Jan 10 (Reuters) – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence wing said it had arrested a foreigner suspected of spying for Israel, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Saturday.
Protests have spread across Iran since December 28 in response to soaring inflation and quickly turning political, with protesters demanding an end to clerical rule. Authorities accuse the U.S. and Israel of fomenting unrest.
(Reporting by ReutersWriting by Muhammad Al GebalyEditing by Peter Graff)
Protests sweeping across Iran neared the two-week mark Saturday, with the country’s government acknowledging the ongoing demonstrations despite an intensifying crackdown and as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world.Video above: Analyst calls situation “the greatest existential threat the Islamic Republic has faced since its inception”With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. But the death toll in the protests has grown to at least 72 people killed and more than 2,300 others detained, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. Iranian state TV is reporting on security force casualties while portraying control over the nation.Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has signaled a coming clampdown, despite U.S. warnings. Tehran escalated its threats Saturday, with Iran’s attorney general, Mohammad Movahedi Azad, warning that anyone taking part in protests will be considered an “enemy of God,” a death penalty charge. The statement carried by Iranian state television said even those who “helped rioters” would face the charge.“Prosecutors must carefully and without delay, by issuing indictments, prepare the grounds for the trial and decisive confrontation with those who, by betraying the nation and creating insecurity, seek foreign domination over the country,” the statement read. “Proceedings must be conducted without leniency, compassion or indulgence.”U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered support for the protesters.“The United States supports the brave people of Iran,” Rubio wrote Saturday on the social platform X. The State Department separately warned: “Do not play games with President Trump. When he says he’ll do something, he means it.”Video below: ‘Locked and loaded’: President Trump warns Iran against killing protestersState TV split-screen highlights Iran’s challengeSaturday marks the start of the work week in Iran, but many schools and universities reportedly held online classes, Iranian state TV reported. Internal Iranian government websites are believed to be functioning.State TV repeatedly played a driving, martial orchestral arrangement from the “Epic of Khorramshahr” by Iranian composer Majid Entezami, while showing pro-government demonstrations. The song, aired repeatedly during the 12-day war launched by Israel, honors Iran’s 1982 liberation of the city of Khorramshahr during the Iran-Iraq war. It has been used in videos of protesting women cutting away their hair to protest the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini as well.“Field reports indicate that peace prevailed in most cities of the country at night,” a state TV anchor reported. “After a number of armed terrorists attacked public places and set fire to people’s private property last night, there was no news of any gathering or chaos in Tehran and most provinces last night.”That was directly contradicted by an online video verified by The Associated Press that showed demonstrations in northern Tehran’s Saadat Abad area, with what appeared to be thousands on the street.“Death to Khamenei!” a man chanted.The semiofficial Fars news agency, believed to be close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and one of the few media outlets able to publish to the outside world, released surveillance camera footage of what it said came from demonstrations in Isfahan. In it, a protester appeared to fire a long gun, while others set fires and threw gasoline bombs at what appeared to be a government compound.The Young Journalists’ Club, associated with state TV, reported that protesters killed three members of the Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force in the city of Gachsaran. It also reported a security official was stabbed to death in Hamadan province, a police officer was killed in the port city of Bandar Abbas and another was killed in Gilan, and one person was slain in Mashhad.State television also aired footage of a funeral service attended by hundreds in Qom, a Shiite seminary city just south of Tehran.More weekend demonstrations plannedIran’s theocracy cut off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls on Thursday, though it allowed some state-owned and semiofficial media to publish. Qatar’s state-funded Al Jazeera news network reported live from Iran, but they appeared to be the only major foreign outlet able to work.Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who called for protests Thursday and Friday, asked in his latest message for demonstrators to take to the streets Saturday and Sunday. He urged protesters to carry Iran’s old lion-and-sun flag and other national symbols used during the time of the shah to “claim public spaces as your own.”Pahlavi’s support of and from Israel has drawn criticism in the past — particularly after the 12-day war. Demonstrators have shouted in support of the shah in some protests, but it isn’t clear whether that’s support for Pahlavi himself or a desire to return to a time before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.Airlines have cancelled some flights to Iran over the demonstrations. Austrian Airlines said Saturday it had decided to suspend its flights to Iran “as a precautionary measure” through Monday. Turkish Airlines earlier announced the cancellation of 17 flights to three cities in Iran.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates —
Protests sweeping across Iran neared the two-week mark Saturday, with the country’s government acknowledging the ongoing demonstrations despite an intensifying crackdown and as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world.
Video above: Analyst calls situation “the greatest existential threat the Islamic Republic has faced since its inception”
With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. But the death toll in the protests has grown to at least 72 people killed and more than 2,300 others detained, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. Iranian state TV is reporting on security force casualties while portraying control over the nation.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has signaled a coming clampdown, despite U.S. warnings. Tehran escalated its threats Saturday, with Iran’s attorney general, Mohammad Movahedi Azad, warning that anyone taking part in protests will be considered an “enemy of God,” a death penalty charge. The statement carried by Iranian state television said even those who “helped rioters” would face the charge.
“Prosecutors must carefully and without delay, by issuing indictments, prepare the grounds for the trial and decisive confrontation with those who, by betraying the nation and creating insecurity, seek foreign domination over the country,” the statement read. “Proceedings must be conducted without leniency, compassion or indulgence.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered support for the protesters.
“The United States supports the brave people of Iran,” Rubio wrote Saturday on the social platform X. The State Department separately warned: “Do not play games with President Trump. When he says he’ll do something, he means it.”
Video below: ‘Locked and loaded’: President Trump warns Iran against killing protesters
State TV split-screen highlights Iran’s challenge
Saturday marks the start of the work week in Iran, but many schools and universities reportedly held online classes, Iranian state TV reported. Internal Iranian government websites are believed to be functioning.
State TV repeatedly played a driving, martial orchestral arrangement from the “Epic of Khorramshahr” by Iranian composer Majid Entezami, while showing pro-government demonstrations. The song, aired repeatedly during the 12-day war launched by Israel, honors Iran’s 1982 liberation of the city of Khorramshahr during the Iran-Iraq war. It has been used in videos of protesting women cutting away their hair to protest the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini as well.
“Field reports indicate that peace prevailed in most cities of the country at night,” a state TV anchor reported. “After a number of armed terrorists attacked public places and set fire to people’s private property last night, there was no news of any gathering or chaos in Tehran and most provinces last night.”
That was directly contradicted by an online video verified by The Associated Press that showed demonstrations in northern Tehran’s Saadat Abad area, with what appeared to be thousands on the street.
“Death to Khamenei!” a man chanted.
The semiofficial Fars news agency, believed to be close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and one of the few media outlets able to publish to the outside world, released surveillance camera footage of what it said came from demonstrations in Isfahan. In it, a protester appeared to fire a long gun, while others set fires and threw gasoline bombs at what appeared to be a government compound.
The Young Journalists’ Club, associated with state TV, reported that protesters killed three members of the Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force in the city of Gachsaran. It also reported a security official was stabbed to death in Hamadan province, a police officer was killed in the port city of Bandar Abbas and another was killed in Gilan, and one person was slain in Mashhad.
State television also aired footage of a funeral service attended by hundreds in Qom, a Shiite seminary city just south of Tehran.
More weekend demonstrations planned
Iran’s theocracy cut off the nation from the internet and international telephone calls on Thursday, though it allowed some state-owned and semiofficial media to publish. Qatar’s state-funded Al Jazeera news network reported live from Iran, but they appeared to be the only major foreign outlet able to work.
Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who called for protests Thursday and Friday, asked in his latest message for demonstrators to take to the streets Saturday and Sunday. He urged protesters to carry Iran’s old lion-and-sun flag and other national symbols used during the time of the shah to “claim public spaces as your own.”
Pahlavi’s support of and from Israel has drawn criticism in the past — particularly after the 12-day war. Demonstrators have shouted in support of the shah in some protests, but it isn’t clear whether that’s support for Pahlavi himself or a desire to return to a time before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.
Airlines have cancelled some flights to Iran over the demonstrations. Austrian Airlines said Saturday it had decided to suspend its flights to Iran “as a precautionary measure” through Monday. Turkish Airlines earlier announced the cancellation of 17 flights to three cities in Iran.
Installation view: “Aiza Ahmed: The Music Room” at Sargent’s Daughters. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Sargent’s Daughters, New York
In a year defined by market calibration—especially on the ultra-contemporary front—very few young artists have truly emerged. One of the rare exceptions is 28-year-old Pakistani and New York-based artist Aiza Ahmed, who in 2025 achieved rapid, sustained recognition across two key regions: the art world’s center in New York and the rapidly expanding cultural ecosystem of the Gulf. Her enthusiastically received debut solo at Sargent’s Daughters closed only weeks ago, yet she is already preparing for the inaugural edition of Art Basel’s Qatar in February, where she will be one of the youngest artists featured in the fair’s curated exhibition format led by artist Wael Shawky. Although she completed a year-long residency at Silver Art Projects, Ahmed has temporarily traded her downtown Manhattan studio views for the MENA region’s most prestigious residency at the Fire Station in Doha, also directed by Shawky. She spoke with Observer from that studio, where she is working on the major installation she is preparing for her next milestone moment in Doha.
This continual movement between countries and cultures is not new to Ahmed, whose life has been shaped by constant geographical crossings. Her grandparents were originally from Calcutta but left India for Pakistan after the 1947 Partition, beginning a migratory trajectory that has threaded through the family ever since. Born in 1997 in Lahore, she spent a brief period in Karachi before relocating to London with her family at a young age. Ahmed spent her adolescence in Dubai before moving to the U.S. for her undergraduate studies at Cornell, followed by an MFA in painting at RISD. Now a decade into living in the States, she acknowledges that her life—and by extension, her art—has been defined by inhabiting the in-between, switching between cultural contexts governed by different social codes. That instability has sharpened her acute spirit of observation of the humanity around her, from which all her work originates.
Upon entering her solo at Sargent’s Daughters, what stands out is not only the maturity of her visual lexicon but also the clarity of her world-building instinct. Ahmed moves fluidly and inventively across mediums, shaping entire narrative spaces from the moment she traces a face or draws the psychological contour of a figure, then expands that gesture outward into the room as a potentially ever-evolving story.
Aiza Ahmed in her studio. Photo: Leo Ng
“I’ve been drawing and working with my hands for as long as I can remember,” Ahmed tells Observer. Her parents say she was always making things or engaged in some kind of craft. But it was around year seven or eight—early in high school—that her interest began to take real shape. “I had a favorite art teacher who I credit so much—she supported me from the beginning and would leave little notes in my journals, encouraging me. They were just drawings I used to do, but she really saw something in them,” she recalls. “I also recently found these caricatures I made when I was about ten, these political cartoons, and looking at them now, I can see the threads. The seeds were already there—this instinct for humor, for drawing the line.”
Ahmed’s style, in fact, isn’t straightforwardly figurative. Her figures remain suspended in an unfinished state—between dimensions, between figuration and something surreal or even abstract—rooted more in the emotional and psychological space of her characters than in the synthesized volume of their bodies. At the same time, her sharp, confident line work grounds the compositions in a tradition that evokes comics, political satire and caricature. As seen in the work of French satirical artist Honoré Daumier or the German George Grosz, Ahmed’s caricatural style exaggerates posture, expression and behavior with a few quick, incisive strokes, distilling personality or social type into its most telling gestures. She readily acknowledges her connection to this lineage. “I’m really drawn to the face. I feel like I’m a keen observer of people, especially having lived between so many worlds and having to assimilate—from Pakistan to London to Dubai to the U.S.” she reflects. Across all those moves, she adapted in an ongoing process of code-switching—first observing, then imitating, learning to fit in without losing sight of who she was or where she came from.
Drawing gives Ahmed a space for unfiltered, intuitive expression—a way of seeing that precedes the expectations of society or culture. “When I draw, it’s quick and raw,” she explains. “It’s the first mark that comes out. I don’t erase. It’s whatever is coming through me in a stream-of-consciousness way.”
Ahemed’s practice contends with borders, migrations, public histories, and private archives within diasporic identities originating from the Indian Subcontinent. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Sargent’s Daughters, New York
Notably, most of the characters Ahmed brings to the stage are men—often exaggerated in their grotesque appearances and postures, whimsically distorted in their grinning or perverse expressions, or revealed in moments of fragile vulnerability beneath a masculine performance of power.
The artist admits she only recently realized that, over time, she has consistently drawn or painted male figures. “I didn’t notice it at first, but recently I was like, okay, in my studio it’s just all these men of different types and me,” she reflects. Earlier in her graduate studies at RISD, she had been thinking a lot about uncles, she adds. “My whole practice is me trying to trace where I come from, the ancestry I didn’t know, the histories and displacement of my own country that I wasn’t taught until really late in my upbringing.” In more recent series, however, something has shifted—or perhaps she has simply become more aware of the deeper reasons behind her recurring male subjects.
Growing up, and even after she left Pakistan, she returned every summer to visit grandparents, aunts and cousins. During those visits, she became attuned to what she calls the grammar of men. “In public spaces, all you see are men. Women are usually inside, or covered,” she recalls, noting how her visual field was filled with authority, corruption and performance. Even after moving to New York, she found the dynamic not so different—only more indirect. “I can’t walk from point A to point B without feeling the male gaze. It’s uncomfortable. It’s charged. At first, I thought it was just Pakistan, but it’s everywhere I go.”
Portraying men, then, becomes a kind of role reversal. “As a young woman, I’m looking at men. In art history, it was usually the opposite: men looking at women, and no one questioned it,” she reflects. Still, she admits she sometimes feels sorry for her subjects. “The way I draw these border guards, they look clunky, short, stout, almost fragile. And then I’m like, wait, why do I feel sorry for them? It’s all very layered,” she acknowledges.
Ahmed enacts, through her art, a sharp human and cultural diagnosis—exposing the hypocrisies and paradoxes embedded in socially coded, gendered behaviors. With her cartoonish figures, she deciphers patterns of authority and performance. Aiza Ahmed observes society as a system shaped by power dynamics—and claims art as a space to imagine different ones.
Ahmed constructs theatrical narratives that unsettle fixed ideas of nationhood, masculinity, and belonging. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Sargent’s Daughters, New York
When asked if she remembers being particularly drawn to political satire in newspapers or to the language of comics more broadly, she says she probably was not looking at anything specific. “I used to read the newspaper because my father would tell me to—just to know what was happening in the world,” she says, recalling how she often found it difficult and would flip straight to the illustrated sections. “It’s funny—I never connected that until now. Maybe that planted something,” she acknowledges, adding that she loved Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake and grew up watching a lot of Disney. “The Disney aesthetic really shaped me,” she reflects, describing how she recently discovered a Disney encyclopedia series in an antique shop in Doha. “One volume was called Great Leaders. It listed all these men and maybe two women—like Queen Victoria. It was fascinating, and the illustrations were unlike anything I’d seen,” she says. The find feels serendipitous, almost luminous, given the direction her work is now taking.
The fact that Ahmed constantly oscillates between caustic social indictment and a playfully theatrical or carnivalesque register pushes the grotesque into the realm of the fantastical and hallucinatory. As James Ensor once did, Ahmed’s line exaggerates expression to the point of derangement, using humor, absurdity and the grotesque to surface moral and psychological undercurrents, as well as the paradoxical fragility at the heart of today’s crisis of masculinity and the masculine-led world these performances of power seek to uphold. Applying the inverse of a more gentle, compassionate feminine playfulness, Ahmed’s work unsettles fixed ideas of nationhood, masculinity and belonging.
After all, it is playfulness and humor that often allow satire to resonate. They soften the critique just enough for the viewer to enter, while sharpening the underlying point. The best satire lets you laugh and wince at the same time.
This is why Aiza Ahmed’s work often takes on a theatrical presence, as she stages human drama within the space, suspended in dreamlike atmospheres. This was particularly evident in her solo debut with Sargent’s Daughters. Drawing its title, “The Music Room,” from Jalsaghar (The Music Room), Satyajit Ray’s mesmerizing 1958 film, Ahmed translated the movie into spatial terms through a multimedia installation of shifting characters rendered in monumental paintings and wooden cut-out figures. An original composition by historian, composer and guitarist Ria Modak further shaped the mise-en-scène, transforming the gallery into both a soundscape and a theater where these narratives unfolded with unsettling resonance in the present.
Evoking the film’s psychological portrait of India’s zamindar class, propped up under British colonial rule before facing dissolution amid land reforms and shifting politics in the mid-20th century, the music room here similarly becomes a stage for hollow rituals of nostalgia and masculine display. Ahmed’s figures appear as ghostly presences, drawn with raw, essential lines that balance humor and pallor, exposing the paradoxes and slow decay of any myth of masculinity. Crucially, in another act of inversion, she imagines a music room authored by women, turning their gaze back onto patriarchal and colonial power.
A similar impulse shaped her Spring Break Art Show presentation last May, where she first drew wider attention with a booth curated by Indira A. Abiskaroon, a curatorial assistant at the Brooklyn Museum. There, Ahmed reimagined the Wagah-Attari border ceremony, a daily ritual established in 1959 that draws thousands to watch soldiers from India and Pakistan march, gesture and parade as mirrored adversaries in a choreography that has long fascinated her for its oscillation between fury and restraint, rivalry and camaraderie.
Installation view: Aiza Ahmed’s “Border Play” at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in 2025. Photo: Leo Ng
In her installation, she amplified the spectacle to expose its built-in theatricality: bugle calls and Kishore Kumar’s bright vocals led visitors through hot pink drapes and onto a red carpet flanked by wooden soldiers, toward an imagined stage where painted and sculpted figures performed their own exaggerated version of the ritual. Within this draped, cardboard mise-en-scène, the soldiers’ postures, uniforms and expressions became social masks—revealing not only the codes through which authority and masculinity are enacted, but also the fragility those performances attempt to conceal. Her presentation at Art Basel Qatar will continue this narrative; she is currently working on new paintings, a suspended muslin work and a series of wooden cut-out soldiers for the installation.
Ahmed’s visual and narrative approach is not far from the narrative strategies used in commedia dell’arte, which established the idea of fixed “characters” representing social types, each defined by a mask and exaggerated behavioral code—or pantomime, which strips these roles even further, reducing gesture to language and expression to narrative. Ahmed’s suspended storylines operate in a similar register. Much like in Pirandello’s work, she uses playful role-playing and seemingly naive humor to generate immediate empathy while simultaneously revealing the fragile, absurd theater of human existence and the drama of identity.
Thus far, Ahmed acknowledges, two main sources have shaped the origins of her work. One is her personal observation of societal rituals—weddings, funerals and ceremonies that exist in a liminal space between the public and the private, where she has been both observer and participant. The other is the India-Pakistan border, which she has studied in depth. Still, she notes, the overarching theme that continues to emerge is the spectrum of masculinity and the attempt to understand its psyche. What is going on in their heads—and how has that interiority hardened into a social rule that has long shaped a shared sense of reality?
When asked if her work is political, Ahmed says that every action can be a political act. “Even if you don’t voice it, you’re making a statement. Being a brown woman is already a political act. There are endless layers you can add to that,” she argues. And endless, too, are the dimensions in which Ahmed’s powerful imagination can evolve, as she continues to translate her both empathic and critical observations of the world around her.
Jan 8 (Reuters) – A federal judge dismissed on Thursday a lawsuit demanding the U.S. government conduct emergency rescues of Palestinian Americans and family members who are trapped in Gaza and trying to escape hardships caused by the war between Israel and Hamas.
Chief Judge Virginia Kendall of the U.S. District Court in Chicago said she lacked the power and tools to evaluate “delicate foreign policy decisions” belonging to the government’s Executive Branch, while expressing sympathy with “the impossible positions in which many of the plaintiffs have found themselves.”
Nine Palestinian Americans, all U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, sued in December 2024, accusing the U.S. government of violating their constitutional right to equal protection by abandoning them in a war zone and not evacuating them as readily as it would evacuate other Americans.
They said destroyed homes, food shortages, poor medical care, mental anguish and other hardships imposed a “mandatory, non-discretionary duty” on the government to evacuate people from Gaza.
But the judge said she was ill-equipped to address how to coordinate an evacuation with neighboring countries, how to shepherd evacuees through dangerous “red zones,” which people are eligible for evacuations, and how the nonexistent U.S. diplomatic presence in Gaza would complicate the process.
“Endeavoring to answer these questions – and many more like them – from the comfort of chambers is both undoable and would also invade the political branches’ constitutionally committed tasks of determining when, how, and under what circumstances evacuations from war zones should proceed,” Kendall wrote.
The judge also said available evidence showed the U.S. government has developed an evacuation plan, and the nine plaintiffs had either been evacuated or rejected offers that did not cover immediate family members.
Lawyers from the Council on American-Islamic Relations advocacy group, which represents the plaintiffs, had no immediate comment. The U.S. Department of State did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and abducted 251 others in an October 7, 2023, assault on Israel, according to Israeli data. More than 71,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The lawsuit was filed against former U.S. President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken and former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and continued against their respective successors Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Nia Williams)
BEIRUT, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Lebanon’s central bank will seek the repayment of public funds embezzled by at least one former central bank official and by lawyers and commercial bankers, to help guarantee its liquidity, Central Bank Governor Karim Souaid said on Thursday.
Souaid did not name Riad Salameh, the former central bank governor whose 30-year term ended in disgrace amid investigations into whether he embezzled more than $300 million between 2002 and 2015.
Instead Souaid told reporters that the central bank had filed a criminal complaint against an unnamed former official of the central bank, a former banker and a lawyer over alleged illicit enrichment through misuse of public funds. He said the operations were carried out through four offshore shell companies in the Cayman Islands that he did not name.
COORDINATING WITH FRENCH INVESTIGATORS
Souaid said the bank would become a primary plaintiff in the state’s investigation against Forry Associates, suspected of receiving commissions from commercial banks and transferring them out of the country. Forry is controlled by Salameh’s brother, Raja. Both Raja and Riad Salameh deny wrongdoing.
The pair are under investigation in France, Germany, Switzerland and other countries over the alleged embezzlement. Souaid said he would travel to France to meet with the investigators this month “to exchange highly sensitive information held by the French authorities.”
Souaid would not say how many people in total were suspected of involvement in the scheme or the full sum now thought to have been embezzled.
“Our mission is to pursue these individuals and entities, seek their conviction, and seize their movable and immovable assets and the proceeds of their illicit activities to ensure liquidity for the rightful owners, first and foremost the depositors,” he said.
A Lebanese source familiar with the central bank’s new measures said they were prompted by lots of evidence – both new material uncovered in the central bank’s records and other evidence made available from external investigators. The source said the bank’s leadership suspected Salameh was aided in his scheme by other members of the institution.
Salameh was detained for nearly 13 months over the alleged financial crimes committed during his tenure, and was released last September after posting a record bail of more than $14 million. He remains in Lebanon under a travel ban.
(Reporting by Maya Gebeily and Tala Ramadan; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
The head of Iran’s military threatened preemptive action over “rhetoric” targeting the country as the regime faces massive protests. Iran’s Maj. Gen. Amir Hatami was likely responding to President Donald Trump’s warning that America would act if violence was used against protesters.
Trump recently made it clear that the U.S. would step in if it saw that Iran was mistreating or killing protesters.
The president wrote on Truth Social, “If Iran shoots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
Trump’s warning took on a new meaning for Iran following the historic U.S. mission in Venezuela that led to the capture and extradition of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Iranian military chief Maj. Gen. Amir Hatami seemed to respond to President Donald Trump’s remarks in his latest statement on the ongoing protests.(Masoud Nazari Mehrabi/Iranian Army via AP; Alex Brandon/AP Photo)
Hatami, who was speaking to military academy students, said, “The Islamic Republic considers the intensification of such rhetoric against the Iranian nation as a threat and will not leave its continuation without a response,” according to The Associated Press, which cited the state-run IRNA news agency.
He added, “I can say with confidence that today the readiness of Iran’s armed forces is far greater than before the war. If the enemy commits an error, it will face a more decisive response, and we will cut off the hand of any aggressor.”
Economic woes have led to an uprising among the Iranian people, and international backlash over the treatment of demonstrators has left regime officials feeling threatened, particularly by the U.S. and Israel.
Protesters hold signs during a demonstration in Iran amid ongoing unrest, according to images released by the Iranian opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran.(NCRI )
In an effort to quell the unrest, Iran’s government began paying the equivalent of $7 a month to subsidize rising food costs for dinner-table staples, such as rice, meat and pasta. Iranian state TV reported that the subsidy will go to more than 71 million people across the country, according to the AP. The outlet noted that the new subsidy is more than double the 4.5 million rial the people had previously received.
Iranian shopkeepers have warned that prices for items like basic cooking oil could triple under pressure from the collapse of the country’s currency, the AP reported. Iranian media has also reportedly covered the rise in prices of basic goods, including cooking oil, poultry and cheese.
Protesters march in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP)
Iran’s vice president in charge of executive affairs, Mohammad Jafar Ghaempanah, told reporters that the country was in a “full-fledged economic war,” the AP reported. He called for “economic surgery” to get rid of rentier policies and corruption within Iran, the AP added.
Protests began late last month and have showed no signs of stopping. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) claimed the cities of Abdanan (Ilam province) and Malekshahi were effectively “taken over” by protesters.
The Associated Press and Fox News Digital’s Emma Bussey contributed to this report.
Rachel Wolf is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital and FOX Business.
President Donald Trump was photographed with a signed “Make Iran Great Again” hat alongside Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as nationwide demonstrations in Iran continued against the regime’s political and economic corruption.
In a photo posted Monday morning on Graham’s X account, the senator could be seen flashing a thumbs up next to Trump as the president holds the black hat emblazoned with his signature.
“Another great day with @POTUS who has brought America back, stronger than ever, at home and abroad,” Graham wrote. “God bless our Commander in Chief and all of the brave men and women who serve under him.”
“I’m proud to be an American,” the post continued. “God bless and protect the brave people of Iran who are standing up to tyranny.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., posted a photo of himself posing with President Donald Trump, who is holding a signed “Make Iran Great Again” hat.(Lindsey Graham / X)
Demonstrations have spread to more than 220 locations across 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported early Monday. At least 20 people have been killed, the group said, and more than 990 have been arrested.
Protesters march in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP)
Iran’s collapsing currency has fueled a deepening economic crisis. Prices for staples such as meat and rice have surged, while the country grapples with inflation of around 40%.
In December, the government introduced a new pricing tier for its heavily subsidized gasoline, raising the cost of some of the world’s cheapest fuel and adding to public anger. Tehran has signaled that further increases may follow, with officials now set to review fuel prices every three months.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves to the crowd during a meeting with officials, Islamic countries’ ambassador to Iran and a group of people in Tehran, Iran, on Monday, March 31, 2025. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
PALM BEACH, Florida, Jan 3 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump capped the holidays with an unprecedented strike on Venezuela, overseeing a surprise snatch-and-grab operation early on Saturday targeted at Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
The dramatic mission punctuated a winter sojourn to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, filled with an unusual mix of activities that have become oddly typical for the unconventional president.
Trump spent Thursday night, for instance, blasting out messages on Truth Social about an eclectic array of topics, none of them related to the South American country.
He wrote that the U.S. was “locked and loaded” and poised to help protesters in Iran if they were attacked by the government in Tehran. The 79-year-old president also presented his 11.2 million Truth Social followers with an image of a bald eagle that had been apparently slain by a windmill, while assuring them in a separate post that he is in “PERFECT HEALTH.”
On Friday, less than 24 hours before the Venezuela mission, Trump spent almost an hour perusing marble and onyx at an Italian stone importer in a gritty section of Lake Worth Beach for his planned White House ballroom. Onlookers were left agape as “The Beast” presidential limousine snaked its way down narrow roads flanked by strip malls and trailer parks for the shopping excursion.
Since arriving at Mar-a-Lago in mid-December for a trip that wraps up on Sunday, Trump’s days have been a blend of heady geopolitical affairs with visits from foreign leaders and glitzy social occasions, like a black-tie gala on New Year’s Eve replete with Palm Beach socialites. No stretch has underlined that juxtaposition more than the last few days.
Supporters see a vigorous executive, capable of juggling several tasks and interests simultaneously. Opponents say he is easily distracted and sometimes focused on trivial matters, even when his administration is engaged in immensely consequential matters, like preparing to attack a sovereign nation.
A PASSION FOR MARBLE, A DISDAIN FOR CLOONEY
On New Year’s Eve, with hundreds of military assets already in place and awaiting the order to capture Maduro, Trump took to Truth Social with mock celebration of the news that George and Amal Clooney – both critics of the U.S. president – had obtained French citizenship.
During the gala at Mar-a-Lago hours later, Trump invited painter Vanessa Horabuena up to the stage to paint an image of Jesus Christ. He then auctioned off the painting for $2.75 million to a woman in a top hat and a svelte man in modified black-tie attire. The proceeds, the president said, would go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
In the lead-up to the Venezuela mission, Trump also had his most high-profile architectural passion project – the $400 million new White House ballroom – on his mind. The endeavor has faced sharp criticism from Democrats and conservationists, in part because it involved the demolition of a significant chunk of the executive mansion.
A White House official told reporters on Friday that Trump was purchasing marble and onyx for the ballroom at his own expense, without providing further details.
“I’m doing a magnificent, big, beautiful ballroom that the country’s wanted, the White House has wanted for 150 years,” Trump said last week alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had traveled to Florida to meet with the U.S. president.
That Trump would venture out days later to view marble options – even as one of the most significant U.S. military operations ever in Latin America was imminent – was not a total surprise for a president who has long had something of an obsession with the white stone.
During his first term in office, Trump appointees on an architectural board demanded that a renovation of the Federal Reserve in Washington include more marble. That demand, revealed by the media last year, has garnered renewed relevance as Trump frequently criticizes Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for the cost of that renovation.
Following Trump’s Friday stop at the marble importer, he headed to his golf course, as he did on a near-daily basis while in Florida. In the evening, he met with his ambassador to China, former Senator David Perdue.
Within hours, the plan to capture Maduro was a go.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Alistair Bell and Diane Craft)
WASHINGTON, Jan 2 (Reuters) – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is deeply concerned by Israel’s announcement of a suspension of the operations of several international non-governmental organizations in occupied Palestinian territory and called for the measure to be reversed, according to a statement on Friday.
“This announcement comes on top of earlier restrictions that have already delayed critical food, medical, hygiene and shelter supplies from entering Gaza. This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the secretary-general, said in the statement.
(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Chris Reese)
ANKARA, Jan 2 (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he would have a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday to discuss peace efforts between Ukraine and Russia as well as issues surrounding Gaza.
Speaking to reporters in Istanbul on Friday, Erdogan also said Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will attend a meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing”, a group of nations backing Ukraine, in Paris in coming days.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever; Editing by Jonathan Spicer )
DUBAI, Jan 2 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Yemen said on Friday that Aidarus Al-Zubaidi, the leader of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC), refused landing permission the previous day for a plane carrying a Saudi delegation to Aden.
The halt in flights at Aden international airport was the latest sign of a deepening crisis between Gulf powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose rivalry is reshaping war-torn Yemen.
“For several weeks and until yesterday, the Kingdom sought to make all efforts with the Southern Transitional Council to end the escalation … but it faced continuous rejection and stubbornness from Aidarus Al-Zubaidi,” the Saudi ambassador, Mohammed Al-Jaber, said on X.
Yemen’s separatist STC did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Jaber’s statement.
Zubaidi issued directives to close air traffic at Aden airport on Thursday, the ambassador added, saying that a plane carrying a Saudi delegation to Aden aiming to find solutions to the crisis was denied permission to land.
In a statement on Thursday, the STC-controlled transport ministry accused Saudi Arabia of imposing an air blockade, saying Riyadh required all flights to go via Saudi Arabia for extra checks.
The UAE backs the STC, which seized swathes of southern Yemen last month from the internationally recognised government, backed by Saudi Arabia, which in turn saw the move as a threat.
The Aden international airport is the main gateway for regions of the country outside Houthi control.
(Reporting by Ahmed Elimam; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Dec 31 (Reuters) – United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned on Wednesday a move by Israel to ban electricity or water to facilities owned by the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency, a U.N. spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said the move would “further impede” the agency’s ability to operate and carry out activities.
“The Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations remains applicable to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), its property and assets, and to its officials and other personnel. Property used by UNRWA is inviolable,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the secretary-general, said while adding that UNRWA is an “integral” part of the world body.
UNRWA Commissioner General Phillipe Lazzarini also condemned the move, saying that it was part of an ongoing “ systematic campaign to discredit UNRWA and thereby obstruct” the role it plays in providing assistance to Palestinian refugees.
In 2024, the Israeli parliament passed a law banning the agency from operating in the country and prohibiting officials from having contact with the agency.
As a result, UNRWA operates in East Jerusalem, which the U.N. considers territory occupied by Israel. Israel considers all Jerusalem to be part of the country.
The agency provides education, health and aid to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. It has long had tense relations with Israel but ties have deteriorated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza and Israel has called repeatedly for UNRWA to be disbanded, with its responsibilities transferred to other U.N. agencies.
The prohibition of basic utilities to the U.N. agency came as Israel also suspended of dozens of international non-governmental organizations working in Gaza due to a failure to meet new rules to vet those groups.
In a joint statement, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom said on Tuesday such a move would have a severe impact on the access of essential services, including healthcare. They said one in three healthcare facilities in Gaza would close if international NGO operations stopped.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Don Durfee and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
LONDON, Dec 30 (Reuters) – The humanitarian situation in Gaza has worsened again and is of serious concern, Britain, Canada, France and others said in a joint statement on Tuesday that also called on Israel to take urgent action.
The statement, published online by the British Foreign Office, said Israel should allow non-governmental organisations to work in Israel in a sustained and predictable way, and ensure the U.N. could continue its work in the Palestinian enclave.
“(We) express serious concerns about the renewed deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Gaza which remains catastrophic,” read the statement from the foreign ministers of Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
It also said Israel should lift what it called “unreasonable restrictions” on certain imports including medical and shelter equipment, and open border crossings to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October after two years of intense Israeli bombardment and military operations in Gaza that followed a deadly attack by Hamas-led fighters on Israeli communities in October 2023.
A global hunger monitor said on December 19 that there was no longer famine in Gaza after access for humanitarian and commercial food deliveries improved following the ceasefire.
But humanitarian agencies say far more aid needs to get into the small, crowded territory and that Israel is blocking needed items from entering. Israel says more than enough food gets in and that the problems are with distribution within Gaza.
(Reporting by William James; editing by Andrew Heavens and Mark Heinrich)
BEIJING, Dec 29 (Reuters) – China opposes any attempt to split territories in Somalia, the foreign ministry said on Monday, affirming Chinese support for the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of the East African country.
“No country should encourage or support other countries’ internal separatist forces for its own selfish interests,” ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters at a regular press conference, urging authorities in Somaliland to stop “separatist activities and collusion with external forces”.
Israel became the first country on Friday to formally recognise the self-declared Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state, seeking immediate cooperation with Somaliland in agriculture, health, technology and the economy.
(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista, Writing by Liz Lee; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
Dec 29 – Syria’s government has ordered soldiers to guard a mass grave created to conceal atrocities under Bashar al-Assad and has opened a criminal investigation, following a Reuters report that revealed a yearslong conspiracy by the fallen dictatorship to hide thousands of bodies on the remote desert site.
The site, in the Dhumair desert east of Damascus, was used during Assad’s rule as a military weapons depot, according to a former Syrian army officer with knowledge of the operation. It was later emptied of personnel in 2018 to ensure secrecy for a plot that involved unearthing the bodies of thousands of victims of the dictatorship buried in a mass grave on the outskirts of Damascus and trucking them an hour’s drive away to Dhumair.
The plot, orchestrated by the dictator’s inner circle, was called “Operation Move Earth.” Soldiers are stationed at the Dhumair site again, this time by the government that overthrew Assad.
The Dhumair military installation was also reactivated as a barracks and arms depot in November, after seven years of disuse, according to an army officer posted there in early December, a military official and Sheikh Abu Omar Tawwaq, who is the security chief of Dhumair.
The Dhumair site was completely unprotected over the summer, when Reuters journalists made repeated visits after discovering the existence of a mass grave there.
Within weeks of the report in October, the new government created a checkpoint at the entrance to the military installation where the site lies, according to a soldier stationed there who spoke to Reuters in mid-December. Visitors to the site now need access permits from the Defense Ministry.
Satellite images reviewed by Reuters since late November show new vehicle activity around the main base area.
The military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the reactivation of the base is part of efforts to “secure control over the country and prevent hostile parties from exploiting this open strategic area.” The road through the desert connects one of Islamic State’s remaining Syrian strongholds with Damascus.
In November, police opened an investigation into the grave, photographing it, carrying out land surveys and interviewing witnesses, according to Jalal Tabash, head of the al-Dhumair police station. Among those interviewed by police was Ahmed Ghazal, a key source for the Reuters investigation that exposed the mass grave.
“I told them all the details I told you about the operation and what I witnessed during those years,” said Ghazal, a mechanic who repaired trucks carrying bodies that broke down at the Dhumair grave site. Ghazal confirmed that during the time of “Operation Move Earth,” the military installation appeared vacant except for the soldiers involved in accompanying the convoys.
Syria’s Information Ministry did not respond to requests for comment about the re-activation of the base or the investigation into the mass grave.
The National Commission for Missing Persons, which was established after Assad’s ouster to investigate the fate of tens of thousands of Syrians who vanished under his rule, told Reuters it is in the process of training personnel and creating laboratories in order to meet international standards for mass grave exhumations. Exhumations at Syria’s many Assad-era mass graves, including the site at Dhumair, are scheduled for 2027, the commission told Reuters.
The police have referred their report on Dhumair to the Adra district attorney, Judge Zaman al-Abdullah. Al-Abdullah told Reuters that information about Assad-era suspects involved in the Dhumair operation, both inside and outside Syria, is being cross-referenced with documents obtained by security branches after the dictator’s fall in December 2024. He would not describe the suspects, citing the ongoing investigation.
According to military documents reviewed by Reuters and testimony from civilian and military sources, logistics for “Operation Move Earth” were handled by a key man, Col. Mazen Ismander. Contacted through an intermediary, Ismander declined to comment on the initial Reuters report or the new investigation into the mass grave.
When the conspiracy was hatched in 2018, Assad was verging on victory in the civil war and hoped to reclaim legitimacy in the international community after years of sanctions and allegations of brutality. He had been accused of detaining and killing Syrians by the thousands, and the location of a mass grave in the town of Qutayfah, outside Damascus, had been reported by local human rights activists.
So an order came from the presidential palace: Excavate Qutayfah and hide the bodies on the military installation in the Dhumair desert.
For four nights a week for nearly two years, from 2019 to 2021, Ismander oversaw the operation, Reuters found. Trucks hauled corpses and dirt from the exposed mass grave to the vacated military installation in the desert, where trenches were filled with bodies as the Qutayfah site was excavated.
In revealing the conspiracy, Reuters spoke to 13 people with direct knowledge of the two-year effort and analyzed more than 500 satellite images of both mass graves. Under the guidance of forensic geologists, Reuters used aerial drone photography to create high-resolution composite images that helped corroborate the transfer of bodies by showing color changes in the disturbed soil around Dhumair’s burial trenches.
(Reporting by Feras Dalatey. Additional reporting by Ryan McNeill. Edited by Lori Hinnant.)
ISTANBUL, Dec 29 (Reuters) – Seven Turkish police officers were wounded during a clash with suspected Islamic State militants in Yalova province in northwest Turkey on Monday, state broadcaster TRT Haber reported.
(Reporting by Daren Butler; Editing by Tom Hogue)
JERUSALEM/PALM BEACH, Florida, Dec 28 – U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to push for progress in the stalled ceasefire in Gaza when he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday for talks that will include Israel’s concerns over Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran.
Netanyahu said this month that Trump had invited him for talks, as Washington pushes to establish transitional governance and an international security force for the Palestinian enclave.
Trump has said he could meet with the Israeli leader soon, but the White House has not confirmed details. The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting.
Netanyahu, who is expected to visit Trump’s Mar-a-Lago beach club, said on December 22 that discussions were expected to cover the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, as well as Iran and Lebanon.
Washington brokered ceasefires on all three fronts, but Israel is wary of its foes rebuilding their forces after they were considerably weakened in the war.
NEXT STEPS IN GAZA CEASEFIRE PLAN
All sides agreed in October to Trump’s ceasefire plan, which calls for Israel to withdraw from Gaza and Hamas to give up its weapons and forgo a governing role in the enclave.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that Washington wants the transitional administration envisioned in Trump’s plan – a Board of Peace and a body made up of Palestinian technocrats – to be in place soon to govern Gaza, ahead of the deployment of the international security force that was mandated by a November 17 U.N. Security Council resolution.
But Israel and Hamas have accused each other of major breaches of the deal and look no closer to accepting the much more difficult steps envisaged for the next phase.
Hamas, which has refused to disarm and has not returned the remains of the last Israeli hostage, has been reasserting its control, as Israeli troops remain entrenched in about half the territory.
Israel has indicated that if Hamas is not disarmed peacefully, it will resume military action to make it do so.
While the fighting has abated, it has not stopped entirely. Although the ceasefire officially began in October, Israeli strikes have killed more than 400 Palestinians — most of them civilians, according to Gaza health officials — and Palestinian militants have killed three Israeli soldiers.
LEBANON CEASEFIRE ALSO TESTED
In Lebanon, a U.S.-backed ceasefire that was agreed to in November 2024 ended more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and required the disarmament of the powerful Iran-backed Shiite group, beginning in areas south of the river adjacent to Israel.
While Lebanon has said it is close to completing the mission within the year-end deadline of disarming Hezbollah, the group has resisted calls to lay down its weapons.
Israel says progress is partial and slow and has been carrying out near-daily strikes in Lebanon, which it says are meant to stop Hezbollah from rebuilding.
Iran, which fought a 12-day war with Israel in June, said last week that it had conducted missile exercises for the second time this month. Netanyahu said Israel is not seeking a confrontation with Iran, but was aware of the reports, and said he would raise Tehran’s activities with Trump.
Trump in June ordered U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites but has since then broached a potential deal with Tehran.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal in Palm Beach, Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicut; Writing by Simon Lewis; Editing by Sergio Non, Rod Nickel)
CAIRO, Dec 27 (Reuters) – Yemen’s Saudi-led coalition said any military moves by the main southern separatist group STC in the eastern province of Hadramout contrary to de-escalation efforts will be dealt with to protect civilians, the Saudi state news agency reported on Saturday.
The statement from the coalition spokesperson, General Turki al-Malki, comes in response to a request from Yemen’s head of the Presidential Leadership Council, Rashad al-Alimi, to the coalition to take immediate measures to protect civilians in the Hadramout from “violations committed armed groups affiliated with the STC”.
(Reporting by Yomna Ehab; Editing by William Mallard)
Dec 26 (Reuters) – Israel has recognised Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia, as an “independent and sovereign state,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday, making Israel the first country to do so.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell and George Obulutsa, Editing by Louise Heavens)
DAMASCUS, Dec 26 (Reuters) – Three people were killed and five injured when an explosion struck a mosque in an Alawite neighbourhood in the Syrian province of Homs on Friday, a local official said.
Syrian state media said security forces had imposed a cordon around the area and were investigating.
Local officials told Reuters it may have been caused by a suicide bomber or explosives placed there.
(Reporting by Khalil Ashawi, Firas Makdesi, Feras Dalatey, and Ahmed Elimam in Dubai, Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
