RSS
Why Confronting Iran Should Be a Major Priority for the Trump Administration
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi meets with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in Tehran, Iran, Nov. 14, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Following Donald Trump’s major victory in the 2024 US presidential elections, the new administration is facing a number of international crises that extend from the Korean Peninsula, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and last but not least, the escalating war in the Middle East ignited by the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023 on Israel. It doesn’t require a political expert to figure out that Iran’s unconditional support to Hamas and Hezbollah are behind the current 14-month regional crisis.
In the past year, Hamas and Hezbollah received a heavy beating by Israeli attacks on their strongholds in Gaza, southern Lebanon and Syria, especially with the elimination of both terrorist groups’ leaders Yahya Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah. Even with the fall of the longstanding Assad regime in Syria on December 8th, Iran remains the catalyst and purveyor of chaos in the region.
Americans who lost family members during the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel filed lawsuits in November against Iran, presenting new evidence that Iran was involved in the terrorist attacks which claimed the lives of 46 American citizens — in addition to the 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers — while other Americans were among the more than 250 taken hostage.
Four Americans remain in Hamas captivity according to former hostage Aviva Siegel. Hamas released a video titled “Time is running out” on Dec. 1, 2024, of 20-year-old Edan Alexander who is still being held hostage in Gaza.
Iran endorsed the terrorist attack, and its Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, lauded the attacks and applauded his Hamas allies.
President-elect Trump vowed on Dec. 2 that there will be “hell to pay” if the hostages in Gaza are not freed before his inauguration.
Iranian Regime’s Threats and Abysmal Human Rights Record
Hardly a week passes without an Iranian leader or commander issuing threats against another country, but these are not empty threats, as some may claim or estimate. Iran has been vehemently working on destabilizing other countries in the Middle East, threatening Israel with annihilation and nearing the completion of a nuclear military program that turn its threats into a nuclear one.
In the span of less than five decades, the Iranian regime created a bizarro world of its own within the country and has been vehemently attempting to export its twisted state model across the Middle East through what it calls “Exporting the Revolution.” The Islamic revolution in Iran of 1979 that toppled the reigning Iranian Shah (emperor) Mohammad Reza Pahlavi shook the foundations of the Middle East, as it initiated a new grim chapter of extremism and terrorism.
Nowadays, Iran is a country producing ballistic missiles that it would launch indiscriminately on enemy militaries and citizens alike, case in point the barrage of over 300 ballistic missiles on Israel last October. At the same time, Iranian citizens are living in an archaic world that belongs to medieval times where adulterers are publicly flogged. Even young women such as Kurdish-Iranian Roya Heshmati are not spared from these punishments simply for appearing on social media without hijab. Barbaric punishments such as public executions using cranes, remain a common scene in Iranian streets and the regime uses them to send warning messages to dissidents.
Women’s rights in the country can only be compared to the same rights women had millennia ago. Iran’s abysmal record of women rights was condemned by every human rights NGO including the United Nations.
Following the September 2022 uprising in Iran, triggered by the death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amina in police custody, the repression of women has increased with new measures like the inhumane Noor Plan.
Though mass protests have subsided over the past two years, the ongoing defiance of women and girls remains a stark reminder that they continue to live in a system that relegates them to second-class status. The regime doesn’t even attempt to cover these abuses; they happen in broad day light and the videos of them have gone viral across the Internet. Nationwide protests for Mahsa’s death resulted in 551 deaths, including 49 women and 68 children, according to a United Nations report.
Roots of Religious Extremism of the Iranian Regime
The Iranian regime represents Shi’a Islam’s most extreme sect which is called the Twelver Shiism. The current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is the earthly representative of the last Imam or the Twelfth Imam and hence his word trumps all others in importance. The Twelver Shiism doctrine was adopted following the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, and is used to suppress opposition.
According to the doctrine, an army of believers must be formed which is called the Al Mahdi Army which would be tasked to fight all the other faiths and nations around them to restore justice and equity in the world after it became a place of violence and corruption.
One can only imagine what would happen if the Al Mahdi army was armed by a nuclear arsenal to complete its “holy mission.”
Following the Islamic revolution, the regime believes and endorses the aforementioned set of beliefs as a creed. It is a cult-like doctrine that imposes an inevitable war with everyone who doesn’t believe in it.
The Iranian regime repeatedly stresses that it is the Middle East’s Shia Muslims who are defenders of the faith and protectors from the tyranny of the region’s regimes against them.
Nuclear Threats to the Middle East
Last month, during nuclear program negotiations with Britain, France, and Germany, Iran vehemently repeated the message it has been peddling for years — that its nuclear program is for peaceful and civilian purposes even as it brazenly produces far more fissionable material than would be required for military purposes. Nevertheless, Iran repeatedly threatens to convert its “peaceful” program into a military one or change its nuclear doctrine if it feels threatened. This redundant message is always in the form of threats to annihilate Israel and the United States.
Western countries and politicians who ignore the atrocities of the Iranian regime and seek rapprochement at any cost, are precisely the ones the regime welcomes, However, these politicians are doing a disservice to their countries, as Iranian regime behavior towards anything Western is characterized by disdain and haughtiness.
“The European Union must stop its “arrogant and irresponsible behavior,” said Iranian deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs Kazem Gharibabadi on November 29th.
He added that “Europe should not project its own internal issues, particularly those surrounding the Ukraine war onto others.”
Earlier in November Iranian authorities threatened to turn their nuclear program into a military one in case of further threats or pressures.
“If an existential threat arises, Iran will modify its nuclear doctrine. We have the capability to build weapons and have no issue in this regard,” said Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Supreme leader Ayattolah Khamenei on November 2nd.
This threat was reiterated on Nov. 28th by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi who was more direct in his threats of militarizing the nuclear program and changing Iran’s nuclear doctrine if his country remains subjected to “pressure.”
Europe imposed further sanctions on Iran last month as a result of its continuous military involvement and support to Russian aggression in Ukraine by supplying a range of its drones and ballistic missiles. These sanctions were added to previous sanctions imposed in response to its abysmal human rights record and its nuclear program.
Continued Financing and Political Support of the Three H’s (Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis)
It is safe to say that without Iranian funding, training and political support none of the three above mentioned perennial global terrorist threats would have ever existed in the first place. Yet, this fact seems to elude most politicians namely Western liberal ones when addressing the issue of Iran.
Hezbollah was founded in 1982 in Lebanon through political and financial support just three years after the Islamic revolution overtook Iran.
The Yemeni Houthi movement is a Shiite terrorist group that was founded in northern Yemen in the 1990s. Funding and support from Iran eventually enabled it to overtake the country in 2014 after a decade of fighting with the Sunni-majority government. The Houthis now represent the most dangerous terrorist group threatening the naval supply line.
Last but not least in terrorist impendence is the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which was formed in 1987 as an offshoot of the global Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas leaders have been and still pledge allegiance to Iran openly.
If Trump’s upcoming second term will be deemed a successful one four years from now, a lot of that success will be measured on how his administration will firmly deal with an Iranian regime that has been a menace to the world and namely America for over four decades. Taking down or neutralizing the Iranian regime may prove to be a gargantuan task for Trump, but if Trump is unable to do it, then it seems unlikely that any other American president or Western leader will be to do it in the foreseeable future.
This is not simply about a regime comprised of lunatics who call America the “Great Satan” or antagonize it with every political decision or speech. As explained above, it goes much further than that — to world security.
Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) Senior Fellow Hany Ghoraba is an Egyptian writer, political and counter-terrorism analyst at Al Ahram Weekly and a regular contributor the BBC. He is the author of Egypt’s Arab Spring: The Long and Winding Road to Democracy He is a writer and contributor for over a dozen international outlets, periodicals and networks including Newsmax, OANN, BBC Radio, CSP, MEF, American Spectator, American Thinker, Arab Weekly and Al Arabiya News. A different version of this article was originally published by IPT.
The post Why Confronting Iran Should Be a Major Priority for the Trump Administration first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Jews, Israelis Targeted in Austria Amid Surge in Antisemitic Incidents; Local Jewish Community Calls for Action
Illustrative: Pro-Palestinian protesters shout slogans and hold flags during a demonstration against Israel’s military action in the Gaza strip, in Vienna, July 20, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
Austria is facing a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel rhetoric, prompting outrage from the country’s Jewish community and urgent calls for authorities to take swift action against growing anti-Jewish hatred.
On Saturday, a group of pro-Palestinian activists burst into the opening of the Salzburg Festival — one of the world’s premier events for opera, music, and drama — waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic slogans.
As Austrian Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler began his opening speech at the event, six individuals stormed the stage, aggressively waving Palestinian flags and shouting “Blood on your hands!” along with other antisemitic slurs.
The Salzburg Festival.
A frenzied white Austrian on stage, screaming in German about those bloody J*ws.
I’m sure we’ve seen that before… pic.twitter.com/b6oNyTwZRT
— Joo
(@JoosyJew) July 28, 2025
The incident raised alarming questions about the event’s security, as the six protesters gained easy access while wearing fake, misspelled staff IDs with fictitious names, revealing a clear failure in background checks.
According to festival director Lukas Crepaz, security measures and control checks have been significantly strengthened. The six activists were arrested, and authorities continue to investigate the incident.
Elie Rosen, president of the Jewish Community (IKG) of Salzburg, Styria, and Carinthia, condemned the incident, calling the disruption of the Salzburg Festival’s opening a “targeted political provocation, carried by openly anti-Israel rhetoric.”
“Jewish life in Austria must not become the collateral damage of political agitation,” Rosen said in a statement. “We often hear powerful statements at commemorative events condemning antisemitism.”
“But where are Israel’s outspoken supporters when real solidarity is needed? Antisemitism takes many forms and frequently starts with the silence of the majority,” she continued. “Hatred toward Israel is not a legitimate form of protest.”
In a separate incident last week, an Israeli couple was denied access to a campsite in Ehrwald, a village in western Austria, after attempting to make a reservation to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.
According to local media, the couple attempted to register at the campsite, but after revealing their Israeli passports, they were denied entry and asked to leave, forcing them to find alternative accommodations.
“We have no place for Jews here,” the campsite operator reportedly told them.
When asked for comment, the campsite operators told the German newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, “These people should much rather take care of the many children in Gaza. Otherwise, there is nothing to say.”
In another incident last week, a group of well-known Israeli classical musicians reported being refused service at a pizzeria in Vienna after staff overheard them speaking Hebrew.
One of the musicians recounted that while they were ordering their food, the waiter asked them which language they were speaking. When they replied Hebrew, the waiter allegedly told them, “In that case, leave. I’m not serving you food.”
“The initial shock and humiliation were profound. But what struck us even more deeply was what came next – or rather what didn’t. The people around us were clearly startled, some offered sympathetic glances … and then, quietly, they went back to their dinners, their conversations, their wine – as though nothing had happened,” one of the musicians wrote in a post on X.
RSS
‘All of Our Strength’: Over 1,000 Pro-Israel Activists Gather in DC for Solidarity Conference
2025 Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit. Photo: ICC.
Over 1,000 Jewish students, faculty, and activists amassed in Washington, DC on July 27-29 to attend the Israel on Campus Coalition’s annual National Leadership Summit (NLS), an electric event which achieved creating the atmosphere of both a festival of Jewish elation and an academic conference.
Founded in 2002, the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) is a nonprofit organization that describes its mission as inspiring college students to defend and hold pride in the state of Israel. One of its major initiatives is the “microgrants” program, which helps pro-Israel campus groups organize events about Israeli culture and society. Another, the ICC Community Impact Fellowship, awards college students a $1,000 stipend for completing a leadership seminar in which they are trained in civic engagement, coalition building, and rapidly responding to antisemitic and anti-Israel events on their campuses.
Demand for a spot at this year’s 2025 conference exceeded the nonprofit’s capacity to host the thousands of students who signed up to be a conferee at what is recognized as the largest gathering of pro-Israel students in the country. Hundreds were waitlisted and encouraged to reapply next year. Those whom ICC did select were flown out to DC and billeted at the Capital Hilton, all expenses paid. They were joined – for the first time ever – by a delegation of faculty from the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) and staff from most major Jewish organization in the US, from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to StandWithUs (SWU).
“We just ultimately believe that we’re better when we use all of our strength as a movement,” ICC chief executive Jacob Baime told The Algemeiner on Monday during an interview. “And we’re not the only ones who feel that way. The other side does as well, having mounted a highly professionalized coalition, well-funded, well-coordinated effort with many groups involved. We need our partners and the different perspectives they hold too.”
When The Algemeiner last attended NLS, the world was not yet one year removed from Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the deadliest day in modern Jewish history since the Holocaust. Jewish students and ICC staff, many of whom have family members and friends who were affected by the atrocities or were later drafted into the war it precipitated, were still laboring to comprehend what had become a new and unprecedented world – one in which classic antisemitic tropes had resurfaced to corrupt public debate, anti-Jewish violence occurred daily across the world, and anti-Zionist groups were taking over college campuses and converting them into outposts of antisemitic hate.
As such the event aimed to inspire Jewish students “take back the campus,” an effort advanced by an infantry of social media influencers.
This year’s NLS leaned more heavily into supplying students with information, facts, and statistics curated and presented by the most accomplished Middle East scholars, government leaders, and nonprofit executives in the global pro-Israel community. Social media influencers and celebrities took the stage as well, showcasing their strengths as spirited advocates who remind students why the issues under discussion relate to their contemporary experiences as young people and consumers.
Speakers included Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law; Col. Miri Eisin of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute; Miriam Elman of the Academic Engagement Network; and Dr. Ayal Feinberg, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights. On offer as giveaways were Douglas Murray’s recently published polemic On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization and Dina Powell McCormick and David McCormick’s co-authored book, titled Who Believed in You?: How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World.
“We wanted students to engage with ideas that touch on the entirety of the campus ecosystem and the subjects they may be asked to comment on,” Baime explained to The Algemeiner. “Oct. 7, the war, and its aftermath have changed the American pro-Israel movement forever.”
The obverse side of the conference’s educational objectives was wholesome fun for the 800 college aged conferees in attendance. They were treated to a buoyant concert in the Hilton’s Presidential Ballroom featuring the jazz-pop fusion act “All of the Above” and the rapper Duvbear, an 18-year-old who is emblematic of what Generation-Z calls “rizz.” Celebrities such as former NBA player Meta World Peace, former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho, and professional boxer George Foreman III afforded the students quick meet and greets and selfies. Capital Hilton staff carted out pounds of food – Latin, Asian, and Kosher – from its kitchens every several hours, fostering opportunities for socializing and being photographed on an ICC-themed “red carpet.”
University of California, Davis rising junior Toby Jacob told The Algemeiner that the nonprofit’s strength is its staff.
“The staff here is so knowledgeable and so capable,” Jacob said. “It can feel really scary when you’re dealing with these like large scale issues in your student government, with your administration – and to have people who have the resources to walk you through it is vital.”
Tessa Veksler, an NLS 2025 moderator who became the most recognizable pro-Israel activist of Generation-Z after being elected the first Shabbat-observant president of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s student government, agreed.
“When I was on campus going through the worst of the worst, I knew that ICC had my back and that I could count on the staff and the organization to be there at a moment’s notice,” Veksler said. “They exceptionally equip students with the tools to be able to lead themselves, and so there is an expectation that if you are an ICC fellow that you take the tools ICC gives and put in the work to go and become involved in student government and be the person to make the impact.”
She continued, “It’s a remarkable thing, and there’s a reason why I have stayed as involved as I am.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
RSS
‘Devastated’: Wesley LePatner, Killed in Manhattan Mass Shooting, Was a Jewish Communal, Philanthropic Leader
A man holding a rifle walks into an office building at 345 Park Avenue shortly before a shooting that killed several people, in the Midtown Manhattan district of New York City, US, July 28, 2025, in a still image taken from surveillance video. Photo: Surveillance Camera/Handout via REUTERS
Wesley LePatner, an executive at Blackstone and a Jewish communal leader, was one of the victims of the mass shooting in Midtown Manhattan on Monday that killed four people and wounded a fifth in addition to the shooter, who died by suicide.
LePatner, 43, was an active member of the Jewish community and served on the UJA Federation of New York’s board of directors, which said it is “devastated by the tragic loss.”
“Wesley was extraordinary in every way — personally, professionally, and philanthropically,” the federation wrote in a statement on Tuesday. “An exceptional leader in the financial world, she brought thoughtfulness, vision, and compassion to everything she did. In 2023, we honored her with the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award at our Wall Street Dinner, recognizing her commitment to our community and her remarkable achievements, all the more notable as a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field.”
In her acceptance speech, LePatner said, “Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I would be up on this stage two decades later [after attending her first UJA Wall Street dinner]. UJA has many super-powers, but its most important in my view is its power to create a sense of community and belonging, and that ability to create a sense of community and belonging matters now more than ever.”
She also explained that “UJA stepped in early and fixed my feeling out of place by connecting me with senior Goldman Sachs women who were further along in their careers and personal lives, but equally committed to their Jewish community and identity.”
“I was an American,” she said, “but I was first and foremost Jewish.”
LePatner was also a supporter of Israel, leading a solidarity mission with UJA after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
“In the wake of Oct. 7, Wesley led a solidarity mission with UJA to Israel, demonstrating her enduring commitment in Israel’s moment of heartache,” the UJA Federation of New York said in its statement. “She lived with courage and conviction, instilling in her two children a deep love for Judaism and the Jewish people.”
In addition to serving on the board of directors of the New York UJA, she was also on the board of trustees at The Abraham Joshua Heschel School — a pluralistic Jewish day school in New York. The Forward reported that school representatives wrote in an email that “there are no right words for this unfathomable moment of pain and loss.”
“It was a rare z’chut, a rare privilege, to know Wesley and to learn from her. She was a uniquely brilliant and modest leader and parent, filled with wisdom, empathy, vision, and appreciation,” they continued.
David Greenfield, CEO of the Met Council, posted on X that “Wesley was an amazing person who was also tremendously talented leader. She volunteered with her kids [at the Met Council] to feed those in need.”
LePatner graduated from Yale summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and met her husband on the first day of school in 1999.
She is survived by her husband and two children.