Two Republican lawmakers said they believe the security clearance of Rob Malley, who is on unpaid leave from his post as US special envoy for Iran, was suspended because he allegedly sent classified documents to his personal email account and downloaded them to his personal mobile phone.

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) did not provide any source for the allegations in a May 6 letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The letter was first reported by the Washington Post and reviewed by Reuters on Tuesday.

“We understand that Mr. Malley’s security clearance was suspended because he allegedly transferred classified documents to his personal email account and downloaded these documents to his personal cell phone,” said the letter, which gave the most detailed potential public explanation to date for the suspension of Malley’s security clearance.

“It is believed that a hostile cyber actor was able to gain access to his email and/or phone and obtain the downloaded information,” they added, criticizing the department for not providing more information about Malley’s case and posing 19 questions about it to Blinken.

A State Department spokesperson said Malley remains on leave, adding that “under longstanding policy going back for decades, the department does not comment on individual security clearances.”

Malley declined to comment on the letter in an emailed response to Reuters.

Appointed soon after US President Joe Biden took office in 2021, Malley had the task of trying to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal after then-President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to abandon the pact and reimpose US sanctions on Tehran.

That effort has failed, and the United States and Iran are increasingly at odds on issues from Iran’s nuclear program to its support for proxy forces across the Middle East and its first direct attack on Israeli territory on April 13.

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The Hamas terror group said it was battling Israeli troops on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip’s crowded southern city of Rafah on Wednesday after a US official said Washington had halted a shipment of powerful bombs that Israel could use in military operations.

The United States, which is seeking to stave off a large-scale Israeli offensive in Rafah, said it believes a revised Hamas ceasefire proposal may lead to a breakthrough in an impasse in negotiations, with talks resuming in Cairo on Wednesday.

Israel has threatened a major assault on Rafah to defeat thousands of Hamas terrorists it says are holed up there, but Western countries and the United Nations have warned a full-scale attack on the city could worsen an already dire humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave.

Hamas said its fighters were battling Israeli forces in the east of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge from combat further north in the enclave. Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian terror group, said its fighters attacked Israeli soldiers and military vehicles with heavy artillery near the airport east of Rafah.

Around 10,000 Palestinians have left Rafah since Monday, said Juliette Touma, spokesperson for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the number at tens of thousands.

A senior US official said President Joe Biden’s administration paused a shipment of weapons to Israel last week in an apparent response to the expected Rafah offensive. The White House and Pentagon declined to comment.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington had carefully reviewed the delivery of weapons that might be used in Rafah, and as a result paused a shipment consisting of 1,800 2,000-lb bombs and 1,700 500-lb bombs.

This would be the first such delay since the Biden administration offered its “ironclad” support to Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Washington is Israel‘s closest ally and main weapons supplier.

A senior Israeli official declined to confirm the report: “If we have to fight with our fingernails, then we’ll do what we have to do,” the source said. A military spokesperson said any disagreements were resolved in private.

Israeli tanks rolled across the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Tuesday.

The complex was closed for a second day on Wednesday, according to the Gaza health ministry, but Israel said it was reopening the other crossing in southern Gaza, Kerem Shalom, through which most aid to Gaza has been delivered recently.

The Israeli military said it had uncovered Hamas infrastructure in several locations in eastern Rafah and its troops were conducting targeted raids on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and airstrikes across the Gaza Strip.

It has told civilians, many of whom have been uprooted several times already, to go to an “expanded humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi, some 20 km (12 miles) away.

Armed groups of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah said in separate statements that gunfights continued in the central Gaza Strip, while residents of northern Gaza reported heavy Israeli tank shelling against eastern areas of Gaza City.

CEASEFIRE TALKS

In Cairo, delegations to negotiations from Hamas, Israel, the US, Egypt, and Qatar reacted positively to their resumption on Tuesday and meetings were expected to continue on Wednesday, two Egyptian sources said.

CIA Director Bill Burns was to travel from Cairo to Israel on Wednesday to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Mossad counterpart, an Israeli government source said.

Israel on Monday declared that a three-phase proposal approved by Hamas was unacceptable because terms had been watered down. White House spokesperson John Kirby said a new text presented by Hamas suggests the remaining gaps can “absolutely be closed.”

The proposal included a first phase with a six-week ceasefire, an influx of aid to Gaza, the return of 33 Israeli hostages, alive or dead, and the release by Israel of 30 detained Palestinian children and women for each released Israeli hostage, according to several sources.

Since a week-long ceasefire in November, the only pause so far, the two sides have been blocked by Hamas’ refusal to free more Israeli hostages without a promise of a permanent end to the conflict and Israel‘s insistence on only a temporary halt.

The war began when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting 252 others as hostages. Of those kidnapped, 128 remain hostage in Gaza and 36 have been declared dead, according to the latest Israeli figures.

Israel responded with a military campaign in neighboring Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas, aimed at freeing the hostages incapacitating the terror group to the point that it can no longer pose a major threat to the Israeli people.

The post US Pauses Some Weapons to Israel as Battles Rage Around Rafah first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Israel carried out heavy airstrikes in south Lebanon and Hezbollah said it had launched explosive drones and powerful rockets at Israeli targets on Wednesday in an escalation of seven months of hostilities in the border region.

Israeli attacks killed three people in Lebanon, security sources said.

The conflict between Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group based in Lebanon, and Israel has rumbled on since October in parallel to the Gaza war, uprooting tens of thousands of people on both sides of the frontier and fueling concern of a bigger war between the heavily armed adversaries.

The Israeli military said it had hit military structures and infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah in three locations in south Lebanon, including more than 20 strikes on Hezbollah targets in the Ramyeh area.

Hezbollah, which wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon, said it had launched explosive drones at a military headquarters in the Israeli border town of Ya’ara, and fired its powerful Burkan rockets at a barracks in Biranit, among at least 10 attacks announced by the group on Wednesday.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported Israeli strikes on 28 towns and villages of south Lebanon, a stronghold of the heavily-armed Hezbollah. Two security sources in Lebanon said the Israelis were using powerful munitions in an apparent attempt to hit Hezbollah underground bunkers.

The Israeli military said secondary explosions had been identified during the attack by its artillery and fighter jets in the Ramyeh area, indicating there were weapons storage facilities in the location.

The displacement of some 60,000 residents of northern Israel has prompted calls within Israel for firmer military action against Hezbollah. Across the border in Lebanon, some 90,000 people have also been displaced by Israeli strikes.

The Israeli military said in April it had completed another step in preparing for possible war with Hezbollah that centered on logistics, including preparations for a broad mobilization of reservists.

More than 250 Hezbollah members and 75 civilians have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon since October, sources in Lebanon say. In Israel, some 20 people — including soldiers and civilians — have been killed.

The United States and France have both been seeking to defuse the conflict through diplomacy.

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