IRAN

• Iran launches attacks on U.S. bases in Kuwait and UAE: Iran’s army said it launched missile and drone attacks early Thursday targeting U.S. military facilities in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, including the Ahmed Al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait and Al-Minhad Air Base in the UAE, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported.

  • Kuwait was defending itself from Iranian attacks, the Kuwaiti army announcedon X, adding that any explosions heard were a result of their air defenses responding to “hostile” missile and drone attacks.

• Latest wave of U.S. strikes on Iran kill 18, injure 142: The U.S strikes on Iran on Tuesday and Wednesday killed at least 18 Iranians and injured 142, according to a spokesperson for the Iranian health ministry. The ministry noted that 61 of the wounded were women and 44 were under the age of 18.

  • Six members of Iran’s navy were killed in U.S. strikes on Tuesday, the Tasnim news agency reported on Thursday, without specifying where they were killed.

• Iran seizes ship in the Gulf, arrests crew members: Iranian ⁠border ⁠guards seized a vessel carrying 382,000 liters (101,000 gallons) ⁠of “smuggled fuel” in the northern ⁠Gulf, Iranian state media reported on Tuesday, adding that the guards also arrested 11 of the ship’s crew members.

• Trump says Iran bombing won’t last “too long,” suggests naming Strait of Hormuz after himself: U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that the renewed U.S. bombing campaign against Iran would not continue for “too long,” but said the U.S. was “prepared to do another” attack at “any time we want.”

  • In the same remarks, he claimed again that the U.S. was in control of the Strait of Hormuz, and that the U.S. is “bringing lots of boats out every day with millions of barrels of oil” through the Strait daily. “We are, for the most part, doing it without trouble. Every once in a while they shoot a drone, and we knock it down,” he added.

  • On Truth Social, Trump suggested he would attempt to change the name of the passageway to “TRUMP STRAIT,” following similar unilateral name changes of the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario.

• Trump aides reportedly pushing to quiet Iran war until November midterms: Trump’s senior aides are pushing to prevent an escalation in the ongoing war in Iran before the November congressional midterm elections, hoping to limit Republican losses, Reuters reported.

  • Sources told the outlet that White House officials may consider ramping up military action after the elections, though officials do not presently think there is a risk of a return to full-scale war.

  • The war is unpopular with voters, with 63% of Americans disapproving of the conflict and only 31% approving, according to a late August Reuters/Ipsos poll.

  • Trump responded to these and similar reports on Wednesday, claiming he was “not affected by the election” because he himself was not running.

• Iranian rial hits record low: The Iranian currency dropped to a record low of more than 2.2 million rials to one U.S. dollar on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

• Netanyahu says Israel’s mission in Iran “not yet finished”: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country’s mission in Iran was “not yet finished” in remarks to i24News on Wednesday, saying that “all of our systems” remained committed to “bringing down” the Iranian government.

  • President Donald Trump told the Israeli news outlet Kan on Wednesday that Israel does not need to worry about a resumption of the war with Iran, claiming that he would “take care of it.”

• Rubio warns other countries not to aid Iran, threatens sanctions: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that any country helping Iran create “mechanisms” to generate funds would also face American sanctions.

  • He added, in remarks to reporters, that “nothing that anyone is providing Iran is in any way impeding our ability to act as necessary to protect the United States.”

  • Rubio also said that the Strait of Hormuz would “remain open” and that the U.S would “continue to target” entities in the state that pose a threat to its interests.

• Iran criticises UNICEF over lack of response to deaths of Iranian children: At a UNICEF board meeting in New York on Wednesday, Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s representative to the United Nations, criticized the children’s rights agency for what Tehran described as its failure to condemn attacks by the United States and Israel that have killed Iranian children.

  • UNICEF has previously expressed concern over child casualties in Iran and called on all parties to comply with international humanitarian law, but has generally not attributed individual attacks to the U.S. or Israel.

• Six vessels transited Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday: Just six ships transited the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, down from 11 on Tuesday, according to the latest data from Kpler, reported on by Reuters.

  • The vessels included two very large gas carriers, two long-range tankers, one Supramax tanker and one Panamax tanker, according to the firm.

  • The number may be updated, with ships that switch off their transponders possibly being added to the tally.

Palestine 

• Israeli forces kill two Palestinians, including child, in northern Gaza: Two Palestinians, including a child, were killed and several others wounded by Israeli forces gunfire in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, on Thursday, WAFA reported.

  • On Wednesday, an Israeli strike on a tent in Al-Mawasi, southern Gaza, wounded five, with one man later dying from wounds sustained in the attack.

• Israel kills two Palestinian teenagers in the occupied West Bank: Israeli gunfire killed Khalil Abu Alia, 16, and Omar Mohammed Naasan, 19, as soldiers and settlers raided al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday. Khalil’s uncle, Mohammed Hussein Abu Aliya, spoke to Drop Site contributor Mutasem Sqf ElHait as the attack continued. He described homes raided, sheep taken and residents abused: “Children, women, young men, even people passing by on the road. No one was spared.”

  • Israel’s military said it fired at “key instigators with the aim of removing the threat” and accused Palestinians of throwing rocks when soldiers took livestock it claimed belonged to Israelis. “Hits were observed,” its statement said.

  • “The machinery of beatings, destruction, snipers, and terror is operating 24 hours a day,” Abu Aliya said. “Our children are dear and precious to us. They love life. They love a dignified life.”

  • Watch the dispatch by Mutasem Sqf ElHait here.

• Israel establishes three new settlements in a week as demolitions, arrests continue across occupied West Bank:

  • Tubas: Palestinian authorities received the body of Jadallah Jihad Juma Jadallah, a boy from Far’a refugee camp, after Israeli authorities had withheld his body since his killing on November 16, 2025, WAFA reported. Israel continues to withhold 799 documented Palestinian bodies, including those of 80 children.

  • Hebron: Israeli forces detained a Palestinian man from Susya in Masafer Yatta on Thursday, as settlers released livestock onto Palestinian land and around homes. On Wednesday, Israeli forces demolished 38 residential, agricultural, and service structures in al-Tabban, Masafer Yatta, displacing eight Palestinian families comprising 58 people, including 26 children and 30 women.

  • Bethlehem/Hebron: Israeli authorities established a new settlement in the Gush Etzion bloc on Wednesday, the third new settlement within a week. The settlement was established on an axis connecting the bloc’s western and eastern sections, with its regional council saying it was intended to create territorial continuity between them. Two other settlements were established on Monday: Makida/Doran, northwest of Hebron, and Noa, southeast of Jenin.

  • Jenin/Tubas/Tulkarm: The Israeli military announced a “military exercise” in the cities of Jenin, Tubas, and Tulkarm “starting from the morning hours until noon.”

  • East Jerusalem: Israeli forces detained several employees of the Hizma municipality, northeast of occupied East Jerusalem, during a raid on the town on Thursday and seized a municipal vehicle, according to the Jerusalem Governorate.

• Israel’s Katz: Removing Palestinians from Gaza remains the “only solution”:Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel remains prepared to forcibly remove Palestinians from Gaza “by sea, by air, by every way possible,” describing the ethnic cleansing of the Strip as the “only solution.” Katz said Trump has not canceled the plan but “froze it” after pressure from Arab governments, while countries willing to receive Palestinians want U.S. backing. He added Israel expects a future “green light” to advance militarily and territorially if Hamas is deemed to have violated its commitments.

  • One of Trump’s two main Gaza advisers, Jared Kushner, made a similar threat after meeting Netanyahu last month, saying that if Hamas failed to decommission its weapons, the U.S. would back Israel resuming the war to “finish the job.”

• EU foreign ministers split over Israel trade sanctions amid West Bank settler violence: Ireland and Spain, backed by Belgium and the Netherlands, pushed EU foreign ministers to back trade restrictions on goods from illegal Israeli settlements at an informal Gymnich meeting hosted by Ireland in Wicklow on Tuesday and Wednesday, Al Jazeera reported. Germany, Austria, Czechia, and Hungary opposed the move, warning it would damage the body’s diplomatic ties with Israel.

  • Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee said the bloc should act “collectively” on international law, but the body’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas did not address sanctions at the post-meeting press conference.

  • It remains unclear whether such restrictions would need unanimous approval or a simple majority.

Yemen 

• Yemen’s Saudi-backed forces say Ansarallah fired 14 missiles as heavy fighting erupts in Taiz: The Saudi-backed government said Ansarallah forces fired 14 ballistic missiles and launched drones at populated areas in Taiz and Hodeidah governorates, as heavy fighting continued on the Al-Kadaha front southwest of Taiz city.

  • The military’s media center claimed air defences shot down several drones over Taiz and the western coast, while government forces “neutralised sources of threats and hostile fire” in the Al-Kadaha sector.

  • The media center also released footage purporting to show government strikes on Ansarallah fighters and positions in Marib and Al Bayda governorates, without specifying when the attacks took place.

Lebanon 

• Israeli forces carry out large explosions across southern Lebanon despite “ceasefire”: Israeli forces carried out a series of large explosions in several towns in southern Lebanon on Thursday, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.

  • A massive explosion in Kfar Tebnit, Nabatieh, sent thick clouds of smoke into the air and was heard across large parts of southern Lebanon.

  • In the Marjayoun district, Israeli forces carried out three explosions in Bani Hayyan, as well as explosions in Qantara.

  • Forces also conducted detonations in the towns of Haddatha and Baraachit in the Bint Jbeil district.

• Israel agrees to release five Lebanese detainees as forces detain three others in southern Lebanon: Israel agreed to release five Lebanese detainees as part of negotiations with Lebanon, in return for Beirut’s assistance in efforts to locate and return the remains of figures from Lebanon’s Jewish community, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Thursday, according to The Times of Israel. The office acknowledged the five were civilians and that there was “no reason to continue holding them in Israel.”

  • The International Committee of the Red Cross completed the first handover, with the Lebanese army receiving Malek Ghazi at the Naqoura crossing, Lebanon’s NNA reported.

  • Separately, Israeli forces raided Halta in Hasbaya District on Thursday morning, surrounded several homes and prevented residents from leaving before detaining three men and withdrawing, according to NNA.

• Save the Children: Israel killing average of seven children daily in Lebanon since March: Israel has killed an average of seven children per day in Lebanon since March despite agreements aimed at ending the fighting, Save the Children said Wednesday.

  • The report noted the risk fighting has posed to education in the country, with 340 schools damaged or destroyed, according to the latest survey by the Lebanese Ministry of Education.

  • Israel has killed at least 4,300 people in the country, including 257 children, wounded over 12,000, and destroyed 60 to 70 villages over the past six months. More than 348,800 people remain displaced in the country despite a June ceasefire, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

U.S. News 

• Trump administration backs OpenAI in copyright fight against New York Times: In the legal fight between OpenAI and The New York Times, the Justice Department filed court papers Tuesday supporting the artificial intelligence firm’s argument that training its AI models on internet content, including news articles, is protected under copyright law’s “fair use” doctrine.

  • The department wrote that “the creative possibilities and public benefits” of training large language models on such content “far outweigh any competitive harm.”

  • The Times, which sued OpenAI in 2023, has alleged the company effectively stole billions of dollars’ worth of its journalism. It criticized the administration’s position in a statement Tuesday, accusing the DOJ of “siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of the countless American creators whose work they stole.”

• Federal judge blocks Trump’s latest birthright citizenship order: U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday barring enforcement of President Donald Trump’s latest executive order on birthright citizenship, saying the order defies the Supreme Court’s June ruling striking down a previous attempt to end birthright citizenship entirely.

  • The order seeks to deny citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to parents who entered through a “commercial transaction” or are classified as “alien enemies.”

• House rejects GOP amendment to lock Supreme Court at nine seats: The House voted down 212-206 a proposed constitutional amendment offered by Rep. Andy Biggs to permanently fix the number of Supreme Court justices at nine.

  • The measure was part of a broader series of GOP messaging votes during the Congress’s new session, which included a resolution denouncing socialism, which passed on Tuesday.

  • Support for expanding the court has grown within the Democratic mainstream in recent years, with Rep. Jim Clyburn recently endorsing 13 seats and former Vice President Kamala Harris voicing support for expansion this summer, following the conservative majority’s rulings on abortion, voting rights, and presidential immunity.

• NYC schools ban AI tools, cap screen time for elementary, middle schoolers: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuelsannounced a policy banning generative AI tools for preschool through 8th grade students and prohibiting companion chatbots for all grades. The change will apply to roughly 600,000 public school students starting September 10.

  • The policy also caps screen time on personal devices, recommending 30 minutes daily for grades 3-5 and 45 minutes for grades 6-8.

  • “The tech industry wants us to believe that AI-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary. We do not see it that way,” Mamdani said.

  • There are more than 80 active campaigns in 24 states to amend policies related to screen use and classroom devices.

• ICE preparing $5 million contract to build national voter database: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to award a contract worth up to $5 million to a company that will build a national database of voter registration and voting history files, Wired reported.

  • A federal document published last week notes that the contractor will need to obtain data from all 50 states on its population’s voting history for every federal election—including general, primary, runoff, and special elections—and voter registration information, which experts believe will impinge upon U.S. voters’ right to privacy.

  • The effort is part of a broader push by DHS and the Trump administration to scrutinize voter rolls ahead of the midterms, including a $125 million contract with Thomson Reuters for access to its CLEAR database, ICE’s acquisition of voter rolls from counties in Texas and North Carolina, and a new surge in election fraud investigations led by DHS, despite minimal evidence of noncitizen voting.

• Whistleblower says ICE skipped background checks in rush to hire recruits: A former ICE unit chief who oversaw vetting for more than 100 employees filed a whistleblower complaint alleging the agency fast-tracked “improperly vetted” recruits during a 2025 hiring surge, skipping fingerprint, identity, and credit checks before extending job offers, according to The New York Times.

  • After filing his complaint, the whistleblower was interrogated for four hours by agency lawyers, had his laptop seized, and was placed on leave for 10 months over unspecified “serious misconduct” allegations before being reinstated without findings of wrongdoing and retiring in July.

• Pentagon pulls classified war planning documents after report on generals’ Iran war concerns: The Pentagon removed decades of classified documents associated with the Secretary of Defense Orders Book from an internal SIPRNet web portal after The Washington Post reported that senior military officers had raised objections to prolonged operations against Iran.

  • Several generals had “non-concurred” with extending large-scale operations against Iran, according to the Post, warning it was unsustainable and risked weakening the military’s ability to confront threats elsewhere.

  • A former defense official said restricting access to the document, which details ship, unit, and weapons availability, may complicate time-sensitive logistical decisions for the military, whose commanders rely on the document, and fewer of whom will now have direct access to it.

• Widow of U.S. airman killed in Iran war claims she was denied benefits: The widow of a U.S. Air Force major who died during U.S. military operations against Iran said she has not received some of the benefits she is entitled to because of his death, according to Military.com. Air Force Major John “Alex” Klinner was killed when his aircraft crashed in March in an unspecified incident while he was in “friendly” airspace in Iraq. Kinner’s widow, Libby Klinner, posted on Instagram last weekend: “The Air Force recently told me that because we haven’t officially declared war, my kids and I aren’t eligible for some benefits,” she wrote. “So, not only was my husband killed in a war he never wanted to participate in, but now the benefits we’re left with are being dictated by semantics and public perception.”

Have a tip on Capitol Hill? Email DC Correspondent Julian Andreone at [email protected]

Other International News 

• Maduro asks U.S. judge to dismiss drug trafficking charges, citing head-of-state immunity: Nicolas Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, filed a motion Wednesday in Manhattan federal court arguing that the U.S. court lacks jurisdiction to try the ousted Venezuelan president on drug trafficking charges because heads of state have “absolute immunity from criminal jurisdiction.”

  • Maduro, abducted during a U.S. military raid in Caracas in January and held in a Brooklyn federal jail, has pleaded not guilty and faces a June 2027 trial if the dismissal effort fails.

  • Pollack argued that while Washington has disputed Maduro’s legitimacy since 2019, “the Executive Branch does not dispute that Mr. Maduro was Venezuela’s head of state” and called it “incongruous” for the U.S. to recognize his successor, Delcy Rodriguez, who was appointed by Maduro, without recognizing Maduro himself.

• Malta jury acquits businessman of masterminding 2017 murder of journalist:A Maltese court acquitted businessman Yorgen Fenech of complicity in the 2017 murder of anticorruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia on Tuesday. Caruana, who was called a “one-woman WikiLeaks” for exposing high-level corruption in the island country, was killed in a car bombing in 2017. Her death triggered the eventual resignation of former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat in 2020, though Muscat was never personally linked to the murder.

• Australia, U.S. to expand defense ties: Australia and the United States announced plans on Wednesday to boost their defense ties following a meeting between Defense Minister Richard Marles and U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth in Washington. Marles told reporters that “American force posture in Australia is growing” across every domain.

  • The cooperation builds on the existing U.S.–Australia Force Posture Initiatives, which allow U.S. forces to train and store equipment in Australia. It also features the AUKUS submarine pact, under which four U.S.-commanded Virginia-class submarines will be based at the HMAS Stirling naval base starting in 2027, a pact China has called dangerous and warned could spur a regional arms race.

• China conducts seabed survey east of Taiwan, third coast guard patrol since June: China’s Ministry of Natural Resources surveyed waters east of Taiwan in August, with the survey purportedly aimed at understanding the area’s seabed geology as part of creating a territorial planning map, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Thursday.

  • Separately, China’s coast guard conducted its third routine patrol east of Taiwan since June on Thursday. The Taiwanese coast guard condemned what it called China’s attempt to “harass” Taiwan while “maliciously engaging in political manipulation.”

• UN report finds foreign networks fueling Sudan’s drone warfare: A UN fact-finding mission reported Thursday that foreign weapons, fighters, and logistical networks are sustaining Sudan’s war and expanding both sides’ drone capabilities, with more than 1,000 people killed in drone strikes in the first five months of 2026 alone.

  • Investigators found grounds to believe a network involving the UAE, Chad, Libya, and Somalia supplied the Rapid Support Forces with weapons, training, and personnel, including up to 2,000 Colombian contractors who helped operate advanced drone systems. Some of these Colombian contractors were present during the RSF’s October 2025 capture of El Fasher in Darfur, where the mission has previously said mass killings bore hallmarks of genocide.

  • The report also found foreign-supplied combat drones had expanded the Sudanese military’s long-range strike capabilities.

• U.S. to use OAS to isolate Nicaragua over constitutional changes: Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that the U.S. will use the Organization of American States to isolate Nicaragua’s government, accusing President Daniel Ortega and co-President Rosario Murillo of waging a “war on democracy” that “threatens our hemisphere’s stability and prosperity.”

  • The move follows Nicaraguan lawmakers’ passage Tuesday of constitutional reforms that largely bar opposition parties from elections and extend the presidential term from six to seven years, drawing on a package Ortega’s government submitted in July aimed at excluding “traitors” and “coup-plotting” opposition members from the government.

• U.S. officials, business leaders discuss Venezuela following oil deal: U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Wednesday it was “unlikely that we would put Venezuelan crude into our Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” saying the U.S. would swap Venezuelan oil for American crude after increasing its production following the deal announced late last week to resume production at several of the country’s oil fields.

  • Wright also noted that China will have no claim to Venezuela’s oil production or revenue, despite the country’s debts.

  • Chevron CEO Mike Wirth separately told the outlet that the firm plans to invest $7 billion across three Venezuelan joint ventures over five years, aiming to lift their oil production from over 250,000 barrels a day today to over 600,000 by 2031.

  • Separately, President Trump told a reporter in the Oval Office that Venezuela was “not ready” for proper elections.

• Honduran court drops charges against former President: A Honduran court has dropped fraud and money-laundering charges against former President Juan Orlando Hernández, nine months after Trump pardoned the convicted drug trafficker, who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison.

  • Prosecutors had accused Hernández and other officials of diverting nearly $11 million in state funds to political campaigns, including his 2013 presidential run.

  • Trump announced Hernández’s pardon two days before Honduras’s November election and threatened to cut U.S. funding if Nasry Asfura, the candidate of Hernández’s right-wing National Party, did not win. Asfura is now president.

• Norway seizes Russian ship in support of Ukrainian energy firm: Norwegian authorities seized the Russian vessel Professor Molchanov in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard after a court approved a request by the Ukrainian energy firm Naftogaz to impound and sell the ship as compensation owed for assets Russia expropriated following its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

  • A Hague tribunal ordered Russia in 2023 to pay Naftogaz $4.2 billion plus interest and legal costs. Russia has refused to comply and demanded the vessel’s immediate release, saying it will challenge the seizure through Norwegian courts.

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