In the spring, U.S. officials suspected that Israel intended to kill Iranâs top negotiators and sent a warning to Tehran to take precautions.
Archiv: Washington Post (media)
US deploys Additional Warships to Middle East for possible Ground Assault Inside Iran
A report by Washington Post said the Pentagon is weighing bold military actions, including raids on Kharg Island and strategic coastal targets near the Strait of Hormuz.
The moves stop short of a full invasion, but the stakes could not be higher. The plans involve elite special operations forces alongside conventional infantry, putting American troops directly in the line of fire against Iranian drones, missile systems, and ground defenses.
Push from Saudis, Israel helped move Trump to attack Iran
President Donald Trump launched Saturdayâs wide-ranging attack on Iran after a weeks-long lobbying effort by an unusual pair of U.S. allies in the Middle East â Israel and Saudi Arabia â according to four people familiar with the matter, as Israeli and U.S. forces teamed to topple Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei after nearly four decades in power.
White House Confirms Second Strike on Alleged Drug Boat and Defends Move as Legal
(December 1, 2025)
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command acted âwithin his authority and the lawâ when striking an alleged drug boat a second time on Sept. 2 after the first strike left survivors.
The White House has scrambled in recent days to respond to reporting that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered an elite military unit to kill everyone on board an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in early September, leading the commander to send a second strike that killed survivors from the first attack.
House committee seeks âfull accountingâ of boat strike after WaPo âkill everybodyâ report
The leaders of the House Armed Services Committee said late Saturday they are seeking âfull accountingâ of an early September U.S. military attack against an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean after a report alleged that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered U.S. troops to âkill everybodyâ aboard the vessel.
âThis committee is committed to providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defenseâs (DOD) military operations in the Caribbean,â Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chair of the House committee, and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the panel, said in a joint statement.
Senators vow oversight after report Hegseth told troops to âkill everybodyâ in boat strike
Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) issued a statement Saturday vowing to conduct âvigorous oversightâ on Caribbean strikes after a report surfaced that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. military to âkill everybodyâ aboard an alleged drug vessel.
Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all
(November 28, 2025)
As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretaryâs order to leave no survivors.
Looting, chaos and Israeli gunfire prevent aid from reaching Gazans
(August 1, 2025)
JERUSALEM â Shortly after 5 p.m. local time on Wednesday, trucks carrying food from the U.N. World Food Program passed an Israeli checkpoint and entered the rubble-strewn no-manâs-land of northern Gaza. Immediately, they were overwhelmed.
âHundreds of thousandsâ of aid seekers who had been waiting for hours surged to within 100 meters of the checkpoint, and Israeli troops began to fire rifle and artillery rounds, according to an internal WFP mission security report seen by The Washington Post.
Israeli plans for Gaza draw criticism of âconcentration campsâ
In March, in the wake of the collapse of an earlier ceasefire, Katz had issued a warning to Gaza residents that, if they didnât release the remaining hostages and âremove Hamasâ themselves, Israel would act with âunprecedented force.â Other âoptionsâ were possible for Gazaâs population, Katz suggested, including ârelocation to other countries,â while threatening âcomplete destruction and devastation.â
At the time, Meron Rapoport, a left-wing Israeli journalist, parsed the statements coming from prominent lawmakers and officials, as well as connected right-wing Israeli journalists, and came up with this somewhat prescient conclusion: âIsrael is preparing to forcibly displace the entire population of Gaza â through a combination of evacuation orders and intense bombardment â into an enclosed and possibly fenced-off area,â he wrote on April 1, suggesting the goal was tantamount to the creation of a large âconcentration camp.â
More Americans oppose than support a U.S. airstrike in Iran, poll finds
What do Americans think about the possibility of launching U.S. airstrikes against Iran, which President Donald Trump threatened this week unless the country dismantles its nuclear program? The Washington Post texted more than 1,000 people on Wednesday to ask.
The poll finds Americans opposing U.S. airstrikes against Iran by a 20 percentage-point margin â 45 percent to 25 percent â with a sizable 30 percent saying they are unsure.
New Gaza Aid Plan, Bypassing U.N. and Billed as Neutral, Originated in Israel
The New York Times found that the broad contours of the plan were first discussed in late 2023, at private meetings of like-minded officials, military officers and business people with close ties to the Israeli government.
The group called itself the Mikveh Yisrael Forum, after a college where members convened in December 2023. Its leading figures gradually settled on the idea of hiring private contractors to distribute food in Gaza, circumventing the United Nations.
Sweeping overhaul of Gaza aid raises questions of morality and workability
The planning documents anticipated public skepticism and preemptively prepared talking points in case the GHF encountered allegations likening its food distribution hubs and residential compounds to ââconcentration campsâ with biometricsâ or comparing the organization to Blackwater, a former U.S. mercenary firm implicated in violence against civilians in Iraq.
(…)
In mid-2024, Israeli officials shared their plans with a group of private-sector American consultants led by Phil Reilly, a retired CIA paramilitary officer and former agency station chief in Afghanistan. Reillyâs group, said five of the Israeli and American individuals, took over the planning and determined that a new company led by Reilly, named Safe Reach Solutions, would be the future subcontractor that would provide security and logistics for the hubs.
TOP SECRET AMERICA: National Security Inc.
(July 20, 2010)
The Post investigation uncovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America created since 9/11 that is hidden from public view, lacking in thorough oversight and so unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.
It is also a system in which contractors are playing an ever more important role. The Post estimates that out of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors. There is no better example of the government‘s dependency on them than at the CIA, the one place in government that exists to do things overseas that no other U.S. agency is allowed to do.
(…)
Contractors kill enemy fighters. They spy on foreign governments and eavesdrop on terrorist networks. They help craft war plans. They gather information on local factions in war zones. They are the historians, the architects, the recruiters in the nation‘s most secretive agencies. They staff watch centers across the Washington area. They are among the most trusted advisers to the four-star generals leading the nation‘s wars.
The United States canât just stand by as Israel starves northern Gaza
The Biden administration needs to push its ally with more than just empty threats.
Top 5 moments during Trump-Harris presidential debate: ‚I‘m talking now‘
„Do you believe you bear any responsibility in the way that withdrawal played out?“ Harris was asked by a moderator.
„Well, I will tell you, I agreed with President Biden‘s decision to pull out of Afghanistan.“ she said.
„Four presidents said they would and Joe Biden did.“
During the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, 13 U.S. service members were killed in a terrorist attack.
4 takeaways from the first Trump-Harris presidential debate
If Democrats were concerned about anything amounting to a repeat of Bidenâs shoddy debate performance in late June, which led to his dropping out, it was quickly erased. Harris returned to the form that made her the runaway winner of the early 2020 Democratic primary debates.
More than that, though, with a premium on Trump defining the lesser-known Harris, she made sure the debate was overwhelmingly about Trump and his less-appealing traits.
Isfahan, apparent site of Israeli strike, is home to Iranian nuclear facilities
(today)
The Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center is Iranâs largest nuclear research complex and employs approximately 3,000 scientists, according to the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative. It was built with Chinese assistance and opened in 1984. It operates three small Chinese-supplied research reactors, the NTI says, adding that the facility is also the target of both U.S. and U.N. sanctions.
U.S. allows U.N. cease-fire vote, but itâs too late for many in Gaza
We are already halfway through Ramadan, a month-long holy period marked by pronounced grief and suffering in the Palestinian territories. The Israeli campaign in Gaza has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, including many women and children, forced the overwhelming majority of people in Gaza to flee their homes and plunged more than half of Gazaâs population into a de facto famine. Small children are dying of malnutrition in what U.N. officials describe to be the broadest and most severe food crisis in the world.
Just Two US Lawmakers Sign International Statement Demanding Arms Embargo on Israel
(02.03.2024)
The statement‘s signatories include legislators from Israel‘s top allies and weapons suppliers, including the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada. Just two U.S. lawmakersâReps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.)âbacked the statement.
The statement includes six signatories from Germany, which is facing an International Court of Justice (ICJ) case alleging complicity in genocide against Palestinians.
The lawmakers argued that an arms embargo on Israel is both „a moral necessity“ and „a legal requirement,“ given the ICJ‘s interim ruling in late January.
U.S. floods arms into Israel despite mounting alarm over warâs conduct
Washington has approved more than 100 separate military sales to Israel since its invasion of Gaza, even as officials complain Israeli leaders have not done enough to protect civilians
Israel is still floating a plan for Gaza island. And now thereâs a video.
He has estimated the cost of the project to be around $5 billion and has indicated in the past that Saudi Arabia or the Chinese might be interested in investing in the venture.
All sounds good until one factors in Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
Israel has waged one of this centuryâs most destructive wars in Gaza
The Washington Post analyzed satellite imagery, airstrike data and U.N. damage assessments, and interviewed more than 20 aid workers, health-care providers, and experts in munitions and aerial warfare. The evidence shows that Israel has carried out its war in Gaza at a pace and level of devastation that likely exceeds any recent conflict, destroying more buildings, in far less time, than were destroyed during the Syrian regimeâs battle for Aleppo from 2013 to 2016 and the U.S.-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, in 2017.
This was a pernicious lie that was promoted by Biden and his administration to justify Israelâs attacking of hospitals. Those of us who warned that this was a lie at the time were accused of being Hamas propagandists.
The case of al-Shifa: Investigating the assault on Gazaâs largest hospital
The Postâs analysis shows:
– The rooms connected to the tunnel network discovered by IDF troops showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas.
– None of the five hospital buildings identified by Hagari appeared to be connected to the tunnel network.
– There is no evidence that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards.
Hours before IDF troops entered the complex, the Biden administration declassified U.S. intelligence assessments that it said bolstered Israelâs claims. In the aftermath of the raid, Israeli and U.S. officials have stood firm behind their initial statements.
A Washington Post investigation has found no proof of a Hamas command center under al-Shifa Hospital following Israelâs attack on the medical complex
Evidence Doesn‘t Support Israeli Claims That Hospital Was Hamas Command Center: Report
The Israeli raid on al-Shifa Hospital last month, which was preceded by an evacuation order aimed at thousands of people sheltering at the hospital and hundreds of sick patients, produced one of the grisliest scenes in the countryâs ground invasion of the Gaza Strip: a âdeath zoneâ that included a mass grave at the entrance of the hospital and dozens of desperate patients inside, according to the World Health Organization, whose aid workers arrived at the facility on Nov. 18 as part of a humanitarian mission.
Forty patients, including four premature babies, died in the hospital due to a lack of electricity in the days surrounding the raid, hospital administrators told the United Nations.