KOENIG

The United States is warning it will destroy potential Iranian long-range missile shipments delivered to the Maduro regime in Venezuela, a senior administration official tells Fox News.

"The transfer of long-range missiles from Iran to Venezuela is not acceptable to the United States and will not be tolerated or permitted,” said Elliott Abrams, the State Department Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela.

"We will make every effort to stop shipments of long-range missiles, and if somehow they get to Venezuela they will be eliminated there,” added a senior administration official.

France's largest employers' federation on Monday urged companies to "resist the blackmail" over a product boycott by Arab countries as a backlash widens over Paris's hardened stance against radical Islam.

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to take the fight to Islamic radicals after the October 16 beheading of a history teacher who had shown cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed to pupils in a class discussion on free speech.

But his comments triggered protests in Muslim-majority countries at the weekend, with people burning pictures of Macron in Syria and setting fire to French flags in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) must enforce a settlement boycott by ensuring that the database of businesses operating over the pre-1967 lines can be used for enforcement action, special rapporteur Michael Lynk said in a written report he submitted to the General Assembly in New York.

“The UNSC should ensure that the database becomes a living tool, that it clarifies and broadens its mandate, and that it provide the database with sufficient resources so that its spotlight can properly identify the scope of all business involvement with the settlements and the occupation,” wrote Lynk in his annual report published over the weekend.

He is a Canadian legal expert who is the UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur for the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories.

In February of this year the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights published a list of 112 business entities – 94 domiciled in Israel and 18 in six other countries – which it has reasonable grounds to conclude operate over the pre-1967 lines.

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday morning launched a large-scale exercise simulating war against the Hezbollah terror group, aimed at improving the military’s offensive capability, it said.

The multi-day drill — dubbed “Deadly Arrow” — will predominantly focus on how various headquarters and command centers work together and communicate in wartime, the military said. It was also set to include physical maneuvers by ground forces, naval vessels and aircraft.

“The goal of the exercise is improving the IDF’s attack ability and testing all levels [of the military] in an integrated way,” the IDF said in a statement.

The vast majority (83%) of Israelis are convinced that the country is on its way to a third coronavirus lockdown, according to a new survey published over the weekend by N12.

The survey, conducted by Midgam’s Mano Geva on behalf of the station, found that the majority of Israelis (56%) said they do not trust the government’s handling of the pandemic. A similar number (55%) said that the government’s efforts were “less good” than in most other countries around the world.

As a result, 56% of Israelis say they are living with stress and anxiety. 

Fragments of nails believed to have been used in Jesus Christ's crucifixion have ancient wood and fragments of bone on them, according to the revelations of a new study, The New York Post reported. 

The fragments appeared for the first time after the 1990 excavation of a burial site of Caiaphas, the high priest who organized a plot to kill Jesus, according to the New Testament.

Scholars back then slammed the suggestion, The New York Post report, denying the nails Jacobovici had found were the same ones from Caiaphas’ tomb.

A normalization announcement between Israel and Saudi Arabia will most likely happen following the end of the US presidential elections, Mossad director Yossi Cohen said, N12 reported in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday morning.

The reason for the expected date, Cohen explained, is due to Riyadh's desire to present the normalization as a "gift" of sorts to either US President Donald Trump or his Democratic rival Joe Biden, depending on the outcome of the elections."

They seem to be waiting for the US election, to give a 'gift' to the president-elect," he explained, according to N12.

The normalization deal will also reportedly involve an arms deal between the US and Saudi Arabia, which could serve to cushion the move, Cohen said.

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump announced Friday that Sudan has agreed to make peace with Israel, making it the third Arab state to normalize ties as part of US-brokered deals since August.

During a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sudan Sovereign Council president General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, Trump brought reporters into the Oval Office and announced: “The State of Israel and the Republic of Sudan have agreed to make peace.”

A senior Trump aide, Judd Deere, said that Sudan and Israel “have agreed to the normalization of relations.”

• The U.S. Embassy in Turkey issued a security alert Friday, saying it received reports of a possible attack on Americans and other foreigners, and temporarily suspended consular services.
• The embassy in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, urged American citizens to exercise caution, including while at large in office buildings, shopping malls and other locations where foreigners gather.
• The Islamic State group and an outlawed Kurdish militant group conducted deadly attacks on Turkish soil between 2015 and 2017.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday there is no need for a Russia-China military alliance now, but noted it could be forged in the future.

Putin’s statement signaled deepening ties between Moscow and Beijing amid growing tensions in their relations with the United States. The Russian leader also made a strong call for extending the last remaining arms control pact between Moscow and Washington.

Asked during a video conference with international foreign policy experts Thursday whether a military union between Moscow and Beijing was possible, Putin replied that “we don’t need it, but, theoretically, it’s quite possible to imagine it.” 

Russia and China have hailed their “strategic partnership,” but so far rejected any talk about the possibility of their forming a military alliance.

Israel and Sudan will announce the establishment of diplomatic ties over the weekend or early next week in a US-brokered deal, Hebrew media reported Thursday, citing officials involved in the negotiations.

The announcement will likely come after a phone call between US President Donald Trump, Sudan’s transitional leader Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Walla news site.

The breakthrough comes after a high-level Israeli-US delegation reportedly traveled to Sudan on Wednesday for covert negotiations on the normalization of ties between Khartoum and Jerusalem.

Last week, the Iranian-flagged oil tanker Samah entered the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal. After a few miles, the 900-foot-long ship stopped reporting its position and destination. Evidence suggests the ship sailed to Syria, escorted by two Russian Navy ships, including a destroyer.

Russia’s role in protecting the shipment may change the dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the past, Iranian tankers sailing to Syria have been intercepted by the U.K. Royal Navy. The Russian Navy escort could be viewed as a precautionary step, raising the political and military risks of any intervention by the Royal Navy or others.

Last July, an Iranian tanker destined for Syria, Adrian Darya-1, was seized by U.K. Royal Marines off Gibraltar. The British accused Iran of supplying Syria with oil in contravention of European Union sanctions. Iran quickly seized a British-flagged tanker in a likely retaliatory move. Eventually, in September, Adrian Darya-1 was released by a local court with the assurance that it would not deliver its oil to Syria – but days later, it transshipped its oil in Syrian waters.

The American position is that West Bank settlements should remain in place permanently and Israel should apply sovereignty to them at a later date, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said on Wednesday.“

The position of the United States is that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria will never be evacuated. We will never ask any community in Judea and Samaria to ever disband,” Friedman said in a Kohelet Policy Forum conference on the Abraham Accords, conducted online. “We believe in long run, it is in Israel’s interest and America’s interest to extend [Israeli] sovereignty over these communities.”

The Trump administration’s plan, should he be reelected, is “to put all our efforts in the near future in diplomatic efforts to make Israel as safe, secure and prosperous as the nations of the region and reduce that threat level as much as possible” by encouraging more countries to normalize ties with Israel.

“When we feel we've exhausted these efforts, of course we will help Israel formalize its boundaries, including communities in Judea and Samaria,” Friedman said.

The arrival of the first-ever official government delegation from the United Arab Emirates in Israel this week came with an announcement that the countries, along with the US, were launching the Abraham Fund.

The fund, based in Jerusalem and established with a commitment from the three states involved to mobilize over $3 billion in investments, is meant "to identify and initiate strategic projects with a high developmental impact, including those that catalyze economic growth, improve standards of living, and create high-value, quality jobs," the joint statement on the Abraham Fund says.

The fund is already involved in two projects. The first is "MedRed:" Israeli pipeline company EPAC had just struck a preliminary deal to transport oil from the UAE to Europe via a pipeline connected the Red Sea from Eilat to the Mediterranean at the Ashdod port. The second is an effort to modernize checkpoints for Palestinians in Israel and Jordan.

Syrian state media said Israel had fired a missile early Wednesday at a site in the Quneitra province in southern Syria, near the Golan Heights border.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike hit a base for pro-Iran militias, adding that I was “likely” responsible.

However, the official SANA news agency said the midnight attack hit a school building in the village of Al-Harah, without providing further details.

Following the end on the 18^th of October of the 13-year United Nations’ embargo on Iran buying or selling weapons, the roll-out of the military component of the 25-year deal between China and Iran will begin in November, as exclusively revealed by Oil Price.com. After a series of meetings in China on the 9^th and 10^th of October between Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Zarif, and his China counterpart, Wang Yi, this military component may now also feature the deployment in Iran of North Korean weaponry and technology, in exchange for oil, according to sources very close to the Iranian government spoken to by OilPrice.com last week.

Most notably this would include Hwasong-12 mobile ballistic missiles, with a range of 4,500 kilometres, and the development of liquid propellant rocket engines suitable for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or satellite launch vehicles (SLVs). This will all be part of a broader triangular relationship co-ordinated by Beijing and further facilitated by the imminent launch of a new digitised currency system by China.

This sort of co-ordination – between North Korea and Iran and also between North Korea, Iran, and China – is nothing new, although its resumption at such a scale and in such products is. According to a number of defence industry sources - and recorded in various ‘Jane’s Intelligence Reviews’ (JIR) - over the first five-year period from the onset of Iran’s ballistic missile program in 1987, Iran bought up to 300 Scud B missiles from North Korea.

Pyongyang, though, did not just sell Iran weapons but it was also instrumental in helping Iran to build-out the infrastructure for what has become an extremely high-level ballistic missile program, beginning with the creation in Iran of a Scud B missile plant that became operational by the end of 1988.

Iran says that it is conducting a massive air defense drill that will cover half of Iran’s airspace this week. It will begin on Wednesday and comes in the wake of a joint Israel F-35 drill with the US. It comes in the context of increased focus on air defense in the region after Azerbaijan has used drones successfully against Armenian forces for the last three weeks of fighting. An arms embargo on Iran recently expired and the country is looking to improve its military and defense technology. 

Iran’s Tasnim news says that the new drill with air defense units is aimed at “improving the combat readiness and increasing the air defense capability of the Armed Forces and is one of the goals of holding a joint specialized air defense exercise for the 99th Sky Defenders of the provinces.” The operation will take place as if it is a “real battle.”

American adversaries and rogue nations around the world sense a “power vacuum” in the United States in the final days of the 2020 presidential elections that raises the risk of foreign policy crises, allied sources fear. 

“In our region, we feel that America doesn't have time, wish, or resources or political will to devote attention, and we also feel some kind of vacuum,” a Baltic official said. “We feel the absence of America from our region, and this absence has some negative connotations.” 

The proliferation of that sentiment has left allies feeling more vulnerable to threats from Russia and China over the coming weeks. It may account even for the hardening of disputes within the U.S. alliance network, such as the recent surge in aggressive foreign policy moves by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

“Erdogan is becoming more prone to risk-taking,” Greek lawmaker Dimitrios Kairidis told the Washington Examiner. “He feels a bit more emboldened, the closer we go to the elections. In his mind now, he sees a power vacuum in Washington he wants to exploit.”