Monitoring the situation: Israeli defense minister Israel Katz delivered a confidential briefing to lawmakers on Tuesday night, telling them “that Israel and the United States are prepared to resume strikes on Iran if the regime attempts to rebuild its nuclear or ballistic missile programs,” the Free Beacon‘s Andrew Tobin reports from Tel Aviv.
“Katz delivered the classified update to members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv,” writes Tobin. “The meeting came one day after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire ended a 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran. Both countries, according to Katz, believe diplomacy with Tehran is unlikely to succeed and are prepared to enforce the ceasefire through coordinated military pressure if Iran moves to reconstitute its strategic capabilities.”
“Latz said the United States supports Israel’s efforts to prevent Iran from accessing key nuclear infrastructure and is cooperating on enforcement. The coordinated stance, he said, includes monitoring sensitive locations such as the Fordow enrichment facility and known missile depots.” Here’s how Boaz Bismuth, a member of the committee who attended the meeting, put it:
“If they have the bad idea, the fantasy of rebuilding, then I believe there will also be a restart in damaging their programs. A nuclear Iran should be not only a fantasy, but in the domain of science fiction.”
READ MORE: Israel, US Monitoring Iran and Ready To Renew Strikes If Necessary, Defense Minister Says in Confidential Briefing
Swept under the rug: Of the three university leaders who testified in the infamous December 2023 campus anti-Semitism House hearing, MIT’s Sally Kornbluth is the only one who kept her job. But she’s not out of the woods when it comes to Jew hatred at her school.
A new Brandeis Center complaint accuses a linguistics professor at MIT, Michael DeGraff, of harassing two Jewish students. In one case, DeGraff sent department-wide emails threatening to use one of the students as an academic “case study” of the “Zionist mind infection,” according to the complaint. In another, he posted details of a postdoctoral student’s Israeli military service online after the student attended a campus vigil for victims of Hamas. Kornbluth was directly informed of the details of the latter case, but the university apparently declined to address the concern.
“The cases are ’emblematic of a larger problem on the MIT campus, where anti-Semitism has been permitted to take root and fester,’ said the complaint from the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law,” our Alana Goodman reports. “The university, the Brandeis Center alleged, has become a ‘hotbed of anti-Semitic hate and lawlessness.'”
READ MORE: MIT Declined to Investigate Professor who Harassed Jewish Students: Complaint
Tell it to the judge: The three men charged in an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate both Donald Trump and an Iranian dissident on U.S. soil now have a trial date: March 9, 2026.
Federal judge Lewis J. Liman set the date during a pre-trial conference held in his courtroom in New York City on Tuesday. Our Jon Levine attended the conference, which had been delayed several times thanks to what federal officials called a “significant’ discovery process.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob H. Gutwillig told the court he expected the trial to last two weeks. He also “said the government would likely file a Classified Information Procedures Act motion, indicating that prosecutors will likely present classified material at the forthcoming trial.”
READ MORE: Trial Date Set for Three Men Charged in Iranian Assassination Plots Against Trump, Dissident
In other news:
- Bending the knee: Hours after Zohran Mamdani’s surprise NYC mayoral primary win, Democrat leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries issued statements embracing the avowed socialist for running a brilliant campaign focused on “affordability” (Mamdani’s signature policy proposal consisted of government-run grocery stores).
- Donald Trump is considering sending more Patriot missile systems to Ukraine following a “good” meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
- Ousted Montana senator Jon Tester, a top Dem recruit to challenge the GOP incumbent Steve Daines, won’t enter the race. “Democrats make this mistake too often,” he said, “we try to recycle candidates.”
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