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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has been on a strategic tour to prepare for two dramatically different paths that could unfold in the coming days: a return to diplomacy or a resumption of the war with the U.S. and Israel. While President Donald Trump has claimed that the Iranian government is in a state of internal chaos and his administration is waiting for Iran to capitulate, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Tehran is establishing the conditions under which a new round of direct talks could take place.

“We’re currently moving forward with our own design, and we feel continuing negotiations doesn’t make sense until the U.S. government lifts the maritime blockade,” said the official who has direct knowledge of internal diplomatic deliberations in Iran. He requested anonymity because he is not authorized to publicly discuss the negotiations. “The scope of the conflict has expanded, and naturally the issue is no longer purely nuclear.”

Tehran, the Iranian official said, remains firm in its demand that the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz be lifted as a condition to move forward. If that happens, a formal second round of top level direct talks can happen.

“Araghchi is Iran’s top diplomat. So even if there’s a 1% chance for a breakthrough, he would embark on it,” said Hassan Ahmadian, a prominent Iranian analyst and associate professor at the University of Tehran. He told Drop Site that Iran has crafted a multi-phase outline for ending the war: A real ceasefire must be imposed on Israel in the region, specifically Lebanon, and a settlement must be reached in the Strait of Hormuz “without harming Iran’s national security and also regional security.” Once these conditions are met, comprehensive negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program and a long-term non-aggression agreement could commence.

“The Iranians are saying time is working in our favor for the three Ms: munitions, markets, and the midterms. These three Ms help Iran in its position and weaken U.S. positions,” Ahmadian said. “Obviously in the U.S., they want something to say, ‘We squeezed Iran and we got this.’ My perception is that the Iranians are keen to deny the United States that—they wouldn’t give what Trump wants as a victory.”

While White House officials claim Iran presented the U.S. with a “new” proposal over the weekend and pushed this narrative through their preferred media outlets, the Iranian official said the characterization was false. Trump claimed Iran softened its stance over the weekend, but not enough for a deal. Ahmadian said there has been a recent Iranian shift, but it is toward a clearer set of conditions for resuming negotiations, not acceding to American demands on its nuclear program. “There are changes, as I understand,” he said. “The main change is for Iran to insist on the stop of the war regionally. That’s pivotal in Iran agreeing to discuss other issues.”

As a practical matter, Tehran is facing an unprecedented challenge in dealing with Trump. Twice in one year, Israel and the U.S. have bombed Iran in the middle of negotiations. Trump is erratic and frequently contradicts himself—vascillating between expressing optimism for a deal and claiming Iran has surrendered to sweeping U.S. demands only to turn around and threaten to destroy Iranian civilization and to carpet bomb its civilian infrastructure. Iran also believes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been given unprecedented influence over U.S. intelligence estimates and White House decision-making.

“Our country has had negotiations with the Americans at various levels over the past 30 years— formal and informal, public and back-channel,” the senior Iranian official said, referencing previous U.S.-Iran negotiations that involved months—at times years—of diplomacy and technical talks. “It’s as if they are showing up to a football match with rugby rules.”

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Iran has total disdain for Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and views him as both oblivious of diplomatic processes and totally ignorant of technical issues. Kushner is viewed by Iran as Israel’s man at the table. Iran, the senior official said, does not see any reason to deal with these two without a figure like Vice President JD Vance present.

Last week, the Iranian government announced that Araghchi would be visiting Islamabad for bilateral talks with Pakistani leaders. This set off a flurry of media speculation that a new round of negotiations would happen. Trump announced that Vance was en route to Islamabad and once again characterized Iran as pleading for new negotiations. But Vance, it turned out, was not on a plane, and Iran continued to deny it had any intention of meeting with U.S. officials in Pakistan.

Trump then said he was dispatching Witkoff and Kushner, and the media was flooded with stories about a meeting with Iran. Some news outlets, citing White House sources, claimed that planes were en route to the meetings, and the White House suggested Iran was lying about the forthcoming talks. “The Iranians want to talk, they want to talk in person,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on Friday. “Steve and Jared will be heading to Pakistan tomorrow to hear the Iranians out.”

Iran continued to reject suggestions that any talks would happen. “No meeting is planned to take place between Iran and the U.S.,” Iran’s Foreign Minister spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said soon after Araghchi arrived in Pakistan. Iran, he said, discussed a range of issues, including trade. On Sunday, Islamabad announced it was expanding the transportation of third-country goods through Pakistan destined for Iran. While the transit routes had been under discussion since 2008, the timing—with Trump claiming his naval blockade was “strangling” Iran—was impossible to ignore.

After Araghchi left Islamabad on Saturday and flew to Oman, Trump scrambled to spin the narrative and control the damage, claiming he had actually called off the planned negotiations. “Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership.’ Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”

Trump then claimed that as a result of his refusal to send his emissaries, Iran had softened its stance, submitting a new proposal to the U.S. “They gave us a paper that should have been better. And interestingly, immediately, when I canceled it, within 10 minutes, we got a new paper that was much better,” Trump said.

Trump continues to claim that he extended the initial two-week ceasefire agreed on April 7 because Iran’s leadership was in a state of disarray and infighting. This narrative has been widely parrotted in Western media. “That’s part of the cognitive warfare on Iran,” said Ahmadian. “It’s targeted at the society, the elites, and the position of the Supreme Leader. It’s not news, it’s not intel that they’re talking about. It’s basically an agenda to create what they are calling division. And I think the main aim within Iran is to increase mistrust and decrease trust among elites, which I think the Iranians are now very well aware of.”

Ahmadian said that Iran’s perception is that it is the U.S. leadership that is in deep disarray, as evidenced by Trump’s flip-flops, unrealized threats and the recent chaos over which officials would be heading to Islamabad to negotiate with Iran. During the first round of direct talks held in Islamabad on April 11, the Iranian team arrived with “a clear message coming out of Tehran, with a team that represents all of the system, and it came with a very strong case for showing the unity within the country,” Ahmadian said. He added that the Iranian side left the talks with the impression that there were stark differences between Vance on the one hand and Witkoff and Kushner on the other. “The Iranians see Witkoff and Kushner as representatives of the Israeli interests, not those of the United States, as opposed to Mr. Vance, who is representing the U.S. interests in those talks,” he said. “They were divided in their way of approaching the Iranians.”

“I Don’t Take That as a Bluff”

Abbas Araghchi’s three nation tour, the senior Iranian official told Drop Site, is aimed in part at laying out Tehran’s position in clear terms to mediators and key strategic players who could play a role in any future deal. Oman has decades of experience serving as the mediator on nuclear issues between the U.S. and Iran, but Muscat was blindsided by the surprise attack on Iran a day after its foreign minister visited Washington and was led to believe an agreement was within reach. Given Oman’s vast experience and technical knowledge, Iran is eager to see Muscat reenter the diplomatic process. Araghchi also discussed the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, as Oman and Iran are the only two littoral states in the strategic waterway. “Our focus included ways to ensure safe transit that is to the benefit of all dear neighbors and the world,” Araghchi wrote on X.

During his talks with Pakistani officials, Araghchi offered a comprehensive overview of Iran’s position on a range of issues, including nuclear enrichment and the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz. The senior Iranian official said it did not constitute a new proposal, but rather a reiteration and extrapolation on the terms laid out by Iran since February. “We explained our technical positions to the Pakistani side. Regarding the nuclear issue, solutions that we had previously proposed were raised again so that we could reach a shared understanding with them,” the official said. “Our remarks were not directed at the Americans given that these are bilateral discussions. We believe that the intermediaries themselves should also be technically briefed on the proposals.”

While some Iranian officials have expressed frustration with Pakistan’s role and a perception that it has shown an inability to manage Trump, Ahmadian said Tehran will not publicly criticize Islamabad. “They don’t want these talks to burden their relationship with Pakistan with any negative outcomes,” he said.

Ahead of a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, Araghchi held the U.S. responsible for the stalled progress in negotiations. “The Americans’ approaches caused the previous round of talks, despite the progress that had been made, not to reach its objective,” he said, decrying “the excessive demands they made and the incorrect approaches they adopted.”

Araghchi’s meetings in Russia—a key strategic and military ally—also serve a dual purpose. If war resumes or if it stretches into a prolonged unresolved state with no comprehensive agreement, Iran will need to craft an alternative path to rebuild the country, stabilize its economy and prepare for future U.S.-Israeli military attacks. Support from Moscow would be crucial to all of these efforts, especially military and intelligence cooperation.

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During his meeting with Araghchi Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised “how courageously and heroically the people of Iran are fighting for their independence and sovereignty,” and pledged that Moscow would offer its assistance to Iran in efforts to bring the war to an end. “Russia, just like Iran, intends to continue our strategic relationship.”

Russia played a key role in the 2015 nuclear deal and could emerge as an important guarantor of Tehran’s interests in any agreement reached with the U.S. Following the 2015 agreement, Iran shipped more than 25,000 pounds—roughly 98 percent of its enriched uranium—to Russia. At the time, Iran was believed to possess only a small quantity of highly enriched uranium, and nearly all of that stockpile was sent to Moscow along with the less enriched material. After Trump unilaterally canceled the landmark agreement, Iran increased its enrichment activity and is, at present, believed to have roughly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium. Trump falsely claimed recently that Iran had agreed to allow the U.S. to send troops into Iran to take custody of the uranium, which Trump refers to as “nuclear dust.”

Iran has said it will not transfer its enriched uranium outside of the country. Instead, it has said it would agree to dilute its enriched uranium under international supervision. Whether this stance would change if Russia was brought into the process remains a wild card.

“Russia, and to my understanding, China, are the main parties that the Iranians might think of,” said Ahmadian. “A partner that is trusted more than the United States that can play a mediating role and then can be the destination if there is an agreement for the highly enriched uranium. These are things that I think are part of any negotiations with China and Russia.”

Iran has given no public indication it would alter its position opposing a transfer of its enriched uranium, but has also maintained it is willing to resolve the issue as part of a comprehensive settlement with the U.S. “These issues, on the ground, have clear and practical solutions, and we have always examined them in meaningful negotiations,” said the Iranian official. “Any serious negotiation on the American side must involve a large team, including experts and multiple government departments, so that they can properly understand and process a meaningful agreement that covers the various cross sectoral dimensions on their side.”

At present, Iran still believes it is likely that the U.S. and Israel will resume the war. “Our assessment is that we do not see [Trump] as capable of shaping the agreement,” the Iranian official said. “Our take is that they’ve basically decided to keep the war going until there’s a regime change,” which the official predicted will continue to fail.

Tehran has indicated it has prepared new forms of retaliatory strikes and other actions, including in the Strait of Hormuz. On April 22, Iran’s Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, published maps of undersea cable infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, raising concerns it was suggesting Iran could cut the cables, causing widespread internet outages and disrupting commerce, further harming the global economy. Iranian military commanders have said that while the U.S. has moved more military assets into the region during the ceasefire, Tehran has also taken this period to prepare its own weapons systems for more fighting. Iran has made no secret that it would target U.S. military assets, as well as infrastructure in any Gulf states who aid American attacks in any way.

All of this is unfolding amid an increasingly tense standoff in the Strait of Hormuz marked by nearly daily incidents, including the seizure, interdiction, and forceful redirection of ships. “I think the Iranians will not sit on their hands watching the United States harass and seize their ships. They would rather go for a war,” said Ahmadian. “If there’s no breakthrough in the next week, I think escalation will happen. I expect the United States to increase the pressure on Iran militarily. But the Iranians will go heavier this time,” he added. “Iran is saying that if its infrastructure is targeted, we will target four times what’s hitting Iran. I don’t take that as a bluff. I think they will do that because the more the pain on the other side, the less likelihood of it continuing the targeting of Iran’s infrastructure.”

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The future of U.S.-Iran negotiations remains in doubt after President Donald Trump and Tehran’s leaders staked out opposing positions on the Strait of Hormuz. “Diplomacy is a tool to secure national interests and security,” said Esmail Baghaei, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, in a briefing in Tehran on Wednesday. “Whenever we conclude that the necessary and logical grounds for using this tool to realize national interests and consolidate the achievements of the Iranian nation in thwarting the enemies from reaching their evil goals are prepared, we will act.”

On Tuesday night, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Iran would move forward with a second round of talks in Islamabad only if Trump extended the ceasefire and ended the U.S. naval blockade. “The Pakistani side indicated that they expect Trump to lift the naval blockade of Iran,” the official said. “If that happens, and the ceasefire is extended, a new round of talks will be held on Thursday.”

Soon after, Trump announced on Truth Social that he was indefinitely extending the ceasefire but added that the blockade will remain in place. “Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal,” Trump wrote. “I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”

The Iranian official dismissed Trump’s claims that Iran’s leadership was in disarray, characterizing it as a desperate attempt by Trump to save face after his recent false claims, including that Iran had offered him sweeping concessions, and “agreed to everything,” including handing over its enriched uranium and allowing the U.S. military to enter Iran to seize it. “Our people, together with the Iranians, are going to work together to go get it. And then we’ll take it to the United States,” Trump said April 17. Iran swiftly rejected these claims.

Trump also publicly announced on Monday that JD Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, were on their way to Islamabad and suggested that a deal was almost finalized. “They’re heading over now. They’ll be there tonight,” he told PBS. He added that he was considering personally attending the talks. When Iran ultimately decided not to send a delegation, Trump scrambled to reconcile his messaging and reverted to threatening to destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure. On Tuesday morning, he told CNBC he would not extend the ceasefire only to flip flop hours later in the face of Iranian intransigence.

“[Trump] thought we would go into the negotiations under the current conditions. They did everything they could to get our diplomatic delegation sent, and he didn’t expect things to turn out this way,” said the official, who has direct access to Tehran’s internal deliberations. He requested anonymity because he is not authorized to publicly discuss strategy. He added that Tehran’s position remains unchanged: lifting the blockade is a condition for continuing talks.

That position was publicly reiterated by Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations. “The naval blockade initiated by the United States is a violation of the ceasefire,” said Amir-Saeid Iravani in an impromptu press conference in New York Tuesday. “Tehran will not enter into negotiations with the United States until the naval blockade is lifted.”

An adviser to Mohammed Bagher-Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and Tehran’s lead negotiator in the first round of talks with the U.S. in Islamabad, denounced Trump’s announcement that he was extending the ceasefire, saying it “means nothing.”

“The losing side cannot dictate terms,” said Mahdi Mohammadi, the Ghalibaf adviser, in a post on X. “The continuation of the siege is no different from bombardment and must be met with a military response. Moreover, Trump’s ceasefire extension is certainly a ploy to buy time for a surprise strike. The time for Iran to take the initiative has come.”

The senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Iran continues to prepare for what they see as a likely resumption of U.S.-Israeli attacks on the country and expressed confidence that Iran’s continued control of the Strait of Hormuz and its capacity to conduct strikes in the Persian Gulf and inside Israel would create a crisis for Trump. Iranian officials have said they would not engage in preemptive strikes, but will respond militarily to any attacks.

“In the event of any aggression or action against the Islamic Republic of Iran, [we] will immediately and forcefully strike pre-designated targets,” said Ebrahim Zolfaghari, the spokesperson of Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, Iran’s conventional joint military command, in a statement on Tuesday night. “Our capable and powerful forces have long been at full readiness, with their fingers on the trigger.”

The situation in the Strait of Hormuz will be at the center of any deal that is reached to continue negotiations. Trump continued to post on social media late into Tuesday night. “Iran is collapsing financially! They want the Strait of Hormuz opened immediately- Starving for cash! Losing 500 Million Dollars a day. Military and Police complaining that they are not getting paid. SOS!!!,” he wrote.

On Wednesday morning, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp announced that its naval forces had seized two vessels—saying that they had “endangered maritime security by operating without the necessary permits and tampering with navigation systems.” Iranian naval forces escorted the ships, one of which is Greek owned, to Iran’s coastal waters, warning, “disrupting order and safety in the Strait of Hormuz is considered a red line for Iran.”

The possibility for a comprehensive deal between Iran and the U.S. any time soon appears low. Both Iran and the U.S. are so far continuing to speak with Pakistani officials and those from other mediating nations. But, even if another round of negotiations does take place, the stated red lines of Iran and the U.S. stand in stark contrast.

Trump has made the transfer of Iran’s highly enriched uranium the centerpiece of his “victory” narrative. Iran has said it will not hand over its stockpile and Baghaei called it “as sacred to us as Iranian soil,” saying it “will not be transferred anywhere under any circumstances.” Iran has indicated it would be open to diluting it for civilian use under the monitoring of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran has also demanded an easing of economic sanctions and the unfreezing of tens of billions of dollars of its assets. Trump has said he will not allow the transfer of funds to Iran and frequently denounces President Barack Obama for the unfreezing of Iranian assets as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, calling it “one of the Worst Deals ever made having to do with the Security of our Country.” In that deal, Iran shipped more than 25,000 pounds—roughly 98 percent of its enriched uranium stockpile—out of the country. Iran is currently estimated to have less than 1,000 pounds of enriched uranium.

Rather than a comprehensive deal, the senior Iranian official told Drop Site he believes a more likely scenario would involve the U.S., through Pakistani mediation, “shaping a de facto end to the war without any formal declaration.” This would leave the major issues unresolved and the possibility for a resumption of war still open.

Perhaps the most vital component for any deal from Iran’s perspective is a non-aggression agreement with the U.S. and crafting terms that would ensure war would not resume if Iran offers concessions as part of a deal. Given Trump’s track record, this would be nearly impossible to guarantee.

“Iranians do not trust the Trump administration at all. But what they’re banking on is the fact that they stood against an aggression and forced [the U.S. and Israel] out of this aggression, short of achieving any of their goals that were stated,” said Iranian analyst Hassan Ahmadian, in an interview with Drop Site. “The Iranians moved past the international community as a protector. The UN Security Council did not stop two wars, illegal wars imposed on the country. And so the Iranians learned it the hard way. It’s about power. If you don’t have power, you will be subject to annihilation,” he added. “The Iranians see that they can balance—asymmetrically—the power of the United States and can push it back. They go for a negotiated settlement, because at the end of the day, you have to stop the aggression.”

But, Ahmadian cautioned, “They don’t trust it.”

On Wednesday, Axios—citing anonymous officials—reported that Trump’s ceasefire extension may only last three to five days. In line with the White House spin about what they claim is chaos within Iran’s ruling elite, a U.S. official told Axios that Trump was offering time “to allow the Iranians to get their shit together.” Trump-aligned media has spent the past 48 hours awash in stories claiming that Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei is incapacitated, political leaders have been sidelined, and the IRGC is taking charge of decision-making. The senior Iranian official dismissed these stories as psychological warfare and said Iran continues to run all decisions through its Supreme National Security Council.

Ahmadian said that despite the assassinations of senior leaders and the massive military attacks over the past six weeks, the Iranian government remains a highly structured and organized system of institutions. “Name another system whose top echelon are assassinated and is capable of continuing, and also waging, a retaliatory war effort against two big foes. I don’t see any historical parallel,” he said. “The simplistic view of this institutionalized system is basically wishful thinking.”

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Ahead of a potential new round of negotiations in Islamabad, Iran believes there is a significant chance that President Donald Trump—urged on by Israel—will resume military attacks if a deal is not reached soon, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site. Tehran, the official said, is preparing for a prolonged war during which Iran would cut off all talks with the U.S.

While the official said Iran prefers to make a comprehensive deal with the U.S. that would address nuclear enrichment, offer sanctions relief, and establish a long-term non-aggression framework, Tehran believes the window for an agreement is rapidly closing as a result of maximalist U.S. demands and Trump’s erratic behavior.

“Our assessment is that Trump effectively lacks both a coherent plan and the capacity to secure even a temporary agreement,” the official said. “His decision-making appears to be grounded in Israeli political and security assessments, conveyed to him on a daily basis.”

The senior official has direct access to Tehran’s internal deliberations. He requested anonymity because he is not authorized to publicly discuss strategy.

Despite the intensifying war of words between Trump and Iran, Pakistan has been preparing for another round of talks in Islamabad expected this week. While the Iranian official told Drop Site that Tehran is skeptical of U.S. intentions, he also emphasized that Iran prefers a diplomatic path if an acceptable negotiating framework is mutually agreed upon.

“There hasn’t been any real progress” on the positions of the respective sides, the Iranian official said. “Both sides are just signaling behind the scenes that they’re open to reaching an agreement.”

In a Truth Social post on Sunday morning, Trump claimed that a new round of talks was scheduled, while reiterating a previous threat to commit war crimes against Iranian civilians if a deal was not made. “We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!”

At the time of Trump’s post, Iran had not agreed to a second round of talks and has still not confirmed it will do so. The first meetings were held on April 11 and 12 in Islamabad, where top Iranian officials met a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance. “In the previous round, it was clearly stated to Vance that public threats should not be repeated,” the senior Iranian official said. “We’re not opposed [to another round of talks],” he added, but cautioned: “Given what Trump has publicly stated, the negotiations definitely need to be meaningful, and their framework should be defined in advance.”

The senior Iranian official told Drop Site that contrary to Trump’s repeated claims that Iran was “begging” for a deal, it was Washington that sought talks with Tehran via intermediaries led by Pakistan. “President Trump himself persistently sought a cessation of hostilities,” he said.

“The Islamabad negotiations provided President Trump with an appropriate opportunity to exit the war,” the official added. “Should [Trump] nevertheless choose to continue the conflict, Iran will, for a prolonged period, suspend diplomatic channels and will seek, within the context of the conflict, to impose significantly greater costs on United States interests.”

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Despite Trump’s repeated claims that a deal will soon be reached, he has continued his whiplash pattern of saying a “new regime” in Tehran is offering concessions and then threatening to bomb additional Iranian infrastructure. While engaging in diplomatic talks with mediators and reviewing new proposals, Iran has also been preparing for the war’s resumption.

“We see that the Americans have been bringing in more troops and equipment to prepare to attack, but the Iranians have also not been resting during these two weeks of ceasefire,” said Mohammed Sani, a political analyst based in Tehran, in an interview with Drop Site. “They have been preparing, repairing the underground missile cities, bringing in new air defenses, missiles and drones. Iran is at a high standard of readiness right now. If there is another round of negotiations sometime later in the future after another round of American attacks against Iran fail, the Iranian conditions for peace will be much tougher.”

The Iranian official said that most of the issues at the center of the Islamabad negotiations are identical to those being discussed in February when the U.S. and Israel launched the war. Iran, he said, has maintained the “same flexibilities” it put on the table in February and suggested that Trump’s war had not moved the needle in any significant way.

He reiterated Iran’s view that Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son in law, had “failed to fully grasp” the significance of Tehran’s offers during negotiations in Geneva in February. The U.S. decision to launch the war, the official believes, was based on technical and political ignorance, an underestimation of Iran’s military capabilities and the fact that Israel had put tremendous pressure on Trump to launch a regime change war aimed at severely damaging the Iranian state. In the aftermath of the Geneva talks, Iran made clear to mediators it does not trust Witkoff and Kushner and refused to agree to the Islamabad negotiations unless the U.S. sent a top official. Trump subsequently dispatched Vance.

Even if another round of talks between Iran and the Trump administration takes place this week, bridging the gaps between the sides may prove insurmountable in a short time frame. Iran has insisted it wants a comprehensive agreement centered on firm commitments that the U.S. and Israel will not attack Iran again, a demand that seems nearly impossible to guarantee.

“It’s always tough between Iran and the U.S., but between Iran and the Trump administration is going to be much more difficult,” said Robert Malley, a former top U.S. Iran negotiator who was an official on the U.S. team that secured the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, in an interview with Drop Site. “There’s no process on the American side. It’s entirely in the hands of one person who is whimsical, unpredictable, impulsive, subject to extraordinary mood swings.”

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Trump seems intent on achieving a “relatively quick deal,” which Malley says, at best, would involve a “pretty broad framework” requiring weeks or months to fully negotiate in a form acceptable to Tehran. “If things are going to get dragged out, in time Trump may lose patience,” Malley said. “If he doesn’t get his dramatic, all at one time, success, it may not be sufficient for him. In which case, I would expect renewed US strikes with increased intensity and even more blatant war crimes.”

The Iranian official said Tehran’s allies, as well as international diplomats involved with mediation efforts, have expressed increased skepticism that a comprehensive deal will be reached. “Some of Tehran’s strategic partners assess that President Trump is likely to continue the war,” he said.

Iran, the official added, is in parallel discussions with friendly nations, including nuclear powers, “aimed at establishing a balance of power with the United States and Israel in order to bring about a lasting end to the conflict.” He declined to name any nations or offer more details.

The mediation on the Pakistani side has been led largely by the country’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, who has engaged in shuttle diplomacy between Islamabad and Tehran during the two-week ceasefire. Following a high-profile summit last week that failed to produce an agreement, the Pakistani military establishment started sharing messages for public consumption aimed at managing expectations about the possibility of a deal being reached and emphasizing the limitations faced by any mediating party in such a negotiation.

Late Saturday night, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf—Iran’s Parliament Speaker and head of the country’s negotiating delegation in Pakistan—told Iranian state TV that during the talks in Islamabad, Iranian officials made clear their “red lines” to Vance and that the U.S. also laid out its bottom line.

“We have achieved some progress in the Islamabad negotiations, but there are still significant gaps and key points that have not yet been resolved,” Ghalibaf asserted, adding that there remain “disagreements on several issues, including nuclear matters and the Strait of Hormuz.”

“Negotiation, by nature, is for reaching understanding, but we have our principles,” Ghalibaf said. “We have no trust in the enemy. Even at this moment, while we are sitting here, the war may start—the armed forces are fully prepared in the field.”

Iran, Ghalibaf said, will not accept a temporary agreement that leaves the door open for a resumption of war, which happened after the “12-Day War” last June. “The Zionist regime and the United States have continuously operated in a cycle of war, ceasefire, and peace,” Ghalibaf said. “This cycle must be broken, and a durable peace must be established with guarantees that war will not happen again.”

A Question of Leverage

On Friday, a potential breakthrough seemed possible after the U.S. forced Israel to formally agree to a short-term ceasefire in Lebanon, a condition of the deal made on April 7 between the U.S. and Iran. Israel initially said it would not agree to a ceasefire. Trump then suggested a 10-day deal that Israel has portrayed as essentially meaningless and Hezbollah has denounced as a ploy. Nonetheless, the move appeared to clear the hurdle. “In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, the passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in a post on X.

Trump initially responded with a brief post on Truth Social thanking Tehran and referring to the waterway as “The Strait of Iran.” Moments later, Trump posted another message, stating that while the Strait was “completely open and ready for business and full passage,” the U.S. would maintain its naval blockade on Iranian ports imposed on April 12.

Iran swiftly shot back, retracting Araghchi’s announcement. “The Islamic Republic of Iran, following previous agreements in negotiations, had in good faith, agreed to the managed passage of a limited number of oil tankers and commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz,” said the Iranian military spokesman, accusing the U.S. of violating the agreement by maintaining its blockade. “Control of the Strait of Hormuz has returned to its previous state, and this strategic Strait is under the strict management and control of the armed forces.”

Sitting in the Oval Office Saturday, Trump nonetheless said that talks with Iran were ongoing. “We have very good conversations going on. It’s working out very well. They got a little bit cute as they have been doing for 47 years and nobody ever took them on. We took them on,” Trump said, claiming that Iran has no navy, air force, or leaders and that there had already been “regime change” in Iran. “They can’t blackmail us,” Trump declared. “It’s going along, actually, very well.”

The two-week ceasefire agreement is scheduled to end Tuesday. Last week, Trump made a series of sweeping claims about Iranian concessions, including that Tehran had agreed to hand over its highly enriched uranium, which he referred to as “nuclear dust,” to the U.S. “We’re going to get it together. We’re ‌going to go in with Iran, at a nice leisurely pace, and go down and start excavating with big machinery,” Trump said. “We’ll bring it back to the United States.” He also claimed that Iran had agreed to an indefinite suspension of its nuclear enrichment activities. “No years, unlimited,” Trump declared.

In response, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said at a briefing, “Iran’s enriched uranium is not ⁠going to be transferred anywhere,” while President Masoud Pezeshkian said, “Trump says Iran cannot make use of its nuclear rights but doesn’t say for what crime. Who is he to deprive a nation of its rights?”

During the recent talks in Islamabad, the U.S. reportedly asked Iran for a 20-year moratorium on nuclear enrichment. Some reports suggested Iran countered with an offer of a five-year suspension, though the Iranian official said Iran’s offer was even shorter in duration. “This proposal was first put forward by our side during the final round of negotiations prior to the outbreak of the war, solely to demonstrate goodwill and the necessary degree of flexibility,” the official said. “The timeframe we proposed was less than five years.” He also said that Iran rejected a transfer of its enriched uranium to the U.S. and said Iran instead had offered to dilute the highly enriched materials.

“Iran has proposed a transparent mechanism to address the stated concerns and pretexts of the United States regarding [Iran’s] nuclear program, centered on peaceful applications and low-level enrichment,” he said. “A voluntary suspension of enrichment was also put forward, given that sufficient uranium stockpiles—following dilution—would remain available for research, medical, and other peaceful nuclear purposes.”

Malley, the former U.S. negotiator, said it will be “extremely difficult” to construct a deal that Iran will trust the U.S. to implement. “A lot of the things that Iran is being asked to do are concrete, tangible, irreversible,” he said, citing U.S. demands that it dilute or hand over its enriched uranium. “And the commitments that, in theory, they would get from the U.S.—which is sanctions relief or the unfreezing of assets—those are spaced in time and highly reversible. We’ve seen it before.”

Iran’s negotiating position could potentially weaken if it agrees to a limited deal or engages in a protracted negotiation with the U.S., particularly if the Strait of Hormuz were fully re-opened as part of an initial settlement.

“From an Iranian perspective, I think it would be very important to extract the maximum tangible economic benefits it can as a condition for ending the war,” Malley added. “Because once it’s ended, it is pretty hard for Iran to say, ‘Now we’re going to resume closing the Strait of Hormuz because we’re not happy with what we got in return.’” Over time, the U.S. will recover from the economic damage it has suffered as a result of the war, Malley argued. “Iran? Not so sure,” he said. “They will confront an almost unmanageable economic crisis and a restive population without the means to address one or satisfy the other.”

Iran was deeply skeptical of accepting a temporary ceasefire agreement with the U.S. Twice in one year, the U.S. and Israel launched massive military attacks against Iran in the middle of supposed negotiations between Iran. Iranian officials and analysts have consistently said they believe that scenario is likely to be repeated. Prior to the April 7 deal, an Iranian official told Drop Site that Tehran believed the U.S. and Israel would use such a period to replenish their defenses, which had been severely depleted by Iran’s ballistic missile and drone attacks. As Drop Site previously reported, Israel was facing a significant shortage of interceptors before the two-week ceasefire was announced. Iran ultimately moved forward with the Islamabad talks, after concluding that it had a stronger negotiating position than at any point since the 2015 nuclear agreement was voided in 2018 by Trump during his first term as president.

Iran inflicted unprecedented damage on U.S. military infrastructure across the Persian Gulf, forcing the evacuation of more than a dozen military bases and other facilities and pounded Israel with ballistic missile and drone strikes, despite daily claims by the U.S. and Israel that its weapons capacity had been all but wiped out. “The Americans had a plan in mind that they would conquer Iran, or overthrow the Islamic Republic within three days of attacks. But ever since that plan failed they have been proceeding without any clear vision at all of what their objectives are,” said Sani, the Iranian analyst. “They are now trying to take something from Iranians in talks that they couldn’t take on the battlefield. Iranians are not fools and are not going to take one step back from our rights, nor are we seeking a deal at any price. No deal is much better than a bad deal from the Iranian perspective. Iran is not going to hand over its ballistic missile and drone programs, or the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.”

While the U.S. has indeed moved more military assets into the region, leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps say they have also used this period to prepare for more fighting. “During the ceasefire, our speed in updating and replenishing missile and drone launch pads is even faster than before the war,” said Majid Mousavi, the IRGC’s Aerospace Force commander, on Sunday. “We know that the enemy is incapable of creating these conditions for themselves, and they are forced to bring ammunition from the other side of the world in a trickle.”

Ghalibaf, the Iranian parliament speaker and lead negotiator, said that Iran had already defeated the U.S. by preventing it from achieving its goals. He warned that Iran would not capitulate to ultimatums. “This nation managed to bring a superpower and the ruthless Zionist regime to a standstill. We held no negotiations until 48 hours before the ceasefire,” he said in his interview on Iranian TV. “Trump is a master of lying and psychological warfare.”

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Hezbollah MP Ibrahim Al-Moussawi told Drop Site, “We will be respecting the ceasefire,” and says the deal is based on the original agreement between the US and Iran that a ceasefire would apply to Lebanon.

Al-Moussawi’s statement that this ceasefire is based on the original Iranian deal reached with the U.S. contradicts claims by Trump and Netanyahu that Lebanon would not be included, and by the U.S. State Department that the Lebanon ceasefire be a wholly separate deal.

"They went back to the same ceasefire agreement that has been reached to in Islamabad by the Iranian initiative,” Al-Moussawi told Drop Site. "We will be respecting the ceasefire and we will deal with it cautiously, actually. And the Israelis have to abide by it completely, comprehensively in all of the Lebanese territories, including the areas bordering Palestine. And it should include total cessation of the hostilities and restraint to the movement of the Israelis to stop their assassinations. And it should hopefully be a beginning of a course of the Israeli withdrawal from our occupied territories."

As President Donald Trump tries to manufacture some form of a Lebanon “ceasefire” acceptable to the U.S.’s rogue ally Israel, a senior Hezbollah politician told Drop Site that any agreement must include a total end to Israeli bombing and a complete withdrawal of occupation forces from Lebanese territory. Ibrahim Al-Moussawi, a member of the Lebanese parliament with the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc, criticized the Lebanese government for agreeing to direct talks with Israel in the midst of the ongoing, massive attacks on Lebanon that have killed more than 2,100 people, including over 170 children, since early March.

“We reject direct negotiations. Of course we don’t accept that the Lebanese go there and surrender to the dictations and to the will and to the hegemony of the American and Israeli warmongers,” said Al-Moussawi in an interview with Drop Site. “None of the conditions of Lebanon has been met, none of the requirements and the goals of Lebanon has been met. This is going to be rejected not only by Hezbollah, but by the majority of the people.”

Trump, for purely short-term strategic reasons, is pushing for a ceasefire announcement—reportedly as soon as tonight. His administration has offered full support for Israel’s ongoing bombing and ground invasion of Lebanon. But the policy has become complicated over the past week as the U.S. and Iran have engaged in backchannel talks with Pakistan about conducting another round of negotiations. Tehran has repeatedly said that failure to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon could derail any potential agreement.

On Wednesday, the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to the U.S. met in Washington, D.C., the highest level, publicly known direct talks between the two governments since 1993. Hours after the meeting ended, Trump claimed on Truth Social that the leaders of Israel and Lebanon would speak by phone on Thursday. “Trying to get a little breathing room between Israel and Lebanon. It has been a long time since the two leaders have spoken, like 34 years. It will happen tomorrow. Nice!,” Trump wrote.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has come under intense criticism from Hezbollah and other factions in Lebanon for authorizing direct talks with Israel while it conducts intense attacks that have forcibly displaced more than 1.1 million people—a fifth of Lebanon’s population—since early March and inflicted widespread destruction of villages and neighborhoods throughout the south. The Lebanese government has engaged in these talks with Israel without seeking a consensus from Lebanon’s diverse political factions, or allowing formal parliamentary debate, and has done so over the explicit objections of Hezbollah, whose forces would be at the center of any deal reached with Israel.

A direct call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be unprecedented and would spark mass anger inside Lebanon.

“Do not comply with Trump’s orders to make contact with Netanyahu. If you do, you will sever the last thread that still exists between us, the people, and you,” wrote Hasan Illaik, a prominent Lebanese analyst and host of a popular YouTube show, in a post on X. “If you do it, it will mean that your presidency ends in that very instant, and more dangerously, it will be an announcement that you have proceeded to implement an American-Israeli decision to destroy the country, and history will then remember you at the very bottom of the ranks.”

Lebanese officials claimed early Thursday that they had “no information” about a call, but did not explicitly deny it was under discussion. Some Lebanese analysts told Drop Site that Trump’s post may have been floated as a trial balloon to gauge public reaction. Lebanese TV later reported that Aoun had refused a call with Netanyahu. Moments after that, U.S. officials told Lebanon’s MTV that Trump planned to have Aoun and Netanyahu join a three-way call. The Lebanese presidency confirmed in a statement that Aoun spoke with Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday.

Over the past several days, the Trump administration has scrambled to try to push through an agreement acceptable to Israel, which maintains that it will not end its war against Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed or defeated. Ha’aretz and other Israeli media outlets reported that senior Israeli military commanders had been told to prepare their forces deployed in southern Lebanon ahead of a truce that would reportedly take effect Thursday between 7 p.m. and midnight local time.

“I would take any ceasefire declaration on the part of the US or Israel with a huge grain of salt at this point. The talks themselves —Israeli-Lebanese and to a lesser extent, U.S.-Iranian, are starting to look more like a means of warfare through other means,” said Amal Saad, a lecturer on international relations and politics at Cardiff University in the UK who is writing a book on Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance. “This could well be another ploy to deceive, buy time to reconstitute or give cover to the Lebanese government to quickly normalize Israel and its aggression before the fighting resumes.”

Following the talks on Wednesday, the State Department released a statement emphasizing that the aim of the meeting was to develop a framework for disarming Hezbollah and increasing cooperation between Israel and the Lebanese government.

“This is nonsense,” said Al-Moussawi. “This is something that no one can accept. This is stripping Lebanon from its points of strength. You’re talking about honorable people fighting on the front to defend Lebanon.” Al-Moussawi, the former head of Hezbollah’s media relations department, was first elected to Lebanon’s parliament in 2018. He is a journalist and academic and holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Birmingham in the UK. “I’ll tell you, as long as the occupation continues, the resistance will continue,” he stated. “And the resistance has every right to fight back if the Lebanese army isn’t equipped enough to fight back,” he added. “We should be thanked for what we are doing and not to be accused or not to be delegitimized because of this.”

When Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif formally announced on April 7 that a two-week ceasefire agreement had been reached between the U.S. and Iran, he emphasized that the agreement would apply to all territories involved with the war. “I am pleased to announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY,” Shehbaz wrote in a post on X.

The specific mention of Lebanon by Shehbaz was significant. Iranian negotiators had repeatedly emphasized that any deal must include an end to Israel’s scorched earth attacks against southern Lebanon. Iran’s ally Hezbollah entered the war on March 2, two days after the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and had stunned the region by exhibiting a continued capacity to strike Israel and fight off invasion forces. Soon after the U.S.-Iran agreement was announced, Netanyahu said that he would not end Israel’s war against Lebanon and ratcheted up the bombing. Israel conducted one of its heaviest aerial assaults on Lebanon, dropping 160 munitions within 10 minutes in what some Lebanese have come to call “Black Wednesday.” Within 24 hours more than 350 people had been killed, and over 1,200 wounded, in Israeli attacks, one of the bloodiest days in Lebanon since the 1982 Israeli invasion.

Iran charged that the Israeli attacks and the refusal to halt its bombing “blatantly violates the initial ceasefire,” while Trump claimed Lebanon was “not included in the deal,” calling Israel’s war against Lebanon a “separate skirmish.”

Initially, Lebanese officials insisted that Lebanon should be included in the deal, but soon shifted their diplomatic language to calls for a separate ceasefire. On April 9, a Lebanese official told Reuters that Lebanon had been advocating for a temporary ceasefire on a “separate ​track but the same model” as the Iran agreement, effectively signaling acceptance of the U.S. and Israeli rejection of Lebanon’s inclusion in the Iran deal.

The State Department reiterated Wednesday that it would not abide by the terms announced by Shehbaz regarding a Lebanon ceasefire, saying in a statement that “any agreement to cease hostilities must be reached between the two governments, brokered by the United States, and not through any separate track.” Pakistan, which is the main mediator of the Iran negotiations, continues to insist that Lebanon is part of the initial deal. “Peace in Lebanon is essential for peace talks,” said Tahir Andrabi, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry, at a briefing Thursday. “Israeli attacks against Lebanon constitute a grave violation of international law and fundamental humanitarian principles.” Several European nations also signed onto a joint statement endorsing the agreement and emphasizing the importance of including Lebanon.

Al-Moussawi said that the Lebanese government’s decision to capitulate to the U.S. demand for bilateral negotiations with Israel rather than insist that Trump uphold the terms of the agreement with Iran opened the door for continued Israeli attacks. “This has opened a window for the Israelis to make more massacres in Lebanon,” Al-Moussawi said. “This massacre has taken place simply because of the lack of responsibility of the Lebanese officials because they [excluded] themselves from the ceasefire that has been put as a core requirement by the Iranians,” Al-Moussawi said. “They are responsible and they are partners in the killing of their own people.”

The speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, spoke to Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon’s legislature, on Thursday and reiterated that Iranian negotiators continue to demand the ceasefire apply to Lebanon. “We have been seriously pursuing forcing the enemies to establish a permanent ceasefire in all conflict areas according to the ceasefire agreement because for us, the ceasefire in Lebanon is as important as the ceasefire in Iran,” Ghalibaf said, according to IRIB, the official Iranian broadcast network.

Some supporters of Hezbollah were angry that Iran did not halt the negotiations with the U.S. once it became clear that Israel was going to continue its war against Lebanon in violation of the announced ceasefire framework. Al-Moussawi, however, said he is confident Iran is prioritizing a Lebanon ceasefire. “We want the result to happen, to pressure the Israelis, to pressure the Americans and this is what the Iranians are doing. The most important card in the Iranian hands is the Strait of Hormuz. And they continue to say we will not open the Strait of Hormuz unless you include Lebanon in the agenda of the ceasefire,” Al-Moussawi said. “Iran has never abandoned the Lebanese. Iran has proved to be very faithful and loyal to its allies and to its friends.”

The Lebanese government is in a difficult position. While it is the internationally recognized authority ruling Lebanon, it cannot force Hezbollah to abide by an agreement that the resistance movement rejects. Israel and the U.S. have consistently described their vision for a ceasefire as an agreement that involves Israel and the Lebanese Army jointly disarming Hezbollah. Hebrew media outlets close to Netanyahu have reported that Israel is promoting a plan to effectively create a West Bank-type structure in southern Lebanon, dividing it into three sections. Israeli forces would establish a long-term presence in a “buffer zone,” continue its military operations against Hezbollah in a second zone until the resistance group is disarmed and after which Lebanese forces would deploy. A third zone would involve Lebanese forces engaging in disarmament operations against Hezbollah.

President Aoun, in a meeting with the British Secretary for Middle East Affairs on Thursday, said Lebanon was calling for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon as part of an agreement for the Lebanese army to deploy in the south. “The decisions taken by the government, particularly those related to the exclusivity of arms, will be implemented in the interest of Lebanon and to ensure the protection of all Lebanese people who aspire to see their state solely responsible for maintaining security, stability, and public safety in the country,” Aoun said, according to a readout of the meeting. He added that a ceasefire would enable “the Lebanese army to redeploy up to the international borders.”

Al-Moussawi dismissed the reported Israeli buffer zone plans and said Hezbollah would never accept it. Hezbollah, he argued, is necessary because the Lebanese army is incapable of defending the country from Israeli aggression. “No one can disagree that the official [Lebanese] authorities have to have a monopoly of arms. This is one of the definitions of a state,” he said. But, he added, Lebanon “has never had an army that is equipped enough or that has the political [backing] by the leaders or the officials to defend or protect Lebanon…to fight back against the Israelis.”

Hezbollah stunned many international observers with the ferocity of its attacks against Israel when it joined the war alongside Iran in early March. Both Israeli and U.S. officials had portrayed the group as severely degraded and a remnant of its previous stature, yet it launched repeated missile attacks and has fought off Israeli attempts to impose a broader occupation in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah’s stance stood in stark contrast to Lebanon’s official armed forces.

In early April, as Israeli attacks ravaged southern Lebanon, the Lebanese army announced its forces had withdrawn from southern border villages, leaving residents without even the semblance of protection. “The villagers, the people of the villages in southern Lebanon—Christians, Muslims—they were begging the army to stay,” Al-Moussawi said. “But officials ordered the army not to fight back, not to protect, not to defend, but simply to withdraw.” he added, “One of the important [jobs of the] Lebanon state is to defend and protect its people. This is what the army should be.”

The day after the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, Hezbollah entered the Gaza war, opening what it called a second front against Israel. Less than a year later, in September 2024, Israel unleashed its strongest campaign of attacks on Lebanon since the 2006 invasion. It conducted an assassination campaign targeting Hezbollah officials and civilian workers with exploding pagers, massively bombed civilian neighborhoods and ultimately assassinated Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. By November 2024, over 3,800 people had been killed and more than 1.2 million forcibly displaced. That month, Israel and Lebanon signed a ceasefire agreement, which Israel systematically violated on a nearly daily basis, killing over 340 people in the period leading up to March 2, the day Hezbollah joined the Iran war.

After the U.S. and Israel initiated the war against Iran in February, which began with the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior political and military leaders, Hezbollah announced it was entering the war and began launching missiles at Israel. “We saw that this is the proper time for us to engage in the war and to retaliate because Israel would be preoccupied with fighting against a huge regional power, which is Iran,” said Al-Moussawi. “You’re talking about a war that has never been stopped by the Israelis. We were retaliating.”

Israel has a multi-decade track record of violating ceasefire agreements, including with Lebanon. “The Israelis say, ‘Yes, we had reached a ceasefire,’ but they continue to assassinate, they continue to kill,” said Al-Moussawi. “This is not something that Lebanon should accept, not on the resistance level, not on the official level. This is something that should come to a total stop. The Israelis should be pressured in order to respect a full ceasefire and not to be given the liberty to do whatever they want anytime, anywhere in Lebanon.”

“Without the Americans, you know, I know, everybody knows, that the Israelis cannot continue the war,” Al-Moussawi added. “It’s the American administration that should be held responsible for this. Without America, I believe we would have been released from all of this terrorism, Israel, a long time ago.”

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Tehran rejects any agreement for a temporary ceasefire to end the war with the U.S. and Israel, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site, saying that Iran would only accept an agreement that leads to a permanent end to the fighting. The official, who was not authorized to make public statements and spoke on condition of anonymity, said recent proposals for a temporary pause in exchange for resumption of full access to the Strait of Hormuz were “detached from the realities on the ground.”

In the face of new threats by President Donald Trump to escalate the war on Iran, Reuters reported Monday on a Pakistani-led framework to end the fighting that had been shared with both Washington and Tehran. The framework reportedly calls for a temporary ceasefire in exchange for a resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, with 15-20 days given to reach a final settlement that would address Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions relief, and a regional framework for administering the strait.

The senior Iranian official who spoke with Drop Site confirmed that Tehran had received the proposal but reiterated that Iran rejects any agreement based on a temporary ceasefire. “It is our assessment that the Trump administration, owing to legal constraints within the United States concerning the prosecution of the war as well as the need to maintain control over financial markets, requires a short-term pause in the conflict,” said the official. He added that Iran would only accept an agreement that ended the war against Iran conclusively, and which could then be used as a basis for broader talks. The official also pointed to Iran’s February proposal in Geneva that included significant concessions on its nuclear program and a non-aggression pact as a basis for a permanent agreement.

“Our assessment indicates that this [new, temporary] proposal has been drafted solely on the basis of the mediators’ perception of the minimum demands of the parties for halting the war,” the official said. “Tehran does not consider a temporary ceasefire to be a logical course of action, inasmuch as the window for the United States’ exit from the conflict has already been delineated. Should the requisite political will exist, the parties are in a position to establish a permanent ceasefire and thereafter concentrate their efforts on diplomacy.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An administration official speaking to CNN on Monday said Trump has yet to sign off on the proposal, and that it is “one of many ideas.”

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Prior to the outbreak of the war, Tehran proposed unprecedented concessions on its nuclear program during February talks in Geneva that both UK and Omani participants considered sufficient for making progress towards a final agreement. In a dramatic intervention, Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi said in an interview with “Face the Nation” that a “peace deal is within our reach” and asked for more time to continue the talks. Shortly after that last round of negotiations, however, rather than engaging with the concessions, the U.S. and Israel launched a surprise attack on Tehran that included the assassination of the country’s head of state and many other senior officials.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were later accused by nuclear experts of failing to understand the significance of the technical concessions Iran was proposing in Geneva. Notably, while Iran brought a team of technical experts to the negotiations, Witkoff and Kushner did not.

The senior Iranian official who spoke to Drop Site indicated that the framework for negotiations in February could still serve as a basis for a durable agreement between Tehran and Washington. “The latest proposal put forward by Iran prior to the commencement of the unlawful US-Israeli war would fully address the United States’ concerns regarding nuclear weapons through a posture of maximum flexibility on the part of Iran, accompanied by extensive monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” he said.

As Drop Site has previously reported, Iran’s terms for permanently ending the war include a long-term guarantee that the U.S. and Israel will not attack Iran again and that any ceasefire also apply to Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine; reparations for the damages done to Iran during the war; sanctions relief; and that Iran retain control over the Strait of Hormuz.

On Easter morning, Trump posted a profanity-laced statement on Truth Social laying out a Tuesday deadline for Iran to capitulate to U.S. demands to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Throughout the war, as global economic harm continues to mount, Trump has repeatedly claimed in public speeches and posts on Truth Social that Iran is “begging” for a deal, only to follow with threats to attack oil and infrastructure targets after Iranian denials.

Trump’s recent public statements regarding the Strait of Hormuz reflect a shifting timeline of deadlines and escalating warnings: an initial 48-hour ultimatum on March 21 to reopen the strait was paused on March 23 for “productive” talks—a claim Tehran rejected, labeling it “fake news” intended to manipulate markets. The deadline was later extended on March 26 by ten days, with Trump expanding his threats on March 30 to include oil wells, Kharg Island, and desalination plants . On April 1, he again claimed that Tehran was seeking a ceasefire, despite repeated Iranian denials, issued another 48-hour warning on April 4, and pushed the deadline once more.

“This threat isn’t new, and Iran has already made its position clear if such a crime were to happen,” the official said regarding Trump’s frequent threats. Iran has repeatedly said that it will retaliate to such attacks by targeting U.S.-linked infrastructure across the region—potentially including critical energy and water desalination facilities in both Israel and the Gulf Arab states.

The Pakistani framework, aimed at heading off the Tuesday deadline, was reportedly developed in the context of messages exchanged “all night long” between Pakistani army chief Asim Munir, Vice President J.D. Vance, Witkoff, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The putative agreement would be known as the “Islamabad Accords,” providing a temporary end to the fighting and arrangements for final status talks in the future between the U.S. and Iran.

Yet the staged nature of the proposal would leave Iran open to future attacks by the U.S. and Israel—both of which have repeatedly used prior negotiations as a means to prepare assets for attacks against Iran, even targeting and killing negotiators themselves.

In late March, the Trump administration reportedly issued a 15-point plan for an agreement with Iran, including a 30-day ceasefire, the total dismantlement of the Iranian nuclear program, limits on Iran’s ballistic missile program, an end to Tehran’s support for armed resistance groups, and immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. That reported plan matched much of what Washington had demanded even before the war started and was dismissed as “extremely maximalist and unreasonable” by Iranian officials.

Amid a general lack of trust in Washington’s willingness or even ability to negotiate an agreement, Iran issued its own list of conditions for a peace deal—including guarantees that the war would not resume, an end to attacks in Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq, reparations for war damages suffered during the fighting, and recognition of Iranian right to exercise authority over the Strait of Hormuz.

The issue of the strait has now become a core point of contention between the two sides. While the strategic waterway was open before the U.S.-Israeli attack, Iran has now managed to assert de facto sovereignty over it—controlling access to which ships may transit and even charging fees for passage to those that meet its criteria. Iran has also stated that ships associated with hostile countries will not be allowed to pass.

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While an accumulating global oil shock has continued to build due to the disruption of energy shipments, the Iranian parliament has already passed measures aimed at normalizing its control of access to the strait going forward. The proposed Pakistani deal calls for opening the waterway immediately in exchange for a temporary end to the fighting—a proposal that Tehran said it rejects.

“The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the establishment of a temporary ceasefire is not acceptable. Tehran has finalized a new mechanism for oversight, inspection, and secure navigation in the Strait and will shortly present it to the countries of the region for their participation. At present, Iran’s bilateral arrangements with various states have already established the necessary groundwork for the safe passage of a number of vessels, serving as a pilot project for the exercise of Iranian sovereignty,” the senior Iranian official told Drop Site.

The official added that Tehran would be willing to negotiate renewal of access to U.S.-linked ships as part of a broader peace agreement. “Naturally, the passage of vessels associated with the United States can constitute a subject for discussion between the parties within the framework of comprehensive Iran-United States negotiations, wherein a shared understanding on the matter may be reached,” he said.

Initially described as a short “excursion” that would be wrapped up within days, the war with Iran has increasingly come to look like a major quagmire for the Trump administration. In addition to asserting control over one of the world’s most vital maritime shipping routes, Iran has managed to maintain a steady rate of fire at Israel and the Gulf Arab states over more than a month of fighting—inflicting increasing damage as limited stocks of missile interceptors have been drained, and forcing the U.S. to transfer critical munitions from East Asia to the Middle East.

In addition to killing thousands of civilians, the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has done tremendous damage to Iranian infrastructure, including recent attacks on universities, bridges, and petrochemical facilities.

In the face of repeated threats of regime change, and attempts to cause the dissolution of the country through attacks on civilian infrastructure and support for violent separatist groups, Iranian officials say that they have now prepared for a longer war of attrition and will not accept any agreement that merely serves as a pause to enable Israel and the U.S. to recover and prepare for future attacks.

The U.S. “appears to envisage the pursuit of the collapse of Iranian sovereignty by repeating this war-ceasefire cycle until the third year of [Trump’s] presidency,” the senior Iranian official told Drop Site. “For this reason, we consider it probable that President Trump may unilaterally declare a temporary ceasefire, in which event the Strait will continue to be administered by Iran through the new mechanism.”

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Over the past week, both the U.S. and Iran delivered frameworks to mediators aimed at ending the ongoing war. The Trump administration is now insisting that its framework must be the basis for any negotiations, a high-level Iranian official told Drop Site, as President Donald Trump’s top envoy on Friday repeatedly asserted that direct talks are imminent and that the U.S. expects a response from Tehran in the coming days.

Trump has portrayed the diplomatic situation as the U.S. offering a desperate and broken Iran a chance to end the war. “They’re being hit so hard, anybody would be negotiating. They are negotiating. They’re begging to make a deal,” Trump said in remarks at the Future Investment Initiative summit in Miami on Friday. “Turned out I was right, they were negotiating.”

But Iran, which continues to launch regular missile and drone attacks at Israel and at U.S. military sites across the Persian Gulf, maintains that Trump is sinking deeper into a quagmire and Tehran will decide when the war ends. The senior Iranian official with direct knowledge of internal deliberations said that both Iran and the U.S. recently submitted their own sets of terms and conditions to end the war via intermediaries. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, pointed out that it was the U.S. that abandoned formal direct talks last month mediated by Oman. On February 28, two days before scheduled technical discussions were to take place in Vienna, the U.S. and Israel began a massive bombing campaign they claimed was aimed at overthrowing the Iranian government.

Since the war began, messages have been delivered through intermediaries, most recently through Pakistan. The senior Iranian official said that Iran, however, remains deeply skeptical of Trump’s sincerity and cannot rule out that the entire process is a smokescreen ahead of a major military escalation. As of this publication, Iran was still contemplating whether to offer any further response to the U.S. terms, as Tehran’s view is that it already has laid out its own framework for starting diplomatic negotiations.

“The Americans are not prepared to engage in what can genuinely be called negotiations. Rather, they seek to impose their own terms,” the Iranian official told Drop Site. “They are clearly being disingenuous. We have had, and continue to have, the Omani platform for negotiations. Their unwillingness to engage within that framework calls into question the sincerity of their claims regarding negotiation and diplomacy.”

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“These are sensitive diplomatic discussions and the United States will not negotiate through the news media,” said Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, in a statement to Drop Site. “As President Trump and his negotiators explore this newfound possibility of diplomacy, Operation Epic Fury continues unabated to achieve the military objectives laid out by the Commander in Chief and the Pentagon.”

Iran has consistently said that it will not accept what it views as a temporary ceasefire akin to the one requested by the U.S. and Israel that ended the “12-Day War” in June 2025. From Iran’s perspective, that agreement only served to buy the U.S. and Israel time to prepare for the larger war they ultimately unleashed last month.

Among Iran’s terms for permanently ending the war are a longterm guarantee that the U.S. and Israel will not attack Iran again and that any ceasefire also apply to Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine; reparations for the damages done to Iran during the war; sanctions relief; and that Iran retain control over the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian official told Drop Site Iran also addressed issues related to nuclear enrichment in its proposal but declined to offer specific details.

“They’re trying to frame Iran as a country that refuses to negotiate, while in reality we have a clear, logical position that the war must come to an end,” the Iranian official said. “We have conveyed our own positions to them, encompassing both the format of the negotiations and the substance of the issues to be addressed.”

Witkoff, speaking at the investment forum in Miami on Friday, reiterated the U.S. claim that Washington had presented the Iranians a plan but had heard nothing in response. “We have a 15-point deal on the table that the Iranians have had for a bit of time. We expect an answer from them,” Witkoff said, adding that he was hopeful that sit-down negotiations could begin as early as this week.

On Saturday, Trump asserted that Iran had 48 hours to open the Strait of Hormuz before facing attacks on civilian infrastructure. On Monday, he extended the deadline several days, and then extended it again on Thursday—saying Iran had requested the extension. The Iranian official said that any deadline extension had never, in fact, been requested by Iran, as Trump had claimed. Mediators also confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that no such request was made by Iran.

Trump, in a speech on Friday, repeated his demands. “They have to open up the Strait of Trump—I mean Hormuz,” he said in wide-ranging remarks. “Fake news will say ‘he accidentally said.’ No, there’s no accidents with me. Not too many.”

“I think we have regime change already,” he declared.

Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, was lead negotiator in the previous two rounds of talks, both of which ended with surprise U.S. attacks. “My definition of real negotiating would be right here,” Witkoff said, pointing to himself and the moderator, “and we don’t leave until we’re done. And we’ve offered that and we think there will be meetings this week. We’re certainly hopeful for it.”

While Trump has repeatedly claimed that Iran has been “begging” him to negotiate, Drop Site reported last week that it was Witkoff who repeatedly texted Iranian officials and passed messages via intermediaries.

Trump earlier this week celebrated a “gift” he claimed Iran had presented him as a gesture of good faith. He later claimed that the gift was the passage of ten oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as a way for the Iranians to “make up for their misstatement” regarding the absence of negotiations. The Iranian official said that some Pakistani ships have been cleared to pass through the Strait since the war began as a result of bilateral “goodwill” discussions between Islamabad and Tehran. “The whole claim about ships passing through had nothing to do with Trump or the U.S. at all,” he said. Iran has maintained that the Strait remains open to some ships from friendly nations as long as they are not connected to the U.S. or Israel.

Yet Witkoff pointed to it as a sign of warming relations. “Ships are passing, that’s a very, very good sign,” he said.

Despite Witkoff’s claims of progress, massive attacks continued unabated Friday, as the U.S. and Israel launched a coordinated bombing campaign on three steel plants, in Mobarakeh, Esfahan, and Khuzestan, targeting the heart of the Iranian economy. Mobarakeh Steel Company is the largest steel production facility in the Middle East and North Africa. Israel also claimed credit for striking the Arak heavy water nuclear reactor, an attack that could lead to radioactive fallout if powerful enough.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that “Iran will exact [a] HEAVY price for Israeli crimes” carried out “in coordination with the U.S.” After Trump claimed he was postponing civilian infrastructure attacks, Araghchi said on Twitter, the “attack contradicts POTUS extended deadline for diplomacy.” On Friday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps published a list of targets that included steel plants across the Persian Gulf.

Witkoff, who made no mention of Iran’s proposed framework, said at the forum Friday that the U.S. terms presented to Iran were sweeping and would “solve it all.”

“It would solve the enrichment question, which is, we can’t have enrichment there today. It would solve the [nuclear] material question,” he said. “They have close to 10,000 kilograms of enriched material stockpiled, which they have to give up.”

“It would solve the stockpiling question, and the oversight question,” Witkoff went on. “So all of these are red lines for us, but we’re not looking to see the dissolution of the Iranian people.”

Iran has expressed deep concerns about the U.S. negotiating team consisting of Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. In the 2009 and 2015 negotiations with Iran, President Barack Obama dispatched multi-disciplinary teams consisting of senior U.S. officials and subject area specialists. During the February negotiations, according to The Guardian, Trump did not send U.S. technical experts to accompany Witkoff and Kushner.

“We made it clear to the mediator that these individuals have no familiarity with diplomacy,” the Iranian official told Drop Site. “The U.S. delegation in the negotiations should include people who are technically well-versed in regional issues, nuclear matters, and peace processes.”

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On Monday, Iran forcefully denied claims by President Donald Trump that the U.S. and Iran are in the midst of negotiations to end the war, saying that no direct talks are occurring.

Trump claimed on Monday via Truth Social that “GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS” had taken place with Iranian officials over the past two days, backtracking from his Saturday threat to destroy Iranian energy infrastructure if Iran did not open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours.

Iran immediately dismissed his claims. “Fake news is intended to manipulate financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire in which America and Israel are trapped,” wrote Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of Iran’s parliament, in a post on X.

A senior Iranian official confirmed to Drop Site that “no new developments have occurred” between Washington and Tehran. The official was not authorized to make public statements and spoke on condition of anonymity. The U.S. has continued to send messages through third countries, he said, but Iran has only reiterated its position and has not engaged in any back and forth.

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“There aren’t any negotiations taking place. The Iranian side has simply communicated its conditions to them and even that has been done indirectly,” the official said. He added that Iranian officials had previously expressed their position on ending the war in general terms to regional countries acting as intermediaries, but that they “firmly deny” claims that any talks had taken place between Iranian and American officials.

According to the official, Iran’s conditions for an end to the war include a simultaneous ceasefire in Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq. Iran has consistently said that it will not accept a ceasefire similar to the one requested by Israel and the U.S. that ended the “12-Day War” in June 2025. Tehran has maintained that agreement was exploited to buy time for another U.S.-Israeli war and that Iran will only consider a comprehensive deal.

The war, the official said, created a new dynamic for Iran’s nuclear enrichment. “In light of the violations of international law by the United States, as well as Israel’s extensive attacks on nuclear facilities, Iran will formulate a new doctrine concerning its nuclear industry,” he said. “Under this doctrine, enrichment activities at levels required for national needs will continue, either independently or in cooperation with China and Russia.” Iran had previously insisted on the right to enrich uranium on its soil for purposes of generating energy and medical research.

Iran also wants U.S. sanctions on the procurement of defensive weapons and equipment lifted. Iranian ballistic missiles, the official asserted, represent a deterrent against future aggression that Iran will not abandon. “Given its defensive nature in countering Israel, this program will continue unchanged and with increased intensity in the event of a ceasefire,” he said. “The missile program shall not be subject to negotiation under any prospective talks.”

Iran would also pursue compensation for damages inflicted by the U.S. and Israel during the war, the official added.

On Saturday, Trump issued a statement threatening a massive escalation of the war by attacking Iranian energy infrastructure: “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the US will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”

The Iranian government quickly responded to Trump by threatening to systematically target energy infrastructure in Israel and throughout the Persian Gulf region in retaliation—a measure that Iran would only take, the official emphasized to Drop Site, as retaliation for U.S. or Israeli strikes on their own power supply. Ghalibaf, a leading figure in the Iranian war effort, wrote on X that if Trump carried out his threats then critical infrastructure and energy facilities across the Middle East would be “irreversibly destroyed.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps also responded with its own statement directed at Trump, stating that if his orders were carried out, “The Strait of Hormuz will be completely closed and will not be opened until our destroyed power plants are rebuilt.”

Trump’s statements backing off from the energy threat “for a five day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions” resulted in an immediate rally in financial markets that have been thrown into chaos. Trump’s sensitivity to the economic impact of his decision to attack Iran three weeks prior, and, in particular, market fluctuations, has fed the belief in Tehran that his statements about the war are aimed at cynically preserving short-term economic stability.

“The fact that he publicly responds to [Iran’s position] by posting a tweet is solely intended to manage the financial markets—nothing more,” the Iranian official told Drop Site on Monday soon after Trump made his comments. “Since this morning up to this moment, the heaviest attacks by the United States and Israel against urban centers in Iran have taken place.”

Tehran was subjected to heavy bombardment Sunday night before Trump’s announcement, including attacks on Iranian infrastructure and an apparent assassination targeting an Iranian aerospace scientist, Saeed Shamghadari, who was reportedly killed at home along with his family.

Soon after posting on Truth Social, Trump made even more expansive claims in comments to reporters, claiming his envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, had engaged in talks with Iran, and that, “We’ve had very strong talks. Mr. Witkoff and Kushner had them. They went perfectly.” He added, ”I would say that if they carry through with that, it’ll end that problem, that conflict.” Trump said there were “major points of agreement” not only on access to the Strait of Hormuz but also on the Iranian nuclear program and the war in general. The senior Iranian official told Drop Site this was completely false.

All these claims have also been officially denied by the Iranian foreign ministry. In a statement reported by Mehr News the foreign ministry stated that it had “rejected the US President’s claims that talks are ongoing with Iran.” The statement also claimed that Trump’s comments are “within the framework of efforts to reduce energy prices and gain time to implement his military plans.”

While denying any talks with Washington, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said “messages from the US, sent via friendly countries to seek talks and end the war, were received and answered in line with Iran’s principles,” according to Press TV.

The senior official told Drop Site the messages from the U.S. presented to Iran are “difficult to assess, as they have conveyed different points to each of the intermediary countries.” He added that the U.S. has “expressed a willingness to halt operations” in the messages passed onto Iran via third parties, but said they appear “primarily aimed at reassuring those countries and [have] not been taken seriously by the Iranian side.” Regarding reports of a possible meeting to be convened in Islamabad, the senior official told Drop Site that “each of the intermediaries is eager to have the ceasefire talks held in their own capital. Pakistan is no exception.”

In response to a request for comment about Iran’s denials of Trump’s claims, the White House pointed to remarks Trump made implying that the U.S. is secretly talking to an anonymous top Iranian official. “We’re dealing with the man who, I believe, is the most respected and the leader,” Trump said, adding that he won’t name the Iranian figure because “I don’t want him to be killed.”

Last week, Drop Site reported that Witkoff had sent a series of messages to Iran, including directly to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, attempting to restart talks and that Tehran ignored his messages. The White House quickly spun an alternate version of the narrative, claiming Iran was begging him to negotiate.

Three weeks after the U.S. and Israel initiated a war of choice against Iran, Trump’s daily pronouncements on how he intends to secure a victorious ending to the conflict have begun to resemble the unraveling of a leader drifting toward psychological abyss. In a single set of comments on Saturday, Trump pivoted between boasts that the war has already been won, demands to select the new leadership of Iran, denunciations of allies, and wild threats of escalation—including the threat to target critical civilian infrastructure in Iran, a war crime.

The war started on February 28 with a series of bombings and assassinations carried out by Israel and the U.S. reportedly intended in part to trigger an uprising and the collapse of the government. Israel has continued to press forward with a strategy aimed at causing regime change or spreading chaos inside Iran while the Trump administration has expressed increasing doubt about this outcome. The war, meanwhile, has now metastasized into a regional conflict as the Iranian government has seemingly consolidated power while continuing to fire a steady rate of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel, the U.S., and Gulf Arab states hosting American military bases.

Iranian attacks have continued despite Trump’s repeated assertions that he had “blown Iran off the map,” and that the country was “dead,” and as the Iranian military now maintains de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz. While periodically dismissing the strait as something “we don’t need,” Trump has also threatened retribution against NATO countries for refusing to assist in the campaign to restore access to the strategic waterway.

After temporarily lifting sanctions on Iranian oil exports in hopes of stabilizing global markets, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—who has increasingly become the face of a conflict that JD Vance and Marco Rubio appear increasingly reluctant to embrace—claimed that the move, which will provide a financial windfall to Iran, was actually “jujitsuing the Iranians,” and “using their own oil against them.”

As the situation has dragged on, Trump has refused to rule out the possibility of a ground invasion of parts of Iran to regain access to the Strait of Hormuz. On Sunday, Senator Lindsey Graham also called on U.S. troops to storm Iran’s strategic Kharg Island—a major export terminal for Iranian oil—while invoking the specter of the World War II invasion of Iwo Jima, which killed nearly 7,000 American soldiers.

Over the weekend ballistic missiles fired by Iran struck the Israeli cities of Arad and Dimona—the latter being the site of Israel’s primary nuclear facility. Footage showed that the strikes, which Iran described as a direct retaliation for an earlier attack on its Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, caused significant destruction to residential areas. The Israeli Ministry of Health reported at least 180 casualties across both locations declaring a “mass casualty incident” following the attack.

Several Gulf states have further hardened their positions against Iran. UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed said on Sunday the country “will never be blackmailed by terrorists,” referring to Iran, while Saudi Arabia expelled the Iranian military attaché and four embassy staff on Saturday, declaring them persona non grata. In a statement issued Sunday, Anwar Gargash, a senior diplomatic advisor to the UAE government, went even further—stating that the goals for terminating the conflict should go beyond a ceasefire towards a full dismantling of Iranian military capacities, including “curbing the nuclear threat, missiles, drones, and the bullying of the straits.”

When asked about the position of Gulf countries regarding regime change in Iran, the senior official said, “Unfortunately, this is the heartfelt wish of the rulers of some of these countries. However, they are fully aware of our patience and perseverance, as well as the resilience of the Iranian side, and they know that this is an unattainable aspiration.”

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President Donald Trump has been leading a double life in prosecuting his war against Iran. In public, he regularly boasts that Iran’s military might has been decimated, its leadership killed off, and that the few officials remaining alive in Tehran are begging him to talk. “They want to negotiate. They want to negotiate badly,” Trump said Sunday night. “We’re talking to them. But I don’t think they’re ready, but they’re getting pretty close.”

Behind the scenes, it is the Trump administration that has been asking for talks. Two Iranian officials told Drop Site that Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff personally sent messages to officials in Tehran, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, last week exploring possibilities for resuming negotiations. Iran has not replied to Witkoff. The Iranian officials told Drop Site that Iran has also received messages from the White House via third countries.

“Because of decisions made by [Iran’s] top authorities, no response was sent to his messages,” a senior Iranian official told Drop Site. “The message here is clear: Iran has once again closed the window for any direct negotiations,” he added. “The authority to declare a ceasefire rests solely with the country’s Supreme Leader. It’s not something the foreign minister, or any other official or organization in Iran, would send messages about to a foreign party.”

In response to request for comment, a White House spokesperson sent Drop Site the following: “The radical, left-wing Drop Site News is clearly carrying water for the Iranian terrorist regime — and reports like these based on pure fiction and citing unnamed anonymous sources should be discarded immediately. Iran feeds this fake news media outlet propaganda and they publish it as fact, which is abhorrent, America Last behavior. Operation Epic Fury will continue unabated until President Trump, as Commander-in-Chief, determines that the goals of Operation Epic Fury, including for Iran to no longer pose a military threat, have been fully realized.”

Witkoff did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Less than an hour after Drop Site first published this report, a U.S. official spun an alternative version of these events to Axios, claiming that it was in fact Araghchi who reached out to Witkoff. “The U.S. official claimed it was Araghchi who was attempting to engage, but told Axios the U.S. ‘is not talking’ to Iran,” the report said.

As the Axios report spread, Araghchi took to X to deny the White House’s claims. “My last contact with Mr. Witkoff was prior to his employer’s decision to kill diplomacy with another illegal military attack on Iran. Any claim to the contrary appears geared solely to mislead oil traders and the public,” he wrote.

In a series of media appearances over the weekend, Araghchi publicly rejected Trump’s characterizations. “We never asked for a ceasefire, and we have never asked even for negotiation,” he told CBS on Sunday. “We are ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes. And this is what we have done so far, and we continue to do that until President Trump comes to the point that this is an illegal war with no victory.”

One of the sources, a senior Iranian official who spoke with Drop Site on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss potential negotiations, said the U.S. outreach indicates that the Trump administration underestimated Iran’s resolve and is seeking an offramp. “Many direct and indirect requests for a ceasefire have been coming from the U.S.” over the past week, said the senior Iranian official. “Now that they’ve seen the Iranian side isn’t responding to those requests, they’re trying to make up for their embarrassment by twisting the narrative in the media.”

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“This whole thing is completely false,” the senior Iranian official continued, referring to Trump’s repeated claims that Iran is asking for a ceasefire. “The responses that we provide [to third party countries] for a ceasefire are being publicly presented by [Trump] as if they were his own positions.” He said that Iran has made clear to all nations that inquire about potential ceasefire talks that Tehran will not enter into any agreement that leaves the door open for continued U.S. and Israeli attacks by Iran.

“The United States appears to be seeking a temporary ceasefire in order to assess the outcomes thus far and to employ a combination of diplomacy and pressure to advance its broader objectives within Iran’s political system,” the senior Iranian official added. He said that while many nations have reached out to Tehran urging it to engage in talks with the U.S., their efforts should instead be aimed at Trump and his administration.

On a daily basis, Trump and his War Secretary Pete Hegseth stand before cameras and offer sweeping assessments of their obliteration of Iran’s missile and drone capacity. U.S. Central Command posts grainy videos of strikes blowing up airplanes, naval vessels, and infrastructure. “We have achieved a 90% reduction in their ballistic missile launches and a 95% reduction in their drone attacks. They don’t have too many missiles left,” Trump said Monday. “This is a paper tiger that we’re dealing with now. It wasn’t a paper tiger two weeks ago.” Yet Iranian strikes against U.S. bases and assets in the region, as well as attacks on Israel, continue.

Global oil and gas prices have risen dramatically over the past two weeks, as Iran has threatened to attack any U.S. or Israeli-linked tankers that traverse the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz. International oil shipments through the strait have plummeted to less than 10% of their pre-war levels. At the same time, Iranian exports last week exceeded their normal levels. “Through effective management of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has secured a notable advantage at sea,” the senior Iranian official said.

“The Strait of Hormuz is not closed in general, it is closed only to America and its allies, and we will continue this policy as long as the attacks continue,” Araghchi told Al Araby Al Jadeed on Sunday. Tehran has also suggested it would be open to increasing the flow of traffic through the area as long as the financial transactions were paid for in Chinese yuan.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed Monday that the U.S. has been allowing Iranian ships to pass through Hormuz without bombing them. “The Iranian ships have been getting out already, and we’ve let that happen to supply the rest of the world,” he told CNBC.

Last Wednesday, the CEOs of Chevron, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips held talks with senior officials at the White House and warned of grave consequences if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened. One oil executive told the Wall Street Journal that if oil reached $120 a barrel, it would cause “economic destruction.” Those meetings came as Trump is pressing the U.S. military to come up with options for stripping Iran of its dominance in the strait.

This weekend, Trump claimed he was assembling a multinational coalition to escort ships, and the Pentagon recently approved the rapid deployment of at least 2,000 U.S. soldiers from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. “I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their territory,” Trump said Sunday, saying that NATO nations as well as China should participate. “They should help us. You could make the case that maybe we shouldn’t be there at all, because we don’t need it. We have a lot of oil.” Many nations have expressed reservations about participating in such operations and some—including Germany, Greece, Japan, and Australia—have ruled out joining any Hormuz mission. Trump has suggested he may postpone his trip to China scheduled for later this month if Beijing does not agree to aid U.S. operations in the strait, and has warned of a “very bad future” for NATO if it does not participate.

“This war has nothing to do with NATO. It’s not NATO’s war,” said Stefan Kornelius, a spokesperson for the German chancellor, in a press briefing on Monday. “I would also like to remind you that the U.S. and Israel did not consult us before the war, and that Washington explicitly stated at the start of the war that European assistance was neither necessary nor desired.”

Trump’s decision to deploy Marines, combined with recent U.S. strikes on the Iranian island of Kharg, could indicate that the U.S. is contemplating an operation to occupy the island, which houses Iran’s most important oil terminal through which 90 percent of its crude oil exports run. Trump said the U.S. has refrained from directly bombing the oil depots on Kharg but said that if Iran directly prevents ships from passing the Strait of Hormuz, “I will immediately reconsider this decision.”

“No one should read into anything more than what the president announced,” a senior White House official told Axios. “The president has made no decisions on Kharg Island,” the official said, adding, “The president is not going to wait around and let the Iranians dictate the pace of the conflict.”

Iranian naval forces have spent decades wargaming in the Strait of Hormuz, including exercises that began on February 16, less than two weeks before the U.S. and Israel launched the war. These preparations have focused on asymmetric attacks on larger military vessels, utilizing fastboats, drones, and anti-ship cruise missiles. If Trump decides to move toward military confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz, it would increase the risks to U.S. troops, placing them within direct reach of Iran’s shorter range munitions and smaller naval attack vessels and maritime missile systems.

“Everything they have done during this period has been the result of miscalculation and error,” Araghchi told Al Araby Al Jadeed. “The attack on Kharg was a mistake, and occupying Kharg would be an even bigger mistake. As we said before, we are waiting for American ground forces to enter our territory, because we know how to confront them.”

In response to the Iranian stance in the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia has increased its oil output through its western coast and oil tankers have begun traveling through the Red Sea in large numbers. But these ships will ultimately need to ship their cargo through the Bab al Mandeb strip where they could potentially face a blockade from Yemen’s Ansar Allah. While the group, which controls large parts of Yemen, technically has a ceasefire agreement with the US, signed in May 2025, there have been indications it will enter the war in defense of Iran.

Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, a senior member of Ansar Allah’s political bureau, said on March 14 that a “zero hour”—a coordinated campaign of military operations—could be declared soon. “All options are on the table,” Al-Bukhaiti told RT Arabic. “If we are compelled to use the Bab al Mandeb card, we will use this in a flexible manner by targeting all the countries involved in the aggression against Lebanon and Iran.”

“The End of the War is in Our Hands”

Even before the U.S. and Israel launched their attacks on February 28, Iran vowed that it would not repeat the “12-Day War” of June 2025. Then, as with the current war, the U.S. claimed to be negotiating with Iran only to turn around and launch massive bombings. The ceasefire that ended the June war was requested by the U.S. and Israel and, from Iran’s perspective, it was a strategic pause aimed at preparing for the wider war that began last month. “They went back, prepared themselves again, and attacked us once more,” Araghchi said Sunday. “This scenario cannot be repeated. We will end this war when we guarantee that it will not be repeated, and that requires a decisive and final conclusion to the war.” Iranian officials have told Drop Site that they will not consider any ceasefire proposals until Tehran believes it has convinced the U.S. and the world that Iran will not accept repeated and periodic U.S. and Israeli military strikes.

“The end of the war is in our hands,” said Major General Mohsen Rezaei, a veteran commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in an interview on Iranian television on March 14. He said that as part of any ceasefire negotiations Iran would seek reparations for the damage done during the U.S.-Israeli bombing and reiterated Tehran’s call for the U.S. to withdraw its military presence in the Persian Gulf. The senior Iranian official also said that Tehran would only consider a ceasefire if it also included Lebanon and Iraq and was certified by the United Nations Security Council.

Unlike previous military confrontations where Iran has choreographed its retaliatory strikes against Israel and U.S. bases in the region ahead of time, the past two weeks have seen the Iranian military conduct unprecedented missile and drone strikes across the Persian Gulf as well as a steady pace of attacks on Israel.

“Iran’s strategy is centered on diversifying its attacks and opening multiple fronts against the U.S. and Israel over an extended period,” the senior official said. “The focus will be on gradually wearing down the opponent and delivering more effective blows to U.S. and Israeli interests, in order to create the necessary conditions for a broad and sustainable ceasefire.”

The senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Tehran understands it is fighting an asymmetric war and is confident in its ability to endure the U.S.-Israeli bombing. More than 1,400 people have been killed in the U.S.-Israeli bombings and more than 18,500 injured, according to Iran’s Health Ministry. Among the dead are at least 223 women and 200 children—41 of them under the age of two.

Iranian state media and news outlets close to the IRGC have suggested that Iranian forces may soon begin targeting the offices of large tech companies in Israel and the Persian Gulf, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Nvidia, and Palantir. Iranian strikes have forced the closure of Gulf airports and spurred an exodus of Americans, Europeans, and other Westerners from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain. The U.S. has been forced to abandon a number of military facilities and move personnel to hotels or out of the region.

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“Continuing these strikes—if carried out precisely and without harming the citizens of these countries—can play a very effective role in applying pressure to achieve a ceasefire,” the senior Iranian official said. “There are very deep economic ties between American companies and these countries. Threatening those interests would be a powerful leverage to pressure the Trump administration.”

With the exception of Oman, the Persian Gulf nations that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have refused to issue any condemnations of the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran. Instead, they have portrayed Iran as the aggressor and accused it of engaging in wanton attacks on their sovereignty and dismissing any suggestion that Iran has a right to target U.S. bases or assets housed within their borders.

On March 11, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution drafted by Bahrain on behalf of the GCC that denounced Iran’s “egregious attacks” and demanded that Iran “immediately and unconditionally cease from any provocation or threats to neighboring States, including the use of proxies.” The resolution did not mention either the U.S. or Israel, nor did it issue any condemnation or expressions of concern over the killing of Iranian civilians or the bombing of Iranian schools, apartment buildings, hospitals, oil and gas facilities and heritage sites.

While Iran continues to speak to officials from some GCC countries, it has made no secret of its anger with them. “The situation is not good at all. This war was ignited by the United States and the Zionist entity,” said Arraghchi. “They did not condemn the attack on Iran, and that is truly regrettable.”

Iran has acknowledged that some of its strikes against U.S. military bases and other assets in the Gulf have inflicted “collateral damage,” and Iranian officials have pointed to an apology issued by President Masoud Pezeshkian to Iran’s Arab neighbors on March 7. Iranian officials maintain that their strikes are aimed at U.S. and Israeli military and intelligence structures.

Iran has also claimed that in some cases, it has struck sites in Gulf countries based on intelligence they were used to directly attack Iran. Gulf countries have denied that their territory is being used in any attacks, despite the presence of key U.S. installations such as the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain or CENTCOM in Qatar. But Araghchi said that Iran has intelligence that some of the strikes on Kharg island came from missiles launched from the UAE. The New York Times recently verified video showing ballistic missiles being launched at Iran from Bahrain.

Araghchi denied that Iran has deliberately targeted any civilian sites in Gulf countries that have no connection to the U.S. or Israel. In some cases, Iran has acknowledged it did hit hotels or other civilian buildings, but has claimed those sites were being used by U.S. soldiers or Israeli intelligence. This is the same justification Israel has repeatedly employed to defend its strikes on civilian sites in Gaza and international law experts have widely denounced the practice as illegal. Iran has also denied being behind a range of attacks over the past two weeks, including in Cyprus, Turkey and in several Gulf countries and has accused the U.S. and Israel of conducting false flag attacks in an effort to try to further pull other nations into an overt conflict with Iran.

“We are ready to sit with our friends in the region and form an investigative committee to determine which targets were struck and whether they were American or not,” Araghchi told Al Araby Al Jadeed. He claimed that Iran has intelligence that Israel and the U.S. have cloned Tehran’s Shahed drones and are using them to conduct strikes on civilian sites in the Gulf. Iran has not publicly released any evidence to support these claims.

In a post on X Sunday, CENTCOM denied the allegations. “U.S. attack drones are only targeting Iranian military capabilities to eliminate threats posed to the region,” read the post.

On Monday, Ali Larijani, the chair of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, published a six point message addressed to Muslims across the world and to Islamic governments in which he defended Iran’s actions in responding to the U.S.- Israeli war. “Today the confrontation is between America and Israel on one side, and Iran, the Muslim nations, and the forces of resistance on the other. So which side do you stand with?” Larijani wrote. “Think about the future of the Islamic world. You know that America is not loyal to you and that Israel is your enemy. Pause for a moment and reflect on yourselves and on the future of the region.”

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Jawa Ahmad, Drop Site News’s Middle East Research Fellow, contributed to this report.

Update, March 16, 6:40 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include White House claims made to Axios after this report was published that it was Araghchi who initiated contact with Witkoff, as well as Araghchi’s public denial of those assertions.

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On Sunday, March 1, a day after launching the war on Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entreated the Iranian people to overthrow their government, pledging that the U.S. and Israel would strike thousands of sites across Iran to weaken its hold on power. “Do not sit idle, because your moment will arrive soon. The moment when you must take to the streets, come to the streets in your millions to finish the job, to overthrow the regime of terror that has embittered your lives,” Netanyahu declared. “Now is the time to unite your forces to overthrow the regime and secure your future.”

That urging of Iranians to action was echoed by President Donald Trump, who told them: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations.”

The joint U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is the culmination of a decadeslong campaign spearheaded by Netanyahu and waged by powerful forces within Israel’s intelligence, military and political machine. Trump’s canceling of the 2015 nuclear deal and the intensification of economic sanctions morphed, in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, into an open campaign of periodic military attacks against Iran, with the U.S. finally declaring openly that it wanted the government in Tehran toppled.

For Israel, the widespread Iranian protests in January presented a grand opportunity. Though the peaceful demonstrations were spurred by worsening economic conditions and the collapse of the national currency—caused largely by U.S.-led sanctions—within days the dynamic shifted dramatically. Violent riots broke out, and Trump and Netanyahu issued public calls for an uprising to seize control of the country. The situation was viewed by Iranian officials as an armed insurrection backed by Israel and aimed at toppling the state. Amid peaceful protests, reports emerged of organized cells inside Iran who launched deadly attacks on Iranian police, mosques, and civilian infrastructure.

The narrative of foreign involvement was endorsed by some Israeli commentators, as well as former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who claimed that Mossad agents were on the ground helping to organize the uprising. The riots were crushed with intense brutality by Iranian authorities. But the violence provided a prime opportunity for Netanyahu to press his case for war, wrapped in a veneer of freeing the Iranian people and eliminating a terrorist theocracy intent on building and using a nuclear bomb.

As the war nears the end of its second week, Trump has sidelined his talk of Iranian liberation. He routinely dismisses the idea that the son of the deposed Shah could take over, has said he is open to a religious leader ruling Iran, and declared that he prefers to have Iran’s head of state come from within the current system—a leader Trump said should be “internal and eternal.”

Netanyahu, however, is continuing to emphasize Israel’s goal of shattering the Iranian state as it exists after the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “The Ayatollah is no more, and I know you don’t want him replaced with another tyrant. So you must act,” Netanyahu wrote in a post on X addressed to the “People of Iran” on March 10. “In the coming days we will create the conditions for you to grasp your destiny. Your dreams will become a reality. When the time is right, and that time is fast approaching, we will pass the torch to you. Be ready to seize the moment!”

Israel has long waged a shadow war inside Iran, employing a mixture of covert operations, assassinations, coercion, and psychological messaging aimed at engineering the government’s collapse. The Israeli campaign to infiltrate and undermine Iranian society has included recruiting individual Iranians to carry out influence operations as well as large-scale psychological operations involving anti-government Persian-language media networks.

This is well established. Far less is known about Iran’s secret operations inside Israel, and its ongoing clandestine battles with Israeli intelligence.

Drop Site News has obtained internal Iranian intelligence briefing summaries, photos, and other materials related to secret influence operations targeting Israeli citizens. Iranian intelligence has carried out a series of small-scale active measures for the past three years in an attempt to foment social division inside Israel and build relationships with individual Israeli citizens. Drop Site also spoke to two Iranian officials, one of them an intelligence operative who worked directly on the program, and granted them anonymity to discuss the operations because they are not officially authorized to confirm or deny the program’s existence.

“A shadow war has been underway for years between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other,” one of the Iranian officials told Drop Site. “Regarding operations of this nature, no responsibility has ever been officially claimed nor is it likely to be,” he added. “No country openly speaks about them.”

Over the past two years, roughly three dozen Israeli citizens have been arrested on charges of carrying out espionage and influence operations inside Israel on behalf of the Iranian government. The charges have mostly involved surveillance and vandalism—though some have risen to the level of attempted violence against selected targets. In 2025, Israel witnessed a 400% increase in suspected and confirmed cases of Israelis performing espionage related activities for Iranian intelligence, according to a report by the Dor Moriah Analytical Center, an Israeli think tank.

The Israeli government has made a concerted effort to control information during the current war and requires that all reports pertaining to national security be reviewed by a military censor. It has also begun suppressing footage of Iranian ballistic missile strikes in the country—footage of which was widely disseminated during the 2025 conflict and impacted public opinion at home and abroad about the course of the war.

The intelligence materials, which represent the first internal Iranian confirmation of such covert operations within Israel, show handlers inside the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) recruiting individuals living in Israel to share political messages in public places—including banners and placards containing domestic political messages and stylized insignia from the Islamic Republic. The contacts span from the outbreak of judicial reform protests in Israel in 2023 through the genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The degree to which Israel and Iran have utilized their clandestine networks to aid their current war aims is unknown. An unnamed senior Israeli official told the Wall Street Journal on March 12 that Israel is receiving targeting assistance from “ordinary Iranians”—via Israeli social media accounts—that has been used in strikes against Iranian security forces. Likewise, the Iranian intelligence official told Drop Site, “some of the targets being struck within [Israel] are dynamic targets that have been identified in recent days. These targets are collected by MOIS through its local contacts.” The official declined to offer any specifics.

Iran’s Covert Efforts

The officials who spoke to Drop Site described Iran’s activities as a parallel campaign to Israel’s—what one of the officials termed a “reciprocal measure” to exert influence inside Israel by seeking to enlist ordinary Israelis in disruption operations. But relative to the size, scope, and lethality of Israel’s operations—and its proven ability to accentuate unrest or conduct assassinations inside Iran—the actions described by the Iranian officials are modest.

“Foreign actors linked to Israeli intelligence services had, over time, established contact—through various social media platforms and under diverse cover identities—with a significant number of Iranian citizens, particularly young people,” said the Iranian official who shared the materials. “These contacts encouraged and incentivized the performance of specific tasks through a combination of financial and non-financial rewards, as well as the provision of material support, including small arms and other equipment.”

Among the materials shown to Drop Site are social media groups established by MOIS agents, intelligence reports detailing the cultivation of Israeli assets, operational summaries of the activities of Israelis recruited by Iranian spies and scores of photographs of propaganda posters, leaflets, T-shirts and other materials the assets distributed on behalf of Iran.

The materials date back to mid-2023 and extend through early 2026. The officials said that the Iranian influence campaign began as retaliatory actions amid the outbreak of protests in Iran in 2022 following the death of a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini in police custody. According to witnesses, she was arrested for not wearing a head cover and severely beaten. Iranian authorities claimed she died because of an underlying condition.

Hundreds of people died when security forces sought to crush the demonstrations, along with dozens of members of the police and Basij militia. Iranian intelligence operatives internally concluded that some of the violence was being encouraged and facilitated by Israeli operatives, according to the sources. “Foreign actors linked to Israeli intelligence services had, over time, established contact—through various social media platforms and under diverse cover identities—with a significant number of Iranian citizens, particularly young people,” the Iranian intelligence official alleged. These Israeli handlers, he said, “encouraged and incentivized the performance of specific tasks through a combination of financial and non-financial rewards, as well as the provision of material support, including small arms and other equipment.”

Iranian intelligence agents, according to the two officials, studied the tactics of the alleged Israeli-orchestrated influence efforts and embarked on an operation to expand their targeting of Israeli citizens for recruitment.

In June 2023, Haaretz reported on the existence of an astroturfed campaign inside Israel related to judicial reform protests under the tagline “No Voice.” The report described the display of banners that authorities suspected were created by Iran. At the time, the Shin Bet told Haaretz that it had “recently identified Iranian influence activity on social media in Israel, whose purpose is to exacerbate the social and political rifts in Israel over the entire political spectrum.”

The internal materials provided to Drop Site include evidence of Iran’s role in the “No Voice” campaign, as well as video and photographic documentation of other limited activities by the MOIS inside Israel—including display of seditious messages in public spaces for broadcast on social media, and photographing of public sites. In some cases, activist groups created and promoted on Facebook succeeded in drawing small numbers of people for public demonstrations that were later filmed. Photos of these materials were later sent back as evidence to handlers in Iran. The materials do not provide information on specific Israelis involved in the operations and obscured the identities of participants.

After Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza, the Iranian intelligence officers said they sought to infiltrate Israeli demonstrations calling on the government to make a deal with Hamas and secure the return of Israeli captives held in Gaza.

In some images and videos of protests provided to Drop Site, individuals whose faces have been obscured can be seen holding up signs in Hebrew while others depict banners displayed in public areas—including draped on apartment balconies—with messages expressing support for Israeli captives, or criticism of the Netanyahu government.

While such banners have been common in Israel during protests, Iranian intelligence created custom designs for their assets to mass produce and distribute that included discretely embedded signatures visible in the materials showing the logo of the MOIS, or stylized depictions of former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the U.S. at Baghdad airport in a drone strike ordered by Trump in January 2020.

Other photographs show images of individuals at protest rallies in Israel wearing T-shirts with the same images and holding them up for the camera. In one video of a protest outside a Tel Aviv police station, a group of demonstrators can be seen chanting and displaying Israeli flags while being filmed from above with a drone whose footage Iranian intelligence claims was later provided to them by a source inside Israel.

Following videotaped instances of police brutality against protestors in Israel, the Iranian intelligence operative claimed that Tehran’s Israeli assets were instructed to promote videos that identified specific Israeli police officers on Hebrew-language social media channels in order to create “a shame campaign” against the officers and increase public criticism of the police. The broader effort employed social media pages and personas in an effort “to ensure that the protests would continue in a sustained manner.” While the Iranian officials provided documentary evidence of their involvement in some small protests, organically organized political demonstrations are not unusual in Israel.

In some cases, the Iranian officials claimed, Israelis enlisted in these operations believed they were being paid by Jewish Americans concerned about the fate of the captives in Gaza or angered by the Netanyahu government’s policies. The payments, they said, were made in cryptocurrency, though they declined to give specific amounts paid.

“The missions assigned via WhatsApp from the other side gradually took on a different tone and flavor,” the Iranian intelligence official alleged. He said the “missions” would begin as printing leaflets or stickers and then moved to helping to “organize a rally in front of [Israeli President Isaac] Herzog’s house and protest Netanyahu’s war crimes as well as his indifference to the fate of Israeli captives in Gaza.”

From Surveillance to Violent Attacks

Although the materials shared with Drop Site point to mostly small-scale activities in comparison to Israel’s demonstrated ability to recruit individuals inside Iran to carry out complex, violent attacks, the wider phenomenon of Iranian infiltration inside Israel has evolved into a notable issue within Israel.

One recent case in which an Israeli was charged with carrying out surveillance on behalf of Iran (though not directly referenced in the Iranian materials shared with Drop Site) involves an Israeli citizen named Yosef Ein Eli, 23.

Eli was arrested last September, accused of providing handlers based in Iran with information and photographs from hotels and tourist sites in southern Israel, for which he was provided the equivalent of roughly $3,000 in cryptocurrency. The operations were intended to be a step up the escalatory ladder, Israeli authorities claim. Eli had allegedly been cooperating with Iran since late 2024 and had been assigned further tasks by his handlers—including arson attacks, surveillance of political figures, and providing identifying information about IDF soldiers.

Since 2024, Israel has handed down nearly three dozen indictments of Israelis accused of espionage-related activities for Iran, though only one person has been sentenced. Israeli officials have been pressuring prosecutors to move these cases toward convictions and sentencing, in part to serve as a deterrent. “There needs to be harsher and faster punishment,” a security official told Israel’s YNet in January. “If people saw that defendants immediately received 10-year sentences, that alone would deter others.”

Prosecutions in Israel dealing with national security are covered by a state censor and only cases “cleared for publication” are permitted to be disclosed to the public, leading to ambiguity about the scale and detail of the allegations involved in many cases.

But the incidents have become serious and widespread enough that Israeli officials launched a national advertising campaign last year to urge citizens against spying for Iran, with messages warning members of the public, “For 5,000 shekels is it worth ruining your life/family?”

“In the past, Iranian intelligence was believed to work exclusively with marginal elements of society,” according to the Dor Moriah Analytics Center report. “Now, those arrested include mainstream Israelis—active-duty military personnel, students at religious seminaries, and even ideologically motivated citizens acting not just for money but out of conviction. Notably, it was Jewish citizens, rather than the Arab minority, who made up the bulk of Iran’s agent network.”

The report also highlighted several individuals from economically marginalized sectors of Jewish Israeli society and the Druze community who have been accused of conducting espionage for Iran, including surveillance activities on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps for payment. There are even cases of individuals acting out of ideological hostility to Zionism, including an American-Israeli dual citizen from the anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidic sect who allegedly conducted surveillance and provided Iran with intelligence on former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Israeli reservists have also been arrested, accused by authorities of transmitting photos of the Iron Dome missile defense system to Iran in exchange for small cash payments. In one case, a military base used by the IDF’s Golani Brigades was reportedly surveilled by a group of Israeli agents working for Iran before being struck by a Hezbollah drone in an attack that killed four soldiers. The same network—all Jewish immigrants to Israel from Azerbaijan—allegedly carried out hundreds of missions over two years, including surveillance of the Nevatim and Ramat David airbases.

In another case, an Israeli man who had allegedly conducted several missions for Iran was also accused of trying to assassinate an Israeli scientist for a promised payment of $100,000. He was apprehended by the Shin Bet in October 2024 while attempting to retrieve a handgun intended for the murder from a “dead drop” location.

“Everyone is free to guess”

There are clear hints that the clandestine war between Israel and Iran has continued during the current war—including dissemination of rumors targeted at rival populations online and via media channels influenced by both Tel Aviv and Tehran, as well as threats of future uprisings and infiltration by Israel inside Iran.

The Iranian government blames Israel for helping incite disorder and violence inside Iran via its own covert operations, including widespread violence during nationwide demonstrations in January that killed thousands of people. International human rights organizations have characterized the death toll as more than double the official Iranian claims of 3,100 dead and charged that the vast majority of deaths occurred at the hands of Iranian forces attacking largely peaceful demonstrators. Iran has characterized the violence as the product of an Israeli-led terror campaign aimed at sparking an uprising.

“Go out into the streets together. The time has come. We are with you. Not just from a distance or through words. We are also with you on the ground,” read a post on a Farsi language site widely believed to be linked to Mossad. It was subsequently deleted and some Israeli security analysts argued that boasting of Israeli involvement could undermine the efforts to destabilize the Iranian government.

“Foreign actors are arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed,” wrote Tamir Morag, the diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s Channel 14, during the uprising. “Everyone is free to guess who is behind it.” Morag and his network are well known for their close ties to Netanyahu.

“There is already an operation. There is currently a very significant U.S. influence operation,” said Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman, former chief of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, in an interview with Israeli radio on January 13.

On February 24, four days before the U.S. attack on Iran began, the CIA issued a Farsi-language public communication asking Iranians to make contact with them to provide intelligence and other cooperation via encrypted channels. “Hello. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) can hear your voice and wants to help you,” the post on X read. It included a video explaining how to use software to send messages to the Agency.

In the face of mounting instability, global economic shock, and continuing Iranian missile and drone strikes, Trump has increasingly hinted that he wants the war to wrap up soon. Israeli and U.S. media are reporting that internal intelligence assessments indicate it is unlikely the Iranian government will be brought down by force alone. “You can lead someone to water; you cannot make him drink,” Netanyahu said on March 12, in his first press conference since the war began. He boasted that the military attacks of the past two weeks had weakened Iran with “crushing blows,” but added, “ultimately, a regime is ousted from within.”

When the bombs do stop falling, the battle will shift back to the shadow war.

When asked why Iranian officials were willing to discuss details of their clandestine efforts in Israel with Drop Site, one of the officials said that, in light of recent Israeli involvement in protests inside Iran, it “is a deliberate reminder that [we] too possess the capability to manipulate citizens on the Israeli side and carry out reciprocal actions.” Iranian intelligence, he claimed, is “indeed proceeding with precisely such operations against them.”

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As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran stretches into its second week, President Donald Trump has been floating the idea that he wants to declare Mission Accomplished. “We will. We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” Trump declared on Monday afternoon in a speech before Republican lawmakers in Florida.

Iran, however, has shown no sign of ceasing its attacks. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is steadily launching missiles at cities across Israel and continues to strike U.S. military assets and outposts in the Persian Gulf. “The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran are capable of continuing at least a six-month intense war at the current pace of operations,” IRGC spokesperson Ali Mohammad Naini said Sunday in video remarks broadcast on state media. “Iran will determine when the war ends.”

Iranian military officials have said that in the first days of the war, they overwhelmingly used missiles developed between 2010 and 2014, while holding some of Iran’s more sophisticated, modern missiles for future use as the war stretches on. “In the last ten years, what’s been produced, we haven’t used at all,” Naini said. The IRGC announced Monday that it was going to begin deploying more of its advanced 1,000 kg ballistic missiles and, in the first series of retaliatory strikes launched since the naming of a new Supreme Leader, fired dozens of missiles at Tel Aviv and at the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet infrastructure in Bahrain.

Iran’s latest round of strikes began as Trump was addressing a press conference in Florida, assuring reporters that Iran’s drone and missile capacity had been “utterly demolished.”

“Their missile capability is down to about 10 percent, maybe less. We’re also hitting where they make missiles and where they deliver missiles,” Trump said. “We’re knocking them out. We know where they all are. We’re knocking them out very quickly. We’re ahead of our initial timeline by a lot.”

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Despite these claims, Iranian forces have continued to conduct counterstrikes across the region and inside Israel, and Iranian leaders have asserted they have the ability to continue the war. “Let them continue lingering in these illusions,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei at a press briefing Monday in Tehran. “They started this war and now realize they are caught in a quagmire.”

While U.S. and Israeli leaders have loudly proclaimed that the use of overwhelming force is evidence that they are winning the war, political and military analysts say this rhetoric obscures the reality that in asymmetrical warfare, the less powerful force does not need to militarily defeat an adversary, but rather force it to a point where it determines the costs of continuing the war is too high.

“Iran’s goal is to impose such a great cost that the war ends and their ‘win condition’ is the war has ended and they are still the guys you have to talk to,” said Amir Husain, author of “Hyperwar: Conflict and Competition in the AI Century,” in an interview with Drop Site. Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks in the region are not aimed at causing random widespread damage or defeating the U.S. and Israel militarily, he said, but rather at inflicting economic damage that forces Trump to cease the war and deters future attacks. “The U.S. is the biggest military machine in the world. Nothing that the U.S. has lost is irreplaceable in time. The question is economic costs and that is really the big driver.”

Iranian officials told Drop Site that after being attacked on February 28 they moved swiftly to implement a series of planned retaliatory strikes that had been war-gamed extensively in the months following the 12-Day War in June 2025. Iran, they said, anticipated that the U.S. and Israel would conduct a systematic assassination campaign against the country’s leaders so Tehran’s military planners preemptively constructed a “mosaic” system where command authority was delegated further down the chain. This allowed commanders from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace division to launch ballistic missile and drone attacks within hours of the war beginning and to strike at predetermined targets even if communications were disabled or senior leaders killed or incapacitated.

“This is the war that Iran has been preparing for for a generation. And the question was always when this existential war was going to take place. And it seems that they believe that that time is now,” said Jon Elmer, an analyst on weapons and military tactics of Palestinian and regional resistance groups for Electronic Intifada. “The Trump administration was treating Iran as if you just come back every few months and destroy and attempt to overthrow the country, overthrow the regime. Iran’s preparation for this war is generational and there’s strategic depth, both within their hardware capacity, but also within their human capacity.”

Since the war began, Iran’s drone and ballistic missile attacks have hit major U.S. airbases, naval headquarters, logistics sites, and missile-defense radar systems across Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Iran also struck a CIA station in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the most significant strikes have been Iran’s attacks on U.S. advanced warning radar systems, the nerve center for the military’s defensive missile apparatus.

Satellite imagery has shown that Iranian attacks have damaged or destroyed advanced AN/TPY-2 and PAC-3 missile defense radars for the THAAD and Patriot systems as well as other radar domes at U.S. bases in the Gulf. In addition to reducing ballistic missile defense effectiveness for the entire region, the disabling of defensive facilities at airbases may force operations to be carried out farther from Iran, further reducing the number of sorties that the U.S. can carry out on a daily basis. On March 9 the satellite imagery provider Planet Labs announced that it would restrict access to its commercial imagery over the region for security reasons.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. had begun relocating components from its THAAD missile defense system in South Korea to the Middle East, as well as more Patriot interceptors that had been deployed to East Asia. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said that Seoul had “expressed opposition,” to the decision, which would increase its own exposure to the threat of war. “The reality is that we cannot fully push through our position” and block the transfers, he added.

In addition to ballistic missile strikes, U.S. officials on Tuesday confirmed the downing of at least 11 MQ-9 Reaper drones over Iran, with another reportedly shot down on Wednesday. Iran claims to have shot down over 80 drones, and the officially confirmed U.S. losses come in addition to significant numbers of downed Israeli drones verified by OSINT researchers and independent monitors. The loss of drones over Iran further degrades the ability to stop Iran from firing by adding a limitation to the intelligence the U.S. can gather on ballistic missile launches.

Prior to the war, concerns over missile interceptor stockpiles, which are costly and time-consuming to replenish, were a major factor in arguments against launching the war. Figures on U.S. stockpiles are classified, but a significant number of interceptors are believed to have been employed in response to Iranian missile bombardments targeting Israel and the Gulf Arab states.

The continued firing of missiles nearly two weeks into the fighting will soon push against logistical limits for the forces deployed, Elmer told Drop Site. “There’s only so many missile interceptors on the [U.S.] destroyers. Once they expend those missiles, they have to go back down to Diego Garcia and reload the missiles. And reloading the missiles looks like offloading a ship. It involves a significant amount of labor. It’s not something that’s simple to do. It’s a multi-day process,” said Elmer. Iran is “using a defense that puts weight on the fact that there’s a distribution over the territory to different autonomous units that can continue the battle if one particular territory runs short or is depleted or is attacked.”

Economic shock waves

The war has sent economic shock waves through the region and the global economy. In an interview with Princeton Alumni Weekly on March 6, Sheikh Nawaf Al‑Sabah, the chief executive officer of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC)—the national oil company of the State of Kuwait and one of the largest oil companies in the world—discussed the impact of the war on oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz. He explained that the company immediately activated a “contingency plan” once strikes on Kuwait began. “What I didn’t expect is, one, that Kuwait would be so consistently targeted, and two, that Iran would be effective in essentially closing down the Strait of Hormuz. Physically it’s not closed, but there’s nothing going through because they’ve threatened every ship that might go through,” Al-Sabah said. He added that while KPC has a strategic tanker fleet prepared to move through the Gulf, the company is still waiting for “some level of assurance on safe passage from the U.S. Navy, but that’s not there yet.”

Al-Sabah explained that KPC had prepared for such a disruption by storing oil outside the Gulf near Japan and Korea, and by loading its tanker fleet before the strikes and sending them out of the Gulf to provide cover for a limited period. However, he emphasized that these steps were only temporary. “There has been oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz for over 80 years, and not a single day of those 80 years has it ever been closed to traffic. After eight decades, we have now entered a new era of geopolitics in the region, where we now have five or six days of practically zero traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which is where you get 20% of the world’s oil supply.”

Major Persian Gulf oil producers have begun sharply reducing output as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has largely ground to a halt, with petroleum storage facilities filling up with unsold crude.

Anusar Farooqi, a geopolitical and defense analyst who authors the Policy Tensor newsletter, said that the sustained ability of the Iranian military to hold closed the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz has been the most revelatory development of the war to date, adding that a failure to coerce the strait open would mean a strategic defeat for the U.S. whose relationship with the Gulf oil monarchies has been built on protection of the waterway as well as their own security.

“There is a specific strategic problem that must be solved: unless the Strait of Hormuz can be reopened, the war cannot be brought to an end. If Hormuz remains closed, the vectors through which Iran can deliver economic pain are effectively unlimited,” Farooqi said. “The economic consequences of a three-month closure of the Strait of Hormuz have been modeled many times, and the results are catastrophic. Unless flows can be restored—even at reduced levels—the situation becomes extremely severe.”

The ability of Iran to hold the strait closed has been built largely on its deployment of large numbers of cheap and effective Shahed drones—a one-way attack UAV used to strike ships in the region as well as targets in the Gulf Arab states. The Shahed, which can be produced for tens of thousands of dollars a piece and deployed from low-cost mobile launch platforms, has transformed the security environment in the Gulf by allowing Iran to strike targets on a level that has effectively shut down the economically vital region.

“The big shock of this war is that Iran has adopted a highly effective defense strategy mixing both counterforce and countervalue targeting,” Farooqi said, referencing attacks that strike both military and infrastructure targets. “The original U.S. strategy for defending the region was based on the assumption that it could deny Iran the option of closing the strait. But the economics of modern warfare—cheap drones, missile proliferation, and technological diffusion—have changed that equation. The old strategy was not simply responsive enough to the spread of precision-strike capabilities to countries like Iran.”

Iranian missile and drone strikes have declined over the past two days. The U.S. has attributed this to the massive bombing and the decimation of its munitions and launch systems. Iranian officials say that the decrease is a result of the initial damage done to U.S. and Israeli defense systems and that they do not need to launch as many missiles or drones.

Husain said that Iran recognizes the asymmetry of the conflict and has engaged in a strategic series of attacks aimed at maximizing the economic damage. Iran’s opening days of attacks degraded the defensive military infrastructure of Gulf states to a degree that Iran is able to more successfully strike. “Initially [Iran] expended 2,000 plus [missiles and drones] because they needed the ability to launch a few and have them get through. They needed to increase their penetration factor, they needed to take out early warning, they needed to take out counter batteries, and they needed to expend their opponents’ interceptors,” he said. “Once that’s done, the strategy shifts into economic cost maximization mode. Their goal is not to flatten a place. Their goal is to impose such a great cost that the war ends and their win condition is the war has ended and they are still the guys you have to talk to.”

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Iran utilizes both mobile and fixed missile launch sites and has spent significant resources embedding many inside mountains, making them difficult for the U.S. to destroy. Within these sites are tunnels and other infrastructure with subterranean missile silos—what are known as “missile cities.” “There are reports that there might be between 70 and 100 Iranian underground launch facilities for ballistic missiles,” Husain said. “Many of these facilities have rail mounted ballistic missiles. We’ve seen video in the past of a rail infrastructure underground carrying multiple Iranian missiles that are almost like an automated magazine. A missile moves into position and then it can fire, then the next one moves into position and so on.” Some of these underground sites house bulldozers and other equipment that can clear debris at entrances that are struck by U.S. or Israeli missiles.

Husain also cited videos of Iranian missiles being launched from a fixed silo with a concealed exit. “It’s underground and suddenly the ground bursts open and this missile is launched,” he said. The U.S. and Israel would “need to launch extremely devastating repeat strikes with some of the largest bombs in the arsenal and maybe—maybe—then you can penetrate and that’s over 100 sites,” he added. “I haven’t really seen any devastating strikes on Iranian missile cities. It seems to me like a lot of that is being held in reserve. So, I haven’t seen anywhere near the evidence that would convince me that all of this is gone.”

Iran is now using long range drones that Husain, a specialist in artificial intelligence, said appear to utilize AI to guide their paths once they extend beyond the range of control and they employ antennas that are more challenging to jam. The Karrar drone also includes air-to-air infrared missiles, a technology that both Russia and Ukraine have used against the other’s drones.

“The drones are extremely precise. They’re able to pick off the particular installations inside the bases, the radar domes in particular. That has been something that they have hit at these bases all across the region. And when you do that, you knock out this multi-layered missile defense system,” said Elmer. “So the strategic outlook for Iran is the longer this battle goes on, the more it tilts in their favor because of the disruption that it causes in the Gulf countries even though the U.S. bases are the targets.”

The launch systems for Iran’s drones are highly mobile and easy to produce, making it much more difficult for the U.S. to target launch sites as it did in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq’s Scud missile launchers. “There are no complex launchers that are necessary,” said Husain. “In the Iraq war there were these complex transporter erector launchers that you could take out and then Iraq didn’t have the ability to launch a Scud. It’s not like that with Iranian drones.”

If Trump decides he wants to end the war, which he has begun referring to as a “short term excursion,” there is no indication Iran would accept a temporary ceasefire similar to the “12-Day War” in June 2025. Iran’s senior leaders have said they do not trust the U.S. and point out that Trump has twice claimed to be negotiating with Tehran only to launch massive attacks. Iran’s strategic position, as articulated by its leadership, is that the war must end on terms that make clear the costs of future attacks on their country. “We are absolutely not seeking a ceasefire,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, on Monday. “We believe the aggressor must be struck in the mouth so it learns a lesson and never again thinks of attacking our beloved Iran.”

There is speculation that Trump has begun speaking of wrapping up the war because of the response of global financial markets and increased pressure from U.S. allies, who fear even greater economic and security consequences. Iranian leaders have been clear they believe Trump underestimated the damage Iran could inflict and overestimated the ability of the U.S. and Israel to swiftly impose a state of collapse on the Iranian state. “They thought that, in a matter of two or three days, they can go for a regime change, they can go for a rapid, clean victory, but they failed. So I believe that the option plan A was a failure, and now they are trying other plans, but all of them have failed as well,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Monday. “I don’t think they have any realistic endgame in their mind,” he added. “I think they are aimless.”

Jawa Ahmad, Drop Site News’s Middle East Research Fellow, contributed to this report.

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Iran is considering reducing its strikes in most Arab nations that house U.S. military bases while expanding attacks against Israel, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site. Iran’s political and military leaders believe their ballistic missile and drone operations targeting U.S. bases and infrastructure have largely achieved their intended aim of degrading major radar systems and depleting stockpiles of interceptors, said the official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

“This is a trend we are likely to observe over the course of the coming week in the ongoing conflict,” the senior Iranian official said. “There has been no change to the overall strategy—this continues the previous defensive approach. In the coming days, it is likely that operations will place greater emphasis on targets associated with Israel, while attacks on U.S. bases in the region may decrease to some extent. However, this reduction may not apply to U.S. bases in two particular countries, where such actions could continue.”

The Iranian official declined to name the countries, but over the past two days, Iran has escalated its attacks in Bahrain, which houses the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet and plays a central role in the military onslaught against Iran. Tehran has repeatedly said it will continue to target U.S. military infrastructure in countries whose territory is used in attacks against Iran.

“Their territories were used to initiate attacks. We have the right to defend ourselves and this act cannot be interpreted as aggression against other countries,” said Esmail Baghaei, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, at a press briefing in Tehran Monday. “I hope those countries have learned the lesson. We urge them not to allow their territories to be used by the U.S. or the Zionist entity to stage attacks against Iran.”

The senior Iranian official emphasized that the situation remains fluid and that decisions on which targets to strike, including inside Gulf countries, was subject to ongoing review by Iran’s political and military leadership.

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In the early stages of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian military forces orchestrated a decentralized retaliatory campaign. Within hours of the strike that assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran activated a regime of retaliatory strikes based on a bank of targets in Israel and across the Persian Gulf that had been planned in advance. As the war reached the end of its first week, according to the senior Iranian official, military commanders and political leaders shifted to more centrally coordinated operations.

“The political and decision-making system has been restructured. In the military sphere as well, we are witnessing more organized and systematic actions,” the senior Iranian official said. “The military system has been operating in a much more organized way, both in timing and in the choice of targets.” Iran’s overarching military strategy, he said, is aimed at “exerting maximum pressure on U.S. and Israeli interests in the region in order to compel them to move toward halting the war and de-escalating the situation.” President Donald Trump, he said, “has cornered both himself and U.S. interests.”

On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted an image on X depicting the dramatic increase in oil and gas prices across the world. “9 days into Operation Epic Mistake, oil prices have doubled while all commodities are skyrocketing,” he wrote. “We know the U.S. is plotting against our oil and nuclear sites in hopes of containing huge inflationary shock. Iran is fully prepared. And we, too, have many surprises in store.”

Iran’s New Leader

The choice by Iran’s Assembly of Experts to name Ayatollah Khamenei’s son Mojtaba as Supreme Leader was a direct rebuke of Trump’s insistence that he must be involved in choosing Iran’s next leader. Mojtaba Khamenei is known for his close relationship with the IRGC, the most elite military and security force in the country. In addition to the assassination of his father, the U.S.-led war has killed his mother, his wife and one of his children. “He believes in taking a firm and strong stance,” the senior Iranian official said. “This decision will probably escalate the war in the short term.”

The choice of Khamenei was viewed in the upper echelons of power in Tehran as asserting the nation’s sovereignty and continuing the position of no surrender or negotiations based on U.S. or Israeli ultimatums.

“It was not just a symbolic or performative act to defy or spite Trump/Israel but a strategic position in the face of the U.S. and Israeli attempt to break Iran’s will to resist. If any other leader was chosen, this may have been interpreted by Trump as weakness and possibly even surrender to U.S. diktat,” said Amal Saad, a lecturer on international relations and politics at Cardiff University in the UK who is writing a book on Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance. “For Iran, resistance is itself the source of institutional legitimacy and the entire governing logic of the Islamic Republic is organized around the assertion of sovereignty against imperial pressure, so the threat of escalation does not function as a deterrent but as a consolidating force that reproduces this resistance and sovereignty assertion.”

Khamenei’s succession as Supreme Leader also offers Iran’s military and political system continuity at a moment when both the U.S. and Israel have threatened to assassinate any leader deemed unacceptable by Trump or Netanyahu, said Abdullah Al-Arian, an Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University in Qatar. “There’s also a sense of this being something of a consensus figure who enjoys a tremendous amount of credibility within a lot of the decision-making bodies within the country,” Al-Arian told Drop Site. “But, a lot of that has less to do with just simply the family lineage and more the fact that he was quite active across a number of the key decisions that have been made in recent times and enjoys good relations with a number of different state bodies and institutions, including the IRGC, but not solely the IRGC.”

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The internal strategic discussions among the Iranian leadership about its retaliatory strikes in the Persian Gulf seeped into public view on Saturday when President Masoud Pezeshkian released a video statement saying that Iran would end its strikes. “I personally apologize to neighbouring countries that were affected by Iran’s actions,” he said. Pezeshkian’s comments were widely reported as an apology for launching retaliatory strikes in those countries, and Trump celebrated his comments as a sign of weakness and surrender. “Iran, which is being beat to HELL, has apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors, and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore. This promise was only made because of the relentless U.S. and Israeli attack,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial on March 7. “They were looking to take over and rule the Middle East. It is the first time that Iran has ever lost, in thousands of years, to surrounding Middle Eastern Countries.”

Iranian officials moved swiftly to clarify that Pezeshkian’s remarks were misinterpreted, and that the Iranian president was effectively acknowledging collateral damage suffered by Gulf states and that Iran reserves its rights to continue striking any U.S. bases or facilities that initiate attacks against Iran. “The enemy had crude misconceptions about my statements; the enemy wants us and neighboring countries to be at war,” Pezeshkian later said. “If they seek to attack and invade our soil from any country, we are compelled to respond to this aggression.”

Soon after Pezeshkian’s original comments, a desalination plant in Iran was bombed, and Tehran accused the U.S. of launching the attack, saying it was a war crime to target vital civilian infrastructure. “President Pezeshkian expressed openness to de-escalation within our region—provided that our neighbors’ airspace, territory, and waters are not used to attack the Iranian people,” Araghchi wrote on X Saturday after the desalination plant was bombed. “Gesture to our neighbors was almost immediately killed by President Trump’s misinterpretation of our capabilities, determination and intent.”

That night, Iranian forces conducted heavy strikes across the region, including an attack on the U.S. base in Bahrain, which Iran said was the site from which the attack on the desalination plant was launched.

Tactical Shifts, No Surrender

The senior Iranian official maintained that internal discussions about shifting away from strikes inside regional countries and focusing on striking Israel have largely resulted from Iran’s military assessments of the damage inflicted on U.S. capacity in the Gulf. But the possible shift in tactics also coincides with nascent and fragile diplomatic efforts at backdoor diplomacy with countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council. With the exception of Oman, these Gulf states have spent the past week portraying Iran as an aggressor, while almost entirely avoiding any denunciations of the U.S. or Israel. They have characterized Iran’s strikes as attacks on their sovereignty, offering no credence to Iran’s claims to be engaged in retaliation against U.S. military targets.

Over the weekend, Bahrain—with the support of France—circulated a draft UN Security Council Resolution on behalf of GCC countries that “condemns unequivocally in the strongest terms the egregious attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The draft paints Iran as an unprovoked aggressor flouting international law and deliberately targeting civilian sites. Russia is pursuing its own resolution, which does not name Iran, the U.S., or Israel, but calls on “all parties to immediately stop their military activities and refrain from further escalation” and “condemns in the strongest terms all attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure.” The Russian draft calls for a return to negotiations “without further delay.”

If Iran does reduce its strikes inside the borders of most Gulf countries, as the senior Iranian official suggested, Tehran would expect those nations to pressure the U.S. to end the war, a political calculation complicated by these states’ reliance on the U.S. military and their deep business ties to Trump and his family. Trump has signed massive business deals in the Gulf and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s firm is largely bankrolled by Gulf money.

Iran’s Arab neighbors understand they must “walk this tightrope very cautiously” in their approach to Trump, knowing that they could quickly fall out of favor with him, said Al-Arian.

“This comes down to the bigger question about what leverage these states are willing to exert regarding the U.S. and Israel and their maximalist goals and the fact that until the U.S. sees a reason for it to back down from its stated positions, then diplomacy can only go so far between the states of the region,” Al-Arian told Drop Site. “It’s pretty clear that all of this is a result of U.S.-Israeli aggression. The reason that many of these states have probably resisted stating the obvious is in part due to maintaining what they see as a more positive and open direct line to Washington and to the U.S. President. Any words of condemnation in public would be seen potentially as affecting or harming that relationship which they are depending on, in part, to bring this to an end at some point.”

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The substantial economic damage that has rocked the region and the global economy over the past week is the most likely pressure point that Trump will face from Gulf nations in any discussions about ending the war, rather than concerns for Iran’s sovereignty or the well being of the Iranian people. “I think the argument that is probably being made is the kind of mutual harm, the broader economic consequences that are now reverberating globally, the shockwaves that are starting to even begin to be felt within the U.S. Economy in a way that’s going to then give the U.S. Administration more domestic considerations going forward,” Al-Arian said. “There’s certainly a fear, based on Trump’s record, of how things could escalate to where countries that are one at one point considered to be staunch allies could all of a sudden find themselves in a different column.”

Iranian officials maintain that they have not reached out in any way to discuss a ceasefire with the Trump administration and that they intend to continue their counterstrikes against Israel and any U.S. bases used in attacks on Iran. “Iran’s position [is] that it will continue to defend itself firmly until a credible and robust framework is established for a ceasefire and for preventing any renewed attacks by the United States or Israel,” said the senior Iranian official.

Saad said she thinks it is unlikely Iran would accept any temporary deal with the U.S. that leaves open the possibility that another war could be launched again in the near future.

“Iran will not accept any ceasefire at this stage because what it is pursuing is not a mere end to hostilities, which can and will be easily broken by Israel and the United States, but a deterrence-restoring outcome that creates the conditions for a lasting and enforceable settlement,” she said. “The strategic logic is that holding out now, despite the costs, is the precondition for an agreement that actually holds—a ceasefire concluded only after Iran has demonstrated sufficient retaliatory capacity to make the cost of violating it prohibitive for the other side.”

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Since launching a scorched earth bombing campaign against Iran on February 28 despite ongoing negotiations, President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to portray the Iranian government as cowering in the face of American might, appealing to him to make a deal to end the war. “They have no air defense. All of their airplanes are gone. Their communications are gone. Missiles are gone. Launches are gone. About 60% and 64%, respectively. Other than that, they’re doing quite well,” Trump quipped on Thursday. “And they’re calling. They’re saying, ‘How do we make a deal?’ I said, ‘You’re being a little bit late,’ and we want to fight now more than they do.”

Trump’s claims that Iran has sought to negotiate a ceasefire with the U.S. are a “huge lie,” a senior Iranian official told Drop Site. On Thursday, Abbas Araghchi similarly told NBC News that Iran has not had any communications with the U.S. through backchannels since his meeting in Geneva last week with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. “No, not after Thursday that we met last time. We met last Thursday. We negotiated for almost seven hours,” he said.

“No negotiations from the Iranian side are conceivable until the official announcement by the Supreme Leader of Iran,” the senior official, who is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said. “The decision of Iran’s military forces is the continuation of the defense of the country against attacks by Israel and the United States, and the long-term management of the war imposed by foreign forces.”

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian leaders were assassinated last Saturday in the opening strikes of the U.S. war. The Iranian government moved swiftly to name an interim leadership council consisting of President Masoud Pezeshkian, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the head of Iran’s judiciary, and Ayatollah Ali Arafi, a prominent member of Iran’s Guardian Council and Assembly of Experts—the body that is ultimately responsible for choosing the country’s Supreme Leader.

Iran is expected to name a new Supreme Leader in the coming days. Some reports indicate that a leader may already have been selected by the Assembly of Experts. “The voting has been conducted,” the Iranian official told Drop Site. “Security and protection measures for the new leader must be put in place before they can announce his name.”

While Iran denied communications with the U.S., the official said other nations had reached out to Iran appealing for it to consider discussing a ceasefire. “Our assessment is that the USA side has requested their mediation. These requests have so far been rejected by our side,” the official said, adding that he believed such claims by Trump were part of a broader propaganda campaign.

“Some countries have begun mediation efforts,” Pezeshkian said on Friday. “Let’s be clear: we are committed to lasting peace in the region yet we have no hesitation in defending our nation’s dignity and sovereignty. Mediation should address those who underestimated the Iranian people and ignited this conflict.” Pezeshkian did not offer any details on the nature of these diplomatic initiatives.

Soon after Pezeshkian’s statement was posted on X/Twitter, Trump took to Truth Social to demand full capitulation from Iran. “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” Trump wrote on Friday. “After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. ‘MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).’”

On Wednesday, in an interview with Drop Site, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei also denied that Iran had asked to resume talks with the U.S. “They are killing our citizens. Municipalities, schools, hospitals, medical centers, sports clubs—everywhere is being bombarded and targeted by missiles by [the] Israeli and American war machine. Do you think any Iranian with common sense would be really in a position to reach out to the United States under these circumstances?” Baghaei asked. “We were negotiating with the United States,” he said, pointing out that another round of talks was scheduled for Monday, March 2. “Just two days before that, the United States and Israel attacked Iran,” he added. “We were betrayed. Diplomacy was betrayed.”

The Iranian Military Mosaic

As the war nears a week, the U.S. and Israel continue to rain missiles and bombs on cities and villages across Iran, inflicting massive destruction not only to government buildings, military infrastructure, air defense capacity and missile systems, but also directly striking civilian buildings, including schools, hospitals and parks. Among the dead are 168 young girls killed in a direct strike on their school in Minab in the opening hours of the U.S.-Israeli assault. The World Health Organization said that 13 medical facilities in Iran have been struck in attacks over the past week. According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, the death toll in Iran is at least 1,332, and roughly 30 percent of those killed are children.

Trump and his aides—most prominently War Secretary Pete Hegseth—speak of the war as a sporting event, gloating over the U.S. military’s overwhelming firepower advantage. “Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight,” Hegseth said Thursday during a visit to U.S. Central Command. “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be. Thus far, Operation Epic Fury has delivered twice the air power of shock and awe of Iraq in 2003.” Hegseth promised the U.S. would intensify the bombing, including through the use of 2,000-pound gravity bombs. “We are just getting started,” he boasted.

“Iran is not the same country it was a week ago,” Trump told CNN on Friday. “A week ago they were powerful, and now they’ve been indeed neutered.”

While it is undeniable that Iran’s military forces have absorbed massive damage and that the U.S. and Israel have degraded its air defenses, making it easier to fly warplanes over the country with greater frequency, Tehran is exhibiting an ongoing capacity to launch missiles and drones at both Israel and at U.S. military, diplomatic, and intelligence targets across the region. Since Monday, the State Department has been sending Americans in more than a dozen countries urgent messages to “DEPART NOW,” spurring an exodus of tens of thousands from the Gulf. U.S. embassies and consulates, several of which have come under attack, have shut down and U.S. military and civilian personnel have been moved away from bases.

Since the bombing started, Iranians have regularly gathered in crowds in the streets and squares across the country to denounce the U.S.-Israeli war and Iranian officials have maintained that the country will remain defiant and that capitulation is not an option. The U.S. has repeatedly said that it believes Iranians will rise up against the government and Trump has openly called on anti-government Iranians to seize power as the U.S. decimates Iranian military and security forces.

In January, large peaceful protests against the government in Tehran descended into bloodshed after groups of people began attacking police stations, mosques, and government buildings. In response, Iranian forces violently cracked down. The Iranian government says that roughly 3,100 people were killed during the unrest, blaming the deaths on Israeli and U.S.-backed “terrorist” forces, while human rights organizations asserted the death toll was much higher and accused Iranian forces of indiscriminately shooting protesters.

Throughout the past week, Iranian security agencies have sent out text messages to Iranian citizens, warning of potential plots to create unrest and threatening that “any movement that disrupts security will be met with [a] strong fist.” The agencies warned against engaging in actions “that could pave the way for enemy exploitation” and asking citizens to report suspicious activity. “If you observe any suspicious anti-security incidents, such as movements of terrorist groups, movement of weapons and military equipment, and misinformation and anti-psychological security measures, please send reports to your servants in the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps],” read one message confirmed as authentic by Drop Site. Another government text message verified by Drop Site said that “the next step” in the U.S.-Israeli war will include efforts to spark “terrorist acts and street riots.”

While there is little doubt Iranian authorities would respond forcefully to anti-government protests as the country is under bombardment, the U.S.-Israeli bombing also casts any anti-government protests as pro-Trump and in favor of regime change. “Now it’s a very different dynamic where if you’re protesting right now, it comes off as explicit support for a foreign entity that is killing your fellow Iranians,” said Ali Ahmadi, an Iranian analyst who is a fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy. “It is a very different dynamic.”

While the senior Iranian official who spoke to Drop Site acknowledged the damage wrought to Iran’s military infrastructure, he said the U.S. and Israel were exaggerating its impact. Prior to the bombing, he said, Iran engaged in extensive planning for a protracted war with the U.S. and Israel that would include leadership decapitation strikes, including by delegating authority further down the command structure to engage in military action.

“This mosaic of different Iranian military commands around the country operate independently and continue firing missiles, firing drones, and basically running out the stock of American interceptors that’s available not just to the United States itself, but also to Israel and the Gulf states,” Ahmadi said. “You have different military sectors in different parts of the country with predetermined strike packages, ways of coordinating without talking, knowing each other’s game plan and responding to attacks and counter attacking. There doesn’t need to be a centralized command structure.”

Senior Iranian military commanders, meanwhile, have claimed that their missile and drone attacks have done far more extensive damage to U.S. air defense systems inside the borders of its regional Arab allies that house U.S. military facilities than the U.S. and Israel are publicly acknowledging. Iranian missile strikes have hit THAAD anti-aircraft sites and early warning radar detection systems, including the billion dollar ballistic-missile early-warning radar at Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which feeds data to THAAD and Patriot systems throughout the region of incoming missile attacks. An open source investigation by the New York Times confirmed that in just the first three days of the war, Iranian strikes “damaged structures that are part of or near communication and radar systems on at least seven U.S. military sites across the Middle East.”

Sources from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps told state media over the past two days that in the opening phase of its retaliatory attacks, Iran largely used missiles produced between 2010-2014 and that it was beginning to deploy more modern, longer range missiles against U.S. and Israeli targets. After U.S. officials claimed Iran’s pace and scope of attacks seemed to be slowing on Thursday, that night Iran launched heavy attacks at U.S. facilities in multiple Gulf countries and successfully struck multiple sites across Israel.

The initial days of Iran’s military response, the Iranian official told Drop Site, were aimed at “setting the stage to unleash a lot more power,” utilizing “stronger and more advanced missile weapons in [Iran’s] arsenal.”

Iran has carried out strikes against civilian targets in Arab nations, including hotels and other buildings in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Iranian officials told Drop Site that some of the buildings were housing U.S. military or intelligence personnel. Without confirming that any officials were in sites hit in Bahrain, the U.S. embassy did evacuate its staff from hotels in Manama and Israel recently conducted a special airlift to exfiltrate Israeli government employees from the UAE.

Tehran has also denied that it bombed an airfield in British-controlled Cyprus. A drone hit a hangar used by American U2 spy planes. Britain initially accused Iran of launching the attack, but UK defense officials later said it did not come from Iran and that they believe it was launched from Lebanon or Iraq. Iran likewise claimed it was not behind an attack on an airport in Azerbaijan.

Throughout the past week, Iran has accused Israel of engaging in “false flag” attacks in an effort to draw other nations into the U.S.-Israeli war. “Attacks have been carried out that have been attributed to Iran,” the Iranian official said. “These attacks are false-flag operations intended to provoke the countries of the region into entering a regional war.”

No evidence has been produced to indicate Israel has been responsible for any of the strikes in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries or Azerbaijan.

On Thursday, following a meeting of the foreign ministers of European nations and the Gulf Cooperation Council, the EU and GCC officials issued a joint statement condemning Iran for its “inexcusable attacks” in the region and calling on Tehran to “cease immediately.” Attacks in Bahrain, Kuwait, and the U.A.E. have killed eight people, including two Kuwaiti soldiers and an 11-year-old girl. At least 11 have been killed in Israel. Six U.S. military members were also killed on the second day of the war when an Iranian drone hit an operations center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait. The statement ignored entirely the mounting civilian death toll in Iran and the bombing of civilian sites.

The GCC countries, Ahmadi said, were blindsided by the actual impact the war against Iran has had on Gulf Arab countries. “I don’t think they expected to get hit hard. I don’t think they expected the U.S. to focus so heavily on defending Israel to their detriment,” Ahmadi said. “The foundation of their governance philosophy is the idea that America is going to put a lot of bases in their countries and they’re going to be essentially guaranteed security regardless of what America even uses their bases to do. And that creates the foundation for GCC stability and prosperity. And now that’s all been thrown into chaos.”

Iran has said repeatedly that it would intentionally strike oil infrastructure only if its facilities were attacked first and it has denied striking such sites in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. “As Iran has previously announced, it will only attack energy infrastructure if Iran’s energy infrastructure is targeted by the United States or Israel,” the Iranian official told Drop Site. “The logic of this position is also clear: energy infrastructure in the region constitutes USA interests, directly or indirectly.”

On Friday, the price of Brent crude oil surged past $90 a barrel for the first time in two years. Qatar’s Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi warned in an interview on Friday that if the conflict with Iran continues for several weeks, it could “bring down the economies of the world,” predicting oil prices could reach $150 per barrel amid ongoing disruptions to shipping and production in the region. “Everybody’s energy price is going to go higher. There will be shortages of some products and there will be a chain reaction of factories that can’t supply,” al-Kaabi told the Financial Times. Qatar also supplies about 20% of the world’s liquid natural gas and has stopped production since Monday.

Trump’s Regime Change Visions

Since the first bombs struck Iran last weekend, Trump has been on a telephone tour with a variety of Washington, D.C. journalists, bragging about the war he unleashed and engaging in theoretical discussions about what might happen next in Iran.

Trump told Axios’s Barak Ravid on Thursday that he must approve of any future Iranian leader. “I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela,” he said in a reference to the U.S. operation to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and the consolidation of U.S. support for Venezuela’s vice president. “We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran.” Trump told CNN’s Dana Bash on Friday, “It’s gonna work very easily. It’s going to work like [it] did in Venezuela,” adding, “I don’t mind religious leaders, I work with a lot of religious leaders and they are fantastic.”

In recent days, there has been a spate of news reports that the CIA has been arming Kurdish rebels in Iraq and may try to deploy them in a ground invasion in Iran. On Thursday, multiple media reports said Kurdish forces had already crossed over into Iran—but Kurdish sources rejected this claim wholesale. Any Kurdish effort would be up against a large and well-equipped national army. The concept seems to be one component of an emerging U.S. plan that envisions widespread instability gripping Iran, accompanied by defections and support for armed attacks against government forces in a campaign to overthrow the government.

“I don’t know what capabilities they’re going to be able to bring over from other places to fight the Iranian government,” said Ahmadi. “They’re dancing around trying to figure out options because sending 100,000 American troops isn’t really politically viable.”

When it comes to attempts to foment unrest, Ahmadi believes both the U.S. and Israel are misjudging the cohesion of the Iranian state and the strength of its governing, security, and military structures.

“You have a very decentralized network of ideological, security, economic organizations, all of whom are loyal to the founding principles of the Islamic Republic. They are decentralized enough to the point where killing individual people is not going to really accomplish very much,” Ahmadi said. “This is just a huge miscalculation on the part of the Israelis and the Americans, a miscalculation they keep making over and over and over and over again where they think Iran functions the same way as Hezbollah, which is a non-state actor. This is an actual country. It’s a government. The IRGC is an actual military force. It has a command structure. It has lines of security succession. Decapitation strikes don’t really accomplish much.”

Iran has dismissed Trump’s calls for the government to surrender and senior officials have predicted that once the U.S. realizes that Iranian retaliatory strikes cannot be entirely prevented and a domestic uprising is not occurring, the U.S. and Israel will seek an end to the war. “We didn’t ask for a ceasefire even last time,” Araghchi told NBC, referring to the 12 Day War in June 2025. “In [the] previous time, it was Israel who asked for a ceasefire. They asked for an unconditional ceasefire after 12 days that we resisted against their aggression,” he said. “We are not asking for a ceasefire, and we don’t see any reason why we should negotiate with the United States when we negotiated with them twice, and every time they attacked us in the middle of the negotiations.”

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On Saturday, President Donald Trump went to TruthSocial to announce the U.S. and Israel had been successful in assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote. “He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do.”

The New York Times followed with a breathless account published Sunday purporting to tell the secret story of how the CIA and Israel hunted down Khamenei, “tracking him for months” and “gaining more confidence about his locations and his patterns,” before pinpointing his location so he could be killed. “People briefed on the operation described it as a product of good intelligence and months of preparations,” the report claimed.

Khamenei’s secret location, it turned out, was simply his office.

The U.S. and Israel have consistently claimed Khamenei was in hiding. “This is basically just fabricated drama to make Trump look bigger and more dramatic than he really is,” a senior Iranian official told Drop Site. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about internal matters.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council “personally recommended to [Khamenei] that he relocate, change his workplace, and even adjust his living arrangements for safety reasons,” the Iranian official said. “But [Khamenei] had a completely different perspective on moving—he insisted on keeping things as normal and ordinary as possible, without seeking extra security measures or standing out in any way.”

For breaking news updates, follow Drop Site News on X.

Ali Larijani, the chair of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said Iranian officials anticipated that the U.S. and Israel would target Khamenei. “They decided to strike him first. This analysis was also circulating among military circles—that they were pursuing exactly this objective,” he told Iranian state TV after Iran confirmed Khamenei was killed.

“This event is an extraordinarily bitter one for us,” Larijani added. “America and the Zionists, through this act, have effectively created a situation for Iran—for the Iranian people—that we must say: You have burned the heart of the Iranian people. We will burn your hearts in return.”

As of Sunday morning, the Iranian Red Crescent and state-linked media have reported preliminary casualty figures of over 200 people killed and more than 740 injured across Iran, though the actual toll is expected to be significantly higher. One strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab killed 165, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

Within hours of the U.S.-Israeli bombing, Iran began launching barrages of ballistic missiles at Israel in attacks that have so far killed at least 11 people and injured several hundred. On Sunday morning, an Iranian missile struck a building near Jerusalem, in an attack that is estimated to have killed at least nine people in a bomb shelter.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran considers bloodshed and revenge against the perpetrators and commanders of this crime as its legitimate duty and right, and will fulfill this great responsibility and duty with all its might,” Pezeshkian said Sunday in a statement carried on state TV.

Iran has also unleashed a series of sustained missile and drone attacks against U.S. military facilities across the Persian Gulf, striking the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, as well as targets in Jordan. The UAE reported three deaths and 58 minor injuries in Iranian strikes, with most of those impacted believed to be foreign workers. Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest airline hub, was also damaged and partially shut down after an unidentified projectile struck one of its concourses. Two were also killed in Iraq and one in Kuwait.

The attacks have also drawn the first acknowledged U.S. military casualties of the war. In a statement early Sunday, U.S. Central Command announced that three American service members had been killed and five others seriously wounded during “Operation Epic Fury,” adding that several other additional personnel had sustained minor shrapnel injuries. The soldiers killed had been deployed to a base in Kuwait supporting the operation, U.S. officials told NBC News.

Iranian officials have said their initial response to the U.S.-Israeli bombing, while unprecedented in scope, did not represent the full force of Tehran’s potential retaliatory strikes.

Is a Diplomatic Solution Still Possible?

The Saturday strikes on Khamenei’s office wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s political and military structure and killed several of the late Supreme Leader’s family members. Iran, which has spent decades investing in a horizontal leadership structure to defend against this type of attack, announced a new leadership structure. Along with President Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s new interim leadership council includes Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the head of Iran’s judiciary, and Ayatollah Ali Arafi, a prominent member of Iran’s Guardian Council and Assembly of Experts—the body that is ultimately responsible for choosing the country’s Supreme Leader.

The White House said President Trump intends to speak with what a U.S. official called the “new potential leadership” of Iran in the coming days and Trump has suggested the war may be shorter in duration than he initially projected. “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” Trump told The Atlantic. “They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner. They played too cute.”

For now, Trump said in a post on Truth Social, “heavy” bombing would continue “uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary.”

In a pre-recorded message on Sunday afternoon, Trump said, “I once again urge the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian military, police to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death. It will be certain death. Won’t be pretty. I call upon all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment.”

Likewise, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would expand its strikes. “In the coming days, we will strike thousands of targets of the terrorist regime,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on social media. “We will create the conditions for the brave people of Iran to free themselves from the chains of tyranny.”

Trump said he still believes there will be an uprising in Iran spurred by the U.S.-Israeli bombings and assassinations. “I think it’s gonna happen,” Trump told the Atlantic.

“Everyone said that if Ali Khamenei is killed the people will come into the streets to overthrow the regime, and so far that has not happened. Some people have cheered, but overall the system is quite resilient,” said Sina Azodi, director of Middle East studies at Georgetown University. “One thing the Israelis have tried for the past two years is decapitating the top echelon of their enemy and expecting them to implode tomorrow. That works well against non-state actors, but not against a state actor that is quite resilient, has a constitution and other structures in place, and that in its early years already had to go through the experience of total war and leadership assassinations.”

Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American political analyst who served as an advisor to former Iranian President Mohammed Katami, said Iran has been preparing for major U.S.-Israeli attacks since the 12-day war last June, during which more than 1,000 Iranians were killed, including senior military commanders. “Their military leadership is quite deep in terms of both the regular army, the IRGC, and the Navy. They have an ability to sustain a war, perhaps even longer than the U.S. wants to,” Majd told Drop Site. “There will come a point at which Trump may decide Trump is the one who wants the off-ramp, not Iran.”

Watch Drop Site’s full conversation with Majd here.

Majd said that if Iran decided to start targeting oil infrastructure in the Persian Gulf or completely shut off access to the Strait of Hormuz, the economic consequences would be significant. “A financial hit on America and Western Europe is something that nobody wants for a long period of time, certainly not Trump,” he said. “So there’s going to be an advantage for Trump to have [an off ramp]. But if he really believes that Iran is then going to come in and say, ‘Enough, we give up, whatever you want, we’ll do,’ that’s very unlikely.”

Iran, meanwhile, has said it remains open to diplomacy and has denounced the U.S. “deception” in the purported negotiations that preceded the bombings that began Saturday morning. Technical talks were scheduled for Monday in Vienna. Oman’s Foreign Minister, Badr Al Busaidi, the chief mediator of the talks between Iran and the U.S., said Sunday he had spoken with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. In a statement, Al Busaidi called for a ceasefire and said that Araghchi told him Iran was open “to any serious efforts that contribute to stopping the escalation and returning to stability.”

In an appearance Sunday on ABC’s This Week, Araghchi was asked by host George Stephanopoulos if a diplomatic resolution was still possible. “You answer this question,” Araghchi shot back. “We negotiated with the United States twice in the past 12 months. And in both cases, they attacked us in the middle of negotiation. And that has become a very bitter experience for us.”

Dr. Foad Izadi, a professor at the University of Tehran, said that Iranian forces still have not used their most powerful weapons systems, including its hypersonic and long-range ballistic missiles, in retaliatory strikes against Israel and U.S. bases and vessels in the region. If meaningful steps toward a ceasefire or a return to diplomatic talks do not emerge soon, he said, Iran is likely to intensify its military responses.

“[Iranian leaders] are getting this idea that you either use it or lose it. Iran has some capabilities and the other side is hitting these capabilities, so the sense is that Iran should use these capabilities as long as they remain available,” said Izadi, a prominent supporter of the Iranian government, in an interview with Drop Site. “They have to basically measure how much they can use, when they can use it, keeping in mind that they may not be able to access these stockpiles if they wait too long. But when you lose senior commanders, then sometimes making decisions on these issues becomes more difficult.”

Iran’s Strikes in the Gulf

The Gulf states have issued strong denunciations of “Iranian aggression” against them, while avoiding explicit demands for an end to the U.S. attacks that are being launched with the use of military and intelligence facilities on their soil.

“To the countries of the region: We are not seeking to attack you,” said Larijani, one of the central figures directing Iran’s current strategy. “When the bases located in your country are used against us, and when the United States carries out operations in the region relying on these forces, then we will target those bases. For these bases are not part of the land of those countries; rather, they are American soil,” he wrote on X.

But Iran has not only struck U.S. military facilities. It has also hit civilian airports in Kuwait, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai, as well as hotels and other buildings in the UAE and Bahrain. “We have begun targeting their military bases. They evacuated their bases and moved into hotels, turning civilians into human shields,” Araghchi charged in an interview with Al Jazeera. “We are trying to target only military personnel and facilities assisting U.S. operations against Iran.”

On Sunday, an Iranian strike also hit a port in Oman, the central mediator in the recent negotiations between Iran and the US. Araghchi said the strike was not intended as an attack on Oman and indicated that it was the result of pre-selected targets developed before the war began. “We have already told our Armed Forces to be careful about the targets that they choose,” he told Al Jazeera. “Our military units are now, in fact, independent and somehow isolated, and they are acting based on general instructions given to them in advance.”

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia summoned the Iranian ambassador on Saturday and issued a statement condemning what it described as “cowardly Iranian attacks” targeting its territory. In a Sunday interview with CNN, United Arab Emirates Minister of State for International Cooperation Reem Al-Hashimy conveyed a similar combative stance, saying that the UAE won’t “sit idly by.” The UAE also said it had closed its embassy in Tehran and withdrawn its ambassador and diplomatic mission.

In an extraordinary meeting held via video conference on Sunday, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) condemned “treacherous Iranian attacks” on GCC countries and Jordan and stated that it will take “all necessary measures to defend its security and stability,” including the option to “respond to the aggression.” The GCC said that attacks happened despite “repeated assurances that their territories would not be used to launch any attack” on Iran and urged for decisive action from the UN Security Council, “noting that the stability of the Gulf region is not only a regional concern but also a cornerstone of global economic stability and maritime navigation.”

Araghchi said that Iran’s Arab neighbors “should be angry at the United States and Israel,” adding, “They should not pressure us to stop this war; they should pressure the other side.”

Analysts have suggested that some of the targets hit by Iran in the opening phase of the war were selected because Iranian intelligence believed they housed Israeli intelligence and defense companies or personnel. The U.S. embassy in Bahrain evacuated government personnel from hotels and issued a warning for citizens to avoid hotels in the country after an Iranian strike on the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Manama.

“Right after the 12-day war, with the threat of a new regional conflict looming, Iran’s security and military agencies jointly put together a target bank that included potential strikes on American and Israeli personnel and forces if things escalated into a full-blown regional war,” the senior Iranian official told Drop Site. “The fact that they’ve now pinpointed the residences/locations of some of these forces has really caught the Americans and Israelis off guard. And yeah, the precision and targeting of these attacks are getting sharper and more focused by the day.” There has been no independent confirmation that any of the sites hit by Iran housed Israeli intelligence facilities or personnel.

“The UAE is host to a lot of Israeli intelligence companies, arms companies, and Iran considers those offices legitimate targets because they’re Israeli targets,” Izadi said. “The UAE government has allowed Israelis to basically have an unofficial base in different parts of UAE. Part of the Israeli operation against Iran is run out of the UAE. So Iran has been monitoring these places.”

On Sunday, the Israeli Broadcasting Authority reported that an Iranian drone struck an apartment inhabited by Israelis in Abu Dhabi near the Israeli embassy. The UAE is one of the only Muslim countries in the world to have normalized relations with Israel and officials from both countries often publicly celebrate their close ties.

Amid a wave of attacks on targets in the UAE including iconic buildings like the Burj al-Arab hotel, which was reportedly struck by a drone, multiple fires visible from satellite imagery also broke out at one of the berths at Jebel Ali Port after debris from what local authorities claimed was as an “aerial interception” struck the area. Jebel Ali is the largest container shipping port in the Middle East and a critical node in the Emirati economy. DP World, which operates the facility, announced that it was suspending operations at the port temporarily in response to the attack.

The leaders of France, Germany and the UK issued a joint statement Sunday that appeared to indicate they may get involved directly with the U.S.-Israeli war. “We will take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially through enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source,” they wrote. “We have agreed to work together with the US and allies in the region on this matter.“

Faced with an existential war, Iran has long signaled it could retaliate by striking the global economy—including by hitting oil facilities around the Persian Gulf. In addition to the attacks on Jebel Ali, at least two ships, including an oil tanker, in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz were also hit by projectiles over the past 24 hours. The Iranian government has warned ships not to attempt to cross the strait, through which roughly 20% of global oil and gas production flows. As of Sunday, over 200 ships, including at least 150 oil and gas tankers, are estimated to have dropped anchor outside the waterway, while commercial traffic has plunged 70%. Oil prices have already risen by over 10% to over $80 a barrel and could rise above $100 in the event of further escalation.

“Iran’s strategy and only real option is to continue attacking and increase the costs on the Americans and U.S. allies. Part of that strategy of increasing costs means attacking the GCC countries but also hitting U.S. bases in the region. We have now seen the three Americans killed and the Iranians know that Americans are sensitive to casualties including in a midterm election year,” said Azodi. “For Iran, an ideal scenario might be to fight for three to four weeks after which there is no clear winner at the end—they are trying to increase pressure in every way. They cannot win the war but they can absorb a lot of punishment and can force it to stop.”

Jawa Ahmad, Drop Site’s Middle East research fellow, contributed to this report.

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At approximately 9:40 a.m. local time in Iran, President Donald Trump launched what he bluntly characterized as a regime change war aimed at eliminating the Iranian leadership, destroying the country’s missile system and naval forces, and calling on Iranians to rise up and seize control in the aftermath of the attacks. The bombing campaign was initiated by Israel but Trump’s statement announcing U.S. involvement made clear the stakes to Iranians: “Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” Trump said in a taped statement on Truth Social soon after Operation Epic Fury began. “This will be probably your only chance for generations.”

In what has now become a signature component of Trump’s approach to Iran, the U.S. constructed a false veneer of continuing diplomatic negotiations, only to turn around and launch a major attack.

In the months running up to the strike, Israel and the U.S. reportedly engaged in close coordination to synchronize attacks aimed at decapitating the leadership of Iran and degrading its ballistic missile program. This morning, strikes targeted both the Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei and President Masoud Pezeshkian; while Israel claimed the targeting was successful, Iran denied that either had been killed.

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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking in an interview with NBC, said Iran’s supreme leader and president are still alive “as far as I know.” Araghchi added that while “one or two,” commanders may have been killed, senior government officials including the head of judiciary and the parliament speaker survived.

Technical negotiations on the nuclear file were scheduled for Monday in Vienna, and the Omani foreign minister—who had been mediating the talks—had just concluded a visit to the U.S. where he met with Vice President JD Vance and proclaimed that a diplomatic agreement was within reach. It was the precise tactic Trump employed last June when the U.S. and Israel initiated a 12-day bombing campaign targeting Iranian nuclear facilities and killing more than 1,000 Iranians in the process.

“Once again, diplomacy has been reduced to an instrument of deception, and international law has been openly disregarded by the United States. The assassination or elimination of Iranian political and military officials will have no impact on the continuity and authority of the Iranian system,” a senior Iranian official told Drop Site on the condition of anonymity because he was not officially authorized to speak. “We had anticipated that unlawful and aggressive attacks by the United States and Israel were far more probable than the acceptance of a fair and effective agreement. For this very reason, the military and political posture of the country had been carefully planned and structured for precisely such circumstances.”

In his announcement of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, Trump spoke in sweeping terms about the military and political objectives, boasting that “no military on earth is even close to its power, strength, or sophistication.”

“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally totally, again, obliterated. We’re going to annihilate their navy,” Trump said. He called on members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) to lay down their weapons and surrender. “ I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or in the alternative, face certain death,” Trump said. “You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death.”

Dr. Foad Izadi, a professor at the University of Tehran, told Drop Site that despite the massive deployment of military assets in the region and Trump’s vow to enact regime change, he believes the stated aim will ultimately fail. “They cannot do it. It’s not possible—physically not possible. Iran has a population of over 90 million. You cannot kill everybody,” Izadi said. “Iran is not an organization or a small entity. Iran is a serious country with a serious history. And we have seen aggression in the 7,000 years of Iranian history. And the aggressors have been defeated and Iran has continued to live.”

In contrast with previous attacks by the U.S. and Israel, within hours of bombs hitting cities across Iran, Tehran unleashed a series of ballistic missile and drone strikes aimed at Israel and U.S. military facilities across the Persian Gulf, as well as in Jordan. Iran targeted U.S. assets in Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.

It is not yet clear what targets were hit in Israel. Videos of Iranian Shahed drones and ballistic missiles hitting U.S. positions quickly emerged on social media including attacks on radar stations in Bahrain. Only one casualty has been officially reported so far in the attacks—a laborer in the UAE killed by shrapnel from an intercepted missile. Reports have also emerged online of strikes targeting the Muwaffaq al-Salti airbase in Jordan, which is hosting dozens of U.S. military aircraft deployed for use in the operation.

“The instruction [the Iranian military] had was that once the US or Israel attacked, the targets that were supposed to be hit were supposed to be hit, and they needed no more instructions, and that’s what they did. And this is going to continue,” said Izadi, who maintains close contacts with members of Iran’s leadership. “The consensus here is that the pain for the other side should be strong enough so these types of attacks every few months are not carried out against Iran.”

Trump acknowledged that U.S. personnel could be killed in his war based on Iran’s capacity to launch strong ballistic missile counterstrikes. “My administration has taken every possible step to minimize the risk to U.S. personnel in the region. Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties,” Trump said. “That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”

Gulf Arab countries and Jordan all issued condemnations of Iranian “aggression,” but did not condemn the U.S. launching the war against Iran. Saudi Arabia quickly condemned the Iranian counter attack instead of the initial U.S. and Israeli strikes, with the foreign ministry saying in a statement that it “denounces in strongest terms the blatant Iranian aggression and the flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan. The Kingdom affirms its full solidarity with and unwavering support for the brotherly countries, and its readiness to place all its capabilities at their disposal in support of any measures they may undertake.”

“The failure of countries in the region—especially those hosting American military bases—to condemn this criminal U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran is deeply regrettable. This is not merely an Iranian matter; it is a matter concerning the entire region,” the Iranian official told Drop Site. Pointing out that Iran is striking U.S. bases in these countries, he added, “It is certain that American soldiers stationed in the region will not return home alive.”

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Last month, as the threat of a U.S. attack was growing, Saudi Arabia struck a different chord, with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman calling Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to inform him that the kingdom was ruling out the use of its airspace for a potential attack. The UAE also said it would not allow its airspace or territorial waters to be used in any military action against Iran.

The breadth and immediacy of Tehran’s retaliatory strikes in the region are unprecedented. In his statement to NBC, Araghchi said Iran had communicated its intentions to Gulf Arab countries, stating that “I was in contact with my colleagues in the Persian Gulf and explained to them that we have intention to attack them; but we are actually attacking the American bases in an act of self-defense. We cannot just sit and watch them attack us and not respond simply because their bases are in a friendly neighboring country.”

After the initial wave of U.S. and Israeli attacks, videos circulated showing the aftermath of an airstrike that struck a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran, including harrowing images of families screaming and searching through the rubble of the collapsed building. According to state-run IRNA news outlet, the attack on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, a city in southern Iran, killed at least 60 students. Many more students were reportedly trapped beneath the debris; approximately 170 girls were inside the school at the time.

Araghchi said the attack “will not go unanswered.”

“The targeting of civilian infrastructure—such as schools and hospitals—in the city of Minab sends a clear message to all: in this criminal aggression, the attackers recognize no red lines and evidently intend to shed a great deal of the blood of the noble people of our country,” the Iranian official told Drop Site.

Both the House and Senate indicated that lawmakers would vote on respective War Powers Resolutions early this week, which in theory could limit Trump’s ability to attack Iran because the U.S. constitution states that Congress has the exclusive authority to declare war. In launching the strikes, the Trump administration preempted any formal congressional debate.

“We had Congresspeople talking about the War Powers act, so they wanted to get this started so diplomacy wouldn’t have a chance,” Izadi said. “And this is logical because they’re saying that they want to overthrow the Iranian government and if you want to do that, then you shouldn’t be reaching a diplomatic solution. Because if you reach a diplomatic solution, that means there is no war. And if you want to overthrow the government, you need war. So this was very much a deception operation.”

Drop Site News Middle East Research Fellow Jawa Ahmad contributed to this report.

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The U.S. military is in the midst of amassing an enormous fleet of aircraft and warships within striking distance of Iran as the region enters the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. It is the largest buildup of firepower in the Middle East since President Donald Trump authorized a 12-day bombing campaign against Iran last June that killed more than 1,000 people.

While Iranian and U.S. negotiators are speaking in cautiously optimistic tones about the latest round of indirect talks held Tuesday in Geneva and suggested another meeting was possible, comments from the highest levels of power in both countries drive home the reality that the U.S. may be on the verge of attacking the Islamic Republic.

“In some ways it went well. They agreed to meet afterward,” Vice President JD Vance told Fox News on Tuesday, following the talks. “But in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.” Vance maintained that Trump prefers a diplomatic solution, but warned that “the president reserves the ability to say when he thinks that diplomacy has reached its natural end.”

A former senior U.S. intelligence official who is an informal advisor to the Trump administration on Middle East policy told Drop Site that, based on his discussions with current officials, he assesses an 80-90% likelihood of U.S. strikes within weeks.

The extraordinary and expensive U.S. military buildup would be sufficient for a large-scale campaign against Tehran that goes far beyond the limited strikes that have taken place in the past. “It harkens back to what I saw ahead of the 2003 Iraq war,” said retired Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a senior fellow and military expert at Defense Priorities, in an interview with Drop Site News. “You don’t assemble this kind of power to send a message. In my view, this is what you do when you’re preparing to use it. What I see on the diplomatic front is just to try to keep things rolling until it’s time to actually launch the military operation. I think that everybody on both sides knows where this is heading.”

Iran realizes that it is facing an unprecedented threat from the U.S. if a deal that conforms with Trump’s terms is not reached, former Pentagon official Jasmine El-Gamal told Drop Site. “This is not a dress rehearsal,” she said. “This is it. This is not the negotiations of last year or the year before or the year before that. They’re backed into a corner. There’s no off ramp.”

The ongoing deployment includes the stationing of dozens of aircraft including F‑15 strike fighters, F‑35 stealth fighters, Boeing EA‑18G Growler electronic‑warfare aircraft, and A‑10C ground‑attack aircraft at a military airbase in Jordan—despite the Jordanian government’s recent insistence that its territory would not be used as a base to attack Iran. Dozens more F-35, F-22, and F-16 fighter jets have also been observed by independent flight trackers transiting to the region over the past 48 hours, along with a large number of tanker refueling aircraft departing from the continental U.S.

Two carrier strike groups—each built around one aircraft carrier, several guided‑missile destroyers armed with Tomahawk missiles, and at least one submarine—are also being stationed nearby, along with several additional U.S. destroyers and submarines in regional waters near Iran to defend against ballistic missile attacks, as well as more than 30,000 U.S. military personnel and numerous Patriot and THAAD anti-missile batteries spread across regional military bases.

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been in the region since late January, also carries an air wing of roughly 60–70 warplanes, including about 40–45 F‑35C and F/A‑18 strike fighters, as well as Growler electronic‑warfare jets, early‑warning radar aircraft, and MH‑60 attack helicopters.

The USS Gerald R. Ford—which last week was redirected from Venezuela to the Middle East—is the world’s largest and most advanced carrier, and can operate a similar mix of up to 75 aircraft. “The Ford was used for the campaign in Venezuela and eventually the strikes on [President Nicolás] Maduro. And now they’re being sent to the Middle East. They won’t be back for several months. So this is a crew that has been stretched to the limit,” said El-Gamal, who specialized in Middle East policy at the Defense Department. “The fact that that carrier is there tells me that this isn’t just a routine kind of, ‘Hey, let’s flex some muscle.’ He didn’t need that. He didn’t need to send that second carrier to flex muscle.”

President Trump explained the move in remarks at Ft. Bragg as a threat to the Iranians amid ongoing talks, saying, “In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it.”

Parallel Negotiations

In June, the Trump administration used the veneer of preparing for additional talks with Iran as cover to launch a surprise attack on the country. Both U.S. and Israeli warplanes struck military and civilian strikes across Iran and killed scores of senior and mid-level Iranian military and intelligence officials, including Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s highest-ranking military official, Hossein Salami, the commander of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the IRGC’s chief of aerospace operations who commanded Iran’s ballistic missile strikes. The attacks also killed several Iranian nuclear scientists. Estimates put the number killed in the strikes at more than 1,000, including at least 400 civilians, alongside an additional 4,000 other Iranians—both military and civilian—wounded.

In a speech on Tuesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei struck a defiant tone and denounced the Trump administration’s approach to nuclear talks, charging that an ultimatum is not a negotiation. “The Americans say, ‘Let’s negotiate over your nuclear energy, and the result of the negotiation is supposed to be that you do not have this energy,” Khamenei said. “If that’s the case, there is no room for negotiation; but if negotiations are truly to take place, determining the outcome of the negotiations in advance is a wrong and foolish act.”

Acknowledging the “beautiful armada” Trump has boasted of sending to the region, Khamenei said, “The Americans constantly say that they’ve sent a warship toward Iran. Of course, a warship is a dangerous piece of military hardware. However, more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea.” He added, “The U.S. President has said that for 47 years, the United States hasn’t been able to eliminate the Islamic Republic. That is a good confession. I say, ‘You, too, will not be able to do this.’”

The Israeli military has also indicated it is making preparations for potential war with Iran. After meeting with Trump in Washington, D.C. last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put out his own list of priorities, which included ending both Iran’s enrichment program and addressing its ballistic missile capabilities. “[President Trump] is determined to exhaust the possibilities of achieving a deal which he believes can be achieved now because of the circumstances that have been created, the force projection,” Netanyahu said at a conference of presidents of major American Jewish organizations. “And the fact that, as he says, Iran must surely understand that they missed out last time, and he thinks there is a serious probability that they won’t miss out this time. I will not hide from you that I express my skepticism of any deal with Iran.”

El-Gamal, the former country director for Syria and Lebanon at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy under the Obama administration, said she believes Trump would prefer to make a deal that he can claim goes beyond any Iranian concessions made in the 2015 nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration, specifically dealing with ballistic missiles and support for regional resistance groups. “If he can get that without a military confrontation, he will take it,” she said, quickly adding that Iran almost certainly will continue to hold firm to its red lines against such demands.

“Right now, the ballistic missile program is essentially all Iran has left to maintain any sort of deterrence posture and defend itself and project any sort of power in the region,” she added. “And what is the Islamic Republic of Iran if it doesn’t have the ability—any government, by the way—if it doesn’t have the ability to project power as a serious player in the region, maintain deterrence capacity and defend itself? Then you might as well not be a government at all.”

The former senior U.S. intelligence official told Drop Site that Trump was intent on striking Iran in January, but was not satisfied with the options presented by the military based on the existing assets in the region. The renewed diplomatic talks gave the Pentagon time to dispatch more weapons, ships and planes, significantly expanding the scope and power of potential operations. Extensive deployments are necessary not only to conduct sustained attacks on Iran, but also to position munitions and aircraft for confronting Iranian retaliatory strikes against U.S. military facilities and Israel, which Iran has indicated would come under heavy bombardment in the event of a U.S.-led air war.

While several Arab countries have publicly stated they will not allow their territory or airspace to be used for an assault against Iran, in the event of large strikes, the U.S. would need to utilize command and control and targeting systems in several nations, as well as satellite and surveillance capabilities. Military assets in these countries, including advanced U.S. missile systems, would also be used to confront Iranian retaliatory action.

“Everything was set up” to strike in January, Davis said, “And then all of a sudden it didn’t happen.” Netanyahu was concerned that more defensive capabilities were needed to respond to Iranian retaliation, he said, and these concerns were echoed by Pentagon war planners. “And I think that that delayed it,” Davis added. “And then of course, right after that, you saw this big surge of air defense missiles going in all over the place.”

Following Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had asked Davis to join the administration in a senior post where he would have overseen the compiling of the Presidential Daily Briefing, a comprehensive intelligence summary presented each morning to the president. In March, as Davis was going through the background check process, Gabbard withdrew his name from consideration after lawmakers and pro-Israel groups protested, citing Davis’s criticism of Israel, the Gaza War and his opposition to military attacks on Iran. Davis said he maintains contact with what he described as some of the few remaining “sane foreign policy minds” in the administration. “They’re beside themselves because they feel powerless,” he said. “They can only go so far to say something or else they’ll be either removed or sidelined.”

Based on his experience with past U.S. war planning and missions, Davis said he believes the military would first strike Iranian air defense, command and control, communications facilities and senior leaders of the IRGC. It would also target Iran’s offensive missile capabilities, mobile launchers, naval bases and vessels. “We’ll be going after the political leaders simultaneously with a lot of this. They may even go with them concurrently with trying to take out the air defense so that they don’t get a chance to go to bunkers or whatever,” Davis said. “I think that that’s the idea, because if you can take out the senior leaders and decapitate the regime, then you have the chance for people to rise up, at least according to that hoped-for theory.” He added that the U.S. will also likely engage in broader attacks against Iranian security forces that would be used to quell or crush domestic uprisings or riots.

El-Gamal said she believes U.S. war planners are anticipating unprecedented Iranian counterstrikes and will seek to preemptively attack its offensive infrastructure. “You have to stop anything that the Iranians would have planned before they even have the chance to begin. It’s kind of akin to destroying a country’s air force fleet before you go to war,” she said. “If you look at it from that perspective and you look at the assets that are being sent to the region and you look at what the Iranians could be planning as retaliatory attacks on the carrier strike group, attacks on U.S. personnel in the region, and you look at everything that would be needed to do those attacks—the ballistic missiles, the short range missiles, the shaheds, then you will have to have a plan to attack all of it right at the beginning, at the onset. And if you’re going to assume or get ready for talks to fail, that would have to be your plan.”

Trump’s Strategy

In the aftermath of the June strikes, Trump and other senior officials boasted that they had effectively wiped out Iran’s nuclear program. “Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror,” Trump said in a White House address on June 21. “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed, “Our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,” while Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “This was complete and total obliteration. They are in bad shape. They are way behind today compared to where they were.”

Since those strikes, media reports have suggested Iran is secretly rebuilding and fortifying missile facilities damaged in previous U.S. and Israeli attacks. But satellite images showing the building or reconstruction of access tunnels, which form the basis of these media reports, are not evidence of attempts to build nuclear weapons.

For years, U.S. national intelligence estimates have consistently undermined the alarmist tone of senior U.S. and Israeli officials warning of Iran’s ability to imminently build a nuclear bomb. Those assessments determined that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in late 2003. For decades, Khamenei has maintained his opposition to producing or using weapons of mass destruction. And Iran has publicly stated that the damage to its missile capabilities by the June war was far less significant than the U.S. claimed and that it has worked to rebuild its conventional missile capacity and stockpiles.

In addition to the U.S. military buildup, the White House has also been engaged in a prolonged economic war targeting Iran that has been described in increasingly blunt terms by Trump administration officials as a tool to generate social unrest inside the country.

At a Senate hearing earlier this month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described a policy aimed at inflicting maximum economic harm on ordinary Iranians by targeting the strength of the Iranian currency. “What we have done is create a dollar shortage in the country,” Bessent said in response to questioning by Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), stating that the policy had reached a “grand culmination” in December with the collapse of one of the country’s largest banks. “The Iranian currency went into freefall, inflation exploded, and hence, we have seen the Iranian people out on the street,” Bessent said.

The remarks echoed previous statements made by Bessent at the World Economic Forum in Davos in late January in the wake of mass public unrest in Iran. Following large peaceful demonstrations that began in late December against economic conditions in the country, the protests turned violent on January 8, spurring a series of events that would leave thousands of Iranians dead. Bessent described U.S. policy towards Iran at that time as “economic statecraft, no shots fired,” adding that the uprising showed that “things are moving in a very positive way here.”

As riots broke out and spread across the country, Trump called on Iranians to seize state institutions and promised help was on the way to support an insurrection. Police stations, mosques, hospitals, and other sites were attacked as security forces used overwhelming force to crush the rebellion. International human rights organizations have asserted that much of the violence consisted of unprovoked widespread attacks by Iranian security forces on peaceful protesters, while Tehran characterized the events as foreign-organized acts of terrorism.

In advance of the diplomatic talks that began February 6 in Oman, the U.S. and Israel sought to impose an ultimatum on the Iranian side. Not only did they demand a dramatic reduction in Iran’s civilian nuclear capabilities, but also a significant degradation of the country’s ballistic missile capacity—both in terms of stockpile and range—and an end to Iran’s support for armed resistance movements and groups in the region. Iran rejected that framing and insisted it would only negotiate on the nuclear issue.

“The best way I could characterize it is this is a detachment from reality,” Davis said of conversations he has had recently with current U.S. defense officials. He said some of them have spoken of an administration searching for a successful operation like the recent snatching of Maduro in Venezuela or the 2011 overthrow of Moamar Qaddafi in Libya, giving Trump the appearance of a quick regime change victory. “We’ve got a plan A, which is the Libya model—maybe even more than the Venezuela model—that the people will rise up and do on the ground what we don’t have ground troops for,” he said. “Therein is your problem. If plan A doesn’t work, we don’t have a ground force. The chances of having a regime decapitation—even with this massive amount of firepower, and it is massive, no question about that—I think you’re going to be surprised and disappointed. Then what are you going to do next?”

El-Gamal said that suggestions that Reza Pahlavi, the son of the ousted dictator who fled Iran in 1979 as the Islamic revolution began, or the Israeli-linked MEK (Mojahedin-e-Khalq), a fanatical cult-like faction that has achieved success in cozying up to U.S. politicians, would be major players in a regime change operation is fantasy. Iran is not comparable to Syria, she said, where there was a prolonged civil war, involving multiple armed factions and major Western military and intelligence support for overthrowing the Assad government and installing a replacement. More likely, she said, is that U.S. intelligence and military planners believe that if they decapitate the country’s leadership, they could make a deal with the surviving officials, similar to what is unfolding in Venezuela.

“You skim off the minimum required at the top and you keep as much of it as possible in place, but then it becomes a pliant regime. It’s exactly what’s happening in Venezuela,” she said. “If I were sitting at the Pentagon thinking, ‘Okay, how do we do this and not risk a country of 90 million just being a failed state essentially,’ I think that’s what you would try to plan for. So you would look at, what assets are we going to take out? What people and personnel are we going to take out? Who are we going to keep? What intelligence assets, largely Israeli, are we going to activate in order to send the messages that we need to send to the remnants of the regime? And how are we going to turn this around quickly so that you don’t leave a vacuum open?”

The level of military force now or soon to be stationed around Iran would be sufficient for a large-scale military operation potentially lasting weeks or longer. The logistical presence in the region also suggests that the U.S. could facilitate the fueling and support of longer-range heavy aircraft that could launch attacks from U.S. territory—similar to those that struck Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-Day War.

“Over the summer, the U.S. and Israel demonstrated that they can destroy or bypass Iranian air defenses. You probably don’t need eight aircraft carriers in theater, because U.S. aircraft can operate with a high degree of confidence moving in and out of Iranian airspace,” said Harrison Mann, a former U.S. Army major and executive officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency for the Middle East/Africa Regional Center. “If you were trying to implement regime collapse in China or Russia, you would bring far more forces. This is still a budget operation—what is more notable is the reminder of what is not there, which is a substantial number of ground troops. The plan seems to be to simply destroy things until the Iranians accept an escalating list of demands—or until there is simply no government left to accept anything.”

In response to this buildup, Iran has hinted that it may take action during a conflict to halt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—a strategic waterway vital to global energy flows through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil consumption and about one‑fifth of global liquefied natural gas trade pass.

On Monday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy started a live‑fire military drill in the strait. Iranian officials framed the exercises as a test of rapid reciprocal response to threats and a signal that they can threaten one of the world’s critical oil and gas chokepoints if pressured further.

“Iran’s missiles wreaked havoc against the best missile defense systems in the world in Israel during the 12-day war. Iran also enjoys very powerful speedboats that can operate in the environment of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman. They can control everything there,” said Mostafa Khoshchesm, security analyst close to the Iranian government. “A second option is shutting down the Strait of Hormuz by mining it, sinking ships, and hitting vessels with missiles from anywhere in Iran.”

In previous cases where Israel and the U.S. have bombed Iran over the past two years, Iran has retaliated with strikes calibrated to avoid killing American military personnel and Israeli civilians and engaged in pre-strike choreography with the U.S. through back channels. The strategy was aimed at Iran being able to respond without dramatically escalating the situation into a larger-scale war. Since early January, Iranian officials have warned they will no longer operate under those informal rules of engagement and intend to inflict real damage in any future strikes. Davis, the retired Army officer, said he believes the U.S. is underestimating Iran’s missile capacity.

“I’ve heard this from people who have access deep inside the Pentagon at the highest levels that there are those who say, ‘I think we can handle Iran’s military, their missile strikes now. I think that we can defend adequately,’” said Davis. “I don’t think we can. I think that Iran demonstrated in the 12 Day War that they could penetrate the absolute best integrated air defense systems that we have. I think it’s a bad gamble—not even a bet, but I think it’s a gamble—to say, ‘I think we can sustain this and still knock them out and get their offensive missiles before they have a chance to shoot us.’”

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As President Donald Trump prepares to convene the first official meeting of his speciously named Board of Peace on Thursday, he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have re-escalated demands that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions imminently disarm—with Netanyahu insisting that all small arms must be turned over before the Israeli military withdraws any of its forces.

“Very importantly, Hamas must uphold its commitment to Full and Immediate Demilitarization,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Sunday.

This demand is being presented as a condition for any reconstruction to begin in Gaza, with no guarantees for Palestinian security or sovereignty. A senior Israeli official also claimed Monday that Trump is considering imposing a two-month deadline for Palestinians to surrender their weapons. Both Trump and Netanyahu have threatened that a large-scale war against Gaza could resume if Hamas refuses to capitulate.

Meanwhile Hamas has not been part of any formal negotiations for several months. Amid media reports of new drafts and U.S. preparation for negotiations, Hamas leaders say there has been nothing formally presented to the movement and that no official meetings have been held with the group to discuss possible scenarios.

Basem Naim, a senior Hamas leader who has been deeply involved with ceasefire negotiations, told Drop Site that Hamas will not accede to sweeping demands that the Palestinian resistance unilaterally disarm, nor will it submit to a total demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. He reiterated that the group is willing to negotiate on disarmament of resistance forces only if it is linked to a long-term ceasefire that restrains Israel and is accompanied by a political process that leads to the establishment of a Palestinian state and armed force capable of defending itself.

“Our position on this matter is very clear,” Naim said. “Before speaking about disarmament or confiscation of weapons, we believe it is necessary for Netanyahu and his extremist government—along with the mediators and the American guarantor—to ensure full implementation of everything agreed upon in the first phase, so that there can be a fundamental change in the humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

“Palestinian resistance and its weapons are a legitimate right, and disarmament is rejected and will not be accepted by any Palestinian,” Naim continued. “The problem is fundamentally political, not security-based, and its solution lies not in the weapons of the resistance but in [ending] the Zionist occupation. Gaza is not a real-estate project; it is an integral part of the Palestinian homeland.”

Netanyahu has regularly and falsely claimed—often backed by Trump and other Western leaders—that Hamas agreed to a total disarmament of the Palestinian resistance as part of the limited-scope first phase of the “ceasefire” deal signed in October. He has justified the killing of more than 600 Palestinians since the “ceasefire” was signed by claiming Hamas fighters and civilians alike are violating the agreement. In reality, Hamas did not sign any terms having to do with disarmament, asserting that they could not unilaterally make an agreement on future governance or armed resistance on behalf of all Palestinians.

“It is clear that Netanyahu and his extremist government are searching for new justifications to continue the aggression against Gaza and to resume the war, despite all the regional and international positions rejecting a return to fighting,” Naim said. “Hamas also is exerting all efforts to avoid the return to war again. Until recently, Netanyahu used the issue of [Israeli] captives to justify continuing the assault on the Gaza Strip, refusing to withdraw, open the crossings, and allow aid in.”

Throughout the Gaza genocide, Israel has demanded a total surrender not only of Hamas, but of the Palestinian cause of liberation. Hamas officials have told Drop Site that while the group rejects total disarmament, it is open to negotiating the issue of weapons, including an internationally-verified warehousing or decommissioning of some “offensive” weapons on the condition that a Palestinian security force is established in Gaza.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials have maintained that the armed resistance would only disband in the context of the establishment of an internationally recognized Palestinian armed force capable of defending its territory and people. The Trump plan calls for the destruction of “offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities” and a longer term vision for “an agreed process of decommissioning” other weapons.

“Life in Gaza today is unsustainable,” Naim emphasized, noting that the reported proposal and demands do not make any guarantees for Palestinian security. “How can there be talk of disarmament while the aggression continues and Netanyahu does not commit to the ceasefire? Armed gangs are being formed, supported, and backed to carry out dangerous security operations such as kidnappings and killings. How can disarmament be discussed while [nearly] 60% of the Gaza Strip remains occupied by Israel?”

Mutual Security Pacts

As Drop Site has previously reported, Hamas repeatedly suggested to regional mediators a solution to the weapons issue wherein the Palestinian resistance would agree to store or “freeze” its weapons and not deploy them in any attacks against Israel. This configuration, which would be part of an internationally-enforced long-term ceasefire, would come with the endorsement of the Palestinian resistance groups themselves. Violating such an agreement, especially one endorsed by large numbers of Arab and Islamic countries, would carry grave consequences for the broader Palestinian struggle. The key to its success, Palestinian officials cautioned, would be compelling Israel to respect the agreement. Israel has consistently violated ceasefire deals not only with Palestine, but also in Lebanon where it continues to bomb on a nearly daily basis despite a ceasefire signed in November 2024. Hamas’s proposals went nowhere and since Trump officially launched his board, there have been almost no substantive discussions with Hamas leaders.

On Sunday, Netanyahu sought to front-run any potential technical negotiations with Hamas that would permit Palestinian fighters to retain even small arms, declaring that the Gaza Strip must be entirely demilitarized as a condition for Israel to move to the second phase of a deal.

“What has to happen is that Hamas must first be disarmed and then Gaza must be demilitarized. Disarmed means that it must give up weapons,” Netanyahu said in a speech at the conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem, dismissing the notion that any negotiations on decommissioning should take place. “There are practically no heavy weapons in Gaza. There’s no artillery, there are no tanks, there’s nothing. The heavy weapon, the one that does the most damage, is called an AK-47, okay, that’s it. That’s how they execute people. That’s how they shoot our people. That’s what they used, assault rifles. That’s what they used in the massacre of October 7,” he added. “That’s the main weapon, and that has to go.”

On Monday, Yossi Fuchs, Israel’s Cabinet Secretary and a senior aide to Netanyahu, claimed that the Trump administration had asked Israel for a two-month window to force Hamas to disarm before Israel re-launched a large-scale military assault on Gaza. ​​”We are currently preparing for a period of around 60 days during which Hamas will be given the opportunity. We are in complete coordination with the Americans, this is their request, we respect them,” Fuchs told a media conference in Jerusalem. “This process will be examined, if it goes well, great. And if not, the IDF will have to return and complete the mission.” Fuchs said he did not know when the 60-day deadline would begin, but predicted that if full disarmament did not happen by June, Israel would renew its total war against Gaza.

“Does talk of disarmament mean the absence of any reciprocal security arrangements, leaving Israel free to operate in Gaza Strip wherever, whenever, and however it wishes?” asked Naim. “Attempting to portray the problem as the existence of weapons in Palestinian hands—light weapons that cannot be compared in any way to the conventional, chemical, biological, or nuclear arsenal possessed by Israel—[ignores] what was witnessed over two years of genocide in the Gaza Strip. These light weapons in the hands of the Palestinian people are fundamentally for self-defense, not for aggression against anyone. Therefore, such a measure is rejected and cannot be allowed to pass, as they claim or demand.”

Naim said that Hamas’s position is that any proposals regarding weapons or disarmament must center around mutual security pacts, not unilateral demands put before the Palestinian side. “Israel must be restrained from continuing the aggression, and it must be ensured that a multi-year ceasefire—three, five, or seven years—runs parallel to the political process,” he said. “During this period, the resistance would commit—under Palestinian, Arab, and international supervision—to the ceasefire. In this time, the weapons would be removed from the field and stored, and full opportunity would be given to the Palestinian government or the administrative committee to manage all civil and security affairs in the Gaza Strip without interference from anyone.”

This position has been consistently articulated by Hamas officials since the signing of the October agreement at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Despite the pervasive false characterizations from U.S. and Israeli officials that Hamas agreed to all of Trump’s terms, Hamas and other Palestinian factions did not sign an agreement beyond a ceasefire, exchange of captives, and an initial framework for the redeployment or withdrawal of Israeli forces from some parts of Gaza. Officially, there is no deal on a “second phase.” Palestinian negotiators made clear that demands impacting the future of a Palestinian state, the weapons of resistance factions and other existential issues would require consultation with a broad cross-section of Palestinian political parties and factions.

“We have discussed a comprehensive and holistic approach. First, the humanitarian track must be entirely separated: the daily life of the people—their food, water, and medicine—cannot remain at the mercy of this fascist government and its political agenda, whose stated goal is to resolve the conflict by force in favor of the entity and to erase Palestinian existence,” said Naim. “There must also be a serious, time-bound political process that begins and ends with the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. At that point, the weapons and fighters of the resistance would become part of that state and its army.”

“Either disarmament or war”

Last weekend, Trump announced that he had received more than $5 billion in commitments for his board and that partner nations have pledged thousands of troops to deploy as part of an International Stabilization Force (ISF). While Trump did not name specific countries, Indonesia became the first nation to publicly declare its participation, announcing it was preparing for a potential deployment of up to 8,000 of its troops. Many nations have said they will not send troops if the mission includes disarming or clashing with Palestinian resistance factions.

Hamas has said it welcomes an international force, but only to serve as a neutral buffer between Israeli forces and Palestinians in Gaza. “Indonesia’s participation is not intended for combat missions and not for demilitarization missions,” read a February 14 statement from Indonesia’s foreign ministry. It added that the “mandate is humanitarian in nature, focusing on the protection of civilians, humanitarian and health assistance, reconstruction, as well as training and capacity-building for the Palestinian Police.” The statement declared that Indonesia would “terminate participation if the ISF’s implementation deviates” from that mandate.

The Trump plan also calls for a Palestinian police force to be formed under the banner of a newly-established technocratic governing body known as the National Committee for Administration of Gaza (NCAG). Composed of 15 Palestinians, the NCAG is the only component of Trump’s board that includes Palestinians and is situated on the lowest rung of the Board of Peace hierarchy. When Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, presented a slide deck at the launch of the Board of Peace in Davos, Switzerland on January 22, a slide titled “Demilitarization Principles” stated, “Heavy weapons decommissioned immediately. Personal arms registered and decommissioned by sector as NCAG’s police becomes capable of guaranteeing personal security.” The section concluded: “The end state: only NCAG-sanctioned personnel may carry weapons.”

A top official in Trump’s Board of Peace likewise indicated that efforts to disarm Palestinian resistance groups would occur as part of the establishment of a Palestinian security force and not as a formal surrender ceremony. That Trump officials appeared headed toward a slower process of disarmament than Netanyahu has demanded was also reinforced by a report in the New York Times describing a draft U.S. plan that would require Hamas to “surrender all weapons that are capable of striking Israel, but will allow the group to keep some small arms, at least initially.”

Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Dr. Khalil Al-Hayya, met recently in Cairo with Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for Trump’s board, though a senior Hamas official told Drop Site that no official proposals for disarmament were presented at the meeting. “In some meetings, the topic was put on the table in general,” the official said. “Until now, no official discussion with us has been launched.”

At the Munich Security Conference on February 13, Mladenov was asked where he wanted to see the situation in Gaza a year from now. “I hope that we will be significantly advanced on deploying a new security force of Palestinians inside Gaza and Hamas would have given up a significant part of its weapons so that we are moving forward to the point at which Israel can withdraw from the yellow line,” said Mladenov, a Bulgarian diplomat who served as the UN’s top envoy to the region from 2015-2020. “These are conditions that I think are critical if we are ever to return back to the political resolution of the Palestinian question because the political resolution to the Palestinian question requires negotiations, it requires one Palestinian leadership over the entire occupied territory, and it requires a dialogue that is facilitated—not overseen, but facilitated—by the United States, Europe and others as it has been in the past.”

While Mladenov’s theoretical timeline appears to contradict Netanyahu’s demands for immediate disarmament, he also acknowledged that no serious reconstruction or Israeli military withdrawals would occur unless the resistance was disbanded. On this issue, Mladenov said that not only Hamas’s armed wing would need to disarm, but also Islamic Jihad and all other armed factions. He called Trump’s plan “the only option for going ahead with anything that makes sense in Gaza and that stops this war and doesn’t allow a return to violence.” He added, “Gaza needs to be governed by a transitional authority as authorized by the Security Council resolution under which it needs to take on the full civilian and security control of Gaza and that includes the disarmament of all factions in Gaza, not just Hamas.”

Mladenov said that is the condition for Israeli forces to withdraw and for reconstruction to begin. “The reality is that all of this needs to move very fast,” he said. “Let me be absolutely clear about the risks that we’re facing here: The first risk is that we are not going to implement the second phase of the ceasefire, but we’re going to go to the second phase of the war and that is a serious threat.” He said that if Israel resumed the war, there would be no place for the Board of Peace “until we see what is left and pick up the rubble, potentially, at the end of it.” Mladenov warned that if Phase 2 was not implemented swiftly, the Israeli division of Gaza into two halves and the treatment of Gaza as a separate entity from the West Bank and not as two parts of the same occupied territory would be “cemented.”

Naim, the Hamas official, blasted Mladenov’s statement. “It is a disgrace to hear some American or international politician like Mladenov saying, ‘Either disarmament or war’ because this makes him a spokesperson for the Israeli government, instead of being a representative of a body working to create peace.”

That coercive ultimatum constitutes the centerpiece of Israel’s campaign to ensure it maintains full control of the eastern half of Gaza, an ability to strike at will in the western areas and to impede the minimal concessions offered to the Palestinian side. Phase 2 of Trump’s plan envisions a large-scale reconstruction plan, expanded freedom of movement for Palestinians through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, the empowerment of the Palestinian transitional technocratic committee, under the direction of Mladenov, to assume basic governance duties and the gradual deployment of a Palestinian security force in Gaza. It also includes terms that call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces to a perimeter encircling Gaza, rather than the status quo of Israel occupying more than half of the enclave.

“The U.S. is playing the good cop in this moment to Netanyahu’s bad cop position. They are talking reconstruction and peace while he keeps the threat of war hanging. So I see them doing a diversionary tango that constantly moves Hamas further and further into a corner,” said Sami Hermez, a political analyst and professor of anthropology at Northwestern University in Qatar. “I don’t think we can separate the U.S. and Israel or Trump and Netanyahu into two different strategies versus partners in one overall strategy working in tandem. It is naive to think otherwise or to follow the media narrative that Trump is not seeing eye-to-eye with Netanyahu every now and then.”

Devastation in Gaza

Despite the overarching colonialist structure of the Board of Peace and Trump’s constant deference to Israel’s agenda, Netanyahu continues to publicly reject any plan that would allow Palestinians to remain in Gaza with even a semblance of autonomy or an ability to rebuild homes, hospitals, roads or schools. Israel has systematically refused to uphold the terms of the October agreement. Over the four months since the so-called ceasefire took effect on October 10, approximately 1,620 Israeli violations have been recorded, according to the latest figures from Gaza’s Government Media Office. These include hundreds of shooting incidents, repeated shelling and airstrikes, incursions into residential neighborhoods, and the demolition of homes and buildings. These violations resulted in the killing of at least 603 Palestinians and the wounding of more than 1,600.

Israel has also refused to allow in the agreed-upon levels of food and other life essentials stipulated in the agreement. Although 600 aid trucks per day were supposed to enter the Gaza Strip, the average has been only around 260 trucks per day. Fuel deliveries have been especially restricted, with just 861 trucks entering out of the 6,000 agreed upon. Israel has severely restricted passage in and out of Gaza at the Rafah crossing since its partial reopening last week, allowing roughly a quarter of the expected number of Palestinians to depart or return to Gaza. As Israel continues to move its forces deeper into Gaza than permitted, it has also been constructing infrastructure in areas of eastern Gaza that indicate long term plans for open-ended occupation.

In the bigger picture, Netanyahu is manufacturing a state of chaos in Gaza that relegates Palestinians to fragile tent encampments and limited access to basic life necessities. He has made no secret that Israel’s aim is for Trump to empower ongoing Israeli attacks, severely limit any improvement to living conditions or the hope of reconstruction and to encourage the large-scale removal of Palestinians from Gaza. By making a boogieman of the small arms of the resistance, Netanyahu is maintaining a political justification to continue a low intensity war—that Amnesty International has deemed a continuation of the genocide—with the spectre of resuming larger operations.

“The longer Netanyahu can keep Gaza unlivable the better, the longer he can stall any reconstruction and relief the better. The idea of total disarmament is a good way to ensure nothing gets done in Gaza because he knows it is an unrealistic demand,” said Hermez. “To a great extent, the US and Israel are following the same playbook they used in the West Bank for decades: they talk peace and the US even funds peace initiatives, while the troops on the ground make life hell for Palestinians and continue to squeeze them. All in the name of some future promise—it was statehood post Oslo, it is mere reconstruction in Gaza. The wild card, of course, is Hamas and the resilience of life on the ground.”

Naim said that the unfolding events underscore the continuance of Israel’s multi-decade campaign to annihilate not only the aspirations for a Palestinian state, but an intensification of the war to force Palestinians entirely from the land. He pointed to Israel’s ongoing siege of the occupied West Bank, replete with regular Israeli military invasions, the expansion of illegal settlements, and the terror being unleashed on Palestinians by state-backed settlers on a daily basis. He also cited recent judicial actions that allow Israel to register land in areas of the West Bank as legal property of the state for the first time since 1967.

“The Palestinian experience over more than 33 years since the Oslo Accords—which were supposed to end with the establishment of a Palestinian state—shows how Israel, especially during Netanyahu’s tenure since 1996, used every means to destroy that opportunity, weaken and undermine the [Palestinian] Authority, and expand annexation by all means. Recent decisions bypassing previous Israeli laws and obligations toward both Palestinians and Jordanians and canceling Jordanian law and the administrative capacity of the Palestinian National Authority, amount to de facto and legal annexation,” he said. “This experience confirms that the problem has never been the Palestinians or the resistance, but rather the Israeli colonial settlement project aimed at erasing Palestinian existence and ending the Palestinian cause in favor of a Jewish state between the river and the sea.”

Naim added, “What Netanyahu and his army have failed to achieve over the course of two years, they will not succeed [in attaining] by any other means—regardless of the support he may receive from any party.”

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“I never lost hope, and I never will,” said Nael Barghouti, a 68-year-old Palestinian from the occupied West Bank who spent more than four decades in Israeli captivity. It has been a year since Barghouti won his freedom through a prisoner exchange deal signed between Hamas and Israel in January 2025. As a condition of his release, Barghouti had to agree to go into exile and was deported to Egypt a month later. “I have been optimistic from the very first day I began my struggle,” he said. “In prison, I was optimistic that I would be free one day. And, even if I were to die in prison, I would remain content, because those who come after me will continue the path, because they are convinced that we are in the right.”

According to the most recent and reliable statistics, there are approximately 9,300 Palestinians currently held in Israeli captivity. Nearly half of these have not been charged or brought to trial. Additionally, there are an unknown number of Palestinians held in military camps run by the Israeli army. At least 87 Palestinians have been killed inside Israeli prisons since October 7, 2023, including several documented cases of death by torture, abuse, or intentional neglect. “Without any prior warning, a prisoner is detained with no charge—a 15 year old [boy], or a woman. Malicious arrest—arrest simply to send a lesson to entire generations. They are received with beatings, bone‑breaking, and the spread of infectious diseases,” Barghouti told Drop Site.

In a wide-ranging, in-person interview in Istanbul, Barghouti reflected on his time in Israeli captivity, the torture he endured alongside other Palestinian prisoners, and why he believes the Palestinian cause will ultimately triumph. “We are not seekers of blood or wars, but we will accept nothing other than defending ourselves and our rights,” Barghouti said. “Why is it forbidden for Palestinians to live like any other people—to leave when they wish, return when they wish, go to the sea when they wish? Personally, I have seen the sea only once, in a prison transport vehicle, and when I was released. The sea is thirty kilometers (18 miles) from my village—why? Why are olive trees hundreds of years old uprooted? Why do settlers go to villages to uproot trees, attack people, and kill their animals? Why does the occupation prevent the families of released prisoners from leaving to meet them?”

In the struggle for Palestinian liberation, political prisoners occupy a space of immense national pride and importance. They are widely seen as heroes of the cause, and they participate in the decision-making process for the factions to which they belong. “Palestinian prisoners in the occupation’s prisons are one of the most respected and esteemed groups among the Palestinian people—regardless of which faction the prisoner belongs to,” said Husam Badran, who spent 14 years in Israeli prisons and is currently Hamas’s head of national relations. He told Drop Site, “I believe there is hardly a Palestinian household that does not have a Palestinian prisoner. In some families, the father, mother, and children are sometimes all inside prison at the same time. We are talking about a long experience since [the Arab-Israeli war of] 1967; we are talking about a period of almost sixty years. We define ourselves as fighters for freedom—certainly not terrorists, as the occupation describes us.”

Badran, a former commander of Hamas’s armed wing Al Qassam Brigades in the West Bank, described how Hamas and other factions held democratic elections inside the prisons and remained intimately engaged in the broader decision making of their movements on the outside. “I wouldn’t trade the prison experience for all experiences in the world. It is bitter and difficult, true, but you gain a lot from it—on a human level, a personal level, and in understanding life. You cannot learn this anywhere else except in prison, despite how difficult it is. Your ability to innovate and invent [ways] to communicate surpasses imagination,” he said. “Yes, we studied, we learned, we went to university, we earned master’s degrees, because the Palestinian by nature has an extraordinary ability to confront hardship. The world is not capable of understanding that this is who the Palestinian is. This Palestinian today is part of the decision‑making body in the Palestinian cause. So how do you expect to break him? And how do you expect to impose international forces on him, take away his weapon, and bring [Tony] Blair to rule him? How could he accept that?,” Badran asked.

“The whole story is connected together. If you want to understand the current Palestinian situation by looking only at the last two years, you will not succeed in understanding the Palestinian cause—you will fail,” he added. “You must go back decades and study the Palestinian personalities and leaderships. So how do you expect to deal with this type of leadership—whether in Hamas or others—through submission, surrender, and raising the white flag?”

This week President Donald Trump pushed ahead with his Gaza Plan and announced the first round of appointments to his so-called Board of Peace. They include his son-in-law Jared Kushner, venture capitalists, ex-Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair, and an assortment of non-Palestinian heads of state and political leaders, as well as business figures—some with close ties to Israel. “States want to sign agreements on behalf of the Palestinian people, but the Palestinian people did not authorize them and never will. Money will not tempt us, and airplanes will not frighten us. This resistance will continue until the Palestinian people return to their lands, and until American politicians regain their reason, along with everyone who supports this entity,” Barghouti said. He added, “Anyone who truly wants America to remain a state that upholds justice in the world must stand with the Palestinian people—not [submit] to the influence of a Zionist lobby that is damaging America more than it is damaging the rest of the world.”

“Our spirits and our will were not broken”

When he was freed last year, Barghouti was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner held by Israel. He spent more than 45 years behind bars—nearly 34 of them consecutively. In 2009, the Guiness Book of World Records certified him as “the longest serving political prisoner ever.” The previous record was also held by a Palestinian, Said Alatabah, who served more than 31 years before being released in 2008.

As a ten year old boy, Barghouti witnessed Israeli forces invade his family’s West Bank village of Kobar, near Ramallah, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war as Israel began its decades-long occupation. Barghouti began his anti-occupation actions by joining other youth in throwing stones and writing graffiti on walls. He came from a family with deep roots in Palestinian resistance. “My uncle was imprisoned during the British occupation and the beginning of the Zionist entity. My father was imprisoned twice during the occupation, as were my mother, brother, sister, wife, and many other family members,” Barghouti said. “We come from a family that rejects the occupation. We lived in a simple village, but it was one that hosted refugees from [the Nakba in] 1948. We knew that these refugees had land, homes, and property, and that overnight they became poor people waiting for the United Nations to grant them some aid,” he added. “What we witnessed of the crimes of the occupation and its soldiers, and the humiliations, instilled in us a refusal to accept this occupation. From a very young age, since 1967, I saw my father being humiliated by soldiers while I was still a child—him being beaten in front of me by patrols.”

In 1977, Barghouti was arrested for the first time and spent three months in jail. In April 1978, just as he was preparing to complete his high school final exams, Barghouti was again arrested, along with his brother Omar and cousin Fakhri, but this time he was accused of being involved with the killing of a former Israeli paratrooper working as a bus driver. They also detained his father. “I was tortured in front of my father, and my father was tortured in front of me. They threatened to arrest my mother, and later they did arrest her,” Barghouti recalled.

In the end, he was hit with a life sentence plus 18 years. “We entered prison unjustly, were sentenced unjustly, and were assaulted unjustly,” he said. “We will not submit, and we will not be ashamed that we resisted—we will not disown our actions. Those who must disown their crimes are the leaders of the Zionist occupation.”

When Barghouti entered prison, he originally affiliated himself with Fatah, the party of the late Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat. In the 1990s, when Arafat signed the Oslo Accords and recognized Israel, Barghouti joined Hamas.

“The Palestinian people have been fighting for more than a hundred years. This is not tied to Hamas, Fatah, or any other organization. Every phase will have its own names and labels until the goals of the Palestinian people are achieved: return and self‑determination. This is a point that no Palestinian will ever abandon,” he said. “We entered prison and resisted the occupation, and we are not ashamed of that. It is the right of the Palestinian people—and of any people under occupation—to resist. The American people resisted British injustice. How did Ireland gain its freedom? Through the use of all forms of resistance.”

Inside the prison, Barghouti earned a reputation as a leader, organizer, and political thinker. He was a voracious reader of history books and studied foreign languages. As the years went by, he became known as the “Dean of the Palestinian Prisoners” and Abu Al-Noor, “Father of Light.” He often organized protests and strategized how to resist the prison authorities.

“We Palestinian prisoners entered prison at a time when the torture was the same as the torture that exists today. We carried out multiple [hunger] strikes with the support of our people. Sometimes the occupation wanted calm from us so that the Palestinian people would not rise up, so through our strikes, we achieved certain gains: the pen, the paper, the notebook, the book, and bedding—the blanket,” he said. “Everything inside the prisons was achieved through our [hunger] strikes. Our organization was disciplined because we are political prisoners: we do not accept living the life of a criminal prisoner.”

Over the decades, Barghouti was imprisoned with other high-profile Palestinians, including Yahya Sinwar, who would go on to become the leader of Hamas in Gaza and was one of the main architects of the October 7 attacks. Sinwar was killed in October 2024 in battle in Gaza. “If we wanted to speak about the martyred brother Yahya, I knew him and lived with him. He was among the most humane people I have ever known,” Barghouti said. He recalled how they both studied Hebrew, and that Sinwar had translated the memoirs of various Israeli intelligence chiefs from Hebrew to Arabic and encouraged other prisoners to study Israel’s history and tactics.

“We learned about Zionist life in prison through the Hebrew language—yes. We came to know them, and we came to know the extent of their criminality,” he said. “It should not be surprising that in prison we understood them, studied them, and came to know their criminality through their own books and through what they wrote in their press,” he added. “Sinwar and his brothers and comrades learned and understood that this enemy cannot coexist with this region as long as it carries a racist Zionist ideology. This is the truth.”

Sinwar and Barghouti were both released in 2011 as part of an exchange deal for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been taken captive by Hamas fighters in 2006. More than 1,000 Palestinians were freed in the deal. Sinwar, who was held more than 20 years in Israeli captivity, played a central role in negotiating the deal from inside prison.

Upon his release, Sinwar returned to Gaza and went on to become the political leader of Hamas. “He understood more deeply how to influence the occupation. And so, after leaving prison, it was in his mind that we must do something that makes this occupation reckon with its continued presence,” said Badran, who lived in the same cell with Sinwar for years. “He chose to set an example for all Palestinian leadership that the true leader is one who lives among his people—exposed to harm as they are, fights as they fight, is martyred as they are martyred, and goes hungry as they go hungry.”

As Sinwar rose to the leadership of Hamas in Gaza following his release from prison, Barghouti returned to his village of Kobar on October 18, 2011. After nearly 34 years in captivity, he tried to build a life in a world he had not inhabited for more than three decades. A month after winning his freedom, he married Iman Nafi, who had also served 10 years in prison, from 1987-1997. “Nael is a Palestinian hero. I have known of his heroism, his steadfastness and leadership in prison for many years. He is a special person. He belongs to a revolutionary school that is true and authentic and comes from the land itself. I have known so many details about his life, from what I have read and heard,” Nafi wrote in an essay published in the 2019 book, These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons. “When he came asking for my hand, I told my family that I agree without any hesitation.”

Like Barghouti, Nafi was arrested when she was still in high school. “As a freed prisoner, I consider my marriage to another freed prisoner a victory against prison, a challenge to those who deprived us of our freedom, and a triumph of the spirit of faith and hope,” Barghouti said on his wedding day. “The idea that Nael would be released from prison and he and I would be together gives the Palestinian people hope that we could all be free and happy,” Nafi said. Barghouti enrolled at Al Quds Open University and farmed his land along with his brother Omar, who was also released in the Shalit deal. “The world has changed and developed so much since I was gone. But the longer the occupation lasts, the worse things are,” Barghouti said soon after his release. “I am being welcomed not as a person, but as an idea, a symbol for Palestinians.”

On June 12, 2014, three Israeli settlers were abducted near an illegal settlement outside of Hebron. Israel accused Hamas of being responsible and launched a sweeping military action throughout the occupied West Bank, codenamed Operation Brother’s Keeper, and took more than 350 Palestinians prisoner. Among these were some 70 Palestinians released in the 2011 Shalit deal. On June 18, Israeli forces descended on Kobar and snatched Barghouti—claiming he had violated the terms of his release after he delivered a speech at Birzeit University and citing rumors that he was considering accepting a ministerial post in a possible unity government between Fatah and Hamas. Barghouti dismissed their justifications and charged he was snatched as another act of collective punishment.

Prosecutors, claiming to have secret evidence, sought to have his life sentence reinstated. A year later, a military court in Ofer Prison ruled the charges baseless that Barghouti had “committed a crime under the security laws,” but the court nonetheless sentenced him to 30 months in prison, claiming secret intelligence showed he was involved with “terrorist financing.” Barghouti was not permitted to see the alleged evidence. In 2017, again citing secret files, the military court reversed its decision and reimposed Barghouti’s original life sentence. He remained in captivity until Hamas and Israel signed a ceasefire deal in January 2025. He was freed from prison on the condition that he live in exile.

Barghouti, whose freedom was achieved through negotiations in the aftermath of Operation Al Aqsa Flood, recalls hearing the news of the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023. “Honestly, I felt the same feeling that the Israelis felt in 1967—how within six hours the Arab air force was destroyed and Arab land was occupied. [The Israelis] felt happiness and arrogance. I did not feel arrogance. Despite our limited and simple capabilities and [living] under siege—we don’t have F‑16s, we don’t have Patriot missiles—this arrogant army, which goes to Yemen and bombs Yemen, bombs Iraq, bombs Iran, was confronted by simple people coming out of the siege saying, ‘Enough,’” Barghouti remembered. “Yes, we took pride in it—yes. Even though we wish that this Flood had never had to happen—that we had already been free and had no need for such battles. But, tomorrow, there will be another flood, and another, until this occupation and this injustice come to an end.”

Barghouti also said that, soon after the October 7 attacks, the Israeli guards inside the prison began to intensify their abuse and torture of Palestinian prisoners. “Israeli policy against prisoners used every method of repression: beatings, humiliation, dogs, tear gas, stun grenades, and starvation. I personally lost 22 kilograms (48 pounds) in weight. I was deliberately poisoned more than three times—myself and those living with me in the same section,” he said. “It was intentional poisoning—some of the guards put substances in the food, and everyone who ate it suffered from diarrhea, and we received no medication. Those who contracted contagious diseases like scabies were taken to rooms with healthy prisoners so the disease would spread, and it spread intentionally and systematically. This demonstrates a fascist mindset.”

“Our hands, legs, and ribs were broken, but our spirits and our will were not broken,” Barghouti added. “Dogs fitted with iron collars were used against me more than once: they were given orders. My shoulders were broken. My blood covered my back—from iron shackles, from plastic restraints. Hunger. Cold—for two full months I walked barefoot in the cold. Barefoot,” he recalled. “The clothes I was wearing—the guards all called me ‘homeless.’ I believe there are photographs they took—they boasted about it. The food—they would kick it with their feet, spit on it, spit into the food. These are things that happened.”

Solidarity With Other Palestinian Prisoners

Since his release in February 2025, Barghouti has used his time advocating for the freedom of other prisoners, demanding that families of those forced into exile be allowed to reunite, and promoting the cause of Palestinian liberation. When he was freed, Israel denied his wife exit papers to join him in Egypt. According to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, Israel routinely blocks families from being reunited with their loved ones once they are freed and forced into exile, with the organization calling the Israeli practice “collective revenge.”

“Why, at this moment, are the families of Palestinian prisoners who were released under an agreement prevented from meeting their children? Why is this happening? Why are the wives, sons, and daughters of detainees prevented from joining their children in visits? Why?” Barghouti asked. “All prisoners who have been [exiled]—their families are punished by being forbidden to meet them.”

Since 1967, Israel has also maintained a practice of holding the bodies of Palestinians who die in prison and refusing to allow their families to bury them. Conservative estimates indicate there are more than 700 bodies held in numbered graves or refrigerators, though these estimates do not include many of the Palestinians killed in Gaza whose bodies were taken back to Israel since October 7. In one case, Israel has continued to hold the body of a Palestinian who died on hunger strike in prison in 1980. “There are dozens, even hundreds, of Palestinian victims to this day in numbered graves and in secret prisons, and the Red Cross is not allowed to see them. They trade in bodies, and this goes against everything that is human,” Barghouti said.

Barghouti’s thoughts are never far from his comrades still in captivity, including high-profile political prisoners like Marwan Barghouti, the single most popular Palestinian leader. “These prisoners, and dozens like them, are heroes of the Palestinian people,” he said. “But if these prisoners were to be tried under a fair legal system, they would not—and could not—have received the sentences they were given. I challenge international law: if it truly wants to resolve the issue of Palestinian detainees, it must review all their cases.”

Hanan Barghouti, Nael’s 60-year-old sister, has been “administratively detained” by Israeli forces three times without charge or trial in the past two years. A prominent organizer of mobilizations in support of Palestinian prisoners, Hanan was first detained in September 2023 and released in November 2023 as part of the “Flood of the Free” prisoner exchange during the temporary truce between Hamas and Israel. After her 2023 release, Hanan recalled how an Israeli officer threatened her against appearing in the media or allowing celebrations for her freedom, reminding her that four of her sons were also under administrative detention. She told Al-Araby’s Al-Jadeed that she confronted him as a “sadistic oppressor.” Reflecting on the cost of resistance, she said: “The price is heavy and painful, and there is a sea of blood, but this blood will water the land, and the land will bloom in all colors.”

She was then taken again by Israeli forces in March 2024 and held for nine months—an Israeli violation of the terms of the November 2023 exchange deal. On September 30, 2025, she was detained for a third time under a new administrative order and is being subjected to repression, abuse, and starvation in Israel’s Damon Prison, according to the Prisoners’ Media Office. Barghouti told Drop Site that Hanan was taken shortly after he spoke with her by phone.

“Today, my sister—my own sister—is in prison. Why? Because she spoke with me on the phone,” Barghouti said. “Can you imagine? She is taken under an administrative law dating back to the period of British occupation. My sister is [imprisoned] simply because she spoke with her brother. What justice is this?”

Israeli politicians have recently intensified their threats to begin executing Palestinian prisoners, and the conditions inside of the prisons have dramatically worsened as torture and extrajudicial killings have intensified since October 7. In November, the Israeli Knesset moved forward a bill introducing the death penalty for those it deems terrorists, a measure expected to apply almost exclusively to Palestinians living under occupation. The bill grants immunity to the state, allows death sentences without a prosecutor’s request, and imposes total isolation on those condemned. Passed in its first reading by 39–16, the vote was celebrated by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who wore a noose-shaped pin and declared that “terrorists will only be released to hell.”

Barghouti argues that the escalating abuse and torture and threats to begin executions, will foreclose meaningful negotiations toward a broader peace, given the importance of the prisoners to the Palestinian struggle. “They have left the prisoners’ file as a fuse for future confrontations. Release them, and I believe the region could enjoy a long period of calm. [These prisoners] are an inseparable part of the Palestinian struggle. Keep them imprisoned, and you will drive many generations, and the children of future generations, to struggle for their liberation, and the cycle will continue unchanged,” he said. “Stupidity is one of God’s soldiers deployed upon the minds of these criminals—it will ultimately contribute to the end of this entity. Part of their stupidity, animosity, and criminality will contribute to their downfall in front of the people of the world, not only in the eyes of our people.”

In striking ways, Barghouti’s life is a metaphor for the entire Palestinian struggle. “We endured beatings and humiliation, but our spirit and our will were not broken, and will never be broken by any torture. We endured because we were people of conviction. Even when we were prevented from praying, and forbidden from practicing our religious rituals, we prayed in secret—just as Christians once prayed in secret under the Byzantine and Roman empires when they were persecuted,” he said. “We held onto hope, we remain hopeful, and we will continue to hope. The jailer will never defeat us, no matter what methods he uses, because we are people of a just cause,” Barghouti added. “We deserve a state under the sun—a state with scientists, poets, writers, and artists, no less than any other country in the world.”

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DOHA, QATAR—Since President Donald Trump falsely proclaimed the dawn of a new era of peace and harmony in the Middle East in early October, Palestinians in Gaza have lived in an Israeli-imposed purgatory. The scorched-earth terror bombings and full-spectrum blockade on any life essentials entering Gaza have been replaced by sporadic, though daily, Israeli strikes and a trickle of food and medicine deliveries in quantities far below the terms agreed to in the October 10 “peace” deal. What is happening in Gaza is not a ceasefire, but a lower intensity, slower-paced killing operation by an Israeli regime daring Palestinians to fight back.

As the White House struggles to convince even a single nation to deploy forces in Gaza on a mission to disarm the Palestinian resistance, Hamas negotiators say there has been no formal communication from the U.S. on how it intends to proceed on any of the terms laid out in Trump’s sweeping plan. There have been no substantive discussions on how Gaza will be governed, who will be in charge of its internal security, when or how Israeli forces will withdraw, and what role Palestinians will play in determining their own destiny.

The fact remains that Hamas and other Palestinian factions did not sign an agreement beyond a ceasefire, exchange of captives, and an initial framework for the redeployment or withdrawal of Israeli forces from some parts of Gaza. Officially, there is no deal on a “second phase.” Moreover, several senior Hamas officials told Drop Site that there currently are no substantive negotiations happening with Palestinians outside of a process that appears aimed at using Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas to give the appearance of Palestinian endorsement.

“The matter is so complex. It’s not just that we, as Palestinians, do not have a clear view of the next steps: I tell you, even the countries in charge, including America, do not have clear steps,” said Husam Badran, a senior Hamas official and a member of its political bureau, in an interview with Drop Site. Badran is a former West Bank commander of the Qassam Brigades and is currently Hamas’s head of national relations. He told Drop Site that Palestinians recognize they cannot issue demands of Trump, but can impact the reality on the ground through their refusal to surrender or to leave.

“Even though Palestinians are relatively weak compared to the occupation—sometimes we may not be able to impose what we want, but we can reject what we don’t want. As Palestinians—not just Hamas—we still have the ability to reject what we do not accept. And the world has started to realize that,” Badran said. “Certainly, we do not have the forces, military and financial capabilities, or international relations that the occupation has, but in the end, we are the people of this land; we are the people of this cause; and we are a people oppressed for more than seventy years. We live in an extremely sensitive region—not in the far West or the far East, but at the heart of the world.”

Several Palestinian negotiators who maintain contact with regional mediators from Qatar and Egypt told Drop Site that what is happening behind the scenes is largely a negotiation between the U.S. and Israel, as well as consultations with regional mediators Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey. The Palestinian side, Hamas officials said, is periodically briefed on the evolution of the U.S.-Israeli positions gleaned by the mediators, but it is not engaged in any process resembling a negotiation.

On Friday, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey traveled to Miami, Florida, for meetings with Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. The gathering represents the highest-level talks that have taken place since the October agreement was signed in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

“The resistance forces have fully adhered to their obligations under the agreement and remain committed to doing so, but the current situation is unsustainable,” said senior Hamas official Basem Naim on Friday. “We expect examination of how to implement what remains of the plan in a way that achieves sustainable stability, launches comprehensive reconstruction, and lays the foundation for a political path in which Palestinians govern themselves—culminating in the establishment of an independent state.” Naim called on the U.S. and regional mediators to “put an end to the ongoing Israeli rampage and to compel the occupation to abide by the requirements of the Sharm El-Sheikh agreement—foremost among them the provisions of the humanitarian track, including the entry of aid, the opening of Rafah crossing in both directions, and allowing in all needs for reconstruction and rehabilitation of infrastructure.”

Since October, Israel has adopted a posture as a victorious conqueror who now dictates the terms of surrender and occupation to a vanquished enemy—a stance fiercely rejected by Hamas. “The battle did not end with the defeat of the resistance or with the military defeat of Hamas. We paid an extremely high price, yes—martyrs and the destruction of infrastructure—but in the end, we were not defeated in this battle. You cannot compare us—excuse me for saying this—to the Japanese emperor when he was defeated in World War II,” said Badran. “We reached an agreement in Sharm El-Sheikh. It is true that [from the Palestinian perspective] the agreement is not just, but it is a political agreement attended by all the world’s leaders, foremost among them Trump.”

Despite repeated demands by Israel throughout the war against Gaza that Hamas surrender, it failed to achieve that aim through its genocidal war. Badran said that Palestinians will not suddenly capitulate their liberation struggle through a bureaucratic process masquerading as a peace agreement. “If the world—and especially the Americans, who today have the greatest influence in the world—wants to create genuine, long-term stability in this region, the only solution begins with the end of the occupation, not with anything else,” Badran said. “If you want to start by talking about disarmament and Palestinian surrender—the Palestinian will not surrender. And I tell you: even if Hamas were to disappear, others would come after it.”

On Thursday, Trump claimed he had “ended the war in Gaza, bringing for the first time in 3,000 years, peace to the Middle East.” The statement, delusional on its face, was nonetheless an encapsulation of Trump’s overarching approach to the Gaza plan—animated by a belief that his edicts alone entail equal results. Reality, though, is far more complex, and the prospects for an enduring resolution bleak.

Hamas officials have increasingly warned that Israel’s actions—and the U.S. refusal to compel Israel to abide by the terms of the ceasefire—risk destroying the deal. The head of Hamas in Gaza, Khalil Al-Hayya, said recently that Israel’s actions “threaten the agreement’s ability to hold,” and called on Trump “to compel the occupation to respect the agreement, adhere to its implementation, and refrain from exposing it to collapse.”

There are some indications that Trump realizes the Israelis want to ignite the flame that could torch his deal. The U.S. reportedly expressed its concerns that Israel conducted the strike without giving the White House prior notice and warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against actions that would jeopardize Trump’s plan. Since the October deal went into effect, nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks, the vast majority of them civilians. Israel has also been systematically murdering the very combatants with which it signed the ceasefire deal, brazenly justifying its attacks by claiming to target Qassam fighters, including Israel’s assassination on December 13 of Raed Sa’ad, a senior commander of the Qassam Brigades. Rather than retaliate by force, the Palestinians have repeatedly appealed to mediators to intervene.

“There is no doubt that these deliberate, clear, and blatant violations pose a very serious threat to the agreement and cause it to wobble and weaken,” said Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas negotiator on Sunday. He warned that the pervasive Israeli violations “place the agreement in grave danger.”

The White House has already begun downsizing its plans and “pushing for an initial deployment [of an international force] that would operate only in areas controlled by Israel,” perhaps only in areas of Rafah in southern Gaza, according to the Wall Street Journal. The wild card, then, becomes whether Trump would greenlight expanded Israeli military operations in the name of disarming Hamas. That scenario would force the Palestinian resistance to decide whether to retaliate in self-defense, which Israel would seize upon to further escalate its own attacks.

Badran and other Hamas officials told Drop Site that if Trump and other world leaders do not compel Israel to cease its war of annihilation in Gaza and halt the intensifying Israeli assaults and settlement expansion in the West Bank, a third intifada could break out. Moving forward with a plan in Gaza that seeks to advance Israel’s war of conquest through non-military means under a false banner of peace will reignite the war and send a message to Palestinians that they have no choice but armed resistance.

“If the world once again says, ‘There’s been a war, we will calm things down, [slightly] improve Palestinian conditions, and then the Palestinian cause will die,’ they will be surprised by what comes next,” Badran said. “The matter is not only about what the occupation wants. If the world deals with us Palestinians as if the [Israeli] occupation decides everything, this region will never find stability. And not only in Palestine.”

“Phase Two”: Disarmament, the ISF, and the “Yellow Line”

To listen to Trump and his allies, the priority right now is to move to the “second phase” of his grand deal. U.S. officials speak as though the terms have been laid out clearly and what remains is implementation. The plan is this: A “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump and consisting of a hand-picked assortment of world leaders will take charge of Gaza’s destiny and create a massive private and public financing scheme, estimated at $70 billion, to rebuild the enclave as part of an attractive investment opportunity. To do this, they will first deploy an International Stabilization Force (ISF) to disarm the Palestinian resistance and assume control of areas currently occupied by the Israeli army. A 15-member technocratic committee of non-partisan Palestinians will be enlisted to act as a civil administration inside Gaza, though they will be entirely beholden to the dictates of Trump’s imperial board and function more as a city council than a sovereign governing authority.

Palestinians in Gaza, the deal sheet claims, will not be forcibly displaced, but little else about their fate beyond that is spelled out. There is mention of a sufficiently reformed Palestinian Authority (PA) possibly returning to Gaza, though who would determine how the PA achieves that status is not detailed. “While Gaza re-development advances and when the PA reform programme is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people,” Trump’s plan says without offering any specifics or addressing the massive attacks and displacement operations underway in the occupied West Bank.

The most contentious issue right now centers around the planned deployment of the international force. Trump and Netanyahu have said its first mission would be the total disarmament of the Palestinian resistance and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. To date, Trump has failed to get any nations to volunteer for a deployment of that nature. Arab and Islamic countries, which Trump claimed for weeks would form the backbone of the ISF, say the mission must focus on creating a barrier between the Israeli occupation forces and the Palestinians of Gaza and ensuring that the terms of the ceasefire are respected. “We do not want a stabilization force in Gaza that serves to protect one party at the expense of another,” said Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Wednesday. “Delays and ceasefire violations endanger the entire process and place mediators in a difficult position,” Al-Thani said after meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, adding that the force’s role should be to safeguard the October agreement.

“What we hear from these [Arab and Islamic] countries—whether we speak with them directly or through mediators—is that they want the mission to be completely clear. They cannot send their forces on an unknown mission. The most important thing is that there should be no clashes between them and the Palestinians, because that would affect even the public image of these countries,” Badran said. “The sympathy for Palestinians among Arab and Islamic peoples is nearly absolute. Therefore, any ruler in any country has to consider that they are not, in effect, confronting the Palestinians. And that’s where the complexities come in.”

Al-Hayya said “the role of international forces should be limited to maintaining the ceasefire and separating the two sides along the borders of the Gaza Strip with our 1948 lands, without having any duties inside the Strip or intervening in its internal affairs.”

From the perspective of the Palestinian resistance, the fact that it is openly welcoming the deployment of a foreign force is itself a significant concession. “Historically, Hamas did not agree with the idea of an international force. This was our fundamental political stance,” said Badran. “However, given the developments that occurred during the war—and the heavy price paid by our people in the Gaza Strip—we are ultimately a pragmatic movement that discusses what serves the general interest. Therefore, we agreed, in coordination with all the factions including the Palestinian Authority and Fatah who took the same position. We have no objection to the principle of international forces—there is no objection to that. But what their role and mission will be—that is what matters.”

In the lead up to the signing of Trump’s plan, Israel made clear it opposed the deployment of a UN force in Gaza, and senior Israeli officials railed against the international body as an antisemitic enabler of Hamas. On November 17, Trump managed to secure a UN Security Council resolution that endorsed his private force without placing it under any UN command or oversight. Nonetheless, Netanyahu’s public position on the deployment of the ISF has been one of scorn, dismissing outright that it would ever undertake the disarmament of the Palestinian resistance, while claiming that Israel would eventually need to resume its war. “Our friends in America want to set up an international force to do the work,” Netanyahu said on December 7. “I said, ‘Please, are there volunteers? Go ahead.’ We know there are certain tasks this force can do, but not everything—perhaps not even the main tasks.”

Israeli officials have also declared that the so-called “yellow line,” which currently partitions Gaza in half, is the new border with Israel by which Israel’s occupation will indefinitely remain in control of eastern Gaza. “The ‘yellow line’ is a new border line, serving as a forward defensive line for our communities and a line of operational activity,” said Eyal Zamir, chief of the general staff of the Israeli army, during a visit to troops in northern Gaza on December 8. “We have operational control over extensive parts of the Gaza Strip, and we will remain on those defense lines.” The line, which was first presented in a map accompanying Trump’s plan, was officially framed as the initial Israeli redeployment position. Since the ceasefire came into effect, Israel has been constructing military infrastructure and demolishing Palestinian homes and buildings in eastern Gaza.

The U.S. has been floating a proposal to construct so-called Alternative Safe Communities to entice Palestinians to leave areas of Gaza still controlled by Hamas by offering them temporary housing, food, and medical services in areas currently under full Israeli occupation. “This is not an earthquake that happened in an area and [you need] to move people to another area,” said Badran. “The story is connected to a people, a life, a future, political ambitions, study, education, and other such things. Even if this plan succeeds—which I expect it will not—they are talking about many years ahead. Who will have patience with them?”

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian political leader and former presidential candidate, sees a sinister motive driving the actions in eastern Gaza. “It’s Bantustanization with another goal, which is liquidation of the Palestinian cause. The Israelis want to end Palestine and the Palestinian people. That’s exactly what Netanyahu is dreaming about,” Barghouti said in an interview with Drop Site. “The way he’s dealing even with this idea of stabilization forces, making jokes of it. And he hints that he’s the only one who will be able to conduct the job [of disarming Palestinians]. I think he never gave up the idea of total occupation of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of its population,” Barghouti added. “The same applies to the West Bank where they are using settler groups to attack Palestinians. And they’ve already uprooted 60 communities. So the challenge is huge. But one thing I am 100% sure of, there is no power in this world that will force us to leave our country. And there is no power in this world that will break our will.”

Hamas and other Palestinian factions have emphasized that Israel is using the issue of demilitarization and disarmament of the resistance as a proxy to demand a total surrender of the cause of national liberation.

“The occupation wants not only to confiscate weapons: it could pursue us even down to the knives in people’s kitchens as ‘weapons.’ It knows perfectly well that we do not have warplanes, tanks, armored personnel carriers, or naval vessels. Everyone knows that. We are not an army: we are a resistance movement whose weapons are, in the end, simple weapons. So what does the occupation want? It wants to break the idea of resistance within the Palestinian people,” Badran said. “The issue is not about weapons; it is about wanting the Palestinian to surrender and abandon his political aspirations.”

Hamas negotiators understand that the issue of disarmament is not going to disappear and that the Israeli narrative has been fully embraced in Washington and in European capitals. “We affirm that the resistance and its weapons are a legitimate right guaranteed by international law for all peoples under occupation, and that this right is linked to the establishment of the Palestinian state,” said Al-Hayya. “We are open to studying any proposals that preserve this right, while ensuring the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.”

The foreign ministers of Turkey and Egypt—two of the most important Muslim allies supporting Trump’s plan—have said that the U.S. must be realistic about the issue of disarmament and an international force. On Friday, Rubio appeared to acknowledge that Israel’s demand for total disarmament was implausible and that the issue will require an agreement with the Palestinian resistance. “You’re not going to convince anyone to invest money in Gaza, if they believe another war is going to happen in two, three years. So, I would just ask everyone to focus on what are the kind of weaponries and capabilities that Hamas would need in order to threaten or attack Israel—as a baseline for what disarmament would look like,” Rubio said. “We’re going to leave that to the technical teams to work on. It would have to be something, obviously, that they’re willing to agree to—that our partners can push and pressure them to agree to. It also has to be something that Israel agrees to. In order for that to work, both sides have to agree on it—we need the space to do it.”

In meetings with regional mediators, Hamas has proposed a range of ideas on how to address the issue on a technical level. If the concern is ensuring no attacks are launched against Israel, then Hamas believes an internationally-enforced, long-term truce is the best path. “We are open to having a comprehensive approach in order to avoid further escalations, or in order to avoid any further clashes or explosions,” Naim said in early December. He told Drop Site Friday that, in order for Hamas to offer an official stance, it needs to see an actual proposal. “We have no idea about the true goals of the plan in clear words,” Naim said.

Hamas has expressed an openness to a deal that would see the weapons of Hamas and Islamic Jihad stored or “frozen,” a configuration that would come with the endorsement of the Palestinian resistance groups themselves. Violating such an agreement, especially one endorsed by large numbers of Arab and Islamic countries, would carry grave consequences for the broader Palestinian struggle. The most significant risk to such an arrangement, Hamas officials argue, is that Israel would continue its attacks as it has in Lebanon, while insisting Palestinians have no right to self-defense.

“In the occupation’s narrative, it wants to portray weapons as the obstacle even to implementing the second phase. Why should we fall for this narrative? In the first phase, the occupation put forward a clear goal: it convinced the Americans, and perhaps others, that the main reason for the continuation of the war was the presence of [Israeli] captives held by the resistance in the Gaza Strip. And the entire world began repeating that the only problem was the captives,” said Badran. “So where did the occupation uphold its commitments in the first phase? It did not uphold them in anything at all. This shows that the captives were merely a pretext and an excuse. Now they want to push us into the second phase—which is far more dangerous and strategic—using the same method, by claiming that the problem is weapons. The problem is not weapons.”

The Future of Gaza’s Security

Hamas officials have reiterated their position that Palestinians should be in charge of governance and internal security in order to stabilize Gaza, prevent a resumption of fighting, and open a space for real negotiations on the broader agenda embedded within Trump’s plan. Hamas has formally agreed to a non-partisan technocratic committee to govern Gaza in the interim, but it has insisted that it not simply serve as an enforcer of a foreign or Israeli agenda. International forces, they emphasized, should not be engaged in law enforcement or disarmament.

Badran argued that a Palestinian police force, deployed with the full support of all Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, would have the local credibility necessary to establish order and to ensure compliance with any agreement governing weapons of the resistance. He asserted that Hamas’s offer to agree to a long-term truce with Israel, wherein the Palestinian resistance agrees to store its weapons and not deploy them in any attacks against Israel, is the only tangible path to resolving the issue.

“The committee that assumes responsibility for the Gaza Strip in all its details must also take responsibility for what is called internal security or civil peace within the Gaza Strip,” he said. “The Palestinian police currently in the Gaza Strip for roughly the past twenty years are not Hamas police. It is true that Hamas has been overseeing the overall administration, but these employees—the police force—are ultimately a civilian police force—not an army. As a result, large numbers of them are not members of Hamas, even to this day,” Badran added. “Any armed individual other than the Palestinian police who appears in the street carrying a weapon should be held accountable by this police force, and his weapon confiscated. We were very clear on this point: internal security related to the Gaza Strip is the task of this committee, which is responsible for all matters, including security.”

Badran, who was born in Nablus in the West Bank, spent a total of 14 years of his life in Israeli prisons, and he was a cellmate and close friend of Yahya Sinwar, the former leader of Hamas in Gaza who was killed by Israeli forces on October 16, 2024. Badran was arrested in 2002, and in 2004 he was sentenced to 17 years in prison on charges that he orchestrated a series of deadly attacks during the second Palestinian intifada, which began in 2000. He was released in 2011 with Sinwar and more than 1,000 other Palestinians in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

During his interview with Drop Site in Doha, Badran described the motivations behind the October 7 attacks; the dire humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, which worsened by the month prior to the attacks; and the suffering endured by Palestinians in the seven decades preceding the launch of Operation Al Aqsa Flood in 2023.

“I think the general Palestinian feeling was that Palestinians were forced into such a step because the world wasn’t listening to them. You remember in 2018, 2019, when the Great March of Return took place—peaceful marches. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed, and still the world did not grasp the message, and the occupation didn’t either. So maybe October 7 came to tell the whole world that Palestinians are capable of doing something that you wouldn’t expect,” Badran said. “We are not seeking improved living conditions—we are not a minority living within another state. We want our political rights. And, therefore, I tell you that October 7 is fundamentally because of this idea.”

He described how Palestinians held inside Israeli prisons regularly go on prolonged hunger strikes, in some cases to achieve a simple demand that they be given glasses to drink tea. “So someone who cannot give up small things—and who paid the price of going on a hunger strike for twenty days just to obtain that one glass cup—why do you expect him to surrender?” he added. “This is the Palestinian mentality. Failing to understand it will lead major political leaders—including Trump and his team—to a wrong understanding, and therefore to wrong decisions. The feeling that Palestinians are weak, that their capabilities are limited, that Gaza has been destroyed, and that the occupation today has achieved all its glory through attacking the Palestinians—this leads to a false conclusion: that the world can live with this situation. And I tell you: it cannot.”

Badran said that Palestinians are not simply seeking better tents in which to live or a reduction in checkpoints or a slower pace of the expansion of Israeli settlements. Nor, he said, will they accept a multi-decade bureaucratic process, like Oslo, that promises a vague resolution to questions of statehood and self determination as Israel’s war of annihilation continues unabated.

“Palestinians want something clear and direct: their right to self-determination, to govern themselves, and to establish a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, with full sovereignty—without anyone controlling us or interfering in our internal affairs. This is a natural demand for any people. It is neither unrealistic nor unreasonable,” he said. “If the world wants real stability, it must act now and provide Palestinians with a genuine solution—not a solution limited to improving [living] conditions.”

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DOHA, QATAR—If President Donald Trump wants to achieve stability in the Middle East, he should put an end to Israeli interference in U.S. policy toward Palestine, senior Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told Drop Site. Instead, Meshaal said, the U.S. should enter into a genuine process of direct negotiations with Hamas and other Palestinian political factions aimed at establishing friendly, bilateral relations.

“Unfortunately, one of the problems with the U.S. administration is that it prioritizes Israel’s interests more than the United States’ own interests. Even Trump’s people—MAGA—came to realize that Israel is a burden on them, restricting and harming U.S. interests. I am simply calling on the American people and the U.S. administration to judge based on America’s interests, not Israel’s,” Meshaal said. “If they look at us even for a moment in a fair and impartial way, they will see that the Palestinian people are oppressed under occupation, and they have the right to resist—unless America steps in and forces Israel to withdraw, in which case we would thank America.” He added, “When the world fails to help you, you have no choice but to resist the occupier until you force it to withdraw.”

Read Drop Site’s full, in-person interview with Meshaal below.

Meshaal, who is currently the head of Hamas outside of Palestine, was a founding member of the movement and is one of its most experienced and internationally well-known leaders. In the decade before Hamas launched in 1987, Meshaal was part of a group that created the architecture for the formation of a new Islamic political liberation movement in Palestine. That process crystallized in the formation of the Islamic Resistance Movement, commonly known by its Arabic acronym HAMAS. After the Israeli assassination of Hamas’s spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004, Meshaal was widely recognized as the political leader of the movement and he served as head of its political bureau from 1996-2017.

He reiterated that Hamas is prepared to enter into a long-term ceasefire agreement with Israel, backed by a pledge that Hamas would store its weapons and commit to end all military operations targeting Israel. Meshaal also said that Hamas is ready to work closely with the U.S. and the international community in creating a stable security environment inside Gaza that will enable the reconstruction of the enclave, prepare the ground for democratic elections, and create the political conditions for negotiations addressing the future of a Palestinian state.

“The pragmatic American mindset, and President Trump’s genuine concern to achieve stability and prevent Gaza from remaining a continual bleeding wound that worries the world and deeply strikes the human conscience [can] create an opportunity for stability,” Meshaal said. “Hamas provides this opportunity with real guarantees and a record of commitment.”

Hamas remains a popular political actor within Palestine and has served as the only governing authority in Gaza for two decades—a fact that, Meshaal said, Trump needs to consider. While Hamas has offered to relinquish its governance of the enclave in favor of a technocratic committee of non-partisan Palestinians, Meshaal warned that attempting to impose a sweeping ban on anyone affiliated with Hamas from participating in the stabilization and rebuilding of society in Gaza would be counterproductive.

“Any attempt to establish a non-Palestinian authority inside Gaza is first unacceptable and second doomed to fail,” Meshaal said. “Any non-Palestinian authority—meaning foreign authorities or foreign forces inside Gaza—would be treated by Palestinians as an occupying authority, as an occupying power. This would automatically create a state of conflict because Palestinians would not accept it. Why would Palestinians reject Israeli occupation but accept another form of foreign occupation?”

During the sit-down interview with Drop Site in Doha last week, Meshaal argued that the current moment offers an opportunity for the U.S. and Europe to realign the Western approach to the Middle East. “The Palestinian people are not against American interests. We are opposed to those who interfere in our affairs and to those who support our enemy. But we are ready to open up to America, to Europe, and to the world,” he said. “What we will not accept is occupation, guardianship, or support for an occupier. We criticize the United States not because it is the United States—no—but because it provides Israel, our occupier, with complete support in all forms. Today, there is an opportunity for transformation, and I believe it is in the interest of the West to sponsor a fundamental change in [the approach to] Palestine, just as it eventually recognized the truth in South Africa and withdrew its support from that apartheid regime.”

Citing Trump’s embrace of Ahmed Al-Sharaa, the former Al Qaeda operative turned anti-Assad rebel leader who took power as interim president of Syria in January, Meshaal said the U.S. should pursue a similar path with Palestinian political leaders. “Why does the U.S. administration give Ahmad Al‑Sharaa this opportunity but does not give it to Hamas and the Palestinian resistance forces? It does not even give it today to [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas, who is not accused of terrorism,” Meshaal said. “It is in the interest of the United States and Western capitals to pursue positive engagement with Hamas and with the Palestinian people, because we are the future, and this occupation will become part of the past.”

A former physics teacher, the 69-year old Meshaal has spent his life building Hamas. In 1997, a year after Meshaal was named head of Hamas’s political bureau, the newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Mossad agents to assassinate him in Amman, Jordan. Posing as Canadian tourists, the two operatives sprayed poison into his ear as he exited his car. One of Meshaal’s bodyguards, with the assistance of Jordanian police, captured the Israeli agents. King Hussein subsequently threatened to put the spies on trial and potentially execute them if Meshaal died and to end Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel. In response, Netanyahu dispatched the head of Mossad, Danny Yatom, to fly to Amman with the antidote to the poison. Hussein also secured the release of Yassin, Hamas’s spiritual leader, as part of the deal.

Meshaal has been widely credited with being one of the architects of Hamas’s 2006 winning campaign in the Palestinian national elections. In 2012, Meshaal—who had spent his life in exile since 1967—made a triumphant visit to Palestine where he received a hero’s welcome in the streets of Gaza. Meshaal’s last act as Hamas’s political leader came on May 1, 2017 when he presided over the public unveiling of a 42-point manifesto that stated that Hamas was willing to accept a Palestinian state along the borders that existed prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

“Without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights,” it stated, “Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.” The document also sharpened language defining the national liberation character of armed struggle in Palestine, denounced anti-semitism and clarified that the enemy of the Palestinian cause was a “colonial Zionist project.”

While the manifesto did not officially replace Hamas’s 1988 charter, its language on accepting what would amount to a two-state solution was seen as a significant overture to the international community. In the ensuing years, Meshaal continued to represent Hamas internationally, but the center of leadership within the movement shifted to Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh—both of whom Israel assassinated in the summer of 2024. Over the course of the past two years of the Gaza genocide, Meshaal receded from prominence and has seldom spoken or appeared in public.

That dynamic has changed as of late. Within minutes of Israel’s attack on Hamas’s offices in Doha on September 9, Israeli media outlets and prominent social media accounts were circulating reports that Meshaal and other Palestinian leaders had been assassinated. Those rumors were false. While the strike killed the son of Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, and four other office staff, it did not kill any negotiators or political officials.

And now, in the aftermath of Trump’s October Gaza deal, Meshaal has reemerged as a prominent voice representing Hamas and outlining its positions on a range of issues. He has denounced Israel’s pervasive violations of the “ceasefire” agreement and its continued killing of not just Palestinian civilians, but also members of the armed resistance who are direct parties to the ceasefire. Since October 10, Israel has killed nearly 400 Palestinians and wounded more than 1,000 and continues to block the agreed upon delivery of life essentials.

“Some in the world think the first phase was excellent or fully implemented—it was not. While the war, in terms of total annihilation, has stopped, Israeli violations continue,” Meshaal said. “Therefore, our call as Palestinians, not just Hamas, is that Israel must be held accountable for all agreements of the first phase before moving quickly to the second phase. As Hamas committed to the first phase requirements, Hamas, along with all Palestinian forces, is committed to the requirements of the second phase through this serious dialogue with the mediators to reach sound approaches—not as Netanyahu wants, but as agreed upon with the mediators.”

Meshaal has also outlined Hamas’s position that while it is open to a “freezing” or storing of its defensive weapons, it will not agree to disarmament unless it is in the context of establishing a Palestinian army or security force capable of defending itself from Israeli aggression.

Last week, Netanyahu mentioned Meshaal by name in a speech, saying that Meshaal’s rejection of Palestinian disarmament would be confronted. “This mission will be completed either the easy way or the hard way,” Netanyahu said on December 9. A day later, Meshaal sat for an hourlong special interview on Al Jazeera Arabic and Hamas widely distributed his remarks across its official platforms.

Meshaal is the second most popular hypothetical candidate for president of Palestine, according to a recent poll, should the Palestinian Authority allow fair elections. Marwan Barghouti, who has ranked as the most popular potential leader for years, is currently imprisoned on multiple life terms in Israeli prison. “We hope that Marwan will be released, that he will have the opportunity to engage in national struggle and political work, and that he will be a candidate—this is his natural right,” Meshaal said. “Hamas also has the right to nominate whomever it chooses, whether Khaled Meshaal or someone else.”

Abbas, the 90-year-old head of the Palestinian Authority, disagrees. He issued a “decree law” on November 19 that would ban Hamas-affiliated candidates and other pro-resistance Palestinians from running in local elections. It would also prohibit candidates who do not officially recognize the Oslo agreements and other deals that are widely seen among Palestinians as dangerous capitulations. The law, which was pushed by Western countries but widely denounced in Palestine, is almost certain to be applied on a national level, according to a source who has seen a draft version of the proposed decree. The source added that there is language in the draft that would also prohibit any party with an armed wing from participating in elections.

“The democracy desired in Palestine, as is unfortunately practiced in some countries in the region and the world, is that elections should produce predetermined results acceptable to those holding them. If they do not, they are canceled. That is not democracy,” said Meshaal. “If you respect the will of the people, allow them to express it freely at the ballot box. Today, everyone knows—even after the destruction in Gaza following two long years of the crime of genocide committed by Israel—that the Palestinian conscience, awareness, and, I believe, the Palestinian voter, if given the opportunity, would vote for the resistance.”

Hamas’s Message to Trump: “Power is responsibility”

Drop Site News met with Meshaal in person on Thursday in Doha. The interview was conducted as the Trump administration is pushing forward with its plan to deploy an International Stabilization Force (ISF) to Gaza and, in recent days, has been intensifying its pressure on both European and Islamic nations to commit troops. Several Arab and other Muslim countries have said they will not join a mission to disarm or battle Palestinian resistance fighters.

“We should be realistic and nuanced in expecting certain things,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in an appearance on December 6 at the Doha Forum in Qatar. “Our first objective in deploying the ISF is to separate Palestinians from the Israelis.” His remarks were echoed by Egypt’s foreign minister Badr Abdelatty. “We need to deploy this force as soon as possible on the ground because one party, which is Israel, is every day violating the ceasefire and claiming that the other side is violating, so we need monitors,” Abdelatty said.

Netanyahu has dismissed the notion that an international force would be willing, or able, to implement a disarmament operation. He suggested that Israel may eventually launch its own military campaign in the name of disarming Gaza, an objective its forces failed to achieve during more than two years of scorched earth war.

Despite clear opposition from its Arab and Muslim allies, the Trump administration continues to insist the ISF will enter Gaza with a mission to disarm Hamas. “We specifically put language in there that said, ‘by all means necessary,’” U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz told Israel’s Channel 12 on December 11, referring to the UN Security Council resolution passed on November 17. “Now, obviously that’ll be a conversation with each country. Those rules of engagement are ongoing. I’ll tell you this, President Trump has repeatedly said Hamas will disarm one way or another, the easy way or the hard way.”

Last week, U.S. officials met with their European counterparts in Tel Aviv to discuss the ISF and reportedly threatened to permit an indefinite Israeli military presence if EU nations did not offer troops. “The message was: ‘If you are not ready to go to Gaza, don’t complain that the IDF stays,’” one European diplomat told Axios.

While citing substantial objections over the Trump Gaza plan’s vague yet sweeping nature, Meshaal said that the 20-point document nonetheless contains key concepts that Hamas, in principle, would accept. Meshaal cautioned, however, that the common ground between Hamas and Trump is undermined by attempts to impose foreign rule over Gaza, deploy an international force to disarm the Palestinian resistance, rather than serve as peacekeepers, or to enact policies that would enable Israel to continue its war of annihilation under the guise of a “peace deal.”

He also reiterated that Palestinian negotiators never agreed to disarmament or any of the terms in the “second phase” of a deal, despite U.S. and Israeli claims to the contrary. The negotiators from Hamas made clear privately and publicly in October that they only had a mandate to negotiate a ceasefire and exchange of captives and that all other issues must be handled through a consensus process involving all major Palestinian political factions.

Hamas negotiators had urged the U.S. and regional mediators to approach the issue of disarmament through technical negotiation, Meshaal said, and not through edicts that seek to achieve a surrender of the Palestinian liberation cause that Israel could not win on the battlefield. During the October negotiations, he noted, Hamas leaders informed the mediators that sweeping demands for immediate disarmament would sabotage a broader agreement and undermine Trump’s stated aim of ending the war.

“We do not want to clash with anyone or confront anyone, but we will not accept being forcibly disarmed. We told them: if you want results, let us look for a realistic approach that includes guarantees,” Meshaal said. “In truth, the major question is not the likelihood of the Palestinian side’s commitment, the problem lies with the Israeli side—because by its nature it is treacherous, this is its history. Second, it is the side that possesses lethal weaponry. The issue is not how to protect the Israeli side—it is the occupier. The issue is how to protect the Palestinian people, who are nearly defenseless. The weapons of the resistance do not mean that we are armed in the conventional sense, as states are. We are a nearly defenseless people, and we have sought weapons only to the extent possible in order to protect ourselves and defend ourselves.”

In launching his sweeping plan for Gaza, Trump was able to marshal the endorsement of dozens of Arab and Islamic countries, culminating in an unprecedented UN Security Council resolution that placed a fabricated stamp of legitimacy on an agenda that many Palestinians see as doing Israel’s bidding and colonialist in nature.

When asked whether the actions of Arab and Islamic states represented a betrayal of the Palestinian cause, Meshaal struck a diplomatic tone. “While they try to play a role in supporting the Palestinian people, standing by its cause or stopping the war, they also [consider] economic interests, arms purchases and other strategic considerations,” he said. “Since the American president is, in fact, a businessman, some countries are trying to build relationships with him that either serve their interests or protect them from potential harm, because they fear Trump’s adventures and sudden moves, as we saw in the past. This situation undoubtedly weakens strong Arab and Islamic intervention to stop the war.”

Despite the justifiable anger Palestinians may harbor toward Arab and Islamic states for their lack of intervention against Israel’s genocide, Meshaal emphasized, it is the U.S. that holds the only leverage over Israel: “Yes, more is required from Arabs and Muslims, but they are not the strongest party. As you know, no one in the world is able to compel Israel—even Europeans do not do so, or cannot do so.”

“Therefore, the responsibility of the United States is a doubled responsibility, and power is responsibility,” Meshaal said. “President Trump and the American administration alone are capable of compelling Israel and Netanyahu to respect the agreements, so they bear this responsibility before we assign responsibility to any regional or international party.”

Below is the full transcript of Drop Site’s wide-ranging interview with Meshaal on December 11, 2025 in Doha, Qatar. The interview was conducted in Arabic and translated into English by Drop Site.

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Interview With Khaled Meshaal

Jeremy Scahill: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us.

Khaled Meshaal: Thank you very much. I appreciate your keenness to conduct this interview and for providing this space and platform for me and for all those who represent the Palestinian cause.

There is no doubt that the unprecedented Israeli crime is a war of genocide, a repetition of what the Jews were subjected to many decades ago. They are now committing this Holocaust and this war of genocide against the Palestinian people and against a small area of only 365 square kilometers—using the most severe and horrific tools of destruction and killing. We are pleased to address Western public opinion through your platform so that people hear from us, not about us, and so that the true nature of this conflict is understood, about which the world has been misled for many decades. So thank you.

Jeremy Scahill: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned you by name the other day in regards to the demands for the disarmament of the Palestinian resistance. Trump’s National Security adviser, Mike Waltz, said recently that Hamas can disarm the easy way or the hard way. Can you explain in detail the position right now of the Palestinian resistance on the issue of disarmament, freezing weapons, and a long term truce, or hudna? Explain the position, right now, in the face of these demands from Netanyahu and Trump’s administration.

Khaled Meshaal: Of course, Netanyahu mentioned my name as if in a context of surprise, or incitement—he is inciting. Does Netanyahu really expect the Palestinian people to simply go and give up their weapons? Netanyahu’s own history, and that of his predecessors among Israeli leaders, is full of massacres. There is no trust among the Palestinian people toward the Israelis and the occupation. Israel’s history is one of massacres, treachery, and the violation of all agreements.

Even Yasser Arafat, who signed the Oslo Accords with them, was killed by poison. Mahmoud Abbas, who dealt with them with great openness in continuing Oslo and the peace process, is now left in the headquarters in Ramallah with no real role. In fact, Netanyahu, [Bezalel] Smotrich, and [Itamar] Ben-Gvir are now disassembling the Palestinian Authority and withholding its clearance funds. Not to mention the massacres Israel has committed throughout its history in Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt, and even in relatively recent Palestinian history—when the Palestinian resistance left Beirut, [Ariel] Sharon carried out the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

Therefore, within Palestinian culture, both historically and in the present, there is no trust in the Israeli. This is a criminal, treacherous enemy, and therefore it is only natural for the Palestinian to hold on to his weapon. This is not an extra weapon or something marginal for Palestinians—it is directly tied to our existence under occupation. Any people living in an independent state rely on the state and its army—the state is theirs, the army is theirs, and it protects them. And in any society, a citizen engages with their state through political means. But when you are under occupation, resistance is natural. Who has not resisted?

Let me tell you a story. In 2007, President [Jimmy] Carter visited me. I respected him because he conducted himself with high moral standards. He wrote books supportive of the Palestinian cause. I valued him, and he gifted me some of his signed books. I remained in contact with him. I was saddened when he passed away. This man, with his deep humanity, asked me about my parents—who were living in Damascus at the time in 2007. He asked, “Do you mind if I meet them?” I said no, so he met with them. My father, spontaneously, said to him: “Mr. Carter, listen—I fought the British Mandate. I fought the British.” President Carter replied, with a beautiful spontaneity: “And we fought the British too.”

Meaning that even the Americans fought the colonizer or forms of colonialism and guardianship over the United States. I am not speaking [only] about Vietnam, South Africa, the peoples of the world, or Cuba—I am speaking even about Western societies. You know that from the BBC in London, the British authorities allowed [Charles] de Gaulle to ignite the spark of popular resistance by the French people against the Nazis—against Hitler’s forces. So this is [part of] culture—it is something natural. Accordingly, what Palestinians do in resistance is natural, and their holding on to their weapons is natural. It is essential that this background be clear to everyone.

When Trump’s plan emerged, followed by the Security Council resolution, and dialogue began between us and the Egyptian, Qatari, and Turkish mediators, the central matter became, how do we deal with what was stated in the plan and in the Security Council resolution? Our position was clear: Do not resort to an approach of disarmament. This would lead to clashing, violence, and confrontation from the side seeking to impose it on us. We do not want to clash with anyone or confront anyone, but we will not accept being forcibly disarmed. We told them, if you want results, let us look for a realistic approach that includes guarantees. We outlined several such guarantees. The first guarantee is that these weapons—Hamas and the resistance forces would preserve and not use, display or parade them. [The weapons] would be set aside by their own decision and with full seriousness, especially given that Hamas has a record of commitment and high credibility.

Second, what has been referred to as international stabilization forces: we accept them on the borders as separation forces between the Palestinian side and the Israeli side, not as forces deployed inside Gaza, as was intended for them and as Netanyahu wants—for them to clash with Palestinians and disarm them. Third, we proposed a hudna, and this is evidence of Hamas’s seriousness and the seriousness of the Palestinian resistance. A truce of five years, seven years, ten years—whatever is agreed upon. And a hudna means commitment. All the periods of calm, as we call them, during the wars of the past twenty years—all those limited hudnas—Hamas adhered to them, and it was Israel that violated them. So, a hudna.

Fourth, we said that the three mediators, along with other Arab and Islamic countries that have good relations with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the resistance forces, can guarantee the Palestinian side to both the Israeli and the American sides—that Hamas and the resistance are committed. In truth, the major question is not the likelihood of the Palestinian side’s commitment, the problem lies with the Israeli side—because by its nature it is treacherous, this is its history. Second, it is the side that possesses lethal weaponry. The issue is not how to protect the Israeli side—it is the occupier. The issue is how to protect the Palestinian people, who are nearly defenseless. The weapons of the resistance do not mean that we are armed in the conventional sense, as states are. We are a nearly defenseless people, and we have sought weapons only to the extent possible in order to protect ourselves and defend ourselves.

I believe these are the correct approaches. I believe—as I stated in my [Al Jazeera] interview—that the pragmatic American mindset, and President Trump’s genuine concern to achieve stability and prevent Gaza from remaining a continual bleeding wound that worries the world and deeply strikes the human conscience—Western capitals, above all others, have become exasperated and fed up with what Israel is doing—create an opportunity for stability. Hamas provides this opportunity with real guarantees and a record of commitment. This is the approach—any other [approach] is impractical. It is enough for me to say it is impractical—not just unacceptable from our side.

Jeremy Scahill: I watched your recent interview with Al Jazeera Arabic and you mentioned the experience of Paul Bremer, who George W. Bush installed as the “viceroy” in Iraq during the 2003 invasion. And when the Americans implemented de-Ba’athification—where they criminalized the Ba’ath party of Saddam Hussein—they eliminated huge numbers of not only the professional military, but also civil society, government bureaucrats, and technocrats. They broke civil society because of de-Ba’athification. It seems to me that the Americans may eventually realize that Hamas is not only a resistance movement, but was a government and built civil infrastructure and civilian security forces. If they recreate a de-Ba’athification policy with Hamas and they try to remove anyone affiliated with Hamas, what would the consequences be on a security level? Because the idea is they’re going to send in a Palestinian police force—trained by the Egyptians, maybe. But the reality is that Hamas has been the security internally in Gaza for two decades. What would the consequences be if the Americans tried to adopt a de-Ba’athification approach to Hamas in Gaza?

Khaled Meshaal: From what I’ve been following in American statements, after the 2003 Iraq invasion, there have been some American reassessments about what they did in Iraq—that one of the mistakes was not just dismantling the regime. They realized that by dismantling the Iraqi state and its institutions, including the Iraqi army, they created chaos. This allowed groups like ISIS and forces the U.S. feared to emerge and it provided a pretext for prolonging the war in Iraq and the region. Therefore, I believe the American administration under President Trump should not repeat the same mistake—this is a relatively recent experience. If America seeks stability in the region, it must not make things worse or add fuel to the fire, which would further cause instability.

Furthermore, Hamas is not just a military organization or armed group—it is a resistance movement with a military dimension, but it is also a civil society movement. It is deeply rooted in the Palestinian people and is part of the fabric of Palestinian society. Its members are present across all aspects of Palestinian life. For two decades, Hamas has governed society efficiently, learning from past mistakes and gaining experience, and there was stability. The people of Gaza know that before Hamas ruled Gaza, there was lawlessness—a certain degree of chaos from rogue groups. Hamas managed this situation with high efficiency. Therefore, Hamas has a successful track record in maintaining security in the country and providing public safety. It has a successful experience in governing society, the government and providing for people’s needs, despite an unjust siege that lasted throughout this period.

Consequently, any attempt—and here I’m speaking about the principle, not just the method—to establish a non-Palestinian authority inside Gaza is first unacceptable and second doomed to fail. That’s why I said the Bremer experience is not acceptable. Looking back at Palestinian history a hundred years ago, after World War I in the early 1920s, there was the British Mandate. Practically, this Mandate was colonial, and Palestinian revolts in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s fought against it. The Mandate was unjust: it seized rights it did not possess, and it served as cover for the Zionist gangs that infiltrated Palestine and established Israel in 1948. Therefore, from a practical perspective, the Mandate experience and legacy is extremely negative, and in principle, is unacceptable. In principle, a mandate and guardianship are unacceptable.

As for the consequences you asked about, if such a scenario were to occur, they would certainly be serious. This would not be a confrontation with Hamas alone; it would be a confrontation with [Palestinian] society. I have said that any non-Palestinian authority—meaning foreign authorities or foreign forces inside Gaza—would be treated by Palestinians as an occupying authority, as an occupying power. This would automatically create a state of conflict because Palestinians would not accept it. Why would Palestinians reject Israeli occupation but accept another form of foreign occupation? That is unacceptable.

That is why I said that the Palestinian people are the ones who govern themselves, who make their own decisions, and who manage [their affairs]. Then Hamas took a step meant to shorten the path: it stepped away from administration—actually relinquished governance, not just in slogans—and left it to mediators such as Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, in a Palestinian dialogue with various factions, to agree on forming a technocratic administration. This is what we have done for more than a year. What delayed this [process] is that the [Palestinian] Authority in Ramallah was not enthusiastic about it, even though we said that the reference authority of this administration would be the authority of Ramallah so that the Palestinian system between Gaza and the West Bank could be unified. Unfortunately, it stalled. Three weeks ago, this idea was finalized: 40 respectable Palestinian figures, all independent technocrats, were proposed, and eight were selected. The original plan was for this step to be implemented quickly and efficiently, but there was a delay because everyone was waiting to see what Israel would do in the second phase and whether the United States would force Israel to enter that second phase. President Trump’s recent statements indicate that the process would begin early next year, but Israel is the one causing the delay.

For your information and for the information of American viewers and followers, the first phase has not met its requirements. Israel has violated the requirements or conditions of the first phase: in relief, shelter, the entry of tents and caravans, food and medical aid, hospital rehabilitation, and opening the Rafah crossing in both directions—as stipulated in the Trump plan and the Security Council resolution. Yet Israel only mentions the remaining Israeli bodies—only one left. Hamas and the Palestinian resistance committed to everything, while Israel violated many [obligations]. This is in addition to killings under various pretexts. Even the issue of Hamas fighters in Rafah was a solvable problem, and the U.S. offered an initiative, but it was thwarted by Netanyahu. We also heard how Trump criticized Netanyahu, saying, “Why did you make this an ongoing crisis?”

Furthermore, the “yellow line,” which initially allowed Israel to control about 53% of Gaza—[Israel] is moving this line—has now shifted closer to 60% of the Gaza Strip. So some in the world think the first phase was excellent or fully implemented—it was not. While the war, in terms of total annihilation, has stopped, Israeli violations continue. Therefore, our call as Palestinians, not just Hamas, is that Israel must be held accountable for all agreements of the first phase before moving quickly to the second phase. As Hamas committed to the first phase requirements, Hamas, along with all Palestinian forces, is committed to the requirements of the second phase through this serious dialogue with the mediators to reach sound approaches—not as Netanyahu wants, but as agreed upon with the mediators. And I believe that the American side, as I said, in its pursuit of stability and its concern for results more than the ways Israel is trying to incite the U.S.—the American administration and the international community will understand the approaches that we can develop together with the mediators.

Jeremy Scahill: How, though, are you going to navigate the role of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority? He’s 90 years old. The last time he was elected was 2005. The Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 with a five year mandate. The Americans also punished Abbas—they banned him from attending the United Nations general assembly in New York. But also they want to use him for a sort of legitimacy stamp to say, “Ah, see, Palestinians agree with this.” Recently Abbas pushed a decree law about elections—the local elections—that would mean Hamas can’t run in the election. Even Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian political leader and former candidate for president who does not control any armed faction, could not run in the election. But other resistance leaders have told me that working with the PA right now in Gaza is the least bad option because at least it’s Palestinian. But, given the history, this may not really strike a lot of Palestinians as a convincing answer. What is your position on how to navigate the way the Americans want to use the PA and the broader struggle by Hamas and other movements to preserve the Palestinian cause for an independent state?

Khaled Meshaal: First, democracy is a right of the Palestinian people. Elections and building the Palestinian political system on democratic foundations are a right of the Palestinian people, not a favor from anyone in the world—not a gift we wait for from anyone. On the other hand, the slogans raised by the United States and Western capitals about democratizing the region, or their support for a democratic system—they do practice it in their own countries, no doubt about that—they must respect the choice of peoples to exercise this democratic right. The Palestinian people have a culture and a history of political engagement. Just as they excelled in the struggle, they excel in politics. They have formed parties since the days of the British Mandate. They have culture, free press, education, and universities. The Palestinian people are vibrant, educated, and well-versed in civilization. Palestine itself is the land of civilization and of the Prophets—it has a long history. It also has a history of peaceful coexistence among its different components and religious communities. Therefore, the Palestinian people do not need anyone to teach them the culture of democracy. They simply need others not to interfere with or violate this right of democracy.

Now, there was the Palestinian Authority, as you mentioned, [established] in 1994. In 2006, elections were held, and Hamas participated for the first time. Hamas won the elections and formed a government in 2006 and extended offers to all Palestinian partners. However, the Authority in Ramallah pressured these factions not to participate. Consequently, Hamas was forced to form the government alone with some independent figures. This was not their choice but imposed on them because Ramallah incited the participating factions. Until clashes occurred and some members of the Palestinian security apparatus at that time attempted a coup against the legitimate government led by Mr. Ismail Haniyeh—Brother Abu Al-Ubid was the Prime Minister at the time, who later became a martyr, as you know, more than a year ago. Then the Mecca Agreement of February 2007 was reached, leading to a national unity government in which Fatah and all the factions participated.

By June 2007, as a result of an attempt by remnants of the security apparatus to overthrow this government, clashes occurred, and stability was imposed in Gaza under the leadership of Hamas. Some claimed that Hamas had ousted the others, which is not true. I visited an Arab leader at the time, and he asked me, “Brother Abu al-Waleed, how is it that you fought Fatah and the others in 2007?” I replied, “We did not fight anyone. We were not opposing or fighting the authority—we were the authority. When someone rebels against the law and the authority, what should we do? Suppose, Mr. President, someone from a party in your own country came and fought you—what would you do? Retaliate? Stop them? Or just watch and smile?” The president smiled. So, Hamas did not stage a coup against anyone because it was the authority. Ismail Haniyeh [of Hamas] was the Prime Minister of the national unity government, and [Fatah politician] Azzam al-Ahmad was his deputy.

So, Hamas is committed to democracy, committed to the law, and committed to making the democratic experiment succeed. Since that time, the situation has changed. What is the main reason for this? Many Western powers—and unfortunately, some regional powers in the area—were not satisfied with the results of the 2006 elections and did not give Hamas and the Palestinian society the opportunity to make this experiment succeed. As a result, a coup was attempted against it through security and military conspiracies. Vanity Fair at the time published a detailed report about this—it is a Western magazine, as you know. Gaza was also subjected to an economic blockade. The democratic experiment was therefore fought against economically and targeted security-wise through attempts to overthrow it. The security coup did not succeed, but there is no doubt that the blockade harmed the experiment and made life in Gaza abnormal. So, this democratic experiment was perhaps targeted for failure from the very beginning, but the will of our people enabled Hamas to continue.

After that, we were called to hold elections several times, but what made this fail was President Mahmoud Abbas. We agreed several times—for example, in 2011, we agreed to rebuild the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on new democratic foundations. That is, there are elections for the Palestinian Authority—which, as you know, operates in Gaza and the West Bank. The PLO is the political national reference for the Palestinian people, inside and outside [the country]. We agreed to rebuild the organization and took a transitional step by forming a temporary leadership framework, which met for only two sessions in Cairo that I attended, and then they did nothing. President Mahmoud Abbas, on his own initiative, called for municipal elections several times and then canceled them. We agreed in, I think, 2020 or 2021, on elections—they were canceled again. I asked one of the leaders in Ramallah, “Why were the elections canceled?” Of course, this was unofficial, and he said, “In short, because we are not confident in the results.”

Therefore, the democracy desired in Palestine, as is unfortunately practiced in some countries in the region and the world, is that elections should produce predetermined results acceptable to those holding them. If they do not, they are canceled. That is not democracy. If you respect the will of the people, allow them to express it freely at the ballot box. Today, everyone knows—even after the destruction in Gaza following two long years of the crime of genocide committed by Israel—that the Palestinian conscience, awareness, and, I believe, the Palestinian voter, if given the opportunity, would vote for the resistance They know that the resistance reflects their conscience and is a natural response to the occupation, and that the real problem lies with the Israeli occupation. Therefore, the Palestinian Authority has become weak because, on one hand, it no longer renews its legitimacy before its people. Secondly, it has been reduced to weak roles, especially security coordination with Israel. It has essentially become just a stamp or signature required to approve steps taken by the Israelis or the Americans. And you know—you, being part of American and Western society—that the West does not respect the weak, even if they are its followers. The world respects the strong. Hamas is strong, credible, and open to dealing with the entire world.

So today, notice in the Trump plan and the Security Council resolution—they, of course, want to end Hamas while at the same time rejecting any role for the Palestinian Authority (PA). Europeans advocate for a role for the PA, but the U.S. administration does not accept it, and Israel does not accept it. That is why we have called for Palestinian national unity, so that we are strong together and can impose our will on everyone. Hamas believes in organizing the Palestinian system around two principles: elections and a return to the ballot box, and second, partnership, meaning we do not exclude anyone. I have said this: in normal circumstances, as in the West, the party that wins the majority governs, and the rest are in the opposition or form a shadow government. But in our country, we need the energy of everyone. We hold elections, and after the elections we form a formula of national partnership across all institutions of the Palestinian political system to benefit from everyone’s efforts.

This is what Hamas proposes: it does not assert itself solely based on its popularity or majority, nor because it is the primary force on the ground. It seeks to include everyone. Hamas wants democracy because Hamas is also part of Palestinian society. It has political experience and a practical, civil presence within its community in all its aspects.

Jeremy Scahill: In the most recent polls I’ve read, Hamas is the number one most popular political party in Palestine. You are the most popular candidate for president with the exception of imprisoned leader Marwan Barghouti. But in terms of men who are not in prison right now, you’re the leading candidate. It seems like Europe and America do not want Hamas to be able to participate in elections. Given the popularity of Hamas and your popularity as a political leader according to some Palestinian polls, would you consider running for either president or to be head of the government as prime minister? And how would you do that if they make a law saying you can’t?

Khaled Meshaal: First of all, our dear brother Marwan Barghouti—who is in prison, and whom we hope will be released—we have fought for his release, as well as for [the release of] Brother Ahmad Saadat, the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. However, it is Israel that remains intransigent. And I am not revealing a secret when I say that some Palestinian parties were not enthusiastic about Marwan Barghouti’s release from prison—his wife knows this. Hamas, for its part, was keen, but due to Israeli intransigence and the lack of sufficient American pressure on Israel during the recent negotiations, we were unable to secure the release of Ahmad Saadat, Marwan Barghouti, Abbas al‑Sayyed of Hamas, Ibrahim Hamed, Abdullah Barghouti, Hassan Salameh, Arman, and many other Palestinian leaders. This is, of course, deeply regrettable for us. But this reflects our commitment to all the prisoners of our people—whether from Hamas, Fatah, or the Popular Front.

We hope that Marwan will be released, that he will have the opportunity to engage in national struggle and political work, and that he will be a candidate—this is his natural right. Hamas also has the right to nominate whomever it chooses, whether Khaled Meshaal or someone else. That is a decision for the movement to make at the appropriate time. Just as Hamas courageously participated in the 2006 elections, it is capable of doing so again. However, the doors are closed—not only by Israel and the U.S. administration, signaling that they would reject any election results—but, unfortunately, also by the Authority in Ramallah, which does not allow elections unless it can guarantee [the outcome]. They want elections that are carefully calibrated and whose results they feel assured about.

We understand and firmly believe that there is no solution—just as there is no solution to dealing with the occupation except for it to leave our land, whether through resistance or otherwise. Incidentally, in my meetings with regional leaders and Western leaders, I have told them clearly: our demand as Palestinians is the withdrawal of the occupation from Palestine.

Jeremy Scahill: Have you personally had any discussions—you, yourself—with EU leaders recently, with European leaders directly?

Khaled Meshaal: No, we did meet with officials from the European Union, but not at the level of heads of state within the EU—we met with ministers. For a period, we were open—there was openness toward us from Norway and Switzerland. We met with ministers from those countries. We met with officials from countries, some of these meetings were public, and others were private. Many of the meetings we held were private. We welcome any such meetings.

The main point is this: I told one of these leaders that the Palestinian people’s demand is very simple—the end of the occupation. It is our natural right. Our people do not accept living under occupation. How do we get rid of the occupation? There are two options: either we resist it, which is our natural right under international law, or others help us to get rid of it—just as the Americans have helped in the past to remove occupiers from certain countries. We said that we prefer the easier option. But as long as the international community does not act fairly toward us—while the Americans and Europeans have intervened in some cases, such as Kosovo, Bosnia, elsewhere, and Iraq, and at a certain point lifted their support from the apartheid regime in South Africa—to this day the international community and its major powers have not intervened to do us justice or to compel Israel to withdraw, at the very least in accordance with international legitimacy resolutions, which the West respects, from the West Bank and Gaza. They have not done so.

Therefore, when the world fails to help you, you have no choice but to resist the occupier until you force it to withdraw. History—Palestinian history and the history of the region—shows that there has never been a case in which an occupier withdrew from land without pressure. This was [true] during the era of British, French, and Italian colonialism in the region, and it has been [true] in our experience with the Israeli occupation since 1948. That is our demand in the context of resistance. In the political realm as well, the solution we believe in is democracy—but on the condition that it is genuine democracy, not one imposed on us in the manner preferred by Israel or the United States, where the results are predetermined. As the Palestinian people, we are capable of managing our own political system, holding free and fair elections, and governing ourselves. The outcome of such elections would be a strong, respected Palestinian leadership that represents the Palestinian people in managing both the struggle on the ground and the political battle.

Jeremy Scahill: Part of why I’m asking is because some European leaders and political officers have suggested Hamas could reform itself and take a more moderate position. And it seems like they understand that Hamas represents a large percentage of the Palestinian people. But there’s going to be a lot of pressure on you and other leaders to make concessions to Western countries. And given your career spent in this movement, I’m curious how you navigate this. Because Hamas has been called terrorists and this is in the mind of so many leaders in the U.S. and in Europe. But Hamas is also a popular movement. It’s also a resistance movement. So, how do you navigate this? I’m sure European leaders—the European leaders know you well. And so I’m wondering what your position is, how you deal with this pressure while staying loyal to the overarching principles of Hamas?

Khaled Meshaal: There is no doubt that how you present yourself under an initial or preemptive accusation—that you are a terrorist organization and that you are judged by Israel’s standards for classifying groups—[is difficult]. If, however, the U.S. administration and Western capitals applied the same Western standards to Hamas and the Palestinian resistance factions, they would classify them as national liberation movements—just as, for example, the Americans did 200 years ago, the French during World War II, and as all the peoples of the world have done. I am certain of this. Just like how they treated Mandela: once considered a terrorist and then he became a great man to them, and indeed he was a great man. If Western standards on democracy, human rights, and opposition to occupation under international law were applied, the West in its various capitals would see Hamas and the Palestinian resistance forces as national liberation movements. Yasser Arafat was considered a terrorist by them and later became a man of peace.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with the U.S. administration is that it prioritizes Israel’s interests more than the United States’ own interests. Even Trump’s people—MAGA—came to realize that Israel is a burden on them, restricting and harming U.S. interests. I am simply calling on the American people and the U.S. administration to judge based on America’s interests, not Israel’s. If they look at us even for a moment in a fair and impartial way, they will see that the Palestinian people are oppressed under occupation, and they have the right to resist—unless America steps in and forces Israel to withdraw, in which case we would thank America. But if they do not do so, then they should leave us to resist.

Now, what is the other standard for Hamas? The philosophy of resistance is to liberate [one’s land], which is consistent with international law and the historical Western approach to occupiers. Regarding structure—the organizational framework of any movement—what more could they ask of Hamas in terms of its democratic structure? Hamas elects its president and leadership every four years. Hamas is democratic to its core, perhaps more so than some Western parties and forces. Money is not used in our [elections] as it is in Western elections. Hamas is inherently democratic and accepts democracy with others, as shown in the 2006 elections, municipal elections, and university and union elections. Hamas practices [democracy] and abides by the results. Hamas is also a movement rooted in society and provides services to the Palestinian community. It has a civil body—it is a resistance movement, not a [purely] military organization. It is not a military group. It is a social movement that engages with all segments of society and has established many institutions, including universities and hospitals and other facilities that serve the Palestinian community.

So, Hamas is a movement that cannot be described as terrorist, because it is part of the fabric of Palestinian society. Accordingly, it should be dealt with on that basis. You can interview anyone who has met with Hamas’s leadership among Western figures. As I mentioned to you, for example, President Carter met with us. Some former U.S. ambassadors met with us through the Human Dialogue initiative in Switzerland. Others have met with us as well. All of them came away with impressions very different from the stereotypical image they had before meeting Hamas’s leadership. They discovered that Hamas’s leaders are open, democratic, and willing to engage [in dialogue]. Yes, they defend their national project and their right to independence and to ending the occupation, but they are also politically open to everyone. Therefore, this unfair, stereotypical labeling is exhausting and burdensome for us because it erects barriers between us and others.

Let me give you an example: Ahmad Al‑Sharaa, who was formerly known as Al‑Jolani, was once accused by the Americans of being affiliated with Al‑Qaeda or Al‑Nusra, and suddenly he became acceptable. We are pleased that he is accepted, because in the end he is a son of Syria. He has an experience that I cannot judge, but later he fought for Syria’s freedom and led his people, together with the broader Syrian forces, to rid themselves of tyranny. That is a Syrian matter and their right. Why does the U.S. administration give Ahmad Al‑Sharaa this opportunity but does not give it to Hamas and the Palestinian resistance forces? It does not even give it today to [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas, who is not accused of terrorism. There is a clear double standard. I believe—and I have said this repeatedly, and I say it to you now through your platform—that the Palestinian people will prevail and will rid themselves of the occupation, and Israel’s fate will not be different from that of the apartheid regime in South Africa. It is in the interest of the United States and Western capitals to pursue positive engagement with Hamas and with the Palestinian people, because we are the future, and this occupation will become part of the past.

Jeremy Scahill: Regarding Ahmed Al Sharaa, I must say, when he took power, the Israelis bombed nearly all of the conventional military capacity of Syria. They are pressuring him to sign a normalization agreement with Israel. The Israelis have been able to occupy more and more Syrian territory. Yes, it’s an interesting example because of his history with Al Qaeda and Nusra. However, the demand in front of the Palestinians now from Europe is a disarmed Palestinian state, demilitarized—no army, no weapons. This is what they are saying—two state solution. On the other side is Israel. It’s not just Netanyahu—a large percentage of Israelis clearly want all of you gone or dead, as indicated by public polls. So you’re facing a situation where the support for Palestinians is unprecedented, huge support in the world. But the official demand from the chambers of Western power is no guns, no army, no self defense—essentially, you must always be under the fist of Israel. That’s also the emerging reality in Syria. That’s what they’re doing to the Syrians. So it’s a difficult situation you’re in.

Khaled Meshaal: That is true. And why? What is the reason behind all these abnormal situations? It is Israel. When the United States or Western capitals deal with other countries, they may not be right or fair, but they behave in a relatively reasonable manner—except in any case where Israel is involved. At that point, the West and the United States lose sight of themselves and align with Israel’s demands—demands of an occupier seeking dominance over the region. That is our problem today.

In Palestine, they first talk about a state. And I believe that, so far, the issue of a state remains a slogan—there is no real seriousness. Yes, a conference was held under the sponsorship of Saudi Arabia and France, and 159 countries recognized the Palestinian state, but this still remains at the level of symbolism. There has been no international will formed to force Israel to withdraw so that a state can actually exist—because there is no state without withdrawal. The Palestinian Authority declared the state many years ago, but it is a state in the air. We are not seeking psychological satisfaction from symbolic statehood, we are seeking freedom, independence, to live without occupation, and to build our state. Today, this opportunity is not available to the Palestinians. If the world does not want to help us achieve this, then it should allow us to resist and should not label our resistance as terrorism.

Furthermore, what does it even mean—a state without weapons? Of course, if a state is granted as a gift from others—if that were even to happen—it would come with conditions, just as conditions were imposed on the [Palestinian] Authority. The problem is that any achievement based on agreements under others’ conditions, will restrict you. That is why the Palestinian Authority has been constrained security-wise, politically, and economically. We are seeking a Palestinian authority—or more precisely, a Palestinian state—after the end of the occupation. We were not satisfied with having an authority under occupation through Oslo. It proved to be a failed authority because it was constrained, and at any moment [Israel] could intervene. Today there is a complete violation of the Authority: the Israeli army can enter Ramallah and Area A at any time, and it now seeks to restore administration even over Area B, contrary to Oslo, and may even reassert control over Area A as well. [Israel] intervenes whenever it wishes. Any Palestinian minister within the Authority is stopped at checkpoints—even Mahmoud Abbas cannot move without their permission. What kind of authority is this? It is an authority without sovereignty, without even the most basic level of respect or independent decision-making.

Therefore, for us, the proper course is that a state should be established only after the occupation ends. The first step toward statehood is not available here. That is why the Palestinian people do not wait for others. They know that the West—led by the United States—acts with absolute bias whenever Israel is part of the picture. Therefore, we decide to rid ourselves of the occupation and to create our independence just as other peoples have done. Second, why am I being asked to be disarmed? Guaranteed by whom? Who gives anyone the right to demand a state without [weapons]? A state itself decides—just as some countries choose to be non-aligned or without military capabilities. That is their decision, it is not imposed on them. We are like any other country in the world: we end the occupation, establish our state, build it democratically, and it will have its own army like any other state in the world. In short, there is a huge difference between waiting for others to deliver your national rights and demands—which I consider futile and detached from reality—and taking it upon yourself to achieve your identity, your rights, and your national aspirations. When you do that, those who reject you today will accept you tomorrow. We know the Western world well: it tries to block you, but once you prove your merit, it will deal with you. This is what we are striving for.

We say to the American people—over the past two years—we have deeply appreciated the engagement we have seen in American society: in universities, [including] the most prestigious ones, across different U.S. cities, among American elites, and among the new generation of Americans, including Jewish Americans who have shown solidarity with Palestine. Fifty-one percent of young Americans aged 18 to 24 support the Palestinian cause—indeed, support Hamas and the resistance. [Note: The poll, conducted by Harvard/Harris in December 2023, asked if the October 7 attacks “can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians?”] This is a significant shift, and we hope that the American human conscience will awaken and realize that Israel is a burden on [the United States], and that the Palestinian people are not against American interests. We are opposed to those who interfere in our affairs and to those who support our enemy. But we are ready to open up to America, to Europe, and to the world to build cultural and civilizational exchange, just as this region has historically been a cradle of civilizations, and to manage mutual interests. What we will not accept is occupation, guardianship, or support for an occupier. We criticize the United States not because it is the United States—no—but because it provides Israel, our occupier, with complete support in all forms. Today, there is an opportunity for transformation, and I believe it is in the interest of the West to sponsor a fundamental change in [the approach to] Palestine, just as it eventually recognized the truth in South Africa and withdrew its support from that apartheid regime.

Jeremy Scahill: Trump of course is a businessman. And he’s not just representing America as the president, he’s also preparing the path for business deals for his family. Many Arab countries are making big deals with Trump and they are trying to become very close friends of Trump. And in this deal on Gaza—the 20 point plan—Arab countries and Islamic countries put their stamp on it. And I heard you on Al Jazeera give credit to some of these countries—they stopped the big genocide by agreeing to it, but still Palestinians are killed every day. How do you not feel that this is one of the biggest betrayals of the Palestinian people by Arab and Islamic countries by working with Trump in this way?

Khaled Meshaal: Look, as Palestinians, we deal with our Arab and Islamic nation on two levels: one based on brotherhood—on the fact that we are one nation with a shared destiny and mutual rights—and another based on the realities of politics. As a leader, I have to balance both. Measured by the standard of brotherhood and shared destiny—that we are one nation and that the Palestinian cause has always been, and remains, the central cause of the [Arab and Islamic] nation—there is no doubt that the responsibility of the nation is great. Governments, leaders, and rulers within the nation should not have allowed this criminal war, this war of total genocide, to continue for two full years. That is why we called on many leaders of the nation, from the very first weeks and months, to move decisively and tell the Americans and the West: enough—this war must stop. There was undoubtedly some shortcoming, and the efforts fell short of what we had hoped for.

At the same time, we are aware of Arab and Islamic weakness. We know that the Arab position is not unified—there are disagreements, unfortunately, that have grown over a long period. There is no agreed-upon Arab or Islamic leadership that can command, reject, and coordinate collective action—there is fragmentation and disarray. Moreover, many states are preoccupied with their own priorities and interests with the United States and Europe. So while they try to play a role in supporting the Palestinian people, standing by its cause or stopping the war, they also [consider] economic interests, arms purchases and other strategic considerations. And since the American president is, in fact, a businessman, some countries are trying to build relationships with him that either serve their interests or protect them from potential harm, because they fear Trump’s adventures and sudden moves, as we saw in the past.

This situation undoubtedly weakens strong Arab and Islamic intervention to stop the war, and it is something we have criticized. But this does not negate the positive steps I mentioned in the interview—and I was sincere about them. For example, Egypt’s rejection of the displacement of our people from Gaza is a genuine Egyptian position because it also aligns with Egypt’s interest and its national security. Similarly, Jordan has feared—and continues to fear—the policies of Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich aimed at annexing the West Bank, displacing its population, expanding settlements, destruction, seizing large areas of land, and violating Al-Aqsa Mosque, over which Jordan has a religious custodianship. These [policies] alarm Jordan deeply. Therefore, Jordan’s rejection of displacement from the West Bank is also a genuine position—it is not only about Jordanian security, but about the very existence of the Jordanian state. There are concerns for the future. We appreciate the positions taken by Egypt and Jordan. We also appreciate the significant positions taken by Qatar, despite the fact that it is not a neighboring country and is distant—it took strong and commendable positions. The same is true of Turkey. And many Arab countries as well, including Saudi Arabia, which was asked to normalize relations with Israel, establish ties and join the Abraham Accords. [Saudi Arabia] set four conditions: three related to Saudi Arabia, and one tied to ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state.

There are Arab and Islamic positions that I do not want to constrain [to a list]—across our region there have been commendable stances. However, they have not been sufficient given the responsibility of the [Arab and Islamic] nation toward Palestine and in light of the scale of the crime committed over two full years in the Gaza Strip. Our policy in Hamas is to thank the efforts that have been made, while [at the same time] calling for more. Even countries that supported us, such as Iran, and Hezbollah, which entered the confrontation in support of Gaza, are appreciated by us. There have been political efforts, military efforts, humanitarian relief and support inside Palestine, and popular mobilization in the Arab and Islamic streets, just as there has been in Western societies—all of this is valued. But did the international community succeed? Did the Arab and Islamic nation and its leadership succeed in stopping the crime at an early stage? The answer is no, they did not. The massacre and the war of genocide continued for two full years. That was undoubtedly extremely painful for us—yet, praise be to God.

When eight Arab and Islamic leaders went recently to New York last September and exerted pressure on the administration—they met with President Trump. This led to what became known as the Trump plan which was not sufficiently fair and contained serious gaps, but we considered it an important step toward stopping the war. That is why we dealt with it positively, intelligently, and with flexibility, which helped bring the war to a halt. Even this plan, however, is being violated by Israel. From time to time, we hear statements from President Trump and some members of his administration criticizing Israel, but the criticism is mild. Meanwhile, Hamas—which has adhered to the agreement—continues to face accusations and harsh rhetoric from time to time. This is something that must be overcome.

In short, on this point: yes, more is required from Arabs and Muslims, but they are not the strongest party. As you know, no one in the world is able to compel Israel—even Europeans do not do so, or cannot do so. Therefore, the responsibility of the United States is a doubled responsibility, and power is responsibility. President Trump and the American administration alone are capable of compelling Israel and Netanyahu to respect the agreements, so they bear this responsibility before we assign responsibility to any regional or international party.

Jeremy Scahill: Hamas, in essence, updated its charter in 2017 and the official position on what the international community, particularly the U.S. and EU, calls the “two state solution” is that Hamas, if it’s the democratic will of the Palestinian people to establish a state along the pre-1967 war borders, would not object to it and would accept the democratic will of the Palestinian people. But you have an expansion of settlers in the West Bank. You have a genocidal mentality in Israeli society. Is there really a point anymore to Palestinians discussing a two state solution? Is there any relevance to this anymore in your view?

Khaled Meshaal: Look, what we announced in 2017 in the political charter was not, at that moment, a new position regarding Hamas’s behavior or political stances—Hamas had already developed and maintained these political positions since it participated in elections, even before that. For more than twenty-five years, Hamas has built a political philosophy and a system of political positions and ideas, developing them through its internal democratic structure, through dialogues with other Palestinian factions, and also with Arab and Islamic countries through discussions. This was to form a political program that aligns with its principles and constants, but also opens horizons to achieve gains on one hand, and importantly, provides a common ground for Palestinian-Palestinian unity and engagement with the official Arab position.

We wanted—especially after winning the elections—to create a joint political program where we could meet with Fatah and other factions, and also have a program with shared points with the official Arab stance, as a way to facilitate matters. But we understood that Israel would not allow this. What is called the “two-state solution” will not be permitted [by Israel]. I believe that the idea of a two-state solution is a beautiful slogan presented internationally and regionally, but Israel will not allow it because the West Bank is, for Israel, the heart of the Zionist project. Israel has historically referred to it as Judea and Samaria.

What happened in Gaza in 2005, with the Israeli withdrawal, was an exception forced upon Sharon at the time because Gaza had become a burden for them. Gaza is a limited area, and Israeli policy is fine with relinquishing small areas, especially if they have a dense population and pose a security headache, like Gaza. The 2000 Intifada, though primarily in the West Bank in terms of population and area, was addressed by Israel through withdrawal from Gaza, not the West Bank. On the contrary, they launched [Operation] Defensive Shield. Because the West Bank, in Israel’s plan, is the heart of the Zionist project. That’s why I said: when Israel withdraws from the West Bank and Jerusalem, it would mean a shift in the balance of power, and Israel would withdraw from all of Palestine—it would leave all of Palestine.

So why did Hamas accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, without calling it a two-state solution? Because the two-state solution implies automatically recognizing Israel. In discussions with Westerners, we told them: no, we accept a state on the 1967 borders as a shared national project with the other Palestinian factions. As for recognizing Israel, Hamas has a [clear] position on this—we do not recognize Israel. However, we will respect the Palestinian will when it is consulted on this matter and other related issues. As for us in Hamas, we do not recognize the legitimacy of the occupation. So, why did we go with the idea of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders? To reach a common position with our Palestinian partners and also with the Arab and Islamic countries. Hamas’s approach has been proven correct—not only what Hamas presented in 2017, but even back in 2006 in the National Accord Document that came from the prisoners’ initiative. All of this was on the table—a state along the 1967 borders. However, even the official Arab system, which presented King Abdullah’s initiative—may God have mercy on him—through the Beirut Summit in 2002, has not been able, over these past 23 years, to achieve a single step toward establishing a Palestinian state, because Israel refuses it. Israel will not give anything freely.

For Hamas, therefore, we are both principled and realistic. Principled: we reject the occupation, we reject guardianship, we reject relinquishing our rights to the land and to Jerusalem, the right of return for refugees, and the independence of our national decision-making. These are the principles and rights of our people, including the release of our prisoners. At the same time, we are politically realistic and deal with partners, including the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and Fatah. We are realistic in dealing with the Arab and Islamic reality and the international community, and we are ready to engage with any serious project to establish a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders. Even though I realize, unfortunately, that this is impossible because of Israeli policy, not just because of today’s realities with settlers, or the policies of Ben Gvir and Smotrich—this [only] reflects the essence of the strategy. The Likud has a clear strategy: no Palestinian state between the river and the sea, and if Palestinians want a state, they should go to Jordan. That is their strategy. The difference between Netanyahu and Smotrich or Ben Gvir is only in how they present the position. But Netanyahu does not differ from them in essence—he does not recognize Palestinian rights.

Therefore, the current reality in Gaza, the settlements, the violations, the attempts at displacement, and the war crime of genocide in Gaza show that Israel does not respect Palestinian rights and does not accept a Palestinian state. Nevertheless, we Palestinians—in Hamas, along with our partners on the Palestinian scene and our Arab and Islamic countries—are ready, if there is serious regional and international commitment, for Israel to be compelled to withdraw to the borders of June 4, 1967, including Jerusalem, so that we can establish our Palestinian state. If the conditions are met, Hamas will accept this and act responsibly. We will build a real democratic Palestinian state—not like Israel today, which claims democracy while violating it even against its own citizens.

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On the heels of an unprecedented UN Security Council resolution endorsing President Donald Trump’s Gaza agenda on November 17, the U.S. and its allies are now trying to move forward with the “second phase” of their plan to colonize Gaza and turn it into a hub of international investment. The aim is to use an international force, which will operate under Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace,” as a means to completely disarm the Palestinian resistance in Gaza and impose imperial tutelage on the Gaza Strip. While it states that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza,” the plan bestows sweeping agency on Israel and is filled with ambiguities that could keep Israeli forces indefinitely entrenched in Gaza.

Trump’s 20-point plan has been endorsed by an assortment of Arab and Islamic states and Mahmoud Abbas, the deeply unpopular 90-year old head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), but it has been rejected by a wide cross section of other Palestinian political factions and parties.

“It’s an Israeli plan that has been rebranded as a Trump plan,” said Diana Buttu, a human rights lawyer who previously served as an advisor to Palestinian negotiators. “All of the guarantees are being given to Israel, but there’s no guarantees that are given to Palestinians. The fact [is] that all of the control rests in the hands of Israel. No control is ceded to anybody else; it looks to me entirely like an Israeli plan that was rebranded as a Trump plan—not the other way around,” Buttu told Drop Site. “It was a plan that was designed to ease the pressure off of Israel and, at the same time, let Israel continue to kill Palestinians—let them try to ethnically cleanse Gaza. It exactly matches what Israel said from the beginning.”

Israel has repeatedly violated the Gaza “ceasefire” agreement, which went into effect on October 10. It conducts strikes inside Gaza on a daily basis and has killed more than 350 Palestinians—at least 136 of them children. “More than a month after a ceasefire was announced and all living Israeli hostages were released, Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip,” charged Amnesty International in a briefing published on November 27. Israel is “continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signaling any change in their intent.”

Israel refuses to allow the delivery of the agreed-upon levels of food, medicine, and other life essentials to the enclave, and has still not reopened the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Israeli forces have penetrated beyond the so-called “yellow line”: the agreed-upon positions where it would redeploy its forces as part of the exchange of captives. Israel, meanwhile, is still occupying more than half of Gaza. It continues to engage in mass-demolition operations throughout eastern Gaza, razing more than 1,500 buildings to the ground since October 10. Israel is building up military infrastructure there for what officials have said will be an indefinite presence.

U.S. officials have spoken of erecting a “green zone,” which they would use to entice Palestinians to leave western areas of Gaza with the promise of food, medicine, and shelter, effectively creating two cantons. In the area not under Israeli occupation, analysts predict Israel will conduct regular military strikes in the name of crushing Hamas, while denying the remaining population sufficient food and medicine. “They will continue killing Palestinians, hoping that this will instigate a massive expulsion or a massive displacement of Palestinians,” said Sami Al-Arian, a prominent Palestinian academic and activist and the director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University. “We will just have a low level genocide. Instead of having 100 to 200 Palestinians being killed each day, as we’ve seen in the past two years, it’s going to be 15, 20, 25, 30, 35—depending on how the Israelis feel that morning.”

That has been Israel’s modus operandi in Lebanon, where it has continued to regularly bomb in the name of fighting Hezbollah, despite a U.S.-backed ceasefire agreement signed in November 2024. “What is happening now, clearly and explicitly, is that the war has not ended. Israel has not stopped the war, nor has it abided by the ceasefire. So what does it mean that all conditions are now being imposed on the Palestinian side?” said Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a prominent Palestinian political leader and head of the Palestinian National Initiative. He told Al Jazeera Mubasher recently, “The main problem is not on the Palestinian side; the main problem is on the Israeli side. Unfortunately, Western pressure is directed only toward the Palestinian side. What most disturbs and worries Palestinians is that every time Israel launches an attack on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, it says it received permission from the American side—from the mediator. So where are the mediators? And what is the role of a mediator if he is biased?”

When the early October “ceasefire” deal was finalized at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, Hamas told the mediators that it only had a narrow mandate to negotiate terms for ending the Gaza war and conducting an exchange of captives. The remainder of the sweeping terms laid out in Trump’s proposal would need to be addressed through consensus among all Palestinian factions—not just Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

“In this plan, the ‘Board of Peace’ is the sovereign authority. This is essentially a form of guardianship over the Palestinian people, and we do not accept guardianship. The Palestinian people must possess sovereignty,” said Mohammed Al-Hindi, a co-founder of PIJ and its chief political negotiator, in an interview with Drop Site. “The second phase concerns withdrawal and the future of Gaza—its management, governance, who governs it, its relationship with the West Bank—the general Palestinian situation, and the issue of weapons. These issues do not belong to the resistance factions alone; they concern all Palestinians.”

According to Trump’s plan, Gaza is to be administered by a 15-member committee of non-partisan Palestinian technocrats under the supervision of Trump’s board. “Everybody wants to be on the board, and it’ll end up being quite a large board, because it’ll be the heads of every major country,” Trump said at a White House dinner honoring Saudi crown prince and the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, on November 18. “Gaza, while it looks a little bit messy—it has for many, many years,” Trump said, laughing, “is getting very close to being perfected.”

This Palestinian technocratic committee, by design, is not intended to actually function as a government, but rather convenes local bureaucrats to implement the dictates of Trump’s board. It would be “responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities” under the “oversight and supervision” of the Trump-chaired board.

The Trump-chaired board, which is also slated to include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, would remain the supreme authority in Gaza, until the PA is sufficiently “reformed” and can “securely and effectively take back control of Gaza,” the plan states. The deeply unpopular PA controls only a small section of the occupied West Bank and serves as the local enforcer for the Israeli occupation, and it is widely seen by Palestinians as corrupt, undemocratic, and illegitimate. Trump’s plan does not spell out what specific measures the PA would need to undertake or a timeline for this process.

“Who decides that the [Palestinian] Authority has fulfilled these reforms?” asked Al-Hindi, suggesting that Trump’s board would defer to Israeli diktats. “This ambiguity is the real obstacle that will cause the plan proposed by Trump to fail and will prevent any stability in the region.”

On a technical level, there are aspects to Trump’s Gaza plan that, on the surface, resemble some concepts for which Hamas and other Palestinian factions have expressed support. They have welcomed proposals for the deployment of an international force, the establishment of an international reconstruction fund for Gaza, and the creation of an interim body of independent Palestinian experts to take charge of Gaza. While versions of all of these are in Trump’s plan, they are in the service of colonialism and foreign control and accompanied by a demand for total disarmament and demilitarization of Gaza.

“We always approach any American decision or position with extreme caution, because the United States is managing the war against our Palestinian people and is a primary partner with the Zionist enemy in the recent war on Gaza,” said Ihsan Ataya, a member of PIJ’s political bureau, in an interview with Drop Site. “Trump is attempting to achieve certain gains for the benefit of ‘Israel,’ which even with its allies—America at the forefront—and with all their military power was unable to achieve during a brutal two-year war. This is something the resistance cannot accept.”

Not since the Oslo Accords of the 1990s has there been such a monumental moment in the history of the Palestinian liberation cause. The Oslo agreements codified the suspension of rights and surrender of Palestinian demands and facilitated the dramatic expansion of Israel’s war of conquest and annihilation, culminating in the Gaza genocide.

At the heart of the intra-Palestinian dialogue right now is a monumental struggle over who speaks for Palestine. While Abbas formally controls the reins of power within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—which was officially recognized as the “sole, legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people by Israel in the 1990s—it would be farcical to claim the current iteration of the PLO is the democratic body that represents the will of its people. The PA was established in 1994 during the Oslo negotiations by the PLO and was intended to be an interim “self-government” project for a five-year period. The PLO remains the only internationally-recognized Palestinian body with a mandate to negotiate treaties or establish embassies. Abbas is the chairman of the PLO, president of the PA, and the leader of Fatah.

Under pressure from the U.S. and EU, Abbas is currently moving to ban Palestinian parties who do not bow to demands to recognize Israel and who won’t renounce armed resistance against Israeli occupation. On the other side of the intra-Palestinian dialogue is virtually every other significant political movement in Palestine, including sectors of Abbas’s ruling Fatah party. They agitate for a total reconstitution of the PLO, one that would see it function in proportion to the democratic will of the citizenry.

A senior PLO official aligned with Abbas recently described Palestine as being in a “phase of a transitional agreement,” while Hamas and other resistance movements call it a “phase of national liberation.”

The U.S. has made clear that it is only interested in dealing with a hollowed out, malleable Palestinian “partner” to implement Trump’s agenda. The central question is how Hamas, the PA, and other Palestinian actors will navigate these demands, delivered under the threat of a resumption of full-scale war. The PA—under pressure not only from the U.S. but also European powers and many Arab states—appears to be on a path to capitulating to Trump’s agenda. Virtually every other Palestinian faction is loudly denouncing the colonialist nature of the plan and calling for national consensus before any agreement is formalized.

The Sidelining of Palestinian Unity

While it is seldom mentioned in media coverage, or within public discourse among Trump and his allies when speaking of the Gaza deal, a unified front of Palestinian political leaders offered a detailed outline of their vision for how to achieve a peaceful resolution within the Beijing Declaration in July 2024. The agreement entailed resolutions not only on ending the war against Gaza, but of envisioning a democratic future for an independent Palestine. Trump’s team has ignored these initiatives. When convenient for the sake of claiming Palestinian buy-in to the plan, the U.S. and its allies invoke a potential role for the PA.

From the early months of the Gaza genocide, leaders from a broad cross section of Palestinian political organizations have met in an effort to adopt a unified stance. These initiatives were spearheaded, in part, by Barghouti, a former Palestinian presidential candidate and member of parliament who is not affiliated with any armed resistance groups. Not only did Hamas and PIJ participate in the meetings, but so, too, did Fatah—the ruling party of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The most notable document to emerge from these conferences was the Beijing Declaration, drafted by Barghouti and signed by 14 Palestinian political factions in China in July 2024.

The reconciliation talks in Beijing were unprecedented and brought together 14 major Palestinian factions, which spanned Islamic resistance movements alongside nationalist, leftist, and secular groups. The three-day conference culminated in the signing of a document that reaffirmed the right of the Palestinians to resist occupation and called for an end to illegal Israeli settlement expansion. It endorsed a reformed PLO, one empowered to reassess the terms of Oslo and other agreements, that would operate with a popular mandate to negotiate its future with the international community. The agreement proposed the formation of a national reconciliation government that would govern all Palestinian territories—Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. That government would oversee reforms necessary to hold democratic elections for parliament and other offices. It also envisioned international involvement in facilitating talks on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

What emerged from the conference that summer was a unified front that could rightly claim to negotiate on behalf of a substantial majority of Palestinians.

“The Beijing Declaration was extremely significant. All the factions, not just Hamas and Fatah, subscribed to it. It would have been the basis for which you would have Palestinian unity,” said Al-Arian. “The major obstacle has been Abbas. His movement goes there and signs like all other movements, thinking that now we’re going to begin a process of Palestinian unity—only for Abbas to come back and renounce these declarations and [say] that he’s not going to subscribe to it; he’s not going to accept it; he’s not going to follow all these recommendations.”

Barghouti said that Abbas’s failure to implement the Beijing Agreement abetted the narrative that there is no other legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The agreement “would have closed the door to any attempts to impose foreign guardianship over us, whether in Gaza or the West Bank,” Barghouti told Al Jazeera Mubasher. “The major loophole through which the Israelis and certain international parties try to impose on the Palestinians what happens to them—the main reason and weak point—is the continued internal division.”

The U.S. has refused to engage with this broad coalition of Palestinians, instead issuing unilateral dictates and holding closed-door meetings to hash out details. The unfolding strategy appears to be using some thin veneer of legitimacy, offered by the mere existence of the PA and the PLO’s official representation at the UN, to pretend that Trump’s plan has the formal support of “the Palestinians.” Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, has embraced this role. When Trump announced his “peace summit” in Sharm El-Sheikh, Abbas was not initially invited. The night before the gathering, Egypt informed Abbas’s office that he could attend the summit, but he did not participate in the official signing ceremony.

“They’ve been using Abu Mazen as kind of this puppet to say, ‘Well, you know, if Abu Mazen and the PA accept it, then why should it be so bad?’” said Buttu who served as a legal advisor to the PLO and worked alongside Abbas. “He allows himself to be used as the puppet, because he’s lured into this idea of somehow being a player on a world stage when, in reality, he’s nothing.”

Instead of adopting the recommendations of the Beijing Declaration, Abbas moved to further consolidate his grip on power and broaden his attempts to exclude or sideline other Palestinian parties. ​​He also deepened his collaboration with the Israeli occupation and implemented policies demanded by the U.S., the EU, and Israel.

In early 2025, Israel launched its largest forced displacement campaign in the West Bank since 1967 in a series of operations that began with Abbas’s security forces targeting Palestinian resistance fighters, killing more than a dozen Palestinians and arresting hundreds of others. The PA operations, which started in late 2024, paved the way for Israeli forces to drive Palestinians from their homes and villages. Within a month, more than 40,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced, the majority from the Jenin, Nur Shams, and Tulkarm refugee camps, and Israeli forces began a systematic campaign to destroy houses, roads, and infrastructure. The military onslaught morphed into a year-long series of Israeli raids and attacks, accompanied by an intensification of widespread violence and terror attacks against Palestinians by Israeli settlers.

In the midst of the Israeli invasion, the PA shut down Al Jazeera—the most watched network in the world reporting on the siege—in the West Bank and attempted to block its website. The ban remained in place until May.

In February 2025, Abbas issued an intensely unpopular decree canceling the laws and regulations governing financial allowances for the families of martyrs, prisoners, and Palestinians wounded in Israeli attacks. Israel and the U.S. have labeled the program “pay for slay,” saying it rewards terrorists. Since 2018, U.S. law has prohibited some financial aid to the PA unless the program is repealed. Funding for Palestinian security forces coordinating with Israel, however, remained in place. A State Department spokesperson said Abbas’s decree “appears to be a positive step and a big win for the Trump Administration.”

Palestinians widely see the payments as a necessary financial contribution to the families of Palestinians who have been killed, wounded, or imprisoned for engaging in the national liberation struggle. Abbas’s decree transferred the program to the Palestinian National Institution for Economic Empowerment, an entity overseen by a board of trustees appointed by Abbas.

Hamas condemned the decision in a press statement, saying that “turning these heroic nationalist individuals, who sacrificed the most for the Palestinian people and cause, into mere social cases is disgraceful.”

Qadura Fares—the Abbas-appointed head of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs—denounced the decree and demanded its immediate withdrawal. “It is not acceptable for the rights of prisoners and martyrs to be subjected to new administrative or economic standards that ignore the national dimension of this issue,” he said. Just over a week later, Fares was forcibly retired by presidential decree—a move broadly interpreted as a response to his public opposition.

In April 2025, Abbas named Hussein Al-Sheikh, a long-time member of Fatah known for his close ties to Israel, as vice president of the PA. Since 2007, Sheikh has served as the head of the General Authority of Civil Affairs—the main body coordinating with Israeli forces operating in the occupied West Bank. “If you heard him talking in a closed room, you’d feel that you are talking to an Israeli soldier,” Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, told Drop Site soon after Shiekh’s appointment. “That is not my words; it’s the words of some significant leaders of Fatah.” The Israelis pushed for Sheikh’s appointment as Abbas’s deputy and likely successor, Hamdan alleged, because “they know that he is willing by himself to handle this dirty job on their own behalf.”

On November 23, Sheikh met with Blair and an unnamed U.S. official in Ramallah, and they discussed the implementation of Trump’s plan as endorsed by the UN Security Council. Hamdan told Drop Site that Israel would prefer to deal with Sheikh—an official they see as having a “security mentality” and who would accept the role of cracking down on Palestinians who try to organize resistance against Israel, as PA forces have done repeatedly in the West Bank. “It means there is no political leadership. This is why they choose Hussein Sheikh,” said Hamdan. “He’s not a political leader; he’s a security leader. His work all this time was to make the security arrangements with Israelis, according to the Israeli needs.”

Abbas and the PA are widely despised among Palestinians and not viewed as the true representative of their aspirations. “Abbas does not have legitimacy. His legitimacy only comes from an international community that does not care whatsoever about Palestinian lives,” said Al-Arian. “We’ve seen that through two years of genocide. We’ve seen that in the fact that Israel is having this security coordination with Abbas, cracking down on Palestinians in the West Bank, while they are killing Palestinians in Gaza, [and] while Abbas is doing nothing.”

A poll conducted by the independent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) in late October in both the West Bank and Gaza found that support for Abbas stood at 21%, while support for Hamas was 60%. Only 13% of Palestinians said they would vote for Abbas in a presidential election. Hamas remains the single most popular political party in all of Palestine—not just Gaza. Only a third of Palestinians say they would want the PA to take control of Gaza. Two-thirds of respondents said they want elections within a year to choose new leaders.

“Abbas has the lowest support ever, and it’s actually all of these other factions that have a higher percentage of support. These factions actually work together. They’re not working against one another; they’re actually working together,” said Buttu, pointing out that the last time Abbas won an election was for a four-year term in 2005. “He’s constantly being portrayed as the leader of the Palestinian people when, in fact, he lost his mandate back in 2009. He has no mandate now.”

Abbas’s Moment of Truth

When stripped down to its core, Trump’s Gaza plan was aimed at one central objective: achieving the surrender of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination—an end that secures the imposition of a state of subjugation to Israel and Trump’s private board. Israel failed to accomplish this through more than two years of genocide, and Palestinian leaders, with the exception of Abbas, have been clear that they will not accept through edict what they resisted by force of arms.

“Unless an agreement is reached that grants the Palestinian people their rights, the Palestinian people will turn to resistance, because no other path is available,” said Al-Hindi. “In the future, there will be resistance movements regardless of their names—Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front—regardless of the labels. Even if these factions hypothetically were to surrender or agree to any settlement, new factions would emerge to resist.”

The EU, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, has been spearheading an effort to use Abbas’s tenuous mandate as head of the PA in an effort to bureaucratically undermine a democratic Palestinian response to the genocide and the future of the liberation struggle. Under the banner of “reform” of the PA, and support for a “two state solution,” the EU and U.S. have been pressing Abbas to push through a new constitution and a law defining the requirements to form an official political party that would require recognition of Israel’s right to exist and the renunciation of political violence.

Standing alongside Abbas in Paris on November 11, Macron announced that the two men established a joint committee that “will be responsible for working on all legal aspects: constitutional, institutional and organizational. It will contribute to the work of developing a new constitution, a draft of which President Abbas has presented to me, and will aim to finalise all the conditions for such a State of Palestine.” Abbas reiterated that he wants to see an “unarmed” Palestinian state, and he condemned the October 7 attacks. He has not made the purported draft constitution Macron cited available for Palestinians to read.

Since the 2006 elections, which Hamas won decisively, Palestinians have not had the opportunity to elect their representatives. In the legislative elections held that year, Hamas won 76 of the 132 seats in the Legislative Council, while Fatah secured 43. Abbas was elected to a four-year presidential term in January 2005, and no presidential elections have been held since.

In the years that followed, Fatah and Hamas signed several agreements that included commitments to hold comprehensive elections, yet none of these agreements were fully implemented. In 2021, Palestinian factions reached an agreement to conduct legislative elections, followed by presidential elections. Abbas, however, announced on April 29, 2021, that he was postponing the vote. He justified the decision by citing Israel’s refusal to allow legislative elections in occupied Jerusalem. Hamas denounced the postponement as an attempt to avoid elections.

On March 4, 2025, during a summit in Cairo, Abbas declared his willingness to hold elections. “We are fully prepared to hold general presidential and legislative elections next year, provided that the appropriate conditions are met in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem,” he said.

During a meeting with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul in August 2025, in Ramallah, Abbas reiterated that any elections in Palestine “will not include political factions or individuals who do not adhere to the program and commitments” made by the PLO and his authority. He added, “We want the State of Palestine to be non-armed, including in the Gaza Strip.” A public opinion poll by the PCPSR conducted in late October showed that 63% of Palestinians opposed Abbas’s condition requiring election participants to accept all PLO obligations, including agreements with Israel.

Despite widespread public opposition, Abbas issued a “decree-law” on November 19, 2025, that imposed the new regulations for local elections. The PA praised its “important national and reform-oriented achievement” and highlighted its efforts to increase the participation of women in governance and to ensure election integrity. Analysts believe the law is likely to be replicated for national elections. The law states that all candidates for office must “commit to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s program platform—its international commitments and the decisions of international legitimacy.” That clause means that Hamas, the single most popular Palestinian political party, would be prohibited from fielding candidates.

In a statement on November 22, Hamas said the law effectively makes “recognition of the Israeli occupation a prerequisite for candidacy [and] constitutes a serious infringement on citizens’ right to freely choose their representatives,” charging that it “represents a clear attempt to exclude national and Islamic forces as well as independents…. and aligns with Israeli and American pressure.” Hamas’s statement accused Abbas of “yielding to international pressures aimed at creating a submissive Palestinian environment, consistent with the ‘Rehabilitation of the Authority’ projects being promoted and advocated, in a way that serves the occupation and its plans to liquidate our cause.”

Hamas was not alone in denouncing Abbas’s edict. In a joint statement on November 26, a coalition of secular and nationalist parties, known as the Democratic Forces, denounced the law as “dangerous,” saying it “undermined the spirit of the electoral system.” They charged that Abbas had wholly disregarded the widespread objections to the proposed amendments offered by a range of Palestinian parties, and they called on Abbas to repeal it.

A coalition of dozens of major Palestinian NGOs, civil society groups, and women’s rights organizations also issued a joint statement blasting the law. They called the inclusion of the requirement to commit to prior PLO agreements “alarming,” and they said it was “a new condition that did not appear in any of the drafts that were previously discussed.” They said this term “constitutes a fundamental infringement on the right to political participation as guaranteed by international human rights standards, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the State of Palestine has acceded and is legally bound.” The groups said that, if the condition was not repealed, they would reassess their participation in election monitoring, training, and other voting-related activities.

A senior PLO official and Abbas ally, Fahmi Al-Za’arir, defended the law’s requirements, saying it was a “strategic mistake” to have proceeded without them during the 2006 elections, which Hamas won. In an interview with Saudi television network Al-Hadath, he blamed Hamas for not holding elections in Gaza over the past two decades. With no apparent sense of irony, Al-Za’arir said that what’s needed is “to entrench democracy within Palestinian society and among the Palestinian people.”

“We absolutely need a legal and political reference that is genuinely represented in the legitimacy of President Abu Mazen,” Al-Za’arir added. “Until elections for the Parliament of the State of Palestine are held, these decisions become necessary, as they serve as regulatory measures.” He acknowledged that Israel refuses to respect previous agreements with the PLO, but maintained that Abbas must nonetheless adhere to them. “This agreement is still guaranteed under international legitimacy, and it remains what regulates the minimum level of relations within the occupied Palestinian territory: between us and the international community, on one hand, and between us and the Israeli occupation, on the other,” Al-Za’arir said.

Basem Hadaydeh, a senior official in the PA’s ministry of local government, responded to the outcry over the law, claiming it was necessary to preserve the legitimacy of the PA and the PLO—to strengthen local governance, and to ward off potential suspension of international donor funding for local aid projects. In a Facebook post, he argued that the demand that candidates and parties formally commit to previous agreements of the PLO was not “political exclusion,” but “a framework for protection.” The condition was added, Hadaydeh contended, to comply with the terms of the UN Security Council resolution and “the demands of President Trump’s peace plan, which stipulates the non-participation of armed groups, including Hamas, and their exclusion from governance institutions in both the West Bank and Gaza.” He predicted that the PA “will not back down from including this condition and implementing it, nor will they modify its phrasing.” Abbas’s office and the PA did not respond to a request for comment.

“Abbas was a no-show during two year[s] of genocide, and now what he wants to do is to change the election laws, because now there is a lot of talk about having legitimacy for whoever is going to take over Gaza,” said Al-Arian. “The Americans have been saying you need to do reforms. For them, reforms are basically to give in to all of Israel’s impossible and illegal demands. That’s what he’s trying to do now. Since he’s not registering in the polls high enough to win any elections, he’s trying to change the election laws so that only he and his team would win elections,” Al-Arian added.

When it comes to national elections, the central objections to the new law center around the agreements initially made with Israel by Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the PLO. Beginning with backchannel talks in the late 1980s, and extending through the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, these commitments stipulate that Palestinians recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli state, but do not require Israel to recognize a Palestinian state. Israel offered only formal recognition of the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people.

The agreements made by the PLO do not lay out a framework to end Israeli occupation, do not address the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, nor impose any restrictions on the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. In signing Oslo, Arafat agreed to formally abandon claims to 78% of historic Palestine in return for Palestinian “self-governance” in the remaining territories.

Abbas was one of Arafat’s top deputies and a leading figure in brokering the agreements with Israel in the 1990s that led to the signing of the first Oslo Accords in 1993, which initiated a sustained process of Israeli usurpation and the rise in popularity of Islamic resistance movements. Abbas personally signed the 1993 “Declaration of Principles” with Israel on behalf of the PLO.

“The fashion-show vulgarities of the White House ceremony, the degrading spectacle of Yasser Arafat thanking everyone for the suspension of most of his people’s rights, and the fatuous solemnity of Bill Clinton’s performance, like a 20th-century Roman emperor shepherding two vassal kings through rituals of reconciliation and obeisance: all these only temporarily obscure the truly astonishing proportions of the Palestinian capitulation,” wrote the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said in a 1993 essay. “So first of all let us call the agreement by its real name: an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles.” The PLO, Said observed, “has ended the intifada, which embodied not terrorism or violence but the Palestinian right to resist, even though Israel remains in occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.”

The PLO also agreed to formally renounce violence and to take responsibility for preventing armed resistance against Israel. After Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006, Abbas agreed to a set of edicts from “The Quartet”—a committee made up of the U.S., the EU, Russia, and the UN—that mandated that any Palestinian government recognize Israel, endorse the Oslo Accords, and renounce violence. Failure to do so, the Quartet threatened, would result in immediate sanctions and the cutting off of aid. Taken as a whole, the process that formally began in 1993 transformed the PLO from a national liberation movement into an administrator operating at the pleasure of the Israeli occupation regime.

“For Hamas, and for many other organizations, the issue here is: Why should we be recognizing a state that has colonized our land and turned us into refugees?” asked Buttu, who advised the PLO during negotiations with Israel and the U.S. from 2000-2005. “Because if we recognize them, then we are implicitly recognizing that they have a right to take over our land, and that they have a right to turn us into refugees. We’re not going to recognize that, because they don’t have those rights.” She added, “Here we are 32 years after the signing of that first agreement, and the situation has actually gotten worse for Palestinians. I’m not even sure if Israel recognizes the PLO at this point.”

While Hamas is not a member of the PLO, it did revise its charter in 2017 and expressed a willingness to accept an interim Palestinian state along the pre-1967 borders as part of a national consensus, but without formally recognizing the state of Israel or relinquishing its goal of liberating all of historic Palestine.

In interviews with Drop Site, officials from both Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they support restoring the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian peoples’ destiny, but not without significant reforms and revisiting the agreements made beginning in the 1990s.

“The PLO disarmed, condemned Palestinian resistance, and anyone who resisted was persecuted. The constitution was changed, yet they were not given a state in the West Bank or Gaza,” said Al-Hindi, adding that calls for Palestinian statehood that require it to submit to Israeli subjugation and disarmament are meaningless. Europe “remained silent in the face of Israeli actions: continued settlements, land confiscation, threats to Jerusalem, and attacks on Islamic and Christian holy sites,” he said. “Therefore, this hypocrisy happening in Europe is blatant to the Palestinian people and cannot fool us again.”

Al-Hindi pointed out that Palestinian factions agreed in Beijing in 2024 to a reconstitution of the PLO—and the inclusion of Hamas and PIJ—noting that an organization claiming to be the sole voice of the Palestinian cannot exclude its most popular parties. “The resistance had no objection to joining it, provided that the organization is reformed on new democratic and political foundations that reflect the Palestinian reality, and that we become part of the PLO,” Al-Hindi said. “However, it was not implemented, because the issue of implementation is a decision not in the hands of the Palestinians or the Palestinian Authority; it is in the hands of Israel and the U.S., who have vetoed the rebuilding of the PLO and the inclusion of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”

Al-Arian said that if the PLO was truly representative of Palestinian sentiment, it would require significant involvement of Hamas and other pro-resistance parties. “If we’re going to reform the PLO, that means we have to give Hamas enough seats to represent its weight. That means the number of seats for Fatah and the other factions will go down,” Al-Arian said. Abbas “knows that, if he is going to have the PLO reorganized along the lines of what the main Palestinian factions call for, then his group would be an extreme minority. So he’s trying to basically exclude everyone else, so that he wins the election and gets a majority [that] can go along with the current process. It’s an illusion.”

Buttu charged that Abbas “is creating a framework in which dissent is not allowed,” saying his moves are aimed at “removing Palestinian politics from Palestinian life and Palestinian governance.”

Hamdan said that Abbas’s electoral law decrees come at a historic moment when Palestinian factions are engaged in an unprecedented effort to unify. He added that Abbas’s pandering to a U.S.-EU-Israeli constituency, rather than a domestic one, will backfire.

“I think the PA now is at a very critical point—the moment of truth,” Hamdan told Drop Site. “If they want to [accede] to what the Israelis are asking, they will lose their position as a national leadership for the Palestinians. They will be considered betrayers.”

Hamdan said that, if Abbas holds any pretense to being a Palestinian leader, he has an obligation to engage in the intra-Palestinian dialogue to reach a united front in responding to Trump’s edicts.

The “Least Harmful” Option

Hamas has repeatedly said it will relinquish governing authority in Gaza, and it has endorsed the technocratic committee on the condition that it is Palestinian-led and not a fig leaf for foreign rule.

Despite the open disdain for Abbas expressed by Palestinian resistance leaders, Hamas officials have consistently said they support the interim administration of Gaza falling under the umbrella of the PA. “Israel is trying to disconnect Gaza from the West Bank. They want to take over the West Bank. They want to turn Gaza into a concentration camp. We will not allow them to do that, even if [it means turning over governance] to the Palestinian Authority,” Hamdan said. “We believe that as Palestinians we can solve the problems—whatever it takes.”

In late October, senior Hamas officials, including its Gaza leader Khalil Al-Hayya, met with Sheikh and the PA’s intelligence chief Majed Farraj in Cairo. Hamdan told Drop Site that Abbas initially was refusing to meet with Hamas, but eventually agreed to it after intervention by Egyptian officials. “They rejected a meeting with all the Palestinian factions, which was strange. You can’t talk to your own people at the same table?” asked Hamdan. “And then, by the pressure of the Egyptians, they have accepted to have a meeting with Hamas, with Dr. Khalil Al-Hayya. All the political ideas which were suggested in the meeting were from Hamas’s side,” Hamdan said.

“A detailed discussion took place regarding the challenges facing our Palestinian people,” said Hussam Badran, Hamas’s head of national relations, in an interview with Al Jazeera Mubasher on November 30. “In terms of diagnosing the situation, there is perhaps a degree of agreement and convergence, but the issue lies in the mechanisms for confronting these challenges, and how we can unify the Palestinian stance.” Still, Badran said, “We do not lose hope in discussing national issues or in bringing viewpoints closer. Anyone who refuses internal rapprochement will, in the end, pay the price before anyone else. Perhaps the events will compel Palestinians—even those who do not want it—to unite the Palestinian ranks in confronting the obstacles and challenges before us as Palestinians.” Badran added that Hamas hopes “to reach at least the minimum level of agreement in confronting what our Palestinian people are facing.”

The prospect of Hamas endorsing Abbas and the PA assuming control of Gaza is not unprecedented. In October 2017, eight months after Yahya Sinwar was elected head of Hamas’s political bureau, an agreement—brokered by Egypt—was reached between Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas. It would have seen the PA return to government in the strip for the first time since 2007 and Hamas’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections.

Soon after Hamas’s win and a new Palestinian government was formed under Ismail Haniyeh, the U.S. froze all aid to the PA and broadened its designation of Hamas officials as terrorists. The EU and Canada imposed sanctions as well, crippling Palestinian institutions. Western nations demanded the new Palestinian government recognize Israel and renounce violence. Abbas scrambled to respond to these edicts, and major disputes also erupted over the issue of disarmament and control of armed forces. Hamas accused Abbas of abusing presidential decrees to enact a “soft coup.”

In June 2007, Abbas dissolved the government, removed Haniyeh as prime minister, and declared a state of emergency. The brief civil war between Hamas and Fatah resulted in Abbas consolidating his power in Ramallah and a Hamas rule in Gaza. Abbas subsequently refused to hold new elections.

The U.S. and other Western nations, along with Israel, Egypt and the PA, maintained a devastating blockade on Gaza, effectively punishing the population for electing Hamas. In 2012, the UN published a report predicting Gaza would become “unlivable” by 2020. Three years later, the UN warned conditions were worsening faster than originally projected and said Gaza would become unlivable by 2018.

By 2017, the situation in Gaza had immensely deteriorated. It was suffering under the Israeli blockade, and the PA had collaborated with Israel to cut off electrical supply to the enclave, leaving most residents with only a few hours of power per day. The greatest impact was felt in the health sector —hospitals needed to begin using generators and had to cut back services—as well as with Gaza’s water purification system. Unemployment was rising, and the PA slashed salaries to government workers in Gaza, while laying off others as part of broad cuts to funding for social services. Israel continued its policy of “mowing the lawn”—periodically launching drone strikes and other attacks, as it waged a series of short wars against the enclave in 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014.

Trump had just come to power in Washington and pushed his agenda for Arab normalization agreements with Israel, and offered a hardline defense of its expansionist policies. Sinwar said he hoped an agreement with the PA would pave the way for new elections across Palestine and to reestablish a unified Palestinian governance structure over Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and east Jerusalem. In return, Sinwar wanted the blockade on Gaza to be lifted.

“Hamas is moving toward reconciliation based on two considerations: First, its sense of the danger facing the Palestinian cause and the need to safeguard the national project,” Sinwar said in a speech in October 2017 in Gaza. “And second, its feeling that the future of Palestinian youth is at risk.”

“There is no winner or loser in reconciliation; the winner is our people and their just cause,” he said.

Netanyahu, privately and publicly, opposed any effort to unite Gaza and the West Bank. “This is part of our strategy—to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank,” Netanyahu later told a Likud Party conference in 2019. “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.” These remarks are often erroneously portrayed as evidence Netanyahu supported Hamas. In reality, he was articulating a strategy of divide and conquer—aimed at crushing any effort to formally unify Palestine by enforcing a fractured power structure—while maintaining the siege against both Gaza and the West Bank as part of Israel’s broader war of annihilation.

Soon after a preliminary reconciliation deal was signed between Hamas and Fatah for a national unity government, Trump’s Middle East Envoy Jason Greenblatt intervened. “Any Palestinian government must unambiguously and explicitly commit to nonviolence, recognize the state of Israel, accept previous agreements and obligations between the parties—including to disarm terrorists—and commit to peaceful negotiations,” Greenblatt said. “If Hamas is to play any role in a Palestinian government, it must accept these basic requirements.”

In response to Greenblatt, Sinwar declared, “No one has the ability to extract from us recognition of the occupation,” adding that “No one in the universe can disarm us. On the contrary, we will continue to have the power to protect our citizens.”

The deal with Abbas eventually collapsed and Sinwar, after offering significant concessions, charged that the PA leader was doing the bidding of Israel and the U.S. by demanding disarmament of the Palestinian resistance and by seeking to place Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, under PA control. “One state, one regime, one law, and one weapon,” Abbas said in an interview with Egyptian television. “I will not accept or copy or reproduce the Hezbollah example in Lebanon. Everything must be in the hands of the Palestinian Authority.”

During the negotiations, Sinwar had indicated support for a long-term truce with Israel and a total dissolution of Hamas’s governing committees. He offered commitments to store resistance weapons and agreed to PA forces serving as the official internal security presence in Gaza. He, nevertheless, saw disarmament of the resistance factions as crossing a red line that would undermine the national liberation struggle and strip Palestinians of the weapons for self-defense against Israel. Sinwar stressed that no one could force Palestinians to recognize the occupation, and that resistance movements are “freedom fighters and revolutionaries for the liberation of the Palestinian people, fighting the occupation in accordance with the rules of international humanitarian law.”

In May 2018, months after the reconciliation deal collapsed and with Israeli forces gunning down nonviolent protesters during the Great March of Return demonstrations, Sinwar compared Gaza to a “very hungry tiger, kept in a cage, starved, whom the Israelis have been trying to humiliate. Now, it’s on the loose; it’s left its cage, and no one knows where it’s heading or what it’s going to do,” he said.

“The October 7th attack would not have happened if Abbas accepted Sinwar’s offer,” said Al-Arian. “The fact that the Palestinian Authority refused to take over Gaza tells you all you want about who is actually controlling Abbas, and who he listens to and who controls him. Abbas couldn’t do it, because the Americans and the Israelis rejected it.”

The failure of the 2017 agreement was not a surprise, given Abbas’s history and the well-known process of the U.S. and Israel intervening to quash such efforts.

Buttu said that Abbas’s entire tenure has amounted to continuing this arc of capitulation by both wittingly and unwittingly catering to the Israeli agenda. Abbas’s leadership has been a multi-decade Oslo déjà vu. “We’re constantly going down this path where we have Abu Mazen leading Palestinians in saying, ‘You have to do everything possible to recognize Israel. You have to do everything possible to make sure to recognize that their colonization is okay and legit. And you have to do everything possible to recognize that you will never have a right to return to your homes. And you have to do everything possible to renounce your right to self determination. And if you don’t do all of those things, then you’re the bad guy and Israel’s the good guy,’” Buttu said.

Despite his years of servitude to the U.S. and Israeli agenda, Israel has repeatedly declared Abbas as unacceptable and portrayed him as a terrorist enabler. Netanyahu has said, from the beginning of the Gaza genocide, that he would not accept the PA governing Gaza. “The day after the war in Gaza, there will be neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority,” he declared in February 2025. After the UN Security Council endorsed Trump’s plan on November 17, Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, dismissed a role for the PA. “Some colleagues have suggested that the Palestinian Authority could be the one to disarm Hamas and rebuild Gaza,” he said. “This assumes the PA will suddenly do something it has never done and has never been able to do.”

While using Abbas and the PA when convenient—and despite its sycophancy—the Trump administration nonetheless issued sanctions against senior PA and PLO members in July, accusing them of supporting terrorism. The State Department also revoked visas from PLO and PA officials for the UN General Assembly in New York in September and barred Abbas from entering the U.S. Following the October Gaza agreement, Abbas is back in play because Trump has determined his plan has use for a Palestinian façade.

Barghouti said that Abbas’s failure to implement the Beijing Agreement abetted the narrative that there is no other legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The agreement “would have closed the door to any attempts to impose foreign guardianship over us, whether in Gaza or the West Bank,” Barghouti told Al Jazeera Mubasher. “The major loophole through which the Israelis and certain international parties try to impose on the Palestinians what happens to them—the main reason and weak point—is the continued internal division.”

Al-Hindi said that, despite Abbas’s history and collaboration with Israel, the Palestinian factions remain willing to accept the PA returning to Gaza.

“Just to be clear: Mahmoud Abbas as he is—who talks about security coordination with Israel and about the futility of resistance—we accept that he issues the decision to form the technocratic committee, and that it would be affiliated with his government in Ramallah,” he said, adding that he wants Abbas and his Fatah party to engage fully with other Palestinian factions. “We are keen that Fatah, led by Mahmoud Abbas, participate as an essential partner in these internal Palestinian consultations, because the main issue we are discussing concerns the future of the conflict with Israel.”

Al-Arian said that Hamas and Islamic Jihad view an interim governing structure in Gaza under the auspices of the PA as the “least harmful” option on the table. “What’s the alternative? Trump in charge? ‘Board of Peace’ in charge? Tony Blair in charge? Israel in charge? Arab troops in charge? So they keep saying, ‘We need Palestinians to be in charge, and we’ll deal with Abbas, even if the Palestinian Authority is corrupt and everything. But that’s the least bad option that we have,’” Al-Arian said. “We’re not going to accept a High Commissioner 100 years after the British mandate. After Herbert Samuel of 1920, now we’ll have Donald Trump as a High Commissioner or Tony Blair? That’s unacceptable.”

Macron announced that France would recognize a “sovereign, independent and demilitarized State of Palestine” and that Hamas must be shut down and disarmed in September. “Hamas has been defeated militarily by the elimination of its leaders and decision-makers,” he declared in a speech at the UN during a conference organized by France and Saudi Arabia. “It must also be defeated politically to be truly dismantled.”

Macron’s demand for a demilitarized Palestinian state echoes the stance Netanyahu used to promote before the Gaza genocide. “The solution is a demilitarized Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said in 2013. “True and ongoing demilitarization with very clear security arrangements and no international forces.”

In response to France and other nations recognizing Palestine, Netanyahu said he will never allow a Palestinian state. “I have a clear message to those leaders who have recognized a Palestinian state after the terrible massacre of October 7: You are granting a huge prize to terrorism,” Netanyahu said in a video address on September 21. “And I have another message: It will not happen. There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River.”

While Palestinian resistance factions have welcomed the growing number of nations recognizing Palestine, they also argue that the added caveats about disarmament render the gestures symbolic or, worse, that they ultimately serve to undermine true Palestinian liberation. “We see that one of the aims of these states in recognizing the State of Palestine is to preoccupy the Palestinian people and distract them from resistance with words that have no practical translation on the ground,” said Ataya. “The Palestinian does not want to live in an illusion—that he has a recognized state while, in truth, he does not possess a single centimeter of his land on which this ‘fake’ state could actually exist. This is also one of the problems our enemies try to exploit: manipulating the emotions of Palestinians who long for an independent, fully sovereign state on their own land, and who wish to regain Jerusalem as its capital.”

In effect, what Trump’s plan envisions is the very same structure that the Israelis achieved in the 1990s—offering the Palestinians no meaningful rights, while claiming to be working toward peace, as they continue their war of annihilation through a combination of military force, bureaucratic trickery and dispossession. The entire package, as with Arafat in the 1990s, is being adorned with the wrapping of Palestinian acceptance.

“Oslo confiscated the rights of the Palestinian people—especially regarding Palestinian land. All the crimes are committed under Oslo’s umbrella, and then the world says, ‘Give up your weapons, give up your resistance,’” said Al-Hindi. “When the world—this world that created Israel and Europe, which established Israel as its arm in the region—bangs on the table and says, ‘Solve the Palestinian issue; give the Palestinian people their state,’ then it becomes logical for them to talk about Palestinian weapons. But at a time when our land is being stolen, the aggression continues, and they are arming Israel, while settlements are being built every day, and then tell us, ‘Do not resist’—this logic is completely unacceptable.”

Two decades after Oslo, the Trump plan is being pushed in the midst of record expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, with Gaza decimated and Israel in control of more than half of the enclave.

“In recent years, the Oslo Accords have become like a dead body that has not yet been buried,” said Ataya. “No proposal has been presented to the Palestinians that grants them any of their rights. Therefore, as with any people who possess a just cause, we cannot give up our rights. We will continue to hold firmly to our right to resist in all available forms—a right that is guaranteed by the United Nations and by international conventions for any occupied people. Any political rhetoric that is not translated into real action is merely deception or illusion.”

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