The new civilian nuclear cooperation agreement already signed between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is now contingent on Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords, President Donald Trump announced on Thursday morning.

The president’s Truth Social post — in which he said the deal is “totally subject” to Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel, a provision not previously disclosed by the administration — was quickly affirmed by the White House.

“Yes, this deal with Saudi Arabia, the energy deal, is contingent on this condition as far as the president is concerned,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing on Thursday. “So we’ll continue to talk with our Saudi counterparts to get the deal finalized, and hopefully see them joining the Abraham Accords very soon.”

It appeared that Trump thought to add the provision only after the signing ceremony, which took place on Wednesday afternoon between Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. 

Asked if Trump had spoken to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about it, Leavitt said, “As you know, the president just put out this statement a few hours ago. I don’t believe he’s had a call with MBS in the hours since.”

The new addition may have thrown a wrench in the agreement: Leavitt said the deal is “still being worked out,” despite already having been signed by the parties, and “will eventually, hopefully, be finalized with the condition that the president spoke about this morning.”

Leavitt also said she did not believe the provision was requested by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Good Wednesday afternoon.

This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.

Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.

📡On Our Radar

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

More than 100 House Democrats, about half of the caucus, voted in favorof Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-KY) amendment to strip all U.S. aid to Israel out of the State Department appropriations bill this afternoon, including several leaders of the caucus such as Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA), the No. 2 House Democrat, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

While the amendment was overwhelmingly defeated, 314-104, the large segment of Democrats supporting the measure indicates a growing shift away from the party’s historic support for Israel…

---

Vice President JD Vance, in an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” released today, stated repeatedly that Israeli actors are engaged in a “very discreet, very well-funded” influence campaign to extend the war in Iran: “There are some people within their system we know beyond a shadow of a doubt who are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely. Again, not towards any objective, but just indefinitely,” he alleged.

Vance also said that the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein “clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence” and to “elements of the Israeli deep state that were left of center”…

---

The U.S., Israel and Lebanon, wrapping up talks in Rome this week, agreed on the structure and guidelines for implementing the two pilot zones the parties agreed to create in southern Lebanon, a State Department official said today, without specifying a timeline for the IDF’s withdrawal. The parties will now engage in expanded technical talks to implement the trilateral agreement reached in the last round of negotiations…

---

CENTCOM began another round of strikes against Iran this afternoon; coming after strikes earlier in the day, the pace of the operations appears to be gaining momentum. President Donald Trump is reportedly considering expanding U.S. military efforts to include more airstrikes, utilizing ground forces and targeting nuclear sites again, according to The Wall Street Journal…

---

Three senior U.S. officials connected to the Board of Peace, the Trump-led body created to resolve the conflict in Gaza, have been meeting with congressional offices this week to request $200 million for the International Stabilization Force, two people with knowledge of the meetings told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch. The meetings mark the first time that Board of Peace representatives have approached Congress with a funding request…

---

Ahead of today’s deadline, candidates have begun releasing their fundraising reports for the second quarter. In Georgia, where some in the Jewish community have felt torn between two less-than-ideal options in Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and his opponent, Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), Ossoff holds a commanding fundraising advantage: The senator reported raising$20 million this quarter with $42 million in the bank, while Collins raised $2.1 million, leaving him with $2.2 million in cash on hand…

---

Meanwhile, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed released his 2025 tax returns, which he is not legally obligated to do but was pressured to do by his opponent in the Democratic primary, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI). El-Sayed’s reported total income was over $680,000, nearly $300,000 of which was unspecified as to its source…

---

The anti-Israel American Priorities super PAC made an initial investment of $375,000 to boost El-Sayed in the race; El-Sayed has repeatedly railed against super PAC involvement in politics — particularly that of AIPAC’s United Democracy Project, which is spending heavily in favor of Stevens…

---

Rep. Hilary Scholten (D-MI), speaking to Semafor about electability concerns in the Democratic Party, criticized progressives who “prop up other candidates who have said really problematic things.” The moderate congresswoman added that El-Sayed, who has been criticized for comments about Stevens seen as misogynistic, “has a problematic record with women”…

---

A new Quinnipiac poll of Pennsylvania voters found Gov. Josh Shapiro leading his Republican opponent in his reelection race by 13 points, 53-40%, with a 56% overall approval rating. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) had a 77% approval rating among Republicans, but only 19% among voters in his own party. Nearly half (49%) of voters said the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left, while 42% said the Republican Party has moved too far to the right…

---

Former White House senior official Brett McGurk is releasing a book, Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7 Hostages, on his role leading U.S. efforts under former President Joe Biden to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, due out on Oct. 6 to coincide with the third anniversary of the attacks…

---

The New York Times examines the role that Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel could play in the potential presidential run of his brother, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, as politicians increasingly seek access to media as part of their campaigns; among those close to Ari Emanuel are the UFC’s Dana White, commentator Joe Rogan, pundit Stephen A. Smith as well as Elon Musk…

⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at what this afternoon’s vote on Massie‘s amendment to cut all U.S. aid to Israel means for the future of Israel policy in the Democratic Party.

At least eight Democratic candidates vying to replace former nominee Graham Platner on the ballotfor U.S. Senate in Maine will take the debate stage tomorrow evening in their first chance to pitch themselves to voters, ahead of the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention later this month.

President Donald Trump will give an address to the nation in the evening, which he has said will largely focus on American election security.

The American Federation of Teachers’ annual convention will kick off in Washington. The second largest teachers’ union in the U.S., the AFT has previously featured anti-Israel resolutions at its gatherings.

The Aspen Security Forum continues with several panels on the Middle East, including speakers such as Akif Çağatay Kılıç, top advisor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister; Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT); Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee; Dan Shapiro, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel; Rahm Emanuel; Anne Neuberger, former deputy national security advisor; and Salam Fayyad, former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority.

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SPACE MAN

The Israeli scientist at the center of Trump’s search for answers on UFOs

Harvard professor Avi Loeb believes his research, which propelled him to the White House, could usher in a ‘new messianic era’

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LITMUS TEST

Khanna pressed to support Oct. 7 attacks in Drop Site interview

The congressman angered Drop Site co-founder Jeremy Scahill by refusing to condone the attacks; Scahill accused Khanna of promoting a ‘double standard’

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President Donald Trump has a border czar, a government official leading the crackdown on undocumented immigrants — whom the White House calls “illegal aliens” — crossing the southern border. The president, who likes to go big, now also has a UFO czar, a Harvard astrophysicist who is scanning the cosmos in search of aliens of the science-fiction variety.

It’s a stunning if improbable career highlight for Avi Loeb, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor who fled Nazi Germany and settled in a moshav, a cooperative agricultural community, in central Israel. As a child, Loeb had a lot of time alone with his thoughts — walking around to collect eggs from the chickens, or driving a tractor to the surrounding hills, where he would sit and read philosophy books. 

“I was deeply interested in the most fundamental questions of our existence,” Loeb told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. 

Loeb still studies life’s big questions, but from a different perspective. A series of small but ultimately life-changing pivots led him to study astronomy instead of philosophy, setting him on the path toward becoming one of America’s best known, and most controversial, scientists. 

He now has a new benefactor supporting his quest to discover whether intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe: Trump, who tapped him in June to lead the White House’s new effort on the issue.

“That’s why I’m doing astrophysics, because I was offered things that I couldn’t decline, but at the end of the process it’s like an arranged marriage, and I realized that I’m married to my true love,” Loeb said. “Because in astrophysics we can ask fundamental questions about the universe, which was pretty much what I was aiming to do in philosophy. But I can address it with the scientific method.” 

Decades before Loeb would be tapped to lead the Trump administration’s unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) science advisory council — an updated scientific term for what are colloquially known as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs — he got his start in the Israeli military. 

Loeb served in the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Talpiot unit, where he pursued a doctorate in astrophysics in order to advance Israel’s scientific research and development needs. After earning his doctorate at Hebrew University, a project he pursued in the 1980s through his military service led him on a trip to Washington, where he met someone who helped him get a job at Princeton. A position at Harvard opened up a few years later. He has been there for 34 years. 

At Harvard, Loeb was granted tenure after just three years and spent more than two decades researching major cosmological questions, seeking to understand the formation of the universe and early stars and galaxies. He was named to a Time magazine list of the 25 most influential people in space in 2012. Loeb chaired Harvard’s astronomy department for nine years. 

The last decade of Loeb’s career has been less straightforward. His public appearances skyrocketed, even as other astronomers sought to keep him closer to earth. In 2017, an interstellar object — meaning an object that was believed to have come from another solar system — was captured on astronomers’ telescopes for the first time. It had an unusual shape and exhibited motion unlike asteroids or comets. No one seemed able to explain what the object was or where it had come from. 

One year later, Loeb and a Harvard colleague argued in a scientific journal that the object was “humanity’s first contact with an artifact of extraterrestrial intelligence.” 

Loeb believed the interstellar object was likely an alien craft, a UFO of the science-fiction variety. Except he argued that it was real — or, at least, it could be. The argument he has honed over the past decade, which has now launched him into the president’s orbit, is that astronomers have a duty to explore the possibility that extraterrestrial life might exist, and that scientists should not preemptively shut down the debate. Many other astronomers say he’s tilting at windmills, pursuing a quixotic quest for answers when no evidence exists for his attention-grabbing claims. 

“I get attacked from both sides, from people who are skeptics who say we don’t want to look at the data, because there is nothing there. They ridicule the actual dealing with the anomalies that the government talks about,” said Loeb. “Then you have people on the other side who say, ‘We already know the answer, he’s wasting his time, and how dare he even consider other possibilities other than we are being visited by aliens.’” 

After decades of silence from the federal government on extraterrestrial matters, Congress held a hearing on UAP in 2022. It came after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report that found that UAP posed a risk to national security. 

At the hearing, lawmakers explored whether the unidentified objects were drones or weapons from adversaries like Russia or China; whether they were the result of American pilots observing other American technology they did not know about; whether the UAP were really just glitches on radar or camera screens; and, lastly, whether the UAP were extraterrestrial in nature. Scientists have not seen any evidence of aliens.

Whether life exists outside of earth has long been one of the most energizing and heretofore unanswerable questions facing scientists. It has spurred movies and TV shows and books and Reddit rabbit holes. And it has captured Trump’s attention. Earlier this year, he directed the government to release files related to the unexplained objects that have been spotted by military craft. 

Loeb thinks that the advisory body he now leads, composed mostly of his Harvard colleagues, stands the best chance of definitively identifying the UAP once and for all. He sees two options: either the group determines that the UAP are a national security threat, which would further American interests — or the body finds that UAP are evidence of an alien civilization. Loeb is not modest about the stakes.

“Altogether I think the partnership between science and government is a blessing. It will bring us to a better place: either improve national security in this context of UAP, or reveal the most important discovery ever made,” he told JI. “This may be a naive expectation, but it could bring cooperation among all humans on earth, and in that sense it will reflect the new messianic era of more peace on earth, but the messiah will not arrive from earth. It will arrive from another star.” 

Loeb’s dramatic claims may put him at odds with many of his peers in academia. But he says their immediate skepticism toward his conclusions is “not in tune” with the interests of the public, which he sees as just one area of many where he believes academia is failing the American people. He has also been frustrated to see Harvard tilt towards “a particular political direction,” which he thinks is a mistake. And after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks in Israel, Loeb watched the university “allow protests to disrupt scholarship,” some of which were antisemitic in nature. 

“Definitely something is wrong within academia,” said Loeb.

Despite his frustrations, Loeb remains at Harvard. He publishes fewer academic papers now, and focuses more on blog posts on Medium, but his research has not slowed down. He oversees the Galileo Project, which searches for evidence of extraterrestrial technology. His work has made its way to the highest reaches of the American government. 

Next month, he’ll face his biggest audience yet: a Major League Baseball game. He’ll be throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at a Houston Astros game in Space City, U.S.A.

Good Tuesday afternoon.

This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.

Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.

📡On Our Radar

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a warning to Iranian leaders, as military hostilities escalate between Iran and the U.S.: “Do not count on there being calm if you attack us,” Netanyahu addressed Tehran, while speaking today at a conference in southern Israel. “Do not expect a repeat of what happened before, because there will be no repeat. … Any further attempt to harm us will be met with a different response — far more powerful”…

---

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump walked back his announcement that the U.S. would institute a 20% toll on all cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz, saying in a post on Truth Social that Middle East leaders had agreed to additional trade and investment deals with the U.S. to replace the fee…

---

CENTCOM announced it began launching an additional round of strikes against Iran this afternoon “to continue degrading Iranian capabilities used to attack commercial shipping” in the strait, and officially reinstated a blockade on Iranian ports. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it launched missile and drone attacks in retaliation against bases in Kuwait and Bahrain…

---

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said he would oppose an amendment led by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to strip all aid to Israel out of the 2027 State Department appropriations bill, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. But Jeffries also argued for “urgent change” to the U.S.-Israel relationship, including suggesting that direct U.S. military aid to Israel should end when the current memorandum of understanding expires.

Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), on the other hand, said he plans to vote yes on Massie’s amendment, writing in a “Dear Colleague” letter that the “American people are crying out for an end to US tax dollars subsidizing Israel’s military”…

---

Israeli Transportation Minister Miri Regev announced today that the U.S. will only be permitted to station 20 military refueling aircraft at Ben Gurion Airport, while the rest must be parked at Israeli Air Force bases, in order to facilitate commercial travel for Israelis over the summer…

---

U.N. official Ramiz Alakbarov accused Hamas forces of interfering at a humanitarian aid distribution site in Gaza, saying armed men had entered a warehouse and “endangered humanitarian personnel,” leading the organization to suspend its operations at the site. “These incidents are not isolated. They are completely unacceptable and reflect an increasingly dangerous pattern of intimidation, violence and obstruction,” Alakbarov said…

---

Trump asked Netanyahu in a phone call last week to pull IDF forces back from Syria and Lebanon, Axios reports; the Prime Minister’s Office said Netanyahu in turn emphasized Israel’s need for security zones along its borders…

---

The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area issued a statement today on Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-CA) recent encounter in the West Bank, where he claims he was detained by violent settlers as well as the IDF. The group said it has “conveyed our concerns to the Congressman in how he is representing the district and our community on foreign policy issues” and called on Khanna “to exercise the same urgency he has brought to criticizing Israel to address the hostile climate many Jewish Americans face every day”…

---

Pressed repeatedly by writers with the Hamas-sympathetic outlet Drop Site News to offer support for the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks and Palestinians’ “right to kill Israeli soldiers,” Khanna said he is “not for violence in any way”…

---

Asked about legislation imposing sanctions on Russia that was championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Trump said in the Oval Office today that lawmakers “may be adding Iran to it … They may add Hezbollah, too.” He said there’s a “good chance” it will pass “in honor of Lindsey”…

---

White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were spotted in the Senate chamber during the swearing-in this afternoon of Darline Graham Nordone to fill Graham’s seat…

---

The AIPAC-linked United Democracy Project super PAC sent direct mail to voters in Michigan highlighting far-left Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s refusal to condemn extreme rhetoric from antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker and El-Sayed’s efforts to “rationalize” the attack on Michigan’s Temple Israel earlier this year…

---

Columbia University anti-Israel protest leader Mahmoud Khalil filed a civil rights lawsuit against Trump administration officials, the Heritage Foundation and pro-Israel groups Canary Mission and Betar, alleging they “sought to terrorize” him to “intimidate and silence the growing movement for Palestinian rights”…

⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for an interview with Avi Loeb, the Israeli Harvard scientist leading Trump’s search for answers that may be out of this world.

Trump will headline the last day of Sen. Dave McCormick’s (R-PA) Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit at the U.S. Army War College, with additional remarks from Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

The Aspen Security Forum in Colorado will feature fireside chats with former Navy Secretary John Phelan and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Also on tomorrow’s agenda: a live taping of the “What the Hell is Going On?” podcast hosted by the American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka and Marc Thiessen, in conversation with former National Security Advisors Stephen Hadley and Robert O’Brien as well as Michèle Flournoy, former under secretary of defense for policy.

Jay Clayton will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee for his confirmation hearing to be director of national intelligence, after Trump abruptly canceled his hearing originally scheduled for last month.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) will speak at the Hudson Institute on the future of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East..

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MICHIGAN MATTERS

Mainstream Democrats rally to block far-left candidate from nomination in swing Mich. district

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PEACH STATE PROBLEMS

In Georgia’s Senate race, tough choices ahead for the state’s Jewish community

Top contributors to Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback are also bankrolling Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Abdul El-Sayed and Andre Carson

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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.

Good Monday afternoon.

This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.

Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.

📡On Our Radar

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

President Donald Trump declared today that the U.S. will take control of the Strait of Hormuz and 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,” Jewish Insider’s Christina Sher reports. The move comes after Trump and his administration insisted for months that no country is permitted to charge fees to transiting ships…

---

Trump also announced he is reinstating a blockade of Iranian ports, which was lifted when the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding last month. CENTCOM said the blockade will resume tomorrow at 4 p.m. ET and will be enforced “against vessels transiting to or from Iranian ports and coastal areas.”

CENTCOM also revealed that it successfully deployed sea drones in combat operations for the first time yesterday, using the unmanned vessels to strike an Iranian submarine at the Bandar Abbas Naval Base…

---

Trump notified Congress on Friday that fighting with Iran officially resumed last week, further stoking tensions between the executive and legislative branches as lawmakers already approved a war powers resolution calling for an end to American operations in Iran.

Trump’s letter to congressional leadership said U.S. “ground forces are not involved in these strikes” — which he described as “limited, measured, planned, and executed in a manner designed to minimize civilian casualties” — and said he is acting “pursuant to [his] constitutional authority as Commander in Chief”…

---

The Mossad spent years grooming former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an intelligence asset to be installed as Iran’s leader after a post-Khamenei regime change, including paying for his housing and travel and arranging a meeting with then-Mossad chief David Barnea under cover of a climate conference in Budapest in 2024, American and Iranian officials told The New York Times.

As the Iran war broke out on Feb. 28, Mossad operatives rescued Ahmadinejad from an Israeli airstrike on his Tehran compound and took him to a safe house, but he balked and left — Ahmadinejad is now reportedly under house arrest by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps…

---

The Houthis accused Saudi Arabia of bombing Yemen’s international airport today, with a spokesperson saying the action “will not go unanswered,” threatening a tenuous truce enacted several years ago between the terror group and the Saudis. A spokesperson for the internationally recognized Yemeni government, which is backed by Riyadh, said the Houthis subsequently fired ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabia…

---

U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced on Monday that the country designated the IRGC as a terror organization, with those found guilty of supporting the group facing up to 14 years in prison. The government also banned the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, which No. 10 Downing St. said was behind a number of attacks on British Jewish sites…

---

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster announced at a press conference this afternoon that he is appointing Darline Graham Nordone, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) sister, to serve out the rest of Graham’s term. Trump had voiced his support for Nordone, who shared an exceptionally close bond with her brother, as “a fabulous tribute to Lindsey.” Fox Newsreported that Nordone could be sworn in as soon as Wednesday…

---

The Trump administration plans to launch a major diplomatic offensive against the International Criminal Court, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced today, the latest move in the White House’s longtime battle against the international organization.

The push appears to be rooted in concerns that the ICC will seek to prosecute American servicemembers, JI’s Gabby Deutch reports. Such actions would not only be “a grave overreach of its purported authorities,” Rubio wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “it would mean the death of the U.S. as a sovereign and independent nation”…

---

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani vowed that he would maintain ties with Morris Katz, the controversial political operative behind Mamdani’s own victory as well as the imploded campaign of former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, JI’s Will Bredderman reports, despite calls from members of the Democratic Socialists of America to boycott the consultant’s services…

---

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a member of the Squad and a vocal detractor of Israel, endorsed far-left Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed today, joining fellow Squad members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Summer Lee (D-PA) and Delia Ramirez (D-IL) in backing him less than a month before the primary…

⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at the surging anti-Israel candidate in the Democratic primary for Michigan‘s swing 7th Congressional District.

The sixth round of talks between Israel and Lebanon are slated to begin tomorrow in Rome, despite Beirut’s reported threat not to attend if the IDF did not vacate two pilot zones in southern Lebanon before the discussions. Israeli media reported that this week’s talks will focus on the timeline for the withdrawal.

The Aspen Security Forum, the high-profile annual gathering of national security leaders, policymakers and foreign policy experts, begins tomorrow afternoon in Colorado. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and former Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker will speak on a panel on the “state of the world.”

The two-day Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit, hosted by Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA), will kick off at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., with a keynote address from Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine.

Some House Republicans were invited to a dinner tomorrow night with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to Punchbowl News, as the Trump administration is seeking more than $67 billion for the Pentagon in its supplemental funding request.

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REMEMBERING

Tributes pour in after death of Lindsey Graham, Israel’s staunch defender in the Senate

Trump, Cruz, Fetterman, Coons and Jewish organizations remembered the South Carolina Republican, who died suddenly at 71

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FOLLOW THE MONEY

Radical GOP governor hopeful got cash from backers of far-left Dems

Top contributors to Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback are also bankrolling Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Abdul El-Sayed and Andre Carson

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As President Donald Trump returned to Washington on the first Sunday of the new year, he was joined by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who had traveled to the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate a day earlier to be with Trump after he ordered the operation that deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Graham, 71, had been encouraging Trump since returning to office last January to take a more aggressive posture toward the Maduro regime, and vigorously defended the president’s decision to launch a series of strikes targeting Venezuelan boats that the Trump administration alleged were carrying drugs meant to reach U.S. soil. By late October, he was calling on Maduro to flee Venezuela and cede power as tensions between Trump and the dictator escalated. 

During an impromptu press conference aboard Air Force One, Trump and Graham defended the merits of the operation and predicted that the Cuban regime was likely to fall as a result of the mission. The South Carolina senator, one of the most hawkish Republican lawmakers on foreign policy, grinned as he heralded the mission as a success.

“When I was on Air Force One with the president flying back and we did that news conference, if you thought I was smiling big on the outside, you have no idea how much I was smiling on the inside,” Graham told Jewish Insider in an interview shortly after arriving in Washington with the president. “This is the best time in my political life because I’ve aligned myself with the strongest president in modern times. We’re getting results that are making this world safer and America more prosperous.”

By that time, more than 10 years after rejecting Trump’s candidacy and decrying him as a “race-baiting, xenophobic bigot” whose rhetoric would “kill my party,” Graham had become one of the president’s closest allies in the Senate and a close confidante on foreign policy matters.

“This is what happens when you stay in his orbit, realizing there’s far more good than bad and understanding that this man has magic that nobody on the planet has,” the South Carolina senator told JI. “It’s not so much that I’m on a roll. It’s the fact that talking with President Trump, he is embracing policies that he calls common sense, and the small part I play on the end of this, I’m so proud of.”

Following Graham’s sudden passing this weekend, Trump somberly reflected on the loss of his friend, political confidante and golfing partner, praising the late senator for his political acumen and his patriotism in a pair of media interviews and two social media posts.

“He’s a tough one to lose. He was great. He was unique in every way, actually,” Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning of Graham. “He was really a worker. … He was a great politician, actually.”

“He was such an advocate if he wanted to get something. He had a unique ability, he was able to deal with Democrats. If I had a problem, a real problem, I wouldn’t often ask, but if I had a problem with a Democrat, he could work it out,” he continued. “There was nobody like him. He loved being a politician, and he was going to win his election [in November for a fifth Senate term]. … He just had it made.” 

Graham passed away on Saturday evening after returning from a congressional delegation that included stops in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Ankara, Turkey, for last week’s NATO summit.

The South Carolina senator arrived to his Capitol Hill townhome late Saturday afternoon and began making phone calls to Republican political allies in the early evening about legislative business, developments in the Middle East and to share details of his recent trip, according to two sources with direct knowledge. 

One of those calls was to the president. Another was to Morgan Ortagus, the former deputy presidential envoy for Middle East peace in the second Trump administration and one of Graham’s closest confidantes in Washington. The president said that Graham mentioned being “tired” during their conversation, but noted that “he was fine” and expressed shock at his sudden passing. Ortagus told JI on Sunday afternoon that Graham was upbeat during their final conversation, expressing optimism that Trump was coming around on supporting his Russia sanctions bill and with resuming military operations in Iran. 

“Nobody was expecting this. That’s for sure. Not even Lindsey was, or he wouldn’t have been running for another term,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who has had close relationships with both Graham and Trump, said of the senator’s sudden passing. “When a person cuts as wide a swath as Lindsey cuts, it is shocking. It will take some time to process the reality of it. It should really hit on Monday when we show up for work.”

It came as a shock to Trump, Ortagus and everyone else in Graham’s orbit when his office announced his passing in the early hours of Sunday morning, which the Washington D.C. medical examiner’s office, in a preliminary autopsy report, attributed to aortic dissection caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

“He was extremely jazzed up in our last conversation. He had just gotten off the phone with the president, and he was super excited about the Russia sanctions bill and the president deciding to go back into Iran,” Ortagus told JI. “He could not have been happier when I spoke to him last night. He was in the best mood and in a great place. He spoke about how he felt like he was doing consequential work.”

“Nobody was expecting this. That’s for sure. Not even Lindsey was, or he wouldn’t have been running for another term,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who has had close relationships with both Graham and Trump, said of the senator’s sudden passing. “When a person cuts as wide a swath as Lindsey cuts, it is shocking. It will take some time to process the reality of it. It should really hit on Monday when we show up for work.”

Asked about his phone call with Graham during his “Meet the Press” appearance — on which Graham had been scheduled to appear — Trump said, “I just can’t believe it. He was like a member of the family to me. It’s very tough, actually. It’s amazing.”

Trump and Graham formed an unlikely relationship over the course of the first Trump administration, finding common ground with the establishment of the Abraham Accords and the confirmation of the president’s Supreme Court nominees. 

Graham briefly broke with Trump in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, condemning the attack and recognizing Biden’s 2020 victory. But within months, Graham was regularly visiting Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., and publicly urging his party to rally around the president’s bid for a second term in 2024. 

“He genuinely had a fantastic relationship with President Trump. They really actually liked each other a lot. I think Trump was his best friend in many ways,” Ortagus said. “He loved the president. It was genuine. They were incredibly good friends.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Graham got to know each other as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and on the presidential campaign trail in 2016. The two developed a close working relationship in the last decade, finding common ground on economic and foreign policy issues that pitted them against the expanding populist wing of the GOP. 

Speaking to JI on Sunday, Cruz said that Graham and Trump “became close friends. Lindsey would call the president early in the morning, late at night and at every hour in between. And the president listened to him. He didn’t always agree, but he trusted him and he knew that Lindsey was speaking from the heart.”

“[Senate Majority Leader] John Thune (R-SD) is going to miss him terribly. Donald Trump is going to miss him terribly,” Cramer told JI. “It confounds them, MAGA world. They love Donald Trump and can’t stand Lindsey Graham, so they’re befuddled by the relationship.”

Cramer noted that Trump has developed political alliances with several former critics, the most notable example being Vice President JD Vance, who was similarly disapproving of the president during the 2016 election. Like Graham, the vice president became an avid defender of Trump during the president’s first term. 

While both men found their way into the president’s orbit, they remained on opposing sides of the conservative movement, with Vance becoming one of the leading GOP voices wary of U.S. military engagement abroad and Graham emerging as a leading force behind the effort to maintain an engaged foreign policy. 

“With Lindsey, he was talented,” Cramer said. “He was bright and he knew things that a lot of people don’t know. He had a historical perspective a lot of people don’t have. He had a Rolodex that’s probably in several languages, and he called you from all kinds of time zones. You never knew where he was when he called.”

Despite having those conservative detractors, following his death, Graham was lauded for his humor, his friendship and his public and private support for Trump by those in the president’s orbit — including Vance and other prominent Trump administration officials who were not often ideologically aligned with the late senator.

“Early in my Senate tenure, I remember getting into a shouting match with Lindsey about a Ukraine funding bill at lunch and then learning the very next day that he was pushing rail legislation I really cared about behind the scenes,” Vance wrote on X. “That was Lindsey Graham. He fought like hell for the things he believed in, and he was just as willing to go to bat for you when it counted.”

“Lindsey had the best sense of humor in the Senate. He loved the game of politics. He was constantly asking which races were up and down, and how he could help,” the vice president continued. “As he liked to say, ‘I don’t care if you’re an isolationist or a religious fanatic, so long as you have an R next to your name, I want you to win.’ We certainly had our disagreements. But I couldn’t help but like him. A one of a kind figure in our politics.”

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and a longtime Trump advisor, described Graham as a cherished ally to the president in implementing the administration’s policy goals and spoke of telling the late senator “what his friendship meant to me and to us all.”

“I cannot describe to you how much joy President Trump’s leadership and friendship brought to Lindsey,” Miller wrote on X. “Meetings with Graham at the White House were filled with camaraderie, kinship and uproarious laughter.”

“The fact that Lindsey started out as a political opponent only to become one the President’s most steadfast and faithful supporters underscores that Lindsey believed emphatically in the voice of the people,” he explained. 

Miller described Graham as “a senator’s senator” and praised his ability to “move a room,” calling it “a glorious thing to witness.”

Sander Gerber, the CEO of Hudson Bay Capital and the architect of the Taylor Force Act, the passage of which Graham championed, told JI, “Lindsey was a maverick. He didn’t care about convention. He cared about doing what was right. When Lindsey set his mind to something, he was going to deliver on it, and he had a keen sense of the politics to be successful at that. He should be remembered as one of the greatest champions for Israel among members of Congress.”

“As heartbreaking as his sudden passing is, I hope it will bring some measure of comfort to those who cherished him to know just how much he was living his dream every day,” Miller said. “Very rarely in life do you get to be exactly where you want to be, when you want to be there, with who you want to be with, doing precisely what you want to do — that was every moment for Lindsey.”

Many of those who spoke about Graham after his passing described the South Carolina Republican, who spent more than two decades in the Senate, as a professional at navigating choppy political waters 

“He wasn’t just a good talker, he had depth,” Cramer said. “He knew what the hell he was talking about. He had interesting insights.”

Sander Gerber, the CEO of Hudson Bay Capital and the architect of the Taylor Force Act, the passage of which Graham championed, told JI, “Lindsey was a maverick. He didn’t care about convention. He cared about doing what was right. When Lindsey set his mind to something, he was going to deliver on it, and he had a keen sense of the politics to be successful at that. He should be remembered as one of the greatest champions for Israel among members of Congress.”

“In order to get things done in Congress, to actually make a difference, you need to have the relationships,” Gerber said. “Lindsey was able to cultivate those relationships, and that’s what enabled him to get things done. There are 100 senators, but he was able to get his voice to stand out and to drive policy forward.”

Republicans and Democrats alike predicted Graham would be remembered as a legendary American political figure known for his ability to take political risks and find common ground in unexpected places. 

“There was not a fight on domestic or foreign affairs that he didn’t want to jump into,” Ortagus said of Graham. “If he believed in an issue and believed that a particular policy was the right thing, he really didn’t care about the politics. Ultimately, he wouldn’t change what he believed was right based on politics, and that’s in very short supply politically right now.”

Ret. Gen. David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA and head of U.S. Central Command, told JI that Graham’s legacy would be “that of someone who was fiercely committed to the enduring principles, values and freedoms that we cherish, and who had the political skills and determination to see what he supported promoted by legislation, policies and strategies.”

“Sen. Graham’s dedication to the state of Israel and to the Jewish people was deeply sincere. We talked about it all the time. I went to Israel with him many times,” said Morgan Ortagus, the former deputy presidential envoy for Middle East peace in the second Trump administration and one of Graham’s closest confidantes in Washington. “He was a Southern Baptist and believed in the importance of the Jewish state to his core, and was willing to defend it.”

“I think he would be pleased to hear me say that he was not just adept, but was diabolically creative when necessary to achieve the outcomes to which he was committed,” Petraeus said.

Many of Graham’s allies said they expect his longstanding support for Israel and his commitment to aiding Ukraine in Russia’s war against it to be signature pieces of his foreign policy legacy.

“Sen. Graham’s dedication to the state of Israel and to the Jewish people was deeply sincere. We talked about it all the time. I went to Israel with him many times,” Ortagus said. “He was a Southern Baptist and believed in the importance of the Jewish state to his core, and was willing to defend it.”

“We talked a lot in the past year about the rise of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in both parties. He was very close to my daughter and she called him ‘Uncle Lindsey,’” she continued. “I would always remind him that I have a Jewish daughter and that throughout our history, the Jewish people have always thought we were safe until we weren’t.”

Ortagus said she and Graham “agreed that we have to fight antisemitism back in our party, that it can’t be allowed to fester. He would always talk about how important it was. He had deeply held personal beliefs on what America’s relationship with Israel should be. There was nothing cynical or craven about it.”

Cruz described Graham as “a passionate and formidable defender of Israel” and noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “trusted Lindsey and listened to him.”

“Lindsey loved the nation of Israel. He loved the people of Israel, and he believed ferociously in defending and strengthening America’s friendship and alliance with Israel,” the Texas senator said of his late colleague. “Now, Lindsey would sometimes tell his friends messages they didn’t want to hear. Lindsey was not one to just blow smoke. He would tell people exactly what he thought, but that made him an incredibly effective advocate for Israel.”

“Lindsey understood that standing with Israel is overwhelmingly in America’s national security interests,” he continued. “He and I collaborated very closely on articulating why standing with Israel makes America safer, that the enemies of Israel, whether Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran, are the enemies of America as well.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) credited Graham with doing “a masterful job of pulling” senators from across the ideological spectrum “in the same direction” in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, swiftly organizing a bipartisan congressional delegation alongside former Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as he sought to salvage his longstanding efforts to achieve Saudi-Israeli normalization. 

“It was an incredible trip, and all of us said it was just one of the most consequential, constructive trips we’d ever been on,” Coons told JI. “[Sen.] Katie Britt (R-AL) came on the trip. It was one of her first trips as a senator, I think. Think about the range of members who we had. We had [Sens.] Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) in the same meeting.”

“Even though it was two weeks after Oct. 7 and it was in the middle of that shock, he knew what he was doing,” Coons continued. “He was building a coalition of supporters for the deal that he was hoping he could pull off.”

Coons was one of several people to point to Graham’s well-documented friendships with the late Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), known as the Senate’s “three amigos,” as an important part of his legacy. 

“I think he continued McCain’s legacy of fighting for freedom, and he never gave up on the possibility of ending the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Coons said. “That was his prize.”

“He was not afraid to be critical and he was never uncritical of friends. He believed that friends owe it to each other to try to enable them to do better,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said. “He had a vision, which was in effect the normalization of relationships throughout the Middle East, an extension of the Abraham Accords. He pursued it relentlessly.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who maintains a similarly bipartisan reputation in Congress, worked with Graham frequently on foreign policy matters. Blumenthal began traveling abroad with Graham in 2012, two years after being elected to the Senate. Their first trip together was a congressional delegation to the Middle East organized by McCain. The two traveled repeatedly to Ukraine and its European neighbors since Russia’s invasion, and to the Middle East since Oct. 7. 

“He loved the Jewish people and he loved the Jewish state, which was so striking to me when I first traveled with him and John McCain to Israel,” Blumenthal told JI. “He and McCain loved the faith of the Jewish people, which of course is so much a part of life in Israel, but Sen. Graham also loved Israel’s ingenuity and inventiveness and the prowess and scrappiness of its military.”

“He was not afraid to be critical and he was never uncritical of friends. He believed that friends owe it to each other to try to enable them to do better,” he continued. “He had a vision, which was in effect the normalization of relationships throughout the Middle East, an extension of the Abraham Accords. He pursued it relentlessly.”

On the Taylor Force Act, Gerber noted that he convinced Graham to push for the Palestinian Authority to end its controversial payment program to Palestinian terrorists and their families, also known as “pay-for-slay,” after showing the senator video footage of the Palestinian Authority celebrating the terrorist who murdered Taylor Force, a U.S. army veteran killed by a Palestinian while visiting Israel in 2016.

“I’d shown this to many other senators, but no one was as upset as Lindsey. I remember him shaking when he saw the footage,” Gerber said. “Originally, I just wanted to educate Congress about what was going on, so I was trying to meet with as many members as I could to let them know the Palestinian Authority had this institutional infrastructure in place.”

Leading Jewish and pro-Israel organizations praised Graham in statements on his passing as a champion for the Jewish state and in the fight to combat rising antisemitism. 

“For more than two decades in the United States Senate, his voice was a constant reminder that a strong Israel is firmly in America’s national security interest, and his commitment to these principles never wavered,” AIPAC said. “His many visits to Israel and his love for the Israeli people reflected not just a policy position, but a deep personal connection to the Jewish state and its citizens.”

The American Jewish Committee described the late senator as “a powerful advocate for many of the issues AJC champions, including American global leadership, Israel’s security, a robust North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Ukraine’s defensive fight against Russian aggression.”

AIPAC called Graham “a great friend and true champion of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

“For more than two decades in the United States Senate, his voice was a constant reminder that a strong Israel is firmly in America’s national security interest, and his commitment to these principles never wavered,” the organization said. “His many visits to Israel and his love for the Israeli people reflected not just a policy position, but a deep personal connection to the Jewish state and its citizens.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition released a statement from Matt Brooks, the organization’s CEO, and former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), the organization’s national chairman, describing the late senator as “a dear friend” to both men personally and the organization as a whole. 

“On a personal level, Lindsey was a man of deep loyalty, humor, and heart. He treated everyone, ally or adversary, with warmth and respect, and he built friendships across the aisle that many said were impossible in today’s Washington,” the statement read. 

The GOP senator’s slow embrace of Trump earned him criticism from constituents and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. As a former conservative House lawmaker who had fought the rise of the Tea Party movement in the early 2010s, Graham had built a reputation as a defense hawk with a penchant for bipartisanship when Trump was first elected in 2016. 

Some Democrats were angered by his political pivot, especially during and after the first Trump administration, but Graham maintained strong relationships with his Democratic colleagues and continued working with them frequently on efforts to support Ukraine and other areas of agreement. 

“He deeply, genuinely loved the Senate. He tried really hard to do positive things for the institution at the same time that he was a fierce partisan,” Coons said of Graham. “Our fight over Kavanaugh was one of the worst I’ve ever had.”

Another of those Democrats is Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who became close with Graham in the two-and-a-half years since the Oct. 7 attacks. Graham and Fetterman, whose decision to vocally support Israel amid declining support in the Democratic Party prompted his relationship with the progressive left to collapse, frequently engaged on foreign policy matters, especially related to developments in the Middle East. 

Fetterman described Graham to JI as “warm, friendly and thoughtful” and called his passing “a tragedy.” 

“Israel lost a huge champion with Lindsey Graham,” the Pennsylvania senator said. 

Libertarian and isolationist Republicans, meanwhile, grew frustrated that such a hawkish voice was being consulted so closely on foreign policy matters in an America First administration. 

“There should be a law that Lindsey Graham can only enter the White House every other week, and that he’s only to meet with under mid-level people, not the president. No more golf outings,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a foe of Graham’s in the Senate Republican Conference who opposed the president’s actions in Venezuela, told reporters in January. 

Across the political spectrum, those who knew Graham described him as an irreplaceable fixture in the Senate and predicted that his loss would cause many voids in the upper chamber, where the late senator was supposed to take over as the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee next year.

“He links so many things and so many people that without him, there’s a missing link in a lot of relationships between Middle Eastern countries between members of the Senate, between Budget Committee members and leadership, between the Republicans and Democrats,” Cramer said of Graham’s expansive presence in the Senate. “We’ll find out the consequences of losing him in time like this soon, but it’ll be hard to navigate to be sure.”

“I don’t know who can play this role going forward. I just don’t see it,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said. “He’s just not replaceable. There’s not going to be anyone like him again.”

Cruz told JI that, “nobody will fill that void” left by Graham’s absence, citing the respective impacts of McCain and the late Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to the upper chamber. 

“When John McCain passed away, that was a void that was never filled. When Orrin Hatch, another longtime legend of the Senate, passed away, that was a void that was never filled,” Cruz said. “Nobody will fill Lindsey’s shoes. Others will step up and lead in different ways, but Lindsey left an indelible mark on the Senate, on the nation and on the hearts of his colleagues.”

“I don’t know who can play this role going forward. I just don’t see it,” Coons said. “He’s just not replaceable. There’s not going to be anyone like him again.”

President Donald Trump on Wednesday reiterated his threat to “finish the job” in Iran and said the current ceasefire is “over” while denying that renewed U.S. strikes in the country mark a return to war. 

Trump told reporters during a press conference at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday that he was no longer sure if he was interested in a peace deal with Iran and was questioning if the country’s leadership was rational enough to work with. 

Hours after Trump’s remarks, CENTCOM announced additional strikes on Iranian targets “at the direction of” the president, saying in a statement that the operation was intended to “further degrade [Iran’s] ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.” 

Asked during the press conference what caused him to sour on Iran’s leadership — whom he referred to on Wednesday as “scum” and “sick people,” after praising them last month as “very rational” and “nice to deal with” — Trump replied: “I got to know them.”

Trump noted that he was comparing the current regime to the previous two regimes in his prior complimentary statements.“I think they’re much more rational than level one, level two. Level one is gone, level two is gone. This is level three,” Trump said. “I think they are more rational, but based on their actions over the last week or two, they’re not doing a service to the people.”

“I’m not sure I want to make a deal with them,” he continued. “We can play games, but I’m not sure I want to make a deal. Let’s just finish the job.”

The comments came hours after the president said that the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran was “over” and said “I don’t want to deal with them anymore.” 

Trump went on to criticize Iran’s leaders as “a little loco. They’re a little crazy,” pointing to Iran’s continued attacks against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and claiming he’s Iran’s top target for assassination.

“They want to make a deal, but they don’t know how to make the deal, and then they go around shooting ships at night [in the Strait of Hormuz]. I don’t like that,” he said. “I’m the No. 1 target. … I’m the No. 1, because they’re scum. That’s the way they act, and that’s the way they’ve done it for 47 years.”

Still, he rejected the idea that the military operations meant that the U.S. was resuming full-scale warfare with Iran. 

“I don’t think ​it’s going to start again. I ​think it’s going to go very quickly. They hit a couple of ships, ​and so we hit them ​much harder,” Trump said of the war. “When they hit, we hit. We use their language. We speak their language. No, I don’t think so. I think anything that happens is going to be over very quickly and will only make [the region] safer.”

Is President Donald Trump about to throw Israel under the … fighter jet?

The F-35 may be a stealth jet, but the Trump administration’s likely sale of the highly sophisticated planes to Turkey is creating a very out-in-the-open rift between Jerusalem and Ankara. It pits two strongmen of the type that Trump purports to admire — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, both of whom are vying to be a kind of Mideast “favorite son” to the mercurial American president — against each other.

The potential for the sale — one that strikes at the heart of Israel’s qualitative military edge and could tilt the balance of power in the region — is fueling anxiety in Israel. So much so that Netanyahu took to Fox News on both Sunday and Monday to detail Turkey’s long anti-Israel “rap sheet.” And this comes after harsh words by both Trump and Vice President JD Vance about Israel’s isolation on the world stage.

Israeli foreign policy analysts are also raising red flags. “Defining [Turkey] as an enemy would be a mistake, but it is clearly a rival that openly acts against the State of Israel and promotes a vision that includes Israel’s destruction,” Avner Golov, vice president of national security consulting firm MIND Israel and former senior director at the Israeli National Security Council, told JI.

The relationship between the two regional superpowers, however, hasn’t always been this strained. Just three years ago, Netanyahu met with Erdoğan on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, and the two leaders were planning reciprocal visits. But about a month later, Hamas launched the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel and regional dynamics were rocked with the multifront war that followed. 

Turkey has repeatedly claimed that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, and the rhetoric only escalated, followed, eventually, by action. Last week, after years of deliberation, Israel officially recognized the Armenian genocide, a move that deeply displeased Ankara. Then came the Trump administration’s moves to allow Turkey back into the F-35 program, which deeply troubled Israeli decision-makers.

In his comments to Fox, Netanyahu listed Jerusalem’s grievances against Turkey, including: supporting Hamas; failing to assist in the struggle against Iran (even though in 2022, the Mossad and the Turkish MIT, headed then by Hakan Fidan, now the foreign minister, thwarted an Iranian cell actively targeting Israeli citizens); occupying half of Cyprus and even threatening to conquer Jerusalem. Netanyahu then delivered his punch line: “They are not like us. We, Israel and the U.S., share the same values.”

But the potential F-35 fighter jet sale is a complex one for Israel. Turkey was actually part of the program once before, but was expelled from it during the previous Trump administration over its purchase of a Russian air-defense system. 

“Turkey used to be our friend, we used to train together, so they were not part of our demand within the framework of the Qualitative Military Edge,” a former Israeli Air Force planner told  Jewish Insider. “And here we find ourselves in a problem: Turkey was a member of the project, and we are not” — though Israel has received F-35s despite not being an official partner. 

“The Turks were thrown out of the project,” the former planner said, “because of internal matters between them and the U.S. But Turkey is very hostile to us, and it is not good for it to receive such an advanced system whose greatest advantage is the richness of the image that the pilot himself has in the cockpit.”

According to Golov, “In practice, Turkey is leading a Muslim Brotherhood camp that combines military power, diplomatic influence alongside Qatar, nuclear capabilities through Pakistan and a drive to establish a presence on Israel’s borders in Egypt, Jordan and Syria. It is also leading the delegitimization campaign against Israel in the West. Preserving Israel’s military superiority vis-à-vis the Turkish threat is therefore a critical Israeli interest, both in order to restrain Erdogan and, in my view, to pursue diplomatic superiority.” 

Israeli officials believe that the die has been cast, and the deal will move forward. Does this mean there will soon be a Turkish F-35? Not necessarily. There is still a long way to go, but Israel is banking on two things: first, that Congress will raise objections, as lawmakers have already begun to do, and second, that the highly complex bureaucracy inherent in the stealth fighter jet program will run its course and delay the matter further.

Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, thinks that even after Turkey acquires the F-35, Israel and its air force will be years ahead. “As the United States insists that NATO allies do more to provide for their own security, it will be more difficult to deny a key NATO partner top-line U.S. equipment. So an F-35 sale to Turkey is increasingly likely,” he told JI. 

“Rather than try to block it,” Shapiro continued, “Israel should focus on the understandings the United States should seek to ensure Turkish capabilities do not pose a threat to Israel’s security. Israel will be more than a decade ahead of any Turkish F-35 capability. But to ensure Israel stays ahead and can maintain access to this capability, Israel needs to take into account the totality of its relationship with, and standing in, the United States.”

The harsh, even painful words from Vance regarding Israel’s current standing in the world, and his assertion that Trump remains the only one by Israel’s side, spark exactly that anxiety. If this is what Trump is doing now, by likely allowing the sale of the F-35, what will come next? Israel, for now, is left with the question of how it maintains the sense that, ultimately, the Jewish state is the “model ally” for the United States, regardless of the political climate in Washington. 

President Donald Trump, speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday, said that the memorandum of understanding with Iran that was inked last month was “over,” following overnight Iranian attacks targeting U.S. military installations in Bahrain and Kuwait. 

“To me, I think it’s over,” Trump said. “I don’t want to deal with them anymore.”

The Iranian attacks came after CENTCOM hit over 80 targets in Iran on Tuesday in retaliation for Iranian strikes on three commercial vessels — including a Qatari ship and a Saudi oil tanker — in the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week.

“We attacked very powerfully last night the very dangerous people from Iran,” Trump said of the U.S. strikes, which targeted air-defense systems, command and control networks, coastal radar sites and more than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats. “They’re sick. There’s something wrong with them.”

“We said, ‘Go and do your funeral stuff,’” Trump added, noting the multiday funeral ceremonies for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on the first day of the war against the Islamic Republic in February. “Instead of that, they start shooting rockets at ships yesterday, and so we hit them very hard last night.”

The president, appearing alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Ankara, said that the U.S. was “going to de-nuke Iran.”

“We’re not going to let them because they’re crazy,” Trump added.

The Iranians, the president said, are “bad people, very bad people. I think they’re incompetent, by the way, because if they were competent they would have made a deal a long time ago.”

“Of course they’re dirty players, so they go after everyone. Probably including me. I’ve been No. 1 on their list for years. And they’re a bunch of scum, if you want to know the truth. They’re scum. So we don’t like them, I don’t like them. And they’re evil people.”

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration was preparing to lift congressionally mandated sanctions on Turkey as he weighs moving forward with the sale of coveted F-35 fighter jets to Ankara.

“We’re going to be taking the sanctions off,” Trump said alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, referring to lifting the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). 

“It’s time to do that. We don’t want to sanction friends. It’s very simple,” he continued. “We’re working very closely with [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio and with [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent and with [Defense Secretary] Pete [Hegseth] and everybody else.”

"We don't wanna sanction friends," Trump said at the NATO summit as he announced he was preparing to lift sanctions on Turkey.

"It's very simple."

Read more: https://t.co/FM9Me9HQQk pic.twitter.com/HjwESQs5M6

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) July 7, 2026

The CAATSA sanctions were imposed by Congress in December 2020 during the final weeks of Trump’s first administration due to Turkey’s acquisition of Russian S-400 missile-defense systems. The Trump administration had, the year before, announced it would be banning Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet program over the same issue, which Congress codified. Defense experts and lawmakers have previously told Jewish Insider that Turkey still maintains the Russian hardware, which makes lifting the sanctions legally complicated.

The Trump administration noted last month that it planned to review Ankara’s eligibility to receive the F-35s, a move that has already drawn bipartisan pushback in Congress. Asked whether he is still considering the deal despite these remaining legal restrictions, Trump said it was “something, certainly, we would consider.”

“It’s a decision we’re going to make,” Trump said. “We have a very good relationship. I can tell you, many people, including the people sitting right here, think, ‘Why wouldn’t we do that?’ We have a better relationship with Turkey and Turkey has been in many ways much more loyal than other countries.”

Throughout the exchange, Trump repeatedly emphasized his close ties with Erdoğan, describing the two as “great friends” and crediting the Turkish leader with playing an instrumental part in neighboring Syria.

“Because of [Erdoğan], we have a very good relationship with the new leader of Syria,” Trump said. “I approved [Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa] along with [Erdoğan]. We were the two that really wanted him, and he’s done a great job.”

Trump also lauded Turkey for playing an “extraordinary” role in helping wind down the military conflict between the U.S. and Iran, downplaying criticism over Ankara’s increasingly hostile relationship with Israel.

“They could have gotten into the fight on the other side,” Trump said of Turkey’s role in the Iran war.

“They are a nation that’s been very good, they’ve been extraordinary in many ways with respect to our relationship, including trying to end the war with Iran — or whatever you call it, it’s not even a war, it’s a military operation, it’s a denuclearization,” he added.

President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that the U.S. and Iran will meet in Qatar on Tuesday to continue negotiations, as both nations attempt to step back from a weekend exchange of military strikes that threatened to derail the fragile ceasefire agreement.

“IRAN HAS REQUESTED A MEETING. IT WILL TAKE PLACE TOMORROW IN DOHA!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News that White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would be attending the talks. “On the sidelines of those high-level talks, there will be the technical talks” to move forward the memorandum of understanding, she said.

Tehran, however, has indicated that no meeting is scheduled to take place. Iran’s deputy foreign minister and senior negotiator Kazem Gharibabadi dismissed the reports, telling Iranian state news agency IRNA that the technical talks in the Qatari capital “are not confirmed.” Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, later said Iran has no discussions scheduled with the U.S. and that an Iranian technical delegation heading to Qatar this week will not be meeting with U.S. officials. 

Over the weekend, the U.S. launched targeted strikes against multiple military sites in Iran after Iran struck two oil tankers, first on Thursday and again on Saturday. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responded by firing a volley of missiles and drones at U.S. military infrastructure in Kuwait and Bahrain on Sunday. 

The renewed fighting stemmed from Iran’s insistence that commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz do so within a lane under its jurisdiction, rather than Oman’s, and obtain permits to do so. Meanwhile, Trump has insisted that the ceasefire terms dictate the critical shipping lane immediately be reopened to international transit without restrictions.

Underscoring the high stakes of the breakdown, Trump warned on Truth Social following Saturday’s strikes that Iran may “never learn.”

“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” Trump wrote. “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

Among the Democrats mulling a presidential run in 2028 — a group that is ideologically divided, each with their own diagnosis about what’s wrong with the Democratic Party and how to fix it — there was a unified reaction in February when President Donald Trump decided to attack Iran: opposition to a war they viewed as reckless and unconstitutional. 

As those Democrats respond to the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding that Trump announced last week, another consensus is emerging, which holds that the deal is just another example of Trump’s ineffectual leadership — yet another instance, these Democrats argue, of Trump getting taken advantage of and undermining the American people. 

“They’re negotiating a deal that, truthfully, every single detail we continue to hear just looks like the Iranians continue to do better than us. I think they should have been the one to write The Art of the Deal, not Donald Trump,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a TV interview on Tuesday. 

Rahm Emanuel, the former U.S. ambassador to Japan, member of Congress and chief of staff to President Barack Obama, offered a similar quip at a recent Financial Times event after describing the deal as “the memorandum of misunderstanding.”

“While the president thinks he wrote a book called The Art of the Deal, they’re going to teach him a lesson, which is the Persian lesson: the art of the negotiation,” Emanuel said. “And he just got schooled, unbelievably.” He called the war with Iran “the single worst — and there’s a lot of competition for it — American national security mess that I’ve ever seen.”

The MOU offered immediate sanctions relief for the Islamic Republic and launched a 60-day window for nuclear negotiations. 

The 2028 contenders who have commented on the deal have generally done so without much detail. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro criticized the agreement in an interview with CNBC on Monday, though he shared little in the way of specific critiques or concerns.

“I think what’s clear is the Trump administration, the president, specifically chose to enter this war and had absolutely no plan when he went in, and that’s why he’s got no idea how to get out,” said Shapiro. “The president created a mess, and now he’s dispatched JD Vance … to try and figure out a way out of it, and seemingly both of them are getting played by the Iranians.”

A spokesperson for Shapiro declined to comment further. 

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has used the deal as a political talking point. He was asked by reporters on Monday and Tuesday to respond to a social media post where Trump called on Pritzker to seek his help in responding to gun violence in Chicago. In response, Pritzker referred to Trump’s Iran negotiations as a reason why he would never want to ask Trump for help.

“This is the president who wants to blame everybody else for algae that showed up at the Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C.,” Pritzker told reporters during an event in Illinois on Tuesday, “the same president that thinks that after bombing Iran, that they should pick up the phone and call him, and indeed, who’s failing to put together an agreement that is anywhere near as good as the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], that was the agreement that he ripped up as president of the United States.” 

Last week, he said at a Punchbowl News event that the deal sounds like it is “really just a cessation of hostilities and pushing off into the future negotiations about things.”

Some Democrats considering a 2028 run are avoiding the question entirely for now. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who on the day the U.S. began its campaign in Iran referred to the American actions as an “illegal, dangerous war,” has thus far not weighed on the MOU. Anthony Martinez, a spokesperson for Newsom, said that “Trump’s reckless war” has been costly to Americans. “That’s a bad deal for hardworking Americans, plain and simple,” Martinez said. He declined to comment on the MOU. 

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have also criticized the war but so far refrained from discussing the agreement.

Most potential Democratic 2028 contenders view the Iran war as a hard-to-solve morass, with little offered in the way of alternatives to a war and deal that they oppose. Merely criticizing Trump for an unpopular war appears to be enough. 

Shapiro acknowledged that he wants the U.S. to come out ahead in the war, but he said he doesn’t see how that will be possible with Trump leading the negotiations.

“I’m on Team USA. I want us to win, but this is the problem when you have a president who is just hell-bent on creating chaos around the world,” Shapiro said on CNBC. “What we need instead is steady-handed leadership, and we don’t have that right now.”

Pritzker pointed to the 2015 Obama nuclear deal as the best-case alternative, although that deal is now defunct.

“It’s a real question whether there’s any advancement at all of U.S. interests,” said Pritzker. “I think the question I think we’re all going to have to ask is, is this any better than the JCPOA that was already in place when Donald Trump tore it up in his first term?” 

It was a line that former Vice President Kamala Harris, who is also mulling a presidential bid in 2028, echoed recently. 

“This is a president who has proven himself to be entirely self-indulgent. And we will see what happens in the coming hours and days in terms of the negotiation. And really, it’s a concept of an agreement,” Harris said last week at a speech during a conference in Vienna. “Whatever is being negotiated, this president is going to declare victory, and we’ll end up where we were after the JCPOA and call that a victory.” 

Far-left lawmaker Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who has said he is considering a 2028 run, called the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran “welcome news that Americans should support.” But he said it “delivers Iran a better deal” than the JCPOA that Trump “spent years ridiculing.” His message got a boost on X on Tuesday from former Secretary of State Tony Blinken.

“Wise words from my friend,” Blinken wrote. 

Good Tuesday afternoon.

This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.

Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by JI U.S. Editor Danielle Cohen-Kanik.

📡On Our Radar

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

The U.S. and Iran continued to offer conflicting accounts of the agreement reached over the weekend: President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social this morning that Iran “fully and completely agreed to highest level Nuclear inspections long into the future,” without which “there would be no further negotiations.” But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said it was untrue and that the parties had not discussed any nuclear issues.

About Tehran’s denial, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. “know[s] what [Iran] agreed to do, and now they’ll either do it or they won’t. And if they do, the process moves forward. And if they don’t, the president will have some decisions to make”…

---

Trump also said in his post that the funds received by Iran through the deal will go “into escrow, controlled by the U.S.A., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies.” Yet the Treasury Department’s waiver of Iranian oil sanctions contains no such language and the text of the memorandum of understanding says unfrozen Iranian assets “shall be made fully usable” for “any ultimate beneficiary designated by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran”…

---

Meanwhile, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi were in Muscat speaking with Omani leaders about the Strait of Hormuz: In a joint statement, the parties said their foreign ministries will work towards an agreement on the “future administration” of the strait, the “services that will be provided in this regard and the costs associated with them,” as the Trump administration has repeatedly stated it will not accept any tolls placed on transit through the key waterway…

---

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was also abroad, meeting in Islamabad with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, where Pezeshkian said Iran’s ballistic missile program “will never be” up for negotiation with the U.S…

---

Jerusalem is publicly expressing concern about the Lebanon deconfliction mechanism established by the U.S. and Iran for the first time, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports: At the opening of Israel and Lebanon’s fifth round of direct talks taking place in Washington today, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter claimed the parties are “heading towards a train wreck.”

Leiter said he’s “concerned the concept of deconfliction is misplaced” because “Israel is not in conflict with Lebanon,” and that Israel had assumed “the central issue was Lebanon and Hezbollah — not the extent to which Iran could restrain Hezbollah. That is not Iran’s role”…

---

Rubio, arriving in Abu Dhabi, said the U.S.-Iran and Israel-Lebanon tracks “are separate because Lebanon is a sovereign country,” and that the U.S. is “going to negotiate a deal directly with the Lebanese government,” without mentioning Israel.

Rubio also made clear that Iran is responsible for much of the terror activity in the Middle East, striking a different tone than that of Vice President JD Vance, JI’s Danielle Cohen-Kanik reports, after Vance said yesterday the U.S. is counting on Iran to “rein in” Hezbollah…

---

The Senate passed a war powers resolution this afternoon directing the administration to withdraw U.S. forces from Iran, 50-48, with GOP Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) voting in favor with Democrats,JI’s Marc Rod reports.

The resolution, now passed by both chambers, came as a concurrent resolution — meaning it will not be submitted to the president and, based on past court precedent, is not seen as carrying the force of law…

---

A manifesto allegedly left by the gunman behind yesterday’s rampage in Côte-des-Neiges, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in Montreal, repeatedly targeted Jews and Zionists, specifically identifying “influential Zionists” among his intended victims, JI’s Haley Cohen reports…

---

New York City First Lady Rama Duwaji posted an Instagram story today flashing an “I Voted” sticker and encouraging her followers to support two congressional candidates endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America: Assemblymember Claire Valdez and doctoral candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier. Not receiving a mention was the only Jewish congressional candidate endorsed by her husband: former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, JI’s Will Bredderman reports…

---

Ammar Campa-Najjar, a DSA-backed candidate who was recently defeated in his run for a California congressional seat, launched a new PAC called Democratic Majority for America — a counter to Democratic Majority for Israel, which organized against him in the June primary — to support progressive candidates who want to end aid to Israel, Politico reports.

The PAC, which Campa-Najjar said has about $100,000 in cash on hand, has already endorsed California congressional candidate Randy Villegas and far-left Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed…

---

AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has spent more than $38 million backing candidates this election cycle so far through direct and indirect spending, according to Politico, surpassing the $26 million it spent on the 2022 midterms…

---

The Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, headed by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, announced the formation of its inaugural advisory board, including Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, Dentons CEO Kate Barton, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav…

⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for primary results from key races in New York and Maryland, as well as a postmortem on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s ability to wield his political capital in the three congressional races where he endorsed progressive candidates.

---

President Donald Trump is expected to attend a GOP Senate luncheon as he remains at odds with his party over several legislative efforts and as some Republicans speak out against his efforts to curb Israeli operations against Hezbollah.

---

In the afternoon, Trump will hold a rally on the National Mall to kick off his Great American State Fair in the lead-up to the country’s 250th anniversary.

---

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is slated to brief House Republicans tomorrow as the Pentagon gears up for a contentious fight over an expected $80 billion supplemental funding request tied largely to the Iran war.

---

The House Appropriations Committee will mark up the 2027 defense spending bill.

---

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) will speak in conversation with Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick as well as leaders from other religious groups, including the Union for Reform Judaism and Orthodox Union, about the Jewish American Security Act.

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Good Thursday afternoon.

This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.

Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by Senior National Correspondent Gabby Deutch.

📡On Our Radar

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

As the White House continues to promote the memorandum of understanding that will end the war with Iran and start negotiations between Washington and Tehran, Vice President JD Vance is out with a message that sounds strikingly familiar — at least to anyone who followed former President Barack Obama’s pitch on the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

“If you think this is a bad deal, what is your alternative?” Vance said in an interview this week with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. 

Obama used nearly identical phrasing at a 2015 White House press conference: “I’m hearing a lot of talking points being repeated about ‘this is a bad deal,’” he said. “What I haven’t heard is, what is your preferred alternative?”

Watch a side-by-side look at Vance and Obama here…

Vance also delivered a tough message to Israeli officials who have criticized the MOU, telling reporters on Thursday that Israel’s government should be careful not to alienate the only friend it has left: President Donald Trump, JI’s Emily Jacobs reports.

“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time and he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower. If I was in the Cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” said Vance…

Trump also had a word of caution for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, two days after he said Netanyahu was too “vicious” in his approach to fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon. Asked by a reporter for Israel’s Kan News if he will support Netanyahu in this year’s Israeli elections, Trump said he most likely would, but did not commit.

“I’ll have to look at who’s running, but I like Bibi very much. I would be most likely to endorse him,” said Trump. “He’s doing a very good job, he’s got to be a little bit more rational”…

United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group that rallied opposition to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, said on Thursday that it “cannot endorse the MoU in its current form”…

AIPAC released a policy memo on Thursday that said the MOU “raises significant questions,” and called on Congress to “play a critical role in ensuring a final deal meets President Trump’s stated objectives for the war”…

In a Thursday speech at the FII Priority summit in Rome, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama blamed Iran for “ruthless” cyberattacks against the country, claiming that Tehran has sought to sow unrest about a preliminarily approved luxury development project in the country from Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, JI’s Matthew Shea reports…

Janeese Lewis George defeated Kenyan McDuffie in the Democratic primary for mayor of Washington, D.C., with the Associated Press calling the race on Thursday afternoon. Democratic socialist Lewis George leads McDuffie 53% to 36%…

American Priorities, a super PAC created as a progressive counterweight to AIPAC, has received $250,000 from a tech executive whose firm is developing AI data centers in New York State — while boosting two democratic socialist House candidates who oppose efforts to expand data centers, JI’s Matthew Kassel reports…

Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ), who has been absent from Congress since March due to an unexplained personal health issue, plans to return to Washington on June 30…

Israel and Syria are expected to resume direct talks soon due to pressure from the U.S., the Israeli network Kan reports…

The FBI announced that it charged San Diego resident Reda Mazen Rida Sabassi with conspiring to provide material support to Hamas after he allegedly raised approximately $600,000 through fraudulent charitable campaigns and funneled a portion to the terrorist organization…

Former Presidents Joe Biden, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton attended the grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on Thursday afternoon.

Guests included a litany of ex-Obama administration staffers, including former White House liaison to the Jewish community Matt Nosanchuk and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who was spotted chatting with Obama…

⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider for a look at how Jewish Republicans are feeling about the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding that was signed this week. 

Vice President JD Vance plans to travel to Switzerland this weekend for talks with Iran, though the plans are not yet finalized, he told reporters on Thursday. 

Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, will become the acting director of national intelligence on Friday after the confirmation of DNI nominee Jay Clayton was delayed this week at President Donald Trump’s request. 

We’ll be monitoring the final days of the heated congressional primary campaigns in New York, where Israel and Gaza remain hot topics for progressive candidates. 

We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!

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As Vice President JD Vance takes on the role of chief defender of the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding and forthcoming talks, he has begun to sound a lot like someone whom the Trump administration has lately spent a lot of time attacking: former President Barack Obama.

Vance and President Donald Trump have both, in recent days, made clear that they view the MOU — which is set to deliver sanctions relief to Iran as nuclear negotiations get underway — as fundamentally different from, and better than, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal signed by Obama. But as the White House faces criticism from hawkish members of the Republican Party, the language Vance is using to defend the burgeoning deal closely resembles the arguments made by Obama 11 years ago.

“If you think this is a bad deal, what is your alternative?” Vance said in an interview this week with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. 

Flashback to a 2015 press conference at the White House soon after the JCPOA was announced. 

“I’m hearing a lot of talking points being repeated about ‘this is a bad deal,’” Obama said. “What I haven’t heard is, what is your preferred alternative?”

Both Vance in 2026 and Obama in 2015 argued that the deals negotiated by their respective administrations were better than using military force — or in the case of the Trump deal, continuing to use military force — and that they would lead to a safer world.

“We could drop more bombs. We could destroy more of their country. We could kill the current iteration of their leadership. We know where all of them are. All of those things could happen,” Vance said. “But does that make the American people safer or more prosperous? The president of the United States and I think: No.”

Obama frequently argued similarly.

“If the alternative is that we should bring Iran to heel through military force, then those critics should say so,” he said at the 2015 press conference. “We’ve got a historic chance to pursue a safer and more secure world, an opportunity that may not come again in our lifetimes.”

“None of them have presented to me, or the American people, a better alternative.” -Obama, 2015
“It’s not just whether this is good or bad, it’s what is the alternative.” -Vance, 2026

As Vice President JD Vance takes on the role of chief defender of the U.S.-Iran MOU and the… pic.twitter.com/TB5bvxINM5

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) June 18, 2026

There are substantive differences between the agreements notched by the Obama and Trump administrations, though both share the core assertion that they will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. 

“The Obama-Iran deal allowed them to generate a stockpile of enriched uranium,” Vance claimed, although the JCPOA required Iran to limit the level to which it enriched uranium, cut its stockpile by 98% and ship the rest of its enriched uranium out of the country.  “Our deal ensures that stockpile is destroyed and eliminated, so that’s a very, very big difference, a very important difference for the American people,” Vance said this week. (The text of the 14-point MOU says only that the uranium will be discussed during the forthcoming negotiations.)

But both Vance and Obama, in their roles as salesmen of their administrations’ respective deals, argued that critics simply misunderstand the agreements.

“I just don’t think that people who are criticizing this, one, they’re not actually dealing with the reality of what’s in it, and No. 2, they don’t have an alternative,” Vance said in a podcast interview with Megyn Kelly this week. 

Obama told NPR’s Steve Inskeep in 2015 that critics of his deal get the facts wrong.

“I’ve listened to the critics, some of them who announced their opposition before they had even read the bill, or read the agreement. And that is that they will put forward arguments that after a few minutes can be shown as illogical or based on the wrong facts,” said Obama.

Vance challenged critics to come up with a better alternative beyond more fighting. 

“What is it that they wanted us to do besides put 300,000 ground troops in Iranian soil, which we were never going to do?” he said to Kelly. “If your alternative is just to drop bombs without any clear goal or any clear American interest implicated, then you’re not making wise decisions on behalf of the American people.”

Former Secretary of State John Kerry argued something similar before Congress in 2015.

“So what’s your plan?” he asked. “Totally go to war?”

Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon were among the high-profile invitees at a dinner in France on Wednesday during which President Donald Trump signed the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran.

After Trump signed the agreement at the dinner, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles, Schwarzman was seen applauding in video footage of the event. Dimon, who was sitting two seats down from Macron — who was beside Trump — appeared to film the moment on his phone. Afterward, Macron shook hands with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump, saying, “Great job, bravo!”

French businessman Bernard Arnault, CEO OF LVMH, was also at the event, seated next to French First Lady Brigitte Macron.

Hours earlier, the Trump administration shared with journalists the official text of the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran to establish a ceasefire with Iran, permanently end Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, reopen the Strait of Hormuz while ending the U.S. naval blockade and kickstart a 60-day negotiation period on the future of Iran’s nuclear program and the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

Good Wednesday afternoon.

This P.M. briefing is reserved for our premium subscribers like you — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.

Today’s Daily Overtime was curated by Senior National Correspondent Gabby Deutch.

📡On Our Radar

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

After days in which President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other senior officials boosted the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding — and amid calls from Capitol Hill and beyond to make public the agreement’s details — the White House on Wednesday shared the text of the document that the Trump administration said will end the war against Tehran. Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs obtained the text of the MOU, which was read aloud to reporters during a call with a senior administration official.

The MOU states that the two nations “and their respective allies in the current war” will permanently end military operations — including against Lebanon, a stipulation that suggests the deal is meant to suspend Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Hezbollah, a provision for which Israel has not yet expressed approval. Iran “reaffirms” in the MOU that it will not “procure or develop nuclear weapons”…

The MOU text also reveals that the U.S. plans to issue a sanctions waiver to Iran so that it can sell oil, a major policy shift away from Trump’s use of sanctions against Iran. If a final deal is reached, the U.S. committed to ending all sanctions on Iran. Trump said earlier in the day at the G7 summit in France that the U.S. will not invest in Iran but would not stop other countries from doing so, JI’s Matthew Shea reports.

One new piece of information Trump shared on Wednesday that was not directly addressed in the MOU: a nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran would not prohibit the Iranians from possessing ballistic missiles, JI’s Matthew Shea reports. “I mean, they have to have some, because other people have some … It doesn’t work that way. And missiles aren’t the problem,” Trump said at the G7.

The agreement does not address Iran’s ballistic missiles or support for terrorist proxies. At the beginning of the war, the Trump administration said eliminating the ballistic missile threat from Iran was a key war aim…

The MOU asserts that a final deal will be negotiated within 60 days, unless both countries agree to extend the deadline. Iran’s naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz must be lifted within 30 days. 

When talking to reporters after landing in Paris this afternoon, Trump said he does not view the 60-day deadline as a hard deadline. “Just as long as they’re behaving, I really don’t care that much,” Trump said.

Vance, not Trump, will be signing the MOU in Switzerland on Friday. “This way if it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD,” Trump said during the G7…

Some Republican senators criticized the MOU, with retiring Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) calling it “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades,” JI’s Marc Rod reports…

Dario Amodei and Sam Altman, the CEOs, respectively, of Anthropic and OpenAI, joined Trump and the other G7 leaders for lunch on Wednesday, along with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis… 

The planned Senate confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee to serve as director of national intelligence, was scuttled on Wednesday morning after a last-minute Truth Social post from the president saying that the hearing would be canceled, prompting frustration from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, JI’s Marc Rod reports…

As a major shareholder in Volkswagen, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund is complicating talks between the German automaker and the Israeli state-owned defense company Rafael over Rafael’s intention to buy a plant from Volkswagen to manufacture components for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense systems…

The anti-Israel advocacy group TrackAIPAC, which attacks lawmakers who have received support from pro-Israel groups and donors who have supported Israel-related causes, endorsed Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who once was targeted by TrackAIPAC before moving sharply to the left on Israel in recent months…

After eight people were indicted last week for allegedly threatening University of Michigan leaders and their families as part of an anti-Israel pressure campaign, former Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lon Johnson called on the party’s current leadership to review the actions of five of the suspects who were members of the Michigan Democratic Party…

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights announced on Wednesday that it is opening an antisemitism investigation into the American Psychological Association, the nation’s largest professional organization for mental health professionals. JI’s Gabby Deutch reported on the APA’s handling of antisemitism last summer…

⏩ 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 some of the country’s most prominent Jewish communal leaders are marking America’s 250th birthday this July Fourth.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) will be speaking in the morning at a fireside chat at the Hudson Institute focused on “diplomacy, defense and debt.”

We’ll be monitoring the results of Tuesday’s mayoral primary election in Washington, D.C., which still has not been called, even as Janeese Lewis George leads Kenyan McDuffie 53% to 37%, with 68% of the vote counted. 

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Republicans doubt Iran will follow through on nuclear commitments

Senators on both sides of the aisle say they’re eager to see the text of the agreement, but the administration has not yet made plans to brief Congress

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President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that the U.S. would not forbid Iran from possessing ballistic missiles, downplaying the threat despite it being a key war aim in the onset of the conflict. Speaking at the G7 summit in France, the president asserted that the majority of Iran’s missile capabilities have been destroyed and that he could not enforce the provision since other countries also “have some.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio asserted in March that a key U.S. aim in the war would be “the destruction of Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and their ability to manufacture them.”

“I mean, they have to have some, because other people have some … It doesn’t work that way. And missiles aren’t the problem,” Trump explained. “Missiles are, they hurt a little location, but they don’t blow up the planet.”

When asked whether it would be acceptable for the administration to allow Iran to keep its ballistic missiles, Trump argued that Tehran’s capacity has been significantly depleted over the course of the conflict. 

“What are they keeping?” Trump responded. “We knocked out probably 84%-85% of their missiles. The rest are underground, they can’t even get them out. On the first night we knocked out hundreds of their missiles.”

Trump also asserted that Iran does not “want to be firing missiles right now,” noting that instead Tehran is likely focused on rebuilding what has been damaged during the war. 

WATCH: When asked whether it would be acceptable for the administration to allow Iran to keep its ballistic missiles, Trump argued that their capacity has been significantly depleted over the course of the conflict.

“What are they keeping?” Trump responded. “We knocked out… pic.twitter.com/Ysu5MfiZjt

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) June 17, 2026

The president also praised Israel as a “good partner” in the conflict and argued that the nuclear restrictions laid out in the U.S.’ agreement with Tehran are the ultimate victory for Jerusalem. According to Trump, if Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon, “Israel would have been blown away.”

“Look, think of what Israel’s getting, they’re not going to be nuked, very simple,” Trump said. “I told [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu], ‘Your biggest risk was that they [Iran] drop a nuclear weapon into the middle of Israel. They’d only need one, and there would be no more Israel. Think of it, Bibi, you got the best, the most important thing that you were asking for is that. So, I think they’re happy.”

Regarding the technical specifics of the deal, Trump stated that Iran has agreed to work with the U.S. to “turn over” its enriched material. He noted that while the material is secured “deep in the bowels of the earth” and monitored by cameras, technical discussions to remove the stockpiles would begin immediately. He insisted that, unlike the Obama administration’s implementation of the JCPOA, any relief Iran receives under this framework would be strictly “based on merit.”

Additionally, while Trump maintained that the U.S. did not enter the conflict seeking “regime change,” he argued that the war’s casualties effectively accomplished that by wiping out multiple tiers of Iranian leadership.

“They have a new group of leaders that I think is actually very smart, I think they’re far less radicalized, and I think they’re really good. They love their country,” Trump said. “You talk about regime change, nobody will say that, but … one set of leaders is all gone, the second set of leaders is all gone, their third set of leaders a little bit gone, but for the most part, I think that’s regime change.”

Trump also returned to vocalizing his frustrations with Israel’s military approach against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“Israel, by the way, they’ve been a good partner again. I love them as a partner. They were terrific, but they could do a much better job with Hezbollah. On that, I don’t think they’re doing well, and I feel very bad for Lebanon,” Trump said. “I’m not saying they shouldn’t protect themselves. I’m saying, when two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly, you don’t have to knock down buildings in Beirut. [Israel] could behave better, and frankly, they could do a better job.”

Trump characterized the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah as a “very small piece of the puzzle” compared to the agreement with Iran, though he said it “makes a lot of noise,” adding that he has urged Netanyahu to use a “softer touch” when conducting strikes.

“He happens to be a very good man. We’ve had an amazing partnership,” Trump said of Netanyahu. “We have a little dispute over Lebanon. I say you can do a little softer touch, maybe you don’t have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that’s from Hezbollah … but he will say we’re the big partner, he’s the very small partner, that’s true.”

The president contrasted the situation in Lebanon with what he described as major progress in the Gaza Strip, claiming that “Hamas has been very silent” as the U.S. attempts to disarm the group.

“Look at the job we’ve done in Gaza. Look at Hamas. Hamas has been very silent. You haven’t read anything about Hamas. We’re trying to get them unarmed,” Trump remarked. “They grew up with a machine gun in their hand … but they’ve actually behaved pretty well, considering this was not the lifestyle that they were taught to have.”

Republican senators said on Tuesday that they’re skeptical that Iran will hold to any commitments it has made or may make in negotiations with the U.S., and urged the administration to release the terms of the memorandum of understanding announced on Sunday.

The administration has not yet communicated any specific plans to brief Congress on the deal.

“Rather than an end to the activities in Iran, I think it’s more of an intermission,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told reporters. “We still haven’t seen what the documents look like, and regardless of what they look like, I don’t think you can trust the Iranian regime.”

Cornyn added, “I need to see the writing — I need to see the print. But I don’t believe that the regime will abide by it.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) emphasized that the U.S. has been in similar positions with Iran before, and that they have not resulted in a viable long-term agreement. He told Jewish Insider that he thinks it’s “generous to call it a deal, it sounds like it’s a deal in progress … and if we’re making progress, that’s good.”

But he said that it’s hard for him to assess an agreement “that we only get described in broad strokes.”

He said he would also be uncomfortable with any arrangement that provided Iran with a financial windfall. Multiple outlets reported Tuesday afternoon that the MOU includes financial incentives for Iran, including lifting various sanctions.

“I’m worried only because at least some of our decisions seem to be affected by the short-term economic impact [of the war], and that’s not a good decision,” Tillis said. “Talking about some of the money that Iran’s going to start receiving. … If all of the sudden we’re pulling back some of the things that were in place even before the operation, I’ve got a real concern because they’re a totalitarian regime.”

He told JI that the U.S.’s current posture and negotiations with Iran make it appear that “we’re willing to accept a totalitarian regime, and so the question is, how does this agreement match up against the original objectives of this initiative” as laid out by the administration at the beginning of the war.

Tillis added that Trump should explain to the country the national security interests and necessities of the U.S. operations against Iran, and that some short-term economic harm might be a consequence of that.

“That should be the case to the American people, and then you stay strong, versus have a sub-optimal or bad deal that actually enriches the very people that you were focused on trying to take out,” Tillis said. “Now that we’re here, you can’t all of a sudden say that because people are really frustrated with gas prices, that the nuclear threat in Iran is a manageable risk, because that is 180 degrees away from the predicate for going in there to begin with.”

Tillis said that the final deal should be made public, or at least shown to members in a classified setting — though he said he was skeptical there was much substance in the page-and-a-half document described by Vice President JD Vance, given its length.

He also reiterated comments from Monday that any final agreement should be subject to ratification by Congress, as the only way to ensure that such a deal would last. 

“Trump could have a real foreign policy legacy but he’s been poorly influenced because he’s just so insecure. I’ve never seen anything like it. His conviction is his own popularity, his own attention, his own credit. It hurts my heart a little,” another Republican senator told JI. “I just was hoping that the second term he wouldn’t do what he’s done, and that is to make it all about himself like his first term.”

“I don’t know what’s in [the MOU],” the senator added. “Don’t trust any senator who says they know what’s in the deal. They don’t know. I mean, none of us know, not really.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told JI the agreement “looks to me like it’s a deal to make a deal.”

“The only facts I know today are that the blockades on both sides have been lifted. We’re supposed to negotiate more over [60] days,” Kennedy continued. “The Iranian government Iran lies like fish swim. I have no idea, and neither does anyone else, whether they will make concessions. The other thing I know is that Iran is immeasurably weaker today than it was a year ago.”

He added that he does not expect that the “religious zealots” in Iran have “had an epiphany” and will give up their nuclear program.

Kennedy said he’s “sure” the text of the deal will be released this week. In the interim, “If you don’t know [what’s in it], you should shut up, and none of us … know what’s in it. I think we ought to wait and see what’s in it first,” Kennedy continued.

Asked about reports that Iran would be receiving up-front sanctions relief as part of the MOU, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said, “I’d be surprised, I haven’t seen that. I think we’re all in the position we’d like to see the MOU. Unless there’s something in there that they’ve already changed their ways, I don’t know how you’d be entitled to sanctions relief.”

“I think we’d all like to see it,” Scott reiterated, when asked whether he was concerned the administration hasn’t released the text yet. “Then we’d be able to answer questions on specifics.”

Though some Senate Republicans are eager to see the agreement, there do not yet appear to be any specific plans to brief them on it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told JI on Tuesday that he was not yet aware of any plans for the administration to brief Congress on the contents of the MOU between the U.S. and Iran, as lawmakers continue to call for transparency on the agreement.

“Not that I’m aware of yet. [I’m] going to find that out,” Thune told JI, when asked whether the administration had notified him of plans to brief lawmakers.

On the other hand, Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE), said, “The administration probably has a reason for doing what they’re doing. I don’t know what it is, have not been briefed. We’ll all find out on Friday, and then I expect a briefing after that.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) likewise said his understanding is that the text of the agreement will be released after the formal signing ceremony on Friday.

Democrats have also been critical of the administration for failing to release the text of the MOU, and described it as a bad deal — though many say they support an end to the conflict anyway.

 “He has not released text, but we know one thing about this president: if he had a great deal, he’d be jumping up and down, and doing a press event with the text. The fact that he announced the deal, got on a plane, left the country, and is now letting JD Vance explain it tells you everything you need to know,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told JI.

He said he doesn’t expect the administration to come to “consult, brief or include us” in any capacity, including under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act.

“They should have come to us, consulted us, briefed us and explained to the American people what their objectives were at the outset, but I don’t expect their conduct to be any different at the conclusion, if there is one. This is such an internally flawed arrangement that it seems to be inevitable that it will fall apart in a matter of weeks,” Coons continued.

“Trump must hold a classified meeting on his so-called ‘understanding’ with Iran. He must brief all of Congress,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said. “He must inform the American people and make the ‘understanding’ public. … Americans need to know how and when this war will truly end.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said that if the deal touches on Iran’s nuclear program, the administration legally has to submit the agreement to Congress, but if the current deal does not include specific commitments on the nuclear program, it may not need to be submitted.

“We’ll know on Friday, and at that point, when it’s all out on the table, I probably have more to say,” Kaine said, declining to comment on potential concessions in the deal until it has been publicized.

A year and a day after Israeli fighter jets first opened fire above Iran, setting off a year of intermittent fighting and numerous failed negotiations, President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that an agreement with Iran to end the war had been reached. A signing ceremony set for later this week in Switzerland — which is expected to be attended by Vice President JD Vance — will kick off a 60-negotiation period to address Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

For Americans, the deal closes a chapter that saw high gas and food prices as well as schisms in the GOP as the party’s wings fought over how the war should be fought and ended. Among Democrats, legislators and activists from the party’s progressive wing — from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to the National Iranian American Council’s Trita Parsi (who additionally gloated, “Netanyahu failed!”) — praised the deal.

But Israel was not part of the negotiations, nor did it have final say in what was in the agreement inked between Washington and Tehran. As the Is were dotted and Ts were crossed on the agreement, tensions between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — already on display following Israel’s threatened escalation last week in Beirut, followed by an actual escalation on Sunday when Israel struck Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood — deepened. In a call on Sunday after Israel conducted the strike — later claiming to have killed a senior Hezbollah commander — Trump told Axios he had conveyed to Netanyahu that he “was so pissed off.” Netanyahu, Trump said, “has no f***ing judgement. I let him know that.”

In Israel, the deal is being met with dismay across the board, as neither of the war goals laid out by Netanyahu last June — removing Iran’s “existential threats” to Israel and ending Tehran’s support for its terror proxies across the region — have been met, even after a year of fighting.

With elections in the country fast approaching, Netanyahu, who has long billed himself as “Mr. Security,” is already finding himself on the receiving end of criticism from across the political spectrum. Former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman blasted the deal as “catastrophe from Israel’s perspective,” while prominent right-wing Israeli journalist Amit Segal posted an ominous quote from former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

The question now is what, exactly, is in the agreement. Iran’s state-linked Mehr agency reported that under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. will release $12 billion in frozen assets to Iran before talks begin.

Fox News reported that the $12 billion figure, as well as other reports of the deal’s stipulations, are incorrect, and that officials within the Trump administration are growing frustrated over rumors about the contours of the agreement.

Calls for the deal’s text to be made public have come from even Trump’s staunchest supporters. Commentator Mark Levin said he has “asked for days, why can’t we, the people, see the damn MOU?” Levin added that he had “never seen anything like this. If it is a great outcome for peace, then release it.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on X on Sunday that he was “somewhat concerned” that Iran’s account of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire deal diverges sharply from what the U.S. negotiators are claiming, and demanded Vice President JD Vance personally present the deal to Congress. 

The vice president, who two months ago traveled to Pakistan for high-level negotiations with Iranian officials, has increasingly become the public face of the Iran talks. In an interview last week that aired yesterday on “CBS Sunday Morning,” Vance said he believed “that we are in a position to get a deal that is good for the United States economically and that really does deal with the Iranian nuclear program” in the long term.

For Vance, the success or failure of the deal, and of the negotiations to follow, could become one of the defining political issues of his rumored 2028 presidential bid — one in which he will likely find himself up against Secretary of State Marco Rubio in what could be a bruising primary.

With the deal’s signing later this week, the military phase of the war — begun just over a year ago — will conclude. But what comes next is the political phase, which will determine Iran’s nuclear future, Israeli security policy and the direction of U.S. foreign policy in the region for decades to come. 

The United States and Iran have secured a ceasefire agreement, President Donald Trump announced on Sunday. The deal is slated to immediately freeze regional military actions, and will lift the U.S. naval blockade and restore commercial shipping through the critical Strait of Hormuz after a formal signing ceremony set for Friday in Switzerland.

“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday. “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade.” He later clarified the Strait would open after the deal was officially signed on Friday.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, also told Iranian media that the agreement had been finalized and stressed that Iran’s “commitments will take effect starting Friday.” 

The agreement establishes a 60-day ceasefire extension, during which Washington and Tehran are expected to enter technical negotiations on the scope of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and the dismantling of its highly enriched uranium stockpiles. The cessation of hostilities extends across the entire region, including in Lebanon, according to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped mediate the agreement.

“Following intensive talks, we are pleased to announce that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED,” Sharif posted on X. He noted that international mediators will facilitate a “series of meetings” and “technical talks” ahead of the signing ceremony.

Sharif’s statement thanked Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey for their roles in the negotiations, but made no mention of Israel, which had fought alongside the U.S. in the conflict with Iran.

The diplomatic breakthrough followed a tense escalation earlier on Sunday that threatened to derail the negotiations. Israeli forces struck Hezbollah targets in Beirut in response to a Hezbollah drone strike on northern Israel, prompting Tehran to warn it would abandon talks and strike against Israel.

Vice President JD Vance said the U.S. was able to deter an Iranian attack on Israel prior to the deal being reached. “After the Israelis struck Beirut, we saw a lot of evidence the Iranians were going to launch a large number of missiles at…them,” Vance said on Fox News. “[Iran] assured us they were not going to respond to the Israelis. They were going to sign the agreement, and get to peace.” 

Writing on Truth Social, Trump  criticized the Israeli response as an unnecessary escalation against a “meaningless” initial drone strike, and demanded an immediate halt to all military activity in Lebanon. “There should be no more attacks by Israel anywhere in Lebanon, but there should also be no more attacks by any other party, including Hezbollah, against Israel,” he wrote.

Gharibabadi said the Iranian threats against Israel “helped facilitate progress in the negotiations.” Iranian state media reported that Iran called off the attack on Israel because of “last-minute concessions” offered by Trump, including “preserving Lebanon’s territorial integrity” and Israel’s withdrawal from the Lebanese border. The U.S. did not confirm the reported concessions on Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the IDF would not follow such a request and that Israel does not consider itself bound to the Lebanon ceasefire under the agreement. It is unclear whether the Trump administration will pressure Jerusalem to comply.

Israeli security officials have reportedly expressed concern with the deal, warning that it could harm Israeli security interests and leave Iran stronger.

Efforts to eliminate annual time changes and make daylight saving time permanent are picking up momentum in Congress with strong backing from President Donald Trump — a proposal long opposed by the Orthodox Jewish community.

Orthodox groups say that changing to permanent daylight saving time would have a significant impact on daily Jewish morning prayers, which must be conducted during daylight and would happen well into the workday in certain times of the year, and also raise safety concerns for children commuting to school in the dark. 

They have lobbied for years against making daylight saving time permanent, and past movement toward making the change has repeatedly fizzled out. But the House Energy and Commerce Committee in May voted 48-1 to insert an amendment codifying the change into a high-priority surface transportation package, a must-pass bill that could carry the measure through into law.

Trump and the White House have been directly involved in the effort, Politico reported, urging lawmakers to include the amendment in the package, and making direct calls to lawmakers on the provision.

“We are doing what we always do, which is, first, educate,” A.D. Motzen, the Washington director of Agudath Israel of America, said. “Many members of Congress are not aware of our religious practices, may not be thinking at all about daylight saving time, so it’s going to key members and talking about it.”

“Thankfully many members, after we speak to them, are fascinated,” Motzen continued. “It’s something they were not thinking about, not aware of, plus the safety issues for children, and are definitely thinking, thinking twice — even those who had maybe expressed support or did not have an opinion are thinking now.”

Motzen said that many lawmakers who support the legislation, known as the Sunshine Protection Act, don’t have strong feelings about whether daylight saving or standard time should be permanent — they just don’t want to change the clocks.

“So then we have an avenue to say, ‘OK, but if you do it this way, this affects us.’ So now they have … to balance between other arguments to do it the other way,” Motzen said.

Motzen said that the Orthodox community prefers the status quo of twice-annual time changes, a pattern to which they have adjusted, but that permanent standard time would raise fewer concerns than permanent daylight saving time.

The traditional proponents of permanent daylight saving time have been entertainment and recreation industries like golf, and many in Florida. Health advocates and physicians have been pushing for permanent standard time. The agriculture and airline industries have traditionally been advocates for the status quo, alongside parents’ groups and the Jewish community.

Motzen said that some of the opponents of the time changes have been less vocal recently, in part because “most people just assumed this issue was dead” — there’s periodic attention to it around the biannual clock changes, but it usually “goes away.”

“So I think that this is more of a surprise, because until now the president has not weighed in” in favor of making daylight saving time permanent, Motzen said, adding that Congress and Washington are tackling a range of other priority issues. “I don’t think that people had permanent daylight saving time on their bingo card of a must pass bill for this session.”

That the bill was attached to a must-pass package has made its passage more likely, he said, and he largely credited Trump with that development. He said, however, there are still opportunities to remove the provision or have it modified as it moves to the full House or especially the Senate.

“You have states that are going to … push back on its conclusion,” he said, noting that it is far from a cleanly partisan issue. “The Senate might be a little more deliberate, as they are fond of doing. … That part of the bill [might be] looked at more carefully.”

Motzen also noted that permanent daylight saving time was tried in the mid-1970s, and it quickly became a widely unpopular move that was repealed. At the time, he said, the change also had clear effects on the Orthodox Jewish community, which has grown significantly and has a larger presence across the country today.

In the ’70s, he said, there were examples of synagogues that had daily morning minyans for a century which then struggled to find 10 men who could attend daylight services before work. Some Jews had to find time to pray during their shifts, which was not an option for others.

“It has a permanent effect on the synagogue structure — [taking a break at work] would take care of his personal obligation to pray every day. It does not solve the problem that you have synagogue services that cannot get a quorum,” Motzen said. “It won’t solve the problem of a school that has safety issues for their [start times].”

President Donald Trump named Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, as his nominee to replace Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, after a two-week furor over his plans to name federal housing chief Bill Pulte to the role in an acting capacity.

But the nomination likely comes too late to prevent a lapse on Friday of federal foreign surveillance authorities under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Democrats have refused to reauthorize in protest of the Pulte pick.

Clayton is also a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and partner at  Sullivan & Cromwell. “Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay. I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible,” Trump said in his announcement on Truth Social.

Though his career hasn’t been focused on national security issues, Clayton’s time at the SEC and the SDNY gave him background in law enforcement, security and counterterrorism issues, which could help assuage concerns on the Hill.

Clayton signed the U.S. indictment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro ahead of Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces in Caracas.

After his time in the first Trump administration, among other roles, Clayton served as an advisor to Fireblocks, an Israeli-based cryptocurrency firm.

Trump initially said that Pulte would begin as acting DNI at the end of the month, but subsequently moved his start date earlier, to June 19. It’s unlikely that Clayton could be confirmed before the end of next week, so it remains unclear whether Trump still intends to put Pulte in the role at all.

Trump said Thursday afternoon that Pulte will be DNI for “a little while” and “he’s running it for a short while we get a very talented person, Jay Clayton, in.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters, “Pulte’s got to go. The DNI role is too important for him to be there. He has got to go, period. No matter what else they do.”

Asked whether he would support Clayton, Schumer responded, “I support getting rid of Pulte. That’s unequivocal.”

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY) told Jewish Insider he was “encouraged by the president’s decision to name someone permanently for that role, and it’s the right move.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on X that Clayton is an “outstanding choice” who has “real-world experience, the complete confidence of the President and has performed every task in the public and private sectors in an exemplary manner.”

Some Democrats worried by Trump’s pick of Pulte appear to be at least somewhat relieved by the Clayton nomination.

“[It’s] a vast improvement. I’ll need to look at his record,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told reporters. “I’ll need to look at his record … whether he has experience in the area of national intelligence.”

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on X he has “known and respected Jay Clayton for decades” and that he will be a “terrific DNI.”

“Had this nomination been made a week ago, lots of pain might have been avoided,” Himes said.

Others remain on guard.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) said he needs to research Clayton further before forming an opinion on him but said that he believes Trump “hasn’t changed on the whole idea of using the DNI to effectively screw with the 2026 elections.”

The Clayton nomination seems to come too late to salvage FISA talks before the Section 702 authorities lapse. Both chambers rejected efforts for a short-term extension of surveillance authorities — which Republicans warn creates national security and terrorism risks, especially ahead of the World Cup.

A bill requiring a two-thirds majority in the House was opposed by a majority of the House on Thursday, with Democrats and several Republicans voting against it. The House has now left Washington for a scheduled recess until June 23. 

Senate Democrats blocked efforts to unanimously pass an extension of Section 702 authorities shortly before Trump announced Clayton’s nomination.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “I’ve never been a fan of Director Gabbard, but if Director Gabbard were to stay until he was confirmed, that could be a path out. But again, if there was any level of serious concern about this in the White House — the House has already left town.”

But Warner said he has “great respect” for Clayton.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) told reporters, “Quite frankly, I wish we were talking about the substance of the bill, how we balance national security concerns on the one hand and civil liberties on the other. Instead, once again, Donald Trump is the fly in the ointment, and he’s put forward someone [Pulte] that demonstrates that he’s much more interested in having a political operative over our intelligence agencies than preserving our national security.”

Asked about Clayton, Warnock said, “Pulte has to be out of the equation.”

President Donald Trump said on Thursday that negotiations with Iran had reached a breakthrough and that he expected there to be a signing, possibly in Europe, in the coming days. With the diplomatic developments, Trump said he would cancel planned strikes against Iran, and call off an operation to take control of Kharg Island.

“Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

In the Oval Office, the president said the deal was “in pretty final shape” and predicted that it would “get done over the next few days.” He also claimed that the agreement would ultimately deliver on his assurance that Iran would be prevented from having nuclear weapons and open up the Strait of Hormuz.

“The signing of the agreement will be in Europe, perhaps during the weekend,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon. “I won’t be able to be there, but Vice President [JD] Vance and the [White House special] envoy [Steve] Witkoff will.”

Trump also said that Iran’s supreme leader had approved the deal. However, Iranian state media and a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry have reportedly asserted that Trump’s claims that Iranian leadership had provided approval are “speculative” and that “nothing has been finalized.” 

The president spoke with the Emir of Qatar following the announcement and also with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Reports indicated that Netanyahu was initially surprised by the statement. However, after the conversation between the two leaders, the Prime Minister’s Office said that Netanyahu “expressed his appreciation” for the framework and the inclusion of key objectives related to Iran’s nuclear program and support for terrorism. 

The U.S. and Iran have reportedly closed vital gaps on three main issues that have prolonged diplomatic efforts, including the protocol for releasing Iranian frozen assets, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. 

The announcement came after two days of tit-for-tat strikes between the U.S. and Iran. Earlier on Thursday, Trump warned that the U.S. would hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT” and threatened to seize Kharg Island, which handles roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports.

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday morning that the U.S. could soon launch additional strikes against Iranian power plants and bridges, raising the prospect of a broader military campaign against Tehran as he accused Iran of dragging the U.S. along in diplomatic negotiations.

The president’s comments to Fox News’ Trey Yingst came hours after the U.S. military announced it had targeted Iranian air defense, ground control and surveillance radar sites in response to Iran downing a U.S. Army helicopter on Monday. Iranian state media, meanwhile, claimed attacks on U.S. military facilities in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday morning that Iran had “taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them” and warned that Tehran would now “have to pay the price.”

Trump made similar threats regarding targeting Iranian power plants and bridges as a way to escalate hostilities when he was unsatisfied with negotiations in April, though such strikes were not carried out. 

Trump also disclosed new details about the incident that precipitated the latest U.S. action: According to the president, an Iranian drone became lodged between the two pilots of a U.S. Apache helicopter who guided the helicopter into the sea, where they were rescued “for the first time in U.S. military history” by an unmanned sea drone.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, President Donald Trump said his red line for resuming military action in Iran would be if he didn’t believe the parties could reach a deal in a timely manner, and said U.S. forces could be deployed into Iran to retrieve and destroy the regime’s stockpile of enriched uranium.

Trump continued to assert that Iran is desperate for a deal, even as negotiations appear largely deadlocked and as Esmaeil Baghaei, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, told CNN in Tehran on Sunday that the primary obstacle to an agreement is Washington’s changing and “contradictory” positions. Meanwhile, U.S. and Iranian forces continue to exchange strikes nearly daily around the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump ruled out the prospect of unfreezing any Iranian assets or offering upfront sanctions relief to secure a breakthrough, maintaining that compliance must precede concessions.

“If they behave, if they do a good job, we start talking,” Trump said. But should Iran walk away from the table or drag out the timeline, the president emphasized he would not rule out a return to hostilities.

“My red line would be if I think I wasn’t going to make a deal, or if I wasn’t going to make a deal fast enough,” Trump said of resuming military action, noting that if Iran were to kill additional Americans — more than a dozen U.S. troops have already been killed in the current conflict — that would be “something that I would think about very seriously.”

“We’re having very good negotiations with the people that are leading the country now. It’s the third group that we’ve been dealing with. And they are different. And you could say it’s regime change actually because these are very different people. I find them to be more rational, very smart,” he added. 

Trump specifically noted that he considers Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei — the son of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — a more “rational” negotiating partner. 

“I think [he is] more rational. He’s pretty badly injured. So there’s a certain bravery there,” Trump said. “A lot of people, if they were injured that badly, they wouldn’t be talking about, you know, ‘How are we doing with the United States?’ They’d have other things on their mind. So there’s a certain bravery there. But he is very seriously injured.”

The president further said U.S. forces could be sent into Iranian territory to secure the regime’s nuclear stockpiles, claiming that Washington knows exactly where the material is stored. 

“The way you do it is if we make a deal now, we’re friendly, we’ll all go together. It’ll be our equipment. We’ll take it out and destroy it, whether it’s onsite or whether we take it offsite,” Trump explained. “We will be at peace. And we will go with them, or without them. But we won’t have people shooting at us, okay?”

He added: “Now, if we don’t make a deal, then we’re going to take them out militarily very harshly. And we’ll wait until we do that before we go, in which case we’ll have safety either way.”

Trump further claimed that the U.S. possesses highly specific data on Iran’s remaining military capabilities, including the locations of its drones, manufacturing plants, remaining missiles and launch sites. While the president stated that the majority of Iran’s production facilities “have been knocked out,” he acknowledged that Tehran still maintains some of its arsenal.

“I know almost the number, and we know where they are too, and we know where their drones are, and we know where their drone factories are,” Trump said. “Most of the drone factories have been knocked out, most of the launching pads have been knocked out and most of the missile manufacturing areas have been knocked out. But they still have capacity. They have some missiles, they have some drones. I would say percentage wise, maybe 21-22% of their missiles. It’s a lot of missiles, but it’s not what it was when we first attacked.”

Turning to the broader regional landscape, Trump clarified that he is “not demanding” that Lebanon be included in a peace deal with Iran, as Tehran has requested, though he expressed a desire to see “a more surgical” approach to combating Hezbollah

“I’d like to see Lebanon have a better life,” Trump said. “I’d like to see a more surgical attack on Hezbollah. I think it should be more surgical,” he added, but did not reference Israel or its recent military actions against the terror group.

It’s a strange moment when the leader of the free world explains to a reporter why he cursed out the prime minister of a major ally.

But we live in an increasingly strange moment, one in which President Donald Trump confirmed to the New York Post this week that he had indeed called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “f***ing crazy” during a discussion about Israel’s plans to expand operations in Lebanon, even as he stressed that he and the Israeli leader have “worked very well together.” (Trump’s confirmation came after Netanyahu’s office denied the remarks.)

The tense nature of the Trump-Netanyahu call this week underscores the increasingly divergent tactics the two are taking to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East as Trump leans into diplomacy while Netanyahu pushes for intensified military action — and as questions loom over the future of U.S. aid to Israel.

With the House’s passage of a war powers resolution yesterday (with four Republicans breaking with House GOP leadership), and a Senate vote on the issue still pending, the Trump administration’s appetite for a resumption of hostilities is even smaller than it was last month (when, as we reported, it was already quite low, owing to rising gas prices and the approaching midterms). 

And it’s not just Trump distancing the U.S. from renewed all-out conflict. Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers that the Iran war was “over.”

The comments come even as Iran continues to scale up its attacks in the region, in some cases prompting a U.S. response. Early Wednesday morning, the Islamic Republic launched a drone attack targeting Kuwait’s main airport, killing one person and injuring at least 60.

Trump has reportedly set a red line on Iran, telling aides that he could end the ceasefire — which, while not a technical halting of all fire, has resulted in far fewer exchanges of fire and destruction than at the height of the war in March and early April — if U.S. troops are killed.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu told CNBC on Wednesday that he wants to start the process of winding down U.S. military aid to Israel over the next two years — the final years of Trump’s term — in a way that would shift the relationship, according to the prime minister, “from aid to a partnership where we both invest equal amounts and both share equally in the fruits of our innovators and technologies.” Such a move, Netanyahu added, “will also take away the myth that Israel is depleting America’s coffers” — a popular talking point among opponents of U.S. aid to Israel on Capitol Hill and beyond.

On paper, Washington and Jerusalem do appear in lockstep — alongside Beirut — on deepening relations between Israel and Lebanon and rooting out Hezbollah. To that effect, the White House announced in a joint statement with Lebanese and Israeli officials on Wednesday that the parties had agreed to a renewed ceasefire — though it is contingent on the cooperation of Hezbollah, which did not take part in the talks and continues to launch drones and missiles at northern Israel.

But even as officials in Washington reach an accord on Lebanon, the challenges on the ground remain much the same. It was, after all, the issue of Lebanon — and Netanyahu’s announcement that the IDF would attack Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut — that triggered Trump’s expletive-laden outburst on Monday, causing Netanyahu to walk back Israel’s military plans in Lebanon.

And while Netanyahu needs to stay in Trump’s good graces, it is voters in Israel — including those in the country’s north who are living under daily Hezbollah fire — whom Netanyahu will need to sway ahead of the fall elections. 

The U.S. is nearing a deal with Iran to end the war, President Donald Trump announced on Saturday, though the precise parameters of the agreement remained unclear.

After holding a call with officials from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan, Bahrain and Egypt, as well as a separate discussion with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said on Truth Social on Saturday afternoon that an agreement has “been largely negotiated” with “final aspects and details … currently being discussed.” 

“In addition to many other elements of the Agreement, the Strait of Hormuz will be opened,” the president said.

While Trump did not offer any further details, Iranian officials had told The New York Times that a memorandum of understanding under discussion with the U.S. would end fighting on all fronts, including between Israel and Lebanon; lift the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and allow for free movement of commercial traffic without any tolls; leave nuclear issues to be negotiated within 30 to 60 days; and see the release of $25 billion in frozen Iranian funds. 

U.S. officials told the Times that, under the current agreement, Tehran has committed to giving up its stockpile of already enriched uranium, an issue that Trump has frequently stated is a U.S. priority, but the specifics as to how that transfer will occur are set to be worked out in subsequent negotiations.

A senior Iranian official denied to Reuters on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear program was a part of the initial agreement, and said that Tehran had not agreed to hand over its enriched uranium. “The ​nuclear issue will ​be addressed in negotiations for ‌a ⁠final agreement and are therefore not part of the ​current deal,” the official told Reuters.

A U.S. official told Axios’ Barak Ravid that the agreement involves a 60-day ceasefire extension during which the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened and Iran would be able to sell oil freely. The draft MOU, according to Axios, includes commitments from Iran that it will never pursue nuclear weapons and to negotiate a suspension of its uranium enrichment program and the removal of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. The draft also includes an end to the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Netanyahu said in a statement on Sunday regarding his conversation with Trump the day prior that the two leaders “agreed that any final agreement with Iran must eliminate the nuclear danger,” including dismantling Tehran’s nuclear program and removing enriched uranium from the country. Trump also “reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself against threats on every front, including Lebanon,” Netanyahu said.

Some hawkish Senate Republicans expressed outrage on Saturday over the reported terms of the deal, calling it a defeat for the United States filled with major concessions to the Iranian regime.

Hawkish Senate Republicans expressed outrage on Saturday over the reported terms of a U.S. ceasefire deal with Iran, calling the agreement a defeat for the U.S. filled with major concessions to the Iranian regime.

“I am deeply concerned about what we are hearing about an Iran ‘deal,’ being pushed by some voices in the administration,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said on Saturday.

Cruz said that Trump’s decision to strike Iran was correct and “the most consequential decision of his second term, but said that ending the war on the reported terms would be a failure.

“If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime — still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’ — now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake,” Cruz continued.

He said that he is “pray[ing] the early reports are wrong” but said the fact that former Biden administration Iran envoy Rob Malley praised the reports is “not encouraging.”

“President Trump believes in peace through strength, and his strong leadership has already made America much safer,” Cruz said. “He should continue to hold the line, defend America & enforce the red lines he has repeatedly drawn.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that ending the war along the proposed terms would be conceding that there is no military solution to defeating Iran. 

“If a deal is struck to end the Iranian conflict because it is believed that the Strait of Hormuz cannot be protected from Iranian terrorism and Iran still possesses the capability to destroy major Gulf oil infrastructure, then Iran will be perceived as being a dominate force requiring a diplomatic solution,” Graham said.

He said that such an outcome would shift the balance of power in the region and “be a nightmare for Israel.”

“Also, it makes one wonder why the war started to begin with if these perceptions are accurate. I personally am a skeptic of the idea that Iran cannot be denied the ability to terrorize the Strait and the region cannot protect itself against Iranian military capability,” Graham continued. “It is important we get this right.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, shared Graham’s post.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had urged Trump on Friday to ignore advisors urging an agreement with Iran, and encouraged the administration to return to war so as not to leave behind a legacy of weakness.

“The rumored 60-day ceasefire — with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith — would be a disaster,” Wicker said Saturday. “Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!”

Meanwhile, other congressional Republicans are expressing support for the administration’s approach.

“President Trump is the ONLY one who could have gotten Iran — the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism — to the negotiating table,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said. “We are greatly encouraged to learn a PEACE DEAL in Iran is underway — and look forward to learning more about the specifics. Under President Trump’s leadership, our nation is stronger, more respected on the global stage, and safer than ever before.”

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) said he’d spoken to the White House about the proposed deal and expressed support for it.

“President Trump will land this deal and end the conflict on his terms,” Fine said. “The Mullahs will never have a nuclear weapon.”

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also lambasted the reported deal’s terms, calling it “straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook: Pay the IRGC to build a WMD program and terrorize the world,” referring to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal struck by the Obama administration. He also called for a return to war.

Pompeo’s post faced furious backlash from White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, Trump advisor Alex Brusewitz and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL).

In the closing days of his House reelection campaign against Trump-endorsed Navy veteran Ed Gallrein — which will conclude with Tuesday’s primary — Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has focused his ire on pro-Israel and Jewish advocacy groups, claiming that his opponent is a “puppet” of such interests. 

At a rally on Saturday, the congressman joked that Gallrein’s phone number had a Tel Aviv area code, part of a narrative by Massie that Gallrein is working on behalf of Israeli interests.

“After months of beating around the bush, one reporter finally writes the true story of my race and when asked, the lobbyists brag about it,” Massie said on X on Sunday, referring to a story in Politico about pro-Israel groups’ spending to defeat him. “A coalition of Israel’s lobbyists and donors is spending tens of millions of dollars in a blatant attempt to buy a KY congressional seat.”

The congressman also asserted that Gallrein is a “puppet” of the Republican Jewish Coalition and that “they are running his race.”

The RJC’s national political director, Sam Markstein, responded, “I am speaking for ALL Republicans who want to see you lose tomorrow — including President Donald Trump.”

On Friday, Massie called his primary, which has become the most expensive intraparty congressional contest in U.S. history, “a referendum on whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress.”

“I’ve never seen Great Britain, Australia or even Germany play in our elections here in the United States. But Israel gets so much from the United States. It’s a one-sided relationship,” Massie said. “They get us to be their proxies in wars they want against their enemies. They get our military assistance. They get our technology. They get our bombs. They get our tax dollars. And I think it’s a very one-sided relationship. At least with NATO, we pretend that they would come to our aid someday if we needed it — and even that’s a ruse.”

Massie also reportedly hosted at least two antisemitic social media figures at his home for an event over the weekend. Some of the attendees said online that Massie brought a group of several dozen influencers into his home for the event. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the event or on the individuals invited.

One of the individuals pictured at the event was Ryan Matta, a Holocaust denier who was pictured with Massie at a separate event wearing an “American Reich” sweatshirt. Another was David Reilly, a self-described antisemite who also has a history of racist and otherwise offensive comments.

Various figures with records of antisemitism including Tucker Carlson, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Carrie Prejean Boller, who was booted from the White House Religious Liberty Commission over her antisemitic views, Alex Jones, Nick Fuentes and Ian Carroll have all declared their support for Massie, framing his race as a battle between him and Israel and its supporters.

He’s also picked up support from a variety of anti-Israel and Israel-critical figures on the left.

In the final days of the campaign last week, Massie also introduced the “AIPAC Act,” demanding that the pro-Israel group, and other interest groups supporting other countries, register as foreign agents — a longtime talking point by the congressman that leans into antisemitic dual loyalty tropes.

For the last two weeks, a resumption of hostilities with Iran seemed unlikely, with the U.S. uninterested in sparking renewed fighting against the Islamic Republic in advance of President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping — whose country is a key trade partner of Iran. 

But with the president back in Washington, the administration appears to be reopening military options — even as Iran continues to drag out tensions by offering what U.S. officials have said were unacceptable proposals to end the war. That extends to Congress, where Democrats on both sides of Capitol Hill are expected to introduce new war powers resolutions this week in an attempt to constrain the administration’s actions in the Middle East.

Trump told Axios on Sunday that “the clock is ticking” for Iran and the U.S. to reach an agreement to end the war. After rejecting Iran’s previous response to a U.S. proposal, Trump said that Tehran has to get to “where we want them to be,” or else “they are going to get hit much harder.” 

A decision on whether to return to active fighting could come as soon as Tuesday, when Trump is set to hold a Situation Room meeting to discuss options. After returning from Beijing, the president met on Sunday with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

In Israel, preparations are being made for a possible return to war. Channel 12 quoted a senior Israeli official on Friday saying that the country is “preparing for days to weeks” of renewed fighting.

Even as the tenuous ceasefire has held, the United Arab Emirates — which during the active hostilities took the brunt of Iran’s attacks — has continued to face drone attacks. Emirati officials are investigating a fire near Abu Dhabi’s Barakah Nuclear Power Plant that broke out on Sunday after a drone entered the UAE from its western border and struck a generator near the facility.

The Islamic Republic’s ongoing strikes targeting the UAE — and its clashes with the U.S. Navy in the Gulf — play into a broader Iranian strategy to slow-walk negotiations as it continues to destabilize the region. Few doubt Iran’s capacity — even after six weeks of active fighting — to hit the U.S., the UAE, Israel or other U.S. assets in the region, but doing so would likely prompt a severe U.S. response and collapse the tenuous ceasefire, dragging Iran into a renewed conflict as it works to recoup its heavy losses from the U.S. and Israeli bombing campaigns.

It’s a strategy underscored by Iran’s seizure last week — the same day that Trump and Xi met — of a boat belonging to a Chinese security firm. While disruptive, no one aboard the vessel was killed or injured, and China is unlikely to retaliate for the incident. But analysts told The Wall Street Journal that the move was likely an effort by Tehran to send a message to Beijing. Chatham House’s Sanam Vakil told the WSJ that Iran’s apprehension of the boat “is a way to remind the Chinese who is in control of [the Strait of] Hormuz and they shouldn’t even think of providing their own security.”

Foot-dragging talks while making minimal concessions has served Iran well through multiple U.S. administrations, and allowed the Islamic Republic to retain control through rounds of active fighting while preserving its military and diplomatic leverage. Now, with Tehran appearing to bet that the outcome of the midterms could provide a more favorable environment in Washington and constrain the Trump administration’s ability to escalate, the question will be if Iran will slow-walk its way to November — or whether the clock has run out.

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he was temporarily pausing “Project Freedom,” the three-day-old operation aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, at the request of Pakistan and due to progress in negotiations — hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio heralded the start of the operation. 

The president wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday evening that all elements of Project Freedom, a U.S. mission to escort commercial vessels safely through the Strait of Hormuz, “will be paused for a short period of time” in order to see if a “[peace] agreement can be finalized and signed.” 

The U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, however, “will remain in full force and effect,” Trump noted.

The president said that the decision had been made “based on the request of Pakistan and other countries” as well as due to the “great progress” made toward “a complete and final agreement with representatives of Iran.”

The comments came a few hours after Rubio held a lengthy press conference at the White House, where he repeatedly insisted that the U.S. had completed Operation Epic Fury, the administration’s name for the war in Iran, and was now solely focused on Project Freedom, as well as diplomatic efforts.

“Operation Epic Fury has concluded. We achieved the objectives of that operation. We’re not cheering for an additional situation to occur. We would prefer the path of peace. What the president would prefer is a deal,” Rubio said. “He would prefer to sit down and work out a memorandum of understanding for future negotiations that touches on all the key topics that have to be addressed. That’s the route he prefers.” 

“That is, so far, not the route that Iran has chosen,” he continued. “And so the result has been that the United States has to do something about the fact that we’re the only nation on earth that can do anything to open up a lane within the Straits of Hormuz to get product and to rescue these people that are trapped in there, and that’s what we’re undergoing now,” Rubio said of launching Project Freedom.

The nation’s top diplomat emphasized on multiple occasions that any future U.S. attacks on Iran should be viewed with a different lens than prior instances of fighting. 

“What’s really important for you to report and for everyone to understand is this is not an offensive operation — this is a defensive operation. What that means is very simple: There’s no shooting unless we’re shot at first,” Rubio said. 

He also acknowledged that any peace agreement with Iran would need to address its nuclear enrichment, and allow for the U.S. or others to remove any enriched material currently in Iranian facilities buried in the U.S. and Israeli strikes in June of last year.

“As far as the negotiation is concerned, I think the president’s been clear that part of the negotiation process has to be not just the enrichment, but what happens to this material that’s very deep somewhere that they have still have access to if they ever wanted to figure it out,” he added. “That has to be addressed, and that’s being addressed in the negotiation.”

The secretary of state could not say if the president had followed through on his public musings to send weapons to Kurdish groups and Iranians looking to take up arms against the regime, but again tried to create distance between any prior offers and Project Freedom.

“I think what the president is expressing is the desire that he wishes the Iranian people had an ability to fight back against some of these things that are happening to them,” Rubio said. “And I would view that as distinct and separate from the specifics of this operation that was ongoing before it concluded, and certainly different from the operation that’s going on now.”

Iran’s latest proposal for a ceasefire is unacceptable, President Donald Trump said on Sunday, as the tenuous ceasefire in Lebanon continued to hold in name only and as Israel weighed whether to resume combat in Gaza, citing Hamas’ refusal to disarm.

“It’s not acceptable to me,” Trump told Israeli public broadcaster Kan of Iran’s proposed ceasefire terms. “I’ve studied it; I’ve studied everything. It’s not acceptable.” 

On Saturday, Trump said that he “can’t imagine that [Iran’s ceasefire terms] would be acceptable in that they have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to humanity and the world over the last 47 years.”

Iran submitted a proposal on Thursday that reportedly includes an end to the fighting, after nearly a monthlong ceasefire, and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz in the next 30 days. Talks about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear plan would only begin after that, with an initial offer of a 15-year pause in uranium enrichment.

On Sunday, Trump announced “Project Freedom,” an endeavor by which, he wrote on Truth Social, the U.S. would “guide … ships out of these restricted waterways” in the Strait of Hormuz. 

“Countries from all over the world … have asked the United States if we could help free up their ships, which are locked up in the Strait of Hormuz. … Many of these ships are running low on food, and everything else necessary for largescale crews to stay on board in a healthy and sanitary manner. … If, in any way, this humanitarian process is interfered with, that interference will, unfortunately, have to be dealt with forcefully,” the president added. 

In response, Iran warned the U.S. Navy not to enter the Strait of Hormuz, saying: “We have repeatedly said the security of the Strait of Hormuz is in our hands and that the safe passage of vessels needs to be coordinated with the armed forces.” Iranian national security official Ebrahim Azizi posted on X that “any American interference in the new maritime regime of the Strait of Hormuz will be considered a violation of the ceasefire.” 

CENTCOM said that U.S. military support for the effort will include “guided-missile destroyers, over 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members.” However, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that “Project Freedom” was not expected to involve U.S. Navy warships escorting the stranded vessels. 

In Israel, proceedings in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial were canceled on Monday, following the previous night’s meeting of his “inner cabinet” to discuss matters of national security.

The meeting, of a forum that includes Israel’s defense, foreign, finance and national security ministers, rather than the full Security Cabinet, reportedly convened to discuss resuming the war in Gaza. According to the Trump administration’s plan, Israel would only withdraw from Gaza, allowing reconstruction, after Hamas’ full disarmament, for which an April 11 deadline was set. 

Hamas told the Board of Peace on Sunday that it would not give up all of its weapons, offering to further negotiate the matter in the framework of establishing a Palestinian state. 

On Saturday, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit reported multiple incidents in which terrorists crossed the Yellow Line dividing Gaza between Hamas and Israeli control. Soldiers opened fire on the terrorists, killing three and wounding one.

Hezbollah in Lebanon has also said it has no plan to disarm, as exchanges of fire continue between the terrorist group and the IDF, and Israel and Lebanon negotiate a ceasefire and normalization.

A Lebanese lawmaker in Hezbollah’s faction said that the terrorist group is “capable of thwarting all the objectives of these negotiations” between Israel and Lebanon, which include disarming Hezbollah, and “will not implement” their results.

Monday evening marks the start of of Lag BaOmer, a Jewish holiday whose traditions have become entangled in discussions of the security of northern Israel amid ongoing rocket and missile attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Tens of thousands of Jews, mostly from Hasidic communities, gather each year on Lag BaOmer on Mount Meron to pray at the grave of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. However, the Israel Police has limited outdoor gatherings to 200 in light of fears that the site may become a target. In addition, Israel’s largest civilian disaster took place at the site in 2021, and there were concerns pilgrims may again be trampled by fleeing mobs if missile sirens are sounded. Police remained on alert that some will attempt to circumvent police barriers to visit the site. 

Over the weekend, a major restock of over 6,500 tons of munitions and military equipment arrived in Israel from the U.S. over air and sea in a 24-hour period. The cargo included military trucks, Joint Light Tactical Vehicles and more, Israel’s Defense Ministry said.

On Friday, the State Department notified Congress that the U.S. sold 10,000 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon Systems, which turn non-guided rockets into precise weapons, to Israel, the UAE and Qatar for $992.4 million each

In addition, Israel announced on Sunday that it would acquire two squadrons of F-35 and F-15IA jets from the U.S., which Netanyahu said would “bolster Israel’s overwhelming air superiority.”

At the same time, Netanyahu said that Israel is working on greater arms independence and plans to allocate over $100 billion to domestic munition production in the next decade, “ensuring we are not dependent on foreign sources.” He added that Israel will “develop groundbreaking Israeli-made aircraft [that] will change the entire picture.”

Netanyahu also said Israel is working on “a special project to thwart the drone threat.”

“It will take time, but we are on it,” he promised.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) expects Congress to make another “big push” to urge President Donald Trump to fill the role of special envoy for the Abraham Accords once the Iran conflict subsides. 

The role was created in 2023, when Lawler and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) introduced a bill to establish a Senate-confirmed, ambassador-level special envoy position dedicated to expanding the Abraham Accords and Middle East normalization. The measure was ultimately signed into law as part of the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Tasked with strengthening and expanding regional normalization, the special envoy would be responsible for coordinating U.S. strategy across regional embassies, nongovernmental organizations, and international stakeholders.

But despite the legal mandate, the position has remained open. The vacancy has drawn frustration from congressional Republicans, with 47 House GOP members sending a letter in January 2025 urging Trump to immediately fill the post while condemning former President Joe Biden’s failure to do so during his term.

Lawler told Jewish Insider that he would “like to see it filled,” noting that the evolving situation in the region has increased the need for the position. He said it is something he will “continue to advocate for.”

“Obviously there’s been a lot happening in the Middle East over the last year and a half. As we see the situation in Iran get resolved, I do think the Abraham Accords is going to critical moving forward,” Lawler said. “I would like to see somebody fill that position and be entirely dedicated to that work, which I think is going to be a key part of keeping stability in the region.” 

Asked whether he expects House Republicans to make another push similar to the January 2025 letter urging Trump to fill the position, Lawler replied: “I do. I think we will.”

“As you see the situation in the Middle East, from the standpoint of Iran, resolve, there will be a big push again on the special envoy.” 

“Look, obviously a lot of the focus has been on the role of Steve Witkoff, the [White House] special envoy, and he has been hyper-focused on a lot of these issues that are covered in the Abraham Accords. So I think in some capacity they have been doing this work,” Lawler added. “But I think long term, this was a position we created to accentuate one of the president’s biggest achievements of his first term.”

A who’s who of the leading names in media, tech and global and domestic politics are flocking to the nation’s capital for the scores of exclusive parties surrounding the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner this Saturday — where President Donald Trump will make his first-ever appearance as president and deliver a roast of the political press corps. 

The correspondents’ dinner, and the parties thrown in its honor, have always generated enough fanfare to maintain its status as the biggest weekend of the social calendar in Washington. This year, however, is being treated inside the Beltway as the most high-profile WHCD weekend in at least a decade, the result of Trump’s decision to participate in this year’s dinner after boycotting it for his entire presidency.

In addition to Trump’s roast, guests will be entertained by Oz Pearlman, a famed mentalist known for his mind-reading tricks. Pearlman, who is Jewish and was born in Israel, marks a shift from the traditional entertainment choice at the dinner, which is usually a monologue delivered by a comedian. Those comedians’ jokes about Trump were a factor in why the president has skipped previous dinners, and the White House Correspondents’ Association canceled its planned entertainer last year over backlash to her past comments.

The dinner could make for some awkward moments: one of the WHCA’s award winners this year is a team from The Wall Street Journal, for reporting on Trump’s ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein — an article that led Trump to sue the Journal. And that’s not to mention Trump’s routine hostility toward and criticisms of the media more broadly. It is unclear if the president will be present for the award ceremony.

Celebrities have historically flocked to Washington for WHCD weekend, though the number of famous names willing to appear for the dinner or other events dwindled during the first Trump administration. That trend began to reverse during the Biden administration, though it picked up again last year when Trump returned to office. 

Nicki Minaj, the rap superstar who has become an advocate for the Trump administration, will be attending the dinner as a guest of the Washington Times. No other media organizations have announced celebrity guests for their respective tables at the dinner. 

Regardless of a diminished turnout of famous faces, this weekend will be jam-packed with nonstop events, and it has already begun.

Trump’s announcement in early March that he would attend Saturday’s dinner — leading many senior administration officials to also make plans to attend the festivities and Donald Trump Jr. to organize an ultra-exclusive event at his Executive Branch Club in Georgetown on Friday night — prompted an avalanche of interest from major companies, U.S. officials, foreign diplomats and dignitaries, top corporate powerbrokers and domestic political firms. 

Boeing, Meta and Amazon swiftly organized intimate, invite-only gatherings for this weekend or became lead sponsors for events being hosted by D.C.-area embassies, media outlets, political operatives and high-profile consulting groups. Foreign ambassadors stationed in the U.S. and others looking to connect with the president’s circle or the broader Washington political orbit began calling in favors to get on the guest lists for all of the weekend’s events, making invitations all-the-more difficult to secure for those who have attended in the last decade. 

The parties start early on Friday with Axios Live’s annual WHCD weekend kickoff brunch at 9:00 a.m., followed by MS NOW’s brunch at 11:00 a.m. and Punchbowl News’ WHCD weekend kickoff gathering the publication’s townhouse in Capitol Hill at noon. 

Meghan McCain’s “Renegade Women’s Cocktail Party” at The Graham in Georgetown starts at 4 p.m. while YouTube’s official WHCD party at Floreria Atlantico in Georgetown and the Motion Picture Association’s reception at the Downtown headquarters begin at 5:30.

Later that night, Semafor is hosting a “house party” at the private residence of its founder, Justin B. Smith, starting at 8 p.m.; Creative Artists Agency’s annual Friday evening party, sponsored by Vanity Fair, will take place this year at 7:30 p.m. at the Belgian ambassador’s residence near Georgetown; and United Talent Agency will host their annual “Celebration of American Journalists” at 9:00 p.m. at Osteria Mozza in Georgetown.

The Qataris are once again hosting a Friday evening correspondents bash with Washingtonian magazine, which starts at 8 p.m. at the Georgetown Four Seasons, which Qatari Ambassador Meshal Al Thani is slated to attend. At 7 p.m., doors will open for the Daily Mail’s party with Brunswick Review Business Magazine at the British ambassador’s residence.

Saturday’s festivities start at 11 a.m. with the annual White House Correspondents’ garden brunch, hosted by Tammy Haddad at the Beall-Washington House in Georgetown. Ahead of the dinner, Puck is hosting a “penthouse pre-party” on the rooftop of The Hepburn, located next to the Washington Hilton. At the Hilton, where the dinner is taking place, The Wall Street Journal and ABC News have their respective annual pre-dinner receptions at 5:30 p.m. The Washington Post has a cocktail reception at the Hilton starting at 6 p.m., the same time that Politico’s pre-dinner event with CBS News — featuring new CBS News honcho Bari Weiss — takes place just down the hall. 

Alongside the dinner, Substack is hosting its “New Media Party” at 8 p.m. at the Renwick Gallery, located blocks from the White House; afterward, MS NOW and NBC News have dueling parties starting at 11:30 p.m., with the former hosting theirs at Dupont Underground in Dupont Circle and the latter hosting theirs at the French ambassador’s residence in Kalorama. Time’s WHCD afterparty at the Swiss ambassador’s residence in Woodley Park begins at 11 p.m.

On Sunday, NOTUS and Politico are hosting a brunch at the home of Robert Allbritton starting at 11:00 a.m., and CNN’s “WHCD Weekend Finale” brunch reception starts at 12:30 p.m.

President Donald Trump was honored alongside CBS News’ White House correspondents at a private event at the U.S. Institute of Peace on Thursday night hosted by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison ahead of the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday.

The gathering, which was not open to the press, marked what is expected to be Trump’s sole appearance at a WHCD event outside of the dinner itself, which he is set to attend for the first time as president on Saturday. CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss was among those in attendance, though Deadline reported on Thursday that most of those invited were “from Paramount corporate, rather than the news division.”

An invitation to the dinner described the event as an “intimate gathering in celebration of the First Amendment honoring the Trump White House and CBS White House correspondents.”

Dozens of protesters gathered across the street from the Institute of Peace to protest the dinner and Paramount’s proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which Ellison has been lobbying the Trump administration, the Department of Justice and Congress to approve. 

Opponents of the merger — including thousands who signed onto a letter earlier this month raising concerns about the potential deal — have said it will result in higher costs and fewer opportunities and jobs for those in the industry.

Attorney Norm Eisen, a co-founder of Democracy Defenders Action; Alvaro Bedoya, who served as FTC commissioner under President Joe Biden; Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Becca Balint (D-VT); and Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, a left-wing consumer advocacy group that organized the protest, were among those who spoke at the demonstration. 

The White House did not respond to Jewish Insider’s requests for comment on the dinner.

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday afternoon that he would extend his pause on plans to strike Iran’s energy infrastructure, “per Iranian government request,” for an additional 10 days amid ongoing diplomatic negotiations to end the war.

Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform that he is “pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction by 10 Days to Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 P.M., Eastern Time.” 

“Talks are ongoing and, despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the Fake News Media, and others, they are going very well,” Trump added.

The post comes a few hours after the president said that he wasn’t sure if he would follow through with his five-day delay, set to expire Friday, for strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure, which he had pushed back at the start of diplomatic negotiations on Monday. 

“I don’t know yet,” Trump said when asked by reporters if the strikes would still take place Friday. “It’s a day. In Trump time, a day, you know what it is? That’s an eternity.”

Trump made the comments while speaking to reporters at the opening of his first Cabinet meeting since launching the war in Iran.

He alleged that Iranian leaders “are begging to make a deal” to end the war while criticizing press reports alleging that he was looking for a diplomatic off-ramp to the conflict, saying he has not decided whether he’ll agree to a diplomatic settlement if one were reached.

“They are begging to make a deal. Not me,” Trump said of current Iranian leadership. “They’re not fools, they’re very smart actually in a certain way and they’re great negotiators. I say they’re lousy fighters, but they are great negotiators. They are begging to work out a deal. I don’t know if we will be able to do that. I don’t know if we’re willing to do that. They should’ve done that four weeks ago. They should’ve done it two years ago.”

“The reason they want to make a deal is they have been just beat to sh*t,” he said later on, touting the U.S. military operation as a success. 

During the meeting, White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed reports that the U.S. had presented Iran with a “15-point action list” as a starting offer in peace talks between the two countries. He also confirmed that Pakistan had been acting as a mediator for the U.S. and Iran.

“We will see where things lead, and if we can convince Iran that this is the ​inflection point ​with ⁠no good alternatives for them other than more death ​and destruction,” Witkoff said. “We ​have ⁠strong signs that this is a possibility.”

Witkoff said to Trump, “You’ve instructed us that your preference is always peace and that we should make that our priority. We have delivered that message, sir, along with the 15 points for peace. Finally, we have told Iran one last thing: don’t miscalculate again.”

Trump later revealed that the “present” Iran gifted the U.S. was allowing eight oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, which he said proved the U.S. was speaking with the “right people” in Iran with the authority to make such decisions. 

“They said to show you the fact that we’re real, and solid and we’re there, we’re going to let you have eight boats of oil, eight boats, eight big boats of oil,” Trump said of the Iranians. “And I said, ‘Well, I guess they were right,’ and they were and they were real.”

Trump then said that Iran later allowed two additional vessels to travel through the strait, which he described as an overture from the Iranians to “apologize for something they said.”

Turning to Witkoff, the president then expressed hope that he hadn’t “screwed up” their diplomatic efforts by revealing the “gift.”

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Donald Trump maintained his tough talk against Iran, reiterating that he will use force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, even though he’s willing to explore diplomatic options to resolve the standoff. 

Trump did not — as some online had predicted — make a grand televised announcement of United States strikes on Iran during the speech. Nor did he elaborate further on his plans for the growing U.S. military might in the region, or what specifically would trigger the U.S. to utilize that military power.

”They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words, ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,’” Trump said about Iran. “My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terror — which they are by far — to have a nuclear weapon. Can’t let that happen.”

A number of moderate House Democrats — around a third of the Democrats in the chamber — as well as the majority of Republicans stood to applaud those comments from the president. Democrats remained largely passive through much of the rest of Trump’s speech.

Negotiations are set to resume between the U.S. and Iran in Geneva later this week.

Trump also insisted again that the U.S. had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in its strikes last June, and had warned the regime in Tehran not to attempt to rebuild its weapons programs, including its nuclear program, but it has continued those efforts anyway.

“As president, I will make peace wherever I can, but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must,” Trump said. “And no nation should ever doubt America’s resolve. We have the most powerful military on earth. … It’s really called ‘peace through strength’ and it’s been very, very effective.”

In addition to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Trump highlighted the Islamic Republic’s manufacture of ballistic missiles, threatening U.S. allies, troops and potentially the U.S. homeland, and its sponsorship of terrorism.

“Since they seized control of that proud nation 47 years ago, the regime and its murderous proxies have spread nothing but terrorism and death and hate,” Trump said. “They’ve killed and maimed thousands of American service members and hundreds of thousands and even millions of people.”

And he again said the regime had killed 32,000 protesters during a recent wave of demonstrations, though he asserted that the U.S. had prevented the regime, through threats of retaliation, from executing “a lot of” dissidents.

Trump boasted of having ended the war between Iran and Israel last year, as well as the war in Gaza, which he said “is proceeding at a very low level — it’s just about there.” Trump offered praise to White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for their involvement in those negotiations, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who wore a scarf in the pattern of a keffiyeh with a Palestinian flag at its ends, shouted, “It’s a genocide” during those remarks.

Trump also highlighted the successful return of the Israeli hostages: “Believe it or not, Hamas worked along with Israel and they dug and they dug and they dug. It’s tough — it’s a tough thing to do, going through bodies all over, passing up 100 bodies sometimes for each one they found,” the president said.

Trump added that “nobody thought that was possible” to find the remains of the final hostage, Ran Gvili, but Witkoff and Kushner were able to accomplish it.

“I remember the family of the 28th [hostage of the final group that had remained in Gaza]. They were so — grieved, but they were so happy, as happy as it’s possible to be. They had their boy back,” Trump said. He emphasized that the hostage families all wanted to see the remains of deceased hostages come home “as much as though [they] were living.”

Earlier in the day, top congressional leaders received a classified briefing from the administration on Iran, and Democrats emerged urging the administration to explain its position and plans to the American people.

“It’s very serious and the president has an obligation to make his goals public,” Schumer told Jewish Insider after the briefing.

President Donald Trump vowed on Monday that he would support the U.S. or Israel launching another round of strikes against Iran if Tehran is attempting to rebuild its ballistic missile program or nuclear facilities.

Trump made the comments while speaking to reporters from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the latter’s fifth visit to the United States this year. 

Asked if he will support another Israeli attack on Iran if they continue their ballistic missile and nuclear programs, Trump said, “If they continue with the missiles? Yes. If the nuclear? Fast, okay? One will be yes, absolutely; the other was, we’ll do it immediately.”

He added later, “If they are [rearming], we’re going to have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that build up. … We don’t want to waste the fuel on a B-2 [bomber]. It’s a 37-hour trip, both ways, I don’t want to waste a lot of fuel,” suggesting the U.S. would again utilize its bomber jets that conducted the June strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The president repeatedly urged Tehran to return to the negotiating table with the U.S. while cautioning that the regime would face consequences for declining his offer to address the nuclear issue diplomatically. “They could have made a deal the last time before we went through the big attack on them, and they decided not to make the deal. They wish they made that deal. So I think, again, they should make a deal,” he said.

About reports that Iran is rearming, Trump said, “Iran may be behaving badly. It hasn’t been confirmed, but if it’s confirmed, look, they know the consequences.”

“This is just what we hear, but usually where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” he continued. “I’m hearing that their [efforts are] not nuclear yet, but maybe nuclear, too. The sites were obliterated, but they’re looking at other sites [than the ones the U.S. bombed in June]. That’s what I’ve heard. They’re looking. It’ll take a long time. They’re not going to go back to where they were, but they have other places they can go. And if they’re doing that, they’re making a big mistake.”

Trump repeatedly praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his remarks with Netanyahu, pledging to thaw tensions between the Turkish and Israeli leaders and repeated that he was “very seriously” considering approving Turkey’s longstanding requests to purchase F-35 fighter jets from the United States. “We’re thinking about it very seriously,” Trump said about the move, which Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said last month that Israel opposes.

“I know President Erdogan very well, and as you all know, he’s a very good friend of mine … and I do respect him and Bibi respects him, and they’re not going to have a problem,” Trump said.

Speaking to reporters alongside Netanyahu ahead of their meeting, Trump also voiced his support for Turkey joining the proposed U.S.-led International Stabilization Force to be deployed in Gaza.

“I have a great relationship with President Erdogan, and we’ll be talking about it. And if it’s good, I think that’s good. And a lot will be having to do with Bibi, we’re going to be talking about that,” Trump said. “But Turkey has been great, and he [Erdogan] has been excellent, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know about you [Netanyahu], but to me he’s been very good.” 

Netanyahu did not comment on the suggestion at the time or during the press conference later on, though Israel, as well as several U.S. lawmakers, has said it opposes Ankara’s involvement in the proposed peacekeeping force due largely to Turkey’s ties to Hamas, despite the supportive posture from the Trump administration.

The president later used the topic of Syria to again praise Erdogan, arguing the Turkish leader deserved “a lot of credit” for ousting the Assad regime. 

“Don’t forget, it was President Erdogan that helped very much get rid of a very bad ruler of Syria. That was President Erdogan, and he never wanted the credit for it, but he really gets a lot of credit. Bibi agrees with that. … I know it,” Trump told reporters. 

The president went on to say that the U.S. and Israel “have an understanding regarding Syria” and that he was working to improve relations between the Jewish state and its neighbor, praising Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa along the way. 

“We do have an understanding regarding Syria. Now with Syria, your new president. I respect him. He’s a very strong guy. That’s what you need in Syria. You can’t put a choir boy, you can’t put somebody that’s a perfect person — everything’s nice, no problems in life,” Trump said. 

“I’m sure that Israel and him will get along,” he continued. “I will try and make it so that they do get along. I think they will.” 

For its part, Israel has been wary of al-Sharaa and the new Syrian government, with the IDF maintaining control of the 155-square-mile buffer zone between the two countries since the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad last year, against Damascus’ wishes. Israel and Syria have also continued to disagree on the contours of a potential security agreement, which the Trump administration has continuously sought, with Netanyahu maintaining that any agreement must require Syria to accept the demilitarization of territory stretching from southern Damascus to the Israeli border.  

Trump was also asked about the Lebanese government’s failure thus far to disarm Hezbollah, amid reports that the terror group is rearming. The president demurred when pressed on his support of Israel striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon again as a result, instead only acknowledging his disapproval with the terrorist organization. 

“Well, we’re going to see about that. We’ll see about it,” Trump said. “The Lebanese government is at a little bit of a disadvantage, if you think of it, with Hezbollah, but Hezbollah has been behaving badly. So we’ll see what happens.”

Asked about attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, Trump acknowledged that he and Netanyahu discussed the West Bank during the meeting and that they’re not in complete alignment on the issue. Still, Trump expressed confidence that all parties would reach “a conclusion” to prevent the matter from undermining the implementation of his broader peace plan, though he declined to offer specifics.

“Well, we have had a discussion, big discussion, for a long time on the West Bank. And I wouldn’t say we agree on the West Bank 100%, but we will come to a conclusion on the West Bank. … It’ll be announced at an appropriate time, but [Netanyahu] will do the right thing. I know that. I know him very well. He will do the right thing,” he said.

Trump also expressed gratitude during his remarks for being named the recipient of the Israel Prize, the Jewish state’s highest cultural honor awarded by the country’s education minister. Netanyahu said Trump will be the first non-Israeli to receive the award, which the president said “really is a great honor.”

Netanyahu invited Trump to visit Israel on Yom Ha’atzmaut, the Jewish state’s independence day, in April, which will be an election year, to receive the award in person. 

Joined by Trump at his the meeting with Netanyahu were White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles; Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy at the White House; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Steve Witkoff, the White House’s Mideast envoy; and Jared Kushner, Trump’s advisor on Middle East efforts. 

Netanyahu also met individually with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth while at the president’s property. 

Former White House communications director Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci has a message for Israeli leaders: Be careful not to get too chummy with President Donald Trump, “because he burned everybody.”

“If you’re an Israeli politician, be careful because you think he’s your friend. He’s not your friend,” Scaramucci said in an interview with Jewish Insider on Friday. “He’s only using you for his own self-interest. And the minute you no longer become useful to him, he will drop you like a hot potato in a very detached, narcissistic way.”

Scaramucci remained one of Trump’s strongest defenders even after he was fired from the White House job he held for a mere 11 days. But in recent weeks, Scaramucci has heavily criticized the president on a media tour, using harsh terms to describe his character after Trump called him “a highly unstable nut job” in a tweet last month.

The former West Wing staffer suggested that the firing of National Security Advisor John Bolton last week is “just a continuation of the pathological mania of [Trump’s] personality… If you’re getting better press than him, if you’re better looking than him or if you’re more talented than him, he’ll try to drop you in his personal fire to appease himself. He makes sacrifices of loyal people into the Trump personal volcano because he has very low self esteem.” 

Scaramucci warned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could soon feel Trump’s wrath as well. “How do you think that [Trump] wouldn’t turn on [Netanyahu] given the track record of 51 people who have departed the White House and 81 people who have departed the administration?” he asked rhetorically. “He turns on political leaders on a dime, unless they’re dictators like [Vladimir] Putin or Kim [Jong-Un]. Of course he would turn on him.”

Following his short tenure in the White House, Scaramucci visited Israel four times. Several trips were organized by Orthodox Jewish groups supportive of the president. 

Asked if he has lost any friendships in the Orthodox community over his strong opposition to Trump, Scaramucci said, “I don’t know. If I have lost friendships in the Orthodox community because of my honest assessment of the full-blown maniacal craziness that is taking place right now from the American presidency, then they were never my friends in the first place.”

“You know and I know that you have a small handful of friends in life,” Scaramucci continued. “And so if Orthodox Jews want to hold a blind eye to the full-blown mania and craziness that is taking place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue right now because the president did some things that we all like — like move the embassy and other things that he did to help Israel — I think it’s mistaken. I think it’s a mistaken assessment and it’s misplaced support.”

Scaramucci also criticized Trump for accusing the Democratic Party of being anti-Israel. “I’m a Zionist. I believe in the State of Israel and I want there to be a permanent alliance between the United States and the State of Israel. So in order for that to exist, we have to make sure that the alliance with Israel and our sanctity as allies is bipartisan,” he explained. “I don’t think anybody can say that they’re anti-Israel,” he added, referencing President Barack Obama’s funding of the Iron Dome and the 10-year MOU signed in 2016.

Scaramucci recently announced that he is forming a new political action committee (PAC) to defeat Trump. He told JI that there is no chance of a ceasefire with the president, even predicting that Trump might be replaced by another Republican on the ballot next year. “I predict that I will be supporting the Republican nominee in November of 2020 and that Republican will not be Donald Trump. That’s my prediction,” he stated confidently. 

Scaramucci is not yet ready to commit to supporting any of the other three Republican candidates: former congressman and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford; one-term former Rep. Joe Walsh; and former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld.

“There’s a couple of more weeks, there are several Republicans that need to make a decision and let’s see where they land in terms of where their decisions are. Let’s see how it shapes out before I commit to anything,” he said. “I will be working over the next 14 months to make sure that [Trump is] a one-term president. I’m a very organized guy. I’m in the process of raising a PAC. I know where to put the money in the swing states to defeat him as president. He cannot be the president for another five years.”

Joe Walsh wants to turn the Republican presidential primary into “a referendum on Trump the man.”

The one-term former Illinois congressman spoke with Jewish Insider on Tuesday about his seemingly quixotic quest to run for the Republican presidential nomination.

Walsh, who declared his candidacy earlier this week, is the second significant primary challenger to Trump, joining former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, who announced his campaign in April. 

The Illinois conservative has long been prone to “Trumpian” rhetoric, both on his radio talk show and his Twitter account. As a result of Walsh’s comments — which have included repeatedly calling former President Barack Obama a Muslim — he has spent much of the first several days of his campaign apologizing for past statements. In a Monday interview on MSNBC, Walsh said, “I wouldn’t call myself a racist, but… I’ve said racist things on Twitter. There’s no doubt about it. And an apology is not enough.”

Walsh, who became a radio talk show host months after his single term on Capitol Hill ended in 2013, said he wouldn’t run “if I just had a problem with a policy or two of this president.” Rather, he thinks, the incumbent is “completely unfit to be president.”

He doesn’t believe, however, that the administration is devoid of accomplishments. Walsh praised Trump’s judicial picks as well as “some good deregulation” and “pro-Israel stuff [like] moving the embassy to Jerusalem” as well as “his firm stance against Iran.” 

But the radio show host balanced this against other concerns about Trump’s policies. “[Trump] doesn’t give a damn about the debt,” said the Republican hopeful, who also condemned the incumbent for “screwing things up at the border and not building a foot of a new wall.”

Speaking to JI, Walsh indicated he has shifted to a more moderate approach on the issue of climate change. Although he had been skeptical in the past, calling climate change “the media’s religion” in a 2017 tweet, the presidential hopeful said Tuesday: “It’s an issue that the Republican Party needs to more actively embrace, be open to and have dialogue on.”

However, Walsh insisted, “I’m still a Tea Party guy. I believe in limited government, free trade and free markets.” The former congressman argued that the Republican Party “has abandoned all those issues. [It] no longer stands for limited government, no longer stands for the rule of law and no longer stands for free trade.”

Walsh’s bet is not an ideological one, but simply that “most Republicans privately believe what I say about Trump publicly… they just don’t want to say those things publicly. What I’m trying to do is to get Republicans to say these things publicly.”

The former congressman believes that if Republican voters are presented with a conservative alternative where “you don’t get all the bull****, all the drama and all the insulting tweets,” they will eventually opt for him. His strategy is simply to “call Trump out everyday” and hope that eventually Republican voters will see how — under Trump — the economy slows and “he tweets us into a recession.”

Walsh expressed disappointment with Republican leaders who have not stepped up to challenge the president. “I like me,” Walsh said, but he acknowledged that there are “bigger, better [potential] candidates out there.” He mourned the Republican governors he knew who “have just determined that they will keep their mouths shut and then the Republican Party will go back to normal” after Trump leaves office.

Walsh will be campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire in the coming weeks. A graduate of the University of Iowa, Walsh first attended Grinnell College, the elite liberal arts college located in the Hawkeye State.

Although the former congressman acknowledged that he won’t have the funding Trump does, he’s “optimistic about financial resources,” both in terms of what his campaign can raise and what outside groups can do on his behalf. “There is quiet support out there, people seem to be more willing to contribute financially than be public.”

In the meantime, Walsh will launch a campaign podcast and be “on TV as much as possible” to promote his bid for the White House. “My hope is that everybody will see my mug.”