FILE PHOTO: Iranian Army commander-in-chief Amir Hatami attends a meeting in the Iranian Army’s War Command Room at an undisclosed location in Iran, in this handout image obtained on June 23, 2025. Photo: Iranian Army/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

The commander-in-chief of Iran’s military, Amir Hatami, said on Sunday that threats from Israel persist, according to state media.

In June, Israel and the US launched strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities during the so-called 12-day war, in which Tehran retaliated against Israel with several barrages of missiles and drones.

“A 1 percent threat must be perceived as a 100 percent threat. We should not underestimate the enemy and consider its threats as over,” Hatami said, according to the official IRNA news agency, adding that the Islamic Republic’s missile and drone power “remains standing and ready for operations.”

Last month, Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz warned that his country would strike Iran again if threatened.

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir speaks at a convention in Jerusalem, Jan. 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

i24 News – On the Jewish fast day of Tisha B’Av, which mourns the destruction of the First and Second Temples, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ascended the Temple Mount, joining thousands of Jewish visitors expected to visit and pray throughout the day.

Under Ben-Gvir’s policy, Israeli police have allowed Jewish visitors to sing, pray in the eastern section of the mount, and even prostrate, a significant shift from the longstanding status quo that prohibits overt Jewish worship at the flashpoint site.

Videos from Sunday morning showed dozens of Jewish worshippers singing and dancing openly on the mount. Police did not intervene. In one incident, an Arab man who shouted at a group of Jewish visitors was removed and arrested by security forces.

Associates of Ben-Gvir hailed the moment as “a monumental change that hasn’t happened in a thousand years,” adding that his policy is to ensure freedom of worship for Jews at all sites in Israel, including the Temple Mount. “There is no law permitting racist discrimination against Jews on the Temple Mount or anywhere else in Israel,” they said.

The Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, is Judaism’s holiest site and Islam’s third holiest. It houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. The site remains one of the most sensitive and contested in the region, with tensions often flaring over perceived changes to the fragile status quo.

Ben-Gvir’s visits and policies have drawn sharp criticism from Arab states, international actors, and Israel’s own security establishment, which has warned that shifts in worship policy at the site could inflame tensions and endanger national security. The move has also been condemned by ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders, who oppose visiting the site on religious grounds.

Despite the criticism, Ben-Gvir has maintained that Jewish worship at the Temple Mount is a matter of basic rights and national sovereignty.

US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect

President Donald Trump’s administration is actively discussing with Azerbaijan the possibility of bringing that nation and some Central Asian allies into the Abraham Accords, hoping to deepen their existing ties with Israel, according to five sources with knowledge of the matter.

As part of the Abraham Accords, inked in 2020 and 2021 during Trump’s first term in office, four Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after US mediation.

Azerbaijan and every country in Central Asia, by contrast, already have longstanding relations with Israel, meaning that an expansion of the accords to include them would largely be symbolic, focusing on strengthening ties in areas like trade and military cooperation, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Such an expansion would reflect Trump’s openness to pacts that are less ambitious than his administration’s goal to convince regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia to restore ties with Israel while war rages in Gaza.

The kingdom has repeatedly said it would not recognize Israel without steps towards Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state.

Another key sticking point is Azerbaijan’s conflict with its neighbor Armenia, since the Trump administration considers a peace deal between the two Caucasus nations as a precondition to join the Abraham Accords, three sources said.

While Trump officials have publicly floated several potential entrants into the accords, the talks centered on Azerbaijan are among the most structured and serious, the sources said. Two of the sources argued a deal could be reached within months or even weeks.

Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, traveled to Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, in March to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Aryeh Lightstone, a key Witkoff aide, met Aliyev later in the spring in part to discuss the Abraham Accords, three of the sources said.

As part of the discussions, Azerbaijani officials have contacted officials in Central Asian nations, including in nearby Kazakhstan, to gauge their interest in a broader Abraham Accords expansion, those sources said. It was not clear which other countries in Central Asia – which includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – were contacted.

The State Department, asked for comment, did not discuss specific countries, but said expanding the accords has been one of the key objectives of Trump. “We are working to get more countries to join,” said a US official.

The Azerbaijani government declined to comment.

The White House, the Israeli foreign ministry and the Kazakhstani embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

Any new accords would not modify the previous Abraham Accords deals signed by Israel.

OBSTACLES REMAIN

The original Abraham Accords – inked between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan – were centered on restoration of ties. The second round of expansion appears to be morphing into a broader mechanism designed to expand US and Israeli soft power.

Wedged between Russia to the north and Iran to the south, Azerbaijan occupies a critical link in trade flows between Central Asia and the West. The Caucasus and Central Asia are also rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, prompting various major powers to compete for influence in the region.

Expanding the accords to nations that already have diplomatic relations with Israel may also be a means of delivering symbolic wins to a president who is known to talk up even relatively small victories.

Two sources described the discussions involving Central Asia as embryonic – but the discussions with Azerbaijan as relatively advanced.

But challenges remain and there is no guarantee a deal will be reached, particularly with slow progress in talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The two countries, which both won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, have been at loggerheads since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh – an Azerbaijani region that had a mostly ethnic-Armenian population – broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia.

In 2023, Azerbaijan retook Karabakh, prompting about 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia. Both sides have since said they want to sign a treaty on a formal end to the conflict.

Primarily Christian Armenia and the US have close ties, and the Trump administration is wary of taking action that could upset authorities in Yerevan.

Still, US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself, have argued that a peace deal between those two nations is near.

“Armenia and Azerbaijan, we worked magic there,” Trump told reporters earlier in July. “And it’s pretty close.”