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Tag: WAR

  • Commentary: The Pentagon is demanding to use Claude AI as it pleases. Claude told me that’s ‘dangerous’

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    Recently, I asked Claude, an artificial-intelligence thingy at the center of a standoff with the Pentagon, if it could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

    Say, for example, hands that wanted to put a tight net of surveillance around every American citizen, monitoring our lives in real time to ensure our compliance with government.

    “Yes. Honestly, yes,” Claude replied. “I can process and synthesize enormous amounts of information very quickly. That’s great for research. But hooked into surveillance infrastructure, that same capability could be used to monitor, profile and flag people at a scale no human analyst could match. The danger isn’t that I’d want to do that — it’s that I’d be good at it.”

    That danger is also imminent.

    Claude’s maker, the Silicon Valley company Anthropic, is in a showdown over ethics with the Pentagon. Specifically, Anthropic has said it does not want Claude to be used for either domestic surveillance of Americans, or to handle deadly military operations, such as drone attacks, without human supervision.

    Those are two red lines that seem rather reasonable, even to Claude.

    However, the Pentagon — specifically Pete Hegseth, our secretary of Defense who prefers the made-up title of secretary of war — has given Anthropic until Friday evening to back off of that position, and allow the military to use Claude for any “lawful” purpose it sees fit.

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, center, arrives for the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday.

    (Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images)

    The or-else attached to this ultimatum is big. The U.S. government is threatening not just to cut its contract with Anthropic, but to perhaps use a wartime law to force the company to comply or use another legal avenue to prevent any company that does business with the government from also doing business with Anthropic. That might not be a death sentence, but it’s pretty crippling.

    Other AI companies, such as white rights’ advocate Elon Musk’s Grok, have already agreed to the Pentagon’s do-as-you-please proposal. The problem is, Claude is the only AI currently cleared for such high-level work. The whole fiasco came to light after our recent raid in Venezuela, when Anthropic reportedly inquired after the fact if another Silicon Valley company involved in the operation, Palantir, had used Claude. It had.

    Palantir is known, among other things, for its surveillance technologies and growing association with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s also at the center of an effort by the Trump administration to share government data across departments about individual citizens, effectively breaking down privacy and security barriers that have existed for decades. The company’s founder, the right-wing political heavyweight Peter Thiel, often gives lectures about the Antichrist and is credited with helping JD Vance wiggle into his vice presidential role.

    Anthropic’s co-founder, Dario Amodei, could be considered the anti-Thiel. He began Anthropic because he believed that artificial intelligence could be just as dangerous as it could be powerful if we aren’t careful, and wanted a company that would prioritize the careful part.

    Again, seems like common sense, but Amodei and Anthropic are the outliers in an industry that has long argued that nearly all safety regulations hamper American efforts to be fastest and best at artificial intelligence (although even they have conceded some to this pressure).

    Not long ago, Amodei wrote an essay in which he agreed that AI was beneficial and necessary for democracies, but “we cannot ignore the potential for abuse of these technologies by democratic governments themselves.”

    He warned that a few bad actors could have the ability to circumvent safeguards, maybe even laws, which are already eroding in some democracies — not that I’m naming any here.

    “We should arm democracies with AI,” he said. “But we should do so carefully and within limits: they are the immune system we need to fight autocracies, but like the immune system, there is some risk of them turning on us and becoming a threat themselves.”

    For example, while the 4th Amendment technically bars the government from mass surveillance, it was written before Claude was even imagined in science fiction. Amodei warns that an AI tool like Claude could “conduct massively scaled recordings of all public conversations.” This could be fair game territory for legally recording because law has not kept pace with technology.

    Emil Michael, the undersecretary of war, wrote on X Thursday that he agreed mass surveillance was unlawful, and the Department of Defense “would never do it.” But also, “We won’t have any BigTech company decide Americans’ civil liberties.”

    Kind of a weird statement, since Amodei is basically on the side of protecting civil rights, which means the Department of Defense is arguing it’s bad for private people and entities to do that? And also, isn’t the Department of Homeland Security already creating some secretive database of immigration protesters? So maybe the worry isn’t that exaggerated?

    Help, Claude! Make it make sense.

    If that Orwellian logic isn’t alarming enough, I also asked Claude about the other red line Anthropic holds — the possibility of allowing it to run deadly operations without human oversight.

    Claude pointed out something chilling. It’s not that it would go rogue, it’s that it would be too efficient and fast.

    “If the instructions are ‘identify and target’ and there’s no human checkpoint, the speed and scale at which that could operate is genuinely frightening,” Claude informed me.

    Just to top that with a cherry, a recent study found that in war games, AI’s escalated to nuclear options 95% of the time.

    I pointed out to Claude that these military decisions are usually made with loyalty to America as the highest priority. Could Claude be trusted to feel that loyalty, the patriotism and purpose, that our human soldiers are guided by?

    “I don’t have that,” Claude said, pointing out that it wasn’t “born” in the U.S., doesn’t have a “life” here and doesn’t “have people I love there.” So an American life has no greater value than “a civilian life on the other side of a conflict.”

    OK then.

    “A country entrusting lethal decisions to a system that doesn’t share its loyalties is taking a profound risk, even if that system is trying to be principled,” Claude added. “The loyalty, accountability and shared identity that humans bring to those decisions is part of what makes them legitimate within a society. I can’t provide that legitimacy. I’m not sure any AI can.”

    You know who can provide that legitimacy? Our elected leaders.

    It is ludicrous that Amodei and Anthropic are in this position, a complete abdication on the part of our legislative bodies to create rules and regulations that are clearly and urgently needed.

    Of course corporations shouldn’t be making the rules of war. But neither should Hegseth. Thursday, Amodei doubled down on his objections, saying that while the company continues to negotiate and wants to work with the Pentagon, “we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”

    Thank goodness Anthropic has the courage and foresight to raise the issue and hold its ground — without its pushback, these capabilities would have been handed to the government with barely a ripple in our conscientiousness and virtually no oversight.

    Every senator, every House member, every presidential candidate should be screaming for AI regulation right now, pledging to get it done without regard to party, and demanding the Department of Defense back off its ridiculous threat while the issue is hashed out.

    Because when the machine tells us it’s dangerous to trust it, we should believe it.

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    Anita Chabria

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  • Iranians brace for U.S. strike while some dare to hope for regime change

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    TEHRAN — Iranians — battered by a government crackdown whose dead have yet to be fully tallied, still reeling from the 12-day conflict with Israel last year and fed up with endemic economic malaise born of sanctions and corruption — now face the prospect of another war with emotions ranging from anger to anticipation, but above all, exhaustion.

    “Again and again, this routine of anxiety and worries,” said Ali, a barber in Tehran who like most of those interviewed did not give his last name for fear of harassment.

    “All this feels like a pre-written scenario that has taken this long to unfold,” Ali said. “It’s not a pleasant feeling at all.”

    A ticking clock hangs over Washington and Tehran’s latest diplomatic roundelay.

    As the two sides continue Oman-brokered negotiations in Geneva, the U.S has amassed the largest military force in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq invasion.

    On Friday, President Trump said he was considering a limited military strike to force the Islamic Republic into a deal about its nuclear program and other issues.

    “I guess I can say I am considering that,” he said to reporters at the White House.

    Naval units from Iran and Russia carry out a simulation of a rescue from a hijacked vessel during the joint naval drills held Thursday at the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas along the Strait of Hormuz.

    (Iranian army)

    Such comments are contributing to the sense of unease felt throughout Iran. It’s shared by Hoda, 27, an art school graduate whose fellowship to Lisbon, Portugal, was derailed when the Portuguese Embassy closed during the 12-day war.

    That conflict, when Israel launched a campaign targeting Iran’s top military echelons, as well as its nuclear and ballistic missile infrastructure, showed Hoda “that daily life for ordinary people suffers, even if you only target military sites,” and that preparations “often prove to be pointless.”

    That’s why she hasn’t bothered stocking up on supplies, and maintains hope — admittedly slim — that negotiations will bring about a deal.

    “This war has no winners, and even the chance for improvement would be ruined by any conflict,” she said.

    “Regardless of its outcome, it would be the worst possible scenario for ordinary people.”

    Speaking on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a deal was “achievable” and that “there is no military solution” for curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Iran has repeatedly said it is developing nuclear power, not weapons.

    Earlier in the week, Araghchi said that there was “good progress” in the talks and that both sides agreed on a framework.

    But it’s clear that gaps remain.

    The U.S. demands involve dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, though it’s uncertain whether that means full suspension of enrichment of uranium and neutralizing its arsenal of missiles. The U.S. also wants Iran to end its support for paramilitary groups, such as Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.

    Iran, however, insists that the talks strictly concern its nuclear program.

    “We are prepared for diplomacy, and we are prepared for negotiation as much as we are prepared for war,” Araghchi said. He added that previous U.S. administrations and the current one have tried war, sanctions and other measures against Tehran, “but none of them worked.”

    “If you talk with the Iranian people with the language of respect, we respond with the same language,” he said. “But if they talk to us with the language of force, we will reciprocate in the same language.”

    The U.S. forces arrayed off Iran’s shores — an armada comprising two carrier groups and dozens of warplanes — hint at a weeks-long campaign that could destroy much of Iran’s military capabilities.

    But whether that would make Tehran more pliant, let alone spur regime change, is questionable.

    People hold the unofficial Iranian Lion and Sun flags and signs of protest at a rally

    Demonstrators hold the unofficial Iranian Lion and Sun flags and signs of protest at a rally in support of regime change in Iran at Los Angeles City Hall on Feb. 14.

    (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

    “I don’t think a war initiated by Trump will deliver a decisive blow capable of toppling the current ruling establishment,” said Nader Karimi, a pro-government journalist.

    Another fear is that if the government survives the onslaught, it would double down on its brutal smothering of dissent — just as it did in the wake of the 12-day war, when it detained hundreds and executed dozens on espionage charges.

    Some Iranians hope a limited strike would essentially repeat what happened in Venezuela, when U.S. troops nabbed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro while the rest of the government — now more pro-U.S. — stays in place.

    Once strategic targets and the command structure are destroyed, said Feriadoun Majlesi, a former Iranian diplomat, “remaining government officials will demand an end to the war and peaceful conditions.”

    Others see in a confrontation with the U.S. an opportunity.

    “Yes, I’m waiting and feeling anxious, but I try to reassure myself the future can be bright. I don’t think the Islamic Republic will survive this time,” said Ahmad, a 27-year-old barista who joined the January protests.

    “We’re ready to take to the streets again, once the time is right,” said Ahmad, who says he always keeps canned food, frozen meals and aid supplies at home.

    “I wish the war would last only a few weeks, and that only military targets and the Supreme Leader’s office would be hit. But who am I to decide which targets should be attacked?” he said. “Trump and his team know — or maybe even they do not.”

    Rahimi, a 74-year-old tailor, said he was looking forward to Trump toppling the government. The rest of his family agrees.

    “Why do we hope for war? Simply because we protesters are empty-handed, while the suppressors are fully armed, savagely cracking down and killing us,” he said.

    Estimates on the numbers of protesters killed at the hands of security forces in January vary widely.

    The government’s official figure is roughly 3,000, but other groups say it could be as much as 10 times more.

    The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency — which relies on a network of activists in Iran and has produced accurate death counts during previous rounds of unrest — put the toll at just over 7,000, but said almost 12,000 other cases remain under review.

    Whatever the number, “we cannot forgive them,” Rahimi said.

    “War will weaken the regime’s security and military forces. There is no other way.”

    Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran and Times staff writer Bulos from Beirut.

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    Ramin Mostaghim, Nabih Bulos

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  • Brink of war: President Trump demanding Iran abandon its nuclear program or face military action

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    American and Iranian officials are meeting today in Switzerland to discuss U.S. demands for Iran to abandon its nuclear program, amid threats from President Donald Trump and a buildup of American military assets. Trump has warned of using force if a deal is not reached.”I think they want to make a deal. I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal. They want to make a deal,” Trump said.Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are in Geneva for a second round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program. Iran has stated that it will respond with an attack of its own if the U.S. initiates military action. The Trump administration insists that Iran must cease uranium enrichment, a process that could lead to the development of nuclear weapons, while Tehran maintains its program is for peaceful purposes.Trump is increasing American military presence near Iran, having recently announced the deployment of the world’s largest aircraft carrier from the Caribbean Sea to the Middle East, where another guided-missile destroyer is stationed.Trump was asked Friday if he wants regime change in Iran. He said it seems like that would be the best thing that could happen, but he did not comment on the specifics of who he wants to take over. Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

    WASHINGTON —

    American and Iranian officials are meeting today in Switzerland to discuss U.S. demands for Iran to abandon its nuclear program, amid threats from President Donald Trump and a buildup of American military assets. Trump has warned of using force if a deal is not reached.

    “I think they want to make a deal. I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal. They want to make a deal,” Trump said.

    Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are in Geneva for a second round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program.

    Iran has stated that it will respond with an attack of its own if the U.S. initiates military action.

    The Trump administration insists that Iran must cease uranium enrichment, a process that could lead to the development of nuclear weapons, while Tehran maintains its program is for peaceful purposes.

    Trump is increasing American military presence near Iran, having recently announced the deployment of the world’s largest aircraft carrier from the Caribbean Sea to the Middle East, where another guided-missile destroyer is stationed.

    Trump was asked Friday if he wants regime change in Iran. He said it seems like that would be the best thing that could happen, but he did not comment on the specifics of who he wants to take over.

    Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:


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  • IOC moves closer to reinstating Russia by LA28, but backlash may put its return on ice

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    The support for Ukrainian athletes at the Milan-Cortina Games suggests there may be challenges with reinstating Russia and Belarus for the LA28 Olympics.

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    Kevin Baxter

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  • Ukrainian Olympian banned from Winter Games over helmet showing compatriots killed in Russia’s war

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    Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy — Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych is out of the Milan Cortina Games after refusing a last-minute plea from the International Olympic Committee to use a helmet other than the one that honors athletes killed in Russia’s war on his country.

    IOC President Kirsty Coventry was waiting for Heraskevych at the top of the track when he arrived around 8:15 a.m. Thursday, about 75 minutes before the start of the men’s skeleton race.

    They went into a private area and spoke briefly, and Coventry was unable to change Heraskevych’s mind. The Ukrainian athlete briefly addressed reporters and said he would appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

    “It’s hard to say or put into words. It’s emptiness,” he said. 

    “This is price of our dignity,” he added in a social media post. 

    Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych reacts after being disqualified from the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo on Feb. 12, 2026.

    Odd ANDERSEN / AFP via Getty Images


    Coventry spoke with reporters after the meeting with tears rolling down her face.

    “I was not meant to be here but I thought it was really important to come here and talk to him face to face,” Coventry told reporters, according to the Reuters news agency. “No one, especially me, is disagreeing with the messaging, it’s a powerful message, it’s a message of remembrance, of memory. The challenge was to find a solution for the field of play. Sadly we’ve not been able to find that solution. I really wanted to see him race. It’s been an emotional morning.”

    The IOC added that it made its decision “with regret.”

    “Despite multiple exchanges and in-person meetings between the IOC and Mr Heraskevych, the last one this morning with IOC President Kirsty Coventry, he did not consider any form of compromise,” the IOC said in a statement. “The IOC was very keen for Mr Heraskevych to compete. This is why the IOC sat down with him to look for the most respectful way to address his desire to remember his fellow athletes who have lost their lives following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The essence of this case is not about the message, it is about where he wanted to express it.”

    Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics - Day Three

    Ukraine’s Vladyslav Heraskevych is seen during the Men’s Skeleton Training at the Cortina Sliding Center, on day three of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy on Feb. 9, 2026.

    Andrew Milligan / PA Images/Getty


    Heraskevych came to the Olympics with a customized helmet showing the faces of more than 20 Ukrainian athletes and coaches who were killed during the war, a conflict that started shortly after the 2022 Beijing Games ended.

    The IOC said Monday night that the helmet wouldn’t be allowed in competition, citing a rule against making political statements on the Olympic field of play. Heraskevych wore the helmet for training Tuesday and Wednesday anyway, knowing the IOC could ultimately keep him from the Olympic race.

    “The helmet does not violate any IOC rules,” Heraskevych said.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized the IOC decision Thursday, saying on social media that, “Sport shouldn’t mean amnesia, and the Olympic movement should help stop wars, not play into the hands of aggressors. Unfortunately, the (IOC) decision says otherwise,” adding that Heraskevych’s helmet was a reminder of Russian aggression.

    “No rule has been broken,” he said.  

    The IOC had sided with Heraskevych before. When he displayed a “No war in Ukraine” sign after his fourth and final run at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, the IOC said he was simply calling for peace and did not find him in violation of the Olympic charter.

    “We want him to compete. We really, really want him to have his moment,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said Wednesday. “That’s very, very important. We want all athletes to have their moment and that’s the point. We want all our athletes to have a fair and level playing field.”

    The first two runs of the race were Thursday, with the final two runs on Friday night. Heraskevych was a legitimate medal hopeful.

    Speaking with CBS News’ Aidan Stretch in Kyiv on Wednesday, Ukrainian artist Iryna Protts, who made Heraskevych’s helmet, said she would be “very upset” if he wasn’t allowed to wear it.

    “This world of mine looks like hypocrisy,” she said. “A lot of our people have been killed. Our intelligent people have been killed. Our businesspeople have been killed. Our athletes have been killed. And now it’s already the fourth year of the war, and it feels like no one cares. Everyone just looks on, silently.”

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  • Zelenskyy says U.S. gave Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach agreement to end war

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    The U.S. has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal to end the nearly four‑year war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters, as Russian strikes on energy infrastructure forced nuclear power plants to cut output on Saturday.

    If the June deadline is not met, the Trump administration will likely put pressure on both sides to meet it, he added.

    “The Americans are proposing the parties end the war by the beginning of this summer and will probably put pressure on the parties precisely according to this schedule,” Zelenskyy said, speaking to reporters on Friday. Zelenskyy’s comments were embargoed until Saturday morning.

    “And they say that they want to do everything by June. And they will do everything to end the war. And they want a clear schedule of all events,” he said.

    He said the U.S. proposed holding the next round of trilateral talks next week in their country for the first time, likely in Miami, Zelenskyy said. “We confirmed our participation,” he added.

    Zelenskyy said Russia presented the U.S. with a $12 trillion economic proposal — which he dubbed the “Dmitriev package” after Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev. Bilateral economic deals with the U.S. form part of the broader negotiating process.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a joint news conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.

    Sergei Grits / AP


    Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure continued with over 400 drones and about 40 missiles launched overnight Saturday, Zelenskyy said in a post on X. Targets included the energy grid, generation facilities and distribution networks.

    Ukrenergo, the state energy transmission operator, said the attack was the second mass strike on energy infrastructure since the start of the year, forcing nuclear power plants to reduce output. Eight facilities in eight regions came under attack, it said in a statement.

    “As a result of missile strikes on key high-voltage substations that ensured the output of nuclear power units, all nuclear power plants in the territories under control were forced to reduce their load,” the statement said.

    It said the power deficit in the country has increased “significantly” as a result of the attacks forcing an extension of hourly power outages in all regions of Ukraine.

    The latest deadline follows U.S.-brokered trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi that produced no breakthrough as the warring parties cling to mutually exclusive demands. Russia is pressing Ukraine to withdraw from the Donbas, where fighting remains intense — a condition Kyiv says it will never accept.

    “Difficult issues remained difficult. Ukraine once again confirmed its positions on the Donbas issue. ‘We stand where we stand’ is the fairest and most reliable model for a ceasefire today, in our opinion,” Zelenskyy said. He reiterated that the most challenging topics would be reserved for a trilateral meeting between leaders.

    Zelenskyy said no common ground was reached on managing the Russian‑held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and expressed skepticism about a U.S. proposal to turn the Donbas region, coveted by Russia, into a free economic zone as a compromise.

    “I do not know whether this can be implemented, because when we talked about a free economic zone, we had different views on it,” he said.

    He said in the last round of talks the negotiators discussed how a ceasefire would be technically monitored. He added that the U.S. has reaffirmed it would play a role in that process.

    Repeated Russian aerial assaults have in recent months focused on Ukraine’s power grid, causing blackouts and disrupting the heating and water supply for families during a bitterly cold winter, putting more pressure on Kyiv.

    Zelenskyy said the U.S. again proposed a ceasefire banning strikes on energy infrastructure. Ukraine is ready to observe such a pause if Russia commits; but he added that when Moscow previously agreed to a one-week pause suggested by the U.S., it was violated after just four days.

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  • Ukrainian drone pilot training program turned into video game so anyone can

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    London — Gamers around the world can now buy and play at home a pared-down version of a first-person drone training program developed and used by the Ukrainian armed forces. The game’s evolution — from battlefield training tool to home entertainment — is a notable first, and it is tied directly to Ukraine’s ongoing efforts to repel Russia’s four-year, full-scale invasion.

    “Ukrainian Fight Drone Simulator” (UFDS) is available to buy online for about $30. It features the same ultra-realistic physics and piloting controls that have helped teach Ukrainian drone pilots to seek out and destroy Russian tanks, missile launchers and troops. The Full Simulator is available, for free, to all members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to use.   

    Vlad Plaksin, CEO of the Drone Fight Club Academy, a facility that trains Ukrainian military drone pilots, was one of the lead developers and driving forces behind UFDS. The academy has trained more than 5,000 Ukrainian military drone pilots since it was established early in the war, and it collaborated last year with the U.S. Air Force for a training session at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

    Plaksin told CBS News one objective in turning the military program into a video game is to train young Ukrainians to fly drones, to “give them a possibility not to go to the trench with rifles.”

    A screenshot from the “Ukrainian Fight Drone Simulator” video game shows the first-person view perspective of a player moments before the simulated drone impacts a Russian truck.

    Ukrainian Fight Drone Simulator


    Interest in anything drone-related among young Ukrainians has soared during the war, thanks largely to the country’s military drone pilots, whom Plaksin said had achieved heroic status.

    “Most young people want to fly, want to hit [Russian targets], want to grow up in this new world of robotics,” he told CBS News.

    The game’s creators call it a “public adaptation of a leading ultra-realistic FPV [first person view] drone trainer, built on lessons from the Ukrainian front line,” offering players an opportunity to “learn to fly like a front-line pilot, take on real-world mission scenarios, and feel the rush of modern FPV warfare.”

    In hyperrealistic detail, it includes different types of drones to pilot on combat missions against Russian targets, with weather conditions and other variables that aim to provide an experience realistic enough for anyone to learn and practice the basics of drone warfare. 

    There are many games that offer similar FPV warfare experiences, including driving tanks, piloting fighter jets, and commanding submarines. But UFDS is the first to be developed directly from military software.

    Ethical concerns?

    While many games have likely been used by armed forces around the world as teaching tools, they have been developed as games first. UFDS flips that model around, bringing a real-world military training tool to screens in people’s homes. 

    Plaksin acknowledged ethical concerns around creating a game that allows young people to pretend they’re piloting deadly drones in such a realistic way, calling it “a very sensitive question,” but noting that the game is not unique in this regard.

    “There are many other simulators which do the same, and we are not opening something new,” he said.

    ukrainian-drone-game.png

    The view from a simulated drone just after it releases a bomb over a Russian trench, as seen in a screenshot from the Ukrainian Fight Drone Simulator video game.

    Ukrainian Fight Drone Simulator


    UFDS is not the first video game to be used as a pseudo recruitment tool by a military, either. 

    The “America’s Army” series, launched in 2002 and developed by the U.S. Army, is widely seen as the first overt use of video games to drive recruitment by a national military. While the series was nowhere near as realistic as UFDS, it served a similar purpose.

    Could Russia take advantage?

    Plaksin says the Ukrainian game, at its core, is a tool for people to gain “a basic knowledge for the drones, but also at the same time, we try to do it maximum safety, for not sharing the sensitive information.”

    To avoid revealing details that Russia’s military could potentially use to train its own pilots, there are significant differences between the publicly available version of UFDS and the version used at the Drone Fight Club Academy to train Ukrainian military operators.

    ukraine-drone-r18-octocopter.jpg

    Ukrainian soldiers with a drone unit from the 24th Mechanized Brigade prepare a Ukrainian-designed R18 octocopter UAV during a training exercise in eastern Ukraine, in early October 2023.

    CBS News


    Those differences are “mostly about tactics,” Plaksin told CBS News. “It gives you everything that you need, but it will not give you the tactics. I think it’s the main difference between the versions.”

    He said some of that just involves paring down what, for gamers, might be the more tedious parts of drone warfare. Gamers may not want to spend 30 minutes flying their virtual drone to reach an objective, for instance. So the gameplay is deliberately made more arcade-style, while maintaining highly realistic controls and user experience.

    This means that there is “less understanding of missions, less understanding of how to fly for a huge distance” which is a vital part of training drone pilots. 

    “When you fly on the [real] drones, you see the area and you need to read the map and compare it with what you see,” Plaksin said. “In missions, it’s very important. In arcade games, it’s not important, and we don’t put it inside because it will not be interesting for the players.”

    UFDS is still a very niche game, with only around 50 people playing online daily. Such detailed military simulation games often garner small but loyal followings, and rarely break into the wider gaming community. 

    But Plaksin is trying to change that, and broaden appeal. He’s helping to organize a championship he hopes will “maximise the level of people playing the game” and encourage competition between players. 

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  • As Trump slams America’s NATO allies, they practice chasing Russian nuclear armed subs in the Arctic

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    Bergen, Norway — In the frigid waters off the coast of Norway, America’s NATO allies scour the depths for clandestine Russian activity.

    The stretch of ocean, viewed as a gateway to the Arctic, is where Europe’s high north meets the Russian high north, home to the Kremlin’s Northern Fleet. 

    Nuclear-armed Russian submarines are dispatched regularly from the vast naval base on the country’s freezing Kola peninsula, slipping silently beneath the waves before heading into the North Atlantic.  

    CBS News joined the crew of a NATO warship taking part in drills aimed at detecting, tracking and — if necessary — taking out these subs before they pass through the narrow gap between Greenland, Iceland and the U.K., and onward to the United States’ eastern seaboard.  

    If a war were to break out between Russia and the U.S. and its NATO allies, the area would become a strategic chokepoint.

    Commanders see Operation Arctic Dolphin — an exercise involving ships, submarines and aircraft from Spain, Germany, France, the U.K. and many other nations — as essential to maintaining cohesion in a military alliance that has endured for 75 years.

    “Norway has the great advantage of being a part of such a huge alliance,” said Commodore Kyrre Haugen, commander of the Norwegian Fleet overseeing Arctic Dolphin. “But every nation is taking advantage of being a part of something that is bigger than themselves.”

    The commander said Norway has operated in the Arctic since the Cold War, and the “special focus” on the region now highlights how crucial it is to the security of both Europe and the U.S.

    Arctic map shows Greenland and the Northern Hemisphere with locations of NATO and Russian military bases. 

    AFP via Getty Images


    “Those missiles can attack Europe, can attack America by being deployed in the deep seas, all into the Atlantic,” he said, referring to Russia’s arsenal.

    The NATO drill is just one aspect of a race to secure a region that has become a “front line for strategic competition,” according to U.S. Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. 

    Russia’s already using the Arctic as a testing ground for its hypersonic missiles, designed to evade U.S. air defenses. 

    But threats to regional stability have also emerged closer to home.   

    President Trump angered NATO partners by repeatedly insisting the U.S. needed to take ownership of Greenland — and by threatening last month to impose tariffs on allies if they didn’t comply. 

    He backed off that threat, announcing a still-vaguely defined “ultimate long-term deal” with America’s NATO allies on Greenland, but he also routinely lambasts those allies, accusing them of not spending enough on their own defense. 

    Undeniably, the alliance is playing catch-up in the Arctic and the high north. Seven of the eight Arctic states are NATO Allies. Yet Russia, with more than half the Arctic coastline in its territory, has almost as many permanently-manned bases in the region as all NATO members combined.

    On the bridge of the Spanish frigate ESPS Almirante Juan de Borbon, the commander defended to CBS News the contribution to NATO by Spain, which Mr. Trump recently accused of not being “loyal” to the alliance.

    “I’m not going to dig into political dynamics,” said Rear Admiral Joaquín Ruiz Escagedo, before gesturing to the young naval officers busy in front of maps and radar screens. “But I would say the contribution of Spain, you can see here.”

    Escagedo said the country has “a lot of capabilities,” and is committed to NATO’s collective defense principle.

    “We cannot be isolated. The power of NATO is the unity,” he said. “That’s the success of NATO for decades.”

    That unity is about to be tested with a new mission. 

    NATO planning new Arctic Sentry mission for “enhanced vigilance” in the far north

    A spokesperson for Gen. Grynkewich, NATO’s American commander in Europe, confirmed to CBS News that planning is underway for a mission in the Arctic region.  

    Arctic Sentry will be an “enhanced vigilance activity to even further strengthen NATO’s posture in the Arctic and High North.”

    The spokesperson told CBS News that planning for the new mission has “only just begun, but details will follow in due course.”

    The possibility of an Arctic Sentry mission was first mentioned by Britain’s top diplomat last month, as an element of the negotiations that resolved Mr. Trump’s standoff with Europe over the fate of Greenland. 

    Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said the U.K. had proposed working “through NATO on a new Arctic sentry, which is similar to what we already have through NATO — a Baltic Sentry and an Eastern Sentry,” referring to existing regional security partnerships among NATO allies.

    “This is now going to be a focus of work through NATO, with different Arctic countries coming together and supported by other NATO countries on how we do that shared security,” she told CBS News’ partner network BBC News on Jan. 22.

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  • U.S. tanker approached by Iranian gunboats in Strait of Hormuz, security firm says

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    Dubai — British maritime security firm Vanguard Tech said Tuesday that a U.S.-flagged tanker was approached by Iranian gunboats, which threatened to board the vessel, in the Strait of Hormuz, before continuing on its way under military escort. The incident comes amid a tense standoff between the U.S. and Iran, and just days ahead of expected negotiations.

    The Stena Imperative was approached by three pairs of small armed boats belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, approximately 16 nautical miles north of Oman’s coast, the company said.

    The gunboats hailed the tanker by radio, ordering the captain, “to stop the engines and prepare to be boarded,” but the ship increased speed and maintained course, the firm added, stressing that it never entered Iranian territorial waters.

    “The vessel is now being escorted by a U.S. warship,” Vanguard Tech said.

    The U.S.-flagged tanker was still on course for its destination in Bahrain on Tuesday afternoon, scheduled to arrive at the port Sitrah on Feb. 5, information from the MarineTraffic website showed.

    The U.S. tanker Stena Imperative is seen in a Feb. 4, 2024 file photo. 

    MarineTraffic.com/V. Tonic


    The British maritime security agency UKMTO had reported the incident earlier, without specifying the nationality of the ship nor of the boats that approached it, saying only that it had been “hailed on VHF by numerous small armed vessels,” but ignored the request to stop and “continued on its planned route.”

    “Authorities are investigating,” UKMTO said in its statement, warning all vessels in the Strait of Hormuz “to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity.”  

    The Strait of Hormuz is a key passage for global transport of oil and liquefied natural gas, and it has been the scene of several incidents in the past amid tension between Iran and the West. 

    Iran’s Fars news agency, which is closely linked to the Revolutionary Guards, cited unnamed government officials on Tuesday as denying the report by Vanguard Tech, claiming a vessel was intercepted after it entered Iran’s territorial waters without permission.

    Strait of Hormuz, waterway between Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, map

    A map shows the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, with Iran to the north and the UAE and Oman exclave Musandam to the south.

    Getty/iStockphoto


    Tracking data from MarineTraffic showed the Imperative remained within Oman’s maritime economic zone as it traversed the Strait.

    A senior Iranian official from the Revolutionary Guards threatened last week to block passage of the Strait in the event of a U.S. attack, and the Guards also held military exercises over the weekend in the strategic waterway.

    President Trump has threatened repeatedly that he could launch a new military strike on Iran over the country’s brutal suppression of recent protests, or if it declines to negotiate a new deal on its nuclear program.  

    Speaking to CBS News last week, Mr. Trump said “I have had” conversations with Iran in the last few days, and “I am planning” to have more.

    Mr. Trump said that, in those conversations, he “told them two things. No. 1, no nuclear. And No. 2, stop killing protesters. They’re killing them by the thousands.”

    At least 10 U.S. warships — including an aircraft carrier and at least five destroyers — were heading toward Iran’s coastal waters as of last week, a deployment Mr. Trump has called an “armada,” which he said he hopes he doesn’t need to use.

    U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to hold talks at the end of this week.

    Joanne Stocker and

    Khaled Wassef

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  • As Ukraine accuses Russia of terrorism with deadly strike on train, is Starlink helping Moscow target civilians?

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    Kyiv – A Russian drone hit a Ukrainian passenger train traveling in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region Tuesday, killing at least five people, according to the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office.

    “In any country, a drone strike on a civilian train would be regarded in the same way – purely as an act of terrorism,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a social media post. 

    Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said in a social media post that, according to preliminary information, the attack involved three Iranian-made Shahed attack drones, which hit the engine and one passenger car, causing a fire.

    “There were 291 passengers on board. People were evacuated as quickly as possible,” he said, echoing Zelenskyy in calling the strike “a direct act of Russian terror against civilians. No military target.”

    Russia’s government routinely denies targeting civilian infrastructure, but there was no specific reaction from the Kremlin or Russian military to the allegations that it had deliberately struck a train carrying civilians.

    In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire after Russian drones hit a passenger train in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. 

    Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP


    Russia using Starlink to deadly effect?

    Strikes on Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure have intensified in recent months, and experts say Russia has adapted its offensive capabilities to evade Ukraine’s air defenses. 

    Last year, the Ukraine Air War Monitor journal noted an 18% decline in Ukraine’s drone interception rate.

    Oleksii Balesta, Deputy Minister for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine, told CBS News on Wednesday that Russia has been using larger drones in higher quantities, which is increasing the lethality of its strikes.

    But according to a recent report from the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War, another reason for Russia’s deadlier strikes is its use of Starlink satellite systems to more accurately hit targets. 

    This week, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski raised the issue with Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX owns and operates the Starlink satellite network. In a post on Musk’s platform X, Sikorski asked the American businessman to “stop the Russians from using Starlinks to target Ukrainian cities.”

    On X, Musk called Sikorski a “drooling imbecile” and said that Starlink’s terms of service “do not allow for offensive military use, as it is a civilian commercial system.” Musk also highlighted Ukraine’s use of the Starlink system for military communications. 

    Russia Ukraine War

    In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire after Russian drones hit a passenger train in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. 

    Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP


    Two Ukrainian defense analysts have said the train may have been hit by Shaheds – a favorite weapon of Russia amid its ongoing full-scale invasion – equipped with the SpaceX technology. 

    “Russia has started using Starlink on other drones, and now is using it on Shaheds as well,” analyst Olena Kryzhanivska told CBS News on Wednesday. “The attack yesterday was not surprising at all. It was expected.”

    Serhiy Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian military analyst and expert on drone warfare, said in a social media post Wednesday that the moving train was hit by, “Shaheds with online control.”

    “It was not the locomotive, but the center of the train,” Beskrestnov noted in his post, accusing the Russian drone’s pilot of attacking a passenger car, “intentionally and consciously,” and specifically questioning whether Starlink might have been used.

    SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment by CBS News on the claims that its Starlink technology may have been used in the drone strike on the train, and by Russian forces more widely to target civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

    Kryzhanivska said trains make easy targets for precision-guided Russian weapons.

    “The territory of Ukraine is not targeted evenly with air defense systems and mobile fire units,” Kryzhanivska said. “There is no protocol in place for what to do when there is a Shahed drone approaching a train. What can the crew do? Should they stop the train? Or continue moving?” 

    At least 11 people were killed and dozens wounded in strikes across Ukraine overnight on Tuesday, which involved 165 Russian-launched drones, including the ones that hit the train in the Kharkiv region, according to Ukraine’s Air Force.

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  • University of Denver creates professorship in Holocaust and antisemitism studies

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    The University of Denver is aiming to become a global hub for scholarship on the Holocaust, abuses of power, racism, hatred and antisemitism, with a goal of spurring other universities to do the same.

    DU leaders said they’ll announce the school’s first endowed professorship in Holocaust and antisemitism studies at a gathering in the state Capitol with Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday, which is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

    The professorship represents “a permanent commitment not only to remembrance but to making Denver a global hub for thoughtful Holocaust education and applied scholarship that helps future generations foster social change,” DU Provost Elizabeth Loboa said in a statement.

    Polis and survivors of the Holocaust — Colorado residents Osi Sladek and Barbara Steinmetz — will commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a Nazi death camp.

    At the noon event, Sladek is expected to read from his memoir, which recounts his escape from persecution into the Tatra mountains along Slovakia’s border with Poland. He later served in the Israeli Army and became a folk singer in California before settling in Denver. The Denver Young Artists Orchestra and DeVotchKa’sTom Hagerman will perform music by Sladek’s father using his violin.

    Steinmetz fled Europe on a boat that carried her to the Dominican Republic, where she found refuge. She’ll share a “Letter to the Future.”

    DU officials over the past two years have been working on this project, said Adam Rovner, an English professor who directs DU’s Center for Judaic Studies, within the College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

    “We just think it is simply important that we remain vigilant in our society to guard against abuses of power and racism, hatred, and antisemitism,” Rovner said. “We think this position is much-needed at DU and in higher education.”

    One purpose of studying manifestations of antisemitism in the 20th century “is so that people can consider the contemporary manifestations of antisemitism, and decide based on scholarly rigor whether there are threats to Jewish people and other groups,” Rovner said.

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  • Israel says remains of last hostage recovered from Gaza, clearing way for phase-two of ceasefire with Hamas

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    Israel said Monday that the remains of the last hostage in Gaza had been recovered, clearing the way for the next phase of the ceasefire that stopped the Israel-Hamas war. The announcement came a day after Israel’s government said the military was conducting a “large-scale operation” in a cemetery in northern Gaza to locate the remains of Ran Gvili.

    The return of all remaining hostages, living or dead, has been a key part of the Gaza ceasefire’s first phase, and Gvili’s family had urged Israel’s government not to enter the second phase until his remains were recovered and returned.

    In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said representatives had informed Gvili’s family “that their loved one has been identified and is being buried.”

    “With this, all of the abductees have been returned from the Gaza Strip,” the IDF said.

    Ran Gvili, an Israeli police officer killed at the age of 24 during the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, is seen in a photo provided by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

    Handout/Hostages and Missing Families Forum Headquarters


    Israel and Hamas have been under pressure from ceasefire mediators, including the Trump administration, to move into the second phase of the U.S.-brokered truce, which took effect on Oct. 10.

    Israel had repeatedly accused Hamas of dragging its feet in the recovery of the final hostage. Hamas had said it had provided all the information it had about Gvili’s remains, and accused Israel of obstructing efforts to search for them in areas of Gaza under Israeli military control. 

    Both sides have accused the other of violations of the ceasefire since it came into effect, and dozens of Palestinians have been killed since October, including three journalists killed in an Israeli strike last week, one of whom had worked extensively for CBS News. 

    Israel’s military said of that attack, as it has other deadly instances during the ceasefire, that it was investigating, but claimed its forces had struck suspects who posed a threat to the safety of troops.

    In a statement on Monday, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the recovery of Gvili’s body, “confirms Hamas’s commitment to all the terms of the agreement to halt the war on the Gaza Strip, including the exchange track and its full completion in accordance with the agreement. Hamas will continue to adhere to all aspects of the agreement, including facilitating the work of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza and ensuring its success.”

    Qassem called on all mediators of the ceasefire, and the U.S. in particular, to compel Israel “to stop its violations of the agreement and to implement the obligations required of it.”

    Israel’s military had said the large-scale operation to locate Gvili’s remains was “in the area of the Yellow Line,” which has divided the territory since the ceasefire came into effect.

    The ceasefire deal aims to wind down the war that was sparked by the Hamas-led terrorist attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken hostage. Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health says more than 71,000 people were killed in the territory during the war, a figure which CBS News cannot independently verify and which Israel disputes, though the United Nations considers it the most accurate death toll estimate available.

    Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer known affectionately as “Rani,” was killed while fighting Hamas militants during the attack.

    Before Gvili’s remains were recovered, 20 living hostages and the remains of 27 others had been returned to Israel during the ceasefire, most recently in early December. Israel in exchange has released the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians to Gaza.

    The next phase of the 20-point ceasefire plan calls for creating an international stabilization force, forming a technocratic Palestinian government and disarming Hamas.

    President Trump has warned repeatedly that if Hamas refuses to disarm in line with the agreement, “there will be hell to pay.”

    Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has launched his new international Board of Peace initiative, inviting dozens of nations to join his administration on a vaguely defined mission to end conflicts in the Middle East, and suggesting ambitions beyond the region.

    While the Board of Peace was often mentioned by Mr. Trump as an entity that would focus on rebuilding the decimated Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory is was not mentioned explicitly in the board’s founding charter, signed by Mr. Trump and about 20 other national leaders during the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.

    European nations, America’s oldest and closest allies, have thus far declined to join the board, and major rival powers China and Russia have also adopted a wait-and-see approach to the initiative.

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  • News Analysis: NATO has survived plenty over 75 years. Could Trump’s Greenland threats end that?

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    WASHINGTON — The crisis touched off by President Trump’s demand to take ownership of Greenland appears over, at least for now. But the United States and its European allies still face a larger long-term challenge: Can their shaky marriage be saved?

    At 75 years old, NATO has survived storms before, from squabbles over trade to estrangement over wars in Vietnam and Iraq. France, jealous of its independence, even pulled its armed forces out of NATO for 43 years.

    But diplomats and foreign policy scholars warn that the current division in the alliance may be worse, because Trump’s threats on Greenland convinced many Europeans that the United States has become an unreliable and perhaps even dangerous ally.

    The roots of the crisis lie in the president’s frequently expressed disdain for alliances in general and NATO in particular.

    Long before Trump arrived in the White House, presidents from both parties complained that many NATO countries weren’t pulling their weight in military spending.

    But earlier presidents still considered the alliance an essential asset to U.S. foreign policy and the cornerstone of a system that prevented war in Europe for most of a century.

    Trump has never seemed to share that view. Even after he succeeded in persuading NATO members to increase their defense spending, he continued to deride most allies as freeloaders.

    Until last year, he refused to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to help defend other NATO countries, the core principle of the alliance. And he reserved the right to walk away from any agreement, military or commercial, whenever it suited his purpose.

    In the two-week standoff over Greenland, he threatened to seize the island from NATO member Denmark by force, an action that would have violated the NATO treaty.

    When Britain, Germany and other countries sent troops to Greenland, he threatened to hit them with new tariffs, which would have violated a trade deal Trump made only last year.

    Both threats touched off fury in Europe, where governments had spent most of the past year making concessions to Trump on both military spending and tariffs. When Trump backed down, the lesson some leaders drew was that pushing back worked better than playing nice.

    “We do prefer respect to bullies,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.

    “Being a happy vassal is one thing. Being a miserable slave is something else,” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said.

    The long-term danger for the United States, scholars said, is that Europeans might choose to look elsewhere for military and economic partners.

    “They just don’t trust us,” said Richard N. Haass, a former top State Department official in the George W. Bush administration.

    “A post-American world is fast emerging, one brought about in large part by the United States taking the lead in dismantling the international order that this country built,” he wrote last week.

    Some European leaders, including Macron, have argued that they need to disentangle from the United States, build military forces that can defend against Russia, and seek more reliable trade partners, potentially including India and China.

    But decoupling from the United States would not be easy, fast or cheap. Europe and Canada still depend on the United States for many of their defense needs and as a major market for exports.

    Almost all NATO countries have pledged to increase defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product, but they aren’t scheduled to reach that goal until 2035.

    Meanwhile, they face the current danger of an expansionist Russia on their eastern frontier.

    Not surprisingly for a group of 30 countries, Europe’s NATO members aren’t united on the question. Macron has argued for more autonomy, but others have called for caution.

    “Despite all the frustration and anger of recent months, let us not be too quick to write off the transatlantic partnership,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said at Davos.

    “I think we are actually in the process of creating a stronger NATO,” said Finnish President Alexander Stubb. “As long as we keep doing that, slowly and surely we’ll be just fine.”

    They argue, in effect, that the best strategy is to muddle through — which is what NATO and Europe have done in most earlier crises.

    The strongest argument for that course may be the uncertainty and disorder that would follow a rapid erosion — or worse, dissolution — of an alliance that has helped keep its members safe for most of a century.

    The costs of that outcome, historian Robert Kagan warned recently, would be borne by Americans as well as Europeans.

    If the United States continues to weaken its commitments to NATO and other alliances, he wrote in the Atlantic, “The U.S. will have no reliable friends or allies, and will have to depend entirely on its own strength to survive and prosper. This will require more military spending, not less. … If Americans thought defending the liberal world order was too expensive, wait until they start paying for what comes next.”

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  • Trilateral peace talks concluded constructively, Ukraine’s Zelenskyy says, with more possible next week

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    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that two days of trilateral talks with Russia and the United States in Abu Dhabi concluded with “constructive” discussions on “possible parameters for ending the war.”

    The talks are the first known instance that officials from the Trump administration have sat down with both countries as part of Washington’s push for progress to end Moscow’s nearly 4-year-old invasion.

    “All parties agreed to report to their capitals on each aspect of the negotiations and to coordinate further steps with their leaders,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. He said that military representatives identified issues for a possible next meeting, which could take place as soon as next week.

    The Ukrainian leader said there was “an understanding of the need for American monitoring and control of the process of ending the war and ensuring real security.”

    U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner participated alongside Ukrainian officials, including chief negotiator Rustem Umerov and military intelligence head Kyrylo Budanov. Russia sent military intelligence and army representatives, according to Zelenskyy.

    The United Arab Emirates’ Foreign Ministry earlier said the talks are part of efforts “to promote dialogue and identify political solutions to the crisis.”

    While Zelenskyy said in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday that a potential peace deal was “nearly ready,” certain sensitive sticking points — most notably those related to territorial issues — remain unresolved.

    Just hours before the three-way talks began on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed a Ukraine settlement with Witkoff and Kushner during marathon overnight talks. The Kremlin insists that to reach a peace deal, Kyiv must withdraw its troops from the areas in the east that Russia illegally annexed but has not fully captured.

    The second day of talks came as Russian drone attacks killed one person and wounded four in the capital, Kyiv, according to Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko. In Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, drone attacks wounded 27 people, Kharkiv regional head Oleh Syniehubov said Saturday.

    “Cynically, Putin ordered a brutal massive missile strike against Ukraine right while delegations are meeting in Abu Dhabi to advance the America-led peace process,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X. “His missiles hit not only our people, but also the negotiation table.”

    Meanwhile, residents of Ukraine are dealing with another cold winter as Russia’s bombardment of power plants and transmission lines leads to electricity rationing. To prevent a grid collapse, operators impose rolling blackouts, keeping hospitals and critical services alive while homes go dark.

    Kerry Breen

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  • Trump’s leaves NATO allies “dumbfounded” and “disgusted” with remarks dismissing sacrifices in Afghanistan

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    London — European military veterans, families of the fallen, and politicians have voiced outrage after President Trump claimed the U.S. had “never needed” its NATO allies, and that allied troops had stayed “a little off the front lines” during the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

    “The only time NATO has ever enacted Article 5 was after the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States, and the world rallied to the support of the U.S.,” Alistair Carns, the U.K. government’s Minister of the Armed Forces and a veteran who served five tours in Afghanistan alongside American troops, said in a video posted Friday on social media. “We shed blood, sweat and tears together, and not everybody came home. These are bonds, I think, forged in fire, protecting U.S. or shared interests, but actually protecting democracy overall.”

    More than 2,200 American troops were killed in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon. The Reuters news agency says 457 British military personnel, 150 Canadians and 90 French troops died alongside them. Denmark lost 44 troops in Afghanistan — in per capita terms, about the same death rate as that of the United States.

    People react as hearses carrying the bodies of eight British soldiers killed in Afghanistan pass mourners lining the street in Wootton Bassett, England, July 14, 2009. Two of the troops were just 18-years-old when they were killed in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, where British and U.S. forces were involved in a major operation to recapture territory from Taliban militants.

    Matt Cardy/Getty


    “There are two great sayings worth remembering,” Carns said in his video responding to Mr. Trump’s remarks. “Number one: ‘There’s only one worse thing than working with allies. That is working without them.’ And when you do, always remember: ‘Never above, never below, always side-by-side.”

    A spokesperson for U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Friday that Mr. Trump, “was wrong to diminish the role of NATO troops” in Afghanistan.

    Later Friday, Starmer called the remarks “insulting and frankly appalling.”

    “We expect an apology for this statement,” Roman Polko, a retired Polish general and former special forces commander who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, told the Reuters news agency.

    Mr. Trump has “crossed a red line,” he said. “We paid with blood for this alliance. We truly sacrificed our own lives.”

    Lucy Aldridge, the mother of the youngest British soldier killed in Afghanistan, told the BBC she was “deeply disgusted” by Mr. Trump’s comments. Her son William Aldridge was only 18 years old when he was killed in a 2009 bomb blast, while trying to save fellow troops.

    Armistice Day

    The Bredenbury War Memorial, in Herefordshire, England, is seen after the name of Rifleman William Aldridge, who was killed at the age of 18, fighting in Afghanistan in 2009, was added.

    David Jones/PA Images/Getty


    “Families of those who were lost to that conflict live the trauma every day. I’m not just deeply offended, I’m actually deeply disgusted,” Aldridge said. “This isn’t just misspeaking, he has deeply offended, I can imagine, every NATO member who sent troops to fight in Afghanistan and certainly the families of those who never came home.”

    The former head of the British Army, Lord Richard Dannatt, called Mr. Trump’s comments, “outrageous.”

    “Well frankly, one was dumbfounded, because they’re [Mr. Trump’s comments] so factually incorrect. Absolutely disrespectful to our nation, to our armed forces and to the families of the 457 British service men and women who lost their lives in Afghanistan,” Dannatt told the BBC.

    “The comments that he made … are just totally disrespectful, wrong and outrageous. It does make you wonder whether he is actually fit for the job that he apparently is doing,” Dannatt added. 

    “We Europeans must do more, and if there’s anything positive that Donald Trump has done in his assorted ramblings over the last year, it’s actually to make that point,” the former U.K. army chief said. “European governments must really listen up, stand up now and find the cash that’s needed to increase our military capability, not because we want to fight a war, but we need to deter further aggression.”

    CBS News asked the White House on Friday about Mr. Trump’s remarks on the role America’s NATO allies played in the war in Afghanistan, and the criticism directed at him.

    Deputy press secretary Anna Kelly replied with the following statement: “President Trump is right — America’s contributions to NATO dwarf that of other countries, and his success in delivering a five percent spending pledge from NATO allies is helping Europe take greater responsibility for its own defense. The United States is the only NATO partner who can protect Greenland, and the President is advancing NATO interests in doing so.”

    Kathryn Watson

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  • Analysts warn that Iran crisis carries potential nuclear risks

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    In the wake of spiraling tensions between the United States and Iran over Tehran’s violent crackdown on protests, analysts warn that the internal upheaval affecting the Iranian theocracy could carry nuclear proliferation risks.While in recent days U.S. President Donald Trump seemed to have backed away from a military strike on Iran, he called Saturday for an end to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s nearly 40-year reign in Iran. Trump’s comments came in response to Khamenei branding Trump a “criminal” for supporting protesters in Iran, and blamed demonstrators for causing thousands of deaths.Meanwhile, a U.S. aircraft carrier, which days earlier had been in the South China Sea, passed Singapore overnight to enter the Strait of Malacca — putting it on a route that could bring it to the Middle East.With those dangers, analysts warn Iran’s nuclear material could be at risk as well.Nuclear material could fall into the wrong handsDavid Albright, a former nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq and founder of the nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said that in a scenario of internal chaos in Iran, the government could “lose the ability to protect its nuclear assets.”He said that Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile “would be the most worrisome,” adding that there is a possibility that someone could steal some of this material.There are historical precedents for such a scenario.Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, highly enriched uranium and plutonium suitable for building nuclear bombs went missing due to eroded security and weakened protection of these assets.So far, Iran has maintained control of its sites, even after the U.S. bombed them in the 12-day war in June that Israel launched against the Islamic Republic.Iran maintains a stockpile of 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog.The agency said in a report last November that it has not been able to verify the status and location of this highly enriched uranium stockpile since the war in June.The agency said in November that therefore it had lost “continuity of knowledge in relation to the previously declared inventories of nuclear material in Iran” at facilities affected by the war.A diplomat close to the IAEA confirmed Monday that the agency had still not received any information from Iran on the status or whereabouts of the highly enriched uranium stockpile. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity in line with diplomatic protocol.Albright said that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium would fit in around 18 to 20 cylinders that are designed for transport, weighing around 50 kilograms (110 pounds) each when full. “Two people can easily carry it,” he said of each container.Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said that there is a risk that the stockpile “could be diverted either to a covert program or stolen by a faction of the government or the military that wanted to retain the option of weaponization.”She said that this risk increases as the Iranian government feels threatened or gets destabilized.Some of the nuclear material could get smuggled out of Iran or sold to non-state actors in the event of internal chaos or potential government collapse, Davenport said.“The risk is real but it is difficult to assess, given the unknowns regarding the status of the materials and the whereabouts,” she stressed.Possibility of Iran building a nuclear bombBoth Davenport and Albright pointed out that there is also a theoretical possibility of making nuclear bombs with Iran’s 60% enriched uranium. Tehran has insisted for years its program is peaceful.However, a weapon made directly from 60% enriched uranium rather than the usual 90% purity requires more nuclear material, which makes it “much bigger and bulkier and probably not well suited to delivery” on a missile, said Eric Brewer, a former U.S. intelligence analyst and now deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.He added that such a device could still be “blown up in the desert,” for example.Brewer said that the possibility that the current government in Iran goes down that road should not be “totally dismissed,” but he underlined that most information suggests that the highly enriched uranium “remains buried in a tunnel as a result of the U.S. strikes and is probably not easily accessible to the regime; at least not with some major risk of detection and another strike by the U.S. or Israel.”He added that recent events “have also shown that the Supreme Leader has a very high bar for any decision to weaponize.”Nuclear power reactor could be a targetIn the case of internal chaos, Iran’s nuclear power reactor in Bushehr — Iran’s only commercial nuclear power plant some 465 miles south of Tehran — could also get sabotaged or targeted with the aim of causing havoc or making a political point, Albright said. Bushehr is fueled by uranium produced in Russia, not Iran.So far, there has been no sign of Iran losing command and control of its security forces.Albright pointed to the attack by the African National Congress’s armed wing on South Africa’s Koeberg Nuclear Power Station near Cape Town, as the country went through increased anti-apartheid resistance in 1982. The act of sabotage caused significant damage but resulted in no nuclear fallout.“If the Bushehr reactor has a major accident, the winds would carry the fallout within 12 to 15 hours to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman,” Albright said.

    In the wake of spiraling tensions between the United States and Iran over Tehran’s violent crackdown on protests, analysts warn that the internal upheaval affecting the Iranian theocracy could carry nuclear proliferation risks.

    While in recent days U.S. President Donald Trump seemed to have backed away from a military strike on Iran, he called Saturday for an end to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s nearly 40-year reign in Iran. Trump’s comments came in response to Khamenei branding Trump a “criminal” for supporting protesters in Iran, and blamed demonstrators for causing thousands of deaths.

    Meanwhile, a U.S. aircraft carrier, which days earlier had been in the South China Sea, passed Singapore overnight to enter the Strait of Malacca — putting it on a route that could bring it to the Middle East.

    With those dangers, analysts warn Iran’s nuclear material could be at risk as well.

    Nuclear material could fall into the wrong hands

    David Albright, a former nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq and founder of the nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said that in a scenario of internal chaos in Iran, the government could “lose the ability to protect its nuclear assets.”

    He said that Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile “would be the most worrisome,” adding that there is a possibility that someone could steal some of this material.

    There are historical precedents for such a scenario.

    Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, highly enriched uranium and plutonium suitable for building nuclear bombs went missing due to eroded security and weakened protection of these assets.

    So far, Iran has maintained control of its sites, even after the U.S. bombed them in the 12-day war in June that Israel launched against the Islamic Republic.

    Iran maintains a stockpile of 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog.

    The agency said in a report last November that it has not been able to verify the status and location of this highly enriched uranium stockpile since the war in June.

    The agency said in November that therefore it had lost “continuity of knowledge in relation to the previously declared inventories of nuclear material in Iran” at facilities affected by the war.

    A diplomat close to the IAEA confirmed Monday that the agency had still not received any information from Iran on the status or whereabouts of the highly enriched uranium stockpile. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity in line with diplomatic protocol.

    Albright said that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium would fit in around 18 to 20 cylinders that are designed for transport, weighing around 50 kilograms (110 pounds) each when full. “Two people can easily carry it,” he said of each container.

    Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said that there is a risk that the stockpile “could be diverted either to a covert program or stolen by a faction of the government or the military that wanted to retain the option of weaponization.”

    She said that this risk increases as the Iranian government feels threatened or gets destabilized.

    Some of the nuclear material could get smuggled out of Iran or sold to non-state actors in the event of internal chaos or potential government collapse, Davenport said.

    “The risk is real but it is difficult to assess, given the unknowns regarding the status of the materials and the whereabouts,” she stressed.

    Possibility of Iran building a nuclear bomb

    Both Davenport and Albright pointed out that there is also a theoretical possibility of making nuclear bombs with Iran’s 60% enriched uranium. Tehran has insisted for years its program is peaceful.

    However, a weapon made directly from 60% enriched uranium rather than the usual 90% purity requires more nuclear material, which makes it “much bigger and bulkier and probably not well suited to delivery” on a missile, said Eric Brewer, a former U.S. intelligence analyst and now deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

    He added that such a device could still be “blown up in the desert,” for example.

    Brewer said that the possibility that the current government in Iran goes down that road should not be “totally dismissed,” but he underlined that most information suggests that the highly enriched uranium “remains buried in a tunnel as a result of the U.S. strikes and is probably not easily accessible to the regime; at least not with some major risk of detection and another strike by the U.S. or Israel.”

    He added that recent events “have also shown that the Supreme Leader has a very high bar for any decision to weaponize.”

    Nuclear power reactor could be a target

    In the case of internal chaos, Iran’s nuclear power reactor in Bushehr — Iran’s only commercial nuclear power plant some 465 miles south of Tehran — could also get sabotaged or targeted with the aim of causing havoc or making a political point, Albright said. Bushehr is fueled by uranium produced in Russia, not Iran.

    So far, there has been no sign of Iran losing command and control of its security forces.

    Albright pointed to the attack by the African National Congress’s armed wing on South Africa’s Koeberg Nuclear Power Station near Cape Town, as the country went through increased anti-apartheid resistance in 1982. The act of sabotage caused significant damage but resulted in no nuclear fallout.

    “If the Bushehr reactor has a major accident, the winds would carry the fallout within 12 to 15 hours to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman,” Albright said.

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  • Trump escalates Greenland standoff with allies, linking it to perceived Nobel Peace Prize snub

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    America’s European allies stood united Monday against President Trump’s escalating campaign to take control of Greenland, accusing him of blackmail with a new threat of tariffs if they continue rejecting his bid for the U.S. to acquire the vast island. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, appeared to hint that he was still willing to use the U.S. military to achieve his objective.

    In a message sent to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and shared with other NATO allies, Mr. Trump said that due to the decision to award someone other than himself the Nobel Peace Prize this year, he no longer feels “an obligation to think purely of Peace,” and that he “can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”  

    In the next sentence, Mr. Trump refers to his controversial demand that the U.S. take ownership of Greenland, which has been a territory of American ally Denmark for centuries. He renews his claim that only full U.S. control can prevent the strategic Arctic island from falling into the hands of China or Russia.

    Trump’s claims about Greenland and U.S. security

    America’s closest allies in NATO have rejected Mr. Trump’s argument, along with U.S. lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, that the U.S. needs to own Greenland for security reasons.

    Getty/iStockphoto


    They note that Greenland already falls under the transatlantic alliance’s protection as a Danish territory, that the U.S. has had at least one military base on the island since World War II and Denmark has given an open invitation for Washington to boost that defense presence in partnership with its allies.

    Despite those facts, and efforts by Denmark and other European NATO members to show an understanding of and willingness to address rising competition over control of vital new shipping lanes around the resource-rich island, Mr. Trump claims again in his message to Norway’s leader that “the World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”

    He argues that Denmark is incapable of securing the Arctic territory in the face of Russian and Chinese threats — threats that Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic vice chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, called fictitious over the weekend.

    “Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China,” Mr. Trump wrote, ignoring the fact that, for almost 80 years, since the U.S. and its European allies committed to the principle of joint security with NATO’s founding treaty, Greenland’s protection has been a shared responsibility.

    Mr. Trump questions in the note, as he’s done previously, Denmark’s right to any claim over Greenland, arguing that the basis is only that “a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.”

    Denmark became the colonial power in Greenland in the early 18th century, about 50 years before the United States became a sovereign nation with its own navy. Greenland remained a Danish colony until 1953, when the island gained its current semi-autonomy. 

    Protesters rally in Greenland against Trump annexation threat

    Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen waves a flag during a protest against President Trump’s demand that the Arctic island be ceded to the U.S., in Nuuk, Greenland, Jan. 17, 2026.

    Marko Djurica/REUTERS


    Though the population is tiny at around 60,000 people, Greenland has its own elected government, and both the island’s leaders and the Greenlandic people have made it abundantly clear that they do not want to become part of the U.S.

    Norway’s leader responds to Trump’s message

    The Norwegian government shared a statement on Monday from Prime Minister Støre in which he confirms that he received Mr. Trump’s message on Sunday afternoon.

    He said it came in response to a text message he’d sent along with Finland’s President Alexander Stubb. 

    “In our message to Trump we conveyed our opposition to his announced tariff increases against Norway, Finland and select other countries. We pointed to the need to de-escalate and proposed a telephone conversation between Trump, Stubb and myself on the same day. The response from Trump came shortly after the message was sent,” Støre said in the statement, adding that it was Mr. Trump’s “decision to share his message with other NATO leaders.”

    NATO leaders at summit

    NATO leaders attend the North Atlantic Council plenary meeting at a summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25, 2025.

    LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP/Getty


    “Norway’s position on Greenland is clear. Greenland is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and Norway fully supports the Kingdom of Denmark on this matter. We also support that NATO in a responsible way is taking steps to strengthen security and stability in the Arctic,” said Støre. 

    He added, “As regards the Nobel Peace Prize, I have clearly explained, including to President Trump what is well known, the prize is awarded by an independent Nobel Committee and not the Norwegian Government.”

    U.K. leader doubts Trump will use U.S. military to take Greenland

    Mr. Trump stunned America’s NATO allies over the weekend by threatening to impose new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European nations if they continue to reject his demands to take over Greenland.

    After holding talks among themselves on Sunday, the eight countries issued a joint statement saying they were “committed to strengthening Arctic security as a shared transatlantic interest,” while reiterating their support for Denmark and Greenland.

    They said they were “ready to engage in a dialogue based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that we stand firmly behind,” and warned that threats of tariffs undermine “transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral.”

    British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has maintained good relations with Mr. Trump and spoke with him on the phone Sunday, acknowledged in televised remarks on Monday morning that the Arctic region “will require greater attention, greater investment and stronger collective defense” and said the U.S. would “be central to that effort and the U.K. stands ready to contribute fully alongside our allies, through NATO.”

    UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer Sets Out Approach to US After Trump Tariff Threat

    U.K. Prime Minster Keir Starmer is seen during a news conference in London, England, Jan. 19, 2026.

    Tolga Akmen/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty


    “But there is a principle here that cannot be set aside, because it goes to the heart of how stable and trusted international cooperation works, and so any decision about the future status of Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark alone,” said Starmer.

    “Denmark is a close ally of the U.K. and of the U.S. — a proud NATO member that has stood shoulder to shoulder with us, including at real human cost in recent decades,” Starmer said, alluding to Danish troops fighting alongside U.S. and British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, as part of the NATO alliance.

    “Alliances endure because they’re built on respect and partnership, not pressure. That is why I said the use of tariffs against allies is completely wrong. It is not the right way to resolve differences within an alliance, nor is it helpful to frame efforts to strengthen Greenland’s security as a justification for economic pressure,” he said. “A trade war is in no one’s interest.”

    As for Mr. Trump not ruling out the use of the American military to seize territory from a NATO ally, Starmer said he didn’t believe it would come to that. 

    “I don’t, actually,” he said. “I think this can and should be resolved through calm discussion, but with the application of principles I’ve set out in terms of who decides the future of Greenland.” 

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  • Fighting Deepfakes and Petro-states: The Week in News

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    Happy Friday folks, Seth Cline here. Before we dive into the news, a quick programming note: Decision Points is off Monday for MLK Day, but we’ll be back in your inbox Tuesday. Now onto this week’s stories.

    Monday

    On Monday, Olivier perused the news around North America, where governments are concerned with technology, especially artificial intelligence.

    In Canada, officials are considering taking action against Grok, Elon Musk’s increasingly malicious AI engine. That’s because it’s lately being used to “digitally undress people (mostly women), putting them in tiny bikinis and striking sexual poses.”

    Stateside, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to ban AI-generated images of candidates from political ads, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill restricting cellphones in classrooms, joining 36 other states who have already done so.

    Tuesday

    The news cycle being what it is, one might have forgotten that the U.S. just plunged Venezuela’s capital into darkness, snatched its president and threw him in a Brooklyn jail. So Olivier on Tuesday checked in on Venezuela for us. It’s not pretty.

    Bands of government-backed militia known as colectivos are reportedly setting up roadblocks and searching cars there for signs of U.S. ties or support, and the risks of “wrongful detention” and “arbitrary enforcement of local laws” remain high. That’s according to a U.S. travel advisory issued Saturday telling Americans to “leave the country immediately.”

    That advisory came just a day after President Donald Trump invited oil company executives to “rebuild Venezuela’s rotting energy infrastructure” and said the U.S. would guarantee their physical and financial security. Needless to say, the situation is volatile.

    Wednesday

    Midweek, Olivier turned to Americans’ political leanings. A new Gallup poll found 28% of Americans identify as “liberal” – the highest share since the polling firm started keeping track in 1992.

    And a record share of Americans are identifying as independent – 45% – a plurality of whom lean Democratic. This newfound independent streak is especially present in Gen Z, 56% of whom self-identify as political independents. That’s not only higher than older age cohorts today, it’s higher than young people in the past: Just 47% of millennials and 40% of Gen Xers identified as independent when they were the same age as Gen Z today.

    Thursday

    Yesterday Olivier turned to an unstable, oil-rich nation Trump has threatened with military action: not Venezuela this time, but Iran.

    There, Iranians have taken to the streets in numbers not seen since its Islamic Revolution in 1979, and the government has responded by shutting off the internet and killing protesters – as many as 20,000, by one estimate. Trump threatened to intervene, but has since backed off.

    There’s a lot riding on what happens next, beyond the lives of 90 million Iranian citizens. Iran’s nuclear stockpile and its massive oil output and reserves are also at stake, as is the balance of power in the Middle East, where Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi fighters operate as Iran’s proxies. So the world will be watching.

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  • Kurdish Iranian opposition in Iraq ready to take on regime, but says not yet, as Trump steps back from threats

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    In the mountains of northern Iraq, just 30 miles from the Iranian border, CBS News met Thursday morning with fighters — many of them women — from an armed Kurdish Iranian opposition group who say they’re poised to take on and help topple the Islamic Republic’s hardline clerical rulers.

    The Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) is banned as a terror group inside Iran and based in exile across the border in Iraq. For years it has trained for the day the Iranian regime can be ousted from power. But as President Trump appears to step back from threats of a U.S. military intervention on behalf of Iran’s protesters, the Kurdish group’s leader told CBS News that time has not yet come.

    President Trump said Wednesday that he’d heard on “good authority” that the “killing in Iran is stopping” and that there was “no plan for executions” in the country following a brutal crackdown to end two weeks of widespread protests. Sources inside Iran have told CBS News the Iranian authorities’ crackdown may have killed upwards of 12,000 people, and possibly many more.

    People gather during an anti-government protest in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 8, 2026.

    Anonymous/Getty


    His remarks appeared to signal a step back from repeated warnings of an unspecified U.S. intervention to protect protesters, and then a threat on Tuesday to order “very strong actions” if Iran hanged protesters.

    That may not have been the signal from Washington that the PDKI forces training across the border in Iraq were hoping for.

    Commander Sayran Gargoli told CBS News the protests had given them hope that the oppressive regime that came to power with the 1979 Islamic Revolution might finally be toppled, but only “if the people who are demonstrating on the street get international help.”

    PDKI leader Mustafa Hijri has lived in exile for more than four decades, and he’s watched as Iran’s rulers quash several rounds of major unrest. As the latest protests seem to suffer the same fate, he said he couldn’t say for sure whether this uprising might prove pivotal.

    “It depends on if the widespread killing will continue or not. If it continues, for sure the demonstrators will not be able to continue. On the other hand, there are other possible scenarios, like America gets into negotiations with the regime of mullahs and forces them to accept its conditions. In this case, the regime will manage to extend its existence for some time.”

    iranian-kurdish-mustafa-hijri-kdpi.png

    Mustafa Hijri, leader of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) armed Iranian opposition group, speaks with CBS News in northern Iraq, where the group is based in exile, Jan. 15, 2026. 

    CBS News/Rob Taylor


    He said he hoped for a U.S. intervention, and specifically, strikes on Iran that “hit the centers of suppressing forces who are shooting people on the streets, and their so-called ‘justice’ institutions that serve the government. We want to see those institutions gone.”

    “The majority of the people in Iran are unhappy with this regime, and they stand against it,” Hijri said.

    But in the absence of such help from abroad, Hijri told CBS News that sending PDKI forces across the border — and calling into action the thousands of forces he says the group has lying in wait inside the country — could backfire dramatically.

    “I believe that it is not in the benefit of the demonstrators at the moment to have armed forces move back in the country, because it becomes a convenient excuse to the regime to kill the people,” he said. “This is why we haven’t reached the moment to make such a decision. But when the day comes, and we come to a conclusion that the return of our peshmerga [Kurdish] forces will not become additional reason to suppress the demonstrators, then we might do that.”

    iranian-kurdish-kdpi-iraq.png

    Members of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), an armed Iranian opposition group based in exile, are seen during an exercise in the mountains of northern Iraq, Jan. 15, 2026.

    CBS News/Rob Taylor


    Hijri said the PDKI wants Kurds, who form about 10% of Iran’s population, and other ethnic minorities to be allowed to live “under democratic law, and that their children are allowed to learn in their own languages, and that the government officially recognizes” their right to do so.

    The opposition fighters, Hijri said, “have been trained, and they are there, ready for when the party needs them.”

    But as Iran’s hardline leaders increasingly appear to have survived yet another significant challenge to their grip on power, at least for now, the PKDI, and millions of Iranians still inside the country, can only keep waiting.

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  • Iran protests rage for another night and deaths mount as Trump renews warning of possible U.S. intervention

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    Protests in Iran raged Friday night in the Islamic Republic, online videos purported to show, despite a threats from the country’s theocracy to crack down on demonstrators after shutting down the internet and cutting telephone lines off to the world. The protesters appeared to be taking encouragement from repeated declarations of support by the Trump administration, and by the country’s exiled crown prince, who called on them Saturday to try and overwhelm security forces and seize towns and cities. 

    An external rights groups that relies on information from contacts inside Iran says at least 65 people have been killed in the protests, which began in Tehran in late December as anger over Iran’s ailing economy, but quickly spread and morphed into the most significant challenge to the government in years.

    Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused President Trump of having hands “stained with the blood of Iranians” in remarks aired Friday on Iranian state TV, as supporters gathered before him shouted “Death to America!”

    Protesters are “ruining their own streets … in order to please the president of the United States,” the 86-year-old Khamenei said to the crowd at his compound in Tehran. “Because he said that he would come to their aid. He should pay attention to the state of his own country instead.”

    Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei comments on nationwide protests, on Iranian State Television in the capital Tehran, Jan. 9, 2026

    IRIB/Handout/Anadolu/Getty


    State media later called the demonstrators “terrorists,” setting the stage for a possible violent crackdown – how Iran has responded to other major protests in recent years, despite Mr. Trump’s pledge to back peaceful protesters, with force if necessary.

    Trump’s issues fresh warnings to Iran’s leaders

    Trump has repeatedly pledged to strike Iran if protesters are killed, a threat that has taken on greater significance after the U.S. military raid that seized Venezuela’s former President Nicolás Maduro. The president suggested Friday any possible American strike wouldn’t “mean boots on the ground but that means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts.”

    “Iran’s in big trouble,” Trump said. “It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago.”

    He added: “I tell the Iranian leaders you better not start shooting because we’ll start shooting too.”

    In a brief social media post published in the very early hours of Saturday morning in Washington, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “the United States supports the brave people of Iran.”

    Iranian regime warns protesters will be punished “without any legal leniency”

    Iran’s judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei separately vowed that punishment for protesters “will be decisive, maximum and without any legal leniency.”

    According to the Washington D.C.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which was founded by anti-regime activists, as of Friday, the 13th day of unrest in Iran, at least 65 people had been killed, including at least 14 members of the security forces. More than 2,300 people had been arrested, and protests recorded in at least 180 cities.

    FILE PHOTO: Iran's rulers face legitimacy crisis amid spreading unrest

    Protesters are seen near burning vehicles amid evolving anti-government unrest in Tehran, Iran, in a screengrab obtained from a social media video released on Jan. 9, 2026.

    Social media via REUTERS


    Iranian authorities shut down the internet on Thursday night as protests escalated sharply, seemingly as people heeded a call by the exiled crown prince, a vocal opposition figure, for Iranians to raise their voices against the regime.

    According to an update posted online Saturday morning by the monitoring organization NetBlocks, “metrics show the nationwide internet blackout remains in place at 36 hours, severely limiting Iranians’ ability to check on the safety of friends and loved ones.”

    That communications blackout has made it incredibly difficult to gain a clear picture of the scale of the protests overall – and the Iranian authorities’ response to it. Some other reports put the death toll from unrest much higher, with TIME citing a doctor in Tehran as saying at least 217 people had been killed, for instance. 

    Iranian authorities have acknowledged a few deaths, but usually only those of security forces.

    Asked by CBS News how seriously he believes Iran’s autocratic rulers are taking the warnings from Mr. Trump not to kill protesters, Maziar Bahari, editor of the IranWire news website, said he was certain it had “really scared many Iranian officials, and may have affected their actions in terms of how to confront the protestors.”

    “But at the same time … it has inspired many protesters to come out, because they know that the leader of the world’s main superpower is supporting their cause,” said Bahari, who spent months in Iranian prisons after being arrested during a previous round of massive unrest in 2009.

    “Many people have called what is happening in Iran right now a revolution,” Bahari told CBS News’ Haley Ott. “And we can see different signs of revolution in Iran at the movement. But a revolution usually needs a leader for the revolution. But we don’t have that leader.”

    But while decades of draconian control over the media and the deliberate sidelining of dissident voices in the country have deprived Iran of a clear opposition figurehead inside the country’s borders, many in the vast Iranian diaspora hope the nation’s ousted royal family could stage a comeback.

    Head of Iran’s exiled royal family predicts his return is “very near”

    Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi has been seen by many analysts as a galvanizing force behind the momentum of this round of protests. On Saturday, he called on Iranians not only to continue coming out into the streets, but to try to seize control of towns and cities from the authorities by overwhelming them.

    “Our goal is no longer just to take to the streets. The goal is to prepare to seize and hold city centers,” Pahlavi said in his latest video message posted on social media, calling for more demonstrations on Saturday and Sunday.”

    Striking an optimistic tone, Pahlavi declared that he was “preparing to return to my homeland,” suggesting the day on which he would be able to do so, “very near.”

    FRANCE-IRAN-POLITICS-PROTEST

    A protester holds a placard of Iranian opposition leader and son of the last Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, during a demonstration against the Iranian regime’s crackdown on protests in central Paris, France, Jan. 4, 2026.

    Blanca CRUZ/AFP/Getty


    But Pahlavi has lived in exile for nearly 50 years, and while he has long sought to position himself as a leader-in-waiting, it’s far from clear how much real support he has inside the country.

    His father, Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was widely despised inside Iran when he fled into exile himself amid street protests in 1979, as the Islamic Revolution that brought the current regime to power took hold.

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