 35km South of Kuwait City on June 6, 2022.
Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command who is nominated to be the next CENTCOM head, said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday that the United States is prepared for the possibility that Iran will attempt to place mines in the Strait of Hormuz to close off the strategic waterway.
The Iranian parliament approved a move earlier this week to close the strait, but that decision would be dependent on the approval of the Iranian leadership, and it’s not clear whether the ceasefire between Israel and Iran might hold off such a move. Around a third of the world’s oil supply passes through the strait, which connects the Persian Gulf and several Gulf states to the Arabian Sea.
The incoming CENTCOM leader, who previously led naval forces in CENTCOM and the Fifth Fleet based out of Bahrain, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. “has sufficient capacity and capability to handle the threat” of mining the Strait of Hormuz, and that it is keeping a close eye on Iranian movements that would signal such an operation is occurring.
“It would certainly be important for us to watch what they’re doing and attempt to both anticipate and then react faster than the threat,” Cooper said. “It’s a significant threat. It’s a known threat, and one that we’re watching.”
Cooper acknowledged that the potential shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz would have “significant” impacts on U.S. operations in the Middle East. He said it would be a “complex problem,” given that Iran has stockpiles of thousands of mines, and noted that “historically in mine warfare, nothing happens quickly,” saying the operation would be a matter of “weeks and months, not days.”
Cooper said that U.S. and Israeli strikes, and particularly Israel’s successes against Iran and its proxies, have weakened and degraded Iran significantly, but added that Iran remains the primary destabilizing agent in the region and a sponsor of global terrorism.
“They possess considerable tactical capability, one element of which we saw yesterday,” Cooper said, referring to Iranian missile barrages at U.S. bases in Qatar and Iraq. “We’ve got to be in a three point stance, ready to go every single day. “
Pressed repeatedly by Democrats on whether the U.S. is planning for a ground invasion or for regime change in Iran, Cooper declined to discuss specifics in public, stating that his role is and would be to provide options to the administration’s civilian leadership and to prepare for various potential scenarios.
Cooper added that “deterring Iran and its proxies … is a critical element of our national security,” noting as well that some of the Iranian-aligned militia groups in the region, as well as the Houthis, remain an active threat. He highlighted that Iranian proxies have attacked Americans around 500 times in the past 20 months.
Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former director of operations for CENTCOM, who was testifying alongside Cooper, said that “the Houthis are likely to be a persistent problem that we’ll be dealing with in the future a few times again.”
Cooper said it might take several months for normal commercial trade to resume through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait after the U.S.-Houthi ceasefire agreement was reached last month.
Cooper said that the U.S. is prepared for a range of scenarios should the Houthis break the ceasefire. He also warned that the Yemeni terrorist group is “extremely well supplied by the Iranians” and is increasingly entrenching underground.
He added that, learning from Hamas, Iran and other groups in the region, U.S. adversaries entrenching underground is likely to be a growing problem in the future. He highlighted the work of Israel and U.S.-Israeli collaborative efforts to counter this threat.
Cooper emphasized concerns about the growing cooperation between U.S. adversaries such a Iran, China, Russia and North Korea. He expressed particular frustration about the flow, through Iran, of weapons components from China to the Houthis, and China’s longstanding failure to take action against the Houthis.
The vice admiral emphasized that the U.S.’ efforts in Syria going forward will be led by diplomacy and appear to be headed in a positive direction, but added that the U.S. must remain vigilant and active to focus on the ongoing threat from ISIS.
“Stability in Syria can translate into security in the United States,” Cooper said. “And here’s how those dots connect. ISIS thrives in chaos. If the government of Syria, now seven months into their existence, can help suppress that ISIS threat, along with the U.S. forces in the region, that stability helps create our own security. I’m optimistic for the future.”
He argued that now is not the time for the U.S. to be pulling back from the Middle East, and that any drawdown of troops from Syria — which the Trump administration has pursued — should be based on conditions on the ground, emphasizing that the U.S. remains the leader of the international coalition to combat ISIS.
Cooper said that the Abraham Accords and Israel’s incorporation into Central Command “presents extraordinary opportunities to advance security and enhance deterrence” in the region, and that he would continue to work on those relationships — a priority for the outgoing CENTCOM leader, Gen. Erik Kurilla.
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