Israel has exposed a far-reaching Iranian-backed terrorist network targeting Israeli officials and overseas assets, as the Islamist regime intensifies a widening campaign of attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets across Europe through proxy groups.

On Monday, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency the Mossad, the Israel Defense Forces, and the country’s domestic security agency the Shin Bet released a joint statement confirming that authorities had uncovered and dismantled an Iranian-backed network after several of its members were arrested in Azerbaijan last month.

Following the onset of the US-Israeli war against Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s elite military force responsible for overseas terrorist operations and the coordination of proxy groups, has escalated efforts to establish cells abroad and carry out attacks, widening what officials describe as a sustained campaign of destabilization beyond the Middle East.

According to Israeli intelligence, members of the cell had smuggled explosive drones into Azerbaijan while gathering intelligence on potential targets under direct instructions from Iranian operatives as part of an organized effort to lay the groundwork for planned attacks.

With the arrest of the cell’s members, authorities were able to expose the broader terrorist network and its chain of command, including several senior operatives who were later killed during the US-Israeli campaign against Iran that began on Feb. 28.

Among those killed was Rahman Moqadam, head of the Special Operations Division within IRGC intelligence and the senior commander overseeing the network.

Moqadam allegedly recruited and trained operatives both inside and outside Iran to gather intelligence on Israeli political leaders, security officials, Israeli and Western military facilities, ports, and Israeli shipping routes worldwide.

Last month, Azerbaijan foiled a series of planned attacks linked to Iranian operatives on its territory, including plots targeting the Israeli embassy in Baku, a synagogue, and Jewish community leaders, as well as the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, which runs through Georgia and Turkey and supplies roughly a third of Israel’s oil imports.

Police arrested at least seven Azeri nationals in connection with the investigation.

At the time, government authorities said law enforcement “prevented terrorist acts and intelligence operations in Azerbaijan organized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).”

According to Israeli security officials, Mahdi Yekeh-Dehghan was identified as the network’s regional commander in Azerbaijan after Turkish authorities arrested six suspects, including an Iranian national, in January during coordinated raids across five provinces on charges of political and military espionage for Iran.

Yekeh-Dehghan is said to have directed the cell’s operations, including efforts to smuggle explosive drones from Iran through Turkey to Cyprus and to collect intelligence on US forces at Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey.

Since the start of the war, European governments have tightened domestic security amid mounting fears that Iran could, in retaliation, activate proxy networks across the continent against Israeli and Western interests.

But even with increased security and heightened intelligence monitoring, Europe has seen a string of attacks targeting Jewish and Israeli institutions, several of them claimed by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, a newly emerged Iran-linked terror organization.

Just in April, the group claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks across the UK, Germany, North Macedonia, and the Netherlands, many of them concentrated in London.

Since emerging in early March, it has taken credit for at least 15 attacks against Jewish and Western targets across Europe.

A Republican businesswoman from a well-known Jewish family who narrowly lost a bid for the University of Michigan Board of Regents in 2022 suggested on Monday that Democrats may have handed her a second chance by nominating a candidate who is facing backlash for past praise of Hezbollah.

In an interview, Lena Epstein said the choice creates a “clear contrast” in a race that could be shaped by campus antisemitism and wars in the Middle East.

The Michigan Democratic convention on Sunday nominated civil rights attorney Amir Makled to run for the eight-member board tasked with governing the state’s university in the general election over incumbent regent Jordan Acker, who is Jewish. Acker had drawn criticism from pro-Palestinian students and activists over the university’s response to protests following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and the war in Gaza.

Makled, who legally represented some demonstrators and backed calls for divestment from Israel, has since faced scrutiny over past social media posts viewed as pro-Hezbollah and antisemitic. He called Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a “martyr” after he was killed by Israeli strikes in 2024.

The controversy led the Service Employees International Union last week to rescind its endorsement of Makled. The posts were later deleted.

“Eyes are open, chills are going down people’s spines, terrified at the prospect of Makled representing their families at the University of Michigan Board of Regents,” said Epstein, a 2008 graduate of the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business.

Epstein said she is now reaching out to Jewish Democrats who previously opposed her, framing the race as a nonpartisan effort to confront antisemitism and tensions over Israel on campus. Epstein lost her 2022 bid by just 0.7 percentage points in an election year when Democrats swept every statewide office. Democrats currently hold six seats on the regents board.

The Republican Party nominated Epstein last month alongside Michael Schostak, who is also Jewish and running for another open seat against incumbent Paul Brown. “When it comes to Israel and combating antisemitism on campus, there will be no greater regent than me,” Epstein said.

Epstein’s past controversies

Epstein is a third-generation owner and the chief executive of Vesco Oil Corporation, the business her grandfather Eugene Epstein founded in Southfield, Michigan, in 1947. Her mother’s family founded Winkelman’s department store in Detroit.

She is no stranger to controversy.

Epstein, who served as the Trump campaign co-chair in Michigan in 2016, made headlines after a country club her family had belonged to for generations canceled a scheduled fundraiser for her when she ran for Congress in 2018.

That year, days before she lost her bid for a U.S. House seat to Rep. Haley Stevens, who is now running in a Democratic primary for an open Senate seat, Epstein caused an uproar by inviting a Messianic rabbi to offer a prayer for the victims of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue massacre.

In 2023, Epstein faced scrutiny during her bid for chair of the Michigan Republican Party after saying she considered herself a “Jewish Messianic believer of Christ.” Mainstream Judaism does not accept Messianic Jews because they believe in the divinity of Christ and try to convert Jews to Christianity. Epstein later withdrew from the race.

In the interview on Monday, Epstein said she “never was” a Messianic Jew and apologized to anyone offended by it, calling it “nothing more than a blip.”

Epstein said she remains “very, very proud” of her Jewish identity and said she is actively involved in the community, including membership at Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Hills, a Reform congregation, where she said her eight-year-old daughter attends religious school, and participation in family milestones such as a recent bar mitzvah at Adat Shalom Synagogue, a Conservative congregation in Farmington Hills. She said she studies the Torah every Tuesday night with her mother and with a Chabad rabbi.

“I’m 100% Jewish,” she continued. “I apologize if any of that discussion offended anybody. But I definitely want to be very, very clear that my existence as a Jew, my love of Judaism, my commitment and passion for Judaism have never been stronger, and it’s been a lifelong pursuit.”

A test of Democrats’ Israel divide

Michigan is one of a few states in which voters play a direct role in choosing university overseers.

Makled’s nomination comes at a fraught moment for the Democratic Party, testing its coalition and approach to Israel policy amid the wars in Gaza and Iran. Michigan, home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States, was also the birthplace of the 2024 Uncommitted movement, which protested the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas that led more than 100,000 voters in Michigan to leave their primary ballots blank.

Anonymous text messages to state Democratic Party donors claimed that Acker, who met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in January, would “put Israel first.” Acker’s home was vandalized in 2024 by pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whose homes were later raided by federal authorities.

Days before the convention, The Guardian reported that Acker had allegedly made “lewd” comments about a Democratic strategist in a private group chat. A lawyer for Acker said he had “doubts about the authenticity” of the evidence.

Makled is an ally of Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan rising in the polls. El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants and a critic of Israel, faced backlash for appearing alongside streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric. In an interview with CNN aired Sunday, El-Sayed said that the Israeli government is “evil” like Hamas. “Killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil,” El-Sayed said. “It’s not how evil is this one versus that one — Hamas: Evil, Israeli government: Evil. We can say both.”

Appearing at the El-Sayed campaign rally with Piker earlier this month, Makled told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he stood by his defense of the pro-Palestinian encampment while condemning the attack on Acker’s home.

At the Democratic convention on Sunday, Stevens, who is perceived as the preferred candidate of pro-Israel voters, was booed by delegates.

JTA contributed to this report.

The post University of Michigan regents race turns into Israel litmus test for Democrats appeared first on The Forward.

The sexual depravity that Hamas proudly broadcast to the world during its Oct. 7, 2023, rampage across southern Israel has now show up in Gaza, with video testimonies emerging of pervasive abuse, coercion for food, and an increase in both child marriages and child pregnancies.

In a new bombshell report, the Daily Mail presented findings from both the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) into rising child marriages and an anonymous journalist at Jusoor News who filmed Gaza residents reporting on the exploitation of women.

According to the UNFPA, while pre-war numbers of child brides fell to 11 percent in 2022, a decrease from 26 percent in 2009, marriage records from 2025 showed that at least 400 girls between 14 and 16 had become wives. This number likely only counts a fraction of the total as many such religious ceremonies to theologically justify child abuse go unreported.

Nestor Owomuhangi, whose official title is “UNFPA Representative to Palestine,” explained that war and collapsing humanitarian conditions had exacerbated this regression.

“We are witnessing the dismantling of a generation’s future,” Owomuhangi said.

Multiple men told Jusoor News they had seen or heard of Hamas members abusing women, with one reporting that a Hamas charity organization had blackmailed his neighbor and sought to become her pimp. “They wanted her to whore herself in exchange for a food parcel, or an aid voucher, or 100 shekels,” he said.

Exchange rates on Monday placed 100 shekels as equal to $33.48.

A fighter in Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, confirmed the sex crimes, saying that Hamas members took advantage of the “wives of martyrs” in a tent in the Gharabli area in Deir al-Balah. He was told to say nothing but chose to tear down the tent, declaring, “We told them it was an insult to our honor and dignity.”

Another anonymous man in Gaza said “we were contacted by the wife of a friend. She had asked a Qassam Brigades commander to help her, but he took advantage of her. His behavior is disgraceful. We investigated the matter and found her in a tent in the Gharabli area where a bunch of Qassam members were taking advantage of her.”

He also reported that “we informed the leadership, but we were told we had to keep silent about it.”

An unnamed woman said she had experienced sexual harassment from a man at a Hamas charity who appeared religious when she sought help. “I asked him how he could talk to me like that. And he should be ashamed,” she said. “I told him I would expose him. He said, ‘You cannot expose me; I am the government here.’”

One anonymous elderly woman said that “one charity in Gaza is unfortunately the biggest perpetrator. From its chairman all the way down to its doorman, it’s being done by all their employees and members, as though it’s an organization set up for sexual harassment, psychological abuse, and harassing young women.”

Reports of rising sexual abuse against girls and widows come as Hamas continues to resist pressure to disarm in accordance with the US-backed ceasefire and peace plan for Gaza.

On Sunday, the New York Times reported that two Hamas officials had said the Palestinian terrorist group planned to surrender thousands of automatic rifles and small weapons which belonged to Gaza police and other internal security organizations. However, this would not entail full disarmament, which according to the peace plan is a key prerequisite for beginning major reconstruction of Gaza and for Israel, whose military currently controls 53 percent of the enclave, to further withdraw its force.

According to several reports, Hamas recently rejected the Board of Peace’s eight-month phased plan for the terrorist group to disarm. US President Donald Trump proposed the Board of Peace in September to oversee his plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, subsequently saying it would address other conflicts.

Meanwhile, Hamas is further tightening its grip on the nearly half of Gazan territory it still controls, where the vast majority of the population lives.

Since the initial ceasefire took effect in October, Hamas has imposed a brutal crackdown, sparking clashes with rival militias as it seeks to eliminate any opposition.

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC) — an Israel-based research institute — released a report last month explaining how the US-Israeli war against the Islamic regime in Iran had disrupted the second phase of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, which required Hamas to disarm in order for Israeli troops to withdraw.

Earlier this month, Hamas demanded that the Israel Defense Forces exit first before giving up weapons.

ITIC’s analysts warned that this delay could enable Hamas — which still controls approximately 47 percent of Gaza — to rearm. The Islamist terrorists are reportedly smuggling in guns from Egypt and creating weapons internally.

In late March, Turkey reaffirmed its longstanding support for Hamas when the terrorist group’s senior negotiator Khalil Al-Khaya and its political bureau delegation met with Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalın. Kalın had also met with senior Hamas leaders in Istanbul the previous week.

According to the Middle East Monitor, the Hamas delegation “expressed its appreciation to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Turkey’s efforts to achieve peace in Gaza.”