KOENIG

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset on Monday that he and U.S. President Donald Trump are in full agreement on Iran, describing their personal relationship and the Israel-U.S. partnership as “a recipe for the continuation of our successes in 2026.”

Speaking during the parliamentary "40 signatures" debate, Netanyahu highlighted close cooperation between Jerusalem and Washington on key regional issues, including efforts to repatriate the remains of Staff Sergeant Ran Gvili, the last Israeli hostage still held in Gaza.

Turning to Iran, Netanyahu delivered a firm warning. “We will not allow Iran to rebuild its ballistic missile industry, and we will certainly not let it restart its nuclear program,” he said. He stressed that the shared Israeli-U.S. position is based on a zero-enrichment principle, requiring Iran to export all enriched uranium and ensure its nuclear facilities remain under strict, permanent monitoring.

The Islamic regime will get “hit very hard” if it starts killing protesters, U.S. President Donald Trump warned on Sunday, upping his rhetoric as demonstrations continued for the eighth day.

Washington is monitoring the situation “very closely,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, asked about his warning on Friday that the U.S. would come to the protesters’ rescue.

“If they start killing people, like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump reiterated.

The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reportedly has an "escape plan" that involves fleeing to Russia if the current nationwide protests continue to intensify, British newspaper The Times reported on Sunday.

The plan, called "Plan B" by the British report, would include 86-year-old Khamenei and 20 close people, including family and aides.

It will also involve a way of taking his vast asset network, which, according to a 2013 Reuters investigation cited by The Times, is valued at about $95 billion, and includes the Setad organization, one of the most powerful organizations in Iran, and the Ayatollah's system of semi-state charitable foundations known for their financial obfuscation.

President Donald Trump has been “unequivocal,” both in private and in public, that Hamas needs to disarm as a condition for his 20-point peace plan to proceed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

“This is a necessary and fundamental condition for the implementation of his 20-point plan. He made no concessions on this and showed no flexibility on this matter,” Netanyahu stated, addressing journalists ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday.

Netanyahu’s visit last week to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., contributed to “deepening the dual relationship—between Israel and the United States, and of course the personal bond,” he added.

Senior Israeli and Syrian officials are scheduled to meet Monday and Tuesday in Washington for talks mediated by US envoy Tom Barrack, i24NEWS has confirmed. This will mark the first such high-level meeting since Syrian Foreign Minister Al-Sharaa’s visit to Washington.

The Israeli delegation will be led by Ambassador Yechiel Leiter and Roman Goffman, along with a senior member of the National Security Council. The Syrian side will be represented by the Syrian Foreign Minister, while US envoy Tom Barrack will attend on behalf of the United States.

Previous i24NEWS reporting has noted that broader Israeli-Syrian negotiations have progressed significantly. Discussions are reportedly focused on security arrangements and coordination, reflecting ongoing diplomatic engagement that precedes this week’s scheduled senior-level talks.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado celebrated the US capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro Saturday, saying in her first public comment the “hour of freedom has arrived.”

“The time has come for popular sovereignty and national sovereignty to govern our country. We will restore order, free the political prisoners, build an exceptional country, and bring our children back home,” Machado said in her first public statement since the historic arrest.

“We have fought for years, we have given everything, and it has been worth it. What had to happen is happening.”

President Trump ordered strikes on sites inside Venezuela, including military facilities, U.S. officials told CBS News, as the administration early Saturday ratcheted up its campaign against the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The strikes follow months of U.S. military buildup in the region, with the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and numerous other warships positioned in the Caribbean.

In recent weeks the U.S. has seized two oil tankers off Venezuela, launched deadly strikes on more than 30 boats the administration says were carrying drugs, and struck what President Trump called "the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs."

The Trump administration has accused Maduro of drug trafficking and working with gangs designated as terrorist organizations, which Maduro denies.

The United States will intervene if Iran violently suppresses anti-government demonstrations, President Donald Trump warned on Friday.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that if “Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters,” Washington will “come to their rescue,” adding that the U.S. is “locked and loaded and ready to go.”

Demonstrations over Iran’s plunging currency and soaring inflation, the largest in three years, have widened nationwide and turned deadly as security forces clash with protesters.

Senior Iranian officials are warning of a fierce response if Washington follows through on Trump’s threat to intervene should Tehran use lethal force against demonstrators.

The FBI disrupted an alleged plot to attack people inside a grocery store and fast food restaurant in North Carolina on New Year’s Eve in support of the Islamic State terrorist group, prosecutors revealed Friday. Christian Sturdivant, 18, of Mint Hill — a town outside Charlotte — was arrested and charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization...

In one of his first acts in office on Thursday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani revoked the city’s implementation of an antisemitism definition that includes some forms of Israel criticism, in a sweeping rejection of his predecessor’s executive orders.

The mass revocation of those executive orders also canceled other pro-Israel measures taken by the former mayor, Eric Adams.

Mamdani, a far-left anti-Zionist, took office with the start of the new year, replacing Adams’s staunchly pro-Israel administration.

More than two years after Hamas attacked the Jewish state on Oct. 7, “Israel has come out of this war stronger than ever before,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told attendees of a JNS event in Surfside, Fla., which drew hundreds of people on New Year’s Eve.

The Israeli premier told attendees that the Jewish state made alliances and peace with strong countries.

“We have opened up opportunities for peace that have never existed before. In the first term of President Trump’s office, we did the Abraham Accords that brought four historic peace accords with four Arab states,” he said. “We’re committed to do more.”

“It’s peace through strength,” he said. “It’s prosperity through strength.”

Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York City just after midnight Thursday, taking the oath of office at a historic decommissioned subway station in Manhattan.

Mamdani, a Democrat and an avowed anti-Zionist, was sworn in as the first Muslim leader of America’s biggest city, placing his hand on a Quran as he took his oath.

“This is truly the honor and the privilege of a lifetime,” Mamdani said in a brief speech.

Finnish authorities have seized a vessel suspected of intentionally severing undersea telecommunications cables amid fears of Russian sabotage in the Gulf of Finland. The seized cargo vessel Fitburg was en route from the Russian port of St Petersburg ⁠to Israel at the time of the incident on Wednesday, Finnish Border Guard officials said at a news conference in Helsinki.

Regional pressure on Hezbollah is intensifying, as Egypt, Qatar and Turkey have reportedly issued a stark ultimatum to the group to relinquish its weapons and transfer them to the Lebanese state.

According to a report by the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, citing Lebanese ministerial sources, the three countries warned Hezbollah that disarmament could help Lebanon avoid a potential Israeli military strike and prevent deeper internal divisions between the group and the broader Lebanese public.

The message was framed as a last opportunity to de-escalate at a moment of heightened regional tension.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News on Tuesday that progress toward the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire hinges on Hamas disarming, calling the terrorist group’s refusal to give up its weapons the central obstacle to stabilizing the territory in 2026.

“A new government in Gaza is possible if you disarm Hamas, because no one’s going to come in there if Hamas stays armed,” Netanyahu told the TV network’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier. “They’ll put a bullet right through the back of their head, you know, anyone of any potential new government.”

Netanyahu stressed that the next phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan, which envisions Gaza’s full demilitarization and the deployment of an International Stabilization Force, has stalled because of Hamas.

US President Donald Trump gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approval to take action against Hezbollah, "If the Lebanese army doesn't succeed in disarming them, and Israel believes an action is the necessary thing to do," two sources familiar with details of their Monday meeting told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed the option of another military confrontation with Iran during talks with U.S. President Donald Trump this week, Axios reported, citing multiple U.S. officials briefed on the meeting.

US President Donald Trump and his top aides expressed concern over several Israeli policies in the West Bank during their meetings Monday with visiting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in West Palm Beach, a US official told The Times of Israel.

Trump and his senior advisers took particular issue with unchecked settler violence, settlement expansion and Israel’s withholding of several billion dollars in Palestinian Authority tax revenues, which has brought the Ramallah-based government to the brink of collapse, the US official said, confirming a report on the Axios news site.

The official clarified that the conversations on those issues were cordial, even as Washington expressed fear that instability in the West Bank could harm efforts to stabilize the Gaza Strip and expand the Abraham Accords.

President Donald Trump and his senior advisers asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change Israel’s West Bank policies during their Monday meeting, Axios reported Tuesday, citing a US official and another source with direct knowledge.

The sources said the president and his advisers asked Netanyahu to avoid provocative steps and “calm things down,” raising concerns about settler violence, Palestinian Authority finances, and settlement expansion.

Axios reported that Netanyahu’s government policies were cited by the sources as weakening the Palestinian Authority, expanding settlements, legalizing outposts, displacing Palestinian communities, and moving toward de-facto annexation. The report added that Washington’s message was that changing course in the West Bank is critical to repairing ties with European countries and to any further growth of the Abraham Accords.

Saudi Arabia executed airstrikes on Yemen's Mukalla port Tuesday, obliterating what it characterized as an illicit weapons cache shipped from the United Arab Emirates to separatist forces, AP reported. Riyadh directly blamed the UAE for the separatists' recent territorial expansion, warning Abu Dhabi that its intervention was "extremely dangerous."

The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a port facility on the coast of Venezuela, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, marking the first known US attack on a target inside that country.

Speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that he would “absolutely” support additional Israeli strikes on Iranian missile and nuclear facilities.

In remarks to reporters, Trump agreed to military action alongside Israel if Iran “will continue with missiles” and nuclear activities.

“Yes, the nuclear: fast.” Trump said. “One will be yes, absolutely. The other we’ll do it immediately.”

It was not clear if Trump meant that he would support a strike under current conditions but suggested that any potential military action would be a response to Iranian actions.